Random Links:

SEQUENTIAL Canadian Comics News and Culture caught us at the FanExpo:

http://sequential.spiltink.org/2008_08_01_archive.html

DIGITAL KONTENT reviews Sex & Violence Suffering and Wickedness Comics #2: “The Three Kinds of Sex” by Eden

http://digitalkontent.com/?p=1006

Although BOOTCAMP COMICS will not have a full presence at the 2009 FANEXPO Canada; a few of its Army will be in attendance.

 

Catch Greg Dunford’s Cyberpunk Comics at Booth A43 launching his new comic ‘Hard Drive’!

 

Catch Ty Templeton & Gibson Quarter in the Artist Alley!

 

As for me… I’m sure I will be easy to find at one of the after parties… hope to see you all there!

Atten-shun!! The BootCamp Army will be out in full force at this weekend's Toronto ComicCon Fan Appreciation Event, held at the Toronto Metro Convention Centre. We'll have mini-comics, sketches and much more! Check out Hobbystar's website for details on the show, including directions and other guests. Hope to see you there!

While everyone else is scrambling around trying to figure out how to use best Teh Internets to sell comics, DC Comics is going seriously retro with its latest announcement: Wednesday Comics. Instead of following the model of their previous weekly titles, such as 52 and Trinity, DC will be running a 12-part weekly serial that will contain various stories printed in a fold-out broadsheet format. The comparison that's being made is to Sunday comics supplements that newspapers used to have.

Some of the lineups seem too good to be true (Gaiman and Allred on Metamorpho? Yes, please!) But what is the point? On paper it sounds like excellent introductory material for children and new fans. But I'm not sure if DC is planning on selling it on newsstands or in book stores. So this may be the case of an fuzzy nostalgia book with limited appeal that is doomed to be chained to the ghetto of direct sales. But, hey, know your market, right?

I think doing anthology books with top talent is a gread idea. DC has a lot of "fan favourite" characters kicking around that can't sustain an ongoing title. And the limited nature of the series will hopefully insure that the talent (and fans) won't get bored too soon. It's also similar to their new "back-up feature" stories they've announced for Booster Gold, Teen Titans and the new Doom Patrol.

If nothing else, it should be an interesting experiment. Some of the art previews floating around the web look pretty nifty. Here's some Green Lantern art from Joe Quinones, Hawkman by Kyle Baker (fighting hijackers and...a giant crab?), Sean Galloway's Teen Titans designs and some Wonder Woman sketches from Ben Caldwell.

Kathleen's article about the Watchmen movie prompted me to reflect on this:

 

It's inevitable that, whenever a beloved book is adapted for film, a character or three will be dropped from the story, and each omitted character will have been somebody's favourite.

 

Remember when everything had a designated place?  Like back in the '70s, when every issue of DC's "PLOP!" was assumed to have taken place on Earth P*? Something should be done with all of these surplus characters.  Where do they go?  I imagine an Island of Misfit Character Concepts, where Soundwave and Tom Bombadil are chugging brewskis with Giant Squid and original-Darth-Vader-who-isn't-Hayden-Christiansen.

 

*or something like that -- work with me, here.

Another sketch for an upcoming project that I did recently.

Till next time!

 Draake Herd

 

 The Onion's A.V. Club names Ty Templeton's classic STIG'S INFERNO one of the 24 graphic novels they'd most like to see adapted for film:

In the wake of Watchmen: 24 more graphic novels we'd like to see made into movies.

The big comic-book news for me this week was coming home after a weekend away to find that LiveJournal had shut down Scans_Daily, the infamous community which posted scans from comics past and present. This wasn't terribly surprising, since Scans_Daily's lax community rules and scanning policies were pretty much a pirate's paradise. Users would regularly scan the important and best bits in recent comics, allowing fans to keep up with events in big titles, without having to fork out the dough themselves. Oh, and of course allowing fans to bitch about how a publisher was mistreating their favourite Z-list character, or raping their childhood, etc.

Much more interesting was the wrinkle that writer Peter David may have been the one who inadvertently instigated the shutdown, after being learning s_d had posted significant portions of the current issue of X-Factor. David had recently asked comics fans not to spoil the ending of the last two issues. Something which, to scans_daily users, is the equivalent of walking onto a pit of fire ants covered in honey.

The closure of Scans_Daily and subsequent accusations of blame resulted in the biggest clusterfuck of online comics fans vs. industry professionals so far this year. Check out these articles at CBR blog Robot 6 and Christopher Bird at Mightygodking.com for the best roundups you'll find on the subject.

Of course, you can't keep a good pirate down. Most of the Scans_Daily crew have migrated to -- wait for it -- Daily Scans at what appears to be a Bizarro-LiveJournal site called InsaneJournal. I will confess that I've read Scans_Daily on and off for years. I was never into the slash or fanfic elements, and I never commented on anything for fear of being dragged into one of those endless pissing contests that online commentators are so fond of. But I appreciated that it was a different vibe from a lot of online comics discussion boards, and I picked up a lot of comics thanks to reading excerpts on the site. But all good things must come to an end. I survived when Metallica killed Napster, and I think I'll survive this. RIP, Scans_Daily.

Sorry gang, but I'm unable to blog this week.  I'll be back next Monday! 

 

Cheers,

GQ

So, I stumbled across this list online, although I haven't been able to find it on Wizard's website.

 What do you think?

