WonderCon! Here are a few images from the floor to whet your appetite before I head into the panel I’m covering for the mothership …

Demo at the DC booth…

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From the Image Comics booth at WonderCon:

Mark Millar. Tony Harris. Summer 2008. Sweet.

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The Homeless Channel creator Matt Silady dropped us a note about his activities at WonderCon this weekend:

Next, as part of my triple threat year of “making comics, selling comics, and teaching comics,” I’ll be taking my CCA graphic novel class to the show on Friday, moderating a panel on Saturday, and then working both the Isotope events during the weekend. I’ll be wearing all of my hats this weekend (creator, retailer, and educator!)

You can read more details at his MySpace blog, and you also might be able to find him at the Writer’s Old Fashioned table this weekend.

CNN.com has a video report about Eric Heuvel’s The Search, a comic being used to teach German students about the Holocaust.

At IGN.com, artist Marko Djurdjevic walks through the cover-creation process for issues of Marvel’s Daredevil and Thor.

This is the first volume in Ed Piskor’s projected four-volume series about the early days of computer hacking. You can find lots of preview pages on Piskor’s Web site, and can order a copy of the book here.

And you should order a copy of the book, because it’s very good. As subject choices for debut (as in writing debut, since Piskor has done a lot of work with Harvey Pekar), self-published, multi-part graphic novels go, it’s an inspired one, and Piskor does an excellent job of guiding the reader through the ins and outs of the burgeoning hacker world without becoming bogged down in terminology or technology. (more…)

In a strange and stodgy essay for PopMatters, Shawn O’Rourke argues that recent “event comics” like Infinite Crisis and Civil War herald the end of the Modern Age and the beginning of the Postmodern Age — instead of, y’know, simply being a continuation of themes that began decades ago.

After spending six paragraphs defining the Modern Age — which, he asserts, began with the release of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns – O’Rourke gets down to business: DC’s Infinite Crisis and Marvel’s Civil War, which, “represent some of the most impressive and dynamic work done in mainstream comics history.”

“Using some of the greatest creators in the medium,” O’Rourke writes, “the two companies have created storylines with spectacular ramifications that have influenced the majority of their books in significant ways. While the stories and issues dealt with are different, the two are linked in that they both thematically rest on the failing of the mainstream superheroes to live up to the requirements established by the previous paradigms. This theme, coupled with the fact that it takes place in the primary continuity of mainstream comics, represents the linguistic and epistemological shift that has ushered in this new age of superhero comics.”

It’s a difficult slog, littered with scholarly terms (“epistemological changes”!) and fannish hyperbole (Superboy Prime’s “murderous rampage is sure to go down in comic book history”). I don’t know, it just feels like a review that grew into a “think piece” before it went completely off the rails.

At About.com, Deb Aoki talks with Chip Kidd and Saul Ferris, authors of the upcoming Bat-Manga! The Secret History of Batman in Japan. Due in October from Pantheon, the book collects Jiro Kuwata’s 1966-67 stories from Shonen King, which were spurred by the popularity of the Batman TV show.

There’s also a small gallery of artwork.

Ron Rege’s art blog.

Reed Elsevier is selling its Reed Business Information magazine-publishing division, which includes trade publications such as Variety, Publishers Weekly – and Publishers Weekly Comics Week and The Beat — Broadcasting and Cable, and Playthings.

According to ICv2.com, the company will keep Reed Exhibitions, which produces New York Comic-Con, the New York Anime Festival, Book Expo America and other trade and consumer shows.

There’s no timetable for the sale, and Reed reportedly has no buyer lined up.

The fine folks at Warner Home Video have provided us with three copies of Justice League: The New Frontier, the animated direct-to-DVD flick coming out next Tuesday. Based on the Eisner, Harvey and Shuster Award-winning graphic novel by Darwyn Cooke, the movie features the voice talent of Kyle MacLachlan, Lucy Lawless, Brooke Shields, Neil Patrick Harris and many more.

I managed to wrestle our free copies away from the rest of the Blog@ crew, which is good news for you … ’cause we’re gonna have a contest.

To enter, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post telling us what your favorite Justice League story is. Feel free to provide as much or as little detail on why it’s your favorite as you want.

Also, use your real name and email address so I can contact you if you win. I’ll pick three winners at random on Thursday, Feb. 28 at 5 p.m. Pacific, so make sure you leave your comment by then.

Want to hedge your bet? Johanna’s also giving away copies of the DVD.

Following up on The Incredible Change-Bots toy concept art I posted yesterday, Devil’s Due sent out the official press release for the launch of Pop, their new merchandising arm that’ll be producing toys based not only on Jeffrey Brown’s awesome Transformers parody, but also journals, stickers and plush toys.

The complete press release and more art can be found after the jump …

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– Missed it: Peter Bagge and Simpsons writer Dana Gould satirize the Oscars.

– Awesome YouTube link of the week: Animation tests for unfinished Pogo cartoon, in two parts.

– Not comics: The New York Times has a swell profile of children’s book author Sandra Boyton.

– It looks like the Drinky Crow show is a go.

– I’m glad Scott Adams has this guy’s back.

