Batman has really let himself go

Walking Dead Casts Rick! -- Premiere in October?

 

 
Just over a week ago, AMC greenlit a six-episode start to the television adaptation of The Walking Dead, the hit comic book series by Robert Kirkman which has been going strong with monthly issues ever since its start in 2003.


On the casting front, Jonny Lee Miller (Eli Stone) was rumored for the role of Rick Grimes but we now know that Frank Darabont has chosen British actor Andrew Lincoln.  Lincoln may not be a recognizable face (yet) but he’s done quite a bit of British TV work

“Dead” creator and writer Robert Kirkman said:

“Andrew Lincoln, wow — what an amazing find this guy is,” declared Kirkman in a press statement. “Writing Rick Grimes month after month in the comic series, I had no idea he was an actual living breathing human being and yet he is. I couldn’t be more thrilled with how this show is coming together.”

The Walking Dead was won in a bidding war by AMC last August and it’s been on the fast-track ever since, with a pilot being announced earlier this year. The series officially begins production in June and is set to premiere in October during AMC’s Fearfest event.

Going out with Red Robin

Jim Lee's newest iPad sketch - Wonder Woman

DC Co-Publisher Jim Lee put on a clinic today, showing how to make Wonder Woman on the iPad using Sketchbook Pro, an app made specifically for Apple's new device, and nothing but his fingers as an input device.

Total time it took Jim Lee to create the lastest in his series of iPad masterpieces:  80 minutes while sitting in the chair getting his haircut.

The Art of Jim Lee (Marvel Masters)

Funny Comic Book Tweet

ProfessorZenith (@ProfessorZenith) 4/6/10 5:46 PM Anti-life justifies my banana hammock. Self=Darkseid.

Barack Obama Considers Green Lantern Ring for US Military

President Barack Obama tours a secret US Military factory where they are trying to develop Green Lantern rings.  I'd join the military tomorrow if it came with a Green Lantern Ring!

Batman wins this year's DC/Marvel Tournament

Batman beats Spiderman in Tournament Finals

Out of more than 4,000 votes cast, the winner is...

• Batman (Bruce Wayne) 2,314 - 55%
• Spider-Man (Peter Parker) 1,900 - 45%

 Full bracket is availble here - http://tinyurl.com/yc496z5

 

On his way to the win, Batman beat Black Adam, Lex Luthor, Dick Grayson, Superman and Rorschach in earlier rounds of the tournament.  After all those victories, Spiderman was a cake walk.

 

While the end result was virtually a given, the bracket was still full of ridiculous results.

 

• Hal Jordan beat Magneto, Thing and Wally West.  Then he somehow lost to Spiderman?

• Darkseid beat a bunch of Marvel charachters that no one has ever heard of, them somehow lost to Wolverine.  I mean Wolverine?  Are you kidding me?

• Barry Allen lost to the Hulk?  Guy took down the Anti-Montor, but he can't handle a guy on steroids?

• Tim Drake lost to Kyle Rayner after beating Death himself.  Ridiculous.  Enough said.

 

Gfest Fan Favorite Bill Willingham Nominated for a Hugo Award

Yesterday, the 2010 Hugo Award nominations were announced, naming the best that sci-fi and fantasy had to offer of the past year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories and have been presented every year since 1955.


The winners will be announced at this year’s WorldCon.

The nominees are:

Fables Vol. 12: The Dark Ages  Written by Bill Willingham; Pencilled by Mark Buckingham; Art by Peter Gross & Andrew Pepoy, Michael Allred, David Hahn; Colour by Lee Loughridge & Laura Allred; Letters by Todd Klein (Vertigo Comics)


Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? Written by Neil Gaiman; Pencilled by Andy Kubert; Inked by Scott Williams (DC Comics)


Captain Britain And MI13. Volume 3: Vampire State Written by Paul Cornell; Pencilled by Leonard Kirk with Mike Collins, Adrian Alphona and Ardian Syaf (Marvel Comics)

Girl Genius, Volume 9: Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm Written by Kaja and Phil Foglio; Art by Phil Foglio; Colours by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)

Schlock Mercenary: The Longshoreman of the Apocalypse Written and Illustrated by Howard Tayler

Cool Blackest Night Shirt Picture

Blackest Night
Originally uploaded by RDunbar078

Grant Morrison's Batman and Robin Sales on Steady Decline

 

Here are the sales figures for Grant Morrison's run on Batman and Robin, with the imposter under the cowl and the brat at his side.  With these sales numbers, I'm starting to see why DC is bringing back Bruce Wayne as soon as they can.

