Over the last twenty years, TRIPWIRE has been covering comics, TV and film with interviews and columns by now-famous names like Grant Morrison and Warren Ellis. Still running as an annual publication, it continues to run feature-length articles and one-off artwork cover commissions.

2012 marks the 20th anniversary of TRIPWIRE, and to commemorate this milestone, Unbound are working with editor-in-chief Joel Meadows to crowd-fund a beautifully bound hardback celebration of the publication. It will be filled with the sort of content that has garnered praise from many of the biggest and best names in genre over its twenty-year existence.

Unbound is, essentially, Kickstarter for print projects, and so this hardcover is relying on donations to happen. But look what’s awaiting you if you contribute:

• Art from genre and comic geniuses Mike Mignola (Hellboy), Drew Struzan (Shawshank Redemption, Indiana Jones), Duncan Fegredo, Frank Quitely, Walter Simonson, Chris Weston, Howard Chaykin and many more

• Articles looking at the major trends and debates of the past two decades, including the best and worst comic movies 1992-2012, and which creators have come to the fore in the past 20 years

• Classic interviews and features that have made TRIPWIRE’s reputation, including Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Peter Milligan and Guillermo Del Toro

How could you resist? Go here to contribute.

If I wasn’t afraid of losing the book, at the next Marvel Retreat, when going over Spidey plans for 2013, w/ a very straight face I’d say:

“Spider-Man gets a new sidekick. A parrot. It’s with him all the time. So make sure if Spider-Man appears or guest-stars in any of your books that he has his parrot with him. The parrot doesn’t have any powers per se, but it does cause extra complications. Especially, at one point, when Mary Jane says, ‘But what if they find out that Spider-Man is really Peter Parker?’ And the parrot keeps repeating, ‘Spider-Man is really Peter Parker’– everywhere they go. I really think this could work.”

I’d try to keep this up as long as possible. Partly to see how long it would take for people to kill it. And partly to see if any of the retreat regulars would say (and, from experience, these are my best guesses), “Does it have to be a parrot?” “Could it be a monkey?” “WAIT! I’ve got it! It should be the EXACT OPPOSITE of a parrot! It should be a… torrap.” “Logically, it should be a spider, right?” “I think that Mary Jane scene, where she says ‘Peter Parker is Spider-Man’ I think that works better if it happens over in my book. It’d be more organic that way.”

But the real telling thing would be the ONE person who’d say, “Parrot? That’s a GREAT idea. You should run with that!” Because THAT would be the person I’d have to keep an eye out for. THAT’D be the guy who’s ready to push me under the bus.

Spider-Parrot could be the Spider-Mobile of tomorrow.

THR is spinning his casting as indication as an endorsement by Favreau of new director Shane Black.

The film began principle photography in Wilmington, North Carolina earlier this week, and at least according to one report has received a $60 million dollar budget boost (from $140m to $200m) in wake of The Avengers global box office success.

In other Avengers-verse movie news, Mads Mikkelsen, perhaps best known as Le Chiffre in the James Bond revival Casino Royale, has been cast in a villainous role next to Tom Hiddleston (Loki, of course) in Thor 2. Games of Thrones’s Alan Taylor directs that sequel, which will feature most of the cast from the first film.

Speaking of which, Anthony Hopkins (Odin) is looking to carve out time in his Thor 2 shooting schedule to join the cast of Red 2, the sequel to the Warren Ellis-written comic book inspired film starring Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren and John Malkovich.

Hopkins would reportedly play a genius scientist who was locked up in an insane asylum, which wouldn’t be the first time the veteran actor has been fitted for a straightjacket for a big screen role.

As you may have noticed, effective with yesterday’s installment four and retroactive back to Week One, we elected to make pirating INSUFFERABLE easy. No longer do uploaders have to go to the trouble of downloading the screen images and packing them into a file they can then share. Now you can read the installments online, as you have been…OR you can download them as PDFs and as .cbz files that you can read offline, upload, share, whatever. The links are right there underneath the comics themselves. That’s right, my pirating friends, I did the work FOR you. I didn’t muck with the comic itself, I didn’t DRM the images, I didn’t add anything to the downloadables that made them different in any way from what we give you online…

…EXCEPT for a stylishly designed credits-and-copyright page at the end that says “if you liked this, visit Thrillbent.com for more free comics!”

