My friend Tammy wrote a piece about the ladies of Wizard Rock (for the uninitiated, that’s bands spun out of the Harry Potter universe) and the new, growing subculture of, yes, Twilight rock.

But plenty of DIY communities, especially within the indie music scene, are male-dominated and less than female-friendly. The difference in wizard rock is the sheer number of women and girls making the music, and the extraordinary amount of encouragement wrockers and fans provide each other. Many men who are involved in wizard rock actively support their female peers, and the vast majority of wrock music avoids demeaning or stereotypical treatments of women.

Wizard rock has also paved the way for Twilight rock, a small but growing collection of musicians and bands devoted to making music inspired by Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling series. Mostly made up of solo acts and acoustic bands who sing from the perspective of the novel’s many characters, Twirock is overwhelmingly (and, given the book’s fan demographics, unsurprisingly) dominated by women. Katie Parr of the band Bella Rocks! says, “Obviously, Twirock is a branch of wizard rock. We’re still in our young stages, but we are related to them in almost every way.” But Twilight rock doesn’t seem to have the momentum that wizard rock had at the same time in its history, leaving one to wonder if Twilight’s female-dominated readership hinders the growth of its fan-based musical movement.

Most wizard and Twilight rockers will acknowledge that the treatment of women in their source materials is problematic, and some wrockers have also raised questions about gender issues in the scene.

I love when a creative work, whatever that work might be, spawns other creative work, and particularly since Twilight faces a lot of criticism for encouraging girls into traditional gender roles, it’s nice to see girls who love the books taking that love to a very untraditionally feminine place: fronting a rock band.
Of course, there’s the usual downside:

Although there’s no open feud, and a few wizard rockers even have Twirock side projects, Twirockers are often received in the same way that the public tends to characterize all Twilight fans: as screaming, silly girls.

Still, it’s a start. Maybe the more active and involved Twilight fans get, the easier it will be for people to take them seriously–at least as seriously as grown men who call themselves “Harry and the Potters.”

Finally, a fish to help Batman fight the Joker fish: Ichthyologist Pablo Lehmann has named a new species of catfish Otocinclus batmani, on account of the black markings on its tail that resemble the bat-symbol. Of course, if you read the journal Neotropical Ichthyology, then you already knew that. (Link stolen from Mike Sterling).

“Now Archie is set to marry into money, hopefully the price was worth his soul”: I love reading reactions to the Archie/Veronica wedding like this one, whether the writer is joking, half-joking or deadly serious. Did newspapers run stuff like this for every DC “imaginary story” and deliberately provocatively misleading cover in the Silver Age? Did people express outrage over Wonder Woman choosing to marry Mr. Monster instead of Steve Trevor, or Lois Lane marrying Bruce Wayne instead of Clark Kent?

“The story…is written by Michael Uslan (who produced the Batman movies), and—you might want to sit down for this one—it is not very good”: Invincible Super-Blogger, Jimmy Olsen enthusiast and regular Archie Comics reader Chris Sims covers the wedding issue here. Will Sims be able to squeeze references to both the Willennium and the Millennium Giants into a few paragraphs on the latest issue of Archie? Click the link to find out!

Oh snap!: Here’s Douglas Wolk, from his “Don’t Ask! Just Buy it!” column at Comics Alliance, talking about Wednesday Comics: “It’s great to see a lot of these artists thinking about effective, inventive things to do with a gigantic page. (Extra points to the Flash team for the marvelous split-strip effect.) It’d be even more fun to see more artists taking a similarly inventive approach to the page design of DC’s regular-sized titles.”

Was August 19th the least funny the funnies have ever been?: Josh Fruhlinger provides evidence that may support that assertion.

“I honestly can’t believe I typed that last sentence”: How great is Achewood? So great that just reading a fairly straightforward fifteen-paragraph synopsis of the current, still-in-progress storyline may make you both laugh out loud and shake your head in awe. Seriously. (Link via Dirk Deppey).

Tony Millionaire’s cover for Moby Dick: If you click on this expecting to see Ishmael about to attempt to throw a harpoon through Captain Ahab’s butthole, out his mouth and into the great, white whale, you will be disappointed.

“World’s first Muslim superheroes, the 99, out to conquer the West”: Wait a minute Times, if The 99 were only created three years ago, they can’t possibly be the world’s first Muslim superheroes.

“Polluted Streams Breed Super Strong Mosquitoes”: This article points out how remarkably comic book-y that fact is, but what happens if one of those super-mosquitoes bites a high school nerd? Is that super-strength transferable? Will said nerd gain the proportionate strength of a mosquito?

