Entertainment Weekly has a preview of Avengers Vs. X-Men #1 – or, as the preview seems to call it, “Round 1″ – give you a chance to either get a sneak peek at what’s likely to be the year’s biggest event, or try and get used to some of the crazy explanations behind the McGuffins necessary to make the fighting start (Seriously, they analyzed the energy and worked out that the Phoenix Force was coming to Earth? Or they’re just convinced that Nova is correct…? “Well, he seems to mean it…”). Either way, the John Romita Jr. art is really nice. Go and see for yourself.

Do I consider my work on the story to be award-winning? Certainly not.

But how can John credit me for STATIC‘s failure when, before I was even involved, he couldn’t get a plan approved or get off the ground?

How can John credit me for STATIC‘s failure when he once again floundered after resuming full control of the story with issue #4?

John had very fixed preconceptions of what STATIC should be, very much aligned with his own Rozum-esque sensibility. When Editorial asked him for a different vision, he got knocked out of kilter and just couldn’t regain his balance. He just couldn’t see how to move from where he was to where editorial wanted him to be. I didn’t cause that.

When I joined the team, I had NO preconceptions. I listened, carefully, to what Harvey was trying to achieve, and then set out to achieve it. I didn’t conspire against John. I just did the job the way John should have.

For a variety of reasons, many people regard this book as a total failure. I must be totally out of touch with reality, because while it was far from perfect, I think it was also far from being a total “turd.”

I thought it was a romping adventure that featured a young hero who was discovering new things about himself – about his powers, about his perception of people. We (most of it from me and Harvey) extended his power set in believable ways entirely consistent with his TRUE core ability (his telekinetic ability to manipulate electrons). We (mostly me) introduced a lot of characters to implement STATIC’s story of growth.

It might not have been what people expected, but wasn’t that an important ingredient of the DCnU relaunch? There was a lot of NEW in this STATIC.

That’s from Scott McDaniel’s lengthy response to John Rozum’s explanation for quitting Static Shock with the series’ fourth issue, in which he called the book “a mediocre comic series” and complained about unprofessional treatment and a particularly negative experience. Reading the two together – and parsing out the passive aggressiveness in both – what becomes clear very quickly is a creative mismatch between McDaniel and Rozum’s sensibilities, as well as a horrendous breakdown in communications between editorial and the two creators; instead of there being any smoking gun of “He Said He Said” gossip or controversy here, it just seems sad and a wasted opportunity all round. Static Shock deserved better.

In case you need a reason to feel good about Dan Slott today, Gail Simone has you covered with this awesome tale of the Amazing Spider-Man writer dealing with an irate fan (anti-fan?):

One day at the con, a guy stood in Dan’s line, between Ethan’s line and my line, and when he got up to the front of the line, he said something really horribly rude right to Dan’s face. I don’t recall the words, but it was very strong stuff. He had stood in line just to say how much he hated Dan’s Spider-man AND that he hated Dan personally, as well, for that reason.

It turns out that he had been posting genuinely awful stuff about Dan (because he didn’t like Dan’s Spidey work) for a long time. Dan knew instantly who it was (we all have a few people like that). Now, only the weeniest of pros freaks out when someone doesn’t like their work. But when someone follows you around, trying to get others to hate you, it just gets a little weird.

Anyway, Ethan, who has zero patience with rude people, looked over at me, and we expected a bit of anger. Instead, Dan was incredibly patient and kind. He defended his work, but he did so graciously, he didn’t respond to insult with insult.

Much more in the link, including the end of Slott’s conversation with the fan, which has to be seen to be believed.

If it’s Wednesday, then it’s time for another object of comic book awesome delight to be celebrated and, as the Stone Roses once so poignantly put it, adored. Get on your M-Vest, people!

