The News Blog of Comics Culture
This was alluded to in our 2011 Survey, but now it’s official: the great Peter Bagge has a new series coming out from Dark Horse in April. Called RESET, it’s about a man who has a second chance at living his life. Will it get better or worse?
AWESOME BONUS SAUCE: Variant covers by Matt Kindt!
Last year Dean Haspiel kick-started the creative juices of the new year with an essay called “Dear Content Maker” that confronted some of the excitement and uncertainties of the new horizons. Since then he’s launched a new website — Trip City — and kept juggling all the balls a creator needs to.
This year, he has a similar call to arms that surveys the current landscape called “Publish or Perish”, named after a tweet by Jimmy Palmiotti:
With all the popularity of High School Musical/Glee/American Idol and other performance-based media these days, comics have been tiptoeing around this genre. There was Siena and Mark Siegel’s To Dance; and Raina Telgemeier’s upcoming DRAMA!, due this fall. And here’s a new one from Papercutz, Dance Class: So You Think You Can Hip-Hop by Béka, aka Bertrand Escaich and Caroline Rogue. Aimed squarely at tween girls, it’s another French pick up for the publisher, and it looks pretty charming.
FATALE #1, the first issue of Ed Brubaker and Sean Philips’ new Image series, has sold out at Diamond and has a second printing on the way. And of course it will have a variant cover.
Warren Ellis takes a stab at Five Predictions About The Immediate Future Of Comics. It’s brief — just go read. A couple of main ideas:
* Roll-your-own digital available to creators creates distribution opportunities and chaos
* Creators will continue to explore Kickstarter and other methods to get paid for their work
* DC and Marvel in diminishing returns.
And this classic Ellis observation:
Tony Millionaire reposts this full page wonder from the LA Weekly when alt.comix strips were an important feature and people actually read alternative newspapers.
Today, we keep seeing attempts to bring back limited versions of the newsstand comics rack. 2011′s Barnes & Noble program being the most prominent to get a little press. Interestingly, in recent weeks, both Jim Shooter and Chris Clarement have made comments about the demise of the newsstand system. Coming from these two, the opinions are a bit more interesting as both were on the top of industry when things shifted over from the newsstand to Direct Market in the early-to-mid-80s.
As we’ve mentioned here several times, there have been no more important graphic novels published in this century than PERSEPOLIS by Marjane Satrapi and FUN HOME by Alison Bechdel. Both found large audiences well beyond the traditional ones for comics, and both have become oft-imitated — but never duplicated — by book publishers trying to cash in on the “graphic novel” trend. (The number of graphic autobiographies exploring ethnic roots alone is staggering.)
Although you’d think he was busy enough drawing THE WALKING DEAD every month, artist Charlie Adlard occasionally has time to toss off something like CURSE OF THE WENDIGO (reviewed here) a horror comic written by French screenwriter Mathieu Missoffe and released in France in 2009. The story is set in World War I and finds French and GErman soldier teaming up to fight a greater horror.
An American edition is out today from Dynamite, and here’s a preview:
Adi Granov has supplied the cover for the 2012 edition of MONSTERS & DAMES, the art book crated in conjunction with the Emerald City Comicon each year. The cover provides both a monster and a dame, so it is well within the theme. Check out the link for much more art.
This year’s ECCC will be held March 30-April 1st in Seattle, WA.
All kinds of news and quotes from the world of comics! Comics are back! The Huffington Post said it is so!
Chocolate Apple 1991-2011, a manga released at the just passed amateur manga show Comiket — which drew some 500,000 people — presents the author’s heartfelt appreciation of the late Steve Jobs and his creations, while portraying Jobs as a cute Japanese girl.
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