Bug-Bee-Picked-Up-By-Showtime

One trade of the Vertigo title Exterminators was enough for me. Not that it was bad, it just grossed me out way too much to keep reading. But if you're into that sort of thing you'll be happy to know the title has been picked up for development by Showtime.

The Hollywood Reporter announced the producer of Dexter, Sarah Colleton, is on-board to take Exterminators from the page to the small screen. "In it's Showtime incarnation, Exterminators will revolve around the Bug-Bee-Gone crew, an extended dysfunctional family of exterminators whose greatest enemies aren't the insects and rodents they meet and kill on a daily basis but rather their own self doubts, vices and inner demons," reports THR.  They also compare it to "Six Feet Under in the world of pest control."

The initial pitch for Exterminators was originally planned for TV by creator Simon Oliver who used to work in the industry. After further consideration he decided it would be better suited for comics. Originally, Exterminators was planned as a 50-issue run but has since been canceled. The series ends with issue #30 this month. If the Showtime series is a hit we're sure to see what was intended had the series run it's full course.

DCU: Crisis Now! If not now, when?

Misdirection is a common form of deception often used in magic. Nothing up my sleeve, right? What people often forget is that misdirection is also a literary device most commonly used in detective novels. If you don't get my specific meaning there, I'll just go ahead and say that DC Comics is no stranger to misdirection.

Ok, was I being too vague? Of course by detective I'm referring to Batman. There couldn't be more misdirection going on in Batman R.I.P. if they tried. Possibly in an even further move towards that direction, the mysterious identity of the villain actually responsible for what's going on in that book wasn't mentioned once at Saturday's DC panel at Wizard World Philly. That's not to say that other huge story points weren't given away. Spoilers for the current and some of the future projects in the DCU ahead.

"I apologize if I'm gonna take six or seven of your questions. This really is the FINAL CRISIS. Ok? We're really going for it this time," said Senior VP/Executive Editor Dan Didio, "When we come out, we come out with a clear cohesive direction for the DCU." Didio led the DCU: Crisis Now panel that included Senior Story Editor Ian Sattler, Jimmy Palmiotti (Jonah Hex, Powergirl), Jim Calafiore (Gotham Underground, Batgirl mini-series), Tom Derenick (Reign In Hell), Shane Davis (Superman/Batman, Final Crisis: Rage of the Red Lanterns), Franco and Art Baltazar (Tiny Titans) and Ethan Van Sciver (Green Lantern, The Blackest Night). Didio gave the readers a guide to the coming crisis, "The official rule of Final Crisis is it doesn't cross off into the monthly series. Anything that takes place that has to deal with the particular story of Final Crisis is all going on in different mini-series and one-shots."

Final Crisis: Superman Beyond is one of the new mini-series and it's going to be a little different from the rest. "This is probably the thing Grant Morrison is most excited about, even more so than anything else, because he's gonna take Superman through the Multiverse and he gets to do it in 3-D," said Didio excitedly. That's right, you're going to be getting a pair of 3-D glasses with this issue. But wait, there's more. "It's not only just 3-D for us but it's also 3-D for Superman. He has his eye colors changed, one eye is blue and one eye is red," revealed Didio.

If you've been following the K story arc in Superman/Batman you've only got one issue left. Artist Shane Davis hopes everyone has been enjoying it and says we're all going to be surprised by the ending. "There's been hints at things in every issue that I haven't really seen anybody pick up on on the message board at all," he said. "You shouldn't be reading those things, you know that right?" scolded Didio.

Conversation did eventually turn to Batman R.I.P. but Didio didn't need to bother telling us about it. Instead he had a fan fill everyone in on what's been going on. This actually happened a few times during the panel, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. A fan also thanked Didio for bringing back Stephanie Brown, a.k.a Spoiler. Didio said you're welcome but continued ominously, "It's nice to bring somebody back in case somebody else goes away." When Stephanie returned in the last issue of Robin it all seemed a bit too easy. "You might have gotten a neat little answer there but there's a lot more intrigue that comes out from this story," Didio explained, "It's not that simple." If you thought you'd start getting your answers in this weeks Robin/Spoiler Special, you were wrong, that was just some alone time for the pair.

Of course Batman is also involved in DC's new weekly series Trinity, along with Superman and Wonder Woman, in stores today. The first half of the book is told by the same creative team every issue, Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley but the second half will change. "We don't even want to call it a back-up anymore," said Didio, "it's really a story that supports what's going on in the front without focusing on the three leads."

