a wee bit more on Superman Family kids' comic

DC Comics' blog made a formal announcement today regarding the Superman Family Adventures comic I mentioned Friday.

It sounds exactly like the sort of thing I was hoping DC might do this year.  Well, 2012 is close to this year, so I'll take what I can get.

From the article:

This May, the Eisner Award-winning creative team of the NEW YORK TIMES bestselling TINY TITANS, Art Baltazar and Franco, will continue bringing their wonderful and unique humor to DC Comics with the new ongoing monthly series, SUPERMAN FAMILY ADVENTURES. The series will be starring (you guessed it!) the whole Superman gang – Superman, Supergirl, Superboy, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Lex Luthor, Bizarro, General Zod and … Fuzzy the Krypto Mouse!

As near as I can tell, Fuzzy the Krypto Mouse is all-new, but its been a while since anyone was added to the Legion of Super-Pets, so I welcome Fuzzy with open super-arms.  (But "Krypto Mouse"?  Could he be Streaky's nemesis?)

This is, of course, in tandem with the line of kids' Super Pets books which will soon have volumes featuring Super Turtle, Comet and more Krypto and Streaky.

I did notice on the bigger image DC provided of the FCBD comic that Superman is in his new suit.  I'll be curious how Jim Lee's design translates.

the kids love a high collar!

But, yup, that's Superman.  I am pretty excited about this!

Signal Watch Watches: Hugo

When the trailer hit for Hugo, I think a lot of folks were bemused or confused. Scorsese made his bones with some tough subject material, is closely associated with his gangster work like Casino and Goodfellas, and still turns out good stuff, the most recent that pops to mind for me is The Departed and the doc Public Speaking.

Of his contemporaries, Scorsese never went off the rails as much as Coppola and Lucas seemed to after their initial decade or two of success. He's been consistent, usually sticking to fairly mature material even when handling a costume drama like The Age of Innocence.  Thus it may have been, I raised an eyebrow when I saw he was doing a family movie for release at Christmas with 3D, storybook sets, a bright-eyed little boy a lead and dogs.  I still wanted to see what he'd cooked up, but more or less planned to write it off as Scorsese's holiday-film lark.

Firstly, Hugo is not at all the movie I believed it would be from the trailer. Nor the poster. And, I'd argue, its barely a kids' movie. Or, if it is for kids, its not going to slow down for your dopey kids as it goes about telling very exactly the story it has in mind.

SW Advent Calendar December 11

Thanks to Nicole for this video.

Actually, this video might actually be of Nicole.

SW Advent Calendar December 10

This evening we host our annual Holiday Party.*  Were we only so lucky as to have Enemy Ace come flying in out of the snow to party crash as he did in the story "Silent Night" from Christmas with the Superheroes #2.

*you're invited.  Come on by!

SW Advent Calendar December 9

...why is Santa so HUGE?  And shouldn't Wonder Woman put on some pants if she's going to sit down in the snow?

So, so many questions...

Superman Family Kids' Comic Coming?

Well, this looks three kinds of promising.

Free Comics Book Day is announcing their upcoming titles for this spring/ summer, and included in the "Silver" book announcements, I read the following:

DC COMICS 

DC Nation Super Sampler / Superman Family Adventures Flip-Book

(W) Art Baltazar, Franco, Various (A) Dario Brizuela, Art Baltazar, Various

This super sampler is the place to check outGreen Lantern Adventures and Young Justice, two sensational new comic series from the DC Kids line based on Warner Bros. Animation’s popular Green Lantern: The Animated Series and Young Justice, featured on the upcoming DC Nation programming block on Cartoon Network in 2012. The sampler includes two exciting, all-new stories that readers of all ages will enjoy. Plus, get a sneak-peek at the brand-new Superman Family Adventures monthly series from the Tiny Titans creative team!

Let me pull out the relevant/ exciting part.

Plus, get a sneak-peek at the brand-new Superman Family Adventures monthly series from the Tiny Titans creative team!

What?!  That could be AWESOME!

So maybe this summer we're getting a kid's version of The Superman Family?  Well, count me in.

You can see Superman in the little bullet there towards the bottom of the cover.

It's a nice little surprise in my day.

Garth Ennis's "Battlefields"

A comic that's gotten sadly too little conversation, in my opinion, has been Garth Ennis' war comic, Battlefields.

Ennis is famous for Preacher, Hitman, Punisher: Welcome Back Frank, The Boys, Adventures in the Rifle Brigade and other over-the-top comics adventure stories aimed squarely at the 17-and-up crowd.  Yes, he knows how to a work a good de-nosing, be-facing, entrail gouge and other such entertaining topics into his work.  And, I admit, when I'm in the mood, I absolutely love that stuff.

