Marvel released a new image teasing their “The Heroic Age” event, and it certainly seems that Agents of Atlas mainstay Gorilla-Man might get a shot being one of the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Granted, as we reported, Marvel won’t cop to that being the new Avengers line-up for the new Avengers book, but that certainly looks like a possible team.

In fact, making Gorilla-Man an Avenger would tie in nicely with this zeitgeist piece I wrote. Why?

Because Congorilla just joined the JLA! Apparently, something is in the air with talking gorillas on super-teams. I cracked that I could think of several team books that could be improved by the addition of a talking gorilla. Let’s try it out.

Teen Titans: Teen Titans has run the gamut lately from merely bad to shockingly bad. Maybe they just need a talking gorilla? Surely, Gorilla Grodd has a niece or nephew that wants to atone for his uncle’s misdeeds? Gorilla Kid? Kid Gorilla?

The Outsiders: Does Markovia have a national zoo? Maybe Halo returns as pure energy and has to find a host, but the only nearby form is a gorilla? She could change her heroic name to Silverback or something flashy and dispense outsidery justice while marking time for the next inevitable killing-off that she’ll suffer.

X-Men, etc.: All this time, and we haven’t had a gorilla X-Man? Some would argue that Beast fits the bill, but not really. Shouldn’t this be a more likely mutation than wings or optic blasts?

What about you, readers? Any suggestions? I can tell that Blog@ team member Kyle DuVall is in total disagreement. He says that THIS is the decade . . . of the anteater.

Man, that would be a WEIRD direction for Brightest Day.

For the past few weeks, Ted Naifeh (creator of the Courtney Crumrin series from Oni Press) has been updating his site with a Batman gallery. Mainly sketches out of his sketchbook, but also includes sample pages and redesigns for Catwoman and Mad Hatter (that is a bit risque, but nonetheless creepy).

Blog@ spoke to Naifeh about this particular Joker design. “Oddly, I never really got the Joker until The Dark Knight came along. In the books, he just doesn’t add up. Is he a bank robber, a crazy serial killer, what? Why does he hate Batman? Why do people work for him when he shoots his own men all the time, or pulls idiotic schemes purely to get Batman’s goat? What, when you get right down to it, is his motivation?”

He continues with “I feel like the movie sharpened and streamlined him nicely, and made all the contradictions make sense. He doesn’t just go around robbing jewelry stores and insanely killing people. He wants people to see that he’s not insane, but the only one that IS sane. He wants to reveal justice, fairness, and good and evil as mass delusions. That makes him compelling, because, in a way, he’s right.”

My favorite design out of the collection is probably this take on Ivy. It’s a slight deviation, but still captures the character quite well.

Naifeh didn’t stop with just character designs, he actually has a few Batmobile drawings that bring movies Alien to mind. As well as a few Kate Kane Batwoman and the villain, Alice from Rucka and Williams’ III first arc in Detective Comics.

With Batman & Robin having rotating artists the past year, and these images showcasing what Naifeh is capable of, I think any Bat-book would be stunning in his hands, but do you think readers?

In those halcyon days of the early ’90s, in Brooklyn’s hipsterdom of Williamsburg, amid the Doctor Seuss hats and pierced nipples, there once stood a towering figure of a man ever ready for a stiff drink and a chance to see his art take yet undreamt of form. In that era, Millionaire came across as one of those guys with a streak of mad genius who could draw you anything for a little beer money. I knew a guy like that. You did too. But these guys never saw their ships come in. Millionaire did. And, no, he wasn’t just a lucky bastard. He made his ship come in by creating it himself, drawing every intricate detail of that vessel from stem to stern. And it would be populated by the most glorious creatures: Uncle Gabby, a deranged ape patterned after a dear alcoholic genius; the navy of alligators, suggested by a violent friend in New Orleans; and Drinky Crow, standing in for all of humanity, drunkard or otherwise.

“The Art of Tony Millionaire,” published by Dark Horse, is a serious, yet irreverent, mid-career retrospective of one of the best known and beloved cartoonists around. Read his comic strip, “Maakies,” in your local alt weekly and feel the rush of anarchy take hold. Read this book, full of honest recollections from the artist, and feel like you know the man. “Maakies,” by the way, goes back to when Millionaire drew a comic strip called, “Batty,” for a sports zine. The guy who put it together, Spike Vrusho, loved to yell out, “Maakies!” whenever he caught sight of the tugboats with the big M’s on their stacks coming into New York harbor.

