---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ed Dukeshire and Mike Imboden Present: THE COMIC BOOK NET ELECTRONIC MAGAZINE ISSUE NUMBER 280 1999 EAGLE AWARD NOMINEE 9/01/2000 Edited by: David LeBlanc - ComicBkNet@aol.com FREE VIA EMAIL SINCE FEBRUARY 1995 ______________________________________________________________________ C O N T E N T S ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [A] Submissions, mailing address, web page [1] On the Net ............................ David LeBlanc [2] Letters to the Editor ................. Your Page! [3] TRIVIA CONTEST ........................ Win *real* prizes! [4] Network Buzz .......................... News, gossip & rumors [5] Interview:Mark Waid ................... Paul Dale Roberts [6] And Let Me Tell You Why ............... David Coulter [7] 4 Color Review:Paper Cuts! ............ Jason Baldwin [8] Great Googaly Moogaly ................. Chad Trout [9] Comics Culture Shrapnel ............... Kris Naudus [10] Martian Vision ........................ John Jones [11] M.O.E. Reviews ........................ Paul Dale Roberts [12] My View:POP GUN WAR ................... David LeBlanc [13] New Comic Book Releases List .......... Charles LePage [14] HYPE! Section ......................... Various ______________________________________________________________________ World Wide Web Home Page-->> http://members.aol.com/ComicBkNet Mailed by Egroups: http://www.egroups.com/group/ComicBookNetworkEmag HTML WEB EDITION at -->> http://www.digitalwebbing.com/cbem featuring a week's worth of the online strips: Steve Conley's ASTOUNDING SPACE THRILLS AND DR. CYBORG by Alan Gross & Mike Oeming ----------------------------------------------------------------------- o \o/ _ o _| \ / |_ o_ \o/ o /|\ | /\ _\o \o | o/ O/_ /\ | /|\ / \ / \ |\ /) | ( \ /o\ / ) | (\ / | / \ / \ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The ComicBook Network was founded by Ed Dukeshire and Mike Imboden ----------------------------------------------------------------------- If you wish to receive each issue automatically through your Email account, FREE, please send a message FROM that account TO: ComicBookNetworkEmag-subscribe@egroups.com To UNSUBSCRIBE send a message FROM the account to be dropped to: ComicBookNetworkEmag-unsubscribe@egroups.com See section [A] for the address to mail material to be reviewed. ______________________________________________________________________ All text contained within is copyrighted to the originating author(s). Except where elsewhere noted, The Comic Book Net Electronic Magazine is Copyright 2000 by The ComicBook Network. You may freely distribute or retransmit this file intact without alteration for noncommercial purposes only. Except for personal archiving, permission must be obtained from the individual authors to reproduce, retransmit, or publish any part of this magazine. Opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Editor, the Network Administration Team or the members and users of The ComicBook Network. ______________________________________________________________________ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [A] E-Mag Info: Submissions, Back Issues, Web Page SUBMISSIONS ----------- To submit an article, review, column, etc. to our e-mag, simply E-mail it to the editor at: ComicBkNet@aol.com Reviews of mainstream books are welcome and we encourage reviews of indies and self published material as we feel that material deserves more exposure to the general public. If you write intelligent, coherent, and timely reviews of anything it will almost always be printed so give us a shot. Commentary on the state of the industry, and personal observations and reflections related to comics are *most* likely to be included in our publication. PLEASE, no material on Gaming, role playing, collectible card games or other hobbies or collectibles other than comic books. That does not include plugs for web pages UNLESS they are concerned with print comic books. We do not promote web comics as we do not consider them to be comic books. SEND US YOUR WORK ----------------- We also accept product for review purposes. Advanced copies of comic books will not be returned but anything sent to us *will* be reviewed in the ComicBook Net Emag. Send all material to: David L. LeBlanc 84 Heather Circle Jefferson, MA 01522-1419 Material is generally reviewed in the order received and be advised that we work a few weeks in advance so your review may not be in the magazine immediately. Advanced copies are therefore encouraged so the review will occur prior to your product hitting the stores. THE Comic Book Net WEB PAGE http://members.aol.com/ComicBkNet ---------------- If you have access to the World Wide Web, please stop by and visit our web page! On our web page, you can find the latest issue of our E-Mag, as well as all back issues and an annotated index. You'll also find important information and other neat features like links to the HTML version of the current issue of this magazine at DIGITAL WEBBING, [http://www.digitalwebbing.com/cbem], some of the comic companies and creators' web pages and many other Comic Book related links! You can also find some back issues at America Online, by going to Keyword: COMICS, then choose the menu item _Comic Book Forum_ and then going to the _Comics Library_ from there. These are non-zipped text files. ______________________________________________________________________ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] On the Net David LeBlanc For those in the USA, remember there is a Monday holiday coming up and as usual the comics delivery will be a day later to your local store. The holiday, of course, is Labor Day which we celebrate on the first Monday of September. As in the past, I urge you to take a few minutes apart from saying goodbye to Summer and getting the kids ready for school and thank those public servants who will be working just the same next Monday. Those in law enforcement, firefighting, health care and the military will be on guard as always to make it a safe holiday for the rest of us. Make sure you let them know you appreciate it! And speaking of appreciation, below is a list of URL's which appear every single week in the Emag. Take a minute to copy and paste them into your bookmarks: http://www.comicon.com/splash/ http://www.comicbookresources.com/ http://www.SilverBulletComicBooks.com http://www.comicscontinuum.com/ http://www.thecomicreader.com/newsmain.htm http://www.comics2film.com http://www.mania.com/newsarama/index.html http://www.Fandom.com/comics/ http://www.zentertainment.com http://www.dccomics.com/newsletter.html http://www.dcbservice.com http://www.jazmaonline.com/ http://www.comiclist.com We rely on information from all of these sources to keep you up to date on the goings on in the industry from the latest news and gossip, to the list of comics shipping next week, and for some of the interviews we are allowed to share. There are many more out there on the net but I have found over time that these essential sources provide most of what I need to know and want to pass on to you. Combined with official press releases and direct mailings from those in the business and friends who get a hot bit of news from a more obscure source the Emag is partly a filter for what I think is worth knowing about the hobby we share. Of course there is a lot of hype as well, and stuff that is sent to us in that category is relegated to the last section for easy reference or discarding depending on your preference. Some of the "news" posted to the above URLS is a lot of hype as well, and I generally will filter that out. The difference is the stuff sent to me is run as a courtesy to the people trying to get more exposure through our mag by taking the time to contact us. No matter how many times I repeat it or post it to our web page and even though I state the subjects we are interested in in the header of every issue, I still get requests for links and news about webisodes, web comics, web strips, web animation, and the oxymoronic "web comic books." There are also the few request concerning various subjects like science fiction, collectibles in general and the occasional personal web site. Through it all we stay focussed and "on topic" with what we hope is the essential info on comic books and very little else. We sprinkle in the columns, reviews and the trivia contest in what has worked for 5 1/2 years now. We thank those who help make it work and hope you will take the time to check out the web sites above. And now for something completely different - this weeks comics: AIT/PLANETLAR Astronauts In Trouble Space 1959 TPB, 7.95 BONGO COMICS Bart Simpson Comics #1, 2.50 DC COMICS JLA #46, 2.25 Preacher #66, 3.75 <--------Pick of the Week, FINAL ISSUE! Supergirl #49, 2.25 Superman Tales Of The Bizarro World TPB, 14.95 DIAMOND PUBLICATIONS Previews Vol X #9, 3.25 MARVEL COMICS Universe X #1 (Of 12), 3.50 ONI PRESS INC. Road Trip, 2.95 WIZARD ENTERTAINMENT Gatecrasher The Series #3, 2.50 The Network Buzz this week begins with a long special report on a MAJOR shake up at Marvel - a NEW Editor in Chief has been named! Thanks to Mike Doran and all at Newsarama for complete coverage of the press conference this past Wednesday. David LeBlanc - ComicBkNet@aol.com Editor The Comic Book Net Electronic Magazine ______________________________________________________________________ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [2] Letters to the Editor If you want to comment on this or any previous issue, want to offer something for us to publish, or just want to shamelessly suck up to the editor to try and get your name in print send Email to: ComicBkNet@aol.com Note: Letters of comment may be used in future issues of CBEM unless you specifically request us NOT to use them. Your Email address and/or name will be withheld upon request. +++++ Subj: Question between writers and artists From: alex_stres@email.com (Alex Stresino) Hello, I was perusing some of my trade paperbacks and I was thinking about the age-old question: Who is more important, the writer or the artist? Right now we are able to enjoy a great number of titles from most of the comics industry. Books like Aria, Daredevil, Powers, Planetary, Promethea, Tom Strong, or Top Ten are great books. Would they work without the artists? We all have opinions about who are the best artists but there is no question that the right art compliments the very best writers. No matter how great Alan Moore is as a writer he attracts some of the best talent. I was already impressed by J.H. Williams from Chase and very aware of the talent of Gene Ha and Chris Sprouse. Ha and Sprouse were on books that were badly written and I had little interest in. Their ability was there and thankfully they found their way to ABC otherwise I don't know if I would be enjoying their art. Right now one artist I had missed that was wasting his time on some Spawn spin-off is Liam Sharp. He is working on a Magik miniseries for Marvel. His work is tremendous as seen on the short-lived Man-Thing series. At the same time writers like Mark Waid, Kurt Busiek, Peter David have lost steam. Some of the best writers have lost consistency. Even the British Brigade (Ellis, Gaiman, Morrison, Moore, Jenkins, etc.) have their limits. Depending on anyone's particular tastes you may agree depending on which writers you follow. So far I have seen some artists lose their touch (i.e. John Byrne, Mike Allred, Jim Starlin etc.), but this happens after a great deal of lapsed effort and/or inking jobs done on there work. Ultimately there is a distinction of quality we find in artists. Would you rather see Ron Lim do Silver Surfer or Moebius do Silver Surfer? Why are some artists who are the best of the industry so inconsistent? Will the Cliffhanger imprint survive with one series being published? Can we see P. Craig Russell do a monthly Dr. Strange series? (See Dr. Strange: What is it that disturbs you Stephen?) Neil Gaiman is a great writer but would he be great without the bevy of artists he was able to work with? (Maybe, go read Neverwhere) All these questions point to the power of art. Don't get me wrong. Writers are very important. But without artists comic books don't exist. Thanks for listening, Alex +++++ Subj: A return to romance Date: 9/1/00 7:33:04 PM Eastern Daylight Time From: dino@cobite.com (Dean Haspiel) Folks-- Karon Flage at Sequential Tart wrote a very nice spotlight review for my new Billy Dogma comic BOY IN MY POCKET (published by Top Shelf), due to debut at The Expo 2000 (http://www.spxpo.com/index.html) in Bethesda, MD (Sept. 15th), where I will also be a guest speaker in the "New Voices in Cartooning Roundtable" at ICAF (International Comics Arts Festival: http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~epk93002/icaf/). To read the spotlight review, please go to: http://www.sequentialtart.com/art_0900_1.shtml Hope to see most of ya'll at The EXPO & ICAF-- --Dino http://keyhole.wraithspace.com/dean/ Dean Haspiel 335 Court Street, #131 Brooklyn, NY 11231 USA Ph/Fax: 718.237.1764 ************ My Website/Portfolio/Resume ~ http://keyhole.wraithspace.com/dean/ My Publisher ~ http://www.topshelfcomix.com ______________________________________________________________________ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [3] [TRIVIA CONTEST] **THE FIRST PLACE TO FIND THE EMAG EACH WEEK IS ON OUR HOME PAGE!** IF YOU ARE DESPERATE TO WIN THE TRIVIA, GO THERE FIRST ON FRIDAY NIGHT http://members.aol.com/ComicBkNet/emag.htm QUESTION OF THE WEEK Prizes donated by Discount Comic Book Service at www.dcbservice.com where you can order most DC, Marvel, Image, and Dark Horse comics, statues and retail products for 35% off. +Submit your own trivia and win the CHEEZY PRIZE(tm) if you can stump+ +the readers! You MUST submit the correct answer with your question.+ LAST ISSUE'S QUESTION OF THE WEEK: What event lead the Kent's to sell their farm and open a general store in Smallville, in the 60's continuity. Tony Baltulis got it first, they moved when Clark was going to begin school. Tony wins X-Men: Phoenix Rising Trade Paperback (and the coupon for $10 off an order of $50.00 or more in August or September) from our sponsor, Discount Comic Book Service. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++ THIS WEEK'S TRIVIA QUESTION: "The Story of You-Know-Who" was the subtitle of a one-shot about who? IMPORTANT RULES NOTICE The first correct answer to reach the editor wins the CHEEZY PRIZE(tm). The editor will be the sole judge as to which guess arrived first! Messages with more than one guess will be disqualified. LIMIT: ONE PRIZE PER MONTH PER PERSON! ______________________________________________________________________ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [4] Network Buzz News, gossip and rumors from around the industry SPECIAL REPORT FROM Newsarama; http://www.Fandom.com/comics/ WINNER OF THE 1997 & 1998 INTERNET "SQUIDDY" FOR BEST WEB SITE MARVEL E-I-C MOVES MADE OFFICIAL (8/30/00) Marvel Comics Confirms Quesada as new Editor-in-Chief. Ending 18 hours of rumors, speculation and near confirmation, this afternoon, Wed. 8/30, Marvel Comics officially confirmed that writer/artist and Marvel Knights head Joe Quesada has been named the publisher's new Editor-in-Chief. In a statement issued by the publisher, Bill Jemas, Marvel`s President of Publishing, Licensing & New Media confirmed Quesada has been "promoted to lead editorial operations." "Recognized in the industry as one of today's premiere comic book editors and creators, Mr. Quesada is charged with guiding the editorial direction for Marvel`s world renowned superhero franchises, including Spider-Man, X-Men, The Hulk and The Fantastic Four," read the announcement. "He takes over the reins after serving as the Editor-in-Chief of the Marvel Knights imprint for the past two years. During that time, Mr. Quesada turned Marvel Knights into a lightening rod for talent, attracting such well-known writers and artists as Kevin Smith, Brian Bendis, Bob Gale, Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, Paul Jenkins, Jae Lee and Mark Millar. His editorial accomplishments with Marvel Knights include revitalizing The Punisher and Daredevil series and turning them back into top sellers for the company. "We are dedicated to fulfilling our mission as the `House of Ideas' and feel that Joe is the perfect visionary to achieve this lofty standard. Joe's accomplishments speak for themselves. He is a creative genius, a gifted recruiter and manager of talent, and has experience in all facets of the comic world. We will be looking to him to bring to our entire line the same level of creativity that has turned Marvel Knights into an award-winning and top-selling imprint," said Jemas. "Quesada, who currently resides in New York City and in Sparta, NJ, has done work for every major comic book company - including DC, Dark Horse, Image, Valiant and Topps - during his award-winning career," continued the announcement. "Prior to joining Marvel, he helped launch Event Comics whose flagship character Ash – a firefighter who is also a superhero -- was an immediate best-seller and has been optioned to Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks to become an animated feature. "Further underscoring its commitment to the company`s core publishing business", Marvel also announced it has created an internal editorial board whose mission will be to "develop a unified editorial content direction for all of Marvel Enterprises". Made up of Quesada, Jemas and Senior Vice President of Publishing Frank Fochetta, the editorial board will work closely with Marvel's Chief Creative Officer and Marvel Studios CEO Avi Arad to assess the company`s publishing programs on a regular basis. In addition to the main superhero comic lines directed by Quesada, the board will also evaluate third party publishing opportunities to be overseen by Fochetta, and new media content initiatives to be spearheaded by Jemas. QUESADA & JEMAS TALK TURKEY Today Marvel's Bill Jemas and new EIC Joe Quesada fielded questions from the comics press regarding the editorial change confirmed this afternoon. Bill Jemas: The first thing to do is to congratulate Joe. He's been an industry professional for a number of years, and has come in and really distinguished himself in a fairly difficult time for Marvel. Marvel Knights has been a shining star for the company. This is a promotion to probably the top job in the business, and it is really 100% merit based. I have to thanks Bob Harras for 18 years of outstanding service to Marvel. This is the man who more than any other single person created this powerful X-Men franchise that exists today. By that I mean Bob, as an editor, turned those books from certainly leading books, into becoming the unquestioned 800-pound gorilla of the comic book industry. Just as importantly, Bob had more of a powerful stamp on the X-Men television show, which frankly dominated the kids 11-17 media of the mid 90s. That fan base that Bob and his crew laid in the mid ‘90s, I think more than anything else is what's responsible for the tremendous success of the X-Men movie. We wish him the best, and more importantly, we wish to continue a strong relationship with Bob where he is working with us on the most high profile and special projects that we can find. Joe Quesada: It's really a pleasure to be in this position right now, and it's really an honor to be in the position of editor-in-chief of Marvel. This company is the industry leader, and as this company goes, so does the rest of the industry. It's a high-pressure situation, and I look forward to this, meeting the challenge head on. We worked some magic with Marvel Knights – don't necessarily ask me what that magic is – it was all based on instinct. The goal is to bring this all to Marvel now, and just carry this over to the rest of the titles, and try to make this company what it can be – what it once was. We've got all the right cards. We just need to put them in the right place to have some winning hands. That's really the goal at this point. Joel Meadow, Tripwire Magazine: What happens with Marvel Knights in terms of the editing structure? JQ: MK will pretty much remain the way it is. I of course will be stepping down from my position, someone will be taking over the position, who it will be I can't say as of yet. So with regards to MK, the imprint will continue. The renegade structure that Marvel Knights established in getting guys that would not work for Marvel is still a very important thing to have here, and it adds prestige to some of these characters, and should continue to do so. MK will be healthy and running, it just won't have me necessarily for the head. Joel Meadow: Are you planning on carrying on the same attitude with the main Marvel line? JQ: It's all I know how to do. It's not like the attitude changes when I put on a different hat. It's the same attitude we had with Event Comics, only we were working in a smaller pond. Now we're working in this large universe, so the goal is to continue that. Jim McLaughlin, Wizard – Why Joe? Jemas: Joe's proved that he can do it at a time when people were giving up and running scared and acquiescing in defeat. The man and his team took characters like the Punisher and Daredevil, which had lost relevance and sales, and turned them into top 10 books – it was a remarkable achievement. And we appreciate that. Joe also has a knack that a lot of very good creators don't have for working on a team as a team player and attracting new talent. So that when Marvel was very anxious to launch our Ultimate line, it was Joe recruiting two writers that were perfect for what we needed to do – bringing them in and bringing them to the fold, and saying "let's go". This is a person that had no financial interest, it was really a willingness to step up for the company. We really looked at who, inside and outside Marvel had the creative juice in the first place, and who could also recruit better talent than anybody else, and that's why we went with Joe. Cliff Biggers, Comic Shop News: Will there be any immediate changes in the Marvel line in terms of additions or dropping books or format? JQ: Right now, there`s a goodly bit of a learning curve for me. Obviously my universe has gotten a little bigger here. I have to start looking at things a little more globally than I'm used to. I looked at things globally in the context of Marvel Knights, and of course I have my own opinions about how books are performing or how certain books should perform, and those might become evident somewhere down the road. It's not going to be something sweeping and something immediate, I think that would be a big mistake to make in the first place, but everything will be looked at and scrutinized, and we'll figure out game plans and we'll try to attack everything appropriately and significantly in the proper amount of time. Mike Sangiacomco, Cleveland Plain Dealer: Bill: Is the lack of performance of Marvel after X-Men and not being able to capitalize on that with some accessible books based on the movie – did that have anything to do with this change? Jemas: That's a good question. I can say that it does hurt that we have this worldwide beacon thrown on Marvel from the X-Men movie, and that by and large throughout the line, that has not turned into significant additional sales, so that does hurt, and I do believe that the wonderful and difficult content in the current books is part of the problem. I can't say that it was clearly cause and effect. Whether sales bumped up five percent or bumped down five percent after the movie was not so much a concern as was we really think that the company needs a leader for the comic books creatively like Joe, and this was a little bit independent with respect to the movie. I can tell you that the movie books did sell respectably well, and now we have Uncanny, X-Men and Wolverine all at the top three slots in the comic book business. But the concern though is that you can be the top three in the comic book business all day long, but all that means is you're the leader of the losers – you're the leader of the people who are losing 7-10% a year. So the ticker that we have to watch if we're going to be successful is new readers, and there's a very, very hard balance and what I'm learning the hard way here as I enter the business more and more is that it's very difficult to grab a new reader with accessible content and not have that really visceral and hostile reaction from the people who have been reading for 20 years who like solving the jigsaw puzzle. I can name on one finger on one hand the guy that has been able to do that, and he's on the call with us, and that's why Joe's doing this. Christopher Griffen, The Comics Reader: Each of Marvel's EIC's has left an imprint_what's going to be your legacy? JQ: Hopefully, creating something from what's perceived as nothing right now. I really want to try to inject this place with an energy that's been lacking for some time, and understandably lacking – this company's been through a series of layoffs and shakeups, and morale is not what it should be. I remember walking through the halls of this company when I was a young budding artist trying to break in, and to me, it was the equivalent of a minor league baseball player being called up to play for the New York Yankees. This was Yankee Stadium, and there was an energy, a crispness that ran up and down your spine when you walked in here. That's been missing for quite a while, and it's been understandably missing, and it's something that I want to instill in people. When they walk through these halls – this is the Yankee Stadium of the comic book industry. For it to be Yankee Stadium ,we have to bring in some DiMaggios and some Mickey Mantles. At the end of the day, hopefully, we'll be able to do that. That's kind of what we did with Marvel Knights – but we did it on a smaller scale. Now we've got to do it on a bigger scale. Once you get those players in, you can fill up those seats with behinds. That's a really grassroots approach – there's really no magic to it in that sense. Chris Lawrence, Wizard: With the new position, what impact does that have on the more creative aspect of your job? Are you going to be stuck more with the business side? JQ: Actually, part of my initial discussions with Bill was that taking the EIC position was that I still continue drawing. Obviously, I'm going to have to cut down, but it's my belief that one of the important things about Marvel Knights, and one of the reasons why were able to attract the creators we were able to attract was that I'm in the trenches with these people. I'm working, I'm a freelancer – it's a day-to-day thing. I know what it's like to stare at a blank page in the morning, and there's nothing more difficult in my mind to do that. The minute that I lose that edge, I lose that line of communication with the people who are really most important to my business which are my freelancers and creators. We live and die by that, and our characters. It's an understanding that no, I can't pencil as much as I would like to, but I will continue penciling – it will probably be special projects, probably still involving Daredevil, but we've yet to see. So the answer is yes, I'll still be creative, but no, probably not as much as I'd like to be, but some sacrifices have to be made on my end as well. Beau Yarbrough, Comic Book Resources: Why now? What precipitated this position? Jemas: We're looking at a pretty long continuum here where the business has been rocked since the mid ‘90s. We went from having a really easy fun business to having a really hard fun business. The move to Joe has really been incremental. Joe went from Marvel competitor to Marvel insider with his own imprint, but not all the way in to being 100% there, so I can't say that any particular incident precipitated this, but the time is certainly right to have a real lead creator take the lead role at the House of Ideas. Ed Gross, Fandom.com: The Ultimate titles – how important do you see them and why are they so significant? JQ: The Ultimates are one of the many steps we need. Contrary to what people may believe, there is no magic bullet in this industry, and there is no comic book messiah. Ultimate is one of the many steps that Marvel will be taking to bring back the youthful reader. Both Bill and I are in agreement that we have at least a lost generation of kids that did not grow up reading comic books, so consequently there aren't a bunch of 8 and 12 year-olds that had brothers and sisters who have a comic book collection that they could hand down to them. We have to start cultivating readers, and I've said it on many times – we have to get them young because comic books are the equivalent of literary crack. Get a kid hooked on it, and chances are you've got them hooked for life. The Ultimates are an important piece of that puzzle, but probably not the only piece of that puzzle. That's my view on it. Jemas: I would say that the Ultimates are significant more for the business model than for the content. In other words, we could have done Ultimates about the X-Men books with some alterations, about the Wolverine books, about the new Peter Parker book by Paul Jenkins. We could've done the Ultimates about some of the current content. The Ultimates are significant really because Marvel is taking a very aggressive view towards marketing towards teenagers. Joe and I were talking about this the other day - kids in our generation got their comic books from their older brothers., We've lost a generation of older brothers now, so Marvel is out there with our marketing partners sampling 12 million of these books. So the Ultimates really relate to putting a diverse piece of literature in the hands of a 12 year old and getting them to read it. Again, the Ultimates are significant because we're taking a very aggressive stand with respect to newsstand distribution, and it's a three-part program. But, if that model works the way we hope it will work, it will be repeated against all of the mainstream Marvel titles. Matt Brady, Comics Newsarama: Character wise – who's your first priority? JQ: Spider-Man. Hands down, I think we need to take a good look at the Spider-Man titles, and again, I'm speaking off the cuff here – this is Editor in Chief day one. Spidey's one of the things that I think is very important for us to look at, because as Marvel goes, so goes the industry, and as Spider-Man goes, so goes Marvel, and you can throw X-Men into that mix too. Obviously, I think we have to start at the top and take a good hard look at what we're doing on these titles, creatively, editorially and find out how to hone them and make sure we're healthy as the ship rolls along, especially with the Spider-Man movie looming in the future, I think that it's imperative that we take action now, and not wait until it's two months before the movie's released. Gregory Dickens, Herald Journal: Regarding the Ultimate Marvel bringing in readers, and taking advantage of the X-Men and Spider-Man movie, what steps would you take to make sure you don't lose those new readers to viewers who would watch the adaptation. How would you make them come back to those books? Jemas: I've been around the entertainment business for 20 years, and the main lesson that people have learned in the 20 years that I've been there, and this is a pretty significant attitude change – I cut my teeth at the NBA - as cable television moved from an also ran to 