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The Beat was the guest co-host on this week’s Comic News Insider: Episode 449 with pal Jimmy Aquino. Lots of dishing on the news and reviews of Arrow #1, FF #1, My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic #1, RIPD City Of The Damned #1. Of those we really loved FF #1…Fraction, Allred and Miss Thing. How can you miss.

Nobody has any idea why this exists, which I guess is precisely why everybody should be thrilled to view it? After first being announced at San Diego during a strange, strange panel which featured live appearances from several members of the cast, the first episode of Marvel’s ALL-WINNERS SQUAD animated webseries has gone online, which sees basically every Marvel character worth caring about… assemble onto one team.

Not since The Champions have we had such a powerful lineup in the same room. We’ve got The Unicorn (Russia’s greatest villain!), Hypno Hustler, Frog-Man, Squirrel Girl, Howard the Duck, Ruby Thursday and Walrus all on this team, you guys. Ruby Thursday, I say! She’s the notch Wolverine is proudest of having on his bedpost. It’s an inspired lineup of heroes. Here’s a photo Marvel took at SDCC with three of the cast members, who are IRL here but are contained to cartoon in the video:

The video is a ridiculous piece of silliness, in which the characters gather round a conference table to find out why they’re there, and what the point of everything is. The basic plot gets set up – no spoilers – and looks like it could be a whole lot of fun. Ruby Thursday has a seductive robot voice. Hypno Hustler speaks exclusively in 1970s Blaxploitation nonsense. And Frog Man appears to be masturbating.

There is little to no reason for this to exist, although apparently Doop will also show up soon – and as everybody knows, Doop Is. So I suppose that will have to be reason enough.

Now, I know some of you are going to look at this and think that Marvel are making fun of the sad-acts who use the internet to talk about comics. Here we have a group of losers, who can’t make it on their own, desperately clinging onto Marvel to provide them with some small semblance of dignity and power. Some of them are perverts, some of them are fat, and one of them is a furry. ISN’T THAT BASICALLY WHAT A MESSAGE BOARD IS?

Not really, no. And hilariously forced subtext aside from me aside, this is quite a fun start. It’s obviously the most cheese you’ve ever seen in the history of your life, but Hypno Hustler alone makes it worth watching. It’s sad that winning characters like DARKSTAR and HEPZIBAH have yet to appear, but maybe – just maybe – this could be the place to finally see the return of Peter Milligan’s finest creation…. RAIN BOY?

Probably not. More likely are appearances from Deadpool, Pixie, D-Man and Batroc The Leaper. Expect a full breakdown once episode 2 hits the net!

By Steve Morris

It’s not all about San Diego, you know. Deep in the sodden trenches of Southern England comes a quiet-quiet announcement from Uncanny X-Men/Phonogram/Batroc The Leaper writer Kieron Gillen, regarding a new comic-book podcast. Called Decompressed, the podcast will see Gillen interview a series of writers about specific stories they’ve written, going into extreme detail on things like panel layout, storytelling, and the roles played by artist/writer when creating a comic.

The first episode is about Wolverine & The X-Men #13, by Jason Aaron. And wouldn’t you know? Jason Aaron is his first guest on the thing. Apparently it’s pronounced “Air-ron” instead of “Arr-ron”, which sadly takes away a little bit from the ‘is-he-isn’t-he secretly a pirate’ thing he had going on.

Several other writers like Rob Williams and Andy Diggle have volunteered to appear on subsequent episodes, and it’s likely that you may see appearances from people such as Matt Fraction and David Hine at some point, too. Maybe even Jamie McKelvie? No, that’d be crazy. You’d never get those two in a room together.

by Jimmy Aquino, Comic News Insider, Special to The Beat

I sat down with old pal and amazing artist Francesco Francavilla on Sunday at Heroes Con. Always a great interview, Francesco and I talked about his recent work on Batman,  upcoming Captain America/Black Widow mini-series, The Black Beetle, cover work, Comic Twart, What Not, and his genuine love for cartooning. You can check out other great interviews I got at Heroes Con over at the Comic News Insider (my podcast) site! 

My voice is back enough to podcast! A miracle! Check out this week’s Comic News Insider Episode 322 – Walking The Beat with Heidi MacDonald in which I co-host with Jimmy Aquino:

Stepping into the rotating co-host chair this week is good friend Heidi MacDonald (The Beat). Heidi gives a great recap of last week’s big Chicago comic convention, C2E2. Jimmy hopes his real journalist pal wont call him out on his fajournalism. They chat about Jimmy being interviewed in Stated Mag, wish William Shatner a Happy 80th, judge the first pic of Adrianne Palicki in herWonder Woman outfit, Pop Funk Archie t-shirts and the new Simon Pegg/Nick Frost/Seth Rogen movie Paul. News includes: Zack Snyder’s plan for his Superman film, new Sailor Moon in the U.S., The Sandman TV series is back on, Steve Rude needs an intern and Darren Aronofsky leaving the Wolverine movie. Listener feedback and more! Leave your iTunes comments! 5 stars and nothing but love!

