Linko! XVI

All right! Since I didn't get to this last week since I was drowning in a sea of hard to comprehend panel transcripts, we're wrapping our Comic-Con week here on the CKT with an all-San Diego Linko!

* Some of you may have already seen this, but I posted a link to all the stories I wrote for CBR up on my Four Color Forum interview blog. That includes everything from DC and Marvel panel reports to an interview on the Scott Pilgrim video game to some "state of the con" stuff with organizers. I should have another post up early to mid-next week with the rest of the work I did at the show. (Oh, and sorry if the site loads slowly. I'm working on it)

* When it comes to news, there are 10,000 things getting announced every second at San Diego – so much stuff that I wonder why companies don't just wait until August to talk about big initiatives, but I don't run a publishing empire, so what do I know? In any event, the things I noticed that had me interested were:

Marvelman is back! Sure, this was already everywhere five times, but it's still big news even though at this point there's absolutely nothing proving Marvel Comics will be able to leverage their purchasing of the '50s British superhero rights into reprints of the '80s American superhero masterpiece(s). Fingers crossed though. In the meantime, read up on what this all is and what it means at Robot 6 or check out my own report of the announcement with quotes from Mark Buckingham or go back to Robot 6 for the first word on the whole deal from Neil Gaiman. BONUS! John Parker's Comics Alliance Essay on 'Miracleman' at Marvel: How Not to Ruin It was a good read, though I think he's already lost the naming battle.

New Bone book! Sure, I was a little bummed to learn the expansion of Jeff Smith's classic comic serial would come in the form of illustrated prose books rather than straight comics, but I don't want RASL to slow down, and writer Tom Sniegoski did a great job in that world in the past. So onwards and upwards. See covers and read more at Smith's blog.

New Casper comics! I may be the only person to find the announcement of a new series of comics starring Casper the Friendly Ghost interesting, but according to every comics news site, I'm also the only person beside Cartoon Brew's Jerry Beck who noticed it. I can't think of another beloved kids franchise that's been so poorly handled over the past 15 years as the Harvey Comics lineup (and the Looney Tunes have been fucked over pretty bad), and I really don't think that an all-new, all-kewl take on Casper is the way to really get kids back into the characters. Then again, Todd Dezago is writing this, and he knows what he's doing on that score. Plus, the Flash Gordon series from the same publisher looked cool the few times I saw it, so best of luck to them.

* Honestly, there were a lot of other really great comics projects announced at Comic-Con this year, and aside from spreading word on books that cause me to beat my own personal nerd drum like the above, I'm just going to point you to Robot 6's inherently better rundown of all the news.

* Here's a stupid question? Does nobody write con reports about San Diego anymore? I mean, obviously some do, but I'm seeing less and less of the "here's all the fun dinners and panels I went to" kinds of reports that hit in the days after a show. Maybe more will pop up next week like Ben's, but for now the best I've seen so far include Brian Heater's report which was very good even if it didn't mention me, web comicker Meredith Gran's take which shows a different view of the show than us journalisty types get, writer Matt Maxwell's epic continuing report (scroll down and work your way up), John Hogan's more newsy take at Graphic Novel Reporter and for anything else that might be on interest to anyone will either show up on The Beat's ongoing SDCC category or The Comics Reporter's soon to be giganta-mega SDCC link dump.


* On to the silliness of the weekend, aside from a lack of a category for dudes in obscure DC Characters costumes, Neatorama's rundown of the kinds of costume-wearing fans you meet at the show covered all the bases. Also: upside of JJ Abrams Star Trek popularity that I should have seen coming but didn't: it's returned Trek cosplay to its rightful place as king of all nerd dress up parties.

* I saw some folks disparaging the total lack of comics coverage in this year's Entertainment Weekly con coverage, but while the print magazine seemed to totally fail honest to goodness comics readers, the EW website did slightly better in handing over their con coverage to celbrinerds like Seth Green and Olivia Munn. OK, so most of their coverage isn't actually that comic focused or "intelligent," but I found a lot of it to be fun fluff. Also check out this nice photo set and EW's general Comic-Con round up.

* This Hollywood Reporter Comic-Con roundtable featuring the likes of Grant Morrison and David Goyer was a totally great read. Bonus: radical Jim Mafood illustration.

* Project I learned about by meeting the very cool and somewhat excitable Cecil Castellucci: the nerd-themed YA story collection Geektastic which is edited by Cecil and Holly Black. It comes out in August, y'all.


* Up through last week, I was about 87% sure this supposed Green Hornet movie with Seth Rogan was never actually going to get made. Not that I've seen the car from the film in person, I'm down to about 22% sure it won't. More photos are here.

* Aside from all that, feel free to check all the news of the show at CBR's infinite list of stories and also scroll down through all of Comics Alliance's which had some great "flavor of the show" posts from conspicuously-placed TV ads to fake Iron Man trailers as well as some nice news reactions to the show in general and Twitter life and fun red carpet and celebrity silliness videos.

* Finally, it's not a Comic-Con roundup without at least one photo set featuring Storm Troopers...so here's one from the Chicago Tribune.

* Addendum: Cute "Kids in Costume" photoset from Steve Gerding.