50-60% penetration of the market, what happened was there was more opportunities to televise more games. Almost to the man, woman and child, every person involved in ticket selling believed that if you could watch the game on television, you wouldn't show up to watch. There are still people walking the buildings at Madison Square Garden who cringe when we televised an event, because why would you bother to buy a ticket, go into Manhattan , brave the subways and leave the comfort of your own home to watch a game. What would happen was that every big game for the past eight years has been televised, and every game has been sold out. What really happens with a media phenomenon is once you hit critical mass, the public will have a strong appetite for every strong product that you produce against that character. Guess what? There was no such thing as a Pokemon comic book, but when the Pokemon cards and televisions show got hot, the Pokemon comic books became a reasonably successful title. My sense is that more is more and more is more than that, and that the better Marvel does in the electronic games and movie, and t-shirt capacity, the better the comics will be. Don Lund, The Comic Reader: Planning on any immediate staff changes? JQ: Before we make changes, we may make some additions. Bill and I have spoken about additions to the editorial department that would benefit Marvel, not just on the superhero front, but in other directions we're planning on doing. There are some positive changes that we're talking about, things that have been rumored for years and years, but no one has really acted on it at Marvel, but again, I don't want to give away everything. But soon we will be hinting about some of the things we have planned. Rich Johnston: Silver Bullet Comic Books: How much of Marvel Knights could be attributed to Jimmy Palmiotti, and how much of that will be missing when you take over as editor in chief? JQ: I don't think that Marvel Knights really missed a beat when Jimmy resigned. To be perfectly honest, who really ran Marvel Knights had nothing to do with Jimmy and I, we were just the pretty faces behind it. Nanci Dakesian and her assistant Kelly Lami really did most of the grunt work with that – we just recruited talent. Jemas: That's an awfully hard question for Joe to answer, in all fairness. My assessment as a person who was highly involved with both of them is that Jimmy is a great guy who has a lot of friends in the business, but we were very, very comfortable with Joe as the prime mover at Marvel Knights, and that's why we brought him in. Hannibal Tabu, NPO.com: Concerning the language you're using – you were hurt, energy was lacking_now that we have Joe as the head pusher of this literary crack, what sort of changes can we look for in the actual offices? JQ: One of the biggest problems at Marvel has been the ever-looming spectre of "oh my God, what's going to happen next?" with regards to books, with regards to jobs. We have to change that perception in house first. Will the books be changing? Most likely. How will they be changing? I can't tell you yet, because I really don't know. I don't know how the creative community will respond to this, hopefully it will be favorable. I'm hoping that we will have some people knocking on our doors that we haven't had in quite some years that maybe either decided to leave or that this wasn't a fun place to work anymore. More importantly than that, we'll have some people knocking on the door that never even thought of comic books as an outlet for their creativity or as a financial outlet for their creativity. I'm hoping that the outlook is favorable. I'm hoping that there will be some names attached to Marvel books that you haven't seen in a long time. I'm kind of betting on it, and I'm not going to give away names, but if you look at Marvel Knights and its track record, you can see that there's been more than one occasion where you've picked up a trade periodical and said, "I can't believe so and so is working for Marvel." I think you'll be getting more of that down the road. Tabu: How did this lack of energy, lack of leadership, lack of capitalization happen, and how will you be able to prevent making those mistakes again? Jemas: Part of the issue at Marvel, and I can't say that I enjoy knocking my predecessors, but I don't mind either, there was a real disconnect between the business guys and the creative guys. They lived on different planets. Even to the point where there was the church and state distinction, where the publisher might or might not get actively involved in the editorial direction of the company. Because of that separation, there was often a lack of support or knowing support. That was exacerbated even when business and creative sides would line up. They might be doing something a thousand percent different than what was happening in the rest of the business at Marvel. A great example of this was Maximum Carnage – it was this nasty but spectacular crossover issue that created this horribly popular, charismatic character. One of our electronic game companies came in and released the biggest video game release that Marvel had ever done, and maybe one of the biggest in the industry around Maximum Carnage. As that was going on, the editorial guys took a long, hard look at Carnage and said they didn't want that disgusting character involved in their books anymore. So at the time that we were having our largest electronic game release ever, the character was more or less banned from the books. There was a real and deep disconnect between the publishing side, the editorial side, and the rest of the business. One of the things that we're doing here just to make sure that that doesn't happen and to make sure that we understand each other's needs is that we're forming an editorial board. Frank Fochetta is a long time publishing industry expert, he's the senior vice president of publishing at Marvel. Frank, Joe and myself will work together to make sure that Joe has everything he needs to take care of business from the business people. Brian Jacks, The Slush Factory: Are you going to be pushing more for a Vertigo-type line for Marvel that doesn't work under the Code? JQ: Again, there will many things that will be happening here. There might be different imprints, there might be a different attitude to certain books, we haven't really sat down and discussed the exact game plan. We've talked about a lot of things in theory. A lot of this will have to do with the additional staff that we bring in to Marvel as well, but you might see a different flavor of Marvel book, besides just a straight ahead superhero. I've heard a lot of people call Marvel Knights Marvel's Vertigo imprint. It may be nothing more than that at the end of the day, but again, we're talking about things that I really probably shouldn't be hypothesizing about right now. We'll have more concrete answers as this thing moves along. Nathan Versalle, The Slush Factory: Are there any books on the top of your list to take a good hard look at and be realistic about the creators? JQ: I think I already stated before that I want to take a good look at the top of our list which essentially is X-Men and Spider-Man. It's not to say that I don't think the books are performing properly, but I think we need to take a good hard look at them, along with Bill and the editors in charge of those books and find out if we're headed in the right path, or if there are any icebergs in the way, that need to be dealt with immediately, because that is the strength of this company. Once we work on those, then we'll trickle down and see what the rest of the line is doing. Alan Doane, Comic Book Galaxy: Are you confident that you'll be able to build bridges to the various editorial offices to make everything work smoothly? JQ: I'm going to try. When MK first started out, it was a very difficult situation for us in the sense that we were sort of on the coattails of Heroes Reborn, which set up a lot of resentment in the halls between the editors at Marvel and what was going on ion the studios in California. A lot of it had to do with the broken down line of communication. They had no idea what was going on at the West Coast, and they had no idea what was going on with the East Coast. With Marvel Knights, part of our deal was that Marvel give us office space, not because we needed office space, but because we wanted to be here. We understood that there were going to be some problems after Heroes Reborn. When we walk through these halls, naturally, we were viewed as outsides, and I would say that it took a good six months to three quarters of a year to show people that we were here in the trenches with them. We were keeping late hours, we were working along with them. We weren't just running buckshot, using characters without approval. We tried to make sure we went though the exact same approval process that every editor here has to in order to get his or her books approved and published. Once again, being in the Editor in Chief position, there's obviously going to be a bit of a point when you're going to have to prove yourself and say, "hey, we're all a team, and we're all still doing this," but I think a lot of those bridges have been built in our tenure here at MK. We've established great relationships with people here. So far the reception I've gotten after the news has broken has been nothing but fantastic and warm. It's very well appreciated from me as well. There will be bridges that need to be built. I'm sort of the guy at the top now, and it's sort of an awkward position for me to be it, but one that I'm really looking forward to. There will be bridges that I will be building with editorial, but hopefully that editorial will be building with the press, because we need to expand that as well. Our editor needs to communicate a little between with all the press a little bit better about projects that we have coming up, and a lot of it has to do with excitement. Let's face it, if I don't believe in a project, I can't expect an editor underneath me to believe in a project, so, hopefully those are some of the things that will become evident as time goes by. Steve Fritz, Fandom.com: How do you get comics out to the public? Jemas: That's a good question. Of all the things that worry me as the president and acting publisher, I understand that that's an important problem, but it really worries me the least. Distribution in the long haul is the easiest piece of the puzzle. Curtis is a powerful newsstand distributor, and we're linked up with them. Curtis has the full support of Diamond Comics, because Diamond is smart enough to know that every new reader Curtis brings in through the newsstand will ultimately end up buying their comic books through a comic book store. The reason why I'm not so worried about that is because I've seen Marvel at its peak with 75,000 retail newsstand outlets. Just to give you some context of that number, that was at a time when Fleer was running Marvel cards and baseball cards and basketball cards and football cards. We thought that we were one of the best-distributed products in the country, just short of cigarettes. We have the ability through Curtis to get comic books placed everywhere that videogame magazines would be sold. The issue historically is that as content producers, we hit a point where the stuff that was out at newsstand for new readers was inaccessible and irrelevant for the new readers. So I'm not so much worried about getting the distribution done, because we can get placement everywhere in your town that you can possibly buy a magazine. The challenges are twofold really – getting the content `improved' is a pejorative word, because getting some of the content altered enough so it can be accessible to new readers, and then getting enough marketing done so that people are interested enough to have the books on their shopping list. To come full circle, Joe is 100% right about the Ultimate content. That is just one of many content issues, the key is making sure that marketing and distribution are lined up with the content, and I'm very confident that Marvel will be able to get that done in the near future. Sangiacomco: How many newsstand outlets is Marvel in now? Jemas: My best guesstimate now would be that we are in 15,000 newsstand outlets. For the Ultimate program, we actually bought slots next to the electronic games magazines. We'll be in at least 25,000 outlets total for the Ultimates. Maggie Thompson: Comics Buyer's Guide: Where do you see Marvel's position next May [2001] in terms of presence in the marketplace, where are you going to be? JQ: With regards to Marvel, it's going to look and feel familiar, but it's going to be completely different at the same time, if what we have planned bear fruit. Again, I hate to speak cryptically about it, but it's going to be some things that Marvel has tried to do in the past and we haven't been able to succeed. A lot of it has to do with putting the right people into the right seats within the company. I can speak editorially and cleaning up some departments and maybe really aggressively pursuing some avenues that we haven't done in the past editorially. Also, probably making it a better place for creators to work. Because of my background, which is artist and a publisher as well, I understand a lot of the levels of what goes on over here, but my main perspective in life has always been from the freelance artist perspective, and that will never change. So consequently, I do want to make this a better, friendlier place for freelancers to work, and it's my belief that if you make it that, you get better work. And also you have to get out of people's way and let them do what they do, which is if you hire great creators, you've got to let them create. Nine months down the road? That will be a visible change. The attitude has been the same from when we started the imprint two years ago to now, and hopefully that'll be the attitude I can instill in all the editors. Jemas: The only thing I want to add to Joe's answer is that the closer you get to the comic business, the easier it is to miss the forest for the trees. It's very easy to miss the X-Men characters. The people that make a fortune and spend a fortune predicting movie results had the X-Men logged in at 22-25 million for it's first weekend. What they missed was the tremendous popularity and importance of the X-Men characters to a population of 11-17 year olds who grew up watching them on television. The problem has been that Marvel, across the board, publishing electronic games, t-shirts, hats, and everything that you can do – we had a 3-4 year hiatus to satisfy the demand of that fanbase. As we come on line with more and more good product across the board, you'll see dramatic increases. Activision just released an X-Men console game and a Gameboy game called Mutant Academy, both of which are the #1 games. The sell on the Spider-Man game has been incredible. It really goes to an across the board look that as Avi Arad and the guys at Marvel Studios become more successful at getting solid movie and television projects cranked out, we on the comics side and the consumer products side are going to be right there with filling out the overall consumer and fan experience with good products. So, my sense is that nine months from now, we will continue to grow at a pretty strong rate on every aspect of the business. Sangiacomo: Could you be more specific about Bob Harras' role with the company? Jemas: That is mostly up to Bob. We value our friendship with Bob we value his contributions. If Bob wants to be extremely active, he will be extremely active. If he'd like to be less active, he'll be less active. But we really want the relationship to continue in the strongest