Tag Archives: DC

Orion’s Exclusive ECCC Pics (part 1 of 2)!

26 Mar

by Orion Tippens

(Mike here: Orion KILLED it with these sweet pics from the 2013 Emerald City Comic Con. I’m just going to post these in random order: together, these photos really capture the essence of walking a convention floor. Click on each photo to make it superbig. How many of the brilliant creators in these photos can you name? And yeah, I probably should’ve tried to post these a couple weeks ago: I’m polishing up the final draft of a script that’s being drawn for Comic-Con. More in a bit…)

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The 1st Spider-Man Fantastic Four appearances – never to be touched again by human hands.

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Poison Ivy vs. Batgirl

Photo Mar 02, 12 26 32 PM

hint: webcomics genius.

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Fauhawk Superman vs. old school Lex Luthor!

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Writer of great DC comics of the past, now a voice for creator-owned books and digital publishing.

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REPRESENT!!

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Wil Wheaton surrounds himself with love.

Photo Mar 02, 12 28 24 PM

If you don’t own all of his comics work, you really should. REALLY

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Photo Mar 02, 12 28 11 PM (1)

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Did anyone actually PAY $1000 for a year-old Walking Dead comic?!

Photo Mar 02, 12 27 51 PM

Extermination has never been so colorful, and huggable.

Photo Mar 02, 12 27 49 PM

Looked at this and I thought, what would be the worst thing you could bring home to show the wife and kids after a day at a comic con?

Photo Mar 02, 12 27 44 PM

artist on one of the better-selling New 52 DC series.

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hint: you may have a tattoo of his artwork.

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Just letting you all know, Invincible is the greatest superhero epic story ever!

Photo Mar 02, 12 27 21 PM

hint: Okay, this one’s a freebie.

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Only at a comic or related convention is this considered normal.

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Emerald City con life.

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hint: Really nice Image artist…

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…doing what he does best.

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Photo Mar 02, 12 26 54 PM

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hint: one of Image’s best-selling artists.

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It’s not a comic con without some huge tower of geek apparel for sale.

I’ll post the creators list after this break:

Continue reading →

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R.I.P. Robin (Again)

1 Mar

by Orion Tippens

Robin death news

I heard the news today, oh boy…

I think the comics industry took a step back this week.

Batman Incorporated Volume 2, issue #8 happened.

Not so much the story, but the sudden PR blitz behind it, hitting the mass media. Also, the knee-jerk reaction by comic investment speculators. As to the subject, you probably already know. But just in case, spoilers ahead.

Robin is dead…again.

So if you are into comics as much as I am, and actual readers following current Batman comics, then you’ll know him as Damian Wayne. Damian is the son of Batman and Talia al Ghul. If you know Grant Morrison (he is a very famous comic book writer!), than understand he has a lot of power over the DC universe (that’s where Superman and Wonder Woman live), because of his earned trust on writing interesting stories. He created Damian Wayne for the current Batman comics to perhaps add interesting, complex dimension to the familiar mythos. Success, I think. Damian Wayne is an awesome character, and became part of some fantastic stories. Most notably among them, Batman and Robin volume 2, written by Peter Tomasi.

Batman Inc #8 cover detail

Batman Inc #8 cover detail

But never mind that: apparently the mass media informed the greater public masses (probably resulting from a rushed press release) that ROBIN is DEAD! Of course, the “geek” culture has earned enough cred through movies, TV, and video games to be considered this relevant to entertainment reporting. But, wow that is kind of insulting, to just throw it out there like that. I mean, to publicize a development to the story, without the story itself kind of degrades the literature as a whole.

Mainly because: it’s all bad marketing. First off, we are marketing a small point in a far larger story that has spanned YEARS. The Grant Morrison Batman epic is a good story. Hey, CNN, CBS, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly (all show up first in Google News on this): could you tell us why it’s called Batman Incorporated? Could you tell us who or what killed him, or how he died? Could you tell us that Jason Todd is still all alive (his past death and relevance is to the Robin legacy is apparent, but don’t worry: I’m confused, too)? How about not reminding us who played Talia in Dark Knight Rises (also noticed in some write-ups by the mass media).  Has it occurred to the mass media what big suckers they are for shit like this. Remember when Captain America, Spider-Man, and Superman all died – only to be brought back, and reported to a lesser extent?

And the comic itself, arrrrgh! I am happy I obtained this through the legal digital market. I would have been horrified in my lateness to buy this latest issue because of some damn media blitz. I enjoyed the hell out of the Batman Inc. storyline and enjoyed following the Grant Morrison story progression since R.I.P. (that’s where Batman died, or was it Final Crisis, sigh…well, he DIED, the media said so!!!). Anyway, I have been enjoying this story as a whole, BatCow and all!

