Category: News

To counteract the rah-rah of San Diego Comic-Con’s impending arrival, here’s a chunk of depressing news for comic companies looking to reach the teen market: Bloomberg reports on a new study from a 15 year old intern at Morgan Stanley says that teens think printed media, such as newspapers and comics, are “irrelevant”.

And if you think going to the movies will save comic companies, the news ain’t all great there either: teenagers go to the movies “quite
often” although it’s “not about the film, but the experience
and getting together with friends.” Young people will often
choose the film once they arrive at the movie theater.

“Teenagers are consuming more media, but in entirely
different ways and are almost certainly not prepared to pay for
it,” Morgan Stanley analysts Edward Hill-Wood, Patrick
Wellington and Julien Rossi said in a note.

What else?

Teenagers don’t twitter; they
resent intrusive advertising on billboards, television and the
Internet and they are willing to chase content and music across
platforms and devices such as mobile phones and Apple Inc.’s
IPod. They do not listen to the radio, preferring music Websites
that stream music for free and allow them to choose their songs.
They are “very reluctant” to pay for music and 80 percent
download it illegally. Most have never bought a CD.

And now you know why comics sales are heading up on the iPhone. Hear that? It’s the sound of the comics business model changing…

Note: this is an intern from Eurpoe, so his experience is somewhat different from the US market– but I’ll bet good money it’s not that different.

After months of speculation and jerking around, Warner Bros. announced the casting of Ryan Reynolds as Green Lantern in their forthcoming movie of the same name.

No stranger to the world of super-characters, Reynolds most recently played Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. He will be reprising that character in the forthcoming solo movie. He also played Hannibal King in the third Blade movie and, at one time, was alleged to play The Flash in the movie project that disappeared in a wink.

The husband of Scarlett Johansson, Reynolds beat out Bradley Cooper, Jared Leto, and Justin Timberlake. He’ll be playing Hal Jordan, the off-again/on-again GL who dominated the continuity over the past half-century.

Green Lantern is produced by Donald De Line and Greg Berlanti and written by Berlanti, Michael Green and Marc Guggenheim. It will be directed by Martin Campbell for a 2011 release.

No word on who’s playing Ch’p.

Shore Leave 31. It’s where I’ll be this weekend, at the Hunt Valley Inn, along with (deep breath) ComicMix people Robert Greenberger, Aaron Rosenberg, Jenifer Rosenberg, and comics pros Peter David, Mike W. Barr, Greg Cox, Keith DeCandido, Kevin Dilmore,
Michael Jan Friedman, Allyn Gibson, David Mack, Dayton Ward, and an armada of other SF writers and media guests.

Make sure to get there Friday night at 7:30, when we’ll be roasting Keith DeCandido. Cheap shots will be taken and mud will be thrown. 18+ to enter, 21+ to drink. The event’s for charity; all proceeds will benefit the American Red Cross. And stick around for Mystery Trekkie Theater 3000 on Sunday, with a few other special guests along the way.

It’s a fun convention. Come on by and say hi.

Sad but true. Ten blocks away from DC’s corporate headquarters, Superman and Batman were arrested yesterday by police– Superman was even charged with resisting arrest. Was the big red “S” being mind controllled?

When the men in tights refused to produce proper identification,
officers quickly cuffed Batman, while Superman flew off, screaming, “I’m not getting arrested!” Witness Ryan McCormick tells the Post, “The Man of Steel didn’t go down with just two officers, it took seven officers! He was putting up a good fight. Little kids were like, ‘Mommy, it’s Superman!’ ” The Batman quickly confessed that Superman, his cowardly cohort, “freaked out and punched the girl cop in the face.”

We have no idea where the cops got the Kryptonite needed to bring Supes down, but we assume it was from Batman’s utility belt.

I love New York in July. How about you?

Hat tip to (where else would you expect a story about Batman?) Gothamist. Photos by Idle Type.

Yesterday I wrote about how DC was trying, with Wednesday Comics, to do something that couldn’t easily be reproduced on the computer screen to drive sales of paper. Marvel has now announced they’re doing something that doesn’t work on computers well– though it might be the return of the biggest disaster to hit comics in the 90s.

Don’t worry, says the press release:

“This is Marvel doing the nineties right,” explained David Gabriel,
Marvel Comics Senior Vice President of Sales & Circulation. “We’re
taking two of the most popular cover treatments of all time—foil and
holograms—to create an all new kind of cover, as a ‘thank-you’ to fans
who’ve been demanding this kind of variant! Retailers and fans don’t
need to worry. We’re only doing this on a limited basis. You won’t see
one on Ms Marvel #46 or Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers #4. We’re using
them to mark very special occasions…such as the launch of Ultimate
Comics line.”

I had the same type of feeling when the Bush Administration said it didn’t torture, and anyway those were special circumstances.

The hell of it is, foil covers do catch the eye and help promote books, that’s why they do it with novels, record covers, and every other kind of packaging. But if they crank up the stupid collectibles market again… or rather the collectibles stupid market… Marvel will have no one to blame but themselves.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back to reading piles of press releases about stupid exclusive collectibles being released at San Diego Comic-Con this year. Ooh, a special Gleek action figure only at SDCC! How could I have ever survived without it…?