In spite of reports earlier in the year that Dynamite Entertainment plans to begin publishing Flash Gordon comics soon, Ardden Entertainment, whose Flash Gordon: The Mercy Wars was widely praised a couple of years ago, has maintained that they plan to follow up on that story in the fall. By way of evidence, series writer Brendan Deneen provided Newsarama with a first look at artist Eduardo Garcia’s pair of variant covers to Flash Gordon: Invasion of the Red Sword. The accompanying press release (below) also indicates that Garcia is committed to two more miniseries after this one–Flash Gordon: The Vengeance of Ming and Flash Gordon: King of the Impossible, which are meant to help get Ardden’s flagship franchise back on its feet after some time off.

Having enjoyed the first mini and really, really dug the hardcover I picked up at New York Comic Con last year, I’m looking forward to where they take the character next. Like so many mid-level publishers, their biggest problem now (as evidenced by both Flash Gordon and Casper & the Spectrals) isn’t the quality of Ardden’s catalog, creators or output–which have all impressed–but the reliability of their publishing schedule. Announcing not one but three miniseries is a bold step in the right direction, especially if they can keep the books on track for the duration of their run. (more…)

This week’s Savage Dragon #162 gives readers not only a look into the way the world is reacting to Savage Dragon’s sudden turn to evil (through the eyes of OverLord, the Deadly Duo and the police force) but also the first (very, very vague) hint that cracks may be starting to form in Emperor Kurr’s psyche, and that “our” Dragon may not be truly gone. To that end, let’s see what the tag team of myself and Savage Dragon super-fan Gavin Higginbotham can extract from creator Erik Larsen this month…!

Gavin Higginbotham: We see Captain Battle and Silver Streak have come to Chicago now that they’ve heard about Daredevil’s plight? Does this mean that those two (and possibly more Golden Age heroes) are sticking around for the war with Emperor Kurr?

Erik Larsen: It’s not as clean as all that. The Emperor Dragon story doesn’t stay in one place quite so much so it’s not as though heroes can just hang out in Chicago and grab him. In this issue, for example, he’s in Detroit and later on he’ll be in a few other locations. It’s no easy task to track him down. (more…)

Day-um! Another month, another delay on this poor column. I assure you that, along with giving it an honest-to-goodness name, I’ll be working overtime this month to ensure that it arrives on time in the future. I’m once again blaming my newborn for the delays, although that’s not entirely fair since I sent the questions to Erik and Gavin, and received them back, days ago. At any rate, let’s take a look at Savage Dragon #161, and the fallout from last week’s villain massacre at the hands of Emperor Kurr.

DragonQuestions: The kids at school know that she had a thing with Daredevil? How long can it be before the authorities come asking some very unpleasant questions…?

Erik Larsen: No more than the police show up when any other teenage girl has a picture of a guy hanging in her locker. When I was growing up there was a girl obsessed with Christopher Reeve. She had all kinds of pictures of him in her locker–but nobody thought for a second that her affections were being reciprocated. Same deal here. Other kids know she has a crush on the Golden Age Daredevil because Angel’s locker had pictures of the Golden Age Daredevil and she talked to her friends about Golden Age Daredevil. (more…)

Warner Brothers has once again put together a battery of classic animation and released it all over a very short period of time. In the last month or so, they’ve released the Peanuts 1970s Collection Volume 2, Tom & Jerry: The Deluxe Anniversary Edition and The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo. All of these DVDs are chock full of old material, repackaged in a way that they can be “previously unreleased.”

Only the Tom & Jerry collection is truly indispensable if you’re trying to put together your kid’s library. It’s the disc you’d want to have if you didn’t care all that much about the cat-and-mouse game that Tom & Jerry have been putting on for something like fifty years, as it’s the old classic shorts as opposed to the newer ones–and it’s a 2-disc, 30-episode compilation of shorts that contains almost all of the specials you would have watched and loved as a kid with a bare minimum of extra, random crap. With a premise as redundant as Tom & Jerry’s, and with quality being so scattershot over the years, having a package like this is really nice because it allows you to enjoy the best of their stuff all in one place, as opposed to carrying around four volumes of “Tom & Jerry’s Greatest Chases,” which are pretty much the same material except that they feel obliged to leave a mediocre one–usually one of the newer episodes–on those discs to fill them out so that these 30 can stretch to four volumes.

