Special from Lan Pitts of the Best Shots Team

A while back, TV Guide confirmed the appearance of everyone’s favorite leggy magician, Zatanna! Well today, the first photo of her in her comic book attire was released and boy is it great. True, it is only the top half of her costume, but in this columnist’s opinion, so far so good. With a portrayal by Serinda Swan (who has an almost magician-like stage name herself), it will mark the first time Zatanna has been seen in live-action.

She has made other notable appearances in Batman: The Animated Series (though she was not a sorceress, but an actual stage illusionist), and of course in Justice League Unlimited, where they went back to her more mystic roots.

I, for one, am an absolute Zatanna nut and my friends know it. If my birthday is coming up, or Christmas, any Zatanna merchandise always works. My enthusiasm for this episode is undescribable and personally, I’m glad they are doing an episode with her with actual magical powers and not just some stage performer. The past 2 seasons have been complete fan fare and I couldn’t be happier. “Hex” airs on March 26th and I am ready to be enchanted.

TV Guide reports that Universal is looking at making a Battlestar Galactica movie that has nothing to do with the present SciFi show. In fact, it appears that Glen A. Larson will be coming back to do it with new (again) versions of Adama, Baltar, and Starbuck.

Granted, people were pessimistic at the first BSG redo. But this? Thoughts, readers.

If you like what’s you’ve read so far totally check out more super cute comics at:www.sosuperduper.com!

Fangoria Graphix, the comics wing of the horror company, has just released a new trailer for their upcoming series Death Walks The Streets.

The horror/crime series follows the lives of Michael Labou, Danielle Dante, and Malcolm McDermot — by day, they’re members of the IBVM Union Local 666. By night, they’re a crew for “The Organization,” a crime syndicate terrorizing the city of New Marshall. But with vampires, werewolves, and zombies in town, the Organization isn’t the only scary group in town…

Both issue #0 and #1 of the series, written by James Zahn and Ben Brezinski and pencilled by Guilherme Balbi, is available to order on MerchDirect. The series is also in development for a full-length feature film.

As the upcoming Watchmen movie (March 6th) begins its expected rollout of major cover stories, one you won’t readily find at your local supermarket checkout line is with Malin Akerman (Silk Spectre) on the cover of Inked magazine. A relatively new publication that’s become a favorite of mine (I’m so biased), thanks to it’s ability to strike the right blend of tattoo art, pop culture and fashion, Akerman is the latest cover girl. For those not familiar with the monthly magazine (found mostly at specialty shops), they run several interviews per issue with guys and gals of the inked persuasion, and they typical go with a celebrity to grace the cover.
In stores now as well as online, most of the Akerman interview discusses her own personal tattoo history, and the pros and cons of getting work on herself in the particular profession she’s in, but of course the discussion eventually veers toward her current role in 2009′s most high-profile comic book-based film…

You spent a large part of last year making, arguably, one of the most anticipated movies of 2009, Watchmen. How would you describe this movie to the uninitiated? Yeah, that’s a difficult task. It’s so layered and complex. So far I’ve failed at trying to describe it. Every time I say something some fan starts blogging, “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about!” It’s not your typical superhero film. What would it be like if real people, real vigilantes that we call superheroes, lived among us and were just regular people? Watchmen is one of the best novels I’ve ever read. It’s so smart and it’s one of those things you can pick up and read over and over again and always get something new from it. It’s a bit of a thriller and a love story and a conspiracy theory—there’s a little bit for everyone.

Have you had any physical encounters with overzealous fanboys? Not yet. They kept us at a distance from all of them at Comic-Con. You know, I have a friend who is a big comic book geek and he freaked out! All of a sudden, as soon as I got Watchmen, he became a fan instead of a friend. I was like, “It’s still me!” [Laughs.] “I’m not Silk Spectre for real.” It was just amazing to see him get so excited.

Speaking of which, has your husband demanded you bring the latex costume home? I saw in his eyes how much he loved it. He came to the set and I came out in my costume and his eyes popped open—I’ve never seen them as wide as that before. But before he opened his mouth I said, “Listen, it’s never coming home. It won’t be in the bedroom, so just forget about it.”

You know, Jude Law has a Watchmen tattoo—apparently he’s a huge fan. Couldn’t that have scored him a small role? He does? Really?

Yeah, it’s the character Rorschach. Well, then no. If it’s not Silk Spectre, screw it. He doesn’t deserve a scene!

Adam Rogers from Wired has certainly been busy lately. He managed to sit down with Watchmen creators Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, to chat with them about the upcoming movie.

