Tagged: Green Lantern

George Miller Confirms He’s Off ‘Justice League’

News
December 1, 2008

On the Australian morning television show Sunrise, director George Miller told the viewing audience he was no longer attached to Warner Bros.’ stalled Justice League film.

In a report at Dark Horizons, “Miller indicated that if the project does get going again, he expects that it’ll be recast as ‘the studios seem to want bigger stars in their super-hero movies now.’

Miller also acknowledged his Mad Max sequel script was rejected by actor Mel Gibson but remains hopeful they will team for a film project in the future.

Since a big report in August that Warner was reconsidering their DCU properties, there has been little official news as to which hero will step before the cameras next. The likeliest candidate remains Green Lantern with a finished script now in the studio’s hands.

Neal Adams Named New Guest of Honor at NYCC

News
December 1, 2008

Celebrated artist Neal Adams will be a Guest of Honor at New York Comic Con (NYCC) this year where he will be available to thousands of fans who are eager to meet the legendary artist. Adams is best known for helping to create some of the definitive modern imagery of the DC Comics characters Superman, Batman and Green Lantern among others. In addition to his Guest of Honor appearance, Neal Adams has also created the official artwork for New York Comic Con 2009 which will be highlighted in a unique poster featuring several heroes from DC’s Green Lantern Corps. The Green Lantern series was a breakout hit for DC last year with the "Sinestro War" storyline, and the Blackest Night storyline looks to be another huge success.

New York Comic Con is the second largest popular culture event in the United States and will take place at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City, February 6 – 8, 2009. Neal Adams will appear on panels as well as participate in autograph sessions throughout the weekend.

“Neal Adams is one of the fundamental forces of comics: he’s helped reshape the visual vocabulary of the field with his illustrative style, improved its business practices as a leading champion of artistic rights, and godfathered an entire generation of new talent as they entered our field,” said Paul Levitz, President and Publisher of DC Comics, “Comics wouldn’t have been the same without him, and he continues to focus on important new work to affect the future of the field.”

“I can’t begin to say how genuinely honored we are to have Neal Adams create this poster for New York Comic Con, to say nothing of having him appear at our show as a Guest of Honor!” notes Lance Fensterman, Show Manager for NYCC. “At the cusp of the 60’s, Neal and writer Denny O’Neil created some of the best loved comic stories featuring Green Lantern’s Hal Jordan, and the Green Arrow, as they tackled social issues of the day and set new standards with Neal’s photo-realistic artwork. The poster he has created is extraordinary and it allows us to stay at the forefront with original and innovative artwork for New York Comic Con. We are enormously grateful to Neal who has been a great supporter of our show from day one. This is a real collector’s item and a huge value for anyone who manages to ‘score’ one of these special posters.”

In commenting on the creation of the poster for New York Comic Con, Neal Adams notes: “Folks ask why I went all out on this poster for the NYCC? First, I’m a New Yorker, and this is my hometown. Secondly, I take tremendous pride in these characters. Especially, Hal Jordan and John Stewart.”

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Rich Faber needs your help

News
November 26, 2008

I’m lifting this directly from Johanna Draper Carlson. Yes, again… but in this case, I hope she won’t mind, because Rich Faber, inker on Green Lantern, needs our help:

I first met him ages ago, back in the 90s, when he wanted a copy of a sketch Chris Sprouse did for me, to practice his inking. He’s kept at it, working on Roboy Red and Buzzboy, as well as a lot of other stuff.

Sadly, in August, his wife Traci was diagnosed with cancer, and they’re facing large medical bills. Here’s how he puts it (from the blog link above):

… lately things have gotten a little hairy, financially. While we have health insurance, it’s not covering everything. Medical bills and co-pays can truly be a drag. It’s been tough for us to maintain our regular work schedules between treatments (and Traci’s ensuing fatigue), doctor visits, and caring for our two-year-old son. … So we’re looking for ways to generate more income, in order to keep afloat.

