It’s called The Learners. I got a copy in the mail yesterday. Here’s the cover:

Yes, that art is by Charles Burns. The lettering is by Chris Ware too. (more…)

More specifically, the very first Big Boy comic.

New York’s Vulture has a preview of the new graphic novel by Marc-Antoine Mathieu up on their site.

–Brendan McCarthy draws the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

–Jesus and the Bear.

–Reader mail: A Blog@Newsarama reader dropped us an emailing, asking:

So what’s up with out of print trades? And not things like Flaming Carrot – things that are relatively obscure, and, although it’s showing some resurgence, really doesn’t have a big enough demand to justify a new printing – or things like the Starman trades – books that we are actively seeing come back in new, big, fancy shiny editions – or even books like Days of Future Past – where if you missed it, you missed it, but it’s not really hard to find anyway – but books like Garth Ennis’s Marvel Knights run on the Punisher, or volumes 2 and 3 of the Walt Simonson Thor Visionaries books, or the TPB of Daredevil: Born Again? (I realize that Born Again is in the big Frank Miller Daredevil Companion book now, and that’s cool and all, but what if I ONLY wanted Born Again? Which, you know, was the only thing I wanted.)

Obviously there’s a big enough desire for these books. At the very least, vols 2 and 3 of the Thor books. Amazon has vol. 2 listed as available “New and used from $65.00″, and vol. 3 from $149.99.

That is very silly.

That does seem silly, and I don’t have an answer. Can anyone else provide one?

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–This isn’t quite the new Indiana Jones poster:

It’s actually for Morgan Spurlock’s new film, Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden? Spurlock, of course, is the mad genius behind Super Size Me and FX’s 30 Days.

–IESB asks Jason Statham what comic character he’d like to play:

IESB: Anyone in particular?

Statham: Let me think… It’s funny, I took a meeting for Sub-Mariner. I don’t know if I’d look right running around in a tight speedo with wings on my ankles but there’s so many cool fucking characters. The Hulk, I’ve always been a big fan of but Ed Norton’s doing that. And rightly so. He’s fucking amazing. And he’s working with Louis Leterrier, believer it or not who did The Transporter. I’m trying to think of what would be a good comic book character for me to play. You know, there’s talk of them redoing The Crow. That was a good movie with Brandon Lee, although that was years ago. So if that one comes my way, bang! You know, there’s so many comic book movies out there and most of the time there’s only a handful of people who can do them any justice. Hopefully, they’ll come my way for one of them.

I don’t really see him as either the Sub-Mariner or The Crow … who do you think he should play?

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…According to Wizard, at least. Millar explains the story:

…“Enemy of the State” was “Wolverine versus the Marvel Universe.” Just on a primal level as a fanboy, that appeals to me. This is entirely different. In this, the Marvel Universe as we understand it is gone. The superheroes are gone. There’s a few scattered guys left around, and they’re living in the remains of the Marvel Universe. Some terrible incident happens. America is absolutely f—ed. There’s nothing left but a wasteland really. It’s more like “Mad Max” than the Marvel Universe, but amongst that we see its remains. We still have some of the supervillains, but what they’ve done now is had children and grandchildren in some cases. So we’ve got gangs out in the states now. And there are ecological problems because we’re 50 years in the future by this point. It’s unlike any Marvel story you’ve ever had before. It’s more like a European thing. It’s just this horrible post-apocalyptic nightmare that happens to have superheroes and supervillains in it, and Wolverine is at the heart of it.

That sound you hear is probably the cash registers ringing in advance.

What happens when you cross Hunter S. Thompson with Arthur Conan Doyle? Probably something like Holmes, Omaha Perez’s self-published mini-series. Perez’s version of Holmes may have more in common with Keith Richards than Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, but Perez promises it’s all in good fun — he’s actually a Sherlock Holmes fan himself.

Perez published Holmes himself under his O-P-P banner, but this March AiT/Planet Lar will release a remastered collection.

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(By the way, I’m not really comparing Countdown to something designed deliberately to be the worst musical ever produced. I’m just running out of time to make cheap jokes at its expense.)

Not a lot of surprises in the April DC solicits. Finally, the new Titans series debuts. Finally, Countdown reaches its last issue, along with most of its tie-ins. Still, that’s not to say there’s nothing intriguing here. Let’s get started, shall we?

YOU CAN CHANGE THE NAME OF A ROSE, BUT YOU CAN’T DO NOTHIN’ ABOUT THE SMELL

With a DC/WildStorm miniseries joining the DC/Tangent miniseries, that’s two look-how-different crossover stories running contemporaneously. Obviously I’m a big fan of the Multiverse concept, but this bugs me for a couple of reasons. First, we’ve just spent a year dealing with eleventeen versions of Batman, and I could use a break. Second, these kinds of stories run the risk of diminishing the crossed-into universe.

