Artwork by James Sturm

Creators | Market Day creator James Sturm explains he’ll be boycotting The Avengers movie because he believes Jack Kirby, co-creator of many of Marvel’s longest-lasting characters,  “got a raw deal”: “What makes this situation especially hard to stomach is that Marvel’s media empire was built on the backs of characters whose defining trait as superheroes is the willingness to fight for what is right. It takes a lot of corporate moxie to put Thor and Captain America on the big screen and have them battle for honor and justice when behind the scenes the parent company acts like a cold-blooded supervillain. As Stan Lee famously wrote, ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’” Tom Spurgeon notes the position seems to mark a shift for Sturm, who wrote the Eisner-winning 2003 miniseries Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules for Marvel. [Slate, The Comics Reporter]

Michael Chabon

Creators | The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay author Michael Chabon discusses a recent short story he wrote for The New Yorker about a comic book writer and artist who had a falling out, noting who they may or may not be based on: “Well, the obvious answer is Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Stan and Jack met in the forties, began collaborating during lean times in the fifties, jointly revived the fortunes of Marvel Comics in the sixties, and then underwent a creative divorce that seems to have resulted in a certain amount of acrimony on Kirby’s side. So the outlines of the story are similar. But Feather and Conn are not Stan and Jack; their fates, their experiences, their biographies, and their personalities are quite different. Jack Kirby died in 1994, still idolized by fans, surrounded by his loving family, as far from the embittered loneliness of Mort Feather as you can be. And Stan Lee is still going strong, a potent creative force who seems to bear up under the tribulations and triumphs of a long and interesting life with the élan for which he has always been famous.” [The New Yorker]

Comic strips | The Chicago Tribune has spoken: Editors pulled last Friday’s Doonesbury strip because it “broke from its satirical mission in order to deliver a direct fundraising appeal for a specific charity that the author favors. The Tribune’s editorial practices do not allow individuals to promote their self-interests.” [The Daily Cartoonist]

Amelia Rules!

Creators | Robot 6 contributor Brigid Alverson talks to Jimmy Gownley, creator of the all-ages Amelia Rules series, about his experiences from self-publishing to signing a multi-book deal with Simon & Schuster. During the interview, Gownley dropped a bombshell: His next Amelia book, the eighth in the series, will be his last—at least for a while: “Amelia was a huge learning experience for me. I came out the other side a very different person and artist. I want to take all those lessons and put them into one book that combines all of that.” [Publishers Weekly]

Editorial cartoons | Times are tough for editorial cartoonists, but The New York Times cattle call for artists to provide work on spec for their Sunday Review section — and the measly fee of $250 per cartoon for the winners — is raising a hackles in the cartooning community. [Comic Riffs]

Creators | Ao Meng chats with French artist Boulet a.k.a. Gilles Roussel, about his recent webcomic Darkness, among other topics. [NOVI Magazine]

The Hookah Girl

Creators | Erica Friedman interviews artist Marguerite Dabaie, creator of The Hookah Girl, a memoir of growing up in the Palestinian Christian community in the U.S. [The Hooded Utilitarian]

Commentary | Librarian Robin Brenner and the contributors to the Good Comics for Kids blog discuss whether the inclusion of dialogue in graphic novel biographies makes them fiction. [Good Comics for Kids]

Commentary | Joe “Jog” McCulloch pays a visit to Dredd Reckoning to discuss Vol. 17 of Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files with host Douglas Wolk. [Dredd Reckoning]

Copyright | Mike Lynch calls out MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes show for displaying a cartoon by Lian Amaris without asking her permission, let alone compensating her. To his credit, Hayes responded on Twitter, saying “we absolutely should have credited it and will rectify.” [Mike Lynch Cartoons]

Academia | Columbia University librarian Karen Green lays out a possible typology of comics, discussing the different ways they can be broken up for teachers who want to use them in a variety of different academic settings. [comiXology]

Screenwriter Max Landis, whose found-footage superpowers movie Chronicle topped the weekend box office, has released an entertaining 17-minute rant about, and recreation of, the death and return of Superman, featuring appearances by Elijah Wood and Mandy Moore, among others. The original version apparently was 45 minutes long, so what we get here are the highlights — along with a sly plug for Chronicle.

From "Heist," by Keron Grant

Superhero movies are certainly nothing new, but director Josh Trank and screenwriter Max Landis are taking a different approach to the genre. Described by some as “Paranormal Activity meets superpowers,” the “found footage” film Chronicle follows three high school friends who gain superhuman powers only to find their lives spinning out of control.

In anticipation of Chronicle‘s limited release on Feb. 3, the filmmakers asked several artists to interpret the movie’s central question: What would you do if you had superpowers?

Artist Keron Grant (Iron Man, Fantastic Four) was one of those asked, and he shared one of his illustrations exclusively with ROBOT 6. Titled “Heist,” it came about from Grant dreaming up a bank robbery if he had those powers. “Wonder what that says about me?” he said with a laugh.

Grant created several illustrations for Chronicle that will be released shortly, adding they will be “a bit more noble.” Some of the other commissioned art also cropped up recently on Bleeding Cool.

Check out Grant’s “Heist,” and the film’s trailer, below.

Bleeding Cool noticed that just last week the company submitted two versions  of a new logo to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The design, which you can see at right, depicts a D flipping back to reveal a C below; one version includes the words “DC Comics” below, the other “DC Entertainment.”

Although the “flipping” aspect of the logo may not be obvious in its static form, it’s likely designed with animation in mind, for inclusion at the beginning of movies, television shows and video games. How that design might translate to comics remains to be seen.

Comic Book Resources has contacted DC for comment but received no response.

The publisher’s current logo debuted in May 2005 as part of an effort to emphasize the DC brand across all media. Designed by Josh Beatman of Brainchild Studios, the “swoosh” replaced the Milton Glaser-created “bullet” the company had used in one form or another since 1977.

Lisa Hanawalt’s illustrated review of Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-bait World War I drama War Horse has a lot in common with Pablo Picasso’s immortal masterpiece Guernica. They’re both an example of their artists at the peak of their powers. They’re both an artistic response to a traumatizing early 20th-century military conflict. They both prominently feature horses. And they both contain, like, subliminal messages of skulls and shit. Three of those four statements are true — to find out which, read the review.

Friedrich filed the lawsuit in April 2007, shortly after the release of Columbia Pictures’ Ghost Rider movie, accusing the studio, Marvel, Hasbro and other companies of copyright infringement, false advertising and unfair competition, among other counts. The film grossed $228 million worldwide; a sequel, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, will be released in February.

