Tag: Top News

Guten Tag! Germany... it's a bit of a conundrum in Continental comics. Smack dab in the middle of Europe, it gets a lot of comics imported...

Best known in the US for writing Beautiful Darkness, Fabien Vehlmann is a superstar writer in France, working on some of the best known characters while winning numerous awards, and even writing the occasional movie. Here's a brief look at some of his work available in English.

Today is a day to send shout-outs to the Center for Cartoon Studies, located in White River Junction, VT and recognize it's many good deeds. While my shout out should be a loving essay on how teaching comics has had a strong effect on storytelling and how the bucolic yet isolated campus in rural Vermont allows students to focus in on making comics, or the print room or the other great things about the faculty which includes James Sturm and Steve Bissette, I don't have time for that. Instead I will just direct you to Rob Clough's series looking at the WORK of CCS grads and spotlight a few of them:

Jamie Coville has done his usually top notch job of recording some of the best panels from this tear's Emerald City con. Here's his...

Welcome to a new analysis of the Marvel sales. Reminder: I'm the French guy who took over Jason for this column. Less figures, a comparaison with the issue#2 sales and some TPB sales at the end are the only big differences you could notice. Reminder: those sales are estimates, sales to comics shops in North America. American comics do get sold somewhere else in their original floppy edition. Keep also in mind that just because a copy is sold to a shop doesn’t mean it's sold to a customer. This would be way too easy. It's a little hard to be sure what the fate of each title will be after Secret wars: Marvel did release a list of the titles that will come back after the event, and confirmed that The Last Days banner was for titles that will stop publication. But, frankly, it's hard to believe the list, and seeing that a title can be cancelled to be relaunched one month later with no differences, the word “cancellation” can lose some of its meaning. I'm pretty sure they will change their mind on the way and that, in fact, they are not sure yet which titles will come back, waiting for how many copies those Battleword titles will sell before taking their real decisions.

April Fools? Or totally cools?

See I tolja, it's hard to be funny about this stuff any more with satirical sites the Onion and Clickhole, let alone ACTUAL sites like Daily Caller, Upworthy and thenTaboola promising 10 celebrity dogs who have aged badly at the end of everything we read on the 'Net. A few people tried. io9 of all places had the old DC, Marvel Announce Merger story, albeit with some nice characterization:

Brian Heater, the man behind the much missed Daily Cross Hatch indie comics site, keeps himself busy these days with many projects, including a regular podcast via Boing Boing called RiYL (Recommended if You Like). The podcast celebrates it's 100th episode this week with They Might Be Giants, perhaps the most podcast-iest podcast guests imaginable, but along the way Heater has talked to many comics folks, and he's supplied a cheat sheet to listen to you favorites. Heater knows his stuff and is an excellent interviewer so all of these are RECOMMENDED if you like good conversation!

reetings, sales charts fans! It's time once again to look at DC's sales figures. While DC's top seller, Batman, slid to #5 on the Diamond chart--behind the debut issues of Orphan Black (Loot Crate-enhanced), Darth Vader, and Spider-Gwen; and the second issue of Star Wars--things were in fact a bit rosier for DC in February. Especially compared to January, as the Harley Quinn freely-orderable variant was a good deal more popular with those doing the ordering than last month's Flash variant. In most cases adding 2K - 4K more copies for those titles with the HQ variant. (A couple, Batman & Flash, went up about 8K; while Batgirl mysteriously dropped instead.) For the most part, DC is in a holding pattern right now, as many titles are coming to a close next month and the move-induced mega-event Convergence on the slate for April & May followed by a sizable relaunch in June. So you'll have to forgive the brevity of many of the comments below, as their just isn't that much to say this month that hasn't already been said before. Don't worry, I promise that the next few month's DC sales charts will have plenty more excitement!

Beloved comics figures Jen Vaughn is leaving her marketing position at Fantagraphics, and Tom Spurgeon has her exit inerview: VAUGHN: The plan was to stay...

With movies and TV shows based on comics unavoidable no matter where you turn, I've often wondered why there aren't more indie movies based on indie comics. Part of the reason is that it's just so darned hard to fund any indie movie any more. But it does happen. And if you had reminded me that Officer Downe, the one shot comic by Joe Casey and Chris Burnham was being actually made, with Slipnot's main clown Shawn Crahan directing, I would have said "oh yeah, April Fools." Not because it isn't good source material but it sounds so darned unlikely. <

Since launching, Kickstarter has funded 2,652 comics projects, raising $37 million. Comics have a 49.72% success rate—the fourth highest after dance, music and theater, so it's a well established category for the crowdfunding giant. In the month of April, Kickstarter's Brooklyn office will host several comics related seminars and events. You can RSVP for all of these on the Kickstarter page, but here's a rundown, with a pair of events this Thursday.