Tonight, Wednesday August 29th, at 9 PM EDT, Discovery’s Mythbusters will be taking on Marvel Superheroes!

The show’s description reads:

You’re not seeing things. As uncomfortable as it is, it’s true. The Mythbusters are wearing their underpants on the outside. And why? Because this episode is the Superhero Hour — the Marvel comic maestros are put under the MythBusters microscope.

For those living under a rock, Mythbusters is a television program that takes urban myths and determines through experiment whether the myths are true or false. I can only imagine what they’ll do with Marvel.

Source: Blogs@Newsarama

Don’t get too excited by the photo above. These are not the actors to play Beaker and Dr Bunson Honeydew in a live action Muppet movie. They are Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, the creators of Penny Arcade. This weekend they’re in the middle of the Penny-Arcade Expo in Washington, and they’ve issued a new trailer for their first game.
Its some big news that the game, titled “On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One” will be hitting Xbox 360 in addition to Mac, Linux, and Windows.
Wired Magazine also offers a profile, declaring “This is the story of how two douches from Spokane, Washington, became the most powerful players in the videogame industry.”

Cory Doctorow is an authority on copyright law and a huge oppoenent to DRM. Among many many other things, he is also an author and a comic book fan. Newsarama put up a interview with him a while back and I thought it was important to link to it. He has some very intelligent things to say and offers up his own solution. I highly recommend giving this a read. Here are a few juicy excerpts:

I don’t think that downloadable comics substitute for printed comics. I think that downloadable comics entice people to but printed comics. The key calculation you have to make when you talk about digital distribution versus physical distribution is how much it entices and how much it substitutes.

But there’s a much larger audience of people who are, not price sensitive, but are time sensitive, or have other aesthetic or design considerations that come into play when they think about what kind of media they’re going to consume. For example, people who love seeing movies in a big cinema, or people who love holding books, or people who take their comics home in a Mylar bag with a board behind it, and then buy a second copy so they don’t get fingerprints on the first one. For those people, the question becomes does having a free online edition that they can sample, and, more importantly to me, be moved about on the internet in a social way from friend to friend on recommendation – does that create more sales than are lost by allowing a few cheapskates to get their copies for free?

Comic book stores, when they hook you, have a Wednesday audience. There are so many people who will come to a comic book store every Wednesday and, while they’re only in there to buy a three dollar comic, many times they walk out of there holding a twenty dollar graphic novel with a much higher margin than that three dollar comic. That’s an amazing position to be in, and it’s something that almost any other kind of retailer would give anything for. But the problem is the audience for comic book stores is not growing. The growth in the industry seems to be coming from trade editions sold in traditional retail outlets. People who will go into bookstores are still not a huge mainstream audience.

Go here to read the whole article and see Cory’s proposed solution.

A couple years back, Screenwriter David Goyer was getting ready to go on a movie based on the DC hero The Flash, and he made no mystery that he wasn’t Ryan Reynolds in the role. Then the movie died. Joss Whedon’s Wonder Woman isn’t happening either. Batman rolls on into the Dark Knight, and Superman is still tenatively scheduled to return again as Man Of Steel in 2009.
IESB reports that Warner Bros execs are gassed about a Justice League script they got and want to put it into production as early as next spring fro a 2009 release…

Our sources have confirmed earlier reports that the Justice League of America film will consist of at least Superman (Clark Kent), Batman (Bruce Wayne), Wonder Woman (Princess Diana), The Flash (Barry Allen), Aquaman and the Green Lantern (John Stewart) and will follow the OMAC storyline and also feature Maxwell Lord.
Within a few weeks, George Miller should be confirmed as the director and casting should commence immediately. The priority for the studio will have to be to figure out what they are doing with Superman and Batman.

I bolded that last part because its important. I don’t know if Batman or Superman as a franchise can survive with a JLA movie. I don’t know if Nolan & Goyer’s Batman would even work in this movie. And recasting Batman would be as big a mistake as keeping him and changing his character.
Fueling speculation is Ryan Reynolds dodging Flash questions. Why would he talk at all unless he was either already signed or seriously being considered for the role?

Personally I’d leave Batman and Superman out of it. If they’re so gung ho to get a League movie going, lets get Giffen and DeMatteis on it and make a Justice League Detroit or Justice League International movie.

                                                     Picture courtesy of Draw!

Earlier today Newsarama broke the news that industry legend Mike Wieringo had passed away from a heart attack. Wieringo was probably best known for his runs on The Flash (where he co-created the character Impulse) and Fantastic Four, both with writer Mark Waid. Most recently he had just finished up a run on Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man with Peter David and the miniseries Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four with Jeff Parker. Mike was regarded as one of the nicest, most humble guys in the business. He was only 44. Our thoughts and condolences go out to his friends and family.

For more details, please read the original Newsarama article here.
UPDATE: Newsarama has also added a few words from Mike’s friends and colleagues Mark Waid and Tom Dezago here.

IGN seems to have the cover to the first issue for the third installment of the Ultimates book. It appears to be a slightly new lineup of Ultimates facing off against the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Venom and maybe Storm? I haven’t been keeping up on the Ultimate books lately outside of the Ultimates itself. Thankfully thats been on a schedule I can keep up with; about two issues a year.

This game is the sequel to 2002’s Freedom Force, which is one of the best games inspired by comic books without actually being based on one. The game featured a wide array of characters, RTS-style controls, and a look right out of a 1960s Jack Kirby comic. You fought against an assortment of weird communism-worshiping villains inspired by the Silver Age of comics. The game was also modable, allowing players to add in new characters, missions, and campaigns to the experience. In 2005, Irrational Games released a sequel containing even more comic goodness, and this time, it took gamers to the golden age of comics, and Freedom Force fought against the evil of the Nazis.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

I was browsing through my feeds this afternoon, specifically the Blogs@Newsarama feed and saw the following preview posted to YouTube. It looks pretty interesting. It will be based off of Darwyn Cooke’s comic that was highly influenced by the silver age of DC comics. This trailer was shown at SDCC and will apparently be released in Spring 2008, though the B@N post says February 2008. Keep your eyes open for more info and feel free to share any thoughts on the trailer in the comments!