Batman
First look at Ben Templesmith’s Batman for DC digital-first series
Ben Templesmith tweeted this sneak peek of his version of Batman featured in DC Comics’ digital-first Batman anthology series. B Clay Moore is writing the story. Now you’ll have to excuse me so I can go buy an iPad.
- May 1, 2012 @ 09:00 AM by Michael May
This guy loves Batman more than you do (just look at that Bat-Stache!)
No matter how many thousands of Batman comics you boast to everyone — and I mean everyone; enough already — that you have in your collection, you’ll never be a more devoted fan of the Caped Crusader than Reddit contributor Captain_Auburn_Beard, who has made his dream a reality … by shaving his Van Dyke into the shape of the Bat-emblem. (Never mind that the Van Dyke is more closely associated with Green Arrow). Just don’t ask him to show you his Robin logo.
(via Gawker)
- April 30, 2012 @ 10:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
What Are You Reading? with Tim Seeley
Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye
Hello and welcome to What Are You Reading? Today our special guest is Tim Seeley, whose work you may know from Hack/Slash, Bloodstrike, Witchblade, Colt Noble, the upcoming Ex Sanguine and Revival, and much more.
To see what Tim has been reading lately, click below.
- April 29, 2012 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
Quote of the day #2 | ‘Gayness is built into Batman’
“It’s quite a bizarre mission to go out at night dressed as a bat and punch the hell out of junkies. And then he goes home and lives in this mansion. There’s an aspirational quality to him — he’s an outlaw and he can buy anything. He has a new Batmobile every movie. He’s very plutonian in the sense that he’s wealthy and also in the sense that he’s sexually deviant. Gayness is built into Batman. I’m not using gay in the pejorative sense, but Batman is very, very gay. There’s just no denying it. Obviously as a fictional character he’s intended to be heterosexual, but the basis of the whole concept is utterly gay. I think that’s why people like it. All these women fancy him and they all wear fetish clothes and jump around rooftops to get to him. He doesn’t care — he’s more interested in hanging out with the old guy and the kid.”
– Grant Morrison, in a Playboy magazine article that includes his thoughts on such comic-book characters as Superman, Wonder Woman, King Mob and Magneto (“Magneto’s an old terrorist bastard. I got into trouble — the X-Men fans hated me because I made him into a stupid old drug-addicted idiot.”)
(Illustration of Morrison by Frank Quitely for Playboy; link via ComicsAlliance)
- April 26, 2012 @ 01:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
What Are You Reading? with Jessica Campbell
Quoi!
Happy Earth Day and welcome to What Are You Reading? Today our guest is Jessica Campbell, design manager for Drawn and Quarterly as well as a painter.
To see what Jessica and the Robot 6 crew have been reading, click below.
- April 22, 2012 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
Grumpy Old Fan | Grandfathered continuity in the New 52
Hal Jordan as the Spectre (but not for long)
I’ve talked previously about the unwieldy nature of the New-52 timeline, but today I want to try and suss out some specifics.
There wouldn’t be as much of an issue — and perhaps none at all — if every character’s history had been allowed to reset. However, stating specifically that the Batman and Green Lantern families both came through the relaunch relatively unchanged, even as Superman, the Flash, the Teen Titans, and the Justice League generally each got new beginnings, was just asking for trouble. Still, the question then becomes how much of Batman and GL backstory has become crucial to the present understanding of those characters?
* * *
We begin with Batman. Pre-relaunch, Batman had built up a small army of proteges and associates over the course of a long career. In fact, said career spans at least ten years, because Damian Wayne was ten years old when he met Bruce Wayne, and his mom (Talia al Ghul) only sought out Bruce because her father had figured out he was Batman. Factoring in Dick Grayson’s age (between 18 and 20, depending on when you think 1987′s Batman: Son of the Demon falls in the timeline), and adding a few years for Dick’s early Robin career and Bruce’s solo debut (accounts vary) gives us a rough idea of how many years Batman’s been operating.
