Friends of Jalila - AK Comics - Middle East Heroes

One of the great superhero teams of the sixties which I loved as a kid was the Legion of Superheroes. What was so different about them was that the stories were set a thousand years in the future, taking them out of the tired run-0f-the-mill DC format. In fact, I always thought it was a mistake having Superboy as a member but I guess that was a marketing decision.

In recent years, attempts have been made to revive the Legion, but in my opinion none of them have really worked and I would like to see a return to the classic legion of the sixties - there is still plenty of work to be done in providing adventures for the likes of Saturn Girl, Shadow Lass and my favourite of them all - Phantom Girl:

Oh - and couldn't we have a movie or better still a TV series? The rotating leads would make an excellent TV series.

You can find out more here:

http://members.shaw.ca/legion_of_super-heroes/mainpage.htm

Another batch of entries arrived today from a school where I gave my 'How to Make a Comic Book' masterclass. This lasts all morning - so any teachers out there who are interested - it's a nice thing to do near the end of term - Years 7 & 8 are probably the best ages (10-13) but older students may also benefit. It's very hands-on with a short introduction on world comics; followed by a brainstorming section for the characters and plot outline; the group then breaks down into script writers, artists and 'editor' (progress chaser) before coming together with a four-page finished product at the end of the morning which is then copied and distributed. This is also good for marketing (always an issue in modern schools) with the opportunity for lots of newspaper-friendly photos.

Please contact me if you are interested.

Meanwhile, here are some of the latest entries:

Jason Fleming's characters are The Caliph, The Emir, The Sultan and the Shah. They command the four 'fundamental' forces of nature. The Caliph can produce lightning from his fingertips but also can control all electrical machinery such as computers. The Emir controls magnetism and through that has power over metallic objects - he can twist the barrel of a gun for example. The Sultan controls gravity and can levitate but also make other objects so heavy that they fall helplessly to the ground. The Shah commands light and can make himself invisible by bending the light. But each of these characters has a different but equally strange weakness. You will need to read Jason's stories to find out what they are.....

Jason has slightly broken the rules of the competition by having all-male characters (but we don't care!) but this is balanced by Sheila Ahmad's entry which are all female characters! There's Princess Amina, who is from West Africa, and can duplicate herself to form an army of dozens - but each time one of her 'army' gets killed, it takes one day off her life - how long does she have left? Princess Amina lives in the 16th century. There's Tanya, a Scythian warrior from the mountains of Kazakhstan. Tanya comes from a tribe that has isolated itself for centuries and which follows the 'old' religion of paganism. Tanya lives at the time of Ancient Greece. Tanya is seven-feet tall and carries a broadsword equal to her height! The third member of the team is Siti Sati, who comes from Zanzibar. Siti Sati has the most beautiful voice in the world and is able to bend others to her will when she sings to them. Siti Sati lives at the time of the German occupation of Zanzibar in 1900. And finally, there's Jasmine, a fashion model in LA today. Jasmine has the ability to walk through time with the same ease that others walk through space. These four characters have their own individual stories but Sheila has this amazing idea that all four of them are connected telepathically, that there is something drawing them altogether to a place in Egypt in 2006 and Jasmine has been somehow given the task of making this happen. Wow! What an imagination this girl's got!! She's also written a great story that goes with her descriptions - if I have time, I'll stick that on the web as well.

Another entry comes from Salman Singh and is based on Arabic mythology, in which he has a deep interest. His characters are: Belit, who likes to be known as Belle Star. She is an extremely beautiful goddess. When other women look upon her, they cry in shame at their inadequacy. Belle is able to control the power of the Sun, but she can be a bit vain and is not terribly bright - a tarnished angel perhaps. Bes, who likes to be called Beast, is a happy, cheeful, short, fat ugly God who likes to get drunk and have a good time - which usually includes having a good fight with the bad guys. Nergal, who likes to be called Nerd (which tells you a lot), commands the Code of Life - the program or the DNA, if you like, that is the operating system for all living things. With this talent, he is able to create new forms of life when he needs to in order to help the Gods to combat the bad guys. Astarte, who likes to be called Bad Ass, is a tough, militaristic woman, who (from the look of Salman's drawing) likes to wear a lot of leather and rubber! She is beautiful in a cold, clinical kind of way and is a master of all forms of weaponry. Salman's Gods have lived on the Earth for thousands of years, ever since their spaceship crashed here. They are not immortal but have an average life span of 100,000 years. Originally, there were twenty of them, but slowly over the centuries, this has been eroded down to four who remain very close to each other - but also they have become very protective of the humans amongst which they live. They call themselves the Annurabi.

