Apologies to any of you who check Blog@Newsarama ever Saturday morning just to read my linkblogging. I usually try to have this up first thing in the morning (my version of first thing in the morning, anyway), but I stayed up to the wee hours of the night finishing the second season of Primeval on DVD last night and thus sleeping in obscenely late on this Fourth of July holiday. Wait a minute, Primeval’s a British series! Aaaa! I’ve betrayed my country!

Anyway, here are some links to things dealing with comics that I took note of since Wednesday morning…

“Luke did an amazing job of making the Mouse Guard RPG more than jut a typical RPG where you happen to be mice, but where being mice is the RPG”: That’s Mouse Guard creator David Petersen talking about Luke Crane and his work on the Mouse Guard role-playing game, which recently won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Game of 2008.

“As far as I can tell, gods and other deities don’t have trademarks that are jealously guarded by lawyers for entertainment corporations”: Paul Constant reviews Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow and Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader for The Stranger, focusing on the superheroes-as-modern myth theme in a lot of comics criticism and commentary. The results are pretty entertaining.

This is at least part of the reason I can’t read X-Men comics: Wired’s Geek Dad columnist recently re-experienced the confusing world of the X-Men via the Wolverine and the X-Men cartoon, and in a column on the subject he linked to this completely insane relationship chart at io9. Did you know that Wolverine slept with every single member of every X-Men team ever? It’s true! (It’s not). That’s why he’s on so many teams, has so many books and is the most popular X-person. Dude totally slept his way to the top.

“Although sometimes inaccurately called a graphic novelist, Sacco is a journalist who draws”: The Toronto Star includes Joe Sacco’s upcoming work of comics fiction, Footnotes in Gaza: A Graphic Novel, in a round-up of book releases to watch for this fall.

I’m honestly not sure if having every character in a JLA comic shout “Justice!” at the end of their scene is awesome or stupid: James Robinson and Mauro Cascioli’s Justice League: Cry For Justice must be a really special comic book. Retailer Brian Hibbs’ daring highly trained special mission force of critics has been taking it kind of slow on Savagecritic.com this summer, but a half dirty-dozen of ‘em showed up to review JL:CFJ, on the week of the Fourth of July holiday. The comic doesn’t fare too well, but it was honestly pretty fascinating to see the various strategies employed to criticize it. Douglas Wolk was first out the gate with an elegant single doctored-image allusion review (sinle allusion reviews really aren’t something you see every day), Graeme McMillan noticed some Jeph Loebishness and some Brian Michael Bendisocity in the script, Hibbs himself questions the font of the subtitle and the use of the word “Justice,” Tucker Stone calls it “hardcore pornography for train-wreck enthusiasts” while determining that it is “excellent crap” and David Uzumeri offers a pretty straightforward dismantling of the issue while holding out the not-unreasonable hope that it might get better. I’m crossing my fingers that Abhay Khosla will show up before the end of the weekend to deliver a 5,000 word essay full of sex jokes about it.

Speaking of that Justice League comic…: Many of the negative reviews I’ve read of it so far have focused on Robinson’s script while generally praising Cascioli’s art. Let me help balance that out a bit. Yeah, Cascioli’s panels all generally look like nice images in isolation. His figure work is just fine, and he adds some appropriate melodrama here and there. But on a purely technical, below-the-paints-and-pencil level? It’s pretty weak work that fails at some of the most basic stuff. I’m not talking about the fact that 22 entire pages of nothing but talking occurs and yet no one except Congorilla ever actually opens their mouth—although “draw the character talking with their mouth open” is Comics Art 101, isn’t it—but the staging.

What is up with that first six pages or so, where Hal Jordan gets all teenager-y with the rest of the Justice League? The whole scene looks like a dream, with characters appearing and disappearing at random and dramatically shifting positions between panels.

This is my favorite page, as it makes it look like the table dramatically shrinks between panels, or that Wonder Woman and Roy Harper ran all the way around the table super-fast and knocked some chairs out of the way just to get all up in Hal’s face, while he tosses his head dramatically back and forth, so that different people are to the left of him:

Okay, well that’s probably enough complaining about sub-par super-comics for me today. I’m going to kick off my celebration of the Fourth of July in the traditional way, by watching the symbol of our nation punch a filthy communist across the room:

Jeff Lemire’s Question: I’ve got a question about Jeff Lemire—how is it that he draws this well when he’s just warming up? Jeez.

“Even when the rest of the comics industry was struggling to survive, the X-Men always sold…People bought the comics no matter what”: Comics blogger Tim O’Neil has been thinking about the X-Men in preparation for what will likely turn out to be a couple of think-piece posts on the franchise, focusing on the fact that for years and years it was the top of the comics heap, and seems to be in sharp decline now (Marvel’s own Avengers franchise now ranks higher than their X-books). What’s going on with the X-books, and why are they no longer as popular as they once were? O’Neil ponders, and his readers offer some input. Few (if any) comics bloggers no more about the X-Men than Paul O’Brien, and he speaks to some of the X-books’ existential problems in this review of X-Men Legacy #225.

I would buy both the Wolverine comic and the Man-Thing one: Speaking of think pieces, retailer, blogger and Sluggo enthusiast Mike Sterling has been wondering “What if the characters/teams from Marvel and DC were allowed one starring title, and that’s it?” and how that might impact the market and industry, as unlikely as it is that either publisher would ever embrace and enforce that rule. Here’s Sterling’s original post on the subject, and here’s his follow-up. They’re both well worth a read and a think, and even if Marvel’s unlikely to ever  cancel Wolverine: Origins, Wolverine: Weapon X, Wolverine: First Class and the weekly miniseries and/or one-shots starring Wolvie to concentrate on making Wolverine the greatest Wolverine comic imaginable and maybe encouraging fans to try new and different books, it’s not like they couldn’t start leaning in that direction.

“The Craziest Costume Changes in Comics”: You can probably guess what most of these are by the headline, but this Comics Alliance post is well worth checking out just for the visual gag that accompanies the last person on that list.

