This week’s DC purist thorn of pain comes from the new issue of TEEN TITANS, in which Wendy and Marvin, two characters birthed from the insufferable SUPERFRIENDS cartoon, return, only to be savagely slaughtered by Wonder Dog, who then feasts on their grisly remains.

That is how to do it! I understand that SUPERFRIENDS is a low point, not just in superhero history but the annals of animation (indeed, the name Margaret Loesch in the credits must be seen as one of the true harbingers of cartoon doom.) It is only fitting that Wendy and Marvin get what was coming to them.

Plus, let’s face it, if Grant Morrison or Alan Moore had written this issue, we’d all think it was genius.

James Jean announces he’s leaving FABLES to concentrate on his own art:

“This is a difficult email for me to write. Don’t worry . . . as far as I know, I don’t have any tumors or crippling neuroses, and my taxes are in order. But I feel like I’m breaking up with the prom queen on prom night, after having dated through grades 6 - 12. Feeble analogies aside, it has been an amazing opportunity to work on Fables these past 7 years (8 this October). But I feel that it’s time to devote myself full-time to painting and personal work. Shelly and I talked yesterday, and my last cover will be 81, at the end of the story arc. It has been a true privilege to work on a team that has produced such great chemistry on paper, and to have been a part of such an important book that has entertained and drawn together so many people.

As usual, he’s going out on the same heart-stoppingly beautiful level he came in on.

This story in the WSJ reveals that DC Comics’ days as the shy, studious librarian of the Warners empire are doneski, as Warners bets on a new film strategy with DC at the center. The plan involves fewer films but larger tentpole opportunities for each of them. And all eyes are on DC:

“Films with our DC properties have the opportunity to support other divisions in the company in a way that our other movies don’t,” Mr. Robinov says, for example, with products such as a Superman game or toys. By 2011, Mr. Robinov plans for DC Comics to supply the material for up to two of the six to eight tent-pole films he hopes Warner Bros. will have in the pipeline by then.

These will not be chipper films, like the crash-and-burn of SPEED RACER:

Like the recent Batman sequel — which has become the highest-grossing film of the year thus far — Mr. Robinov wants his next pack of superhero movies to be bathed in the same brooding tone as “The Dark Knight.” Creatively, he sees exploring the evil side to characters as the key to unlocking some of Warner Bros.’ DC properties. “We’re going to try to go dark to the extent that the characters allow it,” he says. That goes for the company’s Superman franchise as well.

News of the film slate is forthcoming:

The studio is set to announce its plans for future DC movies in the next month. For now, though, it is focused on releasing four comic-book films in the next three years, including a third Batman film, a new film reintroducing Superman, and two movies focusing on other DC Comics characters. Movies featuring Green Lantern, Flash, Green Arrow, and Wonder Woman are all in active development.

MEANWHILE, back at the ranch, Val links to a report from the Toronto DC panel which suggests that the new word at DC itself may be “stable characters you can build a franchise on”, at least per Dan Didio.

“What happens is that if a character doesn’t work, we go, ‘We got a brand new direction to put him in! We’re moving him into something new! We’re going to try something brand new and different! We’re going to throw everything out and start over again!’ We make that mistake, but what that does is, it alienates fans.

“Our biggest mistake is that we don’t continue and build on…what we should be doing is let it sit for a while and then come back with a good strong story with what’s going on. That’s what Geoff [Johns] does. That’s Geoff’s secret weapon. He doesn’t throw it all out and start all over. He builds on what’s existed and makes it better…We get too worried about the minutia…all we should be doing is telling great stories with out characters.

“What we’re doing coming out of ‘Final Crisis’ ” and I’ll say this here, and I’ll say this everywhere ” is that we’re locking our characters down. We’re going with a good interpretation, and we’re staying with it. That’s why you don’t see Aquaman right now, because we want it to be clear what it is, who he is and what he’s all about.”

Given THE DARK KNIGHT’s history-making box office performance, it’s unthinkable for DC’s superheroes to remain the wallflowers of the Warner universe. Not one but TWO stories in Variety on Friday pointed this out.

The first puts DC’s superheroes into the wider picture of Warner’s release schedule:

It’s a tentpole whose supersized budget for top talent, lavish action sequences and special effects can pay off big time by selling a helluva lot of tickets — and raking in the dough for other divisions, including TV, homevid, merchandise and vidgames.

If Warners got its way, it would have at least four of those blockbusters a year. Yet the studio is light on tentpoles next summer. Make that most of 2009.

