DC

Last night's gala premiere for THE DARK KNIGHT RISES in NYC brought out some stars, with author Neil Gaiman escorting DC president Diane Nelson to the event. At the afterparty, DC execs Jim Lee and Geoff Johns relaxed and flexed with singing star Daughtry, who is teaming with the WB and DC for the "We Can Be Heroes" campaign to raise funds to end hunger in the Horn of Africa.

With "New 52" numbers settled down (see here for a long-term breakdown), May marked a return to a variety of old-fashioned direct-market sales boosters: six of the loowest-selling "New 52" titles were replaced with new launches Earth-2, Worlds' Finest, Dial H, G.I. Combat, The Ravagers and Batman, Incorporated; new creative teams (meaning Rob Liefeld, mostly) were instated on Hawkman, Deathstroke and Grifter, three of the lower-selling "New 52" books that haven't been cancelled; Annuals for Batman, Animal Man and Teen Titans, three of the more popular "New 52" series; and, finally, four separate crossovers involving 21 titles, notably the "Court of Owls" storyline running through most of the Batman line. And those tricks still work quite well, as it turns out: For the DC Universe imprint, average comic-book sales, total unit sales and total dollar sales soared back towards their highest respective levels since November 2011, which is pretty good. With Before Watchmen around the corner and September's issue-#0 stunt and the next round of "New 52" replacements coming up, it seems safe to say that the publisher will be able to build on the ground recovered thanks to the "New 52" relaunch through the second half of 2012.

There's a new teaser poster for Man of Steel making the rounds at Comicon:

Quentin Tarantino jumped onto the Before Watchmen panel today, ran around on the table, and announced a new 5-issue miniseries based on his new film, to be published by Vertigo.

Today I spoke with Scott Snyder by the DC Booth at San Diego Comic-Con. I got to talk with him about his work with Batman and how he's going to bring us the another big event with Greg Capullo and Death of the Family.

It's the 25th anniversary of Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Could DC let this go by without new material? No. And not only did they get Gaiman to agree to do a new tale, they got a real artist's artist to illustrate it in the form of J.H. Williams III. Technically, this sounds like it will be a prequel, if not a prologue, to the original series. It should end just as the original issue #1 is about to begin.

MTV is streaming live video interviews from Comic-Con!

"Now I know who the comic lovers are here at Comic Con,"  said Jimmy Palmiotti to appreciative applause  in first DC Panel of SDCC 2012 on Thursday.   He went on to announce Jonah Hex among the titles to appear under "the Dark and the Edge" banner.

We got a chance to look at Cryptozoic's latest project, the DC Comics Deck Building Game on Thursday morning. Cryptozoic has been a strong presence building geek culture games, adopting Penny Arcade, The Walking Dead, and The Big Bang Theory. Now their aim is to adopt DC's comic universe into the next big game.

Props to Jimmy Fallon for bringing us this delightfully odd version of Batman. All he had to do was take a recent trailer for The Dark Knight Rises and let Paul Reubens re-dub the dialogue in his Pee Wee Herman persona. The results are... well, see for yourself.

Basically if you go to the Darkness and Light gallery on 5th Street on Friday you will see Lego builder recreating a Jim Lee painting in Legos. You don't see that every day. No sir.

Sometimes you get a fuller story when the solicitations are announced, and today would be one of those times. Let's start out with another primary creative change: Dan Jurgens is taking over Firestorm: