Archive Page 2203

May 2024

PUBLIC DOMAIN BLUES

Public Domain Mickey Mouse to battle Public Domain Winnie the Pooh

Story at Gizmodo

Marvel pledging ten issue minimums on new runs? – Bleedingcool

Probably a good idea, with series sometimes getting cancelled after far fewer issues there's not a lot of chance for an audience to build for an unknown or unique title.

Seventy years ago when the comic book industry was almost destroyed by Dr. Fredric Wertham – IGN

Global comic book market estimated at $15 billion+ – Marketplace

Kirby at DC

After his breakup with Stan in 1970, Kirby had gone over to DC, where publisher Carmine Infantino had promised him artistic and editorial freedom. Kirby created several titles for the company, including the acclaimed Fourth World Line – The New Gods, Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, The Forever People, and Mister Miracle. However, it soon became apparent that Kirby, for all his mastery of plots and pencils, needed an editor, someone to restrain his more outlandish impulses and to clean up his clunky dialogue. At Marvel, Stan had fulfilled this function in what had been a near-perfect arrangement for both men until their later difficulties . On their own, neither creator would ever again match the specific, accessible brilliance of their combined efforts during the formative years of the Marvel Age. Kirby's early-1970s DC work – raw, frenzied, laden with metaphor but occasionally baffling – underscored that point. Increasingly, DC's editors meddled with Kirby's titles, rankling the veteran artist to the point that when it came time to re-up his contract in 1975, he was already headed back to his former employer."

– Stan Lee - The Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book, by Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon, page 178, Chicago Review Press, 2003.

One of the biggest comic book publishers in the USA is the New York City Public Schools – Forbes

Free Comic Book Day this Saturday - what is it and what books will there be?

Story at Daytona Beach News Journal

The Free Comic Book Day Website

New look of TMNT reboot at IDW – Hollywood Reporter MSN

Batman Arkham game into VR

Story at Kotaku

Unfortunately they're not talking about Jack Russell

"Werewolf Billionaire CEO Husbands Are Taking Over Hollywood" – Rolling Stone

Zack Snydering Batman and Superman – Fandomwire

Snyder’s statement implied that Batman’s no-killing rule and Superman’s pacifist ideas were inconsistently depicted in the comics that served as source material for his films. Hence, Snyder indirectly hinted that his take on the characters wasn’t drastically different from the source material.

100 Comic Book Store Free-Comic-Book-Day events

Story at Bleedingcool

Marvel characters based on "real people" – MSN Movie Web

Here comes the Deadpool/Wolverine movie and the expectation for it to shake-up the MCU

Story at Geek Culture

History lesson: what caused Batman to be given an increased role in the 1960s Justice League? – CBR Comic Book Resources

"The state of the industry"

Story at Comicsbeat

Comics sales are either "returning to normal" or plummeting depending on who you ask..."

Why are superhero films failing? Shorter attention spans, says Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo

Story at Boundingintocomics

There's more than just Amazon: buying comic books online – Android Police

Scholastic and Manga – Publishers Weekly

Comic book store in Sioux City gets donation box stolen – KCAU Sioux City

Last Friday was a normal day for StarFighter Comics until a man came in and took money that was meant for a charitable cause.

"We were busy working, and he grabbed the box and ran out the door," co-owner Justin Knecht said. "I tried to chase him, but 20-something versus 40-something doesn’t really work, so I didn’t quite catch him unfortunately."

With the donation money thieved, the store decided on a different way to raise funds for a hospital, details in the story.

May edition of Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly Previews catalog: EC Comics and Hello Darkness

Story at Bleedingcool

$1.8 million for Batman #1

Radio show talks to Comic Connect's Vincent Zurzolo at WGN Radio

Deadpool / Wolverine

Killing Catwoman, again – Screenrant

...Catwoman #64 by Tini Howard and Carmine Di Giandomenico showcases Catwoman's most devastating death yet as she crashes from space into Earth, burning up again and again before making final impact. This might rank up there with some of the most horrifying deaths in DC Comics history, not just in Catwoman's shortening lifespan."

Kagurabachi Manga by Takeru Hokazono makes sales record – Comicbook

DC's The Penguin is ending with twelfth issue – Comicbook

"One of the most important jobs in comics" – the new Senior Outreach Lead at Kickstarter – Comicsbeat

"Marvel’s Newest Covers Celebrate Every Hero and Villain in 60 Years of X-MEN Comics ...from the iconic to the obscure"

Story at The Nerdist

Predicting a $594 Billion Collectibles Market for 2024 – Yahoo Finance

Owner of Dark Horse Comics, Embracer Group, plans to split itself into three separate businesses – Comicbook

The continuing drumbeat of closures

Cosmic Comics Games & Collectibles in Bellevie, Illinois is closing – Belleview News Democrat

...Dyer said that revenue for 2023 was down quite a bit. The first quarter of 2024 was down even more. Dyer feels that the area never fully bounced back from COVID, and many people aren't able to spend like they could before."

DC Comics July 2024 releases – Gamesradar

The hot market for vintage comics

Story at New Atlas

Was Batman originally inspired by a vintage photo of an old man in a sort've bat cowl? – MSN Snopes

A vintage 1892 photograph of a bearded butcher, Bill Smith, in a bat mask, was the inspiration for the character of Batman?"

Snopes pulls apart the claim looking at the idiosyncratic parts, researches the "Batbarbone" of 2011, and also remarks upon the 1920 Douglas Fairbanks The Mark of Zorro and the 1930 movie The Bat Whispers and The Shadow radio show. (But no one talks about The Scarlet Pimpernel novel by Baroness Orczy of 1905.)

Who killed Kamala Khan? MCU Boss Kevin Feige – Boundingintocomics

Feige wanted the character brought "in-line" with the movie/TV version

Bob Beerbohm obituary – The Comics Journal

Bob was a scholar in the best sense of the word. He was a vast font of knowledge of the history of comics going back to the 19th century, if not earlier, and broke a trail in the research of many subjects (19th century humor books, the early comic strips, the early comic books, underground comics) that countless other researchers have followed along..."

Marvel's July comics coming out – Comicsbeat

👀 What’s behind Stephen Goldblatt, the cinematographer, while filming #BatmanForever?#ReleaseTheSchumacherCut pic.twitter.com/ayTqt7e0wc

— RTSchumacherCut 💚 (@CutSchumacher) April 18, 2024

Retailers getting copies of Marvel's Blood Hunt #1 whether they order it or not – Bleedingcool

James Gunn and the Superman anniversary – MSN Cinemablend

ComicsPRO Survey results show 2023 had drop-off in sales at comic book shops – Publishers Weekly [behind paywall]

Viz and Marvel going into partnership – Comicbook

Alex Ross exhibit opens at the North Dakota Heritage Center – Minot Bismark

The death of Bob Beerbohm

His Facebook posts were a lot of fun to read, full of stories about comic book retailing history and the personalities of the aritsts and writers who made up the producers of the comic book past.

Comic Book Shop Pioneer And Historian Bob Beerbohm Had Died At 71 – One of the earliest comic book retailers and comic historian Bob Beerbohm has died, from cancer, at the age of 71. RIP – Bleedingcool

Robert Beerbohm, Pioneering Comic Book Retailer and Historian, Dies at 71 – NY Times

Bob Beerbohm on Wikipedia – Wikipedia

AMAZON - JLA 1 Paperback - 616 Pages - by Grant Morrison, Mark Millar, Brian Augustyn, Tom Peyer, Todd Dezago – Amazon

DC Comics presents the legendary 1990s series, collected for the first time with all accompanying JLA mini-series and one-shots! Experience the complete epic, launched by Grant Morrison and Howard Porter, that changed the DC Universe forever.

Mark Millar has a plan to publish public domain Superman comics by himself in 2033 – Bleedingcool

I'm sure he's not the only one with these ideas

... last year, he appeared to be negotiating with DC in public, saying "My suggestion is that if ONE of these companies swaps that 2% royalty for a FIFTY-FIFTY split with the creative team on all sales over, say, 60,000 copies they will send a bolt of electricity through the industry and bring in the most commercial freelancers in the biz again."

... those negotiations may have hit the skids. Mark Millar has just tweeted "I'd been thinking about writing a Superman story late summer, but Superman goes public domain in 9 years so I can write my stories in 5 years time & pay the best artists in the industry to draw them so it's all banked and ready for me to publish myself in 2033."

Profile of Anthony Marques and the Joe Kubert art school – Uproxx

Anthony and Jackie own and operate The Kubert School now, taking it over in 2019. They also run Dewey’s Comic City, a Madison, New Jersey comic staple founded in 1991 by Dan Veltre. Anthony and Jackie bought Dewey’s in 2017 as Veltre was retiring, expanding into another side of the comic book industry after Anthony spent years as an artist and editor at Dynamite. With both Dewey’s and The Kubert School, they just couldn’t accept the idea that these places might go away..."

Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 4? – Digital Trends

So why are we still talking about Spider-Man 4 a whopping 17 years after Spider-Man 3? Because in 2021, Spider-Man: No Way Home brought back both Maguire and Garfield opposite their MCU counterpart, Tom Holland, for a smash hit at the box office. Ever since then, fans have tried to will Spider-Man 4 and The Amazing Spider-Man 3 into existence to continue Maguire and Garfield’s respective Spidey franchises. That’s why we’re sharing everything you need to know about about Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 4.

Rare set of pre-war Batman books to auction – Yahoo News

...Forty-eight Hall of Fame baseball players, Batman and Superman comic books and hundreds of other trading cards are a part of the Harry W. O’Brien collection being sold by Paul McInnis Auctioneers May 4..."

Auctioneer's Web Site – The Live Virtual Webcast Auction will be held Saturday, May 4, at 11:00 a.m

"The Superhero Movie Is Dying" – Yahoo News – but as this article says, here comes video game franchises!

Transformers One animation coming with Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson and Laurence Fishburne. And there's also new toys to back it up – Superherohype

Get into the Public Domain archives that are online at Graphic Chatter

Original page May 25, 2024