The summer of the superhero movie continues Friday with the release Will Smith’s latest summertime epic, Hancock, co-starring Jason Bateman and Charlize Theron. The Hollywood red carpet premiere is this evening Monday, June 30th at 9:30 p.m. EST/6:30 p.m. PST) and courtesy of Sony, you can watch the event live streaming right here on Blog@Newsarama after the jump.

The live streaming webcasts begins at 6 p.m. Pacific and until then you can watch the extended Hancock trailer in the player below.

And if you can’t watch this evening’s live webcast, look for a wrap-up show of the premiere event Tuesday, July 1 at 8 a.m.

And look for the main site’s Hancock review Tuesday as well…

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G.I. Joe: Resolute, Hasbro’s upcoming online animated series, will be PG-13 and “designed to bring adult fans back into the market.”

The 10 five-minute episodes and one 10-minute finale, written by Warren Ellis, later may be released on DVD or on television. Resolute is expected to debut online early next year.

Details were revealed this weekend during JoeCon 2008, the international G.I. Joe collectors’ convention.

Toy News International reports that although there will be little to no blood depicted in the series, bullets will replace the lasers of the ’80s cartoon. (Thanks to “The Invisible Hand of Fate” episode of The Venture Bros., I can never think of the cartoon the same way.)

More details can be found at the links.

Speaking of revisiting issues: Artist David Lafuente (Patsy Walker: Hellcat, Ultimate Spider-Man Annual) gives a wink to last year’s Mary Jane statuette controversy in this illustration, shown during the “Ultimate Universe” panel at Wizard World Chicago.

It’s been a while since anyone has brought up “Women in Refrigerators” — the Gail Simone-coined term for the superhero-comic plot device that involves the maiming, killing or depowering of female characters. But today at Topless Robot, Zach Oat reopens the Frigidaire with his list of “The 10 Worst Women in Refrigerators.”

Perhaps surprisingly the top spot doesn’t go to Alexandra DeWitt, the character whose fate spawned the phrase “women in refrigerators,” but to Sue Dibny, who met her end in Identity Crisis #1:

Right off the bat, Sue gets horribly burned to death in her home. The culprit is unknown, but based on the evidence, the League suspects it to be Dr. Light. Now Doc Light is usually a D-list villain, and he actually had his name stolen by a superhero once, but we find out through a flashback that one day, when Sue was hanging out on the Justice League satellite (by herself, in space), Dr. Light somehow managed to get aboard. Yes, a supervillain had somehow gained access to the League’s high-tech HQ (in space), and that was when he decided to rape Sue to within an inch of her life. The League showed up soon after to pull him off of her, but the damage was done, and they had to blank Sue’s memory to make her forget it. I wish they could do that to my memory—when I close my eyes, I keep seeing Dr. Light’s rolling eyeballs and wagging tongue as he violates a minor character who never hurt anybody.

All right, this has nothing to do with comics — unless you count the 1988 DC Comics sequel or Jack Kirby’s unpublished adaptation — but I’m a big fan of the surreal ’60s TV series The Prisoner, so I’m blogging about it: Cable network AMC has announced that Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellen will star in its six-part reinterpretation of the sci-fi classic.

If you’re unfamiliar with The Prisoner, it starred series creator Patrick McGoohan as an ex-British spy who’s held captive at a picturesque seaside village — called simply the Village — where he’s called Number Six and subjected to his captors’ attempts at brainwashing and interrogation. He repeatedly attempts to escape, but is often thwarted by the Village’s constant surveillance, and the menacing floating white ball dubbed the Rover.

The updated miniseries, a co-production from AMC, ITV Productions and Granada International, is set to debut in 2009. Caviezel will star as Number Six, while McKellen will play one of his captors, Number Two.

Modern “reintepretations” of older works tend to make me uneasy, particularly when, like The Prisoner, the original is so entrenched in the period (the Cold War, in particular). The update promises to address “21st Century concerns and anxieties, such as liberty, security, and surveillance, yet also showcase the same key elements of paranoia, tense action and socio-political commentary seen in McGoohan’s enigmatic original.”

That doesn’t alleviate my concerns, but the casting is terrific. And AMC’s first original series, Mad Men, is shaping up to be one of the best shows on TV.

