yes, I'll say it again, Galactus by Sienkiewicz.Nuff Said.
Showing posts with label Marvel Comics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marvel Comics. Show all posts
Friday, December 27, 2013
We Interrupt This Post: Galactus by Sienkiewicz
yes, I'll say it again, Galactus by Sienkiewicz.Nuff Said.
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Oh The Anger: Genesis West's Red Nails - Artist's Edition
As I hold in my hands the Genesis West Artist's Edition of Red Nails, I find that i had misgivings about certain aspects of the packaging: The one sided pages, the glossy paper used, the unnecessary slipcase, but it did not occur to me just how much this would be discussed, with such anger, online.I should have known better.
This is what the internet is made for. And never suffer a geek, whether sci fi or comic or fantasy, not given what they want, especially if you get really, really, REALLY close to what they want. (Mos Eisley is no longer a one horse town? great, but do i have to have Han shoot second to get the bigger town? Really?)
Case in point here are the rise of the artist's editions by IDW. Never, in my life, would i have thought that anyone would get their hands on the art, get the money to reproduce comic art full size, and get enough buyers to actually not go bankrupt producing that book. Clearly I was wrong. Ever, happily, oh so wrong. That first Simonson one took me, and I think, a lot of folks by surprise. After all, someone was actually taking a chance of catering to a fairly niche market. And it worked. Yay for us.
There is a charm to the original art that, I thought, only came across when you were holding the originals in your hands, looking at the margin notes and the erasures and white-outs, and i certainly didn't think that many of us had that gene. IDW has proved me wrong on that account.Now lets be very upfront on this: if this book doesn't come out, you and I NEVER EVER will see the Red Nails originals. And I seen and held a lot of original art, more than most, since i started collecting originals back in 1989. We would, NEVER, get to see this artwork full size in original form. So, I kept that in mind when i slipped the book out of its case.
Now, i do have some of the IDW books, and I do like that format. I don't think that the glossy paper is ideal, but its OK when you get down to it. Partly this book just suffers from IDW delivering so much bang for the buck with regards to production values and their choice of material. We've gotten used to seeing artwork on bristol and it looks "like is should". So, no, its not the ideal format in my mind, but its OK in every aspect other than the non-facing pages.
Slipcase I really don't want? Glossy paper? Borders to the artwork? Fine. But do not, on any other editions, give me one piece of artwork with nothing on the back. Its a huge waste of space and money and that is the one thing that would stop me from getting another Genesis West book. Yes, I bought this, and will love having it, but you're not getting my money again without that adjustment. This book, with facing pages, should have been "Song of Red Sonja" and Rednails and the piece that Barry did for the Marvel 1975 Calendar and then we'd be talking something worth the money.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Dave Cockrum 1975 Sketch: Nightcrawler & Storm
Just wanted to post this because, well, Dave was great. The Nightcrawler is actually pretty generic and the face is a bit long, but the Storm... well, Dave clearly has actually looked at women and captured the languid sensuality of her body language. The delicacy of her left hand in the grass is a small be delightful touch. Well done Dave. Miss ya.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
In Process: The Avengers by Granov & Yoakum
Posted this "in process" piece, simply to blow Alex Sheikman's mind, since we approach inking completely differently.This one is coming along I think.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Quick Look: Hulk Special #1 Cover by Jim Steranko
It isn't a wonder that Stan gave Jim all this freedom when it came to his work at Marvel, after all, he was looking at the stuff and knew that Steranko was on that enviable upward curve where the artwork experiences rapid leaps almost every month. What I don't get is how he didn't realize how Jim getting the writer credit and freedom to experiment would hurt Kirby. That lack of emapthy was a huge miscalculation at best, or a huge blind spot at worst. I suspect the latter.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
A Quick Look: Iron Man #1 cover by Gene Colan
The cover of Iron Many #1 is a great example of using the heavy blacks to really orient the weight of the figure without having to worry about pointing out how wonky the left leg and right shoulder of the figure is! As well, if you compare this with the printed version, you can see how the editors statted the vignette scenes around Iron Man and moved this into different positions. Lets face it, it IS too crowded at the top. I would certainly believe that they told Gene to leave space at the bottom for a blurb, which he did, and they later decided that the "Premiere Issue" blurb didn't quite fit. Personally, while both covers for me, Gene's original is better.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
A Quick Look: X-Men #58 Cover by Neal Adams
Welcome to the X-Men. Except that this is no X-Men like you've ever seen before. This is the "we're hanging on by the skin of our teeth and are about to get canned" X-Men. And it shows.
Adams and Steranko both dropped in and knocked out some stunning work on a book that neither of them could have cared less about, but that is because they were, in their prime, stunning artists who didn't need to be in love with the work to make everyone else in the industry look like amateurs. They were the next generation of stars in the comics and they would have a profound effect on the industry for the next 20 plus years. Longer even.
Adams' design for Havok was a delightful and inventive bit of visual imagery. the lack of highlights on the black costume, as well as the concentric circles showing the building of power in his body we something that no one had done before. And should have been done for the First Class movie. Why they didn't I don't know. Adams would also knock off designing the infamous Cerebro helmet that would get used for decades to come. Enjoy seeing the original art for this one, and ask yourself, what were they whiting out all over the cover?
Thursday, March 14, 2013
A Bit Of: Steranko - Our Love Story #5
Less well known is his attempt to re-invent the visual language of the romance story, and the short from Our Love #5 is an interesting stab at it. This is the first time I've ever seen a color guide from that story, a perfect example of how they called out the CMYK values back in the day. Take a little peak behind the curtain....
Sunday, October 21, 2012
The Rudderless 70's
Was just perusing a few of the Amazon reviews of Marvel Comics: the Untold Story when i ran across this bit:
I've prepared a number of times, and scrapped, posts about using someone else's properties to make a meaningful personal comment, and just how difficult and, yes, strange it is to think of using someone else's character for that. And yet, with no other venues available, that is exactly what those 1970's arteurs did.
