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The original comic-book industry rumour and
news column, by Rich Johnston.
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Elmo Health Warning: This column is RUMOUR. Do not take anything here seriously. These RUMOURS are presented here as GOSSIP for their ENTERTAINMENT value. |
| What is Ramblings 2000? |
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Dateline: 28 Apr 2000 |
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Those Creative Juices... Still working on a Bristol report, though I'd send you all a little titbit first. You probably all now know that League Of Extraordinary Gentleman issue 5 has been disposed of by the man they're calling Mad Pulper Paul Levitz. Some sites are reporting that Alan Moore (now apparently changing his name to Alan Marvel-Vagina according to www.comicon.com/splash) received the only copy of the first print. It's not true. Good friend of Ramblings, Joel Meadows has also received a copy, in the post this morning. Hardline fans can e-mail him at joeltrip@aol.com... though I reckon you're going to be looking at $500-$1000 if you ask me... remember, the Elseworld 80 page giant reached $300 and there were thousands of them and hey, why not check out http://www.kryptonkomics.com for news on his Tripwire magazine. Joel very kindly scanned in the offending visual in question. Here it is in all it's vaginal glory... |
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Dateline: 20 Apr 2000 |
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Mark Millar Ramblings Special. Well, response to Authority 13 has been massive, and writer Mark Millar is getting phonecalls from everyone, we hear. Here are a couple of specific rumours from various publishers trying to snag the comic industry's new golden boy. For Marvel Knights, industry insiders say Mark Millar may be writing a S.H.I.E.L.D book. We're talking Nick Fury and a world politics focus to the book all going to plan, this will be officially announced at San Diego. The other big insider scoop is that Millar recently turned down the offer to write Spawn, when TMP called. We hear that TMP were willing to move their creative teams around to accommodate the former Swamp Thing scribe. Is this true? Mark Millar responded, saying "It's weird suddenly finding myself in the position of being offered the big stuff and even weirder hearing rumours circulating which are entirely without foundation. All I'm going to say is YES, my good friend Joe Quesada called me up in the wake of The Authority and we're talking about the possibility of a Nick Fury story... and no, I'm not writing Spawn. Christ knows where that rumour started!" What About DC? "Wildstorm guru Scott Dunbier asked me if I fancied doing anything else for him besides The Authority and I mentioned an idea I'd had floating around for a while. A concept which takes superhero books beyond even what Frank and I are doing at the moment on The Authority. Scott whispered the name of a possible artist and I practically shat my pants. I'm saying nothing until I've signed a countract, but this guy is genuinely is one of the biggest and most acclaimed artists in the business. If this all pans out (and there's no reason why it shouldn't), I'll be a very happy man." Millar was also able to tell us that Superman: Red Son will come out this year... the artwork is almost finished. More Marvellous Morrison Murmurings Mark does give us a lovely bit of gossip concerning Grant Morrison though... and it concerns the famed Skrull Kill Krew, a series by Morrison and Millar for Marvel a few years ago. Millar says "Grant said he'd quite like to use them at some point in the near future now he's working at Marvel. He had a great, great idea for Moonstomp, the team's lovable, racist skinhead which, if he gets away with it, should win him every Eagle, Eisner and Harvey known to man, if there's any justice in the world." Back Issue Bins And naturally, all this fuss means that the hunt for Millar back issues is on. Highlights include Savior, Shadowmen, Swamp Thing, Skrull Kill Krew, Flash, JLA, Aztek, Crisis and a pile of Eighty Page Giants and other anthologies. Indeed, the acclaimed River Run run on Swamp Thing is being desperately snapped up... one of the issues features the first post-Crisis Crime Syndicate as recently featured in the Morrison/ Quitely JLA hardcover. Naming Names And just for you completists, have a look at certain Authority 13 panels before they were altered to remove all specific mention of which country and dictator they were meant to be taking down... [page 2] [page4] Please Sir, Can I Have Some Moore? A few more Alan Moore titbits come down the wire... the ABC hardcover collections will be pencilled by the main artist on the title and then given a photo realistic treatment by the guy who worked on Promethea 7, giving all the books an unified look. Also, catch Art Adams will be doing illustrations and covers for the Terrific Tales series, as well as drawing the Jonni Future backup. Paul Rivoche has been named as the lead artist on this Tom Strong spinoff. On Top Of The Financial Wave. Eric Reynolds from Fantagraphics has something to say about the Breaking The Waves story we recently ran. "Just read the latest Ramblings, and thought I'd let you in on something about the Cruise, which I was on... I think it is true that prior to embarkation, the cruise had barely broken even, but the fact is that the auction at the end of the cruise, which included a few jam pieces by all of the artists on board, raised enough money to put the event in the black." "More importantly, it's absolutely true that