Articles by tufkittn
Sun Sep 2, 2007 — by Adriane Nash
COMICS REVIEW: Amazons Attack
... your patience, your wallet...
At Heroes Con in Charlotte this past June, one convention goer asked DC EIC Dan DiDio what was the point of Amazons Attack
It’s been a couple of shaky years in the world of Wonder Woman fandom; turning her into a killer, handing the mantle off to Donna Troy – which you would have missed if you blinked, the “who is Wonder Woman?” plotline which I’m not even sure has started but was touted as ”next” at the end of issue #4, which then begs the mention of the sporatic publication of the book itself mere months into the re-launch of the series.
After all that, “the first major comics event of 2007,” as the house ads touted, should have given us six action packed issues that could not be contained in the regular monthly title. Instead, Amazons Attack was confusing, boring and left me month after month echoing that Charlotte fan’s question.
Why was this a mini-series? This story could have easily been told in the pages of the monthly Wonder Woman book, and then perhaps they wouldn’t have replicated numerous scenes in multiple publications across one month, while leaving questions up in the air because it was so easy to not pick up a tie-in or read them out of order. Was the project ill-conceived or just poorly managed?
The art was amazingly varied from the main AA book to the tie-ins, it was sometimes hard to see where they tied in since there visual cues were often non-existent. Sadly, the art in the main title fell short: there was something lacking in what Pete Woods did that left the characters looking very flat and ill-defined facially.
It only being a few hours since I finished the series, it hasn’t sunk in yet that the whole thing served only one purpose: to set up Jim Starlin’s The Death of the New Gods
***Spoiler Alert (but I see it as saving you the trouble of reading this mess)**
Sun Aug 12, 2007 — by Adriane Nash
WW-CHICAGO: Marvel Still Civil
Liefeld bringing back a personal favorite.
Wild Weather on the East Coast Friday stranded most of the Mondo Marvel panelists in New York (hmmm... wonder how ComicMix's E.I.C. made it out that evening), leaving Joe Quesada and C. B. Cebuliski to fend for themselves while sharing with the crowd images and news from upcoming Marvel projects.
One other panelist, Rob Liefeld, who was there to talk about his new Killraven series. Apparently thought up at a bar in San Diego last year, Liefeld and Rob Kirkman will be bringing us an all-new take on the charactertarting fresh and looking to integrate Killraven into the Marvel Universe of the future – a world where our heroes are gone but their artifacts remain, one piece of art had Killraven holding Captain America’s shield. Look for the book in mid-2008. Reminding us that the creators of comics were and are comics fans themselves, Liefeld took some time to talk about his love for the character (and his DC counter-part Kamandi) during his childhood, you could hear the 11 year old Rob coming through loud and clear.
Luke Cage is back in his tiara and yellow shirt now that writer/artist (and Cartoon Network legend) Genny Tartakovsky has gotten a hold of him. The new artist on Punisher War Journal is Corey Walker. Doing his first work for Marvel, Tan Eng Huat (Doom Patrol) will be the artist on the mini-series Silver Surfer: In Thy Name, to be written by Simon Spurrier (2000 A.D.). I wonder if that news blows the ending of the current Silver Surfer mini.
Up next for Paul Jenkins will be a limited series drawn by Paul Guluay called Penance: Relentless about “the most hated man in America.”
Quesada and Cebuliski also said there are some big shake ups (an end?) coming to the Ultimates Universe by year’s end, and we’ll be seeing the "real" Nick Fury back in action next year.
Sun Aug 12, 2007 — by Adriane Nash
WW-CHICAGO: DC at the crossroads
All the DC news that seems interesting
At Wizard World Chicago this weekend DC staffers sat down for another DC Nation panel and gave fans some insight into what we can expect in the Immediate" future."
Editorial honcho Dan Didio was joined by coordinating editor Jann Jones, marketeer Bob Wayne, Jim Starlin and Sean McKeever. Starting off we heard what we have down the pipeline after Countdown to Final Crisis, the aptly named Final Crisis will be a seven issue series by Grant Morrison and J.G. Jones starting in May 2008.
And since the weekly format has been so successful for DC over the recent years, starting weekly in December Countdown: Arena starts bringing us more tastes of the Multiverse pitting three different versions of a character fighting out to be a leader in Monarch’s army. The results will be determined by the fans who will get to vote on the DC website for the winner. That’s right folks its reality comics!
Salvation Run will place DC villains in a penal colony, their own planet resulting from the DC heroes looking for a better solution than prisons and Arkham.
Starlin will be killing off whomever he feels like in Death of the New Gods, an eight-part mini-series starting in October. At the panel he jovially made it clear that no one is safe.
The long awaited Marv Wolfman/Damian Scott Raven has been slated for early 2008. In other Titans news we’ll see a Terra mini-series in March.
