The kibbles have gotten totally out of hand.

§ First off, I had this site bookmarked for a while: Work Made For Hire, clearing house of information on contracts, negotiation and much more stuff ALL freelancers and employers should have in mind. Perhaps it would pique your interest to see a story called Ghost Rider and the No Good, Very Bad Contract?

§ Writer Steven Seagle and artist Teddy Kristiansen have quietly been building up a nice little spot on the graphic novel bookshelf with their collaborations House of Secrets, It’s a Bird…, The Red Diary/The Re[a]d Diary and now Genius. Seagle told the LA Times about the new book, which uses Kristiansen’s expressionist art style to good effect to reflect the state of mind of a scientist with a secret:

SS: My favorite thing about working with Teddy is his fearlessness. Each time we do a project we intentionally try to do something new with the semiotics of sequential storytelling — to push the comics form in some uncomfortable direction. On our last book together, “The Read Diary/The RE[a]D Diary,” I did a completely visually-cued translation of Teddy’s Danish script before even knowing what the book was about. That was a huge challenge. I decided on “Genius” that turnabout is fair play, so I dropped a gauntlet for Teddy. I told him that I needed him to depict something completely unknown and unknowable. I gave him some parameters, but the execution was all Teddy and when that scene hits, it’s a stunning, fresh moment for comics, I think. As this was the first book I’d done for publisher First Second, I was worried that when editor Mark Siegel or my editor, Calista Brill, read the sequence they would freak out, but they were very amenable and I love them for that.

Back-to-Back-To-The-Future.jpg

§ A Back to the Future fanatic is imagining what it would be like if…Eric Stoltz had starred in the trilogy as originally planned, instead of Michael J. Fox. And of course, he’s re-imagining it as a graphic novel. Okay maybe you saw all that coming, but what you did NOT imagine was the comic being serialized at a bunch of websites, starting with EW.

EW: Have you met Eric Stoltz at all or spoken with him or anyone else from Back to The Future about this project?
LEVY: I have never met Mr. Stoltz. I did see him eating at a restaurant in New York in the late ’90s with Tate Donavan. When I began writing this in 2001, I thought it would be amusing if I just pretended they were close, dear friends based on that interaction alone. I have no idea what their real relationship consists of. But I haven’t spoken with him or anyone else from Back to the Future about this project. I would feel too creepy approaching them and saying, “Look what I’ve spent the last decade working on. It’s all about you!”


[via Johanna]

§ In a piece discussing the universal love of Despicable Me’s Minions, Cartoon Brew rounds up the great yellow cartoon characters.

§ Okay sue me, but Ryan Reynolds’ description of the loooong delayed Deadpool movie he might star in sounds pretty darned entertaining:

“That movie is alive and kicking, and then it’s dead as a doornail. Then it’s alive and kicking and then it’s dead… it’s like the worst relationship I’ve ever had!” “The character knows he’s a comic-book character, he knows he’s in a film, he knows who the executives are at the studio making the movie,” Reynolds explained. “In the current iteration of the script, Deadpool is aware of the Wolverine movie. He doesn’t say anything disparaging about it but he does at one point play with the Deadpool action figure with some curiosity.”


§ Paul Fairchild examines why Kryptonite Is Crap:

Unknowingly, they tripped over a storytelling problem that showed up millennia before Superman yanked his first car off the ground. What the hell does a writer do with a character that easily wins every battle and dispatches his enemies with ridiculous ease?

Chris “Elio” Eliopolous has a nice slide show from the recent ALA in Chicago.

§ CCI: San Diego’s official Toucan blog has been running some hints and advice from long-time con-goers. Here’s a classic from Maggie Thompson:

Come to Think of It, Just Make Notes Because you will not remember. Whether it’s keeping track of costs for tax deductions or figuring out whose autograph that may be, memory is not as dependable as actually having written down the information. I carry a tiny spiral-bound notebook in which I jot comments before transferring them to other forms (such as my iPad). Pen and paper can still be the fastest. Whether it’s a great quote during a panel or an identification of people in a photo, it’s nice to have it written down. Frankly, Comic-Con is overwhelming. Think of Dug, the Up dog whose thought-translating collar interrupts with, “Squirrel!” Your brain will be Squirrel-wiped throughout each day, at least, if you’re anything like me.