first-year cruise fundraisers rarely earn their money back; in that sense, by even breaking even the CBLDF was way ahead of the game. By comparison, the company organizing the CBLDF cruise also organizes annual cruises for the National Review, now in their third year. The first year, the magazine attracted 36 paying guests, which in and of itself is a disaster. By its third year, held in 1999, they had over 400 paying customers, which is a raging success." "The CBLDF had somewhere around 70 paying customers this year, which was right at break-even. By all accounts the fans seemed to love every minute of it (I'm sure you'll be hearing more in the coming weeks), and word of mouth should easily put next year's cruise on a similar growth curve as the National Review events. If the CBLDF could attract even 150 or 200 people next year, which is perfectly reasonable, expect them to raise over six figures next year alone, making it the singlemost successful fundraising event in the history of the organization by a country mile. So, all's well." Good to hear, Eric! The Duck Knight Returns? A rumour comes our way... "About a month ago, you printed a rumor that Steve Gerber left the new Stan Lee company. A friend who should know tells me that the rumor is true. He says they hired some xxxxx television writer to run the writing department and Steve Gerber hated how he was changing the scripts and turning them into Saturday morning cartoons. The friction between them got so bad that Gerber worked at home instead of in the office for a couple of months before he left. But here's the real news. The TV writer just got the heave-ho and now Steve Gerber might be writing some stuff for Stan again! Wrestling In Jilly We hear that the next WWF book by Chaos Comics features the female wrestler Chyna - a one shot in August written by Steven Grant is to be drawn by none other than... Jill Thompson? Dear me, I might even buy that... let's hope it has more of a Love And Rockets feel than the usual. Wizard Deny Rumour Rumour Hard Hats on! The following rumour was handed to us by an industry source but has been denied by a member of Wizard staff. It goes thus: "Wizard has just recently come down with a ruling that editors and staffers can no longer do outside freelance work, which has many of the peons(associate eds, research assts, etc) there in a tizzy and ready to explode since their base salary ain't enough really to live on, even in Congers, NY." "This has been a change as some now west coast Wizardites used to write for Topps, while Scott Beatty moonlit for DC Comics, writing Secret Files and Origins while he was Toy Fare editor - a job which subsidized Beatty's fledgling comic writing career until he was able to jump into it full time and now co-writes specials and such with Dixon and will be doing some 80-Page giant work this summer." "Others have had jobs here and there as well, helping to earn a living. Some even took jobs at Wizard with the idea that they'd be able to follow in the shoes of Beatty and the others. Now it seems that if you want to write comics at Wizard, you gotta be high enough up so you can get a Black Bull/vanity job." "Word is from inside the Wizard offices is that there have been happier days. Mass walkouts aren't out of the question in protest to the new rules." However Online Assistant Editor of Wizardworld, Rus Wooton, e-mailed us to say "Not true. You need more reliable sources." Anyone else with further clarification on this rumour, and where it came from, please e-mail twisting@hotmail.com Highly Conventional I'm at the Comics 2000 festival in Bristol this weekend. We're nominated for two Eagles awards (although to be frank, I reckon we'll be beat... X-Flies is up against stuff by Neil Gaiman and Paul Chadwick, while Ramblings has both Sequential Tart and Mania to fight off) and while I'll probably be dragged onto 2 or 3 panels, I'll definitely be on the Comics And The Web thingy... don't be shy, make yourself known! If anyone wants to find me, I'm staying at the Jury's Hotel and you can call me on 0780 1350982. |
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Dateline: 17 Apr 2000 |
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Fantagraphics: The Smartest Publisher On Earth We hear that Chris Ware's massive "Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth" will be published by Pantheon this summer. A source says "One would think this would upset Ware's comics publisher, but to be honest, I bet Fantagraphics dodged a bullet. A 300-page full-color book would just destroy most publishers, and would severely impair FBI's ability to print anything else for a couple of months. So they're probably more than happy to have Pantheon let them distribute a $30 book for the comics market just so they don't have to pay that printer's bill." And if the book makes the splash on the outside-direct market that it deserves to, that can't be bad for sales of the regular series. Could this be another Maus/Dark Knight breakout? How Rumours Start On Chuck Dixon's webpage, www.dixonverse.com. Supermonkey enquired about Ghost Rider. He wrote "In todays Punisher 3 (great btw) there is the Genesis edition of Marvel Knights and in the art is Ghost Rider! Eduardo says something like "Charectres like Ghost Rider, (he names others too) give me a chance to work on new charecters". Chuck does this mean he has been drawing GR for the book or is this just some extra art to put in the preview? Please say GR is in the book, at least one issue." Chuck Dixon replied "Look for him next year." In a Comic Book Resources interview with Brian Michael Bendis, Bendis says "I have two mainstream