Consider me busted.

Originally conceived in a strip of HijiNKS Ensue web comic, and then almost immediately caused a craze for such a shirt and of course, gave in to the demand.

So, Team EJO shirts can be bought here for about $20.

Team Edward, represent.

My lord, has it really been FIVE YEARS since the beyond senseless murder of metal guitar god Dimebag Darrell? The music community was rocked to its core this month in 2004 when a deranged “fan” shot and killed Pantera guitarist “Dimebag/Diamond” Darrell Abbott (along with 3 others) in a Columbus, Ohio, music club while performing with then-current band Damageplan.

In recognizing this tragic event’s 5-year anniversary, Revolver magazine is doing a cover feature in tribute to the accomplished and widely admired guitar legend (of which you can count your Reverend a fan). Of special note to comic book fans is the talent responsible for the original cover to this issue, graphic artist Tim Bradstreet. Along with work on the Punisher, readers are likely familiar with his lengthy run of covers of Vertigo’s Hellblazer series.

From Revolver’s press release:

REVOLVER Magazine has teamed with renowned and award-winning graphic illustrator Tim Bradstreet (The Punisher, Hellblazer, “Vampire: The Masquerade”) for a Pantera Vulgar Display Of Power commemorative issue, celebrating guitarist Dimebag Darrell on the fifth anniversary of his death. The issue–available only on newsstands from December 22 through February 22–captures the defining moment in Pantera’s career and features Bradstreet’s stark and powerful cover illustration of the classic 1992 album cover photo.

The REVOLVER Vulgar Display Of Power issue includes an additional Pantera illustration by Bradstreet, rare photos, as well as exclusive interviews with all surviving Pantera band members (Phil Anselmo, Vinnie Paul, Rex Brown); Dime’s longtime girlfriend Rita Haney; album producer Terry Date; musicians Rob Halford, Rob Zombie, Sean Yseult, Scott Ian, Zakk Wylde, Nick Bowcott; and other key friends and associates. In fact, this marks the first piece to include interviews with both Phil Anselmo and Vinnie Paul since the 2006 VH1 “Behind The Music” on Pantera.

In this issue, REVOLVER Magazine and writer Jon Wiederhorn debunk the myth behind the Vulgar Display Of Power album cover photo shoot and reveal the stories behind how “Diamond Darrell” became “Dimebag Darrell” and the origins of Dime’s signature “Black Tooth Grin” drink.

Each newsstand copy of REVOLVER’s Vulgar Display Of Power issue will include a special memorabilia pack with an authentic replica of a Vulgar Display Of Power tour backstage laminate and concert ticket, a Pantera show flyer, and sticker. In addition, REVOLVER will give away Tim Bradstreet’s original hand-drawn cover art for the issue, an Affliction Pantera Signature Series T-shirt, Dean Dimebag Dimebonics ML Electric Guitar with Case, Dunlop MXR DD11 Dime Distortion Pedal and DB01 Dimebag Signature Wah Pedal, Seymour Duncan Dimebucker Pickup, and ddrum Vinnie Paul Signature Snare. Look for contest details in this issue and enter online at www.REVOLVERmag.com.

Fans can also purchase a highly limited-edition (only 250 printed) Vulgar Display of Power Commemorative T-shirt featuring Bradstreet’s cover illustration at www.REVOLVERmag.com/store.

Well, maybe not a thousand, but 83 characters and 16 teams sure gets you a lot.

Kurt Busiek has posted on his blog a comprehensive list of all the characters he has created or co-created, apparently as a new accounting process for Marvel. The craziest part of all this — this doesn’t include Astro City, or any of the characters Busiek has made for DC or elsewhere. This is 100% Marvel — such as Phil Sheldon, the man holding the camera in the above cover of Marvels.

Considering the guy is a continuity whiz — take a look at last year’s DC weekly Trinity if you don’t believe me — it’s an interesting and amusing read. Click here to check it all out.

[Hat tip to Caleb for the heads-up]

This is a nice bit of weirdness that I thought I’d share — over at Pat Loika’s Randomly Untitled Blog, there’s a video up seeing Alan Moore rockin’ out:

Is this more unsettling than watching Batman sing? Hey, so long as Rorschach’s journal doesn’t make it into musical form, I’m happy.

