Last week, we checked out the fashion evolution of Luthor in the comic book medium. But Luthor is a villain who has been interpreted across the board in other forums. And there’s also been a few heroic interpretations of the character. Let’s take a gander now, eh?

BUSINESSMAN OR ATOM MAN?

In Atom Man Vs. Superman, Luthor was depicted by Lyle Talbot as a corrupt private businessman who was also quite the scientist in his spare time. Depending on the scene, he either sported a black suit or had thrown a lab coat over it. It was simple but let you know both aspects of the character pretty quickly.

Ah, and here is the famous titular villain of the movie serial, the Atom Man himself. My God, that’s a ridiculous helmet. So big. So sinister. So bald. Hey, you don’t suppose… Yup. That’s Lex Luthor in a big honking mask and robe, masquerading as a villain called Atom Man. Because what better disguise is there than a mask that looks like a cartoon version of yourself?

Now some of you might be thinking, “Wait, I thought the Atom Man was a super-villain with cool powers that fought Superman.” Well, in the radio show, you are correct. But in this movie serial adaptation, it was just Luthor playing dress up.

Lex Luthor did not appear in the live-action series that starred George Reeves and it would be decades before he showed up in television media again. (more…)

Tokyopop’s publishing arm may have shut down, but that doesn’t mean that creators are about to get the rights to their work back, as The Comics Journal reports:

According to a source formerly at Tokyopop, all but three of Tokyopop’s original series were created under either work-for-hire conditions, or with Tokyopop sharing trademark and copyright with the creators, effectively making the creators unable to reprint or continue their work without permission from Tokyopop… Another former Tokyopop associate, speaking on condition of anonymity, believes that the closure of Tokyopop’s publishing division, and its seemingly inexplicable publishing decisions, are much simpler than they may seem on the surface. “Tokyopop did not die because of pirating or because of Borders,” the source said. “It died because Stu [Levy] was sick of being a publisher.”

The piece quotes East Coast Rising creator Becky Cloonan, Queenie Chan, King City‘s Brandon Graham – “I seem to have gotten away with more than the rest of the artists,” he says, in respect to the revival of his series through Image – and M. Alice Legrow, whose Bizenghast was the only of Tokyopop’s OEL books to survive the 2008 cull of projects. But Ross Campbell may offer up the most appropriate reading of events:

I’d love the rights back but as long as their headquarters and other offices and media stuff is active, I doubt I’ll ever get them back. I always figured that they were holding onto everyone’s rights partly so that even if they became insolvent or completely collapsed or whatever, that they could sell off the catalog of properties to another party and make a quick cash grab before they crashed and burned.

Sad, sad state of affairs. If nothing else, I hope that Graham’s King City experience might allow other publishers to license out and complete some of the books that Tokyopop are keeping hostage.

Okay, so the final issue of Brightest Day may have appeared in stores this week, but the stories are far from over. We already know about two titles spinning off from the series – Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search For Swamp Thing and Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis and Joe Prado’s new Aquaman title – but what about the other central characters in the series? Don’t they deserve some kind of spin-off as well? Spoilers for those who haven’t picked up Brightest Day #24 yet… (more…)

Truth, Justice and the Death To America Way: Guys, I honestly cannot tell you how glad I am that Graeme has been blogging about Superman renouncing his citizenship or whatever in Action Comics #900 (here and here). When I first heard the news, I gasped “Oh no!” Not because I particularly care about imaginary character Superman’s imaginary citizenship—dude’s not even “real” within the fictive DC Universe, where Clark Kent and Kal-El are his “real” identities, and spent about a year exiled from Earth on New Krypton at the request of planet Earth—but because the last thing I wanted to do was sift through mainstream media coverage of another ginned-up comic book “controversy” like Batman hanging out with a Muslim or Captain America comic book featuring signs taken from a real world protest of a black man being president. Heidi MacDonald of The Beat has a stronger stomach than I, and is paying attention to the mainstream reaction, so check her out for more. I think Mike Sterling  sums it up pretty well in this post at his Progressive Ruin blog (you’ll have to scroll past the really important news of the day, regarding Swamp Thing action figures), noting that the subplot is “causing people who’ve never read Superman comics to threaten to never read Superman comics.” Political satire blog Wonkette has a similar take about the importance of threats to “boycott” Superman, expressed in their own particular style and vitriolic viewpoint:

