And here’s where Paul Cornell convinces me that I’ll be buying the new Stormwatch series, as he tells the DCU blog about the new characters he’ll be introducing in it (emphasis mine):

Adam One, who’s been aging backwards since the Big Bang, the master of tactics who… forgets things and isn’t that great at convincing people he knows what he’s doing; the Projectionist, the voice of and god of the internet and the Eminence of Blades, the universal master of bladed weapons, who has terrible doubts.

Firstly: “The Projectionist” is the greatest choice of name for “the voice of the internet” imaginable. Secondly, I don’t know why, but “the voice of and god of the internet” sounds so Warren Ellisy that I can’t help but hope that there’s some Ellis parody in the character somewhere. Even if there’s not, it feels appropriate to the book by evoking Ellis, considering his run on the original (and then, The Authority) remains the most well-known, and well-beloved, of the history of the characters. (more…)

Tom Brevoort on how things are done at Marvel, in terms of important decisions:

Everybody takes a blow to the gut at some point where a story they thought was going left suddenly is going right because someone had a better take on it. But those turns don’t happen against the will of the creators involved. If Brian was absolutely dead set on not killing Ultimate Spider-Man, it wouldn’t have happened, or he wouldn’t have written it. If we were convinced that Ultimate Spider-Man must die and he didn’t want to do it, it would have been Jeph Loeb or Jonathan Hickman or Nick Spencer. But the fact that Brian wrote it should tell you that he got on board with the idea. He came to embrace it. The first moment it came up I’m sure it sent a chill down his spine, but it’s a story. He’s a storyteller sitting there, thinking about it, tossing the ideas around and seeing if it works. And he found a way it worked for him. That’s why our creative environment is better than anybody else’s in the business at this point. We have fans that poo-poo us without really understanding how this all goes down. They think that either every creator just does what they want or that everything is mandated from above or that everything is decided by a star chamber of five guys in a secret location. Maybe that’s how other people do it.

Okay, I can’t be the only person who doesn’t see a large amount of difference between “everything is mandated from above” and “If we were convinced that Ultimate Spider-Man must die and he didn’t want to do it, it would have been Jeph Loeb or Jonathan Hickman or Nick Spencer. But the fact that Brian wrote it should tell you that he got on board with the idea,” right? The latter just means that Bendis got behind the mandated from above idea, but admits that, if he hadn’t, he would have been replaced on the book. In what way isn’t that mandated from above? (more…)

News breaks in all sorts of places these days — including, apparently, the Facebook page of a drinking glass manufacturer. Yesterday this image appeared on the official ‘Toon Tumblers Facebook page (click to enlarge):

It’s Jim Lee artwork for a Comic-Con International exclusive tumbler, and, as DC Women Kicking Ass pointed out, quite possibly the full roster of the new post-Flashpoint Justice League series illustrated by Lee and written by Geoff Johns.

Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg we already knew about; they were all on the initial cover released by DC Comics. The rest? From top left, there’s Deadman, Atom, Element Woman (a Jim Lee-designed character debuting as part of Flashpoint), Firestorm, Green Arrow, Hawkman, an unidentified female character (DC Women Kicking Ass guess Power Girl or Black Canary, though they note it’s a different look for the latter than from the cover of the new Birds of Prey #1) and Mera. That’s 15 characters total — initial press on the series indicated that there would be 14 members on the team.

Of course, until DC officially confirms the full lineup, this is nothing more significant than an image for a con-exclusive tumbler. But seeing as how the core roster are in their established post-Flashpoint costume designs, the implication is clear. Feel free to speculate either way. Justice League #1 is out on August 31.

Update: As commenter Matt points out, the unidentified female appears to be a dead ringer for monster hunter Miranda Shrieve, a new character currently appearing in Flashpoint: Frankenstein and the Creatures of the Unknown.

Green Lantern earned $18.4 million in its second weekend, according to current studio estimates reported by Box Office Mojo. That’s a 65.5 percent drop from its first weekend, a steeper decline than Thor (47.2 percent) and X-Men: First Class (56.2 percent).

Facing two strong openings — Cars 2 and Bad Teacher — the Ryan Reynolds-starred DC Comics adaptation placed in third, with a cumulative domestic total of $89.3m. Combined with a current $29.4 in foreign gross, the film’s sitting at $118.7 worldwide. The stiff competition isn’t letting up in the coming days, with Transformers: Dark of the Moon debuting in theaters on Tuesday night.