Starting with Gibbons, who takes the “glass is half full” approach, the artist discusses just how meticulous the art for Watchmen really was, as well as touching upon other Alan Moore collaborations. A highlight of the interview, which you can read in its entirety at the previous link:

The thing with Watchmen was that we were always revisiting the same locales, and I was going to have to draw them from lots of different angles under lots of different lighting conditions, different times of day, with different stuff going on. So, particularly with the intersection, which was one of the major repeating locations, I wanted to know and have clear in my head exactly what it was like. Now, before I started in comics I used to be a building surveyor. So, I’ve always thought in terms of feet and inches and plans and elevations. So, it was no great difficulty for me to kind of draw some, if not actually scale drawings, then drawings that had measurements marked on them. And I found that once I’d done that fairly comprehensively, I really didn’t have to refer to the drawings because, you know, just by processing it I’d actually internalized it.

And another amusing look into Hollywood from Mr. Gibbons:

A long, long time ago, when the world was young, Alan and I had a meeting with Joel Silver, who owned the rights at one point. He was very keen that Arnold Schwarzenegger should be Dr. Manhattan. He was also very keen that Arnold Schwarzenegger should be Sgt. Rock, which is even more of a stretch.

Meanwhile, Moore (perhaps not surprisingly), takes the “DC used my glass as a toilet” approach, reiterating a scathing critique of American comics, which you can read here:

I wonder—perhaps this is being too simplistic, I don’t know, but I wonder if the root of the emergence of the superhero in American culture might have something to do with a kind of an ingrained American reluctance to engage in confrontation without massive tactical superiority.

Is Superman the equivalent of carpet bombing? I personally see them as the great equalizer, being unconventional tactics that are the only means of combatting unequal numbers and strength — see Bruce Wayne v. Criminal Underworld. (But that’s my two cents — debate away!) Another highlight of the article, though, when discussing Moore’s later work at DC:

When I returned to work for—well, I didn’t return. I was kind of press-ganged. I had DC buying the company I had just signed contracts with, which is flattering in one way and very creepy in another. It’s like being stalked by a very rich demented girlfriend who can just buy your entire street in order to be close to you.

This past weekend I sat down and watched Mallrats, Kevin Smith’s much-maligned yet highly entertaining follow-up to his debut film, Clerks. While most people wouldn’t think of Mallrats as being thought-provoking, since it’s pretty lowbrow and crude, a few random ideas did pop into my head while I was watching:

*I could stare at Joey Lauren Adams all day long. I’ve always been surprised that she wasn’t a bigger star. She certainly has the talent. As her Wikipedia profile suggests, it may just be a case of her pixie-ish voice being too obnoxious for people. Personally, I think her voice is part of her charm.

*The acting is pretty rough. Jeremy London looks perpetually lost; Shannen Doherty seems as if she’d rather be anywhere else but on the set; Jason Lee yells all of his punchlines at the top of his lungs, which gets to be a little annoying; and Jason Mewes is Jason Mewes.

*Stan Lee is awesome, though. If the whole comic book thing doesn’t work out for him, maybe he can get his own sitcom. Mark Millar would be great as his wacky next door neighbor.

*Speaking of Stan the Man, did anyone else notice that Brodie accidentally stinkpalmed Lee when they met?

*Kevin Smith’s movies are much better when he works on a smaller scale. Clerks, Clerks II, and Chasing Amy are relatively quiet compared to the more frenetic Dogma, Mallrats, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. It’s kind of weird, but his best movies are the ones with very little plot. They tend to hide his limitations as a director and accentuate his talent as a writer. Still, I’ve always liked all of his movies. Even Jersey Girl.

Bavaria Pictures will be creating a live-action film adaptation of the German novel “Death of a Superhero,” Variety reports.

The film deals with a teenage comic artist suffering from leukemia, as he retreats into the heroics of his creation, Miracle Man, as he fights his nemesis the Globe.

Freddie Highmore from Burton’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and German actress Jessica Schwarz are slated to star. The picture is currently budgeted between $7-10 million.

Holding out for a HERO? Well, look no further.

The HERO Initiative, which helps creators in need, will be hitting the Orlando MegaCon this weekend! Dan Jurgens (Booster Gold) and George Perez (Crisis on Infinite Earths) will be at the organization’s booth for signing.

“For far too long, we, as an industry, failed to come together as a group to help those who needed it. The Hero Initiative has changed all that and it really is an honor to chip in and offer assistance to our friends and colleagues who have shared so much of their talent and creative energy over the years,” said Jurgens in a press release.

To make it even better? The Initiative will be auctioning off lunches with Jurgens, Perez, Darwyn Cooke (New Frontier), and DC mastermind Dan DiDio. Want to know more? Here’s the HERO schedule below!

