WHAT do Jesus, Lady Gaga, J. K. Rowling, David Beckham and the cast of “Glee” have in common? They are each the subject of a biographical comic book from Bluewater Productions.

And there are more yet to come: Carla Bruni-Sarkozy (August), Meredith Vieira (September), Olivia Newton-John (October) and the cast of “Twilight” (November).

Set in that middle ground between fanzines and traditional biographies aimed at the younger reader, these publications are the latest chapter in the publishing industry’s presentation of fact-based comics. The man behind them all is Bluewater’s president, Darren G. Davis, and the true-story comics have been the company’s salvation.

“Without these comics, we wouldn’t be alive,” Mr. Davis said in a telephone interview. Bluewater, like many smaller comic book companies, was struggling with a tougher, smaller market and the declining sales of comics featuring the 10th Muse, a character Mr. Davis created, which was introduced in 2000. A Michelle Obama comic book from the new series sold around 65,000 copies, Mr. Davis said. By contrast, copies of the 10th Muse sell between 5,000 and 10,000.

The turnaround for Bluewater began with the 2008 presidential campaign. Another comic book company, IDW Publishing, released biographies a few weeks before the election telling the stories of Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. Those issues sold nearly 30,000 copies to comic book stores in the first month of their release.

Mr. Davis was inspired to follow up those comics with ones devoted to Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sarah Palin. (The cover of the book featuring Mrs. Clinton even mimicked the look of the covers featuring the male senators.) Mr. Davis said he was frustrated that the women “were being treated really unfairly in the press.” He thought that the Bluewater biographies, which were released in February 2009, would help get their stories out. “You might not like them, but you have to respect them and their career,” he said.

Having such powerful women starring in comic books fits into Bluewater’s slate of “female empowerment” books, which include the 10th Muse, about a long-lost daughter of the Greek god Zeus, and comics featuring the Egyptian goddess Isis. The biographies of Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Palin were published under a “Female Force” banner that went on to include Michelle Obama; Caroline Kennedy; Diana, Princess of Wales; Condoleezza Rice; Barbara Walters and others.

Putting out the comic biographies allowed Mr. Davis to tap skills from his earlier career in marketing, publicity and advertising. He had worked for E! Entertainment Television, USA Networks and Lionsgate. “I know how to utilize the press,” he said. “People are going to publicize a Sarah Palin comic rather than a small independent comic.”

Comic book biographies are not new, of course. “There have been an awful lot over the years,” said Mark Evanier, a comic book historian. One of the first regular series, Mr. Evanier noted, was Real Fact Comics, from National Allied Publications, the forerunner of DC Comics. The series ran from 1946 to 1949 and told the stories of famous folks like the musician Glenn Miller, the writer Jack London and the actor Lon Chaney. More recent biographical comics have run the gamut from Marvel’s take on Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II, in the 1980s, to the story of Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco from First Amendment Publishing, in the 1990s.

Mr. Davis has since twice broadened the focus of Bluewater’s line. Enter the “Political Power” series with Colin Powell, Ted Kennedy, Al Franken and Joseph R. Biden Jr. The company’s latest effort is its “Fame” series, which chronicles the likes of Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and the cast of “Twilight” (individually and as a group phenomenon).

The “Fame” series will no doubt help Bluewater’s bottom line, and it will also help meet another of Mr. Davis’s goals and the Holy Grail of the comic book industry: attracting new readers. The biographies are sold at comic book stores, amazon.com and even Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft stores nationally. Mr. David said that signings at comic stores have attracted women who “didn’t even know comic book stores existed.” Getting those women in can sometimes lead to additional sales of other comics — for themselves or their children, he said.

The Bluewater books have had their share of mistakes and detractors. The first version of the cover of the Hillary Rodham Clinton comic depicted the American flag with 14 stripes. In a discussion with a caller on his show, Rush Limbaugh revealed that he did not have a cat named Banjo, as his comic book biography claimed. (His cat’s name is Punkin.) Johanna Draper Carlson, who operates the Web site Comics Worth Reading, had concerns about the books’ overall quality. “I’m afraid that anyone drawn in because, say, they’re a fan of Lady Gaga would be so turned off by what they got that it wouldn’t be a net benefit for comics,” she told newsarama.com, a Web site that covers the comic book industry. “It could confirm the outdated stereotype of comics being sub-literate and for the uneducated.”

“People say we get all our information from Wikipedia, but that’s a total lie,” Mr. Davis said. “We really go out there and do the research. We talked to Oprah’s dad before Kitty Kelley did,” he said.

And while some of the comics did not have the cooperation of their subjects, that may be changing. “We reach out to the celebrities and try to get them as involved as possible,” he said. He offers to publish public service advertisements for causes the subjects support, or to donate a percentage of the proceeds. Olivia Newton-John and Charlaine Harris, the author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels on which the HBO series “True Blood” is based, have taken part in their coming biographies. “We’ve also heard from Taylor Swift’s agent,” Mr. Davis said. “There’s a possibility we might be doing something with her.”

