I apologize for not posting this earlier in the day. I’m planning a trip to Haiti and have been busy making sure I have enough zombie repellent.

Indy TV ad

Something’s wrong here, because the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull TV ad is even better than the theatrical trailer.

Tikiware

You do like the Tiki, don’t you? Tell me you like the Tiki. Because if you do, a) we can be friends, and b) illustrator/designer Kevin Kidney is going to make you very happy.

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Very sad news from Mark Evanier, who’s had to announce way too much of this lately:

One of the most prolific artists to ever draw comic books, Jim Mooney, passed away in Florida on Sunday. He was born in 1919 and had been in failing health for some time, especially since the passing of his wife Anne in 2005.

Mooney was one of the greats. He’ll be missed.

Paul Pope draws the Avengers.

Unless you were on Internet silence this weekend, you undoubtedly know that late Friday news broke that Jerry Siegel’s heirs have reclaimed half the copyright to the Superman material in Action Comics #1.

Should Judge Stephen Larson’s ruling survive appeal, this isn’t just the comics story of the week; it’s the story of the year. Hell, probably several years. Another trial, or else an out-of-court agreement, will determine how much Time Warner owes Joanne Siegel and Laura Siegel Larson for its use of the character since 1999 — the date their ownership was determined to have been restored.

As anyone who waded into the comments section of my initial post can attest, the ruling sparked a frenzy among a segment of fandom on a level not seen since, I don’t know, the Crash of ‘29. Actually, remember the bonfire scene from The Lord of the Flies? It was a lot like that. (C’mon, guys, nobody’s “destroying” Superman. If he can survive the Mullet Years, Red/Blue and the final season of Lois & Clark, he can survive a legal battle. In all likelihood you’ll continue to get your weekly dose of Superman uninterrupted.)

I updated the initial post with worthwhile links, such as The New York Times’ report, Jeff Trexler’s continuing coverage (including a terrific FAQ), and Tom Bondurant’s analysis for Newsarama. Since then, there has been some more notable coverage:

• At Comics Should Be Good, Brian Cronin assembles a Superman copyright FAQ that serves as a good companion to Trexler’s.

• Comics commentator Abhay Khosla looks at the decision, and the original deal between Siegel, Shuster and Detective Comics.

• At Comic Book Resources, intellectual-property attorney Brendan McFeely discusses the finer points of the ruling.

• At Journalista, Dirk Deppey “poke[s] a finger in DC Comics’ glorious misfortune,” and then settles in for a dissection of Larson’s 72-page decision.

• Variety’s coverage focuses on Siegel attorney Marc Toberoff, whom it calls “Kryptonite to studios.”

More links as they appear.

Over at Whitechapel, Warren Ellis is continuing to talk about leaving Thunderbolts and his stance on creator-owned work:

I actually had no intention of going back into WFH (work for hire). The creator owned stuff was selling to expected numbers and things were ticking along fine.

What happened was that Mark Millar and Brian Bendis got in touch — they’d hit a scheduling wall and weren’t able to service twelve issues of ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR, and asked me to help them out. And when your friends ask you for a favour, you do it, you know? So I said yes, and got to work.

That’s how I ended up doing more superhero comics.

The first odd thing happened after the first issue came out. Now, remember, I’d been doing mostly original material for the previous few years, and doing fine. But I was suddenly flooded with email from kids — teenagers — who had never heard of me before. What was happening, it turned out, was that I was reaching seven or eight hundred stores at maximum, and there was anything up to a couple of thousand stores who just weren’t ordering my stuff. I remember talking this over with people at Marvel and particularly DC, and it turned out that this was in fact the case — that two thirds of comics stores really don’t order much other than superhero comics and a few licensed books. And in those years of doing my own thing, the audience had turned over to the point where there were people who’d never read a thing by me. It hadn’t been all that long ago that I’d been selling 200,000 copies of DV8 and 150,000 copies of WOLVERINE, I thought…

The second really odd thing came in some months later. Sales of TRANSMET TPBs spiked massively. And the only thing that had changed was that I was writing UFF. What had happened was that these new readers had liked UFF, gone looking for other stuff by me, found nothing in their local store, gone to Amazon or bookstores, and picked up TRANSMET books. A few months later, I saw numbers on all my other creator-owned TPBs pick up too.

And now we can sell more than 12,000 copies of CRECY in a matter of months.

And what’s REALLY strange is that I discovered Marvel under Joe Quesada and Dan Buckley is in fact a really nice place to work.

The thread also features appearances from Brian Wood, B. Clay Moore and Jonathan Hickman.

