Marvel Digital Comics: Tales of The Black Freighter

I’m guessing that Marvel’s been feeling a little left out by all the publicity surrounding DC Comic’s New 52 and their decision to make all their comics available for digital sale the same day as print, because late Friday afternoon Marvel issued a press release announcing that Ultimate Spider-Man, one of the few comics that Marvel DOES offer for sale the same day as print, had “the best first day of sales for a new release to date!” on their iPhone and iPad apps.

Awesome! How many copies did you sell, writer Brian Michael Bendis?

Nothing frustrates an author more than his work not being able to get into the hands of the people that want it, and now with the Marvel Comics app we can!

Okay… how many people got their hands on it digitally? You: Marvel SVP of Sales David Gabriel – how many?

We’ve been pushing to make Ultimate Comics Spider-Man our top release to date, and the results we’ve seen both here and in print certainly show us that we’re heading in the right direction.

For the love of – Why won’t you just tell us how many digital copies you’re selling, Marvel and DC? What are you so worried about?

And Then They Came For The Oans…

Comic Book Resources just published a preview of the upcoming Green Lantern Corps #1, written by Peter Tomasi (Of recent Batman & Robin infamy) and Fernando Pasarin on pencils. As with all DC’s New 52, I can only presume that it’s meant to be a jumping-in point for new readers unfamiliar with Green Lanterns, their background or any of their history. So let’s look at it while pretending to be one of those new readers, shall we?

We start with a man being locked into something called a “sciencell” against his will by uncaring jailors.

A Dose Of The Sticky Green Rings

Heidi MacDonald at Comics Beat got her hands on an email from DC Comics saying that some percentage of copies of Green Lantern #1, which came out this past Wednesday, are being recalled for replacement due to a printing error that dropped a big, ugly-looking green loop on the cover, making Sinestro look like he’s rocking a raging dose of Oan Face Herpes:

The Nightwatchman Moonlights

The first big Comic-Con announcement, on preview night, was that Dark Horse Comics was planning to publish Orchid, a comic written by Tom Morello, the lead guitarist for Audioslave and Rage Against The Machine, which led most if us there at the time to take in a sharp breath and remark: “I hung around the Dark Horse booth for an hour to hear an announcement that didn’t include the words ‘Buffy’, ‘Sin’ or ‘City’?”

Dial ahead two months and Dark Horse has released a six-page preview of the first issue of a book they’re hyping as “the tale of a teenage prostitute who learns that she is more than the role society has imposed upon her.” Oh, Dark Horse… you had me at “teenage prostitute.” And so did the Internet. Be right back…

There Goes The Neighborhood

As will likely always happen on Wednesday nights, things at Crisis on Infinite Midlives will go dark until tomorrow for the following obvious reason:

Yup, just like last week, there’s 13 DC Comics New 52 books that need… wait a second… what the FUCK…

Is that a fucking MARVEL book? Will Crisis on Infinite Midlives do the heretofore unthinkable and begin focusing on non-DC New 52 books?

Tune in next week for the answer to these questions on the next episode of… PIIIIIGS IIIN – IT’S NEW COMIC DAY, SO FUCK OFF, WE’RE DRINKIIIIING!

Laying Cable: Marvel Announces Avengers: X-Sanction

Yesterday afternoon, Marvel announced in a conference call that their next big event will be called Avengers: X-Sanction, written by Jeph Loeb and penciled by Ed McGuinness. The story will focus on the Avengers – probably to keep focus on the team for the release of the Joss Whedon movie nest summer – and will feature the return of Cable, the popular mutant character killed in the X-Men Second Coming event last summer. Cable, who was introduced in New Mutants in 1990 by *eyeroll* *drool* *take back fuck I threatened to give*

Okay, maybe that’s not fair and a little premature. Let’s see what Loeb has in mind for the story:

As to how Cable’s mission relates to the Avengers, Loeb said he “doesn’t want to give away too much,” but “how Cable survived ‘Messiah Complex’ and ‘Second Coming’ — and I do consider those one big arc — if there had been even a hint that the Avengers had something to do with Hope’s future, he would… do something to them.”

…[Marvel Senior Vice President of Publishing Tom] Brevoort said the event puts Cable in conflict with characters readers aren’t used to seeing him with. “The definition of Cable as a father out to protect his daughter by any means necessary gives the character a weight and heft you can relate to on a very human level.” There are also “some larger situations going on” for both Nate and the Avengers.

Okay, THAT changes things. NOW I feel… yeah: I got nothing.

Knife To The Eye! Footage From The Goon Hits Youtube

Eric Powell just put up some early test footage of the long awaited, but still frustratingly far away movie of The Goon. If the movie ever sees the light of day, David Fincher is supposed to direct. Clancy Brown and Paul Giamatti provide the voice work, as they did in the clip Powell showed at Comic Con in 2010.

What is it going to take to just get this thing made?

Amalgam Comics Redux

Considering the most effective and forward-thinking form of comic book marketing has historically involved white wire, ball bearings and the garish phrase, “Hey Kids! COMICS!”, DC Comics has been going all out hyping their New 52 books. They’ve put commercials for the books on TV (Including reportedly during The Daily Show to catch that wily college potsmoking demographic), trailers in movie theaters, and print ads in straight magazines (I can’t address any idle rumors about ads in gay magazines).

And they haven’t stopped there. Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool reported this morning that DC’s bought themselves a bunch of sponsored search terms on Twitter.

Those search terms being the names of Marvel Comics characters.

DC Comics’ Electric Dreams

This morning on the Source Blog, DC Comics announced that Justice League #1 and Action Comics #1 have each sold through more than 200,000 copies in less than two weeks and one week respectively, and that Justice League #1 is now officially the biggest selling American comic book of 2011 so far… they key word being AMERICAN. The biggest selling JAPANESE comic being, of course, the million copy selling Tentacle Panty Sniff Party by Kuroda Masato, the biggest name in Manga that I just made up.

In all seriousness, them’s big numbers for DC, and not the only ones: every New 52 book DC released last week is going back for a second printing, and other than Action and Justice League, DC’s got eight other books with sellthrough of more than 100,000 copies.

Which is exciting news for DC Comics and for comics enthusiasts in general; God knows my Local Comic Store Owner – who knows me by name and asks me if I should maybe be eating better or if instead something crawled up my asshole and died – was positively giddy when he confirmed to me last Wednesday that I was FAR from the only customer who asked him to pull all 52 of the new DC books.

And even MORE exciting is that those numbers only count the actual print run; they don’t include numbers from DC’s other big innovation – making every book they sell available for sale digitally the same day they’re available in print! And when you add THOSE numbers in, well… I’ll let John Rood, DC’s Executive VP of Sales, Marketing and Business Development tell you: lay ’em on us, Johnny!

We can’t.

Um… what was that?

Woman of Kleenex

DC Women Kicking Ass just released this DC Comics internal promo image by Cliff Chiang for the New 52 reboot of Wonder Woman by Chiang with Brian Azzarello scripts that’ll be released on September 21st: