Digital comics updates and experiments

The Z-Cult FM story continues, with the site receiving and complying with requests from DC Comics and Top Cow to remove all trackers to scans of their comics.

Top Cow comics have been available for legal download at Direct2Drive for a while now, while it’s safe to assume some kind of service for DC’s print comics will be coming at some point.

But it’s interesting to watch this blow up now, as the timing is strangely random. Glenn Hauman over at ComicMix talks about meeting with execs at DC about 2½ years ago in which he laid out an online strateg for the company. The result is telling:

They thanked me for my time, but suggested that a certain higher-up at DC would never go for it-- even though there would have been more than enough support from the online advertising market and from their corporate parents, and even though it would have been an obvious source of revenue that would have benefitted DC's bottom line and supported all sorts of new comic initiatives.

He also recalls meeting with Marvel more than six years ago to discuss building an infrastructure for managing the company’s assets, both digital and not.

Meanwhile, “High Moon” won the first competition at Zuda Comics, which is currently “between competitions.”

Artist Colleen Doran writes about her experience trying to get Marvel’s new Digital Comics Unlimited service to work after signing up for it.

After poking around on the site at a few of the free samples on the site this morning, I was intrigued enough to give it a shot for a month or two to see if I will actually read a lot of comics in this format. While Doran had trouble, I had a surprisingly nice experience reading through a few comics such as The New Mutants Special Edition #1 (one of my all-time favorite superhero comics), the Ed Brubaker-Steve Epting Captain America #1 and Fantastic Four #251.

After a bit of experimenting, I found the “Smart Panel” mode was the easiest way to move quickly through the book, though there were some issues that I hope will be addressed: For some reason, the bottom of the page was sometimes cut off by the frame in the browser, forcing me to switch to another mode to read some balloons in this part of the page. There also were some strange zooms, especially on pages with large vertical panels. In some instances, I could click on part of the panel and the browser would zoom in, making the text easy to read and the art nice and big; but sometimes it didn’t and there wasn’t an easy work around aside from switching to another reading mode. (It’ll be interesting to see if Marvel will adapt the way it makes print comics to make them work more easily in digital formats.)

The comics themselves looked very nice and the way the browser zooms in on the art displays it at a much larger size than you see in the print version. In some instances, it gave otherwise small panels more of an impact and got me to see things I hadn’t seen in print. The art on the older books was sharp looking, keeping the classic color scheme of the era.

So far, I’m pretty happy with it. As long as it always works at least this easily, it’s definitely preferable to the experience of using a reader to look at cbr or cbz files, which usually require tons of scrolling and zooming to get through a page. My few attempts to try to read something in thsi format were frustrating enough for me to just drop the idea of reading books that way. I look forward to experimenting further and seeing if my interest in reading comics this way will hold up after the novelty wears off a bit.

Pics and clips: 'Dark Knight,' 'Watchmen'

U.K. film mag Empire gives us a new glimpse at Heath Ledger's version of Joker in next summer's "The Dark Knight." Here's the image in question:

In case you haven't seen it, here's a video clip from the IMAX site on the film's being shot in that supersize format.

Over in "Watchmen" land, Zack Snyder posts on the film's production blog some info about the backlot set built to replicate the look of New York in the graphic novel. A few goodies here include a shot of the newsstand reader poring over the latest issue of The Black Freighter and the must-have Nixon re-election poster. The page also includes larger versions of the images below.

Marvel, DC bite into BitTorrent

Now that both DC and Marvel have jumped into the digital comics space – albeit with completely different approaches – they’ve been forced to address the issue of comics piracy.

Working together, Marvel and DC sent legal letters last week to the operators of Z-Cult FM, a popular site for BitTorrent trackers that allow users to download comics, including the most recent issues of those publishers’ titles. According to posts at the site, the letters gave the site three days to act before the publishers would take further legal action.

The site, which is based outside the United States, has its own policy for allowing publishers to request their material be removed. After verifying the letters were authentic, the site says it agreed to take down all Marvel trackers from its site within seven days. While the site has confirmed the letter from DC is authentic, they have, as of this writing, not posted any reports of further talks. In lieu of any talks with DC, Z-Cult FM has decided not to allow trackers for any new DC titles until the book has been on sale in comic shops for 30 days.

The publishers also went after a prolific uploader of scanned comics named “Oroboros,” who decided to stop using Usenet forums, though will continue to “scan and release into the wild like I did a year ½ ago.”

