NYCC: Comics and graphic novels sales up 10%

Milton Griepp of ICV2.com presented his third annual white paper on comics and graphic novel sales at the Graphic Novel Conference that preceded NYCC. Graphic novels and comics sales in 2007 were up in both bookstores and the direct market to total $705 million in the U.S. and Canada, up about 10 percent from 2006. Manga sales were up, though the rate of growth was slowing, in part from increased competition as the market matures.

Mostow talks "The Megas"

Jonathan Mostow is the most recent Hollywood director to create a comic for Virgin, with the first issue of his series “The Megas” hitting stands today.

Mostow, who directed “U-571” and “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,” says he’s not a die-hard comics fan, describing himself as a more typical reader who loved them as a kid but has not been an avid follower of the medium. You wouldn’t know that, however, from looking at his upcoming projects, which include a film version of “The Surrogates,” based on the Top Shelf graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele and set to shoot in two months with Bruce Willis, and a screenplay for a “Sub-Mariner” movie at Marvel that he says may be his follow-up project.

“The Megas” is an alternate timeline story: What if democracy never came to America and the nation was ruled by an aristocratic class that was subject to different laws than the rest of us. The story begins with a sordid Mega-related crime investigated by Bureau of Royal Investigation Agent Jack Madison, whose belief in the system is challenged by what he learns in the course of his enquiry.

Mostow says he came up with the basic idea a few years ago, and he had considered it as the basis for a television show. When Virgin approached him to do a comic for its Director’s Cut line, which has published concepts created by the likes of John Woo and Guy Ritchie, Mostow saw it as the right way to explore the concept.

“The great thing about the graphic novel medium is you can draw it. I can sit there and try to explain it to you, but when you see the image I think it has a kind of certain power to that image,” Mostow says. “I get to communicate what’s cool about the idea and compelling about the idea in a way that’s more compelling than writing about it or a phone call with me talking about it.”

That was especially key when the underlying concept is as abstract as it is in “The Megas.” “The idea is an intellectual idea and if you start to explain it people think it sounds like a thought experiment from some eighth-grade social studies class,” he says. “But if you draw it, if you see the White House re-envisioned as a palace, and you see these iconic architectural archetypes like the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument re-imagined as trappings and symbols of power of a monarchy, there’s some thing very compelling about those images that I think can create an emotional feeling the viewer or reader.”

For Mostow, there is one key image in the book that, for him, nails the idea and gets it across in an instant. “There’s a panel in there where one of the high-level royals comes into a club and everybody who’s there bows down,” he says. “I find that to be a very compelling image: modern people dressed in Armani suits and they drive nice cars and live in nice houses and are professionals and lawyers and doctors and bankers and all that stuff, but they have to bow down to somebody.”

Mostow created and co-plotted the series with scripter John Harrison, whose credits include the Sci Fi Channel adaptations of “Dune” and “Children of Dune.” The series is drawn by Peter Rubin, a former art director at ILM who has done conceptual art on Mostow’s movies. “One of the thing I like about Peter’s work and one of the ambitions I had for this comic was I was not out to create a overstylized look to the comic,” Mostow says. “I wanted it to look good and rich, but I wanted the story and the idea to be the star of it.”

He says the production of the comic was a real learning experience, both in its similarities to filmmaking and its differences.

“It’s kind of got no rules in a sense, which is really from a creative standpoint very exciting and dynamic,” he says. “It’s not like we did anything groundbreaking in the execution of this, but it’s the medium. It’s deciding how many panels are you going to have on a page and where are they going to be and what are you relying on text to explain and what are you just going to show in an image.”

Mostow says creating a comics script was an unusual experience because of the need for everything to be up front, whereas film scripts can rely on the talents of actors, directors, production designers and cinematographers to fill in the details. “It’d be like if I did a movie, but only if I did it by faxing and memoing and emailing everybody.”

Mostow and Virgin are shopping the project around as a feature. With no screenplay, the comic is the key to their pitch. In print, “The Megas” is set to run four issues and then Mostow says they’ll see what the reaction is. “From there, it will be sort of self-evident as to whether it becomes a movie or not,” says Mostow.

DH adapts new 'Indiana Jones' pic

Indiana Jones isn't a comicbook hero (in fact, his success in comicbook form has been decidedly mixed). But with so little known about the upcoming sequel, I'm willing to make a small exception and offer this quick look at the description and cover art for Dark Horse's upcoming adaptation of "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull TPB

Writer: George Lucas, David Koepp, John Jackson Miller
Penciller: Luke Ross
Inker: Fabio Laguna
Colorist: Dan Jackson
Genre: Action/Adventure

The most anticipated movie event of the summer comes to comics in this adaptation of the fourth Indiana Jones film!

The intrepid Doctor Henry Jones Jr. is back in his biggest adventure yet! This time, the world-renowned archaeologist finds himself caught in a series of events that all point to a discovery unlike any other. But will his rivals in pursuit of this priceless treasure seize his quarry from right under his nose? Not if he, and a few unexpected companions, have anything to say about it!

The thrill and the humor, the action and the romance, the hat and the whip--everything you love about Indy is here! This is a tale sure to please longtime fans as well as foster a whole generation of new ones!

Adapting the most anticipated movie event of the year!

Publication Date: May 22, 2008
Format: Full color, 96 pages, TPB, 7" x 10"
Price: $12.95

(H/t to Comic Book Movie.com)

Valiant dispute settled

The dispute over the rights to the Valiant comics characters has been settled, with Valiant Entertainment owning the copyright and trademark to the original comics characters. This frees the way for Valiant to distribute the hardcover collection "Harbinger: The Beginning" through Diamond starting in February. The company plans a second collection from the early 1990s publishing house, "X-O Manowar: Birth," featuring a new story from original Valiant contributor Bob Layton, to ship in April.

The press release from Valiant Entertainment follows in the jump.

VALIANT IP FIGHT OVER

New York, NY, December 30, 2007 - The trademark intellectual property fight between Valiant Entertainment and Valiant Intellectual Properties that has continued for two years in the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board and in Federal Court is now over with Valiant Entertainment owning all Valiant-related trademarks, including Valiant Intellectual Properties-filed trademark applications.

The conflict began soon after Valiant Entertainment acquired all rights to the Valiant Comics library of characters from videogame publisher Acclaim Entertainment’s estate in June 2005.  It was discovered that during the sale to Valiant Entertainment a newly formed company called Valiant Intellectual Properties LLC (VIP) had filed intent-to-use trademark applications for certain Valiant-related trademarks that were owned but not correctly renewed by Acclaim’s estate.  These Valiant-related intent-to-use trademark applications included Valiant, Harbinger, Eternal Warrior, Rai and the Future Force, Quantum & Woody, Outcast, Dr. Mirage, The Visitor, Ninjak, Deathmate, Bloodshot, Punx, and Secret Weapons. 

Valiant Entertainment filed oppositions to these VIP-filed trademark applications in the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the US Patent and Trademark Office.  However, the process can take years to reach fruition and prevented the distribution by Diamond Comics Distributors of Valiant Entertainment’s highly anticipated Harbinger: The Beginning hardcover collection featuring a new story by Jim Shooter.  The hardcover collection was subsequently distributed by Valiant Entertainment directly to retailers.

During this time, VIP released an ashcan at the 2007 San Diego Comic Con containing recognizable Valiant trademarks, such as Harbinger and Eternal Warrior, alongside completely unrecognizable character sketches.  Despite trying to circumvent Valiant Entertainment’s copyrights, VIP’s attempted use of Valiant-related trademarks in an effort to strengthen their applications enabled Valiant Entertainment to file a lawsuit on August 29 against VIP in the Southern District of New York Federal Court for trademark infringement, unfair competition, false designation of origin, false description, and false representation.  Last month, a settlement agreement was reached between the parties.

“The lawsuit Valiant Entertainment filed to protects its intellectual property against VIP LLC has been resolved to Valiant Entertainment’s satisfaction.  Valiant Entertainment owns all copyrights and trademarks to the Valiant and Acclaim characters, including all right, title, interest, and associated goodwill to the VIP-filed trademark applications,” said Jason Kothari, CEO of Valiant Entertainment.

He added, “I would like to thank the loyal Valiant fans for their continued support and Blank Rome LLP for their outstanding work.”

Valiant Entertainment’s HARBINGER: THE BEGINNING hardcover collection featuring a new “Origin of Harada” story by comics’ legend Jim Shooter is being resolicited in the February 2008 issue of Diamond’s Previews.

Valiant Entertainment’s X-O MANOWAR: BIRTH hardcover collection featuring a new “The Rise of Lydia” story by Valiant co-architect Bob Layton and a new cover by Sean Chen is being solicited in the February 2008 issue of Diamond’s Previews and will be in stores in April 2008.

