Eclipsing the highly anticipated live action summer release The Dark Knight Rises, The Dark Knight Returns is up next. An animated adaptation of Frank Miller’s 1986 seminal dystopian look at Batman is being produced by Warner Premiere/DC Comics Premiere Movies.
The news is somewhat bittersweet for diehard The Dark Knight Returns fans. On the one hand, any well-done video adaptation would be a welcome sight. That said, until we see a live action version of this major graphic novel, anything else is just something less than the potential that this property could realize in both viewers and revenues for DC. Until we see Warner and DC Comics put this work on the big screen, we can’t get too excited here.
Providing the voice for the grim and hardened Batman is Peter Weller, who has been in several TV shows and movies, such as guest roles on House, M.D., Psych, Dexter, Fringe, Monk, 24, Star Trek: Enterprise, and key roles in the films Screamers, Leviathan, Buckaroo Bonzai, and of course, Robocop. It’s too bad this isn’t live action, as Weller’s great Robocop jaw could pull off the look of a 50-something Bruce Wayne.
Ariel Winter (Modern Family) will voice Robin, with Wade Williams (Prison Break) as Harvey Dent/Two-Face, and genre favorite Michael McKean (This is Spinal Tap, Homeland, Smallville, Sesame Street, The X-Files, Star Trek Voyager, Saturday Night Live, Coneheads, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Clue), expected to portray the doctor from Arkham Asylum, and David Selby, likely to portray one of the villains. (We hear Mckean got hit by a car this week, so we all hope he recovers quickly).
What should be highly anticipated, and has not yet been released, are the voice actors who will portray the key guest appearances in Frank Miller’s novel: Alfred Pennyworth, the Joker, Superman, and Green Arrow. I’d expect some key voice actors for the various newscasters, too, assuming this film follows the original’s focus on economic turmoil and 1980s excess.
Fans of the animated Batman: Year One, released last year, may appreciate this new animated feature the most. The plan is for The Dark Knight Returns to be released on two parts, the first by year end and the second in early 2013. Unfortunately it is also direct to video—so you won’t find this one at a theater unless Warner gives a preview at the San Diego Comic-Con this year as they did with Batman: Year Onelast year. The first photos released yesterday really don’t seem to grab Frank Miller’s rugged style, so hopefully the actual release is able to attain some of that from the original sourcework.
Bob Goodman (Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, Justice League, Static Shock) is writing the script for the film. Storyboard artist and animation director Jay Oliva is directing.
A lot can be said for the DC Comics New 52 reboot, and without re-hashing every bit of that for the umpteenth time, one single high note comes to mind. With so many #1 titles, with stories starting for the most part from scratch, it allows anyone to become a new reader, anyone to become a fan of something they weren’t a fan of before.
Oddly enough, when DC Comics said that they would have 52 titles, I actually believed them. I am glad they didn’t stick with that approach. Several books have been layered into the New 52, some relevant, some not. Titles like Batman Incorporated and Huntress. Another title I was surprised to see was Smallville: Season 11. And I am surprised it is a good series adaptation.
Smallville, the TV series, at its high point had millions of fans. Over its incredible ten-year run on the CW Network, it boasted both comic book fans and a mainstream audience. It never grabbed me, but once in a while I’d watch an episode and could see the appeal. As TV series are concerned, my preference was the earlier, slightly different but still similar Lois and Clark TV series. That series featured Teri Hatcher as Lois Lane and Dean Cain as Clark Kent, and–one big difference from Smallville–Clark donning the Superman suit and cape. Although I really liked Tom Welling in the remake of John Carpenter’s The Fog, it’s probably that distinction that kept me away from Smallville.
Smallville: Season 11 gives fans of the TV series Tom Welling finally portraying Superman, in the suit, and continues the story of the characters where the series left off. This works like the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8, etc. series–so long as every other panel is drawn to look like the actors who played the characters on TV, this can work. It actually works really well with Smallville Issue #1.
Writer Brian Q. Miller knows the characters enough to make you feel like you’re watching the show, with snappy dialogue and a relevant story. He should, as he wrote for the TV series. The banter between Clark and Lois is likely the best part of the first issue, with Lois as a particularly funny character. Pere Perez’s renderings aren’t picture perfect but he often nails the actors’ appearances and their roles, enough so that Smallville: Season 11 Issue #1 hits all its marks as you’d hope. Perez gives readers several good splash pages of Welling as Superman. Better yet, Miller and Perez give a substantial part of the story to Oliver Queen/Green Arrow and his wife Chloe Sullivan-Queen. Here the differences between Smallville and the New 52 series are obvious, including the fact Oliver is married, confirming Smallville as a parallel universe story in the DCU. As much as I know diehard Superman fans love the current Action Comics series, by comparison I found Smallville: Season 11 Issue #1 more interesting than Action Comics Issue #1. I was also surprised I prefer the Justin Hartley-influenced Green Arrow look, vibe, and story in Smallville to the current New 52 Green Arrow series.
At a dense 33 pages, including an alternate cover image and recap of the TV series season 1, with Smallville: Season 11 you’ll for once feel like you got your money’s worth.
As the #1 Green Arrow fan around, I’ve just got to say I was blown away by the first trailer for Arrow, just greenlighted for the Fall season on the CW Network. If I can’t have the TV series that I see in my mind, then I’m glad the one that is actually getting to the screen looks this good. For the first time since the Flash TV series DC Comics is expanding its cinematic reach with a focus beyond the tier 1 Justice League superheroes. Arrow very well could be DC Comics’ first step toward a future Justice League movie that could try to compete with the enormously successful new multi-superhero Avengers movie.
Check out this great first look at the series:
Stephen Amell looks like a good choice for a young Oliver Queen. And out of nowhere one of the best genre actors around shows up–Paul Blackthorne–Harry Dresden himself from Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files. Blackthorne, who was one of our top picks last year for the next James Bond, appears to be the second lead actor featured in the series, girlfriend Dinah Lance’s father, the man trying to find out who is behind the vigilante hero called Green Arrow.
As expected, the series is taking a Green Arrow: Year One approach, and Amell looks every bit the marooned Oliver Queen from artist Jock‘s visionary mini-series. Amell is also reminiscent of artist Phil Hester’s initial Green Arrow tales written byKevin Smith, showing a shaggy bearded version of Ollie.
This second teaser focuses more on Oliver Queen, and gives us a look at Amell and how he plans to portray the character:
Nice arrow work with the tennis ball scene–a great idea for showing his skill. And the cinematography doesn’t feel like the normal CW soap opera series we’re used to seeing. I hope that trait carries through to the final product.
And check out his mini-Batcave-like retreat! No question–I for one am looking forward now to this dark superhero series more than the new The Dark Knight Rises movie.
Finally, this mini-preview is a great snapshot of the show:
I initially didn’t care for the title, but the logo they are using with the target looks great.
Arrow stars Stephen Amell as Oliver Queen, Colin Donnell as Tommy, Katie Cassidy as Laurel Lance, David Ramsey as John Diggle, Willa Holland as Thea Queen, with Susanna Thompson as Moira Queen and Paul Blackthorne as Detective Quentin Lance. Based on the characters appearing in DC Comics, Arrow is from Bonanza Productions Inc. in association with Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros. Television, with executive producers Greg Berlanti (Green Lantern), Marc Guggenheim (FlashForward, Eli Stone), Andrew Kreisberg (Warehouse 13, The Vampire Diaries) and David Nutter (Smallville, Supernatural, Game of Thrones). Melissa Kellner Berman (Eli Stone) is co-executive producer. The pilot was directed by David Nutter from a teleplay by Andrew Kreisberg & Marc Guggenheim, story by Greg Berlanti & Marc Guggenheim.
Arrow will begin airing on Wednesday nights at 8 pm on the CW Network this Fall.
