Clark Kent sells Kellogg’s Smacks
Kellogg’s Sugar Smacks, back when it was still legal to use the word "sugar" on a cereal box.
Hat tip to Michael Pinto.
The Mix : What are people talking about today?
Sales spurt continues into ’07
Good news from our friends at ICv2 — the rise in sales of periodical comics last year is continuing, thanks largely to event comcis like Marvel’s Civil War and DC’ 52. There was a less than 5% drop between Civil War #s 5 and 6, and the most recent issue sold more than twice as much as the #2 title (another Civil War tie-in), Civil War Return.
As expected,
How do you attract fanboys to your convention?
If you’re the New York Comic Con, you put up a webpage on MySpace and pretend you’re a 28 year old female.
Now that’s the way to drum up business. And it’s a good thing too, because I was worried about the convention being underattended.
Podcast #4
Marvelous May, DC’s scheduling nightmare, Stan Lee and tons of news and previews — we it all in the fourth Comicmix Podcast, now downloadable right here, right now:
Plus — Timeline, a guide to new variant covers, a reveal on Battlestar Galactica, Buffy and … John Wayne?
If you missed any of our earlier ComicMix Podcasts, here they are.
Dennis O’Neil: What Would Green Lantern Do?
So do the Guardians of the Universe equip Green Lanterns with bumper stickers that read: My Space Sector, right or wrong?
This question is prompted by something that recently popped up on my screen, a political blog entry forwarded by Martha Thomases, ComicMix’s commnications director and my friend of more than 30 years. The blog was by Matthew Yglesias and it likened the current U.S. foreign policy honchos to the fictional Guardians and their interstellar group of do-bes, the Green Lantern Corps, each of whom is assigned a chunk of the galaxy. Mr. Yglesias describes the gizmos that give the Lanterns their bag of tricks as “the most powerful weapon(s) in the universe,” trinkets that “let bearer(s) generate streams of green energy… (W)hat the ring can do is limited only by the stipulation that it create green stuff and by the user’s combination of will and imagination.” Mr. Yglesias continues: “(A) lot of people seem to think that American military might is like one of these power rings. They seem to think that… we can accomplish absolutely anything in the world through the application of sufficient… force. The only thing limiting us is a lack of willpower.”
Phantom to aid Uganda’s children
From the watchful eyes at Monitor Duty: Proceeds from Moonstone’s The Phantom #17, 18, and #19 will be going to the Invisible Children charity to help create safe havens for children in Uganda, where they can be fed and protected from exploitation.
This three issue self-contained storyline will be penciled by Silvestre Szilagi and colored by Bob Pendroza. The A cover variants will be done by Marat Mychael and the B cover variants will be done by Darryl Banks and Terry Austin. For every B cover variant issue sold, Moonstone publishing will make a donation. (Pictured: the variant cover for #17.)
Kudos to writer Mike Bullock and Moonstone Books publisher Joe Gentile. (Hat tip to Alan Kistler.)
Dark Tower to be filmed
First it was the Marvel comic — now the Hollywood Reporter tells us that Stephen King and J.J. Abrams (Lost, Alias) are in talks to bring The Dark Tower to the screen. No word as to whether it will be for movies or TV.
The article also notes that Abrams co-hort Damon (Ultimate Wolverine/Hulk) Lindelof is also a huge King fanboy, bringing along a rare first edition of "The Gunslinger," Book 1 of the series, for King to sign at a recent round-table for Entertainment Weekly.
No word how this will affect Star Trek XI or any of the other myriad projects that have Abrams’s name attached.
Previously:
Glyph Awards nominees announced
Rich Watson has announced the nominees in the second annual Glyph Comic Awards, honoring the best in black comics and creators. The awards ceremony will be held at the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention (ECBACC) on May 18-19 at Temple University’s Anderson Hall in Philadelphia. Besides Rich, the other judges will be Johanna Draper Carlson, Pam Noles, Calvin Reid and Hannibal Tabu.
There is one fan-based award for favorite black comic in a poll to be posted at the ECBACC website for the month of March. Fans can write in their choice or select from the following nominees:
Black Panther: The Bride, Reginald Hudlin, Scot Eaton & Klaus Janson
Crisis Aftermath: The Spectre, Will Pfeifer & Cliff Chiang
Firestorm #28-32, Stuart Moore, Jamal Igle & Keith Champagne
New Avengers #22, Brian Michael Bendis & Leinil Francis Yu
Storm, Eric Jerome Dickey, David Yardin & Lan Medina and Jay Leisten & Sean Parsons
George Takei responds to Tim Hardaway
George Takei, recently seen on Heroes but always thought of as Mr. Sulu, recorded this reply to recent homophobic comments made by former NBA all-star Tim Hardaway, as aired on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Show.
You go, George.
Milestones in new comics media
I may be typing this on a MacBook but mostly I’m old. Ever so much older than I used to be. A real 20th century kinda gal. So I’m way behind the curve on what those crazy kids are up to when they’re not trampling my theoretical lawn or treating the comics shop like a reading room.
For one, they’re reading lots of comics online — by one estimate there may be as many as 36,000 different web-only comics out there, and that’s not even including syndicated print comic strips reproduced online. There’s just no time to read them all, so we rely on others to announce special events, like today’s online ceremony for the 2007 Webcartoonists’ Choice Awards (congratulations to all the winners!), or the announcement that Ed Dunphy’s and Max Velati’s science humor webcomic Lab Bratz has just hit its 100th weekly episode. At least the latter milestone makes us feel a bit better, as Dunphy used to write for such print titles as Munden’s Bar, Mongrel, Slash and Splatter.
I got those credits from ComicSpace, a sort of MySpace spinoff for comics folks. Feel free to befriend me there; I don’t know how it works anyway. It’s apparently "a community of over 12,500 comic fans and creators… hosting over 3,000 comic galleries… containing over 28,300 comic pages!" so, you know, who has time for that, a full-time job and sleep? Well, MySpace now has its own comic book section, with over 20,000 "friends" so far.
The Internet is rapidly becoming the most expansive force in comics. It’s exciting to watch it grow.