FRIDAY, February 27, 2009 (Show hours: 12 – 7 p.m.)
12:30 – 2 p.m. Dan Jurgens
2:30 – 3:15 p.m. “Hulk 100 Project” signing: Jim Cheung, Mike Perkins, Andy Smith
3:30 – 4:30 p.m. Ron Marz
4:30 – 6:30 p.m. Dan Jurgens
5:30 – 7 p.m. George Pérez

SATURDAY, February 28, 2009 (Show hours: 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.)
10:15 – 11:30 a.m. Dan Jurgens
12:30 – 2:30 p.m. Nelson DeCastro
2:30 – 4:30 p.m. Dan Jurgens and George Pérez

SUNDAY, March 1, 2009 (Show hours 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.)
10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. George Pérez
11 a.m. – 12 p.m. Steve McNiven
2:30 – 3:30 p.m. George Pérez

Now that Heath Ledger’s posthumous award has shown once and for all that superhero movies are as worthy as any other films of the best talent out there, it seems like an even better time to discuss casting for Bat-sequels.

MTV Splash Page has an interview with Greg Rucka saying he’d love to see Catwoman in the next Nolan Bat-movie, and I couldn’t agree more. As Rucka said, with the death of Rachel Dawes, the time is ripe to introduce a new love interest, and the traumatized Bruce Wayne we saw at the end of The Dark Knight would be ripe for an unhealthy, dark, messy relationship with a Nolanized Selina Kyle.

Nothing campy about Catwoman in Nolan’s Gotham City. She’d have to be sexy, of course, but also capable of being conflicted, complicated–as much so as Bruce/Batman himself. I love the idea floated of Rachel Weisz (also, the picture!). She did the genre in Constantine (eminently watchable if you allow yourself to forget that Keanu Reeves is supposed to be playing, well, John Constantine), and she’s pretty but not in a conventional way (not unlike Maggie Gyllenhaal, who fit so well into the Dark Knight cast).

At a party at NYCC, I got into a discussion with the lovely Molly Crabapple about what we’d like to see in another Batman film, and we both agreed that it was time to up the female presence. To make the film pass the Bechdel test, what if Nolan added Harley Quinn? The Joker’s gone–they’re obviously not going to replace Heath Ledger this soon. So what about a psychotic Harley out for revenge? Instead of the girlfriend in the background, she’s in the foreground, out for blood.

I love the Joker archetype and I would love to see a woman playing that type of character. Molly and I quickly tossed out a few rules for Harley: we want her to not be uber-pretty, and even better if she’s a bit older. We want her dangerous, like the Joker but both more seductive and more unhinged, Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted ramped up to 11. But who could play the role? Angelina, sure, but she’d have the pretty-pretty thing going.

We didn’t reach any conclusions that night, but it hit me the next day:

Courtney Love.

Discuss.

F. Scott Fitzgerald would have been pleasantly surprised to find his short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, finally becoming a movie but could not have anticipated something like a graphic novel as well. Both the movie and the comic are fine works in their own rights. However, both must work in the tricky world of adaptation which sets up some formidable challenges since its always asking a lot to compete with your mind’s eye reading the original.

Amid all the buzz surrounding the Brad Pitt flick, I first turned to the graphic novel adapted by Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir and illustrated by Kevin Cornell. Its ambitions are more limited than the movie as, chapter per chapter, it remains faithful to the original. It reminded me of a theater group putting on a play version of a favorite classic book. Once you get past the novelty of the characters coming to life off the page, it all depends on the actors. 

Much like a theatrical adaptation, you get to enjoy from this graphic novel the novelty of the characters and action from the original inhabiting a different space. Then you have to ask yourself how good is it, would it be better if it were just a reading?  Had this graphic novel taken on the goal of pushing the comics medium, then a bolder statement would have been made. Instead you get a mellow and charming presentation which is fine but holds back too much. It all depends on the art in this case and Kevin Cornell provides a wonderful characterization of Benjamin Button starting with our first look at a Father Time figure in a baby crib.

Now, as for the movie, the sky is the limit in the hands of director David Fincher and his creative team. Not since Robert Redford in The Great Gatsby in 1974 has there been a major motion picture of such caliber based on a work by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It’s hard to resist comparing the two movies considering how much Benjamin Button is transformed into a tragic hero, dark and enigmatic, not unlike Jay Gatsby. In the original short story, Benjamin Button follows a more linear path with only a few key adventures befitting a tall tale. In the movie, everything is nuanced down to the slightly more plausible version of Benjamin Button’s fantastical birth and physical development.

It is Benjamin Button’s spiritual development that is carried out in the grand old Hollywood style, enhanced by digital wizardry, and so it all depends on that style to make this movie work. Much like Robert Redford in The Great Gatsby, Brad Pitt knows how to command the screen in quiet moments with himself. He’s a natural leading man who doesn’t take himself seriously and we can relate to him with ease. He’s perfect to play the role of a man we want to see “reinventing” himself, a concept at the core of The Great Gatsby and which continues to influence us.

