Good news for Steve Gerber, Man-Thing and classic Marvel comics fans: Kevin Nowlan has finished the art on the long-lost Man-Thing graphic novel, and it’s being released by Marvel:

INFERNAL MAN-THING, a three-issue limited series beginning in June, will present the final Steve Gerber Man-Thing tale, a previously-unknown story that until recently remained only a wishful thought in the hearts and minds of his devotees.

As to what Steve Gerber might’ve thought about his final Man-Thing story finally seeing publication, the artist feels he cannot possibly know for certain, but there’s a definitely an open-minded wish there that the writer would be pleased.

Of all the people to propose a new business model for the comic industry, somehow it ends up being Jim Shooter…? Even stranger, some of his points are surprisingly progressive: Allowing for “dandelioning” (that is, essentially online pirating) of the work, considering it as a loss-leader that will bring new readers to comics, or treating creators of creator-owned work like the book publishing industry treats authors. But then, there’s this:

Here’s a big key: COMPANY OWNED,W4H AND THEREFORE “UNIVERSE” TITLES MUST ALL BE CREATED BY EMPLOYEES ON STAFF. SHARED UNIVERSE WORK INHERENTLY MUST BE CREATED BY AN “ORCHESTRA” OF CREATORS UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF A “CONDUCTOR,” OR EDITOR (WHO IS A WORLD-CLASS VISIONARY).

MAKE ANYONE WHO WORKS ON YOUR UNIVERSE TITLES A WELL-PAID, SALARIED EMPLOYEE WITH BENEFITS AND PERKS WHO WORKS ON YOUR PREMISES.

We’ve had revivals for Flash Gordon, The Phantom and now, another King Features comic strip hero: Mandrake The Magician. This one, however, doesn’t come from Dynamite’s increasing line of classic character series – They’re too busy crossing everyone over in Prophecy – but from Hollywood, which is apparently planning a big screen moment of movie magic for the character:

Warner Bros. is conjuring up Mandrake the Magician, picking up the movie rights to the classic comic strip with Atlas Entertainment producing… Warners now wants to give the character a 21st century makeover, the same way it did for Sherlock Holmes, and is on the hunt for new writers.

I’ve never really gotten into Mandrake; he’s seemed encased in nostalgia and the past to me, pretty much because he hasn’t had the revivals that Flash or the Phantom have (And, to be fair, the Phantom has always seemed curiously old fashioned to me, as well), but I’m curious to see what a Sherlock Holmes-style 21st century makeover actually means, never mind what it could do for the character. Grimy turn of the 19th/20th century magician adventures? I might end up enjoying that quite a bit, really…

Over at Fast Company, tech writer Rob Salkowitz looks at Marvel’s ReEvolution and unpicks the messaging from the actual tech on offer:

The new strategy provides an elegant solution to a number of Marvel’s immediate business problems. It retakes the initiative in the critical digital space and changes the conversation from “What is everyone going to do about DC?” to “What is everyone going to do about Marvel?” It serves the brand interests and the audience self-image of the self-styled “House of Ideas” by coming to market with a big, bold, announcement that changes everything and RAWKS YOUR WORLD! By lobbing this grenade from SXSW, it made a bid for attention in hipster and high-tech circles, the traditional market segments that border the comics niche and represent its most natural sources of new readers.

Beyond the branding benefits – and he’s right that ReEvolution works as an attempt to retake the digital frontier from DC and Archie, something that hadn’t even occurred to me – there’s the problem of the technology, however: (more…)

IDW’s Scott Dunbier drops a teasing little tidbit in his chat with Tom Spurgeon:

[A]t WonderCon we will announce a new Rocketeer mini-series that isn’t an anthology, but one big story. I wish I could tell you the creative team on it but I think people will be pleased with the gentlemen doing it — tune in on Friday to find out who it will be!

I was very nervous about IDW’s Rocketeer Adventures anthology when it was first announced, if only because the characters seemed so tied to creator Dave Stevens that it seemed doomed to failure, but I’ve been really pleasantly surprised with the two series to date. I’m cautiously looking forward to this news.

