I really like the expression “50 previously unseen Yodas”: Mike Baehr kicks off Monday’s edition of “Things to see” on the Flog! Blog with links to his Yoda-themed sketchbook. Gahan Wilson, Jeff Smith, Roger Langridge, Gary Panter, R. Sikoryak and Anders Nilsen are among the artists who offered their versions of the Muppet Jedi master.

“Captain Kirk To Be Captain America?”: As David mentioned earlier in the week, there’s one of those casting rumors regarding Chris Pine as Captain America going around. He better be careful about taking too many Captain roles in major film franchises, or he’ll be in danger of being type-cast as someone who can only play Captains. Although come to think of it, maybe that won’t be so bad. There’s Captain Marvel (the DC/Fawcett one) and Captain Marvel (the Marvel one) yet to play, maybe the lead in a live-action adaptation of Captain Crunch breakfast cereal (you know it’s only a matter of time before Hollywood gets around to movies based on breakfast cereals) and perhaps someday the lead in a Captain Kangaroo biopic. Go for it, Pine!

“James Patterson hopes comics expand his audience”: Yes, because if there’s one thing James Patterson needs, it’s a bigger audience.

“The only ones who can stop Tiger and his gang of violent thugs are the city’s two superheroes, Panda Superman, the son of an anthropologist, and Panda Heroic, the son of a zoo custodian”: To hell with Iron Man 2 and Green Lantern, the superhero movie I’m most looking forward to is Pandamen.

Well, I always liked his helmet at least: Nobody likes Peacemaker.

“The 5 Most Disturbing X-Men Love Affairs”: Only five…?

Did you hate the little cartoons I used to do to kick this column off each week? Then good news! I just lost access to the scanner I used to use to send them into the Internet, and probably won’t be able to upload any for awhile (Unless there are any millionaires in the reading audience who would like to buy me a scanner of my own). Did you like them? Oh. Well, then I guess it’s bad news.

But whether there are colored pencil drawings of dubious quality or not, it’s still the night before Wednesday, which means it’s time to take our weekly look at what’s coming out this week. Ready?

Almost Silent: This 300-page, $25 hardcover collects a quartet of one-named comics creator Jason almost silent works, including several that have been out of print for a while. You Can’t Get There from Here, Tell Me Something, Meow, Baby and The Living and the Dead are all included, and that last one’s got zombies in it…you all still like zombies, right? This should look fine sitting next to Low Moon on a bookshelf.

Dark Avengers #14: This week’s Siege tie-in, and it’s…kind of a big deal, I think? I don’t know, the solicitation sounds like free verse poetry to me: “Is this a hero reborn or a eulogy?” It also promises “the most pivotal moment” in The Sentry’s life, so that’s something. It’s by Brian Michael Bendis and Mike Deodato, and it will cost you four bones. If you’re a little behind on your Dark Avengers and need to get caught up, this week also sees the release of the second collection of the series so far, Dark Avengers Vol. 2: Molecule Man is a $20, 110-page hardcover collecting #9-#12 of the hit series.

Devil #1: Madhouse, the anime studio responsible for Trigun, Ninja Scroll and Paprika, are producing this four-issue, Western-style (i.e. not manga) comic book series. Torajiro Kishi is the writer/artist, and the premise is a new take on vampires. It should definitely be worth a look. Preview here.

DC Universe Origins: Hey remember those neat little two-page origin stories that appeared in the back of 52 and Countdown? Well DC’s gathered them all up into a single $15, 145-page trade paperback. Mark Waid, Scott Beatty and Len Wein wrote ‘em, and they were drawn by a who’s who roster of artists, many of them perfectly suited to the subject. There should be about 50 characters covered, everyone from Animal Man to Zatanna, according to the solicitation.

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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!

“From The Ashes” is a wonderful satire that picks its fights wisely and, unlike some political humor, will stand the test of time. You need to have a healthy sense of humor for this to work and Bob Fingerman has that going for him. He does funny right with his art and writing. On top of that, he can tell a good story. In the end, no matter what your political views, you can’t help but like the guy and get hooked into this book.

