For one thing, Devil's Due is being smarter about the format: each European album is being broken down into regular US-style comic books in initial publication before being collected again later, as opposed to the previous attempts to get fans and retailers excited about paying more for a bigger chunk of something that they know nothing about.

And for another, they're also being smarter about the material chosen to (re)introduce the line to American audiences. While the Humanoids line - which spun out of Metal Hurlants, the original version of Heavy Metal magazine — has an incredibly impressive back catalog of SF and fantasy material, Devil's Due is playing it cool by choosing material produced by familiar American creators to bring in the US audience: I Am Legion is drawn by Planetary and Astonishing X-Men's John Cassaday, while The Zombies Who Ate The World is illustrated by BRPD's Guy Davis.
Both series launch in November, with work by Kurt Busiek and Butch Guice, amongst others, waiting to follow.

Devil's Due Partners With Humanoids [ICv2]

Thursday afternoon, EW's Nisha Goplan introduced Jim Lee, John Cassaday, Matt Fraction, Mike Mignola, Robert Kirkman, Colleen Doran and Grant Morrison to an eager audience, and then shut up and let them do the talking. The short version of the event would go something like this: Comics can do anything, comic creators should be less afraid to try to do anything and everything they want, and Mike Mignola really can't stop himself swearing accidentally. But why give you a short version when we can let the panelists talk for themselves?

On Movies' Influence On Comics:

Kirkman: I don't think [movies] will change the content, I don't think it should change the content. Hollywood comes to us because of our content.

Morrison: I think we should write comic books that are more like comic books.

Mignola: The plus side is, I think some things are getting published... because they might see potential in it somewhere else...

Morrison: Hollywood's got a lot of rules, it's very formulaic. Comics should break those rules.

Mignola: It's sad to see people changing their structure to fit [the Hollywood rule]... Let's do the comic and see someone else turn it into a film.

Lee: I think it's the opposite, I see a lot of movies and TV shows like Lost following the comics form.

Morrison: Death to Hollywood!

Mike Mignola On The Pluses And Minuses On The Hellboy Movies:

You try your best to convince yourself that you're doing the best thing, and then you spend the rest of your life explaining yourself that, no, Hellboy doesn't have a girlfriend... You live in the shadow of the movie. But you make your peace with it. Or don't license the character.

On The Future Of Print Comics:

Fraction: As long as there's print, there'll be comics. We're a cheap, easy, nasty, swarthy medium. We'll be the last to go... I've yet to see an iPhone that can beat a comic.

Cassaday: I can't stare at my computer screen for very long.

Morrison: You can't take your computer in the bath,

Kirkman: Yes you can!

Morrison: This man knows more than me.

Kirkman: Do you mean bathroom or bath?

Morrison: I mean bath, being immersed, I mean, water is the best element.

Kirkman: We'll talk later.

Mignola: We sure sound like visionaries, don't we?

Grant Morrison On The Need For Superheroes:

I think superheroes are more relevant now than they've ever been before. Superheroes have become this desperate attempt to imagine the future for ourselves. Superheroes and Star Trek. They represent something that isn't a cowboy for the West to be. I don't know if we'll ever reach it, because we have a lot of good bombs.

On working on personal projects against corporate creations:

Fraction: A lot of guys like me, their own stuff doesn't pay the bills. It doesn't even buy lunch. If you write the X-Men, it's okay, bills are paid.

Mignola: Find some time in between commercial projects and try something. I firmly believed that, after I'd done the first Hellboy, I'd go back and do another Batman book. But when you try that thing, you should really make sure that it's something you love so that if it's successful, you're stuck doing the thing you love.

Doran: Too many people treat their entire project as an audition for the rest of their career.

Robert Kirkman On Killing Characters:

I never think of this stuff, or else I wouldn't do it. I just write things and think, yeah, I think this guy's gonna die now. The main character in Walking Dead gets his hand cut off, and I didn't think about it. I remember thinking, I should think about what this will mean. Oh, he can't button his shirt, this'll be easy. And then, ten years later, I was like, oh crap. I shouldn't have cut that guy's hand off.

On Why They Create Comics:

Kirkman: I do it so my wife doesn't think if I'm a failure. I can't do anything else.
Fraction: I've never run across anything that you can't do in comics. No-one ever says that you can't afford to blow up New York. We can blow up New York and rebuild it twice if we want.
Lee: I always figured that if I was ever arrested, I could be the big guy's art bitch. I'm being completely serious.

On Why Colleen Doran Got Into Comics:

Doran: I had a crush on Aquaman.

Morrison: What was it about him?

Doran: He was wet.

On Who Today's Visionaries Think We Should Watch Out For:

Fraction: Jason Aaron.

Doran: Derek McCullogh.

Kirkman: Jonathan Hickman.

Mignola: It's not that I don't think that anyone's good, I tend to not remember anyone's names.

Morrison: I want to see an entire generation of crazy 17 year-olds doing this stuff.

Meanwhile, Shadowcat awakes in a world of trouble in this page from the final ASM comic. I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about the possibility of Shadowcat's imminent demise. Whedon did say that Kitty Pride was a prototype for Buffy, and look how many times he killed her.

Famous names: Suicide Girls' Warren Ellis and Joss Whedon's favorite artist John Cassaday crossed over (and back) from indie cool to mainstream with this book.

Crunchy goodness: 4

Stunt casting: In a special crossover with Batman, watch out for Adam West putting in an appearance.

Design breakthrough: Cassaday's artwork manages to adopt the pacing and layout of whatever genre he's being asked to rip off in each chapter without managing to lose his own stylization, bringing a solid yet changing structure to the series.

Deadliest spoiler: The mirror is a good place to look for that mysterious Fourth Man.

Planetary FAQ

Famous names: JOSS!!! WHEDON!!!! OMG Joss will you be my boyfriend? Oh, and John Cassaday.

Crunchy goodness: 4

The shit: Whedon writes the X-men with the glee of a long-time fan finally getting his hands on the toybox. The storylines are pedestrian, even by X-men standards, but the character beats and dialogue are solid gold.

Life lesson: Black leather isn't really THAT slimming. And bright yellow spandex is kinky in its own way.

Deadliest spoiler: Colossus isn't really dead. Or gay. Actually he is gay, but only in an alternate universe (otherwise known as the XXX video arcade in the alley behind the X-mansion.)

The X-Axis Review by Paul O'Brien