Canmag.com has pictures up from the set of the upcoming Michael Bay Transformers movie:

Paul O’Brien looks at the July sales figures for Marvel, and he likes what he sees:

Well, here’s something I never thought I’d see – a month where most of the six-month comparisons are going up. July was an extremely good month for Marvel, mostly thanks to CIVIL WAR. On top of that, X-MEN and UNCANNY X-MEN get new creative teams, a new GHOST RIDER title launches, and the BEYOND! miniseries begins. Once again, Marvel are the runaway market leader. They beat DC in dollar share by 40.4% to 33.9%, and in unit share by 44.3% to 35.9%.

As could be expected, he also comments on what the Civil War delays mean in the larger picture:

[T]he omens look bleak for huge disruption to Marvel’s top selling comics over the next few months. DC must be breaking out the party hats. Marvel, meanwhile, have gone to great lengths to publicise a project that now makes them look like a bunch of incompetents. And while readers are merely inconvenienced, retailers can stare at their cashflow forecasts and weep.

The CIVIL WAR miniseries itself will still sell just fine when it resumes. That’s not really in doubt. The interesting question will be how badly the knock-on effects mount up – there are real financial consequences here, in terms of months when Marvel’s major titles could be missing from the shelves.

As with everything Paul writes, it’s well worth a look.

MTV.com spoke with James Franco, who only thought he was done filming Spider-Man 3:

“The next thing I’m shooting?” series star James Franco said over the weekend. “Re-shoots on ‘Spider-Man.’ ”

Revealing that director Sam Raimi has put out the call for “more action,” Franco said he’s being called back to the set of the blockbuster. “Probably next month,” he added.

Despite evidence to the contrary, Franco plays coy about becoming a full-fledged villain in the film. “You saw me in a suit?” Franco said. “I don’t think that was me.”

I think I like Elizabeth Genco’s brief interview with Brian Wood at The Chemistry Set because it doesn’t focus much on comics. Instead, it’s a breezy chat between friends, mostly about childhood, fort-building, reading lists and Marion Zimmer Bradley:

So your new (just announced) project is about Vikings. Have you always had a thing for Vikings? I’ve always had a thing for Celts, personally…

Yeah.. Vikings, Celts, you name it. Since I was little. We were raised on it, it seems. I was a very early reader as a kid, and before everyone else my age caught up, I was placed in these sort of silly “advanced reading classes”, which was just me and a few of my fellow early readers sitting in the empty cafeteria for last period reading different books. I remember reading KING ARTHUR and as a counterpoint, THE MISTS OF AVALON.

Dude. Marion Zimmer Bradley!

Did you ever see that Mists of Avalon film? Kinda funny.

I’m a little disturbed by Wood’s Lord of the Flies-style photo, though.

This doesn’t have anything (directly) to do with comics, but I think it provides an interesting comparison*, particularly in light of recent industry news:

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation has released its annual study of network TV dramas and comedies, and finds just nine gay or lesbian characters in regular lead or supporting roles in eight fall shows. Another five are in semi-regular recurring roles. (That’s 1.3 percent of all series-regular characters appearing on the 2006-2007 TV schedule.)

Those numbers are down slightly from last year’s 10 regular and six recurring characters, the media-advocacy group reports. (You can read the full “Where We Are On TV” study here.)

Now, I realize television is a mass medium, something the superhero comic hasn’t been in, oh, half a century. But there are at least passing similarities, at least when it comes to examining serial fiction and/or recurring characters.

Using the Gay League’s list of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters, I count 10 in starring/co-starring roles in DC and Marvel titles, with another six or so in supporting and/or recurring roles. I don’t know what percentage that is, because it would mean a lot math (and time), which makes my head hurt.

What does any of this mean? Nothing, probably, because I don’t know that the TV/comics parallel is strong enough to provide any sort of meaningful comparison. I just thought it was worth pointing out.

* And not in a See?-It-Could-Be-Worse kind of way.

Related: L.A. Daily News reports on the GLAAD study

In his annual sitdown with retailer website ICv2.com, DC Comics President and Publisher Paul Levitz talks at some length about the state of the market, web delivery, 52, the CMX manga line and more.

