You may recall an ongoing blame battle between writer John Rozum and artist Scott McDaniel over the New 52 launch title STATIC. Rozum was the first of the New 52 creators to walk, and revealed it was because of creative differences with McDaniel. Now McDaniel has told HIS side of the story — in a 15,000 word novella that covers every moment of every conference call in minute depth. McDaniel says he has never written anything before, but he seems to have a great future as a court reporter.

There’s a ton of “he said/he said” going on in the post.

Looking back on the situation, I think John simply felt there was nothing he could contribute. I solved most of the story issues to Editorial’s satisfaction, not him, and he was relegated to scripting a novice’s plots. And that infuriated him.

For my part, I am ashamed of being so angry. I am not ashamed of the work I contributed, but of the manner in which I offered it at this time.

And again, I hurled no expletives, or personal insults or insults of any kind. I simply refused to lay down before the master, instead making him earn each step.

You may not be able to get through this blow by blow account so we’ll just agree with Graeme McMillan’s take — there are no good guys/bad guys, just guys with different views.

Reading the two together – and parsing out the passive aggressiveness in both – what becomes clear very quickly is a creative mismatch between McDaniel and Rozum’s sensibilities, as well as a horrendous breakdown in communications between editorial and the two creators; instead of there being any smoking gun of “He Said He Said” gossip or controversy here, it just seems sad and a wasted opportunity all round. Static Shock deserved better.

If you can get through the whole McDaniel piece, there is a lot of perhaps unintentional insight into the state of the DC office during the whole New 52 rollout, such as this:

Again, Harvey and I were very concerned about the sales trend on STATIC. Please recall this topic from earlier in my statement. This historic sales trend is no joke. It's real. Sales cool. Harvey and I feared that, as retailers were preparing to order #4 through #6, if they didn't see evidence of real story momentum and something important and cool happening that would attract additional readers, they would not change their historical ordering patterns and the book would simply slide into cancellation, if not by issue #6, then maybe by #8 or #10. Again, John expressed a contrary opinion. To him, that stuff wasn't worthy of consideration – only story mattered. And he was gonna bring the story.

Again and again McDaniel comes back to preoccupation with sales—parsing CBR polls and Diamond charts for any meaning. (Were McDaniels and editor Harvey Richards privy to the actual numbers, one wonders.) While this seems like anathema to the creative process, it was only common sense—this WAS a horse race and the slowest horses—Men of War, Mr. Terrific, etc — all got shot on the track just like Static.

Is this really where the Big Two gotten to as an industry? A desperate dash to sales at any cost?

Well, I think you can all answer that question for yourselves.

ICv2 has a wide ranging interview with Marvel’s Sr VP of Sales, David Gabriel, and it covers just about every topic you could imagine, from digital coupon conversion to page counts to pricing. Go here for all that: Part 1 and Part 2. However, since we’ve had a high degree of scrutiny on Marvel’s trade program of late, here’s what he had to say on that topic:

[Q:] Marvel tends to let its book format collections go out of print more quickly than some of its competitors, treating them as more temporary products than as long term backlist. Can you describe the rationale for that strategy?

Let’s clarify that statement. Top selling evergreen books are not allowed to go out of print. Folks continually want to dredge up the past where nothing was thought of as evergreen. Our two top selling collected editions for 2011, as noted in the market share ranks, were Civil War and Wolverine Old Man Logan. We keep those books in print because with the demand we’d be fools not to do so.

Books that we don’t see as having a shelf life of more than a year and a half, are printed with that in mind. We put out more classic material than any publisher. We’ve had a strong, continuing Masterworks program for over 7 years now… and we’re approaching our 200th edition. Essentials are no longer considered perennials in this market, and we’ve taken our measure of those from retailers and consumers who do not order them as such, and so they are not all kept in stock as evergreen titles. Over the past eight years we’ve published nearly 100 volumes of Premiere Classic books that put some of our most popular stories from the past decades into collected editions. No other publisher has supported the amount of material that we have. There have been times when a book has been allowed to go out of press, say Secret Wars, in order for us to create a special Omnibus Edition which also allows us to gather new extras, redo files that need fixing and get the best possible re-creation available for all the pages. This process in turn allows us to then put out a better version of the paperback and keep that one in stock. We’ve talked about this process before. It would be ludicrous on many books for us to go back to press on an inferior quality book, when we know if we wait a few months we’ll be able to put forth a superior edition.

