"Please Stay Tuned For A Message From Your Savior." If yesterday's discussion of the Apocalypse was just not enough for you, consider Stephen Buell's Video. Video was originally published in 2004 as a five-issue mini-series from Lost in the Dark Press. The premise is simple. How might the modern world deal with an actual Second Coming? The trade collection, including improved artwork and concept sketches, will arrive in shops next Wednesday. For your further consideration, a 22-page preview has been provided.
posted on Nov 15, 2006 - View this thread

Comic Book Urban Legends. Would you believe ... that a Marvel Comics editor became a Pet Shop Boy? that Wonder Woman's creator invented the real-life lie detector? that the first-ever Marvel / DC Comics crossover was The Wizard Of Oz? that the King of Rock & Roll found hairstyle inspiration in Captain Marvel, Jr? Three of these are true, one is false, but all of the behind-the-scenes tales compiled by Comics Should Be Good could prove blissfully detrimental to your afternoon productivity.
posted on Sep 20, 2006 - View this thread

Just Imagine Stan Lee's Watchmen! Back in 2002, DC Comics extended an olive branch of comics industry peace to Stan "Excelsior!" Lee, the founder of rival Marvel Comics. The result was the Just Imagine line, wherein we find several DCU heroes reimagined in one-shot comics as only Stan Lee could. Some titles were good. Some were okay. Most were just so. But never in a million issues would DC have let him take on Watchmen -- perhaps the most critically-acclaimed and analyzed series this side of Maus. So since Stan couldn't or wouldn't, Kevin Church has.
posted on Aug 25, 2006 - View this thread

Project Rooftop! Rogue streamlined by Nuno Plati of Portugal. The Spectre re-imagined by Dean Trippe (creator of "Butterfly). Black Widow redrawn by Stuart Immonen (artist for Warren Ellis's Nextwave). Tracing its origin back to January's "Batgirl Meme," Project Rooftop is an excellent exercise in meta-fashion. Edna Mode would be so proud. Project Runway? What's that?
posted on Jul 18, 2006 - View this thread

Hero Tomorrow. Superman Returns had a budget of $260M. X3? $210M. So what kind of superhero film can you make for a mere $100K? Check out Hero Tomorrow, making its big screen debut next week at the San Diego ComicCon.
posted on Jul 10, 2006 - View this thread

The Strange Case Of Gordon Lee. “It is highly unusual to have a single defendant face three arraignments in less than two years for the same alleged criminal conduct. In my fifteen years of practice, I have never seen such an occurrence.”* [more inside]
posted on Jun 16, 2006 - View this thread

Spider-Man in Arabic. Through a licensing arrangement with Marvel Comics, Kuwait-based Teshkeel Comics has started producing the adventures of your favorite heroes in Arabic, starting with Spider-Man. The Hulk is next. But don't miss their own in-house pack of super-powered do-gooders: The 99 ("the world's first superheroes conceived from Islamic culture"). India in 2004. Saudi Arabia in 2006. Where will the world-travellin' webslinger be in 2008?
posted on Mar 17, 2006 - View this thread

Jimmy Olsen is a Lutheran. Really. And Clark Kent? Methodist, it seems. Daredevil, Gambit, Huntress and The Punisher? Catholics, all of them, though I have to wonder when Frank Castle last went to Confession. With about half of DC Comic's line-up heading to church in the latest issue of Infinite Crisis and knowing that Civil War is imminent in the House of Marvel, what better time than now to contemplate the particular faiths of our two-dimensional heroes.
posted on Mar 7, 2006 - View this thread

"I'm greater than Superman and Batman put together! Before I'm through, I'll have them cringing before the might of Composite Superman!" The mighty Composite Superman is brilliant artifact from the Silver Age of comics. A variation on the theme recently resurfaced in print and on television! Just goes to show that you can't keep a gimmick supervillain down. He's even got his own blog! (via Scans_Daily)
posted on Dec 2, 2005 - View this thread

39¢ Heroes. On January 8, the price of a First Class US Postage Stamp will creep up another two cents. But fear not, True Believers, because 20 of those new stamps will feature costumed crusaders from DC Comics "including Superman, Wonder Woman, Plastic Man, Batman, Green Arrow and many more." (Newsarama has more on the story, including the featured cover images for each hero.)
posted on Nov 30, 2005 - View this thread

Infinite Crisis begins today. In 1985, DC Comics released Crisis On Infinite Earths -- arguably the biggest retcon engine in comicbook history. The goal of the Crisis maxi-series was the unification of disparate DC timelines and dimensions (designated as numbered or lettered Earths) into a single universe. Beloved heroes died and new heroes emerged. Twenty years later, DC is putting all of its heroes and villains back in harm's way with Infinite Crisis. Building steam from plot elements in last year's critically-acclaimed Identity Crisis (written by NYT Bestselling Author Brad Meltzer) and a quartet (1, 2, 3, 4) of related mini-series published over the last six months, Infinite Crisis (penned by Geoff Johns) promises to be just as jarring as the original Crisis. So jarring, in fact, that flagship characters of the DC Universe will be pitched forward in time, a year into the future. To account for the lost time, a weekly series called 52* will start in May of 2006. And when the dust settles, DC will start progressing all of its characters and stories in real time.
posted on Oct 12, 2005 - View this thread

