Kate Brown’s on The Beat! A writer, colourist, artist, self-publisher, Young Avenger, anthologist, board game inventer and designer, Kate was kind enough to talk to us about all sorts of things.

The best thing about writing on The Beat is that we have full control over our interviews, and can set up interviews with people even when they aren’t on a promotional trail. We talk and interview to people that we want to talk to, and like, and whose art and comics inspire us. And at the same time, that gives us a chance to build up a sense of community as you move from interview to interview. Kate Brown has worked with Neill Cameron for The Phoenix, for example, and will soon be joining Antony Johnston and Emma Vieceli on the next Alex Rider graphic novel. See that sense of community building up? There’s a web connecting everybody in UK and Ireland.

Emma was the one who suggested I talk next to Kate, and I jumped at the chance. Soon to be seen as the artist for an issue of Young Avengers, Kate’s also contributed to The Phoenix (another connection for you there) the BCA-winning Nelson anthology, Manga Shakespeare and The DFC. Her self-published work Fish + Chocolate tells three stories about motherhood, which move from stark realism to heady fairytale at a switch. She wrote the stories, and drew them, and coloured them – they’re personal and spectacular. So that seemed like the best place to start!

Steve: On books like Fish + Chocolate you’ve handled almost everything – the writing, the pencilling, the colouring. What part of the process do you most enjoy?

Kate: Doing EVERYTHING! Literally, I mean, like, with F+C, when my little self-published copies turned up, I was so happy, because it felt like it was really mine. I’d done everything except print the actual pages. I come from a background of publishing my own stuff (or publishing to web in my teens), and it’s the best!! Just holding this thing that’s totally 100% yours is so good. Um, to be a bit more specific about the comics process… my favourite bit is thumbnailing! I could do that shit all year! (And have done! It’s great!!)

Steve: Your colouring style in particular has changed over the years, moving from traditional to digital colouring. Was it a difficult move to make?

Kate: It’s been a very long time since I was using traditional colouring on my comics! I think I stopped just before my final project at uni. It was a bit tough because Photoshop can be pretty overwhelming, and I know I felt like I was going backwards in terms of the finished effect of the page (i.e., it looked like a pile of shit) for a while until I got the hang of things. These days, I think I’m over-rendering pages… my new book has a super pared-down look, which was a bit hard to get used to (I think detail is addictive) but I think it’s beneficial for the project.

Steve: What’s the key to colouring a page? Do you try to go for clarity or for splash?

Kate: Hopefully both at the same time! My colouring style’s not terribly flashy, though, in my opinion, even if it can be a bit over-complex…

Steve: Does having control over both the art and script tempt you to push further? For example, do you find yourself writing complicated, difficult pages which will show off your artwork more?

Kate: Hmm, no, I wouldn’t really say so. There’s been a couple of things when I’ve been like, “thanks SO MUCH, Past Me, for writing something really complex.” Especially when doing stuff in the Phoenix where there’s a choke-hold on space, even an extra panel can screw things up. I would say I usually set my bar pretty low, hahahaha!

Steve: With The Phoenix you’ve created all kinds of things – not only comics, but board games as well. Do you feel there’s any difference in your mindset when working on all-ages projects, rather than more mature works? Or, aside from the swearing and stuff, do you create in much the same way?

Kate: Ahahahaha…. *fond memories of Phoenix editor scoring out swearwords in drafts with red pen*

Well, yes and no! I think the characters I’ve made up for these particular projects have given the storyline the skew it needs. Like, in The Spider Moon, if I’d had Feth as the main point of view instead of Bekka, the storyline would have been the same, but it would have been a very different telling of it. I hope that makes some sense. Really, the difference in creating something that’s 70 pages long told in 3-page chunks vs. one 150 page book is enough to make the way something’s created super different, in my opinion/experience. I’m often egged on to make my all-ages stuff more exciting, which I find hard, as I don’t really lean naturally towards creating like that, or reading comics like that…

Steve: What kicked off the idea of making board games for the magazine, as well as comics? It reminds me of the sort of thing you’d find in old copies of the Beano, or The Beezer (nobody ever remembers Beezer!)

Kate: I’m afraid I don’t remember Beezer either, sorry!! Ehh, I just sat up one day and was like “I wanna do that.” It’s been really fun but OH MY GOD each one has taken a LOT LOT LOT of work. I hope people are enjoying them. So far there’s four in total, and I think we’re up to two published.

Steve: You’ve worked with a whole host of other British creators, from Emma Vieceli, to Warren Ellis, to Neill Cameron.. How do you feel the British comics community has grown over the past few years? Do you think it’s become stronger and more supportive of new comics projects?

Kate: Yeah for sure! Though I’ve always felt really very welcome… I’ve been doing conventions and trying to be active in the UK scene, specifically, since about 2000, and it’s been really nice. Anyone just needs to drop into a convention like Thought Bubble, really, to see how boomin’ it is. Great selection of content and a growing selection of people from different backgrounds.

Steve: You’re soon to be seen on Young Avengers, as artist for issue 6. How did you get involved with the series, working with convention troubadours Gillen and McKelvie?

Kate: Hahaha, so… when I got the email through from Lauren asking about it, I’d just got back from an event and was super tired, lying on the floor checking my mail on my phone. My phone didn’t show the email properly, so I was like… is this spam? What the hell is this? I nearly deleted it, lol. Then I was like, waaaaait a fucking minute, and passed it to my boyfriend to double-check. THEN I got super excited… but it didn’t really feel real until Jamie DM’d me the next day about it all and I found out they’d put my name forward. It was a big surprise and I was super flattered. But that was it, really, just got emailed about it…! I then proceeded to freak out a little bit, like, “I’m really gonna do this…..?! I hope I don’t mess up!!!”

Steve: This would represent, I believe, your first time working to somebody else’s script (Shakespeare doesn’t count). How’s the experience of working with Kieron been?

Kate: I worked on a one-off for the Phoenix called “Emilie’s Turn” with Neill Cameron previously to this, so I got a chance to work with an excellent script-writer (albeit briefly! Neill! Let’s team up again, dude!!!) and that started me up that learning curve. Both Neill and Kieron are communicative, trusting, and sure in their own judgements, so, I really appreciate that. Personally, I feel I’m often very grumpy to work with, but working with other people can have a positive influence on me… Kieron was very relaxed for instance, so, that rubbed off on me, and I was like “Gotta be cool! Gotta pull out my best!”

Steve: The book has been building a reputation for trying some strange new ways of laying out pages – will we see that kind of collaborative experimentation for your issue of the book? How far do you like to push the storytelling on a page?

Kate: Jamie’s layouts are incredible. I love them. The fact that they’re so visually attractive, AND read so well, is obviously some kind of witchcraft. I love what this series is doing! Well, I tried to step up my game as much as I could for #6! I am all about storytelling, it’s the heart of comics for me. I couldn’t care less if art/writing is fantastic, if it’s not told well… I think success comes with experience and lots of self-analysis/analysis of storytelling with visuals.

And experimentation. I like to push mine as far as I can… I still have a lot to learn, of course, but it’s an area I’m very particular in, so I try my hardest. In particular, I love working on character “acting,” and trying to get that down as well as possible; I labour a lot over little details in expressions & body language, etc. I can’t be lazy when it comes to layouts/thumbnailing, it’s no good for anyone! I personally feel that I get too interested in how a page looks as a whole sometimes, rather than just breaking that and going for sheer clarity, which is a bad habit. I definitely need an editor.

Steve: Is there ever a temptation in your own books, once a page is completed, to go back and edit the writing, change the dialogue? How strict do you keep yourself?

Kate: I keep changing text until the thing is ready to go to print! It’s actually one of the reasons I’m often wary of showing people who aren’t that familiar with my working style my early drafts, because the text is always place-holder until the last minute, really. My thumbnails are often covered in stuff like “This, but, like, better” or “Imagine this is good” or “Haven’t quite got this bit yet” just a speech bubble with “Etc.” in, hahaha.

