It may simply be a post-Comic-Con malaise, but this seems like a pretty low-key week for comics.

Oh, sure, there are some notable comings and goings: Marvel wraps up its successful Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born miniseries — with three covers and a sketchbook, no less! — while kicking off another installment of Shanna the She-Devil. Dark Horse ends another Conan miniseries. And DC takes another stab at the Metal Men, while welcoming an 89 percent less slutty-looking Supergirl (thanks to a new creative team).

But overall, it feels like we’re well into the middle of things as we trudge toward autumn: another issue of Word War Hulk, another issue of Countdown, and countless trade paperback collections.

For a rundown of the titles Chris Mautner and I think are worth special mention, just click “more.”

And, as always, let us know your choices in the comments below.

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Stuart Immonen points to a preview over at Marvel.com of Ultimate Spider-Man #112, his first full issue on the title.

Mark Millar has just seen the most awaited British television documentary about a comic book creator who co-created Spider-Man that isn’t Stan Lee:

Just watched the Ditko Documentary, written and produced by Jonathan Ross [...] Bloody Hell! What a great, great documentary. We’re so used to half-assed, badly produced comic book documentaries (either cheaply put together by people who love them or shoddily put together by people who don’t). It’s a genuine pleasure to see something done by a guy at the top of his game, aimed at the BBC4 art-house mob and featuring a subject even we (the crazies) know little about.

Only three photos of Ditko even exist and yet we have a documentary filled with Ditko goodness for one Earth hour ranging from Flo Steinberg and John Romita Senior to Stan Lee, Jerry Robinson and vast chunks of Alan Moore (singing a song about Mister A he wrote some years ago). I feel slightly out of place among such industry luminaries, but nice to hang out in such legendary company. I believe this is my favourite documentary ever and, as I said to Jonathan on Saturday when I’d just finished watching, it’s been built with love-bricks.

You’re going to ADORE it.

Should be on BBC4 later in the month and up on youtube for the rest of you shortly thereafter.

There’s no way BBC America are going to show this, is there…?

The Bendis Board have decided that it’s time to stop worshiping false idols, and time to start worshiping other false idols:

“Where as Frank Miller seems to have completely lost his way with the character, Matt [Wagner] seems to have picked up right where Year One left off. His Batman, along with the supporting cast, is spot on. These are right up there with the Engelhart/Rogers run. I hope DC keeps him on limited series like these, if only for the high quality. And personally, I think he draws one of the best Batman’s out there.”

“I agree with your assessment on Matt Wagner, and disagree with your assessment on Frank Miller. He hasn’t lost his way just because he isn’t writing the now stereotypical Batman attitude he helped popularize.”

“I have to disagree. DK2 was…well, it was the reading equivalent of bathing in dirty bath water. I haven’t gotten to the Batman & Robin thing, but by most accounts its not good.”

“Wagner nor anyone is worthy to the Miller throne except Miller himself.”

New York magazine’s Vulture blog has a 10-page excerpt from the first volume of Alive, by Tadashi Kawashima and Adachitoka, due out this week from Del Rey Manga.

I didn’t see see this among the avalanche of Comic-Con news and images, so I’ll go ahead and post the convention teaser poster for Whiteout, based on the 1998 Oni Press miniseries by Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber. It’s obviously based on Frank Miller’s cover.

(Via Greg Rucka)

Related: Read the first issue of Whiteout on Lieber’s ComicSpace page

Writer Greg Rucka looks at DC’s Countdown #40, and comes face to face with one of the creative pitfalls of work-for-hire comics:

The problem, you see, in working at DC or Marvel or anyplace where you are, essentially, work-for-hire, is that try though you might, you have little to no creative control over how the characters you’re working on 1) appear, and 2) are drawn.

The mere fact that Renee [Montoya] was included in Countdown annoys me, frankly, but that’s nobody’s fault, really. DC’s character, they want to give her play, sure. What annoys me more is that nobody bothered to either talk to me about the Grand Plan for the character (and there is one) or the redesign that would naturally occur after her last appearance in 52.

For those of you who want to see what The Question looks like these days, check out The Crime Bible: The Five Books of Blood. For those of you who have little faith and want Charlie back, check it out anyway, and then either your worst fears will be confirmed, or you’ll find yourself maybe being willing to let go of the past and give us a chance.

But this, man … I recognize it’s a hard sell for some folks. And stuff like this – done with the best of intentions, mind – doesn’t help the cause, so to speak. First appearance after the end of 52, this is what we get.

The Crime Bible: The Five Lessons of Blood miniseries debuts on Oct. 31.

It’s not just us Westerners who lovelovelove the Harry Potter, you know. He’s quite popular in Japan and other Asian countries as well. Exhibit A to that effect is the number of Harry Potter doujinshi that’s produced in the Land of the Rising Sun. The blogger known as Mutantfrog has photos up of some poorly made bootleg “sequels” and one rather nice, g-rated fan comic.

If you’re curious about more HP comics, you can find some here (not that I approve of scantillations or anything), here, here and also here. Be warned, of course, that most of these comics seem more interested in exploring the romantic possibilities between the various male characters in Rowling’s universe than anything else.

Did you know there was a musical based off of the manga Bleach? I certainly didn’t. And it seems to have caught Bleach fan John Jakala by surprise as well. Nevertheless, he’s got links to an FAQ, a YouTube video and the cover of the soundtrack album up on his site.

If that doesn’t sound wierd enough, in the comments section someone notes that a musical has also been made of The Prince of Tennis. Which not only begs the question “why,” but also “why haven’t we tried something like this?” I want to see Spent: the Musical.

USA Today talks with comics writer-novelist-screenwriter Neil Gaiman about Stardust, the illustrated novel and film (which debuts Aug. 10).

ICv2.com confirms an item we ran on Thursday: Top Shelf Productions will release a full-color, 500-page omnibus edition of Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill’s Marshal Law.

“We are trying to collect everything we can get the rights to and put it in a big omnibus and then go from there,” Top Shelf’s Chris Staros told the website.

The grim, futuristic superhero parody originally appeared at Marvel’s Epic Comics in 1987-88, with later stories released through Apocalypse Comics, Marvel, Dark Horse and 2000AD.

Well, it’s all over now except for the reflecting … San Diego 2007 has come and gone, leaving behind memories, bits of news, photos and a heck of a lot of blog and twitter posts. It was chaotic, tiring, long and frustrating … but I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else. Some random thoughts …

–I guess the biggest highlight for me was that I got to meet a lot of people in person who I’ve only known through the ‘net. It was great to meet another member of the Blog@ team, Tom Bondurant, and to get to see Carla, Graeme and Matt Brady again. I also got to meet a former Blog@ guest blogger, Cecil Castellucci, and her Plain Janes cohort Jim Rugg. Ryan Penagos gave me a man hug when I met him for the first time. After I introduced my wife to Alex Segura, I told her he was the one who got me into this whole blogging thing in the first place … so now she knows who to blame. Chip Mosher, who is only about two weeks into his new job with BOOM!, had a very busy con, but not too busy to chat several times. The AiT table was always a fun place to be; Larry Young was showing everyone baby pictures, and I got to see Matt Silady, Daniel Goodbrey, Josh Richardson, Kirsten Baldock and Ash Aiwase, and meet Pat Donley, Marc Bernardin, Adam Freeman, Nima Sorat and Adam Beechen (whose email address I need to find because I need to ask him about something). Ted Mathot, Dan Vado, Jennifer de Guzman, Dean Trippe, David Hyde, Bully and his pal John, Chris Pitzer, Rick Spears and Chuck BB, Jamie Rich, Josh Howard, Ryan Claytor, Tim Leong and Laura Hudson … I know I’m forgetting someone, or several someones.

