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‘Watchmen’ Tops 3Q Sales Charts

  • News
  • November 11, 2008

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ICv2

reports that graphic novels tied to feature film release saw a massive increase in third quarter sales.

“Sales of the Watchmen graphic novel exploded after the trailer hit theaters and it will clearly be the number one graphic novel of 2008, but a number of Batman-related graphic novels including The Killing Joke and The Dark Knight Returns also showed huge increases in sales, while Mark Millar’s Wanted graphic novel published by Top Cow clearly benefited from having a hit movie adaptation,” the site noted.

As the summer features arrive on DVD for the holidays, additional trade sales are anticipated.  Marvel cannily released additional Iron Man product when the related DVD came out September 29.

Manga did not suffer according to the site’s analysis, saying “Viz Media’s shojo series Vampire Knight, the top Manga series to debut in 2007 gained strength in 2008 and Viz Media also has one of the best new series of 2008, Rosario & Vampire, but with the maturing of the Manga market, the number of new releases slated for 2009 is declining, though the quality of those new series appears to be going up.”

Top Superhero Properties–Q3 08

1 Watchmen, DC
2 Batman, DC
3 Spider-Man, Marvel
4 Wanted, Top Cow
5 League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, DC/Wildstorm
6 Iron Man, Marvel
7 Marvel Zombies, Marvel
8 Hulk, Marvel9 Superman, DC
10 Green Lantern DC

Top Genre Properties–Q3 08

1 Star Wars, Dark Horse

2 Y: The Last Man, DC/Vertigo
3 Indiana Jones, Dark Horse
4 Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dark Horse
5 Dark Tower, Marvel
6 Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Marvel
7 The Walking Dead, Image
8 Fables, DC/Vertigo
9 Sandman, DC/Vertigo
10 Angel, IDW

S. Clay Wilson Hospitalized

  • Uncategorized
  • November 10, 2008

arcade-wilson-2564420The Oregonian is reporting that S. Clay Wilson, “one of the seminal figures in the underground comix movement, suffered a "severe brain injury." Wilson’s partner, Lorraine Chamberlain, stated on Sunday, "I just talked to the neurologist a few minutes ago. He’s in a decline because of the pneumonia. They can’t seem to stabilize him."

The 67-year-old Wilson was originally thought to be the victim of a mugging when he was found but doctors now theorize that he may have repeatedly fallen given his medical condition. He’s been at San Francisco General since Saturday.

"That’s what we think now, that he fell several times and hit his head," Chamberlain said. "He has a fractured orbital bone in his eye and he fractured his neck. He looks like he’s been kicked in the face and beaten up. But if he’d been beaten up, he would have been robbed. There’s no way to know. But he had way too much to drink.

wilson-s-clay-5823217"It was very bad news today," Chamberlain said. "The most important thing is that he gets over the pneumonia, but he’s had a very severe head injury." Chamberlain and Wilson have known each other for four decades but have been together for only the last eight years.

As a youth, Wilson relocated from Kansas to San Francisco in 1968, just as the Underground Comix movement was gaining traction.  He found R. Crumb, who produced Zap Comix and showed his artwork off.

"I was just completely blitzkrieged by the guy," Crumb said. "I’d never seen anything like those drawings of his before." The founder of the movement credits Wilson for pushing him to cease self-censorship and let everything flow on the page including sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

"I get a lot of flak from feminists, but we all do," Wilson said previously. "But within that group of feminists, there’s all kinds of mentalities. Some don’t understand what we’re dong — making fun of everything. Spain (Rodriguez) gets a lot of shit about it, we all do. I like the idea of keeping the boat rocking."
 

‘Lost’ Arrives January 21

  • News
  • November 10, 2008

ABC has decided that Lost will come back to Wednesday nights at 9 p.m., beginning January 21.  The series will displace Private Practice, which will gain a new timeslot now that the network has given it a full season pickup. In fact, the entire night will see its shows find new homes to boost ratings.

Lost will begin its fifth season with a recap hour followed by a two-hour season premiere, according to The Hollywood Reporter. There will be a total of 17 episodes for the season, making up from the Writers Strike-shortened fourth season, which will be released on DVD in December.

In other television news, NBC has given a full season’s order to its Life series. While the ratings are iffy at best, the network has confidence in the show finding its audience and will be sticking with it. They are bolstered by the ratings once DVR numbers are considered.

"This unique crime drama continues to offer consistent and compelling stories each week," Teri Weinberg, executive VP, NBC Entertainment told the trade. "We love Life and are thrilled that we get to see more of these characters and amazing new cases."

The series has been hampered by being bounced around the schedule and can currently be found Wednesdays at 9, meaning it has to withstand the arrival of Lost in the new year.

WizKids shuts down

  • Uncategorized
  • November 10, 2008

In another sign of the looming comics recession, ICv2 reports that Topps is shutting down WizKids, its core hobby gaming business, and temporarily discontinuing the WizKids product lines.

