In editor Tom Brevoort’s blog today, he announced a new look for the Fantastic Four book. As you can see above, it’s more of a magazine-type cover than a comic cover and it fits well with the Four being the public superstars of the Marvel Universe.

This change will coincide with Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch taking over the book in February.  The one concern with this is that Hitch isn’t known for speedy artistry (see: Ultimates 2) and the running jokes are that it will end up being the Fantastic Four-Issues-A-Year. Brevoort did address that concern as well.

I know everybody’s making all the typical jokes and predictions about us not being able to put two issues of this series out in a year’s time–and history could still prove you all right. However, Bryan’s completely penciled six full issues at this point, he’s got most of the next two almost completely penciled, and even has a handful of pages completed on the two after that. (Because Mark has been writing so far ahead, Bryan’s had the luxury of being able to work over entire story arcs at one time, bouncing backwards and forwards as the inspiration strikes him.) And either way, this is going to be a book worth waiting on.

I can only hope that Brevoort is right; Marvel hasn’t had a good track record with being totally upfront about how close the creative teams are to finishing issues. The recent Spider-Man opus, One More Day was said to be close to completion a few months ago, but delays have held it up recently. (and this is with Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada doing the artistry.)

Archibald is an Aardvark.

Archibald worked for Neptune Studios with his brother Andre Aardvark. He was accused of killing his brother (and some other people; every time he did a film, someone died) and spent some years in the loony bin.

Recently released, Archie is being approached by Neptune to get in front of the camera again, this time co-starring Santa Claus. Before the filming, Baron von Badger shows up, saying that he’s directed all of Archie’s previous films, why not this one?

Archie complains of a headache, Badger gives him a “homemade remedy” that knocks him out. Archie has a dream of Santa getting killed. He wakes up; thankful that it was just a dream . . . or was it?

Santa’s dead, Badger gets blamed and everything’s over, right? Not so fast, chuckles. How can Archie save Christmas if the issue ends with Santa Claus dead?

All in all, this is a fun book. See it in the LCS, pick it up and look at page one. If that doesn’t hook you, nothing will. This is a one-shot book, however — but it may not be the last time we see Archie.

It’s a one-off story, but we do have more plans for holiday books. We’re doing an Easter story, that’ll be written and illustrated by Grant Bond, and there will be a Halloween book, which we’ll both do. So we have a lot of plans for this character, and I’d like to do something with Rascal Rooster, the character from the first five pages of this story. So we do have plans for more Archibald.

Batman is getting some major exposure recently. A lot of comics, a new movie coming out — and the recent rumor about Bruce Wayne’s death and raising to godlike status — and this week a new comic book was released: Batman and the Outsiders.

This is more of a re-release. There was an Outsiders series from 1985-1988, 1993-1995 and also 2003-2007. Why is it being relaunched? Probably because DC wants the sales boost from a new #1 issue, and also because Batman took over the team. Batman has stated the intention of making the Outsiders a “black-ops” Justice League . . . to do the missions and take the fall where the League can’t.

As a second issue, it doesn’t do the job as well as it could; the story is picked up in the middle instead of the beginning. We need a recap page in case we missed issue #1. One thing that is well done is that the characters are introduced well. You meet Metamorpho, Katana, Thunder, Grace, Martian Manhunter and Batgirl in varied situations that show off the relative power levels pretty well. Catwoman and Batman are also in the mix, but they are more well-known than the others.

All in all, it’s worth another look next month. And if you’re curious, then it’s worth reading through.

The Punisher is Foolkiller-lite.

Both are vigilantes. Both are at-least-physically normal, if a bit twisted in the head. Both have issues with criminals. And both don’t shy away from killing.

Foolkiller, however, goes a wee bit further. As shown above, Foolkiller goes to the extremes when dealing with the less-than-savory characters. In one shot, he puts a pedophile on a ferris wheel. Of course, the pedophile is dead, and he rotates around the wheel after being fastened to it via his ankle.

So yeah, a bit farther.

Issue #1 dealt with a thug who goes looking for the Foolkiller’s help.

This issue deals with the “origin” of the Foolkiller. A decent-enough story, albeit motivation is a bit lacking for what the guy does now. Still, the art by  Lan Medina is top-notch, and the story as written by Gregg Hurwitz is told well enough to keep my interest to issue 3.

Both #1 and #2 end at the same point, so the over-arching story will advance in issue #3.

Bill Willingham’s Fables is one of the best books out there. An inventive take on the fables that have been told through the ages, reminiscent of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods in a way, but told with Willingham’s flair that makes it perfect for the medium it’s in. Jack of Fables is the spinoff title, and carries much the same humor and sense of fun as the main title.

And it’s got a hallucinating Babe the Blue Ox.

So far, I haven’t read an issue of Jack of Fables that hasn’t been new-reader friendly. As with most every title out there, there will be a bit of confusion as to just who the characters are, but as Willingham draws his characters from the fables and tall tales of our childhood, the familiarity comes quickly.