So here’s mythical metrosexual King of America and lamestream media reporter Clark “Superman” Kent pledging to join the U.N. or something. Teabaggers will be very upset! Even though the only comics they read are “Mallard Filmore” and those emailed pictures of the Obama Chimp Family picking watermelons outside the White House.

Will that stop teabaggers and Palin slobs from “boycotting” something they don’t read and would never purchase. Of course not, c’mon, are you new around here?

Hard to argue with the conclusion of their post either, of which I’ve taken out a swear because we try not to use those particular swears here: “You know what’s going to be…awesome? Never looking at the Internet again.” Oh, if only it were that easy…

Steven Weissman draws Harry Potter: Check it out here.

Oh, maybe that’s why his Batman comics have been coming out late: Grant Morrison has a lot going on these days, like his prose book Supergods. DC’s Source blog has a first look at the cover.

R. Sikoryak’s Jerry Robinson’s Joker (And Jerry Robinson, too): The artist has a nice illustration of Robinson and Robinson’s most famous creation in The New Yorker, accompanying an article on Jerry Robinson. You can see it here. And, of course, in The New Yorker.

Oops, I’m not done with politics just yet after all: What’s the difference between depicting a white president with big ears as a chimpanzee and a black president with big ears as a chimpanzee? Alan Gardner of The Daily Cartoonist links to an NPR piece on potentially offensive political cartooning, in which Tell Me More host Michel Martin interviews American Political Cartoons author Stephen Hess and political cartoonist Mike Luckovich. I’m linking to Gardner’s post instead of just straight to NPR, as Gardner provides a bit of background. Do give the interview a listen, or read the transcript here. Luckovich is a hell of a cartoonist, and there’s some interesting stuff in there about political cartooning in general and a bit about his thought process, and Hess has some funny stories, like one about a 1902 conflict between a cartoonist and a governor.

And then there was that time when Superman renounced his American citizenship, and everyone went crazy. I admit, my favorite “mainstream” reaction to the story came from the rightwing politico site Pajamas Media, which took an entirely different message than everyone else – that the White House was to blame for forcing Superman’s hand (“That the Administration thought it could dress down Superman with impunity proves that it doesn’t understand how far it has fallen since the heady days of 2008, long before the desire for change was upended by the “change” that actually ensued,” it declared) – but lots of eyes are suddenly on the Man of Steel, and not for the reasons that DC would probably like them to be. So, what happens next? (more…)

You remember that tongue-in-cheek 3D horror flick Joss Whedon wrote? No? Well neither does anyone else because it never came out. Well now it looks as if a release for The Cabin in the Woods may finally be on the horizon thanks to Lionsgate.

The Whedon flick, directed and co-written by frequent Buffy the Vampire Slayer partner Drew Goddard, has been on the back-burner for almost two years. The original release date was October 23, 2009 but then MGM went bankrupt and the future of the film was uncertain. It was set to be released on yet another date until it was decided the film should be converted to 3D.  Deadline now reports Lionsgate is making a deal with MGM to distribute the film.

The Cabin in the Woods stars Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford plus Whedon favorites Amy Acker and Fran Kranz. The film also stars the Almighty Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth, albeit before he filmed the superhero role. Whedon is currently teamed up with the Aussie actor again on the set of The Avengers.

MGM is also selling their Red Dawn remake, one of the other last films they produced, which also stars Hemsworth. Oh but wait, there’s more. Red Dawn stars our new Wonder Woman, Adrianne Palicki, too. So technically, they could make out better on these two movies than they ever dreamed.

