Legendary comics artist Walter Simonson gets honors this week, because of his excellent “Joker-shark” variant cover to the latest issue of Aquaman. Simonson helped define one of Marvel’s most popular characters with his run on The Mighty Thor starting with issue #337(1983). From very early on in his career Simonson was a frequent collaborator with fellow comics legend, writer/editor Archie Goodwin on DC comics such as Detective Comics and Manhunter. Simonson’s dynamic style pushes out in bold perspective and influenced many comics illustrators to come after him.
Walter Simonson has worked on many comics with his wife, writer Louise Simonson, including a memorable run on X-Factor, and later on the World of Warcraft comic for Wildstorm.
Simonson received the Hero Initiative Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010, which was presented to him by his wife Louise.
You can catch the latest news/artwork from Mr. Simonson by following him on twitter here.
For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates
Battlestar Galactica art edition? Why yes, when Walt Simonson drew it. Dynamite is adding to its oversized Art Editions line with Simonson’s BSG book, Jose Gonzalez’ Vampirella and Marvel’s John Carter Warlord of Mars series which had art by Gil Kane, Carmine Infantino, Dave Cockrum and more. Tasty!
Dynamite Entertainment proudly announces the expansion of their Dynamite Art Edition line to include three new high-end collections that meticulously reproduce the actual storyboard and cover artwork from classic 1970s comic books. Jose Gonzalez’s Vampirella Art Edition and Walter Simonson’s Battlestar Galactica Art Edition celebrate the seminal work of two master storytellers, while the Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter: Warlord of Mars – The Marvel Years Art Edition showcases the artistry of numerous industry legends, including Gil Kane, Carmine Infantino, Dave Cockrum, and many more. Scanned in high-resolution color and printed at the original size of the artwork, these gorgeous hardcover collections preserve every detail of the prestigious artists’ meticulous skill and hard work.
The process of creating each oversized Art Edition format involves high-resolution color scanning of original storyboard artwork, capturing the look of the artwork as originally illustrated, with all blue lines, corrections, pasted letters, editorial notes, and other distinctive creative elements intact. Each scan is then printed on heavy stock paper to give readers the most realistic experience of what it would be like to hold actual storyboard pages.
Jose Gonzalez’s Vampirella Art Edition honors an illustrator whose mesmerizing and macabre interpretation of the raven-haired heroine established him – in many readers’ minds – as the definitive Vampirella artist. Introducing an unparalleled level of sophistication to the visual storytelling of Warren Publishing’sVampirella Magazine in the 1970s, Gonzalez transformed the one-time horror hostess into a layered protagonist and industry icon. Longtime fans will thrill to see his mesmerizing and macabre artwork in the Art Edition’s high-quality reproductions, representing ten complete stories selected from throughout his entire body of Vampirella work, including “Resurrection of Papa Voudou” (as written by Archie Goodwin), “The Blood Queen of Bayou Parish” (Steve Englehart), “An Eye for an Eye” (Bill DuBay), “Spawn of the Star Beast” (Rich Margopoulos), and more.
“For me, the initial exposure to Jose Gonzalez’s lush artwork was eye opening. The reproduction of the original stories in black and white allowed for a subtlety which was never approached in four color comics. I was lucky enough to be able to acquire a number of stories from the original series over the years. I am looking forward to Dynamite Entertainment’s efforts to expose new readers to the artwork that I love and to give longtime fans access to the work as it was originally created.” Steven Morger of Big Wow Art.
Walter Simonson is one of the most prolific artists ever to work in the comic book medium, a universally admired innovator whose work – whether it be onManhunter, The Fantastic Four, The Mighty Thor, Jack Kirby’s Fourth World, the list goes on – leaves a mark in the hearts and minds of readers for years afterwards. Walter Simonson’s Battlestar Galactica Art Edition commemorates the master draftsman’s senses-shattering work on the Battlestar Galactica comic book series, published by Marvel Comics from 1979 to 1981. Truly, the adventures of brash pilots Apollo and Starbuck were never so epic as they were under Simonson’s skillful hand, as demonstrated in the scanned storyboard art of the complete stories contained therein. While Simonson himself assumes writing chores in many of the Art Edition contents, contributing writers also include Steven Grant, Roger McKenzie, and Bill Mantlo.
