Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark looks like it just might be the best thing ever: Your mileage may vary of course, but check out Vogue‘s article on the ill-starred Broadway musical featuring our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, and prepare for your jaw to drop and your mind to be blown by Annie Leibovitz’s photos. I have to say, as weird as some of those characters look, I think I like this Green Goblin better than the live-action film version.

“6 superhero origins Hollywood got right (and 6 that Hollywood messed up)”: In the wake of the the release of the Green Lantern trailer (oh my God you guys, is that the real trailer for the real movie? Abin Sur looks just like a pink verison of J’onn  J’onnz from that live-action JLI-era Justice League pilot!), i09 compiles a coupla lists. I think they put Batman Begins in the wrong category, but whatever.

“33 Years of Spider-Girls and Spider-Women”: At the Techland blog, Douglas Wolk reviews the history of the many female versions of Spider-Man over the years. Does the latest one have the worst hair of them all?

Life in Low Resolution: Check out Steven Kraan’s three-panel video game comic strips at Top Shelf 2.0.

Batman and Robin #16, improved: Chris Haley makes the climax of Grant Morrison’s run on Batman (so far) even cooler than it was.

Men in peril and mean girls: At The Comics Journal, Tom Crippen provides two galleries of weird covers.

Talk of The Nation talks to cartoonists: The NPR show recently featured Lynda Barry and Sophie Crumb. They also have a nice blog post on learning to love Barry and an excerpt of Crumb’s book.

Someone please explain Batman: Odyssey to Eric Reynolds: Fantagraphics’ Reynolds took to the publisher’s blog to ask “What the Hell is Going On Here?!” in a panel from Neal Adams’ current Batman limited series. Or, as Adams’ Bruce Wayne might say, “Um?”

Don’t forget Drawn and Quarterly!: As the end of the year nears and critics, bloggers and a whole lot of comics fans with Internet connections begin to think of the best comics they read during the past year in order to compile lists, D and Q provides a handy list of all the great comics they published during the last year. I personally haven’t been thinking about such things just yet, but Hicksville, Market Day, and Wilson sure were great, Make Me A Woman was a lot of fun, I always enjoy reading John Stanley comics, particularly when given D+Q’s slick production values, and man, I still have a lot of comics to catch up on…!

“I’ve killed roughly 5.2 zillion videogame Nazis over the years”: At the Savage Critics, Abhay Khosla slaps Hitler across the face with a copy of Kathryn and Stuart Immonen’s Moving Pictures. Sorta.

That’s an awful lot of comics history in a single image: Check out this photo of Jerry Robinson and Joe Simon at NYCC. (Via The Beat)

I don’ t like it: Entertainment Weekly unveiled the cover of the first True Blood collection with some fanfare. If you’re going to stick that close to the actors’ appearances, and render them that realistically, why not just go with a photo cover?

They are?: “WRESTLING greats John Cena and The Rock are set to go head-to-head in a battle to play SUPERMAN.”

Derf plays the ultimate Get Out Of Jury Duty Free card: The City cartoonist Derf recently got out of jury duty by answering a question regarding whether or not he’d ever committed a crime by mentioning he went to high school with Jeffrey Dahmer.  Derf’s original blog post about the incident and another about the Plain Dealer column and the Associated Press piece about it can be found on his blog; of particular interest is the fact that Derf is apparently near the end of completing a 200-page graphic novel version of My Friend Dahmer, a 2002 comic book he made about the point where his life intersected with that of the future serial killer.

Well, that’s a strange way to boil Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World down into just five words: “Nerd takes on girlfriend’s exes”; being in a rock band, being able to constantly defeat your many foes in physical combat and having almost every pretty girl you meet fall madly in love with you is pretty much the exact opposite of being a nerd, isn’t it?

Speaking of Scott Pilgrim: The release of the DVD of the movie means another round of interviews with cartoonist Bryan Lee O’Malley. This is a neat one, which mentions Edgar Wright’s  ”Amelie version of Toronto” as the setting.

