Comics212

My friends got a great publishing contract that lets them have their cake and eat it too.

Have you heard about the forthcoming graphic novel THEREFORE, REPENT? It’s from Canadians Jim Munroe (a noted author ’round these parts) and Salgood Sam (he was in the first COMICS FESTIVAL! book, amongst other places). If you haven’t heard of it, here’s a quick 45-page preview of the first book: http://www.comicspace.com/salgood_sam/comics.php?action=gallery&comic_id=1612.

Well Jim Munroe is an interesting guy. See, his first novel (that’s a words-only novel)got picked up by one of those great big publishing houses, and he decided that the whole thing? It wasn’t for him. He started self-publishing his novels, doing as well (or better) than he ever did with the big publisher, and even started helping other folks learn to do it for themselves. His publishing banner? No Media Kings.

So when it came time to create an original graphic novel (based on a section from his most recent novel, An Opening Act Of Unspeakable Evil) was he just supposed to ignore all that and sign with a major publisher? Throw his indie cred out the window or risk not having his work seen? Just Zuda the whole thing and call it a day? Hells no! He and Sam negotiated a contract that worked for all parties, meaning that No Media Kings will print and distribute THEREFORE, REPENT! inside Canada, and the international edition will be printed and distributed by… IDW PUBLISHING.

IDW is no stranger to negotiating potentially-sticky contracts; just recently they figured out a way to do comic book adaptations of six Cory Doctorow’s short stories, which are currently available for free under a creative commons license. It looks like they worked out a good deal too, because both Jim and Sam are really excited about it. I took a lunch or two with Mr. Munroe in the lead-up to his contract negotiations to help him try and navigate the minefield that is ‘independent’ comc book publishing right now. Aside from the fact that I hold them single-handedly responsible for an industry-wide price increase to $3.99 for 22 pages of comics (hiss), I couldn’t think of anything bad to say about IDW, and in fact, most of the creators I know who work with them are really happy with the experience. And now they’ve got Alan Payne (ex-Tokyopop) handling their marketting, so the books might even get placement in bookstores too, who knows! :)

Anyway, I’m really happy for all involved. The international edition of THEREFORE, REPENT! launches in January from IDW (tentatively), whereas the Canadian edition will be debuting… oh, look! At the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, August 18-19 in Toronto, Canada! How about THAT for a coincidence? Hope we see you there!

- Christopher

WHOOPS! Got a bit negative for a second there, didn’t I? I forgot my promise not to engage all of this. Sorry about that, didn’t mean to harsh your mellow. Out with the jive, in with the love.

I am in the newspaper. The GAY newspaper. The fine folks at XTRA magazine (publishing in Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, and even on the internet) comissioned me to write a little overview of what’s hot in gay graphic novels, and I turned it into a sort of fun, on-its-ear SUMMER READING LIST. It saw print on my birthday (yay!), and it went online earlier this week when I wasn’t looking:

Porky #1 & Pornomicon #1 by Logan. Published by Class Comics. 32 pages; $9.95 each.

In the past year Class Comics has begun publishing gay comics from around the world and these two comics from France’s Logan (so hot he only needs one name) are downright dirty, in all the right ways. Featuring worlds seemingly comprised entirely of hot’n'hairy muscle bears with impossible proportions, anyone searching for something a little more hirsute in their smutty summer reading will have it made in the shade. A word of warning: If guys with PIG tattooed on their tummies and sex with the Octopus-faced baddie from Pirates Of The Caribbean (and all that entails) make you squeamish, Logan’s work is definitely not for you.
- Review by Me.

It includes everything on the spectrum from the suggestive to the smutty, and all points in between. It was a lot of fun to write too, and even more interesting? I WAS EDITED! Usually I just rail on and on here at the blog, but I got to work with an editor who actually made the piece stronger and tighter overall! Suck on that, Internet!

