News from SDCC
Jul. 25th, 2008 12:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sdelmonteYup, it's San Diego Comic Con time, and that means news about comic books. Including some things I find very noteworthy...
- Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver, the team who brought Hal Jordan back from the dead in a way that makes sense, have been assigned to do a similar miniseries to re-establish Barry Allen's role in the DCU, Flash: Rebirth. While I am still unsure of the necessity to bring Barry back, I trust this team to do a good job and to have a little fun doing it. We can also expect to see Barry's job as a police forensics man become a key selling point in the CSI era.
- Kevin Smith will writing a 3 part miniseries pitting Batman versus Onomatopoeia, a villain he created for his run on Green Arrow. Smith says he's already turned in the first two scripts and it halfway through the third, but I think I will wait till the collected edition comes out, given that he STILL hasn't finished that Daredevil miniseries from 2002.
- Speaking of Green Arrow, Judd Winnick is leaving Green Arrow/Black Canary. Much of fandom is breathing a sigh of relief, I would say. The new writer is Andrew Kreisberg, who is a screenwriter for ABC's Eli Stone and also co-writing a Green Lantern screenplay with Marc Guggenheim, co-creator of that series and a writer for Marvel.
- Even though Disney is creating its own comic book company, Kingdom Comics, they have decided to license several Pixar films to the new company, Boom Studios. That's the company that hired Mark Waid away from DC. The first Pixar title will be an Incredibles miniseries, written by Waid (with covers by Darwyn Cooke). Given that Waid was the best Fantastic Four writer in the past twenty years, this should be really good. Other titles will includes Cars, Toy Story, Monsters Inc. and Wall-E.
- Speaking of Cooke (the man who did wonders with the Spirit for DC), he's going to be doing a comic book adaptation of Donald Westlake's Parker novels. I love this series, but I don't get why the big thing at the moment is to his top talents to rewrite things that don't need rewriting. Still, his style as a writer and artist is well suited to these hard-boiled crime novels written in the 60s.
- Marvel will also be doing another adaptation, sort of. They've signed with Stephen King to make a partially animated series of webisodes based on a new short story called "N" prior to its inclusion in a collection this fall and to being turned into a standard comic next year. This seems to be the latest idea in alternative packaging of comic books - DC is doing something similar with Watchmen. I don't get the appeal but clearly King is still very happy with what Marvel's done with his work since this makes three projects so far (Dark Tower and The Stand being the other two).
- Lastly, and not related to the con but still really interesting, sales of Watchmen have skyrocketed since the trailer for the film was released. It's #2 at Amazon, and one major retailer reports selling as many in the past week as he sells in a month (and it always sells well). The movie may or may not be good, but it's great that more and more people will be reading the original.
- Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver, the team who brought Hal Jordan back from the dead in a way that makes sense, have been assigned to do a similar miniseries to re-establish Barry Allen's role in the DCU, Flash: Rebirth. While I am still unsure of the necessity to bring Barry back, I trust this team to do a good job and to have a little fun doing it. We can also expect to see Barry's job as a police forensics man become a key selling point in the CSI era.
- Kevin Smith will writing a 3 part miniseries pitting Batman versus Onomatopoeia, a villain he created for his run on Green Arrow. Smith says he's already turned in the first two scripts and it halfway through the third, but I think I will wait till the collected edition comes out, given that he STILL hasn't finished that Daredevil miniseries from 2002.
- Speaking of Green Arrow, Judd Winnick is leaving Green Arrow/Black Canary. Much of fandom is breathing a sigh of relief, I would say. The new writer is Andrew Kreisberg, who is a screenwriter for ABC's Eli Stone and also co-writing a Green Lantern screenplay with Marc Guggenheim, co-creator of that series and a writer for Marvel.
- Even though Disney is creating its own comic book company, Kingdom Comics, they have decided to license several Pixar films to the new company, Boom Studios. That's the company that hired Mark Waid away from DC. The first Pixar title will be an Incredibles miniseries, written by Waid (with covers by Darwyn Cooke). Given that Waid was the best Fantastic Four writer in the past twenty years, this should be really good. Other titles will includes Cars, Toy Story, Monsters Inc. and Wall-E.
- Speaking of Cooke (the man who did wonders with the Spirit for DC), he's going to be doing a comic book adaptation of Donald Westlake's Parker novels. I love this series, but I don't get why the big thing at the moment is to his top talents to rewrite things that don't need rewriting. Still, his style as a writer and artist is well suited to these hard-boiled crime novels written in the 60s.
- Marvel will also be doing another adaptation, sort of. They've signed with Stephen King to make a partially animated series of webisodes based on a new short story called "N" prior to its inclusion in a collection this fall and to being turned into a standard comic next year. This seems to be the latest idea in alternative packaging of comic books - DC is doing something similar with Watchmen. I don't get the appeal but clearly King is still very happy with what Marvel's done with his work since this makes three projects so far (Dark Tower and The Stand being the other two).
- Lastly, and not related to the con but still really interesting, sales of Watchmen have skyrocketed since the trailer for the film was released. It's #2 at Amazon, and one major retailer reports selling as many in the past week as he sells in a month (and it always sells well). The movie may or may not be good, but it's great that more and more people will be reading the original.
(no subject)
Date: Jul. 26th, 2008 05:23 pm (UTC)Plus, I can't be happier to see Winnick leaving GA/BC, but the creativity drain at DC just continues to grow, doesn't it? Not that every title needs to be written by the same small list of established comics writers, but the way DC brings in new writers just seems hopelessly random.
I've read two miniseries from Boom so far. The Foundation is about an organization dedicated to preventing the more dire prophecies of Nostradamus from happening, and North Wind is a post-environmental apocalypse story on an Earth gone into deep freeze. Both were a little clunky in execution and the art wasn't great, but they weren't bad at all coming from a relatively young press. If they're getting people like Waid on board, I'm hopeful they have good things coming.
By the way, speaking of worthy comics, if you're not reading Wasteland or The Infinite Horizon already, you might want to check them out.
As for Cooke, I suspect the projects he's getting are more his personal choice than editorial direction. As you know, he's been incredibly consistent all along. I worry that he's limiting himself too much, but god, I do love what he's done so far--and that despite the fact that I have no nostalgia for the Silver Age.