Must read #2: The Daily Cross Hatch presents The Best Damned Comics of 2008 Chosen By The Artists with over 50 cartoon types picking their faves.

2008 will perhaps be known as the year that smaller publishers like Sparkplug and Secret Acres really came into their own, or maybe the moment that Top Shelf truly asserted itself as a publishing house on par with the likes of Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly, thanks to scheduled that include many of the year’s best titles. It will be regarded as confirmation that those who have weathered the storm with self-published titles are truly in it for the love of the medium and the creation of art.

Shamelessly stolen from Lew Stringer.

Aaron Albert attempts to break down the cost per minute of such forms of entertainment as movies and comics, and comics come out a bit spendy.

I think there are many reasons. Comic books are a very unique medium that you can’t really get anywhere else. There is an interactivity in comics, where you play out the characters voices and some of the action in your mind…at least I do. The collectible nature of comics also comes into play. I have comics that are worth quite a lot more than I paid for them, but I also have comics that aren’t worth the paper they are printed on. It can go both ways. What isn’t calculated above is the other time we spend, and hopefully enjoy, on comics. Reading blogs, watching superhero movies, talking with friends about who could beat whom, all of that comes from the fifteen minutes where we suspend belief and delve into the an imaginative world.

It should be noted that Albert DOESN’T break down graphic novels, or manga tankubon ($10 for 180 pages) which would be interesting. I know it took me A WEEK to read, for example, ALICE IN SUNDERLAND and STUCK RUBBER BABY and GEMMA BOVARY, and so on. It takes a few sessions to get through WATCHMEN or your average SANDMAN volume, as well, perhaps more of the reason they have remained so popular. Bang for the buck, or as we like to call it…the satisfying chunk.

Daily Kos analyzes an old propaganda comic.

Ulises Farinas is a Member of ACT-I-VATE, and with this drawing, he says what many of us have been feeling.

Dean Haspiel cartoons for the NY Times alcohol blog.

In only a few short days, THE SPIRIT will open, and the long, long promotional trail — and all those posters of a flapping red tie dotting the nation — will be just a memory. It was a good run.

In the meantime, Frank Lovece catches up with director Frank Miller:

What else do you think you’ll get flak for?

Because he doesn’t have a blue suit, which would have looked silly. That Ellen Dolan isn’t just a little simpering daughter to somebody; she’s a surgeon. I don’t know what I’ll get flak for – I just do the stuff I do! … Comics fans are wonderful, sincere people, but they can be a little arch.

§ The Scotsman ALSO caught up with Frank Miller:

In technical terms, Miller’s film is also at the cutting edge. Shooting against vast green screens on virtually empty sound stages, Miller says, he was able to work in a way that allowed his imagination to burn. Did he have as much freedom as when he is sitting at his drawing board? I ask. “It’s very close,” he says. “But this is a new adventure for me so I try not to compare the two. But I think that without the CGI, I don’t know what my role in movies would be. This allows my mind to really go all over the place. I draw something and then (effects supervisor] Stu Maschwitz turns it into something astonishing. There are places in the movie where it feels like a brush drawing!”

The Metro broke with tradition and caught up with co-star Eva Mendes:

In one eye-catching scene, she’s able to avoid arrest when she drops her robe — shocking The Spirit and moviegoers with a revealing backside.

“The point is my character uses everything she has as a woman to get what she wants,” admitted Mendes.

“If there were no brains behind the body I would have major qualms with it. This girl’s kick ass in every way and she’s such a smart dame that part of getting what she wants is turning up the sex.”

§ Must read: Many comics types weigh in on 2008’s events at The Comics Reporter.

§ MTV’s Splash Page rounds up some holiday-themed comics so we don’t have to.

§ This article from the Schenectady Daily Gazette examines how many media that are supposedly for kids are supported by adults …like comic books:

Earthworld’s owner, J.C. Glindmyer, said the market for comics and action figures has changed drastically since he purchased his store two decades ago. Today, most of his customers are between the ages of 17 and 55; teenagers and young adults comprise the majority of his market.

