Update: I apologize, I haven't been online much due to the holidays. I realized that there was an erroneous data point for Andrew Stanton in 2009 that was never supposed to be there. I missed it when I initially looked over the graph, but it's been removed now.

As we've been reflecting on the last ten years, we've been asking ourselves whether any true "masters" of science fiction and urban fantasy have emerged, especially in film and television. It's certainly been a decade of highs and lows, of old masters who've begun to fade and bright new stars just cresting the horizon.

To that end, I've attempted to chart the relative "master levels" of various directors and television producers over the several years. This is an utterly unscientific chart; I looked at the projects these folks have had since 2000 and assigned each one a "master level." The number reflects my understanding of the projects acclaim, its ability to attract an audience (i.e. box office/Nielsen numbers), its awards, whether it succeeded in something unusual (such as a relatively popular foreign language film in the case of Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth or Dr. Horrible's status as a breakthrough web film), and the nebulous sense that it add or subtracted from the individual's "geek cred." The numbers themselves are largely subjective and, of course, you should feel free to nitpick.

The greater purpose was to offer a watercolory sense of whether any "masters" have emerged from this crowd. Certainly, the last year has brought low some of the genres' promising potentials. Joss Whedon entered into the decade riding high on a Buffy/Angel cocktail. Though his name wasn't enough to overcome Fox's confusing treatment of Firefly, but the show's eventual cult popularity led to the Serenity feature film, and the Whedon brand helped make Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog an important moment for web-based content. Perhaps this all made Dollhouse — which has been, by turns, frustrating and brilliant — all the more disappointing, its impeding demise fairly readily accepted, even by Whedon's fanbase. Similarly, Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica, despite being regarded by some readers as the most overrated scifi of the decade, was regarded by many as a turning point for smart, politically savvy space opera. But a rocky final season punctuated by finale filled with dei ex machinae left a lot of folks sour on the entire series. And the Wachowskis, while doing a solid (though Alan Moore-enraging) bit of cinema with V for Vendetta, never quite lived up to the promises of The Matrix.

But there have been plenty of masterful bright spots as well. Bryan Fuller gave us some beautiful urban fantasy with shows with Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, and Pushing Daisies, even if many of his efforts (including the truly amazing The Amazing Screw-On Head) were prematurely axed, or shafted before ever getting off the ground. Guillermo del Toro brought us to great heights with Pan's Labyrinth, even if his other eye candy films didn't hit the same heights.

So have we seen any masters? Peter Jackson has certainly come close. Granted, The Lord of the Rings movies are high fantasy, but they showcased Jackson's ability to handle a difficult epic in a way that not only pleased JRR Tolkien's fans, but also won him mainstream accolades. And his remake of King Kong, which should have been automatically anathema, proved both profitable and well-reviewed. The Lovely Bones has been his blip, earning him his worst reviews in 20 years. But it's more likely that 2009 will be remembered as the year Jackson introduced the world to filmmaker Neill Blomkamp, demonstrating that he has a good eye for new talent and the Hollywood cache to bring that talent to light. It's not for nothing that he made this year's power list.

Another power list member, JJ Abrams, has also given us a good spate of fun and thoughtful science fiction. While he didn't give us the decade's best monster movie, he did manage to reboot the Star Trek franchise in a way that was respectful to what came before and drew in folks who never turned into the TV shows. Of course, we still have yet to see as Lost will end and whether Fringe will survive.

Chris Nolan is on the list of promising possibilities for eventual masterhood. Although Memento wasn't science fiction, it took a "what if" concept (here, what if a man searching for his wife's killer had no short term memory) and portrayed it in a thoughtful, suspenseful, and ultimately heartbreaking way. And he not only shot fresh blood into the corpse of the Batman franchise, he made it Oscar-worthy. And now he's continuing the science fiction thread with Inception.

And, of course, there's the question of whether James Cameron will prove the kind of science fiction as much as he claimed to be the king of the world. His foray into science fiction television, Dark Angel, never fared particularly well in the ratings; it was eventually canceled in favor of Firefly, and it never achieved the posthumous popularity of the later show. But perhaps Avatar is the reinforcement of his previous scifi successes, proof that he can still be relevant where other long-time directors have started to fade away. Hopefully, we won't have to wait another 12 years to see his next installment.