We clearly stated when we first started putting our ongoing series into smaller Premiere Hardcovers about five years ago that we did not plan for those to stay in print, nor would they be reprinted; they were an edition that went to press a little closer to the timing of the last comic of a series and they were priced slightly higher than a paperback edition in order to assist those retailers who were still enjoying sales of the comics. These volumes keep the lower priced paperback editions off the shelves for a little while longer, allowing a longer selling time for the comics.

There are a lot of factors at play here, one of which is that you just can’t take into account the needs of just one retailer, but instead you need to take a look at the overall big picture. Do we need to get Infinity War back to press when we need to make sure Civil War is still stocked? We need to make the calls on those books that are going to make both us and our retailer and book buyer partners the most money. Sometimes there will be that one book that has gone out of print for a million reasons and rather than anyone find out why they just jump to the wrong conclusions; or to make matters worse, when the rationale behind a book being out of stock is explained some folks just don’t want to hear it or accept the reasons, so they’ll start a massive campaign and create false information. Whew… hope that explains things a bit without inciting riots.

[Q:] What’s your response to retailers who say there’s a lot of demand for Marvel’s archive material that they can’t satisfy because of your book strategy?
See above. I have never heard that a retailer can’t find archival material.

Somehow, we don’t think this is going to answer all the questions. For instance, here’s a fan-created list of Marvel Premiere Hardcovers that are not in print…things like the Warren Ellis/Adi Granov Iron Man which would seem like a good print intro to a very popular character, directly influenced the movies, and was even turned into a motion comic. It’s Marvel’s business plan for this not to have a shelf life, sure, and that’s their prerogative. It just seems…odd.

By Todd Allen

The “real” January sales estimates are up.  Looks like my guesstimates weren’t all that far off, either.  This time out, I’ll be scrolling down the estimate list at Comics Chronicles.  That’s also where John Jackson Miller reminds us that January orders always suck, but that this January sucked considerably less than previous Januarys.  He’s got the overall orders only down 6.25% from December.  A glass half-full, perhaps, but there is some comfort to be taken in that it looks like the top line at DC might be stablizing a little more.

When I take my first glance at the charts, post-New 52, one of the first things I look at is where Detective Comics is.  I am truly disappointed this is the first month that the first issue didn’t show up in the top 300 as a re-order.  Such an unusual and good story.  But the positive sales trend continues.  Some cynics will say this is related to returnabilty accounting, but in January, Detective comics posted a nearly 10K sales jump but up to 99K (adjust for UK sales, etc, and it’s certainly well over 100K in sales).  It also passed Green Lantern, which had a slight decline, to become the #4 book by sales.  You don’t don’t get sales bump like that if you aren’t connecting with an audience and January is when all those reorders started effecting the regular orders.

DC controlled the top 10 entirely in January.  A bit of a rarity, but unless Winter Soldier #1 charts a little higher than I think it will (a solid book, btw), DC has a good shot to own the top 10 in February, too.  A few benchmarks for DC: best seller is still Justice League, stabilizing a bit at an estimated 138K.  The low point for the new 52 is the now-cancelled Blackhawk down at a bit over 12K.  Last non-cancelled 52 title is Captain Atom at 15,693.

Trying to pick up the Reorder Torch from Detective, we have Justice League #4 with 3,026 copies and Batman #4 with 2,829 copies.

Over at Marvel… well, Marvel’s $3.99 plan still has them winning the dollar battle, which is probably what Marvel Management cares about, but those individual title sales levels, much like the old grey mare, are NOT what they used to be.  Marvel’s top sellers and only issues estimated over 60K are two issues of Uncanny X-Men, both a hair over 63K.  No Avengers books over the 60K level?

