Hugh Jackman, 'Dragon Ball' and Guillermo del Toro all in Everyday Hero headlines

And the Oscar goes to ... the fanboys: How's this for an Academy Awards scenario -- Iron Man and the Joker will be competing for an award and Wolverine will be hosting the show. That's the way it could shape up with a possible nomination for Robert Downey Jr. (for "Tropic Thunder"), a seemingly certain nomination for the late Heath Ledger and the news today that Hugh Jackman, every one's favorite song-and-dance mutant, will be emceeing the trophy broadcast. Here's the academy press release: "Hugh Jackman will host the 81st Academy Awards telecast, producer Laurence Mark and executive producer Bill Condon announced today.  This will be Jackman’s first time center stage at the Oscar show, although he has previously been a presenter. 'Hugh Jackman is a consummate entertainer and an internationally renowned movie star,' said Mark and Condon in a joint statement.  'He also has style, elegance and a sense of occasion.  Hugh is the ideal choice to host a celebration of the year’s movies – and to have fun doing it.' Jackman stars in the current release 'Australia,' directed by Baz Luhrmann.  He will next be seen in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” having portrayed the title character in the previous three smash-hit 'X-Men' movies.  His other film credits include 'The Prestige,' 'Flushed Away,' 'The Fountain,' 'Happy Feet,' 'Van Helsing,' 'Kate & Leopold' and 'Swordfish.' A native of Australia, Jackman won the 2004 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his performance in 'The Boy from Oz.'  He has served as host of the Tony Awards ceremony and won a 2005 Emmy for that assignment. Jackman’s other stage credits include 'Carousel,' 'Oklahoma!' 'Sunset Boulevard' and 'Beauty and the Beast.' [AMPAS press release] What do people think? Well, Mary McNamara, the Los Angeles Times television critic, groaned when she heard the pick but the paper's Hollywood columnist, Patrick Goldstein, likes the notion.

"Sleepless Knights" put to bed? How many movie projects can Guillermo del Toro be associated with? Maybe the list just got shorter, according to Jennifer Vineyard, who reports that the Grant Morrison story "Sleepless Knights" is losing steam: 'Sleepless Knights' was an idea Morrison scripted that would be a sort of fairy tale, which Del Toro was attached to direct. Thanks to a time-machine error, the world gets stuck on Halloween, permanently — kind of like 'Groundhog Day,' but for everyone. Ghosts, goblins, and other creatures think of it as a free-for-all, and start running wild. That is, until a new kind of Ghostbusters, called the Sleepless Knights, start fighting them. Though the premise could work as a creep-out horror movie, Morrison thought it of it as a family-friendly, coming-of-age, fantasy-adventure film, and wrote the lead role as a 15-year-old teenager named Alex Bradbury (a nod to Ray Bradbury). The idea was sold to Dreamworks exec Michael DeLuca, and producer Don Murphy came aboard. And then nothing. Morrison continued plugging away on a second draft, and still nothing. At Comic-Con, he said the project was “resurrected” (apt for a story about the dead). But now, he’s not so sure. 'That was the last we heard, but now it seems to be doing something else,' Morrison told us. 'So it’s no longer, as far as I know. It’s not at Dreamworks anymore, as far as I know. We spoke to some people after the convention, and that aspect seems to have gone quiet again.' No matter — Morrison and Del Toro have plenty of projects to keep them both busy, what with Morrison’s 'Area 51' film and the adaptation of 'We3,' and Del Toro’s work on 'The Hobbit.'" [MTV Splash Page blog]

Wait, there were 83 movies worse than "Speed Racer"? The Times of London staff has put together their list of the 100 Worst Movies of 2008 and a lot of them were fanboy fare. "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," the first animated theatrical release in the George Lucas space opera, finished all the way up (or is that all the way down?) at No. 5. and came with this appraisal: "The latest installment of George Lucas’s interminable franchise has the charm of a cash machine. This noisy animated feature is set in a galaxy that isn’t far away enough." Ouch. Also on the list: "Speed Racer," whose "famous actors look more plastic than the sets" at No. 84; "The Eye," with plot twists "as remarkable as pasteurised cheese," at No. 57; "Babylon A.D.," a "slapdash sci-fi effort," at No. 49;  "Max Payne," a "dull cod-noir fantasy," at No. 41; "Superhero Movie," with "lots of fart jokes" at No. 40;  and"Alien vs. Predator: Requiem," which was "wrist-slittingly awful," at No. 10. Their choice of the very worst movie of the year? That would be the aptly titled "Disaster Movie."

