Last Update: October 1, 2023
Millions of dollars of rare comic books stolen from collector's home shortly after his death
Story at KPTV Portland MSN
Robbers broke into the home eight times in the following days.
What's the hold up on an MCU X-Men movie? – AV Club
Graphic novels or comic books, what's the difference? – IGN
Are they the same thing? "This is an incredibly complex question with a relatively simple answer."
How much research goes into a comic book panel? – Owlcation
The essential non-superhero comic books and their movie versions – Forbes
Shortest Marvel superhero movie? The Marvels clocks in at 1 hour, 45 minutes – Superherohype
Are we now seeing the return of traditional action film lengths on coming hero films? The regular complaint of "too long" as been laid at the doors of both Marvel and DC for a lot of recent movies.
A restored version of the 1968 Luchador film classic "The Batwoman" has been completed – NY Times – "This Caped Crusader Wore a Bikini"
Though there are obvious costume similarities, the 1968 Mexican wrestling film "The Batwoman" is a non-Batman character that is obviously derived from the Adam West American TV show and contains mostly a one-woman fight against a mad scientist, starring Maura Monti.
Monti’s life could be a biopic in and of itself. Born in Genoa, Italy, Monti went to Mexico with her mother, and according to García Besné, right away had a cinematic stroke of luck: a winning lottery ticket. She started modeling, then acted in a string of genre films (first role: Maria Magdalena). Handpicked by the director René Cardona for "The Batwoman," she reveled in the role, staying in her bikini-and-boots costume to stroll around town. But despite the star turn, her film career petered out. García Besné attributed the fade-out to her marriage to a producer — "producers from the era did not want their women to be working," she said — while Venkatesh speculated that Monti wasn’t interested in the nude-leaning roles that became more popular in the 1970s. Whatever the case, Monti stepped into a new professional identity — journalist — and didn’t look back. She wrote for magazines and co-hosted an arts program for television...
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"My family would say [The Batwoman] was shot in Mexicolor — they would just invent words," she remembered of her producer relatives. "But I said, ‘How would Mexicolor look like?’” The results: rich blues for the Batwoman’s outfits, and an ominous red for her nemesis, the fish-man Pisces (who might remind some viewers of the creature in Guillermo del Toro’s "The Shape of Water"). Today, the unpretentious fun of "The Batwoman" feels all the more precious in comparison with many of today’s lumbering superhero franchises..."
Batman and Joker: brothers? – Superherotype
Delving into the phantasy of the Todd Phillips' Joker movie in which Arthur Fleck's mother, Penny, made him believe that he was the illegitimate son of Thomas Wayne.
General Zod series coming from DC – Comicbook
"James Gunn Kills ‘Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom’ In Its Cradle" – Bounding into Comics
The Aquaman movie of 2018 made $1.15 billion in international box office, but how long ago was this measured in superhero movie years now that 2023 has been full of flops and flubs? 2018 is a long time ago.
Cartoonist Cheeming Boey writes apology and protest after his comic book When I Was A Kid 3 was banned in Malaysia – MSN Malay Mail
Boey explained how when he was a kid, his father disapproved of him reading comic books, and so when he embarked on the series, his goal was to write books that would educate people about life back home, and to write books his father would be proud of. According to Boey, When I Was A Kid 3 was released in 2014, it was an instant hit, and he was invited to schools nationwide to talk about it..."
A protest in Indonesia at the Malaysian embassy over Boey’s comic book led to the comic book getting banned. The protest against the book concentrated on a page which the accusation is made that it denigrated a Malaysian maid who had climbed a coconut tree, and Boey has said that it is a misinterpretation of events within the comic.
Top Ten Batman "runs" – Yahoo News
What's discussed: they talk about the Doug Moench and Kelley Jones run; Paul Dini's stretch; the "New Look" Batman of John Broome, Gardner Fox, and Carmine Infantino; the Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers Batman stories; the Tom King Batman, Frank Miller's work on Batman; the Jeph Loeb Batman with Tim Sale; Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's recent long Batman run; the Grant Morrison Batman; and finally their "number one run" of Batman comics are the Neal Adams and Denny O'Neil books.