comics things green-lit that are going to make peoples heads literally explode. Well, maybe not explode. But they might go 'huh ... interesting.'" This has been enough for the rumours to start flying that Bendis and Eduardo are the creative force behind a new Marvel Knights Ghost Rider series. Ho hum. However, one Bendis project we've heard green lighted is the new Batman/Spawn crossover by Bendis and Ashley Wood. It's going to take a while but promises to be worth a look. Who's Bad? Despite Stan's reported denials, we're getting solid information concerning his attempts to buy out Marvel. We have a confirmed sighting that Michael Jackson was in Stan Lee's office two-three weeks ago. The rumours continue. "Apparently, Stan made an offer on Marvel a while ago, but it was too costly. Now that Marvel has had its ups-and-downs, the price is lower. Stan is trying to seal a deal with Jackson's partnering in. Avi Arad is doing everything he can to block it, even to the point of scuttling upcoming film deals for Marvel characters." Harry Knowles has had other rumours concerning the scuttling of the Marvel films at http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com , and yes Avi Arad has been named there, although with different motivations. Gods, it's sad to say, but Marvel would have been in way better shape if they'd sold to Jim Shooter's consortium all those years ago. We also hear that former comics guy and probable typo Will Muegniouthas just become the Creative Director in Stan-Land. Any advance on the correct spelling of his name would be appreciated. |
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Dateline: 14 Apr 2000 |
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The Author, The Comics, Their New Writers And Joel Meadows. Alan Moore recently gave a talk to Mania, outlining many of his plans... but he gave a lot more to Tripwire magazine! And given an advance shufty through Joel Meadows' notes, I've pulled out a few pertinent news notes. Here we go... I'll let the man. "I asked Eddie (Campbell) if he fancied trying his hand at writing a Tom Strong story and he reacted by enquiring whether the rumours were true. He had heard rumours that I was using ghost writers which obviously isn't true. Having said that, I am going to have to get other writers in but hopefully I'll be able to work closely enough with them to keep the stamp of what makes an ABC comic consistent." Hey, I never heard that rumour! What's up? So how's the success of ABC affecting Alan... "At the moment I am completely at the end of my rope in terms of deadlines. I'm under such tremendous pressure so the fact that I'm talking about additional work sounds suspiciously mad to me, so the readers should bear in mind that I might very well be incarcerated and sedated by the time this stuff comes around." Mania have confirmed and given details about some stuff Ramblings has been talking about, the new Tom Strong book, the end of Top Ten Season One and the new Top Ten one offs, the Comic Ranger graphic novel, America's Best Comics Crusade and more... so what was left out? "As of Tomorrow Stories #12, as it stands at the moment, Rick Veitch will be leaving Greyshirt. I understand that Rick still has some unresolved problems with DC and he feels that when he's done his twelve issue stint, he's honoured his commitment. So, rather than get someone else in to draw it, we have a space in Tomorrow Stories, which will be filled by two alternating series. John Totleben called me recently, he's now got two kids and he pointed out that we haven't worked together in ages. He likes the ABC stuff and he's been hinting about an underwater character, probably a woman because he loves drawing women. I happen to agree with him that the underwater landscape in comics has never been exploited to its fullest potential. So we came up with a character idea and a name, Pearl Of The Deep, which for me, is a great name. It's a great name because it sounds familiar and new at the same time." "On the other strip for Tomorrow Stories, I would be working with John Coulthard and this would feature a female occult investigator or adventuress from around 1910 and the name of this figure, as this is very much the symbolist, decadent period of art, is The Soul. This is what they used to call the young women who were the models and the inspiration for the symbolist artists. John'll be illustrating it digitally, which is something that seems to be a little bit in vogue at ABC at the minute, because we've got digital artist Jose Villarubia illustrating a section of Promethea as well as John drawing his strip that way. It strikes me that, if it's used properly, you can something wonderful with the technology. If the ABC line is about anything, then it's this synthesis between past and future." And outside ABC? "The next spoken word album that I release will be called Snakes And Ladders, which I performed at Red Lion Square last year. Ironically, it'll be appearing as a comic, drawn by Eddie Campbell, like The Birth Caul, before the CD comes out. It's more overtly magical than The Birth Caul. It's about Arthur Machen and about Holborn, where we did the reading. We talk about the history of the earth, the universe, mankind, Oliver Cromwell, the Pre Raphaelites and a lot of different threads that end up making a sort of sense." Okay, spoiler alert... Mike, what can we do here... another webpage, specifically for these things? Why not?? Okay, click *here* for major spoilers about the concluding episodes of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, courtesy of Alan Moore and Tripwire. Okay, spoilers over, back to publicity