Category: News

James Marsters has quite the fan following as an actor but also an equally loyal following as a reader of audio books.  The latter fans will be delighted to know that he has signed on to read the remaining six Harry Dresden novels by Jim Butcher.  These titles include Death Masks, Blood Rites, Dead Beat, Proven Guilty, White Night, and Turn Coat (to be released simultaneously with the hardcover due out in April 2009).

Death Masks will be released when Roc re-releases the book as a hardcover in November 2009. Blood Rites and Dead Beat can be expected when the hardcover reissue of Blood Rites is released in July 2010.

Butcher’s series about Dresden,  freelance wizrd/private investigator has been running for a decade or so now and was adapted as a one season Sci Fi Channel series.  The Dabel Brothers are also producing Dresden comic books and graphic novels, the firstof which will be reviewed here on Wednesday.

As a performer, he will next be seen in 2009’s Dragonball, the adaptation of the anime Dragonball Z.

Peter Jackson is returning to Middle Earth, but he’s not doing it alone. As previously announced, Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy II: The Golden Army filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro will direct The Hobbit and an untitled sequel that leads into the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Jackson will serve as executive producer.

As part of The New Yorker Festival series of talks, Guillermo Del Toro spoke at the Director’s Guild of America regarding his foray into the Tolkien universe. For the director, finding Middle Earth isn’t as easy as a walking into a magical wardrobe. He describes his method:

"I find you have to discipline yourself to write in the morning, and then watch and read in the afternoons stuff that seems relevant, even in a tangential way. For example, reading or watching World War I documentaries or books that I think inform The Hobbit, strangely enough, because I believe it is a book born out of Tolkien’s generation’s experience with World War I and the disappointment of being in that field and seeing all those values kind of collapse. I think it’s a turning point that you need to familiarize yourself with. I’m starting. Peter Jackson is such a fan of that historical moment and obsessive collector of World War I memorabilia, and he owns several genuine, life-size working reproductions of planes, tanks, cannons, ships! He has the perfect obsessive reproductions of uniforms of that time for armies of about 120 soldiers… each. I asked him which books he recommended… because I wouldn’t be watching Krull or The Dark Crystal, I need to find my own way into the story. That’s the same way I did Pan’s Labyrinth or Devil’s Backbone, by watching stuff you wouldn’t think about."

The star of The Hobbit, for Del Toro, is going to be the nefarious dragon Smaug. Literally "The Magnificent," Smaug embodies "greed [and] pride" to Del Toro, who has been interested in dragon lore his entire life. He speaks about Smaug passionately, citing the villain with "some of the most beautiful dialogue" in the film. As for the character’s design, Del Toro is "pretty sure that will be the last design we will sign off on, and the first design we have attempted."

Del Toro is itching to talk more about the project, but insisted that he couldn’t due to something a little less subtle than a gag order.

"Warner Brothers has a sniper right here in the theater," he jokingly warned.

"Listen," he later said, taking a more serious note, "If we were having a drink two years from now I would spill the beans, because I’m a pretty easy guy about spilling the beans, but I can’t in this instance. I can’t because it’s three years from now."

Three years is probably generous, given that Del Toro has a large slate of films on the horizon. Variety reported earlier this year that Del Toro is booked solid through 2017, with films such as Slaughterhouse-Five, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, At the Mountains of Madness and Frankenstein. He spoke briefly about Frankenstein, saying that his vision would be something entirely original.

"I’m not doing Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. I’m doing an adventure story that involves the creature. I cannot say much, but it’s not the central creation story, I’m not worried about that. The fact is I’ve been dreaming of doing a Frankenstein movie since I was a child."

He then promised that "compared to Kenneth Branagh [director and star of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein], I will not appear shirtless in the movie!"

Actor Bill Murray spoke at a New York news conference for City of Ember and repeated his interest in appearing in Ghostbusters 3.

The comedian also said that a script is moving forward at the moment. "There’s two fellows from The Office that are writing a script, but I’ve yet to see it. And I’m more involved with, you know, trying to get the dessert we ordered at lunch than I am with the new Ghostbusters sequel. But it’s possible. It’s a great idea that they hired these two guys to do it, because I think it’ll be a … it could be a fresh look at it. And it could be funny."

If true, he would reprise his role of Dr. Peter Venkman and appear alongside Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson, Jr. more than 20 years after Ghostbusters 2.

Of the latter, he admitted, "We did a sequel, and it was sort of rather unsatisfying for me, because the first one to me was the goods. It was the real thing. And the sequel, you know, was … it was a few years later. There was an idea pitched. And it was like, well, they got us all together in a room. We just laughed for a couple of hours. And then they said, ‘What if we did another one? Here’s an idea.’

"So they had this idea, but it didn’t turn out to be the idea when I arrived on the set. They’d written a whole different movie than the one [initially discussed]. And the special-effects guys got it and got their hands on it. And it was just not the same movie. There were a few great scenes in it, but it wasn’t the same movie. So there’s never been an interest in a third Ghostbusters because the second one was kind of disappointing … for me, anyway."

City of Ember opens this month.
 