It looks like Fingerman has done some soul searching regarding how he tackles the world of auto-bio comics. With a sense of modesty and irreverence, he gives us here a mash up of auto-bio, horror, sci-fi and political humor. In this case, Fingerman doesn’t think it’s enough to recount what’s already happened in his life. This book is a “speculative memoir” of what may happen and allows him to express his dismay with right-wing extremists, religious extremists and post-9/11 fear mongering.

It’s the end of the world as we know it and Bob and his wife, Michele, are alright, at least at first. All that peace and quiet instead of the mayhem they’re used to living with in New York City is therapeutic. All those annoyances, all the meaningless demands, all gone. Michele finally says goodbye to her dead BlackBerry, with a profound sense of relief. But a post-apocalyptic world isn’t all a bowl of cherries. The jolly couple go through a range of emotions and mourn the passing of loved ones just in time for their next challenge: cannibals.

The cannibals turn out to be foodies that don’t find Bob and Michele appetizing at all. Bob is rather insulted. He wants to pick a fight with the cannibals but Michele steers him away, just in time for: mutants. And later on it’s time for: zombies. And even later on, it’s time for: right-wing nuts. This really gets crazy when all these groups get mixed together. It’s all good fun in the spirit of MAD Magazine. Fingerman used to work with Harvey Kurtzman, the creator o MAD, and that influence has served this book well.

A healthy sense of humor is inextricably linked to a healthy sense of humanity. That’s a hallmark of MAD. Humor can be goofy, silly and offbeat but it also needs to be in touch with the human condition. If it were not for human folly, there wouldn’t be any good jokes. “From The Ashes” keeps to that ideal. It may seem loud and pushy at times but that’s part of being human and part of a book that rings true. In these times when we supposedly need to watch what we say, this book says it just fine.

“From The Ashes” is published by IDW Publishing. It is a trade paperback of 175 pages. And it costs $19.99

Most comic fans can remember that first, cherished comic story that got them hooked on the medium, that one 4-color masterpiece pulled off a bookstore shelf or a spinner rack that exploded in their brain like a gamma bomb, irradiating them forever with a love of comics. My personal indoctrination into comics, however, was a bit different. I wasn’t hooked by a story in an ongoing title, but by an introduction to a little publication called The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Deluxe Edition. After absently shuffling through a friends copy of OHOTMUDE #1 during a bored moment in 6th grade science class, nothing was ever the same.

Unfortunately, an experimental exposure to DC’s counterpart encyclopedia Who’s Who did not have such an effect. In fact, I can say with a great degree of certainty that it was the relative lameness of Who’s Who that played a big part in my total lack of interest in DC comics during those formative years. Even now, decades later as I’ve embraced “brand ecch” and become hooked on DC titles like Secret Six, and Detective Comics, the shortcomings of Who’s Who still needle me. When a writer pulls some obscure DC character out of the continuity bag, I always reach for my dollar-bin acquired Who’s Whos, for a little perspective and they invariably let me down. With December’s announcement of a new Who’s Who in the works at DC, this DC-impaired fan of encyclopedic comic projects would like to put forth some suggestions on how to make this new Who’s Who the type of guide to the DC universe I always wished I had had:

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Our very own George Marston found a juicy bit from the rumor mill over the weekend:

The film gossip site CinemaSpy is reporting that Chris Pine, whom you will all remember as James T. Kirk in last year’s blockbuster Star Trek, is rumored to be the current front runner for the part of Steve Rogers in the upcoming Captain America film adaptation.  The tip comes, unsurprisingly, from an anonymous informant who claims to be well connected at Paramount.  Pine is currently attached to the Star Trek sequel, as well as the part of Jack Ryan, last inhabited by Ben Affleck; however, his filming schedule does appear to have a Captain America-sized hole in it later this year, and the start date for the film is fast approaching.

Director Joe Johnston has reportedly been auditioning younger actors (between the ages of 23 and 32) for the role, which Pine fits, though it’s been said that he’s also focused on hiring an unknown.  Again, this could be a complete fabrication, though Pine is a pretty hot name in genre films these days.  He was also rumored to be a front runner for the role of Hal Jordan, which eventually went to Ryan Reynolds, and as previously mentioned he now carries the Jack Ryan films as well as Star Trek.  Further, his onscreen father Chris Hemsworth is already attached to Thor, so Marvel is perfectly willing to mine the Star Trek talent pool.

