Tagged: comics

Marvel Begins Original Digital Comics

  • News
  • September 16, 2008

Marvel’s Digital Comics will begin original material for the first time, with two strips based on this year’s movies, Iron Man and Incredible Hulk. In fact, the content will be based on the film versions not the comic book continuities so as to appeal to a wider audience. The stories will run weekly, with new installments showing up on Wednesday, the traditional “new comic day”.

Iron Man: Fast Friends, starting tomorrow, is said to focus on the relationship between Tony Stark and Jim Rhodes. It’s written by Paul Tobin, with art by Ronan Cliquet and covers by Dave Bullock.

Incredible Hulk: The Fury Files, launching October 8, will feature Nick Fury investigating Bruce Banner. It’s written by Frank Tieri, with art by Salva Espin and covers by Steve Lieber.

Both strips are timed to the impending DVD releases of the films with Iron Man due September 30 and Incredible Hulk due out October 21.
 

ComicMix Radio: What Comics Did You Miss?

Printing mistakes and distribution snafus have plagued us all comic-wise the past few weeks. We help you catch up on what you should and will be seeing in the comic stores, plus:

  • Geoff Johns jumps into the DC Universe MMO
  • Captain Action gets out the vote
  • Shia LaBeouf in Y The Last Man?
     

It kicks right off when you Press the Button!
 

And remember, you can always subscribe to ComicMix Radio podcasts via badgeitunes61x15dark-6462078 or RSS!

 

 

Bluewater Announces ‘William Shatner Presents’

  • News
  • September 16, 2008

Bluewater Productions has added William Shatner to their growing line of celebrity endorsed comic books.  Following in the footsteps of Ray Harryhausen, Vincent Price and Roger Corman, Shatner will have comics based on his novels including Man O’ War and Quest for Tomorrow. These will be published as miniseries, continuing the stories with talent yet to be announced.

His TekWar, written with Ron Goulart and an unnamed fourth title round out the commitment between the actor and the publisher. TekWar will also be a continuation. All four are scheduled to come out in the first quarter of 2009, available in comic shops as the hoopla surrounding the reboot of Star Trek edges towards its May 8 release.

The TekWar universe was adapted previously by Marvel Comics in the early 1990s and ran for 24 issues, written solely by Goulart.  Darren G. Davis, president of Bluewater, has promised the ongoing series will be more faithful to the source material which ran in nine novels.  It was also adapted as four telefilms and a one-season syndicated series starring Greg Evigan.

Bluewater’s publisher Darren Davis said in a release, “Mr. Shatner is a savvy businessman and a creative mastermind. We’re honored to be partnering with him and are confident our efforts will create comic books both his fans and ours will embrace.”

“With all of these comics, I have final approval," Shatner told the Los Angeles Times. "This is not a licensing arrangement; this will be me involved very directly throughout the process. They are going to do adaptations of my ideas and also sequels; they will be in the stores in March of 2009. I loved comics as a kid. I used to sit under the sheets with a flashlight and read Superman when I was six in Montreal and now, with the comics as they are today, it’s thrilling, really.”

Of the old Gold Key comic adaptations of Star Trek, Shatner enthused, "Oh, they were great. They always made me look so skinny."

Batman’s Comedy of Eros, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • September 16, 2008

Way back in the late 80s, or maybe early 90s, an inker working on one of DC’s superhero comics rendered a female form rather more like the Lord made female forms than the mores of the time allowed. The editor dealt with the problem by putting a color hold – a purple one, I think – over what some would have deemed offensive nudity.  Sex always wins. The lady’s charms shone clearly though the purple haze and a fuss ensued.

I remembered this anecdote when I saw, in the New York Times, an item about a Batman comic describing “a two page action sequence that is filled with foul language…uttered by (a) heroine…

“A black bar covered the blue words, but it was too transparent and allowed the text to be read.” Sex always wins and maybe “foul language” at least doesn’t fight fair.

