Who is Hellen Jo? We already previewed her contribution to THE GIRLS’ GUIDE TO GUYS’ STUFF, but poking around her website is like poking around your eye. A preoccupation with vomit and other mishaps coupled with an energetic line make her sort of…maybe like the girl version of Johnny Ryan? Check it out.

At Rocketship in Carroll Garden.

At Chicago Comics

Saturday, June 30th, Chicago Comics will host two of comics hottest writers. Be there for Attack of The Brians signing from noon to two p.m or miss everything.

Brian Wood debuted in 1997 as creator of the acclaimed series CHANNEL ZERO and has quickly risen to become one of the most important indie creators of the last decade. He is the man behind COURIERS, DEMO, SUPERMARKET, LOCAL, DMZ and has earned multiple Eisner Award nominations.#

Brian Azzarello is the writer and co-creator of 100 BULLETS, winner of the 2002 Harvey Award and the 2002 and 2004 Eisner Award for best continuing series. Some of Azzarellos’s other writing credits include LOVELESS, JONNY DOUBLE, GANGLAND, and an Eisner-nominated run on HELLBLAZER.

Jeff Smith is working on a new comic!!!!! According to his blog:

The image above is the cover for a 6 page preview comic I’m working on for the San Diego Comic-Con International. It’s also going to be the cover of RASL no.1 when the series starts coming out from Cartoon Books in 2008.

Best news of the week, for sure.

What are spoilers, anyway? Their history in nerd chronology perhaps goes back to the premiere of RETURN OF THE JEDI, when the New York Post, I believe, revealed that LEIA WAS LUKE’S SISTER DAYS BEFORE THE MOVIE OPENED. The young Beat read that spoiler but still went to see the movie opening night, for the Post had not spoiled the magic nor the fact that the Empire would be defeated by weeping teddy bears. Actually The Post had mentioned the teddy bears, just not the weeping.

It was that wonderful surprise that enabled us to still enjoy ROTJ. Honestly, what is it with all the spoilers nowadays? We don’t mind a few hints and clues, but why do you think they call it SPOILers? They SPOIL things! We heard the secret of THE SIXTH SENSE before we saw it and instead of the delightful mind trip everyone else had we saw a dull, plodding movie.
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loan spain officer in

[2] These manufacturers account for over 80% of all loans home equity citibank s sold and produce phones for sale in most countries.

Dr. Sketchy appears at the Lucky Cat in Williamsburg tomorrow night:

Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, the best damn cabaret life drawing class in the world began as the brain child of Brooklyn based artist Molly Crabapple. In the year and a half since its inception, Dr. Sketchy’s has strived to bring its patrons more than the average life drawing class by featuring models from New York’s thriving burlesque scene and through encouraging interaction between patrons and models with games and prizes provided by local sponsors, and is frequently attended by many local artists and illustrators such as Fred Harper, illustrator for The Week and most recently a contributor to the Hollywood Zombies card set for Topps, Jamal Igle penciller of the Dc Comics titles Nightwing and Firestorm, and Khary Randolph artist of the Animated Spawn comic.

Saturday June 30th will be no exception as Dr. Sketchy’s Anti Art School holds a very special session featuring Stormy Leather and The White Boom Boom inspired by your favorite copy-righted, lawyer protected Marvel characters. Watch as we transform The Lucky Cat Lounge, located at 245 Grand St. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn into the as these extra-ordinary characters come to life and give us all a little more than we bargained for!

Want more information? Visit the Dr. Sketchy’s website at www.drsketchy.com where you can find the schedule for the founding branch, locate a Dr. Sketchy’s in your area, and view the blog featuring photos, video clips, and recaps of previous Dr. Sketchy sessions.

www.myspace.com/drsketchy

www.mollycrabapple.com

PR:

Joss Whedon has long been championed by women around the world for his depiction of strong female characters. His breakout hit television show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer featured Buffy Anne Summers, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar as the young woman chosen by fate to battle demons, vampires, and other nightmares. Buffy inspired a generation with the show’s powerful depiction of women overcoming all odds to defeat the forces of darkness.

Dark Horse has been the proud publisher of the companion comics since 1998, and earlier this year brought Buffy back with a direct follow-up to season seven of the smash-hit TV series, written by Joss himself!

