We went to a screening of SUPERMAN RETURNS courtesy of Shelton Drum last night, and had a great time discussing it afterwards on the van ride back to the hotel with Mike Oeming, Colleen Doran, Craig Hamilton, Neil Volkes and Steve and Dana Saffel. If that isn’t a wide ranging panel, we don’t know what is. Steve and Dana had the same objections to it that I did, while others looked on it more favorably. The evening was also the occasion of The Beat’s most embarrassing moment EVER, one involving — and we are NOT MAKING THIS UP — baby canola oil, camouflage underwear and Rosario Dawson.

All of our problems with SUPERMAN RETURNS were magnified upon a second viewing. In fact, here’s Things We Learned While Watching SUPERMAN RETURNS (SPOILERS!!!):
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MTV caught up with James Cameron at the PIRATES 2 premiere; the reclusive helmer hasn’t made a film in NINE years, but he seems to be ramping up for two including the manga adaptation BATTLE ANGEL:

The first of these films is a long-rumored love story to be set against the backdrop of a planet-hopping future — and has been known by several names. ” ‘Project 880,’ we’ll probably release it as ‘Avatar,’ ” he said, mentioning two such aliases. “We haven’t locked in on the title yet, but this is what we are calling it. [There will be] possible sequels if it does well; if it tanks, no.”

“We’re going to do ‘Avatar’ first, and we’re in active pre-production on it right now,” he added. “I’m directing it; I’m directing all these films.

“And with ‘Battle Angel,’ also, we’ll do the same thing,” Cameron said of his second project, a sci-fi thriller about a female cyborg in the 26th century. ” ‘Battle Angel’ is actually designed as a three-film cycle. So the logic there is to make one and, if it hits, boom-boom on the other two.”

“If you want to know more about ‘Battle Angel,’ you can get the graphic novels,” the director said of his source material. “There’s a series of 10 graphic novels, the original 10, by a Japanese artist named [Yukito] Kishiro.”

The tech-minded Cameron added that although he watched with great interest as “Sin City” filmmaker Robert Rodriguez reinvented the graphic-novel movie with his green-screen breakthroughs, “Angel” won’t be such a slave to the colored page. “It’ll be a cinematic style; it won’t be a moving graphic novel,” he revealed. “I think what Robert did with ‘Sin City’ was a spectacular visual experiment; I think it worked brilliantly, but that’s not what I’m going for. It’s more of a cinematic, photo-real feel.”

It’s the biggest anime/manga fest of the year, highlighted by the epochal appearance of CLAMP! Pata has an entertaining run down of panels

1:00-2:00 pm CLAMP Panel Seating. Yes, the pre-event seating counts as something major, because I would like to see this just for the catfighting that will inevitably ensue. A cosplay Kamui will battle a cosplay Fuuma for front row, several Chis will go flying, and I hope that anyone dressed as Sakura has a sturdy staff, because it might come in handy.

2:00-5:00 pm CLAMP Focus Panel The only focus panel to be held in the Main Events ballroom (~4500 seats) because it will attract THAT many people. I feel sorry for anyone else hosting a panel against this time: J-rocker Mana, Broccoli Intl., Bang Zoom, the Robotech people … well, I’m sure that they’ll get their fair share of congoers who feel that battling for CLAMP isn’t worth it.

More in link.

Robin Brenner, Creator & Editor in Chief of Noflyingnotights.com, wrote to give us some much needed background on the graphic novel panel at the recent ALA show which Neil Gaiman reported on and we quoted:

First, just to say, we were all thrilled that Neil Gaiman took the time to attend our panel. Both the panelists and the audience were very excited to have such an honored guest attend our presentation.

There was, however, context for the panel that may not be apparent.

At ALA, there have been numerous programs in the past on graphic novels in general, from how to start a collection to where to collect them to what titles are the best for all kinds of librarians. We librarians have been supporters of graphic novels of all kinds for many years now. I can personally attest to the years of work that have gone into establishing the first official ALA list recognizing graphic novels, YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens Selection List, the first list to be announced in January 2007. All of our panelists have been working for years (some for decades) as advocates for graphic novels.

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The New York Times looks at the “Slick. Young. Hip. Powerful.” world of studio execs, a lizardlike world where face and ritual rule and knowledge is powerless and truth is a rumor. This generation of players may be slick, hip and powerful, but they still like their comic books, as we witness the primal scene: an account of the pitch of a familiar comics property:

Then Bender got to the matter at hand, a pitch for a movie based on “Y: The Last Man,” a graphic novel by Brian Vaughan, Pia Guerra and José Marzan Jr.

The basic idea, as is often the case in today’s Hollywood, is quite simple: The movie begins with shots of all the world’s men - presidents, airline pilots, farmers, doctors and the rest - dropping dead for an unknown reason. All except one, a slacker who spends the rest of the movie battling a ticking clock as he hunts down the reason for the genetic apocalypse while trying to adjust to being the only man left with billions of women.

“There are 15 of these ‘last man left’ stories going around the town, but they’re all comedies,” said Brener, who shepherded the hit “Wedding Crashers” to the screen last summer. “This is a thriller and a love story. It could work.”

Bender grinned and reached for his BlackBerry. He has sold projects like “Monster-in- Law” and “The Butterfly Effect” to Brener, and he smelled pay dirt. “Wait till Richard hears the part where the only ones left picking up the garbage are supermodels,” he said to a reporter.

Seeing as how we were responsible for getting a new round of “Preacher is an HBO miniseries” rumors going, we decided we would go straight to the horses mouth and get the skinny from writer Garth Ennis who says: NO GO. Those brother’s cousin stories have been refuted by “sources” at other places, but this is as definitive as it gets.

