Once a week I sift through the millions of Etsy listings to find the best in geek chic for Blog@ readers. Last week I harkened back to my childhood with the Princess of Power herself, She-Ra. This time I’ve decided to focus on one particular Etsy user, as I’ve done in the past, starbrightsilver (Megan).

Never before did I think to myself, “You know what I need? I need a Bat’leth necklace.” I can’t say that any longer. Starbrightsilver has recreated the famous Klingon weapon in tiny form for $37.

I cannot even begin to tell you how much I love Jurassic Park. I thought I was a total weirdo until I became friends with a girl that was equally obsessed with the dinosaur film. Needless to say, we share a special bond and I know she’ll love this “Clever Girl” necklace as much as I do. In Jurassic Park font of course, $20.

Two words. My. Precious. $50

As soon as I looked at this A-Team pin I got the television theme song stuck in my head. And now, so do you. Starbrightsilver has this one for $12.

And last but not least, prove to everyone you’re a Goonie by wearing their motto for everyone to see. This “Goonies never say die!” pendant is made from black perspex/acrylic and sells for $19.

As always, bear in mind, since Etsy is a craft website and not a commercial, mass-market dealer, items are almost always one-of-a-kind or in very limited availability. When you see something you like, buy it. It may not be there the next time you surf round. (Yes, it’s a very dangerous site for your wallet.) Also, since most items are created individually, many sellers are willing to customize something specifically to suit your needs. Just ask!

It was the clash of the titans that no-one saw coming. While Ron Marz was responding to the outcry over Miles Morales being the new Spider-Man, as well as the Laurence Fishburne is Perry White news, on Twitter (“‘Worst. Week. Ever.’ — Racists.”), Scott Lobdell was busy responding to… Ron Marz:

Marz was understandably confused, retweeting the above and adding “Probably, since I have no idea what that means.” Lobdell’s reply was to the point (The following includes these two additional follow-ons):

[I]t means your daily Me Am Morally Superior To World rants are tedious and unoriginal. Let your work speak for itself. Wow! What a stand: “Racists am bad” Why not use your writing to change hearts and minds instead of shooting fish in a barrel. I find your pomposity fascinating. Take this as an Tweetervention: no1 stands up FOR Racism ‘cept morons. Ur impressing no one.

While Marz seemed confused in response (“Me Am Morally Superior To World’? Seriously? I was under the impression I’m allowed to think racists are bad people” and “Scott, please understand this is said with no malice: if my tweets somehow offend you, you don’t have to follow me“) before adding “It’s not my goal to impress anyone. I just say what’s on my mind. Sorry if that casts me as pompous in your eyes“, leading Lobdell to respond by suggesting “Hmmm. Maybe you just need to think deeper thoughts.”

I can’t be the only one wondering what is going on here, right? I mean, if you’re going to attack people for stating the obvious on Twitter, there are far more deserving targets that someone jokingly going after racists for being idiots. Clearly, there’s some backstory here that no-one else – including, potentially, Marz himself – knows about, but as ever, Kurt Busiek wins when it comes to commentary on the situation:

Slipped inconspicuously into a preview of Batman Beyond #8, in stores today, DC quietly confirmed on their official blog The Source that the series will be returning with a new #1 in 2012. Here’s their exact word:

BATMAN BEYOND #8 is the final issue of this run of the series. BATMAN BEYOND will return with an all-new #1 and story arc, “10,000 Clowns,” in 2012.

The fate of Batman Beyond had been unclear since DC’s announcement of the September revamp — the series was not among the “new 52″ books announced, and an issue wasn’t in the publisher’s September or October solicitations. But now it looks like Terry McGinnis fans can rest easy, though whether or not the current regular creative team of writer Adam Beechen and artist Ryan Benjamin (Chris Batista guests on art in issue #8) are returning as well is unclear at this point.

The series debuted as an ongoing in January 2011, following a six-issue miniseries in 2010, and is based on the animated series that ran from 1999 to 2002.

