In an annual rite, ICv2.com talks with DC Comics President and Publisher Paul Levitz about the state of the company and the industry. The four-part interview covers the book market, the recent investment in Flex, manga and the CMX imprint, Zuda, the World of Warcraft adaptation, Minx and more:

We were thinking back to twenty-five years ago recently because we were asked to do some recollections of when we first published Nexus and of how that came about, and the story was that Baron and Rude came to us with a story about an encyclopedia salesman and we said “This is never going to sell, you’ve got to do superheroes.” So they did superheroes, and I think what you’re saying is, now maybe we could publish the encyclopedia salesman story.

I think we’re at a time where a great encyclopedia salesman story can be told. Will it sell as much as a superhero? Probably not today, but it can be told, and that’s a wonderful thing. My first exposure to manga, and I’ve said this before in interviews, was Barefoot Gen and you look at the power of that and the social impact of that as a story. American comics had no vehicles for doing that when I came into comics. Underground comics might’ve been able to try a little eight page story touching on a thing like that, but no one could do a serious work about that.

Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; and Part 4.

I was sent this groovy “Batman” commercial for Intel’s Core 2 Duo processors.

(Thanks, Stan)

Apple announced yesterday NBC Universal will pull all of their content available on iTunes. The cause of the dispute? NBC Universal wants to sell episodes for $4.99 each, more than double the original price of $1.99.

“We are disappointed to see NBC leave iTunes because we would not agree to their dramatic price increase,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We hope they will change their minds and offer their TV shows to the tens of millions of iTunes customers.”

NBC said they will withdraw from iTunes in December, midway through the season. Apple responded by cutting ties in September, dropping NBC before the season starts.

Although Comic-Con International doesn’t kick off until later today, three companies got a jump on things yesterday with some fairly big publishing announcements:

• IDT Internet Mobile Group (IMG), a division of the telecommunications company IDT Corporation, has acquired a controlling interest in IDW Publishing, which publishes 30 Days of Night and numerous licensed books, such as Transformers, 24, CSI and Star Trek. IMG also announced it has formed Zedge Studios to develop and license content for the Internet and mobile platforms.

“IDW Publishing’s stellar reputation in the comics and graphic novel arenas and its emphasis on original intellectual properties in the action and horror genres are a perfect fit for Zedge Studios,” says IDT’s Moshe Berger.

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I have to admit I’m not all that sure what it’s about, but comiXology — “a social networking site that brings Web 2.0 to the comic book market” — has launched.

From what I can gather from the brief press release and from scanning the site, comiXology utilizes a widget that allows users to preview, search and rate new comics releases. Although the website is fairly barebones now, it promises content, including weekly columns and blogs, soon.

ComiXology is the creation of former Marvel senior web designer John D. Roberts and partners David Steinberger and Peter Jaffe.

We’ve seen a platinum Gundam figure, and a wooden Gundam figure. But now here’s the real deal — okay, sort of. Gizmodo has photos of the new 59-feet-tall, full-scale Gundam from the “Gundam Crisis” attraction at Fujikyu Highland in Japan.

Pfft. Who needs CGI Transformers?

(Via AnimeOnline)

Somewhat related: Chris Sims tackles Marvel’s MegaMorphs

Zuda – It’s not just DC Comics’ new webcomic portal, it’s also The Word That’s Sweeping The Nation! Why, here’s Richard Bruning right now to talk about why it took DC so long to make a move into the webcomic arena:

A lot of times, in all honesty, DC has never been the kind of company to jump on a bandwagon just because we saw one pulling out of the gate. Sometimes we’re frustrated that we didn’t, and other times we realize that we were pretty smart by holding back.

And here’s Paul Levitz also thinking about timing:

Should we have done this a year earlier? Three years earlier? Maybe. I think there is certainly not a well-developed stage or platform for the typical creator to perform on, and I don’t think there should be one platform. I don’t think we’ll supply the only one out there. The fact that there are guys that have succeeded with this is terrific, because it demonstrates that the model can work.

I certainly think that DC’s not always the first to move in the industry. We like to move when there’s a clear opportunity, and when we’re convinced we’re bringing something to the table.

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A selection of some of the funniest, most interesting and strangest quotes from the past week:

“All the iPhone is is a retarded Mother Box.”

– artist-writer Paul Pope, on the new iPhone

“We’re counting down to something … [but] we’re not bringing back the Silver Age.”

– Dan DiDio, senior vice president-executive editor of DC Comics, on Countdown

“They’re all standing on Darkseid’s head, which can only mean one thing: one of the younger heroes killed him. Maybe a bunch of them. The Teen Titans killed Darkseid. Why? So when old Flash and old Green Lantern and Wildcat are all ‘Do it our way, because we beat Hitler!’ the kids can respond “F*** off, grandpa, we beat Darkseid. Who the f*** is Hitler?’”

– blogger Chad Nevett, on DC’s latest teaser for Countdown

“Anybody who does this has to have a regular, well-paying job. It ain’t a cheap hobby.”

