When I first saw Phil Noto’s online gallery, quite a few years ago, I instantly thought “Man, this stuff looks like 70′s Playboy art filtered through the brains of a comic-loving nerd… Awesome!”

Apparently I wasn’t the only person who had this observation, especially the ‘awesome’ part, because the next thing I knew Phil Noto was doing artwork for comics and all was right with the world.

His gallery is still chugging away and his work is just as impressive as it ever was, possibly moreso. I imagine that in the world of Phil Noto illustrations, everybody is kind of like James Bond and vinyl records, complete with sultry ladies on the covers, never go out of style.

And so. Last week, I bought the first Young Liars trade. It was bizarre and twisted and left me with an odd taste in my mouth, and yet I want to read more. I like the idea of the girl with no inhibitions, even though that could so easily lend itself to exploitation (or a bad porn script…). And I enjoy stories where there are no good guys, because that means there are no bad guys, either.

Of course, Young Liars does have bad guys, but it’s intriguing nonetheless. Don’t know if I’m entirely comfortable with the portrayal of “Annie X”–I don’t tend to read eating disorders as funny. But I like the tendency to throw out obvious stereotypes and then subvert that I see developing here.

And I’m a sucker for rock’n'roll references.

On to this week, then. It’s AIR week and the last Battlefields: Night Witches as well. I’ve decided that I cannot live without Hellblazer monthly once again, and so I’d be buying that even if the cover wasn’t awesome.

(Oh, there will be more on my love for John Constantine soon.)

I can’t really say that there’s anything else I’m tempted by this week, but as always, I can be persuaded. So give me your best pitch for the series you love.

Starting Tuesday . . . Blog@Newsarama gets a little more fab!  Join us in welcoming Brian Andersen’s So Super Duper! That’s right; we’ll be serializing the acclaimed independent book (written and drawn by Best Shots contributor Andersen), beginning back at issue #1, with one page each Tuesday and Thursday.

Here’s what people have been saying about So Super Duper:

“SSD is a surprise .  It’s friggin’ fantastic.  I’m hooked.” – Dave Baxter, Broken Frontier.

“LBGT Comic of the Week.” – Pink Kryptonite

“Brian Andersen did a GREAT job.” – Gay Comics Geek

SO . . . check in tomorrow for our first installment; I believe we’re going to have a special introduction by our good friend J. Caleb Mozzocco as well.  So Super Duper!  It’s, well . . . super.  Dig it.

I’m not knowledgeable enough to add anything beyond “Go read this”: Comics reporter Tom Spurgeon posts a long, thoughtful letter from SLG Publishing’s Dan Vado about recent changes being instituted by direct market distributor Diamond, and what it will likely mean for SLG and other publishers. This is likely going to be a big story with wide-ranging implications, so it should be well worth keeping an eye on.

Speaking of Spurge: He posted this political cartoon on his blog today, in the process of wishing Knights of the Lunch Table cartoonist Frank Cammuso a happy birthday. In it, Cammuso totally nails the personalities of five different presidents, and tells a pretty funny joke that is topical, springboards off an actual event and would be mildly amusing even if weren’t. And he does so without the infernal labeling of random objects and characters that so many of his peers are overly reliant on (or any dialogue, captions or words of any kind). Not all of his cartoons are as successful, but if you haven’t seen his political cartooning work for the Syracuse Post-Standard before (like me!), give it a look. There’s an artist with a nice line, I tell you.

Chesley B. Sullenberger III is a fantastic name for a secret identity: This person says heroic hero deserves to be called a superhero.

Cracked.com’s “Marvel Comics vs. Science: 5 of the Most Absurd Superhero Origins”: I don’t know, gamma bombs and cosmic rays sure sound a lot more plausible to me than, say, Jay Garrick’s origin.

You call that Xtreme?: Real superhero Mr. Xtreme has no shoulder pads, no spikes and hardly any pockets.

