Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by retailer Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in
I’ll be honest; I underestimated how big and mainstream the New York Comic Con was going to be.
It’s so respectable it got covered by Arianna Huffington’s Huffington Post. The Business Editor Michelle Kung was sent to experience her first comic book convention and according to the piece she wrote, she mostly liked it (except for all the people in their homemade costumes; cosplay still has a long way to go in this country before it gets any respect). She wrote about a cocktail party and a reading by that dreamy Neil Gaiman who was introduced by SNL cast member Bill Hader (who seemed to be there to tell MTV News they weren’t making a Laser Cats movie – yet).
But getting back to the comics, One of my dreams came true when DC announced they were going to add a title to their Johnny DC line: Supergirl Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade. Finally there will be a Supergirl comic that could actually appeal to actual girls. Now that that’s taken care of when will they buy a clue and produce a manga version of Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld?
Speaking of which we’ve actually gotten to see character designs from the upcoming (scheduled for release in Spring 2009 – you’ve kind of got to wonder why they need that amount of lead time) Del Rey X-Men and Wolverine manga books. They look like they could appeal to manga fans, though the Badger/My Neighbor Totoro version of The Beast pretty much precludes any crossover with the main X-Men readership.
There was a lot of loose talk about “shelving limits”, a.k.a. how the limits of available bookstore shelf space plus the ever increasing number of publishers and titles could halt further growth of the graphic novel market in
It went completely unreported in all the usual suspect newsfeeds (I had to read about in my e-mail copy of the Publisher’s Weekly Comic Week) but it seems like someone is finally going to try and compete with Viz’s monthly manga anthologies. Yen Press’ Yen Plus will supposedly be as widely distributed as Shonen Jump. The PW piece claims it’ll be available in Wal-Mart, which would be quite the coup since that’s one of the few places I’ve never been able to find a copy of Shonen Jump.
In hints of things to come, Vertigo is increasing its output of original graphic novels (my supposition is that the day may come, maybe sooner than any of us think, when the floppy model will not hunt any more when it comes to Vertigo-type material). And Tokyopop will launch a line of full-color graphic novels by “manga-inspired creators from around the world,” which I’m going to interpret as the publisher’s very reasonable attempt to diversify as the manga market grows ever tighter.
It was quite the week for Stan Lee. First there was the announcement of his deal to create a superhero universe for Virgin – I’ve longed wondered if any publisher would dare to try that again. Though of course Richard Branson is happily too smart to try and launch a half dozen superhero titles simultaneously like they did in the bad old days.
And Viz media held a special press event for Lee to announce his collaboration with Shaman King creator Hiroyuki Takei’s Ultimo will (of course) be published in
And finally in an Associated Press piece headlined “Superheroes Head For the Persian Gulf,” the various attempts to build American-style theme parks in the
The opinions expressed in this Talk Back column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
