Fans of stylized Frank Miller films will be disappointed to know that another of the author’s anticipated sequels, “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For,” has now been pushed back, this time to Aug. 22, 2014. The “Sin City” follow-up was previously slated for release this October.

No reason has been given for the ten month delay, but this doesn’t seem promising at all.

Killing Zod was a big thing and Chris Nolan, originally, said there’s no way you can do this. That was a change–originally Zod got sucked into the Phantom Zone along with the others and I just felt it was unsatisfying and so did Zack. We started questioning–we talked to some of the people at DC Comics and said, ‘Do you think there is ever a way that Superman would kill someone?’ And at first they said ‘No way, no way,’ and we said, ‘but what if he didn’t have a choice?’

But for those who feel that this scene takes away the idea that Superman doesn’t kill – Well, not exactly. Director Zack Snyder explained:

And the why of it was, for me, that if it’s truly an origin story, his aversion to killing is unexplained. It’s just in his DNA. I felt like we needed him to do something, just like him putting on the glasses or going to the Daily Planet or any of the other things that you’re sort of seeing for the first time that you realize will then become his thing. I felt like, if we can find a way of making it impossible for him–like Kobayashi Maru, totally no way out–I felt like that could also make you go, ‘Okay, this is the why of him not killing ever again, right?’ He’s basically obliterated his entire people and his culture and he is responsible for it and he’s just like, ‘How could I kill ever again?’

In other words, this Superman will never kill again, because he’s already killed too much. It’s a significant change from traditional canon, but I have to admit, I kind of like it a lot.

(Via.)

(Looking at the collection of books in the sale, Hawkeye does that, I think.)

The second issue of a series – Like the second storyarc of a series, for that matter, it’s always the follow-ups – is where the reader gets to see whether or not a comic has more up its sleeve than just the initial moment of “Awww, yeah.” In so many respects, it’s the hardest of the initial issues to get right, and yet the one we think of the least, it seems.

We are looking at summer 2014. It will pick up on the status quo that was established at the end of the last “Queen and Country” novel called “The Last Run.” This will be Oni Press. Queen and Country will be back in comic form.

Goodness gracious, but I’m looking forward to some new Queen and Country. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, this would be a good place to learn. (We haven’t seen a new issue since 2007!)

We complain often that the stories in comics are hampered by Superman’s status as an ‘icon.’ Meaning that the corporate overlords can’t afford to allow creators to innovate, but I, for one, hadn’t realized just how ubiquitous the use of the ‘S’ had become to peddle literally everything under our brazen yellow sun. Call it selective naiveté, but I thought there might be at least a shred of respect left at the corporate level for a hero whose corpus of work I so admire. I feel like we’re all holding our collective breath that the new movie might, just might, qualify as art, while ignoring just how far Superman has been reduced in nearly every other sphere of our world, and that kind of sucks. I want the new movie to be great, but I also really don’t want Superman trying to sell me pizza. If he’s supposed to be an ideal to strive for, he should be doing better.

That’s from Ryan Haupt’s piece on Superman as Corporate Icon over at iFanboy, which prompted a question. Given the amount of product placement deals in other superhero movies that go relatively uncommented-upon, is it that Man of Steel has so many more merchandising deals than other movies, or do we hold Superman to a different standard as readers and fans than we do other characters – And if so, why? Does his fictional appeal as a pure, inspiring figure to his fellow heroes and adoring public translate to the real world, and again, if it does, why does it work for Superman in a way that it doesn’t for, say, Captain America?

There will definitely be a lot of things in flux after “X-Men: Battle of the Atom,” 4thsummer. Lots of character shifts. And the current cast of “X-Factor” is no exception.

Lots of character shifts as a result of Battle of the Atom? That’s good. It’s only been seven months since the launch of All-New X-Men, after all. Wouldn’t want to think that we’d have more than a year of relative stability in the mutant side of the Marvel Universe.