But a number of years back now, Ennis did a two-issue, prestige format Enemy Ace story that more or less set up my current fascination with the character (especially after learning Pratt's work on War Idyll and the original Kanigher and Kubert work was so astoundingly good), and I'd highly recommend it as a good "here's a comic without superheroes" comic.

He went on to write some great stuff in his War Stories comics at DC, and, again, I'd recommend.

But a couple years back he started a new banner at Dynamite where he could tell short, 3 issue stories, called Battlefields.

Truthfully, I'm not sure if I've discussed his work on Battlefields here before or not.  But it bears discussion.

Unlike most of comic-dom that plays with facts, refuses to do so much as a Google search on even the historical figures or events they're talking about, or grossly misrepresents facts in order to "tell the story", Ennis clearly does his research.  He clearly knows his topics, from New Zealand army bombers to British tank commands during WWII.  And on top of that, he tells brilliant, human stories in the grinder that is war.  Sometimes sentimental, sometimes less so, but never with the varnish of a John Wayne war movie, nor the melodramatic flair of Platoon, Ennis actually carves out a pretty straightforward way of relating his stories, and that makes the tragedy surrounding the characters all the more grim.

If you get a chance, at least pick up that first collection.  Its of 9 issues, 3 separate stories on 3 separate fronts, and all chillingly well told.  I'm pretty sure it'll mean you go ahead and pick up Volume 2.

While Ennis most definitely gets a nod of respect, there's so much more internet ink spilled (and I suspect sales are much higher on) his books like The Boys.  And that's great, but its missing what a tremendously talented and versatile (and damned smart) writer Ennis really can be.

SW Advent Calendar December 8

Dang, yo!  Batman gets all the cool presents.

Then again, Jamie doesn't like how I drive as it is.

Jerry Robinson Merges with The Infinite

Comics artist and creator of Batman's arch-nemesis, The Joker, Jerry Robinson has merged with The Infinite.

There are fact-filled eulogies and appreciations drifting in from all over the internet, so I'd rather link to better-written and better-researched articles and eulogies.

From CBR

From Newsarama

Jerry lived to the age of 89, but in his youth was part of the comics explosion, working side by side with the pioneers and greats of industry.  He was also a comics historian, and advocate for creator's rights.

With the production of The Dark Knight as a major film (and featuring The Joker), Robinson was given emeritus status at DC Comics, and has enjoyed a close relationship with the company the last few years.

Another of the great ones has passed.

So, someone has made an all new Three Stooges movie

...I find this idea bizarre.

Yes, the Three Stooges were characters portrayed by actors.  I do not labor under any illusions that the three Stooges really went about poking one another in the eye, slap-sticking each other and pulling one another's nose, no matter how totally awesome that illusion might be.  But its also, for this human, impossible to separate the characters from the actors.  Hell, the Stooges didn't just hire some new guy to play Curly.  They replaced him with Shemp.

Which opens the door to the whole "Fake Shemp" discussion, which is sort of morbidly fascinating.

Now, according to my intensive Stooges research, the Stooges struggled for years with their third stooge, and it could be said that somehow that makes them all fungible.  Hell, after Curly and Larry died, Moe did continue on with Shemp, then Joe, then Curly Joe.  Then a replacement Larry.  Then, when Moe died, an "all new Stooges" formed from the replacements, but who the hell remembers those guys?

the classic formula

The point is - Moe, Larry and Curly are so tightly bound between actors and characters, bringing them back in 2012 with new faces and actors trying to emulate the original formula seems ill-conceived.

In all honestly, I originally thought when I heard there was a movie about the Three Stooges, it would be a biopic about the men behind the eye-poking.  It wasn't until I watched the new trailer that I learned otherwise.

I don't think you'd see a new Little Tramp movie.  Or a new Marx Bros. movie.  Laurel & Hardy.  Abbott & Costello.  A new Lucy TV show, etc...  And while, yeah, we'd all like to see some new Stooges movies*, if none suddenly surface, I think its okay to just live with the many, many shorts and features they released.

Also - these guys, all talented, just aren't the Stooges.  They're guys approximating what the Stooges refined every day of their lives for 30 years.  The timing looks off, and it looks like half-realized impersonations of well known characters more than, well, I guess just BEING Moe Howard

I guess its a kids' movie, but given current trends in parenting, I'm hard-pressed to believe that the eye-poking, face-slapping antics I enjoyed as a youth will go over well today.

All this said - I'm not a huge Stooges fan.  I don't dislike the Three Stooges, but it isn't something I watched all that often as a kid, and they just didn't air much anymore by the time I was an adult.  I appreciate that they have a cult following (you know who you are), and I am certain someone is thrilled to license the image of their dead relatives to get this movie made, but I'm not sure how this is going to work.

Prove me wrong, new Stooges movie directed by the ever-increasingly-dull Farrelly Brothers.

*your mileage will vary on that sentiment