Category: News

‘Elfquest’ Movie Moves Ahead

One of the more shocking moments in my life came when I was pretty young and randomly picked up an Elfquest comic book. Tolkien’s stately creatures, these are not.

Now, after years of failed efforts to get the property to screens, Warner Bros. appears to have made major headway toward an Elfquest movie, going so far as to announce a writer/director/producer.

The original comic, which Wendy and Richard Pini initially self-published in 1978, followed a tribe of elves known as the Wolfriders in their attempts to survive and link with other dispersed elves on a Earth-like planet with two moons while on the lookout for tribes of humans and trolls, both of which acted as allies and enemies.

The series — later published by both Marvel and DC Comics — attracted a more mature audience as it went along, with scenes of battles and sexuality that were intense for that time.

Rawson Thurber ("Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story") will write, direct and produce the feature, whose format is undetermined.

One can only wonder how graphic the film will be, and if a whole new generation is set to be startled.

The Flash Added To The DC Comics Network

It wasn’t that long ago we told you that Xbox LIVE added a DC Comics Network channel to its lineup of videos for download on the Xbox 360 gaming console. Well, they’re not wasting any time adding more programming. They’ve added The Flash to the lineup of superhero television shows.

1990’s The Flash, starring John Wesley Shipp, was one of those shows that never got the recognition it should have. It was caught in an unfortunate network struggle for Thursday night between The Cosby Show and The Simpsons. Taking a cue from Tim Burton’ first Batman movie, it was playful but took itself seriously. Comics author Howard Chaykin was on board as one of the program’s writers so the show maintained the right shout-outs to appease comic fans. Amanda Pays perfected the hot, brainy scientist helping Barry Allen with his mysterious powers. And let’s face it, that suit looked cool moving at super-speed.

All that quality was expensive, though, so CBS canceled it after one season when it failed to become a runaway hit. But the show lived on in reruns on the SCI-FI Channel and on DVD.

Visit the official page to see some great previews of each episode — especially episode #12, if you want to see Mark Hamill hamming it up as the Trickster.

Keep ’em coming boys. Maybe you’ll be the ones that will finally distribute episodes of the Adam West Batman series from the ’60s.

New Dark Horse Site Goes Live

It’s a big week for Dark Horse.

Friday sees the release of Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, and in the meanwhile, the publisher has given its Web site a much-needed facelift.

The new site is updated with a cleaner and more easily navigable framework, though I haven’t noticed much in the way of new features.

I don’t know that it amounts to a hill of beans for comic readers, but as a reviewer I’m happy to see the "new releases" and "upcoming comics" sections given a makeover, as there’s nothing as annoying as having to dig through the Internets for some product info or a cover image.

Enough of what I think. Why don’t you head on over and judge for yourself.

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‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’ Photos

With all of this talk about blockbuster adaptations of comic books, it’s easy to forget about some of the other big films hitting theaters this year. Luckily, the Cinematical team has provided a reminder about one of those big releases that’s likely to appeal to ComicMix readers: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

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Warner Bros. recently released some images from the film, and Cinematical has collected them in a nice little Half-Blood Prince gallery. Posted here is one of the images, but head over to Cinematical for the full host of photos from the film, which is scheduled for a November 21 release.

Comic Shop Therapy and ‘The Dark Knight’

I’ve been telling friends of mine for years that the answers to all of life’s dilemmas can be found in the pages of comic books — you just need to know which books to look inside.

Well, it looks like I’m not alone. In fact, anyone looking for answers might want to cruise over to the online home of Kyle Piccolo, Comic Shop Therapist, for a helpful diagnosis.

Problems with women?

Frustrated at work?

Suspect you have a mutant power?

Just head down to your local comic book shop and have a chat with the man behind the counter — Kyle Piccolo, the always sardonic, sometimes empathetic, and not quite all-knowing Comic Shop Therapist. Kyle possesses the uncanny ability to find the answer to your problem in the pages of a comic book and you can bet he’ll do it in a smart, entertaining and, more often than not, hilarious way.

While much of the website looks to be a massive billboard for The Dark Knight, the videos of Piccolo dispensing comic shop wisdom to the masses are actually pretty well put-together and likely to bring a laugh or two. If the whole thing is just more Dark Knight viral marketing, consider me successfully marketed to… or whatever the applicable term might be. The Heath Ledger-centric Dark Knight trailer on the site is pretty impressive.

Oh, and kudos to the crew at Manhattan’s Midtown Comics for providing a set for the videos.

Shelf Watch: This Week’s Comics

ikillgiants_cover-8368705Every week I look ahead at Diamond’s shipping lists to see what I’ll be reviewing for the Weekly Haul. Here’s what’s on tap this week (reminder, comics aren’t out till Thursday):

Not sure why, but I’m looking forward to Image’s I Kill Giants #1, even though I don’t have much of an idea what it’s about. The art reminds me a lot of Alex Robinson’s — but with more manga influences — so that might be a lot of it.

Dark Horse has a couple of usual suspects on the way in The Goon #26 and B.P.R.D.: The Warning #1, as well as the Hellboy: Oddest Jobs trade. I’ve been especially impressed with The Goon of late, after it nosedived when Eric Powell shifted his focus to Action Comics and the Chinatown GN.

DC has a fairly ho-hum slate. Tops would be Booster Gold #1000000, though DC’s Web site says that’s not coming out till next week. There’s Final Crisis Requiem, the one-shot that deals with the Martian Manhunter’s death (glossed over in Final Crisis), and the Batman books are tied into the lackluster RIP storyline. Nothing screams “must read.”

Marvel has a big headline with Secret Invasion #4, but aside from that there’s nothing of exceptional interest, aside from the preview for Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s Captain America: White and the always excellent Nova (issue 15). Am I the only one already tired of Matt Fraction’s Invincible Iron Man, even though only the third issue is coming out now?