With nothing but the Green Arrow prison drama directly on tap, things look so thin that HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE had to be moved to Summer ‘09 to prevent this year’s Batman-led profits from completely shaming next year’s more modest slate. Here then is the problem: WB’s development feeder.

The other article is a more direct look at what will be done with this potential gold mine of superheroes:

The Time Warner comic-book arm is sitting on a stable of well-known superhero properties like Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and the Justice League, but has been slow to develop the bigscreen adventures.

Getting the movies made would involve many of Warner Bros.’ other divisions — including TV, homevid, consumer products, online and vidgames — that would create tie-in projects for release around the films.

“They need a lot of lead time and it all needs to be choreographed,” Robinov says.

Yet with the dearth of tentpoles next year, those same divisions will have little to work with and will have to focus on more classic product like Looney Tunes.

In other words, the way forward isn’t yet clear. The article quotes WB studio head Alan Horn and production head Jeff Robinov, along with DC’s main movie man, Gregory Noveck, senior VP of creative affairs.
Noveck hasn’t yet emerged as the kind of Avi Arad-like figure who can convert lines on paper to lines in the theater. Robinov may be too preoccupied with larger studio matters to specifically oversee DC’s development.

What this article clearly suggests is that some changes will be made in the way DC movies are moved through the pipeline.

“We’re having a lot of internal discussions on it,” Horn says. “We haven’t committed to any change at DC at this point,” adding that both Warners and DC are committed to turning “the properties into viable movie product in an intelligent way so that we introduce them like planes on a runway. They have to be set up the right way and lined up the right way and all take off one at a time and fly safe and fly straight.”

As expected, THE DARK KNGHT finally fell to number 2 at the box office, although it took a superteam of Nacho Libre, Iron Man and Zoolander to stop him, with a cameo by Ethan Hunt.

Nonetheless, DARK KNIGHT is now officially the second biggest grossing domestic film of all time, and expect a new cottage industry of psychoanalysis as to why. The Guardian lays out various theories in the link, and you know it is serious whenever someone uses the word Manichean!

“Nolan turns the Manichean morality of comic books — pure good vs pure evil — into a bleak post-9/11 allegory about how terror (and, make no mistake, Ledger’s Joker is a terrorist) breaks down those reassuring moral categories,” writes Dana Stevens in the online magazine Slate. If the references weren’t obvious enough, the Time magazine critic Richard Corliss calls the Joker “the Bin Laden of movie villains”.

Both conservatives and liberals have been rushing to claim that The Dark Knight has become such a phenomenon because it validates their beliefs about the ethical issues at the heart of the war on terror. “There seems to me no question that The Dark Knight is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W Bush in this time of terror and war,” the conservative novelist Andrew Klavan writes in The Wall Street Journal. “Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.”

Technorati Tags: Batman wins

First it was 200K, then 250K, then 300k…now the NY Times reports that 900,000 more copies of WATCHMEN have been printed since the trailer debuted. Thus there will be about one million copies of WATCHMEN in print this year. Last year, about 100,000 copies were sold.

Kremlinologists will have a goddam FIELD DAY with this long piece in the New York Times on Time Warner’s new strategy entitled: Holy Cash Cow, Batman! Content Is Back at Time Warner, which details CEO Jeff Bewkes effort to dig TW stock out of the AOL-induced doldrums, an effort to which the success of DARK KNIGHT is integral:

Mr. Meyer is the chairman of Warner Brothers, the Hollywood studio behind “The Dark Knight,” and the film has had its debut at a transformative moment for his studio’s parent, Time Warner.

In an effort to focus more sharply on “content creation” (or what nonsuits still like to call movies and television shows), Jeffrey L. Bewkes, who became chief executive of Time Warner in January, is whittling down the company’s many branches.

It’s a makeover that will unravel about two decades’ worth of mergers that created the company in its current form, putting its trophy studio, Warner Brothers — as well as the ups and downs of moviemaking — more directly in Wall Street’s glare.

Time Warner, initially the amalgam of the old Warner studio and the Time Inc. magazine empire, grew to include Turner Broadcasting, America Online, a cable company and such prized cable channels as HBO. Some analysts have had a hard time embracing this goliath as it has grown into the world’s biggest media company.

The story does not mention DC Comics; however it does mention that TW’s publishing arm is under scrutiny:

It is less clear how the Time Inc. unit, which publishes magazines like Time, People, In Style, Fortune and Sports Illustrated, meshes with Mr. Bewkes’s strategy. According to Time Warner insiders, the company is likely to shrink the publishing unit to just a handful of the most profitable titles. Some analysts predict that Time Warner might try to sell the publishing unit en masse, but only if market conditions improve.

