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New York Post writer Reed Tucker is on a mission to explain what’s wrong with the comics industry.

Did you miss the good news? According to ComiChron, comic book sales in 2012 were at their highest level in two decades. It was a good year, with funnybook publishing raking in some $715 million. Add that to the other mainstream media stories popping up (regrettably with a headline containing the word “Biff!”) about the rebounding market and the superhero’s growing presence in mainstream culture, and geeks should be popping the bubbly.

So why doesn’t it feel like a time to celebrate? Why does it feel like it’s one of the worst eras to be a reader since the days of The Clone Saga — at least when it comes to the big-two titles? Inflated prices, desperate reboots, an even greater flood of tie-ins, crossovers and other publishing gimmicks have become the order of the day.

Overall sales may be getting better (though when you take into account inflation, that’s debatable), but in the end, it hardly matters. Comic books long ago became a niche hobby reaching few outside the circle of hardcore Wednesday crowd. The frustrating thing is, DC and Marvel seem to have thrown in the towel on this point, and most everything they publish has become in service of that ever-narrowing crowd.

In Business 101, you learn that there are really only two ways to make more money as a company: You can sell to new customers, or you can squeeze more money from your existing customers. Increasing ARPU, they call it: average revenue per user.

The publishers (Marvel more-so than DC) seem to have decided that broadening the audience just ain’t gonna happen, so they’ve opted for the latter, raising prices and gambling that their current customers will shell out more money each month for an ever-expanding line of branded books or for big events that promise to break the Internet in half.

Do you like Batman? Well, you’re gonna love him in 13 other monthly books. Or, were you moved when that one character actually died back in the 1980s? Well, we’ve got a boatload of shocking new deaths for characters that will definitely not be resurrected in six months with some plot fudge involving a time gun.

So far the strategy seems to have worked, in that it has helped the publishing market rebound slightly and allowed the big-two publishers to pump up their bottom lines. But these are most likely only short-term gains. This is not the way to build an audience for the long-term, and this is certainly not the way to ensure that comic books exist as anything other than a niche hobby.

Sales are supposedly up, but anecdotally, it sure seems like a lot of long-time readers are fleeing the pastime. “I love me some comics, but I finally had to quit this addiction,” wrote one commenter recently on Ain’t It Cool News, whose opinion was quickly echoed by others.

Now is the time to fix it, lest it goes the way or the dodo or the pet rock. A few decades from now, a kid will find a dusty copy of The Weird #3 in grandpa’s attic and wonder what the hell it is.

If someone were to put me in charge of DC or Marvel for one day – Anyone? Anyone? – here’s what I’d do.

Stop putting out so many freakin’ titles

It may seem antithetical that cutting back on something might help it grow, but occasionally it’s true. Hell, it works with hair and it works with bonsai trees. It’s time for DC and Marvel to drastically slash their lines. It might actually increase sales.

DC has been flogging its “New 52,” (in reality, the company publishes even more than that bloated number), and as best as anyone can tell, the strategy behind 52 didn’t arise out of any data about what the market will bear or which characters can carry a title, but instead grew out of the number of weeks in a year. They may as well have based their entire publishing strategy on the cycles of the moon.

And 52 monthly titles have obviously proved too many. After Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and the other recognizable marquee characters, DC was left scrambling to fill the racks with unknowns like Mister Terrific and Voodoo, just to reach this rigid, nonsensical 52 threshold that they set for themselves. Not surprisingly, a good number of the initial launch titles have been cancelled – though only to be replaced by new ones, so that the 52 brand can be kept intact.

It doesn’t make any sense.

I’d cut the number of titles by more than half. Completely pare down the line to only its most recognizable and bestselling titles. Sorry, OMAC. I don’t care if the co-publisher is writing you. You would never have been greenlit in the first place. Sorry, 15 confusing iterations of the X-Men. There will now be two books with X in the title, tops.

One of the things that both DC and Marvel are selling is the shared universe concept, the idea that these adventures and characters all inhabit the same place. Something that happens in one title has a ripple effect to another. With fewer titles, readers would be a lot more likely to follow a greater number of books as the universe begins to feel a lot less sprawling and more manageable. Readers would invest more in the stories. Too many titles only leads to confusion and encourages readers to check out.

Look at old Marvel subscription ads from the early 1980s, and you’ll find almost no offerings beyond simply-named titles featuring recognizable characters (except for US 1, whatever that was), as well as a few licensed titles. Amazing Spider-Man, Thor, The Incredible Hulk. Is it a coincidence that the massive expansion of the X-Men line coincided with the greed-drenched speculator boom of the 1990s? Prior to that, if you wanted a title with X in it, there was Uncanny X-Men.¤.¤.and that was about it.

A smaller line will force more readers to invest in those few series, as opposed to spreading their money out broad line of titles. Instead of having 30,000 people buying, say, four different X-Men books, wouldn’t it be better to have 120,000 people buying one X-Men book?

Imagine if Marvel only published 5 titles. How many Marvel zombies would buy them all? What about ten titles? Fifteen? At some point the line of titles gets too broad for fans to pick up every one, but the fewer the titles, the greater the likelihood that readers will buy more of them.

The glut of titles also turns off new readers. Say that you discovered the Avengers or Batman or the X-Men at the movies and wanted to follow their printed adventures. Walking into the comic book shop might send you running the other way. There’s just too much material, too many titles and too many numbered and renumbered volumes for newbies to make any sense of.

It’s no wonder that the massive success of movies, such as Spider-Man and The Avengers, hasn’t led to any negligible bump in sales. What would a converted fan buy to start with? Would he even be able to understand what he was reading?

Now look at the Walking Dead. The TV series has actually led to a huge increase in sales of the comic. Issue #100 was the top seller in 2012, and its trade volumes consistently clog the bestseller list. Not bad for a title whose first issue had an initial print run of about 7,000. And you gotta figure that the Walking Dead comic book has been able to capture some of the TV audience because it’s easy to understand and buy. There’s only one title, one set of trade paperbacks. (It also helps that it’s really good.) Robert Kirkman has resisted the temptation to spin out a companion title or mini-series. Want to start at the beginning of the story? Look for the number 1. That’s it.

Simplify, consolidate.

Of course, the publishers will argue that slashing titles will cost them money. That might be true initially, but as the months went by, die-hard fans would probably be apt to pick up more titles when faced with fewer choices. They’re addicts who need their fix and they’re gonna get it any way they can.

But let’s look at the math. DC, for example, shipped around 2.4 million comics in February 2013 for about $8.4 million in sales. And the company had to publish about 70 titles to get there.

Let’s say the company only published 20 titles. That’s it. To reach their current sales mark of 2.4 million units, each title would have to sell 120,000 copies. Moving that many units doesn’t seem feasible and it may not be, but then again, the Justice League and Batman regularly sell around that mark – and that’s on a monthly basis, without any crossovers or gimmicks.

Take a recognizable character, tell a great story with great art and the readers will come. What if every title in DC’s stable had a creative team almost as capable and all-star as Batman and Justice League? No offense to J.T. Krul, but his name on the cover probably isn’t packing them in. Fewer titles means you won’t have to hire people like Krul or Scott Lobdell to write your books, leaving you with more marquee talent.

Stop charging so much

Yeah, yeah. Everyone’s been complaining about this one for years, but with the jump from $2.99 to $3.99 and beyond, the industry seems to have reached a breaking point where it’s actively losing readers because of the expense of staying in the hobby. Even longtime fans have been forced to now think about at an issue’s cover price, and a lot of them have calculated it’s just not worth it anymore.

I’d cut prices to $1.99.

Again, with lower prices, revenues might take a hit initially, but the companies have to ask themselves a simple question: Would you rather sell your product to fewer people at a higher price, or to more people at a lower price? The publishers have clearly opted for the first option, jacking up prices because they know that the most die-hard readers won’t be scared off, no matter what kind of abuse is heaped on them. But how many new readers would a lower cover price bring in? How many current readers would be willing to take a chance on a new book or be slower to drop another one if the price was lower? Isn’t selling 100,000 copies of something at $1.99 better than selling 50,000 copies at $3.99? In the end, the money earned is basically the same.

Here in New York City, one of the biggest restaurant trends is the $1 pizza slice shacks. These things are popping up on every corner, and it’s a bit of a head-scratcher, because before they started appearing, the going rate for a slice was $2 and up across the board. These restaurants immediately cut the price of pizza in half, just like that. Did pizza suddenly become half as expensive to make? Nope. The owners just calculated that greater volume (as well as cheaper ingredients) would offset any money lost in the price cut, and so far, they seem to have been right.

Would the same principles work in comics?

