Tagged: DC

Top Cow Pledges not to Raise Cover Prices

  • News
  • December 6, 2008

topcow-logo11-4730370The major publishers, DC Comics and Marvel Comics are both inching towards the standard 32-page comic book retailing for $3.99, a dramatic $1 increase during these difficult recessionary times.  The following release arrived from Top Cow, one of the founding imprints as part of Image Comics.

LOS ANGELES, Calif., December 5, 2008 – Top Cow Productions, Inc. announced today it will maintain a $2.99 price point for its regular-sized comic books throughout 2009, despite the recent move of other publishers to raise the cost of some of their books to $3.99.

“We looked around and saw cover prices creeping up and up all around us,” noticed Top Cow Publisher Filip Sablik. “It seems wrong to raise your prices on customers during these tough economic times. Once we knew we were going to hold the line on our prices, it made sense to call attention to it. Hopefully, it will encourage some fans to try our titles.”

And despite the price freeze, Top Cow will not compromise the quality of its regular-sized books to cut overhead costs.

“Our content pages will remain the same as it is now and in fact we’re adding more and more added-value pages, including interviews, back-matter articles and preview art,” said Sablik. “We want to be the value and quality leader in the industry.”

The $2.99 price point does not apply to oversized books, exclusive variant covers and special editions.

‘Watchmen’ Top BookScan Charts for November

  • News
  • December 4, 2008

watchmen-trade-paperback-1031596It’s little surprise that the Watchmen toped BookScan’s list of Top 20 Graphic Novels for November for the fifth month in a row.  In a report at ICv2, it was noted the book actually hit the Top 10 list twice with the paperback edition of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ story atop the list and the new hardcover edition in the sixth spot.

Eight of the 20 spots belong to traditional graphic novels with the remaining dozen spots nabbed, as expected, by Manga releases, led by Fruits Basket Vol. 21 in second place. DC’s Joker original tale debuted in fourth place and gave the publisher three of the Top 10 spots. Marvel had no titles in the Top 20 although DK’s holiday book Marvel Chronicle debuted in 17th place. Similarly, Running Press’ wonderful DC Vault appeared in 15th place.

BookScan’s report of bookstore sales is an incomplete picture of the book business but used as a measuring stick by publishers and retailers.

Rank    Title                                                                                                  Author                              Pub     PubDate

1           WATCHMEN TPB                                                                           ALAN MOORE               DC         4/1/95
2           FRUITS BASKET VOL. 21                                                            NATSUKI TAKAYA         TKP       11/1/08
3          NARUTO VOL. 32                                                                           MASASHI KISHIMOTO  VIZ        12/1/08
4          THE JOKER                                                                                     BRIAN AZZARELLO      DC       11/1/08
5          YU-GI-OH! GX VOL. 2                                                                     NAOYUKI KAGEYAMA   VIZ       11/1/08
6          WATCHMEN HC                                                                             ALAN MOORE                 DC       11/1/08
7         NARUTO VOL. 31                                                                            MASASHI KISHIMOTO   VIZ       9/1/08
8         HELLSING VOL. 9                                                                           KOHTA HIRANO             DHC    10/1/08
9         CHIBI VAMPIRE VOL. 11                                                                YUNA KAGESAKI            TKP     11/1/08
10       BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER SEASON 8 VOL. 3                  DREW GODDARD         DHC    10/1/08
11       OURAN HIGH SCHOOL HOST CLUB VOL. 11                         BISCO HATORI               VIZ       11/1/08
12       THE DRESDEN FILES: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE HC     JIM BUTCHER                DEL    10/1/08
13       FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST VOL. 17                                              HIROMU ARAKAWA        VIZ      10/1/08
14       TSUBASA  VOL. 19                                                                         WILLIAM FLANAGAN      DEL     11/1/08
15       THE DC VAULT: A MUSEUM-IN-A-BOOK                                   MARTIN PASKO              RPB     10/1/08
16       BLEACH: SOULS OFFICIAL CHARACTER BOOK                   TITE KUBO                       VIZ      11/1/08
17       MARVEL CHRONICLE                                                                   BREVOORT, DEFALCO DK     11/1/08
18       D.GRAY-MAN VOL. 11                                                                    KATSURA HOSHINO     VIZ     11/1/08
19       VAMPIRE KNIGHT VOL. 5                                                              MATSURI HINO               VIZ      9/1/08
20       BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE SPEC. ED. HC                           ALAN MOORE                 DC      3/1/08

