Nerdy News for May 11, 2005

Looks like Jeff Loeb figured out how to make Supergirl #1 start with a bang: have a girlfight (left, with Power Girl) and then an alternate cover by Michael Turner (right). Click to expand each one. The cover by Ian Churchill is a bit better than Turner's cover, more enticing, shall we say. Turner makes Supergirl look like a bitchy valley girl from Krypton with high maintenance issues. Still, given the fact that Loeb writes decent blockbusters, I am going to buy Supergirl, especially after reading this interview from January. One of the 1970s superstar writers, Steve Englehart, is making a comeback in Batman: Dark Detective, now on sale. I am skipping the single issues at $3 a pop in order to get the trade--sorry, man, but it's just too expensive. The artwork by Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin looks incredible. You can read an interview with Englehart at Sequential Tart that talks about Batman and his earlier work. I'm a big fan of Mike Wieringo--I loved his FF so much that I went out and got the FF 2005 calendar that has his incredible covers in a larger, glossy format. Wieringo is going to be the artist for a new series titled Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man and he has sketches of the main characters at his blog. He couldn’t be any more perfect to draw Spidey and crew. One of my favorite video games last year was Burnout 3, the gaming equivalent of crack cocaine. IGN has a preview of the sequel, Burnout: Revenge, where Criterion tries to tweak and improve an already successful formula. It seems like I can't get through the day without mentioning Star Wars. There's some neat articles on msnbc, the first one mentions all the inconsistencies that Lucas will probably never explain, and then another one about how the whole unified saga is entirely about the coolness of Darth Vader. I liked this article about Star Wars games from 1983 until the present, but they left out the stinker of all time: Super Bombad Racing. The one where Darth Maul is a kid with a big devil head racing a hovercar. Nuff said.