Female Super Hero Fan Film from Jesse V. Johnson on Vimeo.

I asked this on Twitter yesterday in light of the online buzz for Jesse V. Johnson’s Wonder Woman demo reel – I’m sorry, “Female Super Hero Fan Film” – but, what’s with the whole “Wonder Woman Vs. The Nazis” thing? I know that she is a product of the Golden Age and all, but it feels as if the character is seen as a period piece by non-comic-readers more often than not – The 1970s TV show was set in WWII, Joss Whedon’s mythical unmade movie was set in WWII, and now this demo reel. I don’t get it, to be honest. What’s with the seeming reluctance to allow Wonder Woman to be contemporary?

Twitter response included the suggestion that Nazis simply made the best villains for such a powerful character, but I’m not sure that I buy that – Otherwise, why don’t we see more Superman in WWII stories? For some reason, Wonder Woman – a character whose “stranger in a strange land” concept, mixed with the mythological aspects and the feminist angle, would seem to offer an amazing amount of material in any time period – feels oddly trapped in the past. Hey, DC Entertainment: You should really work on breaking this surreal preconception of the character.

Spoilers for this week’s Uncanny Avengers #4 follow.

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If you have, somehow, managed to avoid spoilers for this week’s issue of Batman, Incorporated #8 – Whether by avoiding the New York Post story, the heavy online coverage (Yes, including this site) of the major event in the issue, the regular shipping cover of the book or the Channel 52 back-up strip in every single New 52 book released this week – then there’s just one more thing you might want to do before sitting down to actually read the comic itself: Avoid DC’s own website.

Spoilers for those who are somehow unspoiled, if you click through.

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Definitely not relating to any comic released today, at all, MTVGeek’s Valerie Gallaher finds herself asking Killing Kids in Comic Books: Acceptable or Tasteless?:

After observing the comics community for the last decade, it has been increasingly clear to me that as the level of violence — against children and otherwise — gets “amped up” in comics, many dedicated fans become deeply defensive about anyone criticizing it. Other fans do get upset over the violence in general, and wonder if comics “are for kids anymore” (answer: probably still in the true mainstream, but mostly not in superhero-land). It is a complicated issue, and I am not saying one side is right, or one side is wrong.

It’s an important, if somewhat uncomfortable, question, and one that raised other, similarly uncomfortable, questions (If killing kids isn’t the stuff of entertainment, then what is the right age where such deaths become acceptable?). It reminds me of my surprising-to-me squeamishness over the Punisher post-Newtown, something that I’m still unsure about: Am I being too sensitive to pop culture, or is there actually a problem with that character’s portrayal in the current social climate?

On the same day that Before Watchmen: Doctor Manhattan #4 gives a glimpse at what happened After Watchmen, maybe we should remember that others have teased alternative possibilities for Manhattan’s Life After Alan Moore:

It took less than a year before Alan Moore and David Gibbons’ Watchmen was first mentioned in the pages of a story set in the DCU. In 1988′s The Question #17, Denny O’Neil and Denys Cowan had shown Vic Sage reading a copy of the graphic novel and pondering Rorschach’s psychopathic approach to problem solving. Yet the first, and perhaps only, crossover between Moore and Gibbon’s Charlton analogues and the DCU appeared in the little-known and repeatedly delightful Hero Hotline, a 1989 mini-series which featured a team of minor-league super-people working for hire in order to pay their everyday bills.

Spoiler: It’s not even a true cameo, but it may give those in charge at DC some ideas…

Diamond has just released a new video designed to promote this year’s Free Comic Book Day – May 4, for those who haven’t already memorized the date – and it’s… Well, it’s somewhat confusing, to be honest.

It’s not that it’s a bad video, per se – But I can’t quite tell what the point of it is, or who it’s actually aimed at. It features lots of comic creators (and publishing executives – How often do you actually see Dark Horse’s Mike Richardson appear in something like this?) say the words “Free Comic Book Day” before they talk about their love of free comic books and/or mention the date and suggest you visit your local comic book store, but… Aren’t the only people who would recognize these people the audience who is already aware of Free Comic Book Day and therefore not likely to need this kind of online outreach?

