For regular readers of the blog, you’ll note that we LOVE Chris Samnee — and while we’ve shown you still images of his in the past, get ready to see it in motion!

Via his blog, check out a video of Samnee taking on the Swamp Thing:

For those who are wondering, yes, it’s sped up — he said this was about 30 minutes in real-time. But the lushness of the inks, well, it’s just awesome. Give Samnee’s blog a look if you dig.

Yesterday Scott McCloud, the innovative comics creator and thinker-and-talker-about-comics repsponsible for Zot! and Understanding Comics, posted all 466 pages of the rough draft of his next book, a 2013 release tentatively entitled The Sculptor. Here’s a screenshot of what 466 pages of comics look like:

I’m a big fan of McCloud’s work, and I just couldn’t wait to read and write about his latest, even if it’s still a work in progress. So here’s my review of the book:

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!

I bought and read four new comic books yesterday, one of which was Weird Western Tales #71, one of those kinda clever Blackest Night tie-ins that are literally returning from the dead (if one considers long-canceled comic books to be literally dead).

When deciding whether or not to buy that particular comic book, weighing the various pluses and minuses on some half-subconscious level that Malcolm Gladwell has probably written a book about, one of the factors was who wrote it: DC’s Vice President/Executive Editor and public face of the company Dan DiDio.

For me personally, DiDio’s involvement was more of a question mark than a plus or a minus, and even after reading the book—which ended up being pretty terrible, by the way—it’s still a question mark. What I don’t really understand is this: Does Dan DiDio have any fans?

I’m honestly not trying to be glib or dismissive or—what’s the phrase?—a dick here. It’s something I’m curious about, given DiDio’s rather regular dabbling in writing for his company. The direct market that specializes in selling single issues of Big Two super-books like those that DC publishes is largely fan-driven, and fans tend to be fans of creators more than characters or concepts at this point (And no wonder either, given the amount of choices available to them these days).

The byline “Dan DiDio” is one that comes with a lot of baggage. One need not look far to find detractors of the man, who is—rightly or wrongly—assigned a great deal of the blame for whatever people perceive as wrong with DC Comics (And, to be fair, he gets a lot more blame than he gets credit; if you love something the company does, you’ll probably credit the writer involved, whereas if you hate it you’ll blame the editors and management).

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Universal has released the first official pictures of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and might I say they are a beaut:

Scott Pilgrim. Flaming sword. Kick-flips. Who’s excited to see our indie slacker guitarist face off against seven evil ex-boyfriends?

To paraphrase the great urban philosopher Ricky Bobby, this might win the Academy Award. For Best Movie Ever Made. Another image of the gang is up after the cut!

[Via Slashfilm]

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Bluewater is apparently showing us all its Poker Face, as they announced this week that they would be printing a biocomic based on… Lady Gaga.

E! reported that the book, the first of the publisher’s “Fame” line, will be out on Free Comic Book Day. Others slated to be on that list are Robert Pattinson, 50 Cent and Taylor Swift.

The Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery in Seattle will be hosting its 2010 preview exhibition this Saturday!

On display will include work from Tony Millionaire, Peter Bagge, Jim Woodring, Michael Kupperman, Jason, Gilbert Hernandez, and Richard Sala. New talent will include Joe Daly, Nate Neal, and Tim Hensley.

The event will take place from 6-9pm, coinciding with the Georgetown Art Attack.

And to be fair, if I could make an Olympic-sized pool filled with money using less than 1 percent of my annual income, that’s pretty much the right answer.

George Lucas was on the Daily Show Tuesday night, talking with Jon Stewart about his new book, Blockbusting. Best part of the interview is when Jon discusses the… we’ll call it “generation gap” between he and his children when it comes to all things Star Wars.

“It’s a work of fiction — its a metaphor,” Lucas told Stewart, when asked about keeping a sense of humor despite stinging criticism against Episodes I-III. “It’s not real. And therefore you can either like it or not like it. Whatever.”

Talk about a save worthy of Avengers history — with Spider-Man 4 delayed, Paramount and Marvel Studios are filling the void by bumping up the release date of the Thor film!

Variety has reported that the Kenneth Branagh-helmed picture starring Chris Hemsworth as the God of Thunder will be moving to May 6, 2011 — a weekend slot that Marvel’s most successful films, such as Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, and Iron Man all opened on.

