The future of comics is a precarious place, as print is still alive and well and should be for awhile, the digital format is making great leaps and bounds. From the advent of Comixology and its build in sales, not to mention Marvel’s success with their digital subscription, the winds of change have been blowing.
Kurt Christenson and Reilly Brown really began the rally in my eyes of what might be possible with the digital format through their comic POWER PLAY. Although Motion comics aren’t a new thing altogether. Even before Marvel started doing their motion comics, companies like Bryon Preiss Multimedia were playing with the idea of combining sound and motion in comics and during its existence Crossgen also worked on it, but the new tablet/mobile format, as well as advances in technology has pushed things to another level altogether.
Two new companies are at the forefront of the movement, MADEFIRE and NARR8 and currently both are offering their applications, as well as their associated books for free. I attempted in speaking to PR people for both companies to get a better understanding of how they got their investment capital and what type of profit return exists in terms of the future of the business, but to no avail. Saying that I did learn a lot of other things about each company and will explain why both are worth your time and quality of life to experience.
Madefire is the brainchild of marketing genius Ben Wolstenholme, founder of Moving Brands, long established comics artist Liam Sharp and Mobile Technology/Cloud Computing Guru Eugene Walden. It features some of the most well known and talented comics creators of both recent and legendary status with features that run from superhero to noir. Some of the folks involved are Dave Gibbons, Robbie Morrison, Jimmy Broxton (or James Hodgkins as rumors state), Sheperd Hendrix, Dougie Braithwaite, Angus McKie, Mike Carey and an assortment of other folks that any comic book fan truly worth their salt should at least marginally know of. The application currently features six series, my personal fave being what is also considered their lead feature, a book based in noir, horror, and war action in a wonderful pastiche of concepts from the one non comics guy on the brand, co-founder Ben Wolstenholme (although assisted by Liam). I’m also very intrigued by the Gary Erskine illustrated sci-fi story written by former video-game producer turned comics writer W. Haden Blackman tackling his first original IP. I am hoping in the future some of Blackman’s understanding of interactive entertainment may be used in Madefire’s future. The infrastructure of Madefire as a whole is actually truly fascinating. Moving Brands unsurprisingly helped a lot with the development of the product and its marketing and there’s an awesome web page dedicated to it in their portfolio.
On the other end of the spectrum NARR8 is a complete start-up full of unknown artist studios based in Russia. The website states that the founder is Alexandr Vashchenko, with the main investor being IMI.VC and naming Igor Matshyneko, the lead at IMI.VC as the CEO of NARR8. Alexandr is also the lead at one of the main arms of IMI.VC, mobile gaming company GameInsight. This suggests to me that they are all one company under the head of very creative, intelligent men and woman with headquarters in Moscow and San Francisco. At New York Comic Con I was more than fortunate to sit with the head of public relations on Narr8’s part, Alisa Faber and get a bit of a more hands on look at NARR8 and I have to admit, as much as Madefire is awesome because of it’s immense lineup of quality ,well known creators, NARR8 ups the ante in terms of interactive application and a new way of reading comics, novels and even magazines. In terms of the magazines they have a popular science magazine titled PARADIGM and a historical one called CHRONOGRAPHICS. In this issue of Paradigm, which was the first episode of season 1 (this is how they are marking issues, as episodes of a season) it showed off the optics how different animals view the world. Through an excellent combination of animation, interaction, well-written text and fantastic photography I could see how birds, butterflies, bulls, and insects among more see with an added bonus at thend of showing how each spieces would see the same exact scene. It was both fun and informative, which can equally be said of the history magazine. In the second episode of that series, the topic is a very vast look titled “Cortez and the Conquest of Mexico” which takes both a very serious look at the history, while evoking some fun with it through very clever animations. The work is broken down into date segments and almost has the feel of when reading through those historical txts in Assassin’s Creed games where you choose to emerge yourself in the world and accidentally get educated, here you choose to get educated, but also have fun while doing so. Below here’s some soundless video that shows off Paradigm and Chronographics “in action”, just to give you a small taste of the awesome available. The same work and energy went into the comics I speak of the next paragraph.
