Well, The Gold Exchange that hits tomorrow or Monday will cover two issues instead of one, because I’m more than a month behind. In fairness to Dan Jurgens and his fantastic Time Masters miniseries, that interview will run later today, before the next issue hits. Sorry for the many delays, but back on September 8, my fiancee and I decided that we would get married…on October 9. Needless to say, that’s thrown my schedule a bit. I always feel bad when I miss my (self-imposed) deadlines, and feel even worse now because it’s the first time in over two years of doing it that the Gold Exchange has missed a month…but if it makes you all feel better, check out the cufflinks I wore to the wedding in question! I got a surprising number of people who noticed the Sinestro Corps logo.

J.M. DeMatteis, current writer of Booster Gold and one of the creators behind Justice League International and The Life and Times of Savior 28, announced on his blog today that he’s departing as Editor-in-Chief of Ardden Entertainment. DeMatteis cites creative differences for the exit, although it doesn’t sound like anything too traumatic, as he’s still got nothing but kind words for the executives at Ardden, a company which has made a name for itself by bringing classic properties like Flash Gordon and Casper the Friendly Ghost back into circulation. DeMatteis’s post says that the departure is related to editorial disagreements surrounding the revival of old Atlas Comics properties.

Says DeMatteis:

“After a couple of very enjoyable years as editor-in-chief of Ardden Entertainment—working on Flash Gordon, Casper and the Spectrals and the recently-announcedAtlas Comics revival—I’ve decided to take my leave of the company.  It’s been a great ride building this new company with Ardden co-publishers Brendan Deneen and Rich Emms—both of whom, I hasten to add, are terrific guys—but, as we’ve all worked together to prep the Atlas material, co-creating the new versions of Grim Ghost, Phoenix and Wulf the Barbarian, it’s become clear that we have different visions of how to proceed.  After pondering long and hard, I decided the best thing would be to put on my parachute and exit the Ardden Tower, leaving the Atlas revival in Brendan and Rich’s very capable hands.  It was fun flexing my editorial muscles, seeing the comics world from the other side of the desk, and I may do it again one of these days.

I wish Brendan, Rich and Jason Goodman’s Atlas team great good luck with the new books.”

When contacted by Newsarama, Brendan Deneen said, “Rich Emms and I are sad that Marc has decided to move on but as his fan and his friend (not to mention his former manager!), I have learned an incredible amount under his tutelage.  His edits on my Flash Gordon scripts were phenomenal and he is a brilliant storyteller.  He remains a close friend and I will continue to read all of his material in all its varied forms, just like I’ve been doing for the last couple of decades.”

Deneen went on to provide the following, new organizational structure for Ardden Entertainment and Atlas Comics:
Publishers:  Brendan Deneen & Rich Emms
Editor-in-Chief:  Brendan Deneen
Designer-in-Chief: Rich Emms
Consulting Editor:  Jim Krueger
Consulting Designer:  Adam Boreham
Managing Editor:  Cody DeMatteis
Assistant Editor:  PJ Feffer
Assistant Editor:  Zach Frankel

Added Deneen, “Despite Marc’s departure, we have put together a new, larger staff about which I am extremely excited.  This past weekend’s New York Comic-Con proved to me that Ardden and Atlas have a very, very bright future, and we are expanding accordingly.  I look forward to having the already-legendary Jim Krueger edit our comics, especially my Flash Gordon scripts, and to have Rich and Adam continue their incredible design work.  Cody DeMatteis, who’s been with us for awhile now, will continue to oversee our artists and writers (and I have a feeling he’ll be editing my and Jim’s Phoenix scripts).  Finally, I’m excited to introduce PJ and Zach, two extremely talented young writers who will help keep Ardden and Atlas on track.  I truly feel that 2011 is going to be a big one for both Ardden Entertainment and Atlas Comics.”