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As Grant Morrison fans know, the writer is somewhat fond of the idea of travel back and forth between the real world and that which we create. He’s met characters from The Invisibles and other works, and has famously (or notoriously) inserted himself into comic projects he’s written, such as The Invisibles (he modeled King Mob after himself) and Animal Man. So – Grant Morrison writes DC’s Mr. Miracle, both as part of 7 Soldiers and Final Crisis, and what happens?

Apparently, we get a Mr. Miracle television series on Discovery Channel, with some advertising that’s…well, if not out and out a nod to classic Mr. Miracle iconography, it’s certainly evocative of it.

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By Scott Allie

I’m in a bit of a crap mood this week. If I told you why you’d totally understand, but I don’t want to go disclosing no names. Around the offices we’re gearing up for New York Comic Con, the first big convention event of the year. Goddammit—the second biggest comics show of the year and they stick it the first weekend of February in New York City? Don’t New Yorkers know how cold it is in New York …? Dark Horse hails from the temperate Northwest, where it barely snows in winter … except this year, where the whole town was shut down for two weeks, and we still had to go to work. Okay, maybe it’s not the week making me grumpy.

I did make the mistake of going to see The Unborn the other night. Holy crap, what a turd. I’ve walked out of maybe three non-porn films in my life, but I ditched out of this one in under an hour. About the only thing I liked about it was the costars. James Remar showed up as the dad—James Remar has been amazing since The Warriors, but I’ve been r eminded of that lately on Dexter, where he plays … the dad. Another Dexter costar, C.S. Lee, popped up in The Unborn as a quirky doctor … paralleling his Dexter role of a beyond-quirky forensics specialist. (more…)

Tatsuya Ishida’s Sinfest is one of the most consistent and impressive strips on the web. His cartoony characters have a wonderful simplicity and energy, expressive and rich but not overly detailed. The jokes run the full gamut from cutesy newspaper-strip style through to the blackest politically incorrect humor. Each day you can go to the site and not know which kind of humor you’ll get, but almost certainly be entertained.

The site celebrated its 9th anniversary this past weekend, so you can be assured that there’s a massive archive of material to pore over and enjoy.

Colleen Doran’s stunning and beautiful sci-fi series A Distant Soil is now running online.  For readers who’ve missed out on the acclaimed series, you really owe it to yourself to check out a one-of-a-kind comic series.  Mixing sci-fi, Machiavellian politics, family drama, interstellar war and super-powered beings, A Distant Soil is complex, challenging and stunning comic.  Plus, if you’ve seen her artwork on Vertigo’s Orbiter (with Warren Ellis) or Marvel’s Book of Lost Souls (with J. Michael Straczynski), you already know that she draws the heck out of it.

She’s also relocated her blog to the A Distant Soil site, located at http://adistantsoil.com/.

But, hey don’t take my word for it.  Allow me to steal some choice quotes from her website:

“(Colleen Doran) does it with aplomb, with soul and with a sense of joy…” -Neil Gaiman

“An elegantly drawn, complex cast of characters crowd through her pages and fill her multidimensional story with a complex weave of emotion and wonder.” -Charles Vess

“Recommended!” -Harlan Ellison

Not sure I buy that last one.  Has anybody ever known Ellison to limit himself to one word like that?

This is the only thing that would make me want to see The Sound of Music again:

Julie Andrews vs. Nazi Vampires! Somebody get Michael Bay on the phone and tell him to stop working on that new A Nightmare on Elm Street remake and get to work on this film right away.

For more awesome pieces of art like this, go check out Jim Rugg’s website and livejournal, where the Street Angel artist regularly posts new works.

Indeed. At the Ovi Nedelcu Blog.  The PIGTALE creator (who did development work for the late Legion of Super-Heroes animated series) cuts loose on a few designs.  I particularly enjoy his Brainiac 5 . . .

I can’t save the 31st Century without coffee, either.  Check out the rest here.

Lucas and his lovely wife just wouldn’t let me leave without a Superman comic when they found that I’d never actually read one. They sent me back on the train with a pretty hardcover of Kryptonite, by Darwyn Cooke with art by Tim Sale, and yes, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It made life easier to have one shoved into my hands and not to have to think about it, this is true. And also, because this book goes back into Superman‘s past rather than relying upon a bunch of continuity that I’m not familiar with.

I also enjoyed the art–particularly babyfaced Superman in his Smallville sweatshirt with the sleeves chopped off, looking just way too huge for the kitchen table and yet so young and vulnerable.

I tend to be bored by superheroes because of the clear black-and-white, good-and-evil nature of them, and this book didn’t really challenge that idea the way that others have. But to be fair, it was much more concerned with challenging the idea of how super Superman could really be, and the idea of invulnerability as a burden rather than a benefit.

There’s retro screwball-comedy sass to this Lois Lane, a forties feel to the book, yet characters use cell phones and computers. And somehow the bad guys are the ones with the technology. Luthor in particular gives off an oily, technocratic vibe.

Superman’s always been the Middle American hero, the farm boy made good, the original American dream, and his villains have always been ubercapitalists. That should endear him to me, but I’ve got to say that I’m still probably not going to be reading Superman books on a regular basis.

I’m still broke, on a limited time schedule, and Scalped still comes out monthly.

On the inside back cover of Trevor Alixopulos’ The Hot Breath of War (Sparkplug Comic Books), there are a couple of rough cartoons scrawled graffiti-like over what looks like a photocopy of a What To Bomb type of map. The lowest of these features a funny looking man holding a goggle-eyed baby in one hand, pointing at it with the other and addressing a funny looking woman, saying, “This baby has the hot breath of war on its neck.”

I suppose that’s where the book gets its title, which means it could just as easily have been called C’mon and Take a Ride on My War Bear, which is written in big block letters above a guy in a camouflage t shirt and briefs pumping his fist and riding on what looks like a rabid bear.

C’mon and Take a Ride on My War Bear is a pretty appealing title, but I suppose The Hot Breath of War is the more poetic of the two, and better captures the thematic veins running through the half-dozen pieces that make up the collection. They all deal with conflicts of a sort, be they literal wars, or quieter, interpersonal wars.

For the most part, Alixopulos eschews the traditional grid format of comics, with most of his panels being border-less, implied ones, determined by the borders of the pages or, in some cases, the start of the next image. Most of the pages just contain a single image, or perhaps, at most, a pair of images.

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Perhaps one of the most revered science fiction epics looks to be coming to the big screen, as Variety reported that Columbia has won the rights to Issac Asimov’s Foundation, and has tapped Roland Emmerich to direct. The film will be produced by Emmerich and Michael Wimer, his partner at his Centropolis production house.

The story of Foundation dates back to 1942, where a series of eight short stories by the master appeared. Asimov later developed the stories into a trilogy of novels (which collected and expanded upon the original stories): Foundation, Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation, published in 1951, 1952 and 1953, respectively. Asimov returned to the world in 1982 with Foundation’s Edge, and Foundation and Earth in 1983, and then wrote two prequels, Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation in 1988 and 1993, respectively. Asimov later expanded the novels to connect to his other works, creating a coherent timeline from I, Robot to Foundation and Earth.

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This is a post-mortem column, breaking down the game film for Young Liars #11. As such, please bear in mind that there are SPOILERS ahoy, dear reader, and proceed with caution (or, if you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed after having read it)!

-Ample Spoiler Space-

Blog@Newsarama: So…this issue kind of throws a wrench into things, eh? Is it just me, or in terms of “sympathetic narrators,” did Danny kind of let his denial get a bunch of his friends killed in this issue? If he could have made the gunmen stand down at just about any time, whatever happened to Donnie and Ceecee is kind of on him, isn’t it?