Like any good coffee table book, along with a marvelous selection of comics and illustrations, this book is full of wonderful anecdotes you can enjoy flipping to in order or at random. There’s stories, for instance, about bumming around Europe as a young man. In Rome, he created one really good drawing of the Roman Forum, made a hundred prints, and proceeded to sell each of them to tourists who thought they’d just caught him as he was drawing the original. For good measure, full of youthful rage, he pissed in every famous Roman fountain he could find. With security tight for the two Vatican fountains, he had to piss in a cup and discretely pour it in during the day. Then there’s Berlin, where he may have stirred an international incident.

Before any of this, there was Gloucester, Massachusetts. Unsuited for college, and even less for a job as a dishwasher, young Tony hit upon selling drawings of his rich neighbor’s houses. “I always knew it was my bread and butter,” he writes. We can imagine him reassuring himself of this with each sale. “I always knew it was my bread and butter.” He also had his family for moral support. His father was an illustrator and his mother and grandparents were painters. When you learn that, to round out his income, he would go down to the wharves to draw schooners just as beautiful as the ones his grandfather drew, it might bring a tear to your eye.

It is the curse and blessing of the young turk to push and pull against society and hope to live to see another day. That was the Millionaire way of life. By the time he was forty, he decided it was time to cut back a bit on the rage. A bunch of his friends had hailed a cab. There were five of them and the driver would only take four. Tony crawled on the top of the cab, screaming through the windshield. The cab took off with him on top and he was forced to jump. Luckily, there were no broken bones. He could afford to bring things down a notch. He was now a featured artist in the “New York Press” and his life as an artist was tangible. He could probably sense the upswing in his life. “I always knew it was my bread and butter.”

The success that followed would flow from “Maakies” and evolve to full length works of exquisite complexity like “Sock Monkey” and “Billy Hazelnuts.” Like Crumb, he followed his own muse from a bygone era and imbued his art with a timeless grace.

You can’t rush anything worthwhile. That certainly holds true for comics. You can’t rush creating anything of lasting value and you can’t rush reading it either. That’s the tradition comics come from. It is what makes “Maakies” so darn good. The eye is teased to linger on some nautical detail or some arcane turn of phrase or some unusual use of body parts. It is a modern day miracle of comics is what it is.

“The Art Of Tony Millionaire,” 200 pages, hardcover, 9″x12″, $39.95, published by Dark Horse Comics

“It really is hard to avoid the impression that this book exists for no other reason than that it currently makes just slightly more money than it loses”: Tim O’Neil can’t stop reading DC’s The Outsiders, a book he finds fascinating. He reviewed the first Dan DiDio/Philip Tan issue here, wondering at its very existence (Same goes for Deadpool: Merc with a Mouth and J. Michael Straczynski’s Brave and the Bold run). Speaking of the new Outsiders, Tucker Stone finishes off his Comics of the Weak column this week by taking a look at the art and arriving at a conclusion that just plain made me sad. Oh super-comics, you depress me so…

“You’ll be able take the Bif Bam Pow out of your own ear before you criticize it in another’s”: Speaking of comics breaking one’s heart, did everyone already read Tom Spurgeon’s excellent essay about some of the obvious (but apparently not thought about often enough) comics have changed in our lifetimes? If not, it’s not too late to do so!

“Old comics return in ‘Blackest Night’”: When DC announced their clever “undead” Blackest Night tie-ins, I wondered if the mainstream, not-comics media would find zombie comics about zombie characters an interesting enough hook for coverage. I haven’t seen much of that, but here’s an article from West Virginia University’s student paper at least using that angle in the headline for a story about the series/event.

“I’ll buy a few things, or possibly nothing. Because it’s less about consumption than ritual”: Jacob Lambert writes an opinion piece meditating on the changing nature of Philadelphia’s South Street for Philadelphia Weekly, at one point discussing one of the reasons he goes there weekly—to visit his local comic shop, whether or not he actually buys new comics there or not.

