Tagged: Times

2010 Glyph Comics Awards Nominations; ‘Original Johnson’ snags 4 nominations

2010 Glyph Comics Awards Nominations; ‘Original Johnson’ snags 4 nominations

  • News
  • February 15, 2010

The Glyph Comics Awards, designed to “recognize the best in comics made
by, for, and about people of color from the preceding calendar year,”
have released the names of the comics and creators that make up their
2010 nominee slate.

We are incredibly proud that The Original Johnson
 has received four nominations in the categories of Best Artist, Best Cover, Best Male Character, and Story Of The Year.

“It’s wonderful to see Trevor Von Eeden’s life-work receive such recognition,” ComicMix editor-in-chief Mike Gold said. “He’s been working on The Original Johnson for 15 years, and we’ve been working with him for the past three. It has taken an extraordinary amount of effort to produce this book, and recognition from the Glyph awards makes every drop of it worthwhile. We are proud to be associated with Trevor and this amazingly intense work. My personal thanks and gratitude to Trevor and to all of those who have been involved in the effort.”

The awards will be presented at the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention in Philadelphia on May 14th and 15th.

The full list of nominees:

(more…)

What if the Kindle had been invented first?

What if the Kindle had been invented first?

  • News
  • June 28, 2009

From a commenter of Megan McArdle’s at The Atlantic:

I was walking through a bohemian part of town and ran across this
place called a “bookstore”. I thought, “Hmm, that’s interesting. I’ve
always gotten my books electronically on my kindle, but this could be
an interesting idea.” So I stepped inside. What I saw was an unfamiliar
way of experiencing books: on hundreds of of sheets of paper, bound up
on one side with glue and wrapped in a hard cardboard cover. They even
smell a little musty, at least the old ones.

At first I was excited; but then I began to think, well how would I
do a text search in such a book? Supposing it was a reference book, or
I wanted to find a quote that was particularly memorable? Also, I can
resell it if I don’t want it, but I can’t take notes in the book
without ruining its value. Plus, where am I going to keep these books
if I buy a whole bunch of them? They’re really heavy! And it uses a lot
of paper – especially newspapers! What if it’s dark and I need a bigger
font? What if I’m on the train to work and decide I want to buy the
paper version of the Times that day? Can’t get it!! Not only that, but
they wanted to charge me MORE for these clunky, static, physical, books
than the normal electronic price! Honestly, with all these limitations
and disadvantages, they should be giving them away for free. I decided
I’m never going to pay a single red cent for a paper book until these
issues are addressed. No way.

Interesting. Let’s take it from the POV of the comics buyer:

“But still, this paper edition does have a few advantages– I mean, wow, color? I wonder how my Japanese imports would look in full color? And some of the pictures are crisper, the ones that aren’t painted– these paper versions look like someone took all the figures and traced a black line around them, to make them sharper. Neat!

“Oh, a few in paper shouldn’t be bad. It’s not like I’m going to buy thousands of them and keep them around.”

Your thoughts?

Scans_Daily: Actual, you know, data

Scans_Daily: Actual, you know, data

  • News
  • March 2, 2009

One of the arguments that’s been trotted out in the wake of the scans_daily closing– sorry, scans_daily is how I see it should be written — is that having things posted there tipped people off to cool things to read. We have anecdotes of people spending $2800 because of books that they saw on s_d, pitted against sales figures for monthly comics that have been going down month after month, year after year. Most of this is difficult, because there are very few correlations that can be pointed to that make us say, "Ah! Someone posted five pages of Stupendous Man #73 and sales went up!"

However, we actually do have data that we can point to– webcomics.

At various times, people used scans_daily to promote their webcomics, books that couldn’t be gotten any other way. And at one point, so did ComicMix. I posted the first seven pages of The Original Johnson to scans_daily on January 19th, Martin Luther King Day, to see what sort of traffic we could get.

How much traffic did we get? A negligible bump. Fifty click throughs at most over a few days, and not many of them stuck around.

As a point of comparison, the New York Times ran an article on The Original Johnson a month prior on Christmas Day, 2008, the least visited day of the year for the website and the newspaper. The article was buried in the sports section. And we got well over twenty-five times the click throughs from the Times alone, and seventy times the traffic.

So– was scans_daily a good promotional platform? I’d have to say no. Why? Because it was an illicit group, and had to stay under the radar. As an illicit group, it was limited as to how much it could grow– it had less than nine thousand readers when it went down. As Warren Ellis pointed out, it couldn’t be used to promote anything. What it could do– and did very well– was reproduce a lot of comics storylines well enough, month after month, so that people didn’t need to actually buy the comics over time.

