This week was, apparently, all about the interviews on the mothership. And, for that matter, very much about the interviews for upcoming DC projects. For example, Keith Champagne talking about the latest Countdown spin-off, the audience participation slugfest book Arena:

Let’s say you’re not reading Countdown (and if you’re into DC, you should be!) and you’re just in the shop looking for a good time with your comics. Pound for pound, Arena is absolutely the most fun you’ll have with a comic for four consecutive Wednesdays in December. Everything you need to understand the bigger picture is contained in the first issue. Each issue is double-sized, it’s weekly, and it’s a freight train of a story.

Alternatively, Keith Giffen answering questions about 52 Aftermath: The Four Horsemen:

I think it will surprise people. A lot of people are saying, “Oh no! They’re just capitalizing on 52 with another spin-off!” But it’s more than that. It’s a bit more than that. It’s something you can read for six issues, and if you didn’t read 52, it still works… I’m trying to keep it in its own little corner of the DC Universe. If outside events intrude, it is only to acknowledge that outside events are happening. As an example, when Cale first encounters Wonder Woman again? She goes, “Oh! Did you bring your little Amazon war with you?”

Or how about Keith… sorry, I mean Eric Powell discussing his upcoming stint as Action Comics artist for the Bizarro World arc?:

The opposite thing doesn’t sum up Bizarro to me. He would be a woman if he were really an opposite, wouldn’t he? He’d also have to be a black woman, too. And a lesbian. A communist. Be really weak under a yellow sun. So yeah, a gay black lady communist without eye beams. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a gay black lady communist without eye beams. No, I see it as more of a distortion. A mockery. Bizarro would be a mockery of Superman in my eyes.

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Birds of Prey #109 has been something of a hot topic among blogs this week, especially thanks to a certain continuity error that has been keeping a lot of people talking.

First, we have Tony Bedard’s apology located here at Comic Book Resources.

Karen Healey points out a positive aspect to the whole scene:

But on the side of awesome, a DCU character, and Dinah, no less, acknowledges that Ollie was raped by Shado. And she used the specific word “rape” – not “forced him” or “didn’t ask him” – he was raped. Oh, Tony Bedard, I forgive you your glaring continuity error! You’ve fixed a persistent little misandrist/misogynist thorn in my side that went so long unacknowledged I thought no one would ever pull it out.

Starman Matt Morrison points out another odd element to the scene:

Am I the only one who sees a certain level of irony in Barbara Gordon and Dinah Lance – two women who were both, in the late 80s, physically assaulted in a manner which suggested rape – speculating on how a rape victim feels?

SallyP is amused by the Connor-Shado mistake but depressed about certain other events in the issue:

I am depressed that Knockout ends up being murdered by the guy who is going around picking off all of the New Gods. That is a plot that REALLY didn’t need to be examined. Why the desperate need to kill off a bunch of perfectly good Jack Kirby characters? They weren’t hurting anyone. Well, maybe Darkseid was, but that’s his job for heaven’s sake!

So what do you think?

A selection of some of the interesting, touching, funniest and strangest quotes from the past week:

“My big brother is gone now. And I don’t know what I’m going to do now that he’s not around to look out for me. I feel lost and alone and scared. Mike and I weren’t very religious. But I can’t believe that a soul as sweet and gentle and caring and generous as Mike’s just goes away. Today, I’m a believer. I believe my big brother is out there and he’s waiting for me. I believe he’s with Jack Kirby and Alex Toth and Will Eisner and they’re telling him how much they loved his work. And when my time comes, he’ll hug me and take me over to introduce me to his new friends. And then he’ll smile and say, ‘You just wanted to come up here because I’m here.’

“And he’ll be right.”

Matt Wieringo, from the eulogy for his brother Mike

“Jeff is a beautiful father figure in this movie. But you know the comic book. You know what the comic book is about. You know what has to take place.”

Terrence Howard, hinting at an appearance by Obadiah Stane’s armored alter ego, Iron Monger, in the Iron Man movie

“This is the sickest, most perverted piece of writing I have read in many a year. It is certainly the pervy-est thing I have ever drawn. God I love it so.”

