Amazing Spider-Man #650: Spider-Man gets another new suit in this issue by Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos (Haven’t seen it yet? Really? Well, you can take a look here).  It looks like it’s basically his black suit, only the white parts glow red. What for? You’ll have to read the issue—which also features the new Hobgoblin, Mach 5 and the Black Cat—to find out. I’m going to guess either built-in bug zapper or simply that it looks cooler at raves.

Birds of Prey #7: Writer Gail Simone and artists Ardian Syaf and Vicente Cifuentes kick off a storyline entitled “The Death of Oracle,” which features Batman on the cover and may prove particularly interesting given that weird panel in Batman: The Return where Bruce Wayne gave Barbara Gordon a picture of herself wearing Alicia Silverstone’s Batgirl costume.  Is there a big change in the near future of the character? For plenty of stories featuring a younger, cape-wearing Barbara Gordon, this week also sees the release of Batgirl: The Greatest Stories Ever Told, a $20, 160-page trade featuring short stories from her 1967 debut to a 1998 Kelley Puckett/Terry Dodson/Kevin Nowlan two-parter.

Black Panther: Man Without Fear #513: Hey, this series by writer David Liss and artist Francesco Francavilla about Marvel’s jungle hero The Black Panther returning to a big U.S. city to try to be an urban vigilante again sounds kind of neat. Too bad I missed the first 512 issues…I’ll never catch up now. Preview here.

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There’s no doubt that this year’s crop of Golden Globe nominations are, as usual, a little odd (The Tourist is a musical and/or comedy?) but it was a pretty good year for comic book adaptations. As pointed out here earlier, Red was nominated for best picture, musical or comedy, but the six-episode first season of The Walking Dead also got a nod for best television series – drama. Congrats to all involved, and best of luck among some hefty competition — another new series in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, CBS hit The Good Wife, Showtime’s always popular Dexter, and AMC mate/perennial award show fave Mad Men.

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!

In case you missed the Golden Globes nomination announcements this morning, the film adaptation of RED, written by Warren Ellis and art by Cully Hamner, was nominated for Best Picture  in the Musical or Comedy category.

Blog@ spoke to Cully Hamner and wondered what was going through his mind this morning on the hearing of the news. “Well, how’s that to wake up to?  A surreal cap to a surreal year,” Hamner stated. ”My congrats to Summit, DC, and everyone from the producers, writers, director, and cast all the way down the line to the crew.  Well-deserved, guys.”

“Superman Symphony’s Surprise Grammy Nominations”: Last Friday’s episode of NPR’s All Things Considered featured Michael Daugherty’s Metropolis Symphony, which has been nominated for a Grammy. You can read and/or listen to the story here (listen though, so you can hear some of the music), and the symphony’s entire fourth movement, “O, Lois!” can also be heard there.

Great work from great cartoonists: Here’s Ward Sutton’s extended Dr. Seuss homage, How WikiLeaks Stole Christmas! (man, that guy can ape a cartoonist’s style like no one’s business!), and here’s Kate Beaton’s series of New York Sketches, full of anecdotes about a visit to the city (My favorite panel is the one with the little girl’s reaction to what Beaton does for a living).

Henry and Glenn (Anti-)Christmas Cartoon: Over the weekend The Beat posted this six-minute animated cartoon featuring the Henry and Glenn Forever characters (plus a substantial commercial for the comic). I was pretty happy to see it because, while I had mixed feelings about the overall quality of the book itself (nothing inside it is really as funny as the idea of the book itself),  I was most struck by Tom Neely’s character designs, and the fact that the Glenn character looked like some kind of messed-up old-school Disney cartoon character. So it was great to see him get animated.

This looks like the cover to an Elseworlds comic I’d really like to read: Annie Wu responds to a complex character redesign challenge, coming up with an awesome-looking punk rock version of the Justice League (The Justice League of Anarchy, maybe…?). Also, it’s worth noting that her punk Wonder Woman is yet another better Wonder Woman redesign than the one currently in the comics with the jacket and the pants and what not. (Link gaffled from Comics Reporter)

They also make swell gifts for thirty-something comics bloggers hint hint: “Kids love their old-time comics”

Minor DC heroine Katana is foremost among inexplicable blips: Noah Berlatsky discusses Mike W. Barr and Jim Aparo’s Katana character from the initial run of Batman and The Outsiders, and how she failed to conform to the standard cheesecakey, flirty superheroine stereotype. Berlatsky also notes that the height of her popularity seemed to come at this period, and no later attempts to give her more revealing costumes did anything to help her Q-rating.

