The Dark Knight Rises had its first screening for critics on Friday… Except, well, it didn’t, really:

The computer device that syncs the picture and sound broke about 1 hour into the screening. Junket reporters, local press, and members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association were at the IMAX at the AMC at Citywalk to see the film. A strict no-guest policy with wristbands were issued for entrance. The movie started promptly at 7 PM. But at about 8:15 PM, as a new reel began, the dialogue between Christian Bale and Michael Caine was clearly out of sync - with a full 5- to 10-second lip-flap after lines were spoken. After a few minutes the crowd shouted for a projectionist. The movie was stopped and the lights went up. A 40-year employee of IMAX said that this has never ever happened to him before. After 20 minutes the man came out again and said the sync computer had failed and could not be rebooted.

Critics had to return at 8AM the next morning to try again. The computer failure is unusual, but it’s not unique; the same thing apparently happened to screenings of Prometheus and, yes, The Dark Knight at the same theater previously. Here’s hoping that it doesn’t end up being a common problem when the movie is released a week on Friday.

(For those wondering, advance word from the Saturday screening is very positive, although time will tell if it stays that way; Prometheus also had great early buzz after screenings, as well, remember.)

and what he does is accidentally get caught in Spring Break fever.

Presented as a love letter for Logan, by Jason Latour (Daredevil: Black and White, Loose Ends, and of course, Wolverine) and art by Robbi Rodriguez (Uncanny X-Force, Polly and the Pirates 2, and the upcoming Collider). What starts as a misadventure for Logan as he comes across an old dive he frequents for Bike Week mistakenly during Spring Break, ends with some pretty funny and violent moments. It’s almost like something that would have appeared in Marvel’s Strange Tales.

Completely unauthorized, but absolutely insane, check out the rest of Sping Break Wolverine, but be warned that last page will catch you off guard.

Snikt.

To everyone whose days are currently filled with San Diego Comic-Con thoughts: Maybe you should start thinking about next year’s con already.

Yes, you can already pre-register for SDCC 2013. It never ends.

CBR has a round-table chat with Robert Kirkman, Mark Millar and Steve Niles about creator-owned comics and the industry that’s just filled with interesting stuff, even if I’m not sure I agree with all of the logic. It’s also filled with some wonderfully quotable stuff, like this from Millar:

There are advantages [to work-for-hire] as well, though. I won’t say that I’ll never do company-owned again, even though I make more money from my creator-owned work. The best payday I think anyone has had from corporate comics for the past ten years was “Civil War.” Steve [McNiven] and I made a lot of money on that, but what Leinil Yu and I made from “Superior” was more. It’s financially so much smarter to do creator-owned, but sometimes it’s just fun to write those classic characters. Sometimes you write something not for money but just because you love it. So I don’t view this as a kind of “them versus us.” I have a much more holistic approach to it, and right now, I’m doing work where I just want to do creator-owned stuff, and for the next year at least I’ll be doing that. But I won’t rule out more company-owned stuff in the future. I loved writing “Ultimates” and “Civil War” and “Old Man Logan.” There’s a buzz to it.

I like the Marvel and DC guys, so I don’t want to do any name calling. But I don’t like them so much that I’d create a character for them. [Laughter]

In related news, Dear Marvel and DC: This might be a good time to reconsider your creator participation policies. Now that people are actually laughing about the fact that they won’t come up with new characters for you and all, I mean…

If you’ve been waiting for more information about Grant Morrison’s long-coming (It’s been promised since 2008) Multiversity, well, hold onto your hats. Morrison talked about the project during an appearance at the recent Glasgow Comic Con with Frank Quitely, and beans were in fact spilled. Laura Sneddon got a lot of what was said:

[I]t’s a nine issue series that reintroduces the whole concept of the DC multiverse but in a way that, I went back to the roots – I read those first Flash stories where the Flash is reading comics about the old Flash. I thought wouldn’t it be great to have all these worlds communicate between one another using comics that are published in each different reality which happen to be the stories of all the other realities. So the whole thing, I made up seven different comic companies and [laughs] the whole thing cross refers, and a big immense god-like[?] menace in it… [T]here’s all kinds of stuff like the Nazi Justice League and all these other cool guys, and there’s a kind of 90s version of Justice League where all these characters have grown up with nothing to do because the Earth, they fixed it so they have battle re-enactments… and sit around just reading magazines like Heat [laughs]. So there’s a bunch of different worlds, and they’re all completely unlike one another, but they each collaborate and then the story comes together. So, it’s a bit of a puzzle box but if it works it should be pretty good fun.

The story will start with Pax Americana, his Carlton characters collaboration with Quitely. He describes it as an update on the formalism demonstrated in Watchmen: “Stuff like, where they had a nine panel structure, we’ve got this 8 panel grid and it’s based on the musical harmonics and it’s all to do with DC, and this ringing frequency… We worked all this stuff out for the deep symbol structure of it and built this up and I’m really excited by this, it’s all grids, it’s like a mathematical puzzle and time is represented in many different ways, so it’s really kinda exciting.” Pax Americana will be followed by other titles, Morrison explained, including Society of Superheroes (SOS), The Just, Thunder World and Master Men, which is apparently set on the world of the Nazi Superman from Final Crisis.

I cannot tell you how excited I am for this.

With this film, the last in his Dark Knight trilogy, Nolan completes the story arc he commenced with 2005’s “Batman Begins.” He recalls, “We were all very excited to bring this tale full circle; that was our chief inspiration for returning to Gotham. We also felt a tremendous sense of responsibility to fulfill expectations based on the first two movies while giving the audience something they hadn’t seen before. It was a tricky balance.”

What’s that, you say? You’d like to read the Production Notes from The Dark Knight Rises for yourself? Oh, okay – Look at the far right of the menu here, then. Be warned: There’re a lot of spoilers in there.

This is fascinating, and well worth your time to go through; Daniel Best discovers (and shares) court papers detailing the (rejected) deal DC Comics offered Laura Siegel Larson, Jerry Siegel’s widow, over ownership and renumeration for Superman, and it’s… impressive, at least to my eyes:

In recent times DC has merely hinted about the amounts of money that Laura Siegel stands to gain for settling the suit and signing with them.  The hints have always been in the wording of ‘tens of millions of dollars’, but finally DC have announced the amount that is sitting aside for her.  Buried in a footnote to a line about accounting and reservation of amounts due, DC have stated that, “…the record fact remains that a reserve was set; it totals more than $20 million, and the funds will be paid to Larson if this Court enforces the 2001 agreement. Larson gets all of this money, though Marks may have a claim to 5%; only Toberoff loses his improperly obtained 40% (or more) cut.”  Thus the actual amount is still yet to be revealed, but that equates to roughly $2,000,000 per year since the accounting period began in 2001.  That’s a lot of money for anyone to turn their back on and when you consider that the deal included such benefits as health insurance – a brilliant carrot to dangle in the USA – then it would give people pause and have them ask, what exactly was wrong with the deal in the first place.

What’s wrong, of course, is that Superman is presumably worth significantly more than that if Larson actually owned (or co-owned) the character. But still; it’s not a bad offer, exactly – $2 million per year plus health insurance? That’s nothing to be sneezed at – and there’s something interesting to me in the fact that DC apparently still has that money on-hand somewhere, as if it’s still waiting for the offer to be accepted. Whether or not it’s enough raises the question of how much is enough, and that I really can’t find myself able to answer.

(Via.)

Congratulations, webhead:

Sony Pictures’ superhero reboot  The Amazing Spider-Man opened with $35M Tuesday. (Of that $35M, IMAX took in $4 million.) It easily set a new domestic record for a Tuesday opening – helped by its 3D premium pricing – and is ahead of the original 2D Transformers ($27.8M) that debuted on Tuesday July 3rd, 2007. ”That is one huge number,” a Sony exec gushed to me last night. “Unbelievable start to what should be a very exciting 6 days.”

The reviews have been mostly positive, and Cinemascore reports suggest that the word-of-mouth about the movie is very good. Is the movie going to upend low expectations and become a smash to rival The Avengers…?

And everyone else, too; it just means something else over here…

Happy Independence Day, United States of America.

Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.

