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A poster depicting Barack Obama as Batman villain The Joker has been called 'mean-spirited and dangerous' by the U.S. President's supporters. The image, which has been adopted by Mr Obama's critics, shows him wearing the white face paint and smudged red lips of the character most recently played by the late actor Heath Ledger. Beneath the picture reads the word 'socialism'. The creator of the image remains unknown, but the website that first published the image crashed yesterday because so many had been attempting to view it. It has since been spotted in Los Angeles and Atlanta after it appeared...

They are superheroes battling injustice and fighting evil the Islamic way, and they are teaming up with some of the west's biggest comic book icons. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are among those joining forces with The 99, who personify the 99 attributes of Allah, according to Islamic tradition. What will unfold on the pages of the collaboration between DC Comics in the US and Teshkeel Comics in Kuwait is yet to be seen, but the appearance of The 99 – who already appear in comics in the Muslim world – alongside archetypal American heroes would have been unlikely during...

Twentieth Century Fox said on Monday it will seek an injunction to block release of the Warner Bros movie "Watchmen" after a Los Angeles court ruled a copyright lawsuit against Warner can go forward. The movie about raffish, flawed superheroes -- which has already been shot -- is slated for release on March 6, said Warner Bros spokesman Scott Roe. The highly anticipated film, with a budget believed to be about $120 million, is based on a 1980s DC Comics graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. In his decision released last week, Judge Gary Feess...

Batwoman's new look has been designed by artist Alex Ross Comic book heroine Batwoman is to make a comeback as a "lipstick lesbian" who moonlights as a crime fighter, a DC Comics spokesman has confirmed

Hinted and teased about for months, Sunday’s New York Times (already being delivered in the New York area) confirms that DC is brining back a staple of its Silver Age: Batwoman. The article, entitled "Straight (and Not) Out of the Comics: At DC and Marvel Comics, new heroes are gay, black, Asian and Hispanic. Get used to it," is a full- page feature on page 25 of the Sunday Arts & Leisure section on Marvel and DC’s emphasis on increasing the diversity of their respective character libraries over the past months to year-plus. NYT writer George Gene Gustines covers, among...

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Entrepreneur Richard Branson is getting into the comic book and animation businesses. He has signed up as a partner in Virgin Comics and Virgin Animation, which will create original titles and characters that blend Eastern and Western mythologies. The companies, based in the Indian city of Bangalore, India, will be steered by Gotham Chopra, son of author Deepak Chopra, and business partner Sharad Devarajan. "We are a generation whose identities are cut and pasted from cultural elements of East and West," Chopra said. "Virgin Comics and Virgin Animation is our home, where we get a...

While the immediate concern for the Gulf Coast and affected regions is the safety and health of those who were in the way of Hurricane Katrina, the livelihoods of comic retailers in the vast region which saw damage from the storm will be receiving support from both DC and presumably Marvel in the coming weeks. In a statement released today, DC said that they will do all they can to help affected retailers get back on their feet when they are able to return to business. From DC: With Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath impacting Louisiana, Mississippi and other Southern...

DC Comics has ordered a New York gallery to remove pictures which show Batman and Robin kissing and embracing. The Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts gallery was told it would face legal action unless it removed watercolours of the superhero by artist Mark Chamberlain. "DC Comics wants me to hand over all unsold work," said Ms Cullen. Arts website Artnet was also told to remove the series of semi-naked images of Batman and Robin from its website. DC Comics was unavailable to comment. Homoerotic poses The colour pictures, which depict the superheroes in a number of homoerotic poses, were put on...

With so many great classic stories at their disposal, it's no wonder that DC Comics has finally decided to follow in the footsteps of other publishers and offer affordable black and white collections from their stable of characters. DC Showcase Presents makes its debut this September with Superman and Green Lantern volumes. These Silver Age spotlights features 500 black and white pages of action, adventure, and - something that era is famous for - fun. Like the Marvel Essentials, the DC Showcase Presents volumes are designed to be affordable reading copies of the material. The publisher chose to stay in...