Actually, none of these surprised me: “Movies based on comic books that may surprise you”

“How one U.S. Jew stopped worrying, began drawing, and started loving Israel”: Haaretz.com profiles Sarah Glidden and her new book How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less. It’s actually gotten a pretty decent amount of ink lately, as publisher Vertigo’s Graphic Content blog demonstrates with a link round-up here.

How Ann Telnaes does what Ann Telnaes does: The Washington Post has a neat little behind-the-scenes video demonstrating how the incredibly talented political cartoonist-turned-animated editorial cartoonist creates her work. The single panel cartoons sure seemed a lot less labor intensive.

This looks pretty awesome: I’ve been pretty apathetic about the latest volume of DC’s latest volume of Batgirl (I tried out just one issue, the one with all the Draculas on the cover, and didn’t care for it), but this sequence by the series’ new pencil artist Dustin Nguyen looks pretty incredible. Maybe it’s time to try a second issue of the series…

“Don’t you think the idea of selling signed silkscreens is a mean trick? Why not just sell signed Xeroxes?”: Vice‘s Nicholas Gazin interviews Vice‘s Johnny Ryan about the zombie shooting target thing he made to help promote The Walking Dead show. The results are very Vice-ish and Johnny Ryan-esque. (Via Flog)

“After all, whatever you may believe about its quality, Beetle Bailey is undeniably one of the most influential comic strips of all time”: At Comics Comics, T. Hodler struggles a bit with discussing Mort Walker’s Beetle Bailey, which he recently revisited through Titan’s collection of the strip.

Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Ramonas: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World director Edgar Wright shares about one billion photos of people dressing up as characters from Scott Pilgrim for Halloween. Needs more Matthew Patel.

I think they’re so scared in that first panel because they’ve never seen an adult before: Mike Sterling shares a crazy Charlie Brown scheme.

Mid-term toons: There was an election this past Tuesday, and you know what that means, right? Well yeah, some people who were holding public office are not going to be holding it much longer, and some people who weren’t holding public office will be holding public office soon. Also, various ballot issues either passed or didn’t. But more importantly, the nation’s political cartoonist all had something exciting to draw about. Alan Gardner at The Daily Cartoonist has a round-up of some exiciting goings on (like David Horsey and Clay Jones’ impressive marathons), R.C. Harvey surveys political cartoons  dealing with the election results at The Comics Journal and, as always, Daryl Cagle’s Political Cartoonists Index is a good place to go to perform your own surveys of political cartoons by topic.

Sometimes the Google News feed robot gives me the weirdest articles: “Karima Keyek, an 18-year-old belly dancer, has claimed that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, 74, owns a marble statue in the shape of Superman with his own face in place of Clark Kent’s.”

Amazon calls it a year: Here are Amazon’s editors top ten comics and graphic novels for 2010. Drawn and Quarterly was the publisher with the most books on the list with three, followed by DC with two.  The Abrams ComicsArts-published The Art of Jaime Hernandez: The Secrets of Life and Death topped the list. The “customer’s favorites” top ten list consists entirely of comics that were adapted into movies (Scott Pilgrim Vol. 6, Kick-Ass), were just adapted into TV shows (Walking Dead Vols. 11 and 12), were TV shows adapted into comics (Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 8 Vol. 6) or adaptations of novels (Twilight: The Graphic Novel Vol. 1, The Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel, Troublemaker, The Dark Tower: The Fall of Gilead). The only comic on the list without a tie to a different form of media is Blackest Night…which prominently features Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Who will be featured in the upcoming Green Lantern movie. I don’t know what this means exactly, but it sure means something.

“Virtually every cartoonist of the era was racist to some degree but their racism came through in different styles”: At Comics Comics, Jeet Heer returns to Greg Sadowski’s collection of first generation, Golden Age superhero comics, Supermen!, and has some interesting observations about the particular types of racism certain giants of the field evince in their work there.

