One of the biggest announcements from this past weekend’s C2E2 convention in Chicago was Marvel’s new Hawkeye ongoing series, starring the increasingly ubiquitous Avenger and from the creative team of writer Matt Fraction and artist David Aja. Our interview with Fraction is here, and we also talked to Aja — and got some thoroughly unconventional (and undeniably creative) answers.

Newsarama: David, you very famously worked with Matt a few years back on Immortal Iron Fist — how has it been reuniting with him on Hawkeye?

David Aja: Thanks to quantum superstrings, Matt and I have been working together all those years on a parallel dimension, so I do not really have that reuniting feeling but a continuity one. Those superheroes comics are all about continuity. And reuniting. Life and death. But in ink. Know what I said? Great, because I do not have the slightest idea.

Nrama: Visually, what can you say about the tone of the series?

Aja: Well, to draw is an eternal search and learning, so we will see what I find. Lately I’m trying to go more iconic, more cartoony, but keeping that mundane way of doing stuff it seems I always have. I suppose I will keep on going with that progression. It’s my style realistic? I don’t think so. Mundane? Yup, could be. See? You do not need to make questions, I can do that job for you. Next one, “David, how can you be that extremely charming, talented, handsome and modest, dude?” Oh Albert, you think so, thank you, but naaaah, do not take care what people say, I’m a humble guy. Oh, look a magpie on my window. I love magpies, don’t you Albert? May I call you Albert?

The full cover to Hawkeye #3, released by USA Today, is after the jump.

(more…)

Those aliens in the Avengers movie? They’re not important, according to Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige:

Truthfully, they are Loki’s army and what is most important about them is that they are Loki’s army… The notion of Skrulls and Kree and the amount of speculation — the great thing about the fans just want to know everything they don’t know. They wanted to fill in the blank, and that blank wasn’t particularly important of who the aliens were; we revealed Loki a long time ago, he was the main bad guy.

Well, until they’re important, of course:

There’s a reveal at the end — the notion that Loki has made an arrangement with somebody, that somebody has provided these extremely deadly and creepy and cool aliens to fight alongside him and then to reveal who that somebody was, that’s all Joss and that was sort of the big payoff.

Yes, those two quotes really do come right after one another in the interview, amusingly enough (“What’s really important about them is this – well, really, it’s this”). Also, does this mean that we now know what the mysterious new scene shot last week is, or is that a different new scene…?

While C2E2 may have been drawing most comic book eyeballs this weekend, the New York Times had a great piece about the behind-the-scenes drama at Archie Comics that has led to court battles over the control of the company:

What Mr. Goldwater refers to as “the boiling point” was reached in May 2011 when a female employee threatened to file a harassment complaint against Ms. Silberkleit with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Mr. Goldwater hired a lawyer and commissioned a human resources consultant to investigate the accusations of workplace abuses; Ms. Silberkleit was the only member of the company who declined to be interviewed. The report, released in June 2011, concluded her absence or removal was advisable, and in July, Mr. Goldwater began legal action against her. According to Mr. Goldwater, all two dozen employees volunteered to supply affidavits bemoaning Ms. Silberkleit’s conduct; Ms. Silberkleit termed that proof of a Machiavellian palace coup engineered by Mr. Goldwater.

After a series of court rulings against Ms. Silberkleit that included a $500 fine — for violating the temporary restraining order by twice showing up at the office in mid-December with a former football player in tow — and responsibility for $59,000 in legal expenses accrued by the company, last month the hostile parties agreed to take their problems to mediation. Ms. Silberkleit’s 50 percent share of the company is not in jeopardy, but her job may be.

Some of this has been public knowledge for some time, but the piece has a lot more information, and puts everything into a clear context, suggesting not only reasons for the conflict between Goldwater and Silberkleit, but also reasons for Archie’s relatively recent bid for the title of Most Progressive Mainstream Publisher, what with the Kevin Keller storylines, the upcoming “Occupy Riverdale” storyarc and the company’s wholehearted embrace of digital before anyone else. It’s an interesting, somewhat eye-opening read.

