ROBOT 13 hits 100K downloads mark

9 Comments POSTED ON Aug 03 2010 AT 10:21 am BY The Beat

ROBOT 13, the stylish steampunk fantasy comic by Thomas Hall and Daniel Bradford, has just become one of the first independently produced comics to push past the 100,000 download mark on iTunes and Android, according to a press release from e-distributor Robot Comics. The app is free on both platforms, so it hasn't been a cash cow for the creators -- however, there are three print issues available and the first has sold out. Nonetheless, it's an impressive feat for a relatively unknown indie comic. The downloadable version has many bells and whistles, says Robot Comics.

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Charts of Note #2: Does Comic-Con KILL movie buzz?

22 Comments POSTED ON Aug 03 2010 AT 8:04 am BY The Beat

Has all the Comic-Con hype actually TURNED OFF some moviegoers? That's what what a chart over at THR seems to show, Jay Fernandez reports:

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Charts of Note #1: Vertigo ongoing series runs

5 Comments POSTED ON Aug 03 2010 AT 8:02 am BY The Beat

Funnybook Babylon has an interesting charticle looking at the runs of various Vertigo ongoing series over the years, following some speculation that books were being canceled there because of increased scrutiny from DC's new management. Chris Eckert suggests this is not the case, or at least not the only factor, by showing that the lowest selling titles are always canceled, although nowadays the best selling title is something that would have been canceled a decade ago. Eckert also runs a chart showing relative Amazon rankings for various Vertigo trades, a weak metric but all we have to go on.

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DC pushes Green Lantern to the fashionable

6 Comments POSTED ON Aug 03 2010 AT 8:01 am BY The Beat

A vigilant reader sent us this scan of an ad in the current edition of Women's Wear Daily, the bible of the fashion trade. The ad, for Green Lantern licensing opportunities, ran in a previews section for the upcoming 2010 MAGIC Marketplace, "the preeminent trade event in the international fashion industry." Obviously, Warner Bros. has BIG, BIG plans for Green Lantern licensing -- and based on the number of folks we see walking the streets of NYC in GL T-shirts, we'd say they might just be on to something.

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Superman’s German accident

9 Comments POSTED ON Aug 03 2010 AT 8:00 am BY The Beat

Spotted in Berlin. Context unknown. Thanks to Jah Furry for the share.

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True Blood Recap: Then we woke up in a puddle

5 Comments POSTED ON Aug 02 2010 AT 4:19 pm BY Shannon OLeary

Share this link on Facebook!TweetTrue Blood Season 3 Episode 7: Hitting the Ground Hitting the Ground hit the ground running just where we’d been left off on the edge of our seats last week with Lorena sucking Sookie all but dry.“You’re delicious,” Lorena says to Sookie, saying she can see why Bill is so enamored with her.  [...]

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SD10 the wrap-up: Eating scraps

84 Comments POSTED ON Aug 02 2010 AT 12:55 pm BY The Beat

Lesson #1 of San Diego Comic-Con 2010: You can’t live on breakfast from the Embassy Suites. Or if you do, you will pay a fightful price. It was Thursday morning at Comic-Con, the morning after Preview night and the day when things blast into high gear with a roar of thunders and a crack of ozone. It was my second morning at the Embassy Suites, the “family hotel” of the Inner Circle. With a free breakfast buffet and “manager’s receptions”—aka FREE BOOZE—every evening, not to mention giant suites that sleep 6 comfortably, the Embassy Suites is the best bargain at the con for those, like this year’s Beat, on a budget.

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Archaia goes exclusive with Graphic.ly for digital

5 Comments POSTED ON Aug 02 2010 AT 11:50 am BY The Beat

Studios and the digital comics provider Graphic.ly have announced an exclusive agreement, Graphic.ly's Micah Baldwin explains in a newsletter: We are excited that Archaia has decided to work with us exclusively! Over the past couple of months, PJ and I have had a lot of conversations about the benefits of presenting Archaia's books digitally to a community of passionate fans. We will be able to do interesting and innovative things around story lines, creators and characters.

