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It’s been an interesting couple of weeks in TV land if you’re a superhero fan; today saw the announcement of a new Greg Berlanti drama, No Ordinary Family. Michael Chiklis, Vic Mackey of The Shield fame, will play the patriarch of a family of superheroes. This coming on the heels of last month’s announcement that NBC has picked up The Cape, a superhero series that some have speculated will serve as a companion piece to the network’s struggling Heroes, once a ratings juggernaut but currently not even guaranteed a fifth season.

On the sassiness of Ebony White: Tom Crippen notes the bit of DC’s First Wave promotional material referring to a new version of The Spirit and a new version of Ebony, and has some objections.

Go for the drawing of Batman eating cake Batmanly…: Stay for Kurt Busiek’s essay on why Batman isn’t the Green Lantern of Sector 2814, and extended references to comic book characters and concepts as cakes and frosting which have made me very, very hungry for cake.

“Five Worst Batman Villains”: I imagine fans will find a lot to bicker with Tim O’Neil about in his list of the very worst Batman villains—and pretty thorough explanations for why is each is included. After all, The Joker’s on that list. O’Neil makes some pretty convincing arguments though, and I wholeheartedly agree with a couple of these (Particularly Ra’s al Ghul. That guy’s been  in more Batman comics than Alfred these the last few years). In defense of Mr. Zsasz though (well, in defense of his creators Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle), I think he was created just to be a one-off villain used in “The Last Arkham” and then forgotten about, and it’s all the other creators who keep insisting on using him that have made him so terrible (Also, in his first appearance, he dressed up in tuxedos and wore a top hat…how come he’s always running around nearly nude now?)

Maybe Watchmen spin-offs won’t be so bad after all: Tom Spurgeon has a pitch for a four-issue limited series featuring a character you probably didn’t see coming.

“Smallville’s two-hour ‘event,’ the introduction of the Justice Society of America… was alternately endearingly clunky and just plain old clunky”:
Entertainment Weekly’s Ken Tucker on the Smallville JSA special.  Isn’t it sorta weird that the Smallville-iverse is on its second Star-Spangled Kid  before there was even a Superman?

True horror: So, you thought Michael Leavitt’s three-foot-tall, fully-articulated wooden R. Crumb sculpture was horrifying when you first saw it? Well, wait till you see it move! (Via Flog!)

As the pre-release hype machine gears up for Joe Johnston’s The Wolfman, the director of The Rocketeer, October Sky, and Jurassic Park 3, is letting slip some details regarding his next little low-key indie project, Captain America: The First Avenger.

Gadfly/columnist Devin Faraci at CHUD is breaking the news that Hitler-smacking super-team The Invaders will not only appear in the film, but they will also play a major role in the story. What is unclear is just who Johnston’s Invaders Roster will include, although Faraci does a pretty good rundown of the rights entanglements involved with characters like The Sub Mariner and The Human Torch.

This comes hot on the heels of the junket confirmation of The Red Skull’s presence as Cap’s primary villain in the film. Could Master Man and Baron Blood be far behind? Wolfgang Von Strucker.

Of course with Johnston directing The Wolfman, maybe we can look forward to something like this…

For a show with some serious comics street cred to start, this series has done a pretty good job of shedding a lot of it as it’s gone. After losing showrunner Marc Guggenheim near the beginning of the season, ABC’s FlashForward–which stars Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle‘s John Cho and Lost‘s Dominic Monaghan–is saying good-bye to David S. Goyer, according to Entertainment Weekly.

ABC has had a hard time promoting both FlashForward and its other tentpole genre title, V. In spite of pretty good critical and fan reception, ratings have dropped to Heroes levels this season, and a lot of experts are speculating that they’ll continue to sink next month when the show comes back from hiatus. It’s unclear who will take Goyer’s place as showrunner; he’s reportedly leaving to focus on his feature film career.

In addition to co-creating the JSA relaunch with James Robinson, Goyer is known in comics circles for writing, directing or producing screenplays based on Nick Fury, Batman, X-Men, Ghost Rider and Blade. According to IMDB, he’s attached to the upcoming Green Arrow film Super Max as well as Y: The Last Man and X-Men Origins: Magneto.

