Well, it’s not quite a Batmobile, but CNN has reported that police may soon get a new set of wheels that would make Bruce Wayne envious.

(And he would then embezzle said technology from his company. Holy white collar crime, Batman!)

In all seriousness, the Carbon E7 from Carbon Motors Corp. features a 300-horsepower clean diesel engine, an onboard computer with voice command, and — wait for it — integrated shotgun mounts. There’s apparently also weapons of mass destruction detectors that are optional. For real.

The only catch? The cars cost about $50,000 each. But they are supposed to last 250,000 miles, or over twice as long as a standard police cruiser. And more importantly, they have specially designed seats that allow them to easily clean up if a suspect relieves himself inside the cruiser. But can they jump across buildings? This is why Batman wins.

As you may remember from our 2008 coverage of the San Diego Comic Con, we broke the news that Charles and Daniel Knaupf were hard at work translating the Phantom to TV…

Well, now SyFy (or the artist formerly known as the Sci Fi Channel, take your pick) has officially greenlit a “backdoor pilot” for the oft-rebooted comic property. The really interesting part? This Phantom “pilot” will actually be a four-hour film. If it goes well, it could continue on as a full-time series a la Battlestar Galactica.

“The four-hour format allows us to command large dollars around the world for our shows that puts about ($4 million-$6 million) of production on the screen per hour,” Robert Halmi Jr., president and CEO of RHI entertainment, told the Hollywood Reporter. “It gives the network a chance to try a concept with the same production values, if not better, than you’d get for a series.”

According to the channel, this is supposed to be a more realistic work, like the Dark Knight or Iron Man. “It isn’t a guy in purple tights,” said exec VP of original programming Mark Stern.

Tribune Media service is apparently suing actor and director Warren Beatty to regain control of the movie and TV rights to Dick Tracy, the comic strip detective with his trademark yellow jacket and radio watch.

Beatty acquired the rights to the franchise in 1985, and proceeded to make and star in a lukewarm 1990 feature. There’s a lot of rumor swirling around whether or not Beatty is ash-canning this project — in other words, “initiating” work on a TV special, just to continue holding the rights to the franchise.

[Via ICv2.]

With all the hubbub around DC Comics’ latest weekly series, Wednesday Comics, I thought I’d show you some teaser art that’s been surfacing from some of the creators in question:

Sean Galloway (of Spectacular Spider-Man fame), on Teen Titans:

Kyle Baker, on Hawkman:

Joe Quinones, on Green Lantern:

and Ben Caldwell, on Wonder Woman:

…Now discuss.

Beating on The Beats: A Graphic History: Writing for The San Francisco Chronicle, Gerald Nicosia expresses plenty of reservations about the latest Harvey Pekar and company Graphic History book for Hill and Wang, most troublingly regarding the factual accuracy. Not that I’d let a single bad review discourage me from seeing what Ed Piskor, Summer McClinton or Trina Robbins’ drawings of Kerouac and company look like, of course.

I love Batmanwoman and Ultra-Casual Robin’s costumes: Yesterday was superhero day at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, news that is too late to do you any good, but I like the picture that ran with this announcement a whole lot, so I’m posting it today anyway. Here’s another picture of their heroes in a different pose, and here’s a write-up of it, with a pint-sized Batman photo.

That’s right, she said “Banana-nihilating”: Enjoy these excerpts from the DC Super Heroes Super Healthy Cookbook.

Sometimes I wish Brandon Graham drew every comic: One of my favorite artists unveils his Kitty Pryde drawing and it is a think of beauty. Wolverines tiny flacid penis is in the distant background (he fights Sentinels in the nude sometimes, I guess) as is a swear, if that sort of thing gets you in trouble at work. (Link yoinked from Heidi MacDonald)

I know I’m behind the times on this one, really. It’s been recommended to me over and over by comics folks and even those who don’t normally read sequential art. But I finally got around to reading Blankets this week, mostly on Monday when I was sick in bed all day, and it was just as beautiful as promised.