I’m only being slightly sarcastic; I feel as the Uncanny X-Men of my youth – That’d be the Chris Claremont/John Romita Jr. issues, for those curious – was also in flux in many ways, with the very concept of “team” seeming to have been entirely abandoned at times in favor of some idea of the main characters in the book as a family that the book would follow wherever they went.

The difference between today’s flux and yesterday’s, however, is that it’s far easier for a creator to lose control of a character when they’re going through changes. In days of yore, X-characters “belonged” to either Chris Claremont or, perhaps, Louise Simonson. These days, they’re really the property of the X-Office, and that’s a much dicier concept to have to deal with for fans of a particular character.

With so many different X-Men books out there – All-New, Uncanny, Wolverine and, Astonishing and the adjectiveless Marjorie Liu-written title, not to mention Legacy and the titles that don’t include the actual words “X-Men” in the title – characters are already being shared between books, so the idea of having such freedom to (a) do whatever the creator wants with a character and (b) being able to follow them wherever they go, without fear of losing them to another part of the mammoth franchise feels almost impossible.

I’m not even necessarily arguing that this is a bad thing. What if the writer of Uncanny X-Men, say, wants to write a character who’s belonged to Astonishing for years? Uncanny is a far more successful series, with more potential for raising the profile for that character – Is it really that bad a choice for the editors to take the character from one book to another, if it means that more people will find out about the character?

That’s why the concept of “flux” in today’s X-Books makes me uneasy. On the one hand, it’s definitely staying true to the X-Men narrative DNA as established by Claremont – Hell, as established by Stan Lee and Roy Thomas, if you think about the changes the book went through way back when – but on the other, such changes feel somewhat different when played out on a large scale as exists today.

The alternative, of course, is stagnant stories, which no-one really wants. Whither the old thing about “not change, but the illusion of change”…?

More than the obvious voices saying this is a sign that female characters don’t sell, this is really more of a branding issue than anything else. Journey Into Mystery, for whatever reason, wasn’t relaunched for Immonen’s run, thus losing most of the power of the Marvel Now branding. A series of Marvel titles have been cancelled over the past month, including Gambit, Red She-Hulk, and X-Factor – leaving many to wonder if this will lead us to a ‘second wave’ of titles being announced shortly.

What you’ll notice there is that all the books which are ending – and X-Factor is debatable here – are light-hearted series, heavy on humor and character but light on ‘importance’ and disconnected from other books. Marvel have been relying rather heavily on their three major franchises recently (Avengers, X-Men, and Steve Wacker) above all else, and only one of those three franchises seems able to sell a comic which isn’t dark and important.

You could argue that Wolverine and The X-Men isn’t “dark,” as such – It has moments of darkness, sure, but one of the reasons that the book appeals to me is that it also has a lot of humor and lightness to it; overall, I’d argue that it’s the lightest X-Book in the franchise for years – but Morris is correct that the truly successful Marvel books tend to come from one of the three “franchises” named (And calling the editorial office of Steve Wacker a franchise strikes me as a particularly canny choice on Morris’ part), and appear to need to be “important” to the larger continuity in order to sell. Are we reaching the point where, for whatever reason, the market can’t support a B- or C-level title even at the biggest publisher in the business?

First up, the Clique:

It’s possible that you’d recognize the cover version of this more than the original, from R.E.M.’s Life’s Rich Pageant album:

And then there’s Jim Croce, with a song that isn’t really about Superman at all, but does contain maybe the most famous lesson about Superman in pop music history:

Of course, considering it’s Superman, tugging on his cape is hardly going to have the most dramatic consequences, but, hey. It’s Jim who’s telling me that, and I’m not going to mess around with Jim. That’s exactly the point he’s trying to make.

That’s not hyperbole, by the way. You can easily argue that the presence of Superman has made the world a better place. Superman spawns other superheroes, bringing in a new heroic myth. Children of all sort pick up on it and use it as a behavioral template. Something to aspire to. Those kids grow up and they’ve imprinted on Superman, as well as other superheroes along the way. The idea of doing good, putting justice first, and fighting for hope end up rooted far firmer in the minds of people while they make their choices throughout their own lives.

