Tagged: ComicMix

Webcomic News Roundup: Goats Goes Big, Webcomics.com For Sale

  • News
  • July 11, 2008

By far, the biggest item of note this week was announced today, as one of the longest-running webcomics in the ‘Tubes will now be collected in a series of 150-page Goats tomes. If you want to know the whole scoop, you can read my interview with Goats creator Jon Rosenberg here on ComicMix, as well as Gary Tyrell’s mustachioed Q&A stylings over on Fleen.

Here’s an excerpt from Tyrrell’s interview:

Q: Any of your other material — earlier strips, the tantalizingly incomplete Patent Pending and Worlds of Peril, your minicomics (including the long hoped-for Operating Thetan III) — that might now see print as a result of this deal? 

A: Anything is possible, but a lot of the projects you mentioned were ended for good reason. Patent Pending needs to be completely rethought and redone if I ever decide to work on it again, it would have made a better novel than comic I suspect. The Worlds of Peril comics were the inspiration for a lot of what makes up The Infinite Pendergast Cycle, I like to think that it’s the story of what takes place in the aftermath of Goats proper. It’s not canon, though, so don’t be reading too much into that.

The first minicomic is going to be reworked slightly to serve at the intro chapter for Infinite Typewriters. The second one could theoretically be included as an extra in one of the other volumes. I don’t have any plans to produce OT3 at this time but if I can fix some of the plot issues I could see it appearing in the future in some form, either as a standalone or as an arc of Goats.

(more…)

Review: This Week in ‘Trinity’ #6

Things started to coalesce in last week’s Trinity #5, and issue six keeps moving in the right direction with DC’s big three coming to realize there’s a big problem building, and they’re at the center of it.

This issue has dueling narratives, one part featuring Tarot now hiding out from Morgaine Le Fey’s wolf monsters. Tarot continues to see weirdness in her tarot cards, but she dives into it, seeing Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman appear on the cards and in her dreams.

There are some obvious elements in the cards — Superman on The Sun, Wonder Woman on The Earth and Batman on The Moon — but also a few more mysterious ones. Batman appears on The Magician, and Superman shows up on The Hanged Man, with the drawing making him look like Christ on the cross. Hmm…

Meanwhile, the big three themselves are up in the JLA space station trying to figure out what’s going on and not having much luck. The brand left on Diana’s shoulder by another of Morgaine’s monsters gives them worry, and again Kurt Busiek’s character moments are done quite well.

The two narratives come together as the heroes and Tarot both talk over the nature of the trinity, and their identities as heroes, how they each represent different faces of the same ideal. One strange aspect is that in Tarot’s dream, the people around each of the heroes have no faces, like the Question. Hmm…

(more…)

The Weekly Haul: Comics Reviews for July 11, 2008

  • News
  • July 11, 2008

All around, a great week for comics even in the face of a few serious missteps. And while the latest Secret Invasion was quite good, it was the monthlies that really kicked into high gear. Let’s get to the reviews…

jsa16-4829475Book of the Week: Justice Society of America #17 — This book hit a pretty serious lull in the middle of the Gog storyline, as Magog went away and Gog (an apparently benevolent god) made his presence known.

The latest issue is all about that old axiom, be careful what you wish for. Gog is on the peacepath, so to speak, and turns his focus on the members of the JSA, granting their deepest desires.

But his altruism cuts both ways. Damage gets a new face and Pieter regains his sight, while Starman becomes sane (“not a good thing”) and Power Girl is transported home… wherever that is.

It’s a slickly done issue by Geoff Johns, who crafts an extremely dangerous story without a whiff of a villain. This series had been needing a kick in the pants, and this issue was a big swing of a steel-toed boot.

Runers Up:

Captain Britain #3 — Even better than Secret Invasion is this spin-off title, which has the Skrulls invading Britain as part of their global conquest. This is one jam-packed issue, with epic fight scenes, tough decisions and even a believable turn from Merlin.

The expected rebirth of Captain Britain was goose-bumps good, and my only complaint is that this Skrull battalion is all fighting and no subterfuge, as they don’t utilize that huge shape-shifting advantage.

The Goon #26 — A classic gangsters-at-war story. Think Miller’s Crossing, except with monsters, zombies and filthy humor. Eric Powell maybe goes a bit too far in places, but all in all it’s a damn fine issue, and his art is brilliant as ever.

  (more…)

Mike Oeming, Mark Wheatley Bring ‘Hammer of the Gods’ to ComicMix

  • News
  • July 10, 2008

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Following is an Official ComicMix Press Release –

COMICMIX BRINGS DOWN HAMMER OF THE GODS II JULY 14

Brand New Adventures from Oeming, Wheatley and more!