“No superhero or super villain name is too great or too dorky, and no costume is too skimpy, provided its legal”: If you live in or around Reno, Nevada and enjoy playing dress up and/or adult beverages, there’s an upcoming superhero-themed pub crawl there. While pub crawling doesn’t sound like a terribly superheroic activity (unless you’re this guy), proceeds go to the Washoe County School District Canine Drug Task Force, and keeping kids off drugs does seem like something superheroes would be into. Here’s the event’s official website.

This week’s cartoontroversy?: Well, it’s only Monday as you read this, so maybe something bigger will come up later. Anyway, political cartoonists seemingly had a blast drawing goodbye cartoons featuring a long-time favorite subject of theirs, Michael Jackson, most choosing either a bland “Hey, he’s dead now” sort of acknowledgement cartoon, others making jokes about his physical appearance or legal troubles concerning his alleged sexual interest in young boys. One of the more…potent cartoons was that of Mike Luckovich, featuring Heaven and Hell flipping a coin (above). Here’s a brief story in which Luckovich talks a bit about the cartoon, which proved controversial among readers, and here’s Washington Post comics blogger Michael Cavna asking readers if they think it went too far.

“You’ll be in awe of how perfect it is and certainly envious of it if you are a writer”: This guy really, really, really liked David Mazzuchelli’s eagerly anticipated Asterios Polyp.

“These two comics, for all their surface similarities, serve as almost perfect examples of How To Do It and How Not To Do It”: That’s Andrew Hickey on last Wednesday’s issues of TEC and Gotham City Sirens. Can you guess which one is which? His post reviewing the two issues is entitled “Comics Review (Guaranteed 100% Michael Jackson Free).” But that guarantee makes reference to Michael Jackson! So it’s actually just 99% Michael Jackson-free.

I’d read a comic book about a comics fan with a time machine who goes back in time and tries to deliver these messages: Comics Reporter Tom Spurgeon had his readers “Name Five Decisions You’d Like To Talk The Comics-Related Person Who Made Them Out Of Doing.” Check out their responses here.  And while I’m linking to Spurgeon, this week’s Sunday interview was with cartoonist Trina Robbins, regarding her recent Nell Brinkley book.

I would also read a Marvel comic in which Ben Grimm replaced Steve Rogers as Captain America, but only if it was entitled Cap-Ben Grimm-erica: Bully the Little Stuffed Bull likes Ben Grimm a whole lot, so much so that he’s devoting a full 365 days to spending time with the big lug, but he has found one way in which it is possible to improve upon Aunt Petunia’s favorite nephew. Click here to find out how!

In your face Dr. Wertham! Batman was never really gay after all: It was just a phase he was going through, and he tried to keep it up for Robin’s sake, but his heart just wasn’t in it.  At least, that’s what I gather from Robin’s thoughts in yesterday’s Daily Batman, which has since changed, as it’s a new day, and a new day means it’s time for a new Batman. Anyway, The Daily Batman. Some day I might stop linking to it, but not today.

“As a novice cartoonist, his salary ran from $6,000 to $20,000 a year”: Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune had a brief profile of Tiny Titans writer/artist Art Baltazar, with a local-cartoonist-makes-good sort of angle.

“For better or for worse, Tim Burton’s Batman changed the movie business forever”: Scott Mendelson lists the seven ways in which the Burton’s Batman changed filmmaking and moneymaking in the film industry for The Huffington Post. The occasion? The 1989 film is 20 years old this year. In other news, Oh my God I am so old!

“Ironically, this ass-kicking lesbian is a reinvention of a character originally created in the 1950s to reassure a nervous American that Batman wasn’t getting it on with Robin”: New England paper Bay Windows devotes a healthy amount of ink to the debut of Batwoman as the new star of Detective Comics. Dan DiDio is quoted several times throughout, and man, is it nice to see a J.H.Williams spread running alongside a news story about comic books, instead of some goofy drawing of Barack Obama meeting Spider-Man or sword-fignting Sarah Palin. (Not sure about that “Pow! Bang! Dyke!” bit in the caption, though)

“Out,  out! And a gay!”: Alright, I admit it—that made me laugh. Here’s another “Hey, did you know Batwoman is a lesbian?” story, this one from The Dallas Voice. Greg Rucka is interviewed, as is Richard Neal, the owner of Zeus Comics, where Rucka is doing a signing today. Okay, just one more and I’ll quit linking to Batwoman stories: Rucka was also interviewed by The Dallas Morning News, in a meandering Q-and-A that mentioned another Dallas signing he was doing (That one happened last night though).

“Now open your eyes and think about the worst possible Michele Bachmann comic, ever”: Wonkette’s Riley Waggaman did not much care for False Witness: The Michele Bachmann Story, which he felt had too many facts, and was thus more like a “graphic adaptation of the Daily Kos.” I would question his judgment on matters comic book-ical, given that he writes for a politics, gossip and satire site, however, he did wear a tophat while reading it, and I make it a rule never to argue with anyone in a tophat. They obviously know what they’re talking about, or they wouldn’t be wearing a tophat.

“It makes me glad to see, and to remember, that comics can also just be for kids”: The Christian Science Monitor has a very sweet story written by Rebekah Denn, a life-long comics reader taking great pleasure in her six-year-old son’s embrace of “the glorious fable of a man who had been exposed to cosmic rays until he could stretch his limbs like rubber, and how that man, ‘Mr. Fantastic,’ battled evil aided by his fiancé, who could turn herself invisible, and her kid brother, a human torch, and their friend Ben Grimm, an orange, rocky ‘Thing.’” Obviously comics can be so much more, but it’s worth remembering that even when all they are a couple of middle-aged-men hastily cranking out disposable trash entertainment for the children of the 1960s, they’re still something pretty special.

