A place to talk about anything to do with comics that doesn’t belong in the other threads.
Random Comics-Related Stuff
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Tintin drawing by Hergé sells at auction for record £1.9m
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I think it’s in the IDW Watchmen Artifact Edition (with selected scans of the original art) that Gibbons mentions how much he now regrets selling the original boards at such a low price, given the amounts they would fetch today. There’s a contemporary ledger that shows how much each page went for and it’s alarmingly little.
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I think back in 1987 it was still rare for artists to retain ownership of their comic book pages, so there likely wasn’t any way to easily determine what the “value” of each page would be. Gibbons shouldn’t kick himself too hard for selling them so cheaply in that context.
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I think back in 1987 it was still rare for artists to retain ownership of their comic book pages
To be honest by that time I don’t think it was. The Kirby issues with hoarding artwork at HQ was mostly over.
In retrospect Gibbons made a very bad call. At the time though it was easy money for a relatively young man for work he’s already been paid for by DC. Someone estimated that sale earnt him £25,000 which at the time was a lot of money, a good professional annual salary. I’ve made similar bad financial calls.
It’s only in retrospect we see that was way too cheap for a global classic work but I think Dave overall has done fine. He still gets royalties for a massive selling book plus Moore’s share of any TV and movie cash and the Kingsman stuff.
The impoverished artist is a narrative we like but the truth is that the reason players like Dave Gibbons or even Brian Bolland have such low output for 40 years is a fair chunk of cash for the iconic work they produced.
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Should I be storing these better?
Yes; I recommend storing them at my house.
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Whereas I recommend that Jerry store his house including the artwork in my possession.
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I finally got to reading the Grendel/Shadow crossover. Grendel is amazing experimental storytelling by Matt Wagner!
Most readers are into the Hunter Rose incarnation. His original arc is very brief, yet most of the crossovers (Batman, Shadow) involve Hunter Rose. There is a lot of story weaving into the Hunter arc.
As for crossovers, the Grendel future timeline is totally incompatible with Batman and the DC timeline, but who cares? 🤣
Netflix had a Grendel show in the works, but decided to nix it. It might have been nice.
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Rachel Pollack, award-winning author, leading authority on tarot and the occult, trans activist and comic-book writer who created the first mainstream transgender superhero, has died aged 77.
As an author of speculative fiction, she published seven novels and four collections of short stories, including 1980’s Golden Vanity and Unquenchable Fire, which won the Arthur C Clarke award for science fiction in 1989. Her most recent, The Fissure King, was published in 2017.
Her first fiction success was the short story Pandora’s Bust, published in Michael Moorcock’s seminal new wave magazine New Worlds in 1971, and she transitioned very soon afterwards.
Her friend, the author Neil Gaiman, visited Pollack at the home she shared with her wife Zoe in Rhinebeck, New York state, shortly before her death. She was diagnosed seven years ago with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system, and was, says Gaiman, drifting in and out of consciousness when he was there.
Pollack’s death was confirmed by her wife who posted a message on Facebook which was tweeted by Gaiman.
Gaiman, who first met Pollack in 1985 while interviewing her about tarot for the now-defunct Today newspaper, said: “Rachel was a beloved writer of fantasy, but I prefer to describe her as a magical realist. She wrote these wonderful books of heightened reality and magical worlds where she would concretise metaphor.
“Rachel and I bonded over many, many things, one of which was Jewishness, and despite being a bastion of the new age she was also incredibly Jewish. There’s an orthodox prayer that begins ‘Thank you, God, for not making me a woman.’
“I remember her telling me that after she came to following her surgery she said, ‘Blessed to you God for not making me a woman, but thrice-blessed to the doctor who did.’”
Pollack, born in Brooklyn, New York, on 17 August 1945, was one of the earliest trans activists, and moved to the UK when she transitioned in her early 20s, following a career as a professor of English.
