Finding myself in an art creating deadline crunch this weekend, so I’m going to pass on some art tips for you. I just came across this tutorial on creating speed lines in Photoshop, and creating a brush to do the process.
It looks to be one of the more useful techniques, and will be interesting when I find a place to use it.
(Hat tip: salfield.)
With regards to the recent C&D letter from Imagi’s lawyers, we’ve received the following:
August 4, 2009
Mr. Glenn Hauman
ComicMix.comDear Glenn:
Imagi Studios apologizes for any misunderstanding or inconvenience caused by the legal letter of July 29 regarding the image posted with your story about Astro Boy. This letter, which truly resulted from a miscommunication, was sent in error, and is hereby retracted. We thank you in advance for your understanding.
We would only like to point out that the image which appeared on your site is not from the movie as it is early concept art, and therefore we would greatly appreciate it if you could replace this image with one of the new stills from the Astro Boy movie, which are attached herewith.
Imagi Studios prides itself on being collaborative with the media by providing images as well as access to filmmakers and executives, and we hope to further our relationship with you in this way as well. We would also like to express our warm appreciation of your support and that of ComicMix.com to date, and we look forward to sharing updates on Astro Boy and future projects with you and the ComicMix community.
Best regards,
Erin Corbett
President, IMAGI STUDIOS U.S. & Chief Marketing Officer Worldwide
Erin, your apology is accepted. We’ve restored the articles to the site, and while we won’t replace the image, lest we be accused of histroical revisionism, we’re happy to make an annotation to the article indicating it’s early art and share the newer images with the rest of the world– starting with the one above, which I think is one we haven’t seen before.
One of the first questions posed regarding digital comics is just how you make any money from a strip available for free. The usual answer is that the strip, if it’s any good, will find an audience who will then happily pay for a print compilation. That seems to be the model for DC Comics’ Zuda Comics as they released Bayou
, the first book collecting Jeremy Love’s charming southern serial.
Zuda has been a nice place to find some new talent or see familiar talent try new things. The interface is fairly dreadful but the content is a nice mixed bag, veering just a little too much on the traditional genres of science fiction, horror, and fantasy. Few, though, use the genre as a jumping off point with the same affection and craft as Love’s feature. He called it “a southern fried odyssey”, set in 1933 Mississippi when the races were segregated. Two little girls, one white and one black, play as equals despite their parents’ views. When the white girl goes missing, Lee’s father is arrested for the crime and so begins the girl’s adventure.
Working with 1-4 panels per page (or screen), Love leisurely introduces us to the world of the Deep South and its players. Wisely, they are products of their time but not stereotypes or clichés. His simple art and lush color are wonders I these days of scritchy line art and oversaturated pages. Love knows how to tell a story from pacing to dialogue to art and color. No wonder the strip was lauded last month at the Glyph Comics Awards taking home five awards, including Best Writer, Best Artist and Story of the Year, Best Comic Strip, and his lead character, Lee Wagstaff, was declared Best Female Character.
The problem with the collection, though, is that at 160 pages we get only part of the story. Nothing is resolved and everything is left dangling, forcing you to wait for a second volume or more before we find out who these creatures living in the Bayou are and will Lee be fast enough to save her daddy from a lynching he does not deserve.
The book also lacks any sort of introductory material about the strip, Zuda or Love. All we get are a few sketches at the back to show the development, but even those pages are lacking context.
[[[Bayou]]] in print is a wonder to behold and comes recommended but be careful. Love’s work and the world he created are addictive and you will be left wanting much more.
It’s fascinating to see the same material presented in competing books, approached in entirely different ways. DK Publishing, the successful home to the various character-specific Ultimate Guides, offers up Wolverine: Inside the World of the Living Weapon (200 pages, $24.99) while Pocket Books, which has been home to the Marvel novels, gives us The Wolverine Files (160 pages, $40). The former is written by DK mainstay Matthew K. Manning while Mike W. Barr, not a writer normally associated with guide books or Wolverine, handles the second book.
Both detail the character’s background, his friends, his foes, his greatest capers, and a look at his deeply fractured psyche and tortured soul.
However, Manning’s book gives readers a far more detailed accounting of the backgrounds of the characters and storylines. Taking a chronological approach, he offers up overview of specific eras followed by key issue spotlights plus long looks at the key people in his life, both the good and the evil. Interspersed are also short bits regarding how the stories fit in with the overall publishing program at Marvel along with some insight into the creators and their efforts. As a result, this is a far richer, and cheaper, reading experience.
DK, known for its hyperkinetic layouts, tones things done here and makes each spread easier to read, with nice call outs, and judicious graphic selections showing the great range of art styles employed through the years.