My Google News alert-bot must have somehow pulled this article from 1999: The Eagle Tribune reports that its local library in Hampstead, New Hampshire is going to start a collection of these newfangled things that  “if judged strictly by their covers…look like comic books. But they’re not comics.” No? Then what are they? “The books belong to a genre called graphic novels,” the article says. Ugh. I know it’s easy to point and laugh when some poor local reporter has to write some poor article about some dumb thing or another they probably neither know nor care very much about just to fill in all that blank space between ads, but…well, but nothing. I’m just pointing and laughing, I guess.  Meanwhile, here’s a nice, thorough article about Pittsburgh-based cartoonist Ed Piskor and his two volumes of Wizzywig (which I highly recommend, by the way). The article itself is great, but the headline refers to graphic novels as a “genre” (”Ed Piskor’s graphic novel creates sensation among genre’s fans”) and the caption manages to spell the name of Piskor’s book wrong in the very same sentence that it’s also spelled right. So, to sum up: This is why newspapers are currently dying their richly deserved death—they offer the very same quality of writing you find on the Internet, only slower, and not for free.

Oh God, I hope he reads the book himself for the audiobook version!: Based on the interviews he tends to give about the superhero comics he’s writing, Grant Morrison’s upcoming history of the superhero genre, Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero, will probably be a pretty good read.

The Passion of St. Jameson…?: I’ve linked to some of the images of J. Jonah Jameson that comics blogger and writer Kevin Church has commissioned in the past, but I’m going to link to this new one from John Keogh as well because a) it is awesome and b) Church has a link to his whole collection of JJJ art at the bottom of the post. Go check it out, and try to pick a favorite. It ain’t easy.

Lest anyone think political cartoons have lost their power to stir readers up: Herb Pinder discusses the reactions his paper received after running a controversial syndicated editorial cartoon by Don Wright that they published after doctor George Tiller was killed (above).

The curators couldn’t have been hurting for material to consider…: Tom Richmond brings word that the legendary, prolific cartoonist Sergio Aragonés’s work will be featured in an exhibit at Ojai Valley Museum in Ojai, California. If you’re anywhere near Ojai, you can learn more here.

Be on the look out for some jerk with a couple of laptops, one of ‘em full of awesome art: Paul Tobin has word that his pal comics artist Steve Lieber, who had just embarked on a media blitz to promote his new book Underground, had his laptop stolen. Tobin proceeds to level a series of movie-inspired curses at the computer thief. Now why Tobin would want a werewolf burglar out on the loose, I don’t know…

I bet The Daily Bugle and the papers of the Marvel Universe are full of stuff like this: Sunday’s Boston Globe ran a tongue-in-cheek parenting advice column entitled “What to do if your child has superpowers.” As long as you don’t enroll them in any weird private schools run by a bald guy with funny eyebrows who rides around in a wheel chair, they’ll probably be okay.

“They trap you with the Batman name, and I don’t know what their underlying mission is…I was outraged”: That’s Charlotte, North Carolina mother Yvette Spivock in an article in yesterday’s Charlotte Observer. She had purchased last summer’s Batman Confidential #18, the Batgirl-chases-Catwoman-into-a-nudist-club issue by Fabian Nicieza and Kevin Maguire, at a library for her 12-year-old son, and was less than happy with the content, in which the two female characters are both TV naked (you know they’re not wearing any clothing, but the body parts you can’t show on TV are covered at all times). The reporter apparently spoke to an unnamed representative for the company, who told her Batman Confidential is intended for readers age 16 and up, and that “ the company often places a star on the cover of kid-friendly comics.” That’s news to me, and I read a lot of Johnny DC books, so I wonder if there was some miscommunication there. Looking at the cover for that particular issue, I don’t see a Comics Code Authority seal anywhere, but then, DC applies those seals in a mysterious way I’ve never quite understood (It was on a recent issue of Green Lantern in which some characters were brutally, graphically killed, but was absent from the next issue, in which a character has his hand chopped off). The Spivok parents stressed they weren’t angry with the library, and don’t seem too outraged in general, given the goofy picture they posed for to run with the story.

As it turns out, DC’s “Blackest Night”/rainbow of Lanterns Corps comics make them perfect for Pride events: Boston comics shop Comicopia had a float in this year’s Boston Pride Parade, to both show their support and promote their store. The Bostonist conducted a short interview with Comicopia manager Shannon Outlaw to find out what was up with that group of superheroes marching. Batman, Robin, Batgirl, Wonder Woman and Rainbow-Brite were among those passing out leftover FCBD comics and other goodies along the route.

Oh no, now your copies of Shadowman and Guy Gardner: Warrior or worthless!: Photographer and blogger “Color Me Katie” finds some old comics at a thrift store, and finds the pages make for fun, cheap, colorful wallpaper.

It always freaks me out a little when I see what autobiographical cartoonists look like outside their comics: The San Francisco Examiner profiles Julia Wertz, who has a new collection of her comic strips out. I like the part where she talks about how some people resisted her strip because they don’t like that one word in its title. Me neither! It’s one of the three words I can never bring myself to type or say out loud, under any circumstances. Good comic, though.

Speaking of SF media…: The San Francisco Chronicle has a short piece on Adrian Tomine and Seth, in advance of their speaking engagement at a library there last night.

Wow, I haven’t heard the words “Death Row” in a while…: Billboard reports that the music publisher EverGreen signed a deal with WIDEawake, the company that owns the assets of of the legendary/infamous Death Row record label. Among their plans are “a new brand extension called Hustle City, which will debut first as a graphic novel including a CD insert of music related to the story line.”

“A handful of Australian artists have broken into this very competitive business, but Scott, 37, is probably the most successful so far”: The Sydney Morning Herald has a nice little profile story about Birds of Prey/Secret Six artist Nicola Scott, and her rather unusual career path getting to where she is now.

Actually, I think only certain absolute and omnibus editions really qualify as weapons: “Horn Promotes Use of Graphic Novels as Educational ‘Weapon’”

Hmm…needs more labels: Hopefully pseudonymous blogger “JekylinHyde” takes a look at a week’s worth of political cartoons on dailykos.com in this gigantic post. If nothing else, it’s a nice gathering of a ton of political cartoons in one place at one time.

Speaking of political cartoons…: Tom Spurgeon rounds up some cartoon-related news dealing with the situation in Iran at the moment at The Comics Reporter (and rightly notes that there’s much bigger stuff going on there than anything having to do with comics).