"Dragon Ball" rolling: How popular is the "Dragon Ball" manga adventures? I've seen sales reports that list 150 million copies of "Dragon Ball" volumes being sold -- and that's just in Japan. The massive audience for Akira Toriyama's mystical martial arts tale is the chief motivation for the April 2009 live-action film "Dragonball Evolution" from Twentieth Century Fox. The director is James Wong, who also helmed "The One" with Jet Li and "Final Destination." " Wong was also co-creator of "Space: Above and Beyond" and a writer for "The X-Files" (Do you remember "Home," the creepiest episode ever? Wong co-wrote it.) The "Dragon Ball" script is by Ben Ramsey (who is also working on "Luke Cage") and the producer is Stephen Chow, who is now at work on "The Green Hornet." Sound promising, right? Well, maybe not. Here's a trailer for the film which looks, um, not so great.

Do you have to eat haggis?: Newsarama is having a contest that will send the lucky winner to Scotland for dinner with Mark Millar. The lowdown: "To mark the DVD and Blu-ray release of Universal's 'Wanted' (based on Millar's "Top Cow" series) this month, we're picking one lucky fan and a companion to take an expenses-paid trip to Scotland, which includes a a personal dinner with the writer. Want to ask him whose side of the 'Civil War' he was really on? What’s coming up in 'Ultimate Avengers' or his next wave of creator-owned books? Did he get to meet Angelina Jolie in person? Here is your chance to ask, as well as an opportunity to soak in a European culture to boot. Grand prize includes a four-day/three night trip for 2 to Scotland, including accommodations, round trip airfare for two, airport transportation, and tax, along with $500 spending money that doesn't necessarily have to be exhausted in Scottish comic book shops." [Newsarama]

-- Geoff Boucher

Hugh Jackson at the premiere of "Australia," photo by Carl De Souza AFP/Getty Images. Guillermo del Toro on the set of "Hellboy 2: The Golden Army," photographed by Egon Endrenyi and courtesy of Universal. "Speed Racer" image courtesy of Warner Bros.

Neil Gaiman: 'Alan Moore got to be the Beatles. ... I was Gerry and the Pacemakers'

EXCLUSIVE: The second installment of our three-part interview with Neil Gaiman finds the writer musing on the "British Invasion" in comics, describing his love for "mythology mash-ups" and wondering if maybe he pulled off the impossible with sustained excellence of "The Sandman"

(Read Part One and Part Three)

GB: How would you describe Morpheus, your flawed Lord of Dreams, to someone who was coming to the tale for the first time?

NG: He's a lot like me, only with an immortal's superpowers and no sense of humor of any kind. Hmm. So in fact, he isn't anything like me at all but he does have very messy hair. [Laughs] That was a great point of correspondence between me and the character. He's much paler than I am too. No, really, with the character, it was an idea of trying to take something very literally: What would it be like to live in dreams? A lot of that came out of terror. I was a young writer and had never written anything monthly. I needed a story shape that could take me anywhere because my fear was: What if I run out of stories? So I thought, "I will have somebody who has existed since the dawn of time, so that gives me the entirety of human history to play with for stories."

And I wanted someone who is absolutely and utterly powerful. It's interesting because at the time, John Byrne had just taken over Superman and had announced that he was making Superman less powerful because he had become too powerful and you couldn't write interesting stories about people that were too powerful. That started me thinking, "Well, no, actually you can, because what makes a person interesting or not interesting isn't how powerful they are, but who they are."