Mad's 20 Dumbest: Entertainment outtakes

Mad Magazine's annual list of the 20 Dumbest People, Things and Events of the year hits the stands this week. The list includes, in typical Mad fashion, the usual gang of idiots (Britney, Lindsay, George W.) as well as a few newbies (Michael Vick, American Idol's Sanjaya). But the best of this year's crop is No. 13 on the list: Alternate Sopranos Endings That Would Have Been Better. Click on the image below for an advance peek (warning — the image has to be pretty large to be legible, so you may want to download and look at it in an image editor).

Also worth a look is No. 9: The Giant Toy Recall, at right. In the meantime, we can look forward to next year's edition, which will surely include some kind of commentary on the writer's strike.

Levy looks back on 10 years of Tokyopop

Photo by Amy Graves/WireImage.com
(Click on image for larger view)

It’s been ten years since Stu Levy founded Tokyopop, which has gone on to major success as a publisher of both imported and original manga and the lifestyle that goes with it. In honor of the occasion, Daily Variety has published a special feature package in today’s edition of the paper that can be read online at www.variety.com/tokyopop

Having first interviewed Levy for Variety at the 2002 Comic-Con Intl. in San Diego, I was eager to ask about the many changes in the businesses of the manga, graphic novel and comics-to-film. The interview with Levy ran more than an hour in a conference room at Tokyopop’s 20th floor offices across from the L.A. County Museum of Art, and yielded way more interesting material about publishing and the market for manga than could be included in the two articles I was asked to write for the print edition. So here, we’re presenting some additional, manga-specific highlights from our extensive interview with Levy.

Variety: Did you have any overt intention of getting into the entertainment business?

Levy: I was exposed to it. As I moved on to high school and college and went from the geek side to kind of the trendy socialite side, I used to crash with my buddies a lot of Hollywood parties and concerts and things like that. And so it was kind of that combination of having an aspiration for entertainment plus this love for technology and geek culture that when I went to Japan it all came together and I fell in love with that culture and how multimedia it was, how futuristic it was.

Variety: How did that lead to you publishing manga?

Levy: My first business initiative really was as a multimedia producer and I turned it into a little company called Japan Online. It came along right when the videogames started, the CD-ROM-based videogames — Sega Saturn, Sony Playstation, 3DO. When those things first started, the technology that I was using in my business merged with the old days of “Street Fighter.” I was in Japan and all the anime and manga and videogame guys all merged together and it was this incredible time creatively, where graphic design was moving into early 3-D work and everything was coming together on the computers. Around that time, I discovered manga. I had already been watching anime, and I was like, “Oh wow! This is the origin to everything.” What a better way to build some kind of position than grab an analog library of content that I can then move in the digital realm. Hence, manga. Then I founded Mixx.

Variety: How did Mixx become Tokyopop?

Levy: We were searching for domain names and thinking about stuff and we ended up with Tokyopop. We had for a while Mixx and Tokyopop. I don’t know when we started to actually use Tokyopop for everything, but we debated it constantly. We had Mixx, which is a cool name, but there were some trademark challenges. It wasn’t a clean trademark. And our online site was not Mixx.com, somebody else had that, so we had Mixx Online. And then there was Tokyopop, which people got immediately.
So finally, we said, you know we’ve got to put a stake in the ground and choose just one brand and run with it — and we chose Tokyopop.

Variety: In the company’s early days, what were your relationships like with the license holders in Japan? Was it difficult to convince them to give you a shot at publishing manga in the U.S.?

Levy: That was actually the easier part of it, to be honest with you, because no one was doing it. People in Japan, they thought it was so out there and, frankly, kind of strange or weird that I even had an interest in doing that. I guess they kind of thought it was sort of cute.

Variety: Did you look at previous attempts to publish manga in America? In the 1980s, there was always some publisher trying to do manga in the American-style comics format.

Levy: When we started, I was pretty ignorant to all that because I didn’t really grow up a comic book collector. My exposure was more to film and music. The extent of my American-based comicbook knowledge was that I used to love the Bob’s Big Boy throwaway and that was kind of my thing. I never really delved into collecting

Somebody always tried to publish manga but it was always in the comicbook shops, which I never thought about. I was always thinking about the malls and it hadn’t even occurred to me to approach the comicbook shops because I didn’t really consider the comicbook shops to be, at that point in time, a place that frankly was mainstream enough to actually make a business out of it. It seemed so niche-y that you couldn’t pay your bills.

Of course, once I wasn’t able to get any distribution anywhere, and I learned about the comicbook shops, Diamond and all of that, that’s ultimately where we had to start. But yeah, we could barely pay our bills from that distribution and a lot of that was because everything was driven by, at the time, especially Image Comics and to a lesser degree Marvel and DC.

Variety: How did you get into the bookstores and malls?

Levy: A year, year and a half in, Waldenbooks started to bite a little bit and it was mainly because of “Sailor Moon.” We put together media kits for “Sailor Moon” with Buena Vista. Although it was taken off TV at the time, Buena Vista was about to put out some videos and we teamed up and sort of decided to help each other out. They gave us some information for the media kit and they put a little ad, a postcard, in their videos. We went to the bookshops and Walden decided to try a couple “Sailor Moons” — and they sold. So that was kind of the in that we needed, and little by little they would take some more product.

Variety: The major turning point seems to have come in 2002, when you began publishing manga in the original right-to-left format, as well as in standardized books at standardized prices. How did you make those decisions?

Levy: That was definitely the stuff that we did that, out of everything we tried, was the most successful, which was able to build our company. It was from a lot of studying other businesses. Me, I had always been influenced by the videogame industry.

When the videogame guys — Playstation and Sega Saturn — first launched, everything was in the same package and you put it into the computer or your Playstation or your Saturn and it worked. It was all standardized, so the user didn’t have to think about anything other than, “Is this the content that I want? Is this a cool game?”

And then I remember the year before we decided to go with the right-to-left thing, I was getting pressure from the Japanese. “Publish it right-to-left! We hate it when you flip it! This artist doesn’t like that or this editor doesn’t like that!” And we had gone to the retailers out there around 2000 and said, “Hey, what would you think if we published this right-to-left?” And they said, “You’re out of your fricking minds to even think about it.”

So we went back to the Japanese and said we can’t do it. And they said fine, we understand, but these particular titles we can’t license to you because the artists won’t accept it.

And then in 2001 I went to Frankfurt Book Fair for the first time and I saw that in Germany, they were publishing “Dragonball” right-to-left and it was selling blockbusters. And so it was kind of like, well look, the Germans tend to be really conservative and if they’re accepting of a right-to-left format, why can’t we try something a little bit unique?

And so that’s when we talked about it and I said: “You guys, we’ve got to do it. We’ve got to standardize the thing. We’ve tried all these different sizes, we’ve tried these different price points, nobody wants to try right-to-left … Let’s just do it all at once and just go for it and make a big statement.”

I was in the room with a few people in the company and, I swear to God, there was probably only one other guy who got it. Everybody else in the conference room looked at me and said, “Should we start looking for jobs right now?” And one guy, our head of marketing at the time, was like, “Let’s do it. Let’s make this thing happen.”

And so we did a few things. We lined up all the various book sizes — from Japan, from Korea — put them all in a row, in order from smallest to biggest, and we said: “What’s the size? What will work from a production point of view? What will work from a marketing point of view? What’s the size?”

We looked at them all and we said, “Boom! The one right in the middle.” And that’s the size we use.

Variety: You also very strongly branded your books. How did you do that?

Levy: We tried a bunch of things and came up with this branding bar on the side of the book. And we made a point of really pushing the fact that it’s Tokyopop doing this, which at the time, for this business, wasn’t very common. Certainly, Marvel I think was successful at that, and Image was successful in the comicbook world. But in the book world, nobody was doing that kind of stuff. So there’s that, and the influence for the brand bar was frankly Nintendo. Nintendo did that with Game Boy and all of the Nintendo stuff had this huge stripe.

Variety: And how did you come up with the price point?

Levy: At the time it was, let’s make it easy on people. Let’s make the shelves all look pretty. Let’s make everybody know that any of these are $9.99 — just choose your content. That was the strategy and definitely quite a lot of people said we were out of our minds.

Variety: At what point did you know that this was starting to click with people?

Levy: Well, we got a bunch of recorders.

Variety: Did that happen very quickly?

Levy: That happened very quickly. We ran out of stock really quick. We ran out of stock! My God, maybe it’s working! And then our distributor went bankrupt, and it really screwed us. It was literally, we ran out of stock, we’re about to re-supply and then our distributor went bankrupt and we couldn’t use our inventory. Our inventory is frozen for two months, which probably actually got people wanting it even more because they couldn’t get the reorders immediately.

Variety: From a business perspective, how essential was it for you to start to develop original material that you own over versus the stuff you’ve licensed?