Dan Didio always wanted to kill Nightwing, but it looks like Nightwing is trying to kill DC Comics sales figures first.


06/2009: Batman and Robin #1 -- 168,604 copies sold
07/2009: Batman and Robin #2 -- 117,986 (-30.2%)

08/2009: Batman and Robin #3 -- 110,594 (- 6.3%)

09/2009: Batman and Robin #4 -- 106,925 (- 3.3%)

10/2009: Batman and Robin #5 -- 101,607 (- 5.0%)

11/2009: Batman and Robin #6 -- 95,690 (- 5.8%)

01/2010: Batman and Robin #7 -- 87,780 (- 8.3%)

02/2010: Batman and Robin #8 -- 87,302 (- 0.6%)

02/2010: Batman and Robin #9 -- 84,562 (- 3.1%)

Jason Heyward's Legend Grows with First Home Run

With Day One of the 2010 Major League Baseball season in the books…pretty much everybody out there knows that one of Spring Training’s biggest stories (Atlanta’s Jason Heyward) quickly became one of the biggest stories of the new season.

Here is the Home Run by the numbers:

433  feet is the distance Heyward's blast traveled.

104  Major Leaguers have gone deep in their first career at bat.

42  Major Leaguers hit a home run in their LAST at bat?  Two (Paul Gillespie and John Miller) also hit homers in their first at bat as well.

22  players have hit a home run on the first pitch ever thrown at them.

21  players who hit a homer on their first at bat never hit a second. 

3 players in Major League history have hit grand slams in their initial plate appearance. (Bill Duggleby in 1898, Jeremy Hermida in 2005 and Kevin Kouzmanoff in 2006).



2  Bob Nieman and Keith McDonald are the only two players in Major League history to hit home runs in their first TWO at bats. Nieman did it during the same game in 1951, but McDonald had to wait two games in 2000.


The Heyward Challenge -- The best season ever by a player who went deep in his first at bat was by former All-Star Bill White, who had 22 home runs in his rookie year of 1956.  Can Cameron beat that?

"Special people do special things at special moments,'' Braves pitcher Derek Lowe said. "I know I'm using the word 'special' a lot. But to have your first at-bat with the crowd chanting your name and then do that, it's special.''

Jason Heyward Autographed Major League Baseball

ATLANTA -- Jason Heyward's legend grew even larger on Monday afternoon when the Braves phenom drilled a three-run homer on the first swing of his Major League career.

Big Bang Theory Cast in Superhero Costumes

The show’s cast will end up in “superheroine drag” in the April 12 episode — that’s Simon Helberg as Batgirl, Jim Parsons as Wonder Woman, Johnny Galecki as Supergirl, and Kunal Nayyar as Catwoman —

The show involves the return of Sheldon’s arch-nemesis, Evil Wil Wheaton.

Jim Lee Draws Sweet Looking Stuff on ipad

Jim Lee tried out his iPad's Sketchbook app and created a Catwoman and Joker via digital fingerpainting, proving that even a limited device can churn out impressive art in the hands of a master.

Batman Mini Statue II Designed by Jim Lee

Catholic Paper Says Pope's Credibility Is At Stake

AFP/Getty Images

Pope Benedict XVI celebrates mass during Holy Week at St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican on Thursday. The Pope has been on the defensive as the Catholic Church's ongoing child abuse scandal has again gained force in the U.S. and Europe.

Published: April 02, 2010

by David Folkenflik

No American publication has written about charges of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church longer, or more consistently, than the National Catholic Reporter. It's a small, not-for-profit news organization based in Kansas City, Mo., with a circulation of 34,000, a full-time news staff of just eight, and an unshakable Catholic faith.

"NCR was founded about 45 years ago to report on the news of the church like a good local or good city newspaper covers the news of its municipality," says Joseph Feuerherd, the paper's publisher.

But in recent weeks the hometown paper has not only reported the news but, in a starkly worded editorial, challenged the very credibility of Pope Benedict. The Pope has been on the defensive for charges he failed to intervene while an archbishop and cardinal against priests he was warned had abused children.

"The focus now is on Benedict. What did he know? When did he know it? How did he act once he knew?" asks the editorial, written by Feuerherd and Thomas Fox, editor of the National Catholic Reporter.

"The strategies employed so far — taking the legal path, obscuring the truth and doing everything possible to protect perpetrators as well as the church's reputation and treasury — have failed miserably. We now have the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in church history ... It is time, past time really, for direct answers to difficult questions. It is time to tell the truth."

The media has not been widely thanked within the Church for raising such questions. The Vatican newspaper termed press coverage "clearly an ignoble attempt to strike at Pope Benedict and his closest aides at any cost." The Catholic archbishop of Portland, Ore., canceled his subscription to the Oregonian newspaper and called for fellow Catholics to follow suit after its editorials questioned the practice of celibacy within the church in light of the sex abuse scandal. An Italian exorcist said press coverage of the issue was "prompted by the Devil."

All of which might make it seem surprising for a Catholic paper to take the stand it did. But from its founding in 1964, the National Catholic Reporter embraced a liberalism inspired by the reforms of the Vatican II Council. So staffers blended their faith with a desire to seek and report the truth — including things that reflected critically on the church.

"This was a novelty. Most of the papers were owned by bishops and they were house organs," says former Newsweek religion editor Kenneth L. Woodward, who contributed some articles in the early days. "These people did independent reporting, and did it right from the start, and with high journalistic standards. It was pretty exciting."

Its best known reporter is its ubiquitous senior correspondent John Allen Jr. — a respected authority on Vatican doctrine and politics who has become the paper's public face on CNN, NPR, and other media outlets. But the National Catholic Reporter assigns correspondents and freelancers to travel across the country and the world to chronicle good deeds and success stories as well as the tensions within the church.

One story has always been different. National Catholic Reporter staffers saw the emergence of lawsuits by parents of children claiming abuse at the hands of clergy who had failed to win the attention of bishops and priests. NCR editor Tom Fox says patterns emerged.

"One was the clergy abuse and the second was the cover up of the local bishop," Fox says. "That usually went with the bishop denying that the abuse ever took place, and then often turning on the victim, saying that that person was just making it up."

Fox says reporters often found priests were shuffled to other parishes — and complaints of abuse would recur. Even back then, the National Catholic Reporter called for full accountability from the church. The coverage created a backlash.

"We were getting letters from bishops, we were getting from priests and letters to the editor who were saying at that time that we were really destroying the church," Fox says. "It was a very, very lonely and very difficult period for us."

A member of NCR's board of directors, seen as a champion of reform within the church, angrily quit in disgust when he was not able to alter the paper's editorial direction, according to Feuerherd and Fox.

Not everyone agrees with the current editorial, either. Woodward, now a contributing editor at Newsweek, says the editorial overreaches by relying too heavily on what he considers flawed reporting by The New York Times. Allen, the NCR's senior correspondent, wrote a carefully crafted opinion piece for the Times saying that much media coverage has overlooked the major reforms undertaken by the former Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict.

I asked whether the language of the editorial, reminiscent of questions asked about President Richard Nixon during the Watergate crisis, was intended to so starkly challenge the Pope's credibility.

"These are not just questions we're asking," Fox responded. "These are questions Catholics around the world are asking."

Fox says he's receiving far fewer objections from readers these days. Instead, he's receiving letters from people with their own claims of being abused, who ask whether he can tell their stories, too. Copyright 2010 National Public Radio

Geoff Johns Drops Nuggets on Brightest Day

Geoff Johns let a bunch of nuggets fly on twitter last night regarding Brightest Day.  Each one gets me more excited than the next.

• According to Geoff, Deadman is the single most important character behind the secret of the twelve heroes and villains resurrected.

• Geoff seemed to confirm that Deadman is the only character still wearing a ring after resurrection.

• He confirmed we will see Dex-Starr vs Krypto this year...but Dex-Starr fights Lobo's dog first!

And finally, in the least exciting news:

• Firestorm is...an ongoing story. Much more to Firestorm than you could guess. 

 Blackest Night (Green Lantern)

Cover to Brightest Day #0 Revealed

Green Lantern Bitch Slaps Superman

During the 2007-2008 season of the animated TV show, The Batman, in the episode “Ring Toss,” Robin meets Hal Jordan. And one of the first things he says is, “If you and Superman were ever in a fight, which one of you would win”


The scene throws into light the ongoing debate among comic book readers of just WHO would win the fight if Superman were to go up against Green Lantern.

The debate has been recently rekindled, thanks primarily to the “Sinestro Corps War”. In that story, fans on either side of the debate finally got to see an actual, prolonged slugfest between a Kryptonian (Superboy/Superman Prime) and the “ultimate Green Lantern” (Sodam Yat/Ion). Readers have latched onto the fight as evidence of what just would happen if fan favorites Superman and Hal Jordan were to go head-to-head.

Clearly, Hal would beat Superman in a fight.

Historically, it's pretty well established that Superman has a healthy fear of Green Lantern power.



Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

- Second, at least some Green Lanterns (Hal Jordan and John Stewart, specifically) are capable of stopping Superman in his tracks if they have to.



Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

The fight has already happened.  Superman went up against Hal Jordan as Parallax (in Zero Hour, or in Green Lantern #64 (1995), etc.). Parallax essentially had souped-up Green Lantern powers similar to Ion's. Not only that, those powers were wielded by Hal Jordan, who as a Green Lantern is the best of the best of the best ... In every confrontation between Superman and Parallax/Hal Jordan, Hal wiped the floor with Superman.

Thank you for playing.  Enjoy your walk Superman. 

Blackest Night #8 - Twitter Sized Reviews

While the "highbrow comic industry expert" writers at sites like Newsarama, CBR and IGN chose to nitpick the Blackest Night series to death and be cheerleaders for failure, its clear that the "real comics community" absolutely LOVED what Geoff Johns did with the Blackest Night series.


Blackest Night #8 wow....just wow. Best "event" series since the original Crisis.


-- by theatomicgeeks

Wow. Go read Blackest Night #8 now. Then once you finish, read it again, taking your time to absorb each and every stunning page. Wow.

-- by jtkrul



Blackest Night 8 made me cry, dude. IT MADE ME CRY.


-- by JLanphear



BLACKEST NIGHT #8 Probably the greatest superhero comic you'll ever read. Just amazing.


-- by ComicsandMorePM



I had to change my underpants atleast 4 times reading Blackest Night 8.


-- by iBobbyWilson


Blackest Night #8 made all those tie-ins worth it. Issue is so good it hurts.

--  by @JimSeals01

Blackest Night #8 just rocked my ass! Such an awesome series and ending!!

-- by Danubus

Umm... yeah. So. 'Blackest Night' #8? MELTED MY FACE. 

-- by Salloria


Blackest Night 8 is one of the best comic book issues I've ever read. Ranks with the final issues of Rebirth, COIE, & Watchmen

-- by erikescuro

Blackest Night 8 just mindfucked the shit out of me. In so many good ways. 

-- by kristalantern

Blackest Night 8 = Jizz in my pants!

-- by Krysalid

Oh wow, Blackest Night 8 is just awesome on top of awesome

-- by Mark_Roy

Marvel Comics To Be On iPad - DC Comics Stuck in Dark Ages

On Saturday morning, Mac fans, tech heads and curious members of the public alike will doubtlessly line up in some form or fashion to be the first people to buy Apple's new iPad device. The question on most comic fans minds since its announcement in January has been when comics will be made available for download. And tonight, a first answer to that query came with the news that Marvel Comics will have a launch app ready for the iPad's first week on sale, produced by comiXology.

In the buildup to the iPad's weekend release, a variety of Web sites and news organizations have been offered advance reviews of the new device. In articles on USA Today and the Chicago Sun-Times, both mention the existence of the Marvel Comics app.

Sun-Times writer Andy Ihnatko says of the reading experience, “…this was a perfectly acceptable way to read the comic. I truly felt as if I was reading an issue of ‘Fantastic Four,’ not interacting with an application.”