the Captain’s Justice League blog!

Thanks a flaming lot Associated Press. There are some comics spoilers even I’d like to avoid, but that seems impossible with Associated Press plastering the entire internet with new of a certain characters return.

A little off topic for this blog, but I couldn’t resist posting this video up. Its of a Rubik’s cube solver built using computer controlled Lego. Too cool for words.

I leant my copy of the New Frontier DVD to my thirteen year-old cousin Chester on the condition that he wrote a few sentences about the film. According to Chester:

Justice League The New Frontier is an excellent movie. Fantastic villains and more superheroes than ever before. Spookey nights, shapeshifting aliens and crime fighting heroes. Justice League the New Frontier is a must see masterpiece.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Justice League of America #11 by Brad Meltzer and Gene Ha has been nominated for the Best Single Issue category in the 2008 Eisner Comics Industry Awards. JLA #11 followed the desperation of Vixen and Red Arrow after they were trapped in a collapsed building. In my review I noted that “if any issue of the current run deserves to win awards it’ll be this one.”

The full nominations are:

Best Single Issue (or One-Shot)
Amelia Rules! #18: “Things I Cannot Change,” by Jimmy Gownley (Renaissance)
Delilah Dirk and the Treasure of Constantinople, by Tony Cliff (self-published)
Johnny Hiro #1, by Fred Chao (AdHouse)
Justice League of America #11: “Walls,” by Brad Meltzer and Gene Ha (DC)
Sensational Spider-Man Annual: “To Have or to Hold,” by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca (Marvel)

[via CBR]

I hope they win, but I think the nomination shows that super-hero stories have to be atypical super-hero stories if they’re to be nominated at the Eisners. They have awards for best single-issue, best continuing-series, best limited-series, but no awards for best multi-part story (arguably the basic unit of the modern superhero comic).

Over at the Comicbloc forums JLA reader Starks was asking about Dwayne McDuffie’s future on the main title:

With him being a story editor for a new cartoon, will he be leaving the JLA title? We’ve already seen Burnett write the front half of a couple of issues, is the title already in transition mode for a new writer?

McDuffie popped-up to deliver a status update on his current work load and to refute the idea that the title was transitioning to somebody else.

I’m not leaving. Because they take so long to produce, by the time a network announces the staff members of an animated TV show, the story editor is almost always done with his work. I was story editor for Ben 10: Alien Force while writing Fantastic Four, Justice League and Damage Control. I’ve moved off of Fantastic Four and Dam Con, and I’m in-between seasons on Ben 10, so if anything, I’ve got more time than before.

My recent break on JLA had to do with giving me some time to catch up after having to write JLA scripts for 2 or 3 different artists pretty much simultaneously. Alan was kind enough to help me out by taking on the Salvation Run tie-ins, so I could move ahead to issue #21 (the Final Crisis tie-in) and the big arc that follows in 22-26 (Amazo, Red Tornado, Vixen and a brand new villain). Unfortunately, the reshuffling delayed the return of Flash (planned for #16, moved to #20), but Ethan rocked it, so it’s worth the wait.

In any event, we’re back in sync with the rest of the DCU now, and I’m in sync with the artist schedules, so starting with #20, for good or ill, I’m the writer for the foreseeable future.

McDuffie certainly hasn’t had a clear run on the title as it’s had to endure Tangent, Salvation Run, and Final Crisis tie-ins while he has only really done one arc of his own (even that was partially a set up for getting Luthor and co into Salvation Run). It’ll be interesting to see what he does with a clear road in front of him and can really accelerate.

In my opinion Wizard has been royally eclipsed by Newsarama. Maybe it’s a fashion thing, but Newsarama seems to have the exclusives you use to have to wait for the print version of Wizard to read about. They also have a more polished and mature tone to Wizard’s increasingly immature banter (then again, maybe I’m just getting old).

I’ve got to say: I love Comic Book Resources (CBR) latest redesign. CBR had one of the older website designs, but it was always one of the strongest. The new design is sleek, well laid out, and easy to navigate. And importantly they’ve managed to retain the old content. (If I didn’t know better I’d swear they were using Wordpress.)

CBR’s redesign is easy to scan and find exactly what you want. Compare that to Wizard’s cluttered, over-widgetised front page and it easy to see the mistakes CBR could have made. The one thing I do like at Wizard is their franchise rounds ups. A good friend of this site, Jerry Whitworth, is now writing Wizard’s Dark Knight Developments, check his column out next time you’re over at Wizard.

It’ll be interesting to see what Newsarama does next. They were acquired by Imaginova last year and did promise to bring in new media to the site. The association with the Word Balloon podcast has been good. I really like John Siuntres’s interviewing style, and as much as a also love the energy of Fanboy Radio, the long form one-on-one interview style adopted by Word Balloon is almost unique in comics online.

And least we forget about The Pulse. They still generate interesting content, but you have to wonder how much longer they’ll keep going until Jennifer Contino is head hunted elsewhere.

It looks the Justice League’s starfish foe has concocted another fiendish plan to pass himself off as a new breed of Antartic sealife.

“Scientists who conducted the most comprehensive survey to date of New Zealand’s Antarctic waters were surprised by the size of some specimens found, including jellyfish with 12-foot tentacles and 2-foot-wide starfish.” [CNN]

This is how it starts, happy photos wired back to the mainland, but by the time that ship reaches port every one of the crew will have one of those five-armed monsters wrapped around their face. New Zealand falls to the invader first.

“You’re Superman. And Superman belongs to the world.” — Lana Lang, Man of Steel #6

Jerry Siegel’s hier have just won one stage in their fight to regain the copyright to Superman from Warner Brothers/DC Comics. I’m ambivalent about the custody battle being fought out over the rights to Superman and Superboy. Maybe its because Superman has been around for so long, but I find it hard to really consider him as belonging to any one entity in particular. It’s like arguing over who owns Robin Hood or Father Christmas.

Geoff Johns just posted this to the Comicbloc forums:

• Inspiration in web-design using super-hero costume colours — There are a slew of these websites across the net that help web-designers pick colour sets for their websites. Well Abduzeedo (didn’t he fight Hal Jordan) has put together a set using the three-colour costume palettes of our favourite heroes.
• Read Batman gadget: Six-inch long radar packing spy-bat robot drone called the COM-BAT
  
  
• A UK train company used comic themed posters to brand anti-social passengers as reverse superheroes [I’ve seen a couple of these locally - I’ll grab a photograph if I remember].
• I love Minus - absolutely fantastic and touching webcomic