Levy: I was realizing at the time, well we’ve proven our name as Tokyopop, that we can market and we can distribute. But a lot of people, especially in Japan, were treating us like we were a distributor, maybe even like we were an agent.

So I decided that, yeah, it’s important for us to prove that not only can we work with finished product and adapt it, but we can work with creative people and we can express ourselves creatively as well and become more of a studio. That’s certainly what American comic companies do. We’ve been doing graphic novels, comic books for a long time. We know it really well. We think we understand the secrets of the success of Japanese manga, and why it resonates worldwide, so let’s take a stab at it.

Variety: How important is it for you guys to keep connected with your fans, whether it’s in print or online?

Levy: I think it’s critical. The fans are the key to everything.

Our general mentality is a totally open environment. Any fan can talk about anything they want on our website. I mean obviously pornography is something we have to be careful about because there’s a lot of underage fans. But other than that, in terms of if somebody’s a huge fan of our competitor's manga? So what? That’s great. We love that. We welcome that. Somebody wants to take some of our stories and crate a fan fiction or a mash-up video or things like that? We totally encourage that.

So my personal view on how to approach copyright is I really tend to lean towards opening it up and embracing fans expressing themselves creatively with IP that other people have created. I think that's what this country stands for and I think that obviously it’s a fine line, because with piracy, ultimately, if nobody gets paid for anything, then we’re all out of business. But I think fans are conscious of that and they respect you.

Variety: And where do you see the company 10 years from now?

Levy: Honestly, 10 years from now, we’ve either really made it or not. We’re going to go balls to the wall. The next five years, the next three years, the next 10 years, we’re just going for it. And either we’ve become a true part of the fabric of world pop culture, or we’re not here anymore.

DC goes with Random House for bookstores

Calvin Reid at Publisher's Weekly (a sister publication to Variety) has the details on the distribution deal, which kicks in in the spring.

For years, DC had used Warner Books for bookstore outlets, but that relationship hit an obvious snag when both company's parent, Time-Warner, sold the outfit last year to French firm Hachette Livre, which reorganized into the Hachette Book Group USA. Random House is the largest distributor in the business.

DC will continue to use Diamond for distribution to comicbook specialty shops.

Barry Levine gets Radical

As comics and Hollywood continue to find their fates intertwined, the links between the two industries will become as explicit as they are with Radical Publishing.

Set to debut their first book, “Hercules,” in March, Radical was founded by prexy and chief publisher Barry Levine and co-publisher and editor-in-chief David Elliott.

Levine, a former rock photographer turned producer, founded Radical after a stint developing and producing films through a first-look deal with Dark Horse Comics. Working with Dark Horse founder Mike Richardson, Levine set up “Rex Mundi” at Warner Bros., with Johnny Depp attached to star, and “RIPD” at Universal.

“But it still wasn’t my company,” says Levine of his decision to go out on his own.

Radical made its Comic-Con debut last month with a booth filled with poster-size images of artwork by some of the top painters in the business, including Jim Steranko, John Bolton, Dave Dorman and Bill Sienkiewicz.

“We created kind of like a gallery,” Levine says. “We wanted to make an impression and give people and idea of the quality of the artists that we were coming out with.”

The Radical slate steers clear of superheroes, opting instead for the fantasy, sci-fi and horror genres. Levine says that while he knows Radical won’t compete with Marvel or DC in terms of market share, he intends for the company’s comics to compete with the big two on a creative level, hence the recruitment of top-name talent.

Creators with track records like those who’ve signed on with Radical are attracted to the quality of the story, Levine says. A story has to be good enough to arouse their interest and get them to feel passionate about the project.

“A lot of the stuff we’re doing has very good cinematic possibilities. It’s easily adaptable because we don’t do superhero stuff,” he says. “What we do, whether in science fiction, fantasy, comedy, crime, drama, supernatural, horror — whatever it is — it has to be character driven and dialog driven.”

Levine says the company plans a slow expansion in both publishing and into film and TV through sister company Blatant Studios. “Hercules,” written by Steve Moore, will be first the first comicbook out of the gate, and has already been set up at Rogue Pictures, also the home of another Radical project, “Blood on the Tracks.” Director Xavier Gens, who helmed the upcoming videogame adaptation ”Hitman,” is attached to “Hercules.”

Comics wise, the company will focus on miniseries running about five issues and then being collected.
Other major comics projects in the works include “Khrome,” one of two projects pitched to the company by the king of horror comics, Steve Niles; and a book from Japanese artist Yoshitako Amano that will feature 250 original paintings and an original story. Levine says the book will debut at next year’s Comic-Con, and they plan to bring in Amano for a signing.

Also in the works is “Caliber,” a Western with an Arthurian slant; artist Nick Percival’s fantasy tale “Legends”; “Solitude,” a graphic novel from director Vincent Perez and drawn by Bolton; “Feast of Fools,” a horror tale from artist James Heffron; and sci-fi concept “Hotwire,” created by Warren Ellis and Steve Pugh.

The company will focus on the direct market first, “because that’s your fanboys, and that’s who you want to keep happy,” Levine says.

Levine says he believes comics are perfect vehicles for the kinds of high concept stories that Hollywood can’t get enough of. He cites as an example Niles’ trend-setting horror series “30 Days of Night” — a tale of vampires descending on an Alaskan town where the sun doesn’t rise for an entire month. “It raised the bar on people’s perception of the high concept,” Levine says.

Of course, Levine also would like to follow in the footsteps of “30 Days’” Hollywood success — the film version starring Josh Hartnett is due out in October from Sony. Developing that high concept is a key step in Radical’s development process, with the company creating character and production renderings for a comic sometimes even before an artist is chosen for the series.

Radical also has teamed up with Imaginary Friends, a studio in Singapore that’s contributing to several Radical comicbooks. They also have an overseas partner in U.K.-based sales, production and finance house, Intandem Films, which bought a 5 percent stake in Radical.

And while comics are great springboards for films and TV, there are other markets, too. “If it becomes a film, great. If it doesn’t but it’s a great book that people will enjoy, then that’s another thing,” he says. “Not every book that Frank Miller did is a film, but he never compromised. That’s the cool thing about Frank Miller.”

Levine sees a lot of potential in the interactive market and plans to market to that audience through outlets such as Play Magazine.

There also will be two sister companies to Radical Comics: Radical Books, which will publish original graphic novels; and Radical Art, which will do art books devoted to the likes of painter Luis Royo.
While comics-based pics aren’t immune to the ups and downs of the movie-going audience’s taste, Levine says comics will be big in Hollywood for a long time to come.

He also expects more Hollywood talent to dip their toes into comicbooks. “It’s an incredible opportunity to tell a story and have it come out quickly, as opposed to waiting a year or 15 months to see the film, or see something go into development hell,” he says.

“I just think Hollywood is so hungry for high concepts and good storytelling, that it doesn’t matter if it comes from a videogame or a comicbook,” he says. “I just think comicbooks will be getting more sophisticated.”

Marvel, Dabel Bros. split

Marvel's relatively recent and high-profile co-publishing arrangement with Dabel Bros. has come to an end after less than a year.

Move comes as a surprise given the success the Dabel imprint had in launching its titles, most notably "Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter," which was a hot seller that brought author Laurell K. Hamilton's fans into comicbook shops and is presumably primed to be a huge bookstore market hit when it's collected.

Dabel will return to self-publishing, while Marvel will hang onto and continue to publish a number of the properties Dabel began, including "Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter."

Full details from the decidely-vague press release: 

Marvel Entertainment, Inc. and Dabel Brothers Productions, LLC announced today that they are mutually ending their publishing relationship. In 2006, Marvel and Dabel Brothers signed an agreement for Marvel to market, print and distribute several limited and ongoing series, in addition to some other dynamic new properties. Founded in 2001, the Dabel Brothers have specialized in creating comic books and graphic novels based on the works of best-selling authors’ series such as Laurell K Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter; George R. R. Martin’s Hedge Knight; and Orson Scott Card’s Tales Of Alvin Maker and others.

Marvel Entertainment, Inc. President and Publisher Dan Buckley explained, "We have great respect for the Dabel Brothers’ business and the relationships they have generated. Our partnership has been an exciting experience for both companies. We wish the Dabels well in their future publishing endeavors and hope to work with them again, should the opportunity present itself.”

“Working with Marvel was a dream come true for all of us, and we enjoyed the opportunity to learn from the comic book industry’s market leader,” said Ernst Dabel, President of Dabel Brothers Productions. “We’re looking forward to applying those lessons to our business as we resume our status as a self-publisher, and we plan to continue producing top-quality adaptations of best-selling science fiction, fantasy, horror and thriller novels by popular authors.