Thompson’s story is billed as a first-love tale, and it is, but it’s more importantly a coming-of-age story, a story of a young man finding love and freedom amid the loss of his faith and family.

I wanted a happy ending, a satisfying ending, but real life doesn’t come with those. Instead, Thompson has woven the threads of his religious upbringing, his relationship with his brother, and his first relationship into the what makes his protagonist the man that he is.

The gradual revelations of the narrator’s own unreliability and failings, scattered throughout the horrors of childhood, the teenage years, and the pains of love and loss, make this far more complex than the usual coming-of-age story.  Thompson is unflinching, laying bare all the messiest, scariest, most embarrassing moments and by doing so both conveying their power and stripping them of it.

Most readers won’t know what it was like to grow up in an evangelical family like the one in Blankets, but the fear and discomfort of growing up and realizing that you don’t fit into your family anymore is universal. And the love story is poignant and beautiful, as comforting as the titular blankets and yet still confusing, painful, and even lonely.

Thompson’s art is simple, but magical, showing us the full inner life of a dreamy teenage boy and bringing us to all the heavens and hells of adolescence.

The best first love stories make you remember what it felt like to have your heart touched for the first time, and this book does that and then some.

Why haven’t YOU read it yet?

If the little boys of the 1950s loved cowboys and Indians, I can only imagine how dinosaurs and Indians must have hit them. In 1954,  Dell Four Color #596 introduced the feature “Turok, Son of Stone,” the story of two young braves who stumble upon a lost world of dinosaurs. It cost a dime, and it had a painting of two dinosaurs fighing while a worried Indian watches from the safety of a cave right there on the cover.

While I have to imagine how exciting those early Turok stories must have been in the eyes of the readers they were originally created for, I don’t have to imagine what the stories themselves were like, thanks to Turok, Son of Stone Vol. 1, a new Dark Horse Archives collection of Turok stories from Dell Four Color and six issues of Turok.

While there’s certainly no mistaking them for modern comics, these Turok tales age remarkably well.

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Joe Loves Crappy Movies Volume One was one of my favorite books coming out of last month’s New York Comic Con—in the giant stack of books that I got to review there were a number of good reads, a slightly larger number of stinkers…and a small handful of books that I just fell in love with right away. Joe Loves Crappy Movies is an inoffensive, pop culture answer to Joe Matt—a guy who uses himself as the main character, and acknowledges that he’s not always right, or brilliant…but ultimately doesn’t let it ruin him. And as an added bonus, it has some great insights into American cinema (such as that all Vin Diesel movies are better if you watch them drunk). Joe Dunn, the creator of the webcomic and consequently of the collected edition, talked to Blog@ about the book, which has been on the shelves for a little over a month.

Blog@Newsarama: Can you give the readers who may not have seen the site what Joe Loves Crappy Movies is all about, in a nutshell?

Joe Dunn: Sure it’s basically I combined my love of making comics and my love of going to the movies. Every movie I see, I’ll make a comic about sort of making fun of it and then I’ll write a detailed review of it, kind of pointing out the good points and sliming the bad ones. I wanted to get those two worlds together and sort of get a discussion of movies and comics started on my site.

Blog@: Just because of timing, and the fact that you’re a movie guy, I have to ask: What did you think of Watchmen?

JD: It’s tough; I’m going to be one of those people who says I was a big fan of the book, and I’m having a really hard time separating it. It was a really faithful adaptation and the movie was so much fun, but my official opinion is that it was beautiful, it was fun, but sort of dead behind the eyes and it didn’t have the same kind of emotional impact the book had.

Blog@: Can you get a little bit into the head of the flick and tell me what it is that made that happen?

JD: It’s almost as if they got really distracted by adapting it—so much of it so faithful to the comics, and it’s almost like they were too worried about getting the picture on the wall and the tear in Rorschach’s jacket right and forgot to make people care.

Blog@: Back to the strip—what was the impetus for collecting now?

JD: People have been asking me for a while if I was going to collect—that seems to be the rage in webcomics right now. I always found it to be a daunting task because collecting the comics as well as the reviews seemed like too much work but I spent about six months just whittling stuff down, and adding bonus material to make it worthwhile for people who see the material for free anyway on the site to buy the book.