Are some comics so good that they make other, really-good-but-not-as-good comics seem dull by comparison? iFanboy’s Mike Romo worries about that very topic:

As I fell off of Resurrection Man and other titles, I was also scrapping pretty much all of my Marvel books as well.  I liked my Batman books, I hung in there with Action Comics, The Flash and Justice League, but that was about it, and much of that was really kind of out of habit. I really felt, gentle reader, that I was falling out of love with comics, just a little bit.Then Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ Saga happened. Now, I know that this is not a book for everyone and I am sure there are problems with the book, but, issue after issue, I know that I have not fallen out of love with comics — I am just loathe to put up with comics that are not fantastic.  I had a similar experience reading Darwyn Cooke’s Before Watchmen: Minutemen and Cooke and Amanda Conner’s Before Watchmen: Silk Spectre. These were the kinds of comics I wanted to read, created by artists and writers who I trust, who have been amazing in the past and continue to be amazing in that particular way that my heart and brain react to with happiness and joy.

This is a good thing yet also not a good thing, I realize. It makes no sense to limit my exposure to new creators and titles — I might miss out on future Cookes and Conners and Vaughan.  I don’t want to be stodgy and be one of those old guys who only talks about the great stories and characters of the past, but here I am, basically wrapping up my legs in a blanket after taking two minutes to settle down into a rocking chair, ready to yell at the kids playing near my lawn.

Later in the same piece, he asks “Is this stagnation or is this taste?  Is It the cool comfort of being able to consummate professionals or the tyranny of habit?” before deciding “Probably a combination of both, but one thing is for sure: once you get comfy, it’s really hard to get out of that rocking chair, and with comic book prices as high as they are, it seems almost reasonable to go back to the old days, where buying 2-3 comics a month, 2-3 comics that you really liked, was the perfect amount.”

I have to admit, the idea of just staying with that which you know you love, and cutting lesser projects that are only “good enough” doesn’t seem like a bad idea to me – the problem comes when you stop trying new things, to see if you could like them just as much, surely…?

Well, this was just heartbreaking, in its own way. Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld co-creator Dan Mishkin on the character’s resurrection at DC:

It doesn’t feel great. It doesn’t feel great to see our characters handled in ways that don’t seem true to what we were intending to do. I’ve really been trying to adopt a “don’t hate the player, hate the game” approach, and I don’t even hate the game! I can be unhappy about it; I can be disappointed. It’s never been a thrill to have a writer say to me, “I would love to write Amethyst,” or “I would love to write Blue Devil,” as if I must be dead or something. I would like to write them too — in fact, I created them! But this is the business. I shudder to think what my attitude was when I was first writing comics and working on characters created by other people with this cavalier assumption that I knew better than anyone what this character was all about. The difference with Gary and me is we moved very quickly to creating our own stuff because there was that moment in the early ’80s when DC was open to that.

Would I like to be writing “Amethyst?” Sure. Would I like DC, if they’re going to do this character they’ve announced, to do it with a completely new concept that doesn’t trade on stuff Gary and Ernie and I created? Sure. But that’s not going to happen. I would even say that this new Amethyst might be pretty successful; in fact I imagine that it will. I’ve enjoyed some of Christy Marx’s stuff, I remember years ago really liking “Sisterhood Of Steel,” I really like Aaron Lopresti’s art, so I think they are going to be successful.

I also think what they’re setting out to do isn’t worth doing. My understanding is going to be this is going to be a seventeen-year-old Amy Winston who discovers that she’s Amethyst and that she’s had a pretty rough life in those seventeen years. You can do that, and because of the rules of the game you can even call it Amethyst. But to say that it’s essentially the same as what we did — I’m sorry, I just don’t think that’s true, because essentially what we did was a story about being on the cusp of adolescence and discovering what the moral choices of adulthood are going to be. You don’t do that at seventeen; you do that at twelve or thirteen.

It’s a great, great piece and well-worth reading.

For those who haven’t seen the news about the Entertainment Weekly piece yet, Marvel has spilled the beans about its much-discussed post-Avengers Vs. X-Men plans. Under the umbrella branding “Marvel NOW!” the publisher will launch at least one new series every week from October through February 2013, including a new X-Men series by Brian Michael Bendis and Stuart Immonen in which the original X-Men time-travel to the present day, a bi-weekly Avengers series by Jonathan Hickman and Jerome Opena and Uncanny Avengers by Rick Remender and John Cassaday, a series that mashes-up the Avengers and X-Men teams. Some random first impressions:

