Tag: DC

Last night's gala premiere for THE DARK KNIGHT RISES in NYC brought out some stars, with author Neil Gaiman escorting DC president Diane Nelson to the event. At the afterparty, DC execs Jim Lee and Geoff Johns relaxed and flexed with singing star Daughtry, who is teaming with the WB and DC for the "We Can Be Heroes" campaign to raise funds to end hunger in the Horn of Africa.

With "New 52" numbers settled down (see here for a long-term breakdown), May marked a return to a variety of old-fashioned direct-market sales boosters: six of the loowest-selling "New 52" titles were replaced with new launches Earth-2, Worlds' Finest, Dial H, G.I. Combat, The Ravagers and Batman, Incorporated; new creative teams (meaning Rob Liefeld, mostly) were instated on Hawkman, Deathstroke and Grifter, three of the lower-selling "New 52" books that haven't been cancelled; Annuals for Batman, Animal Man and Teen Titans, three of the more popular "New 52" series; and, finally, four separate crossovers involving 21 titles, notably the "Court of Owls" storyline running through most of the Batman line. And those tricks still work quite well, as it turns out: For the DC Universe imprint, average comic-book sales, total unit sales and total dollar sales soared back towards their highest respective levels since November 2011, which is pretty good. With Before Watchmen around the corner and September's issue-#0 stunt and the next round of "New 52" replacements coming up, it seems safe to say that the publisher will be able to build on the ground recovered thanks to the "New 52" relaunch through the second half of 2012.

Quentin Tarantino jumped onto the Before Watchmen panel today, ran around on the table, and announced a new 5-issue miniseries based on his new film, to be published by Vertigo.

"Now I know who the comic lovers are here at Comic Con,"  said Jimmy Palmiotti to appreciative applause  in first DC Panel of SDCC 2012 on Thursday.   He went on to announce Jonah Hex among the titles to appear under "the Dark and the Edge" banner.

We got a chance to look at Cryptozoic's latest project, the DC Comics Deck Building Game on Thursday morning. Cryptozoic has been a strong presence building geek culture games, adopting Penny Arcade, The Walking Dead, and The Big Bang Theory. Now their aim is to adopt DC's comic universe into the next big game.

Basically if you go to the Darkness and Light gallery on 5th Street on Friday you will see Lego builder recreating a Jim Lee painting in Legos. You don't see that every day. No sir.

In order to view this both impressive and oppressive 3D rendering of THE DARK KNIGHT RISES Gotham City one must first allow Nokia—the formerly ascendant Finnish company that was once the world's largest cel phone manufacturer—to tattle to you friends on Facebook every time you look at it AND tell Nokia you like them. Luckily I do like Nokia -- or at least I did like my tiny blue Nokia from 2000 that was my very first cel phone.

Here in the world of what is laughably called "pop culture journalism" we're all used to a certain breathless acceptance in talent interviews. Staying competitive means getting exclusives and getting exclusives means playing ball. Tough questions are rarely asked, and confrontation is the greatest sin of all. So when you read Watching Watchmen: A Classic Comic’s Classless Return at the Daily Beast, you have to either wince or gasp as things spin out of control.

So now we know that Kindle exclusive is really OVER, as DC has officially announced that DC graphic novels will be available for B&N's Nook. The comics, which include the 100 favorite such as WATCHMEN as well as the new launch of New 52 collections, will be readable in a new "Zoom View" format—which is B&N's version of comiXology's guided view.

A concept artist who worked on BATMAN: ARKHAM ASYLUM has posted some Justice League concept art that could be just an afternoon doodle...or something else? It's definitely a more video-game esque and robust take on the characters. Our guess: something toyetic.

True to their word, DC is launching a followup reader survey, after last fall's New 52 launch survey. John Rood mentioned that any demographic info would only be truly useful as more comparisons were able to be made, and future surveys were promised. And here it is. We tried to take it but got booted out for truthful answers, sadly. (In this case not actually buying any DC comics.) As before there is a fake survey title, ORANGE IVY, to weed out wannabes.

For the full effect you'll want to go right to the site, but this trailer has a lot of dark Bane vs Batman footage and less Catwoman. Any chance this movie will top AVENGERS? Probably not. But it should easily vanquish Spider-Man for #2 comic book movie of the year.