Find out more about Global Freezing here on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays or at ComicsByEgg.com.

“The fact that he’s wearing a shirt at all, and not wearing wings and a hawk mask, makes this a pretty good disguise”: Rachelle Goguen, the Internet’s number one rater of super-hunks, reviews the street clothes the Justice Leaguers are wearing in a panel from JLoA #89, which she calls “one of the most insane and self-indulgent comics ever written.” Ooh, that one should be in the next Showcase Presents collection. Get collecting, DC!

“Who is this movie for? And why this particular story?”: This review of the Superman/Batman: Public Enemies DC does a good job of encapsulating what has been one of the major problems I’ve had with each of the projects I’ve seen so far, that of address. They seem short and simplified as if for children, but usually throw in enough “grown-up” stuff to seem inappropriate for kids. He closes the review out by rating it in probably the most appropriate way possible, as either less than or greater than other DC direct-to-DVD movies. All of them I’ve seen—just the first three or four so far—have been poor in the exact same ways (far too short, bizarrely addressed to the narrowest imaginable audience), so that system seems to work out well.

“The superhero mode has so dominated — you almost want to say “deformed” — comic books for so long that few folks younger than 50 can remember the wonderfully diverse subject matter of the comic’s early days”: Here’s Milo Miles on the Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly edited The TOON Treasury of Classic Children’s Comics for NPR.

“‘Comic’ retells Honduran coup and Manuel Zelaya arrest”: In other news, The Guardian still using quotation marks to indicate that not all comics are actually comical.

“New graphic novel is ‘all dolled up’ to go somewhere”: Abby Denson’s Dolltopia should prove popular with headline writers. The puns practically write themselves!

“One fun thing about being an editorial cartoonist is that I sometimes get invited to strange places as a cartoon celebrity”: Daryl Cagle on his week in Algeria.

“Asterix at 50″: Time magazine looks at the career of the most famous Gaul in comics.

Library employees fired for violating library policy proceed to alert the media: Apparently, two employees of the Jessamine County Public Library in Nicholasville, Kentucky were fired last month because they refused to allow an 11-year-old to check out what a local TV news station calls “a book from The League of Extraordinary Gentleman series,” which one of the employees, Sharon Cook, referred to as “pornography.” As is usually the case at public libraries, the policy states that it’s up to parents to deem what is and what isn’t appropriate for their children. I know there’s some pretty weird sex in each of the volumes, and if I was a parent I might not want my 11-year-old reading it—while being impressed that she’d be able to understand the dense, allusion-filled book enough to enjoy it—but it’s hard to imagine a grown-up could even flip through any of those volumes and decide that they are actual works of actual pornography. Here’s WTVQ’s report from Wednesday, and here’s a Thursday follow-up on reaction to the original story. You can watch the report here, if you don’t mind sitting through a twelve-second commercial first.

Mercy Thompson: Homecoming
Written by Patricia Briggs and David Lawrence
Illustrated by Francis Tsai and Amelia Woo
Published by Del Rey

Based on Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson novels, Homecoming is a collection of Dabel Brothers’ four-issue prequel to Briggs’ first book. Without having read Briggs’ prose, I can only treat this book as a stand-alone narrative, without any insight into the affectionate nods to the character’s core story or insights gained to her motivations.

That said, there’s little in Homecoming to make me want to seek out Briggs’ novels to learn more. A fairly standard modern fantasy, with its requisite sardonic heroine of limited supernatural power but plenty of chutzpah, Homecoming feels like it’s just going through the motions. Our heroine, Mercy, arrives in the Twin Cities, encounters some mysterious beings who alternately take a dark interest in her and pursue a vaguely antagonistic agenda, finds some unlikely allies, and plays the villains in the end.

Thematically, there’s simply nothing here. It’s pure plot, a mystery driven by secondary characters surrounding Mercy. Much of the book’s failure stems from Lawrence’s (and Briggs’? the writing breakdown isn’t very clear, but it seems the Briggs operated in a more supervisory capacity, if the interview in the back of the book can be trusted) inability to infuse the secondary characters with any compelling motivations or subtleties. They’re bad, thus Mercy needs to thwart them. Her allies are predictably surly, as she is, but they develop an inevitable grudging respect.

