You can listen to the full interview with Joshua Dysart on our iTunes feed here.  Make sure you rate and subscribe to the feed.  (We’ve got lots of cool interviews coming up!)

The following first appeared on Huffington Post, where you can go to see the rest of the pages.

Neil Young has spent the better part of five decades becoming a living legend in the world of music and during all of that time he’s never been a stranger to shining a light on political causes and exploring new mediums. He’s directed films, put on benefits like Farm Aid, and established non-profit organizations. Next week, with the help of DC Comics, he will broach the world of comic books with the new release Greendale.

Vertigo, the more literary imprint of DC Comics, tapped Joshua Dysart to work with Young to adapt the story. Dysart is an old hand at mixing the entertaining memes of comics with the conceits of political undertones that leave you feeling good about the book and not as though you’ve been preached to. He was the mastermind responsible for Vertigo’s relaunch of The Unknown Soldier, which I’ve written about for Huffington Post previously.

Dysart and I spoke recently to talk about the project: “Originally, Greendale was a bit of a rock opera in that the songs were loosely related to the Green family who lived in this fictional Northern California town of Greendale. And they’re all very much grounded in activism and it’s all very much Neil’s frustration and anger over choices the Bush Administration was making in 2003 regarding our energy policy in particular. It’s an activist album. He went on to direct a film by himself, which was sort of an accumulation of music videos, and a rock opera, and they put out an art book. And all of these further illuminated the narrative of Greendale. So when it came time for us to attack it, we sort of felt like the narrative had been wrung out from that angle, so we wanted to do something different, but firmly entrenched in the Greendale mythos. We got into the mystical aspect of the women of the Green family. And so what we tried to do was to tell a story that both had human elements that Neil Young had, but really use comics to their great strength.”

And they very much did. The comic is an incredibly engaging look at Sun Green, a young girl in the Green family at the onset of her mystical powers. Between this super-natural awakening and her overriding outrage for environmental issues, Sun is left to deal with too much. But even more is piled when a mysterious Stranger blows into town, causing trouble. Sun is left to unlock the secrets of her family, focus her outrage, and find herself, before she’s able to face off against the Stranger.

As a writer, Dysart, under Young’s guidance, was able to straddle that balance between literature and political speech without ever crossing a line that would make it seem trite or forceful. His masterful words are accompanied by Cliff Chiang’s artwork. The imagery is top notch and the subdued colors by Dave Stewart lend the book an ethereal quality you’ll want to read again and again.

Presented below are 13 pages for your viewing pleasure. I would recommend you pick the book up. If you’re a fan of Neil Young or comic books, you won’t be disappointed. It hits book stores June 15, 2010.

Bryan Young is the editor of Big Shiny Robot!, a comic book news site. You can listen to the full interview with Joshua Dysart there.

(you can see the rest of the pages here!)

Have you had a chance to read the Serenity one-shot comic that came out last week? If not, you have no idea what you’re missing. And if so, then this should be a nice add-on to what you’ve read. City Weekly‘s bloggist extraordinaire Gavin Sheehan, sat down and chatted with Patric Reynolds, the artist for Dark Horse who has had a hand in the Abe Sapien one-shot, HellBoy, and drew the Patton Oswalt written issue. The two chat over his career plus thoughts on the industry.

Gavin’s Underground interview with Patric Reynolds

Gavin: How did you officially break into the business and land a job with Dark Horse?

Patric: That’s another good story. During the beginning of my last year in graduate school, I began sending my portfolio off to every publisher I could think of. But, I kept getting the same responses. It was mostly “Great stuff, we’ll show ’em around the office.” That went on for about nine months. I began to get nervous, since school was almost finished. Then people began telling me that I should start sending my stuff to artists and writers, since they already have established connections with publishers. So one day I sent my portfolio to Duncan Fegredo, who is a regular artist for Dark Horse’s HellBoy series. Duncan was incredibly supportive and seemed to really like what he saw and he said he’d pass the work along to Scott Allie, the Senior Managing Editor at Dark Horse. The next day, Scott Allie e-mailed me and said “Hey, good stuff… call me on my cell phone and we’ll talk possibilities.” I still can’t believe it. Scott got me started on a little 8-page story for Dark Horse MySpace Presents #23, and I think the rest is history.

Gavin: One of the more highlighted gigs you’ve gotten involved with recently is the Firefly comic that will be written by Patton Oswalt. How did you get involved with that project and how has that been coming along?