Rick Veitch draws Frank Frazetta…in a Mark Schultz comic…?: I’m  having trouble wrapping my head around it, but I did enjoy laying my eyes on it. Perhaps you will too.

Larry David for The Riddler!: In an interview with the Curb Your Enthusiasm creator, Eric Ditzian suggests to Larry David that he should pursue playing The Riddler in the next Batman movie. I’m all for it, as long as David also gets to write and direct the next Batman movie.

“Nell Brinkley is one of those women I feel like I should have learned about in college”: So says Whitney Matheson and yes, she should have learned about Nell Brinkley in college. We should all learn about Nell Brinkley in college. So if you’re currently in college, go check out The Brinkley Girls already. And if you’re out of college already, well go check it out anyway, because everyone seriously needs to see this book—Brinkley was that good.

“MySpace is not currently in a situation where they feel they can win this social networking battle”: CNN reports on MySpace’s moves to readjust their workforce in an attempt to better suit their existing market. And Marvel EIC Joe Quesada just moved his semi-nomadic “Cup O’ Joe” feature from MySpace to Comic Book Resources. Good timing on Quesada’s part, or did he single-handedly destroy MySpace’s fortunes just as he’s always destroying your childhood?!

There’s no getting around it, Barry Allen wore a bow tie: Over on 4thletter, David Brothers talks a bit about why Flash: Rebirth just isn’t doing it for him, and notes something that bugged me about last week’s third issue—Geoff Johns offers Explanation #2 for why Barry Allen wore a bow tie. The real answer is, of course, that Barry Allen is old, and he starred in old comics from a long time ago, back when people wore bow ties. Now only conservative TV pundits do, so Johns has attempted to explain why Allen, who, on DC’s sliding timeline never was from the time of bow ties being fashionable, always wore a bow tie. Once was probably sufficient; it’s not like Frank Miller devoted any panel time to explaining Bruce Wayne’s pipe-smoking and ascot-wearing in Batman: Year One.

Why this place doesn’t sound the least bit pleasant: Southern Ohio’s Springfield News-Sun chats up local creator Chad Lambert about his graphic novel Return to Point Pleasant, which is about a now legendary local cryptid—The Mothman.

I like his logo: The Honolulu Star-Bulletin on the print-on-demand return of Mr. Jigsaw, a one-time Charlton Comics back-up star.

“More like Whine for Justice”  made me laugh: Here are Rachelle Goguen’s reviews for some of the books she read this week. When discussing Green Lantern Corps, she got distracted by the multi-page preview of Justice League: Cry for Justice included in the back, and she wasn’t terribly excited about it. Tucker Stone didn’t much care for it either, bringing it up in his review of last week’s Batman, after wondering if “Ed Benes and Ethan Van Sciver having a line-drawing fight or something”:

Sure, DC was nice enough to jam that hideous looking “A Cry For Justice” preview in the back of the comic to remind you how much worse things can get, but still—who gets off on this kind of art?

I agree with #2: Sandy Bilius shares a few brief thoughts on the comics industry, and I second his second one, regarding weekly comics. From a business perspective, I’m sure it actually helps Marvel and DC to stretch out their six-, seven- and eight-part crossovers to last as long as possible—since, if adding Civil War: in front of any title helps it sell better, the longer the time period they have, the more comic copies of Civil War: Richard Rory they can publish—but if these things would wrap up in the course of a few weeks, that sure would be preferable from a reader’s perspective (and it also allow for more non-crossover storylines in the rest of the line, encouraging writers to write their own stories, rather than focusing on building up to, tie-ing into, and dealing with the aftermath of whatever the big universe-wide story is).

Everything he learned about editing he learned from J. Jonah Jameson: Stephen Colbert guest-edited a recent issue of Newsweek, and in his editorial about why he took the job (entitled “Why I Took This Crummy Job”) he discusses what editing entails. Comic book reference in paragraph seven.

So that’s why there aren’t more women in comics: Becky Cloonan keeps picking fights with them. (Via  The Beat)

“What I really dug was the exchange of ideas, which is ultimately what any book group, regardless of genre, is about”: The Philadelphia Inquirer has a nice little feature story on local comics shop Brave New World’s book club.

I call foul: Jenna Weissman Joselit’s story about the relationship between the Catholic church and comic books is interesting, and features a cool illustration, but didn’t quite live up to the “When Moses Saved the Man of Steel” headline.

“It’s not about violence. That’s too easy. It’s about evil”: In my last link dump, I had  linked to a post of Christopher Bird’s making fun of Mark Waid’s new-ish series Irredeemable, and I gave it some pretty negative reviews myself, so here’s a nice, positive one. April Snellings writes about the book, and talks with Waid about it here. Balance!

The Long Halloween is “possibly the best Batman graphic novel of all time”: I completely agree with Ian O’Connor. Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s Batman: The Long Halloween really is the best Batman graphic novel of all time. Except for Batman: Year One. And The Dark Knight Returns. And A Death in the Family. And A Lonely Place of Dying. And Batman: Child of Dreams. And Batman: Gothic. And Mad Love. And The Killing Joke. And Batman: Year 100. And Arkham Asylum. And The Many Deaths of The Batman. And Batman: City of Crime. And Batman: City of Light. Oh, and Batman: The Cult. And all of the Matt Wagner Batman comics, especially that first Grendel crossover. And The Dark Knight Strikes Again. And All-Star Batman and Robin, The Boy Wonder. And Batman Black and White, if collections of shorter stories count as graphic novels. Oh, and if so, then certainly Batman: Ego and Other Tails. And all those Showcase Presents, Archives and Batman Chronicles collections. And, come to think of it, I even liked Dark Victory better, as it has my favorite Loeb-written sequence ever.

So how old are Batman and sons?: Regular reader “batmansgirl” posted a link in the comments section of my post yesterday to Tom Bondurant’s discussion of how old Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake and other Bat-characters must be, given the introduction of Damian Wayne. I’m going to re-link to it here, because  Bondurant’s post is fun and fact-filled. And his conclusions hew close to my own assumptions about the characters’ ages, with the exception of Tim Drake, who needs to still be high school-aged. Unless he keeps flunking junior year to keep up the pretense that he’s just not smart enough to be Robin…? As impossible as Damian makes it for Batman to still be in his mid-thirties as editors so often insist when pressed, even bigger problems for Batman’s generation of heroes were raised by the introduction of Black Lightning’s college graduate-aged daughter Thunder, and Green Arrow’s nineteenish or so son Connor Hawke.