The closest we come to any sort of quietitude or character bits is a clumsily paced and terribly drawn scene in which Mercy attempts to establish some semblance of a normal life, which apparently involves spending an entire page on her expositioned meeting with an old hardigan with a Puritanical fear of tattoos. Not necessarily an impossible scenario, but one delivered with poorly posed figures and not even a sliver of warmth or humanity.

Francis Tsai handles art for the first two chapters of the book, with Amelia Woo taking over for the last half. Both provide fully painted pages, and they show considerable potential. Which isn’t the same as delivering excellent pages, but the art would not be distracting if the story delivered on any level at all. Tsai’s delivers very strong work in the area of mood and shadows, and some very nice panel compositions. His page layouts, like the figure work, are rigidly stiff, however. By comparison, Woo’s pages are softer, with less oppressive coloring that lets the characters pop off the page and – occasionally – allows hints of nuance in the faces and postures. Alas, the layouts are overly posed, often excessively so, and “overacting” abounds.

All of which is 400+ words that can be easily summed up as this: Avoid Mercy Thompson: Homecoming.

When you can’t sleep… A problem I rarely have. Jaia has it with more frequency.

Find out more about Global Freezing here on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays or at ComicsByEgg.com.

Well it’s eight days left until Halloween, and it’s about time the History Channel starts airing all that Halloween-themed programming. I have yet to see nilch, but my sleep schedule is a bit off, so that might explain why.

I came across this a while back and can’t wait to see the final video. Bob Burns’ Hollywood Halloween. Bob Burns lives in California that had huge attractions in his yard that people would come for miles to come see. I don’t mean just any kind of haunted house. I mean this stuff was phenomenal. Just check out his rendition of Jekyll and Hyde, War of the Worlds and his personal favorite: his take on The Time Machine.

I would have loved to be a kid and had gone to one of those things. Also, I love how his “crew” consisted of some of Hollywood’s premiere make up and special effects people, including a 13 year-old Rick Baker.

For all you cats in the Portland, OR and Flemington, NJ areas, this is a great event for you to be checking out — Wonder Woman Day!

The event — which takes place on Sunday — will go to benefiting domestic violence centers (as this month is indeed National Domestic Abuse Month). Over the past three years, the event has raised over $69,000.

In Portland, Excalibur Comics will be hosting an event from noon to 6pm, with a silent art auction — with art from Adam Hughes, Alex Ross, Gary Frank, Nicola Scott, and Jamal Igle — as well as creators including Gail Simone, the Hernandez Brothers, Paul Gulacy, and Aaron Lopresti signing books. Proceeds for this event will benefit Raphael House of Portland, Bradley Angle and Portland Women’s Crisis Line.

“For over sixty years, Wonder Woman has been an iconic female symbol of peace, strength, equality, and honesty,” said Andy Mangels, curator of the online Wonder Woman Museum. “Her story has been told in the pages of comic books and books, and on television shows, and her visuals and ideals are known worldwide. For the Wonder Woman Day events, fans and the general public have an opportunity to celebrate the character and the people who create her adventures, and they have the opportunity to be heroic themselves!”

Meanwhile, in Flemington, Comic Fusion will be hosting an event from noon to 5pm. They too will have a silent auction, with sketches from Adam Hughes, Khoi Pham, Billy Tan, and Whilce Portacio, and guests in attendence include Joe Sinnott, Chris Muller, Ken Haeser, Rob Kramer, and Buz Husson. This event will go towards Safe in Hunterdon.

(Boy, I think I rewrote that headline five or six times to get proper grammar as well as the correct number of words in that headline. Stay in school, kids!)

While my laptop is making a trip to the doctor’s office (or the scrap heap), “The Loaner” and I found an interesting post on Wired via Fables writer Bill Willingham on storytelling in six words.

The inspiration? Hemingway’s favorite short story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” So Wired asked tons of writers — including some of the best and the brightest comics storytellers — to give their spin on the six-word story. Here are three of my favorites, from comics and sci-fi luminaries:

Failed SAT. Lost scholarship. Invented rocket.
- William Shatner

Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time
- Alan Moore

With bloody hands, I say good-bye.
- Frank Miller

Considering brevity is a virtue for comics — one description has been writing “newspaper headlines in poetry” — it’s a fun read. For all you writers and artists (aspiring or not) in the house, what would be your favorite six-word story? Let us hear it!

I can’t imagine the term “Blackest Night” can possibly be used to describe the mood around the DC offices these days.