Remember, the UK competition ends on June 30th but is also open to people outside the UK - in fact one entry has already arrived from France and another from the US.

And here is the AP article again - this time in the Cincinatti Enquirer:

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/AB/20060613/ENT/606130311/

And the Delaware News Journal:

http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060613/LIFE/606130311/1005/

MacLean's news feed in California:

http://www.macleans.ca/shared/print.jsp?content=e061023A

It can also be found in the Kuwait Crime News:

http://www.einnews.com/kuwait/newsfeed-KuwaitCrime

but you need to be a member to access the full article.

I think that's probably enough now to demonstrate just how successful this interview has been. Well done to all concerned!

Still tracking that AP article across the world's press. Here it is again on the Redding website:

http://www.redding.com/redd/fe_books/article/0,2232,REDD_17500_4762918,00.html

I'm finding it very interesting how sub-editors use AP articles - a new title, a slight twist of the text - and there we have another page of the newspaper or website completed. The power of agencies like AP, Reuters, Itar-Press and so on to plant news in this way is fascinating.

Here it is again on PE.Com

http://www.pe.com/entertainment/stories/PE_Fea_Ent_D_comics.new.258b545.html

And also in Santa Cruz, New Mexico:

http://www.santacruzlive.com/ex/content/view/5204/126/

Fascinating

A great photo of Ayman from Jam! the showbiz website - another follow-up from the Associated Press interview. It looks like the Diamond distribution has gotten off to a great start in the USA - well done to all involved!

http://jam.canoe.ca/Books/2006/06/10/1624702-ap.html

And here it is again in the York Dispatch:

http://www.yorkdispatch.com/entertainment/ci_3927835

On the Yahoo Canada website:

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/10062006/2/entertainment-batman-meets-aladdin-form-21st-century-comic-book-heroes.html

From LJ World in Kansas:

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2006/jun/11/batman_meets_aladdin/?arts

And the Herald Net in Washington State:

http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/06/06/11/100tra_tl10mideast001.cfm

So all in all, a pretty successful interview!

The AP article has begun to spread out worldwide. Here's a version appearing in the Hindustan Times in India:

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1716490,00110004.htm

This is good news for AK as it demonstrates there is a potential market for the comic book in South Asia.

Maenwhile, let me introduce you to Jheremy Rhapaak, one of those great Brazilian artists who has been working on Aya and Zein. You can find out more about him here

http://www.lynx-studio.com/samples.php3?id_rubrique=90

and here:

http://raapack.multiply.com/

You should certainly check out his final-inked image of Batman for deviant art which is very, very good. I wish I had his talent.

Our fun UK summer competition finishes on June 30th. Many thanks to all those UK fans of AK Comics who have entered so far. All the entries have been excellent. Here are just three of them to keep you excited:

Tom Watson's team is called Arabian Knights and is based on well-known figures. There's Ali Baba - he controls an army of 40 robots, each of whom has a different skill. There's Djinn - a sorceror's apprentice; a comic character whose sorcery sometimes goes wrong! The third member of the team is Scheherazade who is able to tell stories that become true as she is telling them (!) and finally there's Cleopatra, who is able to leave men breathless and weak with her beauty and who commands the snakes and all the other creatures that live in the desert.

That's a great effort Tom - well done! Tom is only 11 years old, folks!

Then there's Leila Kadir who has based her team on Arabian heroes from the Middle Ages. There's Prince Sandokan, a swashbuckling character who sails a ship through the skies; Then there's Prince Antara - a combination of Robin Hood and King Arthur. Antara becomes stronger and more powerful when the beautiful lady Ablah is close to him, but as she moves further away........ . The third of Leila's team - which she calls the League of Arab Heroes - is Meera, who wanders Panarabia bringing love to those who deserve it and who has the power to turn evil back upon itself. Then, finally, from an earlier period - there's the Queen of Sheba who is the leader of the team, of immense intelligence and a wide range of psychic powers that she is still exploring. WOW!!! Can't wait to read more from Leila - well done!

Chris Robinson has opted for a team of super-villains!! His ideas have grown from a project he is doing at school on mythology. Most of his fellow students have chosen Greece and Rome - but Chris is interested in Egyptian mythology. His super-villains called The Pantheon include: Anubis - a villain who controls a pack of jackals that swarm through a small town terrorising the inhabitants at night; Horus - a villain who controls a flock of hawks and can command them to attack the police or army units; Tefnut - a female villain who can control water, making torrential rain fall on her pursuers for example; and Sekhmet who has the strength of a lioness and can control cat-like animals of all types. Some great ideas there, Chris.

