The News Blog of Comics Culture
Short version, the last remaining book retail giant plans to close as many as a third of its stores over a 10-year period—although that may be an optimistic projection, as well. Slowed by the rise of digital and a lack of new malls, B&N oipened only two stores in the last fiscal year, and it’s end of year profits were well below what was expected. While the Nook ereaders has been a bright spot, sales there have slowed as well. So a leaner meaner BN seems to be in the cards.
The 90s are out there, and Scully and Mulder are determined to find them. IDW will be relaunching the X-files franchise in comics form. The plan includes reprints of the original series that ran from 1995-2009, and a new series launching in June.
Close on the heel of the Adventure Time comic empire, Boom is striking again with a comics adaptation of The Regular Show, J.G. Quintel’s Cartoon Network hit about Mordecai and Rigby, a blue jay and raccoon trying to make their way in a crazy world. K.C. Green writes and Alison Strejlau draws.
If there’s one trend we’ve noticed growing over the years its the use of graphic novels as teaching tools—on the must basic level, comics are now recognized as a way to get reluctant readers to get started reading. On a larger level, comics are being used as a general teaching tool. Josh Elder’s Reading with Pictures organization has been promoting this idea and cataloging the use of comics in the classroom. It’s not just the visceral appeal of colorful pictures that puts comics over—some think that the verbal-visual blend is the future of literacy, and comics could potentially be on the forefront of that.
It’s not that they weren’t go before, but now they ‘but now they even have a whole name: Marvel’s Phase Three, as Marvel studio head Kevin Feige told MTV:
§ Must Read: Tom Spurgeon catches up with First Second editor Calista Brill, whose essay on giving up on a comics career turned into a 10-alarm internet fire last week. Verbalizing these painful issues of a career in comics was something of a shock for many:
Written by Vance Sumner, drawn by Sandy Jarrell. Published by Monkeybrain Comics.
X-Men: First Class does something I haven’t seen a superhero movie do before. It’s not just a period piece, that’s unusual enough, but it also places its fantastic characters, Gump-like, in the middle of historical fact. Captain America: The First Avenger, released concurrently, went back in time to place its difficult-to-like protagonist in his proper context, but then wove a fantastical story around him involving ancient Norse artifacts and a guy with no face. First Class not only places its characters in history, it puts them at the center of the darkest, most traumatic events of their time.
This week saw the release of Green Lantern #16 by Geoff Johns and Doug Mahnke, as well as Green Lantern Corps #16, by Peter Tomasi and Fernando Pasarin. The Green Lantern books are some of DC’s most popular, but recently seem to have fallen out of the spotlight, off doing their own thing while the […]
We’ve all been enjoying Dennis Hopeless week, haven’t we? That time once a month where two of his books come out on the same day? Well just in case that wasn’t enough, it looks like Hopeless has decided to add another date to our calendar: Mike Norton week. Not only is Norton involved in drawing […]
