BOOM! Studios has debuted the trailer to Irredeemable, Mark Waid’s new ongoing superhero series that premieres this April. Take a look:
If you go to the BOOM! website, there’s also a coupon you can give to your comic store, but really, who wants an Irredeemable coupon?
A happy birthday to the Occasional Superheroine and the President of Friends of Lulu herself, Valerie D’Orazio!
(No, we’re not telling you how old she is. She is timelessly and eternally young– in other words, younger than all the principals of ComicMix. And much cuter than Mike Gold.)
While we wait for Cloak and Dagger to come out, go read her current piece on the Doomsday scenario in comics distribution. And let her know we said hi.
Fred Van Lente may have one of the strangest resumes in modern comics.
After all, not many writers can give their first claim to fame as writing an award-winning non-fiction comic book series both satirizing and paying tribute to the greatest thinkers in human history; yet that’s his name alongside artist Ryan Dunlavey’s on the cover of Action Philosophers, which won the Xeric Grant in 2004.
Since then, he’s gone on to write what seems like an endless stream of series and miniseries for Marvel: Marvel Adventures Iron Man, Marvel Adventures Spider-man, Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four, Amazing Fantasy, Super-Villain Team-Up: MODOK’s 11, Wolverine: First Class, and more besides.
These days, his most steady gig is co-writing (with Greg Pak) Marvel’s Incredible Hercules, a fan favorite series and critical darling that’s been praised for mixing mythology with good old Marvel superheroics. He’s also writing the X-Men Noir miniseries, a mystery story set in the heyday of prohibition.
And, just to make sure his resume keeps getting stranger, the third issue of Comic Book Comics, his second collaboration with Ryan Dunlavey, just hit the stands recently. As the title suggests, it’s a comic book that chronicles the history of comic books.
Fred took a few minutes out his schedule to talk to us about how he wound up writing for Marvel, how not to kill Jocasta, and how not to get sued when infringing on copyright.
ComicMix: How does the writer of a black-and-white independent series about the great thinkers wind up writing all-ages superhero stories for the Marvel Adventures line?
Fred Van Lente: Well, believe it or not, my working for Marvel and me doing Action Philosophers happened simultaneously. What happened was, for two completely different career paths converged. I was doing Action Philosophers on and off with Ryan [Dunlavey] more or less for fun until we got the Xeric Grant, and I did a color independent comic with a great artist by the name of Steve Ellis, who’s now better known for having co-created the series High Moon over at Zuda. We did a super-crime mob series called The Silencers for Moonstone, and that brought me to the attention of Mark Paniccia over at Marvel. Mark invited me over to pitch for an anthology series called Amazing Fantasy. They ran a poll on Marvel.com for which characters to revamp, and they chose Scorpion. By a bizarre coincidence, Action Philosophers #1 and Amazing Fantasy #7, which premiered the new Scorpion, came out on the same day.
CMix: Really?
FVL: Yeah! And in most stores, because they were both “A” titles, they were racked next to each other. So after ten years of trying to break into the business and not really getting much traction, I not only had two comics come out on the same day, I had them sit next to each. And to add irony to irony, I had broken my ankle. So I was laid up and on painkillers, so I was unable to go to the store and see this magnificence for myself.
CMix: That’s kind of sad.
FVL: Well, my friend sent me cell phone pictures.
CMix: Gotcha. So, my next question is, how does the writer of all-ages Marvel superhero stories wind up co-writing Incredible Hercules, one of the most critically beloved mainstream titles right now?
Yes, it’s official. Heath Ledger wins the Oscar for the Joker. Now I can turn off the show and catch the highlight reel later.
Although, I have to give Hugh Jackman credit for a fearless opening number. Damn, he can work a crowd. And who knew Anne Hathaway could sing?
Glad to see Shanti pegged the Oscar winner for costume design going to The Duchess.
Yep, while everyone else is obsessing over the naked men tonight– Oscar, not Hugh Jackman– let us not forget the awards handed out last night, the 29th annual Golden Raspberry awards. Here’s the press release:
At least someone loved THE LOVE GURU. Voters for The 29th Annual RAZZIE Awards spread the dis-honors around this year, but gave several of their berry biggest trophies to one of 2008’s most notorious box office losers, Mike Myers’ misbegotten, far-from-mystical “comedy” THE LOVE GURU. In addition to being named the year’s Worst Picture, GURU also received spray-painted gold for its screenplay and Myers as Worst Actor, in intentionally tacky ceremonies held on “Oscar Eve” at the Barnsdall Theatre in Hollywood.