While the bold-faced personalities for these books may seem infinite, Mr. Davis has drawn a line in the sand. “I’m not a big fan of the reality stars,” he said. “You’ll never see a comic book with Heidi Montag.”

Last year’s panel for The Goon, Eric Powell’s odd comic book series about two friends who (to grossly over-simplify) live in a city infested by a plague of zombies, was unbridled insanity. This year’s panel was a lot more restrained, despite the presence of returning moderator Ben Garant.

This year it was all about the movie that is in development based on The Goon, so things were a little more restrained. Producer David Fincher was in the house, and while the panel wasn’t all business (by a long shot) it definitely focused more on what the movie might be and how it could get made than anything else.

The big news out of the panel is that Tim Miller and Jeff Fowler, both of animation house Blur Studios, would co-direct the film if it does get to go forward. At this point the movie is still in development and the teaser shown to the panel audience (and embedded below) is basically the reel that Fincher, Blur & Co. are taking to studios in order to raise funds for the movie.

Yes, Clancy Brown is still the voice of the Goon, though he wasn’t on hand. Paul Giamatti was there, and one of the best revelations is that before he was hired, while Blur was considering him as a great choice to voice Frankie, a sound editor built part of a test clip with sampled dialogue from Giamatti’s role in Cinderella Man. That’s fantastic — it’s also the clip that Giamatti first saw. So he was brought on to the project by hearing his own voice already playing the character! (At least I think that’s a true story — hard to tell with these guys sometimes.)

The film would be PG-13, but really doesn’t sound as if it would be hampered by that. Fincher said “You could so easily fuck this up by allowing someone to sanitize it and turn it into Pixar lite,” and all of his comments were to the effect of: I like this book, which is why I’m producing it, and I want it to hit the screen. What can’t be in the film? “No sodomy between siblings,” said Fincher.

“Pretty much all of the main characters are there,” says Powell. “Goon, Frankie, Buzzard, all the guys in the bar, Zombie Priest, all of his entourage…Peaches.” He actually said that he’s really jammed a lot of characters into the script, though there are a few things he held back for a possible sequel.

Check out the teaser trailer below:

SAN DIEGO (KABC) —
At Comic-Con, the attraction is not just comic books — the people-watching is one big comic book come to life.

A character from “The Little Mermaid,” a really creepy joker, a 6-foot-10-inch pirate and a human-sized sock monkey are just a few among the thousands of fans attending the 2010 Comic-Con.

For some, it’s a fun dress-up day without any judgment because everyone is a fan.

“Growing up as a geek, I usually got picked on, but now this is our realm,” said San Francisco resident Michael Bachman.

A San Diego resident dressed up as Captain America said thousands of people have come up to him for pictures.

“It’s just people who are brought together by a common love of entertainment and comic books and it’s a great time,” said Lisa Gregorian of Warner Brothers Television.

Movies are a major part of Comic-Con and big names like Eva Mendes and Seth Rogen made it a point to join the festivities.

Comic-Con runs through Sunday.

<!– POLL

–>

Get more Hollywood Wrap »

comic-con, comic book, celebrity, san diego, movie news, hollywood wrap, george pennacchio

<!–

–>

• Comment Now
• Email
• Print
• Report a typo
• 
  
  
  

Copyright © 2010 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

SCOTT SIMON, host:

This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I’m Scott Simon.

(Soundbite of “Star Wars” theme music)

SIMON: A long time ago in a city far, far away from the East Coast, a small band of comic book enthusiasts gathered in a subterranean lair – you might call it a basement in other dimensions – to trade tales of combat, valor and superheroes. They were geeks, and they were gathering in San Diego for what’s called Comic-Con.

Forty years later, and now the geeks – well, they’re still geeks, but they’re cool geeks. They still trade tales of sci-fi adventures and superhuman heroes, but they’re sought after by Hollywood celebrities and powerbrokers eager to hawk their latest projects to a gathering of more than 125,000 convention-goers.

Today, Comic-Con is Comic-Con International, and this weekend the rich and the beautiful will mingle with more nerds than you can shake a light saber at. Geoff Boucher writes the Hero Complex blog for the Los Angeles Times. He’s in San Diego for Comic-Con. Thanks very much for being with us.

Mr. GEOFF BOUCHER (Hero Complex Blogger): Oh, it’s nice to be with you.

SIMON: So there’s still comics at Comic-Con?

Mr. BOUCHER: Oh, absolutely, and some of them cost quite a bit. I saw that some of the comic books that are up for auction, some of the vintage ones are going for upwards of a million dollars.

SIMON: A million dollars for a comic book?

Mr. BOUCHER: Yes, exactly. I think the lower the price tag on the cover, the original price, and the more important the superhero, the more expensive it is now.

SIMON: I got to tell you, I mean, what does that say about this?

Mr. BOUCHER: Well, I think what it says is that, you know, the pop culture that you love when you’re young stays with you for a very long time. And these are the mythological heroes of America. I mean this is the Hercules and the King Arthur of American culture. And now that we’re in the special effects era with film, where huge things like “Lord of the Rings” or “Matrix” can be accomplished on a screen, and “Avatar,” the original comic book stories now can be realized with a visual style that lives up to the exploits on the page.

