Today is the day that toys from Hasbro’s Transformers 2: Revenge of The Fallen line roll out in a toy aisle near you. (Or at least, this is the day they’re officially scheduled to go on sale. Lots of stores jumped the gun and put them out early.) Hasbro’s website has a large assortment for view or sale, including one item I would love to have had when I was young enough to play with it:

The Bumblebee Voice Mixer. Actually, the item description says “Adjusts to fit head sizes ages 5 through adult”, and while I’m sure there are plenty of older toy enthusiasts who are going to have a ball cosplaying with it, I don’t think somebody my age could wear one without looking like someone from “To Catch a Predator”. More’s the pity.

However, there is one Transformers 2 toy that just might be too cool to pass up:

(Picture courtesy the fine folks at Figures.com)

Aww yeah, it’s Devastator! Seeing the Constructicon combiner kick some Autobot ass is going to be the best thing about this movie not named Megan Fox. The toy looks pretty sweet as well, even though I haven’t been a big fan of most of the movie designs so far. (I’m not a grumpy purist, I just think some of the characters look too generic. Especially Starscream and Megatron.)

The Scholastic softball team is nicknamed “The Red Dogs”, in reference to their famous cartoon icon Clifford, though at Thursday’s misting, overcast softball game, perhaps they’d be better nicknamed the “Captain Cliffords”. Once again, the Bullets massive roster came to the rescue of a short-handed opponent. With Scholastic’s squad decimated by this weekend’s impending Book Expo and an apparent fear of wet weather, four Red Dogs were joined by Bullet stalwarts Jeff Boison, Adam Staffaroni, Erin Dawald, Rickey Purdin and Jerry Cerza.

The Bullets team proper jumped to an early lead, with 3B Mike Lorah (4-5, 2 runs, 3 RBI, triple) looping a two-out, opposite field triple onto the right field line to score CF Vince Letterio (1-5, two FC, 2 runs) and SCF Doug Harrison (3-5, 2 runs, 2 RBI, home run). After the Red Dogs tied the score in top two, P Larry Ganem (3-5, 1 run, 3 RBI, double) doubled, 2B Doc Lauren Fries (3-5, 2 runs) singled, and both came around to score later in the inning. Later Fries and C Sal Cipriano (2-5, run) opened the fourth with singles. Lauren came home on RF Neil Hiremath’s (1-5, run, RBI) fielder’s choice grounder when the throw home was late. Sal then scored on SS Adam Schlagman (3-5, 2 RBI, sac fly) sacrifice fly. Three more singles from LF Andrew Arnold (1-6, run, RBI), Letterio and Lorah produced two more runs. In the last of the sixth inning, Harrison cranked a home run with Vince on first base, and Lorah and 1B Joel “Happy 40th, sorry we couldn’t win one for ya” Press (2-5, run, double) later touched the plate on Ganem’s two-run single.

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Another New Frontier comic?: Cartoonist Todd Ramsell talks about his comic, Tales of the New Frontier. Hmm, not bad, but it needs more J’onn J’onnz…

Newspaper reader offended by cartoonish politics in political cartoon: Just one more reasons why newspapers deserve to die.

Yeah, but that’s exactly why we love Wonder Woman: Professional pretty lady Megan Fox tells the Times that “Wonder Woman is a lame hero” and that “Somebody has a big challenge on their hands whoever takes that role but I don’t want to do it” (Er, punctuation…?). That’s too bad, as Fox certainly looks the part. If by “the part” you mean “a pretty young woman with black hair and blue eyes,” which I do. (Although if they ever do get around to making a Wonder Woman movie, I imagine they’ll go for more of the post-Perez warrior princess interpretations than the original Amazon-girl-in-America conception). (Link swiped from MTV’s Splash Page).

Fantagraphics’ Gahan Wilson book to be totally awesome: Just look at this. Damn. Fanta’s Gahan Wilson: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons is scheduled for an October release, so start saving your pennies now.

Poor Peter Parker: Poor, poor Peter Parker.

I think I have a new favorite comics artist from the Van Sciver family: Noah Van Sciver boils his brother Ethan’s latest collaboration with Geoff Johns, The Flash: Rebirth, into two, four-panel strips, and Wizard posts them (I know! Wizard! Never thought I’d want to link there! Link spotted at and swiped from comicsreporter.com, by the way).

This is kind of a short’n’sweet rundown on the articles I bookmarked this week, as I’m knee-deep in so much stuff right now I don’t have time to do them justice.

