Sunday 7: Hollywood's Top Money Makers for 2009 Names A Few Suprises

Our inaugural Sunday 7 has been all about superhero cinema, so it seemed only fitting to take a peak into the pockets of some of Hollywood's top earners to see exactly how much bank they're bringing home before taxes.  Vanity Fair recently released their list of  the directors, producers, and stars that can be counted among Tinseltown's Top 40 earners, and you might be just as surprised as we were by who made the final cut.

Here's a quick peak at the Top 10:

   1. Michael Bay, producer-director ($125 million)
   2. Steven Spielberg, producer-director ($85 million)
   3. Roland Emmerich, producer-director ($70 million)
   4. James Cameron, producer-director ($50 million)
   5. Todd Phillips, director ($44 million) – no relation, sadly
   6. Daniel Radcliffe, actor ($41 million)
   7. Ben Stiller, actor ($40 million)
   8. Tom Hanks, actor ($36 million)
   9. J. J. Abrams, producer-director ($36 million)
  10. Jerry Bruckheimer, producer ($35.5 million)

Interesting that for all the bank Avatar made, Michael Bay of Transformers fame still came in ahead of director James Cameron. And look at Daniel Radcliffe! Who knew that little wizard from the Harry Potter flicks was earning dough ahead of Tom Hanks and our boy J.J. Abrams??

Vanity Fair goes into some great detail as to where these guys made their millions as well as how the magazine found its facts and figures. Especially around tax time, this article makes for some interesting reading. Find it [here].

Michael Bay photo [link]

iPad Goes On Sale March 26th; e-Readers Headed For e-Nnihilation

Lingering rumors to the contrary, our resident fortune teller insists that the next technological revolution from Apple - the iPad - is literally just around the corner. We'd tend not to believe her, but we've learned that she's not alone. Both the MacRumors website and the Examiner have (also) reported that the Apple iPad without 3G will be on sale at 6:00 pm on Friday 26th March.

Analysts have predicted that Apple will ship 10.5 million iPads this year alone. According to Apple's website, the company will begin pricing their newest tech at $499, with the top-priced model going for a cool $829; 3G enabled models will set you back another $130. Like the recent and rather dramatic rise in the popularity of netbooks to satisfy the computing needs of many users who no longer require the capabilities of a desktop computing system, the iPad-lead 'Tablet Revolution' will undoubtedly change the Personal Computing landscape.  And, like a bigger, stronger if not older brother, Apple's iPad will not only follow in the footsteps of the iPhone, the device credited with overlapping the PC and mobile phone industries, it and its kind will very likely - and quickly- surpass its smaller sibling.

Like a technological Tunguska, the coming iPad / Tablet event will dramatically change the ecosystems of the PC and mobile phone worlds. Suffice it to say, they won't be the only ones.  Apple Insider reported earlier that iPad's commercial campaign is expected to begin March 15th, with the emphasis being on the iPad's e-book capabilities.  E-readers, such as  market-leader Amazon.com's Kindle, Sony's digital Reader, and the Barnes & Noble Nook, have been hot commodities as recently as last Christmas; however, even as the e-Reader industry announced just yesterday that color capabilities, among many other improvements and 40 new models to come this year,  Kindle and co. seem woefully outmoded - and far less sexy - than vastly superior iPad tablet.  abbracadabbling has developed a mathematical equation to quantify and qualify exactly why iPad will dominate and quite possibly destroy the e-Reader marketplace:

Although the situation for Kindle and kin doesn't look good at this juncture, we didn't want to jump to any hasty conclusions, either. Three of us independently checked our formula (using our respective Mac Pro's, we should add), yet the answers yielded bore remarkable similarity. We sum up our conclusion like so:

For a more in-depth comparison of iPad and Kindle, hop on over to Computer World HERE.

For such a new technology, e-Readers have gone from being last Christmas' new hotness to today's old has-been in less than the blink of an eye.  (If you're wondering exactly how fast the blink of an eye actually is, there's an app for that.)  Although Sony introduced a very early digital reading device in 2004, e-Reader tech didn't really get going or get noticed until Amazon.com's Kindle hit in 2007. Three years later, very unexpectedly, it's nearly outmoded.  What other technologies and industries will also be effected, altered, otherwise drastically changed, revolutionized, or at worst, completely outmoded by the advent of Tablet?