I am incredibly far behind. All the DVD reviews lately (particularly since there have been a number of time-consuming TV releases) have combined with the day job to really put me behind the eight ball here at Newsarama. The upside? I’ve got another week of insanity followed by an entire week off during, which time I’ll be getting the various Q&A features back on schedule and getting some reviews in with the rest of the Best Shots team.

In the meantime, Gavin Higginbotham stepped up and did this whole interview himself. As such, it’s a little shorter than usual…but maybe I’ll get ambitious and add some material to it when I get some breathing room.

Gavin Higginbotham: Double Paige is a rather… interesting… design. I’m guessing she’s a bitch to draw? Just getting the anatomy correct every time when choreographing a fight scene with her has got to be tough?

Erik Larsen: The choreographing fights was a big part of what excited me about the character–just cause it was so bizarre having a character with four arms and legs–there were great possibilities there but yeah–what a pain in the butt to draw! Too many limbs to keep track of and there were quite a few times where I got confused working out all the details. I sorted the mess out but there was a panel where I inadvertently draw Paige’s gloves on Angel–luckily Nikos caught it and I was able to redraw it. But what a nightmare. (more…)

Smallville has historically divided comics fans; while many have seen it as tonally one of the truest interpretations of the character ever to be filmed with real humans, both post-Crisis fans of Superman and purists of any era have taken issue, at various times, with the show’s use of Superboy, its continuity or, most recently, the bizarre death of Jimmy Olsen (don’t worry, folks–his parents have another kid also called Jimmy).

All that said, this writer had never been able to get into the first few seasons simply because they seemed aimed at a different audience; the teen angst on display in the first few seasons was much more reminiscent of Dawson’s Creek than of any Superman comics I’d ever read, and the involvement of Jeph Loeb (whose Superman comics were hit-or-miss for me) kind of poisoned the well a little bit, too. (more…)

You know what’s super-exciting and happening in just a couple of hours? The season premiere of Chuck, my favorite show currently on TV. And while last year’s third season wasn’t as spectacular as we had all hoped and expected after the terrific second-season finale, it was still one of the best shows on TV and a singularly entertaining genre show.

Chuck: The Complete Third Season, which hit DVD and Blu-Ray on September 7 (so you can own it today on DVD or Blu-Ray), features not only every episode of the show’s most spy-tastic season but also a fun mockumentary detailing the history of Jeffster (up to the night of the protest concert featured at the end of the season), as well as an actual documentary about Chuck‘s presence and history at Comic-Con International.

This season sees Chuck‘s supporting cast (which, like Manhunter or Blue Beetle comics, is arguably the strongest part of his story) getting a lot more super-spy screentime, with Awesome and Morgan being introduced into Team Bartowski pretty early in the season, giving them an interesting mix of day-to-day stories and cloak-and-dagger tales. Chuck’s father, played by Scott Bakula, makes his return to the show as well for a final few episodes that, while added at the last minute when the network ordered more of the show, still fit seamlessly into the rest of the season and were, to me, the strongest and best-written episodes of the season (perhaps the looming spectre of cancellation that’s always hanging over the head of this show had been lifted a little, and that allowed the writers more freedom). Sprinkle in a little non-spy characterization for Adam Baldwin’s Casey (finally!) and you’ve got a really interesting season which, while it kind of dragged in places, certainly had a few great moments.

Seeing the show return in spite of not being all that much more highly-rated than Heroes (a onetime ratings juggernaut that NBC gave the ax at the end of last season) created a great sigh of relief for lovers of good TV, and especially for me (as I was very disappointed with almost everything last season). It’ll be interesting, with this season already chock full of guest stars and promising to cope with the ramifications of where Sarah and Chuck went at the end of season 3, to see whether it can pick up any new eyes or whether it’ll be four seasons and out for our favorite electronics store clerk-turned-super spy.

