This guy has just left Marvel after 5 years. He announced this 2 weeks ago on his facebook and had this message for Marvel
5 years and it’s finally over. 2 months ago I turned in my early termination for my Marvel Exclusive contract. It’s over. No more superheroes, no more sad men in tight clothes, no more covers, at least for a long while. :) I can’t believe it’s over. After 300 painted covers, countless redesigns, 10 issues of interior art I can finally close this chapter of my career and focus on SIXMOREVODKA with all my strength and energy. I feel relief. And I feel like things are brighter than they’ve ever been. Thanks to Marvel for the great 5 years. It taught me a lot, but now it’s time to move on. :D ahhhhhhhhh
Along with this photo
Half Promoting his new project/ half addressing his feelings to Marvel.
He then had this to say, very inappropriately, at the Marvel 'Team Spirit' talk at Fan Expo today.....
"They never put me with any writers that I liked,” before launching into a tirade about Marvel and ripping into writer JMS, whom he said writes “like toilet paper"
He then complained about not getting paid by the hour and having to redo work because Marvel Editors couldn't make up their mind. One example he mention was the design of Lady Bullseye, which he did countless designs for they seemed to randomly pick one. He went on this rant throughout the talk and even cut Jonathan Hickman off at times.
Mark Waid on twitter had this to say " Dear #MarkoDjurdjevic : you will not be missed."
On one side I can see his point, but he totally went about this the wrong way.
He's a fantastic artist but...... Thoughts?
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Surely anyone reading a prominent Marvel title has noticed a certain character popping up here and there lately. No? Well it's Jean Grey/Phoenix/Dark Phoenix.
Here's some examples where I myself noticed (and I'm sure there's probably some I've missed)
Dark Phoenix is plucked from time and is used to end the world in this, but that's just this prologue issue :) And she's pretty prominent on the cover Her Age of Apocalypse version is currently fighting with X-Force as they now reside in that universe. She's a very prominent character in the story The final issue of Uncanny before the relaunch.Normally I would take a cover like this as a throw back to the original line-up, and on it's own it is, but with everything else going on.....Anyone that's been reading the arc in X-Men will agree it's confusing but ultimately awesome. 2 stories are being told in this arc, one in the past when Jean was with the X-men originally So those are the ones I've seen. I think what's going on is Marvel wants to bring Jean back, and that they also have an idea as to how. However, the average comic fan would be against that. So what they are trying to do is get people interested in her character NOW, without resurrecting the poor girl, and are trying to create a situation where it seems like the fans asked for her to come back because there's such an interest. If 50% of fans wouldn't mind that happening then they will do it. Currently I'd say 5% actually do, and to bring her back at all will always be cheap.
But they just want to justify it to sell the comics. To me, this is the case anyway. It looks inevitable that she will return and with all the hype over at DC, which I predict will put them above Marvel for a time, Marvel need BIG stories.
Has anyone seen her anywhere else?
PS: I don't think she'll come back from AOA, I have better faith in Remender.
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I've been listening to some of the podcasts of DC panels from SDCC. Interesting stuff to say the least. Also, I think I warmed to Dan Didio. Go figure.
One comment he made that struck accord with me was that they have a 5 year plan with this initiative. I think that's really great that the plan goes that far and I hope they see it through. Todd Macfarlene has been noted saying he thought that DC had completely screwed up having everything out in the same month and I found myself disagreeing with Spawn and Haunt creator. That comment by Didio shows just how much thought has gone into this and lets not forget, there will be 2nd and hopefully 3rd waves of new number 1's to look forward to. Dan Didio Another interesting note made was that for those 5 years, there will not be an Event/Crossover. I also think that's a great move. The best example I can think of , of the over saturation of events and tie-ins, is Marvel over the last year. We've had Shadowland, Chaos War and now Fear Itself. Only Fear Itself has been impressive, but it has a million and one horrible tie ins unfortunately. Dc are going to let each of the new titles focus on themselves and build upon that title. Each team won't have to worry as much about what's happening with everyone else, to an extent anyway.
So I now have 2 predictions. #1 iN 5 years we are going to have an amazing DC Event launched. It will be big because it'll be the first since Flashpoint Chaos War #5 And #2, I think we will see some crossovers between titles, but on a smaller scale. Kyle Higgins is writing both Nightwing and Deathstroke. They've got to have an arc together at some stage don't you think? Something similar to Marjorie Liu's Daken and X-23. The Higgins thing is just one example mind.
I'm also way more psyched about Flash number 1 after hearing Francis Manapul talk so excitedly about it over the weekend
Little over a month now until the DC Relaunch. I, for one, am excited. On first glance as everything was being announced, my first thoughts were "Wow these all look so great. I'm picking them all up!" Some weeks have passed and I've come to my senses. One reason is I don't have a lot of money month to month, but I do spend most of it on comics :D. Another is that my local 'comics' shop is bollocks and is really a games (Warhammer and what not) store that happens to sell comics. No on who works there even knows who Booster Gold is. Can you believe that???? So through a combination of amazon, ebay and that store, I'll be picking up these numbers one's and intending to follow them each month for the foreseeable future.
I'm going to try and bring some sort of order to this, so I'll do this by going through each of the ranges/groupings, as I understand them.
SUPERMAN
Action Comics 1:
Ya, Grant Morrison is writing this so try and stop me. All-Star Superman is my second favorite comic ever so this looks to be a treat. Rags Morales (of Identity Crisis fame) isn't a bad artist either which helps.
Might pick up: Superboy 1. Cover looks so crazy, but I don't know
Batman
Batman 1:
Scott Snyder is an unbelievably awesome writer. His detective comics run has been dark, gritty and memorable. Now he's tackling Bruce which is interesting. Greg Capullo's art is something I've admired for years and really looking forward to seeing him draw Batman. Also, imagine owning a copy of Batman number 1.....
Batman: The Dark Knight:
Simply put, I love Finch's art so this will be in my pile
Batman and Robin: Great writer/artist team on a title that has never once disappointed me. Even the fill in issues after Morrison and between Tomasi were great
Batwoman: Finally it's arriving. I loved the crazy panel arrangements in the previous Batwoman stories. She's a great character and has been missed these last few months. Her popping up in INC. was a nice to see.
Nightwing: why is he Nightwing? Why's his costume slightly different (red)? I've grown to love Dick Grayson greatly and far more than I could have predicted. Kyle Higgins appears to be a great writer so it looks like this is going to be a great title. The only sad thing is that Dick isn't partnered with Damien :( Bummer.
Maybe: Batgirl, not sure yet. Might see what people think. I am very curious for Catwoman though, mostly because Judd Winnick is writing and he's great.
Green Lantern
Green Lantern:
I will be picking up Green Lantern issue 1 even though War of the Green Lanterns has disappointed me. I do own every Johns trade from Rebirth so basically I must and have to pick this up.
Maybe: Ya so, Corps, New Guardians and Red Lanterns are in my maybe pile. It's heavy on the pocket to get each of these so I think I'll wait and see what's supposed to be good.
Justice League
Justice League:
too big a title to say 'no' to. I have high hopes for this. Geoff Johns is one of my favorite writers and Jim lee is a huge inspiration to me as an artist. Everything about it sounds great to me. Some people are way too obsessed and vocal with the collars and knee pads. Calm down and enjoy the stories, huh?
Wonder Woman: I am excited about Wonder Woman! That is something I thought I'd never, ever say. But the prospect of Azzarello and Cliff Chiang's art is simply mouth watering. I for one, didn't mind her costume change and thought no one would have cared if they hadn't made such an announcement about it. I think I even preffered the image to the left, with pants, than the altered one. Hope they asked Chiang before editing it.
Aquaman:
If Geoff Johns is writing something, sign me up. I'm glad there is an Aquaman title for 2 reasons. I liked his arc in Brightest Day and he's the best part about Brave and the Bold.
The Flash: I'm loving Flashpoint and even if the story is S**T in this new Flash series, I admire and adore Francis Manapul's art to an unhealthy degree
Maybe: Captain Atom and Justice League International are probably my 2 highest maybe's of all. And for one reason. Judd Winnick's Generation Lost. They are in my maybe's simply because he's not involved :(
The Edge Titles
Stormwatch, Grifter and Men of War. They look COOL. Paul Cornell writing Stormwatch doesn't hurt either and I'm curious to see how WildStorm integrates acceptably into DC
The Dark Titles
Swamp Thing, Animal Man, Demon Knights and Frankenstein:
Snyder on Swampy you say? Yes please. Lemire on Animal Man and the really cool ongoing Frankenstein after the awesome Flashpoint tie in? Yes, YES. Paul Cornell on Demon Knights? F*** Yeah!!.......... So, ya I like the idea of these a lot.
Young Justice
Not picking up any of those titles. They just don't appeal to me.
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Ok, so that's like 19 number 1's I'm going to pick up. How many I will I stick with? Only time will tell. Is there anything I've left out you think I'm really going to regret missing? Is there anything I've added you think I should actually stay away from? Let me know what your thoughts are and what titles you aim to get.
Whatever you like or don't, it's an exciting time to be a comics fan
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This is a data visualistaion of comic book sales figures from January 2005 until December 2010. Each balloon represents a comic book title released in that time. Please see original post here for more info and larger versions of images as well as other images.
Click here for the full image *(Warning! It's massive. 19,844 x 14032 pixels. you may be able to download it and view on a native software)
Part of the project was to create a software program to handle the data in some way. I coded the software 'Processing' to handle the data, to count the complete numbers of an issue and to create the visuals.
The bigger the balloon and the higher it floats represents how many issues in total that title sold over the time. The further away from the left hand side of the image the balloon is, the more issues it had released. Colour indicates publisher. Red = Marvel Blue = DC Green = Image Grey = Dark Horse Pink = Everybody else
To give some perspective, Amazing Spider-Man sold 10, 843,815 copies with 176 issues released in this time.(this includes some re-releases of course, the Obama issue being an obvious example)
Close ups at varying zoom sizes:
This was created using the software Processing with data gathered from Diamond Distributors monthly sales reports in relation to comic book stores orders.
Tweet it, Facebook it, Tumblr it. Whatever your into I would appreciate any kind gestures of spreading the image. The overall aim is to get as many comic fans (people actually interested in comics) to see this.
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