Marvel’s top 10 titles, a few of them shipping twice a month (if you have to meet financial goals and can’t hike the price to $4.99, that means you need to ship more books), with Diamond ranks are:

1. Uncanny X-Men (11/12)
2. Wolverine and the X-Men (13)
3. Wolverine (14)
4. Avengers X-Sanction (15)
5. Amazing Spider-Man (17/20)
6. Avengers (18)
7. Scarlet Spider (21)
8. New Avengers (22)
9. Avenging Spider-Man (23)
10. X-Force (27/29)

Coincidentally, those are also all the titles estimated at 50K or higher.  These are extremely low numbers for Marvel best-sellers and all Marvel can do is wait for the next Event (Avengers Vs. X-Men) and the next big(-ish) launch in Avengers Assemble.  It seems like Marvel really has trained people to buy the Events and their top line is but a shadow without them.  The danger is more people getting tired of the Events, not finding enough titles that aren’t crossing over and deciding not to play.  DC would be wise to look at this situation as they start jumping back into events.

Marvel’s big #1 of the month was Scarlet Spider #1 at a bit over 53K.

There has been some talk recently of Marvel #2’s having extreme sales drops.  Let’s have a look at a couple Dec/January books.

Avengers X-Sanction: #1: 93,380 vs. #2: 58,578

Defenders: #1: 85,969 vs. #2: 38,935  – OK, IIRC Marvel shipped an extra 50% of Defenders #1, so it’s really #1:57,313 vs. #2: 38,935

Now, certainly you can run a company on books that sell in the 40K-60K range.  Marvel has bigger fiscal expectations, though, so AVX is looking more important all the time.

On a brighter note, their excellent Daredevil title looks to have picked up about 4500 copies in a Spidey-crossover.

On the indie side of the world, things are looking a little better.  The big story is Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips selling an estimated 20K copies of Fatale #1 over at Image, and with a second print on the way.  That’s a very healthy number for a non-licensed indie property.

The best selling indie was, of course, Walking Dead with 31,596.  Notable debut’s included Dynamite’s new Tarzan comic, “Lord of the Jungle” with 25,212 ($1 book), Danger Girl Revolver at IDW with 19,169, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic War at Dark Horse with 16,179, Transformers More Than Meets Eye at IDW with 15,340 and Peanuts from BOOM! with 11,994.

29 indie titles are estimated at 10K+.  It’s possible we’re seeing a little bit of migration to independent books as Marvel’s top sellers and DC’s mid- and bottom-list have shed readers.  The indie section does appear to creep slowly crawling up the list.

Well, here is a very worthy subject for an art book: Ramona Fradon, legendary Silver Age artist. Co-creator of Metamorpho and one of the defining artists on Aquaman, Fradon’s career covers everything from Super Friends to Brenda Starr. Now she’s the subject of a comprehensive art book from Dynamite that includes an interview conducted by Howard Chaykin. As you can see from the sample pages, it’s a treasure trove of archival material. Click for larger images.

Fradon is an icon to many, simply for being one of the few women creators of her era to forge a career in comics that lasted beyond a few years. As anyone who knows her and her work is aware, however, far from being a token or a novelty, she was just a hard-working freelancer. A very, very talented hard-working freelancer.

Long time fans of Metamorpho, Aquaman, Aqualad, Plastic Man, The Fantastic Four and Super Friends are quite familiar with the work of legendary artist, Ramona Fradon, but not until now will they know the whole story of Ramona’s incredible career in comics, as Dynamite Entertainment is pleased to announce the upcoming The Art of Ramona Fradon in stores on April 2012!

For the first time ever! The DEFINITIVE retrospective of Ramona Fradon’s career will be presented in The Art of Ramona Fradon. The Art of Ramona Fradon will be a hardcover book that highlights the magnificent career of the artistic legend, plus never-before-seen sketches.

Interviewed by legendary creator Howard Chaykin and featuring a forward by Walt Simonson, Fradon talks about her artistic career, accomplishments and creations from her early days at DC in the 1950’s to her later work on Marvel’s The Cat and Fantastic Four and DC’s Plastic Man, Freedom Fighters, Super Friends and more!

“I’ve never liked to see my work in print, but the way it’s presented in this book makes me feel proud,” says legendary artist Ramona Fradon. “The drawings are arranged so attractively on the pages that the not-so-good ones look good and the good ones look really good. It covers so much of my career that there are things I barely remember doing, starting with an unpublished story strip I practiced on before I got into comics. It’s nice to see I’ve improved since then.”