Billy Ray Cyrus, Marvel?: Maxim magazine lists “11 Celebrity Comics Books We Can’t Believe Exist.” I have to admit that while I can believe these all exist, there were a couple I didn’t know existed, like Marvel’s Billy Ray Cyrus comic (Hey, doesn’t his daughter have her own comic yet?) or Jackie Joyner-Kersee’s. (Oh, and this seems like as good a time as any to say, Hey DC! How about some Adventures of Jerry Lewis and Adventures of Bob Hope trades? Preferably of the Showcase Presents variety…?)

Reason #658 That Cliff Chiang Rules: Check out Chiang’s Imperial propaganda art for an set of Star Wars trading cards. Almost makes me want to take up arms against the rebel scum…

I guess they don’t call it a comic “strip” for nothing!: Josh Fruhlinger on yesterday’s Spider-Man newspaper strip: “Congratulations, Spider-Man! You have produced the most gratuitous and pointless instance of a lady taking her shirt off in the comics in the long history of that particular art form.” I guess you don’t need to pay for Marvel Comics if you wanna see MJ in her underwear anymore. Also on the subject of Frulinger and Spider-Man, Monday the comic strip commentator noted a typical act of heroism by the newspaper version of ol’ Webhead.

Graylight
Written & Illustrated by Naomi Nowak
Published by NBM

Visually, Naomi Nowak’s books always grab my attention. The trim format is easy to handle and carry, and her use of color and open design sense lend an airy, welcoming quality to each of her books. Yet much like her last comic, House of Clay, her most recent effort, Graylight, comes up short of my hopes for it.

Graylight follows one young woman and two men, engaged in something of a romantic triangle, while one of the men attempts to interview a reclusive writer, and the other, the writer’s son, acts on her behalf. Meanwhile, the mother, who happens to practice arcane rituals, wants to protect her son from the female outsider in town.

Problem is, these sordid intersections don’t really add up to much. None of the characters express much clarity of purpose, leaving the reader without a clear sense of what each wants or how another’s presence has affected him or her. The story’s magical undercurrent moves in and out of the narrative, and feels tacked on when it does manifest.

Nowak’s loose layouts, manga inspired, lend a dream-like quality to the story, which only enhances the haziness of the characters’ motivations. While the coloring provides effective ambiance, the elusive dialogue, open layouts and infrequent use of hard, clear background details fail to provide grounding for readers.

Graylight is a very attractive book, well drawn and visually appealing, but Nowak’s characters fail to come across as compelling or fully realized.  It’s almost a disappointment that she continues to pursue narrative-based comics, because it’s the storytelling aspect that tripped up House of Clay and Graylight.  Nowak’s visual talent is obvious, and hopefully she’s soon find a story she can sink her teeth more deeply into.

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!

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

WORLD OF HURT – The Thrill-Seekers – Episode 25: “Tell The Truth, Shame The Devil – Part 5”

Once I decided that Duke was going to cross this line, I knew I couldn’t redeem him.  He did more than just set the wheels in motion for whatever Charles, Ned, and Tuck ultimately did to her, he was complicit in her death.

New strips of WORLD OF HURT – The Internet’s #1 Blaxploitation Webcomic are posted every Wednesday at www.worldofhurtonline.com.

- JEP

Afrodisiac: I could have sworn this had already came out, but there it is on the Diamond shipping list for this week’s releases. Well, this is Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca’s gorgeous original graphic novel (of sorts) dedicated to the title character, a sort of What If…Luke Cage Were a Pimp with Pheromone Super-Powers? story told in a variety of styles. Guest-starring Dracula, Hercules, Death and Richard Nixon. It’s $16 for a 96-page hardcover. Even if you don’t buy it, make sure you at least pick it up and flip through it this week, as it is one beautiful book—wonderfully designed and full of eye-candy artwork. You can see a preview here.

Amazing Spider-Man #619: I hereby move that Marvel re-title this comic book The Amazing Marcos Martin (Featuring Spider-Man). This is part two of Martin and writer Dan Slott’s Mysterio story.

