Courtesy of DC Comics, here’s a preview of Brightest Day #18, on sale this Wednesday and the official 3/4 mark for the 24-issue maxiseries. There’s Hawkman, Captain Boomerang, White Lantern action, Captain Cold shows up — covers and pages after the jump.

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Looking for Marvel’s April 2011 solicitations, for books like Fear Itself #1? They follow, in full, after the jump. (UPDATE: More properly formatted version is 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!

Who says you can keep an old assassin down?

The Hollywood Reporter has announced that steps are being taken to make a film sequel to the movie RED, based on the comic from Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner.

Erich and Jon Hoeber, who wrote the original film’s script, have been tapped for a second film. That said, the movie has NOT been greenlit yet, and the producers still don’t have the original director or cast (Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren or John Malkovich) signed on for a second movie.

Still, the idea that this Wildstorm book inspired a Golden Globe-nominated movie, and raked in $90 million domestically? Not too shabby! Let the reloading begin.

Late today, Image Comics announced that they were “expanding” their day-to-day operations to more directly include Marc Silvestri’s Top Cow Productions, publisher of comics including Witchblade, Velocity and Artifacts.

Save a brief period in 1996, Top Cow has always been an Image partner, but has acted mostly autonomously. Image’s release states that now “Image Central will work more closely with Top Cow to coordinate production, marketing and sales efforts in much the same way it already does for the other Image partners.”

The press release included quotes from Silvestri, Top Cow’s founder and CEO, along with publisher Filip Sablik. What this may mean to readers and the employees of Top Cow’s Los Angeles office is currently unclear.

The full press release follows after the jump.

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Something tells me there isn’t much crossover love between comic fans and the people who enjoy watching award shows each year but last night something strange happened. The Golden Globe Awards were filled with comic book characters. With all those heroes in the room I’m surprised a supervillain didn’t attack.

Boardwalk Empire may have won Best Television Series – Drama over The Walking Dead but that doesn’t mean Robert Kirkman didn’t win a Golden Globe in an alternate reality. Hey, you can’t blame a guy for playing make-believe.

So a creator was in the crowd, but as the show progressed,  people started noticing something oddly familiar about the audience – it was sprinkled with all kinds of comic book characters. (more…)

Come this April, Matt Fraction will be again be writing a new ongoing title starring a Marvel Comics icon right before his feature film debut. This time around it’s him and artist Olivier Coipel on The Mighty Thor, the publisher announced earlier today.

The new series spins directly out of Fraction’s current “The World Eaters” story arc on Thor, and will feature the Thunder God and Sif’s “journey into the fractured nexus of nine worlds,” as disclosed in Marvel.com’s article. Galactus, seen recently in both Fantastic Four and Chaos War, will come to Asgard to do his usual thing — eat it.

The Mighty Thor debuts in April, the month before the Thor film hits big screens. In 2008, Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca launched The Invincible Iron Man shortly before the first Iron Man film premiered. To make the comics-to-movie connection even clearer, a variant cover of The Mighty Thor #1 features a photo of Thor star Chris Hemsworth.

As Fraction departs the current Thor ongoing after March’s issue for The Mighty Thor, writer Kieron Gillen — Fraction’s Uncanny X-Men co-writer who immediately preceded him on Thor — will take over in April, with the series keeping its numbering but returning to its original title of Journey Into Mystery; focusing on Loki and the other Asgardians as they deal with the threat of Marvel’s 2011, Fraction-helmed event series, Fear Itself.

In an interview with Marvel, Gillen referred to the series as a “mythological black-ops comic,” and compared its relationship to The Mighty Thor with the dynamic between Secret Avengers and Avengers. The title previously reverted to Journey Into Mystery in 1996 during “Heroes Reborn.”

Coipel was the artist on Thor during the 2007 relaunch of the title with writer J. Michael Straczynski. The Marvel articles state that current Thor artist Pasqual Ferry will be returning to the character after Fear Itself, and Doug Braithwaite, who illustrated Secret Invasion: Thor in 2008, will handle art duties for Journey Into Mystery.

More art follows after the jump.

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Green is the color of money, after all: Despite reviews ranging from so-so to middling, the Seth Rogen-starring, Michael Gondry-helmed Green Hornet film—which I believe has been in development before the invention of the television—did pretty well at the box office this past weekend. ICV2.com calls its estimated $34 million take “the highest-grossing opening ever for a live-action superhero comedy,” which sounds good. But I think that just means it did better than Mystery Men and My Super Ex-Girlfriend, right? The Washington Post‘s comics-blogger Michael Cavna also takes a look at the movie’s take, and has a nice little summary of the Green Hornet in general. Any of you guys seen it yet? What’s the verdict?

