The News Blog of Comics Culture
Bon Alimagno is leaving Marvel to take a job with software company The Apollo Group. At Marvel Alimagno worked closely with Senior Vice President, Business Affairs & Talent Management David Bogart on freelancer scheduling and handling. He was formerly the editor at Harris Comics, overseeing the adventures of Vampirella.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers are still around! And to prove they are still in touch with the kids they have hopped on the hot graphic novel trend for their latest video — because graphic novels aren’t just for kids any more. Under the bridge downtown, is where I drew some mini comics.
Actually, the video for “Monarchy of Roses” is more an homage to Raymond Pettibon than comic books. Amazingly, Anthony is still rocking the shirt-off look as he nears the half century mark…clean living, I guess.
Janna Morishima, formerly of Scholastic and Diamond, has just joined Papercutz as Marketing Director. At Diamond Morishima helped spearhead the then-nascent market for kids graphic novels, so working with the Papercutz lineup of such things as The Smurfs and Lego is a natural move for her.
From now on we’re using a phrase from this in every article!
I’d been meaning to write something about the new Shade maxi-series, but James Robinson made this a higher priority when he tweeted
“If sales don’t improve it may be cancelled before the 12 issues are done.”
It is perhaps surprising, given his huge reputation, just how slim Chester Brown’s published works are — five graphic novels and a short story collection. But given the power of the stories in THE PLAYBOY (1992) and I NEVER LIKED YOU (1994), the source of his stature is obvious. Two of the most painful, honest and haunting tales of adolescence ever put in comics, they are among the 100 best comics of all times, according to the Comics Journal.
JOHN CARTER is coming in March, and several stills have just been released. From EW, there’s a picture of John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) fighting a giant white ape. Director Andrew Stanton told EW:
Michel Fiffe has posted a step-by-step guide to how he pencilled a pin-up for the upcoming 20th Anniversary Madman Monster here’s the pencils for the drawing which featured over 100 beloved indie comics characters — from Frank to the Rocketeer. For the final result — inked by Michael Allred and colored by Laura Allred – go to the link. How many can YOU name?
In January Kevin Keller, Riverdale’s popular gay teen, is getting married, and Here’s the cover to LIFE WITH ARCHIE #16 which leads in to Kevin’s monthly series. According to the pr, “Since arriving on the scene last year, Kevin has enjoyed a meteoric rise to becoming one of Riverdale’s most popular teens, graduating from guest-star to mini-series to his upcoming starring title in the span of just over a year. Not only is he a hit in comic sales, he’s fitting right in with the gang at Riverdale High having been elected class president plus representing his new school in a TV Game Show “Witmasters” and winning!”
You might want to ponder this for a minute — a humorous soap opera comics that has stood in for American normality for over 75 years introduced a gay character who is now popular enough to get his own series. And get married in it. America, you are okay after all.
For West Coasters and late risers! Very incomplete, so add yours in the comments.
We’re not sure if this Russian Avengers teaser was ever found to be “official” or not, but it doesn’t matter, because artist Kevin Bolk has given it a gender swap, with the male characters showing the kind of twisting butt-and-face pose that is usually reserved for The Black Widow. It’s called Avengers Booty Ass-emble :
An article in The Gauntlet, the University of Calgary’s student magazine, boldly proclaimsThe beginning of a new comic era — and Calgary’s Maad Sheep Productions are just the guys to do it. What the article does not mention is that in order to flourish, comics creators must dress like a NASCAR pit crew.
While we were tidying up, we chanced upon the old archives of Beat articles no longer on the Internet, including one linking to Edward Champion’s Boilerplate for All Future Comics Articles. It’s as true today as it was in 2006!
Hope you all had a great holiday weekend and plenty of turkey and stuffins. We spent the whole holiday mucking out our shelf porn — organizing shelves, tossing pamphlets, setting aside some books for storage some for donation, a few for eBay. And some for Beat giveaways! Check back every day this week at 5 pm EST for some really swell classic GNs which we’re giving away to lucky readers! A few other notes of business:
Over at the Books-A-Million website, on the magazines page, DC’s “New 52″ is being highlighted. “Action Comics,” “Justice League” and “Batgirl” are rotating in the middle slot at the top of the page, sandwiched between magazines like “Vogue” and Maxim. At the bottom of the page, filed under “special interests” are Batman, Action, Batgirl, Wonder Woman, Detective, Supergirl, Green Lantern Corps and Batman & Robin.
I’m in Iowa for the holidays, so I thought I’d drop in to the local (brand new) Books-A-Million and see what kind of comics they had after they joined Barnes & Noble in removing the boycotting the 100 DC graphic novels made exclusive to the Kindle. There were a lot more Marvel books there than DC and, of course, no Grant Morrison Batman or Batman: Hush or… uh, oh. What’s that on the shelf?
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