Amazons Attack ended Wednesday, and I got a look at the last few pages even though I dropped the miniseries long ago. A number of readers have proclaimed that “Will Pfiefer killed Wonder Woman” and I’ve taken it upon myself in my personal blog to tell them (in a few admittedly not very polite posts) that they are overreacting a bit. The usual fighting has commenced, and it leaves me thinking about exactly why I dropped the miniseries. Strangely enough, it wasn’t for any of the more prominent criticisms.

(Yes, I am about to nitpick this miniseries after I just spent two days telling people they were overreacting to it.)
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Random House has a fun trailer up for James Kochalka’s new kids book, Squirrelly Gray, which Chris mentioned earlier this week in Can’t Wait for Wednesday.

So who remembers Joust, the 1980s video game where you flew around on a flying ostrich jousting with guys on buzzards over a pit of lava? There really wasn’t much more to it than that. Press the button to flap your wings, move the joystick to change directions and try to hit the bad guys from the top or it’s bye, bye birdie …

After the Kiss manga thing turned out to be a joke, I’m reluctant to even post about this because it sounds like it, too, is bogus, but GameDaily is reporting that Joust is heading to the big screen. And to the printed page:

The plan is to launch the new Joust franchise with a graphic novel, which is being penned by Steven Elliot Altman of DC Comics and Dark Horse Comics, and will be based on Gottlieb’s screenplay. The film has been given the fast track by CP Productions and should be wrapped by June 2008. Several A-list directors are already interested in helming this sci-fi/action project.

Yes, several A-list directors are interested in making Joust into a movie. Because the world has gone completely insane.

A victim support group in Australia is calling for Mattel’s Naruto action figures be removed from store shelves because the toys can be used to act out stabbing and slashing.

The Daily Telegraph reports the Homicide Survivors Association says the figures, marketed to ages 6 and up, teach children a dangerous lesson.

“I think there’s a link between playing with these toys and violent behavior later,” group founder Peter Rolfe tells the newspaper. “It doesn’t happen to everyone but it can have an effect on people with problems. … If they play with toy weapons does it make them more comfortable with real weapons later? At some stage there’s an imprint left on them.”

Mattel, for its part, says it’s up to parents to decide whether their kids should play with knife-wielding ninja figures.

(Via Giapet)

Although many scanlators stop working on a manga series once the North American license is announced, John Jakala turns up a whopping 484,000 results in a Google search for “Bleach scanlations.”

Even better, he finds some unintentionally funny legal disclaimers, at least one of which is more than a little contradictory, given that the site is, essentially, dedicated to violating copyright: “… Although we did not create the BLEACH series, we did create this website to be as original as possible. We ask that you respect the originality of our work, and not take anything without expressed written permission by the owners.”

There’s more hilarity at the link.

Paul O’Brien is looking at Marvel sales for July, and brings the sad truth with him:

Strange but true: [World War Hulk: X-Men] is outselling COUNTDOWN. In fact, so is WORLD WAR HULK: FRONT LINE, but that one doesn’t surprise me so much. It’s a strange world we live in.

Dear DC: That sound you hear is apparently a warning siren.

Continuing to be more reasonable than he has any reason to be, Tom Brevoort is thinking about how it works in the Marvel Universe:

There’s a school of thought that there are certain elements of a given character that are sacrosant. And there are—but the list is much, much shorter than many readers think it is, I think. And it’s a very subjective list as well—the things I think are sacrosant may not match up with the things Axel [Alonso] thinks are sacrosant, may not match up with the things a given reader thinks are sacrosant… Every writer brings a slightly different take to the table in terms of the characters—the same way that every fan has a slightly different take. It all depends on when you started reading the books, what your formative experiences with the characters were. And the plain fact of the matter is that, when you’re working within a shared world construct like the Marvel Universe, there really is no one firm, set, eternal answer. Every answer is true until it isn’t true anymore—until somebody manages to tell a story that, good or bad, changes the perconceptions people have.

