Comics

UPDATE: We are sad to confirm via Frazetta's agent Robert Pistella that the artist passed away this afternoon in a hospital near his home. The cause of death was a stroke. Funeral arrangements will be announced shortly.

As the featured event of the 2010 Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF), which is being held at the Toronto Reference Library, the evening also featured a moving tribute to pioneering Canadian cartoonist Martin Vaughn-James, who was posthumously inducted into The Giants of the North, The Canadian Cartoonist Hall of Fame, in a talk delivered by cartoonist Kate Beaton. The winners were decided by a jury comprised of Matt Forsythe (editor of Drawn.ca, winner of the 2009 Pigskin Peters Award for Ojingogo), Geoff Pevere (Toronto Star book critic; author of Mondo Canuck,) Fiona Smyth (artist; cartoonist) and Carl Wilson (editor/writer Globe and Mail, author of Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste). Speaking on behalf of the jury, Pevere praised the Best Book winner George Sprott as "a portrait of a character, of a country…a country that is no longer with us," adding that: ...Speaking for Wright Awards nominating committee, which chooses the annual Pigskin Peters Award, Matt Forsythe described Hot Potatoe as "a collection of seven years of work that is insulting and hilarious and sarcastic and sincere," and continued that it has "influenced a whole wave of comics and artists – myself included."

While some comic companies may be shutting down websites that post their comics illegally, Moulinsart, the company which owns the rights to Hergé's work,...

Cartoonist Keith Knight reminds us that not only has his syndicated comic strip Knight LIfe lasted two years, it has a book collection coming out, The Knight Life .  In a press release Knight joked at his relief the strip had lasted this long: “The bottom fell out of the economy just as my strip launched. And I became a first-time father one month later…I figured if I can make it through these first coupla years, I can make it though anything. The 200-page collection hits in June and includes strips that never made it to print due to "risqué" content.

At the blog for the insanely popular webcomic XCKD, Randall Munroe directly confronts issues of gender, fashion and whether a color can be construed as "dusty" Here are the color names most disproportionately popular among women: 1. ... Kind of an incense-bomb-set-off-in-a-Bed-Bath-&-Beyond vibe. ... Here are the color names most disproportionately popular among men: 1.

Via Colleen Doran comes word that htmlcomics.com has been shut down by the FBI. The site was a very popular online library of unauthorized comics scans, with hundreds of thousands of issues available at the click of a mouse:

Lots and lots of personnel announcements over the last few days.¶ Image has hired Todd Martinez as their new Sales & Licensing Coordinator. For...

By Matthew Murray

Dynamite grabs the top indie comic spot this month with the first issue of their adaptation of Kevin Smith’s Green Hornet script. However, issue 2 sees a fairly large drop, and people seem unsure if the market can support the five Green Hornet titles Dynamite plans on launching.

Elsewhere on the chart Green Hornet Year One written by Matt Wagner is the second biggest indie launch of the month, The Guild and Terminator are Dark Horse’s newest launches, and Zenescope shipped a lot of books.

IDW had a 3.61% market share, and 4.02% dollar share, Dark Horse had 3.33% market share and 4.76% dollar share (gotta love those trade paperback sales), Dynamite had 3.08% market share and 3.40% dollar share, and Image had 3.01% market share and 3.22% dollar share.

I’ve listed every indie title in the top 225, every Dark Horse, Image, and IDW title in the top 300, and a selection of other titles.

Thanks to icv2.com and Milton Griepp for permission to use these numbers, which can be found here.

Joining the elite three-time (Stardust, Kick-Ass) club for comic book movie directors, Matthew Vaughn has signed on to direct X-Men: First Class after a lot of back and forth. Bryan Singer was originally on board to direct but he pulled out due to scheduling -- the helmer of the first two X-flicks will stay aboard as producer. Vaughn had been rumored for a while -- he was originally scheduled to direct the third X-men movie before pulling out at the last moment himself, leaving Brett Ratner to have his way with the franchise.   

During his six years as Marketing Manager at Marvel Comics, Jim McCann definitely established himself as a strong candidate for Nicest Guy In Comics, and certainly helped out The Beat on many occasions. This Thursday will be his last day on staff at Marvel, however, as he leaves to pursue his writing career with both regular Marvel writing gigs and a stiking creator-owned project, THE RETURN OF THE DAPPER MEN, coming this fall from Archaia. As McCann mentions in the interview, he long had a background in writing, but his outgoing nature usually ended up spinning him towards marketing jobs, but now he's sticking with the path to what he wants to do. McCann has definitely been in the middle of some of Marvel's wildest rides over the last six years, and when he suggested an "exit interview," we thought it would be a good way to look back on them. Plus he suggested a music number to end it all, so we had to go along. You won't find too much muckraking here -—McCann could easily segue into inspirational speaking -— and things might get a little sappy at the end, but not every one can be a tearjerker!

We're not the world's SMALLLEST Johnny Ryan fan but... when he nails it, he nails it. Via Flog .

Can she get any more awesome?