Earlier this week, industry website ICv2.com released their initial data and analysis for comics sales in the direct market during the month of September, and it was apparently a very good month for the market’s perennial second banana, DC Comics.

According to their numbers, the best-selling book of the month was Blackest Night #3, with four other tie-ins to the “Blackest Night” event/story placing in the top-ten—Green Lantern, Blackest Night: Batman, Green Lantern Corps and Blackest Night: Superman. (It’s also noted that there doesn’t seem to be very dramatic drop-offs between issues of the “Blackest Night” books, which is also good news for the publisher.)

Of the top ten, there’s one more DC book—Grant Morrison and Philip Tan’s Batman and Robin—with Marvel claiming the other four spots, with event title Captain America: Reborn, two “Dark Reign” branded tie-ins, and Wolverine Giant-Size Old Man Logan.

That’s a pretty extraordinary showing for DC, and obviously they’re going to want to do whatever they can to try and replicate that success in the future. I’m sure they’re asking themselves, and have been doing so for a while, just what it is about Blackest Night that seems to be hitting with their audience, and what they can do to generate more Blackest Nights in the future.

I’ve got a couple of ideas.

Read the rest of this entry »

A little late on this one. Actress Aubrey Plaza (also known as one of the very few good things in NBC’s Parks & Recreation) talked to MakingOf.com about comics adaptation Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, its star Michael Cera and Director of Photography Bill Pope, who not only worked on the Spider-Man movies but more importantly was the DP on Zero Effect, my personal favorite movie of all time.

For those of you who are fans of Dollhouse, you’d better get in as much of it as you can, because Entertainment Weekly’s Michael Ausiello says that the brainwashable, sci-fi-ish actioner is getting benched during November sweeps.

This is not the sort of move a confident studio will pull on a profitable property — as Ausiello notes, this is the kind of move a studio will give to let a show go die quietly in a corner. Sadly, this wouldn’t be the first time that a Whedon show has been pulled by Fox, as there was a lot of anger after they pulled the plug on DVD cult classic series Firefly.

And considering how by-the-wire Dollhouse came at the end of its first season — see this cartoon from Hijinks Ensue for a more detailed look at it — it’s not looking like Dollhouse will be running for much longer.

By Christian Beranek

I’m a huge baseball fan. The Yankees are my team. That’s why it’s a real treat for me to be a part of the “Pulse of the Postseason” promotion over at www.mlb.com this year, along with fellow comic book creators Joe Quesada, Matt Fraction and Emma Caulfield. Baseball represents a sense of adventure — teams battling over the course of a season to get a chance to play for the title. It’s a war of attrition. And this year, I’m predicting the Yankees win it all.

Here’s various videos my fellow comic book cohorts and I did for the MLB site:

Joe Quesada:

http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=7051639

Matt Fraction:

http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=7051721

Emma Caulfield and CB:

http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=7078141&topic_id=7223784
http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=7079289&topic_id=7223784

CB:

http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=7080063
http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=7079287

Christian Beranek co-founded and co-runs Disney’s Kingdom Comics. CB has a first look film/tv deal with Disney/ABC via his Lead Pipe Entertainment banner. He has several projects in development around town including Dracula vs. King Arthur, based on the graphic novel he co-created. He is currently working on his first novel and an album. CB is never late for dinner and invites you to add him on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/beranek.

Part of the undeniable appeal of Hulu.com has to be the fact that you can watch programs from across the entertainment spectrum at all times for free. As of 2010, you can strike the “free” part. According to Broadcasting and Cable, the site will begin charging next year.

Chase Carey, Deputy Chairman of News Corp., speaking at Broadcasting and Cable’s OnScreen summit, said, “It’s time to start getting paid for broadcast content online.” He went on to say:

“I think a free model is a very difficult way to capture the value of our content. I think what we need to do is deliver that content to consumers in a way where they will appreciate the value,” Carey said. “Hulu concurs with that, it needs to evolve to have a meaningful subscription model as part of its business.”

Speaking with AdVerse, Carey noted that the charging would likely begin in 2010.

What do you think, readers? Is this a death-knell for Hulu, or would you pay a reasonable fee to subscribe?

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 Comics have long been full of dark and evil gods, constantly making trouble for our heroes and heroines. But as bad as Darkseid, Ares and their ilk might be, you know the comic book gods that really scare me?

The ones some of DC writers seem to worship.

