Bundled, Tossed, Untied And Stacked



By Tom Spurgeon

* Yam Books has the Tim Hensley book Ticket Stub available for advance order. That looks adorable.

* Charlie Kochman talks about the winter books at Abrams, including new Dave McKean, with ICv2.com.

* bunch of mainstream stuff this week. People who watch this stuff closely seem to think DC is doing a bunch of crossovers in November. It really does seem to me that they're having to pump their existing readership almost constantly to keep sales from declining almost across the board. It's really worrisome.

* Mark Waid continues into the next phase with his digital comics plans. Everyone should be paying attention to that one.

* a fourth of Dustin Harbin's Diary Comics books will be out this Fall.

* for the life of me I can't find a simple summary explanation of what the Marvel Now endeavor encompasses. That seems hilarious to me. I know that I've seen specific articles, and there's been a roll-out of announcements, but I can't find one article just listing the books or something similar. I was also baffled by Marvel's devoted site. I guess I could reverse engineer a lot of it from articles like this interview with Axel Alonso. I think they have good writers there for the most part, so I'm sure I'd enjoy some of those books, too. I mean, I guess this is a cover for a new Marvel title featuring the original X-men characters. I suppose there are worse strategies for reviving a bunch of exhausted properties than placing them in their original packaging for a while.

* wait! One of the Twitter followers was making himself a list. Thank you. That... that group seems pretty okay. Nothing leaps out at me as weird, although I have my doubts that the market can sustain two Fantastic Four-related titles for very long without a radical re-constitution of who's buying comics and why. Jonathan Hickman will be doing a lot of work. And there's still stuff to be announced, I guess, which makes me think I'm not wrong to be a little bit confused. If a lot those comics don't hit individually, I suppose that opens them to a big-time "you just did what you'd been doing with a new name on it" charge. I'm not sure that Marvel can exploit its strengths in the current market even given the best outcomes creatively, but that's a separate post.

* Josh Kopin writes about the cancellation of the Matt Fraction-written Defenders effort, which comes as they're kind of doing this cleaning up and re-presenting on their entire superhero line. I'm always a bit sad to see Marvel series get canceled despite all their sometimes-dubious corporate history and my general disinterest in their books. I'm not sure why. Maybe nostalgia? I'm fond of Fraction's work generally, so that could be it, too. It actually benefits me when the mainstream companies have titles that crash and burn because they tend to be a lot easier to pick up for a buck each down the road if I'm so inclined. But for now, it's just people not working anymore, at least on that thing, and was probably some kid's favorite book. That's a funny first line from Mr. Kopin, by the way.

* finally, it looks like The Dandy is wrapping things up. I know we're supposed to be sad about stories like this, and I am concerned for there suddenly being fewer jobs, but I don't think we should expect publications to live on in perpetuity because only a few do.


 
posted 6:00 am PST | Permalink
 

---

 
Daily Blog Archives
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
 
Full Archives