USA Today and EW.com are reporting Oscar-winning Aussie actress and X-Men co-star Anna Paquin (Rogue) will star in an HBO pilot produced by Six Feet Under‘s Alan Ball based on the Southern Vampire series of books written by Charlaine Harris, called True Blood.

It’s not such a big stretch for Paquin from her X-Men days. She plays a waitress who just happens to be a telepath who falls in love with a vampire who flew into her sleepy Louisiana town.

Hope this is more than just a Buffy/Angel thing…

Many thanks to fellow Newsarama scribe Kevin Melrose for the news about James Jean and Adam Hughes winning top honors last weekend during the 14 annual Spectrum Art competition in Kansas City.

Jean, the popular and terrific cover artist, won a silver award for his gorgeous work on the recent cover of the DC Vertigo hardback release of Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall and a gold award for advertising (Spacerace 2020 for Nike).

Adam Hughes nabbed gold award honors for his work for Marvel/Upper Deck on the card, Wanda–Lost.

Read the full list of Spectrum award winners at Irene Gallo’s The Art Department Web site.

Get the early scoop on DC Comics’ young-adult imprint Minx with an interesting 17-page sneak preview of its initial foray into young-adult market, The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg, that hits your friendly neighborhood comic stores and bookstores in May.

Yeah, who didn’t see this coming? Mark Millar Faux Controversy Machine! Go!:

Like all my pals, the TV and movie people have come calling and even the computer game people (which is weird because games are for pedos and I have no interest).

Now, lets look at how computer game people are reacting:

Wait, a guy who writes comic books for a living is saying that games are for pedophiles? I think tipster Neal put it best: What a jackass, especially coming from someone who works in an industry that is often geared toward a young market. What is this, Comic Industry Stupidity Day?

Or:

I’ve always harbored a mild disgust for Mark Millar, because the guy always comes off as a very shameless self-promoting “rock star” writer who doesn’t think before he talks. But hey, now he’s saying we’e all pedophiles. Yeah, it’s probably just one of his wacky jokes (which always tend to come off more as smarmy, condescending “I’m better than you” remarks), but it sure is insulting to a very large audience (way larger than his little comics industry, to boot). Get over yourself, Mark Millar–you’re just a freaking comic book writer. 

Or even:

I’d thought that Marvel writer Mark Millar couldn’t descend further into self-parody… Y’know what? I’m calling this one on Bad Waiter Syndrome. I got nothing.

Luckily, Mark’s feeling penitant:

That’s hilarious. A clear indication that gamers are twitchy and guilty if they can’t take a joke. I love it. These guys should spend less time whacking off to Miss Lara Croft and more time reading Spider-Man  

Remember, kids – He only does it to see how you’ll loudly you’ll scream. 

When I started this column, I defined its scope as covering anything “fringe.” I picked the word because it describes anything that’s on the edge or the periphery of something else, in this case the mainstream comics industry in the United States. What I intended by that was to cover pretty much everything but Marvel and DC, though I suppose that given its popularity, I should probably leave manga alone too. But except for the title of the column, I haven’t been exactly consistent in my terminology and I’ve substituted words like “indie” and “alternative” for “fringe.” And I’ve been called on it at least once. 

So, lets take a look at some of these labels and what they really mean. Is Dark Horse “indie?” Is Image “alternative?”

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Getting personal for a second, let me just say that I like the Hulk. A lot. But I hadn’t always; growing up, I saw some of the TV show and snored through it. I only bought one comic of the big green guy at my first comic shop tenure, and that was due to the subject matter (PAD did AIDS before Winick shed his Real World days!). I did what most people did: looked at the cover, saw a big monster throwing truck and based my opinion from that.

A friend of mine changed all of that. He’s the one who got me to actually open a book and look inside, something very integral to all Marvel characters. While someone can take a look at Superman or Batman and get their gist (Superman, dressed in red and blue, sailing through the sky, Batman, dark, normally hunched in shadows, lookin’ mean), you really have to find out about guys like Spider-Man to learn about Great Power and Responsibility and the real heart of their stories. Thus it was with the Hulk; one of the first things I read was Incredible Hulk: Beauty and the Behemoth (from the House of Ideas!) with Peter David’s forward and afterward, and I found a remarkable romance within the character and got that all important connection that grabs most readers from the House that Stan Built: character identification.
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Kevin Melrose talks to David Hahn, the new artist on Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, who does a fun bit of name-dropping:

Outside of your studio mates, do you spend much time with local creators? I imagine hours spent in coffeehouses, talking craft and complaining about editors. Am I way off?

