Comic Book Site

Mumbai, Mar 10 (PTI) Bollywood actor Aarya Babbar, who
got noticed for his roles in films like ‘Guru’ and ‘Jail’, is
trying out an interesting alternative career, that of a comic
book writer.

The young son of actor Raj Babbar is donning this new
role for a mythological comic book series, tentatively titled
‘Pushpak Vimaan’ and has begun writing it.

“I have been shooting for ‘Tees Maar Khan’ and have
also completed a Punjabi film, ‘Virsa’. I used my free time on
the sets and at home to develop and research this subject. I
have read many books related to the various characters in the
Ramayana and the Mahabharata,” Aarya told reporters.

“The story will be a mythology, set in today’s world.

I had e-mailed my idea to Shekhar Kapur, who loved it and
initiated the process with Liquid Comics,” he said.

Over the last few days, a strange situation has been brewing between Amazon and a sizable number of comic book fans. On March 7, Bleeding Cool broke the news of an apparent Amazon sale featuring high quality hardcover Marvel graphic novels at bargain-basement prices of $14.99, when their retail prices were more along the lines of $125. Alas, it turned out to be a pricing error. Amazon could have simply canceled the orders (which is common practice for online retailers), but instead, it tried to do right by its users and said it would honor some of the orders. Except it didn’t actually have enough books in stock to do what it promised, leading to another wave of frustration from the comics fans. Now Amazon is looking to smooth things over with some $25 dollar gift certificates.

The tale is a bit complicated. After word of the apparent sale began to spread, plenty of comics fans began to snatch up the books as quickly as they could, causing some of the graphic novels to climb toward the top of Amazon’s best seller lists. Within hours Amazon fixed the pricing glitches (which affected multiple items), and told some customers that rather than canceling their entire orders, they’d still receive a single copy of the books they purchased at the heavily discounted price. The only catch was that they’d only get one copy apiece (many people had purchased multiple copies). Quite a nice gesture considering that Amazon could have simply canceled the orders outright.

Unfortunately, something went wrong. This morning, Bleeding Cool reported that many (and perhaps all) of these single-copy orders had been canceled as well, without any kind of notice or email from Amazon. As it turns out, Amazon simply doesn’t have enough books in inventory to fulfill all the orders it promised, so it’s handing out $25 gift certificates as an apology for the inconvenience.

Not everyone who bought a Marvel book is getting a certificate — if you placed an order that was immediately canceled, then it sounds like you won’t get one. Some people should be actually getting their books in the mail. If you got an email saying your order was cancelled, you should be hearing from Amazon about this shortly.

It’s hard to really fault Amazon for this. Obviously there were some errors in miscommunication, but it really didn’t have to do any of this — every online retailer has a clause in their Terms of Service that doesn’t make them liable for pricing mistakes.

Some of the changes to comic book publishing are obvious since Hollywood started salivating over their wares. But a lot of changes influenced by the film industry have happened without most loyal comic book fans even realizing it.

The biggest and most apparent shifts within the world of publishing have happened just in the last year. DC Comics is now calling itself “DC Entertainment,” reporting directly to Warner Bros. Pictures Group. Marvel now runs its own movie studio under the umbrella of Disney’s entertainment conglomerate. And comic book’s top writers, like Brian Michael Bendis and Geoff Johns, spend much of their time nowadays consulting on scripts for movie projects and TV shows.

But other changes to the comic book industry have trickled down to even smaller publishers in ways that are less noticeable to readers, but all-too-apparent within the industry.

“It varies from company to company, but most comic book publishers have some method of talking with Hollywood,” said Stephen Christy, director of development for Archaia. “I think it’s made all the publishers, in varying degrees, more aware of the fact that these aren’t just comic books. These are ideas. It really then becomes a question of, ‘Do we want to embrace the fact that these can be multi-platform ideas, or do we really just want to focus on the comics and let the rest of it kind of take its course?’”

Many companies and even some creators actually pitch movies to Hollywood based upon their comics, whether directly or through agents. For example, Erik Feig, president of production at the film studio Summit Entertainment, told Newsarama that Summit is now filming Red for release later this year because the Warren Ellis comic was pitched to him as a movie idea.

“[It] came to me fully formed as a potential movie. To be honest, I knew Warren Ellis, and I knew his other material, but I wasn’t super-familiar with Red until it was presented to us by DC and Lorenzo di Bonaventura, one of the producers, as a potential movie,” he said. “Then I was able to see it as a movie, and look at the comic as really inspiring source material.”