Over at the Ausiello Files, a Season 9 teaser for Smallville has been posted, and yes, we finally get to see some form of the Super-suit. I’ll have to admit, Callum Blue channels Terrence Stamp quite well as General Zod. It’s a fast-paced clip of Tess Mercer (Cassidy Freeman) wielding a sword, Chloe packing heat, and of course some great scenes with Zod and Metallo (Brian Austin Green).

September 25th can’t come soon enough.

Star Trek alum Karl Urban will be joining the cast of the TokyoPop film adaptation Priest.

Urban will play the villainous Black Hat, the Hollywood Reporter announced, a former priest who believes himself to be the lord of the vampires.

The film stars Cam Gigandet and Maggie Q, and will begin production next week.

itsJustSomeRandomGuy, the mastermind behind “I’m a Marvel… and I’m a DC” YouTube movies, is answering the tough questions: like how Deadpool and Green Lantern feel about being played in film by the same guy.

Heh. Oh, Deadpool — “You’re the only one who’s been inside of me… as a character.”

For the three cornerstones of the Avengers — Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor — it’s been a rough few years.

Steve Rogers found himself on the losing side of the superhero Civil War, ending with his untimely “demise.” Tony Stark split the Avengers by backing the Superhero Registration Act, only to find himself forced underground by Norman Osborn. And Thor, betrayed by his former colleagues in the Civil War, has recently been cast out of Asgard by the machinations of his half-sibling Loki.

But according to Previews, despite being battered and broken, there is some hope that the Avengers Trinity could be back in business. According to them, November’s issue of Wizard will have a Marcos Martin cover of the Avengers, with the following blurb:

o Avengers Assemble
We’ve waited and we’ve begged, but can we finally be close to seeing the classic trinity of Thor, Iron Man and Captain America back together again at the House of Ideas?

The fact that the question is even being asked is a good sign — if Marvel didn’t have something to say, would it make the magazine at all? The trio (and yes, I do consider Bucky Barnes to be Captain America, at least till Steve returns in full) last joined forces in the Secret Invasion, but before that, it’s surprising how long it’s been since the Trinity joined forces in the mainstream Marvel universe: they haven’t been together since 2003, several months before Avengers: Disassembled hit, cementing Brian Michael Bendis’ take on the top-selling Marvel characters. What say you on all this?

Variety has reported that Bryan Singer isn’t just rebooting Battlestar — he’s hitting up Excalibur as well.

Not to be confused with the Warren Ellis project of the same name, Singer will be helming a reboot of the 1981 film.

I think if Singer can infuse his characters with the same sort of grandeur he heaped upon Superman and the X-Men (love them or hate them, you have to give him credit for loving the characters), I could see this as a good thing.

And if you’re still thinking about Warren Ellis’ Excalibur project, just remember, sometimes creative genres hit their stride around the same time: think Wyatt Earp and Tombstone, or the Prestige and the Illusionist.

“7 True Tales of Internet Horror” by Keith Knight

This apparently isn’t actually a story per se, but an introduction to the rest of the volume, although I did not discover that until I got to the final panel, in which Knight lists his seventh tale of Internet horror as “Finding out the intro you were asked to do for MySpace Dark Horse Presents was due last week!!”

So, poor job of introducing the introduction as an introduction, although it is a decent introduction of what follows in that it is a typical Keith Knight cartoon, and an anthology that contains a typical Keith Knight cartoon is one that’s probably going to include a great deal of variety, since no one has such a disciplined loose style as Knight, nor the ability to rely heavily on verbal wit without seeming to be trying to overcompensate at all (A word-less Knight strip would still be pretty hilarious, so adept is he at drawing funny faces, and moving from image to image).

Also, its inclusion demonstrates that whoever put the anthology together has pretty good taste, which is a good sign.

“Murderous Intent” by Mike Mignola and Ben Stenbeck

Your typical Mike Mignola story, which is either a good or bad thing, depending on the degree of affection you have for Mignola’s writing and the amount of patience you have with the endless variations of a government agent guy versus the supernatural (with the supernatural presented with enough historical detail that they feel genuine, or at least based on real historical facts, whether they actually are or not).

This one stars Edward Grey, star of Mignola’s Witchfinder series. Stenbeck is credited with art, but many of the panels look so Mignola-esque that I would not call you a liar if you told me he penciled or inked it himself.