The writer asserted he created Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider in 1968 and, three years later, agreed to publish the character through Magazine Management, which eventually became Marvel Entertainment. Under the agreement, the publisher held the copyright to the character’s origin story in 1972′s Marvel Spotlight #5, and to subsequent Ghost Rider works. However, Friedrich alleged the company never registered the work with the U.S. Copyright Office and, pursuant to federal law, he regained the copyrights to Ghost Rider in 2001.

But The Associated Press reports that on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest ruled Friedrich gave up ownership to the property when he endorsed checks that contained language relinquishing rights to Marvel’s predecessors. The judge said the writer signed over all claims to the character in 1971 and again in 1978 in exchange for the possibility of more freelance work for the publisher.

“Either of those contractual transfers would be sufficient to resolve the question of ownership,” Forrest wrote. “Together, they provide redundancy to the answer that leaves no doubt as to its correctness.”

“The law is clear that when an individual endorses a check subject to a condition, he accepts that condition,” the judge ruled, contending her finding made it unnecessary “travel down the rabbit hole” to determine whether Ghost Rider was work for hire.

Life with Archie #16

Comics | CNN covers the upcoming wedding of Archie Comics’ Kevin Keller, who will get married to another man in Life with Archie #16. Keller was injured while serving in the military in Iraq and Clay Walker, his groom-to-be, was his physical therapist. “Riverdale is this picturesque vision of American life, and when you see yourself reflected in that, you have a role in even the most idealized version of the reality you live in,” said Matt Kane, associate director of entertainment media for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. “That’s the difference between feeling like a rejected outsider and feeling like you’re a part of something.” [CNN]

Comics | Jim Caple worries that viewers of the Tintin movie won’t appreciate it the way he does, comparing old-school Tintin fans to old-school Boston Red Sox or Seattle Mariners fans: “That’s what I worry about. I worry there will be all these Tintin wannabes who only know the character from the movie, who don’t appreciate Herge’s genius, who don’t know what it was like to wait a month for the next 10-page installment or when you had to special order the few books made available in America. Fans who didn’t earn this movie.” [ESPN]

Creators | Kurt Busiek discusses his work on Dracula: The Company of Monsters, which returned from cancellation as a webcomic, as well as digital comics in general: “I’ve been interested in the possibilities of online distribution for a long time, and even pitched an idea for an online strip a decade or more ago, but my collaborators and I couldn’t afford to do it on our own back then, and we didn’t find any takers who wanted to back it. And there are stories I’d love to do online, and ways I’d like to try taking advantage of the online interface, instead of print, that I’m eager to try — but between deadlines on existing projects and my health issues, I haven’t been able to launch an online series yet.” [Biff Bam Pop!]

"Saga," from Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

Creators | Fiona Staples talks with her local newspaper about her upcoming project with Brian K. Vaughan, the eagerly anticipated Image Comics series Saga. [Calgary Herald]

Creators | Sweets creator Kody Chamberlain gets the spotlight ahead of a book signing with Chew artist Rob Guillory. [The Times]

Creators | Here’s a heartwarming story for the holidays: A historian found some old comics about Saginaw, Michigan, in the local library and tracked down the artist, Vincent Faletti, whose work was published in The New Yorker and other magazines. It turns out that Faletti is alive and still cracking jokes at 95. [MLive.com]

Comics | The first issue of IDW’s Magic: The Gathering comic, originally scheduled to be released next week, has been pushed back to Feb. 1 due to “unforeseen printing challenges.” [ICv2]

Crime | Victoria, British Columbia, police have recovered a cache of stolen goods worth more than $10,000 — $8,500 of which was a comic book collection taken from an apartment storage locker. Police are returning the collection to its owner. [Victoria Times Colonist]

Fandom | Ology spotlights the marriage proposal of David Salomon, who proposed with a homemade take on an issue of Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane. “What is it about the gamers, the comic book Ologists, the sci-fi fans and the zombie slayers that makes them the kings and queens of romance?” [Ology]

1. What comic-related gift or gifts would you recommend giving this year, and why?
2. What gift (comic or otherwise) is at the top of your personal wish list, and why?

We’ve gotten back a bunch of suggestions, which we’ll run between now and the end of the week. So let the merriment commence …

Jim McCann

1. Exclusive 2011 Janet Lee Holiday Ornaments
Every year, Janet does about 12 ornaments, three sets of four. This year, she has done Hipster Animals, Scary Toys and Art Nouveau Angels. They are signed and dated, and at the end of the season, that’s it! She stops making them. I’ve been collecting them since 2007, and now our tree is almost completely filled with Janet’s art. You can buy them exclusively through her Etsy shop.

Oh, and if you’re REALLY nice, she MAY have a very limited Dapper Men ornament or two. Just ask!

2. This year, for myself, I’m going with a mix of Blu-Rays (portable Blu-Ray player, please, Santa!) and books. But the thing I’m REALLY excited for is the hardcover edition of the Complete Ripley novels, by Patricia Highsmith. Most people only know of Ms. Highsmith through The Talented Mr. Ripley (and classic film lovers through Strangers On a Train). There were actually five Tom Ripley novels, and the collection looks amazing. Why these books? My spouse recently Tweeted a quote from John Lithgow that struck me as a writer: “Duality, duplicity, truth and deception, good becoming bad and vice-versa are crucial elements of great storytelling.” Highsmith was and remains an unsung hero of mastering that, so I hope I learn something in the process!

Happy Holidays from the Dapper Lariosa-McCann household!

Jim McCann is the writer of Return of the Dapper Men and its upcoming sequel, Marvel Zombies Christmas Carol, Hawkeye:Blindspot and the upcoming Mind The Gap.

Matt Kindt

The Sixth Gun, Vol. 1

1. The gift I’d recommend would be The Sixth Gun trade #1 and #2. There are very few comics that are just good fun well-told stories. And even less that are also westerns. And it’s got a giant mummy. Seriously. I love it.

2. What I really want is for publishers to start bringing back comic book subscriptions. And I don’t mean iPad notifications. I want them to mail me single issues as they come out and wrapped in those brown kraft paper envelopes that are open on the ends.

Matt Kindt is the writer of the Robotman comic you can find in issues of DC’s My Greatest Adventure and artist on the Oni graphic novel The Tooth. He’s also the man behind Revolver, 3 Story: The Secret History of the Giant Man, Super Spy and the upcoming Supernatural.

