Are you ready? If you're ready I'm ready man.

PVP points out the online version of the 24 Hour Comic, 100 Panels in 24 Hours.

Captain Planet, but creepy. Funny thing is, I would probably buy that. Via Franklin's Findings.

Tokyo Pop plans TV ads. I plan on writing a column on this as well as advertising and how it relates to comics later this weekend.

The 4th Rail reviews ASTRO CITY/ARROWSMITH #1, BATMAN: GOTHAM KNIGHTS #52, RICH JOHNSTON'S HOLED UP #1, FRACTION #1, UNCANNY X-MEN #443, SUPERMAN: SECRET IDENTITY #4, DAREDEVIL #59, THE GHOULY BOYS #1, RUNAWAYS #14, TEMPTATION TPB, as well as Snapshots and Quick Critiques.

Caleb Gerard at Comic World News talks about writer changes he's like to see. Basically it's the old dream team game where you match creators with the books you think they should write.

Also at Comic World News, Ed Cunard talks about convention sketchbooks and gives mine a mention, which I forgot to post last week. I'll make up for that mistake right now. Behold Aaron Sowd's (who can currently be seen inking Robin) Dark Beetle.



SBC's Silver Soapbox discusses comic book elitism.

Moviehole.net has news on The Vega Brothers, Terminator 3.5, Peter Jackson's Lovely Bones, Paul Hogan's desire to make more movies, an interview with Man-Thing's Ian Bliss, the American Gothic movie, and a new Trek movie. Whew.

Moving on over to CBR, James Sine has posted the latest Comic Pimp and this time he talks to Uncle Lar about Planet of the Capes.

Want a sneak peek at the look for the Arkham Asylum in the new Batman movie? Superhero Hype provides. While you're there check out the Christian Bale interview.

Newsarama has plenty to talk about including MV Creations moving back to Image, a preview of Noble Causes: Extended Family #2, as well as Ad House and Scott Morse.

Meanwhile the Pulse covers Aaron Lopresti 's Excalibur and a Tarantino Graphic Novel?

Comics 2 Film weighs in with Rebecca Romijn as the Black Widow and Puffy AmiYumi's Teen Titans "Music Video".

Make sure you check out the very impressive artwork and inspirational text over at Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba's site. Each image they upload seems to be better than the last. It's a wonder they aren't on a book for the big two. Very nive work. They do have an 8 page story in Autobiographix which was nominated for an Eisner. Go pick it up.

And with that done, I leave you with these wise words from Rick Springfield:

There's times when real people let me down,
when the temperature falls to zero.
I curl up by the fire with a good book,
and for awhile I am a superhero.
You really need to be a superhero.
'Cause many times people will hurt you
and try to mess you 'round
And anyway, my comic book heroes won't let me down.

Get Your Link On.

Atari produces Paddle TV Games to follow it's Joystick Games.

I want this clock.

Cool online Flash based comics at 48 Vignettes About Everything.

Macaulay Culkin is Saved! by Mandy Moore.

I would buy one. I Robot Now. Good promotional job. Ads are in for trailers between this Resident Evil 2 and Eternal Sunshine.

This sounds like an interesting read.

The Accidental Video Game Porn Archive (work safe, no actual porn involved)

The secret behind google's pagerank revealed.

Now you too can learn to swear in 150 languages.

The Beastie Boys are finally releasing a new album. To The Five Boroughs.

Want more secure DVD's? How about Paper DVD's? What?

Where we're going we don't need roads!

Interblog Dialogue (to steal from Ken)

Dave at the Intermittent says:

I'm old enough to remember when there was no comics advertising to speak of. No internet. No Wizard. News alerts were limited to Bullpen Bulletins. New comics were discovered on the stands by happenstances.

Comics sold really well then, evidently.

Today, by comparison, we're drowning in information about comics. There are multiple magazines devoted to medium. There is a semi-credible set of folks who publicly review comics. The blogosphere. Diamond information is available months ahead of time, and many comic shops make hard copies of the Diamond catalog available to customers. Information is out there. And the comics fanbase--aging, mostly computer literate--should have easy access to it.