He doesn’t want handouts (although I’m sure he wouldn’t mind any help) — instead, he wants to sell original art, t-shirts, and signed comics. He’s also taking commissions; email rich_faber(at)comcast(dot)net. (That’s also his Paypal account, in case you can donate, regardless of what he says.) They’re not hurting yet — but since Traci will be in treatment for at least a year, he’s planning ahead and trying to be responsible.

I know it’s tough times, and it seems that there’s always a request to help someone. There are plenty of deserving who need help, but if you can, check out Rich’s website and blog to see if there’s something you’re interested in.

So go. Rich has been nothing but a stellar professional and a friend to us here at ComicMix. Here’s his website, here’s his blog.

October Comics Sales Soften

News
November 20, 2008

As the economy went into free fall, ICv2 notes that October sales have shown some slippage. From their just released list of the top 25 titles, just two showed signs of improvement over September sales. One was Amazing Spider-Man #573 which featured the faux-Stephen Colbert for President cover while the other was Batman #680, the penultimate chapter to Batman RIP.

Despite somewhat stagnant sales, the dollars sold in to comic stores were up a “robust” 9% compared with a year ago, according to the industry watchdog. September and October were the first positive months for comic sales since January. Of course, more titles were retailing last month at $3.99, rapidly becoming a standard, as opposed to last October. ICv2 did note that the unit sales for the title charting in the 300th position was 4200 compared with 3000 just twelve months ago which they interpret as a sign of overall industry strength.

Graphic novel sales showed an increase of just 5% compared with last October. Combined with comic book sales, that creates an 8% total increase.

The site notes that the company crossovers, Secret Invasion #7 (154,675 copies) and Final Crisis #4 (115,666 copies) took the first two spots on the list. Marvel had seven of the top 10 and 17 of the first 25 with DC taking the balance. IDW’s G.I. Joe relaunch and Angel: After the Fall were the first non-Top Two titles to crack the top 100 list coming in at 65th and 66th place. This further cements IDW’s fourth place standing among comic book publishers, after Dark Horse and now ahead of Image.

In graphic novels, DC’s Joker by Brian Azzarello, took first place with an estimated 17,000 copies sold, also nabbing the top spot for dollars earned. Marvel’s best seller for the month was the Marvel Zombies trade paperback, which likely hit the top Marvel spot given its three variant covers. Wile Watchmen slipped from first place to sixth, its 6000 copies remains impressive given its age.

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‘Eli Stone”s Marc Guggenheim on the Season so Far

News
November 19, 2008

"I think in many ways we’re following the Battlestar Galactica model of blowing the show up every other week and constantly raising the stakes," Marc Guggenheim told Sci FI Wire.

The co-creator and executive producer of ABC’s Eli Stone, Guggenheim added, "The name of the game here is just how can we expand the show in every conceivable way. How can we make the musical numbers bigger? How can we make the visual-effects sequences more cinematic? How can we expand and deepen the relationships among all of our characters? The show is going to bigger and bigger and bigger places."

The Tuesday night series features the title character, played by Johnny Lee Miller, as suffering from an aneurysm that also enables him to receive visions from Heaven, enabling him to come to the aid of others. Of course, few believe him and hence drama ensues. After trying to get rid of the life-threatening spot in his brain, Eli accepted his role in life rather than see the responsibility shift to his brother. He’s also continued to practice law at Wethersby, Posner & Klein where several of his coworkers, notably Victor Garber and Loretta Divine, tend to burst into hallucinating song and dance.

The show has tried to gain notice with stunt casting such as Sigourney Weaver in the season opener followed by Katie Holmes a week later. Coming up will be singer Seal in the seventh episode. "We’ve got some cool visual effects happening in episode 207…where we literally put Eli in the middle of a movie," Guggenheim said. "We do it in a way that you’ve never seen on the show before, where we’re trying to push the envelope in terms of the way Eli has his visions."

Guggenheim, who works on the show with his pal Greg Berlanti, form two-thirds of the team behind the Green Lantern screenplay and continues to write Wolverine stories for Marvel. Still, his weekly series is his baby and intends to get as many people to try it out as possible. The character is out to make Earth a nicer place to live.