I guess if Aquaman’s archenemy is the biggest black supervillain, then there probably is a problem: Vince Moore has a pretty interesting piece up over at Comics Waiting Room about the dearth of great black supervillains, and he casts about for the biggest names—Black Manta, Moses Magnum—while wondering why there aren’t more and better black villains. Is Apocalypse black? Does he count? I certainly can’t think of any others; do you guys have any suggestions? Anyway, it’s an interesting question, and an interesting piece.

Oh wow, that’s Batman’s happy face?: Here’s another particularly strong panel from The Daily Batman. Do visit it often, and then I won’t feel compelled to link to it in, like, every one of these link round-ups.

Christopher Bird Is Evil: Bird gives Mark Waid and Peter Krause’s Irredeemable the “Honesty In Comic Book Covers” treatment. If you haven’t seen any of these before, do click on previous ones.

Oh thank God: I realize I may be the only comic book reader who thinks of the next Spider-Man movie as the next Kirsten Dunst movie instead of the next Spider-Man movie or next Sam Raimi movie, so maybe you won’t be as excited by this headline as I am, but, “Kirsten Dunst Returning For Spider-Man 4.” Huzzah!

“It’s just story, and it moves, and I can get the characters from the way they act”: One of the best barometers by which to gauge whether or not what you might think is a good comic book is actually a good comic book or not is to check and see what Comic Book Virgin Nina Stone thinks of it. Like, what does someone who didn’t even know that Dick Grayson used to be Robin think of the last week’s Batman and Robin #1?

She liked it:

I love that I find out in this issue that not only did Nightwing become Batman, but that he used to be Robin, too. Now I’m sure you all know that. But I didn’t. I’ve read some Nightwing comics, but all I can remember is that the art was kind of boring and he was always hang gliding in New York. But it’s written in so well here, it seems to come up naturally and move right along within the story. This little formula looks like it’s going to make for dramatic tension at its best…

I’m excited to keep up with this one. That doesn’t mean I’ll be reading it regularly, but I could see myself asking somebody about it after they read it.

Much more at the link.

“I never got to be Frank Miller big, but I got to be Neil Gaiman big”: That’s Neil Gaiman talking about how popular he is in the comics field, as part of an interview with the Toronto Star. It’s been a few days since I linked to an interview with Neil Gaiman, so I was overdue for one.

“All in all, though, Demanding Respect is an enjoyable, not too scholarly read”: That’s Ron Capshaw’s verdict on a new history of the comic book, Paul Lopes’ Demanding Respect, in this Washington Times review.

But what about Sex Bob-Omb?!: The Playlist theorizes that Metric will play the music of The Clash At Demonhead in the upcoming Scott Pilgrim flick. That’s cool. I like Metric.

When Robin’s skeptical, you know Batman’s gone too far: Have you heard of The Daily Batman yet? It’s provides your daily minimum requirement of Batman.

“I’m just here for the Sleestaks”: Comics blogger Sleestak of Lady, That’s My Skull has seen Land of the Lost, and reviewed it here. Obviously, he’s about as big a fan of the original as you can find in the comics blogosphere, so his reaction is well worth a read (as is his blog in general, if you don’t normally stop by there already).

“Sprawling, trippy, moving, and a hell of a lot of fun”: That’s EW on David Mazzucchelli’s long-awaited graphic novel project, which turned out to be Asterios Polyp.

All of my conflicting emotions when reading this news cancel each other out: So I guess hearing that extremely popular novelist Janet Evanovich is going to be breaking into graphic novels leaves me…apathetic? Hopefully her final product will be better than Brad Meltzer’s or Jodi Picoult’s or Dean Koontz’s or Stephen King’s or…well, you get the idea. The fact that it will be coming from Dark Horse is kinda promising, as they weren’t responsible for any of the godawful graphic novels written by or based on the works of popular airport paperback novelist I’ve suffered through in the past.

Apparently, if it’s new to them it’s news: CNN discovers the “real superhero” movement, which every media outlet in the world except maybe CNN reported on months ago. CNN’s piece tries to tie the movement into the economy.

“Stan Lee, who inadvertently shaped contemporary film, is now trying to do so on purpose”: Not a bad sub-head, that. It’s from an Economist business story about Stan Lee and film. Unfortunately, whatever points one might award them for the sub-head get subtracted for the headline: “Ka-pow!”

I often see IDW’s Astro Boy in my dreams, and wake up screaming: Sarah Boslaugh reviews a couple of comics for kids, including Astro Boy: Official Movie Prequel #1.

Basil Wolverton is rather high on my list of Cartoonists Whose Work Will Never Be Used To Model Playground Equipment After: But what do you know? Look what the Fantagraphics blog has a picture of.

Go read Monster Plus #1: You might reasonably expect the most ingeniously insane character in this online comic to be its star, who seems to be a zombified mummy/Frankenstein’s monster that is also a vampire and a werewolf, but page six will disabuse you of that notion. You’ve never seen anything like what you’ll see on page six.

At this point, I’m pretty sure all of the Obama comics are part of a Republican plot to make everyone so sick of the president they won’t re-elect him in 2012: I mean, even his dog is going to be appearing in one of Marvel’s comics, Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers. USA Today had the scoop, and they have a nice little chat with writer Chris Eliopoulos. Well, it’s nice if you can stand all the puns and pet humor in it. Careful though, that link leads to a spoiler! Don’t read the article if you don’t want to know the location of the final infinity gem!