Daryl Gregory

1. For the kids in your life, you can’t do better than the e-Comic. It’s as thin as a monthly comic book, with a folding screen that opens to allow two-page spreads. It’s high-res, so you can read word balloons easily while still be able to take in all of the surrounding art. The e-Comic comes loaded with every Jack Kirby comic, under a generous licensing deal with the Kirby estate. Plus, it only costs $25. When it’s invented in 2018, give one to every kid on your Christmas list, and SAVE COMICS.

Journey into Mystery

Until then, take the kids to a comics shop and buy them something great. My son highly recommends Journey Into Mystery by Kieron Gillen — it’s loads of fun.

2. I very rarely allow myself to play video games–nothing destroys writing time like a good game–but every Christmas I take a week off and do nothing but hang out with my family, eat and play with toys. I usually ask for one video game, and for that week I throw myself into it. Previous stockings have been stuffed with Battlefield 142, Company of Heroes, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal… and this year I want to play Arkham City. There, I’ve said it. Fortunately, it’s also on my son’s wish list, so I don’t have to use up one of wishlist slots I usually reserve for specialty beer. So you know what that means: Dad gets to punch the Joker while buzzed on Westemalle Tripel.

Daryl writes Planet of the Apes for BOOM! Studios. His novel Raising Stony Mayhall was named one of the best SF books of the year by Library Journal, and his short story collection Unpossible and Other Stories was named one of the best SF books of the year by Publisher’s Weekly. Daryl loves one of them better than the other, but won’t say which–it would hurt their feelings. You can reach him at darylgregory.com.

Jim “Zub” Zubkavich

Green Wake

1) There are a ton of great new comic titles to give/receive this year. High on my giving list are:

• 27 for music-loving friends
• Atomic Robo for people who crave action/comedy/pure joy
• Chew Omnivore Edition for dark-hearted humorous pals
• Green Wake for horror and mystery readers
• Return of the Dapper Men for fans of faerie tales and the fantastic
• The Sixth Gun for the western aficionado
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Ultimate Collection for Gen X-Yers
• Who is Jake Ellis? to the espionage-thriller reader
• and One Soul for the intellectual poet in your gift-giving circle.

See? Comics for everybody!

2) Original comic art is a unique and classy thing to give a comic fan and it’s always high on my personal wish list. Even less expensive options like a convention head sketch or random comic page original can make for a great show piece in the home of a fan. I have a lot of framed originals and they give the right touch of geek chic to my place. Getting an original from my favorite artists, new or old, is now something I look for throughout the year and Christmas is no exception.

Jim Zub is the co-creator and writer of Skullkickers from Image Comics and the creator of Makeshift Miracle, UDON’s online graphic novel serializing with new pages every week at www.makeshiftmiracle.com.

Jamie S. Rich

Petrograd

1. If you’re giving the gift of comics, than my cohorts at Oni Press have the two books from 2011 that I think have the broadest appeal and will get you the most mileage this holiday season. First, there is Petrograd, Philip Gelatt and Tyler Crook’s riveting alternative history of the assassination of Rasputin. It’s got danger and intrigue and Tyler is one hell of an artist. The handsome hardcover package has a lot of flair and though the $30 price point is totally reasonable, it would never occur to the person you’re giving it to that you were at all frugal.

Second is Ray Fawkes’ amazing One Soul. Ray has done an amazing thing here, using the standard nine-panel grid to tell the concurrent stories of 18 different people spanning the ages, separated by space and time. Though it’s possible to read each life individually front to back, the experience of reading each one moment by moment, cycling through all 18 on every double-page spread is exhilarating. One Soul is both emotionally moving and intellectually thought provoking, and despite all the formalist experimentation, a damn good read. Also another wonderfully designed, smartly priced hardcover.

More self-serving for me, and a higher ticket item, is the Madman 20th Anniversary Monster, coming from Image in just a few short weeks. I helped Mike Allred put this massive hardcover together, and I even wrote the two-page framing sequence that he and Jim Valentino drew to tie it all together. Mike has done a new story, there are 20+ all-new one-pagers from the likes of Matt Wagner, Darwyn Cooke, Patrick McEown, and all three Hernandez Bros., and also every pin-up we could get our hands on from the last 20 years of the series. Yes, that includes masters like Jack Kirby, Alex Toth, and Frank Frazetta, and also relative newbies like Joëlle Jones, Emily Carroll, and Chris Samnee. There are over 260 pages and the whole shebang is 11″ x 17″, the same size as the Wednesday Comics collection.

2. There are three items I would really like this Christmas. All of them are expensive collectors editions of material by artists that have been extremely influential on my creative development, but that I have yet to save the pennies to buy myself. They are:

(1) The Blu-Ray edition of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, bundled with the DVD of his second film The Magnificent Ambersons.
(2) The Smiths Complete–All of the Smiths albums remastered with Johnny Marr at the boards. I’d love the Super Deluxe box with the book and the dual version on vinyl and CD, but I’d settle for the straight CD versions, too. The music is the thing, and what I have heard of these new mixes is quite astonishing.
(3) The Who: Quadrophenia Director’s Cut: Super Deluxe Box Set: Okay, here is one where I have to have the massive version with the bonus 5.1 disc and all the books and such. Quadrophenia is like a religious experience for me. My first book, Cut My Hair, is named for a track on the original album, and so this new opening of the vaults is utterly essential.

Both the Smiths and the Who, as well as Orson Welles, helped change my artistic path when I was a teenager, and they still provide inspiration to this day.

Jamie S. Rich is a writer who regularly publishes through Oni Press, and quite often with the likes of Joëlle Jones, Nicolas Hitori de, and soon Natalie Nourigat and Dan Christensen. His most recent comic book release was Spell Checkers, vol. 2: Sons of a Preacher Man. You can read his sort-of kind-of frequently updated blog at http://www.confessions123.com.

Ryan Cody

Bone

1. The one comic related gift I always recommend is the Complete Bone by Jeff Smith. My children read it cover to cover at least once a year. Jeff Smith’s epic is a great read, fun and adventurous for any age group. For adults I would recommend American Vampire, it’s been my favorite book this year as I catch up on it. You can also never go wrong with Hellboy. A more unique gift for a comic or pop culture fan would be original art. Full size comic pages look gorgeous framed and hung and there is probably artwork out there to fit all budgets.

2. I don’t usually buy a lot of comics myself, but I’d be more than happy to get some original art, or a nice sketchbook or two from my favorite artists. An original Sean Murphy, Cory Walker or Mignola page and I’d be one happy camper Christmas morning.