Deadline says it’s unclear when Lionsgate will release The Cabin in the Woods, but October may be the target.

Start planning your ’90s X-Men cartoon marathon: Marvel shows are coming to Netflix Watch Instantly, with nostalgia on demand.

The first crop, launching on Friday, includes recent projects like the Spider-Woman, Iron Man: Extremis and Astonishing X-Men motion comics; plus the 1996-1997 Incredible Hulk cartoon, and the still-incomprehensible 1999-2001 series Spider-Man Unlimited (the one with all the animal people, excuse me, “Bestials”).

The real mother lode comes this summer, with the aforementioned ’90s X-Men cartoon being joined by the ’90s Spider-Man series, X-Men Evolution, ’60s Spider-Man, the first season of the current Disney XD program Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, the always-beloved Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, and more. In the fall, more ’60s stuff.

The full release list, direct from Marvel.com, is after the jump.

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Summit Entertainment, the studio who brought the Twilight Saga to life on the big screen, is now set to adapt another popular book series – Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game.

With the Twilight films about to end, the studio is eager to grab up another franchise to sustain its momentum. According to Deadline, they’re on their way with Card’s highly-successful science fiction series. They’ve even gone so far as to attach X-Men: Origins: Wolverine director, Gavin Hood to the project to both write and direct.

Ender’s Game was first published as a novel in 1985 and has since expanded its universe to include eleven novels and ten short stories. It’s was even adapted into comic books by Marvel a few years ago (Something, like a film version, I thought was long overdue). The story centers around Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, an exceptional child sent to Battle School in order to defend the Earth from an alien race known at the Buggers.

According to the website, Warner Bros acquired the novel in 2002 and tried making the film director Wolfgang Petersen to no success. “I’d heard that the author, who long resisted selling the project to film, was a very hands-on presence and that complicated the movie transfer,” said the writer, “The studio’s option lapsed and Gigi Pritzker’s Odd Lot stepped in. Odd Lot hired Hood, who has spent the past year crafting a screenplay, in between directing TV pilots like Breakout Kings. While Hood was said to have had a difficult time making Wolverine at Fox, that film posted an $85 million opening weekend and grossed $375 million worldwide in 2009.”

Hood’s 2005 film Tsotsi won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. He’s currently finishing up an effects presentation with VFX house Digital Domain to promote the project at the Cannes film festival. Deadline says production could start as early as next year.

What do you think Blog@ readers? How long have you been waiting for Ender’s Game to be turned into a movie? Does it turn you off it’s being made by the same studio that did Twilight? They will certainly be shooting for a younger demographic with the casting but seeing as how most of the book’s fans are older now, it could cause a disconnect.

Image Comics publisher Eric Stephenson has worked out the greatest way to sell books:

[W]e’ve got a book in the works from a hot young writer/artist called “Epic Kill.” If you were disappointed by “Sucker Punch,” this is a book that’s kinda sorta in the same vein, but actually delivers.

I fully expect “It’s like that thing you wanted to like, but not sucky” to be the new “This will break the internet in half” within the next month.

Was there something in the water when DC was preparing this week’s books? Something… anti-American?!? Spoilers for those who haven’t made it to the store yet. (more…)

Cable channel FX goes super-hero crazy this Sunday. As part of a “Super-Hero Sunday” promotion, the network will feature a marathon of Marvel movies hosted by Thor, Chris Hemsworth. Hemsworth will be unveiling sneak peeks and behind-the-scenes footage of his new film, which opens in the U.S. next week.

The films on tap are (all times EST):
7am: Elektra
9:30am: Fantastic Four
Noon: Spider-Man 3
3pm: Ghost Rider
5:30pm: The Incredible Hulk
8pm: Iron Man
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer also gets two airings on Monday.

Granted, if you’re a fan, you probably have these on DVD. Also, if you’re a fan, you probably don’t want to see Elektra or Ghost Rider again. Nevertheless, this is a pretty strong promotional tactic, given that a network is willing to devote 15 straight hours of programming to it.