Avengers: The Initiative #32: Marvel’s “superhero army” the Initiative find themselves fighting alongside the Dark Avengers against the forces of Asgard, and the solicitation makes it sound like some of the cast won’t survive. Given the minor Marvels and new characters that have always made up the team, that sounds likely and, in fact, that’s always been one of the more exciting aspects of the title—the characters always seemed more highly mutable (and expendable!) than those in most other Marvel books. Christos Gage writes and Mahmud Asrar draws. The other Siege books of the week are New Avengers #61, a $4 installment of Siege mastermind Brian Michael Bendis and Stuart Immonen’s ongoing, and Siege: Storming Asgard—Heroes and Villains, a $4 book that sounds like something between a book of profiles on the major players and some behind-the-scenes material.

Batman and Robin #7: Grant Morrison is joined by another new artistic collaborator as a third story arc begins—his Seaguy and Manhattan Guardian collaborator Cameron Stewart. (Hooray!) This arc is entitled “Blackest Knight” and will guest-star The Knight, The Squire and Batwoman.

Batman: Under The Cowl: This $18, 145-page trade paperback collects stories Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns, Chuck Dixon, Bill Willingham, Doug Moench, Andy Kubert, Mike McKone, Graham Nolan, Tom Fowler, Mike Gustovich and others. The theme is apparently Batman comics in which people-other-than-Bruce Wayne are in the Bat-costume, including Jean-Paul Valley, Dick Grayson, Damian al Ghul, Tim Drake and Terry McGinnis. Most of these stories have been collected elsewhere, and are chapters in bigger, longer narratives rather than standalone stories, but it’s not a bad sampler of various Batman creative teams over the course of the last two decades.

Captain America: Reborn #6: Weeks after other books spoiled the (admittedly, foregone conclusion of an) ending, the story of the original Cap’s rebirth sees completion. It’s by Ed Brubaker and Bryan Hitch, and will run you $4.

Green Lantern #50: This looks like a fairly big week for DC’s Blackest Night event. The book the event spun out of hits a big anniversary number, and writer Geoff Johns (who wrote the last 49) and current art team Doug Mahnke and Christian Alamy celebrate with an over-sized, $3.99 issue. Johns also pens this week’s back-from-the-dead issue of Atom and Hawkman, featuring art by Ryan Sook and co-stars who are now on two different Lantern Corps. And, finally, James Robinson and Eddy Barrows continue their three-part story of what the JSA has been up to during all this in Blackest Night: JSA#2.

Justice League: Cry For Justice #6: James Robinson and Mauro Cascioli’s hilariously behind schedule miniseries staggers one more ponderous step towards its seventh and final issue. How comically behind schedule is Cry? Well, it’s set before Blackest Night, which is five-sevenths over, and the last three issues of JLoA have been set after the events of Cry‘s last chapter. (By the way, does that mean JLoA #41, which also ships this week and features the debut of the new line-up, will be the first DC book set after Blackest Night wraps up…?) Both JLoA and Cry are $4, although Cry‘s page count will, if the past five issues or any indication, include pages of prose back-matter to reach the 40-page page count indicated on dccomics.com

Kick Ass #8: It still boggles my mind that they managed to make a whole movie in the time it took Mark Millar and the usually speedy John Romita Jr. to produce eight issues of a comic book.

Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man and The Avengers: While technically accurate, the title is perhaps a bit misleading. This $10, 95-page digest collects four issues of Marvel Adventures Super Heroes, only one of which features a Spider-Man team-up (With Tigra and She-Hulk, versus The Leader). Other heroes appearing include The Hulk, Hawkeye, Spider-Woman, Giant Girl, The Beast and The Blond Phantom. All four stories are written by Paul Tobin, and the art comes courtesy David Baldeon, Marcelo Dichiara, Denis Medri and Amilcar Pinna.

Robocop #1: Robocop is back again…again! This time Dynamite Entertainment is publishing the adventures of the half man, half mahine, all cop hero, and they’ve got Rob Williams writing and Fabiano Neves drawing.

Sword #21: Hey, I thought Marvel just canceled this…?

Teen Titans #79: Oh hey, remember how DC was integrating the Milestone Universe into the DC Universe? Whatever happened with that? Well, in this issue Static and his Titans teammates return to Dakota with him, in a story by the title’s apparently occasional “regular” writer Felicia D. Henderson and the art team of Joe Bennett and Jack Jadson. It’s a $4 book, but comes with the usual Ravager back-up.