Reign in Hell is a new mini-series that will involve most, if not all of the magic characters in the DCU. Keith Giffen is the writer and Tom Derenick is now the artist. "[Keith] has a vision for what the DC Universe's version of Hell should look like and feel like and it's nothing you've ever seen before," Derenick said, "Think H.R. Giger on acid." A fan asked if there was any chance of tying DC's hell into Vertigo's hell. "The easy answer is, no chance in hell," laughed Didio.

The subject of Barry Allen was eventually brought up. A fan talked about him like he was already back to which Didio had to respond, "Did we ever officially say Barry Allen is coming back?" Didio posed the question to Ethan van Sciver who got very scared and didn't want to be asked about it. Ian Sattler didn't want to be asked either so Didio settled on this hypothetical situation, "If Barry Allen ever came back, a perfect place for him to come back is the middle of a major crisis event. Just the same way, but if we did a Final Crisis it should not just be about one Flash, but ALL Flashes." Bart too? "All Flashes," Didio put simply. 

As far as a new creative team for the Flash goes Didio was trying to pass the buck, "Um, I don't know, Ethan, what's going on with Flash?" Van Sciver replied emphatically, "Don't ask me!" The games continued later on in the panel after a fan asked Van Sciver about Plastic Man, which he said is shelved for now. "I just have something really big that I'm working on now that I'm NOT GONNA TALK ABOUT," Van Sciver said, raising his voice. Assumptions should not be made, Van Sciver is also rumored to be working on something with Wonder Woman writer Gail Simone.

As usual, there was a lightning round for fans to ask yes or no questions. Here are a few:

Is Damien really Bruce's son? - Met with silence and uncomfortable looking faces.

Will Selina Kyle ever emerge again in Bruce Wayne's life? - Yes (We saw her in todays issue of Detective Comics and she was PISSED.)

Martian Manhunter really dead? - Yes. Sorry.

Barry Allen coming back? - Yes.

Will Barbara Gordon walk again? - No. Never. (Thank you Dan!)

Shane Davis, Franco and Art Baltazar

On the less serious side of comics we have the new kid-friendly Tiny Titans series by Art Baltazar and Franco. There seems to be almost no limit on the team members they might be using, not to mention the cuteness level. Blue Beetle apparently has a talking back-pack. "They just think he's a weird kid," said Baltazar. A fan asked if Terra would be making an appearance, Baltazar responded, "She throws rocks." Though Dan Didio had to give the team a call at one point to ask them why the Tiny Titans were going to be in outer-space, "[Baltazar] said, 'Oh, they're flying home to Starfire's house to clean her room,' I'm like, oh ok that makes sense." But will Connor Kent be showing up? "Maybe in their hearts for right now," says Baltazar.

At one point a female fan asked where the long-awaited All-Star Batgirl was. "J.G. got a little busy," said Ian Sattler. That wasn't a good enough answer for her though and she continued to press for answers as to it's completion. "Actually it's fully complete, we all have copies, we're not sharing it with you," joked Didio, "Now that you put it that way, we're NEVER going to share it with you."

Some of the other women from the DCU will be getting some more attention soon. Arist Jim Calafiore will be doing a Batgirl mini-series that he says will address the changes she went through in the One Year Later stories. It will also include a new character who is a relative of hers. While living in Wayne Manor, "She's not supposed to be going out and doing any super-heroing," said Calafiore. But of course she can't help herself. The much talked about, but rarely seen, new Batwoman will apparently be making an appearance in Final Crisis: Revelations fighting Killer Croc.

Jimmy Palmiotti couldn't pull himself away from the innuendoes to tell us much about the new Powergirl series he's working on with Amanda Connor. "Everything about this book is big," he said, "We also have in your face action. I could go on ALL day." He pretty much did, Ian Sattler started to wrestle the mic away from him whenever Powergirl came up.

Magic is also considered an art that entertains. Captain Carrot and the Final Ark was definitely an entertaining little series. Any plans to pick up on it's mysterious ending? Didio hopes so, "Did we ever announce the Zatanna book?" The panel became confused. Did they just slip up? It was said something with Paul Dini and Zatanna was a possibility during the NY Comic Con panel but no, nothing had actually been announced. Didio needed to go hypothetical again, "If Zatanna had her own book, you might see something along those lines somewhere down the road. Just saying if."

Now have you seen through my clever ruse? I used the art of misdirection on you just like any great magician would have. I told you everything that was going on in the DCU just so I'd be able to tell you Zatanna is getting her own book. !ahctoG ;-)

The ancient Shamans were next called upon to do the hokey pokey and turn themselves around.

