Tag: History

With the announcement of the closure of WildStorm imprint at DC and the retiring of the WildStorm name, it isn't just another in a long list of comics imprints that have ended over the years. In its 18 year run WildStorm has been a vital part of several revolutions in commercial comics, and changed the game in many ways -- Rob Liefeld's post below gives a succinet run down of some of the highlights.

Founded by Jim Lee as one of the original six Image Studios (along with Marc Sillvestri's Top Cow, Todd McFarlane's McFarlane Productions, Rob Liefeld's Extreme Studios, Jim Valentino's ShadowLine and Erik Larsen's Highbrow Entertainment), WildStorm immediately established itself as one of the most commercial, with huge sellers like WildCATS and Gen 13. A series of developing fan favorite artists, including of course Lee himself, but also J. Scott Campbell, Joe Madureira and Humberto Ramos, kept popularity up, while the creator owned Homage imprint delivered such strong properties as Astro City and Leave it To Chance.

Although known first for their art, by the end of the decade, WildStorm was really becoming known for some of the most daring mainstream writing of the period, with genre-defining work by Warren Ellis and Mark Millar, strong adventure material by Jimmy Palmiotti and Ed Brubaker, as well as daring experiments like Automatic Kafka, a book by Joe Casey and Ashley Wood that people are still figuring out.

And then there was America's Best Comics, an new line of comics written by Alan Moore that would introduce the world to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Tom Strong, Promethea and Top Ten, the superhero police procedural. And our favorite, Jack B. Quick, the boy inventor who solved science's greatest non problems.

Of course, there are dark parts to the legacy as well, all of which will be trotted out and discussed at length, we're sure. But for now, we asked creators and staff for some of their good memories, and this is what they came back with.

As SPX '10 thoughts still swirl in the indie community, Frank Santoro looks back and swirls about why mini-comics no longer feel fresh to him:

We kept meaning to link to this fascinating post by blogging/internet consultant Dan Blank about the disparate ways Disney and MGM treated their legacies, beginning with a harrowing account of the legendary MGM auction of 1970, an event equivalent to the burning of the Alexandrian library or the retreat from Leningrad in terms of movie memorabilia:

Oh snap! Curmudgeonly genius Alan Moore delivers one of his most vinegary interviews yet, taking to Adi Tantimadh at Bleeding Cool mostly about DC's abortive attempts to get Moore to give his blessing for those Watchmen sequels and spin-offs and what-nots. As Moore tells it, DC sent Dave "Watchmen" Gibbons to discuss the matter with Moore, which, to the shock of no one, upset Moore's feelings. Moore wonders why DC is even seeking his approval, speculating that perhaps there is some kind of legal reason for the move. (Moore doesn't seem to think that maybe they were just...trying not to hurt his feelings.) Anyway, Moore also wonders why they even need him anyway and delivers s bunch of sharp zings to today's comics creators:

Fantagraphics has just announced via PR the publication of a long-lost but much alluded to comic strip by William S. Burroughs and British artist...

Via Hairy Green Eyeball II:

Via Sam Henderson, a gallery of art by fabulist Basil Wolverton, from PLOP! In case you are wondering what PLOP! was, it was a humor/satire...

Boilerplate, the not-so-historical mechanical man dreamed up by Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett, has been optioned by J.J. Abrams, whose Bad Robot production company...

From Kirby to Colletta to Legos, you will learn a lot at the TwoMorrows booth. The big debut is the book on Vinnie Colletta -- who says there are no comics in Comic-Con?

Everything's coming up Vinnie Colletta! After some brisk discussion here and elsewhere on the inking giant, John Morrow writes to say that...

Over the recent holiday weekend, we had occasion to spend a fair bit of time going through posts from the Old Beat, clearing out some spam and trying to clean up the database for various purposes. Along the way we were forced to violently relive the last few years of the last decade. It all seemed so simple once. So many news stories that never went anywhere -- a few we jotted down for future investigation, but there were also things like this fellow who spent money in 2007 to announce his new blog. Now it's only a reseller placeholder. They had such big dreams, but those big dreams crawled under a rock to die.

We're gonna try not to have minutely news updates on this year's San Diego, but it's probably gonna be daily from here on out, so here's a round-up of pertinent links and ephemera. Which reminds us....isn't it time San Diego was renamed Douche Prom?