Tom Brevoort answers a question I’ve had since last weekend’s Free Comic Book Day issue: In what world could Avengers: Endless Wartime be called “Marvel’s First Original Graphic Novel,” considering the 1980s line of OGNS?

Those are absolutely all great books, but none of them really fit the parameters of a Graphic Novel in the way the term is recognized today, for all that the line that they were a part of was called Marvel Graphic Novels. They’re really European-style albums, and not truly long enough in most cases to be considered a genuine graphic novel. So that’s the difference

Even if that’s the case, what about the Season One books…? Weren’t they issued as OGNs? Do they not count because they were created as single issues, according to those who’ve worked on them…?

It’s not often that I direct people to particular sales, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that ComiXology’s Amelia Cole sale finishes tonight, meaning you only have a few more hours to sample what was easily one of my favorite new series of last year for a ridiculously low price. For just $6 – the price of two regular DC books! – you can get the entire run of the first series, which just might be the best bargain you’re going to get in comics anytime soon. This ends the plug; you can thank me later.

Ryan Haupt considers the concept of free, and in the process, accidentally outs himself as the Grinch of Comics:

Then there’s Free Comic Book Day, which from what I can see on the internet seems to be a HUGE deal and I honestly can’t force myself to care. I get the impetus, it’s a good day for retailers to get new bodies in the door, and I hope my friends who are retailers are able to accomplish just that. People promote it as a great time to introduce your friends or kids to comics. Well I don’t have any friends kids so me trying to bring kids to the comic shop the first Saturday of May would likely get me banned from the park. Unless by kids we’ve all been talking about baby goats this whole time, in which case I wouldn’t bring them either because they’d probably eat all the free comics.

And as someone without human children, I wouldn’t want to bring another adult friend to the shop on the Free Comic Book Day because I can’t imagine them wanting to return to a place with that many children running all over, especially when such a state isn’t representative of a normal day in the local comics shop. I think I’d be much better off taking someone to Isotope on a lazy day and kicking back on the couch, or to one of their parties and just blow their mind. I’ve done both, and they’re both fun in different ways neither of which got that friend into reading comics even though I like to think they had a good time.

Who doesn’t like seeing happy kids with free comics? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like baby goats as much as the next man, but still…

The Deadline report on the current state of the Marvel Studios makes for fascinating, if somewhat confusing, reading:

But The Avengers cast are ready to rumble with Marvel for the Avengers sequel slated for a May 2015 release. “Some received only $200,000 for Avengers and Downey got paid $50M. On what planet is that OK?” an insider tells me. CAA represents an overwhelming majority of the Marvel stars and is trying hard to keep the negotiations out of the public limelight and media headlines. But that may not be possible with some reps blaming the studio for ’scorched earth’ tactics past and present. ”Marvel has created so much animosity by strong-arming and bullying on sequels already. It’s counterproductive,” one source tells me. Says another, “I’m sick of Kevin Feige telling me again and again how Marvel is ‘reinventing the movie business’. It doesn’t work like this. They’re reinventing business, period.” I’ve learned Marvel already has threatened to sue or recast when contracts and/or options are challenged. That prompted a few cast members to respond, “Go ahead.” I hear Hemsworth especially wasn’t anxious to go back into that arduous diet and training regimen and subsist primarily on egg whites for Thor: Dark World which hits theaters November 8th.

On the one hand, given the various rumors and behind-the-scenes stories that have emerged from Marvel Studios in the past, in regards to the studio’s ability to work cheap, this isn’t the biggest surprise. But on the other, I really can’t see Marvel getting away with recasting any of the main characters in Avengers without risking a significant backlash; cutting costs is one thing, but managing to dump lead actors to save money when you’re arguably the most successful movie studio in the business right now…? That’s not going to play so well, surely.

While mainstream buyers fall for Hawkeye, the Hooded Utilitarian’s Ng Suat Tong takes a look at the series and isn’t that impressed:

Barton in these issues is a bit like Chandler’s Phlilip Marlowe without the cool dialogue, machismo, and active mind—he’s basically a plains clothes knight of the city who gets beaten up a lot. He uses fists not words and is bereft of any trace of deep intellectual content or motivation. He’s just another nice guy in an unending stream of nice guys in popular culture. He never dies; no, he can’t die because no one actually wants to kill him. They just want to tell him that he’s going to die like every weirdo in the Marvel universe. If readers came here even remotely excited that this was a comic which takes the superhero into hitherto unknown territory, let me dampen that down right now.

