Secret Avengers by Brubaker and Deodato Jr? I want more adjectives dammit! Avengers Academy won’t be enough, I want Preppy Avengers Academy!!

So what else has been happening this week? Oh yes.

I broke out the Young Justice League cartoon news, and thought that, wow, that was going to be my biggest story of the week. And combined with a great Vampirella shot from Joe Jusko, a SFW Batporn trailer, and Jim Shooter’s affidavit against DC Comics and Grant Morrison gave the site its biggest day’s traffic to date.

I emphasise to date.

Because the next day I ran a little story regarding a planned Watchmen spinoff comic book project at DC Comics. And boom. A number of sites followed it up, spinning the story as Watchmen movie sequel story (which it wasn’t) but at least they almost all linked back. As did Nikki Finke when she pointed out how wrong the movie aspect was. And the comics creators were talking about it too…

Adding the return of Spider-Girl to her own monthly book, Brendan McCarthy taking Paradax and more to Hollywood and that Olivia Munn was legally threatening comic shops was just gravy.

You know, any other week, the exclusive script review of NBC’s The Cape would have been our biggest story. This week it didn’t crack the top ten.

So what else? I previewed Batman And Robin and Nemesis nicely, looked at voting revelations at Angoulême, got details of Bill Murray in Ghostbusters 3, noted the return of Josh Hoopes, asked if Alan Moore was on Lost, talked up Jen Contino, clarified a Joe Casey interview, gave away Fall Out Toy Works for free and ran a swipe file on myself.

I also talked up he return of Fell, Neil Gaiman’s confirmation he was writing Who, iPad reaction from software developers, Vertigo movie possibilities, and may have plugged Chase Variant and Rob Liefeld’s chase variant cover for… Chase Variant.

And I welcomed new columnist and comic shop employee Nevs Coleman to the Cool to replace Alex De Campi and joined Adi Tantimedh. More from Nevs tomorrow!

Thank you servers. You did well. High five!

(Note to self – never attempt to high five a server. Ow.)

Well, today I received a leaked copy of the script for that pilot. So, you know, obviously there are spoilers going in at this point, but there won’t be many, I’ll keep them restricted to general discussion, and I won’t majorly spoil the plot’s twists apart from the general set up stuff.

This first episode sees our protagonist, Vince Faraday, honest cop with a family in a city beset by corruption, dealing with a political assassination threat from a mysterious figure known as Chess. Vince is also considering a move to a new private police operation that intends to take over the city’s police force operation. Naturally we discover that the private police force are just as corrupt, if more so, than the existing force. We’ve all seen Robocop, right? And of course, organised crime and political assassins all link in together, and the conspiracy ends up framing Vince for the very murders he’s been investigating.

So after a few more conspiratorial shenanigans, the world believes Vince is dead, as do his family and even those who betrayed him and hunted him down. So naturally Vince has to dress up in a costume and go out and enforce some one-on-one justice with fists and stuff, just like in his kid’s comic book.

Okay, it’s not quite that simple. And The Cape’s central conceit is quite a neat one. That Vince becomes a superhero, The Cape, whose secret identity is the villain he’s now been forced to become – and the villain’s secret identity is that he’s a heroic ex-cop. Vince is trapped in a world not of his choosing by circumstances out of his control, he is left trying to do the right thing under very difficult circumstances.

What we’re getting here is the Trapped Man scenario played out with superhero tropes. Most popular in the eighties with The A Team and Knight Rider, there are also cues here back to The Spirit, The Hulk TV show, The Shadow and The Phantom… the world thinks he’s dead, his reputation is destroyed, he fights crime with crime in an impossible battle to put right what once went wrong. But he’s not alone.

There’s the blogger reporter called Orwell sending secret information, the carnival of crime that take Vince in and become his entourage, there are crocodile men, trained racoons and even a fictional location, Palm City, just like the DC comics. And a whole state stucture to be taken down. It’s all a bit V For Vendetta, without the planning, style or elegance – it’s more a bludgeoning, well-aimed force.

