Canadian cartoonist Ralph Hagen will craft a new comic strip, The Barn, debuting from Creators Syndicate on October 27. The strip will concentrate on the interaction between farm animals and local humans.
Hagen, a self-taught artist, has been professionally illustrating for 31 years and has been published in a variety of outlets from The Saturday Evening Post to Reader’s Digest. He’s also done commercial illustration for numerous clients including Kraft Foods.
Last Friday, Mark Verheiden posted on his blog that he has moved from Battlestar Galactica, now completed, to Universal’s other big hit, Heroes.
“I have made a lateral shift in the NBC/Universal universe and joined the show Heroes as a consulting writer/producer,” he revealed. “So far I’ve been catching up with the show’s wonderful mythology (boy, I thought Battlestar was twisted!) while watching an amazing staff craft incredible stories. Emotional, suspenseful, and jam-packed with action. And after watching some of the upcoming episodes, I’m in awe at how much they manage to accomplish each day. Lots of people, from the fantastic cast and directors to the hard-working and super-talented crew, are working really hard to make this all happen.”
His work will be seen in the second story arc for season three due in the spring. Heroes returns to NBC Monday nights beginning September 22.
Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay will adapt The Boys for the big screen according to The Hollywood Reporter. The Columbia Pictures’ project is based on the Garth Ennis/Darick Robertson series which first launched at WildStorm and quickly moved to Dynamite Entertainment.
According to THR, “The book follows the adventures of a CIA squad, known informally as ‘the boys,’ whose job is to keep watch on the proliferation of superheroes and, if necessary, intimidate or eliminate them.”
The movie is one of many comic book properties currently being developed by producer Neal H. Moritz who also has The Green Hornet, Flash Gordon, and Luke Cage on his To Do list. Also attached as producers are Kickstart’s Jason Netter and attorney Ken F. Levin.
The screenwriting team has had success in Hollywood with a mix of projects ranging from the ambitious Crazy/Beautiful to the action adventure misfires Aeon Flux and The Tuxedo.
The Fox network wants to make certain college kids can get a chance to see the season premieres of both Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (September 8) and Fringe (September 9). Students using a log in with an .edu e-mail account will have a chance to see the episode on line at fox.com along with behind-the-scenes footage and music videos as well as cast and producer interviews.
The BBC issued a press release today announcing that production has begun on the shortened third season of their series Torchwood. The "Children of Earth" storyline will last a mere five episodes which the UK will broadcast as a week-long event in early 2009. BBC America is expected to air the series soon after.
The release was scant on plot details, merely stating, the team will “battle for the future of the human race against the fiercest force they have encountered.” The story is scripted by series producer and co-creator Russell T. Davies, John Fay (Coronation) and James Moran (Doctor Who) and is being directed by Euros Lyn (Doctor Who).
Universal Studios Home Entertainment announced today that the DVD for The Incredible Hulk will be released on October 21 in a variety of formats.: a three-disc Special Edition DVD available for a limited time only; a two-disc Blu-ray release, offered in collectible 3D lenticular packaging for a limited time only; and a single-disc DVD edition.
The film starring Edward Norton and Liv Tyler has taken in $234.6 million worldwide, eclipsing the Ang Lee incarnation.
For those turned off by both Obama and McCain and won’t even consider Nader, then you might want to consider exercising your right by voting for Charlie Brown. To keep people engaged in the electoral process Rock the Vote has worked with United Media to craft a Peanuts-centric website where people can legitimately register for the general election while also casting a vote for Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy or Sally.
No surprise that as of this morning, Snoopy has a strong lead across the land. Additionally, Warner Home Video has planned a rerelease of You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown for October 7. The DVD has been remastered in a new deluxe edition.
Garth Ennis’ The Boys is moving forward a film project but it appears adapting his Preacher series is too controversial for the screen, be it big or small.
Comics Continuum broke the story from screenwriter Mark Steven Johnson that the current management at HBO has shied away from the television incarnation. He was told “the new head of HBO felt it was just too dark and too violent and too controversial.”
The Vertigo series, co-created with artist Steve Dillon, ran from 1995 through 2000 and was an exploration into the relationship between man and God, among several other topics. It was an award-winning project now collected into a series of trade collections that continue to sell well.
A feature film version, possibly starring James Marsden (Superman Returns, Enchanted), has been in the works as an independent feature from View Askew Productions. Rachel Talalay (Tank Girl) was attached to direct with Samuel L. Jackson interested in portraying the Saint of Killers.
HBO stepped in and announced it would develop the series for their pay cable channel in November 2006 with Daredevil writer/director Johnson attached with director Howard Deutch. Johnson initially indicated he saw each issue of the comic as an episode of the hour-long series. He reversed that position and was working with Ennis on crafting new stories when the network pulled the plug.
The 2008 Democratic convention is currently well underway. It being the Age of Reality Shows That Aren’t Real, every bit of spontaneity is of course tightly scripted to allow for maximum media control, not unlike all those Beijing Olympics stories that practically write themselves. What you see is pretty much what they tell you you’ll get.
As a society, we seem to have inured ourselves to accepting style over substance as the norm. We judge books by their covers all the time — even more so when we look at comics. First impressions are the lasting ones. We expect what’s on the cover to reflect what’s inside, often because we’ve been assured that it will. When the cover artist’s style doesn’t jibe with the interior art, the result can be a bit jarring. When the cover art misrepresents the story within, we can feel cheated or used.
And that’s all well and good when it comes to consumer entertainment. We’re used to being lied to, it’s all part of the advertising fake-out. If a certain type of cover art moves product, the actual interior content is irrelevant from the seller’s point of view. We accept (some more grudgingly than others) that we’re going to be subjected to this little dance every time we buy, and buy into, our culture of mass-produced entertainment.
The problem arises, as it usually does, when this mentality shifts from the fictional to the real, and we find ourselves judging people by their “covers.” (more…)
Lionsgate releases the first season of the CW’s Reaper on November 4. The amusing show with Bret Harrison and Ray Wise comes as a box set featuring all 18 episodes plus the usual assort of bonus materials including deleted scenes and commentary with cast and crew. The five-disc set will retail for $39.98.
Reaper features a slacker who discovers his soul was sold to the devil and now has to become Hell’s bounty hunter (while similar to the film Ghost Rider, they’re unrelated). The CW intends to bring the second season to the screen for mid-season.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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