Yes, today is all about Chris Bachalo’s hands. Okay, not really – although, really, doesn’t Bachalo draw great hands? Whether in his early career, where they were all thin and stretchy or his current look, where everyone had Ben Grimm blocky fingers, that man gives good hand – today’s star is Shade The Changing Man. From early days as another example of Steve Ditko’s completely underrated creations (Even ignoring Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, look at the Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, the Creeper, Hawk and Dove, Shade… the man could toss off compelling characters with seeming ease, back in the day) through Peter Milligan’s Vertigo revival, where weirdness met tragedy met self-conscious humor and the whole thing became an extremely enjoyable melodrama to his current revival as a member of the New 52′s Justice League Dark, Shade has never been a massively successful character but his stories have always offered up something different from the norm, something to appeal to fans of the off-kilter and curious. Long may he change.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a release date. Fox has announced a July 23, 2013 release date for The Wolverine, the second solo movie for cinema’s favorite X-Man, directed by Girl, Interrupted and Walk The Line‘s James Mangold and starring – of course – Hugh Jackman. As the Hollywood Reporter notes, this means that it’s opening the same day as the Dirty Dancing remake, so feel free to start working on your jokes about “nobody puts Wolverine in a corner” right now. This date also make The Wolverine the third superhero movie of the year; Iron Man 3 is scheduled to open on May 3, with DC’s Superman reboot Man of Steel opening June 14.

Mark Millar responds to Before Watchmen as only Mark Millar can:

AFTER WATCHMEN: THE SECRET SERVICE

Do I dare do that as a publicity campaign for the book?

“Attention Watchmen loyalists – Vote with your dollars and buy Secret Service #1 in April”

Is that too much? Even for me?

Considering Watchmen‘s Dave Gibbons is illustrating the book, it’s almost fitting, especially as – as Sarah Velez puts it in the resulting thread at Millarworld, “[t]his is pretty much the perfect dichotomy between creator owned and company owned stuff. You and the co-creator of the watchmen coming out with original new material–while DC put out prequels down by neither co-creator, based on 25 year old work.” With DC creating “Before Watchmen” as a brand, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to use “After Watchmen”; if not this, then I’d hope Top Shelf use it for the next League of Extraordinary Gentlemen book…

This is interesting; over at mainstream news and commentary site Slate, James Sturm has written a lengthy essay about why he’s going to boycott Marvel’s summer blockbuster Marvel’s The Avengers (Yes, that’s actually the full official title, presumably to distance it from the Uma Thurman/Sean Connery revival of the old TV show), based on the publisher’s treatment of Jack Kirby and his heirs:

What makes this situation especially hard to stomach is that Marvel’s media empire was built on the backs of characters whose defining trait as superheroes is the willingness to fight for what is right. It takes a lot of corporate moxie to put Thor and Captain America on the big screen and have them battle for honor and justice when behind the scenes the parent company acts like a cold-blooded supervillain. As Stan Lee famously wrote, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

What’s interesting to me about this isn’t necessarily Sturm’s reasoning itself, which is certainly nothing new to comic book fans who have been aware of the legal battle between the Kirby estate and Marvel over ownership of the characters for quite some time now and have chosen sides on this particular Comics Civil War (Although I wonder whether last week’s Before Watchmen argument has led to anyone reconsidering their position…?), but the fact that the article is – according to Slate’s sidebar – the third most shared story on the site. What happens if this story becomes suitably mainstream before the release of the movie, I wonder…? I’m reminded of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster being given creator credit and an annual stipend by DC ahead of the Superman movie in the ’70s (if I’m getting my dates right), and wonder whether there’s a similar move that Marvel can do for the Kirby estate to escape the potential publicity black eye that could result from this story getting wider transmission.