13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo is a Vincent Price-starring, Scrappy-Doo-featuring, 13-episode take on Pandora’s Box as Mystery, Inc. investigates a mysterious chest into which 13 escaped ghosts must be returned. Price is his usual devilish self, and the series isn’t as bad as I expected after a friend remembered it by name simply on the strength of its awfulness–but you can see why the material has been out of mainstream circulation for a while. Let’s face it: Anything with Scrappy is probably not worth buying, but this one could definitely be worth renting at your neighborhood video store.

Lastly we’ve got the newest in a long line of Peanuts collections to come out this year; it is, after all, the 60th anniversary of the first appearance of Charles Schulz’s characters in comic strip form. Warner has been celebrating by reissuing everything that isn’t nailed down, althoguh they still haven’t gotten quite as far as most of the late ’70s, early ’80s specials that I liked so much as a kid. One of them is here, though, in the form of “What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown,” a story in which Snoopy eats a large, bad dinner and proceeds to have a nightmare in which he’s forced to compete in the Iditarod, challenge huge, snarling huskies for scraps of food and generally live every dog’s nightmare.

I had forgotten completely about this story until I saw it on this collection and now I can’t get it out of my head; it was pretty upsetting for me even as a small child to see Snoopy being abused and, later, turning into a mean dog. I look at it by today’s standards and realize that the soft, cushy entertainment we demand for our children means it would never in a million years get made anymore. While these collections are deteriorating in overall quality, making them maybe too much of a good thing, I’m still hoping that by year’s end, we’ll see a decent-quality reissue of Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown and Snoopy Come Home. Now, those would really mess with my memories.

The last year or so has been an interesting one for Denzel Washington who, as one of the most respected actors in the country with a repertoire of mostly dramas and the occasional thoughtful popcorn flick, took on a tepid remake of The Taking of Pelham 123 and followed it up with The Book of Eli, a Hughes Brothers-directed romp through the not-too-distant future (next Sunday, A.D.), where Washington plays a Man With No Name-style nomad who treks through a Mad Max-style post-urban frontier carrying what is apparently the only remaining copy of The Bible.

Like last year’s The Invention of Lying, The Book of Eli takes religion to task for the way it divides and deludes the populace–but in this case the fact that it’s blamed mostly on the people being led rather than those doing the leading kept it from drawing the kind of ire from organized religion that Ricky Gervais’ mediocre comedy did (or at least as far as I’ve seen; maybe it did get lambasted a bit and I just missed it).

It tries to be too many things, and that’s its only real downfall; The Book of Eli can’t decide if it wants to be a thoughtful drama with little bits of action thrown in, an action thriller with as may gallons of blood spilled as dollars made at the box office (that’s about 95 million), a martial-arts movie with spectacular and shocking fight scenes or something else entirely. Washington is terrific, though, and doesn’t have that haggard, grizzled look that so many great actors get when they take a genre role–that “I’m mailing it in and hoping the special effects can make up for me” look. Mila Kunis nearly matches him, which is shocking since…well, since he’s Denzel Washington and she’s the irritating chick from That ’70s Show. She has a definite screen presence that extends beyond the generic warm charm she exuded in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and it serves the film well because she manages to be just barely unable to keep up with Washington–just like her character as she follows him through the American wasteland.

All in all, the flick is entertaining and while I think the Hughes Brothers thought a little too much of their final twist, it’s still a pretty enjoyable one. Other than a lack of focus, the biggest challenge that the movie faces is a Return of the King-like inability to just wrap up already. There are at least four distinct end points in the picture, and the one they finally go out on is just a step too far for my taste.

The Book of Eli is released on DVD and a Blu-Ray combo pack today; it’s certainly worth checking out, even if I can’t say “Go buy it!” with total confidence.