- April 19, 2012 @ 03:00 PM by Tom Bondurant
Comics A.M. | Archie feud goes into mediation; C2E2 attendance ‘way up’
Archie Comics
Legal | The New York Times ventures deep into the legal battle between Archie Comics Co-CEOs Nancy Silberkleit and Jonathan Goldwater, noting the two sides have gone into court-approved mediation. “Competing lawsuits filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan and State Supreme Court in Westchester County lay out a litany of bitter allegations. He punctured her car tires, destroyed her Web site and claimed that she sexually harassed employees. She ordered him to fire several longtime employees because they were too old, too fat or too buxom, and let her dog, Willow, roam the offices and defecate in the art department.” [The New York Times]
Conventions | Although no figures have been released for last weekend’s Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo, organizer Lance Fensterman said attendance was “way up,” noting that, “the size of the show floor doubled and the aisles were much more full than last year. That tells you how much attendance jumped to keep pace with the floor growth.” [Publishers Weekly]
- April 17, 2012 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
C2E2 | A round-up of news from Friday (and before)
C2E2
Publishers, creators, retailers and fans rolled into Chicago this weekend for the Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo, or C2E2. While the convention officially kicked off Friday, the announcements started rolling out Thursday during the Diamond Retailer Summit. After going through Kiel Phegley’s lengthy report on CBR, I’ve pulled out a few tidbits that publishers shared with attending retailers:
• Dynamite Entertainment shared that the first issue of Garth Ennis and Aaron Campbell’s The Shadow, which comes out next week, will likely go to second print. Following their Vampirella and Pantha projects, they also plan to roll out more of the former Harris Publications characters they now own, and they said they plan to work again with Kevin Smith in the future, who they’ve worked with on Bionic Man and Green Hornet.
• Dark Horse Comics announced two Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff miniseries; one featuring Spike and one featuring Willow (Editor Scott Allie spoke more about them with CBR). In addition, legendary artist Russ Heath will draw some pages in an upcoming issue of Buffy. Dark Horse will launch a new Dragon Age series in August, following the online miniseries that’s been running on Dark Horse Digital. They also confirmed that Becky Cloonan will return to Conan after James Harren’s three issues, and they announced Ex Sanguine, a five-issue miniseries by Tim Seeley and Josh Emmons. Finally, The Goon will go monthly with issue #40.
- April 14, 2012 @ 07:32 AM by JK Parkin
Peter Cooper’s musical tribute to tattoos, grandmas and Batman
A few years back I discovered the music of Peter Cooper, a storyteller who released a great song about Hank Aaron. So when I saw his latest single on iTunes, “Grandma’s Tattoo,” I checked it out — only to find it had a comic connection. Grandma’s tattoo, as it turns out, is of a certain Caped Crusader she happened to be a big fan of.
You can find it on iTunes, or you can get it for free at the Red Beet Records site.
- April 13, 2012 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
C2E2 | DC Comics to add more digital-first content
Ame-Comi Girls, by Amanda Conner
Following the release of the digital Smallville: Season 11 series today, USA Today reports that DC Comics has added two more titles to its upcoming slate of digital-first releases.
Joining Smallville, Justice League Beyond, Batman Beyond, Superman Beyond and Batman: Arkham Unhinged will be Ame-Comi Girls, based on the DC Collectibles line of Japanese manga-style statues, and an out-of-continuity Batman series.
Brian Truitt nails the lede here, saying “DC Comics aims to make every day a new comics day.” Ame-Comi Girls, written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, will come out on Mondays, while Batman–which will feature tales of the Dark Knight by Ben Templesmith, Steve Niles, B. Clay Moore, Nicola Scott, Joshua Hale Fialkov, Damon Lindelof and Jeff Lemire, among others–will come out on Thursdays. So the weekly line-up of digital-first series from DC looks like this:
Monday: Ame-Comi Girls
Tuesday: Batman: Arkham Unhinged
Wednesday: The Beyond comics
Thursday: Batman
Friday: Smallville: Season 11
“Our goal has always been from the very beginning to have something for everyone. The opportunities that digital opens up, it really allows us to go for as wide an audience as possible,” Hank Kanalz, DC’s senior vice president for digital, told USA Today. “The Lindelof thing will really appeal to tons of fans who don’t read regular comics, obviously. Hopefully when they come, they’ll see what an amazing medium this is and stay.”