So, here is the story in brief and its tremendous buildup: Batman is outclassed and fighting for his life inside a locked safe while Talia and her sinister Leviathan organization overpower Gotham City. Talia is on the edge of total victory and global ruin, and it’s up to Damian Wayne to save the day. As the Boy Wonder, he must eventually face his greatest enemy: his clone brother, a.k.a. The Fatherless. The fight is incredibly badass and violent. In the end, there is tragedy. Not the best Batman comic, but certainly riveting.

But, I guess for the comics industry, the death of a prepubescent boy holding iconic relevance means cha-ching! Look at the prices on eBay: WTF? I’ve read reports from fellow Redditors on some immediate comic book-store markups. Really?!

Robin on eBay

Price = scarcity (nope) x demand (maybe)…

There is a positive side, as the comics medium could use the attention and struggling small comics stores will likely appreciate the push. Increased drama from tragedy can be a wonderfully needed shake for comics readers. Let the writers and pencillers do their thing, and leave opinion to the readers. Spoiling that early through news feeds and media marketing, as they make a rushed big deal, seems absurd.

So to any comics retailer who did not mark up these particular Batman comics, cheers to you. If you didn’t order enough and regret it, than too bad; you should place more trust in really good comics. That is an investment enough, I think. Just ask anyone who bought and held on to those early Walking Dead comics.

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COPYRAGE: Sony screws Bob Dylan fans with ridiculously limited-edition box set

7 Jan

by Mike Hansen

Bob Dylan 50th front

Way to rub it in everyone’s faces, Sony!

U.S. copyright law tends to revolve around ensuring that Disney continues to own Mickey Mouse in perpetuity (along with Warner Brothers clinging tenaciously to Superman and Batman, Marvel to Captain America, etc.). In Europe, it seems to be all about its music superstars.

Today, Rolling Stone reported something sure to annoy 99.999999999999% of Bob Dylan fans: about 100 copies of an official 4-CD, 86-song Bob Dylan box set of 1962 outtakes (Dylan’s first year with Columbia Records, now owned by Sony Music).

“This isn’t a scheme to make money,” a Sony Music source tells Rolling Stone. “The copyright law in Europe was recently extended from 50 to 70 years for everything recorded in 1963 and beyond. With everything before that, there’s a new ‘Use It or Lose It’ provision. It basically said, ‘If you haven’t used the recordings in the first 50 years, you aren’t going to get any more.’”

Bob Dylan 50th backSo even though Sony doesn’t intend to make money from these recordings (most of which are widely available on bootleg), it wants to ensure that they don’t enter the public domain so they can be freely copied and shared. Really? Is Sony that afraid of having to compete with anyone’s ability to package, release, and distribute the material in a manner of their choosing?

Bob Dylan’s 1962 debut LP became a part of the European public domain on January 1st, meaning anybody in Europe can release the music without paying Dylan one dime. “The whole point of copyrighting this stuff is that we intend to do something with it at some point in the future,” says the source. “But it wasn’t the right time to do it right after he released Tempest. There are other things we want to do in 2013 though.”

Oh, okay: so Sony DOES intend to make money off it. LATER. So they’re lying. Classy!

I’m all for compensating artists for their work, but these are recordings that sat on the shelf for over 50 years while the artist and record company made no effort to make a penny off them. And instead of just allowing the material to become public-domain (like Dylan’s first album and, I assume, the Beatles’ earliest recordings), Sony released just *100* copies of the material to protect its copyright while ensuring that virtually 0% of Bob Dylan fans will actually (legally) hear the material. In a business where record labels routinely underpay their artists (and overpay their executives), this is simply a corporate move to hold onto property it doesn’t care about, just in case it might be worth a few dollars later. This doesn’t benefit the artist; it doesn’t benefit the consumer; and it doesn’t benefit the corporate behemoth greedily clutching the rights. What’s the point?

According to the New York Times, it looks like only Dylan fans in France and Germany can legally download this material from the artist’s website. What?

… Sony is not alone. Universal, which owns the Motown catalog, has released a series of jazz, gospel and rhythm and blues albums under the rubric “Motown Unreleased 1962,” which makes a large body of its unissued archives eligible for the European copyright extension.

Wow. If this isn’t abuse of copyright law, I don’t know what is. It’s no wonder music fans continue to use extralegal methods to acquire music. This is Exhibit A for why copyright law needs to be amended for the benefit of creators and the public, instead of for corporations that behave like mental patients.

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A few good links

5 Jan

by Mike Hansen

Superior Spider-Man 2 cover

Spidey’s gettin’ grabby.

Several websites have reported on a Connecticut group’s plan to hold a public burning of videogames, CDs, and DVDs in the wake of the Newtown massacre. Here’s the best writeup: the CBLDF’s take on the situation.

