Via this Lionsgate press release, Matthew Vaughn’s adaptation of the Mark Millar/John Romita, Jr. action/comedy comic of the same name has finally found a home. It was turned down from studio to studio until a deal was struck with Lionsgate. There was a certain amount of buzz from the footage shown at this year’s SDCC and there’s uncertainty exactly when it will be released in 2010, but consider me pumped and thankful it’s finally going to come out.

Kick-Ass is about an average comic fanboy that one day decides to fight injustice. The catch? He has no superpowers. He meets an eclectic cast of characters along the way. It’s gritty, violent, but oh-so funny.

Power of — water! Shape of — Tom Welling getting hosed!

Sci Fi Scoop, who illustrated the point with the image above, has reported that Smallville might get a bit more… wonderful… with the introduction of the Wonder Twins.

According to them, David Gallagher (the 7th Heaven actor, not to be confused with the similar-yet-different spelling of the High Moon creator) and Allison Scagliotti (Warehouse 13) are going to be on the show, and are rumored to be playing the Wonder Twins.

Now, you could argue, as Topless Robot does, that this means the show is officially out of ideas. I, for one, am curious to see if Gleek will make his live action appearance.

[Original Source: Kryptonsite]

Spider-Man will be zooming down New York City as he makes his larger-than-life return to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade this year!

The New York Post announced that Ol’ Webhead will be returning after a decade’s hiatus.

” ‘When is Spider-Man coming back?’ is a question that has been shouted from sidelines each and every year we inflate our helium giants on Thanksgiving eve,” parade executive producer Robin Hall told the Post.

The balloon ran from 1987 and was retired after 1998. This retooled balloon is slated to go through at least 2011.

Yeah, that’s not true at all, actually, but it neatly sums up the type of attitude I regularly hear and see in the comics world and the literature about comics–if by literature you mean articles and blog posts written 9 to 1 by men.

Anyway, Jennifer de Guzman wrote a post several months back that I just stumbled upon via this post on Amazon Princess (which I found via When Fangirls Attack), and it articulates something that I’ve never really thought about before, but makes perfect sense.

As I wrote in my reply, I am kind of astounded that some men don’t see why physical empowerment would clearly be attractive for women. I think it’s intriguing to note that women often like the hot women who kick ass as much, if not more, than men do. Here’s what I think is behind that: As women, we are nearly constantly aware of physical threats. And those threats often are of being violated sexually. When I used to go to campus for night classes and people warned me to “be careful,” what they are saying was, essentially, “avoid getting raped.”

Now, what if, what if, as a woman, you could walk around, be sexually attractive and not have to feel threatened? What if all the rage you feel about women being victimized and brutalized could be channeled into pure, righteous ass-kicking? And, because you’re a woman, you could possibly do that ass-kicking without being seen as a testosterone Steven-Seagal-esque meathead. Ass-kicking fantasies for men are more about proving and retaining power, I think. For women, they’re about finding and asserting power when they’re not expected to have any.

This resonated with me on so many levels. I’ve taken kickboxing, krav maga and muay thai at different times in my life, and they always did make me feel more confident and yes, sexier, but I’ve always attributed that to feeling healthier and stronger. Maybe I thought a bit about the idea that I might be able to kick someone’s ass if they harassed me as a component, but only in a very general sense.

Yet Guzman’s point is that a superheroine can be sexy and because she can kick someone’s ass, she doesn’t have to apologize or fear for herself. There’s no need for the tradeoff–sexy woman needs powerful man–because she is both. Her sexuality is no longer something to be feared, but something she is free to display if she wants to without worry of repercussions.

In media for so many years, female characters were simple projections of what men wanted to see. Still, women gravitated toward certain characters, and as more women create comics (and movies and TV series and and and) we argued that yes, we do want superheroines. And maybe we do want them to be pretty.