The excitement here is that Hawkeye doesn’t wear his costume all that much and acts like a real life human being once in a while. He cracks some jokes and has some sense of his own mortality when he or his friends get shot at. He is hopeless at superheroics (i.e. fallible). He also has to make rent for his poor neighbors, just like a rich Peter Parker would do (except that, you know, Spider-man was poor). Also, he gets to hang out with a bunch of babes. The bar has been lowered to the level of a Munchkin.

The appeal of Hawkeye, I suspect isn’t that it raises the bar on the entire superhero genre, but rather that it’s a well done alternative to the superhero norm, especially as the norm at Marvel Comics currently; it has enough nostalgia value in the “Clint as a regular schlub” angle – Shades of classic Peter Parker! – and enough style in the seemingly effortlessly beautiful visuals to stand out in the crowd of everything else that’s on the shelves right now. While Tong makes some good points about how reliant the book is on David Aja’s art in particular, I can’t help but feel that he’s dinging the book for not being something that it wasn’t trying to be in the first place…

At the Beat, David Carter offers up a sales chart for what comics and graphic novels are selling on Amazon. Besides what are now the usual suspects for bookstore audiences – The Walking Dead, Diary of a Wimpy Kid etc. – there’s an impressive presence for DC’s Injustice: Gods Among Us digital series, with thirteen placings in the Top 50, and once again, no Marvel presence beyond Hawkeye Vol. 1: My Life As A Weapon. That book really does seem to be appealing to a mass audience in a way that nothing else from the publisher can manage…

This mock ad (described as “but a daydream wish”), from Marvel Comics The Untold Story author Sean Howe, seemed appropriate given earlier thoughts today:

Always worth linking: You can find the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund here, and the Hero Initiative here.

Heidi Macdonald traces the origins of graphic novels as a force in U.S. library lending:

The audience of children and teens is growing, critical and academic recognition has confirmed comics’ literary and artistic value, and a new shelf of modern classics has arrived. The use of comics is on the rise in educational circles as well: a recent survey by test-prep publisher Kaplan showed a third of ESL teachers use comics to help teach English, and the call for unorthodox learning materials in the new Common Core standards could result in even more attention for the growing field of nonfiction comics… According to librarians surveyed for this article, graphic novels are among the most circulated categories, right up there with teen paranormal romance and DVDs.

Reed Tucker has a plan to save the comic book industry, it seems:

The big-two publishers at this point should take a hard, honest look at themselves in the mirror and realize what they are: caretakers of trademarked characters owned by big corporations. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. These characters have long histories and massive name recognition around the world, and there are plenty of creative types out there who’d cut off their penciling hand to work on them. That’s the one major advantage DC and Marvel have over the other publishing houses, besides upfront money to talent.

There’s no point in the publishing giants wasting time and energy trying to launch new characters and new-concept series at this point only to cancel them in six months. (Vibe, anyone?) That part of the market is now better served by Image and other boutique publishers. And what writer or artist, in the age of the creators’ rights movement, wants to hand over a new character or concept that he won’t own?

In total, his suggestions (which are all for Marvel and DC) are:

1. Publish less comics
2. Cut all comics to $1.99 in price
3. Focus on individual titles, not crossovers
4. Don’t create new characters, but stick to established properties

While none of these – with, perhaps, the exception of the last one – are bad ideas, per se (Really, is anyone really convinced that the DCU line has to have 52 titles in it?), I remain unconvinced that any of them are necessarily realistic in today’s market, never mind likely to save the industry…

So, yesterday afternoon, I posted this on Twitter:

400+ retweets – and responses that ranged from “Does Kirby’s estate see any of that money?” to “Jack Kirby must be a rich man!” – later, I thought it might be a good idea to put a little more meat on those bones.

As I said in the tweet, the figure comes from the first issue of TwoMorrows’ new magazine, Comic Book Creator. Specifically, it comes from an article called “If Kirby is King, Why Haven’t Jack’s Heirs Made One Measely Thin Dime Out of The Billions of Dollars Generated by His Creations in Hollywood Motion Pictures?”

The $7,310,655,909 figure mentioned is the combined worldwide box office and subsequent U.S. DVD sales for X-Men, X2: X-Men United, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Origins Wolverine, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Hulk, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger and Marvel’s The Avengers up to Feb 27 this year.

