Comics

Never afraid to try that free marketing thing, BOOM! Studios is launching their new HELLRAISER comic by making a FREE STORY available only in PDF and allowing everyone to post it. As Marketing Director Chip Mosher put it:

Everyone needs a hobby. Artist Mike Kelley has a doozy. He's been devoting the last ten years to making glass imaged of Kandor, the lost Kryptonian "City in a bottle." It seems that before Superman's home planet was blown to smithereens, Brainiac stole the capital city of Kandor, shrank it down, and put it in a bottle, as we might save a ship or a guppy. Superman recovered the city in ACTION COMICS #242, and decided to keep it in the Fortress of Solitude, because nothing breaks up a lonely day like a tiny bottled city full of Kryptonians.

With a bunch of editorial types going off to California to join Geoff Johns' secret avengers team, there have been a few openings in DC editorial of late, and at least two have been filled.

CHEW, the cibopathic comedy smash comic by John Layman and Rob Guillory has been picked up for development at Showtime, and a script by Terri Hughes Burton and Ron Milbauer has been purchased. It's being planned as a half-hour comedy; Stephen Hopkins will direct as well as executive produce.

Tonight is the opening for a, R. Crumb show that has several associated events. Info inside!

by Brady Russell

S.P.A.C.E. is the Midwest's answer to the Small Press Expo,  founded twelve years ago by Bob Corby, as a show that comics creators without a huge following could afford to go to. I've known about it for a long time and always wanted to go. After attending SPX myself for the first time in 1999, I came home and started Googling creators I had met, and I think it was searching for Suzanne Baumann that I found out about S.P.A.C.E. for the first time. The photos made the show look much smaller, much simpler than SPX, which even ten years ago, at the original location, was a pretty crowded scene.

Intensive lab scene accompanied by anxious music? Check. Unsubtle reference to Avengers franchise in title? Check. The line "You don't know when to quit, do you?" Check.

Now this is kind of interesting. Avatar, publisher of some of the greatest writers in comics, like Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis and so on, is switching distributors from Diamond to...BOOM!? Wait, BOOM! is a distributor? Not really, but they have their own distributor deal with Simon & Schuster for the US and HarperCollins for Canada. Avatar will be tagging along on BOOM!'s truck route for a unique partnership. We had the chance to chat informally with several Avatar personnel about this move at C2E2 -- and it's definitely a good one for them. Moore and (to a lesser extent) Ellis are perennial bookstore bestsellers, so being able to hop on that bandwagon should definitely help their trade program. Although not noted by anyone, really, Avatar significantly slowed their trade collection release schedule over the last few months; this deal enables them to get it going again.

Would you like Wolverine with that soy vanilla misto? Ubiquitous coffee chain Starbucks is expandingthe offerings in its Starbucks Digital Network, which allows latte-lovers to read free digital content in its stores. New offerings will include ESPN, The Economist, The New York Times, and Marvel Digital Comics.:

Aaron Colter at Comics Alliance rounds up the latest news of t-shirt makers ripping off artists for ideas without paying them, including the granddaddy of them all, Todd Goldman, whose idea thievery is notorious -- his huge David and Goliath novelty company has a long, well-documented track record for necoming "majorly inspired" by other artists' ideas and then paying a little hush money when caught. We had a whole bunch of posts about Goldman's past sins up here once, but his lawyer made us take them down. Let's hope AOL has a few more resources to keep this story up, because he's a total ______ and a ________ too.

This post by Kirsty Walker rounds up all the evidence FOR the upcoming KA-POW comics convention in London being a total sausage fest -- all the guests, award nominees and face time people are men.

The Small Press Expo has announced its first guests for the 2011 show and they are all awesome: Roz Chast, Jim Woodring, Ann Telnaes, and Jim Rugg. Maybe Jim Woodring will bring his giant pen!