We seemed to watch a lot of “Draw My Life” videos this past year, so we felt it was appropriate to recap our 2014 with a white board and some dry erase markers. In under 3 minutes, we quickly doodle this year’s top movies, tv shows, books & comics. We also draw our favorite Con experiences, the pop culture headlines that stuck with us, and the best hair of the year (belonging to Blythe from IDW’s Littlest Pet Shop Comics)! Lots of wishes for a fabulous 2015, everyone!
This week the Tweeks are giddy over the release of the third volume of John Allison’s Bad Machinery. In Bad Machinery: The Case of the Simple Soul, the kids from Tackleford, England attempt to solve some wacky mysteries (barn fires for the boys and a troll make-over for the girls). Already big fans of the series (watch their review of the 1st two volumes!), Maddy & Anya couldn’t help getting silly over this new release from Oni Press. It’s full of LOLs over trolls.
We’ve put off homework and started our summer reading early with the new-to-us [[[Polly & The Pirates]]] books and the actually brand new [[[Princess Ugg]]] issue #1, both from Oni Press. Both have a few of our favorite things in common: fierce girl characters, boarding schools, and Ted Naifeh, but don’t think these are strictly limited to the Tween/Teen demographic. Seriously, no one is too old to want to read about the daughter of a Pirate Queen or a warrior princess with a wooly mammoth.
The Tweeks love anything British, they love comics, and they love groups of kids solving mysteries so of course they were freaking out over John Allison’s Bad Machinery series where a group of 6 preteens in Tackleford, England not only solve cases, but spazz out over unicorns in video games. Watch our review of Volumes 1 and 2 and see why this is kind of like a younger Buffy without the vampires or British cartoon-y Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys only better.
UPDATE 8/21: What a night. So here are the winners:
BEST LETTERER: John Workman, THOR, Marvel Comics
BEST COLORIST: Jose Villarrubia, CUBA : MY REVOLUTION, Vertigo/DC Comics
BEST SYNDICATED STRIP OR PANEL: DOONESBURY, Garry Trudeau, Universal Press Syndicate
BEST ONLINE COMICS WORK: HARK! A VAGRANT, Kate Beaton, http://harkavagrant.com/ (assuming fellow nominee Scott Kurtz, http://www.pvponline.com/, ever lets her have it.)
BEST AMERICAN EDITION OF FOREIGN MATERIAL: BLACKSAD, Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido, Dark Horse Comics
BEST INKER: Mark Morales, THOR, Marvel Comics
BEST NEW SERIES: AMERICAN VAMPIRE, Scott Snyder, Stephen King and Rafael Albuquerque, Vertigo/DC Comics
MOST PROMISING NEW TALENT: Chris Samnee, THOR: THE MIGHTY AVENGER, Marvel Comics
SPECIAL AWARD FOR HUMOR IN COMICS: Roger Langridge, THE MUPPET SHOW, BOOM! Studios
BEST ORIGINAL GRAPHIC PUBLICATION FOR YOUNGER READERS: TINY TITANS, Art Baltazar and Franco Aureliani, DC Comics
BEST GRAPHIC ALBUM PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED: BEASTS OF BURDEN: ANIMAL RITES, Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson, Dark Horse Comics
BEST ANTHOLOGY: POPGUN # 4, edited by D.J. Kirkbride, Anthony Wu and Adam P. Knave, Image Comics
BEST DOMESTIC REPRINT PROJECT: DAVE STEVENS’ THE ROCKETEER: ARTIST’S EDITION, designed by Randall Dahlk & edited by Scott Dunbier, IDW
BEST COVER ARTIST: Mike Mignola, HELLBOY, Dark Horse Comics
BEST BIOGRAPHICAL, HISTORICAL OR JOURNALISTIC PRESENTATION: THE ART OF JAIME HERNANDEZ: THE SECRETS OF LIFE AND DEATH, edited by Todd Hignite, Abrams ComicArts
SPECIAL AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN PRESENTATION: DAVE STEVENS’ THE ROCKETEER: ARITIST’S EDITION, designed by Randall Dahlk & edited by Scott Dunbier, IDW
BEST GRAPHIC ALBUM – ORIGINAL: SCOTT PILGRM VOLUME 6: SCOTT PILGRIM’S FINEST HOUR, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Oni Press
BEST CONTINUING OR LIMITED SERIES: LOVE AND ROCKETS: VOLUME 3, Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, Fantagraphics
BEST WRITER: Roger Langridge, THOR: THE MIGHTY AVENGER, Marvel Comics
BEST ARTIST: Darwyn Cooke, RICHARD STARK’S PARKER: THE OUTFIT, IDW
BEST CARTOONIST: Darwyn Cooke, RICHARD STARK’S PARKER: THE OUTFIT, IDW
BEST SINGLE ISSUE or STORY: DAYTRIPPER, Fabio Moon and Gabiel Ba, Vertigo/DC Comics
Special Awards: to Paul McSpadden, Harvey Award Administrator, presented by Denis Kitchen.
