Category: News

New ‘Superman’ Movie Coming?

  • News
  • July 15, 2008

Craigslist in Omaha, Neb., has a fairly mundane looking call for extras for a movie, at least unless you’re interested in the Superman film franchise.

OMEL Courtesy Casting is looking for stand ins and extras, the ad says. But here’s where it gets interesting:

Plot Summary: A sequel to the summer 2006 action-adventure. Bryan Singer returns to direct with Brandon Routh again playing Clark Kent/Superman.

Maybe that Warner Bros./DC meeting from last week really did speed things up. I grew up in Nebraska and have quite a few friends in Omaha, so with any luck one of them will check in on this and see if it’s legit.

(via CBR)

Viz Looking for New Properties

  • News
  • July 15, 2008

12901vizmedia_logo-lg-1795549Manga publisher Viz Media will be looking to take on new projects, and even possibly some non-Manga content, according to ICv2.

In a Q&A with Marc Weidenbaum and Eric Searleman, editor in chief and vice president respectively, ICv2 finds out more detail about these changes, and how they tie into Viz’s announced talent search at the San Diego Comic-Con.

Are you looking for manga-style properties?

If by "manga" you mean what is generally considered manga in the United States (fantasy and romance aimed at teenagers), then no. If by "manga" you mean what is meant by manga in Japan (a broad range of comics that emphasize serial storytelling, cliffhangers, reader feedback, a supportive editorial process, and a rich creator voice), then yes we are.

The story also addresses the difficulty in selling any non-Japanese content in the Japanese comics market:

Japan remains the toughest market for material from other countries to crack. But even that may be changing, as the U.S. subsidiary of the two largest manga companies in Japan begins its search for original comics. Viz Media’s Marc Weidenbaum, VP Original Publishing, and Eric Searleman, Senior Editor, the execs handling the search for original content answered in the affirmative when we asked whether there is American material that would sell well in Japan. “Certainly,” they said. “Both countries have their own rich, indigenous graphic-storytelling cultures. There are bridges yet to be built.”

(via Blog@)

The Knows Have It, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • July 15, 2008

stanlee_t-3780122Right up front this week, let’s publish our (forgive me for shouting) RECOMMENDED READING: Danny Fingeroth’s Write Now Magazine from TwoMorrows.

The issue I’m touting, number 18, dated Summer, 2008, is devoted to Stan Lee on his eighty-fifth birthday and it’s full of tributes and reminiscences about the Smilin’ One, who is without doubt the most influential guy in comics. After dozens of pages by others, writers and artists mostly, there is a special treat, headlined: Stan Lee’s Top Ten Tips For Writers. Well, who among us is going to pass that up?

I won’t presume to reproduce all ten of Stan’s tips, but I will give you a condensed version of the first. Herewith:

Write about things you know. If you don’t know, Google the stuff and start learning. Or else be so vague that no one can pin you down…So, to summarize – be totally factual or else be so vague that you can get away with knowing nothing about your subject.

Okay, we can all accord that an amen. It hearkens back to a subject we explored a few weeks ago, that of the uses of science in science fiction. We agreed, I think, that if a writer is using factual science in a story, said writer should bother to get it right. If the science is not factual, why slow down your pacing by explaining something that doesn’t exist anyway?

Don’t lie – Google! Or hold your peace.

Now, allow me to add a modest postscript to Mr. Lee’s wisdom.

(more…)

Hammer of the Gods: Hammer Time!

  • News
  • July 15, 2008

It’s a brand new week and a brand new series today on ComicMix, as Michael Avon Oeming and Mark Wheatley begin Hammer of the Gods: Back from the Dead. Get in on the ground floor as the Norse gods take a trip around the globe. Can this be good news for us puny mortals?

Credits: Mike Oeming (Artist), Mike Oeming (Writer), Mark Wheatley (Colorist), Mark Wheatley (Letterer), Mark Wheatley (Writer), John Staton (Colorist)

More: Hammer Of The Gods: Back From The Dead

The Truth Behind the Death of Harry Horse

  • News
  • July 14, 2008

ogopogo-1050379On Jan. 10, 2007, police found the bodies of Richard Horne, known as Harry Horse, the illustrator, and his wife, Mandy. Word came out that the two had taken their own lives as part of a suicide pact, made after Mandy began to suffer severely from multiple sclerosis.

It’s taken a year and a half for the full story to come out — that Richard brutally murdered his wife, then himself. The Times of London has a lengthy piece on the crime, and it’s a great piece of journalism, though a difficult read because of the ugliness of the incident.

If you do read the story, or the below excerpt, be prepared for graphic descriptions of violence. From the Times:

That evening, Harry and Mandy had their last visitors: two brothers from New Zealand. As relayed by Williamson, Harry was in a demented state, roaming the house and proclaiming: “It’s a wonderful night for a killing.” Mandy was distressed, and did not want the friends to leave. At 9.40 the next morning, January 10, the friends came back to retrieve an item of clothing. The front door was unlocked, so they pushed it open. Inside they saw the bodies of Harry and Mandy lying close together on Mandy’s bed. There was blood on the floor, windows and walls. Harry, so it proved, had butchered Mandy to death with a knife. By the medical examiner’s count, he had stabbed Mandy more than 30 times, fetching a second knife after breaking the first inside her. Then he turned the knife on himself, crisscrossing his arms with cuts and mutilating his genitals, 47 wounds in all. The death certificates record that both died of “exsanguination”: because he’d failed to deliver a lethal blow, both had bled to death. As a final token of horror, he also killed their dog, a chihuahua Mandy liked to cuddle, and their cat.