“There’s been a steady buzz,” of interest, he says, but there is no TV show in production. “I think I would know if it had gone that far. Someone at HBO likes it and they may have mentioned this to other people but in terms of anything solid, there’s nothing at all.”

Ennis did say that he’s looking forward to THE BOYS, his new creator-owned book with Darick Robertson due from Wildstorm later this year, which he thinks will cause some comment. He also confirmed he’s working on a project created by John Woo at Virgin Comics. So there may be no HBO series in his future, but he is a busy, busy boy.

As we’ve often mentioned here, as monopolies go, Diamond is one of the most benevolent ones out there. We often hear general kvetching about Diamond, but also admissions that they have gone out of their way on many occasions to help out publishers and cartoonists. Thus we present the following story not as a scathing condemnation but rather as a head scrtaching look at How Things Work.

Over at his blog, Comics Comics PictureBox’s Dan Nadel reveals that Diamond has rejected most of his output, a group of art comics that includes:

Paper Rad, BJ and da Dogs by Ben Jones/Paper Rad, Me a Mound by Trenton Doyle Hancock and Incanto by Frank Santoro.

I should note that Paper Rad has exhibited work in museums and galleries internationally, including the Tate, Britain, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and Pace Wildenstein, New York. Hancock, meanwhile, was featured in two Whitney Biennials as well as the documentary Art: 21, and his work was recently featured at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He’s one of the most important young artists in North America. Santoro is the creator of Storeyville, generally considered as one of the five best comic books of the 1990s, and a well-regarded painter himself. PictureBox, meanwhile, won a Grammy last year for our package design of Wilco’s A Ghost is Born. Oh, and both myself and company have recently been profiled in LA Weekly and The Washington Post. All of this is not to puff up my chest, but to note that it’s not exactly amateur night over here. Anyhow, our other books are distributed to museums and stores worldwide by the most prestigious art book distributor in the country, DAP. Just
not to comic book stores.

Yesterday I received a slim envelope from Diamond containing form letters detailing their reasons for rejecting each and every one of my titles: Cold Heat, which is a standard comic book, was rejected because “The format you have chosen for your title is unpopular with collectors and retailers.” Let me repeat that: Cold Heat is a standard sized comic book. Huh.

Nadel goes on to list more reasons for rejection: substandard art and so on. He’s not accusatory, although he does worry that Diamond rejecting his publications is stunting the growth of the medium., concluding: “But, honestly, I have to wonder: if it’s good enough for MoMA, why not for Diamond?”
Nadel’s publications aren’t for everyone, or for folks who enjoy easy reading. But they should be seen. And will be. Developing.

Over here at SBM we look at the daily Comic-con countdown at Sky McCloud’s LJ and despair. Time is short. Is there any general clearinghouse of room-swapping, help wanted and so on out there? If no one has set this up yet, someone is missing a bet! Anway, we know Claypool Comics need booth help, as does NBM. Marketing Mnager Tony Shelton writes:

At this time of the year, however, I am primarily bedeviled by an NBM problem: staffing the NBM booth at the SD Con. It’s not easy to come across country and find qualified booth help. Heck, it’s not easy to find UNqualified booth help. It’s best, of course, to find customer care workers who know a little about NBM books, and know how to provide fast, efficient sales help. Register experience is a plus. Actually having a talent for hand-selling is cool, too.

We will provide a badge (ATTEND THE CON FOR FREE!) and an hourly wage (or, if you are a retailer, we can credit your store’s account.)

What we can’t do: pay for your travel, parking, or lodging. The wage may end up compensating for your meals, plus a bit more depending on how many hours you can give us.

Please contact me as soon as possible. Tension’s mounting. I can fill part-time or full-time slots. At this point, full-time is preferred. We will be setting up later Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday, and will need help packing up Sunday once the show is over.

You can reach me at email at Shenton4Sales@aol.com.

If anyone else has help wanted listings, send ‘em to us and we’ll get ‘em posted. While going to the big show with nothing to do might sound like fun, think how much funner it would be to be a PART of things! Seriously.

\We also know of lots of folks looking for roommates or rooms. We don’t have time to play matchmaker, but are happy to point peeps in the right direction.

Answer: Superman is Jesus.

The rest of my comments are going to be spoilerish, so you might want to avoid the jump if you’re sensitive.
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World need savior

E&P has the story of Ted Rall joining United Media in a new position set up to acquire and develops new and emerging cartoonists.

It could not immediately be determined whether Rall will be a staffer or consultant for United, because he and UM Senior Vice President/General Manager Lisa Klem Wilson were unavailable for comment this morning. A UM spokesperson did say Rall’s own work will continue to be distributed by Universal Press Syndicate rather than move to UM.“We are thrilled to have Ted’s expertise on United’s creative team,” Wilson said in a statement. “He is not only a talented cartoonist, but he is also an accomplished writer and editor with an eye for what can work in syndication. Ted has his ear to the ground and he knows where to look to find more edgy content that appeals to younger readers and addresses the needs of today.”

Reactions from around the blogdome to yesterday’s Roundtable Rumble:
Johanna
David Welsh
Manga Blog
Tom and Calvin go a round
Chris Butcher 2

There were no winners here. Only sad, sad losers. It’s always flattering to be held to the Higher Standard. Lacking x-ray vision and ice breath, let alone inspirational teachings from Jor-El, we can only resolve to Do Better. We sure would like to see everyone else do their own Industry Roundtable, however, since everyone seems to know how to do it, and that is NOT meant as a slam. Everything can always be better, and there seems to be a desperate need for such a thing.