sense, and it's really not appropriate to talk about an individual person's finances, but we'd like to continue to have a real strong relationship with Bob. Sangiacomco: Does he still have an office at Marvel? Jemas: I don't really want to go to far into it about Bob other than to say that he's always welcome as long as Joe and I are around. Cliff Biggers, Comic Shop News: You mentioned third-party publishing opportunities. Is that outside of the comic field, or does that tie in to talk that Marvel might be licensing its characters to other publishers? Jemas: The third party publishing falls into two categories, one will direct Joe's life very directly, and that's what we call "custom publishing". In the past, we would do a major comic book promotional deal, like the one we're doing with the Buster Brown shoe company with Spider-Man. What would happen is that people in the consumer products division would run around and put together an embarrassingly weak book that would get sampled to millions of fans, so that what millions of fans would see would be Captain Toothpaste drawn by somebody's brother-in-law, colored by a kid just out of college with a bad Macintosh. It did not work. Move number one, and we're doing this right now, and we did it with the promotional insert we did with the X-Men movie in TV Guide, we're going to take our best writers and pay them all the money they deserve, so that when we sample and promote through the Marvel world, it's going to be Frank Frochetta putting the deals together, and Joe's guys executing top notch creative effort. There used to be a real arrogance among our creators saying, "I'm working on few hundred thousand copy a month book, and not doing a custom," and that is a real sense of reality now where now they're realizing they can reach 10 million people in TV Guide. The other chunk of it is we have lapsed in terms of fishing and finding new top quality third party products. Frank is out there, and we have a few deals in progress that I can't talk about. You all lived through Transformers and GI Joe converting a whole generation of kid toy fans to comic book readers, but we stopped doing that. If we're going catch new fish, we've got to give them the bait that they want. I would've loved to have had the Pokemon comic book rights, but we were not standing there to get them, and the books were executed reasonably well, but certainly nothing that would bring new readers into the business. So 50% is doing a better job of it when Marvel sponsors a book, and the other 50% of it is going to be what was used to be called licensed publishing, but we'll come up with a new name that indicates quality rather than second hand work. Doane: Are you confident that the architecture will be in place to keep the line running on time? JQ: There were lateness problems with MK early – there were some growing pains. Right now the only thing that's grossly late at Marvel is Daredevil. Outside of that, we've been running pretty much on time with everything else. So, it's kind of a bum rap and a well-deserved rap, but I don't think it's a rap that's going to affect that standard, core Marvel titles at all. It's not like I'll sit there and tell editors I want a book that's on time to slow down because that's my rep. That really isn't going to change. Marvel Knights is strange beast because we also_it's something that's tough to explain_because it's something that you sort of do on feel, but you have to understand that when you're working with some of these top creators and you're working on mini-series of particular characters, and the basic reason that character is moving is because of the combination of the writer, the artist and the character_we don't really have the liberty that some of the editors at Marvel have to say, "you know what, you're bounced for a couple of issues," especially when it's only four issues, because we have a certain amount of sales quotas that we have to adhere to, which are probably stricter than some of the sales quotas put on the other books. It's just the nature of the beast. There are a lot of underlying things and behind the scenes things that happened at Marvel Knights why 1) some of the books were late, and 2) why Marvel allowed them to be late. That's the question that no one ever seems to ask – why does Marvel allow these books to ship late? There's a good reason, it's not foolhardiness and it's not bad business. There are reasons for these things. Is this going to happen line-wide? No. Let's really be serious about it, that's not the way it's going to be. Everything is one a case-by-case basis and will continue rolling the way it's rolling. It might look different, it might feel different, it might smell different, or it might read different. Hannibal: In the past, summer events, say, the Onslaught thing, would take a character out of what it was doing, say, Peter David's Hulk and make him stop literally and go into something else which was completely contrary to everything that was going on. In the past, this has caused some problems in terms of readability, I know I've been very irritated at this, and in terms of creators being unhappy with this, and I know David was very public with his concern over that. Is this sort of thing going to happen continually, or what sort of thing can you do as editor in chief to make sure that it won't happen? JQ: Let's take it on a case-by-case basis. No one decision is going to make everyone happy. The idea is to make these decisions and mode them and massage them until you get as many people on board as you possibly can. How will we do these things in the future? I don't know yet. As I said before, this is day one, and there's going to be a bit of a learning curve, but we're going to try and handle things as best as possible. I can't even tell you that they were handled badly in the past. If Peter was vocal about it, he was vocal about it. There have been people who have been vocal about things in this company that have had nothing to do with crossovers. Every creator has his or her pet peeve. The trick of it comes in trying to make everyone as happy and as comfortable as you can. Marvel's always certainly gotten a bum rap for these kinds of things, and I will go on the record saying that the reason we get a bum rap for them is because we are the industry leader, and people always love to be vocal about the industry leader. We're the company that people love, and we're the people love to hate, but we're also the company that you have to consistently keep reading, because we are the industry leader, and we have the best characters and the best backdrop for them. It's the universe that Stan created, and it keeps on rolling_ __________________________________________ THE INDUSTRY REACTS With the news of Marvel's change in Editor-in-Chief now in the books, Newsarama solicited some reaction from the pro community regarding the change, and we'll be bringing readers some of those replies throughout the week_ Jim Valentino, Image Publisher – "Joe Quesada has shown incredible vision, impeccable taste and uncommon leadership abilities with Marvel Knights. I believe he will bring all of these qualities to the MU. This is very good news for the entire industry. " Brian Bendis – "Let`s see. Joe took the chance on bringing me to Marvel, let me work with [David] Mack and him on Daredevil, recommended me for Spider-Man and has been a trusted friend and advisor. What do you think my thoughts are? J" Rob Liefeld – "As half the editorial tandem that introduced the world to the brilliant MARVEL KNIGHTS line, Joe Q has proved that he has the good taste and instincts to put together comics with a distinct commercial appeal. I look forward to seeing how his influence spreads across the broad Marvel landscape. "I am saddened by the departure of Bob Harras as the Editor in Chief. Although Bob and I have had our share of differences, he gave me a chance to spread my wings creatively and he provided me with the most important opportunity of my career when he gave me the NEW MUTANTS assignment, and later X-FORCE. He did a good job in difficult times and I wish him well." Christopher J. Priest - "Hate the sumbitch. :-) "Joe`s a longtime pal and close personal friend, so of course I`m delighted. I`m... stunned at Bob`s rapid departure (how rapid it was, I don`t know... news gets to me very slowly out here in Colorado). "Bob has been a longtime friend and a decent person to work with. I`m indebted to him for his continued support of BLACK PANTHER, and his professional mitigation of some internal conflicts. I`ve nothing but high praise for Bob and am... a little shocked by the news. I wish him well. "Joe will prove himself to be a prime asset to the company and the industry. I look forward to a continued and strengthened relationship with Marvel. +++++ Marvel Enterprises Adopts Stockholder Rights Plan NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--September 1, 2000--Marvel Enterprises, Inc. (NYSE: MVL) today announced that its Board of Directors has unanimously adopted a Stockholder Rights Plan. The Company reported that it adopted the Plan in order to better protect stockholders and assure that they receive the full value of their investment in the event of any proposed takeover of the Company. Marvel noted that the adoption of the Plan was not in response to any specific attempt to acquire control of the Company and that the Company has no knowledge of any such interest on the part of any person or entity. Commenting on the Plan, Marvel President and CEO, Peter Cuneo, said, "It is the responsibility of our Board of Directors at all times to preserve and enhance stockholder value. It is not the intention of the Plan to prevent the acquisition or takeover of the Company at some time in the future should the Board of Directors determine that such a transaction is in the best interest of the Company and its stockholders. Rather, the Plan is intended to help insulate the Company from abusive takeover tactics which are designed to gain control of the Company without paying a full and fair price to all of the stockholders." The Plan, which is similar to plans adopted by many other U.S. companies, strengthens the ability of the Board to assure that the Company's stockholders receive fair and equal treatment and to protect the interests of the Company's stockholders, in the event of an unsolicited offer to acquire control of the Company. Importantly, it is intended to encourage any potential acquirer to negotiate the manner and terms of any proposed acquisition with the Board of Directors. Terms of the Plan provide for a distribution to stockholders of record at the close of business on September 15, 2000 of one Right for each outstanding share of common stock held and 1.039 Rights for each outstanding share of 8% cumulative convertible exchangeable preferred stock of the Company held. Subject to limited exceptions, the Rights will be exercisable if a person or group acquires 15% or more of the Company's common stock (including shares of preferred stock convertible into common stock) or announces a tender offer or exchange offer for 15% or more of the common stock, or if stockholders who already own 15% or more of the common stock increase their holdings by more than a limited percentage. Depending on the circumstances, the effect of the exercise of the Rights will be to permit each holder of a Right to either purchase stock in the Company or stock of the buyer, at a substantial discount, and, in so doing, materially dilute the level of ownership of the buyer in the Company. The Company will be entitled to redeem the Rights at $.01 per Right at any time before a person has acquired 15% or more of the outstanding common stock. The Plan will expire on September 15, 2010. A letter explaining in greater detail the terms of the Plan will be forwarded to stockholders following the September 15, 2000 record date. +++++ Atlas Finds No Humor in Parody NEW YORK (AP) - Flexing its legal muscle, DC Comics managed to knock out of court a lawsuit Charles Atlas Limited filed after the comic book transformed the beach side muscleman hero into a bullying brute. U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in a ruling filed Tuesday declared DC Comics the winner in the legal dispute, dismissing the lawsuit largely on First Amendment grounds. ``This is precisely the type of expression of ideas that the First Amendment is designed to protect,'' Buchwald wrote. Charles Atlas Limited filed the lawsuit last year after learning about the parody by DC Comics of a comic strip advertisement Atlas used to promote its body building classes. In the Atlas comic strip titled, ``The Insult that Made a Man out of Mac,'' a bully kicks sand in scrawny Mac's face at the beach, causing him to take the Atlas course and develop a muscular physique. Mac then finds the bully on the beach and punches him as he receives newfound respect from a female companion and a halo of sorts forms over his head. Much of the story in the 1991 DC Comics spoof of the advertisement remains the same until a character similar to Mac but named ``Flex Mentallo'' returns to the beach. There, Flex beats up the woman with him by smashing her in the face and saying, ``I don't need a tramp like you anymore!'' the judge recounted. ``Here, DC's Flex Mentallo comic books imitate plaintiff's comic ad and take it to an absurd conclusion,'' the judge said. ``It is an undeniable twist on plaintiff's comic ad for the once-weak character to gain strength only to himself become a brute and a bully.'' The judge added, ``In effect, the character Flex Mentallo is a farcical commentary on plaintiff's implied promises of physical and sexual prowess through use of the Atlas method.'' The ruling was criticized by Jeffrey C. Hogue, president of Charles Atlas Limited, which has executive offices in Harrington Park, N.J. ``I think sometimes courts make mistakes. This was one of them. There has to be a limit to how far you can let someone ridicule your trademark,'' he said. ``They took that character and made him into something that was not an Atlas man,'' Hogue said. ``We've always stood up for the underdog. If anyone was beating a woman, we'd be the one stopping it.'' Lillian Laserson, a lawyer for DC Comics, said the company ``certainly meant no harm to the Charles Atlas company.'' ``Comic books are an important part of American culture and we are very happy that Judge Buchwald recognized that they are entitled to First Amendment protection,'' she said. +++++ Dimension Films Acquires the Rights to Marvel's 'Ghost Rider' NEW YORK, Aug. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- In one of its most aggressive deals to date, Dimension Films has acquired the rights to "Ghost Rider," an action-filled adventure based on the popular Marvel Comics superhero, it was announced today by company co-chairman Bob Weinstein. "Ghost Rider" was written by David Goyer ("The Crow: City of Angels") and will be directed by Steven Norrington, who previously worked together on "Blade." Dimension will distribute the film in the United States. Steven Paul, president and CEO of Crystal Sky Entertainment, and Avi Arad, CEO of Marvel Studios and recent producer of "X-Men," will be producing the project. Goyer and Norrington will executive produce. "Ghost Rider" tells the story of a motorcycle stuntman, who, seeking revenge for harm done to his one true love, makes a pact with dark forces to avenge the wrongdoing. By day, the Ghost Rider is a motorcycle stuntman able to perform superhuman tricks; by night he is transformed into a burning demon on wheels as he hunts down those who bring pain to the innocent. "Both Dimension and Marvel Comics have enjoyed great success in developing edgy, provocative projects like 'Ghost Rider,'" said Bob Weinstein. "Following the high level of interest in recent comic book adaptations like 'The Crow' and 'X-Men,' we believe that 'Ghost Rider' offers tremendous franchise opportunities for Dimension." "After Dimension's success with 'Scary Movie,' there is no doubt that Bob and his team can maximize 'Ghost Rider's' potential for us," said Steven Paul. "After all night negotiations, we are proud to reach an agreement with Dimension." Bob Weinstein, Cary Granat, president of Dimension, Michael Helfant, senior executive vp of Dimension, and Andrew Gumpert, svp of business and legal affairs, negotiated the deal for Dimension. Steven Paul and Joseph Inga, svp of finance, negotiated the deal for Crystal Sky. Crystal Sky will handle foreign rights. The picture will be co-financed by Dimension and Crystal Sky Entertainment. The deal will go under several agreements Crystal Sky has in place, including a $400 million line of credit with MM media Capital and output agreement with VCL, Communications in Munich. SOURCE Dimension Films +++++ Here Comes the Spider-Man Activision's Spider-Man(TM) Swings Into Retail Stores Nationwide Acclaimed Superhero Delivers Swift Action to The PlayStation(R) Game Console and Nintendo Game Boy(R) Color SANTA MONICA, Calif., Sept. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Marvel Comic's renowned web-slinging, wall-crawling superhero, Spider-Man, swings onto store shelves across North America with the release of two new video games from Activision, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI) -- Spider-Man(TM) for the PlayStation(R) game console and Nintendo Game Boy(R) Color. The games carry a suggested retail price of $39.99 and $29.99 respectively, and they have been rated "E" ("Everyone" -- content suitable for persons ages six and older -- with Animated Violence) by the ESRB. The first free-roaming, 3D action/adventure game based on the most recognized superhero of all time, Spider-Man challenges players to web-sling, wall-crawl, fight and use "Spider-Sense" to battle evil-doers. Gamers must utilize Spider-Man's super strength and superior wit to protect the innocent as they help solve a variety of puzzles and defeat old and new super villains alike. "The team at Neversoft has developed what we believe will be considered the crowning achievement for character-based action games for the PlayStation," said Michael Pole, executive vice president, Worldwide Studios for Activision. "From its extraordinary graphics to its addictive and diverse gameplay, Spider-Man will provide hours upon hours of enjoyment for his fans worldwide." Developed by Neversoft Entertainment (creators of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater), Spider-Man for the PlayStation features an original storyline that gamers can experience through 34 action-packed levels. From hair-raising police chases and all-out brawls with lizard men to stealth missions, gamers battle through familiar Spider-Man comic book locales including the Daily Bugle, Times Square and a New York bank. Players will utilize all of the classic Spider-Man web defenses from trapping and yanking to impact webbing, as well as new weapons including web doming and web spikes to battle enemies. In addition, players can swing from place-to-place, ambush enemies from above or below, crawl on buildings, ceilings, or walls, and use the always-handy "Spider-Sense" to detect danger from afar. "The essence of Spider-Man has never been so realistically captured in a videogame," said Dave Stohl, executive producer, Activision Studios. "For the first time ever, players will feel like they're actually in a Spider-Man comic book, swinging through the Manhattan skyline, hunting down dangerous enemies and restoring order to the city." Spider-Man for the Game Boy Color was developed by Vicarious Visions, a New York based developer that creates online, next generation console, and handheld games. WWW.VVISIONS.COM +++++ BUZZBOY WEB CARTOONS ARE COMING! BUZZBOY.NET to introduce online "WEBISODES" With the growing popularity of BUZZBOY. NET's Daily Buzzboy Comic, as well as increasing sales of the Buzzboy comic book (Published by Peregrine Entertainment), John Gallagher asked himself, "What Next?" Apparently, the answer was, "Cartoons!" Beginning in September, Buzzboy Webisodes will be hitting the Internet, featuring animation, sound effects, and music. Created with the ever popular Flash technology, the story, art, and animation will be put together by by Buzzboy creator John Gallagher. "I always wrote the Buzzboy comic as if it was a movie on paper," said Gallagher, "because that is how I see it in my head." Gallagher took that approach when he started the animated, daily Buzzboy comic strip back in January 2000. Gallagher was able to add animation to the strip, but only in a limited form, due to download limitations, and the gruelling schedule of a daily strip. The Web Cartoon format offers full animation and sound, with new Webisodes released every four weeks or so. Subscribers to the Free Buzzboy daily comic strip will have early access to the cartoon, with a general presentation on the Internet a few weeks later. John Gallagher is excited about the new storytelling format, with an emphasis on the story. "Sometimes creators can get lost in the technology, and forget the point of what they are doing. With the Buzzboy webisodes, what you'll see is simply another tale of Buzzboy, upbeat hero, and his friends. Except cooler!" To get more info on the upcoming Webisodes, or to sign up for the Free Buzzboy Daily Web Comic, go to www.buzzboy.net CONTACT INFO: John Gallagher Buzzboy.Net johng@gcreative.com 2911 McComas Ave. Kensington, MD 20895 +++++ MATT "STAR WARS" BUSCH SIGNS ON AS ANDROMEDA COVER ARTIST August 28, 2000 Andromeda Entertainment today announced that acclaimed artist Matt Busch, best known for his incredible Star Wars imagery, has signed on to produce the first covers for their new line of licensed sci-fi comic books. The first covers produced by Busch will be for the flagship title of the new line, First Wave, based on the hit Sci-Fi Channel series from Pearson Television. "I'm honored to be working with such a talented assortment of folks in this new high profile company" said Busch. "It's amazing to see all of the work that's going into these books, and then I get tapped to do a cover piece that unifies the cinematic feeling of the book as a whole. I feel very dedicated to these books, and working with the Andromeda team is very inspiring.” In addition to his prolific comic portfolio, Matt's work for Lucasfilm licensees including Bantam/Doubleday (Star Wars: Tales from the Empire) and West End Games (Star Wars Adventure Journal) has earned him high praise from the creative community. Busch also counts extensive film and television credits among his creative contributions including The Matrix, Home Alone 3, CBS's Murphy Brown, and Fox Television's Melrose Place and New York Undercover. Andromeda Editor-in-Chief Art Holcomb feels this blending of a film maker's sensibilities with a comic artist's talent is exactly what is necessary to turn out killer products while at the same time expanding the scope of the industry. "Think of a comic book cover like you would a trailer for a new movie,” said Holcomb. "It must be powerful and beautiful and should only hint at the excitement that awaits you. It is the promise of things to come, and the image that you will hold in your mind as you eagerly await the film's release or that moment when you hold the new comic in your hands. Matt's work does all that and much more. His stuff just rocks and we're delighted to have him aboard!” First Wave, which has been described as "The X-Files meets The Fugitive,” chronicles the adventures of Cade Foster (Sebastian Spence) as he follows clues found in the ancient writings of Nostradamus, which reveals the hidden alien menace among us. The series currently airs on Sci-Fi Sunday nights at 7:00 & 10:00 EST. Busch's cover art for First Wave #1: Heart of a Killer can be viewed on the web at http://www.andromeda-entertainment.com/firstwave. The book is scheduled to ship in December and be on sale December 20, 2000. Details on other releases, future ship dates, and other art samples will be available in upcoming news releases and at Andromeda Entertainment's website at http://www.andromeda-entertainment.com. Retailers, distributors, and fans may send e-mail to first.wave@andromeda-entertainment.com to set up times for interviews or requests for press kits. Matt Busch's portfolio and other art samples can be viewed at www.mattbusch.com. Comics from Andromeda Entertainment – "Believe the Unbelievable!” CONTACT INFORMATION: Website: www.andromeda-entertainment.com E-mail: first.wave@andromeda-entertainment.com Phone & Fax: (303) 845-6208 +++++ Vooosh! Slaaam! Boooom! ... Cain Here; ``Sanity: Aiken's Artifact'' From Fox Interactive Heads Straight for Dark Horse Comics; Read the Action-Packed Comic Book Before You Play the Game LOS ANGELES--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--Aug. 30, 2000--Fox Interactive and Dark Horse Comics today announced the creation of an exclusive comic book inspired by the upcoming PC game, "Sanity: Aiken's Artifact." The comic book is available to all gamers who pre-order "Sanity: Aiken's Artifact" at the nationwide retail chain Electronics Boutique. Additionally, the game-themed comic book will be bundled with more than 35,000 subscription issues of Wizard magazine's November issue (No. 110). The game will hit retail shelves everywhere at the end of September. Dark Horse Comics brought together an outstanding team of seasoned professionals to tell the story of Agent Cain and his war against rogue Psionic criminals and the perpetual family conflict between two brothers. The comic takes a page from the game by establishing the prequel story line and the lead characters featured in the game. Giving additional background and character information, gamers will enjoy the added action and adventure of Agent Cain and his fight against the evil Psionics. "Sanity: Aiken's Artifact" is a story-driven game that features more than 20 single player and 10 multi-player levels and stars the lead character voice of Grammy Award-winner Ice-T as Agent Cain. In the near future, citizens around the world have begun to display remarkable psychic abilities. Called Psionics, these tormented souls are able to generate energy emissions using only their minds -- often with catastrophic and deadly results. Succumbing to the lure of the power they possess, these Psionics will stop at nothing to achieve control of the universe ... one man, Agent Cain, a powerful Psionic working for an elite government agency, stands against them, risking his own sanity to save ours. +++++ Remember when comics were fun? You will! United Comics and Airborne Studios introduce TWILIGHT: FIRST FLIGHT! Mark O'Riley, a young teen...an accident...super powers...bad guys...what more could you ask for? Christopher J. O'Bryant and Lewis K. Stanley have created a new hero reminiscent of the Lee/Ditko Spider-Man days! This 100+ page Graphic Novel also includes an interview with the creators along with unpublished art by Lewis K.Stanley and T.C. Ford! Available NOW! Only $9.95 from select retailers, or ONLINE at the UNITED COMICS STUDIO STORE http://unitedcomics.safeshopper.com Coming Soon: Shockwave: BETA (Oct. '00); UNITED COMICS #1 (Nov. '00). Check our site for details! TC at United Comics/ Focus: The Other Guide To Comics http://www.unitedcomicworks.com UNITED COMICS STUDIO STORE is now open! +++++ Next Man product due in stores in spring Comic Company A has secured rights to continue it's reprints of the former Comico series Next Man. A reprint of Comico issues #3 and #4 , plus new and unpublished art from the series will be featured. The new books wil be the "next" in the reprint series, following on the success of CCA's Next Man Collectors edition # 1, which was one of the top selling independent releases of 1993-1994. Numbering in the series will continue, as opposed to having another restart of a #1. The followups were to be released in '96-97, but the bankrupcy of Marvel led to reevaluations of the the comic book industry, different marketing plans, and a lapse in one of the contracts. Next Man, first published by Comico the Comic Company in 1985, has maintained strong popularity and respectable back issue prices since it's release, possibly due to the work of it's co-creators, Vince Argondezzi and Roger Mc Kenzie in other communications markets and the comic book market. Between the two of them, many of Marvels' and DC's characters, and several independents', have sprung to life, most notably Daredevil, Captain America , Infinity Inc, and Racer X, among others. Next Man was received with great interest in the market when originally released, but creative differences and monetary and management problems with certain Comico personnel led to the duo to take their characters elsewhere. Comic Company A at 215 677 4465 comicaone@aol.com +++++ From Beau Yarbrough's Comic Wire at: http://www.comicbookresources.com/ DWAYNE McDUFFIE WANTS YOU FOR THE SECOND COMING OF MILESTONE Online comic fans like to believe that industry professionals hang on their every message board, mailing list and Usenet posting. Now, they know at least one is. Dwayne McDuffie, editor in chief of Milestone Media, is looking for ideas on ways to expand the second coming of Milestone that is beginning with this fall's "Static Shock" television series and the Milestone continuity miniseries "Static Shock: Rebirth of the Cool" from DC Comics. "Seriously, my partner and I are about to put together a publishing plan for Milestone and we're looking for input," he posted Friday on the rec.arts.comics.misc Usenet newsgroup. "Should we do revivals, new properties, monthlies, mini-series, graphic novels? What characters? Which genres? We're listening ..." Of course, lest fans think he's only listening to the fans who, although loyal, didn't prove numerous enough to ultimately keep the line afloat in the 1990s, never fear. "I'm not asking folks to represent the mass, I'm asking them for ideas that may not occur to Derek [Dingle] or myself. So far they've come up with several. For instance, I'd forgotten about the unpublished, but completed, 'Xombi' special and oddly enough, the award-winning 'Milestone for Kids' wasn't on either Derek's list of titles to reconsider or mine." Of course, while McDuffie is listening to the fans, he's also encountering some lingering misconceptions about what Milestone was. On his Web site he quotes one online writer: "'Milestone didn't really take off, because it seemed like the editorial stance was, 'Hey, black kids! Come read our black books about black people! Black black black black!' without bothering with quality.'" "The problem of course, is that this guy formed his opinion without bothering with reading any of our books. I don't know where these guys get this stuff, but if this view of Milestone is still as widespread as I'm beginning to think it is, we've got some major obstacles yet to overcome. If you ever overhear anyone saying blatantly untrue crap about Milestone and its intentions, straighten them out for me, would you?" +++++ From Rich Johnston's ALL THE RAGE Gossip Column at: http://www.SilverBulletComicBooks.com. ATR Update: The House Of Ideals Damn me and my desire for journalistic responsibility. A ToyBiz employee e-mailed me last week about a memo they'd seen about Bob Harras, and told me it looked like he was for the chop. I asked for a copy of the memo, they didn't have a copy and asking around came up blank. And since I hadn't heard the story from anyone else, not even when I asked around, I decided to