As the Kirby-Marvel/Disney lawsuit judgment begins to settle in people’s heads, we’re beginning to see lengthier responses to it. Over at The Comics Journal, Michael Dean points out that the law was against Kirby’s heirs in the first place:

It was a ruling that follows from a long line of precedents, including the recent judgment that quashed Dan DeCarlo’s challenging of Archie’s copyrights. As Judge McMahon said, it’s not about fairness. Work for hire is the best tool corporations have ever had for exploiting creative talent and the courts’ consistent safeguarding of that concept has ensured that the intent of the Copyright Act of 1976 has in part been undermined. The Act was based on a new understanding of the ways that intellectual property can turn out to have a value far beyond anything dreamt of at the time of its creation. When Siegel and Schuster sold the rights to Superman, they had no idea that the property could one day be parlayed into Blu-Ray discs and video games and computer apps — neither, for that matter, did DC. After a few decades, the property was expected to go into the Public Domain. Under pressure from entertainment companies, however, Congress has repeatedly extended the maximum limits of copyright terms, thereby adding value to intellectual property that it didn’t have at the time creators like Siegel and Kirby were turning their brainstorms over to publishers in exchange for modest pay checks.

With moral judgments put to one side, legally, the decision was sound, according to Terry Hart at the Copyhype blog:

Unfortunately for the heirs, the court found the evidence they presented thoroughly unconvincing. One piece, a 1972 agreement that was the first written contract between Kirby and Marvel, even contained a clause stating that Kirby agreed the works were made for hire… In total, the facts and evidence presented convinced the court that Kirby’s creations were works made for hire. Marvel was the statutory author under the 1909 Act, making the termination notices filed by Kirby’s heirs invalid. This conclusion is, I think, on solid legal ground and consistent with previous cases.

Depressing, but both links are well worth reading.

If there’s one odd tradition of superhero comics that I miss, it’s the underhanded crossovers between companies. Remember the days when characters from other publishers could appear, without attention being drawn to them, in the backgrounds of panels? Or, even better, those Squadron Sinister/Assemblers storylines that coincided in issues of Avengers and Justice League of America in the early ’70s, or the secret crossover between Marvel and DC that happened in Rutland, Vermont a year or so later. Why can’t we have more of those these days? Here’s my challenge to today’s Big Two creators: You people are friends. Get together with each other and come up with a character that’ll be introduced in one DC book and one Marvel book on the same day, and have him/her go from one issue to the other in such a way that we can pretend he/she is the new Access. I’m looking at you, Dan Slott and Gail Simone. You know you want to make this happen.

Entertainment Weekly has the exclusive, actor Laurence Fishburne has been cast as Perry White in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel.

Needless to say, this is going to be a hot button topic. “White has traditionally been a hard-charging, old fashioned newspaperman, who relies on his ace reporters, Clark and Lois, to get the big scoop,” said EW. The news comes less than a day after Marvel announced their new, non-traditional casting for Ultimate Spider-Man in the comics (Read that spoiler here).

EW writes, “The casting resolves the question of what Laurence would be up to following his departure this May from CBS’ long-running CSI after just over two seasons.” White has previously been played by Jackie Cooper, Frank Langella and Lane Smith just to name a few. Fishburne joins actors Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Michael Shannon, Russell Crowe and Julia Ormond already cast in the new Superman film, Man of Steel, which starts shooting in the fall and is scheduled for a June 14, 2013 release.

So Superman fans, how does this casting sit with you? Can you see Perry White as anything but a graying, white man? I’m kind of liking this idea.

Does the date February 16, 2007 bring back any fond memories for you? Wrangling up a group of friends, heading to the cinema, sitting down with popcorn in hand, and watching an opening night screening of Ghost Rider? Well, we’ve got your plans for the five-year anniversary of that auspicious occasion: Deadline reports that sequel Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance has an official release date of February 17, 2012, a half-decade since the debut of the original film, almost to the day. I actually think that date was set for a while, but now it’s officially official. Nicolas Cage is returning as the title character, but the rest of the cast and crew are pretty much all new.

