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Before there was Wonder Woman, before there was Supergirl, there was Scarlet O’Neil, who first appeared in a comic strip by Russell Stamm in 1940 — and then promptly disappeared, a distinct advantage for a young lady fighting crime, though inasmuch as she appeared in outline while invisible, she didn’t save Stamm any significant amount of ink. The strip ran for fifteen years.

And now, she’s appeared again, under the aegis of Russell Stamm, Jr., with a new graphic novel coming out this year. (She’s even got a MySpace page.) Having had the privilege of overbidding for Scarlet’s book-length adventures on eBay over the years, I’m delighted to be able to pick up on a new adventure at real-world prices.

(Thanks to Paul Cwick.)

From Ain’t It Cool News regarding Wolf Man:

Second contender is Matt Reeves, director of CLOVERFIELD, but my source doesn’t know if Reeves will be free because he’s supposedly working on not only CLOVERFIELD 2, but is working on INVISIBLE WOMAN with JJ Abrams again producing. That was news to me, but it’s what I hear.

Of course, we told you that almost six months ago. Then again, it might not be such a big deal after all, if you take this description from Cinematical seriously:

Reeves has also signed to direct The Invisible Woman, “a Hitchcock-style thriller” he wrote that “probes the mind of a former beauty queen who turns to a life of crime to protect her family.”

Assuming, of course, this isn’t just more of Abrams’ world-class misdirection.

This story by Jo James at DivineCaroline looks at ten things you could do while shrouded from everyone’s view, and gives positive and negative aspects of each. This one scored the biggest yocks around here:

6. Sneaking into dressing rooms, bathrooms and locker rooms

PRO: You get to see what people really look like naked

CON: You get to see what people really look like naked

Says it all, really.

Former American Idol contestant Celena Rae has recorded an album called Invisible Woman for Dallas-based YMC Records, and it’s a better-than-decent example of contemporary country. The title song is a fairly standard not-being-noticed lament, but it’s pleasingly punchy, and the hook kicks in at the very end of the chorus: “Tell me, darling, when did I disappear?” Her Web site tells you more about her.

Well, kinda sorta: An Invisible Blog has a white-on-white color scheme which you’re not going to be able to read unless you view source or, as suggested right under the Blogspot header, “Press Ctrl+A and you’ll be able to see everything here!” Actually, some things appear anyway — graphics and Google Ads — but mostly, the tabula is pretty darn rasa.

Generally, invisibility stories fall into one of two categories: either the person is invisible to everyone, or invisible to everyone except one specific character. Ghost stories, in particular, tend to follow the latter pattern: only a single individual is capable of detecting the presence of the spirit, and everyone else presumes he’s off his meds or something.

It is possible, however, to construct a third variant, in which the person is invisible to only one other person; to anyone else, there’s nothing unusual going on. You don’t see this too often, as it’s a wholly-different dynamic. I wrote one myself a couple of years ago, based on a dream sequence.

Now there’s another one, and it’s nothing at all like mine except for that single premise. There may be others out there, but I haven’t found them yet.

Making things invisible is presumably a lot closer to becoming reality than making people invisible, but the human/object interface is likely to be no less problematic:

unseen objects could create a more relaxed environment. just envision a desk which is only filled with your object of present attention. in my current case that would be the cupertino white that is my macbook. but come to think of it, we could even make the desk disappear.

however, rendering certain things around you invisible might cause some problems. so whatever this invisibility-machine will be, it has got to have an opacity setting. if i start walking around, i would very much like to know what is in my path. or at least perceive a glimpse of such object.

Indeed. Were I a better touch-typist, I’d opt for an invisible keyboard.

Besides here, I mean. The Bollywood feature has found its way to amazon.com, where its first reviewer made note of its marked similarity to the 2005 US film Just Like Heaven, which is based on Marc Levy’s novel If Only It Were True, a copy of which is on my bookshelf.

The second reviewer was Marc Levy himself, who was not pleased:

Vivek Agrawal has completely stole the story from [my book]. It’s really amazing that not only he stole the story, dialogues of the book (even the name of the dog in the movie is the same than in the book) and still put his name in the credit as a writer!

A check of the Internet Movie Database suggests that this isn’t the first time Levy’s been ripped off by Bollywood, either: Fazil’s Vismayathumbathu (2004) seems to be basically the same story. (Interestingly, the IMDb picks up on the connection to Levy’s novel with Vismayathumbathu, but not with I See You.)