Comics make Hints From Heloise
Hints From Heloise is a venerable newspaper column (remember those) that usually covers topics such as what to do when you scorch your husband's shirt while ironing, and how to fix a squeaky hinge. But now it has hinted up comics.
Continue ReadingPossible new Angry Birds Space game gets comics spin-offs
A little birdie in the sky has alerted us to four Angry Birds tie-in books due out in July -- and they appear to be space-themed...and include comics.
Continue ReadingThe history of sexy women in comics via Black Canary
All week DC Women Kicking Ass has been running polls to pick the favorite artists on various DCU heroines, such as Wonder Woman and Batgirl. It's fun to see the great artists who have drawn these characters over the years. It is also fun to observe how community standards have changed with regards to superheroines. Take Black Canary. It's a pretty safe assumption that even when the character was created by Carmine Infantino and Robert Kanigher in 1947 a woman in fishnet tights was assumed to be hot stuff. However first general prudishness and later the Comics Code, kept her sort of modest. In recent years, she's been unchained.
Continue ReadingDC updates New 52 collection plans
Ending some speculation, DC released an updated schedule for New 52 collections, and even the red shirt six titles that already joined the hall of heroes WILL be collected in their entirety -- all eight issues of Omac, Static Shock, etc, will be collected. Nice move there, actually.
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Why streaming content still sucks as a business model
While we all contemplate the various issues regarding revenue for comics and where it will come from, let's look at where we all assume it will be going: some variant of streaming content. With Apple—and the rest of the market —doing everything they can to kill off the DVD and "the cloud' becoming the place from whence all jollies will emerge, it is still not a great source of revenue for the big players like Netflix and Spotify.
Continue ReadingPre-Ordering Dominates Comics Purchases – Survey Results
Last week, I conducted a survey on how people buy their comics. The results of which are eye opening. 67% -- a little over 2/3 -- of respondents listed a form of pre-ordering as the primary purchasing method.
Continue ReadingMarvel Month-to-Month Sales December 2011
by Paul O'Brien -- This month, the slow build to AVENGERS VS X-MEN begins with the AVENGERS: X-SANCTION miniseries; and DEFENDERS is relaunched. Both are wisely given a pretty clear run, without other Marvel launches competing for space. Elsewhere, the X-Men, Hulk and Fantastic Four relaunches continue to bed down. And down at the bottom end of the chart, the cancellations continue to mount up. Normal service is resumed, kind of, as Marvel had the largest share of the north American direct market, albeit by a fairly narrow margin - 39% to 38% in units, 34.4% to 33.7% in dollars. But bear in mind, this was a five-week month where DC more or less sat out week five.
Continue ReadingValiant launches retailer outreach, hires Freeman
The newly resurgent Valiant Entertainment is taking action to get the retail community on it side, hiring former retailer Atom! Freeman to the position of Sales Manager and starting a campaign to contact all the 2500 retailers in the US. This kind of goodwill tour should pay off quite a bit—in our experience, all it really takes to befriend a retailer is to listen and then maybe learn.
Continue ReadingNew Joann Sfar documentary will make you feel better about being a cartoonist
Soon after posting yesterday's fret fest over the state of the cartoonist, we had to hurry off to the world premiere of JOANN SFAR: DRAWING FROM LIFE, a documentary by Sam Ball about the French comics superstar. A mellow, thoughtful 46 minute film, it captures Sfar a few years ago when THE RABBI'S CAT was on its way to selling 600,000 copies in France and his work was being published here in the US by First Second...but BEFORE he became more renowned in his homeland for directing.
Continue ReadingAardman’s awesome DC Nation trailer
Okay this might just be the coolest comics-related promo of the year. Aardman Films, the claymation studio behind Wallace and Gromit, has made a promo piece for the DC Nation cartoon block debuting on the Cartoon Network later this year. It takes a conceit first used on their breakthrough film, CREATURE COMFORTS, which animated zoo goers comments on what the zoo animals might be thinking. In this case, they take kid's voicing various DC superheroes. The result is charming and fresh. If DC Nation has anything this good we're in for a treat.
Continue ReadingNew logo alert: Oni Press
Two is a trend! Oni Press has just announced a new logo replacing the Dave Gibbons-designed original. The new logo was designed by Oni Press art director Keith A. Wood and will first appear on THE SECRET HISTORY OF D.B. COOPER, which comes out in March.
Continue ReadingAre cartoonists doomed to die poor and homeless while pirates dance on their graves?
Even as the economy shows fitful signs of flickering back to life, the comics economy, which was "too small to fail" to really take much of a hit during the Great Recession, is still puddling along, under capitalized, under-recognized and with even the greatest cartoonists prone to spells of belt tightening. Comics have been traditionally immune to the effects of a recession—"cheap entertainment does well in bad times!" we've heard time and again—but the corollary is also true: Economic boom times rarely touch comics. During the late '90s and the first dot.com boom, one of the greatest eras of general prosperity in American history, comics were going through their WORST slump since the end of newsstand distribution, with sales numbers so low executives were crying over them. And then, paradoxically, comics began to do better even during the mini-recession following 9/11 and the end of the dot.com bubble.
Continue ReadingJudge to Archie co-publisher: “Stay away!”
The ugly legal battle between Archie Comics co-CEO's Jon Goldwater and Nancy Silberkleit has escalated in recent weeks with new legal filings. And now a judge has banned Silberkleit from going anywhere near Archie's offices or contacting any of the employees.
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