I hate tying myself in to a particular line or set of lines. I’ve found, especially when moving from script to page, that it can be such a vast transition to suddenly be speaking with pictures as well as words, that tying myself into certain dialogue/instruction etc. isn’t really worthwhile. Everything’s pretty loose up until the page is finished, for me.

Steve: What else do you have coming up over the next few months? Where can we expect to see you next?

Kate: Aw man, I have been working my tits off learning how to animate for this particular project that I could not, would never, absolutely COULD NOT pass up… I’m looking forward to sharing it with people! It’s been a super-steep learning curve (like……. well, it’s more of a straight-up vertical than a curve, tbh) and really I’ve just had to go for it best I can. I know I’m not gonna be pulling out anything like someone who’s been studying animation for years, and wouldn’t presume to, but I’m really giving it my all!

It’s been good to start learning a new skill, and I’ve really enjoyed the thinking process that comes with animation – you can’t relax or stop paying attention for one second, and I actually really appreciate that right now… (speak to me again in a month as I lie broken on the floor after it’s finished, hahahahaha).

Me, Emma Vieceli and Paul Duffield have just finished one project for the Tower of London, which was A.W.E.S.O.M.E. It was a series of pics to go across hoarding on the Bowyer Tower. Me & Em split the pics – it was fun researching the little bits of history! Paul handled the printing and designing side of things, and made them look super sparkly. They’re like, lifesize, so I can’t wait to get there and get pics of them!!

Following finishing up the animation, I’ll be colouring the Alex Rider graphic novels (Emma Vieceli/Antony Johnston adapting) and working on my bloody book which has been an utter cow to hammer into shape and I have literally lost count of the number of drafts it’s been through……. I hope it works out alright, I refuse to give up on it :/

Um, in terms of events, I’m at 2D in Derry, Melksham (in Melksham), and Thought Bubble in Leeds this year. So come and say hi and chat to meeeeee (and buy my stuuuuuuffff!) Young Avengers #6 is out at the end of June (I think) and I hope people will enjoy this issue too!

This would be the prequel to the first two games in the Arkham series, then. Featuring a younger, less experienced Caped Crusader than before, the story will see a parade of villains descend upon Gotham in order to try and take out Batman, apparently as part of some scheme planned by Black Mask. The trailer below doesn’t offer any gameplay whatsoever, instead offering a short film setting up one of the more anticipated parts of the game – a fight between Batman and Deathstroke.

There’s also a little news regarding the voice cast for the game –

Kevin Conroy, who voiced Batman in the previous two games, is involved in this game – but possibly not as Batman. It’s unsure what his role will be, entirely, as Roger Craig Smith has been confirmed to be voicing Batman in the story. Perhaps he’s going to appear in a framing sequence, or maybe he’ll be involved in a totally different manner. Meanwhile, it’s been confirmed that Mark Hamill will not be returning to play Joker, who will instead be voiced by Troy Baker.

Arkham Origins is out in October. We’ll be keeping an eye on it.

With Amethyst 8 comes the end of the series, from Christy Marx and Aaron Lopresti. Bringing back Amethyst was another experimental move from DC, but one which has launched off a viable character for them to use in future… just not in her own ongoing series.

I’ve been lukewarm on the run as a whole, mainly due to the somewhat bland dialogue which has been a feature since the start. Characterisation has been somewhat successful, but the book has struggled to match Lopresti’s artwork to standout personalities. Since the first issue, the book has told decent stories in a competent way, offering bits and pieces of narrative which wove nicely together to create a whole which works well. But it’s also struggled to tell the story through anything more than generic dialogue. As a writer, Marx appears to be strongest at creating a world and structure for the characters to inhabit, which has meant that Gemworld has overshadowed Amethyst herself, for the most part.

Lopresti’s work – here supported by Travis Moore and John Livesay – has been reliable. As the cast is made up of several blondes, he’s struggled a bit to differentiate the different women and give them distinctive faces, which causes a few problems. This aside, his fight scenes and entertaining and kinetic, whilst the conversational moments benefit from his sense of perspective and angle. He’s a good choice for the book, and the colouring from Hi-Fi has been bright and enjoyable. It’s the strongest part of the series, and the character designs have done a great job in supporting the society in Gemworld — the clothing is archaic but functional and fun, creating a fantasy setting which feels a bit more contemporary and flashy than something like, I dunno, Tolkein.

Issue 8 concludes the storyline with Amethyst in a new position of power, which sets her perfectly to move on and claim a role somewhere else in the DC Universe. Her origin has been concluded and concreted, and where she moves on from here is yet to be seen – but I would like to see more of her. She’s got a strong concept and fun world to play around with, and I’m sure future writers will be able to fill in the blanks in her personality as they move her forward. The story concludes with a simple narrative twist which empowers the main character rather well, although we have to struggle through a sea of generic characters in order to do so.

There’s a lot of exposition to Amethyst – I’d say at least half the main cast exist solely to tell people what the story is – without the characters having any particular quirks or tics which set them apart. By the time I reached this final issue, I’d say the only character who I felt had a rounded personality was the figure who is obviously being set up as a love interest, Preet. He’s at least got a sense of self-awareness in him which I was surprised not to find in any of the other characters. Even Amethyst, who is the outsider forced to adapt to this fantasy world, quickly acclimatises and gets lost to the reader. Everybody is serious and bland, and they offer serious and bland dialogue and thoughts on every page.

This mucks up the pacing a little bit, as the sense of urgency and tension is lost when none of the characters have anything interesting to say. They go through their motions, and as a result readers aren’t offered any idea of danger. The characters will all be safe and sound throughout, and the villain will be despatched, and everything will be happy ever after. Perhaps because you can sense that this final issue had to be rushed into place, the climax of the story isn’t as exciting as you might hope.

This may make it sound like I found Amethyst to be a chore – I didn’t. I really like the central concept, and I like the idea of the characters… even if they don’t work out very well in execution. Perhaps if somebody scripted over Marx’s plotting, the story would have been far more entertaining. As it is, these issues of Amethyst tell a perfectly fine, if underwhelming, storyline. One thing I really did appreciate was that this final issue is solely about Amethyst – I’ve disliked all the backups put in this book, without exception. Amethyst is, at the least, a step up from the thoroughly dull stories she was backed up by.

Pick up Amethyst if you like, it’s not a bad story. But what happens next is far more interesting than what’s been so far.

Rob Liefeld took a short break from comics after his departure from DC. Now he’s back with some familiar faces in a brand new adventure—and he’s turned to crowdfunding like everyone else.

More and more of the top industry’s creators are testing the crowd funding waters and taking big risks. Why? Is it because Kickstarter creates this sense of urgency and gives fans and retailers full control on whether or not this book sees the light of day? One thing is for sure, it’s a community effort — and that’s what Liefeld is counting on.

So what is he trying to accomplish with the Kickstarter?

By funding this Free Initiative you are helping provide Free copies of Brigade to comic stores in the U.S. and Canada as well as Free digital downloads of Brigade. The more money raised, the more FREE copies and issues we can produce. A FREE comic breaks through all barriers and crosses all ages, a free comic provides a risk-free experience that can create a doorway into a new world of imagination and wonder. Brigade with its fresh, bold direction and characters will provide a dynamic comic book experience for readers old and new

The pledgers will be getting an item exclusive to this Kickstarter. They are signed and  come with certificates of authenticity. The only thing that bums me about is that there’s no chromium cover incentive.

I had the pleasure of asking Rob a couple of questions about his project, and his thoughts on crowd funding in general:

Henry Barajas: Why Kickstarter and why now? Couldn’t you have gone straight to Image versus crowdfunding?