SIMON: You see some comic books and superheroes being essentially touted there at Comic-Con?

Mr. BOUCHER: Yeah. The way Comic-Con breaks down is part of it’s like a giant car show, and that’s where people are selling things and giving things away and just trying to create the elusive buzz that everyone talks about. And then there’s one room, it’s called Hall H, it’s really an airplane hangar, I think, with chairs, and it seats 6,500 people. And they have a series of panels there and that’s where Hollywood stars parade up there with directors. And they try to win over the crowd. They show footage from films that havent been seen yet. Sometimes they do little stunts. And thats the part that gets the most press coverage.

SIMON: A lot of Trekkies there?

Mr. BOUCHER: There are a lot of Trekkies. And it’s interesting to see too – you know, one of the interesting things about Comic-Con is that it’s become such a amplifier stack for pop culture and such a powerful microphone that really it’s no longer just the geek culture that comes here. “Glee” is here on Sunday. And TV shows like “White Collar” and “Californication” and “Weeds,” which have really little or no connection to the fanboy culture, now come here because it’s a Cannes for capes and the press is watching.

SIMON: You mean a Cannes for capes?

Mr. BOUCHER: Exactly.

SIMON: See anything that’s knocked your cape off?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. BOUCHER: My cape is fully affixed. But there are some things that I think people are going to walk away from here at Comic-Con. I think “Sucker Punch” is the movie that a lot of people think will light the largest firecracker here as far as getting people’s attention. And that’s a movie from Zach Snyder, who’s done “Watchmen” and “300,” and this is his first original script. He wrote and directed the film thats coming out next year.

And it’s – I would call it – it’s a kind of a clumsy description, but I would say it’s “Alice in Wonderland” meets “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” It’s sort of a strange inner fantasy of a woman who’s in an insane asylum but she fights samurais and German soldiers and killer droids and all the things that are in her head. And I think that’s a movie that – it really seems attuned to the video game generation and the remote control generation. I think they’re going to really like a movie that flips around faster than they do.

SIMON: Mr. Boucher, thanks so much.

Mr. BOUCHER: Thank you.

SIMON: Geoff Boucher writes the Hero Complex blog for the Los Angeles Times. He joined us from Comic-Con International in San Diego. And you can find him on herocomplex.com.

Copyright © 2010 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR’s prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio.

Largest Comic Book Convention Opens in San Diego

Mil Arcega
|
Washington


23 July 2010

The world’s largest gathering of comic book fans is taking place in California. But organizers of the annual Comic-Con say this convention is not just for comic book fans. Hollywood, TV Networks and videogame makers are all getting into the game – helping to fuel the growing consumer appetite for costumed heroes and fantasy.

Everyone loves a costume party.

And when it’s the world’s biggest comic book convention – some find it simply too hard to resist dressing up. “Since I was 14, I have liked comics, so of course by default, we started going to Comic Cons when he was young.  He kind of grew out on his own.  It was his idea to dress up,” says Jon Graham.

For serious action fans, this convention is as close as some will get to meeting their real-life super heroes – or just acting like one. “Everybody wants to see their comic book hero put into film and flying and [being tough],” says Geri Sumabom. “Doing all the things that we read about. We want to see that come to life.  It’s great!”

Comic-con marketing director David Glanzer says the once-fledgling event has grown in recent years, thanks in part to Hollywood’s love affair with action heroes. “This is our 41st year.  Each year is different.  Whether it be comic book publishers, toy manufacturers, or whatever.  Everybody’s working on new projects.  And Comic-Con is the place you can see those projects before anybody else,” he says.

The convention has turned into a marketing bonanza with celebrity guests this year including mega stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

But regular convention goers complain the event has become too big. Milan Chakroboty says “I certainly do think that it has become a victim of itself in many ways, like getting into some of the events are almost impossible.  You have to get there hours and hours in advance.”

But some say the convergence of popular culture into one giant venue is not such a bad thing. “You know it’s great that Comic-Con has grown into this pop culture event.  This is the event!  In fact I was reading in Vanity Fair and they quoted that Comic-Con is the new Sundance, it is the new Cannes Film Festival,” says J.J. Carwell

In recent years, Comic-Con has helped launch films such as Iron Man and Avatar to tremendous box office success.  This year, the number of new films being promoted has nearly doubled.

More surprised than most by the event’s success is Stan Lee – the 87-year old co-creator of Spiderman and Iron Man comic books.  Lee is mobbed everywhere he goes. “I feel like a rock star in a way.  But the only bad thing about it – I don’t get a chance to really enjoy the Con.   Because I can’t just walk around and look at the exhibits,” he says.

About 125,000 fans of comic books, movies and video games are expected to attend the 4-day event which runs through July 25.

<!–
• Watch 

–>

• Watch 




• Email 




• Print 




• Comments 

Comments (0)

Post Your Comment

* Required