You can be sure there will be more of this going on as each company gets further and further into the digital comics realm. There already are some people reporting easy workarounds for saving the hi-res images from Marvel’s new Digital Comics Unlimited site to your hard drive.

How far Marvel and DC will go is unclear. It seems unlikely they would go after end users who download comics the way the RIAA has with music downloads. But going after trackers and the sites that host them is futile, too, as there are already so many copies out there of pretty much everything those companies have published and no shortage of sites willing to post trackers that are beyond the legal jurisdiction of U.S. IP law.

As with music and movies, the best plan would be to make legit copies of comics available so easily and so inexpensively that it’s just easier to buy them than it is to steal them. But given how long it’s taken both companies to get this far, that’s unlikely to come along any time soon, especially with DC still not making any of its vast library available online in any way or at any price.

Eisner Awards judges announced

Jackie Estrada, the administrator for the annual Will Eisner Comic Book Industry Awards, has announced the judges for the 2008 honors, which will be presented at Comic-Con Intl. in San Diego on Friday, July 25.

As usual, the judges are pulled from various areas of the industry, including comics retailers, librarians, journalists, creators and industry people.

This year's judges are: John Davis, director of pop culture markets for bookstore wholesaler Bookazine; sci-fi author, book critic and comics writer Paul Di Filippo; Atom! Freeman, owner of the Brave New World Comcs store in Santa Clarita, Calif.; Entertainment Weekly writer Jeff Jensen; and Eva Volin, supervising children's librarian for the Alameda Free Library in Alameda, Calif.

Full details on the judges are in the press release, following in the jump.

Eisner Awards Judges Named for 2008

The judging panel has been announced for the 2008 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards. This blue-ribbon committee will be selecting the nominees to appear on the Eisner Awards ballot. This year's judges, chosen by Awards Administrator Jackie Estrada, are:

* John Davis, director of pop culture markets for Bookazine Company, a longtime wholesaler to the bookstore market. Davis joined Bookazine in 2005, where he has spearheaded Popazine, their pop culture, graphic novels, and manga program for retailers. Davis is a 20-year veteran of the book industry, including stints at Central Park Media and Koen Book Distributors. Over the last decade he has especially enjoyed learning more about graphic novels and manga and offering retailers advice and encouragement to embrace the category. In that capacity he has served as a consultant and contributor to ForeWord magazine’s Comique graphic novel supplement. He was also co-founder and co-organizer of the Firecracker Alternative Book Awards.

* Paul Di Filippo, professional SF author with over 25 books to his credit. In comics he has written scripts for such characters as Marvel's Doc Samson and DC's Deadman. His major foray into scripting has been the Alan Moore-approved sequel Top 10:  Beyond the Farthest Precinct. In addition, Di Filippo is a long-time critic and reviewer whose work appears frequently in such venues as The Washington Post and The Barnes and Noble Review.

* Atom! Freeman, co-owner of Brave New World Comics in Santa Clarita, California. Atom! has worked as a comics shop sales clerk, a sales rep for Fantagraphics Books, and an organizer for comics events. He and his wife Portlyn have owned and operated Brave New World for eight years. The Freemans regularly participate in literacy and reading programs at libraries and schools, offer courses for children of all ages on how to draw their own books, and contribute frequently to the local Toy Library and programs run by their county's Child and Family Services bureau.

* Jeff Jensen, senior writer, Entertainment Weekly. A lifelong comic book fan and occasional comic book writer himself (X Factor, Teen Titans), Jensen has been reviewing graphic novels and monthly comics for EW since 2000. He has written EW cover stories on Sin City, Superman Returns, the Star Wars prequels, the Harry Potter franchise, Lost, Heroes, and many other movies and TV shows. But perhaps his favorite assignment was reporting and writing an oral history of the groundbreaking comic book series Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.

* Eva Volin, supervising children's librarian for the Alameda Free Library in Alameda, CA. In addition to being a member of the American Library Association/Young Adult Library Services Association's Great Graphic Novels for Teens committee, Volin has helped create or develop graphic novel collections in several libraries. She also writes manga reviews for Library Journal's Xpress Reviews, ICv2 Guide to Manga, and Robin Brenner's NoFlyingNoTights.com (a graphic novel review website designed for teens and those who work with teens), and she has recently begun reviewing light novels for MangaCast.net.

