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Uh, was Abrams really going to have white people play Sulu and Uhura?

Uhura maybe, since she's actually blonde and Sulu is actually black.

I read many years ago, that for a Western movie, Disney had a horse jump off a cliff into water, with the next scene, the horse swimming. What the public did not know was that horses were killed until a successful shot was obained. The horses were just collateral damage. The end justified the deaths.

Not "horses," just one horse. And it wasn't a Disney movie, it was a 20th Century Fox movie, Jesse James.

http://www.lakehistory.info/jessejamesmovie.html

They weren't trying to kill the horse, either - they were just stupid enough to think the horse would take the fall and be okay with it.

I'm not aware of any film where they just threw away horses' lives to get a good take, but I did hear about lots of horses dying in tripwire accidents while filming The Charge of the Light Brigade.

> The few comics I read are mostly Humanoid/Vertigo, so I'm not familiar with the original armor...

Here's the original Thor as drawn by the same artist.
I think you will be hard pressed to say that his costume is less revealing or exploitive than her's.
His mooseknuckle isn't even armored at all.

This guy seems to have a history of suing people for generic, carnival-themed horror. Here he is suing NBC for Heroes' having a carnival scene.

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2010/05/see-carnival-of-souls-comparisons-from-60-million-heroes-lawsuit/

I'm can't say with 100% certainty that this Jazan Wild is filing frivolous lawsuits in hopes of getting some easy money, but I find the idea that he truly believes that he invented the macabre carnival idea, or that he coined the term "Carnival of Souls" hard to swallow. In addition, this guy be be completely nuts to think he can sue reviewers for copyright infringement. I say he's just fishing.

Go to the linked review site. He's staunchly defending his C&D letters against review blogs. He's a little shit that needs a crotch punch.

Assuming he's actually a thoughtful and decent guy, he appears to be roleplaying as a batshit crazy cunt of a man. Seems that this isn't his first stab at asserting ownership over things that existed long before he ever put crayon to paper.

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2010/05/see-carnival-of-souls-comparisons-from-60-million-heroes-lawsuit/

So how about something that's not superhero oriented, like the very good Adventure Time? http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=preview&id=11362

I believe Undercover Brother was technically the first.

Ahem, yes it was. Not sure what all the fuss is about, only that this latest webcomic-to-movie was a geek-based character set rather than a more mainstream set, but it wasn't first.

Also, in that light, it's more kinda purple.

Back in the 80's, Mayfair Games licensed the DC characters to create the DC Heroes RPG. There were three Watchmen products made (the direct contents of which I am paraphrasing and cannot recall exactly offhand): Watchmen Sourcebook, Who Watches the Watchmen, and Taking out the Trash. Here is an interview with the authors.

Vonnegut's overrated.

The New Yorker, however is an excellent magazine(amusingly, the New Yorker once enlisted pornographic gag cartoon artist Sam Gross for its upscale scrawlings). Other good magazines include Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Affairs, The Economist, and dare I say Fortune.

Meanwhile still availible:

"Titles currently available on Kindle include Christmas Creampie, a graphic novel in which “horny Whoreville hussies show a frustrated dildo shop owner the true meaning of Christmas,” and Little Lorna in Resort Sports (I’m not even going to link to this one), in which Little Lorna, who is spunky, sexy, but “not too bright,” goes on vacation to Mexico with her Uncle Bob; “nudity, spanking, and sexy humor” result.
So apparently a sweet love story between two men is unacceptable, but an orgy in a dildo shop is OK."

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2011/05/too-hot-for-kindle-amazon-pulls-yaoi-from-kindle-store/

Wow. Just wow. I'm guessing you're into torture porn and look like this: Comic book guy

No, the CCA Joker wasn't even a little bit disturbing, he was just goofy.

Not that it matters to me, I hate superhero comics and would prefer they were a tiny, tiny niche.