tease... now for future League stuff. "Then we'll be following it with Book Two, which may or may not appear in this century. Whenever it appears, it'll be dealing with Mars. We intend to combine HG Wells' Mars with Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars and CS Lewis's version of the Red Planet. We reckon that we could come up with a geo-political situation that encompasses all of these scenarios. After that, we might do the story where the League visit America, meet Randolph Carter and get involved in some Lovecraftian shenanigans. The possibilities are endless." Remember Tripwire has the Moore interview in full with more revelations, insight into the man himself and a discussion about the reality of magic. Go to http://www.kryptonkomics.com and then bug your retailer to order Britain's premier feature comics magazine! Mumbles In The Night Misheard mumblings at the recent Colchester Gorilla gig. Everyone put your rumour hard hats on, because this is where the alcohol starts flowing... Joe Kelly may be moving M-Rex on-line... he may be doing a Batman one-shot later in the year with Idelson as editor... possibly an Elseworlds too.... bad vibes about Chris Claremont... Ferry's friend Sal Larocca isn't happy working from Claremont's full script... and the word is that Claremont's influence was partly behind Kelly leaving the Xbooks... Ferry is filling in art for Kelly's Superman title... and has done a 12-page story for Superman: Secret Files... Kitson loves it... Kelly and Ferry may also have something new in the works... The rest of the night is but a blur... so this is also probably a good place to mention that Newsarama printed the news about a Patsy Walker revival at Marvel in a recent issue... which makes our previous Marvel Masterworks rumour far more likely! Wonder Stuff Excited rumourmonger from the WonderCon exclaimed his excited excitement by trying to get me excited about the exciting news that, according to John Romita Jr, Peter Parker's next girlfriend, now that his wife Mary Jane has been conveniently dead for what is in Marvel time about two weeks, is Gloria Grant! Ho hum, oh very exciting I'm sure... but what's that? Apparently Gloria Grant isn't white! Oh shock horror, surely such a union could resort in a mixture of genetics against God's plan and furthering the world union and Revelation days, in a Babel style world apocolypse? Not to mention that the kid will be able to spin webs out of his arse. And Romita's statement that'll he'll be working on hippies-choice Doctor Strange with hippies-choice Harlan Ellison has been disparaged by Marvel Editor hippies-choice Tom Breevort, who said "Not to be a wet blanket or anything, but my understanding is that this is another project that hasn't really even been submitted yet, much less approved. So while it's still possible for it to happen, it's nowhere near definite, other than that JRJR and Harlan seem to want to do it. In other words, for the time being put it in line right behind that Grant Morrison FF project." Priest In Progress Priest, fan-favourite (but retailer curse) has been talking about upcoming work on rec.arts.comics.misc. "At the moment, I'm completing Wonder Woman: The 18th Letter for DC. After that, I'm planning on a nice, long rest, continuing Quantum & Woody and Panther while developing a couple things that it's waaaay too early to talk about, but possibly a long delayed (by me, not them) Marvel Knights LS (which may appear under MK or under regular Marvel)." "As I stated earlier, I regret the timing of the Deadpool announcement, because we haven't got all our ducks in a row yet. It's really not good to announce things until there's a deal in place (*coughs into fist* Panther Annual *coughs*), and I've frankly been the one dropping the ball-- too busy to deal with it." BTW chaps, Black Panther is still too close to the bottom of the charts and it is still the most intelligently written Marvel book. Don't be a dunce, pick it up! Breaking The Bank? The much publicised Comic Book Legal Defence Fund's Breaking The Waves cruise/convention event has barely broken even... however the spin doctors tell us that this should be considered a success because most groups' events fail miserably in the first year and then make money the next. So, unless there's a disaster of Titanic proportions, they'll be back next year, this time with more mainstream pro attendees. Sadly Dan Clowes will be missing the boat... he's involved with the filming of his Eightball serialised story Ghost World. Top comic... hope it's a top movie too! However, lucky attendees may discover far fewer fans attempting to collar their favourite pro's attention, and may well be able to have them all to themselves. I have this horrible vision of pros wandering the ship asking if anyone wants a sketch? Gods, it'll be like the last UKCAC, held in Manchester all over again... Talking Of Which I'm definitely going to the Comics 2000 gig in Bristol over Easter. Nominated for two Eagles and on a number of panels, I should be easy to find. Just look for the hippi-haired spectacled guy holding a paunch and a ridiculous goatie muttering in the corner. Is Anybody Out There? We hear that the Harvey Awards, now taking place at the Pittsburgh con may hear the phrase "can't be here tonight, so instead to collect it on their behalf, is"... the Harvey's generally have less of a mainstream bias than the Eisners but the indie crowd don't figure that large at the Pittsburgh con. Thank goodness Evan Dorkin is the MC. Talk about saving the day! And, you know, Jeff Smith is only a couple of hours away... |
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