Blog@: How tempting was it to go back and make reviews a little more, or less, charitable depending on hindsight and how you really think the movie has fared over a longer run, as compared to presenting the original reviews as published?

JD: The hardest part was looking back and going “Oh man, I gave Mr. and Mrs. Smith a 6.5? It wasn’t that good.” So I spent a lot of time there sort of trying not to take away from what I had originally written but hindsight played a big factor and I said something like two years later, I look back at this movie and it doesn’t have the same power or whatever.

Blog@: Is there a unique challenge, with webcomics, to trying to sell people a collection of material that they’ve already seen for free the first time around and probably can still find in the archives for free?

JD: As far as giving some extra content, I had about fifty sketches from that time and put them in the book, I did another fifty sketches, brand new, and I jammed them in. I’m very conscious that people are not going to want to buy something they can get for free and so I lay awake at nights worrying about that kind of thing.

Blog@: So for the fans of the strip—how hard is it to decide when and where it’s a good idea to use The Palpatine Joke?

JD: I think in the first book, which collects the first 115 strips, I think he shows up four times. And I knew right away that this was a joke that wasn’t going to go anywhere because it’s the same joke over and over again. But there’s a fine line, you can’t bring that up all the time. I would say now, I do about two Palpatine jokes a year and I’m very conscious about finding new ways to approach it so that it’s not always the same setup. It’s the same punchline—it has to be—but it’s not always the same setup.

Blog@: What’s your take on the dynamic between webcomics and the rest of the comics world?

JD: For most people, me included, it’s essentially the equivalent of self-publishing. Nobody picks you up, most people do it for the joy of it so it’s about creating your own website and being able to reach people because a lot of people out there will never get picked up for print or anything like that. Webcomics really opened up a lot of doors for independent creators to tell their stories. It’s good and bad because the market’s been flooded with work, and it’s not all awesome, but everyone’s having a chance to have their say, which is great.

Blog@: …And so Digital Pimp? That’s not an established site that picked you up and decided to publish you?

JD: It’s this website I created about five years ago and I’ve been running strips there ever since. It had been running a little bit before Joe Loves Crappy Movies—I’d been doing two other strips there before I started doing the movie comic. I do a total of five comics—some of them I only do twice a month and some of them I do weekly but Joe Loves Crappy Movies is my main push.

Blog@: For the brick-and-mortar fans, do you have anything else that I can walk into a comic shop and buy?

JD: The only other collection I have is for a book called Matriculated, which I draw but I don’t write. It’s written by a friend named Phil Chan, who I started the site with and it’s about five college friends and I think the official pitch line is, “Five kids in college but not in class.” It’s all about their relationships but no homework or anything like that. So you should be able to get that collection in stores. But I urge them to check out Digital Pimp Online, check out the rest of the strips and see what they think

In case the simultaneous releases of the first issues of The Incredibles and The Muppet Show–coups, both, for a publishing house the size of Boom! Studios to have landed–weren’t enough to convince you that they’re the publisher to watch this week (hell, this month, on the strength of this week alone), this week sees the second issue of the final Hero Squared story. Hero Squared, of course, is the brainchild of former Justice League International writers Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis and is not only one of Boom!’s better titles, but one of the most fun comics to come out in a long while.

Mix these suckers in with The Life and Times of Savior 28 and Super Human Resources and we’ve got a picture of a March 2009 where most of the truly great books on the racks were coming from small or at best mid-sized press houses. Check back later this week, when I’ll have a couple of conversations with writer J.M. DeMatteis–one about the recent JLI hardcover release and one about the aforementioned Hero Squared. In the meantime, Make Mine Boom!

Just found this while cruising the Internet — the Macy’s Day Parade, 1987. (I’m not going to tell you how I old I was when this came out. Just watch the video.)

Anyway, I’m glad to see we’ve come a long way since 1987.

And if you’re asking: yes, that is the theme for Back to the Future, yes, that is Robocop inexplicably on stage, and yes, the Hulk starts hitting himself in the face. I don’t know why.

