and Dead Tree Comics

[beatbandito]

(Not sure about Y. I think Y itself is creator-owned but DC controls the ancillary rights, the TV series which I guess is actually happening this time, etc.)

Ironically, Y being an example of a story where you really should keep seeing the main character long after he's died.

[Thad]

Usagi leaving Dark Horse for IDW. The new series will be in color, and IDW will also release color collections of the entire series.

Fantagraphics has confirmed it will continue to print the black-and-white collections of the Usagi books it publishes. I haven't seen any similar confirmation from Dark Horse yet but I would be surprised if Sakai let Fantagraphics continue to publish its existing books but not Dark Horse.

DH has one last "Saga" omnibus (Volume 8) slated for publication (coming in May); it appears to collect up through Volume 31 of the trade series, which is pretty close to the complete run (Volume 33 is the latest).

I'd very much like to see the DH books stay in print, because I only have three of them (the first two volumes and the "Legends" book of non-canonical stuff -- Space Usagi, Senso, etc.) and because for the most part I'd rather read the books in their original black-and-white*. I haven't been a brobdingnagian fan of IDW's color versions of the old B&W TMNT comics; nothing against them if that's what you're into, but I just tend to prefer comics that look more-or-less like they did when they were first published. (Unless it's something like Marvelman where the original colors were a total hatchet job, I suppose.) I don't see any reason why they wouldn't keep both editions in print if there's a market for both.

Usagi continues to be one of my all-time favorite comics, though I don't keep up with its regular releases, because, again, there's like 3000 pages' worth of it in collections that I haven't read yet. But Sakai is one of the few writers in comics who still takes the "every issue is somebody's first" maxim to heart; if you've never read an Usagi Yojimbo comic before (or just haven't read one in awhile), I'm sure the IDW series will be a perfect jumping-on point and tell you everything you need to know.

* the exception being the Mirage series, which was not originally printed in black-and-white but is printed that way in the Dark Horse collection because they lost the original color plates. I'd like to see it in color again because there are a couple of bits where color is important, most notably a story that ends on a shot of a gold nugget amid a bunch of ordinary rocks that obviously does not work quite as well in B&W.

[Thad]

The Spider-Man newspaper strip has ended and that means Joe Sinnott has retired after 69 years in comics. As Evanier puts it:

I don't like superlatives like "Joe Sinnott was the best inker in comics" but if you said that in a hall filled with professional artists, you wouldn't hear much disagreement. You might not even hear any.

[Thad]

I've been wondering when we'd see Axel Alonso again since he was ousted from Marvel. (He basically got blamed for an overall decline in sales that was, in part, caused by negative reaction to the Nazi Cap storyline. I think he was a great editor and it wasn't really fair to lay that whole fiasco at his feet, but y'know, it's the EIC's job to take the blame when shit goes badly, and he did greenlight it.)

Well, turns out he and Bill Jemas are starting their own publisher of creator-owned comics, AWA (Artists, Writers, & Artisans). JMS, Garth Ennis, Reggie Hudlin, Margaret Stohl, Gregg Hurwitz, Peter Milligan, Christa Faust, Frank Cho, Michael Moreci, Jeff Dekal, and Tim Bradstreet are all onboard. I'm not seeing anything that blows me away just yet, but there's some good talent onboard; we'll see where it goes.

(And hey, we've got Alonso and Milligan; any chance we can get the Allreds onboard for an X-Statix reunion?)

[zaratustra]

garth ennis heard the words "new line of creator-owned comics" in the air and just *flew* into the room i assume

[Thad]

(And hey, we've got Alonso and Milligan; any chance we can get the Allreds onboard for an X-Statix reunion?)

X-STATIX returns in July with original creative team

Say, Marvel. Since you're reading my posts, you caught that one about how I want a Nextwave movie, right?

[Thad]

Outer Darkness by John Layman and Afu Chan is good shit.

It's space opera/horror; Layman cites Alien and Event Horizon as influences. Another good description is "Star Trek, but the ship is powered by a chained demon controlled by necromancers, and everyone is a complete bastard."

The first arc just wrapped so the first trade should be on its way.

[Thad]

From the How Was Your Day? thread:

Just FYI for the non-Twitter users here:




They might need a hand.

Mothra, you still got any connections with publishers/publishing work or is that all way out of date?

Thanks, Mongrel. I'd read about the merger over at the Beat, but that coverage amounted to a press release, with no mention of any controversy. While I'm a longtime Beat reader and would love to give Heidi MacDonald the benefit of the doubt, she recently sold the site to Lion Forge and uh that might have something to do with the favorable coverage.

