Seven Soldiers #1, the book many of us here at Blog@ were eagerly anticipating in this week’s Can’t Wait for Wednesday, will be delayed in some parts of the country. Per DC Comics:

Due to an error, retailers serviced by Diamond Comic Distributors’ Memphis Distribution Center will not receive SEVEN SOLDIERS #1 (AUG060221) and SUPERGIRL AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #23 Standard Edition (AUG060226) this week

These issues now are set to reach retailers on November 1. Retailers will be invoiced for them with their November 1 shipment.

Diamond’s three main distribution centers are located in New York, California and Memphis, Tennessee. Seven Soldiers #1 was originally scheduled to come out last April, but was delayed until this week … and for some of the country, it looks like the delay will be one week more.

As promised back in June, Lea Hernandez announces the winners of her webcomicker grant on her blog:

Before September 6th, for me to say I understood the reach of the Internet would mean that I knew it was an end run around many obstacles facing artists who wanted to share their work with the world. It’s an end run I have been making since 1991, a decade and a half of dodging and weaving, and in that, a bit more than ten as a webcomicker, one of the first to make the print-to-web transition with Rumble Girls: Silky Warrior Tansie. I started Women Webcomicker Grant Nan because I was challenged to do something about the problems I saw with comics, instead of just talking about them. Inspired by Peter Laird’s Xeric Grant for self-publishers and Dr. Keith P. Taylor’s Modest Needs foundation, which gives small gifts to people to help pay emergency expenses, I realized it was within my grasp to do something, and even a “small” something was still something.
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I briefly had a blog dedicated to comic-book cover art and design called, appropriately enough, Comics, Covered. Unfortunately, I had to abandon that to focus on other things. But now I’m bringing it back as a weekly feature at Blog@Newsarama.

How’s that for a brief introduction?

The Man from SHIELD

Shortly before I wandered away from the Comics, Covered blog, I’d intended to write an appreciation of Jim Steranko’s late-’60s Marvel covers, such as The Incredible Hulk King-Size Special #1 and X-Men #50. Mostly, though, I wanted to focus on his brief, but groundbreaking, stint on Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD.

I’d nearly forgotten that plan until last week, when Marvel released its January solicitations. There I saw Greg Horn’s cover for She-Hulk #15, which makes use of the black-and-white psychedelic swirls and op-art elements introduced by Steranko back in September 1968′s Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD #4.

It’s easily my favorite Steranko cover and, arguably, his most influential.

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I’ve always been more comfortable on the fringe of whatever it was my friends and the rest of popular culture was into. When my buddies in high school all started showing up in class with copies of X-Men comics, I wanted in on the fun of reading them, but it didn’t need to be exactly what they were reading and I didn’t want to mess around with having to find a good spot to jump into the story. Fortunately, Marvel introduced a new title about that time, so I tried it out. It was the first issue of John Byrne’s Alpha Flight.

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This week will be a little different. We have a special guest contributor and a real strong push for a long awaited #1. Formalities aside, let’s dive in.

James Patrick’s Pick Of The Week

NEXTWAVE #9.

When Chris asked me to participate and told me to pick the book I’m most looking forward to this week, I thought it would be an indy book. Not only am I partly an indy creator, not only do I look for ward to more indy books than other books, but they also deserve and need the attention. So of course I looked over the list and realized the book I’m most looking forward to is from Marvel. Not wanting to undermine the validity of Can’t Wait For Wednesday, my pick is Nextwave #9. Thankfully it doesn’t read like most other Marvel books and it’s a book that deserves more attention – or sales anyway – though it’s probably too late to be saved.

Yes, it was announced this week Nextwave will only be 12 issues, maybe followed by minis, and it’s a damn shame because I like my monthly dose of this book. It’s like an acid trip in comic’s reading in that it takes you out of the day-to-day reality of mainstream monthlies. You just never know what’s going to happen in Nextwave, and, having caught the preview of Nextwave #9 and having seen how they seemingly get their next foe from (SPOILERS) Captain America’s pee, I won’t be disappointed with this issue. I miss the book already.

