Tagged: creators

Review: ‘Flight, Vol. 5’ edited by Kazu Kibuishi

Review: ‘Flight, Vol. 5’ edited by Kazu Kibuishi

 Flight, Volume Five
Edited by Kazu Kibuishi
Villard/Random House, July 2008, $25.00

As always, the stories in the annual [[[Flight]]] volume are gorgeous and fun, created by a group of artists who worked on storyboards and other art for animated movies, and Flight is easily the most visually diverse of the new breed of mass-market comics anthologies.

But I can’t help but think that most of these stories are square watermelons – the products of creators trained and taught to run their imaginations down narrow channels to produce upbeat, kid-friendly stories with defined beats and clear morals. Nearly every story in Flight 5 could be seen as the treatment for a big-budget “family” animated movie, and many of them feel explicitly like the first scene or two of such a movie. Even once these guys – and all but two of them are guys, which some people may find notable – have been given the freedom of Flight, they continue to tell stories in that one, confined mode, like so many victims of Stockholm syndrome unwilling to leave their own prisons.

The stories are each well-told, but, as they pile up one after another, the number of naïf protagonists learning about the world (often under mortal peril) become just more variations on the same theme. There’s the fox-like world-saver of Michael Gagne’s “[[[The Broken Path]]],” the anthropomorphic fox-man of Reagan Lodge’s “[[[The Dragon]]],” the self-consciously ironic Bigdome of Paul Rivoche’s “[[[Flowers for Mama]]],” Dave Roman’s series of folks who could all be “The Chosen One,” the probably-delusional child Princess of Pluto in Svetlana Chmakova’s “On the Importance of Space Travel,” and – the youngest and most obvious lesson-telling of all of these – boy hero of Richard Pose’s “Beisbol 2.”

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Review: ‘Shmobots’ by Adam Rifkin and Les Toil

Shmobots is a pretty stupid book on its face. And it’s pretty stupid inside too.

Government negligence leads to a city full of worthless robots (termed [[[Shmobots]]]), and three of the laziest ones hang out with a guy and do pretty much nothing with their lives.

The humore here — from writer Adam Rifkin — is all pretty obvious, heavy on robot cliches and slacker jokes we’ve heard before. Yet the book has an undeniable charm, no doubt because its creators acknowledge those faults and even celebrate them.

Sure, the lead robot character is a carbon copy of Bender from Futurama, but he’s used (at least this is my guess) to make fun of the stupid humor genre even while revelling in it.

There is a more involved plot than I let on: the robots and human friend are constantly looking for money, while unknowingly they’re being stalked by the Shmobot Killer. The plot advances at a marijuana-soaked pace.

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Platinum Buys Wowio

  • News
  • July 23, 2008

It’s official. Platinum has purchased Wowio. I won’t have a chance to get into details on the numbers yet, but expect something soon.

Under the terms of the Agreement the Company acquired from the Members 100% of the membership interests of WOWIO for a total purchase price of $3,150,000 payable in shares of common stock of the Company.

Over at his blog, D.J. Coffman, creator of Hero by Night and formerly of Platinum Studios, goes through what he says is the new contract for creators from Wowio, the Web comics outlet that is reportedly going to be purchased by Platinum.

Perhaps not surprising after his acrimonious falling out with Platinum over late payments, Coffman takes issue with several aspects of the contract.

"For revenues derived from Ecommerce Option, Publisher shall receive 50% percent of the quarterly gross revenue generated by sales of Ebooks of the Publisher’s Content.
For revenues derived from Sponsorship Option, Publisher shall receive (i) 50 cents ($0.50 USD) per download for eTexts of less than 100 pages; and (ii) One dollar ($1.00 USD) per download for eTexts of 100 pages and above.
All Royalties shall be paid to Publisher on a quarterly basis, within 45 days following the end of each calendar quarter."

* Couple things here… again, the thought of splitting 50/50 profits on an ebook sale with anyone is ridiculous to me. And the part about when you’re SUPPOSED to be paid, turns my stomach a little in the light of the situation I was in with Platinum. I’m guessing everything will go smoothly during the “transition” period when the old Wowio people are still managing things.. but when the keys are handed over to Platinum, I’ve got a BADDDddddddd feeling about people being paid on time. That’s not an assumption, that’s a proven fact, regardless of the articles written about creators owed, printer representives telling me they were owed and COMIC BOOK NEWS sites telling me they were owed money… and the Drunk Duck kids over there, there was a bunch of “mobile wallpaper” people never paid. I have a really good friend who had his wallpapers up through their service before, and when he asked, he was told that “none sold” but he knew better because his own family had boughten them from the site!!!! — Anyways, THAT’S who will be running this shindig now. That’s who owns them. You have been warned.

Review: ‘The ACME Novelty Date Book, Vol. 2’ by Chris Ware

Review: ‘The ACME Novelty Date Book, Vol. 2’ by Chris Ware

The ACME Novelty Date Book, Vol. 2: 1995-2002
By Chris Ware
Drawn & Quarterly, December 2007, $39.95

In typical Chris Ware fashion, this is an attractively (and extensively) packaged book – so much so, in fact, that what this book precisely is isn’t immediately clear. Is it some kind of notebook, journal, or calendar, perhaps? No, it’s Ware’s sketchbook, or perhaps selected pages from that sketchbook, from the years in the title.

Drawn & Quarterly published the first volume of the “[[[ACME Novelty Date Book]]]” in 2003, which included sketchbook pages from 1986 through 1995. That book covered most of Ware’s twenties, starting when he was in college in Austin, Texas and following him forward as he developed the early ACME characters and themes. That first book also had a wide variety of materials; Ware was young and trying out different art styles, but he’d mostly settled down into his current mode by 1995.

So Vol. 2, as Ware mentions himself partway through it, is mostly made up of three kinds of entries: drawings from life, journal entries, and some short comics strips (mostly autobiographical). There are also some sketches and ideas for [[[ACME Novelty Library]]], and the occasional joke or reference to older comics, but, mostly, it’s those big three.

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Review: ‘Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War Vol. 2’

This past weekend at Heroes Con, a panel of some of comics’ biggest stars weighed in on collaboration and, eventually, the art of the crossover.

Mostly, that meant griping about the impossible task of tying into a Final Crisis or Secret Invasion. Matt Fraction went so far as to say he opted out of some crossovers because the stress of it would take years off his life. Jimmy Palmiotti essentially acknowledged the failure of DC’s Countdown.

Clearly, it’s not that hard for a big superhero event to careen right off the tracks. Which means we should all pay attention when one works particularly well, as in Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War (Volume 2 is out now in hardcover at $24.99).

The story is simple enough: Sinestro breaks loose and raises the most terrifying army ever seen, including all of DC’s strongest villains except for Darkseid. And the Green Lanterns fight back.

In this second half of the story, we see the classic turning of the tide back in the heroes’ favor, although Geoff Johns and crew add enough wrinkles to make the inevitable victory quite shadowy, if not outright pyrrhic.

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Review: ‘MuZz, Vol. 1’ by FSc

Review: ‘MuZz, Vol. 1’ by FSc

MuZz, Vol. 1
By FSc (Foo Swee Chin)
SLG Publishing, May 2008, $14.95

There’s a train that runs to MuZz – or, at least, it’s supposed to – carrying ideas and thoughts whose creators have lost interest in them. They’re all pretty odd and motley, as you might expect: a black whale, a phantom cat, and things I couldn’t even begin to describe.

But, on this particular train, there’s also a figure that looks like a teenage girl missing an eye. She’s Modorelin Farllee, she’s an actual human, and she’s not even dead. (Well, I don’t think she’s dead, but I don’t want to be too definite about any plot points concerning [[[MuZz]]].)

Farllee remembers nothing of her past, and wakes up on the train in such a frantic, grouchy mood that she shakes her elf guide to death and has to rely on the standard pamphlet and the advice of her fellow passengers to figure out what’s going on.

And so she quickly learns what I’ve just told you – she doesn’t believe that she’s actually a figment of someone else’s imagination, but she can’t prove that, and drops the subject. None of them are precisely sure what will happen to them in MuZz, but, for nearly all of them, it has to be better than their previous lives.

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Review: ‘The Joker: The Greatest Stories Ever Told’

This summer is a big one for Batman’s deadliest foe, the Joker, with the deceased Heath Ledger giving an apparently mesmerizing take on the clown prince of crime in [[[The Dark Knight]]].

And just in time comes the latest printing from DC of The Joker: The Greatest Stories Ever Told ($19.99), which offers some of the character’s legendary moments from his debut in 1940 in Batman #1 to last year’s macabre Christmas tale from Paul Dini.

First, lets dispense with the hyperbole of the title. There are some great Joker moments here, but several of the character’s biggest aren’t included. There’s nothing from [[[The Killing Joke]]],[[[ A Death in the Family]]] or [[[Dark Knight Returns]]], for example.

More than anything, this is a great primer on the Joker, charting his characterizations over his six-plus decades of existence as he became quite likely the most recognizable evil-doer in comics.

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Interview: Jeffrey Rowland on TopatoCo and ‘Overcompensating’

Interview: Jeffrey Rowland on TopatoCo and ‘Overcompensating’

Jeffrey Rowland, the creator behind popular webcomics Wigu and OverCompensating, has a new, full-time job these days — and it just might make him one of the most important people to watch in the world of webcomics.

Late last year, Rowland officially expanded TopatoCo, the online store where he sold shirts, stickers and other merchandise related to his webcomics, bringing several other popular webcomics’ stores under the TopatoCo banner and consolidating their merchandise operations. By doing so, fans of many of the most popular webcomics are now able to mix and match their orders among different creators’ designs, and TopatoCo has evolved from a basement business to a staffed, international operation Rowland runs out of an office building in Easthampton, MA.

According to Wikipedia, Rowland "can be considered one of the small number of professional webcartoonists, as running Overcompensating and Wigu, in addition to his merchandise company TopatoCo, is his full time job and source of income."

I spoke with Rowland about the growth of TopatoCo and the first few months of becoming a webcomic merchandising hub, as well as the status of his own webcomics, OverCompensating and Wigu. From the lure of running off to Mexico on a motorcycle to the Snakes on A Plane experience, Rowland shares his thoughts on making a living in the world of webcomics.

COMICMIX: You sound busy, Jeff. What’s going on at TopatoCo HQ today?

JEFFREY ROWLAND: Well, I’m just trying to get a handle on this whole business arrangement here.

CMix: Yeah, it sounds like you’re pretty deep into it these days…

JR: Well, the way we were doing it before was, everyone had their own individual sites up. Dinosaur Comics would have its little store, and then [Dinosaur creator Ryan North] would collect the orders throughout the week and send them to us in a file once a week or so. It wasn’t that bad, because everyone was doing a pretty good amount of business, but when I put them all together… Well, all of a sudden, it just exploded. It was bigger than I thought it was going to be. I think we’ve been up for about a month now, and we’re over 2000 products sold. Over 1000 transactions. Basically, it’s just two of us here working – sometimes three. I have one full-time employee — she’s "Tallahassee" in OverCompensating.

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Two Girls And A Lot Of Magic….

Two Girls And A Lot Of Magic….

When you stop to think about it, there are a lot of similarities in the stories of Dorothy and Alice and now the connection is much deeper than we ever imagined. The critically acclaimed indy series Oz – Wonderland Chronicles might have passed you by, take a minute for ComicMix Radio as we preview the title with one of the creators. Plus:

• It’s finally a Merry Middle Earth Christmas

• Got an idea for a super heroine? Shadowline is listening!

• It’s seven-in-a-row for The X-Men arc "The Messiah Complex"

Press The Button now, and pass the eggnog!

Nudity and the Editorial Process, by Dennis O’Neil

Nudity and the Editorial Process, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • December 4, 2007

In my dotage, I’m coming to believe that a little adolescent rebellion is usually a good thing, and if the rebellion creeps a year or two into full, card-carrying adulthood, that’s okay. Much after the fact, I learned of some things my kid did in his Greenwich Village youth: I’m not sorry he did them and I’m glad I didn’t know of them until much later.

(As for myself…let me note that the principal of my high school told my mother after graduation that they never, ever wanted to see me again. I must have done something…)

Father does not always know best and either does Mother. Like generals, they’re fighting old wars and kids are caught in new wars, which means the kids have to find their own way, which is a process of experimentation, which means that Junior and Pops can’t and shouldn’t march in lock step,

We will now retire the military metaphors and explain what any of this has to do with our current topic, the evolution of superheroes.

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