Tagged: X-Men

Comics sales for first half of 2012 18% ahead of last year

The Diamond Comic Distributors sales report for the middle of the comics year always hits right before Comic Con International: San Diego, which itself is about the future of the business; we see where we’ve been right before we see where we’re going. Last year, the industry arrived in San Diego with the first half of 2011 off 8% versus the year before; this year, orders by Direct Market comics shops in North America are up more than 18% year-to-date. It’s quite the turnaround. Retailers have already ordered more material through June — nearly $223 million in retail dollars— than they did in last year through July.

Marvel’s Avengers Vs. X-Men #6 led the charts, with four DC Before Watchmen debut issues landing in fifth through eight place. Click to see the preliminary top sellers for June. June 2011 was a five-week month versus four shipping weeks for June 2012, and the beats were a little smaller than we’ve seen — but periodical units and dollars were still up double-digits. All the comics in the Top 10 were priced at $3.99.

On the trade paperback side, the release of Walking Dead Vol. 16: A Larger World both topped the charts. There was a slight year-to-year drop in graphic novel units, but not dollars — suggesting that maybe with the DC hardcovers and a new Walking Dead release priced higher than some of the earlier backlist releases, the average price for each graphic novel ordered increased some.

thewalkingdeadvolume16-4197495Retailers appear to have ordered $40.5 million in comic books and trade paperbacks from Diamond in the month, a sum that brings the second quarter orders to more than $20 million higher than the same three-month period last year. For the year to date, all Direct Market sales are more than $34 million ahead of the first half of 2011.

But the comparison observers may be more interested in isn’t between the first six months of this year and the first six months of 2011 — but rather, with the last six months, which included the DC reboot. Direct Market orders were $224.92 million from July 2011 to December 2011 — so even with the reboot titles reaching double-digit issue numbers, the market is down less than 1% from that blockbuster six-month period. The reasons are several: Marvel has Avengers Vs. X-Men on the playing field, and graphic novels are rebounding with the DC hardcovers and Walking Dead. But the fact we can compare at all is significant, because the second half of the year has outperformed the previous first half every year for the last 10 years — and by an average of 10%.

Marvel Expected to Announce Guardians, Big Hero 6 Films at San Diego

  • News
  • June 28, 2012

Marvel Studios is expected to announce the highly anticipated Guardians of the Galaxy movie at Comic-Con International. The film, according to Latino Review, will be their second 2014 release, completing a roster of films now dubbed Phase Two.

The time- and star-spanning team was first created by Arnold Drake and Gene Colan, appearing in the try-out title Marvel Super-Heroes #18 (January 1969). While never earning a title of their own, they went on to be recurring guest stars in a variety of titles all through the 1970s.

Under writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, a new incarnation of the Guardians have been a focal point of their cosmic stories, beginning in the Annihilation: Conquest stories. That particular cycle of stories ended a year or so back, paving the way for a new cycle, expected to be written by Brian Michael Bendis.

The new cycle of stories was teased with the arrival on Earth of Nova in the pages of Avengers vs. X-Men #1 followed by his digital exclusive story.

Meantime, Marvel has been registering domain names and laying claim to Guardian trademarks in a wide variety of merchandise, tipping their hands that such a feature was in development. It was even mentioned as one of several second tier properties being considered for later this decade but clearly it was a feint.

Marvel Comics has mastered the slow news leak, providing tips and nods in a certain direction, leading up to the not-so-surprising news announcement. You can trace this back to Joe Quesada badmouthing Peter Parker’s marriage to Mary Jane Watson at least a year before the eventual One More Day storyline that altered the Marvel reality.

Over the last few months, Marvel has been teasing that things are about to take a dramatic turn as one creative team after another have announced wrapping up storylines and paving the way for a freshening of the Marvel Universe.  Several Thanos titles were announced for this September including two by Jim Starlin the character’s creator.

With The Avengers completing Phase One, the second cycle of films begins in 2013 with Iron Man 3 to be followed in November by Thor 2. For 2014, Captain America 2 was previously announced for April 4with a TBA on the books. (Sony, meantime, has Amazing Spider-Man 2 pencilled in for May 2 and Fox has saved July 18 for another X-Men First Class Sequel). IMDB already has a placeholder page awaiting confirmation.