The film’s disappointing performance apparently isn’t stopping Warner Bros. from planning on a sequel, though: The Hollywood Reporter says in an article today that the studio “still believes in the franchise.”

This week’s DC comics see the second in what is apparently a series of four insert comics advertising Subway – the third such insert in the last month, factoring in the Super 8 one that ran a few weeks ago. While these are free comics – which should be a good thing, right? – I doubt I’m the only person who’s been finding them oddly abrasive and annoying as I leaf past, trying to pick up where the “real” story left off.

DC has a history when it comes to insert comics – In the late 1970s and early 1980s, series like The New Teen Titans and All-Star Squadron debuted as 16-page inserts in other titles before being spun out into their own series, and a decade later, DC tried out new talent in a series of “Bonus Book” inserts that appeared across the line (I remember that Gordon Purcell, who went on to draw Star Trek comics for a long time afterwards, had his first published work in one of those, but did any other creators from those go on to become regular comic professionals?) – so it’s not as if these inserts have come from nowhere with little warning (They’ve even done advertising inserts before; I can remember ones for both Masters of the Universe and MASK toys, although both properties went on to become licensed DC series for awhile afterwards).

But in the past, DC’s insert comics have been for the most part limited to appearing in one book, as opposed to the entire line, which feels… I don’t know, better, somehow – Perhaps it’s because it makes the insert feel more like a special event rather than an overlong advertisement, or perhaps it’s simply because it means you don’t get bored seeing the same thing over and over again if you’re buying multiple DC books that week.

It remains an odd thing to begrudge, though; they’re free comics. At the very least, we can just ignore them, and at the most, they might be fun (I didn’t hate the Super 8 one, although I did hate that it didn’t have an ending as such). So why do the recent inserts feel so irritating?

Dear whoever is in charge of casting over at DC Entertainment,

This:

Make it happen.

Love,

Graeme.

(If you’re wondering what that is: It’s Carlos Pagulayan’s take on Sherlock‘s Benedict Cumberbatch as Morpheus, which I discovered via a tweet from Sandman creator Neil Gaiman, who called it “actually quite spooky.” He’s right, and I’d really, really love to see someone try to make it happen… as long as it didn’t effect any future Sherlocks…)

by Manning/Ross/McKinley/Reddington/Shadowline

Need to catch up? Find TALES OF MR. RHEE in the left-side index under Webcomics for all previous chapters!

Well, now we know what one of the upcoming DC minis will be, as Denys Cowan spilled some beans on the latest Word Balloon podcast:

I’m doing a Batman story, it’s called Batman: Mortality, where we discuss the five stages of death… Paul Levitz is the writer. Paul Levitz is writing it, and it’s a six issue mini-series, or a six issue series within the Batman [titles], the new Batman… And I didn’t know this, too. Let’s back up. Paul and I are planning to do this series. Unbeknownst to me, but probably he knew, DC is planning to do this big thing. I finally get this script after months of delay and wondering what’s going on with this thing, and all of the script – Mike Marts is the editor – and all over the script is red type over the script going “Denys, use Batman: Year One costume,” “Denys, there’s specific reference for this stuff,” “Denys, place everything in this era.” And I’m looking at this thing going, “Why am I placing everything in the 1980s or whatever it is?” Well… Because they were revamping everything. So when this comes out, it’ll be that same era Batman, that’s coming out in that first issue…  It’s reflecting all that stuff. So, I’m part of this thing and I didn’t even know it until I got the scripts.

The whole interview is well worth listening to – you can find it here or on iTunes, if that’s your bag – but I can’t help but wonder if “Batman Year One” + “Five Stages of Grief” = “Story about Batman dealing with losing his parents.” If so, color me fascinated (especially with Cowan art)… as long as we don’t get another Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America.

(Thanks, Xurxo!)

There’s a particular gap in the post-Flashpoint solicitations that I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone bring up yet. Really, it’s also a gap in the Flashpoint solicitations, as well (Maybe even moreso). Namely… Where is the Cyborg solo series? (more…)

There’ve been some great Green Lantern trailer parodies the last few weeks, the Onion’s version as well as The Muppets, but none of them hold a candle to this reenactment of the film by a few adorable kids. See Abin Sur and Hal Jordan in action and make sure to keep an eye out for the special cameo at the end.

