ComicMix Radio: Mortal Kombat, DC Universe – FIGHT!
It’s just over five weeks until the long-awaited Mortal Kombat vs DCU game gets in our hands, and we’ve got even more fuel on the fire to get you pumped including the real truth why Superman won’t be the strongest character, plus:
- Johnny Depp as Tonto and a new role for Buffy
- Dick Grayson TV hunk
- One more time for The Partridge Family
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Transcript
Broadcast 268 3… 2… 1… ComicMates.com Ready, set, fight! Watch out for that cape!
ComicMates 3-0 Hi, it's Mike Raub and the DC Universe and the Mortal Kombat Universe have collided and you're the winner, especially when you get your hands on the brand new Mortal Kombat game said to be in stores not that far from now. And we've got a sneak peek coming up on October 2nd.
2008 ComicMates News! It's anybody's guess when Smallville will come to an end. A lot of people think this season may be the last one. But the CW is not about to give up their franchise on retelling and stretching out the origins of young DC heroes with a new series they're basing on Dick Grayson before he was Robin.
It's called Grayson's. It involves Dick DJ Grayson who travels with his parents in a circus and pretty much is like Smallville except without the powers. Grayson's will be taking elements of the character from the DC Comics continuity and putting their own spin on it to say the least. There will be a Bruce Wayne in the series but there won't be a Batman
and we'll find out more about casting as the days go on. ! It seems like everybody in Hollywood is willing to embrace IMAX. IMAX director Michael Bay is shooting several sequences of the next Transformers movie, Revenge of the Fallen with IMAX cameras.
Bay said he plans to integrate the IMAX footage with CGI to create a specialized look and feel for the Transformers sequel. Revenge of the Fallen is scheduled for release in IMAX and in regular movie theaters on June 26th of 2009. A couple of comic books and pop culture casting notes that look like Kristen Dunst is in for Spider-Man 4. At least so far that's the strongest rumor out there. Meanwhile Johnny Depp has got quite a calendar coming up for him.
He'll be back as Captain Jack Sparrow in the Disney Pirates of the Caribbean 4. Meanwhile he'll also be teaming with Tim Burton to take on the role of the Mad Hatter. In Burton's stop-motion animated adaptation of Alice in Wonderland that's scheduled for 2010. And he's taken on the role of Tonto in Disney's movie version of The Lone Ranger, produced by Jerry Buckheimer and also scheduled for release in 2010.
It's like a revival but not really. If you love the 1970s version of The Partridge Family this probably won't be good news for you. As a modern-day addition to family series in the works right now with the original rights holders and a couple of other production companies including Geffen Records, Sony Pictures TV and others. The concept was to create a family series that merges regular television with the music industry.
But any specifics that are out there right now on this revival say the new version looks nothing like the original Partridge Family. It ran on ABC from 1970 to 1974. And one more good casting note if you wondered where is Buffy? Well Sarah Michelle Geller is coming back to star in a 30-minute pilot project for HBO called The Wonderful Maladies. The single camera project from screenwriter Charles Randolph is set in New York
and it focuses on three adult siblings who lost their parents very young. Production on the pilots start next year. Geller will also executive produce if the pilot is picked up for HBO. Hi, I'm Peter David from The Dark Tower and this is ComicMix. For well over a decade the battles of Mortal Kombat have continued in the hands of enthusiastic game players all over the world and now things are about to take a decidedly different turn.
For the first time ever Scorpion, Sub-Zero and the entire Mortal Kombat team will have a chance to battle Batman, Superman and other DC Universe heroes. You as a player will get to choose your side, challenge your opponents and take part in an all new fighting system that includes new additions like freefall combat and close combat along with dynamic multi-tiered environments. You can pick your favorite character from Mortal Kombat or the DC Universe and go on a fighting adventure like none you've ever experienced before.
How did it all begin? Well creator Ed Boone remembers the day that he got the call from DC saying How'd you like to play with Batman and these pals in the Mortal Kombat universe? Needless to say Ed was excited. And so I talked over with the team, you know we got everybody excited about it and then when we started working on the game we decided hey you know we really want to keep this authentic
there's a whole other audience that we've never really specifically catered to which is you know the DC fans, comic fans and so we got Jimmy and Justin to help us write the story keep it authentic to Mortal Kombat or to the DC Universe how would Batman react if he ran into Scorpion? How would Superman react if you know he's weakened and he had to you know fight against Sub-Zero and that's where Jimmy came in. That's multi-faceted creator Jimmy Palmagianni that Ed's talking about who along with his writing partner Justin Gray
jumped into the project with both feet. It's been really great but like I said it's one of these scenarios that when you first hear it you're like what? I mean I gotta say when we got the call I was just giggling and Justin's a game player like insane game player and he was just laughing and he's going oh this is gonna be great and so far so good it's pretty amazing. If you're any kind of an experienced game player one of the many questions that probably popped into mind right away is
okay so here's the deal I'll just be Superman beat everybody dick game over. Not quite the answer and explains that there's a whole new facet to this part of the MK Universe that makes Superman a little bit different. The Mortal Kombat universe is you know everything's magic it's sorcery it's you know out world it's all the kind of all this mystical stuff and so when these two realms merge there's just kind of magic all over that kind of brings Superman down to a little bit more even even keel with the other characters he still has all his powers and right now is probably one of the strongest characters in the game
and so that kind of makes it a little bit more plausible and to a lot more detail it's described in the story. We really go into the details of you know how all this is happening why are these two you know universes together and it's you know very very thoroughly explained in the story. Taking the histories of the established DC Universe and bringing it into the land of Mortal Kombat and keeping everything even was a project that Jimmy Fields was a little challenging but one he and Justin took on enthusiastically.