It’s really good stuff. Go, read; it starts here.

The amount of discussion over whether or not Man of Steel “gets” Superman or not feels… unusual for a superhero movie. I feel that it was somehow either assumed that earlier movies, like Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger or Green Lantern “got” the characters or else deemed unimportant, because the level of such commentary for those films was so far below what I’ve seen. What it likely is, though, is that the audience didn’t go into the movie theater with such a fully-formed idea of who each of those heroes was. Superman, after all, has a special place in most people’s hearts whether they like it – or even know it – or not.

You wouldn’t necessarily know this from the sales positions of the Superman comics – Or, necessarily, the books themselves (Action, I know you’re in flux creatively right now, but still) – but there’s a lot of goodwill and love out there for the character from people who aren’t regular (or even irregular) comic readers. If Man of Steel is a hit, the question may become “Is there a way for DC to take advantage of that, despite historical evidence that shows little crossover between movie success and increased comic sales?” After all, even though Avengers didn’t do anything for Marvel’s sales in bookstores, look at the bookstore success of Walking Dead. There’s some potential there, surely…?

First up, Sufjan Stevens.

And just for some comparison, Owl City:

Two songs that wouldn’t really go side by side on anyone’s mixtape, but have the common thread of Metropolis to pull them… somewhat closer together? The Stevens track is from Illinoise, his tribute to that fair state (which, of course, produced the men who created the Man of Steel, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster), while the Owl City track comes from a band who did a song with the woman who sang “Call Me Maybe.” I think that’s all you really need to know about them.

That’s right; he’s doing a variant cover for Archie, and it looks that good.

[Via.]

In essence, the Friedrich appellate court ruling is a mirror world version of the Siegel appellate ruling. Siegel lost on the renewal issue; Friedrich won. Siegel won on the work-for-hire issue, with the court noting why he and Shuster most likely held the original copyright; the Friedrich court sent the case back down with reasons why Friedrich is likely to lose.

From the perspective of copyright history, it’s a revealing outcome. Precedent under the copyright law before the 1976 Act had effectively made the renewal right useless for anyone who had transferred a copyright. It’s a line of legal interpretation that more recent courts and commentators have recognized as having been in the tank for corporate interests to the point of being unjust — indeed, this was a factor in the 1976 copyright reform, which gave subsequent creators a set procedure for re-claiming copyright through termination after 35 years.

Unusually for the Internet, the comments section is worth reading, as he also goes into more detail about other legal issues surrounding the case. As I said yesterday, the resolution of this case is likely to be very important and go far beyond just Marvel and Ghost Rider…

A Sons of Anarchy comic? I doubt even the most ardent fan of the FX show would’ve seen that coming. We’ll doubtlessly find out more when Boom!’s next round of solicitations are launched, but right now, this seems like a pretty great get for the publisher.

(Interestingly enough, if there is a comic and it launches in September, that’s the same month that the show returns to FX for its sixth – and, according to rumor, penultimate – season. Good timing, whoever worked that one out.)

First up, the Spin Doctors. Remember the Spin Doctors?

If ever there was a band that was trying to single-handedly revive the genre of music known as “Superman,” it was the Spin Doctors. Not only did they have a song called “Jimmy Olsen’s Blues,” but their debut album was called Pocket Full of Kryptonite. Do either of these things mean we should forgive them for the terrible, terrible earworm known as “Two Princes”? Of course not.

And talking of earworms, there’s also the Crash Test Dummies.

This song is best described by whoever wrote its Wikipedia entry as “a slow funeral dirge.” I was never a fan of the CTD – Sorry, Canadian mumbling fans, the world over – and the fact that this song was apparently a single…? Jeepers, that was optimistic on their part.

In the 70s, when comics were sold on newsstands. even a title like “Werewolf by Night” sold about 50,000 copies a month. And in the 80s heyday of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, bizarro black and white comics sold the same amount…heck even artsy books from Fantagraphics sold 30-40,000 copies. So yeah, there was a sales surge that was undone by the distro wars of the 90s Chromium Age, and these events of 20-30 years ago are still recent enough that many a grandpappy will recount them to a young’un around the fire.

Well guess what, 20 years ago we made phone calls from our landlines to invite people over to play bridge and used a paper map to figure out how to get to grandpappy’s house. We stopped by Blockbuster to see what was new on VHS and went to HMV every Tuesday to pick up new CDs.

You can’t use the same metrics. I still hear people saying “If only we could get back in 7-11s and grocery stores we could save comics!” when people don’t even buy FOOD at grocery stores any more. Several publishers have flirted with getting comics back in 7-11s in recent years and nothing happened. Instead we have the internet, the grandpappy of all newsstands.

The whole thing is worth a read. Go see.

When Friedrich signed the Agreement, he was doing other freelance work for Marvel and he believed the Agreement would only cover future work because that was what Cadence told him at the time. He was not paid anything separately for signing the Agreement. Moreover, Spotlight 5 had been published six years earlier by a different corporate entity (Magazine Mgmt.) and had grown so popular that Marvel had already reprinted it once and had launched a separate Ghost Rider comic book series. Given that context, it is doubtful the parties intended to convey rights in the valuable Ghost Rider copyright without explicitly referencing it. It is more likely that the Agreement only covered ongoing or future work. Hence, there is a genuine dispute regarding the parties’ intent for this form contract to cover Ghost Rider.

Let’s start with Laurie Anderson, shall we?

“O Superman” – Full title “O Superman (For Massenet)” – scared the bejeezus out of me as a kid. Oddly enough, this spoken word art piece made it to #2 in the Top 40 in the U.K. back in 1981, and I remember being all excited when I saw that my older sister had bought a single named after one of my favorite superheroes, only to be hideously disappointed and more than a little confused upon actually listening to it. Hearing it again now, it’s kind of ridiculous (The “Hi, I’m not home right now” bit is hilarious), but this is what passed as cutting edge art back in the day.

Meanwhile, on the more melodic side of things, there’s always the Flaming Lips:

Only joking! As those who adore the Lips know, there’s no necessary guarantee that they’ll be focused on the melody of things when something else is shiny to distract them. “Waitin’ For A Superman (Is It Getting Heavy?)” is from their 1999 album The Soft Bulletin, and one of their biggest hits in a lengthy career that otherwise was lived on the fringes of pop culture. Clearly, one of Superman’s lesser-known powers is the ability to help bands find an audience, even temporarily. Take the hint, obscure bands that want to sell out!

The first universe-wide event of The New 52 begins as FOREVER EVIL launches! The Justice League is DEAD! And the villains shall INHERIT the Earth! An epic tale of the world’s greatest super-villains starts here!

If the concept behind the “first universe-wide event of The New 52″ sounds a little familiar… Well, that’s because it is. The idea of villains inheriting the Earth was central to 2008′s Final Crisis – a series that, remember, was teased with a tagline that started “Heroes Die” – while the idea of a series that focuses on DC’s super villains as a mass group is a stunt that’s been tried in 2005′s Villains United series and 2007′s Salvation Run series (The Secret Society itself has been a fairly ever-present concept in the DCU ever since 2004 or so, as the run-up to Infinite Crisis started getting going; they’ve also appeared in Justice League of America, both the 2006 and 2013 incarnations of the book).

Villains’ Month in general is an amping-up of the 1999 New Year’s Evil and 2009 Faces of Evil stunts, but even off-stunt, we’ve seen more solo focus on the bad guys (or, perhaps, “bad guys,” if you want to include series like Catwoman, Suicide Squad and Secret Six): The Joker has enjoyed a solo graphic novel, Lex Luthor a mini that got reworked into a hardcover quasi-GN, Black Adam got a mini, Deathstroke a New 52 ongoing for a short while, and so on.

