In honor of the event of the day…
Photo by Lisa Padilla.
Author: Glenn Hauman
‘Merlin’ appears on SyFy in April
Syfy picked up the basic cable rights for all 26 episodes of the series Merlin, including the US TV premiere of season two which has never before been seen in America. Syfy will premiere the series this April.
The series featured the adventures of young Merlin and Arthur, who is being groomed by his father Uther Pendragon to one day become king of England. Season one aired on NBC last summer and seasons one and two
aired on BBC One in the UK during 2008-09. BBC is moving forward with a
third season, slated to air in September.
‘Human Target’ tv show finally references the comics– and not in a way you’d expect
Okay, so Christopher Chance is sent to a monastery to find the person he’s supposed to protect. And, well, you’ll see…
And yes, of course he knows all of this, he’s Jimmy Olsen.
Darth Vader and Snoop Dogg selling sneakers together in Times Square
Lily Tomlin was right. No matter how cynical you get, it’s impossible to keep up.
Yes, it’s been one of those days. Why do you ask?
More on the ‘iPad: will it save the world… or destroy it?’ debates
I always notice these things when I’m on five different deadlines and really shouldn’t be distracted, but when Dirk Deppey says I’ve missed the point entirely, as he does here, replying to my comments here— well, it catches my attention.
Dirk says: It [the iPad] has to be cheap enough to appeal to the general public, building a large enough pool of potential customers to once again make selling comics to a mass audience feasible — otherwise you’re just trading one limited, stagnant marketplace for another, selling primarily to a fraction of the same customer base that you already had. Which is what I think will happen with the iPad as presently designed and marketed, for reasons already outlined. … Here’s the thing about Google’s strategy: Because it’s both open source and backed by one of the largest tech corporations on Earth, they can make a strong appeal to manufacturers, not only for their operating system’s lack of licensing costs but also because it comes with an already-functioning apps store that sells across multiple hardware platforms, guaranteeing (to the extent that anyone can) a thriving online marketplace for one’s customers. This in turn offers creators and publishers a potential for mass-market ubiquity that Apple will never, ever be able to match.
In order:
The iPhone came out less than three years ago and Apple has sold 33.75 million iPhones sold by the end of 4Q09. That’s a mass market platform, certainly a larger number than the number of people walking in to comics stores. For a point of comparison, Time Warner Cable has less than 25 million cable subscribers.
An even bigger sales platform is the iTunes Store, which has been the number one music vendor in the US for almost two years straight, which has sold over 9 billion songs, over 1 billion HD TV episodes, and downloaded over 2 billion apps, while traditional stores like Sam Goody and Tower Records have pretty much gone bye-bye. I wouldn’t exactly call that a “limited marketplace”.
We already have reports that iPhone editions of some comics from major publishers have been outselling print editions of the books, and that’s on a platform that’s not optimal for reading comics.
If there’s a problem with the platform, it’s the problem of getting lost amidst the huge amounts of stuff other people are putting out.
Dirk, if you’re willing to bet against Apple, which is also “one of the largest tech companies on Earth”, more power to you– I remember the Newton too. But don’t be surprised if these new distribution methods and platforms turn your local comic shop into the 21st century equivalent of Record World.*
*For the youngsters: once upon a time, CDs (remember them?) used to be as big as your head, and they would have so much music on them that they turned black. And when you turned them over, there was more music on the other side!
‘Watchmen 2: The Smell Of Fear’ (and other potential titles)
All right, let’s get them all out of the way…
- ALAN AND DAVE’S BOGUS JOURNEY
- WATCHMEN 2: THE QUICKENING
- BLUE HARVEST
- WATCHMEN: THE SALLY JUPITER CHRONICLES
- BRIDE OF NITE-OWL
- WATCHMEN 2: THE LEGEND OF CURLY’S GOLD
- COMEDIAN’S LITTLE DIVIDEND
- WATCHMEN 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO
- ERNEST SAVES WATCHMEN
- WATCHMEN 2: THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES
- FROM RORSCHACH WITH LOVE
- THE WATCHMEN ALWAYS RING TWICE
- I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU WATCHED LAST SUMMER
- WATCHMEN 2: WATCH HARDER
- NIGHT OWL AND SILK SPECTRE ESCAPE GUANTANAMO BAY
- WATCHMEN 2: BIGGER, BLUER, AND STILL UNCUT
- OZYMANDIAS AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM
- WATCHMEN VS. GHIDRA
- SON OF WATCHMEN
- THE CHARLTON MENACE
- WATCHMEN 2: THE AZURE ARMY
- THE ROAD TO KARNAK
- WATCHMEN 28 WEEKS LATER
- THE WATCHMEN STRIKE BACK
- WATCHMEN 2: THE SECRET OF THE OZY
- A VERY WATCHMEN CHRISTMAS
- WATCHMEN, TOO!