The news from this past weekend that Journey Into Mystery will be crossing over with The Mighty Thor for a story arc called “Everything Burns” got me wondering something: Is Journey Into Mystery the most crossed-over title we’ve seen from a publisher in awhile?

It’s definitely the best most crossed-over title we’ve seen; JiM is continually a great read, with writer Kieron Gillen bringing a specific (and deeply enjoyable) tone to the book despite the number of other stories it gets itself involved in. But “Everything Burns” will apparently run from #642-645 of the title, following on from “Exiled,” the book’s crossover with New Mutants in #637 and #638. Of course, the title launched with a number of Fear Itself tie-in issues from #622-630, meaning that in 24 issues of the title’s existence, only nine won’t have been labelled as some kind of crossover or tie-in to another series or event (I’m being kind and assuming that the “Shattered Heroes” banner that the book had for five of those issues is, essentially, sales-based and not story-centric).

Even in these event-centric times, that really does feel like a small number, doesn’t it? And yet, the realities of the business these days being what they are, that number of tie-ins and crossovers is possibly what’s managed to keep the book around all this time – Maybe I should be grateful that the book has been good despite the cross-continuity demands, and glad that it’s found itself in the center of all these storylines, because otherwise, it wouldn’t necessarily be around at all…

Hope you weren’t waiting for the paperback edition of the collected Legion Lost series by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning and Oliver Coipel:

Please note that orders for the LEGION LOST TP (FEB120261) have been cancelled. This item will not be resolicited.

Unless I’ve missed some, this is the first paperback to be cancelled by DC in awhile; I thought that perhaps we were out of the danger zone for such things, but apparently not. I’m curious just how small the orders must’ve been for this, so we could work out a baseline for DC’s trade cut-off point…

It’s apparently all about the mainstream publicity these days; not only are Marvel promising media coverage for the upcoming wedding in Astonishing X-Men and “when universes collide” crossover in Spider-Men, but DC is now talking about the TV ads it’ll have to support Before Watchmen, New-52-style:

Given the fact that Watchmen has been a strong perennial seller in bookstores for years, and has a sterling literary reputation—it was the only graphic novel on Time Magazine’s list of the “Top 100 Novels”—it has been read by a huge number of people who don’t regularly read comics.  TV ads appear to be among the best possible ways of reaching those potential customers and informing them about the Before Watchmen books.

Call me cynical, but it strikes me that targeting the non-comic-reading audience and saying “There’s now more Watchmen!” isn’t something you should do for the original publication, but the subsequent collections – Isn’t that format the one more likely to appeal to an audience that doesn’t have experience paying $3.99 for one small chapter of the story…?

It’s artistic musical chairs at Marvel: Khoi Pham is moving from Daredevil to Scarlet Spider, where he’s replacing Ryan Stegman, who’s moving onto Fantastic Four, and Jamie McKelvie and Mike Norton are taking over Defenders from Terry Dodson, who’s off to parts unknown beyond July’s Avenging Spider-Man #9 (That’s better news than I was expecting about Defenders; given the drops between issues, I was expecting news of cancellation before a new art team announcement, to be honest).

What’s interesting about these announcements isn’t just how good a fit they all seem (Pham on Scarlet Spider in particular seems like a really good match), but that there’s a sense from the interviews supporting the announcements that these may be more permanent artistic changes than some we’ve seen at Marvel lately; I wonder if the recent “one arc and then off” era may be being replaced by some kind of more consistent artistic regime for awhile?

Okay, start your speculation engines one more time: Marvel has told retailers that, when Ultimate Captain America returns to the books this summer, he’ll make “a decision no superhero has ever done before… that can only be done in an Ultimate book.”

Genuinely, I’m stumped about what that could be. Even before the “can only be done in an Ultimate book,” I can’t even guess what kind of decision a superhero has never made before, considering all of the decisions that superheroes have made in their 75+ year history at some point. We’ve even had superheroes go rogue and try to destroy humanity in that time, after all… But then, I’m also not paying attention to the Ultimate books for the most part. Are there clues I’ve missed out on about this apparently momentous return? Can anything live up to that level of hyperbole?