I think we should replace the word “graphic” with “comics” and have “comics novels” (and “comics short stories” and “comics serials” and “comics biographies” and so on): Shawn Huston has a pretty great piece about the names by which we call comics, prompted by the New York Times‘ decision to use the term “graphic books” in their sales tracking, a term I kinda freaked out about when I first heard it (Like it or not, the publishing world long ago settled on the term “graphic novel” for any bound comics work, and it’s gonna take a lot more than a decision from a few folks at the NYT to change that). Do take some time to check out Huston’s article. It’s well written, and wrestles with an issue no one’s been able to solve satisfactorily so far: Just what the heck do we call these things?

“Fan expectations high for the most famous queer character in mainstream comics”: More famous than Extrano and Northstar? Is it possible? Chaos McKenzie talks to writer Greg Rucka about his upcoming run on Detective Comics, which will be focusing on Batwoman. It’s a pretty thorough piece, starting with the original Batwoman in the 1950s, although it seems to skip over the weird, several-year delay between the new Batwoman’s debut in 52 and the start of this story arc. Why has it taken DC so long to exploit a potentially hot character the mainstream media was interested in? Because they wanted to make sure they got this comic book just right?  That’s not exactly the company’s usual M.O., as the state of Bat-books for, oh, the last five years or so attests.

Trinity, one year later: Comics critic Don MacPherson takes a look at Kurt Busiek, Mark Bagley and company’s year-long weekly series as a whole, now that it’s finally wrapped up. Is MacPherson’s piece a good read? Um, I don’t really know, as I haven’t read it yet; I’m planning on doing my own Trinity debrief later in the week, and so have been avoiding other Trinity pieces. But I’m totally going to come back and read MacPherson’s afterward.

Wow, right through the goatee!: Chris Sims on Conan’s first night as the Tonight Show host.

The Penguin, dressed as a cowboy: Dr. K presents an old Batman mini-comic he got from a box of cereal, in which the arch-villain attempts to rob a rodeo, while accessorizes his Western duds with an umbrella and monocle. It is, as Dr. K notes, the perfect example of a Batman story. I particularly like this panel, in which the artists draw Penguin’s whole area. Denim doesn’t do Oswald Cobblepot any favors.

And speaking of The Penguin, Kevin Church has assembled a whole bunch of ’80s era Super Friends/Super Powers Team videos in one spot here; I always used to feel bad for The Penguin, because he was just some middle-aged fat guy with a helicopter umbrella going up against an army of superheroes, you know?

“…but what set her apart was her tendency for her face to transform into a hideous grinning skull”: Dave Campbell on the two weirdest characters that appear in Supermen!: The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes: 1939-1941, Fantomah and Stardust The Super-Wizard. Hmm, now what do those two have in common…

“The graphic novel particularly fits Snyder’s talents and career interests, since she is interested in both writing and drawing”: Here’s a nice little profile on Montana State University studio arts major Jasmine Snyder, “who used comic book illustrations to explain her research that explored and explained the commercialism of the underground culture,” complete with images of Snyder’s very nice art. I’m going to have to dock the article’s writer Carol Schmidt a point for misspelling Spider-Man though; it’s two words, hyphenated and with a capital “M.” Jeez, what do they teach these kids at school these days?

Since it’s been days since I’ve posted anything about Guibert’s The Photographer…: Here’s the LA Times review of his book.

Aqua-Borg? Terranado?!: Last week, on Living Between Wednesdays, Dave Howlett discussed Superman/Batman, and came to an unusual conclusion:

The book features a supremely annoying house style of writing where the two leads narrate in hilariously homoerotic tandem, constantly commenting on what the other must be thinking right now. In defiance of all odds, it somehow became even stupider when Jeph Loeb wrapped up his 25-issue arc.

However, I submit to you that, despite all these flaws, Superman/Batman is the most consistently accessible and yes, entertaining, mainstream book featuring these two leads a lot of the time.

I quit buying it around the time of the weird Metal Man “story,” and even quit looking for library trades of it after that one with the New Gods in which Batman was “aroused beyond all reason,” but Howlett does make a pretty compelling argument that sometimes the book reaches a critical mass of stupidity that makes it awesome.

Also of note at LBW this week was a Johnathan’s post about punctuation, which I enjoyed in no small part because he used three of my favorite comics characters to illustrate examples of less-standard punctuation.

So, how about this Dwayne McDuffie thing, huh?: I assume you’ve all heard the news about McDuffie leaving JLoA by now, right?

It’s been something of a hot topic, and talked about hither and yon. I first heard about it at 4thletter.net, which concludes a post about it in…an interesting way (And by interesting, I mean hypnotic. I can’t stop staring at that thing). Chistopher Butcher mentioned it while liveblogging the May Previews, which I’ll quote because it gives me an excuse to link to Butcher’s always entertaining (and educational!) liveblogging of Previews:

I mean, whatever, people don’t like their jobs, but you can only complain about how fucking broken the book is and how your hands are tied, in public, for so long, before Dan DiDio reads his e-mail. You know what I’m saying? That dude seems like a biiiiiiiiiiiit of a control freak, I can’t imagine he’s reading McDuffie complaining about a scene needing to be re-written at the last minute and the scene being clumsy because of it, and DiDio steps back and goes “Yeah, shit, good point man. We really gotta get our act together here at DC!”

Dan DiDio doesn’t seem like that kind of guy is all I’m saying.

To The Extreme.

The thing that confuses me about the situation is that I don’t see how removing McDuffie from the title helps anyone, especially DC. I mean, yes, the title was horrible, just completely unreadable. But then, it was before McDuffie got there too, and it was pretty clear to anyone trying to slog through it that the person credited as the writer only had so much control over the proceedings. From the issues I read, it seemed like McDuffie spent about 75% of each issue in his run trying to finish what his predecessor half-wrote before leaving, and/or setting up and tying into other books, and he was working without a regular artist.  I mean, there were multiple issues where the artists would draw entirely different characters than the ones the writer was writing into the scene (actually, that started before McDuffie did, with the Aquaman mistake in Brad Meltzer’s last issue). I’m pretty sure that Alan Moore could have been writing JLoA and getting story tips and advice from the ghosts of Shakespeare and Mark Twain, and the book would have still been pretty terrible.

