Paul O’Brien asks what might be the core question in his look at Marvel sales in July:

[High-selling ongoing titles] never seen that much gain from the crossovers, presumably because the event audiences are buying them already.It’s more striking that we’re seeing the same pattern on the other tie-in books further down the chart. The impact gets more noticeable the further down we go – but not by much. Which kind of begs the question: how much did Marvel actually gain from making FEAR ITSELF into a line-wide crossover?

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You know how people quote things that other people have said, and then follow it by saying “This,” to show that they agree? Well, Greg Rucka wrote this over at the Lady Sabre & The Pirates of Ineffable Aether blog yesterday:

Here’s the thing: I am sick and tired of super-heroes who aren’t super and aren’t heroes, but more, I’m sick and tired of Hollywood blaming us for their failures. I am sick and tired of hearing various Hollywood studio execs who are as disconnected from the reality of middle-American taste as Rick Perry is from Christianity excusing the poor performance of their ill-executed product by tacitly blaming you, me, and everyone else of us who didn’t pay to see their garbage. Catwoman fails? Instead of, perhaps, just perhaps, acknowledging that the movie is a piece of excrement unworthy of use as fertilizer, they conclude instead that a female lead can’t open a movie unless her name is Jolie. So now we’re not only guilty of not being willing to pay for 90 minutes of intellectual abuse, we’re all apparently sexist jerks, as well. The problem with Green Lantern’s performance at the box office is that it’s not “gritty” enough? I don’t think so.

Art – and even if that art is commercial art, produced for entertainment – feeds and is fed by the society that consumes it. So I ask you, right now, looking around you, what flavor of escapism will go down best with you? In an era of terror alerts and bipartisan dysfunction, of rising hate and blossoming intolerance, of bank failure and wide-spread, global unemployment and recession, is gritty really what we need?

Look, I like gritty. I write gritty. There is a time and a place for gritty. I’ll take my Batman gritty, thank you, and I will acknowledge that such a portrayal means that my 11 year old has to wait before he sees The Dark Knight. But if Hollywood turns out a Superman movie that I can’t take him to? They’ve done something wrong. Superman is many, many things. Gritty he is not, something that Richard Donner certainly understood.

(Pet peeve time: for the contingent out there who sneer at heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman and Captain America, those icons who still, at their core, represent selfless sacrifice for the greater good, and who justify their contempt by saying, oh, it’s so unrealistic, no one would ever be so noble… grow up. Seriously. Cynicism is not maturity, do not mistake the one for the other. If you truly cannot accept a story where someone does the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, that says far more about who you are than these characters.)

This is not an argument of era or audience sophistication. Sophistication does not negate sincerity, nor does it even deny it, as the Captain America movie proves. Sophistication demands better storytelling, clearer motivation, purer intention. “Gritty” is an apologist word in this sense, used in the place of “realism.” We don’t go to the movies for “realism.” This is why documentaries aren’t the major product in the theaters. Sophistication does not demand realism; it demands smart.

And… oh, man. This. This times a million.

For those of you who, like me, thought that Chris Roberson did an amazing job rescuing Superman’s “Grounded” storyline from the hell that J. Michael Straczynski created – For those who jumped off the book before Roberson started because, well, that wasn’t Superman, you should go back and check out his issues – you’ll probably want to check out the latest episode of the War Rocket Ajax podcast (Now part of Comics Alliance), because Roberson’s “exit interview” spills all kinds of beans on his run on the title:

So when I signed on, in October of last year, [the editors] gave me a one page… you could charitably call it “an outline,” written by Straczynski, where he saw the remaining issues going. I think it was drafted at a point where he assumed he would be the one writing them, so this is what he’s giving DC editorial to draft solicitation copy… When given this one page outline, it was with the context that “Here’s where we were gonna go, use of it what you want, and do your own stuff.” Basically, the only things I was beholden to was to have Superman go to each of eight towns, eight cities, [one] in each of the issues… Superman is walking from east to west, and that in #708, Wonder Woman shows up and in #709, the Flash shows up. And beyond that, everything else you see on the page was mine.