Shall we see the rudderless '70's as a company with no over arching vision? Of course, because if someone was really watching, and Jim Shooter would soon be, we would never have had Steve Englehart doing his own personal take on Watergate with his Secret Empire storyline in Captain America, or Jim Starlin exercising his personal Viet Nam and Catholic upbringings in Captain Marvel and Warlock. Don McGregor wouldn't have been able to make Jungle Action: Starring the Black Panther into a personal forum to battle racism and social injustice, nor made Killraven less a derivative science fiction story than a mediation on the rising and advancing of the last free people traversing North America. Would P. Craig Russell have had the chance to develop his singularly lyrical art elsewhere under a DC house style? Starlin wouldn't have given us Thanos. And Gerber, yes, Gerber would have never breathed life into the Man-Thing, let alone Howard the Duck.
Oh, and have we forgotten that, in 1975, a little book called the All New, All Different X-Man would come along and basically save the industry?
I can't wait to read more on this book.
Having my local bookseller, as always, order it for me, not on Amazon.
The history of Marvel reads like a series of epic story arcs. There's the Big Bang of the 'sixties; the rudderless 'seventies; the Jim Shooter era, with an editor-in-chief seemingly dedicated to sabotaging Marvel's entire line of books; the boom and bust years of the early to mid 'nineties, in which the Heroes World distribution debacle and the mass defection of artists from Marvel to Image (who, once there, were incapable of releasing their books on time) helped to put thousands of comic shops out of business, just as Marvel, the former industry leader, declared bankruptcy.And it caught me in that, as many bad '70's books as there were (and YES, there were some terrible 1970's Marvel Comics), there were a significant handful of truly amazing Marvel Comics that came out in that decade which may be glossed over by that simple phrase in the review above.
I've prepared a number of times, and scrapped, posts about using someone else's properties to make a meaningful personal comment, and just how difficult and, yes, strange it is to think of using someone else's character for that. And yet, with no other venues available, that is exactly what those 1970's arteurs did.
Shall we see the rudderless '70's as a company with no over arching vision? Of course, because if someone was really watching, and Jim Shooter would soon be, we would never have had Steve Englehart doing his own personal take on Watergate with his Secret Empire storyline in Captain America, or Jim Starlin exercising his personal Viet Nam and Catholic upbringings in Captain Marvel and Warlock. Don McGregor wouldn't have been able to make Jungle Action: Starring the Black Panther into a personal forum to battle racism and social injustice, nor made Killraven less a derivative science fiction story than a mediation on the rising and advancing of the last free people traversing North America. Would P. Craig Russell have had the chance to develop his singularly lyrical art elsewhere under a DC house style? Starlin wouldn't have given us Thanos. And Gerber, yes, Gerber would have never breathed life into the Man-Thing, let alone Howard the Duck.
Oh, and have we forgotten that, in 1975, a little book called the All New, All Different X-Man would come along and basically save the industry?
I can't wait to read more on this book.
Having my local bookseller, as always, order it for me, not on Amazon.
Monday, May 07, 2012
Hobgoblin by Romita & Yoakum
final touches added, here is my first work over the legendary John Romita's pencils.I think that i could have done a hell of a Spider-man cover back in the 1970's. Given that i cuold have wrest the job away from Esposito or Giacoia for an issue.
Thursday, May 03, 2012
In Review: Michael Chabon and the Art of the Conn
Richly imagined, in its own little constrained world, the surrogate dopplegangers of Stanley Leiber and Jacob Katzenburg reach the end of their lifes and try to reconcile or try to avoid reconciliation when little is left of the world that they had started. How does it end? Badly, as you would expect, and messy, in all the ways that you would also expect.
Finally had the chance to sit down and really read through Citizen Conn by Michael Chabon from the February 6 & 13 issue of the New Yorker and it was an interesting read, but ultimately and puzzling one. I'm not surprised by Chabon working comic book territory again, after all, he loves the stuff down to his DNA as much as I do, as much as i expect the readers of my blog to, and so, instead of being upset with him mining comic book iconography and mythology (as I am with Lichtenstein), I appreciate his take on our favorite guilty pleasure medium. He can write, really write, and its a joy to read his sentences as opposed to so many other writers.
So for him to turn to the ugly soap opera ridden uncertainty that is the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby is certainly interesting, and certainly his take on the story is the right one: rather than assigning who did what in the never-to-be-visited past (there is nothing more subject to the Roshamon effect than the origins of the Marvel Comics Group), he visits the later days of these creative giants. Days when the pages no longer fly off the board and the typewriter is still and the effects of money, time, lawyers and long ago signed backs of Work For Hire checks have long since had their way.
But, tellingly, the Kirby of the story has no Roz to take care of him. He is a prototypical loner, who toiled at his drawing board for too many years and never had the support of a wife or children, and so it is the Kirby surrogate, Morton Feather, moving into an assisted living facility while struggling with bone cancer, who has no dilution of focus. The Stan Lee of the story, Artie Conn, may be married, but we see none of that, we only see his attempts to reconnect with Feather so many years after the Fantastic Four, Thor, The Hulk, and, of course, The Avengers.
It focuses the anger that Feather feels towards Conn that neither has a spouse who walks on stage during the story to take the focus. The female rabbi who narrates wisely has a husband who stands in for us, the average fan, and we get the chance to see how ineffectual our love and devotion to those long yellow paged stories is. It puts us in our place almost instantly and takes us out of the narrative to the benefit of the story.
