Bloody Disgusting reports that the film adaptation of the Devil’s Due comic Hack/Slash is getting a new writer.

According to their announcement, Stephen Susco, writer of the Grudge, has been signed on to write the adaptation.

This is a new development, apparently marking the departure of Justin Marks, whose biggest (and only) feature film thus far was the disappointing Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.

Susco’s signing also marks a brand new creative team, as Fredrik Bond joined the production as a director back in July. What about casting? Currently there’s no word on any of it, although Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (boy, that says something about my viewing habits when I confuse that movie with Zombieland) actresss Kat Denning expressed her interest in the property to MTV.

Well, it seems this review is pretty timely. I was starting to wonder if Barack the Barbarian really had legs and then we get some legs.

Playing off Pres. Obama’s mention that he collected Conan the Barbarian comics as a kid, this comic, published by Devil’s Due and written by Larry Hama and drawn by Christopher Schons, is set in a time of swords and sorcery. A gathering of children listen as a shaman retells the legend of Barack the Barbarian. Riding in on a donkey, Barack the Barbarian is determined to set things right in the city of Warshingstun, “where every word uttered was lie, and every soul was for sale. A place where men traded dark secrets and openly peddled a powerful drug named Influence.” After fending off some ogres, Barack meets Manny the Fixer who will set him on the path to greatness. But first, they will feast and Barack will partake of a multicultural meal with a dash of Dijon mustard.

Considering that the flap over Dijon mustard is pretty recent, it looks like the creation of the rest of this four part comic is very much in play. So, it would only make sense to go for the gold and follow closely what Sarah Palin does next now that she’s abandoned her post as governor. It’s when Red Sarah, the fighting Queen of the North, makes her entrance that this first issue kicks into gear and it may very well be that the Wonder from Wasilla will bestow some of her mavericky magic onto the rest of this comic.

So far, the best of the Obama comic books is IDW‘s comic book documenting the Obama campaign. It’s a serious approach and it’s spot on. And the best satire is MAD Magazine‘s “Obama, The First 100 Minutes.” Of course, MAD is the gold standard. Barack the Barbarian is funny and seems aimed at all ages despite all the babes in bikinis. So, maybe for older kids. Overall, it’s poking fun at a time in history and isn’t really taking sides. I would only hope that the jokes get sharper.

The humor should be at least as funny as what The White House can create for a political roast. And delivered with as much style as the real Obama like in this perfect dig at the House Minority Leader, a true Republican partisan with a perpetual tan, John Boehner, told at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, May 9, 2009: “In the next one hundred days, our bipartisan outreach will be so successful than even John Boehner will consider becoming a Democrat. Afterall, we have a lot in common. He is a person of color. Although not a color that appears in the natural world.” That joke had the Commander in Chief cracking up. And it still cracks me up.

The jungle adventure genre just isn’t what it used to be.

Popularized by Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book and the work of Edgar Rich Burroughs in the last decades of the 19th century and the first of the 20th century, and then given new life in pre-code Hollywood, tales of safaris into darkest Africa, noble wild people raised in the jungles and battles to the death with wild animals are very much a product of their times.

And, as such, the stories don’t lend themselves well to re-telling, at least not in a modern milieu. Africa—as well as most of the rest of the world—is no longer so dark. The acts of wrestling rhinos and slaying gorillas has lost its luster now that the great beasts are endangered. And let’s not even get into the casual racism of pop culture in the first few decades of the 20th century.

In short, popular imagination has transformed so much during the course of that century that we don’t regard the jungle in quite the same way we used to. It’s not longer a deadly, dangerous challenge awaiting to be explored, conquered and made use of; now it’s seen as a dwindling, fragile resource in need of respect and protection.

So if you’re going to do a jungle adventure story, you’re probably going to want to set it in the past, right?

Steven E. de Souza, the screenwriter who has been working with Devil’s Due Publishing to restore Golden Age heroine Sheena, Queen of the Jungle to comics shelves, didn’t go that route, which, frankly, surprised me.

I was even more surprised by the fact that it worked.
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Dark Castle, the horror division for Warner Bros., has picked up Devil’s Due’s alien thriller The Nye Incidents, Variety reports.

The series, which is apparently based on true events, centers on medical examiner Lynn Devlin, who discovers the brutal murder of an alleged alien abductee. Devil’s Due has a preview here.

This victory may be double-edged for the publisher, however — Todd Lincoln (the visual effects director of From Dusk Till Dawn) was announced to be the director for this film, this may impact another long-in-development project of his: Hack/Slash, which was supposed to come out later this year from the in-transition Rogue Pictures.

Yet if the timing works out, this could be a much-needed boon for Devil’s Due, which just last year struggled with “corporate re-structuring” as well as several high-profile layoffs.

