Via The Comics Reporter:

Where I now see the primary weakness of Final Crisis is that the DC universe itself isn’t vital enough or interesting enough or dependable enough as a starting point or filled with enough creative energy for me to give a crap as it all slips away. It’s hard to take seriously a crisis paired with an adjective, even an alarming one. A greater sense of peril was engendered by one of Fred Sanford’s heart attacks.

John Horn presents a compelling, clearly delineated narrative on the history of the WATCHMEN movie , why Fox is suing Warners, and what it all means.

In Warners’ view, Fox repeatedly declined to exercise any purported rights to become involved in the film during its various incarnations over the years, and in an e-mail even bad-mouthed the script that Warners greenlighted. The “Watchmen” case dramatizes the complex deal making that surrounds many high-profile projects and underscores how movie studios have grown addicted to comic-book franchises. In an era where “The Dark Knight” can generate $1 billion in global theatrical revenue, the well-executed superhero story has turned into Hollywood’s Holy Grail. It’s not just the box-office returns that are so meaningful to these kind of properties. A hit film can also sell truckloads of DVDs, help launch a theme-park ride, or generate millions in television sales. Fox, which has suffered through a demoralizing string of box-office flops this year, could desperately use such a movie. It felt its case against Warners was so strong it had no choice but to take the matter to court.

Amazingly, the case involves not only Fox and Warners, but Universal and Paramount, as well, a complicated tangle worthy of the imagination of, say, Alan Moore.

PLUS: Marc Grazer at Variety looks at the state of Fox’s superhero franchises, which is, well, not the greatest:

Outside of “Fantastic Four,” “X-Men” is Fox’s only successful superhero franchise. It can’t afford misfires like “Daredevil” or “Elektra,” which never had follow-ups. Fox is considering a relaunch of “Daredevil” with a new pic, similar to what Marvel and Universal did with the Incredible Hulk character this summer.

If Fox doesn’t act soon, it could end up in the same position as Warner Bros. which has been criticized for over-developing its superhero projects, like a sequel to “Superman Returns” or launches for such characters as Green Lantern, the Flash and Wonder Woman.

The studio picked up the license from Marvel before the comicbook company began financing its own slate of pics. Rights to “X-Men” revert back to Marvel in 2012 if pics aren’t in active development.

Sorry, kids, the cable went out again. Last time we complained we got a free month of HBO. The moral is to keep complaining.

…..aaaaaand just like that, it comes back up.

A few details are emerging about the troubling news that Steven Spielberg and Will Smith want to remake OLDBOY, the disturbing film about a man who is locked in a room for years and then released to take vengeance. Spielberg is producing, and Smith is starring. First, I AM LEGEND co-writer Mark Protosevich is on board to script, reteaming with Smith. Next, Smith told Film School Rejects that the film will not be a remake of the Park Chan-wook cult favorite, but is rather going back to the source; the OLD BOY manga by Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi. Quoth Smith:

We’re looking at that right now. Not the film though, it’s the original source material. There’s the original comics of ‘Oldboy’ that they made the first film from. And that’s what we’re working from, not an adaptation of the film…,” said Smith.

Hm, is this Smith paying homage to the popularity of comics-based films? Anyway, it’s hard to imagine Smith making a movie with the sensibility of a manga or hardcore Asian action film, so by the time the US version comes out, it will probably resemble something based on an OLD BOY cereal box.

Alarming headline: Astronauts tinker with urine-to-water machine
Even more alarming lede:

Astronauts tinkered Sunday with a troublesome piece of equipment designed to help convert urine and sweat into drinkable water, which is vital to allowing the international space station crew to double to six.

Behold this week’s cornucopia of comics events!

This week is slightly lighter than usual, but that just gives us all more time to be thankful for this year’s great comics. There’s still plenty to do and see, including appearances by James Jean, Bruce Campbell and Gerard Way, and much much more …

Tuesday, November 25

New York, NY, 5 PM – 7 PM – Fantastic Fiction II at Books of Wonder

Holly Black (THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES) will be one of six young adult authors on hand to introduce their new books at New York’s oldest and largest children’s book store. Black’s new book happens to be a graphic novel, THE GOOD NEIGHBORS, which is illustrated by Ted Naifeh.

Tuesday, November 25

Toronto, ON, 6:30 PM – Maurice Vellekoop’s PIN-UPS launch

Toronto retailer The Beguiling celebrates the launch of Maurice Vellekoop’s book of gay pinups with a gallery show, presentation for the book, and music to boot. Free and open to the public, ages 18 and up.

Check out the rest of the week after the break!