Definite read of the day: ICv2′s interview with Marvel’s SVP of Sales, David Gabriel, which addresses every single topic you’d want him to tackle in a way that is both professional and wonderfully frustrating. It’s nonetheless full of interesting information, whether it’s that Marvel apparently plans for collections to stay in print for eighteen months unless they’re considered evergreen, which the Essentials collections are not, or that the publisher has cut its line by 25% for 2012. He’s also great at downplaying DC’s success (“Certainly DC achieved some success with their New 52 and we’re happy to see them prosper” being my favorite line of the interview) and initiatives (Dropping pricepoint to $2.99 is characterized as “retailers seeing a huge drain on their bottom line when prices from other publishers dropped overnight without any story to increase sales of these price reduced titles”), but the money quote of the whole piece may be his answer to how many story pages we can expect in a 32 page comic from Marvel this year:

First, that’s like asking how many minutes does an audience expect a movie to be, or a concert, or a Broadway show… those forms of entertainment are not pro-rated by the minute and comic books have never been prorated by the page count (which has fluctuated for all publishers for 75 years!).  But because it does get asked… in a standard comic they should expect to find around 20 pages of content.  Some may have more, some may have less.  The important thing is to deliver a compelling comic book month in and month out–as long as we’re doing that, everyone’s getting their money’s worth.

It’s the “some may have less” part that sticks in my head. We’ve already seen some Marvel books have 19 pages of story for $3.99, but now I can’t help but wonder if this is a sign that we’re going to see more of this kind of thing. The question of the year may end up being, how short can a mainstream comic get and still feel worth the money?

Okay, so today’s dose of comics awesome may seem a little unusual, I have to admit, considering it’s not a character or a concept that I’m all about, but a visual. But it’s no less wonderful for all that…:

The title page of Darwyn Cooke’s The Man With The Getaway Face, ladies and gentleman; a spectacular piece of design – it’s like a comic version of a Saul Bass title sequence – that’s also a spectacular piece of comics as the black gets cut away (It’s bandages, we learn from the next page) to reveal the title. Look at where the color and the white lie in the first two panels; the logo placement is already there, with the credits revealing pieces of it already. But outside the sequential aspect of it, the page is just a beautifully composed piece of design, with the balance between black, white and color completely right and in just the right place to pull the eye down towards the title at the bottom. This is an amazing page, both evocative of the period of the story, and timeless in terms of how damn good it is. More comics should be so stylish when telling you what they’re called.

After premiering Monday afternoon at a promotional event simulcasted in several cities across the globe, the second Amazing Spider-Man trailer is now on YouTube. And here it is:

Our bicoastal write-up of Monday’s event — with plenty of more details about the footage shown and comments from the cast and director Marc Webb — is here.

Well, this is something I didn’t expect to see anytime soon; DC Comics has released its digital sales rankings for last month – No estimates of numbers sold, of course – and… well, it looks very much like the Diamond top 10 for the month, to be honest:

#1: Batman #5

#2: Justice League #5

#3: Action Comics #5

#4: Detective Comics #5

#5: Green Lantern #5

#6: Batman and Robin #5

#7: Batman #4

#8: Justice League #4

#9: Superman #5

#10: Aquaman #5

Couple of interesting things to see there, not least of which are the previous month’s issues of Batman and Justice League placing so highly (The Dark Knight and Flash are the two books that those issues replace from the Diamond charts). It’s also curious to see that the top 5 is essentially the same as the Diamond chart, with the exception of Justice League and Batman being swapped around in order; clearly, DC has a very clear idea of what its hits books are, across different formats.

Now, if only we could convince ComiXology to compile a download chart not unlike the Diamond chart so we could see rankings for all publishers each month…

It’s possible that many of you out there never experienced the wonder that was Jeff Parker’s Marvel Adventures: The Avengers, but now there’s a chance for you to get a hint of what you missed, as Parker has made some scripts from his Marvel Adventures books available on his website (Other scripts will follow, apparently). For those who want to learn to write comics, this is an invaluable resource. For those who want to see the Leader outclassed by a team of huge-craniumed superheroes who complain about his “wee skull,” this is also an invaluable resource. If you are not in either of those demographics, you may want to reconsider your approach to life.

Another week begins, and with it another reminder of all things awesome in the wide world of comics. For example, the extra terrestrial editor of the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic:

2000AD‘s Tharg the Mighty, one of comics’ few fictional decision makers – Kindly keep your snarky rejoinders to yourself for now, thank you, frustrated comic professionals – and the reason multiple generations of British citizens know what “Splundig Vur Thigg,” “Scrotnig” and “Zarjaz!” all mean. As all who read 2000AD growing up already know, Tharg’s presence in the anthology – whether in his editorials at the start of each issue or his occasional starring roles in short strips on special occasions – are a large part of what made the comic such a special experience. For everyone else, imagine a hipper Stan Lee who’s also an alien that’s here on Earth to defend us from the threat of the Thrill-Suckers. Now I think you understand the awesome.

Reloading on dip while the Avengers Super Bowl commercial debuted during the second quarter of the Patriots/Giants match-up? Just want to relive it frame by frame? Well, here it is!

And here’s the 1:05 extended version, posted on Marvel Studios’ Avengers Facebook page:

Here’s a totally random thought brought on by all the Before Watchmen hoopla: What does this mean for Marvel’s Marvelman plans?

On the one hand, it’s great for Marvel: It shows there’s a high level of interest in (and respect for) Moore’s work, which suggests that a release of Moore’s original Marvelman material would have a much, much bigger impact than the earlier Mick Anglo reprints if it ever happens. But I can’t help but feel that it also points to a potential backlash for any new material planned for the character, at least new Marvelman that doesn’t include Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham, and that feels like it could be a real problem for the House of Ideas.

Marvel, it seems to me, doesn’t “do” legacy material well; in addition to the often-discussed inability to keep material in print continuously without switching format, Marvel hasn’t historically been good at letting classic material stay as classic material without trying to resurrect or revamp it and make it into an ongoing property (See the attempts to revive things like Kirby’s Eternals, or even the New Universe, in recent years). I think most fans expected that Marvel would want to do more with Marvelman than just reprint the classic material, and I wonder whether seeing the uproar in response to the Before Watchmen announcements will change that. After all, if fans can’t accept Cooke, Azzarello and JMS as writers, are they really likely to hook into more Marvelman from the likes of Bendis, Fraction or whoever Marvel would have to offer…?

Alternatively, if the outrage about Before Watchmen is all about that particular series’ status as (a) a conflicted ownership property and (b) a completed story, then Marvelman may be spared all of this kind of protest. I guess we’ll see if and when Marvel ever do anything with the character…

The news that DC took the entire Diamond Comics Distributors top 10 in January seems somewhat stunning. I know that Marvel had a relatively quiet month, with no new launches outside of the second-tier Scarlet Spider and Wolverine and The X-Men: Alpha and Omega mini, but nonetheless, it’s amazing that fifth issues from ten different DC books managed to outsell second issues of Avengers: X-Sanction or Defenders or the oversized Wolverine #300, especially when you remember that DC didn’t manage to take the entire top 10 in September, when their entire New 52 line launched.

(It’s interesting to look at the top 100, and see where the Marvel books do fall in the chart – Most of the big ones form a pile up in the back half of the top 20, with the relaunched core X-Men titles outselling the Avengers books handily; looks like that franchise is back on top at Marvel, for the first time in years. I’m genuinely surprised to see Defenders #2 all the way in the 40s, mind you; with that creative team and amount of pre-release hype, I expected it to be way higher. Also worth pointing out: Look at the dollar ranking of the books: In that, Marvel and DC split the top 10 evenly, but the 5 top selling books by quantity are also the 5 top selling books by dollar share…)

Considering that we’re still in the window of DC’s orders being discounted on the chart by 10% because of availability, it’d be interesting to see what the real numbers for these books would be, and try and work out what this means – Are retailers ordering substantially heavier even at this stage because of the returnability, or do they believe that they can sell more DC books than Marvel, when it comes down to it without any outside influences or events goosing sales (All bets are off to that when it comes to Avengers vs. X-Men and this summer’s Avengers movie, of course)? And, as ever in this scenario, do the sell-through numbers echo the orders?