Seeing these concepts cycle back again and again is something that makes sense on the one hand – Some of these characters are as iconic as the heroes of the DCU, so why not try and use that fame/infamy? – and is oddly exhausting on the other, because it makes the “never-ending battle” part of Superman’s appeal too literal: The bad guys never go away for any appreciable length of time, and keep doing the same thing over and over again, which just makes them less interesting through over exposure and familiarity breeding contempt.

Don’t get me wrong, I want to be more excited than I am about Forever Evil; it’s just that I wish that the first big event book of the New 52 felt a little bit more new, you know?

That’s even worse than Matt Fraction’s short-lived Defenders book from 2011 was faring by its fourth issue – ICv2 has that issue at an estimated 29,789 orders in the U.S. – despite the fact that May was a relatively strong month for sales. Fearless isn’t a bad book, and it’s got a specific hook, good creators and features fan favorite characters, so… what is going on here? Why are retailers – and, one would assume, fans – staying away from this book the way that they stayed away from Fraction’s? Is it really that the Defenders name turns people off?

Clearly, it’s time for Marvel to consider a name change and relaunch to see if it impacts sales positively. The brand may be over-extended enough as it is, but am I the only one curious to see if Lady Avengers would help sales on this book, if they dared to do it?

Being part of DC Entertainment, and by extension, Time Warner Inc., the opportunities for expanding beyond the printed page are legion, a notion not lost on Bond and others.

“We want to kick down the barriers between what comic books can be and what popular culture is,” she said. “I think, now more than ever, we’ve got that opportunity to work in different mediums.”

According to the piece, Bond’s Vertigo not only “won’t play it safe,” but it’ll also “go to the edge” and “push the boundaries” of what comics – and Vertigo as a brand – can be. But those aren’t the only cliches that appear in the piece. “Now is the greatest time for us to actually broaden the scope, and I think what you’ll see is that we’re not only going to defy the standards and confines of traditional genre fiction,” Bond is quoted as saying. “I think we’re going to redefine the industry standards because we’re going to really go deep and dark into areas of psychological horror, dark fantasy, action adventure and even next-wave science fiction and mythic fiction.”

I really like Vertigo as a brand, and I like a lot of what Bond has done as an editor. I’ll admit, however, that I feel a little bit more nervous about the future of the imprint after reading that piece, if only because it felt as if Bond was trying too hard to convince us that the future was bright – Hey, there’s a familiar phrase that she didn’t use – using broad cliches and marketing speak, instead of seeming genuine or giving specific examples of the work that was going to be so innovative and new (Fun, sad, fact: Of the six current projects mentioned in the piece, only one wasn’t a sequel to, or continuation of, famous earlier work that first appeared more than a decade ago).

First up, Jimmy Cross’ “Super Duper Man”:

I know, you’re thinking “Jimmy Cross? Why would he appeal to the Power Pop faithful?” The answer is, he probably wouldn’t, but this track – a B-Side from 1965 – was co-written by and performed with one Harry Nilsson, who’d go on to greater heights and more success in the 1970s…

Secondly, Donovan’s classic, “Sunshine Superman”:

Bonus points for Mr. Leitch for the Green Lantern reference in there, as well. Clearly, a man ahead of his time…!

Karen Gillan will have to be in good shape for her role as a gold bikini-clad alien villain in the Marvel comics superhero film Guardians of the Galaxy. The former Doctor Who star will play Angela, a flame-haired, sword-wielding bounty hunter. The 25-year old Scot – the Time Lord’s companion Amy Pond – begins filming in London later this summer.