Nina Matsumoto (aka Space Coyote), who became a bit of a sensation last year with The Simpsonzu, has turned her attention to Bill Watterson’s well-loved Calvin & Hobbes:

Few historians know of the heartwarming friendship between French Reformation theologian John Calvin and English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, the latter of whom may or may not have been real, considering he was not even born yet.

Sure, she drew it several months ago, but I wasn’t aware of it until Neatorama linked to the illustration this morning. Hey, something like this is timeless.

The good news is that plans on releasing a massive (and massively expensive) Carl Barks collection later this year. The bad news? It’s based on an edition that’s been published in various European countries over the past few years and has been vehemently criticized for use of computerized color. Matthias Wivel has a useful breakdown of the problem:

When the first cassette of ten (containing volumes I, XI, and XXI of 30) was released in Denmark, it caused much consternation amongst fans for its colouring, as well as for its lettering, translation and other things mostly irrelevant to an edition in the original language. I wrote a lengthy, extensively illustrated review of it (in Danish) to which I refer readers interested in seeing examples of the vandalism wrought on the comics in these initial volumes. Protests raised by fans and customers of the books — which were sold by subscription only — made Egmont rein in their colouring strategy somewhat, toning down the use of gradients, airbrush, supplemental elements alien to the comics (such as vectorised cloud patterns), and other horrid computer effects. These changes were, however, only implemented from the third cassette onwards, meaning that six volumes out of thirty are pretty much ruined.

Wivel also compares the collection with the original comic book coloring here.

Blogging for AfterElton.com, Lyle Masaki considers six openly gay men whose work in comics and science fiction has “helped improve visibility for those of us who’d like to have a superhero, space captain, or time-traveling immortal of our own.” From comics, he names writer and journalist Andy Mangels and artist-writer Phil Jimenez:

Jimenez became a role model for gay comic fans in 1996 with an editorial that appeared the last issue of the Tempest mini-series that he wrote and pencilled. In the editorial, Jimenez publicly came out and touchingly remembered Neal Pozner the man who first hired him to work for DC Comics who became a mentor to Jimenez, as well as Jimenez’ partner. Pozner died in 1994 and the eulogy was powerful not only for increasing gay visibility among comic creators but for bringing a gay relationship into the dialogue.

Other names on the list are: Russell T. Davies, executive producer of Doctor Who and creator of Torchwood; horror author Clive Barker; Hero author and movie producer Perry Moore; and Brian Fuller, creator of Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies.

Over at Sekvenskonst.

The original oil painting used for the cover of Tintin in America sold for €764,200 (1.2 million USD) at an auction on Saturday March 29, obliterating the old record for an original comic book art. Last March, a drawing by artist Enki Bilal called Bleu Sang (Blue Blood) fetched €177,000 ($285,950 Cdn).

Held in Paris, Auction house Artcurial announced that the 1932 oil painting, by Tintin’s Belgian creator Hergé, was part of one-off sale of 650 comic originals.

Tintin Actor chosen

Tintin record-breaking sale of the original artwork happened only a day after the announcement that british actor Thomas Sangster will be playing Tintin in the upcoming Steven Spielberg movie. Sangster is best known for his roles in the films Love Actually and Nanny McPhee . Andy Serkis has been confirmed in the role of Captain Haddock.

Tintin was also in the news as recently as last week, publisher Raymond LeBlanc passed away.

Via CBC News.

If you think typing in words on a keyboard is hard, Mike Smith draws his blog every day over at blogshank.com.

Tom Spurgeon talks with author Patrick Rosenkranz about his seminal book about the history of underground comics, Rebel Visions, the softcover edition of which will be coming out soon from Fantagraphics:

SPURGEON: How much material was added to the second volume? Were there any changes to the text?

ROSENKRANZ: When they assigned Greg Sadowski to be editor/designer of the second edition I began to understand how effectively good design can enhance and reinforce the content of a book. Sadowski took a very different approach than Carrie Whitney who designed the hardcover. First of all, he knew something about the subject and was a fan of the undergrounds. He asked me to rewrite some sections to clarify points or add additional information. He moved chapters around to give a better flow to the story, and talked me into dropping the endnotes to make it seem less like a textbook. I substituted a Recommended Reading List instead, which retains the links to full interviews. We had many fruitful discussions on the phone during the process. He was very particular that the text and images relate to each other on every page and challenged me to carefully re-examine my theories and interpretations of events during the comix movement. I was willing to spend the necessary time to chase down facts and find appropriate illustrations and write captions because I saw this as a great opportunity. Fantagraphics was very generous to make the offer to redesign my book. They could have just slapped on paper covers and re-issued the same book, but instead they chose to invest time and money on this project to make it better. I think this demonstrates their integrity and professionalism and I love them for it.