Devil’s Due Publishing has recently been publishing new comics featuring Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, a sort of lady Tarzan from the Golden Age of comics, following the series of miniseries model popular with a lot of non-Marvel, non-DC genre comics.

I haven’t read any of these, as they haven’t really done much to visually distinguish themselves from the pack of current jungle girl comics on the stands, like Cavewoman, Dynamite’s Jungle Girl, and Marvel’s recent Shanna the She-Devil comics.

I am extremely glad Devil’s Due is making Sheena comics though, if only because it gave them a reason to start collecting and re-publishing the golden goddess of the jungle’s original adventures. The latest, Best of Golden Age Sheena Vol. 2, hit shelves this week, and it makes for another great example of what a wonderful time it is to be a comics reader, for the reprints alone.

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If you live in or near Pittsburgh, you can check out the Zippy’s Pittsburgh and More exhibit: If you don’t, you can at least read about it here.

Wait, that doesn’t look like a pajama top to me: Cleveland reporter (and humorist) Michael Heaton interviews Cleveland cartoonist Terri Libenson, the creator of The Pajama Diaries.

“Sixth-graders design breakfast superheroes”: Oh sure this sounds innocent enough, but who owns the rights to the characters when it’s all said and done?

But that guy doesn’t look anything like Alan Scott!: Something tells me that they’re not going to be using my favorite Green Lantern in the live-action movie…

“Warner Bros. Giving Up On R-Rated Superhero Movies?”: Is this something that genuinely surprises anyone in the whole world? Er, how many R-rated superhero movies could reasonably be expected to have been made after Watchmen anyway?

“The Submission Guidelines for every Comic and Manga Publisher in the Universe”: Or at least 65 of ‘em, courtesy of Optimum Wound.

This is the best 4,500-word review of a Smurf comic ever: Jog deserves the Pulitzer Prize for online Smurf comics criticism, and if they don’t give Pulitzer’s for that, then he at least deserves the Smurflitzer Prize.

I know I’m not the only female comics fan who savors those words. Yes, that’s right, ladies and gentlemen, Kate Spencer is back and better than ever. Manhunter is coming back as a co-feature in the new Streets of Gotham book, and it will be written once again by our beloved Marc Andreyko, with art by Buffy Season 8‘s Georges Jeanty.

If you DON’T remember Manhunter, well, what’s wrong with you? No, seriously.  In a superhero world filled with scantily clad and rather dull heroines, Kate Spencer is one of the most real–imperfect, human, tough, smart, and yes, still sexy, if more covered up–female characters in comics.  She’s a lawyer, a single mother, and a superheroine by night.

The solicit says:

This new series also features a regular ongoing co-feature starring Manhunter written by Marc Andreyko and illustrated by Georges Jeanty (Buffy Season 8)! Kate Spencer lost a friend during the chaos of BATTLE FOR THE COWL, and now she wants payback. As usual, she’ll use any means necessary to get it!

I’m not usually a fan of superheroes, but I am excited for the return of Manhunter. It’s an exciting team, a great book, and a great move on the part of DC to bring back beloved books that weren’t quite paying for themselves on the back end of other books.  Among other double features will be the Question on the back end of Detective Comics, which will feature yet another heroine worth keeping an eye on.

Featuring the debut of a new co-feature starring The Question written by Rucka! Odds against you? Alone and nowhere to turn? Willing to fight, but you don’t know how? When you’re searching everywhere for an answer, sometimes all you need to do is ask the right Question. Renee Montoya again dons the faceless mask to help those in need, all the while searching for her own answers in this new adventure with art by Cully Hamner (BLUE BEETLE).

I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking about indulging in superheroes in a big way for the first time in my life. Manhunter, Batwoman, Question, and oh yeah–Gotham City Sirens?  Looks like a great season for superheroines.