Finally, I looked up the original story. I considered how old it is and yet how full of life it is too. The movie version begins the story in 1900 and has Benjamin live well into the ’80s while the original story begins in 1860 with the Civil War which would have resonated with a reader of the time. And then I thought about how much fun it is to read it and how timely the theme remains concerning an individual’s progress in relation to society’s demands for conformity. The theme of reinventing oneself is there too but not as fully developed as The Great Gatsby and hardly full of the drama of a grand old Hollywood movie.

In the original, as well as in the movie, Benjamin Button manages to live up to the standards placed by society and himself. This reminds me of another movie about an enigmatic character who lives out the American dream: Forrest Gump. Unlike The Great Gatsby and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, it won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Director. It too is an adaptation from a book but it somehow found a way to become a phenomena. The right movie at the right time much like Slumdog Millionaire. But this is really no slight against Benjamin Button considering that Eric Roth wrote the screenplay for both Forrest Gump and, with Robin Swicord, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I think F. Scott Fitzgerald would have been pleased.

Guess how many times Obama appears?: There’s certainly a lot to quibble with in this Washington Post list of The Top 10 Black Superheroes of All-Time, from some of the inclusion to some of the phrasing, but it’s always interesting to see this sort of thing from a mainstream media outlet. Unfortunately, only three of the ten currently star in a their own ongoing series, although Luke Cage, John Stewart and Black Lightning are certainly getting a lot more panel time now then they were, say, five to ten years ago.

Does DC need its own Incredible Hercules or Captain Britain?: As a fan of both of those Marvel series, I say yes. The always interesting Johnny Bacardi recently had an interesting post in which he took a closer look at his pull-list and was quite surprised to see how much of it Marvel makes up these days in relation to how much DC does. In the process, he raises the issue of the tone of the DCU vs. the Marvel Universe, and how even though they share a lot of doom and gloom and general negative direction, the latter seems to make more room for humor. DC does try superhero humor books here and there, of course, although mostly in out-of-continuity stuff, but I can’t think of anything that approaches Incredible Herc or Captain Britain in terms of being consistently funny and still part of the shared universe. Secret Six and Booster Gold probably come closest, but the former’s sense of humor is itself very dark, and the latter is somewhat removed from the DCU by it’s “greatest hero the world will never know” time travel premise. Anyway, Bacardi’s post is well worth a look…and a think.

I give up, what if?: I’ve been greatly enjoying Tim O’Neil’s series of posts on the nature of alternate realities and story-scapes among the two big superhero comics publishers, and the way each company’s approach differs. It starts here. And continues here, digresses somewhat here, then moves on here. Crises on multiple and infinite Earths, What If…?, Roy Thomas, Wonder Girl, Hawkman, Heroes Reborn, demon-fighting angel-powered Punisher, Ultimate Spider-Man, the Mephisto reboot, the various meanings of continuity and the difference between it and consistency and the welcome introduction of the word “milieu” into the discussion are all covered. I love stuff like this.

Are you there, Joe Quesada? It’s me, Caleb: If so, man, you have to give Cathy Leamy a big sack of coins with a dollar sign painted on the front  and then run this as a two-page splash—or a five-page fold-out—in the middle of an issue of Amazing Spider-Man. And while I’m telling you what you should do, why don’t you give Kevin Church a call, a job and some money too, huh?

This is how tall Wolverine should be in the movies if they wanted to stay true to the comics, right?: I vote Cruz Beckham for the next Wolverine movie.

BOOM! Studios has unleashed a double-barreled salvo of Mark Waid-related media, sending us not only a podcast with the EiC himself, but also giving us a sneak trailer for Waid’s new series Irredeemable.

In the first “15 Minutes with Waid,” Mark will discuss his relaunched series Potter’s Field. The series will return in March, according to the writer. He also discusses the young studio’s trials and tribulations as a new comics publisher.

Meanwhile, Irredeemable promises to be a new, complex twist on typical superhero adventures. “In superhero comics, pretty much everyone who’s called upon to put on a cape is, at heart, emotionally equipped for the job. I reject that premise,” said Waid in a press release. “IRREDEEMABLE is, in a way, my third and most complex chapter on the cost of superheroics – a pulp adventure tale of horror exploring how the lessons we learn about right and wrong as children can become warped and twisted when challenged by the realities of the adult world.”

You can check out the trailer by clicking below, or by checking out the first seven pages linked here!

(more…)

By Troy Hickman

Since I started this column, I’ve heard from a number of folks who want me to write something about how to break into the comics business. I suppose that would be a natural, given that (A) I’m a teacher and tend to be didactic, and (B) I’m still relatively new to this, so I’m fairly fresh from the womb (and the metaphorical doctor probably slapped my backside AFTER he read some of my comics).