Writing for Barron’s, Bill Alpert provides an overview of Stan Lee Media’s $5 billion lawsuit against Marvel Entertainment, filed back in March 2007.

The article doesn’t appear to be tied to any movement in the suit, but instead relies on Marvel’s current box-office success as a news hook. Still, it’s a good summary of the players and events surrounding the case: infamous entrepreneur Peter F. Paul, a bankrupt dot-com, Stan himself, and Bill and Hillary Clinton.

The lawsuit asserts that in 1998 Lee assigned his intellectual property to Stan Lee Media before he negotiated a new contract with Marvel — the previous one was rejected during Marvel’s bankruptcy — in which he relinquished claims to ownership of the characters he co-created.

So Stan Lee Media, which is being sued by Stan Lee, claims it co-owns Lee’s Marvel creations, and should receive half of the money Marvel has earned from them. Marvel, of course, says the lawsuit has no merit.

Confused yet? Go read the article.

The San Diego Comic Con is getting close, and like last year, we want to hear from any creators or publishers about their plans.

If you have:

– a brand-new book, comic, print, toy, etc. that’s debuting at the show
– any sort of limited edition “con only” merchandise
– a signing, booth or panel schedule
– anything else related to the big San Diego con that fans should know about

then drop me an email and I’ll include it in one of our upcoming updates. I’ll start doing them as soon as I have enough stuff.

The ebook-distribution site WOWIO recently went offline for “retooling,” spurring rumors that the company — increasingly popular with comics creators and small publishers — has been sold.

Now comes an official announcement that Platinum Studios is negotiating to acquire WOWIO, thereby continuing “the expansion of Platinum Studios’ global digital media distribution strategy.”

It’s news that undoubtedly will meet with … let’s call it mixed reaction from creators who use WOWIO for digital distribution of their comics.

From Laura Park’s Flickr collection.

Webcomic artist Rich Stevens announced last week that in August he will end his experiment with newspaper syndication, though the strip will still run online. The cause? Apparently newspapers don’t bring in enough money to justify the extra cost in time and money. An interview in Fleen offers more details:

Fleen: What was the prime factor in deciding to quit?

Stevens: Not to sound like a jerk, but time and money. I was (currently still am) spending 12+ hours a day 5.5 days a week keeping my business afloat and doing 12 comics a week. My website and merch were a little over 90% of my gross income last year. When the workload starting making me sicker and fatter, it was pretty much a no-brainer which job had to go.

The last print DS will run Aug. 10. (links via Daily Cartoonist)

Tom Spurgeon reported late on Friday that DC refused to allow an excerpt of Paul Pope’s roundly acclaimed Batman Year 100 from being included in this year’s edition, despite the efforts of guest editor Lynda Barry, series editors Matt Madden and Jessica Abel, Pope himself, and publisher Houghton Mifflin:

Pope said that he was contacted fairly only on in the process by Madden and Abel to try and get the comics publisher to OK the addition. “I made formal requests, as did Lynda and a number of other people with some degree of influence.” One unfortunate outcome is that it may have kept Pope from the book altogether. “Jessica and Matt said not to worry, because if DC would not allow the addition of my Batman pages, they would be running my story “Fun! Comics” — from THB:CFM #1, which debuted at SDCC that year — so I would be in the collection regardless. Despite the fact that I own THB and Batman was a work for hire project, I wanted to see the Batman pages run in the book as well, so I lobbied for that. Lynda had been searching for some superhero material to add to the series, mine fit the bill. Her intention was to shed light on quality material from the so-called ‘mainstream’ of comics. I’m all for that.

“Months went by and I figured the matter was dead in the water, que sera sera. Then I get an email in the 11th [hour] from HM, letting me know they were about to go to press and were still trying to get DC to OK the addition of the Batman pages. In the end, DC took so long to formally deny the request that it not only prevented the Batman pages from running, it also forced HM to go ahead with the book without any material from me at all.”

Related: The revelation initially came out of this extended interview Spurgeon did with Barry. Which you really should read.

Matthew Fox will star in movie version of Oni’s Billy Smoke

Matthew Fox (Lost, Speed Racer) is in negotiations to star in Warner Bros.’ adaptation of Billy Smoke, the upcoming Oni Press graphic novel by B. Clay Moore and Eric Kim.

Set to be published next year, Billy Smoke centers on an elite hit man who’s nearly killed during a botched assignment. He then realizes his only way to redemption is to rid the world of all assassins.

