The World Science Fiction Society will add a Best Graphic Story category to the prestigious Hugo Awards, which honor science fiction and fantasy.

The new category will need to be ratified at next year’s Worldcon before it can take effect. However, organizers of the 2009 convention in Montréal have included Best Graphic Story as a temporary category. According to ICv2.com, “Any science fiction or fantasy story told in graphic form appearing for the first time in the previous calendar year” will be eligible.

Although this will be the first time the Hugos have had a category specifically for comics, in 1988 it honored Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen in the Other Forms category. And in 2000, Neil Gaiman and Yoshitaka Amano’s illustrated novella The Sandman: The Dream Hunters was nominated in the Best Related Book category for a work that “is either non-fiction or, if fictional, is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text.”

Milton Caniff’s Steve Canyon: 1947
Written and Illustrated by Milton Caniff
Checker; $14.95

Review by Michael May

I don’t know why it took me so long to pull Steve Canyon off my review pile. You’d think a series about the globe-trotting adventures of a tough-guy pilot would be something I’d dive right into.

No, actually, I do know why. It has to do with occasionally catching a Steve Canyon strip in the paper as a kid and not being that into it. An essay at the back of this volume explains why that might have been. During Viet Nam, readers’ attitudes about the military had changed so dramatically that Canyon’s martial adventures became unpopular. According to the essay, “Caniff’s patriotism was outweighed by his other primary instinct – that of a newspaperman in the business of selling papers.”

The essay goes on to say, “Distancing himself somewhat from the day-to-day scripting, the adventurousness and exoticness that the strip had always offered fell away in favor of the interplay of the Canyon family of characters as they were subjected to detective style plots in an increasingly domestic setting.” That sounds a lot like what I remember reading as a kid. No wonder I wasn’t excited. (more…)

On Wednesday, Newsarama reported on fans organizing online to demand a three-hour-plus run time for Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Watchmen.

However, there’s another Watchmen-related petition — this one following up on threats of a boycott of 20th Century Fox because of the studio’s lawsuit against Warner Bros. over who owns the film rights to the property.

Buoyed by a judge’s refusal last week to dismiss the complaint, Fox is playing hardball — for the moment, at least — with sources claiming the studio isn’t looking for compensation. Instead, it apparently wants to prevent the release of Watchmen because Warner Bros. never bought the rights from Fox, which claims to have acquired them sometime between 1986 and 1990.

Hollywood Insider’s Jeff Jensen dubs the rights kerfuffle as “perhaps the priciest whoopsie! in Hollywood history.”

But that’s all “nit-picky legalistic crap,” according to the “Boycott FOX for Watchmen Litigation” petition, which has racked up 979 names since it was started on Wednesday morning:

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In a comment on the Russell Keaton post, Denis Kitchen — whose contributions to the comics community are many and invaluable — expressed his dismay over the publication of copyrighted material with what he considered to be an inaccurate account of their discovery. In this post, I’d like to provide a more in-depth explanation of the documents’ backstory and the legality of republishing them.

Copyright: These documents are part of the official public court record for the Siegels’ Superman case. In fact, the lawyer who made them part of the public record was the Siegels’ lawyer, Marc Toberoff, who certified their authenticity and filed them with the court. U.S. law has long recognized that the First Amendment protects the reproduction of material placed on the public record in connection with a federal court proceeding.

In regard to co-ownership of the material by the Siegel and Keaton estates, Kitchen notes that the Siegels’ lawyer vetoed the publication of a book collecting the material. However, even if the documents had not been made part of the court record, the Keaton estate arguably has a legal basis for going forward with the collection. As the recent Superman court decision reiterates, joint owners of copyrighted material each have the right to exploit it independent of each other, though they are required to share the profits with the other co-owners.

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Nicolas Cage, Aaron Johnson and Lyndsy Fonseca will star in Kick-Ass, Matthew Vaughn’s adaptation of the hyper-violent comic by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.

The Marvel/Icon series follows high-school nerd Dave Lizewski, who reinvents himself as a superhero.

