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Robert Downey Jr. to Star in ‘Cowboys & Aliens’?

  • News
  • June 17, 2008

Robert Downey Jr. must have enjoyed his foray into comic book films as Tony Stark in the breakaway success of Iron Man. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Downey is in talks to star in another long-in-development comics property, Cowboys & Aliens.

While the armor-clad Marvel Studios’ film rises above the $500 million mark in ticket sales, Downey is looking at the Western/sci fi mashup from the Platinum Studios comic by Fred Van Lente and Andrew Foley. The property now is at Dreamworks/Universal after bouncing around the studio circuit for about a decade, but now is supposedly set for a 2010 date.

The story centers on an Old West battle between the Apache and Western settlers, including a former Union Army gunslinger named Zeke Jackson (Downey), that is interrupted by a spaceship crashing into the prairie near Silver City, Ariz.

The story draws a parallel between the American imperialist drive to conquer the "savage" Indians with its advanced technology and the aliens’ assault on Earthlings, who must join together to survive the invaders’ attack. …

The most recent draft by "Iron Man" and "Children of Men" writers Hawk Ostby and Mark Fergus clearly hit the right notes, as the project looks to gain its major players quickly.

No word on how this affects plans for the planned Iron Man sequel. As you’ve read here at ComicMix, that one is supposedly set for May 2010, which would mean a crowded plate for Downey.

genius1-200-4505231

Interview: Adam Freeman on ‘Genius’ and Top Cow’s Pilot Season

  • News
  • June 17, 2008

genius1-200-4505231Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman’s first big comics project, last year’s five-issue miniseries The Highwaymen, was one of last year’s biggest surprises — but not for the reasons you might expect.

Despite a massive marketing push by the series’  publisher, Wildstorm, as well as fairly positive reviews of the first issue, in the end the series was widely regarded as a commercial disappointment. After all was said and done, the series’ performance left many figures in and around the industry, including Bernardin himself, wondering what the difficulties experienced by The Highwaymen say about the industry as a whole.

Nevertheless, the pair has persevered, and this week marks the release of Genius, their original story about a 17-year-old girl in South Central Los Angeles who unites the region’s gangs in a war against the L.A. Police Department.

From the Top Cow solicit for the project:

Alexander, Hannibal, Napoleon, Patton. What if the greatest military mind of OUR generation was born in strife, surrounded by violence and combat since birth? When the gauntlet is dropped, the question isn’t "How did 17-year-old Destiny Ajaye unite the gangs of South Central into a killer army and declare war on the LAPD?" No, the question is, "Can anyone stop her?"

This Wednesday, Genius will hit shelves as one of the titles in Top Cow’s "Pilot Season" program, and readers will eventually be able to vote on which of the "Pilot Season" projects becomes an ongoing series with the publisher.

I spoke with Adam Freeman about Genius, where the idea for the story originated and the Top Cow program that once again puts a story he co-created with Bernardin at the mercy of comics fans everywhere.

COMICMIX: Can you tell me about the genesis of Genius? What was the spark that developed into this story?

ADAM FREEMAN: It was an idea that Marc had swimming in his head for a while, but I responded to instantly.  I have always been fascinated with prodigies and savants.  I am not a religious or spiritual person by any means, but the idea that someone — regardless of their walk of life — could be "chosen" to be the best at something is incredibly cool to me.

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Barefoot In The Dark, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • June 17, 2008

51mmwa7t8sl-_ss500_-9903097I don’t know when I first saw an English edition of Barefoot Gen. It was probably sometime in the mid 70s, when I was editing for the modest enterprise that has become the mighty Marvel Entertainment. In those days, a lot of stuff crossed editorial desks and we read most of it, if not all. So: Japanese comics? Sure, I’ll give it a look. It was probably my first experience with manga and I remember feeling a mild taste of cognitive dissonance – a perceived disconnect between subject and form. (I am choosing to ignore, because it’s a bit off-subject, the hybrid of cartooning and illustration that’s most superhero art.)