For those who don’t know, Jimmy’s podcast used to have a regular co-host, Joe Gonzalez, who left the show not to pursue writing or acting or the usual suspects, but rather to spend more time with his charity, the Project Solution, which, rather than trying to solve a macro problem, tries to fix one thing, like building A well, or buying A class textbooks. From where we sit that’s pretty damned awesome. If you’d like to make a difference, check it out.

Should comics panels be written about or recorded for all to hear?

This panel report from APE of Dan Nadel interviewing Daniel Clowes has been linked everywhere, probably because it’s such a thorough write-up. There’s lots of dish on other cartoonists, and anecdotes from the history of alt.comix:

Clowes told a story how the first panel he was ever on was comprised him, Robert Crumb, Gilbert Hernandez, Peter Bagge and Burne Hogarth. Hogarth spent the entire panel yelling at the independent cartoonists on the panel, saying how they were horrible artists.

“He spent almost an entire hour saying how we were the worst artists who ever lived,” recalled Clowes. “It was an audience full of young, hipster kids who wanted to see Robert Crumb and Crumb was not saying a word because Hogarth was rambling on. People started yelling out, ‘Shut up, old man!’ and finally Crumb just slowly leaned back in his chair and did a pratfall. Hogarth didn’t miss a beat, though, he just kept on going. I literally did not say a word on that panel.”

There’s finally audio of the panel up at Comics Comics, so you can listen for yourself.

Which reminds me of a growing beef — why is the set-up for recording panels at conventions so crap? During the ICV2 Digital and Comics Conference I tried to record them on my Mac but the ambient room audio eluded my technical ability. Milton Griepp used his little dictaphone but the quality wasn’t the best. I have to admit, I think we both screwed the pooch there with something that the average 12-year-old would be able to handle.

I recorded a few NYCC panels with my iPhone — the quality is fine for spoken word purposes. It takes a few minutes to clean and upload the audio files. In short, this is child’s play. So why aren’t all comics panels routinely recorded? I was told that at PAX, the video game conference, they record all the panels and CHARGE for the audio.

Part of this may be the lowly origins of the comic book convention panel. Having been on untold panels in my lifetime, I can attest to the fact that they range from horrific hungover Sunday exercises in awkward phrasing and long pauses best left in the scrapheap, to stimulating once-in-a-lifetime meetings of the mind. But of late it turns out we comics folks have a lot to say and a lot of Internet to say it on. Perhaps the time has come to archive more of these slices of history.

Thankfully, someone with a decent mike was able to record the Nadel/Clowes panel. But we’ve lost a lot of other pieces of our comics heritage along the way. Unless they are all in Mike Catron’s garage somewhere….but that is a post for another time.

Another jam packed and fascinating discussion among people who have a lot to say. nycParticipants:

Print vs. Digital–War, Co-existence, or Collaboration
Publishers, retailers, and others on how the digital revolution will impact on print sales.
- Ted Adams, CEO of IDW Publishing
- Eric Beaulieu, Vice President Premedia, Transcontinental Transmedia
- Dave Bowen, Director of Digital Distribution, Diamond Comic Distributors
- David Gabriel, Senior Vice President of Marvel Comics
- Alison Hendon, Youth Selection Team Leader, Brooklyn Public Library
- John Riley, owner of Grasshopper Comics
- Moderated by Calvin Reid, Senior News Editor, Publishers Weekly

Maybe.

Jamie Coville has now uploaded a ton of panels from Comic-con, including many of our must-sees which we didn’t:

Secret Origins of Comic-Con. (61.8mb, 67:32)
Participants of the first and early San Diego Comic cons tell their stories of how it all began. Panelist include Richard Alf, Greg Bear, Dave Clark, Ken Krueger, Mike Towry, Scott Shaw!, Barry Alfonso, Roger Freedman, Ken Krueger, and moderated by William R. Lund. This panel gets cut off before it ends due to a dead battery.

Indie Comics Marketing 101. (41.7mb, 45:33)
How to market your comics if you are not a big publisher. Boom! Marketing director Chip Mosher, The Beat’s Heidi McDonald and filling in for Shanon Wheeler is popular blogger and creator Kevin Church. Chip goes through the mindset and some rules on marketing yourself, Heidi and Kevin goes through some do’s and don’ts on the press end. The panel is moderated by the former manager of development and content at MySpace, Sam Humphries.

