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G.I. JOE Relaunches with IDW

  • News
  • October 9, 2008

Back in the 1960s, the first doll to be called an "action figure" was created. The "G.I. Joe" line (named after a term used to describe a generic soldier) was a popular toy and depicted soldiers from different U.S. armed forces. In the 1970s, it was re-tooled as the Super Joe Action Team.

In the 1980s, the line was re-launched by Hasbro as "G.I. JOE: A Real American Hero" and now there was a story wrapped around the action figures. It was said that the different characters were all part of a group called G.I. JOE, essentially a counter-terrorist strike force involving the best agents from all branches of the military. Their primary enemy was said to be Cobra, an organization bent on world domination, led by the vicious Cobra Commander and aided by the Scottish war profiteer James McCullen Destro.

This new storyline ignited an interest among fans that has continued for years, inspiring multiple cartoon series, a new live-action movie coming out next year, and a comic published by Marvel and written by Larry Hama (Wolverine), who also wrote the "history files" of the characters for their trading cards and who was no doubt aided by his own experience in the military.

The series spanned 155 issues from 1984 to 1994, along with a few spin-off titles, all of which added deep layers of history and characterization to the JOEs and veered heavily away from the more light-hearted cartoons. Stories ranged from flashbacks to Vietnam to high-flying action in exotic locales to epic struggles between ninjas and battles with science fiction super-villains. In 2001, Devil’s Due Publishing began their own G.I. Joe series, picking up years after the Larry Hama series had ended and lasting over 130 issues, not including spin-offs.

Now IDW has taken the property and has new plans for their own G.I. JOE comics. But rather than continuing the original series and dealing with years of history, they’ve decided to reboot the entire universe from scratch, re-imagining the world and introducing the players to a brand new audience. And this isn’t just one new series. IDW is actually launching three titles under the G.I. JOE banner: G.I. JOE, G.I. JOE: Cobra and G.I. JOE: Origins. The third title will be written by Larry Hama himself.

The three titles will be edited under the direction of Andy Schmidt, who was Marvel’s editor for the cosmic crossover Annihilation. Schmidt spoke to CBR about the new titles and how they will relate to each other. Although each title will reflect the same people and occasionally reference events featured in the other books, the intention is to keep them separate so that readers can follow just one line if they so wish without feeling like they’re only getting part of a story. Likewise, a story that begins in one will not directly continue into one of the other titles.

Andy Schmidt remarked, “[G.I. JOE] has a large cast and will focus on characters and character beats but it’s more the ‘big action movie’ style title. If you really want to get to know Duke, Stalker and the other JOES, then Origins is the book for you. If you’re looking for more of a suspense-thriller feel then Cobra is the way to go. None of the titles is the lead book. Together they all form a strong foundation." Schmidt added, "Obviously, I’m hoping fans will want to try all three and I think those that do will be very happy, but I don’t want to twist anybody’s arm. Each book can be read on its own, but if you’re reading all three you’re going to get some extra layers."

To kick-start the relaunch, IDW is releasing G.I. JOE #0 this month to the tune of one dollar. "It’s not preview pages," Schmidt assured. "There’s actual story content in the issue, so you can see which one or two or three of the books you want to buy.” (more…)

The Complicated Archaia Studios Press Sale

  • Uncategorized
  • October 9, 2008

petersen1-1211107Over the last few days, there have been reports that Archaia Studios Press was being acquired by Devil’s Due Publishing. Not so, according to an official statement from Mark Smylie, Archaia’s founder. The company will be acquired by Kunoichi, Inc., instead.

Says Smylie, "We’re in the process of being acquired by Kunoichi, Inc., a creative services company based in Chicago that was co-founded and co-run by [DDP President] Josh Blaylock until he exited the company to focus solely on Devil’s Due."

This would explain some of the confusion, as Kunoichi maintains a close relationship with Devil’s Due. Kunoichi has been referred to as DDP’s "sister company." Further, Devil’s Due CEO P.J. Bickett owns Kunoichi as well.

Kunoichi exists to creating new materials for existing properties under contract to companies such as Marvel, Hasbro, and Rockstar Games. They have not, until now, been a publishing concern.