Hero Initiative Dick Giordano Humanitarian of the Year: Mike Gold, presented by Mark Wheatley
Hero Initiative Lifetime Achievement Award: Stan Lee, presented by Mark Waid
Update: No wifi here, so live results will be on Twitter. Follow us there!
The 2011 Harvey Awards are being presented at a banquet tonight at the Baltimore Comic-Con, and we’re liveblogging and tweeting the ceremony results and awards.
Named in honor of the late Harvey Kurtzman, one of the industry’s most innovative talents, the Harvey Awards recognize outstanding work in comics and sequential art.
Nominations for the Harvey Awards are selected exclusively by creators – those who write, draw, ink, letter, color, design, edit or are otherwise involved in a creative capacity in the comics field. They are the only industry awards both nominated and selected by the full body of comic book professionals. Thank you to all that have already participated by submitting a nomination ballot.
This will be the sixth year for the Harvey Awards in Baltimore, MD. Our Master of Ceremonies this year for the third year in a row will be Scott Kurtz (www.pvponline.com). And this year’s keynote speaker has a hard job, as last year’s infamous keynote speech from Mark Waid will be tough to top.
Below are the 2011 Harvey Award Nominees. Winners will be highlighted in bold as they are announced.
(more…)
The film adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Oni Press series Scott Pilgrim begins shooting this fall for a 2009 release. While Michael Cera (Juno) has been attached to star as Scott, Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Live Free or Die Hard) is set as Ramona V. Flowers.
Shaun of the Dead’s Edgar Wright is on board to direct the film, formally titled Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, from the screenplay by Michael Bacall and Wright.
The series consists of six black and white digest-sized graphic novels and tells of 23 year-old Scott’s quest to vanquish Ramona’s evil ex-boyfriends to win her heart. Starting in 2004, four of the projected six volumes are currently in print.
Winstead told Moviehole, “Yeah! It’s going to be really cool. I’m such a fan of Edgar’s — I can’t believe I’m going to be involved with it. I’m extremely excited about it. I actually just started Kung-Fu training for it today! I’m hoping to be pretty bad-ass by the end of it.”
Variety is reporting that the Oni Press graphic novel Julius, written by Antony Johnston with art by Brett Weldele, is the latest project optioned for feature film treatment. According to the report, Mandalay Pictures has purchased the rights to Julius, with F. Gary Gray (Friday, Be Cool) named as director.
Mandalay prexy Cathy Schulman said that Gray "has a vision for this adaptation that will satirize obsessive consumerism while providing a thrilling ride for audiences."
Eric Gitter of Closed on Mondays Entertainment, the producing arm of Oni Press, will produce; Oni’s Peter Schwerin and Joe Nozemack exec produce. Schulman, David Zelon and Jonathan Krauss will oversee the project for Mandalay.