The New York Times released its Graphic Books list of this week, and by all accounts, DC Comics and Viz Media are the big winners this week:

Graphic Books Best Seller List (Hardcover)
1 WATCHMEN, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. (DC Comics, $39.99, $75.) This epic tale from 1986 signaled a new maturity in comic books.
2. JOKER, by Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo. (DC Comics, $19.99.) The Joker, newly released from Arkham Asylum, deals with the rivals who have carved into his territory.
3 BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE, by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland. (DC Comics, $17.99.) This critically acclaimed story from 1988 offers a possible origin for the Joker.
4 ALL-STAR SUPERMAN, by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. (DC Comics, $19.99.) These stories, free of the barnacles of continuity, include an encounter with Zibarro, the only sane resident of the Bizarro world.
5 BATMAN: R.I.P., by Grant Morrison and Tony Daniel. (DC Comics, $24.99.) Thomas Wayne, the father of the caped crusader, is cast in a sinister light.
6 HUMBUG, by Harvey Kurtzman and others. (Fantagraphics, $60.) The 11-issue run of this satirical magazine from the 1950’s receives the hardcover treatment.
7 TARZAN: THE JESSE MARSH YEARS, Vol. 1, by Gaylord DuBois and Jesse Marsh. (Dark Horse, $49.95.) Witness the Golden Age adventures of Tarzan.
8 EERIE ARCHIVES, Vol. 1, by various. (Dark Horse, $49.95.) The gruesome magazine, following in the steps of its cousin Creepy, in a hardcover collection.
9 WORMWOOD: GENTLEMEN CORPSE, by Ben Templesmith. (IDW Publishing, $24.99.) Humor and horror team-up in this series about a maggot that animates corpses and solves supernatural problems.
10 THE COMPLETE PEANUTS: 1971-1972, by Charles M. Schulz. (Fantagraphics, $28.99.) Sally Brown is the cover girl in this latest collection of newspaper strips.

DC Comics did pretty well for itself in that first list, taking all top five for standbys like Watchmen and the Killing Joke, as well as newer Grant Morrison-penned books like Batman RIP and All-Star Superman.

Graphic Books Best Seller List (Paperback)
1 WATCHMEN, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. (DC Comics, $19.99.) This epic tale from 1986 signaled a new maturity in comic books.
2 WOLVERINE: ORIGIN, by Paul Jenkins and Andy Kubert. (Marvel Comics, $16.99.) Revealed at last: the secret history of the mutant known as Wolverine.
3 BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, by Frank Miller. (DC Comics, $14.99.) Another classic from 1986: The caped crusader comes out of retirement to save Gotham City from a depraved street gang that are more monsters than man.
4. V FOR VENDETTA, by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. (Vertigo, $19.99.) A vigilante tries to free London in a world where Germany won World War II.
5 WALKING DEAD, Vol. 1, by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore. (Image Comics, $14.99.) The gripping story of the human survivors in a world overrun by zombies continues.
6 SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE UNIVERSE, by Bryan Lee O’Malley. (Oni Press, $11.95.) Can Ramona’s twin ex-boyfriends be defeated? Sounds like a job for… Scott Pilgrim.
7 MADMAN ATOMIC COMICS, Vol. 2, by Mike Allred. (Image, $19.99.) More adventures of Frank “Madman” Einstein, the hero of Snap City.
8 APPLESEED, Vol. 4, by Shirow Masamune. (Dark Horse, $14.95) In the 22nd century, the Extra Special Weapons and Tactics officers must unravel a terrorist plot.
9 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, Vol. 3, by Drew Goddard and others. (Dark Horse, $15.95.) “Season eight” of Buffy continue in Tokyo where she investigates a new threat.
10 FABLES, Vol. 11, by Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham. Does Flycatcher (a.k.a. the Frog Prince) have what it takes to stop the deadly Adversary? (Vertigo, $17.99.)