Christy pointed out that while some of the “packaging” of ideas for Hollywood can be seen as a negative, a lot of it is in response to the challenge of getting beyond the level of “option.”

“There are a lot of film options out there, and that can get frustrating,” Christy said. “So I think for a lot of publishers, dedicating time to working with Hollywood is really just a matter of them saying, “OK, what can be done to actually make these films come out, instead of just being another Variety article where it says this has been optioned by so-and-so?”

For smaller publishers, one of the reasons for working with Hollywood is that there’s a real boost in sales of the source comic books when films are made.

“Anytime you have a mass market film or TV show or video game, you have a surge in sales of the comic,” said Matt Hawkins, president of Top Cow, the publisher behind the Wanted comic book that became a hit film. “Anyone who tells you there’s not is just lying.”

Another reason publishers sometimes desire Hollywood involvement is the potential for owning licensed characters that can be used for merchandise and other media. From Sin City action figures to Watchmen T-shirts, merchandising of comic book characters gets a huge boost from feature films.

But Hawkins said that, despite many comics companies moving in that direction, it’s not always easy to capitalize on licenses when the characters are unknown and less identifiable.

“You have to be aware of who your audience is when a movie or video game is made, and whether they’ll respond to that license as merchandise,” he said. “Like it’s harder to get into licensing with Witchblade than it is with, say, G.I. Joe. That’s a 30-year brand that everyone knows. Witchblade is more of a mini-icon and is less known in the average household. Everyone wants to get into the licensing market, but it’s not going to be as easy as just getting a movie or TV show made to establish that license.”

Another reason publishers have dedicated time to dealing with Hollywood is their desire to control the interpretation of their comics. After all, just because a comic has interest from filmmakers doesn’t necessarily mean it has respect.

“There’s some movie producers that you have out there that really, really care about the comics, and that really means a lot to them,” Christy said. “But there’s still a ton of producers out there that don’t care about the comics at all, really. They just like the idea, or they just might really like the character, or they just might really like the fact that it’s sold x-amount of copies, basically. So our job as publishers, when we partner with someone, is being able to work within the confines of those different things.

“It’s like, ‘Okay, you really like this character in this book, and you really want to adapt it because of this character. Is that the right thing to do? Is that what we should be doing with this property? How are you going to do it? How can we do it in a way that remains respectful to the comic book?’ he explained. “Those are the usual kind of questions and thought processes that you go through when dealing with stuff like that.”

Ross Richie, publisher at Boom! Studios, said he thinks the success of comic book movies over the last 10 years has made Hollywood more understanding when comic book companies want to protect their creations from possibly detrimental changes.

“The attitude used to be that comic book publishing was a niche business and what made comics commercial to comic book fans also made them obscure. So if you bought the rights to a comic book, you had to change it to make it more accessible to a general moviegoing public if you expected to make a hit,” Richie said. “Nowadays, the studios recognize that what makes them distinct is what makes them special and marketable, so they strive to be far more faithful.”

Hawkins said it’s tough to let Hollywood change the source material, but sometimes it’s what is best for that medium, and there are often tough decisions that comic companies have to go through. “We have 13 different projects in various stages in Hollywood, but each thing has its own look and feel,” Hawkins said of Top Cow’s movie involvement. “If you look at the Wanted comic and the Wanted movie, they were different. If you look at the Darkness comic and the Darkness video game, they’re different. They were sort of each suited for their individual mediums. And I think sometimes when you’re too faithful to the core material, you get a film like Watchmen, and sometimes that just doesn’t work.”

Yet several publishers pointed a negative impact of Hollywood in comic book publishing: An influx of people who just want to sell ideas to Hollywood by making a comic.

“I think there are a lot of people out there thinking they can publish a comic and make it rich,” Hawkins said. “To me, that’s hogwash. It’s certainly possible, but it goes back to The Rocketeer. I remember when Dave Stevens did that, he thought he was going to make a mint, and he very notably said over the years that he didn’t make what he thought he was going to make. He thought he was going to retire on it.

“There have been a lot of people enter the market with creative ideas they want to see become a movie, and they don’t know how tough the market is,” Hawkins said. “In a time when most other industries are consolidating and cutting back and trying to go forward with fewer, better things, you see in comics where there’s just more and more and more and more.”

