The News Blog of Comics Culture
If you have been looking at comic art posts on the internet for long, you have probably at some time admired the intricate and imaginative illustrations of cartoonist Ulises Farinas and thought “How does he do it? Well, here’s how in a detailed post on drawing a cover for Zupi magazine:
Bongo is the successful comics publishing company that nobody knows about. Although it will celebrate its 17th anniversary this year, and has mastered the periodical-to-trade business model, and has been happily plugging along publishing essentially creator driven comics for all that time….no one in the comics industry EVER talks about Bongo. Sure, publishing Simpsons comics seems like a no-brainer…but do you think the books would have lasted this long as a licensed title at DC or Marvel?
Well, now there have been some changes. And some new branding. It has a new logo to start with—three’s a trend! And long-time art director Nathan Kane has been promoted to Creative Director, replacing Bill Morrison, who, we’re told, has joined Simpsons creator (and Bongo owner) Matt Groening to work on secret projects.
Sales of the “New 52″ books show no sign of stabilization, four issues into DC’s big relaunch. The average “New 52″ title dropped by 17.4% in December, versus 19.6% in November and 5.2% in October.
The only “New 52″ titles with single-digit drops in December are Aquaman (6.0%), Teen Titans (9.6%) and Batman: The Dark Knight (9.7%). The three “New 52″ titles with the biggest fourth-issue drops are Static Shock (28.2%), Mister Terrific (29.0%) and Men of War (30.0%). Overall, there are 18 “New 52″ titles with drops in excess of 20% in December, down from 22 in November. The lack of re-orders on the chart also suggests that the sheen is off the “New 52.” Whereas 51 of the debut issues made the chart again in October, only two of the second issues charted again in November. In December, none of the third issues made the chart again.
The average drop-off in first-month sales since issue #1 for the “New 52″ books is 36.4%, as of December. The three titles with the smallest overall drop-off are Animal Man (7.4%), Detective Comics (13.5%) and Nightwing (17.6%). The three titles with the largest overall drop-off are Blackhawks (58.0%), Mister Terrific (56.7%) and Men of War (55.6%). Only 7 of the “New 52″ titles display an overall drop-off of less than 20%, while 9 of them have already lost more than 50% of their debut first-month sales.
The internet FTW once again.
Hints From Heloise is a venerable newspaper column (remember those) that usually covers topics such as what to do when you scorch your husband’s shirt while ironing, and how to fix a squeaky hinge. But now it has hinted up comics.
A little birdie in the sky has alerted us to four Angry Birds tie-in books due out in July—and they appear to be space-themed…and include comics.
All week DC Women Kicking Ass has been running polls to pick the favorite artists on various DCU heroines, such as Wonder Woman and Batgirl. It’s fun to see the great artists who have drawn these characters over the years. It is also fun to observe how community standards have changed with regards to superheroines. Take Black Canary. It’s a pretty safe assumption that even when the character was created by Carmine Infantino and Robert Kanigher in 1947, a woman in fishnet tights was assumed to be hot stuff. However, first general prudishness, and later the Comics Code, kept her sort of modest. In recent years, she’s been unchained.
Ending some speculation, DC released an updated schedule for New 52 collections, and even the red shirt six titles that already joined the hall of heroes WILL be collected in their entirety — all eight issues of Omac, Static Shock, etc, will be collected. Nice move there, actually.
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