Patric: I had no idea that it was going to Joss Whedon himself. That’s probably a good thing, though. Had I known beforehand, I might have exploded in a mushroom cloud of nervousness. After a few weeks, Scott got back to me and told me that we were on for the Serenity one-shot. I was thrilled. It was definitely the sweetest gig Dark Horse had given me up until then. But then I remembered how long one page took me, and now I had to do 24 of them. The hardest part about anything is starting it, and once I got into a routine it was easy to ride the momentum. Twelve hour days were not uncommon, but Patton and Joss would directly e-mail more positive comments and support, so I looked forward to the challenge of the next page because I knew I must have been doing something right. When I sent in the last page, Patton replied “Home run.” Man, I hope so.

This image is floating around the web and is rumored to be the logo for the Green Lantern movie. It looks pretty legit to me, what do you think?

Over at joblo they ran a story claiming to have been sent the teaser poster for the Captain America movie. Since it hasn’t been officially released we can’t say if this is the real poster or not, but it looks pretty awesome!

So, more concept from the Marvel movies has been leaked, this time images of Chris Hemsworth as Thor.

Collider has the full story and more pictures than the one below.  I’m a little worried about this.  Not the costume itself, I think it’ll look great, but these concept pieces (like the one of Captain America yesterday) look a little silly and wonky.  It’s not because their bad, it’s just the art style and the odd photoshop job done to put the actors in the suits.  Is this really the best first look of these characters we want?

I really don’t think so.  And I think some people might start to get the wrong impression about these movies far too much in advance.

Also, why doesn’t Cap have wings on his helmet?

In any  case, here’s Thor.  It looks good, but I hope the style of this doesn’t turn anyone off of the movie.

This is Pride Week in Salt Lake City, and to stick with the theme of this week’s issue of IN, I wrote about gay superheroes.  I know there are plenty more of them, and I probably could have written my whole article about Scott Pilgrim characters we all know and love, but I wanted to showcase some good fights and tights books that are better than people realize.  Especially the (at times) snooty “indy book” crowd.

You can pick up IN on stands in the greater Salt Lake area, or read the online version of the article here.

Click to magnify this version below.

The Walking Dead began production today in Atlanta, and that’s good news for everybody.  I’m doubly excited since they’ve announced David Tattersall is the Director of Photography.  He’s the guy who filmed all of the prequels and his camera work is phenomenal.

(Atlanta, June 2) — Production begins today in Atlanta for AMC’s adaptation of the Robert Kirkman comic The Walking Dead. The six-episode first season — written, produced and directed by three-time Academy Award-nominee Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile) and executive produced by Gale Anne Hurd (The Terminator, Aliens, Armageddon, The Incredible Hulk) — follows a group of survivors, led by police officer Rick Grimes, traveling in search of a safe and secure home after a zombie apocalypse.

In order to slake our thirsts for material, AMC has posted a whole bunch of stuff, including behind the scenes photos, casting news and interviews.

Check out their website for Walking Dead here.

In the meantime, you can watch this behind the scenes interview below:

They also had a great interview with George A. Romero and he had this to say about Walking Dead:

Q: You used Charlie Adlard — who does the art for The Walking Dead books — for one of your posters for this film. What do you think of The Walking Dead?

A: I love it. I think it’s the best thing, the best zombie thing out there. It has been for a long time. I’ve always loved it. I’m envious that Frank Darabont is getting to do the television show. If you see Frankie, tell him hello and that we need to have a spaghetti dinner.

First up, filmonic has posted a picture (above) that shows the director of the upcoming X-Men: First Class, Matthew Vaughn hanging out with his new Professor X, James McAvoy, and Kick-Ass star, Aaron Johnson. Now, the picture isn’t revealing at all other than these three men were in each other’s presence at some point last week, but given the recent casting news about James McAvoy and his Professor X role I could see how this could possibly have been some sort of meeting about a possible role for Johnson in First Class.

All speculation at this point folks…

Moving on from speculation to hard rumor, avengersnews.com is reporting that Marvel’s people are talking to Lost star Josh Holloway’s people about him playing “…a ‘lead’ role in an upcoming Marvel film.” There are no hints to who he may play at this point, but avengersnews speculated as follows:

– Henry Pym (important role in “The Avengers” and its sequels, lead role in “Ant-Man” spinoff.)

– Clint Barton/Hawkeye (maybe a S.H.I.E.L.D. member in “The Avengers” with a starring role in the “S.H.I.E.L.D.” spin-off or a future Avengers sequel.)

– Timothy “Dum Dum” Dugan (important S.H.I.E.L.D. member in “The Avengers” and its sequels, and lead role in the “S.H.I.E.L.D. spinoff)

So there you have it! Some good old fashioned rumor-mill “news”!

