Warner Bros. wasn’t all about Watchmen at San Diego on Friday. They also showed off the trailer to the upcoming The Brave and the Bold animated series.
It’s a pretty funky cartoon, from appearances, with a score that harks back to the Adam West days. Watch it below.
In a few short years actress Jamie Chung has began to establish herself as one of the most sought-after young actresses working in Hollywood. From her first apperance as a cast member of MTV’s Real World San Diego through appearances on Days of Our Lives, Veronica Mars and CSI: New York, Jamie’s career continues to advance into bigger and more challenging roles.
More recently, Jamie is co-starring as Chi Chi in the Dragonball feature film based on the hugely popular media franchise and will be starring in ABC Family’s mini-series Samurai Girl, which debuts in September, as the title character Heaven. We caught up with Jamie recently at the San Diego Comic-Con to talk with her a bit about Samurai Girl, her character and how she feels naked without a sword.
COMICMIX: Hi Jamie, thanks for talking to us.
JAMIE CHUNG: Sure, my pleasure.
CMix: So, tell us a bit about your character in Samuari Girl.
JC: Sure. She’s a 19 year old girl named Heaven who’s adopted by one of the wealthiest families in Japan. During some tragic events she ends up finding out her family is influenced by the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia.
In an effort to find out how involved her family is with the mafia, she also discovers that she’s a part of some ancient prophecy which leads her to question who she really is and makes her go a journey of self-discovery to find out the truth about herself and where she comes from.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: As San Diego Comic-Con gets crazier and crazier, so does the mood of some of our ComicMix contributors. Case in point, the following ComicMix Six list that appeared in the queue earlier today from contributor Arthur Tebbel, who I’ve only managed to glimpse as he sprints from one panel to the next throughout the weekend. Here, Arthur offers up his thoughts on the six groups that he could do without at this year’s Comic-Con. -RM]
THE SECURITY STAFF: The assembled masses at any comic book convention are probably too meek to takeover a Starbucks, so why do we need what appears to be thousands of volunteer security guards to give us conflicting information and, most importantly, prevent me from being where I need to be to do my job. If these guys got drunk on as little liquor as they do power they would be in the emergency room after two beers.
STORMTROOPERS: Thank God we aren’t trying to run a Death Star, because we would be dramatically overstaffed. How did we get to the point where people go through all this trouble to express themselves in exactly the same way as everyone else? We respect the effort but… no, actually we don’t respect the effort. Try harder.
PEOPLE WHO BRING BABIES TO A PANEL DISCUSSION: Your baby won’t appreciate the discussion and, thanks to them, now I won’t either. Hire a babysitter; the convention will even look after your kid for you. If your child is too precious to part with for even an hour, go to the park instead.
PEOPLE WHO START THEIR PANEL QUESTIONS WITH “I DON’T READ/WATCH [PANEL TOPIC], BUT…”: These questions are always embarrassingly bad. What happened? Do you have some compulsion that makes you go up to any open microphone? Next year, we will most certainly go to a Battlestar Galactica panel and ask, “I don’t watch Battlestar Galactica but why aren’t there more tits in it?”
JESUS FREAKS: Okay, these guys weren’t in the convention exactly — but I could really do without people telling me how much I’m going to hell for my choice in media. Furthermore, this inspires legions of fanboys to trot out the same tired comebacks about how much they worship Satan or some such. No you don’t, Hell doesn’t have a basement you could live in.
ABOUT 20% OF THE ATTENDEES: Sometime before the show begins they need to assemble all of the con-goers for that day and someone (we’ll volunteer, in fact) will walk through the crowd and eliminate 20 percent of the people. These people will have their money cheerfully refunded and they can try again next year. Next, we’ll do this for the exhibitors.
Want more ComicMix Six? Check out the ComicMix Six Archive for previous editions of CM6.