Not way off at all. My family and I go to dinner parties at Brian Bendis’s home fairly regularly, but as far as talking shop, that happens in the studio. We used to meet for coffee with Greg Rucka at a shop near his home, but then we thought, “Why don’t we just get a studio going?” So doing the coffee-and-sketch thing is now pretty much a solitary activity for me. That’s the way I like it.

Kevin chats with him about several upcoming projects, including Spidey Luvs MJ and All Nighter, an upcoming Minx title.

The San Jose Mercury News, in preparation for WonderCon later this week, has an article up on the aging comic fan:

In 1989, the average age of a customer at Joe Field’s comic book store in Concord was 18.

Today, it’s almost 30. Moreover, Field estimates that buyers under 18 account for less than 20 percent of his sales.

Field’s experience at his shop, Flying Colors Comics, is anything but unique. The comics business has learned to survive and grow by appealing to adults instead of kids. And that has opened the door to increasingly mature and edgy material, some of it within famously mainstream comics.

This is probably my favorite quote:

“Comics,” Field says, “are still a flea on the rear of the entertainment elephant — including TV, movies, advertising and video games. Comics creatively dominate the other media, but they’re far behind from a business standpoint.”

This one from Lee Hester of Lee’s Comics was kind of a gem as well:

“We have a small readership base, and I’m okay with that,” Hester writes in e-mail. “I’m so small that Wal-Mart will never try to crush me.”

Thank god for small favors. The Merc also spoke to Brad Meltzer about the infamous Identity Crisis rape scene.

GamesIndustry.biz has a brief article up on a new game publisher called Xider, which says they will release a Nintendo DS version of Telltale’s Bone game later this year. Cue the “hurrays” from DS and Bone fans everywhere.

But don’t put on your cow race costume and go hog wild just yet … Wired reports that the site is incorrect and there is no DS version of Bone coming just yet, after checking with Telltale:

Wired News followed up on this release with Telltale, who says that GamesIndustry has their facts mixed up, and Bone is not coming to DS. Xider will, however, release the formerly download-only game in a retail box in Europe.

Per joystiq, Telltale is looking to export Sam & Max to Xbox Arcade Live.

Tom Spurgeon reports:

According to an e-mail disseminated by Ken Gale, the writer Arnold Drake was found collapsed in his home and is currently in intensive care at Cabrini Hospital.

More details, and an address to send well-wishes, at the link.

The Forbidden Planet blog has an interview up with Mike Conroy, the new editor of the UK’s long-running comics magazine Comics International, which hasn’t been on shelves for a few months:

FPI: Mike taking over the reins after Dez Skinn put in such a dauntingly long sting must be something that fills you with pride but perhaps a little apprehension given how resistant the comics trade can be to change. How are you feeling at this moment ahead of your first edited release?

MC: Right now? Under siege… I can sympathise with those guys who looked over the wall of the Alamo and saw all those Mexicans camped outside! However, I’m looking to turn it into a Rorke’s Drift-style scenario!

There’s a lot more work to do getting CI back into the shops than I ever imagined. Not only is there the inertia of the three months without an issue to overcome but there’s also everything that goes with setting up a new company to contend with. It would have been much simpler if we’d have bought Quality Communications rather than just the magazine but that’s not what happened so there’s no point carping on about it.

Unsurprisingly, this week’s edition of PWCW focuses on the NYCC and all things therein. Calvin Reed and Heidi McDonald has a pretty good round-up of the good and bad, with promises from those in charge to improve everything for next year. There’s also a look at the Anime Awards, the Stan Lee and Stephen King panels, a look at some librarian-related panels, and news about Vertical’s upcoming manga plans. Oh, and so much more.

Voice of America has a nice profile up of cartoonist and children’s author Jules Feiffer:

Jules Feiffer was born in the Bronx in 1929. He had a lonely childhood, which he filled by reading the comics of the day and by drawing his own. Indeed, his main early influences were newspaper comics and radio comedy, which were, according to Feiffer, “all about timing and pauses and saying the ‘payoff line’ at exactly the right moment.” So he learned, he says, “how to ‘pay off’ in a comic strip. How to leave a blank panel, or how to use an expression.” He sums up his cartooning as a craft “that lets you do the work through a kind of sleight of hand that the reader wasn’t aware of, but that made your point.”

