We just sent Modern Masters Volume 11: Charles Vess to the printer yesterday (which is the reason I’m a couple days behind on blogging). I’ll admit that, while I’m familiar with his work, I wasn’t a rabid follower of it; but after seeing this book, I’m about to be. He’s just… so… darned… good at what he does. Editor Eric Nolen-Weathington used the word “enchanting” to describe it in his promo copy, and I think that’s precisely the right for it. Even when he’s drawing Spider-Man instead of elves and faeries, everything just comes across as magical. There’s a gorgeous color two-pager included that shows Spidey chasing the Hobgoblin, which I’ll link to here, but this small size doesn’t begin to do it justice (it’s shown huge and full-color in the book). Chris Irving conducted the interview for it, which is one of the liveliest we’ve done to date. With the Stardust movie coming out this summer, Vess’ fame will continue to grow even larger, and I think this book does a nice job of giving his fans an intimate look into his world.

Spider-Man, Hobgoblin TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

How much do you really, really love our magazines? If it’s a lot, you probably already have most (or all?) of them. But if there’s one of our mags you’ve just recently been turned on to, and want to get all the issues we have in stock, we’ve just made it easier and cheaper to do so. Our new Ultimate Bundles let you buy every issue we have in stock of Alter Ego, Back Issue, Write Now, Jack Kirby Collector, or Comic Book Artist, for half the normal price! Will we sell any of these huge batches? I dunno, but based on the number of people who seem to be buying the whole runs, a few at a time at full price, it may make sense to check it out at our website and save a few bucks.

Also on Free Comic Book Day (May 5, 2007), I’ll be posting a complete recent issue of each of our magazines to our web site, in PDF format. So if you’ve never tried, say, Rough Stuff magazine, you’ll be able to download it and read a whole issue, free of charge. I hope this’ll encourage everyone (with a high-speed Internet connection; these’ll likely be fairly large files) to take a look at all our magazine offerings and see if they’re something you’d like to get regularly. If so, when you’re in your local comics shop, picking up your free copy of COMICS 101 (see previous post), you can ask your retailer to start ordering it regularly. Of you can just subscribe from us. Either way, it’s all good.

We mail out a lot of free books to professionals. Always have, always will. Pros are the lifeblood of TwoMorrows, and I figure, they help us out so much with interviews and cover art, the least we can do is send them a bunch of books and let their productivity grind to a halt when they arrive. (So yeah, when your favorite comic ships late, chances are it’s our fault.) And we know they’re appreciated, just based on who goes out of their way to stop by our booth at conventions (sometimes, it seems like there are more pros milling around our booth than are in artists’ alley). But it’s especially nice to see a guy whose work we really respect, going on about our stuff. Such is the case with Cerebus creator Dave Sim, who posted this link:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cerebus/message/107319

Check it out, and thanks, Dave!

Speaking of Pete Von Sholly, he’s got such a stockpile of ridiculous cartoons (that he keeps stuffing my email box with), that I’ve decided to run one a week here. This is a particular favorite; if you like what you see, check out his TwoMorrows book Comic Book Nerd, or either of his two Crazy Hip Groovy Go-Go Way Out Monsters parodies of old monster mags. Plus he’s done lots of stuff for Dark Horse Comics, like his Morbid books, but we don’t get a cut of those, so why mention ’em?

Enjoy, and have a nice weekend!

Joker TM & ©2007 DC Comics.

If you follow our stuff, you undoubtedly know the name George Khoury. George has been writing some of our most popular books for several years, dating back to Kimota, The Miracleman Companion, The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore, G-Force: Animated, and our upcoming book on the history of Image Comics. George’s pet project (with collaborator Jason Hofius) is called Age Of Heroes, and it features interviews with nearly every actor who’s played a super-hero on television, from Adam West to Lynda Carter. The book’s just about completely written, the interviews are all done, and just yesterday, we got in Alex Ross’ pencil prelim for what’ll be the painted cover of this upcoming color hardcover. (As you can see, it’s a beaut! And what a guy Alex is, to take time from his incredibly busy schedule, to do a custom piece for us, knowing we can’t come close to paying his usual rate for a painting.)
The next hurdle is getting the final clearances wrapped up, but if all goes well, this one’ll be out sometime between Fall 2007 and Spring 2008. Stay tuned!

All characters TM & ©2007 DC Comics.

The pigs must be flying; check out page 20 of the new issue of Wizard (#185). In the “Heat Index” column, they actually plug one of our publications, saying:

COMIC BOOK NERD (TwoMorrows)
Creator Pete Von Sholly shoves this parody collection up every comic book-centric magazine’s butt (including Wizard) as he tears apart their concepts, designs and content with gut-busting precision satire.

I don’t mean to look a gift horse in the mouth, but other than our experimental PRIME8 comic of about ten years ago, this is the first time Wizard has ever given TwoMorrows any ink. Maybe all the jabs in CBN about how they only cover DC and Marvel did some good! I hope this is a sign they’re changing their editorial policy; the aforementioned George Khoury talked to a couple of the Wizard guys at a convention last year, and when he asked why they never cover our stuff, they said it was because we were their competition. (As flattering as that is, it’s laughable; our mags’ circulation is probably 1/10 of theirs at most, since ours are all geared toward more niche audiences.) In any case, it’ll be interesting to see if it results in any reorders of CBN.