"Fuck superheroes, frankly. The notion that these things dominate an entire genre is absurd. It's like every bookstore in the planet having ninety percent of its shelves filled by nurse novels. Imagine that. You want a new novel, but you have to wade through three hundred new books about romances in the wards before you can get at any other genre. A medium where the relationship of fiction about nurses outweighs mainstream literary fiction by a ratio of one hundred to one. Superhero comics are like bloody creeping fungus, and they smother everything else." -- The Old Bastard's Manifesto

We can thank Frederic Wertham for killing off the best comic book company (E. C.) and every genre of comics but funny animals and superheroes. He's worthy of eternal hatred for that.

Oh please, Batman is overpowered too, brainwise. Hell, he probably has an anti-Chuck Norris spray.

Or how about a can of "Bat-Female Villain Repellent"?

Well then, you have to become more imaginative.

Here's an entertaining "alternative reality" story where this version of Superman gets into a spot that he can't punch or fly his way out.

But your point still stands, the writer always have to come up with an explanation why this flying Deus Ex Machina doesn't have the power to resolve the problem in five minutes.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=1536

According to link about, he got a total of $1.6 milliion for his entire collection, including a mere $86,000 for
Action Comics #1.
True that was 7 years ago but geez, what a markup. Consider all the stories about his financial woes, I bet
he wishes he'd held on to his collection.

Yeah, there's no telling what Captain America would look like under the stewardship of Fox News.

Oh wait...

Some more information on the deal.

The long and short of it is that this sounds a lot like the Disney/Pixar relationship.

Also, the idea of Marvel and Pixar talking to each other and being excited about the talks really interests me.

Sort of...

Interesting read nonetheless.

Of course this never happens in western comics at all, it's a uniquely Japanese phenomenon not found in comics produced
by such reputable companies as Marvel, DC and the like.

I could go on... in fact, I could probably just make every letter a link and it'd still work.

Special bonus: http://forums.comicbookresources.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=31045&d=1167172520

Of course this never happens in western comics at all, it's a uniquely Japanese phenomenon not found in comics produced
by such reputable companies as Marvel, DC and the like.

I could go on... in fact, I could probably just make every letter a link and it'd still work.

Special bonus: http://forums.comicbookresources.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=31045&d=1167172520

Doesn't anyone remember Bush's 2006 SOU address?

http://forums.comicbookresources.com/archive/index.php/t-107625.html
http://www.badgerblues.org/2006/02/01/human-animal-hybrids-and-scientific-research/

Well, that's kind of the point of Watchmen, Alan Moore was hoping to spark a change in comic books (away from "Love in the Wards" and toward other subject matter... like pirates!) with it... and the change he got was superheroes with psychological problems. He blames comics today on his bad mood all those years ago...

Comic books end up being pretty suitable for movies because they act as a premade story board. I quite liked A History of Violence, myself.

No, the Comics Code Authority sucked. The reason why it sucked is not just because it censored adult content.

Put it this way, do you consider Mickey Mouse and Scooby Doo adult content? No? But they have ghosts, witches, werewolves, zombies and vampires in them. Uh-oh, they broke the comics code.

The comics code went completely overboard, specifically to put E. C. out of business. The code wasn't about censoring adult content (comics had been limited in what they could legally show before the code, although E. C. always pushed the limits of 50's censorship, they were censored even before the code) but about eliminating whole genres of comics. All you had left were superheroes and funny animals when they were done, and Archie's I guess (I've always thought Archie's were a bit weird).

Of course, by the time you were reading comics, the code had already been revised a bit. I've no doubt that although the damage had already been done, you were reading comics after they decided that it was OK to include ghosts and vampires again, unless you are very old. (Hey, E. C. had been reduced to one comic book, which they had to change to a magazine format, Mad Magazine. They had effectively been forced out of the comic market, so changing the code to allow Frankensteins was meaningless at that point.)

The thing to remember about the code is that they wanted to put comics completely out of business, and they more or less suceeded. Sure, the broken, ghettoized American comic model still manages to put out the occaisional good comic nowadays. Heck, some people might even read them that aren't already comic book fans. Maybe. (not bloody likely) Of course, it's mostly love in the wards even today, and they are getting creamed by manga.

His position on this has changed over time. Here's a source, MOORE SLAMS V FOR VENDETTA MOVIE, PULLS LoEG FROM DC COMICS.