Rob Liefeld: Like so many last summer, I watched my fellow Image founder Marc Silvestri conduct his own FREE comic initiative with Top Cow. It was exciting to watch the momentum build for their new Cyber Force series. I was on stage with Marc when he shared the example of PBS with everyone attending the panel. I was really caught up in it, and the truth is that everything from Sesame Street to Monty Python was publicly funded for our viewing here in the U.S. His example really resonated with me.

Truth is that a Kickstarter campaign goes beyond the fund raising and forges a personal connection with the pledges and the creator. It gives the project momentum and support in it’s early phases and in this instance provides a FREE comic book. Whatever comic book Kickstarter that I have seen or researched has a pre-order/pre-buy component to it.

The pledges exist to pre-buy whatever comic and hardcover that is being made available through Kickstarter. It’s on us as the campaigners to incentivize the pledges with a great rewards package that gives them something more than what they would receive through a traditional sale.

Re-launching a title can be complicated and Kickstarter provides great momentum and in this case the opportunity to provide FREE copies of our launch and perhaps beyond depending on where we land. Again, I’m emulating the Top Cow initiative because I was very impressed by the entire program Matt Hawkins and Marc put together.

I love new challenges and Kickstarter is a new frontier with a pre-buy component that is very interesting to me. I’m in new territory here and it’s providing a great launch platform for BRIGADE. Truth be told it’s inspiring to put your fate in the hands of the people.

Henry: For better or worse, how much do you think Kickstarter changed the state of the industry?

Liefeld: Are you kidding? Absolutely for the better. It’s an amazing initiative that has empowered a diverse group of creators from Gail Simone, Greg Rucka, Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Grey, Marc Silvestri, Matt Hawkins, Marat Mychaels, Paul Jenkins, Huberto Ramos, Eric Canete, Ryan Stegman, I mean the list is extensive when you start rattling it off. Power to the people and to the creator. It’s amazing to experience.

Henry: It’s been two years since we heard of this series – where does the story pick up?

Liefeld: The story of Brigade has become much larger in scope. I didn’t want to do a crime-fighting team, there’s so many of those out there already. The premise of the new Brigade is that time and space are under constant attack by a variety of threats looking to crash the system and the system is reality. They want to crash our existence, alter it and bend it to their will. This has created dramatic changes in the current reality.

The opening of the new series is reflective of Days of Future Past, depicting how things are changing or threatening to change. A powerful nemesis named Imperator is a primary threat that has been created out of the various time bombs that have detonated. John Stone, Battlestone, has assembled a vast cast of diverse powers and capabilities in order to police this new threat. They hover over the earth in their own space station, tracking rifts and portals that represent the greatest attacks.

Although Youngblood has traditionally been the flagship of the Extreme universe, it’s actually John Stone who has logged the most miles across the most titles as he’s appeared in Youngblood, Brigade, Bloodstrike and a title called Knightstrike. He’s consistently been the single most influential character in my universe and this story services him in that role. I’ve gathered many of my favorite characters in the Extreme Universe to form this expanded Brigade. The Brigade one-off from a few years back sets the stage for this new saga, especially what were doing with the underwater characters, Seahawk and Coldsnap. Roman is one of my all time favorite Brigade cast members and he plays a HUGE role in this new global, inter-dimensional Brigade.

Henry: Who’s helping you with the production?

Liefeld: I’m plotting and illustrating the new (story). Colors are by guys I’ve worked with the last decade, including but not limited to Owen Gieni, Juan Fernandez and Ross Hughes and others. I’m talking to a couple of great writers to script with me. I’ll have announcements soon.

Henry: Will this series be published by Image?

Liefeld: I have not had a single discussion with any publisher about Brigade. It has a long history at Image but I won’t discuss it with anyone until its funded and I have 2 issues completed.

Henry: Is this an on-going or a miniseries? What kind of stretch goals do you have in mind?

Liefeld: Regular ongoing series, intended as the new flagship for Extreme. What stretch goals can we expect to see? Amazing incentives to come, but I don’t want to put the cart before the horse here before we reach our initial goal.

Thank you to everyone who has backed or is planning on backing.

And just like that, Yahoo head Marissa Mayer becomes the most important person in comics.

As you may have heard, Yahoo is planning to buy Tumblr for $1.1 billion, a move that aims to make the recently moribund internet giant a bit more relevant to the social media world.

Where comics come in, as you may have noticed, is that in recent months the entire future business plans of young and emerging cartoonists have been to put their comics up on Tumblr and hope to find an audience, as immortalized in this tweet with publisher Annie Koyama’s advice:

Advice for emerging artists: put your work on Tumblr and put your name on it. (Annie @ Koyama is reading) #tcaf #smallpresspanel

— Comic Book Junkie (@comicbookjunk1e) May 11, 2013

It should be noted, Tumblr’s own business model isn’t that different from that of the legions of cartoonists hoping to an audience—hang around on a street corner until some bigger media entity gives you a billion dollars. And it worked!

Founded six years ago, Tumblr has attracted a loyal following and raised millions from big-name investors. Still, it has not proved that it can be profitable, nor that it can succeed on mobile devices, which are becoming the gateway to the Internet. Even Facebook faces continued pressure from investors to show it can increase its profits and adapt to the mobile world.

“The challenge has always been, how do you monetize eyeballs?” said Charlene Li, the founder of the Altimeter Group, a consulting firm. “Services like Instagram and Facebook always focus on the user experience first. Once that loyalty is there, they figure out how to carefully, ideally, make money on it.”

The deal—which will use up one quarter of Yahoo’s cash reserves—is one of several acquisitions overseen by recently installed CEO Mayer, but by far the largest. Unfortunately, Yahoo’s previous track record of takeovers is pretty crappy, what with shutting down GeoCities—which Yahoo purchased for a mere $3.6 billion—and letting Flickr lie fallow. These are highly visible cautionary tales.

While many might wonder just how to monetize Tumblr—a site 50% made up of animated gifs of Ryan Gosling—it’s clearly that free spirit of sharing and liking and digging in to obsessions that has given it such a loyal and youthful following. Right now it runs mostly ad free, and you might see that changing soon—or who knows what else. In a move to soothe anxieties, in her very own Tumblr post, Mayer promises not to screw things up and offers some numbers:

We promise not to screw it up.  Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going.  We will operate Tumblr independently.  David Karp will remain CEO.  The product roadmap, their team, their wit and irreverence will all remain the same as will their mission to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve.  Yahoo! will help Tumblr get even better, faster.

Tumblr has built an amazing place to follow the world’s creators. From art to architecture, fashion to food, Tumblr hosts 105 million different blogs.  With more than 300 million monthly unique visitors and 120,000 signups every day, Tumblr is one of the fastest-growing media networks in the world.  Tumblr sees 900 posts per second (!) and 24 billion minutes spent onsite each month.  On mobile, more than half of Tumblr’s users are using the mobile app, and those users do an average of 7 sessions per day.  Tumblr’s tremendous popularity and engagement among creators, curators and audiences of all ages brings a significant new community of users to the Yahoo! network.  The combination of Tumblr+Yahoo! could grow Yahoo!’s audience by 50% to more than a billion monthly visitors, and could grow traffic by approximately 20%.

Tumbloo.

Tumblr as an exposure medium for comics is a business model only intuitively grasped—and yet in the last two months, scores of people I spoke with mentioned it as the preferred model for discovery and audience building. Tumblr’s wide open architecture and anarchic spirit reflects the wide open goals, anarchic career plans, and empty pocket books of a generation that has talent and ambition but only a few paths to traditional success. It was way too good to last.

[Painting by Pene Menn]
The grim, skeletal remains of GeoCities—closed down in 2009 and once home to 38 million user-built pages—are a dire warning to those who place their faith in any platform, and Tumblr rip-off Posterous is another one. I’m fairly confident in thinking if Tumblr turns into something lame, comics and Ryan Gosling will just move onto some other platform, just as they moved over from Live Journal when it got lame. But if nothing else, Mayer’s purchase was well timed.

Hey everybody! It’s Laura Sneddon’s flippin’ well birthday innit!