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Review: ‘Batman’ #681

batman681-22-6520554The nature of super-hero comics (and serial storytelling in TV as well) has become an incestuous thing, one that feeds on its own cast of characters, no matter how wrongheaded it might seem. In any given story arc, the reader (and the viewer) has been trained to expect The Last Person You’d Ever Expect (fill in the name of your favorite Beloved Supporting Character) to be revealed as the villainous mastermind. And/or salacious details about Our Hero. Dark secrets that threaten the very underpinnings of the lead characters’ being. The promise of certain death for players who’ve existed for decades. (No, really. We mean it!)
 
The pleasure in last week’s wrap-up to [[[Batman R.I.P.]]] was in the way Grant Morrison mocked all that. Consider yourself under a Spoiler Warning for the duration of this column.
 
At its best, the story was a love letter to Batman as he ought to be — prepared to a degree that anyone else would find ludicrous (as in a terrific flashback sequence) and uncompromising in the face of threats against the reputation of his family name. Watching him emerge from an inescapable deathtrap and wade through all comers was quite satisfying after months of questioning whether Batman had lost it.
 
Just as 1993-1994’s [[[Knightfall]]] arc gave us the ultra-violent Batman that a fringe of fandom imagined they wanted, R.I.P. delivered the story formula that readers have been conditioned to expect. And then, in the final act, Morrison pulled the rug out from under them. Think that the Black Glove was going to stand unmasked as Thomas Wayne, the father of Bruce who’d faked death and became a criminal mastermind? Lies. All lies. Waiting for the culmination of Batman’s mental breakdown? Didn’t happen (at least not to the degree it seemed). He was acting! (Thanks, Alfred!) And that caped-and-cowled, ready-for-slabbing corpse? No body.
 
I can’t help but think, too, that Morrison’s treatment of the Joker reflects a bit on the villain’s usage in the wider DC Comics line. In Morrison’s first issue (#655), the character was casually defeated by a nut in a Batman costume who shot him in the face. And in this climax, his fate was even more dismissive: He was accidentally run off the road and killed (yeah, right) by a speeding Batmobile driven by the deranged Damian. The two scenes struck me as a statement of sorts on the sheer over-saturation of the Joker, a villain who’s appeared in 44 comics in 2008 alone! A character that almost anyone in the DC Universe can hold their own against is a character who can be sucker-punched by nutty Batman wannabes. Couple that with his ubiquitous presence in Bat-books proper and the persistence in characterizing the Joker as the biggest and most unstoppable mad-murderer in history and you have a Batman who’s rather ineffectual, too. But I digress.

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‘Green Lantern’ Completes Third Draft Script

  • News
  • December 2, 2008

Yesterday, we speculated that Green Lantern was the DC hero next going before the cameras and MTV’s Splash Page then ran an interview with co-screenwriter Marc Guggenheim that confirms this projection.

“This morning, we sat down to talk Green Lantern,” Guggenheim told MTV, “and we ended up riffing for an hour and a half on another, much more obscure character. Sometimes, you just have to roll with it when inspiration strikes, you know? I’m sure the studio wouldn’t be happy about it, but we’re not going to blow the deadline. We’ll get it in.”

The screenplay was written by Guggenheim, Michael Green (Superman/Batman) and Greg Berlanti (Eli Stone) and after three drafts, they think it’s about ready for Berlanti to direct. Locations have been scouted and production designs have been crafted by Aaron Sims, who is also working on X-Men Origins: Magneto for director David S. Goyer.

“[The changes are] nothing that’s affecting the storyline, really,” he said. “It’s pretty well set. But sometimes we’ll move a scene to a different location for budget purposes, perhaps in an already established location instead of a new one. It’s a question of, which locations can we live without? It’s a constant process to streamline what you’re going through, even after the film is shot, when you’re cutting things in the edit. That’s what the rewrite process is like, how you sand down the roughness of the a movie to its smoothest.”

