The word manitou comes from the belief system of the Algonquian-speaking American Indians. It is a personal spirit in the form of an animal or bird that is as a link between the warrior and the divine. Manitou Raven therefore seems more like a title than a name. I just wonder if we’ll ever see Manitou Wolf or Manitou Bear.

Spotted on e-bay: Official JLA Valentine Cards. Unsurprisingly the box is unopened. The seller lists a date of 1991, but the artwork looks like stock mid-1980s DC promotional artwork (including the definately Earth-One Wonder Woman). Click on the thumbnail to see a larger verison.

I picked up all three of the DC Ultimate guides from the book shop last month. Very nice eye candy, not too much content for the hardened continuity buff, but an excellent all round exploration of Superman, Batman and the JLA. The content of the Batman Guide seems the oldest while the Superman one seems most up to date. The JLA Guide covers material up and including the Golden Perfect so is pretty much diminated by the Grant Morrison and Mark Waid eras.

All three guides were written by Scott Beatty (GOTHAM KNIGHTS, BATGIRL YEAR ONE). Scott is notable because he’s written for the majority of the Secret Files. Check out Scott’s behind-the-sceen’s section for cut-away sketchs of the JLA Watchtower by Tom Grindberg (2001 AD, SANDMAN, FIRESTORM).

It’s another Wednesday and time for another batch of comics. This week I have mainly been reading: Action Comics, Hawkman, Vertigo Pop, JSA: All-Stars, Detective Comics and PVP Online. Revelation of the week: the identity of Zod in AC or the final page of Hawkman. Worst moment of the week: realising that I was getting too many of the “chaotic evil” jokes in PVP Online. JSA ALL-Stars #1 was okay — a little too much of the “setting up the story” for my liking.

I’ve just been reading the DC spotlight projects blurb that has been posted on a number of websites. One of the new projects is Mark Waid’s new Superman maxi-series titled “Birthright”. It looks like a year-minus-one slash before-they-were-famous tale (or at least the first issue does). This was reported on the newsfeeds a while ago and it’s nice to see that it’s finally surfaced. It’s been a little over shadowed by the coverage of Mark Millar’s Superman Red Son (yes you too can have a Superman mini-series in July just as long as your first name is Mark). Both look like their going to be excellent. Only once downside from this fan’s point of view is that I’m going to need to rewrite the start of the Superman profile (again!) once the series ends. Thanks’s Mr Waid.

If you read the post below – you’ll know I went on a hunting trip through Google Images for JLA pictures. Well I did manage to find an amazing JLA lithography by Nitch & Neary. Heavan know’s why I didn’t pick up on this at the time (probably something to do with writing up my PhD thesis ). Anyhow I’ve just found a full colour picture of the lithograph and had to share it. Enjoy.

Well its Saturaday, half-past midnight and I’m wide awake – something that is probably due to not going to sleep until 5am last night. Damn you Middle Earth will I ever finish the Lord of the Rings before the final film! Currently I’m on that huge section in the middle where the Hobbit outward bounds movement is randomly wandering the Dead Marshes. The bit they almost eliminated from the film. It justs drags on, and on, and on. A bit like a Dragonball fight scene.

As insomnia settles down for the second night in a row I find myself over halling the front of the site. However I need to replace the graduated background. I’ve tried a larger version of the Crisis image, but it just doesn’t work. In an attempt to find a decent image I even tried putting the term “jla” into the Google image search. One or two interesting results pop-up…

• Check this link out. Its a JLA fan image called JLA 2050 that’s posted on the http://www.shattered.ch/ weblog.
• Happened upon the website of Tom Mandrake. The penciller from JLA: DESTINY, MARTIAN MANHUNTER and THE SPECTRE. Often known for working with the writer John Ostander.
• Not sure what to make of the Jewish League of America. Its a single image on Hero City – an online strip about a city where everybody is a superhero.
• Another pro’s website. This time its Yanick Paquette. He was the artist on Wonder Woman a couple of years back. His gallery includes scans of his Tomorrow Woman oneshot from the Girlfrenzy skipweek.
• More original art can be found at The Mysterious Trevor Z’s Original Art Gallery. The most interesting works from a JLA point of view are six pages by Dusty Abell from STARMAN #38. This is one of the most infamous League stories – its the one where the Mist kills a newly reformed Justice League Europe – just so the writer can make a point.
• Saverio Tenuta, is the Italian artist who did the recent JLA: RIDDLE OF THE BEAST one shot. You can find his original art for sale in the For Sale section of his website.
• Jerry Ordway’s Sketch Book includes sketchs for the JLA/Planetary oneshot. One of the great riddles of life is why I haven’t bought this yet.
• Okay I’ve saved the best for last. Check this out. Its called The art of Comics and it seems that most of the inked art from he Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary JLA run is here. The absolute best has to be a three thousand dollar original of the JLA lithograph. Absolutely amazing

This post is dedicated to those hundreds of normal people who called the pictures on their homepage jla.jpg. I had to wade through the lot of you – whoever you may be.

If you’ve been reading the Justice League Library (formerly the Justice League FAQ – the only continously maintained League site older than this one) then you will have noticed the little cartoon renditions of the JLA members in their characters section. These are Mircoheroes. They started out as minature cartoon characters people used to identify themselves in message boards. Fandom being fandom the scene just exploded and now almost every comic or major hero has been turned into a Mircohero. Thus I would point the interested web surfer towards JLA Microheroes – an amazing archive of JLA related Mircoheroes. People have spent serious time and nervious energy on this project.

There is an excellent article over on Newsarama about Diamond’s new sales figures for the top 300 comcis. Diamond are now releasing the rankings based on actual sales figures rather than based purely on initial orders.

A few points of note in Feb’03 rankings:

• JLA #78 was the second highest ranked DC title after BATMAN #612. JLA #78 and JLA/SPECTRE SOUL WAR #2 were ranked 14 and 82 based the number of issues sold.
• JSA #45 was ranked 30th based on the total number sold.
• Diamond now list a “Guide” column with the top selling title marked as 100. It seems that this is the actual sales figures expressed as a percentage of the top selling book. Based on this JLA and JSA sold in the ratio 1.5:1.0, and JLA and Avengers sold in the ratio 1.1:1.0.
• When looking at the retailer rank (based on the total dollar cost of that issue, i.e. cover price multiplied by number of units sold) SOUL WAR actually brought in more dollars than the normal issue of JLA, which pretty much explains why DC keeps chucking out those 6 buck Elseworld and card bound specials.

Your probably know Joe Rubinstein as an inker, but did you also know that he’s also an award winning portrait painter and a commercial illustrator (its amazing who you get working in comics). Joe now has a page over at The Artist’s Choice and is happy to accept requests for recreations or original commissions.

Joe Rubinstein worked on the Justice League International during the late 1980s and inked the pencils of Ty Templeton and Adam Hughes. He also inked the massive group shot for the cover of Mayfair Game’s JLA Source Book. More recently he inked the two part Elseworlds story JLA Created Equal. You can find Joe’s comments on inking at the Comic Book Inking Survey.

Update: Joe will be the inker on the new FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE JLA series which features the reunion of the creative team and character line-up from the Maxwell Lord era. Interesting there will be a new crowd scene cover. Remember that Joe is available for comissions so you could always ask him to recreate you favourite JLA moment.