Y’know, I usually don’t talk too much religion on this blog — perhaps it’s the Jewish holidays that are bringing it to the fore for me (so happy belated 5770 to my fellow Red Sea pedestrians) — but G. Willow Wilson has a really interesting look about Islam and comics over at Broken Frontier.

Here’s a highlight from the article:

We talked about AIR, and he asked whether I’d gotten any push-back from conservatives. This is our polite way of saying threats from fundamentalists. I told him I’d heard a little grumbling, primarily about Blythe’s skirt. Her premarital relationship too, but mostly the skirt. It came as a surprise to me—here I thought I was starting a conversation about whether or not it’s acceptable to use pagan symbols to make a point about monotheism. Was anybody concerned by the giant winged serpent that shows up in almost every issue? Nope, just the skirt.

It’s really fascinating stuff, especially once she starts talking about Teshkeel Media’s The 99, a superhero team series I got to read a few years ago via a close friend at Los Angeles’ Levantine Cultural Center. Click here to read the rest of the column — it’s definitely worth reading.

Genre entertainment got more or less snubbed during last night’s Emmys, but there were a few exceptions to the rule.

While Lost, Battlestar Gallactica, and the Big Bang Theory’s Jim Parsons didn’t win their respective nominations, Pushing Daisies — that’s right, the canceled show by one-time Heroes hope Bryan Fuller — managed to snag a win for Best Supporting Actress with Kristen Chenoweth. Also, as Simon DelMonte rightly reminded me, Lost’s Michael Emerson did win Best Supporting Actor.

And of course, no event hosted by Neil Patrick Harris could be complete without a cameo by Dr. Horrible:

Yes, Captain Hammer, you have mastered those Internets.

The Guardian reports that a man who founded the International Church of Jediism has accused a store of religious discrimination.

23-year-old Daniel Jones — or his Jedi name, Morda Hehol — says he was victimized by a Tesco store in Bangor. The crux of the argument? When he entered the store to get some food during his lunch break, store employees told him to take his hood off.

“They said: ‘Take it off’, and I said: ‘No, its part of my religion. It’s part of my religious right.’ I gave them a Jedi church business card,” Jones told the Guardian. “It states in our Jedi doctrination that I can wear headwear. It just covers the back of my head.” Tesco was a little bit more cheeky with its response, saying their main defense is that Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Yoda were all seen without their hoods.

I’ll be honest, I’m kind of torn by this. On the one hand, it’s pretty easy to dismiss the guy as a weirdo for establishing a religion around George Lucas’ film trilogies, but at the same time, if you took out the word “Jedi” there would be some major implications here. What if they told a Jew they couldn’t wear a kippah? If they told a Muslim they would have to remove their hijab? What do you think?

[via Alex Irvine]

How the X-Men are like the Chicago Cubs (other than the fact that they both play a lot of baseball): I enjoyed Tim O’Neil’s latest post about the X-Men franchise’s historical popularity, and why it seems to be on the wane for the first time in so long. In it, he compares being an X-Men fan to being a fan of a particular sports team:

You liked the X-Men like a Chicago fan likes the the Cubs. Sure, the Cubs never quite make it, but you enjoy the show all season anyway. Sure, some fair-weather fans may come and go as the home team waxes and wanes, but there’s still a huge amount of people who stay committed through thick and thin. Sometimes, and this is something that is occasionally hard to comprehend for many, the franchise thrives despite the low quality of many of its constituent books. The reason for this is simple: people get loyal, and this loyalty takes buying X-Men books above the level of a simple capitalistic exchange of money for a good or bad comic and places it instead on the plane of loyalty to an idea. Ask any Red Sox fan circa 2004: there is nothing sweeter than a long-delayed victory, made even sweeter because of the turmoil wrought on the long-suffering fanbase.

In O’Neil’s X-Men-as-sports-team metaphor, there’s really only one thing the owners of a sports team can use to scare off fans, and it’s a thing Marvel decided to try around the millennium (Oddly, it was the very thing that brought me to check out the X-books for the first time, but then I didn’t stick around too long, which proves O’Neil’s point).