It’s definitely a long shot; Pine’s got a full plate, and he’s already attached to some demanding roles, both of which are multi-film franchises.  It seems unlikely that a studio would bank on someone who is already synonymous with such high profile characters as the face of one of their flagship characters.  What say you, true believers?  Can Pine support a third franchise?  He’s proven he can handle the mantle of an iconic character, and few are more iconic than Captain America.  He’s got more than enough charisma to be believable as the man who inspires Gods.  If he splits the difference between his brash portrayal of Captain Kirk and the patriotic intensity of Jack Ryan, it could be a compelling performance for a young Steve Rogers, fresh out of Project: Rebirth.  Sound off!

Boom’s newish “Boom! Town” imprint will be publishing a book entitled Repuglicans by Pete Von Sholly and Steve Thatham. The subject? Well, the title and cover kind of say it all, don’t they? It will be a 130-page, six-by-nine inch softcover priced at $15.

Given the attention a single piece of a single panel in a background of a Captain America comic garnered, I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear a lot more about this book as time goes on. Will Boom’s EIC Mark Waid end up apologizing to anyone? Unlikely. Waid tweeted that he was “humiliated and mortified on behalf of” his “entire industry that Fox News is able to bully us into apologizing to lunatics” in reaction to Joe Quesada’s marvel culpa.

Sorry for the delay! As you know, it’s President’s Day here in the U.S., and I’ve spent the morning worshiping the golden idols of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln I’ve erected in my backyard and, well, you know how it is…by the time you’ve got the bald eagle tied to the altar and ready to sacrifice, the morning’s half over. Anyway, some comics-related links for your perusal…

“There is DC Comics History, and then there is DC Comics History as I Personally Experienced It”: Writing for Comics Bulletin, Jim Kingman discusses his experiences trying to follow DC’s fantasy and  adventure comics in the 1970s, and some of the distribution difficulties of the time as he experienced them.

No, no he shouldn’t: “Should Christopher Nolan radically reinvent Superman?”

Because they did so well with From Hell…?: “Live Action Akira From The Hughes Brothers”

Gender  Bending Superheroes & Fashion Outlaws: LA Weekly has a neat photo slide show covering a “Crusaders & Haters” party. Kinda like photo sets from comics conventions, only not really.

More like Creative Loathing: Ha ha ha! Writing for Creative Loafing, Carlton Hargo runs down some more of the comic books he hates.

Simon Jones on Christohper Handley: My colleague David posted the news of the Christopher Handley’s sentencing last week, Jones had a brief but insightful response (which may also be a little on the NSFW side, depending on where you work). Since the Handley case dealt with drawn images rather than photographic ones, it was already very different from most child pornography cases, in that no children were harmed in its creation. Jones points out that if “the loli porn inducement theory holds any water, how could he have been a model citizen in all those 17 years, never acting out his ‘obsession’ with young girls?” In other words, it seems that not only was no one  hurt in the creation of the images, and no one hurt by Handley looking at the images…well, except for Handley, whose been made to suffer.

“A brief mediatation on erotic comics”: The San Francisco Bay Guardian has a few paragraphs about the The Kinky Comic Carnival, which included the very well-dressed Ted Naifeh and Serena Valentino and plenty of others. The article’s labled “slightly NSFW,” but it seems okay to me (Of course, I’m working at home).

You know, I have no use for Twitter. I won’t get into why, but apparently Kevin Smith disagrees with me. The filmmaker has gotten himself embroiled in not one, but TWO Twitter-related controversies in less than a week.

First, when an idle suggestion that he’s dabbling in the idea of fan-financing for his announced-but-never-made horror flick Red State hit his Twitter and blog sites, a handful of bloggers decided it was time to take him out back and shoot him. The end result was a long and irate blog entry that basically said, “It was a fun idea, which probably never would have taken off anyway, but thanks for being such jerks about the whole thing.”