The subject was grim. Barefoot Gen is the autobiographical tale of a child who witnessed and survived the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. But it was presented in a visual style I would have described as “cartoony.” Like most American pop-cultch consumers, I associated bright, simple, exaggerated drawings – cartoons – with material that was at least supposed to be humorous, and there was nothing remotely funny about Barefoot Gen. It was, and is, a powerful anti-war document and, because it is that, deeply humane.

It’s creator, who did both art and copy, is named Keiji Nakazawa, and Barefoot Gen is his story. He had this to say about it: “People should be told what happened. If you live through something like the A-bomb, you know that war is too horrible not to be avoided at all costs, regardless of the justifications offered for it.”

The work first appeared in 1972 as a serial in a mass market Japanese publication, Shukan Shonon Jampu (and perhaps some kind reader will translate that for us). Later, it migrated to smaller magazines, and later still, it was published in English as a paperback book series. The most recent English iteration appeared in 2004, with an introduction by Art Spiegelman.

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Review: ‘The Joker: The Greatest Stories Ever Told’

This summer is a big one for Batman’s deadliest foe, the Joker, with the deceased Heath Ledger giving an apparently mesmerizing take on the clown prince of crime in [[[The Dark Knight]]].

And just in time comes the latest printing from DC of The Joker: The Greatest Stories Ever Told ($19.99), which offers some of the character’s legendary moments from his debut in 1940 in Batman #1 to last year’s macabre Christmas tale from Paul Dini.

First, lets dispense with the hyperbole of the title. There are some great Joker moments here, but several of the character’s biggest aren’t included. There’s nothing from [[[The Killing Joke]]],[[[ A Death in the Family]]] or [[[Dark Knight Returns]]], for example.

More than anything, this is a great primer on the Joker, charting his characterizations over his six-plus decades of existence as he became quite likely the most recognizable evil-doer in comics.

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Review: In Odd We Trust by Dean Koontz & Queenie Chan

In Odd We Trust
Created by Dean Koontz; Written by Queenie Chan & Dean Koontz; Illustrations by Queenie Chan
Del Rey, July 2008, $10.95

Odd Thomas, in a series of (so far) four novels from Dean Koontz, is a twenty-year-old fry cook in the small desert town of Pico Mundo, California. He has a tough girlfriend – Stormy Llewellyn, orphan and gun-slinging amateur detective – a great way with pancakes, many friends in town, and a secret: he can see the dead. The dead never talk, but they do find ways to communicate with Odd, and to get him to help them.

[[[In Odd We Trust]]] takes place when Odd is nineteen; it’s a prequel to the novels. Very early on, in a scene reminiscent of the great amateur “consulting detectives” stretching back to Sherlock, the local police chief, Wyatt Porter, comes to ask Odd for help. Joey Gordon, a seven-year-old, was killed brutally in a home invasion during the fifteen minutes between being dropped off after school by a neighbor and the arrival of his housekeeper/nanny. The killer left a cryptic note, made up of letters cut out of magazines, but no normal clues.

The police are baffled, as they so often are in stories like this. Sometimes I think the police exist in fiction merely to be baffled while the much smarter and more skilled amateurs do their legwork for them, and then sweep in at the end to do the actual arresting.

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Torchwood Season 3 – Longer and Shorter

  • News
  • June 16, 2008

Well, I guess all the upheavals at the end of the second season of Torchwood sure made fans curious about what’s going to happen next season. The fact is, to steal an award-winning word from the next executive producer of daddy-series Doctor Who, if you blink, you might miss it.

Season three, scheduled to air around January of next year, will consist of one long, continuous story written, at least in part, by creator/producer Russell T. Davies. That’s the good news.

The bad news is, this story will only run five episodes. Given the unpredictability of BBC-TV runtimes, that means as far as 2009 is concerned we’re probably only going to get about four and one-half hours of Torchwood. 

Captain Jack, however, will be playing a prominent role in the last several parts of this season’s Doctor Who, as will Torchwood’s U.N.I.T.-affiliated Doctor Jones. As for the Captain’s appearances in the series of Who specials set for 2009… dare I say it… time will tell.

‘Sarah Connor Chronicles’ Marathon on FOX

  • Uncategorized
  • June 16, 2008

sarah-connor-chronicles-200x-3773270With the second season of the Terminator spin-off television series The Sarah Connor Chronicles kicking off in September on FOX, the crew over at TV Squad tells us that the network will be airing all of the first season episodes this August to get viewers ready for Season Two.

According to TV Squad:

The network is going to run a marathon of the first season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles starting on Sunday, August 10 at 9pm. Then the other episodes from the first season, in order, will air at 9pm on August 11, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 24.

The two-hour second season premiere then airs on September 8 at 8pm.

I caught the first episode of this series and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It appears as if FOX is really banking on this series , so it could be worth the catch-up time before the second season’s premiere. Heck, the more we can do to convince networks that there are alternatives to "Reality" TV programming, the better — and the more we get to see of Serenity star Summer Glau, well, that’s pretty decent, too.

Happy Birthday: Frank Thorne

  • News
  • June 16, 2008

300px-red_sonja_1-6319757Born in 1930, Frank Thorne got his comic book start penciling romance comics for Standard Comics in 1948. He then went on to draw the Perry Mason newspaper strip for King Features and to work on several comic books for Dell, including Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim, and The Green Hornet.

In 1975 Thorne went to work for Marvel, drawing the character Red Sonja for Marvel Feature. He created her distinctive look as the beautiful redheaded barbarian in the chainmail bikini, and was the artist when she moved to her own series. In 1978 Thorne left Red Sonja and created his own warrior-woman comic, Ghita of Alizzar.

Since then he has worked for Fantagraphics, Heavy Metal, Comico, National Lampoon, and others, though he is perhaps best known for the Moonshine McJugs comic he created for Playboy Magazine. In 1963 he won the National Cartoonists Society award, and he has also won both an Inkpot and a Playboy Editorial Award.

Mixed Bag for ‘Incredible Hulk’ Opening

  • News
  • June 16, 2008

The opening weekend results for Marvel’s The Incredible Hulk pretty closely mirrored my experience catching the film on Friday afternoon: The theater wasn’t packed, but everyone had a good time.

According to USA Today, the new Hulk came through with $54.5 million for its first weekend take, which is actually less than Ang Lee’s Hulk took in the opening weekend in 2003 ($62 million). And while critics didn’t especially love the new take on the green goliath (Rotten Tomatoes gives it approval from 64 percent of reviewers), fans seemed to dig the Louis Letterier-Edward Norton combo.

CinemaScore notes the new Hulk earned a very solid A- from viewers, which bodes well for continued success. The 2003 version brought in almost nothing after the first week on the way to becoming a massive flop.

The showing I caught was between half and two-thirds full, and for the most part the audience seemed completely sucked into the movie. The only complaint came after the semi-endless credits when no extra features rolled. For what it’s worth, I enjoyed the flick.

This was also a pretty competitive weekend for movies. According to USA Today ticket sales increased from the same weekend last year, and a string of movies did well. Kung Fu Panda took second with $34.3 million, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening took third with $30.5 million and a couple others were above $13 million.

Doctor Who in Review: Season Four, Episode #7 – The Unicorn and the Wasp

The hit BBC series Doctor Who is now in its fourth season on the Sci-Fi Channel, and since we’re all big fans here at ComicMix, we’ve decided to kick off an episode-by-episode analysis of the reinvigorated science-fiction classic.

Every week, I’ll do my best to go through the most recent episode with a fine-tooth comb (or whatever the "sonic screwdriver" equivalent might be) and call out the highlights, low points, continuity checks and storyline hints I can find to keep in mind for future episodes. I’ll post the review each Monday, so you have ample time to check out the episode once it airs each Friday at 9 PM EST on Sci-Fi Channel before I spoil anything.

Missed a week? Check out the "Doctor Who in Review" archive or check out any of the past editions of this column via the links at the end of this article.

Keep in mind, I’m going to assume readers have already watched the episode when I put fingers to keyboard and come up with the roundup of important plot points. In other words, SPOILER ALERT!

Let’s begin now, shall we?

Season Four, Episode #7: "The Unicorn and the Wasp" (more…)

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