Among the many projects on Dark Horse Comics’ long list of San Diego Comic-Con announcements this year is an upcoming collection of the well-received Blanche stories created by well-known Gumby and Classics Illustrated artist Rick Geary.
Originally published in 1992 by Dark Horse, Geary’s Blanche Goes to New York first introduced readers to Blanche Womack, the character whose adventures would pair Geary’s already highly regarded and artistic talents with original stories of his own plotting. Only three Blanche stories saw print in the decade that followed, with the last — Blanche Goes to Paris — released in 2001 by Headless Shakespeare Press.
The hardcover collection of Blanche stories published by Dark Horse will feature an all-new introductory comic by Geary, as well as the previously published trio of Blanche Goes to New York, Blanche Goes to Hollywood and Blanche Goes to Paris. The project is currently scheduled for an early-2009 release.
I recently had the opportunity to ask Geary about Blanche, the series’ place in his greater body of work and what’s next for his favorite heroine.
COMICMIX: For readers who might not be familiar with Blanche, can you provide a little background on the character and her adventures?
RICK GEARY: Blanche is a young woman from a small town in Kansas who tours the world as a concert pianist during the early decades of the 20th century.
In the first story she goes to New York (in 1907, as a piano student in Greenwich Village), in the second to Hollywood (in 1915, as the musical director for a film studio) and the third to Paris (in 1921, as the director of an avant garde musical production).
In the stories, she deals with various intrigues and challenges, some of a supernatural origin, and interacts with historical figures like D.W. Griffith, Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway. The character of Blanche is based ever so loosely on my grandmother, who taught piano in her small Kansas town and, as a young woman, studied in New York. From these facts I let my imagination fabricate her outlandish adventures.
Fans already had seen quite a lot at Twentieth Century Fox’s Comic-Con panel — getting early peeks and cast Q&As from The Day the Earth Stood Still and Max Payne — when they got quite a surprise from a man with wicked sideburns.
Fresh off a plane from Australia, Hugh Jackman snuck in to announce that shooting had just wrapped on X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and to unveil a clip from the movie. Newsarama has the details, including the big reveal that Gambit will show up in the film.
“I’ve been waiting to bring Wolverine to Comic-Con for years,” Jackman said. “I owe you guys my career.” He pointed out that the three X-Men movies never did huge presentations at SDCC for one reason or another and said there was no way he would miss it this time around.
Jackman then earned huge points with the gathering by not only lavishing praise on Wolverine co-creator Len Wein, and then ran offstage to shake Wein’s hand, who was sitting up front. Is it any wonder fanboys love this guy?
Jackman told Wein “thank you for creating this character. It made my career,” he said.
The Aussie actor talked about the film being action-packed and bad ass, and said to expect ‘lots of berserker rage in this one.’
Hot on the heels of announcements of the pseudo-animated versions of DC’s Watchmen and Image’s Invincible, the Wall Street Journal breaks early word that Marvel will join that game with an adaptation of an unpublished Stephen King short story.
Marvel’s announcement probably will come today. The story, N, will be available in 25 installments starting next week, available for download on iTunes, Amazon and elsewhere.
It’s sort of a tie-in promotion for King’s new book of stories, including N, from publisher Scribner. And no one’s sure what to expect:
For Scribner, the venture is a shot in the dark. There’s no way of forecasting how well the videos will translate into book sales. While Scribner’s corporate sibling, CBS Mobile, cites Nielsen data showing that roughly 14 million cellphone users in the U.S. pay for video services, it doesn’t know how many of those people are regular book buyers. However, the links from the videos to the NisHere.com pre-ordering Web site will allow Scribner to get a sense of how many sales result from video viewings.
Mr. King is optimistic about the video’s prospects. "I think they’re readers," he says of likely video viewers. But he admits that the venture is "something of a test" whose outcome isn’t certain.
Comics and movies meet at Comic-Con, and this year Radical appears to be the most forward gal at the dance, so to speak.
