The much-awaited, and much-delayed, relaunch of The Comic Journal’s website has become… slightly more delayed. Last night, webmaster Dirk Deppey posted the following to the TCJ message board:

This message board explodes in an hour …everybody booze up and riot!

Two hours later, the board remained unexploded, and a poster stated the obvious:

Um…

*looks around*

looks a whole lot like the last digs.

Dirk explains what happened:

My tech guy asked for more time to get the style sheets fixed, so we’re delaying the launch until he’s done. It should be no later than this evening.

(Of course, naturally I didn’t get the email until after asking our new hosting provider to switch Deppey.com out to TCJ.com on their local name servers, so the test site is momentarily down — it should be switched back within the hour.)

Anyway, sometime tonight, TCJ.com will be relaunched. And it will feature the official relaunch of Dirk’s Journalista blog, the one that started a lot of us off on this whole “comic blogging” thing.

The Danbury, Conn., News Times reports that Pete Moulton Marston, son of Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston, plans to open a museum dedicated to the heroine in the basement of his Bethel home.

Pete Marston, 77, is being helped by Jackeline Gonzalez, daughter of Maria Salome Pazmino, whose life is the focus of the article.

There’s not much more reported about the museum, other than Gonzalez is taking inventory of Marston’s collection and constructing a website.

Dr. William Moulton Marston was a psychologist and inventor who created Wonder Woman in 1941, and wrote her comics until 1947, when he died at the age of 53.

Related: “Suffering Sappho! A look at the creator and creation of Wonder Woman”

Superherohype.com has an interview up with Matthew Paul, producer of the upcoming Marvel:Ultimate Alliance game, where he gives a few details on the storyline:

SHH!: Our audience is REALLY into comics, can you tell them how you came up with a story that features so many characters from different Marvel worlds?

Paul: Actually, the core of the story for “Marvel: Ultimate Alliance” wasn’t that hard because of the number of good heroes, villains and moments in the Marvel universe. The hardest part was trying to pick all the best parts and fit them into a story that we could finish in our lifetime! The story is a combination of the basic plots of Secret Wars and the new Secret War and major comic book moments in Super Heroes’ individual stories. We then placed all of that within a few great environments that will be familiar to every Marvel fan. We even had Marvel editor C.B. Cebulski help us craft the story so that it stayed true to the Marvel canon. It’s been a real fun, but grueling process keeping everything straight, but at the end of the day we’re sure fans won’t be let down.

Speaking of Dark Horse, there’s a very nice, and extensive, Flash preview for Tara McPherson’s Lonely Heart: The Art of Tara McPherson available on the publisher’s website. It’s pretty impressive. The 112-page hardcover is due in stores Sept. 6.

Fangoria talks to writer/artist Bob Fingerman about his new horror novel, Recess Pieces, which he pitched to Dark Horse as “The Little Rascals meets Dawn of the Dead.” A little horror, a little humor, and lots of zombies:

“Just after I had seen Saw II, I was talking about how it seemed like they spent so much time coming up with these really baroque ways of killing the characters, but they didn’t come up with any people you cared about. [With many] horror movies, that’s the case. So I made a joke that the only way you could ever get an audience to care about the characters without doing any work is if you made them all children and puppies. And then I began to think more and more, ‘Yeah, I’d like to do a horror thing with just kids,’ except of course then I would make them characters you actually do care about. That was pretty much the genesis of it. That, and I love zombies. If I can put zombies in something, I’m much happier.”

A four-page preview is available on the Dark Horse website.

This doesn’t have anything to do with comics but, well, that’s never stopped me before: StarWars.com has a kind-of-neat tutorial on how to draw LEGO Han Solo and LEGO Stormtrooper. Hey, it’s for the kids.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer previews this weekend’s third annual Penny Arcade Expo, which is expected to draw some 17,000 gamers and gaming-industry folks to Bellevue, Wash. “It’s sort of a Woodstock for gamers,” Penny Arcade artist Mike “Gabe” Krahulik tells the newspaper.

That 17,000 figure would be nearly double last year’s attendance (9,500), but organizers dismiss talk that PAX could replace the downsizing E3 trade show. “As far as being a clone of E3, we don’t want to do that,” says Robert Khoo, Penny Arcade’s business development director. “”We want it to be more accessible than any E3 could ever be.”

Related: Q&A with Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik 

Cinematical talks about the chain of events that led to the outing of Andre Braugher as signing on for the next Fantastic Four flick:

Andre Braugher is a mystery man currently when it comes to Tim Story’s upcoming Fantastic Four sequel. We have no idea what he’ll be doing in the second movie translation of The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine — but we know he’ll be in there somewhere, because of a Variety article about Forest Whitaker taking a guest role on TV’s E.R. Stick with me here, it’ll make sense eventually. Whitaker will be in a “multi-episode story arc” for E.R. this season as a stroke patient, but he was not the original choice for the role. Instead, he will be replacing … you guessed it … Andre Braugher, who had to back out of his original commitment to the show so he can “co-star” (their word, not mine) in the new Four flick.

