Justice League fans know exactly who you mean when you refer to “The Big Seven”: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Aquaman and Martian Manhunter.

They’re the greatest of DC’s greatest superheroes, right?

Well, actually, they’re just the seven characters who were in the original Justice League comics,  and are thus always thought of as the Big Seven within the fictional DC Universe, no matter how popular or unpopular they actually are in our universe.

And let’s face it, some of those guys aren’t exactly selling comic books hand over fist. Or, you know, at all. Martian Manhunter has only had one, short-lived solo ongoing title. Aquaman is constantly starring in comics that are retooled, canceled, relaunched, retooled, canceled, relaunched and so on. The others usually have books on the stands, although their popularity waxes and wanes with their creative teams, different directions and the whims of the direct market readers.

Every once in a while, I like to take a look at the sales charts to see which heroes are actually the most popular as judged by sales, and wonder what it would do to the Justice League if the roster was determined by who The Big Seven were in terms of those sales (Yes, I like to think about Justice League line-ups in my free time; is that a problem?).

Last week Marc-Oliver Frisch offered his monthly analysis of DC Comics sales at The Beat, which occasioned another round of such thinking on this subject.

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My choice of image here probably gives you some idea of what I loved about the latest Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. And yes, watching Ginny Weasley turn into a confident, proactive woman is a treat–especially in a world that while created by a woman author, provides very few standout heroines.

I adore Hermione. I can relate to the girl who knows the answer to everything in school but feels left out by the attention paid to her male friends, who brushes off the male attention she gets because it’s not coming from the one person she wants. But the rest of the girls in the Potterverse are cackling villains like Bellatrix Lestrange–watching Helena Bonham Carter chew scenery here is a treat, but she’s a one-note character–or giggling girls like Lavendar Brown or Romilda Vane, who serve mostly to teach us that our heroes are indeed desirable, despite their endearing adolescent fumbling. (Molly Weasley’s moment of vengeance in the seventh book is sublime, but until then she’s largely relegated to worrying at home about her family.)

So Ginny Weasley, effortlessly skilled at Quidditch and Bat-Bogey Hexes, popular with the boys, who chooses Harry, not the other way around, is a wonderful character. I find myself for the first time hoping for a change from the books for the seventh installment, because Ginny was cruelly underused in Deathly Hallows.

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If you’re like me, you’re probably tired of comic publishers and their endless stream of hype, teasers and press releases touting revelations that break the internet in thirds and so on.

So when we announced in a press release last week that Vampirella: Second Coming was a “game changer” I’m sure many of you threw up your hands and said, “Oh, here we go again.”

Thing is more often than people want to admit, the hype should on occasion be believed. But how can a retailer know? Comics are ordered two months in advance on a non-returnable basis. Publishers won’t reveal everything about a comic two months ahead of time. By the time such a comic drops on stores, the hubbub surrounding the reveal would’ve long ended. As a result retailers are forced to measure how much they trust publishers and their hype machines and order their books accordingly, sight unseen. It was like they were making a bet with a hand that wasn’t even theirs.

Back around the time Captain America #25 hit, not a few people suggested a special committee be set up to vet publishers’ claims and determine if their product actually lives up to their hype. This committee would read the story but keep its secrets. A publisher could do it’s job of getting the press involved when the book actually came out instead of two months before when it got ordered. Retailers could then ask the committee if they should believe the hype without being told what the big reveals are, making the bet a little easier to make. As far as I know this never happened.

For the Second Coming, though, we wanted to try something similar. We sent the first issue to the board of ComicsPro to make sure retailers know we are not crying wolf. Your local retailer can ask the organization about the issue. Whether the board agrees with our perspective or not is another matter but at the least we wanted to work with retailers in a way that bred trust and partnership. At the end of the day all we want to do is whatever helps both sides prosper.

Two weeks ago we posted this teaser:

Yes, there will be a new Vampirella.

Well… at least one new one.

To Be Continued… in Vampirella: Second Coming #1!

Entertainment Weekly has unveiled the cover for its upcoming issue, and it has the first look at a certain spy of the Marvel Universe:

That’s right, Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow.

Granted, she’s mostly obscured by Tony’s armor, but you now know hair style, and you can see that the leather jumpsuit is making a transition to the screen. If you like your pictures extra blurry, there is a screen capture of an inside image that was aired on TV, which ComicBook.com has right here.

So what do you think, Rama readers?

This is where I come clean as one of the few reviewers on the planet that didn’t see Geoff Johns and Peter Tomasi’s Sinestro Corps War as being completely without fault.

