Once upon a time in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino toyed with bringing Marvel Comics superhero Luke Cage to the screen. This was admittedly early in his career—after he’d directed Reservoir Dogs to critical and commercial acclaim but before he’d even shot the ‘90s-defining Pulp Fiction—and well before our current Marvel Studios glut. Nevertheless, he still gets nostalgic about the project. For instance, while it’s been known he considered Laurence Fishburne to play the unbreakable man, he just revealed that he also thought about Wesley Snipes in the role.
This and more came up during Tarantino’s fascinating conversation on Amy Schumer’s podcast, 3 Girls, 1 Keith. Tarantino came on to discuss his career and his recent Oscar winning work, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, but the conversation eventually turned to one of the most popular genres on screen at the moment: superheroes. This occurred when co-host Keith Robinson brought up Martin Scorsese’s recent comments about Marvel Studios movies being more like theme parks than cinema.
“Generationally
does anyone think he is going to be a big fan of Captain Marvel or Doctor
Strange and Ant-Man vs. the Wasp?” Tarantino laughed while amusingly
renaming one of Marvel’s lesser efforts. “You could’ve guessed THAT would’ve been his reaction.”
However, Tarantino then thought back to his own love for Marvel Comics growing up and how he toyed with adapting Luke Cage back in an era where future Tarantino co-star George Clooney was still building up to his Batman moment.
“There
was a time before all this Marvel shit was coming out,” Tarantino said. “It was
after Reservoir Dogs, it was before Pulp Fiction, and I had
thought about doing Luke Cage. Growing up I was a big comic book collector, and my
two favorite [comic books] were Luke Cage: Hero for Hire, later Luke
Cage: Power Man, and Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu. I also
liked Werewolf by Night, that was a great one, and Tomb
of Dracula was great, but my absolute hero was Luke Cage.”
After
going on to stress that he was the only white guy he knew who collected Luke
Cage comics over all other superheroes, Tarantino noted that this would not
have replaced Pulp Fiction as his second film. Rather it could’ve been his
third movie instead of Jackie Brown. He just couldn’t
settle on casting.
“What
actually dissuaded me from doing it… was my comic geek friends talked me out of
it,” Tarantino explained. “Because I had an idea that Larry Fishburne would’ve
been the perfect guy to play Luke Cage. And I’m talking King of New York era
Larry Fishburne. ‘My name is Jimmy Jump.’ … But All my friends were like, ‘No,
no, listen, it’s got to be Wesley Snipes.’ And I go, ‘Look, I like Wesley
Snipes, but Larry Fishburne is practically Marlon Brando. I think Fish is the
man.’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, but he’d have to get in shape in a big way.
Snipes is that way already!’ And I go, ‘Fuck that! That’s not that important!
Fuck you, you ruined the whole damn thing!’”
That might be true, although we also wonder if the fact Pulp Fiction went on to be a cultural phenomenon, winning the Palme d’Or at its Cannes premiere and going on to earn $214 million at the box office while racking up Tarantino’s first screenplay Oscar, also had a little something to do with him stepping away from comic book movies. Then again, he did follow up Jackie Brown with an unapologetic paean to Kung Fu films, Samurai epics, and Spaghetti Westerns with the Kill Bill saga, and then pivoted to straight grindhouse exploitation via Death Proof.
It is interesting though to wonder how the superhero genre might’ve been affected if Tarantino did a Kill Bill styled epic decades before the likes of Christopher Nolan or then the Marvel assembly line defined it in the 21st century. Then again, we’re very happy to have Jackie Brown in this world, one of Tarantino’s best (and most underrated) films. Snipes, meanwhile, got to star as a Marvel Comics superhero after all when he played Blade, a character spun off from the Tomb of Dracula comics!
No
matter what, it’s good to know that even in the ‘90s, comic book fan casting would
still miss the mark by focusing purely on physical aesthetics instead of talent…
When writer Scott Snyder and artist Greg Capullo were tapped to create a new volume of Batman comics for DC’s New 52 reboot in 2011, they didn’t set out to create a saga that would span almost a decade. With early story arcs like “The Court of Owls” and “Death of the Family,” Snyder and Capullo were just trying to tell the biggest Batman stories they could, the ones they’d always wanted to tell.