There were superheroes in 1910?: I’m going to have to deduct points from this Daily Cardinal article about superheroes for claiming that “Superheroes have been an integral part of our country’s zeitgeist over the last hundred years.” And more points for the “It’s a bird! It’s a plane!” formulation of the headline, which follows only “Biff Bam Pow!” and “Holy _____, Batman!” for annoying headline formulations for articles about superheroes. And more points for  spelling Spider-Man “Spiderman.” And– Oh wait, The Daily Cardinal is a collegge paper? So these are students writing and editing this thing? And I’m just being a jerk? Oh, okay then. Sorry kids; carry on.

I could have used one of these for basically any job I’ve ever had: On Fantagraphics’ Flog blog, Krisit Valenti shares a “Handy Fantagraphics Map/ Staff Field Guide” created by a few interns in order to help future interns.

Frank Miller’s “Krypto-Fascist”: Check out this drawing by Miller; I think he’s actually found a way to make the idea of a dog with all of Superman’s powers even more terrifying than it already is. (Via The Beat)

Grant Morrison, continuity freak: I enjoyed this post at DC’s Source blog in which Morrison details the origins of some of the characters who appeared in his Batman and Robin story arc with Cameron Stewart. While there are several new creations, a lot of them are recreations, and a surprising number of them—I’m thinking of Bruce Wayne’s ancestors here—come from mentions in relatively obscure Batman comics.

Julia Wertz on “The Insidious Nature of Book Reviews”: I wish I hadn’t read this funny cartoon by Wertz, as I hate to think anything I say type on the Internet could make a cartoonist cry. Of course, I like Wertz’s work an awful lot, so I’m reasonably certain I won’t make her cry. Everyone loves you, Julia Wertz!

Did they already announce the title of the next Superman movie, and some of us missed it?: This dude notices that one of David Goyer’s credits given under his blurb on the back of Superman: Earth One graphic novel mentions a Superman project which seems to be the title of the new movie. IMDb has an entry under David Goyer’s “writer” credits with that name too. Huh.

No, he’s tied with Chris Evans’ Human Torch: “Is Chris Evans’ Captain America The Sexiest Superhero Ever?”

They also make fine All Saint’s Day Reading: Brand X Daily and USA Today recommend comics for Halloween.

So that’s how webcomics are made!: Gabby Schulz’s How Every Single Discussion About Sexism and Woman-Type Stuff on The Internet… strip is really funny. And sad. But funny in it’s capturing of a sad fact of life. Not funny-sad, but maybe sad-funny…? Also, panel three offered a revelation about webcomics…I always assumed a scanner was involved at some point.  (Via Comics Worth Reading)

Sometimes the guys are scantily clad too: At The Comics Journal, Tom Crippen examines some Golden Age comics covers with athletic men wearing very little clothing. You don’t see a whole lot of near-nude dudes in pop comics anymore do you, outside of maybe Doc Savage’s tissue-paper longsleeve shirt, and flashbacks to Namor’s Speedo or swim trunk days. These days, even the boy sidekicks wear pants. Meanwhile, Andrew Wheeler has a smart, well-written post explaining the concept of beefcake as it applies to superhero comics.

If she weren’t such a great cartoonist, Lucy Knisley would make a great sea creature costume co-designer: Check out Knisley and her seamstress pal’s squid and hammerhead Halloween costumes (be sure to follow the Flickr too, for more fun shark and squid photos).  (Via Comics Reporter)