According to the Times, the print run was destroyed. Having made more than my share of blunders when I sat in an editor’s chair, I know how easily goofs like this can occur and I hope the ensuing fuss doesn’t devolve on the editor, whoever he or she may be. As a certain Secretary of Defense said, stuff happens.

But I’m curious.  Did the creative folk always intend the offensive language to be covered? Surely not. Why go to the bother and expense of lettering copy that no one will read? Easier, one imagines, to simply do the black bars in the first place, though as a storytelling strategy, that would be questionable; why pull the reader out of the story while they puzzle over the meaning of the black bars?

Okay, the copy was meant to be seen? Didn’t somebody wonder if such language could cause trouble and…I dunno – ask around?

Maybe someone saw it as a free speech issue. If so, I’d demur.

I think the First Amendment is the crown jewel of the Constitution, and, personally, I can be a potty mouth. Much of my choirboy vocabulary was left on an aircraft carrier and much of whatever was left in the gutters of the East Village, pre-gentrification. But I think the way things are marketed creates expectations, and it’s not playing fair with the customers to thwart those expectations. Anything – and I do mean anything – should be allowed in the public arena, but if one buys a book bylined Henry James, one should not be subjected to a story by Mickey Spillane.

Comics have come a considerable distance in the few years since I left editing. Hell and damn, once verboten seem okay both in comics and on TV, and a few gamier locutions are beginning to pop up. But I don’t believe the medium – comics – has evolved to the point where authentic street lingo is expected.

A final consideration: The question in matters like this is always a simple one. Does it help the narrative? Is the vocabulary the writer is using his way of showing off, or does it serve a larger purpose? Any vocabulary that tells the story is almost certainly the right vocabulary, though I’d expect to get argument on this. In the case of the Batman comic we’ve been discussing, I don’t know, and probably never will.

RECOMMENDED READING: Redemolished, by Alfred Bester

Dennis O’Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and The Shadow– among others – as well as many novels, stories and articles. The Question: Epitaph For A Hero, reprinting the third six issues of his classic series with artists Denys Cowan and Rick Magyar, will be on sale in September, and his novelization of the movie The Dark Knight is on sale right now. He’ll be taking another shot at the ol’ Bat in an upcoming story-arc, too. 

The Theory of Webcomics: What are Webcomics?

  • News
  • September 14, 2008

Help me Wikipedia, you’re my only hope! What are webcomics?

Oh, okay. They’re comics published on the web. That was easy. What else have we got? Over 18,000 exist, few are self-sustaining, blah blah blah, some are like newspaper comics and some are like graphic novels, yadda yadda yadda, sometimes use sprites, pixels, photos or 3D Poser art. Some are funny, some are not; and they cover a wide variety of genres.

But really, what are webcomics? “Webcomics” is the collective name we’ve given to sequential art that appears online. Scott Kurtz’s PvP is a webcomic, as is Scott McCloud’s Zot!, but so are the reprints available from Marvel Digital Comics and the online For Better or for Worse strips. Same name, wildly different products: Kinda like comparing a 1940s Superman story with Neil Gaiman’s Sandman or Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor. They’re all “comics”, but the similarity stops there.

We’re going to need a little more granularity: Typically, one will use the phrase “webcomics” to refer to creator-owned properties published originally and/or primarily online. Reprinted newspaper strips would still fall under “newspaper comics”, and reprinted superhero material would still be “print comics” or “comic books”. So our narrowed “webcomics” would include DC’s Zuda Comics, but not Marvel Digital or FBoFW. This is still hazy for cases like Diesel Sweeties, which started on the web, and published both on the web and in syndicated papers simultaneously (with different content) for a time; but it will do.

And that’s the definition I’m typically using and tend to focus on when I talk about webcomics. When I talk about how webcomics make money, I’m thinking about how Kurtz or McCloud would make money, not how Marvel would monetize their website. When I talk about “the most popular webcomics,” I don’t mean Dilbert. The collection of comics that are creator-owned, published online, usually maintained by one or two authors and typically full of geeky content are a community and a genre all their own, and deserve the same singular attention that we give to, say, sci-fi novels.