Now, Joss has teamed up with Dark Horse and eBay to offer fans a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sit down to a private dinner–with Joss himself– at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. Beginning on July 2nd, fans will have the opportunity to bid on seats at his table, all for a worthwhile cause. The charity auction will run from July 2 to July 12, and also offers additional rarities, including signed editions of Dark Horse’s upcoming Serenity hardcover. For complete details, visit ebay.com/josswhedon.

Funds raised from the charity auction will benefit Equality Now, an organization founded in 1992 to work for the protection and promotion of the human rights of women around the world. Working with national human rights organizations and individual activists, Equality Now documents violence and discrimination against women and mobilizes international action to support their efforts to stop these human rights abuses. For more information, please visit equalitynow.org.

The event is being managed on eBay by Auction Cause, a premier online auction management agency specializing in high-profile design, strategy, and cause marketing for corporations and nonprofits worldwide. For more information, please visit www.auctioncause.com

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§ Tintin Pantoja goes to a comicon in INDONESIA!:

Since I couldn’t attend MoCCA this year, I dropped by an Indonesian analogue- KONDEFEST- this weekend. It was a loose conglomeration of thatched kiosks in a park near the marina. Very hot and not the most pleasant place to spend more than a couple of hours, so I had to admire the people who came out here to sell their comics. About 70% were selling manga-influenced minicomics- not surprising, considering translated manga is more widely avaibale here than any other comic. You’ll find piles of them in local bookstores, all printed on cheap newsprint and selling anywhere from US$0.75-1.50. The majority of artists were university students from the central Javanese college town of Bandung (about three hours away) selling photocopied minis.

§ TimeOut Chicago has a great interview with Brad Bird whose RATATOUILLE is inspiring rapture:

People have a real hard time pegging me politically, which I’m fine with. Certain liberals got upset with the lines like, “It’s not a graduation! He’s moving from the fourth grade to the fifth!” And conservatives get upset about my position about weaponry in The Iron Giant, and one guy even thought that the movie was pro-Communist, which is completely ridiculous. And I can’t do anything about how people perceive my films except to say, Well, that ain’t what I was thinkin’. Politically, I’m somewhere in the middle. I’m for the individual, which definitely puts me at odds with this cultural tendency to give everyone a trophy just for showing up. I hate that, because I’m sorry, life doesn’t work that way. There are winners and losers, and losing can actually build character, and the nervousness about failure is a priceless thing that can stimulate you to do your best work.

§ Nathan Rabin at The A.V. Club takes a look at notable film flops such as Ralph Bakshi’s Cool World (1992) :

Bakshi was back! One of cinema’s great bitter, jilted cranks was suddenly overcome with a tricky emotion I believe you earthlings call “hope.” But if Bakshi’s long and tortured career had taught him anything, it’s that dreams exist to be crushed and hope is for suckers. Accordingly, the film’s producer Frank Mancusco Jr., had the film rewritten without, um, telling Bakshi. Mancusco Jr., it seems, having produced the timeless gift to cinema that is the Friday The 13th series, was burnt out on horror and seemed to linger under the misconception that it was Bakshi’s job to help realize Frank Mancusco’s vision, not the other way around.

Bakshi was so enraged, he punched Mancuso in the face during a dust-up, but in one of those dark little twists that characterize Bakshi’s surreal career, Mancuso Sr. was president of Paramount, so he had nowhere else to go.

A subsequent post looks at Tank Girl.

Neil Gaiman is off in Budapest learning how to direct movies from Guillermo del Toro. Luckily he took daughter Maddie along and she’s been reporting from the set and posting an awful lot of pictures that we’re surprised they let out

Today we went on location to film Hellboy 2 and it definitely was not as fun for me. The temperature was about 100° F and 38° C, meaning it was quite hot! I got a little tan on my arms though! Anyway, they were filming up on a hill and I wasn’t allowed to go up there so I just had to sit down by myself and read my book, and occasionally people would tell me to move because I was in the camera shot. They are building a whole troll town in a quarry for the movie, and we got to go visit it today. The air felt really good down there because it was quite cold!! We had to wear hard-hats. Tee hee hee! Apparently where we were filming on location there were many ticks, and I was just wearing white flip-flops. Guillermo wanted me to wear socks so my feetsies wouldn’t be exposed to the ticks. We went to costumes to see if they had any socks, and they did. Unfortunately it was a pair of men’s long black socks. I think I might have looked a little funny walking around in pink shorts, black socks, and white flip-flops. Talk about embarrassing.