And DC wins again this list, mainly due to Dark Knight Returns, V for Vendetta, as well as a new Fables book. And as you’ll see below, Viz Media continues its streak of utterly owning the Manga list with Naruto and other franchise titles like Bleach.
Graphic Books Best Seller List (Manga)
1 NARUTO, Vol. 41, by Masashi Kishimoto. (VIZ Media, $7.95.) A secret from the past comes back to haunt Naruto’s teacher, Jiraiya.
2 NARUTO, Vol. 40, by Masashi Kishimoto. (VIZ Media, $7.95.) A journey to the Land of Rain unveils a secret.
3 NARUTO, Vol. 39, by Masashi Kishimoto. (VIZ Media, $7.95.) The ninja world of Naruto is threatned by an old enemy.
4 NARUTO, Vol. 38, by Masashi Kishimoto. (VIZ Media, $7.95.) Naruto fights to protect his best friend from falling under an evil spell.
5 FRUIT BASKETS, Vol. 22, by Natsuki Takaya. (TokyoPop, $10.99.) This series is about humans who are possessed by the animals of the Chinese zodiac.
6 BLEACH, Vol. 26, by Tite Kubo. (VIZ Media, $7.95.) Ichigo Kurosaki sees dead people – and must help souls find their way to the afterlife.
7 VAMPIRE NIGHT, Vol. 6, by Matsuri Hino. (VIZ Media, $8.99.) Cross Academy has day and evening students, but the later have a secret: they are vampires.
8 ROSARIO + VAMPIRE, Vol. 6, by Akihisa Ikeda. (VIZ Media, $7.99.) Tsukune Aono’s new school is filled with vampires and werewolves. How is a human teenager to survive?
9 CODE GEASS MANGA, Vol. 3 by Goro Taniguichi. (Bandai Entertainment, $9.99.) In a future alternate reality where the Holy Empire of Brittania declared war on Japan, a high school student becomes a terrorist and vows to bring down the empire.
10 NARUTO, Vol. 37, by Masashi Kishimoto. (VIZ Media, $7.95.) Naruto takes on an older and stronger opponent. Is he ready?

Rick Geary may be best known for his tales of Victorian era murder, but he’s certainly quite capable of drawing things that have nothing to do with the most famous murder cases of the 19th and early 20th century.

There’s that fantastic Gumby series he did with Bob Burden, for example, and now here’s another, newer example: The Adventures of Blanche. This gorgeously designed (by Heidi Whitcomb) hardcover from Dark Horse collects Geary’s rather occasional series of stories about Blanche, an early 20th century American pianist who travels the world, crossing paths with eminent historical personalities and fantastical events.

Within the covers of the book, designed to resemble the size and shape of Geary’s murder treasury books and thus fit nicely on a book shelf next to them, are 1992’s Blanche Goes to New York, 1993’s Blanche Goes to Hollywood and 2001’s Blanche Goes To Paris.

A new, three-page “introductory reminiscence” introduces the stories, a first person account of how Geary came upon the letters of his piano teacher grandmother, and what he learned within them (The title page of each of the three adventures begins with a credit saying “From letters discovered by Rick Geary”).

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In addition to revealing the above cover to Dardevil #500 by Marko Djurdjevic, this week’s My Cup O’ Joe at MySpace Comic Books with Joe Quesada discussed the fact that the Man Without Fear will be handled by now-Marvel-exclusive writer Andy Diggle.

Other choice bits from Joe?

“Dark Reign will take us right about to the end of this year.”

“You may see a few smaller, “Planet Hulk”-sized events, but nothing quite as sweeping as a Civil War or Secret Invasion for a little while.”

“Andy will be playing a very, very large part in one of these “Planet Hulk”-sized events. At least one of them.”

“…if you want [more Gambit], there’s a one-shot about his origin coming out in June and more Gambit goodness in July.”

“Not only will Venom be playing the role of Dark Spider-Man in Dark Avengers, but he’ll also be headlining his own “Dark Reign” limited series: The Sinister Spider-Man.”

Quesada also had more to say about X-Men Forever, the rather intersting project wherein Chris Claremont and Tom Grummett will be picking up X-Men continuity from around issue #4 in 1991 as if Claremont had kept writing the book.

