* (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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A little more than a year ago, the American dollar and the Canadian dollar reached parity for the first time in more than three decades, leading to a call for U.S. comics publishers to revise their Canadian prices.

Several did. DC Comics, for instance, announced a single cover price in March. Marvel adjusted its prices to more closely resemble the exchange rate (e.g. $2.99 U.S./$3.05 Canadian).

But now, Publishers Weekly reports, the exchange rate again is in flux, with the Canadian dollar falling more than 70 percent. That means $1 Canadian is now worth about 78 cents U.S., a level not seen since mid-2005.

The decline has happened so fast that many publishing houses are unable to change prices on the wave of books keyed for holiday-season release.

However, it looks like at least one comics publisher was quick to respond.

Toronto-based comics blogger Ty Buttars noted nearly two weeks ago that the Canadian cover price for Marvel’s new releases jumped nearly 15 percent, to $3.50.

After looking at his retailer’s recent invoices from Diamond Comic Distributors, Buttars concludes:

Seems that they are keeping up quite nicely with the craziness. But has Marvel reacted to the recent sharp decline in the $CAD (down about 13-16% in the last three weeks vs the US greenback) too quickly? (Me bitching: They sure took their time reducing cover prices when the US dollar lost ground.) Or is this one of the first steps to prep the market for a gradual price increase in North America? We’ll see once the markets stabilize.

In one of the least-convincing Internet hoaxes since a certain Nigerian prince sent a message of an “urgent, private” nature, a video purporting to be the teaser trailer for The Flash made the rounds last week.

There are a few dead giveaways, not the least of which is that it looks terrible beyond even Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four, or Legends of the Superheroes. Another tell is the preface that attests the trailer was shown before a “private screening” of Watchmen. (While footage of the Zack Snyder movie has been shown to journalists around the country, none of the reports mention anything about The Flash teaser.)

And did I mention the teaser is god-awful? It’s so bad that Defamer asks for a moratorium on “dorm-room exercises masquerading as official teasers.”

“Your mastery of Windows MovieMaker is impressive, but seriously, enough.”

I think they’re being kind, though.

Geekanerd rolls out its list of the “Top Ten Rogues Galleries in All of Geekdom” — TV cartoons and superhero comics, in any case — and, perhaps unsurprisingly, bestows the highest honors on Batman’s villains.

What may come as a surprise, however, is the blow delivered to Spider-Man’s foes. Blogger Degan swears this isn’t “just nerd-baiting”:

He’s one of the best and most unique superheroes in comics-so why doesn’t he have any unique villains? The Vulture, The Rhino, Dr. Octopus, The Lizard, The Scorpion, The Chameleon, (you see the pattern?) I get it… he’s a spider-does that mean he has to fight every member of the damned animal kingdom? Sure sure, there are others, Green Goblin, Hobgoblin, Mysterio, Sandman, Electro… but really are any of them that unique?

The tenure of new Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso has been dealt its first political casualty: his comics-reading time.

The self-professed otaku, elected last month after the surprise resignation of Yasuo Fukuda, complained Sunday in a stump speech that, “It’s hard to read comic books as my time is now restricted.”

“This is already Sunday this week,” Aso told a crowd in Tokyo’s famed Akihabara district. “I’ve read Sunday and Magazine of the last week but haven’t got to Jump and Morning.” (He was referring to three major manga anthologies for boys, and one for men.)

It’s no coincidence that Aso chose the pop-culture paradise as the backdrop for his first street speech since taking office on Sept. 24. He used it as a platform from which to hail manga and anime as key exports.

“Japan’s subculture of animation has been overwhelmingly accepted in the world,” he said. “Japan’s culture is not only kabuki or no play. Comic books, our subculture power, have been widely read in not only Asia but Europe, the United States, Latin America.”

(Via Irene Gallo)

• Artist Jim Rugg shares a commission he did for a local comic shop.

• Joshua Dysart has started a blog on his site about his Vertigo title The Unknown Soldier, where you’ll be able to check out a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff like script excerpts, pencils, layouts, etc.

• Friends of Lulu is looking for nominees for treasurer, reporting secretary and membership secretary for their board of directors. Lulu President Valerie D’Orazio has more details.

• Mark Evanier reports on the death of Tom Fagan, who was responsible for the annual Halloween parade in Rutland, Vt. “Writers and artists from the industry journeyed to Rutland to participate in the festivities, often in costume, and art began to imitate life: Many comic book stories were done that were set in Rutland involving DC and Marvel heroes actually attending,” Evanier writes.

• Austin English has a new blog where he’s interviewing various comics creators like David King and Dylan Williams.

• Just in time for your Halloween viewing pleasure, SLG Publishing posts a creepy story on their website — “The Addlepated House of Odds” by Kurt Hartman.

• The Sardinian Connection posts Mike Carey’s afterword from an Italian tribute book to Watchmen (the afterword is in English, BTW).

• Don MacPherson wonders why he hasn’t seen more about Stephen Colbert’s comic book tie-ins on The Colbert Report.

