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    Archive for May, 2006

    NEWSARAMA.COM: BATWOMAN FIRST LOOK

    Posted by Chris Mosby on 31st May 2006

    After her debut she will be DC’s
    highest profile homosexual character and perhaps the highest profile
    homosexual character in comic books.”

    Just what I was afraid of..

    NEWSARAMA.COM: BATWOMAN FIRST LOOK


    BATWOMAN FIRST LOOK


    DC Comics has given Newsarama a look at art from July’s 52 #11, the debut of the new Batwoman character.

    The new character is already gaining notoriety in the press outside of the usual industry circles - including the New York Times, the New York Daily News, the Gay/Lesbian magazine Out’s website and the Drudge Report
    - because of her sexual orientation. After her debut she will be DC’s
    highest profile homosexual character and perhaps the highest profile
    homosexual character in comic books.

    Click on the thumbnail images to see larger versions of them (by artist Joe Bennett), and click right here for our weekend interview with DC’s Dan DiDio with much more details about the character…

    Sphere: Related Content

    Posted in Coming Soon | Comments Off

    ARAD RESIGNS AS CHAIRMAN/CEO OF MARVEL STUDIOS, WILL STAY ON TO PRODUCE - NEWSARAMA

    Posted by Chris Mosby on 31st May 2006

    Isn’t this interesting…

    ARAD RESIGNS AS CHAIRMAN/CEO OF MARVEL STUDIOS, WILL STAY ON TO PRODUCE - NEWSARAMA

    ARAD RESIGNS AS CHAIRMAN/CEO OF MARVEL STUDIOS, WILL STAY ON TO PRODUCE

    Press Release

    Marvel Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE: MVL), a global
    character-based entertainment and licensing company, today announced
    that the company has entered into a new arrangement with Avi Arad to
    independently produce films for Marvel under his own production company
    banner, Avi Arad Productions. In this new capacity, Mr. Arad will
    remain actively involved in Marvel’s upcoming film slate, including
    Iron Man and Hulk, the first two films anticipated to be financed and
    produced by Marvel under its new film financing slate. Mr. Arad will
    also remain attached to produce various licensed productions, including
    the upcoming Spider-Man 3, scheduled for release next year, and
    subsequent sequels. Consistent with this restructuring, Mr. Arad is
    resigning from his corporate positions as Chairman and CEO of Marvel
    Studios, Chief Creative Officer of Marvel and a Marvel director, but
    will continue to serve as Creative Advisor for Marvel through the
    remainder of 2006.

    Michael Helfant, President and COO of Marvel Studios, and Kevin Feige,
    Marvel Studio’s President of Production, will lead Marvel Studios and
    its continuing development of a growing slate of feature films,
    television and other entertainment projects. Mr. Helfant, an
    industry veteran with over 17 years of production experience, was
    recruited to Marvel last year to manage the expanded scope of studio
    operations; and Mr. Feige, recently appointed President of Production,
    has worked side by side with Mr. Arad for the past eight years during
    Marvel’s impressive production run.

    “I have helped to build Marvel into a very special company, and on the
    heels of the tremendous success of X-Men: The Last Stand, I felt like
    it was the right time for me to move away from the day to day corporate
    responsibilities in order to focus on what I love best - creating and
    producing. I am leaving behind a great team to run the studio, and I
    expect to remain actively involved in the development and production of
    many Marvel films in the years to come,” said Mr. Arad.

    Mort Handel, Marvel’s Chairman of the Board, commented, “Avi has been a
    driving force at Marvel, and he and his team are credited with
    producing some of the highest grossing films in history, including this
    past weekend’s blockbuster X-Men: The Last Stand and Spider-Man, Hulk,
    and Fantastic Four. His vision and leadership will be missed, but we
    understand Avi’s desire to pursue a broader array of opportunities and
    wish him the best of luck. Going forward, we are fortunate to have a
    deep bench led by Michael Helfant and Kevin Feige who will assume the
    bulk of Avi’s company responsibilities.” In addition, Sid Ganis, a
    Marvel Director, Independent Producer and the President of the Academy
    of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, will assist Marvel during the
    transition.