The fault, or a lot of it anyway, lay in the backup features, which I felt (broadly speaking) were just taking up space in the backs of books that were therefore shortened. “Tales of the Sinestro Corps” explored the arcane and sometimes interesting backstories of the antagonists—but really just served as an object lesson in exactly how in love with his own writing Geoff Johns is. Because Johns—who will gladly sacrifice anyone else’s established continuity for the sake of a single good story—clearly cherishes the continuity he builds for himself. So much so that he has to immortalize it in these little backup stories instead of keeping it in the back of his head for later use or just reference. Characters would get a six-page backup story and then appear for about that much space in the entire story; it was bizarre and seemed unnecessary, but at least it was free.

Fast-forward to today, and the release of Blackest Night #1 was of course accompanied by Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps #1. On the one hand, seven times as many corps means the chances of getting all the desired stories told for free in the back of Green Lantern wasn’t going to happen. On the other hand…well, they aren’t any better or more valuable than the Sinestro Corps stories were…and this time you get them packaged nicely together for four bucks. I bought the first one—which I have very little substantial to say about, because the stories themselves were so insubstantial and devoid of real consequence that they don’t seem to warrant it (although the “main” feature, longer than the others and featuring a central character, is the story of Saint Walker and the art by Jerry Ordway is wonderful)—but I won’t make that mistake again. The next pair of Tales of the Corps issues can go unpurchased and I’ll surely feel no poorer for it, just like I didn’t feel like I missed anything when eventually I stopped reading the “Tales of the Sinestro Corps” backups in GL.

What do you think, ‘Rama readers? Am I missing something?

Savage Dragon #150, a 100-page monster of a comic book, was released to shops last week and saw some huge revelations. The introduction of a mysterious new Overlord (the “Who is Overlord?” question teased in promos was not, in fact, answered in this issue), the death of one hero the the apparent death of another were just some of the many twists and turns that this epic, sprawling issue took. With a 30-plus page main feature followed up by a number of supporting stories and reprints featuring everything from The Savage Dragon’s and the Golden Age Daredevil’s origins to new stories featuring Thor, Vanguard and G-Man, plus a ton of guest-artists and a Savage Dragon pinup by Spider-Man superstar John Romita, Jr.

So it’s a HUGE issue.

In order to keep comments manageable, we’ve decided to break down the commentary into two chunks: the first (today’s installment) on the main feature—Dragon’s first confrontation with the new Overlord—and the second, coming tomorrow, looking at the backup features, what they mean and why they were chosen.

Oh yeah–and SPOILERS ON, folks. Remember, this is a commentary piece and assumes that the reader has read Savage Dragon #150. (more…)

The Hollywood Reporter has announced that Fredrik Bond will be the new director for Rogue Pictures’ upcoming film, Hack/Slash.

Hack/Slash is a Devil’s Due comic created by Tim Seeley and Stefano Caselli, delving into the life of Cassie Hack, a woman who hunts down serial killers before they can kill again.

This will be Bond’s first full-length feature, after some commerical work, a 2004 short called The Mood as well as some directing work for the musician Moby.

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s get ready to rumbllllllllle! Because MTV has announced that Joe Kelly will orchestrating a clash of the titans:

That’s right — Spider-Man versus Deadpool.

With some obvious similarities — agility, red masks, snarky senses of humor — the battle between the Webbed Wonder and the Merc with a Mouth proves that action is the readers’ reward. They’ll be butting heads… and blades… and webs… in November’s Amazing Spider-Man #611, with art by Eric Canete and a cover by Skottie Young, which you can see on his DeviantArt feed here.

“Their jokes styles are so different,” Kelly told MTV. “Deadpool is so absurd and mean at the drop of a hat, but Spidey is so light. … [Spider-Man] tries to take the high road, but when you spend enough time around Deadpool, you can’t help coming down to his level.”

Now, this isn’t the first time these two have squared off — Spider-Man did have a appearance in Cable/Deadpool #24, where the Regenerating Degenerate threw Peter Parker off a bridge. But with Joe Kelly — one of the top-tier Deadpool writers in the late ’90s as well as a current member of the Spider-Man Brain Trust — I can’t wait to see the sort of no-brow cracks this war of the wiseasses is going to unleash!

Via MTV, there’s an interesting tidbit from Nicholas Cage, in which he says he would like to “do a reconceive” for a second Ghost Rider film:

Hmm… on the one hand, while the first Ghost Rider was certainly a disappointment, I don’t know how I feel about this. International Ghost Rider? Less western? More Nicholas Cage? What say you, Rama readers?