Spotlight on Jerry Robinson. (41.8mb, 45:43)
Moderator Mark Waid interviews Jerry Robinson about his career in comics, particularly focusing on his early Batman days and his latest work as a guest curator for an exhibition on Superhero comic art.

Golden and Silver Age of Comics. (69.1mb, 75:31) Panelists include Murphy Anderson, Gene Colan, Ramona Fradon, Russ Heath, Jack Katz, Jerry Robinson and Leonard Starr. The group tells stories about their time in comics. The panel is moderated by Mark Evanier.

COMICSPRO: Selling More Comics and Graphic Novels: A Forum for Publishers. (54.9mb, 60:01)
Joe Field (ComicsPro President and Flying Colours owner), Phil Boyle (Coliseum of Comics chain owner) and Judd D’Angelo (Earth 2 chain co-owner) give instructions to publishers and creators on how to sell more comics.

Spotlight on Dwayne McDuffie. (45.8mb, 50:02)
Dwayne McDuffie receives an inkpot award and just does a straight Q&A with the audience. He answers questions about writing comics and animation. In particular about Fantastic Four, Damage Control, Static Shock and the Milestone Universe, Justice League, Teen Titans and Ben 10.

2009 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards. (154mb, 169:17)

The Black Panel. (74.1mb, 81:00)
Moderated by Michael Davis. This laugh out loud funny panel’s participants include Ludacris, Michael Jai White, Kel Mitchell, Prdodical Sunn, Jimmy Diggs, Reggie Hudlin, Denys Cowan, a surprise guest Michelle Nichols. There was also a performance by a singer Asia Lee, Queen of Cali. Artist Ken Lashley was in the crowd and stood up to participate towards the end. There was much promoting of upcoming projects and some Q&A from the audience.

Spotlight on Sheldon Moldoff. (42.4mb, 46:22)
Mark Waid interviews Sheldon Moldoff about his career, in particular about his time working on Batman. Moldoff also talks about the time he sued DC and won (but still continued to work for them) and his very bad experience with Bill Gaines. I should note I missed about the first 5 minutes of the panel.

Spotlight on Denis Kitchen. (94.5mb, 54:04)
Kevin Dooley gave a very long introduction to Denis Kitchen and also ran a quick moving power point showing lots of Kitchen’s underground art. They talked a bit about his career, what he’s doing now and took questions from the audience.

Comic-Con: El Cortez Memories. (45.6mb, 49:51) Moderated by David Scroggy, this panel includes many early comic con goers and they tell funny stories about the old El Cortez hotel the comic con used to be held in. On the panel was Sergio Aragonés, Mike Friedrich, George Clayton Johnston, Jack Katz, Lee Marrs, Mike Royer, William Stout and Mark Evanier.

Harvey Kurtzman Tribute. (46.9mb, 51:14)
Panelists include Paul Levitz, Denis Kitchen, William Stout, Charles Kochman and Harvey’s daughter Nellie Kurtzman. Panel is moderated by Mark Evanier. The group talk about Harvey, his strengths and his career path in an open and honest way.

The Annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel. (51.9mb, 56:42)
Mark Evanier is the moderator. On the panel is Bill Mumy, Mike Royer, Steve Saffel, and the inspiration for the 5 String Mob from Jimmy Olsen comics, Barry Alfonso, Roger Freedman, William R. Lund, Scott Shaw! and Mike Towry. The panel talks about Jack, point out that several of the audience members also have Jack Kirby connections as well.

Coville’s picture are also online.

The other morning, we linked to a Variety report on the option of a yet-unpublished graphic novel called 7th SON. Writer J.C. Hutchins wrote in to explain that is not quite the origin of the source material:

I wanted to let you know that the Variety article you cited was inaccurate in stating that 7th Son was a graphic novel series. It was actually a free “podcast novel” series — free serialized audiobooks that I released in 2006-07. Each week, listeners would receive a new chapter of the audiobook, narrated by me. A pretty cool way to build a fan base, which helped seal the print novel deal for this fall, and the option/development deal with WB.

If you have been missing LOST this last couple weeks, well, no new episodes, but this might tide you over for a day or so. The Helper Monkey was on wrestling historian Karl Stern’s podcast today to discuss the season finale, the show as a whole, the greatness of John Locke and Benjamin Linus, the not-so-greatness of Jack Shephard and more.

You can download it here.

Yet more podcasting from The Beat! Along with Jimmy and Joe of Comic News Insider, Ben McCool and Lenae McKee, we dissect the various versions of A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE as part of CNI’s VERSUS series. It was a lot of fun and quite an interesting discussion.