Ryan Cody is an artist and writer whose past credits include ICARUS, Jesus Christ: In the Name of the Gun V2 and Villains. See more of his work at http://super75comics.wordpress.com/

Be sure to come back tomorrow for more suggestions!

Stan Lee

“[Stan] Lee will receive a special Vanguard award from the Producers Guild in January, and the press release announcing the award claims that he ‘has exerted more influence over the comic book industry than anyone in history,’ which is probably true, but it also claims that he ‘created or co-created 90 percent of Marvel’s most recognized comic characters.’ We’ll never actually know the truth of those collaborations — like great modern American success stories, the truth has been lost in a neverending quagmire of lawsuits. (If this were The Social Network, you could argue that he was the Sean Parker of Marvel. Which isn’t a bad thing: Without Sean Parker, Facebook wouldn’t be Facebook.) [...] Lee will probably give a great speech when he wins the award. He’s always been good at talking, especially when he’s talking about his favorite subject, his greatest invention, the one character that we absolutely know for certain he’s 100 percent responsible for creating: Himself.”

– Entertainment Weekly writer Darren Franich, on the announcement that the Producers Guild of America will honor Stan Lee with its 2012 Vanguard Award, recognizing achievement in new media and technology

I was a bit horrified to discover that I’d never before linked to the luminously sleazy work of artist and cartoonist Jonny Negron here on Robot 6. He’s one of my favorite talents to come along in ages. Then again, with NSFW images like this and this and this as his bread and butter, I guess that’s not too surprising. But that’s not a concern with his gorgeous portrait of Ryan Gosling in Drive, Nicholas Winding Refn’s instantly iconic neon-noir crime flick. Negron’s selling 11×17 prints of the piece for the low low price of $7, thus proving himself to be both a real human being and a real hero.

Avengers Assemble

Saturday at the New York Comic Con brought news for the Avengers, Superman, Legendary Comics and … Disney’s Prep & Landing? Here’s a round-up of announcements from the show today.

• With a big, blockbuster Avengers movie scheduled for next May, Marvel announced a new ongoing series, Avengers Assemble, by writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Mark Bagley. The book will launch next March and will feature most of the Avengers featured in the movie — Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, Hawkeye and the Hulk. The first arc will feature the villainous group the Zodiac.

• Speaking of that big, blockbuster Avengers movie, fans were treated to new footage from it featuring Bruce Banner and the Black Widow. Tom Hiddleston spoke to CBR about his work on the film.

• Marvel also announced that writer Rick Remender and artist Gabriel Hardman will take over Secret Avengers with issue #21.1, adding new members and pitting them against a new Masters of Evil.

• At the Cup O’ Joe panel today, Marvel also announced a Disney/Marvel crossover — Prep & Landing: Mansion: Impossible. It features the elves from the Disney television special who prepare homes for the arrival of Santa Claus every Christmas eve — only this time they’re trying to break into Avengers Mansion to get it ready for Santa. Written by director Kevin Deters and drawn by story artist Joe Mateo, the story will run in the back of the Marvel Adventures books as well as Avengers #19 in November.

• Marvel CCO Joe Quesada also announced that Marvel will publish a comic based on the Showtime television show Dexter. Novelist Jeff Lindsay will bring the popular character to comics with an all-new ongoing series with new stories set in the world of the Dexter novels

• During their All Access: Superman panel, DC Comics plans to release a second Superman: Earth One graphic novel next fall, by writer J. Michael Straczynski and artist Shane Davis. They showed off the book’s cover, and Davis revealed the Parasite will appear in it.

• It was confirmed that Keith Giffen and Dan Jurgens will take over Superman from George Perez beginning with issue #7.

• DC’s CCO Geoff Johns and artist Gary Frank have been tapped for “The Curse of Shazam,” a back-up story that will appear in Justice League starting with issue #5.

• Fans were treated to the first episode of Warner Bros. upcoming Green Lantern animated series. The first scene is available to view online.

• Jeph Loeb and Simone Bianchi will bring back Sabretooth, the character they decapitated some years back.

• Harold Parrineau will voice Blade in the upcoming Blade Anime from Marvel.

• Top Cow announced that David Hine will take over as writer of The Darkness, and a second volume of his comic with Shaky Kane, Bulletproof Coffin, is in the works.

Dragon Age

• Dark Horse Comics, who already have the license for Bioware’s Mass Effect video game, will publish digital comics based on the video game series Dragon Age. The comics will feature characters from the first and second game — Isabela, Alistair and Varric. (As a huge Dragon Age fan, I can’t help but wonder, which Alistair will appear in the comics? I have three different saved games on my Playstation 3 — one where Alistair became king, one where he became a drunk and one where the new queen of Ferelden had him killed. It’s likely not the third Alistair).

• Famed creator Mike Kaluta is working on a “big, meaty graphic novel” based on the John Milton poem Paradise Lost. Legendary Comics will publish it.

• Legendary will also publish a collection of Paul Pope’s The One Trick Rip-Off, an early work first published by Dark Horse.

• Viz Media will replace its Shonen Jump magazine with a weekly digital magazine called Weekly Shonen Jump Alpha.

• Steve Jackson Game will introduce a card game based on Image’s Skullkickers.

• Lucasfilm debuted a poster for the upcoming film Red Tails, drawn by Joe Kubert.

• And finally, ABC showed a sneak preview of their hey-isn’t-that-kinda-like-Fables TV show Once Upon a Time. A fan asked about the similarities between Once Upon a Time, Fables and NBC’s Grimm. “I haven’t seen what the movies are doing and I haven’t read those scripts,” said creator Edward Kitsis. “For us, this is our interpretation of this world. Fairy tales have become a genre the way science fiction is a genre, and I am always up for watching someone in a spaceship heading somewhere on a mission, and this is our version of that.”

Lucasfilm debuted a New York Comic Con-exclusive poster for its upcoming action drama Red Tails created by comics legend Joe Kubert.

Directed by Anthony Hemingway from a script by John Ridley and Aaron McGruder, the film is inspired by the World War II exploits of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American combat aerial unit in the U.S. armed forces. Executive produced by George Lucas, Red Tails stars Cuba Gooding Jr., Terrence Howard, Bryan Cranston and Nate Parker.

See the full poster below. Red Tails will be released Jan. 20 by 20th Century Fox.

Ben McCool (Pigs, Memoir) and Mario Guevara (Solomon Kane, Victorian Undead) will adapt Sergei Eisenstein’s 1938 film Alexander Nevsky into comics form. Titled Nevsky, IDW will publish the 110-page graphic novel in Spring 2012.

