Here’s a poster I did for the upcoming Secret Identities signing at Midtown — featuring Cliff Chiang’s pinup of a character named Jia (who was apparently conceived by X2 hottie Kelly Hu)

LARRY HAMA, CLIFF CHIANG, & CHRISTINE NORRIE TO HEADLINE SPECIAL “SECRET IDENTITIES” EVENT AT NYC’S MIDTOWN COMICS ON MAY 23!

May 12, 2009 – SIUniverse Media and Midtown Comics in New York City are proud to present a special book signing event featuring the editors and contributors of the groundbreaking SECRET IDENTITIES: The Asian American Superhero Anthology at the Midtown Comics Time Square location on Saturday, May 23 at 3:00pm.

Joining Secret Identities Editor-at-Large KEITH CHOW, Art Director JERRY MA, and Senior Artist JEF CASTRO are three of the biggest names in the comic book industry:

- LARRY HAMA: The legendary writer/artist of Wolverine, Bucky O’Hare and Batman and creator of the G.I. Joe universe is currently writing G.I. Joe: Origins for IDW Publishing. In Secret Identities, Hama is the subject of Tak Toyoshima’s interview piece “S.A.M. Meets Larry Hama” and contributed a one-page teaser for a story called “Her.”

- CLIFF CHIANG: Hailed for his fluid and confident storytelling and sweeping line work and nuanced style, Chiang has worked as an artist on several high-profile projects including Batman, Human Target, Green Arrow & Black Canary, and Grendel: Red, White, and Black. He is currently working on the Neil Young graphic novel Greendale for DC/Vertigo. In Secret Identities, Chiang illustrated “Jia,” a character concept by X-Men 2 actress Kelly Hu.

- CHRISTINE NORRIE: Dubbed a natural storyteller by Publisher?s Weekly, Norrie has earned two Eisner nominations, a Russ Manning Promising Newcomer Nomination, and a 9th Panel and New York City Comic Book Museum Award. Her most noted works include her original graphic novel Cheat, the Oni Press series Hopeless Savages, the Scholastic/Graphix teen drama Breaking Up, and DC Comics? Green Arrow/Black Canary Wedding Special. Along with writer John Kuramoto, Norrie contributed the story “David Kim” to Secret Identities.

These look pretty hot.

An exciting series of Marvel Comics superheroines presented in the Japanese Bishoujo (pretty girl) style with original designs specially created by the incomparable illustrator Shunya Yamashita! Each PVC statue stands approximately 8″ tall. Suggested retail: $59.

Black Widow – July 09, Rogue – August 09, Scarlet Witch – Fall 09.

Click to enlarge. No larger image for Scarlet Witch, unfortunately.

This week’s Entertainment Weekly has a piece called “The Truth About Twitter”, mostly name-checking various celebs who’ve embraced it. The thing that got me was the sidebar, though, where they ranked the value of stuff being tweeted and listed the # of followers different Twitter personalities had. At the time they went to press, MC Hammers had 167,000 followers, doubling John Mayer (80,300) and crushing the likes of Martha Stewart (35,900) and Snoop Dogg (27,700)…

On sale at Midtown for 15% off

Scott Pilgrim just turned 24, and things couldn’t possibly be better! This means things are about to get infinitely worse. Suddenly, two of Ramona’s evil ex-boyfriends are in town, and they’re playing dirty. His band is in turmoil, and his own exes aren’t making things any easier. And what’s up with Ramona, anyway? She’s been acting kinda weird ever since they moved in together. Scott’s precious little life is coming back around to bit him in the butt, and it may not be pretty!

Midtown is now selling the 1st printing of Amazing Spider-Man for $50 — which may seem crazy, until you see it selling for $75 at Amazon and $100 at Mycomicshop. I shudder to think what Ebayers want for it :O

So I guess Obama is providing an economic boost already — just slapping his name on stuff is driving people into stores…

Midtown also has the 2nd printing for $5 and 3rd printing for cover price:
http://www.midtowncomics.com/Neshop/SearchResult.asp?chkshowthum=1&WhereFrom=SeriesSearchResult&txtTitle=Obama

Finally had a chance to change up the COMIXUP homepage — instead of showing the most recent posts, it now shows posts from a couple featured topics (currently Spidey/Obama and 2008 in Review), plus the Top 20 most viewed articles. I should also be adding adding a tab for most *voted* posts soon, to encourage people to recommend posts (via the heart icon).

