Pay Attention! Comics News Round-up 08/09/10

Hey, it's 08/09/10! How often does that happen? Anyway, let's broast some ghosts and read a whole bunch of links.

-Soundtrack Hmm… Tim Callahan and Chad Nevett have a podcast. Give it a listen while you read.

-Finish Him Colleen Doran, creator of A Distant Soil and noted self-publisher, absolutely brutalizes a Print on Demand service that decided to get a bit snippy with one of her friends. This is the kind of takedown that makes the internet worth it–mean, funny, and most of all, informative.

-Pretty Soldier Wonder Woman This is a little old, but Ben Caldwell's manga-inspired Wonder Woman pitch is pretty great. I'm usually pretty wary of manga-inspired takes on established properties, but projects like this and Marvel's brief stab at manga Spider-Man certainly seem to be a cut above the rest. Don't worry, mangaphobes–this pitch wasn't accepted by DC. (It should have been, Wonder Woman could use the boost.)

-Deadpool to the MAX I'm unbelievably torn on whether or not to pick up the David Lapham/Kyle Baker Deadpool MAX. I think I mentioned that the other week. But, then Baker goes and posts art like this and I give some serious thought to giving up my Deadpoolphobia. I mean… goodness, how am I supposed to turn that down?

-Obligatory Brandon Graham Link He makes comics better simply by existing, King City is the best, read his livejournal, etc. If you don't know how my Brandon Graham Agenda works by now… well, you clearly haven't been reading too closely.

-Apology Accepted Comics writer Marc Bernardin apologizes for being one of the Hollywood guys at San Diego Comic-con. Confidential to the esteemed Mr. Bernardin: if you can get me and a +1 into those Hollywood parties, all will be forgiven.

-Comics Are Seriously the Best, You Guys Greg Burgas takes a look at a recent Kody Chamberlain comic and springboards off that into a post about how incredibly versatile comic books are. To which I say: yes, I agree. There are so many things that only comics can do, and comics are one of the easiest to understand delivery systems for information there is. Everyone uses comics, from the people who print the instructions to put together your desk to the military. Comics are special, and we should all be looking at comics in terms of what they can do, in addition to what they have already done. Comics are this weird bastard medium, like an amalgamation of movies and prose and poetry and art. I'm not saying it has none of the weaknesses of its ingredients, but it definitely can be stronger or more effective than all of them.

-Case In Point Look at how awesome these panels from Yoshihiro Tatsumi's Black Blizzard are. Matthew Brady dug them up, scanned them in, and provided some "minimal commentary" for you. What's even better is that these comics are old. These aren't panels from some book fresh off the shelf, with the latest in Photoshop and digital post-production worked into the mix. Tatsumi made these a long time ago and in the old fashioned way. There's killer staging, lighting, use of space, scale, whatever whatever. They just rule. They're from 1956.

-Case In Point, II Matt Seneca posts an NSFW appreciation of Guido Crepax's work by dialing in on one specific element (a two-headed arrow) and working outward from there. Look at how much information is conveyed in that one little arrow.

-Seneca Bonus Round He also posted a bit about Jim Steranko, one of those guys I never get tired of reading about. I haven't read the work in question, but Seneca calls it "the great experimenter's greatest experiment," so I'll probably have to track it down sometime soon.

-Case In Point, III James Stokoe drew Galactus, and you should definitely go look at it.

-Two From Johanna Johanna Draper Carlson posts a couple things that should interest you or me or both of us. First up is a preview of Blacksad, a noir tale starring talking animals. I've had Blacksad recommended to me several times, I think even by a few members of the iFanbase. I love noir, and I'm pretty cool with talking animals, so it's just a matter of time until I pick it up. The second is the next volume of Janet Evanovich and Joelle Jones's Troublemaker. I'm a little uncomfortable with the size of Jones's name on the cover. I get the marketing behind it, believe me, but… it still sucks. I figure the paychecks on that project have to be pretty good, though. Dark Horse says that they printed 100,000 of them, which is a crazy print run for a graphic novel in America. I think Scott Pilgrim 6 had a similar run. (In Japan, One Piece has been breaking record after record as far as print runs go. I believe that they're up to 3.1 million for volume 59?)

-Let's See His Notebooks Laura Hudson interviews Jonathan Hickman at Comics Alliance. Hickman gives a shockingly good interview. He talks about his relative rookie status in terms of making comics, how he feels about holding back ideas, and some frank talk on the economics of making comics. I knew that the guy wrote comics that were worth talking about, but he's shown himself to be an interesting person, as well. Five years from now, someone should sit him down for a no-holds-barred The Comics Journal-style interview, where he just spills his secrets and how he feels about comics. I bet it'd be golden.

-Critical (Sales) Analysis Chris Eckert is killing it lately with the comics analysis. His latest post is on the sales of Amazing Spider-Man and the possible economic reasons why Marvel kicked the series in the butt with Brand New Day. The stuff about how second-tier Spider-Man books tend to sell for crap is a surprise for me. Well, mostly–there aren't a lot of classic Spider-Man limited series out there, and a side effect of having one clear voice on a title (like, say, JMS) means that if you want it to be part of your superhero universe, you may end up filling in the continuity-based blanks with merely average books.

-It Makes a Sound Like Kerplunk Heidi MacDonald kicks everyone who got into comics just to get their movie financed directly in the junk. Sorry, Mayhem (MAY-HEM!), but you're chasing a pipe dream.

-Quite Frankly Frank Quitely shows off his high-tech Wacom drawing device over on TCJ.com. C'mon, it's Frank Quitely. Do I really have to convince you to click the link?

David Brothers writes on the internet entirely too much for his own well-being. Find him at 4thletter!.