Category: News

With Freddie Highmore on board to voice Astro Boy in the Warner Bros. CGI reincarnation of the classic anime series, one has to wonder what role Kristen Bell will play.  She has recently been linked to the project along with Nicolas Cage, Bill Nighy, Donald Sutherland, Eugene Levy and Nathan Lane. The movie is due out in spring 2009.

The 1963 animated series from the legendary Osamu Tezuka is being recreated by director David Bowers and screenwriter Timothy Harris.

Meantime, Jodi Benson, the voice of Ariel, comes up from under the sea to lend her voice as Barbie to Michael Keaton’s Ken in Toy Story 3. The film, coming June 18, 2010, of course reunites voice actors Tom Hanks and Tim Allen as the toy’s owner, Andy, moves on to college.
 

After rumors began swirling late last week, Publisher’s Weekly now confirms that Virgin Comics has closed. The SoHo offices have been shut down, the staff let go and principals Sharad Devarajan, Gotham Chopra and Lance Leiberman have not returned attempts by the media to get details.

Virgin Comics has issued the following statement:

"Virgin Comics announced today that it will be reorganizing its operations and closing its New York office to consolidate in an LA base.

"The Company is currently working with management to restructure the business and will release its future plans in the next few weeks.

"Sharad Devarajan, CEO, said, ‘We remain excited about the business and partnerships we have built through Virgin Comics and are working towards a restructuring that properly takes the business forward. The decision to scale down the New York operations and concentrate on core activities is due to the current macro-economic downturn and is in no way a reflection on the dedicated and valuable employees we have had the privilege to work with.’ "

The comic book publisher launched a collaboration between Gotham Entertainment and Richard Branson’s Virgin Group.  Previously, Gotham had been handling translating and selling major American publishers’ titles to India.

In 2006, the company began publishing three lines of comics, largely written and edited in America with art handled by studios in India.  One line created new characters based on Indian mythology whole the other lines offered high profile talents such as director John Woo a comics venue for their creations.  Just under two dozen collected editions of the choicest material are currently in print.

Their goal, in addition to selling comics, was of course to sell movie versions and they have managed several options, most recently their one-shot The Virulents.

Virgin also entered into a partnership with Sci Fi Channel to use comics as backdoor pilots for cable channel.  Mike Carey’s The Stranded debuted in print back in January and is in active development with Carey writing the pilot script.  The recently announced Superbia from Jordan B. Gorfinkel and Lisa Klink is not expected to go forward.

Despite big names from Stan Lee to Grant Morrison to Garth Ennis being associated with the line, the titles never gained traction with the fans and tastemakers.  Their large presence at Comic-Con International this past July may have been too little too late.

Gotham Entertainment, based in Bangalore, is expected to remain in operation.

Virgin Comics is another in a long line of start-ups that have failed to succeed in either the direct sales comic book market or crossover to mass market readers.  Their Shakti line was not dissimilar to CrossGen’s own universe while their Director’s Cut imprint seemed modeled on Tekno Comics’ model of using Big Name people to bring in curious readers.  The lack of a successful marketing campaign and inability to get readers excited about the material contributed to the line’s failure.

 In today’s brand new episode of White Viper, by Erin Holroyd, Dick Giordano and Frank McLaughlin, Ta Moa goes undercover as a corporate spy.  Can he find what he needs to find without getting caught?  If he can, will he be able to survive his employers?   We have just one word of caution:  plastics.  

Credits: Erin Holroyd (Writer), Dick Giordano (Penciller), Frank McLaughlin (Inker), Lovern Kindzierski (Colorist), John Workman (Letterer), Mike Gold (Editor)

I just had a sobering realization that this month is my twentieth anniversary of working in comic books professionally. Gah.

I was in college, between my freshman and sophmore year and my summer job in the city had just gone bye-bye. I started looking for internships, and decided to give DC Comics a shot– even though Marvel had a better known internship program, I was more of a DC guy. I applied to every editor, to Paul Levitz, and to Bob. Most of them had no use for me, but Bob called me in for an interview: he had just lost a guy in the production darkroom, and did I know how to use a stat camera? I said I’d used one for about a week at the local village newspaper. He seemed interested. Since the interview was late in the day, he invited me along to that evening’s softball game. Bob was the manager of the company team, the DC Bullets, and they had a game that night against the crew of Late Night with David Letterman. Sure, I said. (more…)

In today’s brand-new episode of Hammer of the Gods 2: Back from the Dead, by Michael Oeming and Mark Wheatley, Modi tells the story of his life and love to the Chinese goddess.  Apparently, he likes a woman with some fight in her.  Can this relationship be saved?

Credits: Mike Oeming (Artist), Mike Oeming (Writer), Mark Wheatley (Colorist), Mark Wheatley (Letterer), Mark Wheatley (Writer), John Staton (Colorist)