British writer and cultural critic Roz Kaveney recalls that when she moved to London in 1971 she went to the Gay Liberation Front and “asked them if they were doing anything about what we now call trans stuff. They said they had a small group coordinated by Rachel Pollack, and I went to see her the very same day.”
Pollack and Kaveney belonged to the group that drew up the first trans manifesto, published in the GLF’s newsletter in 1972, entitled Don’t Call Me Mister You Fucking Beast, and which included: “There are many questions we are just beginning to examine. Why is Danny La Rue a West End institution, when we get kicked out of our flats for wearing a skirt? Apparently it’s all right if you’re doing it for money, but perverted if you do it for personal satisfaction.”
Kaveney said: “Rachel was a crystallising force in the trans movement and so many other areas. She was perpetually an inspirational figure, and was one of the first professional trans writers who had a career while out, and proved that it was possible to do that.”
Pollack lived in Amsterdam for almost a decade from the mid-70s, where she had her gender reassignment surgery, before moving back to the US.
Between 1993 and 1995 she wrote the monthly Doom Patrol comic for the DC Comics Vertigo imprint, a title that had previously been rebooted by fan favourite writer Grant Morrison, and for which Pollack created what is considered to be the first transgender superhero in mainstream comics, Kate Godwin.
Gaiman said: “It was very hard for anyone to follow Grant Morrison in writing a series, and I think it’s only recently that Rachel’s work on Doom Patrol has been reassessed and seen as genuinely ahead of its time, and it’s about time, too.”
Aside from her prose and comic successes, Pollack was seen as a giant in the tarot and occult worlds, and her friend, writer and historian Morgan M Page, said: “Quite simply, Rachel was the greatest living authority on the tarot.”
When the mystical goes mainstream: how tarot became a self-care phenomenon
Her 1980 book Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom is, said Page, “the basis of all modern tarot interpretation. Every book that has come since is basically cribbing her work.”She added: “When Rachel first became interested in the tarot, writing on it was very basic, very fortune telling-based. She researched it and brought in psychoanalytical ideas, Jungian readings of the tarot.”
Pollack designed her own tarot decks, and became a huge force in the women’s spiritual movement, especially in the area of reclaiming the goddess figure, and bringing trans women into that fold.
Page added: “She was from that generation of trans people who were encouraged to disappear into society, to not be visible once they had made that decision. Rachel was one of the very few people at that time who refused to go away.”
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Pretty accurate Mystique cosplay:
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Well, you can do that in slice-of-life kind of story about Superman’s every experiences (kinda like with the first Astro City issue and the Samaritan), but it’s hard to make that kind of thing an exciting multi-issue storyline about Batman chasing a gang of thieves. For one thing, there are no stakes in that for him, it’s not like they could ever hurt him.
On the other hand, it’d be kind of interesting to have a storyline in which Superman tries to catch a serial killer. Has that been done?
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Yeah I think Christian has it about right. Those stories can be told and are often great, I remember the ‘Kid Who Collected Spider-Man’ as really moving when I was young. A very ground level tale but do that every issue and there are no stakes for your powerful protagonist.
A lot of great fiction does come from overcoming seemingly unbeatable odds, which is where the Batman v Darkseid tales can deliver.
It needs a mix.
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There were a lot of these more mundane “down to Earth” stories in the Superman books, post Byrne pre- Death. It’s the sort of thing that Dan Jurgens used to excel at.
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There was the first “North East Comic Con” in Newcastle last weekend. I didn’t go because I had to visit my sister, but it appears to have been a great success.
Haven’t seen a single report about it that mentions comics, though, nor any lists of guests that includes anyone I recognise from comics.
I’m not judging. I’m sure the TV and movie actors were all great. But I do wonder why they bother to put the word “comic” in the event title. It’s not as if comics have a high enough cultural capital for the word itself to be a selling point. I just don’t get it.
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Barry Windsor Smith recovering from a stroke
Initially reported on BWS’ Facebook page this weekend
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That sounds concerning. Hope he’s ok.