Update: Via press release, DC has announced more details on the Ame-Comi Girls series. “AME-COMI GIRLS, launching in May, is based on the best-selling product line from DC Collectibles that brings the distinct Japanese influence of anime and manga to DC Comics’ female heroines and their foes. In the new series, the heroines must unite to stop an invasion by the female Braniac, who is aided by a group of ‘bad girl’ super villains. Initially, there will be five individual character arcs with multiple chapters, leading up to united, Ame-Comi girl series. All stories are written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray with Wonder Woman art by Amanda Conner and Tony Akins, Batgirl art by Sanford Greene, Duela Dent art by Ted Naifeh, Power Girl art by Mike Bowden and Supergirl art by Santi Casas.”
They also announced the creative pairings for the Batman digital comics: “BATMAN digital, launching in June, will take place outside of DC Comics – The New 52 continuity and feature a series of stand-alone stories by various creators that chronicle different cases handled by The Dark Knight. Confirmed creative teams include Damon Lindelof and Jeff Lemire; Jonathan Larsen and JG Jones; Tom Taylor and Nicola Scott; Ales Kot and Ryan Sook; B. Clay Moore and Ben Templesmith; Steve Niles and Trevor Hairsine; Joe Harris and Jason Masters; TJ Fixman and Christopher Mitten; Jeff Parker and Gabriel Hardman; Joshua Hale Fialkov and Phil Hester; David Tischman and Chris Sprouse; and many more!”
- April 13, 2012 @ 09:36 AM by JK Parkin
Grumpy Old Fan | That extra “one”: DC’s July 2012 Solicits
Overcompensating? Who's overcompensating?
Good grief, it’s the eleventh month of the New-52! The forty-six books left from the original class are just about ready to wrap up their first year, and in some cases their second collection. Where does the time go? (And when can we stop calling it the “New” 52?)
In fact, both Batman #11 and Animal Man #11 promise “stunning conclusions” to their inaugural arcs. Of course, the Owls storyline looks more like a traditional multi-title crossover (even if most of it takes place in the main Batman book), whereas Animal Man’s storyline only involves an Annual and a little bit of Swamp Thing. Usually I am frustrated with the very idea of looking ahead three-plus months, because it’s the serialized-comics equivalent of being forced to check your watch halfway through a movie. Here, though, knowing that these two series are headed for big finishes in July helps adjust my expectations about where they are now.
Similarly, we’ve seen three months’ worth of solicitations (and more than that in hype) on the two Earth-2 titles, but for me that’s built up anticipation. Despite the concept’s radical reworking, I’m eager to see how it all comes together.
Now to more specific comments….
Continue Reading »
- April 12, 2012 @ 02:00 PM by Tom Bondurant
Grumpy Old Fan | Tradition, expectation, and message
Metamorpho, not a joiner
The great strength of DC’s superhero line is its heterogeneity — that is, its history of bringing together different genre-based roots and different storytelling approaches. However, as the shared-universe model came to dominate superhero serials, DC’s various high sheriffs have tried to impose various kinds of order on these disparate perspectives. Starting in the Silver Age, the infinite Multiverse organized characters broadly, for example by generation (Earth-Two), publisher (Earth-X, Earth-S, Earth-Four), or special category (the Crime Syndicate’s Earth-Three, the Zoo Crew’s Earth-C). Crisis On Infinite Earths consolidated a lot of that, The Kingdom’s Hypertime sought unsuccessfully to reincorporate it, and 52 compromised with a scaled-back set of parallel Earths. Today, the New-52 setup still has a Multiverse, but the main DC-Earth has scaled back its superheroic history dramatically.
