I’ve been playing the new Lego Batman video game (PS3 version), working on a review for the newspaper, and thought I’d share some of my initial impressions about the title:

* I haven’t played any of the previous “Lego” games, but I imagine they follow the same basic, stripped-down formula: button-mash battles, platform climbing, a bit of puzzle-solving, collecting lots and lots of “studs” (keep your mind out of the gutters pal) to purchase special items and extras, and some sections where you “build” stuff out of Legos (and by build I mean hold down on the circle button).

* Overall it’s a pretty decent, if overly simplistic formula. There’s some variety in that by moving the controller stick this way or that while button-mashing you can pull off some fancy moves, like making Robin do backflips. But overall this is an average action/puzzle game with a cute makeover, and I can see the combat aspects becoming repetitive very quickly.

* I’m a bit slow, so I always appreciate a good tutorial when I start a new game to show me the ropes. Lego Batman has a horrible one though. The instructions show up for a few seconds and then disappear, never to return, even when you pause the game. As a result, I had to restart the first level, because I couldn’t figure out (or remember, take your pick) what I was supposed to do to get to the next section (more on that later).

* One obvious new addition is the ability to throw batarangs at far-away objects and enemies. You do this by holding down on one of the buttons, moving the cursor to the stuff you want smacked and then letting go. It sounds simple, but it doesn’t handle well and could have stood some tweaking.

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While everyone was following the play-by-play of the Bendis/Kirkman discussion from this weekend’s Baltimore Comic Con, this one seemed to sneak up on us, and it looks like a lot of fun. At the Image panel a Madman: The Movie project was announced, written by Mike Allred and featuring artwork by Darwyn Cooke.

Although Comic Book Resources’ panel report didn’t include details on when we could expect it, I’m a big fan of both men’s work and can say I’ll be looking forward to Cooke’s interpretations of Allred’s characters whenever it does eventually come out.

Allred drops by our comments section to clarify what was announced:

Yeah, dunno how this got so wonky, but Darwyn and frequent inker, J. Bone are doing a KILLER story for MADMAN Atomic Comics no.14. Not a movie adaptation.

Bone wrote the story outline and Darwyn is drawing it. The three of us jammed on the final wrap around cover which you see in part here.

The story involves Frank “Madman” Einstein and his girl, Joe, going to a “Movie studio fun park”. That somehow became misinterpreted as what has been reported here.

The MADMAN MOVIE continues to move forward with Robert Rodriguez, slowly but surely. I’ve been working with him and George “Swimming With Sharks” Huang on putting together the best possible MADMAN movie for several years. I’m confident that we are well over halfway there.

And THRILLED with where we are on our progress and BLOWN AWAY with what Darwyn and J. are doing with their far out MADMAN tale!

So, there is very very much to be excited about, but to be very clear, it is NOT an adaptation of the movie.

I’m Learning to Share has an interesting assortment of gag cartoons by one Bill O’Malley done for Extension Magazine.

Tom Spurgeon posts what is sure to be the big comic-book meme of the week: Fifty Things that Every Great Comics Collection Should Have:

46. A Tijuana Bible

Comics have a fine tradition of filth that your collection should recognize even if you have no taste for the stuff yourself. If the modern stuff depresses you more than interests you, that’s okay — although there’s a lot of interesting work in modern porn from Frank Thorne to F. Solano Lopez to the New Bondage Fairies — but you should at least have one of the old Tijuana Bibles. As many have pointed out, these bootleg sex narratives are kind of a precursor to MAD and underground comix in the way they satirize popular forms and figures through acts of sexual excess and tweaking standard formulas. You don’t need to dig up the originals; there are works out there that have been put into reprint form.

Got to the link to read Tom’s entire annotated list or click on the jump to read a quick rundown. Then come up your own suggestions. Note though, that for everything you add, you have to take something off of the initial list.

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I mentioned last year how much I dig those Milestone comics from back in the ’90s. It was announced in San Diego this past summer that the Milestone characters would join the DC Universe. Great news.

At Baltimore Comic-Con this weekend, we learned that Static will soon make his first appearance in the DCU. His debut entry will be in Terror Titans #4. If I am reading the DC Comics site correctly, Static’s appearance in Terror Titans #4 should hit stands in January.

