New Green Lantern trailer goes deep into Lantern lore

31 Comments POSTED ON May 25 2011 AT 4:00 pm BY The Beat

A new GREEN LANTERN trailer has been released that should be titled "Green Lantern Lore 101" for it explains about Oa, and Guardians and rings and .... yellow powers and all that stuff. As someone who has never been that into Green Lantern, I learned something.

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Book news: Is Liberty’s B&N bid the beginning of the end?

17 Comments POSTED ON May 25 2011 AT 8:22 am BY The Beat

There was some floor chatter at BEA about Barnes & Noble yesterday -- although we all know Borders is not long for this world, some are suggesting that all the book chains are going to be bye-bye within two years. This despite the recent $1 billion purchase bid for Barnes &Noble by John Malone's Liberty Media. But is Malone's bid really about brick and mortar stores?

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Nice art: Kevin Huizenga’s The Body of Work

0 Comments POSTED ON May 25 2011 AT 8:14 am BY The Beat

After some time off, what things do is putting out some comics again. Here's Kevin Huizenga's comic from the CARTOON POLYMATHS program.

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Art

The comics day at BEA: Day 1 — Habibi and Wimpy Kid rule

2 Comments POSTED ON May 24 2011 AT 6:40 pm BY The Beat

The first day of exhibits at this year's BEA kicked off with a smaller floor space, and, as opposed to years past when the Diamond booth was the place to be for comics, found comics publishers scattered all over the floor -- Archaia being the latest to move out, over to PGW. But wherever they were, comics seemed comfortable to be there.

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Wonder Woman: What happened and why she is wearing shorts

68 Comments POSTED ON May 24 2011 AT 8:05 am BY The Beat

Since the announcement that Wonder Woman pilot had not made NBC's schedule, there has been no dearth of analysis about what it says about Wonder Woman, about us, about women, about...EVERYTHING, dammit. The Wonder Woman pilot getting dropped may just be the most significant event of our time! First off, a picture of the variant "shorts" costume has been making the rounds. Would showing a bit more thigh have tipped the balance for the show? Probably not. With Wonder Woman nothing can ever, ever be simple.

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Jack Kirby: “Nobody was in the mood to joke unless you hit a guy with a baseball bat.”

37 Comments POSTED ON May 24 2011 AT 8:00 am BY The Beat

The notorious 1990 Comics Journal interview with Jack Kirby is now online in its entirety, and you can see what made it notorious. The 71-year-old Kirby was not shy about asserting his place in the creation of comics' best known characters and at the expense of his collaborators.

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Piskor’s Color Chart of Yore points out how awful most comics coloring is

5 Comments POSTED ON May 24 2011 AT 7:45 am BY The Beat

Ed "Wizzywig" Piskor has crated a Photoshop version of the famous 64-color chart used to color comics up until the advent of computer coloring and scanning in the 80s. It is, as he points out, rather than a crippling limitation, an invitation to actually think about color:

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Webcomics watch: Donna Barr’s A LITTLE DEATH

2 Comments POSTED ON May 24 2011 AT 7:30 am BY The Beat

Donna Barr is one of the more eccentric cartoonists to come out of the whole self-publishing movement -- her signature book, DESERT PEACH, is about gay Nazis, for instance. Currently she's working on a webcomic called A LITTLE DEATH, which illustrates readers written comments on how they think they'll die. Like we said -- fun, but a little weird.

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Menu leaves L’Association

0 Comments POSTED ON May 24 2011 AT 7:09 am BY The Beat

Jean-Christophe Menu, a founding member and driving force behind the French art comic powerhouse L'Association, has left the organization following a series of shake-ups and disruptions, including a workers strike. Bart Beaty has the best analysis of what it mean for L'Asso, Menu and French comics in general.

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Mike Dawson unveils cover for TROOP 142

2 Comments POSTED ON May 23 2011 AT 5:42 pm BY The Beat

Cartoonist Mike Dawson has revealed the cover for TROOP 142, his Boy Scout epic coming out from Secret Acres this fall. The book will debut at SPX. TROOP 142 ran as a webcomic and follows a group of Boy Scouts on a retreat in 1995 and the things they learn about boyhood, manhood and more. It's an excellent story, without sentiment, and has already won an Ignatz as Best Online Comic.

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BOOM! debuts Stan Lee app

2 Comments POSTED ON May 23 2011 AT 4:00 pm BY The Beat

It seems that standalone apps for authors and imprints and licenses are now the way to go on digital devices, BOOM! has just announced a new Stan Lee app for iOS devices that will includes the digital version of Stan's BOOM! books, including SOLDIER ZERO, THE TRAVELER, and STARBORN. As the PR mentions, this is part of "BOOM! Studios’ aggressive digital comics strategy to offer their entire frontlist and backlist of titles for download across multiple mobile and desktop platforms." So there.

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SCOOP! First look at Twilight The Graphic Novel Volume 2 cover

5 Comments POSTED ON May 23 2011 AT 2:29 pm BY The Beat

Lots of book news today as the BA, the biggest domestic book show of the year, has kicked off this week. Here's the announcement for part 2 of TWILIGHT: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL. Illustrated by Young Kim, the first part of the adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's sensational vampire tale sold 66,000 copies in one week and had a 350,000 first printing. Yen Press has provided us with a sneak peek at the cover to Volume 2, featuring dreamy Edward Cullen, as portrayed by Kim.

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MeCAF 2011: Out to Sea

6 Comments POSTED ON May 23 2011 AT 1:55 pm BY Jen Vaughn

The Maine Comics Art Festival gains momentum with each passing year like the gentle fog we kept hoping would come visit this year. The Saturday night before the show started out just right with a stop off at Casablanca Comics.

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Archaia switches to PGW, publishes APES

2 Comments POSTED ON May 23 2011 AT 1:25 pm BY The Beat

Archaia is making some moves, both with a new distributor -- PGW -- and its first illustrated novel, strong>Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes. Buried in a PR on the Ape book is the news that Archaia is leaving Diamond for PGW, which already distributes Cartoon Books. PGW distributes over 100 independent publishers, so picking up a few GN publishers makes sense. And Archaia's new books-only plan is also a good bit for a books-only distributor.

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Borders’ April: $132 million in losses

2 Comments POSTED ON May 23 2011 AT 12:26 pm BY The Beat

Borders' woes continued in April as their losses mounted, PW reports.

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