Oh, and to keep some of my cred, I’m looking forward to snagging Hawaiian Dick V2 and catching up with second printings of Phonogram 1 and 2. Image, so not hardcore indy, but still.

James Patrick has the critically acclaimed Death Comes To Dillinger trade in November Previews (NOV06 3844) this week and a story in Angel: Masks from IDW next week. James has written the critically acclaimed Crackurz and Lionxor, as well as contributed to the indy smash Hero Happy Hour. He’s written strips for Kevin Smith’s Movie Poop Shoot and was head writer on the television show Independent Axis.

Thanks, James! I can’t wait to see more Death Comes To Dillinger!

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In this exciting midterm year, the Comics Journal board wonders just how your favorite comic characters would vote:

“Popeye might be a Republican, doing so because of military background. Sally Forth votes however her husband tells her. Mandrake the Magician’s a Libertarian. Slylock Fox is a Democrat. Prince Valiant is a Ye Oldde Ramplesteinerer. The Phantom lives in the middle of the goddam jungle. He can’t vote.”

“Batman is one of those scary Libertarians. Spider-man usually votes Independent (when he doesn’t forget to vote, the loser).  Superman’s an illegal alien and can’t vote. Wonder Woman’s a damned Monarchist. I could go on all day…”

“You mean Superman has never become a U.S. citizen? Well, dang! Then he probably IS an illegal alien alien. Then there’s the Clark Kent issue. Clark has no birth certificate, and thus no Social Security number. So how’d he ever get a driver’s license? Or pay payroll taxes? Or get a passport? Or register to vote (assuming he has)?”

“Jimmy Corrigan: Straight-ticket Democrat, but not a regular voter. I see Rusty Brown as a pretty hardcore Libertarian, though. Brown’s hardships have made him callous and I can see him bitching about paying taxes to support ‘welfare moms’, while Jimmy is more gentle type, raised by a single mom. Even if Jimmy is terrified of minorities and homeless people, I can’t picture him voting conservative.”

“[A]s far as I know, Clark Kent was legally adopted by beloved Ma and Pa Kent, so don’t give me any of that illegal immigrant shit. Though you know Superman is an obvious fascist. You better believe a dim-witted goody-two shoes like Superman would be providing service for J. Edgar Hoover and the Feds.”

So much more at the link.

Millarworld hits appropriate notes of disbelief:

“Noticed on DC’s site that All-Star Batman and Robin #5, which had previously been delayed to November 29th, has been pushed back to January 24th! Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think they managed to ship ONE issue in 2006…”

“So at this point is it even possible that there’s an explanation beyond,’I just haven’t been working on it.’ from Jim Lee or Frank Miller?”

“From the couple issues I read, that is a blessing.”

“Good Lord this is funny and pathetic all at the same time. Miller and Lee were only able to get one issue out in 2006? Hahahahahahaha, ah b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l! Sad thing is acording to Lee and DC, Lee was nearly finished All Star Batman & Robin #5 before Lee jumped onto doing Wildcats #1 and assured fandom that #5 would be out at the end of November. Now it’s been quitely pushed back to January 24/07. At this point there is honestly no excuse other then them not working on it for it being so late.”

“I’m all for things like Marvel giving Hitch time to finish Ultimates, but this is ridiculous. There comes a point when you have to go beyond saying ‘something has to give’ and decide what exactly is going to give. He should drop something so that he can concentrate on what’s important to him, and it seems that ASBetc is not what’s important to him.”

“Absolutely, you just shouldn’t commit to more than you can realistcally do. Lee has some video game stuff, the Wildstorm relaunch, ASB, and Wildcats (possibly more). ASB is going to release 1 issue in 2006 and Wildcats couldn’t even launch its first issues without almost a month of delays. At this point he needs to sit down and figure out what he can drop. Doesn’t matter if he wants to do them all, he clearly can’t keep that workload and trying to it costing the company and retailers plenty of potential sales.”

