Joshua Fialkov (Elk’s Run) and Kody Chamberlain’s (Tag) much-anticipated Punks: The Comic finally hits stores this week. They were nice enough to answer a few questions about it and even nicer to answer all the personal questions I tossed in as well.

Who’s your personal hero?

Joshua Fialkov (JF): Kody. No really. He’s so charming and pony-tailed.

Kody Chamberlain (KC): Fist. He’s able to say so much with so few handheld signs.

What’s your morning routine?

JF: Wake up, get out of bed, drag a comb across my head. I’m usually up and working by around 8:00 or 8:30 when the wife-to-be heads off for work. Aside from that, it’s just bagels and sugar-free juice.

KC: I crawl out of bed around 7:15am and make my way to the shower, and drive to work around 8:00 am. Sometime around 9:30 am I wake up and start working.

What’s your favorite item of clothing?

JF: My Country Music Western shirt. It’s got “Country Music” stitched in the back for chrissake!

KC: I have an old, yellow, leather jacket. It’s worn out and my cat clawed all the way up the sleeve once leaving little holes, but I still wear it every winter. I’m in Louisiana; that’s about a week and a half.

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Mythbusters, the popular Discovery Channel show that proves and disproves various urban legends, will tackle superheroes this Wednesday night at 9 p.m. ET.

The description of the show reads:

You’re not seeing things. As uncomfortable as it is, it’s true. The Mythbusters are wearing their underpants on the outside. And why? Because this episode is the Superhero Hour — the Marvel comic maestros are put under the MythBusters microscope.

(Thanks, Tracy!)

Millarworld reacts to this week’s Lying In the Guttered rumors about current goings on at DC:

“Reading between the lines of everything that’s been going on recently at DC — with this recent news about Sandman, Duniber, The Boys, Black Dossier — it seems like there might be some kind of power struggle going on at DC. It’s kind of difficult to not come away with the impression that someone is trying to sabotage the non-DCU books. Even with that report about the Archives… aren’t the Archives done by a division seperate from the DCU editorial? Smells like there’s some heavy politics at play.”

“I don’t think thats the case. I think purchasing Wildstorm was a bad idea from the giddy-up. No offense to Scott, or to discount some good books(Well one good book, the Authority) here and there. But none of it is sustainable without Lee on Wildcats. Sorry thats the truth. So now DC has to do something. Plus the fact that DC itself can’t seem to do one thing right. Gaiman on Sandman is a no brainer. It would make Countdown look like the Atom sales wise.”

“I hate to sound like a disgruntled fanboy, but I’m dangerously close to giving up on DC as a company. If I found out these were anything but rumors and I didn’t love Vertigo I probably would be done (all I read is All Star Superman at this point anyway). I’ve never said anything like that before. But no new Sandman, the Wildstorm crazyness, Didio rejecting the Dorkin/Allred stuff . . . I just don’t get it.”

“Same here, if It weren’t for Wildstorm, All-Star Superman would be it and the fact that Authority and Wildcats will be further delays for another DC Event book really annoys me to no end…but it does seem that DC’s always trying to sabatoge WS ever since the Authority cencorship issue”

“Quite a column, but for those who’ve been collecting Wildstorm comics for the last few years, is it a surprise? Nope – more like confirmation. Does seem a crappy way to do busines – buy competitor, run into ground, move onto next target – I mean, couldn’t they win by putting out better comics? OK, forget I said anything…”

Comic Bloc has an interview up with writer Mike Baron. When something has a disclaimer at the start that reads “The following interview contains adult language … please be advised,” you kind of hope for something good. And with the exception of one good line, I’m not sure that Baron delivers.

On this site, the sweary goes under the jump. So click more for the good line…
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Dark Horse has made available for free on its website the three stories from its Free Comic Book Day issue: The Umbrella Academy 12-page prequel, by Gerard Way, Gabriel Ba and Dave Stewart, and sneak peeks of Zero Killer, by Arvid Nelson and Matt Camp, and Pantheon City, by Ron Marz and Clement Sauve.