You would think, perhaps, that a FCBD trailer of this sort would be better aimed at new or lapsed readers – You know, the sorts of people that Free Comic Book Day was originally created to attract. But this video fails entirely for that audience; the captions don’t attempt to explain who each talking head is, and capitalize on whatever brand name recognition is available (“Kieron Gillen, writer of Iron Man” would surely be something that would grab the attention of non-comic readers than simply “Kieron Gillen,” after all. Sorry, Kieron). Even more confoundingly, there are no women in the video at all – or, for that matter, men under the mid-30s age-range. Shouldn’t this kind of thing attempt to be at least a little bit more inclusive…?

Perhaps I’m racing to judgment; for all I know, Diamond has another video (or videos) up its sleeve featuring female creators that will be released soon, and plans to promote the celebrity endorsements for FCBD that are already online. I hope so; Free Comic Book Day is a pretty great form of outreach for the industry. It’d be sad to see it the bulk of its promotion ending up aimed at the audience that’s already planning to show up for the free swag.

Good news from ComicsPRO, it seems:

At the ComicsPRO meeting this past weekend, Marvel SVP David Gabriel told retailers that we would be seeing the return of the What If? title to Marvel Comics.

I’m a big fan of the What If? series (and general concept; it’s not as if it’s something unique to Marvel, after all), and would love to see it return as an ongoing series for the publisher – One of the problems that I’ve had with its previous incarnation as a semi-annual mini-series format is that a lot of the really fun stories came from the less-obvious story suggestions, and not the “What If This Big Event Had Gone Slightly Differently?” ones. Bring it back as an ongoing anthology and let all manner of creators go wild with the concept. If nothing else, we’ll likely get an awesome trade out of the experience…

And say hello to your cast for NBC’s pilot adaptation of Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt’s The Sixth Gun: Deadline is reporting that Laura Ramsey has been cast as Becky Moncreiff in the upcoming television incarnation of the awesome series, with Deadwood‘s W. Earl Brown, The Hobbit and 24 alumn Graham McTavish and Leverage‘s wonderful Aldis Hodge also signing on for the show (as General Hume, Silas Hedgepeth and Agent Mercer, respectively). The pilot is being produced by Carlton Cuse of Lost fame, and I am ridiculously excited for this. Please, please let it be picked up by NBC.

iFanboy’s Jim Mroczkowski considers the wonders and dangers of the digital comics store:

If you browse just some of what’s available out there now, poring through the infinite back issue bin of the Internet, it will only be a matter of minutes before you find yourself at the bottom of the world’s most expensive rabbit hole. That run of JLA by Chris Claremont and John Byrne is out there. Defenders issues from 1975 are out there. You could read the original run of New Mutants this afternoon and wash it down with Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, the Ultimate book that time forgot. I opened up comiXology and started poking around for examples half an hour ago, and now I owe them $11,000.

Speaking as someone who’s gone from “Oh, I remember those Green Lanterns by Len Wein and Dave Gibbons from when I was a kid!” to “Why did I just buy all of them, oh God” in seconds, I know exactly where Jim is coming from. There are certain series I very purposefully don’t even look up on ComiXology, purely because I know it would bankrupt me.

Rich Johnston notices that DC has apparently applied for a new Trademark for “Infinite Crisis” in the following categories:

Printed matter and paper goods, namely, books featuring characters from animated, action adventure, comedy and/or drama features, comic books, graphic novels, magazines featuring characters from animated, action adventure, comedy and/or drama features

Downloadable publications in the nature of books featuring characters from animated, action adventure, comedy and/or drama features, comic books, graphic novels, magazines featuring characters from animated, action adventure, comedy and/or drama features

Rich suggests that perhaps it’s a new video game project, or pre-emptive protection of the “Infinite” idea ahead of Marvel’s teased Infinity project (Although Marvel would surely be able to go ahead with that, especially considering their use of Infinity Gauntlet, Infinity War, Infinity Crusade and Warlock and the Infinity Gems as titles almost 20 years ago now? They have prior standing, being my point). I suspect that we might be looking at the possibility of an Infinite Crisis animated movie adaptation, considering the repeated mention of animated projects… But what do you think?