Eighteen-year-old British actor Johnson (The Thief Lord, Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging) stars as Dave, while Fonseca plays the object of his infatuation. Cage is an ex-police officer who wants to bring down a drug lord, and has trained his daughter — Chloe Moretz (Dirty Sexy Money), cast earlier — as a lethal weapon.

Last week it was announced that Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Superbad) will play Red Mist, the son of a mobster who tries to discover the main character’s identity.

Related: Slashfilm matches photos of the actors with images of their characters.

Earlier this week Jeff Trexler blogged about rediscovered Siegel/Keaton Superman strips from the early 1930s. 20th Century Danny Boy, meanwhile, posts some lost Superman artwork from the 1980s.

This story involves comic art that was created by Dave Gibbons, Alan Davis, Brian Bolland and several others as part of a project to help fund a Siegel & Shuster Museum of Comics and Science Fiction in Cleveland … art that was never published and appears to have been stolen. Luckily, there were photocopies, which you can check out after reading the whole story.

(Thanks Eddy!)

While this letter was being passed around the internet this week, some of the brains at Girl-wonder.org got together and said “How can we solve this problem and help others solve this problem?” In less than 2 days, they’ve created the Con Anti-Harassment Project:

The Con Anti-Harassment Project is a grass-roots campaign designed to help make conventions safer for everyone. Our aims are to encourage fandom, geek community and other non-business conventions to establish, articulate and act upon anti-harassment policies, especially sexual harassment policies, and to encourage mutual respect among con-goers, guests and staff.

The convention experience is often a fun and rewarding one; we want to do our part to make it fun, rewarding and safe for everyone involved. Conventions can’t eliminate harassment, but they can reduce it, have ways to deal with it when it happens, and make it clear that it’s unacceptable in our fun con environments. Our campaign is based upon a three-part action plan we encourage con committees to adopt and adapt for their own con atmosphere and environment.

The site includes tips for letter campaigns, a FAQ, and a list of genre conventions with contact information and their policies on harassment.

On his blog, Derek Kirk Kim says that he’s completed The Eternal Smile, a book he’s been working on with American Born Chinese creator Gene Yang:

As I mentioned before, this book is my collaboration with Gene Yang. Gene writing, me illustrating. This project has consumed my life for the past year, leaving little room for anything else. (As I’m sure you’ve noticed from this vacant website.) I worked my ass off on this book and I think I can safely say it’s the best artwork I’ve ever done in a comic. Okay, that’s not saying much, but still. (That’s a full page panel from the book above.) But even better, the three stories that make up this book are some of the best pieces of fiction Gene has ever written, in my opinion. It was an honor to be drawing for Gene. Being that this book is Gene’s follow-up to his towering masterpiece, “American Born Chinese,” I’ll be even more honored to ride his coattails.

Kim says the book will be published by First Second next spring.

There are several blogs and communities scattered about the internet dedicated to analyzing popular fiction for themes relating to social issues such as gender roles, racial stereotypes, sexuality and religion. And for much of the year, these blogs and pick apart the various books, comic books, television programs, movies and stories that compose our culture and teach humans about the universe.

And for much of the year, these blogs and communities are assaulted by visitors who admonish them for wasting their time with fiction. Visitors who tell them that it doesn’t make one bit of difference that a fairy tale heroine doesn’t ever talk to other women without shoving them into an oven or that the only reason two black people ever talk in that comedy is to discuss the craziness of the main white character or that the gay guy is the only one who doesn’t hook up by the credits or that there are no non-terrorist Muslims in this season and so on. Visitors who tell social issues bloggers to get off our asses and help real people rather than discuss fiction, as though we never do anything worthwhile in real life and as though they do.
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The Etch-A-Sketchist regularly features detailed etch-a-sketch drawings of everything from the Pineapple Express cast and the Yalta conference to David Bowie and Paris Hilton. He’s also done several comic book sketches, as you can see above, as well as over on ComicMix.

Before we get started this week, let’s have a huge round of nerd applause for everyone annotating Legion Of Three Worlds! Having annotated the DC side of JLA/Avengers in my days on the TrekBBS, I know how daunting (but well-organized!) all those George Perez Easter eggs can be. My hat’s off, fellas.

SPOILERS FOLLOW, both for this title and this week’s JLA.

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This summer I ♥ Comics returns to Blog@Newsarama. Each week comics creators, bloggers and fans discuss the things they love about the medium.

Fred Van Lente writes comic books for a living, including the irreverent-but-indispensible history of our medium, COMIC BOOK COMICS, INCREDIBLE HERCULES (with Greg Pak), and the October-debuting MARVEL ZOMBIES 3. He coordinates his various insidious plans for global domination through his web site.

by Fred Van Lente

The comics retailer has to put up with a lot of crap from the funnybook intelligensia – they’re not doing enough to bring women and kids into their stores, they’re not supporting independent books, they’re not nice to customers and puppies, blah, blah, blah – but I love my local comics shop, Rocketship, which is a few short blocks from my house in beautiful Brooklyn, New York (“Where The Weak Are Killed And Eaten”). Clearly I’m not alone, since Rocketship was named “Best Comic Book Store in New York City” by New York magazine and the Village Voice, and was a finalist for the “Spirit of Retailing” Eisner this year.

Because I happen to own a comic book publisher myself, I probably know more about the business of retailing than the average pro, but while thinking over what to write here it occurred to me it might be most illuminating to spend a whole day working at my L.C.S., to see what life is really like on the front lines of the Comics Crusade.

Try this High Concept on for size:

“Comics Pro Works One Day at Comics Shop“!

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Matthias Wivel finds himself troubled by the casual, wholesale slaughter of Skrulls in Marvel’s Secret Invasion:

Apparently, the shape-changing little green men just don’t rate as Life Worth Preserving to any of these heroes. … Presumably writer Brian Bendis and editorial have chosen to go about the story this way for the sake of “realism” and, probably, some extra, cheap thrills, but it just seems to me wildly out of character for many of these so-called superheroes to not even stop and think about it. It is simply not addressed. At all. Anywhere that I’m aware of, that is (I’m not enough of a sucker to read all the tie-ins).

For some reason, I’m reminded of the independent-contractors-on-the-Deathstar conversation from Clerks.

But I’m also made to reconsider early comparisons of Secret Invasion to the new Battlestar Galactica (“alien” religious zealots have been infiltrating us for years): Maybe the Skrulls aren’t the Cylons at all; they’re the Bugs. That means Secret Invasion is Starship Troopers. The Paul Verhoeven version.

That makes Clint Barton … Johnnie Rico?

(Via Tom Spurgeon)

Last week, Funnybook Babylon had a good post about solicitations’ spoilerrific nature. It inspired me greatly, but I still have some thinkin’ to do before sharing any more.

In the meantime, pull up a link to DC’s November solicitations — which, yes, contain spoilers — and read on!

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New Fullmetal Alchemist anime series is in the works

Despite earlier suggestions to the contrary, studio Bones will announce tomorrow that a new Fullmetal Alchemist anime series is in the works.

The official word will come via the wraparound jacket band for the 20th volume of Hiromu Arakawa’s hit manga, due out Friday in Japan.

Rumors began circulating earlier this summer about a sequel to the hit series when a list of Bones’ animation staff members leaked online. The spreadsheet, which the studio said was fake, contained references to sequels for Fullmetal Alchemist and Darker Than Black.

The FMA sequel reportedly will be based more closely on the manga, from which the original anime diverged fairly early on in the series.