Speaking of the X-Men and pieces of online writing about comics I enjoyed…: Early last week Derek Halliday reviewed Del Rey’s X-Men: Misfits book, and he does a much, much better job than I did, being more knowledgeable about both the X-Men and manga. Additionally, his post has a whole bunch of imagery from the book. Check it out.

And speaking of speaking of…: What the heck, have another. Here’s Graeme McMillian on the X-Men at The Savage Critics. It’s his third post in a series about Claremont’s run on the franchise.

Catfight!: On an NPR blog, Glen Weldon checks in on the great Gotham City Sirens Vs. Marvel Divas battle of 2009. (Link swiped from Dirk Deppey). Remember all the talk about the first issue cover, the solicitation copy and Joe Quesada’s question-answering about Divas? How did all that affect sales? Apparently the impact was somewhere between “very little” and “none at all,” according to Paul O’Brien’s monthly sales data analysis at The Beat, as the first issue seems to have done less than 22,000 copies in the Direct Market. Well, actually, maybe all that attention did help sell a few thousand copies, as I didn’t expect it to sell more than 20K.

But Top Shelf didn’t even publish that book!: Gallery Books in San Francisco recommends David Small’s graphic novel Stitches (along with a mess of prose books) to the San Francisco Chronicle, as part of the paper’s feature “Top Shelf.”

“Graphic novels, which are books that are composed of consecutively ordered texts, panels and images, have brought new excitement to children’s reading”: I have not heard that particular phrasing, but that’s not a bad definition for a notoriously difficult to define term. It’s from an article about four comics in yesterday’s News & Observer by Susie Wilde. Binky the Space Cat, The Storm in the Barn, Stitches and Adventures in Cartooning are covered at the link.

No: Given Disney’s purchase of Marvel, and Boom Studios’ licensing deal with Disney for some properties, Comic Book Bin’s Hervé St-Louis asks “Should Marvel Comics Buy Boom Studios?”

Each week that I don’t have a steady job brings with it guilt over buying comics. Guilt because I’m not buying everything I want, and guilt because I spend money at all. I wish I could lay out the cash for the trades and OGN’s I want each week (um, hello, omnibus hardcover of Whedon & Cassaday’s Astonishing X-Men?) but I’m pretty broke. The lovely thing about comics, though, is that they still cost less than a beer does in Brooklyn, and so as of now, at least, they’re still in the budget.

This week includes: Hellblazer #259 (oh, John, will you ever change? Don’t ever change.), Madame Xanadu #15, No Hero #7 (of 7–how gory will the last one be? Let’s see if Warren can outdo even himself.)

Things I want but don’t know if I can afford: Labor Days volume 2 and Neil Gaiman’s newest, Odd and the Frost Giants. Seriously, Mr. Gaiman, I can’t keep up with you these days. I haven’t even read the Graveyard Book yet (cue shocked gasps).

What about you? How do you make the decision what to buy and what not to buy when money is tight? I know that technically trades come out cheaper than buying singles, but buying a couple of singles each week always feels like spending less money. It’s wrong, I know, but I can’t convince myself otherwise…

Part six of Jaia’s debut.

Find out more about her adventures here on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays or at ComicsByEgg.com.

Surrogates, the new Bruce Willis sci-fi action thriller from Disney’s Touchstone Pictures, is set to hit theaters Sept 25. It is based on the graphic novel written by Robert Venditti, illustrated by Brett Weldele and published by Top Shelf Productions. It all began as a script for a graphic novel that, as Robert Venditti says, has gone far “beyond anything that I ever anticipated happening.” Speak with him and you hear a humble guy who knows what he wants. Here is Robert Venditti talking about Surrogates, comics and Disney/Marvel.

As Venditti describes it, the whole idea of Surrogates even getting published was far from a sure thing. He was working in the mail room at Top Shelf Productions and was hoping that maybe Chris Staros, one of the partners, might be able to help him find a small publisher and then he could have a book he could pass around to editors in hopes of landing more work. “So, to have all of this happen: to actually get it optioned and have it made, which is the huge hurdle you have to clear, and then to have it be the size and scope that it is, you don’t even know what to say.”