Well, so much for that “co-written by JMS” credit that appeared in each issue. There’s a lot, lot more in the podcast – such as what JMS’ unused springboards for each issue were (Spoiler: They don’t sound any better than what was in the issues of “Grounded” that he actually wrote), Roberson’s take on what happened with the original #712, and some annotations on his final issue – that make it a must listen for anyone who enjoyed the pretty great story Roberson ended up making “Grounded” into. Go, listen.

Sarah Velez raises an unexpected question: Should fans boycott Action Comics #1 to teach publishers a lesson?:

I love Morrison’s work.  Love superhero comics.  Enjoy a good superman as much as anyone.But deep down we all know this reboot of Superman is a lot about creating a new origin so DC can keep some of the character that they screwed Siegel and Shuster out of.

It is ethically dubious to contribute money to the Time/Warner corporation in the services of crafting a version of Superman that they can continue to own, despite all of the crap they’ve pulled on the true creators of Superman…

And the thing is, I’m more mad about Marvel’s treatment of Jack Kirby and his family than anything DC has done.  But at some point it gets a little too weird reading books that are made out of the death and misery of the Supergods of our medium.  Some of these books are like the blood diamonds of book publishing at this point.  Shouldn’t we as a readership stand up and demand that these companies prove to us that the creators of these characters are being taken care of properly, before giving them our money?  Some sort of seal they could put in the books that let you know this book’s creators were did not die poor and crazy while you raked in billions in movie money on their ashes.

I feel bad about even adovcating this given the state the industry is in right now.  And given that I think Geoff Johns is a really great human being, and someone who has shown me nothing but kindness personally.

But the Gene Colon stuff, and the Jack Kirby stuff—fucking kills me.  These guys are MY JLA.  And what was done to them/is being done to them, is on some Darkseid shit.

So what do you think?  Boycott?

The conversation gets weirder when she takes it to Millarworld, where she explains why Action would be the book to boycott – “That’s probably the holiest of holy books in the Superhero genre. Not sure of the taste level in rebooting something like Action Comics, or even Detective Comics, as long as they have been running” – and then adds a completely unexpected dimension: (more…)

Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt are on a televisual roll. Not only is their Sixth Gun being made into a mini-series for Syfy, but now Showtime has picked up their earlier series The Damned for adaptation. According to Deadline, David Hayter – screenwriter for Watchmen as well as the first two X-Men movies – will be writing a script adapting the supernatural crime comic into a series that can fit alongside Dexter and… Nurse Jackie, I guess? Congrats to Bunn, Hurtt and publisher Oni Press, anyway.

You all know I had some strong thoughts over DC’s decision to take Barbara Gordon out of the chair and return her to Batgirl duty. Well, it’s long past due Babs had a chance to speak for herself. Here are her semi-sensored thoughts on the DC relaunch…

That’s comedy gold right there.

Barbara Gordon is really Teal Sherer. You may know her better as Venom, the vicious video game vixen from Felicia Day’s web series The Guild. Sherer, like Oracle, is a paraplegic, having broken her spine in a car accident when she was fourteen. So as you can imagine, just like I do, she has a very strong connection to the DC comics character and also like the character and myself, Sherer doesn’t let her disability get in her way. Or stop her from making hilarious videos.

Check out the trailer for Sherer’s “My Gimpy Life,” which premiered at the ITV Festival earlier this month.

When the shadowy first image showed up from Superman: Man of Steel, we wondered, along with many fans, if the well-placed shadow was hiding the red trunks or not. Turns out, not.

The image, from Superhero Hype (click the name for a couple more), shows clearly that like his DC “New 52″ counterpart, the new movie Superman will not have red trunks as part of his costume. On the right side of the image is the black-clad villainess Faora of Krypton, as well. The guy between them dressed like Metamorpho is likely not, but dang, that’s uncanny isn’t it?