  001 - Top Ten 8 ("The Overview")
002 - Sandman 8 ("The Sound of Her Wings")
003 - Batman Special ("The Killing Joke")
004 - Superman Annual 11 ("For the Man Who Has Everything")
005 - Ultimate Spider-Man 12 ("Battle Royal")
006 - Astro City 0.5 ("The Nearness of You")
007 - Saga of the Swamp Thing 21 ("The Anatomy Lesson")
008 - Ultimate Spider-Man 28 ("Sidetracked")
009 - Elseworlds: Batman ("Gotham by Gaslight")
010 - Daredevil 191 ("Roulette")
011 - 100 Bullets 27 ("Idol Chatter")
012 - Superman 9 ("To Laugh and Die in Metropolis")
013 - Planetary 3 ("Dead Gunfighters")
014 - Starman 11 ("13 Years Ago Five Friends")
015 - Uncanny X-Men 159 ("Night Screams")
016 - Amazing Spider-Man 239 ("Now Strikes the Hobgoblin")
017 - Fantastic Four 245 ("Childhood's End")
018 - Justice League - 1 ("Born Again")
019 - Spider-Man Versus Wolverine ("High Tide")
020 - Planetary 13 ("Century")
021 - Action Comics 775 ("What's So Funny About Truth Justice and the American Way?")
022 - Flash 182 ("Absolute Zero")
023 - Ultimate Spider-Man Annual 1
024 - Incredible Hulk 341 ("The Savage Bull Doth Bear the Yoke")
025 - Elseworlds: Batman ("Holy Terror")
026 - Incredible Hulk 420 ("Lest Darkness Come")
027 - Preacher 18 ("Texas and the Spaceman")
028 - Batman 424 ("The Diplomat's Son")
029 - Green Lantern 188 ("Mogo Doesnt Socialize")
030 - Avengers 189 ("Slings and Arrows")
031 - Tangled Web 4 ("Severance Package")
032 - Incredible Hulk 340 ("Vicious Circle")
033 - Lex Luthor Special ("The Unauthorized Biography")
034 - Birds of Prey 8 ("On Wings")
035 - Omega Men 26 ("Brief Lives")
036 - Amazing Spider-Man Annual 15 ("Spider-Man: Threat or Menace")
037 - Fables Special ("The Last Castle")
038 - Spectre 5 ("A Rage in Hell")
039 - Captain America 7 ("The Lonesome Death of Jack Monroe")
040 - X-Factor 87 ("X-Aminations")
041 - Iron Man 128 ("Demon in a Bottle")
042 - New Teen Titans 38 ("Who Is Donna Troy?")
043 - H-E-R-O 11 ("The Great Leap Forward")
044 - GI Joe 21 ("Silent Interlude")
045 - Sandman 18 ("A Dream of a Thousand Cats")
046 - Hitman 34 ("Of Thee I Sing")
047 - Flinch 1 ("Rocket-Man")
048 - What If 4 ("The Alien Costume Had Possessed Spider-Man")
049 - Ghost Rider Annual 2 ("Wish for Pain")
050 - Iron Man 237 ("Star Hunter")
051 - Classic X-Men 25 ("Just Don't Look in its Eyes")
052 - 100 Bullets - 11 ("Heartbreak, Sunnyside Up")
053 - Hellblazer 63 ("Forty")
054 - Secret Origins Special 1 ("Original Sins", "The Killing Peck", "When Is A Door")
055 - Legion of Super-Heroes 13 ("If You Think Khunds Are Cuddy, You'll Love the Lythyls")
056 - Animal Man 7 ("The Death of the Red Mask")
057 - Dark Horse Presents 1 ("Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous")
058 - Dr. Strange 56 ("A Mystic Reborn")
059 - The Thing 2 ("For Beauty Passed Away")
060 - Sandman 50 ("Ramadan")
061 - Incredible Hulk 393 ("The Closing Circle")
062 - Batman Black and White 1 ("Two of a Kind")
063 - Avengers 217 ("Double-Cross")
064 - Sandman 40 ("The Parliament of Rooks")
065 - Avengers Annual 10 ("By Friends Betrayed")
066 - Adventure Comics 466 ("Never Say Die")
067 - Nightwing 25 ("The Boys")
068 - Gotham Knights 8
069 - Sandman 17 ("Calliope")
070 - Planetary Special ("Night on Earth")
071 - New Teen Titans 20 ("Dear Mom and Dad")
072 - Preacher Special ("Tall in the Saddle")
073 - Justice League Annual 1 ("Germ Warfare")
074 - Batman Black and White 4 ("An Innocent Guy")
075 - American Century 9 ("Route 66″)
076 - Batman Adventures Annual 1 ("Laughter After Midnight")
077 - Web Of Spider-Man 1 ("Til Death Do Us Part")
078 - Fantastic Four 3 ("Happy New Year, Reed Richards... Now Die!")
079 - Astro City 1 ("In Dreams")
080 - Preacher 50 ("The Land of Bad Things")
081 - Legion of Super-Heroes 296 ("What Do You Do on the Day After Doomsday?")
082 - Adventures of Superman 474 ("Face to Face With Yesterday")
083 - Conan the Barbarian 100 ("Death on the Black Coast")
084 - Amazing Spider-Man 248 ("The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man")
085 - Robin 46 ("Dark at Dawn")
086 - Tales of the New Teen Titans 1 ("Cyborg")
087 - Fantastic Four 60 ("Inside Out")
088 - Semper Fi 1 ("Reunion")
089 - Preacher Special ("Blood & Whiskey")
090 - Batman: Underworld Unleashed ("Devil's Asylum")
091 - Exiles 16 ("Nocturne and Evensong")
092 - Legion of Superheroes Annual 1 ("Who Shot Laurel Kent?")
093 - Hitman 22 ("The Santa Contract")
094 - Demo 3 ("Bad Blood")
095 - Animal Man 15 ("The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea")
096 - Legion Of Super-Heroes 3
097 - Uncanny X-Men 268 ("Madripoor Knights")
098 - Punisher 10 ("The Creep")
099 - Alias 10
100 - Ghost Rider 68 ("The Curse of Jonathan Blaze")