I thought this was a pretty good wrap-up issue. Plotlines are starting to converge, and pieces are fitting together — although some not as neatly as others. Thanks as always to those who comment, including those who actually produce this fun series. Here’s Kurt Busiek’s Newsarama debriefing for issue #4, which reassured me that Troy Brownfield didn’t recognize those guys either….

SPOILERS FOLLOW

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As the anti-Robin movement marshals its forces against the character’s possible inclusion in the Batman movies, Jeph Loeb — writer of The Long Halloween and Dark Victory – speaks up for the Boy Wonder.

Robin can work in the film universe, Loeb tells MTV News: “Take the time to tell the story properly. There is a story of Dick Grayson and how he becomes Robin that is extremely moving and very helpful.”

The key, he says, is to build the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson. And don’t put Grayson in costume too soon.

“I wouldn’t let him become Robin until the third act, if that,” Loeb says. “I think that’s the other problem when you tell that story is that there’s this rush to put him in a costume by the end of the first 20 minutes and in that case I think it’s a disaster.”

Here’s the second installment of my look at the prevalence of DCU miniseries in the Dan DiDio era. Part 1 of this little exercise covered the years 2001, 2002, and 2003.

Today those look like transitory years, at least in terms of miniseries. In 2001 the publisher produced 75 issues’ worth of miniseries, compared with 379 issues’ worth of regular series and 21 one-shot/special issues. Thus, miniseries were about 16% of the year’s total DCU output. With just 51 issues of miniseries in 2002 (compared to 400 ongoing-series issues), that percentage decreased to 11%. The difference may be attributed largely to the absence of 2001’s crossover events: Our Worlds At War included 11 special issues (a de facto miniseries) and Joker: The Last Laugh involved 6 issues and a Secret Files.

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At Comixology, Tucker Stone considers what the estimated sales figures for Marvel and DC’s summer-event comics may actually tell us:

… the reaction seems to be that, since Marvel’s big event cross-over beat DC’s big event cross-over, there is somehow a connection between those pre-sale numbers and whether or not A) big corporate people should lose their jobs, B) Marvel speaks to the people in a way that DC doesn’t, or C) any of this really matters, at all. There’s something else that occasionally pops up, though — I’m assuming it isn’t as interesting to read or write about, but it’s what I’m more interested in this week. And that is that neither of those numbers — the estimated 200,344 copies of Secret Invasion # 2 versus the 159,036 of Final Crisis — are anything to be really impressed by. Sure, there’s a big discrepancy between those two books — but even at the top end of the scale, it’s only in comic books that 200,000 of anything is worth getting excited about.

The new Umbrella Academy short story that JK mentioned last the weekend — “Anywhere But Here” — is now at MySpace Dark Horse Presents. The comic, by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba, takes us back 13 years to Vanya and The Kraken’s rebellious teen-age years. (You also can read: the comic tie-in to Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, “Captain Hammer: Be Like Me,” by Zack Whedon and Eric Canete; “A Going Concern,” by John Arcudi and Steve Young; and “How To Heal A Broken Heart: Method 37,” by Tara McPherson.)

If that’s not enough Umbrella Academy for you, New York magazine’s Vulture blog has an excerpt from the Apocalypse Suite trade paperback. Oh, and Tom McLean kicks off a two-part interview with Way.

We’re only a few weeks away from the mammoth San Diego Comic-Con, and this is the first of several round-ups of what’s going on at the con. If you’re a creator, publisher, etc. I want to know about your San Diego plans. Got a new book debuting? Got a booth in Artist Alley? Appearing on a panel? Let me know and I’ll include it in a future edition.

Before jumping in, though, a quick public service announcement: if you’re driving to the con or plan to rent a car, California’s hands-free cell phone law went into effect earlier this week. This means you can get a ticket for talking and driving, unless you’re using a hands free device. The law doesn’t address texting or personal hygiene, as evidenced by the lady I saw brushing her teeth while driving yesterday. So brush your teeth, shave, put on make-up, send a text or read a comic — just don’t talk on the phone. End of PSA.

Artist Cliff Chiang sent me a note about the booth he’s sharing with Jill Thompson and Brian Wood, along with an image of the banners they’ll be displaying (which looks very cool!). Here’s what Cliff said:

For the first time, I’ll have my own table at SDCC, sharing a booth with Jill Thompson and Brian Wood. Located at Booth #1322, you can find us listed as the three-headed beast “Jill Thompson, Brian Wood, Cliff Chiang” in the program book. We’ll have books, prints, original art, and Jill and I will be doing commissioned sketches.

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It’s been a couple of months since the Internet was last gripped by “Robin Panic,” the fear that the Boy Wonder will appear in the rebooted Batman movie franchise.

The last outbreak was triggered by rumors that the third film will rely heavily on the miniseries The Long Halloween and Dark Victory for its source material. Now fast-forward two months to this current round of sidekickophobia, sparked by a writer at JoBlo.com … reading a two-month-old rumor.