Spider-Man 4 was originally set to open on that date, but due to conflicts between the studio and director Sam Raimi over the choice of villain — Raimi picking the Vulture and the studio wanting another villain and the Black Cat — the film is looking likely to be delayed.

While Thor was initially set to open May 20, 2011, Variety also reported that the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie is jumping to that date. Additionally, Sony reps are saying that they are trying to still hit that May 6, 2011 date for Spider-Man 4, due to the coveted date — while it’s likely that Thor would be pushed back if that were the case, there’s no word as to when it might go.

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

WORLD OF HURT – The Thrill-Seekers – Episode 20: “The Truth Will Out…”

I had a lot of fun with this one.  I liked the upshot of Pastor so much that I even use a cropped version of it for my Twitter gravatar.  I did have a slight moral dilemma over Pastor using torture to extract the information from Duke, but then I decided that since crime fiction allows us to indulge our revenge fantasies, it is the only place where torture should be used.  Whoops!  Got a little political there, huh?

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

- JEP

Though the projects were announced by DC last month, it was confirmed in the DC Nation pages of Wednesday’s DC Comics releases that the new “Who’s Who” series arrives this May. The series, an update of the extremely popular ’80s accounting of the characters, teams and locations of the DCU, will be 18 issues and include upwards of 1000 characters. Bob Greenberger, who worked on the original series, has returned to DC to help steer the new version.

Also, the column discussed “DC Legacies”, a series that is a spirtual cousin to “History of the DC Universe”. This one will show the history of the DCU through the eyes of five generations of families touched by the events of the super-hero universe. Expect superstar artists, like a particular father-son combination named Kubert, to be involved.

Savage Dragon #156, out this week, was the culmination of not just the last year of storytelling in creator Erik Larsen’s epic superhero saga, but also final and clinching proof of some of the things many fans have suspected since the storyline began in earnest a few issues ago. The issue was essentially one long knock-down, drag-out fight between “our” Savage Dragon and the one who had come here from Darkworld a while back. Then, in the last few pages, there was not one but two major story beats that will doubtless come into play in a big way over the next few months. (more…)

In the spirit of a topic I brought up a few weeks ago, your friends here at Super Articulate wanted to remind the fine folks at DC Direct that there’s an A-list character they’ve lagged on for far too long. Don’t get me wrong, The Flash has gotten attention in the last year alone. But for a hero who has an array of villains surpassed in the DC Universe by Batman alone, I’m not alone in being astounded at all the missed opportunities over the years. Though DC Direct can no longer ignore the viability of the Rogues Gallery and supporting cast of the Fastest Man Alive, not when the DC editorial and creative hierarchy has placed Barry Allen at such a premium. So it is with that sentiment that we offer up a solid THREE rounds of Flash-based heroes and villains who need to find their way to our shelves faster than… well, the Flash.
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Find out more about Global Freezing here on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays or at ComicsByEgg.com.

I saw a fascinating article up on the Washington Post yesterday, discussing the gender gap regarding publishing — which I would imagine could be extrapolated to all its forms, including comics.

The title? Appropriately enough: “The key to literary success? Be a man — or write like one.” Now, there’s been maxims tossed around about romance-starved women buying Nora Roberts books and chewing up advertising space with soap opera consumption, but Julianna Baggott has a different theory:

In my grad school thesis, written at 23, you’ll find young men coming of age, old men haunted by war, Oedipus complexes galore. If I’d learned nothing else, it was this: If you want to be a great writer, be a man. If you can’t be a man, write like one…

When I invented the pen name N.E. Bode for “The Anybodies,” a trilogy for younger readers, I had to choose to be a man or a woman. The old indoctrination kicked in. I picked man. The trilogy did well, shortlisted in a People magazine summer pick, alongside Bill Clinton and David Sedaris. I was finally one of the boys.

The whole article is well worth a read. There’s another thought in here that really is good food for thought that can be extrapolated to comics nowadays — we have Geoff Johns, Brian Michael Bendis, Matt Fraction, J. Michael Straczynski, Ed Brubaker, Jason Aaron representing the Y chromosome. But on the other side, with Gail Simone, Amanda Conner, Marjorie Liu and Nicola Scott, as Baggott says, women being listed as concessions?