    Estrada will be sending out the 2008 Call for Entries in mid-December. The judges will meet in early April to select the nominees that will go on the Eisner Awards ballot. The nominees will then be voted on by professionals in the comic book industry, and the results will be announced in a gala awards ceremony on Friday, July 25, at Comic-Con International: San Diego.
    The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards are presented under the auspices of Comic-Con International: San Diego. Further information on the Eisner Awards can be found at http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci_eisners_main.shtml
    Anyone wanting information on submitting works for the judges’ consideration can e-mail Estrada: jackiee@mindspring.com.

Review: Dan Dare #1

Creators: Garth Ennis, writer; Gary Erskine, artist

Virgin Comics, 32 pages, color, $2.99. On sale Nov. 28.

So? It’s tough for those of us who didn’t grow up in England and don’t know much about Dan Dare to truly evaluate whether this revival is true to the classic installments of Frank Hampson’s adventure pilot. As a single issue, this is promising start to what looks like a good, old-fashioned sci-fi space romp. This issue re-introduces Dan Dare, who’s lured out of a retirement where he dreams of the Green and Pleasant Land of Yore and back to a world where America’s been bombed back to the Stone Age and British space forces face a new threat from the alien Treen. As an archetypal British flying ace, Dare is an appealing hero even with a few years on him, still wearing his 1940s style leather pilot’s jacket. Ennis does a good job of setting things up here, but what will be more fun will be to see how Ennis’ usual sly humor and penchant for big stuff happening will play out. Erskine is a terrific choice for the art. It seems unlikely that die-hard fans of the character will be doing backflips over this first issue — it’s just too heavy on the exposition to really tell how the space stuff everyone wants to see will work out over the next six issues of the series — but it seems to have enough of the right tone and care put into it to be worth sticking with. Grade: B+

Review: Dock Walloper #1

Creators: Edward Burns, creator; Jimmy Palmiotti, writer; Siju Thomas, artist

Virgin Comics, 32 pages, color, #2.99. On sale Nov. 28.

So? If you like Martin Scorsese’s recent films ("Gangs of New York," "The Aviator"), this is the comic for you. Based on an idea by actor-director Ed Burns and written by Jimmy Palmiotti (is there anything he doesn’t either write or ink?), this is a gangster tale set in the 1920s about a down on his luck outcast named John Smith, whose enlarged right hand makes him a power to be reckoned with on the mob-infested docks of New York City. Along with Bootsy, his African-American friend from the orphanage, they arrive in the city and attract the attention of mobster Mugsy and his boss, Gentleman Jim. The script is lively enough and Smith and Bootsy are quite likeable, even as it’s obvious they’re going to end up in over their heads before this five-issue miniseries wraps up. It’s solid entertainment, though not as epic as its apparent inspirations. The art is clear and attractive, aided by some really nice color work that evokes the time and place without being overdone. Grade: B+

Comics doc screens at Bug's reopening

The film "Independents: A Documentary Guide for the Creative Spirit" will screen Sunday at 5 p.m. at The Comic Bug shop in Manhattan Beach.

The film features interviews with  indie comics creators such as Batton Lash, Tony Millionaire, Craig Thompson, Linda Medley, Shannon Wheeler, Carla Speed McNeill, Eric Powell, Jim Woodring, Wendy Pini, Scott McCloud, Jessica Abel, Gary Groth, and Dan Vado, as well as Comic Bug manager and comics writer Mike Wellman. Lash, Pini and Wellman will be signing at the celebration, which begins at 4 p.m., one hour before the screening.

Screening is part of a weekend-long celebration at the Bug, which is reopening in a new location after its previous spot was damaged in a fire. For a full schedule of the shop's plans, check their site here. The new Comic Bug is located at 807 1/2 Manhattan Beach Blvd (three miles from the Rosecrans exit off the 405) in Manhattan Beach.

Webcomics Start to Come of Age

If there were truly any doubts left that the Internet is going to succeed Howard Stern as the king of all media, the number of recent announcements that blur the line between new media and the historically resistant to change comics industry should help dispel them.

It’s taken a while, but with DC and now Marvel both getting into the web with major initiatives designed to bring in new readers and eventually money, the merger of comics and the web is starting to look extremely promising. It’s so promising in fact that a lot of companies that would previously have never considered having comics as part of their business plan are now crossing that line. It surely won’t be a smooth ride to riches for everyone involved, but it’s also unlikely that with so many approaches being tried that at least some of them won’t be successful.