I can’t control the internet. I couldn’t count on uploaders not to “simply” unpack the Installment Four file I provided, excise the referral page, repack the file and upload that.

Except they didn’t.

Good stuff. Go read. Also, go read Insufferable; it’s also good stuff.

Children desire to be just like superheroes. Children mimic superhero actions and even dress up in costumes to resemble these characters as much as possible. Can you imagine little boys saying, “I want a boyfriend or husband like X-Men?”

This is ridiculous! Why do adult gay men need comic superheroes as role models? They don’t but do want to indoctrate impressionable young minds by placing these gay characters on pedestals in a positive light. These companies are heavily influencing our youth by using children’s superheroes to desensitize and brainwash them in thinking that a gay lifestyle choice is normal and desirable.

Apparently, the answer is very wrong indeed. Firstly, children don’t read comics anymore! Secondly, if they were reading Astonishing X-Men, they would likely have found things more objectionable than two people in love getting married – Hey, remember when Warren Ellis was writing the book with the threats of genocide? Genocide is worse than gay people, right? You can agree on that, right? And thirdly, shut up and stop trying to force your bigoted views on the rest of the world. Even if Marvel and DC were heavily influencing young minds by placing gay characters on pedestals in a positive light, that’s a good thing. You know what X-Men is all about? Tolerance and how wrong it is to demonize an unknown “other” based on nothing more than prejudice. The problem here isn’t that kids could read so much X-Men that it rots their brain, but it might be that you guys haven’t read enough X-Men.

One Million Moms wants people to email Marvel and DC to complain about the Northstar wedding and the upcoming outing of a DC character. It’s so tempting to say “We should email them to support those decisions,” but I worry about overloading servers and the poor people who’ll have to go through all those emails. Instead, just email One Million Moms and tell them that they should stop being so scared and hateful and open their minds just a little bit.

Oh, and probably learn to count. They seem to be somewhere around 98,500 short right now.

(For those who don’t know who Chabon is, go here.)

I know it’s controversial, but we always felt that it was part of our books, to try to best reflect the readership and the entirety of people in general. It’s an ongoing thing, and not everything is dictated on a top-down basis; a lot of times storylines get to us from creators. We work with some of the best creators in the business, we support their creative initiative and that’s where a lot of this comes from.

I know, I know: I’m too old-fashioned and traditional in these ways, and I know that this is how these things work now, but “a lot of times storylines get to us from creators”? A lot of times? That doesn’t even sound like it’s the majority of times…

There’s two comic projects we’re still trying to get going. I’ve got an idea that I’ve been carrying around for almost two years now. The first two scripts are written on this thing, it’s just the question of getting the publishing side worked out and what those deals are going to be and finding the right publisher for it… the other one—I know I talked about this before—Rick [Burchett, artist of Lady Sabre & The Pirates of the Ineffable Aether – www.ineffableaether.com] and I still want to do American Soldier. We still want to do this historical record of the history of the country as told through this one family’s military service from generation to generation. We’ve got the preliminary stuff done for the first one. But again, we have to find the right publisher.  I think the way Rick and I have been looking at American Soldier, that’s not something you can take to Marvel nor DC or Dark Horse and make it work because this is a huge freaking graphic novel. There’s going to be a lot of time and lot of money put into it, and there’s got to be an advance on it. There’s got to be some upfront money on it if only to cover Rick’s side of the work, and finding a book publisher that understands how graphic novels are done, and this is a large project and is going to require some outlay at the start. That’s its own problem, and then you go to first publisher and they say how much do you need, and you say we need $30K to start. Most will say have a nice day.

Dear Comic Industry: I would love it if someone would find a way to make American Soldier work financially, please. The project may not have an immediate draw within the direct market beyond “It’s Greg Rucka,” but, people: You can’t tell me this wouldn’t have a market in the mainstream book world.

Michonne made her first brief, shadowy appearance in The Walking Dead‘s second season finale, with word following shortly after that she’d be played in season three by Treme‘s Danai Gurira. Courtesy of Entertainment Weekly, we have the first look of Gurira in character, looking rather closely to how she’s appeared in the Walking Dead comic book series — though Robert Kirkman says to expect some changes.

“The essence of the character — her personality, her motives, everything that makes Michonne Michonne — remains intact from the comics,” Kirkman told EW. “But like a lot of things on the show, there will be little tweaks and differences here and there. We saw that her introduction is slightly different from how it was in the comic, and her interaction with Andrea is really going to be a really cool addition to the character that I think will get television viewers up to speed, and they’ll get to know her a lot faster than comic book readers did.”

