For those of you who don’t know his work, Chris Samnee draws like a beast.

He’s got his own series with Marvel right now (drawing Siege: Embedded and then moving ahead to Thor: The Mighty Avenger with Roger Langridge), working on Serenity: The Shepherd’s Tale with Dark Horse and the brothers Whedon, AND he’s putting up sketches on his blog as well as Comictwart.

So how does he manage to pack in so much, when so many other artists break deadlines month after month? Well, for those who are curious about how Samnee gets so much done, he’s got a post up talking about how to pump up your drawing speed. Here’s some highlights:

-It’s easy to skip around on a page and do all the easy stuff first but don’t. It’ll end up eating more time than you can imagine. If possible, start at page 1 panel 1 and go from there. This will also help continuity throughout the issue.

-If you’re having a hard time getting ramped up at the start of a new issue, start with a splash page. They’re generally pretty fun to draw, can get your mood up a bit and take far less time to do than most pages… so in no time you already have a page completed and it’ll take some of the pressure off.

-Measure how much time it generally takes you to draw a panel. Then set a timer for how long you estimate each panel will take you to complete. Slowly scale back how much time you give yourself to complete each one and you will keep building speed. Make sure you start at a comfortable pace and slowly scale back the time you give yourself to complete a panel. Don’t sacrifice quality for the sake of speed – but you can learn to draw faster. (This is probably my best advice for gaining speed.)

Some of it may seem a little obvious — like playing video games all day might be a little less than conducive to productive work habits — but there are other gems that really stick out as “why did I think of that sooner?” There’s plenty more to see on his blog, which is definitely worth a look.

(Saturn) Girl, you’ll be a woman soon…

Over at the Source, Jim Lee’s Saturn Girl variant for the new LEGION series next month. Lee is doing Legionnaries during various times throughout their history. I think Lee chose wisely for the first installment with the Dave Cockrum-designed costume from the 1970′s.

So I guess we can let the speculation begin on who and what era Lee will pick next. Sound off, readers, who would you like to see showcased?

The World’s Finest Duo are set to be larger than life — as Warner Bros. has made a deal with IMAX that has revealed just a little bit more about DC’s upcoming film slate.

The Hollywood Reporter has announced that WB has sealed a deal to create 20 IMaX films through 2013. Among those titles are “Batman 3″ and “Superman.”

While obviously there are no official announcements either which way, reading between the lines on this news might mean it really is full steam ahead for the Man of Steel, who now has Christopher Nolan shepherding the franchise after Supe’s last big-screen foray proved disappointing to execs. Meanwhile, WB is clearly champing at the bit to get some more screen time for the Dark Knight, who proved to be a billion-dollar baby to the studio in 2008. But the fact that WB seems confident that both Nolan-backed films will be done in three years is exciting to say the least.

“Our track record with Imax has been incredible, and incorporating 3D into this collaborative effort will serve as the ultimate experience for our audiences,” Dan Fellman, president of domestic distribution at Warner Bros. Pictures, said in a statement.

Other films that are fast-tracked for IMAX include Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts 1 and 2, as well as the Hobbit, all of which will be in 3D.

[Image via Flickr]

But is it ugly enough?: It looks like Warner Bros. has just released a new poster for their upcoming Jonah Hex movie. Curiously, the ugly half of Hex’s face is completely obscured in shadow. Perhaps they’re trying to keep it a surprise at this point, but it’s an odd strategy, as that’s kind of his whole visual signature. Wouldn’t it be a little like a Batman movie poster that avoided showing his ears, bat-symbol or scalloped cape hem? New York Magazine posts a little commentary here. I remain most concerned that they may not have made Hex ugly enough; I was originally hoping for something closer to Two-Face in Dark Knight, but none of the stills I’ve seen so far have been that over the top. I guess we’ll see…in less than two months, if the poster is to be believed.

