Frank Miller’s “Gucci Guilty” Trailer

Even though the trailer is for a women’s fragrance, we will feature it here, mainly because it has been produced by comic book legend Frank Miller. The trailer for Gucci Guilty already looks promising and the full clip will be shown during the MTV Video Music Awards on September 12th. The campaign website and video can be seen here.

Detective Comics #27

This issue of Detective Comics features the first appearance of Batman. It’s currently at auction and has already beat all records for a comic book reaching $418,250.00 and still going….

Panelfly Mobile Comic Reader iPhone Application

The smart new iPhone application from Panelfly fills the digital void for comic book fans with a mobile platform for purchasing, storing and viewing comics.

An all-encompassing reader app—currently the only one of its kind available via iTunes—it includes a mobile store offering titles from a growing spate of comic publishers like NBM, SLG and Sterling, as well as complete library functionality that organizes purchased books according to title, publisher, author, artist and genre. It also takes advantage of the iPhone's landscape viewing capability, allowing users to browse with a sideways cover flow option.

When reading comics, users can swipe between full pages, refer to a page index menu or find a previously-saved page via bookmarking. Don't have the eyes of a teenage fan? The application's exclusive navigation engine intuitively zooms in from one sequential panel to the next at the tap of the screen. It's a feature that, unlike other mobile device readers that reformat the text and illustration layout, maintains the integrity of each comic's illustrations on a full-color display, giving them the unabridged focus they deserve.

Panelfly is available from iTunes for $2. Comics vary depending on publisher, but run approximately $3 each.

via: coolhunting.

Pundits examine iPhone comics stampede

There were a couple more iPhone comics announcement in our inbox this morning, bringing the approximate number of iPhone related comics announcements this week to 5,684 or so. Rather than run them all we’ll refer you to ICv2’s brief overview of the field which notes that the number of companies offering comics on iPhones has more than doubled in the past two months. And

It’s been 60 days since we updated our directory of mobile comics content (primarily for the iPhone, see “Mobile Comics Directory—Update #4”), and the number of titles available (most of which include multiple issues) has gone from 105 to 207 in that time.

Manga writer/editor/NYTimes best selling author Jake Forbes looks at the rush but takes a more critical eye with Four Challenges for Digital Comics to Overcome:

Digital comics, in their present state, are require too much compromise. The market is fragmented, with some being device specific (iPhone and a few Kindle titles) or locked to the publisher’s site (like all of VIZ or Marvel’s offerings). Offerings are still slim, with poor representation of the classics (Sandman, Maus, Bone, Blankets, anything Tezuka, and too many others to list). And as for offering an alternative to buying print comics, digital isn’t even close. At this point, it’s hard to even fathom today’s digital offerings making up a proper “collection.”

Among Forbes’ other observations — webcomics and manga are thus far very underserved on the iPhone.

via: thebeat.

Comic Strip Artist's Kit (Redux)

This is a re-post from another blog- including the whole article for accuracy~

Writing this blog, believe it or not, is a lot of hard work! But there are so many people who have said such nice things about the stuff I've written that it keeps me going.

Another side effect of the blog is that other artists find me. It's great to hear from students, fellow animation people, and every once in a while, a real legend in the field.

The other day I got an e-mail from Carson Van Osten, a famous Disney artist who did many Disney Comic Books and created the famous "Comic Strip Artist's Kit". It was created to help beginning comic artists deal with perspective problems and other drawing difficulties. I scanned my old xeroxes a while ago. It's probably the best thing I've ever seen about practical staging and drawing for storyboards or comic books.

Anyway Carson saw it on my blog and read what nice things people had said about it and it really meant a lot to him. And he offered to send me an original copy of the handout, which is 11 x 17. I'll scan it big so you can really see it well and print it out on 11 x 17 paper if you want to. He was even nice enough to inscribe it to me and if you print it out big you can read it.

Here's the history of the handout, in Carson's own words:

I wrote and drew those sketches around 1975 and I'm so tickled to know that people still find them helpful today. It started as a slide presentation for my boss to show at the Disney meeting in Frankfurt. It went over so well that he asked me to expand on it when he returned. They printed 2000 copies and mailed it to all the Disney offices. My friend John Pomeroy asked for some to give to the animators at the studio. that was the time when the animation training program was going on. Frank Thomas saw it and used it for an animation class he was teaching at the Screen Cartoonists Guild. That's how some sketches wound up in the book that he and Ollie wrote, "the Illusion of Life".

Click to see bigger.

via: sevencamels.

FALL OUT TOY WORKS ISSUE 1

Continuing a collaboration which initially began with a custom set of jackets, Dr. Romanelli and Fall Out Boy present a sneak peek into their latest venture, Fall Out Toy Works. The project begins with a special comic series, followed by various other creations, which are currently in the works. Here we get a glimpse at what Issue 1 has in-store:

Los Angeles was hit worst of all by the ecological and economic collapses of the 21st century…competition had been high to develop the new fuels of the future. Advances in solar power collection stole the very sun from the skies. Only the richest would have a clear unbent glimpse of the sun. But for a time the power was cheap and industry ran rampant as it had not for 100 years. Los Angeles skies were darkened like some neo-Dickensian London.

A young man raised in this hell, but strong of will and determined to escape, toiled from almost his youngest memories, in the giant robotic moving factories which plodded, churning along into the dessert, laying out entire communities as they went. Self-contained mobile cities of 4000 workers, all of them living together in a dark, unbearably hot, and terribly dangerous industrial hell.

When a catastrophe struck, and all lives aboard his giant robotic Land-Developer were endangered by a meltdown, this young man took control of the cybernetic reigns himself. Connecting himself with the machine to prevent the disaster. ( To this day, he is scarred and must still wear the wires running to his face and neck to prevent a meltdown of the mind….)

But the incident catapulted him to powerful places in his industrial culture… and then, at his first chance, he broke with his former masters determined to drive them into the ground.

20 years later, the young man has become fat and twisted… greedy with desires to conquer all. The gates of greater Los Angeles are owned and operated by Baron industries. All transport commercial or private are in some way controlled by him, the toll-roads, bridges and tunnels, the tariffs at the gates and ports, so in this way he came to control all manufacture… all design… all resources. Your toaster, that robot worker, that train– likely his BARON stamp was on them all….

In an environment such as this, can the human spirit survive let a lone flourish? Explore the possibilities starting in Fall Out Toy Works #1, on sale September 2nd.

Via: hypebeast

Jeremy Labsolu

Take a graphic novelist, RUN 777, grab his universe, give it to Jeremy Labsolu, and discover what happens when Mutafukaz gets high with some forbidden mexican mushrooms.

via: Jeremy Labsolu blog

Action Comics No. 1

Action Comics No. 1 from 1938 just sold at auction for $317,200.00. John Dolmayan, the drummer for System of a Down bought it.

Secret Lives of Comic Store Employees

Wired looks at the secret lives of Comic Shop employees.

Watchmen motion comics!

In WATCHMEN news, the complete 12-part “motion comic” adaptation — currently available on iTunes — will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on March 3rd. The whole thing runs more than five hours and was supervised by Dave Gibbons.

My room mate actually showed me the first issue of this. It really seemed to work pretty well, combining the comic with basic Flash animation.

via: the beat.

Charles Burns @ Adam Baumgold Gallery

Adam Baumgold Gallery presents an exhibition of drawings by Charles Burns from September 5 through October 12, 2008. This will be Charles Burns' first New York solo exhibition and will include fifty seminal drawings executed in the last 25 years that showcases Burns' masterful pen and ink drawings for his award winning comic books and other publications.