What’s a lantern? You know, that may be the one thing they didn’t explain in the movie…

Frank Darabont shocked fans of AMC’s The Walking Dead last November when he fired the entire writing staff of the successful show. Turns out, Darabont wrote most of the episodes himself anyway but it still raised some eyebrows. The director is finally speaking out about the decision.

Speaking with Deadline, Darabont said the whole thing was “pretty overblown.” “It left the impression that I walked in one day and murdered 12 people. Would you like to know how many writers we were talking about? Two,” he said, “My thought had been that they’d under-delivered, and a change was necessary. I had to do too much of it by myself last year, and that was only six episodes.”

Season 2 is slated for thirteen episodes and the director is not going to be sitting in a room by himself to write all of them. “We hired Glen Mazzara as our Number Two in the room. We consider him our head writer and he’s just a fantastic asset,” he said, “We’ve also got three other staff writers in Scott Gimple, Evan Reilly from Rescue Me, and Angela Kang. Plus Executive Producer Robert Kirkman, who wrote the original comic book, is also writing for us.”

So what’s on tap for Season 2? “It’s fair to say that the first six episodes were teeing up a lot of conflicts that will be more fully explored in our second season,” said Darabont, “We find a growing conflict with our two main guys, Rick [Andrew Lincoln] and Shane [Jon Bernthal]. We’re really excited about putting all of the characters on a chessboard and seeing how wonderfully and effectively we can toss conflict into the game.”

Darabont also mentioned how grateful he is to Kirkman for his understanding when it comes to transferring his beloved comic to the small screen. “He realizes how different the mediums of comics and television are from one another,” he said, “One of the things that really attracted me to this material in the first place was how smartly Kirkman incorporated the characters and their journey in trying to survive and better themselves in this world. It was a really adult approach. And because we’re a TV series, we’ve hopefully got years to flesh out that story and all of the aspects of who they are.”

The director also said he worked for five years to get The Walking Dead on television before AMC picked it up but that the network has been good to them. “We certainly get notes, but nothing that we believe doesn’t make sense. We feel very much in partnership with AMC,” he said, “Sometimes we have to compromise, sometimes they do. But we have to admit that a lot of the stuff they’re telling us is sensible, and none of it’s dumb. Believe me, I’ve gotten a lot of dumb notes in my time, and after 25 years in the business I can tell the difference.”

Asked if he’d given much thought to the upcoming Emmy Awards Darabont said, “You know, a little bit. And it’s awesome to be a part of that chatter. We were just blown away to get nominated for a Golden Globe, a DGA award, and a WGA award in our first year. But that stuff is out of our control.”

We’re doing something a little different here. Sometimes you get ideas that just need to get out there.

First, it seemed that DC Comics was basically starting over, replacing many of their titles with new #1 issues. Then we were told it was a reLAUNCH, not a reBOOT, since only a few characters are being redefined from scratch. Now we’re being told that most of the DC Universe history will remain intact, it’s just getting tweaked here and there and that the new wardrobe should not frighten us away.

I’ve discussed what I think about many of the new fashion trends from the forth-coming DC relaunch. You can feel free to check out Part 1 and Part 2 elsewhere on this site. But with all this in mind, I started wondering what would happen if this were a reboot? What kind of changes would I like to see in the DC Universe? I posted some of those ideas on Twitter and some folks asked me to expand on them, so here we go. This is just my own personal collection of ideas, posted purely for fun. In other words, if you hate them all, that’s cool. Instead of freaking out, just remind yourself that this isn’t “real” and I have no power or effect on DC Comics at all. (more…)

Hey, remember Julia Ormond? She was in a ton of movies in the mid-’90s — she played Guinevere in the Sean Connery/Richard Gere King Arthur movie First Knight, was the title character of the Sabrina remake with Greg Kinnear and Harrison Ford, and starred in Smilla’s Sense of Snow. Since then, her profile has lowered a bit, though she has appeared in films including 2008′s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Deadline reported today that Ormond is “in talks” to play Lara — Superman’s Kryptonian birth mother — in winter 2012′s Man of Steel, and a deal is expected shortly. Russell Crowe was announced last week as official for Jor-El, and Diane Lane and Kevin Costner are already set as Ma and Pa Kent, Superman’s adoptive Earth parents. Henry Cavill starts as the titular man of steel.

