Just to show how much I loved He-Man growing up, this is from memory:

I am Adam, Prince of Eternia and defender of the secrets of Castle Grayskull. This is Cringer, my Fearless Friend. Fabulous secret powers were revealed to me the day I held aloft my magic sword and said, “By The Power of Grayskull. I HAAAVEEEE THE POOOOWWWEEEEERRRRR!!!!”

So, the new live action He-Man and the Masters of the Universe has been in something of development hell for a few years. After all, how do you top Dolph Lundgren facing down Skeletor on Earth? I mean, it’s what every kid dreamt of!

Regardless, Joel Silver, Matt Reilly (Warner Bros), and Barry Waldo (Mattel) are bringing the most powerful man in the universe back to the silver screen. Now, John Stevenson has joined the forces of good as Director. His only directing credit to date is a co-direction of Kung Fu Panda, but he’s worked in the industry on the art side of things for over two decades. The script is by Justin Marks, who may sound familiar to geek culture fans; he wrote the soon to debut Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li and is also working on the Hack/Slash comic adaptation screenplay. The script will be another strange meld of the classic cartoon story and modern elements, with He-Man leading the forces of magic against Skeletor’s technological army. No word yet on when all this will come together, or if He-Man’s voice will echo no matter where he is, even if he’s in the middle of a field, but hopefully it’s faithful enough to evoke some great memories.

And just for fun:

[Via]

Oh yeah, it’s party time. Gonna be in town for the upcoming New York Comic-Con, just a little over a (GULP) week from now? Only have 45 parties to go to? How ’bout another? The Comicbook Artists Guild is hosting their fourth annual Indy After Party on Saturday, February 7th at 8pm. The party is at Blaggard’s Pub, a larger venue than last year’s 200+ attendee event. All are welcome in the spirit of independent creation and collaboration. The full press release is after the jump! (more…)

While Wonder Woman doesn’t look to be getting a live action feature release anytime soon (though there is an animated DVD releasing in March), and some people agree with a ridiculous statement made by a Warner exec a couple of years ago saying females can’t carry a big time action movie, Warners are nevertheless relaunching and rebooting the Tomb Raider franchise. When they bought 20% of Eidos Interactive, the producer and license holder of the Tomb Raider games, a few months ago, part of the deal was the movie rights, once held and used by Paramount for two pictures.

Dan Lin, Executive Producer of Terminator: Salvation and producer on this year’s Robert Downey-fueled Sherlock Holmes, as well as the on again-off again Justice League movie, is producing with Stephen Gilchrist (Rules of Engagement) and Executive Producer Ian Livingstone from Eidos Interactive. The movie, like the announced upcoming game, will see a revamped Lara Croft, going even further in giving her a new origin (and thus presumably a new raison d’être). As such, it is unlikely they’ll be pulling Angelina Jolie out of her semi-retirement from acting for the role. Megan Fox, rumored for the last few days apparently because of a blog post in South America (no kidding), has likewise been disspelled as a possible Lara.

So, who do you think can fill those… boots?

[Via]

The 81st Academy Award Nominations were released this morning, and I have a few thoughts on the nominations, as well as a few T-Rex sized bones to pick with the Academy. How well did The Dark Knight make out? Join me after the jump and find out.

(more…)

As a resident of the environs of Indianapolis, I’m quite proud that we have the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in our town.  It’s an incredible museum, and well worth a visit.  They’ve just announced a program that’s sure to be of interest to our readership; it also happens to feature a couple of familiar names.

From the Press Release:

BIZARRO CREATOR DAN PIRARO & COMIC WRITER JOHN OSTRANDER HEADLINE EITELJORG’S “WESTERN AND NATIVE PORTRAYALS IN COMICS”

 

(INDIANAPOLIS) January 5, 2009 – Artist Dan Piraro, creator of the award-winning, syndicated comic strip Bizarro, and writer John Ostrander (Batman, Star Wars, Wolverine, The Kents, Apache Skies) will be the featured artists at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art’s “Western and Native Portrayals in Comics,” from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 24. The day features an in-depth look at how comics throughout history have handled portrayals of Western and Native American people and cultures. Highlights include panel discussions, gatherings of collectors, comic giveaways and sales, signings by well-known writers/artists and leading industry experts including Steve Sanderson (Cree) and Michael Sheyahshe (Caddo).