 

Topps CEO Scott Silverstein commented, “This was an extremely difficult decision. But in light of the current economic conditions, we feel it is necessary to align our gaming initiatives more closely with Topps current sports and entertainment offerings which are already being developed within our New York office.”  WizKids is based in Seattle, Washington. In its statement announcing the closing of WizKids, Topps also indicated that it was pursuing “strategic alternatives so that viable brands and properties, including HeroClix, can continue without any noticeable disruption.”

 

Founded by FASA veteran Jordan Weisman in 2000, WizKids launched the first successful collectible miniatures game, Mage Knight, and also produced the first constructible strategy game, Pirates of the Spanish Main, in 2004.  In addition to the successful comic book-based HeroClix CMGs, WizKids also released the Star Wars Pocket Model Game in 2007. WizKids was purchased by Topps in 2003, and Topps itself was picked up by Michael Eisner’s Tornante Company and Dearborn Partners in 2007.

DC Comics’ Texas Tidbits

  • News
  • November 10, 2008

legion-of-3-worlds1-1503689WizardWorld Texas wrapped up yesterday and here are highlights from the various DC Comics panels:

Legion of 3 Worlds: Senior Story Editor Ian Sattler says the miniseries is essential in setting up events to play out across the DCU in the next three years.

Final Crisis: Matt Sturges and Freddie Williams will produce Final Crisis: Run, the last miniseries tie-in to their mega-event.  Said to feature a super-villain as the focal point, Sattler promised at least three cool moments per issue.

At several panels, the comprehensibility of Final Crisis itself was debated between panelists and the audience.  Clearly, Grant Morrison’s storytelling was daunting compared with most comics but the editorial team assured the fans that it will pay off with the final issue.

DC’s VP-Sales Bob Wayne aid the plans to collect the mini and its related tie-ins has yet to be settled.

Green Arrow will be the pivotal hero for 2009, according to Sattler.  Editor Liz Gehrlein countered she thought it would be Brainiac. Expect to see a prominent return of Lobo and maybe even the much-teased Aquaman reboot.

J. Michael Straczynski will have a second DC title, as yet unannounced, in addition to The Brave and the Bold.

Sales: When Newsarama asked about the economic downturn affecting comic book sales, Sattler replied “…It motivates us to turn out the best stories we possibly can.” A snarky audience member asked, “Does that mean you haven’t previously been trying?” Sattler replied, “It motivates us to try even more…”

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Review: ‘The Venice Chronicles’ by Enrico Casarosa

  • Uncategorized
  • November 10, 2008

venice-chronicles-9418693

The Venice Chronicles
By Enrico Casarosa
Atelier Fio/AdHouse, November 2008, $19.95

Sometimes it seems like people live in completely different worlds. For example, I live in an America where a guy named Andy can marry a girl named Chris, have a series of decent jobs in book publishing, and go on occasional vacations to theme parks.

But there’s also a world made up of people named Enrico – who have cool movie-industry jobs, like doing storyboards for Pixar – that marry equally cool-named people like Marit – a modern dancer – and go on long vacations to Venice with her parents, zoom across Italy to meet his parents, and have dinner with Hugo Pratt’s daughter along the way.

I’m thinking it’s the names: Enrico just goes with Marit in a way “Dave” or “Bob” doesn’t. If I’d been named Siegfried or Joao, my life might have been as interesting as Enrico Casarosa’s.

And, speaking of Casarosa’s life, we finally come to his new book, [[[The Venice Chronicles]]]. It’s a diary, in watercolor over pencils, of that trip to Venice (and other points in northern Italy) – which I think was in the summer of 2007. It has the look of a sketchbook, but most of the pages were drawn after the trip – though there are sketches and watercolors drawn at the time mixed in as well.

(more…)

‘Gill’ Latest Webcomic, Debuting Today

  • News
  • November 10, 2008

Norm Feuti, creator of Retail, has begun a second strip which will be a webcomic beginning today.  Gill launched this morning and is described as “a humorous look at the life of an 8-year-old boy who lives under less than ideal circumstances. Gill is overweight. His parents are divorced. His mother struggles to maintain their meager existence. His estranged father floats in and out of his life to offer crude and confusing advice. Gill is an exploration of childhood and the imperfect American family in all its dysfunctional glory.”

The strip will appear Monday through Thursday in black and white, with the Friday strip larger and in color, like the traditional Sunday strip.

He told Daily Cartoonist, “About a year ago, I decided to make an attempt at getting a second strip syndicated. Gill is an idea I’ve had for some time, and in July of 2008 I pitched it to all the major syndicate. Unfortunately it was passed on by all of them.

“My initial plan was to abandon the idea if it was rejected and move on to another, but after posting the sample strips on my website, I started having second thoughts. I got overwhelmingly positive comments about the material on my blog as well as The Daily Cartoonist, and received about a dozen private emails from various professional cartoonists (both syndicated and web) complementing the strip. Many urged me to give it a go as a webcomic … and after a lot of thought I decided to do just that.”