GB: There's also the compelling problems that come with that power. Your Morpheus may be able to bend reality to his wishes but he still has to deal with the consequences of his excesses and his relationships.

NG: Which is why I created Dream, this god-like being of immortal power, and then I gave him a family. Most characters in comics simply didn't have any families, and it was something I loved. It was something I loved to write about. When I first came out to America, people told me that in "The Sandman" I created a dysfunctional family, which was not a phrase I had heard before that in England. I talked to people about it, and I realized that what people in America called "a dysfunctional family" was the same thing that we in England referred to as "a family." You didn't see a lot of functional ones. So I gave him a family, the Endless. I gave him Death and Delirium and Desire and Despair and Destiny and Destruction.

GB: It became such an amazing tapestry as the series moved on. There was the feeling of epic fantasy on a scale that wasn't really there in those earliest issues.

NG: At the beginning it was a horror comic. Those first eight issues was a sort of horror comic. After that it became more of, I guess, a fantasy tale, but one that allowed me to go off and write about Shakespeare or history or do a modern-day road trip or really go anywhere I wanted to with an unlimited special effects budget. [Laughs]

GB: I was fascinated when you began plucking the deities of different cultures and putting them together in a sort of mythology mash-up. It was something you would come back to in your non-comics work later with the "American Gods" novel ...

NG: It was something that I had always loved so much about the nature of comic-book universes. Those Marvel and DC heroes all seemed to exist in worlds where you had gods and you had fairies and robots and aliens. It was all there, and there was the potential for this amazing mash-up. All I did was take joy in it and mash it up much, much further. It was all there to be mashed, but nobody had mashed it up just yet in that way.

GB: Well, in Marvel Comics, when Thor and Hercules both ended up in Manhattan, they tended to blend in with the superhero except for their Old Vic accents. Your stories, though, presented the gods as mistrustful tribes forced into the same room.

NG: That's it, yes, the idea of putting them together wasn't something that nobody had done before; it's just that whenever it had been done, they tried to downplay the awkwardness. I wanted to revel in the joy of that awkwardness. It's something I keep coming back to. This wonderful, great-big, post-modern grab bag. It's all up for grabs; it's all metaphor and mythology, and if I can find a kitchen sink, I'm throwing that in too.

DC sends Superman into space and gives Batman his last rites

EXCLUSIVE: Dan DiDio of DC Comics talks about Superman leaving "Action Comics" (and Earth), the revival of "Adventure Comics" and major changes in Gotham City that will mean "a close to the existing lore ... the last rites of Batman."

I was in New York a week ago to work on a long feature about the singer Beyoncé but (just to prove what a hopeless fanboy I really am) I was more excited about making my first visit ever to the offices of DC Comics, which was no disappointment. After a tour, I sat down with Dan DiDio, the senior vice president and executive editor of the DC Universe, which means he oversees the bread-and-butter, ongoing comics titles. He had plenty of scoop to share, including this Andy Kubert cover above, which is the variant for the upcoming landmark Batman tale "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader"...

Geoff Boucher: So, Dan, what are you most excited about right now?

Dan DiDio: Oh, gosh, that’s a good one. We’re coming to the end of “Final Crisis” right now and I’m not only excited about people reading the ending of “Final Crisis” but I’m also excited about getting to the end of “Final Crisis.” We did “Countdown to Final Crisis” and “Final Crisis” itself so this has been a long story for us. I feel we’ve accomplished a lot of goals and we created a lot of excitement. But more importantly it’s a point of change for us in DC Universe again. And once you know the ending is coming, it’s in sight, that’s when you start getting worked up about what’s coming up next. That’s what I really get jazzed about. We have two really big events that spin out of “Final Crisis” each in its own way and affecting our key franchises, Superman and Batman. The first thing we’re going to see is called “Battle for the Cowl,” that’s going to be a book that features nearly every member of the Batman family   

GB: Even Ace the Bat-Hound?

