Wow, February 1 is a banner day in comics history. It is also the day that Image Comics was created—20 years ago. Via Facebook, co-founder Jim Valentino shared a photo of the founders and one pal on that fateful day, from left to right Erik Larsen, Hank Kanalz, Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, Marc Silvestri, and Jim Valentino. They’e all still in the game, all better off than they were 20 years ago. Collectively, they’ve changed the industry a time or two. It was also a day when people wore denim shirts. Ah, what a time…

It was 13 years ago that an “amateur” comics journalist named Gail Simone ran a survey about the phenomenon of “Women in Refrigerators” in comics. That site—currently housed here—used the moment of Kyle Rayner came home and found his girlfriend stuffed in the refrigerator as a lens for the entire phenomenon of female comics characters getting beaten, crippled, stabbed, mutilated, assaulted, and devalued.

Luckily, since then, everything has been fixed!

Or not.

Anyway, the women write about comics site hosted a blog carousel asking writers to update their feelings on WiR. There are quite a few essays linked to and they will take a long time to read. Rather than my summarizing anything there, I will merely say a prayer to Stephanie Brown and Sue Dibny and move on.

Unrelated, but relevant, Sue at DC Women Kicking Ass interviews Janelle Asselin former DC, now Disney editor about her college thesis on marketing to women in comics, and the conclusions she reached from a survey she ran. The whole thing is worth reading, but here’s perhaps the nut graph:

The primary conclusions I made from my research are that there are four different ways the comics industry can adjust to increase sales to an often excluded demographic that just happens – oh yeah – to make up over 50% of America. Those four ways are better marketing towards women, more inclusive content, more effective distribution, and changing the cultural preconceptions of comics. Not every company would need to do every thing on that list, obviously. There are great indie companies that produce content that is already woman-friendly – but people just don’t know about them yet. They would need to market to women better or find new ways to distribute. And better marketing to women would, over time, change the cultural preconceptions of comics.

The thing that surprised me the most was that the answers, as I saw them anyway, were not insane, drastic measures that companies would need to take. These are all within the grasp of comics publishers and retailers. Obviously the cultural preconceptions are difficult to change, but with the other three being adjusted, that would come eventually. It just takes actually considering women of any age a viable market for comics.

We wanted to end this on an upbeat note however. Although we linked to it before, the new This! Moments for women in comics has arisen specifically out of this discussion as a place for triumphant and heroic moments—definitely something worth tumblring about.

By Todd Allen

In many ways, Rob Leifeld’s old Extreme line was the epitome of the Direct Market in the mid-90s.  Imagine my surprise when I’m reading the relaunch of one of those books at realize it’s very much a mid-80s comic.

As with the Prophet re-launch, the Glory re-launch is something a bit different.  This time out writer Joe Keatinge and artist Ross Campbell channel Miracleman and Airboy for their new series,  debuting with Glory #23.  Miracleman and Airboy?  Yes, I said it.

If you go back to the mid-80s, the post-modern era really started a little bit before Watchmen.  Marvelman really started that movement back in 1982 over in Warrior magazine.  Eclipse brought the re-christened Miracleman over to the US in ‘85, to reprint and then continue the story.  Airboy added to the mix in ‘86, along with Miller’s Dark Knight and Moore’s Watchmen (Dark Knight and Watchmen are the two comics that really popularized the pos-tmodern movement).

To varying degrees, Marvel/Miracleman, Dark Knight, Airboy and Watchmen are spin out of trying to find out what happened to missing/retired heroes as a threat from the past emerges.  (And yes, that’s EXACTLY what happened in the first arc of Airboy – Chuck Dixon was doing the action take on post-modernism before it was the fad.)

Glory #23 opens with a young woman who has dreams of the Glory heroine.  Glory has disappeared, and she’s made it her mission to find her.  We see flashbacks to Glory’s birth, the peace-brokered child of the leaders of war races, one god-like and the other demon-like.  We see flashbacks to Glory (or perhaps “Gory” would be more apt –  she could teach the Savage Hawkman something about being Savage).  We also see sinister things lurking in the shadows as the young lady quests.

