Comics – Haibane.info

Wonder Woman Writer Willow Wilson

via her Facebook page – this is amazing news: starting in December, my friend Willow Wilson, of Kamala Khan “Ms. Marvel” fame, will be taking over writing duties for Wonder Woman. I am so proud of my friend and excited to see where she takes the oldest avenger (lowercase). 🙂

UPDATE: here’s the official press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ACCLAIMED WRITER G. WILLOW WILSON BRINGS “THE JUST WAR” TO WONDER WOMAN THIS NOVEMBER

Award-Winning Author and Creator Returns to DC as New Ongoing WONDER WOMAN Writer with Artist Cary Nord

(BURBANK, CA, July 11, 2018) – Following DC publisher Dan DiDio’s surprise reveal on today’s episode of DC All Access, celebrated writer G. Willow Wilson will be bringing her incredible storytelling skills to the shores of Themyscira as the new writer of WONDER WOMAN, beginning in November.

Wilson has won several prestigious literary awards, including the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story in 2015 and the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in 2016 for the Muslim-American character Kamala Khan, a.k.a. Ms. Marvel. Wilson is also no stranger to DC, having previously written SUPERMAN, VIXEN and THE OUTSIDERS, as well as DC Vertigo titles CAIRO and AIR. She takes over the ongoing adventures of the Amazon Warrior this November with her debut story arc, “The Just War.”

“I’m delighted to be writing such an iconic character as Wonder Woman and to be working with DC once again,” said Wilson. “With more than 75 years of history, Wonder Woman has a wealth of backstory and drama to draw from, and I look forward to putting a spin on Diana and her supporting cast that’s both new, yet familiar. It’ll be a challenge to do her justice, but I like a challenge and can’t wait to get started.”

Joining Wilson on art duties for “The Just War” will be Cary Nord, who recently launched THE UNEXPECTED (with co-artist Ryan Sook) as part of The New Age of DC Heroes. Nord is also known for his acclaimed runs on Dark Horse Comics’ Conan and Valiant Entertainment’s X-O Manowar.

When Steve Trevor’s unit goes missing in an Eastern European country torn by revolution, Wonder Woman immediately flies across the globe to help him—only to slam into the brick wall that is Ares, the God of War, who’s taken a strange interest in this conflict. But why is Ares acting so strange? Has he turned over a new leaf? Does Wonder Woman have a chance to redeem him? And just as important…if Ares has returned to Earth, then what happened to the supposedly unbreachable prison built to contain him—Wonder Woman’s homeland, Themyscira?

“Willow’s return to DC to write WONDER WOMAN is an incredible opportunity for us, and we couldn’t be more excited,” said DiDio. “Keeping our core audience engaged requires having the best storytellers around, and she’s definitely a great addition to our current list of writing talent.”

Part one of “The Just War” begins in WONDER WOMAN issue #58, on sale November 14. For the latest news from DC, download the DC All Access mobile app, available for free on the Apple App Store and Google Play.

About DC Entertainment:

DC Entertainment, home to iconic brands DC (Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, The Flash), DC Vertigo (Sandman, Fables) and MAD, is the creative division charged with strategically integrating across Warner Bros. and WarnerMedia. DC Entertainment works in concert with many key Warner Bros. divisions to unleash its stories and characters across all media, including but not limited to film, television, consumer products, home entertainment and interactive games. Publishing thousands of comic books, graphic novels and magazines each year, DC Entertainment is one of the largest English-language publishers of comics content in the world.

# # #

PR Contacts:

To discuss DC Universe publishing initiatives:

Michael Shelling

michael.shelling@dcentertainment.com

Clark Bull

clark.bull@dcentertainment.com

On Behalf of DC:

Nick Valente, B/HI

nick_valente@bhimpact.com

anime Iron Man and Wolverine

Following the path blazed by the Animatrix and the anime prequel to the Batman movies, comes word that Marrvel will be commissioning two anime-style series, for Iron Man and Wolverine. Here’s the press release via AICN:

Marvel Entertainment Inc., has partnered with renowned Japanese animation studio Madhouse (Paprika, Tokyo Godfathers) to create four all new anime versions of classic Marvel Super Heroes. Get an exciting first glimpse of two of the planned four series at this year’s Comic-Con International, the country’s leading comics and popular arts convention. The Marvel Animation Panel will be held on Friday, July 24, and will include an exclusive first look at official teaser trailers for two of these new series, hosted by writer and multiple-Eagle Award winner Warren Ellis, who will appear to discuss writing the all new adventures of these re-imagined Super Heroes.

