April Fools jokes tend to fall flat but there’s always something fun when governments get in it all and the joke lands and feels somewhat relevant. The City of San Antonio announced that the nation of Wakanda as the cities new “sister city” relationship (yes we know Wakanda is a nation but lets go with it).
The Library and Archives Canada is a government organization whose role is to preserve Canada’s documentary heritage and more importantly making sure Canadians can access, discover, and share it.
Even though they’re a government organization doesn’t mean they can’t have some fun and today in honor of April Fools they announced and released some of their “major acquisition of the declassified journals and military records of Canadian supersoldier James “Logan” Howlett.”
From their release:
April 1, 2016 – Gatineau, Quebec – Library and Archives Canada (LAC)
Logan was born in 1882 in Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada, to wealthy landowner Elizabeth Howlett and her grounds-keeper Thomas Logan.
Logan’s journals provide valuable insight into his early life in Canada, including work as a miner in a British Columbia stone quarry, a fur trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company, and a homesteader in the Canadian Rockies. His military career spanned multiple conflicts, making his personnel records an unprecedented study in Canadian military history. Logan was gravely wounded in action many times, and gained a reputation as a gritty survivor.
Quick Facts
• WWI: captain in the Canadian Armed Forces (Devil’s Brigade). Fought at Ypres in 1915. Wounded by a sword through the chest.
• WWII: Returned to the Devil’s Brigade in the Second World War, as an allied spy and paratrooper for the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion during the Normandy landings on D-Day.
• Cold War: based in Ottawa and Calgary, worked for both CSIS and the CIA.
• Logan later changed his operative name to ‘Wolverine’, and worked with various NGOs.
Bravo Canada. Bravo.
Aspen Comics is a company on the move. First they acquired Big Dog Ink, with the first joint venture out this week, and for the past few months they’ve revamped existing series and characters, or announce whole new ones, to meet the shifting diverse comic readers.
Now this! Check out the announcement below:
On April 1st, 2015 Pope Francis issued a papal bull declaring Aspen Comics the official Comic Publisher of the Vatican. Co-Owners Frank Mastromauro and Peter Steigerwald, as well as Vice Presidents Vince Hernandez and Mark Roslan, will be canonized into sainthood in the coming weeks.
“Despite the holy work done by some guy named Robert Kirkman on his early title Battle Pope, we here at the Vatican believe that Aspen Comics and their titles best encompass our values. And good gosh darn do I love me that Dog from that ZooHunters book!” said Pope Francis himself in his official press conference on the matter.
The partnership will yield a series of “Fun Comic Bibles” in the coming year – graphic novel interpretations of traditional Bible stories that include an element of fiction. Pope Francis chuckled heartily as he declared, “Just imagine if Noah’d had Miss Aspen Matthews out there with him during the flood!”
Today, the Smithsonian added a new addition to their already fantastic display at their Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC, Wonder Woman‘s Invisible Jet! They received it on loan from the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington. The plane did a flyover the National Mall before being place in the museum for today only.
They launched the display in a series of Tweets and a live video all of which you can read below.
And the video Tweeted above.
Image has been teasing it, but Daryl Dixon, the popular character from The Walking Dead television show, enters the comic world starting with issue 129.
Not to be outdone by DC Comics or Marvel, Image Comics today announced their intention to just add adjectives to their titles and make each issue a first issue. Their “Number 1” project is aimed to make the indie publisher the top one in the comic business.
Image’s PR and Marketing Director Jennifer de Guzman said:
This may be the worst thing we’ve ever done. It’s a pale reflection of the industry’s need to spin rebooted series through endless hype, turning the crazed hamster wheel of entertainment promotion until it’s fallen apart. Good-bye, integrity.
With all of the sell-outs we’ve had recently, that’ll sure to continue by just making every issue a first issue.
It’s unclear if this will also apply to all of the various publishers who make up Image or just a few. We’ve reached out to BOOM!, Dynamite, IDW and others to see if they have similar plans.
With the leak that DC Comics will be again rebooting their line of comics, Marvel has announced their plans for post Marvel NOW!, Marvel Now NOW! Post Age of Ultron and Infinity, the Marvel comics line will be relaunched/rebooted/renumbered again with key series starting with first issues, many seeing cancellation, and a whole bunch of new series. This is similar to their recent Marvel NOW! line which has seen success.
We reached out and got this from Marvel’s Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso:
We think the Marvel NOW! initiative has been a success and shows how you can successfully relaunch a line without actually relaunching a line. Each new series is organic and comes out of the previous events, so it makes sense. We don’t have to jettison continuity, but provide an easy place for new readers to jump in and read the best comics out there with the best characters. Right now, we’re looking to call it “Marvel Now NOW!” but we might also call it “Marvel REALLY NOW!” or “Marvel NOW!²” The latter one appeals to math geeks too, a demographic we think is under-served in comics.
It is also revealed as part of this initiative that Marvel will be further doubling down on their use of technology. Each Marvel comic will continue to include a code to download a digital copy, the Marvel AR and audio per their Gamma project, but they’ll also now include a code to be able to 3D print figures based on Marvel’s characters so you can act out scenes on your own.
“We want to stay ahead on technology and 3D printing is the next big thing. We’re getting ahead of everyone and will allow people to print Marvel characters with these free codes to download instructions. We expect this to be the hottest thing out there when it comes to collectables and toys,” Alonso continued. “We also have nailed down Patrick Stewart to provide the audio version of every comic that’s part of Project Gamma. We think he has a broad range and can really do the voices of the characters well. Plus that accent is awesome.”
This is certainly getting interesting as publishers one up each other with foolish plans like these.
Leaking from Wondercon, DC Comics will be going through plans post Trinity War to again reboot their comic books, start at all new first issues, but sticking with the number of 52 series. The plan has been put together due to lagging sales for many of their books. We reached out to DC Comics for a response, and received a response from Jim Lee and Dan Didio.
Here’s what they had to say:
“With the shuffling of the higher-ups at Warner Bros., they took a look at the numbers for DC Comics and pointed out things were much higher when the New 52 started,” said Lee. “We were told to make that happen again by any means, even if we had to repeat the stunt.”
“We sat over lunch and some beers and decided we’d just repeat the stunt,” Didio added to the email chain. “It worked once… right?”
We’ll follow-up tomorrow to see if we can get further comment on this foolish plan.