David Lapham: Well, I don’t want to revel too much.  As opposed to the character study of last issue, this one goes back to the core story and won’t be complete till next issue.  SO, Danny’s culpability won’t become clear till next…Well, look, Danny’s a liar, okay.  Who he’s lying to, and what he’s lying about is the ultimate question.  SO, more answers next issue–LOTS of answers next issue but some new questions.  And yes, Danny messed up this issue–big time.

Blog@: Will we be seeing more of Lorelei?

DL: Oh, yeah.  Lots more.

Blog@: So…spiders from Mars…what’re the chances of a rock band trying to fight those?

DL: The brain of every last soul on Earth is at stake here.  If they can’t do it, we’re all doomed.

Blog@: Why wouldn’t someone have outed Danny first? Jack seems to know.

DL: Yeah, Jack knew.  But it’s not his place to “out” Danny.  Plus Danny outranks him and Jack would have been in big trouble with the king of Mars and all, y’know.  A world of bad news.

Blog@: So is it safe to guess that Danny can now make himself Sadie’s man by way of “destiny” or something? If she’s got to birth the spider-babies or whatever…!

DL: That’s a good point, but check out the opening page of issue #12 to find out Sadie’s reaction to this new discovery.  Who knows though.  ”Danny” did have a plan along those lines in issue 7.  Maybe he’ll really turn evil.  (And no everyone, Danny is not evil.  He really is a nice guy.  I swear….Well, anyway, I like him.)

Blog@: If Danny has a dream that he’s a rock star—in what appears to be a later narration than the 24-hour period we’re examining between the battle and the plane—are we maybe looking at a possible future where he’s the one who inherited all that money? It would explain how he can just kind of bum around, drinking naked in his Sadie room.

DL: Well, I think the money came from all the fame and fortune he had as “Danny Duoshade”, but you’re giving me ideas….And come on, really, doesn’t everyone have a “Sadie room”?   I had mine installed last week.

Blog@: Sadie’s fucked-up family definitely has a Preacher-esque vibe. It seems likely that this can’t end well for any of them…but is there a particular plan in place for how everyone in this book will eventually meet their ends?

DL: Yeah.  And everyone comes out fine.  Except Danny.  Who comes out not fine, sort of.  And Sadie, who comes out dead–if you can believe anything that was said in the first issue.

Blog@: If Ceecee lives, will a second consecutive lost pregnancy totally fuck with her head?

DL: Actually it would be her third.  IF she lives and IF the baby doesn’t make it even if she lives.  Big C will play a very important role in Danny’s life as things develop.  If you really look beyond the wild lifestyle, Ceecee is the voice of reason.  Danny’s going to need her to get back from the places he’s going.

Blog@: There definitely seems to be a lot that’s happened in the time between last issue, where Ceecee disavowed the sex, to this one…where she’s hoping aloud that the baby is Danny’s and “kind of” always loved him.

DL: Well last issue was set about a year before.  Also they’d been through a lot.  And you do always demean and humiliate the ones you love.   Don’t you?

Since I’m polishing off the finale of Kirby Five-Oh!, specifically reading through the list of creators influenced by Jack’s work, I’ve been thinking about how Kirby’s work is interpreted by other creators.  Thus, this week’s Top Five, Jack Kirby characters done by creators other than Kirby himself.

5. Captain America, by Mark Waid and Ron Garney.

The current Cap series by Brubaker and Epting is, from what I’ve read of it, sharp and engaging, but when I think of Captain America, there’s a certain relentless vigor that I imagine.  Mark Waid and Ron Garney’s too-brief first run on Cap’s title captured that frantic energy, coupled with solid characterization and twist-filled plots.  The pair reunited for a second – again abbreviated – run that nearly lived up to their first effort, but Garney was moved off the title and Waid’s Cap run wasn’t able to maintain its charge, but those initial eleven issues remain the most bombastic and fun Cap series since Kirby’s Madbomb stories.

4. Fantastic Four, by John Byrne.

Lee and Kirby defined the Fantastic Four’s personalities so well that I often feel that creators since them have simply plugged in generic lines of dialogue and been done with it.  Consequently, nearly every post-Kirby creative team has left me cold and indifferent.  John Byrne’s Fantastic Four popped off the page, however, and his version of the team felt as if anything could truly happen.  Pregnancy, new members, and some of the most memorable Dr. Doom and Galactus stories since Stan and Jack, Byrne’s FF was a thrill-ride comic book adventure.

3. Incredible Hulk, by Peter David and various artists.

While Byrne is one of the few creators since Kirby and Lee to make the FF click, David might be the only creator – including the Green Goliath’s creators -who’s made the Hulk dramatically appealing to me.  Working with top-flight artists like Dale Keown, Gary Frank, Liam Sharp and Adam Kubert, David dove into the mind of Bruce Banner, peeling back layers.  The result was a Greek tragedy of man and monster, showing how much they could accomplish together, yet ultimately tearing them apart.  Joe Fixit and Marlo remain outstanding additions to the Hulk mythos, and David explored Banner, the Hulk and supporting players like Rick Jones and Doc Samson in ways nobody else has matched.

2. Orion, by Walter Simonson.

A continuing trend here, Simonson is the only creator that has managed a series with the scope, majesty and drama inherent in Kirby’s original Fourth World comics.  Bigger and bolder than anything else in DC’s line at the time (or perhaps since), Simonson explored the conflict of fathers and sons.  Simonson pushed Orion in directions that not even Darkseid himself could’ve imagined, scarring Orion’s soul with the Anti-Life Equation, adding a layer of tragedy to Scott Free, and even allowing Orion to comment on the nature of the New Gods.  How good was this comic?  When I quit monthly titles midway through its run, I made an exception for Simonson’s Orion.  It’s simply the best superhero comic I’ve read in the last ten years.

1. Thor, by Walter Simonson.

He got the Fourth World right, and he excelled in the Third as well.  From smaller tales such as Thor’s (unknowing) meeting with his grandfather to TWO Ragnaroks, Simonson challenged the god of thunder like nobody had ever done before.  Odin’s death, Thor’s journey to Hel, the brittling of his bones, and even his epic quest as a frog in New York City’s sewers remain some of the most memorable and exciting Thor comics in history.  Simonson also gave us the great Beta Ray Bill character, and with the top two titles on my list, I guess you could say that nobody does Kirby better than Simonson.

So, readers, after Kirby left his toys for others to play with, which creators gave us the most satisfying versions?

At not responding to this rancid bit of idiocy. I have no excuse, you’ll just have to forgive me.

Let’s start at the top, shall we?

more babes with superpowers.

Yeah, that’s exactly what all women wish for. More characters chosen solely for their sex appeal. It’s all about the “babe”-alciousness, ladies, didn’t you know?

It’ll never work simply because men and women have different interests. (more…)

I haven’t heard the term “zombie comics” used this way before: The Washington Post’s Michael Cavna on undead strips on the funnies pages of newspapers, continuing to live on after their creators have passed away. This is the only link I have today that has absolutely no connection to Barack Obama.

Is “Spider-Man” not in the Associated Press style manual?: Because after reading about a thousand mainstream media reports like this one about Obama meeting Spidey this week and seeing the latter’s name spelled hyphen-less in a ton of them, I’m thinking it really oughta be if it’s not. Even J. Jonah Jameson spells it right, and he hates Spider-Man.

“I swear to God this is the most often a black man has appeared on the cover of a superhero comic since they canceled Power Man & Iron Fist back in the 80s”: The Stranger‘s Paul Constant on you-know-what, in a piece entitled “Everybody Knows Obama First Appeared in ROM Spaceknight #53.” I’d go double-check that in my copy of Essential ROM Spaceknight Vol. 3, but it doesn’t exist because there is no justice in the world.

Wait, that’s the really real cover of the non-variant cover of the Obama/Spider-Man?: If you look at Marvel.com’s solicitation for Amazing Spider-Man #583, it shows the John Romita Sr. image of Peter Parker walking down a street, his arms around two women, while Spider-Man lurks on a lamppost in the background. It’s a nice looking image. What you don’t see there is the text that Marvel would eventually put on the final, finished shipped-to and sold-at cover. The first place I saw the final cover was here, so I just kinda assumed the crass sex jokes on the cover were the work of Mr. Mike Sterling, given the context of the post. They’re funny in the way that superhero sex jokes on the Internet are funny, after all, and certainly aren’t the sort of thing you’d expect a major comics publisher to put on the cover of their comic, particularly if it was going to be one of the most looked-at covers of any of their comic books of late. But now I’ve seen it three or four other places, and that dialogue and blurb are on all of them.

So, let me make sure I get this straight: The actual, real, real-life cover of this week’s Amazing Spider-Man, the one that all those non-comics readers were looking for, makes a sex joke out of a line from a decades-old cartoon theme song (“Action is his reward”) and features Peter Parker calling two women “cougars”…? Seriously? Really? No lie? This isn’t a joke, dream, hoax or imaginary story?

Sigh…

Author, artist, animator and occasional cartoonist Mo Willems has a new book out: It’s entitled Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed, and it’s about a naked mole rat. Who gets dressed. Willems has a typically amusing blog post up here about his tour supporting the book, including a drawing from Cul De Sac cartoonist Richard Thompson and a hand-drawn book a seven-year-old fan gave him, entitled The Pigeon Finds Obama.

Also not quite comics, but close enough for hand grenades: Check out this New York Times slideshow of little kids’ drawings of Obama; it is fantastic. I especially #2 and #3.

In the grand comic book indsutry tradition of seeing what worked once for someone and then doing it over and over again until it stops working, Marvel Comics followed Erik Larsen and IDW’s lead and slapped Barack Obama on the cover of this week’s Amazing Spider-Man. (Perhaps you’ve heard of it?)

It worked like a charm, so I’m sure we’ll be seeing more Obama comics in the near future (An upcoming Youngblood cover featuring Obama, for example, has already been announced).

So if Marvel’s greatest rival DC Comics wants to get in on this Obama sales bonanza action, they better hurry up.

But where exactly would Obama fit in the DC Universe?

Well, it just so happens he fits perfectly into on of the company’s biggest ongoing storylines—Geoff Johns’ ongoing War of Light/Rainbow Lanterns epic.

Why, there’s a new Lantern Corps which shares the same color as Obama’s political party, and their powers are generated by hope!

I imagine it would look something like this…

…only, you know, much better drawn.

(Apologies to Geoff Johns, who wrote the Blue Lantern oath and the scene from Green Lantern #36 this is based on, and to Ivan Reis, whose layout for the same issue this is kinda sorta taken from)

Ain’t It Cool News is reporting that Chris Evans, who played Johnny Storm in those unfortunate Fantastic Four films, has been cast in Edgar Wright’s live-action Scott Pilgrim vs. The World movie (based, of course, on the awesome Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O’Malley and published by Oni Press). Evans will play Lucas Lee, one of Ramona Flowers’ evil ex-boyfriends and rival to Scott Pilgrim (as played by Michael Cera, who’s finally playing a character that isn’t basically George Michael Bluth).

And don’t forget, Scott Pilgrim vol. 5: Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe is set for a February 18th release. Start saving your pennies.

Collider is reporting that extensive reshoots for X-Men Origins: Wolverine are underway in Vancouver. The article states that director Gavin Hood had a difficult time on the set the first go-around, as Fox executives undermined his authority and micromanaged the shooting. Rumor has it Richard Donner was even on set working in some capacity.

If the rumors of reshoots are true, this could be bad news for the movie. Reshoots tend to mean that the original cut of the movie is crap, and the studio in charge is scrambling to fix it. Hood is said to be at the helm of the reshoots, so hopefully he’ll get to make the movie the way he intended. And hopefully it won’t suck.