Snedds, as I’m fairly certain she would hate for me to call her, is one year older today. And you can give her the finest gift of all on this May afternoon – the gift of traffic! You can find her blog right over here! Snedds! Sneddsy! The Sneddster!!

Print on demand supplier ComiXpress has shut down after nine years. In a statement on their site, they wrote:

When we started ComiXpress back in 2004 it was just a handful of comic book creators with a dream to use new technologies to help their fellow creators get their books into print. We were lucky enough not only to have the know-how to make this dream a reality, but also the passion necessary to see where the road took us. Over the course of these nine years we have served hundreds of creators and printed thousands of books. And from the smallest single-copy order for an aspiring cartoonist not even in their teens to huge convention orders for industry legends, we have sincerely loved every minute of it.

As our nine year anniversary approached we took a step back and looked at how we’ve grown in that time and what the next nine years might mean for us – both as a company, and as the creative individuals who make up the pieces of that company. Ultimately, after much soul-searching we realized that although it’s been an amazing nine years, sometimes things just run their course and we’ve made the decision to close our doors. This decision wasn’t made lightly but we feel it’s time to close this chapter.

On the technical side, we wanted to let you know that all paid for orders will be shipping promptly, but no other orders will be moving forward. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

While there was a smattering of outcry on social media, this doesn’t seem to have broken too many hearts–Ka-Blam has become a go to dedicated comics printing site, there’s Lulu, and others on this surely outdated list. ComiXpress was the printer for Cerebus Archive, the collection of various Cerebus-related ephemera, which were the best selling titles on the site, although all the internal pages seem to have been taken down.

We don’t know enough about the POD industry to comment any more on this, but from outside it seems to be another business plan that just wasn’t working any more. If you know any more, please post in the comments.

A post entitled ; ) and equipped with a classic Dark Knight sequence on coming back to life would seem to suggest that Comics Alliance is coming back from the dead after being shut down by AOL about a month ago.

And in case you were wondering if that was a late April Fools, this tweet from former (and present and future) editor in chief Joe Hughes would seem to ail it down:

@jimviscardi Never

— Joe Hughes (@JoeHughes28) May 20, 2013

While details are forthcoming, one might guess that the outcry about a popular, award-nominated website that was making money being shut down maybe reached the ears of some people with common sense at AOL.

Whatever it means, congrats to the CA crew on finding a way forward.

[Previous chapters: 1 to 8 - 1953 – 1985 Roundup, 9 - The Dawn of Eclipse, 10 - Alan Moore at Eclipse, 11 - The Twilight of Eclipse, 12 - All About Angela, 13 - More Angela, More Courtrooms, and Much More Todd]

In Prince of Stories, towards the end of the chapter on Neil Gaiman’s involvement with Miracleman, there are two paragraphs that say,

According to Gaiman, ‘Actually, it looks as if the rights to Marvelman were held by Mick Anglo all that time* – it was always copyrighted to him, not to Len Miller, and Dez admits he had no rights to Marvelman and did nothing to obtain them. Mick Anglo was legally pursuing Eclipse all the years I was writing it, although they never mentioned this to me [...] They were working out a deal with him that then died when Eclipse died.’

In 2007, Anglo’s Marvelman/Miracleman rights were sold to Emotiv and Company. As of this writing, there is no resolution. An Emotiv and Company representative simply stated, ‘This is an ongoing situation that will probably still take years to fix.’ Gaiman notes, ‘I know they bought the rights to Marvelman from Mick Anglo for four thousand pounds, and have been working hard to establish his ownership of the property [...] I’ve chatted to the guys who bought the Marvelman rights … and wish them well.’

[*Although, in Kimota!, he is quoted as saying, speaking of Dez Skinn publishing Marvelman, ’He had some sort of gentleman’s agreement with Mick, but Mick Anglo didn’t actually own Marvelman.’]

This piece of information about Emotiv seemed to slip under everyone’s radar when the book first came out in 2008, but they became the name on everyone’s lips after a post called Marvelman / Miracleman to the Big Screen? appeared on the ComicMix.com website on the 30th of April 2009 that said,

A highly placed source with one of Hollywood’s leading film production companies has revealed to ComicMix that an agent for a Scottish businessman has been offering around to studios and producers the purported feature film rights to Marvelman, the superhero property whose rights status has been in limbo since publisher Eclipse Comics went into bankruptcy in the middle of Neil Gaiman’s iconic run as its writer more than twenty years ago.

The article later says,

So is this Holy Grail of comics finally about to see the light of day with, at minimum, a major Hollywood film? The answer is that it’s possible, but our investigation casts serious doubts on this latest sales effort.

For one thing, there’s the matter of the original author, Mick Anglo. Still alive by all accounts (though Mick Anglo created the character in the 1950s, putting Mr. Anglo well north of ninety years old), the agent asserts that their rights emanate from Mr. Anglo. Mick Anglo, however, had always had the reputation for maintaining tight control over any derivations from the Marvelman character as Anglo originally conceived it, and our source says that Jon Campbell, the Scottish businessman whom the agent represents, may not have from Anglo a critical waiver of Anglo’s droit morale rights. The phrase refers to the right of a screenwriter and director to take liberties with the story and characters as conceived and depicted in the original source material.

The article itself was a mixed bag, I’m afraid to say, occasionally presenting potential new information, and other times a poorly written and badly researched piece (where did the assertion that ‘Mick Anglo had always had the reputation for maintaining tight control over any derivations from the Marvelman character as Anglo originally conceived it’ come from, for instance, as nothing I’ve ever come across supports it?), leading a lot of people at the time to see it as just another unfounded story about Marvelman, of which there had been plenty, but some people found a link between Emotiv and Company, as mentioned in Prince of Stories, and the name Jon Campbell, as mentioned in the article.

Campbell turned out to be a Scottish music producer and performer called Jon Paul Campbell, based in Glasgow, who formed techno group The Time Frequency in 1988, with which he had quite an amount of success, with their 1993 remix of their own Real Love reaching #8 in the UK singles chart. Their website, timefrequency.co.uk, contains the text ‘© 2009 Emotiv Records Ltd’ at the bottom right of the front page. All of which – coupled with the story circulating that Mick Anglo had a son in the music business who got talking to Jon Campbell and told him about Anglo’s creation of this comic character that everyone was fighting about, causing Campbell to go to talk to the senior Anglo himself – seemed to verify that something interesting was indeed going on with Marvelman.

At about the same time that the story about Jon Campbell’s agent trying to sell the movie rights to Marvelman first appeared, another strange story about Marvelman turned up. In a listing on eBay in May 2009 selling several copies of Miracleman, the seller included the text,

In speaking with Garry Leach recently, co-creator of Miracleman, he tells me there is yet another bizarre twist in the tale. Plans are afoot to completely revamp the character with a new name, a new costume and new artwork but keeping Alan Moore’s words! Garry was not pleased to say the least! That means it is very unlikely that the original Miracleman comics will ever be reprinted as originally intended, everyone please take note of that!

After a potential bidder got in touch with the seller, he said,

All I know is that plans are afoot to revamp Miracleman, they will change the name, the costume etc but still keep Alan Moore’s original dialogue! I have no idea about the other characters but they will probably be revamped too. Garry wouldn’t reveal which company plans to publish this comic but apparently they plan to announce something around the time of this year’s San Diego Comicon so no doubt we will hear something soon!

Obviously enough, the assertions of someone on eBay who is selling the very comics he is talking about can hardly be seen to be entirely unbiased, nor the most reliable of news sources, but it would turn out that at least some of what he said was true.

Before we get to that, though, some further examination of the claim that Emotiv had bought Mick Anglo’s rights to Marvelman is called for. A search through the online files of the UK’s Companies House, the official United Kingdom Registrar of Companies, and the purchase of a few relevant documents from them, reveals a fascinating story.