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I’m not even sure if these are all of the photos I have … in fact, I’m pretty sure there’s something else on my camera that I’ll discover in the next day or so that I’ll need to share. But for now, this is my last photo gallery because, well, it has to end sooner or later. Got some good stuff here, hopefully, including Smallville cast members, Isaac’s loft and more …

Some of the Smallville cast was on hand to sign autographs Saturday, including Justin Hartley (Green Arrow):

And Erica Durance (Lois):

And the new Supergirl, Laura Vandervoort:

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Pulp Secret has several video reports from San Diego up on their site, including this one that features some Battlestar Galactica news, an interview on SciFi’s Tin Man mini-series and the Iron Man armor unveiling:

Hasbro presented Stan Lee with his own Marvel Legends action figure in a ceremony on Friday. Check out the crowd!

There were several “booth ceremonies” throughout the convention … this one, the shaving of Simone Bianchi’s head at the Marvel booth (Marvel’s webmaster, Ryan, said they had video of the haircut, and I’ll post it here when it’s up), the Iron Man armor unveiling … Tokyopop, when I walked by their booth on Thursday, actually had a panel going with several of their artists right there on the floor, which was nice for the people who were waiting in line for something at the Tokyopop booth (not sure what it was, exactly); at least they had something to listen to while standing there.

(Thanks Vaneta & Joseph!)

The Lost Colony, Volume 1: The Snodgrass Conspiracy
Written and Illustrated by Grady Klein
First Second
$25.00 (hardcover edition)

The Lost Colony wasn’t at all what I expected.

I should clarify that though by saying that my expectations were pretty base. I heard “lost colony” and “secret island” and saw pictures of a robot and people in nineteenth century clothes and my imagination flew to something like Mark Twain meets Jules Verne meets J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof, and Carlton Cuse.

I was just looking for a fun adventure/mystery, but Grady Klein had loftier ambitions. There is a secret island and a lost colony on it. There’s also a robot. But of all the influences I expected to identify, the strongest is Mark Twain. Or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, at least.

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ComiPress gleans an interesting tidbit from an article about the 10th anniversary of Eiichiro Oda’s manga One Piece: The 46 published volumes have sold 140 million copies in Japan. Volume 27 sold a record 2.63 million copies in its first printing.

The series is published in North America by Viz Media.

Peter David shares what happened after the Marvel-DC softball game at San Diego:

Several of [Marvel's] players were celebrating with the Stan Lee Cup at the Hyatt bar after midnight. Losing DC player Dan Didio saw the guys and endeavored to snare the cup away from them, perhaps in hope that–since they were drinking–they wouldn’t notice. Unfortunately what Dan was unaware of was that they were, in fact, drinking beer out of the Stan Lee Cup. Consequently, Dan’s abortive attempt to yank the Cup away from its bearer’s grasp resulted in beer spilling out of the cup and down Dan’s crotch. To his credit, Dan was a good sport about it and then drank the remainder of the beer from the cup.

I still have a bunch of San Diego pictures of my own to upload, which I plan to do later today (once I’m a little more awake and my San Diego hangover has subsided). But Newsarama’s Vaneta Rogers was also at the show and sent me the pictures she didn’t use for her Comic-Con Floor Buzz post. Thanks Vaneta!

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The cowlicked boy reporter’s troubles have spread to the country of South Africa, where The Associated Press reports Human & Rousseau have nixed plans to release an Afrikaans edition of “Tintin in the Congo” due to complaints about its alleged racist content:

“We felt that it depicted indigenous African people in an unflattering … stereotypical fashion,” said spokesman Carina Diedericks-Hugo was quoted as saying on the SABC news Web site. “We felt that we have a particular situation in South Africa and that depiction of indigenous people, we can’t agree with that.”

In the book, author Remi depicts the white hero’s adventures in the Congo against the backdrop of an idiotic, chimpanzee-like native population that eventually comes to worship Tintin—and his dog—as gods.

The English edition of the book will still be available, printed with a warning noting readers to the potentially offensive content.