No, the focus, the rabbi would have us believe, is in the betrayal that was felt in the late '60's when promises were reneged on and Lee signed up to a life of solid wealth and Feather... oh, hell with it, Kirby forced to move to DC and a life of decaying freelance assignments and meager checks. After all, the rabbi's husband, and, by proxy, us, have our joy in opening those books and discovering those stories and becoming enmeshed in the world as Lee and Kirby unfolded, month after month, but, lets face it. We're nothing compared to the men who took the time to create and live in those universes first. While we merely rented an apartment there, no matter how vested we THINK we, they built the whole damn subdivision from an empty lot. Chabon's case, as i see it, is that the money and the lawyering and Stan's taking credit was secondary to the betrayal of the partnership with which those two created.
Those of us with interest in those sorts of things have read plenty of contradictory interviews regarding who did what. And its clear that it will never be settled because, for too many years, their working method was too streamlined, too overlapping, too damn quick given the deadlines to not just keep filling the pages and stay on a roll. Like your favorite band, there is no way to know who came up with that one riff that played perfectly off of the rhythm; both the bassist and guitarist will remember it as something that they came up with, when, in reality, there was a synergy that allowed the creativity to spin off into far more interesting directions even through disagreement.
And that's something that gets brought up all too often in the painful details of Stan and Jack's splintering. That there would have been a number years when the business started taking off again and the books got better and Stan and Jack were creating so much that the pages and the issues just flew by. And while it was exhausting it was probably also exhilarating with both men doing what they loved to do and seeing it all start to come together. They were in their moment and that moment would be about 6 brilliant years of sleepless nights and feverish working days and ink stained hands.
Chabon sums it up in the penultimate paragraph, when Lee's doppleganger gets to exclaim, "You know what? that wouldn't surprise me a bit. he always took everything so seriously." in reference to the idea that the partnership was the defining moment for Kirby, while Lee, more easy going in temperment, simply moved on. Kirby's desire to create was likened to a force of nature within him, so of course he'd take it all so damn seriously. And when you add in the money, oh all that money we know about, then it changes things. The story's solution is a simple solution, and one that we know works well in comic book logic: sadly, real life is so often messier and far more complicated.
Finally had the chance to sit down and really read through Citizen Conn by Michael Chabon from the February 6 & 13 issue of the New Yorker and it was an interesting read, but ultimately and puzzling one. I'm not surprised by Chabon working comic book territory again, after all, he loves the stuff down to his DNA as much as I do, as much as i expect the readers of my blog to, and so, instead of being upset with him mining comic book iconography and mythology (as I am with Lichtenstein), I appreciate his take on our favorite guilty pleasure medium. He can write, really write, and its a joy to read his sentences as opposed to so many other writers.
So for him to turn to the ugly soap opera ridden uncertainty that is the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby is certainly interesting, and certainly his take on the story is the right one: rather than assigning who did what in the never-to-be-visited past (there is nothing more subject to the Roshamon effect than the origins of the Marvel Comics Group), he visits the later days of these creative giants. Days when the pages no longer fly off the board and the typewriter is still and the effects of money, time, lawyers and long ago signed backs of Work For Hire checks have long since had their way.
But, tellingly, the Kirby of the story has no Roz to take care of him. He is a prototypical loner, who toiled at his drawing board for too many years and never had the support of a wife or children, and so it is the Kirby surrogate, Morton Feather, moving into an assisted living facility while struggling with bone cancer, who has no dilution of focus. The Stan Lee of the story, Artie Conn, may be married, but we see none of that, we only see his attempts to reconnect with Feather so many years after the Fantastic Four, Thor, The Hulk, and, of course, The Avengers.
It focuses the anger that Feather feels towards Conn that neither has a spouse who walks on stage during the story to take the focus. The female rabbi who narrates wisely has a husband who stands in for us, the average fan, and we get the chance to see how ineffectual our love and devotion to those long yellow paged stories is. It puts us in our place almost instantly and takes us out of the narrative to the benefit of the story.
No, the focus, the rabbi would have us believe, is in the betrayal that was felt in the late '60's when promises were reneged on and Lee signed up to a life of solid wealth and Feather... oh, hell with it, Kirby forced to move to DC and a life of decaying freelance assignments and meager checks. After all, the rabbi's husband, and, by proxy, us, have our joy in opening those books and discovering those stories and becoming enmeshed in the world as Lee and Kirby unfolded, month after month, but, lets face it. We're nothing compared to the men who took the time to create and live in those universes first. While we merely rented an apartment there, no matter how vested we THINK we, they built the whole damn subdivision from an empty lot. Chabon's case, as i see it, is that the money and the lawyering and Stan's taking credit was secondary to the betrayal of the partnership with which those two created.
Those of us with interest in those sorts of things have read plenty of contradictory interviews regarding who did what. And its clear that it will never be settled because, for too many years, their working method was too streamlined, too overlapping, too damn quick given the deadlines to not just keep filling the pages and stay on a roll. Like your favorite band, there is no way to know who came up with that one riff that played perfectly off of the rhythm; both the bassist and guitarist will remember it as something that they came up with, when, in reality, there was a synergy that allowed the creativity to spin off into far more interesting directions even through disagreement.
And that's something that gets brought up all too often in the painful details of Stan and Jack's splintering. That there would have been a number years when the business started taking off again and the books got better and Stan and Jack were creating so much that the pages and the issues just flew by. And while it was exhausting it was probably also exhilarating with both men doing what they loved to do and seeing it all start to come together. They were in their moment and that moment would be about 6 brilliant years of sleepless nights and feverish working days and ink stained hands.
Chabon sums it up in the penultimate paragraph, when Lee's doppleganger gets to exclaim, "You know what? that wouldn't surprise me a bit. he always took everything so seriously." in reference to the idea that the partnership was the defining moment for Kirby, while Lee, more easy going in temperment, simply moved on. Kirby's desire to create was likened to a force of nature within him, so of course he'd take it all so damn seriously. And when you add in the money, oh all that money we know about, then it changes things. The story's solution is a simple solution, and one that we know works well in comic book logic: sadly, real life is so often messier and far more complicated.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Friedrich, Ghost Rider & that damn work for hire contract
I've not posted anything on the the Gary Friedrich suit against Marvel for the ownership of Ghost Rider, nor the recent judgement against him to the tune of $17,000, and thats partly because it has gone so viral that it really isn't necessary for me to do so.