- THE WATCHMEN SUPREMACY
- TO DAN DREIBERG, THANKS FOR EVERYTHING, SALLY JUPITER
- DIAL W FOR WATCHMEN
- And finally, WATCHMEN: WE DID BLUE CGI PEOPLE FIRST, WHERE’S OUR OSCAR NOMINATION?
In case you haven’t heard, Rich Johnston is talking about the disturbing possibility that there will be Watchmen spinoffs now that Paul Levitz is gone. And in case you want to know how bad this could get, let’s give you a reminder:
Special thanks to Marc Alan Fishman for the art and @miss_sarah_s for extra titles. And if we missed any titles, please add them in the comments.
‘The Beat’ Goes On, ‘The Beat’ Goes On
Drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain…
La de da de de, la de da de da…
History has turned the page, uh huh– Heidi Macdonald has officially launched The Beat on its own site. She’s footloose and fancy free. Go over and say hi, and tell her we sent you.
Time to update my RSS feeds…
Weekend Window-Closing Wrapup, February 1, 2010
Hoo-boy, I’ve let a lot of windows pile up. Let me close a bunch of them.
- Tom Brevoort: Marvel Vice Prez: Congrats to Tom. A better fit cannot be imagined.
- Apple wants a tablet in every home, a use for everyone
- The best comics of the ’00s | Best Of The Decade | Comics Panel | The A.V. Club
- Poe Toaster tribute is ‘nevermore’
- Charity Artwork Donated for an Upcoming Auction: Some great stuff here, including this Marvel Villains piece by Evan Dorkin.
- French retailers revolt against e-book hegemony: Oh, this will go well.
- HASBRO’S NEW NETWORK MEANS NEW TRANSFORMERS SERIES
- Graphic Novels Challenge 2010
- James Bond At 5-Years-Old [Pic] | I Am Bored
- Brian Hibbs of Comix Experience on the Current Comic Book Market
- ICv2 – ‘Spidey Musical’ Back on Track
- ICv2 – Every Book—10,000 Copies Stolen Uh, no. I call shenanigans. The better number is the one further down, that suggests that 10% of any book’s print run is pirated. And I’d argue that at towards the end of the long tail, a number aren’t even pirated at all because there’s just not enough people buying them in the first place.
- Jonah Hex Headed For Reshoots
- Why the Na’vi Are Making Me Blue: China Miéville has his doubts.
- Russian Moviegoers Tell Cameron and Avatar to Hold on There Comrade…We’ve Already Seen Pandora Harlan Ellison could not be reached for comment.
Anything else? Consider this an open thread.
How Amazon could force comics to go digital
Remember about a month back, we posted an article about Fox Networks and Time Warner Cable playing hardball over being carried?
Well, as of Friday books from Macmillan, including all sub-imprints like Tor books and St. Martin’s Press, have vanished from Amazon.com. According to the New York Times, the disappearance is the result of a disagreement
between Amazon.com
and book publishers that has been brewing for the last year. Macmillan,
like other publishers, has asked Amazon to raise the price of
electronic books from $9.99 to around $15. Amazon is expressing its
strong disagreement by temporarily removing Macmillan books.
Now with this as a precedent, let’s take it to the next level:
“Hello, DC Comics? Jeff Bezos here. Hey, how come we don’t have Batman: Black & White available for the Kindle yet?”
“Oh really? Do you know how many thousands of copies of Watchmen we sold for you last year? How many Batman and Sandman graphic novels? Don’t even get me started on Smallville DVD sets.”
“Let me spell it out for you. If we don’t start getting files for the Kindle by the end of this month, we’re going to stop selling the print editions of your books.”
Think it can’t happen? Are you sure?
The iPad costs too much? Compared to what?
One of the ongoing shibboleths coming out about the iPad, with prominent examples coming from Dirk Deppey, is that it won’t change the game for comics because the iPad costs too much.
To which we have to ask: compared to what?
Let’s take a simple example: Marvel’s Siege crossover event. If you wanted the entire thing and were to pay full retail for the comics, at $2.99 an issue you’re going to spend $100 or so on the full thing.
Now’s let’s assume the digital version of a series at 99 cents an issue. You end up with a savings of $60 over the life of the crossover series.
Or put it this way: If you normally buy an average of $30 of comics a week at a store, and you replace half of them with digital versions of the same books that cost 25% of their paper counterparts, you’re going to save over $560 in a year. That’s the price of a low-end iPad, plus tax and shipping.
I know a lot of people who would take that deal.
