If you want some more off-kilter Star Trek merchandise, this is your ticket.

Mattel has announced that it will be releasing three Barbie dolls in honor of the new Star Trek film on May 8th.

The dolls of Kirk, Spock, and Lieutenant Uhura will be sold on April 20th for $43.19.

While anatomically incorrect, these dolls are authorized to act on all United Federation planets!

1. Linda Medley at the Seattle Public Library.

Tomorrow, Jan. 22.  It’s part of the library’s Comixtravaganza.  Medley, author of the terrific fantasy series Castle Waiting, will be at the Central Branch of the Seattle Public Library to talk about the awesomeness that is comics. If you’re in Seattle, roughly 3000 miles from me, you can go.  I will sit here and envy you.

Also,

2. Free Peter Kuper print for $25 donations to the CBLDF.

Every person who donates $25 to the CBLDF between now and Feb. 8 gets a free Peter Kuper (World War 3 Illustrated, “Spy vs. Spy,” The System, Stop Forgetting to Remember, etc.) print.  CBLDF’s a great cause.  Kuper’s a great artist.  Two great tastes, mm-mm goodness!  Donation options at the link above.

Hey, readers; Troy here. Last time around, we got some questions about how hard it is for long-running indie books to maintain over the haul. Holly decided to address that, and some of the people that have helped along the way . . .

The reason we’re so consistent is because Jim is crazy-glued to his chair and chained to the drawing table and I have had a Photoshop/Adobe implanted directly into my brain!

Gosh… I guess it’s because Jim is creating ideas all the time- We really don’t take many days off so we hit all our deadlines, so the books are in the stores when we say they will be. I think that makes the store owners happy.

We are so blessed to work with wonderful people at Diamond- at our printer , Quebecor…
And our READERS, who we can stay in contact with through our myspace pages- facebook… and we do a fun Newsletters that I send out bi-weekly unless I’m in deadline or uber sick…

(more…)

Feeling kinda meta on a Wednesday afternoon as we blog about a new blog.  Mark Waid, writer of pretty much everything at one point or another, and present Editor-in-Chief at Boom! Studios, has launched a new blog at MarkWaid.com.  I hope that he recaps the story that he tells on the Super Friends DVD about looking for the Cyborg action figure in the K-Mart in the middle of America based on a hunch.  Let’s go to the release!

BOOM! STUDIOS LAUNCHES MARKWAID.COM

Los Angelese – January 21, 2008 – How to write comics. What secrets the comics medium holds in its past, and how its future trends. Which graphic novels are worth reading. How to survive the editorial process. Learn it all at MARKWAID.COM, launching today!BOOM! Studios Editor-In Chief Mark Waid, award-winning writer of such series as KINGDOM COME, EMPIRE, 52, and AMAZING-SPIDER MAN and a longtime industry veteran, hits the keyboard to blog regularly at MARKWAID.COM about his years of experience in the field.

Updated daily with new content, MARKWAID.COM will feature free webcomics, podcasts, vlogs, script tutorials, rants, and special guests on a regular basis.”Who better to hand a megaphone to than a comics vet who’s seen it all and done it all?” said BOOM! Studios marketing and sales director Chip Mosher.  “Mark’s earned a reputation for being outspoken.  BOOM! is proud to sponsor a site where Mark can stand on his soapbox and harangue readers far and wide!” 

“I don’t know if ‘harangue’ is the word I’d use,” added Mark Waid while glaring at Mosher, “but I’ve been searching for a regular venue where I can upload some of my comics stories and behind-the-scenes anecdotes and, in general, go on at droning length about comics history and comics criticism, turn over some rocks, and see how long I can go without saying something stupid and inflammatory that will send the collective wrath of comics fandom down on me. What time is it now?”

MARKWAID.COM kicks off by posting, free for viewing, the entire first issue of POTTER’S FIELD, the critically acclaimed series from Waid and artist Paul Azaceta. The series follows the mysterious detective known only as “John Doe” as he pins identities to New York City’s anonymous dead. Other web-posted comics will follow, as will video and audio interviews, essays, and eyewitness tales of comics history.