The more I read about this, the more sick to my stomach I get, and it's not just because it hurts people I know (though that's certainly part of it). It sounds an awful lot like Oni is banking on the positive reputation LF has developed for diverse comics, while casually jettisoning all the people who were actually responsible for that diversity.

Graphic Policy has some pertinent tweets; there's a lot more and I'll try and pick out some more highlights (lowlights?) later on.

Best of luck to Sharkey and Des and everybody else affected by this, and:

[Mongrel]

There's more detailed information about Des' health on her Twitter, and the depressingly cynical part of me can only think "That's why they fired her, isn't it." and then adding "Of course Sharkey would get the axe then too, because these days corps will find a way to fire both people in a relationship, for the same reason people who get laid off are now frogmarched out of workplaces with no notice." In a world where the workplace covenant has been destroyed by greed, corps are afraid of their own workers.

Obviously I have no concrete basis for that supposition specifically WRT Sharkey & Des. I'm just saying that's what I'm so conditioned to expect these days.

[Thad]

FWIW, the Beat covered the layoffs today, mentioning both Sharkey and Des by name and including their tweets (among others). So it does appear that Heidi is maintaining her editorial autonomy, at least so far.

Newsarama has coverage too. I haven't looked at any other comics news sites (the Beat is the only one I read regularly anymore) so I'm not sure where else it's being covered, but it certainly feels like a topic Bleeding Cool would be all over.

[Thad]

Via Robin Snyder's latest Kickstarter update, I see he's been very busy.

We would like to put all of the writings into print, publish the complete Mr. A. in at least two brobdingnagian books, publish further issues of The Hero Comics, reprint the 176-Page Package, bring Character Twists to print…

…and more.

We have to be selective or we would never accomplish much trying to do everything.

Our recent title, Opening Acts v. II, has been published and is available in Barnes & Noble and many other outlets.

Or, direct from us.

The next volume in the series, Character Twists v. III, is well on its way to publication.

And, there is more…

It is not too soon to make mention of our Summer production, Out of This World.

This unique title has attracted plenty of attention. The next issue is an especially attractive one.

Issue number 28 is another 48-page comic book from Snyder and Ditko.

Now you know. Now lets see how many readers we can attract.

Huh.

I found a bit more about Opening Acts v 2 at CBR.

Called The 32 Series, Snyder and editor Rodney Schroeter lay out a five-volume set to bring the vast majority of Ditko’s “lost” work back into print. While Snyder will keep fans updated on Facebook as to releases and how to order them from her, Schroeter will tackle bookstore distribution. Incidentally, he suggests ordering from Barnes & Noble, “because they actually have stores…and I want to see them continue!” The few details we have come from a look at the back of The 32 Series Vol. II: Opening Acts, which is in spite of its name, the first one to become available (out on March 30, according to B&N and Amazon). Vol. I is presumably still being assembled. The reason for the out-of-order numbering seems to be that the five volumes will eventually collect everything in chronological order. Beyond the current release date and a rundown of the ideas, the pair have little to say. “Steve always wanted to let his work speak for him,” Snyder says. “Well and good,” Schroeter replies. Let’s continue in that spirit.”

I know there was talk of a Complete Mr. A from IDW a couple years back but it never materialized. Nice to see Snyder's still working on it. A lot of Ditko's work is out of print, there's a lot of it I still haven't read, and I'd particularly like to see, for example, his series of essays about Spider-Man and Marvel all collected in one place. I know there aren't many people clamoring for more books like The Avenging World, but I'm definitely one of them (and it'd be great for Avenging World itself to go back into print too).

I love Ditko's work, even at its weirdest, loosest, most abstract, most didactic, least comprehensible. And, not for nothin', it's not all like that; he was a solid, brass-tacks storyteller up to the very end, when he wanted to be; yes, a lot of his work was abstract symbols shouting Randian catchphrases at each other, but OTOH there are some great, straightforward superhero stories like Miss Eerie. And while his essays are often impenetrable, a close read gives some really fascinating information about his experiences in the industry and how he felt about them. For all that I disagree with Ditko on nearly everything, he's got a lot of pointed statements about creators' rights that I do agree with.

I've been worried for years about what would happen to Ditko's creator-owned work after he passed. Clearly it's still in good hands -- and as Snyder's up there in years too, it's good to know he's brought on somebody else to help and, hopefully, continue the work when he's no longer able to.

