Right now, at DC comics, Grant Morrison can do no wrong. He presented a classic version of All Star Superman, which came out as singles, was collected in trades, and recently bundled into a swank collectors addition. And because no one could get enough of it, it's even got an animated movie coming in February. Having won the field with Superman, Morrison took a four-year jaunt in the Batman ...

It seems like lately superhero-inspired clothing for women has been put in a pretty polarizing position. Fans can either pick up affordable logo tees and the like, or splurge for overpriced fashionista fare. No one can fault a publisher like DC for going to top designers, but even with Karl Lagerfeld involved I doubt many people will shell out six hundred bucks for unrecognizable "Green ...

Fanfiction is everywhere. It's on independent websites. It's on journal sites. You can probably find some in the comments of comics discussion boards. And there's almost certainly more of it being produced than any of its source material. Even the smallest fandom has a mountain of it, and most comic book readers are familiar with fan-scripted stories about copyrighted characters, which range ...

After being 'dead' for about a month and traveling through time for upwards of a year, Batman has finally returned. It's doubtful that anyone missed his return to the world of the contemporary living, since he did it in about ten different books over the last two months. One book, aptly titled Batman: The Return, shifted the focus from the circumstances of his return to the new story lines that ...

On Wednesday Tiny Titans released a 'look-a-like' issue. In it, Zatara and Superboy switch clothing and become indistinguishable from each other. On the cover, the two characters look at each other and talk about how it's 'like looking in a mirror.' The rest of the Titans are crowded around, all looking equally confused, with Supergirl saying, "Why do they look the same?" Good question. ...

In the latest issue of Red Robin, Tim Drake took some time off from orchestrating a shadowy master plan, re-connecting with his old ally Cassandra Cain and hugging his newly-back-from-the-dead adoptive father to make out with a lovely lady on a rooftop. Since the person on the other end of his lips was Lynx, a woman he had just broken out of prison, he seemed justified in ending the make-out ...

A career is a tough thing to plan. A career in a world full of supervillains is even tougher. There are so many opportunities that can turn out to be traps, and seeming pitfalls that turn out to be saving moves. It's difficult to maneuver one's superheroic way to stable and comfortable employment. Last time we discussed superhero day jobs, we focused on how to have a successful profession in ...

One of the fun things about comics is something that is a failure in movies or TV (Hello, Whedonia!) can be a runaway success when transformed into sequential art. Lower costs, and lower audience expectation, make smaller groups of devoted fans worth catering to. And since you've tapped into a collector mentality, people will even re-buy stories that they've already read (Hi, Stephen King!). ...

Some webcomics revel in the perverse and the ugly. Others try for cute and sweet. The Bunny System does both. It adopts a 'spoon full of sugar' philosophy. The actual content of the comic is violent, nihilistic, and often defiantly cruel. Some panels mention getting letters of protest from readers. The animation is exactly the opposite. Cute little cartoon bunnies, which look like they've been ...

'Form follows function' is a principle of modern design. Things should look like what they do. Buildings made for the towering ambition of business people should jut upwards. Court houses should be solid, evenly structured, while being subtly imposing. Furniture in an office should be all about efficiency and in a living room should create an atmosphere of ease and intimacy. If you take a look ...