DD: [Laughs] Probably. We have a writer-artist team on this right now that’s scouring every book possible to see what they can include in these two-page spreads they want to build of all the characters that inhabit the Batman universe. So it’s a lot of fun for us. I always like those things because it’s a big noisy adventure book. And whenever you do one of those, the level of excitement is always right there on the page. You hopefully have people respond properly to that.

GB: There’s a lot going on with the Batman franchises.

DD: There are a lot of questions about what’s going on with the Batman line of titles. We just recently canceled three of the longtime Batman-related series: "Birds of Prey," "Robin" and "Nightwing." They all end in February. Then in March, “Battle for the Cowl” starts and once it does, you will get to understand how the Batman universe is starting to be realigned.

GB: And what about the Man of Steel?

DD: Simultaneous to “Battle for the Cowl,” we’re going to be making changes in Superman’s world as well. Superman has been the star of "Action Comics" for its entire run, essentially, and he will be leaving it and handing it over to new characters. The only time he hasn’t appeared in the book, I believe, was after “The Death of Superman,” in those years. So this is a lot of fun for us. I think that’s going to get people excited and scratching their heads and wondering what’s going on. In his own book, "Superman," there will be a dramatic turn as the hero leaves Earth and it seems like he’s leaving for good. We’ll follow his adventures in space more so than his adventures on Earth, and that’s a big and exciting thing. We’re also bringing back one of the old-time favorite titles of DC Comics, "Adventure Comics." It will be ...

Scary movies, Batman's 'Brave' new world and the Flash, all in Everyday Hero headlines

Today's handpicked headlines from the fanboy universe...

Left-over Halloween treat: It was posted last week but I just came across a nifty photo gallery put together by Mandi Bierly, who got William Friedkin, the director "The Exorcist," to make a list of the movies that scare him. The unlucky 13 that he came up with has the usual suspects ("Alien," Psycho" and "Rosemary's Baby," all righteously scary if unsurprising) as well as some dark fare that casual movie fans won't recognize. Here, for instance, is Freidkin's appraisal of Kaneto Shindō's "Onibaba," the 1964 Japanese horror film with the title that translates to "Demon Woman": "'It's a masterpiece of horror and suspense. It's about an old woman, who has only her daughter-in-law to care for her in a remote village. She starts to see her daughter-in-law sneak out every night, and she follows her to see where she's gone — off to have sex with a man out in the weeds. This incredibly frightening, mythological Japanese demon appears every time the daughter-in-law goes out, and the pursuit by the demon through those weeds is terrifying. It's a cautionary tale about going off and sinning and not worrying about paying the price. It can send shivers up your spine like a cold hand on the back of your neck, and there's little if any blood."

Batman's "Brave" new world: I watched an advance copy of the new animated Batman team-up series, "The Brave and the Bold," with my 7-year-old son, Ben, and we both adored it. "Dad, you should write about this show," he told me. Well, son, here you go. The tone is brighter and more bouyant than most recent incarnations of the Caped Crusader (it's got clean lines and a real old-school, Dick Sprang vibe to it, in fact) but there's nothing condescending in its tone. I want to know more about the creative teams, so I read with interest an interview that Steve Fritz has with one of the show's directors, Ben Jones, who said the real fun of the show is putting the hero with a changing cast of costars: "It’s like being at a really big buffet and trying to choose between a hundred different foods. There are a lot of things that would be really awesome to do. The problem isn’t coming up with ideas. The problem is which to actually pick, especially as we only have 26 episodes. How it was done was everyone has their favorite characters ... there are a group of guest stars that appear more frequently, like Blue Beetle, Red Tornado, Green Arrow, Aquaman and, at least I’m thinking, Plastic Man." [Newsarama]