– Help me, I can’t stop the cartoon playing-card links.

–They Might Be Giants videos are now available at Disney.com.

Add two more names to the ever-expanding cast of 20th Century Fox’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Variety reports that former Lost star Dominic Monaghan will play Barnell — aka Blackwing and Beak — while model-actor Daniel Henney will portray Agent Zero — aka Maverick — a member of the Weapon X program.

Earlier this week Ryan Reynolds, Taylor Kitsch and will.i.am were announced as Deadpool, Gambit and Wraith, respectively. They join Hugh Jackman (Wolverine), Liev Schreiber (Sabretooth), Danny Huston (William Stryker) and Lynn Collins (Silver Fox).

X-Men Origins: Wolverine, directed by Gavin Hood, will film in New Zealand, Australia and New Orleans. It’s set to open on May 1, 2009.

Tom Brevoort is asking for trouble:

It’s fun to gripe! We all do it! And it can be educational and enjoyable!

So let’s all gripe here for a second. What is there about what we’re doing at the moment that you don’t like? You can be specific if you like (although I don’t really need to read the same four posts about “One More Day” again), but I’m speaking more in broad strokes, in generalities. By the same token, I’m not really looking to control the terms of your gripes.

So what could we be doing better? What frustrates you about Marvel Comics right now?

The fans respond with some surprising suggestions:

“Not enough old school talent. You’re just now throwing bones to David Michelinie, Bob Layton, and Roy Thomas, but ‘new Marvel’ has turned it’s back on it’s history, regardless of how very qualified they are. Where is something new from Roger Stern, J. M. DeMatties, Larry Hama, JOHN BYRNE, Jim Shooter, Walt Simonson, or Gerry Conway? There’s a bit too much ‘good old boys club’ stuff going on right now at Marvel. I don’t think cliques are healthy.”

“Inexplicable creator ‘pushes’. Mark Guggenheim has bounced from Wolverine to Spider-Man to Young X-Men, while not displaying a damn bit of talent, and all the while bleating about how he hates ‘decompression’ and wants to work with John Byrne – neither of which is appropriate conduct for a Marvel Writer.”

“Please don’t adress Peter’s marriage and/or Mephisto again. ‘The past is past, so don’t look back– look forward.’ I liked that sentence in #546. It’s important.”

“Glossy paper. I guess I would need some more information on this one, but I’ll throw it in anyways. I think glossy paper and computer coloring have really driven up prices. I love Fables and Gotham Central, they weren’t any cheaper, but the paper quality didn’t ruin the storytelling. You can get back to blowing our minds with all the Photoshopped HD art you want when it all goes digital in a few years, but lets figure out a way to put comics in my hands for cheaper in the mean time. haha.”

“I guess my biggest gripe about Marvel right now is the lack of “counter-programming” in their takes on their characters. Don’t like Bendis Avengers? Tough. Want Spider-Man with intact continuity? Tough. I liked when we had a choice between Kurt Busiek’s Avengers and Mark Millar’s Ultimates, between JMS’ ASM and Bendis’ USM, and so on. These were real differences in both setting and tone. It gave readers an alternative.”

Many more at the link.

Rolling Stone reports that the Foo Fighters are suing Marvel Entertainment, First Serve International, Toonz Animation India and First Serve Toonz for copyright infringement:

The band alleges that Marvel used “substantial excerpts” of their songs “Best of You” and “Free Me” as the music for the trailer of the new animated series Wolverine and the X-Men. You can watch the trailer here, and it’s pretty obvious that the Foos are used to soundtrack the cartoon’s preview.

The trailer hit the ‘net back at the beginning of February and has since been pulled from YouTube.

E! Online has a few more details:

Per the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, “substantial excerpts” of the tunes “Best of You” and “Free Me,” both off the 2005 album In Your Honor, were used in a teaser for the upcoming animated series Wolverine and the X-Men.

The song samples “were copied directly from the Foo Fighters’ sound recordings of those two songs” and people can watch the trailer online, the suit alleges.

The suit was also filed on behalf of Roswell Records Inc., owners of the master recordings.

(Thanks, James!)

Devil’s Due dropped us some concept art from their upcoming toy line, which they’ll be announcing via press release very soon. One of the first toys they’re doing is a transformable Balls toy from Incredible Change-Bots. Jeffrey Brown designed it himself.

Click it for a larger image.

Every month when I pore over the new DC solicitations, I feel obliged to look at them as some kind of cohesive whole, like a hint from one book will provide a clue into another. When there are big crossovers afoot, that urge is especially strong. Mostly, though, I’m able to remind myself that there’s not necessarily a master plan, and nobody’s writing these solicitations in a secret code that only the faithful understand.

That said, I wonder if there aren’t some clues to Final Crisis in this, the first month of solicitations for what may be the last Line-Wide Event for a while….

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London-based production company Power has optioned Anthony Lappé and Dan Goldman’s Shooting War to develop as a television series.

The political thriller and satire, which began life as a webcomic, was released as a graphic novel in the United States by Grand Central Publishing, and in the U.K. by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

You can read the full press release after the break:

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It can be found here.