ComicMix editor-in-chief Mike Gold today announced the launch of the next all-new on-going series, Hammer of the Gods: Back from the Dead. Written and drawn by Michael Avon Oeming (Powers, Mice Templar, Thor) and Mark Wheatley (EZ Street, Breathtaker, Frankenstein’s Mobster), the series begins running at ComicMix.com for free online every Monday starting July 14.

Hammer of the Gods: Back from the Dead continues the story of Modi, a young Viking who was given amazing powers from the Norse Gods., as well as a set of limitations.

In the 2004 graphic novel, Modi came to terms with his strengths and weaknesses, fell in love with the Valkyrie, Skogul, and became a hero. As the new series starts, Odin, the king of the Gods, decides to peek in on the world of men. He travels to China, and soon Modi and his men must follow.

In addition to the creators, there will be contributions from Neil Vokes, Guy Davis, Matt Plog, Tim Wallace, Brian Quinn, Scott Morse, Ethan Beavers, David Beck and others.

Michael Oeming said, “I’m really excited to be working with Mark and the gang on the new volume of Hammer. The best part is that people can read it for free, every week on ComicMix.”

Mark Wheatley said, "Doing the first Hammer with Mike was a huge amount of fun. And every project I’ve had fun doing has turned into something exceptional . We’re very excited to dig deeper into the Norse legends as well as open up the series to include Chinese gods, dragons and monsters."

Comicmix.com is the site for readers who enjoy all types of fantastic media, from comic books, television and movies to video games and more. Every day, visitors find new original comics, classic stories, news, facts, reviews, commentary, columns and a community environment that reaches across the globe, across decades and into the future.

For more information, contact:

Martha Thomases

W: 212-727-8089

C: 917-767-5180

Martha@comicmix.com

Review: ‘Ordinary Victories: What is Precious’ by Manu Larcenet

ordinary-victories2-3501417Ordinary Victories: What is Precious
By Manu Larcenet
NBM/ComicsLit, August 2008, $15.95

[[[Ordinary Victories]]], in France, is a series of four graphic novels about a photographer named Marco Louis. They’ve been very successful, selling hundreds of thousands of copies of each book. But those books are each only about sixty pages long, so they’ve been combined for the American market. This volume contains the second half of the series: volume 3, “[[[What Is Precious]]],” and volume 4, “[[[Hammering Nails]]].”

I can’t be the only one to wonder how much “Marco Louis” – a guy in a creative profession in France – resembles his creator with the same initials, but the book itself doesn’t provide much in the way of clues. Let’s just throw this one onto the groaning pile marked “semi-autobiographical” and move on from there, shall we?

“[[[What is Precious]]]” opens with Marco and his partner Emily – it’s not clear if she’s a girlfriend or a wife, but she’s around for the length of the book – visiting Marco’s mother in Brittany in the aftermath of his father’s suicide. Marco needs to clean out his father’s things, which inevitably makes him think about his difficult relationship with his father.

(more…)

harry-potter-00-5494346

‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’ Photos

With all of this talk about blockbuster adaptations of comic books, it’s easy to forget about some of the other big films hitting theaters this year. Luckily, the Cinematical team has provided a reminder about one of those big releases that’s likely to appeal to ComicMix readers: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

harry-potter-00-8666652

Warner Bros. recently released some images from the film, and Cinematical has collected them in a nice little Half-Blood Prince gallery. Posted here is one of the images, but head over to Cinematical for the full host of photos from the film, which is scheduled for a November 21 release.

Mike Mignola Says ‘Hellboy 3’ in the Works

hellboy2poster5-2089479The end of Hellboy is in sight, though it’s still quite a ways out on the horizon.

In a new interview on Metromix, Hellboy creator Mike Mignola talks about Friday’s Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, but more importantly he says planning is already underway for a third film.

Also, Mignola hints at the future of Hellboy in comics:

[Guillermo] has thrown out so many ideas for the third movie, you go, ‘Geez, if he puts everything into “Hellboy 3” that he says will be in “Hellboy 3,” it’ll be 36 hours long.’ The third film, being the end of (the film trilogy), is hard for me. The comic is going to go for 10 to 15 more years, so I don’t want to give him my ending. I want my ending to be a surprise.

While you’re waiting on that, make sure to check out all of ComicMix‘s extensive Hellboy 2 coverage, including this interview with actress Selma Blair and this interview with director Guillermo del Toro.

Review: ‘Skyscrapers of the Midwest’ by Joshua W. Cotter

skyscrapers2-3107482Skyscrapers of the Midwest
By Joshua W. Cotter
AdHouse Books, June 2008, $19.95

If Chris Ware were a few years younger, grew up in a more religious household, and had less of an obsession with comics formalism, he just might have become Joshua Cotter. Or maybe that’s just me being flippant – it isn’t really fair to Cotter; his work covers some of the same emotional terrain as Ware’s, but is otherwise very different.