Making a wild guess based on the cover of the issue prior, it appears that Static may be facing off against Dreadbolt.

Before that happens, though, we get to see ICON and the Shadow Cabinet in the pages of Justice League of America #27, which lands in stores in November. Can. Not. Wait.

It’s been awhile since I’ve been excited about Justice League. With Milestone Media co-founder Dwayne McDuffie writing this one, I will be all over it. Added to the pull list.

A couple of weeks ago, we were chatting about Star Trek comic books. As noted earlier, I am awfully fond of certain DC and Marvel journeys through the Trek universe. It occurred to me that I had not read any of the more recent IDW stuff. To correct that glaring oversight, I picked up IDW’s trade paperback Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Space Between.

This TPB collects all six issues of the The Space Between miniseries.

When evaluating Trek comics, I look for three primary elements to guide me:

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Variety reports that actor/director Kenneth Branagh is in talks to direct Marvel’s upcoming Thor film, which is slated for 2010.

The former Royal Shakespeare Company member has been more active as an actor as of late, having appeared in such films as Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Wild Wild West and the upcoming Tom Cruise film Valkyrie; his directorial credits include the Oscar-nominated Henry V, Dead Again and the critically panned Frankenstein released in 1994. He’s currently starring in Ivanhoe on the London stage.

The article also mentions Marvel’s self-financing movie deal with Merrill Lynch. No doubt someone smarter than I am is working on some sort of update on if and how recent news might impact that deal.

– “… i’m the goddamn surgeon.”

– What format would you like Comics Comics magazine to appear in?

– Is Naruto running out of steam?

– Editorial cartoonist Jim Borgman bids farewell.

– The Advocate explores the world of lesbian manga.

– Kim Thompson remembers the late French cartoonist Raymond Macherot, who passed away late last week.

– More pre-war manga? Yes, please!

With issue #17 of Trinity, the year-long limited series’ fourth month comes to a close; and so does its first big arc. Trinity is the third of DC’s fifty-odd week series, but unlike its predecessors 52 and Countdown (To Infinite Crisis) it has no immediately recognizable place in the DC superhero line. DC already has books about Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, both solo and in various combinations. Trinity hasn’t been billed as a game-changing Big Event, after which nothing will ever be the same. It doesn’t cross over with its heroes’ solo or team-up titles. It’s just a story which has these characters’ relationships at its center.

So what have we learned, and why should we care?

SPOILERS FOLLOW

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I’m as guilty as the next blogger of occasionally misinterpreting a quote or unintentionally taking one out of context. But this may take the cake.

Yesterday I linked to a brief interview with Stan Lee in which the comics legend was asked about the now-debunked rumor that Will Smith had been offered the role of Captain America in the upcoming Marvel Studios movie. Here’s the entire exchange, as published, just to make sure we’re all on the same page:

5. There was a rumor going around that Will Smith would be cast as Captain America. Any truth to that?

I would love us to do something with Will Smith, but I don’t know that he’s Captain America. That would be a long shot. It would be a real leap to make Captain America black … then again, I don’t know. It might be a really smart thing. If Barack Obama becomes President who knows … suddenly a lot of our characters will be black!

I thought the last sentence was a bit kooky, but otherwise, not much to report, right? Wrong.

“Stan Lee Wants To Make Will Smith A Black Captain America,” states the headline on Contactmusic.com:

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On his blog, Brandon Graham posts an amazing two-page spread from the next issue of Multiple Warheads, his quirky scifi-adventure series from Oni Press.

Producer Michael De Luca (21) is bringing the Mark Millar-Tony Harris comic War Heroes to the big screen for Sony’s Columbia Pictures.

The Image Comics miniseries, whose second issue came out last week, takes place in the near future, where the U.S. military gives superpowers to ordinary soldiers: “When a small group of recruits break off to use these powers for a criminal enterprise, a hero rises from their ranks to prevent catastrophic results.”

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Millar and Harris will executive produce, along with Zach Schiff-Abrams. No screenwriter has been attached.

