Hellboy Being Killed Off Too?!?

Spoiler Alert!!

It appears increasingly likely that in Hellboy: The Fury #3, which goes on sale next week, Mike Mignola’s Hellboy is about to join the ranks of recently departed superhero characters such as the Ultimate Spider-Man and Bucky. But it also appears that, unlike so many superhero characters, Hellboy will meet his demise in such a way that he won’t be coming back in corporeal form ever.

But this doesn’t mean the end of Hellboy comics. For one thing in stories set in the past (a Hellboy comics staple), the big red guy will remain the same as he ever was, but also as Mignola pointed out in a revealing interview with Comic Book Resources, “I always say that when characters die in the Hellboy universe, they just become more interesting. So Hellboy now is a lot more interesting.”

Fans will have to wait until next week to find out exactly what happens to Hellboy—and even longer to find out how events in The Fury miniseries affect the B.P.R.D. Dark Horse is promising “mainstream media attention” for what it describes as a “major development" in The Fury #3, so those who enjoy like being “in the know” early and don’t mind having their reading fun spoiled can expect to learn the details of Hellboy’s demise on Tuesday (most likely, if previous patterns hold, in USA Today).

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Remembering Gene Colan, Comic Book Legend

As CBR reported last night, comics creator and Eisner winner Gene Colan passed away at the age of 84 last night.

“The legacy of his artistic storytelling and abilities played a key role in cementing the enduring popularity of characters like Daredevil, Iron Man, Howard the Duck, Blade and Dr. Strange, and garnered him praise and fans the world over,” columnist George Khoury said in an obituary on Comic Book Resources this morning.

In lieu of flowers, Colan’s friend Clifford Meth is asking folks to contribute to a scholarship being set up in Colan’s name for The Kubert School. Details on how to donate can be found on Meth’s blog.

Fellow creators, fans and friends of Gene Colan are sharing memories. Here are a few; as always, click through to see the entirety of what they have to say about one of comics’ legendary artists:

Clifford Meth: “I knew this day would come but it came too quickly. It’s been a rare pleasure working with Gene. He knew who he was—how valuable his contributions to the world of comic art have been—how prized it remains by so many. Yet he never felt less than grateful to anyone who’d even read a single panel that he’d drawn. Until he was too weak to hold a pencil, he put his whole kishkes into everything he drew—whether it was a $5000 commission or a small drawing for someone’s child. And he was never satisfied with his artwork but always eager to learn a little more, do a little better, try something new. At 84.”

Mark Evanier: “Gene was so much a part of comics as long as I’ve read comics. He was the kind of artist who rarely drew less than two comics a month (sometimes, three) and I think a lot of people took him for granted. If he had drawn a handful of comics as fine as what he did in the sixties and seventies and then gotten out, readers would still be haunting their comic shops, praying for his return. I also enjoyed his friendship…and I have to tell you that the one time he drew a script of mine was one of those moments when I would have paid the company for the honor. I received Xeroxes of his pencilled pages — so much more wonderful, of course, than the printed product — and I just grinned for days…because I’d just written a comic drawn by Gene Colan. He always made everything look so damned good.”

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Marvel Digital Comics – Free Mondays (6/20/2011)

Welcome to FREE Mondays! Each week we focus on all of the newly digitized  books you can read for FREE inside the greatest collection of Marvel comics  available online: Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited! Plus, we’ll let you know  what’s coming up next week for FREE, too! With each book, not only are you  getting a free peek inside Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited, but each free  Digital Comic either gives you a look at a book featured in a recent collection  or a comic that’s in stores now.

How  would you like to have five free digital comics to help get you through the  school and work week? Here ya go!
CAPTAIN AMERICA (1968) #130
CAPTAIN AMERICA (1968) #131
CAPTAIN AMERICA (1968) #132
INFINITY CRUSADE (1993) #4
INFINITY CRUSADE (1993) #5

Find out what next  week’s five free digital comics will be below!*
INFINITY CRUSADE (1993) #6
THOR (1966) #174
THOR  (1966) #175
THOR (1966) #176
THOR (1966) #177

*All scheduled  issues subject to change.

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Frank Miller’s Holy Terror On Shelves In September

Rich Johnston and Heidi MacDonald are both reporting that Frank Miller’s long-awaited graphic novel Holy Terror will be published this September, the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks to which the book is a response.

The project began as a “Batman vs. al-Qaeda” book for DC before Miller, feeling he’d taken the story too far outside of the Batman comfort zone, rejiggered it with an original hero called the Fixer and took it elsewhere.

That elsewhere turns out to be Legendary Comics (the publishing subsidiary of the Legendary Pictures film shingle), helmed by former Oni/DC/IDW editor Bob Schreck. This oughta be a pip.

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Some Stunning Images Of First Batman Art

Every time you think you’ve seen it all when it comes to original comic book art something turns up to prove that you haven’t. Exhibit A for that rule today is the Heritage Auctions announcement that 4 pages of 1939 production proofs from Detective Comics #27 just surfaced, having been in the possession of a man living in an apartment building were Bob Kane once lived, who rescued it from the curbside trash some 45 years ago.

Silver Age production art is not uncommon, but like the actual original art itself, Golden Age production art is extremely rare. Usually tossed in the trash, as these pages were. No actual original artwork from Detective Comics #27 is known to exist, although a single page of original art from Batman #1 is known to have survived to the present day.