Within days of that, he found himself removed from a Southwest Airlines flight. The Cliff’s Notes version seems to be that he, being a large man, bought himself two seats on an airplane. When he ended up flying standby on another flight instead, he only had one. While there was at least one other person as large as Smith on the flight, Smith says, he was ejected from the plane. Early reports suggested that he had been complaining about something, later reports just said that Southwest cited a safety policy regarding larger passengers. Either way, Smith was mortified and used Twitter to get the word out immediately; at this point, Southwest has issued a pretty callow apology (helpful hint for Southwest: when a PR and advertising blog writes their morning column on how badly you screwed up, it doesn’t matter that “AtlantaJones” stopped following Smith on Twitter because of the controversy), Smith has continued to rant about it on Twitter, and the story seems to have more or less taken over media coverage of Smith’s upcoming film Cop Out.

I’m sure there’ll be plenty said about what this means for the future of Twitter as an organizing tool–if a filmmaker with a cult following can get his fans motivated enough to freak out Southwest and make BBC headlines, imagine the possibility of someone like Ron Paul or Jonathan Tasini using it to get their dedicated supporters out–but my point is just this: Silent Bob lives him some Twitter.

With the first part of a two-part Tintin big screen adaptation coming in 2011, director Steven Spielberg will see the culmination of about thirty years of efforts, starting with negotiations with the character’s creator, Hergé, in the late ’70s or early ’80s. But IMDB reports that a biography of the cartoonist, originally published in 1996 and released in English for the first time in late 2009, may prove to be an embarrassment to the filmmaker.

The book paints Hergé as an unrepentant Nazi collaborator, and while it doesn’t fit with most narratives of the artist’s life, Pierre Assouline’s Hergé: The Man Who Created Tintin benefits from having had unrestricted access to Hergé’s personal papers. The book also suggests that, rather than being simply a guy trying to get through the day, as Hergé fancied himself to be when he worked on a pro-Reich newspaper during the war, he had real anti-Semitic feelings. The article cites the example of a story in which Tintin was kidnapped by “militant zionists,” a group that was changed to Arabs in later printings of the book.

While the book is unlikely to change the popular perception of Hergé as a person, the impact it may have on Spielberg’s reputation is something that’s interesting to speculate about. After Schindler’s List, Spielberg has been one of Israel’s biggest public backers, from a political, financial and public relations point of view. Being associated with a Nazi collaborator is likely to get some of the director’s biggest fans pretty worked up.

The first Tintin film, which will be directed by Spielberg with contributions from directors Edgar Wright and Peter Jackson in writing and production roles. It is expected to be released in December of 2011.

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

In his spare time, First Second’s editorial director Mark Siegel moonlights as a cartoonist.  If you haven’t seen his review of Scott Pilgrim 5, you really should.

Well, now he’s taken to using his mornings to write and illustrate a webcomic.  Sailor Twain, or The Mermaid in the Hudson is up and running at SailorTwain.com.  A tale of 19th century Manhattan, a sailor and the allure of the water, Sailor Twain is running new pages every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

It looks great and the story is shaping up nicely.  No mermaids yet, I like how he’s letting the story build itself slowly and organically.  And a deer swimming in the Hudson is bizarre enough to make me forget all about the promise of mermaids.

I have only two question: Mark Siegel has free time?  And does his staff know about this?

When people think about comics the term “fashion” doesn’t usually come up unless they’re talking about someone dressed in a Wonder Woman or Sailor Moon costume at a convention. It just doesn’t happen. Sure, there’s a few dapper dressers here and there in the creative field: Grant Morrison likes to wear suits, Warren Ellis has a cane, and Neil Gaiman just plain looks cool. But comics has never been known as a place you can get the latest tips on fashion trends… Until now.

Here is the official PR for a webcomic I’m producing with Andrea Grant for theFashionSpot.com:

TheFashionSpot.com and comic book creator Andrea Grant have teamed up to present the new webcomic series Ready to Where?

