Publishers

Home Team Image has a big line-up of panels and announcements, a Zombie barcrawl, and much more, below:

IMMORTALS is a movie due this winter featuring Henry Cavill, Frieda Pinto, Mickey Rourke and more in a story based on the greek myths of the Titans and directed by Tarsem Singh. Color us curious! To launch the film, Archaia is partnering for the comics tie-in prequel, with a stellar line-up of talent. PR below.

It's incredible what some Disney marketing dollars will do. Marvel has been running a big promo for their Avengers/Thor/Captain America/Iron Man movie franchise gaggle where you try out to be a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent -- they were running it in Chicago at C2E2 but it didn't get the attention it has here in San Francisco where we were awoken this morning by someone slipping the above promo piece into our room at the convention hotel, the Marriot Marquis.

Back in August, 2010, we told you all about the story behind OBLIVION, a graphic novel concept by director Joe Kosinski (TRON: LEGACY) that was optioned to Disney Studios for a cool $500,000. It seemed like a lot of money for yet another "celebrity comic" so what was so hot about it? At the time we wrote:

During C2E2, I discovered some old issues of Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld in the quarter bins.  I knew of this series, but had not read any comics of the character.  I have an eight-year-old niece who loves Wonder Woman, and thought she might enjoy another super-powered princess.

Hooray! A grown woman will play the grown-up Lois Lane in the Superman reboot being prepped by Zack Snyder. Oscar-nominated Amy Adams will play the nosy reporter, “There was a big, giant search for Lois,” Snyder said of the casting. “For us it was a big thing and obviously a really important role. We did a lot of auditioning but we had this meeting with Amy Adams and after that I just felt she was perfect for it.”

Never afraid to try that free marketing thing, BOOM! Studios is launching their new HELLRAISER comic by making a FREE STORY available only in PDF and allowing everyone to post it. As Marketing Director Chip Mosher put it:

Everyone needs a hobby. Artist Mike Kelley has a doozy. He's been devoting the last ten years to making glass imaged of Kandor, the lost Kryptonian "City in a bottle." It seems that before Superman's home planet was blown to smithereens, Brainiac stole the capital city of Kandor, shrank it down, and put it in a bottle, as we might save a ship or a guppy. Superman recovered the city in ACTION COMICS #242, and decided to keep it in the Fortress of Solitude, because nothing breaks up a lonely day like a tiny bottled city full of Kryptonians.

With a bunch of editorial types going off to California to join Geoff Johns' secret avengers team, there have been a few openings in DC editorial of late, and at least two have been filled.

CHEW, the cibopathic comedy smash comic by John Layman and Rob Guillory has been picked up for development at Showtime, and a script by Terri Hughes Burton and Ron Milbauer has been purchased. It's being planned as a half-hour comedy; Stephen Hopkins will direct as well as executive produce.

Intensive lab scene accompanied by anxious music? Check. Unsubtle reference to Avengers franchise in title? Check. The line "You don't know when to quit, do you?" Check.

Now this is kind of interesting. Avatar, publisher of some of the greatest writers in comics, like Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis and so on, is switching distributors from Diamond to...BOOM!? Wait, BOOM! is a distributor? Not really, but they have their own distributor deal with Simon & Schuster for the US and HarperCollins for Canada. Avatar will be tagging along on BOOM!'s truck route for a unique partnership. We had the chance to chat informally with several Avatar personnel about this move at C2E2 -- and it's definitely a good one for them. Moore and (to a lesser extent) Ellis are perennial bookstore bestsellers, so being able to hop on that bandwagon should definitely help their trade program. Although not noted by anyone, really, Avatar significantly slowed their trade collection release schedule over the last few months; this deal enables them to get it going again.