It’s actually low-balling the actual amount made by those movies; the DVD figures – $753,342,333 – are (a) missing any movie released on DVD before 2005 (i.e, the first two X-Men, the first Hulk), (b) not including Blu-Ray sales, and (c) are only domestic sales, meaning there’s a lot more out there… especially when you consider just how well Iron Man 3 is doing in theaters right now.

The Comic Book Creator piece by Jon B. Cooke notes that “The Marvel/Disney empire is raking in billions of dollars from the fruit of his imagination and they aren’t leaving scraps for his children and grandchildren; what they are sharing with progeny Susan, Neal, Barbara and Lisa, and their children is nothing. Zip. Zero. Zilch.” That may not be exactly true; Ed Brubaker certainly said otherwise in an interview with Tom Spurgeon last year:

At the same time, I’ve always felt good about the fact that the credits for Captain America say, “created by Simon and Kirby” and that Marvel had settled with Simon and Kirby — not Kirby himself, but Kirby’s heirs — over Cap. So they are getting something from the Avengers movie, because of that.

Certainly, the lawsuit between Joe Simon and Marvel over ownership of Cap was “amicably settled” in 2003, although details of that settlement remained confidential. It’s possible that Kirby’s estate was involved in that settlement, but by no means definite; Brubaker would be more in the know about the subject than the majority of us, and Captain America wasn’t one of the characters mentioned in the 2010 lawsuit the estate brought against Marvel (A lawsuit that Marvel won, of course). So perhaps Kirby’s heirs aren’t getting zilch, but “a little bit more than zilch.” It’s still not really enough, though, is it?

In the last two decades – Really, little more than a decade – Marvel and its partners have generated more than seven billion dollars from Kirby’s co-creations from movies alone, never mind merchandise or publishing sales. Elsewhere in the Comic Book Creator issue (I know, I know, I keep mentioning it; You should buy it. It’s well-worth reading), Alex Ross puts it best, I think:

Well, I kind of feel like we know the great sin of how the Superman deal went is one of the biggest, most well-known stories in comics, given that that built the entire industry. But given that Jack Kirby himself almost built that entire other half of the industry by his own blood and sweat through countless books over a 50-year career, it’s got to go down as really the greatest sin of comics that in a way he didn’t both receive the amount of remuneration in his lifetime that he deserved, and that there isn’t a permanent structure set up for his family today.

The great Judge Minty fan film – inspired by 2000AD‘s long-running Judge Dredd strip, unsurprisingly – is now online in its entirety, and it’s well worth watching:

You can find out more about the movie here, but it’s worth pointing out that not only was the movie made with the permission of 2000AD owners Rebellion, but it was also co-written by Michael Carroll, who’s one of the team of Dredd writers on the weekly strip these days. Which is to say, this is a pretty authentic “fan film,” all told.

When I was reading the new Bite Me collection from Dylan Meconis the other week, I thought to myself Someone should hire Dylan to write something, she’s just ridiculously talented as a writer. Lo and behold, someone had already had that same idea: She’s just been announced as a staff writer for Scott Kurtz’ PVP:

I’m really excited to be working with Scott on PvP. I’ve been an avid reader for years, but when Cory [Casoni, PVP brand manager and director of business development] and Scott invited me to fill in, I was surprised by how natural it felt to step into the world of the strip. Being asked to continue as a regular contributor is a delight, not least of all because I might get to talk Scott into drawing things I’ve always wanted to see, like Brent riding a llama. Writing for a beloved daily strip like PvP is a big departure from my previous projects. I’m used to toiling over long stories without the benefit of a collaborator, much less one with the talent and experience of a Scott Kurtz. I can’t wait to see the results.

The current storyline is already benefiting from her touch; as the webcomic celebrates its fifteenth anniversary, Kurtz says that “In just a couple of writing sessions, Dylan and I have laid down the broad strokes for some exciting changes in the PvP comic strip. This is only the beginning of what’s to come. We have big plans, a lot is going to change, and the future of PvP is bright!”

