Previews-o-Rama part 1: The Front

It's time to go through the latest Previews to discover the good, the bad, and the strange:





Dark Horse



If you want to have the final Star Wars movie spoiled before you see it, you can get the weekly four-part Revenge of the Sith adaptation in April.



There's a Vampire Hunter D novel. Considering what utter crap the movie was, I can't imagine sloughing through a 300 page prose version.



A new volume of Trina Robbins & Anne Timmons' Go Girl! Yay!



P. Craig Russell is doing a Conan and the Jewels of Gwahlur mini. I'll wait for the trade, like I do with most Dark Horse offerings these days.



Speaking of which, Steve Rude's The Moth has a trade collection this month. The stories were hit-or-miss, butwith always nice art from The Dude.



I don't ever remember hearing anything about a first volume of Dare Detectives, but apparently there's a volume two. Looks interesting.



The late Will Eisner has a story in The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, with The Spirit teaming up with the title character. Other creators in the anthology include Howard Chaykin, Eddie Campbell, & Paul Hornschemeier.



The Dark Horse Book of the Dead features an all-new Hellboy story from Mike Mignola, plus work by Jill Thompson, Kelley Jones, Eric Powell & Gary Gianni.



Woo-Hoo, a $30 Sin City Zippo Lighter. (That's sarcasm, folks.)



If you missed any of Dark Horse's recent miniseries, they have convenient Comic Book Packs, with all of the issues at a cost of $2 per issue.





DC Comics



Nightwing on crutches. Bruce Wayne in a wheelchair in the Batman: Blind Justice collection. Is this the lead-up to an exciting cross-over event that will change physical therapists in the Batman Titles forever?



The Batman: Jekyll & Hyde has Jae Lee art, so I'll wait for the trade so that I won't have to have the story interupted by adds for dumb-ass video games every two pages.



It's Captain Marvel vs. Superman, with a mysterious 'great evil' awakened in Metropolis. Gee, given that big blue tattoo on Supes's face on the covers, do you think it might be Eclipso?



Ed McGuinness returns to the art chores on Superman/Batman.



Adam Strange comes to an end with issue #8, which is about 3 issues too late. This could have/should have been done in about 5.



Wildcat shows up in Birds of Prey, which should make some people happy.



Two new minis spin out of DC Countdown: Day of Vengeance and The OMAC Project. I'm a sucker for continuity-spanning series like this. IS there a twelve-step program somewhere?



Solo #4 is all about Howard Chaykin, who seems to be popping up a lot these days.



Two new Seven Soldiers minis: Klarion the Witch Boy & Zatanna (Ryan Sook rules!). I take it then that these are all going to be bi-monthly? Should help keep them on schedule, I suppose, but could kill any momentum.



The Question is cover-featured in Justice League Unlimited.



The OGN ElfQuest: The Searcher and the Sword gets a soft-cover treatment.



So far I've been mostly uninterested in the CMX offerings, and the new Tenryu: The Dragon Cycle is no exception.



The Fourth Power, space opera from Humanoids, looks promising.



Howard Chaykin's (him again!) new mini City of Tomorrow is another wait-for-the-trade, something I'm trying to do more of these days.



2000 AD's Thirteen is written by Mike Carey.



Ocean and Wild Girl both reach a conclusion.



Kent Williams adapts Darren Aronofsky's upcoming movie The Fountain; it's $30, which is probably more than the DVD will end up costing.



Vertigo: First Taste, a sampler of Vertigo's GN offerings, is just $5; thorugh DCBS, it's only $2.50. At that price, you could afford to buy several and give them to friends.



Have you ever said to yourself: "Gee, I have $90 in my pocket, and I'd love to have an 8.25" tall statue of the Joker from the new Batman cartoon"? Then August 3 is your lucky day, chum! (But if you only have $60, you'll have to settle for the Alex Ross Green Lantern & Green Arrow Colelctor's Plate.)





Image



Frank Cho does Zombies with Zombie King. I wonder if he'll have to cover up zombie nipples?



