Comics

Continuing the frantic pace of digital comics announcements, acquisitions and positioning, Graphicly has announced its acquisition of Double Feature, an application for mobile phones that was developed by the studio of Tim Seeley of HACK/SLASH fame. While the app was originally built to showcase the work of Seleey and his studiomates, apparently it will be available for more content from Graphicly.

Marvel is committing to making virtually all its comics available digitally day and date, accoridng to a story at Gizmodo. The plan will roll out over the next six months, with "print and digital for nearly all comics will be same day release by April 2012" according to Marvel's Ryan Penagos on Twitter. The books will shift over as they reach new "jumping on points" meaning the roll-out will be staggered. However the adults only MAX line and licensed books, inclduing the Stephen King adaptations, will NOT go to the DaD system.

As you all know, Stan Lee pacts the way other people breathe. Here's a new one -- a contest with online community MASScanvas to design a t-shirt; a portions of the proceeds of the winning design will go to the John Wayne Cancer Institute. Winners get their very own congratulatory video from Stan, as well.

The importance of this story will be self-evident to anyone familiar with L'Asso's work but here's a few reasons for those now in the know: 1) They published some of the best comics ever by major creators like Trondheim, Sfar and David B., to name a few. 2) L'Association was the original publisher of PERSEPOLIS, the work which more than any other legitimized graphic novels in the mainstream US publishing world of the Aughts 3) The story of the controversial Jean-Christophe Menu reveals one of the great paradoxes of the creative endeavor, in how the same character trait can often be both the doorway to greatness and its downfall.

Only yesterday word that Charlie Hebdo, a satirical French magazine, was planning to run a a special "Sharia issue" guest edited by the prophet Mohammed. "What could possibly go wrong?" we were planning to write.

Jillian Tamaki has illustrated another Folio Society limited edition book. This time it's Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market & Selected Poems”. More gorgeous illustrations in the link.

Wow, the number of women working in the New 52 just jumped 33%...or something. We're no good at percentages. Anyway, Nicola Scott will be filling in for Jesus Merino on Superman issues 3, 5 and 6 of the George Pérez written book, working from Pérez's layouts. It's definitely a fill-in in many ways. Merino will be the regular penciller from isues 7 on, although Perez is leaving the books. And Scott is pencilling a JSA book, written by James Robinson, with an indeterminate launch date SUPERMAN #3 goes on sale November 23.

Fantagraphics Books has posted their releases for early 2012 and a link to their catalog to see for yourself, but here are some very tasty highlights:

Golden/Silver age artist Joe Giella who worked for Fawcett in the Golden Age and inked things like Gil Kane's Green Lantern in the Silver age, has had some artwork stolen. Jim Amash reports that "A certain person Joe Giella trusted apparently stole a few pieces of original comic art from his house, mostly likely on Sept. 7 and Oct. 13 of this year.  We want to get the word out so that anyone who may have already purchased this work or may be contacted about it will know it's considered stolen property, and hopefully will help get Joe's artwork back to him. A police report has been filed in the case, but spreading the word to the comics art community is absolutely vital."

We meant to post this yesterday but somehow it got lost in the shuffle. This fall Robot Chicken — the toy-motion animation satire that uses lookalikes of your favorite childhood toys to enact grisly jokes — is doing an entire 15-minute episode devoted to DC comics. Recently, Geoff Johns, a past contributor to the show, linked to the trailer — which is NSFW, we might add. Robot Chicken is animated in the super bad style, and it's ugly all the way, but with its laser-cutting, bloody wrist stumps and cock ring humor, this is one of the most disturbing things we've ever seen. And to think that DC used to burn books just because it was suggested that Superman might drink a beer.

Not a hoax, not a dream, not an imaginary story, DC is collecting FLEX MENTALLO: Man of Muscle Mystery in one of those Deluxe Editions that will look nice on your shelf next to other Grant Morrison/Quitely classics like We3 or All Star Superman. You'll recall that FLEX MENTALLO is one of the seminal works in the Morrison oeuvre—many of Morrison's most important themes found their most cogent articulation here— but a collection was long held in the vault due to past legal problems. But now it's coming your way in all its glory, and it has an awesome new cover by Quitely. It's all good.

A little All Saints' Day grave remembrance from the LA Times and Mimi Pond. Pond's upcoming graphic memoir about the Bay area counterculture, OVER EASY, is due from Drawn & Quarterly one of these days.