For those of you that need a reason to click through the link, here’s what I reviewed: Stripped: The Illustrated Male, Porky #1, The Pornomicon #1, Fun Home SC, Aya HC, All-Star Superman, Casanova: Luxuria, PRISM: Your Guide to LGBT Comics, Shirtlifter #2, and Young Bottoms In Love. There really wasn’t much point in picking stuff just to rag on it, so I’ll spoil the surprise and say that I generally liked all of the books in the review.

They even let me plug The Toronto Comic Arts Festival, which was really rather nice of them. I’ve got another article for them almost completed which has a decidedly Eastern bent. I’m sure you can figure it out…

I hope my friend at Fab doesn’t get mad that I wrote an article for Xtra. DRAMA. :D

- Christopher
Image from this year’s PRISM Guide, which you should all go buy to support a worthwhile organisation.

 

If you go here:

http://comicsnthings.blogspot.com/2007/07/citizen-steel-and-power-girl-cosmetic.html

you’ll see what happened when the afformentioned Citizen Steele image from my much-beloved AFRAID OF COCK post finally hit shelves this past Wednesday. You’ll need Adboe Flash to view it.

What does this mean? DC’s really only interested in shying away from controversy when the mood suits them, I guess. Or, you know, COCK. Apparently the reason given for deflating Power Girl’s boobs (see that same link) was that they needed to fit another character on the cover, not that they were too big in and of themselves… The reason why the cock had to get shrunk down? I’m all in favour of rampant speculation. Go to town, really.

I’m not too broken-up over Citizen Steele’s dehancement, just that the thinking behind it is ripe for disection, and it’s somehow the same thinking that’s behind decisions like this:

 

 

On the left there, that’s the solicitation cover for SHOWCASE: BATGIRL, the first of DC’s cheap reprint volumes to feature a female lead character. On the right? That’s the cover it shipped with. Spot the difference.

Do we all know what kind of industry we have now? Are we all aware so I can stop getting death-threats from retards when I dare to suggest a comic book cover is mysogynist? No? I’m just a humourless jerk who hates everything you love? Okay then. Just as long as the dissonance is cognative, I guess that’s alright?

- Christopher

 

Hi there folks, here are a few of the more interesting books scheduled to ship to the Beguiling Books & Art in Toronto, Canada this week. The full list is behind the cut below. Now, these books may not show up at all retailers at the same time, but if you see something listed here, it’s probably worth asking your local comic book retailer about…

MAY070162 ALL FLASH #1 2.99
This is replacing the previously-solicited FLASH #14, and I have a feeling that it probably wasn’t ordered as high as it should have been (see: Green Lantern Sinestro Corps, the second printing of which is shipping this week). I dunno, are people gonna care about the return of Wally West (and family)? I guess we’ll find out…

MAY073311 BONE VOL 6 OLD MANS CAVE COLOR ED HC (C: 1-0-0) 18.99
MAY073310 BONE VOL 6 OLD MANS CAVE COLOR ED SC (C: 1-0-0) 9.99
Can you imagine if the original series had come out with this much regularity? ;)

APR073468 FLIGHT VOL 4 GN (C: 0-1-2) 24.95
It looks like the west coast are getting their copies of FLIGHT this week. I keep seeing all of my friends talking about how pretty this is, and it’s killing me. Hopefully the extra copies we ordered will show up before next Wednesday, but if I gotta wait, I gotta wait. It certainly looks like it’s worth waiting for.

NOV064107 GANZFELD 5 JAPANADA TP (C: 0-1-2) 29.95
This newest issue of THE GANZFELD features a dual focus on cartoonists from Japan and Canada, hence the title. Sounds right up my alley.

MAY073508 LEVITATION PHYSICS PSYCHOLOGY SERVICE OF DECEPTION 12.95
MAY073507 WIRE MOTHERS HARRY HARLOW & THE SCIENCE OF LOVE GN 12.95
It’s the newest two books from Jim Ottaviani and G.T. Labs. Called “G.T. Labs first books on the science of the unscientific”, WIRE MOTHERS is about experiements done to determine the nature of love, and LEVITATION is about… well, stage magic, sort of. They both sound really neat, and with collaborators including Dylan Meconis on WIRE MOTHERS and Janine Johnston on LEVITATION, they should look great too.