Feuti launched Retail two years ago and continues to produce the strip about life at a box box retailer.
 

Zack Snyder on the Altered Ending of ‘Watchmen’

  • News
  • November 10, 2008

new-watchmen-poster-1196845Zack Snyder spoke with Dark Horizons about the recent sneak of The Watchmen and the audience’s reaction, especially to the altered ending.

"We had the best test scores in the history of Warner Bros. with 300 and I kept telling them look the movie is not like 300, don’t think that it is – it’s not going to be the same experience,” Snyder said. “Some people are going to go ‘what the f**k is this’ and I go that’s ok. That’s the thing that you fight… The one thing that was cool was that anyone who had read the graphic novel who was at the screening rated the film ‘excellent’, for me I’m like ‘I’m done’."

So about the squid and the ending?

"The fans, god love ’em, they’re all up in arms about the squid,” he said. “What they should be up in arms about are things like shooting the pregnant woman, ‘God is real and he’s American’, whether that‘s in the movie. That’s my point of view, maybe I’m crazy.

"The squid was not in the movie when I got the script, the squid was never in any draft that I saw. My point is only that there was this elegant solution to the squid problem that I kind of embraced. I’m a fan of the thing as much as anyone, I was saying what are we going to do about this before I even read the script."

He confirmed a second trailer will be released this coming Friday when Quantum of Solace hits theaters in America. "I just saw the final version of it this morning… it’s a little bit more story, a teeny bit more like a full trailer. This is much more like ‘someone’s picking off costume heroes’. You’ll get a sense of the characters plight you know, ‘we were supposed to make the world a better place… what happened to the American Dream’."

A third trailer will be released in early 2009, prior to the March 6 release date.

"The film’s pretty much done in my book. There’s still some visual effects shots which I’m reviewing… there’s probably close to 2000 effects shots in the film" he added.

Snyder’s next film will be his first animated project, Guardians of Ga’Hoole, coming in 2010.
 

Joe Johnston to Direct ‘Captain America’

  • News
  • November 10, 2008

Joe Johnston will be directing  First Avenger: Captain America for Marvel Studios. The director has signed a deal according to The Hollywood Reporter for the film which will open May 6, 2011 setting up the final pieces prior to that July’s Avengers film.

There is no casting as yet nor is there a screenwriter.

Johnston made his name as a special effects designer for George Lucas on the original Star Wars films prior to shifting to directing and his credits include genre fare such as the underrated The Rocketeer and next year’s Wolfman film with Benicio del Toro. Johnston met with Marvel Studio execs two years ago and hit it off so this is the culmination of that relationship.

Kevin Feige told the trade, "This is a guy who designed the vehicles for Star Wars, who storyboarded the convoy action sequence for Raiders of the Lost Ark. From Rocketeer to October Sky to The Wolfman, you can look at pieces of his movies and see how they lead to this one."

Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created the star-spangled avenger for Timely Comics in 1941 and produced ten issues prior to leaving for DC Comics.  The character, though, endured and became one of the three major stars of the comics line through the 1940s.  He was briefly revived in the 1950s but lay dormant until Stan Lee created the Marvel Universe.  For the fourth issue of the Avengers, he and Kirby told of how Captain America had been preserved in a state of suspended animation, trapped in a block of ice until the Sub-Mariner unwittingly tossed the chunk into the sea where the warmer waters melted the block. The Avengers found him and he returned to active duty. He has been a staple of Marvel Comics ever since.

Feige had previously indicated the film will be set during World War II and film students already saw a glimpse of the frozen form in an arctic sequence shot as an alternative opening for this summer’s Incredible Hulk.  We also saw Captain America’s fabled shield in Tony Stark’s lab in Iron Man and again, director Jon Favreau indicated Howard Stark had something to do with the shield as will be revealed in forthcoming films.

Captain America had been adapted twice before.  Once in two terrible telefilms for CBS and the aborted Captain America feature film from 1990 that never made it to theaters.  Matt Salinger portrayed the hero and was pitted against his immortal enemy the Red Skull, who was an Italian terrorist, not a a Nazi.
 

Preview: ‘Wolverine: Flies to a Spider’

  • Uncategorized
  • November 10, 2008

Marvel has provided ComicMix with preview pages from the forthcoming [[[Wolverine: Flies to a Spider]]].  Novelist turned comic writer Gregg Hurwitz (Punisher) is paired with newcomer Jerome Opena (Fear Agents) and cover artist Tim Bradstreet for the oneshot due in stores December 12.

It’s New Year’s Eve and the meanest, nastiest, most jacked-up biker gang you ever could meet, The Road Dawgs, have gathered at a bar called the “Rat Trap.”  But tonight there’s a stranger sitting on a stool at the end of the bar. Someone who’s looking to pick a fight. Someone who’s after much bigger game than some roughnecks – and be sure, this bad boy knows exactly how to get someone’s attention!


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