Daniel Best has, once again, with the time and inclination to read through the court documents and understand the legalese to the point where he can break it down for us laymen. i wanted to link out to further distribute the short and dirty version of where it all stands right now, with the second movie about to open and in trailers.
Gary has no way to win this really. If Jack's heirs couldn't win against Marvel and their lawyers, then Gary has no chance of it. I guess I find it just shocking how these piddly little properties that were given away for $35 a page have turned into million dollar inventions. For the record, the second comic I ever owned was Marvel Team-Up #15, with Spider-Man and the Ghost Rider. Now there is a Kane/Romita cover I'd love to own.
And, as always, the little guy gets screwed. Period. And you'd think that Marvel would want to avoid the obvious bad press, but their lawyers are (quite correctly) worried that allowing any loophole, any crack of precedent to show through, will open the floodgates. Wolfman and Colan's heirs would go after Blade (again) and so would all the rest.
And none of this would have happened had the industry not been born on the backs of utter mobsters and crooks. Reasonable contracts up front would have taken of all of this, or at least made it a little easier. But when Seigel and Shuster and Bill Finger and Friedrich and Burgos and Everett all practically on or over the edge of poverty, there is no nice, there is no warm fuzzy spot. There is only the sound of us long time, life long comic fans sliding the tectonic plates of our nostalgia around to accomodate all the evil done to the creators over the years.
They don't sit easily together, do they?
Daniel Best has, once again, with the time and inclination to read through the court documents and understand the legalese to the point where he can break it down for us laymen. i wanted to link out to further distribute the short and dirty version of where it all stands right now, with the second movie about to open and in trailers.
Gary has no way to win this really. If Jack's heirs couldn't win against Marvel and their lawyers, then Gary has no chance of it. I guess I find it just shocking how these piddly little properties that were given away for $35 a page have turned into million dollar inventions. For the record, the second comic I ever owned was Marvel Team-Up #15, with Spider-Man and the Ghost Rider. Now there is a Kane/Romita cover I'd love to own.
And, as always, the little guy gets screwed. Period. And you'd think that Marvel would want to avoid the obvious bad press, but their lawyers are (quite correctly) worried that allowing any loophole, any crack of precedent to show through, will open the floodgates. Wolfman and Colan's heirs would go after Blade (again) and so would all the rest.
And none of this would have happened had the industry not been born on the backs of utter mobsters and crooks. Reasonable contracts up front would have taken of all of this, or at least made it a little easier. But when Seigel and Shuster and Bill Finger and Friedrich and Burgos and Everett all practically on or over the edge of poverty, there is no nice, there is no warm fuzzy spot. There is only the sound of us long time, life long comic fans sliding the tectonic plates of our nostalgia around to accomodate all the evil done to the creators over the years.
They don't sit easily together, do they?
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Everything that is wrong with modern comics...
Well, no, not really. That would take a lot of work and time to go over. But i feel a rant coming on.Ran across this page over at Marvel.com and I have one question to ask: has this artist ever even seen a real woman's body?
That stance in the 4th panel practically says it all: I've learned to draw comics by looking at cartoons and if I've ever been to an anatomy or life drawing class in my life then I'm not carrying it over into my comic work.
Not mention that relying on the computer to take care of almost all your textures and colors means that you've done very little to make the blacks and negative space on the page interesting or even work well. The tilt on the final panel is meant to convey something, perhaps that the Widow is off balance in her assessment of the mission and that bad things are going to happen soon, but the crop on the panel makes it not even work well.
As well, the artist shoots himself in the foot on the size of the air duct. He shows up how large the air ducts are in the second panel, giving them a size relationship to Natasha, and then completely destroys that relationship on the final panel. No way that she can stand up in that vent, as shown in the 2nd panel.
And this is professional work?
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Selling Marvel to the Ladies and to the Masses: David Gabriel
Just a few random thoughts on Marvel Senior VP of Sales David Gabriel, who has a long interview running in the retailer only Diamond Daily, parts of which were excerpted by Heidi in The Beat.
"Everybody is in absolute agreement that the longer these stories play out, the less likely people are to be interested in them,” but denies this means “event fatigue”.
Really? That sounds like a very easy way to try and avoid the negative connotations associated with the phrase, "event fatigue", but if you have to double talk your way out of doing another Secret Invasion, then fine. I mean, my inner fan boy liked Secret Invasion, but too many books, too long, too much. I found myself really enjoying only the books that didn't tie in. David, while everyone talks up Secret Wars as the beginning of Marvel's infatuation with big crossovers, remember that Shooter made it so that you didn't have to get every other book to keep reading.
Later on in the year, we’re going to do an omnibus with full runs from things like Night Nurse, Hellcat, and some other things you really wouldn’t collect anywhere else. Because this a big omnibus celebrating the Marvel women, we can get the full runs into that and make an event out of its release.
Which will hopefully filter down into editorial not saying "Yes" to any new covers featuring tentacle porn. It is interesting that Marvel is clearly acknowledging that there is female readership that they haven't captured. I'm just not sure that they can overcome their desire to appeal to the regular fan boys who like their Ms. Marvel in a thong. It should be an interesting tug of war to see how much female readership they think that they can get with only a year long initiative. In publishing terms, I don't see a year as being a very long period to try and convince female readers that Marvel is actively interested in courting them.
Besides, who is the target audience that they're printing the Omnibus for anyway? I don't know of any women that even know about Night Nurse, much less the Claws of the Cat, and know none that are going to want to buy it out of some misguided nostalgia for comics that they don't even know exist. Hell, I HAVE the Claws of the Cat and I don't need it in omnibus form.