Bickett felt compelled to clarify matters by releasing a statement of his own: “Normally, Devil’s Due Publishing would not comment on unattributed rumors. But, due to the amount of queries we have received about this, we want to set the record straight.

“While DDP and Archaia Studios Press had some initial exploratory conversations, DDP is not acquiring ASP. We are continuing to have conversations with Archaia about the possibilities of working together in some capacity, as we are with many other publishers both big and small.”

Smylie’s statement goes on to say: “While we had some initial conversations with DDP directly, it will actually be Kunoichi that is acquiring us. Further cause for confusion may stem from the fact that we are still in separate talks with DDP about working together on a few opportunities once the Kunoichi acquisition is completed, including a potential publishing partnership of which we are one of several players in the fold. There’ll be more on all of that soon, I hope.
 

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Hal Jordan and ‘The Real Girl’

  • News
  • October 9, 2008

It’s hardly a secret that Warner Bros. is looking to put Green Lantern into the skies next year. Numerous reports have indicated the studio’s interest in developing the DC super-hero project, including Production Weekly’s acknowledgment of the project as in "active development" and numerous reviews confirming that a script exists. In fact, the buzz across the net and at the DC offices is that the script is just "fantastic."

With Hal Jordan set to slip that ring on in the near future, it’s no wonder that casting speculation has taken the internet by storm. Many fans champion Nathan Fillion of Firefly fame. David Boreanaz (Angel, Bones) was considered a frontrunner for the role due to illustrator Brian Murray’s official concept art using the actor as a model. Although the Boreanaz casting has been debunked by numerous sources since, speculation continues.

Latino Review is the latest to join the fun with a new report. According to their sources, the WB wants Ryan Gosling as Hal Jordan. Though just another rumor for now, the Web site has a solid track record of out-scooping studio press releases in the trades. Earlier this year, they broke the news that Jake Gyllenhaal would be Dastan in Prince of Persia a month and a half before Variety released the official announcement. The site also reported on Jason Reitman’s attachment to Up in the Air a day in advance of a studio sanctioned press release.

For now, Gosling’s casting should be taken as a rumor only — but given Latino Review’s history, the actor is likely to be on the studio’s short list at least.

Fans of Green Lantern are likely divided by Ryan Gosling’s potential involvement. Some will point to The Notebook as irrefutable proof that the thespian should have a court restriction against the beloved DC superhero.

On the other hand, Gosling comes from a similar background as Christian Bale, the current Bruce Wayne on film. He’s starred in several indie films such as Lars and the Real Girl, and even gained an Oscar nomination for his role in Half Nelson. It’s hard to deny that Gosling has the chops to defend Space Sector 2814.

Green Lantern focuses on hot-shot test pilot Hal Jordan coming into possession of the Green Lantern power ring, which allows him to do anything within the limits of his imagination and will power. The film is produced by Donald De Line and Andrew Haas, with a script from Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim and Michael Green.
 

Newman’s Own, by John Ostrander

  • News
  • October 9, 2008

I liked Paul Newman. I should’ve hated him; bastard was too damn good looking and should’ve given me an inferiority complex. The fact is I didn’t always like how I looked but what I learned was that he didn’t always like the way he looked, either. Newman felt his looks got in the way of his being an actor, affected the roles he was offered, the roles he wanted to play. He was a character actor trapped in a leading man’s body. That allowed me to identify with him as a person as well as an actor.

Paul Newman died about two weeks back. I expect you heard. He had a long and varied career as an actor and not every film was great. I won’t pretend I’ve seen them all but I do have my favorites among them. While I liked Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting and admired his collaboration with Robert Redford, those films aren’t on my list of faves. Nor is The Hustler or The Color of Money, in both of which he played Fast Eddie Felson. It intrigued me – the idea of portraying the same character 25 years apart but they don’t appeal to me enough personally to make my own list of personal favorites.

As I said in last week’s column, our likes and dislikes about anything – film, comics, food, whatever – can say more about ourselves than about those likes and dislikes. So I’m not sure what this list says about me. What follows is not a critical evaluation of the films or their place in Newman’s body of work. They’re just the ones I like best and the reasons why.

