Wednesday Comics, DC's spectacular new oversize anthology featuring characters from Batman to Adam Strange and Kamandi in one page installments of serialized stories, launched yesterday to much acclaim from the internet. USA Today will be reprinting the Superman story for the duration of the comics 12 week run.
posted by Artw on Jul 9, 2009 - 30 comments

They've been rumoured to be an item for some time, but in X-Factor #45 Rictor and Shatterstar, formerly of X-Force (the most 90s comic of all time), finally kissed - giving the comics world two more confirmed gay superheroes and making the X-Men Universe Relationship Map out of date (Shatterstar creator Rob Liefeld has however vowed to undo it). Meanwhile over at DC flagship title Detective Comics is now fronted by the new lesbian Batwoman - ironically a character who was introduced to make Batman seem more hetro.
posted by Artw on Jul 4, 2009 - 107 comments

Darkseid tries to join the Legion of Superheroes, Batman wrestles the serpent in the garden of Eden, Clarke Kent shoots Abraham (Brainiac) Lincoln... Hall of Silver Age Elseworlds first pages - from DC Silver Age Elseworld stories that never happened, from the Elseworlds 80-Page Giant collection, which was pulped after controversy surrounding Letitia Lerner, Superman's Babysitter - which later became the only story in the collection to see print again.
posted by Artw on May 14, 2009 - 21 comments

Just imagine! Coming Super-Attractions features vintage DC comics in-house advertisements spanning the decades. Enjoy!
posted by kimota on Jan 13, 2009 - 4 comments

Fans of both Dead Space (and comic books in general), will be happy to learn that the first issue of the new comic book mini-series based on the game has been released online, in full, for free here. Not a fan of Dead Space but like comic books? There are lots of other comic books online that can be viewed for free, like stuff from DC Comics, Marvel and Image. There's also a few Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doctor Who comics online for your viewing pleasure (in fact you can even make your own with the latter).
posted by Effigy2000 on Jan 1, 2009 - 12 comments

Neil Gaiman celebrates 20 years since the first publication of Sandman. Yes it’s that old. Io9 lists five ways in which Sandman changed the comics world.
posted by Artw on Nov 19, 2008 - 66 comments

Original character designs for Watchmen, including a (dropped) full body suit for Rorschach, by Dave Gibbons. (Also it looks like the movie version will have a different ending, so fears of a non-sucky Alan Moore film can be put to rest.)
posted by Artw on Oct 27, 2008 - 163 comments

The Green Lantern movie is back on! Minus Jack Black! Early concept art is looking exciting, though sadly we’ll never see Paul Newman in the role of Hal Jordan.
posted by Artw on Sep 29, 2008 - 65 comments

Superman rebooted! - The next Superman movie will be ignoring 2006’s Superman Returns, something that has been suggested by comic book writers when asked how to save the franchise. Mark Millar has his own idea of what Superman needs: Mark Millar.
posted by Artw on Sep 23, 2008 - 131 comments

All Star Superman in eleven panels
posted by Artw on Sep 7, 2008 - 48 comments

Who watches The Watchmen? Kevin Smith has, Dave Gibbons has, Alan Moore won't (Gibbons hopes he'll watch the DVD), and if Fox has its way maybe YOU won't either.
posted by Artw on Aug 20, 2008 - 109 comments

The Joker is Batman's main nemesis. Why him? Why not some other villain?
posted by painquale on Aug 14, 2008 - 118 comments

Superstar Scottish comics writer Grant Morrison is about to tear the DC Universe apart again with Final Crisis, the latest in a series of apocalypses and world ending events he's inflicted on various comics worlds over the years. But there was a time before fame when he wrote the tie-in comic for ZOIDS, the robot dinosaur children's toy. So what did he do? Ushered in the apocalypse, in the form of THE BLACK ZOID.
posted by Artw on Apr 17, 2008 - 74 comments

"In a possibly historic ruling, a federal judge Wednesday determined that the heirs of Superman co-creator, Jerry Siegel, are now the rightful owners of one-half of the copyright of Superman, and have been since 1999."
posted by Alvy Ampersand on Mar 28, 2008 - 50 comments

For over the past year, John Seavey has been reading through Marvel's Essentials and DC's Showcase Presents reprints in order to examine the title comic's storytelling engine. From classic characters to barely-footnotes, much of the bedrock of Silver Age heroes are represented in the column's archives. [more inside]
posted by robocop is bleeding on Mar 18, 2008 - 18 comments

The Losers Cover Gallery showcases the bold design sense and unique art style of UK comics artist Jock, who also produced much of the interior art for the VERTIGO series. Losely based on a WWII comic of the same name it became a fast paced action caper with a political edge under writer Andy Diggle, and the covers reflect both the themes and the cinematic style of the comic.
posted by Artw on Dec 17, 2007 - 17 comments