Death Jr. looks like it could be fun (unless you think that goth comics suck, that is).



Invincible #0 is only 50 cents--buy two, they're small!



Both The Gray Area and Ultra get collected, and there's a third Walking Dead collection too.



What the heck is Terry Moore doing writing a Darkness/Vampirella one-shot?



The Rising Stars Hardcover collects the entire series--all 624 pages worth. I ordinarilly wouldn't consider such an expensive item, especialyl considering that I read it in floppies, but DCBS is offering it at half-off (i.e. $35), which is looking awfulyl tempting...





Marvel



What's up with the Marvel solicit-copy guy this month? He's relatively laid-back this month, but he's now all about the questions:



Who's that hitting on Mary Jane?

Will Alex be able to sneak out for a romantic evening?

Will either survive this epic encounter?

Will they make it through meeting Ultimate Annihilus and his fellow survivors?

Can even the greatest super team on Earth take down a Norse thunder god?

Is Johnny her new red-hot lover, or a cat's-paw for her latest heist?

Exactly how much was Matt Murdock willing to sacrifice in his obsession to clean up Hell's Kitchen?

Can Ismael overcome his fears and do what's right?

What's scarier than a high-profile super hero turned deathcult assassin?

How will Reed, Sue, and Ben escape from Ancient Egypt to stop the mad tyrant Ramades in the present?

What could be worse than a dozen hungry raptors? *

What better way to pump up his Q-rating than to relive his defining moment?

Who killed the Red Skull?

Do these young heroes intend to help the Runaways, or destroy them?

Can they save the day?

Will the combined might of the Earth's two greatest super hero families be enough to save Manhattan--and the world--from total annihilation?

Will the growing threat froma classic Avengers foe unite the two teams or destroy them both?

What separates the super-villains from just plain villains? **

Will the helping hand be in time?

Are the X-Men prepared to face what's inside them... or will they be defeated by their own inner demons?

Are they now foes?

Who are the Timebreakers?

What will be the final fate of the AoA universe?

Is she the only one behind their problems?

Is it too late to stop the demon-lord Ryuki and his hoard of zombie-samurai and save Japan?



Wow, that's a lot of questions to be answered in just one month's comics!



In the meanwhile, you can get and read the first two issues of the new manga-tinged Power Pack mini, or the second She-Hulk collection.





Wizard



Ooo, Phil Noto is drawing The New West--I must have the pretty pictures!





That's it for part 1. Part 2 tomorrow (probably...)



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* Maybe a high-profile super hero deathcult assassin?



** I'm guessing maybe the 'super-' part?

A Numbers Game

I worry these days for the direct market, especially for the survival of independent comics. Because when I do the math, it doesn't add up.



Follow me here, in my admitedly poorly-thought-out argument:



(I may be mistaken in some of my assumptions, but I think I'm close; and I'm rounding-off to make the math easier.)



The are approximately 3000 Diamond accounts (though probably not all of these are actual comic stores).



I've also heard it said (I forget where, but I've heard it more than once) that the magic circulation number for a black-and-white, standard-sized, self-published comic is 3000 copies; that is, if the comic sells over 3000, a decent-enough profit is realized that the creator(s) can continue the comic.



That would mean that each comic store would need to purchase, on average, 1 copy of a title for it to survive. Which doesn't seem to be that unobtainable; the problem is that there are just too many items in each issue of Previews for any store to buy one of everything on the chance that it might sell.



But wait, it gets worse. Because in truth, only about 10% of the comic stores order with any sort of significance past the premier publishers. This means that each of these stores would have to purchase an average of 10 copies of each of these titles for them to survive, which is even more unlikely.



Now I'm not some sort of polyanna who thinks that all comics deserve to survive; this is a marketplace after all, and bad comics (or those that just aren't wanted) should die off, so that their place in the comics ecosystem can be taken over by comics more likely to survive. But in the current market, the odds of anything surviving are just brutal, and perfectly good comics wither and die.