This month’s The Gold Exchange is a little late—but there’s a good reason that we’ll get into later. Co-writer J.M. DeMatteis returns to us this month, discussing Booster Gold #33 and our hero’s trip to the past, where he dons the ol’ collared shirt and rejoins his pals in the Justice League International. Heading to the recent past, Booster makes a beeline for the JLI embassy, where hopes to find physical evidence of Maxwell Lord’s existence that’s unaffected by the worldwide (apparently, from this issue, universe-wide) mindwipe Lord performed to make himself disappear from everyone’s sight and memory. Before that, though, readers got to see Booster take down a supervillain and dress down a superhero in the person of the Justice League’s Cyborg, who ran afoul of Booster by referring to the JLI as “screw-ups.”

As a side note, that particular monologue delighted me not only because the JLI deserves protecting, but because the character went so far as to refer to the current Justice League as “the REAL Justice League,” a pretty bizarre and terrible reference given that the current JLA book is horrible and full of mediocre characters.

The Gold Exchange: So–The Boppy thing. Rip’s father is, as we know, from the 25th Century and the girl who says he looks like her grandfather, she’s from the 30th. Any chance we’ll find out that those people in #31 were really “supposed” to die and that Rani made it out because she’s essential to the Time Master legacy?

J.M. DeMatteis: To be perfectly honest, the only thing I was thinking about when I came up with the “Boppy” gag was just that…a fun joke for Rip and Rani.  I wasn’t thinking about any deeper connection.  That said:  Hmmmm… (more…)

Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis, the longtime writers of Justice League International and its spinoff miniseries Formerly Known as the Justice League and I Can’t Believe It’s Not the Justice League, returned to one of the characters that most defined their runs on those titles in last week’s Booster Gold #32. With covers by former Justice League International penciler Kevin Maguire and interior art by Chris Batista (52, Infinity Inc.), DeMatteis told The Gold Exchange this month that while the writers are trying to keep a balance of the goofy, over-the-top feel of the Giffen-DeMatteis Justice League with the more serious, traditional superhero tone of the relaunch written by Johns, Katz and Jurgens, they’ll be bringing the bwa-ha-hah soon enough. DeMatteis joined us for a few questions about Booster Gold #32 and the future of the series.

The Gold Exchange: Manoman, this book really *is* a throwback! There’s a recycled joke on the first page! Did you guys decide the “Come with me if you want to live” line had to be there once the time-travel element was such a big part of Booster’s new status quo?

J.M. DeMatteis: The line just came out of Booster’s mouth as I started to type.  I hope James Cameron doesn’t sue! (more…)

For the second month in a row, a format change for this column (we’ll be abandoning the Q&A format in favor of writing actual articles) has been scuttled by my inability to break away from the day job before Wednesday. I’m going to present the Q&A that Gavin Higginbotham and I did with Erik Larsen, unedited for the most part, so that readers can get this today.

Blog@Newsarama: We were actually hoping you could clear some things up. In the chaos of battle, I couldn’t tell which of these Vicious Circle types Kurr actually killed and which he just took out of commission.

Erik Larsen: I can’t really do much with this one. The point was to make this all seem chaotic and make it appear that Dragon killed the lot of ‘em–it also was left somewhat ambiguous so that I could use a few of these guys later if I wanted to.  If I say “this guy’s alive” it kind of takes away from the punch of the issue.I liken it to that issue of Daredevil where it appeared that Elektra killed Ben Urich. We had to wait a month before we found out that he was okay. If I said, “this guy’s fine, as is this one and that one” it would lose something.

Blog@: I know you want to keep the death count under your hat, but it certainly seemed like last month we were talking about Dragonslayer being part of the effort to make the book more new-reader-friendly; he DEFINITELY looked dead. Assuming he was, can we expect to see the armor around anyway?

EL: No–the armor blew to bits as a last ditch by R.Richard Richards to kill Dragon–it’s gone. The armor’s creator is still out there, however, and presumably he can make more of the same.

Blog@: Will this issue mark a turning point in the way Angel and Malcolm see Kurr, or will they continue tryin to bring the old Dragon out of him?

EL: I don’t think either want to give up on the old man but both are pretty aware that he’s not the guy he was–at the same time they’re both responsible for his resurrection and as the story unfolds that’s going to weigh heavy on them. This is a monster they unleashed.

