Rankin-Bass’s The First Easter Rabbit, a TV special recently released to deluxe-edition DVD by Warner Brothers, is a clear case of a gang of creators who cut their teeth on classic Christmas specials, trying to apply that unique formula to an Easter special, with disastrous results.

The story begins with the Burl Ives as the Easter Bunny talking directly to the camera, and the audience, but whereas Santa Claus and Ives’ Sam the Snowman were always charming, or at least alright, the Easter Rabbit’s introduction sounds frenzied and affronted. “You don’t know this story, do you? You know all about Santa and Frosty and Rudolph, but not the Easter Rabbit!” is the shorthand version. It makes me think of the Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special, where the Easter Bunny puts a hit out on Santa after years of his holiday being overlooked.

This impassioned rant, of course, loses a lot of its “oomph” when not only does Santa have to step in and show the Easter Rabbit how to do his job, but then swoops in to save the day when, near the end of the special, the badguy seems to be close to winning. (more…)

Looks like we’re going to be seeing a few different neighborhood Spider-Men — and not all of them are as friendly as our red-and-blue-costumed hero — in “Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions,” seen here in this trailer on our homepage.

The game, written by Amazing Spider-Man Webhead Dan Slott, will feature four different universes, each with their own style of gameplay. I don’t know about you guys, but seeing Spider-Man AND Spider-Man Noir has gotten my brain a-turning. Which other universes could possibly be in store? Let’s speculate on any of the many, many alternate Spideys we might see:

Spider-Man 2099: Talk about a blast from the past — or the future! Miguel O’Hara has gotten a lot of video game action in recent years, serving as an unlockable character in Spider-Man: Web of Shadows and Super Hero Squad. An arrogant geneticist forced to tweak with his own cellular structure by the megacorporation Alchemax, Spider-Man 2099 was a darker version of the mythos with the powers of gliding and organic webbing.

Marvel 1602: Could we be returning to England? With great power comes great kidney pie, as Peter Parquagh was originally Sir Nicholas Fury’s assistant in the original Neil Gaiman 1602. Originally a bit of a running joke — he kept coming tantalizingly close to being bitten by weird spiders throughout the series — he eventually became a hero in his own right by the end of the book, showcasing as “The Spider” in a recent Jeff Parker spin-off series. If Noir has a shot at this, I would wager that 1602 is next in line.

MC2: If Spider-Girl somehow made it into a Marvel video game, I’m pretty sure more than a few fans would go into shock. In this universe, May Parker — daughter of a retired Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson — is a typical high school student who moonlights as Spider-Girl! Seeing the expanded Marvel “legacy” world would certainly be a draw for this character, and getting a female character in the game would certainly help draw in players!

Marvel Zombies Spider-Man: They couldn’t… could they? In this universe, a plague-infected Sentry zombified most of the heroes of the Marvel Universe, Spider-Man included. Let’s just say that Aunt May and Mary Jane did not fare too well. By the end of the original series, he and “heroes” such as Iron Man, Wolverine, Luke Cage and the Hulk succeeded in eating Galactus and the Silver Surfer, causing their virulence to travel the galaxy. But seriously, how weird would it be to stick a zombie game in the middle of a Spidey adventure? Weird… and awesome.

What say you, Rama readers? Any universes we might have missed? Who’d you like to see team up with our friendly neighborhood webslinger?

Being sick is no picnic. Listening to sick rhymes from the Master of the Sith definitely is. Which is why CollegeHumor has delivered something to me more potent than chicken soup, that hits me straight to the core even more deeply than penicillin.

“Daddy powers activate.” This Jay-Z meets Episodes IV-VI track is utter brilliance. Want to learn the lyrics and dazzle your friends and enemies with your high Midichlorian beats? Click here.

Deja vu, much?

Scifi Wire is reporting another Action Comics #1 selling at, yet again, a record-breaking number of one and a half MILLION DOLLARS (insert Dr. Evil face here), beating out the previous record of $1 million and surpassing the sale of $1.075 million of Detective Comics #27 set a few months ago. Apparently, this particular copy was given a grading of 8.5 compared to the past record-holder which had an 8.0. Still, that’s freaking impressive.