This is that most wonderful time of the year: the time when the new TV shows are hitting and so there’s a metric ton of new DVD and Blu-Ray releases of last year’s shows, hitting at an opportune time for folks to get caught up before the new episodes air. One such release is The Middle: The Complete First Season, which basically only qualifies as genre TV because of the involvement of The Janitor from Scrubs, who of course appeared in Todd Dezago and Craig Rousseau’s The Perhapanauts.

Similar to my issue with The Vampire Diaries, the new Neil Flynn-Patricia Heaton sitcom The Middle suffers from a little too much narration, much of which is heavyhanded and full of exposition. It’s also not helped by the fact that the show is pretty formulaic and predictable, with the same sitcom-staple plots that have driven every family comedy for years. In fact, the quirkiness that is the show’s saving grace may not be so impressive when you compare it to that other family sitcom with “Middle” in the title. Frankly, I never cared for the episodes I saw of Malcolm, which makes this one a little fresher to me. Besides, Patricia Heaton—who always came off as shrill and angry on Everybody Loves Raymond, really shines in this show, where her skills are front-and-center. Neil Flynn, best known as The Janitor from Scrubs, disappoints while impressing. He gets most of the best lines, and he definitely carries them off…but after having crafted The Janitor—one of the most insane and likable characters in the last 20 years of TV—almost from whole cloth, here he’s given a lot more to work with and does a lot less with it. That could just be a question of direction, but the bottom line is if you tuned in to see The Janitor you’ll be fairly disappointed.

The kids are really the weakest link of the show; while the parents are pretty strong performers, the kids are pretty much standard, both in terms of performance and in terms of writing and characterization. While the parents are certainly the centerpiece of the show, it would help sell the bit if the kids weren’t, frankly, a little boring. Ultimately, there’s nothing wrong with this show, and its scheduling proximity to Modern Family will probably keep it alive for a few years—but it’s probably not worth buying unless you fall in love with it on first viewing. If you want, though, it came to home video on August 31, so you can own it on Blu-Ray or DVD today.

I just got done showering and shaving. During that time, I did something that most people would be too humiliated even to consider; I sang and danced “Twist and Shout” into brush and filmed it on my cell phone. You know what I proved to myself? Just because Ferris Bueller can pull it off, doesn’t mean we all can. That’s kind of how I feel about voiceover. Usually I feel like stories with a pervasive, first-person voiceover end up spoon-feeding the viewer, and they rarely work for me. There are exceptions–but when I think of Ferris (or Fight Club or High Fidelity), I realize that when it works, it’s mostly becuase the character who’s doing the narration is one with a strong voice. There just isn’t anyone like this in the show I’m about to talk about, which really hurts the overall tone. (more…)

While Cartoon Network’s Batman: The Brave the the Bold has been fairly well-received by fans and critics, it did take me a while to warm to it. The first time I saw the pilot, and a later episode featuring Aquaman, my feeling was that the cartoon was being consciously marketed to a younger audience than Batman: The Animated Series or The Batman. While I certainly understood that urge on the part of the studio and DC (after all, hooking kids in early is rarely a bad thing), it didn’t appeal to me as an older fan—and one who came to comics fairly late in his youth. At 13, I was brought back into comics after a few years away by the Doomsday! storyline in Superman, and don’t have the warm, fuzzy memories of young-childhood comic reading that most fans do.

That said, by the time the show’s first season was ending and Booster Gold appeared in “Menace of the Conqueror Caveman,” I watched the show and really dug it. At the time, I thought maybe it was just my natural pro-Booster bias coming out, but August 17 saw the release of Batman: The Brave and the Bold Season 1 Part 1 on DVD from Warner Home Video. Not only did the Booster episode not make the cut for this two-disc set (which collects the series’ first thirteen episodes), but neither did the great J.M. DeMatteis-penned “The Eyes of Despero,” an episode that featured Bats teaming up with Guy Gardner and G’Nort, aped the famous Justice League International “one punch” gag and was overall so entertaining that I bought a picture book version of the episode to read to my infant son.