Jonathan Hickman talks Avengers, New Avengers and Infinity:

We haven’t really clued people into what the point of ‘Avengers’ is. I suppose you could make an argument that we we’ve done a 12-issue prelude to the stuff that’s going to happen… Maybe I shouldn’t have done it that way, but I’m happy with the work. I think we’ve turned in a lot of cool issues and done some neat stuff, but probably the velocity and ‘mission statement’ will ramp up very soon. I think when people see ‘Infinity,’ understand what it is, where we’re going from there, people will understand why we took all this time to do these little seemingly disconnected and open-ended stories.

There’s something to be said for runs where everything isn’t immediately locked into place, I think; when I think back to my favorite runs of superhero books – Morrison’s Doom Patrol and Justice League, Duffy’s Power Man and Iron Fist, Englehart and Staton’s Green Lantern/Green Lantern Corps – none of them came in with an immediately obvious mission statement, but instead drifted into themselves more slowly, more organically. I seem to remember Kieron Gillen made a similar comment about his Iron Man run having a similarly staggered beginning for some reason; is it wrong that I find this charming, instead of offputting?

Tom Spurgeon’s write-up of his Portland trip and the Stumptown Comics Fest is so very, very worth your time to sit down and read:

I think Portland gets a lot of its deserved praise by being an awesome place for comics people to live. Things like the effectiveness of its public transit or the way that older people have a functioning role in the city’s culture are as important as any single group, person or institution that has a direct, trackable relationship with a longbox. As a result, the community of comics-people kind of organically arises from the general artistic community, and the benefits of the specific grouping of comics-makers, fans and thinkers-about become a bonus to the benefits of just living in one of the great places to settle down. You read about comics people interacting in Portland and it’s always somehow less dramatic than the interactions you read about in other places. No one is holding onto each other for dear life in Portland. They have things to do. Stories from other North American cities involve intense encounters and astonishing leaps in artistic development; stories about paths crossing in Portland are frequently of the “Wow, you can’t go to dinner without seeing another comics person somewhere in the damn restaurant” variety. I think this flatters a lot of what’s individualistic and independent about many comics-makers, and also acts as a crucial hedge against the frequent desire to wrap yourself in a comics blanket so tightly you can’t breathe.

So much more in the link; Spurgeon is a wonderfully honest and evocative writer in this, managing to get across his experience of the show in a way that feels appropriate and balanced, and definitely not forced.

If you’re wondering what effects Wolverine’s actions in the past at the end of Age of Ultron #6 may have had on the Marvel Universe, Brian Michael Bendis has an internal Marvel document for you that might just blow your mind – A list of stories and events that would/might have gone very differently without Hank Pym around:

A – No Vision1 – No marriage to Scarlet Witch/Immortus plan to prevent her from breeding possibly derailed

2 – No birth of children (Speed & Wiccan of Young Avengers)

3      – No undoing of their children, which Immortus engineered in part to ensure Scarlet Witch’s mental instability and thus pliability

a – Mephisto and Master Pandemonium affected

4      – No Leonia, NJ-based events (Vision and Scarlet Witch maxi-series)

a – No opportunity for Crystal to meet and have affair with Norman Webster

1 – No divorce from Quicksilver

5      – No defeating Salem’s Seven

a – they conquer the witch town of New Salem, and we have an entire town of evil black mages working against humanity

6      – Does not form West Coast Avengers

7      – No Scarlet Witch insanity

a – No Disassembled deaths of Ant-Man/Lang, Jack of Hearts, Vision destruction

b – No M/M-Day/Decimation

1-     Hundreds of X-Men/mutant stories undone

8      – Grim Reaper’s Lethal Legion potentially defeat and slay Avengers (Captain America, Black Panther, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch)

1-       Thousands of ripple effects from those deaths

2-     Grim Reaper won’t later feel the need to revive his “dead” brother Wonder Man as a zombie, which means Wonder Man presumably remains dormant

9 – Vision not present as one of the Dead Avengers who save the living Avengers during the Chaos War.

There’s a lot more. As Bendis himself says, “get ready to get dizzy.”

CBR’s Brett White ponders what this past weekend’s Stumptown Comicsfest taught him:

Comics really aren’t just about superheroes, and there is plenty of joy to be found outside of the narrow scope of the Big Two. Yes, I knew this already. And yes, I read plenty of non-superhero comics on a monthly basis. But being in the midst of a town and a convention that so thoroughly celebrates independent publishing with as much fanfare as C2E2 celebrated the fights and tights genre made me really take notice… It’s not a stretch to say that in the recent past I only viewed creator-owned work as a stepping stone to getting into the major leagues and being handed the X-Men’s reins (and yes, I’d make the team nothing but ’90s X-Force and Maggott, so what?). Thanks to Stumptown, I now have a better understanding of the joy that creating original work can bring. I now see that there is a community ready to try new things and read comics based on how good they are and not based on whether or not they’re part of a larger franchise.