Summit Entertainment is proving to be a serious powerhouse. After the success of the “Twilight” franchise, it’s rearing its head in the comic book adaptation market with “Alibi”. Based on the Top Cow comic about a well-known socialite whose public presence establishes a perfect alibi for the his secret twin brother, a government assassin. According to Heat Vision, Summit has hired John Hlavin (TV’s The Shield, and also one of my all-time favorite shows. Ever.) to pen the adaptation to be produced by Mandeville’s (produced Disney’s summer hit “The Proposal” and is in post-production on The Fighter starring Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale and Amy Adams) David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman.

For Top Cow, the deal is aimed at duplicating the success of “Wanted”, which topped $340 million in worldwide gross. Here’s hoping more studios look outside the box for independent books to adapt. I’d personally love to see the Witchblade movie get off the ground, or maybe something like Courtney Crumrin or The Nocturnals.

No casting has been announced yet.

You all know the story by now: a handful of humans, trying to stay alive during a zombie infestation on their city.

However, I doubt we’ve seen it like this. Night of the Living Dead: Origins will be an all-CGI production and according to the Hollywood Reporter, six cast members have already signed on. Two of the actors have worked in George Romero projects before: Billy Moseley and Joe Pilato. The production is still in the animation process and voice work is in its early phases.

Newcomer Zebediah de Soto will be directing the project and he has some interesting views on the zombie genre and how he perceives it. ”I wanted to make this look like a living Monet; it’s expressionism,” De Soto said. “It’s going to be the first zombie movie played on a epic scale. This is the Empire of the Sun of zombie films. I lived through the L.A. riots and saw the city on fire; I remember seeing people running, people getting pulled out of cars. And with 9/11, these images have been ingrained on people of my generation. I just thought that is the way it would really be, a lot of chaos.”

Here’s an interesting thought. With super-hero movies relying on heavy CGI, do you think there will be a time where big-name franchises will be in all CGI? Like Superman, Wonder Woman, or maybe even Quasar?

Okay that last one is a long shot, but think about it: you don’t have to worry about an actor or actress “looking the part”. I think that’s why these DC animated features work so well. How would you feel about that?

Dignifying Science: Stories about Women Scientists

Written by Jim Ottaviani
Illustrated by Donna Barr, Stephanie Gladden, Roberta Gregory, Mary Fleener, Ramona Fradon, Lea Hernandez, Carla Speed McNeil, Linda Medley, Marie Severin, Jen Sorensen and Anne Timmons
Published by GT Labs

Been a while since I’ve written one of these NYPL reviews. I guess it’s a semantical difference to compare an NYPL review to any other review I write for the Blog@Newsarama here, but I’m hoping that the recent slowdown of books I’ve placed on hold at the library is clearing up and I’ll have more library discoveries to share with you all.

On some level, I can’t help but feel that Ottaviani’s goal for Dignifying Science still manages to support the unfortunate ghettoization of women in science – the ladies are all lumped into the “women in science” book here. Of course, that’s merely nit-picking. The difficulty women faced being recognized for … well, everything throughout history means that men were often in the right place at the right time, with all the converging lines of scientific thought putting them in position to make many major discoveries. Fortunately, many women had the means for education and the perseverance required to positively impact our lives and world; Ottaviani’s book looks at some of the many women who thus contributed to development of scientific fields.

Figuring that if you know anything about any female scientists, Ottaviani uses the life of Marie Curie as a framing device, providing a two-page prologue and epilogue that frames the struggle for respect and recognition Curie and her peers faced. Short stories providing overviews of the contributions of Hedy Lamarr (the foundations of cell phone technology), Lise Meitner (physics and atom bomb technology), Rosalind Franklin (DNA), Barbara McClintock (gene research) and Biruté Galdikas (orangutan study). Ottaviani wisely keeps each story focused on the intelligence of the woman in spotlight, while alluding to the difficulties that each faced due to a quirk of birth. Only Hedy Lamarr, whose public life as an actress and sex symbol severely undermined her scientific curiosity, has a story that deals extensively with forces outside her realm of study.