Looking to contact your vampire ex-lover from beyond the grave? How about finding out if you'll ever get out from under your kitten debt to that loan shark demon, Teeth? Well look no further folks. Presenting: The Buffy the Vampire Slayer "Conversations with Dead People" Board and the extra special Buffy the Vampire Slayer Tarot Deck!

Have I sold you yet? For most Buffy fans, myself included, there's no hard-sell needed. They will be mine and it will be glorious. The board, if you didn't already know, is named after an episode from Season Seven of BTVS. It comes with a fun extra too, a comic-style instruction booklet written by current Season Eight author Drew Goddard and illustrated by Paul Lee, who's also drawn some of Season Eight.

The tarot deck was written by established tarot writer, Rachel Pollack, who also wrote the Vertigo Tarot for DC/Vertigo a while back. The art here is also done by Lee and pulls themes and characters from all eight seasons of Buffy. They come with an instruction book f you actually want to learn how to use them but if you're like me you just want them because they're gorgeous. Either way you'll be happy but the extra cool thing is the book also explains how the deck fits into the Buffyverse and gives them their own backstory.

Comic Book Resources has a full write-up of the story behind the creation of the deck and previewed these two cards.

The Magician and Death cards

The Occasional Superheroine had a preview of two of the more, shall we say, thought provoking cards.

The Temperance and Devil cards

And just the other day Newsarama gave us a look at one more card. Who else could have been the High-Priestess?

The High Priestess

Both the talking board and tarot deck are set to be released in September. "Conversations with Dead People" is already available for pre-order on the Dark Horse website for $29.99. I would imagine the tarot deck will be up soon. Happy haunting, or slaying, as the case may be.

NY COMIC CON Day 1 - The Day I Got To Breathe

After a very long (but fun!) weekend at the NY Comic Con I'm back to present you with Day One's events. Last year I only made it to one day. This year I was only planning on attending two, but figured what the hell, I'll go for all three. I would have tried live blogging from the event but I was having too much fun to bother. However, I did use a digital voice recorder and took notes. So here we go.

I arrived early before the general public was let in. All I can say is thank god for that because I was able to scoot around the show floor without being walked into. It gave me the chance to buy myself a stuffed Weighted Companion Cube and this Wonder Woman action figure that I've wanted for a while but kept missing in stores. The con had a bigger space to work with this time around. That meant wider isles and artists alley being on the same floor this year.

I had five panels I intended on going to. The first was "Choosing the News: The Changing Face of Online Journalism." Moderated by Heidi MacDonald from Publishers Weekly's The Beat, panelists were, Matt Brady from Newsarama, Rick Marshall from ComicMix, Richard George from IGN Comics, Brian Heater from The Daily Cross Hatch, Jonah Weiland from Comic Book Resources. Beside the moderator, Matt Brady and Johan Weiland were the most talkative of the bunch. The consensus about getting your blog to be popular was hard work and regular posting.

The topic that garnered a lot of discussion from the panel was viral marketing and whether it should be considered news or advertising. "Personally I find viral marketing just distasteful," said Brady, "that it's taking advantage of the gullible audience and tricking them even more so than regular advertising." Jonah Weiland thinks viral marketing can be fun if it's done respectfully, "Viral marketing can be very successful, can be very exciting. I don't know that the comic companies have it totally figured out yet and by the time I think they figure it out viral marketing will probably be dead." Weiland thinks Warner Brothers has done a great job viral marketing The Dark Knight but he also warned, "As a journalist you have to take a step back and you have to be skeptical of pretty much everything now. Brady agreed, "You have to be very careful, especially when it does come to viral marketing because, I mean, it's always been we've kind of regulated it to the blog section to do any kind of reporting on it. Because if you're reporting on a viral marketing stunt, a cake showing up at your door from the Joker with a cell phone, that's cool. Is it news or then you actually marketing or using your outlet then to advertise and that's, that's a huge gray area to go into."

Next up was the first Vertigo panel of the weekend. Sr. VP/Executive Editor Karen Berger was the moderator for this one. Grant Morrison was the biggest name at this panel and therefore introduced first as one of the founding foursome fathers of Vertigo. This was my first time seeing and hearing him and saying I was enormously entertained by him is a gross understatement. Also there were Amy Hadley who is the artist on Madame Xanadu, G. Willow Wilson who wrote Cairo and is now in the midst of a new comic called Air, writer of the upcoming Unknown Soldier Josh Dysart, Jason Aaron the writer of Scalped, writer of DMZ and Northlanders Brian Wood, Brian Azzarello the writer of 100 Bullets and Loveless, Bite Club writer David Tischman, and artist Russ Braun from Jack of Fables. Berger's fellow Editor Shelly Bond also sat in to talk about her new project MINX which are graphic novels aimed at teenage girls. Editors Will Dennis and Jonathan Vankin attended as well. I was very happy to see Mark Buckingham, artist of one of my favorite comics Fables, slip in just as the introductions were finishing up.