• Shannon Smith takes a look at the minicomic anthology Not My Small Diary #14.

I don’t want to alarm anyone, but we may be on the verge of shifting to an economy based on vintage comics and Smurf collectibles.

Oh, I tried to warn readers of this weeks ago, but did anyone pay attention? Now I know how Cassandra felt.

Today sees two stories about the rising value of decades-old comics — and presumably much younger alpacas — and the apparent wisdom in sinking your money into vintage copies of Action Comics or Beano instead of, say, the stock market.

The U.K.’s This Is Money notes that Action Comics #1 is valued at more than £500,000 ($789,000 U.S.), an increase of 9 percent from last year. Amazing Fantasy #15 is priced at around $47,000. Of course, if nobody has the money to pay you for those comics, the actual value is probably somewhere closer to … zero.

Oregon’s KVAL, meanwhile, touts Golden Age and Silver Age comics as “hard assets.”

“Superman and Batman; golden age, silver age comics are steady investments that are really, really healthy,” says Darrell Grimes, owner of Nostalgia Collectibles in Eugene.

That story mentions alpacas, too. However, they don’t fit neatly in longboxes.

And BBC News focuses on the lasting popularity of Peyo’s Smurfs, which celebrate their 50th anniversary this week. Some of the little blue collectible figures are reportedly going for as much as $1,500.

So while the economy circles the bowl, I’ll be in the attic searching for Smurftastic Hallmark figurines and a set of Hardee’s drinking glasses from the ’80s.

There are certain comics stories that appear again and again and again in the mainstream press: “comics aren’t just for kids,” “the kids love the manga,” AK Comics’ line of Middle Eastern superheroes, and those “And he still lives in Coatsbridge!” profiles of Mark Millar in UK newspapers.

Add to that list articles about Kami No Shizuku (“The Drops of the Gods”), the manga that spawned a wine craze in East Asia. As near as I can tell, the story originally surfaced in April 2007, and has bobbed about like a cork ever since. This is the fifth time I’ve blogged about it here — and that’s with ignoring the articles that appeared last month.

So, why am I blogging about it again? Because The New York Times this morning profiles the manga’s creators, Yuko Kibayashi and her brother Shin, who write under the pseudonym Tadashi Agi:

The comic — which appears every Thursday in Japan in a magazine called the Weekly Morning and has been compiled in 17 books so far — rapidly became a hit in East Asia, where people are still learning to drink wine and may feel insecure about it. Even in Japan, the region’s oldest and biggest wine market, annual per capita consumption is around 2 liters, compared with nearly 9 liters in the United States or 56 liters in France, according to the California-based Wine Institute’s figures for 2005.

In Japan, wine sellers grab copies of the magazine as soon as it comes out on Thursdays, quickly showcasing a featured wine in their stores or on their Web sites. According to Enoteca, a large chain, men in their 30s to 50s tend to ask for wines from the magazine, especially those priced around $30.

In related news, supermarkets in the United States are still waiting for that Martian Manhunter series so they can feature it with the Oreo display.

After a couple of somewhat slow weeks, Marvel and DC return to their summer event comics with new issues of Secret Invasion and Final Crisis — plus a pair of tie-ins, of course.

They don’t stop there, though. DC’s Vertigo imprint rolls out collections of Northlanders and Y: The Last Man, and re-releases Paul Pope’s Heavy Liquid as a hardcover. Not to be outdone, Marvel brings out their dead, and undead, with omnibus editions of Frank Miller’s Elektra, and The Tomb of Dracula.

Elsewhere, Blank Slate Books debuts Trains Are Mint and We Can Still Be Friends, Rebellion revisits The Ace Trucking Co., Viz delivers the penultimate volume of Naoki Urasawa’s Monster, and Del Rey and Dabel Bros. unleash The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle.

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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Project Rooftop has kicked off their third annual costume contest, “Fights, Flights and Tights 3.” This year’s winner gets a sketch of their costume by artist Dean Trippe. More details here.

I hope he wears this to APE in a couple of weeks …

• Westfield Comics in Madison, Wis., is using IDW’s Presidential Material to divine the outcome of the election. Well, sort of. The retailer is keeping a tally of which candidate biography sells more: John McCain’s or Barack Obama’s. Heck, it’s probably as accurate as some of the polls. [The Isthmus]

• The spotlight is on Dark Horse CEO Mike Richardson today as he’s interviewed about donating copies of all of his company’s books to Portland State University, and about the state of the industry. [The Oregonian, ICv2.com]

• In her “All the Comics in the World” column, Shaenon K. Garrity ropes in a panel to decide which American cartoonists draw attractive men. Finder creator Carla Speed McNeil gets the most mentions. [ComiXology]

• Rapper Percy Carey, writer of the Vertigo graphic novel Sentences: The Life of MF Grimm, chats with comics blogger and analyst John Mayo. [Complex.com]

• A new graphic novel focuses on little-known Confederate general Patrick Cleburne. “He is the perfect vehicle to tell a story from the Confederate point of view,” says creator Justin Murphy. [Trumann, Ark., Democrat]