One exchange in particular stands out from Vaneta’s recent conversation with DC’s John Rood and Bob Wayne:

Nrama: That’s interesting that you’re still printing Justice League #1. With a seventh printing, what does that mean? How many Justice League #1 issues are you selling overall, and can you include digital in that number to give us an idea of how many people have read this issue?

Rood: I know it’s at 400,000.

Nrama: That’s bigger than the numbers we’ve seen from Diamond. That includes digital, right?

Wayne: Yes, but it’s because it’s going through so many printings. That number is where we are across all of our platforms.

Who is buying all of these Justice Leagues? Seven printings and over 400,000 copies? That’s just insane for a book that’s only six months old. I wonder if this book will end up defining the size of the monthly comic audience, or if there are too many completists who must have every printing to screw up any such attempts…

The sales estimates for February Diamond orders are up at ComicChron, and they make for interesting reading – Overall top 300 orders are significantly up on last year, even if publisher diversity is down (It’s not all Marvel double shipping, either, cynics; as John Jackson Miller points out, Dynamite alone have 25 more books charting than usual), making me wonder what exactly is going on in the market these days. I’ve been wondering that since the initial placements and order index was released, and it’s all because of one book: Marvel’s Defenders.

Yes, everyone keeps focusing on either Marvel being shut out of the top 10 for the second month in a row and the fact that Aquaman is outselling Uncanny X-Men, or that Marvel has claimed dollar and unit dominance for the entire top 300 despite that top 10 loss, showing up DC’s crumbling bottom end (Seriously, the Vertigo line is just falling apart, depressingly). But Defenders has gone from a top 10 book to #60 in the chart in just three months, which seems… well, completely crazy, really, right…?

Of course, that initial chart placing was somewhat false. Defenders #1 charted with an estimated 85,969 orders in December, sure, but that was including Marvel’s 50% overship of the issue, making the “true” order number somewhere in the region of 57,313, which would’ve made it a #16 book for that month, not a #8 book. But even so, February saw orders for Defenders #3 of 33,548, a 42% drop just two months later, without any change in creative team or end of storyline. If this rate of attrition doesn’t slow significantly, the title will be in the cancellation zone in another two months.

What seems particularly weird about this is that… well, on paper, Defenders should be doing so much better. It spun out of Fear Itself – Well, as much as anything spun out of Fear Itself – and is written by that title’s writer, Matt Fraction. More than that, it’s Fraction paired with Terry Dodson, and the last time the two worked together was on an Uncanny X-Men run that sold almost twice as many copies as Defenders is managing. Sure, there’s a “It’s X-Men” thing happening here, but Defenders isn’t entirely made up of unknown characters even if Doctor Strange, the Sub-Mariner and Silver Surfer aren’t exactly household names for most of America.

There’s a weird defensive reaction I’ve seen from Marvel fans about Aquaman being in the top 10, which goes along the lines of “It’s one of the publisher’s top creative teams and a character that’s had a profile boost thanks to appearing in crossovers and event books, of course it’s a top 10 book!” But the same thing is true of Defenders – it even had the added benefit of launching out of previews in two of Marvel’s highest shipping titles in recent memory, Fear Itself #7 and Point One – and it’s not faring anywhere near so well. I don’t compare the two to say “Well, clearly Aquaman is awesome and Defenders sucks,” because (a) Defenders doesn’t suck, and (b) quality is never an indicator of sales anyway, as we all know by now. Instead, I bring it up because I’m confused; Defenders should be doing better. Any and all snark aside, I can’t help but feel that the fact that it’s being outsold by Teen Titans or Red Hood and the Outlaws is a sign that the direct market is in a really weird place right now, and a sign of concern for people who want to see something other than the already massive franchises come out of the Big Two.

My favorite thing about that Captain Marvel teaser just released by Marvel? The fact that it is a callback to the last time Marvel brought the character back from the dead (in 2007′s Civil War: The Return), which had the same “yellow starburst on white background” layout:

Here’s the new teaser image for comparison:

I’m curious as to why neither image chose a darker background to make the starburst pop more – or reflect the Captain Marvel outfit. The white background makes me remember the Monica Rambeau Captain Marvel, weirdly enough… although, perhaps, that’s intentional.