I’m going to throw out a wild guess that Braugher is being tapped to play Alicia Masters’ father — The Puppetmaster.

Toronto’s Exclaim talks to Derek McCulloch and Shepherd Hendrix about Stagger Lee, their graphic novel that recounts the story of the legendary Lee Shelton, who shot Billy Lyons in a St. Louis bar during an argument over a Stetson hat.

“Every word of this book was written with some version of Stagger Lee playing in the background,” McCulloch says.

Tom Brevoort’s fascinating Marvel Editor simulator blogject is apparently causing ripples out in the real world:

I received the following e-mail from Paul Jenkins today:

>The EIC is fine with the idea of having Paul Jenkins and Ramon Bachs take over EXILES, with Mike Mayhew on covers. You reach out, and are able to get everybody on board. Paul tells you that he knows next to nothing about the mutant world, but that he can see interesting stories to tell in that milieu. You’re going to have to guide him through the continuity a little bit.

I never heard of this before. What is this?

P >

I have since filled Paul in on what’s going on here. But please, folks–this is meant to be nothing more than a fun simulation, just as the disclaimer at the top says. If it starts to interfere with the actual creators and the actual effort of editing the books, then I’m going to have to shut it down early.

For those not paying attention to this experiment, you should; it’s somewhere between being educational and entertaining, if only for trying to work out how much of the problems thrown in the path of the faux editors is realistic and how much is Tom being a bastard.

So, every year, Diamond Comics Distributors and Alliance Game Distributors co-host summits for retailers; they’re somewhere for retailers to meet with distribution and publisher reps and talk shop away from the prying eyes of customers and Rich Johnson. Oh, the things they get up to there…! Secret ceremonies and wild, debauched orgies featuring kinky sex games* and live renditions of infamous monologues from the pages of 1970s Marvel Comics** are just some of the things that retailers find themselves involved in. But really, they’re just there for the freebies:

The schwag list from the Diamond/Alliance Summits are now complete and include unique collectibles that can help retailers cover the cost of their trips. Highlights from giveaways list include [a] Justice League of American Retailer Variant #1 (features Ed Benes artwork from JLA#1 A and B editions as a single piece of art) [and a] X-Men Phoenix Warsong 2006 Summit Sketch Variant #1 (Rare Wolverine Origins Promo Variant #2)… Many other giveaways and door prizes will greet retailers at the event, which will of course also feature valuable programming, the opportunity to meet with key suppliers to the trade, and to learn from interacting with other retailers.

(* – This is not true.)

(** – Neither is this.)

After applying a little math to the November DC solicitations, I was more than a little disturbed. Buying one of everything that had a price listed (as opposed to the action figures, which were “PI”) would cost about $1,100.00. This would get you some 120 items, including the relists. Because I don’t like to think of myself as a slavish DC fanboy, who I had imagined would spend much of the $1,100.00 gladly, I was pretty pleased to count up only 33 items, retailing for just over $193.00. Not bad, eh?

Then I looked at what I was buying, and had to admit to slavish fanboyhood: only one of those 33 items falls outside the mainstream DC Universe, and that’s the Astro City installment. Otherwise, I am getting exactly half of the DCU books.

Now that my shame is on public display, let’s take a look at oh, about half of the DCU books solicited for November and beyond….

(more…)

It’s not just Heidi, myself and the online artcomix intelligencia who are excited about the imminent return of Dirk Deppey’s Journalista blog… But wishing and hoping and waiting isn’t enough, as Dirk explains on The Engine:

In the space of two hours, the location of the test site for the new TCJ got leaked online, and I learned that Safari for the Mac basically makes a complete hash of said test site’s design — all this after I finally adjusted to the vampire hours necessary to have Journalista online when the East Coast wakes up, so now it’s 3:30 in the morning (to me) and I’m too frazzled to sleep. Oh, and have I mentioned that we’re supposed to go live in two days and a quarter of the old site’s legacy content still needs to be input into the new system?

Kill me now.

There’s beta-testing of the new TCJ site going on over at the current Comics Journal site right now, if that’s what you’re interested in…

Found on BoingBoing.

Over at the Fourth Rail, Don MacPherson dives head first into this week’s Justice League of America #1, providing an overview of all the continuity references and obscure characters packed into this issue … it definitely contains spoilers, BTW, so read at your own risk.