1. Uncanny Avengers sounds like that joke that people started making, back when Thunderbolts was announced as about to be retitled Dark Avengers. “One day, Marvel will have a book called X-Avengers that’ll just mix their two biggest franchises, it’s the only thing they haven’t done,” cynics laughed. Well, at least they got the title wrong.
2. Uncanny Avengers also shows that the old Marvel team-up formula still has it: Heroes meet, have a misunderstanding, fight, and then team-up to take on the bad guys. There’s something to be appreciated about that classicism, don’t you think?
3. Bendis’ X-Men series sounds… odd. It sounds like a mini-series, doesn’t it? Or something with a finite end, because (a) you can’t just keep characters from the past in their future indefinitely – Something that Marvel seemingly attempted and then abandoned with its ill-fated Captain Marvel relaunch in Civil War – and (b) you quickly run out of reason for this plot device outside of “Oh, they are horrified by what has happened to their world,” surely? Factor in that four of those five characters already exist in the Marvel Universe, and this seems like a weirdly convoluted way to bring Jean Grey back and also keep her dead. On the plus side, at least they’re not calling it X-Factor this time (Well, that title is taken, I guess).
4. I wonder if Hickman’s new series means that Avengers and New Avengers will be cancelled and folded into one title? What about Avengers Assemble? Or, for that matter, Secret Avengers and Avengers Academy? Surely we wouldn’t end up with six ongoing Avengers books, one of them bi-weekly, would we?
5. One new series every week for five months suggests that Marvel took all of the complaints about DC’s New 52 overwhelming retailers, readers and the market as a whole to heart. I hope it works out for them; it’s a smart move.
6. That’s a lot of new titles. Assuming that not every current book will get relaunched along the way – Will Amazing Spider-Man really turn in 700 issues for another renumbering? Really? (Mind you, #700 could be one of those big dramatic end points that leads to a relaunch the following month) – we may as well all start our speculation engines as to what all-new series we’ll get in the next few months.
7. I can’t believe, considering the publicity that Astonishing X-Men‘s wedding got, that Northstar won’t be up for a solo book during this cycle. If Gambit and Hawkeye can carry one, then surely Northstar could…
8. Launching at least four new series every month for five months is a great way of continually pushing to dominate the news cycle, isn’t it? Well done for that.
9. “Marvel NOW!” is a pretty lousy branding for the event. It sounds like a convention panel – DC even has “DC NOW!” at SDCC this year, doesn’t it? – more than a publishing event, and makes no sense: Considering that Marvel has always prided itself on its contemporary nature, they’ve always been NOW!. What makes this NOW! any more important than previous NOW!s?

If you were anywhere near social media yesterday you couldn’t have failed to hear about MonkeyBrain Comics, the new (digital) comics publisher co-owned by Chris Roberson and Allison Baker; considering the first day after the publisher’s announcement was so dramatically succesful that the publisher became trending on Twitter and demand became so vocal that the first wave of titles was released two days early in order to meet it, it’s not really something that you could’ve easily missed.

You can learn more about the first wave here – I recommend them all, but have to single out Edison Rex, Bandette and Amelia Cole and the Unknown World as favorites right now – with sample pages and other information available, as well as links to ComiXology to download them; priced at either 99 cents of $1.99, they’re a ridiculous deal. As someone pointed out on Twitter last night, you can buy the entire launch line for $5.95, which is pretty great value for money, really. If the future is both digital and creator-owned – and, given the way the industry has been going for the last few months, I think it is – then this feels like an important step in that direction.

Well, this certainly seems like the start of something. As Rich Johnston points out, Jim Starlin shares an early image of Thanos on Facebook, and goes out of his way to point out (twice) that the character existed before he went to Marvel:

This is probably one of the first concept drawings of Thanos I ever did, long before I started working at Marvel. Jack Kirby’s Metron is clearly the more dominant influence in this character’s look. Not Darkseid. Both D and T started off much smaller than they eventually became. This was one of the drawings I had in my portfolio when I was hired by Marvel. It was later inked by Rich Buckler.

Legal Eagles, does this mean that Starlin has a claim to ownership (or part-ownership) of the character? He clearly wasn’t created as work for hire. And if so, what could this mean for Marvel’s future plans for the character within Avengers movies and the comic Marvel Universe…?