If you merely heard about it, then you’d probably be forgiven for wondering if Matt Howarth’s The Downsized was in fact done by that Matt Howarth.

A middle-aged writer who left town to pursue his dreams in LA returns to Michigan, older, fatter, balder and still not the success he planned to be by this point, on the occasion of his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. There he meets up with his siblings, friends, cousins and former girlfriend. In the course of four long scenes spread across 80 pages and set almost entirely in hotel rooms, we get to know this cast of characters and their conflicts.

In other words, it’s real-world drama told almost exclusively through conversations, as if the reader were in the room and overhearing the action, almost like a stage-play. It’s about growing up, and, in a more vague way, how the current society and economy frustrates doing so, and how maturity is mostly relative anyway.

And yes, it’s by that Matt Howarth, the cartoonist best known for his 1980’s and early ‘90s Bugtown, Those Annoying Post Brothers and Savage Henry comics (the latter about a guitarist from an alternate reality), the cartoonist who did some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics, a DC/Helix miniseries about a romance between a space alien and a sentient asteroid and high sci-fi comics featuring Keif Llama.

The Downsized might therefore not sound like something from Howarth, but there’s no mistaking the work of the creator by sight.
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But in a good way. No, really. I don’t have a face anymore. That’s how amazing this is. Watch.

Waiting for July 15th is going to be brutal.

As reported earlier today by the usual suspects (your Hollywood Reporters, your Deadlines) and confirmed by Variety, Antje Traue has been cast in 2012′s Zack Snyder-directed Superman: Man of Steel feature film. She’ll be playing, as it’s currently reported, the female villain character Faora.

Who is “Antje Traue,” you ask? A fair question: She’s a German actress, and most notably appeared in the 2009 sci-fi film Pandorum. She’s got comic book convention experience, as she promoted that film at WonderCon (as I learned from the picture of her on her Wikipedia page).

Who is Faora, you also ask? Another fair question: Originally introduced back in 1977′s Action Comics #471, she’s frequently associated with General Zod (who, as we now know, will be played by Michael Shannon in Man of Steel). So basically, Ursa from Superman and Superman 2.

The movie, starring Henry Cavil, is slated for December 2012.

So, what does the end of Brightest Day mean to the DC Universe/Vertigo divide? Dan Didio clarified matters on the main site, and in the process, might have made things even more nebulous. Spoilers for everyone who hasn’t read Brightest Day #24 yet. (more…)

It has to be said, Shannon Wheeler has a much better attitude to accidentally being left off the Eisner Awards ballots than I would have; besides the above cartoon, he also wrote that he hoped the slip up – described by the Eisner committee as a “computer glitch” that left Wheeler’s I Thought You Would Be Funnier off the online ballot for Best Humor Publication; it’s since been corrected, and votes can be revisited in that category as a result – didn’t lose him too many votes, adding “Though now I can blame the computers if I lose. Ha.” Eisner Voters: Don’t let the humorless robots win.

After a veritable United Nations of international clips, the latest domestic X-Men: First Class trailer is out, featuring some footage we’ve seen from the February trailer, plus bits and pieces from various other versions, but at 2:42, this is the longest one yet. Mutants! Romance! Dialogue! It’s all below:

X-Men: First Class is out in theaters this June 3.

With its tenth and final season coming to a close it’s about time Warner Bros. rolled out their plans for a DVD set of the entire series of Smallville. Well, here’s your first look at it.

According to the info Warners sent out today, “This ultimate collector’s set for the ultimate fan features over 192 hours of content – including all 218 episodes, overfive hours of newly added special features such as an unaired, never-before-seen Superboy pilot from 1961, a 90-minute series retrospective with all newinterviews, the 2010 final Comic-Con panel and more!”

But that’s not all. There will also be, “exclusive printed materials include a Daily Planet newspaper, writtenby DC Comics, that highlights the important storylines developed during the 10-year run of the show and an episode guide with never-before-seen productionart (storyboards/sketches) and behind-the-scenes photos. Smallville: The Complete Series is presented in highly collectable new packaging consisting oftwo lay-flat picture books that hold 62 discs.”

