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SECRET WARS has finally ended...with a shocking sales twist!

Our resident Marvel analyst takes a look at the publisher's November sales, discerning which All-New All-Different titles are posed to be failures and which might become breakout successes.

Announced today at Marvel’s annual SDCC “Cup O’ Joe” Panel featuring Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada, the Marvel Star Wars comic franchise will mark its first anniversary by releasing its first line-wide crossover event, Star Wars: Vader Down.

by Mark Brooks

Co-written by flagship title author Jason Aaron and Darth Vader writer Kieron Gillen, Vader Down will see the titular Sith lord at his most vulnerable and most powerful.  When his ship crash lands on an unspecified planet, the Rebel Fleet will “risk everything” for the opportunity to take down their most powerful enemy.  They’ll throw everything they have against Vader, and the series will throw the kitchen sink at you.

Vader Down will feature appearances from Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbacca, Aphra, and more.  The six-part miniseries will begin in November 2015 and will feature Mike Deodato and Salvador Larroca on art with covers by Mark Brooks.  The crossover will begin in Vader Down #1 and spill into Star Wars and Darth Vader.

By: Nick Eskey

Hello again nerds and nerdettes, and welcome to another installment of San Diego Comic-Con Funko releases! You know Funko, the purveyors of the highly popular POP! series of collectible figurines, who also vow to “cover as many beloved licenses and characters as possible to remind every Comic-Con attendee why they fell in love with these stories in the first place. “

We have some exciting announcements this time, including an extremely limited edition POP! figurine. Reminder, this year Funko will not be doing any sort of pre-buying. The only way you can get this beauties is on site, so be sure to visit the booth. If you don’t have tickets to Comic-Con… well there’s always black magic?

Without any further distractions, let’s bring on the toys:

Pop! TV: Doctor Who – Eleventh Doctor holding Cyberman Head

Does the sight of a British police booth cause you to hyperventilate? This eleventh incarnation of Doctor Who holding a Cyberman head then is the right toy for you. Check him out with his chic purple jacket and debonair hair. *Swoon.*

Pop! Disney: Frozen – Barbershop Quartet Olaf

From Pixar’s “Frozen,” perpetuator of a few sickly cute and catchy songs, comes everyone’s favorite silly snowman Olaf. This Barbershop Quartet Olaf comes complete with a hat, cane, and similarly dressed seagull sidekick.

Pop! TV: The Flash – The Flash Unmasked

Fan’s of the series “Flash” should keep their eyes peeled for this POP! The Flash Unmasked. Be careful not to let this one slip by you.

Hikari: Star Wars – Darth Vader Matte Black

Another Star Wars collectible? No, never. Who could have predicted? Despite there already being a thousand other pieces of Star Wars merchandise however, this Darth Vader Matte Black figure by Hikari looks beautiful. It almost looks like if this famous Sith was made of copper. Better find some room on those already crowded shelves for this toy, which is limited to only 1200.

Hikari: Marvel – Frosted Groot

In this batch of announcements, Hikari will be also coming out with this Frosted Groot. Limited to 1000, it looks like this humanoid plant made out with Olaf. Oh the magic of warm hugs.

Dorbz: Batman – Thrillkill Batman

Nothing better strikes fear into the hearts of men more than a caped crusader in a mask. Well, maybe a caped crusader in full grin and an alternate costume. Dorbz’s Thrillkill Batman sports a red and black costume and a smiling face. A cute, yet disturbing addition to any collection.

Pop TV: Hannibal – Bryan Fulle

And rounding off our releases is this highly limited edition POP! It’s unfortunate that the show Hannibal was cancelled, but you can share the hurt with this Brian Fuller figure. Dressed to kill in his Hannibal like attire, the show’s creator also sports a pair of spectacles and a large kitchen knife. This bad boy comes in only 144 units and will be available during his signing at the Funko booth on Friday, July 10th at 2 p.m. The line for the signing won’t begin until 1p.m., so no early campers please. No other Funko items will be sold during this time.

We’re getting closer to Comic-Con, so stay tuned for more Funko exclusives!

This Star Wars thing has legs! Following on the million selling Star Wars #1, Darth Vader #1, the next Marvel foray into the land of the Force, has already topped 300,00 pre-orders, Comicbook.com reports. The issue is by Kieron Gillen and drawn by Salvador Larroca, and follows what happens after Vader goes spinning into space at the end of A New Hope…but BEFORE anyone brought him his shuttle. The next new marvel Book is Princess Leia #1 and that better top 100k, kids.

This issue will also have a BUNCH of variant covers, but maybe not 100 like SW #1. Here are two we liked the first by Whilce Portacio and second by Alex Ross.