DEC061861 MADMAN GARGANTUA HC 125
DEC061862 MADMAN GARGANTUA HC LTD S&N ED (C: 0-1-2) 150
Has anyone seen this yet? Is it as nice as I’m expecting?

APR070210 SHAZAM THE MONSTER SOCIETY OF EVIL #4 (OF 4) 5.99
The final issue of Jeff Smith’s stamp on the character, and it’s being released in the midst of other… interpretations… of the character and mythos that could not be more opposed to the best-selling, feel-good version. Oh, comics.

…the rest of the shipping list is behind the cut:

Keep reading…

My buddy (and frequent advertiser!) Jeff Lemire, author of TALES FROM ESSEX COUNTY (as published by Top Shelf) has a new website up at http://jefflemire.com/. You should check it out. But if the advertisement to your right is for his books? You should click that instead. :)

- Chris

So, I really like Cold Cut. In my duties as The Manager of The Beguiling, I put together between 6 and 8 orders with Cold Cut a year, and they’re very competitive on discount and stock availability for a number of publishers. When it comes time to do line-wide restocks of Slave Labor Graphics, or grab some out-of-print Tokyopop or Viz trades, or even our massive back-orders of smut from Eros and AG, Cold Cut are good folks to deal with who get us our product in a timely and well-preserved fashion.

You can imagine that I’m a little heartbroken seeing them trying to get out of the comics distribution business. One shouldn’t get emotionally attached to business entities; you’re all in this to make money and that’s as long as your goals are the same, friendship doesn’t hurt. But I can’t help it, as a retailer I really LIKE options when it comes to distributors. I like knowing that Cold Cut is there, and I’m sure that publishers like knowing that there’s another group of people out there working to get their books seen. Hell, my customers might not know how much they love Cold Cut, but they certainly love the considerably-lower prices on things like FILLERBUNNY toys and SPOOKY squeakers that are Cold Cut purchases from us. So, yeah, I’m bummed out (and they don’t even owe me any money!) about this, and I hope things come together for the best. I’m not holding my breath though.

Y’see… The writing’s been on the wall regarding…something…happening for a little while now. About a month ago, I stopped receiving Cold Cut’s weekly update of new product. I just figured my e-mail was bouncing or something, but… nope.  No new product coming in. I also noticed that earlier this year (maybe?) the company was down to one (excellent) employee named Matt. I sincerely hope that whatever happens, Matt ends up okay because his customer service is top-notch, and he worked really hard for our business. And I’ve been wondering for a little while now how the new shipping charges in the U.S. (basically: everything through the U.S. Postal Service just got a whole lot more expensive) were going to affect anyone doing mail-order/distribution… I wonder if that contributed anything? I have a feeling we’ll never know.

But you wanna know what the straw that broke the camel’s back was?

Dan Vado e-mailed me.

Well, he didn’t e-mail JUST me, he e-mailed a lot of folks, retailers like me. Dan Vado is the GodKing of Slave Labor Graphics, long reputed to be Cold Cut’s top distribution client. In an e-mail on June 6th 2007 with the subject SLG Publishing wants to GIVE YOU A T-SHIRT, Dan Vado put out a call to retailers to… essentially see if they were paying attention to SLG’s promotions by offering them a free shirt. But he also encouraged retailers to place direct reorders with SLG by offering good terms and free shipping–something most retailers can’t resist. I thought this was odd… The Beguiling are loyal customers of Cold Cut’s and I’d always thought of the two organisations, CC and SLG, as being pretty tight. For SLG to be stepping up their direct-to-retailer sales like this, particularly because it’s been The Beguiling’s experience in the past that they’ve been reticent to do so (at least for us), I figured something was gonna go down.

And now it has!

