November
18 News bits: 'Hero by Night'; Oscars, DC doings and more

Platinum Studios has announced it has teamed up with IM Global to finance, produce and distribute a TV series based on the comicbook "Hero By Night." This seemingly innocuous announcement has a major train-wreck context, however, given that "Hero By Night" creator DJ Coffman — who won Platinum's Comic Book Challenge and was one of the company's staunchest defenders — has since been fired from his own creation and was not even notified by Platinum that the series was in the works. This is the peril of work-for-hire in the comics biz and a lesson that all creators should learn, whether it's from this example or those of Siegel and Shuster or Jack Kirby.

Variety's Contenders issue came out Monday — you can read here what I wrote about the chances for "The Dark Knight" in this year's race. I also wrote about the animated feature race for the Eye on the Oscars: Animation special here.

The LA Times chats with DC exec editor Dan Didio about what's going on in the Superman and Batman comics — even as reports come out from Rich Johnston of problems, including rewrites on the last issue of "Final Crisis" and a dispute that reportedly lead writer James Robinson to quit writing "Superman" only a few months into the gig.

The National Endowment for the Arts is giving a National Medal of the Arts to Stan Lee.

Imagi Studios has licensed the rights to "Astro Boy" to IDW, which will publish comics and graphic novels based on the character in advances of the October 2009 release of a new feature animated film.

UK site "Den of Geek" has a useful page up listing 75 comicbooks being made into films.

"Batman" and "The Spirit" producer Michael Uslan, superstar DC artist Jim Lee and DC writer Geoff Johns are all guests of honor at the New York Comic-Con. Also appearing is Venture Bros. creators Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer.

"Wonder Woman," the next in the line of DC Universe animated DVD features, is due out Feb. 3 in single- and double-disc DVD and Blu-Ray editions.

Colin Trevorrow has been tapped to adapt Scott Christian Sava's "Pet Robots" into a feature animated film for Disney.

The very worthy Hero Initiative is selling a limited hardcover of its "Hulk 100" project through Arizona retailer Atomic Comics and at cons. The book includes all the original sketch covers done for the project, plus a few extras not available in the regular softcover edition.

The Hero Initiative also is holding a benefit signing with artist Tim Sale, whose work has appeared on "Heroes," from 2-5 p.m. Nov. 22 at Comic Book Ink in Tacoma, Wash. Fans can bid on a chance to win lunch with the artist and a sketch via an eBay auction that ends Friday.

"Lost" fans should be heading tomorrow night to Meltdown Comics in Hollywood for a party celebrating the release of BE@RBRICK and KUBRICK toys based on the show. Appearing to sign the toys are "Lost" co-creators and executive producers J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof, and executive producers Bryan Burk, Jack Bender, Edward Kitsis, Adam Horowitz and Carlton Cuse.  Also scheduled to attend are writers Elizabeth Sarnoff, Paul Zbyszewski, Melinda Hsu Taylor, Kyle Pennington, and Brian K. Vaughan.

Thursday night sees a launch party at Golden Apple Comics for the new Nerdcore 2009 calendar. The theme of this year's "adults only" calendar is Sci Fi. Saturday, the store will host a Wonder Woman Day from 2-5 p.m., and also has a signing set for "Black Friday" with Gerard Way, writer of "Umbrella Academy" and lead singer of My Chemical Romance.