Personally, though, after seeing the delightful Monsters Inc. followed by the superb The Incredibles and WALL-E, I have my fingers crossed for Andrew Stanton and Pixar Studios. Here's hoping that John Carter of Mars is something phenomenal.

Still, singling out directors and producers as possible masters might be missing the point entirely, even when we're talking about movies and TV. Alan Moore might well be your science fiction master, not just because he has written so many fantastic books, but also because those books have captured the imagination of so many directors in the last several years — albeit with varying results. And in the coming years we'll see how comic book writer Brian K. Vaughan — who has been working on Lost as well as the Buffy Season Eight comics — translates to the big screen when Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, and Runaways hit theaters.

So who, if anyone, do you see as your science fiction master? Someone from the list above? Perhaps Russell T. Davis for reviving and expanding Doctor Who? Or maybe writers like Jane Espenson, who have worked on so many of the shows we love? And, with filmmakers like Neill Blomkamp and Duncan Jones arriving on the scene, who might prove themselves master of the genre in the next ten years?

Graph by Steph Fox.

Here's a bonus chart, with more data:

What? Woody over Buzz? But — Buzz has wings and a voice box! Bad choice, Andy. But no doubt this isn't the final word on everyone's favorite playthings. Toy Story 3 comes out June 18 2010.

[via Coming Soon]

Pete Docter, who directed both Up and Monsters Inc., appeared on an episode of Jeff Goldsmith's Creative Screenwriting Magazine Podcast about Pixar's creative process and how the screenplays change from initial pitch to final product. Docter outlined his original pitch for Monsters Inc., which wasn't about monsters who frighten children, but monsters who act as manifestations of an adult's fears:

"Well, my idea was that what it was about was about a 30 year old man who is like an accountant or something, he hates his job, and one day he gets a book with some drawings in it that he did when he was a kid from his mom, and he doesn't think anything of it and he puts it on the shelf and that night, monsters show up. And nobody else can see them. He thinks he's starting to go crazy, they follow him to his job, and on his dates, and all this- and it turns out these monsters are fears that he never dealt with as a kid. And each one of them represents a different kind of fear. As he conquers those fears, the guys who he slowly becomes kind of friends with- they disappear as he conquers those fears. It's this bittersweet kinda ending where they go away, and so not much of that stayed

[…]

it sounds better as a pitch than it did at the time- anyway. "

Monsters Inc. is a wonderful movie, but I'd love to see this one as well. There is always more room for more beautiful stories about monsters in the world, and this just gets me more excited to see what Docter has up his sleeve next.

[KashifPasta via /Film]

First up, the new character in Toy Story 3 will be voiced by Flight of the Conchords' Kristen Schaal, who already has a lovely toy-like sound, and is also hilarious. Also joining the cast is Blake Clark, who will be taking on the role of Slinky after the sad passing of Jim Varney. Also the director announced that the theater run of Toy Story1 & 2 back to back double feature in 3-D will be extended.

You'll have to wait until June 18, 2010 for the third film but until then, enjoy these new character posters...

The official synopsis is this:

Woody, Buzz, and the rest of their toy-box friends are dumped in a day-care center after their owner, Andy, departs for college.

Almost all of the original character voices are returning, including the all-important Tom Hanks and Tim Allen as Woody and Buzz respectively.

I'm not really sure why they can't all come with him to school — the kid with the trunk full of toys would clearly be the most popular one in the dorm. And just imagine all the plot possibilities. The toys witness Andy's first alcohol poisoning experience, Andy's first sexual encounter, Andy's first STD scare. Toy Story 4: Is That A Bump?

The release date for Toy Story 3 is is June 18, 2010.

These are but a mere handful of MacLane's dozens of CubeDudes, which include characters from the SuperFriends, Transformers, Dr. Horrible, and GI Joe. He has also built non-CubeDude Lego sculptures of Pixar characters WALL-E, BURN-E, and Carl Fredricksen.