Glory is an analogue to Wonder Woman, much the same way the better known Supreme is an analogue to Superman.  The flashbacks reminded me of Alan Moore’s run on Supreme, where he was having fun playing with the tropes of Superman from specific time periods.  This is a more violent take on Wonder Woman, more savage and aloof a warrior than DC’s pushed the character towards, but still in the basic mold.  This is still a little darker than the current Azzarello/Chiang edition of Wonder Woman.

All in all, this is a set-up issue.  Where’s Glory gone to?  Has something bad happened to her?  Sinister forces are lurking.  The transitions from past to present are smooth and the mood of impending doom is set up properly.  This is _so_ an 80s post-modern comic.  The ironic thing is, it’s post-modern on a heroine that really doesn’t have all that deep a publishing history and wasn’t published in the time period the flashbacks occur in.

The unusual thing about the Campbell art is that he’s not drawing Glory as a swimsuit model.  She’s a bruiser built more like a linebacker.  While I’m not blinking my eyes, muttering “where did this come from,” like I was with the Prophet relaunch, Glory is solid book that seems to know what it is.  If the tropes I described are your cup o’ tea, it’s well worth your time.  The Extreme relaunch is two-for-two and I’m waiting to see what Erik Larsen is doing with those old Alan Moore scripts.  And yes, it cracks me up how comfortably this comic would have sit in the Eclipse section in 1986, right between Airboy and Miracleman.

Glory #23 comes out on February 15th.

By Todd Allen

After announcing a book for Free Comic Book Day and a lot of teasing, the relaunched Valiant has announced its first title.  X-O Manowar is launching on May 2nd.  That’s actually the Wednesday BEFORE Free Comic Book Day.

X-O’s high concept is, roughly stated, Conan in Iron Man’s suit.  Essentially, a Visigoth warrior/barbarian is abducted by aliens and ends up with the aliens’ most advanced weapon in the universe suit of armor.  It’s also been a popular concept a couple times around, particularly during the first Valiant run.  Between the two previous Valiant launches, here’s a quick partial list of creators who’ve worked on X-O: Jim Shooter, Steve Englehart, Barry Windsor-Smith, Bob Layton, Bart Sears, Jackson Guice, Mark Waid, Dwayne McDuffie and Scot Eaton.  Which is to say, “no pressure.”

Who’s on the relaunch?  The writer is Robert Venditti, best known for the “Surrogates” graphic novels over at Top Shelf.  The artist is Cary Nord, probably best known for his work on Conan at Dark Horse.  Did I mention Venditti wrote an issue of Iron Man: Iron Protocols?  Hmm… an Iron Man writer and a Conan artist on X-O Manowar.

Comic Book Resources has an interview with Vendetti and Valiant Editor Warren Simons (who I seem to recall having been an Iron Man editor, to continue the theme).  The short version is X-O Manowar was never broken, so they’re not planning on fixing it.  However, Vendetti intends to flesh out the back stories involved and go a little deeper into the alien religion.

Bloodshot and Harbinger are announced to be in the FCBD comic, so figure those announcements will be coming up shortly.  My money would be on Bloodshot being next.  That leaves a few more properties up in the air, notably Shadowman, Ninjak and Quantum & Woody.   File under developing…

In the late ’90s, Alan Moore had a bit of a lull in his career.  It was after his exit from DC and before he started up LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN and AMERICA’S BEST COMICS with WildStorm (almost exactly when DC bought WildStorm).  The person who gave Alan Moore a job was Rob Liefeld, over at his Extreme imprint. Moore did a very retro take on SUPREME and wrote a run of YOUNGBLOOD. The thing is, not all of those scripts were drawn or published.

No more! (Pun intended.)

Over at Robot 6, we find out Extreme is relaunching and those old Moore scripts are getting produced.  Erik Larsen will be doing Moore’s final SUPREME script and the quickly aborted YOUNGBLOOD series is to be resurrected.