Now, the existence of a secret cult that meets in the basement of 1700 Broadway on the nights of full moons, their identities hidden even from one another by ritual cloaks and hoods, to chant in a secret, blasphemous language and bow before a profane, obscene stone idol of a hideous monster-god is just a theory of mine.

I have no actual proof of it, other than the suggestion that surely there must be some reason so many writers have begun their new series or new story arcs with a blood sacrifice, as if it were part of a ritual beseeching some entity for success.

It’s 2003, and Judd Winick and Geoff Johns are about to launch new volumes of The Outsiders and Teen Titans respectively. Their storyline kicks off in a special miniseries in which several characters are killed.

It’s 2005, and the pair—joined by Greg Rucka—are about to set the DC Universe on a course towards Infinite Crisis, and they kick it all off in a special one-shot in which they kill Blue Beetle II.

In 2008, Winick gets ready to relaunch a new Titans title, and he does so by slaughtering a half-dozen minor characters.

That same year, the Grant Morrison-written Final Crisis opens with the deaths of Orion and Martian Manhunter.

Surely there must be some reason for all this blood, and since it is the blood of fictional comic book characters, I can only imagine it’s a very peculiar, quasi-religious reason.

It can’t possibly be a creative or dramatic reason, because it’s been done so often in such a short span of time, and despite their occasional shortcomings, all of these men—even Judd Winick, whose work I like the very least—are talented, and have certainly read enough comic books to know that seeing a character get killed barely moves the needle of fan interest, let alone excitement.

These same writers have also been simultaneously restoring dead characters to life during that same time, even undoing some of the most “sacred” comic book deaths, like that of Jason Todd and Barry Allen, further making the act of death meaningless within the context of their fictional universe.

So they must worship an evil god that feeds on the imaginary blood of fictional characters—It’s the only thing that makes any sense.

I haven’t mentioned James Robinson yet.

Read the rest of this entry »

Reuters says it all: “Nickelodeon Acquires Global Rights to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”. The price? A mere $60 million.

We’ll follow in a moment with the complete press release. You’ll notice that it mentions film, animation and toys, but says little to nothing about actual comics. Mirage CEO Gary Richardson is quoted as saying, “Nickelodeon is a powerhouse global brand, and we are confident that the company will be a wonderful steward for Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Donatello and all the other TMNT characters
and take them in all kinds of exciting and new creative directions.”

At his blog, Turtles co-creator Peter Laird addressed a number of issues surrounding the sale. He summed it up with the following statement:

On a final note (at least for this statement), please understand that I sold the TMNT property, not Mirage Studios. Mirage still exists, and it’s still my company. It just doesn’t own the TMNT intellectual property anymore. I’m not sure what its future will be. For a little while, it will be helping with the transition of TMNT over to its new owners. But after that…? I don’t know. What I am hoping, however, is that this little core group of creators sticks together, both as friends and collaborators. And I think that is certainly possible.

Please find the quoted original PR after the jump.
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…And only two weeks left to order.

“Batman fans recognize that nothing like this has ever been created and we’ve received orders from around the globe,” says David Pea, owner of Universal Designs, which is producing the screen-accurate Dark Knight Motorcycle Suit under license from Warner Bros. Consumer Products on behalf of DC Comics.

UD Replicas, the officially licensed division of Universal Designs, is strictly limiting production of the full Dark Knight Motorcycle Suit to 1,000 pieces, which will retail for $998. Orders for the suit will be accepted only through Saturday, Oct. 31.

Have you seen this stuff yet?
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Mattel have released some imagery of the latest from the GHOSTBUSTERS action figure line. After the jump is a handful of shots of some of the characters based off the original motion picture in various shapes and sizes.

By the way, did anyone here see Zombieland?
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By Filip Sablik, Publisher of Top Cow Productions, Inc.

It’s been so long since I’ve written one of these blog entries it’s embarrassing. Really, really embarrassing. My apologies to my readers. Mom, I know you’ve been waiting to see what I’d write next. So, let’s move on to that, shall we?

Preconceptions. We all have them; even those of us who claim to be open minded can’t help but have biases. Like how all guys over 6’4” should be able to dunk a basketball or how old people are bad drivers or how Glee kids are dorks.

There are a couple of preconceptions that I’ve been fighting since arriving here at Top Cow three years ago. The problem with preconceptions is that once you get saddled with one, they’re a real pain to get rid of. Kind of like a bad rash.