[CubeDudes via Super Punch]

In the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, one sentence sparked a lot of conversation.

Marvel has thousands of characters to feed Disney's film, TV, and animation business (Pixar is said to already be eyeballing an Ant-Man movie). As Iron Man proved, they don't need to be iconic to become blockbusters.

Coming Soon reminds us all that many years ago British film producer Edgar Wright expressed a lot of interest in the Ant-Man title, and had even written a treatment for the comic on his own. Whether this will be a CG film or a live action movie, still remains to be seen. But given Ant-Man's incredible shrinking powers, an all-CG film may make the most sense. But then again, what can't Pixar do these days?

We've seen a lot of stellar shorts here; some are simply wonderful as brief visits with strange beings and strange worlds, and some are already being adapted as feature films (like Sundance-winning Tomo and possibly Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog). These are just a few of the short films that could make for wonderful, fun, or strange feature films:

The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello
Notes: Jasper Morello proved a film festival darling, taking top prizes at the Australian Film Institute Awards, Flickerfest, and Dragon Con, and received an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short Film.

Synopsis: Jasper Morello, a disgraced airman, lives in a city plagued by a terrible and incurable sickness. He is called to be a navigator on a mission carrying an unusual passenger, the eccentric physician Claude Belgon, who is studying airmen in hopes of devising a cure. During the voyage, his wife back home, a nurse, develops the sickness, but the crew finds a strange beast whose flesh can cure the sickness. Unfortunately, the creature has a taste for human blood.

How it could be expanded: Already 26 minutes long, Jasper Morello wouldn't need much expanding once we get a bit more into Jasper's background and the personalities of the crew. But in an expanded Jasper Morello, Claude Belgon could commission an air mission on behalf of the Royal Academy to find a mysterious treasure long rumored by airmen to exist on a far off island, one closely guarded by air pirates. Belgon is fully aware of the treasure's true nature: it is a deadly monster that could potentially cure the sickness. When the airship reaches the island, they are nearly thwarted by the air pirates, but they manage to defeat them, taking one unconscious pirate hostage. They find several of the monster cocoons and take them aboard, but then crew members start disappearing. It is not until the air pirate wakes that it is revealed that Belgon has been feeding the crewmen to the growing monsters. From there, the remaining crew would have to evade Belgon and the monsters (and keep the ship afloat). In the final confrontation, it would be revealed that Belgon chose Morello specifically for this mission because he knew of Morello's disgrace and his wife's likelihood of contracting the sickness, and believed it would make him easy to manipulate. The film ends not with Morello trapped in a cavern feeding the beast, but him steering the monster-filled airship home after killing Belgon, knowing full well that, in trying to save his wife, he could be condemning the entire city.

What could kill it: Much of the short's charm comes from its silhouette animation, which might not translate well to a feature-length film. A live action, or perhaps stop motion, film would have to stay close to the look and feel of the original.

According to Disney executives on this morning's investors' conference call, the House of Mouse initially reached out to Marvel "a few months ago," but Marvel creator reaction this morning suggests that it was kept a secret from the majority of people who worked for the publisher, something that Ultimate Avengers and Kick-Ass writer Mark Millar hinted at on his message board today:

I had no idea this was happening. I doubt even Joe [Quesada] would have known as this would have been between Ike, Disney and the Marvel board. If Joe did know he obviously wouldn't have been able to tell us but this is very interesting. I was just complaining to a friend that nothing had happened in a couple of years and now this.

But clearly, while certain freelancers only learned the news this morning, some of Marvel's creators must have known about the deal ahead of time, if they met with Disney/Pixar CCO John Lassetter to discuss possibilities, as per this morning's conference call. Suddenly, Avengers and Ultimate Spider-Man writer (and unofficial Head Writer for the publisher) Brian Michael Bendis' curious tweet from Saturday evening suddenly makes a lot more sense:

in other news- there's a very interesting comic pros conversation going on tonight. its the what if to end all what ifs.

Apparently, you should have included Mark Millar in that conversation, Brian.

Marvel declined to comment on this story.