While there’s no word on which members of either version of the team will be used, we’re looking forward to Groot and Rocket Raccoon being a part of the cast. Apparently, Thanos will be the Big Bad to tie things together with his arrival hinted at with a sighting of his Infinity Gauntlet in Thor and his cameo at the end of The Avengers.  Latino’s piece speculates Thanos will appear in Guardians which will be the final film prior to 2015’s The Avengers 2.

Meantime, Marvel’s corporate masters, Walt Disney, just revealed this afternoon that they are working on their first Marvel animated property: Big Hero 6. The timing is interesting in that the Previews catalog out yesterday contains a new Big Hero 6 project from writer Chris Claremont.The team was introduced in 1998’s Sunfire and Big Hero 6 from Steven T. Seagle and Duncan Rouleau.

Planned for 2014, the blog says in part, “I promised my Bothans that I wouldn’t reveal much about the Marvel project that Walt Disney Animation Studios was working on, that I would only allude to it until something else broke about it. Well, now a website has let the cat out of the bag. Remember that I mentioned that the property would be unlike anything the Mouse had done before? I also mentioned to some that inquired about it, that Marvel owns 4000+ characters and everyone was thinking it was an animated Iron Man or X-Men or even “Power Pack.” Well, it’s not. It’s not one of the top 100 or 200 characters even. The actual title is much more obscure than most people know. In fact, most comic book fans will not even know the title, or most of the characters. So, what is the title/characters that Disney is adapting into an animated film?”

 

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“In Our Mothers’ House” Restricted Access in Utah School District

  • News
  • June 16, 2012

in-our-mothers-house-restricted-access-in-utah-school-district-8316062With the President’s recent open approval of same-sex marriage; a federal appeals court striking down the Defense of Marriage Act (claiming it unconstitutional); the success of Life with Archie #16, featuring the marriage of a gay character; and Marvel and DC’s inclusion of prominent storylines about gay characters, one may surmise it is easy for everyone to access constitutionally-protected LGBT materials. This is not the case, as students in a school district north of Salt Lake City will have to get parental permission before checking out a book about a lesbian couple raising a family, according to a recent article on the Huffington Post.

The book In Our Mothers’ House by Patricia Polacco is at the center of these prohibitive policies due to a complaint by the mother of a student who checked out the book, which features a family led by a lesbian couple and how they use love to give them the strength to overcome intolerance.

From the Huffington Post article by Jennifer Dolner:

Students in a Utah school district will need permission from their parents to read a book about a lesbian couple raising a family following the decision by a special committee to keep it behind library counters instead of on bookshelves.

The book In Our Mothers’ House, by Patricia Polacco, became the subject of controversy in January when the mother of a student who brought the book home complained to the school.

‘The book is still in the library and children can still have access to the book as long as they have written permission from their parents,’ said Chris Williams, a spokesman for the Davis School District, which covers an area north of Salt Lake City.

Dolner goes on to relate that the book has been challenged in libraries around the country:

The Davis district is not the first place parents have raised concerns about the book, which was published in 2009. A 2011 report by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas shows the book was banned in several schools in that state.

Williams said a school-level committee made up of teachers, administrators and parents decided that access to In Our Mothers’ House should be restricted to students in grades 3 through 6. When that didn’t satisfy the parent, a district committee was petitioned to address the issue.

In late April, the district committee voted 6-1 that the book could stay in the collection, but should be kept behind the counter, instead of on shelves. A letter informing parents of the decision was sent out in May.

Williams said in the article that what’s objectionable to one person is not to another. Thusly, a person’s objection to legal material (that is not defined as offensive or profane by law) has led to a subjective decision to restrict access to said material. These policies, therefore, are based on personal ideologies, not law, and are in violation of a national canon of free expression.

Similar outcries and boycotts have been made by special interest groups, such as One Million Moms, against the comic industry for its depiction of gay characters. In February, One Million Moms lobbied to have an Archie comic removed from shelves and encouraged people to boycott the comic.

From a CBLDF article by Betsy Gomez:

One Million Moms — a division of the American Family Association, a conservative non-profit organization that ‘promotes traditional family values’ — recently made news over their boycott of retailer JC Penney over hiring lesbian TV host Ellen DeGeneres as a spokesperson. They are in the news again with recent reports that they will be boycotting Toys ‘R’ Us over the display and sale of Life with Archie #16, which features the marriage of openly gay character Kevin Keller.

Despite the group’s efforts, the comic stayed on the shelves and even sold out.

