Formerly known as Avengers Reborn and Teen Avengers, it’s the trailer for Marvel’s direct-to-DVD project Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow:

Via

– Hero Initiative’s Jim McLauchlin shares some button designs for their FOOG, Too project.

– Congrats to Neil Kleid!

– The New Yorker reports on the recent Friars Club celebration for Drew Friedman’s book, More Old Jewish Comedians. They also review David Hajdu’s The Ten-Cent Club.

– E&P reports that editorial cartoonist Matt Bors will be doing a biweekly comic for the ACLU.

– Newspapers are looking around for temporary replacements now that Doonesbury is on hiatus.

– Sam Gross says that swastikas can be funny.

– Bees!

– Double O Section is giving away copies of Left on Mission.

– Isotope has a report and pictures from this past weekend’s event with artist Tim Sale and Whitney Matheson. Matt Maxwell also talks about the event briefly in a longer column on hitting the California highways to promote his new comic.

– Make your own Wonder Woman sweater.

Compiled by Chris Mautner and JK Parkin.

March goes out with a bang as the last Wednesday of the month delivers a veritable treasure trove of quality releases.

Yes, I said “veritable treasure trove.”

New issues of Gilbert Hernandez’s Speak of the Devil, Jason Lutes’ Berlin and Kevin Huizenga’s Ganges all hit this week. Kid-friendly fare comes in the form of Flight Explorer, Power Pack: Day One, The Clouds Above and Wolverine: First Class. Geoff Johns retells the origin of Hal Jordan in the pages of Green Lantern. And David Hajdu revisits the anti-comics crusades of the 1950s in The Ten-Cent Scare.

To see what other titles Chris Mautner and I think are worth mentioning, just keep reading. As always, let us know your choices in the comments below.

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The Byrne Board wonders, just how greedy was Bob Kane?:

“I remember that Bob Kane said in some interview that he created Dr. Death, The Monk, the Batman, and the Batarange.  Everyone knows that Gardner Fox created Dr. Death, The Monk, the Batplane, and the Batarange.  Why would Bob Kane take credit for things that were really Gardner Fox’s ideas.”

Byrne himself weighs in:

“Having taken credit for everything Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson did, Kane was on a roll!”

Harsh but fair, really. Further in the thread, and needing to be seen to be believed: Kane swipes Todd McFarlane and Kane’s gravestone, which credits Batman’s creation to God.

Marvel B0y is still around, apparently:

Well “True Believers,” the drama continues! After my LJ blog got taken down on Saturday, I thought for sure I was walking into an ambush this morning. But as you can see, I live! I thought the man was on to me but apparently, they still have no clue. I clocked in, fired up the computer, and all my files were still there.  No security to escort me, no being called in to Bogart’s office and definitely no ten people who already knew who I was. And the best part is that everyone thinks I was caught. Anyone that called in sick or who took off is now assumed to be me. Priceless. All morning a group of editorial sleuths thought it was JG until someone finally told them that he sent an email saying he was sick. This is the best reality tv I’ve watched in months.

The question is, is it the real Marvel B0y?

(Thanks, Jeff.)

Hello, Blog@Newsarama readers. This is the first of a new monthly feature, the new “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now,” a series of cartoons and short essays about life in independent comics. My life, specifically. I’m the editor-in-chief of the independent comics publisher Slave Labor Graphics (SLG, as we prefer). That company, founded by the gentleman pictured in panel two (images are courtesy of my husband, artist Brian Belew), has been around for more than twenty years. I’ve been around — at least as far as comics are concerned — for seven years. This is my introduction, my “origin story,” of sorts.

A lot of people ask me how to get a job in comics, and I really don’t have a helpful answer to that question. Though it was a relatively easy process for me, I didn’t get to the position I’m in now on purpose. I began as an editorial assistant at SLG, scanning art, laying out comics and writing press releases. By the sheer force of my showing up regularly and doing what I was supposed to, I was promoted to editor-in-chief a year and a half later. It occurs to me that the “in chief” part of my title is mostly an honorary formality, since I’m the only editor at the company, but it still looks impressive on a business card. What do I do? I help find new projects, work with artists to develop the those we are publishing, and, well, I still lay out comics and write press releases, too. I try not to scan artwork anymore — like everybody everywhere I hate scanning artwork — but sometimes it still falls to me.