So how can it be a failure of advertising when good comics die? How many of the hundred thousand or so regular comics readers out haven't heard that Sleeper is a good comic? Can there really be that many? This isn't snark; I'm really curious. Is the problem really, pace Steven Grant, that folks aren't finding out about good comics....or is it that the people who make up the bulk of the direct market simply have very different ideas then the comics cognoscenti as to what constitutes a "good comic?"

I suspect it might be the latter. And this is not a slam on the direct market; the market is what it is. And while I'd love it if tons of others shared my loves, I don't see divergent tastes as evidence of moral failure. Different strokes, and all that. But pinpointing why a book like WildC.A.T.S. v. 3.0 didn't sell is important, if only so its mistakes can be avoided (assuming that's possible). Maybe a lack of advertising really is to blame, at least in part. Before we accept that as received wisdom, though, let's make sure it's true.

Ken at Ringwood then responded:

Dave's argument is based on the assumption that every single comic book fan is tapped into the blogosphere, news sites, and Wizard magazine on a regular basis. I say this isn't so. How many regulars do you know on message boards and blogs? Maybe a thousand, in all? Two thousand? The major blogs (such as Fanboy Rampage) get about 800 unique visitors a day -- a miniscule percentage of the estimated couple hundred thousand comic book readers.

We are not all tapped into the pulse of the industry, due in part to sheer ignorance of the matter or willful avoidance. I would suggest that the online talkers, like us, are the extreme minority of fandom.

The rest just don't know about Rocket Comics. Or Oni. Or Avatar. The DM stores don't advertise them and in many cases can't afford to give them shelf space. So they're not talking about them, and their shoppers never learn. The "the market is what it is" argument presupposes that every single comic book buyer knows everything there is to know and acts on it accordingly. I do not believe this is the case. They just need exposure.

He goes on to issue a call to activism BEFORE a book is cancelled.

I think they both have valid points.

1) Advertising can be to blame. Marvel and other comic companies are horrible in reaching the demographics of their books with appropriate ads. I even had a post about this a while back. It doesn't help that much to advertise in the comics themselves about things like Spider-man and Batman. Everyone knows about these titles. Sometimes you find ads in Batman about Batman. How does that make sense? You already bought the book. Comics should be using like titles to sell like titles. Put ads for Eye of the Storm titles in Vertigo. Put ads for the MAX titles in ICON. Put ads for Green Lantern in Superman. You also have to go outside the comics themselves for advertising though. Most of the time the ads preach to the already converted. That doesn't do any good. We'll look at this months Hawkman written by Brubaker and featuring a Noir story.

The first ad is for Game Riot a video game party for the X-box. Ok that makes sense. Both comics and games try to hit the same demographic. Do we see any ads in video game magazines for comics though? Not really. Why not trade space instead of charging?
2nd ad is for Wario Ware. More video games.
3rd ad is for DarkSteel Magic the Gathering Online. More video games.
4th ad. Anime. Still fits.
5th. City of Heroes. Game.
6th. Truth PSA. Geared toward preventing smoking. Fits.
7th. Duel Masters. Video Game.
8th. Ummm...Zombie Butts from Uranus. Kids book. Way off.
DC's ad whats new page. Focuses on these books. Action Comics (been promoted everywhere), HERO (that's 1 book that could use the promotion) Touch (that's 2), The Question (promoted everywhere already, but will probably be lost in all the Superman books, 3) Identity Crisis (no way, everyone knows about this), Toe Tags (never even heard of this so that's 4), and a Batman/Catwoman book.
9th. An ad for a Transformers Video game
10th. Milk.

So what do we have. 10 ads that promote another industry. No "house" ads. No support of other books besides one page which you have to "read thoroughly" to find out about and nothing else. That's ad support? Why isn't there a Sleeper and Gotham Central ad in this book? It would be perfect since it's "the same exact team of creators."

