BRAINS!
Whatever you celebrate this holiday season, be sure to check out Sean Bieri‘s themed comic strip for Tor. His zombie-based reinterpretations of classic Christmas stories begin with “Gift of the Zombi,” a simplified—and much improved—variation of William Sydney Porter’s overly altruistic tale, “The Gift of the Magi.”
Spot on
Now that the excitement over the new Watchmen trailer has died down a little, I think we can all agree that it looks amazing. Check out the panel-perfect shots, gravely voice over for Rorschach, and even the Mars sequence with Dr. Manhattan and Laurie Jupiter. The casting is clearly spot-on (except for Matthew Goode as Ozymandius—I’m still not sold on the effeminate Brit for the role), and the stylization, while more techno-shiny than I’d expected, is a perfect parody of other big budget comic book movies. If you’re still salivating for more, remember to check out Dave Gibbons’ behind-the-scenes book.
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Captain America has been raised from the dead—on screen, at least. Marvel Studios has just announced that Joe Johntson will direct First Avenger: Captain America, which is set for a May 6, 2011 release date.
Johnston was an early pioneer of comic book-to-film adaptations, having directed The Rocketeer in the early ’90s, while also counting bizarro family film Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and the franchise-happy Jurassic Park III among his previous efforts. Oh, and he won an Oscar for Best Visual Affects for Raiders of the Lost Ark. If that’s not sufficient street cred then I don’t know what it.
While the studios squabble over rights to the Watchmen movie, Dave Gibbons has extended a lifeline to frightened fans. Joined by jacket designer extraordinaire Chip Kidd, Gibbons has released Watching the Watchmen, an appropriately titled coffee table tome that creates the experience of watching over the artist’s shoulder.
Alan Moore may have given scrupulous directions for each and every one of the story’s panels, but Gibbon’s touch is equally apparent in this chronicle. Original sketches reveal the Comedian to have had a clown-like red nose, Rorschach donning an inkblot suit, and Dr. Manhattan with a radiating color scheme, while Gibbons’ anecdotes divulge the origins of Nite Owl’s name, the painstaking process of hand-making inkblots, and other fanboy gems.
Whatever the outcome of the movie—cancelled, not cancelled, awesome, disappointing—this anthology is a consuming companion to what may very well be the greatest graphic novel of all time.
Dorkscape 