Tagged: X-Men

ITV previews new Prisoner series, Primeval, Law & Order London

ITV previews new Prisoner series, Primeval, Law & Order London

  • News
  • November 21, 2008

Britian’s ITV has a showreel for their upcoming season, with new content of interest for fans:

  • The first video clips I’ve seen for the remake of The Prisoner, starring James Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ) as Number Six and Ian McKellen (X-Men, Lord Of The Rings) as Number Two. You can read more at AMC’s Prisoner production blog, with many entries by Sir Ian himself.
  • Law & Order: London, starring Jamie Bamber (Battlestar Galactica) in the traditional younger detective role and Freema Agyeman (Doctor Who, Torchwood, Survivors) in the traditional female DA role. Character names? It’s Law & Order, you know the roles. Although seeing DAs in wigs is a bit weird. At least they kept the "da-dum" sound.
  • Clips for season 3 of Primeval.
  • A new series called Whitechapel that, as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with Warren Ellis. Unless he’s trying to recreate the Jack the Ripper killings for fun and profit. Which, come to think of it, Warren might do.

And for the obligatory comics connection, they keep using the soundtrack for The Dark Knight over clips. You’d think that soundtrack won an Oscar or someth– oops, sorry. Sore subject?

Any hits? Misses? Impending disasters? Leave your comments below.

ComicMix Radio: Making A Dream Come True

ComicMix Radio: Making A Dream Come True

More than likely you or someone you know would love to make a film, but those first steps are the hardest. Meet Yasmine Zapp who got her horror film, Darksound, on the screen and she shares the secrets here, plus:

  • New Harry Potter Trailer this weekend
  • A Thor cartoon
  • X-Men First Class the movie

Press the Button or we will tell the Boogy Man where you live!

And remember, you can always subscribe to ComicMix Radio podcasts via iTunes - ComicMix or RSS!

 

October Comics Sales Soften

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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20th Recruits ‘X-Men: First Class’

20th Recruits ‘X-Men: First Class’

  • News
  • November 19, 2008

Back in July, Production Weekly listed X-Men: First Class on their charts and visitors to www.x-menfirstclass.com were taken to 20th Century-Fox’s website.  Finally, the trades this morning confirm that Fox is looking to reboot the mutant franchise.

Gossip Girl’s Josh Schwartz has been signed to write X-Men: First Class which is perfect casting given his experience writing younger characters. Schwartz has also worked on The OC and Chuck so gets not only teen angst but can write for the geek audience.

Variety notes that Schwartz’s deal includes an option for him to direct.

The title comes from the Marvel comic of the same name which began a new brand for the company, using modern day storytelling sensibilities to retell or add to the original tales. X-Men First Class has focused on the original quintet of mutants – Cyclops, Angel, Ice Man, Beast, and Marvel Girl – all training under Professor Charles Xavier’s tutelage at his school for gifted students in Westchester, New York.  The recently canceled title was supplemented by Wolverine: First Class and the current Weapon X: First Class miniseries.

Lauren Shuler Donner, caretaker of the mutants in Hollywood, will return to produce. Previously she handled the first three X-films plus next May’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Simon Kinberg (Mr. and Mrs. Smith) will co-produce. Shuler is also developing David Goyer’s X-Men Origins: Magneto film. Possibly spinning out of Wolverine could be Deadpool, played by Ryan Reynolds, who appears in the story.

Since Brett Ratner wrapped what was considered a trilogy, the studio has been seeking ways to reinvent the story of people discovering their mutant abilities set against a world that deeply fears those that are different.
 

Marvel Releases Mutant Variant Covers

Marvel Releases Mutant Variant Covers

  • News
  • November 17, 2008

Marvel sent along the variant cxovers to two of the mutan ttitles tying in with the Bring On The Bad Guys company-wide event. The covers are to Uncanny X-Men #505 by series artist Greg Land, and Young X-Men #9, by Adi Granov.

Issue details are:
 
UNCANNY X-MEN #505
Written by ED BRUBAKER & MATT FRACTION
Pencils & Cover by TERRY DODSON
Villain Variant by GREG LAND
Rated T+ …$2.99
On-Sale—12/17/08

YOUNG X-MEN #9
Written by MARC GUGGENHEIM
Penciled by RAFA SANDOVAL
Cover by CHRIS BACHALO
Villain Variant by ADI GRANOV
Rated T+ …$2.99
On-Sale—12/17/08
 

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

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?

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.)
 

HBO Orders ‘Game of Thrones’ Pilot

HBO Orders ‘Game of Thrones’ Pilot

  • News
  • November 12, 2008

The trades are reporting that HBO has finally given a pilot order to A Game of Thrones, the first in George R.R. Martin’s bestselling A Song of Fire & Ice series. The television version will be executive produced by David Benioff (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and D.B. Weiss (Halo).