Colleen Doran, on Stealth Tribes

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After being felled last week by some sort of alien virus, I’m back for another installment of “Meanwhile,” our weekly tour of the comics blogosphere.

This week sees discussion of the current state of DC Comics, a new home for refugees of The Engine, the return of one of my favorite comics bloggers … and Batman’s opinion of punk music.

For all of that and more, read on.

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Comic Relief, based in Berkeley, Calif., is hosting two events this weekend at their shop. First up on Saturday is an appearance by Mark Haven Britt:

Critically acclaimed comics creator Mark Haven Britt will be appearing at Comic Relief in Berkeley, CA on Saturday, August 25th, 2007 from 5 to 7 P.M.. The Xeric Award-winner will be promoting the release of his new Image Comics original graphic novel, FULL COLOR.

And that might be enough creator goodness for the average store on the average weekend, but Comic Relief has even bigger plans for Sunday:

Comic Relief: THE Comic Book Store, will be hosting a party for the Bay Area’s own 2007 Eisner winner’s and nominees August 26th , 5pm – 7pm. The Honorees include: Gene Yang, Lark Pien (American Born Chinese), Steve Leialoha (Fables), Derek McCulloch, Shepherd Hendrix (Stagger Lee). The evening will be a family-friendly event with refreshments and the opportunity to meet some of the Bay Area’s finest talent.

Comic Relief is located at 2026 Shattuck Ave. in Berkeley.

The New York Times book blog Paper Cuts has a short Q&A up with Dan Clowes, who reveals he’ll be contributing a new 20-part comic to the New York Times Magazine starting Sept. 16.

(Via)

This fall, Spider-Man teams up with six of his foes (and Iron Fist!) in the video game Spider-Man: Friend or Foe. Check out the newest trailer below:

The stylish promotional trailer for the second season of Heroes has made its way onto YouTube. (Interestingly enough, there’s still no sign of D.L.)

Season 2 debuts on Sept. 24.

Writing for The Guardian’s books blog, Ned Beauman expresses his disdain for comic-book adaptations of prose works — such as HarperCollins’ Agatha Christie Comic Strip imprint:

Particularly baffling are Classical Comics’ Plain Text and Quick Text versions of Shakespeare plays, in which characters speak in short sentences of one-syllable words. “If you’ve ever wanted to fully appreciate the works of Shakespeare but find the language rather cryptic, then this is the version for you!” This is like handing someone a vitamin pill and saying, “If you’ve ever wanted to fully appreciate a banana but find the peeling rather tricky, then this is the version for you!” Getting kids into Shakespeare is good, but if you’re going to go to such lengths to conceal what makes Shakespeare worth reading in the first place, what’s the point?

The best comics are nearly always the ones that tell a story that could not have been adequately told in any other medium. Straight adaptations are excluded by definition. What’s far more interesting is something like Alan Moore’s second volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a sort of lunatic conspiracy theorist’s view of The War of the Worlds, or Neil Gaiman’s award-winning issue of Sandman in which a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is taken over by real imps and fairies. They’re not replacements for the originals, they’re irreverent tributes.

At the SLG Publishing blog, Editor-in-Chief Jennifer de Guzman acknowledges her own dislike for adaptations, but wonders whether film and comics are being held to different standards: “I … find it curious that Beauman thinks that graphic novel adaptations ought to change something about the source material. Is this an opinion widely held? It certainly is different from the standard criterion for judging movie adaptations of novels, which is the movies’ faithfulness to their sources.”

On his website, Berkeley Breathed has posted a note saying that many newspapers that carry his comic strip Opus won’t publish it for the next two weeks:

The Opus strips for August 26 and September 2 have been withheld from publication by a large number of client newspapers across the country, including Opus’ host paper The Washington Post. The strips may be viewed in a large format on their respective dates at Salon.com.

You can see one of the strips here. EDIT: Looks like it is no longer available at that link.