McLeod talks a little about the project on his blog.

I’d love to see this kind of approach taken for more things; Jim Ottoviani and Jay Hosler really should be household names by now, dammit.

(Via.)

The distribution system for comics as it stands is an upside down pyramid with the creators at the very bottom.  In this upside down pyramid the creators are the last ones allowed to recoup from their work and they get the leftovers or scraps after everyone else is finished. (If there is anything left for them.)

The creators are the people who put in all of the time and energy into the very product that’s being sold.  Even if you heavily promote your book, you’re doing it to make other people money.

The distributor makes their money, the printers get paid, the publishers, and the retailers before the artist gets to make anything or recoup money invested into a book.  It’s easy to lose money even after everyone has been paid and very common.

Mark Andrew Smith has created a new “manifesto” for creator-owned comics, called The A to B Manifesto. The creator as retailer, and it’s an interesting read that suggests that creators take on more active role in the promotion and sale of their work, and that Kickstarter will be a gamechanging tool in that. I’m not convinced that I agree, entirely, but it’s definitely the starting point for lots of conversation. Go, read. Get talking.

[Ultraverse co-creator Steve] Englehart says that in 2004, Tom Brevoort approached him to integrate the Ultraverse into the Marvel Universe. That he’d plotted the first issue and had written a precis for the first year, including Prime joining Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, but that the project was closed down.

Later an assistant editor told Englehart that he wanted his mission to being back the Ultraverse characters but subsequently called Englehart to tell him “It’s my job if I continue to ask about this.”

And it’s all down to a pesky five percent of profits that Malibu creators are entitled to.

Except, of course, things may not be that simple:

The Ultraverse: Let’s just pretend it never happened, it’ll probably be easier for everyone involved.

Seeing Men in Black 3 in IMAX this weekend? If so, you’ll also get to see six minutes of The Amazing Spider-Man, which is running with MIB3 starting Thursday night at midnight, according to the latter movie’s official Facebook page. The two are both Sony films, so it’s a natural move for them to team up — whether or not this helps MIB3 end the three week-reign of Avengers at the top of the box office remains to be seen. It’s not clear yet is the footage will be subsequently released online.

The Amazing Spider-Man, directed by Marc Webb and starring Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone and Rhys Ifans, is scheduled for release on July 3.

Fans returning to the Civil War saga will find that all-new material has been added to the experience, including a new take on Spider-Man’s role, with the story set in the post-”One More Day” reality and showing these events as they unfolded without Peter Parker and Mary Jane being married for the first time.

It’d be great if it was exactly the same as it unfolded the first time, except at some point, MJ says something like “Man, I’m so glad that Aunt May got over us living together even though we’re not married, tiger.” For the curious, there’s also a downloadable prologue from the novel at the link, letting you know what to expect.

Via Guttersniper, Dylan Todd reimagines a new trade dress for Marvel’s Essentials line, and comes up with just design beauty:

I mean, look at those covers. They are gorgeous. If there was any justice in the world, Marvel would get in touch with Todd to get him to work as soon as possible…

“One of the major iconic DC characters will reveal that he is gay in a storyline in June,” Courtney Simmons, DC Entertainment’s senior vice president of publicity, confirmed to ABC News.

June? That’s when Before Watchmen starts, isn’t it…? Sadly, Rorschach isn’t out until July, otherwise I really genuinely would put my metaphorical money on him… That said, you’ve got to give DC credit for teasing this (minor?) reveal out – by Simmons giving us a gender for the first time, the speculation on the character’s identity (and therefore, the story) gets at least another day of life, making DC seem progressive right before Marvel plays up their “Northstar gets married” Astonishing X-Men issue on ABC’s The View. Sneaky, sneaky…

(Via DC Women Kicking Ass.)

(Via.)

Starting with the 7/4/12 On-sale items, all 32 page Marvel Universe comics, including those that contain a digital code, will be printed with 50# Coated interiors and will be Self-Cover.

I’ll admit it: I’m not that bothered with the self-cover format (Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like I’m used to it from the Dark Horse books I’ve been getting, not to mention growing up with 2000AD in the UK), but I’m curious about what the wider reaction has been out there. Does the “lighter” cover stock mean more shipping damages? Are you as a fan bothered by the change? Do people even really notice it?

