Is it comics or not comics? I’ll let you make the call. Via.

– Alison Bechdel and Harvey Pekar, together at last.

– Steve Duin has some good news about underground cartoonist S. Clay Wilson, who has been in ICU for the past several days.

– Ada Price talks to Dave Gibbons about his new book, Watching the Watchmen.

– Looks like it’s official: Naruto Nation 2009 is totally a go.

– Sam Thielman looks at the significance of Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing in light of the new super-fancy collection coming out soon.

– Over at Stars and Stripes, Gary Trudeau answers some of his critics.

– Van Jensen talks to Mike Allred about the revamped Red Rocket collection.

– Here’s my idea of a fun time: Dan Nadel, Gary Panter and CF sitting around, talking about art and comics.

– Did you know About Comics is 10 years old this year? I didn’t. Chris Murphy has a recollection.

– Sandy Bilus is giving away a copy of Alan’s War over at his blog.

– Oscar Pedro Musibay looks at the Comics Galaxy event that was held at last weekend’s Miami Book Fair.

– Frank Santoro considers the new Popeye collection.

Variety at last confirms a rumor that began more than six months ago: Gossip Girl creator Josh Schwartz is writing X-Men: First Class for 20th Century Fox.

Although no plot details have been revealed, the trade paper notes that the studio has been leaning toward using younger characters introduced previously in the X-Men franchise. The three movies have earned a combined $1.2 billion worldwide.

The spinoff shares a title with the Marvel Comics series introduced in 2006 by Jeff Parker and Roger Cruz about the original X-Men: Angel, Beast, Cyclops, Iceman and Marvel Girl.

First Class joins a slate of X-Men films that includes next summer’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a planned Magneto prequel, and a possible Deadpool spinoff.

Schwartz, who also created the TV series The O.C. and Chuck, also could direct the movie.

If I’m running a little late this week, blame it on the winter weather. Or, at the very least, the avalanche of comics based on movies, television shows and video games.

Angel, Battlestar Galactica, Dead Space, Doctor Who, Halloween, Heroes, Star Trek, Star Wars, Street Fighter II, Transformers, The X-Files, World of Warcraft — they’re all represented on shelves this week.

If those aren’t your thing, there’s also an omnibus edition of Jack Kirby’s The Demon, a Walking Dead oversized hardcover, a collection of Stan Lee’s old monthly columns, Mark Waid’s debut on the Brand New Day-era Amazing Spider-Man, and yetis. Well, at least one yeti.

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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Stripper’s Guide’s Allan Holtz provided a bunch of the strips for NBM’s new Happy Hooligan collection. He had a lot of leftover material, however, which he’s been posting to his blog over the past few days.

Repeated references on the campaign trail by then-candidate Barack Obama to Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln sent Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book rocketing up the sales charts.

Likewise, when the president-elect mentioned Sunday on 60 Minutes that he’d read “a new book out about FDR’s first 100 days,” he caused a bit of a stir as authors and publishers scrambed to lay claim to the title. (It turns out there are several “new” books about Roosevelt’s first 100 days. However, Obama actually was referring to two titles: Jonathan Alter’s 2006 book The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, and Jean Edward Smith’s more recent FDR.)

However, the influence of the 44th president may not end with historical nonfiction. Note that I wrote may.

According to this article in Canada’s Financial Post, news that Obama collects Spider-Man and Conan comics has given a boost to sales of the wall-crawler’s title. At least in Victoria, British Columbia.

“I used to sell three or four Spider-Man comics a week,” says Gareth Gaudin, owner of Legends in downtown Victoria. “Now I’m selling 30 or 35 a day and almost everyone who is buying is mentioning Obama.”

Hardly empirical evidence, I know. But it’s probably enough to make a few retailers and publishers cross their fingers and hope that Obama gives a nod to a few other comic books.

Why should Obama limit himself to Lincoln’s “team of rivals” concept for assembling a Cabinet when he could go with, say, “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes”?

