The most recent episode of Dragonfly Ripple is all comics Comics COMICS! Carlin and I start off talking about how we got into collecting comics, what we imagined it would be like to pass our collections on to our kids, and whether or not that's really how it's going. Then Annaliese and David join in to talk about Jeff Smith's Bone and John Byrne's Alpha Flight. In the Jetpack Tiger segment, Dash and Carlin cover The DC Comics Encyclopedia, then we all wrap up with a dinner table discussion in which we create regional superhero teams for Florida and Minnesota.
I forgot to mention last week's GRD column that covered the Moonstone panel at C2E2. Lots of good Pulp stuff coming out from them in the near future, like the clunky robots and sorority girls vs aliens comic Zeroids.
I also got a press release from them today with some cover art for some of the projects mentioned on the panel. I love both of these Honey West covers.
More Pulp, Mignola gets a website, and Bone gets a cartoon after the break.
No, it probably won't star Val Kilmer. The universe isn't that kind. But Paramount has bought the rights to a script that spices up the life of the old huckleberry. Incidentally, though I know exactly what they're doing (or maybe because I know exactly what they're doing), I'm really tired of hearing people say that their historical adventure movies are "in the vein of Pirates of the Caribbean."
Les Aventures Extraordinaires d'Adele Blanc-Sec trailer
Watch all the way to the end. This is going to be Awesome.
Meet your new Ian Fleming
James McAvoy has been signed to play Ian Fleming in a biopic about the James Bond creator's experiences in British Intelligence during WWII. At one point I'd heard that they were going to fictionalize some events to make them more exciting (in the vein of Pirates of the Caribbean, I guess), but I don't know if that's still the plan.
/Film reports that Captain America starts filming this June (which means we should be hearing casting info soon) and Green Lantern has hired an Oscar-winning crew including the cinematographer from Memoirs of a Geisha, the production and costume designers from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the art director from Avatar. I never thought I'd say this, but Green Lantern ought to be one gorgeous movie.
Bone movie won't try to cover entire story
Sounds like the people behind the CGI Bone movie have the right idea. They won't be trying to squeeze the entire epic into one film. According to producer Dan Lin, they're currently trying to figure out how many volumes of the series to try to fit into what they hope will be the first of a series of films. Lin mentions three or four.
Minor spoilers follow if you haven't read the series
Three would end with the Bones still in Barrelhaven, before things really start to turn bad for them there and the story takes a darker turn, so thematically that makes sense. If they included Volume 4, that would end with the Bones having to leave Barrelhaven which seems like a natural breaking point from a geographical standpoint. I guess my preference would be for ending it after Volume 3. Not only did Jeff Smith tend to think of the series in terms of trilogies, but it would also give the filmmakers room to include more stuff from the books.
Lin also reveals the the movie will be made by the folks who did Happy Feet.
Avatar 2
As if there was any doubt, there will be an Avatar sequel. It could explore unseen parts of Pandora (like the oceans or underworld) or it could take us to some of the other moons around that gas giant Pandora's orbiting.
The poster looks like a thoughtful Merchant-Ivory film, but we're assured that it is, in fact, going to be a kick-ass movie about a mummy-fighting girl reporter battling a pterodactyl that's on the loose in early 1900s-Paris. Undead Backbrain has more details and some scans from the comic it's based on.
If you haven't already... meet your new A-Team
This has already made the rounds, but I'm still catching up from Halloween. The picture both thrills and terrifies me at the same time. In a world that allows Will Ferrell to star in Land of the Lost, there's no way this can be as awesome as it looks like it's going to be. It's got to be some kind of joke. [/Film]
Dark Days Update: Meet Stella
The adaptation of my favorite 30 Days of Night story continues to move along. It's too bad that they couldn't get Melissa George to reprise her role as Stella, but Kiele Sanchez deserves a fair shot. I didn't like her character on Lost any more than anyone else did, but that was all about the writing and nothing to do with her performance. If anything, she actually made we want to get past the ungraceful shoehorning of her character into the established cast.
At any rate, I refuse to have anything but optimistic thoughts about the Dark Days movie. I don't know that it'll be a perfect adaptation, but I'm excited to see what it's like. [AceShowbiz]
Conan Update: Character Descriptions
I won't post any spoilers here, but /Film has casting breakdowns from the Conan movie that's currently in development. They talk about the backgrounds and motivations of various characters in the movie. Unfortunately, none of it's faithful to existing stories, nor does it bring anything new to the sword-and-sorcery genre in general.
Bone Update: A Trilogy?
Jeff Smith says that he's very happy with the progress on Warner Brothers' Bone adaptation so far and that it'll likely be a CGI-animated trilogy of films. That all sounds good to me, though my preference would be for live actors and location-shooting with CGI creatures.
I'm playing around with my posting schedule a little - as I'm wont to do - and am considering just doing one weekly news wrap-up post instead of trying to keep up over the week. Same with the art gallery posts. Hopefully that'll encourage me to generate more of my own content during the week. Not making any promises though. I think I've learned my lesson about that.