Honestly, I don’t quite know why I even bother doing Fusenews posts on Saturdays.  As you might suspect, my readership dips considerably when the weekends hit, but an old Fusenews post is like a week old fish.  Time does it no favors.  As such, I shall cut through my seething envy of everyone at BookExpo this week (honestly, why are you folks having SO much fun anyway?) and pretend that Maureen Johnson’s tweets about how bad the coffee is there will convince me that it’s not that interesting anywa . . . wait a minute . . . they’re giving away copies of that Scieszka/Biggs early reader series in the Abrams booth?!?!  WAAAAAAHHHHHH!

• New Site Alert: We begin with the big, interesting, important news.  Phil and Erin Stead aren’t just Caldecott Award winners.  No siree bob, they also happen to be innovative interviewers.  Having just started the site Number Five Bus Presents (I approve of the title since it fits in nicely with 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast, A Fuse #8 Production, and 9 Kinds of Pie . . . we just need a blog that uses the number 6 to fill in the gap), the two are conducting a series of conversations with book makers.  There will be 9-12 episodes per “season”.  So far they’ve spoken with Eric Rohmann (consider this your required reading of the day) with many more interviews on the way.  You can read the reasons why they’re doing this here.  Basically it boils down to them wanting to connect to fellow book makers in what can often be a lonely field.  If I were a professor of children’s literature, I would make everyone in my class subscribe to this site.  Many thanks to Jules for the tip!

• About a month ago I was at an event where a venture capitalist with an interest in children’s literature was asking how much money a new children’s book prize should pay out.  “$20,000?  $30,000?” he ventured.  We all sort of balked at the amounts, assuring the man that any author would be grateful for $10,000, let alone a larger amount (the authors in the room, as you might imagine, were gung ho for the original mentioned amounts).  Meanwhile, had I but known, the people at Kirkus were debating the self-same thing.  Only when they came up with their brand new book prize monetary amount, they decided to play for keeps.  On October 23, 2014 some amazingly lucky children’s or YA author will win a $50,000 (you read that number right) prize for their book.  All it needs to have done is receive a star from Kirkus to be eligible.  The initial announcement in The Washington Post made the big time mistake of saying that the youth award would only go to YA.  Happily, the subsequent Kirkus announcement clarified that this was not the case.  Man.  I really really want to be on that jury someday.  The power!

• Just a reminder that the Kids Author Carnival will be up and running here in NYC today (Saturday).  Got no plans at 6 tonight?  Now you do.

• Aw, what the heck.  Need a new poster for your library?  How bout this?

You can download the PDF here if you so desire.

• Sure, the blog post Trigger Warnings for Classic Kids Books is amusing, but I would bet you dollars to donuts that at least half of these “objections” have been used in legitimate attempts to ban or remove from shelves these books somewhere, sometime.

• I did not know that Sun Ra and Prince were both influences on Daniel Handler but when said, it makes a certain amount of sense. PEN America’s biweekly interview series The Pen Ten recently interviewed the man and justified my belief that the most interesting authors are the ones that don’t give the same rote answers in every single interview they do.  Of course good questions help as well.

• In L.A.?  Wish you were in New York attending BookExpo?  Wish you had something in your neck of the woods to crow about?  Well, good news.  If you haven’t heard already, the Skirball Cultural Center is featuring the show The Snowy Day and the Art of Ezra Jack Keats from now until September.  Lucky ducks.

• Speaking of BookExpo (and is there anything else TO speak of this week?) I was much obliged to the folks at Shelf Awareness for their #BEA14: Pictures from an Exhibition post.  From that amazing diversity panel at SLJ’s Day of Dialog to singing sensation Michael Buckley and the Amazing Juggling Authors to James Patterson’s $1 million given out to bookstores (way to go, Watchung Booksellers!) it’s a great post.

• There’s a 2014 Children’s Book Week Bookstore Display Contest?  Oo. Good luck choosing amongst them, guys.

• Adult authors that write books for children are hardly new.  They’re also rarely any good.  Sorry, but it is the rare adult author that finds that they’re a natural in the children’s book realm as well.  There are always exceptions (heck, Neil Gaiman won himself a Newbery so howzabout THEM apples, eh?) and one of them might be Jo Nesbø.  Over at The Guardian, Nesbø discusses how he decides in the morning whether or not to write his gritty adult crime thrillers . . . or the fart books for kids.  Frankly, I’ll always be grateful to Nesbø because of the day I was sitting at the reference desk in the Children’s Center at 42nd Street and a group of young female Norwegians came in asking for Norwegian children’s authors.  Thank goodness for Nesbø and Peter Christen Abjorsen.

• Somewhat along the same lines, this has very little to do with anything (to the best of my knowledge the only children’s book she ever penned was The Shoe Bird) but if you have not already read Eudora Welty’s New Yorker application letter, you’re welcome.  Suddenly I want to see the biopic of her life with the character of Eudora played by Kristen Schall.  Am I crazy?

