It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m working and packing, so I thought I’d share with you all the fun things I stumbled across this week in the comics Web.

And since I mentioned webs, you have to check out the winners of Warren Ellis’s Spider Queen Remake/Remodel contest. From Ryan Kelly, Pia Guerra and Paul Sizer, three totally different and totally fabulous visions of a character from a one-paragraph description.

Comics come with teaser trailers now? Apparently so, and this one, for Jeff Lemire’s upcoming Vertigo book, The Nobody, is pretty cool.

Figures the night that I don’t watch Rachel Maddow she talks comics. From Comics Worth Reading, Archie’s Marriage on Maddow.

I’ve always got to have one overly academic link, don’t I? These are notes on a paper titled “Harshin Ur Squeez:Visual Rhetorics of Anti-Racist Work in LiveJournal Fandoms.” It sounds like a mouthful, but if that’s your thing, check it out.

And to wrap things up, a nice little post on “Growing up Vulcan” inspired by the new Star Trek movie (duh).

Or not-gettin’-any-action-figures? (OK, OK, that was awful, I’m sorry). Lucas drew my attention to this on Twitter (via GeekGirlDiva), and I just had to share it. I stopped collecting action figures ages ago, though I still have my Death and a few McFarlane NHL figures. I’m certainly not going to break that streak for Twilight figures, but maybe someone else will.

There are also quite ridiculously priced dolls of Edward and Bella that are temporarily out of stock–which means there’s a significant number of people who spent $139 plus shipping and handling on them.

This is for all our Midwest readers, specifically those in the Windy City:

Challengers Comics in Chicago is having their one-year anniversary party this Saturday night! Starting at 5pm, the shop (located at 1845 N. Western Ave #2R) will have food, drink, and $1.00 back-issues.

“We didn’t want this to be our store and customers just shopped here,” said Challengers co-owner Patrick Brower in a press release.   “We wanted it to be the customers store and we just happen to work here.” W. Dal Bush, the other co-owner, added, “We wanted a store that brought a high level of professionalism to our retail industry.  Comic books are now in the mainstream. More Hollywood blockbusters than not are based off them. The New York Times now has a best selling graphic novel list.  We are proof that the family unfriendly, grimy disorganized stereotype of a comic shop is history.”

Comics and community always go well together, so if you’re in the area, I’d suggest you check it out!

Obama Depressed, Distant Since ‘Battlestar Galactica’ Series Finale

Courtesy of The Onion HERE…

Wired has a list of 10 annoying habits of a geeky spouse and it made me giggle, so I thought I’d share.

My favorite from this list?

7. Geeky toys and decorations can be hard to explain to kids – Long has my plush vorpal bunny languished atop a tall bookcase, waiting for the day when my kids are old enough not to be scared by its huge bloody fangs. And how to properly explain my model of Minas Tirith to kids not quite old enough for The Lord of the Rings? I mean, if we say “You remember The Hobbit? Well, it’s in the same world, but a country not mentioned in that book, and it figures heavily in a later story,” that will only prompt a thousand questions about it. That’s not a bad thing, of course, but it can get a bit tiresome. At least the Warner Brothers cartoon sericels hanging on the walls are easily explained by simply putting in a DVD.

Yeah, I have toy collections too. And my comics are overflowing the bookshelf and competing with far weightier tomes on political science, classic literature (and, um, fashion magazines).

My own annoying geek habit that doesn’t make the list? When I lived in South Carolina, I would drag my then-fiance all the way to Savannah every Wednesday to buy comics.  He’d flip through the same few horror comics while I poked around the selection at the shop, and he’d quickly get bored and end up waiting outside. Any time we went out of town? I had to find the comic shop, ASAP. Then I’d make him drive home so that I could promptly ignore him to devour my new DMZ, Fables or Nextwave.

What habit do you guys have that drives your significant other up a wall? Or have you been lucky enough to find someone who’s as geeky as you are?

The wonderful linkblog, When Fangirls Attack, needs your help to stay in existence. Fangirls, check this out.

The truth is that real life got in the way and got in the way hard, and we’ve come to some unpleasant truths. There’s no way we can keep this linkblog going.

