Category: News

Atomika power, and Angel after the fall

That comic shop you visit every week probably has a few secrets – books you walk right by and never notice. ComicMix Radio is taking it on ourselves to ferret out these gems and share each one. Who knows what we might find – starting today with the story of a creator who took his love of Jack Kirby and created a bigger than life series which has already reached eight issues. Get ready for the world of Atomika, plus:

  • How a cancelled TV show became a red hot new comic series
  • More Zombie sell outs at Marvel
  • Even though Elvis is dead, Tom Swift is alive and well (he said expressley)

Stop staring at the pretty picture and Press The Button!

 

 

More on Z-Cult and the torrenting mess

  • News
  • November 29, 2007

Following the various stories all over the place. A few quick followups:

DC and Top Cow has asked Z-Cult to take down links to torrents of their books. Matt Brady points out:

…with the action against Z-Cult only having a superficial, if any, effect on the number of comic book torrents available online, many observers as well as downloaders are left wondering if the comics industry will soon be looking at a day when a publisher singles out and files suit against an individual who downloads – or scans and uploads comic books. While similar actions have shown little overall effectiveness in reducing the activity in the realm of movie and music or even as acting as a deterrent, they have been a public relations nightmare for the MPAA and RIAA. In an industry a few orders of magnitude smaller than either movies or music, one is drawn to ask what the effects of such a move by a comic publisher would be. Likewise, and this isn’t meant as a shot at the comic book industry, using the RIAA and MPAA cases as thumbnails, the legal costs to prosecute one such case of illegal uploading or downloading would quickly eat into even the largest comic book publisher’s bottom line.

The interesting thing is that DC, et al, do not seem to be issuing actual DMCA takedown notices. This is fascinating on a number of levels– the least of which is that the publishers aren’t really calling out any heavy legal artillery yet, this is mere politeness. I supect that at least one reason why they aren’t issuing true DMCA takedown notices is that it would require the publishers to show that they actually control the copyright in question, which could easily be thrown into question. (Superboy, anyone?) The DMCA grants copyright holders the power to demand the removal of works without showing any evidence that these works infringe copyright but the courts have begun to recognize this, and are beginning to issue large judgements against careless, malicious or fraudulent DMCA notices — for example, Diebold was ordered to pay $125,000 for abusing the DMCA takedown process. This also means that nobody has resorted to saying, "Oh yeah? Make us!" yet.

Related to this is that the companies almost certainly don’t know what they have legitimate rights to. This leads into a comment that JK Parkin made while blogging about Colleen Doran’s experience with Marvel DCU:

What I found interesting was that Doran said she’ll be using the site as a reference. I guess I found it surprising (and maybe I’m being naive here) that Marvel doesn’t have some sort of system in place already where freelancers working on a particular character have access to images of said character. That way Marvel could ensure the character was being drawn in the right costume, and the freelancer wouldn’t have to hunt for back issues.

–which leads into yet another story of how I was brought in to discuss digital strategies with comic companies. This time I was brought in to meet with Gui Karyo, at the time the CIO of Marvel, in March of 2001 to discuss the status of their archives, digital and otherwise; their upcoming CD-ROM archives, and digital asset management in general for the company. I pointed out that Marvel’s in house archives were a disaster, certainly in comparison to DC’s– Marvel didn’t even have complete printed runs of the comics they published, with gaps as recent as the previous decade. Their film for publication had been stored in a warehouse in Arizona, and hot climates are always where I want to store four decade old film.

One of the things I had suggested was taking the time to build a system for digital asset management, so that the company would know what they had and everyone in the company, plus freelancers and licensees, could access it easily. As a demonstration, I pulled out a thousand dollar comic book– Man Of War Comics #1– and said that I could make a decent argument in either direction on whether Marvel owned the rights or not.

For a variety of reasons, Marvel still hasn’t done it, and as a result their own freelancers are now shelling out money to get reference that the company should be providing. God only knows what it’s like for licensors. I’ll bet that they don’t even deal with Marvel and just look at Corbis instead.

Clean Cartoonists’ Dirty Drawings Review

  • News
  • November 29, 2007

Yoe is really the editor of this volume, but he’s credited as the author. Admittedly, he did write all of the text (except for a foreword by R. Crumb), but the art is entirely by other hands. And the art, of course, is the whole point of this book.

As you can guess from the title, Clean Cartoonists’ Dirty Drawings collects pin-ups, gag cartoons, convention sketches, private commissions, and other various bits of risqué art from artists not generally known for such things. The artists run the gamut of comic book, comic strip and animation names, from Carl Barks and Chuck Jones to Milton Caniff and Dan DeCarlo. And the art itself is mostly mild: there are some sex gags, but the art is mostly just nudes rather than anything like a Tijuana Bible. For some that will be a positive and for some a negative; I’m just reporting it. Crumb’s foreword touches on this aspect of the book, seeing it as a gap between what’s promised and what’s delivered – and declaring, if anyone could disagree, that he knows just what a “dirty” cartoonist is, since he is one. (And Crumb’s full-page drawing by his foreword is probably the most sexually explicit piece in the book.)

There are seventy cartoonists included in all – many with just one page, and none with more than five pages of work – in this book’s 160 pages. Some of them are somewhat out of place – such as Dean Yeagle, best known for Playboy cartoons, and Adam Hughes, whose work often looks like pin-ups anyway and doesn’t really add nudity here – but most of the guys (and a tiny handful of gals) included here are regular mainstream sequential art folks who only very rarely did anything risqué. (But Yoe has ferreted it all out from its various hiding places, and assembled it all for the ages.) (more…)

Medium Rare, by John Ostrander

  • News
  • November 29, 2007

You can learn the damnedest things in the most unexpected places

I was paging through last week’s Entertainment Weekly, the one where they anoint their entertainers of the year, and came across four women – Glenn Close, Mary Louise Parker, Kyra Sedgewick, and Holly Hunter – all grouped together by the fact that they are over 40, that they are starring in their own TV shows on cable channels, and all had a uniting reason for doing so: the work simply wasn’t out there in movies for them.

Okay, that’s not news. And that’s what wrong. Pop culture is a reflection of our society and the way that it chooses to show certain demographics of people – including sometimes their omission – says a great deal about our society and what and who we value. While the article made me think of older women, the same point can be made for other minorities. We’re talking not only of movies and television but comic books and other entertainments as well. It is not only the portrayal of these groups – to which there is some increased sensitivity – but their omission that reveals how our society sees itself. (more…)

DC responds to piracy — 2½ years later

  • News
  • November 28, 2007

There’s been a lot of talk about how DC and Marvel started going after scanners and torrent sites this Thanksgiving weekend, and now Z-Cult has agreed to take down all Marvel comics and wait a month before posting any DC books.

To which my response is: what took you so long?

I have particular reason to say so: I met with DC’s vice president of legal affairs, Lillian Laserson, and her assistants, Paula Lowitt and Jay Kogen, about the issue of scans available online back in April 2005– over two and a half years ago.

At the two hour meeting which covered legal issues, business cases, media ecology, and public relations, I delivered a spreadsheet to them that was current as of April 1, 2005, showing them how many DC comics had been scanned in and were available online. This wasn’t a spread sheet I created, mind you, it was created by the scanning community showing their progress. And they had made some serious progress: I pointed out that of all the comics published by DC in their (at the time) 70 year history, over 75% of them had already been scanned in and were available online. The numbers were closer to 90% post-Crisis. In short, the genie was already pretty much out of the bottle. (more…)

Happy 45th birthday, Jon Stewart!

  • News
  • November 28, 2007

Jon Stewart, American comedian, iconic host of Comedy Central’s "The Daily Show" and hero to geeks all over turns 45 today. In an era of corruption and cynicism, Stewart leads the pack in irreverent humor.  His open criticism of the Bush administration and personality punditry shows gives its viewers hope in the face of governmental disappointment.  Granted, the president and his cronies have provided Stewart with ample material, but faced with the alternative, I think we would all prefer that Stewart have to work harder to make fun of the times at hand than have them so tragically, if easily, at his disposal. 

Happy Birthday, Jon– and hell, if we can’t cry about it, thanks for helping us laugh.

Obligatory comics related video. Damn, he’s young.

 

 

 

 

Comics, community and The 99

  • News
  • November 28, 2007

elayne100-4266390One of the things I mentioned in a previous column is how frustrating it is to many readers that reviewers have so many negative things to say about comics and so few positive ones — one of the reasons being, of course, that it’s simply easier (and, for many, more fun) to slag on someone else’s hard work than to praise it, to pick at the missteps rather than examining the story as a whole.  I still suspect this ties in with why so relatively few reviewers discuss the art in a comic book; as they’re writers, it’s easier to concentrate on just the writing, which one can then proceed to negatively nitpick to one’s own standard of personal amusement, rather than learning about how to talk about the main thing that separates comics from prose work, from movies, from just about any other form of entertainment.  But I digress.

