Casting: Chow joins Dragonball, G.I. Joe adds three

Chow Yun-Fat will play Master Roshi in James Wong’s live-action adaptation of Dragonball.

He joins Justin Chatwin, James Marsters, Emmy Rossum and Jamie Chung in the 20th Century Fox production, which is shooting in Los Angeles and Mexico City.

Meanwhile, Paramount’s live-action G.I. Joe has added Rachel Nichols, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Said Taghmaoui to the cast.

Nichols (Alias) will play Scarlett, Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Lost) will play Heavy Duty, and Taghmaoui (Sleeper Cell) will play Breaker.

The three join Sienna Miller and Ray Park, who will portray Baroness and Snake Eyes.

Hellboy II ‘won’t be a golden world’

USA Today talks with Hellboy II director Guillermo del Toro, who insists that although The Golden Army deals with goblins and elves, it isn’t all sparkles and rainbows.

“This isn’t going to be Narnia-esque,” he says. “It won’t be a golden world. It will be a very tarnished, underworld magic kingdom. These beings are outcasts. I’m drawn to those sort of lived-in worlds.”

And although the movie’s opening is still almost seven months away, del Toro tells Sci Fi Wire that Hellboy II lays the groundwork for a possible third installment.

Don’t forget: The first trailer is set to debut at 3 p.m. Eastern today.

TV Guide’s Ask Ausiello feature had a couple of interesting tidbits in it yesterday, the first being a link to a Heroes Vol. 3 trailer that creator Tim Kring showed at the Jules Verne Adventure Film Festival of Los Angeles:

… and the second being an update on the rumored Veronica Mars comic, straight from Mars creator Rob Thomas:

I forwarded your Q to Rob and here’s his faintly silverish-lined response: “I had a second meeting with DC comics. I heard that the [WGA] didn’t want [TV writers penning TV-based] comic books during the strike as it would promote a network property. We’re investigating whether there are similar hurdles for a defunct TV series like Veronica Mars. Naturally, I won’t be writing it if the Guild doesn’t want me to, but we’re hoping that’s not the case.”

The Des Moines Register reports a judge has sided with a Fort Madison, Iowa, man who was fired for posting on an office bulletin board a Dilbert comic strip that poked fun at managers.

David Steward, a seven-year employee of Catfish Bend Casinos in Burlington, had posted the strip in late October after the company announced it would close and lay off 170 workers. The comic, shown above, referred to managers as “drunken lemurs.”

Soon after the strip appeared, casino management reviewed surveillance tapes, determined Steward had posted the strip, then fired him.

As if that weren’t bad enough, the casino then opposed his unemployment benefits. At a recent claims hearing, the casino’s human resources director testified that management found the comic “very offensive,” and considered Steward’s behavior “misconduct.”

Luckily, Administrative Law Judge Lynette Donner didn’t buy that, ruling Steward’s actions constituted “a good-faith error in judgment.”

Dilbert creator Scott Adams told the Register that this may be the first confirmed instance of someone being fired for posting one of the strips in the workplace.

Related: Des Moines Register editorial

Toronto’s BlogTO talks with Zombies Calling creator Faith Erin Hicks about the walking dead as metaphor, the evolution of her book, and her graphic novel gift-giving recommendations.

–Cartoon Network is showing the The Drinky Crow Show pilot again Jan. 1 at 11:15 p.m.

–Firefox News spotlights a new book on rejected New Yorker cartoons.

–Your first holiday link of the day: The Lobo ParaMilitary Christmas Special, adapted to video. (Via)

–50 nerdy things to do before you die.

–Just what the world needs right now: Tekken the movie.

–Your second holiday link of the day: What’s your Grinch name?

–Your third holiday link of the day: We The Robots on the power of Santa Claus.

March! The wonderful month of March, coming in like a lion and out like a lamb! Yes, as we all away from the Christmas cold, let’s look ahead to the month of March, free of One More Days, Messiah CompleXs and World Wars. Okay, maybe a little war in secret.