Write for the digital marketplace

Of course, this talk of profits is where digital comes in. In the past, to keep books in print publishers have had to go through the expensive process of printing and warehousing books. As digital grows, that will obviously no longer be necessary.

The ideal situation for publishers will be to release issues in a monthly print format, then continue to make money on them forever – forever! — in the digital marketplace. It’s like found money. DC and Marvel can sit on their butts and do nothing while the money fills the digital coffers. But the only way to do that is to produce work that people will want to continue to buy five or ten years down the road. DC and especially Marvel really aren’t doing that right now. Instead, they’re focusing on the big “event” stories and the shocking twists that are designed to keep the fanboys coming in every Wednesday, desperate to read what happens next.

But that’s the strange thing about stories that “matter,” to use the publishers’ terminology. After a few months, they don’t matter anymore. Twists are undone, genies are put back in the bottle, things return to the status quo, Spider-Man revealing his identity is magically wiped away. And that’s a big problem for long-term sales prospects in digital. I wonder how many people are buying something like Siege: Embedded digitally months or years after its release?

The things that are going to sell best in digital format over the long haul are the things that currently sell best in trade paperback – timeless, well-crafted stories that are often self-contained. Watchmen, Walking Dead, Sandman. The Dark Knight Returns. Retailers move tens of thousands of those trade paperbacks year after year after year. Can the same be said for Dark Reign?

Publishers need to completely change their strategy. In the last decade, writers were ordered to “write for the trade.” Now, writers should be nudged to “write for digital.” Stories need be written to sell, not just on Wednesday, but years and decades from now. Plots shouldn’t lean so heavily on continuity anymore. Books can no longer have the shelf life of milk. Twists and shocks are disposable. Good storytelling is forever.

Batman is currently following that strategy, so is Walking Dead and Hawkeye. If the companies make enough money from digital, maybe they can afford to lower the print cover prices. Perhaps the promise of digital requires paying less money to the talent upfront with the idea of more money on the back end over the long term.

In other words, the big two should start acting a little more like Image. The indie publisher has made tremendous gains over the last few years by focusing on quality material (much of it standalone) that is accessible to new readers, doesn’t require encyclopedic knowledge of past events and can be enjoyed equally today or ten years from now.

The amount of money to be made off a continuity-contingent story that must be consumed in the month it’s published (like Amazing Spider-Man #700, for example) is finite; the amount of money to be made off a story that can be read and enjoyed any time is infinite.

There’s a reason why no one puts out soap operas on DVD. After the episode airs on TV, it becomes essentially worthless. It’s completely disposable entertainment, only enjoyed during one 60-minute slot on one particular day. Too many comics, especially from Marvel, are similar. Like soaps, they only have one potential revenue stream: the money made immediately upon release. They don’t have many prospects in the long-term trade or digital markets. Hawkeye recently became one of Marvel’s very rare graphic novel bestsellers, debuting at #9. Most months, Marvel doesn’t have any books in the top 20.

It’s probably no coincidence that most of TV’s soap operas have been cancelled. There’s probably a lesson to be learned there.

Focus on established characters.

The big-two publishers at this point should take a hard, honest look at themselves in the mirror and realize what they are: caretakers of trademarked characters owned by big corporations. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. These characters have long histories and massive name recognition around the world, and there are plenty of creative types out there who’d cut off their penciling hand to work on them. That’s the one major advantage DC and Marvel have over the other publishing houses, besides upfront money to talent.

There’s no point in the publishing giants wasting time and energy trying to launch new characters and new-concept series at this point only to cancel them in six months. (Vibe, anyone?) That part of the market is now better served by Image and other boutique publishers. And what writer or artist, in the age of the creators’ rights movement, wants to hand over a new character or concept that he won’t own?

DC and Marvel should stop wasting time, money and manpower on stuff like Insurgent, which was cancelled mid-miniseries, and just focus on the characters they can slap on lunchboxes and pajama sets. This is the reality in 2013 under corporate ownership, and there’s no shame in it.

There should be room for every kind of comic book in a healthy market, be it mainstream superhero, indie, standalone graphic novel or whatever. To get the market truly healthy is going to take some major moves by its biggest players and a realization that quick, monthly profits aren’t the be-all and end-all. If there’s one thing the comic book market should know about, it’s coming back from the dead. The industry has faced more dire times than it’s now facing, so here’s hoping DC and Marvel will make smarter decisions going forward.

As Superman once said of Martian Manhunter when he died one of those times: “Pray for a resurrection.”

I think he’s wrong about every single point he makes. Still that’s just my opinion… I’m off to the comments for that – Rich.

The End Of The Comics World Is Nigh

The Bunny has acquired the rights to another fantasy property...

Feeling bit by the sword and sorcery bug, Warner Bros. has added another franchise to their growing list of magical movies/shows.  So now "The Lord of the Rings", "Game of Thrones" and a possible "World of Warcraft" film will now have "Dungeons & Dragons" in the Warner stable as well.






Fantasy does good, and many geeks have always loved watching the genre, but it seems that only in the last decade+ that a good deal of Hollywood have taken note.  I feel that part of this is the direct result of several geeks/nerds being put in high level positions.  Unlike the suits of old, some of these execs actual have a taste for it, or know people with an understanding of it.

Now, I don't want anyone to think I'm praising the dreck that was that "Dungeons & Dragon" film from a decade ago.  It's a horrible stinker of a film.  But that doesn't mean the D&D property doesn't have tremendous potential and value.  After all, the 90's "Captain America" film is horrible, but the character isn't/wasn't.  "Captain America: The First Avenger" was a fun, great popcorn film to watch.  It's all in how it's approached.





Dungeons & Dragons has a wealth of material that can be drawn from.  From the books, gaming manuals and modules an entire universe could be put upon the silver screen.  Imagine an adventure in "The Vault of the Drow", or travelling through "The World of Greyhalk", or the dark and foreboding "Ravenloft" for example.  And they might even be able to go Disney's Star Wars route; where they have a main film one year (Episode VII) and another film the following year set in the same universe (Boba Fett, Seven Jedi, etc.).  That way they could have a main D&D film, and the next year have one in another land or realm outside the main adventure.

Yes, this is coming from someone that played/DM'd quite a few adventures with eight sided dice in his youth.  I'm sure it won't be one of these, but you can see that the game created by Gary Gygax's TSR, has many realms of possibilities.  It seams that Warner already has a plan/story anyway and that was why they were able to hammer out a deal with Wizards of the Coast, the current owner of the gaming system.




Producer Roy Lee (How to Train Your Dragon) and Courtney Soloman (sadly, directed the original film) have attached Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile) to work with scibe David Leslie Johnson (Wrath of the Titans) on the script.  Strangely, this is based on a script that Johnson sold last year to Warner called "Chainmail" in a deal he already had with the studio (And another twist is that script is based on a game that Gygax created before D&D).  The writer also happens to have written the script for the aborted Doc Savage that Arnold was to start in with Darabont/Chuck Russell directing.

Close knit group, huh?  But they have their idea, and they have a script that is being retooled from one game to the one it inspired.  Apparently they already have a story to bang out.  Darabont is one of Tinseltown's best writers, and a great producer, so they're off to a much better start than the first try at this.

Here's to second chances...

Telltale Games' upcoming adaptation of the series

After teasing fans for a few months, Amy Reeder and Brand Montclare’s Rocket Girl is go for launch.

According to the Kickstarter page, which went live this morning, Rocket Girl is a “teenage cop from a high-tech future” who’s sent back to 1986: “She’s investigating the Quintum Mechanics megacorporation for crimes against time. As she pieces together the clues, she discovers that the ‘future’ — an alternate reality version of 2013 and the place she calls home — shouldn’t exist at all.”

Montclare and Reeder have been on similar flight paths since breaking into comics. They both did their time at Tokyopop before Montclare recruited Reeder to work on Madame Xanadu after he took an editorial position at Vertigo. Last year they re-teamed for a creator-owned one-shot, Halloween Eve, which they used Kickstarter to fund. And now they’ve returned to crowdfunding to finance the production of Rocket Girl, an ongoing series they plan to launch this fall.

I spoke with Montclare and Reeder about Rocket Girl, using Kickstarter to finance their creator-owned works and much more.

JK Parkin: “A teenage cop from a high-tech future is sent back to 1986.” The word I find most intriguing in this sentence is “teenage.” Can you tell us a little bit about the main character, and the circumstances that have led to teenagers working in law enforcement in this alternate reality?