PR:

It was the book that helped put BOOM! Studios on the map, with fans and critics singing its praises, but co-creators and writers Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis have announced that HERO SQUARED will soon be ending. That’s the bad news. The good news is that the two Eisner Award winning writers promise an actual ending to the current storyline, something positively unheard of in this day and age, sorting out the tangled relationships between Milo Stone, Captain Valor, Stephie Johnson and Caliginous. (Sloat we’re not so sure about.)

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Cut down from FirstShowing.net’s release schedule. Here’s a handicapped list.

March 28 (Friday)
Wanted

May 2 (Friday)
Iron Man

May 9 (Friday)
Speed Racer

May 22 (Thursday)
Indiana Jones 4

June 13 (Friday)
The Incredible Hulk

July 2 (Wednesday)
Tonight, He Comes (Will Smith superhero movie— has has a name change.)

July 18 (Friday)
The Dark Knight

August 1 (Friday)
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

BTW we have been FRIGHTFULLY remiss in not posting pictures of Angelina Jolie on the Prague location of WANTED walking her kids to school!

Apparently Brad puts on that hat every day. So cute!

Meanwhile, author M ark Millar Recently went to the set and has some impressions. You really should read the whole thing, because Millar is an entertaining writer, but here’s a little peek.

Despite a five hour delay in Amsterdam, I had a great time and there is nothing– I mean NOTHING– more surreal than wandering around enormous, high school-sized sets of something that lived only in your head just a few years before. I wandered around Wesley’s apartment, touched the bedframe you saw on the splash page of issue two, sat on the chair where he was being toughened up just a few pages later and watched, in awe, the final edit of the scene from the end of the first issue. I promised Universal’s white-hot PR chick I wouldn’t get more specific, but trust me when I say I’m still grinning from how good this looks. In a country where you can get a Big Mac for the equivalent of 50 cents you can imagine what 100 million dollars looks like on-screen. I saw the first 25 minutes of the movie itself and it’s jaw-dropping. As we all know, the super-villains are quite different kinds of villains now, but this first act is almost scene for scene the first two issues of the comic, right down to the dialogue and the captions. I couldn’t be more happy with it. Timur is amazing. The west doesn’t know what they’re getting next March or how great he is yet. I instantly clicked with him as a guy and we’re talking about another project together. I genuinely think he’s the next big thing, perhaps the best action director around at the moment.

However, the FOOD on set did not agree with the Crohn’s challenged scribe, so he was forced to eat at McDonalds every day.

Mark, you are daft.

Have Bruce Campbell walk you through his stash. A mystery unfolds.

Harlan Ellison posted this at his site tonight:

RE: ELLISON v. FANTAGRAPHICS, INC., et al: THE LITIGATION BETWEEN THE PARTIES HAS BEEN RESOLVED. THE PARTIES ARE NOT AT LIBERTY TO DISCUSS THE TERMS OF THE RESOLUTION. AT THIS TIME.

Man that was FAST!

by Marc-Oliver Frisch

DC Comics’ big launch in May was, of course, the weekly Countdown. Succeeding the tremendously successful 52 and widely publicized as the “spine of the DC Universe” for the coming twelve months, Countdown seems to be met with high expectations by the publisher: It has to deliver as an event book in its own right; and, unlike 52, it also has to serve as the lynchpin of a large-scale crossover with a plethora of tie-ins and spin-off books coming up, all of which are going to live or die on the popularity of the mother title. Do the first four issues of Countdown live up to those expectations? Well, look below for an answer.

In other news, DC’s average and total periodical sales were down again in May. This comes as no surprise, given that April’s World War III event miniseries was effectively ordered as four extra issues of 52 and resulted in a sizable sales boost. With the perennial bestseller Justice League of America, the erratically shipping All Star Batman and a strong final issue for 52, the publisher had three books selling beyond the 100,000 unit mark in May. However, they remained the only DC titles to make the Top 15 that month. The only new title coming from DC’s sub-labels, meanwhile, was the TV adaptation Supernatural: Origins. In other words, it was yet another very, very, very quiet month for Vertigo and WildStorm, in terms of periodicals.