• Penny Arcade co-creator Mike Krahulik talks about the Penny Arcade Adventures video games. [GamePro Arcade]

The comics blogosphere has been talking about mediocre superhero comics for a little while now, and I suppose I should be grateful that “mediocre” and “superhero” haven’t become entirely redundant.  While he doesn’t appear to have picked up directly from the “mediocrity” discussion, I’d still like to thank Tucker Stone for giving us this week’s topic:

There aren’t a lot of very strong canons for super-hero comics out there…. Most of the serious comic canons that show up don’t deal with super-hero comics anyway, and if they do, it’s usually the standard names checked: Kirby! Watchmen! Something Frank Miller wrote! That’s indicative of a lot of variables — a portion could probably be attributed to snobbery, sure, but at least part of it will have to deal with the nature of creators who didn’t really care that much about the subject, a lack of ethnic and sexual diversity, and all the inherent mechanics involved with stories that, by their very nature, can never reach true conclusions….

Still, while a super-hero canon that isn’t beholden to a bunch of message board noise and voting may not be a current, actual product, it’s one that would certainly be an interesting little jack-in-the-box to take a look at…. Canons aren’t, for the most part, the purview of the fan …  but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth trying out, even from the fan side.

Well, for good or ill, I have picked up this little gauntlet, and will probably return to it in the weeks to come.

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With slightly more than two weeks to go, publishers are ramping up their Halloween-themed releases, from superheroes battling the supernatural to a boy dreaming of becoming a vampire.

Shadowline kicks off its Silverline all-ages imprint with Dear Dracula just as The Hulk slugs it out with Frankenstein’s monster, and Superman and Batman team up to tackle vampires and werewolves. Plus, there’s a Hack/Slash special, and another installment of Ben Templesmith’s Welcome to Hoxford.

If pre-Halloween chills aren’t for you, there’s always the second issue of Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds, Art Spiegelman’s Breakdowns, or the third issue of Jeff Smith’s Rasl.

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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• Richard Gehr from the Village Voice went to the The New Yorker Festival earlier this month and brought back a report on Lynda Barry and Matt Groening’s chat. “I think the only art left for us is slowly peeling a label off a beer bottle while somebody tells you about a dream they had,” Barry said.

• Fortune examines Marvel’s recent success — not in the world of movies, but in the world of comics publishing.

• The horror webcomics site Split Lip’s got chills, and they’re multiplying … the site is posting new stories every Sunday throughout the month of October.

• The new Comic Foundry magazine was delayed until this week, but you can read Laura Hudson’s update on a couple of Comic Book Legal Defense Fund-related cases from the magazine over at its website.

• “So why is it that I know more about Tony Stark’s heart condition than I do my own father’s?”

• First Second’s Gina Gagliano posts a Q&A with Get Graphic, a literacy advocacy program that uses comics in Buffalo, N.Y.

• And finally, the greatest headline of the week so far.

– Tom Spurgeon interviews Bill Schelly, who’s new biography of Joe Kubert, Man of Rock, should be out in stores any day now.

– In more depressing newspaper news: Acclaimed editorial cartoonist Chip Bok is taking a buyout and leaving The Akron Beacon-Journal. The number of full-time, on-staff cartoonists at daily papers gets smaller and smaller. Of course, so does the number of editors, reporters, photographers …

– On the BBC, they’re talking about comics.

– The Daily Cross Hatch begins a multi-part interview with Art Spiegelman.

– Go! Comi are so excited about their new 07-GHOST series that they’ve set up a whole Web site for it.

– Cool things to bookmark: Elizabeth Conley, Elena Diaz, Pancha Diaz, Andrew Farago, Shaenon Garrity, Konstantin Pogorelov, Jason Thompson, and Leia Weathington have formed a new group blog, titled The Couscous Collective.

– Steven De Souza, who wrote the screenplay for the 1987 Spirit TV-movie (remember that?) offers his thoughts on the upcoming Frank Miller film.

Captain America, the costumed symbol of liberty during Word War II, has been found — thanks to global warming, and a sharp-eyed reviewer.

Back in June, director Louis Leterrier promised that the Marvel Easter-egg hunt would continue in The Incredible Hulk with a glimpse of Captain America (producer Gale Anne Hurd begged to differ).

But when the Sentinel of Liberty failed to materialize in the theatrical release, legions of fans — well, maybe not legions — cried foul. Then came word that the original opening scene, which features Bruce Banner in the arctic, ended up on the cutting-room floor, but will be restored on the DVD.

Believe it or not, that’s not simply a ruse to sell more discs. As we reported on Thursday, the scene is there, but is Captain America? Short answer: Yes. But you already knew that.

At Film School Rejects, Cole Abaius spots the body of Steve Rogers and the telltale shield near the end of the alternate opening, “as an avalanche crashes down toward the camera.” Rope of Silicon confirms the discovery.

No word yet on the whereabouts of a certain James “Bucky” Barnes. The Avengers have been dispatched to investigate.

(Via First Showing)