The numbers don’t lie: More people are reading Image comics every single week, and those numbers are going to increase, whether they get them from your stores or from someplace else, because no offense to everyone who made the last 20 years so vital and creative, but right now, we’re blasting headlong into the future and creating some of the best comics in history.

See – in the past, when everyone claimed the sky was falling, it was because we were losing readers in droves – and worse, we were losing stores – because our numbers had been inflated by speculation.

But the reason the sky isn’t falling now – the reason we’re actually skyrocketing – is because there are readers – real readers, the kind of customers we all want – in abundance.

It’s our job – yours, mine, and the creators we publish – to capture their attention and give them the kind of experience they’ll come back for again and again.

That’s Image’s Eric Stephenson, from his keynote address at the C2E2 Retailer’s Summit yesterday (as posted in full at iFanboy). The “we” that’s skyrocketing is, presumably, Image Comics and not the industry as a whole, but it’s worth pointing out that according to figures released the direct market is actually growing annually. Are comics better off now that during the boom years of the 1990s, in terms of the business as well as the quality of the comics themselves…?

The spectacular Dustin Harbin considers the Eisner Awards:

The big big big problem with the Eisner Awards, probably bigger than any of the others I’ve listed here, is the Eisners have been around long enough to attain that quality of being too heavy to move anymore. Everyone complains about the Eisners, everyone disagrees with them, which is natural in any kind of qualitative, subjective award. But when you start talking about how to change them, the conversation inevitably turns to “well we all know that won’t happen” or “yeah but people will complain if there’s not an award for _____”. And that’s natural too probably. It’s the same with anything that tries to serve as large an audience as the Eisners do. Someone’s always going to be grumpy, me in this case.But are those reasons not to change something? Shouldn’t the preeminent industry award carry some true cachet? Some thrill other than “now I can put “Eisner-winning” in front of my name and hopefully sell more books”? Shouldn’t an award push an artform forward, define the leading edge of that form, rather than stooping to gladhand each balkanized sector each year?

What makes Harbin’s post so worthy of your attention – besides the cartoon about attending the Doug Wright Awards that opens it – is that he doesn’t just complain about the Eisners, but offers his solution, which includes drastically paring down the number of awards given out, the judging structure and even the name of the awards themselves. I’m not sure if I agree with all of his suggestions – or even all of his complaints about the Eisners as a ceremony/concept  – and wonder if, instead, this is the start of a parallel/replacement award altogether, but it’s a remarkably interesting post that should start a conversation or two about a comic institution we tend to take for granted a lot…

Last night the world premiere of Avengers — or as it’s officially called, Marvel’s The Avengers — took place in Hollywood. Several Marvel creators were in attendance, and based on Twitter, it doesn’t look like any of them were disappointed by the latest entry in the Marvel Studios canon. (more…)

…Aaaaaand here’s the bit where we all get that little bit more nervous about Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel movie, courtesy of Dylan Sprayberry, who plays the young Clark Kent in said movie:

When Zack [Snyder] and I were talking about it the first time, he was saying how Superman, they want to give it a more edgy feel like The Dark Knight but also make it more realistic and emotional so it’s not just the all-American superhero that saves everyone. He has dilemmas and love and struggles throughout the whole movie, especially when he’s a kid.

Firstly: “A more edgy feel like The Dark Knight“? It’s Superman. Secondly: “Make it more realistic and emotional”? Again, it’s Superman. If you’re concerned with making Superman “more realistic,” I really do start to worry that you don’t get the core appeal of “Alien sent to Earth from dying planet, turns into superhero and saves the day a lot.”

For fans of Sam Humphries, this interview with CBR about his upcoming Ultimates run is good stuff:

When I came on to it [outgoing writer Jonathan Hickman] did a really generous thing and said, “Here’s where I wanted to go with this book. You can use these plans if you want, but you need to focus on what you want to write. Make this a book that you want to write. Find the characters that mean a lot to you.” Even though I came in and put things on a different path than he would have on his own, he’s been very supportive. He’s given me a lot of freedom to inject my own voice into the book, and for someone who’s put as much thought and planning into the book it was a very cool thing for him to do.

