As many of you no doubt have read, a federal appeals court has refused to grant the petition for rehearing in the Dwight Whorley case. Whorley had been convicted of possessing child porn, receiving obscene manga and sending obscene email.

The court ruled 10-1 against rehearing the case, but the focus of attention has been the lengthy dissent, in which Judge Roger Gregory urged Whorley to take the case to Supreme Court. Among other things, Gregory argues that Whorley’s conviction violated the First Amendment insofar as it punished speech pertaining to “imaginary children.”

Judge Gregory’s may have struck a chord in the comics & manga communities, but odds are that it will not make a similar impression on a majority of Supreme Court Justices, let alone appellate judges in his or any other federal circuit. The Court established years ago that fiction and drawings can be obscene. There is no split among the federal circuits regarding that issue, and the Supreme Court is not likely to view protecting pornographic depictions of children as a compelling reason to overturn decades of established obscenity jurisprudence.

Anti-censorship advocates, including Judge Gregory, have been wont to quote passages from the 2002 Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition decision regarding the unconstitutionality of banning virtual images, but these passages don’t prove what people think they do. In short, the quotes are being taken out of context–the Aschroft case dealt with a statute that banned virtual images regardless of whether they were obscene, a constitutional problem that current law arguably corrects.

There are equally substantive issues with Judge Gregory’s argument that obscenity communicated over the Internet should be regarded as personal, akin to private thoughts or matter read in one’s home, rather than connected to interstate commerce and thus a legitimate subject of federal law. This blog is not the place for an extensive analysis of Commerce Clause jurisprudence and the regulation of electronic communications, but suffice it to say that for Whorley to prevail on this point, the Supreme Court would essentially be nullifying precedent that provides the basis for much of Congress’s present legislative authority, let alone analogous principles that have enabled Congress to regulate obscenity sent by mail or through Customs.

Still, if people want to file appeals claiming that the Internet is intrinsically private or that images of fictional children cannot be obscene, that’s their right–it is, after all, a free country, at least in regard to the freedom to pay lawyers to make quixotic arguments.

Dear Internet,

I bought not one, but TWO superhero books this week. That’s right, two. One from DC and one from Marvel, all balanced-like. Streets of Gotham (which I really bought for the Manhunter backup) and the Gambit Origins book. I read ‘em, and I’m going to write about ‘em, but not right now. I’m too tired. Instead, I will give you linkage to pretty and interesting things. I promise to write about them soon, though.

In the meantime!

At Comics Worth Reading, the welcome news that Thom Zahler is giving away free comics to the first 75 women who visit his booth at Heroes Con this weekend.

Also there, Ed Sizemore reviews things he picked up at MoCCA, and they’re mostly books I didn’t already talk about. (I do think he’s crazy to not have liked The Unwritten, but I realize not everyone gets as geeked for metafiction as I do.)

Via The Hathor Legacy, a rant about “Strong Female Characters” that I can totally get behind. I also find this wording problematic because it implies that female characters are normally not strong, so strong must be pointed out when it does occur. But read her post. It’s better than what I said.

Shakesville has a good rundown of the sexism in the geek world lately. Seriously, people? It’s really not that hard to figure out that girls like all the same kinds of things that guys do.

This is just kind of a short, sublime post by, well, Neil Gaiman, who does short and sublime rather well.

Lost alum Maggie Grace, whose character Shannon has long since taken the big dirt nap in the series, is headed to Hawaii soon to…well, nobody’s quite sure. The TV Guide article on the matter has so many people denying the notion of her making a return to the hit ABC show in so many ways, that really the notion can only be either absolutely true or complete fanboy speculation with no basis in reality. Which one, according to TV Guide, is totally up to the reader to decide.

My excitement for DC Direct’s output to kick off 2010 was tempered just a tad this week with the latest solicitations (Sept. 2009). Not to say that the product is bad, necessarily (I’m actually quite excited that DC Direct is doing a third series of “Women of the DC Universe” mini-busts), but it’s hard to muster up enthusiasm the months where they unveil what amounts to repainted action figures.

Take the Batman: Mad Love Collector Set. Now I don’t doubt for a moment that there’s an audience for this item, but it’s “been there, done that” for me since I got Joker and Harley Quinn the first time around.

