Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* the cartoonist Jeremy Eaton returns to the subject of the now-closed R. Crumb exhibit at Seattle's Frye Museum.

* the cartoonist Larry Marder discusses his badge designs for the Stumptown Comics Fest just past.

* the Iron Man movie opened up late yesterday in the desirable "first out of the summer gate" slot that was once potent enough to make a hit out of The Mummy, and all signs indicate that it could do quite well. It's an important story to comics in the sense that this it's the first movie produced by Marvel itself, and although the company's comics enterprise is protected from a lot of the everyday business of the entertainment conglomerate, the late '90s showed it's not totally insulated from the core efforts, and this is a core effort. It's also important that with Iron Man kind of a long-time non-starter in comics shops, attention driven to the character's books should be more noticeable than with a more established, hit property.

When the Iron Man movie and Marvel's plan to produce its own movies were originally announced, a lot of people thought the whole thing might be a non-starter because the characters Marvel had available to it lacked perceived heavy-hitters like Spider-Man. I thought the plan stood at least some chance of working because 1) you don't have to have another Spider-Man to have a successful run of films, 2) Iron Man is a movie about a rich guy in a metal suit punching things and shooting them with ray beams and seemed like it would communicate to summer-style moviegoers rather well, and 3) the field for competitive blockbusters is much, much weaker than it was around 2002-2003. You never know, but I think this movie and Marvel's film slate in general each has a chance to do just fine, although the odds are always stacked against films and you're likely to see a "they don't have anything except Iron Man" run of analysis even if the Iron Man movie does well. If it falls short of expectations, expect outright burials.

I'm sure this short piece at ICv2.com takes the movie opening a bit more seriously than I just did.

* the cartoonist Jeff Smith handles some super nice-looking comics in preparing for his big art show. You can see a video preview of the exhibition here.

* I found this analysis of Paul Grist's inability to get his serial comics out in an exacting, timely fashion to be an interesting one. I take it from one of the tags that this has been noticed before. It's difficult to put out regular serial work right now, not only because it's difficult in all the ways that getting regular work out can prove to be nettlesome, but the market isn't geared that way anymore and I imagine there are structural impediments as well. At the same time, I don't see how Grist's loopy narratives would work in serial form other than regular publication.

* seriously, Barry Allen was dead?

* the writer and retailer Christopher Butcher has penned a short post about some of the inexplicable manga hits of recent years. I like how Butcher admits that sometimes sales are missed; in a lot of pieces, stories like Butcher tells would be the support points in a long argument to avoid the category altogether.

* apparently, I still live in that bizarro universe where Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon pop up in a New Yorker profile and it's no big deal.

* the cartoonist Diana Tamblyn will attempt a full-fledged graphic novel has her next project.

* finally, it always kills me in comics when not being able to meet demand without reprinting is celebrated as an awesome thing rather than an inability to predict how something is going to do.
 
posted 7:30 am PST | Permalink
 

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