For many others, however, the impending destruction recalls the past incineration of all kinds of creative works, from Beatles records to — of course — comic books, that some adults thought had a negative influence on youth. In reality, there is no proven link between gun violence and video games, but that has not stopped lawmakers and media commentators from trying to blame them for virtually every mass shooting by a young male since the Columbine massacre in 1999. Of course, this requires ignoring the fact that millions of people around the world, of all sexes and ages, play and enjoy a wide spectrum of video games that some would consider violent without embarking on real-world killing sprees.

Remember when Harry Potter books all went away after a few loonies burned them? Yeah, me neither.

The Hollywood Reporter talks about the settlement of one lawsuit between the producers of the TV show Smallville and Warner Brothers, after the judge ruled that the case had enough merits to warrant a jury trial:

The case touched upon a sensitive issue in Hollywood: so-called “vertical integration.” The producers contended they were deprived of significant profits when WBTV allegedly undersold the series to affiliates the WB Network and then The CW instead of licensing the series to outside companies.

This reminds me of the problems reported by several Vertigo series creators, who complained that DC cockblocked media offers that would have made them good money because Warner Brothers wanted to give the media rights to its own production companies (which never produced anything). Not cool.

And finally, a verdict in a California rape case involving an outdated law and impersonation to trick a partner into sex:

“A man enters the dark bedroom of an unmarried woman after seeing her boyfriend leave late at night, and has sexual intercourse with the woman while pretending to be the boyfriend,” the Los Angeles-based 2nd District Court of Appeal said in Wednesday’s ruling. “Has the man committed rape? Because of historical anomalies in the law and the statutory definition of rape, the answer is no, even though, if the woman had been married and the man had impersonated her husband, the answer would be yes.”

So now that Doctor Octopus’s mind is in Peter Parker’s body, does that mean every time he has sex it’s rape? I hope Marvel clarifies this, and soon…

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Get well soon, Peter David

30 Dec

by Mike Hansen

I can’t access his website right now, but Google has given me the following:

We were on vacation in Florida when I lost control of the right side of my body. I cannot see properly and I cannot move my right arm or leg. We are currently getting the extent of the damage sorted out and will report as further details become clarified.

Best wishes for a full and speedy recovery to Mr. David. His work on The Incredible Hulk and SpyBoy hold a special place in my heart, and I hope for many more wonderful stories from him.

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I watched The Dark Knight Reborn documentary

5 Dec

by Mike Hansen

The Dark Knight Rises (Best Buy Blu-Ray) In case you didn’t know, the Best Buy edition of The Dark Knight Rises Blu-Ray set comes with a free bonus downloadable documentary, The Dark Knight Reborn. (I’ve read that this is also on the Blu-Ray disc itself for Best Buy editions, but my copy won’t show up for a few days.)

Here’s the trailer:

Overall, it’s a bit uneven, but there are a lot of fantastic moments from the making of all three of Christopher Nolan’s Batman films. Nolan is featured heavily in the interview footage, and it’s nice to see one of my favorite directors reflect on his journey of creating the ultimate Bruce Wayne story.

There’s an amazing unused shot featuring Heath Ledger as the Joker – very little happens in the scene, but it highlights just how incredible Ledger’s presence was in The Dark Knight. This moment alone made watching this worth it for me.

This “documentary” is only 38 minutes long, and it’s structured more like a string of unrelated featurettes than as a fully formed behind-the-scenes story. There are way too many talking-heads shots – I understand the need for these during the initial promotional process for a film, but a lot of the dialogue here would have worked better as narration. Speaking of which – there’s a really cheesy narrator talking over a few segments who seems to think he needs to sell the Batman trilogy (hey, guy, we’ve already bought it!).

In order to download/watch it, I had to set up a (free) CinemaNow account, which was a bit of a hassle and required going back a few times to get it to download properly. But once it was fully downloaded, I got myself a .WMV file that can be played/burned however I want.

So was it worth it? Continue reading →

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A tribute to Karen Berger and Vertigo

4 Dec

by Mike Hansen

Even though this news was expected for a while, it’s still a gut-punch now that it’s happened.

From today’s DC press release:

Karen Berger, Executive Editor & Senior Vice President of DC Entertainment’s Vertigo brand, has announced she is stepping down from her post after nearly 20 years at the helm of the award-winning literary imprint. She will remain on through March 2013 where she will be assisting in the transition to a new leadership team which includes veteran staffers whom she has mentored over the years.

First off: congratulations to Ms. Berger for her decades of amazing work in comics. She remains one of the best working comics editors (along with Bob Schreck, Diana Schutz, and a very short list of others). Few editors in comics history have had such a range of success or depth of influence. I’m eager to learn where she lands and what she does next: the sky truly is the limit.

