DC has made images of a number of iconic comic book locations available for use as virtual backgrounds for Zoom and other video conferencing services.

"Whether it's for work, school or just keeping in touch with your friends, you've likely found yourself video chatting with a lot of people over the past couple of weeks. After all, it's a great way to stay connected in this time of social distancing," the DC press release reads. "But why take video calls from your living room or bedroom when you could take them from the Batcave, the Fortress of Solitude, Themyscira, or the Hall of Justice?"

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[H/t Bruce Dykes]

Image: Fortress of Solitude virtual backdrop from DC Comics Read the rest

Diamond Comics is the exclusive shipping and distribution source for all weekly comic books. Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, Boom! — they all send their single-issues to comic book stores through Diamond.

Due to coronavirus concerns, however, the company has halted all shipments for the foreseeable future.

Comic book stores can still sell other merchandise, as well as some graphic novels, trade paperbacks, collected editions, and other bound book-style publications. Single-issues will also continue to be available digitally through Comixology, as most publishers have already announced their solicitations for new comics through at least June.

But what this means for the future of the comic book industry remains to be seen. While graphic novels and trade paperbacks of single issues have continued to increase in popularity, those single weekly issues remain the backbone of the industry, just as they've been for the last 50+ years. The entire serialized structure of the medium depends on it. Even if you prefer to pick up the collected editions of SAGA (also known as "waiting for the trade"), the comic still benefits from the 6 months of promotion that it gets every time a new single issue is released. Each single issue sells around 40,000 copies, compared to 1-2,000 copies per graphic novel (although the first trade paperback continues to sell more than 1,000 copies per month on average, based on a quick glance through Diamond's sales charts). Self-contained graphic novels — those that are created and released as a single, cohesive entity, instead of as a collection of single issues — rarely sell as well as collected trade paperbacks. Read the rest

The poster for "The Dark Knight Returns: The Golden Child" features Batman hurling a molotov cocktail in front of the words "The Future is Young," after DC Comics posted it to Instagram and Twitter, the image was copied into Chinese social media, where they sparked outrage among Chinese users who claimed that the subtext of the image was support for the Hong Kong protests. Read the rest

When you've got a 77-year-old hunk of intellectual property that can breathe underwater and talk to fish, it's not a bad idea to update it so that it's relatable for a modern audience. In the case of what I'm seeing in this first trailer for the Aquaman movie, I feel like DC may have missed the mark by about 20 years. It is so grim-dark and EXTREME that you'd swear that 1990s Todd McFarlane was called in as a consultant.

I love DC comics. I grew up with them. I really want their movies to do well. But I'm not sure that this is the right way to go. Read the rest

George Reeves remains my fave.

Previously: The Evolution of Batman.

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Adam West still wins.

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DC Comics recently released a comic about Furiosa by an all-male creative team, and boy does it get everything wrong.

After Ben Affleck denied that he was ever officially asked by Warner Bros. to direct the Justice League movie, a new name has been tossed into the internet rumor mill: Wachowski, as in Andy and Lana Wachowski of The Matrix (and Cloud Atlas, V For Vendetta, and Bound). The siblings are now apparently on the WB's short list to direct the DC Comics ensemble answer to Marvel's The Avengers. It's pure, unadulterated rumor right now, but it's a cool one, for sure. And Hugo Weaving would probably be on board for that, which is pretty boss. (via The AV Club) Read the rest

Last year at New York Comic Con, the creators of Adult Swim's Robot Chicken teased their upcoming DC Comics special, which is finally arriving on Sunday, September 9 at midnight. They showed a bunch of past clips from the show that featured DC characters, which was all fine and good, but like every other faithful viewer of Robot Chicken, it was stuff we'd seen already. Tons of times, if we are nightly Adult Swim viewers. Well, the preview video at IGN is all new footage, and it looks like some of the best stuff the show has done to date. I really can't remember the last time a preview video made me so happy. So, they've done Star Wars and DC, which means I will be putting Star Trek and Marvel episodes on my wish list. Have at it, genies! (via Seth Green on Twitter) Read the rest

Last night at Comic Con, during a DC Comics panel that focused on its Vertigo imprint, it was casually mentioned that Neil Gaiman would debut a prequel to his Sandman series in November 2013. In a prerecorded message, he provided the following quote:

"When I finished writing The Sandman, there was one tale still untold. The story of what had happened to Morpheus to allow him to be so easily captured in The Sandman #1, and why he was returned from far away, exhausted beyond imagining, and dressed for war."

We thought you might be interested.

Neil Gaiman's writing a prequel to Sandman in 2013 [io9] Read the rest