Fortunately, DC Comics is, famously, part of the entertainment division and not part of the publishing arm, a move facilitated over the years by Paul Levitz. One imagines that whatever has been going on with Time Warner of late has also been going on with DC, and this almost certainly ties in to the widely reported “DC movie retreat.”

As someone who’s been in the content production business for a couple of decades, the most interesting quote of all was this:

For Mr. Bewkes and his team, the core of the strategy is a wager that the media pendulum will swing away from distribution and back toward content.

Ya think? That’s one bet we’ll take.

The goddam Batman is rewriting the history books, staying on top again with $26 million to beat the stoner action comedy PINEAPPLE EXPRESS’s $22.4 mil. DARK KNIGHT just passed SHREK 2 to become the third highest domestic grossing film, just behind STAR WARS, which it is expected to pass this week.

An LA Times wire story wonders why a DARK KNIGHT video game has failed to appear:

It’s not as if an interactive “Dark Knight” wasn’t gearing up before the film’s release. Game publisher Electronic Arts had the rights to make a “Dark Knight” title, which EA-owned developer Pandemic Studios was working on, according to an EA manager who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information is proprietary.

Gary Oldman, the actor who plays Gotham City police officer James Gordon, said in a recent interview with cable network G4 that he had seen a “tiny little piece” of “The Dark Knight” game and described a sequence with Batman realistically gliding across rooftops.

Beyond that, details about the game have been as concealed as Bruce Wayne in the Batsuit. Representatives for Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, EA and Pandemic would not comment for this story.

Frankly, we don’t quite know what they’re talking about.

The spectacular hospital explosion in DARK KNIGHT was actually a closed Brach’s candy factory being blown up. Some fellows make a pilgrimage to the site as it stands today.

Thanks, RJ.

Technorati Tags: Batman wins

We’re told this is very funny if you read DC comics.

It’s just a wild, wild guess at this point, but there seem to be some rumors out there that there could possibly be another Batman movie with Christian Bale and Chris Nolan. Just possibly. Splash Page polls comics pros on just who should be the villain if this HIGHLY, HIGHLY speculative movie gets made:

Brad Meltzer (“Identity Crisis”): “The reason the Joker worked is because he’s insane, and Batman is also crazy. You need someone who is more than evil. Anyone who saw Tommy Lee Jones as the cackling lunatic knows that.”

Grant Morrison (“Arkham Asylum”): “Ideally, you want another movie with Heath. Without him, Catwoman, but really think that one through. Give her a new take.”

Technorati Tags: Batman wins

by Marc-Oliver Frisch

In June, DC Comics’ periodical business was mostly defined by all the things that didn’t happen. Final Crisis #2 didn’t seize the top spot. The new weekly Trinity, DC’s big launch of the month, didn’t make the Top 10. The third chapter of “Batman RIP” didn’t show up in stores as scheduled; neither did All Star Batman, Reign in Hell, The Legion of Super-Heroes, Robin, Blue Beetle, Fables, The Exterminators or Northlanders. At Vertigo, the launch of the new monthly Madame Xanadu didn’t much affect average periodical sales. And at WildStorm, average periodical sales didn’t increase from May’s historical low. See below for the details, and please mind the disclaimers at the end of the column. 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 - FINAL CRISIS
05/2008: Final Crisis #1 of 7 — 144,826          [151,704]
06/2008: Final Crisis #2 of 7 — 126,082 (-12.9%)

The bad news first: There’s no sign that the poor performance of Final Crisis in comparison with other blockbuster comics is due to an accounting glitch or because retailers massively misjudged demand when they placed their orders. So far, the numbers we see appear to be an accurate reflection of the book’s reception in the market place.

On the other hand, the second-issue drop in June is relatively small, particularly for a book selling above 100K. Marvel’s Secret Invasion, by comparison, saw a 27.1% drop for its second issue in May, shedding almost 70,000 units, as opposed to the 20,000 copies Final Crisis lost between its first two issues. Final Crisis #1 also made the chart again in June, selling an additional 6,878 copies.

Neither of these things suggests that retailers are rushing to make some significant course correction here, mind you, and Final Crisis sales are still in a different league from those of Secret Invasion. But the modest drop and the reorders may be a hint that the audience is slowly coming around to the book, after all.

Like the debut issue, Final Crisis #2 was promoted with a 50/50 variant-cover edition.