“You’re going to have a massive influx of people coming now trying to make comics because of the ability to get movies made has gotten so much harder, and because comics have become such a high interest sector,” said Jeff Katz, who co-wrote Booster Gold before starting his own comics company, American Original. “I think people are going to get killed, because at the end of the day, and I struggle with this now, you’ve got a shrinking comic market that is based solely on a direct market. I don’t think they understand the business, and it’s not as easy as making a comic and selling it to Hollywood. You have to make something people want to read first.”

But most publishers recognize that, no matter what kind of relationship is developing between comics and Hollywood, the focus in the publishing world still has to be making comics.

“It’s made Comic-Con too damned crowded,” laughed Chris Ryall, publisher and editor-in-chief at IDW, who makes comics like 30 Days of Night. “But any negative impact it’s had depends on your approach to creating comics. Some people fear that one big bomb for a comic movie will kill Hollywood’s enthusiasm for comic book movies. Others create comics for the express purpose of selling them as movies. Since we’re not dependent on these things to survive, they don’t adversely affect IDW. So positive or negative attention from Hollywood, it’s really one of those sine-curve things that are just noise. Sometimes good noise, sometimes less good, but nothing that gets us too up or too down. We just like making comics.”

“My own personal beliefs, and this is something we try to carry out in Archaia, is that if you’re a publisher, you’re first and foremost a publisher,” Christy said. “You can never abandon the act of publishing, and you can never abandon the fact that you are putting together comic books, and you are selling comic books to readers. You’re not selling movie pitches to readers; you’re selling comic books to readers.”

More on the Comic Book Movie Decade:

The Men Behind the Movies
The
New Movies of the Next 365 Days
2010
- the YEAR of the Comic Book Movie

• Original Story: The COMIC BOOK MOVIE DECADE: The Impact on Publishing

Newsarama.com is the go-to source for the latest comic book and genre entertainment news, reviews and commentary. Newsarama’s passionate audience contributes to lively discussions ranging from classic and new comics to movies, TV, manga, anime and more. Watch previews, interviews and more on our video player, sneak peeks of new comics on our Comic Book Viewer and sign up for our RSS feeds. And be sure to join our community so you can voice your opinion on our articles and in our lively forums.

A new comic book will be released this spring about Al Franken, whose superpower may be that he’s a U.S. senator in a country that’s a superpower. He’s also got super comedy skills, or at least Lorne Michaels of “SNL” used to think so.

It’s coming from Bluewater Comic Books, which produces lots of non-traditional comic book titles; there’s one about vampire books author Stephanie Meyer, first lady Michelle Obama and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. They also publish Missile to the Moon, Legend of Isis, Pistolfist, things like that.

Says the company: “With stories that range from classic myths, science fiction and superheroes to Hollywood legends such as William Shatner, Roger Corman, Ray Harryhausen and Vincent Price, Bluewater is a fresh voice in comic publishing.”

And the company gives a brief promo of the comic book:

Political Power: Al Franken will trace the Senator’s rise from Saturday Night Live writer, a position he often used to skewer politicians, to radio talk show host to viable Senate candidate.

Writer Jerome Maida said that the comic may introduce readers to sides of Franken’s character that most did not know he possessed.

“Al Franken has this reputation —not completely unfounded, if you read the comic — as a metaphorical bomb-thrower, a guy who hates his enemies and has an in-your-face style,” Maida said. “While I did find some stuff that would support that perception, I also found out a lot more interesting stuff that makes him a real person, a character instead of a caricature.”

Maida, for instance, discovered that Franken first fell in love with politics at a young age. He also discovered that Franken co-wrote the powerful film When a Man Loves a Woman, a movie based on his wife’s alcoholism.

Coming to comic book stores everywhere in May.

CHICAGO – When Barack Obama merely mentioned how much he liked his BlackBerry, the unofficial endorsement was said to be worth as much as $50 million. While not in the same stratosphere, a small comic book startup is using caricatures of the president, First Lady Michelle Obama and other big names to drive up sales.

Blue Water Productions has tapped a vein of mass appeal, capitalizing on the star power of public figures. Besides the Obamas, co-founder Darren Davis has profiled Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Caroline Kennedy, Barbara Walters, Oprah Winfrey, George W. Bush and Lady Gaga to name a few.

“I’m not the most political person in the world,” said Davis, whose unauthorized biographical comics have become the lifeblood of the fledgling Portland, Ore.-based company. Davis said Blue Water’s 2009 revenues were close to $1 million and expects that could double this year.