My job in comics is some sort of cosmic rebalancing, I think. In a previous life, I must have made too much money in a soul-deadening industry, maybe in petrochemicals or a company that makes the little plastic things that keep pizzas from sticking to the top of the delivery box. But the joke’s on karma, if that’s the case. Sure, working in the comic book industry means you have an even chance of being poor, suffering from a defensive inferiority complex, and taking up the drink, but that’s probably true of any profession. At least I’m having fun. For now, anyway.

By the way, now that I’ve gotten to know Dan, the Oscar Wilde comment doesn’t exactly make sense, but it’s a lot less baffling than it was at the time.

(Lyrics in this cartoon are from the song by The Smiths from which I’ve taken the title.)

Cartoonist Aaron Alexovich (Serenity Rose, Kimmie66, Confessions of a Blabbermouth) is serializing a new adventure of Serenity Rose on his website. SLG Publishing will collect the comic, titled Goodbye Crestfallen, once it’s completed.

You can begin reading here.

Actor Hugh Jackman is teaming with television and comics writer Marc Guggenheim to create Nowhere Man, a Virgin Comics series designed to be adapted into a movie — for Jackman, of course.

The title will be published as part of the company’s Virgin Voices imprint, which includes comics co-created by Nicolas Cage and Dave Stewart.

According to Variety, Nowhere Man is set in a futuristic world “where mankind has traded privacy for safety.”

John Palermo, Jackman’s partner in Seed Productions, told the trade paper could first be a video game before being made into a movie.

Super Punch plays host to a gallery dedicated to DC Comics’ 1997 “Pulp Heroes” event, in which that year’s annuals sported painted pulp-style covers.

Raymond Leblanc, publisher of one of the most successful comics magazines in the world passed away last Friday at the age of 92, according to various news sources.

In 1945, Leblanc convinced Herge, creator of Tintin, to have the boy reporter headline his own magazine for kids. At the time, Herge was suffering under accusations of collaborating for the Nazis as he had allowed Tintin to be serialized in one of the occupied papers during the war and had difficulty getting work afterward.

The magazine would go on to serialize some of Tintin’s most famous adventures, as well as such European stalwarts as Edgar P. Jacobs’ Blake and Mortimer series.

You can learn more about Leblanc here, here and here.

The Forbidden Kingdom

Went to 10,000 BC the other night (not good, by the way) and saw a huge lobby display for The Forbidden Kingdom. The display made it look like a bad video game movie except that it has both Jackie Chan and Jet Li in it. That’s worth gambling on right there even if it ends up sucking.

Fortunately though, the trailer makes it look really good, like it’s sort of combining the humor of Chan’s movies with the artsy fartsiness of Li’s.

Automatons

This is how humanity dies. Holy crap, that looks cool as hell.

Outlander

And it just gets better. Vikings vs. Aliens.

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NPR did a story yesterday on the influence of Sixteen Candles Asian stereotype Long Duk Dong and on it’s Web site included Adrian Tomine’s great strip about his own relationship with the character.

Bully shows us what life might be like for Clark Kent if he worked for Barry White rather than Perry White.

Over at his blog on Pop Culture Shock, Jon Haehnle compares Brian Bolland’s original artwork from the original Batman: The Killing Joke to the recolored artwork used in The Killing Joke Anniversary Edition — recolored, that is, by Brian Bolland himself:

Paul Karasik reported yesterday the March 16 death of Fletcher Hanks Jr., son of golden age cartoonist Fletcher Hanks. The cause of death was complications resulting from a car accident two days prior. He was 90.

Though mainly known by comics fans as the son of the recently rediscovered artist, Hanks led a coloful and vibrant life:

From July 1942 to August 1945, Hanks, sometimes called “Christy” by his colleagues, flew 347 trips in unarmed C-47s delivering supplies to inaccessible areas of China using a path from India over the south ridge of the Himalayas called “The Hump.” Years later, in 1997, he returned to China and he and a group of Chinese soldiers found the wreckage of CNAC 53, the airplane piloted by American Jim Fox and his Chinese co-pilot and operator.

After the war and because of his entrepreneurial spirit, Hanks returned to Lehigh to help raise funds to build quarters on campus for the college’s fraternities. His salesmanship skills were legendary during his college days. To help pay his tuition, he was an agent for 13 newspapers, waited tables in the prep school’s dining hall, sold stationery, and peddled shirts, socks and other men’s attire bearing the Real Silk label.

