Tagged: Marvel Comics

Stan Lee and Hioryuki Takei’s “ULTIMO” Manga

  • News
  • August 6, 2008

Attention, true believers! Next month’s issue of manga magazine Shonen Jump will feature the premiere of Stan Lee and Hioryuki Takei’s Ultimo, which was announced back in April during New York Comic Con.

While the series is old news for readers in Japan (the issue has already been out for a few months over there), North American readers will get their chance to pick up a copy of the debut story in September.

Here’s what to expect from the series, according to the press release (which is posted after the jump):

High above Farmless City, citizens are stunned by the sudden appearance of two floating figures. Are they human boys, monolithic robots, or something much more strange? As the battle ensues between them, destruction and devastation falls on the hapless city. One figure is Vice, and seems to be as evil as his name implies. The other is Ultimo, intent on trying to stop Vice from wreaking more havoc. But who are Vice and Ultimo really? Where did they come from? A new mystery begins with the fate of the world possibly hanging in the balance!

My favorite part of the PR? The quote from Stan Lee about the project that is so very, well… Stan Lee. Check it out:

“Wow! This is just what I’ve been waiting for!” says an excited Stan Lee. “For the very first time I’m able to create superheroes in the fantastic Japanese manga style thanks to my lucky partnership with the great Hiroyuki Takei. What a kick it’ll be to join Hiroyuki-san in offering brand new, action packed stories to an army of readers in both the Eastern and Western worlds!”

Can’t you just hear him saying it in your head? Keep an eye out for the September 2008 issue of Shonen Jump for the first chapter of Ultimo. (more…)

San Francisco Media Examines the New X-Men HQ

  • News
  • August 6, 2008

SFGate, the website for the San Francisco Chronicle, has put together a pretty interesting analysis of the recent relocation of the X-Men from Westchester County, NY, all the way out to the West Coast in X-Men #500.

According to X-Men Editor (and Bay Area native) Axel Alonso, San Francisco’s often controversial status as a "sanctuary city" made the move long overdue for Marvel’s most persecuted superteam.

"Anyone who looks at the X-Men, the analogy is right there: If you’re different in any way due to race or sexual orientation or just being nerdy, there’s an X-Men character for you. They’re about being different and finding strength in that weakened position."

In order to get accustomed to basing the team’s adventures in the new city, Marvel staffers will be brushing up on their West Coast savvy in the coming months.

Marvel Comics artists will be visiting San Francisco frequently to get a feel for the fashion, architecture and even the way residents walk and talk. There are no cable cars in the first issue, but the artists did include a KRON TV news truck and a panel where the iconic mutant Wolverine walks through Noe Valley. The heroes make their base in the concrete bunkers beneath the Marin Headlands and join the protest of a controversial art installation at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

While Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada hesitated to comment on the permanency of the X-Men’s new home, the article goes on to provide a nice roundup of parallels between the mutant superteam and the real-life groups that have found sanctuary in San Francisco over the years.

“The Stand” Trailer Premieres on Marvel.com

Marvel.com recently posted a new video "trailer" for their upcoming five-issue series based on Stephen King’s The Stand. While I’m not sure how I feel about the whole movie-style "trailer" as a promotional tool for comics, the video does show some previously unseen art from the series. I was really impressed with the way the two previous King stories were handled by the Marvel crew (Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born and Dark Tower: The Long Road Home), so I have high hopes for this project.

The Stand: Captain Trips #1, written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa with art by Mike Perkins, goes on sale September 10.

You can also read an interview with Aguirre-Sacasa about the project on Marvel, as well as a video interview with Perkins. Both are fairly standard promotional material, but worth the time for anyone interested in the publisher’s latest collaboration with Stephen King.

Marvel Fashion Show at Comic-Con

  • News
  • August 3, 2008

I’m not sure what to make of the "Marvel Fashion Show" event held during San Diego Comic-Con. I didn’t attend the event, and now that I think of it, I’m surprised I haven’t heard anyone express an opinion about it one way or another.

All I know is that Marvel.com just posted photos and a video from the event… and that provides a nice opportunity to open up discussion and hear what people think about it.

What do you think about Marvel’s superhero fashion show, ComicMix readers? Let us know in the comment section of this post.

Universal Studios Options “2 Guns”

  • News
  • August 1, 2008

twoguns_uni_press-00-8589552Boom! Studios announced today that Universal Studios and Wanted producer Marc Platt have optioned the Steven Grant graphic novel 2 Guns for big-screen adaptation. Boom! co-founders Andrew Cosby and Ross Richie are attached to produce via their Boom Entertainment banner.

2 GUNS was created and written by Steven Grant, a veteran comic book scribe well known for developing Marvel Comics’ THE PUNISHER into a franchise character. Story follows two thieves targeting a mob bank – unknown to either, they’re both undercover agents. They pull off their heist, only to find out they’ve stolen cash from a CIA black bag operation, not the mob, and are now in over their heads. Project is targeted to be a throwback to classic 80s buddy movies in the vein of LETHAL WEAPON and 48 HOURS, but with a modern spin. Grant is well known to comic book fans for his online Comic Book Resources column Permanent Damage as well as his work on the Dark Horse Comics character "X" and the Marvel series X-MAN.

Boom! is currently posting pages from 2 Guns on their website as part of the publisher’s free webcomic initiative.

The full press release is posted after the jump.

 

(more…)

SDCC: What if Grant Morrison Met Stan Lee?

  • News
  • July 25, 2008

stanlee-1939755Here’s a bizarre bit of "Only in San Diego." Grant Morrison and Stan Lee agreed to partner on a new superhero… Let that soak in.

