Comics

Word on the street of late has been that a female director had been approached to direct the 2017 Gal Gadot Wonder Woman movie. Who could it be? Lena Dunham? Miranda July? Well now a name has emerged and it's Michelle McLaren. If you're a fastidious credit watcher you've seen McLaren's name in the credits of The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad. With a resume like that how could she NOT direct a superhero movie? IN particular, she directed some of the most brutal and riveting Breaking Bad episodes, showing she knows her way around a meth lab at least.

§ Marvel is putting out a Thor Annual and they pulled out all the stops to get the wackiest mix of creators ever. Wrestler...

Want to find more about how graphic novel publishers are approaching the massive changes in comics readership and marketing now underway? Then fire up your computer tomorrow at 1 pm EST for a webcast with these industry experts.

There haven't been many new developments in the "Future comics" category of late; that is comics that use animation, gifs, or other tablet- or web-based technology as a storytelling tool, beyond Madefire's leading the category. It seems like motion comics and the costs of developing platforms have sort of put this on the backburner...plus guided view and the like are now such a standard aspect of reading comics that they don't elicit much comment.

Novelist Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl) seems to be the headliner in the gala 200th issues of Dark Horse Presents. This groundbreaking anthology has introduced a ton of great comics to the world—a couple of little comics called Sin City and Concrete— and it was also the very first Dark Horse publication. To celebrate, the 200th issue has a stellar line up and a HELLBOY cover by Gabriel Bá, an APE-X variant cover by THE GOON creator Eric Powell and more including the US publication of a comic Flynn and Dave Gibbons originally commissioned for the Guardian in the UK.

Ryan Ferrier and Valentin Ramon's D4ve, a Monkeybrian digital original about a middle aged robot who yearns for one last battle, is coming to print from IDW in February, with a new cover by Fiona Staples. Nice, eh? PR below:

Okay so Image has been teasing team members of a new super team book from the last few days—smart money says Jay Faerber may be involved—and just for reference, it's shaping up to be quite a team of misfits and characters!

Magnetic Press launched earlier this year bringing some top-notch French comics to the US market and they're not only still here, they are expanding to Chinese comics with DAOMU, which adapts the popular novel series by Chinese author Xu “Kennedy” Lei, who's knwn as China's Stephen King.  How popular is this series? The first novel, which forms the basis of the graphic novel has sold three million copies as of 2010 with an additional 20 million copies on the black market. I didn't know there was a lack market for novels but it's a thrilling world.

by Zachary Clemente   IMAGE COMICS AT THOUGHT BUBBLE 2014 Image Comics panels, signings, and a WYTCHES variant for sale I can remember a day when Image went...

As humongous and "earth shattering" as event comics can be they usually aren't the endgame a publisher has in mind. The payoff usually lies in what comes after, whether it's in the form of another event or a new series. Unfortunately for Marvel the pattern that's developed is a stale event followed by a great series; one example that comes to mind was Dark Avengers coming after the Secret Invasion event. Marvel's latest case, AXIS, while convoluted at times, has set the stage for Tom Taylor to play on the other side of the big two field with Superior Iron Man.

"Where is the Netflix of comics?" you ask. Unlimited streaming of everything from Blondie to Urasawa. That remains only a pipe dream, but a site called Comicsfix (get it?) is trying to be the streaming service we want. For $9.95 you get unlimited comics on various apps, and 24 hour access. But access to what? It's just been announced that Dynamite is the first company Top 10 publisher to sign up with them. You don't get everything, but some good starter stuff:

By Matt O'Keefe In the world wide web there’s a lot that goes unnoticed, even in more niche industries like comics. For the last few...