More recently, the group has taken similar actions against Marvel’s Astonishing X-men #51, featuring the marriage of the mutant Northstar to his same-sex partner, and DC’s “outing” of the Green Lantern, according to an ICv2.com article.

From the ICv2 article:

American Family Association ‘project’ One Million Moms has added Marvel and DC to the list of comic publishers that it opposes because of their inclusion of gay characters. The group argues that the companies ‘want to indoctrate [sic] impressionable young minds by placing these gay characters on pedestals in a positive light.’ The group was reacting to the announcement by Marvel that its character Northstar would marry his same sex partner in Astonishing X-Men #51 (see A Gay Wedding for Marvel). DC announced this week that a major, iconic DC character would be revealed as gay next month (see DC Character to Come Out). ‘These companies are heavily influencing our youth by using children’s superheroes to desensitize and brainwash them in thinking that a gay lifestyle choice is normal and desirable,’ the group said.”

Though One Million Moms public objections are constitutionally protected speech, banning comics and books (as in the case of Texas schools banning In Our Mothers’ House) due to moral, political or religious ideologies violate these First Amendment rights.

From the First Amendment Center’s website FAQs concerning speech, schools and books:

School officials cannot pull books off library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas in those books. In Board of Education v. Pico, the Supreme Court ruled that school officials in New York violated the First Amendment by removing several books from junior high school library shelves for being too controversial.

The Court said the First Amendment protects students’ right to receive information and ideas and that the principal place for such information is the library.

However, in Pico, the Supreme Court also said school officials could remove books from library shelves if they were ‘pervasively vulgar.’ The Court noted that its decision did not involve school officials’ control over the curriculum or even the acquisition of books for school libraries.
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School districts should develop policies on how to handle challenges to books, and how to ensure that decisions regarding removal of books from the library or the curriculum respect the Constitution and reflect sound educational policy. School officials must also ensure that a book is not removed simply because a concerned parent or special-interest group dislikes its content.”

Visit the non-profit organization First Amendment Center’s website for more information.

LGBT publications, from books to comics, are often challenged, banned or subject to restrictive access policies in libraries. These materials are legal, non-obscene, and protected speech, but they often suffer the consequences of personal, religious, and moral dogmas that infringe on free speech and free access.

Please help support CBLDF’s important First Amendment work and reporting on issues such as this by making a donation or becoming a member of the CBLDF!

Justin Brown is a journalism graduate of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

May 2012 comics sales break more records

  • News
  • June 12, 2012

The full report of comics orders for May 2012 has been released by Diamond Comic Distributors, and as the initial report here found, the market is hitting on all cylinders. It’s also breaking records, according to estimates compiled here at The Comics Chronicles. Click to see the comics sales estimates for May 2012.

As reported on Friday, led by Avengers Vs. X-Men #4, the comic book Direct Market’s orders of $44.68 million in comics and graphic novels (at full retail value) is the largest sum seen in a single month since Diamond began reporting Final Order data in February 2003, and it’s probably a higher figure seen in any month since 1995 in un-inflation-adjusted dollars.

Now, with the estimates out, we can see that two other Diamond Exclusive Era records have been set. Diamond’s Top 300 comics had orders totaling $25.72 million, an increase of 44% over last May and the highest total since Diamond became the sole distributor in 1997. It beats the total of $25.37 million set in December 2008.

Trade paperbacks and hardcovers were exceptionally strong, too, with the DC reboot volumes topping the charts; the Top 300 accounted for $8.27 million, just missing the one-month record from November 2008. That combined with the comics figures to break the other record this month: the Top 300 comics plus the Top 300 graphic novels combined for sales of almost exactly $34 million, beating the previous record from December 2008 by nearly $2 million.

These are dollar sales and not unit sales — though the unit figures came close to setting records, and inflation is not really a huge factor in comparisons over the last two or three years. As we can see on this table of average comics prices, that December 2008 peak found the average weighted price of comics in the Top 300 to be $3.31; this month, the average weighted price was $3.53. That’s less than a 7% increase over three and a half years.

The 300th place issue didn’t set a record, but it was the second-highest total for issues at that rank since 1996, with more than 4,800 copies sold. We’ve also now gone a full year where all first place issues each month topped 100,000 copies. So we are, as they say on CNBC, well “off the lows” for the decade.

Again, the Diamond Exclusive Era records are exactly that — they don’t take into account the mammoth sales of the early 1990s, the Golden Age, or anything earlier than 1997.