Blog@: Will Kurr’s skin remain that color for the rest of the story, or is this a momentary thing and he’ll have healed the next time we see him?

EL: He’ll be back to normal by the next time we see him. Some time will have passed between issues #160 and 161. One of the pitfalls of setting a book in real time is that you’ve gotta try and cover a lot of ground. You can’t have each issue spill into the next.

Blog@: Are there any halfblood Dragons left out there, who weren’t part of this issue’s battle royale?

EL: Not from the Vicious Circle. It was stated at one point that the villainess BattleAxe had a child and we can only assume that Darkworld Dragon was its father but at this point we haven’t seen that child.

Blog@: Does Overlord have some kind of plan percolating in the back of his head? Seems strange for him to have set himself up as an advocate for the freaks, only to send a bunch of them off to get pummeled.

EL: Overlord has all kinds of plans brewing–some of which will pan out–others of which will fall flat. This new Overlord isn’t necessarily as much of a mastermind as the old one was, though quite a bit deadlier thanks to the armor being overhauled. We’ll certainly be seeing more over Overlord in the months to come.

Blog@: Is Kurr not worried about these guys “coming back” or is he just trying to bleed them dry of his blood? He didn’t do the “stop, drop and eat brains” drill on any of the folks he pounded this issue.

EL: Mostly he’s making sure his blood isn’t being put to use in somebody that shouldn’t have it. Since most of the group lost their heads in the fracas, it really wasn’t necessary to eat their brains. And that was much more necessary with Darkworld Dragon who was fully functional. The Vicious Circle goons may have had green skin and a fin but given Dragon’s previous experience with Cutthroat and Glowbug–he knows they’re not quite as hard to dispose of as he would be.

The Gold Exchange is very late this time around; my conversation with Dan Jurgens on Time Masters: Vanishing Point took precedence over the monthly column, but also happened halfway through our e-mail interaction about this month’s issue of Booster Gold. The result is that there are some questions asked here, which have already been answered in part or indirectly. I’m going to leave the questions as they appeared when asked and answered, so as the column progresses you may notice that I seem shockingly ignorant in the asking of a few questions. Let it go and enjoy the conversation.

The Gold Exchange: So last things first…Time Masters #1? Rip Hunter starring in The Return of Bruce Wayne? I suppose the latter makes sense, but I didn’t see it coming. The former—where’d that one come from? Has this been announced or solicited and I just missed it?

Dan Jurgens: As you have probably seen by now, we just made the official announcement this morning. Given the fate of Bruce Wayne, it’s something that makes a lot of sense.

GX: Booster laments having too many time-travel missions lately; while you and Norm take over his and Rip’s adventures in Time Masters: Vanishing Point, do you hear that the plan is for Keith and Marc to do less chronal, more traditional superhero stuff?

  “We’ve had a lot of internal discussions about how to put the emphasis back on periodicals.”

 That was really the only particularly relevant piece of information that came out of the fan-creator love-fest that is the DC Nation Panel at C2E2 yesterday.

 (I mean—seriously! Even the fan who stood up to the mike to deride James Robinson’s creative abortion Justice League: Cry For Justice was won over by Robinson’s dubious excuse that he “always planned” for the gore-covered ending of the book and that in the DC Universe apparently you have to blow up a city and rebuild it from the ground up in order to give it character. I mean, really, James? I seem to remember back in the day someone could take a fairly blasé place like Opal City and make it really sing just by fabricating a backstory and a sense of shared identity and civic pride in the characters who lived there. I guess there’s nobody like that at DC anymore. Note to creators: Not every community can be Coast City…and in fact, after Bludhaven, Montevideo and now Star City, we really don’t need any more DC cities to try.)

 Anyway, I’m getting off-topic. It seems to me that Dan DiDio and Jim Lee’s determination that, even in the face of eReaders and a burgeoning trade market (my girlfriend works for Barnes & Noble and has told me several times that while most sections in the store are sinking as people warm to eReaders and just generally buy less in our crappy economy, the comics/graphic novels/manga section is consistently growing not just at her store, but at the numerous stores where she’s been called to assist in the last six months.), DC needs to focus its energies on shifting the focus to periodicals seems a little dated and more than a touch naïve. Do they really think that they can manage the way their customers choose to enjoy their product, sheerly by force of will? Let’s ask the music industry how well that’s worked out for them in the last decade or so.