What a great bunch of kids - with wonderful imaginations. There's still time to enter this competition which finishes on June 30th. Good luck everyone!! Remember everyone who reads AK Comics is a winner.

There's a great new article written by Associated Press on AK Comics this month as we build up towards Comicon in July.

AP articles are widely circulated which is great news for AK and you can find a copy of the article on a legal website - of all places - here:

http://news.findlaw.com/ap/e/53/06-09-2006/c9d4003dffd09cca.html

Daerick Gross is the managing editor of AK Comics and is featured in the article. You can find some of Daerick's own exceptional artwork here:

http://www.studiogpub.com/artwork/print/dsr/SciFi.htm

Another article as part of the build-up, with some good analysis, appears in one of my favourite comic websites Silver Bullet. You can read that here:

http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/soapbox/114895569441667.htm

There have also been some very positive reviews of AK Comics following its launch in the US and UK through Diamond. Here are a couple from The Comics Review:

http://www.thecomicsreview.com/temper.php?id=116
http://www.thecomicsreview.com/temper.php?id=127

Robert E Howard probably based Red Sonya on the Scythian warrior women of ancient Greece. This territory was also part of the vast sprawling ancient loosely-governed empire sometimes known as Cimmeria in about 1200BC.

The Wikipedia entry on Amazons is excellent and can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazons

I'm hurrying this blog entry a little because I keep getting cut off.

A more fun site is this one with lots of terrific links:

http://folk.uio.no/thomas/lists/amazon-connection.html

I've just recently been enjoying the new Red Sonja graphic novel. Of course, we all remember the surprisingly good 1985 film with Brigitte Nielsen and Sandahl Bergman (if you ignore the annoying cute little kid) but isn't it time now for another one? Yes, it is! And a new one is already in production - but currently locked in development hell. We'll see what happens.

You can find out more about the original movie here:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089893/

And there's an excellent - really excellent - background article on Red Sonja from Wikipedia here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sonja

There were also some excellent paperbacks in the 1980s and it would be nice if these were reprinted - 20 years is after all a big enough gap for a new market to grow through and become interested.

For such an exciting character with a long pedigree stretching back to Robert E Howard, there are surprisingly few fan groupings for Red Sonja - hopefully this will change in the future.

One of Jalila's biggest friends and fans must be Vampirella - the exotic vampire-siren from the planet Drakulon.

Originally developed by the legendary Forrest J Ackermann of 'Famous Monsters of Filmland' fame, she really came to life through the work of sf satirist, Ron Goulart in the eponymous Warren publication of the 1970s. Ron also wrote some excellent Vampirella novels around that time which really deserve to be reissued.

You can find out more about Vampi here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampirella

And she has her own website here:

http://www.vampirella.com/

There was a 1996 Vampirella film which had a disappointingly small budget but was in fact quite a decent film, acted with great gusto by all those involved. Talisa Soto made quite an excellent Vampirella and the details of the film can be found here:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118063/

There should of course be a new big-budget Vampirella movie and it's extrordinary that this hasn't been picked up yet - there are rumours of course, as always, but nothing concrete.

For many people, Julie Strain was the ultimate Vampirella pin-up model and her website can be found here:

http://www.juliestrain.com/

Although the newest Vampirella also looks pretty much the part - enter the stage Maria deAngelis:

http://vampimodel.tripod.com/maria.html

Meanwhile, you can find out more about the excellent books of Ron Goulart - including his Groucho Marx, PI books, the funniest detective books ever written - here:

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/g/ron-goulart/

And of course, we finish where we started with the legendary Forrest J Ackermann:

http://4forry.best.vwh.net/

After a hard day at work defying and defeating evil, most of Jalila's friends like to retire to the Femforce headquarters for a sauna and massage and a very dry martini.

Femforce is the wonderful creation of our near-namesakes AC Comics - in particular Bill Black and Stephanie Sanderson. This is one you really can't miss. Don't worry too much about continuity. The creators worry about this but actually you can pick up the running commentary after just a couple of issues - meanwhile you can certainly enjoy the art! You can find out more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femforce

With its sardonic humour, breath-taking array of characters, first-class artwork and nostalgic yearning, femforce have developed a huge cult following over the last 15 years.