The aggregate totals for the month:

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES

May 2012: 7.3 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: +42%
Versus 5 years ago this month: -6%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +27%
Versus 15 years ago this month: -8%
YEAR TO DATE: 31.29 million copies, +20% vs. 2011, -11% vs. 2007, +13% vs. 2002, -27% vs. 1997

ALL COMICS UNIT SALES
May 2012 versus one year ago this month: +44.24%
YEAR TO DATE: +20.89%

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TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES

May 2012: $25.72 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +44%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +5%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +60%
Versus 15 years ago this month: +36%
YEAR TO DATE: $108.66 million, +20% vs. 2011, -2% vs. 2007, +39% vs. 2002, +8% vs. 1997

ALL COMICS DOLLAR SALES
May 2012 versus one year ago this month: +45.12%
YEAR TO DATE: +21.77%

—

TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

May 2012: $8.27 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +47%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: -17%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 50 vs. the Top 50: +47%
YEAR TO DATE: $33.16 million, +28% vs. 2011

ALL TRADE PAPERBACK  SALES
May 2012 versus one year ago this month: +41.14%
YEAR TO DATE: +16.22%

—

TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

May 2012: $34 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +45%
Versus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: +1%
Versus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +36%
YEAR TO DATE: $141.83 million, +22% vs. 2011

ALL COMICS AND TRADE PAPERBACK  SALES
May 2012 versus one year ago this month: +43.76%
YEAR TO DATE: +19.95%

—

OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, trades, and magazines)

May 2012: approximately $44.68 million (subject to revision)
Versus 1 year ago this month: +44%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +9%
YEAR TO DATE: $182.49 million, +20% vs. 2011, +4% vs. 2007

The average price of comics in Diamond’s Top 300 was $3.53 as was the cost of the average comic book retailers ordered. $3.50 was the median price of all comics offered in the Top 300, while the most common price remained $2.99.

The numbers already show it, but there’s increasing anecdotal evidence of a turnaround out there — including this piece in yesterday’s Ventura County Star. The headline alone is of a sort we haven’t seen in the business in a long time. Brian Jacoby from Secret Headquarters in Tallahassee, Fla., also provides a very positive view in the comments thread of this ComicsBeat post. “My subscriber list has grown 20% in the past 9 months, beginning on the strength of the excitement for the New 52, and bolstered by other great launches since, like (Miles Morales as) Ultimate Spider-Man and Saga, and the continued influx of Walking Dead– and Avengers-curious people brought in by other media.” That’s how recoveries have worked in the past: one thing leads to the next.

Follow Comichron on Twitter and Facebook, to be alerted when new estimates are released.

A Look at the Anime Adventures of Iron Man and the X-Men

  • News
  • April 20, 2012

In case you missed it on G4 over the last year, Marvel Comics licensed a quartet of properties to be  adapted into anime for the Japanese market. Acclaimed studio Madhouse handled the visuals while Warren Ellis was brought aboard to craft twelve -part stories for Iron Man, Wolverine, X-Men, and Blade. In short, he helped design a Marvel Anime Universe and the fruits of those labors recently completed their cable run.

On Tuesday, Sony Home Entertainment is releasing Iron Man and X-Men as two-disc DVD collections. For those unfamiliar with the properties, here’s a slideshow for each. Our review will run in a day or two.

IRON MAN Anime

X-MEN Anime 

Real Steel’s Hugh Jackman Talks Boxing Bots

  • News
  • January 27, 2012

charlie-coaching-300x200-1649725Hugh Jackman stars in Real Steel, out on home video this week, and the native Australian is best known to ComicMix fans for his work as Wolverine in  X-Men, X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand before spinning off into X-Men Origins: Wolverine and cameoing as the canucklehead in X-Men First Class.

In the fall of 2009, Jackman made a return to Broadway in the Keith Huff-penned A Steady Rain.

On February 22, 2009, Jackman took on the prestigious role of hosting the 81st Annual Academy Awards live from the Kodak Theater, he wowed those in attendance and helped ABC score a 13% increase in viewership from the previous year. Previously, Jackman served as host of the Tony Awards three years in a row, from 2003-2005, earning an Emmy Award for his 2004 duties at the 58th annual ceremony and a nomination for his 2005 appearance at the 59th annual ceremony.

In 2008, Jackman was seen in Twentieth Century Fox’s Deception opposite Ewan McGregor and the romantic action-adventure epic Australia, directed by Baz Luhrmann.

