Tagged: Marvel Comics

First Look at ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ #1

  • News
  • February 13, 2008

As we mentioned a while back, Marvel’s cosmic superteam series Guardians of the Galaxy is returning this June, featuring a lineup of "Annihilation" storyline survivors and some yet-to-be-named characters from the space-faring side of the Marvel Universe.

IGN has the first look at the cover to Guardians of the Galaxy #1 by Clint Langley, as well as short interview with editor Bill Rosemann, the architect of much of the publisher’s recent success in space-based titles. Given the success of Nova, Wraith and the overall "Annihilation" arc, the next step in developing the team-based story of Guardians, it seems, was a no-brainer:

IGN Comics: When gathering your creative team for this series, how did you go about selecting your writers and artists – Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Paul Pelletier and Clint Langley?

Rosemann: Given the vision and velocity they brought to Nova and Conquest, Dan & Andy (a.k.a. DnA, a.k.a. They Who Must Not Be Named) were the go-to guys to continue the cosmic action on full throttle. And while Paul Pelletier was kicking butt on Nova – just wait until you see issues #11 and #12 – we all realized he had the perfect mix of eye-candy and grit to launch us out of the stargate. As for Clint Langley, people are still talking about his Wraith covers – and he’s the guy to bring that "gamer" feel to Marvel.

Makes perfect sense to me!

Remembering Archie Goodwin

  • News
  • February 9, 2008

Blog@ guest columnist Tim O’Shea notes that March 1 will be the anniversary of the passing of comics legend Archie Goodwin, and writes at length about the editor and his legacy.

While editor-in-chief of Marvel from 1976 to 1978, he was credited in the late 1970s with securing the publishing rights for Star Wars. Given how successful Marvel is these days–making movies out of their own characters and such–securing Star Wars may not seem like that big of a deal. But back in a 2000 interview with CBR, Jim Shooter said: “If we hadn’t done Star Wars … well, we would have gone out of business. Star Wars single-handedly saved Marvel… ”

 

What Makes a Successful Character?

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  • February 7, 2008

Stan Lee and Marvel Comics Senior VP of Sales and Marketing David Gabriel weigh in on why certain characters succeed and others don’t in a recent article on Forbes.com.

After taking a few undeserved jabs at Quasar, the space-faring Marvel hero created in 1978 and recently rejuvenated by a new miniseries, the article gets down to brass tacks and talks to Lee about what makes a superpower success story.

"I’m not sure I have the full answer, but my guess would be in many cases it’s just the quality of the writing, or the artwork or whatever," Lee said.

"For example, take Sherlock Holmes. There have been millions of detective stories over the years. Many of them are forgettable. Somehow Sherlock Holmes has endured, mainly because no one could write a detective story as brilliantly as (Arthur) Conan Doyle, and nobody could come up with a character as interesting and flawed as Sherlock Holmes."

And what did Gabriel, one of the marketing gurus behind all of the recent Captain America hub-bub, have to say?

Gabriel said it’s tough pushing some books on a consistent basis. People in his business have the blockbuster movies and videogames to thank for bolstering demand. With the exception of the diehard fans, this is what gets people into the 3,500 or so comic book shops nationwide these days. Slap the death and resurrection of a flagship character in there, and you’ve got a surge in the franchise.

Well, there you go. If they just killed off Quasar, Marvel would have a hit on their hands… right?

 

Peter David on ‘Dark Tower: The Long Road Home’

  • News
  • February 6, 2008

The subject of Marvel.com’s weekly interview this time around is Peter David, co-writer of last year’s Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born and its upcoming sequel, Dark Tower: The Long Road Home.

According to the Long Road Home interview, the sequel picks up where its predecessor left off… with a slight twist: Roland, the main character, is effectively out of commission:

Marvel.com: Roland’s in a coma—how are Alain and Cuthbert, the other members of the Ka-Tet, responding to the Big Coffin Hunters chasing them while they’re trying to get Roland’s body safely back to Gilead?

Peter David: Well, not to sound flip, but they’re responding in the way that one would expect: They’re running like hell. Their job at this point is to survive and return home to tell of everything and everyone they’ve encountered. Goals don’t get much simpler than that.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the series is worth buying simply for the beautiful work of artists Jae Lee and Richard Isanove – the great story is just a bonus. Marvel.com has posted some of the art from Long Road Home with the interview

The first issue of the five-issue miniseries hits shelves Feb. 27.

 

Roger Corman’s ‘Fantastic Four’ Movie Climax

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  • February 4, 2008

Science-fiction fan site io9 has posted a video clip in their "Found Footage" section featuring the climax of 1994’s live-action "Fantastic Four" film, which Roger Corman produced and Marvel Comics spent heaps of money to hide from the public.

Okay, I’ve never seen the full film, but I’m quite certain its depiction of Ben Grimm, The Thing, will live on in my nightmares. Oh, and check out the animation used in the "Johnny Storm flying off to stop the Destructo Ray" sequence – it’s wonderfully cheesy.

io9 has more on the background of the film’s production, as well as some of its more questionable plot choices (an angry space leprechaun, anyone?):

How did this disaster happen? A German production company owned the rights to make a Fantastic Four movie, but was unable to raise the $40 million it needed before the rights were due to expire. So the company turned to Roger Corman, who said he could make the movie cheap and quick. … At $1.4 million, this movie had a huge budget compared to a usual Corman spectacle. After the film was completed, Marvel paid a few million to suppress it. The team worked in secret to complete post-production on it, but then Marvel ordered all prints destroyed. So it’s a minor miracle that you’re able to suffer through this clip.