I’ve had the pleasure to see one of these rare comics on exhibit, but have never seen a ‘Tec #27. Maybe one day.

I just want to know who has these copies, because three years ago, there was only a reported thirteen left on record. I wonder if these auctions are those issues, or if new ones are being found.

Seriously though, I’d love a quantum leap accelerator or a flux capacitor right about now.

Entertainment Weekly’s Michael Ausiello reports on a rumor that a major cast member will be killed off by season’s end on Smallville. Frankly, I was really surprised that the show was renewed and have no idea what direction it might go in, especially when they keep putting off Clark’s turn to Superman. As for this show’s particular human target, I’m in agreement with a lot of folks that Chloe is that obvious choice. Then again, maybe they’ll “kill” the name of the show and just switch it to “Metropolis”. Thoughts, campers?

What’s the plural of Mouse Guard? Would it be Mouse Guards or Mice Guard?: Archaia just announced plans for a new Mouse Guard miniseries, this one an anthology series in which creator David Petersen will get help from an all-star roster of contributors, including Terry Moore, Ted Naifeh, Guy Davis, Gene Ha, Karl Kerschl, Katie Cook and others. The new series, Legends of the Guard, will be set in a tavern and feature a group of guardsmice taking turns telling tall tales. Petersen will handle covers and chapter breaks, while the other creators will illustrate the mice’s tails. Er, tales.

“Kick-Ass changes comic book films forever in a single blow”: The Guardian discovers that comic book films, which were all the same before Kick-Ass was made, are all going to be different then they were before, on account of Kick-Ass having been made. Apparently. Anyway, here’s the latest feature story on the movie based on the Mark Millar/ John Romita Jr. comic. Is there a ridiculous quote from Mark Millar that we can pull out, point toward and laugh at? Would it be a feature about Kick-Ass if there wasn’t?

“With Kick-Ass, the book’s just out and now the movie’s out six weeks later. And I think that’s the way things are going to go now, because to go to Marvel’s B and C-list characters and try to get movies out them – what’s the point of that?”

Hey! That’s the entire business strategy of the hand that feeds you, isn’t it? Anyway, much more at the link…make sure you stick around to the end, at which point Millar explains how Kick-Ass makes all future Spider-Man movies irrelevant.

“Singer to launch himself into super-hero musical”: I saw that headline and got excited that it ran atop an article about how X-Men and Superman Returns director Bryan Singer would be making X-Men 4 a musical. That is not what the story is about at all.

“Of all the source material a director can choose to adapt, a graphic novel is probably the trickiest”: So writes Steven  Zeitchik, in discussing Dean Parisot maybe taking on a film adaptation of SOCOM: SEAL Team Seven. Is that really true? It doesn’t seem too bad, after all, the storyboards are all ready done….

Hey, I had the Catwomanmobile with a wagging tail!: Reviewing this Comics Alliance list of “McDonald’s Ten Most Superheroic Happy Meals” (written by Caleb Goellner, who I like to think of as The Other Caleb), I realize I’ve missed out on a lot of sweet toys when I became vegetarian.

Julia Wertz and Johnny Ryan continue to horribly desecrate the books you enjoyed as a child: NSFW, obviously.

And linking to Johnny Ryan…:I can think of no more unlikely crossover than this. (Via Flog)

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!

A-Team War Stories: B.A. #1: This prequel to this summer’s A-Team movie is a solo spotlight on B.A. Baracus, featuring a script by Chuck Dixon and Erik Burnham, art by Casey Maloney and a cover by Michael Gaydos. (I would have preferred a cover by Brandon Bird, but no one asked me). It’s a $4 book.

Blackest Night #8: This is it, the grand finale of DC’s long-running event comic series thing. And, despite Tom Brevoort’s November prediction, it looks like it’s going to be wrapping up before Siege does.

Cloak and Dagger #1: This $4 one-shot by Stuart Moore and Mark Brooks follows-up on what the duo’s up to after having quit the Dark X-Men and joined the mutant populace of Utopia. Preview here.

The Creeper by Steve Ditko: This $40, 255-page hardcover collection looks similar in format to all those nice Jack Kirby-related collections DC’s been pumping out over the last few years. This one collects six issues of Beware The Creeper, and stories from World’s Finest, Showcase and a 1st Issue Special.

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Click image to view at FULL SIZE.

WORLD OF HURT - The Thrill-Seekers - Episode 36 – “Good Help”

This was a fun strip to do, because I got to design some henchmen for Ned.  As has been my standard MO for the strip, I designed them pretty much on the fly.  I wasn’t completely happy with my final rendering of Danny  The Fringe-Jacketed Thug, but his look was a big hit with the readers.  He was a little bit Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider and a little bit Dr. Johnny Fever from WKRP In Cincinnati.

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

- JEP

[Source EW.com]

I have to admit. Even though I’m not a Twilight fan, I have to give props to Stephenie Meyer when they are due. She’s written a novella showcasing Victoria’s (who was introduced in Eclipse. Good timing with the movie this Summer, right?) newborn vampire army as they prepare to close in on Bella and the Cullens. The book will retail at $13.99 with $1 from each sale going to the American Red Cross International Response Fund. I just think the irony seems appropriate.

But here’s the deal, the book will be released on June 5th, but from June 7th to July 5th, fans will be able to read the book for free online at www.breetanner.com, which will also provide a link to the American Red Cross website where they can donate to support relief efforts in Haiti, Chile, and across the world. It makes me wonder how many people will wait out. Though Meyer admitted the novella is a “gift” to devoted Twilight readers, which is why she asked her publisher to make it available for online for free.

Interesting note, this novella has sort of scorned a few fans because Meyer hasn’t finished “Midnight Sun” and worked on this instead.

The way I see it, non-fans should or could buy it and give them as gifts to the fans in their lives. What do you readers think?

For those who are still working to imagine what Chris Evans would look like as Captain America, Film School Rejects has your back, with some decently-constructed fan posters.

What do you think, Cap-fans? Does the A on his head stand for Awesome? Or Awful?

Forget health care and national wireless — let me put some tax money into an Oan power ring!

Dean Trippe proves that you can make politics funny (and not in a “I want to jump off a bridge afterwards” kind of way), with his series “Barack Obama Looking at Awesome Things.” His political slogan should be: “Power rings for some — shield-sized American flags for others!”

However you stand on the political aisle, seeing Barack with Optimus Prime is living proof that you, Mr. Trippe, are a real American hero.

Gordon and the Whale really scored a coup this weekend, snagging an interview with Hulk stars Ed Norton and Tim Blake Nelson, and managed to slip in some questions about the future of Marvel’s Unjolly Green Giant.

It’s particularly interesting to hear Norton say this: “Without naming names, I’ve seen very high-ranking executives at the companies involved sitting white-knuckle over all your sites trying to parse what you guys think about what it should be.” Seems like the fan economy still holds sway in Hollywood! Norton and Blake go on to talk about working with high-powered actors and directors creating a shared universe.

X-Men screenwriter (and Solid Snake voice actor) David Hayter will be hitting Hollywood again, big time, as Latino Review has posted a few of his new genre-friendly deals.

The first of his projects with E1Entertainment will be penning a pilot for a prospective TV series of Push (whew, try saying that one three times fast), based on the superpowered filim starring Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning.

Additionally, Hayter is eying his big screen directorial debut for the movie Wolves. Here’s what Latino Review got:

Hayter describes the picture as, “Twilight with a bit more bite to it, and without abstinence.” Hayter said he de-constructed past werewolf films, took out the mythology that haunted the screen adaptations, and found a way to make it a metaphor for a teen maturing sexually into adulthood, at the age when young men howl at the moon.

The sound you hear in the background is millions of slashfic writers pounding away at their keyboards. What say you, Rama readers? You excited to see Push hit the small screen?

In a banner week for ill-conceived movie pitches, Variety has revealed Warner Bros. and Legendary pictures are in the process of producing a yankified GODZILLA film for 2012 release.

In all honesty, one can hardly conceive of a new flick being worse than 1998′s American re-make of GODZILLA (Godzilla is taken out by ONE sidewinder missile…Whaaaaa?) Nevertheless, this Godzilla fanatic can’t conceive of a single American or European director (besides, maybe, Quentin Tarantino) capable of shepherding the king of monsters through the Hollywood gauntlet without losing everything that makes the character so special. Sure, on the surface the GODZILLA formula seems pretty simple: Giant monster comes ashore at major city, crushes everything, breathes fire, maybe fights other monster, but the real appeal of this 5-decade old icon is more complex, a wonderful melange of earnestness,outlandishness, quaintness and foam latex that only the Japanese seem to get.

The core problem here is not just Hollywood’s tendency to stray from the essentials of co-opted properties, but the cultish appeal of the character itself. No matter how talented the director, no matter how high-concept the Hollywood “refinements”, its the blockbuster polish itself that will sand down any big-budget Gojira into indistinction. Do we really want to see GODZILLA with next-gen, cutting edge special effects? As talented as, say, Christopher Nolan or Guillermo Del Toro are, could you really concieve their  hypothetical auteur-infused visions of GODZILLA? Would it be GODZILLA all?

Then there is the 50+ years of Godzilla continuity to deal with, and the fact that filmmakers will have to choose between depicting the character as a terrifying avatar of nuclear holocaust, or the sauroid superhero he eventually became. On top of that, you just know that they’ll have to set the film in the US, which, to this fan, is kind of like making a Paul Bunyan movie and then setting it in France.

I’m all for a high-profile Kaiju-style monster flick, just don’t try and call it GODZILLA. The icon has too much baggage, too much context to work as a “legit” hollywood film. Even in a best case scenario  outcome with some a-list geek favorite talent behind the camera, something will be lost. Something you cant just buy with a $200 million budget alone.

By Filip Sablik
Publisher, Top Cow Productions Inc.

We live in an age where unparalleled information is at our fingertips. Not only things like the news or reference material, but information about our friends and even people we don’t actually know.

How many of us start our workday by checking our favorite news or pop culture sites like Newsarama or skimming our RSS feeds in our favorite browsers? Or find ourselves checking up on our Facebook friends’ statuses on our iPhones while standing in line for a cup of coffee? Or checking-in at an exciting new restaurant and tweeting what we’re having for dinner? Okay, maybe that last one is just me.

I admit I’m an information junkie. Part of it is job-related; I need to keep up with the latest in comic news and industry happenings. Another aspect is just part of my ever growing need for feeling connected and informed. I check Twitter after my morning run and sometimes beforehand. I run through a dozen or so RSS feeds with my cup of coffee. I update my status while watching TV in the evening. Yep, I have a problem.

I recently noticed that this constant information streaming and processing has had an unintended casualty. The time I’d previously spent reading comics, magazines and books has shifted in part to downloading information. Which left me wondering, how many people are in the same boat as I am?

Have you noticed your personal comic reading decline with the rise of the internet? Or do you limit your leisure web surfing to the traditional limits of your workday? Yes, dear employers, your employees probably spend as much time goofing off on the internet as they do working on whatever project they’ve been assigned by you.

If there’s a large group of us looking at the internet all the time, could the future of comics include not only digital comics on your phone or computer, but combinations of daily updates with links to new sequences or pages of comics? Or perhaps even more frequent links with single images accompanied by 140 characters or less of dialogue and captions. Is it that far-fetched to think our beloved art form might evolve in this direction? In India, there are already plans to deliver comics through SMS messaging on mobile phones. USA Today featured some Twitter comics recently. WebDesignerDepot.com also highlighted some 50 Twitter-based comics. For the time being, most of these tend to be comedic, one beat strip-style stories, but who’s to say you couldn’t do serialized fiction in a similar manner?

Last week, I took a trip to Memphis to meet with some of the hardest-working, forward thinking retailers in the country at the annual ComicsPRO Meeting. These guys think outside the box and are all about promoting the business and art form of comics. There was a fair amount of concern over the future of the future of digital comics, like in the image above from Panelfly, and how it will impact the direct market. What was heartening to hear was the consensus, from all of the publisher representatives who were present, who were not only dedicated to pushing new customers to the direct market, but also the strong belief that the digital reading experience could not replicate the experience of reading a hard copy comic book.

As for myself, I have to agree. As addicted as I am to the internet and the waves and waves of information available on it, nothing gives me the same warm, fuzzy feeling of cracking open a comic—the feel and smell of the paper, the act of turning pages, the ability to hold this artifact of pop culture in your hands. Our next opportunity to pull in a new group of potential fans is coming in May with Free Comic Book Day. Grab a friend or someone you know through your social network and encourage them to pick up a comic, won’t you? If you are so inclined, recommending our FCBD offering Artifacts #0 would make me happy.
Take care,

Filip Sablik
Publisher Guy

Filip Sablik is the Publisher of Top Cow Productions, Inc. He’s been in the business for ten years and is in his thirties. Occasionally, he does a bit of writing and drawing. He loves comics. Top Cow Productions, Inc. was founded by Marc Silvestri, co-founder of Image Comics. Top Cow currently publishes its line of comic books in 21 languages in over 55 different countries. The company has launched 20 franchises (18 original and two licensed) in the industry’s Top 10, seven at #1, a feat accomplished by no other publisher in the last two decades.

Latino Review has broken the news that Matthew Vaughn, hot off KICK-ASS, is trying to scrape together the resources to bring 1990′s Valiant Comic character BLOODSHOT to the big screen.

For those of you who don’t know about BLOODSHOT, don’t feel bad. Bloodshot is one of the hundreds of  forgotten “extreme” creations of the variant-cover crazy 1990′s. First appearing in 1994, Bloodshot was a laundry list of pyrite age cliches. Like so many other 90′s creations, he was a cross between Wolverine and The Punisher: a nano-enhanced mob hitman re-animated by evil government scientists, and robbed of the memories of his past. Packing the obligatory high caliber firearms and clad in a vest with no shirt underneath, he blew people away in the name of revenge, justice, and speculator dollars. Not having read any BLOODSHOT, maybe I’m in no position to say whether this movie  is a good idea or not, but I do know one thing, Rob Liefeld must kick himself in the butt every morning for not thinking of the name “Bloodshot” first.

Vaughn, according to Latino Review, is in the process of self-funding the film, much as he did with KICK-ASS. If KICK-ASS tanks, this project will probably quickly disappear along with all hopes of an eventual WARRIORS OF PLASM motion picture.

By Christian Beranek

Hello and welcome again to another installment of The Life of High Adventure — this one has a title longer than any Star Wars prequel! It also packs twice the punch.

It’s convention season. There is hope in the air. The smell of musty old comics mixed with fresh ink. There’s going to be a lot of stained fingers and plenty of broken hearts. Comic enthusiasts will flock to the shows with items to have signed, sketches drawn and questions answered about the future of their favorite franchises.

It’s a time to rock.

Your beloved CB has rocked many of these shows throughout the years, as a fan and as a creator. I’ve hauled boxes of books miles across cement floors. I’ve drank my heart out in the hotel bars and awoken the next morning ready to bring the word of sweet comics to the masses.

At many of the shows I do a panel called What It Takes To Make It In Comics. At these discussions I notice the room gets fairly packed. I wish it was that people come to see me! No, it is because there are tons of hopeful comic creators out there — so many that I wonder if every person who regularly buys comics wants to create them themselves!

The panels are always enjoyable. Sometimes I’ll bring in a guest to sit in with me, but more often than not I love rocking these alone. There’s something to be said about the thrill of performing solo (and not in the way that you’re thinking dirty birdie, although that is nice too.)

I get asked a lot of intelligent questions. The general jist of them comes down to this: “How do I break in?” More and more my answer is: “You already are in, where do you want to go?”

And it’s that simple. Used to be back in the day you had to get a book printed and distributed because it was the only avenue. You may be able to set up shop at a show and sling some copies, but the time and costs of those endeavors barely covered bar tabs.

Back in the day we didn’t have fancy iPads, iPhones, itunes, netbooks (I ain’t forgetting PC users — now buy my comics!), print on demand houses, etc and etc and on and on. No, we had to do four color separations and get the pages to the printers and wait… and wait… and wait…

It was a lot of damn work.

Now, like it or not, comics are instant. Yep. It takes a moment to upload a comic to the web and a moment for a reader to click on a link. And several moments to enjoy.

When I used to buy comics regularly (don’t look at me like that, those things are expensive these days) it took me about 5 – 10 minutes to read one. They were great to take with me into the bathroom so I could get some privacy from my ex-common law wife. And they made Wednesday afternoons something to look forward to — and we’re not going to lose that feeling — that love for newly printed comics everyone, at least not for a long while. But now, with webcomics, you can read an entire run of strips… for free. Not $3.99. FREE. And they are available 24/7. You can read them in your underwear. I know I do from time to time.

So, with all of these new avenues to get comics out there instantly — and don’t forget you do have to still write and draw them — you can technically break in at any moment.

“But is anyone going to read it?” you ask.

Well, now that you broke in, that’s up to you.

Christian Beranek is a writer, musician, actor, film/tv producer and webcomic entrepreneur. He co-runs The Webcomic Factory with Tony DiGerolamo and is hard at work on several original graphic novels. He is also co-starring in High School Sucks The Musical for Lakeshore Entertainment and PDFlo Films. He is never late for dinner and invites you to add him on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/beranek

Now this is a strange release.

Publisher Drawn and Quarterly and cartoonist/editor Adrian Tomine have been gradually introducing Western audiences to manga-ka Yoshihiro Tatsumi over the course of the last five years or so, through collections of his short, dark, adult work collected in Abandon the Old in Tokyo, The Pushman and Other Stories and Good-Bye.

Last year they printed his epic autobiography, A Drifting Life, and now comes Black Blizzard, which has so little in common with the work seen in D+Q’s earlier anthologies that you’d be forgiven for thinking it the work of an entirely different artist.

Black Blizzard is a much earlier work, created by a 21-year-old Tatsumi in 1956, and a fairly straight work of genre fiction compared to the literary work we’ve previously seen. It’s a fast-paced, crime melodrama with some extremely obvious twists and turns.

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So it’s been a crazy weekend; everything that happened in the comics and genre universe kind of ground to a halt for me when I found out about the passing of Dick Giordano. There’s been a few things worth mentioning, though, so away we go:

New Hampshire State Representative Nick Levasseur was pressured into a hasty apology this weekend after some ill-advised comments about anime that offended his Japanese-American constituents, as well as presumably thousands of pasty white kids wearing Pokemon t-shirts. Calling the art form “a prime example of why two nukes just wasn’t enough” on his Facebook page, he pretty quickly realized that Facebook is a public forum and not someplace that you say insanely stupid things if you don’t want news agencies everywhere reporting on it.

Call him Lex Luthor: Executive Producer. Smallville star Michael Rosenbaum is joining Jonathan Silverman as the showrunners for a new action-comedy for Syfy. “Saved By the Zeroes” will apparently be a buddy comedy that, from its description, will feature characters not entirely unfamiliar with the movie “Galaxy Quest” (over-the-hill former sci-fi TV stars), but without the real-life sci-fi backdrop.

My personal favorite news of the week: AMC has picked up The Walking Dead for a six-episode run, sight-unseen. Bloody-Disgusting.com has been reporting that Jonny Lee Miller is the prohibitive favorite to play Rick Grimes, with the pilot still set to shoot in June.

Former Superman Brandon Routh’s run on Chuck appears headed to a natural conclusion in the next few weeks, unless there’s a major shift in the writing. This week’s episode, which should appear online in the morning after airing tonight at 8pm, completely shifts his character’s raison d’etre; “Would I trade my life for the man who killed my wife?” He asks Sarah, and then answers in the affirmative–and shortly thereafter we come face to face with the killer. Check out the show on Hulu, where you can catch up (since my postgame review column kind of died on the vine when I had to take a more demanding day job–sorry about that, folks).