Batman on a horse: I haven’t been the biggest fan of Tony Daniel’s Batman work over the last few years, but it looks like his latest issue will feature Batman riding a horse, and, little-known rule of comic books, Batman riding a horse always works.

Okay fine, I’ll play along: Over at DC’s Source blog, David Hyde has a few blind items…

1) Which superhero team is losing their headquarters? Hopefully the JLA, because I never liked that cartoon Hall of Justice in D.C. plus also a satellite accessible by the door technology from The Authority but, eh…probably the Teen Titans. Maybe the new direction of the book will be that instead of killing off members, they start killing the places they hang out…?

2) What classic cult favorite DC horror series is getting the DC Comics Presents treatment next year? Wow, this is a hard one. The anthologies all seem to be pretty well-covered by the Showcase Presents program. Maybe the pre-Alan Moore Swamp Thing? Or…hmmm…I, Vampire? The kids today all like vampires, right?

3) Who is pulling the strings of the Legion of Super-Villains? Huh. I must not be reading enough DC comics, because I didn’t even know the Legion of Super-Villains was appearing anywhere at the moment. I’m going to assume it’s Dan DiDio. No wait, Bob Harras. Yeah, Bob Harras is pulling their strings. Oh, wait! I was thinking of the Legion of Doom! The Legion of Super-Villains is probably a Legion of Super-Hero thing, huh? In that case, Paul Levitz.

(I’m not very good at blind item guessing…)

Castle Waiting v. 2
Written & Illustrated by Linda Medley
Published by Fantagraphics

There are few comics as pleasant at Castle Waiting.  Linda’s Medley’s fantasy series takes place sometime after the end of traditional fantasy – happily ever after and the great conflict both seem to be in the recent past, and a collection of diverse strangers have gathered in an abandoned castle to make a new life for themselves.

Clocking in at over 350 pages, v. 2 offers readers a meaty chunk of story, a nice compliment to the massive v. 1 hardcover.  In addition to continuing to explore their home, where they discover hidden passages, booby traps and more, the cast welcomes company in the form of Henry’s surrogate family (they’re dwarves, but don’t call them that; it’s offensive!).  The new blood introduces a new mix to the group, which Medley explores in considerable detail.

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Okay, technically, it’s 11 days in so I apologize for my tardiness.  You might recall Neill Cameron’s Santa Sketch Fest for last year, and believe me, there were some pretty funny/disturbing stuff going on. Though yesterday’s post put my Christmas mood into overdrive.

Kirby Santa, requested by Chris Sims.

Mr. Cameron has been taking requests this year as he did last year, but to qualify for something like this you have to buy one of his comics (which you can do here). If your request goes up, you get the comic as well as the original art of your suggestion. Sounds like a win-win.

I think that there is no reason why a Kirby-esque Santa shouldn’t have his own limited series. You can follow Neill on his blog and watch the Santas march on.

Wanna get a glimpse of the Thor flick? Yahoo has just posted the trailer!

What sayest thou? Is this trailer worthy? Or does it need some time to stew and think upon what its done? Sound off!

Raised to be a fighter and assassin almost since birth, Natalia “Natasha” Romanova had several teachers, the mysterious Logan AKA Wolverine and later the man called the Winter Soldier. While still a young girl, she was recruited into Russia’s Black Widow program, where she and other young women were trained at the “Red Room” facility to be covert operatives. Because she was given special chemicals treatments that increased her vitality, Natalia looks to be in her 30s today despite being born a few years before World War II began.

Natasha was the first to graduate from the program and took “Black Widow” as her official codename. A combination of brainwashing and false memory implants were used to keep her loyal and obedient even if she would’ve normally disagreed with a mission or refused to kill someone. Her superiors later faked the death of her husband, a government agent called Red Guardian, in order to further manipulate her emotions to this end. Eventually, she became an enemy of Tony Stark AKA Iron Man, trying to steal the secrets of his technology. To help her with this, she recruited the masked archer Hawkeye in some of these missions, initially manipulating him but later growing genuine feelings for the man.

Natasha started fighting against her mental programming and left Russia, joining the intelligence agency S.H.I.E.L.D. and working alongside the Avengers, now using wrist-mounted weapons that fired a “Widow’s Bite.” In her travels, she became romantically involved with Daredevil for a time and briefly led the California-based superhero team known as the Champions. She was leader of the Avengers for several months and has worked alongside many different superheroes across the globe. A few times, she also crossed swords with Yelena Belova, another women who claimed the name of Black Widow after she was trained by some of Natasha’s old teachers.

