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Free Comic Book Day Gold Books Announced
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Early in December, the folks who run Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) released the list of the Gold Sponsor comics. They are as follows: Archaia Entertainment: A 48-page hardcover trade that is more of an anthology rather than a flip book. It will have all new stories with the likes of "Mouse Guard" and Jim Henson's "Labyrinth" and a few others. This one will not be standard comic size, but instead will be 6" x 9" in size. I'm always tempted to get the Mouse Guard book every year at FCBD but instead have to get something for my older brother who has to work the day of FCBD and can't go to the local comic shop so I have to give-up one or two of my five choices for his stuff and some stuff just has to stay there. Archie Comics: "Mega Man: Let the Games Begin" is going to be their offering. This is being touted as the first issue of the hit "Mega Man" comic series. The series will be covering the adventures of Mega Man as he battles the robots Dr. Wily stole from Dr. Light and reprogrammed to do bad things. Bongo Comics: They are going to be offering a flip book of "The Simpsons" and "SpongeBob Squarepants" with a little bit of Sergio Aragones storytelling thrown in as well. The Simpsons story will be all about the guys who hang out at Moes Tavern telling all about their time with the Springfield Bear Patrol. Sergio Aragones will be regaling readers with his story all about how he made his first money drawing. There will be two SpongeBob stories that are from his early comic book stories that are apparently hard to find as back issues. At least Bongo has the guts to tell us they are reprints rather than making us think they are original stories. Boom! Comics: They are going the flip book route as well with a "Peanuts" on one side and on the other time a story from their "Adventure Time" comic that is based on the Cartoon Network show of the same name. Don't know if these are going to be reprints or not, but I know the cover to the Peanuts side is a reprint of the one they had on the '0' issue released last year. Dark Horse Comics: Another flip book. One half is a "Star Wars" story involving the dashing smuggler Han Solo and his Wookiee companion, Chewbacca, who according to the description have had an argument when a deal goes bad. The other side is a "Serenity" story, based on the show of the same name from writer Joss Whedon. The story is not by Joss, but by a Zack Whedon. The Star Wars side has a beautiful cover of Han and Chewie by Adam Hughes that should be framed. DC Comics: The New 52 FCBD Edition. Not much released about this one, but it is supposed to be a look at DC's New 52 for the year 2012. Some of that is going to be old news because by the time this hits stores, the year will be almost half over. I also think that this is the first time that DC has done a book for FCBD that has not been about their latest crossover event. IDW Publishing: "Transformers" 80.5. IDW is releasing a comic similar to their 2010 release of GI Joe 155.5 only this time with Transformers rather than GI Joe. It is picking up where the Marvel Transformers comic series left off in 1991 after it was canceled with issue 80. This is all leading up to a new Transformers series by the company in July picking up at issue 81. This one I am really excited about. Image Comics: "Image 20" This book will be an anthology celebrating the past 20 years of Image Comics and contains stories of Image's new and old characters. Very little has been released about this book other than that. Marvel Comics: "Avengers" 12.1. A single sided starting point for new readers that has the battle between the Avengers and the Intelligencia, the return of SWORD and the disappearance of Spider-Woman. Oni Press: "Yo Gabba Gabba" From the Nickelodeon show that has a story involving all the Gabba's as well as DJ Lance Rock and a Super Martian Robot Girl tale.
© 2011 Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. and Free Comic Book Day, inc. All rights reserved. Free Comic Book Day, FCBD, and the FCBD logo are copyright Diamond and Free Comic Book Day, inc. Diamond, the Diamond logo, and PREVIEWS are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Diamond Comic Distributors in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective copyright owners.