Devil’s Due Publishing has recently been publishing new comics featuring Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, a sort of lady Tarzan from the Golden Age of comics, following the series of miniseries model popular with a lot of non-Marvel, non-DC genre comics.

I haven’t read any of these, as they haven’t really done much to visually distinguish themselves from the pack of current jungle girl comics on the stands, like Cavewoman, Dynamite’s Jungle Girl, and Marvel’s recent Shanna the She-Devil comics.

I am extremely glad Devil’s Due is making Sheena comics though, if only because it gave them a reason to start collecting and re-publishing the golden goddess of the jungle’s original adventures. The latest, Best of Golden Age Sheena Vol. 2, hit shelves this week, and it makes for another great example of what a wonderful time it is to be a comics reader, for the reprints alone.

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• Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons talks about catching Alan Moore’s typos, the miniseries’ colors, the movie adaptation, and audience reaction to seeing a naked Dr. Manhattan on the big screen: “He’s somebody who, by the force of his will, has reconstructed his body, so you’re not looking really at a naked man; you’re looking at a model of a naked man. I know that’s a rather fine distinction.” [Vulture]

• Cairo and Air writer G. Willow Wilson discusses those titles, superheroes, the Standard Attrition message board and group blog, and guerilla marketing. [Heavy Ink]

• The Dresden Files author Jim Butcher chats about bringing wizard-for-hire Harry Dresden to comics. [Sci Fi Wire]

• Best-selling author Stephenie Meyer rattles off some of the inspirations for her insanely popular Twilight vampire epic. Who would’ve guessed X-Men cartoons and and the Iron Man movie would be on the list alongside Jane Eyre and Anne of Green Gables? [EW.com]

• Ned Beauman celebrates Garth Ennis’ reinvention of Marvel’s Punisher. [Guardian]

• FEARnet profiles Devil’s Due Publishing, focusing on the company’s horror titles. [FEARnet]

Eisner winner Chuck BB is working on a comic starring the rock band Hinder for Devil’s Due Publishing.

“The band’s ability to tell stories in their songs makes this a good marriage,” Stephen Christy of Devil’s Due Publishing told USA Today. “It doesn’t hurt that there’s always a ton of hot girls hanging around them.” No release date for the book was given.

The webcomic Halloween Man crosses over with Devil’s Due Comics’ Hack/Slash in part one of Hack/Slash vs Halloween Man. And it’s free; you can either check out the jpg’s or download it as a PDF.

Devil’s Due Publishing, Hypergraphia, the Hero Initiative and the American Cancer Society are teaming up for a benefit to help artist Josh Medors, who is currently battling cancer. The event will be held in Brooklyn next Saturday, Oct. 4. More details can be found here.

– The Hero Initiative has more Hulk covers up on eBay.

– Devil’s Due talks about their deal with Les Humanoids.

– Laura Hudson talks about Marvel’s The Stand adaptation with writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and artist Mike Perkins.

– Steve Ditko and Chuck Norris, together at last.

– More Marshall Law is always a good thing.

– PWCW examines the Wowio debacle.

MTV’s Splash Page reports that ABC Family is bringing the upcoming Will Triumph Fights Alone mini-series to the small screen. The series, which will be publsihed by Devil’s Due in the spring, is written by Dave Child and Kal-El Bogdanove, and drawn by Kal-El’s father, Jon Bogdanove.

According to the site, the story “follows rookie superhero Will Triumph, son of a powerful superhero team known as The Dynamics who were killed in the line of duty by their arch-rival, Dr. Loricas. Soon thereafter, Will inherits his parents Rings of Power, but in order to activate them, he must get married. What follows is Will’s quest to not only right the wrongs of Dr. Loricas, but find the right girl in order to become the hero he’s destined to become.”

I’m exhausted, and I’m not even in San Diego.

Saturday’s “DCU: A Guide to Your Universe” panel at last put an end to relentless questions about the status of the Milestone Media characters: They’re being incorporated into the DC Comics universe, initially in the pages of Justice League of America and Teen Titans.

The same panel also revealed that the Archie Comics line of superheroes — The Fly, The Shield, The Black Hood and others — have been acquired by DC. The characters, licensed by DC in the early ’90s and published under the Impact imprint, will be reintroduced during J. Michael Straczynski’s run on The Brave and the Bold.

Marvel, meanwhile, announced that Mark Millar, original writer of Ultimate X-Men and The Ultimates, is returning to help reshape the Ultimate line.

“The Marvel Universe has basically been turned into the Ultimate Universe, right down to the military super-teams,” Millar told Newsarama, “so now it’s time to go back and take things to the next level. I have a very big pad filled with notes here and am blazing on this stuff. I just want to take things to the next level.”