Lots of news coming out of San Diego of course and that'll continue all weekend. Here's what I've found most interesting so far:
The Collected Lorna
Marvel's got a $60 hardcover coming out in October that collects a lot of old Lorna, the Jungle Queen/Girl stories. I don't think I'll buy it until they release a cheaper, paperback version, but I hope it does well enough for them to do a second volume featuring Jann of the Jungle.
As much as I like most of Marvel's kids' line, I've always had a bug up my butt about the Marvel Superhero Squad line. It was too dumbed down; too tame. Any line that turns Hulk into a smiley, happy guy who prefers to use his words before his fists is most certainly not intended for me.
But lately the promo art for the Squad has had Hulk looking a bit more grumpy and/or mischievous, so when they announce a cartoon version with a line-up like this, I'm interested. I mean, it's cool enough that they've got some of my favorite people (Taye Diggs and Greg Grunberg to name two) providing voices, but they're also including characters like Black Widow and Valkyrie. And Kevin Sorbo playing Ka-Zar? That's almost as inspired as George Takei's playing Galactus. Well done, Marvel.
House of the Wolf Man
House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula aren't the greatest Universal monster films ever made, but they're a lot of fun on their own terms since they team up the Unholy Trinity of the Universal Monsters. I always felt that the Wolf Man got a little ripped off since he never got one with his name on it. Well, no more.
The sequel that everyone-would-have-been-waiting-for-if-only-we'd-realized-it may not be a Universal production, but it's sure got the spirit of the others. It even stars Ron Chaney. Thanks so much to Undead Backbrain for finding this.
IDW has announced a new fantasy comic by Bill Willingham and Gene Ha. It's about a guy who learns that a multiverse of fantasy worlds exists and that its possible to travel between them on the Back Roads. Sounds like a great concept with unlimited potential. Just the sort of thing I'd expect the creator of Fables to do really well with.
More Bone!
Speaking of fantasy worlds, Jeff Smith is returning to his. The official press release is misleading and makes it sound like there are two new comic series coming out, but Smith is more clear on his blog.
Bone: Tall Tales will have some new material, but will also be a re-packaging of the Stupid, Stupid Rat-Tails mini-series that Smith and Tom Snigoski did about Big Johnson Bone while the regular Bone series was still coming out. It'll also collect some material from Disney Adventures. The new material will include a framing sequence of Smiley and Bartleby telling campfire stories to some young Bone Scouts as well as some new Johnson Bone tales.
The Quest for the Spark trilogy isn't a comic at all, but a series of novels by Snigoski with illustrations by Smith. That's still very exciting though. According to Smith, the books "follow a new generation of Bone characters into the Valley."
Blacksad comes to Dark Horse
At last! I can't describe how awesome Blacksad is without doing a full review of the two volumes that have already been translated into English. It's an amazing series though and I've been waiting forever for the translation of the third and final book. Thanks, Dark Horse!
Oh, I'm gonna go see it, but I'm really not invested in whether it's good or bad. That's because for all its genius, its point was horribly misunderstood by the superhero creators it influenced and ushered in an era of overly violent, "realistic" superhero comics that we're still trying to live down today.
Watchmen wasn't saying that superhero stories should be all "mature" and gritty. I believe the point was to show how ridiculous they'd be if they continued down that road. But of course it only pushed them further in that direction and I'm not sure that all the blame can be placed on the readers for not getting it. After all, the first thing we learned in Communications 101 was that if a message doesn't get through to the listener, it's not the listener's fault but the communicator's.
Or maybe I'm the one who missed the point. But I don't think so.
Either way, Watchmen: very important influence in comics and enjoyable in its own right, but definitely not one of my favorites. And that's why I can't get all excited either positively or negatively about the movie costumes.
Besides, I agree with Mike Sterling that the only superhero costume worth considering is this one right here.
(Okay, that's not at all what he said, but I'm taking his point and running with it.)
Fantasy casting doesn't usually interest me, but dang if The Braxcave hasn't done a nice job with a hypothetical Alpha Flight movie. I even like the idea of Chris Jericho playing Sasquatch.
It seems like every time DC doessomethingquestionable with one of it's girl superheroes, artists start creating theirownversions of the character in an attempt to hold on to the elements of the character that are being neglected in the comics. Not that I'm complaining, 'cause it's led to some fantastic art. Looks like Mary Marvelcould be the latest.
Quick Stop Entertainment has a great article (actually a review of Peter Coogan’s Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre) on defining the superhero genre and determining what makes a character a superhero. It's a long piece with lots of examples, but it's interesting reading. Boiled down: super heroes are people with costumes, code names, and defined missions who exist in modern day settings. The setting, according to the article, is vitally important. It's the reason that Batman is a superhero, but Zorro isn't. Or that Green Lantern is, but Flash Gordon isn't. The article also makes exceptions for people like Zatanna or Rogue who may lack some of the defining characteristics, but are considered superheroes because either their creators or the characters themselves obviously intended for them to be. It goes to show that the superhero genre is next to impossible to define, but they make a fascinating job of trying.
Fantasy
Jeff Smith's showing the prototype for a new Fone Bone plush toy. Hopefully it's the first in a series.