 It does, though, paint a pretty distinct picture of their company. Even at a time when mainstream retailers are accounting for an increasing amount of revenue (those guys don’t stock many floppies, by the way) and the New York Times is finally recognizing graphic novels with their own bestseller list, they want to convince everyone that there’s “something special” about holding that 32-page floppy in your hand. But the phrase “shifting the focus back to periodicals,” along with the phrases “The Return of Barry Allen” and “Fear of a Black Firestorm” suggest to me a company which has ceased trying to court new, young customers and has resigned itself to the conclusion that their target demographic is Geoff Johns and James Robinson: white, immersed in pop culture, young in the corporate sense but quickly aging in the biological and decades behind what’s new and cool when it comes to their personal tastes. These are the guys who still resent John Byrne’s Man of Steel as a slap in the face to the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity of their youth.

 This is hardly a surprise; the promotions of Geoff Johns and Jim Lee fairly cemented in my mind the idea that the company was not interested in exploring editorial, creative or distribution directions into which they weren’t already fairly entrenched. They’re going to continue pimping the same five creators until their hands fall off or enough of their stories fail to sell that the whole company has to be radically reconfigured—a move that will be much harder to pull off now that they’ve installed a pair of co-publishers, one of whom is an ideologue (Johns—it honestly seems to me that Lee is just trying to help the company, and/or in it for the paycheck).

 Personally, I’ve got nothing against the floppies. I read most of my books that way, and the only ones I pick up in trade are the ones that I fell badly behind while reading and/or didn’t start buying until a trade or two had already been in print. But almost everyone I know in the industry has been talking for some time about how the writing is on the wall for most floppies (nobody seriously thinks that Superman, Batman, Spider-Man or Archie will ever go trade-exclusive). I’m not sure how a few higher-ups, whose point-of-view seems very narrow, can expect to change what has been broadly perceived as The Future Of Comics.

In spite of their relatively low mass appeal, two superhero (sort-of) movies have made their way to the DVD market for the first time this month, compliments of the Warner Archive, a program where you can order DVDs directly from Warner Home Video’s website and get them printed-to-order. The program has been going for a while, but seems to have picked up steam lately, with not only Steel (starring Shaquilled O’Neal and based on the character from the Death and Return of Superman story) and Doc Savage: Man of Bronze, but also some other genre titles like The Amazing Captain Nemo (which starred Burgess Meredith of Rocky and G.I. Joe: The Movie fame as its villain). You can also buy a handful of motion comics titles, including Batgirl: Year One and Superman: Red Son on the site.

Steel is that movie that has a decent script (not good, mind you), but a terrible cast and a number of flaws, not least of which is a running “free-throw” gag that revolved around the fact that its star, Shaquille O’Neal, was well-known for having no skill at shooting free throws. They removed all but the tiniest of details that bore resemblance to the comic, and Judd Nelson vamps and screams his way through every scene he’s in.  All that said, it’s a lot better than I remembered it; of course, the last time I saw it, my friend and I were the only two in a 200-seat theater on opening weekend–and we didn’t pay because he worked for the maintenance company that cleaned the cinema.

Doc Savage, meanwhile, is a charming little camp movie along the lines of the old Batman TV show. It’s such a blatantly pro-US, pro-military movie that you actually get to see the “USA” in John Philip Sousa flash red, white and blue in the credits. At a time when DC has launched a new Doc Savage series after the debut of First Wave, there probably wouldn’t be a better time to reissue this DVD (at least unless or until the feature film that’s stumbling along finally gets made). It’s fun to see this different interpretation of the Arctic Fortress of Solitude, and the characters have potential, even if their execution is typical ’70s action camp.