In more news of what’s apparently becoming the elephant in the room in regards to Marvel movies, Variety reported last night that Marvel Studios has offered Mickey Rourke $250,000 to play the “main villain” in Iron Man 2 – as the trade describes is, “a lowball opening offer” (emphasis on “opening,” as by all reports, Rourke has not walked from discussions.
(more…)

The comics industry is in serious trouble…or something…maybe: The Los Angeles Times attempts a state of the comics industry in New Great Depression type of story, and runs immediately into a problem that underscores how weird the industry is compared to others:

But even after a year stuffed with blockbuster films based on comic books, growth in all sectors is stalling.

There are no statistics available for comic books sold to customers. But the number sold to merchants is dropping. For February through November of 2008, the amount of top comic books sold to shops was lower than the same period in 2007, according to online research group Comics Chronicles.

The article is definitely of interest, but you may want to take much of it with a grain of salt. Keep your salt shaker nearby as you read.

“Cautiously pessimistic”: This short article about Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder’s MLK Day appearance at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana contains some mixed reactions form the audience, some of whom were less-than-impressed with McGruder’s take on Obama’s election (above) and/or his performance:

“He’s nothing like his show,” Zane said. “I thought it was kind of boring. His answers were long and they didn’t make any sense.”

If you only click through one of these links, it should probably be this one: Cartoonist Mike Lynch has a nice post about Sam Cobean, the talented and influential magazine cartoonist who was a friend and contemporary of Charles Addams. Lynch’s post links to samcobean.com, a nice site to burn an hour or so looking at some really fantastic line work.

I bet I coulda made it to 100: Graeme McMillian offers ten thoughts about Showcase Presents: The Brave and The Bold Batman Team-Ups Vol. 3 by Bob Haney and Jim Aparo, which is pretty much the best thing in the whole world.

This is the saddest thing ever: DC’s nonsensical murder “mystery” about rape, insanity, cover-ups and narration boxes among the Justice League got him hooked on comics and made him cry. I cried too, actually, but for different reasons (I still love you though, Rags Morales! Well, your art anyway…I don’t really know you well enough to say I love you personally, I guess).

“There’s nothing like Dame Darcy”: Who could argue with a headline like that?

The only thing that made me even a little sad yesterday: Here’s an interview with Get Your War On cartoonist David Rees, who is retiring the strip with George W. Bush. Speaking of which, here’ s the last strip, which isn’t at all funny. Rees, by the way, would like you to buy 50 copies of his new book from Soft Skull Press, collecting pretty much all of his GYWO cartoons (there have been some new ones since the collection was published). I think that’s a bit extravagant; you’re probably safe buying just the one.

One of the best best-of list: The man most often confused with our own Matt Brady, blogger Matthew J. Brady, presents his best of 2008 list. This is my favorite kind of best of list, not because it overlaps most closely with my own and validates my feelings (although I do kinda like those ones too), but because it’s full of some really great sounding comics I now want to check out. Like, how did I miss “Akira Toriyama’s one-volume manga about a headstrong half-vampire, half-werekoala kid who saves his village of monsters from a contagious disease through a countryside quest and the power of friendship”…?

A Bunch of Large, Angry Men Sitting Around a House Waiting for a Call to Go Thump Something would actually be a great title for a super-team comic: Tom Spurgeon reviews Essential Avengers Vol. 2. That phrase is from a description of his childhood comprehension of what Avengers was all about.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, writers Joss Whedon (do I really need to list his credits at this point?) and Drew Goddard (Alias/Buffyverse TV writer, Buffy comic writer, Cloverfield screenwriter) have landed a couple of notable actors for their forthcoming horror film, “The Cabin in the Woods”.  Goddard, who is directing, told THR that: “It’s really just your basic typecasting: When you need two actors to run through the woods in low-cut nighties, you immediately think of Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford.”

Character-actor Jenkins received rave notes for his turn in Burn After Reading last year, and Whitford is best known for years of The West Wing.  “Cabin” is said to be a twist on isolated-teen-slasher cliches, and Goddard has made repeated comments that the film will do familiar things in new ways.  There’s also a general quiet around much of the internal mechanics of the picture, echoing the approach used to promote the aforementioned Cloverfield.  Cabin is set to arrive in 2010. 

I promised myself that I wouldn’t just turn these Art Link posts into a steady stream of plugs for UDON stuff, but I’m not going to pretend that it’s not part and parcel of what I’m up to either.

Omar Dogan is a dear friend who I’ve known since college. We’ve worked together at multiple companies and he was the person who introduced me to UDON and helped break me in to this crazy industry. His dedication and hard work is inspiring. Watching his quality kick into high gear over the past few years has been a joy.

His latest comic series, Street Fighter Legends: Chun-Li, hits stores today and if you get a chance to check out his line work and colouring, I think you’ll agree that it’s great stuff.

Go to Omar’s deviantArt gallery and you’ll see his car obsession on full display. Many pro artists avoid technical perspective when they can and loathe drawing cars. Omar loves them. He can’t get enough.

The library is a great place for readers to discover comics, and it’s a great place for comics readers to check out things that they want to try without spending their hard-earned cash. I’m looking at comics that I find in the New York Public Library system.

I already posted my Best of 2008 list, but if I were to do it over again, Dash Shaw’s opus about the Looney family would certainly be somewhere on it. Mixing humor and tragedy, Shaw charts the family’s lives over a single weekend, as the three adult children, one of their children and another’s spouse, come together to spend time with their parents who are divorcing after forty years of marriage.

Shaw does great work establishing each character’s core personality and the conflict each faces during the course of this emotional weekend. Then each person’s dilemma is explored and resolved in a plausible and sensible fashion, leaving the reader satisfied yet also leaving us with the understanding that these characters’ lives are not over and they will continue to deal with life.

Artistically, Shaw’s not a great illustrator, but his storytelling is precise and clear, moving everything forward at a deliberate and specific pace. He also uses some nice tricks, including diagrams and depicting youngest son Peter as a frog (which is later explained, and in a particularly effective panel, shown as artifice).

Although it is a little padded at times, Shaw is in total control of the pacing, drawing out emotional moments and teasing readers through tough times. He’ll literally draw only one panel per page – not a splash page, just a single, regular-sized panel in a field of blankness – to slow a sequence down and focus the reader on the quiet beats unfolding in a characters’ life. It’s pretty much a virtuoso pacing performance.

It’s a moving, funny, sad and melodramatic piece.  Adult readers who are capable of dealing with the emotional subtleties and occasional bits of graphic sexuality are likely to enjoy Bottomless Belly Button if they come across it at their local library.  It’s a strong ambassador of quality adult comics.

Hello, L.A. comic fans! If you’re near Golden Apple Comics tomorrow, what are you going to do?

Well, Armageddon over there to have Rob Liefeld sign stuff! (Forgive the pun.)

The artist behind the new series Armageddon Now will be hitting the comic shop from 7-9pm with his partner-in-crime, Phil Hotsenpiller. The series is a modern fictional tale dealing with the Biblical Revelations, spanning New York to Los Angeles to Israel as terror builds in the shadows.

If you think Aquaman is lacking in utility, check out this site.

Superuseless Superpowers shows the true potential of lackluster hiding beneath every caped crusader.

With gems like 13th Bullet Bulletproof Skin and Complimentary Chameleon, this site is proof that even the Wonder Twins can be Justice League material against some not-so-special abilities.

Does the Gloucester town of Cotswold deserve a better class of hero? Because one graffiti artist seems determined to give it to them.

The Cotswold police are currently investigating a series of tags across the city based on a certain caped crusader. The images were sprayed on two doors and at least two vehicles.