Funky Winkerbean is not a comic strip I would ever associate with controversy, but nevertheless, it appears controversy has glommed on to it all the same. The Daily Cartoonist is reporting that a recent strip involving what looked like a U.S. soldier being blown up by an IED, only to have it turn out to be a video game the next day, has led to some rather angry readers. Both the Columbus Ledger Inquirer in Georgia and the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner in Alaska received irate phone calls over the strip, feeling it was insensitive to servicemen currently in Iraq. Cartoonist Tom Batiuk has since issued an apology, which you can read by clicking on any of the above links.

via Tom

It’s Wondercon Weekend coming up, and as JK and I plan to break into the hotel rooms of all DC guests and steal plans for Countdown to publish them here, other attendees might be looking for more legal ways to entertain themselves. Luckily, James Sime has you covered with guests Adam Beechen and JM DeMatteis. Yes, really. JM DeMatteis:

The Isotope’s huge WonderCon Weekend celebrations are co-sponsored by our pod-and-video-casting amigos at iFanboy. Slip on your sexiest gear, fix your hair, and try not to sleep with the staff… your wild weekend is about to be broadcast worldwide!

Go ahead. Sleep with the staff. That Jared is kind of foxy, after all.

The other day I linked to the Daily Cross Hatch’s interview with Pete Bagge. As good as that interview was, it only was only the tip of the iceberg compared to the utter wealth of goodies this relatively new site provides. Check it out man, in the past few days they’ve posted interviews with Perry Bible Fellowship cartoonist Nicholas Gurewitch, comedian Patton Oswalt, James Kochalka and Jeffrey Brown! Not to mention Frank Stack, Johnny Ryan and the an enticing assortment of news and reviews. Obviously these guys don’t sleep. In fact, I met editor Brian Heater at NYCC and he did look kind of tired …

Seriously, just go bookmark this site now. You’ll thank me later.

Marv Wolfman blogs his master plan for Dick Grayson:

The trick to Nightwing is giving him purpose and drive. Because the murder of his parents was resolved quickly he never developed the rigid obsession that has motivated Batman. His motivation comes from the pursuit of justice. But maybe something happened between the last days of the first run of Teen Titans when he disbanded that group for reasons we will learn, and the first issue of the New Teen Titans where he returned to the fold more grown up and less a kid sidekick than he ever had been before. Coincidentally, it’s also a year where he wasn’t with Batman 7/27. Something changed him then, and now that something has returned. And as I say, if what happens in our second Bride & Groom story lights the fuse, our third storyline is where everything in Dick’s life is going to explode.

If, like me, you’re wondering when the Agents of Atlas will appear again, wonder no more … Leonard Kirk shares artwork from an issue of Marvel Adventures: The Avengers that will feature the team:

As I mentioned in an earlier entry, Jeff Parker had already let it slip that the Agents of Atlas will be making an appearance in a future issue of the all ages title, Marvel Adventures: The Avengers! Well, for those of you impatient fanboys (and girls) who just can’t wait for anything related to ATLAS, here’s a little preview. I’ve posted a few selected, nonsequential panels, so as to avoid excessive “spoilage” of the issue.

So, next summer, it’ll be time to ironically smash, apparently:

David Maisel of Marvel Studios outlined the four elements of Marvel Entertainment’s movie and TV program during a conference call with industry analysts. Among the revelations about the first two Marvel-produced films was a shift in date for the release of The Incredible Hulk from June 27th, 2008 to June 13th, and a firm start date for principal photography on Iron Man, which begins filming on March 12th.

Possibly the more interesting news may be the thing left until last in the article:

In answer to a question about the role of Avi Arad, who left his position as Chairman and CEO of Marvel Studios to become an independent producer last June… Maisel said that there was “no change in his level of involvement as producer on both Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk,” which is considerable. However he also noted that Marvel had lifted Arad’s non-compete agreement, which means that Arad could end up producing comic book-based movies based on properties from publishers other than Marvel.

How long before Warners tries to get Arad to work his box office mojo on Wonder Woman, d’you think?

Over at the Bendis Board, Steve Zegers shows off his pretty awesome sketch collection from NYCC, including Alex Maleev mistaking Zatanna for the kind of woman who wants to show you her underwear (the Gene Ha Zatanna is great, though). Enough to make me want to get over my fear of talking to strangers and get my own sketchbook filled up…