Tagged: Sandman

‘Spectacular Spider-Man Season 2’ Episode Descriptions

‘Spectacular Spider-Man Season 2’ Episode Descriptions

  • News
  • December 23, 2008

Marvel Animation has released episode descriptions for the second season of The Spectacular Spider-Man.

The second season kicks off will premiere on the Canadian network Teletoon at 10:30 a.m.  January 11, 2009. The American fans have to wait until March when the series moves from TheCW4Kids to Disney XD.

14 – Blueprints
It’s early December, and the first snow is falling. PETER PARKER has a long “To Do” list – leading off with talking to GWEN STACY about their surprise first kiss. But before he gets the chance, SPIDER-MAN has a run in with the sorcerer MYSTERIO.

15 – Destructive Testing
Both GWEN STACY and LIZ ALLAN like PETER PARKER. So whom should Pete pursue? Meanwhile, KRAVEN THE HUNTER has come to New York to make SPIDER-MAN his prey!

16 – Reinforcement
As Christmas approaches, the SINISTER SIX reconstitutes with SANDMAN, RHINO, VULTURE, ELECTRO and new members MYSTERIO and KRAVEN. All they want for Christmas is SPIDER-MAN – dead. Meanwhile, PETER PARKER finds his wandering eye prevents him from being with GWEN STACY. He’ll have to learn to focus if he wants to get the girl… and if he wants to stay alive.

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‘Watchmen’ Tops 3Q Sales Charts

‘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

Superman, Batman producer Jon Peters charged with parole violation

Superman, Batman producer Jon Peters charged with parole violation

  • News
  • November 7, 2008

The New York Post (I know, I know) reports that Jon Peters, the producer of Superman Returns and the Michael Keaton Batman films, has been charged with multiple violations of his parole stemming from a drunk-driving plea. Peters pleaded no contest to DUI after dozing off on the 101 Freeway in Ventura on Feb. 11, 2006. The Ventura County district attorney’s office told Page Six Peters is due in court on Jan. 16 to answer charges he failed to complete an alcohol-education program, or report to his probation officer, or complete community service.

What’s more, rumor has it a document submitted by the four-times-divorced filmmaker is being examined for alleged forgery, as it shows he did a required 40 hours of community service when he had finished only four. A Hollywood producer fudging numbers? Shocking.

Jon Peters, you may recall, is the bozo who wanted Kevin Smith to write a Superman script where Superman would never fly or appear in costume, and put the Sandman movie into development hell. And of course, the mechanical spiders. Here’s Smith’s take on the guy…

Vertigo/WildStorm at the Movies

Vertigo/WildStorm at the Movies

  • News
  • November 3, 2008

Since Dark Knight hit the screen, the world of superheroes in film may not be the same again. With the inevitable success of Watchmen in 2009 and many more non-cape-wearing heroes on the way to theaters, we’ve collected just where things lie on some of our favorite Vertigo and WildStorm franchises, and how far we could be to seeing them at the local multiplex. For the super-heroes, see yesterday’s report.

Y the Last Man

New Lien optioned the recently completed  Y the Last Man several years ago and creator Brian K. Vaughn wrote the initial screenplay. In 2007, New Line assigned the stalled project to the creative team behind Disturbia — director DJ Caruso and screenwriter Carl Ellsworth — with producer David Goyer.

In an interview with Caruso, he claimed that the story was too much for just one movie, and they decided to focus on making the first film primarily about issues 1-14 of the comic series. The entire series would be plotted into three films and rumors have been circulating that Shia LaBeouf was in line for the role at one point. Caruso and LaBeouf worked together of Disturbia and Eagle Eye and LaBeouf expressed interest in the role.

Caruso told Slash Film in July, “I was talking to Shia [LaBeouf] about this yesterday when we were looping him, because he really wants to do it as well, I would like to prep this movie in October, and start shooting it by January. Warner Bros keeps saying ‘We need movies for 2010′ I’m like ‘We’re the movie!’” said Caruso. “[Shia] wants to do it, I want to do it. I think we just need to worry about him being exhausted, so I told him, if I prep it in the fall and we start in January, that’s a nice big break.”