    Michael Helfant, who joined Marvel in November 2005, has over 22 years
    of entertainment industry experience, most recently as COO of Beacon
    Pictures, a major independent motion picture production company whose
    recent feature film releases include Open Range, Raising Helen and
    Ladder 49. Prior to Beacon, Mr. Helfant was Senior Executive Vice
    President of Dimension Films (SPY Kids, Scream and Scary Movie
    franchises, and The Others), a division of Miramax Film Corp. from
    1999-2002. Mr. Helfant also served as Executive Vice President, Head of
    Business Operations and Acquisitions at Interscope Communications, Inc.
    (Runaway Bride, Pitch Black, Mr. Holland’s Opus and Jumanji), and
    Senior Vice President of Sovereign Pictures, Inc (Reversal of Fortune,
    My Left Foot, The Commitments and Cinema Paradiso). Mr. Helfant started
    his career as an entertainment attorney with Loeb & Loeb in Century
    City. Mr. Helfant is a graduate of the JD/MBA program at UCLA.

    Kevin Feige has over ten years of entertainment experience, including
    eight years developing feature films and entertainment based on Marvel
    characters. He joined Marvel Studios in 2000 as Executive Vice
    President and was recently promoted to President, Production. He has
    been actively involved in Marvel’s feature film projects, serving
    as Executive Producer on X-Men: The Last Stand, Spider-Man 2, The Hulk,
    The Punisher and Fantastic Four; Co-Producer on X-Men: United and
    Daredevil and as a production executive on Spider-Man. Prior to joining
    Marvel Studios, Mr. Feige worked for Producer Lauren Shuler Donner and
    Director Richard Donner at The Donners’ Company. While
    there, he worked on films including Volcano, starring Tommy Lee Jones
    and the hit romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail, directed by Nora Ephron
    and starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. He then transitioned into
    development which led to an Associate Producer role on the film that
    revamped the comic book genre, X-Men. It was there that he started his
    work in the Marvel Universe, developing the X-Men feature for two years
    with Lauren and Director Bryan Singer, and serving as the film’s
    Associate Producer. Mr. Feige graduated from the University of Southern
    California’s School of Cinema-Television.

    Sphere: Related Content

    Posted in Comic Book Movie\TV News | Comments Off

    MARVEL TEAM-UP #14 CONTINUED IN INVINCIBLE #33 - NEWSARAMA

    Posted by Chris Mosby on 30th May 2006

    I love Kirkman’s work on Invincible, but I hated the Marvel Team-Up issue.  It was really bad.

    MARVEL TEAM-UP #14 CONTINUED IN INVINCIBLE #33 - NEWSARAMA

    MARVEL TEAM-UP #14 CONTINUED IN INVINCIBLE #33


    Press Release

    “The Villain Behind Invincible’s Trip to the Marvel Universe Revealed at Last!”

    BERKELEY, CA — 24 May, 2006 — In a crossover of
    unprecedented proportions, MARVEL TEAM-UP #14 featured the first
    meeting of Invincible and Marvel’s Spider-Man as the unwitting
    Invincible was plunged through reality after reality with only a hint
    as to how or why. At the end of that issue, Invincible returned home in
    search of answers, and with INVINCIBLE #33, those answers are finally
    coming!

    Since INVINCIBLE’s 2003 debut, the world Robert Kirkman has shaped
    around the series’ title character has become home to an ever-growing
    cast of colorful characters, but for all the foes Mark Grayson has
    faced, none have ever attained “arch-enemy” status. Only in the pages
    of MARVEL TEAM-UP #14 was an enemy beyond Invincible’s control hinted
    at, which was exactly how Kirkman had planned it.