Gideon Boomer started drawing Wolverine and now he just can’t stop.

Unfortunately my three years of high school Spanish left me ill-prepared to read this interview with Northwind and upcoming Spider-Man artist Alex Cal … but I don’t need Babelfish to see the artwork, featuring Cal’s upcoming work on Spider-Man with J.M. DeMatteis:

Oakley Inc. has filed a lawsuit against Marvel, Twentieth Century Fox and a UK company over sunglasses used to promote Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

The California-based sports clothing and equipment company contends a pair of sunglasses included in a gift packet produced to promote the movie violates its U.S. patent by copying its Penny eyeglass line.

The lawsuit, filed March 20 in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, Calif., asks that the court award an injunction to prevent Marvel, Fox and London-based RDP Unlimited from manufacturing sunglasses that infringe upon the patent. It also requests an accounting of all profits from the sales of the products, damages, and the destruction of all infringing sunglasses.

–Check out this fun Charlie Brown/Watchmen mash-up.

–iFanboy chats with Darwyn Cooke.

–Brian Wood talks about the inspiration for the “Friendly Fire” story in DMZ.

–7-Eleven Slurpees — now with more Iron.

–Justice League director George Miller threatens to take the film from his native Australia to New Zealand or Canada.

–LuridTV.com has launched a new web series spotlighting P. Craig Russell. The first episode is up now, with additional episodes going up every Monday for the next five weeks.

No matter what quotes I found this week, I just really cannot compete with the exchange of opinions/infinite monkey theorem experiment that began on Friday evening. So without further delay, the quotes that caught my interest.

“I ask to all those with their negative comments to try and exude some class and respect for a man that truly loved his family and worked so incredibly hard to create works of art for millions of people to enjoy. Lets not forget that no one, INCLUDING YOURSELVES, are perfect- we all try as best we can.”
- Katherine (Vince Colletta’s granddaughter), bringing a much-needed perspective from Eddie Campbell’s comments section, which Campbell in turn reposted to draw greater focus on her thoughts.

“Why would the Fantastic Four contact Iron Man for anything? I could see Mr. Fantastic calling up Tony Stark to bounce technical ideas and theories off him, but Iron Man…? The only things Iron Man brings to the table are repulsor rays and rocket skates. There’s absolutely no reason the FF would need Iron Man for anything.”
- Sean Kleefeld, defining his hate for Iron Man and working in an alliterative reference to Shellhead’s rocket skates.

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Perhaps understandably considering the recent scandal surrounding its artist, New Avengers #39 has become a talking point at various blogs.

J. Hunt of Comics Daily enjoyed the issue, particularly David Mack’s pencils:

It’s a fairly straightforward story, but nicely plays off Maya and Logan’s history together (as explained in the pages of Daredevil some years ago) by pairing them up. Bendis is remarkably restrained with his dialogue, allowing Mack’s amazing pencils to speak for themselves. I’ve never seen Mack’s work like this - I’m only used to his painted pages, and I had to check the cover to make sure it was actualy him. Let’s get this straight: Mack is nothing short of an amazing penciller. If I worked at Marvel I’d give him whatever it took to have him pencilling something on even a semi-regular basis. As it is, he only seems to put out the odd issue of Kabuki through Icon - a move that seems purely designed to keep him at Marvel ready for this kind of project. Either way, keep doing it.

Kirk Warren of Weekly-Crisis didn’t like the issue:

Up until now, I had been on the fence with the whole Secret Invasion / Skrull nonsense. I was intrigued, but pretty much all the suspense and hype for it was coming from Bendis in interviews. Not once did I feel like the book actually reflected any kind of Skrull threat and what little there was seemed to be the exact words Bendis was using to promote the book on Newsarama, Jinxworld and the numerous other comic sites. The ending to the Illuminati series was the first time I thought this could actually be really cool.

However, this issue killed any kind of interest I have in the book or upcoming event. I’ll probably still pick it up, as I’m that guy buying all the crap events, bitching about not buying them anymore and then going right back for more. But that doesn’t change the fact this issue consists of Bendis disguised as Wolverine and Echo and preaching his Skrull speech for an entire issue

While Deamentia of Weekly Comicbook Review.com was unimpressed by the issue, particularly Mack’s pencils.

Not helping matters is David Mack’s art. I know, it’s hard to believe. Maybe I’m just spoiled and used to seeing his beautiful painted stuff, because his pencils and inks here are average - and worse, his storytelling is very mediocre. Those who are keen enough will notice a lot of “lifted” poses for the characters, especially when it comes to the fight scenes. There’s also a double page splash that feels complete wasted and devoid of any kind of energy. Don’t get me wrong, I love David Mack’s body of work but his art in this issue is bad enough to where it detracts from the story.