“We have a great number of his scripts including several “Youngblood” issues that we will produce in the next year. Alan was in his peak form back then. “Supreme” fueled his comic book come back and many of his Extreme ideas became the basis of the former ABC line. We will showcase the best that Alan did at that period of his career.”

Now about the last installment of 1968… <ducks head>

I wouldn't cross her, would you?

At San Diego Comic-Con it was announced that Anne Rice’s classic vampire novel, Interview With a Vampire, is being adapted into graphic novel format by webcomic creator Ashley Marie Witter for Yen Press, due out in 2012. Also announced was the manga adaptation of Scott Westerfield’s popular young adult science fiction series Uglies, by Tokyo-based artist Shawn Cumming, for an undisclosed publisher. The series is about a society that tries to force conformity and beauty upon its subjects.

Meanwhile, Ms. Tree, a literary character who began as a comic book character, returns to print. Author and comics creator Max Allan Collins announced at the First Comics revival panel that the entire run of the hardboiled graphic novel series will be collected and returned to print. Although Collins has published several short stories and a novel about the character in the years since, the Ms. Tree comics have been out of print since 1993.

Kate Fitzsimons is the producer of PW Comics World’s new podcast More To Come, starring The Beat’s own Heidi MacDonald. You can subscribe to it on iTunes here. She will be covering San Diego Comic-Con all week for The Beat – if you have a tip, twitter her at geekiferouskate.

Via PR and an interview with CBR, the much-argued over Valiant comics characters are coming back, this time under a group led by former Marvel CEO Peter Cuneo, his brother, Gavin, CEO Jason Kothari and director Dinesh Shamdasani.

This morning, Valiant Entertainment – the company which purchased the rights to the ’90s comics powerhouse’s original properties in 2007 – announced that it will begin publishing new comics in both print and digitally formats in 2012 featuring heroes like XO Manowar and Bloodshot. The move comes in part thanks to a capital infusion from Cueno & Company, LCC – an investment firm headed by former Marvel CEO and Vice Chairman Peter Cuneo and his brother Gavin. Cuneo left Marvel in 2010 as a result of the Disney buyout of that company and will serve as Chairman of Valiant, rounding out a management team that already included CEO Jason Kothari and Director Dinesh Shamdasani (the full press release can be read here).

Valiant Comics was a ’90s comics powerhouse, with astounding sales for books that relied on strong stories and characters over flashy art. The company foundered, as many did, in the wasteland of the Distributor Wars, and the characters have been at the center of several lawsuits since then, most recently when the FORMER e-i-c-, and chief world builder of the Valiant-verse, Jim Shooter, wrote several of the Gold Key characters — like Turok — at Dark Horse. Valiant had licensed these characters to great success in the 90s, but they are not part of the line moving forward:

Kothari: Valiant has a huge library of characters, and we have the Valiant Universe which is larger than any one character as it plays an invaluable role in supporting and strengthening all the characters within it. The Gold Key characters are part of our past, but they are not important to our future. Within the Valiant Universe framework, we are initially focusing on 9 or 10 of Valiant’s A-list characters, such as X-O Manowar, Bloodshot, and Harbinger, and the interactions between them.

The last time we had a public encounter with people claiming to be rebooting Valiant was a couple of years ago when Fred Pierce, formerly of Wizard, and Mark Frangos, formerly of Virgin, were going around the Diamond summit talking about relaunching the line. Neither they, nor Bill Jemas, another potential publishing figure who attempted to orchestrate a Valiant comeback, seems to be involved with this go round. Heck, the silhouetted figure with the smoking gun in the promo art (below) ight as well stand in for the Mystery Valiant Investor who has been lurking on the edges of the comics biz for the last few years.

With BOOM!’s DARKWING DUCK comics doing well for the ’90s nostalgia crowd, was it only a matter of time before they brought back RESCUE RANGERS, as well? Absolutely.