But, hey, it’s an evergreen topic, right? Much like Sturdy’s ages-old arguments against the character’s inclusion: Robin isn’t cool, the presumption of pedophilia, homoeroticism, Joel Schumacher, etc. It must strike a chord, though, because the comments thread is up to six pages, and the discussion has moved on to other sites.

At Cinematical, Erik Davis responds to Sturdy’s assertion that, “if you got together all of today’s best writers and filmmakers and locked them in a room, they wouldn’t be able to come up with a Robin storyline that worked”:

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Warner Bros. has acquired the film rights to the Image Shadowline sci-fi series Hiding in Time for Dan Lin (Terminator Salvation) to produce.

Beau Thorne (Max Payne) will pen the adaptation.

The 2007 miniseries, written by Christopher Long and penciled by Ryan Winn, is set in the near-future, where the Witness Protection Program uses time travel to relocate people. But when an assassin begins finding and killing witnesses, a government technician must go back in time to help save them.

After the avalanche of titles last week, this Wednesday seems far more manageable.

Warren Ellis and Simone Bianchi take the reins from Joss Whedon and John Cassaday on Marvel’s Astonishing X-Men, and DC pulls the plug on The All-New Atom while launching the certain-to-be-adorable Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam! (by Herobear’s Mike Kunkel).

Fantagraphics delves into the world of Steve Ditko with Blake Bell’s Strange & Stranger, Mike Mignola and Richard Corben reteam for Hellboy: The Crooked Man, Ross Campbell surfaces at Minx with Water Baby, and Keith Knight’s The K Chronicles receives the “omnibus” treatment.

To see what other titles Chris Mautner and I think are worth mentioning, just keep reading. As always, let us know your choices in the comments below.

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On Sunday, there was a Women in Comics panel that wasn’t announced in the Wizard World printed program. I only found out about it because a friend of mine, Katie Cook (who’s done some recent work for Dark Horse), was on it. Because it sounded rather impromptu, I figured most of the panelists would be in the up-and-coming category, but Gail Simone and DC Coordinating Editor Jann Jones were also there. Spider-Man too, but he was in the audience.

To be candid, I was a little concerned about the direction the panel was going to go. I’d like to live in a world where a Women in Comics panel isn’t necessary because women in comics isn’t a big deal. But it still is a big deal, so I went, partly to support Katie, but mostly because I was curious about the direction of the discussion.

And as long as I’m being all open and stuff, I’ll also tell you that I got way too into the panel and didn’t take any notes. I’m kicking myself for it now, but at the time I just wanted to drink in the atmosphere, because it was awesome. There was very little us-versus-them and Simone affirmed my feelings when she said she didn’t often think about the concept of “women in comics” except for when she was asked to be on panels like this one.

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The Comics Are for Kids Too! panel was made up of Art Baltazar and Franco from Tiny Titans, Peter David (mostly because of his work on Marvel Adventures Spider-Man), Josh Elder and Russel Lissau from The Batman Strikes, and Owly’s Andy Runton.

The Wizard moderator opened the panel with a question about what comics the panelists read as kids that inform their current work. It probably shouldn’t have been surprising that most of them came to comics from other media. Bugs Bunny cartoons, Adam West’s Batman, Star Wars, and Super Friends were a few examples. David in particular talked about watching the old Adventures of Superman TV show and how excited he got when the announcer mentioned that the characters were based on a Superman magazine he’d never heard of.

In addition to that though, a lot of them were introduced to comics by older relatives. Lissau’s grandparents (on both sides of his family) loved Batman and Superman when he was a kid and used to make up stories for him featuring those characters. Elder learned to read when his mom lost her voice and couldn’t finish a Transformers comic she was reading to him. He figured out the words himself just to complete the story. Similarly, Runton learned to read from his mom’s reading him the Sunday comics pages.

David said that he got into comics at the barber shop, which stocked plenty of Harvey Comics. He fondly remembered not understanding that when Casper was drawn with a dotted line, it meant that he was invisible. Thinking it was supposed to be interactive, David would just connect the dots.

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Saturday’s Wonder Woman Spotlight panel with Gail Simone, Aaron Lopresti, and Greg Rucka was one of the two I’d most been looking forward to (the other being the Kids and Comics panel later that day). Rucka and Simone began by talking about the challenges and rewards of working on Wonder Woman. For Simone, it’s writing her as a character with a message instead of a character who is a message. Rucka didn’t exactly disagree, but added that Wonder Woman is inherently political. She’s the only woman in DC’s big three characters and you can’t ignore that.

Simone built on that notion by saying that because Wonder Woman is the first female adventurer, she has a lot of weight on her shoulders. Characters like Xena and Buffy – any strong, female, adventure character you can think of today – are here because Wonder Woman paved the way. So while Wonder Woman may not have to be a feminist (an idea Rucka doesn’t accept), she does have to carry that weight of her historical importance. She has to be strong and keep up with DC’s male characters, while not just being written as a male in a woman’s body. She needs her own motivations and personality.