To celebrate the coming of Sondra Li, the band’s new lead singer, the creative team put together a fun promo image. The image shows off her introduction in a familiar fashion, giving a shout-out to Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson.

Check out the image, and the full press release, below, and go to Sparkshooter.com for more band comic goodness.

Press Release: When Sparkshooter, the webcomic from Troy Brownfield and Sarah Vaughn, launched in February, it came with the promise that a new singer would shake up the group of friends that formerly provided the backbone of the group Crazy Yeats.  With Crazy Yeats dissolved and a new band in the offing, get ready to meet Sondra Li!

Sondra debuts on Page 13 of Sparkshooter, which posts on Wednesday, May 23rd.  To commemorate this shift in the story, series artist Sarah Vaughn created a special promo inspired by the work of Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson on the cover to Justice League of America #75, the issue wherein Black Canary joins the team.

Writer Troy Brownfield said, “With the arrival of Sondra, the whole story moves into a new direction.  Immediately following Sondra’s debut, you’ll also meet Jack Spencer, the once and future manager of the guys.  He’s going to give you some info in the coming weeks that explains how the boys got together and sets up one of the central conflicts for months to come.”

Become our friend on Facebook at www.facebook.com/sparkshootercomic

You can also follow Sparkshooter on Twitter @sparkshootercom

A new page of Sparkshooter posts every Wednesday at www.sparkshooter.com

DC says Watchmen was “a work for hire agreement at the start”, however. And it provides such a rich basis for prequels, according to DiDio. “The stories and ideas are so well defined, and there are so many throwaways in the body of the original work, a one-line mention or a side item or a cameo shot of a character, that were basically great wonderful springboards we could grow the world from,” he said. “That’s why when everybody says this is a finite story, true if you’re looking at the beginning, middle, end of that particular story itself. But when you’re talking about the characters, there’s nothing finite about them. They have endless possibilities in the types of stories we could tell with them. And like I said we’ve found the right creators to tell those stories.”

I have no particular horse in the Before Watchmen race, but I am endlessly amused by the line about people who think Watchmen being finite are correct “if you’re looking at the beginning, middle, end of that particular story itself.” The beginning, middle and end are the entire story!

Today Marvel wants to take the time to thank all of the fans who have liked and followed us on our social media adventures! To show our appreciation we’ll be setting up exclusive sales, cool surprises and much more!

We’ll be starting the festivities off with a 99 cents Digital Comics sale of INCREDIBLE HULK (1999) #77-112. If you loved the Green Goliath in “Marvel’s The Avengers,” follow his ongoing adventures during this sale! For fans who love to shop at the Marvel Store, shipping will be free to show our appreciation for your support!

There will be also be publishing exclusives appearing throughout the day on our Twitter and Facebook feeds, so be sure to be on the lookout! Finally, we’ll be releasing an exclusive special animation clip just for you!

The Twitter sweepstake rules are already up, with a year’s subscription to Marvel’s DCU up for grabs as a grand prize.

What happened was that I basically became obsessed with Jeff [Lemire]. [Laughs] I read “Sweet Tooth” and was like, “Holy shit. Who is this guy?” I googled him and found out about “Essex County,” so I ran out and grabbed the collected edition and read it cover to cover. Then I tweeted about him and about how awesome “Sweet Tooth” was. And then, he tweeted back at me, we exchanged email addresses and just started talking to each other.

For this project in particular, it all happened through [Editor] Ben Abernathy at DC. I’m trying to remember if Ben reached out to me first, or if Ben reached out to Jeff and then Jeff emailed me and was like, “Do you want to work on a Batman story?” When Jeff Lemire asks you if you want to work on a Batman story, you say, “Yes.” First off, that guy can write, so he’s not just doing the art; you’ve got a collaborator all the way. And he’s never drawn that character before, so I was like, “This sounds like the greatest thing ever.”

One of these days, I’m going to figure out how to do this Twitter thing properly.

A number of DC subscribers have contacted Bleeding Cool rather annoyed that DC Comics have told them that they can no longer get their favourite books in this fashion, and they will be cancelled with issue 10.

Which means Justice League International readers will miss the final two issues of that comic, and unless they object, will receive issues of Superman instead. And subscribers to Aquaman will be switched to Justice League (and pocket the difference in price) and Justice League Dark subscribers will, bizarrely, be switched to Batman: The Dark Knight.

