Comics

Mickey Mouse diplomacy? Disney characters were recently seen at a state concert in North Korea.

The third nominee for this year's Russ Manning award is Tyler Crook! Artist for Petrograd and B.P.R.D, amongst others.

Debuting this week, concurrent with Comicon, is the Secret Agent Poyo special from Image. Poyo is a rooster. A fighting rooster. The deadliest fighting rooster in the world. So yes, this comic has it's roots in cockfighting, but Poyo will basically kill anything that moves. Yes, Poyo is an angry bird. Poyo first turned up in Chew a couple years back and was an instant hit. This is the character's close up and it almost defies description.

Our spotlight of the five artists nominated for this year's Russ Manning Award shifts across to Uruguay's Martin Coccolo, who draws cowboys and monsters. Yay!

A kinship is felt.

Jason Latour and Robbi Rodriguez put Wolverine in the corner

OK, here's another one you weren't expecting. Howard Chaykin is going to be writing and drawing a Buck Rogers series. From Hermes Press.

More creator change announcements at DC today. Ann Nocenti taking over Catwoman under unusual circumstances and Tony Daniels moving on to a higher profile title... for a little while.

The Russ Manning Awards Draw Closer. Here's a quick rundown of nominee Craig Cernak

CBR has a nice roundtable on creator-owned comics that rounds up Robert Kirkman, Mark Millar, and Steve Niles. Since they are all "strongly for" the piece doesn't really ignite any banter, but it does allow many long, entertaining manifestos. For instance, how Millar terrorized Alan Moore when he was a teen.

In order to view this both impressive and oppressive 3D rendering of THE DARK KNIGHT RISES Gotham City one must first allow Nokia—the formerly ascendant Finnish company that was once the world's largest cel phone manufacturer—to tattle to you friends on Facebook every time you look at it AND tell Nokia you like them. Luckily I do like Nokia -- or at least I did like my tiny blue Nokia from 2000 that was my very first cel phone.

Greg Farrell, he of the Strand strike comics, has posted a new comic about the history of Obamacare. It's a history of the whole process and in case you're dying to dig in to this light-hearted topic, this might get you through easy cocktail banter.