Ask him what a surrogate is or what the story is about, and Venditti answers with such enthusiasm you’d think it was the first time he was being asked. “Maybe you want to have a surrogate because you want to summit Mt. Everest but you don’t want to go through the turmoil of actually doing that or maybe you are diabetic and you just want to eat chocolate cake — you can do any of these things with your surrogate and experience it as if you are really doing it but it’s all coming to you secondhand through the machine.”  The story about these surrogates, these android duplicates that do all the things its human owners only wish to do from a distance, takes a turn when they start turning up fried out in the real world. Something or someone is destroying them and that is where detective Harvey Greer steps in, played by Bruce Willis in the movie.

Having Bruce Willis on board is something that Venditti sounds like he’ll never grow tired of talking about. He sets up a scene a few years back, just as the trend of movies based on comics is heating up, and it’s him and his wife sitting at the kitchen table. They look at each other. What if, he asks, just for fun, a movie was made from his book? “Who would we cast in the film? And her and I both thought that Bruce Willis would be the perfect guy to play Greer because he is one of the very few actors that can be convincing in tough action sequences but also convincing in the more personal, emotional scenes like Greer has with his wife in the book, which is a very strong undertone of the book, the effect that surrogate technology has had on their marriage. And there aren’t a lot of guys who can do both and he is one of them. So, we thought he would be perfect and then, six years later, they cast him in that very same role, so it’s all pretty surreal.”

Surrogates can be practical as replacements for humans in dangerous occupations but the real attraction is that they can be the ideal version of their owners. Is this human trait to want to be something other than who you are essentially good or bad? “There is always something about yourself that you wish you could tweak to some extent. I don’t know that that’s a positive or a negative. When I wrote the book, I tried not to make any determinations. I’m trying to just ask questions. Is technology used in this way good or is it bad? It could be good in the sense that it’s what leads us to strive to better ourselves and ultimately make the world better around us. But it could be bad in the sense that it could make us go beyond that and start to lose sight of who we actually are and try to become something that we are not. So, there is no black or white, yes or no, answer to those kinds of questions — it all depends on how they are applied.”

And how are we applying the technology we have today? Where are we headed? “The technology is already so much more near the future than even the story I wrote. I put it about fifty years down the road but it seems like technology is advancing at a much faster rate that it’s going to be here sooner than that.” Venditti recalls a documentary he saw on Wired.com with robotics scientists demonstrating the use of robot arms by wearing a headset you operate with your mind. Then he thinks about things like Second Life and how we’re inching closer and closer to the future in his story with all the activity already in play in a virtual world. And, in this new world, can we hope for a truly level playing field free of prejudice? “I would hope we could reach such a place without having to use technology to get there.” In his story, for instance, the only way people can guarantee advancement is by simply taking on the required identity such as women pretending to be men in order to be airline pilots.

Now, get Venditti to talk about the writer’s craft and his creative journey and you’ll hear him make his way to a life changing discovery. “Through high school, all the way to graduate school, I had the same misconceptions that most people have which is that comics are just children’s literature and not capable of complex ideas and themes — never having read them and it was a completely ignorant stance to take. But a friend of mine was a big comics fan and got me to read an arc of Astro City called ‘Confession’ and it just jumped out at me.” “Confession”, by Kurt Busiek, considered a masterwork in comics comparable to Watchmen, showed Venditti that comics could be more than a plot-driven genre but it could be a character-driven work of literature.  On top of this discovery, Venditti had always harbored a childhood desire to be an animator. “So now, flash forward, and I’m reading these comic books with a literary sensibilty and I realized here’s a medium where I can write the stories and someone else can translate the stories into art and that’s probably as close as I’m ever going to be to that original childhood ambition I had.”

So, there is that wall between academia and commerce that must be overcome. What about another wall, the one that separates fans of mainstream comics from fans of alternative comics? Venditti’s relationship with Top Shelf Productions is a prime example of how these two worlds can mix with excellent results. Surrogates was definitely something new for Top Shelf, known for black and white graphic novels with a more literary style. Surrogates would be their first mainstream full color serialized story. “So, it was a bit of leap for them,” Venditti says, “but I take it as a great source of pride that Top Shelf felt that Surrogates had strong characters and a literary style. I don’t think that a wall should be there. There is a lot of cross-over. I know from working for Top Shelf, among the leading light of their generation of cartoonists, and they all grew up on Marvel and DC and they’ve all got a Spider-Man or a Batman story that they are just dying to tell so I don’t think the wall is as pronounced as maybe some people would think.”