The comics I got to see were Final Feat, based in mythology and JAM, which is a mangaesque story based in Video Games and also features some awesome 8-Bit music. One of the cooler features is that when you stay on a panel long enough you’ll get to see some animation and in some cases clicking on the page will show off another interactive element. This was even more clear in the two prose features I got to scope in FEAR HUNTERS and MULTIVERSE. Multiverse actually really holds onto a tried and true concept on some of my favorite sci-fi novels, the random footnote, but displaying it through much more interesting and intriguing means, such as pop-ups or video animations within the screen itself. I am highly impressed that all this work is being developed from script, to art, to technology, music and animation as well as the proprietary engine within the Narr8 page which runs the HTML 5 data or in certain cases Unity.
Narr8 will hopefully be launching sometime soon, with over 11 titles which you should definitely check all of them out. Unfortunately at launch it will only be on iPad, but Android tablets will come next, followed by mobile and according to what I see, on the website itself as well. This last one excites me personally most, as reading comics while sitting at my desk is ideal.
As part of what was considered the Academic end of programming for New York Comic Con, there was a panel dedicated to the historical document LEAPING TALL BUILDINGS. Academic was fitting though as the panel was moderated by Hannah Means-Shannon, a college professor in Medieval literature and history whose focus has turned to comics and comics history, writing various theory and thesis like articles on Sequart and very cultured journalistic articles for The Beat.
LEAPING TALL BUILDINGS is a collection of essays & interviews by Christopher Irving, balanced tightly against portrait photographs of the subjects taken by Seth Kushner, all bundled together ingeniously by graphic designer Eric Skillman. The book had pre-requisites of trying to focus mostly on creators who were both writers & artists, but many times that was forlayed to get a true full scope of comics in general and some of the more influential people who helped comics and the industry become what it is today, as there are features of folks such as Dan Didio, currently Co-Publisher of DC Comics after a 10 years as Vice President. Folks such as Harvey Pekar, primarily known as a writer. This widespread look shows that the book has its attention not merely on superheroes despite the book’s title, but on comics as a whole and it makes it a much better book for it. Also focused upon is Larry Hama, but I’ll get to that more in a moment.
Christopher Irving, Seth Kusher, Eric Skillman & Hannah Means-Shannon after the LEAPING TALL BUILDINGS panel at NYCC 2012
Hannah had some very focused questions for the panel, and after getting into some brass tacks behind how the book came about, she got more into the book itself and its creators. I first want to share a quote from Christopher Irving speaking of a creator who had a spotlight panel at NYCC and has been part of some amazing comics, most notably DONDI and Wildcat.
“There’s no bullshit in Irwin Hasen…”
Christopher Irving was raised in a town called Farmville in Virginia where he loved Batman and used to get picked on at school for wearing an X-Men t-shirt. He also really loved G.I. Joe. No, really, loved it. We’ll get back to that, but he loved G.I. Joe, not the show and the toys, the Marvel comic. Okay, let’s move on quick. Seth felt growing up loving comics back in the 70’s/80’s was way different, being a nerd is the norm now for a lot of folks, but back then it just wasn’t cool.
Chris talked about how he used to hide comics inside the pages of Hustler, (instead of you know the other way around). Seth said he was about to say the same thing, except it was Playboy, which Chris said was for babies.
Eric’s best anecdote of growing up with comics is that if you look through photos, up till the age of 8 years old you won’t find anything with him where he isn’t wearing a Superman outfit.
Hannah asked the panel about which character and or work really had an influence or effect on them growing up in becoming tue comics lovers. This allowed for Chris to really really really open up about his love of Marvel Comic’s G.I. Joe by Larry Hama. The flood gates were open and the topic would be returned to various times during the panel. From discussing the silent issue, to Larry Hama’s awesomeness, to Chris’ pure admiration of the man and meeting him. Chris had to even bring up that Hama appeared in The Warriors as a guy on a subway platform in a hat. Chris stated G.I. Joe as one of the best written monthly comics ever. Seth even had a story that he was actually published in the issues of G.I. Joe complaining about the silent issue. Seriously though, Chris really loves Larry Hama’s G.I. Joe, I think he’d marry them if he could. This wasn’t even mentioned at the panel but in talking with Seth later over the weekend it turns out Chris even wrote an issue by issue breakdown of the comic.
Seth Kusher stated that he learned to read from Spidey Super Stories, which was written by Jim Salicrup, now edtior at Papercutz, who just happened to be in the audience for this panel. From there he moved on to Marvel Tales, which was a reprint of Spider-Man starting from the beginning, so it allowed he almost ground floor introduction and then in High school he used his photography as an excuse to talk to girls, much like Peter Parker, coming full circle.
