Everyone waiting for Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, the second big screen adaptation of Frank Miller’s crime comic…? You’re going to have to wait a little longer, it seems:

Fans of stylized Frank Miller films will be disappointed to know that another of the author’s anticipated sequels, “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For,” has now been pushed back, this time to Aug. 22, 2014. The “Sin City” follow-up was previously slated for release this October.

No reason has been given for the ten month delay, but this doesn’t seem promising at all.

So, that Man of Steel climax, huh? Spoilers under the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

The ComiXology sale for Marvel first and second issues has me thinking about the second issue of series. The first, as we all know, is the one that has to amaze and impress, make a splash and be memorable and awesome enough to ensure that the casual reader will return next time, but it’s the second issue that’s trickier, I feel; it has to essentially do the same thing, but also do enough to suggest that there’s something to the series beyond all the flash and sparkle of the debut issue, that there’s some depth and room for development later as well.

(Looking at the collection of books in the sale, Hawkeye does that, I think.)

The second issue of a series – Like the second storyarc of a series, for that matter, it’s always the follow-ups – is where the reader gets to see whether or not a comic has more up its sleeve than just the initial moment of “Awww, yeah.” In so many respects, it’s the hardest of the initial issues to get right, and yet the one we think of the least, it seems.

Best news for me from last week’s comicsinternet? That would be this, from the Parallel Worlds interview with Greg Rucka:

We are looking at summer 2014. It will pick up on the status quo that was established at the end of the last “Queen and Country” novel called “The Last Run.” This will be Oni Press. Queen and Country will be back in comic form.

Goodness gracious, but I’m looking forward to some new Queen and Country. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, this would be a good place to learn. (We haven’t seen a new issue since 2007!)

We complain often that the stories in comics are hampered by Superman’s status as an ‘icon.’ Meaning that the corporate overlords can’t afford to allow creators to innovate, but I, for one, hadn’t realized just how ubiquitous the use of the ‘S’ had become to peddle literally everything under our brazen yellow sun. Call it selective naiveté, but I thought there might be at least a shred of respect left at the corporate level for a hero whose corpus of work I so admire. I feel like we’re all holding our collective breath that the new movie might, just might, qualify as art, while ignoring just how far Superman has been reduced in nearly every other sphere of our world, and that kind of sucks. I want the new movie to be great, but I also really don’t want Superman trying to sell me pizza. If he’s supposed to be an ideal to strive for, he should be doing better.

That’s from Ryan Haupt’s piece on Superman as Corporate Icon over at iFanboy, which prompted a question. Given the amount of product placement deals in other superhero movies that go relatively uncommented-upon, is it that Man of Steel has so many more merchandising deals than other movies, or do we hold Superman to a different standard as readers and fans than we do other characters – And if so, why? Does his fictional appeal as a pure, inspiring figure to his fellow heroes and adoring public translate to the real world, and again, if it does, why does it work for Superman in a way that it doesn’t for, say, Captain America?

Here’s Axel Alonso answering a question about the future of the cast of X-Factor, over at CBR:

There will definitely be a lot of things in flux after “X-Men: Battle of the Atom,” 4thsummer. Lots of character shifts. And the current cast of “X-Factor” is no exception.

Lots of character shifts as a result of Battle of the Atom? That’s good. It’s only been seven months since the launch of All-New X-Men, after all. Wouldn’t want to think that we’d have more than a year of relative stability in the mutant side of the Marvel Universe.

I’m only being slightly sarcastic; I feel as the Uncanny X-Men of my youth – That’d be the Chris Claremont/John Romita Jr. issues, for those curious – was also in flux in many ways, with the very concept of “team” seeming to have been entirely abandoned at times in favor of some idea of the main characters in the book as a family that the book would follow wherever they went.

The difference between today’s flux and yesterday’s, however, is that it’s far easier for a creator to lose control of a character when they’re going through changes. In days of yore, X-characters “belonged” to either Chris Claremont or, perhaps, Louise Simonson. These days, they’re really the property of the X-Office, and that’s a much dicier concept to have to deal with for fans of a particular character.