For you see, we’re getting the SECRET INVASION SAGA, proving the next big Marvel event will not be televised, but instead it will be 32 pages and FREE.

From the solicitation, it sounds like this will be the best and brightest behind-the-scenes treasure map to the storyline said to have been in the works for years. “From their first encounter with the Fantastic Four, through the epic clash of the Kree/Skrull War and the destruction of the Skrull Throneworld, all the way to the recent Annihilation War and subsequent invasion of Earth, the time line of known Skrull activity is made clear so effective battle plans can be drawn.” Wow. Even being so far away from the first real salvos to the Secret Invasion, this seems like a goldmine. Does this mean the plot’s going to be so convoluted that a free road map is required? Will this just be a repository for ads of books past and issues yet to come? Does it matter ’cause the darn thing is free?

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The big feature story in this week’s Publishers Weekly Comics Week deals with DC’s success with their new Deluxe Edition hardcover line, such as the Jeff Smith Shazam collection:

Upcoming volumes in the format include Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s Batman: The Killing Joke, re-colored by Bolland (the story will also remain in print in the trade paperback DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore); the World’s Finest miniseries by Dave Gibbons and Steve Rude; and the first volumes of Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris’s Ex Machina and Grant Morrison and Howard Porter’s JLA. According to DC’s summer 2008 catalogue, the first collection of Frank Miller and Jim Lee’s All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder will also be in the new deluxe format.

Also in this week’s newsletter: A look at how the WGA strike is affecting the comics world; a summation of ICv2′s Anime and Technology Panel; an interview with the folks behind Marvel’s new Marvel Illustrated line; and an interview with Aimee Major Steinberger about her book, Japan Ai: A Tall Girl’s Adventure in Japan.

Ah, December, the month for list-making: wish lists, gift lists, “best of” lists. And this week, the week before Christmas, brings the mother lode:

– In his “Flipped” column at Comic World News, David Welsh recruits a bevy of bloggers to spotlight some titles from this year that may not be getting the attention they deserve. The participants are Brigid Alverson, Matthew Brady, Ed Chavez, Katherine Dacey-Tsuei, and me. (“Veteran comics commentator”? I’m positively ancient!) I give a little love to two of my favorite books of 2007, Vasilis Lolos’ The Last Call and Faith Erin Hicks’ Zombies Calling.

Another installment, with different participants, will appear next week.

– Entertainment Weekly critics Ken Tucker and Jeff Jensen each pick five of their favorite comics of 2007. Their lists include Rutu Modan’s Exit Wounds, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s Y: The Last Man, and Matz and Luc Jamamon’s The Killer.

– In The Village Voice, R.C. Baker casts an eye over the year in comics, pausing briefly on works like Douglas Wolk’s Reading Comics, Gilbert Hernandez’s Palomar, Jaime Hernandez’s Locas, and others.

– Blogger Kevin Church recommends 75 comics from 2007.

– At ComixTalk, Michael Rouse-Deane recommends five webcomics in print form.

– Writing for the Edmonton Journal, Gilbert A. Bouchard recommends some recent graphic novels suitable for holiday gifts, including James Sturm’s America, E.C. Segar’s Popeye, and G. Willow Wilson and M.K. Perker’s Cairo.

– Writer Brian K. Vaughan comes in at No. 47 on USA Today blogger Whitney Matheson’s Top 100 People of 2007.

– Jesse O’Brien of BostonNOW runs down his best and worst of 2007, focusing almost exclusively on DC and Marvel (“Villain of the Year,” “Coolest Moment,” etc.).

Catching up on Tom Spurgeon’s weeklong series of interviews we first have an extensive chat with Will Pfeifer:

SPURGEON: Now that you have a little bit of space between you and the series, what do you think the basis was for so many people to have a negative reaction to Amazons Attack!?

PFEIFER: Was there a negative reaction? [laughter]

I think at its most basic, people have an idea about whatever superhero or character they love and have their ideal version of that character somewhere in their head. When you go against that version, some people are going to react very strongly. Amazons Attack! is right there in the title. They kill that guy and his kid on the very first page. People were really upset about that. But it was supposed to be shocking. It was supposed to be upsetting. It wasn’t supposed to be a triumphant moment for the Amazons. People who have been reading Wonder Woman for however long they’ve been reading Wonder Woman — and some of them have been reading for a long time — they didn’t like the fact that the Amazons were attacking and were evil. They also didn’t like the fact that in Amazons Attack! that there wasn’t enough Wonder Woman, and that Wonder Woman wasn’t driving the plot along. The reason for that is that there’s another book called Wonder Woman [Spurgeon laughs] where all that was happening.

Then there’s this chat with Paris artist Simon Gane:

SPURGEON: I hope you don’t mind me asking, but how much of your professional life is devoted to comics? Do you have other professional obligations? I’m just trying to get a sense of what you do.

GANE: I do take on some graphic design and illustration work but thankfully 90 percent of my professional life is currently devoted to comics, although that’s only since penciling a Vertigo title. Previous to that I was a freelance illustrator, designer and laborer and it was during that time I drew Paris. It was always the last thing I should have been doing because I had bills to pay, of course, but I loved drawing it too much. I guess comics are a compulsion rather than a career.

Finally, we have an interview with Jason Thompson, author of the excellent Manga: The Complete Guide:

SPURGEON: How did you approach the general section and what made you decide on that length as opposed to dropping it altogether or running something 10 times as long?

THOMPSON: The length of the reviews was my preference based on reviewing manga for Animerica and PULP. My first editor did ask me to trim the text, so I went through it and cut some sentences on the first proof. At one point I was worried that the articles might get dropped for space reasons, or that some of the more obscure manga (the old Antarctic and Studio Ironcat stuff, the Japanese bilingual editions) might get dropped, so I made sure to do all those reviews first so there was no chance they’d get cut. But in the end none of the reviews or articles were removed, and Dallas was happy with the length, so it all worked out. The only section that got trimmed down from my original plans was the artist index — I wanted to have bios of many more artists.

New York magazine’s Vulture blog has a 12-page excerpt from James Stokoe’s Wonton Soup, available now from Oni Press.

Jeff Trexler has updates on the Siegel family lawsuits against Warner Bros. and DC Comics over the rights to Superman and Superboy: The Superman trial is set to begin on May 13, and the Superboy trial after that.

Those trial dates are preceded by a settlement conference deadline and court-ordered mediation — if the parties settle, of course, the trials are off — jury selection, motion hearings and the like.

For background on the lawsuits, read Newsarama’s series of articles, and our own analysis, by Tom Bondurant.

Trexler also sifts through some of the available discovery papers and finds information related to the finances of the Superman franchise. It’s early, and those documents number more than 200 pages. However, I’ll definitely be giving them a closer look later today.

(Via The Legion Ominicon)

It’s apparently a big day for movie stills: Newsarama has four new images from Justice League: The New Frontier: The Flash, Wonder Woman, Superman and Martian Manhunter.

The direct-to-DVD animated feature will be released on Feb. 26.

The Daily Cross Hatch has part one of an interview up with Alex Robinson, creator of Box Office Poison, Lower Regions and the upcoming Too Cool to Be Forgotten:

The fascination with superhero comics seems to be something of a reoccurring theme with independent cartoonists. Everyone grew up reading Kirby, Ditko, et. al. Does the idea of doing a superhero book, at this point in the game appeal to you?

It does in the sense that some people from Marvel and DC have been saying, “hey, you should pitch us some stories.” When Box Office Poison first came out and there was some buzz around, they asked me to pitch them so stories, but I just couldn’t think of any that interested me. I like them in theory, but all of the stories that I came up with were just me regurgitating stories that John Byrne and Chris Claremont came up with, 25 years ago. I guess with fantasy comics, because I don’t know too many of them, it’s kind of a wider field. It’s kind of a cliché, but there’s more fresh material for more in this well-covered ground.

Although Robinson doesn’t talk about Too Cool to Be Forgotten in this part of the interview (I assume that’ll come up in part two), it did give me the opportunity to use the really cool Matt Kindt-designed cover that Robinson shared on his LiveJournal last month.

A group of filmmakers are in the midst of putting together a documentary on famed Calvin and Hobbes cartoonist Bill Watterson. Watterson himself won’t appear in the film, though cartoonists like Keith Knight have been interviewed (scroll down). According to the film’s Web site, they’re looking for people to help participate:

This film is not simply a film about Bill Watterson or Calvin & Hobbes.  What we really hope to capture is the amazing influence that Mr. Watterson’s comic has had on people across the globe.  When the strip was retired on December 31st, 1995, it was published in over 2400 papers worldwide.  Truly, an enormous number of people were inspired by Mr. Watterson’s magical world.

If you are one of those people, we’d like to hear from you.  There are several ways in which you will have a chance to participate, or even be in, this film.  Over the coming months we will post information here on how you can submit artwork that was inspired by Calvin & Hobbes, request to be interviewed for the film, create and submit a video, or become a part of this project in other ways.

Hat tip: Mike Lynch

Warren Ellis points out that Avatar has posted a preview of his next ongoing, Gravel, over on their website. The comic features combat magician Sgt. Major William Gravel, who previously appeared in the Strange Kiss/Kisses/Killings series.

Gizmodo has a fun fake news story about Stormtroopers arresting Santa Claus.

The director of such films as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and that awesome White Stripes video with the Legos will adapt Gabrielle Bell’s short story Cecil and Jordan in New York for the upcoming anthology film Tokyo:

The film tells three separate stories of the Japanese capital, one by Leos Carax, one by Bong Joon-Ho, and one by Gondry. Gondry’s segment is titled Interior Design. Written by Gondry and comic author Gabrielle Bell, Design is based on Bell’s comic book “Cecil and Jordan in New York” from “Kramer’s Ergot #5”. The story follows a girl [Ayako Fujitani] who tries to move into Tokyo with her boyfriend. Unable to find an apartment or a job, she eventually turns into a chair. Sounds like something Gondry would make.

Note that Bell co-wrote the screenplay with Gondry. That’s pretty awesome.

Why didn’t anyone tell me that Funky Winkerbean had added a Marvel Comics artist to its strip? OK, actually they did (Thanks, Tim). The long-running comic strip just wrapped up a story about Pete, who returned to town for a comic convention. Apparently he’s a big shot writer for Marvel Comics now, working on something called “Dream Warrior.”

As you may remember, the strip jumped ahead ten years back in October, and Tom Batiuk has been revealing what happened to the cast over those ten years. If you’d like to see the entire comic convention story, the blog Stuck Funky follows Funky daily, providing the day’s strip with commentary. Start here and then move forward in time.

IGN.com has two new images from Hellboy II: The Golden Army, one of which includes the familiar containment suit-clad figure of everyone’s favorite disembodied psychic, Johann Kraus.

The website also promises the movie’s first trailer, set to debut there at 3 p.m. Thursday.

Hellboy II opens in theaters on July 11.

– Cancer Vixen creator Marisa Acocella Marchetto is blogging about cancer for healthcentral.com. (Hat tip)

– The New York Times gives some love to New York’s The Comic Book Club. Congrats on your one-year anniversary, guys!

– Writer Brian Wood (DMZ, Northlanders) has moved his forum from Ning to a new location. Adjust your bookmarks!

– Lynda Barry has a MySpace page dedicated to her cartooning workshop.

– Douglas Wolk has listed his favorite comics of the year.

– Harvey Pekar and Nick Bertozzi did a comic on Ohio and the upcoming presidential election.

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