In spite of not having either of the episodes that would usually make me buy the show, an open-minded re-watching of the first dozen or so episodes yielded pretty positive results. Jaime Reyes’ much-ballyhooed role as Batman’s de facto #2 is justified by how well the character is handled (although anytime you get Jaime and not a lot of his brilliant supporting cast, it’s too bad—WB network take notice) and how much basic juvenile escape fantasy is implicit with a kid who gets powers–it’s a bit like Captain Marvel, especially since Jaime may physically appear as old as he is in the comics but something about him screams “kid” to me.

This show should really appeal to the fans who are forever complaining that there’s not enough fun in mainstream superhero comics anymore, and that everything is too dark. Not entirely unlike the aforementioned Justice League International books, Batman: The Brave and the Bold takes well-rounded characters who are fun and maybe even have a sense of humor and plunge them into terribly dangerous situations–but rather than the danger corrupting all the characters’ innocence, the show allows the characters to brighten up their bleak situations. Escapism at its best, and since I got my discs late you can own it on DVD today!

Rip Hunter, Booster Gold and company may be spending two or three books a month looking for Maxwell Lord, but in Wednesday’s Time Masters: Vanishing Point #2 by Dan Jurgens and Norm Rapmund, all they were looking for was one another. Following the destruction of Vanishing Point in the series’ first issue, the father-son time-traveling team (along with their teammates Superman and Green Lantern) were separated by a chronal blast that also threw the four back to Pytharia, the homeworld of Claw the Unconquered and Starfire (no, not that one—read the book). Dan Jurgens sat down, as he has every month since Booster Gold #6, to talk about the events of the day.

The Gold Exchange: I like the framing device of using Older Booster and Younger Rip as a setup for the Younger Booster/Older Rip story. Is that something that’ll continue through the mini?

Dan Jurgens: Yeah. It gives some insight into the Booster/Rip relationship and also helps provide some important pieces of the back story. I think it also serves to make them both more human while also elevating Booster. (more…)

At today’s DC Nation Panel at the Baltimore Comic-Con, DC Comics Senior Story Editor Ian Sattler told a fan who asked about Batman: The Animated Series that a Batman Beyond ongoing series was launching soon. The fan-favorite character, who has a DVD box set upcoming, is currently being featured in a miniseries that makes his adventures canonical within the DC Comics Multiverse for the first time.

While the fast-paced nature of a convention panel moved moved right along to the next subject, Sattler’s response piqued Lucas Siegel’s interest and he talked to DC, who verified exclusively to Newsarama that Batman Beyond will be an ongoing monthly series after the current mini is over.

There’s been no conversation about a creative team yet, although an ongoing following on the heels of a successful mini often means that the same team will take it on. What say you, ‘Rama readers? Will you buy more Terry McGinnis? And should the same creative team take it on, or are there some other creators you’d like to see take a swing?

Emperor Kurr (Savage Dragon) took on Thor (not to be confused with The Mighty Thor) in this week’s Savage Dragon #163, as our savage roundtable enters its second year, a year in which the main character of the comic has been dead, either physically or mentally or both. Still, critics (including this writer) have maintained that it’s been a terrific year—one of Larsen’s best, signaling a real renaissance for the character and its creator. This issue featured some of longtime fans’ favorite characters, with Dimension X and the God Squad featuring prominently and the Emperor Kurr and Daredevil stories picking up speed. Plus, this is the first part of the new “Emperor Dragon” storyline. After a month like that, you can bet that Gavin and I had a lot of questions for Erik…!

Russell Burlingame: Rex’s exposition dialogue toward the beginning of this issue is all stuff that we learned/assumed during the last arc; is that mostly for the benefit of readers picking up at part 1 of a new story?

Erik Larsen: That and to catch up anybody that might start reading here or to keep folks up on what’s going on–I’ll do my best to keep readers up to speed.