The publisher also revealed its followup to Secret Invasion: a cosmic event called War of Kings.

Other convention-related announcements:

• ComiPress has a good rundown of the manga acquisitions and new releases announced at Comic-Con.

• Devil’s Due Publishing has entered into a parntership with Humanoids to release some of the French publisher’s titles in the United States.

• Mike Grell will helm a new Warlord series from DC, debuting next spring.

• IDW Publishing announced that Joe Hill’s Locke & Key will return in December as an ongoing series, and Steve Niles is revisiting vampires with Epilogue.

• The sequel to Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá’s Eisner Award-winning miniseries The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite now has a title and a release date: The Umbrella Academy: Dallas will debut in November.

• Dark Horse is revisiting the Aliens and Predator franchises.

• Writer Andy Diggle (The Losers, Hellblazer) will take over Marvel’s Thunderbolts beginning with Issue 126.

• Top Cow is releasing Art of Wanted, an oversized art book containing images from the comics, stills from the movie, and concepts from the upcoming video game.

You can follow our complete Comic-Con coverage here.

Devil’s Due Publishing announced yesterday at Comic-Con that it has partnered with Humanoids to release some of the French publisher’s titles in the United States.

Humanoids entered into a similar, if short-lived, pact with DC Comics in 2004.

This new partnership calls for two to three serialized comics and graphic novels to be released each month, with at least an initial focus on works by well-known American creators.

The imprint launches in November with I Am Legion: The Dancing Faun, illustrated by John Cassaday. That’s followed in December by The Zombies Who Ate the World, by Jerry Frissen and Guy Davis.

Other titles will include Redhand, written by Kurt Busiek, Metal, illustrated by Butch Guice, and classic books such as The Metabarons and The Technopriests.

The full press release can be read after the break.

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Producer Barry Josephson (Bones, The Tick) has attached himself to an adaptation of Spooks, the guns-and-monsters miniseries from Devil’s Due Publishing.

The comic, which debuted in February, was written by Larry Hama and R.A. Salvatore, based on a concept by Ryan Schifrin and Daniel Alter. It centers on a secret branch of the government that protects humanity from the creatures of the night. When the king of all vampires allies himself with the deadliest of witches, it unleashes an invasion of classic monsters on Washington, D.C.

According to ShockTillYouDrop.com, Josephson will find a writer to adapt the comic, and then shop the project to studios.

After several significant publishing announcements right out of the gate on Wednesday — among them, the Vertigo Crime imprint, Darwyn Cooke’s Parker adaptations and the BOOM! deal with Disney/Pixar — the first official day of Comic-Con seemed, well, subdued. At least as far as new projects go.

The biggest news on Thursday probably came from the “DC Nation” panel, where it was revealed that Kevin Smith will write a three-issue Batman miniseries called Cacophony, which features the villain Onomatopoeia from Smith’s 2000 run on Green Arrow. If you were planning some jokes about whether the miniseries will be late, or never finish, save them: Smith beat you to it.

And, surprising no one, Barry Allen will return in The Flash: Rebirth, by Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver.

The “Mondo Marvel” panel introduced a handful of new titles, including an ongoing Agents of Atlas, Greg Pak and Leonardo Manco’s War Machine as a replacement for Iron Man: Director of SHIELD, the return of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon for a weekly Punisher: War Zone miniseries, and … an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s short story “The Electric Ant” by David Mack, with covers by Paul Pope.

Yeah, that last one seemed to surprise, or puzzle, a lot of folks.

At the X-Men panel, the next big X-event was revealed: X Infernus, a sequel, of sorts, to 1989′s Inferno crossover.

Other convention-related announcements:

• Virgin Comics and Perspective Studios rolled out their collaboration with writer Grant Morrison, MBX. It’s an animation franchise based on the ancient Indian epic the Mahabharata.

• Devil’s Due Publishing announced its new online initiative with Kevin Spacey’s talent-scouting website TriggerStreet.com.

• Wildstorm continued its licensing frenzy with a six-issue miniseries based on Electronic Arts’ upcoming video game Mirror’s Edge.

• And then there was the now-usual run of movie news: Bryan Singer’s Bad Hat Harry and Radical Pictures adapting Radical Publishing’s Freedom Formula miniseries; Landscape Entertainment picking up the rights to the Image miniseries Pretty, Baby, Machine, by Clark Westerman and Kody Chamberlain; and Disney renewing its first-look deal with Stan Lee’s POW Entertainment.

You can follow our complete Comic-Con coverage here.