Eric’s comic book love came and cemented during that time when Superman was coming out weekly with a Jerry Ordway, Barbara Simonson, John Byrne, Roger Stern, Kerry Gammill, Jon Bogdanove, George Perez, etc. handling the chores.
The panel started a slide show showing off some of the people focused on in the book, which allowed for some great quotes.
On the recently passed away Joe Simon:
“It’s not every day you get to spend time with someone who is a lexicon of comics” – Seth Kushner
“No one is bigger than Simon” Seth feels.
They did not achieve an interview with the legendary Steve Ditko, but Seth did photograph his door and talked to the security guard in his building who told him “I see him come in sometimes, but I never see him leave”. Chris explained the details of trying to obtain an interview. He had sent a letter of request with an S.A.S.E. and received back a rejection letter in pencil. Instead of being dejected by this, he was happy because he just got an autograph from Steve Ditko.
A big ending of the panel was discussing with designer Eric Skillman, the particulars of the books interiors and choices made, as well as the final cover. Eric said that usually he does the cover first, but on this project the interiors were designed first and a lot of careful planning was involved. They showed off some of the alternate covers during this as well, which you can see in slightly blurry photos, not up to par with my usual work below.
I made sure to be at Con super early to ensure myself a ticket from Mattel for the Dolph Ziggler signing. I ended up handing my ticket off to someone else in the end, but that’s another story for later on in this adventure of paragraphs.
After taking advantage of the show floor opening at 9:30 I walked around a bit to see what new if any freebies or swag was on the floor different from Friday and there was some, but it wasn’t long before I found myself heading down to the “basement” level for a special Disney Interactive session.
It was quite exciting to hear Warren Spector talk about Epic Mickey 2, as well as the Epic Mickey 3DS game. He showed off lots of screens, details and video footage not shown at San Diego, although most of it was shown at PAX probably. I’m going to take advantage of assets and memory to write up some details on the game from memory as my camera seems to have eaten the footage. This was the only thing my camera ate actually, but I remember most of what was discussed so I should be okay. I got a little hands on too, and that’s cemented in my brain.
After Epic Mickey 2 I rushed over to the Press Room for Bruce Timm and Andrea Romano. Those videos will be up within the week, but bigger and more exciting than hearing them discuss Batman: Dark Knight Returns Part 1 and 2 was the announcement of SUPERMAN: Unbound, based on the Braniac story by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank and JUSTICE LEAGUE: FLASHPOINT based on… well Flashpoint. I don’t know how they can even tackle Flashpoint in any fashion, but based on how well they handled the equally deft The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke I am actually excited by this prospect.
Next up was my scheduled interview with professional wrestling’s Booker T in celebration/promotion of his book From Prison to Promise. I asked him a few what I felt were hard-hitting questions although they didn’t really get hard-hitting answers exactly. Informative answers though and great material for my forthcoming review. Got a photo with the man as well so very chill indeed.
At this point I went to get online for Dolph Ziggler even with the signing an hour away. I felt even though it was ticketed, an hour was enough. It seriously was not enough. Not even remotely enough. Fans had started their OWN line unguided by security or Mattel and they’d started it around 11 or 12. Who knows, but it was long and many folks in it didn’t have tickets. Many did, but still… it was a huge clusterfuck in the power of Mattel not knowing what to do and having to wing it, staff being understaffed and security being completely useless. There were other moments I noticed like this on the floor for lines I didn’t plan to be on, but could still see a lack of control or logic. The con has had lines like this happen in the past, but this year they were just completely unprepared to deal with them.
As I said earlier I ended up giving up my ticket for Dolph, but I did get a good shot of him from the line. It wasn’t like they were giving something away and this wasn’t like the Booker interview where he MIGHT remember me, so once my Facebook photo upload finished to get the exclusive He-Man shirt, after waiting maybe 45 minutes if not more I left the line and headed down to the panel room.
Once down there I had to make a choice and I ended up going to the Ned Vizzini and Chris Columbus panel where they discussed and detailed their upcoming book House of Secrets. That was really fun and I knew I had to go to their autographing session to grab the sampler.
The other panel I wanted to go to at the same time was King of the Nerds with Robert Carradine and Curtis Armstrong. Since I didn’t get to, I at least got to meet them, shake their hands and get a signed photo print, a photo, fake glasses and an iPhone case. The Columbus/Vizzini signing was in the same line right after so I procured my sneak peek and then got on line for Brad “Cheeks” Bell, Sean Hemon and Jane Espenson of HUSBANDS. In my preview of NYCC I showed off again my photo from last year when Cheeks and Sean gave me a kiss. They both remembered and loved how much weight I lost and my new short hair, but Brad said that I had no expression in last year’s photo and he was right. So I over compensated this year.