Is Superman: Earth One getting enough hype?: The other day on his blog The Comics Reporter, Tom Spurgeon made a joking observation that the new original graphic novel meant to reinvent/re-style Superman for new and/or younger readers only seemed to be registering on at “a .3 on the Millar Scale of hype” (in fairness, only Millar projects seem to get very high on that scale). “Industry members” responded by providing a list of Superman: Earth One coverage, which Spurgeon then shared. It’s a weird conversation to even have, in large part because it was somewhat premised on a joke about Millar, but also becuase you’d really have to keep count of articles about something and have some sort of agreed upon systm of rating the value of that coverage to get anywhere with it (i.e. a New York Times story is 5o times more valuable then me mentioning the book in this space). The result is a good round-up of folks talkig about the book though. For what it’s worth, just from casual observation, Earth One seems to be getting a decent amount of coverage, but closer to the “Bruce Wayne is coming back” or “Bruce Wayne died” level than the “OMG Batwoman likes girls” or “ZOMG Wonder Woman changed clothes level!” This Associated Press story looks like the biggest story my Google News alert robot gave me today: “Lanky, brooding Superman for  contemporary world.” The AP is certainly a pretty good “get.”

But what do these sexy vampire ladies want?: Kate Beaton adapts Bram Stoker’s Dracula, in her own inimitable style.

Bill O’Reilly asks fans to politely harass some poor cartoonist: Daryl Cagle’s The Cagle Post and The Daily Cartoonist have the story. Man, it’s not even that good a cartoon…

“Offhand, it’s the only successful depiction of bitchiness that I’ve seen in a Marvel comic”: That’s Tom Crippen talking Marvel super-comics at The Comics Journal. In a review of the first two issues of Thor: For Asgard, he asks how gay and how male the comic is, while applauding its successful bottling of bitchiness, and in a review of The Thanos Imperative #3, he discovers that David Spade is actually a time-tossed warrior.

“I spend half the year drawing and half the year writing. It can make you feel a bit schizophrenic”: Bryan Lee O’Malley fills out a survey about comics-creation for a class his friend is teaching, revealing quite a bit about his process in the, um, process.

Two neat posts from on Flog: Fantagraphics’ blog shares Ivan Brunetti’s Halloween-themed cover for The New Yorker and some awesome Walking Dead art by the likes of Johnny Ryan, Jon Vermilyea and others.

Holiday links: Katherine Dacey counts down her favorite “spooky” manga, Chris Sims counts down “The 7 Strangest Spooky Characters In Comics” (Man, someone’s just gotta collect the comics featuring the characters who come in at #1!) and Becky Cloonan sketches the “sluts of Dracula” (NSFW-ish; You know, I would love to read a comic book called Becky Cloonan’s Bram Stoker’s Sluts of Dracula).

“Ten Things to Know About the Future of Comics”: Shaenon K. Garrity predicts the future in piece well worth a read.

If you miss any, you may need to watch it again this week: This Kansas City Star feature offers a multiple choice quiz regarding trivia about the Peanuts Halloween special, It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

“Could zombie comics also provide fresh meat (and brains) for the big screen?”: Since Walking Dead is getting adapted to TV instead of film, writer Nick Nadel looks at a half-dozen other zombie comics for big-screen potential.

The Haindmaid of Might’s Tale…?: Check out these superhero designs by Margaret Atwood.

“Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, actually it’s a hoodie”: Man, Superman: Earth One is making for some pretty awesome headlines, isn’t it? DC’s Source blog has plenty of other links to mainstream-ish press coverage.

“It shouldn’t make people cringe when they look at it. Or question what sort of person I am for reading it”: Kevin Pasquino looks at a trio of DC’s Green Lantern comics covers, including that one which is just a head shot of Guy Gardener puking and weeping blood, and has lots and lots of questions about them.  He has a very interesting point regarding the covers of Walking Dead, a series about cannibal corpses slaughtering and eating innocents, in comparison to DC’s comics about superhero space cops.

Anyone but Bush: The Legion leader election is heating up, and comics bloggers Bully, The Little Stuffed Bull, Christopher Bird and Kevin Church are campaigning for their favorites.

Out-of-context Mark Trail panels are the best out-of-context panels: That’s a fact that Thursday’s one-panel strip, which you can see reproduced and discussed at some length at The Comics Curmudgeon, makes abundantly clear. And because of daily continuity strips’ constant need to recap the events of the previous strip, it seems like that mean dude was either kicking that fawn very slowly, or repeatedly, since he’s still kicking it the next day.