Written with Gavin Higginbotham

What differentiates “Dragon War” from Marvel’s recent “World War Hulks” and related stories? Well, mostly plot. Whereas Marvel has had a succession of Hulk stories that can basically be summed up as “Hulks smash,” Erik Larsen points out to us that this month, “not a punch was thrown” in Savage Dragon. Certainly it seems to be gearing up for a pretty massive throwdown—what else do you expect when the title of the story is “Dragon War”?–but this month was all about establishing a direction for members of the Savage Dragon supporting cast, in the absence of a newly-villainous Dragon.

As usual, Erik Larsen joined us to talk about today’s Savage Dragon #159.

Russ Burlingame: Can you talk about the pacing of this arc? There have been a lot of very abrupt cuts between characters or scenes that don’t seem to have as natural a segue between them as you ordinarily do. It’s given the whole thing a kind of frantic, fast-cutting action movie kind of feel. Is that intentional or just the byproduct of having a lto of subplots feeding into one main story?

Erik Larsen: I generally don’t think in terms of arcs. I’m very much a single issues guy and I try to make each individual issue a satisfying read. Any isolated few issues have closure and beginnings and endings and there are enough drifting threads that it can work split up in any number of ways. When this is all put into trades the “Dragon War” arc will actually be split into two trades even though it’s a six issue story as far as the cover blurbs go. The first couple chapters will be in the Savage Dragon: Identity Crisis trade, which collects issues #151 through #156 and the rest will be in the Savage Dragon: Dragon War trade, which will collect issues #157-#162. And those trades read just fine split up that way even though, as far as the text boxes on the covers are concerned, they aren’t all part of one story. I don’t know how this particular story reads to everybody else but it’s not my intent to make it a radical departure from what I’ve done in the past. Some issues have had a crazy amount of quick cuts. This particular issue is somewhat of an anomaly because it’s almost entirely character stuff. Not a punch is thrown this time out. (more…)

So the Eisner Award nominations have been announced, and there was much rejoicing.

In a year that saw a number of high-profile mainstream projects nominated for awards, including James Robinson’s unbelievably horrible Justice League: Cry For Justice earning him a Best Writer nomination, indie comics saw far less representation than usual in the industry’s equivalent of the Academy Awards. That didn’t stop James D. Hudnall, a conservative blogger who served as a judge this year, from taking issue with a similar accusation, made a little more colorfully, by The Beat. The blog claimed that “indie comics really got shut out almost completely this year, aside from the almost obligatory Kevin Huizenga nomination.” While plenty of non-Big Two books were nominated, they were largely from outfits like Boom! Studios and Viz Media, neither of whom can credibly be called “indie” anymore.

Hudnall, an employee of conservative activist and media provocateur Andrew Breitbart’s “Big Hollywood” blog, responded in the comments thread that “It seemed to me, as a judge, we favored indy comics. In fact, I made a point of doing so.” He also noted that many of this year’s nominations came from publishers who weren’t traditional comics publishers, and so whose status as “indie” may be tenuous but who weren’t part of the comics establishment. “The judges were almost uniformly uninterested in brands or publishers. I know I wasn’t. I just looked at the quality of individual work,” said Hudnall in the same comment. (more…)

Bugs Bunny’s Easter Funnies, available this week on DVD from KidsWB, isn’t exactly a holiday special; it merely uses the premise of a holiday special as the framework for what amounts to a “Looney Tunes” clip show. When The Easter Bunny falls ill, Granny asks Bugs to fill in. When he’s contractually unable to get away from the “Looney Tunes” set, he helps her to audition and choose between  Daffy Duck, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepe LePew and a number of other members of the “Looney Tunes” stable of characters to do the job.

Rankin-Bass’s The First Easter Rabbit, a TV special recently released to deluxe-edition DVD by Warner Brothers, is a clear case of a gang of creators who cut their teeth on classic Christmas specials, trying to apply that unique formula to an Easter special, with disastrous results.

The story begins with the Burl Ives as the Easter Bunny talking directly to the camera, and the audience, but whereas Santa Claus and Ives’ Sam the Snowman were always charming, or at least alright, the Easter Rabbit’s introduction sounds frenzied and affronted. “You don’t know this story, do you? You know all about Santa and Frosty and Rudolph, but not the Easter Rabbit!” is the shorthand version. It makes me think of the Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special, where the Easter Bunny puts a hit out on Santa after years of his holiday being overlooked.