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(l-r, front row Igort, Isabel Kreitz, Max, Nicolas de Crécy; standing, Jaromir 99 and Jaroslav Rudiš)

Euro comics week in NYC continued with an evening of slideshows and presentations by David B., Nicolas de Crécy, Igort, Jaromír 99, Isabel Kreitz, Max, and Jaroslav Rudiš, some of the finest cartoonists in the world, so it was quite the time. B. showed slides from THE EPILEPTIC and described his thinking process behind his powerful imagery. Igort showed off an evocative selection of slides of images and comics that have influenced his own dreamlike stories. Kreitz — perhaps the only German cartoonist we have ever met — described the lack of opportunities for cartoonists in Germany (it’s another Disney-centric country, and there is almost no local comics scene, aside from some self-publishing). She also showed a trailer for her DIE SACHE MIT SORGE, a breathtakingly illustrated retelling of the true-life tale of Russian spy Richard Sorge. (You can watch the trailer below.) The Czech duo of Jaromir and Jaroslav, the least well known of the touring ‘toonists, spoke in broad terms about their influences and work. Max delved into some of the surrealist influences on his character Bardin, the Superrealist, such as Fuseli’s Nightmare paintings. De Crécy rounded out the evening with a slideshow of his pages — the combined effect of seeing so much of his fantastic, gorgeous work was sort of overwhelming, and it’s hard to imagine that there’s a better artist working in comics today. His only large-scale work published here in America is GLACIAL PERIOD, available from NBM, but one hopes that will change.

There was an SRO crowd at MoCCA for the event, and last night’s David Mazzucchelli-led talk at SVA was also packed. Seeing a healthy audience for European artists of this caliber in New York, at least, comes as a nice vindication of the job American and Canadian publishers are doing to get their work over here.

ICv2 talks more about the end of the US branch of manga publisher Broccoli:

In 2007 Broccoli launched Boysenberry Books, a shonen ai imprint that was an attempt to get a share of what at that time was a growing market for yaoi manga. According to interviews with retailers for the next ICv2 Anime/Manga Guide (#62), yaoi sales have leveled off and the market is oversaturated with new releases. The economic downturn has only exacerbated pressures on mid-level manga publishers caused by an over-proliferation of titles and a shift in sales to top tier releases. According to the latest “ICv2 Manga Survey” market conditions in 2008 caused publishers to reduce their projected output of manga volumes in 2008 by 22%.

Simon Jones has a nice eulogy for the company:

Broccoli’s manga list was always rather limited, but in my mind they’re most notable as one of the first post-Tokyopop publishers who demonstrated a complete understanding of print production… the visual fidelity of their books were simply second to none. And in raising the quality expectations of readers, Broccoli raised the quality of licensed manga across the board.

Bigger than FINAL CRISIS!

THE SPIRIT opens Christmas Day.

A few years ago, cartoonist/writer William Messner Loebs (Journey) and his wife Nadine were destitute, and the comics industry rallied around them. Michigan Live has a nice story about how Loebs has turned things around:

In August 2005, Messner-Loebs wrote a fill-in story for DC’s “Green Arrow” – his first published work in five years. Since then, he has found work on a somewhat steady basis. He has contributed stories to “Zombie Tales” for Boom! Studios and illustrated the humor spoof “Chicken Wings for the Beer Drinker’s Soul,” for Novi-based Com Publishing. Com also will be publishing a biblical coloring book he’s illustrating. The monthly cartoon he illustrates for the Livingston Parent Journal is being turned into a line of greeting cards and a calendar.

Finding work again, as well as proceeds from benefit books done on his behalf, enabled Messner-Loebs to purchase a mobile home in Green Oak Township in 2006, where he and his wife now live.

…”So many people have invested in me getting back on my feet; it’d be a betrayal of them if I didn’t keep going.”

Fantagraphics is having a big party on 12/13, and we’re gutted that we can’t go.

Over the course of two years, Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery has become woven into the region’s cultural fabric and drawn attention to an impressive array of local, national and international narrative cartoonists, illustrators, graphic designers, and fine artists while providing a showcase for Seattle-based publisher Fantagraphics Books. To celebrate the second anniversary of this stimulating space, Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery hosts a festive gala and reception for the phenomenal BEASTS BOOKS 1 & 2 book launch and art exhibition on Saturday, December 13 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM.

Since its publication in December 2006, BEASTS BOOK ONE has become a pop culture sensation, quickly selling out two printings and finding an enthusiastic worldwide audience. Meticulously designed, the book combines colorful illustrations of mythical monsters with imaginative text describing the folkloric origins and characteristics of these creatures. The brainchild of Fantagraphics Books design director Jacob Covey, the first BEASTS volume included accomplished contributors including Art Chantry, Tim Biskup, Tony Millionaire, Richard Sala, Martin Ontiveros, and Jordan Crane among many others. BEASTS BOOK TWO, which will debut at the December 13 event, continues the tradition of illustrations from interdisciplinary international luminaries including David B. (France), Jaime Hernandez (US), Femke Hiemstra (Netherlands), Toby Tam (China), Kim Deitch (US), Tatsuro Kiuchi (Japan), and many more. To commemorate the publication of BEASTS BOOK TWO and the simultaneous release of the paperback edition of BEASTS BOOK ONE, Covey has selected 45 representative artists from both volumes for an eclectic exhibition of original works and fine art prints.