 

10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

-         Comic giveaways, sales, demonstrations, meet and greet artists, writers and experts

 

1 p.m.

-         Panel Discussion – “Native Americans in Comics” featuring Michael Sheyahshe, Steve Sanderson, John Ostrander and Dan Piraro

o       Book signing with Michael Sheyahshe in Museum Store following

 

3 p.m.

-         Panel Discussion – “Western and Native Reflections in Comics” featuring John Ostrander, Dan Piraro, Michael Sheyahshe and Steve Sanderson

o       Book signing w/ Dan Piraro in Museum Store following

 

The first 100 guests will receive a signed, limited-edition poster by Steve Sanderson.

 

Step into The Bizarro West

 

Dan Piraro is a surrealist painter, illustrator and cartoonist best-known for his award-winning syndicated panel cartoon Bizarro, which often features Western themes. He has received the National Cartoonist Society Panel Cartoon Award for 1999, 2000, and 2001, and been nominated for their Reuben Award several times for his work on the strip. Since 2001, Piraro has toured the U.S. with various forms of a one-man comedy show called, “The Bizarro Baloney Show.” The show won the 2002 New York International Fringe Festival award for “Best Solo Show.” Visit the Bizarro Web site.

 

Piraro will serve as an Eiteljorg Museum artist-in-residence from Tuesday, Jan. 20, though Sunday, Jan. 25. During that time, he will interact with museum guests and school groups, participate in “Western and Native Portrayals in Comics” and headline “The Bizarro West” at 3 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 25. During the event, Piraro will share his thoughts on Western and Native-themed Bizarro cartoons. Part lecture, part comedy—this event is an all-access look into Piraro’s writing and illustrations. The presentation will be followed by a meet-and-greet and book signing at 4:30 p.m. There is a $10 fee for “The Bizarro West.” Members and IUPUI students pay $5.

 

The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art is celebrating its 20^th year of inspiring appreciation and understanding of the art, history and cultures of the American West and the indigenous peoples of North America. The museum, which opened in 1989, is located in Downtown Indianapolis’ White River State Park. For general information about the museum and to learn more about exhibits and events, call (317) 636-WEST (9378) or visit www.eiteljorg.org.

As it happens, that isn’t the only significant comics presence at an Indianapolis museum.  The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, the largest of its type in the world, is still running its outstanding Comic Book Heroes exhibit.  It’s a stellar piece for the younger set, featuring as it does one of the Batmobiles used in the filming of Batman Begins, thousands of comics from the Max Simon collection, and videos and classes by Indianapolis’s own Stuart Sayger, creator of Shiver in the Dark and artist on a number of Vs. trading cards and Bionicle projects.

If you haven’t checked out the book that Sarah called “The Definite Bush Era Fiction” Khepri.com is ready to help you out. Right now, they have the first five volumes (all that have been released to date) for 43 bucks and change. That’s less than ten bucks a volume, and a real steal to get you up-to-date on this awesome Vertigo series. If you’re caught up and waiting for Vol. 6, which comes out next month, they’ve got it available for pre-order at a hefty discount, as well. Check out the deals here, and don’t say we never gave you anything.

Radical Publishing has announced a bevy of talent that will be at their table during the New York Comic Con.

The first-time attendee has said that its roster of sequential artists — including the legendary Jim Steranko (NICK FURY: AGENT OF SHIELD), Arthur Suydam (MARVEL ZOMBIES), Steve Niles (30 DAYS OF NIGHT), David Hine (SPAWN), Rick Remender (PUNISHER: WAR JOURNAL), Steve Pugh (ANIMAL MAN), and Sam Sarkar (Beverly Hills 90210) — will be signing work throughout the Feb. 6-8th event.

