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Sunday Runaround – Jetting Off To Austin And Seattle

Published Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:16:51 -0500

TakingAdvantageWatch: Joan Jett and the Runaways are to appear in a biography comic from Bluewater Productions. Written by Spike Steffenhagen and Jay Allen Sanford, with interior art by Joe Paradise and Larry Nadolsky, the comic features a cover illustration by Michal Szyksznian. And coming out at the same time as a Runaways movie…

StripWatch: ABC looks at the cutting of comic strips across newspapers nationwide.

The savings can be enormous. The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., told readers that reducing the comics section by one page would save $300,000 a year.

The North Eastern Pennsylvania Times Leader's editor tells his own story about trying, and failing, to remove the strip Pickles.

And then we received the calls. On Monday, the first day without "Pickles," we received a few. On Tuesday, we received many more. The circulation department received calls. Phone operator Nancy Boote received more. Staff in the newsroom fielded calls.

MillarWatch: Mark Millar and John Romita Jr talking about the movie adaptation process. Okay, mostly Mark.

What Stan did during the first two or three years of Marvel Comics was let the reality flow in. It was New York City, not Metropolis. The Beatles were in the background, and the Fantastic Four were in the same world as us. When they had several hundred characters, suddenly it didn't feel like a world. I like idea of a new generation of characters. That's probably what's needed. I want to create real superhero franchises with this approach. I'm amazed nobody has done it yet. Stan said to me a few years ago, "Why's everyone playing with my old toys?"

Before calling security, presumably.

ConWatch: Seattle Times looks at Emerald City Comic Con. And he web-comic artists attending;

Meredith Gran, a 25-year-old Portland webcomic creator, quit her TV animation job two years ago and works full-time on her Octopus Pie comics. She inks her strips, spending about a month for each 16-page block — and then uploads it all to her Web site.

"It's a lot of work for free," she said. But putting her work behind an online pay wall would not work, she said, and the exposure on the Web allowed her to get a book contract.

With Austin 360 looks at the ecenomic benefits to the area of SXSW.

On North Lamar, the employees at Austin Books & Comics see their own SXSW phenomenon.

Regular customers don't make their normal weekly stop, said Brandon Zuern , the store manager. But they're temporarily replaced by lots of out-of-towners.

"I've got a guy from Ireland that comes in every year and buys a lot of comics," Zuern said. "It's really neat, because for a couple of weeks, we have a customer transplant."

ShopWatch: Evil Squirrel Comics of Chicago also discovered the fact that cheaper comics combined with internet promotions can lead to increased demand… and that the shop is named after a comic book creation that was never, well, created.

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