Category: News

We are proud to announce that our publishing partner IDW has launched new iPhone apps that will allow it to sell digital comics in dedicated storefronts; one for all IDW and ComicMix titles, and others specifically for Transformers, Star Trek, and G.I. Joe comics.  Each app is free, and comes with different free comics.  Consumers can then buy other IDW titles from within the apps.

ComicMix titles currently available are:

• GrimJack: Old Friends (available for free)
• GrimJack: Killer Instinct #1-6 (issue #1 available for free)
• GrimJack: The Manx Cat #1-2
• Jon Sable Freelance: Bloodtrail #1-6 (issue #1 available for free)

We’ll be adding more in the future, of course. The app also has everything from Astro Boy and Bloom County to The Rocketeer and Tank Girl.

IDW is the first comic publisher to offer in-app purchases (although several third party companies, including Comixology, Panelfly, and iVerse, all offer in-app purchases of the titles they offer).

So please, download the free app and try it out, and post any and all feedback here in comments. We want to know what you think, and how we can keep improving what we’re doing.

Global Frequency, the DC/Wildstorm comic, might be back in play as a TV series.

You may remember that in 2005, Mark Burnett (producer of Survivor) and John Rogers (who would go on to write the comic Blue Beetle and create the show Leverage) created a pilot for the WB. The pilot wasn’t picked up; however, it got leaked to the Interwebs and became the most watched pilot that never got picked up.

Now the industry magazine Production Weekly has just posted the following on Twitter: The CW will again try to adapt Warren Ellis’ comic book “Global Frequency,” this time Scott Nimerfro will script the pilot. Scott Nimerfro has written for Star Trek: Voyager, Tales From The Crypt, Perversions Of Science, The Outer Limits, Stargate: Atlantis, and Pushing Daisies, and was an associate producer on the X-Men movie.

Warren Ellis, creator of Global Frequency, sent out an email with the headline “I couldn’t possibly comment”.

We understand. And we couldn’t possibly embed a video with footage from the original Global Frequency pilot that should never have been released out on the Internet. That would be wrong.

Here’s hoping Michelle Forbes is still available.

Today’s 18th Annual Baltimore Writers’ Conference will feature Mark Wheatley writer-artist of Lone Justice, Frankenstein Mobster and EZ Street, as well as Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down and The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958 and others.

Now in its 18th year, the one-day
conference at Towson University in Towson, Maryland will bring together aspiring writers from around the mid-Atlantic
to learn about writing from published authors, agents and editors.
Panel sessions will cover a variety of topics including screenplays,
poetry, creative nonfiction, blogging, children’s books, thrillers and
travel writing.

The conference is sponsored by
Towson University’s Graduate Program in Professional Writing, TU’s
College of Liberal Arts, Johns Hopkins Master of Arts in Writing, and
the City Lit Project.

Registration includes all panels, lunch and the closing wine-and-cheese reception. Admission for the general public is $95, and for students (with identification) the price is $50.

For more information, visit the Baltimore Writer’s Conference online, email prwr@towson.edu or contact Geoffrey Becker at (410) 704-5196.

We missed posting something about this the other day but it’s still cool enough for us to talk about. The revival of Captain Action now means he can begin meeting the super-heroes his action figure incarnation transformed into. This begin in March with Moonstone’s release of Phantom Action, a crossover between King Feature’s classic comic strip hero, and Captain Action.

According to the official release, the Ghost Who Walks is captured and his wife Diana pleads with Captain Action to help. “It turns out the young Captain Action has had a crush on Diana since his teenage years, so that makes for an interesting dynamic”, said series writer Mike Bullock. The two-issue mini-series is pencilled by Reno and will offer a variety of covers by artists Art Thibert, Mark Sparacio and Michael T. Gilbert.

The Phantom was one of the original set of heroes the figure could become when introduced in the 1960s. When Playing Mantis had the license in the 1990s, they included Lee Falk’s jungle hero as one of the revival figures. Currently, Cast-A-Way has announced plans to release an 8” Mego-sized Captain Action as the Phantom figure complete with long slide Colt .45s, as well as the Phantom’s signature rings. 

 “My dad has always been a big Phantom fan. As a boy, he just loved the Witman 1944 Phantom book and the weekly Sunday strip. I know I was reading too much into it, but as a child I felt there was some sort of father-son legacy when I dressed my original Captain Action as the Phantom”, said Captain Action Enterprises’ Retropreneur, Ed Catto.

“The Phantom set was one I always wished I had for my Captain Action, so it’s fitting we’re able to bring the characters back together again,” said Joe Ahearn of Captain Action Enterprises, LLC. “Recently, Cast-A-Way toys created new Mego-sized Captain Action and Phantom figures. We might soon have some additional announcements about these toys as well.”

Captain Action was revived in comics last year and has been met with mixed reaction, prompting Catto and Ahearn to consider some form of revamp in the coming year. They’ve already introduced a Lady Action to interact with the hero, who is currently portrayed as the son of the original.

The adaptation of Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner’s Red miniseries has moved ahead and added Julian McMahon (Nip/Tuck, Fantastic Four), Richard Dreyfuss, Brian Cox, and the great Ernest Borgnine, who will play the keeper of the CIA’s darkest secrets.  The film, scheduled for November 19, 2010 release, already stars Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, John C. Reilly and Mary Louise Parker.

Summit Entertainment, flush with Twilight cash, is producing this film based on the 2003 WildStorm miniseries about a former black-ops CIA agent whose a quiet, retired life is shattered when a high-tech assassin shows up at his home. Willis is the spy with McMahon portraying the Vice President who heads up a shadow conspiracy. The 92-year-old Borgnine will play the man who knows the dirty secrets and Dreyfuss is a wealthy industrialist who benefitted from Government contracts. Cox is a former Cold War-era spy with an axe to grind against Willis.

Jon and Erich Hoeber wrote the script for director Robert Schwentke (Flightplan) and shooting should commence early in 2010.

To promote the reimagining of The Prisoner premiering this Sunday on AMC, they’ve created an online graphic novel to go along with it, written by M. Scott Veach and drawn by Mitch Breitweiser.

The first chapter is up now, with some motion comics stuff, because everybody’s doing motion comics nowadays…