Comic Book Resources

H. R. Giger's Batmobile design

...would have looked something like this:

Batmobile by H.R. Geiger

The essential Super Punch has more images and information on Giger's rejected designs for the Batmobile from Batman Forever.

Halloween Reading | Paul Maybury's Aliens strip

Aliens by Paul Maybury

Artist Paul Maybury posted a short "fan" comic set in the Aliens universe, along with a bunch of other cool random art, over on his LiveJournal.

Via

Batman's new villain says let's go crazy, let's get nuts!

Batman & Robin #6

DC's The Source blog shows us Frank Quitely's cover to Batman & Robin #6, which features Batman's "most dangerous, psychopathic, murderous foe," The Flamingo, according to editor Michael Marts.

Now all the motorcycle-riding killer needs is a string of one-word named "apprentices" of the female persuasion ...

Six by 6 by 6 | Six vampires we'd like to share a drink with

The Count

Editor's Note: As mentioned earlier today, we're celebrating Halloween all this week here at Robot 666. Here's the first of six Six by 6 columns with that theme, by guest contributors Tony Trov and Johnny Zito. They are the creators of Black Cherry Bombshells, the girl-on-zombie web comic from Zuda Comics. This October saw the debut of their newest title, LaMorte Sisters, about a vampire orphanage run by strict nuns.

By Tony Trov & Johnny Zito

(In no particular order)

1. The Count

Tony Trov: The Count is a mysterious force on Sesame Street. He has these neurotic ticks that makes him really intense. The Count counts things, even when there's just one. His math OCD makes him great at figuring out the tip.

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Frank Miller, conservative comment-thread commentator

Frank Miller and Eva Mendes (photo by UGO.com's Dr. Know)

He's one of the most influential comics creators of all time (and my personal favorite, might I add), but Frank Miller has kept a pretty low profile since the critical and box-office failure of his adaptation of Will Eisner's The Spirit last Christmas. He's reportedly continued to work on scripts for his Jim Lee collaboration All Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder and the sequel to the Sin City film adaptation he co-directed with Robert Rodriguez; and of course there's his long-gestating graphic novel that may or may not be about Batman fighting al Qaeda and may or may not be called Holy Terror, Batman! But whatever he's been up to, he's been up to it incommunicado, turning down requests for interviews.

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Straight for the art: Vice's Where the Wild Things Are tribute gallery

Sammy Harkham's Where the Wild Things Are

We've said it once before, but it bears repeating: Vice Magazine has commissioned a murderer's row of 24 alternative comics artists--including Sammy Harkham, Tony Millionaire, Matt Furie, Lisa Hanawalt, Jordan Crane, Benjamin Marra, and Vanessa Davis--for a hugely impressive comics tribute to Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze's long-anticipated movie adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic storybook. The movie comes out today, and all 24 artists' interpretations are now live. Let the wild rumpus start!

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On Stranger Tides author discusses next Pirates of the Caribbean movie

On Stranger Tides

Back at the D23 event in September, Disney announced they were doing a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, subtitled "On Stranger Tides." This caused several people to wonder aloud, "Hey, does this have anything to do with the 1988 Tim Powers book of the same name?"

Yes, it does. Geoff Boucher with the L.A. Times catches up with Powers, who says Disney optioned the book almost three years ago. His book is about a group of pirates, including Blackbeard, searching for the Fountain of Youth ... which viewers of the third Pirates movie may remember being mentioned at the end of that movie:

"I've watched all the movies several times, of course, and I think the clear thing they would use is the trip to the Fountain of Youth," Powers said. "My main character doesn't overlap with Jack Sparrow at all [in personality or circumstance]; they're totally different characters. I suppose they might overlap the Geoffrey Rush character Barbossa and Blackbeard. The only thing I feel certain they will hold on to is the Fountain of Youth since they telegraphed that at the end of the last movie."

The movie is scheduled to come out in the summer of 2011.

Happy 40th Birthday, Monty Python!

"And there was much rejoicing": Terry Gilliam art from Monty Python and the Holy Grail

It was forty years ago today that the world got slightly sillier: Today marks the 40th anniversary of the airing of the first episode of the seminal sketch-comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus on October 5th, 1969. Greatly beloved by nerds everywhere (God only knows how I'd have gotten through middle school without my two-cassette copy of The Final Rip-Off), the troupe—comprising John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin—has a deeper comic-book connection than simply the shared interests of many of its fans. For starters, there's their send-up of Superman in the sketch "Bicycle Repair Man," which takes a Twilight Zone twist on the Superman concept and plays it for laughs:

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Go look: Gorey's home

Edward Gorey

Filmmaker Chris Seufert is putting together a documentary about the late illustrator and cartoonist Edward Gorey and has a posted a Flickr set of photos taken from the author's house. You know, in case you were wondering what the home of a guy who would write "The Gashleycrumb Tales" would look like.