It’s mostly the not-lacking-for-colons “JLA Classified: Classic: Series 2:” set of four figures that caught my attention for not all the right reasons. For one thing, the lineup of Aquaman, Superman Blue and Kyle Rayner certainly underscores the fact that DC Direct has confoundedly ignored an incredible opportunity to do a wave or two of Justice League figures based off Grant Morrison’s classic run on JLA. I was almost dumbstruck when I realized that, for all the Aquaman figures produced over the last 10 years, this is only the first time they covered his bearded/hooked design. Though, to be fair, this figure is anything but a simple repaint despite DC Direct using the Ed McGuinness template for the umpteenth time. I have plenty of the EM2-based figures in my own collection, but getting that Aquaman and Superman Blue (of which I have Mattel’s far superior version anyway) for the first time ever from DC Direct based off that distinctive style is sort of a letdown.

Though what’s downright puzzling is the inclusion of Batgirl Cassandra Cain. At what point has she EVER been in a Justice League story, much less illustrated by McGuinness? Why they went with her over — oh, I don’t know — Green Arrow Connor Hawke (still inexplicably untouched by DCD), Aztec, Zauriel, Prometheus or Tomorrow Woman, just for starters, I’ll never know. Going through Morrison & Co.’s seminal Justice League output, I would’ve gone through over a hundred heroes and villains before even considering a Batman character outside Bruce Wayne himself.

What say ye all collectors? Did DC Direct push the right buttons with this lineup (all of this actually dropping in February 2010, not next September), or do retailers have their latest batch or peg-warmers?

As a boutique publisher, AdHouse Books doesn’t put out a ton of comics each year, but what they may lack in quantity they certainly make up for in quality—I just read two of their recent releases, and they were among the best comics I’ve read so far this year.

The first was Fred Chao’s Johnny Hiro Vol. 1, a trade paperback collecting the first three issues of the serially published comic, plus two more stories that would have been published serially as comic books, if that were still feasible in today’s comics market (Plus a bunch of one-page gag strips).

I spoke at length about the considerable virtues of Chao’s Johnny Hiro in this space before, specifically on how Diamond’s changing minimum standards might affect a great comic like this that was being created specifically as a serial comic book, so I’ll try not to repeat myself.

If you’ve yet to heed my recommendation, Johnny Hiro is about a young man by that name and his girlfriend Mayumi Murakami, and their struggle to make it in New York City, while plagued by unusual problems, like a Godzilla-like monster, 47 Ronin Businessmen, a knife-wielding cooking staff, and a $50,000 lawsuit seeking damages for the hole in their apartment caused by the kaiju attack. These are on top of their normal people problems, mostly dealing with bills, money, work and, in Mayumi’s case, some discrimination at her place of employment.

Read the rest of this entry »

Coinciding with this weekend’s release of the prehistoric comedy movie Year One starring Jack Black and Michael Cera, Blog@ has dug through the mists of prehistory to pull out our top five cavemen of comics. From unsophisticated paleolithic predecessors to refined gentlemen, these are top five comic characters who crawled out of the caves to make an impact over the years.

B.C.: The titular character of cartoonist Johnny Hart’s famous newspaper strip B.C., he and his friends depicted in the long running strip are a group of cavemen and creatures living in a prehistoric world. Blending contemporary humor in a fantasy setting, B.C. is an eclectic mix of pre-historic elements such as cavemen and dinosaurs mixed with modern accoutrements like dictionaries and eyeglasses.

Anthro: Recently appearing as a “bookend” character in Final Crisis, Anthro debuted way back in 1968’s Showcase #74 as the first modern boy in the Stone Age. Born of Neanderthal parents, he goes on to be the originator of the modern human race. After his debut, Anthro had a short-lived solo series and later appeared in Crisis on Infinite Earths #2 and 2006’s Tales of the Unexpected. In Final Crisis, Anthro worked as the “first boy”, working hand-in-hand with the “last boy” Kamandi, and later appeared as an old man passing the proverbial torch to an recently-deceased-but-seemingly-alive Bruce Wayne.

Tor: Joe Kubert’s prehistoric protagonist  was a thinking man’s caveman, more than just a bash ‘em over the head club-wielder, putting him at odds with the other neanderthals of the time. Originated created as part of a failed newspaper strip, Tor leapt on the comic page in 1953 with a short-lived series. After several appearances over the resulting 50+ years, Kubert returned to the character in 2008 with a six-issue miniseries.

Vandal Savage: Although he may not look it, DC Comics’ Vandal Savage is arguably the world’s oldest villains. Born in 50,000 BC as the caveman Vandar Adg, a run-in with a radioactive meteorite gave him the gift of of immortality and intellect. Fast forward thousands of years  and he’s carved a swath of blood on the human race, claiming to rules in the guises of Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan and Vlad the Impaler amongst others. In a caveman high school yearbook, he’d be “Most Likely To Succeed”.