Updated twice a week, Ready to Where? features the adventures of Athena Park, editor-in-chief of The Fashion Source, a major online fashion magazine. Athena gets invited to the most covetable parties, events, and fashion shows, and interacts with the most elite, interesting characters in New York City.  But she constantly struggles to balance her work, friendships, and the quest for Mr. Right in a city where there are a lot of Mr. Wrongs.

“I started working as a fashion editor two years ago,” says series creator Andrea Grant. “I’ve always wanted to do a fashion comic and portray the hilarity of this industry, where people are sometimes caricatures of themselves.  Fashion moves so fast, and it infiltrates music, film, art, and design – so of course there’s always something epic happening.”

Grant is a professional writer, editor, and multimedia artist. She is the Managing Editor of The Fashion Spot and the President and founder of Copious Amounts Press. Ms. Grant has published essays, poetry and photographs in numerous publications internationally, and is the author of a graphic novel series called MINX, which merges Native American mythology with contemporary fantasy.

Ready to Where? gives readers insight into the fashion world through a unique, entertaining medium. “The Fashion Spot is thrilled to be launching Ready to Where?, the first ever fashion inspired webcomic series,” says Grant. “We developed this series to allow women an entertaining escape into the world of fashion through the adventures of our heroine, Athena Park. Comic books aren’t just for guys anymore.”

www.thefashionspot.com/ready-to-where

Originating in July 2001, theFashionSpot.com made a name for itself as an invitation only community of designers, stylists and fashionistas that dissected designer collections, celebrating some and skewering others. Building the largest fashion-focused community on the web, theFashionSpot.com has grown into a well-respected fashion editorial site with a strong and active community element.

Fashion is a world full of fantastic personalities, high stakes, colorful costumes and personal drama — sounds a lot like your favorite superhero adventures, eh? I hope that you will give Ready to Where? a chance. Andrea Grant and Liza Biggers have put together quite the comic. Thomas Mauer is providing his usual lettering magic. In addition — it’s free to read! That’s the beauty of webcomics. More on that soon. A lot more…

Christian Beranek is a writer, producer, actor and musician. Currently he is in production on a project for Disney’s Kingdom Comics and has a major role in a feature for Lakeshore Entertainment. CB is never late for dinner and invites you to add him on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/beranek

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

After pleading guilty to the charges last year, Christopher Handley has been sentenced to six months in prison for possessing manga drawings of “children being sexually abused,” Anime News Network has reported.

Handley was charged after the U.S. Post Office seized the following books, back in 2006:

Mikansei Seifuku Shōjo (Unfinished School Girl) by Yuki Tamachi (LE Comics)
I [Heart] Doll by Makafusigi (Seraphim Comics)
Kemono for ESSENTIAL 3 (THE ANIMAL SEX ANTHOLOGY Vol.3) by Masato Tsukimori et al (Izumi Comics)
Otonari Kazoku (Neighboring House Family) by Nekogen (MD Comics)
Eromon by Makafusigi (Seraphim Comics)
Kono Man_ ga Sugoi! (This Man_ is Awesome!) by Makafusigi (Seraphim Comics)
Hina Meikyū (Doll Labyrinth) by Makafusigi (Seraphim Comics)

These books all have drawings of minors engaging in sexual activity, including with adults and animals. According to ANN’s thorough coverage of the legal documentation, Handley’s interest in manga eventually “evolved” in the mid-’90s to ”fascination for images of young girls engaged in sexual activity.”

Handley’s trial had the backing for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which did back out following Handley pleading guilty to the charges. Handley said that if he had known these were against the law he would never have ordered them.

That said, the prosecution’s main argument does set my Spider-sense tingling: ”The works at issue do not even have arguable scientific, literary, artistic, or political value, such as Vladimir Nabokov’s famed novel, Lolita, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, or even Alan Moore’s recent, but controversial, graphic novel, Lost Girls. By the defendant’s own statements, the works for which he was convicted of receiving and possessing are clearly obscene.”

At that point, isn’t it all or nothing? Let’s even step aside the obvious argument of whether a drawing of an illegal act is the same as partaking the real thing — at what point do we start labeling the art as “valuable” or not? When do we start discussing motive for consumption? Will viewers have to own up to seeing Transformers 2 because of the sheer art and beauty of an eye-bleeding transformation, or because they simply find Megan Fox to be extremely attractive? Let’s discuss.