We can but hope that this means that whatever the new Captain Marvel reveal turns out to be – We’ll know more after this weekend’s WonderCon announcement – it’ll last longer than that particular revival.

Hey, look! It’s the Before Watchmen solicits for June, courtesy of MTV Geek. To very few people’s surprise, the books are $3.99 each (or digital download combo pack for $4.99, which seems especially greedy in light of Marvel’s new $3.99 for 20 page print comic plus online extras deal), but more surprising is that each one is apparently just 32 pages, which… seems odd, considering that each book not only features a lead story but also a Len Wein/John Higgins back-up. Typo? No ads in any of the books? Shorter stories? Hopefully there’ll be some clarification from DC before too long…

(Also interesting: Only four titles are shipping in June; we’re missing the Ozymandius and Dr. Manhattan books.)

I find myself weirdly on the fence about Marvel’s Re-Evolution announcement, and almost entirely because of the way it was teased and presented, frustratingly enough, as opposed to what it actually was; it’s not a “revolutionary new way of reading comics,” and that’s not a bad thing – Comics read just fine as is – but instead two entirely different ways of using digital content to expand the experience and value of a print comic. Looking at it from that point of view, both the Marvel AR app and Infinite Comic have a lot of potential (Buying a $3.99 20 page comic becomes a lot more palatable when you get a free online comic as well; I wonder how quickly this will quell complaints about Marvel pricing, as well as how quickly DC will follow suit with something similar), and feel like the kind of thing that will drive a lot of sales for Avengers vs. X-Men #1 (I know that I’m much more likely to buy the book now that I get to play with all these toys at the same time).

You can tell that some of the AR stuff is still being worked out; the idea that the AR material could include a “3D Iron Man” flying out of the page or a video of an editor explaining why a key scene is important feels like the audience for these additional features is still uncertain, and I expect to see more of the latter and less of the former as the program develops (And as people start to realize that “a 3D Iron man flying out of the page” isn’t really that much of a bonus, after all). Much more interesting to me are the Infinite Comics, and the format of them; seeing Mark Waid admit that he wasn’t much of a fan of Motion Comics and the like makes me particularly excited that this might not be the latest incarnation of a similar idea (Remember “Dot Comics”?), but something new and worthwhile in its own right.

Overall, I think that this could be the start of something really interesting, if done well. I do worry that, if sales don’t immediately support it, or there’s another round of cost-cutting, this could disappear all too quickly, but for now? This makes me more excited about AvX than any of the teases to date.

Looks like the New 52 books are about to enter into a little bit of creative flux again. DC announced today that Trevor McCarthy is going to take over the art on Batwoman for three issues, with Ed Benes filling in on Detective Comics for four months while Tony Daniels takes a break, presumably meaning that Benes is taking his own break from Red Lanterns, which he’s been happily illustrating since the first issue. The addition of McCarthy to Batwoman expands that title’s artistic rotation past the announced pairing of JH Williams III and Amy Reeder, potentially risking readers who have already been complaining about Williams’ absence after just one issue (He’s now due back on the book with #12), although McCarthy’s style is likely to merge well with Reeder’s, if not with Williams.

Amusingly, DC Editor-in-Chief Bob Harras’ quote in the blogpost makes him sound unconvinced that the two guest artists will be able to match up to the artists they’re replacing, saying that “Both Trevor and Ed are going to have to bring their A-game to maintain those standards.”

Update: On her Facebook page, current Batwoman artist Amy Reeder reveals that the change is fairly recent:

You found out about it pretty much as soon as it went final, too. It’s definitely regrettable…some real creative differences were going on, to the point that it became untenable.

Developing, as the saying goes.

For those complaining about Marvel’s $3.99 pricing, here’s a plus: Starting in June, every $3.99 book will include a digital download code free of charge. In a press release out this morning, David Gabriel explained that “We’re committed to bringing fans the best value in comics. By including codes for free digital copies in all our $3.99 super hero comics, we’re doing just that.”