I’m just gonna go ahead and say it. I think Captain America: The First Avenger is going to be the best comic book movie this year. First debuted 11 days ago at the Hero Complex Film Festival in Los Angeles, the latest (and presumably final) trailer is now online:

So…much…awesomeness. I’m actually tingling.

Red Skull! HYDRA! GRENADE JUMPING!!! July 22 can’t come fast enough and the fact that it’s during San Diego Comic-Con is so frustrating.

Update: Whoops, unsurprisingly, the video’s been taken down by Warner.

Original story: And, well, here it is, and note the classic “shorts” look on Wonder Woman instead of the longer pants that were originally introduced:

OK, so those dudes look like they were cast out of a hired goon catalogue, but there’s nothing so awful in that 36 second clip, right? NBC aired nine episodes of The Cape, after all. Also: how long before the whole thing surfaces? Seems kind of inevitable.

Well, now we might have a clue as to why one particular character seems to be entirely absent from the September DCU relaunch. Click through for spoilers for this week’s Justice League of America. (more…)

It’s clearly the day for What Ifs about familiar comic teams: First, Jim Shooter revealed the Kryptonian who never joined the Legion, and now Chris Claremont explains who he wanted to join X-Factor instead of a resurrected Jean Grey:

I’d taken this short story I’d done the previous year with Jean and her sister. I said ‘Okay, you want a Grey. How’s this? Sara Grey. What’s her power? Her power is to detect mutants. She knows where they are. She can find them and even manifest their power in advance, so they’ll know who they are. If you’re going to do this with X-Factor, here’s the person. Here’s why: She’s a Grey, okay, but she’s not affiliated with anyone. Suddenly you have the girl at play for all four guys.

Scott might feel ‘I’m torn. She’s Jean’s sister, but I love Jean and can’t betray Jean. Jean is dead.’ And Warren? ‘Hey, you’re cool.’ Bobby? ‘I’m not a kid anymore.’ Hank? ‘Why not? I’ll get some action.’

Suddenly you have physical and romantic tension that you don’t have with Jean. With Jean it’s reasserting everything that existed. With Sara, you have ‘Do I want to get involved with these guys? If I get involved with these guys and something goes wrong, what happened to Jean could happen to me, or worse. And yet, do I really want to spend my life running around in a skintight suit?’

I’m not the biggest fan of Jean coming back to life in the first place – Sorry, Ragnell – and I admit, I think I’d have rather seen this version of the book than the one that actually saw print (Admittedly, I’d really have rather read the version that had Dazzler in the team, but that’s just my bias for roller-skating disco divas coming out). Think of all the angst we could have been spared! Think of the possibility of a Scott Summers who was still married to the woman who really had nothing to do with his dead girlfriend! It could’ve been a whole new world! A new fantastic point of view!

Over on his blog, Jim Shooter introduces the Cousin of Kal-El that we never got to meet: Super Lad. Created, according to Shooter, as a potential Legion of Super-Heroes character during Shooter’s recent return to the franchise as a back-up in case DC lost the rights to Superboy, the character would have been the noble teen hero the current Superboy never quite managed to be, if the initial pitch was to be believed:

What DC allows numbskull lightweights to do to THE hero icon, Superman and other Supers is somebody else’s call.  However, if we are permitted–in fact, we were asked–to add a Super, Super Lad, to the pantheon–then I propose that we make him the noble-spirited young man he ought to be.
(more…)

TALES OF MR. RHEE is from . . .
Dirk Manning (Writer)
Josh Ross (Artist)
Austin McKinley (Colors)
Jim Reddington (Letters)
Image Comics/Shadowline (Publisher/Overlord)

So why didn’t the originally solicited story appear in this week’s issue of Superman? Over at Comics Alliance, Chris Sims builds a convincing case for it being the result of an overly cautious DC nervous about featuring a Muslim American superhero after the “Superman renounces his US citizenship” fiasco that followed Action Comics #900:

As much as I don’t buy the “it doesn’t work with Grounded” explanation, it’s far easier to believe that after Nightrunner and Action #900, DC didn’t want the hassle of dealing with an anchor leading off the news with “Superman renounced his American citizenship — and you won’t believe his new terrorist sidekick!” Not that Sharif is actually a terrorist, but the accurate description doesn’t spike ratings.

Not so, claims Bleeding Cool’s Rich Johnston, who has a much, much more surreal take on events:

(more…)