The Hathor Legacy on Warren Ellis’s Freakangels.

The Angry Black Woman says she would make a terrible superhero girlfriend. She also takes on being a sci-fi/comics fan and being a woman of color.

Johanna Draper Carlson wants to know what your geekiest thing is.

Racialicious revisits Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology and finds a few identities still missing.

Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, prone to outrageous statements, will be the latest politician to star in her own comic book.

Todd Klein does the Library of Dream.

Splash Page has five out and proud heroes who’d oppose Proposition 8.

Daryl Cagle sticks it to the Huffington Post on comics and editorial cartoons.

Adam Beechen and Mario Bello’s Hench is being developed as a feature film by Warner Brothers, according to Variety.

They’re reporting that the film, based on the graphic novel from AIT/PlanetLar, will be a vehicle for actor Danny McBride, best known as Red, the guy who kept getting beaten but just wouldn’t stay down in  Pineapple Express. McBride will adapt Hench–the story of a professional football player who becomes a henchman to a supervillain after a career-ending injury–along with Shawn Harwell, whom he has worked with on the HBO show Eastbound and Down.

Why leave any stone unturned? Check this out: the Obama Manga.

These pages are taken from The Obama Story: The Boy with the Biggest Dream by T.S. Lee. Published by Dasan Productions, the book is positioned as a children’s story for kids 8-12.  PressingDigressions.com, a blog of book distributor Midpoint Trade Books, is hosting one page from the story a day.

“I’m waiting on the trade” has become almost as familiar a part of the comic-reader lexicon as “I’m Batman.” Now that costs for single issues have begun to jump from $2.99 to $3.99 per issue for the Big Two, it’s almost certain that we’ll hear that song with greater frequency. However, that begs one larger question: when you wait for the trade, do you ever actually get the trade?

I know quite a few people that are trade loyalists. They’ll get Fables, they’ll get the recently-departed 100 Bullets . . . they’ll get a number of titles. And yet, they’re content to take the several months between installments so that they can get a larger chunk of story at once.

Nevertheless, there’s a flipside to that. Some weekly shop-goers will move some of their ongoings to “trade wait” status, and never go back. Sure, the intention is there. But other weekly books supplant it, budget concerns creep in, and that trade-waited series gets remaindered to the “don’t read” category.

So, here are my questions: when you trade-wait, do you actually go back? Is there one that you’ve been meaning to get in all good faith, but just never get back to? If you try both, which works better for you: the weekly shop visit, or waiting for the trade? Let’s hear ‘em all.

In the wake of all the responses to my earlier piece on the American Medical Association Alliance’s efforts to get films rated R if a character is depicted as smoking (including an article at Inquisitr where they used my hyperbole as their headline), we decided to make up a list of movies that would be rated R under that standard. Given that I’m leaving out the most obvious (anything in the X-Men franchise), this is of course by no means a complete list—and doesn’t even take into account things like Leave it to Beaver, Popeye or The Brady Bunch, where people smoked on television—but here are Blog@Newsarama’s top ten films that would be rated R if smoking were a solitary consideration to the MPAA: (more…)

If you visit Wizard’s Storefront Feedback at Amazon.com, it appears something bad has happened of late. The 90 day feedback shows 23% negative, but the 30 day feedback shows 53%. Exploring the full feedback, 35 out of the 50 most recent are 1 star out of 5. These have some interesting comments attached to them:

“I ordered a $200+ robot dog and they sent me plastic superman figurine!??!!?? I sent the seller 2 e-mails and received NO response and it’s been over 2 weeks! What a bunch of crooks! AVOID AT ALL COST!! Amazon should really consider banning this merchant from the marketplace!”

“they send the wrong toy plus it was a cheaper version,and charge me original price they never answer my emails ,i had to contact amazon directly,but amazon saved the day, till this day i havent heard from wizard entertainment”

“The seller falsely advertised the LEGO Star Wars Clone Scout Walker. When contacted a couple days later a crushed box with a piece of junk metal arrived. I contacted the seller several times & got no response. Even after filing a claim with Amazon the seller still refused to acknowledge the defect/cheating they performed.”

Most other comments are very similar. There are several reports of people receiving a Superman action figure in lieu of their items, several reports of multiple attempts to contact Wizard via email and phone being ignored, or being sent damaged or overpriced product, complete with the lower pricetag on the box. I contacted Wizard to ask about what seems to be a major case of mail fraud, and received this official response from April Wiggins:

“This is an issue that we are aware of and are addressing. During a recent
inventory move we incurred some damage to parts of our inventory. Since many
of our customers are collectors, these items are not suitable. When this
occurs, we send people a free gift (with shipping at our own expense) to
compensate them for their inconvenience. They also receive a full refund on
their order.