We highlight them all the time here at borg.com. But some of them don’t naturally come to mind when you think of cybernetically enhanced organisms–cyborgs, or borgs for short. What makes a borg? An organism, human, alien, or animal, who has been modified by technology or uses technology as part of or in place of another biological function. We use this broadly, encompassing not only a long-accepted group of borgs that are more metal than man, but also robots or androids modified with biology or biomatter, although taken to the extreme this would seem to include the bioneural starship USS Voyager from Star Trek Voyager.
Regardless of how you define it, meet our borg.com Hall of Fame, always ready for new honorees…
With Marvel’s big premiere of Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, we’ll begin with Tony Stark’s Iron Man. Tony Stark is not advertised as a borg, but if your power source involves techno-gadgetry via an arc reactor and you have his fully integrated armor, we think that makes you a borg. Whedon is very familiar with borgs, having created the character Adam, the nasty, almost unstoppable foe of the Scooby Gang in Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
If Iron Man is a borg, should one of the oldest creatures of science fiction be considered a borg as well–Frankenstein’s monster? How integral are those bolts and attachments to his survival anyway? Does an external power source make a borg? Did he ever have to regenerate?
And if Frankenstein’s monster makes the cut, maybe this spin-off fellow should, too:
Yes, Frankenberry, the only cereal mascot borg? Are those pressure gauges on his head? What functions do they serve? Before we move forward very far in time, we also think we need to at least consider Maria’s doppelganger from Fritz Lang’s sci-fi film classic Metropolis as a possible borg.com honoree–a robot admittedly, but somehow transformed into a humanoid creation with flesh, used to replace the real Maria and wreak havoc across Metropolis:
From one of the biggest science fantasy franchises, Star Wars, Darth Vader began as Anakin Skywalker, but through his own rise to evil and subsequent downfall he became more machine than man:
He even caused his son to require borg technology by slicing off his arm and hand with his lightsaber, making Luke Skywalker a borg as well:
With Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, we met an interesting new villain, General Grievous, a four-lightsaber wielding almost lobster-like biological creature made up of techno-armor and, in close-up are those reptilian eyes? His apparent disfigurement and breathing problems hint at a back story that must be not unlike Vader’s.
In The Empire Strikes Back we also briefly met Lando Calrissian’s majordomo who possessed some type of brain adapter technology–we learn from action figures, trading cards and comics his name is Lobot:
And probably the very first cyborg to be referred to specifically as a “borg” (by Luke Skywalker, even), Valance was a cyborg bounty hunter in the early pages of Star Wars, the Marvel Comics series:
Some borgs are more cybernetic than organism, at least at first appearance. This would include Doctor Who’s Cybermen:
and we’d learn even the Daleks were cybernetic organisms:
and the Terminators from the Terminator movie and Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series, very much more machine with a bit of organics (and even Arnold’s character called himself a “cybernetic organism”):
In Star Trek: First Contact the Borg Queen alters the android Lieutenant Commander Data in such a way so as to make Pinocchio a real boy:
giving real organic material to Data, (like Maria’s double above from Metropolis?) bringing him briefly into the realm of borg status, like Isaac Asimov’s Bicentennial Man:
and this even suggests the Tin Man from L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz may be a rudimentary variant borg being along the lines of Frankenstein’s monster:
All humanoids or aliens modified to become The Borg of the Star Trek franchise clearly are good examples of cyborg beings, the most famous of which are probably Patrick Stewart’s Locutus:
the seemingly innocent Hugh:
and Seven of Nine from Star Trek Voyager:
On Earth we encounter humans all the time with bodies improved by borg technology. Because of the OSI Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers were rescued from near death with enhanced biology and appendages to become the Bionic Man and Bionic Woman:
The British agent James Bond had to take on Doctor No, an evil scientist who took on his own technological enhancements because of medical maladies, bringing James Bond into the fold of genre franchises investigating a borg character:
Featured in a 1980s movie series and soon to be the subject of a new movie, Robocop:
showed us a variant on Austin and Sommers, and a bit like Iron Man, we have the government creating technology to make super-humans, and here, a superhuman police officer. This is taken even further, making three animals into borgs for military use in the Eisner-nominated comic book mini-series WE3:
…a far darker take on the classic cartoon character Dynomutt from Scooby Doo:
Inspector Gadget:
and Doctor Octopus (Doc Ock) in Spider-man 2:
both were borgs that made it into big-screen films.
In the DC Comics universe we have a newer Justice League featured member Cyborg, a football player/student who is in the wrong place at the wrong time, when his father’s lab goes up in flames and his father uses his own research to save his son from death:
Before that, Frank Miller envisioned a disfigured future world Green Arrow who would need his own prosthetic cybernetic arm in The Dark Knight Returns:
Mr. Freeze was an early borg villain in the Batman series:
In Marvel Comics Rich Buckler created Deathlok the Demolisher, another cyborg creation, and one of the earliest borgs in comics:
Add to that Marvel characters like Ultron, the “living” automaton:
Ultron’s own creation, named Vision, the “synthezoid”–
and the borg called Cable:
In the 1990s Jim Lee created the Russian borg in the pages of X-Men called Omega Red:
Long before these Marvel characters the cyborgs Robotman and Robotdog graced the pages of DC Comics in the 1940s, and yes, they were not just robots:
The modern Cylons from the reboot Battlestar Galactica TV series are borgs in the Terminator sense, robots made to look and pass for human. And there were a bunch, not just background, but named characters, the most famous of which was the seductive Number Six:
Years before, Philip K. Dick would create more than one borg character in his novels and short stories, revealed to us the best as the Replicants in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner:
Several replicants appeared in the film:
…all indistinguishable from humans to the naked eye.
In the horror realm we have Ash, from Evil Dead and Army of Darkness, his arm a functioning chainsaw, and at least in the comic book, like the Star Trek borgs he has an interchangeable arm like a mega Swiss Army knife:
If we include Ash do we also need to include Cherry Darling from Planet Terror, since she has a rifle as a leg like Ash’s arm attachment?
Heck, even horrific camp troller Jason became a borg eventually in Jason X:
Todd MacFarlane’s Spawn comics had both the borg assassin Overtkill:
and the cybernetic gorilla Cy-Gor:
Speaking of borg beasties, even Japanese monster movies embraced borgs, having their hero Godzilla encounter Mechagodzilla:
and Gigan:
In the world of manga and anime we have Ghost in the Machine’s own borg girl Motoko Kusanagi:
leader of a group of borgs, and the villain Cell from Dragon Ball:
Cowboy Bebop had the borg character Jet Black, which seems influenced by the design of Seven of Nine:
Akira had Tetsuo Shima:
And we have a new one to add to the list because of the film Prometheus, the creepy borg, David 8:
But he’s certainly not the first in Ridley Scott’s Alien universe. Don’t forget Ian Holm’s Ash in Alien:
John Hurt’s Bishop from Aliens:
and Winona Ryder’s Annalee Call from Alien: Resurrection:
But these are just the biggest examples of borgs in popular genre works. Countless books, comics and short stories have introduced other borg beings, not to mention every other new video game. What will be the next borg to enter the mainstream, with a new TV show or movie?
Should we add an Honorable Mention list to the borg.com Borg Hall of Fame, for beings resulting from the merging of humans with cyberspace? Think of characters like Tron and Flynn from Tron and Tron: Legacy? Or Neo and Trinity & Co. from the Matrix movies? You can argue some of the above in or out of the list, but we’ll be visiting most of them here now and then.
We’ll update this list from time to time and feature it as its own page on the borg.com home page.
This is not an eye-catching lede or a crazy supposition, this is a fact: the only way that Batman could beat Superman would be if Superman didn’t try. If you read the first six pages of the first issue of writer/creator Mark Waid and artist Peter Krause’s comicIrredeemable (or the first six pages of the trade paperback, which tends to be what I collect these days) you would see that basic scenario laid out in graphic detail as the Plutonian faces the Hornet. (You can see a free digital preview of these six pages now at comixology.com).