I haven’t seen Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince yet. I’m just too old for a midnight screening at this point, so instead I have tickets for tonight and will no doubt be writing my response tomorrow. For now, to get myself (and all of you) into the proper state of mind, how about some reviews from around the Interwebs?

From the BBC:

Those wanting noisy spectacle and endless action will be disappointed. This is a talky Potter.

It feels long – but not in a bad way. The main characters and the complex plot get a chance to breathe.

Writer Steve Kloves sensibly excises the padding from JK Rowling’s novel – adding new scenes such as the opening attack on London’s Millennium Bridge.

But Death Eater attacks aside, relationships are what interests Yates.

Even when we first meet Harry in a cafe at Surbiton station, he is effortlessly catching the eye of a waitress.

“Harry, you need a shave my friend,” says Dumbledore later, as if we need reminding that the boy Harry is becoming a man.

The Chicago Tribune:

The Potter series has sustained itself because it no longer seems to be concerned about roping in the widest possible global audience. Instead, it’s trying to treat Rowling’s characters with the care and class they deserve, and in spellbinding sequences such as the “liquid memory” flashback to Tom Riddle’s childhood—in which Ralph Fiennes‘ nephew, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, plays the Dark Lord in training—Yates proves he’s the man for the job in cinematic terms, not merely transcriptive ones.

The San Jose Mercury News:

Previous installments played out in a supernatural bubble bearing little connection to our ordinary little Muggle world. “Half-Blood Prince” brims with authentic people and honest interaction – hormonal teens bonding with great humor, heartache that will resonate with anyone who remembers the pangs of first love.

Drop the magic act, and Hogwarts could be any school of self-absorbed geeks, jocks, popular kids and outcasts trying to maneuver through the day. Even the class bad boy provides insight into the behavior of bullies.

From the New York Times:

There must be a factory where the British mint their acting royalty: Hero, who plays the dark lord as a spectrally pale, creepy child of 11, is Ralph Fiennes’s nephew, and Frank is the son of the terrific actor Stephen Dillane (Thomas Jefferson in the HBO mini-series “John Adams”). The younger Mr. Dillane, who plays Voldemort at 16, conveys the seductiveness of evil with small, silky smiles he bestows like dangerous gifts on Jim Broadbent’s Horace Slughorn, a professor whose trembling jowls suggest a deeper tremulousness. When Slughorn, the fear almost visibly leaking from his body, shares the secret of immortality with Voldemort, you feel, much as when Ralph Fiennes raged through “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” in 2005, that something vital is at stake.

If that sense of exigency rarely materializes in “The Half-Blood Prince,” it’s partly because the series finale is both too close and too far away and partly because Mr. Radcliffe and his co-stars Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, as Harry’s friends Hermione and Ron, have grown up into three prettily manicured bores. Unlike the veterans, notably the sensational Alan Rickman, who invests his character, Prof. Severus Snape, with much-needed ambiguity, drawing each word out with exquisite luxury, bringing to mind a buzzard lazily pulling at entrails, Mr. Radcliffe in particular proves incapable of the most crucial cinematic magic. Namely the alchemical transformation of dialogue into something that feels like passion, something that feels real and true and makes you as wild for Harry as for all those enticingly dark forces.

And of course, from Newsarama’s own Lucas Siegel:

It’s amazing to see just how much the actors have grown over the course of 6 films. Here we have a truly breakout performance by Tom Felton, in the role of troubled Draco Malfoy. Draco is intensely conflicted in his mission throughout the film, and plays a much deeper character than the one-note foil of the previous chapters. It’s a remarkable transformation for Draco and a fantastic performance for Felton, as you can clearly see his agony in many dialogue free scenes.

The other standout in a field of solid actors was once again Alan Rickman in possibly the best casting choice in movie history. As Professor Snape, he has a slightly smaller role for the majority of the film, merely popping in here and there (until the end, that is), and the dry wit and ambiguous morale nature comes off perfectly, maybe even better than the previous movies. The other principle actors are all very clearly comfortable in the roles they’ve been playing for years now, and it gives a great sense of realism to this world of fantasy.

Well, I’m ready for my workday to be over so I can head to the theater…

Warner Home Video sat down to talk with Battlestar Galactica’s Tricia Helfer on the role of Green Lantern Boodikka in the upcoming animated feature Green Lantern: First Flight. The film is due out July 28th.

QUESTION:  What did you seek to convey vocally as Boodikka?

TRICIA HELFER: Boodikka’s a fighter, a protector. She is very honorable in that she does what she thinks is right, even if some things go against the grain. She’s certainly not an evil character per se, but she does things that she thinks are good for society. She’s not really sexy in terms of her personality, so she’s not trying to reel Hal in – that relationship is more like comrades. So I wanted to play Boodikka both strong and sweet.