It really should be said: One of the greatest things about Stumptown is that it’s really about comics as a medium, as opposed to specific genres, companies or the like. It’s all about the creators and the comics, no matter who or what they are. Far more shows could stand to learn a little of the Stumptown thing.

The winner of the bookstore market in April is unsurprisingly clear from this chart of the Top 20 graphic novels: It’s obviously The Walking Dead, which takes nine of the twenty slots (with three different volume ones, interestingly enough; the hardcover, the omnibus and the compendium), as has pretty much been the case for some time now. But there’s something worth paying attention to happening at the bottom of the Top 20.

Matt Fraction and David Aja’s Hawkeye Vol. 1: My Life As A Weapon is at #15. That, in itself, is a big deal, because Marvel collected editions tend to fare pretty terribly in the bookstore market (No Marvel superhero book charted at all in December 2012, nor January or February 2013, for example; Avengers Vs. X-Men charted in November 2012, and then you have to go all the way back to May 2012 to find another Marvel U title, when Infinity Gauntlet reached #19 as a result of the Avengers movie), but it’s an even bigger deal when you realize that it’s the book’s second month in the Top 20; it actually debuted in March, at #9.

Two months in the bookstore market Top 20 is very unusual for a superhero book, which tend to peak in their month of release and drift off never to be heard of again… Has the buzz around Hawkeye gone outside of the comic industry, perhaps (If so, deservedly; it’s a really good book)? And if it has – and if Marvel keep it in print – could Hawkeye turn into Marvel’s first perennial seller in the bookstore market?

Next year’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier adds Steve Rogers’ long-time partner The Falcon to the mix, as played by Anthony Mackie. On-set photos of Mackie in uniform surfaced today courtesy of Lainey Gossip via WENN, showing a much more basic military look for Sam Wilson than his usual superhero attire. While it seems unlikely that we’ll see Falcon in the full red-and-white feathered attire in the movie, it’s also distinctly possible that what he’s sporting in the pictures here isn’t necessarily his “final” look. Though it could be. Hey, it’s still early!

A fuller look at Mackie, who co-stars in current Michael Bay release Pain & Gain, follows after the jump. Captain America: The Winter Soldier, directed by sitcom vets Joe and Anthony Russo and starring Chris Evans as Captain America and Sebastian Stan as The Winter Soldier, is scheduled for release on April 4, 2014.

Read the rest of this entry »

Iron Man 3 has been getting all the Marvel movie attention lately, but Fox’s The Wolverine is less than three months away, with a release date of July 26. On Wednesday, a minute-long sizzle reel of footage (some new, some seen in previous trailers) surfaced online, first seen at last month’s CinemaCon. Here it is:

And in further Hugh Jackman-as-Wolverine news, X-Men: Days of Future Past director Bryan Singer tweeted a picture of Jackman in character — his back, at least — on the set of the 2014 film, great news for fans of Logan in brown leather jackets.

Ridiculously good news from Paul Cornell, via a Suicide Girls interview by Alex Dueben:

We haven’t signed contracts yet but I have every reason to believe we will be starting season two [of Saucer Country] in comic form next year. In February, even. We’ve been talking to some lovely people about this and I think Saucer Country readers have a huge reason to be hopeful. I’m very much thankful to them for that. The sudden cancellation meant that I had to wrap things up really quickly, far too quickly to actually wrap the whole comic up. I thought about all the different plot threads I had to answer questions for and Ryan had already started drawing the first issue of the last three issue arc. That was just going to be a regular arc so the only way I could have finished the whole thing in two issues would have been in a lecture hall with a series of diagrams and charts going so that meant that and this meant this.

Cornell’s Saucer Country – co-created by, and with great art from, Ryan Kelly – was a particular favorite of mine all the way up to its recent cancellation at Vertigo. A UFO conspiracy thriller that’s as much political drama as it is X-Files-esque paranoiafest, it was intelligent and self-aware and horrifically overlooked by an audience that had no idea what it was missing. Hopefully, when it returns, more people will jump onboard.