2) You know why Sleeper is still around? It's not because it's a good book. It's because Brubaker and Phillips went to bat for the series. Brubaker did promotions whenever and wherever he could. He even offered a money back guarantee. The fans, and Dc to an extent, saw how much the creators cared for the book and responded in kind with more promotion and more sales as well as a strong devotion to the book.

Online presence by the creators helps. In these days without letter columns it's our connection to the creators. Is it any wonder that Bendis, Millar, Brubaker, etc. are all well received now? No because they go out and sell themselves. That also sells the work.

3) In the old days ( I sound like an old man) when we didn't have the internet news about comics wasn't as readily available and the comics sold better in some cases, that's true. However, you have to keep in mind that information works both ways. There is good information and there is bad information. With all the information on the internet a buyer could be LESS likely to pick up a book and try it if there is a ton of information about the book online and a reader thinks it's not his/her type of book. In the old days the reader would pick up the book and try it, now the reader hits a couple of sites, reads some reviews, and decides not to buy it. That's one negative of all the online news and information. The inverse is true as well, someone can see that they like a book due to the reviews and pick it up.

4) Reader apathy. It could be possible that readers have been "burned" one to many times by cancellations, bad stories, crossovers, or any other factors and don't want to take the chance to try something new. Comics aren't like a novel. They are an investment in time and money. Why invest if the story won't be finished or is interuppted halfway through with another story from another book?

5) The Direct Market. The Direct Market was created for typical superheroes and that's what it does best. Most comics retailers order in DM stores are superhero comics because the reader knows that's where you go to get that material. That's why it sells. Not providing this would be like McDonalds not having hamburgers. They can carry other things like Ice Cream and even Tacos, but that doesn't mean they will ever sell as well as the hamburgers. They don't need to either. Now if people don't order the Tacos should McDonalds still make them? Why should they?

6) Demographics. Most people in comics today grew up on typical Superhero comics. It's what we are used to. Some of us also grew up with Underground and Indie comics though it's a much smaller group because it's "underground". If these comics were published to make a ton of money I would say half the audience they had originally would leave the title. Simply on the fact that it went mainstream. There is an unspoken coolness with knowing about something no one else knows about. It also feels cool to tell people about your coolness for knowing about it. It's a catch 22 for those books. The more people that know about them, the less cool they are to their supporters in general.

There are more but I'll cut it at 6 for now. Feel free to comment.

Eat More People also has some thoughts on the subject.

Where is My Mind?

Ok not a lot of time right now so I'm going to do some quick link blogging. This time it will be mainly headlines. I hope to get to write a little more about a couple of things I saw around the net last night as well as the normal "What I Thought" column a little later in the day. So, without further ado...

Darren Aronofsky Directing Watchmen

Ken at Ringwood responds to Dave at The Intermittent, read the comments too.

The Pixies, The Fine Line Music Café, Minneapolis, April 13 Concert Review

Clifford Meth talks about Stan Lee.

Demo #7 Preview

Comic Book Numbers here, here, and here.

ICv2 Picks Manga Top 50

"The Losers" artist Jock is working from his home studio in England on "style sheets" for Nolan and Bale in the new Batman movie.

The Pulse talks to Michael Lark

David Hayter to rewrite Iron Man script

Sherard Jackson Talks Assembly

CBR talks to Jim Lee and B. Clay Moore.

Harrison Ford to star in "Wrong Element"

Bond producers confirm they are looking for a new Bond star.

"Day of the Dead” is on the fast-track with Richard Rubinstein to produce.

More to come later.

An Excerpt from Boy Wonder:My Life In Tights

Remember the Batusi? The dance Adam West's Batman did that John Travolta tries to immitate in Pulp Fiction? Well here is an excerpt from Burt Ward's tell all book on the origin of the dance.