These are the comics that you find on Keenspot [link: http://www.keenspot.com/], Zuda, Blank Label, Dumbrella, Modern Tales, and similar collectives. These are the comics that get their start on Comic Genesis [link: http://www.comicgenesis.com/], Drunk Duck, or Webcomics Nation.

And yes, these are the comics that obey Sturgeon’s Law much more so than any others—after all, the barriers to entry are very low; anyone with a computer and a bunch of free time can create one. (I myself had a short-lived sprite comic, now gone from the web and never to be seen again.) This means they’re often drawn and written by hobbyists with limited time, no editors, and the occasional limited grasp of spelling and/or grammar. Which is, of course, the other reason I like to talk about them: There are some fantastic gems of comics to be found, if you know where to look.

I’m  going to be picking apart how these comics exist as an art form and what makes them different; discuss how they make money, why some do so much better than others, and which ones you really should be reading. Though be warned: The only thing that sucks up more of your free time that creating a webcomic is reading them.
 

Examining What Went Wrong With ‘All-Star Batman’ #10

  • News
  • September 10, 2008

All-Star Batman & Robin #10 has caused some controversy since DC Comics announced it was recalling issues scheduled to be on sale today.  They described the problem through the Diamond Comics announcement that it was a printing error.

Apparently, Frank Miller’s expletive-filled dialogue was intended to be blacked out but the process employed failed to effectively do this.

The actual dialogue and scans of the offending pages can be found over at Comic Book Resources. According to Heidi MacDonald at The Beat, Miller insisted his dialogue be lettered in and blacked out.  The production approach clearly failed to achieve the desired effect but editorial judgment has also to be questioned.

According to former DCer Brian Pearce over at the DC Archives board, “What puzzles me is the suggestion that the dialog in the word balloons might have printed in a four-color black (essentially, solid black backed up with a small percentage of the other process colors), while the bar that was supposed to obscure it was just a flat black, and not adequately opaque. ‘Backing up the black’ as it’s called, is often used to give large flat black areas a more ‘rich’ (and less washed out) appearance, or to ward off problems with trapping (when registration is slightly off) — but what strikes me as odd is that there’s really no need to do that with a fine detail like lettering. It’s not really necessary, and against a white background, that would betray even the slightest misregistration. (And even as comics printing and coloring have become more elaborate through the years, lettering inside baloons and caption boxes was genenerally left as only black because it was easiest to strip out that detail from just that one plate for foreign licensees and reprints.)

“And before the usual suspects start speculating on who might lose a job over this, this is an error that would be difficult, if not impossible to spot without a very specific type of proof, or a press proof. (It was probably caught on one of the unbound ‘last chance copies,’ when the books have been printed and bound, but there’s still time to do something.)”

Copies are already being hawked at eBay and its likely that similar to similar recalled comics, such as the Elseworlds 80-Page Giant, it will remain a rare collectible.

Unnoticed in all this was that Action Comics #869 and DC: Decisions #1 were also recalled for other printing problems.  The reasons behind these two remain unclear.
 

Tech Report: E-Ink and Comic Covers

  • News
  • September 10, 2008

A few months back I had heard that Esquire magazine was going to celebrate their 75 anniversary with an experimental  electronic ink technology. Basically batteries are sewn into the cover that power a flexible LCD screen. I was interested but wanted to see how it came out. Well, issues are hitting the stands now. Take a look at the video below:

 

The “animation” is limited. Kind of like web page banner ads, not television. (Yet.) But the first thing that sprang to my mind was how long before a comic company puts out a special edition comic featuring this? Back issues bins are overstocked with prismatic, die-cut, hologram, lenticular special editions from the 90’s. Collectors may have been burned but those suckers sold for the publishers.

What comic covers that come to my mind immediately are an Iron Man cover with lots of parts lighting up. Or the Batmobile with motion blur background. Or seeing that star field effect seen with Donna Troy, Alexander Luthor, Captain Marvel and other cosmic characters actually twinkling.

The only drawback is that the batteries only last 90 days. But hey, put an E-ink comic cover in a comic shop front window and see how fast they’d sell anyway.