“In an era when 99.99 % of American comic books were produced by a male talent pool, and very few women worked in the field–mostly as writers, and mostly producing work of no particular interest or engagement,” says Howard Chaykin.  “The truest exception to this reality is Ramona Fradon, an original, not to say eccentric talent, whose approach to comics was so idiosyncratic as to make her stand out from her peers, men and women alike–and it should be noted that her work, as influential as it’s been over these many years, remains personal, individual and inimitable.”

“I have known Ramona and loved her work forever. I started with Aquaman in the 1950s when I was a kid,” says Walt Simonson. “Ramona’s art wasn’t like anybody else’s work back then.  Her design of the human figure, her slightly abstract and expressive faces, her crisp line, and her clear storytelling stamped her work with an individuality that was instantly recognizable.”

“It is an honor that we are able to present the life and art of Ramona Fradon in The Art of Ramona Fradon,” adds Dynamite Entertainment President and Publisher Nick Barrucci.  “Ramona Fradon’s work has touched many creators, and I personally am a huge fan of her art.  Ramona’s conversation with Howard Chaykin about her life’s-work makes this book a must-read for any Ramona Fradon fan and any fan of comics history!”

Ramona Fradon is an American comic book and comic strip artist.  Her career began in 1950, when it was even more unusual for women to illustrate superhero comics.  Fradon entered cartooning just after graduating from the Art Students’ League. Comic-book letterer George Ward, a friend of her husband (New Yorker cartoonist Dana Fradon), asked her for samples of her artwork to pitch for job openings. She landed her first assignment on the DC Comics feature Shining Knight. Her first regular assignment was illustrating an Adventure Comics backup feature starring Aquaman, for which she co-created the sidekick Aqualad.

Following her time with Aquaman, and taking a break to raise her daughter, Fradon returned to co-create Metamorpho, drawing four issues of the series. Her other work includes Super Friends, Freedom Fighters, Plastic Man,  a variety of mystery stories, and an issue of The Fantastic Four!

In 1980, Dale Messick retired from drawing the newspaper strip Brenda Starr, and Fradon became the artist for it, until her own retirement in 1995. Fradon was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2006.

Join the conversation on Twitter with  #RamonaFradon and on Dynamite Entertainment’s twitter page at http://twitter.com/DynamiteComics

In just two minutes, this summer’s Amazing Spider-Man has gone from an afterthought to the Batman/Avengers slugfest to a “Hey that looks great!’ Even if it is one of those “I just saw the whole movie!” trailers, it certainly conveys all the elements of a successful superhero movie: a wise-cracking hero, a winsome love interest, a villain with a transatlantic accent, and an authority figure determined to take our hero down—in this case Denis Leary as Gwen Stacy’s policeman dad, George.

It’s nice to see that Peter Parker has recovered from that whole Facebook thing—Andrew Garfield’s Spidey is much more the loosy-goosy webslinger of the ’80s on—with a little bit of torment thrown in, of course.

Our only quibble—the word “begins” at the end. Spider-Man, the movie franchise, is already in full throttle. While many have questioned the need for a reboot this soon, the trailer makes it look like an entertaining film, even if it isn’t quite necessary from anything but a studio viewpoint.

Over the weekend, Tom Spurgeon spotlighted the return of two old school members to the Fantagraphics mansion with Mike Catron and Preston White joining as editor and designer, respectively. Catron is actually the co-founder of Fantagraphics, going back to the Virginia/Connecticut origins of the company as The Nostalgia Journal. White (who was known as “Peppy” in the olden days) was a designer for many of the seminal ’80s publications.

Although the hirings are notable in and of themselves, in an interview with Catron, the element of Catron’s life we’re most concerned with is briefly mentioned:

SPURGEON: I and others have seen you in recent years making tapes of some of the panels at conventions, I believe particularly those focused on older cartoonists. What led you to do that? Do you have plans for that material? Are there one or two panels or even moments that you’ve caught with which you’re particularly happy?