 

Capt. Marvel and Serial Retro-Mania, by Michael H. Price

  • News
  • February 3, 2008

 

515n0admfrl-_aa240_-6397917Apart from some chronic bouts of concentrated cliffhanger enthusiasm in visits with the pioneering Texas cartoonist-turned-fine artist Frank Stack, I haven’t paid a great deal of attention in recent years to the extinct form of Hollywood filmmaking known as serials, or chapter-plays.
 
I’ve overcome that neglectful tendency lately with an assignment to deliver a foreword for IDW Publishing’s The Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, Vol. 4 (due in print by March 25), which covers a stretch of 1936–1937 and thus coincides with the early-1937 release of the first Dick Tracy serial by Republic Pictures Corp. George E. Turner and I had covered the Republic Tracy in our initial volume of the Forgotten Horrors books – but a great deal of information has come to light during the nine years since that book’s last expanded edition.
 
The transplanting of Tracy from the newspapers’ comics pages to the big screen figures in an earlier installment of this ComicMix column. So no point in re-hashing all that here, or in spilling any fresher insights that will appear in the IDW Tracy edition.
 
Anyhow, I had expected that these strictly-research refresher screenings of Republic’s Dick Tracy and Dick Tracy Returns and so forth would bring on an attack of Serial Burnout Syndrome – but no such. If anything, the resurrected Tracy cliffhangers have stoked a level of interest that I hadn’t experienced since I had been granted my first looks at the Republic serials via teevee in 1966. (Those attractions were feature-lengther condensations, roughly half or less the running time of a theatrical serial, prepared expressly for broadcast syndication, and re-titled to compound the confusion: 1936’s The Undersea Kingdom, for example, hit the tube as Sharad of Atlantis.)
 
I had wondered aloud while comparing notes recently with Frank Stack, whose lifelong fondness for the serials influences his own approach to storytelling, as to how Dick Tracy in particular could have adapted so brightly to movie-serial form – given that Republic’s adaptation had altered many key elements of Chester Gould’s comic strip. Frank’s lucid reply:
 

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‘Iron Man’ Superbowl Promo Peek

Marvel.com has posted a screencap from this weekend’s much-hyped "Iron Man" trailer scheduled to air during the Superbowl. The screencap shows Tony stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) testing a new suit.

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They also promise to post the full trailer on Marvel.com immediately after it goes on the air, just in case you were in the kitchen getting more chips when the promo appeared.

You can see a full-size version of the image on Marvel.com.

 

Marvel and Dark Horse: Winning the MySpace War?

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  • February 1, 2008

Now here’s a story you don’t see every day: ComicBookResources looks at who the highest-profile comic publishers are on MySpace and compares the strategies each publisher is using to climb the mountain of online social networking environments.

According to CBR, Top Cow has been generating a lot of buzz lately due to its "Pilot Season" promotion that asks MySpace users to vote on several recent miniseries and pick which one will ge its own ongoing series. However, it’s Marvel and Dark Horse Comics that reign supreme in the MySpace world, thanks to a variety of clever marketing strategies and online tie-ins to their titles.

As for DC Comics, well, it appears as if a "divide and conquer" approach is only good for a "divided we fall" result in the world of MySpace.

DC Comics, who welcomed 835 friends to its profile, slipped by its sister DC Nation page and now sits fifth with 16,227. With the two profiles combined, the total leaps to 32,231, which would place the publisher third behind Dark Horse and Marvel (42,513). But with DC split between two profiles, manga heavyweight TOKYOPOP takes third with 18,956 friends.

 

Previewing ‘Dark Tower: The Long Road Home’

  • News
  • January 31, 2008

For those readers who enjoyed Marvel’s first foray into Stephen King’s Dark Tower mythos, Marvel.com has posted a peek at the upcoming sequel to Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born, titled Dark Tower: The Long Road Home.

Plot-wise, The Long Road Home appears to pick up where The Gunslinger Born left off, and writers Robin Furth and Peter David continue to script the miniseries along with artists Jae Lee and Richard Isanove. Marvel Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada will once again provide the occasional cover.

The plot, according to Marvel.com:

With the Big Coffin Hunters on the trail of Roland and his ka-tet Cuthbert and Alain, plus visions of Susan’s death dancing in Roland’s head, what else could go wrong? Well…Roland’s in a coma and the people who burned Susan are determined to make him their next victim!

The first series, Gunslinger Born, remains one of the few projects I would recommmend picking up for the art alone, as it includes some gorgeous work by Lee and Isanove. The fact that it also contains an interesting, compelling story by David and Furth is just a bonus.

According to Marvel PR, The Long Road Home hits shelves at "12:01 AM, March 5" – so expect a midnight release event on March 4, much like the one that occurred when the first series was launched.

 

Video: Joe Quesada on The Colbert Report

  • News
  • January 31, 2008

As you might have already heard, Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada was a guest on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report this week.

Just as many readers predicted, the topic of discussion was the ascension of former Captain America sidekick Bucky Barnes to official superhero status – and the new wielder of Cap’s red, white and blue shield. Apparently, Stephen Colbert was under the impression he was next in line to be Captain America.

Holy awkward situation, Bat-… Wait, wrong publisher…

Anyways, here’s a video of the segment, just in case you missed it:

 

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