Taking a run at 'Flash' rumors: The very talented Grant Morrison is talking about "The Flash" with somebody in Hollywood but just don't ask him about it. Jennfier Vineland did and the writer of "The Invisibles," citing nondisclosure agreements, did some fancy footwork that the scarlet speedster would be proud of: “The thing with Hollywood stuff,” Morrison started to explain, “is that I’ve signed all these NDAs, so I can’t talk about it. I don’t want to get myself in trouble for saying the wrong things. There’s a lot of projects I’m not ready to talk about. I can’t. It’s just not allowed...[a Flash movie] yeah, that’s the kind of thing I can’t talk about. Yes, I have talked to them. I’m deeply involved in those discussions. I know what’s going down with all of that, and it’s actually really exciting. But beyond that, I can’t say anything. I wish I could tell you. I’m sure announcements will probably be made at some point, but I can’t say anything.” Does that mean director David Dobkin might use a Morrison idea or script? He can’t say. Does it mean he pitched it and they turned it down? Again, he can’t say." [Splash Page blog, MTV] NOTE: I had a link to this Splash Page post, but now it's been taken down by MTV.

-- Geoff Boucher

"The Exorcist" image courtesy of Warner Bros. "The Brave & the Bold" image courtesy of Warner Bros. Animation. The Flash image, art by Alex Ross, courtesy of DC Comics.

Grant Morrison explains his Man of Steel

When it comes to writing, the most interesting aspect of iconic comic-book characters is the flexibility of intepretation. Writers representing wildly different ambitions, genres, generations and cultural backgrounds have been able to make their ideas fly with success, which is why there's enough room, somehow, inside Batman's cape for Bob Kane, Frank Miller, Tim Burton, Adam West, Bruce Timm and Christopher Nolan.

But there's can be downsides in the comic books, however. These are ongoing adventures, at least on some level, and readers often reflexively look for some sort of continuity. There's also the numbing clutter of so many competing mythologies through the years -- not to mention some pretty bad fashion choices. What's a writer to do if he or she wants to achieve something that is both fresh but alo "true" to the character? Grant Morrison reveals a lot about the choices a writer must make when approaching a character like Superman during this looooong answer to a question posed by Zack Smith about the starting-point context for Morrison's highly regarded run on "All Star Superman," which took the Man of Steel into a setting that was entirely new but, as it turns out, quite familiar.    

'All Star Superman' could be read as the adventures of the ‘original’ pre-'Crisis on Infinite Earths' Superman, returning after 20 plus years of adventures we never got to see because we were watching John Byrne's 'new' Superman on the other channel. If ‘Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow?’ and the Byrne reboot had never happened, where would that guy be now?

This was more to provide a sense, probably limited and ill-considered, of what the tone of the book might be like. I never intended 'All Star Superman' as a direct continuation of the [Mort] Weisinger or Julius Schwartz-era Superman stories. The idea was always to create another new version of Superman using all my favorite elements of past stories, not something ‘age’ specific.

I didn’t collect Superman comics until the ‘70s and I’m not interested enough in pastiche or nostalgia to spend 6 years of my life playing post-modern games with Superman. 'All Star' isn’t written, drawn or colored to look or read like a Silver Age comic book.  'All Star Superman' is not intended as arch commentary on continuity or how trends in storytelling have changed over the decades. It’s not retro or meta or anything other than its own simple self; a piece of drawing and writing that is intended by its makers to capture the spirit of its subject to the best of their capabilities, wisdom and talent.

Dark Horse, ' Doctor Who' and 'Heroes' in Everyday Hero headlines

Everyday Hero, your roundup of handpicked headlines from the fanboy universe...

The Oregon success story of Dark Horse comics is historic -- in fact, it's so historic that it will now be protected and indexed in a massive archive project at Portland State University. Two copies of every Dark Horse publication will be kept there, one in general circulation and the other in a special collection preserve.

Heidi MacDonald has the story on her blog, the Beat: "The library’s Dark Horse collection will include everything they’ve produced, from books in 24 different languages to Aliens stickers and Hellboy lunch-boxes. The Beat spoke with Portland State University Librarian Helen Spalding, who explained that even a Buffy marquee statue can be useful to academics. 'The key rings, action figures, mugs and tee-shirts are all rich research material for examining marketing, gender roles, and many other topics,' she said. The idea for the collection was sparked a few years back when Spalding saw DHC Publisher and PSU alumnus Mike Richardson speak at a university luncheon. 'They’re an important Portland institution, and the University is really engaged with the community and the alumni,' Spalding said, 'so it just made a lot of sense that we work together on this important collection to our mutual benefit.'" [Publisher's Weekly] ... If you want to learn more about the fascinating contours of the Dark Horse story, check out a major piece I wrote earlier this year during a visit with Richardson (pictured above) and his team in Portland.