All along Mick Anglo’s interest in Marvelman seemed to be have been vested in his company, Mick Anglo Limited, as evidenced by his having added a copyright notice in that name to the page from Young Marvelman #38 that he reproduced in Nostalgia: Spotlight on the Fifties in 1977 (as seen in Poisoned Chalice Part 4, back at the beginning of March), as well as other uses of the company name in his work, so it is this company’s history that I have concentrated on.

Mick Anglo Limited was set up on the 21st of August 1954 with a share allocation of 100 £1 shares, with ten of those shares being drawn down and paid for, nine by Mick Anglo, who was the company director, and one by his wife Minnie Anglo, who was the company secretary. A bit over thirty years later, on the 5th of August 1986, the company was sent a letter by the Registrar of Companies telling them that they would be struck off the Register of Companies under Section 652 of the Companies Act 1985, unless reason was given not to. This section allowed the Registrar to strike defunct companies off the Register. Presumably the Anglos raised no objection, and on the 11th of November 1986 Mick Anglo Limited was struck off the Register of Companies and dissolved.

That should have been that for Mick Anglo Limited, but nearly twenty years later, on the 4th of May 2006, the company was restored to the Register after an application to do so by David Livingston of Emotiv on the 31st of March. Jon Campbell was listed as a director of Mick Anglo Limited from the 14th of June 2006, along with Dawn Stevenson, who is currently the company secretary, a position she also holds at two different Emotiv companies. Soon afterwards, on the 25th of June 2006, both Mick Anglo and his wife Minnie resigned as officers of Mick Anglo Limited, only a few days after Mick Anglo’s ninetieth birthday. On the 24th of August 2006 the remaining 90 of the 100 £1 shares in the company were allotted to Jon Campbell. Immediately after that, all the outstanding accounts and returns for the company for the previous twenty years were brought up to date.

At the moment there are only two officers listed for the company, Jon Campbell and Dawn Stevenson, and the most recent statement of capital I have looked at, on the 21st of December 2010, shows that, of the 100 £1 shares that the company was originally set up with, all of them are currently owned by Jon Campbell, in his own name,. The ten shares that Mick Anglo and his wife had owned were no longer theirs, so I can only surmise that they were sold to Jon Campbell, and presume this was what Neil Gaiman was referring to when he is quoted in Prince of Stories as saying,

I know they bought the rights to Marvelman from Mick Anglo for four thousand pounds.

[All of the relevant documents relating to Mick Anglo Limited can be found in this folder on my own Flickr account, for those of you who are interested. There's too many of them to publish here, and they're not the most visually stimulating, but if you're interested, go copy them, in case anything happens to them!]

After they had bought out Mick Anglo and his wife for £4,000, the next thing that Emotiv did was to contact some of the individuals who had become involved with the Marvelman property after its L Miller and Son incarnation. This seems to be backed up by that article on the ComicMix.com website in April 2009, which said,

According to our source in Hollywood, the information from the agent showing the rights around reflects that there has been a lot of ownership movement between Mr. Anglo, Mr. Campbell, and various business entities, necessitating, one presumes, a lengthy stack of warranties and indemnities from Anglo, Campbell and the several businesses that purportedly held title at various times.

This meant talking to the people who had produced the 1982 version of Marvelman in Warrior, to tell them that they had actually been using a character that was now apparently owned by Jon Campbell, which he felt they hadn’t had the right to use, despite the fact that Mick Anglo not only hadn’t objected at the time, but had apparently given it his whole-hearted support. Dez Skinn, for instance, was approached, and eventually signed a waiver of any rights his company, Quality Communications, may have had in publishing the character.

Dez Skinn was not the only one contacted, either. Alan Moore told me,

Somebody from Emotiv called me up and explained that they had been working with a son of Mick Anglo’s who was a musician, that this son had told them something of the Marvelman story, that they had decided to get involved, because it sounded to them as if Mick Anglo was being cheated, so they told me a few things – such as the fact that L Miller hadn’t gone bankrupt. [...] As soon as I knew that the rights to Marvelman had never been with the Official Receiver, I said, ‘well, if I’d known that, I would have never taken the job, and, yes, if I can help, I do feel bad that I must have been instrumental in taking these rights from their rightful owner, whoever that might be.’

I felt that OK, yes, I know that it’s because I wrote Marvelman the way that I did that it became the work that it’s become, but the fact remains that I had taken somebody else’s property without knowing that that was what I was doing, because I was being assured that this wasn’t what I was doing [...] and I just thought anything that could actually get Mick Anglo some money at this point in his life, when it sounds like he could use it – if there was anything I could help towards that, then I was prepared to do it. So someone came down to Northampton, eventually, and filmed an interview with me where I just answered all the questions that they asked me as honestly as I could, and there may have been some other back and forth. I haven’t spoken to any of the people from Emotiv for a couple of years now. I mean, once I’d signed all the – done the interviews and done everything else, that seemed to be sufficient for them to progress.

One thing that I said at that time was that I was prepared to – if they brought out a collection, if somebody brought out a collection of Marvelman, then I would want all of the money from the first edition to go to Mick Anglo. This was at a time when I though, yes, I did do a lot of the work on it and it would be nice if, I don’t know, Leah and Amber, or Mel, were to profit from it in the future, but by the time that Marvel Comics were involved I just though, no, let it go, give all the money to Mick Anglo, which is more tricky than it – it looked like it was going to be quite easy to do, but then I kept getting all these contracts that didn’t want me to – didn’t seem to want me to give the money to Mick Anglo, or to take my name off of it. Eventually I signed one that did state just that.

One thing that was becoming clear was that the news story on ComicMix at the end of April 2009 contained at least some amount of truth after all. There was a Scottish businessman called Jon Campbell who claimed to have some or all of the rights to Marvelman, and who was attempting to find an interested party in America to deal with. As well as that, there was that seller on eBay in May 2009 who had said, amongst other things,

Garry [Leach] wouldn’t reveal which company plans to publish this comic but apparently they plan to announce something around the time of this year’s San Diego comicon so no doubt we will hear something soon!

This would turn out to be true, as well.

But, before we get to that, there was another bidder who was trying to secure the rights to Marvelman from Jon Campbell and Emotiv. Let me return to that seller on eBay, who had quoted Garry Leach as telling him,

Plans are afoot to completely revamp the character with a new name, a new costume and new artwork but keeping Alan Moore’s words.

Was there any truth in this? Surely there couldn’t be a plan to replace, for instance, Garry Leach’s or Alan Davis’s beautiful artwork, could there? Perhaps there could. I mentioned this story to one of the artists who had worked on the series, who told me,

I was contacted some years ago by a lawyer representing one of the new Marvelman ‘owners’. I was told they wanted to reprint my work in a new collection. I said I would be prepared to allow that IF I was paid enough. The lawyer said I would get the same flat-reprint rate as all other artists and if I withheld my pages in an attempt to increase my reprint rate they could easily be redrawn. So I told him to have the pages redrawn. I mention this incident only because it may be linked to the rumour you heard.

It’s worth pointing out here that there were several other parties who might have been meant by ‘one of the new Marvelman ‘owners’,’ besides Marvel Comics, and that the incident referred to seems to predate Marvel’s involvement with Marvelman, in any case.

Emotiv had another bid put to them besides Marvel’s bid, though, which might shed light on those allegations. That bid was spearheaded by Dave Elliott, who had co-founded Atomeka Press with Garry Leach in 1988, and whose A1 title had contained a number of Warpsmith stories, written by Alan Moore and drawn by Leach.

In a podcast interview conducted by Orbital Comics of London in March 2011, Elliott revealed that he had been one of the people involved in a bid to licence the rights to Marvelman from Emotiv, before they sold the rights to Marvel Comics. He said,

There was a project we were so close to doing a couple of years ago. We were the other party after Marvelman – we’d even been exchanging contracts, closing on it. Our approach was – we weren’t buying Marvelman. We were going to republish Alan’s material, and do a film.