Personally, I think Holloway would make a good Hawkeye (especially the “Ultimate” version), but I liked the idea of Hurt Locker star Jeremy Renner in that role as well. As far as Johnson goes I really couldn’t imagine him as a young Hank McCoy/Beast, Scott Summers/Cyclops or Bobby Drake/Iceman… perhaps a young Warren Worthington/Angel?

Sound off in the comments and let us know which Marvel character you’d like to see Johnson and Holloway step in to!

I haven’t been reading comic books lately, and I have to say, I think “Siege” is the biggest reason why… It was a book that pretty much took over half the Marvel universe, but only managed to keep one four part book interesting. And the hugest thing that came from Siege was the fact that it reunited the Avengers. Which is arguably pretty cool… But then Marvel had to turn the Avengers into a blatant money making vehicle  for themselves… (The Avengers, Avengers Prime, New Avengers, Secret Avengers, Avengers Academy. Not to mention, Avengers the Origin, Avengers Spotlight, Ultimate Avengers 2, New Ultimates… And there are more!)

When did George Lucas take over Marvel? – Slugtron

On top of all of this financial nonsense, they’ve got all of their writers writing ten books at a time… I mean, I used to think Bendis was okay… but there is a major discrepancy in his books… For example, I thought Siege was awesome, but I tried reading an issue of Ultimate: Enemy, and it was completely uninspired and boring… I think this is simply because he writes too many books. This isn’t my only beef with Bendis, but I’ll leave it there for now… Basically what I’m saying is, putting out a hundred of the same book, and then putting it all in the hands of only a few writers, is a bad idea. It’s probably a sound financial move, but it really makes me not want to buy Marvel  books at all… And since I’ve pretty much stopped reading DC books since Batman R.I.P., I just don’t have that many comic books to read anymore… And the final straw— in the midst of these unfortunate transitions, most of the comic community has adapted to a price hike, paying $3.99 for every main stream book.

Steve Wiebe would roll over in his grave if he saw what Marvel was trying to pull. – Slugtron

I still pick up a few titles, (Rasl, Usagi Yojimbo, Walking Dead, Invincible, and a few others.) But I’ve essentially stopped caring about all the monthly books. As a Robot doctor lawyer with a great ass, I’ve been able to maintain some semblance of a regular life without the majesty of reading stories where the protagonist is either a man with an unearthly masculine jaw, or else an unrealistic woman with huge boobs and an I.Q. but I think the comic book companies should be the ones adapting to what we want, not the other way around.

How do we remedy this comic book apocalypse? My fellow robots would tell you to just enjoy the ride… but I disagree. I’ve decided to list some solutions to this problem.

1. Stop buying over priced books!… Spending four dollars an issue turns out to be a ridiculous price to pay for a comic book… I hope I didn’t just blow your mind… Get the graphic novels instead… I’ve never had to pay full price for a graphic novel, and neither should you… If people stop buying individual issues, maybe they’ll return to a reasonable price? (I’m probably wrong in this case because the people that make the decisions at Marvel are such fucks they would probably just raise the price again. But then you wouldn’t be buying them anyway! Win, win.)

2. Don’t support Bad books… Stop buying all these kitschy titles, how many fucking Avengers books do we need? These companies are putting out such shitty material, and you’re still buying it… This is unacceptable… Every single one of us needs to get mad. If you see another issue of Marvel Zombies on the shelf, tear it to shreds! You’ve got to get mad!

3. Final reason, and probably the most important. Never read another comic book written by Brian Micheal Bendis ever again! He is the new Judd Winick… which means Kirkman gets his regular position back!

In Brian Michael Bendis’ defense, he’s only as stupid as he looks. -Slugtron

In closing, I was inspired to write this post after reading a comic book that Robert Kirkman wrote… Destroyer…I suggest buying it and not just taking my word for it, but it was a cool looking book, (Art by Cory Walker) and it had an awesome and original story… It’s what we should expect out of our comic books! Lets stop settling for less!

The collected edition of Wednesday Comics was released to comic book stores last week and hits stores everywhere this week.  Wednesday Comics was perhaps one of the most innovative ideas to come out of comics in a long time and it was exciting to see it come from DC.  During 2009 for 16 weeks, one page serials by 15 different creative teams hit comic shops in a folded newsprint edition.  Though it was looking back to the roots of comics in Sunday newspaper strips, it was an incredibly forward-thinking idea out of DC.