I guess the big question everyone is asking right now is “What happens if it Cold Cut gets bought?” I think the more important question is, what if it doesn’t? Folks who are happy and want to keep running businesses? They don’t GENERALLY put those businesses up for sale. Am I a dick for trying to decide whether to place an order now, or wait and see if they have a huge closing sale down the road? Or am I a dick for other reasons?

Anyway, the whole situation is just sucky and stupid and annoying. Tom asked: “What is it about the shape of that comics market where a boom period is felt more through articles claiming “This is a boom period!” than it is in the wallets of creators and retailers?” and I’d really like to know for myself. Are these sorts of things growing pains? Is Cold Cut just a hold out from the dawn of the DM to be replaced by technologically-advanced bookstore distributors like Ingram and Baker & Taylor? Or is there something much more substantial wrong with the industry right now where we’re selling more comics than we have in a long time, and some organisations seemingly can’t (or don’t want to) make a go of it? I wish I knew.

- Christopher

From Tom Spurgeon at The Engine, on the subject of DC’s new online initiative, quoted in its entirety:

“I’m sorry, but while I agree that everyone should rigorously examine their contracts, and that this takes care of a lot of problems, the notion being floated here that no one can possibly get screwed over if contracts are examined falls somewhere on the spectrum between childish and ignorant.

“It’s childish because when you stridently defend something or someone based primarily on your own personal experience with them, you’re re-casting a company’s wider conduct into your own world writ large. In actuality, the existence of ethical conduct in one area or in one relationship often has nothing to do with the ethical misconduct elsewhere. That’s why such arguments used as a defense depend on recasting the original criticism as a 100 percent attack that it probably wasn’t, or drift towards the most strident examples of rhetoric rather than the bulk or substance of what’s being said. “You say that company is always evil, but I had a good experience with them, so you’re clearly wrong.” That’s also why there’s always a huge element of 13-year-old defensiveness in all of these arguments — “How dare you suggest I’m a victim because this other guy might be. I know what I’m doing.”

“It’s ignorant because the construction of such arguments restrict ethical conduct to a wretched, deplorable minimum: following through on whatever contract they can get someone to sign that’s applicable to right now. When you restrict the argument that way, it knocks 98 percent of all potential hideous business conduct from the beginning of time right off the table. Apply that low of a standard to you and me, and most of us are Christs.

“That someone is satisfied by a contract in no way gives moral impetus to exploitation or profiting at the expense of creators’ work. Siegel and Shuster were reportedly delighted with their pensions, and everyone was happy they got them, and their situation was a lot more complicated than selling Superman for $200 or whatever the Urban Myth says, but there should be no doubt that they did not benefit from their creation as much as they should have.

“Similarly, Jack Kirby made a comfortable living, and had certain expectations about the way the business worked, and was generally fine with it, at least enough to continue working, but that doesn’t make it just or fair when Marvel executives get creators royalties for the creation of toys based on Jack Kirby designs and Kirby’s family gets nothing for actually creating those characters. Let alone that this is cool if the current writer of Devil Dinosaur thinks his contract rocks. Give me a break.

“If you don’t think elements of this stuff exist today, and if you don’t think that companies screw people as opposed to contracts screwing people, and that landscapes shift, and that screwing involves applying elements of a contract (sometimes in ways they were never intended) and pressing advantages rather than contracts existing as words on stone tablets with easy to discern rights and wrongs, I don’t know what to say to you except to assure you this stuff is out there.

“The notion that specific conclusions shouldn’t be drawn before we know something for sure is a sound one. I agree. The idea that DC should be given a grace period to publicize their latest publishing venture without people rightly targeting the ownership and money situations as keys? Fuck that. They’ve done nothing to earn a free trip around the campfire giving high-fives. Besides: they know what they’re doing; if they didn’t want a grace period driven by empty-headed blowjob articles and general boosterism, they would have made all the information they’re promising public from the start.