The interview, which includes responses from Stephanie Fierman, DC’s senior vice president of sales and marketing, was conducted at Comic-Con, so parts of the conversation are a bit dated (for instance, UGO.com began carrying the first five issues of 52 two weeks ago).

The Q&A is probably at its most interesting here, when Levitz addresses the 52 model by candidly looking at DC’s history experimenting with different formats — namely, the graphic novel and the weekly comic book.

The experiment in 1979 or ’80 with Manhunter, based on the European album? “[L]asted for about 2.5 seconds and didn’t work.” Early-’80s Baxter reprints? “That was a lead balloon.” Action Comics Weekly? “[A] notable failure.”

So far, Levitz says, 52 is “thankfully a very, very successful” experiment.

“I think part of the reason for success is Dan [Didio] brought to it an approach to creating new material that was modeled on his TV experience using team writing and building it so the creative people were not so much interchangeable parts,” Levitz says, “but teamed parts so that a consistent product could come out week after week, but without the reader paying attention to the label of which member of the team was doing which job which day.”

Read the interview: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

Slate.com is excerpting a chapter a day of The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation through Sept. 7. You can begin reading here.

Meanwhile, the satirical website Wonkette responds to what it calls “Slate’s Stupidest Idea Since ‘The Zeitgeist Checklist’,” asking snarky questions like, “So, wait, are the mice Jews, or firefighters, or what?” It also provides its own excerpt, featuring Spider-Man.

Related: USA Today interviews creators Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon

If you’ve seen Cobra Starship’s video for the Snakes on a Plane theme song, you might have noticed Samuel L. Jackson eyeing the band as they smuggle snakes onto a plane. But did you notice that he’s watching them from behind a copy of 100 Bullets: Strychnine Lives?

Go check it out at http://www.snakesonaplane.com/. Click on “Trailers,” then select “Starship Cobra.” Jackson’s scene is near the end of the video. The site also allows you to send a customized phone call or email from Jackson to your friends. Go check it out.

The comic blogosphere seems to grow larger every day and just like comics, sometimes it’s pretty easy to get a little lost. “Meanwhile…” will act as your map pointing out what interesting discussions are happening out there while you’re reading Blog@Newsarama.

 

So this is my first official, that is non-guest, swing at doing a Meanwhile. Sheesh, no pressure there, right?

Well, let’s get down to it…

(more…)

Last week we learned that we’ll have to wait a little longer for the next issue of Civil War, but this week the wait is over for anyone wanting to know who exactly made the cut in DC’s post-Infinite Crisis Justice League of America title. We already know Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Red Tornado are in the book, plus one of the Hawks, plus a former Teen Titan, plus … hell, let’s stop pretending that the cover hasn’t already possibly been leaked. If you’re interested in being spoiled, Ragnell has it up on her blog.

Also out this week are several other big releases — Wonder Woman, Batman, Astonishing X-Men, Eternals — and a lot of really cool trades. If you missed out on the singles of Middleman, Boneyard or Dan Slott’s short-lived Thing series, check out the collections this week.

(more…)

So this week finally sees the release of the new Justice League of America title, the one whose cover was originally released with blacked-out images of who would be joining Supes, Bats and WW on the team. With one mystery solved, now it’s on to the next.

The DC solicitations for November, which were released earlier today, feature the cover for Teen Titans #41 with — you guessed it — more blacked-out mystery characters:

The flying lady in the top left looks to be wearing a skirt similar to the one worn by Supergirl or Mary Marvel. With Supergirl already getting a lot of face time in her own book and in Legion, I’m hoping it turns out to be someone else.

The other character? No clue. Any guesses on who it might be?

Larry Young talks to Chris Brown about where AiT-PlanetLar has been, and where it may be going:

Me, I like all the experimental and offbeat things we do with concept and presentation… I like making new categories, or proving existing ones have more worth than folks may originally think, like the AiT and DEMO scriptbooks we put out, or the collection of Warren Ellis’ COME IN ALONE online columns, or the BADLANDs screenplay book, or the SURVIVING GRADY collection.  I like our all-ages books as entrances to the libraries, and I like putting new voices and talents out into the world. I know more than a few editors’ first encounters with a work of Matt Fraction, Adam Beechen, Becky Cloonan, Rick Spears and Rob G, Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba, and even Rick Remender came from a book with an AiT logo on it, because the editors have told me so. So having that kind of eye and working hard with new folks Making Comics Better is really very right on.