Brandon Montclare: DaYoung’s age — as well as the fact that all future police are teenagers — is something that gets a lot of play in the series. The gist is this: To counter rampant corruption, the powers that be in DaYoung’s timeline had the bright idea to appoint teenage cops. It’s not that teens are necessarily more honest, but they are more idealistic. DaYoung has a very clear sense of right and wrong because it has not been grayed by making the compromises one makes as they grow up. She’s very black and white — perfect for a cop. Someone older and wiser (and more curmudgeonly) might tell the kid she has a lot to learn. But hopefully there’s a lot we too can learn from her diligence and integrity. DaYoung’s rigidity is a source for a lot of humor — but her earnestness also gives Amy and me the opportunity for some poignancy.

Amy Reeder: It’s a little contradictory. She’s a cop BECAUSE she’s a teenager, but being a cop obviously forces you to grow up in some ways and forgo your childhood. She’s very tough, very independent, but she can’t help being a kid underneath it all. Going to the ’80s is going to show her what it really means to be young — and in some ways, that’s what she’s fighting for.

JK: How do people in 1986 react to someone coming back in time to tell them her unbelievable story — much less a teenager?

Brandon: Trust is a gigantic theme in Rocket Girl. The adults in 1986 (who are in their early 20s and perhaps still themselves have a lot to learn) don’t believe her story at all. Her technology makes her future origin undeniable, but they don’t trust her story. To them, DaYoung is just a kid and her perceptions can’t be trusted; or worse, she’s making the whole thing up.

Amy: These “adults” Brandon speaks of are physics grad students — they are the ones who manage to create a major breakthrough in science that ultimately leads to this crazy alternate future. DaYoung has gone back to stop them, and yet she forms a strong friendship with one of the students, named Annie. Their relationship is a huge focus in the story — they should be and ARE suspicious of each other, and yet they manage to become very close.

The general ’80s New York public, on the other hand, embrace DaYoung. She’s become something of a hero, a strong contrast against the corrupt police force of 1980s New York.

JK: Brandon, you mention in your pitch that this is a “love letter” to 1986. That was a pretty big year for comics — Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, Maus, Man of Steel, “Born Again,” the Mutant Massacre, the debut of Dark Horse and, of course, the Howard the Duck film (a character you know well). Was it a coincidence you chose that particular year for Rocket Girl to go back to? Are there any comics (or anything else) from that year that influenced Rocket Girl?

Brandon: You nailed it right on the head! 1986 was chosen, specifically, as a nod to the great comics published that year. So while there were plenty of influential books printed in years before and after, the historic success of 1986 is something that inspired me. A very specific influence on DaYoung Johannson is Carrie Kelly, the female Robin from Dark Knight Returns. They’re both a little bratty and a little punk -— and neither like people telling them they’re not old enough to fight crime. And as far as the “love letter” stuff goes -— it’s a lot more than the story and influences. Amy’s art is truly a period piece —- with tons of visual call-outs to the time.

Amy: I’ve drawn quite a few time periods from my work on Madame Xanadu, so it’s great to return to that, only this time we’re settling on a decade I’ve lived through! Brandon may have used comics for the inspiration of having it set specifically in 1986 (in fact, I actually drew Dark Knight, Mage and Starstruck comics into that double-page spread you see), but for the ’80s in general…this series draws a lot from the action and futuristic movies of that time. It was all about cops, and all about the future. And what’s great is so many of these films took place in the NEAR future — which means Blade Runner, Back to the Future II and Akira should ALL have come to pass in THIS decade. We’ve all talked about how “lame” our present looks compared with these movies, and Rocket Girl plays on that, big time. Her 2013 IS that future, but it’s a future that should never have been.

JK: As far as drawing the ’80s go, Amy, what sort of research did you do? Were there any references or influences that were especially prominent?

Amy: I am all about the research, and am lucky enough that I’ve done this sort of thing enough times before. For clothing it’ll be a continual process, but I glean a lot from movies, and I’ll image search things I remember. I also have a Sears catalog compilation from the ’80s. This is ’80s New York, so that becomes even more difficult. Not everybody looks like they come from catalogs, and there are specific taxis, police cars and architecture for that time. I’m finding old school rap videos are great for everyday New York scenes.

I reconstructed Times Square in a roundabout way … first, I went to skyscraperpage.com … it’s a site that documents all the world’s skyscrapers, their height and the date they were built. They also have a map with names of the skyscrapers. So from that I figured out which buildings were made by then. Then I went to Google Maps street view so I could see how they all line up these days. And I also used any photo or video I could find from that time, to see which ads went where. Get this: Panasonic’s logo in Times Square was “Always slightly ahead of our time.” Perfect!

And even the future requires ’80s research, because I’ve decided to make it an ’80s-inspired future. That was mostly researched through watching ’80s future movies and taking screen caps. Any time I do something period-related, I keep a really huge library of screen caps. This time that includes Robocop, Highlander, Akira, The Fifth Element (not ’80s but futuristic New York), Blade Runner and Back to the Future II.

JK: The two of you have taken this approach before, using Kickstarter to raise funds for Halloween Eve. What did you learn from that experience that you’ve been able to apply this time around?

Amy: I’m glad we started with a one-shot to figure everything out! Overall, things went mostly how we expected them to, which I attribute to Brandon’s great business and editorial sense. It was an amazing experience. But I think now we understand a little better how much extra work it is. One thing we didn’t expect last year was that it would take about a month to fulfill everybody’s rewards — this includes getting extras designed and printed, and of course signing and packing and mailing everything out. That’s a month where you’re not generating any extra income, so it’s important to figure in!

Brandon: It’s hugely regrettable that we have to offer fewer rewards to international backers — but shipping costs have skyrocketed since October, and we’ve had a few frustrating experiences with lost or damaged international packages. But mostly it’s just adjustments that we’re anticipating. Like Amy said, there’s improved efficiency that can only come with experience. But it all adds up to a lot of confidence for Rocket Girl shipping on time: we made that happen last year, and it should only be easier now.

JK: For this and for Halloween Eve, you had a publisher lined up before you went to Kickstarter (Image in the case of Halloween Eve). Some folks would ask if you have a publisher, why do you need a Kickstarter? Where does the money go that you raise via Kickstarter?

Brandon: The short answer is: Rocket Girl can’t happen without a successful Kickstarter. So in that sense, the project is dependent on backers in the spirit of crowdfunding. Amy and I explored a few different financing options, including selling off some of the rights. But ultimately we’re partnering with a publisher without any advance or guaranteed pay.

Amy: We’re doing it this way because it makes doing creator-owned work affordable, which I think is great! It seems pretty universally understood that comics do not have high returns, and so making them is a real work of love. We aren’t receiving any money upfront. We’ll have royalties once the books are published, and that will help us keep the series going forward. So Kickstarter for us will literally kickstart us into making it all.

A small percentage of money goes to Kickstarter. A lot of it goes toward fulfilling rewards. The rest goes to Brandon and me — mostly me because I am doing this full time — pencils, inks, colors and letters. With Halloween Eve, we had a very successful Kickstarter. Combined with sales through Image, it netted us a good page rate. Not as much as either of us make at Marvel or DC, but it was pretty close and, most importantly, enough to live on. And the personal reward of creative freedom as well as owning the work more than makes up for the difference.

Brandon: We’re both aware of the thought out there that Kickstarter should, basically, only cover printing costs. Obviously we don’t agree with that — and I think that debate is settling down — but we have thought about it. Again, realistically speaking, Rocket Girl doesn’t happen without a successful Kickstarter. We try to be sensitive to the issue and appreciative of all our backers by providing fair value in the rewards. Meaning: the rewards were designed to be about what one would pay for the items at the shop. The basic $10 reward gets you the comics (signed), plus an exclusive two-sided color print, plus delivery. All that being said: the plan is to have the book available in comics shops (and digitally) — we equally appreciate the support of people who buy Rocket Girl in more traditional way when it comes out in October. We’re only expecting backers who want some of the special rewards and/or who want the behind-the-scenes experience. So we don’t feel as if it’s asking for straight patronage.

JK: One of the key differences between this project and Halloween Eve is that this is an ongoing series. How much of it do you have planned out, and once it gets going, do you have plans to return to Kickstarter for future arcs or issues?

Brandon: Creatively speaking: we have a very tight five-issue arc that opens the series. Rocket Girl is something we hope goes on forever. When Issue 6 and the second arc does come, it will be after a break of a few months — unfortunately that’s the only way we can maintain production. As long as fans support the book, we’ll do tight arcs, probably four to five issues each — something akin to “seasons” on television. Choosing to do a time-travel story gives us extreme flexibility. There’s an ending we’re working toward, but there’s a lot of ways we can get there!

