The Week In Geek: 100 Bullets Comes To TV, Green Lantern Animated, & Gene Colan R.I.P.
100 Bullets Comes To Showtime
One of the most successful writers to flip flop between comic book writing and screenwriting for Hollywood has got to be David S. Goyer; aside from writing the Blade movie trilogy, he co-wrote Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, and recently co-wrote the scripts for next year’s double whammy of DC Comics films The Dark Knight Rises and Man of Steel. Now Goyer is seemingly staying in DC territory with a new project made for cable. It was announced this week that Goyer is in the process of taking the Vertigo comic 100 Bullets to Showtime in the form of a new ongoing drama series. Written by Brian Azzarello and illustrated by Eduardo Risso, the original comic is one of the most critically acclaimed titles the best in the past decade with 100 issues (one issue per bullet) published between 1999 and 2009.
The premise of 100 Bullets is that the mysterious Agent Graves offers his clients a gun, along with a briefcase with 100 untraceable bullets as well immunity from prosecution, enabling them to get revenge against those who destroyed their lives. The comic originally seemed to be self contained one off stories, but eventually a larger narrative emerged. In other words, this kind of thing is a perfect fit for cable tv. David Goyer does better adapting material from comics than creating his own stuff to be honest (anyone remember The Invisible? Case closed) so this sounds like a perfect match. Now bring on Y: The Last Man to HBO, and we’re all good.
Gene Colan, R.I.P.
I hate to ever have to report things like this in my column, but I am sad to report today that legendary comic book artist Gene Colan has died at the age of 84. Many younger comic book readers may not be too aware of Colan’s work, as he has been semi-retired for many years now, but Colan was a true legend at Marvel Comics for much of the late 60’s through the mid 80’s. He drew a vast majority of the early issues of Daredevil, and drew the entire run of Tomb of Dracula (70 issues!) where he co-created the character of Blade. He also co-created the Falcon, Captain America’s partner who was one of the first African American super heroes to have any kind of prominent role in a regular ongoing title. His art was some of the first comic book art that I was ever exposed to, as I grew up reading comic books from the 1970’s that were hand me downs from my older brothers, so in many ways Colan’s art informed my taste in comic book art. One of his last works was for Captain America back in 2010, for which he won a richly deserved Eisner award.
Green Lantern: The Animated Series Teaser Released
For those Green Lantern fans out there who are sad and dismayed that the big screen version of Hal Jordan’s adventures was so very meh and is therefore likely to not get a sequel, take heart: The one man who has never done the DC Universe wrong is animation legend Bruce Timm, and this Fall he is bringing his take on the Green Lantern mythology to Cartoon Network in Green Lantern: The Animated Series. So maybe we’ll get to see the fall of Sinestro after all, as well as the War of Light, the multi colored Lantern Corps, and maybe even Blackest Night all play out in CGI glory…just on television instead of movie screens. Cartoon Network just released a trailer for the new show, and is due to present footage of the show at Comic Con in July. If Timm can do for Green Lantern what he did for Batman, Superman and the Justice League, then I think this show has a better chance of creating a whole new generation of GL fans than the movie ever could have. I for one can’t wait. You can see the teaser here.
Julia Ormond Is Superman’s Mom
In yet another addition to Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel cast, it seems Legends of the Fall’s Julia Ormond is set to play Lara, mother of Superman, and wife of also newly cast Russell Crowe’s Jor-El. I don’t know If her part will be bigger than it was when Sussanah York played it, but I gotta say…at 46, she’s getting a little old to be the mother of a newborn Kal-El, don’t ya think? Oh well, I’m just nitpicking here. Maybe on Krypton they have like, awesome fertility drugs.
Would*You*Like*To*Play*A*Game?
It seems that in MGM’s financial restructuring post bankruptcy, they are only making remakes of classic films from the 70’s and 80’s. Robocop and Carrie will merely be the first, as it was announced today that King of Kong director Seth Gordon is remaking Wargames. The original movie from 1983 starred Matthew Broderick as a computer prodigy who seemingly got off manipulating military computer programs and almost starting World War III by accident. Oops. It will be interesting to see how this movie plays now that everyone knows how the internet works and what hacking actually is. Back in 1983, to most people those were just words. Will modern audiences have an easier or harder time buying into this premise?