We’re sentimental types though, and we like to think that WFA serves a purpose in the fan community. We’d like to see it continue and regain some of the relevance it had previously.

That’s why I’m posting. We’re looking for someone/some people who are interested in taking over WFA.

Go there and let ‘em know if you’re interested.

Yes, I know this is a bit of an old joke at this point, but even with the poor grammar abound in the subtitles I still think this is too funny not to pass on after a friend of mine sent it my way:

Click HERE to see Hitler’s rant about the lack of squidy-goodness in the Watchmen film.

That aside, raise you (cyber-)hand if you caught the not so-subtle (in my opinion, at least) Alan Moore stand-in chillin’ in the bar towards the Third Act of the of the film…

For the fantasy fans out there, C.S. Lewis’s magnum opus has hit some major problems.

The Hollywood Reporter announced today that Disney has declined “for logistical and budgetary reasons” to jump onboard for a third Narnia film.

Considering the initial plan was for Disney to back a trilogy, this is quite unusual — but considering “Prince Caspian” only hit $141 million domestically versus the $292 million of “Lion,” Disney may simply used this as ballast to tighten their belts in the growing media recession.

An interesting question now is where the series will go next. Considering the influx of children’s book adaptations, including Harry Potter, Despereaux, and the Golden Compass, co-producer Walden Media may have a number of backers to petition. The frontrunner at this point is Fox, who already co-produces films with Walden under the Fox Walden banner.

The third film set to be produced by Walden Media would be “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.” According to reps, the film would retain all four main characters from the first films, and was slated to open May 2010.

E! gossip columnist Ted Casablanca has reported an interesting bit of news about the proposed Batman 3.

While he says that the film is certainly “alive and kicking,” the real news according to Casablanca is that The Mummy‘s Rachel Weisz is currently rumored to be the frontrunner to play Catwoman in the third film.

While there is only speculative evidence that Christopher Nolan will return to outdo himself after the near billion-dollar success of The Dark Knight, Casablanca has added that Christian Bale will return to play a “sexier” Bruce Wayne.

Of course, one should take this with a grain of salt: while Aaron Eckhart erroneously gushed about the possibility of Angelina Jolie playing the part of Catwoman, Michael Caine claimed to MTV that Johnny Depp and Phillip Seymour Hoffman would appear as the Riddler and the Penguin.

[Via E! Online.]

(h/t Natalia Antonova)

Much like the comic world, the Hollywood blockbuster world has pretty much been predicated upon the male 13-24 demographic. Hell, most of the recent Hollywood blockbuster movies have been comic movies, led of course by The Dark Knight this summer, as well as Iron Man, The Hulk…you know the drill.

But according to CNN’s Screening Room, the success of Twilight has thrown a new demographic into the mix: teen girls.

Having been a teen girl whose favorite movies were Speed (yes, I know) and The Crow (which was one of the things that led me to comics), I can safely vouch for the fact that teenage girls will indeed go see big action movies, even ones based on comics. I’d bet that more than half the Harry Potter movies’ audience has been girls, and a good chunk of the audience for this summer’s big comic flicks as well.

Indeed, the conventional wisdom seems to have been that movies with a male target audience are a safer bet because girls will go see “boys’” movies but the reverse is not true.

But Twilight blew the archetypal boys’ movie, Quantum of Solace, out of the water. So Hollywood may be taking notice of this demographic as one that can drive a movie on its own.

Twilight is different than the Hannah Montanas and High School Musicals because it’s genre fiction for teen girls. Though at its core it’s still a romance series, there’s plenty of action and it might be a little more palatable to boys.

More importantly, for the comic industry, the Twilight generation is the manga generation. Though DC had a hard time selling Minx books, the success of the Twilight books should prove that there’s a rabid audience of teen girls who are into genre fiction, as long as it’s written for them as well. The problem is, as always, getting them into comic shops.

It makes me happy to see a movie driven by a female lead, with a female director and screenwriter, based on novels by a female author, tops at the box office. But it would make me even happier if we could move away from the stereotypes of “male” and “female” movies. Girls like action movies (and comics) and boys like love stories–there’s a reason Superman and Spiderman have long-lasting love interests, and it ain’t to suck in the female readers.

