This week, I have two fat books about the unlikely adventures of (on one hand) a scarred, secretive, arrogant doctor and (on the other) a self-doubting lawyer who defends the innocent. And since I couldn’t see throwing anyone else in between Black Jack and Phoenix Wright, those two will get the whole column to themselves, in a grand showdown between medicine and law.

Black Jack, Vol. 1
By Osamu Tezuka
Vertical, September 2008, $18.95

Black Jack is reportedly Tezuka’s most popular series among Japanese adults – kids prefer Astro Boy, as you’d expect – but there’s only been one (quickly aborted) attempt to publish it in the US before this. And it’s not like Black Jack is a quick little thing: it ran for ten years in Japan, and totals well over two hundred stories of about twenty pages each. But Vertical now is stepping up to the challenge, and plans to publish Black Jack every other month for three years until they get all seventeen volumes out. It’s an ambitious plan, certainly, but ambition is to be applauded, especially in publishing.

So this book reprints some of the earliest Black Jack stories – it doesn’t explicitly say that all of the stories will be reprinted in order, and several stories have never been reprinting, for various reasons, but these are probably from the beginning. It doesn’t start with an origin: some of these stories fill in bits of Black Jack’s backstory, but he’s in the middle of his career as the book opens, already legendary.

Black Jack is a supernaturally gifted surgeon, capable of amazing and unlikely feats, such as transplanting a brain into a new body or building a body for an intelligent parasitic twin and installing her loose, attached body parts into that body. To be blunt, he does the impossible, generally at least once per story. He’s also an outlaw, unlicensed anywhere in the world though still respected and commanding immense fees. (In these stories, his unlicensed status is mentioned but doesn’t affect the action at all.) (more…)

George A. Romero is hard at work on a new untitled zombie picture, according to Variety. Though long speculated to be working on a sequel to his recent Diary of the Dead, all signs indicate that this upcoming feature is more in line with his previous Dead efforts.

The film "involves inhabitants of an isolated island off the North American coast who find their relatives rising from the dead to eat their kin. The leaders of the island feud over whether or not to kill their reanimated relatives or preserve them in hopes of finding a cure."

Just like a zombie invasion that you don’t see coming until it’s too late, Romero’s actually already deep into filming this new project. The film is fully cast, including Alan Van Sprang, Kenneth Welsh, Kathleen Munroe and others. Paula Devonshire is producing, while Peter Grunwald, D.J. Carson, Ara Katz and Art Spigel are executive producing alongside Romero. Shooting is taking place in Ontario, Canada.

Shortly after Variety‘s announcement, Ain’t It Cool News received a spy report from someone on the set of the new zombie flick, which the Web site is affectionately terming Island of the Dead. The report includes a description of scenes filmed, as well as a few photos.

The spy reports, "What I know about the scenes [I saw] filmed is that they take place while the survivors of a zombie attack are trying to escape an island they are on, and as they run for the ferry it has already departed and they miss the boat so they are forced to confront the zombies that are chasing them."

Sounds like classic Romero, who made his bones with his 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, critically revered as both an exceptional horror film and social commentary. He continued that tradition with Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, then returned to the franchise decades later with Land of the Dead. He broke tradition from his franchise with Diary of the Dead, filmed in a Blair Witch inspired "found footage" style. Romero’s legendary zombie work has inspired remakes, most famously Zack Snyder’s break-out interpretation of Dawn of the Dead.

I’m not a joiner. 

I’m too much of an asshole to belong to any organization. I have no patience for debates when it comes to making a decision. I hate focus groups and polls. I would rather live and die by my own choices without the benefit of a vote.

I know, I know. I told you I’m an asshole. 

Just so I am very clear, when it comes to business I’m all about listening and being a team player unless what’s on the table is so asinine I have to speak up. When I say I’m not a joiner, I’m talking about organizations outside of the work place. Why my distain for “joining?”

One reason could be, when I was a kid, ten years old, my stepfather was having a drunken conversation with me. Yes, a drunken conversation with a ten year old. Look, DON’T YOU DARE JUDGE HIM! Listen, it WAS a weekday – what else was he supposed to do? Get a job? Take care of my sister and me? Let my mother quit one of her three jobs? Don’t be silly and for god’s sake give the man a break.

In his own slurred speech way he was telling me I should join the Boy Scous. Most times I would have known better that to give him a “Is you stupid” smartass come back.

Hey, in a black household you do not talk back to your parents. I’ve made this point before. Super Nanny and Nanny 911 feature NO black families. If I would have tried any of the antics those white kids get away with on the show, I would have been shot.

On this fateful day I forgot the rules of the black household… (more…)

"You’re too Shia, Shia! Hush-Hush, eye-to-eye!"

That’s Shia LaBeouf’s new theme song after this latest incident. The young actor has had a string of bad, painful luck lately that’s left him with some significant injuries. He was arrested in July after an early morning drinking related car crash that left his hand badly injured. There were some rumors that LaBeouf’s hand would never be fully functional again, going so far as to potentially losing a finger. Now recovering from the incident, the actor is back to work on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, his injury having been written into the film’s plot.

Now comes word that LaBeouf’s Final Destination-inspired luck has followed him to the Transformers set. According to TMZ, the troubled actor was injured by a prop on the set, cutting his face just below the eyebrow. After the injury was stitched, Shia hopped back on set and resumed filming. What a champ.

You know, it’s kinda like being lactose intolerant: eventually, you just live with the fact that dairy’s gonna give you the runs. Poor Shia’s gotta live with the fact that he’s always going to get beat up or otherwise publicly embarrassed. Trouble clings to this guy like a freakin’ symbiote. Still, it’s a small price to pay for hanging with Indiana Jones and Optimus Prime.

As we previously mentioned, we printed special editions of Grimjack: The Manx Cat, Jon Sable Freelance: Ashes of Eden, and the Harvey-nominated EZ Street for this year’s Baltimore Comic-Con, limited to a print run of 100 for each title. And just as quickly, there were people asking if they were going to be available if they couldn’t get to the show.

The answer is yes– we’re now selling the remaining copies here. GrimJack and Sable are priced at $25 each, EZ Street sells for $35. Just click on the buttons below to add the books to a PayPal shopping cart. We accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, debit cards, and PayPal.

We have very few copies left, so once they’re gone, they’re gone.