You have to start somewhere and, as Venditti points out, there was a time before the independent comics movement when everyone grew up on Marvel and DC. Only now, can you have readers who have only known indie comics and, for them, it might be easier to cross over to mainstream comics. Whatever the case, Venditti is proud to let you know that Top Shelf has always welcomed all readers. “We do more conventions than anybody in a given year. We have a pretty heavy tour schedule and go to places where we are really the only independent literary style comics publisher in attendance. You know, places like Chicago Comic-Con, MegaCon in Orlando or Dragon*Con in Atlanta, are places where it’s a heavily mainstream audience and we’ve just sort of won people over one at a time. And our fan base, and people that read our books, is very much composed of people that are mainstream comic fans as well.”

The prequel to Surrogates, the graphic novel, recently came out and we can expect a sequel in the future to round out a trilogy. “I’m sort of doing the Star Wars model there where I did the middle first and then the beginning and then I do the end. But since then, I’ve also come up with two additional novels that I would like to do as well so right now, in my head, we’re up to five.”

Also from Top Shelf, there is Venditti’s upcoming Homeland Directive which explores how, in a post 9/11 world, we reconcile public safety with personal privacy. “When the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written, the worst thing you had to worry about was maybe a cannon ball coming through your window. We live in a much scarier world now.”

As for Disney’s acquisition of Marvel, Venditti’s view is framed by the fact he already works for both companies. Of course, Surrogates is a Disney movie. Venditi is also working with Hyperion Books, a division of Disney, where he is working on a graphic novel adaptation of Percy Jackson & The Olympians series. For Marvel, he did a Captain America story for Marvel Comics Presents in April of last year. And, among other upcoming projects, he has an Iron Man One Shot entitled, “Iron Protocol,” that comes out in October. “So I have a foot in both camps. If the acquisition now means that both feet are in one camp, then so much the better.” As for any concerns of change over at Marvel, Venditti doesn’t think there’s reason to worry. “Disney already has other, non-superhero comics publishing divisions, so as long as those continue with their output, I don’t see why Marvel wouldn’t remain primarily a superhero imprint.”

Batman: Cacophony

Writer: Kevin Smith

Artist: Walt Flanagan

Inker: Sandra Hope

Published by DC Comics

Hardcover, 142 pages, $19.99

As he throws out one self-deprecating line after another, Kevin Smith can make what he does look easy but it would be a mistake to dismiss what he’s done with Batman: Cacophony. In his introduction, he readily admits he can do better but  what he really means is that he’s inspired to take the work further. And, after reading this new hardcover collection, you should come away looking forward to more.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Smith’s take on Batman. Some of my comics friends had been put off by Smith’s Batman not saying what Batman would say. And then there’s the whole thing with the Joker taking a walk on the wild side. Well, it’s not exactly too big of a leap to see the character as gay. The one scene where he’s all too eager to act on his desires with the man who could likely kill him is beyond the pale but certainly within Joker territory. The few times Batman seems to slouch into something less than what we’d expect are minimal. Basically, along with artist Walter Flanagan, this is Kevin Smith’s Batman and it works best to go with it.

The quirky moments, I came to see, did not take me out of the story, especially if I’ve already accepted the world that I’m in. And, for the purists who may not even want to give this a chance, the quirk works and it does not overwhelm what is a solid story.

We start at the gates to Arkham Asylum. Due to the recent economic crash, frenzied cost cutting measures by the board lead to the firing of the front gate security guards. The money saved, however, promptly goes to the board’s year-end bonuses. Of course, who would ever want to break into Arkham Asylum? This night, it’s two separate killers both looking for the Joker.

