Big Shiny Robot talks with storyboard artist and director Ben Jones about working on the DC cartoons, and moving away from “the Bruce Timm style” for the upcoming Batman: Brave and the Bold:

The thing is, there’s only one Bruce Timm.  If you look at the timeline of when the shows were made, you’ll notice that Bruce is busy on other stuff, either JLU or the DCU videos.  So he’s just not available, to begin with.  You could, I suppose, try to mimic his style for your show, but that’s kind’ve weird for a variety of reasons, especially when he’s sitting just down the hall.  So in the end, you’re generally better off doing your own thing than trying to be a second-rate Bruce Timm.

The interview includes exclusive looks at Plastic Man from Brave and the Bold, and Jones’ designs for Red Tornado.

– Sam Thielman notes DC has completed its run of Eisner’s The Spirit, and takes a look at the history of the character.

– Chris Arrant looks at The Foundation.

– The LA Times is blogging about comics, though they seem to be mainly focusing on the movie spin-offs.

– Being Batman ain’t cheap.

– Here’s a video interview with Gary Panter.

– And here’s one with Wendy Pini.

– Tim O’Shea talks with Bob Greenberger about The Essential Batman Encyclopedia.

– Take a look at the JLU Question figure.

– Looks like they might be doing a The Dark Knight video game after all.

– “The Secret Origin of Omake!!!”

Compiled by JK and Chris.

The Daily Cross Hatch has the first of a two-part interview with the legendary Mr. Feiffer up on their site:

How did you make the transition to the political strips in The Voice? Did Eisner play a direct role?

It was the United States Army. I got drafted during the Korean War, and my reaction to being in the service and the sense of mindless authority that any military operation oppresses you with—it hits you, right between the eyes—the use of language is misappropriated to not say what you mean, but to maneuver and manipulate people and disguise meaning. All of the versions of that that I had seen in my civilian life plus all of it being so highlighted by my military experience, I decided within months of my being in the army that I wasn’t going to be a traditional comics strip artist. I decided that I had to comment about the world around me and use my cartoons for the purposes of social and political satire. If I hadn’t been in the army, it would have been a very different career.

Back in March, BOOM! Comics hired Matt Gagnon to oversee their upcoming Farscape comics. Per a press release sent out last week, Matt “was quickly promoted to managing editor, overseeing the production of all BOOM! titles,” reporting to their editor-in-chief, Mark Waid.

Matt spent four years as a buyer at Meltdown Comics, the 15-year-old large comic shop in L.A., before moving to BOOM! He’s no stranger to the publishing side of comics, as he was co-editor of the latest volume of the Meathaus comic anthology.

To see how the new job was going, I sent a few questions to Matt via email.

JK: You’re coming to BOOM! from the comics retailing world. What did you do for Meltdown Comics?

Matt: My title was Purchasing Manager, which means I did the ordering for our stores through Diamond, our mainstream distributors, and beyond. Gaston, the co-owner of Meltdown, besides being one of the best business men I’ve ever met, also became a good friend and mentor to me. We had a great short-hand between the two of us. I was also planning events - like Y:THE LAST PARTY - working the counter on Wednesday’s, flexing on thieves. You know, the usual.

(more…)

– Stuart Moore shares the cover for and talks about New Avengers: Fireline, the latest comic from Marvel created for the U.S. military.

– If you enjoyed John Jakala’s essay on comic book “extras” that we ran on Wednesday, he lists even more extras at his blog.

– I mentioned a few days ago that the Chicago Tribune’s Redeye blog was doing a superheroes tournament. Apparently they’re taking some flack because Buffy the Vampire Slayer bested Batman. Based on the number of hits we get whenever Whedonesque links to us, my guess is that Buffy’s victory had more to do with her (and Whedon’s) active, vocal, organized and large fan base, versus any kind of shenanigans.

– Steve Epting walks us through the process of creating a page for Captain America #40.

