Independent Opinions, News, and Reviews of Graphic Novels, Manga, and Comic Books
When I read the first volume of The Summit of the Gods, I wrote it off as men’s adventure. Sure, it was beautifully drawn, but who cares about demonically motivated mountain climbers? Now, sitting in my cozy kitchen listening to the rain fall outside, I realize that I underestimated the story. (Or I’m just at a different place — the reader matters as much as the work in determining a good match.) I now understand how the story isn’t just […]
Read moreThis article at the Los Angeles Review of Books sets out to make the point that there are far too many self-published books and explore the stigma of that label, but I found it more enlightening in its comments on review policies. Apparently major media, newspapers and magazines, don’t cover self-published works as a rule, believing them to be “amateurish”. The Washington Post does not review self-published books. The Post’s fiction editor Ron Charles admits, “We simply don’t have the […]
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Known properties sure have an advantage when it comes to finding customers. Papercutz sent out a press release promoting how “Mask of the Sensei, the second volume in the top-selling LEGO® NINJAGO graphic novel series from Papercutz, shot to the top of the New York Times Paperback Graphic Book Best Seller list immediately upon release last week”. It beat several Batman and Walking Dead books to do so. The first volume in this series sold out 190,00 copies in its […]
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The newest DC original animated movie, Superman vs. the Elite, comes to home video on June 12 as a Blu-ray Combo Pack (list price $24.98) and DVD ($19.98), both with UltraViolet digital copy included. It’s based on “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way?,” published in Action Comics #775, by Joe Kelly and Doug Mahnke with Lee Bermejo. Kelly wrote the screenplay, and the comic is available in trade paperback. The Elite are a new band of […]
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Baby’s in Black tells, as the subtitle says, the story of Astrid Kirchherr, Stuart Sutcliffe, and the Beatles. Stu was known as the “fifth Beatle”, playing bass for the band until he took up with Astrid, a German photographer, during the Beatles’ time in Hamburg. He passed away just a few years later. Arne Bellstorf‘s version of this classic rock-and-roll story was published last year in Europe by SelfMadeHero. It’s told from Astrid’s perspective, and Bellstorf interviewed her as background. […]
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The New York Times has an article up on John Carter, which opened this weekend. The headline, “‘Ishtar’ Lands on Mars“, tells you the tack they’re taking. The facts are damning: “cost an estimated $350 million to make and market”, took in just over $30 million this weekend, will require Disney to “take a quarterly write-down of $100 million to $165 million”. Because of its enormous cost and the way ticket sales are split with theaters, analysts say the film […]
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Recently out, here are the Archie Comics sales figures based on the Statements of Ownership, Management, and Circulation the company is required to file in their publications. These numbers appeared in issues published between January 18 and February 15, 2012; the data was filed with the government on October 11, 2001. (For comparison, I’ve done the same things for books published in 2010, published in 2009, published in 2008, and published in 2007.) Before I get to the sales figures, […]
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As promotion for last week’s release of Justice League: Doom, which had a number of fun bits, many of which involved Nathan Fillion voicing Green Lantern, Warner Home Video has provided this interview with Fillion. Fillion previously was the voice of Green Lantern in Green Lantern: Emerald Knights, which also resulted in some promotional interviews. He has also been the voice of Steve Trevor for the Wonder Woman DVD movie, and that meant an interview available then as well. So […]
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