Going forward, Marvel will continue to publish Anita Blake Vampire Hunter by Laurell K. Hamilton; the Hedge Knight series by George RR Martin; Tales of Alvin Maker and Wyrms by Orson Scott Card; Magician Apprentice by Raymond Feist; Lords of Avalon by Kinley MacGregor; and Highwayman by R.A. Salvatore. Dabel Brothers Productions will begin work on its next wave of books, slated for release in early 2008.

First Look/Look Back at Harbinger

Few things geek me out quite so much as Harbinger, which along with the rest of the early Valiant comics is one of my true comicbook weaknesses. I starting buying Valiant books in 1992, just as the hype for Unity was heating up. I tracked down the issues I missed as quickly as possible, paying what at the time seemed like high prices, but still way below the peaks many of those comics eventually went for, and I even took scissors to the coupon inserts and sent them away to get the special Harbinger #0, which I had signed by creators Jim Shooter and David Lapham at the 1993 San Diego Comic-Con.

I was surprised to see so many comments to the previous post on this book, but apparently the time is right for these characters to return. A lot of that may be nostalgia, given that the cycle runs about 15 to 20 years behind. The rights to these characters may end up being particularly valuable as film and television properties. New universes and libraries of characters don't come along that often, especially ones as entertainment-friendly and good as these.

So with Valiant sending out a look at the first six recolored pages of upcoming hardcover collection, "Harbinger: The Beginning," this seems like a good opportunity to take a look at the new pages next to the old.

The remastered pages (click on the images for a closer look):

 

The original pages, scanned from a copy of Harbinger #1:

From the press release, here's some more info on the remastering and recoloring process:

The deluxe hardcover is digitally remastered in a unique way, as Jim Shooter himself approved continuity corrections in Harbinger issues #0 - 7 that allows the hardcover collection to present the origin story more cohesively than it originally appeared in 1992.

In addition, all digital recoloring was overseen by former Valiant colorists who had an insider's view on the original intention of Harbinger's creative team.  The integrity of the original look was preserved, while adding depth, special effects, and corrections using the latest digital techniques.  The melding of classic storytelling and modern execution more accurately showcases the intended vision for Harbinger issues #0-7 than ever before.

"It's fantastic for me to return to the Valiant Universe and revisit Harbinger with Starlight Runner digital color," said Jeff Gomez, former Valiant editor and current CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, a major coloring team on the project.

One of Valiant’s hallmarks has always been its artistic coloring style. Since the original art assets were no longer available, a unique process was developed to strip the color from the comics, reconstruct the inks, and apply digital color to the prints.

And now, for die hards only, I'll include after the jump a review I wrote of the first seven issues almost 10 years ago in the pages of fanzine Comic Effect #21. This article is reproduced here with the blessing of CE editor Jim Kingman.

Originally published in Comic Effect #21, Fall 1998. This review is copyright Thomas J. McLean.

Harbinger Nos. 0-7— Valiant Comics
Jan.-July 1992
Reviewed by Tom McLean
In 1992, just about all anyone interested in comic books could talk about was Image Comics. And thanks to Image's infamous inability to get its books out in those early days, talking about Image Comics— as opposed to reading Image Comics— was all anyone could do. But instead of filling the time with old favorites from Marvel or DC, a lot of fans began to notice another new publisher, one that produced comics with thoughtful, satisfying stories and got its books to the racks on time. That was Valiant Comics, and its breakout hit was a series called Harbinger, written by industry veteran Jim Shooter and penciled by the then-unknown David Lapham.
Given the market in those days, it may not be so obvious to those unfamiliar with it why Harbinger was such a hit. It had no "grim and gritty" heroes, no foil covers, no bagged multiple editions (it did have a coupon offer for issue 0, but a free comic for those who try the first six issues is more legitimate than a trick cover, in my opinion). It did have a well-written superhero story that hooked readers with a thoughtful and convincing story about young people struggling with complex moral issues.
Harbinger is about Peter Stanchek, a young and powerful telepath and telekinetic who turned to the Harbinger Foundation for help on the advice of his best friend, Joe Irons. The foundation is run by Toyo Harada, a shrewd and successful businessman whose powers are identical to Pete's in both ability and power. Harada uses the foundation to recruit and train the superpowered harbingers of humanity's future and to employ them to further his own goals and personal power. Harada offers legitimate help to those who will follow his cause, but he has no compunctions about doing whatever is necessary to protect himself and crush his enemies. Pete is drawn into the Harbinger Foundation and enjoys the attention paid to him. But the foundation's life of easy luxury begins to influence and corrupt Pete, who abuses his powers by forcing beautiful and popular Kris Hathaway to be his girlfriend.
Joe does his best to make Pete see how he's changed for the worse since he started hanging around the foundation. When Harada sees Pete's loyalty falter, he has Joe killed. Instead of ending them, Pete's doubts they only increase and Harada decides it's better to kill Pete than to let someone with that much power live to become an enemy. All alone, Pete reaches out to Kris, who promises to try to help despite the way Pete abused her. Pete survives Harada's assassination attempt and he and Kris hit the road pursued by Harada's agents. Together, they recruit three other harbingers to their cause: Zeppelin, a somewhat chubby comics and sci-fi fan who can fly and would prefer her friends call her Zephyr; Flamingo, a hot-to-trot Southern belle who generates intense heat and flames; and illiterate auto mechanic John Torkelson, whose goes by Torque. The physical and psychological pain Pete's powers cause his victims quickly earns him the nickname Sting.
While the premise is simple, Shooter and Lapham give it surprising depth. As a legitimate businessman, Harada is a believable and admirable foe who uses methods acceptable to society to further his goals. The Harbinger Foundation pays thousands of workers good salaries and treats them fairly, earning Harada their loyalty. Many of the harbingers who turn to Harada are helped by the foundation and find in it great opportunities for education and work as one of Harada's Eggbreakers, so named because you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. It is legitimate to argue that Harada deserves his personal and financial power for his contributions to society and all the people he has helped. As in the real world, Harada never would have achieved such success without being shrewd and knowing how to manipulate situations and people to his advantage— qualities that help him justify the transgressions he must commit to ensure the outcome he wants.
But to Pete, the ends don't justify the means. Harada has no right to persecute Pete and try to kill him. He has no right to threaten those who fail to swear loyalty to him or who choose to oppose him either directly or indirectly. To Pete, while Harada has used his powers to help others, Harada helps himself first and foremost at great expense to others. Like another superhero named Peter, Sting believes great power involves great responsibility.
But while Pete and his friends believe they are in the right in opposing Harada, they face plenty of obstacles that force them to examine and in many cases alter their values— and not always in ways they're proud of. While Harada operates from a position of wealth and legitimacy, Pete's harbingers have to struggle just to survive. They have little choice but to use their powers to steal food or shelter, to commit sometimes extreme violence as self-defense, and they have to deal with each other and their own conflicting emotions.
The most common problem they have to face is stealing. None of them is rich and they can't work jobs without making themselves vulnerable to detection by Harada. So they have no choice but to force their way into a hospital to get treatment for the wounded Kris or steal a car from the parking lot to escape. (In one of the nicer bits of dialogue, Zeppelin suggests they take a junker, to which Torque replies, "No. Somebody needs that car. Take a rich pig's wheels.") When they confront Harada at the end of the second issue at the foundation's New York headquarters, they steal a large amount of money from Harada's safe and guiltlessly spend it on cars, plane tickets and a vacation to New Orleans. Their use of the money may seem unwise, but it is convincing for people their age.
While dealing with Harada is hard, dealing with each other is far from easy for these hot-blooded teens. The significant role sex plays in this book is evident from the start, when Pete and Kris share a hotel room within the first few pages of the first issue. When Faith joins them, Kris's first reaction is to be defensive about the sleeping arrangements. And everything heats up when they meet Flamingo, who introduces herself to Kris and Faith by burning her clothes off and talking suggestively to Pete. But while Kris says she loves Pete, she also can't help competing with Flamingo for Torque's attention. Torque brushes aside the obvious Flamingo to pursue the tougher catch in Kris. While Flamingo and Torque are referred to as an item, they don't seem to be interested in much more about each other than sex. Kris, who often acts as Pete's and the team's moral compass, finds the reality of maintaining high moral standards hard where Torque is concerned and she has an affair with him that results in pregnancy. (The identity of their child in the Unity crossover was one of the great early twists of Valiant continuity ... but that's another story.)
While Kris and Pete are highly motivated to fight Harada, Faith and Flamingo are more normal, having fled convincingly dull and unsatisfying home lives to fight a cause they knew nothing about before meeting Pete. Faith was a spoiled and shy "geek" who feared her schoolmates conspired to make fun of and embarrass her for her interest in comics and science fiction. She enjoys the adventure and friendship of being in the group and is the most easy going of them all. To her, it's better to have friends and live with some dangerous than to play it safe and be unhappy.
Flamingo played the bad girl all her life to win some attention from parents too involved with fundamentalist Christianity to spend much time with her. She became the town slut, always being used and abused by her supposed boyfriends and often beaten up by those boys' girlfriends. That all changes as she is shocked to find her teammates asking her to break a tie and decide what the team should do next. She's even more surprised when they abide by her decision. This leads her to stand up to a harbinger named Ax in a fight with Valiant's spider aliens by burning him in a very tender spot. From that point on, she is more vocal and takes a more active role in the group. Her development of self-respect is hardly the most inventive plot twist of the series, but it is well done nonetheless.
But despite the abuses heaped on the others, Torque's tragedy is the greatest of all. Raised illiterate in rural Georgia by the owner of an auto shop and gas station, he was physically and mentally abused as a child and had few, if any, friends. To protect himself, he acts like the tough guy who's only after chicks and booze. It's Kris who draws him out as she teaches him to read and returns his attraction. We slowly begin to see him relax and let himself have fun, even throwing items for Zeppelin to "fetch" and going to the zoo.
While Torque is the team member most experienced with violence, the others take to it with surprising ease. There are several battle scenes that take a realistic approach to violence that is harsher and more thrilling than the fantasy violence seen in most comic books. Issue four's Christmas Eve battle, in which Ax recruits belligerent harbingers to get revenge on Torque, is a great action sequence. They chase Torque through cold, rural streets as one harbinger sticks psychic spikes through his body. They torture him for hours before Sting and the others show up. The battle ends when Pete overpowers the harbingers by frying their brains with his painful brand of telepathy while Kris takes a rock to the head of Ax's pit bull and then knees the dog's owner hard in the groin. The team laughs its injuries off in a single panel finale reminiscent of a sitcom tag scene.
But the team's next battle exacted a much higher price than they ever wanted to pay. When the Eggbreaker Puff loses control of his power to disintegrate anything he touches and destroys a Dallas office tower, Harada goes in to help him and is detected by Pete. Harada tries to help Puff, whose girlfriend Thumper is greatly concerned for him. The harbingers' steady progress as they fight their way toward Harada forces him to choose between helping the dangerous Puff and his own personal safety. He orders Puff terminated as Pete and crew enter. Solar, who's also after Harada, shows up as Harada escapes. Pete relays information from Solar's mind to Puff's that allow the youth to regain his control. Puff is grateful but Solar is outraged that Pete entered his mind so easily. Solar gets Pete and his crew out of there and scolds them before leaving. But Pete smells blood and believes this is the best time to strike at Harada. They are ambushed as soon as they return to Harada's complex, and Harada orders Pete shot in the head at the first opportunity. Puff and Thumper decide they can't allow Pete to be killed after the way he helped them and they knock out Harada. Free of Harada's telepathic attack, the harbingers escape with their temporary allies.
But Harada taps into Puff's and Thumper's minds to find out where Pete and his friends are, dispatching more Eggbreakers to stop them. A battle erupts on the road and the Eggbreaker Rock lures Torque into the woods and stabs him. The harbingers win the fight, but realize too late the ambulance that takes away the barely breathing Torque is manned by another Eggbreaker, who gives Torque a lethal injection. Pete enters his friend's mind in time for Torque to say a simple good-bye ... and then he's gone.
The team's struggle with the death of their friend and the cost of their campaign against the Harbinger Foundation completes the story arc. Most of them are numb, unable to truly comprehend that their friend is dead. Pete knows he can never wash Torque's blood from his hands and is ashamed at his rashness in pursuing his crusade. Flamingo surprises herself by finding comfort in the Bible that kept her from her parents. And Kris, who is now showing signs of morning sickness, feels the loss the most, throwing a tantrum and demanding they give Torque a decent burial. Again, they resort to questionable behavior to ensure their friend is laid to rest properly. They steal his body and Pete forces a funeral home owner to arrange services in the middle of the night, no questions asked. In a long, realistic scene, they sit by themselves in the funeral home crying as they listen to the service and pay the price of their crusade and mourn their dead friend. Feeling much sadder and wiser, they use the last of the money they stole from Harada to buy the one thing they know Torque would want them to have: a classic Mustang convertible.
Looking back on these books, it's amazing how well they hold up. The emotion that fuels this arc and climaxes in the tragic and sad death of Torque is still compelling, the modern material well supported by Shooter's flair for Silver Age-style craftsmanship. These stories are densely plotted and move along quickly, with almost no time spent on extraneous mood or unessential plot elements. Lapham and Shooter tell their complex story with a graceful simplicity in page layout, panel composition and scripting— and it works.
It's ironic Shooter would write so well about a conflict between a group of kids and a big company at a time when he was fighting his partners for control of Valiant— a fight he soon lost. Having been both executive and creator, Shooter obviously identifies with both Sting's and Harada's points of view and perhaps was using Harbinger to explore his own feelings about corporate life and its effect on people's morality and creativity.
For a time, Harbinger was the hottest book in the industry in one of the hottest markets for comic books. It was disappointing to watch both Harbinger and Valiant decline so far, so quickly after Shooter and Lapham left. Today, you'd be lucky to find copies of the Harbinger trade paperback in the bargain bins, while Valiant itself is practically gone. Lapham has moved on to his self-published (and excellent) Stray Bullets series and Jim Shooter is now nowhere to be found in comics after two subsequent publishing ventures failed. I still miss this series and its unique flavor from time to time, and wonder what would have happened if Shooter and Lapham had been able to take it to some kind of conclusion. But it's probably better unfinished, as an unsatisfactory ending would only have tarnished the promise shown by this star that shone briefly but brightly in comic-book history.

