One of the hottest promos at MoCCA was the Pantheon flyer for this fall’s new Charles Burns GN, X’ed OUT, and we’ve sneakily scanned it in to give you a sneak peak.

The cover is a direct homage to this famed Tintin tale:

A theme echoed in the interior. (Click for larger version.)

X’ed OUT comes out on October 19th and weighs in at 56 pages. Anything by comics master Burns is a big event and this should be no exception.

Proving the law of physics that states that matter and Grant Morrison projects cannot truly be destroyed, only transferred from one publisher to another, Liquid has teamed with Dynamite, and Morrison’s “Mahabharata” project — announced a few years ago with now defunct Virgin Comics — will be seeing print as an “illustrated script book” entitled 18 Days. Hte project is billed as joint venture between Dynamite and LIquid, the company that was created from the remains of Virgin. The project began as

Morrison’s bible and scripts for an animated series based on the Mahabharata  it remains in development with Liquid and Perspective Studios. The final result will be a hardcover book collecting Morrison’s original unedited scripts, story bible, character descriptions and commentary, illustrated by Mukesh Singh (Devi, Gamekeeper, Shadow Hunter). The original — a classic Indian myth telling of three great warriors and their cataclysmic battles — is the world’s longest epic poem at more than 1.8 millions words, so there was certainly a lot of source material.

Grant Morrison commented, “18 Days is a labor of love made all the more exciting by having a collaborator as original and groundbreaking as Mukesh. His techno-Vedic superheroes and spectacular scenes of cosmic warfare bring a dazzling new and contemporary dimension to one of the world’s greatest stories.”“

18 Days takes one of the most enduring tales of the East and places it in the capable hands of Grant Morrison, one of the greatest storytellers of the West. Combined with the visual spectacle of Mukesh Singh’s artwork, this is a book that goes beyond myth, beyond generations and beyond borders, transcending the story’s origins and showing the world a dynamic new vision of gods and war,” Liquid’s CEO, Sharad Devarajan commented, “Dynamite is the ideal partner to help us bring this book to all fans of comics, pop culture and myth.”

“Sharad and his partners at Liquid have been able to work with an incredibly gifted group of talented creators, and now they’ve added Grant Morrison to that list. To be able to partner up with them to release this deeply personal project of Grant’s is beyond an honor. Grant is one of the best and most thought provoking writers in comics today, with an incredible resume of past and present work. He’s partnered here with the equally talented Mukesh Singh – whose artwork is truly mind-blowing. Together, they have created a new world of gods, war and more!” stated Dynamite’s President and Publisher, Nick Barrucci. “We’re thrilled to be working with them on this, and hopefully many more projects to come.”

Morrison has long had an interest in Indian myths — see much of the Invisibles — and he and Deepak Chopra appeared on a panel together at San Diego in 2008 to tak about aspects of the project.

More artwork from the book can be viewed here: http://issuu.com/liquidcomics/docs/18days

[NOTE: Some copy was left out of the original version of this story due to a posting error; the entire story is now posted.]

It’s been no secret over the last year that Steve Geppi, the owner of Diamond Comics Distribution, has had some money problems on his other business ventures, including Gemstone, his now-dormant publishing arm and the Geppi Entertainment Museum in Baltimore. As we reported last year, he had a $373,000 lawsuit filed against him for money owed to Global Interprint, the printer for many Gemstone books. There was also the matter of a $16,466,205.32 debt to PNC Bank over a bad real estate deal in Camden, Maine. Now, even more debts and lawsuits are emerging.

First, there’sthe little matter of this $500,ooo million lawsuit against Geppi for breach of contract, brought by Paige M. Kuether, Lynn L. Montana, Raymond D Montana and Donald W. Montana against Geppi and the Diamond International Galleries, Geppi’s high-end collectibles business. The plaintiffs are the children of Bob Montana, the legendary artist and co-creator of the Archie characters, so even without looking at the court documents, it’s not too hard to figure out this matter involves artwork or other collectibles.

in 1996 the Montana heirs sued Archie Publications for creator credit on the characters. The suit was settled but Montana is listed as “creator of the characters’ original likenesses.”