Thursday programming for the San Diego Comic-Con is back in the game, with hopefully Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the “on deck” circle. They’ve also announced a special preview night screening of the new Fox TV show Fringe:

6:00–7:30 and 7:30-9:00 Fringe Pilot Screenings—Comic-Con and Warner Bros. Television proudly present two exclusive premiere screenings of the pilot episode of Fringe, the highly anticipated new FOX series from J.J. Abrams (Lost), Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the team behind the upcoming Star Trek feature, Mission: Impossible 3 and Alias. When an international flight lands at Boston’s Logan Airport and the passengers and crew have all died grisly deaths, FBI Special Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv, The Pacific) is called in to investigate. When the search nearly kills her partner, Special Agent John Scott (Mark Valley, Boston Legal), a desperate Olivia searches frantically for someone to help, leading her to Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King), our generation’s Einstein. There’s only one catch: He’s been institutionalized for the last 20 years, and the only way to question him requires pulling his estranged son, Peter (Josh Jackson, Shutter), in to help. Under Special Agent Phillip Broyles (Lance Reddick, The Wire), our trio will discover that what happened on that fatal flight is only a small piece of a larger, more shocking truth. Fringe also stars Kirk Acevedo (Oz), Blair Brown (The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd) and Jasika Nicole (The Mastersons of Manhattan). From Bad Robot Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television, Fringe premieres September 9 and airs Tuesdays at 9:00 PM on FOX. (Please note: we will clear the room between screenings. Seating is limited. Pick the screening time that works best for you!) Ballroom 20

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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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I’ve seen this from a few different sources including Josh Fialkov and Warren Ellis, but Image has put together a helpful press release, so I’m just going to post that. Josh Medors is a pal of mine and the sweetest comics professional I’ve ever met. It breaks my heart that he’s having to go through this:

23 April 2008 (Berkeley, CA) – Unknown to the general public, FRANK FRAZETTA’S SWAMP DEMON, RUNES OF RAGNAN, WILLOW CREEK, GI JOE and 30 DAYS OF NIGHT artist Josh Medors has been fighting cancer for the past several months. In his time of need, Image Comics and Frazetta Comics have stepped in organize an auction with all proceeds going straight to Josh.

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Devil’s Due and SuicideGirls.com have teamed up to publish a new Hack/Slash webcomic on the not safe for work website. The story, called “Murder/Suicide,” will be collected this July.

The first few installments can be found on Cassie Hack’s profile page, where the story will appear each day. “People are always describing Cassie as the Suicide Girl type, and now I can definitely answer yes,” said Tim Seeley, the book’s creator, in a press release. “I have had an account for five years now, and Hack/Slash is a perfect fit for Suicide Girls, because people are also always asking me if they can see her naked.”

If you’re over 18, you can check out Cassie’s profile and the webcomic here (NSFW).

Sunday at the New York Comic Con, expectedly, was a little bit slower on the news front than Friday or Saturday, which gave the comic sites a little bit of time to catch up and post a lot of stuff from yesterday’s panels. The big news today, it seems, is the show itself; Lance Fensterman reports on the NYCC blog that they surpassed last year’s attendance numbers:

So what do we know?

At least 64,000 people attended New York Comic Con this weekend. We have more details to pour through from retailers and on site tickets sales, but as of tonight we know that at least 64,000 attendees were in the building over the weekend. That’s an intense jump from 49,000 last year and it seems to say this crazy little party we call New York Comic Con continues to grow as fast as a speeding bullet.

Stay tuned for final numbers in the next few days.

Some other folks found time to blog today as things were winding down. Peter David gave an update on his wife, who was in a car crash while he was at the con on Friday:

Kathleen was in one piece: As anyone who’s read her blog knows, Kath was in an auto accident. Fortunately she’s fine, albeit a bit achy and bruised. Upon learning of the accident Friday, I immediately headed home, rendering me unavailable for the Marvel autograph session and also the Mondo Marvel panel. I left word at the Marvel booth, but somehow they didn’t get the message to panel moderator Jim McCann. On stage he noticed my absence and wondered aloud where I was. When one of the panels whispered in his ear what had happened, a startled Jim said “Oh my God!”…right into the open microphone, causing some degree of confusion and alarm for the audience which he quickly had to undo.

And Mark Evanier talked about the Steve Gerber tribute panel … which Gerber was able to attend:

Friday, I did two panels — one about the work of the late/great Will Eisner; the other, about the state of the animation business. Saturday morn, we had a nice public memorial panel about our pal, the late/also great Steve Gerber. Many of Steve’s fans and friends were there, along with members of his family. And Steve himself was present as you can see from this photo…

I guess you can’t read the label so I’ll tell you what the top line of it says: “This Package Contains the Cremated Remains of Stephen R. GERBER.” That’s right. We had his ashes there. Morbid, I know…but Steve wouldn’t have wanted to miss a whole panel about himself. It was announced that immediately following the panel, we’d be taking the ashes down and flinging them in the faces of certain editors.

More coverage of New York Comic Con:

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