DC Universe: The Source » Blog Archive » Jeff Lemire takes on SUPERBOY ongoing series

DC Universe: The Source » Blog Archive » Jeff Lemire takes on SUPERBOY ongoing series

Jeff Lemire takes on SUPERBOY ongoing series

Friday, May 14th, 2010

By Alex Segura

It’s the kind of thing that pops into your head and just clicks – who’s better suited to pen the adventures of a super-teen in middle America than Jeff Lemire, author of the touching, evocative ESSEX COUNTY and Vertigo’s SWEET TOOTH?

So, it makes perfect sense to announce today that Jeff Lemire, along with artist Pier Gallo, will be launching a SUPERBOY ongoing series later this year, with a special, one-off co-feature debuting in the August issue of ACTION COMICS (#892), which will give fans a primer for the full series.

What can readers expect from Lemire and Gallo? Well, let’s check in with the writer himself. Take it away, Jeff:

“I am really excited to be taking over the adventures of Conner Kent/Superboy in a new monthly series! The book will combine many of the classic touchstones of the Superboy mythos along with new supporting characters, new villains and new ideas, building a strong foundation that can support the Boy of Steel for years to come. I really want to work with our amazing artist Pier Gallo to combine a classic storytelling feel with a thoroughly modern sensibility and explore what it would really be like to be a super powered teenager, in the heart of rural America.”

And because it’s not a SOURCE announcement without some lovely art, here’s a look at one of Gallo’s prelim sketches of the Boy of Steel:

Newsarama – PAUL LEVITZ Talks LEGION OF SUPERHEROES @ C2E2 2010

Some how I missed this when it came out a while back, but this is a great little interview. Warning, there are some spoilers!

Check it out here

DC Universe: The Source » Blog Archive » SOURCE SPECIAL: GEOFF JOHNS TALKS THE FLASH, PART 2

Read the rest of the interview at the link below

DC Universe: The Source » Blog Archive » SOURCE SPECIAL: GEOFF JOHNS TALKS THE FLASH, PART 2

Friday, March 5th, 2010

By Alex Segura

Yesterday, we talked to THE FLASH writer Geoff Johns about Barry Allen, his Rogues and what it means to be a hero. But there’s more to cover, folks, so why stop there?

We’re happy to present the conclusion of our two-part chat with Geoff, where we talk about his amazing artistic collaborator Francis Manapul, what’s coming with the new series and the one page that’ll keep you guessing.

Industry Reacts to Levitz, DC Entertainment – Comic Book Resources

The rest of the article at the link below

Industry Reacts to Levitz, DC Entertainment – Comic Book Resources

Posted: 5 hours ago | Updated: 4 hours ago

This morning, DC Comics’ The Source blog lit up with release after release outlining the new shape that the just rechristened “DC Entertainment” will take in 2010 and beyond. Much like last week’s shocker news that Disney plans purchase Marvel, the word from DC’s parent company Warner Bros. on the future of the comics giant represents a game-changer for the comics entertainment landscape.

Compounding that massive change is the fact that legendary writer and longtime DC executive Paul Levitz will step down as the company’s Publisher and President to be a consultant and writer, starting with issue #7 of the recently re-launched “Adventure Comics.”

With the news already burning up the blogosphere, CBR reached out to a raft of DC talent to get their take on Levtiz’s legacy as the leader of DC and what the changes mean for the new DC Entertainment. Be sure to check back throughout the day as we update with more reactions and opinions.

Alan Martin: Tank Girl Resurrected – SuicideGirls > Interviews

SuicideGirls > Interviews > Alan Martin: Tank Girl Resurrected

Read the rest of the article at the link above

Alan Martin: Tank Girl Resurrected
By Nicole Powers
Oct 24, 2008

Hollywood nearly killed Tank Girl. Dodgy movies have a way of doing that to people. Tank Girl’s creators, writer Alan Martin and artist Jamie Hewlett, would be the first to say the 1995 big screen incarnation of the cult comic strip character, which they had zero control over, wasn’t all that it should have been. Indeed they might even say it was a “shit sandwich” (well, actually, Martin did). Fortunately, Tank Girl’s superhuman, and her fuck you spirit would never allow a bunch of scummy film execs and industry cheese weasels to have the last word. Down but not out, after a hiatus of over a decade, she put her Tank Boots back on, and kicked, screamed and farted her way back from near oblivion, with a little help from Martin.

In the process of documenting Tank Girl’s past for a best-of book called The Cream of Tank Girl (out October 2008), Martin found a renewed passion for his foul-mouthed, mutant kangaroo-humping friend. Original draftsman Jamie Hewlett may have moved on to pastures new with Damon Albarn and their virtual Gorillaz band, but Tank Girl has found new pen pals to roughhouse with.

With a slew of fresh Tank Girl adventures already in print, in the bag, and on the horizon, Martin and his badly behaved progeny are smashing (“Sleesh! Plock! Glump!”) their way into one of their most prolific periods ever. We sat down for a long distance chat with Martin, and took a gander at what the future holds for Tank Girl.

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Paul Pope: Hope Beyond Comics – SuicideGirls > Interviews

SuicideGirls > Interviews > Paul Pope: Hope Beyond Comics

Read the rest of the interview at the link above.

Paul Pope: Hope Beyond Comics
By Jay Hathaway
Oct 12, 2008

Paul Pope has built a reputation as a visionary artist and writer on the strength of some of the most acclaimed graphic novels of the past decade, including Heavy Liquid and 100%. His multiple-Eisner-winning story, Batman: Year 100, immersed the dark knight in the same kind of near-future dystopia that makes his creator-owned work so thrilling. If you saw The Dark Knight this summer, you saw a motorcycle that looks remarkably similar to the one Paul designed for Year 100.

That’s not the only place Paul’s work has come to life outside of the printed page. Earlier this year, he was picked by DKNY Jeans to design a line of men’s clothes for their fall collection. His original characters are also entering the third dimension as vinyl toys from Kidrobot. As if all of this isn’t enough, we still haven’t seen the main event. THB, the self-published sci-fi epic that launched Paul’s career, is drawing to a close after more than a decade. Both the faithful and the uninitiated are in for a treat in 2010, when THB will finally be widely available — and greatly expanded — in a multi-volume series (Total THB). And we’re not done yet: just before he releases Total THB, Paul is kicking the door in with a new story called Battling Boy, about a kid hero who takes on a gang of mythical monsters.

Suicide Girls chatted with Paul about all of this and more.

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WW PHILLY ’08: DC’S SUNDAY CONVERSATION – NEWSARAMA

 

WW PHILLY ’08: DC’S SUNDAY CONVERSATION

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Report by Sarah Jaffe
The fans still around on a Sunday afternoon [at WizardWorld: Philadelphia] are the die-hards, DC Executive Editor Dan DiDio said. One fan quipped, “It’s like church.”
So DiDio gathered a group in one of the panel rooms for DC’s Sunday Conversation, an hour-long discussion of what people love about comics. DiDio strolled down the aisle of the room, moderating a lively discussion of people’s favorites and hidden gems, how everyone got into comics, and all the best things about the medium.
To start the ball rolling, he asked people to raise their hands if they’d been reading comics for one year. Then five years, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, forty-five, and even fifty.
The one gentleman who’d been reading comics for forty-five years had bought his first comic, Hulk #1, at his neighborhood drugstore comic rack when he was a kid. Another reader remembered buying comics from coin-operated vending machines.
At the other end of the spectrum : the reader who’d only been into comics for a year—who was in costume as the Flash—got into comics from the Teen Titans.
DiDio then asked if anyone, like him, had given up comics for a while only to return. One man joked that he started reading comics again when Star Trek ended, and that it was Green Arrow that brought him back.
For DiDio himself, it was the Batman TV show that brought him to reading comics, and he noted that you can tell when people started reading comics by who their favorite characters are. “We’re always looking for ways to bring things back,” he said.
To prove his point, he asked about people’s favorite Aquaman, since he said he gets tons of people telling him they know how to fix Aquaman.
One fan noted, “Giant sea horses, gotta love those.”
Another was fascinated by the possibilities of a hand made of water. “Can he breathe his own hand?” he asked.
The question about the strangest character people loved brought up another fun discussion. When a fan said that he loved Azrael, DiDio told a story about an old panel of an old comic that featured Azrael, in costume, in a Volkswagen convertible.
Heroes for Hire and Sgt. Rock writer Billy Tucci’s favorite strange character was Lord Malvolio, which led DiDio to a discussion of the levels of continuity in the DC universe.
The first level, he said, is immutables. “Krypton explodes, Bruce Wayne’s parents die.”
The second are things that are helpful—Barbara Gordon as Batgirl was the example he gave, but not necessarily top-level important.
And the third level are things that happen that don’t work and just kind of get ignored. DiDio quoted a writer as saying, “I’m not going to undo that story, I’m just never going to mention it again.”
Every time a character was mentioned, groups of people clapped or laughed or filled in a missing detail. “There’s always somebody obscure that someone will raise their hand for,” DiDio noted.
He told the story of the Cancelled Comics Cavalcade, a bit of DC history—a book of cancelled DC comics from the late 70s that was published as a Xerox copy, with only 50 issues, that he received when he got his job at DC. Laughing, he said, “I got ‘em, and I read ‘em, and they were crap!”
This led him to ask if there were books people loved that, in hindsight, just weren’t very good. His own story was of a book where the island of Manhattan floated out to the middle of the Atlantic and Hercules had to bring it back. “And even then I knew to ask, ‘What happened to all the bridges and tunnels?’”
Someone else mentioned a Daredevil comic with pictures hanging on Daredevil’s walls. “Why would a blind guy need a picture of his girlfriend?” he asked.
It’s hard to go against people’s expectations, DiDio continued, asking people to picture something bad happening to Bruce Wayne. “Who becomes Batman?” he asked.
“Dick Grayson” was the answer from most of the crowd, aside from a few who thought that Bruce Wayne was the only Batman.
“Batman was born of trauma and tragedy,” one fan said, “And the Robins kept him human.”
Another fan suggested marrying Dick Grayson off, giving him some kids, then having someone slaughter his family so that he could be appropriately dark as Batman.
Many people, like DiDio, got into comics because of a movie or a TV show. The Superman movie, the X-Men animated TV series, and even G.I. Joe were cited.
“Some of the few memories I have of my dad were of him reading me comics,” one fan said. Another related the story of him teaching his teacher what the word “feat” meant, which he had learned from comics, since his teacher had never heard the word before.
People shared stories of buying comics at secondhand shops, with covers cut off, or even stealing them from friends.
One woman, there with her husband, joked that she started reading Green Lantern and kept reading because “he was kinda cute. Gateway!”
She went on to say that she and her husband celebrated their first anniversary by buying comics, going to a bar, and reading comics.
The last question was: “If you could give one comic to someone to convert them, what would it be?”
The answers were a veritable map of great comics, though Vertigo titles featured more prominently here than any other time. Y the Last Man, Sandman, Lucifer, as well as Batman: Year One and The Spirit.

WW PHILLY ’08: DC’S SUNDAY CONVERSATION – NEWSARAMA

WW PHILLY: DC NATION PANEL – NEWSARAMA

 

WW PHILLY: DC NATION PANEL

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by Matthew Reichl
Special to Newsarama
According to DC’s senior story editor Ian Sattler, DC will have an amazing 2009, following the fallout of the major crossover title Final Crisis at the “DC Nation!” panel at the Philly World Wizard Con.
With several members of the DC creative talent, including Final Crisis artist J.G. Jones and upcoming Power Girl series co-writer Jimmy Palmiotti, Sattler fielded questions and previewed upcoming issues and series of popular characters from the DCU.

Accompanied by a slideshow, Sattler went through a series of new and upcoming covers, including a Superman/Batman issue where the two appeared to be in a fight, with Batman upside down, leading to Sattler joking about it being the “disco issue.”

Trinity, the new weekly book, was featured, by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley. This was followed by a cover to a new issue of Green Lantern.
“This is the cover to a secret origin story to Green Lantern,” Sattler said, asking if anyone has been reading Green Lantern. The room applauded in response.
When the slideshow shifted to a new issue of the recently announced [url= http://www.newsarama.com/nycomiccon2008/DC/powergirl.html Power Girl[/url] series, the audience applauded before Sattler could say a word.

When asked for more stories involving Power Girl, Sattler responded saying “the JSA Annual deals with Power Girl, and we’ve got a whole Power Girl series that’s popping.”
The floor was soon opened for questions by the audience.

“If you could do more stories with Batman in the 51st universe, that would be great,” a fan commented.

“What’s going on with Jason Todd?” someone in the front asked, in reference to the mantle of Red Hood.

“Jason Todd is being Jason Todd,” Sattler said, adding that there will be some story dealing with the next Red Hood soon.

“We have a real advantage to do really great character stuff, with as much as we can with Amanda on it,” Palmiotti said of the Power Girl series. “We just felt this should be something you can read from issue one where you can get everything,” he continued. “We kind of play with the nuances of character, as she wants things done her way. I’m always interested with characters like Peter Parker and Mary Jane, that’s what I like in Power Girl.”

Asked about what’s coming up in Superman, Sattler said, “We’ve got Jeff johns and James Robertson working on a Braniac story they’re kicking off. That story goes on to the next and then the next. The Superman stories really get big, heading into the Fall and huge into 2009.”

[Are there] “Any plans for a second JSA book?” an audience member asked.

“We’re going to make it through the Gog story first and see which characters are left over,” Sattler said.

Questions then turned to Final Crisis. “The threat level of Final Crisis is huge,” Sattler warned. “We’re seeing right off the bat how that’s playing out. Like with Martian Manhunter – what happens to him and what becomes of him; we’ll see in Final Crisis: Requiem what happens to him.”

The panel was asked if there was chance for an Aquaman relaunch.

“We get asked that question a lot, so we’re aware of the lack of Aquaman,” Sattler said.

Finally, Palmiotti was asked if it was challenging to keep Jonah Hex interesting.

“I don’t think we’ve actually done one story where he got the bounty and got the reward,” joked Palmiotti, who said there were almost 30-something issues where the Western themed character would go after a bounty for a reward, only to come home empty-handed.

WW PHILLY: DC NATION PANEL – NEWSARAMA

NYCC ’08: THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES PANEL – NEWSARAMA

You can also listen to this as a podcast here:

http://www.dccomics.com/media/podcasts/DCComics_2008-04-19_Legion_New_York_Comic_Con_2008.mp3 

NYCC ’08: THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES PANEL

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by Chris Mautner
Lest anyone doubt the popularity of DC’s flagship team book The Legion of Super-Heroes, let him or her discuss the matter with the devoted throng that attended the 50th anniversary panel at the New York Comic-Con this Saturday afternoon.
Though far from packed, a sizable crowd nevertheless showed up to hear artist Keith Giffen, writer (and DC comics publisher) Paul Levitz and current Legion editor Mike Marts talk about their experiences working on the book.
Asked by moderator and historian Peter Sanderson what was the defining element that made the Legion such a revolutionary book, Levitz cited the title’s willingness to let the characters age, change their relationships and even, in the seminal case of Lightning Lad, die. Giffen pointed out that of all superhero teams, the Legion was the first to recognize the price of heroism.
“Up until then comics had come out of classic comic strip tradition of freeze frame. Everyone is going to be same age forever,” Levitz said. “The Legion, four issues into own series said ‘Screw this stuff, we’re going to kill people and change relationships.’”
Marts cited the book’s clubhouse atmosphere, which gave younger readers a strong opportunity for identification. “A lot of kids knew you couldn’t be Superman or Batman but hanging out in clubhouse with friends is something you did all the time,” he said. “You could relate to them almost immediately.
Giffen, meanwhile, stressed the book offering a counterpoint to the dystopian, post-apocalyptic future type of stories that have become so popular these days. The Legion, he said, gave you a “future you wanted to live in. … That’s when it made its mark.”
Asked about past contributors to the lengthy series, Levitz discussed how writers like Jerry Siegel and Ed Hamilton brought, respectively a levity and an epic sense of scale to the work early on, while Jim Shooter (who was supposed to attend but had to cancel his appearance at the convention) brought a humanity to characters who had previously been somewhat cardboard – something that, to this day still amazes Levitz, given that Shooter was showing that sense of humanity while he was 13 years old. All three cited the work of the late artist Dave Cockrum as seminal. The contributions of Curt Swan and Jim Sherman were also highly praised.
Asked about the specific challenges of working on the Legion, the immense number of characters (“30 damned characters” as Giffen put it) and their histories, costumes, and other miscellany were cited as a strong hurdle.
“I thought I was somewhat familiar with the Legion when I came on board, but I was in for a little bit of a surprise,” Marts said. “Knowing what color Batman’s costume is pretty simple,” versus the multitude of legion kids. “It’s tricky to keep the look consistent.”
Levitz stressed the need to be willing, especially for artists, to delve into the challenge that is the group’s immense history while being willing to build new worlds. “For Legion you either get the crazy artist who’s willing to put everything in it or it really shows,” he said.
The Legion’s past reboots were discussed, with Giffen saying that his “5 Years Later” shift in the Legion (which has a love/hate relationship with fans) came about due to his not knowing what else to do when he landed the writing chores on the title after Levitz.
Asked about Legion’s future, Marts said Shooter has an intricate plot laid out and that readers would see more romance and perhaps even a wedding in the book’s future. He also said a legion-related project would be coming out at the end of the year, adding that Shooter is “on for the long haul.”
“There’s nobody lining up to draw or write the Legion,” Giffen added, talking about all the worlds and space aliens an artist would have to invent for such a comic. “There’s no point of reference you have to make it up as you go along.”
The high point of the panel had to be when, in response to a fan question, Giffen voiced his ire for the character Karate Kid.
“I hate that character,” he said good-naturedly. “I agreed to come on Countdown only if I could kill him. If I come on Legion again, he’s dead.”
Why does he hate him so much? “Two words put together. Super-Karate.”
“Everyone in this field has characters they hate,” Giffen said. “I just have the bad taste to say it out loud.”

NYCC ’08: THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES PANEL – NEWSARAMA

GEORGE PEREZ ON LEGION OF 3 WORLDS, I – NEWSARAMA

The MASTER speaks!

GEORGE PEREZ ON LEGION OF 3 WORLDS, I

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by Vaneta Rogers
George Perez is no stranger to Crises.
Now DC has tapped him to help out with another Crisis by drawing the Legion of Super-Heroes — not just one of the teams, but three versions of them from three different universes — in this summer’s five-issue mini-series Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds.
Working with writer Geoff Johns, Perez will be drawing five oversized issues that readers can expect to be filled with characters in what Johns promises is an epic tale. Fans got a preview of the story and Perez’s take on the Legion — as well as a few surprise characters from the 21st century — in this week’s Action Comics #863, where Johns once again incorporated a comic book “trailer” to get readers excited about the upcoming project.
Johns and Perez last worked together on Infinite Crisis in 2005, when Perez did several pages to help out regular mini-series artist Phil Jimenez. And of course, as a veteran penciller in the comic book industry for over 30 years, Perez is also well-known for his role as penciller on Crisis of Infinite Earths.
So now that he’s involved in the Final Crisis, Newsarama talked to Perez about the Legion story he’s drawing, as well as his upcoming pages in DC Universe #0.

 

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