The New York Comic Con officially opened its doors this afternoon, but comics publishers and distributors have been releasing announcements leading up to it all this week. Here's a round-up of news from today, as well as some that hit earlier this week.
• DC Comics, who were having a pretty good week already, announced two creative team changes for the New 52. Ann Nocenti of Daredevil and Longshot fame will write Green Arrow starting with issue #7. She spoke to Comic Book Resources about her approach to the series: "I have a particular way of writing a comic. Comics are short. They are only twenty pages, so you can take a year of comics and that can be your opera, and the opera can have a lot of different passages in it. I kind of believe every issue should be a single story, just a complete story. But there is a momentum that forms like triptychs over it, and then it forms your big overtures, and then the whole thing ends up kind of operatic. I also want a beginning, middle and end, a classic short story approach to every single comic. What I do is I try to figure out, what is the kick in this comic, what is the main feeling I want to get, and everything in the comic has to serve that."
• And Marc Bernardin (Monster Attack Network, The Highwaymen, The Authority) will take over the writing duties on Static Shock beginning with issue #7. "As a fan and as a writer, one of the great things about Static isn't just that he's a new hero, it's also that he's a young hero," Bernardin told CBR. "He will make the mistakes of youth and, even though the New 52 is resetting a lot of heroes to their early days as do-gooders, there's nothing quite like the fumblings of a teenager."
• General Mills cereals will include free custom editions of Justice League comics in October and November.
• And in case you missed them earlier this week, they also announced a change to Wonder Woman's origin, as well as two Vertigo projects -- Dominique Laveau: Voodoo Child and adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s bestselling Millennium trilogy.
• Dark Horse today announced five new Star Wars projects -- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic—War!, Dawn of the Jedi, Knight Errant - Escape, Blood Ties – Boba Fett is Dead and Darth Vader and the Ghost Prison.
• IDW has made several announcements leading up to the show. Coming up this January is Infestation 2, the sequel to this year's crossover event Infestation. It will feature everyone from the Transformers to G.I. Joe to to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Bat Boy and fighting Lovecraftian Old Ones. "We learned how to do this, how to tell a story that is connected to all these different properties but not necessarily involving them all in the same book," IDW CCO and EiC Chris Ryall told CBR. "And all the usual trial and error when you're doing a big event that you've never done before. The other good thing about that, having never done it before, some of the licensors weren't entirely sure what we had in mind so we had to keep all the characters separate. Now that we can show them what we did and show them how it succeeded before, now we're able to cross over some of the characters and have the properties meet up."
Ryall confirmed that Danger Girl is not only part of the crossover, but also will get a new series next spring.
• IDW also announced Road Rage, a comic adaptation of "Throttle," a short story co-written by Locke & Key writer Joe Hill and his father, horror novelist Stephen King, as well as "Duel," the Richard Matheson short story that inspired it. Ryall and artist Nelson Daniel will adapt the stories, with covers by Phil Noto and Tony Harris.
And what else do Road Rage and Infestation 2 have in common? Temporary tattoos!
• Mike Costa (GI Joe: Cobra, Blackhawks), Ryan Browne (God Hates Astronauts, Blast Furnace) and Disney Imagineer/sleight-of-hand artist Jon Armstrong are teaming up for a new miniseries from IDW called Smoke and Mirrors.
• Mark Waid's hero-turned-villain, the Plutonian, will take on his nemesis-turned-hero, Max Damage, in an Irredeemable/Incorruptible crossover that will appear in Irredeemable #32-33 and Incorruptible #25-26.
• Archie's Red Circle characters will return next year as part of a digital comics subscription service.
• Graphicly announced this week that The Walking Dead, Invincible and Irredeemable are now available on Newsstand, a new feature of the newly released iOS 5 for the various Apple devices. Newsstand allows you to subscribe to serial publications like magazines and, obviously, comics, then automatically updates them in the background when new issues become available.
• ComiXology had two announcements this week -- they've added IDW to their iOS application, and they've released a Marvel app for the Android.
• A second Free Comic Book Day, tied to Halloween 2012, is being planned by Diamond Comics Distributors.
• Before hitting the New York Comic Con, Orchid writer and musician Tom Morello went to Zuccotti Park where the Occupy Wall Street protests are occurring to perform.
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