Their run, which is regarded today as one of the best in the history of the character, reimagined Batman’s origin story in “Zero Year,” killed the Caped Crusader off in “Endgame,” and brought him back to life in “Superheavy.” Then they sent the Dark Knight to space to fight a cosmic threat from a nightmare multiverse in the 2017 Dark Nights: Metal event, which is getting a Wonder Woman-centric sequel later this year. With a resume like that, it’s no wonder this creative team has become synonymous with “big storytelling.”
As Snyder told us in 2015 ahead of his final arc on Batman, “The truth of the matter is that if you’re going to work on a character like Batman, there are thousands of writers that would kill to get on the book so that they could do their one big Batman story. And if you have one that’s a big Batman story that you care about but you choose to do the relaxing, small story, I feel like you might as well move over and let somebody else take the book and swing for the fence on it.”
The story doesn’t get any bigger than the three-part Batman: Last Knight on Earth, a post-apocalyptic road trip billed as “the last Batman story.” It’s set on a ravaged Earth where most heroes have died — except for the Dark Knight, who has found a way to cheat death (because Batman always wins). The miniseries, which is out now in hardcover, is the conclusion to Snyder and Capullo’s work on Batman and a love letter to almost a decade of storytelling. They even reunited with all-star Batman inker Jonathan Glapion and colorist FCO Plascencia to finish their story.
Den of Geek spoke to Snyder and Capullo at NYCC 2019 ahead of the release of the final issue of Last Knight on Earth about finally bringing their run to an end, why Batman and the Joker are destined to dance forever, the legacy of the Court of Owls, and what they hope readers will take from their time in Gotham.
Batman’s Inferno
In the span of eight years, this creative duo has told every kind of Batman story there is, from action-adventure and horror to science fiction, detective yarn, and mech vs. kaiju disaster tale. But Last Knight on Earth is by far their weirdest Batman story yet. The world is a wasteland covered in desert. On the blood-red sands walk zombies with green power rings that conjure up giant killer babies. The earth is plagued by Speed Force storms — giant, violent tornadoes made up of the distorted bodies of past Flashes that beg Batman for help — that can age you into bones and dust in milliseconds. All around Batman lie memories of the dead.
And then there’s the Joker’s decapitated head in a jar, which narrates the story and acts as the Caped Crusader’s guide through Hell, like Virgil from Dante’s Inferno but much funnier. Together, they travel from Coast City to the underworld to a dystopian Gotham City where Batman makes his last stand against an evil tyrant named Omega, a masked villain who has a connection to Bruce’s past.
The storytelling is absolutely insane, and that’s saying something when it comes to this creative team, who once retired Bruce and replaced him with a mech suit-wearing Jim Gordon. So, how did Snyder come up with this finale for his version of Batman?
“There’s a really interesting natural progression of the character, because this was the story that I thought of as the last story that we would do for years,” Snyder says. “I didn’t come up with it at the end of our run, I came up with it back when we were doing ‘Zero Year,’ the bones of it.”
The comic book industry is known for its resistance to change. Bold, new takes on characters are great for selling first issues but comics always eventually return to the status quo as one creative team leaves and another takes over. Yet, rarely does a creative team actually get to give their version of a character a genuine beginning, middle, and end. Most runs tend to flow into each other.
But after giving his Batman a beginning in “Zero Year,” which follows a younger Bruce Wayne from tragedy to donning the cape and cowl for the first time, Snyder hoped to give him a definitive end.
“It really came from this moment when I saw [Snyder’s Batman predecessor] Grant Morrison at San Diego Comic-Con when we were first starting Batman, and he told me to come up with an origin and a death for our version of Batman that was particular to ours,” Snyder explains. “The death came pretty early too. You can see the bones of it in the story I did for Detective Comics #27 (2014) with Sean Murphy, where Batman sort of figures out a way to always make sure there’s a Bruce Wayne Batman with his final invention, his cloning machine.”
This “cloning machine,” which creates a new Bruce Wayne aged to the moment when he decided to first become a Bat, plays a vital role in Last Knight on Earth. The first issue actually opens with the original Batman’s death in Crime Alley and his rebirth as a younger clone several decades later. Snyder and Capullo use this setup to ask big questions about what it means to be Batman and why the world needs him as a symbol for hope.
“I was thinking about how I wanted Batman to make my kids brave, the way Frank Miller wrote so much to my fears as a kid. The Cold War, urban decay in New York, all that stuff I grew up with here, I felt in his work,” Snyder says of writing a Batman story that would inspire hope in his own children and a new generation of readers.