“Marvel’s Battlestar Galactica comic will always hold a special place in my heart. I’d been penciling the series for a year in the late 1970s when I was given the opportunity to write a few issues. It was my first professional writing gig, and I loved it. I wrote four of the title’s last five issues. I knew the characters as they had developed in the comic quite well, and as a fledgling writer, I had no idea what I was doing, and consequently, no fear. I got reference from every Galactica book or magazine I could find at the time, and I studied video tapes of the episodes my pal, Allen Milgrom, had made on what have been one of the earliest home video tape machine. The late Archie Goodwin, one of the finest writers and editors the comics business has ever seen as well as a friend, was very complimentary about the writing and offered me my next writing gig when Galactica wrapped. My career as a writer/artist in comics had been launched, thanks in large part to Adama, Apollo, Starbuck, and the rest of the doughty crew of the Battlestar Galactica and their bitter enemies, the Cylons. Thanks, guys. I don’t know that I could have done it without you.” States Artist (and writer on final issues) Walter Simonson
The John Carter: Warlord of Mars – The Marvel Years Art Edition is the product of a recent and comprehensive licensing agreement between Dynamite Entertainment and Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., a fruitful arrangement that opens the vaults of the Burroughs library for the enjoyment of science fiction and fantasy fans everywhere. This Art Edition collects high-end reproductions of stellar artwork from a huge assembly of industry pioneers, including Gil Kane, Rudy Nebres, Bernie Wrightson, Alan Weiss, Ernie Chan, Sal Buscema, Larry Hama, Ernie Colon, Carmine Infantino, Dave Cockrum, Alex Nino, George Perez, John Byrne, Bob McCleod, Ricardo Villagran, and Mike Vosburg. The cover artwork and interior pages are drawn from throughout the 1977-1979 run of John Carter: Warlord of Mars originally published by Marvel Comics.
“We are very pleased that our new licensing agreement with Dynamite Entertainment not only creates a fully new John Carter: Warlord of Mars comic book line, but also encompasses the reproduction of the rich, vibrant art of earlier periods by many masters of the medium”, said James Sullos, President of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. “These are some of the legendary artists who contributed so much to comic art. I know that fans everywhere will want to add this beautiful edition to their collections”.
“I was thrilled to hear that Dynamite is doing a John Carter of Mars art edition. I have a great fondness for the original novels and the Marvel comic book series was released shortly after I had finished reading the books. The series boasted work by some of the true giants in the industry and seeing the original art at its full size will be such a treat. I acquired my first John Carter original art page more than 30 years ago and continue to collect to this day. I am happy to be sharing art from my collection and I am also looking forward to seeing all of the other contributions.” Tom Fleming of Fanfare.
“Words cannot begin to express how delighted I am that we’re able to announce the expansion of our Art Edition Program. With timeless classics like Dynamite’s Vampirella, with the first series focusing on incredibly talented artists, with the first being Jose Gonzalez, to one of my heroes, Walter Simonson on one of his earliest works, Battlestar Galactica, where you can see he was always destined to be one of the greats. Add to that Gil Kane, Carmine Infantino and many other great artists in the Warlord Of Mars Marvel Years Art Edition,” States Dynamite CEO/Publisher Nick Barrucci. “These are great high end collectibles for fans, and just the tip of the iceberg for what we have in store for 2015!”
The Dynamite Art Editions are solicited for retailer orders in Diamond Comic Distributors’ Previews catalog, the premiere source of merchandise for the comic book specialty market. Comic book fans are encouraged to place preorders through their local comic book retailers or online booksellers.
[Concluding our conversation with IDW publisher Ted Adams, we get into digital, new books for 2014 and IDW's plans for getting into the TV business. Read part one here. ]
THE BEAT: Ted, you were something of a pioneer among comics publishers for going into digital and I quote what you told me when I first asked you about it. You said “I’m just going to do a deal with everybody and see what works,” as opposed to everyone else who was like “Oh I don’t know if we should try this, we don’t know, we don’t know, don’t know.” Your attitude was, let’s give this a shot. I think the first time you gave a figure, you said, oh digital’s 1% of our revenue and our sales. Now I believe it’s 15%?
ADAMS: Yeah, and it’s growing even from there. And obviously I think it’s kind of our strategy in general. We were sort of out front [in digital] before everyone else was there. But my goal as a comic book publisher is to try and get my content in front of as many readers as possible. The best place ultimately for me to have long term readers is the direct market. But I want to try and get the content in front of as many readers as I possibly can, so I felt like digital seemed like a pretty obvious place to get our content in front of people who didn’t know comic books existed. But that’s really our strategy. That’s what drives the Fun Packs, that’s why there’s the toys and Transformers comics, that’s why we’re still agnostic when it comes to E-readers. Every legitimate opportunity that comes by, we’re going to put our content there, with the hope being that we’re going to introduce new readers to comic books and then drive those readers to comic book stores. That’s our path to success.