There are other markets of course, such as the emerging bookstore market. But that's a much harder market to break into than the direct market, especially for an indy creator.



I really have no solutions here, or much of a point for that matter. I'm just making an observation, and welcome your observations on this topic as well.

Ryan Sook Rules

I've always liked Ryan Sook's art, but by the look of this preview of the new Zatanna mini he's taking his mad skills up to the next level. Great looking stuff. In fact, it looks so good in black and white, I think I might prefer it if they don't color it in.



(From DC's Seven Soldiers mini-site, found via Thought Balloons.)

Quick Manga GN Reviews

Eerie Queerie! vol. 1

by Shuri Shiozu

Mitsuo is a typical high school boy with an a typical 'gift': he can communicate with the spirits of the restless dead, and said spirits are able to possess his body and use it to communicate with the living. Of course, seeing that he's in high school, he ends up most often being possessed by the spirits of departed high school girls who use his person to confess their unrequited love for hunky boys. Thus the set-up for this bishonen manga, with the typical pretty boys who may or may not be gay but certainly have strong friendships and act the way that girls apparently want boys to act. Eerie Queerie! seems to be a cut above the typical though, in that it has a central plot that could allow the stories to be interesting beyond standard bishonen clichés. Shiozu's art is dynamic, though accasionally to the detriment of clear storytelling. There are two back-up stories by Shiozu in this first volume, one of which--wherein a high school girl worries that her twin brother may be gay like their father--is actually a rather strong offering.

Rating: 2.5 (of 5)




Ai Yori Aoshi, vol. 3

by Kou Fumizuki

In the previous volume, Fumizuki set up the status quo for the continuing series, and nothing much changes here. Taeko is still clumsy, Tina is still Brash, Aoi is still the dutiful traditional Japanese woman, and Kaoru is still, well, boring. In fact, both Kaoru and Aoi are so boring that you kind o fget the feeling that they belong together. One direction to take the series would be for Aoi to gradually wake up to the fact that a modern woman doesn't need to be constantly wanting to pelase her man--that she can have her own life. But instead Fumizuki appears to be going the opposite way, with the infinitely more interesting Tina admiting that she secretly wishes sometimes that she could be more like the boring Aoi! Gagh! So why do I continue to read this series? Simply put, Fumizuki's artwork is incredible. Especially his setting shots, background and architecture, which really succeed in giving the stories a feeling of happening in a real space. If only the love story weren't so dull.

Rating: 2.5 (of 5)




DearS, vol. 1

by Peach-Pit

Aliens have come to Earth (actually, just to Japan), they're now living among us, and they look like freakish Michael Turner women (i.e. all legs and chest) with big eyes and small mouthes! That is, unless they're being drawn in a crude six-year-old style. Our main character here is (of course) a llonely high school boy, who has one of these alien females show up one day, kiss him and move in. But she cannot speak Japanese, and appears to be a bit addled, spending most of the time in skimpy clothing and contorting her body into odd positions so as to show off the maximum amount of flesh. I made it about halfway through this volume before giving up; there are too many other things to read to spend any more time on this poorly-drawn, insulting comic. But given the amount of totally gratuitous fan service, including a busty teacher who has a tendency to strip down to her underwear for no reason, I imagine that it will be quite popular.

Rating: 1 (of 5)

New This Week: February 9, 2005

Based on the NCRL list for this week's comics shipping from Diamond, here are a few things to look for at the local comic shop tomorrow:



The Pick of the Week is the first issue of Grant Morrison & Philip Bond's Vinanarama (from DC/Vertigo). It's more high-concept from Morrison, in the comic equivalent of a Bollywood romantic comedy. Plus, with 32 pages of story and art, there's surely no better use for your $2.95 this week. Surely after We3 Morrison has earned the right for you to give this next project of his a look-see.



