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Author Topic: Funnybooks  (Read 170216 times)

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Thad

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #2200 on: December 22, 2012, 11:42:38 AM »

Gail Simone tends to be fairly tight-lipped, so I doubt we'll ever fully known what happened any time soon, but I'd also guess that some execs down the chain are trying to jockey for position within the greater Time-Warner structure. A 'Look at how balls-tough I am" gesture like trying to break the arm of Gail Simone could have been an attempt at a power-play.

Wouldn't rule it out but I prefer to call Hanlon on this one.

Either way, I'm actually willing to believe that somebody in Didio's position could have been the one to patch things up with Simone to bring her back. He may be kind of a rude jackass sometimes, but he's not going to kick his biggest female writer off of a successful book so crassly.

Well, I'm sure the "do it by E-Mail" decision wasn't his.  I think it's totally possible that he's ready to fire writers who won't play ball with editorial mandates, but this is a case of something that should have been a routine creative shuffle being a huge black eye.  Because of (1) how they handled it, (2) who the creator was, and (3) the sales numbers of the book.

So even if he WAS involved in kicking her off the book, yeah, I'm sure he was involved in reversing course, too.

(Plus, as Bleeding Cool notes, he really doesn't want to spend the next year's worth of cons answering questions from people dressed like Batgirl demanding to know what happened to Gail Simone.)

Now, as for what DC wants to do with Vertigo is anybody's guess. If DC has plans to shutter the imprint and cast its books to the dark-nether, it sure is going through a lot of trouble to do it.

Nah, "Put Harras in charge" is the QUICKEST way to bankruptcy.

At any rate, I don't see Vertigo shutting down this soon; they've got a Sandman prequel coming, for crying out loud.  I see them chugging along for at least another year.

There are a lot of good reasons why you might put the digital guy in charge.  For starters, Vertigo's backlog is stronger than the stuff it's got in print, with Sandman, Y, Hellblazer, and so on (as compared to Fables, which is the only hit it's got that's still ongoing, not including the aforementioned upcoming Sandman prequel).  I'm sure that stuff already sells well online but could sell better, and maybe they think he can bring that kind of attention to some of Vertigo's other books.  After all, it's a lot cheaper to sell books that are already made and don't have to be printed.

And speaking of "don't have to be printed", that's another potential route for Vertigo to decrease costs: DC's already had a handful of Digital First books, and they're mostly cross-media titles (Batman Beyond, Smallville) that are geared to appeal toward people who aren't necessarily regular comics buyers.  That could be an "in" for continuing Vertigo -- continue to publish offbeat, nontraditional books, but save on the costs of printing and distributing them by putting them up as digital and seeing if they catch on in that format first.

Why a creator would go for that over Image, say, well, I couldn't tell you.  Vertigo books probably get slightly better promotion, and can be an "in" for getting work at DC proper, but...everything I've read has made it sound like a less and less appealing prospect for anyone who isn't already established there.
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Shinra

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #2201 on: December 22, 2012, 12:16:03 PM »

Captain Carrot is back in the New 52



Quote
Giffen confirmed to the Robot 6 blog that "Captain K'Rot" is, indeed, Captain Carrot, the 1982 creation of Roy Thomas and Scott Shaw who most recently appeared in the grand finale of the 2008 crossover event Final Crisis, showing up to save the day at the last moment (No, really). "Every book needs a borderline psychotic, booze swilling, whore-mon-

Ahh screw this, I'm out.

 ::(:

Every time I open this thread thinking I should get back into comic books, I find myself leaving content with my decision to stop reading comic books after the shitty, unbelievably bad ending to Civil War. Thanks guys.
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Thad

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #2202 on: December 30, 2012, 10:47:09 AM »

ComicsAlliance has a Best-Of list.  It misidentifies Barbara Gordon as "the original Batgirl", but makes up for it by closing with the award for  BEST STRAIGHT UP SLAP IN THE GOD DAMN FACE:



Also it looks to be a pretty good list.

Saga is great, BTW.  In fact I'm going to go link to it on the Free Comics thread right the fuck now.
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Thad

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #2203 on: December 30, 2012, 04:50:51 PM »

2012 wouldn’t let us get away without another dose of bad news. Peter David, a fine writer and good friend, has suffered a stroke that has impaired his vision and paralyzed most of his right side. He was on vacation in Florida when it occurred and is awaiting further prognosis or diagnosis or some kind of nosis.