One of the crime reduction officers involved in the case predicted a Giuliani-esque effect:

“If it is not cleared away it encourages other people to add their tags as well, and could lead to a spiral of decline for an area, where people think it’s okay to drop litter and commit more serious offences like smashing windows and breaking into cars.”

In my mind, it kind of reminds me of the end of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. Could the Batboy youth culture finally have hit the zeitgeist?

Amazing Spider-Man #583 (Obama Cover 2nd Printing): A good six or seven news cycles later, Marvel rolls out a second printing of last week’s ASM, featuring Barack Obama. The cover on this printing is apparently the same Phil Jiminez image that was on the variant for the first printing. Frankly, I’m disappointed. How about Obamafied versions of classic Marvel covers, like the company did with their second printings of sold-out issues of Marvel Zombies? Barack Obama swinging through the New York City skyline, holding a cowering Joe Biden under his right arm, a la Amazing Fantasy #15! Barack Obama leading his cabinet into action a la Avengers #4! The four members of the first battling a giant monster rising through the pavement, a la Fantastic Four #1! But if Marvel really wants to garner another round of mainstream media coverage, I still maintain a zombie or monkey variant of the Jiminez cover is the way to go. Seriously; draw Obama as a corpse or monkey on the cover—I guarantee media coverage of a comic book like you’ve never seen!

Angora Napkin: Late January is an odd time for a graphic novel set on Halloween, but this one sounds kind of interesting, even if it does deal with zombies, a subject I’ve long ago reached my personal limit of. The title is also the name of a three-piece girl band who serve as the $19.99, 152-page, hardcover graphic novel’s protagonists. Late for a Halloween night show and taking a shortcut, they end up accidentally unleashing the threat of zombiepocalypse on the earth, and must try to save the day they themselves endangered. It’s the work of writer/artist Troy Little, whose Chiaroscuro was previously published by IDW.

Batman: The Strange Deaths of Batman: Can’t get enough of Batman “dying”? This $19.99, 160-page trade collects a bunch of other stories in which Batman “died,” by Gardner Fox, Gerry Conway, Carmine Infantino, Jim Aparo, Curt Swan and others.

Complete Aranzi Hour: A $17.95, 256-page collection of comics, games and crafts featuring mysterious creators Aranzi Aronzo’s cute, crazy characters like White Rabbit, Brown Bunny, Liar, Bad Guy, Sprite, Little Spirte and Mechani-Panda. Check out some sample pages here. Also from Vertical this week is the third volume of their new, handsomely designed Tezuka’s Black Jack collection, featuring the coolest two-fisted rogue surgeon in all of comicdom.

(more…)

Some enterprising individual named Patrick Bolvin has developed a way to play a Street Fighter game IN YouTube. It sounds baffling, but its true. There are some great action figure animations, a rockin’ soundtrack, and a genuine fighting game built into videos. It is kind of like Choose Your Own Adventure, but with Street Fighter. After each move, it loads you into a new video, based on what you chose before. Check it out below:

[Via]

by Bon Alimagno

Though my stalwart pal and colleague The Rev. OJ Flow already talked about this on the ‘Rama Mothership, I still think that it’s appropriate to devote the LB space this week to one of the biggest media moments in the history of the Legion: their first live-action appearance on Smallville.

The Geoff Johns-penned episode, “Legion”, did a nice job of estabilshing Legion basics for those unfamiliar with the characters.  I’ll use my wife’s viewing experience as an example.  She knew of the Legion, primarily because I have a ridiculous number of Legion comics.  She knew that there had been an animated series, and that there was one shelf in our basement occupied with Silver Age Superman and Legion figures.  Past that, she didn’t know much about the team.  She could probably tell you that they came from the future, and that was about it.

(more…)

As you may know, Daryl Cagle maintains the aptly named “Daryl Cagle’s Political Cartoon Index” at MSNBC.   We note that today for obvious reasons as, among many other subjects, the Inauguration has been cartooned from a number of angles.  For example, Steve Greenberg from L.A.:

You can follow the daily index here.

Hey all!  Blog@ begins serializing So Super Duper today!