On a cautiously positive note, I should mention that, for the first time in ages, all DC Comics periodicals solicited for May actually did come out that month, for a change. With the exception of the supposedly ongoing Doctor Fate monthly, that is, which has been reworked into a different format and is now set to launch in September. And, of course, a few books were an issue or two behind their schedules. And, sure enough, this doesn’t cover the bunch that remain in production limbo and weren’t solicited to begin with, either. Or the ones which were on a planned skip month in May. Or the fact that several major and minor titles solicited for June have already been pushed back to July. But still. It’s a start. See below for the details.

Thanks to Milton Griepp and ICv2.com for the permission to use their figures. An overview of ICv2.com’s estimates can be found here.

—–

3 - JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA
05/2001: JLA #54            —  69,390*
05/2002: JLA #66            —  60,581*
05/2003: JLA #81            —  60,316
05/2004: JLA #96            —  70,377 [ 71,546]
05/2004: JLA #97            —  68,170 [ 70,446]
05/2005: JLA #114           —  63,934
————————————–
07/2006: Justice League #0  — 162,378 (+118.4%) [169,199]
08/2006: Justice League #1  — 212,581 (+ 30.9%) [251,266]
09/2006: Justice League #2  — 143,412 (- 32.5%) [158,480]
10/2006: –
11/2006: Justice League #3  — 140,939 (-  1.7%) [143,310]
12/2006: Justice League #4  — 136,709 (-  3.0%) [139,123]
12/2006: Justice League #5  — 132,460 (-  3.1%) [133,924]
01/2007: –
02/2007: –
03/2007: Justice League #6  — 130,099 (-  1.8%) [131,754]
04/2007: Justice League #7  — 154,984 (+ 19.1%)
04/2007: Justice League #8  — 130,365 (- 15.9%)
05/2007: Justice League #9  — 129,285 (-  0.8%)
—————–
6 months: -  8.3%
1 year  :    n.a.
2 years : +102.2%

Sales remain high for the second month of “The Lightning Saga,” a crossover with Justice Society of America which runs through both titles. The lack of a boost from the book’s established range suggests that there’s going to be a drop with issue #11, once the crossover storyline is over. So far, though, the book keeps generating great sales.

As usual, retailers were able to order a variant cover edition for every ten copies ordered of the regular edition, which likely enhanced the numbers. A fourth printing of issue #1 sold another 4,375 units in May, meanwhile, and a second printing of issue #2 shifted an additional 3,557 copies.

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The comics shop Universe of Heroes in Athens, OH was destroyed in a fire:

The two owners face an estimated $100,000 in lost merchandise — a cost that will fall on them. Insurance is expected to cover the estimated $200,000 in damages to the building and the apartments above the store.

“We must gather what is left of the store and try to build back up,” Grace said.

Insurance on structural damage covers all of the building including the apartments above the store.

From the heart of the Crab Nebula, a great hero shall come! With his own comic. EW previews the long-promised Stephen Colbert’s Tek Jansen comic from Oni with interviews with writers John Layman and Jim Massey, and a preview of the back-up story. Massey spills on Colbert’s participation:

He mostly addresses individual lines and jokes, but he did provide some direction to help clarify things for me. The note that had the most impact was his desire that Tek Jansen not have any reference to the reality of our Earth. I think he realized that the fact that the Tek character exists in the context of the Colbert show means that it has some echoes of the real world no matter what you put in — so it’s almost too on-the-nose to make jokes that reference real-world goings on. So if, say, I would make a joke based on mad cow disease, that wasn’t appropriate.

Ellison V Groth goes to mediation! Two men enter…several lawyers walk out.

In the wake of MoCCA, many comical types talk about good comics, none of which we managed to get a copy of.

§ Jog looks at THE buzz book, My Boy by Olivier Schrauwen.

§ Craig Yoe has his top ten which has many gems we must look for in the future.

§ “Ben Boxer” looks at his mini-comics haul.

The latter mentions Laura Park, who we heard several people raving over, and a check of her Flickr page reveals why.

Jesus lord, where are all these talented people coming from???

The Wired blog reports that Telltale Games is reprinting Surfin’ The Highway: The Collected Sam & Max. The book includes both the priceless originals and more recent bonus material.

The original printing is super-rare these days, fetching between $150-200 through Amazon used book sellers. Pretty pricey for a trade paperback!

Telltale is also prepping a two-disc Sam and Max Episode 1 soundtrack release, which of course everyone is excited about. Everyone.

Telltale has been producing Sam & Max videogames of late, and you can see a whole line of fine products at their website, which promise, “The Summer of Sam & Max.”

