The NYCC leftovers edition …

–A report from the Women Who Kick Ass panel featuring Jenna Jameson, Amanda Connor and … that’s it. Colleen Doran and Louise Simonson didn’t make it to the panel. It sounds like Colleen may have been sick.

–Rick Marshall reports on the Webcomics: Threat or Menace panel.

–Josh Neufeld wonders where the indie comics were at NYCC. Things get a little heated in The Beat comment thread.

–Rescued by Nerds has a bunch of video from the con.

–Mike Hawthorne talks about the end of Un-Men, which was announced at the con.

–Tom has 50 observations from the show.

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On his blog, C.B. Cebulski posts a promo piece for an upcoming Spider-Man one-shot he’s working on with French comic creator J.D. Morvan and artist Bengal. The image, but not many details, popped up at the New York Comic Con, but Cebulski was kind enough to send me some info on the project:

It’s a one-shot Spidey special, shipping this winter (hopefully), starring Spidey, Black Cat, Black WIdow, The Hand and Hydra, following up on events from Uncanny X-Men 268 of all things. Co-written by French comic sensation J.D Morvan and myself, illustrated by the always amazing artist Bengal. The image shown is just a promo piece for now.

Warner Bros. and YouTube have teamed up for a fan-created video contest — create your own Veidt Enterprises advertising spot, and it could end up in the Watchmen film. Details at the link, and here’s a sample commercial:

I’m not going to lie: The shelves of your local comic shop won’t be bustling with exciting titles tomorrow. It’s kind of an off week.

DC’s Countdown to Final Crisis and Death of the New Gods wrap, freeing us up for the DC Universe: Zero one-shot and, what we’re all waiting for, Final Crisis. (Admit it, you thought Countdown would never end.)

And speaking of event comics, Mighty Avengers #12 and Ms. Marvel #26 feed the insatiable beast that is Secret Invasion.

Elsewhere, IDW Publishing brings out its third Terry and The Pirates collection, while Oni Press uncovers the second Queen & Country Definitive Edition.

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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Newsarama reporter Vaneta Rogers was on hand at the New York Comic Con this past weekend, and she’s passed on some pictures and commentary … take a look below, and be sure to check out her Floor Buzz features over on the main site.

The towering Hulk at the Marvel booth:

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The fans at Millarworld wonder about the new guard of writers at Marvel:

Well, lately we are seen new writers taking over mostly of Marvel’s output.

Matt Fraction, Marc Guggenheim, Christos Gage, Fred Van Lente, Jason Aaron, Mike Benson, Gregg Hurwitz, Duane Swierczynski, Brian Reed.

Do you think these new guys are the future of Marvel, shaking up the Jemas era of Bendis,Millar, Ennis, Straczynski and Jenkins? Or are they just adding to the legend?

Is that the legend of the Jemas era, or of Marvel…? Nonetheless, the other posters are also feeling the love… kind of:

“I don’t think this crop will have the freedom to shake things up the way the Millar/BMB crop did, but I’d love it if they were afforded the opportunity.”

“Whether these chaps will eventually surpass Millar/ Bendis/ Jenkins/ Ellis/ JMS/ Loeb et al is a tricky question to answer. The ‘old guard’ have a pretty solid fan base, and are big names – certainly enough to sell books on their name alone. I don’t think any of the new writers have that credibility as yet, other than Fraction and Aaron arguably. Time will tell.”

“Fraction is the future of comics! Jason Aaron close behind. they’re both produced nothing by comic book excellence with alarming regularity! …Guggenheim: meh. he’s the new Jeph Loeb -only he resembled current crappy Jeph Loeb instead of old-times cool Jeph Loeb. shame.”

“Marvel ain’t crap until they hire ME! ME ME ME ME DAMMMMMN YOUUUUUU.”

Wizard talks to Geoff Johns, Brian Michael Bendis and Jim Lee about the last decade and a half of comics, and what’s next:

If you could collaborate with each other, what would be the dream project?
BENDIS: Well…I want to do Avengers with Geoff. I think that Geoff needs to do Avengers again. I would like to collaborate with him like that.
JOHNS: I’d love to do that. That would be awesome.
BENDIS: And I would like the three of us—and I’m not starting sh– again, I promise you that’s not why I’m saying this—but I’d love if the three of us could create an inter-company crossover event. The next logical step, if there were no rules or laws, would be for us to create the greatest inter-company multi-tiered 12-issue crossover that has ever existed on the planet. So that’s what I want. “Only that.”
LEE: And I’d like to draw one issue of that. [Laughter]
BENDIS: Oh great, it doesn’t exist and it’s already late.