DC buys into manga shop

DC Comics announced it has invested in Flex Comix, a new manga production and publishing company in Japan. Move is intended to position DC as the English-language publisher for print and digital for Flex's properties and will complement DC's current CMX manga line.

Move also marks a big step forward for DC into the digital comics arena. Flex plans to distribute its comics first via the web and mobile phones, with print editions to follow.

Calvin Reid at Variety sister publication Publisher's Weekly has more details here; the press release from DC follows in the jump.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: DC COMICS INVESTS IN JAPANESE PUBLISHER FLEX COMIX

New York, New York -- DC Comics, the world's largest English language comic book publisher announced today an investment in Flex Comix, a newly established manga production and publishing company in Japan. Flex Comix is comprised of a diverse consortium of investors including DC Comics, SOFTBANK TECHNOLOGY, Archetype Technologies, MOVIDA ENTERTAINMENT and T&M. Flex Comix will create original manga titles that will be distributed digitally across the web and on mobile phones with subsequent print editions available through traditional book trade outlets throughout Japan.

 

The agreement will position DC Comics as the worldwide English language print and digital publisher of titles created by Flex Comix. In March 2007, DC established DC Comics Japan, Ltd. to invest into and manage its interest in Flex Comix. This marks the first time an English-language publisher has made a significant investment in an overseas manga company. The move will complement DC’s existing manga imprint, CMX.

 

“Flex Comix’ publishing model provides a cutting-edge platform for manga readers to enjoy our titles in online, mobile and print formats,” said Seiji Takakura, CEO of Flex Comix. “DC Comics and Flex Comix have forged a partnership that will bring authentic Japanese manga to the worldwide English language audience in new and exciting ways. We have many exciting plans in the works that we will be announcing in the coming months.”

 

"Flex Comix is an innovative force within the exciting world of manga,” said Paul Levitz, DC Comics President and Publisher. “We look forward to working closely with them.”

 

“Flex Comix represents the synergy between several important and diverse mediums, including video games, marketing, IP creation companies and world class technology - all dedicated to creating original manga and then bringing those properties to film, television and interactive entertainment," said John Nee, DC Comics Vice President of Business Development and Flex Comix Board Member. "Our strategy for both digital and traditional publishing builds on our existing commitment to bring great comics to fans worldwide.”

 

Details on the exact nature of the DC Comics/Flex publishing plan will be announced at a later date.

Valiant's "Harbinger" returns

Valiant Entertainment, which has obtained the rights to the long-defunct Valiant Comics line, has announced a deluxe hardcover collection of "Harbinger." The book, set to be released in August, will collect the origin story from issues #0-7, written by Jim Shooter and drawn by David Lapham. The book will be recolored, and will feature a new story written by Shooter and drawn by former Valiant mainstay Bob Hall.

For those of us who read those comics when they first came out, this is great news. Valiant was the company that stepped in and filled the need for new, quality superhero content in the days when Image got all the attention but was chronically late. Shooter, the former editor in chief at Marvel, wrote a realistic and thoroughly modern tale of teenage superheroes, complete with bad judgment and raging hormones. This was the book that launched Lapham's career and laid the groundwork for "Stray Bullets" and his more recent graphic novel efforts, such as the upcoming "Silverfish" for Vertigo. Shooter remains a controversial figure within the industry. A conflict with the management at Valiant led to his ouster from the company, after which it began a long decline in quality. Shooter tried unsuccessfully to replicate Valiant, first with Defiant and later with Broadway Comics. He wrote an attempted revival of the Valiant characters in a series called Unity 2000 that was never completed.

