Comics

Marvel's culling continues, with both GHOST RIDER and BLACK PANTHER reaching their final issues.

The Avengers plus Loki and Nick Fury. These look pretty nice. Even with the typography elements taking center stage in the design, ScarJo continues to exhibits awesome mastery of the butt-and-face first pose, while Mark Ruffalo as the Halk does not look like Zoolander, which is a big improvement. Sad that none of the guys are turned so we can see their butt. Especially Thor and Captain America.

Marvel released a few pages of DAREDEVIL art by Paolo Rivera who returns to the book with issue #7. According to Marvel this s a good jumping on point. The previous issue is by Marcos martin so you really can't go wrong here.

A brief follow-up to yesterday's story about Marvel ending PUNISHER MAX and X-23. As word spread, writer Jason Aaron issued a Twitter clarification that the book was not canceled, but the story was ending: Aaron had mentioned in interviews over the summer that he felt his story was drawing to a close.

Poring over the February solicitations this week has revealed several bits of news. For instance, the Old New 52 gang is breaking up some more as Ron Marz is no longer writing VOODOO, to be replaced by Josh Williamson. Although VOODOO's cameltoe-tastic art by Sami Basri had drawn criticism, most observers agreed that for a story about a stripper who is really an alien, Marz had done a decent job. However, editors wanted a different take, even though editor Rex Ogle was leaving to take a job at Scholastic, as Marz told Newsarama.

When a giant movie studio and a small comics publisher both use the same title, who gets to keep it? Well, in the case of WRATH OF THE TITANS, both. Warners is planning a sequel to its CLASH OF THE TITANS remake for next year, entitled WRATH OF THE TITANS and starring Sam Worthington and directed by Jonathan Liebesman. But Bluewater already published a seres of sequels to the movie in its Ray Harryhausen line, also entitled WRATH OF THE TITANS (this fact wasn't mentioned in the Variety story.) Harryhausen, you may recall, is the driving force behind the original CLASH OF THE TITANS, which showcased his signature stop motion animation.

Rather than putting out all its solicitation information at once, Marvel prefers to parcel it out to various sites, so info on February's releases is drifting out here and there...and among them, more cancellations.

In our tableted world, it's only a matter of time before a multimedia magazine with embedded videos and animations and music and all becomes all the rage and changes our culture forever. Just like they did when CD-ROMs were all the rage*...only those were just ahead of the platform curve. Eisner- and Harvey Award-nominated artist Mike Perkins emailed us to explain that he has a 6-page comic strip in one such magazine, Apparatjik World, which has a preview issue available for free download on the iPad. This one centers around the band Apparatjik, which consists of bassist Guy Berryman from Coldplay, guitarist/keyboardist Magne Furuholmen from A-ha, singer/guitarist Jonas Bjerre of Mew and producer Martin Terefe.

One of its early hits but on hiatus for a while, ARMY OF DARKNESS is coming back from Dynamite in a new series with a new female Ash who wears her underwear 2005-style. Based on the EVIL DEAD trilogy, the new series is by writer Elliot Serrano and artist Marat Mychaels.

More Godzilla comics coming their way from IDW, via a five-issue GODZILLA LEGENDS mini-series, which focused on various kaiju, like Anguirus, Rodan and so on. And covers by Art Adams, because you can't do monsters with Art Adams. (The art shown here is by Bob Eggleton, however.) The first issue is on sale today.

This month's release of the first volume of Fantagraphics' Carl Barks reprints is call for rejoicing. There have been many reprint projects centered on Barks' work, but they must have been designed by the three bears: one was too expensive, one was too cheap, one had garish color, and so on. This new effort -- reprinted in handsome hardcovers with simple coloring by Rich Tommaso that recalls the original limited coloring without a lot of fanfare. I think a lot is going to be said as more of Barks' work becomes available in a world where the bodies of work of the great cartoonists are becoming increasingly available -- it is the golden age of the comics reprint, after all. For now, this conversation between James Romberger and Gary Groth will serve as a good introduction. Fantagraphics has a 17-page pdf preview available on their site. In the meantime, here's a seven-page preview of that preview. And these may be the seven of the greatest comics pages ever. Enjoy.

Swedish digital artist Kilian Eng is one of the hottest things going in illustration, and he's getting his first monograph from Floating World Comics -- and they'll be holding an opening to celebrate on December 1st at FLoating World. Alas the artist will not be on hand. The book will be available at the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival on December 3.