That’s not necessarily a criticism of Stenbeck, by the way. Being able to do a very convincing Mignola impression is probably a virtue in drawing a Mignola-verse story.

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Hi everyone.

After yesterday’s post, where I promoted an event at my local comic shop, I got to thinking. I do love promoting local events and creators of whom I’m fans, but I feel bad because there’s an entire country out there that my little northeastern behind never gets to. So! A brilliant idea.

Eventually, we want to create a Newsarama Events calendar where you can promote your shop, your appearances, everything. For now, though, I’m going to take charge and do a weekly events post here at Blog@. I’m thinking Thursday is a good day to do them for the week coming up, since it’s the day after comics day and the day before the weekend officially starts (though I know a lot of you start partying on Thursdays…)

We have an email address set up just for this, so if you’ve got an event at your comic shop OR if you’re a comics creator making an appearance somewhere, you can email us at newsaramaevents [at] gmail [dot] com. Then I’ll aggregate and post them on Thursdays for everyone to peruse.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Please don’t abuse this address, everyone–I’ve got entirely too much junk mail on my other email addresses.

Thanks!

I am a sad, sad girl that I have a day job all the way in Manhattan and won’t be able to make it to this:

Seriously, I could write my own love letter to the Bouncing Souls. They were one of the bands I loved in high school and they never, ever grow old. Bands I love + comics? It’s pure WIN. Plus, Bergen Street Comics is a pretty rad little shop and deserves your love. So get thee to Brooklyn, people.

You may know him as Geordi La Forge from Star Trek: The Next Generation, or as the host of Reading Rainbow, but next month LeVar Burton tosses aside the iconic visor and replaces it with some lightning-striped duds. Burton spoke with Warner Home Video about voicing Black Lightning in the upcoming animated feature Superman/Batman: Public Enemies.

QUESTION: Was it difficult to settle on a voice for Black Lightning?

LEVAR BURTON: I think everybody has a super hero that lives inside of them, so I just went to that place, that deep kind of super hero voice.

QUESTION: What were your comic book habits as a kid?

LEVAR BURTON: I grew up, part time, in Germany. My father was in the military, so we used to trade comic books for entertainment. On Saturdays, you took your box with all your comic books and you went around from apartment building to apartment building, trading comic books with the other American kids living on the base.  Television was in German (language), so we didn’t watch TV – we read comics. But this was before black super heroes came around – they didn’t start appearing until the ’70s. So it’s mildly exciting for me to actually have a chance to play a black super hero today.

QUESTION: Choose one: Batman or Superman?

LEVAR BURTON: When I was a kid, it was always Batman over Superman. Batman had all the cool stuff, and he just had a vibe. Superman was the All-American guy but, with Batman, there’s a little something going on.  Batman’s history was a little edgier, and there was just something really attractive to me about the cowl. Superman is all out there, even though he does the Clark Kent thing, but Batman keeps his identity hidden.  He has this double life that’s very sexy, very attractive for a kid.  Not that I didn’t like Superman – the whole kryptonite thing is all well and good – but Batman was my guy.

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Orlando fans still have one more con to enjoy, as the Hero Initiative is teaming up with Jeff Parker this weekend at MegaCon!

The Exiles mastermind will be giving away free copies of the Agents of Atlas hardcover, and will be signing and sketching things for con attendees.

Parker will be joined by industry figures such as Jimmy Palmiotti, Casey Jones, and John Beatty. The Hero Initiative will also be patrolling the con with their new Sachs and Violens perfume oil.

Robert Downey Jr. seems to be a man of many hats — or iron alloy superarmors. But some news running around the blogosphere is that the titular Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes is also in talks to play…

…The Vampire Lestat?

Girl Geek Diva has some amusing thoughts about all this — here’s the highlight:

If it’s option A, then someone please help me talk Mr. Downey out of this idea? Look, let’s be honest. You’re not right for Lestat. Not in age or physical appearance. You’re a phenomenal actor but there’s something to be said for knowing when you’re just not right for a role. Marius? Maybe. David Talbot? That would be hot. But really now, Lestat? Lestat was a hot blond “in his 20s”. You’re 44 years old and, while I think you’re sexy and I’d let you bite my neck…well, yeah.

If it’s B, then someone needs to whap Universal right up the head and explain to them that it’s not nice to tease the Vampire Chronicles fans. Trust me. We’ve been messed with enough. Between the odd “did we cast Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise backwards?” casting in Interview With The Vampire and some of the wretched acting in Queen of the Damned (I’ll even admit to liking this movie and Stuart Townsend as Lestat and I watch it with guilty pleasure, but we all know some of the acting in it blew bloody chunks) we’ve been teased with reboots and restarts and hopes of someone “getting it right already!”

Well, it ain’t Cowboy Ninja Viking, but if this is true, Downey is certainly trying to shoot for the stars with three different franchises. I personally think the next character the increasingly overexposed Downey should play next is Wolverine. When Downey appears with the Avengers, X-Men, X-Force and have his own crazy solo adventures, the movie can be totally meta!

Artist, pin-up model, and avid Star Wars fan Holly Golightly’s list of work ranges from Nightmare Theatre (for Chaos! Comics) to Sabrina (for Archie Comics) to her creator-owned work like Vampfire and School Bites. Well this time around, Golightly is bringing her Shadow Academy to the world of web-comics.

Newsarama: So Holly, if you wouldn’t mind, summarize what School Bites is all about for those that aren’t familiar with it?

Holly G: Sure. It’s a romantic comedy, sort of like Harry Potter with fangs. It follows the adventures of Cherri Creeper who is made a vampire accidentially. So, she attends this academy that teaches young vampires how to drink responsibly. Also teach them on how to be a positive influence on our world and so it’s like DeGrassi Junior High with vampires. It has a sort of John Hughes feeling, he was a huge influence on me growing up, so this has a tribute to him.

Newsarama: What were the main influences for School Bites? I mean, vampires are in the spotlight more and more these days.

Holly G: Well, this started in ’04. So it’s not like the media inspiried me, it had more to do with my childhood and growing up in a British school system, so I wore uniforms and when I was fourteen my mother gave me Interview with The Vampire and that influenced a lot of my fantasy life. Almost all the stories I write, have to deal with vampires. Vampfire was more for the grown-up genre, while [School Bites] is a bit more younger and funner idea of what vampirism can be or should be. I got really really tired of “wah wah” vampires complaining about their immortality. “Wah, I’m going to live forever. Poor me.” Dude, get a grip. So, that’s why I created School Bites.

Newsarama: Why did you want to make the transition to a web-comic?

Holly G: I felt that I couldn’t keep the schedule for what I would have to be on for distribution, because we do have a bi-monthly comic that comes out , Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose, that has to be on shelves and “Bites” is more of a fun project and outlet. [Jim and I] are workaholics, so how we relax is work and I wanted this to be fun and not stressful. So I thought it would a be a good way for me to be creative and also keep up with the people who enjoy it. Because it started in 2004 and people want more and now I have time to really generate those strips in a fun and interesting format. I just love the whole “your audience is there” part. I grew up in a theater background so when you put out a web-comic, I feel like your audience is live and they can talk right to you. I just love that feedback.

Newsarama: So when several panels or strips are made, will they be collected in book like the first three?

Holly G: Well yeah, the first three are already out and I’m starting from the beginning because I know there is an untapped audience out there that may have not heard of it, or never seen it. Then, of course after I’ve gathered enough, I’ll put it out as a graphic novel. That part’s easy [laughs] I know how to do that part.

To check out this new strip, click here. Now, it may not seem much at first, but keep your eyes peeled for future updates.

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!

When it comes to online comics, apparently sex really does sell.

That’s what happened when Red Handed Studios creator Kyle Hurlbut got an unexpected e-mail from Apple. His online comics series — Fallen Justice — was ready to launch its second issue, after getting a decent following on his 9-and-older first issue.

So imagine his surprise when he got an e-mail from Apple saying that the second issue could not run with the 9+ rating, due to two panels with some sexually charged content — in this case, the character Dyna-girl laying in bed with protagonist Justice Theta, clearly topless.

“I felt this rush of guilt like our mom had caught you,” Hurlbut said. “And then they included a zip file with those two panels and I opened it up and said I guess, okay, I didn’t even think about it.”

But before you cry censorship — despite the comic being delayed by three days as Hurlbut made a few concessions, such as with a violent panel of a character’s head literally exploding, the 12-and-older comic surged in sales. Hurlbut said that the sales difference between Fallen Justice #1 and Fallen Justice #2 was about a 175 percent increase.

“I’m not faulting Apple really — it shows they really are looking at this stuff and they had to dig into the panels and find the things that were questionable, and that was really impressive,” Hurlbut said. “Had they made the comics stick to 9-and-older, I would have been off the outskirts, but since they’ve put in this ratings system, now it goes to the right level.”

Hurlbut says he isn’t quite sure what brought this on — it could have been the book’s weekend release, which kept it on the Featured Downloads list a bit longer, but he says some of it could be attributed to the older rating, which would alert 20- and 30-something readers that it isn’t a “baby” comic.

“It’s weird, because [the second issue] doesn’t make a whole lot of sense without Final Justice #1,” he said. “I’ve kinda tried to draw the line and not do an R-rated comic and every time I talk with my partners about it, they think I’m crazy. The target audience is 30-year-olds with iPhones, not kids, and a lot of them like sex and violence to some level, I guess.”

Fallen Justice #1 is currently free on the iTunes store — Fallen Justice #2 will remain free through the end of this Saturday.

If you squint at this, you might see it as a one-image synopsis for Superman Returns:

Snark aside, Rich Johnston has posted up a provocative image from the New Museum’s Younger Than Jesus exhibit, which puts together art from 25 international artists under the age of 33. There’s now a book of the work out on Amazon.com with an expanded list of 500 artists. And no, neither Batman nor Chuck Norris is breaking this one up.

Considering Superman and Jesus have been almost as closely linked lately — with All-Star Superman and Superman Returns being the chief examples — as the character was with Moses all these years, it’s interesting to see DC’s flagship hero in such a politically-charged image.

Perhaps it’s no different than Alex Ross’ picture of a superheroic Barack Obama — but whether you think it’s powerfully subversive or think of it purely as shock schlock, it’s nice to see that the Last Son of Krypton still hits hard, even in the real world.

Over on Previews’ web site, Warren Ellis has written a short essay discussing his upcoming look at superheroes, called SUPERGOD:

Here’s the tail end of the essay, which is a highlight for me:

But the Messiah, remember, is a very naughty boy.

The thing about building weapons is that there are always accidents. In Supergod, one of these creatures gets loose. And what it does is completely unpredictable, pretty much insane to a human perspective — because it’s not human. Even if it’s programmed to rescue you, it will not perform that task in a way you understand. These dreams of flying men who will save us from the corrupt and deadly world we live in — those are our dreams. We project human desires upon them. If they were real, they wouldn’t think like that.

And that’s why Supergod opens on a government scientist called Reddin, in a state of almost Lovecraftian mental imbalance, sitting on the Embankment of the Thames while London burns in the background, and thousands of corpses float down the river. London got off easy. You should see Mumbai.

If you click the link above, there are also some preview images for the upcoming Avatar book. Supergod will be out this fall, with artwork by Caliber artist Garrie Gastonny.

It’s looking like they’re putting the comics back into Comedy Central this week — Marvel Comics, that is. Last night, Jon Stewart talked with Project Runway’s Tim Gunn, moving at one point to discuss his guest appearance in Marvel’s Models, Inc.:

But this is only one half of Comedy Central’s Dynamic Duo — Stephen Colbert also railed against what he considered an unholy marriage: Archie Andrews and Veronica Lodge:

Of course, this isn’t the first time that Stephen has talked comics before — he is the proud owner of Steve Rogers’ Captain America shield, after chatting it up with Joe Quesada. Furthermore, before President Obama began sweeping the comics industry, Stephen even had a cameo in Amazing Spider-Man as a presidential candidate. What do you think about all this?

Yesterday’s New York Times had a pretty fascinating article about how libraries deal with books that offend some of their patrons, with Hergé’s Tintin au Congo being kept under lock and key and only available via appointment at the Brooklyn Library serving as the article’s lead. (The image above, from the 1946 color version of the story, ought to explain why it offends some patrons, if you forget the controversy that accompanied the book’s republication a few years back).

The other graphic novel that gets mentioned in the piece is Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s self-proclaimed work of pornography, Lost Girls, which an Alice Knapp of the Connecticut Library Association used as an example when talking to reporter Alison Leigh Cowan:  

Ms. Knapp considered reclassifying the novel as an “823,” a call number that would effectively hide the book inside the vast literature department where erotica was parked, or leaving it where it was, grouped in plain sight with other “graphic novels.”

She chose to tough it out.

Why? “It was in constant circulation,” she said. “The reviews for it were outstanding, and then we decided we bought it to be used, going back to the idea that books should be used. That’s why we’re buying them.”

I know from experience that graphic novels can present special challenges to libraries, librarians and patrons (One of the things I do to keep a roof over my head, food on my table and new comics in my hands is work part-time at public library). That’s because of the simple fact that comics constitute a more visual medium than prose—nudity and sex scenes written in prose are left to the imagination of the readers, while they need to be drawn out in a comic.

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