Superman-related news and notes for the week of July 17, 2009: Kind of a slow news week.

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Superman Homepage had a Q&A abuot the Siegel lawsuit. I don't think you'll find a more Cliff's Notes-y version of what's going on.

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CBR talks with Keith Giffen about the upcoming MAGOG series.

To my way of thinking, Magog is still very much David Reid, a marine Lance Corporal. That’s the Magog thread that I’m using. The fact that this guy got his powers when he was a soldier so he brings a different mindset to superheroing. You know the political debates that we have all of the time wherein terrorist activity is a law enforcement matter or a military matter? Well, Magog doesn’t have that debate. To him, it’s a military matter and he goes after it with military precision. If there’s a tagline at all for Magog, it’s, “Thank God, he’s on our side.”

More at the link.

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Variety is reporting that Craig Yoe's "Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-Creator Joe Shuster" has been optioned for a feature film.

The comics (originally feauturing Shuster's art) were sold covertly under the counters of Times Square bookshops -- until they sparked a dragnet and crackdown on comics, several sensational trials and a Supreme Court censorship case in 1954.

All this came after the leader of a group dubbed the Brooklyn Thrill Killers pegged the comics as the inspiration for a crime spree that involved flogging women with whips, humiliating vagrants, the beating death of one man and the drowning of another.

Yoe, a comics archivist who stumbled across a cache of the underground comic at an estate sale and recognized Shuster's stylistic signature, doesn't reveal in the book how the late artist felt about the scandal. The film will use the crime spree and the artist to paint a period drama.

For what its worth.

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The second installment of the Superman feature from WEDNESDAY COMICS is up at USA Today. It guest stars a certain resident of Gotham City.

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Newsarama has a preview of JSA VS. KOBRA: ENGINES OF FAITH #2. The book will be out next week, I think.

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DC's The Source blog has a preview of POWER GIRL #3, which will also be out next week, as well as a preview of MAGOG #1. which is slated for a September 2 release.

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CBR has another Geoff Johns Prime session with, well, Geoff Johns. Topics this session include SUPERMAN: SECRET ORIGIN, ADVENTURE COMICS and Johns' approach to the Clark-Superman duality.

And my approach to Clark and Superman as far as the duality is a mix of both. He is both Clark Kent and Superman. The awkwardness of young Clark Kent grows from dealing with the emergence of his Kryptonian abilities while the heroics of Superboy are an extension of everything he’s taken from Ma and Pa Kent.

Click over to the link for more.

There's also the obligatory question about PAD's Supergirl. Why can't people let it die? The character had a definite ending to her story. Yes, there are more stories that could be told, but none that need to be told.

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DC has launched a Blackest Night mini-site. Remember, folks: Zombie Kal-L will totally eat your brains.

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CBR talked with Jimmy Palmiotti on his work with the Supergirl feature in WEDNESDAY COMICS.

To be honest, Mark (Chiarello) liked what (Justin Gray and I) did with Kara (in SUPERGIRL #12) and thought Amanda (Connor) and I could do something fun. Amanda, a year before, did a print of Supergirl with Krypto and Streaky people seemed to love, so when Mark suggested Supergirl, I spoke to Amanda and we both decided we wanted to do a strip that was both fun and at the same time adorable because we knew we were surrounded by a lot of heavy hitters. We knew going in that our strip was probably the quickest read of the bunch , but Amanda did such amazing work on them, I think a lot of people are really gonna fall in love with it.

More at the link.

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Newsarama has a preview of October's Superman solicitiations, which includes SUPERMAN: SECRET ORIGIN #2 and the first issue of the WORLD'S FINEST mini-series. Full solicits will be out next week.

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CBR has an interview with Ethan Van Sciver where he talks about the SUPERMAN/BATMAN arc he drew.

CBR: You had a short run on “Superman/Batman” where members of the Green Lantern Corps also made an appearance. Is it hard to escape drawing these characters? Did you think you were a good fit for the title?

EVS: I don't know. I had trouble with that book, just at its very core. Superman and Batman really don't work well together visually. Batman needs to be shadowed, Superman needs to be lit like an angel. So I talked to [writer] Mark Verheiden about it, and we had a very good conversation about where that story was supposed to go, and how Superman and Batman would be so clearly defined apart from each other through the story. I walked away from the conversation excited, pretty happy about what we had come up with.

Then the next script came in, and I didn't understand; it wasn't going where we'd planned. And the next script had Plastic Man in it for some reason. And I just lost interest in it. It was kind of depressing. The Green Lanterns belonged in the story, so I was happy to draw them there. But what we had planned was so big and scary and cool. Suddenly it's Lex Luthor and weird rocks, and on and on. It didn't work, and I don't know what happened.