Gavin Higginbotham: Rex and Horridus have discovered that Mister Glum has begun conquering Dimension-X. Evil Angel only made mention of plans of conquest a couple of years ago, those two must really have stepped up their efforts to have transformed so many planets into new Glum Worlds. Have they got their own army now? Perhaps the Absorbanoids and the rest of Deathseed’s army? Or is Glum’s armor more powerful than we know?

EL: We’ll find all that out as things unfold but typically, conquered peoples join up with the new power and things snowball from there. Certainly Glum isn’t defeating everybody in hand-to-hand combat. (more…)

Halfway through their first arc together as the co-writers of Booster Gold and having completed several Gold Exchange interviews, Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis seem, based on my comments thread alone, to be pretty divisive among the Booster faithful. Comichron.com sales numbers seem to suggest that sales haven’t been affected one way or another by the shift in creative team and tone, but readers seem to have a strong preference, one that may or may not be exacerbated by the presence on the market of Time Masters: Vanishing Point, featuring Booster Gold and done by the title’s previous creators.

I’m hoping to put together a cross-section of reader responses, so I’d love e-mails letting me know whether you think the new direction and creative team is better, worse or no change…and comments explaining your response. I’ll also be talking to some notable Booster fans and friends of the title when I compile my results.

The e-mail is russ@jamesvilleny.com, and feel free to give as much or as little feedback as you’d like.

Booster Gold #35, out last Wednesday, was an action-packed issue, and regular readers will know what that means…not a lot of plot to comment on, so this month’s Gold Exchange will be a little short. Still, there were some major forward-motion moments for the plot, and some interesting, possibly foreshadowing bits of dialogue for writer extraordinaire J.M. DeMatteis and columnist mediocre yours truly to comment on…so let’s get right to it, shall we?

The Gold Exchange: OK, so seriously: What’s the deal with all the tentacles? Not only is there a tentacle monster attacking Booster on the cover of this issue with no tentacle monster inside…but there’s a tentacle monster attacking Booster on the cover of December’s #38 (with a different cover artist, yet)!

J.M. DeMatteis: Haven’t you heard?  Tentacles are in!  Tentacles are hip and happening!  Tentacles are—

Okay, I have no idea.  Ask Mike Carlin. (more…)

It’s not my fault this time!

Okay, so maybe I could have been a little more prepared for J.M. DeMatteis’ vacation, but only if I’d had access to my own time sphere so that I could find out about it before it happened. And if I had a time sphere, then none of my articles would ever be late, and I’d already know who the Black Beetle is!

Yeah, that’s right, I haven’t forgotten about that one.

Anyway, after returning to work refreshed and ready to razz the interviewer, DeMatteis caught up with me today about his and Keith Giffen’s most recent issue of Booster Gold, and talked about all manner of bwa-ha-happenings in Booster’s world. Join us, will you? (more…)

While it’s less likely than its predecessor to become a “cinematic classic” replayed endlessly in middle- and high-school classrooms all over the country, this year’s remake of Ray Harryhausen’s The Clash of the Titans has something that movie studios like even better: dudes with incredible musculature kicking the snot out of CGI-constructed baddies against an epic backdrop.

Let’s face it—as amazing as the original Clash’s special effects were for their time, most people looking back at it now viewed it with a kind of vague, bemused interest. I remember watching it for the first (of four) time in a classroom setting when I was in eighth grade, and thinking, “Wow…this movie is old, and what’s with the robot owl?”

In fact, that same robot owl makes a brief (and memorable) appearance in the remake, only to be cast aside as ridiculous. And that, in a nutshell, is what this film is about. While no truer to the myths it was adapted from than was the original, it found plenty from the original to cast aside in search of a more modern, marketable way of telling the same story—and ultimately it succeeded. What’s ironic is that the most “modern” aspect of the film, and the one possibly most marketed when the flick was in cinemas, was the 3-D compatibility that was overlaid on the thing after principal photography wrapped. It was widely made fun of by “serious film people,” who thought if it was meant to be in 3-D then they should have shot it that way. It appears as though Warner Home Video may have agreed with them, as there is no 3-D option included on the DVD or Blu-Ray of Clash of The Titans.

