Wait, here’s something interesting about the new Fury of Firestorm series DC announced today. Look at the figure on the top of this cover:

Here’s a better look at him, courtesy of Bleeding Cool:

…Is that the Anti-Monitor?

It makes a weird amount of sense, in that Brightest Day definitely tried to establish some link between Firestorm and the Anti-Monitor in its closing issues, but… Is Firestorm the Anti-Monitor in the new DCU? That’s just very bizarre.

Bad news from John Layman for Chew fans:

Good news from John Layman for Chew fans:

If this is glow-in-the-dark all the way through, I am totally on board with this idea.

Last week, we gave you a series of sneak peeks of MR. RHEE. With the new Dirk Manning webcomic debuting next week on Blog@Newsarama, the man himself dropped by to get, well, misterious.

Blog@: Dirk, now that you’re bringing TALES OF MR. RHEE to Blog@Newsarama how about you introduce yourself and give readers a short bio?

Dirk Manning: Well, most NEWSARAMA readers probably know me as the guy behind the long-running “Write or Wrong” column here at NEWSARAMA (which has NOT gone away – honest).

I’m also the writer and creator of NIGHTMARE WORLD, a comic I originally self-published online for several years before it was picked-up by Image Comics/Shadowline both online and then in print via a series of collected TPBs. (The third such collection, NIGHTMARE WORLD Volume Three: “Demon Days”, is being released this October by Shadowline, hence the slow-down in the “Write or Wrong” columns as of late, as it takes a lot of work to put the NIGHTMARE WORLD collections together.)

Well, right as NIGHTMARE WORLD came to an end online, Jim Valentino was preparing to revamp and relaunch a new, streamlined version of the Shadowline website. One of the things he wanted to do was showcase the great online comics he already hosted there as well as delve into some new material, and that lead to us bringing TALES OF MR. RHEE to the newly relaunched (or, as I like to say, RHEE-launched) www.ShadowlineOnline.com as well as here at Blog@Newsarama.

Blog@: Pardon me for asking this, but if TALES OF MR. RHEE (which we’ll delve into the details of in a moment) is already running at www.ShadowlineOnline.com, which is a very prominent website, why bring it here too? It’s not that we’re not happy to have you or the comic here as well… but why host the comic in two places?

Manning: That’s a fair question, and one that Jim Valentino [editor of Shadowline] and I discussed at length. After all, TALES OF MR. RHEE is not only a Shadowline title, but also a spin-off of the successful NIGHTMARE WORLD franchise that Shadowline has supported in both online and in-print for the last three years now. Heck, this October will mark the third year in a row that a NIGHTMARE WORLD collection has been Shadowline’s “Halloween” release, and that’s something I value and am honored by as well.

However, and this is exactly what I told Jim, the fact of the matter is that we’re giving TALES OF MR. RHEE away from free over at www.ShadowlineOnline.com twice a week for at least a year, and because of that we’d be silly to not host it other places – such as Blog@Newsarama – as well. It seems a bit counterintuitive, but, hey, why not, you know? All it’s going to do is bring a comic that we’re already giving away from free for at least a year to more people who love comics, you know?

Besides, let’s be blunt here: Each of us only has so much time in the day to surf the web, and as a result there are plenty of websites we all miss or simply run out of time to visit every day.

As for how this related to TALES OF MR. RHEE, this is a case where everyone involved in the comic from Valentino to myself to the rest of the creative want as many people as possible to see the comic. Considering this, and given my long-standing partnership with Newsarama, well, why wouldn’t I bring it here, you know? [laughs]

If people like it, I’d encourage them to also make it a point to add www.ShadowlineOnline.com to their surfing habits, since Shadowline’s new site will continue to offer visitors great content both online and in print (including some more stuff from me – hopefully in both categories)… but if that’s not possible, hey, at least you’ll get TALES OF MR. RHEE for free here as well.

Blog@: Tell us about TALES OF MR. RHEE, including what readers can expect and how often they can expect it.

Manning: Well, Jim Valentino recently enthusiastically called it my “best work yet”, which is very flattering since anyone who knows him knows he’s not one to mince words be them positive or critical. [laughs]
That aside, as I mentioned a minute ago, TALES OF MR. RHEE is a spin-off of NIGHTMARE WORLD that takes place in the same timeline, only several years after the end of that series. That being said, though, it doesn’t matter if you’ve ever read the former or not. If you have, though, you’ll certainly enjoy some of the Easter Eggs sprinkled throughout the series (starting as soon as the first chapter) as well as checking in on some of the characters from NIGHTMARE WORLD as they now are several years later.

As for the content of TALES OF MR. RHEE, it’s a horror/noir comic that follows the adventures of a paranormal troubleshooter known only as “Mr. Rhee” (get it?) as he tries to survive and thrive in a post-Armageddon/Rapture world.
We’ll be posting a page a day every here at Blog@ every Monday through Thursday for the first eight-page chapter or two, and after that we’ll drop to posting a new page every Tuesday and Thursday.
I’ll be watching the comment sections as closely as possible, too, so I encourage people to let me know what they think!