Perhaps the best way to go about it, though, would be to start with what you SHOULD NOT do if you’re hoping to get into the comics business. Since a lot of folks go the route of trying to sell themselves at conventions, that’s a good place to start. A few thoughts:

(1) DON’T TALK TO ME! Er, wait, that didn’t come out right. Yes, if you see me at a con, please, please come over and talk to me. Talk about my comics, talk about comics in general, talk about the craft of writing (I’m always glad to work with you to improve your stuff)…heck, talk to me about your love for Betty White if you’d like. But if you’re hoping to break into this business, I’m really not your best bet. You want to approach an editor, as they have the power to give you work. The BEST I can do is just maybe put you in contact with someone else, but even then your chances are not great, as I’ve yet to really master the fine art of networking myself. No, you need to seek out an editor, and they’re easy to spot; they’re the ones holding a red pen and wearing a scowl that makes Vladimir Kozlov look like Mary Tyler Moore.

(2) FOR THE LOVE OF ZOD, PULL DOWN YOUR SHIRT! Look, I’m not unsympathetic, as I’ve got a gut that makes me look like I’m just about to give birth to octuplets. But I’m careful not to ADVERTISE it. The simple fact is that it’s tough for folks to pay attention to your pitch when they’re distracted by not only by the image of Judge Death on your t-shirt, but also by the dessert plate-sized belly button a few inches below it. Unlike some current comic scribes, I am absolutely not Mr. GQ, but even I know that you want to make a good first impression, and you don’t do that by extending your prodigious abdomen eye level to a sitting editor.

(3) DON’T USE THIS PITCH! Even though I can’t be much help to you, I still have tons of folks approach me with ideas at conventions and shop appearances (I think it’s my friendly face, like a big happy moon that says “talk to me, babycakes!”). Without fear of contradiction, I can tell you that probably 60% of the pitches I’ve heard are EXACTLY, word for word, like the following:

“So I wanna do this comic, right, and it’s about this really bad ass chick, and her name is Demonica Abyss, and she used to be a prostitute on Earth, see, but then she was murdered by a vampire cult, and she went to Hell, but when she got to Hell, Satan…well, maybe Satan, maybe Beelzebub…or Mephi—Mestiph—well, you know what I’m saying…anyway, he tells her that he wants her to go back to Earth and claim souls for him, and he gives her this totally awesome sword, the Soulstealer, right, and it can cut through anything, and she’s got these really kick-ass wings, like dragon wings or somethin’, and she’s like really hot, kind of like Hayden Panattiere but with some Jessica Biel thrown in, and she comes back to Earth and gets a job with a government agency so that she can find out where evil stuff is happenin, right, but what she doesn’t know is that the head of the agency, I don’t know what it’s called yet, I’m still workin’ on that, but she doesn’t know that the head of the agency is actually Mordecai, the leader of the vampire cult that killed her, and it’d be so cool and totally change the industry, dude.”

The last part is always, ALWAYS “it’ll totally change the industry, dude.”

(4) BE PREPARED! Don’t just have a verbal pitch memorized. Make sure you have it in a coherent written form to leave with the editor if need be, and it wouldn’t hurt to have some scripting samples available. If you’re like me (and really, what are the odds?), then the strength of your work is not so much in the concept, or even in the plot synopsis, but in the SCRIPTING. I have no doubt that if I had approached some editors with nothing but my concepts, they would’ve been less than enthusiastic. “So…it’s a comic about superheroes…eating donuts and talking? Uh…OK. What else you got? She’s…what? She puts on a hooded sweatshirt and walks around her neighborhood…um…do you have a day job?”

In my case, one thing I had going for me is that I had self-published my own stuff. Yes, it was in photocopied mini-comics form, and yes, that will unfortunately get you some dirty looks at convention tables from less enlightened passers-by, but it also enables you to have something in COMIC FORM that an editor can easily review. I’ve been an editor myself, and I cannot overstate the goodwill factor you will gain from making an editor’s job as easy as possible.

(5) KNOW YOUR PUBLISHERS! Generally speaking, you wouldn’t approach the editors at Archie Comics with the same pitch you would the folks at Vertigo (though I’d like to be there if you do). Ask yourself what this company publishes, and if it’s a place where you might find work. Yes, there are certainly exceptions (Twilight Guardian, for instance, is a very different comic than Witchblade, though you should be buying both!), but as a rule of thumb, it may not be a worthwhile idea to submit your idea for “Cowgirl Strippers on Meth” to Marvel or DC (though feel free to email me a copy at CrullersComic@aol.com).

Those are just a few caveats. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Loose lips sink ships!