For the comics industry, a business built upon the foundation of the monthly published pamphlet-style comic book magazine, that is the One Billion Dollar Question. As the era of motion comics, digital comics, and web comics has already dawned, and as the consumer base of the monthly comic book remains small preventing negligible sales growth, the  possibility of e-Comics supplanting traditional comic books is a very real possibility.  Some have already predicted that the Tablet is also the harbinger for the end of the traditional comics industry distribution and sales model, the Direct Market.

abbracadabbling will be taking an in-depth look at the possible changes coming to comics because of emerging technologies like the iPad over the next few weeks.  We'll also be taking a better look at how the internet and digital technologies - from digital comics in general to  devices such as the Longbox Digital comics platform - have already affected comics present  -- and future. Keep it here, dabblers!

Find Apple's official iPad website - here.

No Favors: Marge Does Playboy Magazine

If I wasn't on sabbatical in Springfield, I might've overlooked this completely. Playboy Magazine continues to chart unexplored territory next month, when their November 2009 newsstand issue will feature none other than Springfield's third-most famous citizen, Marge Simpson.

According to one Playboy spokeswoman I heard, Marge's three-page inside spread is, "sexy with implied nudity."

Of course, implied nudity isn't anything new for any member of The Simpsons. Poor Bart became a sex object when he had his junk exposed in 2007's The Simpsons Movie, and any teenage boy with internet access could download enough Simpsons porn to fill a portable hard drive.

In truth, Marge's Playboy debut was inevitable. The Simpsons have enjoyed phenomenal popularity and terrifically wide audience appeal since they burst onto the screen in 1989, and they've pitched almost every product imaginable ever since. I won't say that I saw sex as being next on their list, but I'm not shocked to learn it is.

Magazines, like the monthly comic books I so love, have been hurting for a long time, with annual sales declining at at an average rate of twenty-percent. Whether victims of the internet's timely gratification or of the current recession's effect on discretionary spending, periodicals, as evidenced by last month's cancellation of Gourmet Magazine, grow ever closer to becoming consumerables of a bygone age.

Yet while comics have gone to great lengths to improve the quality of their monthly products, many magazines - from Newsweek to now Playboy -- have seemingly abandoned quality (and dare I say, respectability) for sensationalism.

Granted, sensationalism and short term gain may be reasonable for magazines like Playboy where the long haul may be questionable at best. Still, one would least think that Hugh Hefner and company, by forgoing the long term, might take a better look at the market they do have.

Sales are declining for monthly magazines as well as comics for many reasons, yet chief among them is that both share the same consumer demographic -- namely, white 35-year old males. By forgoing flesh-and-blood females for ladies of the illustrated kind, Playboy's sent Marge Simpson to compete in an arena where she's hopelessly outclassed. No matter how shrewd a decision her centerfold may seem, Springfield's matriarch can't hold a candle to DC Comic's Power Girl or Aspen Entertainment's Executive Assistant Iris. In a tight economy, both comics offer twenty-two pages of glossy monkey-punching material, and for far less money.

Of course, Playboy's betting on Marge to attract new readers -- particularly teenage and twenty-something males -- a vast demographic with with largely disposable income. Marge may deliver Playboy the sales figures its seeking, but only at the cost of what traditionally has kept the magazine afloat.

And frankly, that's sex. Her implied November nudity not-withstanding, Marge has never been a sexy lady, at least not the kind of sexy lady that guys generally drop ten bucks on Playboy to see. For a magazine that once defined what sexy is, the message Playboy's sending the new, younger readers it hopes to attract is a very skewed one indeed.

Sex obviously still sells. But Hugh Hefner and his magazine seem to have lost sight of what's sexy in America today. If anything signals an end to Playboy, it's exactly this.

Is November's Playboy on your shopping list? Or are you going to spend Saturday night at home with a beer and the latest issue of Power Girl? Stop by our Back Issues and let us know!

'The Last Days of American Crime' defines "Radical Comics"

You'll probably remember me mentioning Portland-based Rick Remender as I was giving y'all a tour of Springfield: My Nice Little Town. Rick's been writing Marvel's The Punisher titles for the past couple years now. [Not being much of a Punisher lover myself, though, I've never read 'em. Sorry, people. Sorry, Ricky. I'll let you know what I think when I finally sample your stuff next month with your one-shot, Punisher: The List.]

Anyway, Rick pretty much put himself on the map with his two Dark Horse Comics series, Fear Agent and The End League. That's how I found him, and I've got good hunch that Rick'll be discovered by a whole lot more folks when his new Radical Publishing title, The Last Days of American Crime, starts up this December.