Practically speaking: We truthfully have no plans for another Rocket Girl Kickstarter after this one. That’s why a strong launch is so important to us. That being said, we wouldn’t want to say “never.” There would have to be a good reason to use Kickstarter again, above and beyond the financing aspect. We don’t see that happening now, but Kickstarter is an amazing tool — and here to stay — so I wouldn’t necessarily be surprised if we thought of a new way to use it in the future.

Amy: What Brandon said! I’ll add that I’m done with issue #1, and this should launch in October. So we’re planning plenty of lead time so we can get you as much Rocket Girl as possible.

JK: In regard to the rewards, I’m curious about the “behind the scenes” experience offered at the $15 level, which is something you offered in your previous Kickstarter. How popular are these sorts of “making the sausage” rewards?

Amy: Yes, the Digital Insider reward! This is a new version of our previous Insider book: last time with Halloween Eve we came up with this idea of providing the layouts and script for anyone interested, and it was originally just going to be some photocopies stapled together. But it was such a popular option that we decided to actually upgrade it into its own square-bound book. We’re going to do an e-book this time around: It allows us to do a lot more pages of content, including all of the separate inks. And most of all, it allows for color!

Brandon: Getting a peek behind the scenes is actually something everyone gets. If you back at just $1, we’ll still be sending out a weekly update that shows some aspect of process — as well as exclusive podcasts, Q&A and stuff like that. If you follow Amy’s amazing Tumblr, you get a taste at how thorough her thoughts are behind process; moreover, how great she is at teaching and communicating. I try to keep up with my parts of the Insider rewards. It’s very important that backers feel like they’re making this book along with us. The response during Halloween Eve was phenomenal — tons of professionals, aspiring creators and just hardcore fans wanted to know how we made that book. We’re proud that a third of Halloween Eve Kickstarter supporters were female — and an even higher percentage were backers for the behind-the-scenes rewards.

JK: In regards to your own process, you two obviously like working together. How do the two of you collaborate, and where did this particular idea come from?

Amy: Rocket Girl actually started with the name. We had been trying to come up with the right story to do next, and had five or six possibilities, but nothing felt like THE STORY we HAD to do. On one occasion Brandon randomly blurted out the name “Rocket Girl,” but only as a hypothetical example for something sarcastic. I can’t even remember what it was. But I made him stop right there, because suddenly I wanted to draw Rocket Girl!

Brandon: I believe I said was something like, “We can’t just do a random story about someone who flies around and call it ‘Rocket Girl.’” … My point at the time, I think, was we needed to think of a story that was more contained. It couldn’t just be premised-based, like continuing monthly superhero comics. But as it turns out: we did do a book called “Rocket Girl”! And it is about someone who flies around fighting crime and helping people — but ultimately we made up an ending and a character arc to get us there.

Amy: What’s funny is, there was absolutely no plot at that point, and yet what Brandon came up with turned out to be genius. That was all him. I just knew what I wanted her costume to look like.

Brandon: Working together, in general, is pretty casual like that. We decide together what we want to do, bouncing ideas of each other. So the story gets hashed out. Then I’ll write a full script, and Amy will have all the input she wants. Then she’ll start drawing — layouts first to flesh out my script; if I have any thoughts at that point, I share them. There’s probably a very few times where Amy basically rewrites a scene. And even fewer times where I get explicit with art direction. So we each do our own thing. Because the art requires so much more time, and because of my experience in editing and comics retail, I handle a lot of the administrative and “publishing” stuff behind the scenes. I think the success of our collaboration is simply that we’re on the same side: we find a project that excites us both and works to our strengths, and appreciate what the other brings to the table.

JK: Finally, what were the two of you doing in 1986, and if you could time travel to that year, what would you want to tell your younger selves?

Amy: I was 5 or 6, living in Colorado! When I was young I always expected to be a hugely famous singer, so I think I’d be afraid to tell my stubborn 5-year-old self anything. I wouldn’t want to jinx what I’ve got going now. I’d just want to hang out with me and pick out my most hilarious neon ’80s outfit and take me out for some ice cream. And help me graffiti my bedroom walls.

Brandon: I would have been 11 years old in the summer of 1986. I was reading a lot of comics. It was about a year before I started buying and selling books at local New York City conventions (and I’ve been employed in the comics biz in one way or another ever since). It doesn’t matter what I’d tell 11-year-old-me; there’s no way he would have listened.

For more info:

• Amy’s Tumblr
• Amy on Twitter
• Amy on Facebook
• Brandon’s Tumblr
• Brandon on Twitter

by David Carter

[David Carter is a librarian and a bestseller list maker. Every Friday morning he goes to Amazon an makes a bestseller list from their graphic novel listings, which you can read at his blog, Yet Another Comics Blog. David has agreed to let me share his charts here because of there's one thing Beat readers love it's sales chart.

As David notes, the Amazon list is a snapshot not a running total, and can be gamed, occasionally. But you can discern trends and see what's bubbling outside the comics shop environment. In the future I'll be running only an excerpt of the column, but for this first run, here's the Top 50 from May 3rd and David's commentary.]

————–
Here are the Top 50 Comics & Graphic Novels on Amazon this morning. All the previous caveats apply.

1 (-). Vader’s Little Princess
2 (+5). Darth Vader and Son
3 (N). Injustice: Gods Among Us #16 (Kindle)
4 (-1). The Walking Dead Compendium Volume 1
5 (-1). The Walking Dead Compendium Volume 2
6 (-1). The Third Wheel (Diary of a Wimpy Kid 7) (Kindle)
7 (+1). The Third Wheel (Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 7)
8 (N). Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 8 (Kindle) *
9 (-7). Injustice: Gods Among Us #15 (Kindle)
10 (-). Saga Volume 1
11 (+3). Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Search, Part 1
12 (+9). Big Nate: Game On!
13 (+2). How to Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You
14 (-2). Batman Vol. 2: The City of Owls (The New 52)
15 (+3). The Wimpy Kid Do-It-Yourself Book (revised and expanded edition)
16 (-3). Injustice: Gods Among Us #1 (Kindle)
17 (+2). Cabin Fever (Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 6)
18 (+7). Hawkeye, Vol. 1: My Life as a Weapon
19 (-3). The Walking Dead, Vol. 18: What Comes After *
20 (+2). Batman Vol. 1: The Court of Owls (The New 52)
21 (-1). Dork Diaries 5 (Kindle)
22 (+1). Cabin Fever (Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 6) (Kindle)
23 (+1). The Walking Dead, Vol. 17: Something to Fear
24 (N). Dork Diaries 6: Tales from a Not-So-Happy Heartbreaker *
25 (N). Big Nate: Genius Mode *
26 (R). Injustice: Gods Among Us #14 (Kindle)
27 (+2). The Ugly Truth (Diary of a Wimpy Kid 5) (Kindle)
28 (N). New Moon: The Graphic Novel, Vol. 1 (The Twilight Saga)
29 (-1). Dork Diaries 4 (Kindle)
30 (-4). Injustice: Gods Among Us #2 (Kindle)
31 (+9). Injustice: Gods Among Us #12 (Kindle)
32 (-5). Rodrick Rules (Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2) (Kindle)
33 (R). Dog Days (Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 4) (Kindle)
34 (R). Dog Days (Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 4)
35 (+2). Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
36 (+6). Superman: Red Son
37 (-20). Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 8 *
38 (-3). Batman: The Killing Joke, Deluxe Edition
39 (-7). Injustice: Gods Among Us #3 (Kindle)
40 (-6). Watchmen
41 (+6). Injustice: Gods Among Us #7 (Kindle)
42 (+2). Avatar: The Last Airbender- The Search, Part 2 *
43 (+3). Injustice: Gods Among Us #13 (Kindle)
44 (-11). The Ugly Truth (Diary of a Wimpy Kid 5)
45 (R). Injustice: Gods Among Us #11 (Kindle)
46 (-7). Dork Diaries 3 (Kindle)
47 (R). Injustice: Gods Among Us #8 (Kindle)
48 (-7). Injustice: Gods Among Us #6 (Kindle)
49 (-4). The Walking Dead vol. 1 (Kindle)
50 (-14). Injustice: Gods Among Us #4 (Kindle)

Items with asterisks (*) are pre-order items.

N = New listing appearing on list for first time
R = Item returning to the list after having been off for 1 or more weeks

Commentary:
Jeffrey Brown has the top two slots on the Amazon chart this week. Vader’s Little Princess is #51 on the overall chart this week, while Darth Vader and Son is #104 overall.
Injustice Watch: The latest digital issue debuts at #3 on the chart. There are thirteen Injustice issues on the chart this week, up two from last week.
Also debuting this week are the pre-orders for the Kindle version of Wimpy Kid 8, and Dork Diaries 6 and a new Big Nate collection in print; as well as the latest Twilight Saga graphic novel adaptation.
Dead Watch: Only five Walking Dead collections on the chart this week, down two from last week.
Diary Watch: The Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Dork Diaries franchises between them take up eleven of the slots on the chart this week, up four from last week.
Kindle Watch: Twenty-three of the chart positions this week are taken up by Kindle editions, up two from last week.