Our friend and fellow blogger Carla Hoffman, along with her husband Lance, remains in critical condition in Irvine, Calif. after being severely injured in the Tea Fire a few weeks back. This story in the OC Register talks about their condition and includes an update from Lance’s mom:

Lance Hoffman suffered second-degree burns on his arms and face and third-degree burns on his hands. Carla Hoffman sustained second-degree burns on her arms and hands and third-degree burns on her thighs.

They are being kept in medically induced comas so doctors can treat their wounds. They’ve both had to undergo surgery to their third-degree burns and will later have multiple skin grafts.

Linda Hoffman said doctors told her it will be months before the couple can go home.

“They’ve had good days and bad days but they are still stable,” she said. “It’s going to be a very long road.”

Also, I’d mentioned a few weeks back that we were getting together some items that we were planning on auctioning off on eBay, and the funds we raised would be donated to Carla and Lance. We plan to start some of those auctions next week. We’ve also set up a blog where we’ll post information on the auctions in the weeks and months ahead.

I want to thank my fellow Blog@ colleagues for their contributions, esp. Stephanie Chan, who is doing the legwork in terms of getting everything listed. I’ve also heard from other bloggers and comic pros who are looking to donate items, and I want to thank them for their generosity as well. IDW’s Scott Dunbier and Bully the blogging bull have donated some really nice items already, and there will be more to come.

If you’re interested in donating something to the auction, drop me a line. And if you’re just interested in making a monetary donation, you can find information on doing that here.

Now it can be told: this is, in fact, the last “Grumpy Old Fan” column here at Blog@Newsarama.

So … happy Thanksgiving?

Actually, I had been working on a couple of things for this week and the next. One was a “modern superhero canon” piece centered around JLA/Avengers. Another essay postulated that there really is no DC Universe, just a loose confederation of franchises held together by Justice League of America.

However, since this won’t be the last you see of me on the Interwebs, I think we can hold off for a while. Besides, it is Thanksgiving, and I’ve been a little crabby towards DC lately. Time for some happy talk.

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Comics readers will find several things to be thankful for this week, including the debut of the new Umbrella Academy miniseries, the end of the “R.I.P” storyline in Batman, and the long-awaited Body Bags one-shot.

(Yes, I know Thursday is Thanksgiving only in the United States, but you can still be thankful for something — like, say, the arrival of Mesmo Delivery in comics shops.)

If you’re looking for more books to keep you entertained between parade viewings, food courses and football games, Wednesday also sees an American Elf collection, another Captain America Premiere Hardcover, Scott Morse’s Tiger Tiger Tiger, and … Tijuana Bibles.

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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Over at the blog Comics Should Be Good, Greg Hatcher delves into the murky but warm waters of X-Men continuity by sharing a series of letters between himself and student, Rachel. She recently became a fan of the X-Men comics, and Greg spent the “last week or so” answering her questions about Marvel’s merry mutants. Including the merriest, Wolverine:

…the Wolverine of the comics really was disliked by many people at the beginning. He started out as a Hulk villain.

And later when he was drafted for the new X-Men he was primarily the guy that nobody cared for, the agent of discord on the team. Marvel used to get letters saying “And kill off that obnoxious Wolverine.” The star character in the revival was Nightcrawler because Dave Cockrum really liked drawing him. And in fact there was a point when the Wolverine character was getting so much hate mail that they were thinking of dropping him from the book.

When John Byrne took over the art from Cockrum, one of the things he wanted to do as co-plotter of the book was ‘rehabilitate’ Wolverine… that is, make the fans like him more. Part of it was that Byrne was Canadian himself and didn’t want the only Canadian superhero at Marvel to go away, and part of it was that Byrne thought it would be a fun challenge, taking a hero so despised and seeing if he couldn’t get the fans to come around. So Byrne began, very subtly, to slant stories toward Wolverine. (In those days, Marvel’s artists had a lot more control over a story, because the art was done from a brief outline rather than a script. Then the writer would come in and write captions and dialogue based on the penciled art.)