“Y’know…asking people to start investing in an ongoing project and then treating terminal lateness as a joke to your consumers will get you utterly fired from any other profession. Occasional lateness and the caused unexpected events are one thing. Regular lack of professionalism is another and sorry, I can’t think of any other way to describe it when it gets to this scale. Only take on a job you think you can manage. If it turns out you can’t, sort out the problem, take decisive action or quit… and let someone with better work ethics take over.”

“Wasn’t Wildsiderz the new Battlechasers? Would that make ASB&R the new Daredevil: Target? Or is it Daredevil: Father? Wow, all these late books with big name talent attached…who would have thought?”

“Let’s see… Daredevil: Father #2 came out 16 months after #1. Daredevil: Target #1 came out in 11/2002 and has yet to see #2 hit the stands… Scary to think that as bad as ASB&R’s delays are, they aren’t quite to that level yet…”

(* – Definition of “good” being in the eye of the beholder, you understand…)

B. Clay Moore shares a Marvel pitch that never got to completion, especially interesting in the light of Agents of Atlas and JMS’s new 1950s project:

Since Marvel’s announced JMS is mucking about with a number of the characters in this pitch, I don’t see any reason not to share, for those who might be interested… It was never exactly rejected, but after working on editorially directed revisions for a while, I began to realize it was unlikely the book would ever see the light of day, and turned my focus with Marvel to other things.

Anyway, you guys know how much I love these characters. I don’t think I’ve ever posted an unused pitch before, and probably won’t again, but if you’re interested at all, here it is.

Later in the thread, he explains why the project isn’t going to happen:

…[I]t’s not that they didn’t take it. It’s that my editor (whom I like quite a bit) kept asking for tweaks and revisions, and I was pretty sure that it wasn’t going any further than that, even if he liked what I came up with.

Joe Q’s not a big fan of World War II, so I’m guessing it would take someone with JMS’s sales record to be allowed to play with these toys.

Top Cow: Providing fetishists with their masturbatory material in awkward franchise merchandise since 1993:

Top Cow is providing potential customers with a preview of the sexy Schoolgirl Witchblade Statue designed by Marc Silvestri and sculpted by Clayburn Moore.  The limited edition, hand-painted statue of Top Cow’s most popular heroine stands 13.5-inches tall and will be available in January with a suggested retail price of $159.

Seriously. A schoolgirl Witchblade statue? What is that about?

Tamora Pierce has issued an apology to Mark Millar, for personal remarks made while criticizing Civil War. For those of you behind the news, here are the remarks:

The writer is Mark Millar. And I am just out of my mind with this. I’ve seen some comic book females made to say crazy stuff, but this is just too twisted. What was he thinking Was he thinking? Or does he believe this is what really goes on inside a woman’s–inside a mother’s–head?

These are the days when you wish the characters could just rear out of the pages and sock the writers.

Those particular remarks, summed up on a well-read gossip column last week, led to one hundred and nintey-eight comments on the original livejournal post, thirteen pages here, five pages here, and three pages here. Many of the posters felt that she was being unprofessional and unfair, which is why she issued the apology.

Ms. Pierce is a novelist, new to the comics industry, so she obviously has a lot to learn about the behavior befitting an industry professional. Let’s look at back at some of this summer’s prominent disagreements to see why her comments would be considered unacceptable: (more…)

While mainstream comics fans were busy talking about gay superheroes, ratings and the appropriateness of depicting (homo)sexuality, the programmers at Rockstar Games went and did something sly: They made it possible in their controversial-even-before-its-release video game Bully for protagonist Jimmy Hopkins to romance, and kiss, boys as well as girls.

Gamebrink is credited with first mentioning this last week in a review — they post a video of a hallway kiss, too — but GayGamer has been following up on the story.