THE BEAT: Let’s talk a little about the comic shop market because, again, in 15 years, it’s really evolved a lot, even just the makeup of the retailers. I can tell you from personal experience that in the ’90′s when I was working with Friends of Lulu, we went to retailers and said “Why don’t you promote The Simpsons comics? People like The Simpsons.” And this was a very controversial message at that time! But now it’s “Oh My Little Pony! That’s awesome!” Everyone’s feeling pretty good about where it’s at now, but what is the next level for comic shops?
ADAMS: I think that the diversity that we have today is as good as it’s ever been and I think that we want to have content that can appeal to a wide variety of readers and not just one specific reader. The industry for a long time was really good about producing content that was just for one particular kind of reader, but today we have comics for kids. We have people who like super hero books. We have great, smart comic books like Locke and Key if you’re really into that. If you’re interested in the archival side of the business the Library of American Comics and Craig Yoe for us, we’ve got that nailed. The Artist Editions bring in a completely different kind of reader and I think that diversity that you can see in a micro way with IDW—where we have everything from licensed books to creating our own books, archival books, artist editions—that diversity is what we should all aspire to for that success. We don’t want to limit ourselves to just a small percentage of readers. We want to try to appeal to as big a percentage of readers as we possibly can.
THE BEAT: Talking about expanding the market place, you also have launched a TV division?
ADAMS: Yeah, so we started IDW Entertainment towards the end of last year, last September, October. The goal of that division is that I was frustrated by the way the traditional Hollywood system works where you have a property and then you option it to a studio and you are removed from the process in every way. For us probably the most frustrating experience was actually Locke and Key where we had a deal done and the pilot got shot and it was actually a pretty good pilot and ultimately they did not set it up to go to series. We of course, weren’t involved in any of that decision making. Creatively we were a little bit involved. They certainly were soliciting input from the creators. But from a business stand point we weren’t involved at all because why would we be? We’re not the network, we don’t have any say in any of that. [Locke and Key was eventually passed on as a series.] What we decided to do was actually, to put our own money into the game, which of course, then gives you the control. What we’re doing is actually financing pilot scripts and series outlines ourselves so that instead of going and saying we’re going to shop you the property, we’re shopping you the entertainment.
Once we have a pilot script and a series bible we want to proceed with, we’re not going to a network and saying “We’re selling it to you.” What we’re saying is “We’re going to give you specific distribution rights for this content.” So in the case of one of our properties, we’ll go to a US network and say you can have domestic distribution for this property. Then we’ll go out and sell the rest of the world the same content. Essentially we’re going to go and actually produce the shows ourselves and sell off specific pieces of the rights to be able to finance that show. Then whatever the gap is on that production budget, we’re actually going to finance ourselves. So we’re going to own the show [we’re creating] and we’re going to finance the actual show. It’s a different way—this has been done in a big way for features, but as far as TV, there’s not to my knowledge anybody doing it specifically the way that we’re doing it. And so it’s a pretty revolutionary way of looking at it. The response so far has been great. Certainly the creative community is excited because now there’s a new buyer for scripts and somebody that’s willing to pay. And then from a distribution standpoint, we’re taking the financial risk. So if you’re a US network and we come to you and we say hey, we’re taking the majority of the risk here, it’s a good opportunity for them as well.
THE BEAT: Also, there are so many different channels and delivery methods now for TV.
ADAMS: Right, and that’s the whole reason we’re doing it. Many times even when we call it a TV show, you’re not watching it on your TV.
THE BEAT: Right, Amazon streaming series, blah blah.
ADAMS: Absolutely. There’s so many places that are interested in this kind of content. That’s really who we’re looking to have as our distribution partners, really not those traditional networks. For some of the things we are doing, we would look to traditional networks, but certainly we’re looking at way beyond that at this point. We’re still in very much the early days of getting this worked out. We’ve actually got a writer working on our first pilot script, we just finalized the deal with him. We’ve got two more where we’ve come to terms with the writer and several of those deals should get wrapped up in the next couple of weeks. This is very much a long term plan for us. One of the things that I love about publishing is that we can have an idea for a book and six months later or nine months later, it could be in the market. That’s certainly not going to be the case for IDW Entertainment. This is a long term play for the company that we’ll be looking at, best case scenario, probably end of this year or middle of next year we’ll be able to have our first show up and running.
