Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* the comics business news and analysis site ICv2.com offers a succinct analysis of Marvel's most recent financial report, which once again shows how the company benefits from the licensing boost instigated by a hit movie. The most interesting non-comics part of the coverage is that the WGA strike has scotched Marvel's plans to do two of their own movies a year starting this year, basically by causing a hiccup that will cover most of 2009. I guess that's also an indication how fragile those plans were in terms of their having to hit on all cylinders to get that work done. The most positive spin on a mostly positive day of news comes once again from The Motley Fool, the Duckie to Marvel's Andie Walsh.

* yesterday's installment of Jeff Smith's guest-blogging series on comic book self-publishing in the 1990s feature Rick Veitch talking about how he used what he learned during that period to set up his current publishing efforts, and a few dream comics from prominent self-publishers back in the day, like this sample from a cartoon by James Owen.

* Chip Mosher from Boom! does a follow-up interview with Comic Book Resources about that company's controversial decision to release the contents of North Wind #1 at the same time as the print issues without informing retailers before they made their initial orders: they're working hard to make sure it doesn't happen again, and there was a 30 percent swing in the title's favor for the next order period that applied after the promotion.

* the science-fiction focused io9 notes the high sexual content in the first book in Marvel's book-release partnership with French publisher Soleil, Sky Doll, and wonders if the company will be as conservative with it as they were with past titles.

* this may be the most interesting and out-of-left-field article I've ever read at PWCW: Diamond enters the remaindered books business and attends that aspect of book publishing's big convention.

* there's a story that's raging through the superhero sites right now about a rumor made public by Rich Johnston that DC is going to crack the whip in terms of getting artists to finish books on time. Here's where I found out about it.

I haven't read a bunch of the commentary, but I have to guess it splits into two camps: the idea that the successful serial publication of comics depends on on-time comics sprinkled with a liberal dose of the kids today don't have the professionalism of artists who used to get it done vs. the concept of you can't rush really good comics covered with a thick sauce of too many fill-in issues and other such swap-outs destroy the flow of a series and accompanied by a small side order of this could be solved if editors just did their jobs. In a potential piece of cross-media irony, NBC is going to an endless season strategy in part to better deal with similar peccadilloes in TV show production. (last via Sean T. Collins)
 
posted 8:30 am PST | Permalink
 

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