"Adam elaborated ad infinitum and ad nauseam about all the sexual symbolism and double meanings that he had secretly injected into the dance. At 21, I didn't catch half of them. He prided himself that no one caught what he was doing and with any luck it would slip past the censors."

"...he begins with a series of hillarious frontal bumps tantalizing her. I wonder if he did those same bumps and grinds the night before to tantalize his date.

Then he raises his hand in a weaving, snakelike motion on either side of his cowl to indicate his removal of his mask. His hands recoil and snake up and down, simulating the removal of his clothes and, as he loves to say, his growing serpent. He then raises his cape, Dracula style, to enfold it around her and draw her to him. This is a control move to show how he overpowers her, how her defenses and her will to resist him crumble in realization of the unavoidable taking of her body., and how she inevitably succumbs to the massive thrust of his will. Finally he throws his head back and forth rapidly, indicating a climactic sexual moment where he is on his back and she is riding bronco on his saddle horn. I do have to give Adam an A for imagination."

Adam West was a horn dog.

Check out Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights by Burt Ward for more of the story behind Batman and Robin.

Unique and Forgotten.

Are you unique? Take the quiz to find out more.

Laura at Bloggity Blog Blog Blog pointed me to an interesting story called The Forgotten.

After an exotic dancer named Mindy Flowers is found dead of a massive heroin overdose in a seedy South Philly motel room - her hands tied together and a syringe still stuck in her arm - a heroin addict named James Reynard stands accused of the murder.

Reynard is awaiting his trial with the evidence going overwhelmingly against him... Until in steps a solemn, graying investigator with the ability to alter memories, emerging from the past to uncover the truth about the Mindy Flowers murder and prove Reynard's innocence by any means necessary.

Meanwhile, at the University of Pennsylvania, an ambitious young student named Sara Dawning vows to track down an enigmatic caped hero who disappeared over 20 years ago, known to the public only as Mr. Mystery. She finds a friend in her cause at a local newspaper called Hero Times, which once flourished reporting news of the local superhero activity... but has since dwindled to almost zero circulation in a city where the heroes and the deeds of old have been forgotten.

Thus the forgotten; shattered lives begins, a return to the to the action, mystery, corruption and dark alleys of Philadelphia as a trade paperback collection of the acclaimed 2002 series written by Jareth Grealish and Evan Young.

The 128-page black & white trade paperback retails for $11.95. It is due to ship to retailers in July, 2003.

Linkblogging R Us

The first thing I saw when arriving at work this morning is a link to this in my e-mail. I don't know if I've recovered yet. I'm still seeing that horrible glow from his Tron costume.

On to better subjects The Pulse has an informative interview with John Romita Jr. about The Gray Area.

Newsarama announces Ivan Reis' two year exclusive deal with DC. Congrats. If you aren't familiar with Reis' beautiful work on Superman in Action Comics then check out this image.

While your at Newsarama you should read the interview with the wonderful Devin Grayson as she explains why she's putting Nightwing through hell.

Almost Collossus and Conqueror Worm look to be the next stories headed for the big screen in Hellboy 2 or an anime series.

Ever wanted to take a look at Leonardo's Notebooks and other works that you may never see? Well now you can thanks to The British Library.

Tied of being told when and where to smoke? Then the Nicosphere 3000 is for you!!

First look at Darth Vader on DVD in September.

What's your birthday color? I'm a Feldspar myself.

Ringwood serves up two excellent reviews for AiT/PlanetLar's Johnny Dynamite and Sky Ape.

The Panel tries to determine the best comic for George Bush.

Franklin's Findings points us to the kick ass Annotated Kill Bill.

The Harvey Award Nominees are up.

Steven Grant speaks on everyone's favorite topic lately. The cancellation of Wildcats and Stormwatch.