But the thing is, whatever damage McDuffie might have done by publicly  admitting that writing the book wasn’t super-fun, or that he and the book were at the mercy of the events of other books, it’s already been done. Removing him now just makes DC seem petty about it, and besides, who’s going to replace McDuffie and do any better?

The sales have been sliding since Meltzer left the title, but whether that’s McDuffie’s fault, or the fault of all the terrible artwork, or the fault of the book’s many tie-in plots making it seem irrelevant, or just standard attrition, it’s hard to say. It doesn’t seem like DC booted McDuffie to replace him with a more talented or more popular superstar writer who’s going to rocket JLoA back up the charts.

It looks like Len Wein will be writing the book for at least the next few issues, and while Wein is a talented writer with plenty of experience and goodwill from plenty of older readers, his addition isn’t likely to burn up the sales charts. In fact, it’s likely to do the exact opposite.

It’s like you’re eating at a restaurant, and the food is so bad you complain about it, and the chef invites you back to the kitchen and shows you it’s a filthy mess; how’s he supposed to cook great food under these conditions? And then the owner fires that chef and tells you, “Hey, don’t worry; we’ve got a new chef now!”

If JLoA under McDuffie read like a fill-in run, a placeholder while the “important” DCU stories were going on in Final Crisis, the upcoming Blackest Night business, and whatever Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison were writing, now it’s just going to read like a fill-in for a fill-in.  How does that benefit anyone?

Another New Frontier comic?: Cartoonist Todd Ramsell talks about his comic, Tales of the New Frontier. Hmm, not bad, but it needs more J’onn J’onnz…

Newspaper reader offended by cartoonish politics in political cartoon: Just one more reasons why newspapers deserve to die.

Yeah, but that’s exactly why we love Wonder Woman: Professional pretty lady Megan Fox tells the Times that “Wonder Woman is a lame hero” and that “Somebody has a big challenge on their hands whoever takes that role but I don’t want to do it” (Er, punctuation…?). That’s too bad, as Fox certainly looks the part. If by “the part” you mean “a pretty young woman with black hair and blue eyes,” which I do. (Although if they ever do get around to making a Wonder Woman movie, I imagine they’ll go for more of the post-Perez warrior princess interpretations than the original Amazon-girl-in-America conception). (Link swiped from MTV’s Splash Page).

Fantagraphics’ Gahan Wilson book to be totally awesome: Just look at this. Damn. Fanta’s Gahan Wilson: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons is scheduled for an October release, so start saving your pennies now.

Poor Peter Parker: Poor, poor Peter Parker.

I think I have a new favorite comics artist from the Van Sciver family: Noah Van Sciver boils his brother Ethan’s latest collaboration with Geoff Johns, The Flash: Rebirth, into two, four-panel strips, and Wizard posts them (I know! Wizard! Never thought I’d want to link there! Link spotted at and swiped from comicsreporter.com, by the way).

EW on that GL fan-trailer: Can we all just vote on who plays the lead in a Green Lantern movie, American Idol-style? Because I’ll cast my vote for Brian Austen Green (It’s the role he was born to play! Or at least named to play!); Marc Bernardin prefers Nathan Fillion. Not me, as that would potentially interfere with my enjoyment of Castle. Plus, I hate to say it, but I think at 38 Fillion may be too old. Or at least, I think producers and studio people might think he’s too old (Especially if they’re hoping for a three-film franchise sort of deal).

“In 2004 issue No. 300 was published, fulfilling Sim’s promise to go 300 issues“: Every once in a while it’s worth stopping to think, “Holy crap, he actually did it!” regarding Dave Sim’s Cerebus. That’s what this article in the Miramichi Leader does (although it’s phrased differently).

I really like this cover: Mostly because it looks like Bucky-as-Captain America is teaming up with a little version of himself as Bucky and a teensy version of himself as Winter Solider.

That should have been a super-rare, 1-in-100 variant: Christopher Bird was not surprised by the cancellation of Captain Britain and MI-13, but then, he read one of the covers a little differently than most of us.

100 years?: Here’s a nice, brief history of Korean comics, prompted by a museum exhibit entitled “100 Years of Korean Comics.”

“Five Comic Book Heroes Who’d Oppose Propisition 8”: MTV’s Splash Page tries to tie current events into comic books. I’m pretty sure the second person on the list, Jenny Sparks, is all the opposition needed: She could sic Apollo, Midnighter and the rest of the Authority on California and they could just straight up conquer it and change the name to Authorifornia.

Geoff Johns’ Pal, Superman: I noticed the amusing cover design of the Superman: Ending Battle at the shop on Wednesday, but couldn’t post about it because the full cover with the text and everything wasn’t available online. Luckily, Jeff Simes took a picture of it, so you can click through his name to see it, and his post about it. Now I know why they probably designed this cover so that it looks like it’s a trade by Geoff Johns and some other guys who might have helped out a little, and I’m not about to say they’re wrong to push the most popular name on the credits roll or anything, but this sort of thing always makes me giggle. In this case I found it particularly amusing since, as Simes points out, Johns name eclipses Superman’s, and also because I was reading the Super-books pretty regularly at that point, and had no memory that Johns was even involved in that story at all, although looking back at what the trade contains, I guess he would have written one-fourth of the scripts for it (The other writers were Joe Casey, Joe Kelly and Mark Schultz, and the pencil artists were Pascual Ferry, Duncan Rouleau, Brent Anderson, Brandon Badeaux and Derec Aucoin). Regardless of how DC’s selling the trade of it, I remember the story being a pretty good one: Manchester Black, the Jenny Sparks analogue from the DCU’s Authority analogue team The Elite, has discovered Superman’s secret identity and sets in motion a chain of events that sees pretty much every villain Superman’s ever fought targeting the regular people in Clark Kent’s life, all climaxing in the death of Lois Lane! Sorta!

Emmanuel’s Interview: As part of their Memorial Day weekend coverage, NPR spoke with cartoonist Emmanuel Guibert about his collaboration with Alan Cope that resulted in Alan’s War (Released in English last year by First Second). You can read and/or listen to the piece here, and they also have a six-page excerpt. Check it out; it’s a really great book.