Other than that—relatively major—disappointment for fans of the flick who were hoping to see the 3-D version at home, the discs have a lot to offer. The movie itself has a great sense of pacing and a lot of action to keep the average viewer engaged. In today’s cinema culture, where every movie is looking for a sequel, this one has a pretty good chance of launching 1,000 ships—or at least a franchise. There’s still plenty of Greco-Roman mythology to mine (and mangle), and the response on the part of the core demographic seems pretty good, from what I’ve heard. Myself, I could take or leave this iteration. As a superhero fan, I would love to see some more true-to-the-source-material adaptations of Greek mythology, which in many ways provided the template for today’s superhero universes. The softball/fast food way of approaching those tales is a little discouraging—even when it’s as much fun as this one was.

Clash of the Titans hit the streets from Warner Home Video on Tuesday. It’s available on DVD and Blu-Ray Combo Pack, as well as Warner Home Video’s On Demand pay-per-view.

Major motion pictures these days are built to be franchises; it’s almost imperative that they have a sequel, or at least be open to one. And The Losers certainly leaves it wide open. Here, in a public forum, I’d like to appeal to cooler heads at Warner Brothers and say: Don’t make one.

Don’t get me wrong. The movie is terrific. It’s fun, funny, quirky and action-packed; it retains the tone and much of the best material from Andy Diggle and Jock’s Vertigo series. Still…it seems like nothing good can come from a second installment, in spite of a final twenty minutes of this film that essentially begs for one. But it’s a bit like Kill Bill. Now, there are those who really dug the second installment becuase it was basically all action, all the time. I’m not one of them. I felt like all the story that was worth telling happened in the first movie, and by the second you pretty much knew what was going to happen, and the process of watching it play out wasn’t so clever as to merit another two hours of my life. As it stands, the unresolved-but-it’s-obvious-where-all-this-is-going thing really works for the ending of The Losers, endowing a crazy summer revenge/action shoot-’em-up with an arthouse sensibility that there was really no way for it to come by honestly.

The sequel issue aside, The Losers had few flaws. Frankly, some of the shine might come off it when The Expendables–a similar concept, but with a stronger overall cast–hits theaters later in the summer, but for now it’s safe to say that Jeffrey Dean Morgan really proved himself as a strong action lead. Chris Evans–soon to be Captain America–did little to prove he can expand beyond the comfort zone he’s developed in a handful of mediocre previous appearances, but didn’t do anything to hurt the film either.  And while there were some good and bad moments for almost everyone in the cast, they all seemed irrelevant once you realize that in The Losers, Captain America and The Comedian went to war together.

The plot is a little bit like a hyper-violent episode of TNT’s Leverage (with all the stuntwork and con artistry that such a declaration implies, but without ever really establishing that some of the characters are capable of the computer work necessary later), which is odd because the movie is PG-13, so most of the violence is offscreen and much of it is played for laughs (in a sequence, the villain is being escorted down the beach by a beautiful woman carrying an umbrella. For almost the duration of her screen time, she’s never out of frame, as someone on this film really, really likes to point the camera at beautiful women and just leave it there for a while. When, however, she stumbles in her high heels on the beach sand and the umbrella shifts so that it’s not covering our villain for a moment, he blows her head off. It’s at this moment that she disappears off camera, never to be seen again, because the only way to get a PG-13 rating with as much violence as this film has, is to show almost nothing.

All in all, the movie’s worth watching. There’s no doubt there will be talk of a sequel, and while I hope they can resist the urge…well, let’s be honest–this one was so good that if they make one, I’ll go see it. And then probably kvetch after.

The Losers is available on DVD, Blu-ray and Video on Demand from Time Warner right now.