Valiant fans will certainly be thrilled to see this story back in print, and seeing those characters return in new stories is a tantalizing prospect.

Spidey? Jewish? Oy Vey!

Here’s something comics fans don’t read every day: the author of a new book on the Jewish influence on superheroes explains to the Brooklyn Heights Courier how Spider-Man’s story parallels Scripture (h/t to Stu Levine).

“Peter Parker’s a nerd who grew up in Forest Hills, his middle name is Benjamin and he’s motivated by guilt … I see a connection,” jokes Rabbi Simcha Weinstein, author of “Up, Up, And Oy Vey! How Jewish History, Culture and Values Shaped the Comic Book Superhero.”

Weinstein obviously shares at least one power with Spidey: the ability to spout quirky quips at a moment’s notice.

Vertigo announces Straub/Easton, Cantor GNs

Book Expo America has become an increasingly important event to comics publishers as they push further into the bookstore market. DC Comics used this year’s show, now wrapped in New York City, to announce two major projects.

First, novelist Peter Straub is teaming up with screenwriter and actor Michael Easton to write an original graphic novel called “The Green Woman.” The book, set to be published under the Vertigo banner, has no release date or artist attached as yet.

Vertigo also will publish “Aaron and Ahmed,” the first graphic novel from acclaimed novelist Jay Cantor. The writer of “Krazy Kat,” “The Death of Che Guevara” and “Great Neck,” Cantor has won many prestigious awards for his fiction and worked as a screenwriter on projects for HBO, Columbia, Universal and Disney.

“The Supervillain Book”: A good tome on bad guys

Stan Lee used to joke that you can’t tell the superheroes apart without a scorecard. But with each hero having tons of supervillains, the scorecard is even more essential for the bad guys.
“There’s tens of thousands of villains, even though you’ve only got a couple hundred tried and true heroes,” says Gina Misiroglu, co-editor of “The Supervillain Book: The Evil Side of Comics and Hollywood,” a compendium published recently by Visible Ink Press of the most-vile antagonists of comics, film, TV and pop culture, and available through local bookstores, Amazon and Barnes & Noble.com.
Misiroglu says the book was the natural successor to “The Superhero Book: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Comic-Book Icons and Hollywood Heroes,” which she edited and was published about two years ago, though in many ways the villains tome was more challenging, starting with the wider use of characters that can be defined in supervillains in genres and mediums beyond comicbooks.
“With heroes, especially superheroes, there’s very a strict criteria for their inclusion because of the genre,” says Misiroglu. “So a character like Luke Skywalker I don’t consider a quote-unquote superhero, because he doesn’t fit the criteria that we came up with for the book. But on the other side of the coin, the villains can be found in almost every genre.” For example, the book includes entries on characters from pulp fiction (Fu Manchu), popular fiction (Professor Moriarty) and TV and film (Darth Vader).

But the number of villains made the choice of which ones to include more difficult, especially with a smaller page count, she says. In making those choices, she says she and her collaborators obviously looked for the most unique, most historically significant characters, but then went a little bit deeper. “We tried to include not just the A-list villains, but some of the more interesting B-list villains,” she says. Those included characters that represent something of their time, or characters who could be grouped thematically to provide a look at the trends in villainy.
Perhaps even more so than superheroes, supervillains have changed pretty radically in the past 30 or so years, becoming more complicated and sympathetic characters even as their misdeeds become more and more extreme.
“I think they strike a chord, their whole rebelliousness, their individuality, their anti-social leanings,” Misiroglu says. “For example, Ras al Ghul, we would sympathize with his environmental motives, but not the way he goes about it. Or maybe we think that Magento’s desire to protect other mutants is admirable, but the way he goes about taking care of his mission is so off the board.”
Supervillains in the 1990s and 2000s have gotten even darker, with Doomsday succeeding in killing Superman, Bane breaking Batman’s back, and the body count racked up by the likes of Venom and Sabretooth.
“Our real world is so dark, that what is reflected in our pop culture, on the pages, has to live up to that. Hitler was the real-life villain when the comics were first published, and now we have Al-Qaeda as the real-life worldwide terror organization. Specifically, since 9/11, you’re seeing so much more violence, so much more aggression.”
That’s a major change from the black-and-white villainy of early comics villains. “I think there was a distancing back then. We saw the supervillain as the other. Now, we see the supervillain as ourselves. They’re real, they’re in the real world now, and I think we can more openly identify with them.” She cites the Joker as an excellent example of the changes supervillains have gone through, and you can read the Joker entry at the end of the entry.  
That’s put supervillains into much more of a starring role. In comics, villain-centric titles such as Villains United, House of M, Catwoman, Mystique, Deadshot and Venom have proliferated. TV series such as “24” and “Heroes” feature antagonists that could easily be supervillains. And in film, speculation runs more rampant about which actors will play the villains than the heroes, as it did for the upcoming “Spider-Man 3,” while “V for Vendetta” openly blurs the idea of whether the main character is a hero or villain.
The book was edited by Misiroglu and Michael Eury, with contributions from a number of top writers on comics, including Mike W. Barr, Heidi MacDonald, Andy Mangels and Peter Sanderson. Stan Lee provided the foreward and artist Mike Allred tapped into the supervillain archetype for an original cover.
Misiroglu says she is toying with an idea for a third book in the series, though no plans have been finalized. In the meantime, she’s planning on updating “The Superhero Book,” which will get a new cover and a new trim size to match the slightly shorter supervillain tome.