Cory and Eric’s father must just be constantly looking for an opportunity to delve into a complicated geopolitical topic and/or an excuse to tell the life story of one of his ancestors.

How else to explain the fact that when he and his wife end up refereeing a conflict between their boys, involving Eric stopping Cory from buying a particular type of candy, because the older, wise brother knew it contained an ingredient the younger one didn’t really like, he boils it down thusly:

You know, you boys aren’t the first to argue over this principle…You’re arguing whether or not one entity—in your case, a person, but sometimes we’re talking about a country—can take away another’s capacity to act on its own choices.

After a little back and forth between the four members of the family, the patriarch launches into the story of Corporal Peter Crogan of the Foreign Legion, who naturally had to face the issues revolving around the ethics of imperialism as part of his job, occupying and defending swathes of North Africa for France, whether the native people wanted him to do so or not.

If I were Cory or Eric, I’d be afraid to open my big mouth around my dad…or maybe not, depending on how great a storyteller he is.

Writer/artist Chris Schweizer cuts away from the kitchen scene set-up in Crogan’s March (Oni Press) to present the story of Crogan as an unfiltered comics story, so we don’t hear exactly what the dad says or how he says it, but he must know how to tell a story, given the wide-eyed, slack-jawed looks of awe on the two boys’ faces when we return to the kitchen after hearing about Crogan’s story.

Schweizer, however,  sure knows how to tell one.

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Aw thanks, Boom Studios! I didn’t know you cared! The publisher, which currently holds the licenses on a bunch of Disney characters and concepts and has been making fine use of many of them, has put together a heck of a Valentine’s Day present for fans of classic comics featuring the core Disney mouse and duck characters.

The 130-page, six-story collection is similar in scope and format to the publisher’s 2009 Walt Dinsey’s Christmas Classics collection, with the stories selected comprising a sampling of work from various eras, creators and countries of origin (In fact, every decade between the ‘40s and the ‘80s is represented by a story in here).

The highlight is probably the lead story, 1941’s “Love Trouble” by Floyd Gottfredson, Merril de Maris and Bill Wright. At 36 pages, it’s the longest piece, and features the story of Minnie finding a new, much taller, more charming, more talented and more well-off boyfriend than Mickey, Montmorecny Rodent (although he pronounces it “Rodawn”). Humiliated over and over, and unable to compete, Mickey fights fire with fire by taking up with a beautiful, rich, blonde mouse new to town, and then proceeds to couple-stalk Minnie and Rodent, driving Minnie insane with envy.

Given the way they behave to one another, and use other people (er, “people” probably isn’t the right word…), I’m not sure what the two mice see in each other, but I suppose they’re better off together than inflicting their social dysfunctions on others. Just I suppose I have now thought way too much about the love lives of two cartoon mice from a fast-paced, lovingly and energetically drawn screwball comedy comic strip.

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With Warner Brothers’ The Time-Traveler’s Wife being released on DVD, Blu-Ray and digital download on February 9 (good flick, by the way—check it out), I thought I’d take a little look at one of the nagging questions from the Johns/Katz/Jurgens run on Booster Gold: Who is Rip Hunter’s mother? As revealed in Booster Gold #1000000, Booster is (unbeknownst even to himself) the father of the enigmatic Time Master…but without a consistent romantic interest, fans have been left to speculate as to who Rip’s mother is—or if we’ll even ever see her.

UPDATED on February 9 to reflect changes seen in the Booster Gold #29 preview pages.

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

Also, check out Knights of the Dinner Table 158.  My pals Don Thomas, James Burns, John McGuire and myself got to do a Heroes of the Hackleague back-up strip.  Three pages of fun in one of my favorite comics!  It was an honor to play with their characters.

Jamie Cosley, famed webcomic artist and writer of such hits as More Than Sparrows and Nobody Likes Tony Pony, is launching a brand-new comic strip on Valentine’s Day, but you can see samples here!