Also, perhaps this explains why I was never one of those who was really bothered by superheroine costumes. Sure they’re unrealistic. But could they also be a gleeful middle finger to everyone who wants to tell a little girl that what she’s wearing is “inappropriate” or that bad things will happen to her if she dresses in a way that attracts male attention?

(Of course, we could debate about the rather narrow view of what is “sexy” that is still put forth by superheroines, but that’s another post.)

234Next has an interesting article up about not just breaking into the comics industry — but building one from the ground up.

That’s the situation of Sewedo Nupowako, a Nigerian writer and illustrator who is trying to bring comics to his native country. Here’s a highlight:

“Our capacity has been hampered by a lack of resources and time,” Nopuwakwu says. “We are still at that stage where it is difficult to get the attention we need. If people feel we are not relevant, the energy will dissipate, even with the little pockets of creativity doing their thing. In Nigeria, everything is finance.

Discussing Nopuwaku’s journey from drawing Bible stories to telling soap opera tales with “Nollywood’s Finest,” it’s an interesting article, not in the least because it shows that creativity and art has its place everywhere, even when people typically associate news on Africa dealing with economic or health issues. To sum it up: no matter where you live, comics go hand in hand with hope.

Fight! Fight! Fight!: So the other day Comic Book Bin’s Hervé St-Louis wrote an article responding to recent movement in the Who Owns What Where Superman Is Concerned legal battles. Comics Reporter Tom Spurgeon said the editorial was “so wrongheaded it makes my teeth hurt” and counted nine problems with it, and then  St-Louis responded to Spurgeon’s response to his essay. St-Louis loses me pretty quickly in his second essay, as he seems to start out arguing that Superman should be public domain, an argument in the opposite direction of the DC doesn’t owe the Siegels anything position taken elsewhere. I also have a hard time wrapping my head around his statement that “The most important people in the comic book industry are the fans,” and not just because everyone knows the most important people in the comic book industry are actually us bloggers. Like, I can kinda almost see what he means from an economic perspective—that is. if no one buys comics, there isn’t an industry—but then, “industry” and “medium” are different things entirely and, more importantly, “fans” can’t be fans without something to be a fan of, and that means a creator has to create something for them first, right? At any rate, back to what I learned to do in grade school whenever I saw a disagreement among my peers: Fight! Fight! Fight! (UPDATE: As you’ll see at the third link, St-Louis’ second essay has been taken down and is currently being reviesed. Sorry; it was still up and thus a more relevant link when I wrote this).

“Richmonder sells rare ‘Archie’ comic to protest character’s wedding”: That’s what the headline to this article says, anyway. I guess that’s a more exciting hook than “Richmonder sells ‘Archie’ comic to make $32,500.” The CBC also has a story on the subject. Far sexier than either story is this one by Rachelle Goguen on her blog Living Between Wednesdays, in which she takes a close look at all the girls in Riverdale Archie chose Veronica over.

“I never knew that a person could actually be bored to tears until I read Josh Neufeld’s new graphic book about Hurricane Katrina”: That’s Newsweek‘s Adam B. Kushner on Neufeld’s A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge. Kushner’s assessment of Neufeld’s book isn’t quite as harsh as it sounds—he’s using Maus as a measuring stick, after all. That is a heck of a grabby lead  though, isn’t it? (As for the tears, Kushner was actually in tears because he was affected by the content of the book). Regardless of what Kusher has to say about Neufeld’s book though, the peice is well worth a read for what he says about the medium:

One reason the recent spate of graphic novels has produced little memorable work is that, well, comics are really hard to make. Spiegelman spent 13 years on Maus; Neufeld took three for A.D. (which first appeared in a series online). But it’s not just about technical chops. The real problem is a shortage of introspection and metaphorical ingenuity… great graphic novels, a form already much harder to produce, still have to match the achievements of imagination in other disciplines. No wonder there are so few.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say “little memorable work,” but if Kushner’s talking about there being too few Mauses among the explosion of original graphic novels—and comic books and strips created to eventually be graphic novels—well I suppose he has a point. Anyway, please consider giving the piece a read and a think.