Guggenheim also noted that a cameo for reporter Clark Kent appears in the script leading to speculation if Warner would go with Tom Welling (Smallville) or Brandon Routh (Superman Returns) for the wink to the greater DC Universe.

“There were rumors that Tom Welling would have a cameo in Batman Begins as a young Clark Kent, to meet up with a young Bruce Wayne,” Guggenheim said. “But you have to be careful when you do things like that, because it sounds great in concept, but when you sit down to watch it, it poses the danger of pulling you out of the film.”

He refused to talk about the current rumor of Ryan Gosling being eyed to play test pilot Hal Jordan.

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The Stories That Informed ‘Batman R.I.P.’

  • News
  • November 26, 2008

batman-076-2-1186780“Criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot. So my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts. I must be a creature of the night, black, terrible …a…a…”
 
As if in answer, a huge image of a Caped Crusader flashed across a movie screen. Across monitors throughout space and time and other dimensions.
 
“It’s an omen!” each man, alien and other-dimensional imp declared. “I shall become a Batman!”
 
One of the attractions of Batman was, it’s often been said, the fact that a kid could actually imagine growing up to be the Caped Crusader. No one was ever going to grow up to be Superman but with an extensive training regimen (and a hefty bank account) …well, anything’s possible. Overlay that with the spirit of mainstreaming and conformity of the 1950s and you end up with a universe where there seemed to be a Batman knock-off on every corner and planet.
 
In 1964, editor Julius Schwartz found his arm twisted into taking over the flagging Batman titles. He immediately ditched the extended Batman family and the increasingly prevalent space alien stories for a more contemporary angle grounded in the real world. And as the years rolled on, Schwartz and company refined their approach and gradually, permanently put the Dark back in their Knight.
 

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Bryan Singer and Warner Premiere to Work Together

  • News
  • November 26, 2008

Warner Premiere is known to ComicMix readers as the source for the cool direct-to-DVD movies featuring the DC heroes but they also produce original fare as well.  This morning, they announced a deal with director Bryan Singer to create a “cyberpunk sci-fi thriller” H+, “which picks up after a terrorist fries the brains of a segment of the population ‘jacking’ into the net”

The series will be written by John Cabrera (Gilmore Girls) and Cosimo De Tommaso, who will also serve as executive producers. They conceived of H+ as a television series but  Warner Premiere’s Head of Digital Content, Lydia Antonini, persuaded them to convert it to a web-based series.

The new series, to debut sometime in mid-2009, will be produced by Singer’s Bad Hat Harry Productions, the outfit that already gives us House.

Warner Premiere is dipping its toe into live action after working on numerous animated efforts including the recently unveiled Peanuts, a full animated comic web series. They have 20 original web series in development, some of which will go to video, some to the recently relaunched TheWB.com.

Review: ‘Batman Cacophony’ #1

The eagerly anticipated [[[Batman: Cacophony]]] #1 finally hit shelves this month, and, on many levels, it did not disappoint.  The three-issue series is authored by famous screenwriter/director Kevin Smith, and his signature style is evident.   Smith, as always, manages to weave in a healthy dose of crude, sexual humor, and it is surprisingly successful coming out of The Joker’s mouth.   The tone of the book, however, is not as dark as one would think.  The atmosphere created by the creative minds at work is more a cartoonish, brightly colored Pulp Fiction than the noir-esque Batman of years past.   A color palette of burnt oranges, yellows, and primary colors adorn the pages in the book, and this tone nicely compliments Kevin Smith’s clever, quick witted humor. 

On the topic of art, the book is drawn by illustrator Walt Flanagan, making his DC debut.  Although he shows promise, his style is definitely that of a rookie and not a seasoned veteran.   The drawings lack the stylistic flair that many accomplished comic artists have mastered.   While the absence of pop in the drawings can be distracting, Smith manages to set the stage for what is sure to an interesting story.  He is weaving together a tale that links the Joker to a ring of Greek mobsters and designer drugs which is also peppered by the presence of the always fascinating villain Onomatopoeia, not seen since Smith introduced him during his short run on [[[Green Arrow]]].   Onomatopoeia happens to be one of the characters that is drawn very well by Flanagan, and the story lines are sure to collide and provide solid entertainment for any reader who shows interest.

