Hooooooo boy. If nothing else, it highlights the difference in how they’re marketing this… even more paranoid than the original, if that’s possible. And if you’re like me, you caught even more places where the screen matches the page.
What do you think about it?
We’ve obtained preview footage of the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode, "Enter the Outsiders" airing this Friday, January 9 on Cartoon Network at 8:00 PM, guest starring R. Lee Ermey as Wildcat. And yes, that really is Black Lightning appearing in a DC Comics animated series after thirty years. Congratulations to BL creators Tony Isabella and Trevor Von Eeden.
In this week’s episode Batman and his mentor Wildcat face off against a group of teens– the Outsiders– whose violent pranks turn to criminal activity under the control of the evil Slug. Take a look… (more…)
Today’s installment of comic-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest…
* Producers Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy and Pixar’s John Lasseter are working to guarantee a huge success for this summer’s release of Hayao Miyazaki’s new animated movie, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, according to Variety. Their aim is to increase the number of movie screens where Ponyo will open here, and thus the box office receipts, from Studio Ghibli’s previous US record for Spirited Away, which earned $10.1 million on 714 screens according to Box Office Mojo. The English voiceover cast for Ponyo will feature Matt Damon, Tina Fey, Cate Blanchett, Liam Neeson, Betty White, Lily Tomlin and Cloris Leachman. Ponyo was Japan’s biggest movie of 2008, grossing $165 million.
* Kyle Baker reviews The Spirit.
* Dan Goldman is telling the story of the 2008 election, and has a twenty page preview available as a PDF. I won’t spoil the ending for you.
* Happy Public Domain Day for the rest of the world. We won’t have any new entries here for a few years.
* I nominate this as the top anime fansub of 2008. Do I have a second to the motion?
Anything else? Consider this an open thread.
Okay, let me see if I have this straight. From Rich Johnston:
Rob Liefeld will be putting out a "SMASH! Extreme!" #0 re-printing of Smash’s previous appearances by Jeph Loeb and Liefeld from Image in April.
Rob says, "This will contain a new story which frees Smash! from his bonds and lead into the multi-part SMASH! storyline told in a series of specials pitting SMASH! against the Extreme universe. Then in May, we get ‘Smash! Brigade’ from Marat Mychaels and ‘Smash! Youngblood,’ ‘Smash! Prophet’ and ‘Smash! Supreme’ to follow through the year."
Smash! apparently is this big, shall we say, hulking individual pictured to the right who has been in exile for a good long time after stealing Elliot S. Maggin’s exclamation point, but he returns to wreak havoc on the entire universe in a company-wide crossover– waging war on the world, as it were.
Psst. Rob. The pants are what’s supposed to be purple, not the skin.
Oh, and eventually, it’ll end in a book called SMASH ASSEMBLED! where presumably an SOS goes out to Doom’s 4, but some mischevous individual reroutes the call to a bunch of other heroes who band together and fight him.
And some other even more mischevous individual reroutes the call to Marvel’s legal department. Which won’t be a problem because as we all know, Rob Liefeld is a stickler for credit.
The general consensus is that during hard times, people stay at home and turn to cheap entertainment to save money. And various and sundry players across the net have claimed that comics always do well in recessionary times.
Except, it turns out, those two widely held beliefs are in direct conflict.
Aaron Albert at About.com (you can tell he’s in comics with alliteration like that) runs the numbers on entertainment bang for the buck per minute, and comics are the worst deal of the bunch:
If we suppose that it takes 15 minutes to read a standard comic book what kind of deal are we getting?
The conclusion is obvious, particularly when you see how many people will read free comics available online.
Screenwriter John August describes the sequence of events that led up to, shall we say, the death of Captain Marvel the movie:
I took them at their (written) word and delivered what they said they wanted: a much harder movie, with a lot more Black Adam. This wasn’t “Big, with super powers” anymore. It was Black Adam versus Captain Marvel, with a considerable push into dark territory and liminal badlands like Nanda Parbat. It wasn’t the action-comedy I’d signed on to write, but it was a movie I could envision getting made. The producer and director liked it, and turned it in to the studio while I was in France.
By the time I got back, the project was dead.
By “dead,” I mean that it won’t be happening. I don’t think it’s on the studio’s radar at all. It may come back in another incarnation, with another writer, but I can say with considerable certainty that it won’t be the version I developed.
Whether this is from the internal shake-ups at New Line, or residual inertia from the writers’ strike, or just Hollywood silliness, is hard to gauge.
We already talked about Star Wars: The Musical — now we have the kick line.
Insert obligatory "I’ve got a bad feeling about this" here.
The Jonah Hex movie is getting a new director, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Jimmy Hayward, who directed Horton Hears a Who, has been signed to direct Hex as his second feature, and his first in live action. Prior to directing Horton,
Josh Brolin is still attached to star in the film– because after playing an ornery cuss from the south who goes in guns blazing in W., this was a natural.
Hat tip: ICV2.
The half-hour series Wolverine and the X-Men will finally make its US premiere on Nicktoons Network with back-to-back episodes on Friday, January 23, 8-9 pm. Produced by Marvel Animation, Wolverine and the X-Men will air regularly Fridays at 8p. The network also launches the new tie-in website, areyouamutant.com, on Tuesday, January 20, where fans can check their DNA for mutant genes, which will let them into the Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters where they can visit various rooms, watch replays of the series, and play a game called Wolverine and the X-Men: Sentinel Slash.
Get those kids exposed to slash fiction while they’re young, I always say– then we can move them up to Hellfire Club costumes and really have some fun.
Additionally, content from the series will be available on TurboNick and via Nickelodeon’s wireless platforms. The series will also have a dedicated category in Nick’s VOD offering from January 19.
Sci Fi Channel’s SciFi.com has spun off its daily entertainment news section into a standalone site SciFiWire.com. The news blog will continue to focus on pop cultural news related to the Sci Fi and fantasy genres, covering movies, books, television shows, comics, in what appears to be a much more navigable site, although their RSS feed was down at the time I looked. A few familiar names have popped up here and there in the early posts, most notably Scott Edelman, Craig Engler, and Adam Troy-Castro.
If memory serves, SciFiWire was originally the email newsletter published by Engler back in the 90’s, when SciFi bought him out and put him in charge of the digital division. Now they’re spinning it back out again. You explain it.
The satellite site is the third new launch by SciFi.com during the past year, following the debuts of gadget blog Dvice.com and gaming site Fidgit.com. So it’s trying to be Obsessable, Joystiq, and… well, us.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
Stephen Colbert, we have your writer for “The Chronicles of Amber”!
January 20, 2023
The Law Is A Ass #460: Those “For Life” Sentences Are Nonsense
February 24, 2022