[Thad]

When I saw the headline describing Hickman's House of X/Powers of X relaunch as X-Men for people who don’t like X-Men, I figured hey, I'm a people who don't like X-Men; I should check this out.

HOX keeps selling out but I snagged POX #1, and...nope, still don't like X-Men. (I kinda like Nimrod the Lesser, the villain who's very apologetic about all the torture, eugenics, and genocide.)

I like Hickman. Manhattan Projects was great. But POX #1 is a six-dollar comic that leaves me cold. I really don't care about any of these characters, less still about the various infodumps explaining what the fuck is going on. Another damn alternate universe (or the same one from House of M; I'm not entirely clear on that), the requisite appearances from Xavier, Magneto, and Wolverine to frame a story that's mostly about a new bunch of characters who each have a single personality trait that is, apparently, the result of being selectively bred to have a single personality trait (which is an ugly concept, especially for an X-Men comic, and I hope Hickman has the good sense that this is building toward some kind of revelation that nah, breeding people to be timid or aggressive is eugenecist horseshit and not really a thing, and they're behaving according to their roles due to conditioning, not breeding).

This appears to be yet another in a long line of X-Men relaunches that just aren't for me.

[Thad]

Gail Simone and Walter Geovani are the new team on The Death-Defying 'Devil, one of Dynamite's Project Superpowers line of comics featuring Golden Age superheroes who are now in the public domain. The Death-Defying 'Devil is probably the most famous of the lot, and his name is spelled with an apostrophe because in the forties he was called Daredevil but some other company snatched up that trademark a couple of decades later.

Simone's take is interesting: it's set in a low-income apartment building populated by a diverse cast of colorful characters; a villain named Donovan (who we don't see this issue) wants the property, and has employed some very nasty people to try and scare the residents into leaving. The 'Devil shows up to protect the locals, and takes a serious beating, but the cops are in Donovan's pocket, and the hospital won't send an ambulance.

I like Simone's approach in grounding a '40s superhero in a modern street-level story like this, grounding it in very topical concerns like police corruption and racism, and populating the cast with marginalized people including immigrants, a disabled vet, and a character who appears to suffer from mental illness (or perhaps she's just eccentric; it's too early to tell).

As for the 'Devil himself...well, we don't know much about him (not sure how much of Dynamite's previous 'Devil stories are canon in this relaunch, and I haven't read many of them anyway), but so far, at least, that mystery serves him pretty well. We know who he is from his actions: he doesn't say much, he can take a beating but doesn't appear to have any kind of superhuman invulnerability, and he deals with bad men in extremely violent ways. He does seem more than a little like that other Daredevil.

Anyhow, I think it's a solid opener and I might stick with this one. I sure liked Simone and Geovani's take on Red Sonja.

[mharr]

Disney's management culture somehow shits out the idea they can politically censor Art Spiegelman and achieve anything other than maximum Streisand.

Disney/Marvel demanded that Spiegelman redact his essay, removing references to Trump. The corporation said that it was trying to be "apolitical...and is not allowing its publications to take a political stance."

The Essay

[Thad]

You'd think they'd have learned from that time they did exactly the same thing with Don Rosa's essay about why he retired.

Not strictly relevant, but...who thought it was a good idea to hire Spiegelman to write an introduction to a collection of superhero comics in the first damn place? I'm a huge admirer of his work, but...maybe get somebody who actually likes superhero comics?

[zaratustra]

Well, who the hell likes superhero comics and has some level of respect in the year of our Luigi 2019?

[Büge]

Not strictly relevant, but...who thought it was a good idea to hire Spiegelman to write an introduction to a collection of superhero comics in the first damn place?

Maybe one of the higher-ups went to a bookstore and asked a clerk which comic book was the most critically acclaimed.

Then, after Alan Moore screamed at them on the phone for three minutes, they called Art Spiegelman.

[Upthorn]

That scenario seems fairly plausible.

[Mongrel]

Not quite sure where this should go, but anyway:

Jack Kirby's Toys That Never Were...!

10 ludicrously wonderful Jack Kirby 80's Toy/Cartoon pitches which were never made.

[Thad]

Brian Wood accused of sexual misconduct (again)

CW: Sexual harassment and assault.

Dark Horse has cancelled Wood's upcoming Aliens series. Which I suppose deserves some amount of praise for eventually doing the right thing, but as the title alludes, we've known about Wood for years. Between this and Scott Allie, Dark Horse protecting abusers until they get bad PR for it is starting to seem like a trend.