Grid and bear it: Frank Santoro on the nine-panel grid in America comics.

“After the fatwa against Pokémon, I thought, ‘My God, what has happened to Islam?”: Wait, there was a fatwa against Pokémon? That’s Naif al-Mutawa talking about his creation, Muslim super-group The 99 with The Guardian, occasioned by his characters’ upcoming team-up with the Justice League. There’s also a sizable slideshow with images of the characters and a few preview pages from the team-up series.

Doom, gloom: The third quarter of 2010 was a bad quarter for comics sales in the direct market, according to ICv2.com, which knows such things. At The Beat, Heidi MacDonald has a round-up of what some folks are saying about the numbers, the most interesting bit of which (I thought) came from retailer Glen Soustek, who notes there’s a good chance these numbers may reflect retailers ceasing to chase the variants some comics publisher’s use to pump up their numbers, and that of course graphic novel sales are down, since there are other, in some ways better channels through which to get graphic novels than the direct market.

What if…E.C. Segar drew Giant-Sixe X-Men #1 instead of Dave Cockrum?: That woulda been a swell issue of What If…?, huh? Ben Towle draws the eighties X-Men in the style of Segar, and though I’ve seen the link a few places already, I saw it at Dirk Deppey’s joint first, so he gets the link.

“99 Problems But a Cape Ain’t One”: Andy Khouri takes a look at The 99, a cartoon and comic book series based in Islamic culture and faith, and the depressingly predictable reaction it’s recevied in the U.S. so far, mostly sight unseen. Given that the heroes are set to team-up with the JLA in a DC Comics-published series starting next week, it’s kinda hard to believe anyone would get too worked up about some subversive element to the characters. Safe (sometimes way too safe), 75-year-old corporate-owned comic book publisher DC putting Superman on a cover with The 99 is about as good an endorsement of the wholesomeness and un-anti-American sentiments of the endeavor as anyone could expect, short of the founding fathers rising from their graves to pass out copies of The 99 comics to school children, or a talking bald eagle swooping into your living room and DVR-ing episodes of the cartoon for you.

Oh, uh…: MTV’s Splash Page has some art from the upcoming Green Lantern movie showing what the planet Oa will look like. Looks pretty Star Wars-y to me, which is probably a good sign.

Wait, are there any sane ones?: “10 Completely Insane Super-Hero Halloween Costumes…For Your Dog”

“Exotic, Perilous and Inscrutable”: At The Hooded Utilitarian, Richard Cook looks at about 80 years worth of adventure comic covers portraying Asian people. Obviously, it ain’t pretty, but it gets gradually prettier and prettier.

As a child, the Supermobile really upset me: Blogger Doctor K fields questions in his “Ask Doctor K” feature, and in this installment he answers the question, “Has Batman or Superman ever driven a rocketship before?” When I was a little kid, and my interest in superheroes was relegated to cartoons and toys, I didn’t quite understand the need for toy companies to produce a bunch of products to sell, so I was only confused and irritated by things like a rocketship for Superman to fly in, or a Matchbox car for Spider-Man to drive in and, most gallingly, any Hulk vehicle.

This is the scariest Halloween costume ever: (shudder)

I think there’ s a Human Torch joke in here somewhere, but the whole kids and fire thing makes me feel weird about looking for it: “Marvel Flashlight Toys Recalled for Risk of Fire”

Everyone review Thor comics!: Here’s Don McPherson on Thor, Ultimate Thor and Thor:The Mighty Avenger; Tim O’ Neil on Thor #616 and Kevin Church and Tom Spurgeon on Thor: The Mighty Avenger.

I could look at these all day: Check out these photos of cosplayers next to a seated Stan Lee at Dragon Con, before what looks like the sort of backdrop they use in school pictures . They look a little like the comic book fan equivalent of little kids getting their pictures taken sitting on Santa’ s lap at the mall.