The fact is: cancellations are a fact of life in the comics business, and all cancellations upset someone. (Besides the talent involved, I mean.) It's easy to rave about how good a book was and how it didn't deserve cancellation, and y'know what? It probably didn't. Hell, I've been there. When I was doing X-MAN at Marvel, it got big raves and I still get e-mails from people telling me how much they liked the book. I appreciate it, but the time to bring it up was when the book was being published, and I'm not the one who should've been told. Neither are Joe Casey or Micah Wright, the respective writers of WILDCATS 3.0 and STORMWATCH:ACHILLES. Or the talent behind any book. Not that we don't like to hear it.

But the people you should be telling are publishers, editors, retailers and other readers.

Once again I agree with the man.

Speaking of good books that need more readers, Hawaiian Dick is being made into a movie starring Johnny Knoxville.

New from Jeff Parker and Steve Leiber, The Adventures of Little Porn Boy!(work safe folks, it's really a Convention report.)

Covers for Marvel Titles in July

Some impressive covers on Marvel's July Solicitations:

Steve Epting does covers for Thor as well as Captain America and The Falcon



Greg Land does a Punisher/Wolverine cover



Mike Mayhew turns in an impressive Pulse cover with the original Green Goblin



I enjoyed the retro look of Dave Johnson's Captain America cover



Maleev does a couple of strong covers on Daredevil and The Silver Surfer



Oh and I was right about the villain in the exiles



And finally Steve McNiven turns in another nice cover to District X



That's just the stuff that jumped out at me.

While your checking out the solicits over at CBR take a look at the interview with Robert Kirkman about his run on Cap.

Work Pays the Bills

Sorry it took so long to update today, but sometimes I actually have to work. Today I had to teach two people how to make templates for some multimedia CDs we're producing. I think I might have blown their minds, but anyway, it's lunch time and I'm on break so get ready for some linkblogging.

Batgirl artist James Jean tapped to help with Batman Begins art.

Jim Lee talks about meeting Halle Berry and sketching her in the (still awful even as a Jim Lee drawing) Catwoman costume over at Newsarama.

Comic Book Resources talks about Magnus Robot Fighter.

Augie has a new Pipeline column up.

The Hurting discusses the DC event known as Millenium.

ICv2 tells us of Bruce Willis' upcoming role in Sin City, that of Hartigan, the hardboiled cop with the bum ticker.

Check this out. A liquid thats not wet.

Freaky.

I'm thinking about buying one of these cool Zippo Lighters and I don't even smoke.

Apple laughs in Real Media's face. I would too if I was in their position.

Tarantino's "Vega Brothers" is a go according to Madsen.

Remember those cool anime Daft Punk videos a while back? Well now you can buy the toys.

Amazon launches their new search engine, A9.

Cool thread over at the Comics Journal where people are posting CD art done by cartoonists.

It is used to implant a GPS-microchip in the body of a human being, using a high powered sniper rifle as the long distance injector. The microchip will enter the body and stay there, causing no internal damage, and only a very small amount of physical pain to the target. It will feel like a mosquito-bite lasting a fraction of a second. At the same time a digital camcorder with a zoom-lense fitted within the scope will take a high-resolution picture of the target. This picture will be stored on a memory card for later image-analysis.

Idiots.

Someone let their cat have a blog.

Here is a nice article on Colossus Comics.

The Baltimore Sun asks "Where are the women in comics?"

Tech Central fom The Star Online talks about Malaysian comics.

The Times of India look at why kids don't buy comics anymore.

Legomancer talks about Comics and Hollywood and how it's not necessarily a good thing.

Over at Pop Culture Gadabout, Bill Sherman reviews Astronauts in Trouble.

Completely Futile talks about the much hated Clone Saga.