Over at Tom Brevoort’s blog, the game is indeed afoot as his editorial simulator gathers speed. The aim, as he explained in the opener, is the following:

Your goal over the course of the next two weeks is to increase your sales, put out crowd-pleasing, well-produced comic books, meet your financial obligations to the company, and get the books out on time.

As the editor, you can try anything you can think of more-or-less, provided that such actions get aproved by the Editor in Chief and the Marvel braintrust (in this case, played by me.) So your first move is to determine what you want to do with your three books. Do you want to make creative changes? try to put a new cover artist on? Have an idea for a specific storyline? Want to build a crossover?

Literally anything you can come up with is potentially fair game. The more creative you are, the more fun this will potentially be.

But it’s not as easy as it looks, as the second installment shows. Having given Tom their ideas, the wannabe editors recieve a simulated reality check in return:

You don’t have any individual ad budget–the ad budget for Marvel editorial is communal. So most of your ideas towards targeting ads around the net comes to nothing. Eats up a good meeting, though.

You can do viral marketing on the net, but again, you don’t have any budget to spend. And again, any bit of information that you put on the net makes it more difficult to interest the typical comics news outlets in your stories. You definitely don’t have enough time in your week to do both video blogs and the alternate reality game (nor do you have a budget to hire somebody to come up withthe backstory for the game–this you’ll either need to do yourself or convince one of your writers to do for free–and while he’s doing that he’s not working on your books.) Again, you’ll need to give me your current plan now that you have this new information–confirm what you’re doing or make adjustments to what you propose.

… You only receive 4 or 5 office copies of each book you work on, and you receive those after the title goes on sale. So you’re very limited in terms of what you can send out to reviewers. And any attempts to contact the mainstream media will have to go through Marvel’s PR department, who have bigger fish to fry than promoting the latest issue of DAREDEVIL, so nothing much comes of this.

You’re definitely in no position to arrange to give away copies of GHOST RIDER at the movie premiere. This might happen anyway, depending on the parameters of the shindig, but it’s well beyond your ability to arrange.

Attempting to send a copy of the GHOST RIDER collection to Nic Cage for promotional opportunities would need to go through Marvel Studios. The folks there tell you that it’s not going to happen–the movie has its own agenda in terms of what to promote and how to promote whenever they can get Cage in front of the television cameras or on a talk show set.

It may be brutal for the two contestants, but it’s fascinating for the rest of us.

That photo alone is enough to sell me on this lengthy article in The Seattle Times’ Pacific Northwest magazine about the region’s conventions and fandom.

There’s a great slide show, too.

This has been popping up in a few places, including Drawn! and BoingBoing. Joel Johnson shares hi-resolution scans of comic legend Wally Wood’s “22 Panels that Always Work,” a set of instructional panels that were given to new Marvel artists, where Wood was an editor.

Johnson recently purchased the originals and made them available on his site:

It is now my pleasure to offer these relatively high-resolution versions of “Wally Wood’s 22 Panels That Always Work” in “Unlimited Edition,” scanned in from the original paste-up. The widescreen versions include the whole of the paste board, including a serendipitously open area on the left hand side of the image that makes them practical to use as desktops for your computer, despite the otherwise busy background of the rest of the piece. My scanner is not large enough to scan the entire paste board at once, so I have tried to make a reasonable effort to stitch together four separate scans, although I did not go to any great length to remove all trace of seams.

There is also a 4:3 black-and-white version, tweaked to provide a 1600 by 1200 pixel duotone that emulates the previous versions available on the internet, albeit with greater fidelity.

While I did not leave any watermark or URL on the specific image files, I would ask that you refrain from using the images for any commercial purposes without my permission. Otherwise, please disseminate as freely as you like. Part of the reason I bought the piece was to ensure that it remained available to any artists who might find it inspiring or useful.