These Marvel Anime TV series are being created as a way of merging the beloved Marvel Super Heroes of western culture with the bold animation tradition of Japan. The resulting product will be four visually groundbreaking anime series featuring popular Super Heroes redesigned and repurposed as emerging from the fabric of Japanese culture. The series is expected to begin appearing on the Animax channel in Japan in spring of 2010.

These are being released for Japanese TV, but I’m sure we can get subbed versions off the torrents. I was disappointed by the Batmanime series, and I’m not that enthusiastic about the anime style of Paprika or Tekkon Kincrete, though – I hate the stylized misshapen proportions technique. I’m more of a classical anime style fan, but still style is secondary to plot as far as I am concerned.

pre-rolling the dice

The new episode of Darths and Droids – Ãœberstition – has this truly inspired meta-commentary at the bottom, which purports to quantify the dice superstition that all RPG gamers suffer from to varying degree:

Pete, being the highly logical, calculating person he is, rejects all of that as superstitious nonsense. He instead applies the scientific approach. Over the years, he’s collected somewhere around a thousand twenty-sided dice. Every so often, he gathers them all together. He sits down at a table and carefully and individually rolls each of the thousand dice, once. Of course, roughly a twentieth of them will roll a one. He takes those fifty-odd dice and rolls them a second time. After about an hour of concentrated dice rolling, he’ll end up with around two or three dice that have rolled two ones in a row. He takes those primed dice and places them in special custom-made padded containers where they can’t roll around, and carries them to all the games he plays.

Then, when in the most dire circumstances, where a roll of one would be absolutely disastrous, he pulls out the prepared dice. He now has in his hand a die that has rolled two ones in a row. Pete knows the odds of a d20 rolling three ones in a row is a puny one in 8,000. He has effectively pre-rolled the ones out of the die, and can make his crucial roll with confidence.

This is the sort of geek brilliance that you’d normally find over at XKCD (though this forum thread comes close).

Being the geek that I am, and also because I just sent in a draft of a paper so the ball isn’t in my court and I can goof off a bit, I wonder if we cant look at Pete’s empirical superstition more critically. First, we can write a script in MATLAB to actually implement Pete’s strategy and see whether the empirical results match expectation. Second, we can analyze the problem theoretically.

I’ll play with MATLAB later – as far as the theory goes, though, Pete is out of luck. Each die roll is a purely independent event, so the probability of rolling a 1 is always 1 in 20. Pete argues that the special dice have already rolled 1’s twice, so there’s only a 1/20*1/20*1/20 = 1/8000 chance of getting a third 1. But that calculation explicitly makes the die rolls dependent. In essence, Pete is arguing that the previous rolls represent a-priori information that can be used to modify the probability of the next roll. Pete is a closet Bayesian in a Frequentist world.

But forget boring statistics jabber – look at the superstition on its own terms. Pete rolled 1,000 dice, not just one, and so if you roll each one three times you would have a total of 3000 rolls, out of which 3000/20 = 150 should be 1s. Note that Pete set aside 50 dice that rolled a 1 after the first round, so there are 100 1s still unused. Pete rolls only those 50 dice again, and gets about 3 that roll 1s, so now there are still 97 1s left! Of course you could argue that Pete has only made 1050 rolls thus far, in which case there are only 53 1s expected, but if you make that argument then you’ve admitted that each roll is independent and thus the next roll would still be a 1/20 chance of a 1 again. Plus, you made all those 97 1s angry by not carrying out the other 1950 rolls. Don’t anger the dice, Pete.