“Think back to the original novel. Comic books are the only books shallow enough to go unburned, the only ones people are still allowed to read”: Sarah Boxer points out an interesting irony of the Fahrenheit 451 graphic novel adaptation in this piece for Slate:

As the end time for printed books draws near, Fahrenheit 451, the 1953 novel that envisioned it all, has just been published, again. And this time it reads like a joke—an extended, ironic, illustrated joke. Because this time, Ray Bradbury’s novel about firemen who burn books instead of putting out fires is—oof!—a comic book.

Damn, it was a good weekend for comic book think pieces in the non-comics media…

Speaking of Slate speaking of comics: Here’s Lisa Schmeiser on the curious fact that blockbuster superhero movies never seem to move the dial on the sales of the comic books they’re based on. It would be a lot more interesting a piece if Schmeiser spoke to more people who knew what they were talking about regarding the business end of comics, but then the companies she’s talking about are notoriously tight-lipped about any and all sales data, so there probably wasn’t much more she could have done.

Well I didn’t expect to see that name in an article headlined “Kinky is commonplace at annual fetish convention”: George Perez was at Fetish Con in Tampa this past week. Not on a panel about orange-skinned alien fetishes or anything, just as a con-goer. “It’s wonderful to meet these free-spirited people,” he told the Tampa Tribune, ” Everyone here is accepted for whatever their kinky bend is.” Hmm, what’s Perez’s kinky bend? I’m going to guess crowds. Extremely detailed crowds.

Kerry Callen hearts Tigra: Callen, the creator of the delightful Halo and Sprocket, is a Tigra fan, and he’s got some blog posts to prove it. This Sunday he posted a six-page Tigra strip he submitted to Marvel in the early ’90s, and, speaking of Callen and Tigra, here’s his cover of the cover to Marvel Chillers #3 for the blog Covered last month.

I usually try to review a comic or two here on the weekends, but my review stack has gotten pretty out of control, so I figured instead of shaving a little off the top, I’d try to make a more sizable dent in it. So below you’ll find reviews of five comics and graphic novels from the last few months.

Empowered Vol. 5 (Dark Horse Comics) Adam Warren’s one-man graphic novel series has reached the point where reviewing each new volume seems a little beside the point. You’re either reading or your not, and if you’re not, you should be. Or at least, you should be if you like, love or maybe even loathe superheroes.

Empowered remains not only the funniest superhero comic on the stands, but also the most mature and sophisticated, which itself seems like a joke given the series’ start in superhero parody, shameless cheesecakery and bondage gags that would make William Moulton Marston blush.

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Via When Fangirls Attack, which curates all the great women-and-gender related comics posts out there on the web so I don’t have to, I find this piece on “Marvel Bromance,” or now, apparently “Marvel Super Hero Team-Up.”

I wasn’t aware that there had even been a planned “Marvel Bromance,” which just shows you that I have entirely too much work to do in my life that doesn’t revolve around comics. Because you know I would’ve been all over that, right?

The evolution of the “bromance” out of the “buddy movie” has been interesting to me because it’s deliberately skated across that line of homoerotic tension that buddy movies always shied away from. In comics, the grand pairing of “buddies” was always Batman and his series of Robins, and since Robin was usually a good bit younger than Bruce Wayne, you really want to stay on the right side of that line with those books.

But the “bromance” is still ironic, not genuine. The movies are comedies; the stories loaded with snark and jokes about sharing feelings far more often than actually sharing feelings (when the kids in Superbad say “I love you” to one another they immediately have to pretend it didn’t happen). And so, as Chris Butcher noted, was Marvel’s solicit copy for the trade.