‘Batman: Brave & Bold’ Website now Live

  • News
  • November 21, 2008

Tonight’s episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold sees the Caped Crusader team with Plastic Man to tackle Gorilla Grodd’s threat. The fun series airs at 8 p.m. on Cartoon Network. This week, they have launched a show-specific website.

The all-ages, ad-supported site features a serialized Batman game entitled “The Terror of the Time Traps,” interactive virtual action figures known as “Inter-Action Figures,” detailed back story on many of the co-stars in forthcoming episodes of the show, step-by-step character drawing lessons featuring Batman and friends, and more.

“The new Batman: The Brave and the Bold site is an interactive experience for fans where they can engage with some of Warner Bros. Animation’s most iconic characters in unprecedented ways,” Sam Ades, Vice President, Digital Animation, Warner Bros. Television Group, and General Manager, KidsWB.com said in a release. “Our site combines the coolest characters from the DC Comics family with the control, interactivity, and social media features that younger audiences have grown to expect from their entertainment content.”

Among the content, activities and behind-the-scenes material on the new site are:

“Inter-Action Figures” – Intuitive drag-and-drop tools empower users to select their favorite characters and create custom printable scenes from “Batman: The Brave and the Bold.” Each character comes with a variety of poses and can be positioned inside the scene using backgrounds from the show. Future functionality will allow users to export these scenes for use as wallpapers, screen savers and across other digital applications. Additional custom tools encourage viewers to engage with the characters by learning their history and hearing them speak. The “Spotlight” tool reveals each character’s biography, while the “Talk” tool plays audio clips that highlight the character’s unique personality. (more…)

‘Jonah Hex’ Needs a New Director

  • News
  • November 20, 2008

Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the team behind Crank, have withdrawn from Jonah Hex according to Variety. They wrote the script and intended to direct beginning in March with Josh Brolin (W.) in talks to play the disfigured bounty hunter.

The reason officially provided is that there were “creative differences” which could mean just about anything.

The studio told the trade they intended to replace the pair quickly to keep Brolin on board and still shoot in winter 2009. This is yet another setback to DC Comics getting films off the ground in a highly competitive marketplace.
 

October Comics Sales Soften

  • News
  • November 20, 2008

secret-invasion-7-2-6303333As the economy went into free fall, ICv2 notes that October sales have shown some slippage. From their just released list of the top 25 titles, just two showed signs of improvement over September sales. One was Amazing Spider-Man #573 which featured the faux-Stephen Colbert for President cover while the other was Batman #680, the penultimate chapter to Batman RIP.

Despite somewhat stagnant sales, the dollars sold in to comic stores were up a “robust” 9% compared with a year ago, according to the industry watchdog. September and October were the first positive months for comic sales since January.  Of course, more titles were retailing last month at $3.99, rapidly becoming a standard, as opposed to last October. ICv2 did note that the unit sales for the title charting in the 300th position was 4200 compared with 3000 just twelve months ago which they interpret as a sign of overall industry strength.

Graphic novel sales showed an increase of just 5% compared with last October.  Combined with comic book sales, that creates an 8% total increase.

The site notes that the company crossovers, Secret Invasion #7 (154,675 copies) and Final Crisis #4 (115,666 copies) took the first two spots on the list. Marvel had seven of the top 10 and 17 of the first 25 with DC taking the balance. IDW’s G.I. Joe relaunch  and Angel: After the Fall were the first non-Top Two titles to crack the top 100 list coming in at 65th and 66th place. This further cements IDW’s fourth place standing among comic book publishers, after Dark Horse and now ahead of Image.

In graphic novels, DC’s Joker by Brian Azzarello, took first place with an estimated 17,000 copies sold, also nabbing the top spot for dollars earned. Marvel’s best seller for the month was the Marvel Zombies trade paperback, which likely hit the top Marvel spot given its three variant covers. Wile Watchmen slipped from first place to sixth, its 6000 copies remains impressive given its age.
 

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