"Should comic book characters age? A Boy Wonder doesn't stay a boy for long if a book is set in real time. That makes it so that any Robin can have an active career for, what, ten years? And that's if you buy that a fighting mad ten-year old can really kick anybody's ass." Some insightful comicbook commentary by Erik Larsen, creator of Savage Dragon.
posted on Sep 27, 2005 - View this thread

Inkwell. "As comic's creators and fans we spend a very large portion of our lives telling or reading the stories of extraordinary people doing extraordinary things under extraordinary circumstances and at the end of the day, triumphing over evil or adversity. Inkwell intends to take that simple idea and make it a reality."
posted on Sep 12, 2005 - View this thread

Goodbye, DC Bullet. Hello, DC Spin. Branding is very important for business, even when that business is comic books. So this week, DC Comics announced their first new logo in 29 years. Why? Ask DC's President Paul Levitz: "The hope always, for a brand like ours, is that somehow you can have a logo that somehow acknowledges all the wonderful things that have happened in the past, and looks forward with a sense of 'We’re as cool as tomorrow.'" Compelling, but Senior VP and Creative Director Richard Bruning has a more practical explanation: "[A]s we moved into other areas, and got into things like manufacturing toys or action figures or statues, the physical construction of the bullet, the little hairlines that are built around all the letter shapes, made it very difficult to reproduce on any other medium or form than large and on paper." Another good point ... but can a spinning baby blue swoosh really replace that classic Milton Glaser logo?
posted on May 12, 2005 - View this thread

The Ultimate Nick Fury. Agent of SHIELD? No. Agent of SHAFT.
(An occasionally hilarious politico-conspiracy-fueled parody of Marvel Comic's Ultimate series.)
posted on Mar 21, 2005 - View this thread

What do Captain Marvel and the dad from "My Three Sons" have in common? This guy knows. In fact, he knows more about The Captain (not that other Captain Marvel -- there is a difference) and his entire superheroic family than anyone else on the planet. You may think your obsessions are impressive, but you've got nothing on Walt Grogan.
posted on Feb 4, 2005 - View this thread

Twilight of the Superheroes. After the success of 1987's Watchmen series, Alan Moore approached DC Comics with an idea of epic proportions. Inspired by grand scope of Crisis on Infinite Earths and the dark promise of The Dark Knight Returns, Twilight was pitched as a way to elevate the DC Comics roster from heroes to legends. "What I'd like to do creatively with the series, above and beyond the creative satisfaction to me ... is to create a storyline that lent the whole superhero phenomenon, the whole cosmos and concept a context that [is] intensely mythic ... aiming at coming up with something that cements the link between superheroes and the Gods of legend by attempting something as direct and resonant as the original legends themselves."

The story? Oh, just a little scenario involving the dissolution of society as we know it, a massive conflict resulting in several superhero casualties, a splitting of the surviving superheroes into eight distinct houses, a bubble of lost time called "the fluke" and the unfortunate fate of a BDSM-loving midget in a locked room. Oh, and the hero of the whole thing is John Constantine.

The series was never published. The proposal itself might even be a hoax. But real or not, it is worth finding and reading ... even if DC Comics would prefer you didn't.
posted on Jan 7, 2005 - View this thread

"He based it on the character in mythology ... the wings on his feet ... He had no idea how big it would be."

RIP, Harry Lampert - Creator of The Flash.
posted on Nov 15, 2004 - View this thread

Meet the New Bruce Wayne. And why not? Bats has always been a bit psycho anyway...
posted on Sep 12, 2003 - View this thread

"[T]he whole Marvel Universe is starting to occur 500 years early ...

Sir Nicholas Fury is head of the Queen's Intelligence, Dr Stephen Strange is her court physician (and magician), the Inquisition is torturing "witchbreed" ... and now a mysterious treasure -- which may be a weapon of some kind -- is being sent from Jerusalem to England by the last of the Templars. Something that may save the world, or destroy it, which has already attracted the attention of such people as Count Otto Von Doom (known as "The Handsome")... [so] Nicholas Fury sends his top agent, a blind Irish ballad singer named Matthew Murdock, off to bring it back safely."

What does it all mean? Just that Neil Gaiman is taking Marvel back to 1602.
posted on Jun 30, 2003 - View this thread

Do you know your comic book heroes? Well, the proprietor of this humble site doesn't know everything, but the attempt (with the old school frames and the pixellated scans) is certainly admirable. And you might as well brush up on your Hulk knowledge before the movie comes out, right?
posted on Mar 10, 2003 - View this thread