In my last entry, I discussed a number of the ways that webcomics make money and mentioned that only a few of the thousands of webcomic artists are able to actually do so. There are a number of factors that play into which comics make money (and for that matter, which attract the most readers, and which work best with each type of business plan), but I think a critical one is what economists know as “Superstar Theory”.

Aside: I am an economist by schooling, and years ago, this was a major point in my undergraduate thesis paper. I didn’t invent the phrase—that honor goes to actual economists like Sherwin Rosen—but I suspect I was the first person to use it in reference to webcomics. I’m going to assume you have a basic idea of how economic supply and demand works, here: As people demand more of a good, the price goes up; as producers make more of it, price goes down, and everything else pretty much flows from that.

The classic model would be a baker: If more people want cupcakes, and start lining up at his door to buy them, then he can raise the price and make more money. If a second bakery opens up down the street, people can buy cupcakes from either of them, and the first baker will need to lower his prices or he’ll see his business go to the competition.

In most modern artistic fields, there are a small number of artists that grow huge followings and tend to get the majority of the word-of-mouth “buzz.” This concept is known as the Superstar phenomenon, in which a relatively small group of people earn significantly more money than most in their field, and, in fact, dominate that field in general. Performers, writers, and sports players of the first rank command huge incomes, and there is a large gap between their salaries and those of people of the second rank—though the difference in skill between first and second rank may be minute. (Think of what Harrison Ford makes versus what his “unknown” female co-star makes.) For an economist, this can be complicated to examine with your classic supply-demand model, because that model assumes that products are undifferentiated—one is as good as any other. What’s missing is an account of “box office appeal,” or the ability of a single person to attract a large following. (more…)

Many years ago my dear friend, mystery novelist Elaine Viets, took a look at the growth rate and postulated that by, well, roughly now virtually every American would be an Elvis imitator.

Luckily, we came to our senses. Or maybe not. Either way, I love logic.

Another dear friend, the late Bill Martin, would go crazy reading Bizarro stories because of their lack of internal consistency. That’s why I loved Bill; he would actually think of such a thing. But damn it, he died too soon. Had he lived he would see that we are coming to a world not unlike that of the Bizarros, but with a day-to-day internal consistency.

For example, last week I pontificated upon the impact of our rapidly deteriorating economy upon the comics and popular culture community. It was absolutely brilliant; you should re-read it. As it was posted at 6:46 AM Central time (yeah – we’re out east; don’t ask!) I wrote the column before the big vote in Congress. The one that was voted down. People felt a $700,000,000,000.00 bail out was too expensive. OK, fine. I can dig that. Later that day, the Dow Jones Industrial average dropped 777 points. I love symmetry.

People freaked. Damn! We’ve got to put a stop to that! How can we get that fixed? I know! Let’s add some pork to the bill – spread some additional loot around and buy us the needed votes! So within five days a $700,000,000,000.00 bill that was too expensive evolved into an $840,000,000,000.00 bill that was just right! It was so well-greased that the bill was actually printed before passage and given to Still-President Bush for signing at the appropriate time.

This, folks, is Bizarro logic. And it prevails.

By the way, did the stock market react in gratitude for each and every American chipping in about $3000 to pay for this bill? Nope; the market dropped another 157 points.

I ask you this. Would a Bizarro-Elvis imitator have to be, well, the real Elvis? Don’t think about it; check and see who just bought your bank. Just accept the prevailing Bizarro logic. As if you have any choice.

In the words of the great, great man: “Me am not scared at all.”

Mike Gold is editor-in-chief of ComicMix.  

Writer/director Henry Selick gave Toon Zone an interview in preparation for the release of his stop-motion animated adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline.

During the wide-ranging conversation, Selick nicely compared a book and a film, saying,

“books have a kind of language with internal dialogue and things like that; how do you bring that to a screen? Ultimately, it resulted in creating another character, this annoying neighbor kid Wybie. It’s a dangerous thing to do that to books, but I just could not find another way to flesh out Coraline. Just the cat in the real world? She didn’t know he could talk. So it took a long time, but I’d like to think Wybie went from a device to an important character. And he has a backstory that is connected to the house, so it pays off nicely.”

The book features a girl who discovers another reality just on the other side of a door in her home. The 2002 novella earned the 2003 Hugo Award for Best Novella, the 2003 Nebula Award for Best Novella, and the 2002 Bram Stoker Award for Best Work for Young Readers.

“The two most important things in adapting that I wanted to keep was holding onto the essence of Coraline and not making her overly heroic,” Selick explained.  “Not making her Kim Possible, giving her incredible fighting skills. It still had to feel that she’s skeptical. She doesn’t trust adults. Ultimately resourceful, brave, and tenacious. That was the most important thing to hang onto. The book was written over many years; it was actually inspired by Neil’s older daughter, when she was growing up, and then his younger daughter. So she actually seems to change ages in the book. I always liked that, and I think kids can regress, so she can say to her father, ‘I’m not five years old!’ and then act exactly like a five-year-old. Also, the relationship with her real mom. The real mom at the end of the book is not suddenly nice and caring and warm and touchy. She’s the same. There’s no real lessons learned; she doesn’t remember being rescued. It’s Coraline who sees everyone in a new way – she appreciates them.”

The film will open February 6, 2009.