Kicking off this train of thought is Marvel’s big announcement last week of its Digital Comics Unlimited service, for which you can read the PR here and journo Douglas Wolk’s interview with editor in chief Joe Quesada and online VP John Dokes here.

Marvel has opted for a subscription model, charging fans either $9.99 a month every month or $59.88 for a whole year, which comes out to $4.99 a month. Those fees give the reader access to a bunch of new and classic titles. There will be limits on what’s available, with new comics going online six months after they’re published and the mix of classic titles said to be in a rotation that will see some stuff go down after a while to be replaced by new offerings. Readers won’t be able to download the comics to their hard drives and can only access the comics through a web browser, requiring an internet connection. The interface is not bad — it’s basically the same as they’ve been doing for a while now with promotional digital comics — though reading it on a smaller screen like a laptop or iPhone will be a bit of a challenge.

There’s a lot of questions this model raises that will be fascinating to see how they play out. Subscription services like this one have had trouble as people have increasingly preferred to get the content they want either for free through advertising supported sites or by paying to download only the material they want and being able to use it on their favorite device or, in the case of comics, print it out. The subscription model on the other hand does have advantages. Not only is it easier to try new titles, but it will save you money (and a trip to the comics shop) if you read even two comics a month on the service that you otherwise would have bought in store for $2.99. It’s perhaps the first workable solution for companies reliant on the problematic periodical format, which long ago stopped delivering enough bang for the entertainment buck. What would be a really interesting idea is a system that lets you do both: a subscription that lets you read certain things as much as you’d like on a temporary, browser-only basis and an iTunes style store that lets you pay to download, keep and print out specific comics you like enough to hang on to.

There are other issues at play here, not the least of which is the reaction of retailers. Some will surely see this as Marvel bypassing them and selling direct to the consumer; others will see it as promotions that can pay off for them, since Marvel is mostly putting up material that’s in print and at least part of the reason for this initiative is to drive readers to the print edition. It will be interesting to see how this service will affect demand, especially among fans who either don’t have a nearby comics shop or can’t get to one on a regular basis. This may be a way to once again reach the kids who used to make up comics’ main audience back in the days of corner store spinner racks.

DC, meanwhile, has gone in the complete opposite direction with Zuda, which been up now for a few weeks and seems to be doing well traffic wise, judging from the number of comments. While Marvel is, for the moment, not planning any original comics content for the web, Zuda is all original and all user-generated. The business model is far more current, but the appeal of the content has yet to be determined. Having read through all the content, it’s certainly a wide range of genres and styles. My personal favorites have been the first competition winner "Bayou" and "High Moon." Writing wise, the entries so far are paced a lot like manga, which is probably good for bringing in new readers though it may put off some of the fans of traditional comics. While the content so far is good, it’s still a bit too early to get a good sense of where the site is going, as the strips up now were ordered in advance of the launch and we’ve yet to see a batch of reader-submitted strips to compare. The overriding purpose of Zuda seems to be as a way to develop IP by paying webcomics creators for their efforts and getting a head start on securing the rights to properties that take off. Whether DC has any plans for exploiting its back catalog, which is more extensive even than Marvel’s, is yet to be seen.

Over at Zeros 2 Heroes, animation and comics writer Paul Dini has been hired on as editor in chief. To give you an idea of where this site thinks things are going, Dini — currently running the show on DC's weekly Countdown to Final Crisis series — is working on the site alongside Rainmaker Animation’s Paul Gertz and Greg Zeschuk of the videogame developer Bioware. Z2H uses its site to develop pitches from writers, artists and fans into digital comics that can then, obviously, be further developed into animation and game properties. The company pilot-tested its approach with the "ReBoot" project a few months back and the addition of Dini shows their interest in the using the web to exploit the comics-animation connection.

Meanwhile, more publishers are looking to webcomics for material, with the recent “Heroes” volume that collected the online comics from the show’s site to be followed by "Lifelike" from IDW Publishing next month. Expect more of this to follow, with the web increasingly likely to take over the function once served by periodical comics in terms of testing the market for the most popular material to put into print editions.

All of which paints a picture of a 21st century comics industry that's as flexible, creative and potentially profitable as its ever been.

Movie news: 'Surrogates,' 'Iron Man,' more on 'The Spirit'

* Bruce Willis has been cast in the film adaptation of "The Surrogates," based on the comicbook by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele and published by Top Shelf. Details here.