But the former SNL star wasn’t the year’s biggest RAZZIE winner/loser. That dis-stink-tion belongs to “sex-tape-celeb-utant” Paris Hilton, who tied Eddie Murphy’s hat-trick from 2007, taking a record-tying 3 trophies in a single year. For her “starring” performance in Worst Picture nominee THE HOTTIE & THE NOTTIE (which Hilton herself executive-produced) the air-headed heiress was gonged for both Worst Actress and as part of the year’s Worst Screen Couple (along with co-stars Christine Lakin and Joel David Moore). And for her mostly-left-on-the-cutting-room floor cameo in the “slasher musical” REPO: THE GENETIC OPERA, she was chosen Worst Supporting Actress.
Others roundly RAZZed in the 90-minute Oscar parody included Pierce Brosnan as Worst Supporting Actor for his tone-deaf turn in MAMMA MIA! The year’s third-biggest grossing (and most disappointing) movie INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL “won” as Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel and world-class worst movie-maker Uwe Boll took both the 2008 Worst Director RAZZIE® (for 3 titles) and a well-deserved special Worst Career Achievement dis-honor.
For a complete list of this year’s “winners” click here. And congrats, it was a tough field this year.
This is a weird one. As you may know, Doctor Who has been running since 1963. A number of the earlier episodes are missing, because some bozo at the BBC decided to save money by destroying some old episodes to make room in their library, including a number of episodes starring the first two Doctors, William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton. Once they realized what had happened, massive searches got under way to find what was lost. But despite years of searching, the broadcaster is missing 108 of 752 episodes.
Well, according to the London Sun, it turns out there’s a place where a bunch of them could be– Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe bought the first season of the show when it was still the British colony known as Rhodesia. The BBC suspects the historic series, together with later episodes not held anywhere else in the world, may still be locked away in a vault.
So what’s the problem? The current leader of Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe, hates hates hates the British. Mugabe still blames their former colonial ruler Britain for its economic chaos, and last year called the British Government “thieving neo-colonialists”. President Mugabe has banned the BBC from setting foot in the country. On the other hand, Mugabe and Zimbabwe needs money, and there would be a lot of money in DVD sales if copies do exist.
So we’ll have to wait and see. One day, he may really come back after all…
It comes around once a year. And lord knows, Aaron Eckhart won’t be getting any respect today…
Artwork by TotenVeloren on deviantART.
Well, now we know what Catherine Hardwicke meant when she said she turned down directing the sequels to Twilight because of a "punishing schedule".
Twilight opened on the pre-Thanksgiving weekend last year and will do the same this year with sequel The Twilight Saga’s New Moon (yes, that’s what they’re named now) but The Twilight Saga’s Eclipse is now scheduled to open Wednesday, June 30, 2010, laying claim to the 4th of July weekend. That’s a fast production schedule for theatrical movies.
On the other hand, maybe they just don’t want the actors– or the target audience– to outgrow the films in the time it might normally take to make them.
Today’s list of quick items that don’t fill a full post on their own:
Since it’s second-hand, the selection is kind of catch-as-catch-can, but this reporter always ends up walking out of the store with SOMETHING cool. Just make sure you give yourself a strict spending limit…this reporter also has been known to get a little carried away with the bargains.
Anything else? Consider this an open thread.
Wayne Enterprises has another billion in the bank.
According to Box Office Mojo, The Dark Knight has officially reached $1 billion in worldwide box office revenue, distributor Warner Bros. announced today. The Batman sequel is the fourth movie in history to hit the mark, right behind Titanic, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest:
Breaking the worldwide gross down, The Dark Knight has made a phenomenal $533.1 million domestically and $468 million overseas. It’s the only movie in the Top 20 of the all time worldwide chart where the domestic gross exceeds the foreign gross, which is a common trait among comic book-based pictures. On the all time domestic chart, The Dark Knight ranks second to Titanic, while it stands at No. 22 on the all time foreign chart. Warner Bros. noted that The Dark Knight‘s total includes the highest-grossing two-dimensional re-mastered IMAX release ever at $49.6 million domestic and $15.3 million overseas.
For another point of comparison, this year’s five Oscar nominees for Best Picture, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Slumdog Millionaire, Milk, Frost/Nixon and The Reader ,have only grossed $481,205,302 worldwide combined so far. Gee, why would Warner Bros. announce that the day before the Oscars…?
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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