If you’ve ever read Purcell’s unique madness, you know how good this is. If you haven’t, well you’re in for a treat. Or you can read the Eisner-nominated webcomic here, but be forwarned it’s in some kind of lofi animation so you have to hold your cursor over the panels to read the dialog.

More info.

According to one survey, almost 1 in 4 Japanese men between 30-34 is a virgin:

“There are 11 percent of people who gave an invalid answer to the survey and I bet you the vast majority of them would be virgins. And though there is also 65 percent who said they have had sex, that also includes the guys whose only experience is a single session at the brothel and nothing since, so there are a lot of virtual virgins in amongst them, too,” Watanabe says.

The Japan Cherry Boy Association currently boasts of 517 members whose ages range from their teens to their 40s. Many join the association in the hopes that women will visit its website and try to pick them up. Some members, albeit only a few, actually succeed in “graduating” from the club by successfully experiencing sex.

Some have found comfort in works of fiction:

Conservative virgins argue that they’ve had enough of real women and would prefer two-dimensional types such as those found in manga and anime, who are also not going to lead them to the pain of rejection.

We’ve been poking around lately trying to figure out if things like NYMPHET are normal fun for the whole family or outlets for more dysfunctional aspects of Japanese society; answering such a question is far beyond the scope of one little blog. However we have heard repeated mentions of a Japanese “sex crisis” as in many young women and men not having any. We also are reminded that lots of shojo(girls) comics are actually read by young men. (And girls read shonen.) Anyway, we dont’ have any answers…just throwing that out there.

[Found via Simon at Icarus]

At long last, Lea Hernandez resumes the web version of RUMBLE GIRLS with RUNAWAY LIGHTNING OHMRY. Yay!

Lee Hester posts a history of his comics shop complete with photos of authentic 80s clothing and computers:

You always hear a lot about overnight successes. I was an overnight failure. My first day, my “Grand Opening” I made $150 in sales. After that it was an average of around $20 a day for quite a while. Nobody knew about my store. Eventually I was making an average of $100 a day. Meanwhile, my competition, Comics and Comix in downtown Palo Alto was averaging 1,000 a day. Ten times better than me! Most people in Palo Alto knew about Comics and Comix, but they didn’t know about me. I tried to make up for my competition’s vastly superior store and reputation by working on winning over each person that came through the door. Eventually that policy paid off, and I began to break even, but there were some very lean times initially.

Dean Trippe and “Butterfly” do Mocca

Sam Raimi indulges in another one of his Silver Age fantasies as he imagines making Spidey IV with the Sinister Six as the villains:

Ultimately, if Sony considers the price tag too high for another Raimi/Maguire/Dunst collaboration, then the negotiations would turn to keeping Raimi onboard as a producer only. “I would still hope that Sony would offer it to me [to direct] first,” he said. “But that is not my place to say; it would be more about if Sony decided not to go with me. If not, it would be really up to them to come to a solution [for me to still be involved as a producer].”

Either way, if this tangled web does still involve the filmmaker, Raimi has been busy brainstorming about the villains he’d like to get into the next flick. “I would love to see Electro, Vulture, maybe the Sinister Six as a team,” he said.

Over at the Motley Fool, analyst Rick Munarriz frets about Marvel’s move to producing its own movies:

I hate to pick on Marvel (NYSE: MVL), but the disappointing box-office receipts for both Spider-Man 3 and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer have to be troubling for a company that’s about to start rolling out its own action flicks. Disappointing? You think I’m insane, right? After all, Spider-Man 3 smashed the all-time opening weekend record for a theatrical release. The F4 sequel wasn’t as highly anticipated, yet it managed to narrowly beat its predecessor in ticket sales during its first weekend at the multiplex.

Munarriz goes on to argue that the swift box-office declines of these films spelled disappointment, and thinks superheros aren’t as reliable as they used to be. Surely, Marvel’s production path is fraught with peril, but IRON MAN looks pretty solid with a competent director (Favreau) and A-list cast. EVERYTHING drops off at the box office now, as the opening weekend sweepstakes and flood of sequels make it an all-or-nothing race to Monday morning. Still, America’s, nay the world’s love affair with the panties and capes bunch is sure to wax and wane. Marvel could get caught in some freakish mix of circumstances and lose the movie rights to ANT-MAN forever. A lot will happen between now and 2010.