“What would they be afraid of?” Snyder asks of this new generation. “They’re afraid of shooters. They’re afraid of terrorism and they’re afraid of apocalyptic scenarios that are in the air all the time because of climate change, global dissolution, the whole global community falling apart. I think people have apocalyptic worries right now.”
At a time when DC was pushing darker, grittier takes on heroes both on the page and on the big screen, Snyder and Capullo did something completely different with Batman. Their version isn’t just a symbol meant to inspire fear in evil-doers and the kinds of thugs who would make a child an orphan. Throughout their run, Batman inspires the people of Gotham to be better, to get back up after they’ve been knocked down, to keep fighting. This is a quality usually reserved for “lighter” heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman, but Snyder and Capullo instilled a goodness in Batman that you might not even know was there if all you knew about the character is what you saw in the recent movies.
In Last Knight on Earth, this new, younger Batman faces his toughest challenge yet: a broken world that’s stopped believing. But he walks through Hell for us so that hopefully one day he can show us paradise.
Dance with the Devil in the Pale Moonlight
Last Knight on Earth, like much of their work on Batman, pays tribute to one of the greatest rivalries in comic book history. No great Batman story is complete without a visit from the Clown Prince of Crime, but Snyder and Capullo completely turn that relationship on its head. In a future when virtually all of Batman’s allies and loved ones have died, the Joker becomes the Dark Knight’s only friend.
Despite the fact that the Joker has appeared in many of their stories up to this point, the team keeps finding new ways to explore this relationship. Snyder once described “Death of the Family” as a comedy and “Endgame” as a tragedy. It’s a deadly dance that reaches its conclusion in Last Knight on Earth but not in the way you think.
So why can’t the hero exist without his greatest villain, even after the world has ended?
“They kind of mirror each other in a way, [but] one’s a dark reflection,” Capullo says. “They’re a lot alike in a lot of ways and one of the few things that separate Batman is he knows not to cross the line of killing. Because he could become just as bad as that other guy, because he’s got the same kind of issues, you know? And so he could easily become a Joker.”
Nowhere is the fragile sanctity of Batman’s most important rule — no killing — more apparent than in the villain of the piece, Omega, who is later revealed as an older, heavily scarred, and power-mad Bruce Wayne. Although thought dead after an angry mob under the influence of Lex Luthor rushed the Hall of Justice and murdered the Justice League, this Bruce survived and took over the world as Omega. His ultimate plan is to use Darkseid’s Anti-Life Equation to bend the remaining people of Earth to his will. He believes this is the only way to save humanity from itself.
Snyder, who explored a similar idea with the Batman Who Laughs, a grotesque Jokerized Batman from the Dark Multiverse who killed his entire family and rogues gallery on his Earth, uses Omega to show what would become of the Dark Knight were he to lose himself. As the Joker says in Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s The Killing Joke, it only takes “one bad day.”
“I think for me Joker is always the inhuman opposite of Batman. Whatever Batman is trying to prove, Joker’s proving the opposite,” Snyder says. “When we were doing Batman, Batman was very much about proving that every action matters. He’s trying to get everybody to be inspired to get out and do something good. Joker was always saying, ‘Nothing matters. Everything is empty. There’s no story. It’s just empty existential, inconsequential, nothing.’ And so whatever Batman is trying to do to make himself feel effective, Joker will reverse it. And it’s why I love him as a character. He’s sort of the embodiment of evil in that regard. Whatever you’re most afraid of, he brings to life for you.”
Ironically, the Joker goes through a very different transformation in Last Knight on Earth and ends up helping this new Batman…in his own way. Let’s just say Batman is going to need a bigger cave.
Night of the Owls
The Joker isn’t the only classic villain who gets an encore in Last Knight on Earth. Twisted versions of Scarecrow and Bane haunt an elderly Alfred, while the last remnants of the Earth’s military don masks made of bandages similar to the one worn by Hush. A decrepit Lex Luthor spends his final days inside the Fortress of Solitude trying to bring the Man of Steel back to life.
The Court of Owls, the underground crime organization that ran Gotham from the shadows with an army of undead owl-themed assassins, plays a major role in the book. How could they not? The Court remains one of Snyder and Capullo’s biggest contributions to the Bat mythos. In the years since their introduction in 2011, the Court of Owls has leaped off the page and appeared on TV’s Gotham, the animated movies, and is rumored to be the villain of an upcoming Batman video game.