Reading the above, though, I started to wonder how fans who were reading the book for Hickman feel about the change. As Humphries himself points out, Hickman’s writing is all about the long-term planning, and I wonder if knowing that his plans and schemes won’t be coming to fruition even under a new writer feels… disappointing, or retroactively making his nine solo issues a waste of time or whatever. I’m not reading Ultimates, but I have read books before where writers have left the series for whatever reason before they’d finished their storylines, and there’s always been a sense of frustration when that happens – but with a writer like Hickman who is so about planning for the future and the slow build, is that magnified because the immediate payoff is always delayed in his early issues…?

I imagine if Morrison had left Batman after ten issues, say; without even Batman RIP, the whole run would have felt far different to the way it does now that we’ve reached Batman Incorporated. I’m genuinely curious, Ultimates fans: How do you feel about Hickman leaving, and does it affect your feeling about the issues he wrote?

Remember when it was discovered bootlegged Marvel comics weren’t coming from the stores, but instead exploiting an IT hole in the printing chain? Looks like it might not have been Marvel that had that problem; Bleeding Cool is reporting that Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season Nine #9 was bootlegged online yesterday… on the same day that #8 hit stores.

What’s particularly weird about this isn’t just that the IT security hole exists for multiple publishers, but that someone is trying to spread the idea that at least one physical copy of this issue was accidentally released a month early, in Germany of all places. Ignoring the question of “Why Germany,” I’m more curious about whether or not there even are physical copies of Buffy #9 in existence just yet, even in Dark Horse’s offices…

I don’t know why I find this quote, from Grant Morrison’s Flex Mentallo interview on CBR, so weirdly affecting:

I suddenly realized that Flex is one of the characters that I really wanted to own but I didn’t. And because he appeared in “Doom Patrol” first, which was a DC book, he kind of became a DC character even though every single character in the miniseries was basically created. It’s kind of like a creator-owned book but it isn’t.

He could show up anywhere. Geoff [Johns] could put him in the Justice League. I have this strange fear that he is going to appear somewhere someday… The character seems so attached to me, so probably no one would do it. Geoff had him in “Teen Titans” very briefly. He was in a poster on the wall at the Doom Patrol HQ. But maybe in a couple of years, everyone will realize they can use him — but that would be horrible.

In a year when the idea of “creator owned” work seems to be becoming one of the predominant conversations about comics online, reading such a fan of company-owned superhero franchise characters as Morrison – whose Supergods is practically a love letter to that idea, after all – say that it’d be “horrible” for one of his characters to become part of that group feels particularly powerful in a way that I wouldn’t have expected. Is it just me?

So, you have a line of collectible toys, statues, and DC-branded bits like power rings and pins, and you want to sell them directly. Moving from one of the words in that sentence to the other isn’t a huge, drastic name change, but the fact that DC Entertainment is going to actually move into “Direct” sales is.

DC announced the name change of their toy line today via a post on The Source blog, but the bigger part of the announcement is the opening of a webstore that will hold all of the DC Collectibles products. Found at DCComics.com/Collectibles, the site currently merely acts as a portal to the existing WB Store, “WBShop.com”. Some products are currently unavailable online, and instead only have links to “Comicshoplocator.com” which helps fans find the product at their local store. When the full online store launches in May 2012, all products will be available directly there, without any external linkage needed.

Will retailers get upset over this “step” into the direct market? Well, it’s really just a lateral motion, and a way to try to leverage more direct dccomics.com visits, so probably not much to speak of. Regardless, your DC Direct branded figures just became more… Collectible.