Something interesting based on the Girl Comics announcement from awhile back is that many of the women writing aren’t really being seen in a regular monthly comic nowadays — you have diehards like Louise Simonson and Ann Nocenti and the return of talent like Kathryn Immonen and Devin Grayson, but you aren’t regularly seeing them in the spotlight the same way you are a Bendis or a Johns.

And another tangent that springs to mind: could you spring the argument in the other direction, and argue that male writers with a penchant for strong female characters — let’s use Greg Rucka, as my arbitrary definition as the leader of the pack in this regard — is it them “writing like a woman”? How would this explain things like, say, Wonder Woman sales, or sales on the buzzworthy Detective Comics? I’m curious as to the discussion that could come from this — what say you, Rama readers?

[Hat tip to Johanna]

I’m all about giving credit where it’s due, and Rich Johnston over at Bleeding Cool has a nice and to-the-point retrospective of Mark Millar and Brian Michael Bendis’ careers, marking their upward trajectories as tastemakers at the House of Ideas, as well as where they might go in Hollywood.

Here’s an excerpt, about Millar, who apparently is talking about teaming up with Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn to pursue his personal unicorn — a Superman movie:

[W]ith every step of the last twenty years that’s what Mark Millar has done, from Sonic The Hedgehog to Swamp Thing to Superman Adventures to occasional JLA projects, to Authority, to Ultimate X-Men to Ultimates to Wanted to Civil War to the Wanted movie to the Kick Ass movie. And his name is about to be able to greenlight anything. He’s Frank Miller without The Spirit.

While I’d say that last sentence might be a little over-the top — I’d argue that the success or failure of Kick-Ass will help cement (or debunk) Rich’s claims — there’s no disputing that Millar has been moving upward and onward in both comics and Hollywood, really helping pioneer the “widescreen” epics that are so popular nowadays. If the new Avengers film doesn’t feel at least somewhat like Millar’s Ultimates, I’m going to be mightily surprised.

Yet the thing that really stood out to me was Rich’s look at Brian Michael Bendis’ career — it’s certainly more focused, but at the same time, could there be drawbacks to that?

While Mark Millar has performed more parachuting into projects then leaving fairly shortly afterwards, Brian has stuck with projects, from Ultimate Spider-Man to Avengers to Powers. Which has probably given him less opportunity to take advantage of “promotion”, and has stymied him from switching companies, often the best way to be offered the next step up in any career. But as a result he has a more dedicated fanbase. And he’s doing more comics. And he’s the creative “brain trust” of Marvel, his opinions matter more than anyone, outside of Joe Quesada.

Love Bendis or hate him, he’s an absolute workhorse over at the House of Ideas — I doubt there are any writers that Joe Quesada trusts more in that company, and I think we’re going to see that in spades whenever we see the revamped New Avengers team post-Siege. But Rich is right in this regard — as awesome as it is to work with the major icons of Marvel in comic book form, is there a wider and more lucrative platform for Bendis to shoot for? Apparently on Twitter Bendis expressed his interest in writing the Spider-Man 4 script, which is currently might be delayed due to issues deciding the villain — what say you? Is this something you’d like to see?

Ready for violence, death, and aliens? Well, you’ll have to wait a little bit on that, as the new teaser trailer for Gantz is just that — a tease, instead examining the book’s titular ebony sphere…

The Shinsuke Sato-directed film is due out sometime in 2011 in Japan — no word yet on when it’ll hit the States.

Production sense, tingling!

That’s the word from the Hollywood Reporter, who says that Spider-Man 4 has been delayed, due to Sam Raimi and Sony not being able to agree on who should play the villain or villains in the movie.

(John Malkovich as the Vulture? Okay — Anne Hathaway as Felicia Hardy as the “Vultress”? Not so okay.) But considering the fact that Raimi was convinced to go against his instincts in the last film with Venom — and you see the drop in critical praise that took place between the second and third films — and it’s no surprise that Raimi is sticking to his guns.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Raimi was keen on introducing the Vulture in the last film. A Devil Inside playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, Zodiac screenwriter James Vanderbilt, and Seabiscuit’s Gary Ross have all taken on the script, to no avail — currently, Spider-Man 2 alum Alvin Sargent (seriously, how did I write James? Thanks for the heads-up, Warren!) is working with the script.