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SAVE APATHEA! site launches

1 Comment POSTED ON Aug 02 2010 AT 8:00 am BY The Beat

MK Reed writes to point us to a new website, SAVE APATHEA! which will be serializing her upcoming First Second graphic novel Americus, which is due out in late 2011. It's described as the story of "Neil Barton, a teenager growing up in Oklahoma, and his fight to keep his favorite fantasy series, The Chronicles of Apathea Ravenchilde, in his public library." Reed (a sometime Beat contributor) writes and Jonathan Hill provides art. The first chapter was previously published in Papercutter #7. News pages will go up Monday-Wednesday-Friday.

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Marvel introduces special variant spelling covers

13 Comments POSTED ON Aug 01 2010 AT 5:18 pm BY The Beat

Marvel's S.H.I.E.L.D. #3 variant cover by Dustin Weaver reveals an intriguing new spelling for the name of physics god Sir Isaac Newton. However a peek at the promo copy for the issue , while urging us to "discover the secrets" of the man who popularized gravity, also allows us to discover one of Marvel's more startling secrets:

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SD10: True Blood was EVERYWHERE

3 Comments POSTED ON Aug 01 2010 AT 3:50 pm BY Shannon OLeary

By Shannon O'Leary, Entertainment Editor<P> Last week I said I’d turn in a late True Blood Recap after I got back from Comic Con. Last week I hadn’t actually gone to Comic Con yet.   Going to Comic Con this year was not unlike attending The Fall of Saigon. It was a crowded combat zone littered with hundreds of thousands of nerds elbowing each other out of the way so they could get their pop culture freak on until one of them got stabbed in the face with a pen! <P> I’m not saying it wasn’t fun. I had a blast! But after all that madness, chaos and immersive viral marketing I just don’t have it in me to properly recap the sixth episode of Season Three: I Got A Right To Sing The Blues. Sorry to not live up to my commitments to you, the fang faithful, but I’ve been to war and back and I’m going to save my recapping jujitsu for episode seven on Sunday. What I can do now is tell you a little war story.<P>

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Briefs & Boxers! 08/01/10

9 Comments POSTED ON Aug 01 2010 AT 3:45 pm BY Marc-Oliver Frisch

This week: Neil Gaiman and the continuity courtroom; Kurt Busiek on track to get the first good superhero movie made; Frank Miller surrenders; WildStorm's new publishing niche; and more.

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The Alcott Analysis: Batman & Robin

19 Comments POSTED ON Aug 01 2010 AT 8:00 am BY Todd Alcott

Contrary to its reputation as a garish, headache-inducing day-glo nightmare, Batman &Robin is, in fact, a sensitive, heartfelt examination of power, frailty, family, humanity’s custody of the earth, the ties that bind and the mysterious ways of the human heart. I kid, of course. Batman & Robin, as every schoolboy knows, is ridiculous. A ludicrous traffic-jam of a narrative, it makes no goddamn sense whatsoever from any conceivable point of view. However, that does not mean it is unworthy of study. To paraphrase Charlie Brown, if one learns more from one’s mistakes, that must the creators of Batman & Robin the smartest storytellers who ever lived. No fewer than six main characters vault into the narrative of Batman & Robin, each with his or her own agenda. Some of these agendas cohere into a compelling, thematically- linked narrative. Others, well, not so much.

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Heidi MacDonald, editor-in-chief

Assistant Editor: Kate Fitzsimons

Contributing Editors
Torsten Adair
Jen Vaughn

Technology Editor: Bruce Lidl
Entertainment Editor: Shannon O'Leary

Columnists:
Todd Alcott
Michel Fiffe
Marc-Oliver Frisch
Rich Johnson
Paul O'Brien
MK Reed

Illustrations:
Maggie Siegel-Berele

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