Recently in DC Comics Category

Jim Lee is a fun guy to follow on Twitter.  He loves doing sketches for fans.  Some pros have stopped doing them at cons, because some guys just turn around and auction the sketch on eBay for a quick profit.  Last Sunday, he hid a bunch of great sketches of DC Comics characters (Green Lantern, Batman, Catwoman, Superman, etc) at various places around the convention.  He's left them in all kinds of places, including the women's restroom at C2E2 earlier this year.  Usually people find these sketches within minutes of Jim's tweet.  What a fun idea!

One of the greatest Wonder Woman artists of all time (and the father of the current continuity), George Perez, drew the lead story in Wonder Woman 600.  Diana Prince teamed up with all the super-chicks in the DC Universe, as you can see in the above splash page.  The details in the black and white inked piece are amazing.  You can see several other pages of Wonder Woman 600 original art here.

Here's the final page with colors by Hi-Fi.  The colorist adds a tremendous amount of effects, but there's no doubt that Perez gave him a lot to work with.  Not too crazy about the new outfit, but this lead story was pretty cool.  Nuff Said!

If you can’t go to Comic-Con, we’ve got the next best thing: the press conference, captured by ScreenCrave.

Ryan Reynolds discusses testing for the role of Hal Jordan and his training for the film.  Mark Strong talks about playing Sinestro versus his role in Kick-Ass.

This second video has more coverage of Reynolds at the Green Lantern booth, and on the panel he recites the Green Lantern oath for a little boy.  He has got the oath down—gave me a chill running down my spine!

I hope the film will be good; if handled properly, it’s the next Star Wars.  A few things make me worry.  The costume shown on the Entertainment Weekly cover and Blake Lively’s youth are a few of them.  Carol Ferris should be very close to Hal Jordan’s age, but Lively is 11 years younger than Reynolds.  She’s a beautiful girl, wouldn’t mind seeing her in the Star Sapphire outfit, but I can’t imagine Lively running an aerospace corporation.

Nuff Said!

For the past two years at Comic-Con, Sony has teased us with news & videos on the upcoming DC Universe Online, which will finally get released this November 2010.  Some of the reports on game play are mixed, saying the action was too repetitive and not a lot of fun.  It is definitely a big challenge to pull off a super-hero game, but this trailer is superb.

This little 6 minute movie will delight any hardcore DC fanatic.  You’ve got the Justice League up against a squad of super-villains for an apocalyptic showdown.  Superman and the other characters are rendered with some bits of Jim Lee’s style; the best touch comes from Superman’s eyes blazing red with his heat vision.  Batman wears an armor that looks like a Lee design as well.  There’s a Terminator vs Wonder Woman skirmish that makes you want to see a longer version, and a Black Adam vs (Kyle Rayner) Green Lantern.

No idea what this means to the actual game, but I think the trailer proves something.  A computer animated super-hero film or TV show, played straight in the DC Universe has the potential to be very exciting and true to the source material.

Did anyone else but me see a nod to All Star Superman here—when Clark emerges from the sun?  Nuff Said!

As you can tell by my previous Metal Men post, I've been going through a set of old Amazing Heroes magazines from the 1980s.  This was one of our main sources of comics news, and they had some terrific covers.

Amazing Heroes #3 featured this Justice Society of America cover featuring both old and new generation.  Joe Staton, who drew the JSA in the revival of All-Star Comics, did this cover.  The classic Golden Age characters are in the foreground, but take note of the ones featured in the back.  The Earth-Two versions of Superman, Bruce Wayne, Power Girl, Robin, and Star Spangled Kid.

A couple of years later, the new generation--Infinity Inc--came along and booted the JSA out of the spotlight.  This cover by Mike Machlan and Jerry Ordway introduced us to Nuklon, Brain Wave Jr, Fury, Northwind, Obsidian, Silver Scarab, and Jade.  Along with familiar characters: Power Girl, Huntress, and Star Spangled Kid.  The interior content featured a nice interview with Roy Thomas and loads of information on the Earth-Two mythology.  Nuff said.

I'm a big Metal Men fan.  I've written about them extensively here, I've got a PVC set of the entire team, and I'm currently buying the Doom Patrol comic just to read the excellent MM backup series by Giffen/DeMatteis/Maguire.

In going through a bunch of Amazing Heroes back issues, I came across this Metal Men cover by Terry Austin.  This appeared in AH #10, 1982.

Check out some of my other Metal Men articles:

• Metal Men 45: When Doctor Magnus Went Nuts with a Plutonium Man!
• Walt Simonson's Metal Men pinup for DC Super Calendar 1978
• Alan Davis' Metal Men on LSH cover
• Alex Ross' Metal Justice Men

Nuff said!

I love the high concept covers of old DC Comics.  These covers (by Neal Adams) were probably conceived before the actual story.  These two have Superman having identity problems.

Superman's Greatest Role: The President of Steel!  I predict his foreign policy would have been smashing.

Superman as Public Enemy #1!  Obviously suffering from multiple personality disorder.  Nuff said.

In 1983, Keith Giffen took on a daunting poster for DC Comics.  One that featured nearly every character (heroes, villains, substitutes) that had appeared in the Legion's entire history.  The picture above is only one-third of the entire image, taken from the right-hand side!  I cropped it to this side to show my favorite Legionnaires: Dawnstar, Wildfire, Star Boy, Karate Kid, Mon-El, Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, and Colossal Boy.

Here's the full poster, you can click on it to view the scan.  I remember buying this and pouring over the voluminous cast of characters.  It could have been blown up and used as wallpaper in order to see all the characters better.

Keith Giffen blew a gasket on this poster, as he said in an interview with Jon B. Cooke (for Jack Kirby Collector #29):  "What happened was I did this Legion poster, characters all over the place. And in drawing that Legion poster I totally burned myself out on the book. After the poster I just had to walk away."

Giffen's last regular Legion issue (as penciler) with co-creator Paul Levitz was in the Baxter Legion of Super-Heroes #2.  He would return to guide the Legion in their infamous "five year later" reboot.  Nuff said.