Next up I went to the Remember Me panel and stayed up until they started showing footage I’d already seen. Actually the new footage to me was the combat and combos system, and of course discussing the development of the game and seeing all the great assets and concept art. I ducked out though once I felt like I was sufficiently educated and luckily they did the T-shirt giveaway at the beginning instead of the end. I went from there to the panel with the heads behind Mondo Media,Simon’s Cat, Shut Up Cartoons and Cartoon Hangover. The Cartoon Hangover stuff were shorter clips of what I saw on Friday night, but theMondo Mediasizzle reel was awesome as wasShut Up Cartoons. Three of these four channels are part of the new Youtube Animation network and they’re all awesome.
From there I went to the the special party sponsored by Samsung, Legendary Pictures, Nerdist and Comixology at SLATE. It wasn’t exactly my scene, even though the DJ was awesome. I only saw two people I knew even and one of them works at Legendary. There was free food though so that was awesome. It was just sliders and chicken fingers, but it was a good spread and a good end to my most eventful and busiest day of NYCC 2012.
I arrived at Jacobs Javits with time to spare on Thursday evening’s preview ensuring my press badge and getting on line to hit the show floor for a bit before heading down to the panel rooms for my one and only panel I had definitely scheduled for myself to be on.
I must state that the show did open with lots of confusion and clusterf**k of a mess up as a volunteer accidentally told regular 4 day passes to get on the same line as Press & Pros. In the long run this didn’t end up affecting me as I was in and on the floor show perfectly and happily by 3:01, but for the fans this was just a wreck and a mess for a short while. The staff did their best to correct it, but man was it insanity and not well connected at first. These messes and confusion happened all weekend, and staff tried their darnedest to stay on top of it, but security measures, crowd control and obvious fire hazards became completely out of control. I am sure many people walked away from NYCC saying “What a gyp” as those who walked away with the greatest experience of their lives. I’ll admit for me personally it was just that, an amazing great experience, but as a member of the press and a person who believes in New York Comic Con, I am saddened by the lack of control this year’s show had especially since last year things felt much more organized and people from staff, to volunteers to security were much better prepared and in power of keeping the con sane and safe.
That all said we shall get into my own adventures and I’ll leave complaints, feelings and suggestions to a letter to Reedpop which will also be filled with praise, but lots of vitriol on behalf of fans everywhere.
I had a rule to myself about photos this year, especially considering cosplay and that was “rare or unusual” or just so damn gorgeous I must have a photo. Early on I actually got one of those nice rarities in a full on Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka costume. The photo will appear in an a special edition of PCS called NYCC Rare Cosplay.
The area I rushed for quickly was where all the book publishers are. I grabbed whatever galleys were of interest to me (like I need more books) and got schedules for when other handouts were happenings, as well as signings so I could try to add them to my schedule. My walkthroughs here ended up garnering lots of great swag. Best thing I got at this time which I’ll talk about more soon was a MADEFIRE bag of goodies and printed material. I also ended up making my first of only four purchases when I got issue #5 of The Misadventures of ELECTROLYTE and The Justice Purveyors, an excellent comic by Patrick Reilly and art by Renato Grampa Jr. which I first discovered at New York Comic Con and have been happy to see a new issue when there has been one over the last few years.
I continued walking the show floor a bit looking at so much exciting things before heading down to the panel room a little late, but not too late to catch a TON of the Leaping Tall Buildings panel. A separate article is coming on that and I have ideas for titles, but the main one is “Christopher Irving would marry Larry Hama’s G.I. Joe”. It was an entertaining and informative panel with great quotes and a great moderator. I hope you folks enjoy reading that when the article is up.
I went back to the show floor and got to have some fun with a little of this and that. I tried to get a HALO dude made out of Megablocks to blow my brains out, but no go there. I got to play some ofNi no Kuni – Wrath of the White Witch as well as a bit of stealth awesomeness Hitman: Absolution. I didn’t do very good with either of them, but I blame that on the fact of being on the game floor trying to game. Although that doesn’t then explain that I zoomed through the absolutely enthralling beta demo of TOMB RAIDER. That thing just blew my mind away. I seriously want to play that game right now!