You know, I always thought that Angela looked ridiculous, but the prospect of seeing that costume on a real-life person in a movie just really underscores how ridiculous the character’s look is. If the rumor does turn out to be true, it makes me wonder what the ownership of Angela actually is these days. Surely Marvel Studios wouldn’t use a character they had to license from someone else, right…? Age of Ultron #10 is out soon enough, guess we should just check the copyright indica in there…

Is something going to happen to FF, or is half the cast going to be pulling double-duty and appearing in multiple books per month?

(To add more value to this: Al Ewing’s Tumblr is likely to be as valuable to Mighty fans as Kieron Gillen’s Tumblr is to Young fans. Which is to say, you should probably go ahead and add both to your regular reading lists if you haven’t already, Marvel Avengers readers.)

But why do they have to be Avengers? By this point, I think I might have heard the name so much and on so many books that the word Avengers has lost some of its meaning. For those with pull lists and long reading lists, it might be difficult to keep track of what story came from where when all your books are called “Avengers” something or other. Were there no other names available? I know the Champions are probably still under legal restraint; years back when Matt Fraction was tapped to bring back that brand, Marvel had learned the name had been usurped by someone else. His book was then re-titled The Order, and it’s a great read if you get the chance, but I can see why this new team doesn’t fit the Order’s moniker. Could we use the Defenders? I know there’s a Fearless option on the stands, but maybe two Defenders titles might not be as awkward as six Avengers books. Perhaps, and I know this is crazy, but maybe we could … make up a new name? Perish the less-marketable thought.

Firstly: Six Avengers books? If only that were the case. Instead, Mighty will be the ninth Avengers title, if you don’t count A+X as an Avengers book (The others are Avengers, New Avengers, Avengers Assemble, Avengers AI, Avengers Arena, Young Avengers, Uncanny Avengers and Secret Avengers; I know you were wondering).

Secondly: I always thought Bendis’ second New Avengers series was, to all intents and purposes, a Defenders title. It had the “non-team” feel, the revolving membership and the casual, almost meta-textual unpicking of super-team traditions and cliches going for it, in that respect, as well as Doctor Strange being around. It was, to be honest, one of my favorite things about the title. But Defenders has proven to be a tarnished brand for Marvel in recent years – Consider the swift death of Matt Fraction’s recent title of the name, a fate that worryingly may also befall Fearless Defenders given its current orders closing in on the dangerous 20,000 level in the most recent Diamond rankings, and it’s easy to see the business thinking in preferring the far-more successful Avengers branding instead.

What’s surprising to me isn’t that Marvel is choosing to exploit the successful brand, because – Well, why not? – but that the Avengers brand still seems to have the sales juice that it does despite being exploited quite so dramatically. Even given the success of the movie last year, it’s nonetheless surprising that having the word “Avengers” in a title can up sales at all given the use its had in recent years. After all, as recently as ten years ago, there was no Avengers franchise, just one title that was outsold by Venom and Incredible Hulk as well as the X-Men family, and yet now we’re at nine individual titles, which translates as at least ten issues a month (Avengers being twice-monthly, after all).

Avengers as a concept has become meaningless, now, beyond “superhero team,” but how long before we reach a point where it becomes meaningless as a sales booster, as well…?

(All of this comes as no slight on the quality of the books, by the way; Young Avengers is one of the best superhero titles on the market these days, if you ask me, and the presence of Al Ewing on Mighty Avengers suggests to me that it’ll be something I’ll enjoy very much indeed…)

The five additional slots cleared by The Walking Dead did not go to Marvel and DC, which together dominate the comic store market.  As was the case last month, DC placed only three titles in the Top 20 (this month none above #15), and Marvel one (Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye at #16, down one from #15).  DK Publishing did place two older licensed titles, its Marvel Avengers: The Ultimate Character Guide and DC Comics: The Ultimate Character Guide, we suspect behind promotional activity (given their age).

Still, with Iron Man 3 in theaters, Man of Steel on the way, weaker competition, and roughly a 2/3 share in comic stores, it’s surprising how few books the Big Two manage to place among the bestsellers in the book market.

