Pocket Books has assembled a team of creators worthy of the Justice League themselves with the announcement of their upcoming book, With Great Power…

An anthology of prose superhero stories, you might not think it’s your cup of tea — that is, until you see the list of authors on the list. Check out the table of contents alone:

Introduction: The Golden Age by Lou Anders
“Cleansed and Set in Gold” by Matthew Sturges
“Where their Worm Dieth Not” by James Maxey
“Secret Identity” by Paul Cornell
“The Non-Event” by Mike Carey
“Avatar” by Mike Baron
“Message from the Bubblegum Factory” by Daryl Gregory
“Thug” by Gail Simone
“Vacuum Lad” by Stephen Baxter
“A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows” by Chris Roberson
“Head Cases” by Peter David & Kathleen David
“Downfall” by Joseph Mallozzi
“By My Works You Shall Know Me” by Mark Chadbourn
“Call Her Savage” by Marjorie M. Liu
“Tonight we fly” by Ian McDonald
“A to Z in the Ultimate Big Company Superhero Universe (Villains Too)” by Bill Willingham

I was sold on the titles, to be honest — the authors just drive the point home that this is going to knock you out of your seat. According to Lou Anders, he says the book will be out at some time in 2010, possibly in time for next year’s San Diego Comic Con.

“We’re happy to do the straight adaptations, but those are less fulfilling”: That’s Dark Horse’s Mike Richardson on the publisher’s preference for prequel style film tie-ins over comic book adaptations, in a Variety story about the symbiotic relationship between comics and film, particularly as far as marketing is concerned. I found the numbers interesting in a deperssing sort of way, as writer Marc Graser says, “For a book to be considered successful, it needs to move 20,000 units per issue.” Yikes. Is the bar low enough yet? Of course, Graser also says Dark Horse published 30 Days of Night, so perhaps it should all be taken with a grain of salt.

It probably helps that the joke is like over 25 years old, too: The Washington Post‘s Michael Cavna is collecting political cartoons on the Obama-sponsored Crowley/Gates beer-having that all use the exact same joke. One interesting thing about cases like this is the opportunity it affords to see how different cartoonists frame/present the same gag, and the little differences in each artist’s final product.

“I don’t know where that quest will take her, but the way I figure, it’s got to be better than being a schoolgirl by day and a rock star by night”: The New York Times has an excellent essay by Peggy Orenstein about little girls and superheroes, occasioned by Orenstein’s daughter asking if she could dress up as Wonder Woman for her sixth birthday party. It’s well worth a read, and, if you’re in the business of making or the habit of supporting superhero comic books, well worth a think (I think).

“We love you a lot, but we don’t know if we love you enough to wear spandex”: So said Sarah LaFore’s bridesmaids when they learned their friend was having a superhero-themed wedding. The Sun Journal ran a feature story on the ceremony the day beforehand. The bride was Wonder Woman, the groom was Superman, and Batman, Aquaman, Spider-Man and a bunch of Amazons made up the wedding party. There are plenty of pictures with the piece, too. You may want to check the Sun Journal again this afternoon to see if any villains attacked. At the very least I wouldn’t be suprised if Lois Lane and Steve Trevors had something to say at the “speak now or forever hold your peace” portion of the proceedings.

It should be shocking to absolutely no one that a huge part of my love for Alien is the character of Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver. I once had a college professor say that the only truly feminist movie she could think of was the original Ridley Scott Alien.

Scott’s history of directing movies with badass women (Thelma & Louise and G.I. Jane among them) got its start with Ripley, and it makes me happy to hear that Scott will be returning to helm an Alien prequel, even if we’re unlikely to see Ripley in it: I have faith that we’ll get some other good, complex female characters.

The first Alien movie is so good precisely because you don’t see Ripley coming as the last woman standing. She’s not your typical horror movie Final Girl. She’s abrasive, effortlessly competent and undersexualized–until the final scene, where she’s let down her guard literally and symbolically, and has to fight the alien with none of her defenses. Each character you get attached to is killed off and you realize, slowly, that Ripley is your hero.