The panel mostly consisted of slides of upcoming Vertigo titles with each artist or writer talking about their own and then questions directly mostly at Grant Morrison. There were a lot shown and I don't read a lot of Vertigo titles so I'll just talk about the few that I already know or that peaked my interest. Air is the new title from the creative team behind Cairo which I did not read. G. Willow Wilson said the idea came about after she got stopped by a stewardess in Amsterdam who thought visa's for Iran and Egypt made her a suspicious person. She said Air is, "a really weird surreal look at sort of the way flight has remained sort of magical to us." Wilson also said, "The thing that we've been telling people that they've liked is if Umberto Eco and Hayao Miyazaki had sort of, you know, been in on Alias the TV show it might be something like this," which is what sold me on trying this one out.

I was very excited to find out Vertigo is going to sell a coffee table book of Fables covers come October. If you haven't seen any you're really missing out because James Jean's art is gorgeous. Mark Buckingham talked briefly about issue #75 of Fables called "War Pieces," which will be double sized. "Lots of dramatic things happen, um, you know, nobody's safe. I know they say that a lot in comics, but no, this is one of those moments we will make big changes," he said.

Finally, Grant Morrison spoke about continuing and finishing up Seaguy, three books of three each. He told part of the story which I could never accurately describe how funny it was, I really wish I had video. It involves Seaguy in Spain in a new identity as a professional Matador As a result of mad-cow disease they can no longer kill any cows or bulls therefore they are now known as "Bull Dressers." Morrison explained what that meant exactly, "The Matador buys all these really sexy clothes and stuff and he has a hat and the bull charges up and he just goes whoosh and the bulls like wearing a hat. And then it charges again and he's got a pair of stockings and whoosh and the bull's suddenly dressed in stockings. And the idea is eventually if you're a really good Matador you've got this thing going around in high heels and you win." Hearing him tell that story almost made me pee my pants. He was convinced to tell it again during his spotlight panel the next day.

Finishing up my Friday panels was "Women In Comics" moderated by Abby Denson. Panelists included Karen Green, a librarian at Columbia University who started a collection of graphic novels for them, she also writes for Comixology, Heidi MacDonald once again, artist of American Virgin Becky Cloonan, Shelly Bond also again, collections editor at Marvel Jennifer Grunwald and newly appointed writer of Wonder Woman, Gail Simone who outshined everyone on the panel with her bright red hair. If only I hadn't dyed my hair recently that would have been the perfect open to a conversation.

The ladies discussed how being a women affects their individual work, but did not touch on if they were ever hindered in the comic industry because of their sex, which I found odd. Denson asked them each if they considered their work feminist. Green replied, "I find that a really fascinating question. I think because 'feminism' has become this kind of dirty word and people all over the world want to say, 'oh I believe in equal rights for women but I'm no feminist.' I think that feminism needs to be redefined as basically the right for any woman to have the same opportunities as any man and I can't imagine that anybody wouldn't believe in that." She continued. "I would hope that everyone in this room is a feminist and it's not something that you have to be it's just something that is." Gail Simone felt a little differently. She thinks she has good reason to call herself a feminist, "I grew up in a family that was mostly strong women, there wasn't any really strong father figures to speak of that stuck around for any length of time." She added, "My great-grandmother was a Suffragette and she was in jail many times for, you know, women's right to vote, handing out birth control to women, I mean, it's always been women's issues in my family."

I hopped into the screening of the trailer for X-Files: I Want to Believe before I left. It was about a minute of pure awesome. Fans went wild when the familiar theme tune was played. Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz were brought out for a Q&A session directly afterwards. I stayed for a few minutes then beat it when I realized it was going to be a lot of questions involving the movies plot and a lot of "watch the movie" answers.

I attended the "DC Nation" panel that day also but there's a lot to talk about there so I'm going to do a separate post and include the "DC: Countdown to Crisis" panel I went to on Saturday afternoon as well. All in all it was a fun-filled day but it was time to head home. I needed to rest up for my day in costume. Speaking of costumes, here's a shot of three awesome Indiana Jones cosplayers. Unfortunately for me my camera didn't take pictures very well on the show floor with or without flash but you get the idea.

From left to right:

Jamin the Slavemaster (he runs LeiasMetalBikini.com),  Jedi-G and Jedi-J (who run CONiVERSE.com)