Interestingly enough, the release also quotes the company’s digital media SVP Peter Philips as saying that “With this next step, fans will soon be able to buy their comics from their favorite retailers but also enjoy them on their mobile devices and tablets, all at no extra charge. Welcome to the Revolution.” Wasn’t “the Revolution” the tagline of Marvel’s Infinite Comics announcement? The plot potentially thickens for Sunday’s announcement…

In related news, Marvel is also making a change to its $2.99 books, all of which will go “self-cover” format (That is, the paper stock of the covers will match the paper stock of the interior pages) as of April.

If there’s one thing you have to give Rick Remender, it’s that he doesn’t like his books to sit still for too long. Not content with turning the Punisher into a Franksteinian monster or making Venom even creepier with a symbiotic relationship with Flash Thompson, he’s also planning to shake things up for his popular Uncanny X-Force title:

After issue #27 there will be a death in the team. There will be a new member and there will almost be a complete reset. A ball-peen hammer is going to come down around issue #27 in a pretty huge and crazy way. If you’ve been a fan of the series so far you’re not going to want to miss this. This was something that I didn’t think would get approved, to be honest. Nick Lowe and I worked on it quite a bit and made sure that it was natural, unpredictable, and was much bigger than ‘The Dark Angel Saga.’ That was a huge challenge too because I went pretty big in that story. I wanted to make sure that if we were going to do another big epic that this thing was an escalation and we definitely have that. I think people will see that by issue #27.

The storyline begins in Uncanny X-Force #25, out in May. But for those – like me – who have particular fondness for Excalibur, you might want to be checking out the current storyline. Just saying…

First Kevin Keller, now Northstar…? If this tease from Marvel is to be believed, Jean-Paul is going to follow the Archie Comics character down the aisle in June (And good thing, too; when was the last mighty Marvel wedding?)…

The always wonderful DC Women Kicking Ass blog had a series of posts yesterday saying goodbye to the post-Crisis Huntress, following the revelation that the current incarnation of the character is, once again, Helena Wayne and not Helena Bertinelli (The timing was chosen to coincide with the final issue of Paul Levitz and Marcus To’s Huntress mini-series). In addition to fans remembering their favorite Helena Bertinelli scenes, the posts also included commentary from Greg Rucka and Gail Simone, who shared her reasons for loving the character:

The charge was often leveled us, when I took over Birds of Prey, that we had added the Huntress to the book to tie in with the television series that had spun off from the book’s previous incarnation. The truth is, it was my idea to bring her in. The show had already flopped, and DC was in no hurry to be more closely affiliated with the series. So they were not thrilled with the idea of bringing Helena aboard.  I made a stern case, aided by a great editor, the fierce Lysa Hawkins, for what Helena would bring to the book; her unpredictability, her untamed nature, her unmatchable will.  All of that stuff was true, but had nothing to do with why I wanted her in the book. The truth is a lot simpler.

She was badass.

Completely, unendingly badass.

The post-Crisis Huntress was a character that I’d never really paid too much attention to, before; she appeared in a lot of books I enjoyed without my realizing it, if that makes sense, and I always attributed that to the creators of said books. But reading through the posts, I found myself realizing that I’ll miss the character as well. Maybe we’ll get to meet the New 52 Helena Bertinelli before too long, somehow…

A quiet confirmation for a fact that many have suspected for awhile: Tom Brevoort addresses the fate of Marvel’s CrossGen revival over at his Formspring, noting that “ROUTE 666 and KISS KISS have been shelved for the time being.”

The two titles, announced at last year’s Fan Expo Canada, had originally been due to launch in December 2011 and February 2012 respectively, but were said to be moved to later in 2012 last November. The “shelving” of the titles should come as little surprise; despite the high quality of books like Ruse and Mystic (The latter of which was possibly my favorite Marvel book of last year, next to Daredevil), the line didn’t fare well in the direct market with the final issue released, Mystic #4, only selling an estimated 6,000 copies in the US.

Todd Allen notices that the subscription page on the new DC Comics website – And, as an aside, am I the only person who’s surprised to see the Avengers vs. X-Men advertising all over the comics internet be replaced over a month before the series launches? – is missing certain titles:

I have a hard time believing this is a cancellation list with Batwing, Stormwatch and Suicide Squad on it.  Likewise, Blue Beetle is on the subscription page and that’s one of the lower selling titles still standing.  It is interesting that Grifter, Stormwatch and Voodoo were all left off the subscription form.  No subscriptions for Wildstorm?