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Kyle Rayner will be joining the Challengers. DiDio suggested for everything to make sense read GL 26 then Atom #18 (Actually, DiDio was unsure of the actual issue number but assured us it’s the one after GL 26) then Countdown, all of which should be going down in December/January if I’ve done my math correctly.
Jann Jones described The Black Canary Wedding Planner (out in September) as the “girliest book” ever put out and marveled at how a man (J. Torres) could be doing such a great job writing it.
Cassandra Kane will pop up again in Gotham Underground. McKeever said to look for Manhunter to join the Birds of Prey and DiDio says the Manhunter series isn’t gone, they just want to have a few issues put to bed before they start publishing up again.
DiDio also assures us he’s got a big map of the multiverse and is plotting out what all 52 planets are to ensure the richest DC Universe possible. On a side note, Earth 26 is the Captain Carrot Earth and Vertigo is still not going to be a part of any DC Universe.
Wed Aug 1, 2007 — by Adriane Nash
The New Lara Croft Lowdown
Warren Ellis, Gail Simone, Jim Lee, Peter Chung and Minnie Driver?
While at SDCC last week, I sat down with Ricardo Sanchez, VP of Content for Gametap and creator of Gametap TV’s Re/Visioned series, and writer Gail Simone (Wonder Woman, Birds of Prey) to learn a little more about what the gaming site had in store for fans with their re-interpretation of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.
For those unfamiliar with Gametap.com, it’s a PC gaming site that has both free ad supported and a subscription service. With their biggest coup having made the 10th Anniversary Tomb Raider game available to subscribers for download the same day it was out in stores. Owned by Turner and a sister company to the Cartoon Network, they’re taking advantage of their position by trying to be a gaming lifestyle site, rather than just a place to play and download games. Part of that move is Gametap TV, an Internet broadcast channel that was launched with A Day in the Extra Life series.
Gametap decided to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Lara Croft in several ways, the aforementioned game launch, a retrospective documentary that is available for viewing on the site and a ten episode run launching the Re/Visioned series with a wishlist of great artists and writers, including Peter Chung, Jim Lee, Warren Ellis and Gail Simone. Actress Minnie Driver will be voicing Lara for all the episodes.
There will be seven different Lara stories in total, starting with the three part “Keys to the Kingdom” by Peter Chung (Aeon Flux) which is already up on the site, along with the Brian Puludo / David Alvarez comedic episode “Revenge of the Aztec Mummy.” The very thought of an Aztec mummy was so humorous (or, perhaps, ludicrous) to Warren Ellis he couldn’t help himself from fits of laughter during the SDCC Gametap panel. Ellis’ story is a two-parter entitled “Angel Spit” (art by Cully Hamner) which was screened at SDCC and should be up this week.
I was curious as to how a writer goes about taking a character people know from an established game and tells a compelling new story. In our sit-down I posed that question to Gail Simone, who said her take was to “decide what character traits Lara would have in place” if she “dialed her back” to her preteen years. Simone’s story places a 12-year old Croft in boarding school. From there the “story wrote itself.”
Wed Aug 1, 2007 — by Adriane Nash
The Vertigo Deluge
Interesting new projects abound...
DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint announced a few new projects at their “Looking Over the Edge” panel in San Diego last week.
First up: next month’s Un-Men, the old Swamp Thing foes and stars of the American Freaks mini-series. The monthly book, written by John Whalen and pencils by Mike Hawthorne, revolves around how the Un-Men are now running a tourist attraction at the nuclear test site reservation that was established at the end of the 1994 mini-series.
Bill Willingham and Matthew Sturges will be bringing a monthly House of Mystery revival. It will not be a traditional anthology, but will have ongoing story arcs and one-shot stories within. The series kicks off with Cain arriving home from a visit to Abel and finding the house has been stolen and turned into a pub where patrons have to tell the story to pay their tab, a gambit reminiscent of the Sandman story that featured Cain and Abel. We’ll take this chance to again say the “place has been turned into a bar and tell a story” format sounds awfully familiar, particularly to GrimJack fans.
Out this spring will be a monthly Madame Xanadu title penned by Matt Wagner with art by Amy Hadly. The series will explore her relationship with The Phantom Stranger, revealing why it is they dislike each other so much and how she got the name “Xanadu.”
In October, UK teevee writer Si Spencer (Torchwood) offers up a slice of British sub-culture in the crime-noir Vinyl Underground about a group of four occult detectives in London.
In November Vertigo celebrates the 20th anniversary of the monthly Hellblazer title with Hellblazer: Pandemonium graphic novel. (The cover date of Hellblazer #1 was January 1988) Jamie Delano’s story takes John to Iraq and is a commentary on the current political situation.