As the story unfolds, we see one of the killers is Kevin Smith’s villain, Onomatopeia, from his Green Arrow run. And the other killer is a vigilante, Deadshot. Each will play supportive roles as will another minor baddie, Maxie Zeus, who has built an empire by converting the Joker’s venom into a designer drug. The Joker, in the scheme of things, has been reduced to the role of bait in a plot to lure Batman but he’s definitely the star of the show as well as a great vehicle for Smith’s humor to boot.

This book also includes the first draft script to Issue Three so you can get a sense for yourself of the number of revisions that went into the final work. Needless to say, Kevin Smith is a huge talent and he still won’t win over everyone. Having just read the first issue of Smith’s latest Batman run, The Widening Gyre, I would highly recommend getting this collection and it will likely win you over if you’re receptive and add to your appreciation of the current run.

While the Kirby estate’s copyright termination filing is justifiably making headlines, the Superman case has some news of its own.

First, the parties have reported the results of their latest court-ordered mediation. In short, the case goes on:

In response to the Court’s Order of August 20,2009, the parties scheduled and conducted a day-long mediation in front of Hon. Daniel Weinstein (Ret.) on September 11,2009, which was the only date Judge Weinstein had available for in-person mediation within the Court-ordered period. The parties exchanged written settlement proposals prior to that mediation, and continued their settlement discussions in the week following the mediation, but were unable to settle these cases.

The fact that the case is continuing makes the next bit of legal news truly significant. The Hon. Stephen Larson, the judge in the Superman case, shocked the legal world by announcing his resignation, effective as of November 2, 2009. His stated reason: the judicial salary of $169,300 a year is not enough to support his seven children.

Larson had been pushing the case toward a settlement, and key issues remain unresolved. What Larson’s departure means for the case remains to be seen, but it could have a decided impact.

Just when you thought the comicsphere could rest easy after the past few weeks — the heirs of Jack “King” Kirby have something to say.

The heirs of one of the architects of the House of Ideas have sent 45 notices of copyright termination to Marvel, Disney, Paramount, Sony, Fox, and Universal, the New York Times has reported.

There’s no word about what characters are involved with this — or if the rights being discussed are for comics, film, television, licensing, or all of the above — but considering Kirby has helped create characters ranging from the (original) X-Men to the Fantastic Four, it could be big. Any change-up would occur around 2014, which would be years after Paramount’s Avengers films, Sony’s Spider-Man 4, or Fox’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine sequel would hit theatres.

On the legal side of things, this is more or less bleeding edge copyright and intellectual property war being waged here. DC has seen similar issues with the Siegel estate’s legal dealings regarding the Superman franchise — and in this case, both the Siegels and the Kirbys have the same lawyer, Marc Toberoff. The phrase “work for hire” will almost certainly come into play here, as the creation of these characters in the early 1960s didn’t typically come with the most ironclad of creator contracts.

But what about that Disney deal? Will this spoil that? Not according to Disney reps, who told the NY Times, “the notices involved are an attempt to terminate rights seven to 10 years from now, and involve claims that were fully considered in the acquisition.” Stay tuned to Blog@ and the mothership for more info…

Batman: Gotham Underground (DC Comics) I passed on this when it was originally serialized, as I wasn’t reading Countdown, and it was a tie-in to a Countdown tie-in (Salvation Run), but I’ve found I’m much less picky about the comics I read when I borrow their trade collections from a library as opposed to paying for them out-of-pocket 22 pages at a time over the course of several months. The work of writer Frank Tieri and pencil artist Jim Calafiore, the book is an ambitious attempt at what seems like a pretty good idea for a comic.

Despite the title, the main character is actually The Penguin, and the book deals with his attempt to fend off rival criminal empires encroaching on Gotham City. Tieri seems to be trying to give at least one scene to every single villain and vigilante in Gotham City, and manages to pretty successfully work almost all of them in, sometimes successfully (the unavailable Joker, for example, via flashback) sometimes less so (Vigilante IX, or whatever version they’re up to now, enters and exits via left field).