With so many different X-Men books out there – All-New, Uncanny, Wolverine and, Astonishing and the adjectiveless Marjorie Liu-written title, not to mention Legacy and the titles that don’t include the actual words “X-Men” in the title – characters are already being shared between books, so the idea of having such freedom to (a) do whatever the creator wants with a character and (b) being able to follow them wherever they go, without fear of losing them to another part of the mammoth franchise feels almost impossible.

I’m not even necessarily arguing that this is a bad thing. What if the writer of Uncanny X-Men, say, wants to write a character who’s belonged to Astonishing for years? Uncanny is a far more successful series, with more potential for raising the profile for that character – Is it really that bad a choice for the editors to take the character from one book to another, if it means that more people will find out about the character?

That’s why the concept of “flux” in today’s X-Books makes me uneasy. On the one hand, it’s definitely staying true to the X-Men narrative DNA as established by Claremont – Hell, as established by Stan Lee and Roy Thomas, if you think about the changes the book went through way back when – but on the other, such changes feel somewhat different when played out on a large scale as exists today.

The alternative, of course, is stagnant stories, which no-one really wants. Whither the old thing about “not change, but the illusion of change”…?

Over at the Beat, Steve Morris considers what the cancellation of Journey Into Mystery means for Marvel as a whole:

More than the obvious voices saying this is a sign that female characters don’t sell, this is really more of a branding issue than anything else. Journey Into Mystery, for whatever reason, wasn’t relaunched for Immonen’s run, thus losing most of the power of the Marvel Now branding. A series of Marvel titles have been cancelled over the past month, including Gambit, Red She-Hulk, and X-Factor – leaving many to wonder if this will lead us to a ‘second wave’ of titles being announced shortly.

What you’ll notice there is that all the books which are ending – and X-Factor is debatable here – are light-hearted series, heavy on humor and character but light on ‘importance’ and disconnected from other books. Marvel have been relying rather heavily on their three major franchises recently (Avengers, X-Men, and Steve Wacker) above all else, and only one of those three franchises seems able to sell a comic which isn’t dark and important.

You could argue that Wolverine and The X-Men isn’t “dark,” as such – It has moments of darkness, sure, but one of the reasons that the book appeals to me is that it also has a lot of humor and lightness to it; overall, I’d argue that it’s the lightest X-Book in the franchise for years – but Morris is correct that the truly successful Marvel books tend to come from one of the three “franchises” named (And calling the editorial office of Steve Wacker a franchise strikes me as a particularly canny choice on Morris’ part), and appear to need to be “important” to the larger continuity in order to sell. Are we reaching the point where, for whatever reason, the market can’t support a B- or C-level title even at the biggest publisher in the business?

To celebrate today’s release of Man of Steel – and, of course, the character’s 75th anniversary this year – let’s take a minute to consider the pop cultural impact of Superman as it comes to pop music. More than any other superhero (Yes, even Batman), Krypton’s favorite son has shown up in pop songs almost since the dawn of the medium, and every day this week, I’ve shared a couple of particular favorites. Today, to finish up, two classics.

First up, the Clique:

It’s possible that you’d recognize the cover version of this more than the original, from R.E.M.’s Life’s Rich Pageant album:

And then there’s Jim Croce, with a song that isn’t really about Superman at all, but does contain maybe the most famous lesson about Superman in pop music history:

Of course, considering it’s Superman, tugging on his cape is hardly going to have the most dramatic consequences, but, hey. It’s Jim who’s telling me that, and I’m not going to mess around with Jim. That’s exactly the point he’s trying to make.

Talking of the Man of Steel, all week Adam P. Knave – writer of Monkeybrain’s Amelia Cole and Artful Daggers series, editor of Popgun from Image and all-around man about comics – has been running a series about what Superman and the character’ s mythos mean to him that’s well worth a look:

That’s not hyperbole, by the way. You can easily argue that the presence of Superman has made the world a better place. Superman spawns other superheroes, bringing in a new heroic myth. Children of all sort pick up on it and use it as a behavioral template. Something to aspire to. Those kids grow up and they’ve imprinted on Superman, as well as other superheroes along the way. The idea of doing good, putting justice first, and fighting for hope end up rooted far firmer in the minds of people while they make their choices throughout their own lives.

