Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* in major Comic Book Legal Defense Fund news, Chris Staros is leaving the CBLDF board and presidency. Chris Powell assumes that position and Larry Marder takes the open Board slot. I'll have an editorial up on this tomorrow. Marder comments here. Image Comics will publish an institutionally-supported magazine designed to raise money for the Fund.

* this profile of Studio Foglio's success with taking their material on-line and pursuing a free serialization strategy is better than most similar profiles because it gets into the numbers more than I'm used to seeing.

* google profiles Dan Shahin of Hijinx Comics.

* not comics: you can discover a lot about a writer by what they write like when they're tired. I really liked this Neil Gaiman blog post at the end of an exhausting personal turned professional trip taken by the author.

* not comics: this review of the Watchmen movie's financial track calls into question the entire superhero sub-genre, which is a pretty alarming place to go given it's a mediocre to bad performance by a single film following two smash performances by movies in the same genre. I think it's important, though, because it's the first review I've read that castigated the reputation of the book based on the movie, something I thought might happen, and because I never understood why anyone took screenwriter David Hayter seriously when he asserted the movie had to do well for this kind of transgressive, wild superhero movie to be made again. We may not see Earth-X or Squadron Supreme or Kingdom Come, which might have conceivably been green-lighted if Watchmen were now closing in on $600 million instead of just now making back production costs, and thank goodness for small favors, but they're already making Kick-Ass, and that should be plenty over-the-top and rapealicious or whatever.

* here's a longer-than-usual piece on comics on the Internet as a reaction to inadequacies in the print model and its distribution. Although I think it may be useful to see on-line scanning as a reaction to something that certain fans feel is missing from the way those books are brought to market, in general the comic book is neither a candy bar nor a pop song. I don't think there's anything wrong with selling comic books as a niche item -- that approach is why we still have comic book companies now; without it they might have disappeared and certainly wouldn't have thrived. It also I think best represents the appeal of that certain package. There's not much use in chasing 1947. I'm totally bullish on on-line distribution -- I think all new comics should be available in some kind of on-line format at $1 a pop right this very moment -- but I'd also like to see the existing markets treated as something other than a system to abuse and manipulate for short-term gain, market-share shenanigans and the support of these massive and perhaps unnecessary frameworks for their creation that suck so much of the profit away from the people doing the making and the selling. I would also like a pony.

* it's hard to have a rooting interest in who gets to make live-action Dick Tracy stuff when it's likely either end result is going to be really, really depressing, although it strikes me as I read it that I assume that Beatty's interest is either tangential to making anything or involves making it for someone else. I can't imagine any process by which he could be filmed at his age in that role. Also, to reference an earlier item, if people are still fighting over Dick Tracy after Frank Miller's The Spirit, I don't see how Watchmen mediocre totally screws things for similarly ambitious superhero movies.

* finally, I now believe I was destined to spend part of my professional life in comics just so I could write a link to this headline.
 
posted 7:30 am PST | Permalink
 

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