THE BEAT: Now, you talk about developing properties and obviously Locke and Key is an example of a new series that was excellent and the readership reflected that excellence. But, it’s a little trickier obviously, selling a new property.
ADAMS: Yeah certainly, one of the things I’m proud of is that we, Locke and Key is a great book and it’s unarguably just a terrific book Joe [Hill] and Gabe [Rodriguez] are amazing creators. But, part of the reason that book was successful was because of the way we got behind it. We promoted that book every way possible and every opportunity possible. I think that was a really solid combination of a publisher that got behind a book and two creators who were working at the absolute top of their game, and it was successful of course for all of us. The last volume was the New York Times best seller for the last two weeks and I expect to be selling those books for the rest of my life.
V Wars, cover by Ryan Brown
The creator-owned side of the business is a very important part of our business. This year we have four books that were launched that I think all have a chance to be big hits for us. The first one is V Wars which is by Jonathan Maberry and Alan Robinson. We actually did a Free Comic Book Day book for V Wars. It spins out of a series of prose novels that we’re doing that were edited by Maberry. It’s a terrific comic and the orders for the FCBD edition were great, way more than I expected. So it’s been in a big launch there.
WinterWorld cover by Butch Guice
We’re following that up with WinterWorld, which is a book that Chuck Dixon published with [Jorge] Zaffino with Epic back in the 80′s and we republished it. It’s a hard cover, one of my favorite things that we’ve ever done. And Chuck is now doing a new WinterWorld series with Butch Guice doing art, and it’s just flat out beautiful. It’s really an extraordinary comic.
Ragnarok pencils by Walter Simonson
And then after that we’re doing Ragnarok by Walt Simonson which is something that we’ve had in the works for a long time. I grew up reading Walt’s Thor comics and the pages that I’ve seen from Ragnarok are just, they’re just beautiful. It’s just going to blow people away.
THE BEAT: That’s kind of a no brainer right there.
Little Nemo cover by Eric Shanower
ADAMS: We’re releasing one new series per month starting in May and the last one is Little Nemo in Slumberland which is written by Eric Shanower, and drawn by Gabriel Rodriguez of Locke and Key. I feel like I’m a broken record here, but Gabe’s art on this book is unbelievably beautiful. So it’s these four books and we’ve got lots of other great books, but those four launching May, June, July and August are going to be amongst the best books that are being published this year.
So those are things that we’re passionate about and that we’re supporting in a big way starting with the V Wars for FCBD. We’re going to get behind these books in a big way. One of the things that we’re announcing today at ComicsPRO is that we’re going to create marketing collateral packages for the direct market. So these are going to be catalogues that stores can give away, they’re going to be window clings, posters—basically what we’re going to try to do is give the direct market the information they need to be able to sell these books to their customers. So instead of just taking the Previews and and letting that be the only communication that happens from a retailer to their customer, we’re going to give them information they need and marketing collateral they need to build to help sell these books.
THE BEAT: Looking towards the future, obviously there’s this whole Tumblr culture of comics now, there’s webcomics, there’s the Reddit culture of comics. I don’t know if you’re aware, but I’ve been having Brett Schenker. who does demographic research on Facebook, write about comics. And he came up with something like 24 million people have liked comic-related terms on Facebook. Obviously there is a larger audience or at least a comics-aware audience, that’s a pretty big universe, but it does seem like it’s developing. It’s spinning out into all these unexpected areas. For all media now it’s really like, oh my god there’s so many channels, there’s so many ways to do things. How do you as a publisher look at this kind of Wild West situation that we have now?
ADAMS: I love those articles that you post, because it reinforces what I keep trying to say over and over and over which is that all of us it’s just tapping a small percentage of the potential of this audience. The potential audience is gigantic and it’s on us to figure out ways to provide our content in a way that can reach those people. And so for us it’s the Ebook business, it’s the Fun Packs, it’s the comics and the toys. But as far as Tumblr culture and all those kinds of places, I mean, honestly, we’re all still figuring it out, I think. Clearly every publisher at this point has a good Facebook page and has somebody that’s in social media, if you don’t have a social media marketing person at this point then you’re sort of hopeless.
But there’s so much more than just that. And I certainly don’t have the answer on how do we convert those 24 million people into customers. That should be a goal for all of us, but you said it was the Wild West and I think that’s exactly right. Anybody who’s a comic book publisher should get up every day and think, how do I reach those people? How do I convince those people to buy my content?
