Dreamworks to Adapt ‘The Damned’

Uncategorized
April 15, 2008

damned-9529477 Oni Press just landed a new movie deal, with Dreamworks picking up the rights to the series The Damned.

The comic, created by Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt, is set in Los Angeles during Prohibition and follows a detective who stumbles onto some supernatural weirdness while investigating a case.

The past couple months have been a Hollywood boon for Oni, with things moving forward on Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (likely starring Michael Cera) and Ben Stiller picking up the option on the upcoming The Return of King Doug.

Things have also been pretty busy for screenwriter David DiGilio. He’s been signed up to adapt The Damned for Dreamworks, and he’s already adapting the movie version of his comic book series North Wind, published by BOOM! Studios.

Review: ‘Tônoharu, Part One’ by Lars Martinson

Reviews
April 15, 2008

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Tonoharu: Part One
By Lars Martinson
Pliant Press/Top Shelf, 2008, $19.95

This is another one of those books where it would be dangerous to assume too much, but it’s so tempting to do so. Martinson is a young American cartoonist who “lived and worked in southern Japan as an English teacher for three years.” The main character of this book, Dan, is a new English teacher in the Japanese town ofTônoharu. To make it even more complicated, [[[Tônoharu]]] has a prologue from the point of view of another English teacher in Tônoharu, Dan’s successor, who may or may not be Martinson. From the prologue, we already know than Dan will only last a year in Tônoharu, and that he’ll go home with “that ever-present look of defeat on his face.”

We also know that Dan’s unnamed successor isn’t particularly happy with his life in Tônoharu – the prologue sees him wrestling with the choice of staying for a second year, or bailing out – and the beginning of Dan’s story shows his unnamed predecessor leaving Japan after only a year, along with the predecessor’s only friend, another American teacher. So what is it about Tônoharu – or about Japan in general – that burns out and drives away Americans?

The main part of the story shows Dan feeling isolated and cut off from Japanese society, but he also doesn’t seem to be making much of an effort to connect to it. He has long periods of idleness at the school, which he’s supposed to use to prepare for class, but his language skills don’t get any better, and he’s always badly prepared. He doesn’t have much of a life in Tônoharu, but it’s hard to tell why that is – he says, at one point, that his hobbies are watching TV and sleeping, and he’s apparently honest about that. Honestly, he doesn’t seem to do anything, or to want to do anything in particular – he just wants not to be doing whatever he is doing.

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The Shadow’s Web, by Dennis O’Neil

News
April 15, 2008

With the kind permission of Anthony Tollin and Mike Gold, this week’s column is an adaptation and condensation of an introduction I’m writing for a forthcoming edition of Mr. Tollin’s repackaging of the original Shadow novels. No formal recommended reading this time, but the volume in which the much longer version of what’s below will appear – Shadow #19 – will be on sale in the latter half of June.

Let us, for just a little while, indulge our wish that the great mythic and fictional heroes did and do exist. We are told – and remember, we’re in believer mode – that a diligent historian named Maxwell Grant was privy to the life and thoughts of a mystery man who, though he was probably born Kent Allard often assumed the identity of Lamont Cranston, one of those gentlemen of wealth and leisure who seemed to proliferate in the 30s, the years of the Great Depression, and become almost extinct after World War Two. We are assured that many years ago, while traveling in the Orient, that he acquired certain extraordinary skills – they might even be termed “powers” – and that these aided him in the activities of another of his personae, the relentless and dreaded nemesis of crime known only as The Shadow.

Now, let us entertain a hypothesis. It’s possible, perhaps even probable, that our eastern sojourner, during his investigations, came across reference to Indra’s Net, perhaps while thumbing through a yellowing old volume he found in a bookshop located in a winding Calcutta alleyway. (Would the book have been written in Hindi? Likely. Would Mr. Allard have mastered enough of that language to read it? Again, likely.) Being the ever-curious investigator he had to have been in his salad days, Mr. Allard would have made further inquiries regarding this “Indra’s Net.”

Here is what he might have learned:

In Svarga, the realm of the god Indra, there is a network of gems arranged in such a manner that if a person looks at one of them he sees all the others reflected in it.

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‘Star Blazers’ Superfans Interviewed

News
April 14, 2008

ComicMix pals Michael Pinto and Brian Cirulnick were recently interviewed by the crew at StarBlazers.com, the official website of the Star Blazers animated series, and the conversation is an interesting read even if you’re someone who’s (gasp) not very familiar with the series — like me, for instance.