Now here's one that makes even less sense:
There’s a gap there because the idea is we want to sell out of the Premiere hardcovers first, making those the collectibles for readers that have to get a story right away and can’t wait on. Then those that wanted to wait could get the collection in paperback a few months later.
Now, however, they’re going to have to wait a little longer, as we’re going to push back the release of trade paperbacks out to about four to five months after the Premiere hardcovers’ releases. That should really give retailers that are selling those Premiere hardcovers an extra couple of months to sell them.
So lets attack this for a Sales perspective: the industry trend is going towards the TPB model, slowly but surely, so you're moving back the TPBs believing that you'll sell more hardbacks? The reality is that everyone that i know makes a quick internal decision: this is something that I want in X format. Classic Kirby FF? Worth it in hardback. The Brubaker Daredevil material? Softcover. And I'll read the heck out of it, but I'm not buying it in hardback, no matter how you make me. All the great sci-fi Annihilation material? You too forever to get it out in softcover. And i'm not buying that in hardcover. All you did was annoy the hell out of me and get my money later, not sooner. Wouldn't you rather have it sooner?
And thats the key here, you can't make me buy anything I don't want. If you only released the Daredevil in hardcover, I likely wouldn't buy it at all. By giving me the different formats you're more likely to get my money, one way or the other. In the music format analogy, don't just release it on cassette. Release it on CD, cassette, vinyl, and on iTunes and you'll get ALL of us to buy it. Would the average retailer want to sell two hardbacks or a greater volume of soft and hardbacks combined? The better strategy is to release both at once and let the retailer and customers decide the appropriate type of media.
On “The Heroic Age", coming in 2010:
If you remember the first pages of the Marvel books from the 70s, Marvel always had these lines at the top of the page, month after month, giving a synopsis of what the comic was all about. We have something already written up that explains what the Heroic Age is, and we should be ready to roll that out sometime in January.
The Heroic Age took place between 1963 and 1969 or 1970 and your synopsis should use words like "Kirby" and "Ditko" and "Lee" and "Kane" and "Steranko" and "Heck" if you really want to get it right.
"Everybody is in absolute agreement that the longer these stories play out, the less likely people are to be interested in them,” but denies this means “event fatigue”.
Really? That sounds like a very easy way to try and avoid the negative connotations associated with the phrase, "event fatigue", but if you have to double talk your way out of doing another Secret Invasion, then fine. I mean, my inner fan boy liked Secret Invasion, but too many books, too long, too much. I found myself really enjoying only the books that didn't tie in. David, while everyone talks up Secret Wars as the beginning of Marvel's infatuation with big crossovers, remember that Shooter made it so that you didn't have to get every other book to keep reading.
Later on in the year, we’re going to do an omnibus with full runs from things like Night Nurse, Hellcat, and some other things you really wouldn’t collect anywhere else. Because this a big omnibus celebrating the Marvel women, we can get the full runs into that and make an event out of its release.
Which will hopefully filter down into editorial not saying "Yes" to any new covers featuring tentacle porn. It is interesting that Marvel is clearly acknowledging that there is female readership that they haven't captured. I'm just not sure that they can overcome their desire to appeal to the regular fan boys who like their Ms. Marvel in a thong. It should be an interesting tug of war to see how much female readership they think that they can get with only a year long initiative. In publishing terms, I don't see a year as being a very long period to try and convince female readers that Marvel is actively interested in courting them.
Besides, who is the target audience that they're printing the Omnibus for anyway? I don't know of any women that even know about Night Nurse, much less the Claws of the Cat, and know none that are going to want to buy it out of some misguided nostalgia for comics that they don't even know exist. Hell, I HAVE the Claws of the Cat and I don't need it in omnibus form.
Now here's one that makes even less sense:
There’s a gap there because the idea is we want to sell out of the Premiere hardcovers first, making those the collectibles for readers that have to get a story right away and can’t wait on. Then those that wanted to wait could get the collection in paperback a few months later.
Now, however, they’re going to have to wait a little longer, as we’re going to push back the release of trade paperbacks out to about four to five months after the Premiere hardcovers’ releases. That should really give retailers that are selling those Premiere hardcovers an extra couple of months to sell them.
So lets attack this for a Sales perspective: the industry trend is going towards the TPB model, slowly but surely, so you're moving back the TPBs believing that you'll sell more hardbacks? The reality is that everyone that i know makes a quick internal decision: this is something that I want in X format. Classic Kirby FF? Worth it in hardback. The Brubaker Daredevil material? Softcover. And I'll read the heck out of it, but I'm not buying it in hardback, no matter how you make me. All the great sci-fi Annihilation material? You too forever to get it out in softcover. And i'm not buying that in hardcover. All you did was annoy the hell out of me and get my money later, not sooner. Wouldn't you rather have it sooner?
And thats the key here, you can't make me buy anything I don't want. If you only released the Daredevil in hardcover, I likely wouldn't buy it at all. By giving me the different formats you're more likely to get my money, one way or the other. In the music format analogy, don't just release it on cassette. Release it on CD, cassette, vinyl, and on iTunes and you'll get ALL of us to buy it. Would the average retailer want to sell two hardbacks or a greater volume of soft and hardbacks combined? The better strategy is to release both at once and let the retailer and customers decide the appropriate type of media.
On “The Heroic Age", coming in 2010:
If you remember the first pages of the Marvel books from the 70s, Marvel always had these lines at the top of the page, month after month, giving a synopsis of what the comic was all about. We have something already written up that explains what the Heroic Age is, and we should be ready to roll that out sometime in January.
The Heroic Age took place between 1963 and 1969 or 1970 and your synopsis should use words like "Kirby" and "Ditko" and "Lee" and "Kane" and "Steranko" and "Heck" if you really want to get it right.
Friday, October 16, 2009
R.I.P. George Tuska
Just learned from Danny Boy's blog that George Tuska has died, and it brought back plenty of memories of his Iron Man's, as well as a host of other series that he worked on.