If you missed Infinite Crisis and are curious to know what went down, or just want to relive it in less than 5,000 words, William Gatevackes at Pop Matters has posted a recap of the entire series, summarizing all the complaints that longtime fans have noted about the “C”-word, continuity. Spoilers abound:

These inconsistencies are what make the series a disappointment. Kryptonians have no powers as soon as they are under a red sun. No, the red sun gradually reduces their powers. The Speed Force is where speedsters get their powers. No, it’s only a power source they can tap into. The Speed Force is gone. No, it’s back. Nope, it’s gone again. Superboy-Prime was trapped in the Speed Force. No, the speedsters trapped him on a planet with a red sun. No, it was the Speed Force. Batman doesn’t kill. Wait, he does.

In response to David Welsh’s blog post about how a publisher’s corporate personality can influence consumer perception of its product, John Jakala crafts a publisher personality quiz, or as he calls it, “Comic Book Publishers: A Field Guide to Understanding Their Quirks and Complications.”

For DC Comics, Jakala ascribes the following “Typical Behavior”:

- Is it Monday? Time for a new creative team and/or reboot/relaunch of our entire superhero universe!
- We just know this beloved character who has never been able to attract an audience will finally succeed this time
- But we also have Vertigo, CMX, and Wildstorm

As for the “Overall Impression Created”:

Strangely ambivalent about own rich history: sometimes proud of quirky characters, embracing their inherent goofiness; sometimes attempt to cover up embarrassment over silly characters by changing everything about them except name (bipolar / manic-depressive?) Compartmentalizes.

He also tackles Marvel, Dark Horse, Tokyopop, Viz, Drawn & Quarterly, Fantagraphics and First Second.

Go read for yourselves. (Via David Welsh.)

I’m not big on toys and collectibles, but these vinyl Marvel Bearz from Piranha Studios are, well, adorable. Of course, they somehow become a little less cute when you read that the same company produces a line of Porn Star Bearz (I’m not linking to that; you can search for it yourselves). All 12 Marvel Bearz from “Wave 1,” including Punisher, Wolverine and Carnage, can be seen here.

Usually my wife forwards me articles like this one on Christopher Noxon’s new book, Rejuvenile: Kickball, Cartoons, Cupcakes, and the Reinvention of the American Grown-Up in an attempt to give me a bit of self-awareness. I’ll read it, smile and then go back to reading Summerslam results or the latest issue of She-Hulk or whatever. This one caught my eye, though, not just because of the descriptive opening….

What did you do for fun this weekend? Perhaps you drove your Beetle or big shiny truck to the multiplex to see that pirate movie (very similar to one you’d seen before), or maybe the one about a crime-fighter who flies through the air wearing a cape and tights.

On the way, maybe you treated yourself to a chocolate-flavored frozen coffee drink and took a call on your pink Razr phone, whose ringtone is the theme song from your favorite retro TV show. Maybe you were wearing an oversize T-shirt, baggy shorts and flip-flops, or some similar get-up that wouldn’t be out of place in a middle school cafeteria line.

If this describes you, it describes millions of other Americans, too —something new in history, a variety of adult whose consumer tastes, favorite pastimes and even living arrangements smack distinctly of childhood.

…but because the article noted my wife’s “rejuvenile” passion, Walt Disney World, as much as, if not more than, it referenced comic books:

The No. 1 vacation destination for adults is not the Grand Canyon, not a great city like New York or San Francisco, not even the increasingly theme-park like Las Vegas. It’s Disney World. Half of its visitors are adults unaccompanied by children.

We’ve been to Walt Disney World more times than I’ve been anywhere else on vacation, including the San Diego Comicon. So who is self-aware now?

The author also has a website where you can check out excerpts from the book, read Noxon’s blog and explore the Rejuvenile playground (aka visit links to slumber party and kickball websites).

The Toronto Star wades into the fight between Hobbystar Marketing and members of Toronto’s comics community over conventions — or, more specifically, the company’s tendency to sponsor its own events the week before existing cons like Anime North and Toronto Comicon.

The newspaper does a good job of clearly presenting the sides in the dispute. Hobbystar’s Aman Gupta contends he’s, “trying to look out for the fans in the city. However, Peter Birkemoe of The Beguiling, Daryl Collison of 3rd Quadrant Comics and Brian Garside of allnewcomics.com say Hobbystar is trying to squeeze out the competition.

It’s an interesting read, particularly for those who thought things couldn’t get more contentious than the Wizard World-Heroes Convention conflict.

Related: Garside’s Stop Hobbystar blog