My hope is not to convince all of you reading this that the preconception is not true, but to put up my point of view on the topic, so in moving forward, when this allegation comes up again I can just paste a handy dandy hyperlink to this post. I mean, I figure it’s the internet, if we can’t have a civil discourse here - what’s the point, right?

The preconception at hand is that Top Cow only publishes “T and A” comics.  I’m going to assume I don’t need to define “T and A” for you, gentle reader. If you need to, go ahead and do a quick internet search to bring yourself up to speed.

I’m going to lay my proverbial cards on the table and set up a few ground rules for this conversation. I, personally, as well as the crew at Top Cow, do not think there’s anything wrong with utilizing some sex appeal to sell entertainment. Movies do it, television does it, magazines do it, novels do it, and so on. It works on both sexes and it can help sell copies, tickets, or whatever you happen to be marketing at the time. Shirtless Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds got my wife to Wolverine on opening night and I’m sure slow motion shots of Megan Fox sold more than a handful of tickets to Transformers 2 this summer.
Read the rest of this entry »

Essential Dykes to Watch Out For
Written & Illustrated by Alison Bechdel
Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I recently talked about reading Gilbert Hernandez’s Luba, noting that the book is effectively the sequel to Palomar, one of the two most affecting comics I’ve read in my life. The other most-affecting comic is Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, a staggeringly literate memoir of her coming out and her relationship with her deeply closeted father. After reading Gilbert Hernandez’s follow-up to his masterpiece, I went back to read Alison Bechdel’s creative lead-in to her own masterwork.

Dykes to Watch Out For, a newspaper strip that ran in independent gay and lesbian newspapers and online from 1983 until 2008, when Bechdel put the strip on hiatus to focus on her follow-up to Fun Home, chronicles the lives of a group of (mostly) lesbians. It balances political commentary against a long-running, often humorous, occasionally sad soap opera of romantic, professional and personal entanglements.

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For compiles the majority of the post-1986 strips, when Bechdel began introducing her extended cast and moved the strip away from its early gag-a-day format. Now, those early strips … well, they’re a little choppy. Though Bechdel had been penning the strip for three years already, her art remained stilted. The character work showed some charm, but only occasionally rose above ordinary. It was a slow build, but by 1990 – with 18 more years worth of strips in the book, so there’s lots and lots of good stuff left – Bechdel had captured the elusive voice of an artist with something true to say.

As the strip grew more assuredly artistically, the depth of the characters grew exponentially. Perhaps the quality of the line work allowed Bechdel to show ideas that had always been brewing in the strip but never communicated clearly. Her ability to depict characters across the entire spectrum of experience added humanity to their storylines. Many comic book artists can illustrate highly detailed scenes, moments of exquisite carnage and impossible perspectives, but through it all, most of their characters continue to shout obscenely or cry melodramatically.

Bechdel’s lines are simple, but deep. Reactions come through with subtlety and nuance, and she’s able to balance her artistic accomplishments with characterization that is apparent without having to explain itself. When Clarice becomes enraged at Toni, the character’s sniping ire manifests that rage in clear, simply human terms.

Dykes to Watch Out For is unapologetically political, and anybody who doesn’t lean left as Bechdel does will probably feel put off reading it. Yet the characters each exhibit diverse and fairly argued perspectives within the strip’s liberal outlook. Mo and Sydney frequently argue everything from gay marriage to patriarchal standards of beauty, and both viewpoints are presented fairly and levelly. In fact, one of the strip’s most interesting and challenging moments comes when Bechdel introduces a conservative-leaning lesbian into the group’s community, and despite a few jokes at her expense (though no more than any other character is subjected to during the strip’s twenty-year run), she shows an intelligent and rounded vantage point on the world herself.

Fun Home is perhaps the greatest and most important comic book ever published. (Yeah, that’s maybe a bold statement, but the book is. Read it if you haven’t. Read it again if you have.) That level of brilliance doesn’t develop overnight, and the progression of strips during its twenty-plus year evolution shows that Alison Bechdel experimented, stretched and transformed herself into one of the most important cartoonists working today in the page of Dykes to Watch Out For. Essential Dykes to Watch Out For is absolute must-read comics.

On my site I’m drawing a chicken wearing a people suit…

Find out more about Global Freezing here on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays or at ComicsByEgg.com.