Bayou and High Moon, perhaps the two biggest successes from DC Comics’ Zuda webcomic initiative, will make the leap to print next year.

Wired.com reports that Bayou, Jeremy Love’s “Southern-fried odyssey” set in 1930s Mississippi, will debut in wide format in June. That will be followed in October by High Moon, David Gallaher and Steve Ellis’ werewolf Western.

On his blog, Ben Templesmith teases Groom Lake, his upcoming project with IDW Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Chris Ryall. It’s light on details, but I like the image.

Not a dream! Not a hoax! Not an imaginary story! Marvel’s famously unfinished 2006 miniseries Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk may actually … finish.

“Ultimate Hulk and Wolverine is really going to happen, folks,” artist Leinil Francis Yu writes on his deviantART journal. “I have all the scripts and this baby should be in hardcover real soon! I just hope I can still mimic my 3 year old self. It’s gonna be a bit weird.”

As you may recall, the planned six-issue miniseries, by Yu and Lost executive producer Damon Lindelof, launched in December 2005. The second issue followed in February 2006. However, the third issue — originally solicited for April 2006, resolicited several times and then, finally, canceled — never materialized.

The status of the project became a recurring topic at Marvel convention panels until, at this year’s Comic-Con, Lindelof handed Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada the script to Issue 6 in a staged production. That was a year after Lindelof said he’d turned in the script to the fifth issue.

With that part of the puzzle solved, the only remaining question was the availability of Yu, who’d been busy with New Avengers and Secret Invasion. And after Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk?

“After that is some Mark Millar goodness with an arc of Ultimate Avengers,” he writes. “Of course things could still change and Marvel could shuffle things around since we really won’t know how the schedule would turn out. It’s still months away.”

Update: Marvel’s February solicitations, which were released at noon, include listings for “all-new” printings of the miniseries’ first two issues.

A Spanish version of the “Mars Attacks” cards by an artist apparantly called “Boixcar.” Via.

Evan Dorkin reports on last weekend’s National Convention in NYC:

I mean, wow. Wow. WOW. What an absolutely terrible show. Having nothing to do with how we did at the table, because we didn’t expect much, just to cover costs ($40 parking, tolls, lost brain cells) and maybe low-rent dinner out for the family, which we barely eked out. And we seemed to do better than a lot of  those around us. And not a knock on old — very old — school bargain bin/back wall o’ expensive headlights comics, hucksteriffic cons based around want lists and sweaty palms, which can be fun in a way if, like me, you like old comics, looking at original art, and eyeballing tables heaped with flea market junk that some poor schmuck still deems worth lugging all up and down the coast hoping some other poor dumb schmuck will buy. I can stand, and enjoy, these buck-bin, desperation extravaganzas, but this one tested even my Eltingville limits. This was Eltingville writ large, bulky, real, and stinktacular. I wasn’t expecting MOCCA or SPX, nor the NYCC or even a slice of the dealer’s area of the congenial, enjoyable and cool Heroes World, but I wasn’t expecting this freakshow trainwreck.

Heidi McDonald, meanwhile, provides some perspective while Valerie D’Orazio offers a pointed rejoinder:

Have a heart. I know I’m going to be laughed to oblivion for saying that, that it sounds ridiculous. But have a fucking heart. Some of these older collectors are some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. I grew up around these people. I’m not ashamed of it. Some have used comics as one of their only bright spots in a life that in every other respect might have been awful. If it makes them happy, let them do it. If they aren’t bothering you (other than by the fact of their very existence, offending your delicate sensibilities), stop fucking ragging on them. I can’t fucking stand this anymore.

In case you missed, or simply avoided, the bootlegged trailer for Star Trek that made the rounds over the weekend, now the official version is available for your viewing pleasure — or displeasure — at Apple.com.

The shot above should give Trek purists one more nit to pick: It depicts, I presume, the Enterprise being constructed … somewhere amid a great swath of farmland. Instead of, y’know, the San Francisco Fleet Yards high above the Earth. Discuss.