Click To See the original post along with more great images

‘Walking Dead Weekly’ Coming In January

Image will launch Walking Dead Weekly, a new series reprinting each issue of the original series, in January. Each will be a 32-page b/w comic for $2.99.

Image plans the series as a new way for fans from the AMC series (see “Zombies Invade World Capitals”) to start at the beginning and read a new issue each week in 2011.

The first six-episode season will be completed by January; a second season has been greenlit and will presumably air in 2011.

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Comic Con Remaining In San Diego Through 2015

There’s not too much more to this than what’s in the headline; after a great deal of back and forth about possibly moving the San Diego Comic Con to another city, such as Anaheim, the con has decided to stay put. The organization had previously been contracted to do business in San Diego through 2012, and the imminent end of that period kickstarted speculation about moving. Now a new three-year deal will keep the con in its home city of San Diego until 2015.

Comic Con has grown significantly over the past ten years, to the point where the Con is arguably far larger than San Diego can realistically accommodate. The convention center has officially been sold to capacity (125,000) each year since 2007. Hotels have been enlarged (and built from scratch) and rooms still sell out almost as soon as they go on sale. The massive convention center has even been looking outsized, with more and more events going off-site in the past couple years.

Comic Con marketing director David Glanzer said “L.A., Anaheim and San Diego all had unique understanding of the challenges we faced and tried to mitigate those. In the end, we looked at what was best for the attendees.” He explained that San Diego “really came together to try to make it work for us.”

Some of the city’s efforts likely include the construction of more hotel rooms and additional convention facilities, but the con’s current waterfront location is rather limited with respects to the prospect of further expansion. We’ll hear more plans from the city of San Diego soon, and a great many attendees will be very interested to see if the plans seem far-reaching enough to keep the convention from moving in 2015.

The San Diego Convention Center Corporation has scheduled a press conference for Friday, October 1 at 11:45 a.m. at Lobby E of the convention center.

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Wildstorm Comics Ends Production

Citing “this soft marketplace,” DC Comics Co-Publishers Jim Lee and Dan Didio announced the end of the Wildstorm imprint in December. Wildstorm’s licensed comics, which include a number of video game-inspired titles such as Resident Evil, Clank, and Rachet will continue to be published (along with Wildstorm’s kids titles) under the DC imprint. DC will also stop publishing under the ZUDA banner. Titles that were scheduled to come out under the ZUDA imprint this year will appear as DC books.

Didio and Lee made their announcement on DC’s The Source blog noting that: “After taking the comics scene by storm nearly 20 years ago, the WildStorm Universe titles will end this December. In this soft marketplace, these characters need a break to regroup and redefine what made them once unique and cutting edge. While these will be the final issues published under the WildStorm imprint, it will not be the last we will see of many of these heroes. We, along with Geoff Johns, have a lot of exciting plans for these amazing characters, so stay tuned.”

Originally part of Image Comics, Wildstorm was Jim Lee’s studio and he brought it with him when he joined DC in 1999. According to the Source, “the WildStorm editorial team will undergo a restructuring and be folded into the overall DC Comics Digital team, based in Burbank, which will be led by Jim Lee and John Rood.” Clearly the end of the Wildstorm unit was tied in to the downsizing and consolidation of DC operations attendant on the transfer of many of DC Entertainment’s units to California (see “The Cost of Consolidation”).

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Left 4 Dead Comic ‘The Sacrifice’ Now Online

Honestly, we would never have thought that [redacted] would be the character to bite the dust in "The Passing," but there it is. Sure, we could’ve pictured [redacted] dying, or [redacted] — heck, even [redacted] — but [redacted]? Life’s a trip, qué no?

Thing is, we never figured out how that particular survivor perished — not until now. The first two parts of Valve’s four-part, 150-page digital comic primer for "The Sacrifice," the upcoming DLC for Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, is now online. Give both issues a read by heading over to the Left 4 Dead Blog.

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‘Black Widow’ Spin-Off Movie May Become Real

Several months back, somebody asked Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige if Iron Man 2 side character and The Avengers team member Black Widow (played by Scarlett Johansson) would be getting her own solo outing, to which he replied that it was “definitely possible”. While more revelatory than a flat “no”, that response doesn’t mean much in the world of Hollywood. When it comes to a potentially bankable property, a studio isn’t likely to outright write off an opportunity to take advantage of it.

In the case of a Black Widow movie though, there may have been more truth to Feige’s words than previously suspected. Read what he had to say after the break.

Feige mentioned that there was movement on the project in a Q&A to promote the DVD and Blu-ray release of Iron Man 2, which you can read in full over at Superhero Hype. The relevant bit is below.

We’ve already started discussions with Scarlett about the idea of a solo movie and have begun putting together concepts, but ‘The Avengers’ comes first.

Well, naturally. The Avengers coming first is kind of a necessity here, isn’t it? Iron Man 2 only really served as an introduction to the character, doing more to show off her form-fitting attire and fighting abilities than present a role with any sort of human complexity. Were The Avengers to somehow find the time amidst the half dozen other team members to imbue Black Widow with a conflict and character arc worth investing in, then obviously a Black Widow movie could have potential. It’s possible that even Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye could play a part in it, as his relationship with Black Widow is said to factor into the story of The Avengers.

All of this is still a ways off though, so let’s return to the topic once we see how The Avengers fares. The film hits theaters May 4, 2012.

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