Jackman has also starred in Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige and Woody Allen’s Scoop. He has lent his voice to the animated features Happy Feet and Flushed Away. Other films in which he has had leading roles include Someone Like You, Swordfish, Van Helsing and Kate and Leopold, for which he received a 2002 Golden Globe nomination.

For his portrayal of the 1970s singer-songwriter Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz, Jackman received the 2004 Tony Award® for Best Actor in a musical as well as Drama Desk, Drama League, Outer Critics Circle and Theatre World awards.

Previous theater credits include Carousel at Carnegie Hall, Oklahoma! at the National Theater in London (Olivier Award nomination), “Sunset Boulevard” (for which he won a Mo Award, Australia’s Tony Award) and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (Mo Award nomination). (more…)

Juxtaposition: Two Books for Younger Readers with Words & Pictures

miss-peregrine-6617220Sometimes words and pictures come together in the same story. There’s more than one way of accomplishing this — comics is the most obvious, with the story told in a sequence of pictures and text (captions and/or dialogue), but there are other options — and books for pre-adults have typically made more use of pictures than those in the more adult portions of the library.

Remember: adults are dull and staid, and must not be upset or disconcerted by mere pictures in their very, very serious books. Children are more mentally flexible, and can handle the shock of the pictorial.

Teens are somewhere in between: they usually want to be adults, but they’re still young enough to question that dull stolidity, and still, sometimes, will gravitate to books with pictures in them. The two books I have in front of me today were published to be read by pre-adults of various ages — though I think the first had an older expected reader-age than the latter — and they’re chock-full of pictures. In fact, both of them are stories told through and about their pictures, in different ways — and, more interestingly from my point of view, neither of these books use the language and techniques of comics. They both use pictures as part of their storytelling, but come at it from different traditions, and don’t tell their stories from image-to-image the way that comics do.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is the more conventional of the two books; it’s a novel by Ransom Riggs (his first), illustrated by a sequence of real, mostly unaltered vintage photographs. (Riggs is clear about the “mostly unaltered” stipulation, since some of these are quite odd photographs, as with the cover shot, showing a hard-faced girl standing rigidly still a foot off the ground.) Those photos are part of the story in the most basic, literal way — every so often, a character talks about looking at a photograph, and then, lo! the actual photo appears on the next page.

(more…)

All Pulp Interviews – Will Meugniot

  • News
  • October 5, 2011
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Prolific artist Will Meugniot has worked in comic book, animation, picture books, and more. All Pulp recently sat down with Will to talk about his career, his artistic influences, the differences between working in animation and comics, plus his pulp interests.

Click on the art for a larger view.

AP: Tell us a little about yourself and your pulp interests.

WM: I grew up in the 60s. It was a great time to be a kid interested in adventure fiction. Marvel and DC’s superhero revivals spurred many other publishers to enter the field, so you never knew what great comics you’d find when they finally opened the bales at the grocery store.

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N.E.D.O.R. Agents

A similar thing happened in paperback books. Ace discovered that some editions of certain Edgar Rice Burroughs books had fallen out of copyright, published them, and triggered a pulp revival, which brought everything from Otis Adelbert Kline to Doc Savage back into print.

Doc was my favorite of the pulp heroes, though I bought as many reprints of The Shadow, The Spider, Phantom Detective and Dusty Ayres as I could find and afford. Related to this, I’m also a big fan of the sound serials and have a collection of most of the non-westerns on DVD.

AP: What does pulp mean to you?

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Spider-Man Unlimited Vulture

WM: It means stories which focus on fast paced action in exotic locales and feature larger than life heroes and villains. On a personal note, I grew up in a small farming town and yearned for a larger life full of adventure. The pulp heroes pointed the way, and while I’ve never taken down a globe conquering miscreant, I have had a few interesting overseas experiences in my travels as a producer/director.
AP: When I think of Will Meugniot comics, I think of DNAgents (I’m proud to say I have the entire run) and FemForce. How did you get your start in comics and what is it that excites you about working in comics?
WM: First, thanks for thinking of my comics! So much of my time has been tied up doing animation that I really haven’t done as many comics as I intended.