Imagining chipmunk terrorists Chip and Dale as bold adventurers, with the addition of rodent heroes Monterey Jack, Gadget, and Zipper the Housefly, the Rescue Rangers were another staple of the Disney Afternoon and a favorite of furry fans everywhere. Ian Brill is back as writer, with Leonel Castellani as artist.

It’s the return of your favorite furry flatfoots in an all new original ongoing series! Coming on the heels of BOOM!’s bestselling and multiple sell out DARKWING DUCK series, BOOM! brings you another piece of the Disney Afternoon revolution with CHIP ‘N DALE RESCUE RANGERS in their own ongoing series debuting this December.

Join DARKWING DUCK writer Ian Brill and MARVEL SUPERHERO SQUAD artist Leonel Castellani as they take the diminutive detectives on all new original adventure!

Whether you’re a CHIP ‘N DALE RESCUE RANGERS fan from the hit TV show or want to discover these beloved characters for the first time, this new ongoing series delivers all the mystery, intrigue and hijinks that made CHIP ‘N DALE RESCUE RANGERS the number one Disney Afternoon TV show ever!

This is the only comic book series coming out that will have you singing that song you can never forget: “Sometimes some crimes go slipping through the cracks. But these two Gumshoes are picking up the slack. There’s no case too big, no case too small, when you need help just call —Ch-ch-ch-Chip ‘N Dale Rescue Rangers!”

“After the overwhelming success we’ve had bringing DARKWING DUCK back, BOOM! knew it was time to continue the excitement and imagination of the Disney Afternoon revolution in comic book form ,” said DARKWING DUCK writer Ian Brill. “It’s an honor to continue the adventures of CHIP ‘N DALE RESCUE RANGERS for both the generation of fans that enjoyed the show the first time and for a whole new generation of comic book fans!”

Debuting in 1989, the top rated CHIP ‘N DALE RESCUE RANGERS brought action and suspense to the Disney Afternoon animation block, becoming the most popular Disney Afternoon show on the air. Televised around the world, CHIP ‘N DALE RESCUE RANGERS is still a favorite of pop culture fans everywhere.

Coming out this December, CHIP ‘N DALE RESCUE RANGERS #1 is written by DARKWING DUCK’s Ian Brill with interior art by MARVEL SUPERHERO SQUAD’s Leonel Castellani . The debut issues features two covers in a 50/50 split by Leonel Castellani and Magic Eye Studios respectively and a 1-in-10 incentive cover by Jake Myler.

Daniel Raeburn has made the entire four-issue run of his 1997-2002 fanzine The Imp available for PDF download. Single topic issues on Dan Clowes, Jack Chick, Chris Ware, and Mexican historietas generally defined the direction of all future scholarship on such topics and this is one of the finest and most influential bits of comics scholarship/criticism of the last 20 years. So….go download for your iPad or whatever

It’s the ’90s and the “Bad Girl” era of comics all over again, as Dynamite announces they have acquired the Chaos Comics library, which included such titles as EVIL ERNIE, CHASTITY, PURGATORI, and so on. Lady Death, the best known character from Chaos, was not included in the deal.

Chaos flourished in the ’90s under publisher/chief creator Brian Pulido. Various characters from their library have been controlled in recent years by Tales of Wonder, Crossgen, Devil’s Due and Avatar.

PR Below:

Dynamite Entertainment has acquired the Chaos! Comics’ library and all associated assets which include the publishing labels Black Label Graphics, Infinity Comics and the properties Evil Ernie, Smiley the Psychotic Button, Chastity, Purgatori, Jade, Omen, Bad Kitty, Cremator, Lady Demon and many more (with the exception of Lady Death).  Chaos! Comics was the leading independent comics publisher of the 1990’s, achieving over thirty million dollars in sales in eight languages. 

