Places I Didn’t Ever Expect To See Green Lantern Discussed #41: Ohio Department of Transportation press releases. The Plain Dealer‘s Michael Sangiacomo shares the release about the state’s plans to use green lights on their snow plows, which the release introduces by bringing up the superhero identity of our old friend Hal Jordan.

Perfect for last Halloween!: “How to make your own Rorschach Mask”

“Two new books recall the gory glory days of horror comics”: Dennis Drabelle covers Four Color Fear and The Horror! The Horror! for The Washington Post.

Well, superheroes will always have movies and TV: “Superhero Comic Books Are Still Dying”

The Playwright
Written by Daren Write
Illustrated by Eddie Campbell
Published by Top Shelf

It’s nice to end the year with a review of one of 2010′s best comics. If I were compiling a “best of” list, rest assured, The Playwright would rank high on it.

The back cover of Daren White and Eddie Campbell’s latest, The Playwright, describes the book as “a dark comedy about the sex life of a celibate middle-aged man.”  If that sounds awesome to you, as it does to me, let me assure you, The Playwright actually exceeds its promise.

White and Campbell structure the story, for most of its duration, with three panels per page, each accompanied by a caption box. The delivery, dry and sardonic, captures the timidity and bleakness of the titular writer’s life, while the illustrations move back and forth between his lusty ambitions and his staid actions. If you like Campbell’s strong pen and ink and watercolor artwork or appreciate seeing your own follies reflected back at  you, The Playwright’s one of the best books in recent memory, darkly funny, insightful, and quite unforgettable.

Tatsuya Tsugawa seems to be a particularly pathetic specimen of junior high student when we first meet him in the pages of Aion Vol. 1.  He’s being shaken down by some older students, and a girl in his class has to come to his rescue.

Tatsuya soon finds an even more pathetic victim of bullying than himself, however, a mysterious classmate who repeatedly tells him to butt out since she wants a particularly mean girl to throw her down and kick her when she fails to buy her the right sort of bread for lunch.

Trying to live up to his father’s dying wish that he be “a big man” someday, Tatsuya persists in interfering until he comes across the girl’s secret: She has a weird shadow dragon named Aion that flows out of her finger, swallows evil people whole, and then spits them out, having only digested the evil parasites from the ocean that are living in their brains.

After that, the pair’s lives become intertwined when Tatsuya finds the girl living in a cardboard box in the park and invites her home with him, where she discovers his scheming relatives are hosting evil parasites as well.

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Will the bad luck ever end for this production?

Entertainment Weekly has reported that actress Natalie Mendoza, who was in the role of Arachne, a villain created solely for the musical, is about to leave the show. The New York times stated that she was on a vocal rest, but other reports indicate she was severely shaken when her co-star, Christopher Tierney, was injured after a critical accident. Mendoza was also injured herself a while back during the November 28th performance, suffering from a concussion, when she was struck in the head by a rope holding equipment while she was offstage.

Mendoza’s rep wasn’t available for comment and Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark is still slated to open February 8th.

Jeffrey Brown draws everything on TV ever: Well, not everything, but Fraggles and Pee-Wee’s Playhouse character and some of those crazy Yo Gabba Gabba creatures and some Kroft characters and so on. Top Shelf’s Brett Warnock shares the illustration on his blog.

Check out The Leaf: I wouldn’t expect a superhero named The Leaf whose costume is based on The Canadian flag to look half as bad-ass as this one turned out, but what do I know about Canadian bad-assery? Phil Latter talks to Leaf creator John Helmer on his blog. (Via Sequential)

I’d say Bully is insane, but his head is full of stuffing: Bully, the little stuffed comics blogger, is following up his year-long 365 Days With Ben Grimm and 365 Days With Hank McCoy features with perhaps the most ambitious and daring comics blog feature yet—365 Days With The Guy Freaking Out On The Cover of Action Comics #1. Man, that calf is golden.

“We tend not to have any nudity in comics, but violence can get pretty out of hand at times and violence is an essential part of what comic books are”: That’s David Finch, talking about one of the weird ironies of mainstream superhero comics, in this nice little feature from his local paper about his just-released Batman: The Dark Knight. The premise of the article, alluded to in the sort of vague headline—”Batman series creator tones down the violence”—is that while Finch has drawn all sorts of super-decadence in his career, Dark Knight apparently won’t have anything like The Blob eating The Wasp’s entrails (NSFW, that second link) in it. (The story also features a photo of Finch, which makes me feel a little bad about the many ungenerous things I’ve said about his artwork over the years—I didn’t realize that Finch was bald, and thus he and I are brothers.)

