Dante's Inferno Dev Diary Explores Violence, Comic Book Released Free Digitally
With the first issue of WildStorm's
Penned by Avengers: The Initiative and X-Men/Spider-Man writer Christos Gage with art by Hulk: Broken World's Diego Latorre, the first issue covers how Visceral's child-slaying interpretation of famed fourteenth-century poet Dante Alighieri winds up in Hell.
Developer Visceral Games has also made another visit to Hell in a new developer diary exploring the 'Violence' circle. The action allegory arrives for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PSP on February 9, with a demo hitting PS3 today then the 360 on December 24.
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Print, as far as a viable news medium, is dying.
As far as a medium for visual storytelling, it's very much alive. Go to any comic shop and try to get them to rant on the success of trade paperbacks or graphic novels in the last few years. Now, I -could- download high quality scans of the issues contained in Green Lantern: Rage of the Red Lanterns, but like most people, I want to hold the medium in my hands in a tactile form.-
I think the comic book industry is a terrible example right now, the main engine of the industry still seems to be superhero comics which fucking sucks. Even more so than it was in prior decades. Most comic book stores I've been to recently seem to be large shelves of superhero comics with a small corner dedicated to alternative comics.
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That's simply because alternative comics don't have the same back-catalog that any of the superhero comics do. Also, the main engine of comic books will likely always be superhero comics. Superhero comics typically appeal to the broadest audience because they feature (at least a few) characteristics or situations that appeal to some or our most basic desires / dreams.
Superman is in for his ten-zillionth issue and Jesus still rocks it in The Bible. In many ways, they aren't that different. Anyhow, DIGRESSION!
I can go to any of the comic shops around here and find a wonderful selection of alternative comics. Plenty of major alternative outlets (Dark Horse / IDW / DC's 'Vertigo') and well-stocked and well received in my area.
Plus, plenty of 'alternative' comics are being collected either for the first time, or for a successful reprinting. 'Preacher', 'Fables', 'Y - The Last Man' and the wonderful 'Starman' are being recollected in 'Deluxe' editions. Granted, those are all under the Veritgo banner (but of the major alternative outlets, I don't think anyone even touches the output of Vertigo) but if they weren't successful as original collections, they wouldn't waste the time doing them one better.
Then we have Hellboy, The Goon and so-on.-
Come on, Superhero comics are an aberration at best. They're like this sort of strange rut or feedback loop the industry got caught up in due to various unfortunate business realities of the industry (censorship, business model, etc). True, they have wide appeal, but they seem to really dominate the industry in terms of the sheer published content out there. And it's more than just being the engine of comic books, comic books have come to be practically defined by superhero comics, despite whatever other appeal the medium has.
The reason this whole situation irks me so much and actually scares me when mentioned in the context of videogames, is that I see videogames heading down roughly the same route (albeit not in the form of superhero comics, but something else).
There are decent (and popular!) alternative comics, but if you look at the authors and writers of the most easily acquired comics, they pretty much all either got their start in superhero comics, have significant tenures as writers/artists in superhero comics, or are eventually folded into the superhero comic machine. It's really depressing.
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