THE BEAT: Just a couple more things I wanted your perspective on. Comic Book convention culture is huge right now. I know IDW is very selective about the shows you go to. How do you view that? Is it something that you think is expanding for publishers? I’ve heard other people say that publishers are really getting burnt out on all these conventions.
ADAMS: I’ve always personally struggled with the conventions because they are so disruptive to our core business. I’ve toyed with the idea the last couple of years of hiring a couple of people that would, essentially, just attend conventions for IDW and I’m still toying with that idea. We have increased the number of conventions that we attend over the last couple of years, but we’re still probably looking at six or seven conventions this year. We do some of the targeted conventions, such as a Transformers convention called BotCon that we go to; and there’s one for G.I Joe as well, and we’ve actually have had great success converting new readers at BotCon. Those are the hardest of the hardcore Transformer fans, but even with those guys sometimes they don’t know the comics exist. We had really good success converting people from those shows. At the other conventions…I don’t know, Heidi. I see this huge expansion of the number of conventions and the reality is we’re going to always have to be selective because there’s no way we could come even close to attending them all. But it is something, frankly, that we could do more with and we could do a little better. I think that we’ve gotten very dialed in on how to manage San Diego and that was something that I struggled with for a long time, but I feel like we really have got that convention nailed down in large measure thanks to Dirk Wood who joined us four years ago. But as far as our bigger convention strategy, it’s something that I’m still thinking about.
THE BEAT: So looking to the next 15 years, what’s the one thing that you haven’t done that you really want to do, Ted?
ADAMS: Let’s see. I’m going to publish an adaptation of Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas—that’s a personal goal of mine that I’m looking forward to accomplishing. As far as the business, for me it’s, and again I’m a broken record, but I want to expand the number of people who read our books. So I feel like I haven’t even come close to accomplishing that goal and I feel with the Fun Packs in particular, that we are right on the cusp of going from half a million copies to 5 million copies. And not in an artificial way, like the heyday of the direct market when people were buying 50 copies each. I think that we can go from 500,000 Fun Packs to 5 million Fun Packs with unique readers for those, and not people who are buying them because they think they’re going to sell them in 3 years. But that’s just one example of what my goal would be for the next 15 years. I don’t want to just double the number of people who are reading our comics, I want to have a multiple of that number of people reading our comics.
It’s become a truism of the current comics era that a movie or TV show based on a comics property will only spark big book sales if there is a clear and defined book that ties in closely with the movie or TV show. Thus big sales for things like 300, Scott Pilgrim, Watchmen, Kick-Ass, Walking Dead and so on. We’ll call it the Naruto Effect, since Naruto manga sales surged upwards when it was broadcast on the Cartoon Network.
The Naruto Effect is problematic for Marvel and DC because most of their movies are based on comics that are up to issue #500 or so. JUmping on one of these old-timers is like jumping on a moving train from a cliffside. Even a collection is not that definitive, as every book — Batman, Spider-Man, Hellblazer — has dozens of volumes to choose from. In fact Marvel has, in the past, pretty much given up on having a graphic novel tie in to their very successful movies for just this reason.
However, there can be “spin-off” sales hits. The last one we can think of was The Joker gn
by Azzarello and Bermejo which sold gangbusters in the year THE DARK KNIGHT came out — the book had nothing to do with the movie, but the dark, adult portrayal of he Joker felt a bit like the movie, and people may have sought it out because of that. (It was also a pretty good book on its own.)
The next Marvel movie is Thor, opening May 5, which has the usual jumping on point problems. However, it appears that one book may be having a “spin-off” Naruto Effect, namely the Thor by Walter Simonson Omnibus just out this month. At 1192 pages for $125, this is no impulse purchase — however it’s already at #9 in the Amazon GN bestseller’s list and an impressive #559 in books overall.
Now we all know Amazon’s sales rankings are easy to game, and the different between the #100 book and the #1000 book might be just a copy or two. Still, even at the discounted price of $73.03, that’s a pretty nice piece of change. And the movie hasn’t even opened yet, and the book hasn’t officially shipped yet.
It helps, of course, that Simonson’s Thor work is assured, lively storytelling that stands the test of time, and is reckoned as one of the most definitive runs on Thor.
Hype for the Thor movie is entering its peak phase, so we’ll see how the Thor books track.
Jose Gonzalez work on Vampirella is one of the reasons I love that character. His art and Archie Goodwins scripts. I’ll probably buy that artist edition.