If this book is to be faulted, it’s in not providing enough information regarding the behind-the-scenes work that led to these stories and events. For example, why did Bill Jemas decide that 2001 was the time to finally provide Logan with an origin? Also, Wolverine’s unusual friendships with Jubilee and Kitty Pryde are given short-shrift and both deserved more space.
Barr’s approach is the more creative, with files, reports, letters and memos from the people in Wolverine’s life summing up the man’s background and career. Written from the point of view of Nick Fury, Natasha Romanov, Jasper Sitwell and others, it has varied voices which make for a different reading experience.
The book is more cleanly designed, resembling a S.H.I.E.L.D. case file with tabs along the edge to replicate the look of a report. There are margin notes from Fury and sections are redacted to give it that “declassified look”. The profiles of people and places read not too different from a Marvel Handbook page and the art skews to the works from the last decade and could have benefited from material culled from earlier points in his publishing career.
While a more varied read, it’s also not as complete a dossier and for $40, it should offer a lot more, especially with the competitive book.
If both books are beyond your wallet, Marvel competes with their licensees with [[[Wolverine: Weapon X Files]]], a 64-page comic book for a mere $4.99. Head writer Jeff Christiansen and his ten colleagues have the advantage of the files being the most up-to-date given the shorter schedule for a comic versus a book. The Handbook pages follow the traditional format and scream for a redesign and the pick-up art is hit or miss.
Want more Wolverine after seeing the movie this weekend? You have plenty of options.
Harlan Ellison just posted the following on his website:
Monday, April 6 2009 11:55:36 EXTREMELY BAD NEWS
Len Wein called this morning. More than half of his house burned down earlier today. Len and Chris Valada and Chris’s son, Michael, got out okay, but their beloved dog, Sheba, ran back inside and is gone. In addition to both bedrooms, the bathroom, and much of the office, what was burned first was the original art for the first Wolverine story, the cover of GIANT X-MEN #1 and other art pieces worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Susan and I will be over there as soon as I pick up my car today, and as soon as I’ve met the dental appointment we have scheduled. This is a major catastrophe for one of my oldest and closest friends. Like your Host, Len is a lifetime freelancer and, even though he remains a star of the comics world, even though he created Wolverine and Storm–among other characters–he goes from day to day earning a freelancer’s living, as do I… and these are frightening economic times for those of us out there, to paraphrase Arthur Miller, “on a few words and a shoeshine.”
As bad as the news is, we’re relieved to hear that Len, Christine and Michael are okay. We’ll pass along whatever additional information that we can.
We just got an email from our old pal, Craig Yoe!. Craig sez:
I’d like to tell you about my brand spanking new book and blog.
I recently discovered incredible, previously unknown, fetish art by the creator of Superman, Joe Shuster. The artist and his writing partner, Jerry Siegel, had sold Superman for 130 dollars. When they sued to get the rights back they lost and got drummed out of the comic book industry and Shuster fell on hard times. It was unknown that to get by and/or because of a personal interest in the subject, Shuster then did S&M porn for under-the-counter booklets called "Nights of Horror," sold in Times Square in the early fifties. The back story I uncovered involves the Mob, showgirls, neo-Nazi Jewish juvenile delinquents, inspired by Shuster’s art, known as the Brooklyn Thrill Killers, the famed anti-comic book crusader Dr. Frederic Wertham, Senate investigations, cops on payola, the books being banned by the Supreme Court, teenage girls being horse-whipped in the park, two murders…and dare I say MORE?
I have a full color coffee table art book I wrote and designed coming out April 1 (no fooling!) about all this, Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster.The publisher is the number one leading art book publisher in the world, the prestigious Abrams. I’m blogging about the book and revealing lots of rare art and info that didn’t fit in "between the covers."
Craig’s too modest to note that his book also sports an introduction by Stan Lee.
Considering the fact that, at the time they purchased Superman, one of DC’s owners had been actively engaged in publishing what was considered by the post office censors “pornography,” this is a rather ironic story.
Sadly ironic.
After garnering near unanimous critical acclaim, BOOM! Studios announced Monday that Farscape #1 is completely sold out.
Fans should keep in mind, while distributor Diamond Comics are completely sold out, Farscape #1 may still be found at direct market retailers across the country. BOOM! Studios is working closely with Diamond Comics Distributors and evaluating the demand for a second printing.
"We are tracking the unfilled re-orders carefully at the moment. But a second printing looks like it may just happen," said Marketing and Sales Director Chip Mosher.
Farscape #1 is written by television series creator Rockne O’Bannon with script by Keith R.A. DeCandido, interior art by Tommy Patterson and cover art by fan-favorites Dennis Calero and Joseph Corroney!
