§ Nice Art: My old pal Michael Gaydos alerted me to the existence of BENEATH, a new graphic novel with art by Gaydos (Alias, Jessica Jones) and story by Steven S. DeKnight (Spartacus, Daredevil for tv, Conan and Wastelanders: Wolverine in the comics.) Who doesn’t love some Michael Gaydos? It’s a horror story and my estimation of the logline is: The Thing in a Texas detention camp for undocumented immigrants. The book features graphic design by Cindy Leong, lettering by Toben Racicot, and was edited by Allison O’Toole; Kate Sánchez served as a cultural consultant and translator. The book came out last week from Amazon’s Comixology Originals exclusive digital content line – and it’s Gaydos’s FRIST original graphic novel.
In BENEATH, Deputy Sheriff Jess Delgado is tasked with transporting the sole survivor of a mysterious attack along the Texas-Mexico border to Core Civil, a for-profit immigration detention center that is about to be closed down due to wide-spread protests. Housing only a handful of remaining detainees and manned by a skeleton crew of disgruntled guards, the detention center becomes a desperate battle ground when something otherworldly emerges from deep below the earth. Deputy Delgado must pull together the guards and detainees – two groups that hate and fear each other – to survive the night or fall to the vengeance of the things that lurk beneath.
Honestly, what a great opening sequence. Also, Comixology is still putting out comics!
§ Twice in two weeks, how lucky can you get?
§ Apparently Zack Rabiroff has been working on an epic article on the history of Marvel during the Bill Jemas era. It will be published in The Comics Journal #310, but TCJ.com has an excerpt: The Rashōmon of Bill Jemas: Four Portraits of a Marvel Age. I can’t imagine anything I’d want to read more, so I may just have to buy this issue! Rabiroff talks to some of the lesser known (but key) players of the era, like Jenny Lee and Andrew Lis, and it paints a fairly sanguine portrait of what was a fairly crazy time:
Lis can speak this freely now because he’s been out of the comic industry for some years, working in the saner and more fulfilling realm of metal recycling. It’s where he would have ended up 20 years ago had he not been approached by Axel Alonso, a former editor at DC’s Vertigo line, who had taken up a post in Jemas’ new regime at Marvel: “Axel says to me, ‘You’ve got to come to Marvel. … We can do anything as long as it makes money. Anything.’” Jenny Lee, another outgoing editor from the Vertigo staff who became Jemas’ assistant as well as a kind of editor-at-large outside of the staff’s normal hierarchy, recalls the same Rooseveltian instruction for the books she oversaw: “We try something new, and we see if it works. If it doesn’t work then we change our mind. Then we can fix it. But [Jemas] was very much, like, you learn stuff by trying things, and then if they don’t work, now you know. But you don’t just not do something because you’re afraid it’s unprecedented or hasn’t been done before.”
…
Lis explains the logic: “I remember I said, look, my memory as a retailer is that a lot of these Marvel books, they might sell, but they’re sh*t. You don’t need 15 Midnight Sons titles or whatever you call that. Nobody cares. What you’re doing is, there’s a pool of money, and you’re diluting it, because there’s only this many buyers. Now, you need to add more buyers, but there’s only this much money going around. So, you’re making your Marvel fans choose not to buy Avengers to buy Midnight Sons. But if you subtract half those X-Men titles you have more people buying the core books. They might complain to you, but if you put better quality people on those books you’ll sell more of your best stuff (as opposed to diluting your brand). and you don’t have to tell these massive crossover stories. … It’s easier to promote eight books than to say, ‘You have to buy this one’ when you’re putting out 70.”
The roots of today’s direct market were directly sowed in the Jemas Era of Marvel, and it’s high time it got a thorough examination – although as pointed out several times, the rise of the MCU put an end to anything like experimentation with legacy IP, and that is a damn shame.
§ Jeff Smith is interviewed at PW about his youthful comic strip, Thorn, now reprinted:
I learned how to do comics that were suspenseful. I learned what kind of humor worked. We’d get a reaction in college—there was a lot of people would be like, “Oh, you do that strip. How come? It’s not funny.” Now that I’ve read it, I realized that the reason I thought they were terrible is because when I was submitting them to newspaper syndicates to get it into the newspaper, I got awful rejection letters: “This is dumb. This doesn’t work. Good luck. Try somewhere else.” They convinced me that this was a dumb idea. But I knew it wasn’t a dumb idea. I believe in the characters. I believe in the characters more than the comic strip. And so I just decided, “Well that’s not the format for me,” and I just I cut off all attempts to sell it to the newspapers. Luckily, almost at the same time, in the weekend magazine section of my hometown college newspaper, the Columbus Dispatch, there was a two- or three-page story in full color on a comic book called Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. This is 1986. I never saw anything like it. I never saw a newspaper talking about comic book before! I’m looking at the art and it was new, it was different—different styles, a different way of coloring. And I got excited.
§ Milton Griepp unpacks the latest financial report from the Embracer Group, parent company of Dark Horse, and things look bleak for video games….but profitable for comics?
The Embracer sales decline of 24% was driven by big drops in PC/Console Games (down 34%) and Entertainment & Services (down 54%). Those declines were attributed to tough comps and few new product releases. Within the Entertainment & Services segment, sales of Dark Horse backlist was noted as a revenue driver, led by volumes of Berserk, and stronger sales of Avatar: The Last Airbender behind the live-action Netflix series and exposure to the material on Webtoon.
