Welcome to this week’s Comics Relief. Are you… comics relieved to see me?

Ugh. I’m sorry – the jokes are bad, but the comics news is interesting (and some of it, very good) as Steve Niles gets another comic up on the big screen, Hobgoblin gets involved in Marvel’s Axis event (somehow), and the author of Snow Crash makes his comics writing debut.

Breathing Life Into Breath of Bones on the Big Screen

Steve Niles’ (30 Days of Night) WWII golem drama is coming to the big screen with director Adam Adamson attached. Adamson, who directed the first two Shrek and Narnia movies, would be going a little darker in this story of a small Jewish village beset by Nazis during the war, and the monstrous golem they summon to protect them.

[via The Hollywood Reporter]

Illustration by Erica Henderson

On Sexual Harassment and the Question of Under-reporting in Comics

Juliet Kahn filters her own experience as a professional in comics through the industry’s history of under-reported sexual harassment and assault among professionals.

“[I]t’s no surprise that men react with astonishment to claims of overwhelming mistreatment of women. They don’t see it. We don’t talk about it. The threat of male anger harms women, then ensures their silence—and teaches them that this is normal, that it’s no big deal, that they can handle it. It’s just little things, right? Just a grope or a word or a threat here and there. Little things. Little things that, invisibly, circumscribe the freedom of half the population.”

[via Comics Alliance]

Marvel’s Axis Gets Hot Hobgoblin on Hobgoblin Action in October

The publisher released four preview pages for their upcoming Hobgoblin meets Goblin King event in Axis: Hobgoblin #1. The October 22 release by the creative team of Kevin Shinick and Javier Rodriguez will bring Roderick Kingsley back to the hood and the costume and hot damn does Rodriguez draw the hell out of that 5-part introductory sequence on the third page.

[via Marvel]

Top Shelf Gets its Own Strong Female Protagonist

Brennan Lee Mulligan and Molly Ostertag’s webcomic of the same name is getting a softcover release this December. The Kickstarter-backed project sees teen superheroine Mega Girl battling a sinister conspiracy while still try to get her papers in on time at college.

You can preorder the book at the link below.

[via Top Shelf]

Scope the Cover and Art for Neal Stephenson’s First Comics Work

Cimmaronin: A Samurai in New Spain is out today from Jet City Comics, and the publisher has released the cover and storyboard pages from the first comics work from the Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash author.

From the publisher’s synopsis (warning: samurai and a little genre-bending):

“A disgraced outcast samurai living in early seventeenth-century Manila, Kitazume is contemplating ritual suicide when a divine force (of a sort) intervenes: Luis, a rogue Jesuit priest and Kitazume’s longtime friend. At Luis’s insistence, the samurai agrees to help smuggle a Manchu princess to Mexico. But little does he know that he’s really been dragged into an epic struggle for power.”

[via Jet City Comics]

From Comics to the Screen: The Heroes and Villains of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Brian Cronin runs down the first comic appearances of some of the new characters making their way into the new season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Handy!

[via Comic Book Resources]

Fashionably Covered

Lan Pitts talks with cover artist Jeff Wada about his work and process and being featured on Project Rooftop.

“I love Project Rooftop so much and I was amazed when I was featured. That piece was actually a commission, and I don’t think there was too much art directing by the commissioner. I was very excited by the runways coming out around that time – I think it was a lot of Gucci and Armani Prive. Platform heels were in, and I always love a strong shoulder and a synched waist. For Emma, it was obviously about being sultry, and for Ororo it was about being regal. I tried to add little touches to callback to each character’s personality or design.”

[via Newsarama]

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