TVGuide.com has a story up on a fake documentary NBC put up on the web about Takezo Kensei, the samurai Hiro will meet this fall on Heroes:

“It’s a fake documentary — actually it’s more like a Ken Burns mockumentary — that explores the legend of Takezo Kensei,” says Heroes creator Tim Kring, referring to the iconic samurai whom Hiro (Masi Oka) will encounter this fall in 17th-century Japan. “Like Burns, we use academic professors, only ours are actors, and they share their historical insight against a background of paintings, tapestries and graphics. It’s a chance to dig a little deeper into the new season. Part of the social currency our fans trade on is their knowledge of the show, and this is a fun, cool way to know a lot more than the next guy.”

In other Heroes news, the first season comes out on DVD tomorrow.

The Panel and Pixel forum launches its “Featured Creator of the Month” series with an interview with Jamie McKelvie of Phonogram and Suburban Glamour fame:

Your work with writer Kieron Gillen, the Image miniseries Phonogram (now available in the Rue Britannia TPB), has gained a lot of attention and praise from both fans and the press. How did you and Gillen meet, and what made you two decide that this would be a good project to collaborate on?

We met on a bridge over the River Severn, one misty dawn in early 1835. I had inadvertently insulted his bride-to-be at a tavern three weeks before, and he felt compelled to defend her honour. So he had arranged through our intermediaries for a pistol fight. He had reckoned without my sharp aim, but being a good sort I knew I couldn’t kill him, so I aimed for his pistol. One bullet sent it flying but crippled his hand, rendering him unable to draw. When he talked about his life’s work, Phonogram, and how he could no longer draw it, I felt compelled to lend my pen and help him realize his dream. After all, this was all my fault!

Still, we laugh about it now.

Suburban Glamour, McKelvie’s creator-owned modern fantasy, debuts next month from Image Comics.

Project: Rooftop kicks off its “Wieringo Week” tribute with redesigns of Bart Allen by Joel Carroll, Rick Cortes and Alexandre Louzada.

“This event is a small tribute to Mike Wieringo’s life and career,” writes Project: Rooftop founder Dean Trippe. “If you knew ‘Ringo, or followed his blog, you know how much he enjoyed drawing events, costume redesigns, and teen superheroes, so we at Project: Rooftop wanted to honor his memory by combining all of those things into one fun event. Having known Mike, and spent the last week sifting through all the entries, I’m pretty dang sure he would get a big kick out of seeing each one.”

The Los Angeles Times spotlights cartoonist Josh Neufeld, focusing on his nonfiction webcomic, A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge. The collected comic will be available in November as a graphic novel.

Virgin Comics is bringing Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future out of retirement to star in a new line of comics and a big-screen adaptation.

Variety reports that the classic British science fiction character is a favorite of Virgin’s Richard Branson, who spearheaded the effort to acquire publishing, film, television and video game rights to the Frank Hampson creation.

The new comic, which debuts in November, will be written by Garth Ennis.

“Dan Dare is the quintessential British hero,” Ennis tells the trade paper. “He’s our Captain America, our Superman, our Batman; he’s all of them rolled into one.”

Dare first appeared in April 1950 in the Eagle weekly comics magazine, and has continued off and on, in one comic or another, ever since. A serialized Dare strip, by Grant Morrison and Rian Hughes, appeared in Revolver magazine in 1990.

Related: Profile of Virgin’s Sharad Devarajan

First, Tom Spurgeon discusses the ups and downs of this year’s con with Comic-Con Director of Marketing David Glanzer:

SPURGEON: Assuming you’re going to be working at near full capacity for the next few years, what can you now do to generally improve the experience knowing you’re going to be working a variation of the same crowds from here through 2012?

GLANZER: My personal hope is that we can entice some people to work with us to program some off-site events. I know there was an event on Friday evening at PetCo Park , which we had no involvement with, but an big event like that, during the day, might be a partial solution to the crowding situation at the center.

Granted, one event won’t alleviate the problem, but a number of events? It’s something worth exploring and that might allow us to re-examine the attendance caps we utilized this year.