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There’s a comic coming out in the next two days (I can’t remember who is Tuesday or Wednesday now) from Skybound/Image called ‘Void Rivals’ written by Robert Kirkman.
Not one to promote speculation in comics but there seems to be a big surprise in it.
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There’s a comic coming out in the next two days (I can’t remember who is Tuesday or Wednesday now) from Skybound/Image called ‘Void Rivals’ written by Robert Kirkman.
Not one to promote speculation in comics but there seems to be a big surprise in it.
The details are here for those who want to know. Spoilers, obviously!
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Yeah I was kind of looking forward to seeing what the big reveal to that was going to be. But looking at the spoilers doing the rounds on certain sites, my interest has been transformed to more of a meh🤷♂️ feeling.
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Maybe that’s why they thought it best not to tell anyone about it.
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I’ll spoiler tag my thoughts.
How stupid. There’s a big new Transformers movie out – that’s apparently actually half decent – and yet Kirkman’s big idea is to stealth launch a new TF comic as part of a shared universe under a different name. Insofar as there’s any casual movie-going audience available to comics any more, they’ve been almost pointedly evaded with this. Putting Joe and Transformers together in the same universe is also a terrible idea – it devalues both of them (but mostly GI Joe) and it’s like no-one’s learnt anything from how IDW tanked their good TF comics a few years back with the Hasbroverse. I wasn’t particularly interested in Kirkman doing TF anyway, but this gimmicky nonsense hasn’t helped matters.
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Spoilers for both the comic and the movie Martin refers to:
Apparently the new Transformers movie has GI Joe turn up at the end, so presumably this shared universe idea is something they’re pushing across media.
My suspicion is that this is just another Kirkman gimmick to try and get a quick sales boost. It seems like the kind of thing that’s actively designed to leak ahead of time so that fans seek out the comic.
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The sense I’m getting is its more than Kirkman, with Hasbro wanting to get into the shared film universe game.
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The sense I’m getting is its more than Kirkman, with Hasbro wanting to get into the shared film universe game.
I seem to remember this being mentioned several years ago.
Honestly, this feels like Hasbro showing up to the party after the hosts have gone to bed.
This is an idea of Hasbro’s that goes back quite a ways. In the late 2011 they threw around an idea called UNIT:E that would crossover Transformers with MASK, Action Man, Jem, Micronauts… Stretch Armstrong, Battleship and Candyland as well as hinting at ROM and Dungeons & Dragons amongst others. It got as far as a single comic at SDCC and a throwaway reference in the last series of Transformers Prime.
A few years later, they hinted at an extended cinematic universe and piloted the idea in IDW’s comics with the Revolution crossover in 2016 that brought Transformers, MASK, GI.Joe, Action Man, ROM and Micronauts together. This included a retcon in earlier Transformers issues that revealed the entire IDW GI.Joe run, previously a separate universe from Transformers actually happened in the time gap between the end of the Mike Costa ongoing comic and Optimus Prime’s return to Earth a few years later in the Robots in Disguise ongoing. Presumably the comics’ relatively lukewarm reception, plus the lower box-office take on The Last Knight and the lacklustre GI Joe movies put the kibosh on that.
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I get the point to a degree about the timing but that’s more on Hasbro changing the licence in the middle of a movie being released. I don’t know what you could do other than a stealth tease to time it better.
IDW lost the license at the end of 2022 and it’s been an open secret that Skybound would be getting it since the end of 2021. So it’s not like this is on the backfoot. There’s been plenty of time to actually synergise with the movie (by, say, giving out free teaser comics in cinemas or something).
It just seems so clumsily done, especially given Skybound’s whole deal seems to be bragging about cross-media skills.
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That’s what I mean about it being a Kirkman stunt. It just seems so gimmicky to launch it in “secret” like this. I can only assume the idea is to make the book initially under-ordered and hard to find, and create hype around it that way.
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Looks confirmed:
— Daniel Warren Johnson (@danielwarrenart) June 14, 2023
Yeah it was confirmed in the back of the comic itself by the looks of it.