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Interview: P. Craig Russell

Interview: P. Craig Russell

  • News
  • November 2, 2008

The passage of time sometimes seems like a dream when reflecting back, which is appropriate when you realize that it’s been 20 years since Neil Gaiman, along with a host of brilliant artists, first introduced the world to The Sandman and created a series that is considered required reading by many.

10 years ago, Gaiman released The Sandman: The Dream Hunters, as a prose novella and a standalone story that could be read without prior knowledge of the earlier volumes, with illustrations by Yoshitaka Amano. Final Fantasy fans may be familiar with Amano for his design contributions to the popular videogame series.

This Wednesday, DC is marking the 20th anniversary of Sandman with the first of four issues of the comic adaptation of The Dream Hunters by P. Craig Russell, an artist whose career spans over 30 years across various publishers and genres in the comic industry. The first issue of The Sandman: The Dream Hunters comic adaptation will feature a regular cover by Yuko Shimizu with a variant cover by Russell.

P. Craig Russell is also no stranger to collaboration with Neil Gaiman as a contributor to the original Sandman series. His most recent work was the graphic novel adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline from Harper Collins, which is also due out as an animated feature in theaters next year.

I recently spoke with Russell about The Dream Hunters, Neil Gaiman’s confessions of originality, and the art of adaptation.

ComicMix: For those who may not have read the original prose story, what is The Dream Hunters about?

P. Craig Russell: It’s an original story told in the style of a Japanese fairy tale. It’s the story of a fox who falls in love with a young monk. She falls in love with him and his soul is stolen by a rich onmyōji, who is sort of like a wizard, and the fox then takes her revenge on the onmyōji.

If you haven’t read it, it’s a beautifully written story and I just found out for the first time in Neil’s notes that he just wrote for the first issue of Dream Hunters that the story he told in his afterword to the original book, was that this was based on an old Japanese fairy tale which, in fact, it wasn’t. He made it up entirely.

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Review: ‘The Vertigo Encyclopedia’

Review: ‘The Vertigo Encyclopedia’

The Vertigo Encyclopedia
By Alex Irvine
DK Publishing, September 2008, $29.99

There are few ways to produce a traditional encyclopedia, usually beginning with an alphabetical listing.  Most come with illustrations and are written in an academic style with little in the way of adjectives let alone opinions.  Graphic presentation may be the key difference between one publisher and another.  The role of illustrations grew in importance largely when Microsoft introduced [[[Encarta]]].

Leave it to [[[Vertigo]]] to show how things can be done in another way entirely.  The DC Comics imprint was a natural evolution from a line of titles, largely edited by Karen Berger, in the late 1980s as writers such as Alan Moore, Jamie Delano and Grant Morrison began taking fresh looks at the occult and many of DC’s more offbeat creations.

Once the line was on its own, it quickly found its voice and thanks to DC’s design department, the covers certainly looked less like standard DC fare and more like paperback books.  The subject matter also moved away from just looking into the shadowy corners of the DC Universe but pioneered a lot of creator owned material that began in the realm of the occult but also examined super-heroes, families, and even the search for God.  The line has now become its own mini-publishing empire with comic books, original graphic novels and the just canceled Minx line of black and white digests for tweens.

DK’s [[[Vertigo Encyclopedia]]] examines the line’s output from its inception through today and as written by Alex Irvine, makes some of the tougher to comprehend titles, more easily digestible.  Irvine is an accomplished novelist and major fan of the Vertigo line and his enthusiasm surprisingly comes through on many of the entries. The writing is clear and detailed and the significant titles that deserve the most space (Sandman, Preacher, Transmetropolitan) get it complete with significant events identified.

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‘Sandman’ Celebrating 20th

  • News
  • August 23, 2008

This year marks the 20th anniversary for The Sandman, Neil Gaiman’s famed comic book series from Vertigo. And, no surprise, the DC imprint is putting out a bunch of Sandman material to celebrate.

We’ve already seen the anniversary poster (see below), and a few other projects and events were just announced.