Are you the world’s biggest FF fan? If you’ve got a fanatic dedication to Marvel’s first family, Newsarama wants to talk to you! Just leave a comment telling us why you love the Fantastic Four, or send a message to me, George Marston, with the same information any time in the next two weeks!

Thanks everyone!

MAD’s Greatest Artists: Sergio Aragonés: Five Decades of His Finest Works
Written by Sergio Aragonés and friends
Illustrated by Sergio Aragonés
Published by Running Press

The World’s Fastest Cartoonist, Sergio Aragonés, went through the impossible-to-count number of pages he’s drawn for MAD Magazine over the past fifty years and chose his best strips to be included in this book, a 270-page hardcover collection perfect for fans of Sergio, MAD or anything remotely funny.

Features including “A MAD Look at …” and “The Shadow Knows” dominate the proceedings, though Sergio provides several other featurettes. Many showcase his classic pantomime gag strips; others are produced in collaboration with script writers. Cover illustrations, eye-bleeding detailed sequences such as MAD’s look at comic book conventions, and early silent stories round out the collection.

Each page is accompanied by the issue number and year of the sequence’s original publication. I’ve seen a few of these strips as a kid in various MAD’s compendiums, but this edition – MAD’s Greatest Artists: Sergio Aragonés: Five Decades of His Finest Works – is definitely the way to own this material. Sergio’s a cartooning master, and to have his best work under one cover is too good to miss out on.

Hey guys, this is the last New Comics Day of the year! And it doesn’t seem like too gigantic a week, so it’s a perfect time to visit your local comic shop and drop some of your Christmas money on some collections and graphic novels you’ve been considering buying f0r a while. And if you don’t see anything you like on the shipping list for this week, and can’t find any trades you wanna buy for yourself, you can always visit your local comic shop and by me comics. I don’t mind.

Anyway, here are a few noteworthy releases for the week. As always, these aren’t necessarily the books I deem the best (or worst) or personally plan on buying or reading; they’re just the ones that jumped out at me while reviewing the shipping list as books that have some interesting component to them.

Batman: The Dark Knight #1: For anyone who thought that what the world of comics needs now is one more Batman ongoing monthly series, good news! Here comes a sixth Batman ongoing that’s set in current continuity (I think it’s number eight or number nine if you want to count Batman Confidential, The All-New Batman: The Brave and the Bold and/or Superman/Batman). As if to prove the point that there might be a few too many Batman comics at the moment, despite this being an overall slow week for new releases, this is just one of the three Batman books available this week (Detective Comics #872 and The All-New Batman: The Brave and the Bold #2 are the others).

What separates this book from the Bat-pack is that it’s going to be the province of a single writer/artist, ala Tony Daniels’ on-and-off-and-now-back-on-again run on Batman, with David Finch getting the honor of an all-new Batman vanity series (complete with use of the most momentous Batman moniker!)

Whether it’s for you or not likely depends on your feelings about Finch’s work; the first two issues are $4 a piece, and it will drop down to the $3-for-20-page format in March.

Bigfoot: Pascal Girard follows his short, Drawn and Quarterly-published book Nicolas with this $20,  50-page hardcover about a teenager in a crummy town who becomes a local celebrity when a YouTube video of him goes viral. You can check out a preview here.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Tales: This $30, 300-page hardcover collects a whole mess of short stories from hither and yon, mostly written by Joss Whendon and the TV show’s writers. Gene Colan, Becky Cloonan, Paul Lee, Tim Sale, Steve Lieber and Andy Owens provide the art. You can see the complete list of contents, and a short preview, here.
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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!

Grendel: Behold the Devil
Written & Illustrated by Matt Wagner
Lettered by Tom Orzechowski
Published by Dark Horse Comics

The latest book in Matt Wagner’s Grendel series is something of a homecoming. Wagner has revisited the series’ original protagonist Hunter Rose several times, notably in the Black, White and Red miniseries (and the Red, White and Black sequel), but in those instances, Wagner collaborated with other illustrators on short stories, each illuminating a tiny corner of Hunter Rose’s world and the Grendel milieu.