There have been a lot of successes from online promotion. And we’ll see what sort of traffic we get from a link on Ain’t It Cool News, which wrote Lone Justice up today. But scans_daily has not been seen to have a positive impact on readership from our point of view. We’ll update you in a few days when the traffic dies down. In the meantime, I’ll be happy to publish any other actual data — Kevin Church, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

Woo woo woo.

In the meantime, a few more links:

 

Madagascar Penguins double up at Nickelodeon, The Life and Times of Tim renewed

Madagascar Penguins double up at Nickelodeon, The Life and Times of Tim renewed

  • News
  • January 12, 2009

At the Television Critics Association meeting on Friday, Nickelodeon announced that they were giving the go-ahead for 26 additional episodes of the computer-generated animated series The Penguins of Madagascar, for a total of 52 episodes.  A Nickelodeon and DreamWorks Animation co-production, The Penguins of Madagascar is set to launch on the network Saturday, March 28 at 9:30 PM.  The series will air regularly Saturdays at 10 AM starting April 4.

Remember, boys… cute and cuddly…

In other animation news, HBO renewed the animated comedy The Life and Times of Tim for a second season.

Marvel stock settlement is finally paid out

Marvel stock settlement is finally paid out

  • News
  • January 9, 2009

Remember the last time comics were in serious economic troubles? Remember when Marvel went bankrupt?

Hard to believe in the days of Marvel movies making money like mad, but it was only twelve years ago that Marvel was bankrupt, in one of the most convoluted financial arrangements in corporate history. No, it’s not even possible to try and distill it all. Go read Comic Wars: Marvel’s Battle For Survival if you want all the details.

Now we hear from Ed Zanger that a piece of it is coming to a close, as stockholders from that time have just been paid a settlement from the shennanigans that went on at the time.

And the other big players in the battle? Well, Carl Icahn just put his 177-foot yacht, the Starfire, up for sale for $37.5 million– while Ron Perelman (right) is trying to sell his for $67 million so he can upgrade. Times are tough all over…

‘The Phantom of Coney Island’?

‘The Phantom of Coney Island’?

  • News
  • December 31, 2008

You know times are tough when playwright Andrew Lloyd Webber resorts to mounting a sequel rather than something original.  The theatrical maestro has announced Phantom: Love Never Dies, taking place a decade after the events of the original.  The Phantom apparently survived his encounter with Christine and has relocated from France to, where else, Coney Island, New York.

The 2009 musical will open simultaneously in three cities — Broadway in New York, London’s West End, and Shanghai – a first for any stage production.  Directing will be Jack O’Brien who is known for The Full Monty and Hairspray so is used to the grand sweep of such productions. Sets will be designed by five time Tony Award winner Bob Crowley (Carousel).

According to the Times of London, the Phantom has yet to be cast with speculation over Gerard Butler, who played him in film adaptation, Hugh Jackman, and John Barrowman as possibilities. Whoever stars will be cast opposite an actress playing the younger new love interest.

The original production, still running around the world, has sold in excess of 80 million tickets and helped change the nature of musical theatre. Lloyd Webber, 60, is said to have been working on the sequel for years but only this summer began discussing it in concrete terms,

“Nine weeks ago there was a sing-through of the second act,” The Times reported, “and then, ten days ago, the decision was made:.” “We put the whole thing together with the work we had done on both acts,” Lloyd Webber said. “There is nothing to delay us. The button is pushed.

“It is set on Coney Island. He started in one of the freak shows there but, by the time we meet him, being the Phantom he has become the most powerful operator in Coney. He’s pulling the strings and running the island.”

Somewhere, author Gaston Leroux is rolling in his grave.

Comic Strips Seek New Life Lines

Comic Strips Seek New Life Lines

  • News
  • December 28, 2008

As 2008 winds down, the future looms large and one of the murkiest predictions regards the future of newspapers.  With people increasingly getting their news from the Internet, newspapers seem to serve readers with advertising circulars, classifieds and the comics. As various papers struggle with declining advertising revenue, they have shrunk newsrooms, dropped pages, reduced their size and trimmed features.  Newspapers that carried two or three pages of comic strips are half that size and it gets harder for new cartoonists to gain a toehold.

Today’s New York Times takes a look at the future of the comic strip as it reaches beyond newsprint to reach audiences.  The article quotes Pearls Before Swine’s Stephan Pastis as saying, “Newspapers are declining. For a syndicated cartoonist, that’s like finally making it to the major leagues and being told the stadiums are all closing, so there’s no place to play.”

