§ Venture Brothers Season Three Preview soon to be removed by the PTB, for sure.

§ New SPIRIT trailer!

Apes R1 Jpeg

§ Marvel announced Monkey thing.

§ Brian Heater interviews Douglas Rushkoff and Scott McCloud and has a podcast of their panel

§ Wilson Tortosa will draw the Wolverine manga for Del Rey.

§ Tokyopop’s new line of color manga.

§ Joan Hilty returns to Vertigo, new graphic novel initiative launches.

§ Ender’s Game at Marvel.

§ Steve Gerber’s ashes come to panel

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22 COMMENTS

  1. I don’t understand why anyone would buy more than one issue, if that, of Marvel’s heroes done as apes, because the premise is so flimsy, but then, I’ve never bought or even looked at the Marvel “Zombies” comics, for the same reason.

    I wonder if anyone at Marvel has considered the similarities between their one-joke books and, say, the Kotzwinkle, Murray, and Colman picture book, WALTER THE FARTING DOG (http://www.amazon.com/Walter-Farting-Dog-William-Kotzwinkle/dp/1583940537 ). Small kids think Walter is hilarious, but then, every one of them is supposed to have an undeveloped sense of humor.

    SRS

  7. I attended the Spirit panel, and even though everyone was saying how they were true to Eisner’s Spirit, what I saw on the screen was a brooding, dark, psychological character. It looks like Frank Miller’s Spirit.

  9. If that’s Milller being faithful to something, I’d hate to see what he does when he takes creative license. I haven’t seen something that “faithful” since “The Cat in the Hat!”

    Yup, that sound you hear is Will Eisner spinning in his grave with Dr. Seuss.

  12. Marvel, ripping off ideas from someone else? I am SHOCKED.

    Look… the entire freaking Marvel Universe is based on the fact that Justice League (which was based on the Justice Society!) was selling so well! Marvel, and every other comicbook publisher at the time, would see what sold, and rush out copies of their own. Hollywood does this so often, no one blinks an eye (anyone else notice how the early Dreamworks animated features copied Disney’s slate?) but many people yawn.

    It is an accepted business model. The other guy makes money doing something, you take that idea and work it into your business. Sometimes you get to innovate (like Marvel Zombies) and lead the way, and that’s cool. But Marvel doing apes? Cool. I’ll look at it. “The Amazing Spider-Monkey”? “The Silverbacked Surfer”? Maybe a universal crossover with the Peter Porker line?

  14. Torsten,

    I have nothing against creators trying to rip off popular works; only when they do it badly. And sometimes even the bad versions are amusing, like William Castle’s HOMICIDAL (imitation of PSYCHO).

    But FANTASTIC FOUR seems more like, “Let’s launch this thing that looks a little bit like a popular thing (JLA) in the hope that it catches fire.” That’s more like, “The horror movie genre is doing well, so let’s do a horror movie.”

    Marvel’s AVENGERS were certainly an attempt to copy the format of the JLA, not just the superhero-team genre, though it still had a number of interesting differences.

  15. I’ve read that Carmine Infantino used to have a rule about how many times a year a gorilla was allowed to appear on the cover of a DC Comic…they apparently had explicit market indication that putting a monkey/ape/primate on a comic book cover boosted sales, so he didn’t want to overdo it.

  16. I’d be looking forward to THE SPIRIT if it were a new frank Miller property instead of the beloved Will Eisner strip.
    I predict we’re about to see the first Frank Miller flop.

  17. Sorry guys, but this whole ape thing has “Let’s get loaded and think of some cool story ideas” written all over it.

    “Apes”

    “Yeah! PLANET OF THE APES meets the Marvel Universe. Oh man – yeaah! I’m writing this down!!! This is soooo much better than that STAR TREK idea you had. Though I thought it was pretty groundbreaking to make Spock gay.”

    “Dude – he’s half alien. He’s not gay, he’s bi. ”

    “But would he screw an ape?”

    “Write that down.”

  18. DC did the whole ape thing ages ago. Nice to see Marvel finally catching up!

    It’s funny, but from the preview of the Spirit movie, the one time I felt they get the spirit of Will Eisner’s Spirit was seeing Denny Colt jump onto the building rooftop and struggle to keep his balance as he moved from one side to the next. [i]That[/i] felt Eisner-esque!

    That, and the spotlight design from the Spirit’s hideout. (At first I forgot myself and thought “Why’d they put Steve Ditko’s Dr. Strange skylight there?” Then I remembered. Duh!)

  19. I thought Stan Lee had said that FF was in response to the success of JLA, not the Avengers (even though that would intuitively make more sense).

  20. Mark,
    I just meant that FF doesn’t look like an idea patterned after the JLA, but an idea that got put into motion because of JLA (the usual suspected “parent” of FF is Kirby’s CHALLENGERS).

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