Comics

Marvel and the retailing community sometimes have a love/hate/love relationship, but here's news that they are strongly supporting members of ComicsPRO, the retailer advocacy organization, by releasing Orson Scott Card's FORMIC WARS: BURNING EARTH #1 a day early on Tuesday, February 15th to ComicsPRO member stores. Participating stores will also sell an exclusive poster. The regular sale date is Wednesday, 2/16.

Paul Hornschemeier has just opened a web store which includes things like this creepy Lidsville cover. You will buy things. His Life with Mr. Dangerous is coming out from Villard in May.

quenched consciousness is devoted to panels from the great French cartoonist Moebius, without whom there would be no HEAVY METAL, Lt. Blueberry, TRON, ALIEN, and many other wondrous things. He's a key influence in the "global fusion" style of comics that is all the rage these days so you'd better get acquainted if you aren't already.

Over on the various DC blogs, Jim Lee and Dan DiDio have announced that DC is pulling out of the Comics Code in favor of a multi-layer ratings system:

This week's PW Comics Week newsletter included our owninterview with Dynamite’s Nick Barrucci, and it was a pretty frank talk, covering all the aspects of the Hobson's choices that comics publishers must make. Barrucci says it's all damned if you do damned if you don't on many matters, and newer channels have their own issues:

Archie is going to publish its first OGN -- and its in the foolproof "Archie Babies" format. Mike Kunkel (Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam) writes and Art Mawhinney does the art. The project was previously announced as a regular comics series but the new format allows them take advantage of Archie's new distribution deal with Random House, says co-CEO Jon Goldwater:

Artist James Stokoe continues his assault on the predictable tedium of corporate comics with a huge art post including an ORC STAIN preview, pages from a WONTON SOUP spin-off and FIRE FOR EFFECT, a complete story he once submitted to HEAVY METAL. The latter is NSFW.

 If you missed the earlier stops, you can still see the one and only phenomenal Lynda Barry talking and inspiring: DO NOT MISS Lynda Barry...

Geoff Boucher got to ramble around the X-MEN: FIRST CLASS set yesterday, and hear about Matthew Vaughn's anxiety about getting it finished, and James...

Ever since their autumnal launch of Law and the Multiverse, James Daily and Ryan Davidson, two stalwart attorneys licensed to practice law in Missouri...

After months of speculation, we now know that Christopher Nolan isn't giving up the Batman franchise without going into the sexy feminine side of the myth: Anne Hathaway will play Catwoman in THE DARK KNIGHT RISES -- and yes, that sounds pretty dirty. And the previously announced Tom Hardy will play back-breaker Bane, an escaped criminal who gets super strength after getting jacked on drugs. (Bane was responsible for breaking Batman's spine in a '90s comics storyline.)

Always outspoken creator Joe Casey has another crack at pissing people off with his take on marketing, surviving in Hollywood, and his own brand of career advice in this exclusive interview.