Non-election deep thoughts
Is it just me, or has Greg Rucka been having trouble getting comics work since he tried to kill Joe Quesada?
I mean, it’s not like there isn’t precedent for having comics pros in prison before…
Tagged: comics
Purple Haze, by Martha Thomases
Originally, I wasn’t supposed to have a column.
Mike Gold wanted to have regular writers contributing during the week, Monday through Friday. He had the list of people he wanted to include – comics veterans like John Ostrander, Denny O’Neil and Michael Davis, plus popular blogger Elayne Riggs – and he wanted a soapbox for himself.
Me? I’m the publicist. I’m supposed to draw attention to the product, not to myself. The best publicist is the one you don’t see.
However, I’m also a team player. And an egomaniac. So, when the website started, and we didn’t always have a lot of content, I started to write. I wrote short essays that could get thrown up on the site when we were short on material. I’ve only been reading comics for 50 years, so there was always something on my mind.
One day, Mike said that, since I seemed to be writing regularly, perhaps my writing should have a name and a regular time slot. And so was born Brilliant Disguise, named for one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs, from one of the more depressing Bruce Springsteen albums. It’s about love and loss, and the lies we tell ourselves so we can take care of each other through the tough times. How appropriate. (more…)
‘Torso’ Grows Legs
Bill Mechanic, the former chairman of 20th Century Fox and now founder of independent production company Pandemonium, told Collider that the long planned adaptation of Brian Michael Bendis’ Torso is heading into production soon.
"Torso is moving right towards the starting gate," Mechanic tells the site. "We’ve got a screenplay and we’re waiting for Paramount to decide when to make it."
He also confirms what many have heard: David Fincher will direct the feature.
"I’m hoping we’re shooting in March or April … [so] it should be [Fincher’s next project]," says Mechanic.
And while he has a ton of faith in the project, he does admit that there will be departures from the source material, much in the way that the movie Fight Club broke off from the novel.
"Torso the movie, which may not be called Torso the movie at the end of the day … makes the book better reading because it doesn’t follow [the book] literally," Mechanic says.
Though he’s known today for revitalizing The Avengers, killing all the mutants in House of M and making Skrulls a threat again in Secret Invasion, Brian Bendis’ roots as a comics creator go back to his days at Caliber Comics. He published a string of noir crime comics with Caliber, including Fire (1993), A.K.A. Goldfish (1994) and Flaxen (1995). His most known early works are Jinx (1996), which is the namesake of his Web site JinxWorld, and the comic in question, Torso (1998). It may be hard to believe with top artists Leinil Yu and others illustrating his work, but Bendis actually illustrated a large part of his early work, including Torso. Bendis also co-wrote the novel alongside Marc Andreyko (DC’s Manhunter).
Torso is a historical fiction limited series published by Image Comics. The story focuses on the "Torso Murderer," an actual serial killer in the 1930’s who left behind only the torsos of his victims, making them very difficult to identify for police without DNA testing. The investigator on the case and protagonist of Torso is Eliot Ness, Cleveland Chief of police and one-time head of the Untouchables, the police task force that enforced Prohibition and went after crime lord Al Capone.
Though no official casting has been made, Mechanic did tell Collider that "a lot of things being written [online] about [the film] are probably true." Jake Gyllenhaal and Matt Damon are the two actors long rumored for Torso, so perhaps they’ll be the guys to star in the feature.
Growing Out Of Comics, by Mike Gold
It was the very end of summer, I had just turned 11, and – heaven help me – I was just beginning to tire of comic books.
Not that I was considering getting that four-color monkey off of my back. My enthusiasm was waning. The Superman books were beginning to get silly, the Batman titles had already become silly, and Julie Schwartz’s books like The Flash and Green Lantern were beginning to feel repetitious. I had exceeded the five-year point in my comic book reading life, that moment when the publishers felt you were on your way out, trading comics for sports, girls, and/or life. Being a precocious reader, I was at that portal at an age somewhat younger than the norm, but there was no doubt about it, comics weren’t quite as exciting to me as they had been.
At that time, DC had the market on super-hero titles lock, stock and barrel. Few new titles were launched; indeed, DC’s two debut books – Showcase and The Brave and the Bold – often recycled previous unsuccessful attempts like Cave Carson: Inside Earth and the original Suicide Squad to give them another shot at the marketplace. Each run generally consisted of three issues, so at best there would be four debuts each year, and most of those (like Cave Carson and Suicide Squad) were not of the super-hero genre. Today, of course, we get four such debuts a week.
So when it came time to drive my sister to college, my father did something unique. He stopped at a drug store – one of those places that actually had a massive wooden rack plus two comics spinner racks exclusively dedicated to comic books – and told me to pick out a few for the ride, in the hope that I would not be a bother. He then dashed across the street to pick up a dozen bagels at Kaufman’s, the original one on Montrose and Kedzie in Chicago. They boasted the best bagels in the country, and they were right.
When he returned to the drug store, I had nothing. Absolutely nothing. I had read each and every superhero title in the vast expanse of rack space. Even Lois Lane. Even the war comics, about which I was ambivalent at best, although I was not ambivalent about Joe Kubert’s art. (more…)
Review: ‘I Remember The Future’
For more than a decade, writer Michael A. Burstein has been publishing tales of speculative fiction in the anthology magazine [[[Analog]]]. Several of these stories have been nominated for various Hugo and Nebula awards, including Best Short Story, Best Novella and Best Novelette. In 1999, his short story “[[[Reality Check]]]” was nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. “[[[TeleAbsence]]]” won the 1995 Analytical Laboratory Award for Best Short Story and “[[[Sanctuary]]]” won the 2005 Analytical Laboratory Award for Best Novella.
These works and more have now been collected into one large volume from Apex Publishing entitled I Remember the Future: The Award-Nominated Stories of Michael A. Burstein. The book will be published on November 1, but you can pre-order at Amazon.com if you so wish.
The stories collected here cover a wide range of topics and emotions. There’s the murder mystery involving a killer who targets students while they’re online. There’s the deeply emotional tale concerning the dying wish of the last living holocaust survivor. There is the “[[[Broken Symmetry]]]” series, a trilogy of short stories concerning the consequences that occur when a breach opens between two parallel universes and the events that grow out of it.
Even if you’ve read these works before, this collection offers you new insight into old favorites. Every single story has an afterword by Burstein as he explains what went into it and what may evolve from it in the future. He also discusses changes made in editing, such as when he presents an alternate ending to “Kaddish for the Last Survivor.”
Along with these tales are two brand new stories. There is “[[[Empty Spaces]]]”, a continuation of the aforementioned trilogy, and the titular tale “I Remember the Future”, which gives us a present tense narration from a retired writer who fears that humanity has forgotten how to truly dream.
These stories are all heartfelt and entertaining and each one appeals to a different taste and preference. If you enjoy science fiction, pick it up. If you don’t normally go for sci-fi, hey, still pick this up. These stories are, at their core, about people and the world we all deal with. And who can’t find something to enjoy about that?
Alan “Sizzler” Kistler has been recognized by mainstream media outlets such as the New York Daily News as a comic book historian, and can be seen in the “Special Features” sections of the Adventures of Aquaman and Justice League: New Frontier DVDs. His personal website can be found at: http://KistlerUniverse.com. One of these days he’d love to write for DC, Marvel or Doctor Who.
ComicMix Poll: How should we display our comics?
We’ve been having an internal debate here at ComicMix, about possibly doing different things with the way we display comics– and we want your feedback, since, after all, you’re the people reading them.
Should we…
- Run one or two pages a day from all of our series?
- Run four to eight pages a week, alternating series daily?
- Run twenty to twenty-four pages a month, alternating series weekly?
- Run it however it works best for the story?
Please vote in the poll below, and feel free to discuss your thoughts on the matter in the comments. Your votes will help determine how we show our comics going forward. And thanks for taking the time to respond!
Webcomics You Should Have Read: Minus
One of the most endearing features of Calvin and Hobbes was Calvin’s overactive imagination, which created amazing scenarios of space battles, time travel, and talking tigers. What if it wasn’t all in his imagination, though?
Ryan Armand gives us a brief look at childlike innocence and imagination brought to life in the world of Minus.
