BOOM! Studio announced this week that Steven Grant will be writing an adaptation of Frank Miller’s unproduced original RoboCop 3 screenplay, in an 8-issue mini-series titled RoboCop: Last Stand. The series will be illustrated by Korkut Oztekin with cover art by Declan Shalvey and is expected to wrap up Miller’s early vision of the future cop.
Grant also wrote an adaptation of Frank Miller’s script for Robocop 2 with Avatar Press. Now holding the RoboCop rights previously held by Dynamite Comics, BOOM! is planning on releasing that earlier series as a deluxe hardcover. Marvel, Dark Horse, Avatar, and Dynamite have all previously published RoboCop titles, making BOOM! the fifth publisher to take on the classic borg policeman.
The last preview for a movie that made me feel like the new teaser for the sci-fi film Gravity was the gut-wrenching preview for Open Water.
Although it seems like the studio doesn’t care that we see what must be the key scene in the film, this one looks to set up a pretty scary situation of man vs. nature. It asks the obvious question: How the heck are they going to get themselves out of this disaster?
International Space Station Commander Chris Hadfield, along with flight engineers American Tom Marshburn and Russian Roman Romanenko, returned safely to Earth aboard a Soyuz space capsule Monday night at 9:31 Central Time, landing by parachute in Kazakhstan.
We at borg.com have been watching Canadian astronaut Hadfield and his stunning photography on his Twitter feed since we became addicted to Twitter. In fact I got addicted to Twitter almost entirely because of Hadfield’s tweets and have been raving about his photos and commentary for months. Probably no person in Earth’s history has shared such a perspective and love for Planet Earth as Hadfield, the first Canadian to command the International Space Station. Through his stunning photography of the details of Earth from so far away, like images of Stonehenge from outer space, hundreds of cities alight at night, and hidden paradises and geological formations among unreal blue seas, Hadfield has shared his rare world view with thousands of Twitter followers.
Hadfield has been orbiting Earth for five months. He and his fellow astronauts undocked from the space station at 6:08 p.m. Central Time for his three-hour ride home. It was Hadfield’s first trip home in a Russian Soyuz capsule–he had traveled in space shuttles in past missions in 1995 and 2001.
As a farewell to the space station, Hadfield, who sports a Major Dad moustache, released a video of a slightly modified version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity, the “ground control to Major Tom” song, this time referencing his Soyuz ride home among other personal references. It is the first music video made in space, including Hadfield’s own vocals and guitar, put together by Hadfield and the crew and musicians back here on Earth, over the past several months.
Hadfield has been a huge presence on Twitter, with more than 850,000 followers as of Monday night. Hopefully Hadfield will continue posting photos taken aboard the space station, and sharing his great insights about Earth from above. And I can’t wait to see him host Saturday Night Live (rumor intentionally started here in the hopes it comes true).
Moonrise by Cmdr Chris Hadfield
Enjoy this superb music video, where you can see someone clearly fulfilling a dream that began 44 years ago when Bowie first released the song and when Neil Armstrong first walked on the surface of the Moon.
The best rock video ever? The best YouTube upload ever? The coolest thing ever done in outer space ever? Yes, yes, and yes. And someone should point out this video to J.J. Abrams on how to effectively use lens flares. Right on!
And frankly, Hadfield’s heartfelt rendition of the classic rock tune leaves Bowie’s original in the dust. You might just tear up a bit when you think how awesome it is Hadfield did something we all wish we could do–as Bowie’s lyrics take on new meaning–and how Hadfield has shared his experience with everyone in such a cool way.
Before Starbuck was played by a woman he was played by Face on The A-Team. Before Richard Hatch was Zarek he was Apollo. And Adama was played by Lorne Greene, not Edward James Olmos. Vipers were distinctive and cool. Viper pilots had helmets that were equally cool, with a bit of an Egyptian aura. These were the days of the original Battlestar Galactica TV series. Despite the success of the modern remake, the original 1970s series has its own rightful place in the annals of sci-fi TV.
Next week Dynamite Comics is releasing a new comic book series for the TV series’ 25th anniversary, and if Issue #1 is any indication fans of retro TV generally and the original BSG specifically will find a familiar universe here. And yet the new series has been updated with some new twists.
How about time travel as a weapon? We saw something similar in the Bruce Willis sci-fi movie Looper, reviewed here at borg.com last month. It’s a cool idea introduced in issue #1 and likely will be a key element in future stories.
Artist Cezar Razek creates some nice outer space images with detailed baseships and both classic and updated vipers. The characters evoke the original series cast, especially Dirk Benedict’s Starbuck. Writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning offer up the background of this future world where an epic battle has pitted man against machine. And man is in search of the legendary planet Earth. And in Issue #1 Abnett and Lanning set Commander Adama off on a new battle with those machines–the classic chrome Cylon warriors.
Despite the interesting idea of clone humanoids as Cylons in the BSG reboot, it’s really hard not to love the original appearance of Cylons more.