Next up on the DCU DVD sked: Crisis on Two Earths

One thing I didn't mention in my review of Superman/Batman Public Enemies yesterday was that it came with a preview for the next DC DVD, Crisis on Two Earths. The story is the old evil superheroes from alternate earth versus our guys and seems heavily inspired by this book, as well as lots of old Pre-Crisis Silver Age tales. James Woods, Billy Baldwin and Chris Noth are among the celebrity voices. You can learn more from the video below, which I ganked from Topless Robot.

Ride the Supernova Cycle to Where the Wild Things Are

by Ben Marra

In anticipation of the upcoming Spike Jonze film, Vice Magazine is hosting a blog where various artists are offering their interpretation of the classic kid's book Where the Wild Things Are. Currently you can see artwork by Dan Zettwoch, Benjamin Marra (above, offering a Jack Kirby-inspired trip into space) and Ben Jones, with Jordan Crane, Matthew Thurber, Ted May, Tony Millionaire and many more on deck.

Via Sean T. Collins

Just say no Kal-el: A review of 'Superman/Batman: Public Enemies'

Seriously, look at those necks

Superman/Batman: Public Enemies is a new direct-to-DVD film set in an alternate DC universe where everybody takes ungodly amounts of steroids.

Seriously, that's the only conclusion I can come to as to why every single character in this movie, even the civilians, has a neck -- when they have a neck at all -- that's wider than their goddamned skull. Seriously, their heads look like they've been bolted on. And that's to say nothing of the endless oceans of muscles that ripple across everyone's bodies. The entire planet is obviously juiced to the max.

But the display of over the top physiques really shouldn't surprise me. At it's heart, Public Enemies is your typical uber-macho buddy action movie, and just as dumb and sexist as most of them to boot. It's the comic nerd's version of Tango and Cash.

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Straight for the art | Let's go to the movies, part 2

art from Leslie, My Name Is Evil

Artist J. Bone also did some time in movieland recently, creating artwork for a film called Leslie, My Name Is Evil. The art he produced is for "a Jack Chick-like tract detailing the seduction of the main character, Leslie, by a beatnik who gives her LSD and an unwanted pregnancy." The film debuted at the Toronto Film Festival.

Straight for the art | Let's go to the movies

Eli by Chris Weston

As we mentioned back in July, artist Chris Weston did production artwork for the upcoming film The Book of Eli starring Denzel Washington. Now on his blog, Weston has started share some of the artwork he did, stories from his time in New Mexico working on the film and the fact that he's also worked on some webisodes that tie into the movie. Go have a read.

Confirmed: Jack Kirby's heirs want a piece of Spider-Man

Amazing Fantasy #15

Spider-Man is, indeed, one of the Marvel characters listed in the 45 copyright-termination notices sent last week by the heirs of Jack Kirby.

With Sony Pictures among the list of recipients -- along with Marvel, Disney, Fox, Universal and others -- it seemed likely that Kirby's four children were seeking a portion of the copyright to the wall-crawler (Sony holds the movie rights to the character in perpetuity). Now The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision blog confirms that after reviewing termination notices for Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four.

Wait. Didn't Stan Lee and Steve Ditko create Spider-Man? Well ... yes. However, Kirby was clearly involved in the early stages. The nature, and extent, of that involvement isn't quite so clear.

As Borys Kit and Matthew Belloni recount at Heat Vision, Lee initially approached Kirby to help develop the concept and draw the initial story in 1962's Amazing Fantasy #15. For one reason or another -- Lee has said he didn't like Kirby's muscular, or "too heroic," take on Spider-Man -- Ditko was tapped to draw the story, with Kirby providing the cover.

But some accounts assert that Kirby contributed elements from an unpublished character called Silver Spider that he developed in the 1950s with longtime collaborator Joe Simon. Others say Silver Spider became The Fly, a character created by Simon and Kirby for Archie Comics' Red Circle imprint.

According to the Heat Vision report, Kirby's heirs seek to recapture a share of the copyright to characters and story elements that appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15 -- Aunt May, Uncle Ben, Flash Thompson, etc. -- plus characters and concepts like J. Jonah Jameson, the Daily Bugle, Chameleon, the Tinkerer and the Lizard, most of which debuted months later in issues of The Amazing Spider-Man. (The Daily Bugle first appeared in Fantastic Four #2.)

If the Kirby children are successful, they would reclaim their father's portion of the copyright to key characters and concepts from the Marvel Universe as early as 2017 for the Fantastic Four. In most cases, that would seem to mean co-ownership with Marvel, as Lee agreed to waive claim to any of the characters.  With Spider-Man, one-third ownership could be possible if the Kirbys were to prevail yet the judge recognized Ditko's interests.

Although Disney asserts it "fully considered" the potential copyright claims before it launched its $4-billion purchase of Marvel, this move by the Kirby children surely complicates matters. If nothing else, it provides additional fuel for those who already had criticized Disney for wading into a tangle of licensing agreements that could prevent the House of Mouse from making movies based on Spider-Man, the X-Men, Fantastic Four and other central Marvel properties for years (last link via Dirk Deppey).