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Continuing our “coming attractions” list, here are our picks for the top ten “art/indie/whatever term butters your bacon” comix we’re excited to see hit stores this year:

1. Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! by Art Spiegelman (Pantheon). You could probably argue that this book belongs on the “reprints” list, since at least half of this material was originally published back in 1977. But I figure the inclusion of the title story, with Spiegelman revisiting his youth and early influences, allows me to fudge things a little bit. — Chris Mautner

2. Cold Heat by Ben Jones and Frank Santoro (PictureBox). The reality of the marketplace prevented Jones and Santoro from serializing their surreal conspiracy story involving aliens, drug companies and Kurt Cobain lookalikes, but thankfully we’ll be able to dive into the story in one fell swoop this summer. — Chris Mautner

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Visual references to the TV series Lost have begun appearing in several Marvel comics as part of a deal between ABC and the publisher.

According to this network press release, allusions to the show pop up in current issues of several titles, including Incredible Hercules, Thunderbolts, Uncanny X-Men and Wolverine: Origins. References include a Lost poster, the number 6 and the slogan, “Find Yourself.” More will appear in comics shipping next week.

Marvel is no stranger to product placement: Logos for Nike, Coca-Cola and other products have appeared on characters’ shirts, and in the backgrounds, of some of its books as part of promotional agreements. And in 2006, competitor DC Comics released a six-issue miniseries, Rush City, that promoted GM’s new Pontiac.

Season 4 of Lost premieres on Jan. 31.

EDIT: I can’t believe I forgot about the most obvious, and hilarious, example of product placement in Marvel comics: The repeated appearance of Old Spice in Irredeemable Ant-Man #10! Thanks, Russell Burlingame, for jogging my memory.

StephenKing.com has posted several pages of Jae Lee’s art from the upcoming Dark Tower: The Long Road Home #1. According to the site, the comic will hit stores “at 12:01 am, March 5th, 2008,” which means they’ll be repeating the midnight madness promotion they did with the first book.

Marvel continues the slow roll-out of images from the Iron Man movie, which opens May 2. For some reason, this shot reminds me of RoboCop.

The Portland Mercury talks to Brian K. Vaughan about the end of Y:The Last Man, which includes a couple of really good quotes … this one:

“It’s always worth doing stuff that most people will hate, if even a couple people love it,” Vaughan says when I ask about fans’ varying reactions to the subjects of Y. “I have only ever tried to do the book that Pia and I have wanted to do. I think people want to see our visions. Your job is not to give the audience what they want—it’s to give them what they never knew they wanted.” Vaughan’s voice gets a bit quieter, here, but he doesn’t back down: “Which just sounds presumptuous and stupid. But I guess I believe it.”

And this one:

“I guess I don’t care as long as they are thinking about it,” he answers. “I have always loved the people who hated the book just as much, if not more, than the people who loved it. You would have very well-intentioned liberal males writing about how the book was deeply misogynistic, because the men died [and] the women are unable to even get the electricity up and going. And that same month, Ms. magazine would say that we’re a feminist masterpiece. I like that. People’s interpretations are so much more interesting than my intent. So yeah, I don’t care what they think—as long as they are thinking about it, years from now. That would be shocking to me. And thrilling.”

Tom Brevoort considers the current line of Marvel books, and likes what he sees:

It could be that I just have rose-colored glasses on, but it really seems like there’s a lot of exciting stuff coming out of Marvel at the moment. I page through our Previews catalogue, and there really isn’t much that I’m not genuinely interested in… Look, there are always going to be people who don’t like some or all of wht we’re doing, and we can always be doing something better and striving to improve. But I have to say, from where I’m sitting, we’ve got an extremely strong line of titles coming out at the moment, with a little something for everybody. And if I was working for the competition, I’d be sweating just a little bit at this point.

Adding that your mileage may vary – although, as much as I may not enjoy all of the Marvel line, you only have to look at Marvel’s dominance of 2007 to see that it’s a very strong line – the one thing that really surprised me from Tom’s post was this:

I also dig our oversized hardcovers, and keep paying out of pocket to upgrade my own copies when issues of NEW AVENGERS and the like are eventually collected in this format.

Dear whoever at Marvel: Why isn’t Tom getting these books for free? Dude, if anyone should be on the comp list…

Comics critic and blogger Noah Berlatsky debuted The Gay Utopia last Friday. Designed to be an “online symposium devoted to exploring that ideal realm in which gender, sexuality, and identity dissolve” the site also features an abundance of comic-related material, with features/strips by folks like Dame Darcy, Johnny Ryan, Michael Manning, Edie Fake, Ariel Schrag and much more, including this essay on Alan Moore’s Black Dossier:

Moore’s book, however, seems to suggest that exposure to polymorphous sexualities and gender-identities will somehow lead us to an acknowledgment of gender’s inherent falsehood. While Black Dossier thematizes the fictionality of gender, it more often shows us lots of sex (especially in the first third of the book), a practice that tends not to serve the interests of post-feminism, but instead has the reverse effect. Mostly, what readers of the book are given (and it is a given, in the world of mainstream comics, that most of those readers are male) is a plethora of beautiful women in various states of undress, performing sex acts with men and/or other women. Rare is the depiction of homosexual male intercourse, and rarer is the depiction of sex that doesn’t conform to what might be typically titillating to men.