It’s really good stuff. Go, read; it starts here.

Reading reviews and watching online back-and-forth from those who have seen Man of Steel already – I’m not one of them – something becomes obvious very quickly: People are very, very invested in Superman as a character. That maybe shouldn’t be a surprise; he’s been in continual publication in at least two comics a month for more than seven decades, after all, and enjoyed long-running live action TV shows, animated series and a previous movie franchise, but yet: I am surprised, in some way.

The amount of discussion over whether or not Man of Steel “gets” Superman or not feels… unusual for a superhero movie. I feel that it was somehow either assumed that earlier movies, like Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger or Green Lantern “got” the characters or else deemed unimportant, because the level of such commentary for those films was so far below what I’ve seen. What it likely is, though, is that the audience didn’t go into the movie theater with such a fully-formed idea of who each of those heroes was. Superman, after all, has a special place in most people’s hearts whether they like it – or even know it – or not.

You wouldn’t necessarily know this from the sales positions of the Superman comics – Or, necessarily, the books themselves (Action, I know you’re in flux creatively right now, but still) – but there’s a lot of goodwill and love out there for the character from people who aren’t regular (or even irregular) comic readers. If Man of Steel is a hit, the question may become “Is there a way for DC to take advantage of that, despite historical evidence that shows little crossover between movie success and increased comic sales?” After all, even though Avengers didn’t do anything for Marvel’s sales in bookstores, look at the bookstore success of Walking Dead. There’s some potential there, surely…?

To celebrate this Friday’s release of Man of Steel – and, of course, the character’s 75th anniversary this year – let’s take a minute to consider the pop cultural impact of Superman as it comes to pop music. More than any other superhero (Yes, even Batman), Krypton’s favorite son has shown up in pop songs almost since the dawn of the medium, and every day between Monday and Friday’s big release, I’ll share a couple of particular favorites. Today, it’s time for a couple of songs about Superman’s hometown.

First up, Sufjan Stevens.

And just for some comparison, Owl City:

Two songs that wouldn’t really go side by side on anyone’s mixtape, but have the common thread of Metropolis to pull them… somewhat closer together? The Stevens track is from Illinoise, his tribute to that fair state (which, of course, produced the men who created the Man of Steel, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster), while the Owl City track comes from a band who did a song with the woman who sang “Call Me Maybe.” I think that’s all you really need to know about them.

We already all knew that Walt Simonson was awesome, right? But did we know that he was this awesome?

That’s right; he’s doing a variant cover for Archie, and it looks that good.

[Via.]

Jeff Trexler looks at the ruling sending the Gary Friedrich/Marvel case back to the courts:

In essence, the Friedrich appellate court ruling is a mirror world version of the Siegel appellate ruling. Siegel lost on the renewal issue; Friedrich won. Siegel won on the work-for-hire issue, with the court noting why he and Shuster most likely held the original copyright; the Friedrich court sent the case back down with reasons why Friedrich is likely to lose.

From the perspective of copyright history, it’s a revealing outcome. Precedent under the copyright law before the 1976 Act had effectively made the renewal right useless for anyone who had transferred a copyright. It’s a line of legal interpretation that more recent courts and commentators have recognized as having been in the tank for corporate interests to the point of being unjust — indeed, this was a factor in the 1976 copyright reform, which gave subsequent creators a set procedure for re-claiming copyright through termination after 35 years.

Unusually for the Internet, the comments section is worth reading, as he also goes into more detail about other legal issues surrounding the case. As I said yesterday, the resolution of this case is likely to be very important and go far beyond just Marvel and Ghost Rider…

Well, this was somewhat unexpected when it showed up in my inbox this morning:

A Sons of Anarchy comic? I doubt even the most ardent fan of the FX show would’ve seen that coming. We’ll doubtlessly find out more when Boom!’s next round of solicitations are launched, but right now, this seems like a pretty great get for the publisher.

(Interestingly enough, if there is a comic and it launches in September, that’s the same month that the show returns to FX for its sixth – and, according to rumor, penultimate – season. Good timing, whoever worked that one out.)