Reading this overview of recent interviews promoting Before Watchmen at ICv2, a thought occurred to me: Is this second wave of PR aimed specifically at the people who reacted to badly to the announcement of the line in the first place? Seeing Darwyn Cooke talk about how he had to be added “kicking and screaming” onto the books, or that he’d turned down Dan Didio when first asked until he found himself coming up with an idea that was worth the original story almost a year later feels like a far more humble, far more “We get it! This seems like a bad idea!” approach to PR than some of the first interviews and stories that were done when the project was officially announced, especially some of J. Michael Straczynski’s comments.

If this is a purposeful redirectioning of the PR, I’m curious to see if it’ll work; given how hilariously brittle the comics internet can be, I can see these interviews being fodder for “SEE THESE HACKS KNEW IT WAS A BAD IDEA DEEP DOWN” as much as “They’re not just doing it for the money but had concerns about the necessity themselves.”

(Me, I’m still going to pick up the Cooke books and probably ignore the others…)

Okay, so Spider-Men turns out to be what everyone thought it would be: A crossover between the Marvel and Ultimate Universes where Peter Parker meets Miles Morales and the two celebrate the 50th anniversary of the character by, I don’t know, fighting Doctor Octopus or something.  But putting aside the fact that (a) the two universes crossing over was once described as Joe Quesada as proof that Marvel will be officially out of ideas – A line that he must have regretting saying as soon as he left his mouth, let’s be honest – (b) this feels less like something new and exciting right now and more like the modern version of Spider-Man 2099 Meets Spider-Man (or, for that matter, “Flash of Two Worlds“) and (c) We’ve seen this kind of thing before in “Spider-Wars,” I’m genuinely curious to see what the reaction to this will be; it sounds like a potentially cool story, but without the promise of “IT ALL STARTS/ENDS HERE” that normally accompanies this kind of big announcement, I wonder whether fans will stick with the continuity porn sturm-und-drang of AvX and trade-wait for this…?

Something that comes up a couple of times in this Geoff Johns interview is the seeming importance of DC’s Free Comic Book Day release this year to the DCU as a whole and Justice League specifically; we’re told that the FCBD issue will hint at the future of the team in regards to new members and a shifting public face, as well as evolving the Pandora plot that’s come up a couple of times since the character debuted in Flashpoint #5 last year. What seems interesting about that to me is that it feels like the first time one of the Big Two publishers is making the FCBD release a “must-read” for fans, as opposed to a “Would be nice” added extra.

Marvel was the publisher to push original non-reprint content for FCBD first, in terms of the Marvel/DC axis at least, but all of their books have been seemingly intentionally peripheral in terms of the larger continuity or stories being told (With the potential exception of “Swing Shift,” which previewed the Brand New Day status quo for Amazing Spider-Man months before it actually happened). DC has teased a different route with #0 issues of both Blackest Night and War of the Supermen in the past, but both of those issues have been there to bring readers up to speed and repeat storybeats and information from elsewhere, as opposed to offer anything new in and of themselves. If what Johns is saying about this year’s FCBD title is the case, that sounds like it’ll change this time ’round.

I’m in two minds about this approach. On the one hand, it makes FCBD more of an “event,” with more reason for “regular” fans to go and support their stores on the day, and it also gives readers who’re picking up the DC FCBD book cold more of a sense of “something’s happening!” when they look inside. And yet… It also risks making the DC FCBD book more of a commodity to be hoarded, speculated on and sold on eBay for ridiculously high amounts of money, thereby defeating the “come one, come all!” nature of Free Comic Book Day itself, so… I don’t know. Is it too much to hope that DC will have overprinted/overshipped this book on the possibility that it’s more popular than anyone anticipated…?

This is spectacular, from Tom Brevoort’s Marvel Age of Comics tumblr: A 1968 TV Guide story about the rise of “weirdo superheroes” in cartoons at the time, including concern over the amount of violence, the lack of comedy and the potentially dangerous effects such characters can have on the children. Compare and contrast with the kind of mainstream media coverage something like Avengers vs. X-Men or the New 52 gets these days, and feel either happy at the way in which comic book culture has wormed its way into the mainstream pop culture in the last 40 years or depressed at the fact that no-one uses the phrase “weirdo superheroes” anymore.