The Dumb Are Mostly Intrigued By The Drum

Another comic book post, another Mark Millar story. I've said it in the past, for me, this dude is the best writer in comicdom right now so when these stories pop up, you'll see them here. After staying on the sidelines in the Ultimate Universe, the sheriff is back in town next year when Millar comes back to do Ultimate Avengers in 2009. Check out the interview over here at Newsarama for all the details. I'm guessing that Ultimates 4 with Ed McGuiness isn't gonna happen? That sucks if true but as long as Millar is back at the helm (Loeb's run has been dumb so far), all is good in the universe. Now I'm left wondering who's going to be doing the art duties....Joe Mad & Millar would implode my head like the Large Hadron Collider.

I love Millar's line in that if he was given superpowers that he would "kill who ever John McCain told me to kill." Pretty much! I mean, who wouldn't want to have super powers? Well dude's always spewing gold (it's comments like those that make you either love or hate the guy) and in this interview with G4, he talks it up about everything from his latest comic book, War Heroes to the latest on his much talked about reboot of the Superman franchise on the big screen. And during the whole interview, dude's holding a beer. Ah, to live the rock star life of a comic book writer....

I know that God didn't invent them, but damn are Pluots delicious....Oh, didn't see you guys there. Well after taking it easy for a week due some insane deadlines at work, everything should be back to normal this week....somewhat. Anyways, besides working most of this holiday weekend, lets recap some of the coolness:

I've been raving & ranting about the awesomeness that Kick-Ass (the graphic novel) for a while now and although they announced some of the cast before, today they rounded it out by bringing out the big guns: Nicholas Cage. Meh. Yeah, not very impressed as I'm not a huge Cage fan but whatever gets the investors money to get the film made, right? So the word is the script was so violent that none of the studios wanted to touch this hard R-rated film involving kids beating each other and killing everyone (reminds of why Battle Royale never got a proper release here) hence the search for independent funding which they found. Keep your fingers crossed that Castor Troy doesn't mess this one up. Head on over to Slash Film here to see the full cast lineup with the characters they're playing, pretty cool. For the official story, The Hollywood Reporter has it here. Production is slated to start this Fall in Canada.

No matter what you thought of last week's #2 film in the box office, Wanted is a success. Raking in over $50 million in the box office (and that's going up against the Pixar juggernaut named Wall-E), creator Mark Millar has gain even more Hollywood clout. In the past Millar had spoken about his dream project: writing a Superman film. With the commercial failure of 2006's Superman Returns, the future doesn't look very bright for Millar. Pile that on top of the fact the Millar has, in the past, said some very no so nice things about the people over at DC Comics. But with his new found "power" can that be changing? Well, Slash Film has a real good write up on the latest on Millar's quest to get the ball rolling on Superman in which the writer talks that the film is pretty much a go with a director already attached and an announcement to come before Christmas. Awesome. Even if it is more of Millar's hype machine, it's always good to dream. Maybe, we can finally get a Superman film that is on par with what Christopher Nolan has done with the Batman franchise. 

Wanted in HD

This one looks like it's the final trailer before the film is released later this month and it looks good. Can it be the surprise hit of the summer? It definitely has potential and it's looking real slick right now. Gotta keep my fingers crossed that some of that Millar spark is still infused within the confines of the film. Check out the trailer in HD over at Myspace here.

When we went to Wondercon in Feb., James McAvoy was there talking about the film and he brought and extended scene with him. It wasn't that great. It actually dampened my hopes for the film. The FX looked pretty lame, some of the shots were questionable and some of the black artifacts coming through looked like it had in fact been shot digitally (this is the first feature film to use the Red Camera) so I took and put the film in the loss column right then and there in order to be pleasantly surprised if the film is actually decent. But this new featurette posted over at Empire got my hopes up a little. To see Mark Millar talk about the transition and to hear him say that he had his fears too actually made me push the film back over to the win column. Of course, we'll just have to wait and see what transpires once it actually drop in June.