Minus is a little girl who apparently can do anything she can imagine — she flies, creates worlds, travels in time, talks to spirits and grants wishes. And though this leads to the occasional retribution against bullies or mean adults, unlike Calvin, she also shares her gifts with her friends. Minus will offer someone a flying unicorn as easily as another little girl might offer a lick of her ice-cream cone.
Armand’s site also includes a serial comic called Socks and a collection of older stand-alone comics. He doesn’t have a storefront, though archived newsposts note that he used to do prints of Minus comics; he might be willing to start up again if requested.
Notable moments:
- The Slow Path
- Exploring the Spirit World
- He followed me home! Can I keep him?
- The saga of the Dread Pirate, Minus the Black
- The adventures of Minus the Ghost
Drama: There’s always some drama when you’re tugging at heartstrings, but Minus’ world is not a world of adult problems and relationships; it’s a child’s world, where everyone eventually gets a happy ending, even if they’re occasionally bittersweet.
Humor: While many of the comics earn a chuckle, the focus is more on evoking a sense of childlike wonder. And it succeeds.
Continuity: Low to Moderate. Some strip string together in sequence, but knowledge of previous ones isn’t terribly necessary to enjoy later strips.
Art: Each minus strip is painted with watercolors on a 15×20" piece of Illustration board. The style implies an enterprising painter more than a traditional comic artist.
Archive: About 130 strips. Two years of weekly Sunday newspaper-sized comics, though many are several "strips" long.
Updates: "It’ll be updating every Thursday until I suddenly stop!" Armand stopped updating the strip in March 2008 and started updating Socks in monthly chunks.
Risk/Reward: Some comics are ongoing, telling complicated stories, the ongoing events in characters’ lives, or just a joke every day. Some comics say what they want to say and end. Minus ends on an up-note, keeping tone to the very end. It’s worth your time.
Interview: Todd McFarlane on the State of Comics
Yesterday, the first part of my interview with Spawn creator Todd McFarlane focused on issue 185 of the long-running comic and the changes in store for readers as he returns to active creative duty with Whilce Portacio and Brian Holguin.
Since part one ran, it has been announced that the shipping date has slipped a week and the issue, complete with previously unannounced variant covers, will now be in stores on October 29.
In the second part of our discussion, we chatted about approaching the big 200 mark, the comics landscape overall today and what it might look like in the future, as well as a few Spawn-related surprises.
ComicMix: With issue 200 on the horizon and the “end of Spawn” being teased, will Spawn continue past issue 200?
Todd McFarlane: Yeah, [Issue] 200 we’re already planning for. We’ve thrown enough ripples out already and that people will sort of go ‘whoa’ and have to pay attention to keep pace with it. And 200 will allow us to get to one of the big notes and it’s all sort of a Pandora’s Box; you close one door and another one opens. We’ll have a nice compelling story for 200.
CMix: The comic landscape has changed and continues to change in a lot of ways with all kinds of different formats on the shelves and walking into bookstores now with full sections devoted to trades and original graphic novels, as well as the rise of webcomics and digital formats on the Internet. What are your thoughts in general on these trends and new directions in comics as a medium?
TM: The medium of comic books, which is a combination of words and pictures, I don’t think that medium is ever going to go away. I believe what will evolve over our lifetimes and it’s been a slow evolution, is the delivery mechanism. Is it possible that some day everybody who reads a comic book will turn on a computer? I guess, but it’ll still be words and pictures, it just happens to be in digital form. The basic form of what a comic is will never die. The delivery mechanism, to me, is less important. If people want them in trade paperback, in book form, on their computers, on the back of cereal boxes, I mean, whatever, but it’d still be a comic book. So I’ll let the consumer tell us where they want to get their fix on this medium and then we’ll hopefully not be too far behind the curve and we can give it to them.
CMix: Do you see the monthly pamphlet format headed for extinction at some point as some people have suggested?