The Joker

Call him what you will—the Clown Prince of Crime, the Harlequin of Hate, the Ace of Knaves, or even “Mr. J”—but Batman’s arch-foe the Joker is indisputably the most recognizable of all supervillains. His chalk-white skin, green hair, rouge-red lips, and toothy, macabre smile are etched into infamy, evoking the clown fears that have traumatized countless children and have lingered in the nightmares of many adults.
    When the Joker debuted in Batman #1 (1940), he appeared without the benefit of the customary device of an origin, heightening his mystique. In an untitled tale he interrupts a Gotham City radio broadcast to predict in “a toneless voice” the murder of millionaire Henry Claridge and the theft of his priceless Claridge Diamond, to occur at midnight. Despite a police cordon, a panicky Claridge dies laughing at the stroke of twelve, a “repellant, ghastly grin” creeping across his lifeless face. This is calling card of the Joker, the insane serial killer in a purple zoot suit who uses a toxin to cause his victims to, in the words of Jack Nicholson, who played the villain in director Tim Burton’s live-action Batman (1989), “go with a smile.” His other trademark, a Joker playing card, is established in this first tale, luring Batman and Robin onto the Harlequin of Hate’s trail. Once cornered, the crackpot, crackshot Joker attempts to ventilate Batman’s chest, which is protected by a bulletproof vest, and winds up behind bars, where he diabolically cackles that he will have the last laugh upon his new foe. “The Joker Returns” in that very multi-story issue, three tales later, and is back to his murderous tricks, wielding an ax at Batman; the Joker almost dies as a knife he attempts to plunge into the hero’s chest winds up in his own.
    The Joker’s chilling Batman #1 premiere succeeded in scaring DC Comics’ editors as well as its readers, as the character’s homicidal tendencies were jettisoned for practical joke-laced crimes. The Joker became the chaos to the Caped Crusader’s order, worming his way into story after story, and soon onto the covers of Batman and Detective Comics themselves, which had, in Batman and Robin’s earliest outings, usually featured generic poses of the heroes rather than story-specific teasers (artist Fred Ray’s original cover art to 1942’s Batman #11, featuring the Joker, fetched an astounding $195,500 in an August 2005 auction from Dallas, Texas’ Heritage Comics). He was also seen in newspapers during the mid-1940s, in the Batman syndicated strip. By the time “The Joker Follows Suit” was published in Batman #37 (1946), the Clown Prince of Crime had been firmly established as Batman’s demented doppelganger, tooling around Gotham around in his Jokermobile, taking to the skies in his Jokergyro, and illuminating the night with his Joker Signal, each dastardly device bearing his smirking face.
    The origin of that famous face is marred by controversy, as if the madcap Bat-foe himself orchestrated a cruel joke to disorient historians and fans. Artist Jerry Robinson, originally the assistant to Batman’s credited creator and first artist, Bob Kane, is said to have created the Joker, drawing from the obvious playing-card inspiration for the arch-foe’s look. Conversely, Kane claimed authorship, in collaboration with Batman’s unsung champion, writer Bill Finger. Finger’s son Fred cited yet another, different source for the Joker’s visage: a drawing of a man with a ridiculously wide grin that appeared on advertisements for “the funny place,” George C. Tilyou’s Steeplechase attraction at Coney Island. Penciler Kane and inker Robinson concurred that when drawing the Joker in Batman #1, they based the villain’s looks on stills from the silent movie The Man Who Laughs (1928), provided to them by Finger, the writer of the first Joker tale. In that film, actor Conrad Veidt portrayed Gwynplaine, a disfigured, rictus-faced character.
    The Joker was finally awarded an origin . . . of sorts . . . in “The Man Behind the Red Hood” in Detective #168 (1951). A tuxedoed thief whose features are hidden behind a crimson cowl returned, having evaded Batman early in the hero’s crimefighting career. Batman discovered that the Red Hood was actually the Joker, who, in his original Red Hood adventure, escaped from Batman by swimming through a “pool of chemical wastes” that permanently altered his appearance. His original face was never shown, nor was he named. (A new Red Hood has appeared in 2000s Batman continuity.)
    Often aided by hapless goons and headquartering from abandoned amusement parks or reconfigured buildings (his lair in some texts has been called his Ha-Ha-Hacienda, even bearing his likeness and deathtraps for uninvited guests), the Joker continued to laugh his way through zany capers throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s, donning his own utility belt, filming his own movies, starting a newspaper, launching a “Crime-of-the-Month Club,” and joining forces with Lex Luthor, schemes intended to line his pockets and pester Batman and Robin (and sometimes Superman). While the murderous Joker of Batman #1 was a distant memory, his arsenal was still quite hazardous, from electric joy buzzers to acid-spraying boutonnières to exploding vest buttons. During this era, artist Dick Sprang’s manic interpretation of the Joker stood out as the villain’s signature look.
    After editor Julius Schwartz retooled Batman with an updated “new look” in 1964, the Joker flounced into the mainstream as the third villain to be introduced to a television audience in ABC’s live-action Batman (1966–1968), with screen Latin lover Cesar Romero first appearing as the villain in the two-part episodes “The Joker is Wild” and “Batman is Riled” (original airdates: 1/22/66 and 1/23/66). “Jose Ferrer was my first choice for the Joker,” series producer William Dozier revealed in a 1986 interview; actor Gig Young was also considered. Ferrer reportedly regretted passing on the role after the show became a runaway success (his son, actor Miguel Ferrer, voiced DC Comics supervillain the Weather Wizard on the animated program Superman, 1996–2000). In retrospect, Dozier was ecstatic over the giggling foolishness his old friend “Butch” Romero brought to the Joker, never regretting going with his second choice: “I was thinking [Ferrer] may have taken himself a little too seriously as an actor to do that.” While chuckling through numerous episodes and the 1966 Batman spin-off theatrical movie, Romero as the Joker took one thing very seriously—his mustache, which he never shaved for the role, his lip hair visible under the heavy Joker greasepaint. 
    The Joker was close under Batman’s merchandising wing during this era of “Batmania,” appearing on Batman lunchboxes, plastic coins, figurines, Topps trading cards (a 1966 series of painted Batman cards featured the Joker with Caucasian ears, artists Bob Powell and Norman Saunders’ mistaken impression that the Joker was a criminal in makeup), an ultra-rare hand puppet available only in a gift set, a mini-comic book distributed in boxes of Pop Tarts, and a paperback collection of his 1950s adventures from Signet Books (Batman vs. the Joker, 1966). The Joker was seen in various DC titles, from his home turf of Batman and Detective to guest shots in other series, and in Batman’s syndicated newspaper strip.
      After Batman’s TV cancellation, the Joker maintained a television presence in animation on CBS’ The Batman/Superman Hour (1968–1969) and The Adventures of Batman and Robin (1969–1970); ABC’s The New Scooby-Doo Movies (1972–1974); and CBS’ The New Adventures of Batman (1977–1978). Mego produced Joker action figures in a variety of sizes during the 1970s.
    Batman comic books returned the hero to his darker, gothic roots in the early 1970s, and after a few dormant years while the Dark Knight was fighting ghosts and gangsters, “The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge” in Batman #251 (1973), by writer Denny O’Neil and artist Neal Adams, took the Harlequin of Hate back to square one: serial killer. “Though I wasn’t aware of it at the time,” O’Neil recounted in a 2004 BACK ISSUE interview, “I now know that the Joker is probably the best embodiment of the trickster motif in all of modern fiction, though Hannibal Lecter might be a close second.” This was a trickster embodiment with a body count, as the Joker offed his enemies with wild abandon, and came close to doing the same to Batman, even to artist Adams’ surprise. “Yes, I wanted to do the Joker, and yes, I wanted him to be bad, but Denny made him real bad,” the artist told BACK ISSUE. But Adams ultimately jibed with O’Neil’s back-to-brutal-basics approach, elongating the Joker’s face to a look that, despite minor variations reflecting artistic preferences, remains canonical in the twenty-first century.
    The Joker’s rebirth in Batman #251 reignited his comics career: He received his own title, The Joker (1975–1976), a series that ran out of steam after nine issues as the governing Comics Code Authority required the villain to be apprehended at each issues’ end; and “teamed” with Batman in several issues of The Brave and the Bold. Writer Steve Englehart, joined by artist Marshall Rogers, explored the Joker’s craziness in Detective #475–#476 (1978), where the Joker ludicrously attempted to copyright freakish “laughing fish” contaminated by his smile toxins. “My sense of it was if you really got to the essence of the Joker, he still had another dimension to go, which was to become insane,” Englehart remarked to BACK ISSUE in 2004. (The popular Englehart/Rogers team reunited for a 2005 miniseries titled Batman: Dark Detective, featuring the Joker’s gubernatorial campaign with his persuasive campaign slogan, “Vote for me—or I’ll kill you!”)
    The next milestone in the Joker’s career was Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986), writer/artist Frank Miller’s non-continuity, futuristic vision of a fiftyish Batman grudingly coming out of retirement to battle, among other things, the Joker. Miller’s Joker added a new element to the villain’s dichotomous relationship with Batman: homoeroticism, redefining the reasons for the Crime Clown’s fixation upon his foe.
    Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s 1988 graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke, which is part of DC’s continuity, built upon the classic “Red Hood” tale by showing the face behind the hood, a nameless working stiff with stand-up comedy aspirations who turned to crime to support his pregnant wife, who died in the story. Since this is an origin told by the Joker, its legitimacy remains uncertain, although events taking place in Batman: Gotham Knights #54 (2004) suggest that for once the Joker might not have been pulling readers’ legs. The Killing Joke is best known for the Joker’s kidnapping of Commissioner James Gordon and his debasement and shooting of Gordon’s daughter Barbara (the former Batgirl), which left her confined to a wheelchair. The next year the Joker committed the iniquitous act of killing Jason Todd, the second Robin the Boy Wonder, in the storyline “A Death in the Family” (Batman #426–#429, 1989), an execution sanctioned by DC readers who voted for Todd to die in a rather morbid phone-in publicity stunt.
    Also that year, the Joker returned to movie houses in the blockbuster Batman (1989), with Jack Nicholson cast as mobster Jack Napier, who, while on the lam from the Dark Knight, fell into a vat of chemicals and crawled out of a sewer having been transformed into the Joker. The movie further linked the Joker to Batman by revealing that Napier was the gunman who murdered young Bruce Wayne’s parents before the boy’s eyes, the tragedy which led him toward his Batman career. Nicholson’s Joker, while at times hamfisted with screentime, occasionally displayed Englehart-like moments of mania (not entirely surprising since Englehart was involved with early treatments of the film), and the Joker’s grin-inducing toxin received a name, “Smilex” (used for the movie only; in comic books, it is called his “Joker Venom”).  Nicholson returned the Joker to merchandising ubiquity: Board games, video games, action figures, T-shirts, and a rubber Joker Halloween were among the many items bearing his facepainted likeness. Bantam’s The Further Adventures of the Joker, a collection of prose short stories, was published in early 1990.
    The 1990s and 2000s have cemented the Joker’s position as a pop-culture figure. He has continued to run amok throughout the DC Universe, becoming more deranged each time he is liberated from his cell in Arkham Asylum. He escaped a death sentence in the graphic novel The Joker: The Devil’s Advocate (1996), joined the Injustice Gang and fought the JLA in the late 1990s, co-starred with Dark Horse Comics’ own grinning goofball in the 2000 Joker/Mask crossover, and “Jokerized” criminals in his own image when thinking he was about to die in the miniseries Joker: Last Laugh (2001). Despite his gargantuan smile, it is no laughing matter when the Joker shows up, brandishing his pistol that fires a “BANG!” flag (and sometimes spears) or a smiley-face bomb brimming with his deadly Joker Venom.
    The Joker has kept television viewers enthralled since 1992. Mark Hamill, having brought another DC supervillain, the Trickster, to life on two episodes of the live-action series, The Flash (1990–1991), voiced the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series (BTAS) (1992–1995) and in appearances on Superman (1996–2000), Batman: Gotham Knights (1997–1999), Static Shock (2000–2004), the made-for-video animated movie Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (2000), and Justice League (2001–2004). Hamill’s vocalization became so heavily identified with the Joker that he was hired to provide the villain’s voice on the first episode of the live-action Birds of Prey (2002–2003) and received an outpouring of fan support to play the Joker in a forthcoming sequel to the live-action box-office hit Batman Begins (2005). A Joker playing card left behind at the scene of a crime in Batman Begins’ epilogue suggested the Clown Prince of Crime’s future appearance, and a “casting game” swept fandom and the Internet, with Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, Steve Carell, and Hamill among the names bandied about as Joker candidates. Hamill’s indirect contribution to the Joker canon was the villain’s gun moll, Harley Quinn (whose pet names for the Joker are “puddin” and “Mr. J.”), introduced on BTAS and eventually proving so popular that she was incorporated into DC Comics continuity. The Batman (2004–present), the animated relaunch of the Batman concept, has introduced a revamped, wild-haired, straight-jacketed martial artist Joker played by Kevin Michael Richardson. A collector could easily fill a bookcase with the Joker action figures and accessories (such as Jokermobiles) produced since the early 1990s to tie in to the various animated and comic-book interpretations of the villain, incluidng a 2005 Red Hood figure, with a removable hood exposing the Joker’s sneering face. —ME