Recently, Natasha learned the full truth of her past and has adjusted her view of the world and herself. While she currently operates as a member of the Secret Avengers, she also regularly goes off on her own to handle threats and missions that the average hero couldn’t without crossing several moral lines and breaking many laws. With her appearances in the new Avengers cartoon and the film “Iron Man 2”, more and more people are learning about her and this week she stars in a new mini-series alongside Mockingbird and her old lover Hawkeye. So let’s examine the many looks this deadly Russian has sported over the years.

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Now that’s comics journalism!: Mike Baehr’s “Things to See” link round-up on Fantagraphics’ Flog blog from Wednesday had so many great items in it that I could probably have stolen each one to list here in my link round-up. So I’ll just cherry pick one, and then suggest you go see the things “Things to See” suggests you go see. That one? Oh, how about this Noah Van Sciver interview with Geoff Johns, a partial panel of which you can see above. Van Sciver puts his questions into the dialogue bubbles of fans in an interview line at a convention, and, to pack in a little more action than most interviews manages, adds a lot of fighting and gun play. That’s something you can’t do in old-fashioned prose journalism.

This, on the other hand, is just too bad: Writing for Comics Comics, T. Hodler noticed that The Onion‘s AV Club ran a review of a book that not only hasn’t been released yet, but also hasn’t even been finished yet. If you read the comments section and the updates, you’ll see the AV Club‘s Keith Phipps responded to the situation quickly and, I think, correctly, although this is still one of thos sad for everyone sorts of things—the AV Club is embarassed, the writer loses a gig (justifiably, of course, but I’m sure that doesn’t mean the writer’s not gonna be bummed out) and the book in question…well, maybe it’s okay for the book in question. There’s no such thing as bad publicity, right? (It’s Dean Mullaney and Bruce Canwell’s Genius Isolated: The Life and Art of Alex Toth from publisher IDW, by the way. See? Publicity!) Is this a teachable moment? Maybe. Future and up-and-coming writers in the reading audience, never lie. At least, not on the Internet, because it is full of people who can  and will catch you.

“RASL a worthy successor to Bone”: I don’t think Jeff Smih could ask for a better assessment of his current series than that.

“So yes, feel free to invite me unto one of your fine programs and browbeat and berate me in the name of saving America and its children”: That’s writer Dara Naraghi addressing Fox News regarding the existence of the War On Christmas in a blog post hyping the just-released DC Universe Holiday Special 2010 #1 on his blog. Naraghi chimed in with this very link in the comments section of my Tuesday night ‘Twas… post, but I thought it worth sharing here, since I assume most of you have stopped reading Tuesday night posts. There too I alluded to DC’s holiday special being part of the War on Christmas, since it dealt with diverse winter holidays, but man, I didn’t realize how diverse until I read it for myself. There are six stories dealing with six different holidays: Caveman Winter Solstice, Cowboy Chanukah, Space Ashura, Thanksgiving, Norouz and the 31st Century’s plain-old Holiday. Notice something missing? That’s right, Christmas! It’s not DC Comics attempting to annoy Christians though; as Naraghi’s post makes it clear, it may just be the creators and publisher’s attempt to get on a cable news show.

The John Stanley Library: Tubby
Written by John Stanley
Illustrated by John Stanley & Lloyd White
Published by Drawn & Quarterly

Drawn & Quarterly brings us another collection of John Stanley’s comics, with Tubby from 1954 and 1955, and it’s another solid winner.  Within these pages, the pudgy hero matches wits with spoiled rich kid Wilbur, aids friendly (and small) Martians trapped on Earth, and tries (with hilarious results) to keep girls away from his clubhouse.

Stanley’s warm humor, elegantly simple artwork (aided by finisher Lloyd White here) and inventive twists keep readers, particularly the target audience of young children, delighted throughout these fast-moving, upbeat adventures.  Stanley never preaches, but any character too big for their britches, including Tubby, finds him or herself upended by each tale’s final page. Similarly, as characters with hubris fall, readers see Tubby rewarded for his creativity and intelligence when he needs to defend himself against Wilbur’s plots or aid his Martian friends.