Ultimate Comics Enemy #1: Apparently not content with writing one line-wide crossover event for Marvel, Brian Michael Bendis is also scrpting an Ultimate Comics event story, the universe’s first since it was relaunched post Ultimatum as “Ultimate Comics.” The solicitation is basically meaningless gibberish, so no guess as to what it’s about, beyond there being some kind of, you know, enemy involved. It’s going to be drawn by Rafa Sandoval, feature a cover by Ed McGuinness and carry the Ultimate Comics pricetag of $4.

Sorry, Jack, but Titanic just got sunk… but a bunch of mutant blue cat people.

CBS reports that the James Cameron’s CGI behemoth Avatar has stomped on the long-reigning king of the box office known as Titanic — which perhaps coincidentally was Cameron’s last mass-market film.

The film currently has topped $1.8 billion, which is pretty good, considering Avatar was rumored to have had a half-billion-dollar budget. It goes without saying that it’s the highest-grossing sci-fi/genre flick as well, blowing recent champs like the Dark Knight, Iron Man and Spider-Man 3 right out of the water.

“To get to those numbers,” Hollywood.com’s Paul Dergarabedian told CBS, “you need repeat business, you need great word-of-mouth, and you need to grab an audience basically across the board.” Then again, with already six weeks at number one, the Avatar inertia doesn’t look to be stopping anytime soon.

Mark Millar and Dynamic Forces have teamed up to put one lucky auctioneer in the pages of the upcoming ICON book, Nemesis!

With the bids on eBay currently at $1,600, Mark Millar explained that the proceeds of the auction would go towards a special fund to help handicapped children. Read on for a statement from the man himself:

My older brother, Dr. Bobby Millar, works with these children every day and he explained to me what a difference it would make if they could get a new bus… Resources are tight at all schools and hospitals in the current economic climate, but we had a great success with the Kick-Ass auction and feel hopeful that comic-book readers will dig deep again and they can build towards this pretty hefty amount of cash they need for the vehicle. Steven and I have had an amazing run of luck with Civil War and Old Man Logan and we’re hoping “Nemesis” will be similarly massive. To star as a comic-book hero is pretty cool and the intense movie-studio and production-company interest for “Nemesis” before the book even hits the stands should bode well that whoever wins this auction will get their name out there in many other media too, just like Dave Lizewski. I really hope people get behind this as the staff at the school do a terrific job and the kids would be delighted with this nice, new bus everyone has their eye on.

The winner of the auction will have his name put on the world’s smartest cop, Millar’s antagonist for the anti-Batman known as Nemesis. Wanna throw your hat in the ring? Bidding starts here.

New Jersey’s got itself a new Situation, and I’m not talking about a guy with a fake tan, spiky hair and chiseled abs.

Wizard has announced that it will be launching its own New Jersey Comic Con, in Edison, NJ, on October 15-17. The convention takes place the week after the Great Con War battleground of New York, where Wizard and competitor Reed Exhibitions will square off with Big Apple Con versus the New York Comic Con.

The real questions, of course, are these: Will this potentially staunch New Jersey conventioneers from hitting NYCC or Big Apple Con? (Answer: Unlikely.) But will this tap into the fatigue that companies themselves have during convention season? That may very well be the case — certainly don’t expect companies like Marvel and DC to be sending out huge contingents, even if many of their editors and the like already live in NJ.

Shocking, I know. Robert Buckley, the handsome young actor who played Kim Raver’s much-younger love interest in Lipstick Jungle and Clayton Evans on One Tree Hill, revealed in an interview with Jenna Busch for Popeater that he’s a comic book fan (Which is sort of a must rather than something to be ashamed of in today’s Hollywood, isn’t it?), and, when asked, that he’d ideally like to play Captain America (you can read the comics part of the conversation here).

Given the popularity and money involved with a successful superhero movie, is it really news that an up-and-comer would like to star in one featuring a popular hero? (As opposed to, say, Robert DeNiro announcing his intention to play Man-Thing). Apparently so, as MTV’s Splash Page and Comicbookmovie.com posted reports on the interview with headlines like “‘One Tree Hill’ actor…Wants to Wield Captain America’s ‘First Avenger’ Shield” and  “Rob Buckley Wants to Wield the Shield!” and…oh no, I’ve just done a post on it too! Now I’m part of the problem!