Fuck, Wanted is gonna suck. There, I had to say it because that way when I actually see it, no amount of suckiness will contradict my preconceived notions. The graphic novel is something that will forever be one of most cherished pieces of modern art that will stay with me until the day I die (unless they find a cure for 44 stab wounds by then) and the film strays far (very far) from the source material. Swap "unionized superhero villains" with "unionized assassins" and you can see the discrepancies. But the gunplay they've showcased so far does arouse me to no end (I can't wait to head out to The Range to see if I'm one of the few who can "curve" a bullet). Oh well, so instead of Lex Luthor we get Miguel Bain. Mark Millar (author of the graphic novel) has seen the film and has said he liked it so maybe it will be good....but I'm sticking to my notion of it sucking. Hopefully, I will be surprised come June 27th. If not, I'll always have my graphic novel to go back to. Check out the new HD trailer here or stream it right here:
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So a while back I noticed that an official Hellboy 2 web site had opened up and on that site, there were some forums where people could ask director Guillermo Del Toro questions. I asked, he answered. Check out the thread right here. Pretty cool, huh? I've met Del Toro when he was doing the press for the first Hellboy movie and he was a great guy and he even threw down a sketch of himself in my sketchbook. It's awesome that a director of his caliber is always cool with mingling with the fanboys like myself. And for those of you who don't know what the RED camera is, check it out here. Basically, it's a digital camera that shoots very close to film quality. How close? Nearly indistinguishable. The first feature that will be shot entirely using this camera is a little movie named "Wanted" based on the mind blowing graphic novel by Mark Millar. Check out the trailer or the samples you can find on the RED site (along with a short that Peter Jackson shot as a test for the camera). Very good stuff. And all for the low, low price of around $20,000. Truly a baragin, no joke. Soon enough, all video quality will be looking like Hollywood and not like someone ran it through a meat waffler. The future is here and with classy directors like Del Toro always willing to do fan service, cinema, as a whole, has a bright future ahead! VIVA MEXICO, CABRONES!

It's over. Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's brilliant run on Marvel Comics' The Ultimates has finally come to and end and I'm a bit saddened. With this book, these guys reinvented comics and injected the often misunderstood world of comics with a dose of gritty storytelling, artwork and reality based credibility and will forever live , in my book, as one of the greatest series I've ever read. Always viewed as kiddie material, comics these days are far beyond that. Quite frankly, I'm not sure if I would of been able to understand today's comics back in the days and it's almost as if the industry has grown up right along with me. I started reading comics back in the early 90's when I was at a Madera Johnny Quik on my way home from a visit to the hospital (I can't quite remember for what, though). On the rack there I saw it and it jumped out at me. I remember thinking, this has to be the stupidest thing I had ever seen up to that point in my life: NFL Superpro #1. Yup, that was my first comic book, or "funny book" as my dad used to call them. I bought it and I laughed my ass off for all the wrong reasons. That shit was absolutely horrible. But, it was that book that lead my to start reading comics and the more I read them, the more I was pulled in by the Marvel Universe and it's many inhabitants. As the audience and creators got older and became bored with this universe, they began to create comics aimed at an older audience. A revolution was started and the mid-90's brought us the Image Universe, a creator owned imprint that would let artists work on characters spawned from their own imaginations and not have to worry about decades of back story and continuity issues. As good as it sounded, the end result wasn't what everyone thought it was going to be. The creative freedom didn't do much but create second rate characters with female sidekicks adorned with giant boobs and wraped around with shiny chromium hologram covers. Anything to sell books to my adolescent demographic and sometimes it worked, but I quickly lost faith. As did most people, it seemed. In turn, the industry was almost killed. Marvel was in shambles. DC was worse. And besides the brand name artists, Image was sucking big time. I went back and read my Superpro and thought "Geez, we haven't progress that much further than this, have we?" I flat out stopped reading comics.