Chaos! featured such prominent writers such as Peter (Incredible Hulk) David, Brian (Lady Death) Pulido, Alan (Watchmen) Moore, and Christopher (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) Golden, and artists such as Jae (Dark Tower) Lee, Greg (X-Force/Spawn) Capullo, Mike (Dark Avengers/Secret Avengers) Deodato, Art (Ultimate X) Adams, Boris (Conan the Barbarian) Vallejo, Steven (Lady Death) Hughes, Adam (Wonder Woman) Hughes,  Joseph (Dawn) Michael Linsner, Berni Wrightson and many more.  

The Chaos! library was known for its dark yet seductive characters that pushed the boundaries of horror comics.

”After announcing our acquisition of Vampirella, and now the Chaos! properties, Dynamite Entertainment is in possession of some of the most iconic horror characters in comic book history, with Evil Ernie and Chastity arguably being the most iconic” says Dynamite Entertainment President Nick Barrucci.  ”Dynamite Entertainment has grown significantly these past several months with our acquisition of Dabel Bros., our publishing relationship with Liquid and Grant Morrison, and with several other more surprises coming up, we are aiming to be the most diverse publisher in comics!”

For those who were not around for the Chaos Era, here’s a gallery:

Yesterday the above, somewhat disturbing photo, swept through the internets like a virus, with the breathless question : is this a leak from the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie?

Turns out the answer is: No. Latino Review, which first circulated the photo, says that it’s just a class project from one of makeup master Tom Savini’s students.

However we are happy to report that THIS is the real deal: PIZZA TIME! a TMNT ‘zine coming soon from Koyama Press. The above is Jon Vermillyea’s drawing, and it is not disturbing at all.

While we were out of it, we should have just posted this single link which should have kept everyone busy for a whole day: Part Six of Jay Allen Sanford ’s lavishly illustrated history of comics in San Diego. In this episode:

1 – The Birth of Image Comics

2 – Pacific Comics: The inside story of a legendary local comic book company (including a history of indie comics and the Creator’s Rights revolution)

3 – RIP Dave Stevens, famous former neighbor who created the Rocketeer

4 – Don’t Fear the Funnies: A history of censorship in comics

5 – The New Kids On The Block VS Revolutionary Comics – illustrated by Superman/Supergirl artist Stuart Immonen

Sanford was the publisher of Rock and Roll comics back in the day, and he has a pretty ground-level view, even if some would dispute parts of it. Well worth a thorough read.

§ 90s Nostalgia! Laura Hudson looks back at Wizard in the 90s:

§ It’s generally impossible for an interview with Alan Moore not to be awesome, and this one at Forbidden Planet by Pádraig Ó Méalóid is no exception:

It seems, at least in the case of Lost Girls, there is now an existing piece of erotica or pornography which people, in the debate upon obscenity or pornography, can now point to and say, “What about Lost Girls?” Now if that is all that it’s done – and I don’t think there’s going to be a huge rush of publications like Lost Girls in the very near future because both me and Melinda are very good at what we do, and it took us sixteen-eighteen years, so I doubt there’ll be very many people queuing up to do anything quite like Lost Girls – but, at the same time, Lost Girls exists. It’s a kind of benchmark. I’m not expecting, I don’t know, all of Richard Desmond’s vast array of smutty periodicals to suddenly clean up their act overnight and become aesthetic and intellectual works of art, but, Lost Girls exists.

§ Newsarama presents a roundtable whichlooks at how the current bad economy might affect web comics.

Newsarama: In your opinion, are we heading for another Internet boom or bust? Does the slowing economy have any effect on webcomics at all?

T Campbell: “Another Internet boom and bust?” You mean, like eight to ten years ago, when there were crazy overvaluations for dozens of companies with zero revenue, followed by a rash of bankruptcies? I don’t think that’s gonna happen.

I do think there are some hard times ahead. Webcomics’ low expenses mean they’ll probably weather the storm better than print media. But merchandise might be a tougher sell than it was. We are working off people’s disposable income.