There aren’t a lot of promotional images out there for the movie yet, but here’s a bike prop that was on display at Comic-Con:

Blame the post-San Diego crush for my missing this spectacular quote from Mark Millar about his upcoming Millarworld line of comics:

Millarworld is our full time job and getting together with these artists feels as exciting as 1992 must have felt when Todd and Jim and Rob and the guys all got together and carried their mainstream success over into their own company. Something they owned and could pass along to their children. The guys and I have been working away in the background, and between now and Christmas, there’s some sensational announcements. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t like to do things by half. I really, genuinely want to make this the Big Three instead of the Big Two. I think the plan laid down in 2012 is going to surprise a lot of people with the scale of the ambition.

Well, you can’t fault him for ambition, or for his choice in collaborators – In the same interview, he lists his artists on the upcoming books as John Romita Jr., Lenil Francis Yu, Steve McNiven, Frank Quitely and Dave Gibbons – but I have more than a few doubts that any line that small will break the market share of someone like a Dark Horse, IDW or Image to measure up to Marvel or DC’s (Especially with those artists – Millar talks about this somewhat in the piece, saying that Quitely, Gibbons and Yu will be full-time on the Millarworld books, but Romita and McNiven will surely be prioritizing their Marvel work over the creator-owned stuff, surely…? And doesn’t Quitely still have his Multiversity work for DC to finish before he even starts on this…?). Still, it does sound like there’s more up his sleeve than we know about, so who knows? If nothing else, it’d be fun to see him try.

Cully Hamner compares the opening of RED the comic (which he illustrated, from a Warren Ellis story) to RED the movie:

The most overt thing that survived the translation was the opening scene featuring Bruce Willis’ retired agent character, Frank Moses (Paul Moses in the comic). Now, the beats of the sequence survive: Moses is alone and lonely, marking time in his retirement, when he is suddenly attacked by what’s called a “wet team”—assassins who expect to get bloody. Moses dispatches them like the professional killer he’s always been, gathers supplies, and escapes into the night to…

What, exactly? In our comic, it’s simply to exact revenge, which Moses does with cold efficiency before finally committing what is essentially suicide. In the movie, it’s to protect the woman he loves, reassemble his old team, and discover the reason for the attack. These are wildly different results from what is essentially the same scene.

But let’s look at that opening scene again. As I said, the beats are all still there, but the subtext is very different.

It’s interesting to me to see creators talk about movies based on their work that end up so different from what they’d originally created; this is a (too) short piece, but worth taking a look at – Now, if only we could get a series of these for movies like A History of Violence, Whiteout and so on…

Marvel Studios are on a speeding bullet train it seems. Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger have done well at the box office and footage from The Avengers seems to indicate the trend will last. Now it looks as if Marvel is turning their gaze to the Sorcerer Supreme – Doctor Strange.

According to the website Twitch, the writing team of Joshua Oppenheimer and Thomas Donnelly have turned in a Doctor Strange script and Marvel is going forward with the property. “Marvel has drafted a short list of directors to approach on the title and is forwarding the current script to each to try and sign someone up to ‘oversee continued development,’” writes Twitch.

Oppenheimer and Donnelly previously worked on the Conan reboot, soon to hit theaters, Dylan Dog and Cowboys and Aliens. A good chunk of Marvel’s main hero properties have been utilized at this point and while there’s been a great deal of science-fiction involved with those properties, fantasy for the most part has been steered clear of. Was Doctor Strange really the next natural choice or would it have been a bolder move for Marvel to give one of their heroines a solo shot?

This early in the game nothing is certain but there is one bit of information that may lead us to believe this Doctor Strange movie will happen, Strange’s Orb of Agamotto was one of the artifacts seen in Odin’s vault in Thor. With Iron Man 3 and Thor 2 scheduled for release in 2013 it seems unlikely we’d see this one for a while.

Frazer Irving has a new Tumblr, on which he’s sharing all manner of previously unseen art – including this unused first page to his mini with Grant Morrison, Klarion:

Considering Irving’s one of the best* artists in mainstream comics, the idea of getting additional work from him is a very, very welcome one (especially with Xombi going away with #6). Go check the blog out.