So what do you think now that we can see the full costume clearly, folks?

A moment of silence, please, for the “old” DC Universe, which breathes its last today. This is, of course, the… fifth DCU that has come and gone, by my reckoning (The various DCUs are: Golden Age, Silver Age, Post-Crisis, Post-Zero Hour, Post-Infinite Crisis – Am I missing any reboots? Basically, if it involved a full-scale visit to the Big Bang and/or had a line-in-the-sand Superman origin do-over, then I’m counting it)? But it’s possibly the first time that the final stories themselves have been so aware of their finality. Grant Morrison would be proud of the metatext on show in Justice League of America, Batgirl, Superman and even Green Lantern, despite that book continuing its continuity come next month (“This isn’t how it’s supposed to end” is a great last line of a series, come on).

It’s been interesting to watch how the various books have come to an end – Of the various approaches taken, I think that I’ve preferred the JLA and Batgirl takes, wherein the creators essentially try to show what would have happened on the books had they continued; it’s a trick I remember from the last issue of Green Lantern: Mosaic, way back when (John Stewart even addressed the reader, essentially saying “Oh, what stories you’d have seen!”), and I loved it now just as much as I did then, even if it feels like a cruel trick (Just as enjoyable was Chris Roberson’s attempt to create a new status quo for the Man of Steel in Superman, which employed a similar “What if?” technique, in many ways). But what’s been somewhat surprising is the lack of scorched earth finales – Justice Society aside, I can’t really think of any title that’s really ended on a massive downer (That said, I’ve not read all of the final issues, so there’s that). Is this some signal that the DCU is inherently an optimistic place, or just a sign that no-one wanted to create a final issue so final that readers wouldn’t want to come back for a new beginning in September?

Doctor Who fans are eagerly awaiting this Saturday’s return of the hit show on BBC America with the episode titled “Let’s Kill Hitler,” not to mention the return of the 11th Doctor Matt Smith. Until then, you can check out his adventures in the Doctor Who Annual from IDW, in stores today, with an all-star line-up of creators. Newsarama spoke with one of them about his work and got an exclusive sneak peek at some preview art from an upcoming arc!

As I mentioned, the Doctor Who Annual 2011 features the Eleventh Doctor in his first-ever Annual adventure. The  issue is oversized at 48 pages and contains three full stories as well as a prologue to the next arc by writer Tony Lee and artist Josh Adams.

The next arc of IDW’s Doctor Who, by Lee and Adams, starts with issue #9, set to be released September 28. It just so happens that’s the same day Adams’ famous father, Neal Adams’ New Avengers #16.1 comes out. “When I finally got to read the annual top to bottom, I felt like not only was every creator excited about the content but were really trying to out do each other and I think when you read it you’ll really get the benefit of all that passion,” artist Josh Adams told Newsarama.

“My part in the annual is really a prologue to issue #9 and yet when you read it, you realize it’s like anything Time Lord related; so much bigger on the inside,” said Adams, “Detectives, aliens, talking dinosaur, giant squids, Native American Indians and egg whisks! Of course, if you think that’s something, issue #9 has so much more.”

The artist said he worked through Independence Day weekend as well as Comic-Con week in order to meet the tight deadlines for the book but couldn’t be happier with the results. “Tony Lee has been creating amazing stories in the IDW series, quite in step with the content Steven Moffat produces for the television series and for the scripts I got to draw, he really gave me the kinds of juicy details that you could only wish to see on the show.”

This isn’t just a job for Adams, it’s also a joy. He’s a big fan of the long-running British TV show. “My apartment is jam packed with all sorts of  ’geek’ goodies but take one look and it’s clear that Doctor Who really rules over all,” he told us. “So getting to work on the comic and adding my name not just to the great list of talents who have done the comics but who have created nearly fifty years of amazing sci-fi history just means the world to me.”