Although we send a note attached, it is confusing to some. We apologize for
any confusion and we continue to clear up any misunderstandings. To date,
anyone who was inconvenienced received a full refund and a free action
figure.”

Now, there are zero out of those 35 cases where the same poster has posted again to say anything like, “I got my refund” or “I re-read the paper that came with the Superman figure and realized they sent it as an apology,” so it still seems like something else might be going on. According to an anonymous source within Wizard, the customer service phone number no longer “goes to anything” and the non-replies to the email address are on purpose.

In addition, looking at Wizard’s Forums, the customer service problems appear to have been harrowing them for a lot longer than the last 30 days. A post dated August 8, 2006 is the first to note the non-answering of email and the phone number that’s very difficult to find. The frequency of these style of posts kicked up in March of 2009, with six and a half pages of comments similar to the Amazon feedback. Most of these include statements like, “I’ve been waiting 3 weeks,” “My order shipped with several missing items,” and “I’ve emailed several times with no reply.” These customers are seeing charges come up on their credit cards days or weeks before anything is shipped. They contradict Wiggins’s official statement, saying that after several months they had to dispute the charges with their credit cards in order to get their money back.

A moderator, “Jerry Whitworth,” has gone on this thread repeatedly telling people, “Don’t order from a company you have problems with,” as did moderator “jaydee74.”

One poster, Chris Underwood, even pasted in his entire customer service email experience. He received order confirmation April 30, 2009. He then sent emails that weren’t responded to on May 1, May 6, May 8, and May 9, all with no response.

With all this evidence, it seems something more than a note that is “confusing to some” is the problem. Wizard’s official statement says they’ve been prompt with refunds, but the customers tell a different story. While one has recently noted a refund, it was a full month after order placement (and credit card charge), and still with no communication.

This may be indicative of the larger problem Wizard has been facing over the last year or so. With magazine closings, location closings, and layoffs, things don’t look to be getting better. While Gareb Shamus purchased the Big Apple Con and revived the Chicago Comic-Con name, it is interesting to note that both DC Comics and Marvel Comics are conspicuously absent from the list of exhibitors for this year’s Chicago show, which is only about two months away. Image, Dark Horse, and IDW are likewise missing.

With less than one month since opening day, J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot may not have lived long, but it has certainly prospered.

BoxOfficeMojo has reported that Star Trek has snuck past Monsters vs. Aliens as the most profitable film in the U.S. thus far in 2009, earning $194,828,830 domestically since its opening May 8th. (So yeah, that’s a three week coup.)

At this point, with Terminator: Salvation getting panned critically, the film’s main competitors are Transformers and Harry Potter, the latter of which has lost a bit of its luster since the final book came out (and thus everybody knows the ending). With these competitors coming out the first two weeks of July, we’ll see if Star Trek hits that Holy Grail of $250 million domestic soon enough.

This is some pretty cool news, especially from one of our very own Blog@ teammates.

Brian Andersen, creator of So Super Duper and Saint Carrie, will be speaking at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco from 1pm to 3pm on Saturday, June 20th.

Here’s a nice little blurb, for those of you who don’t know Brian:

Brian Andersen is the super nerdy, super flirty, indie comic book creator behind such colorful comics as So Duper Duper, Reignbow & Dee-Va and Unbashedly Billie.  Under his itty bitty comic “company” (CBG Comics), he’s also published works by other creators,  such as Rick Worley’s A Waste of Time and the trade paperback collection of living comic book legend Trina Robbins’s 1980s series California Girls.

You can also check out his work on his So Super Duper web site. As part of the museum’s Cartoonist-in-Residence program, museum patrons will have the chance to talk to Brian about making his way into comics, as well as watch him work.

I hate Memorial Day.

I don’t have anything against taking a day to commemorate the sacrifices of the country’s fighting men or women, of course, or marking a special day to let people know when they’re allowed to start wearing white or giving folks a three-day weekend in which they can go on short summer holiday.

But Memorial Day comes with a terrible cost, essentially adding a second Sunday to the week, and then throwing the rest of the following week out of whack, which messes with my internal calendar and, like any deviation from my routine, makes me a little cranky and ill at ease.

And worst of all, of course, is the fact that it also pushes new comic book day back a day.