The relatively new publishing company announced recently that a film version of its Old West action series Caliber is headed to screens with John Woo attached to direct. In balmy San Diego, they’ve announced another three series getting development deals.
The company has also made deals for Hercules: The Thracian Wars and the mecha book Freedom Formula. Blog@ notes:
Radical Publishing is introducing the five-issue series this week at Comic-Con, and will release the first issue in August. …
The comic, created by Edmund Shern, is set in a future in which racing exo-suits have replaced fighter jets. The story centers on Zee, a genetically engineered racer who transforms himself into the hero of a dying city.
Producer Gale Anne Hurd has been involved with some of the most successful and exciting sci-fi and action films of all time. From the original Terminator through Aliens, Terminator 2, Armageddon and the recent Hulk, Hurd continues to deliver successful, entertaining and action-packed films over and over again. And her career is showing no signs of slowing down.
Recently, Hurd is readying yet another comic book adaptation for the big screen — a new new film called Punisher: War Zone which is, of course, based on the very popular Punisher comic. I caught up with Hurd at the San Diego Comic-Con to talk a bit about the new film, its dark, violent nature and why she thought a woman was the perfect choice to direct it.
COMICMIX: Hi Gale, thanks for talking to me. Let’s get right to it. Is Punisher: War Zone a sequel, a reboot or. . . ?
GALE ANNE HURD: its a reboot. We wanted to really go back to the origin but this isn’t an origin story in the way that we did it with hulk and take the origin of the punisher from the comic and we have that set up in flashbacks. So in the film we have Frank Castle set up on his mission of vengeance to punish the guilty.
iIs very much a MAX series. It’s a pedal to the metal, violent, tough hard-core film and it takes place in New York. We knew the heavy-duty fans were disappointed that the earlier film took place in Tampa.
For this movie we wanted to go back to the essence of the character, the locations, the other characters and the world and make it much closer to the comics.
CMix: Was it difficult decision to go back and reboot the franchise? Why did you do it? Did the first film not do well?
The best way to experience the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con is to be there. The second best is to constantly refresh ComicMix.com. But the third might be to fire up your game console.
The Xbox 360’s online video service offered excellent coverage of last year’s Comic-Con. Not only did they show footage premiered at the con, they also offered daily wrap-ups, interviews with comic creators, and videos of entire panels. I didn’t fly out to California, but I saw J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5 panel as if I had a front row seat.
To borrow a phrase from one of their upcoming games, this year the coverage will be “bigger, badder, and more bad ass.” Xbox LIVE has partnered with Warner Bros. and DC Comics to show a weekend’s worth of footage. For free! Hosting the events will Larry Hyrb, better known by his Gamertag as Major Nelson, the public face of Xbox LIVE. To start things off right, the service reposted their daily wrap-ups from last year.
Now if they could just figure out how to download a convention T-shirt, I’d be set.
Shortly before Comic-Con started, word spread that Devil’s Due was bringing a major celebrity mystery guest, who was then shortly revealed to be Kevin Spacey.
Kevin Spacey? The actor? Yep, that guy.
At Comic-Con on Thursday the sort of odd pairing was explained, which ComicMix‘s Chris Ullrich reports:
Devil’s Due partners with triggerstreet.com to find new comics talent and hopefully get them to the big screen
Kevin Spacey (co-founder of triggerstreet.com) said when asked why they were doing this, "Because comics are taking over Hollywood"
Triggerstreet started as a site to allow aspiring filmmakers to upload content for peer review. Now you can upload comics for the same purpose (and to be discovered, I suppose). Here are their uploading guidelines, which were just posted:
* The page size should be 6.875" wide x 10.438" high.
* The page count should be a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 10.
* You may also (optionally) upload an icon / avatar
associated with your Comic. The image should be 85 pixels wide by 100 pixels tall and in GIF or JPG format.
* Your Comic should be uploaded as a .pdf file.
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