‘John Carter’ gets another comics adaptation from Marvel
With Disney prepping a “John Carter” film for March release, Marvel Comics continues its collaboration with the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate to adapt the “John Carter” novels into the graphic fiction format.
“John Carter: The Gods Of Mars” No. 1 will be released in comic shops in March, from the creative team of writer Sam Humphries (“Sacrifice”) and artist Ramon Perez (“Jim Henson’s Tale Of Sand”).
“’Gods of Mars’ is going to be a blast — tons of action and intrigue in a fantastic environment,” said Humphries in a news release.
In the novels, John Carter is an American Civil War veteran transported to Mars, called Barsoom by those who live there. Carter debuted in 1912 in All-Story Magazine.
- Matt Price
From Wednesday’s The Oklahoman
John Carter novels to be adapted to comics by Marvel
Marvel Entertainment has announced a collaboration with the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate to create new graphic fiction adaptations of the John Carter novels, beginning with John Carter: A Princess of Mars #1 (of 5) in September 2011.
“With our new partnership with Marvel Entertainment, we believe we have found the best creative force to revive the thrills and adventures in the 21st Century of the legendary John Carter of Mars. We are looking forward to introducing this original interplanetary adventurer to a new generation of fans and await the first issue with great anticipation,” said James Sullos, President of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., in a news release.
According to the news release, by working closely with the ERB estate, all John Carter comics produced with Marvel Entertainment will be considered part of the official canon.
Here’s how Marvel describes the series: Transported to the dying planet of Mars, Captain John Carter must now fight for his life against creatures unlike any ever seen by mankind. But as he finds himself enveloped by an alien civil war, he meets the proud and beautiful Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, who will change his life forever!
Writer Roger Langridge and artist Filipe Andrade are the creative team for the project, which will feature covers by Skottie Young.
“Edgar Rice Burroughs created one of the great action heroes in John Carter and we’re excited to bring his novels to comics for a new generation,” said Axel Alonso, Marvel Editor-In-Chief, in a news release. “Roger and Filipe are going to blow everyone away with their take on the John Carter novels, keeping fans new and old on the edge of their seats.”
Ray Wall Q&A on “Comic Book Rock”
New York-based rocker Ray Wall has been creating rock ‘n’ roll inspired by comic-book characters since 2005. The Ray Wall Band has created songs inspired by the Joker, Watchmen, X-Men and Iron Man.
You can follow Ray on MySpace and Facebook, and purchase his music on iTunes.
He recently answered some questions for Nerdage about his music.
Nerdage: What is “Comic Book Rock” and how did you start creating it?
Ray Wall: Comic Book Rock is a new genre of music that we began introducing and defining in 2005 for what we viewed as an underserved and emerging fan base. It’s an innovation that allows contemporary music to explicitly intersect with comics and imagination based fiction. In other words, Comic Book Rock is real deal, fan-based, content-true music that talks about super-heroes by name, their powers, what they do, their arch-enemies and so on.
For me this has been a kind of personal odyssey. As a kid I was mega comic fan and collector, who like many, drifted away as they got older. My teenage years were dominated by music and becoming a rock guitarist, while later still, college, grad school and career took me even farther away. With few exceptions, comics seemed left behind. That all changed with a vengeance after the first rounds of major Hollywood super-hero movies brought me back into the fold!
However, even as these new movies were getting better and better, I grew impatient with the pop/rock/urban soundtracks that accompanied them and felt that they were not delivering an experience as powerful as the movies themselves. On a gut level something fundamental seemed missing. Where were the cool super-hero tunes I remembered as a kid? I wondered why the major film companies would spend over $100 million dollars on a movie and not even a few thousand on an awesome super-hero song that would prolong everyone’s enjoyment of it.
When the first FF movie came out I decided to submit my “The Fantastic Four Song” for it which I wrote years earlier, and at the same time make a music video. In a strange twist, the music started to rank on iTunes and the video got on public TV in a couple of big cities. All this was a couple of years before Myspace and Youtube hit big but the feedback we were getting as we went forward moved me to write and develop more Comic Book Rock. I had the realization that we can move comics from our eyes to our ears and that combining music with super-heroes can be a powerful and fun listening experience.
Nerdage: Tell me about the various songs you’ve created.
Ray Wall: To date we have released about half a dozen songs covering The X-Men, The Joker, Watchmen, FF, etc. The tunes are quite different from one another in part because the characters demand it and because we change around our sound and bandmates as needed. Some of the tunes have voice actors and sound effects as a kicker. Others are classic theme song structured like our Spider-Man track and still others like Watchmen attempt to covey the essence of an entire graphic novel in one sitting. To date we have covered both Marvel and DC but eventually we will expand into other universes.
For our upcoming songs, we did a thought experiment and imagined what the world would be like if “only” super-hero songs existed on the radio (laughs). Well, you would have super-hero love songs, comic book dance tunes, hero-hip-hop, super-villain operas, and bad guy blues – all of which you may see us release in the future.
Ray Wall composing.
Nerdage: What are you working on now?
Ray Wall: Next year we will be putting out our first full length CD. Until now we have only released singles and generally not pre-announced our songs. Most of our fans understand that we release new music when major comic book movies come out. Usually, when Hollywood starts advertising a new movie our mail box fills ups with letters asking if we are making a song for it. This approach has been fun but it has really limited the quantity of recordings we have done to date. The other result is that I have a huge stack of songs that have been written and are waiting for their respective movies to come out. Hence, now we feel the need to speed things up. It’s a big change from our old approach and requires a lot of planning so right now we are working on finding the right studio and producer to work with. A major goal is to push our new production values as high as possible.
Nerdage: What’s the process – do you immerse yourself in particular issues or trades to get a feel for the characters?
Ray Wall: For me writing music, as opposed to playing music, is a very mysterious process. I usually like to walk around and gently think about the characters for a few hours or couple of days. The next time I pick up the guitar I often just start playing a new tune immediately out of thin air. I don’t understand how this happens but most of the lyrics and music are just sitting there with a few gaps that I fill in later. But realistically, sometimes I get stuck and a particular song may sit for months before I figure it out. Other times, yes, I do have to immerse myself but usually only if I don’t know much about the character. When I wrote The X-Men Song: A Super-Hero Rock Opera, I knew almost nothing about the X-universe because it was not one of the comics I ever read. Before the first X-movie was released I went to our public library and checked out one hundred collected X-Men comics across all the years and read one a night. Since it was close to bedtime I started to dream the music and lyrics. Because this went on for three months I ended up writing a nine minute opera rather than a normal song (laughs). Lately, I find it’s a movie trailer that can jump start a song. I had already read the Watchmen series, but it was the dark spooky looking trailer that hooked me to create our music for it. Also, I would have never written The Joker without seeing what Heath Ledger was doing in the Dark Knight trailer clips.
Lastly, I think emotions play a big role in all this. The best comics you will ever read in your life are those you read when you were a kid. We’re adults now (laughs) but we still have the capacity to tap into our pre-adolescent brain if we want to. On a real level part of my process is to try to feed those feelings back through my ears to make this music.
Nerdage: What’s been the most difficult song to work on?
Ray Wall: We have something coming up on our CD called Silver Surfer Rises which will be an extension of the Comic Book Rock concept into something I call “Musical Comic Books”. The song has a full plot: a beginning, middle, and end. You can practically read the lyrics like a comic book. We were going to release it when the FF-2 movie came out but the track was not ready. The music is very simple but the unfolding arrangement is difficult to figure out as elements appear and disappear in the track. Moreover, it is a long song and the singing is very exacting and emotional. I have already made a few attempts and it’s going to be tough. If you can think of how Robert Plant sang Stairway to Heaven and how perfect, poised, well timed, and expressive he was throughout that vocal to tell the story you get the picture. Not easy!
Nerdage: Who is your favorite character?
Ray Wall: My all time favorite character is Spider-Man and favorite team book is The Fantastic Four; pretty much hands down. During my boyhood years I also collected Cap, Iron Man, Hulk, Sub-Mariner and a few other books. I also loved the worlds of The Inhumans and of Glactus and the Silver Surfer. I think the Lee and Kirby years were the best for this material as they invented most of it. When I was an even younger kid, I was completely in the DC camp and liked Superman, Flash, and funny stuff like The Metal Men. Batman I was watching on TV.
My favorite female character is the underappreciated Kitty Pride because in her origin she rescued the X-Men while barely knowing how to use her powers and being not much more than a scared kid. I guess I like her bravery.
Finally, my interest lately has been really drawn to The Justice League, but not totally by the comics. I’ve been listening to DC’s stories on CD about them. These are much more than someone just reading a novel. They have a full cast of professional actors, readers, sound effects, and great music soundtracks. These are awesome; it’s like a movie in your head! That’s really cool and after all that’s in part where I want to take Comic Book Rock in the future. To have comic books in your ears!
Tulsa author S.E. Hinton plans comic-book projects
According to MTV’s Splash Page blog, Tulsa author S.E. Hinton will bring several projects to comic books, from Bluewater Productions.
The first project will adapt Hinton’s young adult novel “Taming of the Star Runner.” That series is planned for early 2010.
According to the Splash Page, Hinton’s children’s book “The Puppy Sister” is set to be adapted, and Hinton
S.E. Hinton
plans to create an entirely new title for Bluewater. Don Smith, CW Cooke, Guilherme Rafid and Yasir Fajardo will collaborate on Hinton’s projects, according to the blog.
“I grew up reading S.E. Hinton’s books, so to bring these to a graphic novel format is a dream come true for me,” said Bluewater publisher Darren G. Davis at MTV Splash Page. “The best part is getting to work with Hinton one on one. We have talked about the new title, which is on the lines of her iconic work ‘The Outsiders.’”
Hinton is one of Oklahoma’s best-known authors. It’ll be interesting to see the local response to comics based on her work.
- Matt Price
Megan Fox looking at Fathom, Jonah Hex
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Megan Fox (“Transformers”) is in final negotiations to join the film “Jonah Hex,” based on the DC Comics Western hero. She’s also attached to star in “Fathom,” based on Michael Turner’s aquatic hero.
“Jonah Hex” is set to begin filming in April, directed by Jimmy Hayward. Fox will play Leila, a “gun-wielding beauty,” according to THR, and love interest to Josh Brolin’s Jonah Hex.
“Fathom” is being written by Jordan Mechner, the creator of video game “Prince of Persia.” “Fathom” was created by artist Michael Turner, who died in 2008 at age 37. According to THR, Fox had been a fan of “Fathom” since it debuted in 1998.
This is probably the best excuse I’ll have this week to run a lot of Megan Fox photos. I met Fox at the “Transformers” junket in 2007, and it seemed likely then that she would become a bigger star.
– Matt Price
Mark Millar talks “Wanted 2″
Mark Millar talking about “Wanted” at Newsarama: “What I will be doing is providing them with a very small amount of stuff for a story, and that will be used as a basic story that they can build from. It will be a small outline that can possibly be picked apart and not used – but it will be something exclusively for the second film, and no one will ever really see it.”
It will be based in the storyline of the movie, which varied rather substantially from the comic, but bringing in some elements from the original series that didn’t factor into the original movie, Millar said.
Unfortunately, it will most likely be missing something that nearly everybody loved from the first film… find out what after the cut.
EW takes first look at “Watchmen”
Entertainment Weekly talks to Zack Snyder about his adaptation of the Alan Moore-Dave Gibbons graphic novel “Watchmen.” The cover shown is from EW’s Comic-Con preview issue. (This is yet another sign, comic book fans — we won.) Writer Alan Moore, however, isn’t thrilled:
“I increasingly fear that nothing good can come of almost any adaptation, and obviously that’s sweeping. There are a couple of adaptations that are perhaps as good or better than the original work. But the vast majority of them are pointless.”