Illustrated by some of the best female cartoonists working today, Dignifying Science is a very good looking book. Carla Speed McNeil brings her eye for detail and ability to draw drop-dead gorgeous people to Hedy Lamarr’s life. Perhaps it’s due to the quality of McNeil’s illustrations, or something in Ottaviani’s script, but probably because I’m a layperson of limited technical scientific knowledge and the story is the least scientifically detailed – regardless, I found the Lamarr chapter the most engrossing with its war backdrop and Hollywood studio pressures.

Lise Meitner’s conversations with Niels Bohr, the least focused of the installments, benefited from Jen Sorensen’s open, warm cartooning. Four cartoonists provide insight into Rosalind Franklin’s research, offering perspectives on Franklin’s research from colleagues and rivals M.F. Wilkins, Jim Watson, and Francis Crick. The diverse perspectives and Franklin’s contentious attitude made this short tale a recommended read.

The final two stories both span several decades, spotlight Barbara McClintock’s research into heredity through the study of corn and Biruté Galdikas’ long-standing field work in Africa among the orangutans. Lea Hernandez handles the former with a manga-esque charm (even if her drawings of athleticism don’t quite work!) and a strong eye to natural detail; Go Girl’s Anne Timmons provides a strong, clean line to both Galdikas and her simian subjects. Each story skims the years, providing a brief, but effective and concise, synopsis of the general work.

Destruction of (or at least ignorance of) scientific principles remains a long-standing hallmark of comics work, so it’s great to see Jim Ottaviani balancing the scales with books that examine scientific fact and give important credit to the researchers and scientists who have shaped our modern world.  Dignifying Science: Stories about Women Scientists is just another in a long line of quality science-based comics that are valuable as resources for schools and interested readers.  Ottaviani’s books are available through GT Labs and hopefully through your local library.

Has the time come to award the Caldecott Medal to a graphic novel?: Writing for School Library Journal, librarian Ernie Cox argues that it is. The Caldecott is awarded annually to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children, and is one of the prestigious awards available to books for kids. Cox suggests some solid candidates from this year’s crop of graphic novels, inlcuding The Storm in the Barn, Mouse Guard Vol. 2, Jellaby: Monster in the City, Bayou and Binky the Space Cat. I don’t know if any of those necessarily deserve the Caldecott, but they’re all certainly worth a look.

C’mon, Gustines!: George Gene Gustines puts together a little 2009 Graphic Novels holiday gift guide for the New York Times, and the third item on it’s a prose novel. It’s published by DC’s Vertigo print, written by a comics writer and is set in the world of comics series Fables, but still…!

Is there anything Neil Gaiman can’t do?: National Public Radio’s Morning Edition invited Gaiman to contribute to their “Open Mic” series, in which they give a person they’d ordinarily cover the opportunity to do a story of their own. Gaiman puts together a piece on the state of the audiobook, with input from other authors and people in the business. Gaiman, it turns out, has a hell of a radio voice, and isn’t a bad journalist either. You can listen to the report, or just read the transcript, here. 

“Aquaman—A love story”: Given the headline, I thought college paper copy editor Ashleigh Johnson would get more into how dreamy Aquaman is, but instead her column focuses on defending the least popular Super Friend as a total bad-ass. (“More recent incarnations of Aquaman depict him losing his hand to piranhas and subsequently replacing it with a retractable harpoon hand. Holy. Crap. … It doesn’t get much more awesome than a hook that shoots from his stump.” And like that).

One gentle book that you may have missed, but should not, is John Porcellino’s Thoreau at Walden, a beautiful hardcover published by Hyperion. It’s a wonderful introduction to Thoreau for any reader. Thankfully, John Porcellino, in connection with The Center For Cartoon Studies, leads the way. This certainly is not your standard graphic novel meets the classics outing. Instead, it’s a meeting of genuine kindred spirits.

Most people live lives of quiet desperation.

If we don’t keep pace with our companions, perhaps it is because we march to the beat of a different drummer.

These words are ingrained in us and as true today as when they were first presented to the world by Henry David Thoreau in 1849 in the landmark of American literature, Walden.

Never hitting a false note, cartoonist John Porcellino, known for his own landmark in comics, King-Cat Comics and Stories, shares with us his interpretation of what it may have felt like to be in a little log cabin out in the wilderness. This brings to mind the film, Into The Wild, and another young man with the world at his feet with a compulsion to throw himself to the mercy of raw nature. However, this extreme reaction to civilization was never Thoreau’s intention.