QUESTION:  Are there aspects of Boodikka that are familiar to you?

TRICIA HELFER:  I think there are some aspects of Boodikka in other characters. I wouldn’t say she’s like Number Six at all, really, but there’s some clones of Six that are similar. I’d kind of say she’s a little bit like Natalie from the fourth season of Battlestar because she’s a bit of a leader in her own way, she’s strong and intelligent, and she does what she thinks is right when she feels very strongly about certain things – as Natalie did taking sides against her Cylon counterparts.

QUESTION:  This is only your second voiceover role. Was there anything particularly special that enticed you to accept the role?

TRICIA HELFER:  What made me say yes to doing the movie and voicing Boodikka was that I just thought it was a really sweet story.  I didn’t really have any preconceptions of the role or the story.  I’m not very well read in comics, so I went into this with a completely open mind. I loved the script – there was no flipping through it. It was a good, solid story.

QUESTION:  Were you familiar with “Green Lantern” at all?

TRICIA HELFER:  I did a little research, but not too much. I grew up without a television on a farm in the middle of nowhere, so I really didn’t see hardly any movies or TV series, and no cartoons. So I kind of have to go into things with a really blank slate, an open mind, and I think sometimes that’s good actually for voices because you don’t go in with anything really preconceived. I never feel like I have to fit a certain (type) because I’ve seen this character played that way before. I can read the script and go in feeling with my own gut instinct.  And then (she laughs) you have a nice room full of people that tell you if you’re messing up or to try it different way.

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Quirk Books, the publisher of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, has released the trailer for their next book:

Sense and Sensibility… and Sea Monsters. While this is going to be in book form, this trailer makes me wish that the whole thing was filmed.

The new book is due out September 15th.

[Tip of the hat to Agent M for the link]

Think Twilight is a bloody good time? A romance with some bite?

Well, you might be saying “fangs for the memories,” as Wizard Entertainment has announced that several actors for the Twilight saga will be hitting the Chicago Comic-Con, August 6-9.

According to their release, Peter Facinelli, Christopher Heyerdahl, and Cameron Bright will be in attendance, along with Kevin Nash, Taylor Wilde, Jeremy Bulloch, Cerina Vincent, and Doug Jones.

DC Senior Story Editor Ian Sattler will be a special guest at the Chicago Comic-Con, Wizard Entertainment has announced.

“The fans love to get the insight a top industry professional like Ian can give,” Wizard CEO Gareb Shamus said in a written statement. “Fans expect that level of programming at our events and I am thrilled that DC Comics will be part of Chicago Comic-Con.”

As someone who pores through hundreds of scripts to help manage the DC Universe, Ian is definitely a guy with some serious industry insight. Sattler will be at the DC Nation Panel on Saturday, August 8, as well as the Sunday Conversation Panel on August 9.

Hey, Vibe’s right! There is only one more day until Blackest Night #1. It might seem like this storyline has been in the works forever, but there’s a good reason for that—writer Geoff Johns has been setting it up ever since his first Green Lantern story, 2005′s Green Lantern: Rebirth. Will the climax of “The War of Light,” which kicked off in earnest during 2007′s Sinestro Corps War storyline, justify all that build-up? We’ll find out tomorrow. Expect zombies, gore, death, vomiting and cannibalism. Or greater quantities than usual, anyway. Johns’ GL collaborators Ivan Reis and Oclair Albert are the art team, and the book is 48-pages for $3.99. It should be gross, decadent fun.

What else is coming out this week? Let’s take a look, after the jump.

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I took a little twitter poll today (you’re following us, right? If not, click on that link and follow us. Go on, we’ll wait), asking what people wanted to see more. Well, to prove that we’ll actually listen when we ask for these kinds of suggestions, here’s our first article born directly via comments on Twitter.

Let’s Be Friends Again is a webcomic about, well, I’ve read through their entire archive, and to give you an accurate list, the rest of this post would just be topics. Let’s just say if you’re reading this, chances are you’ve had a conversation not unlike Curt and Chris’s that they so generously share with the world here. It’s also a safe bet that if you read any one, 10, or 90 of their comics, you’ll be laughing out loud repeatedly.