Set in the 13th century, the film and graphic novel tell the story of Alexander Nevsky, a 13th century Russian leader who led his soldiers to victory over the invading Teutonic Knights.

“Nevsky was as much a leader as he was a warrior,” McCool said in a press release. “His story isn’t just a page of little known history; it’s an inspiring tale full of strategy and battles and the fight for freedom.”

“Nevsky has a compelling story by Ben McCool and breathtaking art by Mario Guevara,” said IDW Senior Editor, Special Projects Scott Dunbier. “But the big picture here is Nevsky himself, a larger than life figure from Russian history who literally reaches out from the page and pulls you headfirst into the story–if you liked 300, you’ll love this!”

You can find the complete press release after the jump. You can find more information on the project at its official website.

*****

IDW, Mosfilm and Russ Intellectual Properties announce NEVSKY THE GRAPHIC NOVEL

A timeless story of the battle for freedom through patriotism is retold in a vibrant new form this Spring with Nevsky, an original graphic novel adaptation of Sergei Eisenstein’s classic film “Alexander Nevsky” (1938). Written by Ben McCool (Memoir, Pigs) with art by rising star Mario Guevara (Solomon Kane, Victorian Undead) and edited by Scott Dunbier, this full-length graphic novel is a stunning re-imagination of Eisenstein’s famed film.

Alexander Nevsky – decidedly the most popular figure in Russian history – is a much-loved historical leader who helped establish the Russian nation by defeating the Teutonic Knights. These invaders were the last vestiges of the Holy Roman Empire and drove out from Germany bringing oppression and religious intolerance with them. In 1242, Nevsky with an army of soldiers and citizens defeated the Teutonic Knights in a spectacular battle on the frozen Lake Peipus, an achievement celebrated in Russia to this day.

Eisenstein was a revolutionary figure who is to Russian film what Chekhov and Tolstoy are to its literature. In 1938, Eisenstein, was already celebrated for his groundbreaking films “Battleship Potemkin” (1925) and “October” (1928), brought the story of Nevsky’s battles to life in a stirring epic that featured a score by Sergei Prokofiev. The spectacular closing scene of the Battle on the Ice has been studied by filmmakers from David Lean to Steven Spielberg to Walt Disney Animation. Although caught up in the politics of the time – Eisenstein was frequently out of favor with Joseph Stalin – the film became a worldwide classic.

Now, working together with Mosfilm, Trident Media Group and IDW Publishing have partnered to create the first-ever graphic novel adaptation of this classic Eisentein epic film, bringing it to a new generation of readers and film-goers through its wholly-owned subsidiary Russ Intellectual Properties. Russ is devoted to promoting Russian cultural properties across all media. To that end, they have assembled an international team of creators for this graphic novel, including English-born Ben McCool and Mexican artist Mario Guevara.

“Nevsky was as much a leader as he was a warrior,” says McCool. “His story isn’t just a page of little known history; it’s an inspiring tale full of strategy and battles and the fight for freedom.”

“Nevsky has a compelling story by Ben McCool and breathtaking art by Mario Guevara,” says IDW Senior Editor, Special Projects Scott Dunbier. “But the big picture here is Nevsky himself, a larger than life figure from Russian history who literally reaches out from the page and pulls you headfirst into the story-if you liked 300 you’ll love this!”

“Trident has had a long involvement with Russia, its culture and its people,” said Trident Media Group Chairman Robert Gottlieb. “We are excited to be able to spotlight a great filmmaker like Eisenstein and a thrilling page from history by reimagining the story in a new medium.”

“Russia has a rich history in all the arts,” says Mosfilm Cinema Concern Deputy Director Svetlana Pyleva. “We are very impressed by Robert’s knowledge and passion for Russian history, and Ben’s efforts to bring a great Russian hero to an international audience. Nevsky is a great hero to Russians, and this story does full justice to his story.”

This classic story is now told for a new generation in a graphic novel, which brings the heroes and villains of 13th century Russia into the 21st century with an exciting story of battles, heroes, and fierce warrior women: Nevsky, already battle weary from a campaign against the Mongols, who must defend his nation against a new and savage invader; Olga, a fierce shield maiden who cannot be stopped from joining the fray; Vasili and Gavrilo, two soldiers who must overcome their own personal demons to continue the fight; and Hermann Von Bolk, the brutal Grand Knight who leads the Teutonic Knights on a path of destruction.

The making of the novel will be discussed at the New York Comic Con panel “The Comics History of the World” featuring Ben McCool on Friday, October 12th at 1:30 PM.

Nevsky is a 110 page full color graphic novel to be published by IDW in Spring 2012.

Persepolis

Crime | About 50 protestors were arrested in Tunisia for an attempted arson attack on the offices of Nessma TV after it screened Persepolis, the animated adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s celebrated autobiographical graphic novel. The protesters claimed the animated movie offends Islam. All political parties in Tunisia, including the country’s main Islamic party Al-Nahada, have condemned the attack and expressed their solidarity for freedom of the press. [Variety]

Digital comics | Warren Ellis looks at the current options and sees webcomics as a broadcast, out there for free and bringing in new readers through notifications, links and solidarity, whereas digital comics services like comiXology (or even Marvel’s subscription) service are closed systems, more like a shop with comics on the shelves. That makes a difference in building an audience and also in the pacing of the comics, because webcomics can better accommodate the more decompressed storytelling that Ellis prefers. Lots of interesting nuggets among the ramblings. [Warren Ellis]

Sales charts | John Jackson Miller offers additional analysis on the “September to Remember” sales charts. [Comichron]

The Death-Ray

Creators | Daniel Clowes chats briefly about The Death-Ray, superheroes, and growing up in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. [Patch.com]

Creators | Brian Heater talks to Dave Roman about his work on Astronaut Academy and Teen Boat, both of which started as mini-comics and are now full-length graphic novels, and his life as a full-time comics creator. [The Daily Cross Hatch]

Publishing | Christopher Irving takes the long view in his career-spanning interview with DC’s Dan DiDio—and they don’t talk about the New 52 at all, because the interview was done a month before the reboot was announced. Photographer Seth Kushner gives DiDio the Graphic NYC treatment, posing him with DC props and shooting him with strong light and deep shadows, as is his way. [Graphic NYC]

Commentary | Charles Solomon looks at Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths by Shigeru Mizuki: “But Mizuki uses the disparate visuals more skillfully. The black-and-white drawings allow the reader’s eye to follow the characters from their simplified settings to the horribly detailed action scenes. The result is a unified vision that keeps all the action within a single world. Onward is an important book that once again demonstrates power of the graphic novel to depict serious issues.” [Hero Complex]