Femforce also have just about the best fan website that you could ever hope for. You can find it here:

http://www.femforce-femfans.com/

And AC Comics themselves do a pretty mean blog which can be found here:

http://www.accomics.com/accomicsfemforce/femfhq.htm

And finally, another fan site can be found here:

http://rkscroy.tripod.com/accomics.htm

Well, yesterday's post seems to have stirred up a hornet's nest - with many people asking about British Romance Comics to which, I confess, I don't really have much in the way of an answer.

But in response to requests, I have decided to try and build a collection of such comics and this may eventually lead to an exhibition somewhere - so if anyone has or knows where I can get copies of Valentine, Mirabelle, Bunty, Judy and all the rest - I would be pleased to hear from you - especially the annuals. I think I'm looking for anything that's pre-Jackie which was really the first of the pop/teenage culture magazines rather than a comic book.

Meanwhile, here's a great link to Misty - perhaps the last of those great girls' comic books. There's a tale here of just how stupid a comic book company can be - it has succeeded in alienating it's biggest fan and all her supporters. Shame on you Egmont!

http://www.mistycomic.co.uk/

Here's a good introduction from Gateway:

http://www.gatewaymonthly.com/girlcomics.html

I must confess to a soft spot for those wonderful romance comics that existed from the 1940s to the early 1960s. I don't understand why no one has taken the initiative to put a batch of them together and reissue them as an economy edition.

Meanwhile, we have Jeanne Martinet's wonderful 'Truer Than True Romance', probably the funniest graphic novel I've read in a very long time - but be a little careful - it's not for children.

You can find out more here:

http://www.dccomics.com/features/romance/index.html

And you can get reprints of some of the comics here:

http://www.jennymiller.com/romancecomics/girls_romances2/index.html

A more serious analysis can be found here:

http://www.matt-thorn.com/comicology/romance/index.html

Some more great news for all the friends of Jalila.

AK Comics will be featured in the June edition of 'Comic Box' - the leading comic book review magazine in France. This is a tremendous honour for us and we are already licking our lips at the thought of this high quality production giving AK the prominence it deserves in France. France is very much a key to our development strategy - more comic books (BD) are bought in France than any other European country and it's the country where our subscription base is even higher than the UK.

You can check out the current issue of 'Comic Box' and maybe take out a subscription here:

www.comicbox.com

I know some of you will have seen the announcement in the UK press a couple of days ago and my follow-up letter to the 'Independent' newspaper yesterday - we have won our battle against the absurd distribution arrangements for magazines in the UK!

For those of you from overseas, let me explain the background:

In the UK, there are just a handful of big magazine publishers (four). There are three distributors to newsagents (WH Smith, John Menzies, Dawson News) but these distributors have divided the country up into three sections - so there is a monopoly in each section. There's a very cosy, unhealthy relationship between the distributor and the publishers.

The customer loses out because magazine prices are high - so high in fact, that I subscribe to the magazines I want to buy from Spain and it's still cheaper than buying them in the UK!!

The customer also loses out because the distributors are LAZY - they will only distribute to a fixed number of retailers.

The retailer loses out because he has to agree to the terms offered to him by the local monopoly distributor. He has no choice.

Small publishers lose out because the distribution costs are ridiculous (68% of the cover price!) and also because you have to provide tens of thousands of copies to the distributor - two-thirds of which are trashed at YOUR expense as the publisher. This is because the distributor floods the retailers with extra copies to ensure they maximise sales, rather than optimising sales to production. This is terribly inefficient - a crazy system.

About a year ago, I approached one of the distributors, asking to be distributed in areas with high Arab or Muslim populations - East London, Edinburgh, East Midlands etc. I provided maps, a business plan and so on. They agreed AK Comics was an excellent publication, that the target market had been correctly identified - but they still turned me down. I was left with the impression that they just couldn't be bothered to work on the idea.

OK - fair enough - but the problem is that in the UK if the monopoly distributor turns you down, that's it - you have nowhere else to go!

I complained to the Office of Fair Trading who confirmed that they were already feeling uneasy about distribution in the UK.

And now, one year later, they have ruled that the system operated by the distributors is illegal!!

We can now look forward to an explosion of local distributors, especially in the cities, and they will be prepared to sell magazines in a great many new ways - through street sellers, pubs, schools, office buildings, specialist shops and who knows what else. Within a couple of years, I expect to be able to approach several new independent distributors - very often just one man and his dog prepared to walk the streets offering magazines to passers-by for a third of the cover price.

Small publishers like AK will be able to start with small distribution, carrying little financial risk, and then build upwards. Customers will have a much greater variety of magazines available in the street at any time.

This is the market economy the way it was meant to work - thanks to AK!