Bundled, Tossed, Untied And Stacked



By Tom Spurgeon

* Wired had the exclusive news last week of Gene Yang's next book, Boxers And Saints. Yang's a fun cartoonist and this two-volume slip-covered set looks like it should be one of the more enjoyable pre-holiday season efforts this year. Swell guy.

* DC has apparently canceled its Hawkman series. I wasn't aware they had a Hawkman series. Let me go look at it. Hm. Okay, they had one of their solid-but-not-star writers on it and then moved it over to Rob Liefeld and it was "savage" in nature throughout. That seems like the kind of book that someone should be able to write effectively: it has the "basic superhero" thing some of DC's better characters have (giant thug that beats on people; this one flies), the visual of Hawkman strikes me as a pretty good one and you can plug into a bunch of different genres. Then again, I don't think I've read a Hawkman story I've enjoyed since... forever? The old Kubert stuff? Maybe a Brubaker/Phillips one-shot? Granted, I'm not the audience.

* there will certainly be some publishing news from Angouleme, although my ability to track said news may be in question. I'm guessing this announced line headed by Louis Delas deserves mention -- the only thing I can't tell is if this is a formal announcement or more of a reminder that this piece of structural publishing news is out there. I'm always personally interested in that kind of publishing news from the French-language market, because my sense is -- and I have a Mendoza-like batting average with French-language comics market analysis, so bear with me as I swing away -- that there's a bit more structural investment in comics publishing from traditional publishers there. So I don't think you're going to see equivalent announcements at a San Diego or a New York.

* everything is coming up Ralphie.

* IDW is going to take a shot at the X-Files license. I was always confused by the desire for more X-Files because it's the only science-fiction property friends of mine became fans of where literally none of them ever expressed in any way a desire for more of it and most were out by the time the original series concluded. But I guess we're talking such a tiny percentage of those original fans to make something like this work.

* I definitely am the audience for a bi-monthly series of two-color risozine comic line launched by Ian Harker called Sacred Prism. Cartoonists included are Box Brown (February), Maré Odomo (April), Lala Albert (June), Thomas Toye (August), Benjamin Marra (October) and Michael Olivo (December).

* continuing in that vein, there are a bunch of new books available at the vital mini-comics distributor Profanity Hill. You should maybe buy some. At least think about it. Please?

* new Skeleton Key.

* I always get a few e-mails from readers about stories like this one about Marvel's future movie plans, and how this might result in certain characters receiving a comic or two in the publishing line. That's not always how it works for these companies, although certainly characters like that tend to get more of a chance to stick on paper if they're driving people to the box office. I'm not sure why Dr. Strange doesn't work for that company: that's one of the sturdier origins, he has an upper-tier rogues gallery and you can go a lot of directions with the book. I'd always heard he was not a favorite character in-house there, so maybe that was it. I don't think the last few years of his use have won over any fans, although I heard nice things about that Defenders book.

* I guess I knew they were working on a Love & Rockets covers book, but I'm not sure I knew it/knew it.

* Jeet Heer is doing a book about Francoise Mouly. That's good news. That should be a good book. Clever title.

* I'm not sure if a new cover for the Henry & Glenn Forever And Ever book is new news or just new news to me. I think the latter, but what the hell.

* finally, below is the cover to a new comic from J. Chris Campbell, which I can't find mentioned anywhere except on Campbell's Facebook page. It's one to look out for, though.


 
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