* Yes, I know this is a subjective opinion, but I’m right, darn it.

I’m fascinated by Steve Bissette’s reaction to the Disney-Marvel/Kirby Estate lawsuit news, in which he questions not the legal decision involved, but the moral one made by Marvel and Disney, and calls for a boycott of Marvel product based on Kirby’s creations:

I suggest, for starters, simply pulling the plug on all individual support for any and all Kirby-derived Marvel ANYTHING (comics, movies, videogames, merchandizing).

Now.

Today.

* This is step one, and something everyone who cares can do; but TELL your venue or retailer what you’re doing and why.

TELL THEM what you’re doing, and spend what you would have spent on Kirby-derived Marvel product on other product from other companies in their store.

If you’re rightly concerned with continuing to support your local retailers, which I hope you are, let them know what you are doing and spend the same $$ you spent on Marvel product on other product, in the same store: it will continue to support your retailer, but send a clear message to Marvel in due time. If you are honor bound to follow through the pre-orders you’ve made to date (i.e., paying for/buying Kirby-derivative product incoming for the next three months because you pre-ordered it or have it held for you), proceed honorably and accordingly, but cancel all subsequent orders and spend your money with the same retailer on other product.

Again, you won’t be denying your retailer income you, as a customer, provide.

Your dollars, your decision, will speak loudly.

The store will still earn your dollars, but you make your point.

Get creative.

Grow a spine.

The reason this sticks with me isn’t because it’ll be successful – Sadly, I can’t see enough fans managing to quit their regular Marvel fix long enough for it to really impact Marvel’s bottom line, although I’d be overjoyed if I’m proven too cynical in that, and ask everyone to prove me wrong – but because the moral argument is one that I’ve not seen argued by Marvel when it comes to this matter. (more…)

Something interesting from Tom Brevoort’s most recent Talk To The Hat interview at CBR, when he explains why Marvel is able to do Season One as a series of original graphic novels after years of claiming that the format doesn’t work financially for Marvel:

Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to give you the full picture of this because some of the information is still proprietary. But the long and the short of it is that we’ve got ancillary revenue streams for the Season One projects, and that’s what makes it work in this case. We haven’t announced everything we’re going to do with these yet, and these ancillary uses don’t necessarily have anything to do with the direct market, but it’s a particular set of circumstances that allows us in this case to print these books first as OGNs and not start with a serialized format. And if they do well, there may be more things like this. We live in an evolving world where suddenly new opportunities open to us – whether those opportunities are in the digital landscape or things that being a part of Disney opens up to us, or what have you.

So, by “ancillary revenue streams,” he’s talking about Disney Stores, right…? If so, I’m curious how Season One will be affected by the Marvel Superhero origin storybooks Disney is putting out under the “Marvel Press” imprint, presumably for the Disney Stores… I understand that both lines will be aimed at different age groups, but the appearance of both projects around the same time – making such a concerted effort to “introduce” the characters to multiple demographics simultaneously – suggests that Disney is beginning to put more emphasis on working Marvel into its overall branding, in time for the Disney-distribution debut Marvel movie next year, The Avengers. I wonder how long it’ll be before Marvel becomes Disney*Marvel, just like Disney*Pixar…?

The Internet is bursting at the seams with pictures of Batman (Christian Bale) and Bane (Tom Hardy) fighting it out in an outdoor shoot of The Dark Knight Rises over the weekend, taking place at the movie’s current location of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — specifically the Mellon Institute building, subbing for Gotham on this occasion.

As you can tell, there’s plenty of clear looks of Hardy as Bane (click on any image to enlarge it):

We’ve got a few more photos after the jump, and if you want to check out dozens of them (including a couple who apparently just got married across the street and got to check up the Tumbler up close), click on over to Getty Images. The Dark Knight Rises is in theaters on July 20, 2012.

(more…)

by Manning/Ross/McKinley/Reddington/Shadowline