Quick hits while I’m at lunch at work:
ITEM! Jog wrote a great review of The Spirit over at Comixology. He pins down a lot of what I liked about the movie, and even calls to attention a few things I completely missed, like Spirit’s inability to commit to women means that he also cannot commit to death, who is personified as a woman.

ITEM! I talked about Models, Inc. and Marvel Divas a Saturday ago, wondering if the former had been bumped for the latter. I realized shortly after the post went up that it’s 2009, we have the internet, and you can just email people and ask. I emailed Paul Tobin, asking if the series had been canned, and got a very nice response back. In short, the series is in moderate limbo, but is being reworked. Mary Jane is out, but the series is going to be set in the modern Marvel U. There’s no schedule for it yet, but it isn’t erased. So, cool! I can’t wait to see it. I’m very, very skeptical of a 3.99 price point for any comic, but Models Inc. is just the kind of series I’d like to see more of.

ITEM! I still don’t care about Marvel Divas, though. Doesn’t sound like my kind of book at all.

ITEM! It’s a good week to be Jog, because he also talked about some French comic or something yesterday. (It’s Metabarons.)

ITEM! The only Dark Reign book I’ve really liked so far is Elektra. Zeb Wells and Clay Mann told a fun story of a ninja assassin coming back from the brink. It’s light, but fun work. The other Dark Reign titles? Ehhh. Norman Osborn has been replaced with Snidely Whiplash, and is suddenly the guy who will order people to shoot down a commercial aircraft just to see if maybe the new Iron Maiden (dumb name) is worth bothering with. The Hood is suddenly monologuing his evil little heart out while torturing subordinates, making him a cut-rate Kingpin. I don’t know, it’s just coming off overall lame.

ITEM! I liked Fear Agent, but Rick Remender’s Punisher? I can’t do it, man. I think Punisher really probably died with Ennis to me.

ITEM! I have a similar problem with the X-Men. Mike Carey’s first 12-18 issues were really very good, but the last great run was Grant Morrison’s, at least on the writing side.

ITEM! Speaking of New X-Men, here’s the last word on sexy comics, from New X-Men Vol. 5: Assault on Weapon Plus:

Actually, I was thinking about how weird and sexless and unarousing this is.

MODELS, INC. #1 (of 4)
Written by PAUL TOBIN
Pencils by VIÇENC VILLAGRASSA
Cover by SCOTT CLARK
Fashion Week is always a hectic time for models, and this year is no exception. Between escaped wolves, robbery attempts, and overly friendly police officers, Mary Jane Watson, Patsy Walker, Jill Jerold, Chili Storm and Millicent (Millie the Model) Collins are testing the limits of their endurance. But when a brilliant young set designer is found murdered with three bullet holes in his back, and Millie proves to be the prime suspect, the models are forced to play detective in order to save one of their own!
32 PGS./ Rated A …$3.99

MODELS, INC. #2 (of 4)
Written by PAUL TOBIN
Penciled by VIÇENÇ VILLAGRASSA
Cover by SCOTT CLARK
Millie Collins suspected of murder? Could it get any stranger? How about when she’s linked to a second murder by a policeman who’s intent on making a name for himself, and who has romantic intentions on Mille? It will take the investigative skills of Chili Storm and Mary Jane Watson, along with the ever-helpful Peter Parker, in order to turn up the clues to turn Millie loose!
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

Anybody remember Marvel’s Models, Inc.? Paul Tobin and Viçenç Villagrassa have been working on Marvel’s all-ages Adventures books. Models, Inc. was to have been a book edited by Mark Paniccia, who just this past week released the delightful debuts of the all-new Savage She-Hulk (Fred van Lente/Peter Vale) and Exiles (Jeff Parker/Salva Espin). Looking over Paniccia’s profile on Comicbookdb.com reveals him to be a pretty solid editor. He was behind Agents of Atlas, Daughters of the Dragon, the Franklin Richards books, the New Warriors, Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, and (word to Gavok) Marvel’s recent trips back to the What If? well. He’s delivered on some pretty fun and engaging comics concepts, and put his faith in a lot of the non-Bendis/Brubaker/Millar guys at Marvel to great success.

The mini-series was supposed to start in February, after being solicited in November, but we’re two months past that now and Marvel’s just announced a new series, Marvel Divas.

This also seems like the perfect time to announce our Marvel Divas limited series, beginning in July, from Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Tonci Zonjic, featuring some of the Marvel Universe’s greatest female heroes in a way you haven’t seem them before. I’ll let Roberto explain:

“The idea behind the series was to have some sudsy fun and lift the curtain a bit and take a peep at some of our most fabulous super heroines. In the series, they’re an unlikely foursome of friends–Black Cat, Hell Cat, Firestar, and Photon–with TWO things in common: They’re all leading double-lives and they’re all having romantic trouble. The pitch started as “Sex and the City” in the Marvel Universe, and there’s definitely that “naughty” element to it, but I also think the series is doing to a deeper place, asking question about what it means…truly means…to be a woman in an industry dominated by testosterone and guns. (And I mean both the super hero industry and the comic book industry.) But mostly it’s just a lot of hot fun.

Robot 6 has an interesting comments thread about the series and other issues.

Here’s the cover, which interestingly enough is named “vixens001_cvr.jpg.” Was the series Marvel Vixens at first?

In the writer’s own words, the series is “sudsy fun” and “naughty” and “hot fun.” Contrast this with Paul Tobin’s description of Models, Inc.:

The series itself is a murder mystery. The models are all staying at one of Tony Stark’s Central Park mansions because it’s Fashion Week in New York, and they have so many events to attend that they decide on a central location. Fashion Week is already buzzing because of the murder of a well known socialite and the disappearance of several important works of art by artists such as Otto Dix and Egon Schiele.

Then, when a second murder takes place, Millie Collins becomes the prime suspect, and it’s up to the models to band together to unearth the real murderer. Crime, suspense, and high fashion. Alert the paparazzi!

One has a description that’d fit with your average Skinemax movie, or Bill Jemas’s Bad Girls for Fanboys movement. The other sounds like, well, a murder mystery. Jeff Scott Campbell’s cover is, well, a J. Scott Campbell cover. Big on Comic Book Sexy, low on variety. Models, Inc.’s covers were take-offs on the stereotypical Cosmo/Vogue covers, Glamourpuss-style.

When you put them up side-by-side like this, I feel like one of these books would be interesting and fun, and the other wouldn’t. Obviously, I’m pre-judging here, but as a consumer, that’s what I’m supposed to do. Models, Inc. sounded like the kind of self-aware-but-funny comic I dig these days, and fairly non-exploitative. Marvel Divas sounds like the opposite.

I couldn’t find a statement from Marvel online about its cancellation, but the series has been wiped from Marvel’s site entirely. So, what happened to Models, Inc.?