David Brothers would like Black Panther to kill Doctor Doom: He explains why in this post on the conclusion of the Black Panther-related miniseries, Doom War. In other Brothers-on-Panther news, the blogger has some concerns about BP taking over Daredevil’s subtitle, setting and numbering in the upcoming Black Panther: Man Without Fear #513.

No write-ins?: That alone makes DC’s vote for the leader of the Legion of Super-Heroes thing lame-o. Now how am I supposed to vote for Time-Lost Red Bee or Immortal Rex The Wonder Dog? Seriously, this is actually kinda neat, and a younger, more-interested-in-the-Legion Caleb would have been all over it.

Did you know Xombi was one of the best comics of the nineties?: I didn’t, having never read it, but Charlie Jane Anders says it was. Maybe I oughta keep my eyes peeled when I look in back-issue bins.

I liked this headline, although surely someone must have used that gag before: “Red Is Graphic, Though Hardly Novel”

Is that even possible?: This MTV Splash Page article is headlined “Zack Snyder’s ‘Superman’ Will Not Be Based On Previous Films or Comic Books,” and while I imagine it won’t be too hard to avoid doing things that were done in the movies, it’s gotta be a challenge not to do something that was already done in the comics. I mean, there are a lot of Superman comics out there, and I’m pretty sure if you thought of the craziest, most unlikely plot for a Superman story, you’ll find it wad probably done in an eight-page story from the 1950s.  (Confidential to MTV Splash Page: to Mark Waid wrote Birthright, not Mark Millar).

This is weird: On Fantagraphics’ Flog blog, Kim Thompson reports some bad news about what was thoguht to be original Krazy Kat sketches by George Herriman.  An interesting story that never gets as much attention as the final product is, I think, how much difficult work goes in to assembling some of these old comics reprint projects.

Oh so that’s how Ra’s al Ghul found the Bat-Cave: He just used Google Maps. (Via Comics Alliance)

Evan Dorkin touches on Unus: The cartoonist sketches minor Marvel villain Unus The Untouchable, and talks about him at some length, even imagining his creation in a breif play about Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. (Via Comics Reporter)

Does Gotham City have a Hollywood style sign that reads “(Expletive) You”?: Because if so, that’d be pretty cool. Well, there was a pretty big F word in the city at one point, as could be seen in a preview of Bruce Wayne: The Road Home—Batman & Robin #1, but, as Don MacPherson noted on his Eye On Comics, DC did away with the exploding expletive before the book made it to fan’s hands.

I believe this is what is referred to as a wide-ranging interview: “Neil Gaiman on Comics, Twilight, Twitter, Etiquette, Killing Batman, and Sharing Porn With His Son”

She really liked that Howl comic: “‘Howl: A Graphic Novel’ Wails Brilliantly Into the 21st Century”

Another cosplay at a comic convention story: But this one’s in the fashion section of The New York Times.

Try saying that to Picasso’s face: ‘Drew Friedman is better than Picasso’

I concur with the title’s assessment: “The Most Amazing Halloween Costume Ever” (Via Journalista)

“We’re spending too much time talking about the cover price instead of talking about the package”: KC Carlson talks comic book cover prices and the perceived value of the comics in light of DC and Marvel’s announcements of not charging quite so much for the widgets they make.

God, I love comics: Check out this strip by Rebecca Clements.

Also, check this out: These are so great that the photographer even manages to make a guy dressed like Gambit look kind of cool. Gambit! That Black Canary one oughta be a Birds of Prey cover. (Link stolen from Comics Alliance)

Every movie superhero should be fighting Fin Fang Foom: This guy makes the argument that superhero movies need more super supervillains, summing up the conflict from Iron Man 2 thusly: “Who cares about some Russian guy’s patent dispute grudge with Tony Stark’s father? Iron Man needs to be fighting Fin Fang Foom and other ridiculous, out-of-this-world characters.”

