Marvel Buys Marvelman

The San Diego Con is underway as I type these words. So far the big news out of the Con is that Marvel Comics has bought the rights to Marvelman (published previously in the States as Miracleman). The rights have been tied up in a legal knot for years, but Marvel has bought the rights from the original creator of Marvelman, Mick Anglo. It'll be interesting to see what Alan Moore thinks about all this. Marvel claims to be in talks with all the former writers and artists discussing the character, but it's reported that one of the reasons Moore refuses to do any work for Marvel is that they sued back in the day and made the name change from Marvel to Miracle a necessity. Hopefully we'll see a good hardcover reprint of the old stuff. Moore's take on the character is brilliant.

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Preacher and Swamp Thing Coming In Hardcover

From San Diego Comic Con: Preacher and Swamp Thing will be collected into hardback reprints. Hopefully they'll do like they are currently doing with the Starman collection. This is great news, as I've been holding off on buying the trades hoping that something like this would happen.

Impact Comic Characters Back

From San Diego Comic Con: DC Comics announced it would be bringing the old Archie Comics superheroes into the DC Universe. Actually this will be DC's second attempt at doing something with these characters, after their failed !mpact line from years before. J. Michael Straczynski will be introducing the characters in the pages of The Brave and the Bold.

Who Will Rule Again

From San Diego Comic Con: Ok, I was wrong. The "Who Will Rule" teaser was about Vulcan and the Shi'Ar against Black Bolt and the Inhumans in a new mini series War of Kings.

Cloak & Dagger Return

From San Diego Comic Con: Valerie D’Orazio better known for her blog Occasional Superherione will be writing a new Cloak & Dagger mini series. I've never been that big a fan of this duo but I really enjoy Val's blog and look forward to seeing what she does with the story.

Legion Coming To Smallville

From San Diego Comic Con: Writer Geoff Johns will be bringing the Legion of the Super Heroes from the 31st Century to ours in the television series Smallville. This is interesting, Smallville is one of my favorite shows and I have enjoyed the way that they have been introducing other super hero characters into the show.

Everyone figures that this series will end when Clark finally becomes Superman. How about turning it into Metropolis than and showing his start as Superman? I really hate to see this show go off the air and I fear it's closing in on its run.

Gaiman On Batman

From San Diego Comic Con: Neil Gaiman is going to write a two issued Batman story entitled "Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader?" It is slated to come out at the start of next year. Andy Kubert will do the artwork. This follows shortly after the ending of the current Batman R.I.P. storyline, so does it mean anything?

Whedon and Cast Talk Dollhouse

From San Diego Comic Con: Nothing really new to report about Joss Whedon's new show Dollhouse, but he was there with Eliza Dushku (‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’) and Tahmoh Penikett (‘Battlestar Galactica) to talk about the show. I just wish I had been there as this is the show that I'm most looking forward to in the coming season. It will be on Fox in early 2009. Let's hope Fox gives it more of a chance than it gave Firefly.

Milestone Joins DC Universe

From San Diego Comic Con: Milestone Comics will merge itself into the DC Universe. The Milestone Comics were created in the 90's by Dwayne McDuffie, Christopher Priest, Denys Cowan, Michael Davis and Derek T. Dingle. Milestone Media was a separate company but DC Comics published the new series. At that time the Milestone universe was also a separate universe from DC, but they still had a few cross overs. Now the Milestone Universe will be part of the DC Universe.

Vertigo Crime Imprint

From San Diego Comic Con: Vertigo Comics will publish a sub imprint called Vertigo Crime that will feature black and white graphic novels in hardcover. The first two titles announced were Dark Entries by writer Ian Rankin and Werther Dell'edera as the artist. The next one is Filthy Rich by Brian Azzarello and Victor Sankin.

Kevin Smith on Batman

From San Diego Comic Con: DC Comics announced that Kevin Smith will be doing a Batman mini series featuring a former Green Arrow villain that Smith created when he worked on that series,
Onomatopoeia.

Barry Allen Returns As Flash

From San Diego Comic Con: DC Comics announced that they are bringing Barry Allen back as the Flash in a mini series entitled Rebirth. The creative team is Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver, the same team responsible for Hal Jordon being brought back as Green Lantern. Where that leaves Wally West they wouldn't say. I'm not really sure how I feel about this. I'm not reading too many DC Comics now, but I will probably be interested in at least picking up the first issue of this mini series and see how it goes.

New On Going Agents of Atlas Series

From San Diego Comic Con: Marvel announced a new ongoing Agents of Atlas series to be written by Jeff Parker.

Who Will Rule?

From San Diego Comic Con: Marvel's teaser for their next Big Event was the tagline "Who Will Rule?" From what little they said of it sounds like they're gearing up for a battle with the Gods of the Marvel Universe.

Darwyn Cooke Adapts Parker

From San Diego Comic Con: Darwyn Cooke is going to adapt the Parker crime novels by Richard Stark (Donald Westlake) for IDW Comics. The four novels he is adapting are The Hunter (aka Point Blank), The Man with the Getaway Face, The Outfit, and The Mourner. The first issue will come out in late 2009.

