We realize that not everyone coming to this site is a comic book person, so here’s the tl;dr on Deadpool:

• He is the Marvel universe’s amoral, unbalanced, near-indestructible, wise cracking, fourth-wall-breaking, weirdo mercenary.
• A Deadpool-in-name-only appeared in Wolverine: Origins, played by Ryan Renolds.
• Ryan Renolds is starring in Green Lantern.
• The Green Lantern trailer wasn’t really that awesome.  This trailer is.

(via Nerd Bastards.)

What hath science wrought?

You’re not hallucinating.  This is a Lil’ Archie story with an anthropomorphic beaver.  Does anyone else see aquatic rodents and immediately think of Kurt Vonnegut?

(via Comics Beat.)

In a note published on Creator’s Syndicate, cartoonist Gary Larson is politely asking his fans to stop using images of “The Far Side” online. He writes:

These cartoons are my “children,” of sorts, and like a parent, I’m concerned about where they go at night without telling me. And, seeing them at someone’s web site is like getting the call at 2:00 a.m. that goes, “Uh, Dad, you’re not going to like this much, but guess where I am.”

While certainly not angry in his tone, maybe even a little reluctant to have to say something at all, it’s easy to see why Larson is finally warning people who use his work without authorization.

Marvel has announced that it will be killing off a member of the Fantastic Four in next month’s issue, number 587, and that this time, they’re not promising a comeback.

In a story arc entitled “Fear Itself,” the Fantastic Four – Human Torch, Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, and the Thing – have been placed in life-threatening situations, and executive editor Tom Brevoort says, “I think we’ve given plenty of hints as to who may die – perhaps too many.”

Bleeding Cool has the scoop on what, if true, is an enormous deal in the world of manga: It’s reported that Akira Toriyama, creator of the venerable Dragon Ball franchise, is about to relaunch Dragon Ball comics.

Bleeding Cool:

This morning we received word that Shueisha Publishing Company of Tokyo has convinced legendary manga creator Akira Toriyama to come back and restart the Dragon Ball comics franchise.

…

Akira Toriyama has been persuaded to return to creating new chapters. Partly to help promote the [forthcoming Dragon Ball Online MMO] game, partly to earn the boat load of cash he has been promised.

Something that will make this event even more spectacular is a simultaneous fully translated worldwide launch of the new book.

Toriyama wrote the 519-chapter, 42-volume manga series from 1984 to 1995: On television, it was split into two very successful animated series, Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, which successfully managed to combine humor, action, and, yes, interminably long fight sequences and increasingly ridiculous (but still charming) Power Levels.

(The Dragon Ball GT animated series was not based on any manga by Toriyama, and it showed; and darnit, AF was an urban legend.)

While Bleeding Cool’s report is focused solely on the comics business, if Toriyama does indeed write more Dragon Ball comics for the first time in 15 years, it seems hard to believe that these new storylines wouldn’t ripple over into other media. The Dragon Ball franchise has made more than four billion dollars in merchandising sales, and the franchise is still strong enough that the likes of Nickelodeon and The CW can still slap “Kai” on the name and repackage old DBZ episodes and have a hit. If there are more comics, could there be a new animated series as well? If so, expect Power Levels that make 9000 look positively paltry by comparison.

“Robert isn’t a very showy director, but it’s clearly his most cleverly shot film yet.  Also there’s a bit where someone gets exploded into two distinct pieces. I always appreciate that kind of attention to detail.”

- Warren Ellis on the red carpet premiere of RED, which is based loosely on his comic miniseries of the same name, don’tchaknow.

Yesterday DC Comics made a long expected announcement that they will be moving part of their offices to Burbank, California, to be closer to the movie studio that is looking forward to exploiting their characters for box office proceeds. As a part of that announcement, they also mentioned that they will be shutting down WildStorm, one of their relatively independent imprints. And so begins the speculation of what, exactly, will happen to the WildStorm Universe, a specific superhero setting with its own rules and concepts, much as the DC and Marvel Universes themselves.

I can pretty much guarantee that if you don’t read comics, you won’t recognize many of the titles that I’m going to mention below (although you might use it as a recommended reading list). If you do read comics, you’ll notice me mentioning quite a few examples of the most interesting out-of-the-box superhero stories of the last 20 years. They’re all Wildstorm titles, and they’re all being indefinitely boxed up at the end of this December so that they can maybe be incorporated into the DC Universe.

But before I get into what Wildstorm titles will be affected by the editorial apocalypse, a brief history lesson is in order, for irony’s sake if nothing else.

The Digital Comic Museum is a website that is collecting public domain comic books from the Golden Age of Comics, which is generally thought to be between the 1930s and 1950s, and is making them available for the low, low price of free.

Comic Critics: McBatman delights our little fan hearts.  (This is only half of it.  Read the rest here.)

Also: Context.

A couple of Marvel employee tweets from late last week, joking about the bedbug infestation of Google headquarters, were all the hint we had that Marvel and Google might be communicating publisher-to-search-engine about who-knows-what.

Bleeding Cool says they have an answer, and (as we all might have guessed) it’s about piracy.