Along with running the show over at Anime.com and Fanboy.com, Pinto and Cirulnick were also the creators of the first official Star Blazers fan organization and the very first Star Blazers fan film, respectively. How’s that for fanboy cred, eh?

In the interview, Pinto and Cirulnick discuss the ins and outs of the superfan scene, the evolution of fan organizations through the years and how a mutual ~~obsession~~ admiration for a series can turn into a career.

Here, Pinto discusses the "duping parties" that made it possible for American anime fans to get their fix:

I hate to say it but in the early 80s most of our fan activity was trading video tapes from Japan. It’s funny that people talk about illegal downloads as something new, but without tape-trading, anime fandom would never have gotten started in the United States. People would have pen pals from Japan send them tapes and they would makes copies of those for other friends. Being an analogue medium, the quality of the tapes got pretty bad pretty quickly. Most of my early anime memories were of 5th generation VHS tapes, chock-full of static, noise distortion and tracking issues. At many conventions we’d have tape-duping parties where we would daisy-chain VHS decks together to make copies. These sessions would run an entire weekend and were the only source of anime for many fans.

Celebrating Cambodian Creator Séra

News
April 14, 2008

With comics being created throughout the world, it’s all too easy to overlook some of the medium’s best talents. The lack of recognition for Séra, the French-based cartoonist who’s created a collection of graphic novels sketching out tales of the Khmer Rouge.

Like Art Spiegelman and Marjane Satrapi, to name two, Séra looks back on the ugly history of his native land and weaves it into comic book stories (he’s created 12 books). Séra (real name Ing Phouséra) was born in Cambodia and fled for France in 1975, just as Pol Pot took control of the country.

A recent article on TIME magazine’s Web site, takes a look at this largely unknown creator:

Séra started his first graphic novel about Cambodia, Impasse et Rouge — chronicling the years just before the Khmer Rouge — in 1987, five years before Art Spiegelman’s Maus would win a Pulitzer for its famous depiction of the Holocaust and demonstrate that gravitas and the graphic arts were not mutually exclusive. Impasse et Rouge wasn’t published for almost another 12 years. Although the following two titles about Cambodia, L’Eau et la Terre (2005) and Lendemains de cendres (2007), were picked up in fairly quick succession by the major French comic publisher Delcourt, Séra has still not had the international success that "serious" comic books artists like Spiegelman, Daniel Clowes (Ghost World) and Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis) have enjoyed. He teaches drawing by day and works as a night porter at a Paris hotel to get by.

I’ve looked to see if any of his books have been translated to English, but I haven’t found any so far.

Demons of Sherwood: Daring Escapes?

News
April 14, 2008

In today’s brand-new episode of Demons of Sherwood, by Robert Tinnell and Bo Hampton, our heroes have to escape from fire and water.

The monastery burns around them, and not everyone gets out alive. But those that do escape may not be the lucky ones.

Credits: Bo Hampton (Artist), Bo Hampton (Colorist), Bo Hampton (Letterer), Bo Hampton (Writer), Mike Gold (Editor), Robert Tinnell (Writer)

More: Demons of Sherwood

Review: ‘Paul Goes Fishing’ by Michel Rabagliati

Reviews
April 14, 2008

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Paul Goes Fishing
By Michel Ragabliati
Drawn & Quarterly, 2008, $19.95

[[[Paul Goes Fishing]]] is the fourth in a series of semi-autobiographical graphic novels by an illustrator-turned-cartoonist from Montreal named Michel, about an illustrator-turned-cartoonist from Montreal named Paul.

Nosy Parkers, such as myself, will immediately start wondering just how “semi” this autobiography is. Paul and Michel are about the same age, in the same line of work, from the same city, and have the same family details (a wife and one daughter). On the other hand, these semi-autobiographical cartoonists are sneaky – and someone like Ragabliati could also easily have just done a pure autobio comic (there’s no shortage of those). So I’ll refrain from assuming that anything about “Paul” is also true of Rabagliati.

Like the other “[[[Paul]]]” books, Goes Fishing wanders through Paul’s past, with some scenes set when Paul was young (mostly when he’s fifteen and so frustrated with his life that he tries to run away) and some when he’s an adult (mostly in the mid-90s). There’s some narration, in the voice of a contemporary Paul, to organize it all, and explain when each scene is taking place, but the structure is quite fluid, with scenes flowing according to memory or other connections than along purely chronological lines.