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I’ve been mostly blasé the last few years about Wizard World Chicago. Probably because it’s followed San Diego during that time and those creators who even bother to show up at Chicago are so exhausted from the other show. This year, even though Heroes was last weekend, there was a lot more energy. At least in Artists Alley. And even amongst the bigger names, though there were still some like Joe Quesada who didn’t show up, those who were there seemed rarin to go.

Friday night’s Bendis vs. Johns panel was a great example. It was the first of several panels that made the trip worthwhile this year and even though Vaneta’s already given an excellent and much-more-thorough rundown of the event at the mothership, I want to talk for a minute about what I learned from it. Then, in separate posts, I’ll cover the other three panels: the Wonder Woman Spotlight (also covered on the mothership, but I’ll have some more to add to it), Kids and Comics, and Women in Comics.

After a brief wrestling match, the two out-of-breath writers explained that their original intent for the panel was to highlight how similar their approaches are to writing corporate-owned characters and then talk about the differences. It was Wizard’s idea to dumb it down (my words) and add the “versus,” but Bendis and Johns hijacked their panel back (their words) by calling up other writers and artists from their respective companies to create the first ever DC/Marvel panel. There was some polite banter and trash-talking, but the hour was noticeably marked by mutual respect and admiration as everyone talked about the similarities and differences between the two companies.

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Speaking of revisiting issues: Artist David Lafuente (Patsy Walker: Hellcat, Ultimate Spider-Man Annual) gives a wink to last year’s Mary Jane statuette controversy in this illustration, shown during the “Ultimate Universe” panel at Wizard World Chicago.

It’s been a while since anyone has brought up “Women in Refrigerators” — the Gail Simone-coined term for the superhero-comic plot device that involves the maiming, killing or depowering of female characters. But today at Topless Robot, Zach Oat reopens the Frigidaire with his list of “The 10 Worst Women in Refrigerators.”

Perhaps surprisingly the top spot doesn’t go to Alexandra DeWitt, the character whose fate spawned the phrase “women in refrigerators,” but to Sue Dibny, who met her end in Identity Crisis #1:

Right off the bat, Sue gets horribly burned to death in her home. The culprit is unknown, but based on the evidence, the League suspects it to be Dr. Light. Now Doc Light is usually a D-list villain, and he actually had his name stolen by a superhero once, but we find out through a flashback that one day, when Sue was hanging out on the Justice League satellite (by herself, in space), Dr. Light somehow managed to get aboard. Yes, a supervillain had somehow gained access to the League’s high-tech HQ (in space), and that was when he decided to rape Sue to within an inch of her life. The League showed up soon after to pull him off of her, but the damage was done, and they had to blank Sue’s memory to make her forget it. I wish they could do that to my memory—when I close my eyes, I keep seeing Dr. Light’s rolling eyeballs and wagging tongue as he violates a minor character who never hurt anybody.

The ebook-distribution site WOWIO recently went offline for “retooling,” spurring rumors that the company — increasingly popular with comics creators and small publishers — has been sold.

Now comes an official announcement that Platinum Studios is negotiating to acquire WOWIO, thereby continuing “the expansion of Platinum Studios’ global digital media distribution strategy.”

It’s news that undoubtedly will meet with … let’s call it mixed reaction from creators who use WOWIO for digital distribution of their comics.

During the “Bends vs. Johns” panel at Wizard Word Chicago, writer Brian Reed explains what truly separates the DC Universe from the Marvel Universe:

“… Wonder Woman can come home and have gorillas in her living room and you go, ‘OK, cool.’ If Professor X comes into his room and there’s gorillas in there, that’s going to be weird.”

It always comes down to apes. Those damned dirty apes …

(Via Timothy Callahan, who wonders what that all means to Marvel Apes)

Comic Book Resources reports that Eric Stephenson has replaced Erik Larsen as publisher of Image Comics. Larsen spoke about why he is stepping down:

Seriously, and the God’s honest truth is, I’ve put a lot of thought into this and I want to get some work done on my comics and I’ve not been able to do that as Publisher of Image Comics. So, really, it comes down to I’m stepping down from my position to get some work done. I think I’m far more useful to the company in a creative capacity versus and administrative one. I’ve been doing this for about 4 years now and it’s time to get somebody else in this seat who isn’t as old and jaded! [laughs]

Larsen started his term as publisher back in February of 2004, replacing Jim Valentino in the role. Now that he’s stepped down, he’ll be working on getting Savage Dragon back on a regular schedule and on another as-yet-unannounced project.

Stephenson, an Image veteran who worked with Valentino and Rob Liefeld back in the 1990s, served as executive director of Image for both Larsen and Valentino.