– Dave McKean has a not-quite-operational-yet new website.

– Jamie Coville shares pictures from last weekend’s Paradise Comics Toronto Comicon.

– Tim O’Shea talks to Brigid Alverson about her site Good Comics for Kids.

– The Mindless Ones interview David Lapham.

– Marvel.com profiles Spider-Man fan and UFC fighter Anderson Silva.

Entertainment Weekly talks with Alan Moore about the upcoming Watchmen movie, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century, his upcoming novel Jerusalem, and his love of The Wire and South Park:

Don’t you have the slightest curiosity about what Watchmen director Zack Snyder is doing with your work?
I would rather not know.

He’s supposed to be a very nice guy.
He may very well be, but the thing is that he’s also the person who made 300. I’ve not seen any recent comic book films, but I didn’t particularly like the book 300. I had a lot of problems with it, and everything I heard or saw about the film tended to increase [those problems] rather than reduce them: [that] it was racist, it was homophobic, and above all it was sublimely stupid. I know that that’s not what people going in to see a film like 300 are thinking about but…I wasn’t impressed with that…. I talked to [director] Terry Gilliam in the ’80s, and he asked me how I would make Watchmen into a film. I said, ”Well actually, Terry, if anybody asked me, I would have said, ‘I wouldn’t.”’ And I think that Terry [who aborted his attempted adaptation of the book] eventually came to agree with me. There are things that we did with Watchmen that could only work in a comic, and were indeed designed to show off things that other media can’t.

Related: Patrick Wilson (Nite Owl) says Watchmen’s ending stays true to the comic

In an interview with Laura Hudson, the Perry Bible Fellowship creator reveals he’s got a new book out for November, hot on the heels of last year’s successful Trial of Colonel Sweeto:

PW Comics Week: How does the upcoming anthology differ from Colonel Sweeto?

Nicholas Gurewitch: The Perry Bible Fellowship Almanack will have all the material that’s in Colonel Sweeto, and a heck of a lot more. It will essentially replace Colonel Sweeto.

PWCW: Did you expect Colonel Sweeto to be as successful as it was?

NG: I can’t say I didn’t expect it. I don’t think I really thought about it. For what it is—a book of comic strips—it sold a lot. I think the most impressive piece of info we got is that it was the 10th bestselling book on Amazon.ca [Canada].

Gurewitch also reveals he’s working on a PBF-style TV pilot for the BBC.

Van Jensen looks into the recent brouhaha surrounding Platinum Comics’ financial woes and comes away with some interesting numbers:

Much of Platinum’s financial challenges owes to the company’s spending, which one former employee called “outrageous.” The company’s costs and expenses, including the lease on a floor of a Los Angeles executive office building, rose to $6.6 million last year, up from $1.6 million in 2005. So even though Platinum increased its earnings from $180,500 in 2006 to $1.9 million in 2007, it still lost more than $5 million.

In the first quarter of 2008, that trend has continued. A look at the 1st quarter report finds higher cash ($150,527) than at the end of the year, but also a higher accumulated deficit of $14.1 million. Platinum listed $4.8 million in total costs and expenses, compared to $179,382 in net revenue, for a net loss of more than $4.6 million, according to an SEC filing.

The company’s lack of cash led Altounian and Platinum CEO Scott Rosenberg to defer their $300,000 salaries last year, according to SEC filings, which Altounian said showed “we have both put our money where our mouths are.”

Lots of choice quotes from Platinum’s president Brian Altounian and Hero By Night creator DJ Coffman at the link.

Related: Platinum posts a transcript of Jensen’s interview with Altounian

In all the brouhaha over the cover to the latest New Yorker magazine, you may have missed this interview they did with Achewood creator Chris Onstad:

CARTOON LOUNGE: You were Time magazine’s graphic novel of the year in 2007. How does it feel to be on top of the world?