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Archaia Studios Press Unveils Upcoming Books

Uncategorized
April 14, 2008

god_machine_cover-8629086 Archaia Studios Press, the New Jersey-based publisher best known for its ongoing Mouse Guard series, just announced a hefty slate of new titles. The company is also putting out a Mouse Guard role-playing game, which was designed in large part by series creator David Petersen.

It’s a diverse bunch, and a sign of ASP’s growth after the success of Mouse Guard and English translation reprints of The Killer. One of the new titles is The God Machine (cover at right), which follows a young man as he tries to save the soul of his recently deceased girlfriend.

In a press release, ASP publisher Mark Smylie said:

Co-publisher Aki Liao, [editor] Joe Illidge, [art director] Pauline Benney, and I have pored over some amazing submissions. And the crop of creators and titles we’ve selected we think not only fit the company’s focus and direction and mission, but will be greatly enjoyed by fans of ASP’s current titles and new readers who we’re sure will jump at these new books we’re so extremely proud to publish.

A complete list of books after the jump…

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Interview: Josh Blaylock on ‘Voltron: A Legend Forged’

Uncategorized
April 14, 2008

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For the record, I’m a child of the giant robot generation. I grew up pondering the life lessons of 1980s cartoon series such as Robotech and Transformers, and formulated complex theories regarding the place of Go Bots and Tranzor Z in the hierarchy of the universe’s massive mechas. Looking back on it now, I’m fairly certain I had the makings of a fairly impressive thesis on the subject of giant robots completed before I was 10 years old.

However, there was always one wildcard in my studies: Voltron.

The 1984 series Voltron: Defender of the Universe featured a giant mecha composed of five smaller lion-shaped robots. Each lion controlled by a young pilot. Voltron and the "Lion Force" pilots defended the universe against a host of threats that often took the form of monsters launched into battle via coffin-shaped shuttles. The forces at play in the series were equal parts magic and science, and the title character’s ever-changing list of powers and abilities called upon during the series’ long run caused me endless frustration in my attempts to rank Voltron alongside his peers.

In 2003, I found myself thinking about Voltron (and humming the series’ theme song) once again when Devil’s Due Publishing began producing comics based on the Voltron series. Despite its highly praised development of the characters and mythos of the Voltron universe (including contributions from noted creators such as Mark Waid, Kaare Andrews and Dan Jolley), the series was cancelled in 2005 without concluding its final storyline.

Nostalgia for the character has endured, however, and it now appears as if 2008 will be another big year for Voltron and the Lion Force. Earlier this year, DDP released the Voltron Omnibus, a collection of the entire DDP run that includes the previously unpublished final issue of the 2003-2005 series. The Devil’s Due crew also announced the July release of Voltron: A Legend Forged, a five-issue miniseries that promises to take readers on "a spectacular quest, 1200 years into the past." The series will be written by DDP President Josh Blaylock, and feature interior art by G.I. Joe: America’s Elite artist Mike Bear.

I spoke with Blaylock about the new Voltron series and its place in the character’s complicated history, and picked his brain about the character’s role in the world of giant robots. DDP also provided ComicMix with new art from the series, including both an inked and full-color version of the first issue’s Tim Seeley cover, as well as an E.J. Su variant cover featuring Voltron in its popular "Lion Force" form. Full-size versions of each cover are posted at the end of the interview.

COMICMIX: First, let me get the most general pair of questions out of the way: Why Voltron and why now?

JOSH BLAYLOCK: It’s been a while since we played with Voltron, but lately there seems to be something in the air. The DVDs are selling like crazy, the Reeboks shoes, the streetwear. All that, combined with the movie buzz, and it seems like a great time to kickstart a new Voltron miniseries, and who knows, maybe more.

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‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ Trailer Leaked Online

Uncategorized
April 14, 2008

april14clone-8600393 Need a Star Wars fix but tired of reading tie-in novels, playing mediocre video games and re-watching the films? Why not whet your appetite with footage from some new adventures in a galaxy far, far away?

Film School Rejects has gotten ahold of the trailer for the upcoming Star Wars: The Clone Wars film, set for release on August 15, 2008. The movie will kick off an animated series on Cartoon Network this fall.

Check out the trailer soon, before the powerful Sith lords of Lucasfilm’s legal department use their dark powers to remove it.

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