Confession time, folks: I’ve never even heard of Julius. However, with the rate at which projects are being released and optioned these days (with some projects optioned well before they’re released), this has become a far more frequent occurrence with me. Has anyone else out there read this one and/or feel inclined to comment on it?
The big news out of the Oni Press panel at San Diego all revolved around Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim, with an announced title and release date for the fifth book.
It’ll be Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe and it’ll come out at next year’s New York Comic Con. Other than that, all the news was of other books from the publisher.
Newsarama has some coverage.
James Lucas Jones moderated Oni’s panel, which featured a packed room of fans and at least a dozen Oni creators who Jones invited to the podium to talk about their titles as he announced them.
The panel kicked off with artwork for Billy Smoke by B. Clay Moore and Eric Kim. The book is about an elite hit man who’s nearly killed during a botched assignment. He decides his only path to redemption is to kill his former hit man associates.
Jones called it an “adrenaline-fueled thrill ride about an assassin on the path to redemption.” It debuts in early 2009. Matthew Fox has signed on to star in the film adaptation and was at the Oni booth some of the weekend signing autographs.
Last year’s excellent Vasilis Lolos story Last Call looks to be the latest comic-to-movie acquisition, as Variety reports that Universal Pictures has bought up the rights to the Oni Press project.
"The Last Call," written and illustrated by Vasilis Lolos, centers on two teens on a joyride who get hit by a train — an interdimensional soul carrier — and find themselves on a quest to solve a mystery that will allow them to return to their regular lives. Series debuted last year.
Evan Spiliotopoulos, who most recently penned "The Box" for Fox, is adapting the series for the screen.
Last Call is the fourth Oni project to receive such attention from Hollywood, with Scott Pilgrim, Leading Man and Resurrection also optioned over the last few years.
(via The Beat)
From V.T. Hamlin in the 1920s and Etta Hulme during the mid-century, through the Superman books of Kerry Gammill in times more recent, Tarrant County, Texas, has long yielded a wealth of storytelling artistry to the comics industry at large.
An ambitious new representative of that regional-breakout scene is graphic novelist Ian Shaughnessy, of Arlington, Texas. Shaughnessy’s books for Portland, Oregon-based Oni Press – including an edgy comedy-of-errors called Shenanigans, with the Canadian illustrator Mike Holmes – bespeak a childhood fascination with comics, filtered through a lifelong love of language and an interest in taking the words-and-pictures medium to provocative literary levels more commonly associated with the present day’s independent filmmaking sector.
“I find myself writing under the direct influence of Billy Wilder,” says Shaughnessy, 24, invoking the name of a great screenwriter-director whose career spanned from 1929 into the 1980s. “I discovered Wilder during the 1990s with The Apartment [1960], then with Double Indemnity [1944], and found myself very inspired – in a lasting way.
“With Shenanigans, I found myself attempting to honor the spirit of Billy Wilder – that mastery that he had of romantic tensions, with finding the humor in awkward situations – as a key influence.”
Any such talent needs a practical springboard. With V.T. Hamlin, the creator of a famous comic strip called Alley Oop that has survived him by many years, the springboard was a cartooning job at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Hamlin spent much of the 1920s at the daily paper, generating such local-interest attractions as a serialized feature about a formidable minor-league baseball club, the Fort Worth Cats. (A retrospective collection of Hamlin’s Oop-prototype Panther Kitten cartoons is in preparation, along with an earlier Hamlin gag strip called The Hired Hand, whose booklet edition has been out of print since the 1920s.)
For Etta Hulme, the Star-Telegram’s signature opinion-page cartoonist since 1972, an early breakthrough lay in a post-WWII comic-book series about a cowboy critter named “Red” Rabbit. Graphic designer and Web publisher Kerry Gammill spent the 1980s and earlier ’90s as an illustrator with Marvel and DC, then moved into motion-picture conceptual art on such productions as 1998’s Blues Brothers 2000 and 1999’s Storm of the Century.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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