• It took them a bloody long time but at long last the Bologna Children’s Book Fair has announced when the 2015 dates will be.  So . . . if anyone feels like sponsoring me to go I wouldn’t, ah, object or anything.  *bats eyelashes charmingly*

• A library can lend books.  It can lend tablets.  It can lend laptops even.  But lending the internet itself?  NYPL is currently doing just that (or is about to). In this article you can see that, “The goal of this project is to expand the reach and benefits of free access to the Internet provided by The New York Public Library (NYPL) to underserved youth and communities by allowing them to borrow portable WiFi Hotspot devices from their local libraries for a sustained period of time.”  We’ll just have to see how it works out, but I’m intrigued.

• Tell me this isn’t awesome:

As you can see, this is a selection of animal sounds found in the Orbis Sensualium Pictus (or The World of Things Obvious to the Senses drawn in Pictures), also known as the world’s oldest children’s picture book.  And if you can read through it and not suddenly find the song “What Does the Fox Say?” caught in your head then you’re a better man than I.  Thanks to AL Direct for the link.

• When I read the i09 piece 10 Great Authors Who Disowned Their Own Books I naturally started thinking of the children’s and YA equivalents.  So far I can think of at least one author and one illustrator off the top of my head.  The author would be Kay Thompson of Eloise.  The illustrator I’ll keep to myself since he’s still alive and kicking.  Any you can think of?

• “In France, I can publish a funny picturebook one month and a YA novel about revenge porn the next.” Maybe the best thing I read all day.  Phil Nel directed me to this absolutely fascinating piece by Clementine Beauvais called Publishing Children’s Books in the UK vs. in France.  Just substitute “UK” for “US” (which isn’t that hard) you’ll understand why this is amazing reading.  Obviously there are some difference between the UK and US models, but they share more common qualities than differences.  Thanks to Phil Nel for the link!

• How many illustrators sneak pictures of their previous books into other books?  Travis Jonker accounts for some of the titles doing this in 2014.  Along the same lines, how many authors put in in-jokes?  It was my husband who pointed out that Jonathan Auxier put a sneaky reference to his blog The Scop into The Night Gardener this year.  Clever man.

• Daily Image:

I have good news.  You can order this as a poster, should you so desire.

Thanks to Lori for the link!

Jeffrey Brown has cemented himself as a firm favourite of mine for a bunch of reasons, not least:

• his genius in coming up with an idea for some clever books and seeing them through to fruition
• because he’s gotten me out of many a gift-giving bind (especially for friends with children, as being a child-friendly but child-free person, I’m not overly familiar with what appeals to kids these days)
• his books manage the holy-grail feat of impressing both adults and kids.

I’m writing, of course, about Brown’s Vader series. The first, entitled Darth Vader and Son ( I have to say I think Vader and Son would have been a stronger title), I’ve blogged about previously. It’s based on the premise that instead of not encountering Luke until he was an adult, Vader instead raised him on the Death Star.

The follow-up, Vader’s Little Princess, is the daughter-themed equivalent, with Vader experiencing all the love and enduring all the quirks that come with that gig.

The scenarios are recognisable to parents and non-parents alike, but given a peculiarly fantastic Star Wars-themed twist. Let’s be honest, these books are pretty much the best thing nerds and nerds who’ve become parents could ask for (and that’s not even including how much these books appeal to kids).

Some favourite Vader’s Little Princess moments include:

• when Vader embarrassingly insists on dropping Leia right to the front door of school in an At At Walker rather than, as she requests, around the corner
• a dad-and-new-boyfriend ‘bonding’ moment when Vader introduces Han Solo to a carbon freezing chamber
• when Vader lectures Leia, dressed in the barely there outfit famous from the Jabba the Hutt scene, that she’s ‘not going out dressed like that’
• when Leia pours her heart out about (and implores Vader to help dissect the meaning of) saying ‘I love you’ to Han Solo and all he said back was ‘I know’
• and when Leia takes Vader to the ballet featuring—wait for it—Jar Jar Binks (it wouldn’t be a Star Wars spoof without a Jar Jar Binks joke).

I don’t find Vader’s Little Princess quite as entertaining as I do Vader and Son, although whether that’s because Brown understandably used up his best material in the first book or because the element of how-cool-is-this surprise was gone the second time around.

But I do find it great enough to warrant reading occasionally and recommending and gifting to friends more often than that.

I’m not sure if there’s room for a third book in the series—maybe a Vader as grandparent title?—but I truly hope so. In the interim, these two are going to remain my parents-and-kids gift-giving staple.

(Read more ...)

Here are two versions I did of my take on Darth Vader for Josh Frost's book "100 Ways to the Dark Side."

WWW.CHOGRIN.COM

I have heard the words of the wise (sometimes, well 1/3 of the time) Carlman (just don't make it a habit of ordering me around.....) and will seek peace (for the moment) with Master Jedi Zack. I will also read Maniac Magee as suggested by the wise (sometimes) and noble (well kinda) Carlman.

Also to show that we Sith can make fun of ourselves also check out this:



Ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha!!!!!!! (Alright that's enough laughing now!!!!)

The Most Peaceful Sith to ever blow up a planet with a Death Star,

Darth Bill