I guess you can go home again. Just a couple of months after Dan Jurgens’ name disappeared from the monthly credits of Booster Gold, a series based on a character he created, he’s picked up numerous plot threads from that title–as well as some of the characters he’s worked with extensively during his run on Superman and in the mega-crossover Zero Hour, which he wrote and drew–in Time Masters: Vanishing Point. A part of the ongoing “Return of Bruce Wayne” story, this miniseries by Jurgens and former Booster Gold inker Norm Rapmund will explore not only the search for Batman, but the role of time travel in the DC Universe now and going forward. Besides Booster Gold, Green Lantern, Superman and Rip Hunter, the story features Supernova and Goldstar (Booster’s superheroic family members) and Rip Hunter’s sometime-allies the Linear Men, among others. So, while Booster’s monthly has been taken over by the Justice League: Generation Lost story and is tying only marginally into the ongoing narrative of Booster and Rip, that story is being continued–by the same creative team who’s been doing it for a few years now.

We sat down with Dan Jurgens to talk about the first issue, and he took time out of his San Diego recovery–and from browsing the recently-launched DanJurgens.com–to answer us.

The Gold Exchange: You’ve said that Time Masters: Vanishing Point will not only tie into The Return of Bruce Wayne and “Flashpoint”, but also clarify how time travel works in the DCU these days. Will we get a clarification (or have we already have one and I missed it) on the two different interpretations of Rip Hunter that we’ve seen at Vanishing Point in the last few years?

Dan Jurgens: Simply put, I think it’s a part of the change over time, in terms of how I see the character and where I want him to go. Some of this may seem a bit more natural by the end of the series. But I’d also say the more “public” Rip, as seen by Superman and GL, is closer to what may have appeared several years ago. The Rip seen in BG is generally with Booster, which means there is more familiarity and they’re going to have a more relaxed relationship.

In terms of time travel, I don’t know that it’s quite right to say that we’re going to clarify how time travel works. What we will do is reset the table a bit so everyone gets a bit of a better feel for who the main players are, why they do what they do, etc. (more…)

Kevin Smith hasn’t got quite the street cred, either with fanboys or with the mainstream film industry, that he had before Jersey Girl…but there are still those of us who love him. Speaking for myself, since I became aware of Smith, I’ve seen all of his movies in the theater—all of them, that is, except for Cop Out.

Smith directed (but didn’t write—a first for the man who often tells reporters that his directing style is to point the camera at stuff) the Bruce Willis/Tracy Morgan comedy, which Warner just released on home video and which frankly looked pretty awful from the ads. Having heard nothing good about the film, I gave it a miss in cinemas. Morgan has never really done much for me—his character on 30 Rock is basically no different from the character he played in his two-minute cameo in Smith’s Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back. Combining Morgan’s cameo in that film with Smith’s own cameo in Willis’ Live Free or Die Hard a couple of years ago, the principal players of this picture have a strange, Kevin Bacon-less six degrees thing going on which made an already-not-promising project feel just a little too much like a self-indulgent boy’s club.

So it was significantly to my surprise that, upon playing this movie on home video, I discovered it was actually very not-bad. Early in the picture, Morgan’s trademark irritating personality was already starting to grate on me when the scene was rescued with a well-placed Die Hard joke that reminded me that Smith is still a pretty hardcore cinemaphile, and that you can’t completely keep the director’s fingerprints off someone else’s script, if your director is someone with such a big personality. Remember, after all, that the press junket for this picture was completely overshadowed by the “Too Fat To Fly” story that got more headlines and made Smith more friends than Cop Out (or, as Smith prefers, the working title “A Couple of Dicks”) ever did.