A reader at Upcoming Pixar who goes by the name Bryko614 spotted the framed picture hanging behind Pixar sculptor Greg Dykstra in a featurette for Up. It appears there is something to the images, because when Bryko614 tweeted Pixar artist Ronnie del Carmen, asking if he knew anything about the concept art, del Carmen replied:

@Bryko614 I do. But not telling. Nothing to do with anything Toy Story, tell you that.

Because the dinosaur doesn't seem to fit with Pixar's current slate of films (Cars 2, The Bear and the Bow, and Newt), many are speculating that the dinosaur might make an appearance in an upcoming short.

Sneak Peek at a New Pixar Production Featuring a Boy and His Dinosaur? [Upcoming Pixar via /Film]

Minority Report's Samantha Morton and The Wire's Dominic West have joined the cast of the Disney version of Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic novel. So now we're sure that future crime in Baltimore won't be a problem for the movie.

Morton and West are joining the already-announced co-stars of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins, as well as Willem Dafoe. Morton will play Dafoe's daughter, Sola, while West's character will be the Zodangan prince Sab Than, who feels that Mars' rule should be his.

Also joining the cast will be Rome's Polly Walker, as Sarkoja, described as "a merciless, tyrannical Thark."

The movie is expected to start production early next year.

Threesome on journey to 'Mars' [Hollywood Reporter]

The Ancient Book of Sex and Science is the second book in a planned four-book series (the first was The Ancient Book of Myth and War and explores the relationship between sex and science in Pixar's familiar, Mary Blair-inspired style. Said editor and Pixar animator Scott Morse:

Well, we're usually pretty introverted, so maybe that makes us a little kinkier. And there's a tradition of us loving Playboy cartoons and naughtier things in general. We all remember drawing in the margins of our textbooks when we were younger.

And he feels the connection between physicality and the exploration of the physical world was a natural one:

They're similar in that they both have correlating patterns, like the rhythm of math and sex, or like music with peaks and valleys, highs and lows. They can both be very calculated.

Below are samples from the book. Somehow, I'll never look at the characters from Monsters Inc. the same way again. Warning: One picture is NSFW, as you can probably tell from the thumbnail.

[Amazon via Nerve]

"Utah has become Hollywood's destination spot for depicting exotic intergalactic worlds.," notes the state's Salt Lake Tribune, citing the new Star Trek, the original Planet of the Apes, and now, the adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' pioneering Barsoom saga.. But while Star Trek spent just four days shooting in the Beehive State, the Tribune reports that director Andrew Stanton's (WALL-E) production will spend at least seven months there, including 45 days of filming. The state has other ties to Burroughs; he served as a railroad cop in Salt Lake City in 1904.

Burroughs' John Carter novels, about a Civil War vet who finds himself doing a lot of alien-fighting and princess-rescuing on the planet next door, are the source of what will be the first live-action movie for much of the Pixar team. The script, co-written by Stanton, got a recent polish from Michael Chabon. We've been waiting for a good John Carter movie since, oh, about 1917, so the prospect of Disney's 2012 release fills us with childlike glee. No doubt Utahns feel the same way; the $28 million and 400 jobs the production is expected to bring to the state should more than make up for losing the Footloose remake to Georgia. (With Chace Crawford instead of Zac Efron in the lead? Georgia can have him.)

It is nice to see a slightly new spin on the common "make the dog talk" animation idea (even though snausages did it first.) Granted, if they wanted to make it really fresh, they would have made the dog a Republican, just saying. Up will be released on May 29th.

[UGO]

These images of wars fought by the creatures of Mars were created by Joel Rothberg for a limited-edition run of the novel that started Burroughs' beloved series about the Martian land called Barsoom. Adventurer John Carter sword-fights and swashbuckles his way across the red planet, where everyone (conveniently) goes around naked, and the natives occasionally sport more than two arms.

What's striking about these images, which Will Schofield just posted on his blog A Journey Round My Skull, is that they reveal a side of Carter's adventures that surely Burroughs barely understood at the time he began the series in the early twentieth century. Burroughs wrote at a time when imperialist expansion was alive and well in many Africa nations as well as India - regions that were models for Barsoom. By the time Rothberg created these dark, horrifying images in the 1960s, most of the former colonies in both areas had been liberated by anti-colonialist forces. Adventurous white men exploring in "savage" lands no longer felt like a fun story anymore. It felt like the beginning of a long and terrible series of wars in the twentieth century.