“This Is How We Met” is a bizarre and yet somewhat random comic strip that centers around the life of a little Humpty Dumpty-like character and his interactions with several of his friends including Tony Pony, Pee Wee Schooner and Nippy Wallaboosh.  You just got to love the influences of Jack Kent, Walt Kelly, Tony Millionaire (who was just featured in a blog@) and James Kochalka.

Of course the company he keeps isn’t too shabby either. In addition to working with Art Baltazar and Franco (aww, yeah!)  at Blindwolf Studios, he joined forces with three other cartoonists to form Crashland Studio.

When launched, you can check out the strip here, and I’m sure it’ll join the ranks as one of my favorites.

While writers and pencilers get a lot of love by comics fans, there are a lot of people who are involved with the process that don’t get nearly enough credit. Inkers, letters, editors — and in many cases, colorists.

Which is why this coloring tutorial by The Boys colorist Tony Avina is so interesting! Colorists really can make or break an art style — and there are a lot of different styles, whether it’s more photo-realistic, or expressionistic, or just plain flat. (For example, I wrote in yesterday’s Best Shots that colorist Peter Steigerwald made Art Adams’ work look more contemporary and vibrant than ever. Take a look, see what you think.) Artists, what do you think? What kind of tools do you use for your color work?

“This series of books are destined to join the ranks of ‘The Dark Knight Returns,’ ‘Watchmen,’ and ‘Crisis on Infinite Earths’ as a serious contribution to adventure comic books”: Stephen Tramontana really, really likes DC’s Blackest Night event, and hopes this particular story will begin “the era where the gimmicks stopped, and good storytelling took the priority.” Stephen Tramontana is going to be sorely disappointed, but his hopefulness is appreciated—get that man a blue ring.

Were any of you wondering if Disney’s ownership of Marvel was going to result in tamer imagery and more kid-friendly comics?: I think that one scene in this week’s issue of Siege oughta answer that question pretty decisively, huh?

Something interesting almost happened in Blondie this week, but then didn’t: That’s okay though, as R.C. Harvey took the opportunity to explore some of the visual peculiarities of Dagwood Bumstead’s character design in this piece for The Comics Journal.

Three great things that go AWESOME together: John Porcellino, Devil Dinosaur and Morrissey. God I love you, Internet.

Armagideon Time celebrates the month of February in the traditional way: By posting a panel of Jack of Hearts every day of the month. Yeah, that’s right—Jack of Hearts. It just goes to show that every character is someone’s favorite (Except, of course, for all these guys).

“Rugg says that of all his projects, Afrodisiac is the most personal, or as personal as a comic about a super-pimp can be”: Zack Smith pens a great profile of Afrodisiac artist Jim Rugg for Indy Week.

Lame headline, great piece: Dave Howard has a wide-ranging Q and A with retailer, blogger and Toronto Comic Arts Festival director Chris Butcher for Torontoist.

Ch-ch-ch-changes: As you’re no doubt already aware, Heidi MacDonald has relocated her popular comics blog The Beat from its old Publisher’s Weekly locale in cyberspace to comicsbeat.com. Please update your bookmarks, and join me in wishing Heidi and everyone at The Beat the best of luck. Meanwhile, frequent Linkarama person-getting-linked-to Chris Sims has announced he’ll be quitting his day job at a comics shop to focus on his writing full-time, which is great news for fans of Sims’ writing. Perhaps that means he will be the person DC taps to write Watchmen 2 (He’s been tweeting some pretty great ideas on the subject), or maybe just more great pieces like his article on “The Racial Politics of Riverdale” over at Comics Alliance. Finally, retailer and blogger Mike Sterling is messing around with his site, which I remark upon because Sterling’s was one of the first and finest comics blogs I encountered, and because, as a comic book fan, I find even the slightest change in something I’ve become accustomed to worthy of comment. As long as his site remains the number one source for Sluggo-focused weekend content though, I’m sure everything will be okay.

Forget the Robert Pattinson rumors for a second — this is something that I actually wouldn’t mind seeing.

Access Hollywood has revealed that Sony is in discussions with Percy Jackson and the Olympians star Logan Lerman for potentially helming another franchise — this one with the proportional strength of a spider.

“[Spider-Man is] of my favorite characters ever and I’m a huge fan of the series,” Lerman said during the interview. According to him, the interest between him and the studio was “vice versa.” “I’d love to have more conversations about it. I’m definitely very interested in it.”

And you know something? I’d actually be kind of cool with this — Lerman totally pulls off the look, and if he can get the humor down, this could be a slam-dunk. Lerman was quick to say that this is all a long process with the studio, but this is a Spidey I could certainly get behind. What say you, Rama readers?

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!

By Filip Sablik
Publisher, Top Cow Productions, Inc.

“So this is the New Year, And I have no resolutions,” – Death Cab for Cutie

Well, that’s not quite true. I do have one resolution; it’s “do better.” Every year I take a look at how we did as a company and try to figure out ways we can improve. Improve the stories, the art, our timeliness, the value we bring our fans, really every aspect of our publishing business.

I try to avoid doing a ton of self-promotion with this blog for a number of reasons. And besides, I figure there are a number of places where you can find me hyping up our new projects and besides most Blog@Newsarama readers would tune me out if all I did was chat up Top Cow projects.

However, since it’s the beginning of 2010 I hope you’ll indulge me if share some of my excitement with you. Here’s what Top Cow has in store for you in 2010:

Angelus and Witchblade – Ron Marz and Stjepan Sejic continue their dynamic partnership monthly in Witchblade, and in the beginning of the year they’ll also give you a second dose of their awesomeness with Angelus, starring Dani Baptiste.

The Darkness – Phil Hester and artists like Michael Broussard, Whilce Portacio, and others will bring Jackie’s war with The Sovereign to a brutal and pulse-pounding conclusion in 2010. You won’t want to miss the twists and turns Hester has in store for you.

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Entertainment Weekly‘s Michael Ausiello has announced that Tom Welling has sold a new pilot to the CW — a show that may make you cheer!

Or cheerlead. The show is called Hellcats — not to be confused with the Thundercats — and it’s a “dramedy” based on competitive cheerleading.

Not that that show would remind you of a certain show about another snubbed extracurricular. A certain Glee-ful show. There’s no word as to whether or not this’ll impact Welling’s place on Smallville — but Ausiello speculates there may be some strings attached.

I hope so, because that’s what I’m doing at the moment. Just the rumor of the possibility of more Watchmen comics of any kind that David just mentioned below has got plenty of comics folks talking—I’m still sifting through my Google News hits of responses—and, of course, tweeting.

Writer Mark Waid was among those doing the latter:

—Wow, this seems like a bad day to announce that I’ve been tapped by DC to write DK3.

—Big news day for me and I’ve been cleared to announce it! Next summer, Paul Azaceta and I will be doing NEW FRONTIER 2: NEWER FRONTIER!

—I’m sorry. My bad. I meant to say NEW FRONTIER 2: FRONTIER HARDER.

Oh, that Mark Waid is a delight, and that’s before he even brings up Maus 2.

In all seriousness, if someone at DC is seriously considering moving forward with Watchmen projects, they sure picked a weird time to do so (Wouldn’t maybe sometime around the movie have been better? That whole “striking while the iron is hot” idea? Or maybe on an anniversary of the book’s publication?).

Remember, it’s still just rumors and chatter at this point, although a quote from Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes regarding “plans to mine more aggressively the deep catalogue of DC Comics characters” a quarterly earnings report sounds like possible support.

Personally, I sort of hope cool heads at DC and Warner listen to all the hand-wringing and joke-cracking like Waid’s and think better of Watchmen prequels, sequels, crossovers or stories from the squid’s point of view (Are there honestly any stories about those Charlton analogues that can’t be told using the actual Charlton characters DC also owns?). But, in all honesty, I am almost positive more Watchmen would make financial sense, and the publishing business is a business.

Even if they found creators who would take such a daunting challenge/rather tasteless assignment, even if it turned out terrible and every single person who read it hated it and/or only bought it to make fun of it on the Internet (like, say Ultimates 3 or Ultimatum, both of which sold gangbusters), it would certainly make a decent profit.