Geppi had another recent rent dispute settlement regarding a theater one of his companies operated in 2008:

The owner of Westview Mall in Catonsville has settled its unpaid rent lawsuit with comic book magnate Stephen A. Geppi, who served as guarantor for the lease of a former movie theater.

Westview Center Associates LLC had sought approximately $200,000 in unpaid rent from Geppi and Diamond Cinemas Inc., which operated the Diamond Cinemas Westview for six months in 2008.

The theate, located in a Catonsville, MD mall, had closed due to theatre chain consolidation earlier. Geppi’s company tried to make a go of running it, but it closed after six months and remains shuttered.

As part-owner of the Baltimore Orioles, Geppi is a very prominent local businessman, whose ventures often appear in the local papers. In fact, this link is from a local Maryland newspaper naming Geppi one of the “biggest scammers” of 2009:

-The Maryland Stadium Authority reduces politically well-connected businessman Steve Geppi’s $367,820 rent at the state’s Camden Station by 31 percent after Geppi misses 19 monthly rent payments.

The matter of the Entertainment Museum, housed along with a sports museum in a building next door to the baseball stadium Camden Yards, has been a bit of a local scandal. The Orioles have stunk, the recession stung everyone and attendance was down, meaning Geppi’s Museum, launched with much fanfare in 2006, has struggled to make ends meet and even pay the electric bill. However, Baltimore authorities have been generous to local attractions to boost the tourism business. After missing 19 rent payments, Geppi settled up early in 2009 for $364,884.98.

As we like to point out every time we run one of these stories, Geppi’s business is set up with separate corporations for his various businesses, so Diamond the distributor is seemingly not directly liable for any of these debts and bad business deals. However, Geppi’s personal finance problems can’t be helping Diamond as they deal with the general downturn on the economy, the not-as-bad-as-everyone-else-but-still-not-good slip in comics sales, and the disaster that was the move to the new distribution center last year — coming at the height of the recession, it left orders in shambles for months. While Diamond is still getting business done, in light of this growing list of debts, the rest of Geppi’s empire looks pretty shaky,

[Thanks to Ben Grimm for some of the above links.]

The New York Times profiles president of production at Warners, Jeff Robinov, painting him as the heir apparent to Alan Horn as he finds new ways to do business at the studio. The piece looks at his recent takeover of DC’s operations:

Driven by its need to replace Harry Potter, not to mention the continued appeal of superheroes, Warner recently announced a major reorganization of DC Comics. The goal is to quickly and more fully exploit its characters, something Time Warner’s corporate bureaucracy has hampered in the past.

The Walt Disney Company’s $4 billion purchase of Marvel Entertainment just over a month ago has increased the pressure on Warner to succeed this time. Warner is expected to announce a DC slate in the coming months populated by characters like the Flash and Wonder Woman.

Central to Mr. Robinov’s approach to DC is to avoid cookie-cutter representations and take risks when it comes to hiring directors and choosing a cast. Fully backing a filmmaker’s vision has become a hallmark of his style, ranging from the odd “Watchmen,” which was a modest success, to the candy-colored “Speed Racer,” which was a flaming disaster, to “The Dark Knight,” a home run.

“He is trying not to cling to the things that have worked in the past,” said Christopher Nolan, who directed “The Dark Knight” and is working on another Batman sequel.

Also mentioned is Robinov’s hands-on style of being the kind of boss whose name you hate to see come up on the phone:

In a knife-in-the-back industry, Mr. Robinov is known for wielding a blade in the front, something that has resulted in more than a few wounded egos. “As an agent, all I wanted was an answer,” Mr. Robinov said of his blunt style. “Sometimes it’s a hard message to hear and sometimes it’s a hard one to give.”

While DC kremlinologists previously had to closely inspect Paul Levitz’s trash basket to get an idea of what was going on, Robinov may be the new man to scrutinize. He’s certainly taken quite an interest in DC’s doings — reportedly back in the fall, Robinov himself sat in on a number of meetings where DC’s current top brass had to explain just what it was they did.

Thanks for blowing our minds all these years.