Of course, I’m biased. I’m one of the rare Superman fans as opposed to Bats. I like Green Lantern over Green Arrow. (The obvious parallels break down when I try to shift to Marvel heroes. Captain America? A favorite, but not quite in the power realm of GL and Supes). I obviously have a thing for the ultimate Boy Scouts. I like the characters that have to hold back, that can’t give it their all, because if they did, someone would die. (Don’t bother trying to make me think Kryptonite and the color yellow make a difference in stopping Big Blue and Lantern. They only exist because no one knows what to do with characters this powerful. Lex Luthor? As Douglas Adams would say, “Mostly Harmless,” with Lex’s only good plan being the one he devised in Kingdom Come. That’s not a coincidence that Mark Waid wrote it and that it’s my favorite Superman story).
Supes and Lantern vs. Batman = overkill?
That’s why the first trade paperback of Irredeemable is so refreshing. What would happen if one of the ultimate heroes lost his ever-loving mind? (We saw glimpses of it when Hal Jordan became Parallax and I probably need to go back to read that to see if it needs to be added to my list of great stories). When all a hero has is his (or her) sense of right and wrong to guide them, when all they have are the rules of society and the rules they make for themselves (right, Doctor?¹) to keep from doing harm, it’s a tenuous link. When a hero is the nearest thing to a living God, the only thing that can stop the hero is another God, a hell of a lot of luck, or themselves.
Batman? Who is Batman?
I think the same is true of the great sports heroes and why I love to root for them. It’s amazing to watch a truly skilled athlete do what he does best. To watch Alex Rodriguez or Albert Pujols hit in their prime is a kind of living masterpiece. To watch Tiger Woods make a golf course seem obsolete is a thrill of human achievement. Well, it’s true while they are young. Unfortunately, like all humans, sports heroes have to grow old. It eventually ends. It always ends.
Those tears are tears of joy, aren't they Supes? Batman is dead... long live Superman!
But, again, I’m in the minority. How do I know this for certain? Well, I have the great guys at Radiolab to thank for that information. We, as humans, root, root, root for the underdog 80% of the time and if they don’t win it’s a shame. We generally like to see the 15 seeds beat 2 seeds. We generally like to see upsets in the Super Bowl or college bowl games. We generally like to see the Yankees or the Red Sox and all their piles of money lose. We like to think that Batman, the ultimate in human intellect and training could beat the Kryptonian Superman like in The Dark Knight Returns that C.J. Bunce and Art Schmidt mentioned in their favorites worthy of adaptation.²
Most people like the underdog.
So, when athletes age, when they pass 30 and the leap out of bed in the morning gradually changes into swinging your legs over the side and pausing, taking that moment, before rising. The moment becomes longer. The hands move to the edge of the mattress to give that little extra push. The body bends forward so that the momentum of straightening helps to propel the body into space. The body that used to rush headlong into the day now stands before it in repose, knowing it will be there when the time comes to make the forward push into the stream of activity. Part of that pause comes from experience, from the idea that savoring those moments of calm and serenity helps to make the frantic moments acceptable, but part is that little voice in the back of the head that knows that one day the body won’t respond because as much as the mind won’t want to admit to growing old, it notices. It always notices.
Carried off the field = good. Helped off the field = bad.
We grow old. We watch our athletic heroes grow old and have to leave the game. We watch our intellectual and artistic heroes do the same, but the curve isn’t as dramatic and those heroes continue to amaze us and give us hope that we can stay amazing ourselves. Our fictional heroes remain the same though. They are immortal. But, of the immortals, only a couple of them are Gods. If they ever break that trust that we have in them, that’s when they become “Irredeemable.”
1. I think this is one of the reasons that I can’t get behind Rory Williams and his relationship with Amy Pond. I root for the Doctor. I root for him to be happy. The relationship with Amy Pond seemed like it could have been the one. But, that’s because I’m finite. There can never be a true human “one” for a Gallifreyan. Still, boo Rory.
To quote Nathan Petrelli to brother Peter in "Heroes"--"The world needs nurses, too."
2. I always think C.J. and I get along so well because our interests intersect so much, but are so different. He’s a Green Arrow guy and I’m a Green Lantern dude. We obviously differ on Alan Moore. We still have to discuss The Shawshank Redemption vs. The Green Mile.
When pondering what I want to see in the movie theater that hasn’t arrived yet I think a lot about several Philip K. Dick short stories, or TV series that I’d love to see continued on the big screen, like a big screen Magnum, P.I.,orSimon & Simon or Chuck—although if it is as underwhelming as the last X-Files movie then maybe not. I’d love to see some early twentieth century biopics of Bix Beiderbecke or Karl King (who, among other things, composed the circus themes for Ringling Brothers and played in Sousa’s band). And it would be fun to take a bunch of Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass songs from South Of The Border and The Lonely Bull and make them the soundtrack to a modern spaghetti Western, sort of like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with She’s The One. A good Green Arrow or Bionic Man movie, or a good sequel to Return of the Jedi would all be fun. And some things have been done already, but not quite right. Space Ghost had his own cartton then interview show, but how about an adaptation of the serious origin series by Joe Kelly? A big budget movie based on Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Aircould be awesome (the TV version suffered a bit despite a good cast). The Russian story of Lieutenant Kijewas filmed more than half a century ago with music by Prokofiev, but it needs a good updating. We’ve seen four Tom Clancy novels about Jack Ryan, but the creepiest of the series, Debt of Honor, has yet to be made.
A lot of films have been made, and in coming up with this list one of my ideas–a film featuring Super Grover and the cast of Sesame Street–seemed long overdue. I figured Sesame Street got bypassed for the Muppets, as shown in a funny scene from The Muppet Movie where Fozzie the Bear offers Big Bird a ride to the west coast to break into movies, and Big Bird says no thanks, he’s trying to break into public television back in New York. Well, apparently they made that movie back in 1985 and I missed it, Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird. You can’t know everything.
For me this list was tough until I moved away from books as source material. I think the movies I see in my head are better than how some of my ideas would likely turn out produced by the studios. But let’s get on with it–with a nod to Art Schmidt for his idea with DC Comics and Jason McClain for mentioning Connie Willis.
From the comic books: DC Comics’ Dark Knight Returns and Hard-Traveling Heroes
At lunch in high school my friends and I fantasy-cast Batman: The Dark Knight Returns over and over. Ultimately we arrived at (the now late) Paul Newman as the ideal retired Batman, in the graphic novel another wealthy race car driver type. In real life Newman was very much the Bruce Wayne interpreted in Frank Miller’s four-issue series-turned required-reading—as suave guy, well-liked, a wealthy philanthropist. In a different universe Clint Eastwood would be great fun as a superhero coming out of retirement to have that last hoorah with the Batman cowl. Probably too late now. Of all the Batman stories, The Dark Knight Returns is #1–it is so well-established as more than a cult favorite, even beyond Watchmen, you just have to ask DC Comics and the Hollywood machine: Why can’t someone just put it on the big screen?
I’ve said over and over here at borg.com that the best Green Lantern story ever is his team up with Green Arrow and Black Canary in Neal Adams’ and Dennis O’Neil’s classic Green Lantern Issues #76-87 and 89, the so-called “Hard Traveling Heroes.” Imagine Black Canary pulling up on her motorcycle. Imagine Green Arrow defending the kid robbing the slumlord. Imagine Green Arrow catching Speedy. Imagine Hal, Ollie and Dinah driving across America in their pick-up truck. And harpies. And encountering a religious cult. And more harpies.
I’ll echo Art Schmidt: DC Comics needs to catch up with Marvel Comics movies, with Iron Man (the first one), Captain America: The First Avenger, and with Fantastic Four’s brilliant realization of Human Torch and The Thing, maybe my favorite heroes to screen so far. OK, they nailed it with Christopher Reeve’s Superman and Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson in Batman. Hopefully with The Avengers, Marvel Comics sets a new bar that DC Comics will have to work toward with a multi-hero story, maybe even with the Justice League or Superfriends. Art’s recommended Cry for Justice, which we have discussed here before, is a great choice for this.