“It is clearly NOT a bug since there was obviously dialogue recorded for these sequences, and you have your choice of four or five different boys on which to lay the mack down,” GayGamer’s “Fruit Brute” writes. “I applaud Rockstar’s ballsy-ness in actually including the free will to decide who you want to kiss to get your health back. And true to life, not every boy will want to lock lips with you.

“I do think though, that this raises some important questions, not the least of which is: Was this content an homage to the real choices we get to make in life, or merely another ‘Hot Coffee’ type stunt to stir the pot and boost sales?”

Donning his investigative reporter hat, Fruit Brute then played the game himself, and discovered that Trent is one of at least four male Bully characters who responds to flowers and a little sweet talk: “I was shocked later, when I went into the town near the school, to find my blonde hunk holding hands with a red haired jock while waiting in line for the movies. Needless to say, my heart was broken …”

However, he held himself together long enough to make a video of the sequence.

It’s shaping up to be a slow, slow news day, so I give you this: The Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories guide to making a Cylon Jack-o’-Lantern.

(Via TV Squad)

Artist Ethan Van Sciver, hair band Winger and the U.S. military … sounds like a Johnny Carson joke, but in fact, all three of them play into a story in the Marine Corps. Times. Sciver recently provided the military-themed cover to a reunited Winger’s fourth album:

The military also figures prominently in the album art, drawn by veteran comic book artist Ethan Van Sciver. The 32-year-old artist has worked for both DC Comics and Marvel Comics on titles including “Flash,” “Wolverine,” “New X-Men,” “Batman,” “Green Lantern” and “Superman.”

As he talked with Kip Winger about the concept, “over the course of a few conversations with him, I started to understand his feelings that led to the songs he wrote for the album,” Van Sciver said in an e-mail interview. “He really tried to put himself into the shoes of a soldier, to feel what they must feel. And a lot of this album is something like a prayer for them.”

The cover depicts a service member clad in desert camouflage and body armor and carrying an M16 rifle, looking into the distance as three angelic figures watch over his shoulder.

“The angels are the prayers and hopes and best wishes from us, to them,” Van Sciver said. “We hope they’re being looked after as they risk their lives each day. I hope each of them has their own little angel. Or three.”

Posters of the album cover art will be sold online at http://www.slippingintofiction.net, with a portion of the proceeds going to military charities.

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.

Well, it’s already been announced, but I should make it official. You are looking at my last Meanwhile column here at Blog@Newsarama. It’s not that Meanwhile isn’t a great idea or a lot of fun to do, because it’s definitely both. However, the column has always been Shane’s baby and not mine. You’ll see me around here at Newsarama though, doing my Point/Counterpoint posts every week. I hope you guys will enjoy them.

Now I intend to go out with a bang, so this last week, instead of all the varied topics, I’m only going to have one. This past week has been arbitrarily declared Cheesecake/Beefcake Appreciation Week. There’ve been a lot of responses and I’ve got every single one right here for you. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the eye-candy!

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Discussion over an unverified rumor – and I want to emphasize that part – leads to a completely different discussion over on The Comic Journal boards:

As if the recent news about Daniel Clowes’s heart operation (Jesus Christ!) wasn’t bad enough, I just read on www.criterionforum.org that Tomine is losing his eyesight… no further details were given by the poster, so I have no idea if it’s true or if the comment was made in jest, etc. But if true I would have thought it might’ve already been mentioned around here? Now, I realize Tomine’s entire career has more or less been achieved by poorly copying clowes, but this is ridiculous. Going blind is not something I’d wish on my worst enemy (and Tomine is only my second worst enemy) so I sincerely hope it’s not true and someone somewhere is having a lugh at my expense.

Response starts as expected, and then… begins to become more unexpected:
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Heidi isn’t the only one lamenting the end of Season 2 of The Venture Bros. Between that and a skip week for The Wire, I found myself with nothing to watch last night. Instead, I read The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, Vol. 1, so the evening wasn’t a complete loss.