Birds of Prey #1

Commentary | In advance of Duane Swierczynski’s work on Birds of Prey, Corrina Lawson tracked down two of Swierczynski’s novels to see if he’d be a “good fit” for the title. “By the time I finished the books, I was convinced enough of his writing talent to read Birds of Prey #1,” she said. [GeekDad]

Digital comics | Two months after the launch of the online manga site JManga, which is backed by 39 Japanese publishers, Deb Aoki issues a report card, giving them high marks for customer service (and pricing during the current sale) but taking off points for putting up covers for manga they don’t actually offer on the site. [About.com]

Reviews | Paul Montgomery reviews MetaMaus, the book about the making of Art Spiegelman’s Maus: “Memoirs of the Holocaust carry an unparalleled dramatic weight, but what sets Maus apart is that is not simply a survivor’s tale, but a meta-fictional treatise on the responsibility assumed by an individual as chronicler and son. Art tells Vladek’s story, and that of many. But he also relates his own experiences with guilt, rage and acceptance over a complicated paternal relationship and the manner in which he immortalized past experiences.” [iFanboy]

Comics | The death of Steve Jobs last week causes Daniel BT to remember when he first heard of the Apple visionary: In comics, of course, specifically the Calvin and Jobs parodies that ran in MAD Magazine in 1995. [Sunday Comics Debt]

Reviews | Nick Chidgey reviews Laddertop, a manga-style graphic novel by Orson Scott Card and his daughter that is in a similar vein to Ender’s Game, and finds it wanting. [Spandexless]

The Alamo Drafthouse theaters held six “Mondo Mystery Movies” in Los Angeles this past weekend, and they had different artists create limited edition posters for each of them. One of those artists was Charlie Adlard of Walking Dead fame, who created the above poster for 28 Days Later (with title treatment from Jon Smith).

There’s also a variant edition — same poster, different title treatment — after the jump, along with the other movie posters they released for Iron Giant, City of Lost Children, Hellraiser, Assault on Precinct 13 and The Mist.

The Iron Giant by Kevin Tong:

Hellraiser by Florian Bertmer:

Assault on Precinct 13 by Tyler Stout:

City of Lost Children by Ken Taylor:

The Mist by Daniel Danger:

Look, I have a baby. The only movies I have a chance to watch air on Saturday afternoons on Lifetime. (Odd Girl Out is the best.) But Lisa Hanawalt has provided one of her patented “illustrated responses” to Drive, the instant cult-classic crime film starring Ryan Gosling as … I dunno, someone many people find attractive, I’ll bet. I haven’t seen the movie, and so I’m not reading the review, in hopes that I can eventually see it, perhaps if Lifetime acquires the broadcast rights. But don’t let that stop you.

Incredibles by Bill Morrison

Day two of D23 kicked off early for us, as the big movie presentation kicked off at 10:30 a.m. and we knew there would be a line. We just didn’t realize how long of a line …

*****

(Before I get into that, though, I should mention the above artwork has nothing to do with the movie panel; it’s Bill Morrison’s homage to New Teen Titans #1 and the Incredibles, and was being sold at the Disney Fine Arts booth. I just thought it was really cool).

So yeah, we got there early and there was already a line snaking back behind the convention center. D23 had two lines each morning, one for D23 members and one for non-members. Members could start entering the show at 9 a.m., while everyone else came in at 10. We got in line around 8, I believe, and it was around 9 by the time we got into the convention center. We went directly to the Disney Arena line, where the big presentation was being held, and waited … and waited … then we’d move a little bit and wait some more. Eventually we made it really close to the door, and someone popped up to tell us we might not make it in because they were running out of seats. We almost bailed at that point, but luckily we didn’t because we were in the very last group of people they let into the arena.

They confiscated our cell phones before we went in, gave us the wand to make sure we weren’t sneaking in a camera, and sent us to the very top row about two minutes before the presentation began. The presentation itself went from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., I believe, and was a star-studded, clip and news-filled production. Let me see if I can remember everything they covered … the first part of the presentation focused on their upcoming animated films, as Pixar’s John Lasseter walked through several upcoming projects for both Pixar and Walt Disney Studios. These included:

–Planes, a direct-to-DVD spinoff from Cars that features, um, planes. It features a cropduster named Dusty, who will be voiced by Jon Cryer … the first of many special guests to come out on stage. They introduced him as “The star of the CBS comedy Two and a Half Men …” and at that point I was thinking how awesome it would be for Charlie Sheen to come out and talk about Tiger Blood. The clip they showed had White Zombie’s More Human Than Human playing behind it, which was an interesting choice.

–Wreck-it Ralph, which I mentioned yesterday … it’s about the bad guy from a video game who wants to be a good guy. So he spends his days in a 1980s video game destroying buildings so that the game’s hero, Fix-it Felix Jr., can use his magical hammer to fix it and of course take down Ralph. They had the game set up at one of their booths:

Fix It Felix Jr.

Wreck It Ralph

They showed the first four-and-a-half minutes of the film, which features John C. Reilly as Ralph, Jack McBrayer as Felix, Jane Lynch as Sergeant Calhoun (a character from a Halo-like game) and Sarah Silverman as Vanellope von Schweetz. The footage was incomplete; in some parts it was black-and-white line art, but the voice over by Reilly was really funny. At one point Ralph attends “Bad-Anon,” a support group for video game bad guys. I didn’t know anything about this film until this weekend, but what we saw was great … it comes out in fall 2012. Oh, and both Silverman and McBrayer came out on stage to say a few words about it.

–Brave is next year’s Pixar film, set in Scotland and featuring a princess who has to choose one of three idiotic suitors for political reasons. She rides a horse, she shoots a bow, and she ends up meeting a witch who casts a spell … they showed clips from this as well, and brought out Kelly Macdonald and Kevin McKidd, who voice characters in the movie. It’s an action-adventure fantasy thing from Pixar, so it ought to be good.

–Monsters University, a prequel to Monsters Inc. Before they were buddies, Mike and Scully were rivals back in college, and this will detail those college days. Billy Crystal, who voices Mike, showed up to huge cheers from the crowd. It comes out in 2013.

–They also announced two new Pixar movies, which would come out after Monsters University … both of which are currently untitled. The first one is kind of a “What if the meteor that killed off the dinosaurs never hit the Earth?” and the promotional image showed a kid riding on the head of a brontosaurus. The other will take you into how your mind really works. They had mock logos made up for both of them, i.e. “Pixar’s Untitled Movie about Dinosaurs,” which was pretty funny.

