Comics

BTW, a bit more about Powernap, the webcomics collective we mentioned in the previous post. While it's still in its early stages, members include...

Award-winning illustrator/cartoonist Koren Shadmi's graphic novel IN THE FLESH was published by Random House in 2009. Now he's working on a webcomic called THE ABADDON, which he describes as "Jean Paul Sartre meets Three’s Company" with humor and drama meeting existential dilemmas.

In spite of the dramatic international intrigue Sparkplug Comic Books and its affiliates faced at the Canadian border on the way to TCAF last weekend, we managed to simultaneously invade a whole other continent at Stockholm Sweden’s 11^th Annual SPX Festival. Sparkplug was honored to be invited to the festival for the 3^rd year in a row along with many other hella distinguished international guests.

This is the busiest month Marvel have had in quite some time. The big release for March was the relaunch of FANTASTIC FOUR as just plain FF, but the month also sees the prologue to upcoming mega-crossover FEAR ITSELF, two new ongoing titles in VENOM and IRON MAN 2.0, the revival of CrossGen titles RUSE and SIGIL, and issues from the "Death of Spider-Man" and "Age of X" crossovers. We also have the second month of Point One issues - more on that below. As usual, Marvel had the largest share of the direct market, both in terms of dollars (leading DC by 40% to 28%) and unit sales (45% to 32%).

On his Twitter account, DC's vp of Online Ron Perazza confirmed that he is leaving DC instead of moving to the West Coast, as had been previously reported. Perazza was a 12-year-vet at DC, following a stint at Marvel, starting out in creative services where he rose rapidly in influence and rank to vp of creative services. Perazza's best known public move at DC was starting the Zuda webcomics line, which was controversial but one of the most innovative efforts at DC in recent years, and one which developed a thriving online community.

It's a busy week for cartooning events here in NYC, with so many you can't even get to them all. One we didn't want to miss took place last night, DRAWING THE LINE at the Society of Illustrators, a group chat about the cartooning craft by Joe Quesada, Walt Simonson and Jim Steranko. The panel was organized and moderated by artist Dennis Calero (X-MEN NOIR) as part of a move for the SI to get more involved in covering the graphic literature world. In the regard it was a total success, allowing three important artists talk about their work and approaches devoid of the promotional efforts that color most convention and bookstore appearances. Calero did a great job moderating as well, keeping the talk circling various aspects of the cartoonist's life, including dealing with "shortcuts", deadlines and the rewards of artwork, and showing a great knowledge of the trio's careers.

A bit of an interesting experiment going on over at the Drawing Words Writing Pictures blog, as two young cartoonists are learning how to make their way in the world -- without even drawing cartoons:

Just a reminder: The NBM blog is running regular web comics by Lewis Trondheim, one of the finest cartoon diarists of all time. The comics are excerpted from his acclaimed Little Nothings series, published in the US by NBM. Bookmark!

In case you were wondering, Aaron, author of SCALPED, WOLVERINE and PUNISHER MAX, sports a beard as fearsome as his talent.

Both Variety and Deadline are reporting that a pick-up for NBC's WONDER WOMAN pilot looks unlikely, contravening some rumors that went out this morning. WW show runner David E. Kelley might not get blanked, however -- his show HARRY'S LAW, starring Kathy Bates, is likely to be renewed.

We just got back from SVA's portfolio day, in which seniors in the illustration and comics departments display their wares for visiting editors and art directors. We'll have some more comments on this tomorrow, but we'll leave you with some images from AJ Frena who delivers some powerful animal-based imagery. Her paintings are executed on heavy plywood and look even better in person.

In honor of the debut of FLASHPOINT, CNN had a story on Geoff Johns which made it all the way to the front page. The story speaks with various sources who discuss the fact that Johns is The Man of Comics 2011: