Tag: DC

With rising excitement for next year's THE DARK KNIGHT RISES trilogy-ending Batman adventure, WB has announced that the full six-minute prologue to the film will be shown in 42 IMAX theaters in the US and the UK starting Friday, December 16. The footage is expected to be shown with MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL. Although going to see a Tom Cruise film may sound like an onerous proposition, it's also the first live Action film directed by Brad Bird -- who made THE INCREDIBLES and THE IRON GIANT -- so hey, this may be an enjoyable field trip after all. In a statement, director Christopher Nolan said, "Our experience on 'The Dark Knight' shooting and projecting IMAX 15 perf 65mm/70mm film was inspiring. The immersive quality of the image goes beyond any other filmmaking tool available, and in revisiting Gotham, we were determined to shoot even more of the movie in this unique format. Giving the fans an early look at an IMAX sequence is a great way to draw attention to what I believe will be an incredible way to experience our story when it comes out next summer." The prologue is expected to feature the bad guy Bane, played by Tom Hardy. Win, win, win!

The new 52 Universe is getting even more diverse with the return of Steel, who returns in ACTION #4 by Grant Morrison and Rags Morales. In addition to teaming with Superman in the main story, the "John Henry Irons" of the DCU will get his very own 8-page back-up by Sholly Fisch and Brad Walker. And he'll be back for another back-up in ACTION #7. Created as one of the "variant Supermen" during the Death of Superman story, Steel had a pretty good comics run in the '90s, getting up to issue #52 of his very own series -- until he had the misfortune to star in a movie. With Steel by basketball legend Shaquille O'Neal, the film is considered one of the very worst superhero movies of all time. Since then he's appeared as a back-up character here, there, and everywhere. Despite the cinematic setback, Steel has always been a pretty cool character, so it's about time he returned.

YouTube has a new promotion for its new streaming service where you can watch recent movies for 99 cents -- among them GREEN LANTERN. If you've been waiting for a budget-conscious way to watch Hal Jordan save the universe from an angry cloud, this is your chance. You can also watch Harry Potter, Conan and that movie where Ton Hanks lives out his biker fantasy by riding a scooter with Julia Roberts on the back.

There have been frequent sightings of the fabled "WATCHMEN sequel" over the years, but no photographic evidence, if you will. Now, Bleeding Cool claims to have a solid source that a series of four prequels are under way, and Andy Kubert is slated to draw at least one of them. Also believed to be involved: J. Michael Straczynski, JG Jones, and original WATCHMEN collaborators John Higgins and Dave Gibbons. Darwyn Cooke is said to be masterminding the whole thing. Although unverified, Cooke and Kubert have been hinting at working on Top Secret projects for a while. WATCHMEN II supposedly got the nod after Paul Levitz left DC -- he had personally blocked it for nearly 20 years, kind of like that dude guarding the one true Chalice in INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE. But like that dude, Levitz couldn't hold on forever. With him gone, the story goes, Dan DiDio hopped all over it. But a lot of people at DC also thought the idea was blasphemy, and it kind of petered out -- or at least leaks about it to Bleeding Cool did.

Artist Cameron Stewart has been posting a few pages from BATMAN INCORPORATED: LEVIATHAN STRIKES!, the Grant Morrison-written one shot wrapping up the long-delayed BATMAN INCORPORATED's first season. Yesterday he posted a page which features Stephanie Brown -- yes, that Stephanie Brown. Leading to the predictable outpouring of attention. Which led him to tweet:

Here's something I have learned from Tumblr today - PEOPLE LOVE STEPHANIE BROWN

Our review copy of THE NEW 52, the $150, 1216-page collection of EVERY SINGLE NEW 52 #1 issue has arrived. Future uses: pressing flowers, anchoring papers during hurricane. This thing is HEAVY. And big. We've shown it here next to a cup of coffee for size reference. Meanwhile, James Robinson is on Twitter drumming up support for the non-New 52 SHADE which is selling badly and in danger of cancellation. Which, if it had been a New 52 book, would probably be selling as well as BATWING or OMAC.

I'd been meaning to write something about the new Shade maxi-series, but James Robinson made this a higher priority when he tweeted "If sales don't improve it may be cancelled before the 12 issues are done."

I'm in Iowa for the holidays, so I thought I'd drop in to the local (brand new) Books-A-Million and see what kind of comics they had after they joined Barnes & Noble in removing the boycotting the 100 DC graphic novels made exclusive to the Kindle. There were a lot more Marvel books there than DC and, of course, no Grant Morrison Batman or Batman: Hush or... uh, oh. What's that on the shelf?

Just like the girl in the above panel from SWAMP THING, the New DC Universe is beginning to BRANCH OUT (haw haw) and get ENTANGLED (hee hee) in the vines of....continuity and crossovers! This according to hints and forebodings from EIC Bob Harras:

Continuing the quest for a follow-up to Smallville, Booster Gold is the latest DC superhero to get a TV development deal, this time at the SyFy channel, under Greg Berlanti's production banner. The script is being written by Andrew Kreisberg, formerly of Fringe. Booster Gold appeared on the final season of Smallville, so he isn't a complete TV virgin.

Remember good old Vertigo, the imprint where all the top writers for the New 52 got discovered and DC graphic novel book store sales were practically invented? Well, they are still at it! Plucky old Vertigo. And just to prove they still have what it takes, they have announced their book collections for the second half of 2012, including some truly awesome stuff, like a HUGE one-volume edition of THE INVISIBLES by Grant Morrison and his all stars (Quitely, Jimenez, Thompson, Weston, Buckingham etc., etc., etc.) that will weigh in at a mere 1536 pages and $150. Frankly, we didn't know they could print books that big and wide. Given that THE INVISIBLES is one of our favorite mainstream comic of the 90s, we are there. Make room, make room! They also announced two NEW gns, including Get Jiro! by Anthony Bourdain, Joel Rose and Langdon Foss, planned for June and Right State, just announced by Mat Johnson and Andrea Muti.

October was a first litmus test for the good "New 52" relaunch numbers, as it was the first month that allowed retailers to react to customer feedback on DC's "New 52" initiative in a meaningful way. As a result, Marvel won a little less of the market share than usual got really spanked by DC in October, which took the Top 6 spots, along with a whopping 17 out of the Top 20 (and 32 out of the Top 50, and 60 out of the Top 100), as well as 50.97 percent of the unit market share and 42.47 percent of the dollar share. DC's average periodical numbers were down a bit from September and are now in the exact same area as right after the line-wide "One Year Later" event in May 2006, which had been DC's high-water mark before the current relaunch. Back then, the average new DC comic book (not counting the now-defunct WildStorm) sold an estimated 50,519 units, the average new DC Universe comic book 59,505. In October 2011, now, it's 51,280 and 59,146, respectively. These numbers don't suggest we need to build a new ball park quite yet, but DC certainly did a great job of filling up the old one in a way that hasn't happened since, well, 2006. While a slight drop-off from September was to be expected, it turns out to be very slight indeed, because 16 of the "New 52" titles didn't drop at all, but rather increased in sales. They're led by Animal Man, which, on the back of good reviews, saw an impressive second-issue increase of 16 percent. And even most of the rest of the bunch displays much slighter drops than we're used to, for that matter. Only 16 of the percentage drops are in the double digits, and only four of those -- Action Comics, Men of War, Superman and Blackhawks -- are in the area you'd usually suspect. As a result, the average second-issue drop for the "New 52" is a tiny 5.2 percent -- a dream figure by any standard. (Also, it's worth noting that many of the books with the bigger second-issue drops came out in the last week of October. Technically, this means that they were disadvantaged, because all subsequent re-orders slipped into November. On the other hand, the first issues of those titles shipped in the last week of September, too, of course, so it should have evened out. In any case, we'll get a clearer picture of what's going on with the November chart.)