So what did you think?

In what may shape up to be a historic ruling, a judge on Wednesday awarded Jerry Siegel’s heirs the copyright to the Superman material in Action Comics #1.

As Jeff Trexler points out, Judge Stephen Larson’s 71 1/2-page opinion doesn’t resolve all the issues — the separate Superboy case, division of profits, etc. — but it does seem to put an end, of sorts, to a decades-long feud. (The decision is certain to be appealed by Time Warner.)

“After seventy years,” Larson writes in his concluding paragraph, “Jerome Siegel’s heirs regain what he granted so long ago — the copyright in the Superman material that was published in Action Comics Vol. 1. What remains is an apportionment of profits, guided in some measure by the rulings contained in this Order, and a trial on whether to include the profits generated by DC Comics’ corporate sibling’s exploitation of the Superman copyright.”

Trexler also points to an analysis of the decision by William Patry, Google’s senior copyright counsel, which provides some context: “The opinion doesn’t cover Schuster’s interests, which are not subject to Section 304(c) termination, but rather a future 304(d) termination. Nor does the opinion reach the work for hire question for anything after the (justly famous and important) Action Comics Vol. 1 published on April 18, 1938 – the collateral estoppel applied on work for hire only covers Action Comics Vol. 1. Finally, there are very thorny issues of apportionment. All of these issues are likely to be the subject of subsequent motions and possibly trial.”

Expect more coverage over the weekend.

Update: The New York Times weighs in with reaction quotes from Siegel estate attorney Marc Toberoff, Joanne Siegel and Laura Siegel Larson. The Times notes that while the decision leaves intact Time Warner’s international rights to Superman, it may open the door to a similar reversion of copyright to the estate of Joe Shuster in 2013.

“After 2013, Time Warner couldn’t exploit any new Superman-derived works without a licence from the Siegels and Shusters,” said Toberoff, who also represents the Shuster estate.

Update 2 (March 29): Jeff Trexler is a step ahead of everyone else, and provides a wonderfully informative copyright decision FAQ. Those commenters in a panic over what the ruling will mean to their monthly dose of Superman comics would do well to read the article, as Trexler addresses questions of creative control, trademarks, and copyright law.

Update 3 (March 29): Blog@ contributor and attorney Tom Bondurant analyzes the ruling for the main site.

Update 4 (March 29): Mark Evanier discusses the photos of Siegel and Shuster that accompany The New York Times article.

Neil Gaiman also comments: “When I did something like this on a much smaller scale, I remember how much of a relief it was when the court awarded me my share in the characters I’d co-created. (I really ought to do something with it. Anyone want to publish an ANGELA comic? Or Medieval Spawn?)”

Update 5: Jeff Trexler continues his commentary on the ruling: “So is this the death of Superman? No, not at all. Instead of worrying about DC folding up, expect a settlement with both the Siegel and Shuster families, albeit perhaps one that is more favorable to them in terms of finances and the creators’ recognition than might have otherwise been obtained.”

Editor’s note: We’re very happy and excited to welcome DC Comics President Paul Levitz to Blog@Newsarama! He’ll be stopping by on a semi-regular basis to talk about comics and answer your questions. You can read his first post below and leave any questions for him in the comments section.

Start by accepting that I’ve got one of the best jobs on the planet—if you’re a Newsarama regular that shouldn’t be a big leap. I’ve gotten to write comics, edit and publish them, and work with creators both of the comics I loved as a kid and of many of today’s best comics, as well as the creative people who translate our characters to other media. I couldn’t have envisioned this cool a role back when I was editing a fanzine called The Comic Reader and feeling like a kid with his nose pressed to the shop window looking at the goodies within.

So when Matt asked me to join the blogging community, he was inviting me to return to my roots, but with an access to information and knowledge that I couldn’t have thought of 35 years ago in my fanzine days. I’m not free to toss all of it around, of course, but hopefully I can walk the line in an entertaining manner. The good news about netiquette is I can count on you to let me know.

One of the pieces that caught my eye in this space recently was my old friend Brian Hibbs’ lengthy dissection of graphic novel sales. Brian’s a longstanding and passionate advocate of the form, and while I almost never agree with all his conclusions, he’s always got interesting points to raise. I thought he did miss a couple of observations about graphic novels in 2007, though. (None of which are as much fun as it was to watch Brian try to lead a Comics Pro discussion at DC’s recent retailer meeting–turnabout being fair play.)

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