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Not Liveblogging the May 2010 Previews for July

Okay, I’m officially not liveblogging the previews this month,  haven’t got nearly enough time. But. BUT. I reserve the right to bitch about stupid things:

First up, why is this killing trees?:

Time Masters: Vanishing Point #1
On Sale July 21 – 1 of 6 – 32pg, FC, $2.99
Written by Dan Jurgens. Art and Cover by Dan Jurgens and Karl Story

TIME MASTERS: VANISHING POINT #1 launches “The Search for Batman,” as Rip Hunter puts together a high-powered band of Time Masters to travel through time in search of the World’s Greatest Detective. But can even the combined might and skill of Superman, Green Lantern and Booster Gold help the Time Master pinpoint where Batman went at the conclusion of FINAL CRISIS? Information that could keep Vanishing Point from tearing itself apart?

This six-issue mini-series, a companion piece to BATMAN: THE RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE and a story chock full of clues that point toward the next major DCU event, hits in July from writer artist Dan Jurgens with a variant cover by Chris Sprouse and Karl Story (the artists on BATMAN: RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE #1). How can you say no?

(VIA)

A companion series to back-up players from Grant Morrison’s Batman? Set to end 3 months after the story it compliments? Uggggggh. I don’t even want to order this. I’ve got nothing against Jurgens, but this ill-advised, poorly timed, and entirely superfluous little mini-series is just gonna clutter up my racks. Forget this.

—
Edit: Okay, one more.

Marvel is reprinting the 1960s MARVELMAN stuff in hardcover, black and white, 160 pages at a time, and charging 35 American Dollars for the privilege.  Is anyone going to buy this? Anyone at all? It’s so very, very expensive.

AND, in case that’s not good enough, they’re doing a 6 issue ‘best of’ reprinting in black and white for four bucks an issue as well.

Is it just me or is the pricing on this totally out to lunch? More than 20 cents a page for black and white reprints?

I think I’ll be counting on reorders for this one.

And not needing them.

—

– Chris

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CMXy

(via)

So, here’s the deal:

CMX wasn’t, at its inception, a particularly well-run company. There are a lot of excuses out there, but bluntly DC didn’t know a thing about the manga market, and the person they hired to start the imprint wasn’t good at his job. DC offered a deep-discount offer to retailers to stock some of the initial titles, MADARA in particular, an older-Seinen action adventure title at the height of the shoujo boom. (Their sole shoujo title was from the 1970s.) I can’t stress enough, their initial licenses were very strange and generally weak with no cohesion as a line.

Sales tanked, comics retailers who were encouraged to buy BIG were left with unsold stock, and comics retailers have long and ‘specific’ memories and if they’re ever burned by anything they never forget and hold a grudge indefinitely. (Except for superheroes of course; Marvel and DC are putting out lit cigarettes on the foreheads of comics retailers every month, and they keep coming back for more. But say something nasty about Carol Kalish in an obituary and I WILL NEVER BUY YOUR FUCKING BOOKS FOREVER I HATE YOU. Comics are kinda lame sometimes.)

So with retailers burnt, the publisher upped the ante and censored one of their second wave of titles, when the _only_ thing it had going for it was the dirty bits. Manga fans hold STUPID grudges too, and they only need the thinest whisper of an excuse to steal their shit forever. “CMX censored Tenjho Tenge! That’s why I’ll download all the books they publish and never give them any money ever!” Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. You’re awful, flat out awful.

But that’s besides the point; fans were burned too.

So no retailer support, little fan support, reported difficulties getting press coverage/convention coverage, and the books were barely ever in bookstores. All of it added up to…? What? Surprise? It wasn’t a matter of if CMX was going to get closed but when, and bad news at Viz provides the perfect cover doesn’t it? “See! Economic downturn! We can’t publish manga if Viz can’t!” Except of course Viz are publishing manga, just tightening their belts. Feh and bah.

This all smells very much like someone got some early July DC solicitations, noticed there were no CMX books, and started asking questions. This seems exceptionally poorly handled, from a company who’s doing a great job at poorly handling this imprint.

So to summarize: It was a line that was poorly conceived, poorly run for the first half of its life and then barely run at all for the last half. Then it was unceremoniously killed. The end.