From the sci-fi novel: Remake, by Connie Willis
If you haven’t read Hugo and Nebula award-winning author Connie Willis’s books then you are in for a great ride through one of several fun and varied works. For me, the concepts and Hollywood prophesies in her novel Remake are too cool to pass up and I have no doubt represent a foreshadowing of the future of film only slightly touched on in the Ralph Fiennes film Strange Days. Remake is science fiction at its best, and was nominated for a Hugo Award in 1996.
In our near future, Hollywood no longer needs to make new productions. A film technician rearranges classic films via computer manipulation, so that the viewer can select who he wants to watch the next time he watches Raiders of the Lost Ark. How about John Wayne? How about Humphrey Bogart? Why not edit out all the cigarettes so we no longer encourage smoking for future viewers? What other movies would be fun to manipulate? This is the world of our future where Viacom and Paramount are now Viamount, where actors are reduced to stand-ins. OK, so it probably won’t really be our future as totally envisioned by Willis.
The technician falls for a strange woman who wants to dance in a musical and he is continually sidetracked as he pursues her through the novel. The love story is well done—but it’s the world of our future that would be fun to see, finally, on the big screen. And you would not need to film an entire movie, simply clips, like the old soda pop ads that blended dead celebrities with living ones, and that allowed Nat King Cole to star in a modern music video with his grown daughter, the singer Natalie Cole. Hollywood has the technology today—so why not see how far CGI can go?
I’d frankly love to see any Willis book adapted to film, and in addition those mentioned by others in this series, Bellwetherand To Say Nothing of the Dog would be great picks.
From the sci-fi novel: Fantastic Voyage 2: Destination Brain, by Isaac Asimov
When the original Fantastic Voyage was in theaters in 1966, Isaac Asimov created the novelization. He was not happy with it because he was adapting someone else’s work (it was based on a Jerome Bixby story). The original film reflected Hollywood basically at its infancy with special effects related to the future of medicine. In its day it was a good effort. With the 1987 novel Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain, which was not a sequel but an entirely new story, Asimov created the world inside a microscope that only he could envision. The book is like Dennis Quaid in Innerspace, but with a serious mission and tone. A group of scientists, such as you would find in the typical multi-disciplined problem solving team from a Michael Crichton novel, shrink themselves down to microscopic size to enter into the brain and try to diagnose the condition of a colleague, Dr. Pyotor Shapirov, the creator of the very technology that finally allows man to transport to such a miniscule size.
In 2001 Imax theaters featured a documentary on its giant-sized screens called The Human Body. Audiences were able to see (and sometimes be grossed out by) the inner workings of the body. Filmmakers would hardly need much by way of CGI to show a voyage through the cells. Maybe this would be fun to attempt for some creative producer, and a project showing yet another frontier of science to science fiction fans.
From the art gallery: the cinematic paintings of Edward Hopper
How about a story for stage or screen where each scene begins or ends as an Edward Hopper painting? And the focal character is the girl from his Automat, maybe also the same girl from his Chop Suey painting? New York Movie, First Row Orchestra, Summertime, Cape Cod Evening—they all tell some secret story. Or at least they all could, in the right filmmaker’s hands.
Hopper’s cinematic compositions and use of light and shadow has caused filmmakers to mimic his style before. House by the Railroad supposedly influenced the house in the Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and the home in the Terrence Malick film Days of Heaven. Director Wim Wenders’ film The End of Violence incorporates a tableau vivant of Nighthawks. Surrealist horror film director Dario Argento recreated the diner and the patrons in Nighthawks as part of a set for his 1976 film Deep Red. Hopper has inspired both Blade Runner andRoad to Perdition.
Turner Classic Movies uses animated recreations of Hopper paintings as introductions to classic films and in That ’70s Show the producers recreated the diner from Nighthawks. But how about a full-scale movie showing us something about these characters we don’t know? That’s something I’d love to see on the big screen.
From the ancient history books: the world briefly changed by Akhenaten
I could find a non-fiction work for the adaptation, but it’s the story itself I really want to see here. The pharaoh Akhenaten was the leader of Egypt for about 17 years from circa 1353 B.C. to 1335 B.C. He was married to Nefertiti and had six or seven daughters and at least one son–Tutankhamen. In his reign he revamped the religion of his country like never before, moving from a polytheistic pantheon of gods to the worship of a single god, the Aten, or sun-disk. Following his reign the empire was returned to its prior state and for Akhenaten’s blasphemy his name was chiseled out of a significant part of the written record. Art during his reign became more expressive and naturalistic. Images of the pharaoh show a realistic image that hid no flaws, a long face, not the typical glorification and heroic imagery of Egyptian leaders before and after. Akhenaten is so interesting from a number of levels that it would be a great challenge to reflect his reign in film. Certainly a rebel and not a traditionalist. A stunning wife. How do you show all the Egyptian relationships—including accepted inbreeding as a norm–without coming off as judgmental? As pharaoh he was “one with the god Aten.” How do you portray daily life in an interesting way where the ruler is God and what could you show about his family on film? A great pandemic swept across the Middle East during this period, taking out the Hittite ruler Suppiluliuma, and how did they manage through that? But even more interesting, with all the stories of the history of conflict in Egypt, what did life look like during the years of Egypt’s own version of Camelot? This all would be incredible to depict.
From fantasy opera: Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung
I have only seen one version of The Ring that comes close to clarifying this odd and complex story composed of four epic operas for a general audience: P. Craig Russell’s two volume graphic novel of The Ring of the Nibelung. A few years ago I discussed The Ring with Russell and he said it was a great effort to produce it and it became a sort of magnum opus for him. But even an adaptation of Russell’s adaptation would need streamlined for mainstream audiences—yet, it would be a great starting point. Predating that other famous fantasy ring series (the one by J.R.R. Tolkien) by decades, Wagner’s opera is epic in scope and length, taking four nights or 15 hours to perform the full opera. We already have a superb soundtrack from Wagner, but can someone make a feature-length, meaningful adaptation in the English language that conveys the energy and power of the original without all the nonlinear bits and pieces? The reward would be a giant vision of gods, heroes, mythical creatures and magic.
Other operas due for a good movie? The Magic Flute, The Barber of Seville, The Marriage of Figaro.
More than any of the above I would love to see our own Elizabeth C. Bunce’s retelling of Rumplestiltskin,A Curse Dark As Gold(maybe a classic PBS/BBC series or Hayao Miyazaki anime film would be fun) or her fantasy noir Thief Errant series on-screen. A Curse Dark As Gold has already been performed superbly in a full-length audio CD version by a Broadway actress so I’ve had a little taste of what it would be like to witness it fully played out. And speaking of ECB, tomorrow she’ll give us her take on stories that should be adapted for the big screen.
For my top five list of stories I’d like to see turned into motion pictures, I have tried to be somewhat realistic. Some of my favorite stories, whether novels or games or comic books, I have left off as just being beyond realization. The wish of their being turned into a movie is, in itself, a fantasy, due to various factors.
For instance, since I was a teenager, I’ve been dying for someone to make a movie from Grand Poobah Dungeon Master Gary Gygax’s original storyline thread from the first D&D modules: “The Village of Hommlet” modules (T1-T4), the Slaver series (modules A1-A4), the “Against the Giants” series (modules G1-G3), and the “Drow of the Underdark” series (modules D1-D3 & module Q1 “Queen of the Demonweb Pits”). Of course, this would be for the die-hard gaming geeks almost exclusively, and at twelve modules (adventures) it would be difficult to pack into a motion picture trilogy or quintology (!), even if anyone would be so crazy as to provide the funding for it.
