Stop worrying about Super Bowl and let’s deal with more pressing issues like why is LOST looking backwards? Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet) and Michael Emerson (Ben) give us their perspective. MAD Magazine is slowing down (and Mike Gold isn’t happy) – but on the bright side, TORCHWOOD hits NYCon and today we get music from WATCHMEN
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The Big Skinny: How I Changed My Fattitude
By Carol Lay
Villard, January 2009, $18.00
In the wake of [[[Perseopolis]]] and similar works, graphic novels have become ever more popular for acquisition editors at the major trade publishing houses. But, just as the direct market twists products in the direction of its own obsessions – spandex, punches, and chivalry twisted through at least two axes, these days – those mainstream publishers have their own market trends and forces, and they’re looking for particular things themselves. To be blunt, all of the big-publisher GNs seem to be memoirs of one sort or another. Some of them are “here’s my life in numbing detail” books, like David Heatley’s [[[My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down]]], and some are small stories of particular moments and times, like Lucy Knisley’s [[[French Milk]]] – but they all are personal stories of one kind or another.
Carol Lay, surprisingly, hasn’t written a book-length illustrated work before; she’s had several collections published – mostly of her weekly [[[WayLay]]] strip – but [[[The Big Skinny]]] is the first time she created a graphic work purely for book publication. And, since it’s from Villard, one piece of the huge Random House book conglomerate, you’d be pretty safe betting that it’s a memoir of some kind. And it is. But The Big Skinny isn’t just a memoir – it’s some more unusual for comics, though it fits into a pretty common prose format.
As Yogurt the wise teaches us, "Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made. Spaceballs-the T-shirt, Spaceballs-the Coloring Book, Spaceballs-the Lunch box, Spaceballs-the Breakfast Cereal, Spaceballs-the Flame Thrower." CBS has learned their lessons well, one could even say it’s a paramount lesson.
CBS Consumer Products has cranked its Star Trek licensing up to 11 in preparation of the new Star Trek movie, which will debut on May 8th. In addition to the IDW comics tying the movie to Next Generation continuity, the Pocket book publishing license, and the previously announced Star Trek Barbie Dolls, Mattel has also acquired the rights to create radio-controlled flying vehicles for its Tyco subsidiary, a Star Trek Scene-It DVD movie/TV game, and a 20Q Star Trek Trivia Game. (Bob Greenberger’s on our team, we take on all challengers.)
Other game tie-ins include a Star Trek-branded Monopoly edition from USAopoly, and co-branded games for UNO, Scrabble ("Ferengi" is a 61 point word, "Klingon" is 62– no ruling on whether words from their languages count), Phase Ten, All About Trivia, and a Magic 8 Ball. If only the good Kirk from "The Enemy Within" had one.
Disturbing if true: ICV2 has an article entitled, simply, Worldwide Anime Market Shrinking. In a lecture by TV Tokyo’s Keisuke Iwata, he noted that due to market saturation, illegal downloading, the worldwide recession, and the rising yen, “It is easy to imagine the global marketplace shrinking from 2010 onward." According to Iwata there may be little or no growth potential for anime sales outside of Japan and that the industry “may have to go back to the way it was in the past — back to selling Japanese animation only to the Japanese marketplace."
And with a market already glutted and the massive lead time and resources required to create anime, we should expect to see big crashes. Imagi Studios already had to get bridge financing to complete production of Astro Boy.
Anime News Network has reported that the total revenue of the Japanese anime industry rose rapidly from 2003 when it was estimated at 167.4 billion yen (about $1.9 billion), peaked in 2006 at $258.8 billion yen (about $2.9 billion) and then fell to 236.9 billion yen in 2007. Figures for 2008 aren’t available yet, but given the financial distress of many anime producers, another decline is a foregone conclusion.
Also note that Iwata’s market factors of market saturation, illegal downloading, and the worldwide recession apply equally to comics.
We’ve obtained preview footage of the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode, “Journey to the Center of the Bat!” airing this Friday, January 30 on Cartoon Network at 8:00 PM.
This week Batman’s life hangs in the balance when he is poisoned by Chemo, who is under the control of the evil Brain. The Atom races to the rescue with Aquaman by shrinking down and entering Batman’s bloodstream. While Aquaman and the Atom battle the infection deep inside Batman’s body, Batman struggles to end Chemo’s rampage and defeat the Brain! This week’s teaser features Elongated Man and Plastic Man teaming up to derail a bank heist and capture the criminal Baby Face. Take a look… (more…)
Nathan Fillion, star of Joss Whedon’s “Firefly” and “Serenity,” will do double duty this March as the voice of Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman, the next entry in the series of DC Universe animated original PG-13 movies due on March 3, 2009, with a preview showing at the New York Comic Con, and is also taking the title role in “Castle”, premiering on March 7th on ABC, which features Fillion as a hugely popular mystery/horror writer who helps police solve crimes– think "Murder She Wrote" with Stephen King, but nowhere near as stiff.