XMF‘s continuity is a unique beast. Marvel’s never done anything like this before, where we’re literally picking up from a storyline from 15 years ago and letting the creator go the path not traveled. By its very nature, it can’t be considered cannon to the existing universe proper, and with that comes the promise that there will be things that no X-fan would ever see coming, including the unexpected death of a character writer Chris Claremont is closely connected with (PS. Not who you think).

[Via MySpace]

So Troy passed this article on to me about artist Rufus Seder and his Lifetiles murals, which appear to animate as viewers walk past. The article actually doesn’t do the story justice–it’s something you have to see to really understand. Luckily, there’s video.

The tiles were inspired by Seder’s children’s books, which use a similar technique to make the pictures move on the pages.

If the technology you see in Lifetiles looks familiar, you might have caught something similar at a local bookstore. The popular children’s books “Gallop!” and “Swing!” were also written and illustrated by Seder. With a technique he calls scanimation, pictures in the books come alive as you flip the page.

It’s a kids’ favorite that quite a few parents enjoy, too, based on sales numbers. “Swing!” and “Gallop!” are currently on The New York Times bestseller list.

Seder originally used scanimation in greeting cards he sold at trade shows around the country. Then Workman Publishing came calling, asking Seder to develop a book based on the eye-catching technique.

That’s when Seder caught lightning in a bottle. After several decades as a somewhat unknown artist, he found himself flying to China to teach the scanimation technique to book makers. Just a few years later, there are over 2 million copies of “Gallop!” in print in more than 13 languages.

The similarities to motion comics aren’t many, but they’re there. Static images made to move a bit, with simple techniques? It’s pretty cool, either way.

So Brett Ratner, director of X3: X-The Last Stand and producer of the upcoming Youngblood film, is quoted by MTV News and Screen Rant as saying that he’d direct more comic book movies, if only something worthy of his talent would open up.

Okay, so he didn’t really say that–but he does say that all the good stuff is taken, with Chris Nolan on Batman and Bryan Singer on X-Men. He suggests that when he was moved off the Superman Returns project (a blessing in disguise, Brett–you think you could have shined up that turd?), he was “really upset.” How X-Men is, in his mind, a franchise still spoken for by Singer when the last two films (X3 and Wolverine) have been directed by other people is anyone’s guess, but he also suggests that he’s “not going to go and do the Silver Surfer or something,” indicating the type of characters in which he has no interest.

The headlines coming out of this interview are, apparently, that Ratner said something bad about Iron Man and/or Jon Favreau, which isn’t really the case; he said that he’s impressed by what Favreau was able to do with what he called a B-list character–a sentiment echnoed (probably in more nice language) by most comics fans and bloggers I know.

It’s interesting to note that Ratner’s own comments here seem to suggest he knows his limitations. He talks about how proud he is of Favreau for making a go of it with Iron Man, despite the limitations offered by the character–and then says he wouldn’t take on a similar project himself. So…what, Brett? Not sure you could HANDLE “The” Silver Surfer?

The new film Super Capers, the latest in a growing line of movies (including Hancock, Superhero Movie,The Incredibles and My Super Ex-Girlfriend) that takes the superhero genre a little less seriously and relies more on Giffen and DeMatteis than on Wein and Morrison for their Justice League archetypes, took the kind of beating over at Sci Fi Wire that one usually needs superpowers to deliver. Seriously, reviewer Fred Topel seems to take what he perceives as the movie’s badness very personally, prompting the first of his talkback comments to ask him to ease up. Starring Christine Lakin, whose work I’m unfamiliar with but who was in last week’s #1 release, Escape From Witch Mountain, and featuring supporting work from Mallrats‘ Michael Rooker and Adam West of Batman and Family Guy fame, the movie itself is in (very) limited theatrical release around the country.

You heard it here — Hollis Mason’s tell-all on Watchmen’s Golden Age, UNDER THE HOOD, is making the leap to cinema alongside Tales of the Black Freighter! This feature will be a 10th anniversary retrospective told in a TV feature called “The Culpepper Minute.” Warner Bros. has released a Q&A with Eric Matthies, who will be directing the feature, which will features Watchmen stars Carla Gugino and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

More after the cut…

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