One of the things he noted was how the cover changed somewhere between the preview art and the final release:

It’s interesting to note that the final versions of these covers differ from earlier scans released as advance promotion for the series. For example, in an early version, Booster Gold stood where Big Barda can now be found. The Question was in the slot occupied by the Martian Manhunter in the final version. Tempest (formerly known as Aqualad) been replaced by Mr. Terrific, and Karate Kid of the Legion of Super-Heroes has been removed and not replaced. The Red Tornado and the Flash have traded places, and the hooded Green Arrow has replaced Elongated Man. Black Lightning’s spot was original occupied by John Stewart, and BL was instead tucked in behind Captain Atom in the original.

Other changes: Arsenal is now in the Green Arrow’s original position, and Aquaman was originally in the slot occupied by Guy Gardner in the final version; Gardner was originally in the back, beside Mr. Miracle. Batwoman wasn’t in the original; in her slot instead was Animal Man. In the original, Fire wasn’t aflame, and Arsenal stood where Nightwing can now be found. Adam Strange also made an appearance in the original cover art, just to Mr. Miracle’s left.

Witness the promotional art:

and the final cover:

The Ottawa Citizen takes a look at the Rogue Trooper video game:

Roaming a chemical wasteland has never been as much fun as it is in Rogue Trooper, from England’s Rebellion development studio.

The video game, available for PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC from Eidos, is a spinoff from the British 2000 AD comic, which dates back to 1977. Judge Dredd is perhaps the comic’s biggest name, but for those who only know the character via the Sylvester Stallone film, don’t hold that against it.

Rebellion also worked on the previously released Judge Dredd vs. Death — which kind of sucked — and they saw Rogue Trooper as a second chance to do things right:

“We felt we didn’t do Dredd quite the justice that we could’ve done,” Alex Moore, lead designer on Rogue Trooper, said from Rebellion’s Oxford offices. “And it was a big aim right from the (start), to make sure that Rogue was much closer to the licence and please the fans a lot more. And in that respect, fans have loved it. It’s been great.

“The only real negative feedback that we’ve had is that it’s too short, which in a respect is good feedback because it means people enjoyed it.”

Los Angeles City Beat talks with “cartoon journalist” Joe Sacco about But I Like It (Fantagraphics), a collection of his music-related comics from the 1980s and ’90s.

On his blog, Teen Titans artist Tony Daniel posts a beautiful illustration he did for Wizard #179, depicting a “What if?” lineup for DC’s Suicide Squad.

He also teases that the new issue of the magazine, available next week, will feature the lineup for Titans East. However, the Wizard website has already begun posting Daniel’s sketches of the team. For a glimpse of the first member, go here. (Don’t click if you’re spoiler-phobic.)

MoviesOnline laments that Dick Grayson/Robin apparently isn’t part of director Christopher Nolan’s vision for the Batman film franchise:

If Nolan intends to explore Batman’s origins and the beginnings of the characters that surround him, such as Commissioner Gordon, Harvey Dent, and The Joker, then it stands to reason that Dick Grayson is wandering around this universe somewhere. The pity is that if anyone could present Dick Grayson as he was always meant to be seen, it would be Nolan. The quality of Nolan’s cinematic vision for Batman is equivalent to Frank Miller’s comic vision for Batman. It is a darker world that is sensible and without the camp that has made some of the Batman characters a joke like Robin seems to have become when translated to screen from the inked page.

Related: Profile of trained bat from first Batman movie (seriously)

Comic fans looking for scholarly criticism of their favorite comics and graphic novels can check out the University of Florida’s peer-reviewed, open access journal ImageTexT, which is “dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of comics and related media.”

In the latest issue, Jim Casey and Stefan Hall have written a critical essay on David Mack’s Kabuki:

Although stretched over seven volumes, each with their own themes and plot-points, the Kabuki storyline primarily focuses on the (re)creation of self and the (trans)formation of identity. This essay will look at the way Ukiko navigates her construction of personhood and how she resists or participates in the scripting of male-defined womanhood. Like the female cyborg, she is figured as monstrous by her male-dominated culture and must reassemble herself within and against this depiction of monstrosity, actively negotiating the many impediments to her self-definition: she is literally and figuratively written by males, framed and reframed by the collision of lexical sign and artistic image, contained by the fetishizing power of her Noh mask, and prescribed by the genetic and active influence of her parents.

(Curious to know what they’re talking about? Check out Comics@Newsarama’s daily Kabuki strip).

Other articles in the latest issue include “Architectural Grounding in Miller’s Elektra: Temporality and Spatiality in the Graphic Novel,” “Yorick, Don’t Be A Hero: Productive Motion in Y: The Last Man” and “Imagining Terrorists before September 11: Marvel’s GI Joe Comic Books, 1982-1994.” For a future special issue, they plan to focus on the works of Neil Gaiman; the submissions page includes everything you need to know on submitting an article.

Not only do I wish I’d had a resource like this when I was writing essays about comics back in college, but I wish I’d had an “Interdisciplinary Comics Studies” program as well. Guess I was born too early.