(It’s funny; just yesterday, I took a call from a potential customer, who asked “Do you still have that book, The Urinal?” Anyone who’s read CBN knows he was talking about the Comics Journal spoof section, which was titled “The Comics Urinal”. When Pete pitched the CBN concept to me, that title really sold me on it; guess I was right that it’d stick in people’s minds.)

But while Wizard hasn’t covered our books in the past, they sure haven’t hesitated to excerpt our stuff in their mag without crediting it. A good example: in the same new issue, there’s a feature on Miracleman, using copious amounts of quotes and facts straight from interviews in our Kimota! The Miracleman Companion book. At least they mentioned the name of the Kimota! book this time within the article (but not TwoMorrows, or George Khoury, the author, and not as a major source of info for the piece). Oh well, one step at a time. Thanks for the coverage, Wizard; keep it up!

I don’t know how Marvel Comics editor Tom Brevoort does it; constantly juggling projects like that guy on the old Tonight Show that used to spin dinner plates on poles while riding a unicycle. You’d think with all the current projects he’s involved in, the last thing he’d be worried about is an unused Kirby Fantastic Four story. But he’s toiling away to make it a really awesome tribute to Lee and Kirby. If you’re not familiar with what I’m talking about, it’s tentatively called Fantastic Four: Lost, and is scheduled for release this summer. Jack Kirby’s original story for FF #102 was rejected by Stan Lee at the pencil stage, then shelved, and chopped up later as part of FF #108 (released after Jack had jumped ship to DC Comics to do the New Gods).

I tracked down most of the unused pencil art that was discarded in 1970, and reassembled it in Jack Kirby Collector #9 back in 1996. Since then, I’ve found copies of the pencils from the published art in FF #108, so we’ve got virtually all of Jack’s pencils from that story. Enter Tom, who got the inspired idea to have Stan finally dialogue Jack’s pencils, and Joe Sinnott ink them (I’ve seen the new inks, and man, Joe hasn’t skipped a beat in the 37 years since he was inking Jack on the FF). Tom’s also getting a current Marvel writer and inker to do their interpretations, and both finished versions (plus Kirby’s uninked original, and a short article about it by your’s truly) will appear in the one-shot special. (And the Kirby family is getting a nice page rate for the use of the art, probably the highest of Jack’s career.)

But what do you use for a cover? Tom and I both felt that the perfect thing was the FF Marvelmania poster art that Kirby drew back in the late 1960s, but we didn’t have a really good repro of it. Then I recalled a really nice 1990s serigraph reproduction of the poster that was done in France, and with the help of my French pal Jean Depelley, we were able to get a great repro of it from Editions Déesse publisher Fred Manzano, so it’s in the can! (The serigraph was shot from Jack’s original art, and Mike Zeck did the colors for the French version, so that’s what’s being used for the FF: Lost cover.)

Support this book, folks. It’s the last time we’ll see Jack and Stan together on anything “new” (especially on a FF story), and while it’s not the best FF story of their run, it’s not the worst either (and there are flashes of brilliance there). I, for one, can’t wait to see the final product.

Fantastic Four TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

No, that’s not the title of a business course I’m taking at night school; it’s the name of Marvel Comics’ founder Martin Goodman’s publishing company in the 1960s. In addition to Marvel Comics (and Atlas and Timely before that), he published a much larger line of men’s magazines (aptly nicknamed “men’s sweat mags”) that were the bulk of his success before the Marvel Universe took the world by storm. Roy Thomas is running the most exhaustive account of that side of Goodman’s business I’ve ever seen, in the upcoming ALTER EGO #66, out at the beginning of March. It’s written by David George, who was an editor for Goodman, and doesn’t mind telling it like it was. I just finished reading David’s recollections of his time working for Martin, and it’s phenomenal! If you’re a fan of 1960s Marvel Comics, you’ll be fascinated by his account of Goodman himself, and of how his other publishing enterprises intermingled with what Stan Lee was doing over at Marvel. This is just another example of the wonderful history that nobody but Roy is documenting, and I am really proud to be publishing it.

Okay, as long as we’re plugging what conventions we’ll be attending, here’s the full list for 2007 (subject to change, but this is pretty firm):

NEW YORK COMICON
(New York City, February 23-25, 2007)

WONDERCON
(San Francisco, CA, March 2-4, 2007)

MOTOR CITY COMICON
(Novi, MI, May 18-20, 2007)

HEROES CON
(Charlotte, NC, June 15-17, 2007)

COMICON INTERNATIONAL
(San Diego, CA, July 25-29, 2007)

WIZARDWORLD: CHICAGO
(Chicago, IL, August 9-12, 2007)

BALTIMORE COMICON
(Baltimore, MD, September 2007)

SPX (Small Press Expo)
(Besthesda, MD, October 12-13, 2007)

That’s one in every month from February-October (with the exception of April); we’re doing our best to bring the TwoMorrows goodness to every corner of the country!