Batman #678, the third chapter of the much-hyped “Batman RIP” arc missed its June shipping date, meanwhile, and didn’t come out until July. The first two parts of the story both made the chart again in June, however, selling an additional 11,809 and 7,959 units, respectively. That’s quite significant, and it suggests that “Batman RIP” is a hit.

(more…)

He just went roaring past on his scooter:

In only its 18th day in release, Warner Bros.’ “The Dark Knight” reached the $400 million mark in domestic sales on Monday, grossing $6.3 million for a cume of $400.1 million.

That easily beats the 43 days it took “Shrek 2″ to jump the $400 million boundary.

THE DARK KNIGHT is expected to pass $500 million domestically, making it the second highest grosser of allllll tiiiiiime, right after TITANIC.

Oh, joy! Even more WATCHMEN swag as WB releases the 7 posters unveiled last week.

More after the jump!

Technorati Tags: Watchmen

(more…)

Calvin Reid catches up with Paul Levitz and discusses the new WATCHMEN craze, with 300,000, not 200K as previously reported, new copies of the classic tome on their way:

“I don’t think there’s record of a trailer moving books with this velocity,” says DC Comics president Paul Levitz. “Bookscan records Watchmen selling 10,000 copies in one week. We’ve put more than 300,000 copies in print in the last two weeks. That’s a pretty amazing record for a 21 year old book.” In 2007, the title sold about 100,000 copies.

The book has also shot up to #29 on USA Today’s bestseller list. Alan Moore’s THE KILLING JOKE seems to have benefited from the rash of Nurse Jokers out there, shooting up to #114, while DIARY OF A WIMPY KID and Volume 30 of NARUTO keep their usual spots, at #49 and #101.

Technorati Tags: Watchmen

We managed not to get a SANDMAN 20th Anniversary poster with art by Jill Thompson, Tony Harris, Steve Leialoha, Mike Allred, Bryan Talbot, and more than 25 others, but Vulture shows it to you. Follow the link for the whole thing and a character key.

RECOMMENDED: Neil Kleid does Rorschach’s SDCC Journal:

Meeting with Warners left bad taste in mouth. Pampered and decadent, betraying even their own shallow, poor understanding of the comic book industry. Comics industry as bad. Flabby failure that sits whimpering in mothers’ basement.

Why are so few of us in this industry active, healthy and without personality disorders?
…ooh. Free Ben 10 DVDs. Yoink.

Technorati Tags: Watchmen

The keynote event of this year’s Comic-Con had to be the WATCHMEN panel. EW’s Jeff Jensen led director Zack Snyder, co-creator Dave Gibbons and the entire cast of WATCHMEN plus Carla Gugino through a Q&A. Snyder showed some re-edited footage expanded from the trailer with a bit more violence (Dr. Manhattan in Vietnam) and character moments — Dan Dreiberg sitting sadly next to his Nite Owl costume. References to the graphic novel as the “bible” of the shoot were rife, with the entire cast speaking to the richness and depth of the characters. There were also several references to many Easter Eggs throughout the movie.

Gibbons reveals that although he doesn’t make a cameo, ala many comics creators, his signature “G’ is seen as graphitti throughout the sets.

In interviews afterwards, Snyder admitted that though the very enthusiastic response from the 7000 people in Hall H was gratifying, it didn’t entirely relax him. There’s still much editing to be done, and it is the greatest graphic novel of all time. He mentioned the difficulties of making a movie based on such downbeat and nihilistic material at a major studio. “Of course I want Warners to make money,” he said. “But when they wonder why something violent or sexy or disturbing has to be in, I say, that’s the reason why people want to see this movie.”

Gibbons said that the experience of seeing his creations brought to life was overwhelming. He was also asked about Alan Moore’s dismissal of the film. “I see there is an elephant in the room. I wish that Alan could feel the same excitement and joy I’m feeling right now.” After the panel, he said that the last time he had spoken to Alan, Moore asked him not to bring up the Watchmen movie with him again, and he doesn’t expect to. Gibbons was also asked if there would be any new Watchmen art — a portfolio if you will– to coincide with the movie’s release, but there are no real plans at present.

There were several people in costume who asked questions during the panel, including a Batman, a Joker, and a Rorschach. The last named led to a great comedy moment after he asked about whether movies like THE DARK KNIGHT would lead to even more mature comic book movies. Snyder smiled a moment and said, “There’s something funny about being asked about mature comics from someone in that costume!”