Lists like this are pretty subjective, and this list is obviously turned in a direction to accommodate the tastes and probable depth of knowledge of a 21st century Batman aficionado. A nice highlight of the article is a quick discussion of why Frank Miller's Batman, which I think any fair analysis will recognize as probably the most influential "version" of Batman since the 1980s, is only given a mid-tier position. The article explains why by saying it is based upon not just looking at Batman Year One and of course the enormous impact of The Dark Knight Returns, but by considering Miller's various sequel runs on Batman which followed and have been, shall we say, uneven.
Personally, in terms of quality, any list without Archie Goodwin's one year run on Detective Comics is incomplete, and any list without isolating a string of Bill Finger issues is simply ignoring reality.
The article, though, has reasonable arguments for the composition of it's "top ten" and in general presents a good Greatest Hits of Batman centered on highlighting the creative teams instead of stories or eras.
Giant-Size Marvel comics coming back for 50th Anniversary one-shot series – Superhero Hype MSN
Disney, Netflix and HBO Max forming a "streaming business trade alliance" – Hollywood Reporter
The trade alliance is to put an organized effort into lobbying for federal and state policies that best benefit the streaming industry.
Martin Scorsese says directors like Christopher Nolan lead the fight against "Comic Book Movie Culture" – Deadline Hollywood
The danger there is what it’s doing to our culture," Scorsese said of comic book films during a GQ interview. "Because there are going to be generations now that think movies are only those—that’s what movies are."
Fresno Comic book stores closure after 30 years – ABC Fresno MSN News
Owner Dave Allread says the current landlord wants to increase rent by 70 percent, which is something he can't do."
Affectionate "adieu" obituaries on comic book store closings are becoming more frequent.
Inflation across the board is wreaking havoc for small businesses where the margin to weather cost increases are small. Inflationary rising costs are tipping those that survived the pandemic over the edge, and adding to the already high level of commercial property vacancies, a kind of vicious cycle that could get significantly worse.
Interview with Will Eisner Hall of Famer Diana Schutz – The Comics Journal
Schutz was at Comico and Dark Horse as editor in chief and started up the Maverick line. Over the years she worked with Frank Miller, Eddie Campbell, Matt Wagner, Harvey Pekar and others.
It is being said online that the new Disney Snow White movie production spending has cleared $300 million
...which means the chances it makes money vs loses money is becoming more likely with each passing day, and that $300 million number doesn't include the cost of the marketing campaign that will kick into gear to tell the public the film is coming out into theatres on March 22, 2024.
But that big number doesn't apparently match what's been spent on making The Marvels, which as of the end of 2022 had cost $275 million, and obviously doesn't include money spent on reshoots or CGI during 2023, which could be as much as another $60 million or even more, and again doesn't include a marketing campaign. The first Captain Marvel in 2019 made $1,129,576,094 billion and some places say that translated into a net profit of $400 million for Disney, against a production budget of $152 million (rule of thumb on movie earnings is that approximately half of earnings are retained by the theaters themselves).
Kevin Smith comics collection coming to auction – Tap Into MSN
Bodnar's Auction – September 27, 2023 Tuesday 10:00 am-4:00 pm
Newspaper reshuffling comics section guided by reader input – Yahoo News
On Oct. 2, the El Paso Times and elpasotimes.com will roll out a fresh lineup of daily and Sunday comics. The new comic offers are launching across the larger USA TODAY Network. ...Our comics' page remodel was influenced by seeking fresh input from our audience. We took the time to survey our readers and acted upon what we learned.
Marvel bringing back Ultimate Marvel titles – Gizmodo MSN
Kevin Eastman sees more comic book movies coming but less to do with DC/Marvel
Story at UK Yahoo
The Archies Netflix adaptation and nostalgic within India – BBC News
By the time the comic became popular in India, it had gone out of fashion in America. Comics were popular in US in the 1950s and 60s - in fact, Archie made his debut in December 1941 - but sales began dropping towards the end of the century. Publishers have tried to reinvent Archie Comics by adding diverse characters, including the first gay character; exploring darker plotlines tied to current issues like gun control, body shaming, recession and even the challenges of sustaining long-term relationships like marriage... Indian fans appear to be torn over these new offerings. Some like Reneysh Vittal say they miss the playfulness and simplicity of the older Archie Comics. "Our generation was lucky enough to experience life just before the internet took over and for me, Archie Comics will always represent that pre-internet age of innocence," he says.
The worst box office weekend of 2023?
Story at Yahoo
Expend4bles sequel comes in right behind The Nun II with pretty weak numbers.
The Batman books scheduled for the rest of 2023 into 2024 – Gamesradar
DC's publishing a lot of coming Dark Knight stuff.
Fremont California Comic Book Store celebrating National Comic Book Day – Yahoo News
How did comic books become "classics"? – New Yorker
"A classic can only occur when a civilization is mature," one dead white man, T. S. Eliot, intoned in 1944. "It must be the work of a mature mind." Penguin’s first Classic, published in 1946, was E. V. Rieu’s influential prose translation of the Odyssey. How did Iron Man and Wolverine come to occupy the same shelf as Odysseus and Elizabeth Bennet?
A "classic" is a term used a lot for various things, such as saying "that joke is a classic!" or "that car is a classic" and so on. The English word 'classic' is derived from the Latin word 'classicus,' which means a designation of the highest order of elite citizens in ancient Rome.
Are those Marvel comics being reprinted by Random House classics? As Marvel comics they certainly are, and in general as examples of the comic book superhero arts, they are. Also, they are reprinted well on good paper and the Random House production artists did something that the DC and Marvel book designers of the past typically ignored: Random House didn't place the pages in a way that their edges disappear down into the binding at the center of the book such that to look at the entire printed page you have to almost, or literally, crack the binding apart.
James Gunn to utilize Superman for All Seasons by Jeph Loeb for his Superman Legacy project? – Yahoo News
Artist Thomas Scioli talks about the I Am Stan book project about Stan Lee
Story at CBS News
Heres the Penguin Random House publishing company page on the book (incidentally, this is the same company that does Marvel comics reprint collections.)
The first graphic novel biography of the legendary Stan Lee, co-creator of many of Marvel’s beloved superheroes, from Eisner-nominated comics creator Tom Scioli.
Pofile of Justin Green and Carol Tyler – Washington Post MSN
New Flash #1 is "Cosmic Horror" – Gamesradar
Interview with new Flash writer Si Spurrier
The new run offers a very different take on DC's most famous speedster, one that tilts Wally West and his family and friends into darker, more dangerous "cosmic horror" territory.
Costs on Disney's new reversion of Snow White production piling up higher, and higher – Bounding into Comics
Preview of the new DC Power Girl comic #1 – Flickering Myth - preview shows 4 covers and 5 pages from the new book.
Worlds Finest #20 reconnects to the 1996 Kingdom Come – MSN Superhero Hype
New Batman podcast will feature Colman Domingo as Bats – Yahoo News
Marvel is doing a new prequel Planet of the Apes comic
Story at MSN Superhero Hype
Tim Burton did not like how Warners used his past Superman and Batman work in The Flash movie – MSN Looper
Review: Brave and the Bold #131, DC Comics December 1976
A ruthless Catwoman takes on Wonder Woman and Batman while trying to sell off the blueprints to a high-tech cryptographic machine to the renegade terrorist state of Sudaria. Review of Take Seven Steps to... Wipe-Out!
Secret Wars a soft "reboot" of MCU? – Bounding into Comics
Chris Evans to again be Captain America? – Screenrant
Greg Capullo covers for Moon Knight
Story at Yahoo News
Hey gang...it's with a heavy heart that I have some extremely sad news to share. My longtime pal, occasional collaborator and fellow pop-culture junkie...Joe Matt has suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. As many of you know, Joe and I first met when we were both students at pic.twitter.com/WMOY8566rN
— Matt Wagner (@MattWagnerComic) September 19, 2023
Ranking the Batmobiles – Fanside MSN
Hardly any surprises here in the list but they do include the Corvette C7 version from the Batwoman TV show.
Your VHS collection (probably) isn't worth thousands of dollars – Comicbook
Forbes Magazine asks: Who is worse off under Disney management: the Marvel franchise or the Star Wars franchise? – Forbes
They left out Pixar.
Accusation that rebooting Daredevil TV show is Disney's way of renegotiating contracts in their favor – Bounding into Comics
DC denies Bill Willingham can put Fables into Public Domain – IGN
Barbie slips past Avengers for domestic box earnings – People MSN
90's Captain America redesign "exactly how his haters imagine him"
Story at Screenrant
Oppenheimer closes in on $1 billion – Screenrant
Rare British comic book art was found being used as dartboard – UK The Guardian
Rare batch of 80 year old comic books found in a feed store in Pennsylvania go up for auction
Story at CBS News
Time to go to Disney World? Goofy 4 Mickey
Need a Home in Northern Virginia/Metro DC? See 5567 James Young Street