It has been learned that comics legend Bob Haney died on Thanksgiving Day, November 25th. He was 78 years old. Haney died at a nursing/hospice facility in El Cajon, CA where he was hospitalized following a stroke that had robbed him of his ability to speak or recognize people. Complications from the stroke were the cause of his death. Haney was one of the great Silver Age comics writers, landing at DC in the mid-50s, where he soon came to write virtually every comic DC published at one time or another. Haney was the co-creator of the original Teen Titans,...

MICAH WRIGHT: "I WAS NEVER AN ARMY RANGER"On his Delphi forum, Micah Wright has posted a confession – he never was an Army Ranger, something he had claimed since shortly after his debut as a comics writer, as well as the author of remixed Propaganda, a book which lampooned World War II-era American propaganda posters. A version of statement had been on Wright's website since April 25th apparently, however, he opted to post it on his Delphi forum Saturday. Wright began his statement (which has since been edited) with a recap of what he used to tout as his...

MICAH WRIGHT: "I WAS NEVER AN ARMY RANGER" On his Delphi forum, Micah Wright has posted a confession – he never was an Army Ranger, something he had claimed since his debut as a comics writer, as well as the author of remixed Propaganda, a book which lampooned World War II-era American propaganda posters. Wright began his statement with a recap of what he used to tout as his credentials, and then added: “Except that I was never an Army Ranger. I never served a day in a Ranger Regiment. I never went to Ranger School. The closest I ever...

MICAH WRIGHT COMES CLEAN, RANGER STORY A HOAX by Jonah Weiland, Executive Producer Posted: May 2, 2004 Micah Wright at a convention in March of 2004. In a story that broke late yesterday, the writer of the recently cancelled "Stormwatch: Team Achilles," Micah Ian Wright, revealed that he never served as a member of the Army Rangers, a claim he's made since he first came on the comics scene in March of 2002.. Apparently Wright had posted a revised bio to his Web site with the revelation on April 25th, reposting that information to his forum Saturday. The full text...

By 1956 The Flash, 26, was slowing down, when an editor at DC Comics commissioned Carmine Infantino to breathe some life into the speedy superhero, a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court says. Infantino, a 79-year-old New York illustrator, says he revived the declining character, originally created in 1940, and now he wants a federal judge to declare that he, not DC parent Time Warner Inc., owns the rights to the fastest man alive. Infantino says in his suit that he's also the creator of Batgirl, and he wants a court to acknowledge that too.

For America's multimillion-dollar Superman industry, it's a serious problem. This is a guy who's from outer space — he was born on the planet Krypton, let's not forget — but he's also from another time. He debuted in the 1930s, when Americans liked their heroes like they liked their steaks: tough, thick and all-American. Nowadays we prefer our heroes dark and flawed and tragic. Look at the Punisher (wife and kids dead), or Hellboy (born a demon), or Spider-Man (secretly a nerd). Look at Batman: his parents were killed in front of him, and he dresses like a Cure fan....

Though I read them occasionally as a boy, I have never been overly interested in comic books, especially the American sort, the ones featuring superheroes dressed in super-tight costumes fighting super villains, none of whom ever seemed to receive super-long jail sentences for attempting, yet again, to destroy Our Way Of Life. A junior realist, I tended to read, instead, the British-produced, four-times-a-month Commando comics, which were generally set during the Second World War. Commando — whose fabulous titles included Hun Bait, Iron-Cross Yankee, Ghost Stuka, and the unforgettable Deserters Deserve Death! — abjured those pathetic ads one saw in...

Superheroes for Saving Saddam? by L. Brent Bozell III September 19, 2003 It was only a matter of time, I suppose. Comic-book superheroes have gone into the liberal political indoctrination business. The September issue of the DC Comics book "Justice League of America," or "JLA," presents Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman as U.N.-promoting paper dolls for a thinly disguised propaganda play against President Bush's war on Saddam Hussein. The story begins with a "napalmetto" attack on home soil. President Lex Luthor -- how nice, a supervillain standing in for President Bush -- connects the terror attack to "Qurac" and says...