Ruben Bolling on the issues of the day: Here’s a couple of killer recent strips from the Tom the Dancing Bug creator. First, a strip somewhat inspried by Tangled, but may remind you of certain perennial controversies surrounding Tintin. Second, “Classix Comics Presents: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Corrected to Reflect Modern Sensibilities.”

“Just as it’s bad to keep buying comics out of habit, it’s bad to keep NOT buying them out of habit!”: I enjoyed this kinda sorta review of Identity Crisis by Sean Kleefeld. He hasn’t read many superhero comics in a long time, was mainly familiar with the DC characters featured from comics he read as a kid (plus some more recent Green Arrow runs) but received a copy of the book as a Christmas gift and took the opportunity to check in on DC super-comics. He offers an interesting perspective.

If you read one process piece today…: At Comics Comics, the great John Porcellino discusses drawing comics at the same size as their final print size. Porcellino calls it working “100%”, which is actually a pretty fitting way to describe many aspects of Porcellino’s work.

“Superhero Movies By The Numbers”: This infographic at Cinema Blend boiling modern superhero cinema down into some easily digest factoids is pretty neat. It even has a Marvel vs. DC component; interesting that while Batman and Superman are the two most popular superheros for film adapations, more movies have been made of Marvel characters and more money has been made by Marvel movies.

No, no, maybe, they already made about a million of ‘em, please God no never, and sure, as long as it’s  Sin City-style: “6 Graphic Novels That Should Be Adapted Into Movies”

But what does a guy who always thinks and talks about superhero costume design think?: Dean Trippe from Project: Rooftop reacts to the first image of the new live-action Spider-Man comstume.

On the subject of DC’s upcoming Flashpoint: The announcement of DC’s next big crossover event story reminded Don MacPherson of another story Flash story involving alternate-reality version of their heroes which was also entitled Flashpoint. Guess there’s not much chance that the 1999 mini will end up in a trade of DC Comics Presents collection any time soon now, huh? Meanwhile Comics Alliance‘s Chris Sims responded to the teasers in typical Chris Simsian fashion: Making his own joke ones featuring his favorite characters.

“An offensive right hook in a good cause is fine – but not below the belt”: Guardian editor Chris Elliot considers the line between caricature and stereotype, and talks to Guardian cartoonists for guidance.

Mystery at Ralph’s Comics: Mike Sterling notes a sudden surge of interest in DC’s event Zero Hour at the shop he works at. I liked that one pretty well—lots of neat-o tie-ins, it was probably the first and last time I found Hal Jordan to be a compelling character and the timeline at the end was an obsessive DC fans dream come true. I think DC should require that anyone who wants to massively change DC continuity first spend the time required to update that timeline. I bet we’d see a whole lot less reboots, retconcs and mutliverse mucking with.

Upon last week’s release of the first official picture of Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man in the 2012 “reboot” film, some fans felt that they could detect what appeared to be webshooters underneath that costume. The movie’s Gwen Stacy, Emma Stone, effectively confirmed as much in a red carpet interview with MTV at the Golden Globes on Sunday. When pressed, she called the webshooters a “device” — after a bit of hesitation. The video’s here:

The 2002 Spider-Man film (and subsequent sequels) broke from comic book lore by making webshooting part of Peter Parker’s spider-bite granted powers, a move that later, briefly, became reflected in the comic books.

The Goon is well known for fighting all sorts of ghastly creatures – zombies, hags, giant squid – but one enemy has finally stopped him in his tracks. Sparkly vampires.

Now being sold at Hot Topic, Eric Powell’s beloved character from Dark Horse has made the jump to apparel in this limited edition t-shirt. Part of their “Dark Horse does vampires right!” campaign, something tells me Goon’s shock won’t last long and he’ll put those Twilight vampires to work.

I have no doubt who’d win that fight but can The Goon beat the Twilight vamps at the box office? The TBA release is completely computer animated with the voices of Clancy Brown as The Goon and Paul Giamatti as Franky. Powell is writing the script, David Fincher is producing and  Jeff Fowler and Tim Miller will direct.

When Image was founded, Todd McFarlane created a character he intended to become as popular and as well known as Spider-Man and Superman. And with all the marketing that’s been done with the character, Spawn has gotten very close indeed.

Spawn is really Al Simmons. In life, Simmons was a black ops agent who was later killed by those he worked with. As his spirit began to move on, a voice in the darkness asked what he wanted most. Al said he wanted to see his wife Wanda again and would exchange anything for that. The bargain was struck and Al woke up in New York five years later. He got to see Wanda again, but she had since remarried to his best friend Terry. Al couldn’t even approach her because he had come back not as a living human being but as an animated creature of necrotic flesh, adorned in a parasitic costume of necroplasm. And in exchange for seeing his wife again, he had unknowingly agreed to become the new Hellspawn, the first in 400 years he was told, a warrior-in-training who would be a commander in Hell’s army when the apocalypse came.