– cosplayer Paul Lombard, who dons a $1,000 Batman costume for charity events and store appearances

“So, what does it mean, ‘life?’ A stand against abortion? The death penalty? A reference Marvel comic book hero Captain America dying on the steps of a federal courthouse earlier this year?”

– Richard Walker, staff writer for the Orangeburg, S.C., Times and Democrat, pondering the meaning of the graffiti scrawled on the steps of the county courthouse

The Comics Crew has part 3 of their series on the digital distribution of comics; to get caught up, you can take a look at part 1 and part 2 first. For part 3, they focused on independent companies and creators who are ahead of the big two in this area. Which, if you’ve been paying attention, means they naturally talked to SLG’s Dan Vado about EyeMelt.com.

They also talked to Jim Shelley, who created the Flashback Universe. His description of how he became fed up with the big two in the 1980s and 1990s is interesting reading:

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Anime UK News reports that Viz Media has sent cease-and-desist letters to several fansub groups and file-sharing sites that produce or distribute fansubs of the Death Note anime series.

Anime UK News notes that the move comes with just two more episodes left to air in Japan, “ultimately cutting off illegal production of the popular horror series just as it was reaching its climax.” You can read a copy of one of the cease-and-desist letters here.

Viz Media, which holds the North American rights to the Death Note manga and anime, is offering the first 10 episodes for download at $1.99 each.

(Via ComiPress)

Publishers Weekly reports that DC Comics has expanded its involvement in manga with an investment in fledgling Japanese publisher Flex Comix, which will create manga for print, the Internet and mobile phones.

DC’s investment will be managed by DC Comics Japan, which was established earlier this year (though I don’t recall seeing anything about it). DC currently publishes licensed manga through its CMX imprint, which it established in 2004.

According to the PW article, Flex’s original manga will be serialized online, then collected in print.

John Nee, DC’s vice president of business development, will sit on the board of Flex Comix. Other investors include Softbank Technology, Archetype Technologies and Movida Entertainment.

(Pictured is The King of Debris, Vol. 1, which Flex Comix is scheduled to release later this year.)

Update: DC’s official press release on the Flex deal

What do you do after you’ve wowed the comics world with Tank Girl and helped create the pop sensation The Gorillaz? If you’re cartoonist Jamie Hewlett you make sex toys. The adult store JimmyJane (link NSFW, duh) is currently offering a set of six “Ultimate Members” vibrators, each adorned with a unique, original character created by Hewlett. Here’s “The Profit”:

Feel the quality and width of the EPOS genie of EROS.

He’s the spiritual king of kerching for whom the till rings. When it comes to success it’s done INXS and this boys not slow at running the show.

The KABARET prophet of profit with the baby bling, prayer beads and ring that holds the key to destiny’s door. Your name on the list? Underdressed, crass and pissed? Wrong hair, wrong day, wrong profession? To enter Shangri-La, then pass muster past boy wonder you must, but you must have for you’re here reading it…

…So believe.

Um, yeah. Anyway, you can buy one for $275, or all six for $1,650.

On a somewhat related note, here’s some Johnny Ryan condoms.

With technology exploding — often faster than our minds can absorb it — how can teachers help their students better understand and evaluate the myriad of media that influence what they see, hear and think every day? Granted, teachers are so busy covering the basics and maintaining discipline that promoting critical thought, much less keeping up with technology, usually doesn’t register on their radar.

That’s not a good thing, according to a recent column from Mark Glaser of the PBS-hosted Web site MediaShift, because kids are, very often, so far ahead of the tech curve, listening to music from iPods and playing state-of-the-art video games, than teachers, and even their parents. That’s where machinima (a form of amateur filmmaking that takes place within videogames in which game makers allow players to modify levels of games) and comics, specifically manga, come into play, Glaser says, to narrow that gap.

Dr. Michael Bitz, the mastermind behind The Comic Book Project, was one of the featured speakers at a recent conference in New York about such issues, demonstrated how kids deal with serious issues — violence, sexual abuse and death — by making comics about them. Experts and educators also discussed how familiarity with manga can be instrumental in bridging the gap between teachers and students.

The big worry here, as Glaser sees it, is a very real one: “Educators are worried that if we don’t teach students to understand the media in their real world, they will not think critically about them and accept whatever is fed to them by commercial and corporate interests.” The only way digital immigrants (teachers) can reach digital natives (kids) — who spend up to twice as much time engaged with other forms of media every day than school — is to learn their language, and comics and manga can do that.

Just to make the wait for The Dark Knight seem a little shorter, Hannspree recently introduced the perfect 15-inch LCD TV for the Batman fan you love, that is, if you have a bank account the size of Bruce Wayne’s… And, that was merely one of many uniquely framed LCD TVs Hannspree unveiled during last January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Although there’s no sign of Batman at Hannspree’s Web site for now, you can still find a TV in the shape of your favorite NBA and MLB team.

USA Today reports that The Dark Knight will be the first feature film to be shot in the expensive IMAX format.

According to the newspaper, director Christopher Nolan will shoot four action sequences — including the introduction of Heath Ledger as The Joker — on IMAX.

That’s great and all, but the most interesting thing is one of the images accompanying the article: an on-the-set photo of a partially obscured Ledger in The Joker makeup. All right, it’s not that interesting, but still …

The Dark Knight is set to open July 18, 2008.