November will also see the release of the graphic novel Cairo. A story structured like 1001 Arabian Nights about a genie trapped in a hookah features various occult characters form the Vertigo universe which will all be pulled into one story. Also out: Absolute Sandman Volume Two, which will feature lots of behind the scenes material.
Sun Jul 29, 2007 — by Adriane Nash
Big News From San Diego
Wolfman and Pérez and Teen Titans
A few news items of note from the various panels and such at the San Diego Comic-Con:
• Marv Wolfman and George Pérez will be reunited to do Teen Titans issue #50.
• Warren Ellis will be taking over for Joss Whedon on Astonishing X-Men next year. The title will change to Astonishing X-men: Second Stage.
• And per some confused mumbling of Dan DiDio at a panel on Thursday: there is a new All Star Squadron project in the works. However, it will not be tales of WWII, because as Mike Carlin summed up: “Um, Hitler lost.”
In movie/teevee news, the DVD Sneak Peek panel offered up some details on upcoming DVD packages but started off with Javier Soto describing next year’s Hellboy 2: The Golden Army as “Hellboy plus Pan’s Labyrinth on steroids.”
It seemed that the opinion of the panelists was that there isn’t much new left to do in the world of special features and they are all working finding a way to provide content on DVDs that goes beyond deleted scenes. And rather want to bring audiences a more than what they got in the theater (or on TV) in the feature.
With The 4400 Season 4 DVD, we’ll also be getting the season finale director’s cut.
Twin Peaks: The Definitive Collection (out October 30th) will have both pilots, the complete series, “tons of extras including deleted scenes” and a new documentary featuring interviews with the cast today in a roundtable discussion with David Lynch. In the clip that was shared with Comic-Con attendees, Lynch came off more than a little creepy-old-man-ish when discussing a kissing scene with actress Madchen Amick, Kyle MacLachlan mutely sitting to her right all the while.
The biggest treat of the panel was learning about what will be in the box for December 18th Blade Runner: The Final Cut. The 5-disc box set will have five versions of the film:
• The new cut Final Cut version, which includes a CGI correction of the scene where Zhora goes through the plate glass, Joanna Cassidy came back and refilmed for it.
• The international cut, which was described as "with extra violence."
• The Original 1982 version
• The 1992 Director’s Cut
• Work print
All will feature 16 x 9 aspect ratio and 5:1 audio.
Also in the set is the all new three and a half-hour long documentary “Dangerous Days.” And, yes, they got Harrison Ford to do it.
There will be a theatrical release of The Final Cut version in October in New York and Los Angeles, which might put something or other in contention for 2007 Oscars. Maybe.
Sat Jun 16, 2007 — by Adriane Nash
HEROES CON: DC Up-to-date
More on The Flash... and the Green Arrow/Black Canary wedding!
At Heroes Con in Charlotte N.C., DC Comics held its second panel, titled “Countdown and Beyond,” helmed by Dan DiDio under the watchful eye of the VP of Marketing John Cunningham, who was working double duty, also manning the Powerpoint slideshow. Provided were the clarification of how The Flash cancellation/relaunch will go down, as well as the timeline for the Black Canary/Green Arrow wedding.
First, The Flash will be, as previously reported by Mike Gold, ending its run with issue number 13. DiDio admitted to falsely leading readers and retailers alike that the current Flash writer, Marc Guggenheim, was going to be a long term installation and that the orders for issues 14 and 15 were purposely solicited. Flash #13’s story will conclude in JLA #10, followed by All Flash Special #1 the third week of July. The third week of August will see Flash #231 on stands and will go on monthly from there.
Editor Jann Jones feels that while Black Canary can kick some serious butt superheroes may not make the best wedding planners, bringing us The Black Canary Wedding Planner in September to kick off “wedding month.” The second and third weeks we’ll see the bachelorette and bachelor parties in Countdown and JLA respectively. The big event will happen the last week of September with the Green Arrow/Black Canary Wedding Special, written by Dwanye McDuffie – who will also be taking over at JLA with issue #13.
DiDio also says Action Comics is back on track and we can expect to see a couple months where we are doubled up with issues. In addition, a future issue will feature panel in 3-D whenever the action takes place in the Phantom Zone.
Other titles that may or may not have been previously announced were various 52-related spin-offs: Infinity Inc, Black Adam, The Crime Bible featuring The Question and the Four Horsemen, who are not dead but will be facing the three heroes that were missing in 52.
We were given some details about new horror-themed DCU based comic/character Simon Dark, who resides in Gotham and seems to be a twist on a Frankenstein-like being. This is meant to be part of the move to help populate the universe with more “mystical” type characters since the siphoning off of many such folks to Vertigo. Apparently it’s a one way trip since it was said in no uncertain terms that Swamp Thing, Hellblazer and their mature title ilk will not be reappearing.
