In case you missed, or simply avoided, the bootlegged trailer for Star Trek that made the rounds over the weekend, now the official version is available for your viewing pleasure — or displeasure — at Apple.com.

The shot above should give Trek purists one more nit to pick: It depicts, I presume, the Enterprise being constructed … somewhere amid a great swath of farmland. Instead of, y’know, the San Francisco Fleet Yards high above the Earth. Discuss.

J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek opens on May 8.

When state Rep. Jason Mumpower neglected to report his comics collection to the Tennessee Ethics Commission, somebody dropped a dime. Or, rather, an email.

Mumpower needn’t worry, though: His 17,000 comics apparently don’t qualify as a financial investment that must be disclosed to the commission.

“My common sense tells me that isn’t something that should be reported,” Bruce Androphy, the commission’s executive director, tells the Knoxville News-Sentinel.

Mumpower, the 35-year-old House Republican Leader, says he’s been collecting comics since he was 12, and has no idea of their value.

He notes that President-Elect Barack Obama also is a comics fan. (He reportedly likes Conan and Spider-Man.)

“There are two things Barack Obama and I have in common: We both collect comic books, and we both have big ears,” Mumpower told the newspaper.

Editor’s Note: Paul Levitz returns to Blog@Newsarama with some advice on giving feedback to companies.

by Paul Levitz

The incoming mail folder this morning prompts my blogging subject, with apologies to David Letterman, whose marquee shines outside my office window, a top ten list for folks planning letter-writing campaigns:

Ten. Try to figure out whether what you’re asking for is a practical possibility. When the Teen Titans animated television show ended, I got some letters begging for its return (inspired perhaps by the success of the campaign for Teen Titans Go!, more on which later). But the letters came in after the last episode aired…which meant that the team which had produced the show had broken up about a year earlier, and gone on to other gigs. There are sound business reasons why most animated tv shows only last for a certain maximum number of episodes (though the exceptions to the rule, like THE SIMPSONS, defy any form of gravity or entropy), but if you can’t keep the creative team together, you can’t replicate what the viewer loves. So asking for the show to come back after the team’s gone is self-defeating. Same thing’s true for comics.

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If you’re a fan of comics with spines, this is a good week for you.

Image Comics brings out the first volume of the Ted McKeever Library and a new printing of Bill Sienkiewicz’s Stray Toasters, while Dark Horse collects the “Wolves at the Gate” storyline from Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight. Marvel returns to Civil War with a 512-page hardcover, and gives Hulk the premiere treatment.

DC Comics, meanwhile, releases the much anticipated collection of James Jean’s Fables covers titled, appropriately enough, Fables: Covers by James Jean.

On top of that, there’s another volume of CF’s Powr Mastrs, the beginning of Kevin Smith’s Batman: Cocophony, and a complete set of Kia Asamiya’s Junk.

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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The Dark Knight leads the nominations for the 35th annual People’s Choice Awards, with seven nods in such categories as Favorite Movie, Favorite Action Movie, Favorite Cast and Favorite Superhero.

Iron Man received five nominations, including Favorite Movie, Favorite Action Movie and Favorite Superhero.

Fans may vote for their favorites in each category beginning today at the People’s Choice Awards website. Voting ends on Dec. 7. The winners will be announced Jan. 7 during a ceremony broadcast on CBS.

Other noteworthy nominees are Angelina Jolie (Wanted) for Favorite Female Movie Star and Favorite Female Action Star, Will Smith (Hancock) for Favorite Male Action Star and Favorite Superhero, and Heroes for Favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy Show.

The full list of nominees can follows after the break:

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After the firing on Sunday of Heroes co-executive producers Jeph Loeb and Jesse Alexander, EW.com reports that Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller is open to rejoining the series.

That should please those Heroes fans who’ve been clamoring for Fuller to return to the show he helped to write and produce during its first season. The bad news, however, is that Fuller’s comeback is contingent upon ABC’s cancellation of Pushing Daisies, which seems more and more likely.

“I am exclusive to Daisies through the delivery of the 13th episode of our 13-episode order, which will be mid-January,” Fuller tells EW’s Hollywood Insider. “If Daisies isn’t picked up by then, I will definitely be going back to play with my friends at Heroes.”

As EW notes, Fuller wrote just one episode for the show’s freshman season. But that episode, titled “Company Man,” is considered among the best.

The website reports it’s unlikely Loeb and Alexander, who oversaw day-to-day production of the show, will be replaced this season.

Fuller also created cult-favorite shows Dead Like Me and Wonderfalls, and worked as a writer on Star Trek: Deep Space Nineand as a writer and producer on Star Trek: Voyager.

