Joe's Comics Imprint

[Jan]

Okay, I've made some notes from JMS's spotlight and there's some great info about the upcoming comics. JMS told so much at the time there was just no grasping it all.

Sidekick - JMS says he's always liked the idea of the sidekick - kind of 'Robin the boy hostage'. In this comic, The Cowl (because he wears a cowl) is murdered leaving Flyboy ('cause he's a boy who can fly) to try to solf the mystery while struggling to be accepted, even to accepting corporate sponsorships. It's a descent into madness.

Falling Angel - an ordinary young lady, Angel Mendez, sees an old woman dying in an alley - Lady Night. Sudenly the apparation is absorbed into Angel who tries to reform Lady Night while the latter pulls her twoard doing wrong.

Ten Grand - another ordinary guy...named Joe, who's a police investigator investigating a cult. The woman he's deeply in love with is killed and he's transformed. He can be hurt but he can't die unless he's pursuing a case of such justness and right that he can die for one minute - during which he can be with his love. He charges ten grand to accept a case to weed out losers and bring real people to him for help.

Guardians - is set in a world where all the power is Corporate and many (most?) work for the Guardian Corporation. The Point of View character has no interest in the corporations until one day he's called to a murder scene and one of the Guardians has been murdered. He's given the task of finding out who did what to whom and why.

These are due to start coming out in the Spring of 2013. Given what JMS said about being off of monthlies, I'd assumed that they'd be mini- or maxi-series but it looks like JMS has another way of approaching it, as per this interview I just found today:

And our plan is, four titles, and we’ll launch them in stages. So title one comes out by itself for about six months. Then title two comes out and the two will be running side-by-side. Then either four or six months later the third one comes out. First one is done. And then we’ll take a break on each one of these. Like the British serials. They’ll shoot like five or six episodes, then stop, reassess, then do the next batch. I want to have time. When you’re doing a monthly book, you’re like a man racing after a bus. You’re breathless and red-faced. I want to build in quality control. We’ll do 12 issues, stop, put them into a graphic novel. While you’re doing that, evaluate what you did right and what you did wrong, course correct. Take advantage of that gap. Then do the next 12. So it’s a monthly but not a monthly. It’s a series of 12 and 12 and 12 and 12. And if we want to do one or two fill-in issues, we can do that.

Some photos I took of the posters and postcards that were handed out at Comic-Con are here in case anybody missed them.

Jan

[Delenn_of_Mir]

So a graphic novel is when they put a comic series all together in one book? Forgive my ignorance I've just never dabbled in that world before. My two Babylon 5 comics are the only ones I've ever owned.

That Falling Angel one sounds cool as does Apocalypse Al. I've never been a visual person so when I read I don't require pictures, not that I object to having them. I know the graphic/comic field is just another way to tell stories. And illustrators are very talented.

I think one of the B5 comics I have has adverts in between the pages. Is this common? I guess comics are kind of similar to story magazines. I've seen a few of those before. But mostly I've just read regular novels.

[Jan]

Originally Posted by Delenn_of_Mir

So a graphic novel is when they put a comic series all together in one book? Forgive my ignorance I've just never dabbled in that world before. My two Babylon 5 comics are the only ones I've ever owned.

It can be, but not necessarily. Many phrase the compiling of one book by collecting the 'pamphlets' as a 'trade paperback'. In many cases there are extras included in the 'trades' such as concept art or alternate cover art. Other graphic novels can be entirely new material such as JMS' Superman: Earth One which had never been published before.

That Falling Angel one sounds cool as does Apocalypse Al.

Apparently Apocalypse Al is going to be a comic first and then the webseries. Haven't heard of the distribution method of the comic yet.

I think one of the B5 comics I have has adverts in between the pages. Is this common? I guess comics are kind of similar to story magazines. I've seen a few of those before. But mostly I've just read regular novels.

Yes, it's very common. Comics have so much better writing and art these days than they used to so they're very much advertising supported.

Jan

[Joe Nazzaro]

A graphic novel was traditionally a self-contained story told in comic book form with a beginning, middle and end. Watchmen is a good example, or From Hell, or Maus. It's exactly what the name denotes: a novel told in graphic form. At some point, the major comic book companies started taking multiple issues of their comic books and reprinting them in trade paperback and sometimes hardcover form. This allowed them to be sold in bookstores and opened them up to a new readership that might have thought that comics were too juvenile. Maybe somebody wouldn't pick up a Sandman comic book for example, but they would read it in book form. And when it became standard practice to collect the comics as trades, the publishers would sometimes encourage their creative people to conceptualize their stories and five or six-issue arcs, which were the oprimal size for trades. A six-issue comic could then be reprinted as a $20 trade.

