ComicsAlliance Week in Review: April 6-13
This week we had a couple of interesting interviews having to do with the popular Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon series. First, Chris Sims spoke with Gene Luen Yang, the American Born Chinese cartoonist who is scripting a series of Avatar graphic novels, and then Caleb Goellner spoke with the show's creators about its sequel series, The Legend of Korra.
We also had all of the following...
-DC announced plans to revive National Comics, as a sort of 1st Issue Special series to spotlight different, under-used characters in done-in-one stories by rotating creative teams
-Ultimate Spider-Mand Miles Morales and regular Spider-Man Peter Parker will indeed meet in the upcoming Spider-Men event/story by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli, timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the debut of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's character
-Dark Horse will be publishing a comic based on Japan's "national legend" of the 47 samurai, drawn by Usagi Yojimbo artist Stan Sakai (and speaking of Sakai, David Brothers has an appreciation of Sakai's lettering in his signature sereis)
-IDW will be producing a Battle Beasts comic, based on one of the few remaining toylines that I played with a child that haven't had comic book adaptions just yet
-DC apparently liked how their recent flirtation with digital-first distribution went, as they'll be expanding the strategy to include a new Batman weekly and the new Ame-Comi Girls, based on the scantily glad, manga-style statuettes based on DC characters, which would make it a comic based on merchandise based on comics. Both will feature the work of rotating creative teams of fairly high caliber.
-Saga #2 (I really like that seahorse guy)
-The Comic Book History of Comics, the title which has been given to the upcoming collection of Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey's Comic Book Comics miniseries
-America's Got Powers, the latest in a line of reality TV-inspired super-comics
Film:
-Ben Kingsley is in talks to play a villain in Iron Man 3. Fingers crossed it's MODOK!
-Confirmation that pretty much everything Marvel Comics has ever published is in development for some sort of film adaptation: Guardians of The Galaxy is apparently in the works
Television:
Legal:
-A legal conflict involving Superman? Preposterous! This time, it's Smallville's producers accusing Warner Bros. of using DC Comics to hide profits from the ten-season drama
-Frank Miller oughta love this
Not Comics (But Still Kinda Cool):
-Lauren Davis examines Map of The Dead, the Google Maps of (hopefully just) fantasy zombie survival
Art:
-This week's Best Art Ever (This Week)