Instead, his plan was to live in a cabin, not too far from town, as an experiment in self-reliance. He wasn’t courting anything extreme. His goal was to simply live within his means. He grew his own food and did a few odd jobs. He visited friends and they visited him. The rest of the time, he studied, wrote and communed with nature. All this sounds sort of like a page out of John Porcellino’s life. His drawings clearly resonate with a similar outlook on things. That common desire to come up against the elements is tempered with gentle contemplation, a hallmark of Porcellino’s own observations, and the only constructive way to go when it’s just you and the woods.

If you stay in one place long enough, you will see and be part of everything. Out there in the wild, what matters are the quiet moments like how the sun light plays throughout the day or how the owl reacts to your movements or how the friendly mouse will wiggle its way through your clothes to reach that piece of cheddar you hold out to it. It’s a pleasure to see how Porcellino depicts that play of light, the owl’s reactions and the mouse’s journey.

Porcellino is careful to distill what happened at Walden Pond. In a most natural way, Porcellino becomes Thoreau and Thoreau becomes Porcellino. Both of them come together to invite you to join in: no need to crash into nature; just learn to simplify. Porcellino does a great job of keeping that message clear, simple and accessible. He also does a thorough job of annotating his use of text from Walden which helps to encourage further reading.

This book is a great companion to the more recent book by Porcellino, Map of My Heart, which I will explore with you next time.

Diamond’s Previews catalog for books shipping in February 2010 is out, so I’ll take you on my monthly walk-through of the comics that caught my attention.

Honestly, not a whole lot grabbing me this month, which seems to be a mild theme lately. But there are still enough titles to gobble up my limited comics budget for the month.

Drawn & Quarterly’s John Stanley Library project continues, with a second collection of Stanley’s delightful tales of a little monster who just wants to go to school and make friends. Needless to say, he doesn’t quite fit in at home in Monsterville. Melvin Monster vol. 2 is $19.95 for 112 pages.

An otherwise slow month for me is almost single-handedly blasted beyond budgetary means by Fantagraphics’ bevy of offerings: Cathy Malkansian’s new book, Temperance, sounds terrific. I missed her first comic, but I hope to correct that this time around. Any comic that attempts to tackle the drive for enemies and war in humankind is worth paying attention to for its sheer gall if nothing else.

Kim Deitch, one of the most imaginative, creative and perpetually trippy cartoonists in comics history, has a new collection. The Search for Smilin’ Ed promises to uncover more aspects of 20^th century pop culture while offering a bizarre and mind-bending journey through human experience. This title is probably the #1 must-have of the month, and an early contender for some Best of 2010 lists (like mine).

From Fantagraphics’ reprint section, Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips vol. 1 should be hitting shops. I swear they solicited this a while back, so hopefully we’ll actually see it this time. I’m looking forward to it. Two new Love and Rockets collections are also hitting stores. My one complaint about these repackagings of old L&R material is that I’m sometimes unsure of what stories are in what volumes. The Gilbert book here, The High Soft Lisp, is a Fritz-focused edition, obviously, but I’m not 100% sure if the material has already been part of the Luba or Palomar hardcovers. The solicit promises new material, so you can add The High Soft Lisp to my list though. From Jamie, the new edition of Penny Century compiles the previous volume of the same name and the delicious Whoa Nellie trade into a single book, matching the format of the recent reissues. Yeah, it’s a redundant purchase for me, but I like the format and I like condensing books into as few covers as possible. I’ll take one.

But Fantagraphics isn’t the only publisher with an offering I noticed. IDW’s previous attempt to collect the acclaimed GrimJack comics series didn’t get very far with me. Despite its legendary status, I found the comics only a slice above good, and the hefty price tag on each volume wasn’t justified. The new GrimJack Omnibus, bringing together eight back-up stories that ran in Starslayer and the first thirteen issues of the proper series, provides the huge page count (400!) and affordable price ($24.95) that I look for in my trade paperbacks. Trade paperback division at comic book publishers, take note!

World War 3 Illustrated #40 ships from Top Shelf, edited by Seth Tobocman, and featuring the theme “What We Want.” Some of today’s best political cartoonists offer constructive theories on what can be done to improve existing conditions throughout the world.

From Dark Horse Comics, The Book of Grickle looks interesting and offbeat. That certainly rates a page-through, and I’ve searched a long time for Jerry Robinson’s The Comics: An Illustrated History of Comic Strip Art. A revised edition, chronicling strip art from 1895 to 2010, is scheduled to hit stores, advance solicited for April. That’s a definite, must-have.

I’ve been somewhat wary of the direction of the Superman titles, but Superman: Codename Patriot will probably get a look. I’m similarly unsure, but certainly tempted by the ginormous Wednesday Comics collection; with contributors like Kyle Baker, Joe Kubert, Walter Simonson and Paul Pope, and well received serials such as Supergirl and Kamandi, I’m intrigued. Maybe not quite $50 worth of intrigued, but we’ll see…

Supporting the NextWave: Agents of H.A.T.E. Ultimate collection serves two purposes for me. One, it’s a good comic – I borrowed it from the library when it was in two separate trades. Two, it supports my contention for thicker trades. Being a Howard Chaykin fan, I’m slightly interested in Dominic Fortune, but unlikely to actually buy this one.  Here’s hoping the library comes through on this one.

It may be the night before Wednesday, but this week Tuesday night might as well be Monday night, seeing as how tomorrow isn’t New Comic Book Day after all. I hate when that happens…makes me wish I knew a time-traveling superhero who could take me back in time to vent my frustrations on the original cause of the new comic shipping delay.

Of course, if I could time-travel, I guess I could just skip ahead to Thursday and read my new comics…

Anyway, join me after the jump for a look at some of the books coming out this week…on Thursday, not Wednesday. (Assuming you live in the U.S. If not, I have no idea what’s going on where you are).

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Darren Franich over at PopWatch has an interesting article on James Rhodes, aka War Machine. He mentions how during the time he was reading Iron Man, Rhodes was actually under the armor and he thought that Tony was his replacement. I can empathize with his confusion since during that time, a lot of heroes were being replaced with more (at the time) interesting looking costumes. Batman became Mecha-Batman, aka, Jean-Paul Valley. Superman had Steel, Superboy, Cyborg Superman, and the “Eradicator”. Kyle Rayner became the new, and at the time, last Green Lantern.

Though of course Rhodes’ gig as Iron Man didn’t last, and Tony Stark donned the armor again, but Franich gives Rhodes some serious character props and runs down some highlights in the character’s history including his MAX series U.S. War Machine and his playability in the “Marvel vs Capcom” video games.

I believe my first experience with War Machine was more than likely him being on the Iron Man cartoon. I’m currently not reading any Iron Man books, but I keep being told I’m an idiot for passing up what’s going on in Invincible Iron Man. I love both Don Cheadle and Terrance Howard as actors (namely Cheadle’s portrayal as Sammy Davis, jr from The Rat Pack and Howard as Dee Jay in Hustle and Flow).

The reveal of the Iron Man 2 poster has me terribly excited and I’ve heard rumors that the trailer will be attached to Sherlock Holmes, which opens up on Christmas Day.

Going backwards from the recent release of Justice League: The Complete Series on DVD, Warner Brothers has also released Superman: The Animated Series in a 7-disc collector’s edition. While the series wasn’t as long-running or beloved as either Batman: The Animated Series or Justice League/Justice League Unlimited, it’s certainly well-done and it’s certainly part of the DC Animated Universe that fans are so crazy about.

That said, Warner probably would have been better served, in terms of stoking the memories of fans and reviewers, to have released the cartoons in the order of their initial airing—Batman, then Superman, then Justice League. Going from Justice League, back to Superman, really kind of hurts the credibility of the Superman show. The first episode—an origin story that tweaks the history to make Brainiac partially responsible for the destruction of Krypton—feels pretty standard, and the changes they made to the appearances of Krypton and the Kryptonian people felt awkward and silly. While commentary tracks on the disc cite a desire not to ape the movies and to be singular and original in their designs, you almost kind of long for a sterile ice-planet.

Of course, I’m a Post-Crisis fan anyway, and the Krypton used here resembles more of Geoff Johns’ post-Post-Crisis, return-to-the-Silver-Age Krypton. It’s not the “original,” and it’s not the Reeve version…it’s its own, fairly clever, interpretation of the myth but visually not all that interesting.

