It’s very telling, when you look at the DVD for Dr. Who: The Complete Fifth Series (available yesterday from BBC Home Video), the extent to which the studio believes Amy Pond (played by Karen Gillan) is an asset to the show. The lovely redhead is featured on the art on the front of the first disc–a position that’s often reserved for the main character. She really steps up and is more front-and-center with more consistency than other assistants I’ve seen (although I’ll admit, it’s pretty well-established that I’m not a Dr. Who expert).

The great thing is, this box set is packaged for people who want to know each and every little thing about the show, so everyone can become a pseudo-expert in the course of the time it takes them to watch the hours of special features.

That said, both Gillan and Matt Smith are terrific, and this series is a clever, exciting one–which is exactly what you need, I imagine, to placate longtime fans when you segue between Doctors. A discouraging outing his first season, and a new Doctor could quickly become the Timothy Dalton of the series (the “short-lived and not well-loved” part, not the part about getting to sleep with Linda Hamilton in new episodes of Chuck).

Check this one out–coming from a guy who was left cold by the episode where Smith was introduced, he’s really stepped into the role and the writers’ room clearly are playing to his stengths.

Superboy #1
Written by Jeff Lemire
Illustrated by Pier Gallo
Colored by Jamie Grant
Lettered by John J. Hill
Cover art by Rafael Albuquerque or John Cassaday & Andre Szymanowicz
Published by DC Comics

The Karl Kesel/Tom Grummett Superboy series debuted about a year after I’d started reading comics, and it was the first DC series that I followed regularly.  As such, I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for The Kid (the Kesel/Grummett runs are, along with JLI, one of the two superhero series I most often reread), yet the character was eventually steered away from the characteristics that drew me to his adventures over the years.  The cloned-from-Lex-Luthor reveal did no favors, as far as I’m concerned, as the revelation turned the character into a dour, sulky mess far from the high-adventure, good-times hero I’d once enjoyed reading.  (Besides which, I’m not in favor of anything that narrows the mythology with an ever-tighter circle of incestuous relationships – nobody wants Metamorpho to date Lex’s daughter because Simon Stagg’s too low-profile, so I’m not sure I buy the explanation that Superboy’s previous evil-clone-stock wasn’t sufficiently known.  But I digress…)

Anyway, Superboy died during Infinite Crisis and I was happy – better than the alternative, I figured.  Of course, he came back, but we were moving in different circles and I was fairly content to leave it that way.  However, DC announced that Jeff Lemire, auteur of the highly recommended Essex County books would be writing a new Superboy series – and a glimmer of curiosity cut through me.  Despite a character I like mixed with a writer whose work I enjoy, I wasn’t sure I’d check the series out (sometimes, you just can’t go back), but then the dilemma was taken out of my hands when a review copy of Superboy #1 showed up in my mailbox.

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Villains have learned over the years that Batman can never really be killed, but he can certainly be delayed, as the the sixth and final issue of Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne has sure demonstrated. It’s ten weeks late, and the returned Bruce Wayne has already showed up in at least nine different comics already, so maybe Calendar Man is on to something after all. Grant Morrison is still writing, Lee Garbett and Walden Wong are still drawing (with Pere Perez and Alejandro Sicat helping them) and it’s a 30-page, $4 book. DC has a preview here.

10th Muse: The Lost Issue #4: Losing one issue is a mistake, but losing four issues? That’s just careless.

The All-New Batman: The Brave and the Bold #1: What’s so all-new about this volume of the comic based on the Batman: The Brave and the Bold television cartoon? Well, the creative team, for one. While the previous incarnation featured rotating teams, this version will be written by Sholly Fisch and drawn by Rick Burchett, who knows a thing or 10,000 about drawing comics based on animated series based on comics. In this first issue, Batman teams up with Superman for an adventure in the Bottle City of Kandor.

Amazing Spider-Man #648: Marvel’s three-year experiment with a tri-monthly ASM by a team of writers and artists has come to an end, but the company still has big plans for the character. This issue is the official start of their next branding effort for the title,”Big Time.” This issue features a 39-page lead feature by Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos,  guest-starring The Avengers and The Fantastic Four, and a Spider-Girl back up by Paul Tobin and Clayton Henry. That’s a pretty good page-count for a $4 book from Marvel these days.