Then, of course, you got her for several more films. But the original horror of Alien can be brought back in a prequel because once again, you won’t know who your hero is. Since Ripley first met the Alien in the original film, even if we catch a glimpse of young Ripley she won’t be our lead, and instead there will be a new cast to deal with new horrors.

I also can’t wait for a Scott-helmed Alien movie with 2009-style special effects. If you watch the bonus features on the original Alien DVD, you’ll learn interesting facts like the alien inside the egg was actually Scott’s own rubber-gloved hands. And since the movie claims one of the most truly horrifying moments I’ve seen in cinema, still–the moment where the alien bursts out of Kane’s chest and skitters off down the hall–with those rudimentary effects, imagine what disgusting moments Scott can create with high-end CGI?

Again, though, the first movie is terrifying because you don’t know what’s going to happen. When the alien erupts out of the insides of a human character you’ve grown to like, in a vicious horror of pregnancy gone wrong (untopped til Breaking Dawn, but I’m so not going there right now), you realize that even bodies are not safe, and this is capitalized upon when you find out that Ash is a robot. A prequel will have a lot to do to top the thrills of a long franchise like Alien, but I’m betting Ridley Scott is the director who can live up to the early films.

And since I started off with a tribute to Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, how about some ideas for a badass heroine for a new Alien age? Entertainment Weekly suggested Ellen Page, but I’m not feeling her. My vote for now goes to Lucy Liu or Eliza Dushku, but I can be persuaded…

GraphicAudio, who have been producing high-quality audiobook versions of DC’s prose novels for a few years now, have just announced that they are changing audio formats from the Windows Media (WMA) format to the more popular (and industry-standard) MP3 format.

According to an e-mail sent out to subscribers recently, GraphicAudio is “now offering MP3 Downloads of almost all of our GraphicAudio®…Movie in Your Mind™ titles. The Executioner series will be available in the coming weeks.”

This should be a huge boon to their business, as if the DC titles are any indication, the quality of the recordings is pretty high…but having them in WMA made them a bit unwieldy and uncooperative with iPods. Being password-protected and not MP3 friendly made them more difficult to carry with you, unless you wanted to burn up to ten CDs for an unabridged audio production.

Readers are entitled to three licenses for each of the titles they’ve purchased from GraphicAudio, so if they’ve purchased a product in the past and haven’t downloaded all three, they’ll be able to migrate the format to MP3 for a nominal fee ($1.50 per title) by surfing to the company’s upgrade page. If all the licenses have been used, upgrades are not being offered. GraphicAudio also says that starting in October, the Windows Media format will be discontinued altogether and MP3 will be the only digital format available for new releases from the GraphicAudio store. According to the e-mail, “GraphicAudio titles will be available in MP3 Download and Audio CD only. All MP3-CD products will be discontinued on October 1, 2009. Long Haul Box Sets in MP3-CD format will continue to be available.”

It’s official: Fox has announced that Ridley Scott, who brought us Alien in 1979, is set to direct the latest entry in the franchise, the yet untitled Alien 5, slated for 2011.

Is it possible that the horrible creatures from Alien can behave themselves? We should get to see how they interact on their own turf as this prequel will visit them on their planet of origin. No doubt, they won’t act civilized for long once the humans arrive.

At 71, Ridley Scott is a very busy man. A look at his IMDb shows he has quite a number of movies in the works including Brave New World, The Forever War, Stones, The Kind One and Child 44.

The screenwriter for the new Alien movie, John Spaihts, made the successful pitch to Fox and Ridley Scott on the strength of his previous space thrillers, featuring Keanu Reeves: Shadow 19 and Passengers. Spaihts’ current writing schedule includes The Darkest Hour, Children of Mars and St. George and the Dragon.

There have been three sequels to Scott’s original, most notably James Cameron’s Aliens, the second movie that came out in 1986. This is the first time that Ridley Scott has returned as director of the franchise. Will he be able to bring this latest movie back to the level of the first two?

Regular readers here know I love Joelle Jones’ art. You’ll also probably know I love Joss Whedon. So Joelle Jones character sketches for Dr. Horrible comics? WIN.

You can get Phonogram vs. The Fans, the limited-edition Phonogram fanzine that I wrote about here, on Etsy for the low, low price of $5. You want this.

Gail Simone, good and pissed about the EA Games “booth babes” debacle.

Racialicious has a review from the first Asian American Comic Con.

Johanna Draper Carlson talks Girlamatic, which I’d somehow missed out on, so read what she has to say.

One of my favorite bloggers, Renegade Evolution, talks about girls and gaming: “Hey baby, why all the aggro?”

Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan have a cool Op-Ed in the New York Times about “why we need vampires.” Lately I’ve been doing a good bit of thinking about why vampire stories seem to appeal to a teen girl demographic in particular, so this fit right in.

And via BUST, Johnny Depp is set to play a vampire in yet another Tim Burton-helmed picture, Dark Shadows.

Stephenie Meyer, author of Twilight, is set to test the theory that fans are really just out for the hot boys at Comic-Con–she’s going to star in her own Female Force comic. (Can I mention yet again that the name “female force” creeps me out? Referring to women as “females” sounds so animalistic to me…)

Finally, on that note, an interview with Francesca Lia Block on her new vampire young adult novel, Pretty Dead. Since one of the things I’m interested in is why the vampire romance always seems to be older male vampire and young mortal girl (Angel/Buffy, Edward/Bella, etc.) I’m especially intrigued with Block’s book since it reverses that dynamic.

If you’ll excuse me, I think I’m off to watch Angel…

“You can tell that Johns is trying very hard to write something that doesn’t just lie there on the page, and in these troubled times, that counts for much with me”: Johnny Bacardi has an excellent review of the beginning of Geoff Johns’ Blackest Night event/story, made all the more interesting by the fact that Bacardi explains that he isn’t exactly a huge fan of Green Lantern, or of continuity-heavy event books, or of superhero decadence, or of Geoff Johns’ plotting, but still found himself admiring “the scope and the lurid drive of the thing.”

“Who…wants to read this crap? Whose idea of a hero is a NPR commentator in a swimsuit?”: Noah Berlatsky is still reviewing his way through the Wonder Woman catalog, and he’s really not into the Greg Rucka run, as that quote no doubt indicates (and it’s one of the nicer assessments of Rucka’s Wonder Woman-as-celebrity/political figure take in Berlatsky’s piece). I say it depends on the NPR commentator, are we talking Daniel Schorr or Kevin Kling? Kathryn Yu or Baxter Black?

Speaking of NPR…: Their Lynn Neary recently profiled artist Tim Hamilton’s graphic novel adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s classic Fahrenheit 451. You can give it a read and/or listen here.

“All of this serves once again to make the company…continue to look like a slow-moving behemoth, incapable of making decisions, compared with the new kid on the block, Marvel Comics”: In a blog post for The Guardian, Ben Child discusses Warner Brothers’ reluctance to formally, officially announce the next Batman movie, and wonders why they’re having such relative trouble making a Superman, Wonder Woman or another Batman movie. Personally, I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that Hal Jordan is going to end up beating Wonder Woman to the silver screen.

“The two faces of Condi and Michelle”: In a post at Real Clear Politics, Tom Bevan discusses the way that former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was depicted by political cartoonists “with all of her features exaggerated in the most unflattering—and, let’s be honest, racist —way,” while First Lady Michelle Obama gets off easier. He presents some examples, but I’m not convinced there’s a double standard at work here, since there’s a much simpler explanation—as first national security advisor to President George W. Bush and then his secretary of state, Rice was a much more powerful figure than a first lady. Something interesting for political cartoonist observers to think about, anyway.

“The first female G.I. Joe action nurse is produced, which turned out to not be popular”: The Chicago Tribune offers a timeline of G.I. Joe history, from the 1941 comic strip to next month’s live-action movie.