"I think it’s all a part of being true to the concept of the show, because the concept of the show is about changing the world," Guggenheim said. "In the first season, we did a flash-forward to the future, where Eli’s talking to thousands of people in Times Square in New York, and we’re always keeping that in the back of our minds as we plot out these stories. Like knowing that’s ultimately where we’d like to go."

George Perez, Geoff Johns, Jim Lee Added as NY Comic-Con Guests of Honor

News
November 16, 2008

Two more notable comic book celebrities will be joining the festivities at New York Comic Con (NYCC) this year as Guests of Honor. Affording thousands of fans the opportunity to meet them in person, Geoff Johns, who is well-known as a comic book writer of a number of DC Comics characters, including Superman, Green Lantern and the Flash as well as for his work as a screenwriter; and superstar artist Jim Lee, known for his acclaimed artistic runs on titles including BATMAN, ALL STAR BATMAN and WILDCATS, will be attending NYCC to help launch the new Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing game, DC Universe Online (DCUO), produced by Sony Online Entertainment for PLAYSTATION 3 in collaboration with DC Comics and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.

Both Johns and Lee will be signing autographs and they will conduct a large DC Universe Online event on Saturday, February 7, 2009. New York Comic Con will take place at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City, February 6 – 8, 2009.

“Having both Jim Lee and Geoff Johns at our show is a great ‘get’ under any circumstance, but it’s especially cool to have them here to as part of DC Universe Online,” notes Lance Fensterman, Vice President and Con Manager for NYCC. “They will do a fabulous job entertaining our fans and I know that they will attract huge crowds, not only for autographs but also for their demonstration. I am enormously grateful to them for participating in New York Comic Con and we’re pleased to have them as Guests of Honor.”

“Jim and Geoff represent two of the top talents in comics, so it only makes sense that they’d transfer those skills to the gaming world,” said Dan DiDio, SVP and Executive Editor for DC Comics. “It’s a perfect fit to have them named Guests of Honor at New York Comic Con.”

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The Theory of Webcomics: A DC Wiki?

News
November 16, 2008

A few weeks ago, I discussed the usefulness of active, available archives for webcomics. Archives provide huge amounts of free content to draw in new readers; and they prevent continuity lockout by providing a way to easily go back and refresh your memory of previous events. With print comics, especially before the advent of everything getting collected in trade paperbacks, there really wasn’t a way to avoid that — which is a lot of why Silver Age stories needed to be as self-contained as they were.

Nowadays, people who are flush with cash can always go buy a TPB collection of stories they missed or forgot. Who the heck is this character in the latest issue of Ultimate Spider-Man? The editor’s note says he first appeared back in Ultimate X-Men #17. All it takes is one trip to Amazon.com, several days for delivery, and then reading time, and I’ll be caught up enough to understand what’s going on in the comic currently in my lap.

Of course, those of us with rent bills to pay have to make do with the lower-cost option: The internet. There are lots of choices to catch up on, say, DC Comics continuity: The DC Wikia, the Justice League Library, Heroes Wiki, and heck, even granddaddy Wikipedia itself.

But you know where you can’t go to figure out what happened in that recent issue of Batgirl you missed, or that Green Lantern plot point from 1988 that recently cropped up? DCComics.com.

Now, don’t get me wrong: If you want to see artwork previews, or check the list of everything that’s in print, or get a short graphic bio of most of the characters, DCComics.com is the place to go. But say you haven’t been following Trinity and want to catch up. If you go to the forum and ask for the best place to do so, they’ll point you to Wikipedia.

Of course, Marvel’s website already has their own version of the wiki and it’s pretty nifty, too.

So here’s my suggestion to DC: You need a wiki. You’ve got an army of fans just aching to show how much they know about the characters and storylines, as evidenced by the other wikis that crop up everywhere. You need accessible utilities that’ll help build a bigger audience, especially among younger people, who don’t have the continuity knowledge to get into most recent titles. You need to drive traffic to your website as effective advertising for your products, and keep people at your website, rather than shunting them off to an outside source. And you’ll want all of this to be under your nominal control.