Which is to say, he thinks you’re all wrong, and that Tony Stark is awesome.

Fans responding to the recent Mythbusters Superhero Special prove that it’s not just comic fans that can be anal and nitpicky:

“Superman is the only one that used a phone booth. Spidy striped on the fly or swing. wonder woman just spinned around in a puff of smoke. oh try the down the pole as batman did. And Batgirl uhmm she just shows up ready to fight. Superman or supergirl also flies at super speed to change clothes too. I know test what us humans can do. lets see you do batman’s down the pole.”

“I thought this myth was a really pointless one. Superman is the only hero who’s been known to change in a phone booth and he does it at super human speed. He is faster than a speeding bullet you know and sence no one is faster that a speeding bullet you can’t actully test this. I have seen some preddy fast quick changes though working in live theater it’s hard not to see someone strip naked and hurry into another costume back stage. Of course quick chages like this the costumes are useually riged with velcrow to get in and out of them fast.”

“with the changing in a phone booth, there are professional magicians who can change in literaly the blink of an eye, true it has alot to do with the special clothing they where but if i was going to change into an outfit, i would have special clothing on also”

In the wake of Wednesday’s announcement that DC Comics has canceled, at least temporarily, five solicited volumes of its Showcase Presents series, blogger Dave Carter looks at some of the contractual and financial issues involved in reprinting stories from the late 1970s to the mid-’90s.

The five volumes — Captain Carrot, Vol. 1, The Great Disaster, Vol. 1, The Suicide Squad, Vol. 1, Secret Society of Super-Villains, Vol. 1, and Jonah Hex, Vol. 2 — originate from a period when reprint fees were determined differently, meaning DC likely has to renegotiate compensation with those creators.

Carter also unearths a 2006 quote from Bob Greenberger, former editor of collected editions for DC, further explaining why some Showcase volumes are a long time coming: “DC pays a royalty based on a percentage of the cover price to writers, pencillers,and inkers to all material published prior to 1976 and after 1997. For the period in between, the vouchers that were in use called for a set reprint fee to be paid. In some cases, the amount of contractually obligated reprint fees makes the budget for a proposed collection unprofitable. In those cases, DC will either scrap the project or ask the talent involved to waive the reprint fee in lieu of the standard royalty arrangement.”

I don’t watch a lot of television anymore, so this completely slipped by me. Turns out last Monday Harvey Pekar was the featured guest on Anthony Bourdain’s show No Reservations, as the two roamed around Pekar’s hometown of Cleveland. The good news is that even if like me you missed the show, you can still check out these comics by Bourdain (two parts) and Pekar (with art by Gary Dumm) on their meeting on the show’s Web site.

The format wars continue as Twentieth Century Fox unveiled their Blu-Ray Disc marketing strategy with the announcement that Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Live Free or Die Hard movies will debut Fox’s first multi-player strategy game and “advanced” BD-Java games for high definition formats.

“Who Dares Defy Galactus?, will be Fox’s first multi-player strategy game, which allows players to be Silver Surfer, and save the galaxy, or Galactus, who wants to eat it for supper.

The other game featured on the disc is a trivia game called “Saving The World One Question At A Time” where a wrong answer will lead to another planet into Galactus’ celestial stomach.

Maybe these will be the best Fantastic Four video games to date.

The full press release from Buisnesswire, including Die Hard details is after them jump.

Fantastic Four will be released on October 2 in North America and October 9th for the rest of the world.

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There’s been much speculation about when Lynn Johnston would begin the new hybrid format of old/new “For Better Or For Worse” strips. Turns out it’s coming a lot sooner than many thought. Like Sept. 3 soon. Daily Cartoonist has the details:

Lynn Johnston’s popular comic strip “For Better or For Worse” begins a new phase Monday, Sept. 3, as character Michael Patterson looks through a family photo album with his 5-year-old daughter, Meredith. With this strip, Michael begins retelling the Patterson family story by recounting the courtship of his parents, John and Elly, the central characters in the 28-year-old comic strip read by millions each day.