Of course, you can still get all the latest posts (broken down into Reviews, Features & Interviews, Bloggery & Commentary and News & Linkage) by clicking, what else, Latest Posts.

Shout out PCS compadre David Brothers for giving a COMIXUP heads-up over on 4l.

Just a couple pix of the crowd outside Midtown Comics (Times Square store) this morning. There were about three dozen lined up by 9am and by the time they opened it was like 100.

Please note: the guy holding multiple copies is a Midtown employee playing hype man. Midtown had a strict 1 COPY PER PERSON policy. I had to reiterate this in numerous over the past week — which I tried to lighten by saying “Even if Obama himself shows up, he can only get 1 copy”, probably to no effect.

Beyond the fact that Marvel didn’t print anywhere near enough copies for the demand, there are a couple other things that strike me as crazy about this whole media circus:

1) Obama only appears in the five page back-up.

2) OBAMA DOES NOT EVEN LOOK LIKE OBAMA. I realize this was probably a last minute idea on Marvel’s part — and a fairly brilliant one at that — but could they not find someone who could do 5 pages AND draw Obama?? Sorry Todd Nauck, but that is NOT cutting it. This is one time when it would’ve been better to have somebody do severe photo-referencing or even Greg Land style tracing. I mean, now you’re gonna have tons of casual fans pick the book up and see this unrecognizable Barack Obama. I’d be embarrassed.

3) The first guy in line was apparently there at 6AM! And it was probably like under 20 degrees at that time!

Also FYI, the 2nd printing will be available January 21st.

Midtown Comics has already sold out (online) of BOTH COVERS of Amazing Spider-Man #583 — featuring an appearance by President Elect Obama — and the book doesn’t even come out until Wednesday!

CNN was already at the store shooting a piece earlier this week. Meanwhile (or should I say months prior to this) Savage Dragon put Obama on the cover was greeted by crickets.

2nd printing should arrive later this month (21st or 29th).

Fresh from the PCS lab: COMIXUP — “Comic book news, reviews, previews & commentary from the web’s best comic book sites & blogs”.

Although there are a couple existing comic news feed aggregators (none of which appeared on my radar before I started this project), COMIXUP goes a little further by adding site “avatars” and excerpts for each post, as well as categorizing them all for easier browsing. Additionally, COMIXUP also includes the latest posts from creator, publisher and retailer blogs.

This week I started including podcasts which you can listen to with the embedded audio player and videos which you can watch inline, plus recent images posted on DeviantArt. (As with every aspect of the site, I’ll be expanding things as we move along, but these three areas may be more worthy of the “BETA” label.)

COMIXUP is also running a banner exchange program — current partners include Comic Pants, Major Spoilers and Panels of Awesome. Thanks & shout-outs also go out to Johanna at Comics Worth Reading and Justin at 13 Minutes for posting COMIXUP announcements. (And yes, this is a blatant attempt at getting everyone to link to COMIXUP, whether it be with banners or without :)

If you?re interested in adding your feed, joining the network, or have any questions or suggestions about COMIXUP, please send me an email

Thank you,
-Jon Haehnle

Being a fan of Batman, former-Suns coach Mike D’Antoni and *sigh* the Knicks, I really enjoyed this great post on Hardwood Paroxysm about Mike D’Antoni’s infectious 7SOL (Seven Seconds or Less) style and how it parallels Joker’s thoughts on Chaos in the Dark Knight flick:

Joker: Oh, and you know the thing about Chaos?

(pause)

Joker: It’s fair.

[...]

There’s a reason you’re seeing Al Harrington having a renaissance there and why the Knicks as a whole look like they’ve been released from prison. D’Antoni has tapped into something ethereal that exists in players that tend to falter in traditional systems. Players that are made of athleticism and style, but little toughness or resolve. He is, somehow, able to tap into something philosophical with his teams and bring out the best in players that previously had nothing resembling a “best.” He does so by feeding what many consider the worst parts of them previously. He takes their little world and he turns it in on themselves. It’s fun. And it’s tempting. It’s that chaos being introduced to a system. And from a player’s standpoint, it allows them to freelance and always look to score. It’s… fair.

Also mentioned in the post, the fact that the Knicks beat the world champion Celtics at MSG last night. Which was awesome lol