Entertainment

Season 1/Episode 1: The Walking Dead/Days Gone By What’s your day after Halloween take on the TV Zombiepocalypse?  I’m pretty satisfied with the balance of...

Every Friday, The New York Times presents its "graphic books" best seller list. It's compiled from BookScan, Diamond, and, as far as we can tell, magic juju algorithms of some kind. It is, like all best seller lists, probably a little subjective and magical, but it certainly reflects a stable metric of what books are selling briskly that week. Given all that we've talked about this week in terms of superheroes and literary comics and manga and what not...let's see exactly what is selling THIS week in American comics, with my own commentary.

So, does The Walking Dead (premiering this Sunday, Halloween, on AMC at 10:00/9 PM C) live up to the hype? One Word Answer:  Ewwwwwwwwww!

You'd think a graphic novel drawn by Ramona Fradon, Rick Veitch, Michael Netzer and Terry Beatty would have gotten some attention, and it has, but not in comics circles. The Adventures of Unemployed Man by Erich Origen and Gan Golan, authors of the best-selling Goodnight, Bush. As you might guess, the topic at hand is an explanation (from one point of view) of why jobs are scarcer than a mint copy of CHEW #1. As a preview at Huffington Post shows, the story is a didactic allegory using superhero tropes to illustrate income disparity and the decoupling of profit from employment and...also how people turn into the Hulk from being exposed to too many Fox News rays.

We managed to get hold of a pdf of today's EW story on Captain America. We won't be stinkers and post the whole thing in readable form, but there are LOTS of pictures, including:

This week's EW debuts Chris Evans in actual Cap clothing, which turns out to be similar to the outfits that were leaked a while ago. The online excerpt include Evans discussing his fear of the role, and director Joe Johnston going firmly back into ROCKETEER territory:

The premiere for The Walking Dead TV show was thrown last night and the after party was held at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery and it sounds frigging awesome:

Hm. Maybe it IS time to put the superhero genre on the shelf for a bit. Details are scant but it appears that there's a new superhero movie on its way, directed by controversial helmer/pugilist Uwe Boll (BLOODRAYNE, POSTAL) and it's called BLUBBERELLA:

Should comics panels be written about or recorded for all to hear? This panel report from APE of Dan Nadel interviewing Daniel Clowes has been linked everywhere, probably because it's such a thorough write-up. There's lots of dish on other cartoonists, and anecdotes from the history of alt.comix:

We haven't been covering the Hobbit movie drama because it was just too....dramatic. Despite everyone being a total wanker and trying to prevent a Hobbit movie from actually being made, it seems that Peter Jackson & Co. are set to start filming two films back to back in February... Somewhere. A dispute involving the New Zealand acting union was quickly resolved when Jackson threatened to move the production -- however, the studio was so pissed off that they might still move the two Hobbit films to a more hospitable location. Common sense would say "You've already GOT Hobbiton and Rivendell in New Zealand" but...we shall see. Meanwhile casting is moving right along! Lets see who we have here.

Bits and pieces of scrimshaw from the Green Lantern movie are leaking out, and here are a few nice pieces of concept art, as seen at Splash Page.

Armie Hammer is a giant, beautiful human. Now that we have that out of the way, it's very obvious -- after his scene-stealing turn as the rowing Winklevoss twins in THE SOCIAL NETWORK -- that he would make a swell giant, beautiful Kryptonian. However, as he blabs in an interview with Vulture, at 24 he's too young for the upcoming Zack Snyder Superman movie which will deal with a more mature 35-40 year old Man of Steel. Given that we've seen the original of Superman told so well in the Christopher Reeve versions, an older I-know-what-I'm-doing Man of Steel might be a good change-up. It's also more in line with the age of Christian Bale's Batman. And, it just feels more Curt Swan, y'know.