J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek opens on May 8.

Comics legend Stan Lee was among those presented today at the White House with the National Medal of Arts.

The medal is the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the U.S. government.

“I wonder what took so long,” the 85-year-old Lee told The Washington Post. “Say ‘He said it with a laugh’ or I’ll shoot you.”

Others receiving the honor today from President Bush included actress Olivia de Havilland, jazz pianist Hank Jones, sculptor Jesús Moroles, and songwriting brothers Robert B. and Richard M. Sherman, who penned It’s a Small World (After All) and other works for Disney.

The ceremony also included the presentation of the National Humanities Medal.

Tiscali Games has the first screenshots from the upcoming Watchmen video game from Warner Bros. Interactive, Watchmen: The End is Nigh.

Developed by Deadline Games for PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, the episodic game follows Rorschach and Nite Owl in 1972. The first game will be released in March, around the time of the movie’s debut. A sequel is planned to coincide with the release of the Watchmen DVD.

(via Slashfilm)

Page 10 of Strangeways: The Thirsty for your reading pleasure.  Yes, it’s going up a little early today because I’m up a little early because we have a new puppy here at the Casa Strangeways.  And if you know anything about bringing a new puppy home, you’ll know that I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.

Maybe tomorrow will be better, but right now it’s taking me half an hour to do a five-minute blog update here.

Aw, geez, not the toilet…  Gotta run.

The seminal and highly influential (Dave McKean for one) Barron Storey has been posting his work online. Via.

The Montreal-based illustrator and Canvas author has a nice art blog up.

– So Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki’s Skim was named as a finalist for the Governor-General’s Award for children’s literature up in Canada, except that Tamaki’s name was left off of the official list of nominees, because technically, she’s the artist and not the “writer.” Letters of protest were written, but apparently to no avail. Tom has reactions from those involved, including Jillian Tamaki.

– Spurgeon also has an interesting interview with Slow Wave cartoonist Jesse Reklaw. I never knew, for instance, that Reklaw left Yale to pursue a career in comics.

– Some people were worried that Tribune Media might be ending the Dick Tracy comic strip. But it turns out those fears may have been premature.

– Aaron Albert talks the Hellboy talk to Mike Mignola for About.com.

– Hey, Kramer’s Ergot 7 is going on tour!

– Another day, another editorial cartoonist gets laid off.

– Finally, Vice magazine talks to Lynda Barry.

An assortment of quotes that caught my eye over the past week.

“The cancellation of the Minx line of graphic novels aimed at younger, female readers strikes me now as even more unfortunate news, as the Shelly Bond-edited brand has brought us yet another compelling read.”
- Don MacPherson in praise of Alisa Kwitney & Joelle Jones’ Token

“But if you don’t like Kate Beaton’s comics—I mean, seriously, if you don’t like at least one of Kate Beaton’s comics—then you’ve got something wrong with you, and I hope that you never have children. You will raise them badly, and they will be humorless little bloodsucking ticks.”
- Tucker Stone

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Jon Givetz of Metro Entertainment, the comic shop where Carla Hoffman works, sent a quick but welcome update on the condition of Carla and her husband Lance after they were burnt in the Tea Fire that’s ravaged the Santa Barbara area of California.

“The good news is both Carla and Lance’s conditions have stabilized and they are both expected to recover,” he said, “although they will both be hospitalized for awhile.”

He adds that, unfortunately, their home was completely destroyed in the fire. “We are in the process of setting up a fund to help them out, and I will let you know as soon as we have it ready to go,” he said.

Big thanks to Jon for the updates; I’ll pass them on as they come in.

Update (Monday, Nov. 17): The Montecito fire department has announced the establishment of a fund to help Carla and Lance. Donations may be sent to:

The Lance and Carla Burn Fund
Santa Barbara Bank and Trust
1483 East Valley Road
Montecito, CA 93108-1248