Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Bennett takes another turn through the vast pile of news that came out of San Diego Comic-Con.

Even after a week off (as groundskeeper Carl Spackler from Caddyshack once put it, "I was unavoidably detained") news from SDCC is still trickling into the usual suspect news sites so I don’t feel quite so bad about staying on topic because, believe it or not, I find still I have a couple of things I want to say on the subject.
 
Like, remember how adamant I was about how Comic-Con should never be about "what someone is wearing?"  Well you can disregard it because clearly that ship has already sailed; thanks to the Occasional Superheroine website I learned there is a piece on the Elle magazine blog headlined "Our Top Five Looks From Comic-Con" (none of which involved capes, spandex or domino masks).
 
For an even better example of how ubiquitous Comic-Con has become in American culture there’s this piece from The National Enquirer which promises to reveal "The Truth About Comic-Con."  This, according to them, is, “Hollywood hype machines doles out highly manipulative ballyhoo, kool-aid drinkers suck it up" and "the presence of a-listers has become as monotonous and routine as costumed fans."

But if you want to see just how deep Comic-Con has burrowed its way into mainstream America look no further than the TV Guide Comic-Con Special (which according to the cover features a "brand-new Superman comic!").  So at this time I’m prepared to concede the obvious: SDCC is now primarily Christmas in July for the entertainment industry; I just hope there’s room somewhere off in a corner for the comics.
 
I’m sure you’ll all recall how worried I was that Archie was planning on "tweening" their character L’il Jinx once they stripped her of the 'L’il' portion of her name.  Well, it should come as no big surprise that’s exactly what they’re doing, but the character sketches of this new version posted online make me somewhat hopeful.  Plus there’s the way they’ll be going about her revival; the four issue miniseries will be made available first as downloads after which they’ll be collected as a trade paperback.  Which to me suggests the publisher knows the primary audience for something like this is online--we definitely know it’s not the direct market.
 
The Shazam Panel from SDCC revealed that  the collection of Monster Society of Evil, the Mr. Mind serial which ran in Captain Marvel Adventures in the 1940’s I had been so looking forward to (see "Confessions of a Comic Book Guy--That'€™s Just The Way Things Are" from 8/11/2009) has been placed on a "publishing hiatus."  But Mark Waid went on record that the apparently still controversial story would be published, eventually.  Here’s hoping.
 
Somewhere at SDCC Grant Morrison suggested a trade paperback collection of  Flex Mentallo is no longer quite as impossible as it has been in years past, which of course I’ll file under "I’ll believe it when I see it."  But it is nice to think that someday, and someday soon, Grant Morrison’s finest work will finally, officially, be put back in print.
 
In other Morrison-related news it was announced online his All-Star Superman series will be DC’s next direct-to-video animated film, adapted by Dwayne McDuffie.  Naturally I’m both thrilled (it’s my all-time favorite Superman story) and concerned by how they’ll manage to cram all twelve issues into a running time of only seventy-four minutes.  Obviously things will have to be cut and if Dwayne needs suggestions I’d start with the two issue Bizarro World sequence.
 
As you know one of my favorite regular themes is "everything comes back," second only to "things I never thought I’d see," but we’ve got a twofer this  week because I must confess even I ever thought I’d live long enough to see DC bring back the yellow ellipse (i.e. what is universally and erroneously known as "the yellow circle") behind Batman’s chest insignia.  But apparently that’s exactly what’s going to happen in October’s Batman: The Return.
 
For those who weren’t there once upon a time that yellow circle was a highly charged emotional issue in fandom circles.  For decades comic book guys like me derided it as a silly impediment keeping our beloved Batman from returning to his roots as a grim avenger of the night.  But what we tended to ignore was that the yellow circle had been part of the character’s "New Look" launched in 1964 that’s widely credited with helping to save his comic from cancellation.
 
Maybe this is DC just looking for more of the free publicity they got when they had Wonder Woman put on some pants, but after decades of receiving ever diminishing returns from "The" Batman I for one am happy to see the yellow circle back.  It gives me the false hope that in the immediate future we might be seeing an altogether better Batman.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely  those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.