“In sum, Blackest Night is Marvel Zombies by way of Julie Schwartz, but in earnest-redemptive rather than darkly humorous mode”: I enjoyed this big, long piece by Charles Hatfield exploring DC’s Blackest Night story/event from the perspective of a lapsed DCU continuity comics reader checking in to see what’s been going on and what the latest big story was all about. That’s a perspective I always enjoy hearing from.

“I asked Jimmy if he’d gotten tax-exempt status for his Superman fan club. He called me a bitch and said I was just jealous of Clark”: I knew that having a Twitter account was pretty  much mandatory for all journalists these days, but I guess I never realized that Lois Lane had one.

Did you ever stop and think about how deeply weird Dan DiDio’s job is?: I mean, really think about it?

Did Diary of a Wimpy Kid kick Kick-Ass’ ass?: Baltimore Sun film critic Mike Sragow thinks so, and explains why in this piece (It was made for half the price of Kick-Ass, and has made more money than Kick-Ass with far less promotion). Props to Sragow for not calling  Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the source material for the movie, a graphic novel, but for calling it a “novel with cartoons,” which is closer to what it actually is.

“Target Audience: Fans of AWESOME!”: Hey, I like awesome! Oni Press has another round of previews up on their site, including info about the sixth and final volume of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series. There aren’t any full pages from the book, just a smattering of single panels, but still.

“Is Tony Stark the Smoothest Superhero of All Time?”: So asks Nick Nadel at filmcritic.com, and then proceeds to rate Robert Downey Jr.’s Stark against other comics smoothies. The game looks a little rigged, as calling Timothy Dalton’s Basil St. John from the movie Brenda Starr a “superhero” seems to be pushing it. Side bar: Nadel uses Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne from The Dark Knight as the Bruce Wayne in the competition, which got me thinking. Whose movie Wayne was smoothest? I thought Michael Keaton’s was a lot more charming than Bale’s, personally, and George Clooney was awful smooth in his Batman movie…

“Coulda Beens”: Ben Morse at The Cool Kids Table runs down a list of some super-characters from the ‘90s that had a great deal of potential, but never quite caught on like they could have/should have. Included on the list are DC’s The Ray, whom you would  think would have had a pretty big role in Blackest Night since, like Dr. Light II, his powers would have made him a Black Lantern bug-zapper (instead, like Dr. Light, he only appeared in a tangential tie-in), and X-Men villain Stryfe-with-a-Y. I’ve always liked the look of Stryfe’s helmet, even though I’ve never read a ingle comic he was in, as it makes him look a little like a Wolverine made out of knives.

Have you ever wondered what Hal Jordan having sex with a power battery would look like?: Well then, you should enjoy David Finch’s cover for Brightest Day #1. Check out Hawkman recoiling in horror at Jordan’s sexing a lantern in front of his Justice League colleagues.

So I got a new scanner, after having gone a few scanner-less months. Which means the return of poorly-drawn colored pencil-on-index cartoons at the top of this column each week. Hooray…?

This week looks like a big one at the comic shops, with a lot of pretty interesting and widely varied books. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Batman: The Brave and The Bold #16: This is one of those cases where the cover of the comic speaks much more eloquently about its contents than I could hope to. Let’s take a look:

That appears to be Vincent Price playing Egghead, from the live-action Batman TV show, laughing maniacally while holding crystal eggs in which Batman and Wonder Woman are imprisoned. And Wondy is wearing a hella conservative skirt. Writer Landry Walker and Eric Jones are the creative team for this issue, and, as if all of that wasn’t eggs-citing enough, Egghead isn’t the only egg-themed villain in the issue, as the solicitation also promises Egg-Fu. This from all appearances, this is going to be an egg-cellent eggs-ample of an egg-stordinarily egg-cellent comic book.

Civil War #1: Considering how well this sold, and the fact that the trades and Civil War Chronicles collections have been around so long, it’s kind of hard to believe there’s anyone around who’s interested in this comic who hasn’t already had the opportunity to read it yet. But if you are interested and have been holding out, you can’t pass up this $1 reprint of the first one-seventh of Mark Millar, Steve McNiven and Dexter Vines’ game-changing Marvel miniseries. There are some…problems with it, but if I recall correctly, this is the strongest issue, as the series gets more and more nonsensical as it goes on.  Also, Captain America surfs on a jet plane in it.