If This Be Bromance–! Marvel’s greatest buddies take the spotlight in this one-of-a-kind collection, and it’s male bonding like you’ve never seen — as Cable and Deadpool swap stories, Wonder Man and the Beast share a plane ride, Spidey and the Human Torch battle back-to-back, Wolverine makes a bet with Nightcrawler, Black Panther and Everett Ross lay their feelings on the line…and the Warriors Three set sail for fun! Plus: Captain America and the Falcon, Iron Man and Jim Rhodes, and more! Be here as Marvel says, “I love you, man!”

However, apparently “Bromance” was too–what, edgy? didn’t get enough attention? any ideas? It’s been changed to the too-long and unmemorable “Marvel Super Hero Team-Up,” which is so bland that it almost seems it must be a euphemism for something.

While “Bromance” might have been silly, it was at least an acknowledgment of the changing rules of same-gender friendships in the wider pop culture. More accurately, since the trade would be a reprint of classic stories, it would have been an acknowledgment that male friendships have always been more complex than a secret handshake or a gruff “Thanks.” Now it’s just another super hero team-up.

I’m not fighting for justice,
I am not fighting for freedom
I am fighting for my life
and another day in the world here

I just do what I’ve been told
We’re just the gravel on the road
And only the lucky ones come home
on the day after tomorrow

-Tom Waits, “Day After Tomorrow”

My Twitter-length review just wasn’t enough. This one, however, contains spoilers, so click below at your own risk.

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Bryan Lee O’Malley makes music, too?: I really enjoyed this L.A. Times blog piece about musicians who are also making comics and/or comics creators who are also musicians. Mostly because some of those were real surprises for me. Shame they chose that picture of the Umbrella Academy though, instead of something more representative of the comic.

“Because Aragonés has drawn commercially for 50 years, he has massive quantities of archival material”: The Ventura County Star has a pretty neat article walking readers through the process of putting together the Ojai Valley Museum exhibit “MAD About Sergio,” dedicated to the work of Sergio Aragones.

The secret of Wolverine’s success: Noah Berlatsky has a brilliant epiphany about Wolverine, unlocking the secret of his appeal in the process. Tim O’Neil also ponders the same subject, and thinks it may actually all come down to Wolvie’s hair.

But in a way, didn’t we all write Ultimatum?: Hey, so did you guys read Ultimatum, Jeph Loeb and David Finch’s five-part miniseries about Ultimate Marvels brutally killing one another? Yeah, me neither. Some critics did though, and they came to some disturbing conclusions. Zak Edwards at Comic Book Bin, for example, applies Roland Barthes’ concept of the “death of the author” to Ultimatum, and trembles. Tucker Stone also offered some disturbing food for thought in his review of the final issue: “This isn’t made in a vacuum, playboy. This is comics.”

I’ve missed writing reviews but don’t quite have it in me to write a long review of everything I bought this week. Instead, I bring you exactly Twitter-length comic reviews. (Be thankful they’re not in haiku. I might still do that someday.)

Hellboy: The Wild Hunt #5: Worth the wait, yet now I have to dig through piles of comics to remind myself what was going on. Still love Hellboy vs. Irish Myth, though.

DMZ #44: No Future: Ryan Kelly drew Zee! Also, the most haunting DMZ story in a while — deviations from the main story are often more compelling than Matty is.

The Unwritten #4: Shift to twisted Hitchcockian suspense-horror comic here. And killer line: “Stories that hit the world like bombs.” My favorite new series?

“Let’s face it, the geeks have inherited the world, and if you want to be a player in this system, you have to be willing to do some of this.”

These words came from Jason Patric, who has just been announced the villain in the upcoming Losers film. Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Idris Elba, and Zoe Saldana will also be in the film.

While the news of Patric’s casting is important, the thing that really got me was how up front he was about all this. Granted, he also says he was interested in the project, it’s true — as I wrote ages ago, comics have so much potential for marketing, all-ages likeability, and boundless creativity, who wouldn’t want to do stuff in comics?