Drawn & Quarterly’s high standards make for an attractive book as well, with a well designed hardcover, sturdy, flat paper, and striking endpapers and contents pages.  The stories are pure plot, racing forward, rarely pausing to let readers contemplate some of their more outrageous elements, and Stanley plays every scene with a sense of whimsy and humor.  The artwork stands out for its simplicity and clarity.  In short, The John Stanley Library: Tubby maintains the high standards of writing, art and production of previous volumes in the Stanley Library series.  Young readers will certainly enjoy them, as will any reader with an appreciation of quality cartooning.

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!

It’s somewhat astonishing how much there is in Julia Gfrörer’s Flesh and Bone, a 40-page, stapled six-by-eight-and-a-half-inch comic from Sparkplug.

While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the book is actually about witchcraft, that is definitely the subject matter, and Gfrörer works many bits and bobs of folklore about witches, their place in past society, superstitions and folklore.

Here’s a sabbat out in the woods, where a witch gives sexual favors to the devil. Here she is reading tea leaves, and offering magical help to a desperate local the church has refused. Here is an echo of Hansel and Gretel, of Baba Yaga’s hut in Wassilissa the Beautiful. There’s an animal familiar, a spell, a summoning…and magic that’s not really magic.

What’s remarkable is that while Gfrörer includes a survey of witch lore in so short a space, it’s all encountered naturally, in service to an engrossing, complete drama with a clean, succinct, satisfying structure and a simple, almost minimalist amount of detail.
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“Keeping Up With The Goonses”: Here’s a big, long, idiosyncratic post about words and phrases that comics have contributed to the language by Alex Buchet at The Hooded Utilitarian. It’s labeled part one too, so there should be plenty more to follow.

Should there be any “hands off” corporate comics characters?: Jim Mroczkowski discusses the concept  of characters that should only be written or worked on by certain creators, using Steve Gerber’s (or is it Marvel’s..?) Howard the Duck as a starting point. It’s an interesting discussion to have with one self, and I can’t help but see it both ways.

For example, I don’t think anyone’s  Fantastic Four has ever matched Kirby and Lee’s,  but damn, it’s been a blast watching dozens of different artists draw Things over the decades, you know? On the other hand, I hate the thought of someone other than Neil Gaiman writing his Sandman characters for any real length of time. On the other-other hand, Gaiman didn’t create so much as re-create his Sandman, and if DC’s original Sandman was “hands-off,” we never would have gotten Sandman. Nor, if their characters were hands-off to all but their creators, would we have ver gotten Alan Moore and company’s Swamp Thing. Or Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns. Or… Well, you get the idea.

More on breaking into comics, more on 10-page stories featuring Daily Planet staffers: In our last installment of Linkarama, I linked to Abhay Khosla offering a bit of breaking-into-comics advice while hyping his Jimmy Olsen short story in next year’s Superman 80-Page Giant. Khosla’s fellow Savage Critics contributor Tucker Stone offers plenty of good (and/or “good”) advice in his column at Comixology. And over on his blog thing, Neil Kleid discusses his Perry White ten-pager with artist Dean Haspiel for that same Superman 80-page giant. Normally I wouldn’t just link to hype-type stuff, but Kleid’s discussion is pretty interesting, and, c’mon, Dean Haspiel drawing Perry White!

“How Reality TV Translates Into Into Comic Books”: Bryan Young discusses Judd Winick’s 2000 Pedro & Me in an issue of his publication devoted to some sort of weird Jersey Shore theme. Strange how prevalent reality television has become in the last decade and a half that MTV’s early Real World shows don’t even seem to be the same sort of animal as the modern reality show, do they?

“Catwoman’s redemption an example to follow”: I have never once found myself in a situation where I would stop and ask myself What Would Catwoman Do? (The answer usually involves stealing a statuette of Bast and making cat puns, right?) But this guy thinks it might not be such a bad idea. The transitioning-from-villain-to-hero bit of Catwoman’s backstory, not the cat puns.

Backing Into Forward
Written by Jules Feiffer
Published by Doubleday

Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer’s memoir is not a cartoon.  There’s not much else wrong with it, however.

Although the narrative focuses primarily on his professional life, Rhoda Feiffer, Jules’ mother, shaped much of his career and personal life – by virtue of her overbearing, uncompromising manner. Most of us have, directly or indirectly, a Rhoda Feiffer, and will relate to the comical pressures on young Jules. Feiffer shares many hilarious anecdotes of writing theatre, fighting for pay at the Village Voice, and learning to cartoon on Uncle Sam’s dime. Although he rambles on in a few places, most of the tales remain to-the-point, keeping the reader focused on the tale at hand.