The Ticker

• Led by the blockbuster Dark Knight, Hollywood studios are heading for a $4 billion summer domestic box office — just about matching last year’s record haul. That’s despite lower attendance. [Reuters, via The Washington Post]

• Robert Downey Jr. says his starring role in Guy Ritchie’s Holmes – it’s based on a forthcoming comic by producer Lionel Wigram — will be “bad-ass”: “In the real origin stories of Sherlock Holmes, he’s kind of a bad-ass and a bare-knuckle boxer and studies the rare art of baritsu [fictional martial art created by Doyle for the final Holmes story, 1901's The Adventure Of The Empty House]. If you look baritsu up, they can’t even really tell you what it is, so it gives us a lot of leeway.” The movie begins shooting on Oct. 6 in England. [Premiere]

• Rumor mill: Is Ghost Rider 2 back on? [Slice of SciFi]

• What went wrong with the second season of NBC’s Heroes? [Time Out Chicago]

I first heard the words “Chumble Spuzz” at the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con, during the SLG panel. “I like anything that makes me laugh,” SLG publisher Dan Vado said about the book, which at the time was being serialized on their EyeMelt website before the collection came out. He promised a pig possessed by Satan and an over-the-top story, which is exactly what creator Ethan Nicolle delivered in that first volume.

The second volume of Chumble Spuzz came out right before this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, featuring many of the same characters in different but equally as over-the-top situations. Heck, maybe even more so. I interviewed Nicolle over email last week about both books, conventions, poop jokes and working with his brother.

JK: So first off, San Diego … how did the show go for you?

Ethan: I’ve been going to San Diego every year since 2002. This was my first year with books published on SLG, along with a stack of books over at Bad Karma Productions in small press. I brought my brother along, who co-wrote on Chumble Spuzz book 2. We had a blast. I made some awesome contacts this year, and it was awesome how many people knew about my book. BJ Novak, from The Office, stopped my table at the SLG booth. That was cool. But I think the best part of Comic Con is always the group of close geek friends I have that I don’t get to see but about once a year. And slave Leias.

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The Legion of Super-Heroes, with its reboots, threeboots and sprawling cast, can be a little confusing — even for longtime fans. So, how can a new reader expect to untangle all the characters and references in Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds? Don’t worry, Timothy Callahan has you covered.

Callahan, editor of Teenagers from the Future, is annotating the miniseries, pointing out who’s who and what’s what in the Legion universe. Or universes, I suppose. (He’s done the same with the “R.I.P.” storyline in the Batman books.)

Update: It’s Annotations of Three Worlds! Douglas Wolk and Michael Grabois also sort through the continuity pile-up.

Critic David Bordwell takes a lengthy, smart and fascinating look at why superheroes movies are all the rage these days:

Shock and awe in presentation. The rise of the multiplex meant not only an upgrade in comfort (my back appreciates the tilting seats) but also a demand for big pictures and big sound. Smaller, more intimate movies look woeful on your megascreen, and what’s the point of Dolby surround channels if you’re watching a Woody Allen picture? Like science-fiction and fantasy, the adventures of a superhero in yawning landscapes fill the demand for immersion in a punchy, visceral entertainment. Scaling the film for Imax, as Superman Returns and The Dark Knight have, is the next step in this escalation.

Go read the whole thing. It’s really worth your time. (hat tip: Sean Collins)

Speaking of obscure strips, Barnacle Press presents a run of this great, wonderfully bizarre work by one W.O. Wilson. (hat tip: Dirk)

Editor’s note: Newsarama contributor and Olympics fan Seth Robison joins Blog@ to highlight “tangentially Olympic-related” comics and pop culture moments. You can read more from Seth on the Olympics at his blog Off The Podium.

By Seth Robison

When a show’s been on as long as The Simpsons — since 1989, or 1987 if you count the original Tracy Ullman Show shorts — you can’t blame them for going to the same well once in awhile for story ideas. So with 12 Olympic Games taking place (six of each season) during that same span, inspiration struck the show’s writers several times, with sexy results.

In the 10th season episode “The Old Man and the ‘C’ Student,” the International Olympic Committee improbably responds to Lisa’s impassioned plea for the Olympics to come to her fair town. The application is accepted, but Bart’s racially charged stand-up routine at the committee’s reception dooms the town’s effort. Tragically this spells the end of the Homer-designed official mascot, Springy the Springfield Spring.

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