The movie isn’t amazing by any stretch; if you’re looking only for a loving send-up of ’80s action flicks you’d do better to check out Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz. Still, it’s enjoyable enough and you can see where, even as he sells out and does a mediocre flick for the money, Kevin Smith managed to elevate the script’s game. Still, it’s not completely free of the chains that come with a ranting, babbling Tracy Morgan doing his best to make moviegoers miss Martin Lawrence. Bruce Willis’ humor drifts randomly between a spot-on deadpan and a kind of listless, lifeless delivery that makes you wonder if, about a third of the way into shooting, he suddenly realized what he’d gotten himself into. After a couple of lackluster genre deliveries in this and last year’s The Surrogates, one hopes that Willis’ upcoming turn in the adaptation of Warren Ellis’ Red is good–otherwise he’ll have burned a lot of bridges in the comics community, and Boom! Studios’ Die Hard: Year One wasn’t spectacular enough to win him all that goodwill back.

Cop Out is available now on DVD and a Blu-Ray combo pack which includes a DVD and digital copy; it’s also On Demand if you’ve got Time Warner Cable, but they’ve been very aggressively advertising that this (as well as their upcoming Clash of the Titans release) is unavailable on Netflix and Redbox as yet.

Since the San Diego Comic Con is the time of year that a young man’s fancy turns to comics, I decided to check in with writer Todd Dezago, whose creator-owned project The Perhapanauts with artist Craig Rousseau has been one of my favorite irregularly-published titles of the last few years. After a pair of Dark Horse miniseries that put the title on the map, Dezago and Rousseau took a couple of years off and then moved to Image, where the title became ongoing–except that the creators’ heavy workload of mainstream work tends to shunt the ‘Haps to the back burner pretty often and the ongoing has released a little more than a single story arc since it debuted. It’s been consistently excellent, though, and Dezago has crafted an ongoing mythology that proves he’s invested with these characters for the long haul, as subplots and character beats have been set up in almost every issue to pay off later. With Image collecting the Dark Horse minis as a single volume (The Perhapanauts: Dark Days, out September 21), what’s the story with The Perhapanauts in 2011 and beyond? I asked the writer.

“Well, finally, after a long period of down-time, production on the next arc of The Perhapanauts has started up again. Craig has been able to find some (very precious) time to focus on the rather demanding pages of the next story line. Also, we have lots of other artists–Matt Wieringo, Lauren Monardo, Leonel Castellani, Matt Smith–working on back-up stories that will fill out each issue and take our story even farther!

“Also in the works are some very cool webcomics featuring The Perhapanauts in “Elseworlds”-type stories called “Tales From the Perhaps!” which we plan to debut on The Perhapanauts website sometime later this year! The first selection, by writer Rich Woodall and art by Jason Copland, is just about finished and it’s a masterpiece!

“Finally, while I won’t be there (I don’t think…) Craig will be at the Baltimore C0micCon in August and will be bringing the latest in our “Perhapanauts one-sheet series”, this one featuring the Maryland Goat Man! We realized that the best way to make these prints more exclusive would be to make them regional as well! (we’re hoping to have a “Loveland Frog Creature” one-sheet for the Mid-Ohio Con in november)! Craig will also have the latest printing of the infamous Choopie butt-cards and the all-new, all-cool Perhapanauts pins touting all of your favorite Perhapanauts characters on tiny little pins! Collect ‘em all!”

I for one am glad to hear that the beat rages on with this terrific title–and while I look forward to seeing other creators take on the characters, and enjoyed the Molly’s Story one-shot recently, I really can’t wait to see Todd and Craig handling the ‘Haps again. There really is no place like home when it comes to creators working on a property they own and love.

NOTE: The Phelps thing is included here because I wrote this before I had a chance to look and see everyone was already writing about it, and I don’t care to change it.

There are not one, but two issues of The Gold Exchange currently fermenting on my computer (I’ve written interview questions, but not the stories to go with them, for Dan Jurgens on Time Masters #1 and J.M. DeMatteis on Booster Gold #34), and a quick once-over of my contributor page reveals that really, other than Best Shots, I haven’t done just about anything for Newsarama lately that didn’t have to do with Booster or Savage Dragon. So it’s time for a quick linkblog, where I’ll touch on a number of issues that I’ve had waiting in my e-mail for a while. (more…)