I’ll admit that I wasn’t a voracious Valiant reader back in the ’90s – In fact, I’m not sure that I’ve ever read a Valiant book, now that I think about it – but today’s news that the publisher is back seems especially odd to me when you consider that the Gold Key characters are still being published by Dark Horse. I know that there were all new characters like XO Manowar and Archer & Armstrong and all, but… weren’t Solar, Turok and Magnus, Robot Fighter kind of the basis for the entire line? The defensiveness with which the new publishing team’s Jason Kothari addressed the issue over at CBR suggests that the loss is still being felt:

Valiant has a huge library of characters, and we have the Valiant Universe which is larger than any one character as it plays an invaluable role in supporting and strengthening all the characters within it. The Gold Key characters are part of our past, but they are not important to our future.

It’ll be interesting to see what these books look like when they launch next year. I’m nervous that, despite the David Aja preview art, no creator names have been linked to the relaunch in any of the press yet, but if there’s one thing that the new Valiant is already known for, it’s caution – They’ve owned these characters for three years before getting around to announcing the relaunch, after all, so what’s another year or so of waiting around to find out who’s working on the books?

Yuichi Yokoyama’s Garden is by far the strangest comic of any kind I’ve ever read.

It’s a lovely looking object, as much of what publisher PictureBox releases tend to be. It’s an eight-by-six-inch square containing a fat, 330-page page count. It’s printed right to left, as it would have been in the original Japanese, and the white dust jacket is covered in generously spaced, slanted square reproductions of the panels from within, here printed in red ink. Within them are speed lines, large Japanese letters in a mechanical, sound-effect font, and strange characters engaged in mysterious, exciting-looking actions.

The very first panel is a close-up of one of those strange figures, telling a group of its fellow figures, “’Fraid the agarden ain’t open today.” After a few sentences of conversation—“What sort of garden is it?” “A very good garden”—they decide to walk around the fence and, when they find a break in the fence, enter the garden anyway.

The garden isn’t any sort of park and doesn’t seem to have any real vegetation—it’s a bizarre landscape filled with unusual and unlikely things, many of them seemingly falling somewhere between organic and mechanical, as if the entire system were an alien, inorganic organism.  There’s a river a waterfall of balls, a bride of swivel chairs, houses and mountains of every conceivable material and design, strange forms of conveyance, fake trees, towns where every single thing is put on wheels.

For the book’s 300-plus pages, this group of individuals—the size of which is never defined, but is evidently quite large—explores this space, splitting up and getting deeper and deeper into ever more complex, more imaginative and more dangerous territory.
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I can’t help it; now that DC has announced that DCU continuity will be rebooted come September, the July/August Retroactive specials suddenly become a lot more interesting to me for the following couple of reasons:

- Whether knowingly or not, they almost act as a celebration of the DCU that was, prior to the relaunch, taking a (last?) look back at various familiar, former versions of the major icons – especially Superman and Wonder Woman, neither of whom have been really available in “classic” flavors for some time in the regular books, for various reasons – before launching into their new incarnations.

- They act as a tester for the strength of the nostalgia market in case DC want to do something with the “classic” DCU at any point in the future.

That second point is the one that I keep coming back to. There’s an argument to be made that DC has been courting the nostalgia market for some time beyond just reprinting old material – The recent DC Universe: Legacies series written by Len Wein, for example, or some years earlier, the DC Comics Presents books that were part-tribute to Julie Schwartz and part-celebration of the Silver Age (Hey! Even earlier, Mark Waid’s Silver Age event from, what, 1999?) – and I wonder whether, in rebooting the entire DC Universe for new and existing readers, DC could have (accidentally?) created a market for an alternate line continuing what is “current” continuity until August 31st… An “Anti-Ultimate” line, if you will.

Marvel, of course, have tried this already to… interesting ends, with X-Men Forever and New Mutants Forever, but the sales didn’t seem to be there to keep publishing. That said, there also wasn’t much promotion behind either book, both of which seemed more like Chris Claremont’s pension than serious attempts to court fans left behind by the current books. But, if DC has more of a background reaching out to just those fans… and more of an interest, more to the point, in not alienating longstanding fans who care about the “legacy” of the characters they’ve grown up with… perhaps we’ll have more chances to keep up with the “current” versions of the characters after September than we’d initially believed. Hmm.

Things have been very hush on the Doctor Who set concerning events and revelations that are going to occur in season 6, starring Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill and Matt Smith as the 11th incarnation of the Doctor. People are wondering what the real secret is behind the Silents and the true identity of River Song. And what’s the full story behind the death of a certain character? But on IMDB.com, a potentially major event is hinted at via the cast listings.

If you don’t wish to be spoiled (possibly), do not continue.

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Of all the DCU reboot stories, this might be my favorite to date:

I understand that there is an editorial edict for the DC Comics superlaunch that their female superheroes wear more… practical clothing. So Wonder Woman gets to keep her trousers. But the likes of Supergirl will be redesigned so they aren’t running around in a little skirt flashing their panties at every available opportunity either. Female superhero characters will have their legs covered.