Good news – I come at this more as a DWJ fan than any of the franchises involved, but it’s still good to know he has more work on the way soon.
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Looks confirmed:
— Daniel Warren Johnson (@danielwarrenart) June 14, 2023
Yeah it was confirmed in the back of the comic itself by the looks of it.
Good news – I come at this more as a DWJ fan than any of the franchises involved, but it’s still good to know he has more work on the way soon.
Hmm, that’s a bit Pat Lee marshmallowy.
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Looks confirmed:
— Daniel Warren Johnson (@danielwarrenart) June 14, 2023
Yeah it was confirmed in the back of the comic itself by the looks of it.
Good news – I come at this more as a DWJ fan than any of the franchises involved, but it’s still good to know he has more work on the way soon.
Hmm, that’s a bit Pat Lee marshmallowy.
I really am not impressed by that art piece. It looks pretty average. You would think they would use a better image than that one.
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DWJ tends to create incredibly dynamic comics that use exaggerated and sometimes quite warped physicality for his characters to create the desired effect.
So unless he drastically changes his style for this project, I’d expect that here, rather than absolutely rigid adherence to consistent and realistic character models.
Here are some sketches/commissions he’s worked on in the past.
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Looks confirmed:
— Daniel Warren Johnson (@danielwarrenart) June 14, 2023
That looks great.
DWJ’s involvement in this has just moved my interest needle from 0 to 100
He’s the most exciting talent to come to comics this past 10 years or so
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DWJ tends to create incredibly dynamic comics that use exaggerated and sometimes quite warped physicality for his characters to create the desired effect.
So unless he drastically changes his style for this project, I’d expect that here, rather than absolutely rigid adherence to consistent and realistic character models.
Here are some sketches/commissions he’s worked on in the past.
Incredible stuff, as per standard for the man. Great guy as well, I can imagine this is a passion project for him as he only makes comics he’s interested in.
There’s some serious potential for this to be one of the biggest releases image have done in years.
I know there’s some cynicism at the way they’ve gone about it but sadly with social media noise, most of it negative, you really do need a marketing gimmick to cut through it.
im delighted for DWJ as I think this will bring him to a bigger audience and happy for industry in general, because it’s been in the shit for a while, about time we had something to talk about since Hickman’s XMen
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WarrenBots, transform and roll-out!
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I know there’s some cynicism at the way they’ve gone about it but sadly with social media noise, most of it negative, you really do need a marketing gimmick to cut through it.
Yes. Essentially you are between a rock and a hard place with a lot of this stuff.
I like that Kirkman surprises, retailers seem to too (they’ll do a second print, if they don’t they can get a lot of money in the secondary market) and using top creators with something new to say. There is an element that he’s rich enough not to care from his TV sales, similar is true for Millar, but all surprise drops really do is increase profits for everyone but the main publisher.
There’s likely a spreadsheet saying you can put mediocre talent on a Transformers book and make a 20% profit from a solid fanbase. It’ll also move nobody anywhere positive.
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Where is Black Love and Romance in comics
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Mark Millar Gives DC and Marvel Some Advice
Veteran Superman writer Mark Millar shares his opinions on what Marvel and DC should be doing to revive the comic industry.
Comic book writer Mark Millar has shared his opinions on the current state of the comic book industry, and how Marvel and DC can tackle them.
In an interview with Thinking Critical, Millar, renowned for comics such as Superman: Red Son, Civil War, Wanted, and Kingsman, talked about his return to DC for a new Superman series. And, in the process, offered a few words of wisdom to the Big Two on how to revive the struggling industry.
According to Millar, around 20 legendary comic book writers should stage a comeback at both DC and Marvel, for at least two-year runs. Millar emphasized, “We’ve got to man the stations. I think everybody’s got to come in and do a couple of projects and find an artist who’s as good as you can possibly get and just do some killer run on something.” Sharing his personal interactions with comic book stores, he asserted, “The retailers, they’re struggling out there. They’re dying. All my friends and retailers are saying it’s never been, they’ve never known it as hard as this.” His proposal revolves around assembling authors such as Olivier Coipel and Pepe Larraz to execute captivating arcs, envisioning a rejuvenated era of comics.