Hombre. 1967. Martin Ritt directed this western adapted from an Elmore Leonard novel. In it, Newman plays John Russell, a white man raised by Apaches. For various plot reasons, Russell winds up on a stagecoach with a varied lot that includes Diane Cilento, Martin Balsam, and Frederic March. The stagecoach gets robbed by a gang led by Richard Boone who is after the money that March, as a crooked Indian agent, has accumulated. Russell foils the robbery, recovers the money, and becomes de facto leader of the others as they try to get out of the desert, pursued by Boone and his gang.

Newman has a great quality of stillness in the movie. His character is capable of sudden and effective bursts of violence but I was also taken with the sense of patient waiting that Newman projected at moments. Very still with little or no body movement, yet he had a sense of attention and focus. He made stillness active.

He’s also wonderfully deadpan and has some great moments in the film as a result. At one point, the stagecoach passengers led by Newman’s Russell are at the top of an abandoned mine. Boone’s outlaws have them cut off and Boone, under a white flag, climbs to the shack to dictate terms. Martin Balsam’s character negotiates and, at the end, Russell quietly tells Boone he has a question. “How are you planning to get back down that hill?” Boone turns tail and flees down the stairs and Russell puts two bullets into him.

That was cold and that was slick and I enjoyed it so much I later stole it and put it into one of the GrimJack stories. Worries me some for what that says about me, but there you go. The character of John Russell definitely influenced the character of GrimJack. I’m not going to tell you it’s a great film but it’s a fave of mine.
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Scott, DiCaprio Explore ‘Brave New World’

  • News
  • October 9, 2008

Ridley Scott and Leonardo DiCaprio are set to adapt Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. The novel, written in 1932, features a dystopian future where society is divided into castes, humans are genetically engineered and learn through sleep technology.

In an exclusive interview with io9, Scott confirms that he’s hard at work on the project. He admits that the material is a "big challenge" because it’s essentially translating the predictions of a visionary.

"They were predictions in a way," Scott says of Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984. "So the Aldous Huxley [novel], literally what is called Brave New World, that’s a very hard adaptation."

As a result, Scott admits that he’s "still struggling" with the script.

"Even with a good writer, he’ll do it and screw up," says the director, reemphasizing just how hard it is to translate the novel onto the big screen.

According to Scott, it was DiCaprio’s production company Appian Way that approached the director with the project. Scott calls the actor "perfect" for the film, and while he doesn’t explicitly say that he’ll appear on screen, it’s incredibly likely. Brave New World is chalk full of interesting male characters, including John the Savage, an outcast from both modern civilization and the primitive society he was born into.

It’ll probably be a while before any further movement occurs on this one, since Ridley Scott is prepping Nottingham and admittedly has "40 things on the go at once." Still, the project is "a very important one" to the director, so hopefully the show will get on the road before too long. In the mean time, pop a soma and relax, because a thoughtful, carefully planned Brave New World is definitely a movie worth waiting for.

Classic ‘R.U.R.’ Restaged in Chicago

  • News
  • October 9, 2008

Chicago’s Strawdog Theatre Company has mounted a new production of Karel Capek’s 1920 play R.U.R.  The seminal science fiction play gave the world the word “robot” (based on the Czech word for laborer) and this will run through October 25.

The play stars Ryan Bollettino, Brennan Buhl, Zachary Clark, Andrew Gebhart, Joe Goldammer, Sara Gorsky, Carmine Grisolia, Jocelyn Kelvin, Nick Lake, Anderson Lawfer, Michaela Petro, Henry Riggs, John Henry Roberts, Noah Simon, and Rebekah Ward-Hays.

The initials stand for Rossum’s Universal Robots. The theatre company’s site says, “Forget clunky metal boxes, these robots are genetically engineered humans with the troublesome parts, like needs and desires, omitted. The men of R.U.R. live alongside their constructs on a remote island, closely guarding their secret formula while supplying the world with all the cheap labor it can stand. It runs like clockwork until a beautiful young robot rights activist arrives via her father’s private boat.

“Shade Murray, director of Strawdog’s Jeff Award-winning Detective Story and Marathon ’33 once again breathes new life into a forgotten gem, a funny and fast-paced character piece that happens to blow the lid off a whole mess of deep metaphysical questions. What is life? What is love? You won’t find out on the web site.”

Tickets cost $20 and performances are Friday & Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 7 p.m.
 

Shuler-Donner Sings ‘Wolverine’s’ Praises

  • News
  • October 9, 2008

Producer Lauren Shuler Donner spoke with Coming Soon about next May’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine and she admitted the film owes a lot to 2001’ Wolverine: Origins miniseries.

“I guess its closer to the first X-Men in tone,” she said, “because it’s a little darker, but there’s a lot of action. It’s his origin story. It’s really good. I’ve been in the editing room the last couple of weeks and I think that it’s good and that audiences are going to like it. But it’s a little darker.

“There’s an X-Men: Origins that some of it is pulled from, and then it’s sort of an amalgamation of some of them. But X-Men: Origins sort of goes back into his young, young past, and we started there.”

She also confirmed that Ryan Reynolds is terrific as Deadpool and she’s eyeing a possible spin-off for the merc with a mouth. “I hope so. I really hope so. He’s so good at it.”

Shuler-Donner showered praise on director Gavin Hood, saying, “I like taking someone out of the indie world and bringing someone into the action world because it grounds the movie. It gives it a reality. It gives it an emotional core, and then you can have as much fun and action in it as you wants.”

Cartoon Network Crows About ‘Clone War’ Ratings

  • News
  • October 9, 2008

It was about time George Lucas got some good news.  After the critical and commercial drubbing his feature-length Star Wars: The Clone Wars received news that the television series debuted to spectacular numbers must have been most welcome.

A Cartoon Network press release declared, “The new Lucasfilm Animation series scored as the most-watched series premiere in network history, according to preliminary data from Nielsen Media Research. The one-hour new series premiere also reigned as the #1 program from 9-10 p.m. among all major kids networks in kids 6-11, kids 2-11, tweens 9-14, teens 12-7 and persons 2+, earning triple-digit increases compared to the same time period last year. The weekly, CG-animated series also attracted the largest tweens 9-14 audience for any premiere telecast of an original series in Cartoon Network’s 16-year history.”

"This is a great start for our new night of fantasy-action-adventure programming," said Stuart Snyder, president and chief operating officer of Turner Broadcasting’s Animation, Young Adults and Kids Media group. "Kids and their parents made it a point to tune in to the amazing storytelling and brilliant animation of Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Clone Wars." "We are looking forward to building on this foundation and are thrilled with this turnout and record numbers for Cartoon Network."

The Secret Saturdays also debuted last week and earned 35% more kids 6-11 and 86% more boys 6-11 than programming that appeared in the same time period in 2007.

An animated, comedy-action series created by Jay Stephens, The Secret Saturdays reveals a family of world-saving adventure scientists, Doc, Drew and Zak Saturday. They live in a hidden base and are part of a network of scientists who protect against all the underlying evil in world. To the Saturdays, ordinary folk-tales aren’t just legends, but real-life mysteries and adventures.

David Cronenberg Discovers Spies

  • News
  • October 8, 2008

David Cronenberg, the director best known for creepy fare such as The Fly and Scanners, is about to change genres.  Variety reports he is in negotiations to direct The Matarese Circle, the political thriller written by Robert Ludlum.

The MGM film would star Denzel Washington and its story is set back when there was still a Cold War. Washington’s American would have to find a way to cooperate with a Russian counterpart to stop a plot aimed at destroying multiple national governments.

Ludlum’s best seller has been adapted by the writing team of Michael Brandt and Derek Haas (3:10 to Yuma). It has been fast-tracked since the studio, headed by Tom Cruise and Mary Parent, acquired the rights in April.

Cronenberg most recently directed the action-packed Eastern Promises.
 

Will Tim Burton Sail Into ‘Pirates 4’?

  • News
  • October 8, 2008

Cinema Blend is reporting that rather than Gore Verbinski, Tim Burton may helm the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean feature for Disney. While the rumor is unsubstantiated, the site values its source.

Additionally, the film may introduce a brother for Captain Jack Sparrow, giving Johnny Depp someone new to play off of. Additional rumors have the story centering on Sparrow’s search for the Fountain of Youth. Geoffrey Rush is also said to be interested in returning to the high seas.

If any of the above is true, we feel it will most certainly refresh the franchise and possibly allow it to sail towards open seas where the possibilities are endless as opposed to getting further tangled in its convoluted mythos. Certainly, replacing Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom as his foils would keep things new.

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