Moon-Boy: This Jack Kirby creation, with his ever-present partner Devil Dinosaur, is an oddity in the larger Marvel Universe. The descendant of an ape-like species called “Small-Folk”, he was initially dubbed as the “first human” but later retconned at different times to be a mutant or an alien. Currently he and Devil Dinosaur call the Savage Land home, and appeared in the out-of-continuity series Nextwave.

Cancellation sucks.

Young Liars, already one of the best reads on the racks, kinda outdid itself this month with #16. This month’s story is a stand-alone issue—really its first, given that complex and circuitous continuity of the title—and introduced a few new characters who, according to writer/artist David Lapham, may have made a much more substantive impact on the central cast of the title were it not for the comic’s upcoming and desperately untimely cancellation. The issue itself reminded me a bit of Transmetropolitan #8, regarded by many fans as the best individual issue of the series in spite of its arguably negligible impact on the long-term story of the title, as it revolved around fourth-tier character Mary the Revival. Young Liars #16 is similar, following the life of a redneck family from Freedom, Arizona, the town that would later become Browning. This issue reveals a little bit about Loreli’s past and leaves a lot open to interpretation, but is notable in the sense that—despite an inflated sense of importance and obvious social problems—Lapham told us last month that Ronald, the hayseed who narrates this issue, is actually telling the truth. Blog@Newsarama caught up with Lapham for a few quick questions about the issue.

Blog@Newsarama: First off–I think “population 897″ might be close to the same size as most of those Wal-Mart towns in Arkansas. I have friends who went to college out there.

David Lapham: Well, tell them to get ready for the $2.99 meal deal. Read the rest of this entry »

While this story may have to do with Pixar’s new film Up, they’re more like the Incredibles for doing this.

The Orange County Register has written a story about how the computer-animation giant isn’t above helping out on a person-to-person basis.

When 10-year-old Colby Curtin was on her deathbed, after fighting a rare form of vascular cancer, Pixar employees brought a DVD copy of Up, which she wanted to see before she died.

“When I watched it, I had really no idea about the content of the theme of the movie,” said Colby’s mother, Lisa Curtin. “I just know that word ‘Up’ and all of the balloons and I swear to you, for me it meant that (Colby) was going to go up. Up to heaven.”

Colby passed away only hours after seeing the film. But it’s good to know that with all that money, Pixar still hasn’t forgotten what has made it big: having a heart.

Zuda Comics, the online imprint of DC Comics, has posted the following tease about what looks like a new series, called Bottle of Awesome:

This tease, called “The Unattainable,” looks very… bald. There’s another teaser here.

While there’s very little information past the author, Transmission-X creator of “Raising Hell” Andy Belanger, we’ll keep you posted on any and all updates of this seemingly tongue-in-cheek series.

UPDATE: As soon as I sent this blog post, another, more retro tease came out. What is in that Bottle of Awesome?

Has this ever happened to you: You’re checking your email and find a somewhat cryptic message from an address like “dragonjedi264@aol.com”. It’s a two sentence message which states that the sender likes your art/writing, then propositions a collaboration on a project, which is “right up your alley”, on which he/she has done some preproduction. The message is punctuated only by a first name. Friends, in the age of the internet, the contact for collaboration has never been easier. However, just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it should be done without some careful thought or good sense. If you have received a message like the one described above, you know what I mean. If you have written such an email, take note and be encouraged! 1) GET AN ADDRESS THAT IS JUST YOUR NAME First thing you want to do when contacting a potential collaborator starts before you write word one of your email. It is important to get an email that is made of your name, initials, or some permutation there of. If your name is extremely common, then you can get creative, but most people shouldn’t have much problem. “kyle.latino” was already taken when I was signing up for gmail, so I had to go with “latino.kyle”. 2) GIVE MORE INFORMATION ABOUT YOURSELF What you want do really do with this email is establish some level of confidence that you are going to behave like a professional, even if this is just a webcomic project that will provide no money. Information should include: first and last name, age, state of residence, current occupation. There’s no need for any narrative, or message of hope about your project rescuing you from your job as a parking garage night guard. And if you are a high schooler, just say so, the only time age will certainly work against you is if you are dishonest about it. 3) INCLUDE SAMPLES OF YOUR WORK If you are a writer and want to get someone to draw a script for you, then include at least part of that script in an ATTACHMENT on the first email. If you are an artist trying to draw for someone in-particular (I don’t know how often this actually happens) then include LINKS to your sequential work, or online portfolio. Don’t make this person have to respond, “well, I’ll need to see a script first”. Just give him a little taste of your best work, and you’ve given it a good shot. 4) PROOF READ I know I’m the last person who should say anything about his, but just take a few minutes to read you email aloud to see if there are any mistakes. I am almost a criminally terrible reader/proofreader, but that doesn’t mean I don’t try. This first email is all about not looking like a moron, so be sure you’re not writing something that isn’t fit to be sent to Strong Bad. OH and don’t forget about the B:DC June Challenge Agree, disagree? Questions, comments? Love poems, hate limericks? Want me to change the logo… again? Email: latino.kyle (at) gmail (dot) com. -Kyle Latino