I can see Moore’s argument — “Watchmen” works on its own, it sells well years after its original release. Does it need a movie? Will having a movie version mean people don’t feel they need to read the book? It’s a situation I saw to some degree with “From Hell,” by Moore and Eddie Campbell. My comic-book store sold the collected edition well from its original release, and sales increased through all the pre-movie hype. After the film, sales fell off, and while we still sell some copies of the work, it’s not as many as it possibly should be, given the quality of the book. I haven’t looked at specific numbers on these other books, but I wonder if the same could be said for “V for Vendetta,” “Sin City” or “300.” Increasing sales up through the movie’s release, then numbers that settle below where the book was selling before the film. In most cases, I think it’s still a win for the publisher — that surge sells more books than the slow-and-steady movement would have over a certain number of years — but is that true for “Watchmen,” a book that’s been one of the top comic store sellers since the original release in graphic novel form?
– Matt Price
Dabel Brothers to adapt “Wheel of Time”
From Dabel Brothers:
DABEL BROTHERS TO ADAPT ROBERT JORDAN’S BESTSELLING
WHEEL OF TIME SERIES IN COMIC BOOK FORMAT
NEW YORK, NY – July 1, 2008 – Dabel Brothers Publishing announced today that they will adapt Robert Jordan’s bestselling Wheel of Time series, which has sold more than 14 million copies in North America alone, into comic book format. The first issue is scheduled to release in December 2008.
The Wheel of Time began in 1990 with the publication of The Eye of the World; ten more volumes have followed. The most recent four books of the series have reached #1 on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list. It is the story of a world – both our past, and our future – in which the battle between the Light and the Shadow must be fought every day; and of the people, both ordinary and extraordinary, who must fight that battle. Jordan wrote eleven volumes of the series and one prequel; he was unable to complete the twelfth and final volume before his death in 2007. That volume, A Memory of Light, will be completed by Brandon Sanderson, a writer chosen by Jordan’s widow and editor, Harriet McDougal, and published by Tor Books in 2009.
The Dabel Brothers published a comic adaptation of Jordan’s A New Spring in March 2005. In conjunction with that project, Robert Jordan provided them with extensive notes for use in further possible publications, including character descriptions and other visuals.
“I’m delighted to be working with the Dabel Brothers! Their work is splendid. Robert Jordan liked it enormously,” says Harriet McDougal.
For more information on Dabel Brothers Publishing: http://www.dabelbrothers.com.
Meet the Iraq War Hulk
Talk about a treat: Monday night, I got to see an advance screening of “The Incredible Hulk” and let me be the first to say, this movie smashed my expectations.
Much like Iron Man earlier this summer, The Incredible Hulk is a both a loving tribute to fans and an audience-friendly action flick. It’s not high art, but who cares when it’s this much fun?
I’m sure Matt will have plenty to say on the subject soon, but one thing that really stuck out to me was Bruce Banner’s vivid memory flashes of the Hulk’s activities — he has post-traumatic stress disorder.
It makes perfect sense, of course. He’s not a soldier. Bruce Banner is a scientist thrust into a very unhappy situation that makes wherever he is a war-zone.
Fans of the TV show, fans of the comics and fans of big-budget action movies will really enjoy this one. Coming from someone who liked Ang Lee’s earlier film, I can honestly say this is a more mainstream product that I predict will do big box office.
I think Matt and I might do some competing Top 5 lists on the best superhero movies of all time. Let us know what your favorites are in the comments.
– Greg Elwell
Mekhi Phifer attached to “Hunter’s Moon”
Press release from BOOM!:
BOOM! Studios and James L. White have attached Mekhi Phifer’s Facilitator Films to adapt the graphic novel HUNTER’S MOON as a starring vehicle for the actor, it was announced today by Phifer and BOOM! Co-founders Andrew Cosby and Ross Richie. Phifer and his Facilitator Films partner Ronnie Warner will produce the film along with Cosby and Richie, via their Boom Entertainment banner.
The graphic novel was created and written by James L. White, scribe for the Oscar-winning film RAY. The story follows a single father who takes his teenage son into the woods for a weekend of bonding. When the son is kidnapped, the father is forced to do the bidding of the captors in a desperate bid to save his son.