CATRON: What led me to start videotaping panels at comics conventions was that I didn’t see anyone else doing it. Here were all these important figures from the history of comics answering all sorts of questions and providing a wealth of detail about our comics heritage and it was all just being written on the wind. I started taping as a way of preserving as much as I could of that for myself and future generations. As for plans for that material, I have nothing currently in the works. Ultimately, I would like to find a useful way to share it. There are lots of moments that I’m very glad I caught on tape, including some quite emotional ones. Lots of funny stuff, too. Someday.

Catron is indeed that red-headed guy you have seen countless times taping comic book panels at various shows across the nation for more than 20 years. We’ve had many conversations with him about those tapes—they are one of the great priceless, irreplaceable treasures of comics history. Catron hasn’t been able to do much with them due to permissions and the like—presumably a lot of those are missing—and the collection isn’t that organized. We suggested getting some kids in from SVA or wherever to at least try to catalog them. Since Catron has moved to the West Coast, that might not be so easy now.

Hopefully that “someday” will come…someday.

Have you been wondering what digital comics DC has been selling the most of? While you can do a running snapshot of iTunes’ “in app Sales” it doesn’t give you a month’s total. But, as they did last month, DC has just released their Top Ten digital comics for January to CBR. And it goes like this:

DC Comics’ Top 10 Digital Titles, January 2011

#1 Batman (2011-) #5
#2 Justice League (2011-) #5
#3 Action Comics (2011-) #5
#4 Detective Comics (2011-) #5
#5 Green Lantern (2011-) #5
#6 Batman and Robin (2011-) #5
#7 Batman (2011-) #4
#8 Justice League (2011-) #4
#9 Superman (2011-) #5
#10 Aquaman (2011-) #5

So—new comics holding steady.

Of course this chart lacks actual numbers. But perhaps we can extrapolate a little teeny bit here — in a December interview, DC’s John Rood suggested that
But consistency is the right word — especially consistency in the digital end. There has been no shake up of numbers when you look at the percentage of physical sales by title. So if something is selling 6% of its physical sales digitally for issues #1 and 2, then it’s about 6% in issues #3 and 4. And if another title has been selling at 16% of print sales in the early titles, the latter titles have stayed at the same level. So there’s been no fluctuation. And the fact is that the makeup is largely the same and the performances you’ve seen in the data provided is largely the same in digital as it is in physical, yet we know from both anecdotal and primary research that this is a different audience. It suggests that the people might be different [for digital and print] but their tastes and their demos are largely the same.
6% and 16% seem like awfully specific numbers. So perhaps we can except that digital sales are someone between those number as percentage of print sales?

That’s a LOT more than the 1-3% that we’ve previously heard from most publishers. Again, only guessing.

Rood and Bob Wayne have their usual chat in this month’s report, and a subject near and dear to our heart comes up:
People frequently ask – and sometimes this is other people in the industry while sometimes it’s retailers or fans – whether these

numbers on the Diamond charts are the same numbers that actually sell. The argument there is that with returnability and the fact that these are estimates rather than the actual data you have, these numbers may inflate performance. Overall, do you feel this data honestly represents what you’ve been getting back when all is said and done?

Wayne: The Diamond charts for a number of years – ever since we started doing very limited returnability offers on certain projects to retailers could make sure they’re able to stock things like the weekly “52″ project a number of years back – have done a set aside on the numbers in reserve against any returns. So the numbers are depressed on the side of the set asides. We know what the set aside is, and we also then have our data later that shows us what the actual return rate was. And we’ve been very pleased that this has been an effective and efficient way for us to get as many copies on the shelves of retailers around the world as possible. In that ten out of ten, only one of those ten titles on the chart has any level of returnability. Nine of them have none.

Rood: So in answer to your question, not only do we consider the list accurate and reflective of our sales, we think anyone who would question that is kidding themselves.

Burn!

By Todd Allen

With the Avengers movie featuring several of Jack Kirby’s co-creations starting up its media run-up to opening night, the Jack Kirby creator’s rights movement has started a petition at Change.org.  Change.org is a website for social movements/causes and online petitions.  Change.org claims credit for getting Bank of America to drop its debit card fees and getting Universal Pictures to put more of an environmental emphasis on the website for the adaptation of The Lorax by Dr. Suess.

The text of the petition reads:

Give credit and royalties to Jack Kirby and his family.

