Bundled, Tossed, Untied, Stacked: Publishing News

By Tom Spurgeon

* the license for the Buffy comics is being pulled from Dark Horse by Fox. No hard feelings, apparently. The Buffy license was interesting for a while there in that Dark Horse had some success selling the comics as additional and official "seasons" of the TV show, and used many of the show's writers on the scripting side of things. That particularly shot of energy seems mostly gone now; I went from several "civilian" friends buying the comic to not knowing the comic book series was still being published. The Firefly license is apparently also being pulled back.

* gaming has had an enormous influence on comics for the last several years, and I don't think it's a subject that industry press such as myself have covered with any sort of diligence or devotion. I know that there are movements within mainstream comics that are driven by video game popularity that I've ascribed to previous schools of comics thought that probably had little bearing. Anyway, it makes total sense that we're starting to get open interest in comics as an extension of the gaming experience. It's new twist on an old role for the medium.

* the comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com digs into DC's plans for its Captain Marvel character. There was a sneak peek news story on this slate when DC decided not to move ahead with a Monster Society Of Evil reprint because of its racial caricatures, which I find hard to criticize because I'm not sure certain things should be repackaged as if it were modern entertainment -- even though I hope it becomes available in some form because that work is important and should be available in an archival sense. Anyway, I have little to no interest in the modern conception of the character, and the movie looks extremely not for me, too. Superman + Big is a hell of a pitch, though; I can conceive of the movie doing well even if I don't expect it to. One thing that confuses me about the shift in concept is I'm not sure there's that strong a break between children and adults now, so I don't understand the tension that one assumes would grow out of an 8 year old hanging out with adults. It'd be like another night out with my friends.

* finally, the great Calin Reid pulls together a bunch of recent or soon-to-be graphic novels on the subject of bodies moving from one place to another.
 
posted 5:25 pm PST | Permalink
 

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