Although given incredible magic power, it was limited. The sooner Al used it up, the sooner he’d return to Hell. Living on borrowed time and forced to make the alleyways his home, “Spawn” became a hero to the homeless and would sometimes take down criminals and super-villains he came across. Eventually, he became more involved in the cosmic battles of Heaven and Hell, concluding that both sides were corrupt and just saw human souls as fuel. Refusing to take sides, Al decided to forge his own path.

After years of more battles and wars, including a brief stint where Al became King of Hell, Earth was laid waste and God and the Devil were left to war over the remains. Meanwhile, Spawn was given enough power by the Mother of all reality to create a new version of Earth that would be free from the influence of either Heaven or Hell. Initially he attempted to live a new life as a human, his past wiped clean, but being with Wanda again proved tragic. So Al has returned to his role as a Hellspawn, serving penance for the things he’s done in life, living in the alleys again. Despite his remaking of Earth, Spawn has found that some of his enemies have survived into this new reality. Even in a new world, Spawn’s battles are never truly over.

There have also been other Hellspawns over the years. There was a Medieval Spawn and it turned out that Al’s great-grandfather was actually a Gunslinger Spawn in the Wild West (gotta keep it in the family, I guess). So let’s take a look at these different styles. Joining me for this column will be Spawn himself.

ALAN KISTLER: So let’s look at this first outfit of yours.

SPAWN: It’s actually a symbiote. A parasite. It was forged in Hell itself, made from necroplasm.

ALAN KISTLER: It looks like cloth.

SPAWN: It’s a symbiote.

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So, remember those teasers from yesterday? Yes, those, the ones we were all having fun speculating on.

Well, it turns out we were quite right about many of them, if these logos revealed today on The Source are any indication.

So, we were right about Batman and the Wayne Casinos.

We were right about the “marriage” being Wonder Woman and Aquaman.

But hey, those of you who pointed out that there are some other big rings in the DCU, including the one worn by The Flash himself, were right on target. No new info on the Spaceship crash or the one being experimented on, but DC promises new teasers each Friday moving forward.

Hark!: I don’t generally like to use this space simply to repeat publishing PR, but I’ll make an exception given how exciting this particular bit of publishing PR is—Drawn and Quarterly is going to be the print home of Kate Beaton’s webcomics, beginning this fall with Hark! A Vagrant, which shares the name of Beaton’s site. That seems like a perfect match between creator and publisher to me, given that two of the first three adjectivest that come to mind when I think of either D+Q or Beaton are “awesome” and “Canadian.”

Two lumps or three?: Check out A Nice Cup of Comics, a “tumblr” (whatever that it is) collecting images of tea-drinking in comics.

Battle Hymn of the Cartoonist Father: American Born Chinese cartoonist Gene Luen Yang offers a four-panel gag strip in response Amy Chua’s much talked about book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

“It’s as if new writer Chris Roberson thought, ‘People might need a reminder why Superman is awesome’”: Savage Critic Graeme McMillan checks out the first post-JMS issue of the JMS-plotted Superman arc “Grounded,” and finds it much improved. Meanwhile, comics blogger Tom Foss isn’t so sure.
How should DC publish Sugar and Spike?: At Comics Comics, Jeet Heer argues that the expensive Archives format isn’t the right one. And then he clarifies. Personally I woulda liked to see a Showcase Presents volume, but then, I think DC should just publish everything in Showcase Presents volumes.

This may be the scariest comics news I’ve ever heard: Over at The Beat, Heidi MacDonald rounds-up a bunch of year-end sales analysis from various quarters—including that Wolk piece for Techland I linked to previously—and highlights particular tidbits. Perhaps the most alarming is something raised by Sean T. Collins, that the direct market is essentially a three-man operation, with those men being Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns and Brian Michael Bendis. What’s potentially worrisome is that looking around the direct market as it stands at the moment, it’s hard to see many new Morrisons, Bendises and Johnses. Marvel seems to be doing a pretty good job of grooming newer talents over a period of years, so it’ s not impossible to imagine the likes of Matt Fraction or Ed Brubaker or Dan Slott or Jonathan Hickman or Jeff Parker or Fred Van Lente or Jason Aaron or Andy Diggle eventually killing Brian Michael Bendis and taking his power (I think that’s how it works in comics), but DC doesn’t seem to have quite as deep a pool of writing talent at the moment. I don’t mean that as a criticism of the men and woman writing for DC at the moment. I’m not saying, like, Parker and Van Lente rule, while Peter Tomasi and Tony Bedard drool or anything; I’m simply referring to the various writers’ ability to sell books in the direct market based on their name recoginition, and the publishers investing their writers with particular portfolios. If that makes sense. Does that make sense? Well, whatever—what if Morrison, Johns and Bendis all went camping together and were eaten by bears? That would mean the end of the direct market as we know it! AAAAaaauuuggh!