I’m stoked for a movie adaptation of Ernest Cline’s recent novel, Ready Player One, but I’m not including it because it’s already in pre-production at Warner Bros. No need to wish for that which is likely to already happen. Then there’s the Wheel of Time series, which isn’t quite over. The final book, currently titled A Memory of Light, is scheduled to be published in January of 2013. And as the fifteen-volume series will clock in at an estimated 11,000 pages, it could never conceivably be condensed down to make any real sense in a few motion pictures.
Trivia: A series of three books is called a trilogy. A series of five books is called a quintology. A series of seven books is called a heptalogy. What is a series of fourteen books called?
Answer: Too damned long!
Note: No offense to Robert Jordan, may he rest in peace, the series is great, but it could have probably ended after eight or ten novels. I really enjoyed the first ten Wheel of Time books! And all of your Conan novels were great, too!
So, too, would I love to hear of a big screen adaptation of some of R.A. Salvatore’s Drizzt Do’urden novels, especially the Icewind Dale Trilogy, but alas, it is not to be. I could name some Star Wars and Conan novels that I’d like to see adapted, but those subjects have already been masterfully done on the big screen, so there is no use wasting our time.
Same goes for the less well-known but equally awesome Deathgate Cycle heptalogy from the great fantasy team of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Too many books in the series (few of which really stand entirely on their own), and likely too hardcore (i.e. small) of a fan base. Anyhow, the powers that be (being in power, as they are), would most likely take a run at Dragonlance (ho-hum) before considering Deathgate. Too bad.
In the “slightly unrealistic” column, however, I have included the Elric of Melnibone saga in my list, despite the main character being an anti-hero and thus a difficult win for a motion picture, even with the hard-core fantasy crowd. Strangely enough, this may be the one wish that I am granted (read more in my Elric entry, below).
A lot of fantasy, I know. I’m a fantasy kind of guy. There are a lot of good horror, sci-fi, and other fiction out there crying to be made into films, but really, we get a lot of good stuff from those genres already. But there is a dearth of good fantasy films out there, and they come along so rarely; The Fellowship of the Ring came out over ten years ago, after all.
Man, I’m getting old. Somebody please make a couple of these before I croak.
Other honorable mentions. I’d love to see something done with Gaiman’s Sandman series, but probably too difficult and definitely niche. Same goes for Marvel 1601, one of my favorite graphic novels (also Gaiman). But niche. The books of Michael Crichton have been done (and done, and done) as they are so interesting and have such strong plotlines, but my favorite novel of his is one of his non-fiction works, Travels. He chronicles some of his real-life travels had some great insights into his own life from them. But again, probably too tight of an audience for something like that.
Neuromancer would totally rock, but the conventional wisdom is that cyberpunk is way over. I’m no good at conventional wisdom, though. Maybe it’s so over that it’s ready to be hip again? Disco and bell bottoms keep coming back, after all. On second thought, maybe not.
Anyway, on with the real list.
#5 – The Gaean Trilogy (Titan, Wizard and Demon) from John Varley
A mix of fantasy and sci-fi, this is the first thing I thought of when I saw Avatar. And I wasn’t alone. Space farers explore a foreign planet where magic seems to happen in nature, strange creatures abound, and some of them are intelligent/sentient. Then humans come along and really muck it all up. That’s the Gaean Trilogy’s premise (not the plot) in a nutshell.
Of course, there is much more to it than that. There are far more significant differences between these novels and the movie Avatar than there are broad similarities. The combination of sci-fi and fantasy is what would make this appealing, and the titanides and eventual revelation of the Gaea intelligence (and what follows) would make for a great movie.
#4 – Fallout: New Vegas (video game)
My favorite game in recent years (besides Star Wars: The Old Republic, which I’m itching to play even now while writing this), FNV was a great game because of the amazing, engrossing storyline.
In a nutshell:
In the late twenty-first century, America and China fight a prolonged war over resources that ends with a nuclear exchange. The nuclear warheads and subsequent fallout kills most everyone except a chosen few who retreat to underground ‘vaults’ to ride out the Earth’s recovery from global fallout (hence the title of the series). Life as we know it ends.
Some two hundred years later, people begin to emerge from the vaults, and find some still living humans, along with irradiated creatures, mutants, and all sorts of crazy stuff living in the burnt-out shells of our former civilization. Las Vegas was spared from direct nuclear attack by the defenses of wealthy industrialist and casino owner, as was the nearby Hoover Dam. People died, but the core of the Strip survived (what irony).
A lone traveler enters the area, gets shot in the head and buried, but survives and is nursed back to health, although with amnesia from the wound. He sets about trying to learn about himself and his assailants, and in the process discovers that Las Vegas (dubbed “New Vegas” by the current residents) is being contested over by a growing civilization from California (the New California Republic, or NCR), an army of brutal slave-owning tribals calling themselves Caesar’s Legion, and the wealthy citizen who kept Vegas from annihilation (or is it him?) who runs New Vegas with an army of killer robots and calls himself Mr. House.
The story is compelling, and locations are fantastic, the inhabitants are diverse and interesting, and there are stories aplenty for the traveler to encounter and deal with on his way to the game’s climactic battle between these competing forces over who will control Hoover Dam, the one source of electricity and life-giving water amidst a world of death and dust.
A great movie that would make. We’ve seen shades of this with The Book of Eli (a great movie, but more of a morality tale than a straight-forward action/adventure flick) and The Road (a great example of how really good books can be terrible movies), but nothing like the tale spun in New Vegas.
#3 – The Elric of Melnibone novels by Michael Moorcock
An island of anemic sorcerer kings who rule the world. A savage world of monsters and heroes who strive daily to survive. Magic that allows people to cross into other dimensions and sail through space to other planets. Stormbringer. What an absolutely epic fantasy movie that would make!
Of course, the main problem is that Elric is an anti-hero. In fact, Elric is the very embodiment of the modern-day anti-hero. He’s not a nice guy. He’s not even rough-around-the-edges-but-basically-moral-in-an-immoral-world (like Conan) kind of guy. He’s a self-important, selfish, power-hungry elitist. At times, he’s a murder, though he does begin to show some humanity and regret after a while. But he has a goal, and purpose, and oh, the adventures he has, the places he goes, and the things he sees! All fantastic, and all while wielding what can easily be called the most powerful magical sword in all of fantasy (save perhaps for Shieldbreaker from Fred Saberhagen’s Swords novels, but I digress…)
I would absolutely love to sit in a theatre and watch the albino sorcerer-king travel the planes swinging the Black Sword of legend. Ever since I saw Conan the Barbarian, I have longed for someone to make movies out of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Elric saga. One down, one to go.
Apparently, I am a little late to the party on this one. Director/Producer brothers Chris Weitz (About a Boy, The Golden Compass) and Paul Weitz (American Pie, Little Fokkers) were reportedly in “pre-production” on a movie trilogy based on Moorcock’s dark, brooding novels about my second-favorite anti-hero (see #1, below, for my fave), but that project has been side-tracked and is lately talked about by the brothers in wistful terms of ‘someday’.
Here’s hoping that “someday” actually comes.
Side Note: I’m not 100% certain, but I believe “Pre-Production” is a fancy Hollywood term for people emailing and texting back and forth about great ideas for a movie, then meeting in coffee shops and chatting about how great it would be to make said movie, before moving on to work on real movies that are actually being made.
#2 – Justice League / The Dark Knight Returns
DC Comics is sitting on a goldmine, but they have had some trouble translating the shiny stuff in their mine into coin of the realm. The Batman movies of late being the obvious exception, DC Comics has not enjoyed the great success of Marvel in translating their characters to the big screen. Superman was ground-breaking back in the seventies, and the first couple of Batman movies of the late eighties / early nineties paved the way for what was to come. And then there is Batman Begins, The Dark Knight (of course), and this summer’s Dark Knight Rises.
