Entertainment

Experimental, award-winning cartoonist Dash Shaw is obsessed with the reality show Blind Date. Don't ask why -- it just is.

Somehow or other we just stumbled across this blog by Hungarian cartoonist Attila Futaki whose comics adaptation of the immensely popular Percy Jackson & the Olympians, Book One: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan just came out. There are quite a few of these YA novel to graphic novel conversions going on, but Futaki's art is a lot nicer than it has to be. The final version is colored by José Villarrubia and looks even better.

Note: We thought this interview with Feige on the occasion of the IRON MAN 2 Blu-ray release was incredibly long and unfocused and couldn't believe he or his secretary took all the time to answer the questions, but turns out it was a ROUNDTABLE. That makes more sense. .

Now it's LABOR problems. Alas, my Beorn!

Young Chloe Moretz is adding to her geek cred by starring as yet another cartoon character, Emily the Strange, Deadline reports. Originally created as a clothing line mascot by Rob Reger, Emily is a cat-loving goth girl (like there is any other kind) who had expanded into print and graphic novels. An Emily comic is published by Dark Horse, and DH head Mike Richardson will be one of the producers.

Also: Why no BLACKSAD movie yet? Alexandre Aja was rumored to be involved.

Yes, there is a GHOST RIDER sequel being made right now, but it won't come out until 2012. And then the world will end. Nicolas Cage rides the flaming chopper again, Splash Page reports. The CRANK team of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor directs, and it's filming in Romania. You'll recall that although there wasn't that much enthusiasm for the first one, the rights would revert to Marvel/Disney if Sony didn't do something with the property, and Sony wouldn't want that. Because there is life in that flaming chopper.

It seems that the general air of Doompocalypsamagedden has now even extended to the comic book film, a once thriving genre that provided much of the capital that has fueled the biz for the last decade. Over at Comic Book Movie, there's an unsigned "volunteer contribution" that suggests "comic book movie" could go the way of the Western or the POLICE ACADEMY movies:

The BATMAN writer is the bad guy in a new MCR video? And here we always thought he was a force for good.

By Torsten Adair --

The following is a selection of new comic strip titles due to be published this Fall 2010. This list is not comprehensive, as there are over 200 books about comic strips scheduled from September to December. These are just the titles which caught my eye. Although you are welcome to debate the definition of "comic strip" in the comments, for my purposes I'm including single-panel cartoons as well as books about comic strips in this list.

One of the great unfinished graphic novel projects, Craig Thompson's HABIBI, has been finished, he announced earlier this week. Thompson has been slaving away on this 600 page opus since BLANKETS was published to great acclaim in 2003. The subject matter is nothing less than Islam, and Thompson has promised to look at it the way he looked at Christianity in BLANKETS. That isn't going to be controversial at all.

He's been a goth, comics and literary idol for decades...but now Neil Gaiman is turning into am anthro. Wired reports that the best-selling author willguest star on Arthur, the long-running (13 seasons) cartoon about a little aardvark and his world.