[Via Wildstorm]

While Booster Gold and Rip Hunter both walked away from last issue’s explosions pretty much unscathed, all the classic Teen Titans except Raven—a powerful empathy and the daughter of the villain Trigon—were killed, creating a time derailment that, among other things, caused Dick Grayson never to become Batman following Bruce Wayne’s apparent death. As the two join forces in the past with Raven (late to the party for her teammates’ battle with Jericho, Deathstroke and the Black Beetle), Hunter determines that the only way to keep it all from happening is to go into the future, and see what it is that the Black Beetle wants.

When they get there, of course, it’s the future of a world in which the Teen Titans’ deaths paved the way for Raven’s father Trigon to take over the world, killing the Justice League and leaving them without successors to protect the next generation. While Kyle Rayner and Zatanna appear to be leading a fledgling resistance movement against the cosmic dictator, it doesn’t appear to be much more effective than the revolt Green Arrow and Hakwman were leading against Max Lord in the “Blue and Gold” storyline. It’s an issue full of a lot of talking and stage-setting, which promises to deliver with a LOT of punching and explosions in next month’s conclusion to the “Day of Death” story. Still, Booster’s upcoming Blackest Night tie-ins don’t start until #26, so what’s in store for the landmark 25^th issue of the book? We talked to Dan Jurgens for some commentary on this month’s issue and some clues as to what’s next for the world’s most commercially-viable superhero. (more…)

Legion fans found reason to celebrate this week as the Legion of Super-Heroes returned to regular publication as a co-feature in Adventure Comics. Only one problem . . .

The identification captions on Night Girl and Shadow Lass are switched. Night Girl is the white-skinned powerhouse and love interest of Cosmic Boy; Shadow Lass is the blue-skinned caster of darkness and love interest of Mon-El. Got that?

Also, Mon-El himself is missing from the big group shot, and that shouldn’t be because Mon-El is currently starring in Superman. See, that’s Mon-El in the 21st century, hundreds of years before he joins the Legion. Got that, as well?

Actually, this brings me to a point I wanted to make about the Legion . . .
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File this Image series under “so-crazy-it-will-blow-your-mind”:

Via Major Spoilers, this series is about a government program that turns people with multiple personality disorder into counterintelligence operatives. But what happens when these people — called Triplets — are turned into assassins? A lone Triplet called COWBOY NINJA VIKING goes into action!

Somebody get AJ Lieberman and Riley Rossmo a medal. The book is due out October 7.

[Via Major Spoilers]

Youngblood might be getting a little bit more sparkly. MTV spoke with director Brett Ratner on who he’d like to be in his movie — the answer may surprise you. Or sicken you.

“Definitely [Robert Pattinson] from ‘Twilight,’” Ratner told MTV News when asked if he has his eye on any potential “Youngblood” actors at this point. “He just feels like he belongs in that world. I don’t only see him as a vampire, he’s a really good actor.”

Okay, that isn’t an unfair statement to make, about his acting chops (although, admittedly I wouldn’t know, not having seen Twilight). But the character that Pattinson would most likely play? The leader of the Youngbloods, a certain redheaded archer named Shaft:

(And no, for those just joining us, this guy has nothing to do with Richard Roundtree or Samuel L. Jackson.) What do you think? Do you see a resemblance here? Or is Brett just joining the Twilight bandwagon a little too late? Sound off!

I was very skeptcial of the New York Times announcing special beseller lists for various categories of comics back in March, and have only grown more skeptical and cynical since, as being on any of the three ghetto-ized lists under the ghetto-ized “graphic books” category doesn’t seem to mean much of anything.

Unless you’re a publisher, in which case it means you can refer to  yourself as a New York Times bestseller in blurbs, and perhaps make readers think that means you’re a real New York Times bestseller (that is, on the books list), and not that you got a participation ribbon in the just about everybody wins eventually lists, micro-targetted to make entry fairly easy (that is, one of the graphic books lists).