Sigh…

Well, what do you guys think? Has he got the chops to play Cap? He’s certainly got the looks and abs, although if he’s only 29 and looks younger, they’re gonna need to cast an awfully young Bucky Barnes…

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

Z is for Zeitgeist. It’s also for zombie. With AMC ordering a pilot for an adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s WALKING DEAD, fans of the series have to be wondering if WALKING DEAD‘s small-screen translation will retain the character driven, anyone-can-die ruthlessness that separates the series from the shambling horde of zombie comics, movies, and novels.

If this script review at Corona Coming Attractions is accurate, Walking Dead fans need not worry. As Zombies make the slow stagger form pop-cultural boogeyman of choice to the butt of post-mdern jokes like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies It seems that renowned screenwriter/director Frank Darabont certainly sees Walking Dead the same way Kirkman must, as a way to take our zombies back.

At the very least, maybe this will pave the way for a Mad Men/Walking Dead crossover. Instead of shilling products to mindless consumer zombies, you could have Don Draper orchestrating campaigns for real Zombies. Just think of how great Mad Men‘s beautiful period sets would look splattered in entrails.

[Images and Source: TV Guide]

This season of Smallville, even though is half-way over, doesn’t show any signs of slowing down with another DC villain joining the ranks of Metallo and Doomsday with an appearance on the show: Silver Banshee! TV Guide reports that Odessa Rae from TV’s Leverage, will portray the Silver Banshee as well as her alter ego, Siobhan McDougal in “Escape”.

But that’s only half of the news.

Annette O’Toole will be returning. That’s right, Martha Kent, who hasn’t been seen since the 6th season when she assumed Jonathan’s seat on the Senate. She is scheduled for at least one appearance with a possibility of another sometime down the line. It’ll be interesting to see how Martha reacts as her little boy has become quite the man these past seasons. I’ve always been fond of O’Toole as Martha and I have to say looks pretty good for 57 and is certainly a bit different from other Marthas in past TV productions.

Though, I have to wonder something. In Superman mythology, Martha is the one who made Superman’s legendary attire. I wonder in her appearance she mentions that awful dark garb he’s wearing and opts for something a bit more…colorful.

The first few, non-musical sequences of You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, available to own on DVD January 26, is done in a sort of mockumentary-style, with a fair minimum of actual story content before each musical number; I’m unclear as to whether or not some or all of the non-musical footage was either reused in other specials, or imported from them and reused here.

The basic premise of this musical Peanuts DVD, based on a Broadway musical by the same name, is that the gang from the popular comic strips perform sketches and musical numbers, with Chuck, Schrooeder, Lucy, Linus and Snoopy each getting a song spotlight after an the aforementioned introduction, which establishes the characters, giving anyone who isn’t familiar with the material (although, who that would be, I’m not sure) a primer on the characters and concepts that make Peanuts work. Some of them, like Charlie Brown’s horribly mean-spirited kite, get musical moments of their own.

One of the questions that I had going into an animated special based on a popular Broadway special—whether they would use the original musical cast or the voice actors that were so recognizable from two-plus decades of animated Peanuts specials—is answered quickly; they use the traditional voice actors, and to good effect, I think; I can’t quite place how a more typical Broadway-musical style would work with these characters onscreen. The notable exception, of course, is Snoopy’s song, since the dog doesn’t talk in most of the other cartoons. That said, the vocalist who sings that song is probably the most technically-proficient of all the singers on the special, but it still feels the most awkward and out-of-place.

The disc is fun enough, but doesn’t have the energy of some of the better specials; it really made me think that “Snoopy, Come Home” or “Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown” may not have had as many, or as sophisticated, musical numbers but having them intercut into the plot instead of standing alone like an episode of some juvenile variety show moves them along a lot better.

Here’s something you don’t see every day: Praise for Marvel and Brian Michael Bendis’ “Dark Reign”…at The Comics Journal. It is, of course, highly qualified, and speaks only to the basic idea of “Dark Reign” as it was realized in Dark Avengers, not the line-wide, year-long branding exercise that it has since become. The author, Rich Kreiner, also had some kind words for the  beginning of the “New Krypton” storyline in DC’s Superman books.