I’m curious to see how well Superman books perform around the release of Man of Steel next week, if only because DC tends to perform better in bookstores than Marvel. But Man of Steel, like Iron Man 3, feels like it suffers from not having one core tie-in title to immediately point to for moviegoers wanting more. All Star Superman, perhaps? Superman: Last Son?

So… Where will she show up? We’ve seen that she’s not one of the core cast in whatever Mighty is, so maybe another Infinity spin-off…?

(EDITED TO ADD: Okay, so she is one of the core Mighty Avengers cast, just not one of the teased members…!)

Now that the new Power Man has been named as a member, I find myself fighting the assumption that Fred Van Lente should be writing, because he’s the co-creator of the character and the writer who’s guided that character in his few appearances so far. It’s odd; I don’t find myself similarly propriety over Blue Marvel, She-Hulk, White Tiger or Superior Spider-Man, for whatever reason, but both Cage and Power Man feel particularly connected to particular creators in a way that’s unusual amongst Big Two characters these days.

Such a connection between creator and character may seem indulgent and unnecessary – even unwieldy, in an interconnected universe – but I think it’s a good thing, in many senses. It demonstrates the importance and value of characters that have such distinct personalities that they seem to “belong” to particular creators, and also the value of the creators responsible, too. That neither Bendis nor Van Lente may end up writing whatever Mighty is teasing may seem like a disappointment at first, but overall, it points to a good thing within a system that can sometimes seem to de-emphasize the importance of the people writing and drawing the stories.

I created a graphic novel I was very proud of and couldn’t find a publisher. I created another graphic novel that I liked even more. I couldn’t find a publisher for that. I was starting a third and began feeling overwhelmed by the pointlessness of it. Was I just going to keep piling up unpublished graphic novels? In the past, whatever career frustrations I might’ve had, they didn’t keep me from remaining productive and creative, but I’d reached a point where the inability to get my work in print was interfering with my ability to make new work. I thought about Kickstarting/self-publishing but imagining the enormity of the endeavor made me feel really tired. Career frustrations were easier to cope with in my 20′s. There was always time ahead. Now that I’m well into my 30′s it feels like I’m further away than ever at making this work. I was thinking about all the other things I could’ve done with my life and how I’d squandered that time doing comics and now it’s too late to try something else… When your involvement in comics gets in the way of your enjoyment of comics, it’s debilitating. I’d poisoned the thing I love. Every comic I read reminded me of all my own personal failures.

Like many others, I assume, I initially dismissed Scioli as a Kirby wannabe. That was entirely unfair; there’s a lot more to him than that, as his post-Godland work shows at almost every turn (Go check out Satan’s Soldier and Mystery Object for proof). It’s sad that he’s having such trouble getting his work seen, but I can’t help but feel that the thoughtfulness that he puts into his work comes from the same place as the sensitivity he feels about it not being received as well as it should be, if that makes sense. The moral of this story? We should all appreciate Scioli more, if nothing else.

Forever Evil is a huge event. In September the publisher will have 52 issues that will have villain on the cover. It will also have a seven issue mini series, Forever Evil, written by Geoff Johns and drawn by David Finch.

That’s a lot of writers and artists.

Just for the 52 issues appearing in September the number of credits is mind-boggling. I counted more than 150 credits and that includes the 20 artists that will be participating in Justice League #23.3: Dial E.

With only six of the artists announced for that issue, here’s the total on female creators.

Total female creators credits for Forever Evil announced to date:

4

All four credits are for writing, and actually only include three writers (Gail Simone is writing two books). There are no female artists involved in the event at all, seemingly, which is… actually genuinely surprising, considering that Amanda Conner has been getting a push from the publisher recently if nothing else.

On the plus side, there’s the fact that we’ve learned over the last couple of years that the creators solicited for a DC book doesn’t necessarily mean that those same creators will actually be creating said DC book, so more female creators may actually be involved with the books themselves comes September, but… yeah.