[snip]

Johnston will keep fans engaged with a mix of special strips from the past and newly drawn panels that will help reintroduce favorite storylines. The strip’s current storyline will be interlaced with Michael’s remembrances until it gradually reaches a natural closing stage sometime early next year. When that happens, time will stop for the extended Patterson family, but not their stories. The stories will be relived by a current generation of fans and introduced for the first time to a new generation.

The news that it’s ramping up so soon took me (and I imagine a few others) by surprise since Johnston seemed to indicate that she felt she wasn’t done wrapping up the much-debated romance between daughter Elizabeth and childhood boyfriend Anthony. Apparently that just means she’s going to have the new strips continue the main storyline, and not be stand-alone gag strips, as they will eventually become.

Editor and Publisher also has a nice article up on the announcement as well.

After reading a 1977 profile of Edward Gorey who, new to watching TV, became swept up in Star Trek reruns, Shaenon Garrity imagines what “The Trouble With Tribbles” might’ve been like if penned by the author-illustrator.

Telltale Games uploaded the new Sam & Max Season Two trailer as well as some screenshots on their website.

Related: Sam and Max to hit road once more.

One of the things I enjoy about Allen Holtz’s Stripper’s Guide site is the “Obscurity of the Day” feature, where he picks out oddities like editorial cartoonist Pat Oliphant’s attempt to do a daily strip, or some oddity from 1905.

Then he finds stuff like this He-Man and the Masters of the Universe strip and my day is made. The sad thing is I actually remember that strip, even though it only ran for a year.

Ok Allen, now try to find the Mr. Men/Little Miss strip so I can keep wallowing in nostalgia.

Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Bianca Bosker looks at efforts by the Japanese government to capitalize on the growing international popularity of manga and anime. There apparently are a few hurdles, though:

Perhaps the biggest problem is the highly sexualized nature of the form, which can be exceptionally seedy, if not illegal. Earlier this year, 13 manga comics, including “Rape Me in My School Uniform” and “Pedophile’s Banquet II,” were labeled “harmful books” by the Kyoto Prefecture for featuring excessive sexual acts involving girls under the age of 13.

[snip]

And there’s a certain weirdness factor. The nearest American counterpart to anime-inspired costume play may be Star Trek and Star Wars conventions, whose participants also dress up as their favorite characters. Those gatherings have entered the broader cultural consciousness more as a source of late-night television humor than as a viable goodwill export.

The winners of the first International Manga Award — the “Nobel Prize of Manga” were announced in June. Last week, Becky Cloonan (East Coast Rising, American Virgin) revealed she was one of 18 finalists.

On his blog, Jeff Smith reveals some staggering sales figures for the Scholastic editions of Bone:

I received some astonishing sales figures from Scholastic - - the paperback edition of BONE 6: Old Man’s Cave, which just shipped last month, is in its third printing for a total of 260,000 copies! The combined hard cover & paperback sales for the series to date: nearly 2,000,000.

Maybe it’s not Harry Potter, but still!

I should probably have more to say about that, but I’ll just leave it at “wow.”

First off, this is not meant as an exhaustive list. Much of the comics blogosphere has been discussing what ails DC institutionally, and how those problems could be turned around. I can’t offer too much more than what’s been said already. Instead, these are shorter-term goals which I think DC could reasonably and realistically accomplish.

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David Goyer makes the DC fans grin over at Wizard’s website:

Geoff [Johns] and I are doing something [for DC], but I can’t say what it is yet. It would be after Final Crisis. We have long hatched a plan. I don’t want to talk too much about it because it’s just far out, but we talked about it a couple of weeks ago and then I chatted with some powers that be. I had a little side chat at [Wizard World Chicago] right before we did the ‘Dark Knight’ panel, but yeah, I’ve long wanted to get back into it. It was just a question of finding the right time to do it and the right idea, and Geoff and I love working together. We just came up with something I think would be really cool and different.