Heidi’s commentary: I didn’t realize that Kindle books were doing so well vs print books on this chart, even stuff like Wimpy Kid which kids must be reading on their parents iPads.

Also…Injustice Gods Among has been doing phenomenally well in digital, hasn’t it?

This week Valiant are spring-boarding off their Free Comic Book Day offerings to announce “Summer of Valiant” previews of upcoming titles. Their first announcement was that QUANTUM AND WOODY would be coming back starting in July, their first super hero team to grace the Valiant charge into their highly regarded and fan favorite lines this summer. On the second day of their week-long announcement schedule, they released preview art for X-0 MANOWAR, “The Road to Unity” (#15) also coming in July of 2013.

 

The original QUANTUM AND WOODY comics have actually been released recently in digital format on ComiXology for nostalgic fans to prepare for their return. Jody LeHeup, editor on the new book, says:

 

Since the day X-O Manowar #1 hit shelves, everywhere we’ve turned, fans have been demanding that Quantum and Woody step back into the spotlight.

 

James Asmus, who’s worked on a number of Marvel and indie titles is writing QUANTUM AND WOODY, with Tom Fowler, also a Marvel-ite, bringing the artwork. 

To be fair, if you picked up VALIANT 2013 on FCBD, you’ll have seen a “sneak preview” of QUANTUM AND WOODY with an ad that it would be released July 10th 2013. Other titles announced with simply a poster ad in that comic are ETERNAL WARRIOR, H.A.R.D. CORPS, NINJAK, all announced as coming Summer 2013, and UNITY, coming in winter 2013.

 

Despite FCBD teasers, Summer of Valiant announcements this week, popping up in various exclusive interviews on a wide array of websites, give insight into the creation of each of these works and drop hints to keep you eager for what promises to be a Valiant Summer of Love.

 

Hannah Means-Shannon writes and blogs about comics for TRIP CITY and Sequart.org and is currently working on books about Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore for Sequart. She is @hannahmenzies on Twitter and hannahmenziesblog on WordPress.

Wee goggles! Wee goggles and brass fixtures everywhere!

The staff over at The Brick Blogger (via The Mary Sue) spotted this announcement of a forthcoming steampunk-themed LEGO Master Builder Academy kit. If you're not out there making giant mechanical spiders within a week, there's something wrong with you.

The announcement comes by way of the "LEGO Club Magazine" which revealed that the upcoming set would be coming in July. LEGO's Master Builder Academy kits are typically themed: space, robots, cars, creatures--based on real-world architecture and construction principles, allowing users to add gears and movements to their construction projects. So your hypothetical LEGO steampunk spider will be able to walk.

The new set is LEGO Master Builder Academy Level 4, and although pricing details haven't been announced, previous sets have sold anywhere from $30 to $80.

Related Video:

Watch: LEGO Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Toys

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Follow @MTVGeek on Twitter and be sure to "like" us on Facebook for the best geek news about comics, toys, gaming and more! And don’t forget to follow our video gaming and TV writer @TheCharlesWebb.

Chris Koelsch has once again melded various Nintendo products into an awesome animation. Really love the look and feel of his art direction.

Last week, the European Commission voted to place a two-year moratorium on most uses of neonicotinoid pesticides, on the suspicion that they're contributing to the global crisis in honeybee health (a topic I've touched on here, here, here, and here). Since then, several people have asked me whether Europe's move might inspire the US Environmental Protection Agency to make a similar move—currently, neonics are widely used in several of our most prevalent crops, including corn, soy, cotton, and wheat.

The answer is no. As I reported recently, an agency press officer told me the EU move will have no bearing on the EPA's own reviews of the pesticides, which aren't scheduled for release until 2016 at the earliest.

All of which got me thinking about other food-related substances and practices that are banned in Europe but green-lighted here. Turns out there are lots. Aren't you glad you don't live under the Old World regulatory jackboot, where the authorities deny people's freedom to quaff  atrazine-laced drinking water, etc., etc.? Let me know in comments if I'm missing any.

1. Atrazine
Why it's a problem: A "potent endocrine disruptor," Syngenta's popular corn herbicide has been linked to a range of reproductive problems at extremely low doses in both amphibians and humans, and it commonly leaches out of farm fields and into people's drinking water.
What Europe did: Banned it in 2003.
US status: EPA: "Atrazine will begin registration review, EPA's periodic reevaluation program for existing pesticides, in mid-2013."

2. Arsenic in chicken, turkey, and pig feed
Why it's a problem: Arsenic is beloved of industrial-scale livestock producers because it makes animals grow faster and turns their meat a rosy pink. It enters feed in organic form, which isn't harmful to humans. Trouble is, in animals guts, it quickly goes inorganic, and thus becomes poisonous. Several studies, including one by the FDA, have found heightened levels of inorganic arsenic in supermarket chicken, and it also ends up in manure, where it can move into tap water. Fertilizing rice fields with arsenic-laced manure may be partially responsible for heightened arsenic levels in US rice.
What Europe did: According to the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, arsenic-based compounds "were never approved as safe for animal feed in the European Union, Japan, and many other countries."
US status: The drug giant Pfizer "voluntarily" stopped marketing the arsenical feed additive Roxarsone back in 2011. But there are still several arsenicals on the market. On May 1, a coalition of enviro groups including the Center for Food Safety, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, and the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit demanding that the FDA ban them from feed.

3. "Poultry litter" in cow feed
Why it's a problem: You know how arsenic goes inorganic—and thus poisonous—in chickens' guts? Consider that their arsenic-laced manure is then commonly used as a feed for cows. According to Consumers Union, the stuff "consists primarily of manure, feathers, spilled feed, and bedding material that accumulate on the floors of the buildings that house chickens and turkeys." The "spilled feed" part is of special concern, because chickens are often fed "meat and bone meal from dead cattle," CU reported, and that stuff can spill into the litter and be fed back to cows, raising mad cow disease concerns.
What Europe did: Banned all forms of animal protein, including chicken litter, in cow feed in 2001.
US status: The practice remains unrestricted. US cattle consume about 2 billion pounds of it annually, Consumers Union's Michael Hansen told me last year.

4. Chlorine washes for poultry carcasses
Why it's a problem: As the US chicken industry has sped up kill lines in recent years, it has resorted to heavier use of chlorine-based washes to "decrease microbial loads on carcasses," the Washington Post recently reported, quoting a previously unreleased USDA document. As I've noted, the USDA is preparing to release new rules that would speed up kill lines still more as well as allow companies to douse every carcass that comes down the line with antimicrobial sprays, "whether they are contaminated or not." According to the Post, poultry workers face a "range of ailments" to the practice, including "asthma and other severe respiratory problems, burns, rashes, irritated eyes, and sinus ulcers and other sinus problems."
What Europe did: The EU not only bans the practice, but refuses to accept US poultry that has been treated with antimicrobial sprays.
US status: As stated above, the USDA is preparing to roll out new rules that will increase the practice.

5. Antibiotics as growth promoters on livestock farms
Why they're a problem: Antibiotic use has surged on US animal farms in recent years—and now accounts for 80 percent of all antibiotic use. Meanwhile, meat sold in US supermarkets is rife with antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
What Europe did: In the EU, all antibiotics used in human medicines are banned on farms—and no antibiotics can be used on farms for "nonmedical purposes," i.e., growth promotion.
US status: The FDA is floating new rules that would ban antibiotics as growth promoters—but the regulation would be voluntary.

6. Ractopomine and other pharmaceutical growth enhancers in animal feed
Why it's a problem: Fed to an estimated 60 to 80 percent of US hogs, ractopomine makes animals grow fast while also staying lean. Unfortunately, it does so by mimicking stress hormones, making animals miserable. The excellent food safety reporter Helena Bottemiller looked at FDA documents and found that between its introduction in 1999 and 2011, the drug had killed 210,000 pigs—"more than any other animal drug on the market." Pigs treated with it, she found, suffer from ailments ranging from hyperactivity and trembling to broken limbs and the inability to walk. (Beef cows are fed similar drugs, as are turkeys.) Traces of these pharmaceuticals routinely end up in our meat—and according to Bottemiller, their effects on humans are little-studied.
What Europe did: Europe not only bars its own producers from using ractopamine, it also refuses to allow imports of meat from animals treated with it—as do China and Russia.
US status: Rather than trying to rein in ractopamine use, the Obama administration is actively seeking to force Europe and other nations to accept our ractopamine-treated pork.

