Publishers

July's Captain America film starring Chris Evans just got its first poster. Looks gritty.

DC has posted logos for five of their FLASHPOINT miniseries. FLASHPOINT seems to be a kind of DC-only alternative reality Amalgam comic where Cyborg is Superman and so on.

More info here.

Archie Comics has been making tons of news of late, in case you haven't noticed. In addition to all the digital initiatives they've recently announced, they're also repurposing the famed Archie Marries storyline by making all the original issues available as digital comics.

Marketing Coordinator Aaron Colter tweeted and social networked yesterday that he and Dark Horse had parted ways. Colter was a whiz at Twitter and Facebook and all the other ways we talk today, and managed these fuctions for DH, but he also was, shall we say, irreverent -- not perhaps the best image for a respected publisher. At any rate, maybe posting stuff like the attached image was a tweet too far.

Tarpé Mills is a name well known to comics historians, not only as one of the best of the female cartoonists of the war years, but as the creator and artist of Miss Fury, one of the first successful superheroine characters, which ran for nearly a decade as a sunday newspaper strip. It was a lively blend of outre characters, adventure and naughtiness. This April Dean Mullaney's Library of American Comics is reprinting the best of the strips in a deluxe volume complete with an introduction by comics historian Trina Robbins. Mullaney provided a desception of the volume and this preview for our Anniversary week:

While we're spotlighting creators issues and outlooks here at Anniversary Week at The Beat, here's an oldie but a goodie: The (Sad) Saga of Black Lightning’s Creation by Daniel Best which presents documents and drawings from writer Tony Isabella and artist Trevor von Eeden, the team known to have created Black Lightning's first appearance. There's some dispute over how the two should be credited -- Isabella claims sole creative credit due to having come up with the character all on his own and described the costume and so on -- but von Eeden has drawings but...we'll we won't get into that here. von Eeden doesn't want the creator's credit--or the royalties that come with it -- but has his own opinions. But that's not what we're here to talk about today. As is well known, Isabella had the foresight to keep a piece of the character he had created independently of DC editorial -- a move he thinks backfired…

Long story short, Heritage Auctions is selling six Donald Duck paintings by the great Carl Backs, and the paintings will be displayed at the Heritage Auctions location at 445 Park Avenue (at 57th Street) through Monday, February 14th.

A news teaser campaign rolls out. Of course, the temptation to answer "a cult 1999 film starring Janeane Garofalo, Ben Stiller, Paul Reubens, Eddie Izzard, and William H. Macy and created by Bob Burden" is irresistible. If only...

February has only 28 days, but is jam-packed with lots of great graphic novels and related titles! Warning... looking at what appears so far on BarnesAndNoble.com, the rest of 2011 is going to be just as amazing! Click this link to discover more! (Sweet Kirby Crackle! Corto Maltese, in English, from Rizzoli?!) Better start shopping for bookshelves now.

Superman casting rumors were heating up this week and now it's final: English actor Henry Cavill will play the Man of Steel in the Zack Snyder reboot. Cavill, 28, is not a big name here -- he's currently starring inThe Tudors -- but he was previously considered for both Batman and James Bond, so obviously studios have had their eye on him for a while. According to Deadline:

There is a new DC event speeding towards us -- this one spearheaded by Geoff Johns and based around the supersonic Flash. Several teasers have been released on the DCU Source blog, all hinting that this will be some kind of alternate reality thing -- but today a few more details were released -- and the cost is discussed, as much as $170 for the whole event.