Wednesdays have been my favorite day of the week for a good half of my life at this point, for a variety of reasons, but mainly because of New Comics Day. For about the last decade and a half, my Wednesdays have been structured around the arrival of new comic books.
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THE RACE IS ON!
JUNE B:DC CHALLENGE

by: Kyle Latino

Well, first things first: sorry for the break in posts. There was some craziness and laziness (admittedly on my part), but now that things have settled it appears that I will be writing this spot solo for the foreseeable future. Lee has taken on other responsibilities in his life, and we all wish him the best, don’t we? So, yeah, stuck with just me. Ha!

Now, (full story here) June’s issue of the NEW YORKER has a rather interesting cover, it seems. Artist, Jorge Colombo, digi-painted that cover on a $4.99 app (Brushes) on his iPhone. The image is quite remarkable in many ways, not just in skill, but what it means for this digital age we are enjoying. Your average cover has a few thousand dollars worth of software behind it (photoshop, illustrator, etc.), yet this cover was done on a program that costs about as much as a big-beef borrito, cowboy cookie, and small coke at my local Roscoe’s Tacos. Even if you count the investment of the device, itself, you’re still only talking in the neighborhood of $200 - $300 (and sure a computer to sync it to, but you get my point).

As I am so inspired by this momentous event, I am starting a new convention of this feature. I’m calling it the B:DC CHALLENGE! Every month, it will be a new challenge concerning digital comic making (which I’m already worried about running out of). So, here is the low-down on this month’s challenge: DRAW A COMIC ON AN iPhone OR iPod Touch. You can use any drawing app you wish, but NO PHOTO COMICS! (Hey, that’s a good idea for July’s challenge.) You don’t have to letter on the iPhone, just draw/paint. Minimum of 8 panels, do more if you like. I’ll take stick figures, but I really urge you to stretch yourself. Try to make a comic that you would want read. Content is subject to censorship if chosen for display on this site. When you’re done, send me an email with the panels or links to latino.kyle AT gmail DOT com. Heck, any feedback on the feature, poems about the sadness over Lee’s departure, or hot scoops in field digital comics are more than welcome at the same address!

-Good luck, and good comics!

There are certain things that are so counterintuitive I would never do them…except that the anti-whatever-it-is lobbies are so obnoxious that I want to just to spite them. This is something I was thinking about today, actually, while I drove the 80 miles between my home and the nearest decent Hibachi place. One of the Department of Transporation’s relentlessly obnoxious “Click It or Ticket” ads came on the radio and by the time the commercial was finished, it was an act of will for me to keep my seat belt on.

Such is the case with The American Medical Association Alliance, who according to a CNN report are lobbying the Motion Picture Association of America to get a mandatory R-rating for any film that depicts smoking. The lobby, along with other anti-smoking groups, have already successfully persuaded the MPAA to include smoking in its list of factors for rating—a list of antisocial behaviors ranging from cursing and lewd gestures to rape and terrorism.

Let’s pause for a second and reflect on that—The American Medical Association Alliance are asking the MPAA to take the position that smoking is a more insidious act than rape or terrorism. This may seem like I’m extrapolating, but my logic—based on the demands put forth by the AMAA, is sound.

To their credit, the MPAA is discounting the AMAA’s demands out of hand and saying that a “zero-tolerance” policy regarding smoking in the movies “would not be accepted.” I liken this to George W. Bush’s “no litmus test” policy for his Supreme Court justices—the logic being, how can you possibly hope to make an informed decision as to the relative merits of an individual or a film if one factor is weighed so heavily against all the others?

Aside from the fact that hard-and-fast rules like this flirt with the boundaries of being flat-out illegal (that pesky First Amendment’s always ruining the fun, isn’t it?), they eventually suffocate on their own stupidity. The fact that the AMAA’s primary argument seems to revolve around the fact that Wolverine had a cigar in a few sequences of this summer’s hit X-Men Origins: Wolverine, is kind of ironic given that superheroes have combated this sort of myopic censorship before. In 1970’s The Amazing Spider-Man #96-98, Stan Lee and Marvel stood up to the Comics Code Authority, whose rules prohibited any depiction of illegal drug use, regardless of context. The rule was eventually overturned, as the senselessness of it became pretty obvious when the Green Goblin story saw print. Fox spends a good deal of the CNN story dancing cleverly around the subject, citing a number of ways in which they limited Logan’s smoking and inserted an anti-smoking message into the picture, but they miss the greater point.