We’ll see if anything comes of the planned partnership, which came about during a panel featuring the two creators at which they discussed their work with Virgin comics. They also talked up some existing work, including Morrison’s MBX animated shorts. CBR reports:

After a short delay, the panel kicked off with a quick video — an electronic press kit prepared by Virgin — giving a glimpse of Grant Morrison’s "MBX." "MBX," a series of animated shorts, will launch online later this year, and the video showed some behind-the-scenes footage of the motion capture technology and even a glimpse of the characters in action. The characters, based on Hindu mythology but re-imagined by Morrison for the 21st century, fought robots on what looked like a post-apocalyptic landscape. With their energy bows and laser whips, the fierce combatants held off the mechanized swarm. …

Stan Lee, when asked what drew him back to writing comics, said it was "the idea of coming to Virgin and working with new artists on new projects. It’s like the early days at Marvel to dream up something brand new. It’s exciting and I can’t wait to get started."

Then Lee added, "of course — to compete with someone like this," referring to Morrison, "I wouldn’t have been so eager if I had known."

Superheroes Boost Hat Sales

  • News
  • July 19, 2008

Back in the day, it was the cool thing to have a New Era cap of a sports team. I had one of the Chicago Bulls.

That trend has fallen off, though, and New Era is coming back by making an array of caps featuring not athletes but superheroes. The company previously had a deal with Marvel, but now they’re working with DC, as of this week.

Further evidence that comics is the "in" thing, I suppose.

Part of this latest comics push is connected to this weekend’s release of The Dark Knight, the new Batman movie. Over at New Era, they’re running a special promotion for the flick.

One can only wonder if people who jump on the superhero apparel bandwagon are also jumping into comics.

gargoyles-t-shirt-2166293

Interview: Greg Weisman Talks ‘Gargoyles’

  • News
  • July 17, 2008

gargoyles-t-shirt-2166293When I was younger, there was a Disney cartoon that my friends and I loved and which impressed our parents with its maturity and layered story-telling. The series was called Gargoyles, and it told the story of a clan of warrior creatures from 10th Century Scotland who are brought to modern-day New York City via magical manipulation. Led by the noble gargoyle Goliath, the creatures find themselves to be strangers in a strange land, forced to hide while trying to find their new place in the 20th century. Soon enough, they wind up becoming superheroes, protecting the same humans who either fear them or don’t believe they exist.

Although the series lasted only two seasons (followed by the short-lived Goliath Chronicles series, which is considered apocryphal), its fan base remains extremely loyal — so much so, in fact, that a convention for Gargoyles fans, called the Gathering of the Gargoyles, has been held each year for more than a decade now. In recent years, we’ve seen much of the television series finally released on DVD, and Slave Labor Graphics has begun publishing an ongoing Gargoyles comic book series and spin-off miniseries, Bad Guys, headed up by series creator Greg Weisman and picking up where season 2 left off.

I spoke with Weisman (who also serves as story editor for the new Spectacular Spider-Man animated series) during the most recent Gathering of the Gargoyles event, and we chatted about the clan of winged Scottish warriors that he created so long ago and what the future holds for them. 

COMICMIX: So, we’re at the 12th annual Gathering of the Gargoyles convention. You have the new comic book series from SLG and the Bad Guys spin-off coming out now. You’re even talking about future spin-offs. All of this says there’s a decent fan base. So what’s happening that we still only have the first 26 episodes of season 2 on DVD?

GREG WEISMAN: Well, there’s a lot of turnover at Buena Vista Home Entertainment. You’ll have people there who are interested in the project and then you’ll have new people come in who aren’t so much. The ugly truth of it is that Season One sold very well, and the Season Two, Vol. 1 DVD did not sell so well. Even if, ultimately, it sold as well as the first season, we sort of lost Disney’s attention. So we need to get their attention all over again, and the best way to do that is by making sure that we continue to sell the DVDs that exist, show them that the comics are selling well. Gargoyles is SLG’s best-selling comic. (more…)

Marvel’s Tom Brevoort Disses DC

  • News
  • July 14, 2008

Safe to say there isn’t a lot of love lost between Marvel and DC these days, with that writers’ spat over Secret Invasion and Final Crisis, then rumors that DC pulled out of an awards ceremony over a Marvel joke.

Now over at Marvel’s Cup o’ Joe column at MySpace, editor Tom Brevoort has gone straight middle school on the other New York comics giant. In addition to previewing some Secret Invasion pages, Brevoort writes:

I want to announce that I’m not at all interested in replacing Dan DiDio at DC after he is booted three weeks ago, and I haven’t taken many secret, high-powered meetings with key DC and Warner’s executives, who’ve long admired my great success with Civil War and Secret Invasion and New Avengers and so forth. Dan’s doing an excellent job over there, and I’m sure I couldn’t raise their market share by 10%, 15% or 20%. Despite the fact that many top-selling, exclusive Marvel creators have called me up in response to the rumblings to let me know that they’d love to work on a DC project for me if I was running things over there and begging me to consider it, I’m not remotely intrigued by the possibility. If called, I will not answer; if I answer, I will not parley; if I parley, I will not accept the job; and if I accept the job, I will not work very hard. So there’s no truth to the wildfire speculation that links me at the hip to that position, and makes me the obvious next choice to sit in that chair. Just to make that all perfectly clear.

Ouch. I’m sure it’s all in good fun for Brevoort or Marvel, but that has to sting for DC, which has had some serious struggles lately. And, as someone who was at Heroes Con watching DiDio as those rumors came to a head, let’s just say he didn’t look like a happy guy.

Are Marvel and DC still playing softball against each other? If so, this year I’d watch out for the cleats.

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