I’ve known the fellows behind the Sarcastic Voyage podcast for a couple of eons in online friendship time, and they’re currently transitioning from beloved local favorites to bona fide Internet superstars due to one of their videos, featuring Puppet Alan Moore and Puppet Neil Gaiman debating Before Watchmen. It’s even gotten the approval attention of Gaiman himself, and if you haven’t seen it yet, here it is!

Here’s some behind-the-scenes insight, as gleaned from one of the co-creators after I noted that Alan Moore’s name is, in fact, in the Before Watchmen credits: The Dr. Manhattan comic used in the video is, of course, a prop (the comic isn’t out yet); specifically, an “old Archie comic with a fake cover glued on.” Which brings to mind all sorts of enticing and regrettably fictional Archie/Alan Moore crossovers: “Dilton Doesn’t Socialize.” “V for Veronica.” “The Ballad of Jughead Jones.” Feel free to add your own in the comments!

The original Puppet Alan & Puppet Neil video (also Watchmen-themed) and the newest installment are both after the jump; and the Sarcastic Voyage family of podcast(s) can be found here, before the hosts are metaphorically buried under the weight of their own fame and excess.

(more…)

Should we be expecting a new Black Panther series from Marvel soon? During Jonathan Hickman’s “commentary” on the most recent issue of Avengers Vs. X-Men, he has this to say about the character:

Yeah, the Panther is a great character and I am going to do a bit more with him. He’s a secret city, science king, so — kind of right in my wheel house.

Over on his Formspring, editor Tom Brevoort confirms that there’s “more Panther-related stuff on the horizon.” Neither talks about a new series, so perhaps we’re just looking at the character being added to whatever book Hickman is writing post-AvX. Maybe this adds some credibility to the “Hickman on Avengers” rumor, considering the history T’Challa has with that team…

Update, 7/6: The Marc Webb-directed Amazing Spider-Man netted the second-highest Fourth of July in box office history, Deadline reports, leading to a likely better-than-estimated six-day total. Box Office Mojo lists the Spidey reboot at a current domestic total of $58.4 million, which they say is on track for a $140 million stretch over the film’s first six days, which is above Sony’s forecast of $110-$120m in that period — which puts it well below the six-day take of 2004′s Spider-Man 2 and 2007′s Spider-Man 3, but close to the $144 million made in six days by the original Spider-Man film in 2002.

Update, 7/3: Amazing Spider-Man had an impressive midnight opening last night, making $7.5 million according to Deadline. Though that’s well short of the $18.7 million earned by Avengers midnight showings earlier this year (or the record $43.5 million made last year by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2), as the article notes, it’s consistent with major earners like Iron Man 2, Pirates Of The Caribbean 2 and Spider-Man 3.

Original story: So much for my fears about the ol’ Parker Luck. Deadline reports:

Sources are telling me that Sony Pictures‘ The Amazing Spider-Man swept the Asian box office this weekend as the much-anticipated actioner opened early in a handful of international territories… In its first weekend of release, The Amazing Spider-Man grossed an estimated $50.2 million in 13 overseas markets in Asia while Europe remains under the influence of the Euro Cup football championships until tonight, with school vacations in full effect starting tomorrow.

KOREA earned $13.4M on 1,213 screens, capturing a 71% market share. The KW15.8B total for Thursday to Sunday is the 3rd biggest of all time for a Hollywood film, behind only the 2nd and 3rd Transformers films. This is 24% bigger than Spider-Man 3 and 10% more than Avengers… INDIA grossed $6.0M on 1,236 screens, the biggest opening ever for a Hollywood film, 74% bigger than Spider-Man 3, 73% more than Avengers, and more than double the lifetime box office of The Dark Knight.

It’ll be fascinating to see if it manages to have similar success here in the States. Just imagine a superhero movie even bigger than Avengers…

Trawling around Marvel’s trademark listings, Torsten Adair finds something of possible interest:

This is interesting!  Usually, Marvel just registers a name.  [The Strikeforce Morituri] logo was filed on August 9, 2011, for what seems to be a media logo… There are nine listings for “MORITURI” in the PTO database.  Two have been registered (4145694 ; 4142825).  They are the logo and the name, for electronic comics publications.

Ever since Marvel rush-released three volumes of the collected series in a matter of months (Three trades in six months), I’ve been convinced that something was going to be announced regarding Carl Potts, Peter B. Gillis and Brent Anderson’s 1980s superhero sci-fi series. Perhaps we’ll get an announcement at SDCC…