Let’s start with a new Dan Hipp:
- Mark Millar was interviewed by Hero Complex about Kick Ass 2 – both the movie and the comic, and had this to say about the DC relaunch:
“I’m delighted to see DC getting back in the game with their reboot. Making characters who are as old as Donald Duck relevant to a modern audience isn’t easy. I joked about how they were Botoxing these old dudes and squeezing them back into their tights, but in all seriousness it’s been good for retailers and after a long time of soft sales on the bulk of their characters they’ve really got people’s attention again. I love a lot of the guys over there and grew up with these characters. Creatively, it’s not where my head’s at, because I think we need to do what Stan Lee and Jack Kirby did in the ’60s and move forward, creating a new generation of characters and concepts for a 21st century readership. But I like the fact they’ve done something ballsy like this and it’s put money in the pockets of retailers. I don’t know how long it’s going to last in the medium term, but a nice little boost in the meantime.”
- Dan Abnett vlogs about comics home and abroad:
- Albert Underzo, co-creator of Asterix, has retired at age 84. A true legend.
- Jamie McKelvie shares some preview art for his upcoming Marvel book X-Men: Season One:
- Charles Soule weighs in on comics piracy:
“I don’t want to be too negative about this stuff, because I know that having an audience is important, and the idea that people care enough about what I’m writing to seek it out – legally or illegally – is still fairly novel to me. But it still burns a little. A friend of mine sold a few copies of an upcoming issue of his book at a con, only to see it hit the torrents the next day. That meant that someone had to buy it from the creator, make small talk with him, look him in the eye (well, probably – you get some weird types at cons), and then turn right around and screw him as hard as he could. I’m not necessarily even faulting the downloaders that much. I don’t love that, but I understand it. Books are expensive, and a lot of them suck. Sometimes you want to try before you buy, or get something that’s out of print, or… hell, it’s just easier. I get that (although it’s still crappy!) But the SCANNERS… now those guys I don’t get. It’s not like with a CD, where you just have to rip the MP3 and upload it. That’s a two-minute process. But scanning a comic book, at least as I understand how it’s done, takes a minimum of 40 minutes, and can be much longer for complex books with lots of 2-page spreads.”
- As well as posting a bunch of great pictures from the summer convention circuit, Terry Moore posted this pic:
- Pittsburgh City Paper has an interview with Alex Ross. Here’s a morsel:
You have been drawing the same superheroes for 15 years. Do you still find interesting things to do with them visually, and interesting things about their characters?
Absolutely. I've always felt a strong connection to Superman in particular. He can be used as an American icon and can be used to basically contribute various ideas and even ideologies, much like Uncle Sam. Just making stand-alone imagery of him is inspirational. That's enough, for me, to get me charged up. I have a lifelong connection to these characters and I want to reflect that influence back, so there is always much more to give.
Marvels and Kingdom Come have been called "reconstructionist" responses to the 1980s "deconstruction" of superheroes, which saw them psychologically picked apart and made a lot darker. In those two books, the heroes are much stronger and closer to their roots. Was that intentional?
I think myself and the authors of both those books had that instinct in mind. The deconstruction of superheroes was in many ways the destruction of them, and we were trying to remind the reader why these things were valuable and attractive in the first place. I've never lost my love of superheroes completely, though I have had it beaten down and weakened at various times by feeling what I was reading predominantly in the marketplace was either too negative or too dark, too mean-spirited or violent.
- Here’s a video of an interview with Jeff Smith from sdcc:
- Skottie Young has a few more pages of his web comic up, including this one:
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