In other comics:



Beckett has the fourth issue of the domestic super-hero yarn Fade from Grace. C'mon man, it's only $1.99 for a full-length, full-color comic. And it's good, too. Those of you complaining that comics should be cheaper should put your money where your typing-fingers are.



Burlyman has the second issue of Doc Frankenstein.



Dark Horse has the collection of BPRD: Plague of Frogs, which was the first of the Hellboy/BPRD products that really grabbed me, other than just being mildly entertaining. (This would have been the Pick of the Week, if not for Vinanarama.)



DC has Brubaker & Mahnke's Joker Year One-style one-shot, Batman: The Man Who Laughs, along with new issues of Fables (#34), Gotham Central (#28), JLA (#111), and JSA (#70). There are also a softcovers of Steven T. Seagle's It's a Bird GN and the third Tom Strong collection, and the seventh collected volume of Lucifer.



Drawn & Quarterly has the eleventh issue of the much-delayed-but-still-worth-reading Berlin by Jason Lutes.



Marvel double's your Cap pleasure with the third issue of Brubaker & Epting's Captain America and the final issue of Captain America & The Falcon (#12). They also have the second issue of Peter David's return to the Incredible Hulk (#78); new issues of New Thunderbolts (#5), The Punisher (#17), and Ultimates 2 (#3); and the debut of the comic which nobody demanded, Young Avengers.



Oni has the final issue of Sam Kieth's Ojo (#5).





Finally, if you have two hundred bucks to blow on the Constantine Movie Statue: Keanu Reeves As Constantine, you need to just knock it off. Seriously, is this the sort of thing that anyone is interested in?

Why I Love Free Comic Book Day

Dude: Free Comics!



Really, anyone who complains about FCBD is just a whiny cry-baby. It may not be perfect, but it's better than nothing. And so what if you can't get all the free comics you want--if there wasn't a Free Comic Book Day, you wouldn't get those comics anyway, right?



What I like most about FCBD is that it promotes comics for reading, and not as artifacts to be sealed up in mylar or 'slabbed'.



But what I'd really like to see is for Diamond to make the free comics available to anyone willing to pay, not just comic shops. Viral marketing, dude! Let comic fans buy lots of FCBD comics and then distribute them in barber shops, movie theaters, bus terminals, libraries, supermarkets, high schools, etc.



Retailers: Talk to your major customers, and see if they'd be willing to help out in a viral marketing campaign.



Publishers: You can bypass Diamond and go directly to the people! Use your Website to offer lots of 10 or 25 or 100 (or whatever) of your FCBD offering to fans who want to help spread the word.



The goal here is to get people interested in comics. Let's not be half-assed about it--let's go nuts!



Because dude: Free Comics Rule!

Why I Hate Free Comic Book Day

Saturday May 7 is Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) this year, and across the country comic specialy retailers will be giving away free comic books. It's a program designed to promote comic books by giving away special free editions to customers, presumably those people who don't regularly buy comics. How could anyone have a problem with that?



It's not the basic concept of FCBD that I have a problem with. Giving away comics as a promotional tool is, at its core, not a terrible idea. I don't think it's been very effective--it's been running for a few years now, and I haven't seen any sign that any significant number of new customers have been pulled in to comic shops. (Most of the growth in the comic publishing sector has been in bookstores who don't participate in FCBD.)



No, the problem I have with FCBD is the way that it is run in practice. You see, despite its name, the comics aren't really free, at least to the comic shops. The stores are required to purchase the comics that they give away (at a discount, mind you, but they still cost money).



Now a more enlightened comic store (and there are some out there!) will see FCBD as an opportunity to have a variety of different comics available to give away, both to bring new customers into the store, and to interest current customers in new comics they might not have tried before. There are after all 27 different publishers participating, with free comics from all sorts of different artists in many different genres. However, most stores, if they participate at all (my LCS didn't last year) will order comics for FCBD the same way that they order comics regularly, i.e. out of the front of the catalog. They'll get a limited number of the offerings from DC & Marvel, and maybe Dark Horse. They'll put them out on a table on May 7 with a ltitle sign, maybe with a sign in the store window; some of their regualr customers will wander in and pick one up, and that'll be it. Hardly a smashing success.



