ICv2 interviews Viz Media’s Seiji Horibuchi on the subject of Viz’s growing slate of movie releases beyond the DVD market:

With the growing interest in Japanese pop culture do you think that some of these films may get exposure on cable or satellite TV here in North America?

Yes. We’re currently in discussion with some cable channels already. Kamikaze Girls has been aired on AZN television. Also we’ re expecting to get more of our titles exposed not only on TV, but also on Internet broadcasting channels. We’ve obtained the Internet broadcasting rights for Hula Girls, so we’re planning to release this title on the digital distribution channels in the near future.


Comic Book Resources talks to Image’s new marketing guyJoe Keatinge:

“I believe we’re producing titles for the entire planet, not just the typical comics market,” declared Keatinge. “The company came into being out of a creative revolution that still flourishes today. People have really caught on that if you’re creating comics, there’s no better place to do them. That’s why Kyle Baker (‘Special Forces’) took his line of creator owned works over to us. Same with Mike Allred (‘Madman’). Richard Starkings could have continued producing his great line of books such as ‘Hip Flask’ and ‘Strange Embrace’ through Active Images, but he chose to bring them to Image. The list goes on. These are the comics that are the dream books of the creators. Comics produced out of the purest love of the medium you’ll find. It shows in every, single panel of every last book we do.”

Steve Bissette talks to nascent cartooner and CCS grad Sean Ford, whose ONLY SKIN comes out soon.

I visited CCS in November 05 and liked it, but it was actually a work-related visit to Jim Lee’s WildStorm Studios in La Jolla, CA the next spring that made me decide to apply. I didn’t really want any part of WS and certainly less of the creepy, cookie-cutter town of La Jolla, but seeing those offices I just couldn’t help thinking that Lee had been able to do that by pursuing what he really wanted to do in life and I was just kind of wasting away at a job I didn’t particularly care about. It was a really weird setting for a sort of life-altering decision like that, but somehow I was able to look past the Hollywood cheesiness of the moment and I got home from that trip and started drawing my first real comics I’d drawn since I was 14 or 15. And after a month or so of drawing, despite the general shittiness of the results, I applied to CCS and magically got in.