Publishers

Over at the Source blog, DC's braintrust shared their hopes for the relaunch hitting tonight. Including Dan DiDio:

Dynamite has just announced an art book covering their popular cover artist Alex Ross, and although they didn't include the entire interior of the book in their PR mailing, they did include a healthy chunk.

Spanish comics enabler David Macho has been doing a great job of promoting the DC relaunch comics his stable of artists is involved with, last week via tons of preview art. This week he's doing somethign even more ambitious -- trailers! And not motion comics trailers, either. Here's the one for STORMWATCH by Paul Cornell and Miguel Sepúlveda.

After a hurricane, the sun usually comes out resulting in sparkling skies for the clean-up. As the East Coast attempts to clean up and dry off from a storm that could have been much worse (but was still pretty bad in spots) we wake up to a fairly epochal week in the history of comics. Because the internet wasn't around, we didn't know that the 1980 arrival of SUPERBOY SPECTACULAR or DAZZLER #1 -- the first comics produced by DC and Marvel that were direct market-only -- would mark the beginning of a whole new era for the comics industry, and -- despite the protestations of imminent death at every turn -- usher in a era of undreamed of creative fertility and energy. Wednesday at 12:01 am the new era begins. Not the era of the New 52 -- despite any declarations to the contrary, that's really business as usual, just jump started in the manner of a car battery. No, it's the era of digital comics. While everyone has been transfixed over whether GREEN LANTERN by Geoff Johns, Doug Mahnke and Christian Alamy will be better than GREEN LANTERN by Geoff Johns, Doug Mahnke and Christian Alamy; or how Tony Daniels' DETECTIVE COMICS is going to vastly improve on his Batman comics, the real revolution has quietly been dawning on retailers and readers: DC's decision to go with simultaneous digital and print release of their comics.

With both their #3 characters, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern, sitting on the bench in the Hollywood Bowl for now, DC Entertainment must turn to their thousands of other characters for someone to enter the game and score some points. Luckily there are many of them, and several are as colorful as Deadman, who is being developed as a possible TV show for the CW. 'Supernatural' producer Eric Kripke is doing the developing for Warner Bros TV.

Quite the busy month, July. FEAR ITSELF is still rumbling onwards, but it's now joined by two other events - the "Spider-Island" crossover, and X-MEN: SCHISM. And there are relaunches of DAREDEVIL, GHOST RIDER and CAPTAIN AMERICA (which spawns a spin-off into the bargain). Oh, and now that the FEAR ITSELF crossover arcs are firmly underway, this seems a good month to ask: is it really having much of an impact on sales of the tie-in books? As per usual, Marvel had the largest share of the North American direct market, leading DC by 44% to 35% in unit share, and 39% to 31% in dollars. Thanks as always to ICV2.com for permission to use these figures.

We're not savvy enough on the West Coast operations of Marvel to know what was behind this, but it's fairly safe to say that Disney cares much more about Marvel Studios than Marvel Comics. Implementation of the Disney-Marvel relationship has been an odd one -- on the one side, you have a corporate juggernaut who wants to reach the boy market for toys and toons. On the other, you have a company that is very much still led by chairman Ike Perlmutter, who, by some accounts, is Disney's second biggest shareholder after Steve Jobs. Marvel Studios is known for knowing the value of a penny -- something Disney also knows. But whereas Disney has controlling costs down to an art, Perlmutter has it down to a science. The relationship is still evolving.

Initial orders for The New 52 are in and JLA #1 has more than 200,000 pre-orders, and six other #1s have more than 100,000 pre-orders.

Long, long delayed by difficulties finding the source materials, Fantagraphics' long awaited reprinting of the complete Pogo by Walt Kelly is finally at the printers, Mark Evanier announces.

Despite what seemed like a logical timeline, Disney did not reveal the identity of two mystery Marvel movies planned for Summer 2014 at this weekend's D23. A mystery Pixar film was shown to be “The Untitled Pixar film about Dinosaurs" and “The Untitled Pixar Movie that Takes You Inside the Mind.” Well, fair enough. The only Marvel movie touched on was THE AVENGERS -- Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner and Chris Hemsworth all showed up to wave to the crowd — however, and a no cell phones policy meant that no pictures or leaked footage got out.

Trying something a little different this month...

So, this weekend in Anaheim (home of Disneyland), the D23 Expo is taking place. Dedicated to All Things Disney, this show will feature Marvel Comics for the first time, with appearances by Joe Quesada, Kevin Feige, and Marvel creators. Joe Quesada will be hosting a panel on Sunday, at 10:15 AM. I hope someone pulls a "Batgirl" and questions Mr. Quesada about the "legends" of Marvel, and how Marvel honors their contributions to Marvel's legacy. Given the concentrated nature of the fan-fest at "The Happiest Place on Earth", it is very unlikely. So I'll ask them here!