There have been lots of comic conventions this summer, including Wizard World in Chicago and San Diego.
Baltimore has a two-day convention this weekend, September 11 and 12. Notable comic book artists and writers scheduled to appear include John Romita (listed as John Sr, ask me why sometime), Don Rosa (Walt Disney's Donald Duck comics), Walter and Louise Simonson, Mark Waid, Kurt Busieck, Alex Saviuk (he does the ink on the daily Spider-Man comic strips in the newspaper, and also did about 100 issues of "Web of Spider-Man" comic), and many more. Check it out at http://www.comicon.com/baltimore/
If the Baltimore comic convention is too far for you to travel, check out a list of conventions that may be closer to where you live at http://www.comicon.com .
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The big buzz at Marvel is Joss Whedon and John Cassaday doing a new X-Man comic from #1 on called "Astonishing X-Men". Joss made a huge name for himself by creating and producing "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" TV series for many years. This seems to be a big hit for Marvel.
This seems to be a trend, as comicdom reaches out to well-known authors or popular TV or movie writers to take over comic books. Peter David comes to mind as a writer who has been doing TV shows, novels and comics for many years. More recent folks are Kevin Smith and Brad Meltzer on Green Arrow, and J. Michael Strysinski on Spider-Man.
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Marvel 2nd Quarter numbers--my comments:
Marvel continues to look very good as a business. You can check out the numbers for yourself on the Marvel website ( http://www.marvel.com ) under the "About Marvel" button near the top of the page.
Marvel has only shown two movies this year. The first was The Punisher, released April 16th, and the second was Spider-Man 2 on June 30th. (The revenues for the Spider-Man movie would not have shown up in the second quarter results, except for the first release day.) According to the results, the profits were in large part due to toys, and I see that money from clothing and accessories is up about 8 million for the same quarter in 2003. That's a lot of comic-related clothing.
Interesting to note is that, at some level, all of this brand recognition is translating to high profit in comic book publishing. Net sales from comic book publishing is up about 2 million dollars for the quarter (about 5%) and about 6.5 million dollars for the first six months of the year. This is over a 15% increase in net publishing sales. Although the money is in "trades" (softbound books) that you see at the bookstores, I wonder if this is translating into new comic book sales for retailers.
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