Nerdy Nuggets of News: June 2005 Archives

Send in the clones! Spidey's got a new year long storyline that promises to shake up his world, as seen in this Newsarama report. It looks like it will tie into more of Straczynski’s “The Book of Ezekiel” weirdness and I bet a dollar another Spider-based hero will pop up. Sounds like the wrong way to go, I thought he played out that Ezekiel stuff to death. I am much more excited about the return of the Sentry, and you can read an interview with Paul Jenkins about it here. If you want a preview of Astonishing X-Men #11, check this out. This has been a pretty good "fight" arc but it's not nearly as good as the first six issues. We'll get to see the FF on screen next week, and here's an advance review from the fellas at AICN. It's about what I expected. Buzzscope has a preview of next year's Marvel movie, Ghost Rider, taken from Entertainment Tonight. No footage of that flaming head yet, but you can see the luscious Eva Mendes, with an intro by Mary Hart--does that woman drink from the fountain of youth? Moving over to DC, I raved before about Action Comics by Simone, here's an interview with John Byrne on what it's like being "an art robot" on the title he relaunced over 20 years ago. There's a nice interview with George Perez about his career and future DC projects, including news that he may work on a Legion special at some point.

There's a bunch of DC and Crisis related news: somehow I missed this item about Geoff Johns taking on an editorial role to oversee the direction of the DC Universe before and after Infinite Crisis. Today there is an article about Grant Morrison taking on a similar role to revamp DC's backlog of characters into new series. If Morrison could make Animal Man into a must-have book, he should be able to do it for any character. They are talking about the Quality characters (Freedom Force, Doll Man, Phantom Lady, etc.) and I would hope that the Phantom Stranger is on the list. Meanwhile, it seems that Mark Waid is in discussions to go home again and become the new Flash writer after Geoff Johns leaves. That would heal my aching heart. I got very excited about learning that DC is working with a company to do a MMORPG based on the DC Universe. How cool would it be to create your own character, go online, and join the Justice League? Going over to Marvel, there's an interview with Bendis on why he thinks Spider-Woman is so cool. Check out that cover; I think she's cool too and I ordered Giant-Size Spider-Woman #1. I wish I still had my entire Claremont run of that book, the later issues with Leialoha on the art were great. In the movie world, these articles may get you excited about War of the Worlds after the Cruise-Holmes fiasco: this one talks about the film itself, while this one interviews Spielberg. Nuff said, I gotta go watch Oprah!

It's been a slow news month so far, but we finally have some interesting tidbits! We alerted you to Jonathem Lethem's Omega the Unknown mini-series from Marvel, which we were excited about until we saw a preview of the art. Now it turns out from Lying in the Gutters that Steve Gerber is upset about this and wishes Lethem had not revamped his creation. Gerber has more things to say about this on his blog here. I do for sorry for Gerber, he's been kicked around by Marvel awfully hard. There's a couple of comic previews that are worth checking out: Astro City: Dark Age #1 and JLA Classified #8 where you can see Mary Marvel's Nazi like dark costume. This second "I Can't Believe It's Not The Justice League" series is even better than the first one! Rich Johnston and other people have rumored that Grant Morrison will take over Detective Comics with Andy Kubert on the art, which sounds just fine to me. Another rumor has Adam Kubert working with Kid Cosmic Jim Starlin on an ongoing Adam Strange series, which sounds like a match made in heaven! Finally, if you're a game-a-holic and in the midst of summer's dry season, GameStop has a sale going on: buy 2 games and get a 3rd one for free, whichever is the cheapest. I picked up 3 games for $19: Project Gotham 1, Morrowind, and Medal of Honor Frontline; oldies but goodies. Nuff said.

We let Cousin go wild with the WWC Philly 05 news last Friday—most of it was his drunken ramblings. For the real news, we’re most excited about DC’s Showcase reprints. Finally, DC gives us a product similar to the Marvel Essentials line, 500 page black and white reprints of their classic stories. And they seem to realize that the perfect starting point is the Silver Age. Perfect! Now I can collect all those Superman, Green Lantern and Justice League of America stories without paying $50 a pop for the archive editions. Click here for an interview with Bob Greenberger about these new Showcase reprints.

DC’s biggest announcement was that the Kubert brothers are re-joining DC, but there’s no word on what they will draw. Ditto for Jeff Loeb, who is working on a special project to replace Superman\Batman, his lips are sealed as well. The one guy who won’t stop talking is Bruce Jones, who is doing revamps of Vigilante, Deadman and Warlord. I can’t get excited about his descriptions for these series. I think Jones is talented at doing those Warren-type horror and sf short stories, but any time he’s done (or re-done) an established character, it hasn’t worked for me. For the main DC heroes, other than the One Year Later event during Infinite Crisis, nothing much was announced as I am sure they have a bunch of surprises coming up. Didio teased an awful lot about the fate of the Flash during the Crisis.

Marvel spent most of their WWC Philly event plugging House of M, which I won’t buy unless it gets stellar reviews and in collected form. They are saying that HoM won’t be a mere alternate reality story, but it will leave a lasting impact. I predict Daredevil’s secret identity will be restored. It would be shocking if they had Gwen Stacy remain alive. For the new series coming out later this year, I am looking forward to Joe Casey’s Fantastic Four: First Family mini-series. The Defenders book could be good, even though I don’t like my favorite non-team played like the three stooges. The Sentry sequel by Paul Jenkins and John Romita, Jr is promising but the Ghost Rider series by Garth Ennis is not. I just don’t like anything Ennis has done for Marvel. And finally they give The Thing his own series, the cover by Andrea DeVito looks great, and I think Dan Slott has the right take on it. (Marvel’s releasing a Marvel Two-In-One Essentials if you want to see the Thing in his glory days.) Nuff said.