Oh man, I didn’t even send him a card!: Did you know that Monday was Joe Simon’s 97th birthday? The Washington Post‘s Michael Cavna did, and put together a swell column featuring Simon and his legacy.

Wouldn’t most actors?: “Gossip Girl’s Ed Westwick wants to play Batman”

As you’re no doubt aware, this past weekend was the New York Comic Con and, like most sizable comics conventions embraced by the industry, it tends to have a weird, warping effect on the comics news. That is, there was a ton of news released this weekend, but it tended to be along the lines of new product announcements and publisher initiatives, and Newsarama’s main page has got all the news on that. So, if for some reason you come straight to Blog@ and skip the main page but wanna know what went down at NYCC, well then, get outta here.

Here’s some non-NYCC links for your perusal…

I hope they didn’t stop at seven simply because there weren’t any more: “The 7 most successful comic-book superhero reboots”

From cartoonist to ambassador?: Sorta. The Washington Post talks to A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge cartoonist Josh Neufeld about his state department gig, touring different countries (currently in the middle east) as a sort of symbol of the American freedom to criticize the government.

Hey, thanks Canada!: In celebration of Canada’s Thanksgiving (what, already?), Ty Templeton counts the “Top Eight Reasons Comic Fans Should Thank Canada.” (And here’s another).

Only 16…?: “The 16 Worst 90s Superhero Redesigns”

That’s a nice-looking Mr. Peanut: At The Comics Journal, R. C. Harvey examines the way Mother Goose and Grim cartoonist Mike Peters has used “cameos” by various advertising characters over the course of the last year.

And they’re not all Warren Ellis-written comics…?: “Warren Ellis Reveals The Comic Book Adaptations He’d Like to See!”

Correction!: In Monday’s installment, I said that Project: Rooftop had completed their special Justice League invitational superhero redesign event thingee with Joel Carroll’s redesign of The Flash. I was wrong! I had overlooked The Atom (by Jon Morris). Many a villain has made the same mistake, to their peril.

Weird; I thought everyone knew who Jack Chick was: Or, at the very least, were familiar with his tracts. Gil Roth found out otherwise when talking to his co-workers after viewing Chick documentary God’s Cartoonist, which Roth really dug (Via Comics Reporter).

Two great pages: Tim Hodler discusses the similarity of two layouts by Jack Cole and  Neal Adams.

Doesn’t Stan Lee ever get sick of creating superheroes?: Apparently not, as he’s helping create 30 more for the National Hockey League (That is what NHL stands for, right?). As a stereotypical comics fan I don’t care at all about sports, and as a stereotypical American I don’t care at all about hockey, but this sounds kind of neat—I imagine most hockey teams have names or mascots that suggest superpowers.

This is a neat idea: “HILARY PRICE on why her ‘Rhymes With Orange’ will turn pink this Sunday”

There’s no chance that Jim Russell could actually win this, is there?: “Matt Davies Being Sued For $1 Million”

“What makes the blank eyes so appealing?”: That’s the question Dash Shaw tackles at Comics Comics, in a post about masked heroes with pupil-less, white eyes. Make sure you check out the comments section too, where Jacob Covey also weighs in regarding whether Ninja Turtles work better with or without pupils.

I really like the cover of Nick Patten’s Unreachable Beasts: Rich Kreiner, who has read the insides as well, likes the whole thing, according to his review of it at The Comics Journal.

“Each of them, even the bad ones, meant something to him”: This surprisingly touching feature story on professor and comics collector Jose Alaniz donating his comics to a university has been linked to hither and yon, and with good reason—giving up your collection is something most serial comics readers have contemplated, if not gone through themselves. My plan is to just keep adding comics and longboxes until build a giant midden to live in. Archaeologists will pull my skeleton from it many years in the future.