Further proving your point--people are perfectly willing to watch 2-hour movies with the same spandex-clad fighters as the failing comic books. Let me also note that it's quite hard to even find a lot of old issues--Warren Ellis compared it to the memory hole from 1984. Everybody, read this. It's important.
And remember that Marvel Entertainment, Inc. is an American entertainment company formed from the merger of Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. and Toy Biz, Inc. (ref: Wikipedia) Guess where their profits are coming from now?

I recently found this free collection of comic book/cartoon theme music (MP3s).

http://www.comicbookresources.com/columns/index.cg i?article=2153.

He'd decided he'd have nothing to do with it long before.

Thanks for somebody from /. which posted this article some days ago : Alan Moore despise V for Vendetta. Most interrestingly is the yellow insert (scroll down).

Quote "MOORE SLAMS V FOR VENDETTA MOVIE, PULLS LoEG FROM DC COMICS
[The League]Alan Moore, co-creator of the "V For Vendetta" comic, has publicly disassociated himself from the upcoming Warner Brothers movie project based on the comic book and written and produced by the Wachowski Brothers. And as a result, he has cut his remaining ties with DC Comics, including future volumes of the "League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen."
Moore has promised future "League" comics will be published by a US/UK collaboration between Top Shelf and Knockabout. "

Quote : "Alan On The "V For Vendetta" Movie Alan gave some details about bits of the V For Vendetta shooting script he'd seen. "It was imbecilic; it had plot holes you couldn't have got away with in Whizzer And Chips in the nineteen sixties. Plot holes no one had noticed." "


Apparently the horse is already out of the barn...

Usually, Alan Moore, who wrote the graphic novels, doesn't comment on the quality of the movies that are made based on his stories. This is the first movie he actually slammed, and the reason we won't see any more Hollywood movies based on his stories (nor will he work with DC Comics again)

source

Lots of batsuits over the years have had all sort of high-tech body-mod improvements. Since you mention the Azrael storyline, you have to be familiar with the Miller's Dark Knight variation, where he wears something very much along these lines to fight kick Superman's ass but then fakes out at the end. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Knight_Retur ns
Batman has been wearing lots of different costumes, even since the '50's, including body armor on many occasions.
http://forums.comicbookresources.com/archive/index .php/t-11464.html The Wikipedia entry on Batman confirms this.

This then was a huge stumbling block early on in Valiant's history, nearly crippling them before they had even begun.

(Of course, it's worth noting - as the main article does - that the actual Nintendo comics weren't all that great. Interestingly, this is entirely at odds with the early period of Valiant's subsequent superhero work, often regarded as unusually well-done - especially for the time. Considering Nintendo's infamous game standards, one has to wonder if the disparity in quality was due to the created comics going through a number of N-overseen committees and censors before pen was ever put to paper.)

Alan Moore has had at least three movies made from his work recently, and he has seemed relatively okay with having details and stories changed around.

Whatever gave you that idea? He hated what was done to From Hell, as it turned it into exactly the kind of plot he'd set out to avoid. Plus, he's never even seen the League film. (See this interview for more)

For slightly more in-depth reviews, see, e.g.:

Comics in Context #66: A Christmas Potpourri (starts about halfway down the page)

Mild Mannered Reviews - Specials

blogcritics

and for a list of additional 'It sucked!'/'I liked it!' comments: Comic Book Resources

It may be that's an early sketch from Ashley Wood - it's rather 'alternative', but his actual comic pages remind me reassuringly of the PlayStation 1 game, especially the color scheme - rather cool, actually.

You are right!

They are planning a contemporary remake:

Screenwriters Josh Oppenheimer and Tom Donnelly ("A Sound of Thunder") have turned in a draft of the script for the big-screen update of Lee Falk's "Mandrake The Magician." Comics2Film/CBR News followed up with the producers at Crusader Entertainment to see how the project was shaping up.

A spokesperson for Crusader told us they are thrilled with the first draft. "It is an incredibly unique action film."

Created in 1934, Falk's Mandrake strip featured a stage magician who used his powers of hypnotism and illusion to fight crime. Crusader tells us that the movie will update the character for the 21st century.

"The Mandrake in the film will not be the 'classic' Mandrake, clad in top hat and tux," our source said. "He will be a contemporary magician in the high concept, David Blaine mold. His skills range from simple illusions to elaborate escapes."

Plans are for Oppenheimer and Donnelly to do a polish on the script before going out to actors and directors. Crusader tells us they've had interest from several parties on the talent front, but so far nobody is attached. However our source tells us the ideal lead for the movie would be, "someone like Colin Farrell, Hugh Jackman, Johnny Depp or Leonardo DiCaprio."

Crusader Entertainment and Hyde Park Entertainment announced that they'd picked up the film rights to the classic comic strip last fall. Around the same timeframe, they also purchased the feature rights to Falk's classic costumed hero "The Phantom."


This makes a _little_ more sense at least if there is a near-future development project in the works.

City wages war against violent video games

Basically, with this law in effect, depending on the size of your arcade, you might have to rent a larger builing if you wanted to stock Tekken. I think it was even ambiguous if you could create an "adult's only" arcade.

It wasn't really aimed at retail stores as much:

"It would be an odd conception of the First Amendment that would allow a state to prevent a boy from purchasing a magazine containing pictures of topless women in provocative poses, but give the same boy a constitutional right to train to become a sniper at the local arcade without his parents' permission," U.S. District Judge David Hamilton said at the time.

First They Take Vice City, Then They Take Berlin: Video Game Legislation Offers Hard Lessons For Comic Books

The main point is that this was censorship, of a very specific kind. By imposing harsh restrictions on arcade owners that would cost money to meet, they basically could cause arcade owners to stop stocking certain games. Arcade owners are mostly interested in making money, not in idealistically protecting the right of the public to have the choice of playing the video games they want. (It's exactly the same purpose as the Castillo case, really, just swap out comic books for video games.)

The main thing that comes through in these cases is that the people putting these bans in place don't like video games at all and don't think kids (or adults) ought to be playing them, period. They go after them where they are weakest, the only reason they don't try for a blanket ban on all video games is because this is not Afghanistan and it wouldn't hold up. It's very reminiscent of the anti-Dungeons & Dragons crusades of years past, if these same people had stated right out why they didn't like D&D they would not have been listened to. So instead, they linked it to suicide and homicidal rampages among teenagers, even if the link was tenuous or an urban legend.

It was supposed to come out in April, but I think it's now
solicited for August. Saw the solicitation recently on
ComicbookResources.

From the column of Mark Millar, comic book writer:

"A baby-sitter two nights in a row is close to impossible in our family so I stuck on my old copy of The Matrix as a poor sub for a night out. It was the first time Gill had ever seen it and she actually managed to ruin it for me completely by pointing out a major plot hurdle the next two films really better explain. We're all living in The Matrix, right? We're all slaves to the robotic parasites who use our bodies as batteries while they distract us with our nice, glamorous lives in what we perceive to be the real world, right? Neo is The One who's going to free us from these evil robot masters and help us all wake up and reclaim our planet, right? So far, so good, but the world we reclaim is a post-nuclear nightmare, brother! No sun, no fun, no food, no nice clothes, no new comics every Wednesday or Thursday. Imagine everything and everyone you know suddenly switching off as you open your eyes in your little special effects pod and Lawrence bloody Fishburne is standing there with a nuclear winter blowing behind him, telling us he's saved humanity.

Thanks a lot, Morpheus, you big, fucking twat."

From meempool
(I can heartily recommend Leisure Town, it's twisted.
I find the comment in the Forbes article about comic books not making a profit, and that the publishers treat them as R&D for ancillerary rights to be quite intriuging...)