FIRST PICTURE OF CATWOMAN!! Source: TIME magazine Monday, September 29, 2003 The new issue of TIME magazine has a first look at Halle Berry in her Catwoman costume. Here's the picture followed by the article. Thanks to 'Hmmm...' for the heads up. The cat is finally out of the bag. HALLE BERRY slinks into a strapping new ensemble this week when filming starts in Vancouver for Catwoman. The Oscar-winning actress plays the Felonious Feline (see also: Princess of Plunder, Mistress of Malevolence) from the Batman series, a role made famous by Eartha Kitt in the '60s TV show and...

It was only a matter of time, I suppose. Comic-book superheroes have gone into the liberal political indoctrination business.The September issue of the DC Comics book "Justice League of America," or "JLA," presents Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman as U.N.-promoting paper dolls for a thinly disguised propaganda play against President Bush's war on Saddam Hussein.The story begins with a "napalmetto" attack on home soil. President Lex Luthor -- how nice, a supervillain standing in for President Bush -- connects the terror attack to "Qurac" and says the "Joint Chiefs are recommending military pressure." Wonder Woman protests: "International law and...

Okay, for any who have seen my opinions in the past, you know that I'm an avid comic book collector. For a few years now, my favorite title has been Justice League, or JLA for short. The newest issue, #83, came out yesterday. It was, without a doubt, the most unvarnished left-wing piece of Bush-bashing propaganda I've ever seen. The baisc set-up is this (*WARNING*--SPOILERS)...President Luthor (yes, in the DC Universe, Lex Luthor is President of the United States) has decided that the nation of "Qurac" has acquired or constructed Weapons of Mass Distruction, and has decided that he must...

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - It's a bird. It's a plane, but it's not Superman. At least not in Sweden, where a couple who wanted to name their child after the comic book hero found the law harder to bend than the man of steel himself. The tax authority, which oversees rules for names in the Scandinavian country of 8.9 million, nixed a request by Sara Lindenger and her live-in boyfriend, Johan Leisten, both 28, to name their child Staalman, Superman in Swedish. "We wanted to call him David Rune Staalman Leisten," Lindenger told The Associated Press Tuesday. "It would be much...

This week, on the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund Delphi Web site, a discussion broke out about what political beliefs the CBLDF would support being expressed, whether in comics or on their own forum. Then Harlan Carroll wrote, "IIRC Mike Miller was FIRED as an artist because he posted in the DC Forums that he believed homosexuality was wrong. What is the official CBLDF stance on that?" Mike Miller was a DC artist and I personally remember his work from Grant Morrison's "JLA." He replied to the post. "This is Mike. I don't think there's anything the CBLDF *could* do...

Green Lantern Fights Gay-Bashing NEW YORK (AP) - The comic book company that created Superman and Batman has a cutting-edge new story line: a gay teenager is the victim of a hate crime. DC Comics' "Green Lantern" No. 154 hits newsstands in September — with main character Terry Berg beaten almost to death on a street. Terry actually emerged as a gay character in 2001 in issue No. 137, which was cited by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation ( news - web sites) as the year's best comic book. Terry is a sidekick to Kyle Rayner — aka...

"What, me sell out?" Apparently so. Alfred E. Neuman, the gap-toothed mascot of Mad magazine, has officially joined the Establishment. Dressed in a preppy blue polo shirt, he can now be found on the cover of a Lands' End catalog, hawking chinos, button-down Oxford shirts and tasseled loafers. He also had his teeth fixed for a new "Got milk?" campaign. And PepsiCo plans to plaster his lopsided mug on bottles of its SoBe drinks. The list goes on. Although Mad's founder, the late William Gaines, once vowed to teach kids not to believe in ads, his cartoon protege has chosen...