The missing titles are All-Star Western, Batwing, Captain Atom, Deathstroke, Demon Knights, Grifter, I, Vampire, Legion Lost, Resurrection Man, Stormwatch, Suicide Squad and Voodoo. Also missing are the six titles that end next month (obviously) and the six titles that will replace them in May, and all Vertigo titles; clearly, no mature readers would ever want to be mailed their comics…!

Hey, fans of the Marvel movies: Here’s a chance to own a little piece of history – or something relatively close, at least. Marvel Studios will be auctioning off props and costumes from Captain America: The First Avenger, Thor and the two Iron Man movies at next month’s Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo, including Cap’s shield and costume, an Iron Man armor from Iron Man 2 and, perhaps most excitingly, a foam rubber Mjolnir used for stunts in Thor.

Also up for grabs will be a Cosmic Cube, a Red Skull mask and other Marvel ephemera that’ll be sure to make collectors extremely happy, but come on: A foam rubber Mjolnir. Who wouldn’t want one of those to throw around when feeling particularly angry?

Looking at these examples of Salvador Larroca’s use of photo reference (I actually kind of love the “Tony Stark is Josh Holloway” one) makes me wonder two things:

1. Why doesn’t Larroca have nearly a bad a rep as Greg Land for this kind of a thing? Is it that Larroca’s ref is less porny and more appropriate for the stories being told?
2. Am I completely imagining that Marvel had instituted some kind of policy about this kind of thing after the King of Spain threatened legal action over the House of M swipe back in 2005?

That last one might sound like a joke, but I’m serious; I honestly thought that there’d been some kind of official statement about artists’ use of photo reference in light of that whole affair (Short version: Mike Mayhew photoshopped a picture of the King of Spain for a solicit cover of Magneto during the House of M crossover – Seriously, click on the link above and see that you can still see the King’s hairline behind Magneto’s head in the image – and everyone noticed. Marvel substituted the cover on the finished book for something more original), but I can’t find any reference to it online (I did, however, find this lovely little blogpost about computers and photo ref by Stuart Immonen from 2007).

I shouldn’t be too surprised, I guess; Land and Larroca have been popular and successful artists for Marvel in recent years despite/because of heavy use of photo ref, being placed on high-profile books and apparently drawing in readers who don’t care about their art sources or methods as much as the online commenters who find it appalling (Bryan Hitch, too, was another high-profile Marvel artist who relied heavily on photo ref). If the publisher did have a policy against swiping from photos, editors were either unaware of the amount of swiping being done, or were happy to turn a blind eye to it as long as sales kept up and no-one threatened legal action.

I’m ambivalent about photo ref usage; I don’t see a problem with it, as long as it’s not reusing an image without adjustment/artistic input and appropriate to the story being told; Hitch’s usage, say, instead of the orgasmic-no-matter-what women of Greg Land comics. The Larocca image above does seem to be a little too close to its source for my liking, but it’s also a relatively small part of the comic in which is appears, all told. But how much swiping is forgivable?

(Worth linking to: Justice League Dark‘s Mikel Janin on swiping and accidentally doing it from copyrighted images.)

The return of cult series Marshal Law has been teased a couple of times in recent years, with Top Shelf announcing an omnibus that never materialized way back in 2007 and DC Comics being connected to the title last year, but according to co-creator Pat Mills, fans shouldn’t expect any new material anytime in the near future. Talking to CBR about the 35th anniversary of 2000AD, he let the sad news slip out:

[W]ith the prospect of probably never returning to Law — as Kevin [O'Neill, co-creator] is busy on “League [of Extraordinary Gentlemen]” — I do need an outlet for the feelings and values described in Law… [New material] doesn’t look likely, alas. But let’s see what happens when the DC book comes out. You never know, Kevin could be tempted. If he was, I’d for it like a shot.

At least the DC book seems to be progressing, if slowly…