Whatever happened to comic books? In the 1940s millions of Americans read comics not only for Superhero stories, but Romance, Cowboys, War, History, Literary Adaptations and more. Readers were lured away whenever another medium provided their "fix" cheaper, easier or better, beginning with television in the '50s. By the early '80s the only genre still dominated by comics was Superheroes, and 1989's hugely profitable Batman signaled the beginning of the superheroic exodus from comics to film. Since then comicbook sales have plummeted, from $850 million in 1993 to $275 million in 2000 and still falling fast. Leading publishers Marvel and DC Comics both now treat comics solely as Research and Development: they lose millions printing the comics, but earn far more selling licenses for movies, cartoons and toys. Comics' core audience, traditionally pre-teens, is now 18-30 and getting older every year. Is this the death of comics? Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics, plays Gandalf to an unofficial fellowship out to save comics by migrating to the Internet! Join the revolution with Justine Shaw's Nowhere Girl, Patrick Farley's Electric Sheep, Tristan Farnon's Leisure Town, Derek Kirk's Small Stories, Jenn Manley Lee's Dicebox, Cat Garza's Magic Inkwell and more!

• Palooka-Ville - by Seth. Published by Drawn & Quarterly. Pick up the collected story arc, It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken. It's a semi-autobiographical account about the author's quest to find an obscure New Yorker artist (drawn in a New Yorker style).
• Ghost World, David Boring, or anything else by Daniel Clowes. This guy is one of the best writers in Indie comics. Sharp, dark humor. Published by Fantagraphics.
• Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth - By Chris Ware. This one is available at Barnes & Noble and Borders. Collected from the Acme Novelty Library series. A heart-wrenching story about a pathetic man who meets his father for the first time. The best series I read last year and Ware is the greatest hope for comics being taken as a serious medium. Also published by Fantagraphics.
• Optic Nerve - By Adrian Tomine. Published by Drawn & Quarterly. One of the most promising young talents in indie comics. Pick up Sleepwalk and other stories, which collects issues 1 - 4 of Optic Nerve. Short stories about real people. Brilliant work.
• From Hell - By Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. Moore's analysis of Jack the Ripper is frightening, shocking, and enthralling. I've read this series three times and I still haven't absorbed everything. Available in a collected edition at B&N and Borders.
• Maus - By Art Spiegelman. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. One of the most overlooked treasures in comics. This book stands in the shadow of Watchmen when people talk about the best comics produced in the 80's. A masterpiece narrative about the Holocaust. This is the torch-bearer for greatness in the comics medium.
• Anything by Brian Michael Bendis - This guy is reigniting the Marvel line with his work on Elektra and Ultimate Spider-Man but some of his best work was done at Image Comics. Pick up Jink and Torso, both available in TPB.

For even more recommendations and some damn good thoughts on the comics industry as a whole, read Warren Ellis' series Come In Alone at Comic Book Resources. A collected, dead-tree version is also available (which I have and strongly recommend).

I should have included this with the last email... These are awesome links.

First, some from electric sheep, a very socially conscious, interesting, and humerous collection of comics.

• The Guy I Almost Was - everyone who works with technology and OpenSource/Free Software should read this, to get a sense of how some of our idealistic roots came.
• Rush Limbaugh Eats Everything - Rush Limbaugh does Reality shows, and decides to eat... The LAST Spotted Owl.
• The Jain's Death - An insightful and beautiful story on a Jain's lives.
• Overheard at a Rave - A cute story about a daughter who takes her father to a rave with her.

Here are two Scott McCloud links. Scott McClouds greatest works, unfortunately, are not online: Understanding Comics, and Reinventing Comics. Get them at a comic store near you, or at BarnesAndNoble.com. Here's some of his online work, which are of exceptional quality:

• I Can't Stop Thinking! A meta-comic, also by Scott McCloud. Very interesting ideas are expressed here.
• Scott McCloud's "Hearts And Minds" - not my favorite online comic, but a good taste of Scott McCloud's web form, doing things that could *NEVER* have been done in print. (Such as the falling scene in Week 3.)

Finally, Unicorn Jelly, for those who love science, mathematics, and anime. Be sure to check out the alternative time lines, and the powers of ten map of the universe of tryslmaistan.

• Kiss: Psycho Circus
• The Crow (based on the TV show which was based off of someone else's comic even!)
• a metric fuckton of action figures for Austin Powers, Movie Maniacs, Sleepy Hollow, Kiss, Ozzy Osbourne, Rob Zombie, Where the Wild Things Are