* A new teaser site has gone up for Marvel's "Iron Man" movie, due in May. No new trailer, but there's some fan art and the promise of more goodies to come.

* Last week, I had a chance to visit the set of Will Eisner's The Spirit for Matt Brady over at Newsarama. You can read the three pieces I filed on the visit here, here and here.

Here's a few minor bits and pieces, as well as impressions, left over from those reports:

* Overall, it was hard to get a sense of what the film is going to be like, as it was all being shot in greenscreen. The screens themselves ran 40 feet from floor to ceiling, and looking at them even for a short period of time created an interesting effect when you left the stage as everything took on a pinkish tint for a few minutes.

* The sets, such as they were, were very small, such as a patch of grass featuring some junk in what is likely Wildwood Cemetery but was being referred to on set as "the grassy knoll."

* As reported elsewhere, the largest chunk of "set" was a old-time truck emblazoned with a logo for "Ditko's Delivery Service."

* Samuel L. Jackson ate lunch with the crew, standing in line with everyone else — in costume, which consisted of leather pants and a purple turtleneck.

* Actor Gabriel Macht looks quite good in the Spirit costume, though there will surely be plenty of debate over his suit, coat, hat, etc., being black instead of the customary blue seen in the comics. That'll re-open the debate over whether blue in the comics means black or blue.

* The scene we saw being shot of Macht punching out The Octopus was very short and very Miller-esque, with the camera close on Jackson and Macht grabbing his shoulder and turning his face into a big right cross that came right at the screen. It all happens very fast and should play nice and quickly on screen.

* Producer Deborah Del Prete told an interesting story about finding a studio to make the film. Her company, Odd Lot, working with Batman producer Michael Uslan, sent out the script to every studio in town asking for partners in making the film. Making it clear they owned the film rights and had no intention of working with a studio on the content, they went with Lionsgate and have been very pleased with the relationship.

* We were told this is the first feature film to shoot at the new, eight-stage Albuquerque Studios, which were quite nice and still had that new-studio smell. It's a bit remote — the road ends at the studio gate — though our guides said there are plans to extensively develop the empty desert around the lot with all kinds of residential and commercial projects.

Photo by Lewis Jacobs/Lionsgate

Review: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier

Creators: Alan Moore, writer; Kevin O’Neill, artist
WildStorm/America’s Best Comics, 208 pages, color, hardcover, $29.99
So? Reading "The Black Dossier" is like reading an extended appendix to the events of the series’ previous two outings. This truly is a dossier, being comprised as it is of numerous excerpts from fake publications of the kind Moore has been creating since at least "Watchmen" that detail the history of the League both before and after the previous tales, with a comic book story in between. The comicbook story is a fairly fun 1950s-style spy tale that is not without its pleasures (a young Bond) and innovations (a 3-D section; glasses are included) but it’s far from being as satisfying as previous League outings. Still, the cleverness of the dossier material in many ways makes up for it, with formats ranging from vintage English comicstrips and a long-lost folio by Shakespeare himself to a Tijuana bible, a P.G. Wodehouse imitation, a stream-of-consciousness beatnik novel and government briefings. Each reveals in surprising ways key details in the long history of the League, which goes wider and deeper than had been suggested up to this point. While a fascinating way to tell this story, it’s disappointing to not be able to read these “lost adventures” as actual stories rather than as what ends up feeling like a compendium of supplementary material and format tricks. O’Neill’s art is, as usual, terrific even as it feels slightly out of place now that the comicbook section is set in the 1950s instead of the Victorian era his scratchy kinking so beautifully evoked. The esoteric nature of the format and the story will make this all but impenetrable to new readers, who will join even die-hard League fans in hoping that the stories this book is an appendix to will one day come to light. Grade: B+

