§ Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report: “Should we go to war with Iran? We only need 300 troops.”

§ Joel Silver says Wonder Woman is war at Rotten Tomatoes:

“For years now, Marvel’s just been kicking the DC Comics’ characters ass. They’ve been killing them. And look, I don’t know if that’s because the Marvel characters are more self deprecating and more they twist on the super hero character. But I mean, DC is the foundation of the super hero character. They’re where it came from. Watchmen is more in the Marvel direction, but I would hope that we can bring some of these DC characters. They’re doing the new Batman now, and I hope they can do another Superman, I hope we can figure out Wonder Woman, I hope they make Justice League. I hope we can do a lot of these characters, cause I think it’s good to get them out there, and I’d like to try to win that war.”


War — HUAGH.

200703280307§ Wizard yaks with cartoonist turned screenwriter Rob Shrab, whose SCUD THE DISPOSABLE ASSASSIN is coming back:

I started working on “The Sarah Silverman Program.” We did a pilot like a year and a half ago, and then we got picked up for six episodes and we started shooting them in the summer of 2006. At the beginning of the summer, Image called me up and said, “Hey, would you be interested in reprinting all of your Scud books?” I said, “Well, yeah. That would be great.” So I did a little digging, and I found all the pages because for some stupid reason all the original screens were burned up in Canada a couple of years ago. So there was a good chance that Scud was never going to exist again, but I tracked down all the pages and have been putting the book back together over the last couple of months.


§ Newsarama catches up with Yani Mentzas, Editorial Director and Executive Vice President of Vertical.:

Tezuka was part of our lineup from the get-go. In fact, our plan to publish Buddha was one of the reasons why Mr. Kidd, the design star, agreed to become our Art Director. One of Vertical’s founding ideas was to publish newly translated Tezuka on a regular basis. Tezuka Productions, however, made it very clear to us that we wouldn’t be acquiring any more titles from them until we proved ourselves with Buddha. Thankfully, the series did well, so we were permitted to publish more of the master. In terms of sales, the first volume of Buddha sold roughly the same amount as the first book of the Ring trilogy, the other flagship title of our debut year.


§ Newsarama also sits down with Jana Morishma, Diamond’s new Kids Comics czar:

About six years ago, the graphic novel industry used to complain that their books were getting lost, either racked on a few lonely shelves at the end of the science fiction section, or mixed in somewhere among the humor books. A couple of things happened to change this situation: first, retailers decided to create a separate section with signage that clearly indicated “Graphic Novels.” Having a critical mass of graphic novels in one bay (bookcase) in the bookstores helped increase the books’ visibility. Second, some publishers, like Tokyopop, created P.O.P. (point-of-purchase) displays that called out their books even more noticeably for consumers. Suddenly, graphic novel and manga sales started taking off, and over the past five years sales have grown an astonishing 400% (according to icv2.com, graphic novel sales were approximately $75 million in 2001, and were approximately $330 million in 2006).

I predict that we’ll see the same pattern occurring for children’s graphic novels. Retailers will create a distinct subsection labeled “Graphic Novels and Manga” in the children’s department, and suddenly kids who love comics and manga will know where to find their books. Publishers who are interested in focusing on the category will work harder to market their books with promotions such as displays, special offers, advertising, author signings, etc.


200703280204§ Derek McCulloch is interviewed about STAGGER LEE for the WaPo Express

“From everything that I’ve read, I go with the political interpretation that they were men representing pretty bitterly opposed political organizations, and they had some sort of argument of a political nature — eyewitnesses said so.” McCulloch said. “It escalated to the point of killing.”


(Reminder, we’ll be interviewing McCulloch and Shep Hendrix THIS FRIDAY at B&N here in NYC.)

1 COMMENT

  1. Per Mr. Joel (pink shirt) Silver’s comment:

    Yeah, DC may have created the foundation of the super hero mode – but Marvel was only behind a few years with the original team-up of Sub-Mariner, Human Torch, and Captain America – and with them calling themselves the Invaders- didn’t they hold the title of supergroup just before Justice Society of America started?

    ~

    Coat

  2. Thanks for the Scud interview Heidi! :)
    I would’a never seen it on my own cause it had to do with Wizard.

  3. What Matthew said –

    I do believe I got my seventies mixed up with my forties again.

    Come to think – I do remember having Invaders # 2 when I was in grade school.

    ~

    Coat