This impassioned rant, of course, loses a lot of its “oomph” when not only does Santa have to step in and show the Easter Rabbit how to do his job, but then swoops in to save the day when, near the end of the special, the badguy seems to be close to winning. (more…)

So it’s been a crazy weekend; everything that happened in the comics and genre universe kind of ground to a halt for me when I found out about the passing of Dick Giordano. There’s been a few things worth mentioning, though, so away we go:

New Hampshire State Representative Nick Levasseur was pressured into a hasty apology this weekend after some ill-advised comments about anime that offended his Japanese-American constituents, as well as presumably thousands of pasty white kids wearing Pokemon t-shirts. Calling the art form “a prime example of why two nukes just wasn’t enough” on his Facebook page, he pretty quickly realized that Facebook is a public forum and not someplace that you say insanely stupid things if you don’t want news agencies everywhere reporting on it.

Call him Lex Luthor: Executive Producer. Smallville star Michael Rosenbaum is joining Jonathan Silverman as the showrunners for a new action-comedy for Syfy. “Saved By the Zeroes” will apparently be a buddy comedy that, from its description, will feature characters not entirely unfamiliar with the movie “Galaxy Quest” (over-the-hill former sci-fi TV stars), but without the real-life sci-fi backdrop.

My personal favorite news of the week: AMC has picked up The Walking Dead for a six-episode run, sight-unseen. Bloody-Disgusting.com has been reporting that Jonny Lee Miller is the prohibitive favorite to play Rick Grimes, with the pilot still set to shoot in June.

Former Superman Brandon Routh’s run on Chuck appears headed to a natural conclusion in the next few weeks, unless there’s a major shift in the writing. This week’s episode, which should appear online in the morning after airing tonight at 8pm, completely shifts his character’s raison d’etre; “Would I trade my life for the man who killed my wife?” He asks Sarah, and then answers in the affirmative–and shortly thereafter we come face to face with the killer. Check out the show on Hulu, where you can catch up (since my postgame review column kind of died on the vine when I had to take a more demanding day job–sorry about that, folks).

Darick Robertson posted this image on his Facebook account, with a caption saying that it’s a team he’d like to do a miniseries about. I don’t know about you folks, but I’d be a subscriber.

Dark Horse has sent out its second BPRD “Classified” e-mail in as many weeks, with this to say:

Dear B.P.R.D. member, Thank you for joining this elite team of dedicated men and women. Your service is a valuable asset to our organization, and we are proud to have you aboard. Membership, however, is merely the first step. There will be times when we will call on you to perform certain duties to enlarge the scope of the B.P.R.D., but know that your efforts will not go unrewarded. Service in the B.P.R.D. has its benefits. Within a week, you will be sent an invitation to become friends with our founder, Trevor Bruttenholm, on Facebook. Trevor Bruttenholm’s Facebook profile is a private profile for B.P.R.D. members only. We will release exclusive news, interviews, sketches, preview pages, and more via the social network. We ask that, unless explicitly stated, you keep all information and assets secret. We will be contacting you with more information. Look for your friend request from Trevor Bruttenholm soon. Your first assignment: Send a letter to the editors of Hellboy and B.P.R.D. by e-mailing hellmail@darkhorse.com. Questions, comments, concerns — any letter is valid. If we receive word that fifty letters have been sent by March 29, 2010, at noon PST, then we will release sketches only available in the pages of Hellboy: The Wild Hunt to members everywhere via Trevor Bruttenholm’s Facebook page. This is only the beginning. –The B.P.R.D. Team

Some quick notes on things I’ve noticed in the last few days…

First of all, it was called to my attention after I wrote up JMS’ new-to-video release Ninja Assassin yesterday that Straczynski’s bestselling and wildly controversial Spider-Man: One More Day is available for only $6.97 in hardcover in the bargain section of Barnes & Noble bookstores all over the country. Seems like a great chance for continuity junkies who didn’t like the story, but feel like they ought to own something so important, to get it cheap.

There are only 60 days remaining to make yourself part of the upcoming Reading With Pictures Anthology, which is being funded through Kickstarter. It’s 45% funded, with $4,500 of its final $10,000 already pledged. The book involves a bunch of really cool creators working together for a good cause, so I’d say to at least check it out. If somebody else doesn’t contribute in the next month, I’m going to have to raise the level of my contribution. And I’m a cheap bastard, so don’t make me do that!

Speaking of worthy causes on Kickstarter, Ted Rall’s sequel to his great To Afghanistan & Back is still up in the air, with only about half of the total cost donated and a little under two weeks before he’s got to report back to the publisher. Rall’s one of the most fearless and funny graphic novelists in the market right now, so I’d suggest everyone check his work out and think about helping him get funded.

Third and final fundraising shill (for now): Zach Roberts, who masterminded the Greg Palast/Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. comic book Steal Back Your Vote (of which I was an editor–full disclosure here), has a forthcoming documentary about Sarah Palin called Rogue Candidate; it can be found here, and he’s been discussing some very interesting and comics-related promotion avenues for the film, so keep your eyes and ears open; it may be the first documentary film ever to have a comics adaptation.

Starz is not only taking some stories from England, but a style of televising them, too; the network has greenlit a Camelot miniseries that will run for ten episodes and be written by Chris Chibnall of Torchwood fame. Removing “Starz” from this sentence, when I first heard that this was happening, I assumed that it was a BBC or BBC America series being reported. It will, however, go nicely with their Spartacus: Blood and Sand series.

Last week at South by Southwest, Warner Brothers announced that they planned on using DC superheroes as tentpole films starting in 2012 or so to replace the departing Harry Potter franchise. There’ll be some overlap, of course, with the last two Harry Potter movies not yet released and Green Lantern already shooting, but it’s a sound business idea on paper, I think, and setting them up as tentpoles unto themselves means that people will have to start thinking of them as viable commercial franchises instead of just talking about how there are all these random superhero movies being made and when will they go out of style. Should be interesting and really fun for comics fans…provided that Warner can make it work.

Over at TVTropes, probably my favorite website in the world, they have a page dedicated to entertainment that’s about just exactly what you expect it to be about when you hear the title. Writer J.Michael Straczynski’s Ninja Assassin, released on DVD and Blu-Ray combo pack last week from Warner Home Video, is a great example. Light on plot, featuring barely-human dialogue and heavy on the stylized, preposterous, impressive and fun action sequences, the film has rated some rave reviews on Amazon and Rotten Tomatoes from martial arts film fanatics and some pretty terrible write-ups from, well, everyone else.

Ninja Assassin revolves around a ninja assassin who turns his back on the organization that employs him and ends up having to face off against them because, like any good mafioso knows, you don’t get to choose when you leave the family.

The movie, which stars Rain (of Speed Racer fame) and is produced by the Wachowski brothers (The Matrix, V for Vendetta, Speed Racer) is the kind of story that’s held together only by the loosest approximation of a plot; the first twenty minutes or so jump to give a little insight to the titular assassin, while intercutting the story of a pair of EUROPOL investigators, one of whom is convinced that a league of ninjas is performing high-priced, high-profile assassinations all over the world and the other admitting that he’s only humoring her because she’s hot (admittedly, Naomie Harris looks a lot better here than she did in 28 Days Later or Pirates of the Carribbean). But good looks, and even good performances, can’t overcome a script that’s positively awful. And while Harris herself has the physical presence of an actor, including body language and facial expressions that are on the money, her line reads are pretty monotonous, robbing her character of what little depth could have been read into her.

James McTeigue, whose V for Vendetta was one of the most cinematically and visually-interesting comic book movies of the last several years, seems to have given all that up here in the interest of blood, blood and more blood. The movie’s awash in it, not just in the battle and assassination scenes, but also in the training flashbacks. It’s also got plenty of dime-store philosophy, from that of the ninja to the over-the-top idealism of just about every female in the film.

For a mad, bloody ninja rampage, check this movie out. For anything–and I mean anything–else? Pass.