Weekend Reading: Watchmen, Shazam!, Archie and Image

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Conventions, Editorials, Movies, Reviews, DC Comics, Image Comics, Marvel Comics,

Watchmen! Shazam! Archie! Oh my goodness! Could a weirder week get any weirder? Oh, it can. It’s only February.

Here’s a few things to read until the Super Bowl fever hits you and, oh, wait. No one reading this cares about sports!

Well, of course DC was going to do Watchmen prequels and create more Watchmen-related graphic novels. The series will never be considered out-of-print (and now with online availability, you can get it digitally 24/7/365 so it will truly be “in print” in perpetuity). Since it’s a thing that can’t be stopped, I wish the creators well and I wish the original creators well as well (and hope they’re being compensated for the reuse of their creations). Forbes, the journal of the 1% weighs in with the “It can’t be wrong if everyone’s doing it” argument. Although Before Watchmen has to be one of the least grabby titles in modern comics history.

Michael Cavna at Comic Riffs, the Washington Post blog, collects various opinions on the coming new era of Watchmen prequels.

Here’s the Daily Beast on the behind-the-scenes soap opera at Archie. Once you realize that this is all about controlling the privately-held company, it starts to fall into place.

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Comic Book Jobs: DC Comics Online

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, DC Comics,

DC Comics, the division of DC Comics that’s moved to Burbank, CA, is hiring again.

This time, they need an Associate Art Director for their Publishing-Digital department.

This new online venture of DC’s got a nice write-up from The Beat that’ll tell you who the players are.

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Weekend Reading: App TV, Scott Pilgrim, Scooby-Doo and Brian Keene

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Interviews, Movies, Reviews, Television, Independent,

If you want to know where the future of TV and games is headed, check out this piece at Gaming Business Review by my old buddy Chris Ulm. A co-creator of Rune, co-founder of the Ultraverse (it was his idea), and now the CEO of Appy Entertainment, he thinks a lot about those kinds of things.

This’ll get you started: “The living room right now is a no-man’s land of standards and cables, universally poor and inconsistent user interfaces, huge numbers of channels, multiple boxes of hardware, hated cable companies, and multiple video game systems, each with its own proprietary hardware and expensive software.”

Scott Pilgrim: John Scalzi explains the failure of Edgar Wright’s movie in terms we can all understand: the value of nerd-love.

The Cleveland Show: Tom Spurgeon’s brother interviews voice actor Kevin Michael Richardson, the voice of Cleveland Jr. and countless other characters.

Click to continue reading Weekend Reading: App TV, Scott Pilgrim, Scooby-Doo and Brian Keene

Weekend Reading: Star Wars, Star Trek, Scooby Doo and Joe Kubert

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Interviews, Reviews, IDW Publishing,

Welcome to the weekend on the internet. Let’s get it started with Mr. Joe Kubert.

I had the pleasure of working for a company that published one of Mr. Kubert’s books (Abraham Stone) and got to hang out with him a little at Comic Con International one year. Just a great, great guy, as well as a fantastic artist. Marty Pedler at Bookslut has a new interview with him, and if you haven’t read it yet, get over there. Here’s a little snip: “I still feel that if it’s not a children’s medium, it’s at least a young person’s medium—despite the fact that the average person who reads comic books is now, I’m told, probably in their early twenties. Maybe it’s because I’m an old fogey, I don’t know, but I still feel a little strange and awkward when I see stuff that’s so blatantly sexual.”

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