7. Gestation crates
Why it's a problem: The sows that breed the hogs confined in US factory farms spend nearly their entire lives stuffed into crates "so small the animals can't even turn around or take more than a step forward or backward," the Humane Society of the United States reported. An undercover HSUS investigation of a sow facility run by pork giant Smithfield in 2010 found, among other horrors, this:

The animals engaged in stereotypic behaviors such as biting the bars of crates, indicating poor well-being in the extreme confinement conditions. Some had bitten their bars so incessantly that blood from their mouths coated the fronts of their crates. The breeding pigs also suffered injuries from sharp crate protrusions and open pressure sores that developed from their unyielding confinement.

What Europe did: Banned them, effective this year.
US status: Pork giants Smithfield, Cargill, and Hormel have pledged to phase them out; several fast-food chains including McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, and Subway have promised to stop buying from suppliers who use the crates; and nine states have banned the practice, HSUS reported. But the practice remains widespread, and as industry flack Rick Berman recently put it, a large swath of the pork industry "has no plans to stop using standard sow housing."

The fashion sphere can’t seem to get enough of Mickey and Minnie these days, and not just the expected corporate collabs like OPI cosmetics or Barney’s Electric Holiday, but actual couture showstoppers stomping the runways in fashion capitals and captured in the pages of high fashion editorials (like the above Peter Phillips mask for 2005 US Vogue). And even after having revisiting the subject a dozen times over the last five years, designers are still finding new inspiration to cut and sew a pair of mouse ears into their fashion stories.

Marcel Gerlan’s spring 2013 collection “Gerl Power” for Gerlan Jeans featured a girlie assortment of bow-veralls, polka dots and Minnie-maxi skirts as means of alleged expression of feminism for the current generation of young women.

Fashion photographer Prasad Naik’s severe and somewhat abstract analysis of the subject was the star in his 2012 fashion editorial.

Iceberg’s spring/summer 2010 collection brought impractical play suits and gimmicky mouse eared shoulders to Milan fashion week in 2009.

And Jeremy Scott, who arguably began this specific cartoon-y trend with his fall 2009 ready-to-wear collection showcased head-to-toe tributes to the cartoon icon, including his now famous Mickey Mouse sneakers for Adidas.

"Defending our world one soul at a time"

Marvel history is filled with grudges, the kind that aren’t settled with harsh words and tough love over warm tea. Nope, they’re settled with fists — or sometimes claws, hammers or psychic blasts. WeLoveFine celebrates three of these ongoing rivalries with some new shirts featuring playbills for the brawl-to-end-all: Professor X vs. Magneto, Thor vs. Loki and Wolverine vs. Sabretooth.

I have it on good authority that they’re hoping to do more of them, so who would you like to see next? Spider-Man vs. Doctor Octopus? Captain America vs. The Red Skull? Howard the Duck vs. Dr. Bong? Share your ideas in the comments section.

I think the story would have played out a little differently hand Uncle Tony had been around.

Free Comic Book Day on Saturday was an immensely successful event which saw hundreds of signings, thousands of comics given away and untold happy faces on people getting their free comic books. It was great.

So, of course, we’re going to report on the two news-of-the-weird crimes that took place during the event.

In Portland, Maine, a drunken man from Westbrook assaulted a Ghostbuster and a Stormtrooper as they stood in line to get into Coast City Comics, on Congress Street. Police were forced to use a stun gun on Adam Barnes, 31, who threw the Stormtrooper to the ground and punched the Ghostbuster.

Wood, (the stormtrooper) who works at the information technology department at Southern Maine Community College in South Portland, said he was having fun at Free Comic Book Day before the assault.

“People were stopping and kids were dressed up in little superhero costumes,” said Wood.

Wood said someone grabbed him suddenly from behind. At first he thought it was a friend, but then the assailant started to choke him.

“My helmet fell off and he did get one good punch in,” said Wood.

He said he was then thrown to the ground.

Despite the extremely rare assault, and feel bad vibe, Wood said it would not deter him from participating in future FCBD galas.

MEANWHILE, on the other side of the nation, in Los Angeles, the line for the Golden Apple FCBD celebration was interrupted by a car crash and chase, as a yellow Jeep driven by a disheveled woman in a wig—but not in costume—peeled onto Melrose Avenues, pursued by several police cars. The vehicle stopped in front of the Golden Apple and the woman dashed for the door of the store as customers watched. Owner Ryan Liebowitz kept the door shut from the inside, where Geoff Johns was signing. Police cars and a chopper eventually converged on the woman, who was taken to the ground.

The stunned crowd hailed Liebowitz’s quick thinking. “I sort of instinctively held the door because it looked like a crazy person,” Liebowitz told the LA Times. “I said: Nobody can want free comic books that bad. There has to be a problem here,” adding later “Crazy things happen, but they can’t stop Free Comic Book Day. Everything is under control.”

A Kickstarter for a new graphic novel based on the songs of Jonathan Coulton, written by Greg Pak and drawn by Takeshi Miyazawa has done rather well for itself so far.

Raising $215,977 from its target of $39,000 from 5308 backers with 8 days to go, it has just delivered another surprise in the form of a stretch goal. And it’s a doozy.

Already Code Monkey Save World has jumped from a 60 page book to 96 pages, a new album of acoustic versions of the songs that inspired the book to be recorded and handed digitally to backers, a two page story included from Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey and… stickers, posters and stickers!

And now? If the Kickstarter reaches a cool quarter of a million, the creative team will create a new children’s book based around the Coulton song ‘The Princess Who Saved Herself’, which backers will now receive digitally.

“The Princess Who Saved Herself” tells the story of a tough, tomboy princess who encounters a scary dragon and creepy witch — and recruits them to play in her rock band. It’s a beautiful, fun, funny song, and with your help, it’s going to be a great kids’ book. If we make the stretch goal, the whole “Code Monkey Save World” creative team will shift over to work on the children’s book once the graphic novel is completed.

Here’s how it goes;

Click here to view the embedded video.

And a new incentive to get your own child drawn into the book for $500…

Have your child’s likeness drawn into the “Princess Who Saved Herself” children’s book as a supporting character! AND get a beautiful 11″ x 17″ print of the page that your child’s likeness appears on! The print will even be signed by Takeshi Miyazawa, Greg Pak, and Jonathan Coulton!

Sign up, if you haven’t (and who hasn’t?) right here.

Code Monkey Save World Now Brings Us A Princess Who Saves Herself

Although it might have seemed we were safe from another onslaught of political commercials until at least next spring, the Emperor’s Committee to Destroy May the 4th has released an attack ad that would make Karl Rove proud.

“Every year on May the 4th, citizens gather in celebration of Jedi, rebels and the power of the Force,” the narrator says solemnly. “The wear costumes, have parties and share pictures and greetings on their social networks. They say it’s fun, but what aren’t they telling you about May the 4th?”

A lot, it turns out. For starters, the rebels and Jedi are traitors, along with everyone who celebrates May the 4th. Oh, and wearing Jedi outfits is a crime under the Emperor’s Subversive Apparel Act, so cut that out (especially those embarrassing rat tails).

In case you’re foolish enough to disregard the warnings of the ad, StarWars.com has a guide to “How to Party Like an Ewok For May the 4th.”

A year away from the Internet, it turns out, will not fix your life

Warner Bros. Interactive is no stranger to the fighting battles about trademarks and copyrights in courts, but a case filed by two Internet meme creators has the industry giant in a role reversal. According to this NeoGAF thread Charles "Keyboard" Schmidt (Keyboard Cat meme) and Christopher "Nyan" Orlando Torres (Nyan Cat meme) filed a lawsuit against publisher Warner Bros.

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D&D and the devil: One man is trying to send up radical Christianity by taking it seriously

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Given the week’s events, looking at the above photo by Dynamite’s Nick Barrucci taken at the C2E2 bar—the creme de la creme of comics internet media, Newsarama’s Albert Ching, CBR’s Kiel Phegley, The Beat, ComicVine’s Tony G.Man Guerrero and IGN’s Joey Exposito—you might be forgiven for wondering which member of the comic press would soon have a big red X drawn over his or her face. It was that kind of week.

It started last Friday with AOL’s recently hired brand manager Susan Lyne calling staff from the music blogs and Comics Alliance and telling them their brands were done. According to those familiar with the call, the move was sudden and not everyone else at AOL was entirely pleased with shuttering the sites. Lyne’s background is in running Gilt and Martha Stewart, and despite helping get Lost on the air when she was head of ABC Entertainment, it’s not the kind of background that’s very nerd-friendly. Comics Alliance was performing well traffic wise, but Lyne is looking to rebuild AOL’s brands overall, mostly like with video.

