Girls–real, live girls–and kids–real, live kids–buy a lot of manga, and I mean a lot, at the bookstore I’m now working at. They also steal a lot.
Kevin Melrose has broughten his A-game now that Tim O’Neil is out of the linkblogging business. Check him out.
Kevin was nice enough to point me to interviews with Ed Brubaker, author of the terrific Sleeper, and Brian Bendis, author of the terrific (insert one of his twelve million monthly comic books here). The Brubaker interview touches on whether or not Sleeper might be made into a TV series, which brings up that old question: Would Sleeper work better without superpowers? Needless to say I’m not a superhero basher–I just wonder if Agent Carver’s no-way-out predicament seems less grim and inescapable due to the presence of flight, invulnerability, and so forth. Still one of the best superhero books going, but I can’t make up my mind about this.
J.W. Hastings is back on the quickie review beat, with thoughtful looks at Planetary, The Punisher, Smax, Daredevil, The Pulse, The Ultimates, and more.
Franklin Harris draws a conclusion from the success the Hellboy movie has had in driving up sales of the Hellboy graphic novels–in the bookstores, primarily. In light of this, can we read Marvel & DC’s recent “back to basics” moves as a tacit acknowledgement that they’ve given up on their drives to get those legendary New Readers into the comic shops, at least with their main lines, and are focusing on eating up as much of the existing comic-shop market as possible while segregating new-audience outreach efforts into initiatives like Marvel Age?
Demo review coming this week. Please be patient.
Finally, NeilAlien points to Rich Johnston who posts a report that the shooting script for Sin City consists of photocopied pages of the comic book, which of course is ridiculous, but the notion that there are photocopied pages of the comic book being consulted on set isn’t so ridiculous, which leads me to say “Oh God PLEASE let this movie be as good as it should be.”