Lionsgate has released the final trailer for The Spirit, and it’s … probably the best piece of promotion to date for the Frank Miller movie. (Better late than never, right?) For once, his city doesn’t scream “Sin City!” or “This is Sparta!”

The Spirit opens on Dec. 25.

In a brief interview with Moviefone, Stan Lee reveals that he has questionable tastes in actors. And movies:

I also hope Samuel L. Jackson comes back as Nick Fury … even though I didn’t think David Hasselhoff’s interpretation was that bad. But I’m probably in the minority on that. I feel the same way about Daredevil. I thought that Ben Affleck did a good job.

Stan, Stan, Stan … So, what do you think about the (now debunked) rumor that Will Smith might play Captain America?

I would love us to do something with Will Smith, but I don’t know that he’s Captain America. That would be a long shot. It would be a real leap to make Captain America black … then again, I don’t know. It might be a really smart thing. If Barack Obama becomes President who knows … suddenly a lot of our characters will be black!

Um, Excelsior?

(Via Vulture)

I bought a car today. (Bear with me, this leads to a point.)

The coworker who drove me to the dealership to pick up the car couldn’t help himself. He had to annoy me while he was doing a nice thing for me.

“So, I bet in a couple weeks we’ll see a scrunchy around the gearshift.”

“What?”

“A scrunchy, or a hair tie left around the gearshift. That’s what all women do.”
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The Shiniest Jewel: A Family Love Story
by Marian Henley
Springboard Press, 176 pages, $21.99.

This is a new, and I think first, graphic novel from Marian Henley. I wouldn’t be surprised if her name doesn’t ring any bells, though I suspect you may have seen her work once or twice before. For a long time (1981-2003), she was best known for the comic strip Maxine, one of those weekly, “single woman takes on the world,” proto-”Sex and the City” type alternative strips that could be found in magazines like Glamour and dealt with the standard fare like men, relationships and shopping.

Now she’s attempted to tell the story of how she, in her 40s, adopted a child from Russia and finally married her long-term boyfriend at the same time her father was terminally ill.

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Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort wrestles with the complexities of the passage of time in comics, and then proceeds to blow our fragile little minds with Captain America’s sliding timeline:

… Worse still is what the passing of time does to characters who are rooted into a specific event in history. Captain America, at least, has a built-in get-out-of-jail-free card, in that he was in suspended animation since World War II. But because of the sliding timescale (Cap himself is only in his thirties, and has only been Captain America for twelve years or so) this means that Cap was unfrozen when Bill Clinton was President — which can really mess with your mind if you think about it too much.

Steve Rogers was thawed during the Clinton administration? Maybe that’s why The American Prospect‘s Adam Serwer, tongue planted in cheek, contends Cap is “in fact an America-hating liberal.”

Okay, that’s not why. But it’s a good segue into his response to writer Ed Brubaker’s recent interview with Wired.com.

PlayStation releases some screenshots from The Punisher: No Mercy video game announced earlier this week, and answers questions from readers.

The immensely talented J.H. Williams III posts more pages from his guest-artist turn on Jonah Hex #35, which came out earlier this month. On his blog, you can see his black-and-white version as well as Dave Stewart’s colors.

If you’re wondering why Iron Man screenwriters Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby aren’t penning the sequel, well, you’re not alone.

Luckily, though, there may be simple explanation: They’re in talks with Marvel Studios to tackle another property. However, they won’t say which one — or ones.

“There are some really juicy [movies] that we are very much talking intensely with Marvel about,” Fergus tells MTV’s Splash Page. “We’re like, ‘We’re the right guys for this one.’ We’re interested in working on a bunch of these other Marvel projections and everything in the Marvel canon is fair game. We have a lot of ideas about all this, but until they officially ask us to come do one of these we’ll keep our mouths closed about the actual ideas. It’s moving along nicely but nothing official yet. But, yes, we are planning on working on some of those movies. That much I’ll say.”

As the Splash Page points out, all of the films on Marvel’s announced slate — Iron Man 2, The First Avenger: Captain America, The Avengers, Thor, Ant-Man – supposedly have writers already. So, is this a creative shuffle, or is the studio planning beyond 2011?