(Via)

Whatever’s the case, MTV News heaps the praise on Brian K. Vaughan in this video profile at MTV.com.

One of the things that people who only know me through this feature here might not realize is that I am crazy for 1960s Green Lantern stories. I love them, I seek them out, I will shell out a reasonable amount of money for the pleasure of reading them.

As everyone knows, there’s a lot of sexism (and racism — though I don’t see why we can’t bring the Hal’s mechanic back and call him “Tom” now. They’ve retconned out far less significant details than a racist nickname) in 1960s comics. There’s a lot of women fainting, preening and scheming to get married that is simply silly and embarrassing now. I know time and time again I see a panel from the 1960s posted with “It could be worse, girls!” or I see someone at a convention talking about how far we’ve come with female superhero portrayal since the Silver Age. And we have come a long way in some ways, but to be honest I can think of a few instances were things were done right early on, where the portrayal of a female character was revolutionary and the writers since have made it worse while updating the stories.
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And here I thought the Knights of Wundagore were creepy. Sports mascots freak me out. The Toledo Free Press spotlights Triple-A Baseball Heroes, a comic produced by Triple-A Baseball and Marvel Entertainment to be given away at select Triple-A games. (How many times can I use “Triple-A” in one sentence?)

In the comic, written by Chris Eliopoulos and illustrated by Robert Adkins, Rick Ketchum and Drew Geraci, the Fantastic Four (with Franklin and Valeria) and Peter Parker (with Aunt May) go for a relaxing day at the ballpark where Tony Stark is throwing the first pitch, and Bruce Banner is working the concession stand. But then Sandman attacks.

You can see John Watson’s three alternate covers — all featuring more unnverving animal-human hybrids — at the link.

On her blog, Becky Cloonan (East Coast Rising, American Virgin) reveals she was one of 18 finalists for Japan’s International Manga Award — the “Nobel Prize of Manga” — which honors creators living abroad whose work helps to spread the artform worldwide:

Out of 146 entries from 26 countries, I was selected as one of 18 finalists! I didn’t win the award, but yesterday I went to meet with them and was presented with a certificate of recognition and nomination by the Ambassador and members of the CGP and The Japan Foundation. What a complete honor! And very surreal, to be recognized for my comics by the government of Japan.

The winner and three runners-up were announced in June. Congratulations, Becky!

Paul Gravett posted his introductory speech for a recent screening of “Naruto: Ninja Clash in the Land of the Snow.” I’m linking to it here because I think it provides a good crash course in the character and phenomenon. Just in case you were curious:

Naruto, or Naruto Uzumaki is a small boy who discovers a terrible secret about himself. When he was born, twelve years ago, a giant nine-tailed fox demon attacked his village, where the world’s stealthiest ninjas are trained. After the fox demon is defeated by the Hokage, the village champion, its soul is sealed inside the body of a newly born human baby: Naruto. This boy grows up to be mistrusted and feared because of the evil spirit locked inside him and he becomes a troublemaker, a bit of an outsider, but burning with one ambition: to become the next Hokage and the greatest ninja his village has ever known

That’s the question that Eddie Campbell asks after reading this Chicago Tribune story, which takes the “gosh, ain’t comics come a long way” approach in its profile of Wolk and his new book “Reading Comics.” To quote Campbell:

Douglas Wolk is a nice enough bloke, but my feeling right now is that his book “Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean” (Da Capo, 2007), which I haven’t read, is probably doing more damage than good. I’m tired of having it all lumped together as though we are all doing the same thing. As my pal Evans once quipped; “Did Ingmar Bergman have to justify Star Wars every time he sat down for an interview?”

You should also go and read his daughter Hayley’s comments just for fun. Anyway, that post inspires Tom Spurgeon to comment:

That’s funny, and I feel for Campbell in that his best work is so frequently processed through this prism of it either not being a tale of crying Superman or teeth-clenching Batman, or being a more enlightened version of the same thing. I suspect we’re a far way away from the day when comics are routinely engaged without the detritus of the medium’s specific historical and cultural history gumming up the works in all sorts of strange, pathological ways. On the other hand, my gut says a lot of film critics writing about film over the last half century will feel similarly compelled to write about both Elisabet Vogler and Obi-Wan, or maybe just Obi-Wan.