To celebrate this Friday’s release of Man of Steel – and, of course, the character’s 75th anniversary this year – let’s take a minute to consider the pop cultural impact of Superman as it comes to pop music. More than any other superhero (Yes, even Batman), Krypton’s favorite son has shown up in pop songs almost since the dawn of the medium, and every day between today and Friday’s big release, I’ll share a couple of particular favorites. Today, we go back to the 1990s and two bands that many of you doubtlessly never hoped to never hear from again.

First up, the Spin Doctors. Remember the Spin Doctors?

If ever there was a band that was trying to single-handedly revive the genre of music known as “Superman,” it was the Spin Doctors. Not only did they have a song called “Jimmy Olsen’s Blues,” but their debut album was called Pocket Full of Kryptonite. Do either of these things mean we should forgive them for the terrible, terrible earworm known as “Two Princes”? Of course not.

And talking of earworms, there’s also the Crash Test Dummies.

This song is best described by whoever wrote its Wikipedia entry as “a slow funeral dirge.” I was never a fan of the CTD – Sorry, Canadian mumbling fans, the world over – and the fact that this song was apparently a single…? Jeepers, that was optimistic on their part.

Heidi Macdonald on the idea that the comic industry is dying:

In the 70s, when comics were sold on newsstands. even a title like “Werewolf by Night” sold about 50,000 copies a month. And in the 80s heyday of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, bizarro black and white comics sold the same amount…heck even artsy books from Fantagraphics sold 30-40,000 copies. So yeah, there was a sales surge that was undone by the distro wars of the 90s Chromium Age, and these events of 20-30 years ago are still recent enough that many a grandpappy will recount them to a young’un around the fire.

Well guess what, 20 years ago we made phone calls from our landlines to invite people over to play bridge and used a paper map to figure out how to get to grandpappy’s house. We stopped by Blockbuster to see what was new on VHS and went to HMV every Tuesday to pick up new CDs.

You can’t use the same metrics. I still hear people saying “If only we could get back in 7-11s and grocery stores we could save comics!” when people don’t even buy FOOD at grocery stores any more. Several publishers have flirted with getting comics back in 7-11s in recent years and nothing happened. Instead we have the internet, the grandpappy of all newsstands.

The whole thing is worth a read. Go see.

Does Marvel not own Ghost Rider because it specifically didn’t mention Ghost Rider in its 1978 agreement with Gary Friedrich? That seems to be one suggestion in the must-read ruling from the appeals court issued yesterday regarding the now-ongoing-again lawsuit between the creator and the corporate giant:

When Friedrich signed the Agreement, he was doing other freelance work for Marvel and he believed the Agreement would only cover future work because that was what Cadence told him at the time. He was not paid anything separately for signing the Agreement. Moreover, Spotlight 5 had been published six years earlier by a different corporate entity (Magazine Mgmt.) and had grown so popular that Marvel had already reprinted it once and had launched a separate Ghost Rider comic book series. Given that context, it is doubtful the parties intended to convey rights in the valuable Ghost Rider copyright without explicitly referencing it. It is more likely that the Agreement only covered ongoing or future work. Hence, there is a genuine dispute regarding the parties’ intent for this form contract to cover Ghost Rider.

To celebrate this Friday’s release of Man of Steel – and, of course, the character’s 75th anniversary this year – let’s take a minute to consider the pop cultural impact of Superman as it comes to pop music. More than any other superhero (Yes, even Batman), Krypton’s favorite son has shown up in pop songs almost since the dawn of the medium, and every day between today and Friday’s big release, I’ll share a couple of particular favorites. Today, the avant garde impact of the Man of Steel can be felt.

Let’s start with Laurie Anderson, shall we?

“O Superman” – Full title “O Superman (For Massenet)” – scared the bejeezus out of me as a kid. Oddly enough, this spoken word art piece made it to #2 in the Top 40 in the U.K. back in 1981, and I remember being all excited when I saw that my older sister had bought a single named after one of my favorite superheroes, only to be hideously disappointed and more than a little confused upon actually listening to it. Hearing it again now, it’s kind of ridiculous (The “Hi, I’m not home right now” bit is hilarious), but this is what passed as cutting edge art back in the day.