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Wizard World has no President
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Wizard World, the company that I mentioned last month that had removed its online pop culture magazine from its web site back in November 2011. Since then it had been replaced by a Blog that was being written by company president Gareb Shamus, and back in late-November that had disappeared from the company's web site as well. It turns out that there was a reason for it. Mister Shamus turned in his resignation letter that was effective December 1st. According to a statement from the company, his resignation was not because of internal conflict with the company or anything else related to the company. That was completely out of left field. This is getting me to think what all is planned with Wizard going into the future. Shamus is selling controlling stock in the company when the board finds a new president later on this month. I would like for them to move Wizard World Texas from Austin to Dallas because Austin is a traffic nightmare and really hard to get to from around the country. After all, Dallas is a hub for two major airlines and has a better climate than Austin. Plus Austin is just too damn expensive to spend money on getting there, tickets to the show, a hotel room and meals for a four day weekend where you are going to spend a lot more at the dealers tables as well.
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Some Comic Stores no Longer Ordering Dark Horse
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There has been a lot of talk on the internet about certain comic companies releasing their new comics digitally every week on the same day and date as the physical copy. A lot of companies offering digital copies up to this point usually wait a week or two between the physical and digital copies, but that is changing. The latest company to change their digital strategy is Dark Horse Comics who has gone same day and date as their printed stuff with their digital comics. The digital copies are less expensive by $1.00 to $1.50 cheaper and are hitting stores bottom line, and as a result a lot of stores are no longer ordering Dark Horse comics and letting their shoppers go home and download their books for less. If you want a physical copy from one of those stores then you will have to special order them. If you have read my articles over the past few years you can tell; I have no love for digital comics. You might say that I am a physical copy snob. I would rather have a print copy of a comic book or book rather than a digital copy of the same thing. With a physical copy I can whip it out anywhere and read it without having to worry about my device running out of power. Then there is the whole thing with you losing the data on your reader for some reason, and having to spend the time downloading everything again and possibly having to pay for it again. Sure a physical copy can be destroyed by a spill and can be bent up by putting it in the bag and board the wrong way, but the chances of that happening are remote as long as you don't read at the dinner/breakfast table, and pay attention to what you are doing when you put your books back into the bag. If I can't get a physical single issue copy then I will just wait for the trade to come out and get it then. If I can't do either of those then I will just say "Screw it" and not get it at all. My whole philosophy of having something to hold also goes into the realms of gaming and music as well. I don't play HeroClix Online because for the price they are selling their digital boosters, I could get a brick of physical boosters and not have to worry about getting some corrupted data files and having to go through the whole thing all over again. I would not have to worry about the game crashing on me or having the right system requirements for it because I don't need a computer to play a game at a table with another human being. Music is something I started on the iTunes bandwagon and then kind of fell off. I at first downloaded some songs from the iTunes library when I had an iPhone, but when I changed cellular phone companies and got an Android powered phone my whole attitude changed. I would rather pay a store like Half-Price Books (or a used music store in my area if we had any) $7.99 (more or less) for a music CD rather than having to pay $9.99 (or more) on iTunes to get it all digitally. With a CD I can put it into my CD/DVD-ROM drive on my computer and export all the music to iTunes. I just saved two dollars (or more) without having to go onto iTunes and download everything I wanted.
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John Waters Favorite Movies of 2011
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Movie director John Waters favorite films of 2011 were posted last month on the ArtForum web site, and here's a link to the list on the Bleeding Cool web site. Something tickled me about the way he described his number seven pick that I just had to share it with all of you out there. The reason it tickled me so much is that John Waters is one of those directors that I don't know what to make of him. Sure I know he's gay and his films have been known to stir up controversy, but the way he describes some of those are worth seeing even if they weren't recommended by John Waters. I always like to look at the list of movies that major film directors like for a year because it might give you the push in the right direction towards another director's work that you may never have thought of looking at. I've also seen some interviews on television with Waters and he is by far one of the most fun interviews that you can get because he's so much fun and knows his stuff, and when you know your stuff as well, you can get one entertaining and informative interview out of him.
