In the “Damn, they stole my idea” department, New York Times best-selling romance novelist Janet Evanovich and her daugher Alex teamed up with Dark Horse Comics to create a graphic novel called Troublemaker featuring Alex Barnaby, a female racecar mechanic whose vantage point as a raceday spotter leads her into mystery and intrigue. The art is by Joëlle Jones (Dr. Horrible) and volume 1 will be out just days before the annual Nerd Prom in San Diego this July. (Source: Newsarama.com)
American manga artist Amy Reeder (Fool’s Gold) has “graduated” to the big times and will be penciling DC Comics’ upcoming ongoing Batwoman series starting with the second story arc which will see the light of day in early 2011. She’ll be working on scripts by artist/co-writer J.H. Williams III, whose pencils will kick off the series later this year. I’m rather hopeful about this prospect of seeing more female pencilers working on “Big Three” books, and really hope that she (and the book) does well. (Source: Newsarama.com)
After taking heat and a lot of licks for his underperforming directorial debut for The Spirit, comics artist Frank Miller is returning to the medium that made him great and revealed some of the first pieces of art for Xerxes, a 300 prequel story about the leader of ancient Persia who was the antagonist in the numerically-named film/comics series. Scheduled to be published by Dark Horse Comics in 2011, the ouroboros will begin its turn and if director Zach Snyder likes it enough, he said he’ll option it for a live-action adaptation. (Source: The L.A. Times Hero Complex blog)