Moore is best known as the writer of Hawaiian Dick and Leading Man, both of which are being developed as films — the former at New Line, the latter at Universal. Kim illustrated Love As A Foreign Language, also from Oni.

Basil Iwanyk’s Thunder Road is producing Billy Smoke with Eric Ginter of Closed on Mondays Entertainment, Oni’s film arm.

The Ticker

• New promotional media have been released for Hellboy II: The Golden Army: a third trailer, a featurette, and an animated prologue written by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola. [Collider]

• Variety’s John Anderson gives Hellboy II a (mostly) glowing review, calling it “the hipster’s hit of the summer.” He doesn’t like Luke Goss as the villainous Prince Nuada, though: “Goss embodies all the menace of Keanu Reeves.” [Variety]

• New one-sheets have been released for Punisher: War Zone. I’d post the actual images, but I’m protesting the obnoxious website watermarks. [IGN.com]

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On the First Second blog, Paul Pope gives a few more details about his long-awaited book Battling Boy:

Battling Boy is the son of a god or a super hero—it is left unspecified—who comes down from the top of a mountain (or rather, from inside a cloud/UFO contraption/contrivance from above a mountain top) at this father’s behest, in order to rid a giant city from it’s plague of monsters. Hercules had his labors, Batman has his Gotham, Battling Boy has his Monstropolis.

Monstropolis is a city the size of an entire continent—and it is absolutely overrun with monsters. These are horrible, Grimm’s fairytale, Beowulf-ish monsters, awful things. Child-stealers. Plus some of the vampires and mummies and wolfmen we remember from the old black and white Hollywood horror films. Which—if you remember—aren’t very funny. And they don’t all like each other, either. Even a monster can’t stand another monster, this has been proven time and time again.

Steve Fuentes shares a cartoon detailing the time he went to meet Steve Ditko on his birthday.

Via

Seriously. It’s called J-Stache, and according to Billboard, “Oates is portrayed as a modern-day family man and finds himself enticed back to the rock star life by his mustache, which is voiced by comedian Dave Attell.”

The cartoon does not have a home yet, but could end up on a network or on the Web. More from the story:

The pilot, which Primary Wave estimates will be between six and 10 minutes long, is being storyboarded, and the aim is to have it completed in the next two months. It will portray Oates opening a new wing of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that focuses on mustachioed musicians.

Suddenly, a dying David Crosby appears and with his last breath warns Oates of a mysterious secret group of mustache wearers bent on killing other mustache wearers. As actor Tom Selleck attempts to escape from the latest murder scene, Oates summons his own mustache with a fist pump that simultaneously changes his clothes from conservative attire to pink pants and white boots.

This has Adult Swim written all over it.

According to Variety, Frank Miller is working on a follow-up to 300, his comic from Dark Horse that was adapted into a movie last year — and Legendary Pictures confirms they’re developing it into a movie.

Unfortunately they’re short on details about the story, which should prove challenging based on what happens at the end of the first one. So this one could be a prequel or spin-off, they hypothesize.

More from Variety:

“The vision of Frank Miller’s universe that Zack Snyder brought to the screen in ‘300′ is unlike anything ever seen before,” said Legendary topper Thomas Tull. “We want to be certain that the story originates with Frank and be as compelling as the first.”

Another “300″ has been rumored from the start, but last week Snyder and the original producing team stoked a frenzy online when they talked about it at the Saturn Awards.

Snyder has yet to confirm his involvement, as he’d rather wait and see what the story’s going to be first. Both Snyder and Miller are pretty busy on Hollywood sets these days, with Miller directing The Spirit and a Sin City sequel in the works, and Snyder focused on Watchmen and Guardians of Ga’Hoole.

– Jessica Abel and Matt Madden were on NPR yesterday.

– Digital comics will be available for the Wii, but only in Japan. Apparently they will be made by Leji Matsumoto.

– Frank Santoro talks about his HeroesCon panel.

– Can’t make it to a con this year? Shannon Smith has an offer for you.

– Bob Levin’s great book, Most Outrageous, has been banned by a Calif. state prisons.

– Here are some great Ralph Bakshi sketches.

– The joys of playing 5-Card Nancy.

– The late Ed Arno is remembered.