Yesterday J.K. linked to photos from New York Comic Con of character sketches for the X-Men and Wolverine OEL manga titles, due out in spring 2009 from Del Rey Manga and Marvel.

Now the fine folks at Del Rey Manga have provided us with those sketches: Kitty Pryde, The Beast, Iceman and Nightcrawler from the shojo X-Men, by Anzu, and Logan, Tamara and Vincent from the shonen Wolverine, by Wilson Tortosa.

X-Men will be written by Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman, and Wolverine by Antony Johnston. You can read more about the titles, and the creators, here.

The rest of the character sketches can be seen below:

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ICv2.com reports that direct-market sales slipped 5 percent in the first quarter of 2008, the first overall decline since 2004. While graphic novel sales actually rose 5 percent, single issues dipped 7 percent.

March was particularly rough for specialty shops, with a 15-percent drop in single-issue sales versus March 2007.

The news and analysis site points out that March’s top comic, The Dark Tower: The Long Road Home #1, sold just under 124,000 copies, about 48,000 less than the first issue of The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born, released in February 2007.

What’s more, just three series — DC’s Countdown to Infinite Crisis and Green Lantern, and Dark Horse’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer – saw increased sales over the previous issue.

March’s top-selling graphic novel was the special edition of Batman: The Killing Joke.

Top 300 comic books for March 2008

Top 300 graphic novels for March 2008

The June issue of Empire magazine sports a 3D cover of the Incredible Hulk, which may be the most promotion the film has received to date. No worries, Marvel and Universal have until June 13 whip up a media frenzy. Right?

Inside, the magazine has two “exclusive” images from the movie (although everyone’s already seen one of them). Plus, there are new shots from Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which look pretty much like all the other shots.

(*Pay close attention)

The next title from Sci Fi/Virgin Comics, the nearly year-old imprint from the Sci Fi Channel and Virgin Comics, will be Superbia, described as “the Justice League meets Wisteria Lane.”

Yes, that’s a Desperate Housewives reference.

The comic, written by Lisa Klink and Jordan Gorfinkle, centers on Woodshire Village, a planned community for superheroes and their families. It’s expected to be released this summer, with a television pilot in development.

“When the newest residents of Woodshire Village, a pair of young newlyweds, moved to the quaint cul-de-sac, they expected life to be strange,” the official description reads. “But ‘strange’ doesn’t quite cover it. A residential community for superheroes, Woodshire Village boasts affordable housing and easy commutes to all major crime scenes. And when the heroes are away, the spouses play.”

It reminds me of Meadowlands, for some reason.

The Sci Fi/Virgin Comics partnership was announced in July 2007. The imprint’s first title, The Stranded, is being developed as a series for the Sci Fi Channel.

Devil’s Due and SuicideGirls.com have teamed up to publish a new Hack/Slash webcomic on the not safe for work website. The story, called “Murder/Suicide,” will be collected this July.

The first few installments can be found on Cassie Hack’s profile page, where the story will appear each day. “People are always describing Cassie as the Suicide Girl type, and now I can definitely answer yes,” said Tim Seeley, the book’s creator, in a press release. “I have had an account for five years now, and Hack/Slash is a perfect fit for Suicide Girls, because people are also always asking me if they can see her naked.”

If you’re over 18, you can check out Cassie’s profile and the webcomic here (NSFW).

CNN Money was at the New York Comic Con this weekend and filmed a segment on DC Universe Zero with Grant Morrison and Geoff Johns. Check it out here.

I didn’t see any reports on the Zuda panel over the weekend until yesterday, when Ron at Zuda posted his report on the site. And they had some pretty cool news — Dean Haspiel’s new webcomic Street Code will start appearing on the site this summer. They also announced a “second chance sweepstakes” of sorts for all the comics that have appeared on their site and lost:

The much talked about ZUDA COMICS INVITATIONAL is on! Celebrating the one-year anniversary of our announcing Zuda at the San Diego Comic-Con we’re going to have a competition featuring comics from the previous years worth of non-winning comics. I’ll blog about this in more detail but basically if it ran on Zuda and didn’t win its eligible to participate in the Invitational. Send your picks for which comics you want to see get another shot at the brass ring to FEEDBACK (in the upper right corner there, by the login)! The Invitational will be our July competition.

Read the whole report here.

Miller wants to direct Hard Boiled

MTV spoke with The Spirit director Frank Miller at the New York Comic Con this past weekend about the possibility of his graphic novel Hard Boiled finally making it to the big screen:

“We’re talking about [it],” Miller declared to us at NY Comic Con. “I’ve got a really unusual way I want to do it.”

