So this Watchmen prequel thing is happening, finally, because god knows prequels always turn out great, and it's only been rumored for about 50 years. (Okay, fine. Since 1986.) I really like the Times' story about all of this, mostly because of these two chunks, including the official response from Watchmen writer Alan Moore:

Mr. Moore, who has disassociated himself from DC Comics and the industry at large, called the new venture “completely shameless.”

Speaking by telephone from his home in Northampton, England, Mr. Moore said, “I tend to take this latest development as a kind of eager confirmation that they are still apparently dependent on ideas that I had 25 years ago.”

And:

The novelist Jonathan Lethem admitted in a telephone interview to “an instinctive, protective scorn” of any effort to revisit Watchmen.

“That story was absolutely consummate and an enunciation as complete as any artwork in any realm,” he said. “And it’s just inviting a disgrace, basically, to try to extend any aspect of it.”

Yet, Mr. Lethem added, the referential nature of the original Watchmen—which was inspired by earlier superhero characters and drew upon a grab bag of influences, including the Bible, the sonnets of Shelley and “The Threepenny Opera” to tell its story—begged for the graphic novel to be reinterpreted.

“In the greater scheme of things,” he said, “there’s an ecological law, almost, that it ought to be.”

They're both right. Of course there shouldn't be any more Watchmen stories, and of course it was inevitable there would be, whether Moore or Dave Gibbons or God Ozymandias wants them to exist or not.

Continue reading »

Because I am the sort of person who has a favorite comics publisher logo (it's this one), I'll note that DC Comics' possible new logo—

—is significantly worse than their swooshy last one (which always reminded me of Dairy Queen), and certainly not as good as the ol' "BULLET COMING AT YOUR FACE."

And now you know how I feel about that. FYI, I am also available to discuss my deeply held beliefs regarding the various logos of Universal Pictures. I have absolutely no art, design, or art design experience whatsoever.

Via ComicsAlliance, via The Beat, via the motherfuckin' United States Patent and Trademark Office.

It's always interesting to see local bestseller lists, to get a sense of how the readers in our city actually spend their money (and local year-end best-of lists are pretty good too, right??). On Sunday, Floating World Comics' Jason Leivian released a list of the year's top sellers. He writes:

I’ve been looking forward to putting this 2011 bestseller list, mainly out of curiosity. It’s been a strange year for print and comics. The new Kindle has a miniature incinerator which seems a bit aggressive. Yet our sales were up from last year. The business is still growing. I’ve noticed that customers are buying less monthly comics, but trade and graphic novel sales remain strong. Sales are also great for deluxe hardcovers and expensive omnibus collections. People will invest in quality.

And the top three sellers by dollar amount:

1. INCAL CLASSIC COLLECTION HC (Humanoids)
2. HABIBI (Pantheon)
3. MADMAN ATOMICA HC (Image)

But the whole thing is worth a read, if you're interested in comics and/or independent bookselling

Things from Another World, 4311 NE Sandy
tonight, 7-10 pm, free

• Via
• PAUL TOBIN A man who wishes he got free Taco Bell for life.

We've interviewed Portland comics writer Paul Tobin before—right around the time of the most recent Stumptown Comics Fest, in fact, to mark the release of Gingerbread Girl, the well-received book he created with his wife, artist Colleen Coover. But that was back before comics news/gossip site Bleeding Cool declared Tobin to be "the most widely read superhero writer today." According to Bleeding Cool,

He writes the Marvel Adventures books for Marvel, their number-one subscription titles, that get republished all across Europe and South America on newsstands.

He wrote one of the Golden Grahams Justice League comics with a 3.5 million print run.

He writes stacks of Marvel custom comics sold with toys, and for commercial promotions that have million-string print runs, such as for recent Taco Bell promotions.

Now that Tobin, who's also written books like Spider-Girl, Black Widow, and Super Hero Squad, is—officially, indisputably—the most powerful man in all of comics, we figured it was time to check back in on him. If, that is, he hadn't become so famous that he couldn't be bothered to respond to my emails. But he totally responded to my emails in a very timely manner, so here's the interview.

MERCURY: Comics site Bleeding Cool recently suggested you might be "the most widely read superhero writer today." Do you think they're right?
PAUL TOBIN: Egotistically, OF COURSE I think they're right. Between having comics in Taco Bell (big distribution!) and in General Mills cereal boxes (BOOM! and THAT'S a few million copies) I write the Marvel Adventures Spider-Man comics, which is the number-one subscriber comic, and which goes out all over the world. Now... reasonably, I'd have to admit guys like Brian Bendis are easily more widely read. Brian, I believe, writes 67 comics per month.