Now this is just a script, many a scene can change between typewriter and broadcast, but as it stands it is full of the kind of characters and scenarios familiar to those who saw The Dark Knight or Spider-Man movies, but kept off the small screen since, well, the sixties Batman TV show. Remarkable, ridiculous costumed characters doing remarkable things, following a plan of attack, and using a city as their game board.

It’s a game of chess.

I mean the dialogue is fairly dumbed down, there’s a potential blandness in a number of supporting characters, and even the “freaks” are fairly well-adjusted freaks. TV superheroes can be a real pain to pull off convincingly, and some of the effects look a little overbudget for this kind of thing.

But you can’t fault it for ambition. This is not just a high concept trying to find ways to eek it out over five years, this looks a little more complex than that, a little more fractal in its design.

And it’s got a cape.

From a purely business point of view, it makes sense to want to have a movie made from a comic or book. The payout is huge if the movie is a hit and it provides exposure to the original version of the intellectual property, but what I don’t get is why everyone else is so fixated culturally on getting a movie made. It’s as if there’s some weird inferiority complex where people think a story hasn’t truly arrived unless it’s adapted into a movie. It seems to be the content equivalent of people who don’t think their lives matter unless they land a reality TV show.

Another thing I don’t understand is, when people like a book, a comic or a TV show, why do they start saying they want to see a movie? Again, it seems to be the sense of validation from a movie being made. I suppose some people might want to see a novel they like visualized, but then the best novels are already perfect as novels and movies would miss many nuances that made the novels great in the first place. Movies can’t do inner voices or thought processes. Movies, as a visual medium, are very literal, and depend on events that are seen. But then I find in my day job a weird attitude about prestigious books being made into movies: they’re usually just awards fodder. Richard Yates’ highly respected REVOLUTIONARY ROAD and Bernhard Schlink’s THE READER are two recent examples that still linger in my mind. Both books were critically acclaimed and bestsellers but huge downers. The movies struck me as being movies for snobby people who hate movies. Well, it turned out that nobody liked those movies either. Neither of them made a dent come Oscar season last year. Even worse, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD didn’t even make it to the cultural consciousness – I’ve never seen a hyped up movie with a respected cast and director from a respected book so resoundingly ignored by the public before. And people keep banging on about a DOCTOR WHO movie, which mystifies me. DOCTOR WHO has worked best as a TV show. It’s not restricted to the limited running time of a movie, and serialized television offers more time aand room for going into depth in themes, character arcs and details. And it’s already on TV. I can at least understand if it’s a beloved TV show that hasn’t been on air for years, so a movie might at least be considered an event, but there really isn’t much point to having a movie out when the show is still running beyond the most superficial cash-in plan. People remember the TV versions of THE SWEENEY, and no one really talks about the movies, which weren’t more than extended episodes with the same writers, directors and cast.

Comics are, of course, the latest and most convenient properties for the studios to want to adapt if they see profit. They’re already visual and show how the story can be told. Yes, getting a comic adapted is profitable for the creators and/or the publishers, but frankly most comics don’t deserve or need a movie to be made out of them. The best comics really don’t need movie adaptations, and WATCHMEN is proof of that, since the movie version is completely redundant and culturally and artistically pointless in its attempts to slavishly replicate its images and narrative. You already see the best version of the story, so unless a movie adds something else to it, there’s really no point. There’s no way a movie of SANDMAN could replicate the scope and range of its themes the way the 70-odd issues did over nearly a decade. For every good comic adaptation like IRON MAN, there are at least two equivalents of DAREDEVIL and GHOST RIDER. How would a movie version of ASTERIOS POLYP be as good as the graphic novel? It would only be an utterly conventional drama.

The bottom line is, movies are only made when a studio believes it will make lots of money. Not a little money, not a good amount of money, but tons and tons of money. A sequel to the WATCHMEN movie is highly unlikely at this point. It lost the studio so much money that any executive stupid enough to consider a sequel might as well clean out his desk and jump out the window right now.