But that’s not all…after co-directing “Sin City” and single-handedly helming the upcoming adaptation of Will Eisner’s “The Spirit,” Miller has decided that the only person he’d want directing a “Hard Boiled” movie is himself.

“I’m in love with directing,” he gushed. “I’ve found a way to expand my career. Comics and directing are really two sides of the same coin. That’s what Robert Rodriguez taught me…good drama is good drama.”

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Christopher Mills is a pal of mine, but it’s an acquaintanceship born out of my fondness for his work. I hesitate to call him a pulp writer because I have some connotations that go with “pulp” that aren’t all positive. As fun and thrilling and yes, good as the best pulp can be, there’s a large percentage of it that just feels hacked out. The very name “pulp” refers to the cheapness that was associated with the original work in the genre and – rightfully or not – I’ve always connected that with stories that were more or less disposable. And that’s not Mills.

It’s not Lovecraft or Howard or Bradbury either, so I know my prejudice isn’t exactly fair, but I’d still hate for someone to hear me describe Mills as pulp and assume that he just wrote exploitative, sensationalistic stuff without any thought given to things like story and character.

My first experience with Mills’ work was his Gravedigger webcomic (later published in book form by Rorschach Entertainment). I wrote at the time that it “was not inspired by the pulp fiction of the ’30s and ’40s. It was inspired by the Pulp Fiction of 1994.” I was kind of spellbound by the main character and loved how, though he’s a villain (not even an anti-hero) and almost completely without morals, Mills gave me just enough to like about him that I could root for him anyway.

Femme Noir – coming in June from Ape Entertainment – isn’t as dark as Gravedigger. It’s got more of the traditional, pulp elements too. It takes place in Port Nocturne, a corrupt, perpetually rainy city with more than its share of organized crime, mad scientists, femme fatales, and mysterious vigilantes. One of the femme fatales doubles as a vigilante and there you’ve got your premise.

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Editor’s note: DC Comics President Paul Levitz returns to blog about this weekend’s big festivities in New York. Special thanks to Vaneta Rogers for supplying some pictures.

by Paul Levitz

Dateline: New York Comic Con: my first comic convention was the 1971 New York Seulingcon, after I finally convinced my parents to hold off our annual trek to the Catskills for the summer long enough for me to go. That show set a record for attendance at a comic convention, with about 3,000 attendees…or roughly the number of people who were in a single panel room this weekend, watching the new trailer for The Dark Knight. I haven’t heard an attendance estimate for the overall convention, but it seems safely past 20 times the ’71 show. Especially refreshing was the diversity and youth of the audience…one observer compared to a tribal event, watching the anime tribe move past the comics tribe, and then the cosplay tribe weave in and out.

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…oooooooooooooooooooo:

While all good things must come to an end, all lame things must end as well, so it is with a heavy heart that I am closing the doors on Dave’s Long Box.

One more reason to hate ABC, as Dave Campbell put away his long box for one final time. First Darkseid dies and then this? Double-U Tee Eff, world?

The crossover that nobody knew about from NYCC: Marvel editor Tom Brevoort on a DC panel!

This was Sunday morning, and I had an hour to kill before hosting PRIZE OR NO-PRIZE, Marvel’s tirivia giveaway panel (which was well-attended and a lot of fun, as usual. One of these days, I’ve got to get around to writing some all-new questions for the thing.) At their last convention, DC had closed out their programming with a sort of round-robin discussion with a group of fans. I’d read about it online somewhere and was mildly curious—it sounded more like a Marvel panel in terms of its tone. So, since they were doing it again at the NYCC, I thought I’d stick my head in, get a sense of what they were doing, and maybe cause a little trouble.

But the second he saw me step through the door, DC honcho Dan Didio pointed me out, and ushered me up, asking if I wanted to join the panel. In the blink of an eye I found myself sitting alongside a row of DC editors and staffers, talking about comics I’d read in my formative years. It was quite surreal, kind of like stepping into the Negative Zone or something.

Don’t worry, though – The cheap shots don’t stop coming:

I had to dash out as soon as the panel ended, so I didn’t really get a chance to speak with the other panelists. But they seemed like a bunch of relatively-nice individuals. It almost makes me sad knowing what we’re going to do to their market share with SECRET INVASION.

Almost.

Uh… zing?

Deb Aoki, who writes about manga for About.com, attended the Del Ray Manga presentation at this weekend’s New York Comic Con and brought back pictures of the shonen manga version of Wolverine (above) and Kitty Pride and Beast from the shojo manga version of the X-Men. Go check’em out.