Be warned, much of this is NSFW (EDIT: As readers have pointed out, your milage may vary on the label “NSFW.” Just know, it includes lots of swearing and the occasional bloody mess) content. Like this MKvsDCU sendup from last December, for example. The mixture of slice-of-life conversations, one-off topic strips, and some really solid comedic writing and art make this a great example of what webcomics can and should be. This is a continuation of the kind of storytelling comic strips in newspapers used to have, aged for readers who used to read them and are now adults. It’s webcomics for, frankly, people who are most likely to actually read webcomics. It doesn’t try to be too high brow, but is still intelligent, it doesn’t try to hard to be funny, but it makes you laugh.

This was one of the best suggestions I’ve ever received of a new webcomic to read. It now has a permanent place in my bookmarks, and I highly recommend you all go check it out as well.

If you like what you’ve read so far (c’mon, how can you not?) totally check out more super cute comics at:www.sosuperduper.com!

The Vertigo: Graphic Content blog runneth over with announcements and hints of new things in the works. Among the higlights . . .

Remember the great Vertigo Winter’s Edge specials of yesteryear? It seems that the imprint will be doing a turn on that notion during the incredibly appropriate time of Halloween. The House of Mystery Halloween Annual will include a framing story and other shorts familiar Vertigo series and creators. As Pamela Mullin tells it:

This special 48-page book will contain a framing story by the regular HOM creative team, writer Matthew Sturges and artists Luca Rossi and Jose Marzan Jr. However, it will also included short stories from HELLBLAZER by Peter Milligan, Giuseppe Camuncoli and Stefano Landini and MADAME XANADU by Matt Wagner, Amy Reeder Hadley and Richard Friend as well as a special MERV PUMPKINHEAD tale (the first in over 8 years!) by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham and Kevin Nowlan.

Also of note is the forthcoming series I, Zombie. That book comes from writer Chris Roberson and brilliant artist Mike Allred. The title will follow a female zombie detective in a monster-filled world. And you know it’s going to look amazing.

Valerie D’Orazio makes some excellent points over at her blog.

Truly, my heart weeps for those fanboys inconvenienced by 1,000s of Robert Pattinson fans. It is so unfair. And they’re “not even really supposed to be there,” right?

[snip]
Where was this whining when people were going freakin nuts over “Watchmen?” Or when I couldn’t even get through the fanboy phalanx to meet up with friends because of the Hellboy roadblock?

Fandom and conventions are big enough for EVERYBODY. And instead of complaining about “Twilight” fans, maybe somebody should figure out how to get these legions of fangirls to buy more comics.

Seriously. The headline she links–”Female Fans Prepare to Trample Men“–is hilariously ironic because it reflects perfectly the fear in so many articles. The implication that ZOMG WOMEN ATTACK is just so darn Freudian it’s hard for me to unpack it without giggling.

I’m a female fangirl. I have been for years. And I’ve absolutely been trampled at cons–and punk rock shows, and even sporting events, all areas with typical male fan bases that certainly didn’t seem to think anything shocking about being in a room with hundreds of boys and a few girls.

I came to comics through a subculture that, if it had existed back in the day, would certainly have embraced Twilight. As a somewhat overeducated adult, I read the books and saw the movie and thoroughly enjoyed both, if occasionally with the very adult pleasure of laughing at all the wrong moments. I both defend the right to have something like Twilight that is so unabashedly girly that it inspires tons of squealing girls to unload at Comic-Con just for its panel, and despise the tendency to split fandom into two worlds: the comics are for boys, the sparkly vampires are for girls.

Leaving out for a moment the teenage boy sitting next to me at a subway stop reading New Moon on his iPhone (yes, I can recognize the story from a glimpse over his shoulder. What?), why the heck can’t we admit that comic cons were packed full of people fighting for seats before Twilight was thought of, that Hollywood has been trying to find ways to tap into the zealous–and zealously consumerist, willing to buy tons of movie-related merch–comic con audience for a good while now, and that the only thing different when it’s Twilight is that the fans are teenage girls (and their moms, the fear of whom brings up a whole other level of Freudian analysis that I’m REALLY not qualified to do).

So really. Do these guys need to keep Comic-Con a He-Man Woman Hater’s Club that badly, or can they learn to embrace the girls and cross that invisible line between Twilight fans and comic fans? Because who knows, maybe if they dropped the defensive act and realized that more girls in their fandom does not mean less stuff for them, that pop culture is not a finite commodity, maybe more girls WOULD buy comics. And far from that being a problem, it would create more money for comics creators, and thus…MORE COMICS FOR ALL. Win-win.

Last Friday afternoon, the DC Bullets had a chance to make a big move in the New York Media Softball League standings, as they matched up against the High Times Bonghitters on the Great Lawn in Central Park.  Just two weeks prior, the Bullets had come up big in a 5-4 nail-biting win over the High Times gang.  Things didn’t go so well in the rematch.

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