Related: The Hollywood Reporter on the IMAX format

A selection of some of the funniest, most interesting and strangest quotes from the past week:

“Kids love axes!”

– blogger Rachelle Goguen, in her page-by-page commentary on All-Star Batman and Robin #5

“People call it a call back to Silver Age comics, but I just call it the place where the characters were at their greatest — where we saw their greatest strengths. It’s really building upon what people remember and know the characters to be, and what people most liked about those characters.

“We never want to create a situation where the concept behind a character has nothing to do with people’s perceptions of that character. That’s something I’m very specific about and the goal is to build a much more contemporary world around a character but stay true to the things that make them great.”

– Dan DiDio, executive editor of DC Comics, on recent shifts in the DC Universe

“I have to sell a lot of comic books to be able to afford to be out here, doing this. I make lots of money in comics so I can afford to farm.”

– Chuck Rozanski, farmer and owner of Mile High Comics, selling produce at Colorado’s Boulder Farmers’ Market

“The small, makeshift booth is only about two square metres, but it feels like I’ve got enough technology in here to run a small country.”

– the BBC’s Richard Kimber, checking out a media immersion pod in Tokyo

“If the new Captain America proves to have as good a measure of the national pulse as the old one, the world should brace for a US foreign policy that will be low profile and limited, but still quite lethal.”

– Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, foreign editor of The Hindustan Times, on Captain America as political barometer

“It’s not really a black and white issue. Way more than nine out of 10 new books fail and new characters or revamped characters generally don’t make it. The only difference is a black character is less likely to get a second or third chance. DC used the tools they had to draw attention to the book and it was extremely well done for most of its run. People just didn’t buy it.”

– writer Dwayne McDuffie, on the cancellation of DC’s latest Firestorm series

Anime News Network passes along a report that Japanese authorities have arrested three suspects on charges of illegal file-sharing of manga.

The three males — ages 17, 26 and 29 — are alleged to have scanned and uploaded images of Weekly Shonen Jump and Weekly Shonen Sunday manga magazines to the Winny peer-to-peer network.

Police searched the suspects’ homes and confiscated computers, scanners and manga.

The 17-year-old is alleged to have uploaded Weekly Shonen Jump every week from February 15 to April 5 on the Friday before the magazine’s Monday release. The 26-year-old and the 29-year-old are believed to have uploaded Weekly Shonen Sunday every week from Feb. 14 to April 3 and Jan. 31 to April 5, respectively.

According to this press release, it seems as though MTV, the folks responsible for foisting “The Real World,” “Pimp My Ride” and Downtown Julie Brown on us, are teaming up with Gain Ltd. “to develop new media versions of comic books, graphic novels and children’s books.”

“Some of the best characters and stories come from comics and graphic novels, but until now distribution channels have been very limited,” said David Gale, Executive Vice President, New Media for MTV Networks. “Gain combines the original format of comic books, graphic novels and children’s books with the emotional excitement of a great movie that fans can see on-the-go or on-demand, but always in high-quality.”

MTV Networks Music Group’s vast array of television and digital platforms will allow for extensive distribution of Gain’s unique content, beginning with MTV. Various projects will bring together comic book publishers, creators and distributors to create and market existing and original content produced to maximize distribution and build a broader fan base from the traditional niche market for comics and graphic novels. In addition, forthcoming projects will be distributed across other new media formats outside of the MTV Networks’ brands.

If I’m reading the release correctly, and that’s a huge assumption on anyone’s part, Gain will be using their Bomb-XX technology to create animated videos of various comic book properties, similar to the recent Metal Gear Solid graphic novel for the PlayStation Portable I imagine. What these particular comic book properties are at this point is anyone’s guess. You can learn more about Gain and their Bomb-xx software at their Web site.

Thanks to your interest as well as others, viewing of those hilarious “I’m a Marvel… and I’m a DC” parodies made by Michael Agrusso is surging. Since I posted my interview with Michael, views for his first “I’m a Marvel” short have surged to almost 2 MILLION!

Just for your amusement, Michael is back with two more shorts, about dead superhero parents and a very ticked-off Wolverine squaring off against a very neurotic Kal-El…

Evidently, some of you were curious enough to check out the very cool series of YouTube vids, “I’m a Marvel… and I’m a DC,” from It’sJustSome RandomGuy, using the framework of the popular “I’m a Mac… and I’m a PC” commercials to parody the depiction of superheroes in the movies, often at the expense of poor ol’ Superman.

Two things happened since I wrote about it Monday. For one, our It’sJustGuy has posted a sixth short film, a sequel to his previous installment guest-starring Batman, about Spidey drinking his way into oblivion via milk shakes after the largely scathing reviews of S3. For those of you who don’t get the joke, other people have: In just two days, folks have played the newest film nearly 100,000 times and the first one was watched almost 1.6 MILLION times!

For seconds, I had a chance to ask the talented man behind the videos and voices, Michael Agrusso, a writer and performer working and living in LA, a few questions yesterday. Hit the jump for the rest of the story…

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