* Today at Robot 6 I took a look at Marvel’s incredible disappearing price cut for new titles in January. Actually it’s not that simple, as some number-crunching I did with the help of JK Parkin and Kiel Phegley shows, but nor is it as simple as the across-the-board institution of $2.99 as the price point for new titles that Marvel sounded like it was promising the other week.
* Please help Alvin Buenaventura track down the creep who stole two copies of Kramers Ergot 7 from his table at APE. Alvin’s mostly looking for people who were at APE last Sunday morning to let him know if they saw anything suspicious, but I would also think we should keep our eyes peeled for copies of the book being listed for sale on Amazon or eBay or Craigslist.
* Grant Morrison has some thoughts on diversifying the DCU. Good-natured ribbing of James Robinson included!
* Much ado about Hobbit, via the indispensable Frodo Franchise blog: Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh and New Line Cinema are all saying that they still may move production of the films out of New Zealand, the idea being that even if the actors-union boycott spurred by the New Zealand branch of the Australian actors union is now over, the damage is already done. In various interviews conducted in the already constructed sets for the films, Jackson, Walsh, and co-writer Philippa Boyens cast the situation largely in terms of a lack of confidence on Warner Bros.’ part that the NZ film industry and its constituent organizations will be reliable partners on the production. The union obviously disputes the studio/filmmaker POV. The situation is such that New Zealand’s government may literally rewrite the laws to make things more amenable to the studio.
* Tom Spurgeon’s take on the toilet-flushing sound you hear when you look at recent comics sales figures reminds me of something I said a few years ago with regards to DC’s loss of mojo in the event-comics era, an era that DC books like Identity Crisis, Countdown to Infinite Crisis, and Infinite Crisis helped create: Once you’ve shaped the market to demand that sort of book, you’ve created the conditions for your own failure should you cease delivering that sort of book. The problem now is that there’s no Civil War to take over.
* Here’s a really fascinating panel report from the Daniel Clowes spotlight at APE, hosted by Dan Nadel. I really like the idea Clowes advances that he’s shifted his characters away from interior monlogues and into publicly proclaiming their points of view because everyone can post their interior monologue on the internet now. And this quote is just murder:
“I realized at a certain point that the thing that keeps me drawing comics and the thing that has always moved me along is that comics history is really disappointing,” Clowes responded. “It’s not the same as the history of novels, history of art, history of movies, the body of work is pretty spotty. The things we imagined don’t really exist. We imagine that Alex Toth did really amazing comics in the 50s that really worked, that were like Howard Hawk’s movies, but he didn’t do that. He never made a comic you could read. It’s terrible, and I say that thinking that he was one of the greatest genius’ of the 20th Century.”
(Via Tim Hodler.)
* Chris Mautner interviews Johnny Ryan about Prison Pit. Ryan projects six volumes for the series, though he says that obviously he could go past that if he’s still enjoying himself. Money quote:
I’m sure any armchair therapist could have an interesting time with the book. With “AYC,” and pretty much all of my previous work, everything was hidden behind a curtain of humor. There’s no curtain in “Prison Pit.”
* Heidi MacDonald notes that Wizard’s ignominious retreat from the Con War continues, as they’ve moved their Big Apple and New England cons a month prior to NYCC, instead of on the weekends on either side of it as they were this year–which in turn was a retreat from scheduling Big Apple directly against NYCC. As I said last week, the Wizard-initiated phase of the Con War was probably the worst thing ever to happen to Wizard. It served as a focal point for years of resentment in the industry and gave folks cover to take that resentment public; it ensured the already de facto non-participation in any of Wizard’s shows by any of the comics industry’s major players; it gave huge-name creators and Senior Vice Presidents and such cover to badmouth the company publicly and presumably withhold support privately; it cemented the Wizard shows’ reputation as a low-rent autograph mill rather than anything remotely comics centric and gave them an absolutely poisonous reputation among comics fans, and so on. Waving the white flag in terms of scheduling is really just the splatter from the gaping self-inflicted wound that taking on Reed gave the company–especially considering the hubris Wizard’s honchos were displaying at the time, as Tom Spurgeon alludes to.
* Go read Matthew Perpetua on A Sunny Day in Glasgow’s “Drink Drank Drunk,” one of my favorite songs of the year.
* Jeepers, these scary drawings of Sesame Street monsters by Rhys Cooper are really terrific. I love the tiny shark teeth. (Via Agent M.)
* Real Life Horror: No black people fought on the side of the Confederacy, so quit lying about it, you fucks.