And so Rothberg, looking back on Burrough's light tales, saw only darkness, violence, and despair. I think we can be certain that Pixar's live action version of the series will attempt to restore the light-heartedness of the original. What that says about our current relationship to the history of imperialism - well, I'll leave that for you to decide.

See more of the Rothberg's images at Journey Round My Skull.

This earlier attempt to bring Will Eisner's classic comic strip to movies comes to light via the LA Times' Hero Complex blog, where producer Steven Paul Leiva writes about the Spirit that never was: a 1980s version that would've been written and directed by The Iron Giant and The Incredibles' Brad Bird, with Cars and Toy Story director John Lassiter working as one of the animators on the project. According to Leiva, he was convinced as soon as he saw their test reel:

The pencil test mock trailer was brilliant. Not only in its form and execution — it quickly told the origin of The Spirit and displayed clearly the tone of the proposed film — but it was the finest human character animation I had ever seen. Like Eisner, it was fluid and full of personality, each bit of movement communicating exactly what needed to be said about the characters and the situations they were in. It was not stiff and unreal like Saturday morning limited human character animation, nor weirdly “real” like rotoscoped human animation. It was exaggerated, pushed, caricatured movement that seemed perfectly real, or, better said, perfectly true. It was the best example I could imagine of a point I had been making to anyone who would listen, that good character animation was not a graphic art, but a performance art. It was great acting expressing a range of emotions. “Who are these guys?” I asked David with dropped jaw. “I’ve got to meet them as soon as possible.”

Ultimately, the project - which has the approval of Spirit creator Will Eisner - was a victim of lack of funds and lack of vision:

Gary [Kurtz, producer] shopped the project to all of the Hollywood majors. The screenplay was praised, but they couldn’t understand why we wanted to make it an animated film. There was no magic, no young and yearning fairy tale royals, no funny animals.

Hollywood was filled with the sound of executives scratching their heads. At least one offered to make it as a live-action film — an option Brad would not consider and the rest of us would not support. The whole idea was to make an animated film so different, so revolutionary, it would alter forever the art form.

Stupid us, thinking Hollywood would ever back an artistic revolution.

While I've been somewhat skeptical about the potential of Miller's take on The Spirit, the lost potential of this particular version of the character is heartbreaking - but makes for a fascinating article, and curious game of "What if" - After all, if Lassiter and Bird had ended up making this movie, would there ever have been a Pixar?

'The Spirit' movie that could have been [Hero Complex]

1. J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof. These four guys, between them, pretty much created half the most influential works in the genre right now. On television, Abrams and Lindelof's Lost has shown how to make science fiction into watercooler-talk material. Abrams, Orci and Kurtzman's new show, Fringe, has only been on for a few months but feels like a genre classic already. Abrams is also responsible for the ground-breaking (and camera-shaking) Cloverfield.
Up next: The foursome is responsible for bringing Star Trek back from franchise purgatory. And Orci and Kurtzman have co-written Transformers 2.

2. Will Smith, star of I Am Legend and Hancock. It's hard to think of an actor who can make a project into a hit more easily than Smith, right now. Just imagine Hancock without Smith's legendary affability behind it, and you've got a mighty dud.
Up next: Sequels/prequels to both Hancock and Legend are being bandied about.

3. Jeff Robinov, president of Warner Bros. He championed the idea of giving indie director Chris Nolan the reigns of the Batman films. He's been a key figure in getting movies like Watchmen on the screen. (And he killed the Wonder Woman movie, reportedly because he doesn't think women can carry action movies. But this is the "power list," not the "people we agree with" list.)
Up next: He's in charge of the umpteenth big-screen reinvention of Superman.