“We don’t see as many kids,” he said.

But he’s not overly concerned about this. The rise in adult readership, he said, has more than made up for the drop-off in kids.

“I’m not really worried about the younger reader,” Glindmyer said.

§ This piece on Corto Maltese is a bit rudimentary, but it did lead us to a Corto clip on YouTube!

Not a very eventful week, unless you count Christmas and all that … let us know if there are any parties or signings that we managed to miss!

Tuesday, December 23 – Wednesday, December 24

Chicago, IL, 11 AM Tues. – 5 PM Wed. – Challengers Comics Christmas Crisis

Some retailers may be closing early for the holidays, but Challengers Comics is staying open from Tuesday morning until 5 PM on Christmas Eve. They promise camaraderie, holiday themed-activities, plus “gift wrapping, drinking, gift exchanges, more drinking, ridiculous “comic-y” party games…” and drinking. Plus, an art show for superhero stencil artist Kevin McPartlin.

Friday, December 26

Waukesha, WI – Sean McKeever at Neptune Comics

Comics scribe and Wisconsin native Sean McKeever (TEEN TITANS, SPIDER-MAN LOVES MARY JANE) makes a Boxing Day appearance at Neptune Comics to sign his work.

Posted by Aaron Humphrey

Do you remember the Santa who rode on the electric shaver? Of course you do.

Norelco’s shavin’ Santa was a holiday staple for many years. For some reason, it also deeply disturbed my mother. The ads would disappear for a year or two, only to reappear in new, updated settings. Each year my mother would cry out, “No! Not again!”

The 90s version even has slick CGI-like animation.

As much as my mother disliked Santa on a shaver, we’ve been highly disturbed by the new Sprint Santa.

For the current world, not only is Santa so cool that he has to use a cell phone, but he’s magically been transformed into a young, hip “sexy” Santa, with a waxen, smooth countenance that suggest that he really looks like a Thomas Nast drawing but has been Photoshopped into someone you might spot out at the PInk Elephant and would avoid at all costs.

J. Caleb Mozzocco at Blog@ had a good post yesterday about women in comics. Again? Yes, again. Mozzocco tries to put a positive spin on things — pointing out that writers G. Willow Wilson, Amy Woolfram, Ivory Madison, Grace Randolph and Marjorie Liu all debuted this year or last year. And Amanda Conner, Amy Reeder Hadley and Nicola Scott are drawing mainstream comics, while a few folks like Colleen Coover and Kathryn Immonen have been working on slightly more offbeat fare.

It’s a nice piece, although praising a book by saying “it hasn’t been cancelled yet!” sort of speaks for itself. More to the point, will we EVER get to the day when there is more than one woman allowed to write comics? I’m encouraged to see Wilson, Wolfram, Randolph and Madison come on the scene, but when it comes to women writers in comics, Gail Simone has sort of cornered the market, through no fault of her own. 

For some reason, for women to break into writing “mainstream” comics has been ever harder than women drawing mainstream comics, perhaps becuase artists are generally more in demand than writers. It actually strikes me as odd, since writing — in journalism and novels, at least, two fields where women readers are a given — women writers have near parity with men. Off the top of my head, I would say that three of the all-time greatest comics writers have been women: Lynda Barry, Alison Bechdel and Posy Simmonds. All are cartoonists who write and draw, of course, but even reading a few panels of their work shows a mastery of language and dialogue that anyone would envy.

Maybe I’m just cranky at the end of the year, but any idea that women in comics in the mainstream have progressed over the last few years is wrong. A colleague and I were trying to come up with the name of a noted female industry figure other than Karen Berger, and the list was shockingly short. Try it yourself. Diana Schutz and Jann Jones. Shelly Bond. I sincerely hope I’m forgetting someone, because that’s just one more than there was five or 10 years ago. (Yes I know Francoise Mouly, but we’re sticking to the “mainstream” for now.)

