comickal: upcoming 8/25/2008

Well, after two weeks of relatively small pain comes another week that brings the big pain.

Contract #2 (of 3), $2.99 (...maybe. Although, come to think of it, I never saw #1 -- the zero issue, yes, but not #1 -- so maybe not.)

Manga Shakespeare Julius Caesar GN, $9.95
Manga Shakespeare Macbeth GN, $9.95 (...OK, probably not, but the concept...)

Terry Moores Echo TP Vol 01 Moon Lake, $15.95 (probably)

Doktor Sleepless #8 (resolicited), $3.99

Foundation TP, $15.99

Fear Agent TP Vol 04 Hatchet Job, $14.95

Family Dynamic #1 (of 3), $2.25 (originally solicited as a six issue mini, so either that's an error, or the run was shortened prior to publication)

Jack Of Fables #25, $2.99 (something odd happening here; published in consecutive weeks, and it didn't seem like last week's issue was late)

Madame Xanadu #3, $2.99 (last chance, I think; either drop to trade or just plain drop after this)

Fallen Angel IDW #29, $3.99

Surreal Adventures Of Edgar Allan Poo GN Vol 02, $12.99

Immortal Iron Fist TP Vol 02 Cities Of Heaven (Release not confirmed by Diamond Distribution), $17.99

Plus Previews itself.

I'm probably going to let some of that stuff slide for now, because, seriously, OW. $65 in trades alone?

elsewhere/strange horizons: welcome to the real world

Oh, my. I thought this wasn't appearing until yesterday, but it turns out it went up last week. Oops.

Strange Horizons Columns: Welcome to the Real World, by Iain Jackson:
Part One: Location, Location, Location, and the High Cost of Heroes (and Villains)

Why do so many superhero stories take place in places that never were, or versions of the here and now that kind of . . . aren't, quite? And how do those fictional cities and towns manage to recover from having superheroes and supervillains around? They can be, to put it mildly, quite destructive. In part one of this occasional series, we'll look at where the big fights take place, and what it can be like to have superheroes and supervillains around...

...Apart from the architecture and presentation, Metropolis and Gotham City are the most remarkably mobile cities that you'll ever see. Way back in the mists of prehistory, when I was a young'un, it was taken as gospel that Metropolis and Gotham were what was left of New York when you divided it up the East and Hudson rivers, so that New York was now three smaller cities. Later on, things started moving around a bit. For a while, Metropolis and Gotham were outer major suburbs of New York City. These days, to the extent it can be determined, Gotham has apparently moved off to southern New Jersey while Metropolis has settled down in Delaware . . . unless it's one of the stories that Grant Morrison is writing. He's been fairly clear that he still views Metropolis and Gotham as cities surrounding New York—in his Seven Soldiers series, he notes that the cities are the ugly stepchildren of New York—which means that depending on which writer is handling the story, the cities are in very different places at the same time. Something quantum happening to allow simultaneous different locations at the same point in spacetime, no doubt. (For the sake of sanity, we will ignore the TV series Smallville, in which Metropolis has apparently come rumbling in from the east to obliterate and sit on top of the current location of Kansas City, Kansas, possibly dragging a major lake or bay in its wake.) [...]

comickal: virgin closing

Aw, crap.

Virgin Comics Shut Down - 8/26/2008 6:55:00 AM - Publishers Weekly:Virgin Comics, the high-profile 2006 international joint venture between Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group and the India-based comics publisher Gotham Entertainment, has been shut down. The company’s New York office and publishing unit has been closed and the eight people that staff it have been laid off.

Although calls to Virgin Comics CEO and cofounder Sharad Devarajan (who is also president of Gotham Entertainment) have not been returned, sources confirm that the venture has been closed and that a statement will likely be issued soon. The closing appears to effect only Virgin Comics’ U.S. publishing operations in New York City and does not effect the operations of Gotham Entertainment, the Bangalore, India-based partner in the venture that produces comics targeted at the South Asian consumer market.

The company produced about 17 different comics series in addition to publishing about 18 trade paperback collections and 3 hardcover titles. It is unclear what will happen to the rights to these properties....

I have to admit, I'm not nearly as surprised at the closing as I was at the fact that Branson and Gotham decided to open a new comics company in the first place. I really liked most of the Virgin stuff that I read, but from what I could tell by looking at sales charts, it never connected in a broad way. Sales were typical of low-end indie stuff, but the company seemed to be trying to be DC or Marvel (or at least Dark Horse), and that's a circle you just can't quite square. I wonder if, like Crossgen, Virgin simply expanded faster than it could support. That said, as a division of two much larger companies, and one that was signing coproduction pacts all over the place, I'm surprised that it wasn't given more than two years to prove itself. Even Crossgen lasted six years.

I'm going to miss Devi and also the oddball little titles they used to publish. And I wonder what's going to happen to Stranded; it got optioned to SciFi. For that matter, there was this big joint production thing that Virgin and SciFi had going, and I'd imagine that SciFi just got left high and dry on that. And Stan Lee just got screwed over by a company going out of business again; they only recently announced that Stan Lee was developing a superhero universe for them. He was developing the Riftworld superhero universe for Byron Preiss iBooks when that company went under due to the founder's death in an auto accident. I wonder if he might not be better off doing whatever he was going to do as part of Komikworks, which he seems to be somehow a part of. It would be kind of odd for him to do something directly for the web, but at least he could get it out there and not be held hostage to some other company's misfortunes.

Nothing on Virgin's (recently redesigned) website as yet, but then, considering that updates on the website, aside from the weblog section, were always painfully behind the publication schedule, that's not surprising.

EDIT: According to the official press release given to CBR, Virgin is "reorganizing its operations and closing its New York office to consolidate in an LA base." (LA is that much cheaper than New York? Really?) So possibly not dead, but merely sleeping. (Though I'd bet on "dead".)