Seriously, folks, where’s Bill Hicks when we need him?

President Obama has appointed Charles Rivkin–former Jim Henson Company CEO and current producer of Yo Gabba Gabba!–to serve as U.S. Ambassador to France.

Nikki Finke provides the political backstory. I really don’t have any additional observations, except occasionally it’s a relief to note law-related news that doesn’t involve damages, injunctions or plea bargains.

Colleen Coover has shown on her blog that Wolverine is the best there is at what he does.

And what he does…

…is freakin’ adorable.

Seriously, if it ever became a series, I would buy “Wolverine: The Tuff Li’l Canadian” and read it till my fingers bleed. If you click the above link, there’s an equally amusing back cover as well.

This sketch for the Wolverine: Weapon X #1 blank variant cover will benefit the Hero Initiative, an organization which helps creators in medical or financial need. Jeff Parker and Steve Lieber are also doing their own versions, all of which will be auctioned in the near future.

Recently, Hero has been helping out with creator Josh Medors, who has been battling cancer. Click here to get more news on that auction, which is still continuing.

By Filip Sablik, Publisher of Top Cow Publications, Inc.

So what’d you do this weekend?

One night this past weekend, the wife and I invited some friends over for some Chinese takeout and to watch “Can’t Hardly Wait”. The crew included fellow comic pros Archaia Studio Press’ Mel Caylo, freelance writer and editor Rob Levin, and artist Nelson Blake II. “Can’t Hardly Wait” is a seminal high school flick from the 1990s. If you haven’t had a chance to check it out, I highly recommend it.

Other than my illustrious guests, what does this have to do with comics?

Well, because in truth, Rob challenged me to tie in our evening to a blog post after I lamented I had nothing to write about this week. Always up for a good challenge, I decided I could tie this into comics. Specifically to breaking into comics, although you could probably extrapolate these ideas into most industries (certainly most entertainment industries).

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It’s like the old saying goes: “This might just be crazy enough to work.”

BOOM! Studios, which is already heading a coup with its licensing of the Incredibles and the Muppet Show (as well as great series like Unthinkable and Irredeemable), now has one more weapon in its arsenal:

Die Hard’s John %@$#%@#in McClane.

According to solicits, Die Hard: Year One is due out in August, and will go back in time to 1976 to explore John’s first year in the police force, a la Batman Begins or Casino Royale. Howard Chaykin will be writing, while Steven Thompson will be drawing, which already sounds to be completely awesome, especially considering how often people in the comics industry talk about Die Hard (I’m lookin’ at you, Dan Slott!).

Can I get a yippee ki yay from the reader base?

Y’know the only thing worse than a Terminator? A Terminator that’s merged with a Transformer — or as Black20 calls them, Transforminators.

Heh, I love this mashup, especially considering how Terminator director McG once challenged Transformer mastermind Michael Bay to a — we’ll just say “manhood comparison contest.”

“They’re eating all our sand!”

[Shout-out to SCI FI Wire for the link]

The other day David shared word that the Spider-Man newspaper comic strip had just de-rebooted the reboot to Spidey’s marital status in the strip, meant to bring it in line with the comic books.

In the strip, the change occurred in January of this year, with January 2nd’s strip announcing in an all-text third panel that, “In keeping with the new Spider-Man story line in Marvel Comics, we, too, are going back to to Spidey’s roots. He’s single and in college. Let the surprises begin!”

That lasted almost five months, before the notoriously conservative and change-resistant fans of the notoriously conservative and change-resistant medium apparently prevailed upon the strip’s creators and/or syndicate, and the reboot was itself rebooted. (I wonder what that opposition must have been like? I mean, For Better Or Worse Fans were downright scary when it came to Liz’s marriage to Anthony, and Lynn Johnston didn’t bend).

The change lasted only for the length of a single story arc. After the Sunday strip saying the last story arc was only a dream, Monday’s strip reiterated the change (above).

But! Note the phrasing of that third panel. “Peter is back in the present again–still wedded to Mary Jane! But just you wait–till Wolverine shows up!”

“But,” huh?

Er, so while Peter and MJ were married as of Monday, but that might change when Wolverine shows up…? Is Wolvie going to wreck the Parkers’ marriage?

You know, Logan does have a thing for redheads. And there was that cover for Marvel Knights Spider-Man #13. And Tobey Maguire has a certain boy-ish charm, he’s no Hugh Jackman.

Or maybe that last panel is just ambiguously phrased. But I like my interpreation better.