The Beat’s opinion? The footage looks fantastic — rich, detailed and faithful to the spirit of the book — somewhat pulpish but dark at the same time. Of course, we haven’t heard any dialogue yet, but let’s remain optimistic. The cast seems very much on board with the spirit as well. Let the countdown to 3/6/09 begin.

The WB booth has a life-sized model of the Owlship from WATCHMEN.

This is a pretty shitty picture but the model is cooler than dirt.

Man, these iPhones really do have lame cameras. Could only snap this surreal composite. Better photos later.

Variety reports that WATCHMEN will be adapted as a series of downlaodable games . Two are planned with one coming out when the movie does and the other with the DVD release. The games are being developed by Danish developer Deadline Games, and will star Rorschach and Nite Owl, hurm hurm.

WBIE execs said that by producing shorter downloadable games, rather than a full-priced disc version, they’ll have more flexibility to produce high-quality titles on a tight production schedule of just more than a year.

“We don’t want a low-quality console game that will get lost at retail,” said WBIE senior veep of production and development Samantha Ryan. “A downloadable game allows us to deliver the experience that fans expect.”

At PW, Rachel Deahl scoops a new Vertigo Crime imprint from DC:

As thousands of fans and industry professionals prepare to descend on San Diego for the annual Comic-Con, DC has unveiled a new offshoot of its edgy, celebrated Vertigo imprint, Vertigo Crime. The new line, dedicated to crime titles, will launch in 2009 with two lead titles, one by Ian Rankin and another by Brian Azzarello (100 Bullets). For Scottish crime writer Rankin, the forthcoming DC title will mark his first foray into comics. A rep from DC, who said the house would have more details to share tomorrow, confirmed that, despite the launch of Vertigo Crime, Vertigo itself will continue to publish crime titles.

Like Minx before it, this new line has been a poorly kept secret for well over a year. Much-respected editor Will Dennis is the driving force behind the line, and from what we’ve heard over our ham radio, you can expect many of his stable of creators to be contributing. More as it develops.

Back blogging at Newsarama, Paul Levitz runs down DC’s digital strategy, “Motion Comics” — which takes comics art and animates it. First up: WATCHMEN.

Last summer, I traveled to London with Warner Premiere President Diane Nelson to show Dave Gibbons a first test of a new digital format. Diane’s team and WATCHMEN director Zack Snyder passionately wanted to take the original WATCHMEN graphic novel, put the artwork into motion, add a soundtrack, and create a new, multi-format digital version while keeping all of the original literary and art material. We spent hours with Dave, discussing the inherent challenges, the proven power of WATCHMEN to convert people to the “new” format of graphic novels, and how that might happen again if we did this new project well. Unsurprisingly, Dave had important insights into how the artwork could be digitally manipulated to best effect, and ended up becoming a vital part of the process, working directly with Zack and the producers over the last year. This first chapter of the first “Motion Comic” went live as a free download from iTunes on the ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY site last night, and production is moving steadily towards releasing the rest of the monumental work that is WATCHMEN in multiple formats for computers and cell phones between now and the movie’s premiere.

The Times also catches up with Greendale, Neil Young’s 2003 concept album, which is now being developed into many media formats, including a graphic novel drawn by Cliff Chiang.

That was just the beginning: Mr. Young went on to make “Greendale” into a concert tour, live recordings and an original film inspired by his post-9/11, save-the-Earth epic.

By now Mr. Young has moved on to new tours and releases and to activism against the war in Iraq. But “Greendale” continues to inspire spinoffs outside the music world, including a graphic novel and a multi-performer theater piece, which opens in New York on Wednesday.

Anne Thompson has some tidbit on WATCHMEN and a future Superman film from producer Thomas Tull:

An old Watchmen comics fan, Tull wanted in on the film as soon as Snyder pitched it, even though many people have regarded the complex, layered sci-fi narrative about superheroes who are real as unfilmable. After Tull saw a cut of the movie he told Snyder, “You got it. You nailed it the spirit of it and made it come alive.”

“It’s a smart visually stunning movie,” he told me. Of course he’s vested.

He’s also vested in making the next Superman installment, which is still years away, come to life. While Bryan Singer has been working on Valkyrie, Tull and the folks at Warners have been listening to various screenwriters pitch their solutions to how to make the next Superman work. “It’s an iconic character,” says Tull. “After everything that went into the first film, it’s important to make sure that nothing is rushed and we come out with a fantastic second film.” One thing they all agree on: Superman needs a powerful antagonist, a “worthy opponent,” he says.