There’s no word as to how delayed the shooting might get — THR predicts production could begin this summer.

Rotten #6

Created by Mark Rahner

Written by Mark Rahner & Robert Horton

Art by Dan Dougherty

Lettering by Sean Konot

Published by Moonstone Books

In Stores: January 6

Welcome to another installment of agent William Wade and J.J. Flynn, zombie hunters under secret orders from Pres. Rutherford B. Hayes. Wade and Flynn have taken command of a fort and are just a step ahead of their men in attempting to control the latest infestation of the undead. A sudden break in the desperate surroundings at the fort, in the last issue, came about by an unexpected visit by an industrialist and his wife.

This latest issue concludes the story, “Frostbite,” which centers the action at Fort Valhalla, an all but forgotten army outpost. It is 1877 in the Wild West, and folks tend to make up their own rules. A bunch of thugs among the enlisted men have ganged up on Emma Benge, the attractive young wife of Herbert J. Benge, of Hep Industries, a Halliburton-like war profiteer. Just as the men close in on Emma, Wade emerges to restore order. The men are sequestered and we move on to the next scene.

In the last issue, Flynn had decided to investigate a nearby cave and Benge invited himself along. There, they found a ghastly pile of corpses. In this issue, thanks to Benge’s meddling that leads to heating up the cave, those corpses come to life! This issue deals with the bloody consequences as this latest batch of zombies make their way back to the fort and it’s up to Wade and Flynn to engage in their fiercest battle yet with the ghouls.

It seems to me that we coast down to a fairly satisfying conclusion to this story arc. Maybe things are beginning to lose just a little bit of steam. I sense that things got rushed and it led to a few static moments. Other than that, I can’t find too much fault. This is a unique concept that I remain curious about. I can’t say that I ever got totally caught up in the zombie soap opera that is The Walking Dead. A comic that, for me, is mostly about setting up as realistic a zombie story as possible is not enough. I don’t get that from Rotten. A get a bit of a steampunk kick from it. I also appreciate the subtext of political and social commentary. And I feel that the chemistry between the two agents, Wade and Flynn, is strong.

Where Rotten goes after this issue looks interesting. After a zombie massacre, we are down to a small core group: the Benges, Wade and Flynn, and two trusty soldiers. They are all walking into the sunset and it’s anybody’s guess as to what happens next. It might be great to see everything converge on a resolution sooner than later. Or, depending on the strength of the characters and the story, to settle into something episodic and compelling like Jonah Hex. I have no idea where all this is leading but, like I say, I remain curious.

The library is a great place for readers to discover comics, and it’s a great place for comics readers to check out things that they want to try without spending their hard-earned cash. I’m looking at comics that I find in the New York Public Library system.

Some time back, I checked out the fourth Scott Pilgrim book; well, I’m finally caught up, having borrowed the fifth and penultimate book in Bryan Lee O’Malley’s saga, Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe.

I find myself of two minds about this latest installment. On one hand, it’s clearly well done: smartly written; laid out perfectly; graphically creative; upbeat, poppy and fun while still being emotional and intelligent. O’Malley skillfully moves the sillier aspects to the background, as Scott battles Ramona’s evil ex-boyfriends’ robots mostly off-panel, leaving the emotional crux of the saga in the forefront. Ramona and Kim carry large swathes of the narrative, and O’Malley exhibits a strong understanding of their emotional turmoil.

The big fun of Scott Pilgrim is how O’Malley keeps the emotional maturation of his protagonists on center stage while packing the fringes of the panels with power ups, fourth wall-busting jokes, genre exploitation and clever visual gags that make for an exciting adventure-comedy. Intelligence and action under one cover, what an astounding concept!

My second thought is simply that after five volumes, I feel a little apathetic about the too-slow awakening maturity of Scott Pilgrim. Everything’s well done in each book, but there is a sense that everything could’ve been just done by this point. The final fifteen pages of this book only enhanced the meandering quality, giving us only the highlight of Scott’s apology to Kim amid a sea of wandering and loneliness.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe stands as another testament to the quality of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s writing and wit, and it’s definitely a series worth your time.  I must admit to looking forward to it all ending, but I’m also looking forward to my library getting the final book when it comes out, because I definitely want to see how O’Malley wraps this all up.