Andy Diggle and Jock’s The Losers has probably the best last line of any comic ever (if you’ve ever read it, you know it) and the movie drops later this year. MSN has the hookup on a full length trailer, presented here with a tip of the hat to iFanboy, where I watched the footage.

I like it. It looks great, it feels like the book, it’s well-cast, and it has a good sense of humor, something that The Losers definitely had when it was appropriate. Another thing I really like: they aren’t afraid to step away from the source material to make the movie work. There were a few scenes I didn’t recognize (Aisha in the tub, the Blagyver stuff, Aisha being fairly talky talk) along with a lot that I did (Chris Evans dancing in the elevator, Aisha blowing up the tank). A good comic book movie, even when adapting a specific story (such as 300 or Sin City), includes something new, rather than just being comics turned storyboards turned script turned movie.

Freshen it up some. I loved Sin City, but it is faithful to the point of being annoying. I knew all the twists, I knew all the lines, and while I liked it, it wasn’t as dope as it should have been.

But yeah, back to the point: The Losers. Dope.

The Apple iPad is out, as you can see on this post here from Engadget. It’s five hundred bucks for the lower end version, which has 16 gigs of space and supports only WiFi. It looks a lot like a giant, novelty iPhone, but hey- it’s new. Check out apple.com/ipad if you want to order one- the WiFi revs ship in late March, 3G in April.

On the other hand, if you’ve got the money laying around for an iPad… you should be copping Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca’s Afrodisiac. You can read my review on it here, if you’re unfamiliar with the work. The official site has an extended PDF preview and trailer, too.

It hits comics stores today. If your local shop doesn’t have it (we’re going to assume that you go to one of those shops who orders good books like this, and that they simply ran out before you made it in), you can order Afrodisiac from Amazon, where it’ll run you about ten bucks. Amazon’s site says that it’ll be in stock on 02/01, but there’s probably a chance it’ll ship late this week.

Really, get this book.

Two superhero flicks are coming out on DVD & Blu-ray in Feb- Planet Hulk and Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths. Planet Hulk hits the first week of February, while Justice League comes out February 23rd.

Pardon the blatant marketing, if you’re looking to buy them on any format, give some thought to pre-ordering them through our Amazon referral links. Amazon doesn’t charge you until the item ships, and if the price drops between now and when the movie ships, you get the lowest price automatically.

Planet Hulk is going for $14.99 on DVD and twenty bucks on Blu-ray. Justice League has a Two-Disc Edition for $14.99 and a Blu-ray for $25.99.

So, yeah, if you’re interested- give them (and us) a pre-order.

Oh hey, Dwayne McDuffie posted 45 seconds of the upcoming Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths on his site!

Marvel recently released the Deadpool variant cover to Siege #3, the one that’s tied to their promotion involving Blackest Night covers. Here it is:

Never change, Marvel.

This one comes courtesy of David Uzumeri, who spotted this headline on Marvel.com and wasn’t quick enough to write a post about it first! Did Tom Brevoort get a promotion from Executive Editor to Vice Prez? Congrats!

edit: Thanks to Graeme McMillan, who asked someone in Marvel who said that yes, Brevoort is Vice Prez. Congratulations! Brevoort’s edited some of Marvel’s best books, including the Waid/Ringo Fantastic Four, Joe Casey’s Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, some of Priest’s run on Black Panther, and, Gavin’s personal favorite, Double Dragon.

We’re about a week and a half from February, so I figured it was high time to talk a little about Black History Month ’10.

I made a mistake focusing so much on superheroes and the past in the last two Black History Month marathons I’ve run on 4thletter!. This year, for the third volume, I want to do something different. I want to focus more on context and more on the future. Sometimes, that will involve examining the past, but I’m hoping that it won’t be so… bitter.

I’m twenty-six years old, black, and male. I grew up listening to rap, jazz, and gospel. I like movies where everyone smokes cigarettes, violence lurks in dark corners, and bad men do bad things. I’ve been reading comic books since I was six or seven years old. Superheroes, rap, and crime fiction are in my DNA. The only black experience I know is my own, but over the next few weeks, I’m hoping to both clearly illustrate my personal experience and to step outside my comfort zone.

As far as the past is concerned, it is what it is. We’re stuck with what happened and we have to live with what we have. I’m bored with getting angry over things that happened ages ago, and I’m tired of being mad at comics. I’d much rather talk about the future. There are a lot of things happening that I like and I’m hoping to shine a light on them. Life is good, man.