It’s an interesting read for anyone who wasn’t around when Claremont was tearing it up on the title, or for anyone who fondly remembers spending the car ride between Dallas and Austin explaining to his two best friends what happened between Uncanny X-Men #94 and #275, just so they’d be up to speed. They probably preferred it to me making them listen to Appetite for Destruction over and over again.

In the wake of the cancellations by DC Comics of Birds of Prey, Blue Beetle, Checkmate, Legion of Super-Heroes and Manhunter, Marc-Oliver Frisch spies two more titles that seem to have crossed the line of death: Jonah Hex and Simon Dark.

They’re the only remaining DC Universe ongoing series that sell below 24,000, at least according to ICv2.com sales estimates for October. Actually, they’re well below: Jonah Hex #36 moved an estimated 12,629 copies, while Simon Dark #13 sold an estimated 10,404.

“Given that both titles are selling significantly below that marker,” Frisch writes, “there’s probably not much rope left for them, either.”

It seems like not that long ago, 20,000 was that magical point of no return for most books at DC and Marvel (not that a 4,000-copy shift would move either book back over the line). But the newly canceled She-Hulk supposedly sold nearly 23,000 copies in October; likewise, Legion and Birds of Prey were above that 20,000 mark.

I guess times change … quickly.

Last week Executive Editor Dan DiDio revealed that DC Comics is canceling Blue Beetle, a move made official on Monday with the release of February solicitations.

Not to be outdone, Marvel on Tuesday announced the cancellation of She-Hulk. Again. But at least the publisher did so with humor: “She’s been savage. She’s been sensational. She’s been an avenger. She’s been a lawyer. She’s been a bounty-hunter. But there’s one thing She-Hulk has always been, in all of her many series … cancelled. But it hasn’t stopped her yet!”

On his blog, She-Hulk writer Peter David responded to the news in similar fashion:

I’ve known about it for a couple months but didn’t say anything because I’m not big on making with the bad news.

I have to admit, I’m shocked. Shocked. The market has always been so supportive of books with female leads, and She-Hulk has never had a title canceled out from under her before, so I could never have seen this coming.

Writer John Rogers, who co-created Jaime Reyes, had a more … pointed … reaction to the cancellation of Blue Beetle:

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If I’m running a little late this week, blame it on the winter weather. Or, at the very least, the avalanche of comics based on movies, television shows and video games.

Angel, Battlestar Galactica, Dead Space, Doctor Who, Halloween, Heroes, Star Trek, Star Wars, Street Fighter II, Transformers, The X-Files, World of Warcraft — they’re all represented on shelves this week.

If those aren’t your thing, there’s also an omnibus edition of Jack Kirby’s The Demon, a Walking Dead oversized hardcover, a collection of Stan Lee’s old monthly columns, Mark Waid’s debut on the Brand New Day-era Amazing Spider-Man, and yetis. Well, at least one yeti.

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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Repeated references on the campaign trail by then-candidate Barack Obama to Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln sent Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book rocketing up the sales charts.

Likewise, when the president-elect mentioned Sunday on 60 Minutes that he’d read “a new book out about FDR’s first 100 days,” he caused a bit of a stir as authors and publishers scrambed to lay claim to the title. (It turns out there are several “new” books about Roosevelt’s first 100 days. However, Obama actually was referring to two titles: Jonathan Alter’s 2006 book The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, and Jean Edward Smith’s more recent FDR.)

However, the influence of the 44th president may not end with historical nonfiction. Note that I wrote may.

According to this article in Canada’s Financial Post, news that Obama collects Spider-Man and Conan comics has given a boost to sales of the wall-crawler’s title. At least in Victoria, British Columbia.

“I used to sell three or four Spider-Man comics a week,” says Gareth Gaudin, owner of Legends in downtown Victoria. “Now I’m selling 30 or 35 a day and almost everyone who is buying is mentioning Obama.”

Hardly empirical evidence, I know. But it’s probably enough to make a few retailers and publishers cross their fingers and hope that Obama gives a nod to a few other comic books.

Why should Obama limit himself to Lincoln’s “team of rivals” concept for assembling a Cabinet when he could go with, say, “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes”?

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.