Cool Dudes Talk About H.P. Lovecraft (Comic Book Resources)

They’re Making a Petz MMO?! (Massively)

This is What Happens When You Go Out To Eat With Jim Lee (Twitpic)

The Marvel Universe Goes Speed Dating (Comics Alliance)

Emma Stone is Mary Jane? (Bleeding Cool)

Fractal Cupcakes, Mmmmm (Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories)

Who is the Swedish Chef’s Wife? (ToughPigs)

(pic is P. Craig Russel‘s alternate cover to Action Comics #894 (you know, the one with Death), via Paul Cornell, click to embiggen.)

“I was just thinking about the day Jim Lee and Scott Dunbier took me and Bryan Hitch and a few other people out to dinner in London in order to explain to us that DC were buying Wildstorm. What they were really worried about was how Alan Moore was going to take it. I spoke to Alan a couple of days later. “I’m affecting a cane, these days,” he said, “and when I got out of the taxi I took to meet them at the train station, they saw me emerging from a black car with what looked like a cudgel in my fist and went very pale.’

I still wish I’d thought of that, as occasionally I have to walk with a cane and chose not to take it to London with me because the leg was behaving itself.”

Warren Ellis, and he’s actually talking about the end of Wildstorm, from here he goes on to make some (more) interesting points, which you can read after the jump.

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.

Nationalism, it’s just so cute and old fashioned, dontcha think?

Right. So… Fox News is reporting about the Wonder Woman costume change, so that you can decide:

Wonder Woman may have finally been given a pair of pants, but has she been stripped of her patriotism?

The new and allegedly improved Wonder Woman (a.k.a Diana Prince), has been given a head-to-toe makeover by artist Jim Lee, replacing her signature American flag decorated briefs with skintight black pants and purging the super hero of all her trappings of Americana.

You can see our reporting on the new costume, right here. Whether or not you decide anything from it is up to you. We don’t want to pressure anyone.

In the interest of proper comics education, we’d like to let Fox News know that they could have much better reasons to call Wonder Woman un-Patriotic (by their own definition) if they spent the time to find out more about her than what you get from watching the opening sequence from the Lynda Carter show.

It was revealed yesterday in the New York Times, and now we’ve gotten the official word from The Source: Wonder Woman #600 releases today, with a new costume and a new backstory.

Well, it’s a new backstory in the same sense that Star Trek was a restart.  Literally.

DC Comics, the more senior half of the Big Two, announced that they are also going to be diving in to the realm of digital distribution, and doing so even more aggressively than Marvel. DC will be creating a iThing App, as well as partnering with Comixology.com and the PlayStation Network to bring comic books straight to your PSP, iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, or desktop computer.  From The Source:

“At DC Comics, it has been a top priority that DC forges a meaningful, forward-looking digital strategy,” said Jim Lee, Co-Publisher, DC Comics. “As both a comic book creator and Co-Publisher, it was incredibly important that our plan includes not only creator incentive payments, but also an innovative component that supports comic shop owners. We see digital as an opportunity to grow our entire business.”

Digital distribution that supports brick and mortar stores?  People keep saying this, and we keep wincing.

This weekend is Wondercon and of course announcements are rolling out to let us know what to expect from the world of comics, movies, and science fiction. The two that have caught our eye are not exactly what we would call reassuring.

DC Comics has announced that Frank Miller and Jim Lee are still dedicated to the long running “deadline challenged” series of All-Star Batman and Robin, and will be starting up a new series Dark Knight: Boy Wonder, to begin running in February 2011. They promise that these issues will ship on time. Without, you know, switching to a bi-monthly schedule halfway through. And then a five month delay on the last issue which ultimately has to be recalled.

Read on...

What happens when I sit at home and play WoW all day, and forget to pick up my comics? I miss stuff like major changes in the running of the company that I buy most of my comics from. (Strategically announced on the day of the week furthest from New Comic Day? We wonder.)

This Thursday saw major upheaval in the governance of DC Comics. Until now, the company was headed up by Paul Levitz, in the position of President and Publisher. According to an announcement made on the The Source, the official DC Universe blog, Levitz is leaving the positions, and will be replaced by six people. Namely, Co-Publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio, Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns, Executive VP of Sales, Marketing, and Business Development John Rood, and Executive VP of Finance and Administration Patrick Caldon. These so-called “High Five” will report directly to DC Entertainment’s President, Diane Nelson.

A rundown of the artists on DC’s new executive management team after the jump.