The Doctor Who Annual 2011 also features stories by Echoes writer Joshua Hale Fialkov and artist Blair Shedd, Doctor Who Magazine writer/artist Dan McDaid, and writer Matthew Dow Smith and artist Mitch Gerads. The cover features an illustrated Doctor by each of the artists involved, Adams’ is the one standing at the bottom.

“I really enjoy being able to tell stories that a whole family can enjoy while not being to broad or oversimplified and Doctor Who is a series that really takes that sentiment to heart,” he said.

We’re eight days away from the era of “The New 52″ starting in earnest with Geoff Johns and Jim Lee’s Justice League #1, and DC’s official PR blog, The Source — by way of Sirius XM’s “Geek Time” show on Howard 101 — has let slip with the identity of the villain in the first arc. Want to be spoiled? Click through to the jump.

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Hey, did you hear? Grant Morrison did an interview with Brian Hiatt of Rolling Stone. And it’s been the talk of the comic book Internet for the past 24 hours, due to some rather blunt remarks on the state of the industry and some of his fellow comic creators, including former collaborator Mark Millar, who Morrison stated (jokingly, one assumes) that he’d like to hit in an automobile:

He still lives in Glasgow, is there a chance of bumping into him?
There’s a very good chance of running into him, and I hope I’m going 100 miles an hour when it happens.

He also turned his sights a bit on Acme Novelty Library‘s Chris Ware, saying that his work is beautiful but his “attitude stinks”:

I can appreciate someone like Chris Ware for his artistry, which I think is beautiful, but I think his attitude stinks, it just seems to be the attitude of somebody really privileged, and honestly, try living here, try living on an Indian reservation and shut up, and really seeing all that nihilistic stuff, it really makes me angry, it’s unhelpful to all of us, and it’s coming from people who have money and success to talk  like that and bring those aspects of the way we live in favor of all the  others, and it’s indefensible.

As harsh as he might have been on them, the most pointed words in the Q&A were for the comic book industry as a whole, which he says has a feeling of “going off the rails.”

Do you think this is the death spiral?
Yeah. I kind of do, but again, you can always be wrong. There’s a real feeling of things just going off the rails, to be honest. Superhero comics. The concept is quite a ruthless concept, and it’s moved on, and it’s kind of abandoned, the first-stage rocket.

No matter what your stance is on Morrison’s comments, it’s encouraging to see a mainstream publication go in-depth into comic book industry issues in an interview, rather than the usual, generic, “Pow! Bam! Superman is flying back to where it all started — no, not his home planet Krpyton, but a brand-new Action Comics #1! And this time, he’s exchanging his trademark red underwear for a t-shirt and jeans!” The whole interview, including comments on Identity Crisis and Alan Moore’s use of rape in comics, is here.

So, how long before Marvel solicits an Avengers #1 by Brian Michael Bendis and Joe Quesada?

That’s what I’ve been wondering after seeing the remarkable order figures for DC’s relaunched Justice League. Don’t get me wrong; the fact that it’s the first comic for the relaunched DCU likely factors into such high orders as well, as does the all-star line-up of characters, but… the massive orders for JL are really coming from the pairing of Geoff Johns and Jim Lee, right? And the only teaming Marvel can really counter that with is Bendis and Quesada – if only because Quesada is the only true big name artist Marvel has that isn’t already rolled out on a fairly regular basis, and could therefore have the same effect as Lee’s rare appearances.

I mean, we’ll almost certainly have a new Avengers book of some sort next summer to coincide with the movie, I think we can all agree (Mighty Avengers is still available as a title, after all)? The only question might be whether or not Joe can get enough time to draw an opening arc… or maybe, whether Bendis is still enough of a draw on the title to measure up to Johns’ first solo take on the Justice League.