TM: It’s possible as long as someone can offset it with another business model that gets it to the consumer. Again, as long as you give people an option as to where they can get it. Change for change’s sake doesn’t make much sense. At some point, there might be an economic tipping point where you look at sales and see you’re selling 51% or more doing something a new way rather than the old way so you start putting all of your resources behind the new way like the transition from VHS to DVD at Blockbuster where [DVD] was 5% and then 10% and then it took over. If we’re going to go in that direction, I sort of see it being the same as other business models where it’ll simply be a slow transition. (more…)
Saturday was 24-Hour Comic Day! Did you celebrate?
24 Hour Comics Day is an annual challenge for cartoonists to produce a 24-page comic book written, drawn, and completed in 24 consecutive hours. The event was founded in 2004 by Nat Gertler, prolific author and publisher of the About Comics company. Currently, the event is organized each year by the comic book specialty retailer trade organization ComicsPRO, and hosted by independent comic stores around the country.
The idea of the 24-hour comic comes from Scott McCloud, who originally came up with it as a creative exercise for himself and Steve Bissette. McCloud’s rules for the challenge were thus: The comic must be begun and completed within 24 consecutive hours. Only one person may be directly involved in its creation, and it must span 24 pages, or (if an infinite canvas format webcomic is being made) 100 panels. The creator may gather research materials and drawing tools beforehand, but cannot plan the comic’s plot ahead of time or put anything on paper (such as designs and character sketches) until he is ready for the 24 hours to begin. Any breaks (for food, sleep, or any other purpose) are counted as part of the 24 hours.
Numerous notable comic creators have attempted the challenge over the years. Dave Sim published his 24-hour comics in the back of his popular book Cerebus the Aardvark. Neil Gaiman and Kevin Eastman tried and failed, and became the namesakes for the two varieties of “noble failures”: Gaiman stopped his comic at the 24-hour mark; Eastman continued to the full 24 pages. McCloud maintains a site for the challenge and also keeps an official list of recognized 24-hour comics. ComicsPRO reports that over 1,000 people have completed the challenge. Compilation books are available of the completed challenges for the past few years, and McCloud has a book on the subject as well.
While most participants are amateurs, many pro cartoonists take part as well. In addition to the most common black-ink-on-white-paper drawings, participants have done full color painted comics, computer-drawn comics, photo comics, comics made of pictures of posed action figures, a series of painted stones with captions, and a Daredevil superhero comic made by cutting pictures of Ben Affleck’s head out of magazines and pasting them onto stick figure bodies. The biggest single event was in Austin Books in Austin, Texas in 2005, with 70 cartoonists. 2006 saw event sites in 17 countries, and the reports for 2008 are still coming in.
My favorite 24-hour comic? Scott Kurtz’s take on Batman.
The Theory of Webcomics: The Daily Grind
The Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge is a competition between online comic artists to see who can maintain the longest Monday to Friday update schedule, following a strict set of rules. Each artist lays $20 USD on the line. The last man left standing takes the entire pot. The competition started on Monday, February 28, 2005, and is still going with ten contestants remaining.
Webcomics giants like Scott Kurtz, Chris Crosby, Steve Troop, and Jennie Breeden have all missed updates and been beaten out for the top spot. Conversely, none of the remaining contenders feature on Wikipedia’s list of Self-Sufficient Webcomics. Does this seem counter-intuitive?
Any successful webcomic creator will tell you that regular updates are important — in order to build an audience, you need to provide regular content to keep people coming back to the site. And very few comics have come into success with only one comic a week — you could pretty much count them on one hand — so you’d need at least two or three updates each week. If you can stretch it, five is optimal, because it gets the working world checking your site as part of their daily routine.
If your readers have the right sort of personalities, an irregular update schedule could work in your site traffic’s favor. Studies of gamblers has shown that irregular rewards — that is, receiving a reward only sometimes, and seemingly at random, for the same action — play all sorts of fun games with human brain chemistry. This is pointed to as the cause of the Las Vegas zombies who sit at slot machines for days. Is that any different from checking Order of the Stickevery day hoping that one of the three weekly updates will be there?
(Well, how different it is depends on how much of a reward you consider a new OotS comic to be. Money is a pretty universal reward. The comic needs to be good enough to trigger a “reward” response, because a sporadic, unfunny comic quickly gets dropped, rather than obsessively watched.) (more…)
