Comics

With screenings unfolding around the globe, all the buzz on X-MEN: FIRST CLASS has been great (100% on Rotten Tomatoes), and last night the film had its world premiere in NYC, with Marvel's own John Lowe doing some red carpet commentary. Releasing studio Fox has just added to the fun with a new iPad app X-Men EXTRA which plays into the whole conspiracy angle of the film, which follows Xavier and Magneto as young allies in the 60s. As you can see the app has some fun with the historical record, ala Boilerplate, imaging Emma Frost standing beside Jackie Kennedy in a fetching go-go booted ensemble. Check out the byline for another in-joke.

Via Yesterday's Papers, aging goodness from Knockout.

A new GREEN LANTERN trailer has been released that should be titled "Green Lantern Lore 101" for it explains about Oa, and Guardians and rings and .... yellow powers and all that stuff. As someone who has never been that into Green Lantern, I learned something.

After some time off, what things do is putting out some comics again. Here's Kevin Huizenga's comic from the CARTOON POLYMATHS program.

Since the announcement that Wonder Woman pilot had not made NBC's schedule, there has been no dearth of analysis about what it says about Wonder Woman, about us, about women, about...EVERYTHING, dammit. The Wonder Woman pilot getting dropped may just be the most significant event of our time! First off, a picture of the variant "shorts" costume has been making the rounds. Would showing a bit more thigh have tipped the balance for the show? Probably not. With Wonder Woman nothing can ever, ever be simple.

Ed "Wizzywig" Piskor has crated a Photoshop version of the famous 64-color chart used to color comics up until the advent of computer coloring and scanning in the 80s. It is, as he points out, rather than a crippling limitation, an invitation to actually think about color:

Donna Barr is one of the more eccentric cartoonists to come out of the whole self-publishing movement -- her signature book, DESERT PEACH, is about gay Nazis, for instance. Currently she's working on a webcomic called A LITTLE DEATH, which illustrates readers written comments on how they think they'll die. Like we said -- fun, but a little weird.

Jean-Christophe Menu, a founding member and driving force behind the French art comic powerhouse L'Association, has left the organization following a series of shake-ups and disruptions, including a workers strike. Bart Beaty has the best analysis of what it mean for L'Asso, Menu and French comics in general.

Cartoonist Mike Dawson has revealed the cover for TROOP 142, his Boy Scout epic coming out from Secret Acres this fall. The book will debut at SPX. TROOP 142 ran as a webcomic and follows a group of Boy Scouts on a retreat in 1995 and the things they learn about boyhood, manhood and more. It's an excellent story, without sentiment, and has already won an Ignatz as Best Online Comic.

It seems that standalone apps for authors and imprints and licenses are now the way to go on digital devices, BOOM! has just announced a new Stan Lee app for iOS devices that will includes the digital version of Stan's BOOM! books, including SOLDIER ZERO, THE TRAVELER, and STARBORN. As the PR mentions, this is part of "BOOM! Studios’ aggressive digital comics strategy to offer their entire frontlist and backlist of titles for download across multiple mobile and desktop platforms." So there.

Archaia is making some moves, both with a new distributor -- PGW -- and its first illustrated novel, strong>Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes. Buried in a PR on the Ape book is the news that Archaia is leaving Diamond for PGW, which already distributes Cartoon Books. PGW distributes over 100 independent publishers, so picking up a few GN publishers makes sense. And Archaia's new books-only plan is also a good bit for a books-only distributor.

Lettering lord Todd Klein has not only won more awards for lettering than any other living human, he's created six striking limited edition prints in collaboration with Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Alex Ross, J.H. Williams III, Mark Buckingham and Bill WIllingham all of which are available on his site. . All the prints feature Klein's masterful lettering with original words or art by his collaborators, each with a rough alphabetical theme. He's just announced a SEVENTH print, this time in conjunction with Steve Rude, entitled "Hope" and depicting Pandora.