Martha Washington Omnibus

From the San Diego Comic Con it was reported by the artist Dave Gibbons that the entire Martha Washington storyline plus extras will be collected in a one volume omnibus. Martha was a character created by Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons for Dark Horse Comics in 1990. The first mini series was Give Me Liberty, followed by Martha Washington Goes To War, than a one shot called Happy Birthday Martha Washington, followed by another one shot Martha Washington Stranded In Space and than a final mini series Martha Washington Saves the World and ending with a one shot Martha Washington Dies. All this plus extra art and notes from Dave Gibbons will be included in this new edition.

News From San Diego

San Diego is where the big news is announced from the Comic world. Over the next however many posts I will talk about what I find exciting from the world of San Diego and what I find interesting that they've talked about. Don't look for a complete round up of news from the con here, you can go to Newsarama or CBR for that. I just want to point out what I will be looking foward to.

San Diego Comic Con

This is the weekend for the San Diego Comic Con. The last one I went to was 2002. The first one I went to would have been in the late 80's. I remember the year that the Chicago Con (the real Chicago Con, before Wizard bought it) was just a weekend before San Diego. I ended up going to Chicago and than spending the week inbetween with my friend and artist Terry Pavlet and than heading to San Diego. That was the year that I did the Christmas issue of Quantum Leap for Innovation Comics. George Broderick, another friend, was an editor there. In fact I think I was the one that alerted George to the fact that there was a comic book company in his neck of the woods in Wheeling West Virginia.

The first San Diego Con I went to was when I met Sam Kieth. We had talked before, on the phone, but met in person for the first time. We shared a room with Wendi Lee and her boyfriend at the time, another artist that did some work for Eclipse Comics (I'm sorry I can't remember his name now). We were staying at the Hotel San Diego, not exactly in the best area of town. If I remember right across the street was an area where the local winos hung out.

That first con George Lucas came to the con. He had the con people put a different name on his name tag, like that would hide the fact of his identity. Everyone at that Con knew what George Lucas looked like. But at that time the Con wasn't invaded by Hollywood like it is now. You'd see a few Hollywood types, but they were there mainly as fans, not pushing anything. At that time Hollywood, like most of the rest of the world, didn't think appearing at a comic convention would help push anything.

To me the first cons seemed big, but compared to what San Diego is now they were small. The last one I went to six years ago was huge. It's interesting, it can be fun, but it's not a comic book convention anymore. It's a lot more than that.

William Messener-Loebs

Journey is one of the best comic books every published. This comic was published years ago, it tells the story of a different Wolverine, Wolverine MacAllister, a frontiersman during the 1800s in the Middle American Wilderness. Mr. Loebs both wrote and drew the comic.

Lately Bill and his wife Nadine (it's hard to talk about Bill without Nadine, the two come as a unit) have fallen on hard times. Bill lost his right arm while an infant. After producing comics for Marvel and DC Bill found his talents no longer sought after. Changes in management meant changes on the talent. Bill found himself without work. Through some bad times Bill and Nadine ended up living in a Salvation Army shelter. Recently there have been some efforts made to help them out and from what I've read things have improved some.

But where are the new Bill Loebs stories? Where is new issues of Journey? Why have the past issues of Journey not been collected into trades? I've read recently that Fantagraphics was thinking of publishing a phone book edition of the series and more recently I've read that IDW is supposed to be doing a collection of the first twelve issues this summer. I'm not sure which is true, but I hope that there is a collection coming out from someone of this landmark comic series.

Bill or Nadine won't remember me, but some of my past comic book history is intertwined with them. My first published work was in the back of an issue of Journey. It was titled "The Duel" and was drawn by Sam Kieth. I would call and talk with Nadine about the story and she would offer advice before the story was done.

Years later when Sam Kieth was asked to contribute to the newly created Image Comics he came up with his character The Maxx and asked Bill Loebs to script it for him. At that time Bill said no. Sam came to me (and he might have asked a few others inbetween Bill and me) and asked if I wanted to help him with the scripts. It didn't take me long to say yes. At the time I think a lot of writers were seeing Image as an artist's company, most of the original founders were using friends and people that no one knew to write the series they were creating. I wasn't worried. This was the big time for me. I was doing a lot of short stories for a lot of small publishers, but nothing that was bringing in any real money.

Well, anyone that has read The Maxx knows my name was nowhere to be found on it. Sam was able to convince Bill to give it a go and decided to use Bill as the writer. I'm sure Bill has no idea that I was ever involved with the series, however briefly.

The first San Diego Con I ever went to I met Bill Loebs. It was the year that Sam Kieth, Wendi Lee and her boyfriend (I can't remember his name but he drew a few things for Eclipse) and I shared a room at the convention. Bill has always been a great guy.

Someone get JOURNEY in print. Let's collect those old issues and even better yet let's get some new issues of a JOURNEY comic out there.