Jack Kirby is one of the most important and influential artists in the history of U.S. comic books and popular culture. Along with writers Joe Simon, Stan Lee, and Larry Lieber, Jack Kirby created the characters and stories on which Marvel Comics has built a very successful business over the past 60 years. Kirby created or co-created Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, The X-Men, The Hulk, The Fantastic Four, The Avengers, and many more. For his efforts, Kirby was paid a few dollars a page and never shared in the billions of dollars in profits his characters have made in various media, including print, film, and video games.

We strongly urge Marvel Entertainment and is owner Disney to acknowledge Jack Kirby’s authorship and primary role in the creation of these characters. As well, we urge Marvel to pay Kirby’s family royalties for the use of these characters and stories.

Until such a time as Marvel can make things right with Kirby’s legacy and Kirby’s family and heirs, we will refuse to purchase any Marvel product, including comic books, movies, toys, or games. We ask Marvel, Disney, and its shareholders to act ethically and morally in this situation, just as their characters would.

This is reminiscent of how Neal Adams shamed Warner and DC into acknowledging Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster prior to the premiere of Superman: The Movie.  That may have been a different time, though, and Marvel/Disney may be a little less inclined to make an acknowledgement in the current legal environment.

And here’s the complete getting the gang together AVENGERS trailer.

By Todd Allen

It’s Super Bowl Sunday.  How does Marvel celebrate?  How about giving away a free comic?

“MARVEL’S THE AVENGERS PRELUDE: FURY’S BIG WEEK #1″ is available for free digital download today (Sunday, 2/5).  This will be a weekly digital series, with a new $0.99 chapter dropping each Tuesday.  This series is written by Eric Pearson and Christopher Yost, with art by Luke Ross.  This is the _film_ version of the Avengers and looks to be be bridging the gap between Thor (the movie), Captain America (the movie) and the upcoming Avengers film.

So what we have here is the Samuel L. Jackson Nick Fury just after Thor has concluded and just prior to digging out Captain America, giving a little better idea of how the timelines of those two film fit together.

This is an interesting promotion, in that Marvel is releasing the material digitally first as a run-up/tie-in to the movie, rather than as a print series.  The weekly releases, in theory, could build and sustain interest in the film, though it’s odd this will be  wrapping up roughly a month before the May 4 release date for the Avengers.  Or perhaps they’ll have another set of digital comics to bridge that gap when the time comes.

Either way, digital takes another step forward.

You can down load Fury’s Big Week from the Marvel App on your various mobile devices or head over to Comixology and read it on your computer.

By Todd Allen

*Update* DC has revised their website to list Tieri and Poulton as scripters.

————-

Change is still in the air at DC.  You may recall Rob Liefeld got three new books?  We now know his collaborators on those.

Deathstroke with be a solo endeavor for Liefeld.  On Grifter, Rob is joined by Frank Tieri as co-writer scripter.  Tieri, another blast from the past, is probably most strongly associated with early Quesada-era Marvel, working on titles like Wolverine, Weapon X and Iron Man.  He also has done some DC work on titles like Batman and the Outsiders and Gotham Underground.  Over on Savage Hawkman, Mark Poulton is the co-writer scripter and Joe Bennett is the artist.  Poulton has recently been working on Liefeld’s Avengelyne title over at Image.  Bennett moves over from Deathstroke.  Interestingly, way back in the 90s, Bennett drew a few issue’s of Liefeld’s Supreme comic.

Next up, we have the next arc for DC Universe Presents:

Following the conclusion of the science-fiction based CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN, the new story arc begins when the nation’s best FBI profiler, Kass Sage, must reach out to her father for help in solving a desperate case. The twist? Her father is the imprisoned serial killer, Vandal Savage.

Writing this three-part story will be James Robinson, the acclaimed writer of STARMAN, THE SHADE and the upcoming EARTH 2. And illustrating the book will be the artist of DC UNIVERSE PRESENTS’ premiere story arc (starring Deadman), Bernard Chang.

“I’m absolutely jazzed to be working with one of my favorite writers, James Robinson, again,” Chang exclusively told THE SOURCE. “Along with the rest of the superb crew of DC UNIVERSE PRESENTS – cover artist Ryan Sook and editors Eddie Berganza and Wil Moss. I really enjoy telling stories of substance and character, so I’m planning on taking what we did well during the Deadman arc (with Paul Jenkins) and adding even more Tabasco sauce. We’re taking it to the next level!”

