Comics

This is the other superhero movie sneak peak making the rounds, the first look at Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Anthony Hopkins as Odin and Tom Hiddleston as Loki. This still has met with very mixed reaction on the new, looking as it does kind of .. Marvel Studios-ey, if you know what we mean. Since Norse gods don't wear wife beaters, getting the look right is very important.

By Matthew Murray Buffy returned to its usual position of top selling "indie" book this month, but its the last issue before it goes on...

And speaking of RED, the upcoming all-star film loosely based on the Ellis/Hamner miniseries, a bunch of teaser character posters are being released, and...

Via Warren Ellis, the cover to a NEW edition of TWO-STEP, his collaboration with Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti: You know how this project started?...

A busy month, as SIEGE wraps up, and the Heroic Age books begin, including the debut issues of both AVENGERS and SECRET AVENGERS. The "World War Hulks" crossover begins, "Second Coming" continues in the X-books, and the new ASTONISHING miniseries ship their first issues. Once again, Marvel had the largest share of the North American direct market, beating DC by 46% to 35% in terms of units, and 41% to 31% in dollars. For the benefit of any new readers, bear in mind the following disclaimers. These are estimates of orders placed by stores in the North American direct market. They don't include sales on newsstands, or to other countries (such as the UK). And most of this material will be repackaged in collected editions or made available online, so there will be further sales in other formats. On the other hand, we don't know whether the retailers managed to sell everything they ordered. With books that have been around a while, the retailers presumably have a fairly good idea of how many copies they can sell; with new launches, there's a bit more guesswork involved.

It would have pleased Harvey Pekar, I think, that his passing yesterday was noted in every media outlet from the New Yorker to EW, and not just because they made a movie about him, but as a literary figure of worth and stature. Harvey's life's work was in showing that the ordinary was important, and a working class existence was not a prison but a journey through the profound and beautiful that anyone could experience if they took the time. He found that beauty in simple, quotidian things and experiences that others might have found trivial or mundane, but in the end his message was that what else is there? Life as it is lived is the most precious gift of all.

Indie publisher AdHouse has announced AdDistro, a new distribution site for small press books. PR below:

Via PR, Dynamite has announced that Kurt Busiek will be the writer of the Jack Kirby/Alex Ross project they've been teasing. Based on some...

The Cleveland Plains Dealer is reporting that underground comics legend Harvey Pekar died last night. Pekar's wife, Joyce Brabner found him dead at about 1 am. Pekar had battled lymphoma previously, as chronicled in Our Cancer Year, but the cause of death is awaiting an autopsy. Pekar was best known as author of American Splendor, an autobiographical comic that adapted Pekar's lowly life as a filing clerk at the Cleveland VA into a journey of humor, drama and insight as memorable as any fictional hero, hiring artist friends such as R. Crumb, Gary Dumm, Frank Stack and others to illustrate his stories. American Splendor was an early self-publishing success story of sorts -- while its acclaim gained Pekar enough notoriety for him to become a semi-regular on the David Letterman Show (until erratic on-air behavior got him banned) he still had to work at the VA to rely on getting a pension and continuing to make a living -- indie comics was not a cash cow.

Kevin Mutch's story is just getting going, but thing around the orphans Max and Molly are sure getting strange.

As the SD10 schedule drifts out, the big movie panels are shaping up, and one of the biggest comic book movies at this year's...

We don't often have occasion to link to the comic strip musings at The Comics Curmudgeon but it happened to come up in our...