“I don’t believe there’s been a rush to judgment here; I believe there’s the usual Internet reaction and then the usual, depressing assertion of a rush to judgment in order to further a mindset designed to limit longterm creator reward to what the institutions are willing to give them.” – Tom Spurgeon

–

Thanks Tom, you know exactly what to say sometimes.

- Chris

Here’s some things!

ITEM! So this Zuda thing, it’s just another way for a multinational corporation to separate you from your Intellectual Property without them paying you what that’s worth. Right? I mean, I’m not missing something? Other than the always-entertaining arguments that a) I can do whatever I want and you don’t know better than me, grandpa! or b) I KNOW WHAT I’M DOING AND I CAN ALWAYS COME UP WITH NEW IDEAS EVEN AFTER I GIVE THESE ONES AWAY. and my favourite c) You’re A Douche. I mean, sure, submit to the will of AOL/Time-Warner if you want to, I guess, but it’s not like the road to webcomics stardom is particularly hidden, or difficult to travel, or without lots of clear guideposts along the way.

ITEM! Speaking of the road to webcomics stardom, a bunch of my friends and associates here in Toronto launched their own webcomics community a few weeks ago. One of their members, Cameron Stewart, finally got around to asking why I hadn’t mentioned that yet on the blog, which is fair, because I really should have as soon as they launched. Honestly, it’s because when I got the “WE’VE LAUNCHED” e-mail the site wasn’t ready yet… Nothing updated, some broken code, all that stuff. I figured I’d wait until they told me to talk about it. I’m every PR-man-or-woman’s dream! So let me introduce TRANSMISSION-X.

“Enjoy new comics every week with Ragni on Mondays and Karl Kerschl’s The Abominable Charles Christopher on Wednesdays, followed by Andy B’s Raising Hell on Fridays, along with Scott Hepburn’s The Port and Cameron Stewart’s Sin Titulo Rounding out the weekend on Saturdays and Sundays respectively.”

I can see why Cameron poked me today, the site’s looking great and all of the currently-updating features have at least a couple of pages ready to read, if not significantly more. Everything there is looking sharp, and, dare I say it? Commercial. I know that commerciality is the enemy of art and all that, but there’s no feeling reading the site that any of these guys–or these comics–aren’t ready for prime time. Let that be today’s lesson: Professional quality comics on the web don’t need to involve AOL/Time-Warner.

Oh, and as I’ve already mentioned a couple of ways in which I’m biased regarding this issue, I’ll add one more to the pile: The next two comics in the TRANSMISSION-X stable are going to launch at The Toronto Comic Arts Festival, August 18th and 19th. Get ready for Arthur Dela Cruz’s KISSING CHAOS and Ramon Perez’ KUKUBURI too. Yay TCAF! Yay Toronto cartoonists!

ITEM! Uh, speaking of The Toronto Comic Arts Festival, heh, uh, I’ve been doing a lot of work on that. It’s getting to be the exciting time, and we’ve been adding guests to the show left-right-and-centre. A great mix of locals and international guests, guys and gals, print comics, web-comix, and self-published work. Since the last time I mentioned it, check out some of the folks we’ve added:

From The Internet: Danielle “Girls With Slingshots” Corsetto, Chris “Dr. McNinja” Hastings, Jason “BlogTO” Kieffer, and Roxanne “Torontoist.com” Bielskis.
From Toronto: Clayton Hamner, Dave Lapp, Peter Thompson, Steve Wilson, and Tara Tallan.
From Art-Comix: Kevin Huizenga, Brian Chippendale, Frank Santoro, James Sturm, and Matthew Thurber.
From “The Mainstream”: Mike Huddleston and Adrian Alphona.
Publishers and Speakers too!: Peter (Little Nemo: So Many Splendid Sundays) Maresca, Dan (PictureBox) Nadel, and Jason (Shonen Jump, MANGA: THE COMPLETE GUIDE) Thompson.

I’m pretty excited about all of this, I think it’s gonna be a great show (but then you’ve heard me mention that already), and there are more… many more… plans on the way. You should book some plane tickets.

- Chris