Please note that the actual title of this arc is not mentioned.  The Silence of the Lambs riff is definitely there.  Especially since there have been cannibalism references around Savage in the past.  The last time we saw a Savage daughter running around the DC, it was Scandal Savage over in Secret Six.  Does Scandal exist in the New 52 universe?  Is this her?  Is this her replacement?  Is the daughter the star or is the father?

This is an announcement that leaves more questions than answers.  Still, James Robinson and Bernard Chang is not a bad lineup and Robinson is on a legacy character, which is one of his sweet spots.  Of course that also raises the question of whether this is Earth-2 related or not.

Finally, artist Marcus To is moving to Batwing after wrapping up the Huntress mini-series.  Just in time for the “Night of the Owls” Event, he starts with issue #9.

By Todd Allen

I got a phone call from Rorschach just now.  I told him I didn’t want a prequel, but he didn’t seem to care about that.  Yes, that’s right, 6minutestomidnight.com is still online.

If you don’t remember that site, it’s a transmedia website created to promote the Watchmen movie.  Which is not to say there wasn’t any squabbling in the fan community about Watchmen and the movie, but it sure was less conflicted than the last couple days with the prequel.  So let’s go back to a calmer time in the Watchmen continuum.

Essentially, you go to the website, enter your phone number and you get a call from the Jackie Earle Haley version of Rorschach.  He’ll ask you some questions and if you say the right phrases, he’ll interact with you.  Otherwise, he’ll act like you’re crazy.  The site prompts you to say over the phone, or type into your computer, what you see in a rorschach test.

When I typed in “dog,” Rorschach said “I don’t want to talk about that.”  When I typed in “Dan DiDio,” Rorschach said “You think that’s funny?  No good.  Try again.”  (I did think it was funny.)

If you identify one of the images correctly, you get a video clip of one of the characters.

Opinions are a bit divided on Watchmen as a film.  I liked it well enough, but I’m not sure how easy it would be to follow if you hadn’t read the book, first.

Head over to 6 Minutes To Midnight and tell Rorschach your problems.  He probably won’t listen.  Then again not listening is a theme, these days…

Via Image Comics, a teaser for…something involving a chainsaw. And it probably doesn’t mean clearing brush.

Move over, Finn. Jack Krak is on his way.

Over at the Cartoon Hangover blog, this image of James Kochalka’s Superf***ckers has appeared with the headline “Too Wild For T.V.” If you’ve read the debauched adventures of Kochalka’s NSFW teen superheroes—imagine Beavis and Butthead without the intelligence and restraint—you know that any such cartoon WOULD be too wild for T.V. Frederator Studios, which runs the blog and produced such cartoon classics as Adventure Time and The Fairly Odd Parents, has had Superf***ers in development for a while now—and now it’s going to be seen as part of the massive new influx of programming on YouTube. Kochalka has already written 8 of the 12 episodes.

SUPERF***ERS the comic is published by Top Shelf. Kchalka produced four “issues” in the square picture book format which was then collected into a trade.
Two thoughts: #1 as streaming TV becomes the norm, having a series on YouTube isn’t going to mean anything much different than appearing on TV

and

#2 this IS going to be wild. Here’s a theme song Kochalka already wrote:

BLACKSAD by Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido is a famous comic in Europe, but the recent Dark Horse collection has created an American audience, as well: there are more than 20,000 copies of the book in print and a fourth printing is planned. Blacksad’s success isn’t horribly puzzling: a stylish noir storyline by Canales, and some of the most gorgeous anthropomorphic art ever by Guarnido make the tale universal. And the US setting doesn’t hurt.

Blacksad is back with a new adventure from Dark Horse: BLACKSAD: A SILENT HELL, due in July. The story takes panther-headed detective John Blacksad to New Orleans in the ’50s to discover the fate of a celebrated pianist. Drugs, voodoo, the rollicking atmosphere of Mardi Gras, and danger await him. The book includes two never before reprinted Blacksad short stories, and an extensive making-of section, with preliminary sketches and watercolor studies, written by Eisner Award-winner Guarnido.