We weren’t directly dealing with Alan, but, when we first started, and we were going out to shop the film, I wouldn’t do it without something in writing from Alan saying that he knew we were doing it, because the last thing we wanted, was it to get out in the trades, you know, some gossip like, ‘Oh! Apparently Marvelman is being shopped in Hollywood!’ I wanted something in writing, so Alan said, ‘Yup, you’ve got my blessing. Off you go, as long as my name’s not on it’ – which is the standard thing for Alan recently.

So that was great, you know. I wanted Alan to be comfortable, because I know for all the creators involved in Marvelman it’s been a very bumpy ride over the last twenty-odd years.

The bid had previously been referred to in a story by Rich Johnston on the Bleeding Cool website on the 10th of August, 2009, although at the time it was only referred to as ‘The other bid,’ without any names being attached to it, the bidding party simply being referred to as The Anons. Johnston said,

The negotiations took over two years, and contracts between the Anons and Emotiv were drawn up three weeks before the Marvel announcement, when suddenly Emotiv stopped returning calls and e-mails to the Anons. This was after they asked about a contract clause – in that they would have had to sign a statement that Emotiv were not responsible for the legal rights that the buyer would or would not buy. So if there was a subsequent challenge to them, the buyer not the seller would be responsible for all legal fees to fight it.

Briefly, what the Elliott group intended to do was to licence Marvelman from Emotiv – rather than buy the character from them outright – and with the consent of all the other copyright holders – Moore, Leach, and so on – to produce three films based on the three books of Moore’s run on the character; to publish the three volumes of Moore’s run with new artwork, all done by a single artistic team, possibly with Garry Leach involved; to also republish the books in Moore’s run as they had originally appeared, with the original artwork; and to then go ahead and produce two new mini-series, both set in the time before Moore’s story started.

Dave Elliott explained to me what these would have been:

One was the origins of the [Zarathustra] project, including a second scientist working with Gargunza who was actually the one responsible for starting it. As Gargunza used himself in the stories as the villain, this scientist was the Astrophysicist. The other series would be Johnny Bates’s story, from the bomb going off in 1963 to Marvelman coming back in 1982. I’d actually reached out to Grant Morrison to see if I could use the material in his story that was never published.

Of course, despite Marvel having lifting their objections to anyone else using the name Marvelman when Neil Gaiman set up Marvels and Miracles, it was possible that they might reverse that decision, so a new name was devised: Marvelman would no longer be Miracleman, he would be Masterman. Emotiv had even gone to the trouble of having a logo made up, just in case they needed it.

It could be said that this bid, with a group of people including Dave Elliott and presumably Garry Leach also, would have been in a position to make contact and deal properly with the various people involved, and in a reasonably short amount of time. However, their bid was ignored, right at the eleventh hour, and this is what happened instead…

On the 24th of July, 2009, at Comic Con International in San Diego, Joe Quesada announced that Marvel Comics had bought the rights to Marvelman. A press release from Marvel just afterwards said,

The biggest news of Comic Con International in San Diego was revealed moments ago and jaws are still on the floor – the world-renowned superhero Marvelman is now part of the Marvel Comics family! Marvel Comics has purchased the rights to Marvelman from creator Mick Anglo and his representatives, finding a home for one of the most sought after heroes in graphic fiction!

‘It is an honor to work with Mick Anglo to bring his creation to a larger audience than ever before,’ said Dan Buckley, CEO & Publisher, Print, Animation & Digital Media, Marvel Entertainment Inc. ‘Fans are in for something special as they discover just what makes Marvelman such an important character in comic book history.’

Originally created in 1954 by Mick Anglo and appearing in some of the most celebrated comic stories of all time, Marvelman is Micky Moran, a young reporter gifted with the power to save the world by simply uttering the word ‘Kimota!’

‘I did not think it would ever happen,’ said Mick Anglo. ‘It’s a wonderful thing to see my creation finally back.’

Marvelman is back and he’s found a new home at Marvel Comics! What’s next for Mick Anglo’s legendary creation? Stay tuned to Marvel.com for all the news on Marvelman and this exciting new addition to the Marvel family!

In the following few months, there was furious speculation on the Internet and in the comics media as to what was to happen. One thing that stood out for me was that, in all the statements and interviews that Marvel gave at the time, the name Miracleman was never once mentioned. Neither, for that matter, was the name of Alan Moore. And, once again, as with Todd McFarlane’s supposed purchase of the rights to Miracleman, the question that everyone really wanted to know the answer to was, what exactly had Marvel bought? It was a good question in July 2009, and it’s still a good question now. Another good question was, and is, what were they intending to do with it now that they’d got it?

After that initial announcement, Marvel eventually revealed plans to publish a one-off comic called Marvelman Classic Primer in July 2010, a six-issue series of reprinted stories called Marvelman Family’s Finest, starting in July 2010, and the first hardback volume of Marvelman Classic in August 2010, which was presumably the start of what would eventually become a full collection of all the stories published in L Miller and Son’s Marvelman comic, with further volumes due on a roughly six-monthly basis. There was also a first volume of Young Marvelman Classic in May 2011, which would presumably follow the same publishing schedule as Marvelman Classic.

However, and despite their saying they would have news about it ‘soon,’ anyone who was waiting for an announcement from Marvel about their plans to reprint Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman’s work on the title is still waiting (there’s an incomplete collection of those ‘coming soon’ announcements here, which I really need to update). The listing for the Marvelman Classic Primer on Marvel’s website said,

Who is the mysterious Marvelman? The answer to that question is one of the most mysterious in comics lore. Created in 1954 by writer/artist Mick Anglo, the character enjoyed a long run in the British comics market as one of its most powerful heroes. A few decades later, the character was revived with a dark, moody, deconstructionist bent, and produced one of the most important works of comic art in the medium’s history.

But now, miracle of miracles, Marvel has stepped up to the plate to deliver on the promise of Anglo’s incredible characters. The Marvelman Primer will help readers unfamiliar with that character get up to speed on the past, present and future of Marvelman stories. We’ll check in with Mick Anglo, Neil Gaiman and others who contributed to this character’s history over the years. It was the news that swept the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con and the Marvelman Primer explains why.

Leaving aside the obvious hyperbole – ‘The answer to that question is one of the most mysterious in comics lore’ – and the somewhat ominous foreshadowing of what their plans for the character might have been – ‘Marvel has stepped up to the plate to deliver on the promise of Anglo’s incredible characters’ – it did look as though Marvel really were going to explain what their plans for the character were, and the fact that Neil Gaiman was to be in it would seem to suggest they were going to talk about the later incarnation of the character, and not just the Miller-era stuff. However, this never came to pass. The Primer was published, but there was no interview with Neil Gaiman in it.

There was the promised interview with Mick Anglo, however, talking to Joe Quesada, who travelled to England to meet him, but Anglo really had nothing to say about Marvelman, with most of the interview being about his days in the Second World War. He actually only referred to Marvelman three times, saying, firstly,

My brother called me Gargunza. He said I was an ugly-looking fellow. That was my brother!

And later,

Marvelman is one word: I’ve seen it on milk powder, on special products for babies. Marvel was a good name. It was unique, simple, and it means a lot. I liked drinking Marvelmilk! I’ve got a Marvelman T-shirt. I don’t know who gave it to me. The silly thing comes down to my ankles.

Finally, apparently in answer to a question about the possibility of the success of a Marvelman revival, he said,

I don’t like taking anything for nothing unless it’s in big quantities.

And those three statements are the sum total of what Mick Anglo said to Joe Quesada about Marvelman, at least according to what is printed in the interview in Marvelman Classic Primer. It’s worth bearing in mind that, at the time of the interview, Mick Anglo was 94 years old and, sadly, there’s a very real possibility that he didn’t fully understand what was going on, or what he was being asked about.