In Behold the Devil, Wagner takes up the art chores himself, drawing Hunter for the first time in a long while.  He’s also telling a long-form story – this book first serialized in eight chapters – that promises to give readers a meatier look into Hunter Rose’s character.

On one hand, the book is smartly written and very well drawn.  Wagner’s a master comic artist, witnessed in his iconic character designs and startling layouts. His ability to capture chaos or the balletic ebb and flow of a beautifully choreographed fight sequence is nearly unparalleled. Few artists can capture a dramatic beat as powerfully as Wagner, and fewer still can add strong character acting to the mix.

As for the story – taken on its own, Behold the Devil is compelling, a layered mystery, with plenty to keep readers guessing and strong character beats.  On the other hand, few of the character beats haven’t been covered in previous Grendel stories.  Behold the Devil is for hardcore Grendel fans (like me) who enjoy seeing Wagner’s talents on display or for neophyte Grendel readers.  For casual Grendel readers, there’s not necessarily much new here.  Behold the Devil’s still a good story, but I think I’d like to see Wagner creating something from whole cloth rather than revisiting Hunter at this point.

“Why Does This Glee Comic Book Exist?”: Writing for Vanity Fair, Brett Berk takes a look at one of Bluewater’s biosploitation comics, and asks himself the same question so many do when faced with a such a comic—of course, his asking also provides the answer, since this particular book has now been covered by Vanity frigging Fair. Berk is quite familiar with the Glee television show and the various ways in which various folks have attempted to cash in on its popularity, but has very limited experience with comics, and it’s always intersting to see someone who can communicate really well engage a comic book from that outsider’s persepective. Well, it’s always interesting to me, anyway.

“8 Superhero Movies That Broke The Mold (Please Copy Them!)”: That’s the headline for this i09.com story, which I found quite amusing. The premise is basically that these eight superhero movies were good or interesting superhero movies because they differed from the pack, therefore the pack should imitate them…a sort of “I wish everything could be unique exactly like that thing is!” construction. I found quite alarming the particular movies listed, some of which are just terrible, terrible films, and only one of which I would classify even as a very good film. But hey, it’s the Internet—everyone’s entitled to their opinion, and the propagation of it.

This headline is just tempting God to send a meteor hurtling towards Broadway: “Could the Spider-Man Musical Saga Get Any Worse?”

The Daily Planet‘s funnies page is even less funny than your local paper’s funnies page: Using the modern “miracle of DVD technology,” Mike Sterling is able to scrutinize the funnies in a scene from an episode of Superman: The Animated Series (my favorite episode, if anyone cares). Does Paul Dini’s last name rhyme with “meany?” I always thought it was pronounced “Dinn-y”…this could radically alter the way I yell at his comics as I read them…

Today’s must-read: Tom Spurgeon’s holiday tradition of interviewing various comics folks during the traditionally slow weeks at the end of the year is always worth paying attention to, although today’s interview is with perhaps one of the most fascinating figures in cartooning in the world at the moment: Zulkiflee Anawar Ulhaque, better known by his pen name of Zunar. If you read much about political cartoons or cartooning in general—say, if you have a Google News alert set up on those subjects, to aid you in your linkblogging for Blog@Newsarama—Zunar’s is one of the names you’d see most often, although his struggles with his country’s government doesn’t get nearly the attention it deserves here in the states.

Christmas left-overs: Ty Templeton has been blogging up a storm about Santa-related comics covers of late, although his list of The Seven Most Inappropriately Naughty Comic Book Christmas Covers is probably my favorite list so far. Meanwhile, renaissance elf James Kochalka made a Christmas song identifying various DC super-folks in the lyrics. I love the fact that Hawkman’s villain slot goes to “Thanagarian criminals,” while Wonder Woman Man’s goes to “Steve Trevor.” I hope to hear Kochalka’s “Super Christmas Men” playing in malls while I do my Christmas shopping next year…

In the late 1930s, the Golden Age of Comics began, bringing us the first true generation of superheroes. The Crimson Avenger, the Sandman, Hourman, the Flash, Starman, the Golden Age Green Lantern, various others. Several of these heroes formed the Justice Society of America, the world’s first team of heroes. After years of service, they retired for various reasons. Decades passed with a few scattered champions occasionally showing up. The Modern Age of Heroes in the DC Universe began when Clark Kent made his debut as Superman, heralding a new generation of costumed crime-fighters and adventurers. There was Batman, Wonder Woman, the Blue Beetle, along with a new Green Lantern, a new Flash, and eventually a few new Starmen as well. Several of these heroes wound up working on the team known as the Justice League of America, successor of the JSA.