George was the artist on the first issue that I ever brought (Iron Man #64), only the second comic that I had ever seen, and I was completely and utterly perplexed by being thrown into the middle of a confusing Dr. Spectrum story. My seven year old brain was trying desperately to understand some of the visual language native to comics (speed lines, pointers on word balloons, certain visual shorthand that unique to Tuska) and try to understand the story at the same time!
None the less, i did figure it out, and would go on to buy up a ton of back issues with George's work, as well as following the series going forward. George was never my favorite artist, his work as a bit stiff and as he went on in his career ( a career that had been going on for a long time!) he relied on many of the same poses and faces. It was a revelation to come across Iron Man #11-18, where a number of the issues were inked by Johnny Craig, the grand EC veteran, and they brought a finishing skill to Tuska's work that was missing from most of his inkers. I think that George was very poorly served by his inkers over the years, and the evidence is right there.
I have an original from Iron Man #18 that I'll scan and post later so that you can see the work in all its black and white glory.
None the less, I met George for the first time just about 6 years ago, and he was an extremely nice man. I continue to stress going out and meeting your heroes before they pass away, and in this case i'm glad that i got the chance to chat with him. He did a great Iron Man sketch for me that i have to this day.
Someone with more material to scan should really go back and some of George's work from the 1950's so that we can see it. That would be cool.
George was the artist on the first issue that I ever brought (Iron Man #64), only the second comic that I had ever seen, and I was completely and utterly perplexed by being thrown into the middle of a confusing Dr. Spectrum story. My seven year old brain was trying desperately to understand some of the visual language native to comics (speed lines, pointers on word balloons, certain visual shorthand that unique to Tuska) and try to understand the story at the same time!
None the less, i did figure it out, and would go on to buy up a ton of back issues with George's work, as well as following the series going forward. George was never my favorite artist, his work as a bit stiff and as he went on in his career ( a career that had been going on for a long time!) he relied on many of the same poses and faces. It was a revelation to come across Iron Man #11-18, where a number of the issues were inked by Johnny Craig, the grand EC veteran, and they brought a finishing skill to Tuska's work that was missing from most of his inkers. I think that George was very poorly served by his inkers over the years, and the evidence is right there.
I have an original from Iron Man #18 that I'll scan and post later so that you can see the work in all its black and white glory.
None the less, I met George for the first time just about 6 years ago, and he was an extremely nice man. I continue to stress going out and meeting your heroes before they pass away, and in this case i'm glad that i got the chance to chat with him. He did a great Iron Man sketch for me that i have to this day.
Someone with more material to scan should really go back and some of George's work from the 1950's so that we can see it. That would be cool.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Random Thoughts: Kirby, Marvel and Watchmen: Ultimate Cut
In no particular order...
Joanna Carlson is passing on the information on The Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut. Coming out November 3, this is the package that I've been looking forward to. Do the companies realize that instead of making us hungry to buy the DVD of a particular movei that we enjoy, they're essentially making us wait so that we don't have to keep upgrading the packages. U2 had it right when they released all the deluxe versions of The Joshua Tree at once. Instead of waiting, I read through all the versions, picked the one that I wanted and bought it. Immediately. I haven't bought a damn Watchman related thing and now I'm glad that I didn't. I'm sure that's not what they wanted to hear but it's the truth.
Steven Grant goes on at great length on the Kirby Family's potential leg to stand on in their suit with Marvel. Steven can get cranky with the best of, but his first paragraph stands at the top of the all-time cranky opening rants that have ever issued from his keyboard. Get past that, however, and there is a ton of great information of the concept of Work For Hire, the legality of forcing someone to sign away rights on the back of a check, and the precedent of whom the assumed author and copyright holder is, which is different from trademark. He boils it down nicely, and as someone in the game for over 15 years now, I learned some new things in regard to how the changes in the 1976 Copyright law effected comics.
To all those who have been across the internet spewing anger and venom against the Kirby estate, wise up and take a good look around you. Do any reading of history and see that the publishers in this game called comics pretty much fucked over anyone that they could in each and every way possible. They deserve for their bad business practices to come back and get them, and they have only themselves to blame by not being proactive when they should and could have. Will Eisner had it right, we're all Dreamers, hoping for that one magic moment when our creation will allow to be rich and happy and live well off of our art. It rarely ever happens, and when it does and has, each and everyone of those artists and writers have been screwed. I believe that it was Mark Evanier who, and i may be wrong so don't kill me, said in his Kirby biography: All Jack wanted to do was make a publisher rich with his art and ideas and have the publisher do the right thing by him. And one by one, they all failed to do so. Jeanette Kahn and Paul Levitz can be considered the only decent people here, allowing Jack to "redesign" the 4th World characters in the 1980's so that he could be a co-owner and get a piece of the New Gods.
For all those that assume that, should Kirby's heirs get ahold of the rights to the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, the original X-Men, Captain America, (um... do I need to go on?) that they'll pull the rights from Marvel, I humbly put to you that they are far more likely to want a piece of the franchise, not disable it. This is about money and recognition, in that order. And I don't say that in a bad way at all. If Jack were here and knew that his heirs could finally get what he should have, he'd most likely have been all for it. He knew the value of providing for his family.
Who really benefits from the Marvel Disney deal? The upper brass, the stockholders, not you, not me, not any of the creators unless they make a deal on a new character that Disney/Marvel gets behind, then the sky really could be the limit. Despite all the hand wringing it will likely be business as usual until the distribution apple cart is upset.
And then, all hell is really going to break loose.
Why haven't I been posting more? Been working diligently on the writing, pencilling and inking of the Carnival, trying to get ahead of my own deadline so that i can post the whole second half of the story on a schedule. Thinking about storytelling, researching shots and how to make the whole thing work. Comics have been completely on my mind, my brain is just full of comics stuff, just not in a way that i've been blogging about. Or in a way that i think that anyone might care. I could be wrong. My friend Alex, creator and artist of Robotica, has done some great one a day posts that he encouraged me to do.