Details aside, though, each of these cosmological structures is an attempt to bring some deeper meaning to DC’s superhero line. Put simply, for a long time DC’s superhero books weren’t about something, whereas Marvel presented a “world outside your window” in which superpowers came with their own sets of problems. Thus, from the post-Crisis 1980s until the end of Flashpoint last summer, DC was arguably “about” superheroic legacies, and had no small success putting new faces with old names.
And again, those details are not especially germane to today’s post. Instead, I want to talk about the nature of DC’s various traditions, the extent to which those traditions should guide the publisher, and whether DC’s superhero books can, collectively, ever really be “about” anything.
- April 5, 2012 @ 03:00 PM by Tom Bondurant
Food or Comics? | Flex Mentaleggio
Welcome to Food or Comics?, where every week we talk about what comics we’d buy at our local comic shop based on certain spending limits — $15 and $30 — as well as what we’d get if we had extra money or a gift card to spend on a splurge item.
Check out Diamond’s release list or ComicList, and tell us what you’re getting in our comments field.
Hulk #50
Graeme McMillan
It’s a week of familiar faces for me this time around. If I had $15, it’d go on Action Comics #8 (DC, $3.99), which completes Grant Morrison’s first story arc on the title — even though we’ve already had the second one; thanks, fill-ins! — as well as Supreme #63 (Image, $2.99), with Erik Larsen illustrating the final Alan Moore script for Rob Liefeld’s Superman knock-off (I’d love to see a well-done collection of all of these issues one day, now that the Moore run is completed). Also on tap, the final issue of OMAC (#8, DC, $2.99) and the long-awaited return of Busiek, Ross and Herbert’s Kirby: Genesis (#6, Dynamite, $3.99), because a man needs as much well-done Jack Kirby-inspired comics as possible, goshdarnit.
If I had $30, I’d add Hulk #50 (Marvel, $3.99) to once again celebrate what Jeff Parker had managed to do with a book and concept that, by all rights, should’ve disappeared a long time ago. (In all honesty, I much prefer the Red Hulk to the classic version these days, and it’s all Parker’s doing, along with his various artistic compatriots on the title.) Everyone who isn’t reading it: This is a jumping-on point issue! Try it and see if you don’t love it, too. And, despite the unevenness of earlier issues, Matt Fraction’s Casanova: Avarita #3 (Marvel, $4.99) is also a must-read; I really didn’t like the first issue, but loved the second. We’ll see where the book goes next.
Should I be splurging, then this week the splurge is on Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery Deluxe HC (DC/Vertigo, $22.99). One of my favorite comics of all time, I’m likely going to end up getting this over-sized, recolored reprint just because I genuinely can’t resist the optimistic, hopeful tone of the book and its love of superheroes.
- April 3, 2012 @ 01:00 PM by Michael May
Bar Harbor Batman arrested over April Fool’s joke gone wrong
Bar Harbor Batman
If you’re one of those men who just wants to watch the world burn, it’s probably better if you don’t post about it on Facebook.
Maine’s Bangor Daily News reports that 35-year-old Christopher Schwartz, the self-styled Bar Harbor Batman — “A Beacon of light in a bleak and otherwise dismal world” — was arrested Sunday after posting a Joker-esque April Fool’s prank demanding “payment of 1 million Dollars or I will Blow up the Hospital. Once the funds are secured, Private Message me for Further Instruction.”
Although Schwartz reportedly tried to explain to police that the post was a joke, he was taken to Hancock County Jail on a charge of terrorizing, and later released on $1,000 bail. It seems Wayne Manor is located uncomfortably close to Mount Desert Island Hospital, leading the Bar Harbor Police Department to take the post seriously.
- April 2, 2012 @ 01:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Jon Morris brings cuteness to Gotham with Little Batman
Artist “Calamity” Jon Morris brings you a Gotham-sized level of cuteness in his recent Little Batman strips. Done for fun (and sometimes for charity), Morros’ strips show the brighter side of a rich guy dressing up like a bat.
Morris has done several pin-ups, comic strips and even fun crossovers with Little Batman.You can see them all — and see new ones as he posts them — over on his tumblr blog.
- March 29, 2012 @ 10:00 AM by Chris Arrant