Publishers

§ Have you ever wondered what it would be like to read an interview with a publishing executive talking about his digital plans WITHOUT worrying about direct sales retailers taking his every word as a call to arms? Well, take a gander at ICv2's talk with Disney's Dario Di Zanni:

In the spirit of the season, Evan Dorkin, Jill Thompson, and Mike Mignola provide an Eisner-heavy creative lineup for the Beasts of Burden/Hellboy One Shot which is on sale THIS WEEK and there's even a preview.

This week's NBA preview issue of ESPN The Magazine includes special Marvel-themed makeovers of all the teams, and Comics Alliance has the entire gallery. Here are a few to get warmed up:

Ever since the announcement of the "Earth One" line of graphic novels just over a year ago, it's been a little unclear just who the line was aimed at, or how it fit into DC's various lines of books. Subsequent statements just muddied the waters. Although obviously an Ultimates-type revamp for new readers, with just one book on the schedule -- the just released JMS/Shane Davis SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE -- it was just a toe in those same muddy waters.

Even the Justice League is getting into the spirit of Halloween with this year's DCU Halloween Special, now on sale. Contents include stories by Billy Tucci, Lee Garbett, Bryan Q. Miller and Joe Harris. More in link.

A letter of early costume design notes is found. Found via Comics Alliance, where it is pointed out that artist H.G. Peter was 61 years old when tasked with designing this iconic character.

Bits and pieces of scrimshaw from the Green Lantern movie are leaking out, and here are a few nice pieces of concept art, as seen at Splash Page.

Overall, direct market sales for August were substantially down, prompting a bit of handwringing online. And it's true that no title even came close to reaching the 100,000 mark (for only the third time since Diamond achieved their monopoly of the direct market). It's not so much that sales on individual titles suddenly lurched down in August. They've been dropping for a while, and the comparisons with one or two years ago make fairly grim reading at the moment (though bear in mind they don't show books being cancelled and replaced by higher-selling new launches). Rather, it's a month without any really big releases from either company. Marvel's major launch was a new NAMOR series, which lands just outside the top 40, while the biggest story events were the X-Men/vampires affair and the Daredevil-centred SHADOWLAND. As usual, Marvel had the largest share of the direct market, leading DC by 45% to 32% in terms of units, and 41% to 28% in dollars.

Armie Hammer is a giant, beautiful human. Now that we have that out of the way, it's very obvious -- after his scene-stealing turn as the rowing Winklevoss twins in THE SOCIAL NETWORK -- that he would make a swell giant, beautiful Kryptonian. However, as he blabs in an interview with Vulture, at 24 he's too young for the upcoming Zack Snyder Superman movie which will deal with a more mature 35-40 year old Man of Steel. Given that we've seen the original of Superman told so well in the Christopher Reeve versions, an older I-know-what-I'm-doing Man of Steel might be a good change-up. It's also more in line with the age of Christian Bale's Batman. And, it just feels more Curt Swan, y'know.

Image publisher Eric Stephenson doesn't get quoted too much, but maybe he should. Rich Johnston has a very in-depth interview with Stephenson up and its about time. Image is consistently the #3 or 4 comics publishers and in recent months Image has absolutely stolen the mantle of "buzz book" publisher, starting with Chew, but continuing on with Turf, Skullkickers, Morning Glorys and so on. And of course, with the Walking Dead TV show debuting in a few days, they are set to sell even MORE copies of a book that already has 3 million copies in print. As Stephenson mentions, he doesn't often go around tooting his horn, so the inetrview touches on a lot of point seldom publicly spoken of. Kudos to Johnston and Stephenson for putting something substantive up on the internet for a change. Anyone interested in the state of comics publishing and creators rights should read the whole thing, but a few selected tidbits:

Marvel's solicitations came out today* and indsuytry watcher were standing by with microscopes to scrutinize a proposed 1) drop in the number of $2.99 books and 2) decrease in the number of books altogether. On #2, there seems to be some corroboration with what was said at the NYCC retail breakfast, according to Bleeding Cool, which does a big count of all titles in all families. Compared to December there is a 17 percent drop in the number of titles, and a 20 percent decrease in total cover price.

Although Disney's acquisition of Marvel's character library was seen as a genius move to shore up their boy-skewing movie franchises, there was one wistful little fly in the ointment: Marvel had already assigned rights to most of their iconic super hero franchises to other studios. Undeterred, Disney has just regained a few of the crown jewels: Disney has just acquired marketing and distribution rights to THE AVENGERS and and IRON MAN 3, which will be released May 13, 2013. Disney paid Paramount $115 million for the distribution rights and this will serve as a minimum guarantee against distribution fees.