I’m not saying the whole thing isn’t utterly depressing, it is, but only because it’s just a monumental waste of time and resources and talent and opportunity, not because I’m particularly sad to see it go. Maybe that’s mercenary of me–a lot of other people liked the line and I should probably shut up–but yeah. DC evidenced quite clearly that they have no idea how to run a manga line so if they weren’t going to _try_ then it’s best they stopped wasting my time clogging up my shelves.

– Chris

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Cost/Benefit: Monthly Shonen Gangan

Let me show you something.

This is Monthly Shonen Gangan, a monthly manga anthology published by Square/Enix, best known in the west for their video game properties. It is where the very popular Shonen series Fullmetal Alchemist, published in English by Viz, is originally serialized. This is one fat piece of comics.

For comparison’s sake, here’s how this puppy stacks up against my USB plug… it’s about 3 inches thick, and about a 90/10 split comics and advertising.

As you can see, the final story begins serialization on page 1103. The magazine, by my count, weighs in at 1144 pages. In addition to FMA, it serializes a number of popular stories currently being released in English, including Soul Eater from Yen Press. Stan Lee has a serial in here too (really) called HEROMAN, which I’m sure is coming to the U.S. annnnny day now.

In addition, the magazine was even FATTER on the shelf, coming with two gifts! A double-sized Fullmetal Alchemist folder, and a Fullmetal Alchemist mechanical “sharp pencil”. A nice little bonus…!

So how much was all of this? 1144 pages of manga, two free gifts?

That’s right, 500 yen. Actually they charged me 499 yen. That’s about 5 bucks, give or take.

I kind of wish manga would continue taking off in the states, rather than stumble into the plateau it’s hit… Because man, there’s so much further to go.

– Chris

P.S.: Having a wonderful time in Japan, wish you were here. 🙂

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Fantastic Art Auctions to Benefit The Doug Wright Awards

One of the loveliest things I saw this weekend was this original Catwoman illustration by Jillian Tamaki, on display at The Doug Wright Awards Booth at TCAF. This illustration is part of a fundraising auction for the DWAs, which features a number of excellent Canadian Cartoonists donating the proceeds of the sale of their work to keep the awards going. You can find all of the auctions at http://tinyurl.com/27fmlnm.

Also to the right here is Kate Beaton’s contribution, the original artwork to her cranky Wonder Woman strip which I love. The other fantastic contributions to the auction include Chester Brown’s Batman, Joe Ollman’s The Spectre, Matt Forsythe’s Hawkman, Bryan Lee O’Malley with a spread from Scott Pilgrim, Marc Bell’s Iron Man, Jeff Lemire’s Hawkman and The Atom, Lynn Johnston with a For Better or For Worse strip, John Martz’ Bizarro, Diana Tamblyn’s Black Canary, Michael Cho’s Superboy, and Seth’s Dr. Fate.

I probably should’ve mentioned these auctions earlier, but I was a bit busy. At any rate, the first of the auctions ends in less than 24 hours! So get over there and bid on some gorrrrrrrrrrrgeous artwork. That link again? http://tinyurl.com/27fmlnm.

– Christopher

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TCAF Photos!

I took a bunch of pictures at TCAF this weekend, and now they’re online! Check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/comics212/sets/72157624038123570/

In other news, I’ve received word that a few other people have put photo sets online, so if you missed out at TCAF now you can feel like you were there:

Jim Zubkavich: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=182562&id=506857670&l=40671bbc2b

Jamie Coville: http://picasaweb.google.ca/comichistory/TCAF2010#

AdHouse: http://www.flickr.com/photos/adhousebooks/sets/72157624038996660/

Coleen Frakes: http://www.flickr.com/photos/colleenfrakes/sets/72157624036778478/

I think there’s a couple more I’m missing… I’ll update this if I find’em.

– Chris

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My Weekend…

From the @torontocomics account, this is a screenshot from Sunday at about 6:30pm. Check out that trending list.

So yeah, it went pretty well. Thanks to everyone who helped out and came out. TCAF will have a more official response a little later, but for now, we all feel pretty good about stuff. But man do I miss blogging…!