While indie and manga scenes have given rise to dozens of notable women creators on all levels, there are still only a tiny handful of mainstream female “superstars.” For instance, the New York Comic-Con has announced dozens of featured guests – including the tech writer for Newsweek, the marketing director for Bandai, and the guy who covers video games for MTV News  — and only two women, Barbara Canepa and Colleen Doran. Now, Canepa co-ccreated one of the most successful properties worldwide over the last 10 years — W.I.T.C.H. — and Colleen is Amerca’s Sweetheart, and I think both of them have given a little bit more to the industry than the guy who covers video games for MTV News. No offense. In fact I can think of a dozen women who have done more for comics than the guy who covers video games for MTV news.

Looking at the guest list thus far,  I do wonder, what do you have to do to get recognzied in this industry anyway? If you are a man, draw an issue or two of CAPTAIN AMERICA. If you are a women, you must slave away your whole life, and hope that some day, some guy somewhere deigns to put you into a history book.

Am I overstating the case? Maybe a little. But only a teeny, tiny bit. I’ve been in this game for a long time, and looking around, women aren’t in any better position than they were 10 years ago. There are many reasons for that, among them, yes, sexism of some kind, but also women who don’t want to compete at being as loud and attention-getting as men are expected to be. It’s a complex issue.

To end this on a high note, one area seems to have made major progress in the last decade — and it’s not where you think! DC now has 9 or 10 female editors at all levels, including, by my count, four or five in the DCU. That’s a sizable percentage, and I can only imagine what kind of influence it will have down the road. Let’s hope that these young women have long, distinguished careers and don’t become “symbols” of anything other than their own tastes and abilities. That would be true equality.

Just ahead of THE SPIRIT’s opening day, director Frank Miller is supposedly “eyeing” Buck Rogers, which could be alarming or exciting, depending on how you look at it. Odd Lot, the production shingle which made THE SPIRIT, is negotiating for BUCK ROGERS, which is controlled by longtime Miller pal Flint Dille.

Miller will write and direct his own big-screen take on the comic serial; while the creator has only begun to sketch ideas, it’s expected to be a darker take, with many of Miller’s signature visual elements and themes, such as corruption and redemption.

It’s likely to be a priority project for Miller, though he has been mulling a “Sin City” sequel.

To be honest, having seen THE SPIRIT, “darker” is not a word we’d apply to it, despite many night-time scenes and “Sin City” visual elements. It is, like ALL-STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER, more of a broad, broad satire, whose humor is either deliberately outrageous and campy or deliberately infuriating. Early reviews of THE SPIRIT are, well, less than thrilled, although most allow that it looks good.

“The Spirit,” graphic artist Frank Miller’s first solo effort as a director after sharing credit with Robert Rodriguez on 2005’s adaptation of his own “Sin City,” has a single redeeming feature. It illustrates the limitations of the comic-book aesthetic on the big screen.

If we didn’t realize this before, it’s now clear: Movies must obey the immutable laws of cinema and cannot unfold like so many moving panels. For all its bold digital drawings, a comic-book movie must observe the narrative rhythms, scene construction, character development and dialogue delivery that cinema has honed for more than a century.

On the plus side, the premiere on Wednesday looks like it was pretty swell!

Asian film superstar Stephen Chow is no longer directing the GREEN HORNET movie, although he will still star as sidekick Kato. The reason given is “creative differences.”

And so, our interest in this movie went from 100 to about -10. In shape, Seth Rogen, or not.

Just to keep the holiday spirit going, here’s a roundup of recession rumbling from the comics world:

• Rick Veitch notes that he has received a notice from Diamond indicating that “offered again” items will be scrutinized more:

In the solicitation package I just received from Diamond Distribution, suppliers are being notified that due to economic conditions Diamond will be much more selective in which items they will offer in PREVIEWS and that they are cutting back on items being “Offered Again”. Since most publishers, large and small, depend on these relists of backlist items, this will be a hard pill to swallow for many.

It looks like King Hell backlist titles, such as THE ONE, MAXIMORTAL, SHINY BEASTS, ABRAXAS AND THE EARTHMAN, HEARTBURST AND OTHER PLEASURES, RABID EYE, POCKET UNIVERSE and CRYPTO ZOO will not be available through PREVIEWS in the immediate future even though historically most, especially the superhero titles, have attracted healthy orders each time they have run in the catalog.