Pádraig Ó Méalóid continues his look at the history of Marvelman over at the Beat, and in the process, makes the character seem somehow even more of a daunting process to revive for any new creators:

Marvelman and Young Marvelman had run for 346 issues each and, between the three Marvelman titles, there had been a total of 722 comics published in all. There had also been 19 annuals between 1954 and 1963, as well as at least three ‘Magic Ink’ colouring books during the mid-fifties. I believe there may have been other merchandise too, like costumes and games, but I’ve never actually seen any. They were probably the most successful comics to come out of that time. In a country whose comics’ readers generally didn’t have any time for superheroes, the Marvelman titles were a notable exception, and have the distinction of being the longest-running British superhero strips.

I keep wondering when/if Marvel is actually going to do something with Marvelman. It’s been, what, four years since the character was purchased by the publisher and they’ve still not really done anything with him beyond some reprints of the earliest material. Doesn’t the longer wait mean even more expectation of what’ll eventually appear…?

Why, yes; Jim Rugg’s Supermag really does look entirely my kind of thing, thank you very much:

SUPERMAG is Jim Rugg’s latest print project… a glossy, magazine-format collection of “narrative collapse.” It showcases his interests in genre, irreverent humor, graphic design, drawing, and typography. SUPERMAG features new work as well as collecting the best of his recent anthology contributions.

There’s a PDF Preview on that page, and interested parties should take a peek; it looks really good. Between Street Angel, The Plain JANES and Afrodisiac, I’m definitely a fan of Rugg’s work – This looks to be something that lets him play beyond the confines of those projects, though, and I’m very excited to see what that ends up like.

As anyone who’s read this week’s Avengers – or just seen the previews for the next issue, for that matter – already knows, the New Universe is seemingly coming back to Marvel, and colliding with the Marvel Universe as we know it. That made me wonder… When you add that concept to the fact that New Avengers is toying with the idea of the collapse of the multiverse and that we have a rumor about the end of the Ultimate Universe… Is it that ridiculous to imagine the best of the Ultimate line somehow becoming embedded within the regular Marvel U in the near future? Could the mysterious Infinity event – which would seem to be about the fate of the Infinity Gems or the energies therein – turn out to herald the creation of a Marvel Singularity of sorts, when it comes to fictional universes, creating one that contains the Greatest Hits of all of them?

So, what to make of the new Vertigo plans announced yesterday for OGNs for both Fairest and The Unwritten, in addition to their ongoing series? It was something that was both surprising – Neither series has seemed a success the size of Fables or Sandman, say – and unsurprising (Both Fables and Sandman have gone the “additional OGNs in parallel with the regular series” route before for the imprint) at once. It was, if nothing else, a sign of movement and life for the imprint in a week where the final issue of Hellblazer shipped and sounded something similar to a death knell – A really bad cough, perhaps, or an unfortunate operation – for many. I wonder whether it also was a sign of things to come. Given the relative lack of success of Vertigo’s single issues in the Direct Market, could the imprint move to a direct-to-OGN format overall and still succeed with its target audience…?

Matt Fraction considers the art of writing a comic:

i think every writer has to find how they write their scripts, and they have to find how they write their scripts for their artist. these are two wildly different things. Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman are the best thing to happen to comics writing and the worst things to happen to comics writers because their styles of script writing, so legendary as to become apocryphal and for the longest time the only printed examples of comics scripts one could find, made generations of kids write terrible sub-Alan Moore and terrible sub-Neil Gaiman scripts. The lesson is, of course, don’t write like Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman; write until you figure out how to write like you.The only way i’ve found to know how many pages a scene needs is to write until it’s right. That’s why i tend to start with lists, working like very loose outlines.  it gives me a rough breakdown of the mission each page has in the greater whole but keeps things loose enough that i can reshuffle and rework quickly.

More at the link.

If there is one thing out of the many that can be said about Jack Kirby, it could be that he was ahead of his time.

Earlier today, Buzzfeed showed off the lost Kirby art that was going to be “used” for the fake movie “Argo”, and is it intense and obviously Kirby. The heavy inks and broad lines that are distinctive to the Kirby style, but the intricacies of just everything is astounding. You can tell some of his comic work snuck in with the Celestials and Galactus lookalikes.

With this found art, it just shows  that even thirty-something years later, Kirby is still upping the game for artists and creators today.