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§ Legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki is embarrassed by his otaku PM,, Taro Aso, who is always complaining about how he is too busy running the country to read Iron Wok Jan any more.

“It’s so embarrassing,” Miyazaki said at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, in answer to a question about Aso’s publicly asserting his love for manga. “That should be more private.”

Would it be disrespectful to disagree with Miyazaki-sensei? Otaku will not be put back in the closet — but perhaps pandering politicians should be.

§ Blog@ interviews Ivan Brunetti about his new comics anthology:

I feel like the first volume established the center. In the second I had more leeway to move to the left of center and put some stuff in there that was maybe a little more aggressively experimental and also just exploring different sides of comics. There’s a section on collage. That’s kind of the metaphor for the whole book. It’s one aspect of comics that’s not often explored. They always get compared to film and animation and things like that. I wanted to compare it to something else. You could compare it to collage. You could compare it to sculpture in a way too. It was just another way of looking at them. I tried to pick things that illustrated that.

§ John Jakala appears to have Seasonal Affective Disorder.

§ Dan DiDio and Ian Sattler tell IGN about The Future of Batman and the DC Universe. The Beat predicts fan complaints no matter what.

§ Our new favorite site.

“These days, comics need to carry more weight, to make a stronger emotional connection with the reader. You can’t put a fluffy show like “Magnum, P.I.” on TV now, because people expect material with deeper content, like “House.” They don’t watch the show and forget it. They buy the DVD.”

“They want to cherish the book and reread it every few years. Comics cost more than ever now, and folks expect more bang for their buck.”

Courtney Crumrin creator Ted Naifeh talks to Comic Book Resources about moving away from pamphlet comics toward longer, more durable publications.

…

Meanwhile, Jesse Reklaw talks to Tom Spurgeon about the decaying alt-weekly market, and whether or not he considers himself a web cartoonist:

“SLOW WAVE couldn’t exist without the internet. It’s certainly cooler to think you’re an alt-weekly cartoonist instead of a web-cartoonist, since there are so many web-cartoonists at an amateur level. Maybe SLOW WAVE is more of a print-comic since that’s where my money comes from.”

Reklaw also discusses dropping out of a PhD program at Yale for the glamorous cartoonist lifestyle :

“Around the same time, Slow Wave (which I had been self-syndicating for three years) got picked up by five papers in a two-week period, and I calculated that — in my dumpy grad student apartment, with no car or serious expenses, entertaining myself with free film school movies and dumpster-diving, and basically being a cheap-ass — I could support myself on comics.”

And this was in the roaring ’90s! What does it take to support yourself on comics in a world of economic chaos? More bang for your buck, we presume.

Posted by Aaron Humphrey

John Jackson Miller’s October 2008 sales estimates are up, but what’s really notable, he writes, is that October was a huge month for dollars.

The October 2008 comics sales estimates are online at The Comics Chronicles, and it turned out to be a record-setting month in a number of categories.

The Top 300 Comics Dollar sales were the highest they’ve been since the beginning of the Diamond Exclusive era, in April 1997. Likewise, the Top 300 Comics Plus Top 100 Trade Paperbacks (although only the Top 25 and then the Top 50 trades were reported up until a few years ago). The Overall Comics, Trade Paperback, and Magazine sales figure also set the highest mark since that category became trackable in 2003.

And the average cost and average weighted cost of new comics in the Diamond Top 300 is higher than at any time in the Diamond era, and almost certainly in the history of comics. The average cost of all comics in the Top 300 was $3.38 — and the weighted average, total dollars divided by total units, was $3.31. The Top 25 comics had an average price of $3.39, so the top of the list was particularly pricey.

Obviously, rising comics prices had much to do with it, but as we pointed out earlier, and Miller affirms, the overall sales on the chart were much higher than in the past, with even the #300 book selling over 4000 copies. In January 2005, the #300 comic sold 679 copies. (Emphasis mine.)

What does this mean in light of all the recession gloom and doom? We’re not quite sure. Momentum has a lot to do with it, but it does seem that a more diversified base of readers will help smooth out the transition when Marvel and DC inevitably raise their cover prices in the next year.

John Rogers, screenwriter, blogger, and author of a fan favorite run on BLUE BEETLE, usually speaks his mind. His comments regarding the recent cancellation of the book have been quoted everywhere; we don’t want to miss out on the fun:

Wow. It’s almost as if basing your entire business model around a series of must-buy big event crossovers in a market with limited purchasing resources hurts your midlist.