But here's where it gets a bit ambiguous. While most bookstores now have 'graphic novel' aisles most of those books are not graphic novels but collections. Taking six issues of a comic book and selling them in book form does not make it a graphic novel. But on the other hand, you could reprint 'The Kindly Ones' story from Sandman and call it a graphic novel. I don't buy the Walking Dead comic book every month, but I will wait for each trade paperback to come out and read the story that way. I wouldn't consider Walking Dead to be a graphic novel because it's an ongoing series, but some readers WOULD consider it a graphic novel because it's one giant story, i.e. a novel told in comic book form. That's my take on it anyway.

[Delenn_of_Mir]

Thank You so much Jan and Joe for answering my questions. I've heard the term trade paperback before, but never knew what it meant.

I'm going to have to start looking into graphic novels methinks. JMS is such a strong writer, and it looks like there are a lot of good stories being told in this format.

[Joe Nazzaro]

Incidentally, I don't want you to think I was criticizing the notion of collecting a run of comics in paperback form; in fact, I have a lot of JMS's work in that format, including Squadron Supreme, Spider-Man and Book of Lost Souls, which are easier to read than a pile of comics. I just questioned the easy way that people call them 'graphic novels' simply because they're reprinted in book form.

[JoeD80]

Well Watchmen was first published as 12 separate issues. Some stories are more self-contained than others. True the bookstores usually keep the monthlies separate from the collections which are labeled "graphic novels"; then to further confuse it Japanese comics get their own "Manga" section. At least that's how Barnes & Noble tends to organize them.

[Joe Nazzaro]

Joe, you're absolutely right, I completely forgot that I originally bought the series as it appeared in 12 parts. I subsequently bought it in a hardcover edition and I don't think I ever looked at the single comic book version again.

[Jan]

Posted a question on the Studio JMS Facebook page:

Originally Posted by Jan Schroeder

I know there's a great menu of comics in process for the Joe's Comics line but I was wondering if there might be any chance of former faves appearing at all? Particularly Dream Police and The Book of Lost Souls. Loved them both a lot.

And JMS answered:

Originally Posted by Studio JMS

It's something we will investigate a bit down the road

Woo-hoo! I'm not expecting it to be any time soon but I'd really love to see either or both of these again someday.

Jan

[dregj]

ten grand
he can t die and but dies for a minute?
im not sure im getting this
has anyone read it
and can explain?

[Jan]

No, nobody that I know has read it except maybe the artist. I was very careful to put it just as JMS did:

He can be hurt but he can't die unless he's pursuing a case of such justness and right that he can die for one minute - during which he can be with his love.

The way I read it is that his transformation makes it so that he can only die for a very short time in very specific circumstances, not permanently like his lover (and everybody else, for that matter). How he discovers what those circumstances (pursuing a case of justness and right), we don't know yet.

But I'm looking forward to finding out.

Jan

[Delenn_of_Mir]

Originally Posted by Jan

No, nobody that I know has read it except maybe the artist. I was very careful to put it just as JMS did:



The way I read it is that his transformation makes it so that he can only die for a very short time in very specific circumstances, not permanently like his lover (and everybody else, for that matter). How he discovers what those circumstances (pursuing a case of justness and right), we don't know yet.

But I'm looking forward to finding out.

Jan

That actually sounds like a really cool plot point!

[Jan]

Part of a FB post from JMS:

Originally Posted by JMS

...we got in our very first finished issue of our very first comic to appear under the Joe's Comics imprint in April from Image,

So of course, I asked which would be first and who the artist would be and he replied:

Originally Posted by JMS

Ten Grand will be the first one out the door. Will hold details for a more formal announcement. We plan to bank as many as we can ahead of the April premiere so we can ensure the books don't have any delays or problems, which is why we got issue 1 done so early.

ETA: And a later comment:

We're going to make a big debut with the book at C2E2 in Chicago, also.

Jan

[Jan]

Just found a tweet from Patricia Tallman:

Originally Posted by Patricia Tallman‏@patriciatallman

AWESOME working with @YuriLowenthal and @Robin_A_Downes on @Studio_JMS Joe's Comics first release secret project! More news soon!

I'm wondering if this will be unveiled at C2E2.

Jan

[Jan]

A new tidbit from JMS about Ten Grand:

Originally Posted by Fans of J. Michael Straczynski

Just finished writing the second issue of Ten Grand, the flagship title coming out from the reborn Joe's Comics (the same imprint that created Midnight Nation and Rising Stars). We'll have more to say about this closer to the debut this Spring, but suffice to say for now that Issue One looks crazy good. (Also posting this over at the Studio JMS facebook page, which if you're not there already, y'all should check it out because some really cool stuff is going to be happening there very soon.)

Jan