Battlestar Galactica Issue #1 is a fun retro sci-fi read. Pick up your copy next Wednesday, May 15, 2013 at comic book stores everywhere.
If you’ve ever read Orson Scott Card’s classic Ender’s Game (and if you haven’t, go do that immediately), you couldn’t help picturing it on the big screen. Card’s vision of a futuristic military academy is cinematic–in a way it’s taken over twenty years (and movie adaptations like the Lord of the Rings films to pave the way) for special effects technology to do it justice. But there’s more to Ender’s Game than its dazzling sci-fi trappings, and after the rash of recent YA novels-turned-films, focused more on pleasing fans of the original books than in making fully realized, standalone stories, it’s hard not to worry about director Gavin Hood’s upcoming adaptation.
Still, the first trailer, just released, gives us hope:
Marking the 35th anniversary of the original Battlestar Galactica TV series, Dynamite Comics is bringing the original series back for an ongoing monthly comic book series beginning next week. The Alex Ross cover art for the first three issues have been released and they look great, with homages to other 1970s science fiction posters. The cover to Issue #1 is above and here are the covers to Issues 2 and 3:
Although the only recognizable cast member is Ron Perlman, Pacific Rim looks to be a big movie with giant Transformer like robot avatars fighting Godzilla-type beasts. Guillermo del Toro released this new preview and we finally get to see the magnitude of the special effect scenes.
Striker Eureka, Crimson Typhoon, Coyote Tango, Gipsy Danger… they are all names for these Optimus Prime looking robots, one for each of the USA, Russia, Japan and Australia.
If you happened to miss last year’s theatrical release of the sci-fi crime thriller Looper, you might give it a shot now on DVD or Blu-Ray. Although it has some bits and pieces that don’t quite come together and leaves you wondering whether what you think happens at the end is the same as what the director intended, so many great scenes, acting, and sci-fi concepts will have us go back to watch this one again.
In part, it’s what I was expecting from another Joseph Gordon-Levitt sci-fi film–Inception. Inception was over-hyped and more commercially successful, but ultimately didn’t deliver the promised surprises and complexity, but that’s where Looper’s story does it better, with its back-and-forth, twisty time travel tale.
When does the creative spark begin, and when do you follow through with it?
We chat at borg.com each week about some of the best artists, authors, writers, actors, makers and doers around. Every creator is at a different place in a spectrum between wanting to do something and accomplishing their goals. Some may want to be the best out there. Some may want to get that first project in the hands of readers and viewers. Whether you’re trying to get that first comic book published, the first novel in the hands of an agent, the first movie playing on the big screen, everyone has to start somewhere. One route many people take is creating fan versions of existing properties. Some succeed by starting with fan fiction–either by writing a short story with the further adventures of a popular character, making a full comic book story, or a full-length novel. For legal reasons these won’t make you money, but they will allow you to work on the creating process. If you’re really successful at fan fiction you may just end up being noticed–noticed by someone who may give you more opportunities to do what you like to do, or better yet, your big break.
We found four fan works you might not have seen before that we think are worth taking a look at. First up, a long time ago in a small village in Ireland… there was a nine-year-old Star Wars fan named John White. Today John has two one-of-a-kind websites, one focusing on a 200-page comic book he wrote as a kid adapting Star Wars to comic book form inStar Wars: Age 9, and the other adapting Alien to comic book form in Alien: Age 11. Before you brush off the idea as “yeah, my kid does stuff like that” actually take a look at John’s knowledge and talent with layout, color, and design at such a young age (like the panel of the Millennium Falcon above). John has also filled in the gaps as a grown-up with new work and his new work could easily be found in the pages of today’s DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Dark Horse, etc. Check this out from one of what I’ll call his “special edition” pages from Star Wars: Age 9:
Last night at 7 p.m,. across America theaters showed a one-night only event–the world premiere of the remastered release of Star Trek: The Next Generation two-part episode “The Best of Both Worlds,” including specifically the cliffhanger Part 1, which arguably is the most important Star Trek episode and one of the best episodes of any TV series to hit the airwaves. Why the best? It featured a constellation of concepts that came together at just the right time, airing at the end of Season 3, the season where the NextGen cast and writers became comfortable in their roles and produced several incredible episodes, including ”Who Watches the Watchers,” “Yesterday’s Enterprise” (the other contender for best NextGen episode), “Captain’s Holiday,” “Hollow Pursuits,” “The Most Toys,” and “Sarek.”
The stakes were never greater in a Star Trek episode than in “The Best of Both Worlds,” with the beloved Captain Jean-Luc Picard assimilated by The Borg, turned into the leader Locutus who had all of Picard’s memories and strategies to use against his shipmates. It also featured something we all wanted to see–Jonathan Frakes’s Commander Will Riker as Captain of the Enterprise-D. Its cliffhanger ending at the end of Season 3 created a devoted fan following who waited with bated breath all summer and came back for Season 4 and thereafter stuck with Star Trek as loyal fans to this day. The Star Trek franchise might not be as successful today were it not for this great two-part episode.