The main problem with the book (beyond Calafiore’s art, which brings a jagged, edgy weirdness to the proceedings, but little else of value) is that the trade collection isolates the story from whatever else DC had on the shelves at the time, but the story doesn’t quite stand on its own once isolated. Plot lines from other books are picked up on and left to finish elsewhere, with no indication within the story itself that this is so. The result is that certain swathes of the narrative seem to come out of nowhere and then be forgotten.

And even if you are a reader of the DC Universe in general, and are thus aware of things like Countdown and Salvation Run, there’s still something unsatisfying about the book. It is, after all, the story of the struggle for criminal control of Gotham City. So was War Games (2005), Face The Face (2006) and Battle For the Cowl (collection due in November). It’s hard to care much about the consequences of these stories when their results are so short-lived, and/or contradicted by the other Batman books.

Beasts of Burden #1 (Dark Horse Comics) Well this is awkward. I was pretty disappointed in this book, which comes from my own incredibly high expectations for it (I don’t think I’ve ever read a bad comic by either Evan Dorkin, who wrote this issue, or Jill Thompson, who provides the painted art) and the simple fact that I was completely unprepared to read this story. The cast of characters, all house pets that can talk to one another and apparently have some experience facing supernatural threats, was surprisingly large, and this issue is constructed not so much to introduce them as it is to tell readers about what’s currently happening in their lives—it’s assumed that you already know them and what their various deals are.

It’s not an unfair assumption, given that the characters have appeared in several stories in Dark Horse’s various Book Of… horror anthologies over the years, but I expected a more entry-level story from a #1 issue in a new miniseries. If you didn’t read the Book Of… books, Dark Horse is making it easy to do so, by putting them all online here, but I wanted to evaluate the book as it stands on its own.

And it doesn’t stand on its own all that well. Sure, Thompson’s art is gorgeous—the character designs are all extremely strong, to the point where the various animals all look like representational versions of real animals, but can still emote in a way real pets can’t quite manage. A few of them have strong, likable personalities, and there’s a neat conflict involving an imaginatively conceived monster that gets around by pulling a Charles Forte strange fall maneuver. But joining the story in progress like this felt a little like picking up a random X-Men comic. I didn’t know who was who or what was what, and was compelled to go to the Internet to find out.

I realize this doesn’t exactly sound terribly positive, but I don’t mean to warn readers away. Instead, I just want to warn you that if you haven’t read the Book of… books, to start here, and then pick up Beasts of Burden #1. It’ll make all the difference in the world. I didn’t think much of this issue, but I have a hard time blaming anyone but myself, which doesn’t happen very often. (For another opinion, check out my colleague Sarah’s review here).

The Color of Water, The Color of Heaven (First Second) The second and third volumes of Kim Dong Hwa “Color of Earth” trilogy follow young Ehwa into adolescence, into her first serious relationship and ultimately into marriage. While the first volume concentrated mainly on Ehwa’s gradual discovery about her body, the bodies of others and the world of love and relationships from the outsider’s perspective of a child, in the second and third book she begins to experience the same grown-up emotions from the inside for herself.

In Water, which I guess you could call the puberty volume, she meets a wrestler/farmhand from a nearby village named Duksam and falls in love, experiencing longing and frustration. In Heaven, she becomes an adult, experiencing marriage and sex. All of the characters continue to speak to one another almost constantly in poetic nature metaphors, which makes for a formal, literate read, but, looked at from a different angle, can also be pretty funny.

In Water, for example, everything in nature seems to be suggesting sex, like, constantly. Similarly, the wedding night consummation scene in Heaven, told in visual metaphors, is rather elegant in context, but also sort of hilarious, particularly read out of context.

Taken all together, Kim Dong Hwa’s epic is surprisingly emotionally effective. By the end, I found myself feeling proud of Ehwa and sad for her mother, who was about to lose her closest friend and confidant after so many years. That comes from watching Ehwa grow-up over the course of hundreds of pages, I suppose. The cast is tiny (there can’t be more than a dozen characters total) and the setting small almost to the point of being claustrophobic (most of the action set at Ehwa and her mother’s small house), but because the subject matter is that of the two principal characters’ lives, and so much attention is devoted to it (about 900 pages total), that it’s a grand, sweeping epic of the small, intimate elements of two women’s lives.