Then Paul Karasik turns in what has to be the best con report of 2007:

How can I begin to give you a picture of the enormity of this event? Imagine the largest airport you can think of. Empty it (except for Security). Refill it with hundreds of tables piled with plastic things and lots of people touching them. At first, I was overwhelmed by table after table after table laden with action figures, DVDs, video games, and, what else? Let’s see…oh yeah, comics. This is a Comic-Con, right?

After a while, I became less traumatized by the shear volume of stuff being hawked. 99.9% of what I saw I was not interested in. To be more precise, 99.9% of the stuff I saw I simply could not understand since I lead a sheltered life in a thatch hut in the woods. Electricity? What’s that? Once I began to treat all of this merchandise as an endless continuous fogbank, I found that I could begin to find my way to the places I really needed to go: the Starbucks kiosk and the bathroom.

Curse that Brad Mackay of the CBC! Curse him for doing a better interview with For Better or For Worse cartoonist Lynn Johnston than I did:

Q: You’ve been very frank in the past about your difficult childhood, growing up with a tyrannical grandfather and a physically abusive mother, who refused to acknowledge your success, even on her deathbed. Was the creation of the fictional Patterson family, along with its strong family values, a kind of wish fulfilment for you?

A: Well, I think one thing that happens when you have a childhood that is unhappy, like mine was, is you spend a lot of time alone and you make jokes. Many of the other cartoonists had similar experiences. For example, Mike Peters [of Mother Goose & Grimm ] stuttered, so he spent a lot of time alone in his room drawing. My mother was very demanding and strong, so I took everything out on an 8×11½-inch sheet of paper. That was my best friend — my piece of paper.

When I became a parent I told myself I am not going to be rearing my children with a wooden spoon and a textbook. I took it one day at a time. And what’s happened is that I have two children who are very healthy adults. So I feel good that after 33 years I can say “Yes—I was good parent.”

Raving Toy Maniac showcases a series of customized zombiefied Marvel action figures made, fittingly enough, largely out of parts from other figures.

(Via Neatorama)

New York Times editorial writer Brent Staples looks at delayed recognition of the life and contributions of Jack Kirby:

History was late to the party, but it finally arrived. Thanks to renewed interest in Mr. Kirby’s work — and shout-outs from novelists like Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem — he is more widely known today than he was in the 1960s. Back then, those of us who read him haunted newsstands and drugstores, ripping each new issue right out of the deliveryman’s hands. Two books, including a long-awaited biography, are in the works, and the reprint industry is threatening to resurrect everything Mr. Kirby ever produced.

He was introduced to a broader public just last month when the United States Postal Service issued 20 stamps depicting Marvel characters. The images seemed deliberately chosen to maximize Marvel’s marketing opportunities. Even so, Mr. Kirby is credited on eight of the stamps and could have been credited on several more. After all, he did at least some work on nearly every major character Marvel produced.

Related: Jack Kirby Museum

It is, alas, the terrible fact that to be a true mass medium, you need the mass of numbers. Because without that, you’re a pretender, which is what comics have been for the last 20 years. It really is my answer to those that think that teh San Diego Comic Con should spin off the comics into their own con again: we’ve waited long enough in the wilderness as fringe media, don’t exile us again because you don’t like crowds. We need a huge number of readers, used to the conventions of visual storytelling to continue the tradition, and we need a great wealth of material to bring people back again and again. It is not the book itself a lot of times, but the habit of reading the book. If the habit is there, then they will go seek out the books themselves, and, thankfully, these days there are more and more books to fill in the gaps.

It looks as if there actually may be something to last week’s rumor that Warner Bros. wants to fast-track its Justice League of America movie. The Los Angeles Times reports that JLA is one of the projects the studio hopes to rush into production before a potential talent strike essentially shuts down the film industry next summer.

Contracts with the Screen Actors Guild and Directors Guild of America expire on June 30, which means studios must start filming by March 1 to beat the strike deadlines. It also means Warner Bros. will have to hire a director immediately and begin casting.

Although earlier rumors suggested Christian Bale and Brandon Routh might star Justice League, that’s beginning to look unlikely. In fact, Bale says he won’t be in the movie, and thinks it would be better if JLA were to come out after the third Batman.