HBO picked up the rights on January 17, 2007 with Variety describing the series as "an epic struggle for power set in a vast and violent fantasy kingdom." Which is putting things mildly. Martin, called by Time as an American Tolkien, has created a sprawling saga with dozens of characters currently projected to be seven volumes long and is a modern day epic fantasy which would be challenging for even premium cable to adapt.

 “Fantasy is the most successful genre in terms of feature films given the incredible popularity of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies,” Benioff told The Hollywood Reporter. “High fantasy has never been done on TV before and if anybody can do it, it’s HBO. They’ve taken tired genres and reinvented them — mobsters in The Sopranos and Westerns with Deadwood.

“It’s not a story with a million Orcs charging across the plains,” Weiss said. “The most expensive effects are creature effects and there’s not much of that.”

Ever since the option was announced, the producers have insisted that each season would adapt just one of the thick novels.  Martin was also committed to writing at least one episode per season.  He began working on the pilot in 2007, completing a first draft in August.  A second draft was announced as being completed in June 2008. HBO exercised their option on the series in September before yesterday’s announcement.

A Game of Thrones was released in 1996 and won critical acclaim, earning the Locus Award for Best Novel (Fantasy) while earning nominations at the World Fantasy and Nebula Awards.

The other books in the series are A Clash of Kings (1998), A Storm of Swords (2000), and A Feast for Crows (2005). Announced but not yet delivered, written or scheduled are A Dance with Dragons, The Winds of Winter, and A Dream of Spring.  The saga has also led to three novella and act as prequels to the first novel.

Martin actually was at work on Dragons when he realized things were not working and he tossed out much of the work and announced at the Millennium Philcon in 2001 that he was writing a different book to continue the story before resuming Dragons. That became Crows which tightened its focus on a handful of characters while the next book would shift the spotlight to others. An anticipated 2008 publication date came and went and Bantam is hopeful it will receive the manuscript in time for a spring 2009 release.

The one obstacle left is being better than the ten other projects in development at the cable network. Although six are expected to get the series go-ahead, HBO can be choosy under its new regime which jettisoned several other projects already, including Preacher.

Martin plans seven books in the series. The producers intend for each season to span one novel.

THR notes, “Combined with True Blood, this also suggests an interesting, AintItCoolNews-targeted direction for the network. Less edgy-PBS, more R-rated Comic Con.”
 

Revised ‘Magneto’ Plot Revealed

Revised ‘Magneto’ Plot Revealed

  • News
  • November 12, 2008

Production Weekly printed a revised plot synopsis for David Goyer’s X-Men Origins: Magneto film. Goyer is slated to write and direct the project for 20th Century Fox.

“The original X-Men film began with a prologue that showed the character as a child being led to a concentration camp by Nazis and that is the period in which the Magneto film will take place. This setup will allow a future villain to at least flirt with the designation of protagonist since the character will be seen almost exclusively in his formative years. The storyline will heavily involve Professor X, the wheelchair-using X-Men leader. That character was a soldier in the allied force that liberated the concentration camps. The professor meets Magneto after the war and while they bond over the realization that they are alike in their special powers, their differences soon turn them into enemies.”

While Sir Ian McKellen has indicated a desire to participate in the film, the light has yet to go green so there’s no casting, production or release date as yet. While the plot involves Xavier, there’s been no word either about Patrick Stewart’s participation.

McKellen and Stewart, though, will reunite in March for a British production of Waiting for Godot.

Sneal Peeks: ‘Black Terror’ #1, ‘Lone Ranger’ #15

Sneal Peeks: ‘Black Terror’ #1, ‘Lone Ranger’ #15

  • News
  • November 12, 2008

Here are sneak peeks at Dynamite Comics’ The Lone Ranger #15 and Black Terror #1, both hitting shops tomorrow.

The Lone Ranger presents "Scorched Earth" Part Four, from writer Brett Matthews and artist Sergio Cariello cover artist John Cassaday. The Lone Ranger and Tonto are hot on the heels of a serial killer. Plus: Cavendish continues to fall back into old habits as his quest for The Lone Ranger and his revenge continues.

The Black Terror continues Alex Ross and Jim Kreuger’s reimagining of the Golden Age heroes.  They cowrote the story with art from Mike Lilly and Vinicius Andrade. Spinning out of Project SUPERPOWERS, this will be the first new ongoing series -opening with this four-part story.

Each issue will feature a cardstock cover and the first issue also features a 50/50 cover split — one by Alex Ross and the other by Greg Land (Uncanny X-Men).  This new series is the foundation to the storylines spinning out of Project SUPERPOWERS 0-7 (the opening chapter), and will lead directly in to Project SUPERPOWERS Chapter Two.
 

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