Dc Comics

Bob Kane, 83, creator of "Batman" who watched the comic book character become an American icon, collapsed at his Los Angeles home Tuesday and was pronounced dead at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, his attorney, Jim Leonard, said yesterday. The cause of death was unknown.He created Batman for DC Comics in a single weekend in 1939. His hero is Bruce Wayne, a rich man who lacked the powers of Superman, relying instead on strength, agility, high-tech equipment and a fearsome bat mask and cowl to terrorize criminals.

Superman is dying.It isn't kryptonite that's doing him in, nor his old nemesis Lex Luthor. It isn't even that archvillain Doomsday has risen from the grave to kill him a second time.No, this time the Man of Steel faces a much deadlier opponent: Apathy. Truth is, being faster than a speeding bullet or more powerful than a locomotive is one big yawn now for comics buffs.After half a century's worth of caped crusaders, superpowers simply don't cut it anymore. Readers these days want something with a little more attitude -- the smart-aleck snarl of "Wolverine," the devilish depravity of "Spawn," or the hellfire heroics of "The Preacher."

Somehow a time-traveling Billy Ray Cyrus and his roadies are stuck outside a castle in medieval Europe. Baa-ing sheep swarm around them. "Who booked me here?" the country singer demands.Well, Billy, comic-book writer Paul S. Newman is your man. After 48 years in the business, Mr. Newman of Columbia's Wilde Lake village is boldly taking country-western singers where none have gone before.His latest work pits such country stars as Mr. Cyrus and Marty Stuart against Shawnee Indian ghosts and alien hillbillies from space.

Superman died two years ago, but the latest comic-book news may be even more earth-shaking and, at least for some in the industry, scarier.The country's two biggest comic publishers have signed exclusive distribution deals, shifting millions of dollars in wholesale business faster than a speeding bullet.Marvel Entertainment Group Inc., the No. 1 comic company with about 30 percent of the market, fired the first shots two months ago by deciding to use a Marvel-owned distributor for all its shipments to specialty comic-book stores.

Superman swooped back into town yesterday, and fans were leaping over tall magazine racks in a single bound just to get their hands on him.The Man of Steel returned to comic shops and sports card stores after publisher DC Comics resurrected him from last November's much-ballyhooed death.The death issue sold 4 million copies, and the publishers are betting Superman's return in Adventures of Superman No. 500 may be an even larger boon. DC Comics is publishing 6 million of them.Business was brisk as the issue hit shelves early yesterday afternoon.

Will Garfield become an animal-rights activist? Will the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles form a third political party? Will Nancy become a radical feminist and accuse Sluggo of sexual harassment?If there is little in the world that successfully resists change, the comics pages, it seems, are no exception. Reality increasingly colors the multi-paneled worlds of the imagination stuck inside hundreds of daily newspapers. King Features Syndicate, which distributes the Blondie comic strip, last week prepared its readers for the latest capitulation to modern custom: Dagwood Bumstead is not only giving notice to his tantrum-prone boss, Mr. Dithers, but is going to work for his wife, Blondie.

Holy evolutionary cycles! "Batman" leaps back to television in a new cartoon series to be seen weekday afternoons on the Fox network beginning Monday. And the network offers a pair of weekend previews, at 9 a.m. today and in prime time at 7 p.m. tomorrow on WBFF-Channel 45.But this "Batman: The Animated Series" owes much more to the feature film caped crusader (two pictures and counting) and creator Bob Kane's original DC Comics character than it does to the played-for-laughs TV series with Adam West and Burt Ward (on ABC from 1966 to 1968)

If having a baby was a ratings boon for Murphy Brown, think what killing off Superman will do for sales of DC Comics. Surely only a sinister corporate plot could explain such madness. After all, we thought Kryptonians lived forever -- especially one like Clark Kent, whose healthy habits and mild manner would seem to put him at low risk for the dire fates that claim many Earthlings.Only two years ago, the corporate executives approved another attempt at a ratings boost -- having reporter Kent finally become engaged to the ever-faithful Lois Lane.

New York -- An irresistible force is going to meet an immovable object in November and something's going to give:Superman will meet his demise.The Man of Steel will die fighting to save the city of Metropolis from the super-lunatic Doomsday, a new villain who is an escapee from a cosmic insane asylum.But wait a minute. Superman is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. And he's only 54, a mere blink of the eye for `D somebody born on Krypton.

So what if it's taken him half a century to pop the question? Call the caterer, book the hall, send out the invites and make it a Superwedding, Lois . . .least that's what nearly 70 percent of our callers said when they responded Wednesday to our question: Should Lois Lane have said "I do" or "I don't" to Clark Kent's proposal in the Superman No. 50 comic book, which is hitting newsstands this month.Thirty-four of our 50 respondents said that the commitment-phobic reporter and his colleague at the Daily Planet should indeed tie the knot.