The rest of the Marvelman Classic Primer consisted of a very brief and incomplete history of Marvelman, more or less beginning in 1953 and ending in 1954; an article about Marvel UK; any amount of Marvelman artwork by recent Marvel ‘superstar’ artists, but virtually none by any of the original 1950s artists, with what there was by them usually being unattributed, unless it was attributed to Mick Anglo; and a history of British comics, which included this paragraph:

In 1982, Dez Skinn – who, during his reign as Marvel UK Editor in Chief, had successfully resurrected the idea of UK-originated material with Hulk Comic and Doctor Who Weekly – launched Warrior, a groundbreaking anthology. A launch pad for the careers of John Bolton, Alan Davis and others who had also contributed to Skinn’s 1976 title House of Hammer, it led the way when it came to offering the more mature British reader an alternative to traditional comics fare.

For whatever reason, Marvel seemed to be going out of their way to avoid any mention of Marvelman past the Miller-era run, even mentioning Warrior, the very magazine it was resurrected in, without mentioning the strip itself, or Alan Moore, its famous writer, without whom nobody would actually be interested in the very character they were touting. It was becoming obvious that something odd was going on at Marvel, and that things might not be as straightforward as they had originally appeared to be.

And it was becoming apparent that nobody really cared about the reprints of those old 1950s Marvelman comics. The sales figures for both the hardback books and the comics reprinting the 1950 Marvelman stories were very poor, and Marvel abandoned Marvelman Classic after volume 3, which had sales below 300, and Young Marvelman Classic after volume 2, which had sales below that again. The reprint project has been in abeyance since January 2012, and it’s unlikely ever to resume.

However, it was obvious to anyone with eyes to see that these weren’t Marvel’s primary target in buying the rights to Marvelman. After all, Marvel Comics are not in the business of buying up the rights to what are really pretty bad old British comic stories that haven’t stood the test of time too well, just to reprint them in expensive hardback books that have a very limited market, particularly if one rumour, which holds that Marvel paid Jon Campbell $1,000,000 for the rights he held, is to be believed. Their primary reason for buying the property can only have been to reprint the Moore and Gaiman stories, the very things they avoiding even mentioning. I’d like to think that they have some sort of a plan, but at the moment it seems as if nobody actually knows what it is, perhaps not even themselves.

And that is the Marvelman story very nearly up to date, with the exception of recent news about Marvel publishing work featuring Todd McFarlane and Neil Gaiman’s Angela, which I just wish to comment on briefly. One good thing about reviewing all of this material again, to put it online here at The Beat, is that sometimes something that passed me by the first time gains a new significance in light of what we now know. For instance, the interview with Todd McFarlane from 2005 on UGO.com that I led off with in the last part, where we get this exchange:

UGO: Has the Miracleman film gone back to Neil Gaiman or wherever it is supposed to go?

TMcF: With the lawsuit, Gaiman walked away from Miracleman. I have the trademark for Miracleman. No one wants to say it out loud, but that’s what happened with the lawsuit. Everyone was like ‘Hah hah, he killed Todd,’ but unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on where you are standing – he had to pick some copyrights to some Spawn characters or pick Miracleman. He didn’t pick Miracleman.

UGO: Did he take Angela?

TMcF: Yeah, he took some of the Spawn stuff. For whatever reason he walked away from Miracleman, so now Miracleman will be in the Image 10th Anniversary Book.

When the interviewer said ‘Did he take Angela?’, was this actually an indication that Neil Gaiman was after full ownership of the Angela character all along, and had actually secured it fully eight years and more back? Certainly the whole thing, where Marvel were suddenly talking about publishing Angela, as if it was part of the plan all along, is pretty peculiar – as is McFarlane’s comments on the whole situation, where he said,

“Neil Gaiman and I had a resolution in our legal dispute, and as part of that he ended up with the rights of Angela. Whatever Neil chooses to do with something that he owns is at his complete and utter discretion.

The health of the industry is based upon having good stories and good characters, and a wide customer base. If bringing some of these characters back to the fold in a meaningful way adds to that, then it just strengthens our industry.

Good stories that entertain are something that we all should applaud on any level. Whether we’re doing it directly at Image Comics, or at our competition, it helps keep our industry that we love alive. I will sit back and be as interested as anyone else.”

Who was this man, and what had he done with the Todd McFarlane we knew and loved?

And, somewhere along the line, McFarlane’s last attempt to claim a trademark on Miracleman was abandoned, and this was quickly followed up by Marvel Comics claiming the trademark on the name instead. What did this mean? Much like everything else, I don’t really know, and they’re not telling me, but I may speculate on it later on.

I did do some actual speculation about whether or not Marvel had succeeded in buying Garry Leach‘s share of the rights to various things, particularly including his half-share of Warpsmiths, which would include the crucial rights to the Qys technology, the backbone on which Alan Moore’s version of Marvelman is build, here, but as it is simply that, speculation, I don’t know if it even belongs here. None the less, it is not without interest, I hope, and I’ll also be referring back to that later on.

And, really, that’s it. That’s the Marvelman story pretty much right up to date. Over the next few weeks I’m going to be going back over it all again, first to try to condense it all into some sort of comprehensible whole, and then to try to finally answer the question that started me off on this quest, maybe ten years ago now: Who Owns Marvelman?

Thanks to everyone who has hung on this long, and who have given me such valuable feedback. Courage, mes braves, the end is in sight! To you all I address the question, before I start to wrap it all up, is there anything I’ve forgotten? Anything I haven’t made clear? One of the guiding principles for this, from the beginning, was to cast light into corners, but to do so using verifiable sources, by telling the story out of the mouths of those involved, and I hope this is what I’m achieved. But now’s everyone’s chance to ask me about everything, before I’m finally done with this, and I shall do my best to answer as plainly and honestly as I can.

Oh, yes, there’s one other thing: I’ve one more witness to bring forward, a man I’ve been keeping behind the curtain for a very long time now, who casts a very interesting light on, well, pretty much everything. See you all back here next week!

To be wrapped up, and concluded, very very soon now…

[The Marvel Milk photograph is copyright to Edward Coughlan, and is used without permission, but in good faith!]

Writer James Robinson announced his departure from Earth 2 with issue #16 on Twitter— and added that it meant he would no longer be working at DC.

Yes, this also means I’m no longer working at DC Comics.Best wishes and regards to Dan, Geoff and everyone.

— JamesDRobinson (@JamesDRobinson) May 17, 2013

Robinson will always be remembered for his historic runs on Action Comics, Starman, and Justice Society of America. Also his contributions to the Blackest Night, Flashpoint, and Superman: World of Krypton tie-ins. His last work with the company will be Earth-2 #16, and isn’t due for another couple months. Here’s the cover for the next issue, looks like good jumping on point for new readers.

Captain Steel debuts as the World Army sends the hero into the Fire Pits left over from the war with Apocalypse, but even Earth 2’s newest hero isn’t ready for what is hidden within the burning reminders of the conflict that killed Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.

 

Even indie comics are getting to be, if not big business, then extremely popular. More popular than a street fair, even. The last two years, perhaps inspired by BCGF and TCAF, have seen indie shows spring up in many cities from Minneapolis Autopic, to Portland’s The Projects to Chicago’s CAKE.

While we noted that last weekend’s TCAF has mostly outgrown its venue, and the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival shutdown came partly over problems over the show’s growth (more on that in a minute) it’s also evident in the trouble exhibitors had getting tables at SPX. Even a comparatively small show like this weekend’s Maine Comics And Arts Festival had a very quick sellout in January:

The first wave of exhibitor tables has sold out. We have started the waiting list and will fill the remaining tables from that list.

[snip]
Based upon the number of requests for information that we received this year we knew that the demand for tables would be more than in previous years. We have seen many first time exhibitors get tables tonight.

In a post on MeCAF’s old website (now gone) the show’s owner Rick Lowell had mused about what to do about growing demand for tables. MeCAF is definitely a smaller show, but it’s a delightful one, and a growing one, and even a show in an out of the way state is getting too big.