Here’s how you do it: Acquire the Wikia content (I don’t know the legal channels, but I’m sure you could find them). Hire a few of your most OCD fans (and a couple of the ComicMix contributors come to mind) as moderators. Set a few ground rules (no spoilers for this month’s books, no speculation, no flaming), and let the fans go from there. Link in the original stories, history of the DC and other online content you currently have, and have the last line of the wiki entry for each ongoing book or characters be a link to a preview of the next issue. Heck, if you set up creator/author/artist pages right, you can have an “subtle” way of linking fans of one book to things that they would also want to buy.

Also, everything that currently in print? There should be a “Buy It Now!” icon. Not a tiny, blend-in-to-the-background “Subscribe to your favorite comics” down at the bottom of the page. That’ll also be really easy to transition to digital pamphlets when the time comes and the color ebook readers are ready.

Just because classic print comics and “webcomics” as I define them are different animals, doesn’t mean they can’t take lessons from each other about what works in terms of monetizing web content.

(On the odd chance someone official reads this and goes ahead with this idea, I’d also love to see a Showcase volume of my dad’s work from the 70s and 80s, particularly ‘Mazing Man. Also, a pony.)

‘Watchmen’ Tops 3Q Sales Charts

News
November 11, 2008

ICv2

reports that graphic novels tied to feature film release saw a massive increase in third quarter sales.

“Sales of the Watchmen graphic novel exploded after the trailer hit theaters and it will clearly be the number one graphic novel of 2008, but a number of Batman-related graphic novels including The Killing Joke and The Dark Knight Returns also showed huge increases in sales, while Mark Millar’s Wanted graphic novel published by Top Cow clearly benefited from having a hit movie adaptation,” the site noted.

As the summer features arrive on DVD for the holidays, additional trade sales are anticipated. Marvel cannily released additional Iron Man product when the related DVD came out September 29.

Manga did not suffer according to the site’s analysis, saying “Viz Media’s shojo series Vampire Knight, the top Manga series to debut in 2007 gained strength in 2008 and Viz Media also has one of the best new series of 2008, Rosario & Vampire, but with the maturing of the Manga market, the number of new releases slated for 2009 is declining, though the quality of those new series appears to be going up.”

Top Superhero Properties–Q3 08

1 Watchmen, DC
2 Batman, DC
3 Spider-Man, Marvel
4 Wanted, Top Cow
5 League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, DC/Wildstorm
6 Iron Man, Marvel
7 Marvel Zombies, Marvel
8 Hulk, Marvel9 Superman, DC
10 Green Lantern DC

Top Genre Properties–Q3 08

1 Star Wars, Dark Horse

2 Y: The Last Man, DC/Vertigo
3 Indiana Jones, Dark Horse
4 Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dark Horse
5 Dark Tower, Marvel
6 Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Marvel
7 The Walking Dead, Image
8 Fables, DC/Vertigo
9 Sandman, DC/Vertigo
10 Angel, IDW

Michael Green Re-Ups with Universal for 2 Years

News
November 4, 2008

Writer/Producer Michael Green has signed a two-year deal Universal Media Studios where he is showrunning the NBC midseason series Kings.

"There is no more important new show to the network and the studio than that," UMS president Katherine Pope told The Hollywood Reporter. The series, inspired by the Biblical story of King Saul and King David, depicts a fictional monarchy and stars Christopher Egan and Ian McShane. The show is currently anticipated to take over the Thursday at 10 spot which ER has held for the last 14 years.

Pope and NBC’s drama president Katie O’Connell reportedly challenged Green to come up with his most audacious idea. He came back with Kings which excited everyone who read the premise. Everyone, that is, except entertainment president Kevin Reilly. When he left and was replaced by executive vice-president Teri Weinberg, she gave the series the go ahead.

"He is like the Rosetta Stone of writers," Pope said. "He’s one of those guys who is incredibly versatile and shines at whatever genre he does."

"I wanted to tell a story about a world where people are hopeful and believe in their governors even though they are flawed," Green told the trade.

