Comics

Anthology comics are considered sales poison these days so few are launched, which is a shame because there is a horde of talent out there that would shine in the short-form format. Vertigo is giving it a whirl with STRANGE ADVENTURES, an anthology which will launch in May and include eight ten-page SF stories. Highlights include the first chapter of SPACEMAN, the new Azzarello/Risso series. Peter Milligan, Scott Snyder, and Jeff Lemire will also be lending their talents to the book. The cover is by Paul Pope but Mark Buckingham supplies a variant, seen above.

Wandering the halls of the 2011 Toy Fair for even a few moments, it was hard to avoid Green Lantern -- not only action figures (for both collectors and actual children) but costumes, board games, mugs, rings, and more, more, more. It's all by design as this report from Variety details. It's hard to overemphasize how important this summer's Green Lantern movie is to Warners. This is potentially their new Star Wars, with a giant universe of aliens and adventure and a wisecracking, aspirational hero at the center. The promotional push at Toy Fair and the upcoming MAGIC apparel show is huge -- but it isn't an automatic slam dunk, hence the push:

If all you do is read the headline and the excerpt, I want you to remember this phrase: "Digital is the new Direct Market." Not "digital is the new newsstand". Direct Market. Let me explain with some history.

Remember when Mark Millar cleverly used Photoshop to make it look like he was advertising a comic book on a Times Sqaure billboard? Well, something like that actually happened earlier this week when the PR Newswire Bulletin Board ran some press for Marijuanaman, a new comics from Image spotlighting a character created by Ziggy Marley.

MAC Cosmetics has debuted a commercial for its Wonder Woman themed makeup line, featuring animations by Michael Allred. Call us nutso, but this seems to be one of the more successful attempts at a "mocom" -- probably because it wasn't just a comic book to begin with but was conceived as limited animation.

Just unveiled over at Facebook, the X-Men: First Class trailer is here. Directed by Matthew Vaughn (Stardust, Kick-Ass) and staring James McEvoy, Michael Fassbender, January Jones and a cast of thousands, it's a retcon showing the origins of the mutant team in the 60s, starring young Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr. The original X-Men: First Class comic was written by Jeff Parker, but it hasn't been explained how much of an influence it had on filmmakers. This is miles better than the dreadfully boring stills have were previously released; Vaughn knows his superhero stuff and how to give it some life. Our one big beef: this does not look like it was set in the 60s! Some JFK voice-overs do not a different decade make! Have they never seen Mad Men? Or A Simple Man? Or...the British Avengers.

by Marc-Oliver Frisch

On the surface, December 2010 was a great month for DC Comics. The company had a bigger share of the market than its main competitor Marvel, if only in terms of dollar value, and took all of the Top 5 spots on the chart, as well as a total 8 out of the Top 10. That doesn't happen a lot.

Upon closer inspection, though, a less rosy picture emerges: DC's average comic-book sales in the direct market were slightly down from November, average dollar and unit sales were only slightly up. So, despite big releases like the debut of writer/artist David Finch's Batman: The Dark Knight and, over in the "Graphic Novel" section, J. Michael Straczynski's Superman: Earth One book, it turns out December was more or less business as usual, from a commercial vantage point.

Meanwhile, DC's WildStorm imprint, which the company bought from Jim Lee in 1998 and then proceeded to slowly but determinedly squeeze the life out of, ceased publication in December. Average WildStorm sales sagged below the 5K mark, to the lowest number in history.

While comics dealing with cancer have usually been true life tales -- Mom's Cancer or Our Cancer Year -- AN ELEGY FOR AMELIA JOHNSON takes a more unusual tack, following the two best friends of a dying woman — a slightly egotistical documentary director and a self-absorbed journalist -- as they journey to bring her last words to the people she cares about. But if you think this is going to be a weepy about a saintly sick person...you are wrong.

[Yesterday Diamond announced their plan to team with iVerse to offer digital comics downloads for sale in comics shops. Gievn the hot button nature of this discussion, and the big picture nature of the announcement, Dave Bowen, Diamond's Director of Digital Distribution, was eager to talk to us to explain more about it. This is a long interview, but Bowen goes into welcome detail on the thinking behind and motivation for this plan. Short version: retailers deserve to be brought into the process.]

Hiroko Tabuchi of the NY Times has alengthy piece Japan's recent legislation banning sales of adult material to minors. Along the way there's a lot of "Only in Japan!" stuff:

So with Johnny's eternal flame extinguished, the FF needs a new young toyetic star to join their ranks...and it's...SPIDEY! Who would have seen that coming? Jonathan Hickman and Steve Epting will chronicle the new lineup in a book called FF -- for Future Foundation, which will include some "top secret members" according to the pr.