
Written by Michael Schwartz , Oceanverse chronicles the adventures of Clayton Hemmings and his crew aboard the Red Herring, a submarine in search of the mysteries of the sea. I met Michael at one of the CGS gatherings and he is a great guy. You should check it out. BTW, it's free and updates every Monday and Thursday. If you like it, let him know and buy the first issue. Check it out at http://www.oceanverse.com/

This could solve the problem of taking your e-comics into the . . . well, that place where people sit and think. The associated press reports that Sony will be adding a digital reader service to its the PlayStation Portable systems to download comics.
Marvel, who is already way ahead of the digital curve with its Digital Comics Unlimited service (And yes, Marvel's acronym is DCU), has signed up to provided Spider-Man, X-Men and the Fantastic Four when the service starts in December.

DC has some of the coolest giveaways at conventions. First, there were Flash rings and Legion flight rings. Then there was a green Lantern Ring. When Blackest Night 1 came out, the company supplied black lantern rings to the stores. Now, DC is giving fans an opportunity to collect every ring in the emotional spectrum. But, there is a catch. You have to buy more books.
Bleeding Cool news describes the incentive as follows:
For every 25 copies of Doom Patrol #4, Booster Gold #26, R.E.B.E.L.S. #10, Outsiders ‘24 and your retailer orders, they can order a bag of fifty Sinestro rings, Agent Orange rings, Indigo Tribe rings and Star Sapphire rings respectively.
And for every 50 copies of Justice League of America#39, Blackest Night #5 and Adventure Comics #4 sees you with a bag of fifty Red Lantern rings, Green Lantern rings and Blue Lantern rings, also respectively.
Each ring will ship every two weeks, Yellow on November 4th, Orange on November 18th, Red on December 2nd, Green on December 16th, Blue on December 30th (well, December 23rd now, I guess, thanks to Comic Book-Free Day), Indigo on January 13th and Violet on January 27th.
Besides, you can already buy the shirts (as can be seen by Dan Didio's strip show at the last few cons). Soon, everyone's FB profile will mimic the image on the left.
Remember that summer when Armageddon and Deep Impact both came out involving asteroids that were going to destroy the earth. And then there was Troy vs. Helen of Troy and Two Poseidon Adventures. Well, two different sources have decided to analyze whether Comic Sales are affected by movie sales. First, By Lisa Schmeiser at the bigmoney.com wrote Batman's Comic Tragedy: Why don't big screen adaptations boost comic book sales? This article concludes that it does not and cannot unless the comics marketing and distribution changes. But commends companies like Dark Horse for their aggressive marketing.
Second, Wesley Smith at the Examiner wrote a three part story named Why do movie sales not translate into comic book sales? I don't want to give away his conclusion, but the last installment is entitled, Comic Book Movies do Impact Comic Book Sales.
My view (if you cared), is that I'm not sure that movies boosting sales would be a good thing. I love comic books. I love comic movies. But, they are not the same thing. The movies (for the most part) are watered down versions that, if we are lucky, capture the essence of the book. If these movie fans all would start buying the comic books, my fear is that creative control would be taken away from the creator, writer, and artist. Instead it would lie in the hand of the focus group marketing guru. At the end of the day, the comics industry is a business. I kind of like that the comics industry is below the mainstream radar yet wealthy enough to support the big guys and (for the most part) a healthy independent market. I would hate for the model to go Hollywood.
Hit and Runs
- Nuke the Fridge says that he has learned from an inside source at Universal Studios that the company will be releasing both the Back to the Future trilogy and the Jurassic Park’ trilogy in October/November 2010. Heavy.
- Newsarama is reporting that Geoff Johns has signed on as co-writer of the long developing SHAZAM movie. Very exciting. BTW, I also learned at SDCC that he is writing an episode of Smallville featuring the JSA. (Last year he wrote the popular Legion storyline for the show.)
- The new Avatar trailer debuts today on http://www.apple.com/trailers/ at exactly 10:00 EST.
- The Superman Homepage has a new installment of Ask Matt, where Superman Comics Editor, Matt Idelson answers questions about the book submitted by readers.