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Joe Simon Passes Away
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On December 15th the legendary comic book creator Joe Simon passed away at the age of 98. He was probably best known for being the co-creator of the character Captain America in the 1940's along with artist Jack Kirby. He also, and I did not know this, was responsible for the entire genre of romance comics. Hell I did not know there was such a thing as romance comics. Simon left the comic book world in the 1950's when comics started to collapse, but came back every now and then to work with Kirby on projects like a Bronze Age Sandman for DC (not the Neil Gaiman one, the one with the sleeping gas gun and gas mask.) The comics world lost one of their giants and he will be missed.
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Wizard World Finally Makes Good (Almost)
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Back in December, (a few weeks after Gareb Shamus resigned his position) Wizard World made good on something. They are giving a $100 credit to all former subscribers of their print magazines as well as the online one as well. The only hitch, that $100 is only going towards admission tickets to a Wizard World Convention. Wizard almost atoned for the whole print magazine subscription debacle with this act except that tickets to Wizard World are probably something that most of the people that subscribed no longer want because of the way that they were treated. Personally, I would not take this from them. I would reasonably ask the people at Wizard for my money back instead of a $100 credit towards tickets to Wizard World. It would probably be cheaper to Wizard to give the subscribers their money back rather than the $100 credit. If not then I would raise a stink and see what I could do about retaining the services of a lawyer to sue Wizard to get my money back.
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Toy Story Is Back
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Back a few years ago, BOOM! Comics had the license to print comics based on some of the more popular titles from Disney and that included some of the Pixar movies. One of those that went over really well was "Toy Story." Unfortunately when Disney purchased Marvel Comics, BOOM! Had to stop publishing Disney titles. It has been about a year or more since there has been a new "Toy Story" comic put out by any company, but that drought is going to be broken in March when Marvel puts out a four issue limited series with a new story. It is going to be written by Tea Orsi and drawn by Antonello Dalena and Teresa Quezada-Geer. The story will focus on Buster playing with the toys the only way a dog knows how, roughly.
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Box Office Bombs
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The year in film is over and someone has done a list of the top 15 worst performing movies in terms of box office versus coast to make for the year 2011. Some of these I am not surprised about. Here's the breakdown:
Green Lantern - Budget: $200M; Worldwide Gross: $219.9m Cowboys & Aliens - Budget: $163M; Worldwide Gross: $178.8m Glee: The 3D Concert Movie - Budget: $9M; Worldwide Gross: $18.7m I Don't Know How She Does It - Budget: $24M; Worldwide Gross: $30.5m Sucker Punch - Budget: $82M; Worldwide Gross: $89.8m Arthur - Budget: $40M; Worldwide Gross: $45.7m New Year's Eve - Budget: $56M, Worldwide Gross: $54.9m The Thing - Budget: $38M; Worldwide Gross: $27.4m Anonymous - Budget: $30M; Worldwide Gross: $14.8m Happy Feet Two - Budget: $135M; Worldwide Gross: $115m The Rum Diary - Budget: $45M; Worldwide Gross: $21.6m The Big Year - Budget: $41M; Worldwide Gross: $7.4m Conan the Barbarian - Budget: $90M; Worldwide Gross: $48.8m Mars Needs Moms - Budget: $150M; Worldwide Gross: $39m Yes I do realize that some of these movies did make money for their respective studios, but when you only earn $15M over what it cost to make then your movie did not do so hot. Some of these had big names attached to them and still barely made a profit. I guess some names are just not as big a draw when you can see them on television for free every week. If "Cowboys and Aliens" did that bad, I don't want to know what Grant Morrison's "Dinosaurs versus Aliens" is going to do if it ever gets greenlighted. The shocker for me is that "Tower Heist", the latest Eddie Murphy movie that does not have him in a fat suit or voicing an animated Donkey, made over $50M for its company. That is unheard of considering how bad Eddie Murphy movies like "Norbit" went over. The low end shocker for me was "Conan the Barbarian." This was billed as a remake that was going to be bloodier than the first one. That was not a lie, but I think too much blood and gore hurt it at the box office. That or it just came out during a really bad week where it got run over by the competition.
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