Writer Ben Schwartz pipes in:

Btw, People think of STAR WARS and JAWS as having a terrible influence on the modern movie world. I say, spend a week at any modern indie film festival and see if you don’t want to come away wanting to hang John Cassavettes in effigy for all the hacks he inspired.

My take? Whenever you do a story like the Tribune’s you have to write for a general audience, which can lead to some lumping together or just general confusion. That’s not necessarily Wolk’s fault.

MTV.com chats with Ryan Reynolds about what superhero he’d most like to play on the big screen … beating out the Flash is Marvel’s Merc with a Mouth, Deadpool:

“It’s a very tricky character to do,” Reynolds sighed. “It’s hard R. It’s ambiguous whether he’s good or bad. He’s a mercenary. This is all to say nothing of the fact that his face is made entirely of scar tissue.

“These are huge issues,” the 30-year-old actor deadpanned. “Hopefully, there’ll be [somebody] who has the balls to go there and make a really authentic, decent ‘Deadpool’ movie.”

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As the fourth annual Penny Arcade Expo — PAX, for short — kicks off today in Seattle, MSNBC.com profiles Penny Arcade creators Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, whose nine-year-old webcomic has served as a launching pad for the trade show, a children’s charity, merchandising and more.

Tell me how you conceived of the conference. What made you think you could make it fly?

Holkins: I never thought we could make it fly. Much like our other endeavors that have turned out OK, I always expect them to crash and explode. Or, just as the Challenger, explode in midair.

Krahulik: That’s powerful imagery.

Holkins: Basically, the way that it has come together has sort of been a surprise to us, and I think it’s probably an indication that something like this needed to occur. It’s unfortunate that we’ve needed to do it, because it’s been a tremendous amount of work.

Krahulik: You’d asked about what prompted it. … We’d gone to a lot of different conventions …comic book conventions, tabletop conventions … and our fans would come to the show and come right to our table and then leave, because they really didn’t care about comic books. These were gamers. The fit was never quite right. So we thought: Let’s take all of the things that we like about these different shows, and try to make one show — the show that we would go to, and that our fans would go to. And it just so happens that no one had really made that show yet. So I think we got lucky.

PAX, which runs through Sunday, is expected to draw 30,000 attendees, up from 19,000 last year.

Related: Seattle Times’ PAX preview

Related: Extensive Wired magazine coverage

Pink Raygun recently chatted with Melody Severns, founder of Girls Drawing Girls, a group of female animation artists who spend their free time making pin-up art.

PRG: Is Girls Drawin’ Girls a direct response to negative stereotypes in this artistic area?

MS: It was just time we did something different. Most pin up art done by men features huge breasts, tiny waists and out of control proportions that don’t make sense. That can happen here as well, but we’re tyring to say that women are allowed to be sexy and fun and go wherever they want with their femininity and sexuality and still be intelligent and get by doing their own thing.

The group has a new book out, “A Girl In Time,” which can be purchased at their Web site.

Variety reports that Stephen Sommers will direct the live-action film version of G.I. Joe, which is due in theaters in 2009.

While “G.I. Joe” served several futile tours of duty as a movie property, its momentum has been helped by “Transformers,” the movie transfer of another Hasbro brand. That di Bonaventura-produced film has grossed $667 million worldwide for studio partners DreamWorks and Paramount.

Hasbro’s Goldner said that the mythology of G.I Joe was fleshed out during the 1980s through 155 issues of Marvel Comics, as well as an animated TV series. There are about 30 core characters, good and evil, that can be exploited in films.

“Marrying Steve’s vision with 25 years of this brand mythology feels like a great way to go forward,” Goldner said.

The story notes that Hasbro is also looking at possible movies based on their Monopoly and Battleship games.