In the small presses, there’s the eighth volume of Bone and the trade of Badger Saves the World. Other than that, pretty slim pickings.

What are you looking forward to?

Comics and Chris Ware in Virginia Quarterly Review

Comics have long battled against proponents of "serious literature," who have often decried comics as a less intellectual medium than prose.

In the past few years, comics have become increasingly accepted into popular culture, and now it seems they’re well established in the literary world too.

The Virginia Quarterly Review, one of the elite literary magazines, ran a special comics issue this spring, which I just happened across on a recent trip to the bookstore.

It features a cover by Art Spiegelman (seen at right) and, best of all, a new story from Chris Ware. The fictional biography of Jordan W. Lint shows the character’s life through a glance at single days of his existence.

You can see a preview at the VQR Web site, right here.

The Real Day Evil Won

Comic books usually fall back on stories of good versus evil, superheroes battling against villains with the fate of the world on the line.

DC Comics is taking a new spin on that with their big summer event, Final Crisis, which posits that the dark side of Darkseid has triumphed, and the heroes are left scrambling. Grant Morrison, the writer of that incoherent mess, would be well served to take a few lessons from an all too true story of evil defeating good.

In the not so recent past, a wealthy Oklahoma businessman swooped in to buy the Seattle Supersonics (my favorite team in my favorite league, the NBA). The new owner, Clay Bennett, agreed to keep the team in Seattle, where the Sonics had won a championship and built a legion of fans.

Gradually, it became clear Bennett wanted all along to steal the team away to Oklahoma City, spurning his supposed "good faith effort" to remain in Seattle. The man who’s supposed to oversee the NBA and prevent things like entire fan bases from being ripped off is commissioner David Stern, at right.

Unfortunately for Sonics fans, Stern and Bennett are old chums, so the commish managed to actually speed along the move, even telling Seattle it was the city’s fault.

The city did all it could to fight back, but ended up not having the muscle, and the Sonics are now history.

We’ll see if Superman, Batman and company end up victorious in Final Crisis. But in the real world, the good guys don’t always win.

ComicMix Six: The Best ‘Hellboy’ Stories

In previous editions of ComicMix Six, we’ve rounded up everything from Political Campaigns in Comics to Celebrity Team-Ups. This Friday marks the newest milestone for Mike Mignola’s Hellboy franchise, with the movie sequel Hellboy 2: The Golden Army hitting theaters, so this week’s list focuses on Mignola’s most popular creation.

The evil-fighting demon named "Hellboy" has been one of the most successful new superheroes introduced in the past 20 years, first appearing as a joke illustration from Mignola in the early 1990s and then evolving into his current incarnation to debut in a full-fledged Dark Horse comics series.

Now the Hellboy world is huge, comprising several Hellboy books, the B.P.R.D. line, video games and the Hellboy movies.

Picking through all those 15-plus years of content, here are the six very best Hellboy stories, from epics to little fairy tales, from Cavendish Hall to Hell on Earth, and everywhere in between (Note: Only Hellboy-specific stories are included in the list).

Read on for the ComicMix Six: Best Hellboy Stories.

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The Devil Made Me Do It, by Elayne Riggs

I haven’t had a lot of free time lately, but what little I’ve had on the weekends has been devoted to my Zen-relaxation hobbies of sleeping, watching baseball, reading blogs and playing computer games. I’m not big on the kill-em-all-let-fictional-dieties-sort-em-out ones, I much prefer the puzzle games like Atlantis Quest or Bejeweled or Chuzzle (I got my mom addicted to Chuzzle!) or Bookworm. But I do confess to a soft spot for a little phenom from Blizzard Entertainment known as Diablo.

Being cursed with a pretty bad memory for entertainment ephemera, I can’t remember if I ever played the first version of Diablo. I suppose I must have, way back, but it never really caught my interest except as a spectator sport. I loved to watch Robin play it, and he was was quite the fan, so when Diablo II came out I decided to learn its ins and outs and play alongside him. It wasn’t easy, neither of the two computers we had at the time had really fast processing speed, so when we played a round together either or both or our monitors would be pretty messed up, would freeze then go into fast-motion, all the stuff that tells you This Game Is Beyond Your Machine’s Puny Capabilities. Nonetheless, we persisted, more apart than together, and there was a stretch of some months when Diablo II took up most of our computer time, particularly with the debut of the expansion set, entitled “Lord of Destruction” (or as Robin and I, and apparently the creator of the above illustration, preferred to think of it, “Lord of the Dance”).

And I mean, it’s weird to like Diablo so much, not only as a woman who does tend to fall into the stereotypical story preference trends (i.e., preferring characterization to explosions, the evolution of relationships and personal growth to battles and gore, participation of interesting female characters in their own life stories rather than objectification and “love interest” secondary leads), but as someone who just isn’t into entertainment violence, period. I can look at sex far more easily than I can look at violence. Sexual parity is nowhere near accomplished, so most of the stuff in that realm still caters to the male gaze, as I’ve previously observed, but violence as entertainment (at least to me) really seems to cater to the male gaze. I just don’t find it fun. Even when it’s at the level of embarrassment comedy, I still feel for the victim. Maybe it’s because I’m something of a klutz, and the atmosphere around the Riggs Residence often resembles a slapstick sitcom. When I go to give my husband a mock smack on the head and wind up hurting my hand (and wrist, and elbow) instead, it may be amusing at the time in a karmic-justice kinda way, but I know my arm’s going to be killing me the next couple days and I’ll have all these “where did I get those?” bruises and, oh kiddies, it’s just not worth the pain. (more…)