I’ve had the first four issues of a comic book series in front of me for months, wanting to talk about them. This was before the series even debuted in the US, and now the first two issues have already appeared in stores. And with one thing and another in my crazy life, I haven’t had the time nor the wherewithall to actually sit down and review anything. And it’s become, as these things do, rather an albatross ’round my neck that I haven’t gotten to it. After all, a wonderfully talented, amazing woman who happens to edit the books sent them to me in good faith that I’d get to reviewing them sooner or later. And after all, wasn’t I the one who did over four years’ worth of weekly reviews on Usenet, covering at least a dozen comics during some of those weeks? What, besides life’s vicissitudes, was preventing me from sitting down and doing this review?

Sooner or later we all have to face our own procrastinating natures. For me, the approach of the year’s close and the feeling of community that means so much to me in this industry prompted me to finally get down to it. After three introductory paragraphs, naturally. Has the time finally come for me to say a few words about The 99 from Teshkeel Comics? Well, yes and no. I’m not going to do a structured, formal review per se, but discuss the series more in terms of its inspiration and ideas. (more…)

Our nights in Columbus

  • News
  • November 27, 2007

After a few rough nights on the road, ComicMix Radio is back on schedule with a new week and a great post-holiday stack of new comics and DVDs to run through for you, plus:

  • News from MidOhioCon on a John Byrne JLA and a Barry Kitson Spider-Man
  • Two covers coming on Hulk #1 (and aren’t you shocked?)
  • You could own one of those Tim Sale paintings from Heroes – if you hurry!

You will never know how unless you Press The Button!

 

 

Jack of Fables V2: Jack of Hearts Review

  • News
  • November 27, 2007

Brand extensions can be tricky things. Sometimes you end up with Lucifer, but sometimes you get Witchblade Takeru Manga instead. Jack of Fables, from DC, was a clear attempt to extend the brand identity of the Fables series, written by Bill Willingham and mostly penciled by Mark Buckingham, with a companion series about one of the more interesting characters from that world. As far as brand extensions go, it hews most closely to the Sandman Mystery Theater model: the writer of the main series is involved (though it’s always difficult to tell, from the outside, just how much involvement that is) and the tone and style is very close to the original.

I wasn’t completely thrilled with the first Jack of Fables plotline (which I reviewed on my personal blog), finding it a bit too heavy-handed and dark. Jack is an unrepentant rogue, and to care about a rogue, he has to either not be too nasty to people, or mostly run into much worse folks than himself. Either way, he has to have a lightness of touch – the story can’t focus on his worst impulses. (See Jack Vance’s novels The Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel the Clever for one of the best examples of the form.)

Jack is mostly acted upon in the title story of this volume, which is good: a rogue off balance is more interesting, and his scramblings add a feeling of urgency to the proceedings. But that’s actually the second story in this volume, so I have to backtrack.

Jack of Hearts, the book, starts with a two-issue story called “Jack Frost,” framed as a tale Jack tells some of his fellow escapes from the magical prison from the first volume. They’re hiding high in the mountains from those who would recapture them, and Jack mentions that he was once Jack Frost…and so of course has to explain. (more…)

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Is Iron Man Mike Hammer? by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • November 27, 2007

schepper__mike_hamme_60417h-4232768So where we at?  For the past month or so, we have, in a scattershot and disorganized way, been discussing the various elements involved in the evolution of superheroes.  I don’t think we’ve come to any conclusions worthy of being preserved for the ages, nor should we: things change, darnit. But maybe a little tentative upsumming would not be inappropriate.

Upsumming:

Haberdashery: There is currently a trend away from putting superdoers in costumes, though the big bucks movie heroes are still wearing the suits and, judging from the films I know about that are in development, this will not change in the foreseeable future.  But most entertainment consumers — I’m excepting comics fans here — get their heroism, super and otherwise, from television and maybe because of tv production hassles, costumes aren’t common.

Powers: We’ve agreed (haven’t we?) that for a long time the superbeings of mythology and folklore got their powers from some supernatural agency: they were gods, or demi-gods, or friends of ol’ Olympus,  or something.  Or they were agencies of darkness — black magicians of one kind or another.  Then science became the rationale, most famously with Jerry Siegel’s extraterrestrial origin of Superman.  Last, and decidedly least, there was technology allowing the good guy to do his  stuff. And now…well, it’s anything goes time.  Look at the current television offerings: we have a superhero private eye whose abilities are due to his vampirism, which we can call magic; a technology-enabled superhero(ine); and a whole bunch of peripatetic whose gifts have “scientific” explanations, or so it currently seems.

(more…)

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