§ Chris Butcher discovers that Diamond doesn’t always list books as being in stock:

It took me until today to realize that I should just contact their book market distributor and see if it was, you know, actually available, or if the copies I saw in New York for the Inoue signing were the end of a print run, or a fluke, or perhaps a mirage.

“Yes, both of those are in stock and available,” says the nice lady at Simon & Schuster.

“Huh.” says I. “I’ll take 10 of each.”

“Confirmed, you’ll have them next week.”

So there you go. A company that has gone exclusive with Diamond for the direct market (meaning: me, the manager of a comic book store), and Diamond is not only not stocking their full line, but has specifically not offered some editions of their work, and is putting out the false signal that the work is out of print.

§ Chris Butcher is on a tear this week, first with a calling-a-spade-a-spade . post

So yeah, most of the 3300 graphic novels released in 2007 sucked. Godwin’s Law Sturgeon’s Law is that 95% of everything is crap, and that’s about right in this case. Of course, the fact that there’s a “Godwin’s Law” “Sturgeon’s Law” at all should tell me that this is no surprise to any of you, but I just feel like someone had to come out and say it: There are a lot of awful, awful graphic novels coming out these days. Whoever’s guarding the gate, be it retailers, journalists, “journalists”, whatever, I beg you; be discerning in your praise, don’t pass along PR without having vetted the project yourself, stand behind your recommendations and, if you can’t, own up to your mistakes.

He followed it up with a post where is picked up the spade and did some digging to put his money where his mouth is:

That said, I just read the new Amazing Spider-Man, #552, and it’s awful. That’s no surprise, I read about 20 comics this week and half of them were pretty bad, but this one is written by Bob Gale, who wrote Back to the Future. Why is that important? Other than the failure of the writer on this one, there’s the failure of the editor as well for hiring him… This is the same Bob Gale who wrote Daredevil #19-25 (current series). A story-arc so mediocre that they didn’t even bother to collect it in trade paperback, and considering Marvel was collecting nearly everything at that point, including every Daredevil story, that’s saying a lot.

§ HARBINGER, a long ago title from the great Valiant Age of comics may get the movie treatment courtesy of director Brett Ratner. Ratner had fun with X-MEN 3, but now he wants his OWN comics movie franchise to get rolling. The deal was negotiated via the Valiant Entertainment Group, a privately financed company headed by CEO Jason Kothari and chief creative officer Dinesh Shamdasani, both of whom will be co-producers on the film. Apparently more Valiant comics and movie deals are on the way.

§ SLG head Dan Vado presents his March line-up in this slide-show webcast. The internet makes all things possible.

§ Marvel EIC Joe Quesada’s popular feature Cup O’ Joe in which he takes on fan questions will be returning as a regular feature at MySpace:

Every week, Quesada will tackle questions posed directly by True Believers on the world’s most popular social network in this brand new weekly feature on MySpace Comic Books. Like a might Marvel team-up, the online community known for connecting legions of fans with the most exciting creators, projects, and events in the industry comes together with the leading comics publisher to present your chance to get inside the mind of one of comics’ most popular personalities.

Cup o’ Joe was long a regular feature at Newsarama, but word on the street has it that Marvel and the comics news giant had a falling out over a broken embargo.

§ Via the Vanity Fair blog (!) comes a little piece of comics history we had just forgotten about. Radio host Joe Franklin’s appearance at last week’s MOREOLD JEWISH COMEDIANS event was a burying of the hatchet — and not in someone’s back:

That Franklin was in attendance at all, let alone getting laughs, was a big surprise to a number of people at the party, given that, in 1984, he sued Friedman for $40 million after the cartoonist published a hilarious comic strip called “The Incredible Shrinking Joe Franklin” in Heavy Metal magazine. The case was dismissed because the comic strip was an obvious parody, and almost 25 years later Franklin has apparently gotten over his anger. Friedman emailed me this morning to let me know that one of the highlights of his party was when Franklin walked up and embraced him.

Franklin was clearly an early adapter in the cartoon legal battle derby but it’s great to see old feuds left behind in the dustbin where they belong.