So Super Duper by Brian Andersen: An Intro by J. Caleb Mozzocco

If you’ve been reading superhero comics for very long, chances are you’ve read some pretty gay stuff. But I’m pretty confident you’ve never read anything quite as gay as So Super Duper, writer/artist Brian Andersen’s ongoing adventures of Psyche, the least useful member of the premier super-team The Amazin’naughts.

Psyche’s an empath, which gives him the ability to read the emotions of others, allowing him to helpfully point to, say, a giant monster in the process of destroying the city and say, “Hey, that giant monster is totally evil!”

Psyche prances and he minces about; he squees and he squeals. His wrists are limp, his boots are light. He eschews a superhero cape in favor of a scarf. In short, he’s the most flaming superhero since Johnny Storm.

But is he actually gay? Like, a homosexual gay? Like, guy who likes guys instead of gals gay? He certainly fits all the stereotypes, and his co-workers all seem to think he is, but both he and his best gal pal, who secretly longs for him, are completely oblivious.

While that may be the central conflict of Andersen’s story, “conflict” seems like a pretty strong word for such a light book. Anderson approaches his storytelling like something between a comic strip and a sitcom, devoting time equally to Psyche’s conflicts with the frosty queen bee of the team, his relationship with his totally platonic best friend, his struggle to prove his worth to all the heroes with more combat-ready powers than super-empathy and the conflict between people’s expectations of what is gay and what is straight and what the reality of gayness and straightness is, all told in little character sketches that vacillate melodramatic soap opera and character-based comedy. Oh, and there’s superheroes and supervillains punching each other and blasting each other with superpowers, because this is a superhero comic.

But hey, you’ll see all that for yourself soon enough, as Blog@ begins serialization of Anderson’s So Super Duper. I’m just here to let you know that you’re in for a fun ride with an especially effervescent character unlike any other superhero you’ve ever met.

Now go say “HIEeeeeeeee!” to Psyche; I’m sure he’ll be like so totally excited to meet you…

As you read this, I’ll be standing somewhere on the Mall outside the Capitol in Washington, DC, watching Obama get sworn in.

Many of my favorite comics of the past few years have been ones that worked in political commentary, whether as a major theme (as I wrote about DMZ), or an underlying sense. Classic books like V for Vendetta and yes, Watchmen suddenly took on new relevance, and the best superhero movie probably ever, The Dark Knight, dealt directly with many of the questions of the Bush era.

So when I say political comics, I’m not talking about capitalizing on Obama’s popularity by sticking him on a Spider-Man variant cover (sorry, Marvel).

The economic situation is still a mess, and there’ll probably be plenty of bleakness to work into fiction over the next couple of years. Indeed, I suspect that for a bit, I’ll be worried more about my ability to cough up the cash for the comics than whether they’re still providing insights into the world we live in.

But if things do get better? What then? Do the dystopias cease to have meaning, or will they feel quaintly outdated like the Nazi metaphors often do in the Harry Potter books?

Superhero books in general often seem to have a sense of optimism that the more realistic books lack (of course there are exceptions–Batman rarely strikes me as uplifting, which may be why I like him). So I wonder if an improvement in society will actually benefit the superhero books that tend to offer a cheerier view of the world.

Still, though I remain optimistic about Obama, it’s not going to be hearts and flowers. The world will still be a big messy place, and there will be lots of situations that need the attention not just of reporters, but writers and artists.

If anything, I worry that an improvement in our own fortunes makes those things that much easier to ignore.

Brian Wood wrote a bit about the post-Obama reaction to DMZ that I think you should all read. Really. Go read it.

Welcome to our latest installment of Dial H for History! For those who haven’t seen the recent news, Warner Bros. and Terminator: Salvation director McG may be taking a shot at the Human Target.

But who is the Human Target? As readers of the DC character might attest, even he doesn’t know.

Confused yet? Well, you would be too if you were a counterassassin who assumed the identities of potential victims in order to draw their would-be killers out of hiding.

(more…)