Millar’s vision extends beyond immediate revival as he underlined that Marvel and DC’s successes are essential to nurture the growth of creator-owned works. He noted, “The real success comes from the industry. And I’m not talking about as individuals, as creators.” He continued, “But the honest truth is that creator-owned growth comes from Marvel and DC doing well.” The writer also did not shy away from critiquing the current output of major companies. He urged the two comic giants to raise their standards, “Obviously, there’s some great books. There’s two or three good books, I think, at DC right now. But you need 20 good books. There needs to be 20 great books.”
Millar also drew parallels with past eras of comic book excellence, recalling the 90s, 80s, and 60s when a bulk number of comic books used to make fans financially torn between options. “And nobody’s in that position anymore. Everybody’s like, ‘Yeah, there’s only two things worth checking out.’” Millar admitted that his ambition is to rekindle the quality of quantity on the levels of the industry’s golden days, where fans can once again find themselves eagerly clutching a stack of must-read issues.
At first glance, this seems like a great idea. But when you give it some thought, it is basically rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. This is something that may attract lapsed readers, not necessarily new readers. Millar’s idea just sounds like a stopgap measure. And when those creators leave, then what? I’m sure the Big Two would put premium pricing on the books, like $4.99 for 32 pages. Would lapsed readers be willing to pay those prices? It would be interesting to see how they would wedge crossover events into this, because the Big Two are addicts and they are not going to pass up that hit.
I would say that for myself, I would pass on it. My connection to the Big Two has been severed and healed over. Hell, there are top creators who do indie work that I pass on because it doesn’t grab me.
What would actually be more exciting and enticing is to bring in a group of young creators and give them free reign. I think back to the early 2000s when Marvel was trying to get out of bankruptcy and the risks they took. A lot of them weren’t successful but they were interesting. Unfortunately, I don’t think that would be possible today with their corporate masters. If they didn’t value their IP, I could see the corproations shuttering or selling off the comics divisions.
I doen’t think the situation is completely dire but I don’t think it’s that great either. The Big Two have models for their lines that are functioning for them at the moment, though I am not sure for how much longer. I just know that if indie books start going to $4.99 per 32-page issue, I may not be buying comics for much longer.
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Millar’s always had a provocative, hyperbolic tendency but the last few months he seems to have seriously gone off the deep end. As soon as I saw the name of the site I was wary and looks like I was right to be as Thinking Critically looks to be a comicsgate site:
https://theaither.com/the-strange-and-toxic-world-of-american-comic-book-youtube-commentators/
I am, admittedly, sceptical of the idea that the comics industry is nearly dead, as the comics is always nearly dead. The Direct Market is a seriously dysfunctional way to operate and it’s a miracle the industry does continue.
Would Millar’s solution work? It’s not exactly anything new and is already being done – see DC putting together Waid and Mora on World’s Finest. Marvel put Zdarsky and Chechetto on Daredevil. There’s lots of stuff I’m not interested in but good creative combinations are being set up all the time.
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Thing is, most of those “top 20” creators (whoever is on your list) have already had a run on most, if not all, of Marvel and DC’s top characters.
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Oh yeah, the other thing about the “just do a legendary run” idea – that is not decided by the creators but the audience. There are numerous crap stories as a result of a story capturing lightning in a bottle and there follows numerous attempts to deliberately engineer it. It doesn’t work that way.
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Separate to this, for Marvel and DC, I think they have a new problem. Used to be you could pitch their comics as doing stuff that couldn’t be done in TV or film. Now that isn’t really the case so what unique selling point do Marvel and DC’s comics now have?
While you can do just about anything on-screen nowadays, budget and production time does limit how good it will actually look. Lately, we have seen quite a bit of dodgy CGI in movies and television on projects that had huge budgets.
