– Freddie Mercury vs. Darkseid.

– Todd Allen looks at alternate modes of distribution.

– John Byrne talks to Van Jensen about a possible Next Men revival.

– Wil Moss interviews Simone Lia about her upcoming book, Fluffy.

– British cartoonist Martin Rowson wonders who he’ll be able to kick around once Dubya leaves office.

– Todd Klein and Neil Gaiman’s “Before You Read This” print goes on sale this Friday.

Compiled by JK and Chris.

Green Lantern movie will tell Hal Jordan’s origin, producer says

Ever so slowly, more details are coming to light about the much-discussed Green Lantern movie.

Last week director/co-screenwriter Greg Berlanti gave fans hope simply by mentioning that, yes, he’s working on the script. Then yesterday at Newsarama, co-screenwriter Marc Guggenheim spoke enthusiastically about the movie, even if he didn’t really reveal anything.

But now there’s some firm information: Producer Donald De Line tells CHUD that Green Lantern will detail Hal Jordan’s origin and, in the website’s words, feature “all the heroics and action inherent with that character.”

Also … no Jack Black. That’s about it. Hey, I said “ever so slowly.”

UPDATE: Collider now has a Q&A with De Line that fills in some of the details. The producer notes that delays with the Justice League movie won’t affect Green Lantern, which is “very much a kind of stand alone about the origin of that character.”

Zak Penn gets sole writing credit on The Incredible Hulk

Despite Edward Norton’s well-publicized rewrite, Zak Penn will receive sole screenplay credit on The Incredible Hulk.

IESB reports that Penn, who wrote the original draft, is credited with story and screenplay — a determination made by the Writers Guild of America.

“WGA determined the writing credit not Zak or Edward or Universal or Marvel,” a Universal Pictures representative told the website. “WGA always determines final writing credit for our films right before the film comes out. Up until that time, we include the writers on the project to date.”

As The Los Angeles Times detailed back in August, Penn wrote three drafts between early 2006 and spring 2007, but had to promote his movie The Grand before the screenplay could be completed to the satisfaction of Universal and director Louis Leterrier. With three months left before shooting was scheduled to begin, Norton signed a deal to turn around his draft in less than a month.

The Incredible Hulk opens on June 13.

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Steve Niles’ Wake the Dead lands at Holding Pictures

Holding Pictures has acquired the rights to Steve Niles’ IDW Publishing miniseries Wake the Dead, a modern-day retelling of the Frankenstein stories.

Jay Russell (Tuck Everlasting, The Water Horse) will direct from a script by James V. Hart (August Rush, Bram Stoker’s Dracula). Visual effects will be provided by Peter Jackson’s Weta.

Released in 2003-2004, Wake the Dead originally was snatched up by Dimension Films, with Michael Dougherty (Superman Returns) set to adapt. However, it never made it out of the development stage.

“Me and Jay have been working for three or four years now to get this going,” Niles tells ShockTillYouDrop.com. “All through him doing The Water Horse. And we’ve just been steadily hammering away at it. He’s always had a consistent vision and he knows this is a modern re-telling of Frankenstein. It’s grim death. It’s about as far from My Dog Skip as you can get.”

Platinum and Valhalla team up for Final Orbit adaptation

Platinum Studios’ comic-book thriller Final Orbit won’t be released until early next year, but it’s already winding its way toward the big screen.

The company is teaming with Valhalla Motion Pictures for the adaptation, with Russell Gerwitz (Inside Man) writing the script. Valhalla chair Gale Anne Hurd and Platinum Studios chairman-CEO Scott Mitchell Rosenberg will produce.

In Final Orbit, a lottery provides winners with the chance to vacation aboard the newly completed International Space Station. The trip turns bad when the station is damaged, trapping the tourists on board with no astronauts around to help.

The Ticker

• The fire at Universal Studios didn’t stop the MTV Movie Awards. Transformers rode away with Best Movie, while Iron Man won Best Summer Movie So Far. No slight to Iron Man, but that’s the worst category ever. [Reuters]

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Blogger Chris Sims shares an “excerpt” from Conbraganda: Winning Hearts and Minds In America’s Second Cold War over on his blog, and includes several well done G.I. Joe-inspired propaganda posters.

