私は部屋です。私はバットマンです。*

This fall acclaimed designer Chip Kidd (along with co-writer Saul Ferris and photographer Geoff Spear) will be putting out a book that any Batman fan will be drooling over . . . BatManga!

The book will cover the history of and reprint copies of Batman stories published in Japan in the mid-1960s in Shonen King manga magazine. Long forgotten (and more likely, unknown to the masses) the comics ran in conjunction with airings of the ABC tv show Batman, which were re-aired in Japan.

Mostly drawn by 8-Man creator Jiro Kuwata, the stories ranged over a year, were all-original and mostly featured new, unknown in the US villians. The book promises to be a treasure trove of Bat-goodness for fans and will serve as an amazing companion piece to Kidd's excellent Batman: Collected tome.

Look for it in October 2008 from Pantheon Books in both a soft-cover edition and an expanded limited edition hardcover. Read an interview with the writers here.

*I am the night. I am Batman. (translated from Japanese)

CAPTAIN TRIPPS AND THE DARK MAN

Announced months ago by author Stephen King, Marvel Comics this weekend at WizardWorld Philly announced the comic book adaptation of The Stand. Written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacaso (sp? he wrote Marvel's "4" title about the Fantastic Four) with art by Mike Perkins, Marvel E-I-C Joe Quesada held back the number of issues the comic adaptation would run.

Considering the book itself (the unabridged version, at least) clocks in at well over a 1000 pages, it is hard to see the adaptation being anything less than 12 issues. Even the ABC television miniseries was an 8 hour event and that left out a lot from the book. With King being fully involved in the project as he has been with Marvel's adaptation/expansion of his Dark Tower series, it seems that the book will be given a lot of room to tell its story.

The refusal of Marvel to lock-down a finite number of issues seems keyed to the business end of things, however. It's not easy to get a casual comics fan to commit to an ongoing series that extends over more than a year, especially when they know the book will be collected eventually in a handsome hardcover package. Throw in the rising cost of gas and the difficulty of finding a comic shop in this direct market only comics-world, and you have a recipe for a tough sell - even for a writer as popular as King and a book as popular as The Stand.

Either way, it is something that I am sure many King fans are excited about, and certainly, anyone who has picked up the Dark Tower adaptations knows how good and good-looking those books have been. I look forward to the project myself, and just point out Marvel's strange secrecy on the issue number as a point of curiosity.

At right: feast your eyes on a small black and white piece by series artist Mike Perkins!