And then there’s movies made from video games, the newest and most misunderstood of the pop mediums. Top-selling games are making so much money now that of course the studios want to try to get a piece of the pie, but the best they can do is attempt to adapt them into movies. However, the problem is that the two mediums are vastly different, despite some similarities, especially with games becoming more movie-like in their insistence on plots. Games are interactive, movies are not. The list of successful movies based on games has been an amazingly short. I haven’t figured out why the RESIDENT EVIL movies have been successful, unless it’s as B Movie DVD rental fodder, which I’m told it does extremely well, and as a result has made Milla Jovovich bankable as a star, albeit at the mid-budget range. The movie adaptation of SILENT HILL, made by a writer and director who know the game, was a decent stream-of-consciousness horror movie that was practically the first good Lucio Fulci movie that Fulci never made, with a better budget and production values he never had access to, and fans of the game still hated it.

There’s talk about a MASS EFFECT movie now that the second game is out. The movie rights were optioned as far back as 2008. This is not news. When I finally played MASS EFFECT 2, I had a sneaking feeling that I was playing the future of escapist genre entertainment – it had all the thrills and emotional engagement you expect from movies and TV, except you were actively shaping the major parts of the story with the choices you made through the main character. Who your customized character picked as a love interest, you got to choose tactics and superpowers in the battles, and the choices in the final mission that determine who survives are entirely up to you, and that created a stronger sense of engagement and immersion than the passivity of just watching a movie or TV show. The story becomes yours on a deeper and more personal level than movies can achieve. It’s already more satisfying as a story and crams in actual Science Fiction ideas without being afraid that people wouldn’t understand them, the latter reason being why the majority of Science Fiction movies and TV shows are simplistic at best and totally moronic at worst. This is probably one more step towards a holodeck-style story game of the future. With this game, you already get the chance actually shape the story of an epic Bruckheimer-style SF movie. An actual movie would be about five steps backwards and nowhere as rewarding as the game. It’s not even that the game’s SF story was original, it cribs ideas from everything from Bladerunner to Star Trek to Paul Anderson’s novels. It just does it all very, very well, better than any movie has so far.

As someone who works in the movie industry, I get the feeling that while movies still carry a certain mystique and glamour in the eyes of the public, its relevance as a storytelling medium are numbered as games supercede its popularity. Comic books are already falling by the wayside and propped up by the movie industry. I can actually see a day when movies are considered quaint rather than cutting edge.

Not seeing as many movies at lookitmoves@ gmail.com

© Adisakdi Tantimedh

Take DC’s The Source, they have just put up preview pages of Batman And Robin #8, out this week, and very nice they are too. But putting up thumbnails, getting you to open each page up, read it, click the back button, then press on the next thumbnail, well, it just doesn’t feel like comics, does it?

Doesn’t this look, and read, a little better? What do you think?

Seriously, there should be a template for this by now.

Garab Shamus bought the show from local convention organiser… balh blah blah… who will remain with the show…blah blah… free to run one day conventions in the same spot at other times of the year… blah…everyone happy.

Seriously, right now, you mant to make a small amount of money? Run a comic convention in a place where there isn’t a Wizard Comic Con. And wait for Gareb to get in touch.

Here are the dates so far;

March 26-28, 2010, Toronto Comic Con, Direct Energy Centre

April 16-18, 2010, Anaheim Comic Con, Anaheim Convention Center

June 11-13, 2010, Philadelphia Comic Con, Philadelphia Convention Center

August 19-22, 2010, Chicago Comic Con, Donald E. Stephens (Rosemont) Convention Center

October 7-10, 2010, Big Apple Comic Con, Pier 94

October 15-17, 2010, New Jersey Comic Con, New Jersey Convention and Expo Center

November 12-14, 2010, Austin Comic Con, Austin Convention Center

Atlanta Comic Con, TBD

Cincinnati Comic Con, TBD

Cleveland Comic Con, TBD

New England Comic Con, TBD

Well, yes… and no.

It turns out that the public vote wasn’t quite as public as people thought.