When Baltimore native Bernie Wrightson, Archbishop Curley class of 1966, began illustrating comic books in the late 1960s, horror stories were just beginning to come back into vogue after more than a decade of being banned for the "danger" they posed to impressionable youngsters. It didn't take long for Wrightson to become known as a master of the genre. Along with such other artists as Neal Adams, Gray Morrow, Mike Kaluta and Alex Toth (many influenced by the great Frank Frazetta), Wrightson revived the genre, re-introducing comics readers to the delights of being freaked out by stories of vampires, werewolves and other creatures that went bump in the night.

Justice League of America is exactly the kind of movie Warner Bros. loves to make. Based on the classic DC Comics series, the script is filled with a dream team of recognizable superheroes - Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash - and could not only become its own franchise, but also could spin off individual character sequels, TV shows and merchandise. (Green Lantern Underoos, anyone?) But even a league of superheroes might not have enough special powers to repel the latest villain on Hollywood's horizon: an impending labor dispute.

By almost any measure - exposure, esteem, money - writing for comic books is a big step down for authors who are enjoying success in TV, films or fiction. But try telling that to the big-name scribes - including horror-meister Stephen King, Joss Whedon (creator of TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and writer/director Reggie Hudlin (House Party), now head of entertainment at BET - who are taking the plunge into the pulpy world of muscle-bound superheroes. They all think they've died and gone to heaven.

Harry Lampert, 88, the illustrator who created the DC Comics superhero the Flash and later became known for his instructional books on bridge, died of cancer Saturday in Boca Raton, Fla. He began drawing professionally at 16, inking cartoons at Fleischer Studios in New York for characters such as Popeye and Betty Boop. Six years later, he created the DC Comics original Flash Comics 1 in 1940, collaborating with writer Gardner Fox. The first-edition featuring the physics-defying superhero has become a classic among comic book collectors.

Blockbuster. The word just sounds like a superhero, doesn't it? Fitting, because smashing box-office records seems like part of the mission today for the leading men of comic books. Whether it's the anti-heroics of Hellboy or The Punisher (which opened Friday) or the classic valor of Spider-Man (returning to the big screen in July), testosterone seems vital to the formula for breaking out of the comics subculture and into the mainstream. But where are the women? Stuck in wardrobe, apparently, if sneak peeks at Halle Berry's turn as Catwoman (supposedly coming this summer)

Frances Partridge, 103, the last of the spectacularly talented and irreverent group of British writers and artists who coalesced as the Bloomsbury group in the years before World War I, died Feb. 5 in London. Her death was announced by her literary agency, Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., which said she died in her apartment. She was surrounded there by remnants of the Bloomsbury group's heyday, including their books, one of them the letters of her friend Virginia Woolf, and their art, including the painter Dora Carrington's famous portrait of Lytton Strachey.

Frances Partridge, 103, the last of the spectacularly talented and irreverent group of British writers and artists who coalesced as the Bloomsbury group in the years before World War I, died Feb. 5 in London. Her death was announced by her literary agency, Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., which said she died in her apartment. She was surrounded there by remnants of the Bloomsbury groups heyday, including their books, one of them the letters of her friend Virginia Woolf, and their art, including the painter Dora Carringtons famous portrait of Lytton Strachey.

Five ruffians have surrounded Edgar Allan Poe outside a Baltimore bar, and Steven Parke, digital camera in hand, is telling a one-armed thug to step back and lift his club higher over the poet's head. Meanwhile, Stephen John Phillips tries to focus a large spotlight with an aluminum foil funnel on the giggling group - hoping the final effect will be an eerie, 19th-century scene in film-noir style. "A little bit more," says Parke, who is directing the actors as Phillips stretches an extension cable almost high enough to get into the picture.

DC Comics is working on a bit of urban renewal as the new century brings a new look to two fabled comic-book cities: Metropolis and Gotham City. Superman's Metropolis has gotten a futuristic makeover: "It's the city of tomorrow as it always should have been, considering the Man of Tomorrow lives there," says Mike Carlin, executive editor of DC Comics. Batman's Gotham City, meanwhile, has been rebuilt in the wake of a devastating earthquake and a yearlong abandonment by the federal government.

Bob Kane, 83, creator of "Batman" who watched the comic book character become an American icon, collapsed at his Los Angeles home Tuesday and was pronounced dead at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, his attorney, Jim Leonard, said yesterday. The cause of death was unknown.He created Batman for DC Comics in a single weekend in 1939. His hero is Bruce Wayne, a rich man who lacked the powers of Superman, relying instead on strength, agility, high-tech equipment and a fearsome bat mask and cowl to terrorize criminals.