With the recently-released Book of Eli sporting the talents of The Twelve’s Chris Weston and Marvel 1985′s Tommy Lee Edwards, the Hollywood Reporter has an interesting article up, basically chatting it up with several who straddle the line between comics and film:

“You’ve seen the commercial guys go into directing, you’ve seen music videos guys go into directing; now you’re going to see comic writers and artists,” Spider-Man: Reign’s Kaare Andrews told the Reporter, after working on the indie-horror film “Altitude.” “I think that the one thing we have the others don’t is the sense of storytelling.”

Names such as Hellboy’s Mike Mignola, The Lone Ranger’s John Cassaday, Astonishing X-Men’s Joss Whedon and many others are interviewed in this piece. One thing that particularly surprised me is the discussion of the pay differentiation — how in comics you’re being paid by the page, whereas in Hollywood they are being paid by the hour. Considering Hollywood’s budget is astronomically higher than anything the Big Two is printing, that may certainly be a financial lure for a formerly-starving artist.

Want to hear more about the bridge between comics and film? Check the rest of the interview here.

I didn’t expect to start my day seeing a picture of a body-painted Witchblade. But because of Great White Snark and ComicsAlliance, I did:

Apparently this bit of body art was done by FleshandColor.com for the 2008 Dragon Con, and (perhaps thankfully?) doesn’t look as scabby as the real armor would. Because that might look weird in real life.

Want to see more images of the would-be Sara Pezzini? Take a gander over at GWS’ web site, right here.

Yesterday, Newsarama had an exclusive look at the 1-in-50 retail incentive cover of Top Cow’s April-shipping Magdalena #1, showcasing the beautiful, raw pencil work of cover artist Ryan Sook. The incentive cover actually shows an alternate version of the issue’s striking iconic image of Patience, the current Magdalena. The series continues the story of the Magdalena lineage, descendents of Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ, who have served as the Catholic Church’s monster hunters for centuries.

Blog@ had the chance to talk with Sook, series writer Ron Marz, and legendary artist Walter Simonson, whose classic cover to Thor #337 played an important role in the development of the Magdalena #1 cover.

“The Magdalena story that Ryan and I did for in the First Born: Aftermath issue is one of my favorite jobs ever,” Marz said. “So when we started talking about a cover artist for the Magdalena series, Ryan was the obvious choice. He was the only choice, in fact. His style, his use of shadows and light, is just a perfect fit for what we’re doing with Magdalena visually. I feel really blessed – no pun intended – that Ryan is part of the team.”

Sook signed on to be the regular cover artist for the Magdalena series. But tackling the cover to issue #1 meant coming up with a truly memorable image, one that would be emblematic of the character and series as a whole.
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“The initial reaction from the marketplace blasted Diamond for their new practices, at a time when smaller publishers were already struggling in a down economy”: Publishers Weekly’s MK Reed checks in with a variety of small publishers on the one year anniversary of Diamond’s policy change regarding the minimum thresholds book would need to meet in order to be distributed.

Where would the Internet be without Chris Sims?: Comics Alliance caught Joe Quesada’s reference to that one sign in that one panel of that one issue of Captain America being a mistake, which means the thing the sign was supposed to read didn’t make it into the actual comic. What was that crowd protesting? Sims has many possible answers.

“The online Players Ball of art shows”: Hey everyone in the reading audience who can draw, go do this thing. I really wanna see the results.

Some number of retailers taking advantage of Marvel’s DC returns-for-a-Deadpool variant deal: What number? Marvel’s not saying exactly, although it is apparently a number somewhere between one and 50.

“For many years, the people who actually published the comics and produced that bands that targeted the youth market were middle-aged dudes in business suits”: Glen Weldon offers a pretty wide-ranging list of comics works that deal with the intersection of music and music culture with comics.