Fillion, a fan favorite as Captain Mal Reynolds, as well as Captain Hammer in “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” found time away from the grasp of DC Voice Director Andrea Romano (right) and his unrelenting Halo addiction to chat.
QUESTION: Can you describe the challenges of bringing Steve Trevor to life?
NATHAN FILLION: The challenge I find is just trying to use my natural voice and trying not to put on too much of a voice. I tried to just keep it nice and easy and relaxed. He’s a little bit wry, he’s a little bit dry. I can do that. And a couple of times I actually slipped in a little bit of a southern accent.
Steve Trevor is not a complex guy. He’s got a façade up, he’s got a defense up, but he drops it a little bit because he does care about Diana. I like that he’s got a bit of an arc, he’s got something to learn. I think that’s what makes a good character and a good story.
Lara Croft may be returning to the big screen in a continuation of the Tomb Raider franchise. Warner Bros. and producer Dan Lin are in early development of a project with Ian Livingstone of gaming publisher Eidos as co-producer. No word if Angelina Jolie will return to the role of Ms. Croft, or if they’ll recast the part.
Tomb Raider has been licensed as a Top Cow comic since 1997.
Really, it’s not the end of the world. We’re just taking some functions offline and turning comments off for a few hours while we do some necessary techincal upgrades. We should be up and running fine in the morning. See you all then.
Yes, we know it’s getting ugly out there. If Robot 6 has a daily roundup called Food Or Comics, and we’re covering stuff that they’re missing, it’s just outright brutal.
So what to do about it? Kristine Kathryn Rusch, award-winning author and editor, posted the following to an email list regarding the shutdown of Realms Of Fantasy:
If you’re really worried about the magazines, subscribe to them. If you already have a subscription, give a few gift subscriptions. If you can afford it, ask if the magazine has lifetime subscription rates and buy one. Or purchase a five year subscription.
In this economy, an upturn in subscriptions will help any magazine. If everyone on this list bought a subscription, either as a gift or for themselves, that would seriously help.
If you read the information on Realms, it’s pretty clear that the downturn in the fourth quarter hit Sovereign Media hard. Apparently, they rely heavily on newsstand sales. This is one area where the digests have already suffered, so their losses in the fourth quarter won’t be as severe as other companies. However, they’ll see a trickle downward of subscriptions as renewals don’t come in at the usual pace.
So they have time—provided that people continue to renew or subscribe anew.
Just a thought in all the gloom and doom.
That’s good advice in general. If you are in a position to do so, subscribe to your favorite comics. If your local store has a pull list or subscription list, take advantage of it– if they know they’ll have some set income coming in, that will help them budget.
If there are online comics or websites you like, drop some cash in the tip jar.
If you’re downloading comics, buy paper editions as well. It’ll be good practice when MinuteMan loses his job and stops buying and scanning the comic that you were reading.
Ghost World: the Special Edition
Graphic novel by Daniel Clowes; Screenplay by Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff
Fantagraphics, October 2008, $39.99
Ten years after the first collection of [[[Ghost World]]] and seven after the movie version of the same story (and, not coincidentally, the screenplay book), Dan Clowes’s most famous and best-known story has gotten the big fat hardcover treatment – and I’m sure that the fact that his story of suburban ennui and aimlessness follows dozens of stories of spandex-clad punching bags into basically the same format and sales channel is an irony not lost on Clowes. (Though I should point out that this big fancy hardcover is not nearly as expensive and laded with gewgaws as most of those “absolute” and “essential” and “ultimate” books – all those books that name themselves, and lavish on themselves production designs, reminiscent of high end sex toys; shiny and sleek and oversized and, all too clichéd often, in jet-black. Clowes’s book has reasonable proportions, and a price quite reasonable for an art book of its size.)
This “Special Edition” collects the graphic novel [[[Ghost World]]], by Clowes, and the screenplay, by Clowes and Terry Zwigoff. It also adds in a forty-eight-page section of miscellany – box art from odd ancillary products, covers from old [[[Eightball]]] issues when Ghost World was being serialized, foreign covers, miscellaneous art related to the movie, and a few sketches and pages of original art. Up front is a new introduction by Clowes, and a two-page story that may, or may not, show a glimpse of Enid and Rebecca’s lives now. Those are pleasant, but the real core of Ghost World is the story, and this book gives both versions of it equal weight.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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