I want to thank everybody who pointed me toward a bunch of black creators. There are a lot of people I’d like to talk to, but my own weakness with their work or time constraints prevented me from getting in touch with them. Sometimes I just couldn’t get into it for whatever reason. Sometimes, honestly, I just didn’t have anything to say. I have some people lined up whose work I enjoy, though, so keep them fingers crossed.

Posts won’t be daily this year. Quality over quantity. I’m currently planning two or three a week, not all of them from me. I have a lot of ground I want to cover, and I’ve done a lot of thinking about this over the past year. At the same time, by this time last year, I had ideas for every single post written down. This time, I’ve just got a few blocked out, some little more than titles, and am gonna be flying by the seat of my pants and trusting that it’ll come together in the end. I may fall flat on my face, I may end up retreading old ground, I may end up writing something good. I dunno. Time will tell. I’m still taking suggestions as well, so if you’ve got ’em, shoot ’em on over.

Stay tuned.

Gail Simone being back on Birds of Prey is kinda like a big deal. I’m pretty sure that Esther is still going “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” even today. She’s gotta be hypersonic by this point.

Anyway, I liked the old BoP. Those first 12-18 issues or so are some of Simone’s best work, and I didn’t even really mind Ed Benes’s art back then. But, the new announcement bugs me because of DC’s history with announcing fan-pleasing things and then doing half the job on them, at best.

-Spoiler dies in a sexualized and degraded way. Fans form Project Girl-Wonder in protest of the way her murder devalued her character. A couple years later, DC Comics brings her back, completely sidestepping the issues behind people were mad at her death. She’s just… back.

-DC makes a big deal about the return of Milestone, a well-loved company that featured a truly multi-cultural cast. Rather than bringing DC Comics up to the modern day with regards to portrayal of race, the Milestone books are effectively quarantined. They were shuffled off into a series as filler between big-name runs (Mark Waid and JMS) and their reintroduction took place in Dwayne McDuffie’s already-hamstrung run on JLA. And then, in the end, they drop every Milestone character except for Static. They wanted a new toy and jerked everyone around to get it.

-DC announces the return of fan-favorite Gail Simone’s fondly remembered Birds of Prey, with art accompanied by Ed Benes. Simone on Benes: “[H]e also does lovely, subtle acting, and tremendous facial expressions and body language. I think he brings a very fiery European influence that is a wonderful remedy to some of the tired vaguely manga and video game-esque influences we’ve seen lately.”

And, well, I realize that Simone can’t trash her artist (that would be unprofessional), but that doesn’t actually reflect reality. Benes’s men have one face, his women another, and they all have the same flat, empty expression. The body language tends to be of the “crotch or butt thrust directly at the reader” variety, and the “subtle acting” is so subtle as to be nonexistent. The “fiery European influence” would be better termed “draws kinda like Jim Lee used to, only with bigger boobs,” and the “vaguely manga and video game-esque influences” is the kind of annoying strawman people pull all the time without actually naming names. Is she talking about UDON? Humberto Ramos? Paul Pope? Joe Madureira? Ed McGuinness?

Benes is a bad artist for comics, is my point. His storytelling skills are subpar, his love for T&A gets in the way constantly, and his people all look the same. There are numerous other artists DC could have paired Simone with to make a book that would be the girl power monthly it should be- Nicola Scott, for example, or the Lopez brothers from Catwoman. They’ve proven that they can draw realistic, funny, and attractive women, and, most importantly, they have strong storytelling skills. The Lopezes in particular do great work, even with a varied cast, in a style that would fit the tone of Simone’s BoP.

But hey- Ed Benes. DC says he’s nice? I say he’s polite.

Y’all can have him, though.

The RSS feed and iTunes should be working now. I think I broke something on the backend, though, so pardon this post this consists entirely of the theme song while I check things out. If my guess is right, this won’t publish to iTunes, so this is a website exclusive. Download it, stream it, do whatever while I try to fix this thing.

In a word, 2009 ruled.

Thanks to Gav and Esther for writing and thanks to y’all for reading. Double thanks if you ever bought ads via Project Wonderful, used our Amazon affiliate link, dropped us a kind email, or threw some hits our way.

2010 will be better. It’s 4l!’s fifth anniversary in March, the Fourcast! is due back, and several other things are brewing. Four days from now, in fact, I’m going to begin something that’ll either kill me or make me better at this.

Keep reading.