If you’d like to hear someone who isn’t just a cranky crank talk about why the lists don’t really work right, I’d suggest reading Christopher Butcher’s posts on the subject here and then here. Obviously I personally don’t put much stock in the list and generally ignore it, but I certainly understand why publishers would like it (and thus why the NYT would bother producing it).

In the past few months, I’ve seen inclusion on that list touted in more and more press releases and other PR material for various comics and graphic novels, but by far the most elegant example of such touting I’ve seen came in this week’s issue of Incredible Hercules:

See that box in the lower right corner? That’s Incredible Herc‘s editor Mark Paniccia semi-ironically name-dropping the NYT while in the process of providing one of those old-school footnotes.

Bravo Paniccia! That’s an amusing bit of own-horn tootery worthy of Stan Lee himself!

(The image above is by Reilly Brown and Nelson DeCastro, and it appears in Incredible Hercules #132, which, by the way, you should totally read if you’re not already a regular Herc reader. It’s a great jumping-on point!)

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending Chicago Comic Con. It was a very profitable show for me, not monetarily, but cognitively. I talked to some wonderful artists and attended some art panels to see what I could glean from the masters. Some interesting stuff came up, but the greatest benefit was having my portfolio ripped apart critically by two amazing artists in particular: Howard Chaykin and Mitch Mitch Breitweiser. I was honored to have them take the time to fill me in, in gore detail, about everything from the very basics of the mistakes I made in my pages. It was all constructive, though I’ll admit, sometimes hard to listen to. Still, I can imagine no better way to learn how to improve. A heart-felt thanks to both of you, Mr. Chaykin and Mr. Breitweiser.

Well, all the information I’d learned at the con got me thinking about how to properly distill it into something I can reference and pass on to others. Thus I have created the below: PRINCIPIA STRONG TOMICA. By diagramming all that I learned over the expertly drawn panels of three consecutive pages from Chris Sprouse’s and Alan Moore’s TOM STRONG #1.

Here is a text summary:
‘Who, What, Where, When, Why,’ must all be explained in the art. ‘How’ is the story itself.
Compositions are Three-fold with Background, MIDGROUND, and Foreground. (Newspaper strips often only have Back and Foregrounds)

Background:

‘where, when’
context of the action
shows the movement
shows essential textures for continuity

Midground:

‘who, what’
subjects and actors
action happens here

Foreground:

‘why, what’
what the subjects in the midground react to or ignore
frames the panel with black to create guide the eye

FIVE SHOTS OF COMICS:
Establishing Shots:

‘where, when’
man vs god, man vs nature, man vs society
extra background, extra midground, foreground
embellished background
draw the feet
frame heavily with black foreground

Wide Shots:

‘where, when, what’
man vs god, man vs nature, man vs society
background, midground, foreground
draw the feetvdraw background
frame well with foreground
important, physical action

Mid Shots:

‘who, what, why’
man vs nature, man vs man
background, midground, foreground
may need feet
action and acting against the foreground
all character equal players in midground
subjects vs environment
important, physical action

Close Shots:

‘who, what’
man vs man
background, midground
no feet, textures for
background
characters unequal
subtlety, facial a cting
relationships between subjects

Extreme Close Shots:

‘who’
man vs himself
midground
just face
often no background needed
externalize the internal
drama, irony, surprise

Agree, disagree? Questions, comments? Love poems, hate limericks? Want to paypal me wads of digital cash for my brilliance? Email: latino.kyle (at) gmail (dot) com.
-
Kyle Latino

It’s Thursday. I have had too much caffeine and haven’t bought my comics for the week yet. Have some links.

Boondock Saints comics? Hell yes.

Becky Cloonan‘s ongoing webcomic-saga of her “feud” with Amy Reeder Hadley just keeps getting funnier.

Warren Ellis thinks you should buy this print from Laurenn McCubbin. I think you should buy it for me.

One of my favorite political bloggers, Spencer Ackerman, is now the star of a comic book. Where the heck is MY comic book, people?

Jonathan Lethem on the “Squandered promise of science fiction.”

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