The fourth volume of The Absolute Sandman, collecting the last 19 issues, comes out in November. The Sandman: Dream Hunters also comes out that moth, a four-part mini series with art from P. Craig Russell. And Vertigo is releasing a tarot deck set featuring Dave McKean’s covers from the series.

There will also be a CBLDF and DC Comics tribute and auction in New York on Nov. 8 at an undetermined location, and Chip Kidd of Pantheon will interview Gaiman at the 92nd Street Y in New York City on Nov. 9.

For a list of characters in the poster, check out New York magazine’s Vulture blog, which originally posted the image.

Behind the Scenes of Tori Amos’ ‘Comic Book Tattoo’

Behind the Scenes of Tori Amos’ ‘Comic Book Tattoo’

Today sees the release of one of the most odd comics projects of late, a compilation of stories based on the music of Tori Amos, Comic Book Tattoo.

Spinner has a lengthy interview with Amos on the subject, as well as chats with many of the project’s creators. Read it all right here.

Amos offers her reaction to the book:

I’m not offended by this book, but I’m shocked. And it’s shocked in a way that makes me laugh, sometimes makes my skin crawl, sometimes makes me have to go back and dive back into that song again. I had given a brief to Rantz. I said, "This is not about people trying to, line by line, interpret and do a visual cover version of this song." Because I just didn’t find that intriguing at all. The comics that I was introduced to, which was ‘The Sandman,’ had integrity to me. And sometimes in the storyline, things didn’t always end up OK. Sometimes people die. Sometimes life does not triumph over all.

Every Day is Kids Day! by Martha Thomases

Every Day is Kids Day! by Martha Thomases

  • News
  • June 21, 2008

One of the things I learned at this year’s MoCCA Arts Festival (aside from the fact that New York firefighters remain the world’s most awesome) is that independent, alternative cartoonists embrace the children’s market. This was evident not only in the major publishing launch of Francoise Mouly’s TOON Books, but also the work of a lot of young people with their self-published titles.

This may seem like a stupidly obvious thing to say from anyone who has watched the market for children’s books, graphic novels, and other kinds of mass media. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to apply to most comic book stores.

When I worked at DC, the typical story about comics had the headline, “Biff! Bam! Pow! Comics Aren’t Just for Kids Anymore!” My boss explained to me, in great detail, why there was no need to make comics that children under 12 would enjoy. The success of Vertigo – Sandman in particular – meant there was a profitable market for comics among college-educated, affluent adults, especially to advertisers.

This was true, as far as it went. Good books can be good marketing. Sandman continues to make a lot of money for DC, even though there haven’t been new stories for several years. I have no doubt that many people for whom Sandman was their first comic went on to read lots of other comics by lots of other writers, artists and publishers.

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Happy Birthday: Charles Vess

Happy Birthday: Charles Vess

  • News
  • June 10, 2008

Born in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1951, Charles Dana Vess fell in love with comic books and art while still a child—he drew his first full-length comic when he was ten years old.

He attended Virginia Commonwealth University and graduated with a BFA in 1974, then went to work as a commercial animator for Candy Apple Productions in Richmond. In 1976, Vess moved to New York City to try his hand as a freelance illustrator. In 1980, he joined Parsons School of Design as an art instructor.

He was getting regular comic book work, and drew books for Dark Horse, Marvel, Epic, and DC, but it was in 1989 that Vess became truly well-known in the field. He collaborated with Neil Gaiman on one of the issues of the original Books of Magic mini-series and also drew three issues of Gaiman’s Sandman series for Vertigo. One of those issues, #19 (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) won the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story.

In 1994, Vess moved back to Virginia and organized The Dreamweavers, a traveling exhibition of 15 fantasy artists. Since then he has had many other showings and worked on many other comic books.

Another Vess-Gaiman collaboration, Stardust, won an Alex Award from the American Library Association, a Mythopoeic Award, and a World Fantasy Award for Best Artist. Vess has won a Will Eisner Comics Industry Award three times. He has also won a Comic Creators’ Guild award, a Silver Award, and an Ink Pot. He has won numerous children’s book awards as well, primarily for his collaborations with Charles de Lint.

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