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Tarzan. Dave Stevens inks

I first broke into the comics in the 1970s doing strips for undergrounds like The OK Comics tabloid and ‘ground level’ early direct sales books like Faeiry Star. My big break came when I sent Marvel a batch of sample pages featuring characters which didn’t have their own strips at the time: Guardians of the Galaxy, Ka-Zar, Nick Fury, and the one that paid off, Tigra. I did a couple of issues of that, then Marvel imploded and I was out, but fortunately, Tony Isabella showed Mark Evanier some of my uninked pencils. Based on them, Mark gave me work on the Tarzan and Korak comics he was editing for Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. That lasted for almost a year, but Marvel took the Tarzan license and the ERB line was cancelled, which was what sent me into animation.

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DNAgents

A few years later, my friend Dave Stevens came by the Marvel animation offices to score some free Xeroxes of his as yet unpublished Rocketeer. (Which was OK with the company, BTW – it was very ‘family’ oriented and Dave had worked for its previous incarnation, DePatie Freleng.) Dave told Rick Hoberg, Russ Heath and me about the new creator-owned comics movement, and got us excited by it. I phoned up Mark to see if he was interested, and that’s how DNAgents and the second phase of my comics career began.
The things I love most about comics are the creative freedom, and the ability to do a piece of art which is identifiably your own. Animation requires you to blend into the style of the series, and by its nature results in work which is largely anonymous by design. I’m thankful and surprised that so many people recognize my work in that field.

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Golden Girl

AP: I assume you get this question from time to time, but has there been any consideration of you and Mark Evanier doing more DNAgents stories?

WM: We’ve come close a few times, and I suspect we’ll do something with them in the next few years. Mark and I have stayed friends, but our careers have gone down different paths and it’s rare for us to have a big block of time free simultaneously.

I’m tightly booked for the next year or so with the N.E.D.O.R. Agents, a graphic novel of The Land That Time Forgot, Caspak (written by the great Martin Powell), and it looks like the pilot for an animated series I directed this summer clicked and the show will be in production as well.

The Land That Time Forgot: Caspak. The Step-By-Step Process
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Zombie Monkey Monster Jamboree

AP: The Zombie Monkey Monster Jamboree book by you and J. J. Hart looks to be a pulpy fun ride. Tell us a bit about the book and what inspired it.

WM: My friends Shannon Denton and Patrick Coyle started a line of picture books under their Actionopolis imprint and invited me to do one. Zombie Monkey was already written, and I loved the subject matter of boy scouts versus zombified monkies, so of course I said yes! I’ve also illustrated a couple of other children’s books for Actionopolis, Pandora, and my favorite, The Boy Who Cried Wolf. I think you can still get all of them on Amazon.

AP: Where do you, or would you like to, see the comic book industry in 5 or 10 years?

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Zombie Monkey Monster Jamboree

WM: I’d like to see it alive! This is a moment of incredible danger and opportunity for the industry. There is a clear shift in the way the medium will be distributed and that is going to ultimately affect its form. I don’t think print is going away, but I suspect we’re going to see a lot more print on demand and print to preorder books with the bulk of the distribution going electronic. Luddite that I am, I’m focusing on print at the moment, just because I love the feel of the physical product.

AP: With the advent of digital comics, the way many read comics has changed. What are your thoughts on digital comics and their impact on the industry and readers?

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Pyro-Girl Animation Promo Art

WM: There is a need to adapt to the market, and it’s clear many younger readers prefer reading on a screen. The upside is that distribution costs should be less in the long run. The downside is that many publishers seem to be ignoring their responsibility and need to help the current and very important to the industry’s long term health distribution system with the shift.

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Ultimate Avengers 2

AP: You’ve produced and directed several animation projects from The Real Ghostbusters, G.I. Joe, X-Men, EXOsquad, Jem and the Holograms, Conan, Captain Planet, Spider-man, Stargate, and more. How did you make the transition from comics to animation and what are the similarities and differences between them?

WM: The shift was an economic necessity for me at the time, and was achieved by dumb luck.
It started when Mark Evanier ran into Don Jurwich, producer of the Super-Friends cartoons. Don knew Mark had done comics and mentioned that Hanna Barbera was looking for artists with comics experience to help on the new action shows they’d sold for the 1978 TV season. Mark suggested I cold call HB and ask about it, so I did. The girl at the switchboard asked me whom I’d like to talk to and I said, “The producer doing the action shows.”