Anyway, for those looking for some kind of Venture fix, the wedding song performed by henchmen 21 and 24 in Part I of the season finale is available for download here. It’s the full song, with music by Doc Hammer, and lyrics by Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick. It’s catchy.

Next Generation has an article up on Marvel Ultimate Alliance, the latest Marvel U. video game that comes out tomorrow. It reveals some interesting facts about the game, such as it having 23 different endings and a VIP “secret code” that unlocks the Silver Surfer:

Activision chose to get a bit more creative with its online efforts with a program that brought the more dedicated fans into a single community. According to Kostich, the results were excellent.

“We’ve done a lot of viral stuff and one of the things that we did which has been I think a huge success for this title, is we launched a VIP program that’s really for the insiders and the biggest fans in Marvel. We created a center community for them. It can be accessed at vip.marvelultimatealliance.com.”

He explained, “You’re actually invited to this program if you pre-sell a copy of this game at GameStop. There, when you pre-sell a copy of the game, you’ll get a special unlockable code for Silver Surfer and an invitation to become a VIP which you can pass along to twenty of your friends. It’s really an exclusive community that we’ve built to give these guys special access to information—early information as to who the characters are going to be and access to the developers and their thoughts on developing the game. So it’s really a fun insider community that, interestingly enough, has made this our highest trafficked piece of Marvel gaming property that we’ve had to date. And since we’ve launched the VIP community our website traffic has tripled. The results have been phenomenal.”

The game comes out tomorrow and will be available for the Playstation 2, Xbox, Xbox 360, PC, Gameboy Advance and PSP. For more info, visit the official website.

Agents of Atlas artist Leonard Kirk reminds us all that Hallowe’en is coming…:

I had not planned on posting this until next week but I just couldn’t wait. If everyone is really, really nice, maybe I’ll add a few more blood filled spooky treats before the night of the demons and ghoulies.

I created this foul, violent monstrosity of smelly evil in my lab by combining the genetic material of the the three most frightening, twisted and dangerous creatures known to man….. the Frankenstein Monster, the Incredible Hulk and CARROT TOP!!

Click through to the link to see horror like you have never imagined.

One thing I haven’t really done since starting to blog here at Newsarama is blog what happens at Newsarama… but this discussion about Civil War seemed worth sharing:

“Tony starts to do what he feels is right to make it go as quickly as possible. Is he a bad guy? Nah, he even helps out the other side still when lives are in danger. Is that the act of a Nazi? Would Hitler have helped out the Jews if they were about to be blown up in a bunker he created? What people like Tony, Reed, and Carol do is uphold the law. They see that super heroes need to be registered or else more incidents like Stamford will occur. So they areest people and put them in the one place that can hold them all: the negative zone. Yeah, it would suck to be in that prison. Tony knows this. He designed it that way. He wants people to agree to register ASAP, and that means they stay in a pretty crappy environment. Is it harsh? Yes, but I reckon it will also be effective. While his means are questionable, his ends are just: to have super heroes registered so that another small town doesn’t blow up.”

“It’s more productive and more honest to debate whether or not the values Tony is defending are actually Tony’s values. You say he is a hero who upholds the law. I tend to agree. But the question then becomes: which does he find more important, the letter of the law, or rights guaranteed constitutionally? If you violate or outright ignore a citizen’s rights to due process, are you still following the law? Or… Are you following the law as you interpet it? …Lemme just ask this: if a captured Captain America refuses to sign under threat and duress, and Tony and Reed toss him into the cosmic hoosgow with no trial and no charges and no representation, will people still think they are upholding the law as they always have?”

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Serene at the Successless Comics Blog was one of the first customers of the new Fantagraphics “brick & mortar” store in Seattle, which she describes as “Fanta-awesome”:

As one of the first group of patrons to cross the threshold into unchartered Fantagraphics Books retail country, I can say that there is no greater sight than seeing an Acme Novelty Library stand next to a spinner rack swollen with Love and Rockets and Black Hole.

She even offers up a place to stay for non-psychotic, out-of-town comic fans.