Some years back, in the crossover DC 1 Million, written by Grant Morrison, the JLA met the Justice Legion Alpha, a group of champions from the 853rd century who had inherited the mantles or been inspired by the legends of the modern day heroes. Justice Legion A was composed of a new Batman, the descendant of Superman, a new Wonder Woman, a time-traveling Flash from the 27th century, the descendant of the original Starman, a new Aquaman, and an android calling himself the Hourman. Each of the Justice Legion A was headquartered on one of the solar system’s nine planets (evidently, future generations decide that Pluto actually IS a planet, thank you very much) and joined forces when necessary to protect their sector of space and reality itself.

So let’s look at these strange heroes of the distant future. There were many other heroes we saw in the 853rd century, but we’ll be focusing on the core field members of the JL Alpha that we saw in the initial storyline.

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Transformers: The IDW Collection v. 2

Written by Simon Furman, Stuart Moore, Nick Roche & George Strayton

Illustrated by Don Figueroa, E.J. Su, Rob Ruffalo, Robby Musso, Roche & Guido Guidi

Colored by Josh Burcham, John Raunch, Zac Atkinson, Ruffalo, Kieran Oats & Andrew Elder

Lettered by Robbie Robbins & Sulaco Studios, Neil Utetake & Chris Mowry

Published by IDW

Two long stories and six short tales make up this second collection of IDW’s Transformers comics.

“Stormbringer,” by Furman & Figueroa, takes place essentially concurrently with v. 1’s “Infiltration” storyline, explaining the status of Cybertron and where Optimus Prime is.  Although the backstory of Thunderwing feels slightly underdeveloped, Furman builds a strong sense of dread in his appearance and Figueroa’s detailed, dynamic shots maximize the action.

“Escalation,” by Furman & Su, features Megatron’s plot against Earth moving to the next level, and the continued threat of a human faction moving against the Transformers. Su has stood out, to me, as the most dynamic Transformer artist, more cartoony than Figueroa, but more consistent with layouts and pacing.  The story is strong, with lots of action, a solid plot and strong intrigue.

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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!

If it really is darkest before the dawn, that’s a really good sign for next month in Savage Dragon–right now it’s looking pretty charcoal. In the second of two issues whose covers Larsen had embargoed before publication, Emperor Kurr’s people come to Chicago just as Kurr faces off against Virus–who still has a fraction of his mind controlled by Dragon–along with Malcolm, Angel and OverLord in the ashes of the city while Kurr’s people drift overhead, led by their new emperor, Krull.

It’s important to note that these columns are meant as a creator commentary to the comic, to be read by those who have already seen the issue in order to illuminate the content. SPOILERS ON is a serious understatement for the next two months, as we’ve got some pretty massive developments coming up and it would be impossible (and lame) not to ask Erik about them here.

Gavin Higginbotham: The initial four page sequence as a reworking of SD 0 was an interesting way of introducing us to Emperor Krull, and re-introducing us to some of Kurr’s people. Was there any temptation to have Kurr’s heir be a girl or had you always had Krull in mind since you did the origin story? Or had you never really intended for these characters to return originally?

Erik Larsen: Early on I didn’t want to reveal Dragon’s origin so this really wasn’t something I had given much thought. Once I decided to go this route–I decided to go with a male because I wanted somebody that looked like Dragon and I was concerned that his daughter would look too similar visually to Mutation–a character already in the book.

Russ Burlingame: Does introducing Krull give you a chance to create some genuine suspense about Malcolm’s face-off with Kurr next issue? I mean, having a male who looks like Dragon and has a decent soul in circulation provides an opportunity to kill Malcolm if you really wanted to and still have a potential main character out there.

EL: That wasn’t entirely the reason but it’s there. Certainly Krull looks the part a lot more than Malcolm does.

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Miss Don’t Touch Me v. 2
Written & Colored by Hubert
Illustrated by Kerascoët
English translation by Joe Johnson
Lettering by Ortho
Published by NBM

After the startling success of the first Miss Don’t Touch Me book, the creators are back with a sequel.  There’s not much you need to know to jump right into this book.  Our heroine Blanche is a virgin prostitute (for various reasons covered in the first book), and she’s a very popular dominatrix at the pleasure palace known as Pompadour.  She has a (very) few allies and a few (more) enemies there.