Troy Hickman writes comic books, good lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise. Check out his Twilight Guardian mini-series later this year, and in the meantime, the Eisner-nominated Common Grounds trade paperback is available at fine comic shops and bookstores everywhere…except Venezuela, by order of Hugo Chavez, the @#$%.

The Clown Prince of Crime has made his biggest heist yet — Oscar gold.

At tonight’s Academy Awards, Heath Ledger received the second posthumous Oscar win for acting in history for his portrayal of the Joker. Winning Best Supporting Actor has been an event that comic fans across the globe have been anticipating — and boy, does it feel good.

His mother, father, and sister accepted the award in his stead. Presenter Kevin Kline described the late Ledger: “Menacing, mercurial, droll, and diabolical, Heath Ledger as the Joker in the Dark Knight kept us all on edge to see what act of appalling mischief he might commit next… Heath Ledger has left an original and enduring legacy.”

“First of all I have to say this is ever so humbling being amongst such wonderful people and such a wonderful industry,” his father said. “This award tonight would have humbly validated Heath’s quiet determination to be accepted by you all here, his peers in an industry he so loved.”

Why so serious? If you’re living under a rock, this is the hardest a comic book movie has ever hit — and this is for a billion dollar film. For this amazing performance, Ledger has also won awards including a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Congratulations, Heath. You earned it.

Coming in March from IDW, writer J.M. DeMatteis and artist Mike Cavallaro are teaming up to tell the story of The Life and Times of Savior 28. It’s a tale that’s been percolating in the back of DeMatteis’ head for nearly a quarter of a century. The writer told Comic Related at the New York Comic Con early this month that he has been wanting to tell this story since he was writing Captain America at Marvel in the early ’80s. But Mike Cavallaro, whose dynamic art completes the book and sets a tone for the fall of America’s most beloved superhero (in this particular universe, anyway), hasn’t even been in the business that long. Coming a little late to the party, exactly how do you approach creating a look and feel for an ambitious, clever script that’s completed before you ever put pencil to page? Read on…

Blog@Newsarama: How did you come to be chosen as the artist for this project? Did you help JM develop it?

Mike Cavallaro: I’ll answer that in reverse order. J.M. had the entire concept down from the get-go. It’s been his task to hammer out these scripts all on his own. All I bring to the table are the visual interpretations of the characters and situations. He gives me pretty free reign in this area. I think I did my first sketch of 28, and J.M. said, “I love it!” I felt obliged to do more sketches and he was like, “No, I love the first one! Go with it!” Ha ha. Pretty easy to work with.

I’ve been a fan of J.M.’s for many, many years since reading Moonshadow as it was being serialized in the 80′s. A few yeas ago, a mutual friend put us in touch with each other and we struck up a correspondence. I had become part of the webcomics collective ACT-I-VATE, and had just completed my first story, Parade (With Fireworks), which has since been nominated for an Eisner Award and released as a trade paperback from Shadowline/Image Comics. I sent J.M. a preview of my new AIV comic, Loviathan, and he felt the visual tone was what he’d been looking for on Savior 28. He sent me the synopsis, I signed on, and we had IDW verbally onboard by the end of the day.

BLOG@: Do you approach the old-school, superhero Savior 28 pages differently than the pages that were either happening later in his career, or after his death?

MC: That’s a cool question. This past year I was working on a graphic novel. The main character was described as being “not attractive” in the script. I was like, “What does that mean? I want to like the character I’m about to draw for the next 160 pages. What’s not attractive?” My studio mate Dean Haspiel advised, “Sometimes attractive isn’t how someone looks, it’s how they carry themselves — an attitude.” That set a light bulb off for me that resolved the problem for that project, and I carried this thinking over to Savior 28.

The page mechanics are the same between the “old-school, superhero” pages and all the others. The difference happens in 28′s bearing, attitude and acting. There’s definitely something slightly more world-weary and haggard about 28 in some of the scenes as opposed to what I’ll call the “dynamic innocence” of his hero shots.

BLOG@: How do you go about trying to create a look for a superhero that evokes a certain era and feeling, without being derivative of any particular character?

MC: J.M. started me out with visual cues so I could understand what he was thinking for some of the characters, usually by saying, “Think this actor or that actor”. So in the first place, refer to real life. I thought that was a good way of approaching it, so I carried that through with my own research. In a lot of cases, there are actors who really seem to embody their era: James Cagney is a good example. Artists are similar in that way. Kirby and Romita are very ‘60′s/‘70′s to me. Their art evokes that period. If you want to evoke a particular era, marry the way an iconic artist from that time would draw an iconic actor of that time, filtered through your own sensibilities, and you’ve gone a long way in concocting something new that feels very familiar.

BLOG@: Did you intentionally evoke the look of Nomad when depicting the aged Savior 28?