Go check it out, we’ll wait. (Note: Obviously some of the above links are not necessarily safe for work.)

There’s been a bit of confusion lately regarding Lynn Johnston’s comic strip For Better or For Worse. First, she said she was going to combine old and new strips in an effort to get more vacation time. Then, it was announced that the hybrid format was over, done and it would just be reruns from here on out. According to the latest story in Editor and Publisher, that ain’t necessarily so:

The current plan: Continue tying up loose ends with various “FBorFW” characters (a process that’s taking longer than Johnston expected). Then, no later than this September, freeze all these cast members in time. After that, the 1979-launched comic will focus on the younger versions of the characters.

But that doesn’t mean the post-September strips will consist entirely of rerun material. Johnston plans to change various elements of the comics, create new story lines, etc. — but do all that in the drawing style she used to have.

“I’ve become more of an illustrator,” said the Canadian cartoonist. “My old drawing style is a lot less complicated, but it’s more lively and free and joyful.” Johnston might even make the younger Elly Patterson’s nose bigger. “Large ‘honkers’ are funny,” she laughed.

Johnston also says she plans on using part of the newly acquired free time to work on a children’s book starring the late, beloved dog Farley.

Jeff Smith unloaded a dump truck of information about his upcoming RASL series in an interview with Van Jensen:

First of all, I have to stress that it’s not for the same audience as Bone. It’s a little bit more grown up. I don’t think there’s going to be anything pornographic in it or anything like that. I’m picturing more, you know, adult entertainment. It’s science fiction, so I’ve been describing it as Blade Runner meets Jason Bourne, so that gives you the flavor of it. And the story idea is, well, I’m very interested in science. That’s what I read when I’m trying to relax. I’ll read Brian Greene or Carl Sagan or Stephen Hawking. I love physics and I’ve always been really interested in certain parts of physics that get to the extreme edges of what we know and what we can theorize about.

And one of the things we theorize is that there are other dimensions. That’s what RASL is. He’s a dimension jumper. He’ll steal art. He’s an art thief. So, if you have enough money, I mean stupid money, like Bill Gates money, and you want your own original Picasso to hang in your living room, you can pay RASL and he’ll strap these giant engines on his shoulders—this special suit he’s invented—and he’ll step through the dimensions. It uses thermal magnetic power to bend reality so he can step into another dimension.

This week’s Publisher’s Weekly Comics Week also features a good interview with Kazu Kibuishi about his new all-ages book Amulet; a preview of Frederik Peeters’ Blue Pills; a look at Mike Mignola’s plans for 2008; and news about an upcoming comics symposium in March.

On his blog, Neil Gaiman reveals the cover to his forthcoming book, The Graveyard Book, featuring artwork by Dave McKean.

The official Star Wars blog reports on another movie character-turned-potato head, Indiana Jones. It’ll be available under the name Tater of the Lost Ark. Heh.

(Via)

Gail Simone asks the question “How has the internet affected your comic reading?” and the fans answer:

“It hasn’t caused me to stop reading anything, but I have found some titles over the net that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. Plus, the internet allows me a place to discuss my passion for comics, or (more often) bitch about them. It’s win-win for me.”

“Thanks to CBR, Newsarama, and a few other sites, I’ve learned far more about comics than I had since the early 90s, without the Wizard bias. Online ordering makes it more affordable to get books I want, and various interviews and articles have turned me onto far more book than any word-of-mouth. The message board here also gives a sense of community and a source for conversation that I also couldn’t get elsewhere. Without the ‘net, I wouldn’t be reading comics.”

“Iwas on the internet before I was reading comics. I got into comics when the shows I was watching, like The X-Files and Buffy dried up, and I wanted more of that instead of reality shows and Law and Order. I’d grown accustomed to discussing what I watched on the internet, so the same seemed appropriate for comics. Despite the negativity that tends to pervade discussions of comics on the ‘net, it really does not disuade me from comics, even when it has merit. If I like a book, I may acknowledge it has flaws, but I still basically like it. I do, however, occasionally try new stuff because of word of mouth.”

“It’s mostly made me much more careful about my purchases. If there’s a change in the creative team or I run across something new that sounds interesting, I typically hunt down a preview to get a feel for it. No preview usually means that it goes on a list of books to check out more closely or it goes ignored. I figure that if the writing doesn’t grab me in 4-8 pages, the rest of the book won’t either. Lately, I just can’t afford to be dropping cash on piles of books that turn out to be average or outright crap.”

“It’s helped my comics reading immensely. I now know exactly what books creators are working on, when the fill-ins are happening, when writer x is leaving book z, what they are moving on to, what smaller press stuff they are doing. It’s amazing, and getting into discussions with other people that read comics is awesome.”
The thread is surprisingly empty of cynicism and grumpiness. Go read, but keep the snark to yourself for once.