So what’s left: the content and the people. Despite other reports that CA had four employees, there were three: eic Joe Hughes, and senior editors Andy Khouri and Caleb Goellner. Khouri confirmed that all three are still employed by AOL for a while, and even have options within the company.

Meanwhile, though CA alum have been approached by entities inside and outside comics to “keep the band together,” Khouri says but no decisions will be made for a while. The editorial team member have also been offered various individual efforts which they may be pursuing. “Staying together is not necessarily the immediate goal,” he told The Beat.

And what about all that content, including internet classics like The Big Sexy Problem with Superheroines and Their ‘Liberated Sexuality’ and FunkyWatch, a monthly roundup of the month’s most depressing Tom Batiuk strips. Efforts are underway to preserve the content, but getting anything away from a big slash and burn corporation that just shuts you down on a Friday afternoon without so much as an Arrevederci doesn’t sound like the most likely thing ever.

While the departure of Comics Alliance left fans despondent, Tuesday’s departure of MTV Geek editor Valerie Gallaher seemed like an ominous follow-up. However, I’m told that MTV Geek is a favorite of MTV Networks head Tom Akel, who IS a certified nerd-friendly executive (he formerly headed up his own comic book company, Heroverse). While the comics media dome lost—for the moment—a powerful personalty in Gallaher, MTV Geek remains a pretty standard movies/toys/Doctor Who nerd site, with the occasional comics news.

Among the most despondent over the week’s events was the person—or persons—known only as ComicsBlogger, who had been a twitter watchdog over the most prominent comics blogs for misdeed ranging from headline typos (sadly, a regular occurrence here) to more content based sins. With occasional antagonist Comics Alliance gone, like the super villain who only lives to thwart one superhero, ComicsBlogger was moved to shutdown, with the farewell Comics Journalism is dead and here’s why.:

1: There is no money in it. Page views and ad impressions are the conventional way to revenue for bloggers. To keep traffic up, the content must flow. 

2: But the content is poor. Much of the content comes from press releases. Be they comic book movie news, solicits, or approved interviews, most of it is pre-written and disseminated accordingly.

3: However, publishers don’t care. It’s all for naught. No matter how much traffic comic bloggers generate or how careful they are to stay within publishers’ good graces, they can’t compete with The New York Times or USA Today.

4: In fact, nobody cares. Original content, good reporting, and writing that goes beyond the surface of, say, attaching a quip at the end of a quote from another blog tend to get the least amount of traffic.

He had me until the fourth point. Original content is the ONLY thing that gets any traffic any more, even if it’s a roundup of “The 12 cutest photos of kittens being given mouth to mouth resuscitation.” The posts that get the most traffic at The Beat are not the tossed off links and images.

What made Comics Alliance so important and loved was that people got paid to write for it, and three people got paid enough to sit down and write as few as ONE post a day. The editorial mandate of CA as far as I could tell was almost ludicrously luxuriant by current internet standards: 12 blog posts a day by four or five people. (The CA feed stays in my RSS reader, and there it will stay until someday I shuffle it off to the dreaded “dead feed” folder.) In contrast, other folks I know who work for websites are expected to write a minimum of 12 posts a day BY THEMSELVES. CA’s editorials—by far the part of the site that I enjoyed most—were lengthy, researched and showed signs of being revised before posting, an extravagant bonus for 98% of internet journalism.

I don’t know if most other AOL blogs were set up on other similarly bountiful plans, but it was definitely a rarity in this day and age. (MTV Geek has a similar low post count but fewer writers. Robot 6 has a lot of [excellent] contributors, but I believe none of them are staffers, and my impression is that like almost all the good writers about comics, they have day jobs.)

If you’ve been reading any of the posts tagged “Meta” on The Beat this year, you know that fretting over the lack of remuneration for writing about comics—anywhere, not just the Internet—is a gnawing concern for many. While content farms have mostly been put out to pasture by Google, who needs content farms when you have three kids starting up their own entertainment blog to get free shit every day, and every network of niche sites has it’s “geek news” outlet. Content is still king, but gets buried in the slurry of SEO.

It’s getting harder and harder to just launch a website about comics or nerds, or anything—as this story about the AOL contraction points out, music websites are failing by the wayside and those are supposed to be hip and trendy. I hear about this venture or that one starting up and I’m like “Good luck.” The business model isn’t suddenly going to get any better. After all, Comics Alliance might have survived if it had been under the Huffington Post where NO ONE gets paid. Is that a choice at all?

Someone asked me this week “What does this mean for The Beat?” It means the same thing it does every night, Pinky. We’re going to take over the world. Not really—we do what we do, and try to do it okay. TRY, ComicsBlogger, Try. As usual when I go out in public, at C2E2 a lot of people were blowing smoke up my ass complimenting the site and the writers, enough to make me shake my fist at the heavens once more and cry “We shall never surrender!”

At least my general business model—owning my own content and staying independent—has meant that I’m still here. I don’t have to worry that some woman in a suit is going to look at my numbers on any random Friday and shut me down. I may not be able to pay my web developer enough to keep my site from crashing now and again, but by golly, I’m my own boss here, for better or worse. The other day Tom Spurgeon tweeted:

own your own media when and where you can; fuck asking permission to be allowed to do an awesome job

— Tom Spurgeon (@comicsreporter) April 29, 2013

Or as I like to put it; No one is ever going to care about your work more than you do.

Is blogging dead? As a business model, yes. As an obsession and vocation for some? No. Because at the end of they day we all just want three things: good sex, comfortable shoes and a warm place to be snarky. All things considered, blogging is probably the least expensive of the three.

Here's something you won't see every day: a video showing what a LEGO game version of AMC's hit series about making meth - Breaking Bad - might look like. The parody video created by animator Brian Anderson mixes the popular show's plot and characters with the humor of a LEGO video game with amusing results. On the YouTube page for his video, Anderson offers the following disclaimer:

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By Dre Grigoropol

A new store is opening up today, May 1st, 2013 in New York City’s West Village! This new store will be called Carmine Street Comics, due to its location on historic Carmine Street.  Edgar Allen Poe even lived in the area! This new shop is owned and operated by two former Manhattan Comics and More employees, Jon Gorga and Michael Novo, along with Mike McLeroy.

Mike Novo & Jon Gorga.  Photo by Dre Grigoropol.

This new shop will have a stronger focus on the indie comics community.  A part of their agenda is a “Store Front Artist Program”. This program will involve having a permanent rotation of  Artists in Residence, working in-house in the store’s micro-mini studio space. The shop’s grand opening is today May 1st, 2013 from 10 am to 10 pm.  The opening will feature an abundance of activities, such as local artists working in the store’s studio space all day, a signing at 6 PM by NYC-based writer-artist Brian Wood and his collaborator artist Declan Shalvey, as well as an earlier presentation at 2pm with Arlen Schumer, artist, comics art historian, and designer of the Carmine Street Comics logo. Carmine Street Comics is also participating in Free Comics Day on May 4^th 2013.

 

Owners: Jon Gorga, Mike Novo & Mike McLeroy (in Miami)
Company: Carmine Street Comics, LL
Address: 34 Carmine Street
New York City, NY 10014

To contact Carmine Street Comics:
info@carminestreetcomics.com (for business)
thecomicsguys@gmail.com (for customers)
www.carminestreetcomics.com

[Dre Grigoropol is an indie cartoonist and blogger. Her work can be viewed at www.dretime.org. Follow her on Twitter at @dretimecomics. Photos by Dre Grigoropol]

We've got the most adorable Batman and Robin (is that Carrie Kelley or Stephanie Brown?) happily thwarting a bank robbery by the Joker, Penguin, Mr. Freeze, Harley Quinn, and Poison Ivy.

This sweet (literally!) cake was created by Tracey of The Little Cherry Cake Company for a lucky young man named Harry, who got his name done up in that classic BIF POW style of the classic TV series.

[Source: That's Nerdalicious!]

Related Video:

Watch: Teen Titans Go! Season 1, Ep. 2 'Drivers Ed' Clip

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Follow @MTVGeek on Twitter and be sure to "like" us on Facebook for the best geek news about comics, toys, gaming and more! And be sure to follow @eddiewright86 for more fun!

Aussie games writer Alanah Pearce spent a month cataloguing the sexist abuse she receives just for doing her job. Then published it. It's sad reading.

Yeah, we’re gonna talk about it. Don’t get weird.