wait a bit. Sorry, everyone. However, also rumoured from the same source is that the sacking order came from ToyBiz and it is over disagreements with Harras over editorial policy of his staff - basically Harras was sticking up for them and has been pushed out of the way. And yes, I've heard Joe Quesada will be taking over too. But I'm not sure exactly how happy Joe is about the way he's acquired the position. If you've heard anything, email me on twisting@hotmail.com. I guarantee anonymity and protection. That's the rumour. Yesterday I'd have given it 2 out of 10. Today, this gets a Rumour Value of 6 Out Of 10. Calloo Callay The Bob Harras story really began to kick off on the place it began, Warren Ellis' Delphi forum at http://www.delphi.com/ellis Warren Ellis, who broke the story, followed up with a few lines very similar to the words I've been hearing and printed above, saying "Bob Harras was reportedly fired -- not by President Peter Cuneo, who is now being rumoured to be a puppet President, the real power located at Toy Biz -- for defending his editorial staff, their jobs and working conditions. The spin will be different, but that's the word coming out of the office." "Joe Quesada is taking over." But, surprise surprise, who should pop up but Mark Waid (who recently threatened to kill me with the body of Randy Lander) writing "The only bad thing about this is that it happened after convention season was over. Otherwise, the entire freelance community would be drinking on me all summer long.” "And that, my friend, has nothing to do with my own personal head-buttings with a man who's a weasel and a liar. It has everything to do with the fact that his legacy in this business will be as the man who always went the extra mile for ten years to keep the industry's highest-profile books COMPLETELY IMPENETRABLE TO A NON-FANATIC AUDIENCE--an ESPECIALLY grievous crime this summer of ALL summers--*AND* taught his lackeys to do the SAME. (The "X-Men Sampler" piece of shit in TV GUIDE is something I will use forevermore in my classes and teachings as an example of HOW NOT TO DO COMICS THAT CAN BE UNDERSTOOD BY NON-FANS.) “ "Calloo, callay. How many more bullets is that, then...?” Chortling in his joy, this was slightly reminiscent of Chris Claremont's "The witch is dead" celebration on Compuserve when Jim Shooter went down. Warren Ellis replied "Owwwww.” “I liked Bob, personally. But then, I never worked with him extensively. And the one major argument I had with him I won, probably by being unreasonably menacing. Our conversations in the last couple of years have been more about kids than comics.” “I think you're in the right frame of mind to write that interview today... !” Artist Cully Hamner then pitched in "You know, I never really had a lot of contact with Bob Harras, but when I did, he was always very cordial to me. On the rare occasion that I called him, he always took the call, or returned it. He didn't have to do that, so I've certainly got no beef with him. Having said that, Marvel hasn't exactly been the House of Ideas for quite a while now. Oh, there are one or two Rooms of Ideas (Marvel Knights being one of them), but not really what I would call a House. I really have no idea at whose feet we can lay the blame. Was it the suits, the EIC, the editors, or the freelancers?" "But, does anybody remember the last time an artist was in charge at one of the Big Two? Does anybody besides me remember the great and DIFFERENT stuff that came out of DC when Dick Giordano was VP/Managing Editor?" "None of us really knows if Joe's got the job, but if he does, let's give him the benefit of the doubt. He's certainly got a bit of experience, having been a freelancer, small publisher, and line editor." "I feel for Bob, but I think that Joe deserves his shot." Anyone who feels like shedding light on the bullets or the interview reference, get in touch. This one is going to run and run, folks... This Has A Rage Value Of Seven Out Of Ten Brooklyn Dodgy We were told that Jimmy Palmiotti was giving up the pressures of Marvel Knights to spend more time with his family. He'd still do some comic work, and his involvement with Wizard's Black Bull comics was cited as evidence of that. Well, the rumour was that that Jimmy's been an even busier boy that we gave him credit for, setting up a weird/gross out/pornography website called Brooklyn Bizarro. A quick hyperlink later and I'm confronted with a site that contains lots of weird stuff from fake naked shots of Hilary Clinton to a gallery of Jimmy's wife and Black Bull artist, Amanda Conner's Vampirella covers. The registered owner of the site is Wizard World's Buddy Scalera, co-writer with Jimmy Palmiotti on Daredevil. And according to one technical bod, the site not only links to Wizard World but also one of its stored graphics for the site. So we asked around. M Delfini told us the "basic idea about Brooklyn Bizarro came up while Jimmy Palmiotti, Joe Delfini and Buddy Scalera were sitting in a bar. We were talking about the net and how a lot of sites are kind of boring. We wanted to do a adult site that didn't just have porn but other cool adult material such as gore, fun shit, girls. The site is growing through the recruitment of friends who have or offer cool skills or talents_ Basically we are still underground and travel through word of mouth and have at steady following of around 5500 to 6000 hits a month.” Buddy Scalera said “I design and maintain brooklynbizarro.com on the side. I use it to try out new graphic tricks and techniques. Plus, it's a good way to unwind and relax.” And Jimmy Palmiotti replied "Hey Rich, glad you liked the site. I'm pretty much the bank for the site as well as a contributing photographer. It's just a sick fun place to put stuff up and cause a good laugh around the internet. It's like the basement of a friend's house when you are growing up, if you can understand what I mean.” We know what you mean Jimmy... now tidy that place up and get rid of all those dirty tissues! This Has A Rage Value Of Nine Out Of Ten Chair Amnesty I received a copy of a letter sent to Todd McFarlane by Amnesty International. Enjoy: Dear Mr. McFarlane, The Canadian, Dutch, Italian, and USA Sections of Amnesty International are writing to express our concern over your production and distribution of a so-called "toy" entitled Death Row Marv. We understand this figure is being sold in specialty stores in the United States, Canada, and Europe to people aged 13 and older. Although Amnesty International is unconditionally opposed to the death penalty, we welcome all serious discussions, encompassing the widest spectrum of opinion, on the issue. However, the promotion of a "toy" that suggests to people of all ages that this is an issue that need not be taken seriously only serves to perpetuate a climate of disrespect for human rights. While Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, and many other countries have abolished the death penalty, the United States has not. We believe that people in all countries deserve to be given the facts on capital punishment and the reasons that Amnesty International considers it the ultimate human rights violation. The promotion of a "toy" that mocks a form of violence condemned by more than half the countries in the world today encourages disregard for the basic human dignity of all people. Compelling evidence exists that death in the electric chair is unspeakably horrible. Some influential medical experts believe that unconsciousness - let alone death - is seldom instantaneous and that the pain is excruciating. Frequent malfunctions of the electric chair only compound its horror. Every execution is a premeditated killing. Your product treats the suffering, degradation, and death of human beings as a suitable subject for profit and amusement. In our view, corporate ethics require that businesses promote and respect basic human rights values, both in the workplace and in their products. We urge you to give serious consideration to the negative human rights message that this "toy" conveys and to respond accordingly. For your information and review, we have enclosed a copy of Amnesty International's Human Rights Principles for Companies, which contains a recommended code of conduct for all businesses. We look forward to your reply to our concerns at your earliest possible convenience. Sincerely, William F. Schulz Executive Director AI USA You know, they could at least have sent him a letter about those oh-so-worker-friendly toy factories in East Asia that Todd was so proud to show photos of in his comics a few years ago_ I contacted McFarlane Toys without any response. This Has A Rage Value Of Nine Out Of Ten Wee Joke Mark Millar writes on the Authority DC Comics message board at www.dccomics.com. "I'm half-way through the final part of Earth Inferno (yeah, I'm late but the comic should still be out on time because Frank is only a couple of pages behind me). Just written a scene where The Midnighter urinates on a villain via the DOOR mechanism on The Carrier and feeling oddly pleased with myself.” We look forward to seeing it, Mark. If the scene makes it through_ This Has A Rage Value Of Nine Out Of Ten ATR Update III: Poaching, Preaching and Plotting By Rich Johnston Poached Eds Joe Quesada announced in the press conference that he'd be expanding Marvel's editorial staff. Word is a number will be coming from DC. This gets a Rage Value of 9 out of 10 Youngblood And Guts Pmstopper1 asked Kurt Busiek on rec.arts.comics.misc about the recent Previews solicitations from Awesome. "Kurt, I know you've stated that you've got nothing to do with the revamp of Youngblood and that if anything Liefeld is using your old scripts for the proposed Year One mini that never came out but do you know that you're actually solicited in Previews as the writer of the book? He's given you full writer's credit and to think he's not even doing the art in the book. Some guy named Eric Walker is pencilling. Have you been informed of this yet?” Kurt responded "Well, that's just classy as hell, isn't it? The most they've got from me is three plots. No scripts.” And as to being informed, he replied "Nope.” Jimmy Jay from Awesome was on hand to post a response from Rob Liefeld. "Kurt Busiek wrote 3 brilliant plots for Youngblood Year One that have been waiting patiently for the appropriate talent to emerge and illustrate the title. Kurt has been informed that we were going to move forward with this project since the spring of 99. Both myself and the project editor contacted Kurt several times over the past year to ask him to script the project and Kurt told us his schedule was full and that he would be unavailable to work with us on it. At one point he also suggested that if we waited until after Gorilla launched that he would have been open to, but by no means committed to, giving the project further consideration. We waited and he informed us that he could not script over his plots and Kurt politely told us he understood that we needed to move forward and we set out to find someone who could finish the job. Kurt's plots are terrific, filled with intrigue and conspiracy sure to appeal to fans of his work on Avengers and Astro City. Kurt's story densely weighs in at 90 total pages, which brings each of the 3 volumes in the series as 30 page oversized books. It was written right after MARVELS and we are anxious to finally publish the work.” Okay, not actually addressing the point of wrongly soliciting the work, but at least it was polite and professional. Then, oh dear. "Busiek's glib attitude towards the project is in keeping with his attempts to distance himself from a project that he cashed checks for a long time ago. He has also stressed to me and others that he does not want to have other projects competing with his struggling Gorilla titles. The plots require minimal omissions of a few IMAGE Characters such as LYNCH and WYNN. Kurt himself suggested that they are easy to replace with other government operatives to further the story.” "As for someone else scripting over Busiek's plots, this is not a new practice for him, in fact it is one that he is utilizing on the upcoming DEFENDERS title.” Busiek replied to a variety of points, saying "Absolutely. I don't blame you a bit for moving forward, and I encouraged you to. Soliciting the book as written by me, however, when they're plotted by me and scripted by someone else -- that's the part I have a problem with. I sure hope you'll credit the guy who finishes the job.“ As to the Defenders situation, Busiek replied "Not quite, since Erik has plot input and I've got script input on DEFENDERS. But certainly I've worked that way before. The publisher didn't try to pass it off as solo work by me, though.” "What a bad man I am, not wanting to be solicited as the writer of a project I'm not actually scripting. How glib of me. And heck, I'm already seven years distanced from those plots -- how much further can I get?” "But since Rob's been so nice as to insult me while using my name to sell his books, let me respond. Every time someone at Awesome has called and asked me to do work for the company, I've said I'm too busy at the moment (which is true), but that maybe in the future, things'll be different. Which was also true, at the time.” "Let me amend that. Never again, Rob. Whatever mileage you're getting out of soliciting me as the sole writer for this project, when you know it's not true -- and when that was the one request I made of your editor when he talked to me about the project, that I not be credited as anything more than plotter – had better be enough. It's the last you get.” "After all, the only other thing I wrote for you -- a full plot and ten pages of full script for a 48-page YOUNGBLOOD graphic album -- I never got paid for, so you've got no right to use it.” In another reply to someone asking if that plot or script could be made available to the net, Kurt said "No plans for that at present -- but who knows, maybe someday. I've just checked, and I've still got it all, along with the last communication there ever was on the project -- a fax I sent asking if the artist was ever going to get a page rate, since Extreme wasn't returning phone calls by then. Eventually, I'd like to arrange to put up a number of never-released projects, like the outline to the full VICTORY and SILVER STAR stories, and the WHAT IF...? 'Captain America Had Never Joined The Avengers' outline I did that I was pretty proud of. Rob then responded "never again. so be it. go with god.” "In regards to a Youngblood graphic novel, is this the matter that you and Jeph Loeb discussed a while back? I was under the impression that it was a Youngblood Year One issue and that it had been settled. I am not aware of a graphic novel that you wrote. 