SDCC '07: Image Announces Kirby Plans

Image Comics' newly remastered collection of Jack 'The King' Kirby's Silver Star hit stands a couple of weeks ago.

Image also has plans to publish a completely recolored one volume graphic novel collection of Kirby's 14 issues of Captain Victory later this year.

So, what's next?

Announced at the Kirby Tribute Panel at Comic-Con International: San Diego today, Image and The Kirby Estate have entered into an agreement to produce new series based on two of Kirby's final creator-owned properties, originally published by Pacific Comics in the early 1980s.

Also in the pipeline is a collection of completed-but-unpublished Silver Star mini-series by Kurt Busiek, along with Busiek and Neil Vokes' Teen Agents mini-series.

Weekly World News to close (aliens not blamed!)

It's the final nail in the coffin of the Free Press here in America. Just kidding.

Publisher American Media Inc. said on Tuesday it will stop printing the Weekly World News, which for 28 years gleefully chronicled the exploits of alien babies, animal-human hybrids and dead celebrities.

The company said in a brief statement it would end the print version of the tabloid newspaper next month but would maintain the online version (www.weeklyworldnews.com).

'Due to the challenges in the retail and wholesale magazine marketplace that have impacted the newsstand, American Media, Inc. today announced it will close the print version of the Weekly World News, effective with the August 27 issue. Weekly World News was AMI's smallest weekly publication,' the company said in a statement e-mailed to Reuters.

Spokesman Richard Valvo declined further comment.

American Media is headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, and is best known as the publisher of the National Enquirer. The company announced last month it was exploring the sale of five of its 16 magazines as part of a strategy to focus on celebrity weeklies and lifestyle magazines.

The Weekly World News, which boasted it was 'The World's Only Reliable Newspaper,' reveled in shocking and almost always exclusive reports about extra-terrestrials, ghosts, scoundrels and scientific discoveries, such as the cure for lovesickness found on the walls of an ancient Mexican monument.

The Look of Ultimates Volume 3

Well, they've released a piece of Mad's cover art for the first issue of the next Ultimates story line:



This art comes to us via IGN.com.

Pitch of Fear

The Web of Caves

The Doctor is imprisoned

Brilliant

A Final Crisis Teaser

Well, we knew a third Crisis was coming because of the not-so-subtle hints, and the fact that Countdown has to be counting down to something.

DC Comics has provided Newsarama with the following image (by 52 cover artist JG Jones), and offered no further comment.

Blah Blah Blog by Tom Brevoort

I'm really not sure if it would have been any better, but Tom Brevoort is posting Mark Millar's original pitch for Marvel Comics' Civil War event on the Marvel website.

Mostly this is being posted so that people can see the process of how a pitch is turned into a book.

As I mentioned on Friday, this week I'm planning on posting a series of documents from the making of CIVIL WAR, since people seem to be interested in that, and since the earlier series on HOUSE OF M was so well-received. So that's what you all have to look forward to in the days ahead.

To start with, here is the first document written by Mark Millar outlining his initial ideas for CIVIL WAR. This was done immediately after the creator conference at which the initial ideas for CIVIL WAR were thrown around, and you'll see Mark make reference to some of those conversations herein. Also, the version I've chosen to upload has notes incorporated into the body of the text from both Joe Quesada and myself, so you can get a sense as to our innediate eractions to the specifics of what Mark was proposing. And because I can't seem to do different colors in this blog, the Joe comments are labeled JQ, and my comments are labeled TB.

Origins Photos

Here's a montage of some of the photos that I was able to take before the batteries in my camera died. Sorry there weren't more of them. I wanted more pictures.



Here's a link to the photoset.

Jack Kerouac's Famous Scroll, 'On the Road' Again

This September marks 50 years since Jack Kerouac's On the Road hit bookshelves, stirred controversy and spoke — in a new voice — to a generation of readers. Today the beat travelogue continues to sell 100,000 copies a year in the U.S. and Canada alone.

Legend has it that Kerouac wrote On the Road in three weeks, typing it almost nonstop on a 120-foot roll of paper. The truth is that the book actually had a much longer, bumpier journey from inspiration to publication, complete with multiple rewrites, repeated rejections and a dog who — well, On the Road wasn't homework, but we all know what dogs do.

But the scroll: That part's true. Jim Canary, the Indiana University conservator who's responsible for its care, says Kerouac typed about 100 words a minute, and replacing regular sheets of paper in his typewriter just interrupted his flow — thus the scroll.

But Kerouac's brother-in-law and executor, John Sampas, says the three-week story is a kind of self-created myth. 'Three weeks' is what Kerouac answered when talk-show host Steve Allen asked how long it took to write On the Road.