– Writer Britt Aamodt rounds up the numerous comics folks who live in Minnesota.

– The North County Times reports on how the San Diego Comic Con impacts local hotel and motel rates and availability.

– Wizard World Chicago wasn’t the only show in town um, the world this past weekend. Sonny Liew and ToysREvil both have reports from the Singapore Toys and Comics Convention.

Compiled by JK and Chris.

In next week’s column I’ll make sure to include some tributes to the Michael Turner. But for now, I need to share a thought. Upon reading of Turner’s passing, something struck me. Turner’s battle with cancer was something we read about periodically over the years. But to the best of my knowledge, I don’t believe any news outlet knew how close he was to losing this personal battle this week. One has to respect a person’s privacy, let me be quick to clarify. But considering how Gene Colan has credited his fans’ support for how much better he’s feeling these days, I wish this past week had been spent sharing kind words about Turner while he was still alive. Instead for the past week or so, folks (myself included) have been speculating if a DC executive was about to get fired. I wish it had not taken the death of someone to give me the perspective that I was clearly lacking.

“So really, there was a long period where no one wanted to print my work at all. When Drawn & Quarterly asked me, I was overjoyed, because I love making books, and I really wanted to do What it Is, and I was happy someone cared about my work enough to want to print it. And I’ve always loved the Drawn & Quarterly books, they are so beautifully done. It happened that I was half way done with What It Is when D&Q contacted me. I had just decided to do the book anyway, not knowing if it would ever be published and in a way not caring anymore. I just wanted to give the thing form.”
- Lynda Berry admitting that she endured a period where no publisher was interested in printing her work. I question an industry where Barry went without a publisher for any period of time.

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When we last left our discussion of the dispute over the copyrights to Superman and Superboy, the judge had ordered the Siegels, DC and Time Warner to engage in settlement negotiations. Originally the mediation was to last 60 days, but scheduling conflicts pushed the deadline for the parties’ joint progress report back to the end of June.

As Newsarama readers have noted, DC Comics Executive Editor Dan DiDio made an offhand comment this weekend at Wizard World Chicago that has led some to wonder whether the Superboy lawsuit has been settled. Here’s the scoop from the “DCU Crisis” panel:

DiDio also paused to point out the special nature of Legion of Three Worlds. “We’ve got Geoff, we’ve got George, we’ve got SuperBOY Prime (yes, we can say that again).”

This could reasonably be taken as a sign that the Superboy lawsuit is over — after all, it was the Siegel family’s initially successful (but later vacated) attempt to reclaim the character that apparently led DC to take the name off the market.

However, DiDio’s reference to Superboy is not the only piece of evidence to emerge this weekend. On Friday, the Siegels and Time Warner filed their joint progress report in the Superboy and Superman lawsuits. This report states that the parties have not reached a settlement, despite four mediation sessions attended by their lawyers and DC President and Publisher Paul Levitz.

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Final Crisis #1 came out to a fairly lackluster response from many reviewers. Now that Final Crisis #2 is out, it’s interesting to see what people are saying now.

Jog enjoyed the issue:

Anyway, I thought issue #2 was a lot more fun than issue #1, particularly with the (excellent) Japanese superhero scene; poor Shilo Norman has to find even more obscure heroes now, a lost Fourth World dude and a hodgepodge of foreign outlooks (comics from Japan, tee hee). All the while, the evil influence brings about a souring of the superhero world… great compression in this thing. Nice, harsh location cuts.

And then there’s that odd taste of self-awareness, even a little tiredness - Superman hoping the Martian Manhunter will be revived sometime in the future, Lex Luthor acting utterly bored at the death of some expendable superhero (in an Event comic! *yawn*). Like Didio implied, these characters have seen it all. Is it good for the health of DC comics, rather than the DC Universe? Hell, I don’t know. And while I’m aware that if things get so bad they board up the windows it’ll mean less chances for people like Grant Morrison to write comics, I still find it awfully tough to shift my focus onto what’s Good For the Industry when I’m trying to interface with a particular work - my problem, folks.

But, you know, maybe I’m the second-most ideal reader for this particular thing. With a comic like this I guess the DCU hardcore superfan will forever be #1, but I have read every Grant Morrison DCU comic, and there may be nearly as much playing to that audience in here as well. Odd to be catered too.

DamienHospital had mixed feelings:

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