And finally here is what I'm buying this week if things go as planned (I may save my cash for the weekend as an old comic shop is going out of business and selling all their stock at half off or more):

DARK HORSE
NOV030024 DH GOON ROUGH STUFF TP $12.95
DEC030058 LONE #6 $2.99
DEC030018 STAR WARS EMPIRE #18 $2.99

DC COMICS
FEB040240 ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #627 $2.50
FEB040291 ARROWSMITH ASTRO CITY (RES) $2.95
FEB040221 BATMAN GOTHAM KNIGHTS #52 $2.95
FEB040257 FRACTION #1 $2.50
FEB040261 HAWKMAN #27 $2.50
FEB040307 HUMAN TARGET #9 (MR) $2.95
FEB040277 OUTSIDERS #11 $2.50
FEB040238 ROBIN #125 $2.25
FEB040242 SUPERMAN BATMAN #9 $2.95
FEB040248 SUPERMAN SECRET IDENTITY #4 (Of 4) $5.95
FEB040283 WONDER WOMAN #203 $2.25

IMAGE
JAN041306 MINISTRY OF SPACE OMNIBUS $4.95
FEB041357 STRYKEFORCE #1 (Of 5) $2.99
JAN041324 WALKING DEAD #6 (MR) $2.95

MARVEL
FEB041585 CABLE DEADPOOL #2 (RES) $2.99
FEB041613 CAPTAIN MARVEL #22 $2.99
FEB041572 DAREDEVIL #59 $2.99
FEB041609 FANTASTIC FOUR #512 $2.25
JAN041578 NEW MUTANTS #12 $2.99
FEB041583 NEW X-MEN #156 $2.25
FEB041612 RUNAWAYS #14 $2.99
FEB041578 ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #57 $2.25
FEB041581 UNCANNY X-MEN #443 $2.25
FEB041563 WOLVERINE #14 $2.25

COMICS
FEB042025 24 HOUR COMICS VOL 1 TP $11.95
FEB042553 LOVE FIGHTS VOL 1 TP (MR) $14.95
MAR042308 RICH JOHNSTONS HOLED UP HOMELAND SECURITY ED #1 (Of 3) (MR) $3.50

Whew...hope that catches me up a little. Eventually I'll be able to write a few of the articles and reviews I need to get to. Enjoy.

Brian Wood's Life During Wartime

Ad posted on Brian Wood's Delphi Forum

I don't believe it's settled anywhere yet and is still being shopped around, but I sure would love to see this at AiT/PlanetLar. Wood's stuff seems to get more love and care there and they seem to do a good job with their trade packaging. As Larry Young says on Wood's forum, I could see Wildstorm picking this up. It would look so nice next to my AiT Channel Zero and Jennie One trades though. I want a poster of this for my office too.

City of Heroes Beta Overview Part 2

Continuing where we left off in the last episode, here we are at the costume creation screen. First off there are a "ton" of choices to make. We can customize the head by choosing from a full mask, a mask with hair, no mask, pointy ears, a hat, a helmet, full helmets, medieval helmets, and standard. Then there are choices below that as we can choose different faces, hairstyles, skin color, hair color, etc. You do this for each part of the body. You can make just about any costume you want from a the suits and military style clothing of the Wildstorm universe to the costumes of early Marvel and DC to the pulp heroes before them. The only problem with this step is that City of Heroes currently can not handle capes or trenchcoats. They are hoping they can add them at a later date, but they won't be available for launch. The lack of capes is dwarfed by the sheer number of choices available to you at the onset. Take your time on this step as, currently, there is no way system to modify your costume once it's created.

After creating your costume it's time to pick a name, origin, and battle cry for your character. I'll use a character of mine as an example of the character creation system.