The Search for Smilin’ Ed
Written & Illustrated by Kim Deitch
Published by Fantagraphics

The Search for Smilin’ Ed is the latest book collection from Kim Deitch, a longtime favorite cartoonist of mine. The story, originally serialized in the Fantagraphics anthology Zero Zero in the latter part of the 1990s, details Deitch’s research into the life of a forgotten (and mostly fictional) children’s TV show host, one Smilin’ Ed.

Deitch’s narrative weaves Deitch-as-character (with real-life acknowledgements) into a fictional tapestry of demons, underground societies, and pop culture oddities. Stacked with surprising twists and intricate plotting, Smilin’ Ed revels in Deitch’s increasingly complex personal universe, threading new characters into the established histories of his previous protagonists. Densely detailed and creatively laid out, the art can absorb a reader’s eye for days, with tons of nods, winks and subtle touches embedded in nearly every scene.

The plot, however, isn’t necessarily one of Deitch’s best. Smilin’ Ed comes across as somewhat half-imagined (by Deitch’s standard, which means it’s still three times as outlandish as most anything else out there), a series of disjointed sequences, failing to coalesce in a meaningful way. Despite this shortcoming, there’s more outlandishness going on in The Search for Smilin’ Ed than any five issues of most comics, and Deitch’s detailed, stiff renderings and engaging page designs make it worth the time for regular Deitch readers. Kim Deitch newcomers are directed to Alias the Cat or Boulevard of Broken Dreams to see the master shining his brightest.

So, Marvel held a conference call with the press today on March’s feudal Japan-set 5 Ronin miniseries, written by Peter Milligan, illustrated by a host of artists, and starring Wolverine, Hulk, Punisher, Psylocke and Deadpool. We’ve got our live coverage of the call here, and a seven-page lettered preview of issue #1 here, but Marvel released some additional images, which we’re currently unable to add to the main story due to some server stickety-wickets. So here they are!

The rest after the jump!

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Good golly, it’s a smorgasbord of new actors-in-costume shots! Just minutes after we found Chris Evans as Cap, we have Andrew Garfield in Spider-Man costume, sans mask! The spider is certainly different than the last incarnation, and there seems to be more ribbing. Garfield looks like he just took a bit of a beating, and isn’t too happy about it. What do you think, readers?

[via AICN]

Here’s our big, albeit grainy, first look at actor Chris Evans in his full Captain America garb.

The image comes from this week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly and shows Evans, well, just standing around but it’s still cool, right? Though the costume is a bit dirtied up, it doesn’t look too bad in my opinion. Though my eyes go directly to the shield which looks awesome. The only thing I’m a little iffy about is the helmet but really, no ones gonna look that great with their face all smooshed into something like that. At least it’s not computer generated.

What do you think? The helmet does have wings and the costume itself looks like something a person could actually fight in.

Captain America: The First Avenger hits theaters July 22.

(Via ComicBookMovie.com)

We all know by now that it most certainly appears that one of the founding members of the Fantastic Four is dying at the end of Jonathan Hickman and Steve Epting’s “Three,” the currently unfolding story arc wrapping up in this month’s Fantastic Four #587. Some, such as Bleeding Cool’s Rich Johnston, have speculated that it’s the Thing. Yet, there he is, right in the mix with Spider-Man, Wolverine, Luke Cage and the rest of the gang in the New Avengers #9 preview, released today:

The comic ships on Feb. 9, two weeks after Fantastic Four #587.

Is it meaningful? Well, maybe, maybe not. It’s always possible that this story takes place before “Three,” which could be easily cleared up with an editor’s note box. But, with the Thing currently the longest-shot in the betting odds for who kicks the bucket in “Three,” this certainly appears to make it even more unlikely. We’ll know for sure in a couple of weeks.

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!

I kept looking over my shoulder while reading EmiTown, expecting cartoonist Emi Lenox to burst into the room and demand to know what exactly I thought I was doing—that’s how diary-like Image Comics’ print collection of her sketch diary-turned-webcomic actually is.

The work was apparently originally began without an audience of any kind in mind, which is quite evident from the personal, mysterious nature of a lot of the content, particularly at the beginning, where sticky notes of abbreviations and numbers often appear on the pages.

As the introductions explain, it gradually transformed into something for public consumption, yet throughout the 400 or so pages here, Lenox’s self-named town retains a great deal of mystery.

EmiTown isn’t memoir or biography, and doesn’t really resemble the sort of comics that likely come to mind when one thinks “diary comics,” even James Kochalka’s daily American Elf isn’t a good reference point, as Kochalka generally just chooses a single anecdote from the day to present. Lenox, by contrast, talks and draws about her days, the most personal matters semi-obscured by elaborate symbol-characters.

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