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FemForce 158

She hooked me up with Doug Wildey (creator of Jonny Quest), which resulted in my being hired as a layout artist on his Godzilla series. Doug was a huge influence and a great teacher. I started drawing storyboards on the side for him, and we both realized that doing boards came naturally to me, so Doug brought me in house as his assistant, handing out and editing boards on Godzilla and Jana of the Jungle. He even let me do the retakes and meet with the clients on some episodes, which was a rare and generous thing. My next boss after Doug was Tex Avery who was the storyboard supervisor on The Thing, a comedy cartoon about Marvel’s Thing. I had great basic training.

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Zombie Monkey Monster Jamboree

While they are similar in some respects, film and comics are two different beasts. One of the things I’m really enjoying about my current strips is going back to form with them and using all of the classic devices which are unique to the comic book: varying panel sizes (the aspect ratio is constant in film, but it doesn’t have to be in comics), internalized dialogue via thought balloons (much more fluid that doing a voiceover to convey thought in a film), and even visualized sound effects via display lettering.

AP: Who are some of your artistic/creative influences?

WM: Kirby, Wood, Ditko, Williamson, Colan and Frazetta are the main ones. I particularly admire Wood as an artist/writer.

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X-Men Storyboards

AP: What does Will Meugniot do when not making comic books?

WM: Professionally a lot of cartoons, either storyboarding or directing. Privately, I love old movies and non-fiction books about comics, movie serials and biographies. I also like just hanging out with my wife of 40 years, Jo.

AP: Where can readers find learn more about you and your work?

WM: I have a website: http://www.storyboardpro.com of which I’ve been very negligent, but features a lot of my art. My blog is www.maskedmayhem.blogspot.com I write about my interests there.

AP: Any upcoming projects you would like to mention?

wm-zombie_monkey_art_02a-7967843
Zombie Monkey Monster Jamboree

WM: N.E.D.O.R. Agents is the big one at the moment. It has a 3 page preview in FemForce 156, a 26 page story in FemForce 157, and its own cover and 20 pages of story in FemForce 158. PREVIEWSworld is doing a Facebook promotion with me for the strip. If you ‘like’ their page, you’ll be able to follow the strip there and enter some contests to win original art, too.

AP: Are there any upcoming convention appearances or signings coming up where fans can meet you?

WM: I’m sorting that out now as part of the PREVIEWSworld promotion. Follow them on Facebook for updates about my appearances.

AP: You have served as a writer, artist, producer, and director. Are there any creative areas you’ve not been worked in that you would like to try your hand at doing?

WM: At some point, I’m going to do some low budget live action work as a director. It’s been offered me in the past, but I’ve just been too busy to take it on.

wm-meugniot_will_1984-2150447
Meet Vanity

AP: And finally, what advice would you give to anyone wanting to work in comics, animation, and/or art?
WM: The main thing is to DO IT. You’re not a writer unless you write. You’re not an artist if you don’t create art. Don’t let your fear of rejection stand in your way of doing.

AP: Thanks, Will.

X-Men First Class

When we first heard that the reboot of the X-Men film franchise was being set in the 1960s, there was a lot of head scratching going on. But once you stopped to consider the ages of the characters, a lot of it began to make sense. Of course, the first thing you need to do is totally forget about the source material. There are just too many elements that have been radically changed from the comics that it would just hurt your head. Instead, focus on the film as a prequel to a trilogy that more often than not has done a fabulous job adapting the merry mutants to the silver screen.

I’ve been a big fan of Matthew Vaughn’s work for a while now, so I was thrilled that he finally got a chance to try his hand at the X-Men. His work adapting other comics, Stardust and Kick-Ass, prove he has a good handle on what to keep, what to toss, and what to change. Here, he keeps the friendship between Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr at the core of the story. Thankfully, Vaughn cast Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy as the leads because both do superb jobs.

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Upcoming Comics To Video Game Releases

  • News
  • September 7, 2011

This year has seen a ton of comics-to-feature-film releases, and the video game market is not different.  However, the trend to games doesn’t always yield positive results, as many are done as quick cash-ins to support the film releases (“[[[Thor]]]”, “[[[Green Lantern: Rise Of The Manhunters]]]”).  However, every so often, a tie-in turns into a gem (the latest “[[[Captain America: Super Solider]]]” game was a pleasant surprise), but when they work best is when they are using original material to tell the story.  There are three titles coming out later this year that gamers and comic fans alike should be looking forward to.  Below, you’ll find the most recent trailers for “[[[Batman: Arkham City]]]”, “[[[Spider-Man: Edge of Time]]]” and “[[[X-Men: Destiny]]]”, all due out in the next coming months.

[[[Batman: Arkham City]]]

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