From THE SUPERVILLAIN BOOK, edited by Gina Misiroglu and Michael Eury, Visible Ink Press, 2006. © 2006 by Visible Ink Press. Reprinted by permission of Visible Ink Press®.

IDW to reissue 'Little Orphan Annie,' 'Terry and the Pirates'

Great news for fans of classic comic strips: IDW is publishing fully authorized and complete hardcover collections of Milton Caniff's classic adventure strip Terry and the Pirates. There will be six volumes in series, with each Sunday strip appearing in color, starting in July.

Little Orphan Annie will follow in a similar format, though it will pick up in the mid 1930s where a previous strip collection series published by Fantagraphics left off.

Both series are being edited by Dean Mullaney, who was a prominent figure in 1980s indie comics as an editor at Eclipse Comics.

Announcing: "X-Men: The Movie Trilogy and the Comics"

It's time at long last to announce that my first book, "X-Men: The Movie Trilogy and the Comics" will be published next month by Sequart.com Books.

The book is an unauthorized look at the three X-Men films as the culmination of more than 40 years of comicbook history. The book goes through each film, analyzing them scene by scene and picking apart their relation to the X-Men comics. To put all of this into perspective, the book also includes a brief history of X-Men comics, a look at how and which comicbook stories influenced the films' development processes and made it to the screen, and an analysis of the reaction to the films and their box office performance.

Advance copies will be available at the Sequart.com booth at this week's New York Comic-Con, with the final edition to roll out at the end of March through Sequart.com, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com, with additional outlets to be announced soon. Sequart.com also will be unveiling at the show "Grant Morrison: The Early Years," by Timothy Callahan. Both Tim and I will be at the show to sign and sell copies, so be sure to stop by booth #967 and say hello.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have, including requests for review copies, through the e-mail link on this site.

Del Rey rocks with Levigne

Del Rey Manga is jumping into the original content field with a new two-volume series called "Avril Levigne's Make 5 Wishes." Grammy-nommed Canadian rocker Levigne has been involved in the creative process and the first book will be released in April around the same time as Levigne's next album, "The Best Damn Thing." The book itself will be drawn by Camilla D'Errico and written by Joshua Dysart.

Levigne follows somewhat in the steps of Courtney Love, who created the manga series Princess Ai for TOKYOPOP. Move shows the appeal of shojo manga (manga for young girls) remains strong in the U.S. Levigne's popularity with this market will be interesting to watch, as it's been a few years since she burst on the music scene in 2002 as a kind of anti-Britney figure.

Press release after the jump

DEL REY MANGA ACQUIRES ITS FIRST AMERICAN MANGA IN COLLABORATION WITH POP SUPERSTAR AVRIL LAVIGNE

NEW YORK, NY — January 30, 2007 — Del Rey Manga, an imprint of Random House Inc. and one of the premiere publishers of manga in the U.S., announced today the acquisition of MAKE 5 WISHES, created in collaboration with platinum-selling and Grammy Award-nominated recording artist Avril Lavigne.

Del Rey Manga will publish the first volume of MAKE 5 WISHES on April 10, 2007. Avril Lavigne's new album The Best Damn Thing will release shortly after on April 17, 2007 from RCA Records. In volume one of MAKE 5 WISHES, introverted teenager Hana stumbles upon a website that will change her life forever. After a demon grants her a series of wishes that go bad, Hana meets her hero Avril Lavigne, who helps her find the courage to conquer her own personal demons once and for all. The concluding volume of MAKE 5 WISHES will release in July 2007. Both volumes will appear in full-color.

More than simply lending her talents to the creative process, multiple award-winning singer, songwriter, model, and actress Avril Lavigne also appears as a character in the manga. When asked what inspired her to be a part of this project, Avril Lavigne had this to say, "I know that many of my fans read manga, and I'm really excited to be involved in creating stories that I know they will enjoy."

Acquiring editor Betsy Mitchell, Editor-in-Chief of Del Rey Books, said this about the enthusiasm surrounding MAKE 5 WISHES, "In the past few years, manga [the Japanese art form] has grown exponentially in the United States. For our very first original English-language manga, we're very excited to be working with a person as versatile in her talent as Avril Lavigne."

Del Rey Manga purchased world rights for the books in a deal brokered by Terry McBride, CEO of Nettwerk Management.

ABOUT AVRIL LAVIGNE

AVRIL LAVIGNE was born in the small town of Napanee, Ontario, Canada, and stood out from the crowd at an early age. Her musical talents were noticeable by the age of two, and by the time she was in her early teens she was already writing songs and playing guitar. Singing in the church choir and local festivals allowed Lavigne to get her voice heard.

On a trip to New York at age 16, Lavigne was signed to Arista Records when she caught the attention of Antonio "LA" Reid. With her major label deal signed, Lavigne moved to New York City, but not long after moved on to Los Angeles to work on her record. By early 2002, her debut CD Let Go was released. With 15 million albums sold, 8 Grammy nominations and three #1 singles—"Sk8ter Boi," "Complicated," and "I'm With You"—Lavigne gave young women a defiant voice.

In 2004, Lavigne returned with Under My Skin. This time the Canadian chanteuse took charge of her creative direction and reflected a more introspective Avril. The album debuted at #1 on charts worldwide and delivered her fourth #1 single, "My Happy Ending."

Twenty-six million albums later, and following numerous awards, multiple world tours, and myriad magazine covers and TV appearances, Lavigne is now finding time to concentrate on her other loves, acting and fashion.

THE CREATIVE TEAM

CAMILLA D'ERRICO: ARTIST

Camilla d'Errico is an artist whose first love is the manga form. Her work will be featured by the underwear and lingerie company Ginch Gonch in their AIDS Awareness promotion scheduled for Fall 2007. In addition to the Make 5 Wishes series, she will have three comics published in 2007: Burn, a traditional manga series published by Arcana Studios in Canada; Zevon-7, a four-part mini-series published by AngelGate Press; and Nightmares and Fairytales, by Slave Labour Graphics.

JOSHUA DYSART: WRITER

Joshua Dysart co-created and wrote the cult hit comic book series Violent Messiahs for Image Comics. The first eight issues are collected in the graphic novel, Violent Messiahs Vol. I: Book of Job.

He also wrote the comic book adaptation of the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for Art Asylum. More recently, he authored the Dark Horse one-shot Van Helsing: Beneath the Rue Morgue (an original story featuring the character from the Universal film) and Penny Farthing Press' hit mini-series Captain Gravity & the Power of the Vril. He's the monthly writer of DC Comics/Vertigo's legendary title, Swamp Thing.

Joshua has produced/directed and edited short documentary films on music, was commissioned to write the screenplay version of Brian Pulido's ultimate zombie bad boy, Evil Ernie, and has published a plethora of poetry.

ABOUT DEL REY MANGA

Del Rey was founded in 1977 as a division of Ballantine Books under the guidance of the renowned Judy-Lynn del Rey and her husband, Lester del Rey. Del Rey publishes the best of modern fantasy, science fiction, alternate history and manga. Ballantine Books is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, which is a publishing group of Random House, Inc, the U.S. publishing company of Random House, the trade book publishing division of Bertelsmann AG, one of the world's leading international media companies. In the sum