Feiffer drops many  names, which is the province of a memoir if you have names to drop.  The book’s core centers on his career as a cartoonist and writer, but his creativity is constantly influenced by issues in his personal life, so Feiffer is compelled to share tidbits about his children (particularly when he gets into his work in children’s books – oh, the drama of one child having a book about her and not another!) and marriages from time to time.  All told, it’s an engagingly written, very humorous look at the life of one of our most important cartoonists, a man who seemed to find many opportunities accidentally, yet always possessed the wit and creativity to take advantage of those open doors.

Viva Los Angeles! At least, as far as DC Online is concerned.

Ron Perazza, DC’s VP of creative services, has the scoop, as he announced on Twitter today that he had accepted the title of VP of Online for DC Entertainment.

Perazza also confirmed that DC Online would move to Burbank next summer.

Shortly thereafter, Zuda veteran Kwanza Johnson also announced via Twitter that he would be Digital Editor for DC Entertainment, and “will see you out in LA.”

Stay tuned for more information as it arrives…

Word on the street is that the annual return of winter and its attendant conditions have wreaked and/or are wreaking and/or may wreak a certain amount of havoc with comics shipping this week, so keep that in mind before you show up at your local shop and yell at your local shopkeep for not having something you might have been expecting. And drive carefully on your way to and from this week, huh?

27 #1: The title of writer Charles Soule and artist Renzo Podesto’s four-issue Image Comics series alludes to “the 27 Club” of dead rock stars. You know, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin—all dead at 27. Fictional rock star (and series protagonist) Will Garland is also 27…will he be joining the club himself? That’s one of the questions in this series,which will be printed in Image’s “Golden Age format,” used for King City and Cowboy Ninja Viking. Preview here.

DCU Holiday Special 2010: As you can see from the title, this is a holiday special, not a Christmas special, which is likely to upset anyone who believes in (or pretends to believe in, for money) the American media/secular culture’s “War on Christmas.” But wait, it gets worse! Listen to the solicitation from dccomics.com: “From the dawn of time (Anthro) to the far-flung future (Legion of Super-Heroes), sentient life has honored the winter holidays with celebrations and rituals as diverse as the universe itself! Join DC Comics – and a stellar team of writers and artists – to honor the vast and diverse holidays of the DC Universe.” Sounds pretty pagan to me! And also, sort of awesome—these holiday anthologies and 80-Page Giants DC’s been cranking out the last few years have tended to be extremely hit-or-miss, even by the standards of anthologies, but I’m intrigued enough by the thought of seeing the holidays that cavemen, teenagers from the future and I don’t know, maybe the aliens John Stewart hangs out with celebrate (Life Day?) to want to pick this one up. I guess that makes me a footsoldier in the war on Christmas….?

Creators include Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, Tony Bedard, Renato Arlem, Richard  and Tanya Horie, Joey Cavalieri, Dara Naraghi and others, contributing six stories starring Superman, The Spectre, Jonah Hex, Anthro, The Legion and GL John Stewart. Look for the cover featuring Jonah Hex and Spectre parade bloons, the very idea of which is almost as crazy as some of the balloons Chris Sims and Anthony Clark imagined for their fantasy Comics Alliance-sponsored Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
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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!

“The Walking Dead” devoured another cable ratings record over the weekend. As reported by CNN’s Marquee Blog, the first airing of the season finale netted six million viewers and broke records in the advertiser-cherised 18-49 demographic. This is the third time in its six episodes that the series has accomplished that.

Marquee breaks it down thusly:

To put those numbers into perspective, October’s season finale of “Mad Men” had an audience of 2.44 million, according to TVbytheNumbers.com.
. . .

Still, the network says that “The Walking Dead’s” average 18-49 viewership of 3.5 million for this season makes it the most watched drama series in basic cable history in the demographic.

Learned observers will note that the show’s consitency mirrors the growth of the comic. Bucking industry trends, “The Walking Dead” series is one of the few comics to launch in the ’00s that showed long-term stability and/or audience growth.

The only downside for fans would appear to be a nearly year-long wait for the second season, which is said to launch again in October (as the first season did). The first season is already available for DVD and Blu-ray pre-order, with a March release scheduled.

Way back in July, we wondered when G4 was finally going to announce what was obvious to everyone else: that Olivia Munn was done with Attack of the Show, as the show kept the newly minuted Daily Show correspondent in the intro, on-set graphics and website long after she had last appeared on the show.

Well, it looks like that day is today! Not only has Munn been dropped from all that jazz, the show has announced a new co-host, starting January 11, 2011: Candace Bailey.

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