“Brother, that’s eight years in the making. Take that, Siege!”: Tucker Stone talks about the biggest years-in-the-making pop comics event of 2010, and it’s neither Blackest Night nor Siege.

In retrospect, the first coupla Nightwing costumes weren’t so bad after all: Johnathan at Living Between Wednesdays unearthed some fan-submitted redesigns for the original Robin’s costume. David Mouillesea’s is my favorite, as it has Robin inexplicably grow a mustache to go with his new costume. I suppose that’s one way to show people you’re not a kid anymore, but still.

Now that’s an unusual creative team: Oprah-approved author Eckhart Tolle (A New Earth) and Mutts cartoonist Patrick McDonnel have collaborated on a picture book, Guardians of Being. The Summit Daily News has a brief story about it. How is it that this came out last October and I haven’t heard of it yet?

“Going to the gritty would be mistake for next ‘Spider-Man’ film”: You tell ‘em, Erin Nolan.

“They’d laugh, then turn the page and pretend it was something else”: Laurel Maury on Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons for the San Francisco Chronicle.

“…but it’s actually an issue banging on about the Sentry’s back story.  Apparently he might be Jesus or something”: That’s from Paul O’Brien’s mini-review of last Wednesday’s issue of Dark Avengers. He calls the issue “a bit of a mess,” but I’ve got to admit, The Sentry-as-Jesus sort of makes me want to read it…

Since 1997, Lark Pien has built up a reputation within the small press comics community and has now made the jump to her first children’s book based on her most popular character, Long Tail Kitty. Having studied architecture and pursued work in the architectural industry, Pien gradually made the transition over to comics and becoming a full-time artist. With a number of projects in the works, this is a good time to check in on her.

Blog@Newsarama: Tell us about Long Tail Kitty, the character. How far back does it go and is it a guiding force in your comics?

Lark Pien: Long Tail Kitty – Heaven was a story for my rabbit who died while i was traveling abroad in 1999-2000. LTK was almost a side character but he was well-received, and I met many people in comics after this story.

I don’t think Long Tail Kitty is a guiding force, but he’s been fun to draw, and his easy way helps me not to be so serious all the time.

Blog@: You loved comics as a kid, you became an architectural designer and then you returned to comics. What was it like starting out in comics?

LP: It was very humble and private, but I met many cartoonists early on. They were supportive and gave advice freely. Sometimes I would get a postcard in the mail from a cartoonist. My little world became a little bit bigger that way.

There weren’t many girl cartoonists. I remember meeting Andrice Arp at an Alternative Press Expo. I bought her comic and she gave me a sticker of a giant angry duck and I got it in my head that I wanted us to be friends. This wasn’t grade school but it might as well have been! Somehow it happened, we became good friends.

Blog@: Please describe for us your working methods. How do you develop your work?

LP: I write and draw in my sketchbook. I’ll draw even when I don’t have ideas. Most times I know the beginning and the end of a story, but not the middle.

I have to really work to make the beginning and the ending meet. It’s good if i can build a structure to support my story, then let it take the shape that it wants to be.

A lot of people ask about creating characters, how I come up with them. Usually I’m thinking about what the character is doing or where it is in the world, and the story comes from that. The personality and how the character looks develops along the way, and usually reveals itself later on in the process for me.

Blog@: Can you share with us how you’ve managed to turn your comics and art into a career?

LP: This is a very hard question! I’m not sure i can answer it correctly. Do we talk about money? My view on money is general rather than specific. I tend to overlook trend type offers due to a muted interest in the short term.  I group projects by seasons (commissions for example, are winter/spring; conventions are summer/fall). I like to think ahead, but not plan a whole lot.

I think about political/cultural landscapes changing – and what will i be like when i’m seventy, ninety? Also there are all sorts of inventions I hope to see before I die. This is unprofessional to say, but I think my career is a semblance of self-certitude and the possibilities in the world surrounding.

Blog@: What would you like to tell us about your new children’s book, Long Tail Kitty?