Green, known to readers for his work on Superman/Batman, also was a co-writer on the Green Lantern feature film. He began his television writing career by working for the first season of HBO’s Sex and the City. His other credits include Everwood, Smallville, and more recently Heroes.

He wrote the lead role of Silas for Deadwood’s McShane and was delighted when the actor accepted. The first four hours of the series are being directed by Francis Lawrence (Constantine, I Am Legend), giving the series a consistent look at feel from the outset. The series will also feature Brian Cox and Macaulay Culkin in recurring roles.

DC at the Movies

News
November 1, 2008

In keeping up with the comings and goings of DC’s comic book franchises that have plans to segue to the silver screen, here we have put together Warner Bros. more recent plans on making that adaptation for some of our favorite heroes, as well as some other characters and how close we are to seeing them in theaters.

Wonder Woman

In January 2001, producer Joel Silver approached Todd Alcott to write a Wonder Woman screenplay, with Silver Pictures backing the project. Early gossip linked actresses such as Mariah Carey, Sandra Bullock, Rachel Bilson, and Catherine Zeta-Jones to the role of Wonder Woman. Leonard Goldberg, speaking in a May 2001 interview, named Bullock as a strong candidate for the project. Bullock claimed that she was approached for the role, while Lucy Lawless and professional wrestler Chyna both expressed interest. Lawless indicated that she would be more interested if Wonder Woman was portrayed as a "flawed hero." The screenplay then went through various drafts written by Alcott, Jon Cohen, Becky Johnston, and Philip Levens. By August 2003, Levens was replaced by screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis (Birds of Prey).

In March 2005, Warner Bros. and Silver Pictures announced that Joss Whedon would write and direct the film adaptation of Wonder Woman. Since Whedon was directing Serenity at the time, and required time to research Wonder Woman’s background, he did not begin the screenplay until late 2005. According to Joel Silver, the script would cover Wonder Woman’s origin and include Steve Trevor: "Trevor crashes on the island and they go back to Man’s World." Silver wanted to film Wonder Woman in Australia once the script was completed. While Whedon stated in May 2005 that he would not cast Wonder Woman until he finished the script, Charisma Carpenter (Angel) and Morena Baccarin (Firefly) expressed interest in the role.

Despite telling people, "It was in an outline, and not in a draft, and they [studio executives] didn’t like it. So I never got to write a draft where I got to work out exactly what I wanted to do." Whedon is known to have actually finished a screenplay that was not met favorably by Warner Bros. or DC.

In February 2007, Whedon departed from the project, citing script differences with the studio. Whedon reiterated: "I never had an actress picked out, or even a consistent front-runner. I didn’t have time to waste on casting when I was so busy air-balling on the script." Whedon stated that with the Wonder Woman project left behind, he would focus on making his film Goners.

A day before Whedon’s departure from Wonder Woman, Warner Bros. and Silver Pictures purchased a script written by Matthew Jennison and Brent Strickland. Set during World War II, the script impressed executives at Silver Pictures. However, Silver has made clear that he purchased the script because he didn’t want it floating around in the industry; although it has good ideas, he doesn’t wish for the Wonder Woman film to be a period piece. By April 2008, Silver hired Jennison and Strickland to write a new (modern day) script that would not depict Wonder Woman’s origin, but explore Paradise Island’s history.

According to an August 2008 article in The Wall Street Journal, featuring Warner Bros. president Jeff Robinov speaking about their DC property films, a Wonder Woman film is among other super-hero films currently in "active development."

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Tagged: Green Lantern

George Miller Confirms He’s Off ‘Justice League’

Neal Adams Named New Guest of Honor at NYCC

Rich Faber needs your help

October Comics Sales Soften

‘Eli Stone”s Marc Guggenheim on the Season so Far

George Perez, Geoff Johns, Jim Lee Added as NY Comic-Con Guests of Honor

The Theory of Webcomics: A DC Wiki?

‘Watchmen’ Tops 3Q Sales Charts

Michael Green Re-Ups with Universal for 2 Years

DC at the Movies

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