Comics still have the advantage but even then, it depends on the quality and style of the artist.
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Now that isn’t really the case so what unique selling point do Marvel and DC’s comics now have?
Great value for your dollar!!!
Wait. What?!
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Millar’s always had a provocative, hyperbolic tendency but the last few months he seems to have seriously gone off the deep end. As soon as I saw the name of the site I was wary and looks like I was right to be as Thinking Critically looks to be a comicsgate site:
On Twitter he’s been cheering on RFK Jr for President and promoting his bizarre conspiracy theories.
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Years back there was an argument that monthly issue sales subsidised trade prices. But in the interim there’s been a good few GN releases, using the price point, so not sure if that remains true now.
If it isn’t then maybe yes, go straight to trades.
One wildcard is how much the companies get from ad space in monthly issues, would that be made up by the trade sales alone?
The bigger issue for me is that they long since seem to have lost the ability to run the venerable series to any kind of status quo. They keep resorting to gimmicks, usually “character is replaced by someone else”, which just disorientates anyone who isn’g slavishly following it. Reducing those titles down to a few trades a year would remove the need to keep doing tiresome stunts simply to fill pages.
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Millar’s always had a provocative, hyperbolic tendency but the last few months he seems to have seriously gone off the deep end. As soon as I saw the name of the site I was wary and looks like I was right to be as Thinking Critically looks to be a comicsgate site:
On Twitter he’s been cheering on RFK Jr for President and promoting his bizarre conspiracy theories.
Oh yeah, he’s gone the full dipshit online. Look at some of the people he follows: GB News anchors and the “Free Speech Alliance” (who support the speech of transphobes).
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Sad to say he’s at that Frank-Miller-Holy-Terror level which no one should get close to. At that level it’s next to impossible to separate art from the artist.
I did order a copy of Nemesis Reloaded for Jimenez’ art, then BooksEtc did their “sorry, we screwed this one up, here’s a refund”, giving me an out.
Which gets to another point – Jimenez, Sampere, Campbell and Fabok are fantastic artists who I will buy books from where I can. They should be bigger names than they are.
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More than anything else I am convinced the current X-line was designed to be digital / online only, but Hickman was stopped from doing that while keeping the design.
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Certain creators reward the buyers of monthly books by including content that won’t be included in the inevitable trade collection. Ed Brubaker comes to mind (including noir film reviews, book recommendations, the occasional sociopolitical commentary, plus a letters page); Greg Rucka is another (his Lazarus series was full of extras); and Erik Larsen’s Savage Dragon series always has a lettercol and backup stories with varying degrees of quality. These are just a few of the names that come immediately to mind, but there are others who try to make your monthly purchase feel more intimate and personal and immediate than the TPB or HC you buy six months from now.
Of course, it’s important to point out that the examples I gave above are NOT from DC or Marvel. Which is too bad, and may be part of why many longterm fans no longer feel that connection to the Big Two.
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ertain creators reward the buyers of monthly books by including content that won’t be included in the inevitable trade collection. Ed Brubaker comes to mind (including noir film reviews, book recommendations, the occasional sociopolitical commentary, plus a letters page);
Whist this is totally true, Brubaker has not released a monthly book since covid, right? But has released 6 straight to hardcover volumes. Very France-comics
I think it wad something that in text based fiction only happened once the author had a reputation (though it looks like the first Rivers of London book got a hardcover so… maybe things have changed? )
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Oh, I remember trying to start a catalogue/database of my comics in a spreadsheet decades ago and bailing on it pretty quickly – of course there’s an app for that now (loads of them, actually) and I finally spent the past 3 weekends adding my bookshelf to the “Comic Geeks” app, issue by issue. The barcode scanner is imperfect but did still help.
I still have a small pile from my desk to add, and all my TPBs, but there are 2,546 floppies registered now, which is pretty modest a collection I think. The app will come in handy when I next attend the local collector con which I only became aware of late last year, and have attended twice (it’s held 3-4 times a year).