In addition, Radical’s Dream Team will be hosting a panel at 5:15-6:15pm Saturday, in which they will discuss their newest titles. Following the panel, there will be a special drawing where winners will receive a signed poster from one of the creators.

“This is a really exciting time for the company right now,” said Barry Levine, Radical Publishing’s President and Publisher, in a press release . “We have a great lineup of new titles involving our guests to introduce at the show, along with a very special surprise announcement to be made at our panel. This is a great opportunity for fans to meet us, to see our complete library of titles and what we have in store for 2009.”

Among Radical’s lineup is Steranko’s Hercules: Knives of Kush, Suydam’s Cholly and Flytrap: Hush City, Hine’s FZVA: Federal Zombie and Vampire Agency, Niles’ City of Dust: A Philip Khrome Story, Remender’s The Last Days of American Crime, Sarkar’s Caliber: First Cannon of Justice, and Pugh and Warren Ellis’ Hotwire: Requiem for the Dead.

Activision today launched an official website for the game version of X-Men Origins: Wolverine at Uncaged.com. The game is being developed by Raven Software, whose previous Marvel Superhero work can be seen in the X-Men Legends games and the first Marvel Ultimate Alliance. The site is pretty bare bones for now, featuring a 360 degree version of the screenshot seen here, a link to 1UP’s first look coverage of the game (which was featured in what is now known to be the final print issue of EGM, sob), a new forum where fans can talk to producers and developers, and a “slash counter.” By moving your mouse down the logo in the middle of the screen, you can slash it apart with Wolverine’s claws. Once the slash counter reaches “numbers to their liking,” according to the press release, Raven will put up more info about the game. So go start slashing away, and hopefully the game will be as good as EGM was optimistic about it.

Yahoo Movies has released an exclusive one-sheet with images from the sequel to the live-action Transformers film, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

You can see the images — including an image of the Fallen as well as the towering figure of Optimus Prime — by clicking here.

The film, starring Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox, is set to be released June 29, 2009.

John August, the announced ScreenWriter for the in-development Captain Marvel (DC) Movie, says today that the film is no longer a go. He was surprisingly detailed on the whole process in his blog, from the film’s inception at New Line where he wrote a light hearted script mixing comedy and action, to the Writers’ Strike and its move to Warner Bros:

The new executive at Warners said he agreed with the New Line notes, and told the producers I should go ahead with my rewrite. We weren’t on the official production schedule, but there were discussions about budgets and timelines. We were definitely Pete Segal’s next movie, and many of the stories coming out of the press junkets for Get Smart were about Shazam.

When we turned the new draft in to the studio, we got a reaction that made me wonder if anyone at Warners had actually read previous drafts or the associated notes. The studio felt the movie played too young. They wanted edgier. They wanted Billy to be older. They wanted Black Adam to appear much earlier.

(I pointed out that Black Adam appears on page one, but never got a response.)

He goes on to speculate as to why the Studio had such a big change of heart, and how he delivered what they asked with the third draft, including more one-on-one Captain Marvel vs. Black Adam, and even a reveal of Nanda Parbat as a location in the film. He took a trip overseas, got back, and the project was killed.

The movie may see life again, but August is confident that the current incarnation, with any version of his script, is deader than Mary Marvel’s innocence. But hey, at a time when DC desperately needs to breathe life into more movie franchises than just those that have a flying rodent-themed character, it probably isn’t in their best interest for the first one to bear the name of their chief competitor…

SCI FI Wire, SCI FI’s news division, has created an expanded expanded news site outside of SCI Fi’s main page called scifiwire.com. Here’s what the SCI FI Wire staff has said about the new site:

SCI FI Wire is hot news about movies, TV, games, books, top celebrities and more. Red-carpet photos. The newest movie trailers. Sneak peeks at upcoming TV shows and seasons. Exclusive on-set interviews. And with the team behind SCI FI Weekly, we’re about to add all sorts of new content: Top 10 lists, exclusive Q&As, satire, dispatches from the front lines of science fiction, fantasy and the supernatural, funny stuff and a lot more.