So, who’ll play Batman and Superman? In what seems like joke casting, CHUD.com passes along the unlikely rumor that Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson have been selected for the roles. While CHUD cites a “trusted scooper” as its source, not even they seem to believe this one: “… [H]ey, if you don’t like this rumor, I could always make another one up.” Right.

Another casting rumor that was floated and the quickly shot down: that Smallville‘s Tom Welling will play the Man of Steel. IESB.net said yes, but the Superman Homepage went straight to series executive producer Al Gough who said, “Hasn’t happened, won’t happen, he is under contract to Smallville through season 8.”

But what about that other rumor, that Justice League will be entirely, or mostly, motion capture, ala Beowulf? IESB.net now says that while the movie will employ motion capture for some sequences — underwater scenes, the supposed OMACs — it will otherwise be a traditionally made production.

So, make of that what you will.

Unfortunately this isn’t available online, but the T-shirt blog Preshrunk shows off a picture of a really cool Stan Lee/Sex Pistols mash-up from Secret Headquarters in Los Angeles:

I’m not familiar with the Milwaukees, a band that Ryan Penagos chats with over at Marvel.com about their music and comics, but anyone who puts together an iMix dedicated to Captain America is ok by me:

MARVEL.COM: You’ve constructed an American/Captain America-themed playlist on iTunes. What were you thinking when putting these songs together? Break down the songs you guys chose and why.

1. “My Hero” the Foo Fighters – I think this one is pretty obvious.
2. “Fortunate Son” Creedence Clearwater Revival – When we were thinking about it, we decided that Captain America would be a proud American hero without necessarily being a flag-waving, rah-rah, patriot blindly supporting the government. That is a position we sympathize with, and I think that Creedence is the ultimate in proud American bands that aren’t afraid to be critical.
3. “Highway to the Sun” the Milwaukees – This is our take on the great American road song. Its kind of about this very American notion of Manifest Destiny.

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Spin-offs is Blog@Newsarama’s weekly wrap on licensing. Buffy toys cancelled, New Gods toys based on Kirby’s art, and how Aliens Kubrick lead me to find advertisements for old arcade machines.

Diamond Select Cancels Buffy Toys

The comic series is doing well, but the toys are dead. Action-Figure.com reported the Buffy the Vampire Slayer action figures have been cancelled.

As of today Diamond has officially cancelled their Revamped line of Buffy the Vampire Slayer action figures. They are claiming it was due to a lack of interest by the consumers.

Also on it’s death bed is the Judge wave. As per Diamond that wave is scheduled to be cancelled. It has been said they would need to sell an additional 3000 pre-orders of complete sets to make this wave worthwhile.

We are still waiting on an announcement for the upcoming Willow/Kennedy/Kendra wave of Deluxe figures. Based on the above cancellations I don’t get a good feeling for the deluxe figures.

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Picking up where last week’s column left off, here’s part two of my interview with Douglas Wolk, author of “Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean“:

Q: Let’s talk about superheroes for a moment.

A: Awesome! I love superheroes.

Q: Why did you do a chapter on superheroes? What made you want to address it, especially considering you don’t really focus on a lot of writers and artists who have worked in that idiom.

A: Actually, there’s the Warlock thing, there’s the Tomb of Dracula thing. It’s weird. A lot of the reactions I’ve gotten from the book have either saying I spend way too much time on superheroes or nowhere near enough time. (laughs) There’s that trap. Again, I thought it would be something interesting to talk about. There’s a hell of a lot of superhero comics being published and I read a bunch of them. It’s not all I’m interested in, but it’s something I’m interested in. And I’m interested in the way that this incredibly weird little genre has gotten to have such gigantic play in this much bigger medium.

There’s a backlash against their hegemonies that I see a lot, which is people hating superhero comics because there are so many of them and so many of them are crappy and they’re what people generally think of when they think of comics. But I think that’s still not dealing with them on their own territory. And, you know, there’s really good stuff in the genre. It’s worth talking about what it is and why it’s good. The purpose of being a critic is to try to make the world more like you. I would much rather see 40 superhero comics that I really like being published every month. (more…)