A plus from the Before Watchmen insanity has been KC Carlson’s Westfield Comics blog post about the infamous Watchman Ashcan. What’s that? You’ve never heard of such a thing…? Let KC explain…

You see, Al Gordon, as well as being a legendary inker for decades, was also in the running for being the most legendary Watchmen fan, ever. He would pester any DC editor he could find to send him advance photocopies of the Watchmen issues before they were published. The wait between #11 and #12 was obviously driving Al crazy, as he was calling DC every day wondering were his photocopy was. He managed to tick off several people. So, some unidentified DC staffer made sure that Al got the very first photocopy of Watchmen #12 — but not before that mystery person gathered together a bunch of other unidentified DC folks (possibly named Carlin, Helfer, and Bove) to alter the photocopy.

KC links to this old CBR column where Mark Waid gives more details:

It gets increasingly wackier, but it’s really subtle at first. The first dozen pages or so, you wouldn’t know your mind was being messed with unless you were paying super-close attention, I swear. Gradually, however, small alterations in the lettering and art turn into huge ones. In the end, by the time Veidt reveals that his agent of psychic delivery isn’t the squid, it’s reruns of “Pee Wee’s Playhouse,” you’d kinda have to catch on.

This is something that I really wish would see official print at some point, even if it’s just as an extra in yet another collected edition in years to come.

In February, many people’s thoughts turn to love as they celebrate Valentine’s Day. Here at Blog@, it’s a month-long celebration of the awesomeness present in comics, including #3:

The Flash of Two Worlds! Not only does it introduce the multiverse to comics, but look at the little hands on the caption boxes on the right of the page. How awesome is that?

In the midst of all the Before Watchmen noise yesterday – please, someone, tell me that I’m not the only person who’s already exhausted with that particular subject after one day of everyone talking about it – I entirely missed that February 1 wasn’t just the 20th anniversary of Image Comics, but also the 30th anniversary of Diamond Comic Distributors, two institutions that have done more than their fair share – positively and negatively – to shape the comics industry into what it is today (There’s probably some kind of irony attached to those two events being overshadowed by Before Watchmen, come to think of it). Image seems to be having a resurgence these days – deservedly, considering a lot of the projects it’s publishing these days – while Diamond’s future seems far more uncertain considering the threat of digital (Whatever happened to Diamond’s digital plans? Weren’t they supposed to go live last September…?), so it’ll be interesting to see how both anniversary years pan out for the respective companies; will either announce a big overhaul before its next birthday…?

I cannot speak strongly enough about how interrelated I think women and children readers are and how both are extremely important to the future of comics. Women make 80% of the retail purchases in America. EIGHTY PERCENT. And that means that more often than not, if a kid is shopping, it’s with mom. So if the comic industry wants to have a future and hook readers young, they need to target both women and children. If a woman is reading comics, she’ll be more likely to let her kid read comics. And if a kid is raised in a house where one or both parents read comics, I think we all already know that he or she will be more likely to read comics. Kids who never know comics exist are going to have a hard time finding them when they’re at an age that most superhero comics are geared towards. And even better in all of this is the fact that if mom reads comics, she’ll have no problem with her daughters reading comics, which increases the future female readership of comics as well as just the future male readership of comics. There’s no loss here for the comics industry. It just takes foresight. Creating more comics for kids and women, making sure they know they exist, and making sure they’re accessible could genuinely change the future of the industry. Some publishers are already doing a great job making stuff for one or both (Top Shelf and Archaia both leap to mind). We just need a greater segment of the industry to take those demographics seriously.

That’s just one response from Janelle Asselin, former DC editor (now at Disney, working on kids’ magazines, I believe), in an interview over at the wonderful DC Women Kicking Ass tumblr that’s well worth checking out; Asselin talks about her graduate thesis on (the lack of) women in comics, and it’s both eye-opening and depressing. Go read.