This week: three books with very little in common. Oh, they’re all recently published – on paper, and in English, even! – but that’s about it. So you won’t be bothered by my heavy-handed attempts to link everything together this time….

B.Ichi, Vol. 1
By Atsushi Ohkubo
Yen Press, October 2008, $10.99

In the nation of Japon, in the city of Toykyo, in the busy Chinjuku section – are your ribs sore from all of the nudging yet? mine were – an impressionable and unworldly young man named Shotaro is looking for his good deed of the day. You see, in this alternate world – you did get that it’s an alternate world, didn’t you? Because the alternative is that the translator was just really, really bad at spelling – there are “dokeshi,” who use more of their brains than the rest of us, to unleash superpowers, but they also each have a condition that governs those powers.

(OK, just for the record. The “people only use 10% of their brains” idea? Bunk. Utter bunk. It’s not true now, and it never was true – it was misreporting from an era when scientists studying the brain only knew what 10% of it did. But, even then, they knew it was all being used for something – they’d just only figured out part of it. But some people are so gullible they’d drown if they looked up during a rainstorm…)

Anyway, back to Shotaro. His power is that he gets the abilities of animals by chewing on their bones. (In the ever-lovin’ Animal Man vein, as if birds needed “superpowers” to fly, rather than wings, light bones, and strong muscles.) His condition is that he has to do a good deed a day. And his disposition is that intense sunnyness seen only in manga protagonists who have no clue about the actual rules of their world. (more…)

Fans of FUNmation’s anime Witchblade series can download the first episodes from Apple’s iTunes store for free through October 26.  The other episodes retail for $1.99 each or $38.99 for the entire season.

Witchblade, of course, is the star character from Top Cow and headed for a feature film after also having been seen as a live-action television character. In Japan, Gonzo Digitmation introduced an anime version complete with new host for the mystical artifact. The young girl, Masane, starred in a 24-episode run in 2006. Animation writer Yasuko Kobayashi crafted an entirely different story and host for a series of Manga, also from Gonzo.

Witchblade: Takeru began its run in March 2006 in Champion Red from publisher Akita Shoten with art by Kazyuasa Sumita.

Witchblade AnimeTokuma Shoten and Uno Majoto, Witchblade anime veterans, also produced Witchblade Lost Generation: Midori no Shōjo, beginning in August 2006. The host, Yuri Miyazono, has inherited the artifact from Takeru Ibaraki.
 

I sit here amazed that I still live in the HELL HOLE which is Los Angeles. I’m getting more and more pissed at myself for being here. Why? Well, earlier this week there was a real possibility that I could have lost my home to one of the many massive fires that went through part of L.A. like McCain went though “Joe the goddamn plumber” references.

WHAT the Hell was that about? With all the Joe Six Pack and Joe The Plumber stupid anecdotes being thrown around, I can see the next ad from McCain:

VO: John McCain. An American Hero.

Image: McCain in his military Uniform.

VO: John McCain spent 5 years as a P.O.W.

Image: McCain in captivity.

VO: His cellmate will tell you that McCain stood firm in the face of the enemy.

Image: G.I. Joe Action figure.

G.I. Joe: He never threw me away … never.

VO: I’m John McCain and I approve this message.

As Peter David says, I digress.

Instead of being pissed at myself (which is clearly silly as I am damn near perfect in every way) I will instead address my ire at the fashion industry. It’s no secret I HATE the fashion industry. One of my first rants when I started writing this column was about my confrontation with a super model and her boy toy. Or as I like to refer to her, that skinny little Ho that needs a sandwich so she can throw it up bitch.Long story short: she told me to get a real job when I mentioned I worked in comics. A model telling anyone to get a real job is like a porn star having issues with YOUR morals.

This is the same fashion industry that owes the term “super model” to us in the comics industry. Without that term (which WE own) what would they call these “ultra” models? (more…)

Starting October 27, Baldo will crossover with Javier Hernandez’s El Muerto for a week long event celebrating the Day of the Dead.

Baldo, a strip from Hector Cantu and Carlos Castellanos, features a Latin American middle class family living in America. The title character is a teenager who goes to school and works part-time at an auto parts store. He’s tormented by his brilliant activist younger sister and counseled by his loving father and grandmother.

Hernandez created El Muerto in 1998 and it features Diego de la Muerte, “who, while on his way to a Dia de los Muertos festival, is abducted by Aztec gods only to return to Earth a year later with supernatural powers.” Hernandez published the comic book erratically through the last decade only to suspend print in 2003 and has promised a digital incarnation. It ahs a devoted following and was featured in an award winning independent film starring Wilmer Valderrama.

According to Editor & Publisher, this is the third time Baldo, distributed to 225 papers across America, has featured a Latin American comic book character.  In 2005, the strip was visited by Richard Dominguez’s El Gato Negro, another independent comic book. Lela Lee’s Angry Little Girls! paid a visit the following year.

"The Day of the Dead is a special holiday for lots of Latinos and we thought this was a unique way for Baldo and his family to pray for and remember a special loved one in their lives," Cantu said.
 

The always entertaining Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood reports the unsurprising news that Summit Entertainment is already readying the sequel to Twilight.  New Moon is the second book in the quartet of Stephenie Meyer novels and introduces Jacob Black the werewolf heartthrob to complicate Bella Swan’s life.

Finke goes on to note that the unreleased soundtrack album is among the Top 5 Best-Selling Albums on Amazon and Borders’ exclusive 2009 calendar sold out its first printing in days. None of this is a surprise given the book series’ sales alone plus the reaction among the teenyboppers and their moms at Comic-Con International this summer.  Clearly, this is one hot property, the kind of phenomenon usually reserved for Elvis or boy wizards (and Twilight opens November 21, taking the spot vacated by that same boy).

She goes on to report that the film may have cost a bargain at $37 million and even if they spend an additional $30 million on promotion, it’s all at bargain prices compared with other Hollywood productions such as the $180 million spent on The Dark Knight’s production alone.  Clearly, the film will bring in oodles of cash to Summit, allowing them to fund the second film (and third and fourth) in addition to new productions.
 

Blogs can be revealing as creators tend to sound off when executives to tell the press one thing or another.  Take for example; Pirates of the Caribbean co-scribe Terry Rossio.  After all the hubbub at Disney’s recent press announcement about a fourth installment, he posted the other day:

“For the record, none of the recent Pirates 4 rumors have any truth, including the so-called record 50 million dollar payday for Depp.

“Some pretty funny stuff, though. Sacha Cohen? Tim Burton? Studios are way too protective of their franchises for that sort of thing.”

And now that Tom Rothman, head of 20th-Century Fox, has said he’s actually open to a third X-Files feature, despite the poor reaction to this summer’s movie, producer Frank Spotnitz was inundated with links from fans, wanting a reaction.

His response to the fans: “I was encouraged to read Tom Rothman’s remarks as well. I anticipated the studio would wait until after the release of the DVD to make any decision regarding a third movie, but I will let you know if we end up having any news before then.”