So if you are a reader wishing to pick up a King Hell book, you’ll probably have to do it on Amazon.com, or at Paneltopanel.net (which offers exclusive signed plates for some titles) or, better yet, at my own on-line store (where all copies come signed).

This sounds very ominous — as Veitch mentions, relisting back stock is a major source of income for collection publishers — but note that this looks like it could also be part of the recently announced policy on cutting back on posters and prints. It’s also worth noting that the April 2009 D&Q solicits that Chris Butcher just posted include lots of offered again items, so maybe there is wiggle room.

• ICv2 reported this week that Comic Stores are “Holding Up Really Well’:

The numbers from comic stores are “holding up really well” in the economic crisis, Diamond Comic Distributors Vice President Sales and Marketing Roger Fletcher told ICv2. “Diamond’s sales are tracking close to last years levels, but down about 3%.”

“Retailers are trying to be prudent and conservative on inventory,” Fletcher explained. “That’s led to some sales declines.”

• As long we’re talking about Diamond, here’s a bit of news that doesn’t come under fretting, but rather, something we’ve all been wishing for. Diamond has expanded its GN sales charts from 100 to 300 titles, meaning folks will be able to track those back orders much better now. John Jackson Miller covers this and more in a new blog entry, which singles out November for yet another record:

OK, now to the bottom line. Not much good news for consumers or the market this month: First, comics were more expensive in November 2008 than in any month in history. The average comic book offered in Diamond’s Top 300 comics had a cover price of $3.50, beating the previous record (from last month) by 12 cents. The median price is still $2.99, and $2.99 is still the most common price within the chart. The weighted average price — comics dollars divided by comics units — was $3.35, another record. The average price of comics in the Top 25 was $3.43.

2009 = Price increase + recession = ?

• Several folks have responded thoughtfully to Tom Spurgeon’s ponderables, including David Welsh, who added his own questions, including one we think is highly pertinent:

2. Will Borders survive its seemingly inevitable bankruptcy or reorganization? Borders was one of the earliest adopters of manga and arguably played a huge role in popularizing the category for people who might not otherwise have ever picked up a comic, so trouble for the bookseller won’t be without consequences for manga. But while it was an early adopter, it’s been followed by other outlets like Barnes & Noble and Amazon. And if my memory is functioning correctly, graphic novels (including manga) are one of the few sectors of the book industry that are maintaining, if not thriving.

• Matt Blind ups the ante, as he responds to ALL of Tom’s AND Dave’s questions:

My Best Guess: Borders will eventually have to declare a form of bankruptcy, but they’ll emerge from the process leaner, with a substantial debt load but less than what they have now and nothing an average retailer can’t handle, and with a focus on their core business. That isn’t a guarantee, though: The same could have been said of Hudson, Studebaker, and Reo back in the day.

• In shocking book news — and bearing in mind that returns from Borders caused many a woe in the second half of the year — HarperStudio Publisher Bob Miller talks about his new NON-RETURNABLE publishing plan. That’s right — books are becoming MORE like comics.

Today, Borders announced they will not be shipping unsold books back to HarperStudio, forging a new sort of relationship between publisher and distributor.

Yesterday, GalleyCat caught up with HarperStudio president and publisher, Bob Miller, to talk about non-returnable deals. In this exclusive video, Miller explains how he hopes to cut similar deals with more bookstores, and readers get a glimpse of HarperStudio’s upcoming titles.

The Wall Street Journal has the story: “Under the terms of the deal, the nation’s second-largest bookstore chain by revenue will get a deeper discount on initial orders of books published by the new imprint of News Corp.’s HarperCollins Publishers — 58% to 63% off the cover price, instead of the usual 48%. In exchange, Borders won’t return any unsold books to HarperStudio, instead probably discounting them in the store.”

• Finally, because you will need to laugh about all of this, here’s the MySpace Guide to Holiday Shopping by ACHEWOOD’S Chris Onstad which we’ve excerpted above.