I had every intention of reviewing Jeffrey Brown’s latest memoir, Funny Misshapen Body (Simon & Schuster), today. I was planning on reviewing it right up until I got to the very end of the book, and in a post-epilogue, F.A.Q. like sequence he addressed my main difficulty with the book:

Like Brown’s “Girlfriend Trilogy” books, Funny Misshapen Body is structured out of sequence with time, with different sections jumping over and over, so that he’s telling cumulative anecdotes rather than a story, and those anecdotes become the story by the time it’s finished.

In the girlfriend books, these sequences are all very short, giving the books episodic natures. Here though, the sequences are entire chapters, and rather than simply covering the course of a young person’s relationship, the cover a major chunk of Brown’s life—decades really.

It doesn’t hurt the integrity of the story, but I wonder if that story might have been served better with a structure. In the panels posted above, Brown explains why he writes his comics like that, and it certainly makes a great deal of sense, but almost all of his comics are structured the same way—even his lighthearted superhero parody Bighead or his awesome Transformers parody book—which made me wonder if Brown was choosing to tell stories that way, or if its become a default.

So I thought I might talk about that a bit in the course of criticizing his book, but then I got to the end there, and come on…

…how can you criticize a guy with a face like that? He’s so sincere in his apology! It’s okay Jeffrey, I forgive you. Maybe it’s not you anyway; maybe it’s just me.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you like what you’ve read so far (c’mon, how can you not?) totally check out more super cute comics at:www.sosuperduper.com!

DC, via its blog the Source, has announced that the new ongoing creative team for Justice League of America will be writer James Robinson and artist Mark Bagley.

Robinson has some experience with the League under his belt through his miniseries Justice League: Cry for Justice, while Mark Bagley just spent the last 52 weeks drawing all the heroes past and present of the DCU for the weekly series Trinity.

“It’s a thrill to be given the reins of DC’s flagship team book and to know that my partner in crime(fighting) will be the esteemed Mark Bagley who’s dynamic storytelling skills I intend to make full use of,” Robinson told the Source. “It’s further exciting/gratifying for me that I can dove-tail the events of Cry For Justice into the main book where post-Blackest Night will emerge a new team and a new exciting direction as they get caught up in the next wave of events building throughout the DCU.”

Robinson, of course, replaced the departing Dwayne McDuffie, who reported in May that he was fired from the series.

From a production standpoint, I’d have to say that this is a pretty nice decision by DC, as Bagley especially is a lean, mean drawing machine. Based on the portrait of the now-indisposed Big Three on this cover, I guess we’ll find out what happens to Vixen and company in October, when the new team’s first issue comes out. What say you, Rama readers?

Yahoo! News has reported that Michael Bay is done with the Transformers franchise.

Here’s the quote that really stood out/surprised me/made me wonder if he’s ever seen any of his own movies: “I need to do something totally divergent, something without any explosions.” The dateline for this article is June 18, so this is not an April Fool’s gag.

He added that if the Transformers franchise goes to a third film, they’ll have to find another director.

“It’s easy to go shoot an art movie in a winery in the South of France,” Bay said. “But people have no idea how hard it is to create something like Transformers. They (the critics) review me before they’ve even seen the movie.”

Despite big news events like Steve Rogers’ return and Wednesday Comics’ jump to USA Today, it’s still been a gloomy week for comics, due to the passing of creator Dave Simons.

But the Hero Initiative, in their upcoming publication Hero Comics, has collected one of Dave’s last scripts for their book, which will appear as a tribute page in the July book.

While Simons had yet to start drawing the page, the script is completed, and is available for you to read right here. It is very much a sort of mission statement of the Hero Initiative, which helps creators in need.

It looks like a Wanted lady has some very good things to say about First Second.

Angelina Jolie, who has starred in roles varying from the Fox in Wanted to mother Christine Collins in the J. Michael Straczynski-penned film Changling, has given a rousing endorsement of First Second’s book, the Photographer, which follows the crew from Doctors Without Borders in the heart of war-torn Afghanistan.