A lot of our favorite DC superheroes got significant makeovers to go with the big relaunch happening in two weeks. Here are a few designs that didn’t make the cut and god help me, I can’t imagine why.

You wanted pants, you got ‘em!

It’s to draw attention away from the underwear on the outside.

Poor Arthur, can’t catch a break. But he can catch fish!

Now this one I can get behind. If nothing else, it evens out the skin quota between the guys and gals of the DCnU.

The designs of course, are not real, but come via Caldwell Tanner of CollegeHumor.com. He’s been churning out some amazing superhero-themed strips lately for the website. Tanner also includes some Marvel characters in his redesign post. My favorite was his X-Men: First Class crack. So true.

Something in the Joe Quesada presentation from Disney’s D23 this weekend has stuck in my brain… Namely, his announcement that Marvel was the #1 Digital Publisher. It’s not that I think he’s wrong, more that… Well, how would he know?

After all, it’s not like digital sales are made public anywhere, like the Diamond Direct Market figures, so surely Quesada is only privy to the Marvel sales figures, right? But perhaps he’s not talking about sell-through, only the amount of individual issues available – although, in that case, DC will take over that crown soon enough, with the 52-issues day-and-date every month status quo established next month. Or was this just an empty boast, made to an audience that wouldn’t know any better and be ready to hear this kind of thing?

I genuinely don’t know, and I’m curious as to what’s actually behind the claim. Is Marvel really the #1 Digital Publisher? And if so, how does it know?

The Hollywood Reporter is stating that Stan Lee Media Inc is suing the producers for the newly-released (and box office disappointing) Conan the Barbarian and seeking to get 100% of the movie’s gross. The reasoning behind it is because SLMI had the Conan rights since 2000 and when the company went bankrupt, the rights were protected, however, a former attorney for Lee allegedly made an illegal deal to grant the rights to Nu Image/Millennium Films, which produced the new “Conan”.

The company claims that the transfer of the “Conan” character is void because at that time in 2002, “the shares of Conan Properties and all other assets of SLMI were part of a bankruptcy estate and protected from unauthorized transfer by the automatic bankruptcy stay.”

SLMI says that the defendants obtained relief from the automatic stay in March 2002 by getting a judge to sign off on a “Settlement Approval Order” but that this order was itself void because the defendants didn’t provide notice and give 1,800 SLMI shareholders an opportunity to protect their interests by opposing the motion to transfer Conan.

Yet, in 2002, after Conan Sales Co. reacquired the rights to Conan, it sold those rights to a Swedish company called Paradox Entertainment, which has spent the last decade attempting to revive the character in video games, comics, etc. In its lawsuit against Conan Sales Co., Paradox, and others, SLMI is demanding it be restored the rights over the franchise and the defendants turn over all the proceeds from the movie.

Most interesting of all, SLMI is still in the process of suing Stan Lee himself and Marvel Entertainment for the rights to such their most prominent (read: marketable) characters as Spider-Man, the X-Men, Fantastic Four and many of the other major characters in the Marvel Universe.

So what’s your take on this, readers? I thought the estate of Robert E. Howard owned the rights to Conan and his world. Just bizarre. As of today, Conan The Barbarian has only grossed $10 million, a tenth of its budget. I haven’t seen any marketing for the movie, either, so that’s not a surprising number, but disheartening as I kind of dug it.

Geek hosts Blair Herter and Jessica Chobot took their relationship to the next step over the weekend and got engaged with a little help from Wonder Woman and Jim Lee.

The pair simultaneously made the announcement via their Twitter feeds with Herter tweeting, “In a lifetime of affirmation, this was the best “Yes” I’ve heard. Luckiest guy alive.” With his statement, the X-Play host also posted this picture…

Herter, knowing his girlfriend was a huge Wonder Woman fan, had DC artist and co-publisher Jim Lee create this piece specifically to ask for her hand in marriage. Chobot retweeted the picture with this note, “YES!!!!! @blairherter and a ginormous thank you to @JimLee00 for the incredible art! We’ll treasure it always!” And Herter echoed her sentiments on the one-of-a-kind piece, “Massive massive thanks to @jimlee00 for the art. It will always be our most treasured piece.”

