CR Week In Review



Top Stories
The week's most important comics-related news stories, December 18 to December 24, 2004:

1. Word hits the comics industry of the December 17 chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by Todd McFarlane Productions, the comics publishing arm of cartoonist Todd McFarlane's entertainment conglomerate. Among the creditors listed is former NHL hockey player Tony Twist, for the full amount of a $15 million judgment over the depiction of a mobster character in the company's Spawn title named Antonio Twistelli, which is believed to be the driving force behind the filing. The Arizona based company spends much of the week claiming the filing will not interrupt the publishing of the Spawn comic book, and does not effect the operations of Image Comics or McFarlane's toy and media companies.

2. Denis Kitchen releases word that comics legend Will Eisner is resting comfortably after quadruple bypass heart surgery on the 22nd.

3. Year-end figures for the French-language comics market show a healthy market with a huge upswing in the number of titles, the invasion of manga, and the continuing success in the general bookstore market for top albums, figures that really pop out when compared to past numbers.

Winner of the Week
Andrews and McMeel, who announced a publishing date and specs for a likely book of the year candidate in a $150 1400-plus page complete Calvin and Hobbes collection. Judging from sales of a similarly-conceived Far Side collection, the book is likely to do extremely well in a business sense as well.

Losers of the Week
Fans of the square-formatted comics-stuffed specials from the criticism and trade magazine The Comics Journal, which announced its last issue for early 2005, noteworthy as one of the few publishing announcements of the last few weeks which could perhaps be seen in a negative light (back cover from that last issue by Tony Millionaire pictured above).

Quote of the Week
"One gets DC to the masses by putting these books in manga format and making them available in every cinema, record store and bookshop. That's not my job, however. All I can do is make the stories as good as I can. All Frank can do is draw as well as he can. If we still can't sell well-written, well-drawn books at a time when everybody in the world is watching superhero movies and eating superhero cereals, it's because the pricing, format, promotion and availability of comic books is preventing us from cracking the glass ceiling. Comics used to be available everywhere." -- Depending on how you look at it, writer Grant Morrison either hitting the nail on the head or slightly over-asserting the potential of his own mass-consumer appeal, in a typically-good short interview, this time about a new Superman book, on comic book industry news site Newsarama.
 
posted 6:07 am PST | Permalink
 

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