Ant-Man & The Wasp #1: The former Ant-Man Hank Pym, who is currently upholding his late wife’s legacy as The Wasp, is forced to team-up with Eric O’Grady, the irredeemable louse currently upholding Pym’s legacy as Ant-Man. Hilarity presumably ensues. Tim Seeley writes and draws this three-issue, $4-per-issue series.

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Written and created by Brian Andersen, art, colors and letters by the talented Celina Hernandez. For more So Super Duper go to:www.sosuperduper.com!

Well, now you have the chance to help.

It wouldn’t be the first time that one of best-selling author and contemporary legend Neil Gaiman’s stories have been turned into a movie. Both “Coraline” and “Mirror Mask” were critically-praised, the former even garnered and Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature. However, both of those had big studio backing, independent film-maker Christopher Salmon has a different idea. Utlizing the popular site, Kickstarter, Salmon has pitched the idea to make one of Gaiman’s short stories, “The Price”, into an animated short.

Newsarama recently spoke with Salmon about his artistic talents, the animation process of the short, and what it was like to recieve Neil’s approval.

Newsarama: Okay, Christopher, tell us a bit about yourself

Christopher Salmon: Where to start? I’m Canadian & grew up in the stunning Okanagan valley in BC.. I’ve always wanted to make movies an spent my youth and, well, pretty much my whole life trying to develop the talents and skill set to do just that taught myself to draw, write, and sculpt (so I could make rubber monster masks and then foam-latex creatures & stop-motion puppets) Took enough piano so I could generate a simplistic John Carpenter-esque score to go along with my cheesy horror films I made in High School TV class, which usually plotted around some cool new special effect I’d figured out, like my own version of the chest-burster scene from Alien so, totally high-class stuff

I thought I might get my break into film through special effects make-up, but I wound up in the video game industry for many years, just from reading stuff (Fangoria, Cinefex) and trying things out. I blew my chest off once trying out a home-made squib (not so funny) my Mom took one look at the blackened mess on my chest and ordered me to surrender my can of re-filling gunpowder on the spot not too bright either … (me, not my Mom — she rocks)

Nrama: So big horror fan, I take it?

Salmon: I love monsters, so yeah, I’ve watched a lot of horror flicks, but the whole blood/torture/dark-evil thing isn’t what draws me … I just dig the monsters, you know?

But I love Sci-Fi, fantasy, anything really mostly, I love movies. That’s what I love about this story of Neil’s; even with the cool monster stuff, the overall feeling is hopeful, positive, and a little melancholy.

Nrama: Out of all of Gaiman’s stories, what drew you to the Price that made you want to make something like this?

Salmon: The theme of redemption. A chance to design some really cool monsters. I like cats too, so really it was win-win-win! Also, I was looking for something on a small scale that I could handle the bulk of the work for. In the animatic, I didn’t feature any of the secondary characters at all (you could see their feet or profile in shadow) … by being able to keep the focus on the Narrator/Neil, The Black Cat, and the monsters, I could manage costs and put the funds towards these central characters. So it was all of these things, but primarily the theme & feeling I got while reading The Price.

Plus, if I can see it immediately in my mind, I know my chances of recreating successfully are very high and once it’s in there, the only way to ever get it out … is to make the film!

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House of Mystery Annual #2
Published by DC/Vertigo
Cover art by Esad Andrews

Although I’m almost totally unfamiliar with Vertigo’s House of Mystery series, I have to admit that its extra-sized Halloween-themed Annual, House of Mystery Annual #2, provides a solid romp.  The issue follows four youngsters, cursed by a witch to trick or treat for the rest of their lives.  Consequently, the quartet enter the House of Mystery, before meeting characters from several other Vertigo series in what’s effectively a Vertigo sampler.

