Thanks to a spy carefully cultivated at this year’s Toy Fair, we have this image from a new toy franchise/joint venture from DC Direct and Hasbro in anticipation of the Justice League film release.
Apparently, they think there will be a market for this Martian Little Pony. Ooookay…
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Born in 1958 in Palm Beach, Florida, artist Marc Silvestri joined Marvel Comics in the late 1980s, and became the penciller on Uncanny X-Men from 1987 to 1990.
In 1992 he and six other artists broke away to form Image Comics. Each artist had his own imprint, and Silvestri’s was Top Cow, which is best known for its major hits Witchblade, The Darkness, and Fathom. Top Cow has continued to be a major portion of Image, although Silvestri has spent less time doing his own art and more time publishing.
He has returned to Marvel a few times to work on various X titles.
One of the surprise hits in comics last year was I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets, a collection of stories from Fletcher Hanks, a largely unknown comics creator in the Golden Age who is best described as "the Ed Wood of comics."
The bizarre tales – most featured "space wizard" Stardust, who came up with ever more creative and creepy means of dispatching villains – ended up a critical success, with the book making many "best of" lists, including my own.
The renewed attention to Hanks (his bizarre personal story is recounted with skill in an addendum at the back of I Shall Destroy) recently took another step, as Joe Keatinge and Mike Allred teamed up for an all-new Stardust story featured in the recent debut of Image Comics’ Next Issue Project #1.
Given this surge of attention in Hanks’ work, we thought it would be interesting to catch up with Paul Karasik, who edited I Shall Destroy and contributed the original Hanks background story to the volume.
Let’s just say he wasn’t happy with the new incarnation.
COMICMIX: The works of Fletcher Hanks, and Stardust particularly, have very much lingered in people’s minds and, as the success of I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets shows, retain a substantial appeal. Why do you think that is?
PAUL KARASIK: Fletcher Hanks is a master stylist and people are first attracted to style. Once you know what a Hanks story looks like you can always spot his work. In fact, this is one of the reasons I find it amazing that his work was not "discovered" years ago.
In fact, it seemed to me that many readers of I Shall Destory All the Civilized Planets were intrigued by the discovery aspect of my project. Not only was the work of a major comic book artist uncovered, but there was also a true-life mystery surrounding it all.
Finally, readers simply love the twisted quality of these brutal tales of maniacal retribution.
CMix: Given how dated those comics are and the idiosyncrasies of Hanks’ vision, should those comics be resuscitated by new creators?
PK: I can’t imagine a single reason to recreate Hanks’ work. It’s the same idea as remaking films you liked when you were younger. The impulse is fundamentally flawed and the results are categorically disastrous.
Variety is reporting today that Paramount Pictures has acquired the live-action feature film rights to the as-yet unpublished Douglas TenNapel graphic novel Monster Zoo for producer Sam Raimi and his Buckaroo Entertainment company.
At this point, Raimi is not expected to direct the project, which is also being produced by Josh Donen and Ellen Goldsmith Vein. Monster Zoo, which is set to be published by Image Comics in the spring, tells the story of an ancient artifact that is found and transported to a zoo in the United States. There, the idol’s spirit awakens and starts to mutate the zoo’s animals and turn them evil.
Once this begins, a group of teenagers must band together to try to stop the evil monsters from destroying the world.
No word yet on who will be adapting the graphic novel for the screen or directing. But when there is, we’ll bring it to you.
Empire Magazine has posted two new, exclusive images from the forthcoming Incredible Hulk film.
The images show an angry Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) strapped down with electrodes all over him. Like most things in this world, including puppy dogs, ice cream and the New York Mets, being strapped down makes Banner angry and causes him to Hulk out.
The second image gives us a nice profile shot of General Thunderbolt Ross (William Hurt), wearing a cast on his left arm. Tussling with the Hulk tends to leave people with injuries. It looks like Ross got off lucky.
Fans will get to see the green goliath in action once The Incredible Hulk hits theaters on June 13, 2008.
