Where would comics be without the
stories of young people with amazing powers? Oh, sure, you could cobble
together a world canon of stories with no supernatural stuff at all, but it
would have to be a masterpiece of the gerrymanderer’s art. And why would you
want to – when you can have all of the moody, or conflicted, or ridiculously
innocent teenagers with amazing abilities you ever thought of? Like the main
characters of these three books, for example…

Wicked Lovely: Desert Tales, Volume 1: Sanctuary
Written by Melissa Marr; Art by
Xian Nu Studio
Tokyopop/HarperCollins, May 2009,
$12.99

Wicked Lovely is the name of a novel by Marr, and it also seems to be
the umbrella title for her novels about teens and faeries (and teen faeries,
and faerie teens) in the modern world. The novels seem to be about a girl named
Aislinn – no self-respecting teen-novel heroine ever has a name like Doris or
Mabel – and her travails in high school and the Faerie Courts. But this manga
volume – it says on its back cover that it’s “manga,” if you don’t believe me,
and never mind that it reads left-to-right and was written by an American – is set
somewhere in the western desert, where once-mortal Rika lives quietly, trying
to avoid both humans and the local faeries.

Rika was discovered and turned –
not exactly “seduced and abandoned,”
since she wasn’t able to give him what he wanted – many years ago by the Summer
King, Keenan, who turns up early in this book to give an excuse for some
backstory and to fail to get her to swear fealty to him. She refuses, of course
– she’s solitary now, and happy that way. What does it matter if most of the
solitary fay are nasty enough to make “mischievous” a very weak term to
describe them?

But they’re just there for spice;
this is a series for teenage girls, which means Rika has to see a cute boy –
Jace, who paints, like she does – and save him from those nasty fay, who try to
kill him for no good reason. He’s sweet and innocent enough to stare wide-eyed
at her abilities – those nasty wild fay don’t give up, or there wouldn’t be a
plot here other than “elf girl and artist boy meet cute and gaze into each
other’s eyes,” – and the book is low-key enough that they’re just mildly
kissing by the end. (Which seems awfully tame for a fairie who’s hundreds of
years old.)

Wicked Lovely: Desert
Tales: Sanctuary has too many
colons in its title and a thin plot, but I have to expect that it’s just the
kind of thing teen girls will want: a bit of angst, a wish to be alone that
doesn’t actually lead to loneliness, and a cute boy that the girl gets to
protect and pursue. I’m just twenty years too old and the wrong gender to
appreciate it properly. (more…)

Olivia Wilde, who we adore on House and look forward to seeing in the sequel to Tron, will join The Ruins’ Jonathan Tucker in the cast of The Next Three Days, a thriller directed by  Paul Haggis for Lionsgate. The cast already includes Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks, which is said to be the story of a woman (Banks) imprisoned for a murder she claims she didn’t commit while her husband (Crowe) who tries to vindicate her.

The Wizards of Waverly Place, the popular Disney Channel series, has received an order for an additional eight episodes. Now in its third season, the show was awarded an Emmy this month in the children’s programming category. It also scored huge ratings when a feature-length version aired in August. It’s no surprise that the show has a rabid following with Disney raking in bucks from consumer products ranging from video games to books and even clothing lines.

Pity Skynet. They rule the world of the future but can’t seem to get it right in the present. Rights to the Terminator franchise have been handed from one company to another and now Halcyon Holding Group is undergoing Chapter 11 reorganization which will affect plans for the Terminator.

Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood reports that Halcyon has retained FTI Capital Advisors to help them determine the best course of reorganizing. The production entity wound up this way after a dispute erupted between them and Pacificor, a Santa Barbara-based hedge fund.

“Based on our extensive due diligence, we believe the value of the Terminator franchise alone is substantially greater than the $30 million Halcyon paid for it in 2007,” Kevin W. Shultz, Senior Managing Director of FTI Capital Advisors, said in statement. “In our view, Halcyon enjoys a wide variety of strategic options and we intend to explore them all.”

In addition to the still-popular Terminator, Halcyon has first-look rights to the complete works of Philip K. Dick.

Terminator: Salvation suffered from weak reviews and poor box office, hoping to rake in some fresh cash when the DVD is released December 1. Producers from the television version, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, continue to hope to continue the saga in some new manner, possibly as direct-to-video tales. The second season DVD set was released last week.

Primeval, the much loved but low-rated British series has been given a fourth season order after ITV1 cut a deal with the digital channel Watch. According to a report in the Guardian, the series will be co-funded between the two with an order given for 13 new episodes, to be shown in two arcs.

After the third season aired earlier this year, ITV canceled the series, leaving production firm Impossible Pictures, scrambling to salvage the show which has a strong following as witnessed by licensed  books, audio adventures and a possible American feature film to be produced by Warner Bros.

The shows will air in early 2011 with BBC Worldwide handling international distribution. American fans most recently watched the series on BBC America. The current season was released on DVD on September 15.

The Guardian noted, “Watch – which already airs sci fi shows Doctor Who and Torchwood – will repeat it soon after and then premiere the fifth series later the same year, followed by ITV1.”

The full cast is expected to return including Hannah Spearritt, Andrew-Lee Potts and Jason Flemyng. Adrian Hodge remains showrunner.