MC: No. To tell you the truth, I never read an issue of Captain America before signing on to this project, and had never heard of Nomad until relatively recently. There’s no purposeful narrative attempt to relate the two characters on my part. I don’t think it’s accurate to call him “the aged Savior 28″, because he doesn’t age. Again, he’s more world-weary and emotionally distressed, and it goes back to what Dean was saying about how a character carries themselves. I gave him stubble, mussed up his grown-out hair, made him forget to put his costume’s gloves or cape on at times, all in an effort to tarnish his outward appearance to show that his attention was focusing inward.

BLOG@: Given that JM has a history with Captain America, and that there are some obvious similarities between the characters, how hard was it to distance the assassination sequence in the first issue from the one that took place on the courtroom steps back in Captain America #25?

MC: AAARRRGGHHH! SPOILERS!!!! CAP’S DEAD??????NOOOOOOO!!!!

No, seriously … there was just no problem with that at all. I’m finally reading Brubaker’s Captain America run now in trade paperback, and I just bought the first Civil War volume yesterday. I’m not up to the part where Cap buys it. I know it happened, obviously, but it wasn’t a book I was reading and was sort of on the periphery of things for me. I just did my best to interpret J.M.’s fantastic script, and never thought about the fact that other superheroes have “died” previously in other comics. Maybe having not read Captain America #25 made it easier on me, in fact, because I didn’t have that floating around in my subconscious. But I didn’t think about it. I was just focused on doing a good page of comics, to the best of my ability.

BLOG@: How fun was it to draw that strange, hilarious splash panel on page 15 (the one with the alien, Uncle Sam and J. Edgar Hoover in a fez)?

MC: Man, you nailed it. I laughed out loud the first time I read that in the script, then read the page out to my studio mates. Hilarious. One of my favorite moments in the first issue, and colorist Andy Covalt deserves a lot of credit for his spot-on mood setting. The fez became an in-joke for a couple days, and I think we discussed releasing an S28 incentive fez. Ha!

BLOG@: I tell you what—I’d buy one of those!…Thank you, so very much, for respecting your audience enough to draw 9/11 instead of superimposing a digitally-altered version of some crappy AP photo; I’ve seen far too many of those in the last eight years.

MC: Wow, well, thank you. I live in NYC, and love it dearly. Everyone who was here that day has a 9/11 story. I stood in the street and watched the second tower fall with my own eyes. It was a horrible, horrible day, with many more to follow. Since The Life and Times of Savior 28 shines a light specifically on violence in popular culture, it was imperative to include this pivotal moment from our own lives.

In terms of comic-making in general, I normally don’t dig it when you see photos slammed up against drawings. I just don’t think it works. Or at least, it works very rarely, and I certainly don’t think it would mesh with what I’m doing on S28. I never even thought about using a photo there. Never crossed my mind.

Many years ago, I read an interview with guitarist Angus Young from AC/DC. He said he never does anything in the studio that he can’t actually play live on stage. That made a real impression on me. I liked the honesty of that aesthetic. I keep my comics pretty lo-fi in many ways. I don’t do a lot of trickery. I like drawings, I like the humanity of imperfections, I’m not concerned with realism. I guess that’s why I like Kirby so much. It’s more about the vibe than the accuracy.

I hesitate to single out a personal favorite among the works of James Kochalka, on account of the size of the prolific cartoonist’s output and the fact that my favorite changes all the time, but, at this precise moment in time, it’s probably his 2008 kids graphic novel Johnny Boo: The Best Little Ghost in the World.

That single book seems to have synthesized the very best elements of some of Kochalka’s very best works into a single, easily accessible package, the perfect answer to the question, “So, who’s this James Kochalka cartoonist, and what’s his work like?”

It was as brightly colored and lettered as Superf*ckers, as all-ages friendly as Pinky & Stinky, as cute as Peanutbutter & Jeremy and I even detected the same sense of humor that emanates from the cartoon avatar of Kochalka’s interactions with his cartoon sons in his American Elf strip.(This one, in particular, seems to have inspired Johnny Boo, as Squiggle Power plays a prominent role in the first volume).

So Johnny Boo? A pretty great comic book. So here’s some pretty great news—Johnny Boo: Twinkle Power (Top Shelf) is now available.

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I met Tammy Oler from Bitch magazine at NYCC (bonding in the Women in Comics panel, yay!) and realized I’d been lax in reading her blog at the site. So I’m making up for it now, because she’s got a post up about, well, Jane Austen and the Zombie Apocalypse.

I am a bad feminist English major and I have never actually read a Jane Austen book. I know! And somehow I think I should read the actual Pride and Prejudice before taking on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies–but I don’t wanna! I saw the movie with Keira, so that’s enough, right?

No, I know it’s not. But I promise to read the original later, I promise. For now, this just sounds like far more fun than I can handle. It hits the street on April 15, which is exactly ten days before my birthday. Coincidence? I think not.

