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!

With the NY Comic-Con getting all the press lately, WonderCon might be getting a little overshadowed this year. But it’s taking place (unfortunately) the week after NY, from March 2-4, and TwoMorrows will have a booth there again this year. The fine folks who put on Comicon International: San Diego also host WonderCon in San Francisco, and it’s becoming another of the can’t-miss cons of the year. We’re sending our overworked production guy Christopher Irving out to San Fran to handle the booth for us, so stop by if you’re a West Coaster and’ll be at the show.

As each day we get a little closer to the New York Comic-Con, I’m filled with excitement and trepidation. We didn’t exhibit there last year, and after hearing all the horror stories about the overcrowding, it was kind of a blessing we didn’t. But the mess in ’06 just proves how we’ve finally, finally got a great NY convention to go to, and that’s wonderful news for the industry. The fact they they’ve already rented the entire Jacob Javits Center for next year does have me concerned that we may get a repeat of the crowding difficulties this year, but I guess it beats the alternative of a mostly empty exhibit hall! So TwoMorrows will be there in force on February 23 at booth 975. Look for Draw’s Mike Manley, Write Now’s Danny Fingeroth, Alter Ego’s Roy Thomas, Rough Stuff’s Bob McLeod, plus me, publisher John Morrow, all crammed into our double-booth, pressing the flesh with anyone who can squeeze through and find us! We’re also donating a small portion of our booth space for the Jack Kirby Museum (www.kirbymuseum.org in case you aren’t aware of it), so look for Museum president Rand Hoppe to be on hand to sign you up for membership.

Okay, I don’t know who the joker is out there, but here at Casa Dos Morrows, we’ve been getting an awful lot of mail addressed to one “Stan Kirby”. Several have him listed as an MD. Others are offers for everything from credit cards to timeshares. A recent really nice one came from Lamborghini, for a car I didn’t even know existed (I’m more of a Honda kinda guy, but being in advertising, I could at least appreciate the work that went into the elaborate mailing piece). So whoever went to the Amalgam Universe and filled out the paperwork, your efforts have been rewarded by stuffing our mailbox full of junk mail for a guy who doesn’t exist. Nice work. (But man, if Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had ever merged into one, imagine the ramifications for comics. Although if they’d been born as conjoined twins, they’d have probably killed each other.)

A few issues ago, Wizard Magazine ran a full-page feature called “Body Count”, listing all the characters who died in 2006 in the “Civil War” and “Infinite Crisis” series from DC and Marvel. They even listed the gruesome details of each character’s demise. And we wonder why kids aren’t reading comics anymore?

Yeah, I’m risking sounding like an old fart, but who’s reading this stuff? (Not Wizard, but the Big Two’s annual events; although I wonder about Wizard‘s audience sometimes too…) In my day, in between walking 12 miles to school, barefoot through the snow, with no TV or indoor plumbing, I actually enjoyed reading about the lives of my heroes, not their deaths. The occasional offing of a character was an event, and it really meant something to me emotionally. Looking at that list, I’m glad I didn’t pick up either of those series; I mean, how depressing to know the companies are croaking these characters en masse, just cause it’s time for their annual free-for-all to outdo the other. Really, what’s the point of killing the Trigger Twins, who may still have a couple dozen fans (assuming these are the same ones I remember from my childhood)? It just ticks off those fans who have fond memories of them. Wouldn’t it be more fun to try to revamp them for a series that might draw in some new readers? Just a thought. Of course, I still miss Earth-2, and Earth-S, and Earth-X, and Earth-whatever-Julie-felt-like-this-month, so what do I know?