That was a fun part of writing it because we were like oh we can make this work you know and with the crew at Midway and Ed we just like we would throw out the craziest stuff and everyone would just start smiling and laughing going yeah we can do that you know and as you can see in the visuals I mean this stuff is just spectacular. All in all the characters seem to mesh together perfectly. Yeah I mean you know when we're writing it you know we're saying that doesn't sound right for that character you know that's not what they would do. And again working on the comics daily and you know Justin at one point wrote the Bible for all the DC characters up at DC you know we we know everything about them
and the great part is to sit in a room all of us sitting in a big room in Chicago and just throwing it back and forth oh yeah but you know they can't do that because that was done there and so on and so forth. So it's in there it's all in there I mean we they're precious to us all these characters are insanely precious to us and it all went into the game you know you can't just do something like this half ass you know you really got to go in because everyone's going to be watching and everyone's going to be looking at it. So we really put our heart and soul into it and I think the sound of the characters right on both end I think the fighting moves are right as you can see they're distinctive to the character and then when you guys start to get teasers of the actual story you're going to totally understand where it's coming from on both ends. It's going to be a big smile on your face. What we didn't ask Jimmy was about the rumors that he's a character buried somewhere in the Mortal Kombat game. You're going to have to find out the answer to that on your own when Mortal Kombat in the DC universe debuts on November the 10th for Xbox and the PlayStation 3.
ComicMix radio. ComicMix timeline October 2nd. DC was still taking a gamble charging 25 cents a shot for their comics but they were packed with a lot of good stuff including some classic reprints that like the ones in all star Western number nine which had a great Frank for Zeta Western story reprinted there. We got that bad number 237 with a new Neil Adams Halloween story in there. There was brave and bold number 99 and then a double shot of Jack Kirby with forever people number six and Jimmy also number 144 and then the obligatory spooky stuff from DC that included from beyond the unknown number 14 and House of Secrets number 95. From Marvel that was the middle of the Kree Skrull war and we got the latest in Avengers number 95. There was Daredevil number 83 and Thor number 195 this week as well as Marvel feature number two which had the beginnings of the defenders and we got raw high kid number 95 over on the magazine.
The magazine rack Skywald was publishing nightmare. This was issue number six we got this week with the Jeff Jones cover and artwork inside by Mike Coluna plus stories by Marv Wolfman. In the news along Sherman walk out and most of the US seaport cities halted any trade activity this week. South Vietnamese forces suffered a major setback during a fight in the Mekong Delta and more time passed without any public appearances from Chinese leader mouse a tongue leading to speculation on his health. In the movies I love you Alice B toglas was enjoying a rerelease also on the screen there was McCabe and Mrs Miller hired hand there's a girl in my soup mash was still generating ticket sales. There was scary stuff in C. No evil and the picture that gave a big acting role and a lot of attention to Jane Fonda. One man is missing two girls like dead and somebody is on the other end of the phone. Don't be afraid. Horrible trailer for a really good movie also starring Donald Sutherland its clute TV tonight at episodes of funny face all in the family the persuaders the good life and the Mary Tyler Moore show and here you go see if you can remember the show that it started this way.
I doubt a lot of people have memories of the second time he was on television every week it was the new Dick Van Dyke show. On the radio a girl whose band was discovered by 60s rocker Del Shannon and then they had their first hit record back in 1968 the band was called Smith but now she's out on her own big song for a girl named Gail McCormick here's it's a crying shame. We don't have it no more. Love walks out the door. It's a crying shame.
We don't have it no more. Gail McCormick mix. Big shout out to comic mixer Matt Raub who is right now singing a glass box on Times Square taking part in the Netflix Guinness Book of World Records movie watching competition. He needs to be there for at least one hundred and twenty two hours so when we're back on the weekend we'll check in let you know how he's doing. Give you a look at boom studios to and some of the big announcements they made recently including the return of the Muppets that a more can easily be yours all you have to do is subscribe to us on iTunes in the meantime make sure you get all the latest updates from comic picks on Twitter myspace and Facebook and the very latest in brand new and free comics are here too as well with Hammer Of The Gods by Michael Oeming and Mark Wheatley.
Dick Giordano and Frank McLaughlin a white viper and a lot more and again did I tell you they're all free. That's all part of what you get right here at ComicMix and we'll be right back here in a couple of days. Bye.