–The animation part of the presentation ended with Buzz and Woody from Toy Story bringing out a cake in honor of Pixar’s 25th anniversary, and everyone in the arena receiving a cupcake. This was pretty awesome, and the cupcake was really good.

Next up was the live-action stuff, which included:

–John Carter, for which they brought out director Andrew Stanton, and stars Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins and Willem Dafoe. Stanton said he was first introduced to John Carter through the 1970s Marvel series, then went back and read the books. They showed the trailer and several clips, including one that featured Dafoe’s character, one of the nine-foot-tall four-armed martians, meeting Kitsch’s character. Both Dafoe and Samantha Morton’s characters will be done with CGI, but both of them walked aorund on stilts when filming their scenes so they could interact with the other characters. It sounds kinda insane. I like dthe clips they showed; Collins’ Deja Thoris should be one of the highlights.

–Frankenweenie, which is actually a stop motion animated film by Tim Burton. Burton is working on the film in London, but sent over two of the producers and a model of Frankenweenie for them to play with on stage.

–Oz the Great and Powerful, which tells the story of how the Wizard came to Oz. It stars James Franco, Mila Kunis, Michelle Williams and Rachel Weisz, and it’s currently filming in Detroit. None of the stars were there, but they sent a video.

–The Odd Life of Timothy Green, for which star Jennifer Garner came out to promote. This is a Peter Hedges film, who wrote What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Pieces of April. It’s about a couple who find out they can’t have kids, so they write down everything they’d want in a kid and bury the scraps of paper in the back yard. A kid, Timothy Green, grows out of the ground.

–Jason Segel, Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy came out to promote this fall’s Muppet film. They showed a couple of clips, which look funny and awesome and really made me excited to finally see this.

–The they promoted an upcoming DisneyNature film about chimpanzees. It looks like a propaganda film to make us think these things are cute and cuddly, but we all know better, right? Like I never saw Planet of the Apes …

–Last and certainly not least, Marvel’s Kevin Feige came out after they played a “sizzle reel” that recapped all the Marvel Studios films that have come out since 2008 (i.e. the Iron Man films, Hulk, Thor and Captain America). The clips they pulled all kind of tied together, so you had General Thunderbolt Ross talking about the super soldier program, Nick Fury visiting Iron Man, etc. In other words, it was all about the continuity they’ve been building. Interestingly enough, the Hulk clips didn’t feature Ed Norton Jr. at all.

Feige then introduced a scene from the Avengers that he said the rest of the world wouldn’t be able to see for awhile. Let me see if I can remember all the details …

It opened with Loki trapped in some sort of cell in the helicarrier, talking with Nick Fury. Fury says if Loki so much as tries to scratch the glass, the cell will fall 30,000 feet to the ground below. Loki says the cell wasn’t really built to hold him, but a mindless beast … they then flash to Black Widow, who glances up at Mark Ruffalo/Bruce Banner. So apparently SHIELD has captured Loki and has him imprisoned. They also flashed to Thor at one point in their conversation, and to a glove that was either Iron Man or Cap (I think it was Cap), as well as Cobie Smulders/Maria Hill. Loki says something about how powerful he is, and Fury offers him a magazine to read. It cuts to Banner, who says something like, “He really grows on you, doesn’t he?”

Next a plane is shown flying over a city — I’m assuming this was a Quinjet. I mean, it’s gotta be a Quinjet, right? It was quick, so I’m not 100 percent on that. Anyway, the next scene has Tony Stark talking to Loki, and he gives the God of Mischief a “roll call” of the Avengers, noting they have two super assassins, Hawkeye and Black Widow, who we get to see in action; a demigod — hey, there’s Thor being Thor-like; a living legend “who kinda lives up to the legend” — hey, there’s Cap! — and then says they all have a reason to hate Loki.

Loki says, “I have an army.”

Stark replies, “We’ve got a Hulk.”

Flash in a quick shot of the Hulk roaring, and cut to the logo …

There were other flashes in there … I’m pretty sure there was another shot of Hawkeye, plus Clark Gregg/Agent Coulson at some point. It was pretty loaded and looked really cool.

Next Feige said that Joss Whedon and the cast were wrapping up shooting, for which they had about two weeks left, and said that unfortunately Whedon, Samuel L. Jackson and Chris Evans couldn’t make it, but sent their best … then he introduced the cast members who were at the show — Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Cobie Smulders and Tom Hiddleston. Downey took the microphone and made a comment about how they felt like kids visiting their parents on the weekend, then told them to roll the footage one more time. Here’s the group out on stage, courtesy of Marvel.com:

So, wow … it was pretty cool to see all of them assembled like that. We did some other stuff today, but it’s hard to top all that.

One of the most appealing things about the comics form is that no one’s ever been able to offer a satisfying definition of it, a telegraphing sentence-or-two that puts everything that is together into one continuum while simultaneously providing grounds to exclude everything that ain’t.  What is comics? you ask.  The best answer is that it’s complicated.  Without a hard and fast verbal box to place it in, comics remains a fully living field, open to new claimants.  There are plenty of kinds of comics that we’ve never seen before, that we won’t even know are comics until someone points it out.  Mayan pictoglyphs, Mondrian canvases.  The possibilities are endless.

With that said, I’d like to claim the movie trailer above for comics, if I may.  Get over the fact that it’s a trailer for a bad movie: as always in this medium, there are more important things than the content going on here.  And yes, I realize that the content isn’t the first impediment to a reading of a piece of film as comics.  In our current era of genre comics that want nothing more dearly than to be big Hollywood blockbusters, the comparisons between comics and film are made over and over — to the detriment of both media, I believe.  While both are ways of visual storytelling, that’s pretty much where the similarities begin and end.  Film is all about the actual depiction of the world in motion, while comics’ raison d’etre is to strive against the impossibility of creating still images that also move.  Comics, from Jack Kirby to Osamu Tezuka to Robert Crumb to Herge and on from there, are about the suggestion of motion more than its actual existence.  Nailing down the pose that speaks of a whole gesture, finding separate planes within a single picture to pull the reader’s eye over it, organizing figures in space so that a read-through of a panel becomes an animation of a choreographed scene, these are the cartoonist’s tasks.  To bring life to stillness; something from nothing.