I owe a lot of my evolution as a comics reader to Berger and the Vertigo line. For most of the 1980s, I was a Marvel zombie. The only reason I branched out of superhero comics was thanks to Archie Goodwin’s Epic Comics line at Marvel, with Groo the Wanderer and Elfquest first getting my money only because of the Marvel name on the cover. Those titles led me to search out other non-superhero material, and by the end of the ’80s I was a dedicated reader of titles like Usagi Yojimbo, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Aliens, and more.

But as wonderful as those titles were, at that point there were still few comics titles that had the literary aspirations that I was unknowingly missing. There were plenty of other terrific comics out there, but many of them were still seen as “underground” at that point (like most of Fantagraphics’ amazing output), and I was still a few years away from finally discovering essential material like Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing and Matt Wagner’s Grendel. But the Vertigo line arrived at the perfect time, as an antidote to the Image Comics revolution that led to often poorly written and edited Image titles, and several years’ worth of even worse Image ripoffs from Marvel and DC.

Thanks to a well-marketed launch effort, I gave Vertigo a shot for the same reason that I’d given Epic a shot years earlier: this was a major effort at non-superhero comics from one of America’s biggest comics publishers (though DC, like Marvel, was and is focused almost exclusively on superhero properties). I tried almost all of those initial Vertigo books (Sandman, Death: The High Cost of Living, Shade the Changing Man, Swamp Thing, Doom Patrol, Enigma, Sandman Mystery Theatre, Hellblazer), and after that first month of eye-opening work I never looked back. (It probably helped that Vertigo debuted right as I was transitioning from high school to college!)

The sophistication and quality of the Vertigo launch led me to try many other publishers’ non-superhero comics in a way that Marvel’s Epic never had (probably in part because of my age and the era): Bone, Strangers in Paradise, Madman, Sin City, Cerebus, Beanworld, The Crow, Flaming Carrot, The Dirty Pair, Milk and Cheese, Martha Washington… it was a whole new Golden Age of comics, and Vertigo opened my eyes to it. (I was lucky to live near a comics shop that carried virtually every comic published every month – it was a great time to be a comics reader.)

And oh, man – the titles that Vertigo published over the years: The Invisibles, Preacher, Transmetropolitan, We3, Fables, The Unwritten, 100 Bullets, Y: The Last Man, Stardust, Kill Your Boyfriend, Seekers: Into the Mystery, The Filth, Goddess, reprints of Moonshadow and Blood: A Tale, and so many more blew my mind over and over. I am absolutely filled with gratitude for Berger, her impeccable taste in comics, and her talent at mentoring other editors to maintain the line’s quality.

DC tried creating Continue reading →

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G4′s Attack of the Show tackles comics creator rights

25 Aug

by Mike Hansen

Thanos

Thanos by Jim Starlin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I really need to catch up on my DVR…

On the August 1 episode of Attack of the Show on G4TV, guest host Baratunde Thurston dropped some knowledge about how the creators of comics characters in blockbuster movies (including Thanos creator Jim Starlin and Bane creator Chuck Dixon) are/are not compensated for their work. It references one of The Beat’s many recent articles about these issues.

I still can’t embed G4 videos on WordPress, so check out the segment here.

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Marvel needs a “Marvel NOW!” sales boost

4 Aug

by Mike Hansen

Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #1 (May 1984) ...

Now THIS was a must-read as each issue came out, at least for superhero fans.

Brian Hibbs talked about Marvel sales at his store in his latest column:
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=40084

And Todd Allen responds at The Beat here:
http://www.comicsbeat.com/2012/08/04/a-growing-sense-of-concern-over-marvels-sales/

I can see their point – Marvel hasn’t created a sense of urgency (outside AvX) for its books as must-reads (especially as periodicals) in a long time. The Heroic Age couldn’t have been more pointless – even the books themselves made fun of the phoniness of the concept. I get the impression that, for the most part, creators aren’t being given free reign to go as crazy on titles as they could in the past (’80s Uncanny X-Men still blows my mind by how much every issue gets away with), and that readers are giving more of their money to DC and Image, both of which have a lot of titles that people want to buy as each issue comes out. Marvel NOW better be frickin’ amazing!

What do you think?

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DC New 52: Rejected cover to Sword of Sorcery #1 featuring Amethyst

18 Jul

by Mike Hansen

I’d love to know what non-creative executive made this decision.

Here’s the original pencilled cover to Sword of Sorcery #1, by Aaron Lopresti (who posted this on his Facebook feed today) – I got to see the original artwork at Comic-Con, and it’s terrific:

Sword of Sorcery #1 rejected cover

…and here’s the approved, redrawn color version (you can see the black-and-white version on Lopresti’s Facebook page):

Sword of Sorcery #1 final cover art

…which features the main character leaping out at the reader, just like on the cover to the previous issue (#0, by Josh Middleton):

Sword of Sorcery #0 cover

It could be worse. At least DC didn’t make the cover redrawn to look like this: Continue reading →

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