Now on with the rest of today's handpicked headlines...

"Heroes" needs a heroic effort: Jeff Jensen isn't ready to give up on the floundering NBC series "Heroes," which hit a series low of 8.2 million viewers on Oct. 6 (waaay down from its peak audience of 16 million) and has lost so much of its urgency. Jensen writes that "NBC's No. 2 drama won't ever reclaim its status as a ratings powerhouse, but it can regain its creative glory — provided producers start fixing things now. In order to speed things along, we present our five-point plan to save Heroes...from itself." Those five points: 1. Retire Some Capes 2. Make The Heroes Smarter 3. Get Back to the Heroes’ Roots 4. Get a New Bag of Tricks and 5. Find a Big Vision – And Set an End Date. Sounds easy enough! [Entertainment Weekly]

To Serve Man: Wait, there was a show called "Twilight Zone" and it wasn't about a Tiger Beat vampire in Washington state? Yes, kids, a long time ago a fellow by the name of Rod Serling hosted an unsettling and cerebral show about creepy creatures, twist endings and the slippery nature of reality. Sci Fi will air a two-day, end-of-the-year marathon of the grand old show and they want your vote on your 10 favorite episodes. Remember, as with any popularity contest, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Tucker Stone has an essay on the fuzzy logic that applies these days when it comes to labeling comics books for violence and sexualized content. He writes: "The mature readers/explicit content tag may have once been there as a warning to the parent or the queasy, it may have been there to keep the non-comics-shop-haunting evangelicals at bay, but that was then. Now? It's a neon sign, a greasy guy in a trenchcoat, and it's beckoning the reader down the street, and around the corner — and he's saying 'You want some gore? I got you some gore. I got it right here.' For whatever it's worth — that cat ain't lying."  [Comixology]

Who's "Who"?: Grant Morrison would love to write a "Doctor Who" movie but, sadly, nobody has asked. "That would be fantastic to do,” he said. “I’ve got quite a good story for Doctor Who. I think it would have to be quite definitive, especially because the recent series have had a few really strong definitive stories, such as ‘Human Nature,’ and ‘Silence in the Library.’ A couple of those I thought just nailed the character so completely, and that’s what you have to aspire to: a definitive, iconic, almost ultimate Doctor Who story.” [Splash Page blog, MTV]

The Great Sulu-Kirk War of 2008 continues. Here's a press release that came in today about a George Takei interview with "Entertainment Tonight" that will air this evening: "Takei talks to ET exclusively about his "Star Trek" co-star William Shatner's now-infamous YouTube rant about not being invited to his wedding, 'It's absolutely baffling to us because we did invite Bill and we didn't hear from him! But it wasn't surprising because it's true to his history. He's never responded to an invitation. Every time there was something happy to celebrate amongst us, he never showed up.' Shatner says in the YouTube video that Takei has a 'psychosis,' to which Takei responds, 'I think his stability is quite questionable. Bill likes to be the star of the show. He likes the attention focused on him. It's a big, shiny, demanding ego. It's all typical of Bill.  His ranting and raving is just silliness.'" [Entertainment Tonight]

And, finally: Check out our very own Denise Martin's guide to "Twilight" Halloween costumes...

-- Geoff Boucher

2008 photo of Mike Richardson of Dark Horse shot by Robert Durell/Los Angeles Times; Zachary Quinto of "Heroes" photograph by Chris Haston and courtesy of NBC. TARDIS image courtesy of the BBC.