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Oh yeah, he’s gone the full dipshit online. Look at some of the people he follows: GB News anchors and the “Free Speech Alliance” (who support the speech of transphobes).
It’s nothing new really. Millar was a big Brexit fan, albeit coming from a Bennite (Lexit) perspective rather than a Farage one. He’s not someone I would hold as remotely politically sound, he loves a conspiracy. Brexit has clearly been a complete disaster and he’s liking RFK for the stuff about his family being assassinated. The problem is that conspiracy blinds people to the obvious, that most politicians do what they do because it profits them, either during or after office.
Despite that he does generally know how to sell comics. Probably only Kirkman of his generation could argue he knows better. Post Hickman taking on X-Men, which ended prematurely, I hear no buzz for anything other than, back to Kirkman, the Hasbro stuff he also marketed really cleverly.
I do get the desire for ‘straight to trade’ from fans. That would be fine for me and it works for the European market but I’d have to say if it were me as publisher it’s a hard sell over making money twice on the same product. I think we also have to consider that a lot of that material is one volume of 48 pages a year. Similarly to 2000ad with their 6-8 page strips the entire way you tell a story changes and is compressed. It’s a lot more focused on the artwork as those guys have a lot more time. None of that is bad per se but it is a massive change in focus I don’t know US comics with their production line system are ready for. How does it effect comic shops if they get one 48 page volume of Superman a year? Maybe it’s okay, The Killing Joke is in that format and has sold well for decades but also it could drive them bust, there is no incentive to use them over online discount bookstores.
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Seems like you have to register at CBR now for access to their articles. I tried to get to the Spurrier Uncanny Spider-man interview and couldn’t access it without registering and signing up to their newsletter. If the pop ups over there weren’t annoying enough – sheesh!
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Top Ten Reasons CBR Is Annoying – Number Six Will Surprise You
I really want to read that fascinating article Dave, but the link isn’t working. Can you just tell me what #6 is?!
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Top Ten Reasons CBR Is Annoying – Number Six Will Surprise You
I really want to read that fascinating article Dave, but the link isn’t working. Can you just tell me what #6 is?!
Only if you register first.
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Finally bit the bullet and cancelled my pull list at my local comic shop. All that’s been on it for the last couple of years is 2000AD/Judge Dredd Megazine. Given we’ve mived out to beyond the city suburbs and have two kids I was only getting to the shop once every couple of months and, as a result, it was a chore finding time to sit and read the backlog. Feel a bit guilty as five minutes after leaving the shop I set up a mail order subscription for 2000AD/Judge Dredd Megazine but, ultimately, the saving on cost and the convenience of getting it delivered straight to my door each week outweighed the sense of being a loyal customer that’s kept my pull list on life support for the past few years.
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My son and I are in New York next week for NYCC. Is anyone around to meet up? At the show or after hours.
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This was unexpected, but should be fun.
https://www.gamesradar.com/the-boys-comic-creator-to-write-a-much-darker-james-bond/
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Oh yeah, Garth Ennis on Bond should be great.
“When I took a look at the Bond of the Fleming novels, as opposed to the larger-than-life figure from the movies, I saw a great deal more potential – a much darker character in a more interesting world,” Ennis states in the announcement.
Yeah, sounds good.
Plus, I’m not a big war stories guy, so I’m always happy when Ennis does something else.
(And I am still so fucking sad that we never got to see that non-genre Ennis/Dillon book. Damn.)
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He’s also done the Bond mick take with Jimmy’s Bastards.
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My son and I are in New York next week for NYCC. Is anyone around to meet up? At the show or after hours.
I went Thursday:
I heard Friday had more panels in their pressroom. But Thursday was when my cousins got tickets.
All those heads at a minimum of $85 per…
It was crowded as it was on Thursday. I can’t even imagine how it is on Saturday although it is pouring outside.
Was a lot of fun. I didn’t catch the X-Wife podcasters who were walking on the floor.