The IGN Strategize host then tweeted a picture of her unique engagement ring.

As you can see, the ring is Wonder Woman inspired, and was designed by Herter himself according to Chobot. You can see the lasso/star detail on the left but I can’t quite make out the details on the other side. Either way, it’s gorgeous.

No word on whether or not the proposal was a surprise but Chobot’s last tweet before the announcement was that her and Herter were going on a mini-vacation to San Diego for “sunshine and tattoos,” so it may well have been. Herter thanked everyone for their heartfelt congratulations on the engagement and said, “I promise our future Intergalactic Space Ninja offspring will protect your families against the robots.”

Congratulations to Herter and Chobot and here’s to a comic-themed wedding!

Well, this is kind of fascinating.

You’ll remember that Marvel announced last week that Wolverine & The X-Men #1 was dropping in price from $4.99 to $3.99 with, as the official press release said, “no reduction in content!” Imagine my surprise, then, when I see Marvel’s extended forecast for retailers from the end of last week, and find this line:

WOLVERINE AND X-MEN #1 will be 40 pages and $3.99, not 48 pages and $4.99 as solicited.

Let me get this straight: The book has lost no content with this switch from $4.99 to $3.99, but has lost 8 pages. Either one of these announcements is wrong and/or Marvel changed its mind between Wednesday and Friday, or the original solicit was charging a dollar for 8 pages of ads. I’m not sure which I find more believable, but I am sure which I find more depressing.

How important are the three Fear Itself one-shots that are due to appear following the “final” issue of the main series? Well, according to Ed Brubaker, Captain America fans should really make a point of picking up the Fear Itself #7.1: Captain America issue:

So now you know. And let the January launch speculation get started properly – I’m wondering if we’ll see some kind of all-new SHIELD book with Black Widow and Nick Fury as leads. I mean, Secret Warriors will be done by then, and both Widow and Fury will be in the Avengers movie…

The 2011 Harvey Award ceremony were held Saturday night as part of the Baltimore Comic-Con, with Darwyn Cooke and Roger Langridge both winning two awards each.

The full list of winners, courtesy of the Washington Post, follows after the jump.

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Just who does DC Comics think that Diana is these days? It depends who you ask, apparently; according to Brian Azzarello, the writer of next month’s relaunch of the regular title, she’s a character in need of some attention… but not necessarily a superhero:

[T]he first issue’s all done and we’re running right up to the edge, as far as what we can get away with. We’re pushing the envelope with this one. I firmly believe that that’s what this character needs right now… [I]t’s not going to be a superhero book. I can guarantee you that, it’s not a superhero book. It’s a horror book.

Meanwhile, Grant Morrison – who may or may not be working on a project that may or may not turn out to be Wonder Woman: Earth One – apparently also wants to run right up to the edge, but in terms of sexuality:

Morrison said that you can take the violence out of the original concept of Superman- all the drop-kicking bad guys into the ocean, which would basically kill them anyway, or you can take the gun out of early Batman, and these characters remain essentially the same. But you can’t take the sex out of Wonder Woman. That version of the character died with Marston in the 1940s and she hasn’t recovered her popularity since.

That Superman’s meant to be this ultimate expression of masculinity and he still gets to be sexual, while Wonder Woman’s meant to be the ultimate expression of womanhood and yet she isn’t allowed anything to do with sex.

Morrison’s take will, he says, be informed by “feminist theory from Simone de Beauvoir to Andrea Dworkin” (but not beyond? Or maybe he was just going for the most well-known names), and be sexual without being exploitative. Considering Morrison’s Bulleteer, I’m very curious to see where he ends up going with this – if it ever sees print. After all, remember Wonder Woman: Bondage?