House of Mystery (the lead story)
Written by Matthew Sturges
Penciled by Luca Rossi
Inked by Jose Marzán, Jr.
Colored by Lee Loughridge
Lettered by Todd Klein

While Cain and the trick or treater who’s been transformed into a demon debate what constitutes a trick and what is actually criminal, the other three cursees reveal their history and hope for a way to end their curse.  It’s clever and fun, and well drawn.

Madame Xanadu
Written by Matt Wagner
Illustrated by Brandon Graham
Lettered by Jared K. Fletcher

The quartet then travel on to Madame Xanadu’s house, where each finds a room that grants them their greatest wish.  This short tale is essentially a showcase for Brandon Graham’s art; Wagner’s script is very dark and doesn’t have enough room to do justice to the narration.  It’s almost like reading a laundry list of stereotypically evil things that happen to kids.  But it looks whimsically pretty.

Hellblazer
Written by Peter Milligan
Laid out by Giuseppe Camuncoli
Finished art by Stefano Landini
Colored by Trish Mulvihill
Lettered by Sal Cipriano

The kids are mostly off-stage here, as Milligan chooses to explore an John Constantine encounter with chance and coincidence, while also reflecting John’s current emotional state following a failed romance (something I assume regular Hellblazer readers can appreciate far better than I).

iZombie
Written by Chris Roberson
Illustrated by Mike Allred
Colored by Laura Allred
Lettered by Klein

A tale of Gwen’s early life, before becoming a zombie, as the trick or treaters play a prank on Gwen and some friends.  This story is offbeat and humorous, and a nice tease for the iZombie series.

Infernal Bargains
Written by Mike Carey
Illustrated by Peter Gross
Colored by Daniel Vozzo
Lettered by Fletcher

Is this a new series?  A reference to Carey and Gross’s Lucifer series?  I’m not sure.  It’s also the chapter I found the least engaging, as our ostensible heroes find themselves in Hell during a war and try to escape with the help of a demon.  But it never really adds up to anything.

More convention news for your Monday: after a false start last week, Comic-Con International: San Diego registration is opening up for 2011′s show at 6 a.m. (!) PST on Nov. 22. To give an idea of demand, four-day registration including Wednesday’s preview night is already sold out from sales at this past year’s show, so west coasters might want to double up on alarm clocks that morning.

The 2010 installment of the long-running Mid-Ohio-Con took place this past weekend, but the biggest news coming out of the event may be regarding the show’s future: on Sunday, Comics Worth Reading blogger Johanna Draper Carlson found a now-pulled listing on convention magnate/magazine publisher Wizard’s website advertising the 2011 show as as one of theirs. That spotting was picked up by The Beat, who has details here.

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“How one U.S. Jew stopped worrying, began drawing, and started loving Israel”: Haaretz.com profiles Sarah Glidden and her new book How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less. It’s actually gotten a pretty decent amount of ink lately, as publisher Vertigo’s Graphic Content blog demonstrates with a link round-up here.

How Ann Telnaes does what Ann Telnaes does: The Washington Post has a neat little behind-the-scenes video demonstrating how the incredibly talented political cartoonist-turned-animated editorial cartoonist creates her work. The single panel cartoons sure seemed a lot less labor intensive.

This looks pretty awesome: I’ve been pretty apathetic about the latest volume of DC’s latest volume of Batgirl (I tried out just one issue, the one with all the Draculas on the cover, and didn’t care for it), but this sequence by the series’ new pencil artist Dustin Nguyen looks pretty incredible. Maybe it’s time to try a second issue of the series…

“Don’t you think the idea of selling signed silkscreens is a mean trick? Why not just sell signed Xeroxes?”: Vice‘s Nicholas Gazin interviews Vice‘s Johnny Ryan about the zombie shooting target thing he made to help promote The Walking Dead show. The results are very Vice-ish and Johnny Ryan-esque. (Via Flog)

“After all, whatever you may believe about its quality, Beetle Bailey is undeniably one of the most influential comic strips of all time”: At Comics Comics, T. Hodler struggles a bit with discussing Mort Walker’s Beetle Bailey, which he recently revisited through Titan’s collection of the strip.

Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Ramonas: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World director Edgar Wright shares about one billion photos of people dressing up as characters from Scott Pilgrim for Halloween. Needs more Matthew Patel.

I think they’re so scared in that first panel because they’ve never seen an adult before: Mike Sterling shares a crazy Charlie Brown scheme.

Maakies cartoonist Tony Millionaire has illustrated another Elvis Costello album cover, for the music industry legend’s latest record, National Ransom, which hit stores last week. His art got some network TV exposure this past Friday night on NBC’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, when the LP cover was shown off several times during the Costello interview segment.

Millionaire also provided art for Costello’s previous album, 2009′s Secret, Profane and Sugarcane. His latest Maakies collection, Little Maakies on the Prairie, is out imminently through Fantagraphics. Indie comic books got some pretty good exposure on Fallon a couple of months ago, when Rashida Jones talked up Frenemy of the State on the chat show.

Take a closer look at the National Ransom cover after the jump.

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I ran across this incredibly bizarre news item on AOLNews. I’ll block it all below, but the upshot is that a guy dressed as Captain America brawled with a guy dressed as Spider-Man in a Stamford parking garage while a girlfriend dressed as Poison Ivy looked on. Cosplay gone wrong? Another example of why drugs are bad? Or did a reporter happen to miss a crucial element?

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The latest Spider-Man casting news/rumors, if you haven’t heard it already, comes from The Hollywood Reporter, saying Sally Field, seen above looking worried on her ABC series Brothers & Sisters, is in “early talks” to play Aunt May in 2012′s “reboot” film.

This follows the now-official news of Martin Sheen playing Uncle Ben, which was also first made public by the The Hollywood Reporter, so they clearly know a little something about the going-ons at that production.

If the casting pans out, it suggests that we may be seeing a bit of a younger, hipper, Ultimate Spider-Man-style Aunt May — Field turns 64 on Saturday, roughly a decade younger than Rosemary Harris, Aunt May in the previous Spider-Man trilogy, was when the original 2002 movie featuring the character came out.

We’ll probably see an official announcement one way or another soon, but until then, let us know what you think of the casting possibility in the comments. (Do you like it? Do you really like it? That’s actually a popular misquoting of her famous Oscar acceptance speech, but we’ll go with it anyway.)

This week, Grant Morrison ended his run on Batman and Robin with issue #16. As has been covered elsewhere in Newsarama, its epilogue focused on the long-awaited official announcement that Bruce Wayne will be starting Batman, Inc., a conglomeration of vigilantes and heroes around the world who will all act under Batman’s direction and carry his symbol in some form.

This is a re-imagined take on an old idea from 1955 when the “Batmen of All Nations” were introduced in Detective Comics #215. It involved a gathering of heroes who were all directly inspired by the Dark Knight, some of whom had gotten some training from him in earlier comics. The group included: Wingman, El Gaucho, the Ranger, the Musketeer, the team of the Knight and Squire, and the duo of Man-of-Bats and Little Raven. The team was seen again, along with Superman and Batman, in World’s Finest Comics vol. 1 #89 (1957) when philanthropist John Mayhew gave them an official clubhouse and dubbed the Club of Heroes. After this though, we never saw them again in the “Pre-Crisis” era.

After the 1985 mega-crossover story Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC started seriously revising its continuity. They were renamed “The Dome” and were said to be an early version of the Global Guardians, inspired by World War II heroes. But in the late 1990s, Grant Morrison re-introduced the Knight and then a couple of years ago he brought back the idea that the group was indeed inspired by Bruce Wayne, thank you very much. So they returned in Batman #667, now called the International Club of Heroes.

So since they’ve been growing in popularity (Knight and Squire just got their own comic written by Paul Cornell) and since people are talking about the possibilities of Batman, Inc., Let’s take a look at the members of the International Club of Heroes as they compare between their introductions and their modern incarnations. And we’ll also take a look at some other folks who’ve been inspired by Gotham City’s Dark Knight Detective.