“There are so many markets that this hits,” he said. “People just curious about the subject, people collecting biography comics, political collectors, women and kids.”

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The essential companion to the movie, based on the bestselling comic book by Mark Millar and artist John Romita Jr. When an average high school student sets out to become the self-styled superhero Kick-Ass, he soon finds himself in over his head after meeting “the real deal” in the shape of pint-sized lethal weapon Hit Girl and her intimidating mentor, Big Daddy. With Mark Millar as your guide, get the lowdown on the creation of the comic and the making of the film, with eye-popping art from the original comics, unseen John Romita movie artwork, script extracts and hundreds of movie photos! Adults only!

A couple of weeks ago we premiered some exclusive Kick-Ass concept art from the book, and here are a few more images to whet your appetite:

Big Daddy and Hit Girl from the comic book version of ‘Kick-Ass’

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Red Mist concept art from ‘Kick-Ass’

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Red Mist mask concept art from ‘Kick-Ass’

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Big Daddys ‘death wall’ from ‘Kick-Ass’

I’ve personally read the entire book and it’s a fascinating read with tons of great artwork and pictures from the set (I haven’t read the comic book version of the story) as well as some very funny anecdotes regarding the journey from concept to comic to movie. Be warned that the language in this book matches that from what you’ve seen in the red-band Kick-Ass trailer – I wouldn’t recommend you try to win this for your kids.

This movie looks like it’s going to be a “hard” R, and that’s highly unusual to say the least – but “unusual” is what writer Mark Millar and director Matthew Vaughn set out to do. The story of how this made it to the big screen is a very interesting one, and if you’re an adult who’s into comic books and superhero movies I highly recommend it.

To enter you must do TWO things:

1. Send an email to contests@screenrant.com with the subject “Kick-Ass Book Contest” and your full mailing address. (Entries without a mailing address will be disqualified.)

2. Become a fan of Screen Rant on Facebook. Click here to become a fan: Facebook.com/ScreenRant

Yes, I know – TWO whole steps. Tough life, right? (And yes we’ll be verifying both, home-slice.)

Contest ends on Friday, March 19th and is open to residents of the planet Earth. Winners will be randomly selected.

Thanks again to Titan books, and good luck!

Lil Wayne’s jail sentence might’ve been postponed again today (March 2) due to a courthouse fire, but that didn’t stop the rapper from firing off with the first of nearly 20 videos he’s filmed recently. The Young Money collective’s comic book-inspired “Roger That” clip premiered on the net today.

Young Money’s “Roger That” video.

Much like Eminem’s “Without Me,” the “Roger That” video uses a graphic novel motif which finds the Young Money crew adopting the art style of Sin City as well as Frank Miller’s urban noir (i.e. Nicki Minaj’s glittered corset.) YM member Tyga jumps between characters, which include a fighter pilot, a lounge singer, and, er, a guy wearing a gas mask?

 
While he tweeted today “yesterday i smiled,today i smirked,tomorrow i stop……………………….,” Lil Wayne seems more than ecstatic as he jumps around for the grand finale, at one point wearing a plaid button-up shirt, like the ones gang bangers from the west coast wear.

The video takes a few weak stabs at a narrative, but it’s really just the Young Money fam having fun, showing off their duds and celebrating being free and on top of the world.

Lil Wayne’s jail sentence might’ve been postponed again today (March 2) due to a courthouse fire, but that didn’t stop the rapper from firing off with the first of nearly 20 videos he’s filmed recently. The Young Money collective’s comic book-inspired “Roger That” clip premiered on the net today.

Young Money’s “Roger That” video.

Much like Eminem’s “Without Me,” the “Roger That” video uses a graphic novel motif which finds the Young Money crew adopting the art style of Sin City as well as Frank Miller’s urban noir (i.e. Nicki Minaj’s glittered corset.) YM member Tyga jumps between characters, which include a fighter pilot, a lounge singer, and, er, a guy wearing a gas mask?

 
While he tweeted today “yesterday i smiled,today i smirked,tomorrow i stop……………………….,” Lil Wayne seems more than ecstatic as he jumps around for the grand finale, at one point wearing a plaid button-up shirt, like the ones gang bangers from the west coast wear.

The video takes a few weak stabs at a narrative, but it’s really just the Young Money fam having fun, showing off their duds and celebrating being free and on top of the world.