§ I think I’ve said this before, but my #1 Comic-Con tip is simple:

You will not get anything done “at the show.”

In the olden days inkers would sitting their room and finish up late deadlines but now a) there are no inkers, b) they can’t afford to go to Comic-Con, and c) if they did, their time would be too valuable at the show and the Viking Interactive Waterway to work. Anyway, that’s why this week—the last week before CON—is what we “in the biz” call Hell Week, as we race, sleepless, to get everything done before hand because:

You will not get anything done “at the show.”

§ Well this season of Dexter is a crowdpleaser:

Carpenter: “You walk by racks of clothing that the costumers are pulling out on set, and there’s blood everywhere. It’s fantastic! I think fans are going to be really happy.”

§ Here’s a brand new question: Is Comic-Con Becoming a Nightmare? For the purposes of color, author Jim Mroczkowski refers to Comic-Con as “Stacy”:

For years, grumpy grampas have groused that Stacy wasn’t about comics anymore, that Hollywood had stormed in and made a mess of things. Personally, I’m not sure I’d agree with that exactly (even if the cast of The Big Bang Theory and Twilight are there, there’s still an adjacent airplane hangar’s worth of people dressed as Mister Sinister who know who Howard Chaykin is) but one gets the sense that a lot has changed in even the last few years. Iron Man and everything that’s come after have put a much brighter spotlight on the intersection between film and fanboys. Not only is Hollywood beating the bushes again for the next Jonah Hex, but a whole new group of people has started taking interest in Avengers and Green Lanterns. The result seems to be a poorly managed– and maybe unmanageable– feeding frenzy. Every year now, 126,000 to 130,000 people go see Stacy. When I went, according to Wikipedia, tickets sold out “months early.” In the years since, they’ve sold out within minutes of going on sale, even with servers that could be generously described as “squirrelly.”

§ Here are some memories of seminal indie comics publisher Pacific Comics.

§ And in the here and now, we all celebrated the one year anniversary of Monkeybrain, but here’s the interview with Chris Roberson & Alison Baker you should read:

Roberson: Actually, some of the titles are coming out through IDW but all the Monkeybrain creators retain print rights, so each creative team is free to make whatever print deal they want. IDW early on had taken an interest in what we were doing and offered a general deal to all Monkeybrain creators. A number of them took them up on that. But some of the creators had established relations elsewhere, say at Image for example, and have taken their books there. Some of the creators have been able to negotiate more favorable deals at places like Dark Horse. As time goes on, you’ll see more and more Monkeybrain titles coming out from an increasing number of publishers. Our motivation is the content is what matters, not the format. If readers want the immediacy and low price of digital, we offer that to them on a regular basis. If they prefer a print edition, in the vast majority of cases there will be some option for them to get a trade edition. Honestly, I think that’s going to be the model for the industry going forward. Ease of access and maximizing choice for the reader is the only model that makes sense, because it’s the readers and their dollars that are in charge.


§ In the magical fairyland of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY, a magical, mystical temporary newsstand has been opened inside a marvelous, masgical subway station where men wear sarongs and women wear galoshes. And they sell comics! But hurry over, as it closes in a few short days:

The Newsstand, open until July 20, carries selections from some of the city’s best-known specialty bookshops: magazines and journals from McNally-Jackson in SoHo; zines and photography books from Dashwood Books on the Lower East Side of Manhattan; comics from the Desert Island bookstore in Williamsburg; art books from Ohwow in Greenwich Village. The stores selected the offerings, a kind of “staff picks” for the tight space. “I was trying to find a way of supporting that scene without stepping on their toes,” Mr. Saveri said of the stores he asked to participate.

§ Headline of the decade: Star Wars Theremin Bra

2 COMMENTS

  1. Sorry…
    …but how does one play a Theremin Bra?
    “Wipe on, wipe off…”
    Or is it more of a Tai Chi movement?

    Can it be set to make noise when someone gets too close to your personal space? (Theremin panties!)

    “Last night I dreamt I was performing Beethoven’s Fifth in my Theremin Bra, with the Modal Nodes.”

    Does the bra size correlate to the battery size needed to power the bra?
    Or is it piezoelectric?

    “It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.”

    [Thank you, I’ll be here all week. Watch out for the rancor.]

Comments are closed.