But taking the long view, that’s maybe six or seven hit movies over a thirty year span. Not horrible, but not that great. But compare that with Marvel’s run in just the last twelve years, and you can pick twice that number of successful movies based on their characters. The X-Men movies (at least two of them), the Spiderman trilogy (again, at least two), The Fantastic Four, X-Men: First Class, and the movies leading up to and including this summer’s The Avengers (Ang Lee’s Hulk and Iron Man 2 notwithstanding).
I’m not bashing DC here, don’t get me wrong. Their characters are iconic, to say the least. And maybe they don’t value movies as much as Marvel does, which is fine. There is certainly more money to be made in movies, but money isn’t everything; no movie is better than a bad movie, when the protection of a brand is essential to the company’s success.
But DC has such a wealth of great story that it’s hard to fathom that there hasn’t been more translation from the inked page to the lighted screen. Just imagine this movie trilogy, my friends…
The Justice League – A movie centering on the core of the League, Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Arrow and the Flash (possibly also Hawkman and/or the Martian Manhunter, depending on the ability to introduce the movie-going public at large to these characters), coming together to form the group to thwart Prometheus along the lines of Justice League: A Cry for Justice, except using the central characters rather than a competing alliance / ideology, with internal group conflict as to how to deal with the situation as would be natural. Prometheus is murdering foreign superheroes, then planning to destroy cities of the League’s superheroes (maybe limit it to three key cities, rather than the sprawling destruction in the mag). After being defeated he negotiates his escape, proving he’s not bluffing by detonating one bomb as in the book. In this adaptation, Superman is the negotiator and Batman (along with Green Arrow) wanting to make him pay no matter what. End with the Green Arrow scene (no spoiler here), with the barest hint that Batman helped him (but didn’t necessarily know what he was going to do).
The Justice League: Legion of Doom – The League battles the formation of the Legion of Doom. The Legion is forming along the lines of the backstory from the Justice series in 2005-2006, with Brainiac (and Lex Luthor) fooling even his fellow baddies and planning to get the League to wipe out his ‘competitors’ of evil. But unlike in Justice, their motivations are to take over the American government (as depicted in Miller’s The Dark Knight Strikes Again). The League wins the apparent victory against the facade, but Brainiac and Lex succeed behind the scenes with their real master plan. At the very end, the League is disgraced and talks of disbanding. Superman is called away on an emergency he won’t discuss… (Lex has Kandor and is going to blackmail him, but don’t reveal that until the last movie in the trilogy).
The Justice League Returns – The movie everyone wants, Superman vs. Batman, pull out all of the stops. This movie would basically blend The Dark Knight Returns with a little bit of The Dark Knight Strikes Again, blending the emancipation of Batman’s fellow Leaguers a-la DKSA into the main storyline of DKR (yes, it might be sacrilegious, but this is Hollywood we’re talking about). The Justice League disbanded after their failure in The Legion of Doom, and Brainiac and Lex have taken over America and put a computer President in place. With Kandor held hostage, they have forced Superman to help capture or banish the other League members (similar to the backstory of DKSA and DKR both: “Diana returned to her people; Hal left for the stars…” Leave Shazam out, he makes things too complicated). This bit could be the prologue to the movie itself (before credits). Batman is the bitter retiree in DKR and follows that storyline back from retirement to defeat the Mutants gang and/or the return of Two-Face, then sets about freeing his fellow Leaguers (DKSA), which leads to the confrontation with Superman as the puppet of the Braniac/Lex regime (weak not from the DKR nuclear missile but from the faux ‘catastrophes’ that Brainiac/Lex cook up for him in DKSA; the asteroid, the volcano in Hawaii, etc.) along with Batman’s fellow Leaguers (similar to Green Arrow in DKR, but with Hal Jordan and Barry Allen also assisting as in DKSA). No Kara, though, and no Dick Grayson craziness, and take out all of the future media “super babes” hype and whatnots.
Ok, I’m done geeking out. And I realize that the fanboys would cry FOUL (and worse) and this kind of hacked together plot from what may be their favorite series(es). Me? I’m not a purist, I just like good story. Perhaps that’s why I seem to be one of the small minority who absolutely loved both the Watchmen comics and the spectacular movie equally.
Hollywood can ‘just’ make DKR and I’d be ecstatic.
I know there was (is?) a JL movie in the works, announced as being in “pre-production” (oh, boy) last year by Warner Bros., but couldn’t find anything recent on the subject. Anyone have any fairly recent scoop on where that one is at? Still in pre-production? Man, those guys drink a lot of coffee.
#1 – The Chronicles of Amber novels from Roger Zelazny
This would make a great movie trilogy, no question. The great thing about this story and why it would translate to the big screen is the beginning: the hero is a seemingly normal human being on planet Earth in the current day. He awakes in a mental institution, not knowing how he got there, but it’s apparent he’s being kept sedated and held against his will. He escapes but has amnesia (I know, it’s a tired plot device, but here it absolutely works). He finds out he has a sister, goes to her home to investigate, and finds some things that are… weird. He confronts her, and then meets more family. And things get a bit weirder.
As his journey progresses, the audience learns things as the protagonist does; bit at a time, little by little, slowly building up this incredible picture of the hero as a long-lost prince of a magical kingdom in another dimension. Sound like a book for young adults? Hang on to your britches, cause it’s anything but. Don’t let the terms “long-lost prince” and “magical kingdom” fool you. This is hardcore fantasy at its absolute finest.
Once the hero, Corwin, loses his amnesia, he finds that he is a talented swordsman, a gifted military leader, and a cunning strategist. He’s also an able sorcerer and in line for his absent father’s throne. However, his family is currently vying against each other in cabals and alliances for the crown, and there are as many of them as there are books in the Wheel of Time series.
It has the fantasy swordplay of Conan (the original), the magical flair of The Matrix (if you haven’t read the books, it’s hard to explain that reference, but believe me, it’s apropos), the political in-fighting of A Game of Thrones, the gritty war drama of Braveheart and Platoon (again, the reference works, trust me) and the narrative genius of the multiple Hugo and Nebula award-winning author, Zelazny.
Yeah, it’s that good. At least to me. That’s why it makes the top of my list of stories I’d love to see made into movies.
Come back tomorrow, and Jason McClain will give us his take on adaptations and being true to the source material.
One of the Midwest’s best pop culture and comic book conventions was this past weekend, Planet Comicon, which has been Kansas City’s largest fan convention for more than a dozen years. The show seemed to be bursting from its seams this year with thousands of guests, and appears to be outgrowing its venue at the Overland Park International Trade Center.
The film and TV headliners for this year’s show included Edward James Olmos, best known to sci-fi fans for his role in Blade Runner and as Adama in the Battlestar Galactica reboot series. He signed autographs and took photos with fans both days of the show. Here he is with Erin Gray, who appeared with other actors from the 1979-1981 TV series Buck Rogers and the 25th Century:
Gray also appeared on an episode of the Syfy Channel’s Hollywood Treasure last year.
The other featured major guest from film and TV was Billy Dee Williams, best known as Lando Calrissian in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, but also as Harvey Dent alongside Michael Keaton in the 1989 Batman film. His current work includes a stint on USA’s White Collar.
Billy Dee also appeared at the show both days. (I offered a woman in line $5 to say “Billy Dee, Billy Dee, Billy Dee!” when she finally met him but didn’t take me up on it. And it’s OK if you don’t get that reference).
Early Saturday morning legendary comic book artist Michael Golden is getting fueled up before embarking on a sketch of Green Arrow:
Green Arrow by Michael Golden. How cool is that?
Michael is known for his work on such titles like Marvel Comics series The ‘Nam, GI Joe Yearbook, Star Wars, and Micronauts. He is also the co-creator of the X-Men character Rogue.