:;_;:

Hope and best of luck for a speedy recovery.
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Büge

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #2204 on: January 08, 2013, 02:04:49 PM »

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/01/08/more-dc-writer-changes-to-come-was-gail-simone-just-the-beginning/

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And after the fallout of the attempt to fire Gail Simone, I’m told other creators being dropped have been asked not to tweet about it, in return for the possibility of future work at DC on other titles or fill-ins. Those who make a fuss won’t be returning.

so keep your head down and keep your mouth shut
grunka-lunka-lunka-dunkety-dutt
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Thad

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #2205 on: January 08, 2013, 02:32:08 PM »

Well there's no way THAT could possibly backfire.
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Büge

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #2206 on: January 09, 2013, 06:59:00 PM »

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/01/09/in-april-dc-comics-brings-us-holy-sht-month/

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I understand that, across the New DCU line, we are to get some sort of “surprise” covers for April. Something that will really stand out on the comic shelves.

IN THIS ISSUE: DR. LIGHT RAPES EVERYBODY
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Büge

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Thad

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #2208 on: January 10, 2013, 06:51:14 PM »

Welp, I expect Toberoff will try to appeal, but if SCOTUS doesn't take it up it's game over.

As precedent goes it's pretty heartbreaking but at this point I'm too cynical to be surprised anymore.  Doesn't matter what the law says your rights have, some lawyer somewhere can make a case that you gave them up on some spurious grounds.
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Ziiro

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #2209 on: January 10, 2013, 07:03:49 PM »

So if you ever create a comic character or something, never sell. Stay interdependent and doing webcomics/self publishing forever, I guess?
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Mongrel

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #2210 on: January 10, 2013, 07:15:00 PM »

ORIGINAL CHARACTER DO NOT STEAL
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Thad

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #2211 on: January 10, 2013, 07:32:40 PM »

Creator-ownership doesn't necessarily imply self-publishing.  Robert Kirkman owns The Walking Dead but doesn't self-publish it.  (Course, co-creator Tony Moore is none too happy about Kirkman's sole ownership -- creators can screw each other just as surely as publishers can screw creators.)

Course, where I assume you're going with this is that if you get a bad publishing deal, creator-ownership doesn't mean shit -- as in the case with Watchmen.  Indeed, I recently linked a story where Marvel attempted to claim ownership of a creator-owned book it published decades ago.

On the other hand, some people who sell their creations, or produce them as work-for-hire, DO wind up doing pretty well for themselves.  Stan Lee and Bob Kane are both good examples -- and also examples of guys who pretty thoroughly fucked their co-creators.  Conversely, Steve Bissette has wryly noted that the only collaborations he did with Alan Moore that he's able to profit from now are the work-for-hire ones, because Alan Moore has stonewalled reprints on any of their creator-owned books.

Self-publishing's got its own share of problems, of course, and the biggest is obscurity.  While the Internet has made it easier to self-publish and therefore easier for someone to distribute a book (or any kind of work) without the need for a middleman, that also means there's that much more competition and that much less curation.  For every Penny Arcade, PVP, Achewood, or Hark!, there are plenty of talented cartoonists languishing in obscurity (and even those four examples have turned to traditional publishers for their print collections).

TMNT's gotta be the biggest creator-owned success story in comics history, and even it turned into an acrimonious split between the two co-creators and eventually ended in the rights being sold to Viacom.  On the other hand, both co-creators actually DO seem much happier now than they were twenty years ago.

And you know, as bad as things are today, they're not as bad as they used to be.  Scott Kurtz is completely full of shit when he says all that stuff that happened to Kirby has been fixed now (look at the sad case of Robert L Washington III, co-creator of Static, who died last year and whose family had to turn to charity to get him a grave), but at least today there are royalties and equity deals.  Chuck Dixon and Len Wein have made more money off Bane and Lucius Fox than Bill Finger ever did from Batman himself.

Ultimately what I'd like to see is a comic book industry that behaves more like the traditional book industry -- authors retain ownership, and are paid in a some combination of advances, page rates, and royalties.

I'm rambling.  There's no easy fix.  And this is legitimately devastating.  We desperately need copyright reform, and I'd sure like for the SCOTUS to take a look at this and decide that no, the agreements the Siegel and Shuster heirs made in the 1990's did NOT waive their right to terminate the copyright transfer -- but with this Supreme Court I have a hard time seeing that happen.

Beyond that, though, is my unwavering belief that copyright should never have been extended past 56 years, and Superman should have been public domain by now.
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Thad

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #2212 on: January 12, 2013, 11:01:30 PM »

Trexler breaks the ruling down.

The big point: the ruling was issued as a memorandum disposition, which means the good news is that it can't be cited as precedent but the bad news is the SCOTUS is very unlikely to accept an appeal.  (The other bad news, of course, is that even if this technically doesn't set a legal precedent, it's still going to make creators everywhere think twice about trying to get back rights, even if they're owed them.)

The ruling seems to have hinged on Toberoff's professional conduct -- that he was representing the Siegel estate in exchange for gaining a huge interest in Superman himself.  I can certainly see the ethical problem there -- quite a lot of people have raised the possibility that Toberoff's in it for himself and not what's in his clients' best interests.