Gerard Way's Essential Shelf, Part 3

Gerard Way, the lead singer of My Chemical Romance and the author of "The Umbrella Academy," is our featured contributor on The Essential Shelf, and this is the final installment of his Top 10 all-time graphic novels. You can find the first installment here and the second one here. Below are Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 on his list:

"Watchmen" by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
This is the first graphic novel I tell people to read if they are slightly unfamiliar with comics, and it is the graphic novel that changed the way I thought about superheroes and mainstream comics.  I often refer to 'Watchmen' as a gateway drug because that’s exactly what I think about it. It’s the one graphic novel that leads you to more cerebral, “outside-thinking” works. In suggesting this first to people, I realized that it actually does help to have an understanding or nostalgia for traditional superhero works, because that’s exactly what it deconstructs.

"The Dark Knight Returns" by Frank Miller
The other work that comes to mind from the '80s that pushed what you thought about traditional superhero comics, specifically Batman. A total deconstruction of the character, altering everything you thought about the character, his supporting cast, and even Superman, who is portrayed as a government tool. This is Batman past 50 years old, at his grittiest, his darkest, and it paved the way for a whole generation of “darker heroes.”

"The Doom Patrol: The Painting That Ate Paris” by Grant Morrison
This is the 2nd collection of Doom Patrol stories by Grant Morrison, and you should definitely pick up the first volume before reading this one, but this is the one where it really cements itself as the first “post modern superhero comic.” There are insane concepts and wild ideas on every page, from sleepwalking super-villains to sentient streets. This was the main influence in starting "The Umbrella Academy" and Grant Morrison is my favorite writer of all time for the sheer volume of ideas on every page, and the wit and style in which he presents them. Way more than deconstruction of the hero, Grant actually loves superheroes and writes with a nostalgia for the Silver Age of comics while at the same time creating something entirely new.

"The Sandman: Preludes And Nocturnes" by Neil Gaiman.

I remember this being the first comic where the best way to describe it was "literary." Drawing upon folklore, mythology, mysticism, and Shakespeare, Neil Gaiman created one of the most original comics of our time, using a very simple concept as a vessel for imaginative and thought-provoking stories. This is the kind of idea and storytelling you are jealous of as a creator, because you will always wish you had dreamed it up.

Thanks Again to Gerard for taking the time to share his favorites with Hero Complex. Check back here for more guest commentary in The Essential Shelf feature.

-- Geoff Boucher

Gerard Way's Essential Shelf, Part 2

Gerard Way, the lead singer of My Chemical Romance and the author of "The Umbrella Academy," is our featured contributor on The Essential Shelf, and this is the second installment of his Top 10 all-time graphic novels. You can find the first installment here. Below are Nos. 5, 6 and 7 on his list:

"The Invisibles: Say You Want A Revolution,” by Grant Morrison:
I could make a Top 10 list of graphic novels of Grant Morrison’s work on its own, telling you to read "We3," "The Filth," "Seaguy" and others, but I realize I need to make this list more broad. I am including "The Invisibles" because of its volume, ambition and scope. Drawing upon everything from “The Prisoner” (the old British sci-fi/spy show) to the Beatles, this series contained some of the craziest concepts ever put into a comic. At times you question if you are even reading a comic and that’s why this work is so important. Visionary and wonderfully experimental.

"Blankets," by Craig Thompson:
Moving away from breakthrough work within the mainstream, this is one of the best autobiographical comics I have ever read, being able to relate to it in a number of ways, including the wonderfully rendered relationship between Craig and his younger brother. A story about faith, love, loss and coming of age, it’s also one of the best drawn graphic novels of all time.

"Stray Bullets: The Innocence of Nihilism,” by David Lapham:
This collects the first issues of Dave Lapham’s crime/drama comics of the same name. One of the more interesting aspects of the book, aside from its all-too-human way of portraying everything from cold-hearted killers to traumatized little girls, is the fact that this comic exploded onto the scene seemingly from nowhere. Dave Lapham created a book, from the previous confines of work for hire, that was better than anything he had done and better than any other book at the time. This book will scare you and the only monsters in it are the ones you can find hanging out in the alleys of the city you live in.

-- Geoff Boucher