Comics

People looking for a surefire way to print money, comics division, have often suggested a Harry Potter comic book. Since that ain't happening (JK Rowling just isn't interested), Vertigo has just landed the next best thing: a graphic novel adaptation of Stieg Larsson's best-selling Millennium Trilogy, with the comics version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo set to appear in 2012. Subsequent volumes will appear in 2013 and 2014.

by Paul O'Brien Welcome to the calm before the storm. Or, in Marvel's case, the calm before more calm. September will all be about the DC Universe relaunch, and it's going to be a little while before the news cycle comes back round to anything Marvel have to announce. In the meantime, this month we have more "Fear Itself", more "Spider-Island", and the relaunch of the Ultimate imprint with ULTIMATE COMICS HAWKEYE and (ahem) ULTIMATE COMICS ULTIMATES. Once again, Marvel had the largest share of the North American direct market, leading DC by 42% to 35% in unit share and 37% to 31% in DC. Needless to say, it'll be a huge surprise if that holds up next month. Thanks as always to ICV2.com for permission to use these figures.

3.  FEAR ITSELF
04/11  #1 of 7 - 135,746
05/11  #2 of 7 - 105,359  (-22.4%)
06/11  #3 of 7 -  99,501  ( -5.6%)
07/11  #4 of 7 -  93,435  ( -6.1%)
08/11  #5 of 7 -  90,914  ( -2.7%)

Levelling out quite comfortably as the series goes on. I'll come to the performance of the tie-in issues later.

Following his stint at BOOM! Studios, Chip Mosher has joined comiXology as VP of Marketing, PR and Business Development, where he'll run the digital distributor's West Coat office. Mosher was in on BOOM!'s early experiments in digital comics, so he'll doubtless bring much of that experience to comiXology, as well as his formidable talking abilities. It's a strong move for both parties. As if you hadn't figured out that digital comics are here to stay, they are now hiring real people for real jobs for, presumably, real salaries.

The PHONOGRAM artist has a new print for sale, about US$55.

Today's image is pretty strong stuff so to see the whole thing, you'll have have to click on the thumbnail. It comes to us from Sam Costello, who writes:

This image is from our latest story, A Mother's Love, for Split Lip Comics. I wrote it and David Hitchcock (Whitechapel Freak, Springheeled Jack, etc.) drew it. The story is about a monster plaguing a small town in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

You can read the whole story here.

DC is concentrating on their "New 52". But what of the other stories? As DC replicates a strategy from 25 years ago, when will we see self-contained stories which can be added to a strong backlist? What will be the new "Watchmen"?

Here's a number for you: Out of 65 DC Universe comic books published in July, 32 were by the writer/artist creative teams listed in the solicitations -- less than half of the bunch. Most of the others were either completely drawn by guest artists or had help from one or more of them. And for a couple, even the story credit changed. Not counting the six DC Retroactive books, the video-game adaptations and the New Wave titles, none of which are involved in the day-to-day of the DC Universe, the strike rate is 22 out of 55. So, presuming that's not a coincidence, it looks like the big DC relaunch was about 40% well-planned, at this juncture.

THE INFINITE KUNG-FU LAUNCH PARTY: FEATURING HOP-FU! A Spectacular Graphic Novel Launch and Live Music/Film Event

It's the daily DC 52 trailer, this time for LEGION OF SUPERHEROES by Paul Levitz and Francis Portela. Surely you all know the name of the music, right? And you got the hidden in-joke, right?

Here is a Village Voice interview with Marv Wolfman, which is interesting for many reasons. Because Wolfman is always a thoughtful commenter on the comics industry and its may pressures, but also because CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS --and NEW TEEN TITANS by the same Wolfman/Perez team -- is to the New 52 generation what Fantastic Four #1 (the 1961 one) was to so many before it. With its sweeping changes, dramatic deaths and multiple universes, it set the stage for many a crisis to come. And, famously, there was talk after CoIE of doing a line-wide issue #1 reboot. The idea lay dormant until now. But Wolfman points out that for an event to be an event it should have actual motivation:

Michel Fiffe's interviewing and archiving skills cannot be doubted -- nor, after his dynamic ZEGAS debut can his cartooning skills -- but this time out he offers a compelling survey of the often uneasy, sometimes brilliant crossover between indy and superhero esthetics:

Yoe Books/IDW is having comics fans choose which cover they're going to use for the about-to-be-printed book, "Bob Powell's Terror", which reprints the cult favorite's 1950s most terrifying horror comics!