Meanwhile, on the more melodic side of things, there’s always the Flaming Lips:

Only joking! As those who adore the Lips know, there’s no necessary guarantee that they’ll be focused on the melody of things when something else is shiny to distract them. “Waitin’ For A Superman (Is It Getting Heavy?)” is from their 1999 album The Soft Bulletin, and one of their biggest hits in a lengthy career that otherwise was lived on the fringes of pop culture. Clearly, one of Superman’s lesser-known powers is the ability to help bands find an audience, even temporarily. Take the hint, obscure bands that want to sell out!

There are times that I suspect that someone at DC Comics was bitten by a radioactive copy of Bring On The Bad Guys at a young age. Here’s the solicit copy for Forever Evil #1, the flagship book for DC’s Villain’s Month:

The first universe-wide event of The New 52 begins as FOREVER EVIL launches! The Justice League is DEAD! And the villains shall INHERIT the Earth! An epic tale of the world’s greatest super-villains starts here!

If the concept behind the “first universe-wide event of The New 52″ sounds a little familiar… Well, that’s because it is. The idea of villains inheriting the Earth was central to 2008′s Final Crisis – a series that, remember, was teased with a tagline that started “Heroes Die” – while the idea of a series that focuses on DC’s super villains as a mass group is a stunt that’s been tried in 2005′s Villains United series and 2007′s Salvation Run series (The Secret Society itself has been a fairly ever-present concept in the DCU ever since 2004 or so, as the run-up to Infinite Crisis started getting going; they’ve also appeared in Justice League of America, both the 2006 and 2013 incarnations of the book).

Villains’ Month in general is an amping-up of the 1999 New Year’s Evil and 2009 Faces of Evil stunts, but even off-stunt, we’ve seen more solo focus on the bad guys (or, perhaps, “bad guys,” if you want to include series like Catwoman, Suicide Squad and Secret Six): The Joker has enjoyed a solo graphic novel, Lex Luthor a mini that got reworked into a hardcover quasi-GN, Black Adam got a mini, Deathstroke a New 52 ongoing for a short while, and so on.

Seeing these concepts cycle back again and again is something that makes sense on the one hand – Some of these characters are as iconic as the heroes of the DCU, so why not try and use that fame/infamy? – and is oddly exhausting on the other, because it makes the “never-ending battle” part of Superman’s appeal too literal: The bad guys never go away for any appreciable length of time, and keep doing the same thing over and over again, which just makes them less interesting through over exposure and familiarity breeding contempt.

Don’t get me wrong, I want to be more excited than I am about Forever Evil; it’s just that I wish that the first big event book of the New 52 felt a little bit more new, you know?

Okay, I mentioned this in passing yesterday, but looking at ICV2′s sales estimates for May, I have to ask: What is it about Defenders as a title that has so little traction in today’s market? Fearless Defenders #4 is estimated to have 20,657 U.S. orders according to the site,  making it the eighth lowest selling Marvel Universe ongoing series above X-Factor, Gambit, Red She-Hulk, Winter Soldier, Dark Avengers, Morbius the Living Vampire and Journey Into Mystery – all but the last two of which have already been cancelled (Morbius, at least, has been rumored to be joining the other books on the cancellation list before too long) – and firmly placing the book in the danger zone.

That’s even worse than Matt Fraction’s short-lived Defenders book from 2011 was faring by its fourth issue – ICv2 has that issue at an estimated 29,789 orders in the U.S. – despite the fact that May was a relatively strong month for sales. Fearless isn’t a bad book, and it’s got a specific hook, good creators and features fan favorite characters, so… what is going on here? Why are retailers – and, one would assume, fans – staying away from this book the way that they stayed away from Fraction’s? Is it really that the Defenders name turns people off?

Clearly, it’s time for Marvel to consider a name change and relaunch to see if it impacts sales positively. The brand may be over-extended enough as it is, but am I the only one curious to see if Lady Avengers would help sales on this book, if they dared to do it?