Last yaer caused concern as, for the first time, thegre was obvious online campaigning by the winning candidate Gally, author of Mon gras et moi, but better known for his blogging. There were fears that anything could win. So, without much publicity, the public award changed the way it was tallied. The top five voted for books were given to a panel of seven judges, who then chose their favourite.

Which does kind of defeat the purpose of having a public award in the first place. And in any road, with the current system, lets said judges choose from the five most successful ballot stuffers.

The other four nominees have been revealed as Blast Vol 1 (Manu Larcenet, Dargaud), Siegfried Vol 2 (Alex Alice, Dargaud), Il Était Une Fois En France Vol 3 (Fabien Nury and Sylvain Vallée, Glénat) and Billy Brouillard Vol 1 (Guillaume Bianco, Soleil).

One of the judges, Maël Rannou, talks about the voting experience here.

I said to them, ‘I’ll do it if you kill me off in the first reel.’ So now they are going to have me as a ghost in the film.

FilmWatch2: So not only with the actor who plays Captain America have to be an all-singing, all-dancing American hero – he will literally have to be singing and dancing. Calling John Barrowman? Calling John Barrowman? And yes, of course the big bad will be the Red Skull. Was this really a surprise/revelation to anyone? Chud lets us know the movie will feature The Invaders in a major way, a blatant attempt to get a bit of international action going on.

LibraryWatch: Tomorrow, from 10am to 6pm, Phil Yeh – one of the earliest American graphic novelists and the journalist who uncovered the penniless plight of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster,  will be giving a workshop on adapting graphic novels to film and television and the Toa Payoh Public Library in Singapore. Tickets are $280 each. Hmm. Or you could just watch Catwoman and do the opposite of everything that film does.

FilmWatch3: LatinoReview reports the rights to a movie version of Joe Hill’s Locke & Key shifting from Dimension Films to Dreamworks with Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci producing.

FilmWatch4: Dana Offenbach and Mark W. Campbell, creating new indie producer CinemaStreet, and have nabbed the rights to graphic novel The Pale Horsemen, from Larry Meistrich’s Nehst Studios.  The movie will be directed by the author, and Underworld director, Kevin Grevioux. Course, it still hasn’t been published…

LocalWatch: Pittsburgh’s comic book culture is celebrated in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, even if the city’s name  is misspelled in the article title. I think more shops are selling copies of Chase Variant in Pittsburgh than in any other city! Go Pittsburgh!

How much? $5.99. I know, I almost dropped my bacon sandwich.

Comic page count: 45

So that’s basically the same as two $2.99 standard books? I suppose so.

And do they normally have a card cover and perfect board. Um… no.

Well then. Get on with it.

Splash pages: 11

Splash pages that look like like pure filler at the beginning: 3

Ah, pages that actually should have had text on, but somehow got dropped in the production stages. 4

Do you have them? Yes.

Go on then. Okay, courtesy of Dwayne McDuffie.

Page 1

Top Caption:

“Sometimes I have a dream. I am in the cave in Plato’s Republic sitting on the cold ground, my hands and feet bound in iron chains. Through an opening at the end of the cave, I see a turnstile and a neon sign. It flashes ‘World’s Oldest Operating Metaphor’. This does not, however, appear to be a very popular attraction anymore.”

-Jeremy Levin

Bottom Caption:

“The secret to Funk is to pay attention.”

-George Clinton

Page 4 & Page 5

double page splash

“Time forks, perpetually into countless futures. In one of them, I am your enemy.”

-Jorge Luis Borges

Page 9

Icon Splash Page Caption:

“To dream the fantastic is to dream the dream of the Other.”

-Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Do you think DC should replace printed copies with corrected versions? Yes.

Will they? Probably not.

Additional gallery pages: 3

Percentage of the text on the back cover you could read properly? 30%

Sense in changing the cover from the solicited image to the published image? None.