Swamp Thing also turns out to be included in the seemingly inexplicable sub cancellation. It’s obviously not that the books are being cancelled because even though both Justice League titles may be in danger – well, JLI is already ending with #12 – there’s no way that either Swamp Thing or Aquaman are facing their end anytime soon bar a disastrous event at DC. So what’s going on, exactly? Is Warners/DC trying to limit subscriptions to what it considers “core” titles (Justice League, Superman, Batman: The Dark Knight and Batman are the named replacements that we know about so far) in order to strengthen branding, or is this something else? And if so, what…?

Our plan has always been to return to San Francisco; we just don’t have dates at the Moscone Center yet. Moscone typically gives us dates six months out, and it’s hard to ask someone to plan their convention here and not have dates until six months before the show. So we have our fingers crossed that we might get dates earlier, but here we are—it’s already May—so the more time ticks by the more challenging it is. But we hope to get back to San Francisco.

Glanzer said that it’s up in the air whether or not a return to Anaheim would be considered if the Moscone Center wasn’t available. Sorry, Southern California… It looks like you might be stuck with just having the biggest comic and pop-culture convention of the year in your neighborhood, instead of having that one and its smaller sibling.

Robert Downey Jr. plays billionaire Tony Stark (Iron Man’s not-at-all secret identity) in the Marvel Studios movies, and he’s looking to make some pretty good money himself as a result of the phenomenal box office success of Avengers.

The Hollywood Reporter cites “multiple knowledgeable sources” that RDJ is looking to take home $50 million from the picture, which includes back-end compensation and bonuses. After the success of the first Iron Man, Downey’s reps negotiated a deal where he would make a percentage of the profits from any Marvel movie where he plays the character — with The Hollywood Reporter says could be as high as 5 to 7 percent, though no concrete numbers are publicly known.

As far as the rest of the cast, THR’s sources say that Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner and Mark Ruffalo will all make about $2 to $3 million from Avengers, with Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson making around twice that. Avengers currently sits at a worldwide total of $1,016,095,436, according to Box Office Mojo.

Looking at it, my first thought was that it seemed very tame for a cover pulled for content, but my second was… I wonder what would result in a cover being pulled today in similar circumstances? Have covers become more graphic, or is it my imagination? And would this cover be pulled today, or simply shipped in a polybag that hid its content from young and impressionable eyes?

If you look at the success stories over the last 20 years (start with Sandman, which is a weird deal between DC and Neil [Gaiman]), and moving up until now, you can’t point to anything new that has been created by Marvel and DC that’s had any lasting impact, but there are all these things, whether it’s Bone,Hellboy, Sin City, The Walking Dead or Y: The Last Man, that are all tremendously successful properties that have done especially well as trade paperback sales both in and outside the comics market.

Wait, who published Y: The Last Man again…? I know that it’s (a) a creator-owned title, speaking to Stephenson’s true point of new ideas versus retreads of the same old corporate characters, and (b) a Vertigo title, but still: Arguing that neither Marvel or DC have done anything with lasting impact by using a DC title seems somewhat unfortunate.

(Also, Y: The Last Man gets mentioned, but not The Invisibles, Preacher, Transmetropolitan, Planetary or Fables? Was Y really that much more of a break-out hit? Genuinely wondering, because I would’ve thought that Fables was the bigger of the two at least.)

In the “Robin approaching” shot, I was worried that the reflective Nike logo on the black running pants I was wearing would be visible. It was not.

In the Batcave computer room shot, I was worried that the cursor on the computer screens would be visible. It was not.

Diamond reported graphic novel sales down 5.7% in March, and a 12.6% gain in April.  Those percentage changes are based on the wholesale value of Diamond’s shipments to comic stores for those months. But the retail value of the Top 300 graphic novels, calculated based on our estimates of the quantities sold in those two months tells a different story, with graphic novel sales up 24.4% in March and 27.0% in April.  That’s around a 30% difference in the March rate of change, and over a 14% difference in April.

The difference, apparently, comes from distributor sales appearing down due to liquidated stock even though customer sell-through was actually up. Confusing, perhaps, but as the site puts it, the bottom line is that “graphic novel sales in comic stores are even better than the 9.5% year over year increase they showed for the first four months of 2012.” Did we somehow back into the beginning of another boom, and if so, how…?