SLG Editor: Enough Women in Refrigerators

  • News
  • July 14, 2008

slave-labor-graphics-logo-p-2430465For all the discussion about the role of women in comics — as creators and characters — apparently more needs to be said, at least judging from the submissions that come in to publisher Slave Labor Graphics.

SLG editor Jennifer de Guzman goes off in a new journal entry, deriding the material she’s seeing cross her desk.

Indie and alt comics are still much-dominated by male creators, and in these men’s minds, women serve as plot devices that aid in a male development’s character. The women are damaged and victimized and usually odd — like that hot, fucked-up chick in Fight Club, brah! — and I’m tired of them. Just in this month, only a week old now, I have seen women who have been lured into porn, women who are hookers who teach young men lessons about life, women who were raped by stepfathers, women who are bi-polar and suicidal, women who are naive and long-suffering girlfriends of scumbags, and women who seem pretty cool and normal and then get kidnapped in order for the male protagonists to have something to do by saving her. Women who are never the protagonist.

Guys, STOP IT. The cumulative effect of these crazy/victimized/damaged women submissions — almost every other envelope I’ve opened — has got me wanting to punch someone. And you know where that will lead me: In trouble with the law, I’ll slip into the underbelly of society, start a nasty meth habit, turn to prostitution and then have to be saved by the man who has always loved me. Don’t let it happen to me. You can be a hero.

(via Journalista)

‘X-Files’ Comic Preview at EW

  • News
  • July 14, 2008

9999_400x600-6040641The new X-Files movie comes out July 25, and that week also sees the debut of a tie-in comic book series from WildStorm.

Entertainment Weekly has a preview of X-Files #0, from series co-producer and co-writer Frank Spotnitz. Check that out right here.

The truth? It’ll be out there in theaters when The X-Files: I Want to Believe opens July 25. But thanks to Frank Spotnitz, the franchise’s coproducer and cowriter, it’ll also be available in comic-book form two days earlier, when DC’s The X-Files #0 hits stores. While the film takes place after the TV series’ end, Spotnitz’s title (illustrated by Iron Man: Hypervelocity‘s Brian Denham) is fully ensconced in buzzy season 5, with Special Agent Dana Scully’s cancer in attack mode, and her FBI partner, Fox Mulder, initially on the lam, probing Scully’s illness as well as surreptitious alien types.

Issue #0 is a story Spotnitz always wanted to tell, but never had a chance to. And it will, in fact, springboard into a few original comics miniseries set throughout seasons 2 and 5 of the show. Also, these tales will feature a familiar evil force. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. To jump-start the X-Files’ long-awaited resurrection, DC and Spotnitz have given EW.com this exclusive first look at pages from The X-Files #0.

A funny little side note: DC posted a news item about this on its home page, right here. But if you click the link, you’re taken to this wholly unrelated site.

Looks like Grant Morrison’s insiduous usurpation of DC is much farther along than we’d thought.

Animated ‘Invincible’ on the Way, Sort Of

  • News
  • July 14, 2008

While Robert Kirkman is still working away on the screenplay for the movie adaptation of Invincible, his superhero is headed toward screens in another way. Very small screens, that is.

According to a story in the New York Times, David Gale, the executive VP of MTV New Media, is developing along with Gain Enterprises a somewhat animated version of Invincible. It’ll appear on iTunes, cell phones and MTV2.

The process starts with digital scans of the actual comic book pages. They are turned into an audio-visual experience through a process called Bomb-xx developed by Gain. In the end, the formerly two-dimensional comic book suddenly pulses with music, while word balloons pop up and fill in as actors recite the dialogue and panels zoom in and out and pivot in all directions. The frenetic energy is not unlike that of an MTV video.

Of all the comics to “animate,” why start with Invincible? “When you’re looking for a movie property or television property, first and foremost you look for a great story,” Mr. Gale said. “It’s a single creator following a great story arc.”

First six episodes will be previewed at Comic-Con International.

Dean Haspiel and the ‘Street Code’ Preview

  • News
  • July 14, 2008

Over at Whitney Matheson’s Pop Candy blog, there’s a preview of Dean Haspiel’s upcoming semi-autobiographical webcomic Street Code. I’ve always been a fan of Haspiel’s work, ever since I first encountered a Billy Dogma story published by the act-i-vate webcomics collective.

From Matheson’s post about the preview:

"I felt that it was the right time to take what I learned drawing other people’s lives the past few years and revisit drawing my own," he told me.

The story follows Jack, a New Yorker who relocates from Alphabet City to Brooklyn, "where most everything he stumbles upon is not as it seems."

What I find most interesting about this project is that Haspiel is publishing it on DC’s controversial Zuda Comics webcomic imprint. Haspiel’s sensibilities have always struck me as more indie-aligned despite his work with some of the larger publishers, so it will be interesting to see how he’ll fare in this heavily scrutinized publishing model.

Street Code kicks off July 18.

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