Great cosplay, although my cousin told me last year had more. A lot of great artist exhibits, detailed figurines. Amazing time
Walked for hours to get my $85 worth.
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My son and I are in New York next week for NYCC. Is anyone around to meet up? At the show or after hours.
I went Thursday:
I heard Friday had more panels in their pressroom. But Thursday was when my cousins got tickets.
All those heads at a minimum of $85 per…
It was crowded as it was on Thursday. I can’t even imagine how it is on Saturday although it is pouring outside.
Was a lot of fun. I didn’t catch the X-Wife podcasters who were walking on the floor.
Great cosplay, although my cousin told me last year had more. A lot of great artist exhibits, detailed figurines. Amazing time
Walked for hours to get my $85 worth.
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I went Thursday:
Love the shirt, Alfred!!
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Where does one get a shirt like that?
Amazon
I got rave reviews on the floor, thumbs up, “Love your shirt” and so on…
I saw Ralph Carter and Bernadette Stanis (Michael and Thelma of “Good Times”)
The guy who starred in “The Last Dragon”
Someone from work went on Friday and took a picture with Darryl McDaniels (Run DMC)
A few of the original Power Rangers were there.
I saw Joe Quesada in the flesh, an Alex Ross exhibit with Jim Lee artwork as well.
My cousins went crazy on the anime exhibits and bought posters.
The place is a crowded scifi/fantasy heaven. 🤣
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I was there for all four days. I spent far (FAR) too much money.
We spent most days autograph hunting along Artist Alley – meeting so, so many comic book creators. Walt Simonson, Art Adams, Claremont, Tomasi, Jimenez, Mora, Hughes, Romita Jr, Capullo, Aaron, Percy, King, Remender, Chiang, Tynion, … and that’s barely half the list. My back aches from hauling the comics around that I brought along to get signed.
Autograph fees went from the sublime to the ridiculous. Most people charged between $5 and $10 for a signature. Some folks did one or two for free. Others were noticeably higher. Loeb and Romita Jr were both $30 – more than I wanted to pay but they were big deals for me. Jim Lee was $60. Frank Miller $80. I didn’t pay for either. Still, both of those I kind of understand. Scott Hanna charging $20 for one signature was a bit of a joke though. I couldn’t justify that to myself.
I also did the Superman, Batman, 2000AD, Energon Universe, and Ghost Machine panels. Saw most of the reunited Buffy cast for the Slayers panel; queued for hours to meet David Tennant; and got to spend a phenomenally expensive few seconds with Chris Evans.
Bless my wife for encouraging me to go along to this year’s con. I’ve been dreaming about doing one of the big U.S. shows for years. Thankfully I’m now in a place where I could afford to “go big or go home” with it. Not sure I’ll ever do another show of this size, but this one was epic.
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I’m flipping through the latest Previews and I see Boom comics is embracing $4.99 for a 32-page comic. Image’s new Duke miniseries is also $4.99 for 32 pages. A lot of small publishers are also doing the $4.99 price point.
I also noticed Dark Horse is no longer in the front of the catalog. They’re in the regular comics section, as is IDW.
I see a company called Alien Books is now publishing Valiant titles.
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Comixology app dead as of 4 December 2023. You’re using Kindle:
https://aiptcomics.com/2023/11/14/rip-comixology/
Good? Bad?
Just the final nail in the coffin of what Amazon has done to Comixology really. The service died in my mind some time ago. Once the shopfront disappeared it stopped being somewhere I would go to browse and buy digital comics.
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Court cases and settlements:
https://ew.com/marvel-settles-lawsuit-spider-man-co-creator-steve-ditko-estate-8413648
https://ew.com/movies/disney-sues-to-keep-full-rights-to-marvel-characters/
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Millar has been “trending” on “twitter” of late as he’s kind of sort of fallen in with the Comics Gate crowd. If you’ve seen anyone use the term “Cancel Pigs” that’s a Millar phrase.
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