I had an idea for a character involved with Hollywood and politics. I wanted him to be a huge muscle bound glitzy guy with much like Wonder Man from Marvel. So having that idea in mind I came to the first step. How did he get his powers? Well I wanted him to be a genetically modified hero so I chose Science as his origin. As stated before I wanted him to be a huge musclebound guy that can give and take a lot of damage so a Tanker is a perfect fit for the character. Now I've finished the first screen and I have a Science Tanker. Next up I choose the powers. I chose Superstrength for his primary power and under that I chose Jab so he can pummel his foes. I wouldn't want him to get all bloody like a street fighter what with his good looks and all, so I chose Invulnerability as his secondary power which reduces the damage done to him and is always on. Then I came to the cool part. How do I want this guy to look? Well I want the guy to look huge and muscular so I chose the Huge body class and amped up the muscle on the slider below. I also made the character about 7 foot tall as I wanted him to be physically imposing. On the next screen I gave him White hair to make him look distinguished, much like the character Supreme. I thought the rectangle glasses gave him a Hollywood look so I kept those. I then decided on a color scheme. Thinking back to Wonder Man I always liked his colors so I gave my character a bright red and black costume. I wanted him to stand out in a crowd so I chose the shiny black metallic tights with red stripes running down the sides of the arms. I wanted to make give the character some street cred as well so I gave him some leather pants with a lot of straps and a nice leather belt. I kept the stripe motif and ran it down his pants and boots as well. Finally I thought he needed something more on his chest so I gave him a little globe symbol that looked reminded me of a movie studio logo. Then it was time to think up a name. Well first I tried the obvious Super names, those were all taken, same with Ultra, and others like it. Hmmmm...What name brings to mind film and comics? That's when I thought of the name Metropolis. There are three things you think of when hearing that word; one thing is a city, the next is Superman's home, and third is the film. So that became his name. I decided to make him vain so I made his rally cry, "Are the camera's rolling?!?" and made up a quick origin about how the Hollywood studios genetically engineered him to be a star both in the superhero world, as well as in the glitz and glamor of film and politics. Metropolis was born.

Tune in next time as we enter the world of Paragon City and explore the combat system.

Comic Book Happenings

Rachel Gluckstern's column Quoth the Raiven at Comic World News focuses on Revamps, New Directions and Mishaps.

"So instead readers are subjected to retreads of the same storylines over and over again in all the books. How many times have the Scarlet Witch and the Vision broken up? How many times has Peter Parker quit being Spider-Man? And just how many people is Magneto related to? Trying to preserve the concepts demanded by the fans while also trying to strike out in new directions creates tensions and too often pleases no one. "

Comic Book News also has a new Spin Doctor column up. This time focusing on the Beyonder. This is my favorite of the remakes.

But then over at Ninth Art, Bulent Yusuf looks at the positives and negatives of the celebrity writer in comics.

"Hopefully, this obsession with celebrity writers is just a fad, and like all fads, it will soon go away. When a reader picks up a comic book, they deserve a decent story written by dedicated craftsmen, and not the vanity project of an odd-jobbing Hollywood exile.

And if it doesn't? Well, perhaps then we'll see the day when a schmuck like Ben Affleck guest writes DOCTOR STRANGE: SORCEROR SUPREME. Or perhaps the Comics Code Authority stamp will be replaced by a badge that frantically implores us to catch the film, watch the TV show, eat the Happy Meal, play with the toys, and, of course, buy the t-shirt."

Meanwhile, Silver Bullet Comics talks to creator Brian Bendis about Marvel's new Icon imprint. Another All The Rage column hits the streets too.

Elektra's mentor Stick comes back from the dead and suprisingly enough he looks like Terrance Stamp.

Swing on over to the Spawn site to see the new Aliens vs. Predator toys which hit stores in time for the new movie.

Did you ever wonder what Smallville's Tom Welling would look like dressed in the Superman duds? Well Alex Ross and Superhero Hype are here to help.

Comic Book Resources has some interesting tid bits this morning as they regale us with magnificent Tim Bradstreet art from the Punisher, a new The Comic Pimp column focusing on bad things happening to good books, and an interview with Stuart Immomen about his Secret Identity.

Finally over at Newsarama Ale Garza stops buy to tell us a little about the art in the new Starjammers series from Marvel, while over at the Pulse we learn about the latest crossover to hit Batman.

And as for here, well I originally planned to write an review/article about Larry Young's True Facts, a column he once had at Savant Magazine, and is now available in book form, but what did I do? I went off to work today and left the book at home. So expect to see an article in the next couple of days.