So that’s two books you’re adding to your pull list, right? Fables and Jack of Fables. Do so, and you’ll have some fun with them.

You know why people like Moon Knight?

He’s what Batman would be if the bats talked to him. Marc Spector is totally insane. The earthly avatar of Khonshu, (the egyptian god of retribution in the Marvel Universe) Spector hears voices. And for the most part, does what they tell him to do. The voices belong to this Khonshu being, and it’s not a nice god.

Moon Knight Annual 1 came out today and it’s an interesting one. A support group for rape victims is meeting and telling the stories — one man has desecrated them all, only to be caught by Moon Knight. The last bit in the book has a little twist that makes it more interesting, but the book has one flaw.

Not enough words. An annual should be an event, and this read like a one-shot 22-page issue. Very quick to read.  Even if you’re a fan of Spector, feel safe in giving this a pass — the only thing you might be missing is the realization of a true loose cannon being registered with the Initiative.

Ok, so it’s not really revenge. More like “Damn, this Namor guy knows what he’s doing.”

Of course, viewed in a meta context this will not end up being the best decision he could have made, what with Secret Invasion coming on and all.

Little spoiler action: Namor evacuates his people from Atlantis, blows it up (in a very well-done couple of pages there) and takes his army to a place of refuge. And when you see that place of refuge, you will go “Oh, hell. There goes the neighborhood. We’re all Doomed.”

As a miniseries, you kind of need the preceding issues to get the whole story — and overall, if you’re not a fan of Namor, it’s really not worth the trouble to find ‘em. Wait for the trade on this one.

Z-Cult FM has removed DC and Top Cow torrents from their torrent tracker. This is due to what was reported earlier — the C&D letters from Marvel and DC.

Site admin Serj had this to say on their forums:

Ok last 7 days has been hell for the staff of Z-Cult FM and myself. Its not easy seeing your pride and joy that you have worked on since 2004 start falling apart by losing files from few big players, but life must go on.

I was faced with the decision tonight if we should just quit and shut down site on a kinda high… well 72k users and most hits we have ever had in our life time or carry on the good fight and evolve. Well for time being we are going to stay here and see where this takes us.

Over the last few days we have hired more staff (I say hire but they work for nothing) and they will be helping removing torrents and also moderating the posts on here. I must stress I DO NOT want posts on this forum that follow the lines of: “Where can I get latest 0day/[insert name here] pack now”

First this is breaking our rules and second have some good manners. All posts like this will be removed and repeat offenders banned.

We are currently throwing few ideas about in the staff room on what road to take but whatever road we decide to take we hope you will be there with us supporting us all the way. Over the next month or two you should see some nice features going up, some new looks about the place and new sections opening up.

For next few days/week please be good comic fans/cultists because the staff are busy behind the scenes cleaning all sections up and I don’t want them having to spend time policing debates over: “is our decision right/wrong?” or removing urls and requests for new places.

It appears that the comics industry is becoming RIAA-lite — instead of looking forward with the obvious interest in downloadable content, they’ve chosen the strangulation route. Marvel’s DCU is the closest, but Marvel refusing to sell downloads of the material . . .

I think an iTunes-esque business model would work well for the comics industry, but until one of the major publishers takes that chance, we’ll never know.

Interesting stuff on the Dark Knight movie, upcoming. The viral marketing is getting kind of nifty.

Meanwhile, the viral sites keep buzzing, including clues from an email which lead you here, and if you reset your computer’s clock to 7:38 AM (the time “Taffyface” was killed, according to the Gotham Times, you can open the vault and look inside. Oh, and there’s four more viral sites you can poke at: Gotham USD, Gotham Cab, Acme Security Systems and The GVA Foundation.

This comes courtesy of Comic Book Resources.

Apparently, Wonder Woman is big news. Who’d have thought it?

WW has traditionally been the weakest link of DC’s Holy Trinity — Batman outsells and has had a series of very successful feature films (whereas WW can’t get one film off the ground) and Superman is a cultural icon.

Wonder Woman has had some success in the culture market, however — who of my age can EVER forget Linda Carter in that outfit — but just isn’t the impact of the other two.

Gail Simone is looking to change that. As the first ongoing female writer on the title, she is taking the job very seriously. Recently Simone was interviewed in the New York Times and talked about the experience.

Ms. Simone was effusive when discussing Wonder Woman. “She’s just the best kind of person,” she said. “She was a princess who didn’t need someone to rescue her. I grew up in an era — and a family — where women’s rights were very important, and the guys didn’t tend to stick around too long. She was an amazing role model.”

Issue 14 was her first issue. It may have been a not-overwhelming beginning, but Simone has her job cut out for her: recent WW writers have had no ideas on how to scribe for the Amazonian Princess of Power.