It shouldn’t be hard to crunch the numbers on Dark Knight Strikes Again, which most readers seemed to hate (I loved it, by the way) and see how much money that made, or to look at Blackest Night and see how much money the publisher can make by taking some old Alan Moore ideas and letting the right creator run wild with ‘em.

It might be better to wait until Alan Moore passes away to start aggressively exploiting his take on some DC-owned characters, but maybe the decision makers will feel better doing so while Moore’s still alive. After all, now all he’ll be able to do is make fun of them; once he’s dead, maybe he’ll be able to haunt them.

Could the clock be approaching midnight… for a Watchmen sequel?

While I feel a bit skeptical, that’s the rumor making the rounds of the comicsphere today, courtesy of Bleeding Cool. Rich Johnston has stated that apparently DC SVP Dan DiDio is taking another look at the property, which former Publisher Paul Levitz had apparently put the kibosh on any sequels for, due to not wanting to tick off Alan Moore (or any creatives that sided with him on the Watchmen debate) even further.

Here’s a snippet from Rich on this:

I understand that both Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons have to be offered first refusal before any of these titles could be published. But if they don’t want to work on them themselves (and Alan Moore is never going to agree), DiDio has been sounding out people who might be willing to take on the task.

While some creators are reticent, the argument goes if there are a number of Watchmen spinoff projects, any blame or shame can be spread on many shoulders. The sales are expected to be massive, whatever the hardcore fanboy reaction and such expected sales benefits will be shared amongst the creative teams.

Part of me is taking this with a grain of salt — based on the sales figures and the behemoth ad campaign the Watchmen movie had, I wouldn’t exactly call the movie a box-office success. But that said, I’m sure a lot of people were saying this when they announced a sequel to the Dark Knight Returns — which was met with mixed reaction in 2001 and 2002. And as you’ll recall in the image above, Wizard had a particularly provocative promo image for Countdown: Arena, with a DKR Batman putting the slap-down on Rorschach. What say you, Rama readers? If such a sequel were to come to pass, what would you think about it?

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

WORLD OF HURT – The Thrill-Seekers – Episode 28: “An Abrupt Departure”

This episode was cathartic from a storytelling standpoint.  The upshot of the building with Duke represented as a tiny figure against the sky as he hurtled to his death was understated, yet powerful, and I am extremely proud of it.  Having Pastor standing there passively to survey his handiwork, instead of making some smart-ass quip, cemented the notion of him as a no-nonsense tough guy and underscored my desire to make WORLD OF HURT a serious, dramatic work exploration of Blaxploitation.

Yeah, I was pretty happy with this one.

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

- JEP

With the departure of David Tennant as the star of the BBC’s Doctor Who, BBC America and Warner Home Video have released Doctor Who: The Complete Specials. Featuring five specials (The Next Doctor, Planet of the Dead, The Waters of Mars and the first and second parts of The End of Time) over five DVDs, the box set features a wide array of features, commentary and documentaries and is available to own on DVD and Blu-Ray now after their February 2 release.

For hardcore fans of the series, this collection is a great sendoff to the current Doctor and showrunner Russell T. Davies, whose classic interpretation of the characters and the show have been well-received by fans and critics. The series, in addition to being a ratings success in the BBC and a staple of BBC America’s lineup, has inspired comic book spinoffs in the US and the UK and has led to interest in a US remake of the program. It’s a continuation of the BBC’s late ‘60s-late ‘80s run and has inspired a popular, Davies-helmed spinoff, Torchwood.

For more casual fans or those looking to acquaint themselves with the ideas of the show, this particular box set is a decent enough jumping-on point; Tennant has been widely praised as possibly the best Doctor ever to be featured on the show, and obviously the series finale (“The End of Time”) would be a decent enough lead-in to what’s currently a great jumping-on point for them, though: the introduction of a new Doctor (Matt Smith, introduced in part two of that story) with the new season. The show itself isn’t for everyone; the continuation of the old show is not only story-wise, but technically as well; it looks just like it did in the ‘60s, and has the very analog special effects and costuming of that era. Featuring a number of big-name guest-stars, the specials are an enjoyable, if campy, peek at the show.