Chris Onstad: When you are on top of the world, at first you wake up not knowing that. Then you go to your computer, and there is an e-mail from someone with a time.com e-mail suffix, and the e-mail wants to become a phone call. It is uncommon for an e-mail to ask to become a phone call, so you agree, and then the call happens pretty quickly after that. It’s a girl named Julie from Thanking & Congratulations, and she does what you might expect. She makes you feel as though you are sitting Indian-style on top of the world, much like the Little Prince, and in my case I had the distinct feeling that I could have taken her to a trendy vodka bar in Alphabet City and talked playfully and open-endedly about bras for a while. Maybe that’s what they wanted me to feel. Maybe I was played to a T

This September BOOM! Studios is putting out a benefit book to raise money for Josh Medors, who has been fighting cancer for several months. A great line-up of creators have donated their talent, including Steve Niles, Josh Fialkov, Kody Chamberlain, B. Clay Moore & Seth Peck, Chris Samnee and Tony Fleecs. Bringing it all together is designer Ed Dukeshire and editor Dan Taylor.

I emailed Dan a few questions about the book, its line-up and how Josh is doing.

JK: How did you get involved with the Josh Medors tribute book? Do you know
Josh?

Dan: I was actually contacted by Matt Gagnon — now Managing Editor Matt Gagnon — from BOOM! It’s my understanding that I was recommended to them by way of Elk’s Run writer Josh Fialkov (who would be a nobody in this town if I hadn’t taken him under my wing back when he was just fresh off the bus and all wide-eyed with wonder). Matt was looking for someone who knew Josh and had experience in editing comic books. Having spent about three years as an editor at IDW Publishing, I knew a little something about pulling a book together. When Matt asked if I would shepherd the project, it didn’t take long for me to get back to him with a resounding “yes” because not only was it a worthy cause, it was a worthy cause for someone I knew personally.

(more…)

Laura Hudson sits down with Bookhunter author Jason Shiga:

PWCW: Your newspaper strip Fleep, among other works, is a mixture of math and mystery. How much does mathematics influence your creative process?

JS: I get pegged as the math cartoonist, but to be honest, I don’t think there’s anything in Fleep that someone who’s passed all their math courses in high school couldn’t figure out. Certainly nothing past freshman calculus anyway. Maybe a little group theory and combinatorial analysis. But mostly my comics are just extremely rigorous and analytical. Also, there’s a little graph theory in my last two comics.

Shiga also says he’s working on a massive sci-fi epic that will “consume the next 10 years of my life.” Cool.

Ah, the trials and tribulations of being a boutique comics publisher. We recently had two articles that peered into that issue. First up, Doug Wolk offers a profile of relative newcomer Secret Acres, who had a strong buzz going on at MoCCA this year:

Secret Acres is still working out the details on how it’s going to distribute its books beyond the convention circuit and Web site—the publishers are still in the early stages of talking to Diamond and “trying to have a very concerted marketing effort,” according to Matthews. “We advertise, we send out press kits…. We’re also trying to figure out which shows make the most sense to attend. Obviously, we can’t go to all of them, but we’re trying to get a sense of which ones are the best fit for our books.”

Secret Acres also has an Avelino-designed Web site, secretacres.com, which sells it’s books and artists’ minicomics, and also includes critical theory about comics as well as serialized strips. “I liked what Tom was doing with the Highwater Web site, where he had small installments of the books he was selling,” Avelino said. “It’s such a cheap and good opportunity to get people looking forward to seeing things. And comics criticism is a big deal to me. It’s important to me for those conversations to happen.”

Then Brian Heater interviews Sparkplug publisher Dylan Williams about his ever-burgeoning line of books:

Was that sense of dismay that you expressed toward some of the larger indies based on their output?

Well, for me [laughs]—I’ll go on record with this. One of the bigger ones was Fantagraphics, and the problem there was that they weren’t taking any chances on smaller people when I started. They were basically just publishing their own people that they’d had experience with. Within a few years of that, they actually have started changing. They’re doing Mome now. The whole point of Mome is to give some exposure to smaller artists.