Review: Cairo

Creators: G. Willow Wilson, writer; M.K. Perker, artist
DC/Vertigo, 160 pages, black and white, hardcover, $24.99.
So? Author and journalist G. Willow Wilson tries to bridge the fantasy and mythology of ancient Middle Eastern cultures with the reality of today in Cairo, a new hardcover GN from Vertigo. There’s a lot going on this tale, which features characters both likeable and not from the many sides of life in the ancient city, where Wilson has lived and worked for four years: There’s a good-hearted and street savvy hash dealer, a journalist struggling to air his grievances against the government, a lost female Israeli soldier, a Lebanese-American who had been thinking about committing terrorist acts, and a young American girl looking to find the meaning to life she can’t find in Orange County. Then, there is Shams, a jinn — better known in America as a genie — and all manner of unusual, mystical events. While this set up seems to have all the clever ingredients that would make a welcome addition to the line that published Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, it never quite jells, at least partly because the fantasy stands in such stark contrast with the more realistic elements. The characters are well defined and interesting, though the events they encounter become increasingly fantastic and removed from the more compelling realities of life in the Middle East. Part of the problem is that, despite all the fantasy, there is surprisingly little sense of place and the setting seems largely unimportant to a tale that seems like it could take place in any number of Middle Eastern cities. The art by Perker, who lives in Turkey, falls short in this one area of setting, even as it brings out the personalities of the characters quite well. Color might have helped in this regard, as well as taking some of the bite out of the $24.99 price tag. But color can’t change the strange mix of the story, or give it the weight it needs to satisfy readers. Grade: C+

WGA strike post follow-up and debate

My Monday post on the WGA strike and comics got a number of responses across the internet. Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter took issue with some of my points here; my response to his response (and a few more comments from Tom) is here.

Review: Heroes, Vol. 1

Creators: Aron Eli Coleite, Chuck Kim, Joe Pokaski, Oliver Grigsby, Pierluigi Cothran, Christopher Zatta, Andrew Chamberliss, Harrison Wilcox, Jesse Alexander, Mark Warshaw, DJ Doyle and Timm Keppler, writers;  Tim Sale, Michael Turner, Koi Turnbull, Micah Gunnell, Marcus To, Travis Kotzebue, Phil Jimenez, Jordan Kotzebue, Jason Badower, Staz Johnson, Michael Gaydos, Steven Lejeune, Adam Archer and Tom Grummett, artists.

DC/WildStorm, 240 pages, color, hardcover, $29.99

So? This collection of 34 short comic stories that weave in and out of the show's first-season episodes is an excellent reminder of how much fun the show was in its first season (and how lackluster its second season has been so far). Reading these all in one sitting is much more fun than it was scrolling through them online, though fans that really know the ins and outs of the plots of the first season will likely get the most out of these stories. What makes this work is the stories are short, and at five pages, they can't dawdle the way so many comics do. These read almost like good manga, in that they're quick and addictive. The art is solid, with some excellent turns by the likes of Michael Gaydos and workhorse Micah Gunnell, and benefits tremendously from top-notch coloring and lettering. This is a nice-looking book, complete with a retro comicbook design that, oddly enough, evokes the look and feel of Silver Age Marvel Comics (and strangely, it's not exactly clear if this is being published by DC, as the cover says, or its WildStorm division, which is what it says inside the book). Tim Sale's paintings are turned into slightly worn covers for each of the 34 episodes and the hefty volume boasts an interview with the writers and an introduction by actor Masi Oka. A pair of very cool covers by Jim Lee and Alex Ross make this a must-have for fans of the show, even at a slightly pricey $29.99. Grade: A-

Notes: A striking idea; "Hyperactive" optioned; "Heroes"; comic scripts

* Check out this ever-hopeful, strike-related cartoon from the blog of Kevin Church.

* MTV has optioned Scott Christian Sava's graphic novel "Hyperactive," with Benderspink set to produce.

* Tim Kring agrees with and apologizes to fans unhappy with season 2 of "Heroes" over at EW. The show's exec producer Jeph Loeb talks to MTV about how the show's storyline will deal with the stoppage created by the WGA strike. (h/t to Blog@Newsarama on both those.)

* And if you've ever wondered what a comic book script looks like, head on over to the Comic Book Script Archive for links to a bunch of scripts by the likes of Warren Ellis, Alan Moore, Brian Michael Bendis and Chuck Dixon.

Aquaman co-creator Paul Norris dies

Mark Evanier has, as usual, all the details on Aquaman co-creator Paul Norris, who died yesterday at age 93:

A year later, he was at DC Comics where his most memorable assignment was Aquaman, which he and editor-writer Mort Weisinger created. (DC now puts a "created by Paul Norris" credit on all Aquaman comics. The absence of Weisinger's name is apparently a legal problem on DC's end, not a case of Norris squeezing out his former collaborator.) Paul also worked on, among others, the Sandman in Adventure Comics. He was the artist who revamped the character from his old costume — a business suit and a device that looked like a gas mask — and turned him, at editorial insistence, into a Batman knock-off. When Norris left the strip, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby took it over. During this period, Paul also worked on the Vic Jordan newspaper strip for the New York Daily PM.