Johnny Boo Book 3: Happy Apples (Top Shelf Productions) Now on its third book, James Kochalka’s series about a little ghost and his even more little ghost friend has reached the point where I ask myself, “Is there any point of still reviewing this, other than to point out when a new one arrives?”  After all, if you’ve read the first two books, Best Little Ghost in the World and Twinkle Power, you should know what to expect by now:  An all-ages comic featuring Kochalka’s ultra-cute art, coloring so bright it’s electric and gags aimed at both kids (in their silliness) and adults (in their absurdity). In this volume,  Johnny learns what kind of food makes your muscles big and strong (hint: it’s in the title) and what kind of food makes your muscles floopy and funny.  I can’t recommend this series highly enough to Kochalka fans and comics fan parents who happen to have little kids.

It should be a surprise to absolutely no one that I am a huge fan of Jill Thompson’s art. I had somehow missed out on the previous incarnations of Beasts of Burden, but was happy to pick up a new number one issue on little more recommendation than Thompson’s name on the cover.

Beasts of Burden looks like it could be a kids’ comic from the cover–talking dogs and cats? It could be too cute for words, especially with such bright and luscious painted art. Except the same amount of loving detail goes into some truly creepy gore and disturbing moments. A horror comic disguised as cute stuff? I’m in.

The dogs have unique and compelling enough personalities that when one is chained up in a backyard it’s oddly disturbing, like seeing a person on the end of a chain. The hints at underlying mythology–”Witch cats” and “wise dogs”–are tempting, and the humor works without breaking the tension of the story. This issue works as a one-shot, but it also sucks you in and leaves you waiting for more.

So here’s to more comics that sneak up on you, right?

I am off to Bergen Street Comics’ release party for Beasts of Burden tonight, so I’ll save my thoughts on the comic for tomorrow. For now, have some linkage:

Johanna Draper Carlson did not much like the Whiteout movie.

Warren Ellis asked artists to Remake/Remodel Black Orchid. He must’ve asked VERY nicely…

Some thoughts on comics and race in an interesting discussion thread on Racialicious.

The Rumpus brings you a review of Shane Acker’s 9.

“That became my favorite toy, which then led me to the cartoon, which then led me to the comic books. From there, I got to know the characters. I mean, I really grew to like Optimus Prime. I feared Megatron.”: John Geddes of USA Today has a Q-and-A with IDW editor Andy Schmidt about the Transformers: Continum book he’s writing, as well as about Transformers and comics in general.

“Does he consider me some sort of amusing and feckless manchild instead of a respected cartoonist whose work is beloved by hundreds and has made me a thousandaire, who’s been in a committed relationship for 15 years with the same cat?”: That’s cartoonist Tim Kreider reacting to getting an assignment to write about arrested adolescence for the New York Times. He discusses what he calls “The Referendum,”  which he defines as “a phenomenon typical of (but not limited to) midlife, whereby people, increasingly aware of the finiteness of their time in the world, the limitations placed on them by their choices so far, and the narrowing options remaining to them, start judging their peers’ differing choices with reactions ranging from envy to contempt.” It makes for a pretty fun read.

“But it’s the sort of idea of that’s much funnier as a 10-second, ‘wouldn’t it be funny if this comic existed’ joke than as an actual, ‘let’s draw pictures of old naked grandmothers’ comic”: That’s the Onion AV Club on Moonstone’s comic…let’s see what was it called again…MILF Magnet. The piece picks the “most flawless” and “most troubling” book from a trio of publishers attending this weekend’s Windy City Comic Con in Chicago.

Look at how great Darwyn Cooke is: The 4thletter has a “portfolio review” of Cooke’s work available for your perusal here, and man, it is a whole lot of gorgeous in one place at one time. I was pleased to see the two-page spread of little DCU-themed newspaper comic strip and old magazine features from the Cooke issue of the late, great Solo included. I’ve been meaning to dig that out specifically to look at that spread again ever since Wednesday Comics launched. So thanks for saving me some longbox spelunking, David Brothers!

As always, send me YOURS at newsaramaevents [at] gmail [dot] com.