You’re unlikely to find a more awesome video on YouTube this week ever. It’s an a capella medley of John Williams movie themes — Jurassic Park, Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, et al — with lyrics devoted solely to Star Wars. Plus, it involves a mean Mark Hamill imitation.

I love the Internet.

(Bless you, Topless Robot)

I feel a little out of the loop: Apparently, the website Wonder-Who.com popped up last week announcing Transformers star Megan Fox as Wonder Woman in the long-planned Warner Bos. movie.

However, despite what some fans and online writers believe, or hope, the website is a fake.

Never mind that Wonder Woman has been in development hell for the past seven years and that, despite countless fits and starts, no significant progress has been made on the project. Never mind the pedestrian Photoshop work.

The definitive sign the website is fake, Graeme McMillan points out, is the inclusion of the logo for Legendary Pictures: Producer Joel Silver (Silver Pictures and Dark Castle Entertainment) has had an iron grip on the Wonder Woman rights since 2001.

Less than 48 hours after a historic election, comics creators and commentators ponder what a Barack Obama presidency will mean to America … and to comics:

• At MTV’s Splash Page, Laura Hudson rounds up comments from a slew of comics notables, including Incredible Hercules writer Fred Van Lente, K Chronicles cartoonist Keith Knight, Love & Rockets creator Jaime Hernandez and DMZ and Northlanders writer Brian Wood.

“Real-life politics has played a huge role in my work, from the Rudy Giuliani ‘Quality Of Life’ regime in the ’90s to the W. Bush legacy of war, torture, illegal politics, occupation and terrorism,” Wood tells Hudson. “But this morning it was impossible to get up after a long night watching election news and put myself into the necessary pessimist headspace to work on the latest DMZ script.”

• Blogger Sean Kleefeld thinks a sense of optimism may seep into the works of creators. However, “that’s about all an Obama presidency is going to lend to comics, I figure. He can’t wave his hand and suddenly have 200,000 more people head off to their LCS every week. He can’t suddenly make paper and/or printing costs diminish to pass savings on to readers. Even the suggested economic stimulus package won’t have that dramatic an impact on comic sales since people are still spending more on food and gas.”

• Blogger Valerie D’Orazio briefly looks at how the national mood during President Bush’s two terms were reflected in comic-book storylines.

• The Washington Post’s Michael Cavna calls on fellow cartoonist to hone their caricatures of President-Elect Obama.

• Dan Goldman, who’s also interviewed in that Splash Page piece, unveils the final cover art (above) for 08: A Graphic Diary of the Campaign Trail. The “sociopolitical-document-in-comics,” by Mike Crowley and Goldman, is available for pre-order. It’s due in stores in January.

A 19-year-old British man now may have the longest name in the world, and certainly the nerdiest.

George Garratt of Glastonbury last week changed his name to “Captain Fantastic Faster Than Superman Spiderman Batman Wolverine Hulk And The Flash Combined.”

Confirming the dangers of the Internet, The Telegraph reports he did so using an online service that charges $20. Whatever happened to teens just downloading porn?

“I wanted to be unique,” Captain Fantastic told the newspaper. “I decided upon a theme of superheroes.”

He was about to say more, but he was beaten up by a passing busload of schoolchildren.

If it’s November, it must be time for the best-of-the-year lists to begin, right? I’m convinced that Best-of Season eventually will start sometime around May.

Amazon.com and Publishers Weekly lead the charge, each with fairly diverse lists.

Amazon ranks its selections, and divides them into Editors’ Picks and Customer Favorites, with Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba’s The Umbrella Academy, Vol. 1 (Dark Horse) topping the former, and Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules (Amulet Books) leading the latter.

The unranked Publishers Weekly list includes Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie’s Aya of Yop City (Drawn & Quarterly), the Sammy Harkham-edited Kramers Ergot 7 (Buenaventura Press) and Takehiko Inoue’s Slam Dunk (Viz Media).

The full lists can be seen at the links.

As if victories in the Electoral College and popular vote weren’t enough, Sen. President-Elect Barack Obama also has won the battle of the biographical comic books.

ICv2.com reports that sales of IDW Publishing’s Presidential Material: Barack Obama handily defeated those of John McCain by 59 percent to 41 percent. That’s a wider margin than the popular vote, which now stands at 52 percent to 46 percent. (Final results from Missouri and North Carolina haven’t been included in that tally.)

According to the website, the sales figures are based on copies sold to direct-market retailers, not actual sales to customers.

The biographical comics still can be ordered through IDW’s Presidential Material website.