“10 Graphic Novels You Should Pick Up with ‘Twilight’”: I do hope retailers put some thought into selling/pushing read-alikes for the Twilight graphic novel when it sees release, and I like most of the books on this particular list quite a bit, but it seems like a pretty terrible list in terms of matching either style or content to Twilight. I guess Buffy the Vampire Slayer might make sense in that it features vampires, but otherwise…? (Via WFA)

“I hate the idea that my 9 year old will say to me, ‘What is actually happening in Wonder Woman?’ because she can’t just pick it up and read a single great storyline”: You hear that, super-comics publishers? You’re not just letting Charles Yoakum down, you’re letting his kids down! (Via Comics Reporter)

“Most ambitious?”: I hate to nitpick solicitations, which only exist to sell upcoming comic books and thus are prone to exaggeration and hyperbole, but I was awfully surprised to see Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne described as writer Grant Morrison’s “most ambitious project to date.” Considering just the comics that guy’s written for DC over the course of the last few years—52, Final Crisis, All-Star Superman, Seven Soldiers—that’s a pretty bold statement. You can read it, and many other bold statements about May-shipping Bat-books, here. (Hey look, Guillem March is drawing two books in the same month! Not only is he good, but he’s super-fast too?)

“If ever a comic read like a TV show, this is it”: Jonathan of Living Between Wednesdays did not care for the first issue of the new Human Target comic, based on the new Human Target TV show, which is loosely based on the old Human Target comics.

The Cartoon Introduction to Economics vol. 1: Microeconomics
Written by Yoram Bauman, Ph.D. & Grady Klein
Illustrated by Grady Klein
Published by Hill & Wang

Good news, Internets!  I’m back.

…

You could at least pretend to have noticed.  Thankfully I opted for the warranty on my laptop a year and a half ago, and the review I had planned to run here two weeks ago runs today, with a little assistance from an all-new motherboard.

So, on with the show:

If the ubiquitous XX for Dummies books were turned into a comic book, they’d probably be a lot like Yoram Bauman and Grady Klein’s The Cartoon Introduction to Economics vol. 1. The creators take big ideas, distill them down to rudimentary, everyday examples and manage to make most of their abstract material seem concrete and even somewhere on the fringes of exciting.

It’s probably not very surprising, since Bauman’s YouTube video has been stupendously popular, and he even maintains his own economist blog at http://www.standupeconomist.com, that the author has the creative background and intelligence required to convey information in clear order.

So Bauman clearly knows what he’s talking about, and – particularly in the early chapters – he’s able to consistently find simple examples that illustrate how supply and demand trend toward pareto efficient – that is, the best possible deal for both sides. (He later discusses how the world isn’t quite perfect, so we rarely achieve a true pareto efficient, but the economic theory is sound.) Klein complements Bauman’s lessons with a diverse cast of cartoony characters who cope with the consequences of supply and demand. Enhancing his illustrations with graphs and charts to explain where lines of seller and consumer interest intersect, Klein handles nearly all of the lessons adeptly.

The book’s delivery isn’t perfect; the chapter on marginals defies my best efforts to wring any meaning from it, often requiring leaps of understanding that I don’t have the mathematical groundwork to make. Nor has Bauman’s writing given me the theoretical understanding required. Fortunately, most of the higher-end math aspects are restrained to the book’s supplemental website. Subsequent chapters veer back toward solidity, but may occasionally stretch the reader’s limitations. But more often than not, Bauman provides clear examples and uses humor via puns and visual gags to keep readers engaged.

On the art side, Klein sticks to loose, cartoony character designs that are easy to recognize, if sometimes sloppily drawn. The animated style and exaggerated body language matches the tenor of Bauman’s upbeat, humorous writing, and Klein inserts dozens of tables and graphs to enforce the relationship of economic forces.  Klein also took a considerable hand in the pacing of the stories, and his cartooning experience shows on every page.  Although he’s not the financial expert of the team, this is a book that succeeds as much through his understanding of the comics form as Bauman’s knowledge of money.

Given the recognized educational value of comics, The Cartoon Introduction to Economics vol. 1: Microeconomics should find considerable life.  The writing is clear and lively, the art loose but bouncy and effective.  Schools and anybody looking to glean a little more insight into current recession-based headlines would do weel to give this one a look.