The scream masters at Fangoria have launched their Digital Publishing Initiative, and they’ve got lots of creepy, cool stuff available for fans with a high speed connection and Adobe Flash. Check out comics like Robert Kurtzman’s Beneath the Valley of Rage and Death Walks the Streets; the full-length novelization of the upcoming movie, Bump; and best of all, digitized and fully restored classic copies of Fangoria!

Well, it’s official. Up now is the first post from JKParkin and his crew (and some friends), introducing Robot 6, their new blog about comics, hosted over at Comic Book Resources.

Robot 6 is a new comics blog by many of the folks from the old Blog@Newsarama. In addition to Kevin and me, you’ll also find Lisa Fortuner, Tom Bondurant, Michael May, Melissa Krause, Stephanie Chan, Tim O’Shea and Chris Mautner here. You’ll also find a couple of people whose names you might recognize from the comics industry – Jennifer de Guzman from SLG Publishing and Larry Young of AiT/Planet Lar fame

Stop by and say hi now, but their official launch isn’t until Monday. If you’ve missed Tom’s Trinity Annotations, there’s a new one of those over there, too.

Best of luck, folks. We’re glad you have a home again!

Variety announced this morning that Stephen Chow is out as director of Green Hornet. The Kung Fu Hustle director/star still plans to play Bruce Lee’s old role of Kato, the high kicking sidekick to the titular star. “Creative Differences” were cited as his reason for dropping out as director, a role he took on in September. As Seth Rogen is still credited as co-writer and star, it can be deduced the differences were more with production than with Rogen, as they’ll still share screentime.

No early word on a new director yet, but maybe Judd Apatow will step in and make it a rompous sex comedy*.

*Totally a joke, don’t freak out. It’s Frank Miller, changing it to Red Hornet, of course.

[Via Variety]

Hey folks, we’ve obviously been following the status of Carla and Lance Hoffman with baited breath here at Blog@. For those that may not be in the know, Carla was a contributor here with the first team, sharing her love for all things Marvel Comics. She and her husband Lance were badly burned in the recent fires in California, but are thankfully on their way to recovery. On one of the previous posts about the couple, we got a comment from Carla’s brother, Jason.

I am Carla’s brother. I live in South San Francisco and commute to Orange, CA where the UCI Burn Center is. I just got back from visiting them yesterday, and I am happy to report that they are both out of danger and have begun the hard tasks of rehabilitation from both the smoke inhalation and burns. Burns require daily cleaning and the ‘hydrotherapy’ is taxing and painful. Carla is able to talk and is walking a little, and we hope that Lance is not far behind.

Fortunately, UCI is a top facility and even the nursing staff has decades of burn treatment experience. As far as bad situations go, its the best it can be right now.

So, at this time, anything that can be done to keep their morale up is vastly important. I have been out the comic world since high school (I am 42) so any help from the blogsphere would be most appreciated. Anyone know Stan Lee’s unlisted phone number?

Carla has asked for updates on the following:

Secret Invasion
Dark Reign (Rain?)
Final Crisis

Iron Man
The two new Thor books with Matt Fraction
Man of War
God Sized Thor

If anyone can email me at jasonmccomb at hotmail.com with news or links on these subjects I would really appreciate it. I fly down again on Saturday and will share any well wishes, news or information that come my way.

Thanks everyone for their prayers and support,

Jason McComb
jasonmccomb at hotmail.com

So, folks, what I’d ask is this- Let’s flood this comments section with well wishes and updates on Carla’s favorite books. We’ll then send Jason the link for a nice, easy single place to check (and his email won’t be flooded). Also, please don’t forget to check out Let’s Help Carla and Lance, where JK and Stephanie continue to auction some truly awesome items in support of our friends in need. So sound off below, and please, keep any negative thoughts on these books to yourselves in this case, k?

Bettie Page died yesterday.