The Beat and Future Mr. Beat were guests on “Comic News Insider: Episode 194″.

The Beat’s own Heidi MacDonald joins us in studio along with up and coming writer Ben McCool for a lengthy and Twitteriffic show! After a tasty BBQ and many drinks, the gang sallies forth to record a show. Uh-oh. 4 chatty folks on beer and wine! Hang on! News includes Free Comic Book Day, Wolverine Nike’s and easter eggs, Sin City 2, Predators reboot, Twitter wars, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, get a part in Smallville and more! We get into a heated discussion about Twitter and the advantages/disadvantages of it all.

The Comic Book Club folks are now PODCASTING. So you can now listen to the State of the Industry show with ourself, Brian Heater, Kiel Phegley, and John DiBello.

HEAR Dan Nadel interview Powr Mastrs auteur CF here. SEE Gary Panter, Brian Chippendale / Blak Pus and Paper Rad on the new PictureBox YouTube channel.

Clickwheel has been around for a bit as the first company to attempt to take advantage of comics on the iPod. While it hasn’t been maing many headlines lately, it does have some recent updates in regards to the new generation of iPods:

In the wake of Apple’s new iPod line, Clickwheel, the site for creating and distributing comics to iPod and iPhone, is proud to unveil a brand new look as well as added features and content at Clickwheel.net, including community tools and exclusive online content featuring 2000AD’s flagship character, Judge Dredd.

The new Clickwheel front page features an updated look, a built-in player for viewing content on your computer and new features for registered users including: bookmarking tools that alert users when their favorite comics have been updated, a listing of the top ten downloaded features daily and those most recently updated and added, and rating and tagging tools to help both readers and creators enjoy and share their comics.

Among these comics are three pieces exclusive to Clickwheel. For users new to the concept of comics on the iPod we have part two of Colin White’s Comics on small Screens, a series exploring the possibilities of creating comics in this new medium. Clickwheel is also the exclusive home of a new series from the creators of the phenomenally popular webcomic, Brat-Halla called Random Encounters. True to its name, Random Encounters is an RPG/Fantasy driven comic packed with action and humor for fans of any genre. Both of these comics are available as iPod/iPhone formatted comics ready for download, or as PDFs that can be viewed on any PC or iPhone.

Finally, it has been on the wish-list since Clickwheel joined forces with Rebellion/2000AD, but wish no more because Judge Dredd has come to Clickwheel. Judge Dredd: Fifty Year Man is now available online only at Clickwheel, and is sure to please new and old fans of one of comics’ most enduring characters. Fifty Year Man is available for download as an iPod comic, a PDF, or as a Clickwheel video animatic, playable on your iPod, or on your PC via Clickwheel’s homepage player.

These exclusive pieces are in addition to recently commissioned exclusives from Joe Loves Crappy Movies, The Non-Adventures of Wonderella, and 2000AD’s Ten Seconders. In the coming year, Clickwheel will be continuing to commission a limited amount of exclusive work from the best independent creators out there. If you’d like to be considered, email a pitch for your comic to tim ’at’ clickwheel.net.

In addition to new content, Clickwheel is now offering a new type of content in our comic trailer functionality. At the top of the right hand panel on the Clickwheel home page you will find a trailer button that will prompt a list of trailers and previews for various print and web comics currently available on the site. This is only the beginning of this feature and we plan to build a one-stop source for previews of all the hottest upcoming comics, much like Apple’s Quicktime page is for movies. Clickwheel trailers can be either PDF or movie files and if you’d like to have your trailer featured at Clickwheel, simply email the file to tim ’at’ clickwheel.net and we’ll happily post it for you with no additional steps.

This is just the beginning of what Clickwheel has planned for 07 and 08, and we look forward to offering additional tools and features to help pros and independents alike create and promote their work to the iPod generation.

For more information, we have completely rewritten our FAQ to include in-depth guides to creating comics for iPod, and if you’d like to chime in, we’d love to hear from you in our new forum.

For more information or press inquiries, contact tim ‘at’ clickwheel.net

Even though THE BEAT and her helper monkey have been talking about Chris Benoit’s brain, that’s not the wrestling talk we have for you today.

As everyone knows, there are a multitude of similarities between the two popular culture whipping boys: brightly-colored outfits, supersized muscles, and so on.

Today, we shine a line on one of our favorite wrestling companies, CHIKARA PRO, and their love of comics. You may have seen them references on MTV recently, talking about wrestling and video games (CHIKARA has a Nintendo-loving garppler on their crew called Player Uno).