Minneapolis:

Come join MITCH GERADS (artist) and SCOTT DILLON (writer) at 8PM, on Friday, September 18th, at GLUEK’s RESTAURANT & Bar ( http://www.glueks.com ) in Minneapolis, MN.  We’re celebrating our release of JOHNNY RECON No.01 from POPGUNPULP Comics.

Come by and have some drinks and some great local conversation.  You can also grab your own copy of JOHNNY RECON No.01 for $4.00 as well as an exclusive Release Party print by artist, Mitch Gerads.  For more information please visit, http://www.popgunpulp.com

Thanks and we hope to see you there!

San Francisco:

TWO COOL JAPANESE FILM EVENTS AT NEW PEOPLE NEXT WEEK

FUNUKE: Show Some Love, You Losers!
( 2007, 113min., With English Subtitles, Directed by Daihachi Yoshida)
Reviewed as “amusing Japanese dramedy” by Variety, FUNUKE was in Cannes Film Festival 2008 Official Selection. This dark comedy centers around a dysfunctional family with a history of dark secrets. When both parents die in a car accident, actress-wannabe Sumika returns home from Tokyo and takes the opportunity to harass her aspiring manga artist sister Kiyomi, whom she still blames for her own failures in life for strange some reason. More info at: http://www.newpeopleworld.com/films/films-9-2009/#funuke

SORASOI by Katsuhito Ishii (WHO WILL APPEAR IN-PERSON ON FRIDAY 9/25)

(2008, 89min., With English Subtitles, Directed by Katsuhito Ishii & Nice Rainbow)
Take this rare chance to see visionary Katsuhito Ishii’s latest work SORASOI, a “delightfully goofy summer-camp comedy. (-Variety)”! The story unfolds in a small beach side hostel called “SORASOI” where a group of college students practice their dance routine day and night for the upcoming competition. Meanwhile, a mysterious girl named Yuri shows up and stays in “SORAROI” and one of the male students falls in love with her at first sight. More info at: http://www.newpeopleworld.com/films/films-9-2009/#sorasoi

Brooklyn:

BEASTS OF BURDEN SIGNING WITH JILL THOMPSON & EVAN DORKIN AT BSC

Saturday, September 19, Starting at 6pm!

Bergen Street Comics is proud to host the Brooklyn Launch Party for “Beasts of Burden” by Evan Dorkin (writer) and Jill Thompson (artist).  Evan and Jill will be here in person to celebrate  and sign copies of the issue  on Saturday, September 19th from 6PM – close.

Fun, bubbly refreshments will be served.  And Jill has created a special print for all of the fans!

Armors and powers and bears, oh my!

The Crimson Dynamo, Darkstar, Ursa Major, and more will be returning to comics, as High Moon creators David Gallaher and Steve Ellis will be teaming up once more to examine… the Winter Guard! (No, this is not some sort of scarf or mitten set.)

This one-shot promises to pit the Winter Guard against the Presence this December.

In honor of the longest-running soap opera’s final episode today, Marvel has rereleased a comic teaming up the Avengers with the cast of Guiding Light.

Jim McCann, who has some experience with soap opera having worked on One Life to Live, wrote this project in 2006, along with artist Udon. The book is free in its entirety on Marvel.com. What say you?

Say your comic book won an Eisner Award for something, say, Best Publication For Kids or Cutest Redesign of a Jack Kirby Character, whatever. You’re definitely going to want to let everyone know about the honor, right? Now, what’s the best way of doing it?

There’s the standard strategy, of putting a blurb or tag about it on the cover, which Tiny Titans #20 employed…

…which is definitely effective. But surely there’s a better way to make sure your readers know that you totally won an Eisner. Perhaps by having it on panel for an entire page, as in this sequence from the issue, in which Alfred is shown dusting it while Robin and his friends ask if they can play in the Batcave?

But have they gone far enough? Perhaps to be on the safe side, they can have the Eisner Award gain sentience and start attending Sidekick Elementary School and hanging out in the Titans Treehouse with the rest of the kids.

(By the way, Tiny Titans #20 is awesome.)

Part five of Jaia’s debut. 

Find out more about her adventures here on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays or at ComicsByEgg.com. 

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!