I’ve been a fan of the different styles Mike Norton uses in his art for quite a while. Here he is signing one of his comic pages for the Green Arrow/Black Canary series, where he did the pencil work and comic book legend Bill Sienkiewicz provided the ink work:
Mike is working on a creator-owned project currently and has previously worked on Runaways, Gravity, the Young Justice animated series comic book. He was actively sketching pages for fans at the show and produced probably a dozen at least over the weekend, including this great image for me:
Unfortunately Bernie Wrightson wasn’t sketching at this year’s convention, but he was signing plenty of shirts and books for his Frankenstein book. Wrightson’s horror artwork goes back several decades, with his first published comic work with House of Mystery in 1969. He co-created Swamp Thing in 1971. His work has appeared in Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella, and Batman: The Cult. Here Wrightson is at a signing table with Freddie Williams II and his wife Kiki:
Freddie is well known for his work on his Robin series, and is currently one of the DC Comics top artists. We reviewed his and JT Krul’s Captain Atom series here at borg.com a few weeks ago. Freddie was busy creating sketches for fans and speaking on panels at the show.
Currently working on projects for Dynamite Comics, Bionic Manwriter Phil Hester and Lone Rangerwriter Ande Parks had pages of original artwork as well as copies of their books new and old that they were signing for fans, including a lot of low-priced original art from their run on the DC Comics Green Arrow series:
It’s great that these guys have tackled both the writing and illustration sides of comic book creation.
I got to catch up again with a couple well known Kansas City authors. Here, Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore, two of the best known authors of Star Trek novels, talk with fans at the show.
The NBC TV series Heroes co-creator Tim Sale was signing books and art at his booth:
Sales’ past work includes art in Batman: Dark Victory, Batman: The Long Halloween, Daredevil: Yellow, Hulk: Grey, Spider-Man: Blue and Superman For All Seasons. (What’s with these color titles, anyway?). His unique stylized paintings on Heroes featured into the plot of the series.
I spent time chatting with Rob B. Davis, currently providing illustrations for a Sherlock Holmes series and past artist for Malibu’s Deep Space Nine comic book series, writer Jai Nitz, who was juggling signing copies of his Kato and Tron: Betrayal series while moderating different comic book panels at the show, borg.com writer Art Schmidt, local writer Justin Cline manning the front of the convention, and Todd Aaron Smith, who sketched this great Black Canary image for me:
Smith had provided storyboards for Family Guy and other animation art for shows like South Park and various DC Comics and Marvel Comics TV series. Current Marvel Comics lead writer Jason Aaron could be found with some good lines of fans waiting to get copies of his various Hulk, Wolverine and X-men series signed:
The facility was packed wall to wall with plenty of booths selling everything from graphic novels to collectible action figures, original comic book art, and comic book back issues. Here, Elite Comics comic book store owner William Binderup appears to be raking in some cash from sales of comics at his booth:
Show producer Chris Jackson seemed pleased with the success of this year’s convention.
And of course there were plenty of cosplayers. Here a few Batman characters huddled for a photo:
But I think the best was this “Hello Kitty meets Stormtrooper” mash-up:
No doubt it would have been a far different Star Wars had Luke showed up to rescue the princess with this outfit.
The CW Network just released the first photo of Stephen Amell in the new Green Arrow supersuit for the new TV series, titled simply Arrow.
The costume was designed by Academy Award winning costume designer Colleen Atwood. A native of the Seattle area, Atwood has created a pretty interesting look for the classic DC Comics superhero son of Seattle, Green Arrow, alter ego of Oliver Queen. In fact, you could see someone wearing this outfit in a crowd on the streets of Seattle on a typical gray day and no one would even give him a second glance. And that certainly fits with an urban hunter who needs to keep a bit of a low profile.
The costume seems to reveal some tidbits about the new Green Arrow. First, although the outfit doesn’t appear dark and brooding itself, the dark shadows that Amell is filmed in reflects that the producers want viewers to see this as a dark superhero drama. So fans of the cheesier, bright and shiny, green vinyl look that Oliver Queen wore in the Smallville series, take note.
I always thought this bizarre "leafy" outfit from Smallville is something you'd see Joker's girlfriend Poison Ivy wearing.
As we predicted (and hoped) earlier here at borg.com, happily, they are taking a different tack here.
Jock's tougher looking, hooded Green Arrow outfit from the Year One mini-series.
Second, this photograph isn’t just an homage to Jock and Andy Diggle’s Green Arrow: Year One, this IS the Green Arrow designed by the artist known as Jock: from the hood, the small arrow quiver, the vest design with the extended shoulders–further cements this new series as a Year One-inspired story. The fact that one of the show’s characters is named Diggle leads one to believe either the creators were working with Diggle & Co. or at least heavily influenced by the recent incarnation of Oliver Queen in the Year One mini-series.
The costume also is obviously heavily influenced by the character’s own idol, Robin Hood. This can be seen in both the medieval stylized green suede mantle and decorative trim, but even more so on the bottom from the front to the reverse in the skirting/dags/tippets/flaps as seen in Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood costume from the classic Adventures of Robin Hood, as well as in the Green Arrow early 1980s Wonder Years mini-series. The medieval capa or hood bridges the early 1980s incarnation with the later 1980s version created by Mike Grell for The Longbow Hunters.
Green Arrow from Green Arrow: The Wonder Years
The small quiver would seem to indicate removing the possibility of fitting Oliver’s renowned trick arrows in there. Probably a good thing for this kind of series.
The only possible detracting component is the pocket(s). I think pockets on this kind of piece are actually kind of humorous. Would Oliver have time to stand around with hands in pockets in stealth mode? It seems a bit 1990s “hanging out on the street corner” kind of look. Yet altogether my verdict is… I think this costume works. Green leather and possibly suede are slick materials to use. Dark tones. Inspired by various past Green Arrow influences. Practical gloves. No unnecessary belt with a big “G” buckle (I never have been a fan of that part of the costume). Looks like someone jumping around buildings could move easily in it. And it doesn’t look silly. Clearly some good thought and planning went into this.
Atwood could have taken one of these huntsman outfits from the Snow White movie, but didn't.
We shouldn’t be surprised. Costume designer Colleen Atwood has been nominated for nine Academy Awards and won three Oscars, for Alice in Wonderland, Memoirs of a Geisha and Chicago. Her other work includes Sweeney Todd, Sleepy Hollow, Ed Wood, Edward Scissorhands, Public Enemies, The Rum Diary, The Tourist, and the recently previewed coming release Dark Shadows. Do we see a theme here? Yep, pretty much all “dark and brooding” Johnny Depp vehicles, and interesting designs. Recently Atwood designed costumes for the 2012 release Snow White and the Huntsman and Mission Impossible III, but her past work includes film classics like The Handmaid’s Tale, Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, That Thing You Do, Gattaca, Fallen, Mumford, Big Fish, and The Planet of the Apes (remake).
With the Before Watchmen series announced last month “coming soon to a comic book store near you,” now there is more reason than ever to catch up on the current exploits of one of the characters that inspired Doctor Manhattan himself, Captain Atom. Of all the 52 of DC Comics New 52 series, Captain Atom is one of the titles I am still reading after 6 months, up there with All Star Western, Batgirl, Batwoman, Justice League Dark, and Wonder Woman. Yes, I like it better than all the Batman titles I tried on for size and the much praised Animal Man. Captain Atom has probably gotten lost a bit in the shuffle between umpteen Bat-titles and all the Justice League headliner superheroes. So if you are someone whose pull list hasn’t dabbled yet into the rest of the DC universe, this is the first book you should grab to get caught up.
The trade paperback to be published later this year will compile the first six issues, written by J.T. Krul with art by Freddie Williams II, plus it will include additional materials. Spoilers ahead!