Although I’ve gotten some outraged e-mails from fans, I have to say this isn’t unexpected. Both DC and Marvel are in a weird place right now — are they publishing companies in a dying market or IP companies in a growing one? The answers to these questions demand different strategies, neither of which are necessarily the best circumstances for the creative participants.

Time to go creator-owned, and digitally distributed. Because that’s the only solution that makes sense for our side of the equation.

Rogers, a content production veteran, makes his stand on the idea that digital delivery and further specialization of content may make it work:

Will you get even the paltry tens of thousands of paying customers that comics now get? I don’t know. But without the publishing overhead, you may not need that many. Let’s put it this way — stripping out distribution costs and our share of the rent for those nice DC offices in Mahattan, Blue Beetle could have cost fifty cents an issue at its worst sales level, and still paid Rafael and myself more than we made on the run of the book.

The comments section devolves into a lot of the same questions everyone has been asking since this Internet whangdoodle showed up, however.

Digital delivery…comics monetizing themselves…the end of the pamphlet…a new business model…haven’t these been the threads running through almost everything we’ve posted here over the past week or so?

Sorta related counterpoint: The Supervillain blog points out that BLUE BEETLE’s 36 issues wasn’t quite a tragically short run:

You know what never made it to 36 issues? Nextwave. Automatic Kafka. Dozens of other series that were about pushing comics forward, doing something different or fun or interesting. Not a third rate Spiderman-ripoff superhero book that hasn’t even had it’s original creative team in at least a year. The book obviously sold well enough to sustain it for 3+ years, and the only reason it’s being cancelled is because you couldn’t get more readers to buy yet another middling superhero comic. There’s nothing else to it. There was no genius there, nothing that was being overlooked. Nothing that will be missed in three months when everyone forgets about it. King City 2 may never come out. Marvel Boy 2 will never come out. So Blue Beetle was cancelled, huh? Shove it up your ass.

Gia Manry reports that Broccoli USA, the US arm of Japanese publisher Broccoli, is shutting down:

I got an anonymous tip that led me over to Broccoli’s website and eventually to this press release (Japanese PDF), which declares that Broccoli International USA is shutting down and cites the extensive competition in the manga and character merchandise fields here as the reason.

I can’t gather all the details from the release, but the liquidation is expected to be complete by February of 2009.

Sympathies to all Broccoli employees– I love you guys and I’m going to miss your awesome panels! Drop a line and give me a heads up on your plans!

Broccoli’s major titles include DiGi Charat Theater and the Galaxy Angel series. They launched a boys love line, Boysenberry, in 2007. Kai-Ming Cha profiled the company for PW in 2006.

Clearly, the manga market is tightening up, and it’s not just part of the general economic slump.

§ Blog @ updates the status of Carla and Lance Hoffman and benefit efforts shaping up for the badly burned and homeless couple:

They are both still unconscious, in critical but stable condition, but doctors have said Lance’s lungs and eyes were not damaged, which was something they were worried about.

• More information: If you’re on Facebook, you can join the Tea Fire Survivors group, where people are giving updates on and talking about ways to help Lance and Carla.

• There is also a Yahoo Group that has been set up that you can join as well.

• Donations: You can mail a donation to the fund that the Montecito Fire Department set up for them:

The Lance and Carla Burn Fund
Santa Barbara Bank and Trust
1483 East Valley Road
Montecito, CA 93108-1248

§ Steve Duin’s last update on the condition of comatose cartoonist S. Clay Wilson: He’s off the ventilator and still not conscious, but at least holding his own.

More photos from the recently uploaded LIFE magazine photo archives: Yale Joel’s series from “The Comic Book Hearings.”

Oh yeah, search “comic book,” and you also get this one, from 1958:

Whenever you see old (pre-Silver Age) photos of comics readers, half of them are girls. Crazy, eh? What were they putting in the water?

Arnold Fenner writes to tell us that Spectrum Fantastic Art has posted several audio excerpts from interviews with the late Dave Stevens as well as a slideshow of advance pages from Brush with Passion: The Art & Life of Dave Stevens, which should be out early next month.

We’ll be getting a copy.

Controversial cartoonist Keith Knight visited the University of Arizona and talked about his recent, controversial cartoon which contained “the ‘n’ word”, in a story that seems to be confronting many issues which are not being named directly:

“What makes this strip effective is the truth behind it,” says Knight. The comic strip that brought him to Tucson in the first place ran in the Daily Wildcat back on November 5th. The comic shows a political canvasser asking a woman who she and her husband are voting for. The husband answers by saying that they’re voting for the “N” word.

When the strip first ran, it caused an uproar, but Knight says he drew the strip based on someone’s personal account. “Wow, if this couple, who are willing to call this guy the worst thing that he could be called, and elect him to be the most powerful person in the world,” says Knight.