Avatar star Sam Worthington’s Full Clip Productions has had a working relationship with LA-based publisher Radical Studios since last year, and it appears to be paying off in a big way: As announced at Cannes and reported today by The Hollywood Reporter, Radical’s three-part story The Last Days of American Crime is officially in motion as a feature film, with F. Gary Gray on board as director. As previously reported, Worthington is set to star.

The Last Days of American Crime debuted in late 2009, from writer Rick Remender and artist Greg Tocchini. The series depicts a future where mind control makes criminal activities impossible, so main character Graham Brick plans not only his last heist, but also the country’s. As the director of Set It Off and The Italian Job, Gray is no stranger to crime fiction. The Reporter article says the screenplay will be written by Karl Gadejsak, who doesn’t show up in an IMDb search.

Newsarama talked to Remender about the series back in October of 2009, and sat down with Full Clip Production to discuss their deal with Radical Studios last summer. The two previously announced comic book projects stemming from the Full Clip/Radical collaboration are Damaged and Patriots, both of which are yet to debut.

[Via Press Release]

Radical Publishing is proud to announce that director Sam Raimi (Spider-Man, Evil Dead) has signed on to produce and direct the film adaptation of EARP: SAINTS FOR SINNERS, based on Radical Publishing’s miniseries created by Matt Cirulnick and David Manpearl and written by Matt Cirulnick and M. Zachary Sherman. EARP: SAINTS FOR SINNERS will be produced by Mandeville Films partners David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman for DreamWorks with Matt Cirulnick attached to write the screenplay. Radical’s President and Publisher, Barry Levine, and Raimi’s partner at Star Road Entertainment, Josh Donen, will also produce with Radical Studios’ Executive Vice President Jesse Berger, Cirulnick and Manpearl signed on as Executive Producers.

In a world where the American economy has all but collapsed to the levels of the Great Depression, infamous bandits roam the country and the law is as corrupt as the criminals its sworn to stop. Yet one lawman remains a steadfast moral compass for the people: WYATT EARP. Earp has collared more most-wanted men than anyone in history – but after a violent assignment claims the life of his brother, Wyatt sets out to forge a simple life in the only boomtown left: Las Vegas. With gorgeous women and free-flowing money on endless tap, Sin City attracts more people than a modern gold rush. Though Earp no longer wears a U.S. Marshall’s badge, his past is about to catch up to him. With nearly everything to lose, Earp will have to beat the odds stacked against him in order to bring old-fashioned justice to Sin City.

“This is amazing news going into San Diego Comic-Con,” states Levine. “Both Cirulnick and Manpearl have created an exciting setting of Las Vegas in the near future to reinvent the Wyatt Earp legend that will excite fans around the world.”
EARP: SAINTS FOR SINNERS #0 is currently available to purchase for the premiere price of $1.00. A deluxe-sized issue #1 will go on sale in late 2010.

Keep checking www.radicalpublishing.com for updates.

I had read all 44 pages of FVZA: Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency #1 (Radical Comics) before I began to understand why the comic book existed at all and why it felt like a very solid premise from which a story was being reverse engineered, rather than a story that needed to be told.

That realization didn’t come from the comic book itself sadly, but from an interview with writer David Hine, printed after this first third of the story ends—he was apparently brought in to turn the website fvza.org into a comic book. (This also explains the wonky credits. David Hine and Roy Allan Martinez are the only creators with their names on the cover; on the title page the former is credited as “writer” and the latter as “illustrator,” but there are also two people given a “conceived by” credit and two more people given a “painted by” credit).

The premise is an alternate history of the United States, in which both vampires and zombies are real, and have posed existential threats to the nation since at least the time of the Civil War. Eventually, a federal organization was formed to protect the country from these two supernatural menaces. At present, they’ve both been seemingly stamped out, and the agency is in decline, the way that perhaps the Department of Homeland Security would be if the threat of terrorism were somehow almost completely erased.

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I usually try to review a comic or two here on the weekends, but my review stack has gotten pretty out of control, so I figured instead of shaving a little off the top, I’d try to make a more sizable dent in it. So below you’ll find reviews of five comics and graphic novels from the last few months.

Empowered Vol. 5 (Dark Horse Comics) Adam Warren’s one-man graphic novel series has reached the point where reviewing each new volume seems a little beside the point. You’re either reading or your not, and if you’re not, you should be. Or at least, you should be if you like, love or maybe even loathe superheroes.

Empowered remains not only the funniest superhero comic on the stands, but also the most mature and sophisticated, which itself seems like a joke given the series’ start in superhero parody, shameless cheesecakery and bondage gags that would make William Moulton Marston blush.

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In a surprising move just days before the San Diego Comic Con, David Elliot, the former editor in chief of Radical Comics, has sued parent company Blatant Entertainment.

The co-founder of the Radical Comics, Elliot said that he was terminated in April, and alleges he was not given his full salary from Blatant.

Elliot also claims that he was not credited some Radical Comics finds such as Aladdin, City of Dust, Caliber, and Hercules; that he was not compensated for acquiring Hotwire, Cholly & Flytrap, and Lords of Misture; and that other projects that he owns part of the copyrights have been exploited by the company without his consent. You can read the complaint in full here.

Another interesting quote, from THREsq.com: “Blatant’s management failed to have any of its employees sign work-for-hire agreements and/or assignments of copyrights, thereby clouding title to all of Blatant’s projects, and making it impossible for Blatant to provide proper chain of title documents and guarantees to investors, production companies, studios, and insurers, to the detriment of its shareholders.” If this is true, this a whole new can of worms for the comics-to-film venture company.

Radical Comics, which hit the scenes last year, has teamed up with figures ranging from Jim Steranko to Steve Niles to Nick Simmons.

Radical Publishing recently won Diamond Comics Distribution’s 2008 gem award for “New Comics Publisher of the Year,” a fact I mention here not to congratulate them (but hey, congratulations Radical!), but to point out they haven’t been around very long at all.

I’ve read at least one issue of every series they’ve put out so far—they have a very strong public relations strategy—and have been impressed with their aggressive, confident growth and the extremely high production values of each and every one of those books.

What I haven’t been quite so impressed with was many of the books themselves, which have tended to fall into the emerging category of movie pitches packaged as comics. That probably makes pretty good business sense in today’s media environment, but it also makes for less than ideal comics. If comics are created with the idea that the medium itself is merely a proving ground for another medium, they’re somewhat creatively hobbled right out the gate. (Which isn’t to say the whole line is lousy or anything; I have liked an issue here or there).

Hotwire: Requiem For The Dead #1 may also fall into this same category. It certainly has a pitch-ready premise, the opportunity for some neat special effects and I didn’t have to squint too hard to see Christina Ricci as the petite, small-faced heroine with the round forehead.

But where it differs from other recent Radical books is that it also works quite well as a comic book.

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By Barry Levine

As someone who’s been a comics fan for decades but only just started my own comic book business last year, I’m always interested to see how all the people I currently work with made their way into the industry. The staggering amount of talent out there makes one thing crystal clear: nobody works in this business because of a shortage of other options. In short, nobody works in comics because they have to; they work in comics because they want to.

I’ve collaborated with people in film, music and photography at some of the highest levels of those fields, and they’re easily matched by the passion that every single comics professional I’ve met has for their craft. My only disappointment is that Radical Publishing can’t realistically hire them all (yet). But since I find it so interesting to compare how others got into the business, it’s probably only fair that I explain my crazy path into this world of high concepts and alternate realities.

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