Our friends at First Second have declared May to be Vampire Month, and we thought we’d play along by presenting some of our favorite vampires from pop culture (but mostly comics). So sit back, grab a warm glass of the red stuff and sink your teeth into these undead fiends …

Dane from 30 Days of Night: Dark Days

I was a big fan of the initial 30 Days of Night mini-series, so I really looked forward to the sequel Dark Days. Especially since Steve and Ben were going to get six issues to stretch out and develop their story. I was looking forward to watching Stella get her revenge on some vampires for what happened at the end of the first story, but I had no way of knowing how hard I was going to fall for her and some of the other new characters. Particularly Dane.

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– Before moving into the second major story arc, Northlanders will feature a two-parter on Lindisfarne, which Brian Wood says is “the raid that kicked off the whole Viking Age and introduced the larger world to the Norsemen and their nasty habits of rapine and slaughter. It’s importance can’t be overstated.”

– PWCW profiles Lars Martinson’s Xeric-winning graphic novel, Toonharu.

– They also look at IDW’s series of art books.

– Remember Cold Cut? They’re back and now called Haven Distributors.

– Marc Mason interviews Neil Kleid.

– The Daily Cross Hatch has part 2 of their Gerard Way interview up.

– Here’s a nice round-up of the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention.

– Peter David steps up for charities who want to use his characters in money-raising auctions.

Compiled by JK and Chris.

– Tom Spurgeon interviews Tripwire editor Joel Meadows.

– Fantagraphics store manager Larry Reid is profiled.

– Blog@ columnist Neil Kleid is going to be at the People’s Improv Theater for Comic Book Club in New York Tuesday night.

– Gelatometti has video from the Image Seven signing on Free Comic Book Day.

– San Diego Comic Con teasing has begun.

– France needs superheroes.

– American Psycho meets The Dark Knight.

– Roger Ebert talks about the forefathers of blogs — fanzines.

By JK and Chris

IDW publisher Chris Ryall announces on his blog that IDW will publish the first trade paperback collection of Thom Zahler’s Love and Capes:

Harlan Ellison, of all people, called me up and encouraged me to give the book a look, raving (not ranting, but raving) about the sweetness and humor of the story. When a guy of Ellison’s standing talks up a comic that he really likes, it definitely deserves a look. So I contacted Thom, we had a nice chat, he sent me the comics… and then began my usual near-impossible task of simply finding time to read them. But finally, with Thom patiently waiting, I gave one a look, and was hooked. It really is a great, charming story. In the press release, I mentioned that only Tom Beland’s comics feel like they’ve got as much heart and good humor as these comics. But where Tom’s are based on his life, Thom’s are a full-on romantic comedy with superheroes. Not like that painful Uma Thurman movie, but more like THE INCREDIBLES.

Hopefully this will drive more people to check out the book, which definitely deserves a wider audience. Visit Thom’s site to read the press release. The trade comes out in November.

Speaking of licensed comics: Chris Ryall, publisher and editor-in-chief of IDW Publishing, unveils an ad that should make Doctor Who fans happy.

At Den of Geek, James Hunt casts an eye over the field of licensed comics, and decides that, well, most of them aren’t very good:

One of the first things you can be guaranteed to read when someone brings an existing property to comics is a statement along the lines of “Well, of course, since we have no budget restrictions, we can do anything we want, as long as it can be drawn!” A fair enough statement, yes, but on closer inspection, what does it really mean?

In the case of IDW’s comic-based “Season Six” of Angel, it means taking Los Angeles to hell and having Angel fight a ludicrous number of massively-proportioned demons every issue – something that makes the series almost impossible to take seriously. After all, the Angel show we remember featured a small number of demons, almost always human-like in appearance. It was absolutely a budget restriction, but one that kept the show grounded in believability, as much as a show about a vampire detective could be.

With this new freedom to depict demons of all shapes and sized, the reality constructed over five years of the TV show has been utterly discarded in favour of bigger, better things… that don’t remotely match what the viewers of Angel remember. The solution to this one is simple – let the TV show that you’re adapting inform the look of the comic, and stick religiously to that. Any time you’re thinking “wow, we could never have done this on TV!” that’s a sign that you shouldn’t be doing it.

In addition to “no budget syndrome,” Hunt considers the absence of actors, and “canonocity.”

Ben Templesmith (30 Days of Night, Fell), who recently moved from Perth, Australia, to San Diego, Calif., has signed an exclusive contract with San Diego-based IDW Publishing.

The agreement won’t affect his work with Warren Ellis on Fell, from Image Comics.

Templesmith’s deal with IDW calls for him to create art books and new series, such as The Art of Wormwood and Welcome to Hoxford, both of which debut in August.