Certainly, though, it’s nice to hear them talking about the “meaning” of Superman. In the days before Kingdom Come, these creators are sitting around in the pilot asking “What is the story about?” At one point, they say, Superman was the great immigrant story, and then it was the love triangle…so after the marriage, what’s it about? Maybe it’s a condemnation of the early episodes of the show that they don’t have an answer.

While it’s certainly not as good as Justice League, it should be noted that Superman: The Animated Series is a necessary middle step, creating a segue between Batman’s “terror that flaps in the night” and giving the animators a chance to work with powers, rockets, alien worlds and all the other comic book tropes that they would need to take that next step.

Fan rage sense, tingling!!

While many of us were either eating turkey, traveling, or both, I saw an interesting statement made by Joe Quesada over at his Cup O’ Joe column at the end of last week, when asked about stage three of the Brand New Day revamp of Amazing Spider-Man:

Well, I think it’s pretty obvious that MJ is going to be back, so that’s going to open a whole new can of worms with respect to relationships the characters will have or won’t have. Should I even say the word “baby”? Should I use that word? I’ll just put that out there: Baby. Mary Jane. Baby. Mary Jane with a… yes, baby. I’ll stop there.

Unless Joe Q is doing his own spin on “Ice Ice Baby,” this could be the start of something huge. Will this be a sore point for pro-MJ readers in the room? Almost assuredly: considering Spidey has had three close calls with children — once at the end of the Clone Saga, the second time at the end of J. Michael Straczynski’s Days Past storyline, and the third hinted at at the end of One More Day — there are going to be some intense feelings about Peter Parker and his would-be family.

For fans of Mary Jane, this could be interesting — is she pregnant? Was she ever pregnant? Is it Peter’s? Highly unlikely in that last regard. Could it be the whispered deal she made with Mephisto finally coming back into play? If Mephisto is involved with Dark Reign like we’ve previously posited, this could be the continuity chickens comin’ back to roost, y’all. What do you think?

Can you believe how time flies? At least for me, one year and more than 1,000 posts later, it feels pretty much like this:

That’s right, a Bryan Lee O’Malley sketch of Scott Pilgrim high-fiving Superman, courtesy of our pals at Let’s Be Friends Again. Because that is just how Scott rolls.

And for all our readers who have stuck with us — and for those who have joined up in the past year — thank you for being a part of the Blog@Newsarama family!

(Click the image above for a larger version of the strip.)

WORLD OF HURT – The Thrill-Seekers – Episode 9: “The Cover Up”

I have no real insights to add to this week’s edition, except to say that it was a bear to cram everything I wanted, and needed, to say into this edition.  I also think I did a fairly solid job in establishing who Det. Haworth is, and where he’s coming from.

If you’re curious about the latest episodes, remember, new strips of WORLD OF HURT – The Internet’s #1 Blaxploitation Webcomic are posted every Wednesday at www.worldofhurtonline.com.

- JEP

No, this isn’t some plot for some sort of reality show that resembles Billy Madison or anything like that. Comic creators Jim Starlin (The Infinity War, Death of the New Gods) Ron Marz (Witchblade, Green Lantern), Matthew Dow Smith (Dr. Who, Sandman Mystery Theatre) and Terry Austin (Uncanny X-Men, Dr. Strange) visited Woodstock Day School in Woodstock, NY and gave a presentation on how comics are made. From the script, to pencils, to inks, coloring and lettering.

I mean, how cool would it be if comic legends showed up at your school? Especially when you were a kid? There would be no words. What’s even cooler is that Starlin and Austin produced a Spider-Man drawing just for the event.
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One year ago today, my team and I assumed the posting duties for Blog@Newsarama. There might have been some doubt from some quarters, but any real investigation into our traffic would indicate that we’ve been doing just fine all along. I’m quite proud of the group, and I think that they do a great job. On this one-year anniversary, I just wanted to take time to say, “Thanks, guys. Don’t forget that I really appreciate you all.”

Regular readers, please offer a round of applause for the gang, wouldn’t you? Oh, and before I forget . . . Caleb is waaaaay too nice to be Lee Marvin, but I’ll take John Cassavetes anyway, since you never know when someone might shoot you in the back.

Thanks for reading. We’re far from finished.