– Van Jensen hangs out with Paul Pope to find out about the new reprint edition of Heavy Liquid, which Pope initiated when he discovered out of print copies selling on eBay for as much as $200: ” ‘That was disgusting to me,’ he said. ‘That was money those fans could’ve spent on other books.’ ”

– Kai-Ming Cha talks to Yen Press’ Kurt Hassler about the imprint’s absorption into Hachette’s Orbit imprint.

– Tom Richmond looks at how Mad Magazine has covered close elections in the past.

– Alan Gardner critiques the revamped Comics.com site.

– Erin Finnegan reports on the MangaNext show in Somerset, NJ.

– Apparently Famous Monsters of Filmland’s Forrest J. Ackerman is not doing well.

– Doug Wolk reports on last weekend’s APE convention.

– Noah Berlatsky doesn’t care for S. Clay Wilson’s work.

– Jen de Guzman wonders why Slave Labor isn’t getting that many submissions anymore and decides to blame the Internet.

– Because you don’t have enough to read: Here’s Graphic Novel Reporter.

– The final Opus strip ran yesterday.

– Who would like to see some of John Romita Jr’s cover drafts? Now let’s not see the same hands.

– Why does Mort of Bazooka Joe fame constantly cover the lower half of his face? The Onion has the answer and it’s not pretty.

– Kick Ass’ protagonist and Chester Brown: Separated at birth?

– Alan David Doane talks to Ivan Brunetti, podcast-style, about the new Anthology of Graphic Fiction collection.

– Ladies and gentlemen, the top 10 immortal characters of pop fiction.

– Same Hat has some excerpts from their interview with author and manga translator Frederik Schodt, the full text of which will appear in their zine, Electric Ant.

– Charles Brubaker talks with Kevin McCormack, creator of the late-lamented strip Arnold.

– Eric Reynolds provides what will likely be the last 2008 SPX report.

– The Comics Comics blog is all love, flowers and rainbows now.

Earlier this week Chris Mautner linked an article about a prefecture in Japan flagging woman’s manga magazines (out of 9 on the list) as “harmful”. This prompted a post on Melissa’s personal blog about the reaction to fanfiction on the Internet, and how the same mindset might be on display:

I always wondered what the PROBLEM was. (more…)

Somewhere, that Dark Knight-inspired Joker jack-o’-lantern is sending trick-or-treaters screaming into the night. With wet pants.

(Via Slashfilm)

Comedian Rich Kuras ventures inside the World of Warcraft to gauge opinions on Election ‘08. How many electoral votes does Azeroth have, anyway?

(Via Andrew Sullivan)

* (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Watoomb)

Last week’s talk of a possible big-screen future for Doctor Strange has triggered a groundswell of support for the Master of the Mystic Arts.

The Marvel-infatuated Motley Fool went so far as to suggest the company could become “the next Disney.” Because of a Doctor Strange movie?

“Just as Iron Man updated the comic book mythos for an audience all-too-familiar with human frailty, technological prowess, and Middle Eastern conflicts,” Tim Beyers writes, “a Dr. Strange movie could tap into our collective fascination with inner and outer demons. And Harry Potter, of course.”

Writing for AMC’s SciFi Scanner, Nick Nadel doesn’t go so far as to drop the D-word, but he does like how Doctor Strange “could expand Marvel’s ever growing bag of movie tricks.”

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Somebody’s not happy about Marvel Studios recasting James (War Machine) Rhodes in Iron Man 2.

No, not Don Cheadle; he’s probably pleased. No, not Marvel executives; they’re thrilled. Okay, I’ll give you Terrence Howard, who played Rhodey in the first film. He’s certainly chafed.

But I’m talking about these guys, who are upset enough to launch a website and petition demanding that Marvel Studios change its mind and return Howard to the role.

The message at HowardNOTCheadle.com reads:

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I’ve written enough about Halloween-appropriate books over the past couple of weeks, so I won’t highlight titles like Bernie Wrightson’s Frankenstein, or Screamland, or Cthulhu Tales #7, or Hellboy: The Chapel of Moloch.

Instead, I’ll focus on a Batman manga twofer: the collection of Yoshinori Natsume’s Batman: Death Mask, and the much-anticipated Bat-Manga! The Secret History of Batman in Japan.

If Batman, or manga, isn’t your cup of tea, there’s Final Crisis: Rage of the Red Lanterns, which further lays the groundwork for DC’s next big events. For those in a more political mood, there’s American Presidents and more biographies of John McCain and Barack Obama.

Or, while we’re on the subject of biographies, there’s always Bill Schelly’s Man of Rock: A Biography of Joe Kubert.

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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