Associated Content: Comic Books in the Digital Age - Can Graphic.ly Get You to Pay for Digital Content You Can Have Free?

Graphic.ly is a strange name for a company; it's an adverb. I doubt that you have ever seen a business named, for example, "Rapidly Plumbing;" and if you did, you'd assume that the person who named the company doesn't speak English as his first language. As I recall, I had been Twitter searching art-related subjects and the Graphic.ly name popped up in the timeline. When I first read it on my computer screen, the name made me curious enough as to wonder what the eponymous Graphic.ly app Beta they were pimping might be all about.

Speaking of those publishers, they've got Top Cow and Marvel on board, as well as some others in the mix; with many more purportedly on the way. What with my being a Marvel guy at heart, I am admittedly excited at the possibility of having eternally mint interactive copies of the Machine Man collection that I have lost not once, but twice. Unfortunately, I can't see that happening at the cost of 99 cents per issue. If I am going to pay that much, I want the real book; since that's about how much Machine Man issues go for anyway.

So, can Graphic.ly create such a superior product and community experience around their application as to convince us to start buying our comic books in their digital format?

As always, the consumers will determine whether or not the Graphic.ly experiment is a success. What I can report at this point is that they've got a great application and some pretty big ideas. I sincerely hope they're not the type of big ideas that will scuttle the ship in the shark-infested waters of internet commerce before it ever leaves the harbor.

Read the full article here.

Source: Associated Content

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Bookgasm Covers The Crazies

To tie in to Breck Eisner’s film THE CRAZIES (itself a remake of George Romero’s 1973 thriller), Top Cow Productions and Image Comics teamed up for a four-issue miniseries based on the movie. Rather than a straight adaptation, the creators — all of whom differ issue to issue — opted to tell a self-contained prequel, each focused on a mostly different set of secondary characters in the flick’s small Iowa town.

In the first, a poor farmer and his angry pigs are in the spotlight. In the second, another farmer — this time, of diseased cows — takes center stage. The third features the head of a funeral home. All these paranoid guys go nuts, with their stories ending on the points presumably that the film picks up.

The fourth and final issue finds a band of well-armed rednecks taking aim at the zombies who’ve infiltrated their Ogden Marsh turf. It’s the most action-oriented of the bunch, and probably what you would’ve expected the entire run to be. As a whole, the series carries the feel of good ’70s horror comics, like something James Warren would’ve published, and I hope these get collected into a trade paperback down the line.

Scripts and art are solid throughout, even though the creative talents have limited amount of space — roughly 22 pages — to tell each tale.

Source: Bookgasm

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MTV Splashpage: Mark Millar Says 'Wanted 2' Will Go On Without Angelina Jolie

Last week, word broke that Angelina Jolie had turned down the chance to reprise her role as Fox in "Wanted 2." Despite initial rumors claiming that the potential sequel had been shelved by Universal, "Wanted" co-creator Mark Millar has indicated the film will proceed without Jolie.

“'Wanted 2' will be certainly going ahead, because the first one made too much money for them not to do a sequel," explained Millar during an interview with STV. "What I heard was that there’s filming this year for a release at the end of next year, so the plot that they had will have some modifications now. Her character will have to be written out completely. We’ll see what happens, I don’t know, it changes every day. Again, things get so out of your hands with film because 300 people are involved, whereas with comics it’s just you and your artist."

The first "Wanted" movie differed significantly from the original miniseries by Millar and artist J.G. Jones, especially in regards to the fate of Jolie's character at the end of the film.

Read the full article here.

Source: MTV Splashpage

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Newsarama: Seasoned Fliers SILVESTRI & KIRKMAN Talk PILOT SEASON

Although the 1930s and 1940s have the moniker as the Golden Age of Comics, these recent years in comics have shown a new golden age with a multitude of titles, characters, creators and concepts bursting forth from all corners of the globe. There are more comics being released today than ever before, and with that abundance of competition it’s hard for a new concept to get footing – no matter how good it might be. Trying to decide what to publish has always been a hard decision, so comic publisher Top Cow has been giving the fans the decision with their yearly Pilot Season event.

Each year for the past three years, Top Cow has published several one-shots under the Pilot Season banner featuring new creations – with fans given the opportunity to vote on which of the group they’d like to see in its own series. Each year, two titles are chosen out of the group and promoted to a full-length series. Each year, creators in all shapes and sizes – from newcomers like Joshua Hale Fialkov to veterans like Joe Casey – put their ideas to the test to see what fans want to see. But now in Top Cow’s third iteration of the Pilot Season event, Top Cow has drafted a comics dream team.

For this year’s Pilot Season, writer Robert Kirkman and artist Marc Silvestri took the helm as the idea men. It was actually Kirkman’s idea to do it, and once he was on-board there was no stopping him.

“It feels pretty awesome,” said Top Cow Publisher Filip Sablik, who had a hand in the creation of Pilot Season several years ago. “I think this is one of the more exciting and innovative events we do every year. The fact that Robert approached us is a pretty good indication that the idea has some merit!”

After years of separate creative teams on each of the Pilot Season entries, this year’s event has Kirkman writing all the books. Kirkman, who was recently inducted into the inner circle of Image Comics as a partner, had been following the previous years of Pilot Season as a fan before he decided to stick his toes in the water.

Read the full article here.

Source: Newsarama

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Graze Anatomy: Witchblade Battle Ready

Has Stjepan come up with yet another super deadly variation of the Witchblade costume for Sara? Find out in Witchblade #135 this Wednesday.

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ComicVine Podcast: Rob Levin & Bryan Edward Hill Chat Broken Trinity: Pandora's Box

Rob Levin & Bryan Edward Hill call ComicVine talk about Top Cow's Broken Trinity: Pandora's Box #1.

You can listen to the podcast here.

Source: ComicVine

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Geeks of Doom Audio Reviews Pilot Season: Demonic #1

It’s time for yet another installment in the 2010 version of Top Cow’s Pilot Season. What is Pilot Season? Well I’m glad you asked. Pilot Season is the annual initiative from Top Cow started way back in the year of 2007 that gives the fans control over which one shot will get turned into a full mini-series. Imagine American Idol for comics and you basically have Pilot Season in a nutshell.

Check out Geeks of Doom's thoughts on the first issue of Demonic below in my audio review.

Listen to the review here.

Source: Geeks of Doom

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