    “When it came time to do the Invincible appearance in MARVEL TEAM-UP
    #14, I really wanted it to be something special,” explained Kirkman.
    “In too many instances, a crossover doesn’t mean a thing, and as long
    as I had a say, I wanted to make sure this story would affect
    INVINCIBLE for years to come.

    “In TEAM-UP #14, Invincible mentions a guy named Angstrom Levy who’s
    throwing him through a ton of dimensions in an effort to wear him down.
    Problem is, ol’ Invincible isn’t tiring in the slightest, so Angstrom
    turns his attention to the people Marks cares about most. And if you
    think my other book, THE WALKING DEAD, is brutal, you haven’t seen
    anything yet! Angstrom is turning out to be one bad dude!”

    Readers familiar with Angstrom Levy from earlier appearances may recall
    that he initially seemed more or less like a standard-issue human
    menace, but following events in INVINCIBLE #24, he’s been given
    somewhat of an upgrade. And fittingly, Kirkman and regular series
    artist Ryan Ottley turned to an old friend when it came time to give
    Levy his new look.

    “I remember Robert wanted a villain who looked as evil as he acted,”
    recalled Ryan Ottley. “And while I dug the overall idea, I had a hard
    time conceiving him. Luckily, your friend and mine – INVINCIBLE co-
    creator Cory Walker –pitched in and showed us just how to do it.”

    “The moment Cory’s sketches came in, I knew we had our new big bad, ”
    added Kirkman. “He’s going to be tearing our poor boy’s world apart. In
    fact, Angstrom and Invincible’s punch out takes violence in the book to
    new heights – and yes, I was there for the fight with this dad!”

    Fans eager to catch up with Invincible’s adventures can do so with the
    five trade paperbacks currently available and a sixth, entitled A
    DIFFERENT WORLD (NOV051715), due out shortly. And while Kirkman
    encourages readers to immerse themselves in the story, he’s also quick
    to point that anything can happen to even the most beloved characters.

    “I can’t wait for the fans coming off MARVEL TEAM-UP #14 to read the
    book, but they’re going to have another thing coming if they think this
    is just like any other superhero comic,” he noted with a sinister
    chuckle. “With a bad guy this evil, someone’s gotta die. And yes, that
    could mean YOU, Invincible!”

    Invincible #33 (FEB061782) is available for order now with a cover price of $2.99 and an in-store date of June 28.

    Image Comics is a comics and graphic novels publisher formed in 1992 by
    a collective of best-selling artists. Since that time, Image has gone
    on to become one of the largest comics publishers in the United States.
    There are currently four partners in Image Comics (Erik Larsen, Todd
    McFarlane, Marc Silvestri and Jim Valentino), and Image is currently
    divided into four major houses (Todd McFarlane Productions, Top Cow
    Productions, Shadowline and Image Central). Image comics and graphic
    novels cover nearly every genre, sub-genre and style imaginable,
    offering science fiction, romance, horror, crime fiction, historical
    fiction, humor and more by the finest artists and writers working in
    the medium today. Visit www.imagecomics.com for more information. Image Comics - Putting the NEW back in to New Comic Book Day!(tm)

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    NEWSARAMA.COM: HOWARD PORTER: A NEW HERO, A NEW STYLE

    Posted by Chris Mosby on 30th May 2006

    Read the rest of the interview at the link below

    NEWSARAMA.COM: HOWARD PORTER: A NEW HERO, A NEW STYLE


    HOWARD PORTER: A NEW HERO, A NEW STYLE



    by Vaneta Rogers

    After getting used to the way his pencils looked on comics like JLA, Fantastic Four and The Flash, fans of Howard Porter’s work are going to have to get used to his work all over again.

    Anyone who’s seen the previews for August’s Trials of Shazam
    has noticed there’s something different about Porter’s art. The lines
    are more blended, the inks are less defined and the colors almost come
    across as paint or oil pastels.

    The 12-issue Captain Marvel maxi series being written by Judd Winick, which will debut as a preview story in June’s Brave New World, promises to redefine the whole Marvel family. But it seems to be redefining Howard Porter’s art as well.

    Newsarama sat down
    with Porter to talk about what he’s doing differently, why he chose to
    debut the new style in Shazam, and what it means for his artistic
    future.

    Sphere: Related Content

    Posted in Comic Creator Interviews, Coming Soon | Comments Off

    NEWSARAMA.COM: DC’s THE GREAT TEN PREVIEW GALLERY

    Posted by Chris Mosby on 30th May 2006

    NEWSARAMA.COM: DC’s THE GREAT TEN PREVIEW GALLERY


    DC’s THE GREAT TEN PREVIEW GALLERY


    Sunday’s Arts & Leisure piece in the New York Times regarding diversity in American comic books not only included the first look at DC’s new Batwoman character,
    accompanying the piece was a slideshow gallery featuring character
    designs of the highly-touted “The Great Ten” – the Grant
    Morrison-conceived, Chinese government controlled superteam making
    their debut in a June issue of 52.

    Here is a look at the images and the text descriptions of each character as described by the Times and/or the character sketch itself. Click on the images to open larger versions…


    “The Celestial
    Archer
    has ties to Chinese mythology.”


    “The task of the
    Ghost Fox Killer, an emissary from a dwindling colony, is to kill
    evil men.”


    “Mother of
    Champions
    , who can give birth to a litter of 25 super-soldiers about
    every three days.”


    “The Accomplished
    Perfect Physician
    uses sound to cure cancer and promote healing.”


    Corrected:
    one of Mother of Champions brood, roughly age 25 - at his
    “peak.”


    Thundermind,
    a member of the Chinese government-controlled Great Ten, part of a new
    comic book by DC.”


    “The Socialist
    Red Guardsman
    is a character who used his solar powers to carry out
    the Cultural Revolution.”


    Immortal Man
    in Darkness
    gives off dark, swirling vapors.”


    August General
    is known for preventing the Shaolin Robots from enforcing a return
    to imperial rule.”


    “A Shaolin
    Robot
    .”

    One of
    the Seven Deadly Brothers

    Sphere: Related Content

    Posted in Coming Soon | Comments Off

    Newsarama - DAN DIDIO ON BATWOMAN

    Posted by Chris Mosby on 30th May 2006

    I don’t see how this will make it. I just don’t understand how sexuality has to be brought up at all, let alone made to look like it is the focal point of the character..


     

    As the New York Times broke yesterday, Batwoman is coming back to the DCU and Gotham City in the form of Kathy “Kate” Kane, lesbian who has a history both with Renee Montoya and with…apparently, Bruce Wayne. 

    As the news was filtering out through various channels, we caught up with DC Executive Editor Dan Didio to talk about the new character, the role her sexuality will play, and what the future holds for the new Batwoman.

    NRAMA: So – after much rumor, speculation, and teasing, Batwoman is making her debut…

    Dan Didio: Yes!

    NRAMA: Tell us about her…

    DIDIO: We’re always looking for ways to reinvigorate the Batman franchise, and look at other characters to inhabit his world. One of my problems with it was that I felt that a lot of the characters were coming form the same place, the same sense of origin, the same sense of tragedy in their backstory. We wanted to find a way to branch out a little bit more in the Bat-world. We looked at the Kathy Kane character, and we wanted to find a way to bring her back to the DC Universe. We figured that coming out of Infinite Crisis was a good time to re-introduce the character to the DCU –we can blame Superboy Prime for that.

    We wanted to find a way to make her feel different, and give her a different personality, a different ideology, and a different backstory, so that she wasn’t just another Batman or Bruce Wayne clone. She’s a member of high society and she is gay. But her sexuality is not the main thrust of the character; it’s just another aspect of her personality, one that helps her to determine her choices that she makes as she’s fighting crime in Gotham City.

    NRAMA: What do you mean by that last part? How does the fact that she’s gay help to determine the choices she makes as she’s fighting crime in Gotham?

    DIDIO: Basically, what it means is that we have another very strong female character, and how her private life plays against her heroic life is going to be where the stories play in; as well as different types of adventures and different types of dramas that she gets caught up in. One of the first stories is that she does have a history with Montoya – because of that, it pulls her directly into a lot of the events in Montoya’s world, brings her into confrontation with The Question, and gets her hooked up with the things that are happening in 52.

    NRAMA: Playing devil’s advocate, as you said, the fact that she is gay will play a role in her activities as a hero – but, when you flip that, it doesn’t really apply to say, Batman. You can’t say, “Because he’s heterosexual, Batman’s adventures are thus and so.” Heterosexuality as a character trait is has been largely ignored with Batman, yet it’s not the same when you’re talking about a gay character. Why is that?

    DIDIO: If the character is gay, she might have had different levels of challenges in her life. The fact that she conceals her own sexuality to some of the people around her and to her own family is going to be a bit of a story, so there are going to be secrets within secrets. You’ll also find more and more about who she is as the story is told, and see how it plays against her lifestyle.

    NRAMA: Where does she debut again?

    DIDIO: 52 #11

    NRAMA: And her name is Kathy Kane…

    DIDIO: Or “Kate” as we’re calling her now.

    NRAMA: Her costume designed by Alex Ross – it has interesting elements, both a nod to the original Silver Age Batwoman, as well as a nod to the Batman Beyond color scheme. What went into the look?

    DIDIO: We really attribute the costume fully to Alex. When we went to him, we explained that we were bringing Batwoman back, but she is coming back for a new generation. He knew the backstory of the character as well, and wanted to do something that would both pay tribute to the past, but also move the character into her own identity. He’s so incredible when he does these things; he pulls from so many different places and still makes it feel unique while still giving a wink and a nod to everything around him.

    NRAMA: Anytime someone shows up in Batman’s world, he takes a relatively grumpy reaction…well; he did prior to Infinite Crisis. What’s his response to this intrusion, post Infinite Crisis?

    DIDIO: Well, remember that she’s operating in the city for nearly a year before Bruce comes home. She’s going to be able to establish herself in that fashion, and part of the assumption of the identity will be filling that void in Gotham City that has been left by Batman packing up and leaving after Crisis. This plays out on several levels, because you’ll also find out that there’s history between Bruce Wayne and Kate Kane from before she put on the costume as well. She’s someone who’s frequented the high society circles – they’ve encountered each other in the past, and there is some sense of history between the two, although we’re not really explaining what just yet. So, more importantly, he’s going to have to deal with her on multiple levels, as she reasserts herself in a level of prominence in Gotham society.

    NRAMA: Plans for her in the immediate future? Her own series, miniseries, appearances, or can it be said at this point?

    DIDIO: One of the things that I would like to do with Batwoman in particular, because we feel that who she is and the development of the character is so unique to what we’re trying to accomplish in the DCU, but also to what 52 is about, one of the things I’d like to see, at least in the beginning, is to see her as a character who will be appearing primarily in 52. Them, we’ll be exploring things in different ways.

    To use a Marvel reference, I always liked the way that Marvel introduced the Punisher. He started in Amazing Spider-Man, and had some really landmark appearances in Daredevil, and they allowed interest in him to grow. I think this is a character that can really benefit form appearing in different books first before we test the waters with her on her own.

    NRAMA: And let the fan demand fuel a project?

    DIDIO: Yeah. We’ve introduced a lot of characters in a very short period time, and we’ve got a lot more coming down the pipeline, but I’d like to believe that mostly everything we do now is coming out of other things so that we’re not just throwing books and ideas and concepts at people cold. I want it to be where it