In Issue #1 we meet the New 52 Captain Atom in a story along the lines of those found in some other New 52 titles–we fear that which we do not understand–as Captain Atom is attacked by those he wishes to protect. Captain Atom can absorb energy in great amounts but to protect the eastern seaboard he must harness the energy of both a volcano and a nuclear reaction. Uncertain of his abilities, neither he nor his supporters know what can happen. As to comic book intrigue factor, Captain Atom’s abilities offer a “Wonder Twins” meets MacGyver brand of problem solving–and decisions that could result in his own destruction.
Of course with unprecedented devastation, including natural and man-made disasters, society does what it does best, cast blame, and Captain Atom becomes a target in Issue #2. We learn his back story–that of a Captain, Nathaniel Adam, a volunteer in an experiment gone wrong–and that his new “condition” was inadvertently created by a Stephen Hawking-level genius named Dr. Megala. Where some New 52 titles offer no origin story or bombard you with back story, Captain Atom gives readers just what they need to push the story forward. If you liked the superhero-themed TV series Alphas, you will see Captain Atom exhibiting a “seeing” ability much like Gary, the autistic character on the show (for me the best character on Alphas). One of Freddie Williams’ best images to-date is in this issue, an incredible multi-layered splash page of Captain Atom reaching between two worlds, into this new realm of being, laid out over the shadow of the mere mortals mocking him.
Captain Atom struggles with similar, but different, conflicts as Superman in Issue #3–you have all the power but not all the time to fix everything and a superhero must make choices. Honing in on a boy with cancer, Captain Atom moves from volcano blast to Fantastic Voyage–battling an equally large war but on a microscopic scale and moves on to try to literally take on everyone’s problems. In his first team-up, with Barry Allen’s Flash, possibilities of JLA partnerships are opened up for future issues. Behind the scenes there lurks a grotesque abomination in the streets that surfaces in the background of each issue. Unlike the grotesque art in the pages of Animal Man (where I just couldn’t continue moving forward with the series because it looks so…ugly… and I can hardly wait to read how Jeff Lemire takes on Justice League Dark), here the grotesque is more stylized and nuanced–less off-putting for the average reader.
In Issue #4 the inevitable surfaces as the “Captain” in Captain Atom takes front stage and we see that Atom must face similar pressures as Steve Austin in Phil Hester and Kevin Smith’s Bionic Man series–the influence of the military industrial complex surfaces with questions harkening back to 1930s science and the ethics of mass destruction. Captain Atom is a classic superhero in every sense, only he has more than the one-note power you find with other superheroes, such as the Flash with merely fantastic speed. Atom here could take on the Earth’s mightiest mortal, Captain Marvel, because of the enormity of his power, and yet he suffers a social fate similar to Rogue from the X-Men, he can change matter, he can absorb energy, he can be everywhere. But can he fix everything?
With the end of Issue #4 and the beginning of Issue #5, Atom becomes scarier and the reader joins the naysayers on the question of whether Atom should continue on unimpeded when he’s unable to control his power. In Issue #6 Atom faces himself and his biggest threat, and a double-page spread shows the mirror reflection of Atom and his enemy. Both villains who were initially typical baddies: a pain in the ass general and would-be Jack McGee/Ross archetype (from Marvel’s Hulk) and a monster of sorts, are written to be somewhat sympathetic in the end.
J.T. Krul writes a complete story in the pages of Issues #1-6 with the creativity seen in his Fathom and earlier Green Arrow work that eclipses his work on the current Green Arrow series that he also has been writing (I chalk that up to a Green Arrow character at a stage in its history where there is not much exciting that can be done by anyone). There is plenty of character development in these first six issues. The climax of this first Captain Atom story involves another team-up, a surprising one at that–that forecasts and unleashes endless possibilities for future issues. And we are left with a great cliffhanger to boot.
Williams’ illustrations are refreshingly unique in the New 52. He varies his styles and drawing and painting techniques in way I have not seen anywhere else. He doesn’t just draw panels like he is getting directions from a script and plodding ahead. The pages are nicely balanced, employing what reminds me for lack of a better phrase as ”special effects”–bubbling imagery of dematerializing hands, edges that are almost undefinable for Captain Atom himself to give the feel of heat and energy, panel borders that converge in a way similar to what J.H. Williams is doing on his Batwoman series. And kudos to Jose Villarrubia for his coloring, which really draws out Williams creative effects and highlights Captain Atom in particular.
One last thing–although it is neither targeted to young readers nor a mature title, Captain Atom could be recommended for every age. Compared to other New 52 titles, you won’t find here pole dancers (Voodoo), human skin removed and used as a mask (Detective Comics), rivers of blood (Animal Man), or T&A overload (Red Hood and the Outlaws).
I am looking forward to the continuation of this series with Freddie Williams as series artist and J.T. Krul as writer. Their contributions combine for a solid series and these first six issues, with one complete story from beginning to end, will make a good read for those who pick up the trade paperback when it becomes available.
(or the first six pages of the trade paperback, which tends to be what I collect these days) you would see that basic scenario laid out in graphic detail as the Plutonian faces the Hornet. (You can see a free digital preview of these six pages now at
and 
and make them the soundtrack to a modern spaghetti Western, sort of like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with 
. A good 
had his own cartton then interview show, but how about an adaptation of the serious origin series by Joe Kelly? A big budget movie based on Jon Krakauer’s 
could be awesome (the TV version suffered a bit despite a good cast). The Russian story of 
was filmed more than half a century ago with music by Prokofiev, but it needs a good updating. We’ve seen four Tom Clancy novels about Jack Ryan, but the creepiest of the series, 
, has yet to be made.
where Fozzie the Bear offers Big Bird a ride to the west coast to break into movies, and Big Bird says no thanks, he’s trying to break into public television back in New York. Well, apparently they made that movie back in 1985 and I missed it, 
. You can’t know everything.
, you just have to ask DC Comics and the Hollywood machine: Why can’t someone just put it on the big screen?
.” Imagine Black Canary pulling up on her motorcycle. Imagine Green Arrow defending the kid robbing the slumlord. Imagine Green Arrow catching Speedy. Imagine Hal, Ollie and Dinah driving across America in their pick-up truck. And harpies. And encountering a religious cult. And more harpies.
(the first one), 
, and with Fantastic Four’s brilliant realization of Human Torch and The Thing, maybe my favorite heroes to screen so far. OK, they nailed it with Christopher Reeve’s 
and Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson in 
. Hopefully with The Avengers, Marvel Comics sets a new bar that DC Comics will have to work toward with a multi-hero story, maybe even with the Justice League or Superfriends. Art’s recommended 
, which we have 
are too cool to pass up and I have no doubt represent a foreshadowing of the future of film only slightly touched on in the Ralph Fiennes film Strange Days. 
and 
would be great picks.
, which was not a sequel but an entirely new story, Asimov created the world inside a microscope that only he could envision. The book is like Dennis Quaid in Innerspace, but with a serious mission and tone. A group of scientists, such as you would find in the typical multi-disciplined problem solving team from a Michael Crichton novel, shrink themselves down to microscopic size to enter into the brain and try to diagnose the condition of a colleague, Dr. Pyotor Shapirov, the creator of the very technology that finally allows man to transport to such a miniscule size.
. A few years ago I discussed The Ring with Russell and he said it was a great effort to produce it and it became a sort of magnum opus for him. But even an adaptation of Russell’s adaptation would need streamlined for mainstream audiences—yet, it would be a great starting point. Predating that other famous fantasy ring series (the one by J.R.R. Tolkien) by decades, Wagner’s opera is epic in scope and length, taking four nights or 15 hours to perform the full opera. We already have a superb soundtrack from Wagner, but can someone make a feature-length, meaningful adaptation in the English language that conveys the energy and power of the original without all the nonlinear bits and pieces? The reward would be a giant vision of gods, heroes, mythical creatures and magic.
(maybe a classic PBS/BBC series or Hayao Miyazaki anime film would be fun) or her fantasy noir Thief Errant series on-screen. 
has already been performed superbly in a full-length 