While the first book operated as a twisted murder mystery, v. 2 serves readers a more emotionally damaging story. Blanche finds her Prince Charming, a dashing and kind young man named Antoine who is devoted to her and, she hopes, will rescue her from the debts that bind her to the Pompadour.  Her shiftless mother, a shyster born, also chooses this moment to reinsert herself into Blanche’s life, and though Blanche is suspicious, she can’t quite stop herself from trusting her own mother.

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Let’s start with the bad news: Dirk Deppey, who has long been responsible for The Comics Journal‘s Journalista news blog, has apparently been laid off,  and today will be his final day. I honestly can’t tell you  how much that news saddens me—at least not without sounding like I’m exaggerating—but I Deppey’s blog was on of the first places I visited on the Internet each weekday morning, reading it was something I looked forward to every day and, when Deppey blogged-in sick or took a vacation, I missed him. I hope you’ll join me in wishing Deppey the best in his future endeavors.

Two think-pieces of note: At Graphic Novel Reporter, Brigid Alverson discusses “The Pitfalls of Age Ratings,” while at The Comics Journal R.C. Harvey tries “Defining Comics Again.”

“Brainiac is an interesting case that we’ve been thinking about. As an intelligent computer, does he have rights under the Constitution?”: The New York Times‘ John Schwartz chats with the guys behind the new-ish Law and The Multiverse blog, which deals with legal issues in comic books.

Two for Christmas: Jesse Hamm re-gifts his art featuring various maids of might a-milking, and Top Shelf’s Brett Warnock shares some of the Christmas cards he’s been getting, including one in which Dean Haspiel draws a hell of a Santa Claus.

With the appearance both on the cover and at the end of the issue of mastermind villain Dr. Zoom in last week’s Time Masters: Vanishing Point, Dan Jurgens and Norm Rapmund have made the tie between Bruce Wayne’s return and Geoff Johns’ upcoming Flashpoint miniseries much clearer. Still, what his involvement is exactly and how he plays into both the apparent death of Batman and the just-resolved tale of mystics and mayhem both at the end of time and in the distant past is unclear. For a little illumination, we talked to writer/penciller Dan Jurgens, who…well, we’ll see…

The Gold Exchange: Is the flashback/flash forward framing device going to play directly into the A-plot? The attacks on the Carter family make me wonder if we’re going to see who the attackers are here.

Dan Jurgens: Yes, the flashback sequences will play into the “A” plot, but perhaps not quite so much as what you’re asking. It’ll be a bit more subtle than that. (more…)

Hmm, what ever could poorly-drawn Larfleeze’s problem be with The Grinch? Is it his green color? The fact that he was eventually infected by the Christmas spirit and converted from his wicked ways? Or does Larfleeze simply find The Grinch’s attempts to steal everything holiday related Whoville lacking in avarice? The breakout star of Blackest Night, Orange Lantern Larfleeze, will get a chance to see if he can better resist the spirit of giving on Wednesday, when DC ships Green Lantern: Larfleeze Chrismas Special, a $4, 22-pager by Geoff Johns and artist Brett Booth.

Archie #616: Finishing up a year of attention-grabbing stunt covers and stories, Archie finds President Barack Obama and reality TV star  Sarah Palin visiting Riverdale to take part in Archie and Reggie’s campaign for student council.

A Single Match: Drawn and Quarterly continues their publication of highly literate alternative manga from the post-war Japan. This $25,  240-page hardcover collects short stories by Oji Suzuki. You can download a preview here.

Axe Cop Vol. 1: This is it! Grown-up artist Ethan Nicolle’s cult favorite, attention-demanding collaboration with his five-year-old brother Malachai Nicolle is finally available in a Luddite-friendly, $15, 120-page trade paperback format. You can check out a preview here, or cut out the middle man and check out the  strip online here. If you prefer your online comics to have fewer axes and cops in them, publisher Dark Horse also has another hard copy collection of a popular web comic due out this week—Tatsuya Ishida’s Sinfest: Viva La Resistance, which collects another 210-pages in a $15 trade. You can check out a few pages of Dark Horse’s collection here and/or read Sinfest online here.

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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!