– Chris

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Toronto Comic Arts Festival Today and Tomorrow

TCAF: Calm before the storm. 11pm Friday. Photo by ab81 on Twitter.
The Toronto Comic Arts Festival
Saturday May 8th, 9am-5pm
Sunday May 9th, 11am-5pm
@ Toronto Reference Library
789 Yonge St., Toronto, Canada
Admission to TCAF is Free

http://torontocomics.com

I talk a lot of shit about the way things ‘should’ be done in comics here, but one of the ways I actually try to create a better medium–and industry–is with TCAF, The Toronto Comic Arts Festival. It’s a comics event, sorta like SPX or MoCCA, but it’s free to the public and we do a couple of other things differently too. I’m really proud of the event, all of my staff, and our amazing volunteers. We just had the best evening set-up in the history of the show (particularly when you factor in how complicated it was this year), and we ran the amazing kick-off presentation by Dan Clowes and journalist Mark Medley, and everyone’s basically pumped for the show tomorrow.

So if you’re reading this and you can make it to Toronto this weekend, I’d like to invite you to come by the event. It’s a good time, and like I mentioned it’s free, and it doesn’t really ‘work’ for our exhibitors and small press artists and stuff if we don’t get a great big bunch of people walking through the door, spending some money and buying some comics, graphic novels, prints, shirts, whatever. We’ve got some truly fantastic guests, some amazing publishers, and a pretty killer programming line-up too. You can find out more about the event at http://torontocomics.com.

With that, I’m probably going to be offline for a few days… Well a few more days. Thanks for reading everyone!

– Christopher

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San Diego’s “Chump Change” offer

And I’m going to be very blunt with you too: we’re not doing this deal in the media. Anaheim and San Diego – San Diego just woke up and put out that offer a day late and a dollar short, in my view. Our offer’s been out there for five years. And our offer is superior to their offer. I won’t say all the details because I’m not going to play this all out in the media, but I will say that that offer is a chump change offer. It’s kind of an afterthought to me. It’s like, “We think we’re going to lose it, so we’re going to throw a few bucks out there.” And I’ve got to be honest with you, to Comic-Con it isn’t just about that. That’s how I interpret it. It’s all about “How can we grow and enhance the show?” And my primary mission here is to grow and enhance that show. If I can’t improve that show for Comic-Con and for your industry here in Los Angeles, then I would not pursue this show. And I would not have busted my rear end for five years to do it if I couldn’t present them with that option. My offer today is only improved by the fact that I have A.E.G. and the LA Live development in partnership with me.

– Michael Krause, part of the comittee wooing Comic-Con to move to Los Angeles, @ CBR

I have 10,000 other things to do today, but I came across this in a link from Scott McCloud on Twitter (who is firmly in favour of Comic-Con staying in San Diego, I should say), and the bolded part up there (Emphasis mine) jumped out at me.

My response? Yes. Exactly.

Despite some public commentary to the contrary, San Diego has been routinely horrible to the Comic-Con, and their efforts to “work” with their most volumnous show of the year have been sad. The big “public show of support” this year is a fucking joke, flat out. You don’t look at what they’re promising to do, you look at what they _actually_ do, and this year the biggest hotel and the closest hotel basically told Comic-Con to fuck off, holding a giant conference (very police and security-heavy) on the same weekend, blocking off a bunch of rooms and holding them away from an event that they’ve known was coming for… years.

It’s a joke, the city from an infrastructure point of view does not like the show. They don’t. This ‘show of support’ they made is tokenism at best, it’s a to cover their asses with the hotels and restaurants–their constituents–if 125,000+ tourists and their associated tourist dollars disappear in a few years.

I run a show. It’s less than 1/10th the size of San Diego, I’m on nowhere near the same playing field. But running a show like this, making demands on people and organizations and venues and having to make concessions and the wonderful back-and-forth that goes into planning a large event? You begin to be able to tell when the folks on the other end want to make something work, and when they don’t, and in my opinion San Diego isn’t really interested in making the Con work.

This isn’t important, in the grand scheme of things. I think we all know that, but I do think it’s nice that someone–even someone coming from a competing organization/area–came forward and said “We’ve got a better offer, San Diego doesn’t really give a shit” because that’s been my observation all along. And then their recent promises and shows of support? WOEFULLY inadequate. Chump Change.

So yeah, I like walking out the back doors to the pristine Bay view and the good food as much as the next guy, but… I also want a better offer. I want more floorspace, more hotel space, better organization, and I want to be at an event where everyone involved is actually on board, and not barely tolerating each other’s presence.

Where’s that event?

– Christopher