Picking up directly where the television miniseries Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars left off, fans can look forward to show creator O’Bannon steering their favorite characters into new and original stories, keeping with the existing canon – and then extending it!
Debuting on the Sci-Fi Channel in 1998, Farscape follows the adventures of astronaut John Crichton, who has a freak accident during an experimental space mission that catapults him across a thousand galaxies to an alien battlefield. Suddenly, he’s trapped among alien creatures wielding deadly technology – a battle that 20th century sci-fi pop culture never prepared him for. Hunted by a merciless military race, Crichton begins his quest for home from a distant galaxy.
BOOM! Studios has a limited supply of Farscape #1 A, B & C available on their website on a first come, first serve basis.
Rod Serling’s [[[Twilight Zone]]] remains one of the brightest spots of television history. The teleplays were inventive, occasionally funny, often thrilling and always thought-provoking. In thirty minutes, he managed to tell a story with relatable characters and situations then twist things and entertain you through surprise.
Most attempts to revisit the zone have met with mixed results. There was the prose magazine that was quite good but the 1980s revival, not so much. And of course, there was the cursed feature film version which was all right, but not worth losing Vic Morrow for.
The latest people to visit are the students at the Savannah College of Art & Design. The faculty there has licensed from the estate of famed TV writer Rod Serling the rights to adapt the original scripts. The school then partnered with Walker & Co. to release eight graphic novels between now and 2009. The first four are currently out,, adapted by Mark Kneece, who has written for DC Comics and elsewhere. The art, lettering and coloring are handled by the student body, one team per book.
They wisely led off with “[[[Walking Distance]]]”, the most personal of Serling’s scripts, inspired by growing up in Binghamton, NY. A man mysteriously finds himself transported back to the days of his childhood and he seeks out his younger self to warn him of the perils of being an office drone. Things happen and lessons are learned.
Hermes Press recently signed a deal to publish Star Trek: A Comics History, described as “the complete saga of the Star Trek universe in comic books and comic strips.” The March release is being written by Alan J. Porter, best known for his James Bond: The History Of The Illustrated 007. The 208-page, all color, large format deluxe trade paperback is expected to chronicle the four-color history of Star Trek from the first Gold Key comics to the English newspaper strip, to Marvel and DC’s Star Trek titles and the present-day comic and manga iterations.
Star Trek: A Comics History promises creator interviews, unpublished art work, and a detailed checklist of Star Trek comic publications. At the TrekkBBS, Porter said, “My intention is to include an index of the various comics by Stardate. At least I’m compiling one as I do the research and writing. I probably won’t have the time to create a full timeline (ouch – sorry about the pun), so if a story spans several time periods it will most likely only be listed by the establishing introductory Stardate. – But this is a work in progress so who knows.”
He also defended the steep $39.99 for a trade paperback, noting that Hermes Press books are “all published on very high quality glossy archival paper and designed to last. They aren’t mass market paperbacks, they are closer to glossy art books – hence the price point.”
Write Now!, the how-to magazine for aspiring comic book writers, will be canceled after its 20th issue, out in February. TwoMorrows posted the news on their website this week.
Publisher John Morrow noted, “I’ve got to say, I’m really sorry to see it go; Danny Fingeroth has been absolutely professional and delightful to work with on it, and always managed to teach me (and his readers, based on the mail we get) something new about the intricacies of writing for comic books and related fields.”
“Producing Write Now! for TwoMorrows has been one of the highlights of my career,” said editor Danny Fingeroth in a press release. “The art and craft of writing comics is something that is often neglected due to the higher visibility of comics art. Write Now gave me the chance to share what I’ve learned about writing over the years with people who are passionate about expanding their writing knowledge and skills. I got to meet and speak with many great creators of all eras during the magazine’s run, getting them to speak about what they do in ways that had seldom been touched on before. And, of course, working with the great John Morrow the rest of the TwoMorrows crew was always a pleasure. I look forward to continuing my relationship with this important publishing entity.”
The final issue will focus on The Spirit and will include interviews with producers Michael Uslan and FJ DeSanto in addition to an extensive interview with Colleen Doran, writer Alex Grecian discussing how to get a pitch green-lighted, plus a bevy of script and art examples from a wide range of projects. The magazine, which includes yours truly as its Managing Editor, has also seen a Best Of volume and collaborated with sister publication Draw! on How To Create Comics, From Script To Print book and DVD combination.
Subscribers will be receiving information shortly regarding the resolution of any prepaid issues beyond #20, with the option of receiving either a refund, or applying their balance toward another TwoMorrows book or magazine.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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