With the days until the winter festivities rapidly dwindling, and the number of people in your life tired of receiving gifts from Eddie Bauer rapidly increasing, please enjoy this ACHEWOOD-style holiday gift guide. Your yuletide shopping woes are OVER!

If this is your first experience with ACHEWOOD, hang on to your butts. You can check out more of one of the internet’s most popular comics on ACHEWOOD.COM, or on our very own MYSPACE DARK HORSE PRESENTS, or in the newest ACHEWOODcollection, THE GREAT OUTDOOR FIGHT.

Many thanks to Chris Onstad for the hilarious comic and to our good friends at DARK HORSE COMICS. Happy holidays!

Well, things are slowing down everywhere you look. To be honest, we’re really dragging here at Stately Beat Manor. If it isn’t the brutal holiday party schedule, it’s the stress, the rushing around, the shopping, the worries, and so on. We’ll be on VACATION all next week, and today we’re officially going into slowdown mode. But in the meantime, here is a Disney Christmas Cards collection from the always amazing ASIFA Archives.

Here’s a nice vintage Christmas card set of Flickr. When we run out of steam, we’ll just post a few of these and hope everyone understands. Let’s face it, it’s that or more Red Sonja covers, and no one wants that.

PS: Where are all those digital Christmas cards we used to get? Don’t hold out on us.

Majel Barrett Roddenberry, widow of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, passed away today at the age of 76.

She had just recently finished voice work for the new STAR TREK movie, reprising her role as the voice of the ship’s computer.

In the original series, she played Nurse Chapel, as well as Number One in the original Star Trek pilot, “The Cage.”

As the news is just hitting the wires, this will likely be expanded later tonight and tomorrow.

Posted by Mark Coale

Updated to add: You can find all the auctions right here.

On Tuesday, December 16, 2008, a series of auctions will begin at 5:00 p.m. Central Time, benefiting Rich Faber and his family. Rich is a well-known comic book inker and co-creator of the indy superhero series BUZZBOY. His wife Traci is battling Stage 4 metastatic melanoma. According to organizer Drew Geraci:

Times aren’t easy for anyone right now, but the Fabers are also raising their 2-year old son at home, and could use all the help that they can get right now as they try to pay for costly cancer treatments for Traci.

100% of the money raised through these auctions will be donated directly to the Faber family. These auctions are being run by longtime DC comic inker Drew Geraci, and Splash Page Comic Art.”

Inker Andy Owens has generously donated a page from the top-selling Buffy The Vampire Slayer series (written by Joss Whedon, pencilled by Georges Jeanty, published by Dark Horse).

A three piece set of Punisher try out pieces penciled by Louis Small Jr. and inked by Punisher Cover artist Tim Bradstreet. Tim stated that he was asked by his editor at marvel a while back to ink some of Louis Small’s pencils when they were considering having him pencil a run on the main Punisher title. All three pieces are drawn on 11 X 17″ comic art boards, and come together as a set. Donated by Tim Bradstreet & Splash Page Comic Art.

Ethan Van Sciver – Batman Spiderman & MJ. This fun commission is penciled & inked by Ethan Van Sciver on 11 X 17″ comic art board. Spidey’s sense tingles as he see’s Batman making a play for MJ. Donated by Mark Hay of Splash Page Comic Art

Paolo Rivera Wolverine sketch This sketch of Wolverine is drawn in pencil by Amazing Spiderman & Mythos artist Paolo Rivera on a piece of 11 X 14″ bristol board.

We’re previewing a selection of the art and will update with links when the auction goes live.

…cooter?

This is the gift that keeps on giving!

With reviews, interviews, etc. A lot to digest. We’ll have our restaurant review later.

Psychologist William Moulton Marston had a life full of achievements — he helped invent the polygraph test, he created Wonder Woman, and he lived with two women at once! But this book cover would indicate yet one more feat to be proud of: he also wrote lurid novels about Romans — who probably liked a little loving submission now and then, if we interpret those wall paintings in the background correctly.

Thanks to Eric S. for the link!