Dark Horse has somehow managed to walk a fine line of not being a money black hole in the decaying orbit of the video game industry, and that is commendable.
§ Also at ICv2 an interview with Graphix Co-Founder and Publisher David Saylor focusing on the biggest North American comics publisher’s move to add manga:
It’s mostly from seeing the popularity of manga. It’s a category of comics that Scholastic wasn’t doing, and it felt like, well, why aren’t we doing it? It also came from talking with librarians and parents whose kids were reading manga that they probably shouldn’t be reading because they were really excited by the content and by the artwork. It’s difficult for librarians, because they have to guide the appropriate age group to the appropriate books, and they can’t recommend older manga. There’s a real need for middle grade manga for kids, and that’s where I thought Scholastic can make a difference in this world, because we only publish kids’ books. We’re very conscious of what we publish for various ages. We’re very strong in middle grade comics, so I thought, Well, why aren’t we doing manga?
§ For as long as we do this linkage, there will be one story a week with a title like The 13 best graphic novels with mature themes for adults and this time it’s from The Mary Sue. 13 good comics. Show it to friends.
§ The annual NCS (National Cartoonists Society) meeting is coming up in a few weeks, and Broom-Hilda’s Russell Myers has been voted into theNCS Hall of Fame. .
Russell Myers will be honored with the Gold Key award at the 78th Annual Reuben Awards in San Diego, August 23rd. For over 54 years, Myers has independently written and illustrated his daily syndicated comic strip, Broom-Hilda. In 2024, he earned a Guinness World Record for the “Longest Running Daily Cartoon Strip by a Single Author.”
§ CRIME BLOTTER, both involving comic book restoration of all things. In Aumsville, OR., a local man was charged with the theft of $300,000 in comic books after he took comics sent to him for restoration and then sold them online or to dealers:
The 57-year-old man owned a business called “Hero Restoration” in Lebanon, according to the Linn County Sheriff’s Office. Customers from Colorado, Connecticut, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington had sent him comics to restore. The Aumsville man filed with the Secretary of State’s Office to dissolve his business in 2023. But Linn County investigators found that some of the comic books were sold online or to a private comic book dealer in Washington.
§ Meanwhile, in an exact reverse situation, restorers Investment Grace Books have won $10 million in a defamation lawsuit against CGC. The suit has dragged on for eight years after IGB’s Matt and Emily Meyers sued CGC claiming that it had been defamed by statements from CGC employees.
The Meyers sent their restored comic books to CGC for grading, according to testimony in the case. Lead CGC grader Matthew Nelson publicly questioned in an online forum how far IGB had gone in its restorations by asserting fraud, the lawsuit claimed. The Meyers believed their submissions received subpar grades and filed for defamation. The couple also asserted their company had lost future business due to the questions of fraud. CGC asserted Nelson spoke for himself and not the company. The jury disagreed and ruled in the Meyers’ favor.
§ This weekend it’s…..FANATICS FEST NYC, a massive event which aims to be the Comic-Con for sports. The NY Post has a preview as only it can:
Why should comic book enthusiasts get all the fun? The first ever Fanatics Festival — a massive event billed as “the Comic Con of sports” — will be held at the Javits Center this weekend, Aug. 16 to Aug. 18. Over three days, fans will be able to meet and get autographs from top athletes such as Peyton and Eli Manning, Kevin Durant and Derek Jeter, attend dozens of panels and buy tons of merch to cheer on their favorite teams.
Some interesting numbers in the piece: 50,000 sports fans are expected, while parent company Fanatics spent $10 million for various activations at the event, “including a “kids zone” where Tom Brady will pass footballs to young tots,” an area to make your own WWE entrance, a 40 yard dash, and apparently, Jay-Z’s $3 million pop-up recreation of his 40/40 Club. It sounds like a lot of dough, but Fanatic’s founder Michael Rubin has a net worth of $11 billion, so shed no tears.
Fanatics Fest will have a big emphasis on trading cards – Fanatics owns Topps – and other collectibles. Of course, there are many autograph shows, and sports card shows every week in America, and The National, the Comic-Con of trading cards, draws between 40,000 and 100,000 people. Still, I’ve often wondered if sports – the most popular thing on earth – could create a Comic-Con like event…and now we’re going to find out! The Beat will be on hand to report on all the tossing and dashing.
§ At the other end of the spectrum we have the headline of the week: Piney Woods Comic Con bringing excitement for Lufkin hobby shop owner. Viewing a con through one man’s excitement is a fine way to showcase an event, especially when his store is called The Chadderbox.
Chad Fischer, the owner of The Chadderbox Hobby Shop in the Lufkin Mall, has been into all things card games, Pokémon, and comic culture since he was a kid.
What started as a YouTube channel dedicated to opening Pokémon card booster packs with Fischer’s kids has led to a full-fledged store devoted to comics, games, and fantasy.
The same things Fischer is excited to see at Piney Woods Comic Con.
“Big events like this are in too short supply for the amount of clientele that they have here looking for this kind of thing,” said Fischer.
§ I dunno I found this, but you may know Brian Cunningham as a long time senior editor at DC and now editor chief at Ghost Machine, but he also wrote and DREW a suspenseful comic about finding a deer trapped in an egress. And I think that’s cool.