A GENERATIONAL KNIGHT AND SQUIRE

In Batman #62, we met Percival Sheldrake and his son Cyril AKA the Knight and Squire, a father and son who were inspired to emulate Batman and Robin. They had cloister bells instead of a bat-signal and motorcycles instead of a Batmobile.

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Got it? Great. Go about your day.

Mid-term toons: There was an election this past Tuesday, and you know what that means, right? Well yeah, some people who were holding public office are not going to be holding it much longer, and some people who weren’t holding public office will be holding public office soon. Also, various ballot issues either passed or didn’t. But more importantly, the nation’s political cartoonist all had something exciting to draw about. Alan Gardner at The Daily Cartoonist has a round-up of some exiciting goings on (like David Horsey and Clay Jones’ impressive marathons), R.C. Harvey surveys political cartoons  dealing with the election results at The Comics Journal and, as always, Daryl Cagle’s Political Cartoonists Index is a good place to go to perform your own surveys of political cartoons by topic.

Sometimes the Google News feed robot gives me the weirdest articles: “Karima Keyek, an 18-year-old belly dancer, has claimed that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, 74, owns a marble statue in the shape of Superman with his own face in place of Clark Kent’s.”

Amazon calls it a year: Here are Amazon’s editors top ten comics and graphic novels for 2010. Drawn and Quarterly was the publisher with the most books on the list with three, followed by DC with two.  The Abrams ComicsArts-published The Art of Jaime Hernandez: The Secrets of Life and Death topped the list. The “customer’s favorites” top ten list consists entirely of comics that were adapted into movies (Scott Pilgrim Vol. 6, Kick-Ass), were just adapted into TV shows (Walking Dead Vols. 11 and 12), were TV shows adapted into comics (Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 8 Vol. 6) or adaptations of novels (Twilight: The Graphic Novel Vol. 1, The Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel, Troublemaker, The Dark Tower: The Fall of Gilead). The only comic on the list without a tie to a different form of media is Blackest Night…which prominently features Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Who will be featured in the upcoming Green Lantern movie. I don’t know what this means exactly, but it sure means something.

“Virtually every cartoonist of the era was racist to some degree but their racism came through in different styles”: At Comics Comics, Jeet Heer returns to Greg Sadowski’s collection of first generation, Golden Age superhero comics, Supermen!, and has some interesting observations about the particular types of racism certain giants of the field evince in their work there.

Was the preview of Stan Lee’s Starborn we ran last week not enough for you? Well, as is the rage these days, BOOM! Studios has produced a teaser trailer promoting the series. It’s only 28 seconds, but hey, the first issue is out next month. And here it is:

More casting news from the 2012 Spider-Man film surfaced today, as broken first by The Hollywood Reporter — acting veteran Martin Sheen is in “final negotiations” to play the key role of Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben. Deadline.com is reporting it as a done deal.

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Written and created by Brian Andersen, art, colors and letters by the talented Celina Hernandez. For more So Super Duper go to:www.sosuperduper.com!

Er, I mean comics.

The prolific cartoonist James Kochalka recently released two more of his little hardcover kids comics, which come across as a cross between a children’s picture book and a traditional comic book.

He continues his cheerfully silly series about “the best little ghost in the world” and his “pet ghost” in Johnny Boo and The Mean Little Boy, the fourth Johnny Boo book.

As with the previous installments of the series, The Mean Little Boy offers a pretty perfect distillation of Kochalka’s greatest attributes as an artist, and while it’s all-ages work with nothing adult or inappropriate in the content, it is a kids comics that adult can enjoy for its interpersonal character dynamics, goofy humor and the accomplished cuteness of Kochalka’s art.

In this volume, Johnny blows off his friend Squiggle, whom Kochalka draws to resemble an apostrophe-shaped marshmallow with emoticon-simple expressions, to play with his friend, Rocky the Rock (who is actually just a rock).

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YouTube now brings you some classic Looneyness with a channel devoted specifically to Looney Tunes. With Looney Tunes 2011 coming down the pike, this new promo effort is sure to draw a metric ton of views. At this point, it’s mostly clips rather than full episodes. Still, any time that I can reach THIS with a click . . .

. . . it’s a good day.