But even the most dynamically drawn panel of comics is still only one image, a fixed and static thing.  What makes the medium move is sequence.  This is where comics’ real departure from the action of film is.  Comics is like a vast, complex machine that can only perform a single task: each still image performs its story function, then terminates, to be picked up from by the next.  Film, meanwhile, can accomplish multiple story beats with a single shot thanks to its ability to show motion in the frame.  Even when our viewpoint into a film is fixed, it is in perpetual motion.  Basically, film relies on its audience’s immediate memory of what they have just seen to construct what is constructs.  Comics must create a concentrated enough sense of place, tone, and content that the audience can hold onto the story in between pictures that occupy completely different spaces and times from one another, with nothing but readers’ imaginations to link them together.  A shot of film can exist over past, present, and future, a space ranging anywhere from a fraction of a second to hours.  Comics panels exist in an everlasting present.

That said, film still participates in the sequencing of images.  The common intellectualized jargon-name for comics, “sequential art,” can just as aptly describe a few pieced-together shots of film as an Eisner page.   And these days, comics are changing.  The advent of webcomics has shown that existence as printed matter is not inherent to the form.  Full-screen, single-image “scroller” webcomics like Blaise Larmee’s 2001 and J-Shasta’s 1981 function as completely convincing denials of the idea that simultaneous apprehension of multiple pictures is necessary to comics, and also that sequence must remain open to the reader’s interpretation.  As we’ve discussed before in this column, the mode of comics is being brought closer to that of film; not just in appearance, but in the way the medium acts on its readers.

It always requires an extra step of some kind to bring something new into the sphere of comics.  With the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo trailer, that step is a denial of the reader’s ability to determine the time they spend with each individual image.  It’s a tradeoff, but hopefully readers can entertain the idea of a mode of comics-making that loses this particular aspect of the medium in favor of an increased authorial control, the way a scroller comic effectively prevents its readers from taking in the panels out of order.  This hurdle aside, the trailer is as much a part of comics as of anything else.

Most importantly, it is not in any way indebted to the onscreen movement it contains.  Aside from the four-second opening shot, the images flash by at a rate of one per tick of the clock, too fast for the eye to do much more than apprehend the basic content of each shot.  It is not the movement, but the composition and organization of figures that we see.  These pictorial crafts construct what the trailer constructs, not the movement of the objects within the frames.  We know a car crosses a bridge not because we see it drive from one end to the other, but because it is in the road somewhere in between.  We know a man drinks from a cup not because we see him transfer the liquid from vessel to mouth, but because we see him raise it to his face, lips pursed.  The suggestion of motion more than its actual existence.

When a motion is depicted rather than implied, it is done with multiple shots, just as in any comic: a man has his hand raised to his face, then he is grasping the frame of his glasses, then the glasses are removed, in his hand somewhere level with his nose.  Or a house at the end of an icy road moves closer and closer — not in the continuous slide of filmic motion but the jump-cut rhythm of comics, slices of road eaten up off-panel, the space of sky around the house becoming smaller and smaller in great still bursts.  No immediate memory of what happened in the picture before the present moment is allowed, because a different picture was there a second ago, and now this one too is gone.  What is created is comics’ multiple views into one thing, a sense of place and tone and content brought on not by extended exploration of anything, but a barrage of images both disconnected and inherently related to one another.

The metronome flashing of the pictures is a gridded page.  The compositions are cartoons, telegraphing more than they speak of.  The piece of filmmaking is a comic: another new way in a medium too vital to be pinned down.

We know Gaiman best for his comics work, but it’s arguably his prose work that made his name for the mainstream public-at-large and the Hollywood types that have hired him for jobs. While none of his comics work has been adapted to the screen, his prose and prose/art hybrids have come to life in the movies for Stardust and Coraline, and the BBC series Neverwhere. He’s been brought in to write episodes of Doctor Who and Babylon 5, and has written original screenplays for movies like Beowulf, Mirrormask and several unreleased projects. Be that as it may, people have attempted film adaptations of his comics work in the past, including an adaptation of Death: The High Cost of Living several years back.

But with Gaiman’s stock in people’s minds continuing to ride high, I’d bet money on more of Gaiman’s comic work making it to the screen. Here’s a crib sheet for the Hollywood-types on what they should do and how they should do it. Take note, I chose to leave out the variety of prose work that would be natural fits for adaptation, even the prose work that’s later been adapted to comics.

The Sandman: If there’s one comic that Gaiman will always be remembered for, it’s The Sandman. It’s his defacto definitive work in the comics form (and arguably the written word), and rightly so. The story of a rebellious brother in a family of gods, the Sandman is the person in charge of the realm of dreams and all that comes with it. It provided a gateway into a world of different stories, and it’s stoked many cinematic storytellers to try to bring it to the big screen. At one point, Quentin Tarantino’s former writing/producing partner Roger Avary was attached to direct, and recently writer/director James Marigold (Walk The Line) was pitching it as an HBO series. The last news released was that DC’s parent company had lined up Supernatural creator Eric Kripke to push it on the television front. Five years ago a TV series might seem preposterous, but with True Blood doing what it does, a Sandman serialized series is feasible.

Signal To Noise: One of Gaiman’s earliest comics works, Signal To Noise follows a filmmaker trying to finish his final project before succumbing to a terminal illness. It’s been adapted twice to other formats (radio and stage) but no film/television translation has ever been discussed. This could be a great cerebral drama that wouldn’t need a big budget; take long-time Stephen King adapter Lawrence Kasdan in and this could be a great film.

Lady Justice: Not many people remember this, and those that do might have a bad taste in their mouth right now, but it’s not Gaiman’s fault. Lady Justice was one of several comic concepts Gaiman sold to a comics company called Tekno Comics that they developed with other writers.  Peel that away, and there’s still a strong concept there: a blindfolded woman holding scales takes physical form in a supernatural version of 100 Bullets, offering wronged women a chance to bring justice to their persecutors. This would work perfect as a serialized story, allowing standalone episodes while also sowing the seeds for a larger arc.

The Books of Magic: The success of the “other” story of a boy magician might skew The Books of Magic for some, but Gaiman’s creation still remains a potent bed of creativity. DC’s head honcho Diane Nelson has a history of shepherding J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books to success; maybe she could do that same magic here.

Death: The High Cost Of Living: One of the most promising of Gaiman’s ouvre, and also the one that came the closest to filming before falling through. For several years, Gaiman himself was shepherding a film adaptation based on his own script titled Death and Me. Guillermo del Toro was signed on as executive producer with Gaiman penciled in to direct, even going so far as to shadow del Toro for a week during the filming of Hellboy II: The Golden Army. It came on and off the backburner for years before Gaiman pronounced in dead in late 2010 due to intervention from DC and Warner Bros. When someone wises up, this could be a blockbuster film in the making — perhaps even more popular than a Sandman film.