I think that, through all of us smaller publishers, we’ve actually shown the bigger publishers that there are a whole bunch of artists worth investigating who may not be well-known, but can be just as appealing to people. Drawn and Quarterly—I never really had problems with them, it was just that they never expanded because they had a really tight aesthetic. It was very much about their personal taste. I really admire Chris [Oliveros] and Tom Devlin. They’re just amazing, in my book.

– Take a gander at the cover to the next volume of Acme Novelty Library.

– Man, I hope this isn’t a true story.

– The first volume of Bizenghast is available for free online.

– Van Jensen looks at Gary Phillips’ new High Rollers series.

– Sean Collins has been posting the excellent interviews he did with folks like Nick Bertozzi for Wizard up onto his blog.

– Kai-Ming Cha looks at the ultra-violent Gantz series.

– Brian K. Vaughan talks about New York City and Ex Machina.

– Jennifer de Guzman looks at the issue of creators’ rights.

– Black Voices counts down their top 25 black superheroes.

– Scott Kurtz has made up LOLBAT T-shirts.

Compiled by JK and Chris.

– C.B. Cebulski teases two Spider-Man panels by Junko Mizuno.

– ComicMix talks to Neil Kleid about writing Dungeons & Dragons comics.

– Hero Happy Hour on British TV? Not quite …

– DC and Marvel don’t want to talk to Don MacPherson about subscriptions.

– Curt Holman compares Spider-Man 3 to the recent The Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon.

– Funky Winkerbean does a Tales of Suspense homage. And they do it very well.

Gamespot has a Q&A up with Midway’s Ed Boon about the upcoming Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe game … which will feature fatalities and what he’s calling “brutalities”:

GS: Have you made any more headway on the fatality versus finishing moves?

EB: Yes we have. All of the MK characters and all of the DC villains will have fatalities. The DC heroes who don’t kill that often will have brutalities that will function just like fatalities but don’t actually kill the opponent.

He says the big E3 gaming convention will bring a look at four characters and two arenas.

Forbidden Planet has posted part two of Pádraig Ó Méalóid’s extensive interview with Alan Moore. Part one is here.

Brian Heater talks to How to Understand Israel in Sixty Days or Less author Sarah Glidden for Heeb magazine:

You certainly risk coming off as a bit too one-sided, given the generally filtered nature of information on the subject that we receive in the State—but then there’s a certain degree of bias one has to anticipate on a Birthright trip. Did the trip make it more or less difficult to get at both sides of the issue?

Well, I knew going into it that I wasn’t going to get balanced portions of both sides of the issue. Part of me wanted to see just how one-sided the tour would be and I was ready to report on it in the comic, but I was surprised at how left-wing our guide was. It kind of caught me off guard, actually. We talked a lot about the Palestinian situation, the separation wall and what historical events brought the Zionists and Arabs to that point. In the end, however, we were on a tour of Israel and not a tour of the conflict, so of course it wasn’t balanced, but I didn’t feel like I was being brainwashed at all. I really want to go back and get the Palestinian side of the issue, although I could never come close to what Joe Sacco did with Palestine.

Van Jensen talks to the mighty Mr. Campbell about his latest upcoming book for First Second, The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard:

PWCW: How did you come upon the circus and a trapeze artist specifically as the focus for this book?

EC: After I wanted to be a cowboy, which my mom talked me out of because we lived in a big industrial city and she thought it was an unreasonable ambition, I decided I wanted to run away and work in a circus, so this is me playing out another one of my great all-time fantasies, because I never really got to do that either. After leaving school I went and worked in an office for nine years, interviewing people for welfare benefits. I used to stare out the window at the hills far away and wonder what would have happened if I’d had the courage and just gone and done it. After making too many overpayments I was asked to leave that job. I walked out the door and came back in on the other side of the counter. It was then that I finally found my true calling in life and decided to become an artist.