“An unflinching and gripping photographic memoir, The Photographer takes you on a breathtaking journey through the best and worst humanity has to offer in times of war,” she said. “Turning its pages, the reader begins to understand what it means to lose everything as a refugee of war, to cross mountains to help someone you never met, to feel the intense responsibility of being the only one able to capture the last moments of a child’s stolen life. Suddenly Afghanistan, a distant land, a foreign culture, a courageous and resilient people seem closer, more familiar—more human. I love this book.”

A pretty cool coup for First Second, considering it comes from Forbes’ #1 most powerful celebrity. You can learn more about the book here.

Warner Home Video sat down with Bruce Timm to discuss Green Lantern: First Flight, a new full-length animated feature that is scheduled for release on July 28.

QUESTION: There was no downtime for you and director Lauren Montgomery between Wonder Woman and Green Lantern: First Flight. How did you two make that quick transition, and what kept it fresh for you?

BRUCE TIMM: Lauren did such a great job on Wonder Woman, she was immediately my first choice for Green Lantern.  I thought she might be a little burned out after the massive Wonder Woman project, but to my immense relief and gratefulness, she was eager to do it.

All that said, Lauren definitely needed to take a little bit of a break in terms of character design and I wasn’t about to step up to that role, either.  The tricky thing about Green Lantern is that we wanted to have a unique style sensibility.  We’ve done quite a bit with the Green Lantern and characters on the Justice League, including the entire Green Lantern Corps, and we certainly didn’t want to go back and reuse any of those designs. Another really talented young artist named Jose Lopez, who had worked with Mike Goguen and Jeff Matsuda on the recent The Batman series, was brought to our attention. I looked at his portfolio and I thought, “Wow, this guy is really cool.”

Jose has a completely different design sensibility than I’m accustomed to working with.  He’s a little bit anime-flavored, but not specifically anime.  We brought him in to do some designs on Green Lantern, and he ended up being pretty much our entire character design department.  He designed not just Green Lantern and most of the major characters but zillions of background aliens. Jose brought a really unique visual sensibility to the movie.

Read the rest of this entry »

Our own Rev OJ Flow has shown off his awesome superhero tattoos here a few times. He’s opted for several characters with relatively small representations. Well, one fan had a slightly different idea:

Yup, that’s an actual chest with an actual tattoo of the tattered Spidey costume, complete with battle damage, as posted at GeekStir. According to the recipient of said tattoo, it took over 9000 minutes, or 150 hours to complete. That is one dedicated Spider-fan.

Since I didn’t have a lot of money at MoCCA, I picked up a lot of cards and free things that people were giving out. To make up for not being able to buy things from all these people, I’m sharing them with you. They certainly deserve your attention.

Carissa Halston was kind of fabulous, and kind of fascinating, and she writes plays, books, and graphic novels.

Sara Antoinette Martin draws the kind of stuff I want tattooed on me: skulls and graphic girls and puppies. Her prints are only $35! Buy me one. (Or if you must, buy yourself one.)

Evan Palmer is from Lafayette, Louisiana. I love Louisiana. He is also doing some work with Peter Gross, which is how my favoritest comic artist ever, Ryan Kelly, got his start, so you know you’re going to hear great things from this guy.

Sho Murase’s art is completely, insanely gorgeous. I really wanted one of her mini art books, but I’m just too broke.

I got a couple of preview minicomics of a book called Squirrel Machine, due out from Fantagraphics in the fall. Seriously, how do you refuse something called Squirrel Machine? It looks macabre and fascinating, sort of like a Nick Cave song set to pictures.

Bagger43 was the name on the back of this postcard with a couple of girls and a dog on the front, looking like postapocalyptic street angels ready for a brawl. Not much of a bio on the site, but the art is stellar.

Uncle Envelope is a cool art project that will send you an piece of paper art once a month for twelve months. A bunch of different artists are involved, and they gave out a little activity book at MoCCA to tease people. I like art, I love media supported by subscription…it’s a win-win.

Finally, Becky Cloonan and Hwan Cho should need no introduction to readers of this blog, but even if you don’t know who they are, you should go forth and read about their upcoming webcomic, KGB.

TV Guide.com is reporting that Brian Austin Green, last seen on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, has joined the cast of Smallville for at least two episodes of Season 9. He’ll be playing John Corben and his villianous cyborg with a heart of Kryptonite alter ego, Metallo.

Fans of Green or his Green-hearted character don’t have to wait too long to see him; he’ll be showing up in the first two episodes of the Season, starting September 25 (that’s a Friday, don’t forget). So, does he fit the role of Metallo to you, dear readers? Does this make you any more (or less) excited for the new Season?