Speaking of too big, Tim Hodler has the behind the scenes on the end of the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival and it’s kind of he said/he said. Turns out the show’s remaining two co-owners couldn’t agree on how to move forward with Dan Nadel having to bow out due to his other duties. And Gabe Fowler didn’t even know yesterday’s announcement was coming. And someone has already pulled the plug on the shows’s website, which is kind of sad and final (or petty). All the guests, all the fests…gonna have to live on in our memories and Facebook, I guess.

Bill K. has a lot to say about growing pains and how indie comics festivals fit into the industry structure:

Kartalopoulos elaborates: “The other thing I would say is that the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival has been a very successful event. Every year it grew beyond our expectations. I think anyone who was at the 2012 show probably observed that the festival was sort of maxing out the structure that had been built to support it. I mean both literally in terms of the space and also, I would say, organizationally. So you know growth is hard, and presents a lot of challenges. I think that the 2012 event represented the peak of what could be accomplished within the constraints of the current model. So even though I’m sad and upset in certain ways, I am happy to go out on a high note rather than start hitting walls.”

[snip]“As far as I’m concerned, money-making has never been a consideration,” says Kartalopoulos. “The festival just needs to support itself.” But he does think that the perception brings up issues worth discussing. “There’s a bigger infrastructural point here which is that a big part of the indie comics economy at this point seems to rest on the shoulders of people who work very hard for very little reward to create these festivals,” he says. “I think there are some structural issues that I hope people will start talking about, even if not as a direct result of this situation. It’s really hard and it’s really a lot of work to put together these festivals. No one is making money personally doing these things, and you can’t have an industry that depends on volunteer labor forever.”

We noted that TCAF had growing pains this year as well, and showrunner Chris Butcher looked exhausted and said as much. The shows are so important to the economy of small publishers, but they are not, in and of themselves, a profit center for those running them. TCAF doesn’t even charge for admission OR tables!

At some point making money for what you do is a good reward and a good incentive to keep doing them and keep doing them right. That goes for show runners as well as cartoonists. We’re a long way from that being the case on the indie circuit.

In the meantime, Brooklyn will not be without a comics show. The brand new Grand Comics Festival in Brooklyn rolls out June 8-9. See ya there!

The winners of the Bill Finger Award for 2013 have been announced and they are Steve Gerber and Don Rosa. The award was created in 2005 to recognize writers—one living, one deceased—who have yet to receive adequate notice for their work.

Gerber and Rosa are certainly exemplary choices. Gerber’s work on Howard the Duck, The Defenders, Man-Thing and many other ’70s Marvel titles broadened the expressiveness and subject matter of mainstream comics in a way that went on to influence indie creators and inspired much of the alt.comix boom of the 80s. That was a system that Gerber himself took part in with Stewart the Rat, a roman-a-clef about his battle to regain ownership of Howard The Duck. Gerber died in 2008 from pulmonary thrombosis.

Rosa, the first Finger winner to be a cartoonist in his own right, took the work of Carl Barks and expanded it to become adventure comics of an even higher degree in his masterwork, The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. Although not perhaps adequately recognized in the US, Rosa is a household name in Denmark, where his Disney Duck comics are beloved classics. Rosa has had to retire from cartooning due to eyesight problems.

Rosa and Gerber were the unanimous selection of an award committee consisting of Charles Kochman (executive editor at Harry N. Abrams, book publisher), comic book writer Kurt Busiek, artist/historian Jim Amash, and writer/editor Marv Wolfman.

“The premise of this award is to recognize writers for a body of work that has not received its rightful reward and/or recognition,” Evanier explained in a statement. “That was what Jerry Robinson intended as his way of remembering his friend, Bill Finger. Bill is still kind of the industry poster boy for writers not receiving proper reward or recognition. Steve Gerber was one of the most influential writers of his day, and his work has stood the rest of time. Don Rosa is now retired from producing his acclaimed work with Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge. He also drew the comics, but we honor him for the excellence of his stories, which will forever be reprinted around the world. Also, we liked the idea of having an ‘all-duck’ Finger ceremony.”

Steve Gerber got his start in fanzines, worked in advertising, and then found his way to comics in 1972 when he was hired by Roy Thomas for a staff job at Marvel. Gerber wasn’t suited for staff work, but by the time Marvel realized that, they’d discovered the value of his quirky imagination as a writer. Before long, he was distinguishing himself with scripts for, among others, Daredevil, The Defenders, Sub-Mariner. and Man-Thing. It was in the Man-Thing feature that he developed his most popular, lasting character, Howard the Duck. Somewhat autobiographical and wildly popular when written by Gerber, Howard was a unique presence in the Marvel Universe that is fondly remembered by many fans of the era. They also hailed Omega the Unknown, which Gerber wrote and co-created with Mary Skrenes. He parted ways with Marvel over a contract dispute in 1978, though he would return later. Thereafter, he worked for DC and Eclipse and in TV animation, story-editing and writing shows including Thundarr the Barbarian, G.I. Joe, and The Transformers. Gerber died in 2008 from pulmonary fibrosis.

Don Rosa also got his start in fanzines, with “The Pertwillaby Papers,” a comic strip for his college newspaper in Kentucky. An avid collector of comics, he chose for a time to write and draw as a hobby and to make his livelihood in his family’s tile business. In 1986, though, he had the opportunity to write and draw stories of Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge, his favorite characters when in the hands of the legendary Carl Barks. His meticulous, carefully researched work caught on big, at first in America and then overseas, where he was hailed for expanding on the foundation laid by Barks. Particularly popular was a 12-part series he began in 1991, “The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck,” which filled in many details of the character’s past. That series, along with Rosa’s other tales, has been reprinted around the world as much as any comic book of the last quarter-century. Rosa has now retired from creating new stories, due to failing eyesight and disputes with his publisher over compensation.

The Bill Finger Award honors the memory of William Finger (1914-1974), who was the first and, some say, most important writer of Batman. Many have called him the “unsung hero” of the character and have hailed his work not only on that iconic figure but on dozens of others, primarily for DC Comics.

The Rock’s been making suggestions on Twitter again.

Thank U @marvel President Kevin Feige for the nod. I’ll be ready. #RockAsCage #HeroForHire bit.ly/11EJTft twitter.com/TheRock/status…

— Dwayne Johnson (@TheRock) May 17, 2013

This comes off the back of recent comments made by Feige, reported here –

His name has come up in the past. I’m a gigantic fan of his. I think he’s incredible. I might have met him once a long time ago, but I haven`t really met him. I don’t really know him, but I think he`s an unbelievable personality and an unbelievable sort of force of nature.

The Rock, of course, has a longstanding friendship with several key personnel at Disney.

Fangrabs is a comics rental site. You pick up the books in your queue have them mailed to you, you read em and mail em back. Just like Netflix. They have over 6,500 titles to choose from, including manga, Walking Dead, DC, Marvel. etc. Several plans are available, including $15 for two books a month and unlimited plans starting at $20 a month. There are no late fees and presumably a mailing envelope, which is our great downfall.

I think this is a pretty sound idea for a service, but I hope their overall business plan is better than the logo and name “Fangrabs” — not the most attractive image ever.

What do you think, Beatniks? Would you use a service like this?

Brooklyn’s Scott Eder Gallery has announced an impressive show for next month devoted to art, sketches and other drawings from Will Eisner’s A Contract With God, the groundbreaking graphic novel that helped inspire comics storytelling in the US. IT’s the first time the art hyas been shown and offered for sale, so it should be quite the event.

Will Eisner: A Contract with God  
June 14th to August 15th, 2013 
Opening reception June 14th at 6 PM
Scott Eder Gallery
18 Bridge St., Brooklyn, NY

A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories was published in 1978, and while you can argue here or there what was the first complete graphic novel to be published—certainly they were way ahead of the game in Europe with TinTin to name but one—it was a forerunner of much that was to come—as well as an affecting story of Jewish tenementlife in its own right.