I realize that the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic contingent is old news for a lot of us, and that most of us have made up our minds one way or the other, so I want to make clear at the outset that I’m not making a case for or against, or even really trying to take part in whatever the conversation has become, because I don’t really know where the state of things has ended up.

[Read more]

But I do want to talk about the time and place in which this conversation is occurring, because I think it has major ramifications for society, generally but also specific to geek culture, and maybe clear out some cobwebs as far as what is going on and why we feel about it the way we do. Frankly, I’ve thought about writing about them all along, but waited for it to die down a bit because what I want to say isn’t that loud. It doesn’t rise to the volume of the usual fight.

In some corners of the internet—both super-deep genre geek spaces and more mainstream conversations—you get a near Godwin’s-level response whenever these guys are mentioned. Which means we have two topics to discuss here: First, what they’re actually doing and represent, and secondly, why they enrage people so effortlessly. (On the latter point, I’m not talking about their ubiquity and enthusiasm and repetitive behaviors, because that’s true of every geek group—run into a Browncoat lately?—but the fact of them existing at all.)

Consider first the fact that women have been people for about a hot minute. “Feminism” was not a word our grandparents had ever heard: The Pill was invented in our mothers’ lifetimes. Sit with that a second.

When we talk about time speeding up, we’re also talking about time dilation: Because we personally grew up in the first generation of men and women raised by feminists—or at least in an epoch where they’re given voice—we think this is the eternal state of things, but it is in fact blisteringly new.

So the first thing about Bronies is, they’re the second iteration of a very new experiment. You’re talking about boys raised on the Powerpuff Girls, on Pokémon, who see no reason to limit their avatars to classic male archetypes: Girls had Princess Leia, and boys had Han Solo. But the Brony generation gets both, and doesn’t see the problem. In fact, as fans they don’t even need human avatars: Anything with a face can represent a piece of you. That’s entirely new.

As a gay man, I can’t be the leader of a Boy Scout Troop. I have mixed feelings about this. But the reason for it is that we’re still used to looking at sexuality as a strict binary: Straight men, versus any- and everybody else. The fact is that a gay man is interested in men, and a straight man is interested in women. Pedophiles are interested in neither. But because we have a history—going back, technically, forever—of lumping everything into these two categories, straight men v. everybody else, that’s gonna be suspect.

So you take a male who is interested in a stereotypically girlish thing, and—presuming you know nothing about the actual show—you’re going to lump him into the “Other” category of sexuality. Then, too, it’s nominally a product for children, which indicates a pederastic sexual retardation that can only lead to abuses. Right away, they are two things: Perverts, and preoccupied with immature and childish iconography.

But back it up: Again, you’re talking about boys raised on Powerpuff Girls and Pokémon: Their nostalgia doesn’t prevent them taking an interest in this show, as it would us, any more than our nostalgia for Transformers, Star Wars and Ellen Ripley indicates a sex-mad statutory rapist of young girls. They don’t have the walls up that we do, so what for us would be looking over those walls—playing with dolls, what have you—and possibly would indicate something creepy about us.

But it’s not us we’re talking about, it’s them: Boys, raised by feminists to proceed as if those walls never existed. (Spoiler alert: They never did. We just took all this time to realize that.) And it’s true that, like with any kid-stuff enthusiasm, there is a demonstrative aspect to Bronyism: “Look at me liking this kid thing, look at me liking this girl thing.” But from their side of the wall, it’s a point of pride, just as with any other kiddie-stuff nostalgia performance. “Look at me watching The Muppet Show on Netflix, look at me complaining about the Star Wars prequels.”

But all of that is reactive, all of that points to the feminist and patriarchal concerns we just said didn’t matter. So then what is it they’re actually enjoying, when you’re not there to gape? Well, everything I’ve seen indicates that the show is doing its stated job. Remove the pink and purple marketing tricks, remove the toys altogether even, and focus on the primary product: The show.

Which is about a loner, happier with books and solitude than the company of others, overly intellectual, nearly terrified of social contact, who is tasked with—before taking on an adult leadership role—is tasked with exploring other states of thought, other ways of being, other kinds of life. The express task of the show, the lead’s actual job, is to cross the gap from Self to Other, to understand and accept others as being different from Self and acceptable anyway.

But the obvious appeal doesn’t end there: The protagonist is introduced to a cast of characters drawn from the most terrifying archetypes of our young lives. The Jock who excels in sports and physical activities, the Stylish Popular Slytherin who is beautiful and always composed, and so on. And at every turn, we’re shown the positive and open sides of those character types we’ve been trained to hate and fear: The popular girl has affection and insecurity to spare, the Jock is more obsessed with having fun and testing herself against herself to mean you any harm.

Sound like anybody you know? Most of us call this “socialization,” and in today’s focus on things like the autism spectrum and ADHD-enhanced oppositional behavior, it’s probably the highest-minded such program since, I don’t know, ShirtTails attempted to get us to communicate our emotions rather than bottling them up. At the end of each story, the lead character is called upon to verbalize her findings—literally, write a letter to the Godhead figure on the show—and demonstrate how the trust she’s bravely used to cross the gap between Self and Other has once again helped her understand the truth: That Friendship Is, in fact, Magic.

I want my kid watching that show. I want my kid watching the heck out of that show, boy or girl. We’re only going to need more tools of connection in our toolbox as the ways we communicate with each other proliferate. There is no room for fear in the connected world.

 

But that isn’t the whole story, because we’re not talking about kids here but adults. And for a lot of Bronies, at least in the early days, the function above is not only enjoyable and comforting, but actually represents those tools in an engaged way. These are functional approaches to making friends, making connections, finding love, eradicating loneliness. Tools in the toolbox.

I cried, a little bit, at an interview in which one Brony said—with full knowledge of what’s implied here—that he’d learned more about emotional and social life from one season of the show than from thirty years of living.

Now, I can imagine a viewpoint that would find that funny, or pathetic, or “gay” (or even actually gay), but it’s nearly impossible to understand it. Because that is, to me—a person who has devoted my life to staking out new ways to talk about our personal connection to media and how it influences culture-in-general—just about the best thing ever.

In the same geek community that lauds parents whose children beg for non-gender-specific EZ Bake ovens, or mods classic video games to contain female protagonists, it blows my mind that we react to these guys with such vitriol, such kneejerk horror. It speaks a lot to where we are, at the beginning of the world’s chapter called “Feminism,” and to where we still need to talk, on the default-straight-male conversation the internet is slowly letting go. In the end, they’re doing more work toward the future simply by rising to the occasion—both as fans and in the geek world—and demonstrating what a generation actively engaged in the project of evolving looks like.

It wouldn’t be the first time the advance scouts looked like monsters to the rest of us—generally that’s exactly what happens, when a social change comes about—but to me, they’re incredibly beautiful future-mutants, men whose brand of masculine evolution is so unrecognizable some of us think of them as ex-men.

Check back with me in about twenty years, and we’ll see who was on the right side of that one.

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Jacob Clifton is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, Bates Motel, and Defiance for Television Without Pity.com. Check out jacobclifton.com, Twitter and Facebook.

In 2005, Don Bluth and producing partner Gary Goldman donated their animation archives to Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). The substantial collection includes all the artwork they had saved beginning with Banjo the Woodpile Cat in 1979, as well as administrative and legal documents, scripts, unproduced concepts and publicity materials.

SCAD is currently on a years-long mission to process and catalog the material so that it will be accessible to researchers and students. They’ve posted a generous sampling of the materials on the Don Bluth Collection website including pencil tests from Space Ace, storyboards from The Secret of NIMH, and character designs from Thumbelina. Even if you’re like me, and find Bluth’s work to be mechanical and generic, it’s hard to deny the immense value of preserving an archive of this scale and making it available to future generations.

(via Michael Sporn’s Splog)

Bong Joon-Ho has yet to make a bad film, and I don’t know why he’d start now. This year will see the release of his first picture in the English language, Snow Piercer, and I’m excited about it bringing his work to a really wide audience.

Here’s the first footage from the film, mixed with some behind the scenes stuff. It’s all too short, but you’ll get a look at some of the cast, including Chris Evans, John Hurt and Tilda Swinton.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thanks to Rama’s Screen for the YouTube embed.

The film is based on a French comic book that I tracked down simply because Joon-Ho was making this movie. I wasn’t disappointed by what I saw. In short, the story is set in the next ice age, and almost entirely on a train – the Snow Piercer of the title. The structure of a train, and the class system we know that trains use, makes for both drama and satire, and I’m thinking they’ve got the makings of something special here.

The post First Footage From Snow Piercer – This Might Be 2013′s Most Exciting Sci-Fi Movie appeared first on Bleeding Cool Comic Book, Movies and TV News and Rumors.