CHIKARA’S DVD releases have, for the last couple years, been homages to famous comic book covers. You undoubtedly recognize the originals that inspired these discs.

More after the break

CHIKARA just released their second pod-per-view on Itunes today. For less than the price of one overly-expensive cup of Mocha Frappo coffee, you can check out this crew of wacky Americanized Luchadors, include Los Ice Creams, as well as two of the country’s toughest female grapplers, Daizee Haize and Sara Del Ray.

Also, we’ll have an ashcan edition of our magazine at the Baltimore Comic-Con this weekend reprint our articles about CHIKARA, as well as a trip a few weeks ago to see the WWE minor league wrestling promotions, Ohio Valley Wrestling and Derby City Wrestling, in Louisville.

– Posted by Mark Coale

Via Colleen Coover the “Comics are not literature” panel from San Diego that was practically the only provocative one, as far as we can tell, is up. We haven’t listened yet, but it’s very high on our catch up list.

Image of Douglas Wolk, Dan Nadel, and Sara Ryan stolen from Coover. Who just got married this weekend to panelist on the above Paul Tobin so big congrats to the happy couple, and here’s a picture of that, taken by Paul Guinan.

Blake Bell is celebrating Hernandez Brothers week, and of course you don’t have to ask us twice to join in the fun. Bell is posting mp3’s of a 1989 interview of Gilbert Hernandez by Gary Groth and throwws in a few observations:

Interesting that, in part one, Gilbert name checks Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko as inspirations/influences. And it’s fantastic to see that Gilbert has the work ethic of both those creators. Every time I turn around, Gilbert’s producing new work that is consistently well drawn, with a unique narrative. His latest work is a mini-series for Dark Horse Comics entitled, The Devil You Know. Go here for a preview and “trailer” from the Dark Horse site. In an era where my favourite indie artists seem to produce a book a year, Gilbert also has another full-length graphic novel coming out from Fantagraphics called, Chance In Hell.

Hear the Beat blab! Hear Paul Pope, John Cassaday, Jimmy Palmiotti and John Lucas blab also! It’s all on the 100th episode of the Comic News Insider podcast which is now online.

Comic News Insider is your source for news, reviews and interviews on everything comic book, animation, sci-fi and pop culture!  Sponsored by Dynamic Forces. Hosted by Jimmy Aquino and Joe Gonzalez, CNI is a NYC based weekly podcast that is both informative and entertaining. Jimmy and Joe review new weekly comics/movies/TV shows, deliver the latest industry news and share their Top 3 Picks of the Week. Episodes include guest interviews with the biggest names in the comic book industry today, as well as guest segments including Blair Butler from G4’s Attack of the Show. Tune in every Wednesday to get your comic book news and more.

Comics podcast Inkstuds has a mammoth three part interview with Kim Deitch.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

We haven’t listened to it yet. But you should.

Who needs spending hours and hours writing deep thought when you can just blab? Cinematical’s James Rocchi interviews the Beat about movies, comics and comic-book movies.

For those of you that aren’t in SD, DC Comics is giving you a way to feel like you were there.

For at least the second year in a row, DC has podcasts available from some of the panels. There are shows from Thursday, Friday and Saturday offered.

You can find them at DC’s webpage or on iTunes.

If any other studios or publishers are doing them, let The Beat know and we’ll add them to the list.

Posted by Mark Coale

What’s up with the viral game tied into the Batman movie going on at the Con this afternoon?

It apparently started this morning with the Why So Serious website giving out coordinates this morning to a location right outside the convention center.

As of this writing (3:30 ET), the website says “Checkpoint 1″ and a cryptic message scrawled across the page:

Ready to play a joke? Tell your stooges on the ground to look up. They’ll tell you what to do next.

There’s also a place to apparently enter a password. No word on what that is yet.

According to Rich Johnston, it all ends up leading to the new DARK KNIGHT trailer, the one that was up on You Tube yesterday and can be seen in front of THE SIMPSONS movie.

the trailer is back up on You Tube.

edit: Here’s the screen as of now (5:00 ET). The police report (when clicked) talks about a dead “Joker” who was found in an abandoned van (from this morning?) and holding something that said “See you in December.” The small pixel on the right takes you to the trailer.

Posted by Mark Coale

For nerds not in San Diego, the biggest news of the week is probably the release of the Simpsons movie. But, maybe more important than that is what you can see before the movie: the trailer for THE DARK KNIGHT movie.

Of course, it’s 2007, so someone who saw a preview has already put it up on You Tube.

Edit: The clip is down. If another link shows up, we’ll add it. The official trailer will likely be up Friday.

Posted by Mark Coale