On the one hand: Huzzah! On the other hand, I can’t believe it’s taken a rumored editorial edict to ensure that superheroines aren’t always flashing flesh at any given opportunity. Wonder if someone will manage to convince Catwoman to zip her top back up, while they’re at it…? Still, it’s some rare good news for Marvel, as they can now hope to clean up all the fan service-desiring readers that Zenescope haven’t scooped up in the wake of this decision. I look forward to news of X-Men: Cleavage soon.

Something I’ve been seeing in response to the revelation of the line-up of Geoff Johns and Jim Lee’s Justice League book is a complaint about the lack of diversity, which I can both understand and also see from DC’s point of view; I mean, yes, it’s essentially five white guys, a black guy and a white woman, but it’s also the original JLA with Cyborg replacing the Martian Manhunter, so… I can kind of see where Johns and Lee are going with it. However, it’s made me wonder: Why don’t we see similar complaints about the Avengers? (more…)

The new viral marketing campaign for Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises began recently and Facebook may be the latest location.

Previously, the first shot of Tom Hardy as Bane popped up when the Twitter account, @TheFireRises, posted a link that sent fans to the films website. Now, three new videos have shown up on TheFireRises YouTube account, one of which holds a subliminal link that leads you to this Facebook Fan Page. The page features the same black image we see as the avatar on the YouTube and Twitter accounts but also holds the shot above. Could this be Gotham’s next D.A.?

The videos are the usual dramatic yet flashy incitement techniques. The first shows Anthony Michael Hall as part of a GCN broadcast talking about a breakout at Arkham Asylum plus police sounds. The second is a lot harder to make out. There’s people in orange prison uniforms being walked through a room with black bags over their heads and a lot of loud chanting. The last one shows…a lot of stuff on fire and more of the same chanting.

Whether the YouTube and/or Facebook channels turn out to be fake done by a fan, it’s still an interesting look. But if Warner Bros. reserved the Twitter account under that name, wouldn’t it stand to reason the other would have been reserved too? My only doubt is the Facebook page name is written out as The-Fire-Rises rather than TheFireRises but that could easily be a Facebook thing. Plus, last time they did this they didn’t go the usual routes and were a lot more cryptic. What do you guys think? Are you going to follow along with the viral campaign?

Has anyone spotted anything they think is legit?

Released on Monday, and entirely lost in the mad shuffle of yesterday’s news… Say hello to the cover art for what will undoubtedly be one of the books of the year:

Hark! A Vagrant, a collection of strips from Kate Beaton’s site of the same name – which I’m hoping that all of you have been reading for a long time now, and if not, go and do it now – is out from Drawn & Quarterly in October, hopefully in time for my birthday. Seriously, there is almost no way that this will not be spectacular.

The dust from DC’s bombshell: If you missed it, and I’m not sure how you could have, here’s the USA Today article featuring the announcement itself. Here’s Tom Spurgeon’s more-cogent-than-most reaction to the news (that Spurgeon is one cogent fellow, isn’t he?). Here’s Heidi “The Beat” MacDonald’s round-up of creator and retailer tweets on the matter. Here’s Brian Hibbs’ reaction, offering the retailer’s point of view, and really focusing on those 52 titles. (Which is a strangely exact number, particularly if you’re having trouble thinking of, say, 10 DC characters capable of selling more than 20,000 books a month…or ten DC writers whose work you want to read monthly. It occurs to me as I write this that 52 is the same number of worlds in the current DCU multiverse, which may suggest there will be, like, five different Batman titles starring five different Batmans from five different earths or something, but also suggests a real randomness to this output explosion—those 52 worlds came about simply because there were 52 issues of 52, which was determined because it was a weekly series, and there are 52 weeks in a year. Huh.)  Here’s J.K. Parkin of Robot 6. Here’s Michael Cavna of The Washington Post. Here’s Flash-focused blog Speed Force taking a close look at Jim Lee’s Flash redesign (it’s boring old Barry Allen, based on the eye color). Here’s Tom Foss. Here’s Snell, who notes that the people who are announcing all these new titles which are going to be better than the old titles are the exact same people responsible for all those old titles that sold so poorly they needed rebooting. Here’s Jim Smith. Here’s Kiel Phegley, objecting to an omission in the new Justice League line-up, which seems particularly glaring given the new teams sartorial choices. And finally, here’s my own initial reaction from last night, which admittedly consisted mostly of disgust at the JLA’s matching dumb collars. I’m honestly having trouble even processing this announcement (or the reboot/redesign half of it, anyway), as it seems like a out-of-control line expansion applying the “Brand New Day” formula to not just a single franchise, but every single thing DC publishes. It just seems so…risky.

Hmm, did they ever consider just making all their comics really good…?: Here’s David Bitterbaum on four recent DC comics, three of which he liked and one of which he hated.

Supergirls rock and rolling: My God I love Cliff Chiang…is he drawing all 52 of those books? Because that might work…

I’d second this, so long as there are parades involved: “Geek Pride Day”

For those who missed the latest installment of Retweet Theater yesterday on Twitter, Tom Brevoort on May 27th:

Tom Brevoort on May 31, following DC’s announcement of relaunching the entire DCU line:

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