Padraig O Mealoid continues his History of Marvelman series, with an episode about the somewhat surreal genesis of the character:

Mick Anglo says that he went back to Gower Street and thought about it, and decided that what they needed to do was create a British copy of Captain Marvel to step into his shoes, and to carry on instead of him. The character Anglo suggested to take Captain Marvel’s place was virtually a carbon copy of him. The name Billy Batson was turned into Mickey Moran, with Moran becoming a young copy boy for the Daily Bugle newspaper, as opposed to Batson’s position as a reporter for Radio Whiz; the costume was changed from red to blue, and the cloak was done away with; the dark hair became blonde; the magic word SHAZAM!, given to Batson by the wizard Shazam, was replaced by the word KIMOTA! – a slightly altered back-spelling of the word ATOMIC – given to Moran by Astro-physicist Guntag Barghelt. All that was needed was a name.

Even more amusing is the way in which the character was introduced to readers, but I’ll leave that one for the article itself to tell you. Go, read.

Between Justice League of America and Justice League of America’s Vibe, today may seem like the day where Geoff Johns single-handledly – Well, Andrew Kreisberg does co-write Vibe, I guess – tries to wrangle New 52 continuity into some kind of order. I won’t spoil either book for those who haven’t read them yet (Which, considering the time on the West Coast, probably means “a lot of people”), but there are references to hanging plot threads from the first arc of Justice League – which connects to Earth 2, for those who’ve been paying attention - in Vibe, and the Justice League International Annual in Justice League of America, that are particularly welcome for those who’ve slowly been becoming convinced that multiple someones had quietly forgotten about things that seemed like quite a big deal at the time. Between this and the recent mention in the solicitations of Trinity War preludes (Again, down to Geoff Johns), it’s almost as if DC is getting its equilibrium back, at least in terms of continuity and cohesive universe-building.

The question is, perhaps, is this too little too late? We’re almost a year out from the first tease/announcement of Trinity War, and almost two years from Pandora’s first appearance. Unlike Marvel, which rushes through events far faster – unless they’re Age of Ultron, admittedly – the slow drip of DC’s uber-story, whatever that may be, feels glacial, almost unbelievably scattered and worryingly familiar (Brother I again? The trinity fighting again?), all of which could be reasons for readers to jump ship. Now that we’ve had almost two years of New 52 with its stuttering momentum and quick deaths for all manner of titles, creative runs and ideas, does the concept of One Grand Plan at the publisher still have any appeal left – or, for that matter, any real credibility?

For those wondering when we’ll get to see some the current fractured X-Men alliances come crashing down around everyone’s ears and reach some kind of climax… This year, it seems. Here’s Brian Michael Bendis from CBR:

To this day, I think Logan has mixed feelings at best about the whole thing. A lot of that is going to be dealt with right away in the pages of “All-New” and “Uncanny” and “Wolverine and the X-Men.” Things will be coming to a head for our 50th anniversary plans.

I’m fighting cynicism on this one; on the one hand, if we see some resolution on this thread this year, I’ll be happily surprised at the speed with which it all happened and got tied up (Well, as much as anything in the X-Men books gets tied up). On the other, part of me is unsurprised to see the franchise hitting its now-traditional “Well, it’s been a year, time to pretend to change everything” reinvention. Is wanting a status to remain quo for more than twelve months old-fashioned these days, or something…?

And so, not only do we now know the new Green Lantern creative teams, we also know that there’ll be a fifth book joining the family as Keith Giffen and Scott Kolins’ Larfreeze strip graduates from Threshold into its own book – which raises the question, will Threshold get a new second strip, or become a $2.99, 20-page title instead?

That Larfreeze is graduating from back-up to solo title is important, in an odd way; I think it’s the first time that a back-up has done that since the launch of the New 52, and points to a new way for the publisher to try out new series/new characters without committing to an ongoing series off the bat. I’ve been surprised for awhile that we don’t see more of this kind of thing from DC; the second strip format is a great proof of concept for a series, and also potentially a more interesting use of the format than what has been done with it so far, especially in the anthology titles like GI Combat, Sword of Sorcery and Men of War.

Then again, I’m the guy who’s been quietly wishing that Green Lantern Corps would go to $3.99/two strips for some time, so we could get a return of the old Tales of The Green Lantern Corps back-up shorts, so what do I know…?