Besides Tom Welling and the rest of the main cast, you can also expect to see guest-starring appearances from Terence Stamp, James Marsters, Michael McKean, Sam Witwer, Jane Seymour, Brian Austin Green, Pam Grier, Helen Slater, Michael Ironside, Julian Sands, Tori Spelling, Rutger Hauer and Christopher Reeve.

Smallville: The Complete Series DVD set is set for a fall release with a suggested retail price of $339.88. Wowza!

Was anyone else hoping for a Superman symbol-shaped box set? Sure it would be hell to display but, come on!

Schism! It’s the X-Men crossover that’ll change everything again! Schism! It’s the X-Men crossover that’ll pit mutant versus mutant – just like a mutant version of Civil War but without everyone saying “sweetheart” and “honey” every two seconds sarcastically (Remember that period of Mark Millar dialogue?)! Schism! It’s the X-Men crossover that will probably confuse fans uncertain about how to pronounce the title! But… what is Schism? Well, X-editor Nick Lowe has shed a little bit of light on things over at Comic Book Resources:

I’ll confirm that it centers on Cyclops and Wolverine, but that part about Utopia and mutantkind splitting doesn’t sound familiar to me, and I know more about this event than anyone who doesn’t have a scary beard and delights in the sadness of Frank Castle… It’s too early to share post-Schism details. What I will say is that the books coming out of “Schism” are going to be unlike anything we’ve seen in X-books in a long time.

And one of those books? Likely to be written by Schism writer Jason Aaron. In response to a question about whether Aaron would write one of the main X-Books post-Schism, Lowe said “We sure love Jason in the X-office, so I’ll try and make that happen just for you.” But how retro are we going to go with the post-crossover books? I’m guessing it’ll be something close to the “Blue team/Gold team” set-up from the initial Lee/Portacio days, but secretly hoping that we’ll see a return to the designs and cover copy of this:

More Toth imminent: Yesterday I mentioned the release of Genius, Isolated, the first part of a biography of Alex Toth by Dean Mullaney and Bruce Canwell. Well, there’s another handsome-looking volume coming on the subject of Toth set for summer release, Setting The Standard: Comics By Alex Toth 1952-1954, edited by Greg Sadowski. Fantagraphics shows off the cover here.

Please give Ross Campbell a call, IDW!: I know I discussed artist Ross Campbell’s sketches and in-depth thoughts about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on my personal blog already, but I’m not sure if I have here or not yet. Well, I’m going to do so today, because Campbell’s still posting sketches and thoughts, including a story he apparently started for Mirage starring Shadow, Casey Jones’ now-teenaged daughter. If you’ve any affecton for those characters, I’d highly reccomend you spend some time with Campbell looking at his art. And if you happen to have the license to publish new ninja turtle comics—IDW—I’d highly reccomend you hire the hell out of Ross Campbell. He’s the ideal artist for 21st century ninja turtle comics.

Rick Veitch draws Dr. Strange: Here.

“The Adventures of Alfred”: Those Fabulous Fifties shares some comics featuring everyone’s favorite comic book butler, in some extraordinary extra-buttling adventures.

Mark Millar tells the truth: The Mindless Ones on Kapow!

I like the name Sugar Ninjas: If you like the concept, and are a female artist, they’d like your submissions.

Everyone should always be doing this: Zak from Playing D&D With Porn Stars draws his way through the Fiend Folio.

When Dr. Voodoo was a white guy: Found in the The Comic Book Catacombs, a previous Dr. Voodoo who wasn’t Brother Voodoo promoted to Sorcerer Supreme.

Is Scott Adams maybe moving into performance art?: That would certainly explain the Dilbert cartoonist’s activities of late. Here’s the latest “Say, that’s a strange place for Scott Adams’ name to appear” story.