The man responsible for the idea was Mark Chiarello (pictured above with the book), the Art Director of DC Comics.  Though a lot of you may have never heard of him, or recognize his name but can’t attach anything specific to it, now is the time to commit it to memory.  Chiarello is responsible for some of the best things to come out of comics in the last 20 years.  Aside from being the colorist on Hellboy: Seed of Destruction (“I’m the guy that made Hellboy red, that’s sort of my claim to fame,” joked Chiarello during our interview), he’s the guy who brought Darwyn Cooke into comics, he put Batman: Black and White together, the idea for the DC Solo series was his, he teamed up Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee for their epic run on Hush and he’s produced some of the coolest Star Wars art in recent memory.

When I had a chance to talk to him about Wednesday Comics, I jumped on it and we had a really great discussion about the genesis of the project and how it came about.

So what was the genesis of Wednesday Comics?

Mark Chiarello: I was very close friends with one of the great old time comics artists, Alex Toth, and he was one of the masters, up there with Jack Kirby and Howard Kurtzman, and he was a real big fan of the old Sunday strips, Prince Valiant and Terry the Pirate and all that stuff.  And for me growing up in the late 60s and early 70s, comic strips were a real shadow of their former self.  It was mostly humour stuff by the time I got to it, but being over at Alex’s house one time, he took out all of his old Sunday funnies of…he had clipped all of his Terry the Pirate and he had all of them.  They were so gorgeous and enormous and the color was still vital and vibrant and he and I had a conversation, could he and I do this with today’s comics, with modern characters.  When somebody asks me where I came up with such a good idea, the answer’s pretty simple, I just ripped off the 1930’s. It was pretty easy.

How did you go about picking which characters you would use and which team would be with which characters?  Did you have a wish list?  Did you ask for volunteers?  Did you have an editorial direction in mind?

I sat down and had a wish list of who I wanted to work on this thing, I called them, and each and every one of them said yes.  And it was like, okay, be careful what you wish for.  With the majority of the creators I asked them which character they wanted to do.  You know, Neil Gaiman said Metamorpho and he could have said anything really and of course I’d say yes.  A couple I specifically asked, I asked Azzarello and Risso if they would do Batman.  And it’s funny because Azzarello has a real jones to do Aquaman one day, which I can’t imagine but, you know, maybe we’ll take him up on that sometime.  And obviously, Joe Kubert, I wanted to put him and his son Adam together on Sgt. Rock, that was a no-brainer.

There’s something about the size of the book that’s really alluring, but how did you arrive at exactly how you were going to put it together.

A lot of trial and error.  I made a lot of mock-ups and dummy copies.  I wanted to go as big as humanly possible.  If I could have done poster one-sheets I would have, but there was a limit to how big we could get.  But the key to this entire project was the immersive, colorful fun reading experience.  Purely, the only reason to do this was for the reader to have fun.

Are we going to be seeing more Wednesday Comics?  Did it sell well enough to warrant more? Because I really think the interest is there.

Yeah.  It did very well financially and creatively.  I…  I sort of…  It was so labor intensive to put the project together that I’m having a ‘Nam flashback just thinking about it.  But I think the machine is built now so it would be easier to do a sequel.

And I’m sure you have other artists of similar calibre interested in doing it, too…

You know what is funny, is when the first series started coming out, so many great artists called me and said when you do another one give me a call, so I have that list.  I would definitely be able to tap into some of the great names.

So the short answer is maybe we’ll see more?

Yeah.  I think the real key is that we’d only do it if it could be as good or better than the original series.

What was your favorite moment working on it and putting it together.

I really loved seeing Superman, our flagship character, in the newspaper, in USA Today.  That was really cool.  It’s great to be able to get outside of our world a little bit, the comics world, and you know, share these characters with the real world, with the real public.  I know I’m grasping at saying it, but Superman is a real special character and it was nice going back and knowing the country was going back and opening their paper and seeing a full color Superman story.  It was cool.

Though I’ve limited the transcript to our discussion to Wednesday Comics, we talked about many other things, including how much everybody likes Deadman and how at some point we might see a Deadman monthly because so many people love him (“I’d like to see that.”).

Hopefully, we’ll hear more from him soon and we’ll be able to talk to him about more upcoming projects he’s got on the backburner.  As the Art Director for DC Comics, he’s got his hands in a lot of pies and, like I said, he’s responsible for some of the coolest things we’ve loved in comics in the last 20 years.

Having said that, do yourself a favor and pick up the collected Wednesday Comics.  It’s an incredible compilation.  I know I’ve read most of the stories twice since I’ve had it and I can’t stop poring over the art.  And with it being as big as it is, it makes a perfect coffee table book.

You can get it on Amazon by clicking the link, or by hitting up your local comic book store.