From the stories coming out of WonderCon, it looks like the San Francisco convention is quickly approaching the high profile of its San Diego counterpart, with similar big-name announcements, celebrity appearances and, well, masses of stormtroopers popping up during the show.
Here’s a rundown of some of the highlights:
Saturday night’s Iron Man panel featured director Jon Favreau answering questions about the film — and the potential for a sequel — before showing off new footage from the film. SuperHeroHype has a great recap of the panel and footage. SHH also sat down with Favreau for a recorded interview that they’ve made available in downloadable mp3 format.
As for your dose of convention drama, Blog@’s Graeme McMillan ignited a veritable sh*tstorm around the InterWebs when he chose not to report a portion of the Bill Willingham Spotlight due to the creator’s request. Apparently (and this is what I’m gleaning from the online chatter), Willingham revealed some spoiler-esque info regarding Fables and an upcoming Fables-related project and subsequently asked reporters not to report on any of it. McMillan obliged, and was later dragged from his hotel room by an angry mob of comics fans, savagely beaten, then tarred, feathered and dumped in the bay — or the online equivalent, at least.
McMillan’s Blog@ associate J.K. Parkin not only reports on all of this, but also makes sure to get a word-for-word recap of the information that caused all of the ruckus.
Disney’s Ratatouille won out over Marjane Satrapi’s critically praised graphic novel adaptation Persepolis in the "Animated Feature Film" category during tonight’s Academy Awards.
Oscar.com has posted an image from the pre-show survey filled out by Satrapi’s co-creator on the Persepolis film, cartoonist Vincent Paronnaud, who apparently wanted to become a clown and a priest when he was young, and finally decided that cartooning was a "good compromise between the two."
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a big fan of Todd Dezago and Craig Rousseau’s Perhapanauts.
So I was pretty happy to see them launch a new Perhapanauts website, complete with previews of the upcoming "King-Size Annual" that marks their debut with new publisher Image Comics.
Oh, and if you’re the type who’s been holding your breath until they put out a Chupacabra t-shirt, you can finally exhale. The new website is selling one of those, as well as a bunch of other cool merch, too.
Wondering what The Abomination, Hulk’s nemesis in the upcoming "Incredible Hulk" film, will look like? Well, a photograph of a flier posted by SuperHeroHype should provide you with a good idea of how the villain will appear on screen in the June 2008 film.
Although the story posted by SHH seems to have vanished from their site, there was no stopping dissemination of this image of the flier, which features an image of the Abomination toy with "steel" pipe weapon!
(via cinematical)
How to Make Webcomics goes on sale later this month, but CBR managed to track down the book’s authors, PvP creator Scott Kurtz and cabal of webcomickers known as Halfpixel, for a great discussion of why the book is necessary, who it’s intended for and the state of the comics scene today.
“I’ve toyed with the idea of writing this myself for years but always put it off for fear that people would react poorly to it,” said Scott Kurtz of the impetus of producing an instructional book on webcomics. “Maybe I felt it was too egotistical for me to attempt to write some definitive tome on making webcomics. Then we started the Webcomics Weekly podcast and response to it was so overwhelmingly good and positive that we knew that it was time for a book like this. People are hungry for shop talk about making webcomics.”
According to Kurtz and the Halfpixel crew, which includes Brad Guigar (Greystone Inn, Evil Inc.), Dave Kellett (Sheldon) and Kristofer Straub (Checkerboard Nightmare, Starslip Crisis), the book is aimed at people who already have the basic drawing and scripting skills, but want to learn more about the business end of webcomics.
“Newspaper comics are on a very easily charted trend — straight down,” Guigar said. “Webcomics are on the rise. As we say in the book, the days are gone in which one could earn a living through a publisher or a syndicate that held the keys to the mass market. The Internet busted the bottleneck. The entire world is out there waiting to discover your work and they don’t need a newspaper or a bookstore to do it. The only remaining barrier between you and success is yourself.”
Preach on, brother.
How to Make Webcomics is published by Image Comics and will hit shelves later this month.
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