4. James Cameron, director of Avatar. Cameron's 3-D space epic won't be out for another year, but it's already revolutionizing the way people think about movies. He's pioneered a whole new system of 3-D cameras, but also created new motion-capture techniques for his alien creatures. Even before the film comes out, everybody else is already playing catch-up. Meanwhile, Cameron discovered Sam Worthington, who stars in Avatar, and pimped him out as one of the leads in Terminator 4.
Up next: Avatar comes out next December.

5. Kevin Feige, President of Marvel Studios. Warner Bros. may have cornered the market on superheroes-as-serious-dramas, but Marvel owns the idea of a superhero movie universe, complete with crossovers and fan-friendly in-jokes. Between them, Iron Man and Incredible Hulk proved that the superhero punch-'em-up films can feel like pieces of a saga... and make tons of money.
Up next: Another Iron Man, plus Captain America, Avengers, Thor, Ant-Man...

6. Kanye West, rapper/singer. He helped bring a science fiction motif back to music with his Daft Punk collaborations and space-odyssey stage show. He's the reason for Beyonce's cyborg hand.
Up next: His new album, "808s and Heartbreaks," uses an "Autotune" to make his vocals sound more computery and spacey, and it's already the #1 record in the United States.

7. Christopher Nolan, director of The Dark Knight and The Prestige. The Dark Knight was the biggest movie of 2008, but it also showed that grotesque characters and people in funny costumes could be compelling and visceral.
Up next: Nobody knows. Hopefully, another Batman film, but maybe first another mindblowing non-franchise pic like Prestige.

8. Neal Stephenson, author of Anathem. We knew Stephenson's next book would be a hit, thanks to his huge following. But Anathem, with its story of a world where science and technology are separated and pure scientists live in "Maths," captured the imagination of mainstream critics. Suddenly, novels of ideas are cool again.
Up next: Nobody knows. Unless you do?

9. Andrew Stanton, director of Wall-E. Even before his lonely robot movie came out, it had already sparked a whole giant wave of science fiction animated movies. (It looks like exactly one of those movies, Monsters Vs. Aliens, will be good.) People are arguing over what was the best movie of 2008: Wall-E or Dark Knight.
Up next: He's supposed to be directing a live-action movie of John Carter of Mars.

10. Stephenie Meyer, author of Twilight and The Host. I'll be honest: I haven't read any of the Twilight books, or seen the movie. They don't sound like my cup of tea. But the Twilight movie was a huge success, one of the biggest book adaptations in ages. And Meyer's adult science fiction novel, The Host, was surprisingly good: the story of a love triangle between a woman, a man, and the symbiote that is trying to control the woman's body. The Host has been on the Times bestseller list for 29 weeks, outselling pretty much any other recent science fiction book by many orders of magnitude. I would happily go see a Host movie.
Up next: Probably more Twilight books, despite Meyer's vow to stop writing them. The Host also seems to be leading towards a sequel.

11. Guillermo Del Toro, director of Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy 2. He's managed to bridge the gap between arthouse darling and mainstream monster-movie maker in a way almost nobody has done before. No wonder he's been tapped to take on the Hobbit movies.
Up next: Besides Hobbit, GDT is attached to 500 other movies, including Frankenstein, Jekyll, The Champions, Hellboy 3, etc. etc.

12. Bioware, maker of Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights OF The Old Republic. With Mass Effect, BioWare helped recharge the genre of space-opera RPG, following the adventures of Commander Shepard, who encounters aliens and murderous artificial intelligences. This came on the heels of success of past games like Jade Empire and Star Wars: KTOR.
Up next: A new MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic comes out next year.

13. Donna Langley, President of Production at Universal Pictures. When she was an independent producer, she produced The Cell, Austin Powers 2 and other science fiction films. And after she joined Universal, she shepherded Children Of Men to the screen, and she's worked hard to nail Del Toro down to make four movies for Universal, including Frankenstein — and she's been pushing the idea of a Hellboy TV series.
Up next: Her upcoming projects include Army Of Two, a scifi video-game movie.

14. Michael Chabon, author of The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Not only did his literary work of alternate history win Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards, but the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Adventures Of Kavalier And Clay has championed the literary worth of science fiction with his book Maps And Legends and his two anthologies of science fiction by literary authors.
Up next: Supposedly the Coen Brothers are filming Yiddish.

