Born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in 1956, David Victor “Dave” Sim dropped out of high school to pursue a career in comic books.

In the 1970s he worked on a fanzine, The Now and Then Times (Now and Then Books was the comic book store Sim had worked at for his first job) and then another called Comic Art News and Reviews. He worked for several other fanzines, wrote a newspaper strip, and produced several small-press comics.

In 1977, Sim began self-publishing Cerebus, a black-and-white comic about a dark medieval world and a cynical and violent aardvark (originally parodied on Conan the Barbarian). In 2004 Sim completed his planned 300-issue run of Cerebus.

In 2006, he began an online comic biography of the Canadian actress Siu Ta. He is now working on two new projects, a Holocaust book called Judenhass and a women’s fashion comic book called glamorpuss.

Sim won an Eisner Award in 1994, a Harvey Award in 1992, a Kirby in 1985 and 1987, and several other accolades. He is considered by many to be the king of independent comics, having produced the longest-running independent comic of all time.

Remember when we told you that comic publisher UDON was working on a 20th Anniversary art book for the popular Street Fighter franchise? Well, UDON’s website is taking preorders on Street Fighter Tribute and gave some details on the book.

By far the most surprising aspect of the title is its $80 price tag. Even though it’s a 320-page hardcover, you can expect most fans’ jaws to drop at such a steep price. If you don’t mind the cost, the rest of the book should be pretty appealing.

Street Fighter Tribute measures 8.25 x 11.25 inches and features work by UDON regulars Arnold Tsang, Alvin Lee, Omar Dgan, Jeff "Chamba" Cruz and Joe Ng, as well as comic celebs like Adam Hughes and J. Scott Campbell.

Even Gabe from Penny-Arcade.com is in there, representing  the webcomic side of the industry.

Sample artwork is provided after the jump: (more…)

Cinematical is boasting quite the scoop today, reporting that one of their industry insiders confirmed that Zodiac writer James Vanderbilt has turned in a script for Spider-Man 4 that will stretch over multiple films. Negotiations regarding the script are still going on, so there’s no certainty that Vanderbilt’s two-part story arc will end up on the big screen.

From Cinematical:

… according to our source, "his story arc has encompassed two films, making Spider-Man 5 shootable at the same time. The studio saw dollar signs and is in the process of reworking his deal to snatch up the story arc."

Sure, everyone’s happy now… but wait until they hear the working titles for the films: Spider-Man 4: Brand New Day and Spider-Man 5: The Clone Saga.

sigh

That’s weird. We were just talking about Marvel Universe Online a few days ago. The massively multiplayer online role-playing game (think World of Warcraft with Spider-Man and the X-Men) based on Marvel comics superheroes. Joystiq.com writer Christopher Grant got to have dinner recently with Shane Kim, VP of Microsoft Games Studios, and asked him why it was canceled.

Basically, Microsoft owned up to the fact they don’t do MMOs well.

"We don’t have a heritage of MMOs," said Kim. The article went on to list several MMO attempts that Microsoft attempted that failed. "It’s a hits-driven business … it’s all about quality, all about hits."

A link to a Gamasutra.com piece shed more light:

Given the rumors of confusion on the dev team about what the game was going to be like at a fundamental level, pulling support from the project seems like a no-brainer. That said, I think MUO’s death highlights Microsoft’s sordid history with Massively Multiplayer games.

I think that the fact that we’re still talking about Marvel Universe Online several months after it was officially canceled shows that the concept is still compelling and viable. But there’s no arguing that outside of a few MMO hits, the landscape is littered with flops from many different companies. Remember The Matrix Online or Star Wars Galaxies? Not surprising when you consider it’s a subscription-based business. How many of us just have HBO and consider that good enough instead of also getting Showtime?

I like to imagine, though, that Uatu the Watcher is spying on one of his "What If…?" universes where Marvel Universe Online game out and was more popular then Warcraft. Of course, the game would be populated by a thousand variations of Spider-Man and Wolverine with names like "5piDer-MaN" and "Wolverine Gets High."

Manga Friday returns after a brief hiatus — I was on a secret mission in Darkest Florida, and unable to read manga and coherently think about them for several days — with a look at two very, very different books. We’ll start with the easier one to explain.

Toto!: The Wonderful Adventure, Vol. 1
By Yuko Osada
Del Rey Manga, May 2008, $10.95

Toto! is an adventure story about Kakashi, a boy who desperately wants to get off the small island he was born on and get out into the wide world to have adventures. (Not to do anything in particular, just to "have adventures." Manga boy-heroes are often oddly nonspecific. Kakashi’s father, similarly, was famous as "an explorer.") While somewhere there is probably a humorous manga series about a guy who keeps trying and failing to leave his hometown — come to think of it, I’d like to read something like that myself — Toto! falls into the more usual pattern, and Kakashi stows away on a blimp almost as soon as the story begins.

(Toto! is set in the indeterminate future, not an alternate history, depsite the presence of airships. It is an iron rule of alternate-history stories that every possible world but our own is completely covered in zeppelins, and I guess the same may hold true for odd, indefinite futures.)

But just getting onto the zeppelin is not nearly enough; it has been hijacked by the Man Chicken gang, who forced all of the passengers and crew to dive into the sea as they stole the airship for a quick getaway to their secret hideout. (more…)