Read the whole bit here.

CBG lets readers click for Hero Initiative

Details from the PR:

LOS ANGELES (November 6, 2007) - CBGXtra.com, the Internet companion to celebrated Comics Buyer's Guide magazine, is making donating to The Hero Initiative as easy as pie. For everyone who goes to CBGXtra.com and clicks on the Hero Initiative banner, CBG will donate 10 cents to Hero-simple as that. This promotion costs you, the consumer, absolutely nothing.

The Hero Initiative is the only federally chartered 501 (c) (3) charity that helps older comic creators in medical or financial need. “This is a great promotion that's as easy as falling out of bed,” said Hero Board member Steve Borock. “Finally, someone's come up with something so simple, even I can do it.”

“As the longest-running magazine about comics, it's our pleasure and obligation to give back to the industry that's produced so much entertainment all these years,” said Comics Buyer's Guide Editor Brent Frankenhoff.

This promotion is limited to one click per person per day-so no need to injure your index finger! Once a day will do!

Mistrial in case of Ga. comics shop owner

The long-pending trial of Rome, Ga., comic shop owner Gordon Lee got under way Monday, but came to a quick end when the judge declared a mistrial after a prosecutor violated instructions by mentioning Lee's legal history during opening arguments.

Lee is charged with distributing materials harmful to minors after he gave away a copy of Alternative Comics #2 to a minor on Halloween 2004. The comic, a Free Comic Book Day sampler, included an excerpt from the graphic novel "The Salon" that featured a scene with a nude Pablo Picasso.

The District Attorney's office says it will refile the charges next year.

Lee is being defended by the  Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a charitable org that has so far spent more than $80,000 on the case since taking it in 2005.

Fincher options "The Killer"

Par has picked up the rights to the French graphic novel "The Killer," for director David Fincher.

Novel is published in the U.S. by Archaia Studios Press. This would be the second comics pic for Fincher, who last year picked up "Torso," based on the Image Comics graphic novel by Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko.

Marvel reports strong 3rd quarter

Marvel announced its 3rd quarter results on Monday, with "Spider-Man 3" licensing leading the publisher to a tripling of its revenues from the same quarter last year.

Publishing was again a solid performer for the company, with sales up 13 percent over the same period last year to $34.9 million. "World War Hulk" and "Stephen King's The Dark Tower" were both cited as strong performers. The report goes on to say: "Marvel’s Publishing segment is expected to contribute net sales of approximately $130M – 135M in 2008 and to generate an operating margin of approximately 41% - 43%."

The company also gave the usual updates on its film, TV and game projects. On the self-financed side, "Iron Man" and "Incredible Hulk" are set for next summer. Marvel has a director and writer engaged on "Ant-Man" and writers assigned to (but obviously no longer working on, due to the WGA strike) on "Captain America," "Thor" and "The Avengers." In the licensed realm, "Punisher 2" has begun principal photography with a 2008 release eyed and "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" is scheduled to make its May 1, 2009, release.

On the TV animation end of things, "Fantastic Four" from France's Moonscoop is now airing; "Sensational Spider-Man" is coming in the spring through a distribution agreement with Kids WB!; "Wolverine and the X-Men" and "Iron Man" are set for fall 2008, from First Serve Toonz and Method Films respectively; and a "Hulk" series is in development. Marvel also plans four more DVD animated features, including "Next Avengers" for July;  "Hulk Smash" for next October; "Thor" for April 2009 and a TBD title for September 2009.

Comics and the WGA strike

There’s no bigger story right now in Hollywood than the writers strike, which began today and looks like it could go for a long time.

So far, the most visible TV scribes who also write comics are on board for the strike. Comic Book Resources has a report on plans from the likes of Marc Guggenheim ("Brothers & Sisters"), Daniel Knauf ("Carnivale") and one “anonymous” writer. Brian K. Vaughn, whose comic work got him on the writing staff of “Lost,” mentions on his blog that his phone began ringing from Marvel and DC editors as soon as the strike began, but plans to stick with his creator owned series like "Ex Machina" and walking the picket line for the time being. And the ever-informative Mark Evanier reflects on his long experience writing for TV, comics and animation over at his blog, which can be found here.