He eventually returned to Oxford, where to keep busy, he invented the hydraulic conveyor clam-digger that still is in use today. That invention landed him an appearance on the television game show, “What’s My Line?” He had a seafood packing business and retired from that in 1978.

Lots more in the link. You can see recent pictures of Hanks here.

Nylon Magazine has several images of the cool clothing designs Paul Pope did for DKNY:

Now DKNY Jeans joins the museum movement, hiring comic book legend Paul Pope to helm a new range.

Debuting in stores this Fall, the Paul Pope line features original graphics by the artist, whose Spiderman and Batman renditions for Marvel are among some of the most collected in the world.

Pope’s line starts selling in August, but NYLON has the exclusive first photos of the clothes right now…

I’d point out that Marvel doesn’t publish Batman and that Spider-Man has a dash, but mostly I’m just hoping that I got “DKNY” right and it’s not really “DNYK” or “NYDK” … Nylon probably knows as much about comics as I know about fashion.

I’m very excited to announce that Jennifer de Guzman is bringing her monthly column “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” to Blog@Newsarama. Jennifer used to write for Comic World News before they closed up shop, and also writes the column Life in Comics for Publisher’s Weekly. And of course, when she’s not writing columns, she’s editing comics for SLG.

Helping her out each month will be her husband, artist Brian Belew, so expect something fun and different when her column debuts … and watch for it soon!

We should be seeing more tributes to Superman, like this one from the Ottawa Citizen’s Vito Pilieci, in the next month or so. After all, April marks the 70th anniversary of the character’s first appearance in Action Comics #1:

Shuster chose an image of Superman holding a car over his head, in order to create a sense of disbelief in the hopes it would draw people in to read more.

But the image of a strongman in blue tights concerned National publisher Harry Donenfeld.

Fearing the worst, he capped the comic’s print run at 200,000 issues. The comic sold out, distributors begged for more and Superman’s popularity took off instantly.

Shuster and Siegel became overnight celebrities.

Demand for Superman stories was so great, National decided to start a second comic in 1939, simply called Superman. But, Superman started to prove too big for comic books alone and officials at National began to think of new ways to promote the character.

Superman’s big break came on February 12, 1940, when millions of Americans gathered in front of their transistor radios and heard the words: “Boys and girls, your attention please. Presenting a new, exciting radio program featuring the thrilling adventures of an amazing and incredible personality. Faster than an airplane, more powerful than a locomotive, impervious to bullets . . . up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Superman!”

The radio show was a smash hit, cementing the character’s place in pop-culture history.

Related: Metropolis, Ill., is searching for its own Superman

As a tribute to creator Dave Stevens, who passed away earlier this month, four contributors to Project Rooftop offer their takes on The Rocketeer.

“Mr. Stevens’ signature character’s costume remains so exceptionally pure and memorable, it hardly warrants revision,” PR editor Dean Trippe writes, “but in honor of his life and work, we asked several of our regular contributors to send us their ideas.”

If you were anywhere near the Internet last week, you undoubtedly read about “marvel b0y,” who appeared to have been a disgruntled low-level Marvel employee determined to reveal spoiler-ish tidbits in between complaints about writers and editors and his menial duties.

On Friday evening, marvel b0y dropped a handful of seemingly inconsequential spoilers before signing off for the weekend. However, that post spawned a comments thread in which someone anonymously revealed what may be a half-dozen major plot points for Marvel’s Secret Invasion. (I won’t post them here. With a little Google-Fu, I’m sure you can find them.)

By early Saturday, though, marvel b0y’s blog had been deleted — something, perhaps, that writer Brian Michael Bendis had hinted at the day before: “… please, do not pay the troll any mind and it will all be resolved, hopefully, over the weekend. the hounds have been unleashed!”

His blog may be gone, but questions certainly remain. Foremost, of course, is whether marvel b0y was the real deal, or simply Marvel’s attempt at some rather bizarre viral marketing.

This morning Heidi MacDonald points to a February blog post from Tom Brevoort in which he refers to “some of the bizarre and probably ill-considered new concepts” Marvel will be “throwing out” in the coming weeks and months: “They may be stupid, or childish, or idiotic — but they won’t be boring!”

The postings of marvel b0y are certainly bizarre. Stupid, childish and ill-considered, too. But I don’t think Brevoort was referring to marvel b0y or, necessarily, marketing.

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