Tammy also notes that:

the critically acclaimed British television series Lost in Austen is getting the Hollywood treatment, with none other than Sam Mendes producing.

And in even weirder news:

Finally, the latest (and strangest) news: Elton John’s Rocket Pictures is developing the film Pride and Predator, about an alien that crash lands in the world of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and starts killing everyone.  I predict that this may set a new standard for bodice ripping.

Because really, what’s more fun than classic highbrow romance mingled with lowbrow genre films? Guess I’m going to have to get around to reading Austen soon. And really, some of these stories just beg and plead for comics adaptations. Dynamite, I’m lookin’ at you…

Without sitting down with a highlighter and a list of Garth Ennis’ complete works, I can’t say for certain whether or not everything he’s written is, in one sense or another, a war comic, but it certainly seems like the majority of them are.

His Demon run was full of soldiers and included several references to and parodies of DC’s old war comics. Almost all of the characters in his Hitman series were ex-soldiers and their military exploits would get flashback-ed to at one point or another. His Authority stories began with a member of the British military named Kev, who spun out and away from The Authority proper. The Punisher? A superhero-esque character defined by his time as a soldier, who continues to wage a one-man insurgency against the occupying forces of crime. Preacher? The genre may be more Western than military, but what is it but the story of the oldest war of all? And on and on.

Because of their lack of angels, demons, superheroes and/or outrageously colorful black comedy characters, Ennis’ most straightforward war stories can sometimes seem a tad…well, vanilla, I guess. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the eight War Story one-shots Ennis did for Vertigo at the beginning of the decade were his best work , but I think they offer one of the best examples of Ennis’ skills as a writer, skills that can often be distracted from by all those angels, demons, superheroes and/or outrageously colorful black comedy characters. To the point where he’s probably too often considered as “the guy who makes fun of superheroes” or “the guy who tells really funny stories with gore or gay panic as the punch line.”

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Hey, can U.S. cartoonists get $96 million from the government over the next five years too?: On June 2, comics will have had a presence in Korea for exactly 100 years. The government has set aside a ton of money to support the industry.

And speaking of Korean comics…: Here’s a story about the success of a children’s educational comics series, Why? Children of a certain age ask for it by name! Constantly!

According to my news searches, there are exactly two comics-related news stories. One is the Watchmen film, and the other is this one cartoon: Josh “Comics Curmudgeon” Fruhlinger laments the fact that the entire Sean Delonas dead-chimpanzee-stimulus-bill cartoontroversy flared up and burnt itself out before he could post his weekly column about how political cartoons are so awful. He compensates by asking of all the cartoons he covers this week, Could This Cartoon Be Improved With A Racist Monkey Or Mincing Gay?

And speaking of the Comics Curmudgeon: In this post, he attempts to translate what all the *@#S swear words in a Februarty 18 Funky Winkerbean strip might be. I do this all the time with Brian Michael Bendis’ use of such swear words in his Marvel comics, as he usually uses three- or five-character disguised swear words, instead of four-letter ones, and there just aren’t that many three- or five-letter swear words. Anyway, this Funky Winkerbean strip is weird because it seems like the only word that would make sense in context is “sucks,” but that’s not a taboo word even in the daily funnies world, is it?

We post way too many links to NPR, don’t we?: I can’t help it; they do talk about the comics an awful lot, don’t they? Anyway, Day to Day re-ran their piece from the “In Character” series about The Joker, who will probably be talked about ad nauseum this week due to a certain awards show. Steve Englehart and Paul Levitz are both quoted, the former rather extensively.

?!: Have you seen this American Library Association Watchmen-themed “Read” poster yet? Couldn’t they have gotten an actor who plays a more appropriate role model than The Comedian in the movie? And, come to think of it, should they be encouraging kids to read Watchmen at all? Wait till you’re older kids!

This story is full of lies: “The Hottest Comic Book Movie Babes of 2009” includes movies that aren’t really comic book movies. For example, Push, whose comic book connection is that a tie-in book was apparently published, and Transformers and G.I. Joe, despite their long histories as comic books, are really first and foremost toy movies, aren’t they? Also, this article is pretty gross, and I’m only posting it here because I was told I must, if only for the outrage it could generate. It’s not quite as outrageous as the link leading to it, however. Please don’t click on them, if you’re sadness-prone.

What, no Daken or Romulus?: Chances are, you already know an awful lot of the facts in this “10 Essential Facts About ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ “piece. But you may learn something. For example, I didn’t know this: “Len Wein’s original idea was that the character was actually a wolverine cub that was mutated into human form.” That would have made the Origins series a whole lot cuter, I bet.

I’d watch that movie: James Kochalka and friends vastly improve upon Indiana Jones.