There have been some good comics come out, but not in way that inspire me to write about them. Been forever since i've done a review of a regular monthly comic. The only one that really almost made me sit down at the keyboard has been Guardians of the Galaxy, which has been, and continues to be, a ton of fun. Pick it up if you can find the thing. Best read in tandem with Nova, which is good, but not nearly as fun.
Joanna Carlson is passing on the information on The Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut. Coming out November 3, this is the package that I've been looking forward to. Do the companies realize that instead of making us hungry to buy the DVD of a particular movei that we enjoy, they're essentially making us wait so that we don't have to keep upgrading the packages. U2 had it right when they released all the deluxe versions of The Joshua Tree at once. Instead of waiting, I read through all the versions, picked the one that I wanted and bought it. Immediately. I haven't bought a damn Watchman related thing and now I'm glad that I didn't. I'm sure that's not what they wanted to hear but it's the truth.
Steven Grant goes on at great length on the Kirby Family's potential leg to stand on in their suit with Marvel. Steven can get cranky with the best of, but his first paragraph stands at the top of the all-time cranky opening rants that have ever issued from his keyboard. Get past that, however, and there is a ton of great information of the concept of Work For Hire, the legality of forcing someone to sign away rights on the back of a check, and the precedent of whom the assumed author and copyright holder is, which is different from trademark. He boils it down nicely, and as someone in the game for over 15 years now, I learned some new things in regard to how the changes in the 1976 Copyright law effected comics.
To all those who have been across the internet spewing anger and venom against the Kirby estate, wise up and take a good look around you. Do any reading of history and see that the publishers in this game called comics pretty much fucked over anyone that they could in each and every way possible. They deserve for their bad business practices to come back and get them, and they have only themselves to blame by not being proactive when they should and could have. Will Eisner had it right, we're all Dreamers, hoping for that one magic moment when our creation will allow to be rich and happy and live well off of our art. It rarely ever happens, and when it does and has, each and everyone of those artists and writers have been screwed. I believe that it was Mark Evanier who, and i may be wrong so don't kill me, said in his Kirby biography: All Jack wanted to do was make a publisher rich with his art and ideas and have the publisher do the right thing by him. And one by one, they all failed to do so. Jeanette Kahn and Paul Levitz can be considered the only decent people here, allowing Jack to "redesign" the 4th World characters in the 1980's so that he could be a co-owner and get a piece of the New Gods.
For all those that assume that, should Kirby's heirs get ahold of the rights to the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, the original X-Men, Captain America, (um... do I need to go on?) that they'll pull the rights from Marvel, I humbly put to you that they are far more likely to want a piece of the franchise, not disable it. This is about money and recognition, in that order. And I don't say that in a bad way at all. If Jack were here and knew that his heirs could finally get what he should have, he'd most likely have been all for it. He knew the value of providing for his family.
Who really benefits from the Marvel Disney deal? The upper brass, the stockholders, not you, not me, not any of the creators unless they make a deal on a new character that Disney/Marvel gets behind, then the sky really could be the limit. Despite all the hand wringing it will likely be business as usual until the distribution apple cart is upset.
And then, all hell is really going to break loose.
Why haven't I been posting more? Been working diligently on the writing, pencilling and inking of the Carnival, trying to get ahead of my own deadline so that i can post the whole second half of the story on a schedule. Thinking about storytelling, researching shots and how to make the whole thing work. Comics have been completely on my mind, my brain is just full of comics stuff, just not in a way that i've been blogging about. Or in a way that i think that anyone might care. I could be wrong. My friend Alex, creator and artist of Robotica, has done some great one a day posts that he encouraged me to do.
There have been some good comics come out, but not in way that inspire me to write about them. Been forever since i've done a review of a regular monthly comic. The only one that really almost made me sit down at the keyboard has been Guardians of the Galaxy, which has been, and continues to be, a ton of fun. Pick it up if you can find the thing. Best read in tandem with Nova, which is good, but not nearly as fun.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Quesada on the Graphic Novel
This most likely qualifies as piling on.
And I'm not sure that Joe really cares, but what the hell.
Comics Alliance posted this interview the other day, and I was so flabbergasted by the quotes that i almost thought that I was reading the comics version of the Onion.
In fact, it makes more sense that the independent Graphic Novel will lead us to the next Paul Pope, the next indy star who decides to grace your covers with his street cred rather than the other way round.
And if he does mean it, and I don't know Joe personally so I'm making suppositions here, it shows a disregard for any other type of creativity and authorship out there so broad as to be stupefying. You might ask yourself, is this why we have Marvel OK'ing tentacle porn on covers? Or 4th generation Sal Buscema clones on the current Ms. Marvel storyline?
I give up. Wait, isn't that just what Joe wants?
And I'm not sure that Joe really cares, but what the hell.
Comics Alliance posted this interview the other day, and I was so flabbergasted by the quotes that i almost thought that I was reading the comics version of the Onion.
"I've stated publicly on many occasions that I've never seen the benefits of original graphic novels. The economics just don't work and are poor for both the publisher, retailer and the creator, especially during this Marvel regime when so much of what we do gets compiled into a collected edition anyway..."I guess that if you operated out of sheer tunnel vision than this quote would make sense, except that i think that Joe is smarter than that. While i suppose that the Editor in Chief of Marvel is supposed to act like theirs are the only comics that matter, but even Stan, the absolute master of self aggrandizing would refer to the "Distinguished Competition", so Joe can do better than that. There is simply no reason to act like no one that is not currently employed by Marvel sucks (the old "they can't be any good or they'd be working for us" nonsense).
In fact, it makes more sense that the independent Graphic Novel will lead us to the next Paul Pope, the next indy star who decides to grace your covers with his street cred rather than the other way round.