I had a per-arranged appointment with upcoming awesome comics and books app company NARR8. This indeed will be another separate article detailing some of the particulars of this awesome concept that will be free to use at first and has great comics and magazines all for the iPad and eventually Android and iPhone. Go look at the website for now, but promise better further details here on Pop-Culture Spectrum soon.
Eventually I felt it was time to get off the show floor after a bit more exploring, acquiring more swag and enjoying myself, cause I had to get over to Ben Folds Five in the IGN theater.
I was able to find myself a fairly comfortable spot to enjoy the concert despite the giant in the front row who probably had a VIP or Ultimate access badge. I recorded almost the entire ONE HOUR AND FORTY MINUTE concert (to make a best of montage of 20-30 min) which featured only about 3-4 songs off of the new album and the rest was songs from their three albums prior including “Brick”, “Rock This Bitch”, “Uncle Walter”, “Underground”, “Song for the Dumped” and much more. It was seriously like getting a full on Ben Folds Five concert for free on top of Comic Con. Absolutely mind-blowing and completely and totally awesome. The concert let out at around 10 PM, and yet there was still the convention starting the next day at 10 AM or earlier. I stopped in a diner, got a quality dinner which I couldn’t finish so it became my breakfast and headed home and crashed hard after making sure all was ready for the next day.
Madefire is the brainchild of marketing genius Ben Wolstenholme, founder of Moving Brands, long established comics artist Liam Sharp and Mobile Technology/Cloud Computing Guru Eugene Walden. It features some of the most well known and talented comics creators of both recent and legendary status with features that run from superhero to noir. Some of the folks involved are Dave Gibbons, Robbie Morrison, Jimmy Broxton (or James Hodgkins as rumors state), Sheperd Hendrix, Dougie Braithwaite, Angus McKie, Mike Carey and an assortment of other folks that any comic book fan truly worth their salt should at least marginally know of. The application currently features six series, my personal fave being what is also considered their lead feature, a book based in noir, horror, and war action in a wonderful pastiche of concepts from the one non comics guy on the brand, co-founder Ben Wolstenholme (although assisted by Liam). I’m also very intrigued by the Gary Erskine illustrated sci-fi story written by former video-game producer turned comics writer W. Haden Blackman tackling his first original IP. I am hoping in the future some of Blackman’s understanding of interactive entertainment may be used in Madefire’s future. The infrastructure of Madefire as a whole is actually truly fascinating. Moving Brands unsurprisingly helped a lot with the development of the product and its marketing and there’s an awesome web page dedicated to it in their portfolio.
On the other end of the spectrum NARR8 is a complete start-up full of unknown artist studios based in Russia. The website states that the founder is Alexandr Vashchenko, with the main investor being IMI.VC and naming Igor Matshyneko, the lead at IMI.VC as the CEO of NARR8. Alexandr is also the lead at one of the main arms of IMI.VC, mobile gaming company GameInsight. This suggests to me that they are all one company under the head of very creative, intelligent men and woman with headquarters in Moscow and San Francisco. At New York Comic Con I was more than fortunate to sit with the head of public relations on Narr8’s part, Alisa Faber and get a bit of a more hands on look at NARR8 and I have to admit, as much as Madefire is awesome because of it’s immense lineup of quality ,well known creators, NARR8 ups the ante in terms of interactive application and a new way of reading comics, novels and even magazines. In terms of the magazines they have a popular science magazine titled PARADIGM and a historical one called CHRONOGRAPHICS. In this issue of Paradigm, which was the first episode of season 1 (this is how they are marking issues, as episodes of a season) it showed off the optics how different animals view the world. Through an excellent combination of animation, interaction, well-written text and fantastic photography I could see how birds, butterflies, bulls, and insects among more see with an added bonus at thend of showing how each spieces would see the same exact scene. It was both fun and informative, which can equally be said of the history magazine. In the second episode of that series, the topic is a very vast look titled “Cortez and the Conquest of Mexico” which takes both a very serious look at the history, while evoking some fun with it through very clever animations. The work is broken down into date segments and almost has the feel of when reading through those historical txts in Assassin’s Creed games where you choose to emerge yourself in the world and accidentally get educated, here you choose to get educated, but also have fun while doing so. Below here’s some soundless video that shows off Paradigm and Chronographics “in action”, just to give you a small taste of the awesome available. The same work and energy went into the comics I speak of the next paragraph.
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