Co-creator of Spider-Man, Steve Ditko is famous for weird, distinctive art, his 1966 departure from Marvel Comics, and granting very few interviews in the course of his decades-spanning career, preferring to let creations such as The Creeper, the Objectivism-inspired Mr. A, and Squirrel Girl speak for him.
Okay, Squirrel Girl not so much.
Jonathan Ross turns the spotlight on the artist in the BBC4 documentary, In Search of Steve Ditko. Did they find him? Well, that's The Question, isn't it?
posted by Alvy Ampersand on Sep 23, 2007 - 26 comments

Polite Dissent rings in the new year with the best and worst in comic book medicine from 2006. While this entertaining blog's subjects are not limited to four color minutiae, it is the source of some of the most entertaining posts. Please to enjoy Flatlining, Hippocrates, Originitis, and the scourge of a generation, Metal-Eating Disease!
posted by EatTheWeak on Dec 31, 2006 - 6 comments

David Cockrum has passed on. The cause of death was apparently complications from diabetes; he died peacefully, in his sleep. Comics fans would know him from a number of projects, amongst them Giant Size X-Men #1 where he helped introduce Colossus, Storm and Nightcrawler to the world, his run on the Legion of Super Heroes, and possibly his self-published work The Futurians. You can find some nice retrospectives on his career and what he did for Marvel and for DC Comics.
posted by mephron on Nov 26, 2006 - 27 comments

IGN's top 50 DC Comics covers should satisfy those who didn't like the Marvel covers posted yesterday. Great art, traditional themes, and strange psychadelia.
posted by Kickstart70 on Sep 25, 2006 - 18 comments

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 by grabbingsand on Aug 25, 2006 - 41 comments

An official comic book adaptation of the 9/11 commission report is due to hit bookstores this month. The U.S. Army seeks an Arabic-speaking comic book creator. Meanwhile, an Israeli blogger suspects a Kuwaiti company of misusing Marvel and DC comics. These are just the latest incidents in a long-running history of using comic books for propaganda purposes, ranging from Mussolini and Hitler to Captain America vs. the Nazi-affiliated Red Skull to anticommunist comics for Catholic parochial schools to a phony Black Panther comic book created by COINTELPRO to a comic book of the American invasion of Grenada. However, my favorite site of comic book propaganda tends to focus on more innocuous domestic issues such as bicycle safety, USDA nutrition standards, and fighting crack cocaine. (OK, that last issue isn't so innocuous, but comic book propaganda about health & safety issues still generally blows.)
posted by jonp72 on Aug 4, 2006 - 38 comments

Girl-Wonder.org is a new site tackling the portrayal of women in comics, written in the same vein as Women in Refrigerators and sequential tart.
posted by FunkyHelix on Jun 15, 2006 - 18 comments

"And on the rare occasion when nonwhite heroes were included, names like Black Panther and Black Lightning telegraphed the difference" (NYT). Nonwhite and non-traditional superheroes aren't new, but a "lesbian socialite" Batwoman is. How about "The Great Ten," a "Chinese government controlled superteam" also to be featured in the ongoing "52" Series from DC comics (an alternate superverse bereft of A-league stars like Batman and Superman)? When I was a kid, it was pretty shocking to know of at least one gay superhero (and a Canadian to boot), but I wasn't aware that there were actually so many. Of course, the irrepressible Stan Lee claims he created the first gay superhero in the persona of Pvt. Percival Pinkerton. (Previous mefi discussion of Pavitr Prabhakar, the "Indian Spiderman" here.)
posted by bardic on Jun 1, 2006 - 41 comments

Legends of the Superheroes! Starring Batman, Hawkman, Ghetto Man, and Ed McMahon.
posted by painquale on Jun 11, 2005 - 16 comments

The Marvel Directory: from Abomination to Zzzax. On the other side, here's the Unofficial Who's Who in the DC Universe, from Abel to Zauriel.
posted by interrobang on Jun 1, 2004 - 16 comments

The other guy who drew Superman, Wayne Boring. Boring's style defined Superman in the fifties, and still looks nice today.
posted by interrobang on Mar 27, 2004 - 16 comments

The Vertigo Tarot by Dave McKean, illustrator of among many other good things the Sandman comics, was reissued in August. The cards, loosely based on characters from DCs Vertigo comic inprint, are among the most uneasily beautiful interpretations I've ever seen. The original set was in a limited edition of 5000 copies and is changing hands for suitably outrageous sums on ebay. The new edition (slightly smaller cards) retails around the $30 mark.
posted by thatwhichfalls on Nov 14, 2001 - 14 comments

COMICON.com Splash is reporting that the DC Comics company has pulped the entire print run of the fifth issue of LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN because it reprinted an actual Victorian-era ad for a douche syringe that included the word 'vaginal'. The maker of the syringe was the MARVEL CO. It's not clear whether DC publisher Paul Levitz destroyed the comic because of the term or the reference to Marvel. Marvel Comics is, of course, DC Comics' main competitor.
posted by bjennings on Apr 28, 2000 - 3 comments