48 pages, WOW ! I will definitely have a look into this one.” I just love it when people air their dirty laundry in public. It makes my job so much easier_ This gets a Rage Value of 7 out of 10 +++++ From the Comic Reader at http://www.thecomicreader.com/newsmain.htm X-Men DVD to be announced soon Posted by Jonah Weiland - 15:29 PST According to sources close to TheDigitalBits.com, an announcement concerning the X-Men DVD could be coming shortly, as soon as Thursday, August 31st. Rumor has it that the DVD will include the film in an anamorphic widescreen version for all of you with those widescreen televisions, plus dual Dolby Digital and DTS soundtracks. Extras rumoured to be included on the DVD are deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes featurette, artwork, Easter Eggs (hidden menus and images) and more. 60's Batman stars profiled on A&E's Biography next week Posted by Jonah Weiland - 12:55 PST The first week in September will be a special one for fans of the campy 60s Batman television show. Starting Monday September 4th through September 8th A&E's Biography will highlight the career of a different member of the Batman television series each night. Here's the schedule: * 9/4 - Adam West (Batman) * 9/5 - Cesar Romero (The Joker) * 9/6 - Julie Newmar (Catwoman) * 9/7 - Vincent Price (Egghead) * 9/8 - Roddy McDowall (The Bookworm) For a full description of each nights episode visit the Biography Web site. Printing error discovered in Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Ground Zero Official Press Release San Francisco, CA (8/29/00) ­ Viz Comics has discovered a printing error in the first issue of the four-part series MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM WING: GROUND ZERO, due to be released on August 30. The color pages of the comic have been printed out of order, which will result in some confusion to fans reading the story. To remedy this, Viz will be destroying the remaining inventory and reprinting the comic. Replacement copies with the color pages correctly placed will be made available free of charge to anyone who purchased the incorrect version. "We're working with the printer to fix the situation as quickly and painlessly as possible," said Viz senior marketing manager Dallas Middaugh. Purchasers of the incorrect version can exchange their comic for the reprinted version at the shop where they purchased it. The reprint can be identified by the notation "Original Format" that appears on the cover and will be available by September 20. The comic may also be exchanged by sending it directly to GUNDAM WING: GROUND ZERO Exchange, Viz Shop-by-Mail, P.O. BOX 77010, San Francisco, CA 94107-1612. +++++ From Comics2Film at http://www.comics2film.com LUKE CAGE --------- New Line is still working on a deal with Marvel for a LUKE CAGE movie. A 2001 release is not likely. SPIDER-MAN ---------- Schedule conflicts will likely keep Nicholas Cage from playing the Green Goblin in the Spider-Man Movie. THE CROW: SALVATION ------------------- On Friday, September 15th, The Crow: Salvation will be released for a limited engagement in Spokane, Washington. http://abahb.crowfans.com/ STATIC SHOCK! ------------- Static Shock! is set to debut September 23 at 10 am. Men In Black, and Batman Beyond return September 16. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ FANTASTIC FOUR -------------- Alex Ross may do character designs for the Spider-Man movie and the Fantastic Four movie as well. +++++ From The Daily Buzz at http://www.mania.com/newsarama/index.html Darkchylde Flies Solo Hot on the heels of the just-released Darkchylde/Witchblade crossover, Darkchylde creator Randy Queen is taking his long-legged comic book beauty solo into the arena of self-publishing under the Darkchylde Entertainment banner. Formerly published by Image, Darkchylde tells the story of Ariel Chylde, a woman with the ability to travel through nightmarish dreams and a quest to battle demons and monsters. The first of the new series will be "Dreams of the Darkchylde" launching This October with first issue pencils by industry favorite X-Men and Mystic artist, Brandon Peterson. Newcomer Ron Adrian will pencil the following story arc, in issues #2 -6. Queen will be doing both the writing and the covers for the new series, which will focus more on the dreamscapes and psychological aspects of Ariel Chylde, and also promises to return Ariel to the "darker" feel of her first mini-series. The second new series planned to launch in December is titled "Darkchylde: Redemption" and picks up where the end of "The Legacy" storyline left off. Queen says "Redemption" will be much more aggressive than "the Legacy" and fans will finally get to see more of Ariel's sister Jessica, which they have been clamoring for. Randy will be supplying both the writing and the interior art for "Redemption." To celebrate Darkchylde's return to comics, and the move to self-publishing Queen also plans to release a special Darkchylde:Redemption # 1/2 issue in conjunction with Wizard Magazine. Queen will both write and draw the special mail order only issue, and says "this will not be just a throw away issue, instead it will be very relevant to the storyline and will serve as a necessary bridge to where "the Legacy" left off, and "Redemption" picks up. Darkchylde fans will absolutely want this special issue in their collection." "It's a good time to be a Darkchylde fan." Queen adds. "The readers have stayed with the book, and so will I. There's a lot of great new things coming up for the character. But most importantly, the fans and retailers will be getting more of Darkchylde than they ever have before." Brad Pitt As Batman? Director Darren (Pi) Aronofsky is currently in negotiations with Warner Bros. to resurrect the dormant Batman movie franchise. "I'd want to bring an independent guerrilla flavor to Batman,” Aronofsky said. Aronofsky, who is also talking to Warner Bros. about directing Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, recently met with Brad Pitt in Los Angeles. This has led to speculation that the actor may be a candidate to don cape and cowl for the next Batman feature film. --EW.com +++++ From Newsarama; http://www.Fandom.com/comics/ WINNER OF THE 1997 & 1998 INTERNET "SQUIDDY" FOR BEST WEB SITE MOEBIUS SIGNS MOVIE DEAL Jean "Moebius" Giraud has signed a deal to create his first feature length computer-animated film entitled Thru the Moebius Strip, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The film, which will be directed and produced by Frank Foster, is set for release in 2003. The movie follows the story of Dr. Simon Weir, a physicist who disappears into a transportation portal he has been building. Against the family`s wishes, his son goes in pursuit of Weir, following him to another planet inhabited by giants. The screenplay was penned by James (The Rescuers Down Under) Cox. The film will be animated in Hong Kong and China. Moebius is supervising a team of French and American designers creating reference materials that will serve as a guide for Chinese animators. CASEY DA SUPERMAN The Wizardworld.com website is reporting the exit of writer J.M. DeMatteis from Adventures of Superman with December's issue #587. DeMatteis will plot that issue and it will be scripted by incoming new regular scribe as of #588, Joe Casey, writer of Wildstorm's Wildcats and some weekly Internet OP/ED column who's name and location escapes us. DeMatteis' exit from the title are cited by Wizard as his current "huge" comics workload in including the upcoming Spectre series, a four issue Wonder Woman story arc with Phil Jimenez, several graphic novels detailed in the May 19th Newsarama Weekly edition, and a new movie project. "I, frankly, felt constrained by the monthly continuity that prevented me from doing the kinds of stories I really wanted to do," he tells Wizard. "Eddie, too, felt that something wasn`t clicking for me creatively ...so this seemed the ideal opportunity to bow out gracefully." DeMatteis also promised he has another "very cool project" involving Superman in the works for after his current schedule lightens. WHERE NO ANTHOLOGY HAS GONE BEFORE In keeping with this week's release of Wildstorm's Thunderbook #1 and November's America's Best Comics Special #1, Wildstorm is preparing the release of a similar 64-page special focusing on the Star Trek universe. Sporting a half-dozen new stories, editor Jeff Mariotte gave us a brief breakdown of the stories featured and their creative teams_ "The Wake" - TOS story by Jeff Lang (Trek novelist), art by Steve Lieber. "Bloodline" - TOS story by Ian Edginton, pencils by Carlos Mota. "Exercises in Futility" - a Voyager story by former Vertigo editor Stuart Moore), pencils by Trek fan-favorite artist Gordon Purcell. "When The Stars Come A`Calling" - a Deep Space Nine story by Ben Raab, art by John Lucas. "A Rolling Stone Gathers No Nanoprobes" - Next Generation story (but without any of that show`s main characters) by Andy Mangels & Mike Martin, art by Paul Neary. "The Legacy of Elenor Dain" - a TOS/TNG story by sci-fi novelist Christopher Hinz, art by Tommy Lee Edwards. "So we`ve got all the shows represented, and what I think is a great mix of styles, from very traditional to kind of edgy," said Mariotte. "We`ve got recent Eisner winner Steve Lieber. We`ve got the first published pencils in quite some time by Paul Neary. We have science fiction and Star Trek novelists working alongside well-established comics writers like Ben Raab and Ian Edginton. "And it`s all inside a gorgeous cover by John Van Fleet." COBWEB & MOORE, THE STORY LIVES ON_ Readers probably know by now that the Cobweb story Alan Moore wrote and intended for publication in issue #8 of his ABC series Tomorrow Stories (and if you don't know by now you can check out our feature Moore/Gibbons: `No Go` On Watchmen 15th Anniversary Edition) won't see print when the issue is released in November. What readers may not yet know is they might yet get to read the story that has caused the fallout for themselves. According to Moore, the story won't be see in a future Tomorrow Stories, but from another publisher entirely. "We're going to be able to buy back the Cobweb story from DC for a nominal fee," Moore told Newsarama Friday. "We've spoken with Chris Staros at Top Shelf Productions, and he would be very happy to run it in slightly altered form, just with slight changes made in terms of the character, or the character's name, so that should be appearing in print. I'm not sure where or when, but that's the plan." "I think everyone who saw it thought it was the best Cobweb that Melinda [Gebbie] had done to date. It was a snappy little piece of work, so we're very glad that it's going to be published, and Chris, is quite happy as well, because he's got Lost Girls [by Moore and Gebbie] coming out next year, so this gives an odd little prequel to what's coming." Taking the place of the eighth Cobweb episode in TS #8 will be what Moore and Gebbie produced to be the ninth Cobweb story, called "Mondo Gwanda," a story with a jungle girl flavor. "I'm sure_well, I think I'm sure, the story couldn't offend anybody," Moore says. "I don't think there are any nipples in there, and I don't think it would be offensive in any ways to any minorities, except perhaps people from Jersey, whose accent we do parody a little broadly. There is a giant gorilla in there, but I don't think they have any sorts of pressure groups up and running, although you never know – it's a funny country you've got over there. It takes the form of five to six days of continuity of a black and white newspaper strip with a full color Sunday page in the middle." After TS #8’s Cobweb story, Gebbie will, according to Moore, retire from the character for a while, partly due to the "mess regarding the last Cobweb story" and partly to devote her full time to Lost Girls. She will still be providing the cover to TS #9. "Cobweb was going to be moving out of Tomorrow Stories with #12 anyway, possibly into a solo book," Moore says. "That's been postponed until Melinda has Lost Girls finished and feels like getting back into Cobweb. In the meantime, Tomorrow Stories #9 through #12 will have a Cobweb strip in them, but drawn by different artists. Both Melinda and I thought it would be nice if these were all women artists, so we've got Dame (Meatcake) Darcy scheduled to do the story in #9. She's already dun an incredibly funny Cobweb story for the America's Best Comics Special entitled, "He Tied Me to a Buzz Saw [And it Felt Like a Kiss]." So she's planned to do one in #9, and then in ##10 and #11, we've got various other female artists that we're approaching to fill in, and in #12, which was going to be a Greyshirt/Cobweb crossover anyway, we'll probably still go ahead, and Rick will draw all of it." While the whole Cobweb/Tomorrow Stories/Watchmen affair went on longer – and uglier – than all parties involved had ever wished, Moore is anxious to put it all behind him and move on with ABC. "As far as I'm concerned, there's a very big and very black line drawn under the whole episode," Moore says. "I just want to get on and do what I originally signed on with Wildstorm to do, which is these comics. I want to put all of my energy into them for as long as I am humanly capable of doing so, that's what I'm going to be doing and trying to keep ABC healthy and thriving." MORRISON ENERGIZED FOR 2001 Well, now you can really put that retirement from comics conjecture to bed... Grant Morrison has never really gone away and he's heading into 2001 with lots of new plans and heaping portions of enthusiasm for his upcoming work. First up in 2001 is the Marvel Knights four-issue Fantastic Four: 1, 2, 3, 4 limited series with artist Jae Lee, announced earlier this month at the Wizardworld Chicago comics convention. We already heard much about the writer's personal views about the background personal dynamics of the superteam, so this time Newsarama asked him to describe the series in ways that won't be up for readers interpretation. "Imagine Chris Ware and Jack Kirby had come up with the FF," explained Morrison. "The story`s set out of continuity and takes place at some nebulous time when all main players and the Baxter Building were intact and on the same planet at the same time. Avoiding shifting, self-strangling `continuity` problems was the only way I could write this with any degree of originality. Hopefully people will accept it simply as an untold tale of the Fantastic Four." The main villain of course, is none other than the good Doctor Doom. "How could I pass up the opportunity to write the greatest comic book villain ever created?" Morrison asked rhetorically. "The Mole Man and Prince Namor are also involved. I don`t want to spoil any surprises but you`ll see all your favorite characters in a new light and, among other things, we'll be revealing the shocking secret truth behind the `origin` of Doctor Doom." "And Jae Lee is drawing it!!!!" Morrison also says as far as he's concerned, you will be seeing that Silver Surfer one-shot also mentioned in Chicago. "Hopefully for release later next year," said the writer, "It`s got misery, madness and apocalyptic destruction on a cosmic scale so Christmas would be nice." Morrison tells us Frank (The Authority) Quitely - whom Morrison teamed with on the JLA: Earth Two hardcover and The Invisibles, will "definitely" draw the one-shot, though Joe Quesada was not able to confirm his participation at press time. And as for Quitely's `other' job_ no need to rush to assumptions even IF he does pencil it. A spokesperson for Wildstorm/DC told us should Quitely `desire' to take a break to work on another project, WildStorm would accommodate his wishes and his schedule. As to other comics' projects, Morrison could not identify them by name, but promises he has "HUGE" plans in the works that will be announced shortly. "My imagination`s been in overdrive after wrapping JLA and Invisibles at the start of the year. You`ll be seeing a lot of new work from me in 2001." But comics aren't the only things on Morrison's plate right now. He recently spent several weeks in Hollywood talking about possible film projects and gave Newsarama an update, even though he could not talk in specifics_ "I will say that the three main projects I`m involved in are all comics based, two of them being mainstream `superhero` properties I`ve created in the past and forgot all about. One of them will no doubt have fans screaming with horror at the very thought but I`ve just completed a second draft treatment for S***** K*** K*** and it`s going to be the coolest, hardest, funniest, most violently nihilistic film of our time!" Hey also has another original superhero property he was developing with friend Mark Millar, but