Publishers

Sam Humphries is going to the ultimate ultimate with ULTIMATE COMICS: ULTIMATES. We are really just posting this as a shout out to long time Beat pal Sam Humphries, who will be co-writing the book with Jonathan Hickman starting with issue #10; Luke Ross is the interior artist. Humphries has been at the writing game for a few years, but he's finally about to blow up, with a ton of new assignments.

Dynamite has passed along the covers to GAME OF THRONES #6 and Jim Butcher's Dresden Files FOOL MOON #3. Both issues go on sale in May.

Although we're used to those strategic "print run sellout" press releases coming from publishers at a steady clip, it's less often that comics publishers tout topping the BookScan sales chart, which tracks sales in bookstores, and other non DM outlets, for the week. However, Dark Horse notes that Avatar: The Last Airbender—The Promise Part 1 "soared" to the top of the BookScan chart last week. This is the Gene Luen Yang-penned bridging story between the popular TV show and the eagerly awaited sequel, Legend of Korra. The art is by the Japanese team Gurihiru.

With The Shadow already scheduled Dynamite is now scheduling their second pulp adaptation, The Spider. The Spider was effectively The Shadow's nastier little brother. Originally created to tap into the popularity of the Shadow's pulp magazine, The Spider amped up the Shadow's format: more violent, more lurid, wider-ranging schemes from the villains, more outright "weirdness" in the "Weird Tales" sense of "weird." The other major difference was that The Spider had a more streamlined backstory: only one identity and a much smaller circle of sidekicks/assistance.

With less than a month to the premiere of JOHN CARTER, Disney is releasing all kinds of new goodies, to try to explain why you should see this.

. Here's the second part of February's preview.  There's some unusual titles here (including a publisher of religious graphic novels), some which don't seem to...

We've never been able to hide our adoration of Jason's time travel tale I KILLED ADOLF HITLER, and we're far from alone in this regard. Fantagraphics has just announced that Studio Eight in association with Up Country Productions has optioned the film rights to the book. Jamie and Alex Brown of Studio Eight have previously produced LAND OF THE BLIND and CAPTURED. They've tapped screenwriter D.C. Walker of Up Country Productions for the script.

Well, speak of the devil. As we posted only a few hours ago, Marvel is in a very vulnerable PR position on the Gary Friedrich matter...so much so that they have sent both CCO Joe Quesada and publisher Dan Buckley to clarify and soothe at Comic Book Resources. As they point out, the matter is still under litigation and a settlement is being negotiated. Buckley and Quesada do a good job of trying to handle the negatives—they're pros—especially with this:

You can be sympathetic to Gary Friedrich's current situation—older, broke and in bad health—while still being alarmed over all the issues his court case has raised. My own email and IMs are full of variant views on it. So let's trace the evolution of this a bit.

Army of Darkness (as in Evil Dead) returns to the world of comics today with a new first issue. We caught up with Army of Darkness writer Elliott Serrano (who likes to pretend he's a mild mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper as the "Geek To Me" columnist at the Chicago Tribune's Redeye) to talk about Ash, Bruce Campbell and the new series.

Via Fast Company, of all places... So this is going to be the Minutemen Frontier? No surprise there. And, of course, it does look great.

Dropped into this little item about BEYOND THE FRINGE, a digital tie-in to the popular TV show, is the news that Jhonen Vasquez, the incredibly popular creator of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, will be doing some digital comics for DC, along with Becky Cloonan. SWEET.