Related: Have you let all this power go to your head? Are you a total asshole now?
I'm a little bit thrown by this question. I mean, I kind of already was a total asshole, so nothing much has changed. Now, I'm just an asshole in cleaner pants.

Continue reading »

I'm late on this—the news broke this morning—but key Batman creator Jerry Robinson died yesterday. Via the LA Times:

Jerry Robinson, a pioneer in the early days of Batman comics and a key force in the creation of Robin the Boy Wonder; the Joker; Bruce Wayne’s butler, Alfred; and Two-Face, died Wednesday afternoon in New York City. He was 89.

Like entirely too many comics creators, Robinson never got the credit he deserved. Blockquote again:

Working with [Bob] Kane—who was a decade older—opened up new frontiers for the gifted young artist, but Kane took the credit when Batman became a sensation. It was Robinson, who started working on Batman in 1939 with Kane and Bill Finger, who came up with the name “Robin” for Batman’s sidekick, and he was the creator or key contributor to the first and formative appearances of enduring characters such as the Joker, Two-Face and Alfred, Bruce Wayne’s butler. As comics historians now credit writer Bill Finger with co-creating the Caped Crusader, they also acknowledge that the polished, high-verve style of Robinson is clearly evident in many issues that do not bear his name.

Batman wouldn't be Batman without the Joker—a hero is only as good as their villain, and the Joker's one of the best bad guys in comics. Despite Robinson's other comics contributions—some of them, believe it or not, not bat-related—it'll be the Joker that sticks around the longest, in comic after comic, and movie reboot after movie reboot.

Today in "THIS BOOK IS HUGE": DC Comics' The New 52 Omnibus, a hardcover that collects all 52 first issues of DC's line-wide reboot. Mercury Arts Editor Alison Hallett dropped this monstrosity my desk yesterday, splintering my desk in half, sending a THUDD throughout the entire office, and rupturing space-time as we knew it.

This thing seems both ridiculously complete (considering how mediocre many of the "New 52" books were, I can't imagine anyone feeling the need to own the first issue of every single one) and ridiculously incomplete (since these are all just the first issues—the starts of stories—none of these issues really stand on their own). That's not to say there aren't good, even great stories in here—Grant Morrison and Rags Morales' Action Comics, Scott Snyder and Yanick Paquette's Swamp Thing, and Jeff Lemire and Travel Foreman's Animal Man were all smart, great, and fun—but you're also getting stuff like Catwoman, Voodoo, and Red Hood and the Outlaws, so as the collection as a whole goes, it's pretty uneven. It's safe to say your mileage, from issue to issue, will vary pretty widely.

Then again, it weighs like 10 pounds, it's like three inches thick (over 1200 pages), and it could easily be used to maim, or even kill, a small child. So that's something. It goes on sale on December 13 for $150.

• From League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century: 1969

Portland- and Atlanta-based publisher Top Shelf's offered a few digital comics in the past, but with their new iOS app powered by Comixology (a company that, considering it also run the apps for Marvel and DC, is quickly becoming a sort of digital Diamond), they're finally offering a robust chunk of their comics digitally.

As with most digital comics, the prices seem way too high to me—if I'm dropping $15 on From Hell or Essex County, then I'm gonna track down a decent used hard copy—but there are a few solid deals, like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century: 1910 for $2 (and Century: 1969 for $5) and Gingerbread Girl, by Portlanders Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover, for $9.

The app for iDevices is here, and Top Shelf also notes they're going to get you everywhere else, too, with selected books "now available through Comixology, Graphicly, Comics+ by iVerse, Apple iBooks, and Google Books. More titles will continue to roll out on every platform in the days to come, including the Nook and Kindle Fire devices, as well as the Diamond Digital program which partners with comic shops."

So who else are we waiting on to go digital? At this point, the only big comics publisher I'm wishing had more of a digital presence is another local one, Oni Press, which has some offerings on Comixology, but nothing current. I'd guess, though, that within a year or so, we'll see just about everyone offering their comics digitally at the same time they're available in comic shops.

Whenever I'm feeling down I like to come up with business propositions. This business proposition revolves around my desire to roll with a pug on a faux bear skin carpet. The problem is that I don't want to OWN a pug. And PEOPLE are always so suspicious when you clasp your arms around their pet and cavort around the Mercury office. Anyway, we don't even have a faux bear skin rug or Steve certainly doesn't let us use it.

I can't believe Portland doesn't already have this:

• Suzette Smith