Jamie Delano is back in the game. The British writer who helped usher in Vertigo with his launch of Hellblazer returns to comics with Narcopolis, his radical new vision of the future, out today from Avatar Press. In this exclusive, we took the chance to interview Jamie and got all sorts of answers about addiction, controlled substances, controlled people, and why you should be careful about getting drunk in a strange bar…

It’s been twenty years since you burst onto the scene here in America, with some rather scathing looks at Thatcherite England and Reagan/Bush America. So what are you looking at now?

Is that the time already?  Strange, how one’s life passes.  I guess you mean "bursting" in an antiheroic fashion…?

Not entirely sure just what it is I’m looking at now… some sort of ugly foetal monster of post-democracy is clawing its way down the birth-canal of history, though.  The aberrant post-war half-century of  social liberalism is choking its last, held face-down in the swamp of Terror.

  (more…)

Hercules. By most comics fans’ standards, he’s not the biggest draw in the longbox OR on the shelves. So what is he doing with his own series?

More accurately, what’s he doing on the cover of one of Marvel’s most popular characters’ series?

Over at IGN, the Incredible Herc creative team of Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente do their best to address that very question.

Greg Pak: And it’s worth noting that [the success of the series thus far] ain’t all just due to our puny mortal efforts — our lead happens to be one of the most loved characters in human history. That’s one of the real joys of working on Marvel’s Hercules — he’s not just some strong dude who calls himself Hercules — he’s the mangod himself, the son of Zeus, the Lion of Olympus, the slayer of the Hydra, the scourer of the stables! Which means that the Hercules we’re writing is the same hero who was driven mad by Hera and slew his own wife and children, who atoned through the Twelve Labors, who was burned by the blood of Nessus and ascended to Olympus as a god. He’s an incredible combination of scoundrel and hero, of folktale and myth, of comedy and tragedy, of the profane and the divine. And he’s right here in the Marvel Universe — and we got him, baby!

Okay, so I’ll give Pak some credit for building the character up pretty well. (Mental Note: Remind me to ask Greg Pak to write up my professional bio.) But can Herc carry a book on his own?

Van Lente: It’s a buddy book with Herc in the lead and Amadeus [Cho, his teenage partner] in the main supporting role. Amadeus is pretty headstrong and arrogant, and he could learn a lot from Herc — and Herc is very much seeking his purpose in the modern world, and maybe this is it. Of course, he’s also everyone’s leading candidate for World’s Worst Mentor Hero, but hey, therein lies drama…

Check out the interview for a veritable cornucopia of art, as well as more questions and answers about Herc, his friends and enemies, how long the team expects him to hold up the "Incredible" banner and, of course, Skrulls!

It appears as if Boondocks, the popular animated series created by Aaron McGruder, has finally discovered how much (and more importantly, what type of) controversy it takes to get an episode banned. Actually, make that two episodes.

According to this report at Newsarama, two episodes from the current season of Boondocks have been removed from the schedule by Cartoon Network and Adult Swim. Sources say the episodes target key executives at BET, specifically Debra Lee and Reggie Hudlin, the comics writer and former Boondocks producer.

Newsarama provides the following description of the episodes:

The reason for this is two of the planned episodes, “The Huey Freeman Hunger Strike” and “The Ruckus Reality Show” have been pulled. The episodes take savage strikes at not only favorite target BET, but also two of its key executives, Debra Lee and former Boondocks producer Reggie Hudlin. In “Hunger Strike,” Lee is made to look a lot like Dr. Evil from Mike Myers Austin Powers films while “Wedgie Rutland” is depicted as a total toadying nerd. “Hunger Strike” takes even broader strokes at the Black Entertainment Television, implying its true goal is to destroy and/or diminish African-American culture, exemplifying what Chuck D’s statement that the networks letters really stand for the “booty ‘en thugs” network. “Ruckus” takes matters even further, working off the premise that the black-hating Uncle Ruckus is given his own show on BET.

The article also quotes an exclusive report by hip-hop news site HipHopDX on the Boondocks controversy. However, there is wide speculation that the true source of the "rescheduling" command was with the show’s producer, Sony, rather than Adult Swim.