The most widely circulated American comic book this week isn’t anything you can buy in comics stores: it’s Amazing Spider-Man, You’re Hired!, a skinny one-shot included with Wednesday’s New York Daily News, and distributed for free on Marvel’s iPhone/iPad app. (It doesn’t seem to be available on the Web, though.) Written by Warren …
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Emanata: Dimming of the Day
This week’s Amazing Spider-Man #647 marks the end of the three-year, 102-issues-long “Brand New Day” sequence–a consistently entertaining run that could have been more than that. The premise of BND, when it started, was that Amazing was going to be the only Spider-Man book, that it would come out three times a month (giving Marvel …
Emanata: Astro Zombies
It’s a zombie moment. Grey, shambling, undead ex-people are the most durable monster fantasy of right now, and hat goes double for comics, from The Walking Dead on down through Blackest Night and the unkillable Marvel Zombies franchise. Zombie stories are stories about assimilation–being robbed of one’s individuality and absorbed into a …
Emanata: More Weekly Comics, Please!
What this country needs is a good weekly comic book. Admittedly, the last few attempts haven’t worked out terribly well, and the most recent stab at something similar–the thrice-monthly “Brand New Day” era of Amazing Spider-Man–is drawing to a close after a series of missteps and delays that led, at one point, to two issues coming out …
Emanata: Eight Comics That Demand to Be Reprinted
There have been rumors floating around for a few weeks that Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman’s long-out-of-print Marvelman/Miracleman comics are either closer to republication than they’ve been in a while, or further away. (Arguably, the recent kerfuffle over the “Medieval Spawn” case is just the latest set of aftershocks from the Marvelman …
Emanata: When I Am King of Comic-Con
I’m not going to deny it: I had an absolutely great time at this year’s Comic-Con. I saw some fascinating panels (and moderated a few), I found some books I’ve been looking for forever, I bought some fantastic original art, and I was convinced, contra Lev’s essay, that nerd culture is the healthiest it’s ever been, both in numbers and in …
Emanata: The Phone is the Panel is the Page
Just about every comics creator I’ve talked to recently has been thinking, at least a little, about how mobile digital technology is going to affect their work. For anyone who’s going to be at Comic-Con International next week, I’m going to be moderating a panel on “Comics After Paper” on Saturday the 24th, with creators Dylan Meconis, …
Emanata: The Black Mass
There are days when I admire people who don’t have a serious, unkickable superhero-comics habit, and there are other days when I feel a little sorry for people who don’t get to enjoy things like Batman and Robin #13. It’s the best episode thus far of Grant Morrison’s ongoing Batman project: the one in which the dominoes he’s been lining …
Emanata: Cheer On the Bad Guys
“The awful thing about life is this,” as Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game put it: “everyone has their reasons.” That’s the premise behind two excellent superhero comics published this week, neither of which actually have any superheroes in them. Action Comics #890, Paul Cornell and Pete Woods’ first issue of their run, and Matt …
Emanata: What’s a Digital Comic Book Worth?
The most interesting element of DC’s announcement this week that they’re entering the digital-comics sales fray is that they’re trying out tiered pricing: selling individual full issues of serial comics for 99 cents, $1.99 or $2.99. The question of what a digital comic book is worth–and whether its value to a reader is correlated with …
Emanata: Something Something Oranges Something
Here’s the flip side of what I wrote about last week: there are certain serial comics I adore that I’m happy to see ended and don’t ever want to continue. Comics readers are used to the idea that any character or scenario they like can go on forever–that there’s always another first-rate story to be told about Earth-X or Blue Beetle or …
Emanata: Ten Comics That Should Run Forever
A few weeks ago, Tom Spurgeon offered a juicy challenge over at The Comics Reporter: “name five past or present comics titles you think should always be published, just because it would please you to see them on the stands.” I liked thinking about series I’d want to go on forever (as opposed to going on longer than they have): there’ve …