Publishers

As long rumored, the much maligned Comics Journal website has re-launched with a new editorial team: Dan Nadel and Tim Hodler, founders of the Comics Comics website and zine, will bring their view of contemporary comics to the hallowed brand of TCJ.com. Hodler started things off with an editorial which, amazingly, did not talk about how crappy websites are; insead it laid out a pretty exciting vision for the new site:

This site is divided into several sections which will continue to grow over the days and weeks and months to come: Feature articles, including lengthy interviews, investigative journalism, and long-form critical and historical essays; regular columns on a variety of subjects; a steady stream of book reviews; thorough and easily navigated event listings; an ever-growing archive of The Comics Journal‘s thirty-plus years as a print magazine (by the end of 2011, each and every issue will be online)—this will be available in full to magazine subscribers only; and of course this daily blog, which will be a catch-all for short items, selective link-blogging, and a forum for guest voices and bad jokes.

by Paul O'Brien

Let's be blunt: January was a pretty terrible month for the direct market. Compared with January 2010, comic book sales were down by 23% in units and 22% in dollars. The picture for graphic novels wasn't much better. In part, it's because of a lack of really big titles; but to be honest, there seems to have been a lack of titles across the board. The number 300 title in January was LADY MECHANIKA #1, with estimated orders of only 1,291. That's extraordinarily low. In December, it took more than three times that many sales to make the chart.

As usual, Marvel had the largest share of the direct market, and the margin was bigger than normal - they led DC by 39% to 26% in dollars, and 42% to 32% in units.

The big release this month, of course, is FANTASTIC FOUR #587, with the death of the Human Torch. There's also INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #500, the AGE OF X ALPHA one-shot and a handful of new minis. But it's a quiet month.

As always, thanks to ICV2.com for permission to use these figures.

This week's EW has an interview with Captain America director Joe Johnston and an exclusive look at the Red Skull, played by Hugo Weaving, which became unexclusive a few minutes ago.

Disney's plans for their TRON resurrection include big plans for it to be a tentpole for their boy-friendly offerings; although TRON LEGACY didn't quite slay as much as hoped at the box office, that never stoped the Disney Army from following a plan. TRON UPRISING the cartoon starts airing on XD in fall 2012 and it has some good folks attached: director Charlie Bean and painted Alberto Mielgo. Definitely looks like something folks can watch late at night while they come down from being party people, which is of course exactly the audience Disney planned it for.

Oni has just announced the promotion of Jill Beaton and Charlie Chu to full editors. “For the last year both Jill and Charlie have given their all to Oni Press as associate editors and integral parts of our editorial team,” editor in chief James Lucas Jones said in a statement. “They each have taken on added responsibility, working with established Oni creators on stellar books and reaching out to bring new creators into the Oni fold.”

Following up on yesterday's new about Tokyopop laying off at least three editors, the scuttlebutt has continued to flow. Some sources are telling us that there are only 7 people left on staff, including founder Stuart Levy and president Mike Kiley -- the rest of the duties of getting out a line of manga being assigned to freelancers. Brigid Alverson is about as calm and rational a person as we have ever met, so tosee her unload as she does in this post about Tpop's history is a fearsome thing. The layoffs, the OEL rights disasters, the silly detours into movies and Web-TV, and over it all the seeming cluelessness of Levy -- Brigid nails it all:

Word is going around that LA manga publisherToykopop has laid off several more people -- including editors Lillian Diaz-Przybyl and Troy Lewter. The staff is now reduced to a mere handful of people -- including owner Stu Levy and publisher Mike Kiley. EDIT: Editor Asako Suzuki has also been laid off.

Two new posters for X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, the young mutants film opening this June, proving that before they grew up to become arch rivals, Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender) liked to stand around experimenting with Photoshop color filters.

It's the first ever Peanuts graphic novel, Charlie Brown! Last week people were speculating over the announcement that kaboom! -- BOOM! Studios' new all-ages comics imprint -- would be publishing something Peanuts-related. Was it strips reprints? Comic book reprints? What? The reality is that it's an ALL NEW adaptation of a new Peanuts animated movie, Happiness Is a Warm Blanket Charlie Brown, which Warners Home Video is releasing in March.

...unless you read old comic strips. Fantagraphics' Floyd Gottfredson reprint project was a big news item at last year's San Diego, and you can bet that the book (due on April 15th) will get people talking some more. FBI released a pdf of the promo materials and here's a sneak peek.

Oji Suzuki is the latest in D&Q's gekiga projects, and Tom Devlin explains why:

Legendary Archie artist Stan Goldberg started his career in the Golden Age coloring countless covers for Atlas, but in the Silver Age he was as a colorist for Marvel, working on such things as the cover to the very first issue of The Fantastic Four and desinging the color schemes for much of the seminal line. So it's fitting that he's been tagged to draw a variant cover for the new FF #1 featuring the new line-up, which features Spider-Man. The interiors are by Jonathan Hickman and Steve Epting while other variant covers are by Daniel Acuna, Gerard Parel and Marko Djurdjevic.