Publishers

Tom Hart's essential zeitgeist character Hutch Owen gets his third collection this fall, Let's Get Furious!, due from Top Shelf:

The Source break loose and reveals ten new books and creative teams. And notably, it's basically the same sort of teams we've been seeing for quite a while, but mostly much respected creators. Surely the most Tumbl'rd comic will be a NEW character book featuring a character who is non-white: MISTER TERRIFIC, by Eric Wallace and Roger Robinson. .

D&Q has revealed the cover to Hark! a Vagrant their Kate Beaton collection. Just the other day, The Beat and another industry observer were chatting about this and that and we observed that no one does a comics author tour like D&Q. The fantastic response to the Chester Brown tour being an example of that. Fantagraphics is the only company that even comes close.

You've probably already thought of most of these, but Funny or Die has put them all in one place.

On his Facebook page, JMS praises DC's plan to relaunch its superhero line and gives a hint of the backstory.

Back in October, at the ICv2 digital summit, there was a lot of talk about whether digital comics would kill brick-and-mortar stores -- one way to stave off that dire future vision was the idea of digital store exclusives -- things that you can only download from a store. The video game industry has been doing this for a while. When Dark Horse announced their own digital initiative, retailer exclusives were part of the mix. (DC has also announced their intentions to offer retailer incentives, but they have yet to be made official.) Anyway, Dark Horse has just announced they will be making exclusive 8-page stories from their hottest titles available only through comics shops -- via the print-out-a-code-and-hand-it-over method. Wow. So simple. First titles involved include B.P.R.D.,  Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Mass Effect. PR below and a sample page from B.P.R.D. Casualties above.

[Earlier today we ran an essay by longtime Beat contributor Mark Coale on The DC Flashpoint Reboot. In it he stated he was going to stop reading DC entirely. In the interests of fairness, we reached out to find readers who are excited about the changes. We've gotten several great responses and we'll run them over the next day or so. And yes we'll get back to non-DC news very very soon!}

Artist Jock just tweeted this Joker cover for 'Tec and people went nuts. Can you blame them?

While there will be plenty of PR spinning about DC's big news as a great jumping on point for new readers and all that other doublespeak, let's look at the other side of the coin.

Why is it that the biggest news always happens right after a holiday weekend? 18 months ago, it was Disney buying Marvel after Labor Day; this time, it's the biggest editorial readjustment at a superhero comics company EVER: DC's just announced plan to launch 52 new #1 issues in September, with changed or adjusted characters, costumes and and origins. Here's what you need to know, the confirmed and the speculation. First, what we know: The whole new line up will be announced on Monday, June 13th, when the Previews for that month is released. Until then, expect to see breaking news in national news outlets and on The Source.

The complete image of the new Johns-Lee rebooted JLA has surfaced (apparently at IGN) and it's clear that we have a "Big Seven" of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg. Most of the new costumes involved higher collars. Superman has a new logo and no trunks over his tights. There are lots of other details, but when we mentioned earlier that these characters looked about the same we meant it -- these are tweaks on the traditional (Super Friends, licensing) looks for these characters, not huge changes.

From around the Twitterverse, an array of reactions to DC's news that they are reboot their line in September and going to simultaneous digital release. New comics universes are a dime a dozen, but the digital news is really a game changer -- it's hard not to see every other publishers following suit quickly.

The next big announcement for this move would seem to be June 11, when Jim Lee and Geoff Johns are expected to "drop bombshells" at the Hero Complex Film Festival. Although HeroesCon, one of the bigger shows on the circuit, is this weekend, there are no official DC panels so no big announcements. Executive Editor Eddie Berganza is attending however, so catch him on the bar and hope he didn't sign an NDA.