We seemed to watch a lot of “Draw My Life” videos this past year, so we felt it was appropriate to recap our 2014 with a white board and some dry erase markers. In under 3 minutes, we quickly doodle this year’s top movies, tv shows, books & comics. We also draw our favorite Con experiences, the pop culture headlines that stuck with us, and the best hair of the year (belonging to Blythe from IDW’s Littlest Pet Shop Comics)! Lots of wishes for a fabulous 2015, everyone!
This week the Tweeks are giddy over the release of the third volume of John Allison’s Bad Machinery. In Bad Machinery: The Case of the Simple Soul, the kids from Tackleford, England attempt to solve some wacky mysteries (barn fires for the boys and a troll make-over for the girls). Already big fans of the series (watch their review of the 1st two volumes!), Maddy & Anya couldn’t help getting silly over this new release from Oni Press. It’s full of LOLs over trolls.
The film adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Oni Press series Scott Pilgrim begins shooting this fall for a 2009 release. While Michael Cera (Juno) has been attached to star as Scott, Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Live Free or Die Hard) is set as Ramona V. Flowers.
Shaun of the Dead’s Edgar Wright is on board to direct the film, formally titled Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, from the screenplay by Michael Bacall and Wright.
The series consists of six black and white digest-sized graphic novels and tells of 23 year-old Scott’s quest to vanquish Ramona’s evil ex-boyfriends to win her heart. Starting in 2004, four of the projected six volumes are currently in print.
Winstead told Moviehole, “Yeah! It’s going to be really cool. I’m such a fan of Edgar’s — I can’t believe I’m going to be involved with it. I’m extremely excited about it. I actually just started Kung-Fu training for it today! I’m hoping to be pretty bad-ass by the end of it.”
Variety is reporting that the Oni Press graphic novel Julius, written by Antony Johnston with art by Brett Weldele, is the latest project optioned for feature film treatment. According to the report, Mandalay Pictures has purchased the rights to Julius, with F. Gary Gray (Friday, Be Cool) named as director.
Mandalay prexy Cathy Schulman said that Gray "has a vision for this adaptation that will satirize obsessive consumerism while providing a thrilling ride for audiences."
Eric Gitter of Closed on Mondays Entertainment, the producing arm of Oni Press, will produce; Oni’s Peter Schwerin and Joe Nozemack exec produce. Schulman, David Zelon and Jonathan Krauss will oversee the project for Mandalay.
Confession time, folks: I’ve never even heard of Julius. However, with the rate at which projects are being released and optioned these days (with some projects optioned well before they’re released), this has become a far more frequent occurrence with me. Has anyone else out there read this one and/or feel inclined to comment on it?
Last year’s excellent Vasilis Lolos story Last Call looks to be the latest comic-to-movie acquisition, as Variety reports that Universal Pictures has bought up the rights to the Oni Press project.
"The Last Call," written and illustrated by Vasilis Lolos, centers on two teens on a joyride who get hit by a train — an interdimensional soul carrier — and find themselves on a quest to solve a mystery that will allow them to return to their regular lives. Series debuted last year.
Evan Spiliotopoulos, who most recently penned "The Box" for Fox, is adapting the series for the screen.
Last Call is the fourth Oni project to receive such attention from Hollywood, with Scott Pilgrim, Leading Man and Resurrection also optioned over the last few years.
(via The Beat)
From V.T. Hamlin in the 1920s and Etta Hulme during the mid-century, through the Superman books of Kerry Gammill in times more recent, Tarrant County, Texas, has long yielded a wealth of storytelling artistry to the comics industry at large.
An ambitious new representative of that regional-breakout scene is graphic novelist Ian Shaughnessy, of Arlington, Texas. Shaughnessy’s books for Portland, Oregon-based Oni Press – including an edgy comedy-of-errors called Shenanigans, with the Canadian illustrator Mike Holmes – bespeak a childhood fascination with comics, filtered through a lifelong love of language and an interest in taking the words-and-pictures medium to provocative literary levels more commonly associated with the present day’s independent filmmaking sector.
“I find myself writing under the direct influence of Billy Wilder,” says Shaughnessy, 24, invoking the name of a great screenwriter-director whose career spanned from 1929 into the 1980s. “I discovered Wilder during the 1990s with The Apartment [1960], then with Double Indemnity [1944], and found myself very inspired – in a lasting way.
“With Shenanigans, I found myself attempting to honor the spirit of Billy Wilder – that mastery that he had of romantic tensions, with finding the humor in awkward situations – as a key influence.”
Any such talent needs a practical springboard. With V.T. Hamlin, the creator of a famous comic strip called Alley Oop that has survived him by many years, the springboard was a cartooning job at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Hamlin spent much of the 1920s at the daily paper, generating such local-interest attractions as a serialized feature about a formidable minor-league baseball club, the Fort Worth Cats. (A retrospective collection of Hamlin’s Oop-prototype Panther Kitten cartoons is in preparation, along with an earlier Hamlin gag strip called The Hired Hand, whose booklet edition has been out of print since the 1920s.)
For Etta Hulme, the Star-Telegram’s signature opinion-page cartoonist since 1972, an early breakthrough lay in a post-WWII comic-book series about a cowboy critter named “Red” Rabbit. Graphic designer and Web publisher Kerry Gammill spent the 1980s and earlier ’90s as an illustrator with Marvel and DC, then moved into motion-picture conceptual art on such productions as 1998’s Blues Brothers 2000 and 1999’s Storm of the Century.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
Stephen Colbert, we have your writer for “The Chronicles of Amber”!
January 20, 2023
The Law Is A Ass #460: Those “For Life” Sentences Are Nonsense
February 24, 2022