15. Brian Michael Bendis and Joe Quesada, Marvel Comics. It's been obvious for a while now that the competition between Marvel and DC was a lop-sided one, but maybe 2008 is the year we call it a victory once and for all. Bendis, as writer, have been responsible for series like House of M, Secret Invasion, and New Avengers. And Quesada has helped make other series, like Civil War, into sales juggernauts. DC might have Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns and Neil Gaiman writing for it, but Marvel has the readership.
Up next: Yet another big status-quo-massaging event, Dark Reign.

16. Jennifer Jackson, agent with Donald Maass and Associates. Her name comes up more often than any other agent's, when you're talking book deals. And she's the top dealmaker of 2008, according to Publisher's Marketplace, with a dozen high-profile deals in the past year. Her clients include hot writers like Elizabeth Bear, Ken Scholes, Jay Lake and Mary Robinette Kowal.
Up next: She just sold Amanda Downum's The Drowned City to Orbit Books, in a three-book deal.

17. Will Wright, Spore creator. Wright's The Sims is the best selling computer game in history, and other titles like SimCity also remain huge and groundbreaking. But his build-a-lifeform game, Spore, has sparked new levels of creativity — and debate over whether it accurately reflects evolution.
Up next: We're not sure.

18. Brian Goldner, Hasbro CEO. Who could have imagined the toy tie-in movie would become a huge force in Hollywood again? Goldner, that's who. He helped make Transformers and G.I. Joe into summer blockbuster material.
Up next: More toy movies. Says the man himself: "If you remember Stretch Armstrong, there's an opportunity to tell this great backstory of who Stretch Armstrong is, and why he's so incredible and yet funny."

19. Jeff Walker, the independent movie publicist who brought Hollywood to Comic-Con. Hard as it is to believe, Comic-Con was once a comic convention. And now it's the place where Hollywood studios unveil their latest projects and shimmy for the approval of tens of thousands of die-hard fans. Walker helped engineer that transformation.
Up next: Comic-Con keeps getting huger and more unmanageable. Are the studios going to start skipping it, like Paramount did this year?

20. Weta Workshop. The New Zealand practical effects studio came to prominence working on Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings movies, and now it's the go-to place for science fiction epics, including The Day The Earth Stood Still, Fantastic 4: Rise Of The Silver Surfer, X-Men 3, I, Robot and many others, along with its sister company Weta Digital.
Up next: Weta was supposedly hard at work on Justice League, but no longer. Still on the slate are a mooted Halo film, Avatar, Tintin and the Hobbit films.

Talking to Newsarama, Waid - who is also the Editor-in-Chief of Boom! - explained that the deal between the publisher and Pixar has been in the works for quite some time:

It's been in development for a couple of years. Of course, the writers strike put a spike in everything for everyone for awhile across all media. But everything is back on track and we were able to make this work... The deal we put together with Disney is Pixar and Muppets. The Pixar end of it gives us reign over creating new properties and new material based on the Pixar movies. So I think our six launches are Incredibles, Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Cars, Wall-E, and Finding Nemo.

If you're wondering what Waid will bring to The Incredibles - besides his experience of writing super-powered families in both Fantastic Four and his recent return to The Flash - he's perfectly happy to share:

When the properties came available, that's the one I seized on immediately. I sort of jumped on that like a junkyard dog and made everyone else get away from it... I can't take my toes completely out of the superhero pool. So yeah, this gives me a chance to work out my superhero jones. And also, it's comedy! I love writing comedy. We've got some great ideas that have been approved by the Pixar organization and Disney. Obviously, they're faithful to the Incredibles property, but they're giving us a little bit of latitude as far as storytelling... We're not limited by strictly what's in the movie. We can hopefully introduce a few new characters and a few new villains and play it out from there.

The first sighting of the new comics is, of course, at San Diego Comic-Con, where Boom! are giving away a special preview comic with excerpts from the comic versions of Toy Story, Finding Nemo and Monsters, Inc.. The actual series themselves will launch in Spring of 2009.

Mark Waid Talks New BOOM! Studios/ Disney-Pixar Deal [Newsarama]