While comics writing is outside the jurisdiction of the WGA, reactions in the blogosphere indicate we’re unlikely to see a massive influx of new comics from film and TV writers looking for interim work. If fans are lucky, a few of those terminally late comics from TV writers may finally catch up on projects like Damon Lindelof’s almost-finished "Ultimate Hulk and Wolverine" or Joss Whedon’s “Runaways” and “Astonishing X-Men.” And fans of “Buffy” can rest assured that the strike will not affect Whedon and Vaughn continuing the “Season Eight” series at Dark Horse.

Most of the cross-over between comics and Hollywood is creative, so it’s no surprise that these are all writers who support their guild's decision to strike. It’s not clear how much the history of comics and the lessons of the likes of Siegel and Shuster, Jack Kirby, Steve Gerber or Marv Wolfman are at all a factor in anyone’s thinking, but their stories are prime examples of the kind of treatment the writers in the WGA are trying to avoid.

While attempts to unionize comics pros have never succeeded, it is perhaps informative to consider what happened when a group of popular comics creators with complaints similar to today's TV and film writers decided to do something about their situation and go their own way.

Such was the case more than 15 years ago, when Marvel's top artists — Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Erik Larsen, Whilce Portacio, Marc Silvestri and Jim Valentino — struck out on their own to found Image Comics, an organization that would allow each of them full control and ownership of whatever it was they wanted to created.

As with pundits' criticism of WGA members, all of these artists worked on top-selling books and were very well paid for their work. But they nevertheless felt — especially in McFarlane's case — that Marvel deep down did not respect their contributions. This was expressed in ways big and small, whether it was demanding excessive changes in their work, not paying artists when their work was used on trading cards or T-shirts, or simply brushing off the value of their contributions to toe a company line that discouraged the idea that anyone besides Marvel itself was responsible for the success of any of its properties. Marvel execs famously discounted the idea that even this many top artists leaving would have any effect on the company. After all, this wasn't the first time, and if the company could survive the departure of Jack Kirby in 1970 none the worse for wear, then it could survive this, too.

But they were wrong, and when the Image books came out, the kids that had driven up Marvel's sales because they loved Jim Lee's art on "X-Men" or Rob Liefeld on "X-Force," jumped on the Image bandwagon in a second. (That the interest in comics in sure-fire collectibles was at an all-time high was also a factor, but one that was egged on by both Marvel and DC long before Image was founded.) Even as Marvel and DC hired scads of Image imitators and managed to hold their own in a red-hot market, Image proved exactly what those companies had spent decades denying: that the creators who actually made a comic are a factor in its success.

The results of the Image experiment in the short term were nothing short of astounding, as sales hit record levels and made instant millionaires of any creator whose book bore the Image label. This market gave the world the likes of such still-popular characters as "Spawn" and "Hellboy" (who first appeared in an issue of "John Byrne’s Next Men," a well-regarded creator-owned series from that era that is finally coming back to print from IDW) and even made hits of such self-published fare as “Bone,” “Strangers in Paradise” and “Stray Bullets.”

Of course, that kind of runaway growth couldn't be sustained, and the crash was so hard that its repercussions are still being felt. Given the rhetoric that surrounded the creation of Image — of the freedom to create, control and profit from your own work — it’s disheartening to see today’s direct market once again so heavily dependent upon and dominated by Marvel and DC superheroes created under work-for-hire conditions. The Image founders themselves are still around, as is the same basic Image operation, though only Larsen has stuck with writing and drawing his original series, The Savage Dragon. Liefeld was fired or quit, depending on who's talking, and is now back, while McFarlane concentrated on toys and Lee sold his WildStorm operation — and all its characters — to DC Comics in 1998. The state of creator ownership they espoused is prospering on the web, and under attack in print and in the direct market from new publishers whose strategy of using comics to develop film and TV properties requires the creator to be, at best, mere co-owners of their creations.

The final lesson to draw from the Image experiment is still open to interpretation — a lot of the early comics from Image were, despite the hype, pretty awful. But it does prove that the creation of successful stories and franchises is as much if not more about creativity than labels and marketing. TV and film writers have a disadvantage when compared to comics creators, in that making a show requires a great deal of money and collaboration with crews of craftsmen and other artists, from actors and directors to cinematographers, editors, gaffers and, yes, even studio and network executives. History shows that collaboration requires respect and flexibility, two qualities that both sides should consider carefully as they try to work out their differences.