[[[Skyscrapers]]] is difficult to describe; it’s made up of many short stories – sometimes as many as three to a page – that mostly focus on a family in the small town of South Nodaway, somewhere in the vast American Midwest in 1987. There’s also the robot Nova Stealth, who is both the human-sized hero of a Marvel-ish comic the elder boy of the family loves, that boy’s robot toy, and a gigantic god-figure stalking across the landscape, sometimes in imagination but other times clearly real. And then there are the stories that get into really weird stuff.

The stories mostly focus on the family’s ten-year-old son, who is never named. Neither are his father or mother, though his younger brother Jeffrey has the same name as Cotter’s own younger brother (to whom the book is dedicated). And Cotter was born in 1977, which would make him ten year old in 1987 – the same age as his fifth-grade hero. So we do know a name for this boy, even if that name never appears in the book.

(more…)

Review: ‘PvP Vol. 5: PvP Treks On’ by Scott Kurtz

pvp-treks-on1-9014129PvP Vol. 5: PvP Treks On
By Scott Kurtz
Image, June 2008, $14.99

Image is a comic-book publisher, and sees everything through that lens. So, for them, this is a book “collecting issues 25-31 of the hit comic strip series,” as the cover proclaims. For most of us, though, PvP (http://www.pvponline.com/) is a daily comic strip on the web, so what’s important is that [[[Treks On]]] collects strips from June 12, 2005 through April 9, 2006. (Possibly not all of them, since several seem to be added at the beginning and others are missing at the end – and there were some duplicates in the middle, too – but most of them, at least.)

Image might think that referring to comics – which cost money – instead of to a free webcomic might increase the perceived value of their book, but are there really people – even in the inbred, hothouse environment of the comics shop – who would be a) interested in a daily comic strip about computer gaming and b) unfamiliar with webcomics?

My complaints about Image’s publishing strategy aside, this is a handsome package, with the strips shown at a nice large size, two to a page. We’re running about two years behind the current strip, so Brent isn’t even engaged to Jade yet – though he comes darn close in one storyline here. The other character relationships are close to where they are now: Francis and Marcy are friendly but not quite dating, and Robbie & Jase win the lottery in these strips.

(more…)

comicrak-6153652

Why Comic Book Sales Suck, by Mike Gold

comicrak-6153652Last week, ComicMix commenter Alan Coil and I got into a brief discussion about what constitutes decent comic book sales. It is certainly fair for Alan to compare sales against current trends; I like to compare sales against sales potential in the marketplace.

There’s a market for comic books. This is borne out by the fact that ComicMix, much like Wizard Magazine and other venues over the past decade or so, attracts a bigger audience than the vast majority of all comics published in the United States, as measured by the number of different people who actually read the stuff. Yet despite all the success of comic book product in other media – from Iron Man to Road To Perdition – there has been little if any increase in domestic comics sales. How could this be? Herein lies a history lesson.

Forget about the never-ending über-convoluted and oft-retconed continuity. I’ve bitched about all that before, and, happily, our commenters comment consistently thereupon. To look to the root of this particular evil, we must set our WaBac Machines way back to, oh, around 1948. That’s when the comics publishers started to piss in their own soup.

In 1948, comic book publishers were sailing in dire straits. Average sales were down, the number of titles were up, rack space was getting crowded, and super-heroes weren’t selling like they used to. Clearly, that trend was winding down. Magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post and Reader’s Digest were telling parents that comic books caused juvenile delinquency and promoted homosexuality. Neighborhood candy stores and newsstands started to disappear, as did local drug stores. Bolstered by the G.I. Bill, young adults with small children were leaving for the suburbs – a mysterious land with higher-rent open air shopping strips where drug store owners couldn’t make a buck off of selling high-maintenance items for 10 cents.

Creeping Werthamism aside, comics publishers were not alone in this situation. The diminishing presence of traditional newsstands grossly affected newspaper and magazine sales across the board. Papers raised their price from three or four cents to a nickel; a substantial increase, percentage-wise. Magazines raised their prices in a similar fashion; the dime novel, which by now was 15¢, was being replaced by the 25¢ paperback book.

So what did comics publishers do? Did they follow the other publishers in raising cover price? The other publishers weren’t fighting PTAs and major magazines and, eventually, senate subcommittee hearings as they were. They felt that increasing their price to 15¢ was a bad idea. So they cut content. (more…)

Categories

Archives

Everything you need to make great comics!

comicmix-pro-300x69-2

Nucleus X

Bookshop Zaks