When you’re dealing with a hallowed franchise like Watchmen, you have to watch your step around the rabid fanbase. Or maybe, you don’t have to watch it at all, because no matter what you do, you’re going to piss some of them off. In either case, DC Entertainment has just officially confirmed a set of Before Watchmen prequel comic books; guess who’s pissed?

The venerable tumblog DC Women Kicking Ass has gotten a hold of the casting sheet for David E. Kelley‘s Wonder Woman pilot, revealing what looks like the majority of the major characters of the show.

The new show will portray a Wonder Woman who is a “powerful C.E.O.”, and most of the characters named fall into the category of a CEO’s entourage.  A press secretary/best friend, a personal assistant, and a second-in-command-CEO.  Those who don’t fall into that category, naturally, are love interests.

Honestly, our favorite part?  Liberal use of the phrase “open ethnicity” when used to describe casting requirements.

David E. Kelly‘s announced Wonder Woman television show has been shopped around to networks… and nobody’s buying.

According to Deadline Kelly’s pilot script

was reportedly taken out to the broadcast networks on Wednesday night. Fox and ABC passed, while WBTV’s sister network the CW could not afford it…

This left CBS and NBC in play. I hear the CBS executive team was split, while the fluid situation at NBC where new programming chief Bob Greenblatt is yet to take the reins, made it impossible to get the type of license fee that the studio was seeking in order to do the show Kelley had envisioned.

The reason why ABC passed on the pilot is of course because of the network’s association with Disney, who are now the big media company behind Marvel comics.  ABC is currently working on three different Marvel-based television shows, and nobody wants to cross the streams of the Big Two.

The letters page was a hollowed characteristic of the back of a comic issue everywhere for years, becoming so ubiquitous that when the independent comix rebellion against the mainstream got rolling, they still kept that column or two of reader submission and editor response.

But, like most snail mail (with the exception of seemingly immortal trends of junkmail and phonebooks), the letters column was eclipsed by a permutation of the internet, in this case the official fan forum.  DC Comics discontinued their letters page in 2002,  which is right around when I started taking the time to seek out monthly comics.  That said, it’ll be good to see what I’m missing now that DC has announced that they are bringing the letters page back.

In case you’ve been out of the loop (and it’s a pretty tiny loop, so you could easily be excused) there’s more than one Batman now.  Also, one of those Batmans (the original flavor) has been travelling around the world recruiting more Batmans to be his Little Helpers.

I’ll let that sink in.

There has been some controversy over the French-Batman’s-Little-Helper Nightrunner, who is a young French-born Muslim from Clichy-Sous-Bois, the neighborhood rocked by riots in 2005, who was motivated by the death of a radical friend at the hands of the police to fight against Islamic nationals and terrorists in the French state.

And by controversy, I mean internet controversy.  Which is to say, some random people who have nothing to do with the comics industry and, in fact, nothing to do with France, said some racist and religiously intolerant stuff about the choice; and no one in the comics industry or, in fact, France, has yet responded.

Designer Leeora Catalan‘s nOir Jewelry has just released pictures of their new line of DC comics jewelry based on the women of the comics universe, and it’s kind of shockingly awesome.

Sadly, that beautiful Wonder Woman cuff does not appear to be available yet, so I can’t go to its page to see just how much more-than-I-would-be-able-to-spend it costs. And I don’t even like having stuff on my wrists that much.

Oh, and there are also some cuff-links, guys.

With the totally definite termination of its long running hit-with-dubious-relationship-to-actual-DC-Canon Smallvile at the end of this season, the CW has been looking around for some other teen superhero programming to fill the void.

Batman, the original protagonist of the show that eventually became Smallville; and Robin, the protagonist of 2008′s almost greenlit The Graysons, are both out; due to legitimate worries of running a Batman themed teen drama while Christopher Nolan‘s much darker Batman films were being released. Wonder Woman’s getting her own show somewhere else down the line, and canon-disregarding Birds of Prey was abandoned after one season, so who is left?

Raven, apparently.

Nintendo Will Go Next-Gen After They Sell 45 million Wiis to the US (GameInformer)

Batgirl Wants Equal Pay (Comics Alliance)

DC Comics Office Clearly Hasn’t Been Remodeled Since The 90′s (Bleeding Cool)

GoDaddy Now Defaults Users to .co URLs (/.)

4chan vs. Tumblr (Urlesque)

This 5-foot Scale Gundam Costs $3.8k (io9)

10 Green Sci-Fi Movies (TDW)

(pic via Reddit.)

Earlier this week, professional comic book artist Leigh Gallagher took to his blog to post a marriage proposal to his girlfriend Niki in comic strip form. Here’s hoping she says yes!

Update: she did!

A little while ago, FarmVille was offering these costumes to its players, named, respectively SuperFarmvilleMan and SuperFarmvilleWoman. And now… it’s not.  Not only are they not available to purchase, they have been removed from the accounts of those who bought them in return for refunds.  And we know how Zynga feels about refunds.

The most likely reason for the yank?  Well… just look at them.