“The more I think about it, the more I think that digital comics is something that could move comics culture from an inclusive subculture to a general part of culture”: David Brothers contemplates how digital distribution might effect the Wednesday Crowd, the direct market and comics as pop culture. This might not be a popular opinion to express here, since I bet most of us are part of that Wednesday Crowd and the direct market, but I think both account for a pretty small fraction of the folks who actually read comics or are interested in reading comics, so I don’t know that I agree with Brothers’ conclusion, but to answer his question, “No David, you are not totally insane.”

It’s always cool to see a first-generation comics creator getting their due: The New York Times profiles Jerry Robinson about one of his most endurign creations, Batman’s archenemy The Joker. Unfortunately, you’ll now have to register to read it, as the New York Times are jerks.

Is that you, Bizarsenal?: Hey, remember that time that this actually occurred in an actual DC Comics comic book that was actually published, in this, the real world? Well artist Bernard Chang and writer Sterling Gates must, which would explain why Supergirl #57 (on sale October 20) apparently contains a Bizarro version of Arsenal clutching a dead cat, with a quiver full of dead cats on his back, as you can see in the detail above. To see the whole page, and three others, you can visit DC’s Source blog, which is where the detail above came from.

Like Covered, only with panels: Anthony Vukojevich has launched Repaneled, a blog that seeks to do for interior comics panels what Covered did for covers. Looking good so far. (Via Top Shelf’s Hey Bartender! blog)

“What’s the worst that can happen…viewers might accidentally be exposed to something awesome?”: That’s comics blogger and extraordinnare and comics retailer Mike Sterling arguing that the producers of Smallville might as well “Kirby it up” now that the shows in its final season and apparently attempting a Fourth World-inspired plotline. Sterling also has some swell suggestions of Fourth World characters who should appear on the show…and how they should appear.

Yeah, I think he fought Black Adam once: “Meet Amenhotep III, Egypt’s 3400-year-old superhero”

Justice League of Americans Assemble!: Oh wait, it’s the other guys who assemble, huh? Anyway, artist Joel Carroll’s redesign of The Flash was posted to Project: Rooftop last week, which means all ten redesigns of Justice Leaguers by invited artists have been completed, and the Project: Rooftop League is ready to be ogled, as a group or individually. More of a Marvel fan? Well then, check out this gorgeous “Mythical” redesign of Nova by Shane McDermott.

“I’ve never, ever understood why Thor never got the respect I felt he was due…one of Marvel’s undisputed heavyweights in terms of character prominence but not in terms of actual publishing priority”: Well then I know at least one fan who’s probably happy Thor is going to be Marvel’s number one publishing priority this fall! That’s Tim O’Neil on the subject of Thor, particularly on the often-ignored (unjustly, in his opinion) years of Thor comics published between the time Simonson stopped making them and JMS started.  I can neither second O’Neil’s opinion, or disagree with it, since I didn’t read any of those comics either (Actually, I haven’t read the JMS ones either. Or the Simonson ones…which I understand makes me a bad person. They’re on my To Read Someday list though, I swear!)

“The Top Seven books Joan Hilty edited while at the home of the Bat and the Cape”: In the wake of news that editor Joan Hilty will be among the DC Comics employees no longer being an employee of DC Comics, cartoonist (and blogger!) Ty Templeton offers a list of some of her best work. I don’t think The Flash is a terribly good example, as it came from an extremely troubled period for the franchise in which the creative team, protagonist, direction, numbering and just about everything else changed way too frequently and seemed to reveal major behind-the-secnes problems (Hilty might not have been involved with all those changes though; for all I know without spending a half-hour looking up editor credits in old Flash comics, the editors changed as frequently as the directions). It’s otherwise a pretty solid list though—Flinch was a shockingly overlooked jewel in the Vertigo crown (if you haven’t read it, check the back issue bins—there was hardly a bad issue), and just about everyone involved with the last volume of Blue Beetle deserves props for making the character and title work as well as he and it did.