Neil Gaiman features are always fun to read, right?: Here’s a nice long one from yesterday’s  Chicago Tribune.

This year’s National Cartoonists Society winners are…: These people.

This week’s Comics Reporter interview is…: Jim Ottaviani, the writer responsible for such science-related comics as Wire Mothers, Fallout and, my personal favorite, Bone Sharps, Cowboys and Thunder Lizards. Ottoviani and his Bone Sharps collaborators Zander Cannon and Kevin Cannon have a new book out, T-Minus: The Race to the Moon, and Tom Spurgeon uses the occasion to have a rather detailed chat with Ottaviani about the work.

“Actress Lucy Gordon, who appeared in Spider-Man 3, was found dead in her Paris apartment after apparently committing suicide“: So say French police in this Associated Press article from Thursday. The 28-year-old British actress played reporter Jennifer Dugan in the third Spider-Man film.

“Simply put, Burma Chronicles is the most enlightening and insightful book on Burma in years”: Rory MacLean has written a book on Burma himself, Burma Under the Dragon, and Guy Delisle’s Burma Chronicles still impressed the hell out of him, judging from his review of it in The Guardian. It also restored his faith in the comics medium, which he had apparently come to doubt since his years reading Classics Illustrated as a kid.

“Superheroes can’t save California”: Comedian Bill Maher weighs in on the sad state of California politics in an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times. He uses superhero metaphors throughout, playing off of the fact that electing a guy who used to play action heroes didn’t save the day. I’m not sure I agree with all of his points though. For example, he writes,

Truth is, even superheroes couldn’t get us out of the mess we’re in now. Superman can stop bullets, move mountains and crush coal into diamonds, but he can’t help us. He works for a newspaper. He needs a job.

Yeah, but if he can crush coal into diamonds, then couldn’t he make enough diamonds to save the economy? He also uses his vision powers to find and dive for sunken treasure chests whenever he needs some scratch. I wouldn’t be so quick to write President Superman off.

“It’s like Star Wars, when you’re trying to shoot to get the Death Star . . . that tiny little room of error”: That’s Comics Riffs blogger Michael Cavna talking about how “brutally hard” it is to break into the print comic strip business today. Things are brutally hard all over for comics strippers actually, which is the focus of this Los Angeles Times article covering the National Cartoonists Society’s annual convention.

Hey, this art director is also an artist…who knew?: When he’s not busy with his duties as art director at DC Comics or editing projects that look like they’ll totally rule, what’s Mark Chiarello up to? Find out here! (Via The Beat)

Now why didn’t young Lex Luthor think of that?: Chris Sims shares Superboy’s hair-loss solution.

Actually, you may want to buy anything from either of those guys: Bully on who not to buy a used car from.

Cap Vs. Bats?: Tucker Stone on two different superhero-dies-and-comes-back-to-life-narratives:

Marvel did the right thing by Captain America. It let a writer and a team of artists work together to create a strong, smart story, and when it came time for the requisite capitalization spin-off—those moronic “Fallen Son” comics—they didn’t force them into the main narrative. DC’s mistakes with Batman were legion, and they went far and beyond the basic “get the comic books out on time” complaints. Whereas Marvel played things tight, DC vomited out comic books with no eye for longevity, with no concern for whether or not the non-Morrison writers had any idea what was going on, and they’re still pumping out new spin-off titles at a rate of 2-3 a week. Whereas the Captain America issues screamed with consistency, the quality barometer for the Batman titles was set at a level where the only thing that mattered was that a salable product was created. There’s really no other way to put it: they screwed this one up.

At the end of the day though? It doesn’t really matter that much to me, and I’ll tell you why.

You’ll have to follow the link and read the whole piece to find out why. Stone’s tough love (or is it gentle hate?) for super-comics is, as always, well worth paying attention to.

“Never in either an ‘Imaginary Story’ or while under the influence of red kryptonite did Superman seek out and enjoy a damn good thrashing at the hands of a perfectly turned out old-school dominatrix”: Another mainstream media peice about Craig Yoe’s Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster, this one a big, long one by Jonathan Ross for The Times. I’m not so sure I agree with many of Ross’ points, particularly his assessment of the book itself as a missed opportunity, but his article is nevertheless a wide-ranging look at the history of comics, Shuster and the intersections of creators rights and fetish art with comics.

“I used to kind of imagine I was Wolverine. Somehow, it always got two or three more reps out of me”: Hugh Jackman’s work out secret revealed!

Wait, there’s a future of political cartoons?: Daryl Cagle on the subject of the future of political cartoon syndication, in a must-read piece from Monday.

Diana, Gail and Mary Sue: Noah Berlatsky’s fifteen-thousandth post of the year about Wonder Woman covers Gail Simone’s first arc on the series. In general, Berlatsky seems to hold that no one’s been able to write Wondy right since her creator. Despite enjoying various aspects of many of the talented folks who have kept Wonder Woman comics alive since the Golden Age, I wholeheartedly agree. Berlatsky seems to have liked a lot of what Simone managed to do though, even if she too fell far short of Marston. Here’s a taste:

In the end, then, maybe I spoke too quickly when I said that Simone managed to avoid the traps Marston laid for her. She does outmaneuver several of them…but she’s left with maybe the biggest one of all, which is that, unlike most any other super-hero outside of Mr. A, Wonder Woman was actually about something. Marston had stuff to say, in his cranky way, about real issues, peace and war among them. His solutions to these problems were more or less crazy (have woman rule over the world and teach men submission and love as a way to combat war), but they were thought through and existed in a coherent (if cracked) belief system.

I kinda hope Berlatsky’s working on a Wonder Woman book or something, because he’s gotta have just about enough material for one stockpiled at this point.

This is the first time the thought of Sandman fumetti ever occurred to me: Check out photographer Matt Miller’s super-cool Endless family photo, using models dressed as Neil Gaiman’s seven beings who are like gods, but are not gods. Actually, you should check out all of Matt Miller’s photos…when you’re not at work, as there are a lot of naked ladies. (Via Spurgeon, via Forbidden Planet, via Gaiman’s Twitter, if I’ve got that attribution stream correct).