LP: My publisher, Blue Apple Books, has been very generous! BAB has given me a lot of freedom in writing the stories I wanted to tell and drawing the art the way I wanted to do it. They made the book design very special (embossed die-cut cover, cloth binding, an activities foldout page, and a draw LTK bonus section!), and to see the artwork in full-color is a treat (my minis are usually in b/w). though catagorized for younger audiences the new stories in this book retain the qualities that are in my mini comics, so i hope older readers give it a chance too!

Blog@: Can you tell us something about your role as a colorist for Gene Yang’s American Born Chinese?

LP: Chinkee was a challenge to color – he was in a different style (more cartoony) than the rest of the characters, but still placed in a real setting. How yellow is too yellow? He’s supposed to be too yellow. It was hard to make those kinds of decisions. Sometimes I wanted Gene to say “Whoa! Change that color!” but he was very easy-going.

Blog@: Are there any comics that you follow? Or can you tell us about some of your favorite comics?

LP: I like Hicksville (Dylan Horrocks), Black and White (Matsumoto Taiyo) and Notes For A War Story (Gipi). They are my favorites.

Black and White I first read in the 90′s, when VIZ was in SoMA. I was given an oversized  two-volume set – which I foolishly lent out and never got back (see these glittering tears? Falling like rain.) It’s out of print now, that edition, but I’ve another reading set which I don’t mind lending out still.

I just read a ton of Vagabond (Takehiko Inoue) and cartoonists who I’ve recently stalked online are Lille Carré, Eleanor Davis, Laura Park and Anke Feuchtenberger. Girls win this round!

Blog@:  Any upcoming projects that you’d like to tell us about or any thoughts on what lies ahead for you?

LP: I just finished the artwork for Mr. Elephanter – a children’s book with Candlewick Press, based on my mini-comic, Brave Mr. Elephanter (2007). The graphic novel project, Stories from the Ward, is with First Second, but completion won’t be for a little while yet. FS has been very patient and supportive. There are two other comic projects with publishers, but we haven’t set a release date yet. Artwise, I’ve been developing a new series of abstracts. I’d like to squeeze in a collaborative project and/or installation project sometime this year. That’d be fun.

Keep up with Lark Pien at her blog and check out more of her work here. Long Tail Kitty is published by Blue Apple Books.

With the announcement of Marc Webb stepping up to the director’s chair of Sony’s Spider-man reboot last week, Heat Vision has some interesting notes about the production and the future direction the franchise will be headed.

The plan for the movie is to be in the $80 million range and feature a cast of relative unknowns (so you can quash those Rob Pattinson or Gordon-Levitt rumors at this point). And the story will be pared down to center on a high school kid who is dealing with the knowledge that his uncle died even though the teen had the power to stop it.

Wow. I understand that using established actors like Willem Dafoe and Kirsten Dunst have higher salaries than the virtual unknown James Franco and Tobey Maguire (who only got $4,000,000, compared to the $17,000,000 he received for the sequel), but scaling back so much seems out of the ordinary. However, that is explained by the reasoning behind it that.

The touchstone for the new movie will not be the 1960s comics, which were the inspiration behind the movies by Raimi, who grew on up on them, but rather this past decade’s “Ultimate Spider-Man” comics by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley where the villain-fighting took a back seat to the high school angst.

It seems to me they are going backwards. Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man was made for a pretty hefty budget of an estimated $139,000,000 and to scale back. Of course this could all be proven wrong when the case is revealed. I just feel like a production like this, one that has made several billion dollars worldwide, the powers that be are trying to catch lightning in a bottle again, only they’re using a spoon and a frying pan.

Conan O’Brien recently said that cynicism doesn’t lead anywhere, and I believe that, but in light of these developments I’m not going to simply brush it off as a failure and a misstep, but more of a challenge to Sony to prove me wrong.

So, true believers and Rama readers, what do you think of this direction and future of this franchise?

Now appearing on an iPhone near you via comiXology, Chew Vol. 1, which collects the first five issues which also debuted this week on the New York Times Best-Seller’s list. Chew tells the story about Detective Tony Chu, is a cop that is also a Cibopath. Which means Chu gets a psychic impression from whatever he eats and you can imagine the things he has to eat in order to solve the case.

With Chew constantly flying off shelves, this might come in hand for those who have been wanting to check it out, but never had a chance.