On the other hand, I'm pretty uncomfortable with how DC snared him: one of his employees stole documents, and, when Toberoff reported them stolen, a court ruled that that action, Toberoff REPORTING the documents as stolen, made them admissible.  Bit of a catch-22, seems to me.
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Ted Belmont

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #2213 on: January 14, 2013, 05:16:43 PM »

So I guess DC is trying to retcon firing Gail Simone:

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Harras: What we had was Ray [Fawkes] coming on for two months to help out, schedule-wise. We’re very happy Gail is back; she’s on the book moving forward, so to me, that was a moment in time where we were just looking for Gail’s next plot to come in and we’re moving forward.
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Thad

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #2214 on: January 14, 2013, 09:36:30 PM »

DC's been gradually dismantling the imprint over the past decade with a less and less creator-friendly bent, and dismantling it much more quickly over the past year and a half with the removal of Swamp Thing and John Constantine from the Vertigo line in favor of the DC Universe proper.  Without Berger I fear the writing is really on the wall at this point.

Fables isn't going to go away or change in any significant way -- it might have a little "DC" logo in the corner instead of a "Vertigo" one, but I expect it to keep on going without much interference.  But I don't think any other Vertigo book has that kind of job security at this point.

It begins: Saucer Country is cancelled.

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On his blog, Cornell states that he’s “heartbroken” Saucer Country is ending and knows fans will be disappointed that book’s mysteries weren’t all answered. “So I make this promise to you: I will, one day, finish Saucer Country, in one way or another, in a dramatically satisfying way,” he wrote. “That is to say, I won’t just put up the remainder of the plot on my blog or something, I’ll find a professional means to actually complete the story, ideally in comic book form, or as a novel or, hey, go on, a movie. The rights revert to me reasonably soon. We’ll work from there. “

So that's good.  It would sure be nice if Image or somebody picked it up.

In the meantime, I guess the good news is it's one less book for me to spend money I can't afford on.

Unless I get Cornell withdrawal and start buying fucking Wolverine, I guess.
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Royal☭

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #2215 on: January 16, 2013, 07:29:41 AM »

How You Can Help Peter David

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The most direct way is to buy his e-books from Crazy 8 Press (via ComicMix) or from Amazon or Barnes and Noble websites. These are books that he gets the money from directly and the most per book. The quickest and most money is buying the EPub versions from ComicMix, by the way. The more we sell of these books, the easier it will be for us to pay the bills as they start to pour in. All the books are in the sidebar.

Buying his other books does help– especially the Marvel graphic novels he has written. The Crazy 8 books are the most immediate help but all his writings do help the family and the family’s ability to pay bills. If you buy via Amazon, please use this link, which will bring in even more funds.

Buy X-Factor. Put it on your pull list at your local comic book store. Encourage others to do the same. Peter is still writing it and will continue to write it. Issue 250 ships on Jan 15th, 2012 (today) and is a great jumping on point for both X-factor and something Peter has been working on in the Marvel Universe since his Hulk days.

If nothing there catches your fancy, you can just donate directly. And, as always, it helps to raise awareness for the injustice of anyone, let alone a distinguished comic-creator with decades in the industry who has health insurance, having to struggle with large hospital bills.

Royal☭

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #2216 on: January 16, 2013, 07:59:08 PM »

Boom! to create Regular Show comic penned by KC Green

Boom! is starting to seem like Marvel in the 70s/80s, letting a lot of talented creators loose on some licenses.

Thad

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #2217 on: January 16, 2013, 10:10:37 PM »

Scott Shaw DID raise some hell a few weeks back about the low rates for Adventure Time.  He says artists get $100/page, $200/cover, and no royalties -- so, for example, the Cover Showcase books don't pay out shit to the artists, because they were already paid for the cover the first time.  He adds that they sent him a work-for-hire contract after he'd already started the work, which of course is not how work-for-hire works.

I read an interview with Mark Waid a few days later; he's of course no longer with Boom but used to be the EIC there.  He was pretty sympathetic to both sides -- yes, that IS a really shitty page rate; yes, that really IS all Boom can afford to pay its artists.

Now, Adventure Time continues to be one of the best goddamn comics on the stands.  I love the thing.  But Shaw's not wrong to express outrage at such a low page rate.  And Boom had better hope that it has its shit together enough that the contract thing was a one-off, because WFH agreements can't be made retroactively.  As Shaw is well aware, since that's at the core of the legal action he, Penders, Maggin, and others are involved in with Archie.
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TA

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #2218 on: January 26, 2013, 04:55:20 PM »

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Büge

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Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #2219 on: January 26, 2013, 05:28:25 PM »

uh
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