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Justice League of America - Issue #13 Cover - Look at all those villains.

Over Father’s Day weekend, there were two big comic conventions, Heroes-Con in Charlotte and Wizard World Philly. There were tons of announcements over the weekend, but the best one has to be Dwayne McDuffie taking over writing chores on Justice League of America.

McDuffie was the guiding force on the Static Shock animated series from a few years ago and also a major contributor to the Justice League Unlimited animated (and comic) series. Both of those shows were excellent and should hopefully entice fans of those former series to check out Justice League.

Recently McDuffie penned the final three issues of the Firestorm series and is currently writing the Fantastic four at Marvel. The few issues of that series have been better than any in recent memory and really captured the “family” feel the Fantastic Four should have.

With McDuffie writing flagship books at Marvel and DC, I predict a bidding war for exclusive rights to start any day now. I’ll go ahead and say that I hope DC wins, because I do like the Justice League better than the Fantastic Four and I’d expect McDuffie to add Firestorm to the team, now that his solo series has been canceled. Plus, the fact that Dan DiDio (DC Executive Editor) stated that “Dwayne is the writer of Justice League now until he doesn’t want to write it anymore,” is exciting.

Too many comic series these days have writers that stay for only a certain amount of issues. Big name writers sign up for short arcs on popular books. Brad Meltzer is finishing up a 13 issue stint on JLA just before McDuffie. Joss Whedon is finishing up a 24 issue arc on Astonishing X-Men. While I think both arcs have been great, these short runs make for uneven reading. Let’s see someone take on 110+ issues of X-Men or JLA like Brian Michael Bendis has done on Ultimate Spider-Man or the 70+ issues that Geoff Johns has done on Justice Society of America.

Uncanny X-Men #172Comics are exciting and unique because they are a monthly, continuing work of fiction. It’s nice to see a new writer come in with fresh ideas, but even more exciting is watching a dedicated writer with a love of the character(s) continually develop those characters over years and various story arcs. I think that’s what made me love comics so much when I received my first issue (#172) of the Uncanny X-Men by subscription almost 25 years ago.

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Silver Surfer

Fantastic Four:Rise of the Silver Surfer comes out this weekend and I’m not ashamed to say I’m excited about it. When I finally made it out to see Spider-Man 3, I enjoyed it, but would have enjoyed it more if Carter could have watched it as well (it was a little to scary for him). I would have also like a few more action sequences (or extended versions of the existing ones). As it was, I felt the villains (and Spidey) received too little screen time. After all, that’s the real reason I go see the silver-screen versions of the comics, to see cool, live representations of the comics I’ve loved for years. I think the new Fantastic Four movie will deliver just that (and Carter and Jill will be right there with me), thanks to the PG rating.

Next up is Transformers and it keeps looking better and better. New tv commercials keep popping up and the “big robots” keep looking better and better. It looks a little explosion heavy, so Carter may not make it to that one, but I’d say that we’ll get to see lots of big robots transforming and beating each other up and what more could you want?

It looks like Marvel is making plans for 2009 and lining up Captain America and Thor for their big screen debuts. These two are the next logical step (after 2008’s Iron Man and Hulk). Throw in an Ant Man film that’s been rumored for a while and you’ve got the perfect setup for an Avengers film in 2010. Since Marvel Studios owns the rights to all of these characters (with Paramount distributing the individual films), there is no reason a team film can’t be done.

It’s too bad DC hasn’t gone Hollywood as well as Marvel has. Their slate of upcoming films includes only the next Batman (The Dark Knight) film (featuring Christian Bale and Heath Ledger). Another Superman film has been rumored, as well as films starring Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and the Flash. Rumors aside, Batman is the only one in production.

Sadly, that sums it all up. Let’s see some more DC films. Also, I’m ready for a real photo of Heath Ledger as the Joker, none of the viral marketing stuff, let’s see the real thing. The I Love Harvey Dent Too website stated “see you in December.” I guess we have to wait until then.

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The Marvel Comics website released a major upgrade to their Marvel Universe section today and it’s pretty cool. They’ve had a great, Wiki style database for a while, but this upgrade cleaned up the interface a bit and organized things quite nicely.

The coolest feature has got to be the Connections Interface, where you can view a character and a visual map of all the characters they’ve interacted with over their time line. The user interface on this section could use a little work, but overall, it’s a very neat visualization of all the data in the Wiki.

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Shaper of Worlds

So, what does that weird looking guy (the Shaper Of Worlds) up above have to do with Spider-Man? Read on and find out…

For several years, the higher-ups at Marvel Comics have made it known, they don’t like having a married Spider-Man. They state that it’s hard for younger fans to related to a married super-hero. Never mind the fact that the titles that feature a married Spider-Man are not ones I would let my kid read until he was a little older. Ways to solve this “problem” have been talked about for years. They don’t want to upset long-time readers by killing Mary Jane and they don’t want to do a reboot and just have the next issue start over.

I’ve given up on the core Spider-Man titles. They’ve not had a distinctive voice since the 90’s and no one seems to really know how to handle the character or supporting cast. I was never bothered by the fact he married MJ in the comics, but perhaps that causes many writers problems. Anyway…

The rumors of a “reboot” are heating up again. In August, writer J. Michael Straczynski and artist Joe Quesada (Marvel comics Editor-In-Chief) will tell a story entitled “One More Day” starting in issue #544 of Amazing Spider-Man. Many believe this is the story that will reboot the Spider-Man franchise. If today’s rumor is true, it would leave things very similar to the current movie continuity, which isn’t a bad thing.

…they would have put Peter Parker through the worst of it, until he considers ending it all. At that point, he’d find himself on the bridge where Gwen Stacy died, offering his soul if the clock could have been turned back to simpler times. At which point the Shaper Of Worlds does just that, remaking Spider-Man’s world to when he was back in High School, but with the current book’s supporting cast, taking place in the modern day. Eventually confronting the Shaper, he discovers nothing can be changed, and his memories of the old world slowly fade away. The team decided though that this kind of event would be too “cosmic” for Spider-Man, who has a “street level” tone.

It feels like a cheap way out to me and it may not even be true, we’ll see in August. For good Spider-Man comics, just read Ultimate Spider-Man by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley (soon Stuart Immomen).