‘Blackest Night’ stealing ‘Final Crisis’ thunder? by Alan Kistler

  • News
  • September 8, 2008

flash-three-generations-7506952

The major event in DC Comics in 2008 is Final Crisis, written by Grant Morrison. Unlike many summer crossovers, Final Crisis is not its own event so much as the third story of a trilogy (the first two stories being the crossovers The Crisis On Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis).

The opening premise is that all of the New Gods (celestial beings who inhabit a higher dimension) recently seemed to die, except for Darkseid, leader of the evil New Gods. Darkseid has found a way to survive through human hosts, his power fueled by the faith of his new followers under the prophet Libra. Determined to become ruler of reality, he has been resurrecting his sinister forces (an ability Kirby established decades ago) by placing their life-forces in new bodies as well. And since he has now learned the powerful "Anti-Life Equation", a prize he has sought for centuries, he is able to destroy free will in any who hear the equation, thus creating a new army of slaves.

So evil god-like forces have been freely walking among us and because the super-heroes didn’t realize it, they’ve been vulnerable to sneak attacks and manipulations. In short order, John Stewart, Hal Jordan, Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman were all removed from the game board in one way or another.

But this is a Morrison story so that means there are usually layers to be peeled away. There are other things going on as a result of Darkseid now attempting to break the universe down to serve his will. There is, of course, the matter of the Multiversal Monitors, beings charged with maintaining the structure of the multiverse, one of whom is also living among us as a mortal man, unaware of his true nature. And there is the return of Barry Allen, the second Flash, a hero who became energy and merged with the universe even while saving it during the first Crisis over twenty years ago. Barry’s sacrifice saved the universe during that story and in DC Universe #0, it’s implied that the universe itself has brought him back so that he can save it again. It’s also possible he is here as a reactionary force to Libra, who is his opposite number in the sense that this a villain who also seemingly died years while merging with the cosmos.

And Libra and Barry are not the only dead men to show up in this story.

  (more…)

‘Ciudad’ set up at Paramount

  • News
  • September 6, 2008

Oni Press has sold the film rights to their forthcoming graphic novel Ciudad to Paramount Pictures.  Anthony and Joe Russo (You, Me and Dupree) wrote the comic and will pen and direct the screen adaptation according to Variety. The comic was drawn by Ande Parks (Green Arrow).

The trade describes the premise as “story centers on a weary hostage extractor who travels to Paraguay’s Ciudad del Este, a border town considered one of the world’s most dangerous and corrupt locales, to save a kidnap victim.”

The duo researched the story for years, traveling to South Africa and intend to return to their grittier filmmaking style.

Oni Press has optioned four other properties to Universal Studios where they have a first look deal.  Their Scott Pilgrim film begins shooting in a few weeks.

 

DeCandido Returns to ‘Farscape’

  • News
  • September 5, 2008

Saavy readers of Previews may have already picked up on this bit of news, but BOOM! sent out a release to ensure everyone was aware that Rockne O’Bannon was getting som ehelp turning Farscape into a comic book.  Here’s the release:

September 4th, 2008 – Los Angeles, CA – BOOM! Studios and The Jim Henson Company announced today that Keith R.A. DeCandido will be scripting the  Farscape miniseries from an original story by Farscape creator Rockne O’Bannon.

Using O’Bannon’s unique vision and richly detailed story, DeCandido will work with BOOM! Studios and The Jim Henson Company to bring fans the best comic this or any universe has ever seen!

Keith R.A. DeCandido has authored more than 30 novels, among them, the acclaimed  Farscape novel House of Cards, released in 2001. DeCandido also wrote three short stories in that universe for the show’s official magazine and role-playing game.

"Words cannot describe how thrilled I am to be returning to  Farscape. Writing House of Cards was one of the most enjoyable experiences of my career, and I was always sorry I didn’t get to do more work in the universe," said DeCandido.  "Re-immersing myself in the wild and wacky world of FARSCAPE has been a true joy, as the show remains just as brilliant in 2008 as it was at the turn of the century. (more…)

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