Odds that the second cover will be equally fucked about with. 99%

Almost-omniscient narrators: 1

Alpha males: 8

Metatextual comments disguised as fashion commentary: 1

Moments where it feels like scenes are being stretched over several panels, uneccesarily: 5

Moments where I think, I’m not sure if I’m enjoying this as much as the original Milestone run: 3

Moments when I think I’m being unfair, comparing this revival to some kind of idealised, condensed version its multi-year, multi-series publishing history: 1

Chances that I’ll buy the next issue of Milestone Forever despite feelings of mild ennuii. 100%

Slight surprise that this comic hadn’t been pirated on the torrent network, when I was trying to get a few scanned panels to illustrate a point or two. 1

Just wanted to say thanks for your articles on Josh Hoopes/Ron Runstrom. Whenever I get a new artist apply I check out not only the links they send me to their portfolio but also run their name through google (and possible add a couple of other key words) to check more info about them.

I put out an open call for artists earlier today on a number of Forums (including Deviant Art) and I got a guy called Ron Runstrom reply as follows:

—————
Hey there , just caught your posting and wanted to include a link to some
of my work. not much work now a day’s but wanted to put out my feelers to see what projects are out there.
So below is a link to my work, and my prices are negotiable at this
point.
Hope to be working with you soon. E-Mail if interested ronrunstrom@ymail.com
Ron

http://s717.photobucket.com/albums/ww176/stromwise/

That’s our boy Josh. His methods are to show off other people’s work as his own, then offer very low page rates to publishers. Once hired, he will then hire other artists on very high page rates to do the work.

Those artists will never get paid. Eventually they will stop producing work and the publisher will be stuck with whatever page they have. They may even publish those pages, only to discover the are from a different, unpaid artist.

I have run a number of exposes on his methods. I’ve passed what information I’ve had to legal authorities in America. But, for whatever reason, Josh still seems free to scam the most vulnerable.

Warren Ellis: just shot six pages of FELL 10 over to you

Ben Templesmith: Oh you tease me sir.

Warren Ellis: rub it on your fucking nipples son

Ben Templesmith: My gods, he actually did. Warren Ellis sent me some FELL pages. Printing out & rubbing them on my nipples right away.

FoxWatch: Fresh from her Razzle award for Worst Actress, Megan Fox gets rained upon in Hex set stills printed by the Daily Mail.

CapWatch: The LA Times confirms all sorts of aspects to the Captain America: First Avenger film, that it will be set in World War II with present-day bookends. And that the Captain America costume is explained like this;

The costume is a flag, but the way we’re getting around that is we have Steve Rogers forced into the USO circuit. After he’s made into this super-soldier, they decide they can’t send him into combat and risk him getting killed. He’s the only one and they can’t make more. So they say, ‘You’re going to be in this USO show’ and they give him a flag suit. He can’t wait to get out of it.

But of course, the costume does change;

He realizes the value of the uniform symbols but he modifies his suit and adds some armor, it will be closer to the Cap costume in some of the comics in more recent years . . . this approach, it’s the only way we could justify ever seeing him on a screen in tights, with the funny boots and everything. The government essentially puts him up there as a living comic-book character and he rips it off and then reclaims some of its imagery after he recognizes the value of it. We think it’s the best way to keep the costume and explain it at the same time.

They’ll be filming in London in March. I may try and sneak in…

DCWatch: Collider reports that Jeffrey Blitz and Peter Welch are working on a documentary looking at the history of DC Comics, to show first at San Diego. Welch states;

DC Comics contacted us and asked if we would do this.  Jeff and the director are comic book enthusiasts since they were kids and remain comic book enthusiasts.  So yes, we have access to their archives, their material, their covers, their panels, the creatives and the executives in the DC world.

Is there any danger of it being a puff piece? Will we see some of the stories alluded to in Kavalier & Clay, or will it be an whitewash? Might they talk to people who feel they’ve been hard done by? I do hope someone sends them a copy of Watchmensch.

BigInJapanWatch: The Guardian reports 14 year old schoolgirl Rebecca Flint, known as Beckii Cruel, from the Isle of Man, making it big in anime circles by posting YouTube videos of her dressing up, dancing and singing as manga characters – and now debuting her new album. Here’s one of her videos.

And here’s a glimpse of the Isle Of Man