The article went on to cover United Feature Syndicate’s increased emphasis on free archives of their strips at Comics.com and Universal Press Syndicate’s Uclick mobile phone option. As for the cartoonists themselves, the Times says they’re searching for survival by posting their works on the web at sites such as Comic Genesis and Webcomics Nation.
 

‘Wicked’ Film Inevitable

‘Wicked’ Film Inevitable

  • News
  • November 28, 2008

Kristin Chenoweth, now out of work with the cancellation of Pushing Daisies, was asked if she’d be reprising the role of Galinda in the inevitable feature film version of Wicked. She told Moviehole, ”Well, will it ever be made? Yes, I do think it will be made. I think — you know, there’s some sort of thing going on right now where everyone’s hearing that there’s going to be a movie. You know, there will be a movie. But I believe — and I could be wrong, but I believe it will be years before we see it as a movie, because — you know, Universal will really want to make sure that they suck it dry, so to speak in all the theaters. And if you look at movies like Chicago and Phantom of the Opera those were 20, 25 years after the fact. And I could see, definitely, me playing Madame Morrible at that point. But I hope they really do it soon, so that I’m young enough to play Galinda.”

The musical is based on Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire which takes a revisionist look at the witches living in L. Frank Baum’s Oz. The best-seller was turned into a musical songs and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holzman and it debuted to acclaim in 2003, making stars of Chenoweth and Idina Menzel.

Wanted’s Marc Platt was signed to a long term deal at Universal this past July according to Variety and Wicked was included in the projects he will produce for them. Holzman is said to be at  work on a screenplay with David Stone on board  to co-produce.

‘Hancock 2’ Charged with Bringing Sony Profit

‘Hancock 2’ Charged with Bringing Sony Profit

  • News
  • November 19, 2008

The Los Angeles Times notes that Sony has profited handsomely from its investment in MGM, earning huge profits from Casino Royale and expects a similar payday for Quantum of Solace.  After that, MGM regains full control of Bond so the studio needs fresh cash cows.

Looking ahead, the Times counts off forthcoming films based on The Green Hornet, Flash Gordon, and Preacher are worthy candidates. Closer to home, they are preparing a sequel fro the original super-hero tale, Hancock, which brought in huge dollars and little buzz.

Among the films mentioned, The Green Hornet, starring Seth Rogen and Stephen Chow, and to be directed by Chow, will be arriving first, in summer 2010. They’ve pencilled in Spider-Man 4 for summer 2011 but the other projects are still in development so the studio can’t start counting on profits yet.

Flash Gordon will be the first feature film featuring Alex Raymond’s classic hero since the 1980 disaster and will be directed by Breck Eisner, known more for his schlock horror efforts. Preacher, though, will be directed by Sam Mendes (Road to Perdition) so comes with greater hopes.

Sony entered into a financing agreement with MGM when the studio was once again facing financial failure.  As a result, by investing in Casino, Sony actually earned more than MGM, netting as much as $100 million in profit. MGM and Sony parted ways after the latter failed to meet sales targets for DVDs from MGM’s library. The deal allowed Sony to participate in Quantum but that will be all.
 

Klingon Opera in the Works

Klingon Opera in the Works

  • News
  • November 15, 2008

At one point, Paramount Pictures commissioned work on a Star Trek opera as part of the franchise’s 25th anniversary. Novelists Judy and Garwood Stevens were at work on a story when cooler heads prevailed and the project was shelved.

Now, Floris Schönfeld, from the Netherlands, has made it clear he’s at work on a Klingon Opera.  The artist was recently profiled in The New York Times, one of 15 invited to come to Long Island for a two- to three-week residency at the Watermill Center.

“The Klingon opera Mr. Schönfeld is developing is called “ ’u’.” The apostrophes before and after the “u” are part of the title and are pronounced by Mr. Schönfeld like short coughs. The title, he said, stands for universe or universal.,” the Times wrote.

Part of his time in America will be spent on developing the opera’s storyline which the 26-year-old intends to write himself. He speaks English, German, Dutch and what “he calls ‘basic Klingon’ and began his project during the summer of 2007 as his master’s thesis at the Interfaculty ArtScience program, affiliated with the Royal Conservatory, in The Hague.”

He was drawn to the Klingon language, developed in the 1980s by linguist Marc Okrand, and subsequently founded the Klingon Terran Research Ensemble and worked with his friends on the opera.  Several bits have been performed and recorded, available for viewing on their website without translation into English.

As part of his stay, Schönfeld will work with performers and present an improvisational glimpse of Klingon music. “We are humans making Klingon music,” he said, noting that they will not dress in Klingon garb.

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