The Last Days of American Crime tells the story of Graham Brick, a petty criminal never quite able to hit the big score. In a grand scheme, Graham intends to steal one of the charging stations, skip the country and live off unlimited funds for the rest of his life. But the media has leaked news of the anti-crime signal one week before it was to go live... and now Graham and his team have just a few days to turn the heist of the century into the last crime in American history. [To read Radical Publishing's press release for Last Days, go here.]

Remender teams up with artist Greg Tocchini for this three issue, 64-page per issue series. Radical Publishing's one of the relatively new kids in town, but as far as the smaller third-tier publishers go, they've been turning out quality books with regularity as well as drawing some top-notch industry talent their way. Last Days is one of three titles Radical's going to be pricing at $4.99 an issue -- an experiment to find the consumer comfort-zone between cost, quality,

talent, and the page-count of a single monthly comic book.

This is the Big Issue here, abbracadabblers. [I'm even taking an extra paragraph to illustrate this fine point, notice?]

As most of you know, the standard monthly title -- and when one says standard or typical, the main referents are comics from DC Comics and Marvel -- is a whopping 22-pages of story, plus advertising. Both of the Big Two have made price increases for many of their monthly books, from $2.99 to $3.99, the majority of them also being the most popular books, too. This economic snafu, of course, has heard considerable fanboy outcry. To counter, Marvel and DC have both attempted to add page-count to their own books; DC by supplementing many of their mid-selling titles with a 'Second Feature', and Marvel by either publishing their best-sellers like The Amazing Spider-Man more frequently or tweaking the page-counts of their other books.

Radical's decided to throw an extra dollar onto the much-maligned $3.99 that's plaguing DC and Marvel, but they also stand alone with their decision of nearly tripling the 22-page industry standard. Most collectors, including myself, will by-and-large find this quite acceptable. The cost is logical, and I believe it's a five-dollar pill collectors would swallow no matter who published the 64-page whopper.

Plus, third-tier publishers like Radical are allowed much more leniency with their costs in the first place. They're expected to have to charge more: they incur substantially greater printing and production costs, likely pay more for talent, don't enjoy widespread distribution, their books have far fewer readers than any of Big Two's, and they see little to no marketing revenue from licensed products.

Radical's been aggressive from the get-go, thanks to its President and Publisher Barry Levine. Levine's drawn some high-profile folks to his line lately, like the prolific Warren Ellis' Hotwire: Requiem for the Dead. Using this approach, Levine has been enlisting high caliber story lines for his comics, and ensuring that those same comics hit the stand as a pre-formatted cinema-style package, primed for Hollywood adaptation. Levine's no stranger to the movie business, and hasn't made a secret of his approach of marrying 'widescreen comic book storytelling' to that of 'widescreen' movie making.

As much as I (and, obviously, a legion of other folks) enjoy seeing their comic books on the silver screen, Levine's approach veers too closely to the lane of pre-mediation for me to be completely comfortable. That discomfort I feel may also cast me as a 'fanboy in denial' or even as a hypocrite. It's a fact that comics, intentionally or not, are already serving this purpose for the bulk of Tinsel Town's producers, from Ron Howard to Michael Bay. Whether the greater purpose of DC and Marvel properties is that of mass-market consumerables is debatable, too. So, I ask myself, why the problem?

Maybe I'll wait until Remender's The Last Days of American Crime is in my hot little hands before I render a verdict. I mean, I've discussed it here, dabblers, because I know it's going to be a good read. And, as a matter of fact, it's already been primed for the screen, too.

To that, I say kudos' to you, Mister Remender just up the I-5 in Portland-town, and hats-off to the Radical folks as well. Abbracadabblers, you've got two months to save the five hundred pennies Last Days first issue will cost you. Give it the read it deserves, and even if it's not to your liking (which I think to be very unlikely, but it's possible), I assure you, the book in your hands may very well become a true modern-day metaphor.

Not of The Last Days of American Crime, mind you, but of the comic industry. I'm not one to be pessimistic; I'm no doom-sayer. I love me my monthly comics, no matter the cost. But I do keep my ears to the ground, and usually my feet along with 'em. In the end, I'm just saying what I'm saying.

************

Read more about Rick Remender and The Last Days of American Crime on Ain't It Cool News here, Comic Book Resources here, and on MTV here.

Radical Publishing has placed a fifteen-page preview from Last Day's first issue at their MySpace page here, and if you'd like to try supercomputing with Last Day's B-Cover (as seen below), it's here.