“I’m incredibly lucky to have been given the opportunity to continuously work at IDW over the years now and basically have them be the launch pad for anything I’ve ever wanted to do in comics,” Templesmith said in the press release, “so I just saw this as a natural progression and a great chance to be more involved from the ground floor up. Also, the cubicle walls in the office are high enough that people still won’t be able to see that I rarely wear any pants while I work.”

The full release appears after the break:

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As Rich Johnston pointed out earlier this week, former Wildstorm editor Scott Dunbier started a new job this week:

It’s just past midnight here in San Diego, April 1st, 2008. In the morning I’ll be starting as Special Projects Editor at IDW. A very appropriate day to begin a new job, don’t you think? It feels almost like when I came out to WildStorm in April of 1995, but I’m even more excited… and nervous as Hell.

Going to post this and then off to bed, I’ve got a big day ahead of me tomorrow. But I wanted to share something with you before I sleep, a present from my good friend Gene Ha. It showed up quite unexpectedly last week in my e-mail (followed soon after by a package with the original art). Something to commemorate the end of one life and the start of another, the note said. Gene calls it Scott Free. I like the sound of that.

I was going to start off this post by saying something about how we’re too highbrow here at Blog@ to participate in any April Fool’s Day antics, but I don’t think anyone would buy it. The real reason why we didn’t announce the blog was defecting to Wizard or moving to the domain amazingheroes.com or something along those lines is because Matt Brady is out on vacation today, and if we can’t mess with his head, then what’s the point?

A lot of folks are having some fun today, so let’s get into today’s fake news …

–Oni Press announces that they’ll be publishing Superman:

“This really is a dream come true,” exclaims James Lucas Jones. “We hope to tell great stories that can be read and enjoyed independently of any other form of convoluted continuity. The character and story come first… no Civil Wars… no Crisis… no Secret Invasions… just good stories that any kid can pick up and enjoy.”

No word on the creative team, except that it won’t be Mike Grell … he’s drawing Superman for ComicMix.

–Fabio Moon announces he’s completely changing his drawing style.

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The Daily Page in Madison, Wisconsin talks to Mike Baron about the return of Madison’s own superhero, the Badger:

What makes Madison a good venue for Badger stories?
Madison is, ah, an eccentric village with many eccentric denizens. Wisconsin in general has a wealth of lore: Paul Bunyan, the hodag, Ed Gein, the giant muskie — oh honey, don’t let me commence!

What’s your connection to Madison?
Born in Madison. Graduated from West High School — only my senior year — I grew up in South Dakota. Graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in political science. And a fat lot of good it’s done me. Moved to Boston after graduation, moved back in ‘77, lived in Madison through 2003, and will probably return there.

– After sharing several cover possibilities for The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman reveals the final Dave McKean artwork.

– Congratulations to blogger Matthew J. Brady and his wife on the birth of their daughter.

– Doonesbury creator Gary Trudeau is going on a 12-week break.

– Our thoughts go out to Alternative Comics publisher Jeff Mason, who is suffering from Crohn’s disease and currently recovering from surgery to combat it. Here’s hoping he gets better soon.

– For Charlie Brown, it will never end.

–Marvel.com has launched a new gaming blog.

– IDW celebrates Fallen Angel’s 25th issue.

– Kim Deitch and Jim Woodring are at the Fantagraphics store in Seattle this weekend.

Compiled by JK Parkin and Chris Mautner.

New comic art by Bernie Wrightson is always a good reason to smile … IDW’s Chris Ryall shares a trailer for the Wrightson-drawn, Steve Niles-written Dead, She Said miniseries:

TVGuide.com has a preview of IDW’s upcoming Ghost Whisperer comic. “The show has become darker, and there are evil forces everywhere, and that makes it perfect for us,” IDW editor in chief Chris Ryall told TV Guide.

The book comes out in March.

I’ve never been into Transformers, but this IDW Publishing promo is kind of funny.

IDW Publishing chief Chris Ryall shares a couple of pages from Angel: After the Fall 6-8:

ANGEL: AFTER THE FALL is doing something special with issues 6-8. We’re taking a break from the ongoing story–and oh, how this might upset some of you after you see the end of issue 5–to do the now three-part “First Night.” This is an array of short stories, all handled by different artists and each one finally revealing what these characters the night of the big, apocalyptic fight in the alley at the conclusion of Angel Season 5.

He posted an additional page here.

The artwork posted above is by John Byrne.

IDW Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Chris Ryall teases a yet-to-be-announced Transformers comic with some lovely promotional art by Nick Roche.