“An adaptation would be an incredible challenge—and would likely have to wait until the prickly Sim dies”: The fact that Watchmen made it to the big screen has The Onion’s A.V. Club thinking of other graphic novels they’d like to see follow it. Twenty-four of ‘em, in fact. They range from comics projects that are already in development, to ones I’d consider frankly un-filmable, like Dave Sim’s Cerebus: High Society (Which that quote refers to). And while I’m linking there anyway, here’s their latest round of comics reviews.
One day we’ll all look back on this and laugh: As I said before, I don’t think Sean Delonas was guilty of doing anything other than drawing a not very good political cartoon, and while the reading that a drawing of a chimpanzee in a political context must automatically translate into a “black people = apes” message since the president is black is now possible, even though I think it takes a really, really tortured reach to get there. Delonas’ many cartoons making fun of gay folks though? Those are all perfectly clear and unequivocal. So why did so many more folks get mad about a Delonas cartoon in which they saw coded commentary on race than those who got mad about his many previous cartoons blatantly derisive of gays? Is it because far too many people consider gay people”fair game” for public mockery in a way that black folks no longer are? This piece by Jeff Bercovici makes the point that if Rupert Murdoch apologized for the ambiguous dead chimpanzee cartoon, doesn’t that mean he should also apologize for the unambigous gay people have-sex-with-sheep cartoon and others of its ilk? (Link stolen from Tom Spurgeon).
Christopher Bird vs. Scans_Daily and Peter David: Looks like a TKO for Bird.
“Dr Manhattan is the best quantum-mechanical superhero—in any universe”: I could post nothing but links to stories dealing with some aspect of the Watchmen here until my fingers bled, and I still don’t think I’d cover them all. This one’s a little different than most. It’s a review of the film from that respected film journal New Scientist, on that takes a closer look than most at Dr. Manhattan’s powers.
Another more interesting than most Watchmen story: An exploration of the history of Charlton Comics and its characters, as prompted by that movie everyone’s talking about (Link swiped from Heidi MacDonald)
WiiMan?: I think I created a superhero with this exact same name when I was six years old. It was spelled differently though. And his powers and costume were very, very different. Anyway, here’s WiiMan.
Eddie Campbell’s blogging again: This is both good news and bad news. Good news because Campbell’s a great blogger and I enjoy reading his thoughts on things, and bad news because every second he spends blogging is another second he’s not spending drawing a comic.
Hawkeye, Hawkeye or Hawkeye?: Bully wants to know, can you match the line of dialogue to the correct Hawkeye? In other Bully Is A Delight news, here’s his guide to the babysitters of the Marvel Universe.
Person DC Should Hire To Do A Wonder Woman Comic Immediately #49: Kate Beaton.
March 4th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Good call by AV Club, putting Vaughan’s Runaways series on the list… But I’m shocked that they didn’t put Y: The Last Man (or Ex Machina, for that matter) on the list. Thanks to Vaughan’s success working for Lost now, I should think that his stuff will get made sooner rather than later.
Interesting take they had, on adpating either JLA Year One and/or New World Order… Either one could make a great film, but Year One probably makes more sense given that Batman’s doing just fine in his own excellent series of solo films, and that WB really needs to straighten out what they’re doing with Superman (and Wonder Woman deserves her own film too). Doing Year One establishes a bunch of lesser-known characters without having the baggage of the “Big 3″ in the mix.
The other issue, of course, is that a JLA film needs mature actors who are believable as Earth’s mightiest heroes, and not the “90210″ style casting that was attempted for the shitcanned (I think? I hope) George Miller project.
March 4th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Thx for the link to Charlton – Watchmen history. You’d be surprised how many fans don’t know that Alan Moore based his characters on the Charlton archtypes…I heard enough ‘intelligent’ fanboys mess that one up all the time.
As far as graphic novel movies….I’d put Bone definitely on the top of my list. As far as both major companies go I can’t argue with Waid’s JLA Year One or Vaughan’s Runaways. For Image I’d love to see a Shadowhawk movie based on Valentino’s original premise but Invincible is good too.