Detective Comics #864: Batman reclaims his original title from Batwoman, with the first part of a two-issue story arc dealing with Dr. Jeremiah Arkham and Black Mask II , by writer David Hine and artist Jeremy Haun (The Question back-up, by Greg Rucka and Cully Hamner, remains in the back of the $4 book). Just look for the gorgeous Cliff Chiang cover. The home page also has a preview here.

Gigantic Vol. 1: It’s Rick Remender, Eric Nguyen, a giant monster from space and smashing, all in an $18, 145-page trade paperback package. Take a look.

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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!

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

It looks like time is running out for Johnny Blaze, as Columbia is under the gun to get cracking on a new Ghost Rider film — or otherwise lose the rights entirely.

Vulture has a nice post up about what’s happening on the Nick Cage vehicle (a-heh, see what I did there?), saying that while Cage is willing to do a sequel, he might be already booked for the third National Treasure franchise. Considering the well-known comic fan is also having some major financial trouble, he’s got to get the most bang for his buck.

Might this mean that Columbia will have to get another actor to play the Spirit of Vengeance? Vulture says that’d be a bad, bad move:

But would the film work without Cage? One unconnected producer who’s worked in the comic-book genre gave Vulture an emphatic no, pointing out that the Ghost Rider character isn’t particularly well-known; any familiarity with it comes from associating the face of Cage — a worldwide box-office draw — with the title. Compare that to Iron Man 2, for which billboards all over the nation show nary a glimpse of star Robert Downey Jr. You don’t need the star to sell that movie, you just need the suit.

Yet all’s not lost on the Ghost Rider front — apparently Scott Gimple and Seth Hoffman of Flashforward have written a Ghost Rider 2 script, and the studio is shopping that script around for a new director.  What say you, Rama readers? You think Columbia needs to quit idling on this movie? Or does Johnny Blaze need an overhaul that only his new Disney parent company can provide?

Popeye: Plunder Island
Written & Illustrated by E.C. Segar
Published by Fantagraphics

Fantagraphics’ fourth oversized collection of Elzie Segar’s legendary Thimble Theatre strips, famous as the birth place of Segar’s notorious Popeye the Sailor, continues the winning standard set by earlier editions.

Well, honestly, Plunder Island comes up slightly short of the brilliance set by previous Popeye strips, if only because Segar pushes J. Wellington Wimpy so heavily in the Sunday pages.  I seem to be in a minority, and I can’t quite put my finger on why, but the repetitious themes of Wimpy’s mooching exhaust me.  The payoff is slight and easily predictable.

The daily sequences, more focused on Popeye and his English-mangling, extreme-punching, heart-of-gold antics, mixing adventure and humor in balanced measure, are more to my tastes.  I’m not sure why Popeye’s gimmick is less bothersome than Wimpy’s – mostly I suspect that there’s just a little more range in the jokes focused on Popeye.  The gags are still well within a certain realm, but Segar was more able to vary the formula when working on the dailies.  Wimpy’s only relationship is with hamburgers, after all. Popeye manages to juggle Olive and June VanRipple, as well as friendships with Mr. VanRipple, Castor Oyl and Toar, while discovering Plunder Island, saving King Blozo’s kingdom (again) and establishing his own country, Spinachova.

Fantagraphics’ enormous format remains among the best-looking strip reprints available.  The Sunday pages are published in full-size glory, complete with the (fairly tepid) accompanying Sappo strip Segar created to run with Popeye.  To match the largeness of the Sunday pages, Fantagraphics puts six dailies – a full week – on each page, giving an incredible density and even matching the weekly pacing of the strips in a condensed manner.  The artwork reproduction is very strong throughout.

Anyway, the gags in the dailies remain of a type, but Segar mixes the formula to keep things fresh, and his comical character designs continue to be strong, suiting his slapstick pacing.  If you were to ask me to recommend a classic newspaper strip, Popeye would easily be among the top five.  Given the vast range and sheer number of strips that have existed, Segar’s incredibly high standard continues as a standard-bearer.

Wow, exceptionally light weekend…this is all I could scrape together…

“In other words, we can safely assume that Marvel has every intent of exhausting their superhero list from A to Z, no matter how obscure the hero may be”: That’s from an article in IF Magazine, about Marvel’s plans to produce much cheaper films in the future focusing on their much less popular heroes. What does that mean? Hopefully it means Batroc The Leaper: The Motion Picture.

“Meet Detroit Steel”: The Detroit Free Press picks up on a local tie-in to the upcoming Invincible Iron Man #25, a character named after the paper’s city. Earlier this week, the Press ran another comic book-related article, as they were one of the many to note the newest addition to Riverdale High.

“The top Seven Comics Creators who can KICK YOUR ASS”: Ass-kicking cartoonist Ty Templeton counts down the top, well, it’s write there in the title of his post, isn’t it? Give it a read; it’s funny stuff, and it will give you a good idea of which pros you should be most polite and deferential too should you meet them at a convention, in order to avoid being stepped on, shot with an arrow or blown up by an honest-to-God demolitions expert.

“While it’s admittedly absurd to compare the empires of Caesar and Geppi in too many ways…”: I’m sure Tom Spurgeon meant absurdly awesome when he wrote that. It’s from a weekend post on the Comics Reporter entitled “Two Wider Cultural Conversations That May Remind You of Comics,” regarding how Bryan Ward-Perkins’ thoughts on the fall of Rome and the current financial recession sort of remind Spurgeons of the current state of the Direct Market, and how there seem to be lessons for comics folks to learn in a recent speech by Christopher R. Weingarten. Pretty Interesting reading.

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

3D filmmaking might have been the box that Pandora opened with Avatar, but it’s not going away anytime soon, as two more genre-friendly flicks are getting the three-dimensional treatment.

Deadline has reported that Michel Gondry’s Green Hornet has been pushed back from December to January 2011 to be converted to 3D. According to what Sony’s Jeff Blake told them, this tactic is “doubling down” for the studio. “We’re investing more in the film to have it 3D. We’ve seen part of the movie. We love it. We believe in it. Whoever is spreading these rumors has not seen it. We’re going to finish Green Hornet in 3D and take 9 months to do it right.”

Additionally, Deadline has stated that Avatar: The Last Airbender will also be in 3D, which will likely cost anywhere from $5 to $10 million to convert. If you take a look at this trailer, it’s already visually pretty powerful, so 3D might be even hit sensory overload levels. That said, Mike Fleming does rightly state that because 3D movies kick a price hike around the $3 mark, it might cost a bit to get the image overhaul. What say you, Rama readers? You excited to see the 3D revolution, or do you think it’s not worth the price?

[Image via Radar]

Bruce Wayne’s life is looking to get more complicated, as MSN has posted a new trailer for the Batman: Under the Red Hood animated feature.

Topless Robot, where I found this clip, kind of surprised me, by reminding me that Mark Hamill isn’t even in this movie, but John DiMaggio. The thing I’m particularly curious about, however, is the Amazo sequence in this trailer — does that mean we might see Nightwing? It’s clear A Death in the Family will be referenced, but the DC Animated Features’ penchant to insert in new characters without a lot of setup (see Aquaman, Red Tornado, Firestorm and Black Canary jumping into Crisis on Two Earths as an example) just to see who you’ll recognize has my curiosity piqued.

“Comic book shocker!”: The comics press has been all over this story already for obvious reasons (Here’s our own Vaneta Rogers from the home page the other day, for example), but it looks like the mainstream media is now starting to take note. Here’s a brief article from the New York Daily News, and I expect a lot more to follow, since Archie Comics have always been viewed as a publisher of kids comics (and a lot of people of an older generation think any mention of homosexuality to kids should be verboten), a few years (or decades) behind the times, and, fairly or not, an extremely conservative publisher. I’m not so sure how conservative they reall are though. There’s always been an extremely libertine streak to their Riverdale characters, I thought, from pioneering furries Josie and The Pussycats to Jughead being the world’s first out and proud hamburgersexual. Plus there’s this whole crazy catalog of fetishes Comics Alliance’s Chris Sims recently chronicled.  (That last link may not safe for work,  by the way…for the words used, not the images, so don’t get too excited, perverts).

Why, that’s not disturbing at all: Check out a Renee French sketch that isn’t at all creepy (Via Flog)

Wow, look at these: Check out Top Shelf’s blog to see a bunch of convention sketches by cartoonist Jeff Lemire, including some of his own characters as well as plenty of familiar faces (and masks) from DC and Marvel’s character stables. Cliff Chiang has also been sketching up a storm, and, as usual, displays the results on his blog. (Speaking of Chiang, I hope you all gave this week’s issue of Brave and the Bold at least a looksee in the shop—his art is certainly something to see, and super-comics sure could use more like it).

You guys aren’t sick of talking about Kik-Ass yet, are you?: If not, here’s a pretty interesting take on the film’s performance opening week from Spinoff Online, written by one Graeme McMillan (Now why does that name sound familiar…?). Aside from all the other reasons previously cited by so many others—the R rating, the lack of stars bigger than Nic Cage and the kid who played McLovin, the fact that the original comic and characters aren’t popular at all compared to most superhero movie material, the fact that the original comic wasn’t very good—McMIillan comes up with a deeper, more fundamental diagnosis. He calls it another deconstructionist superhero movie like Watchmen (Hey, I bet Mark Millar would like to hear Kick-Ass referred to as “another Watchmen!”):

The superhero genre is still pretty much unexplored in that medium, and to that audience, so they haven’t necessarily reached saturation point or the need to see icons stripped down and humanized just yet (Again, Batman aside – but you could argue that he’s been in the public consciousness at least since Adam West’s turn in the late ’60s, and is almost separated from superheroes as a genre due to his pop icon status).

That’s a pretty great point (And one I wondered about when Watchmen came out, thinking it  would have been like trying to sell deconstructionist Westerns like Dead Man or Unforgiven in the mid-1950s and hoping they would be hits). Are there counterexamples of deconstructionist superhero movies that were bona fide box office hits, bigger than Watchmen and Kick-Ass (as it stands going into its second weekend)? The only one that leaps to mind for me is The Incredibles, but its Pixar pedigree gave it a a boost somewhat special to that studio.

The next test for comic book movies: The Losers, based on the Vertigo series (which was itself a reinvention of an early ‘70s DC war comic series), opens this weekend.  Like Kick-Ass, The Losers has been rather aggressively marketed, and should therefore be under some pressure to perform. SF Weekly critic Dan Kois was less than impressed, noting that the villain of the piece is no Gary Busey. But is that even a fair criticism? Isn’t “needs more Gary Busey” something that could be said of every movie?

“The 12 Best Comic Book Moments in Non-Comic Book Movies”: This is a pretty fun list from Maxim magazine. That Adventures in Babysitting scene always comes to mind whenever I hear talk of the Thor movie, and it makes me think Vincent D’Onofrio would still be an ideal Thor, 23 years and at least 23 pound more or no.

King of the Flies vol. 1: Hallorave
Written by Michel Pirus
Illustrated by Mezzo (Pascal Mesenburg)
Translated by Helge Dascher & John Kadlecek
Published by Fantagraphics

A bleak, heavily noir tale of ennui, sex and drugs, King of the Flies tells of four teens, Eric, Marie, Sal and Denis, and a handful of adults connected to them, whose lives unfold in interlocking short stories.

The first installment of three European albums, Hallorave bursts with depravity and ugliness.  The few characters who aren’t intentionally using another are either willingly being used or simply oblivious to their abusive ways.

King of the Flies centers around the character Eric (who narrates four of the ten chapters), but is really a tale of lives intersecting.  Six separate characters take a turn as the lead, and each focuses largely on scoring a hit, getting ahead in some illegal manner or getting into the pants of someone they’re lusting for.

It is self-loathing, disaffection at its finest.  At the book’s most fascinating, Pirus takes inside each person’s head and examines their ability to justify their actions, some via rationalizing, some through ignorance, some through simple narcissistic arrogance.  When Eric starts dating Marie before breaking off his relationship with Sal, Pirus swings through all three characters’ vantage points, showing the indifference each feels for the other, yet the pride that demands respect.

One of my favorite aspects to most European albums that I’ve read is how easy to read most are.  Three-tiered grids lock the story into a precise rhythm, an inexorable progression of windows into these lives, providing readers with precision storytelling and pacing.  Captions are placed squarely at the top or bottom of a given panel, so there’s no confusion about which sequence to read the text in.  Even novice comics readers can move smoothly from text to art, panel to panel, and traffic the flow of information easily.

Mezzo, the series illustrator, sticks to a dark color palette, refusing to allow any sunshine into the lives of the characters.  By using variety of angles, including occasionally severe zooms and long shots, Mezzo keeps the story visually engaging, and shows the range of his illustrative prowess.  Every character and every backdrop is rendered with an eye toward its downtrodden humanity, packed full of deliberate details (from the decor of a room to the blowing of autumn leaves) and sagging, hollow-eyed humanity.

If you’re looking for a light-hearted pick-me-up, King of the Flies vol.1: Hallorave is not it.  If, however, you’re looking for a darkly compelling, twisted, beautifully illustrated account of the broken souls and self-absorbed nihilism, Pirus and Mezzo’s album is about as good as you’ll find in the comics field.  It’s a stunning piece of fiction, beautifully crafted in its prose, pacing, artistry and crushing understanding of humanity’s ugliness.

I try not to overpost certain artists, but sometimes people make it difficult for me.

Namely, Chris Samnee, whose cover sketch for Thor the Mighty Avenger #4 puts the “DAAAAAWWWWWWW” into adorable. Think not too hard on my questionable linguistics and pronunciation, and instead check out his blog, which has some other design masterpieces, like Tony Stark’s classy moustache and Thor’s stylish ponytail. Does Thor and Volstagg not look like BFFs who might go off and get into trouble and adventures? The One True Pair (OTP) factor is off the scales! Either which way, the above image just fills me with unspeakable glee, hence it being passed along to you.

[Image via Nathan Cosby]

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!

Please click the image to enlarge to FULL SIZE.

WORLD OF HURT – The Thrill-Seekers – Episode 41:

See? Dirty fighting.  There’s a little WWE in here, but I thought it was a pretty fun- and painful looking- sequence.

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

- JEP

Gene Luen Yang’s Prime Baby (First Second) has two unusual factors going for it, beyond the obvious fact that it’s a new-ish comics work from Gene Luen Yang.

First, its protagonist is an extremely unlikable (and thus, somewhat lovable) jerk whom one is more likely to root against instead of for. And second, the narrative takes an inventive twist or two, to avoid the predictable ending—it’s happy, and there’s closure, but it’s not the obvious, path-of-least-resistance conclusion.

Prime Baby began as Yang’s contribution to the funny pages section of the New York Times Magazine, and its collected format reflects its one time strip nature.

The thin volume is a horizontal rectangle, about six inches tall and eight inches wide, with a three-to-four-panel comic strip set in the center of each page, surrounded by white space. While it looks like a comic strip collection, it reads like a graphic novel. Rather than stopping and starting on each page, climaxing at the end of each strip and retreading what came before in the first panels of each new one, Prime Baby simply continues, the effect more like a long, continuous graphic novel scrolling sideways through the horizontal space, or, perhaps, a single comic strip with the length of a novella instead of a single joke.

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