Ashcan All-Stars, an art blog where weekly topics are sent out to a group of professional artists to provide their unique take on characters from pop culture, is celebrating The Hunger Games this week, and it’s already off to an amazing start.

So far, Ashcan All-Stars has two great additions to the collection with even more coming down the pipe. First is an Effie Trinket piece by Ultimate Spider-Man artist Sara Pichelli that’s designed in the style of an Uncle Sam propaganda poster. Next, All-Star Western artist Moritat gives his interpretation of the star of the popular book, and now film, Katniss Everdeen. Moritat’s take is more of a classic action pose of Katniss as she prepares her bow for the hunt. I really love both of these pieces, which are provided here below for your convenience, as I’m a huge fan of both artists and the content, and I’m even more excited to see other artists’ interpretation of The Hunger Games.

Last week, Titan Books announced that novelist Greg Cox is set to pen the official novelization of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises. You can now pre-order the paperback* edition of the novelization; the book will also be available for the Kindle this July.

One notable piece of information here is that this is the first novelization of the Christopher Nolan Batman films that legendary comics scribe Dennis O’Neil has not written. Fans of these Batman novelizations shouldn’t worry though, because Cox is no stranger to the concept. Cox has previously written novelizations of other comic book-related work such as Infinite Crisis, Countdown, Final Crisis, as well as novels based on properties like Star Trek, Underworld, Warehouse 13, and original tie-in novels based on Terminator: Salvation and CSI, so his work should be at home with the adaptation of The Dark Knight Rises.

In honor of Earth Day 2012, Dark Horse Comics is offering a FREE digital copy of Brian Wood and Kristian Donaldson‘s The Massive one-shot.

Collecting parts 1-3 from Dark Horse Presents, The Massive tells a story of three people whose lives were changed as a result of the environment. These three made it their goal to each become environmentalists on a mission to save the planet after the world has already ended. And Dark Horse is giving you the opportunity to read the comic that acts as a prelude to the upcoming series in a paperless, eco-friendly way for absolutely no cost.

Swamp Thing is a character who blurs the lines of regular man who looks like a monster, a straight up piece of vegetation that looks sort of like a man, and both of things but also an eco-terrorist of sorts, but no matter how you view the character, it’s impossible to deny the fact that some of the greatest writers in comics have either written him or his ancillary characters. Also, when he’s not questioning his identity, he’s a pretty eco-friendly dude. So, it’s with this fact that Comixology is offering a 99 cent three-day sale on Swamp Thing for this weekend’s Earth Day.

Comixology has recently made these sales more manageable if you don’t exactly know what you’re looking for and have places different comics into sections that categorize them more efficiently than just, “Here’s a bunch of comics that are on sale.” These different sections for Swamp Thing are:

Following the lead in Scott Snyder’s current run on Batman, DC Comics has posted a graphic containing all of the titles that will be participating in the Batman crossover event Night of the Owls.

Night of the Owls started this week with a prelude in Kyle Higgins and Eddy Barrows’ Nightwing #8 which kickstarted the first issue in the crossover event, Batman #8 by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo. The concept of the mini-event is that Gotham City has a sordid past that even Bruce Wayne was unaware of. The Court of Owls, an evil group of assassins, has been controlling the fate of Gotham the entire time. There’s much more to the story including Dick Grayson’s lineage and an all out assault against the Wayne family and other leaders of Gotham City. It’s a war of Bats vs. Owls when most of the Bat-family is called upon to participate.