But my point here isn't to rip on bad comic stores. No, the reason I've really grown to dislike FCBD is the way in which some publishers approach it. Some of the publishers offer special FCBD editions with brand new stories not available anywhere else. And if your LCS either doesn't participate in FCBD or only gets the comics from DC & Marvel--a very likely scenario--well then, you're out of luck.



Renaissance Press has a special Amelia Rules #0 FCBD Edition, with an all-new story about the first meeting of the cast. Amelia Rules is one of my favorite comics, but if my retailer doesn't participate in FCBD or order Amelia Rules #0, I'm out of luck.



Top Shelf has the Owly Splashin Around FCBD Edition, with an "all-new, heartwarming tale". I haven't read Owly but I've heard good things about it. It would be the perfect opportunity to get me to try it, but if my retailer doesn't participate, then no dice.



Aracana Studios Presents #2 FCBD Edition has 3 all-new stories. But guess what? Sorry Charlie.



Dark Horse's Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith FCBD Edition offers a special prequel to the movie, but even if you're a huge Star Wars fan, you won't get to read this story unless your retailer participates.



Gemestone's Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge FCBD Edition reprints Carl Barks' first full-length Uncle Scrooge adventure, something I'd really like a chace to read. But sorry, no can do.



The worst offender is Beckett Comics. Last year they offered the first issue of The Ballad of Sleeping Beauty as their FCBD offering. Not a reprint of the first issue, the actual first issue. The only way to get the first issue of The Ballad of Sleeping Beauty was if your LCS orders copies of the FCBD edition. As I mentioned earlier, my LCS didn't participate in FCBD at all, and thus no copies of The Ballad of Sleeping Beauty #1 were available for customers. Amazingly, LCS ordered several copies of the regularly priced second issue, and unsurpringly they all sat on the shelf unpurchased. This year Beckett is doing it again, with the first issue of Ronin Hood of 47 Samurai--apparently they didn't learn their lesson the first time around.



That all said, there are some publishers approaching FCBD correctly. DC & Marvel are both offering reprints of first issues of their all-ages super-hero titles (Batman Strikes & Marvel Age Spider-Man Team-Up respectively). Bongo Comics has a sampler edition reprinting stories from their Simpsons family of titles. Image is reprinting selected stories from the Flight anthologies. G.T. Labs's offering showcases the frist 20-odd pages of the upcoming Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards graphic novel. These publishers are offering either reprints of previously published material or previews of forthcoming material. So you're not at the mercy of your LCS--there are other avenues available for you to read and enjoy these stories.



Frankly, I'd be perfectly happy to see FCBD go away. It was a good idea, at least for something to try, but it doesn't really seem to be working, and in some instances serves to alienate existing fans and customers. But if we're going to continue with FCBD in the future, I'd like to offer the following suggestions:



Publishers: Enough with the special FCBD editions with stories not available anywhere else--it only serves to alienate your existing clientele. Instead, reprint material you already have on hand, or showcase material from an upcoming project. Your target audience, people who don't read your comics, haven't seen this material yet (by defintion!) And heck, after FCBD is over, why not put your free comics online for people to read? That'll surely reach more potential readers than a few pamphlets scattered about a few comic shops.



Retailers: Think outside the box. Don't just order those FCBD titles that appeal to your existing customers. If the non-customers in your community were interested in super-hero comics, they would have found you already. Use the oppornity to get cheap editions of comics maybe you don't ordinarily get, and promote the diversity of comics to both your existing and potential customers. (And then be sure to have the regaular merchandise avaiable, so that mother of the kid who liked the free Owly can come back and purchase the Owly GN!)



As for me? Heck, I'd be willing to pay for some of those FCBD editions; but as an individual consumer, that's not an option for me. So I'll be sitting at home on May 7, thinking about all those wonderful free comics that I'll never have a chance to read.