wound up completing on his own. "It`s a new twist on the genre (or at least it is until Bruce Willis arrives in Unbreakable and steals a little bit of my thunder, but not all...) and will cost $100,000,000 but thanks to the success of X-Men which I`d anticipated, the script is currently being read by a number of A-list blockbuster lads, including Roland Emmerich. We`ll see..." Finally, wrapping up, Morrison addressed the rumors circulating in San Diego last month that he was `taking meetings' about a possible fifth Batman film_ "I wrote up a great pitch which got Batman out of Gay Gotham for a while and brought in some brilliant villains nobody`s used yet but as far as I know Darren Aronofsky, the director of `Pi` (the sign rather than the word) is thinking about Batman. There are rumors that it might be partly inspired by stuff from ARKHAM ASYLUM, so I may or may not have further involvement." CHAYKIN EXAMINES AMERICA'S GOLDEN MEAN As announced at last month's San Diego Comicon, creator Howard Chaykin is returning to monthly comics next year with a new Vertigo series entitled American Century. Chaykin will co-write the series with writer David Tischman, paint the covers and provide thumbnails for penciler Mark Laming. Set in 1950, Chaykin describes the book as having elements of espionage and crime, but firmly rooted in the `adventure' genre. "In the late 40’s, early 50’s there was a lot of adventure newspaper strips out there_strips like Steve Canyon, Buzz Sawyer, and Johnny Hazard. This series is a modern version of those strips, taking place during the same time as those strips, but with a millennial point of view and point of reference. It's a Vertigo book, so you can sort of fill in the details there_" The series stars hero Harry Craft, an ace, medal winning, WWII fighter pilot, who is drafted back into the service in 1950, and according to the writer, "Just freaks out and decides not to go." Asked the significance of the title, Chaykin explained, "1950 is the golden mean of the American century. Between 1945 and 1959 we owned the f****** planet, and there is a certain irony attached to the fact that back in 1950 we had actually won the second World War, as opposed to sort of getting through it and realizing that ultimately we won the war by lost the peace." Chaykin also has another project in development with DC and editor Peter Tomasi entitled Blackhawks 4000, which as the title suggests, stars the Blackhawks of future in the year 4000. Though not going into details on the project, Chaykin said that it would also be co-written by Tischman. "As far as I can tell, with every few exceptions, most of the projects I'll be doing for DC the next couple of years will be co-written by David. "An interesting talent", according to Chaykin, Tischman is a film and television producer. The two worked together while Chaykin was on staff on the TV show Viper and Tischman was a freelancer. Chaykin said his co-writer is about to start writing a film version of Marvel's Cloak & Dagger. Finally, commenting on the possibility of a follow-up to his and Dan Brereton's ThrillKiller series, Chaykin replied, "There is a possibility of a third book that takes it into the early 70’s, but much more than that I can't say." DARICK ROBERTSON GETS BUSY IN THE BIG CITY Newly relocated to Brooklyn, New York, artist Darick Robertson recently updated the Transmetropolitan website with a few news items. First off, regarding the Transmet prequel one-shots recently mentioned by Newsarama, Transoceanic and Transcontinental, Robertson reemphasized what editor Axel Alonso stated in the original report – that the projects have only been discussed as possible continuations of the franchise after the series ends with issue #60, but that NO set plan have been made, much less approved. Robertson did add however, "_if we do them, I plan to be the one to draw them." Robertson also reported his first-ever published work, Space Beaver (not what you may be thinking) will be collected in two volumes with new art beginning this December by Larry Young's AiT Productions. "Foolishly, Larry thinks people want to see how I wasted my summer school education in 1986," joked the artist. Volume 1 will feature a new cover and an introduction by Warren Ellis. Volume 2 will feature the never before seen `Final Chapter of the Space Beaver saga.’ "Back when issue #11 was published, it had a unresolved cliffhanger ending, because the company ran out of money and I needed to eat! Now that I am feeding well off the DC tit, I am drawing the final chapter, with all new art! More `Beave' after that? Who knows? Who cares?" The artist also gave readers an update on the two-issue, prestige format series he's drawing for writer John Francis Moore, Batgirl/Catwoman-Oracle/Catwoman. Set for a 2001 release and inked by Jimmy Palmiotti, Robertson told Newsarama all about the project back in September of last year. According to Robertson at that time, it's part current day story featuring Catwoman and Barbara Gordon, as well as a flashback story to Barbara's first Year 1 encounter with Selina Kyle. "Catwoman is accused of a crime she didn`t commit when a dead body is are found, apparently clawed to death. And only Oracle knows she's innocent," he explained. "For me, it`s a dream project. My first love in comics was Batgirl. I still think she`s a great character and I`m excited that I`ll get to draw her as she was, in her classic look. I look forward to trying to bring out a difference between her and Catwoman in stance and body language. Try to define their characters not by their costumes, but how they wear them." And finally, (whew), Robertson is also set to pencil Marvel's Deadpool #50 and #51… WORD ON THE STREET Speaking of Deadpool, editor Mike Marts dropped us a line and gave us an update on what readers should expect from the title for the foreseeable future_ After Paul Chadwick wraps up his three-issue arc in December, writer Jimmy Palmiotti (and co-writer Buddy Scalera) will be joined by artist Michael Lopez with issue #49 (with a Kevin Knowlan cover), Darick Robertson for issues #50-51 (with a Art Adams and Robertson cover for #50 and #51 respectively), and Anthony Williams and cover artist Steve Dillon for issues #52 and #53. According to a spokesperson for Dark Horse Comics, Jim Steranko's graphic novel Red Tide, announced at last year's San Diego Comicon, is yet to be re-added to their publishing schedule. The project is reportedly being completely "renovated", and DHC does not have an ETA from the creator. Marvel Comics has settled on a January 2001 launch for Erik Larsen and Kurt Busiek's Defenders ongoing series. The debut issue will be Marvel's "book of the month", and will be launched with "full Marvel fanfare", according to a spokesperson. As announced in San Diego last month, December's monthly Batman titles will all be thematically linked under the title "In This Issue: Batman Dies!" and tell a Batman story told from the perspective of a Bat-villain, each imaging his or her `fantasy' of killing Batman. So we caught up with the writers of each title to get little preview of their plans_ Batman, written by Ed Brubaker – "My issue concerns the finale of my Penguin storyline, in which Penguin kills Batman, horribly, and viciously, and the consequences of those actions. That`s all I can say." Gotham Knights - Devin Grayson – "My stunt issue uses the sociopath Mr. Zsasz for a glimpse into the mind of a serial killer. I`ve always liked the character, and when I was talking to Brian Vaughan about him, Brian came up with a brilliant idea of how to catch him that I just had to steal (with Brian`s blessing, of course). I love having generous geniuses for friends, it makes my life so much simpler. "Initially I had Zsasz himself narrating that one issue, but I ended up taking the narration out - part of what`s so creepy about sociopaths is NOT understanding how they think. The story is told mostly through his point of view, so it`s dark, scary, and twisted, and, of course, a bit of a departure from the larger arcing story that`s been running through Gotham Knights, as most stunts must inevitably be. "And there`s lots of blood. Buy it," she said with a grin. Detective Comics, Greg Rucka – "TEC #753 will be the debut of Harvey Dent`s work in Arkham Asylum`s new `Art Therapy' program. We`re very proud of Harvey... and surprised that he has such artistic talent. In essence, he`s created a 20-page comic book, very much in the style of the original BLACK MASK or PULP FANTASTIC adventure tales of the 20`s and 30`s. The hero is a Man of Adventure, the brilliant and handsome Professor Copernicus Dent. With his best girl and plucky assistant, R`Nee, he travels the world, righting wrongs and solving crimes. This particular adventure is entitled `The Janus Double-Down!’ DC has updated the shipping status of a few upcoming projects_. The Hawkman Archives Vol. 1 Hardcover has been given a new shipping date of 9/7, Jenny Sparks: The Secret History Of The Authority #4 has been moved from 9/20 to 9/27 with issue #5 rescheduled from 10/18 to 11/18, and Planetary #12 has been moved from 9/13 to 10/11. IN HIS FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS_GHOST RIDER Well, not really, but new Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada did confirm today a project Marvel has been hinting at for years, most recently at the Wizardword Chicago Comicon. Today Quesada confirmed with Newsarama that a new Ghost Rider project is the works for the Marvel Knights imprint, but added, "no creative team has been announced". Nor did he mention the format or length of the project. Rumored - repeat rumored - creators possibly attached to the project include writers Brian Azzarello and Greg Rucka, with the latter being the most likely candidate, though Quesada chose not to comment when asked about those possibilities. Quesada also told Newsarama, "Marvel Boy will be back", when asked about a possible follow-up by Grant Morrison to Morrison and artist J.G. Jones' current MK mini-series. SPIDER IN PROSE Artist Tim Bradstreet recently updated his website with news of a few new projects_ The lastest new project according to the website is a 96-page Transmetropolitan illustrated hardcover book written by Warren Ellis. Bradstreet will reportedly provide `around' 50 new illustrations to go along with Ellis` prose as well as providing the cover for the project due in summer 2001. Newsarama readers will recall Transmet editor Axel Alonso mentioned he and Ellis were discussing "another big TRANSMET project" a few weeks back. Bradstreet is also working with friend and writer Brian (100 Bullets, Hellblazer) Azzarello and artist Lee (Superman/Gen13) Bermejo to "solidify plans" for an upcoming DC/Wildstorm deluxe-format 48pp, three-issue crossover mini-series, Batman/Deathblow. Bradstreet will be providing inks over penciler Bermejo as well as illustrating the covers (tentative)." MORE FROM THE EIC Joe Quesada wrapped up the events of Wednesday 08/30 with a post to Usenet's rec.arts.comics.marvel.universe newsgroup. In a post entitled "A MESSAGE FROM THE... UH... EIC?", Quesada addressed readers after a day of dealing with the comics press. "It`s going to get some getting use to :-)", Quesada said, referring to the subject of his post. "Well, folks, it`s been a crazy day indeed," he wrote. "I just wanted to come on here and thank all of you, fans and freelancers, for your incredible support. Without all of you, Marvel Knights would not be the success it is and I wouldn`t be in the position I am now. I want you all to know that all the criticism as well as praise has been appreciated and has help me grow as an artist, writer, editor and human being. I want to try to calm any fears that some of you might have about the change in leadership at The House of Ideas. Bob will be missed terribly. His contributions to Marvel will be felt for years and years to come. I know this and all of you know this, but now the ball has been handed to me and I have to take it and try my best to protect it and polish it up as purdy as I can for a new crop of readers who will hopefully one day be on these boards ripping me a new hole. "I`m going to do my best to avoid being perceived as some sort of enigmatic fixture who sits in some dark tower overseeing the company. I`m one of you, fan first - creator second. I love this industry, I love Marvel Comics, I love DC Comics, heck I just love comics! I plan on taking the tools I`ve been given and give this job the best shot I can! What does this mean to you? It means that I`ll be listening, time permitting I may pop on from time to time, most importantly I won`t be anonymous or faceless. "This is an opportunity for us all to succeed, it`s a chance to try to reestablish this art form that we all love. I won`t be so presumptuous as to ask for your support but I do want to ask for your trust. There will most likely be some changes, we have to do something and we have to do it now. You all may not agree with every decision but please take solace knowing that we`re giving it our best attempt! It`s going to be one heck of an uphill battle and wild ride, but I`m up for it, are you? I`m being told it can`t be done and I just refuse to hear it or believe it. I know that with all of your help we can prove the rest of the entertainment industry wrong, in the immortal words of John Belushi in Animal House "Are you with me!?" +++++ From Zentertainment; HTTP://WWW.ZENTERTAINMENT.COM To sign a friend up or begin receiving ZEN yourself, e-mail: subscribe@ZENtertainment.com K&C TO PUBLISH NEW 'D&D' COMIC KENZER & COMPANY (Knights of the Dinner Table) has acquired the exclusive rights to make an official DUNGEONS & DRAGONS comic book. The book is expected to launch in early spring 2001. http://www.kenzerco.com http://www.wizards.com 'PREACHER' COLOR GUIDES FOR SALE ON EBAY With the final issue of DC/VERTIGO Comics' PREACHER being released this week, award-winning colorist Matt Hollingsworth has begun selling his color guides for the series on EBAY. The 36-pages of hand-painted and coded guides over copies of Steve Dillon's line art for the first issue are currently up for bid, and Hollingsworth plans to sell guides for the first 24 issues or so. Hollingsworth is also planning to sell his original guides for HELLBOY work with Mike Mignola, HELLBLAZER work with Sean Phillips, and work with Art Adams and Tony Harris. http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/anina2 'AQUAMAN,' 'WONDER WOMAN' FIGURES FROM DC DC DIRECT has revealed plans to release and AQUAMAN AND AQUALAD Deluxe Action Figure Set in March 2001. The Silver Age renditions, solicited in the November issue of PREVIEWS, also comes with a seahorse and wave the figures can ride on. DC DIRECT will also release its WONDER WOMAN figures for ARES, CHEETAH, and ARTEMIS next March. http://www.dccomics.com +++++ From Wizard World Emailer; to subscribe send Email to WizEmailer@aol.com with the subject: ADD ME WIZARD ATTENTION TRUE BELIEVERS! Now's your chance to get your very own MarvelMail(TM) email address. Enroll in the X-Men, Avengers, X-Force, even the Starjammers--all from the comfort of your own computer! Join the thousands who've already signed up for MarvelMail! Create your username, then choose from one of these cool Marvel domains: X-Men.com MarvelOnline.net FantasticFour.com MarvelKnights.net X-Force.com AvengersAssemble.net Starjammers.com ...and 12 other amazing Marvel domain names. MarvelMail users will get an exclusive bi-weekly communiqué from Marvel HQ--dishing out exciting Marvel news tidbits. The powerful MarvelMail interface also lets you collect email from all your addresses on one handy page. Best of all, it's FREE. All you have to do is register, and your MarvelMail address is y