And if he does mean it, and I don't know Joe personally so I'm making suppositions here, it shows a disregard for any other type of creativity and authorship out there so broad as to be stupefying. You might ask yourself, is this why we have Marvel OK'ing tentacle porn on covers? Or 4th generation Sal Buscema clones on the current Ms. Marvel storyline?
I give up. Wait, isn't that just what Joe wants?
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Time Warner Comics and the Mighty Disney Avengers
I was asked about the Warner/DC moves in conjunction with the Disney/Marvel purchase and how it might affect artists working for the companies. Here is my answer:
I believe that Warner has long treated DC as the bastard stepchild that they inherited, and did not appear too eager to actually plumb the creative resources that they had at their disposal. They followed the old adage, "Well, Batman is popular, but now we'll do it RIGHT!" conveniently ignoring all the great stories that had been done in the comics because, to them, comics were crap.
Marvel hired people who took a chance and used the properties to make movies that took directly from the best elements of the comics themselves and thus used their acquisitions to their best advantage. X-Men 2 is Chris Claremont's X-Men and no one elses... and its by far the best comic book movie ever made in my opinion.
Time Warner is just making adjustments that will allow them to use their properties as best as they can, something that they should have been doing 20 years ago. Neither corporate move would stop me from doing work from either company, they may actually become more professional in their dealings with artists as time goes on. We writers and artists can get screwed by a much better class of people.
As our little niche media is recognized by the rest of the general public for what we comic fans had always known- i.e. that we're a media with a lot of entertainment to give - we should expect that with greater dollars comes greater responsibility, and greater corporate overseeing.
I believe that Warner has long treated DC as the bastard stepchild that they inherited, and did not appear too eager to actually plumb the creative resources that they had at their disposal. They followed the old adage, "Well, Batman is popular, but now we'll do it RIGHT!" conveniently ignoring all the great stories that had been done in the comics because, to them, comics were crap.
Marvel hired people who took a chance and used the properties to make movies that took directly from the best elements of the comics themselves and thus used their acquisitions to their best advantage. X-Men 2 is Chris Claremont's X-Men and no one elses... and its by far the best comic book movie ever made in my opinion.
Time Warner is just making adjustments that will allow them to use their properties as best as they can, something that they should have been doing 20 years ago. Neither corporate move would stop me from doing work from either company, they may actually become more professional in their dealings with artists as time goes on. We writers and artists can get screwed by a much better class of people.
As our little niche media is recognized by the rest of the general public for what we comic fans had always known- i.e. that we're a media with a lot of entertainment to give - we should expect that with greater dollars comes greater responsibility, and greater corporate overseeing.
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Disney and Marvel: A Marriage Made in Heck
Oh Wow.
That was my terribly sophisticated reaction on Monday to the news that Marvel Comics had been purchased by Disney. And I stand by it. I really didn't know quite what to think. Mainly because this has NOTHING TO DO WITH COMICS. This does have everything to do with properties and distribution and pre-existing contracts vs. new contracts for uses of those properties. The actual pamphlets here have little or no cash value intrinsically, since the numbers are so small, but using those X-men or Spider-Man characters and we're dealing with millions and billions of dollars.
Which makes this an interesting analog to the DC-Time Warner deal, a deal that always promised to give us greater integration of the DC universe into the real world and yet only gave us two good Batman movies, one forgettable Superman movie and a bunch of Teen Titans Go! cartoons. Somehow it always seemed that Time Warner saw DC as the bastard step child of material and just couldn't bring itself to care too much, they certainly seemed like they looked at the catalog of properties that they had bought and gagged. There was never that moment where they said, "Hey, Birds of Prey thing? We can get behind that!" And when that didn't succeed, where is the next one? Where is the TNT Challengers of the Unknown series? Where is the Secret Six series?
You can bet that Disney is licking their chops over some more obscure Marvel characters that they can repurpose and rennovate and recreate and remarket. There are, lets face it, a ton of them.
The best analysis over the deal, and all the different contracts that Disney will have to contend with, is here, at Nikki's blog. Fascinating stuff, given that they're discussing contracts and character usage that I've never even known about, and it makes you realize just how ugly this contract situation is if Universal didn't cover enough territory over eventualities like this in their theme park contracts. Yikes.
It will be verrrrrrrry interesting to see how the rest plays out. More later as I dig into more of the Hollywood stuff.
That was my terribly sophisticated reaction on Monday to the news that Marvel Comics had been purchased by Disney. And I stand by it. I really didn't know quite what to think. Mainly because this has NOTHING TO DO WITH COMICS. This does have everything to do with properties and distribution and pre-existing contracts vs. new contracts for uses of those properties. The actual pamphlets here have little or no cash value intrinsically, since the numbers are so small, but using those X-men or Spider-Man characters and we're dealing with millions and billions of dollars.
Which makes this an interesting analog to the DC-Time Warner deal, a deal that always promised to give us greater integration of the DC universe into the real world and yet only gave us two good Batman movies, one forgettable Superman movie and a bunch of Teen Titans Go! cartoons. Somehow it always seemed that Time Warner saw DC as the bastard step child of material and just couldn't bring itself to care too much, they certainly seemed like they looked at the catalog of properties that they had bought and gagged. There was never that moment where they said, "Hey, Birds of Prey thing? We can get behind that!" And when that didn't succeed, where is the next one? Where is the TNT Challengers of the Unknown series? Where is the Secret Six series?
You can bet that Disney is licking their chops over some more obscure Marvel characters that they can repurpose and rennovate and recreate and remarket. There are, lets face it, a ton of them.
The best analysis over the deal, and all the different contracts that Disney will have to contend with, is here, at Nikki's blog. Fascinating stuff, given that they're discussing contracts and character usage that I've never even known about, and it makes you realize just how ugly this contract situation is if Universal didn't cover enough territory over eventualities like this in their theme park contracts. Yikes.
It will be verrrrrrrry interesting to see how the rest plays out. More later as I dig into more of the Hollywood stuff.
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