Full details on her life before and after her pin-up days are available through several news sources, including Yahoo News HERE, although the Chicago Tribune has a photo slideshow (found HERE for those interested) is also worthy of merit if for no other reason than that it features a pic of Bettie Page from 2006.

Her face, of course, is not shown… but what else would you expect?

(For those of you out there who are unsure as to how this relates to comics, hunt down and then read Dave Steven’s The Rocketeer, you bums!)

Artist Rob Liefeld, always the source of good internet conversation, is signing tonight at Midtown Comics’ Times Square location in NYC, in support of his new original graphic novel from Image Comics, Armageddon Now: World War 3. The OGN features a marked shift in art style for Liefeld, with digital painting over his pencils. The writer, Phil Hotsenpiller, will also be there, signing copies of the recently released hardcover GN about the end of the world. As a longtime and unabashed fan of Liefeld’s work and how nice of a guy he is in person, I’m excited to attend tonight. Full details after the break. (more…)

The first items have been posted for the auction to benefit Carla and Lance Hoffman.  As you know, Carla, part of the original Blog@ crew, and her husband, Lance, were severely burned in the Tea Fire around Santa Barbara last month.  The Facebook group, set up by the family to track their recovery, reported on Wednesday that Carla was awake and breathing on her own; she was even able to speak to Lance’s father.  For his part, Lance has been able to respond to questions via blinking, and is taking breaths beyond the ventilator.  Those are all very positive signs.

What can you do?  JK and Stephanie are manning Let’s Help Carla and Lance.  Get over there now and visit repeatedly; there’s already some great stuff up for bidding, and there’s more to come.

Additionally, there will be a benefit screening of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to raise money.  That will be at the Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara on December 15th.

Please check the sites out, and if you’re able, do what you can.  Visit Let’s Help Carla and Lance for regular updates.

Hey all!

I’m Dirk Manning.

Regular Newsarama readers will know me as a regular contributor to the site and the fellow in the dapper black hat who writes the ongoing advice/”how-to” column Write or Wrong. If you’ve somehow managed to avoid the first forty-six(!!!) installments of the column to date, click the link to check out the most recent edition from a few weeks ago. As always, it’s informative and entertaining. Honest!

Fans of horror and/or online comics might also know me as the guy responsible for NIGHTMARE WORLD, a series of stand-alone but carefully intertwined short stories that detail several people’s lives and loves (and, yes, occasionally deaths) before, during and after an Armageddon of very Lovecraftian proportions. Cthulhu appears often, if that helps to motivate you, and we were also recently picked-up by Shadowline as part of their webcomic family to boot. Huzzah for us!

Aside from all that, Matt Brady also saw fit to thrust me upon the gang of talented folks who will be bringing you the new Blog @ Newsarama. I dunno, apparently Troy Brownfield made him mad or lost a bet or something…

Whatever the reason, the end result is that I’ll now be popping-in here from time-to-time in addition to my regular Newsarama duties, posting comic and entertainment stuff that I think is interesting and worthy of sharing with you fine folks.

I’ll try to keep the obscure pulp/horror references to a minimum. No promises there, though.

Over at the Comic Foundry Magazine site, Editor-in-Chief Tim Leong announced today the cancellation of the magazine, after next issue.

Comic Foundry means the world to me, which is why it saddens me to an unexplainable extent to say that our next issue will be our last. I’m sorry to admit that I’ve reached the unfortunate point where my career no longer allows enough time to do the magazine.

He goes on to thank the fans and his “right hand woman” Laura Hudson, who recently relocated to the Portland area, largely considered to be the “other” center of the comics world (with New York City of course being the first).

The magazine was a fun and different way of reading about comics, and was definitely doing something different (and far more enjoyable) than Wizard Magazine. It’s interesting, and a shame, that Leong feels he should cancel the magazine altogether rather than have anyone take over or take a backseat and provide the minimal assistance he feels he’d be able to for now. The early February issue is still on track, and Leong assures fans this was a personal, not a financial, decision.