What is it about the Court of Owls that’s given them such staying power?
“The scariest thing is when the things that you feel most comfortable with attack you,” Snyder says. “I think that’s why I loved Stephen King growing up. He does that over and over with things that are totemically comfortable like your car Christine. Your dog Cujo. Your father Jack in The Shining. It’s always the things, these American icons or these things that you feel safe with, that suddenly turn on you.”
As Batman learned in the first arc of Snyder and Capullo’s run, the Court of Owls had manipulated the events of Gotham City for centuries. Suddenly, The Dark Knight didn’t know his city as well as he thought.
“For Batman, I was thinking what is it that could turn on him? And it’s Gotham itself being like, ‘You don’t know me as well as you thought you did. Everything you thought you knew is just this much and I’m a big mystery,’ Snyder says. “It felt like the kind of horror that I love. So I hope that’s why it sticks. And zombie owl assassins are pretty cool.”
The Court of Owls storyline also led Bruce to some major discoveries about his own past, namely that he possibly had a secret younger brother named Lincoln March, aka Thomas Wayne Jr. Batman never truly solved this mystery, and Snyder has said that not writing a second Lincoln March story is “one of his big regrets.” But it’s possible that the legacy of the first story will live on long enough for another writer to pick up the yarn.
“What he did was brilliant,” Capullo says of Snyder’s writing in that early arc. “For Scott to drop this bomb in there and go, ‘It’s existed for hundreds of years without you knowing a damn thing about it.’ I just got chills just saying it again. It’s genius. I think that’s why it has so much appeal and it makes its way into these other things.”
Snyder and Capullo bring the Court of Owls’ story full circle in Last Knight on Earth. Long after the Gotham they once ruled from the sewers has been reborn in Omega’s image, the Court of Owls is now led by Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon. In this dystopian future, the owl has unexpectedly evolved into the symbol of hope and justice — just another example of how Gotham can still surprise Batman.
Batman Forever
The Court isn’t the only thing that’s changed after eight years of Batman stories. The creators have changed both in how they work as a team and how they approach telling stories.
“It’s funny because Scott started off giving me ridiculous amounts of script for the 24-page story,” Capullo says of working with Snyder in the early days. “Issue one was over 40 pages of script. I’m going, ‘Are you crazy, kid?’ Because I was used to working from phone calls with [Spawn collaborator] Todd [McFarlane], and I’d jot down notes. And I would tell Scott all the time, ‘You don’t get paid by the word, just let me do the heavy lifting.'”
It’s no secret that there was friction between the writer and the artist at first, and they weren’t sure they were going to be able to work together. Snyder was still a relative newcomer to comics in 2011, while Capullo was a veteran who’d started his career at Marvel Comics in the ’80s and moved on to Image for a long run on Spawn in the ’90s. Capullo was used to working under the “Marvel method,” named for the process pioneered by creative pairings like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby or Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, where an artist draws an entire story based on a short summary or notes from the writer. The writer then goes back and adds dialogue to the finished art. This was not how Snyder liked to work. Fortunately, the team learned how to collaborate and Snyder and Capullo even became close friends in the process.
“Finally, he’s gotten it,” Capullo says. “Now the scripts go, ‘Okay, here’s what happens from pages 8 to 24.’ So he’s completely changed. He’s realized this is much easier.”
You can see how this partnership developed from one issue to the next. As Capullo has said previously, the artist feels that their early issues of Batman were a bit too verbose and “a lot of the lettering in the first chapter covered up the art.” But you can see how the team’s approach loosened up in later issues, with the art doing more of the talking, especially in the action-packed and splash-heavy “Zero Year.”
“I don’t even recognize the way I used to write when I look at those old scripts,” Snyder says of his early collaboration with Capullo. “I never do that unless somebody asks anymore. I don’t write full scripts, but I write closer to full script than what I show him. Like I’ll write it page by page to make sure it fits beat by beat. And then I undo the pagination and press send, so that he has more room to decide how to choreograph it. I just don’t want to put too much in so that I’m jamming it, or too little, you know?”
Snyder believes that change is important in order for an artist to grow: “That’s the way it should be. No matter what creative field you are, you should always be changing and evolving and seeing things in a different and hopefully better way.”
Looking back at their time with Batman, there are too many iconic moments to count: Batman trapped in the Court’s labyrinthine underground base, the Joker wearing his own face as a mask, the Caped Crusader’s epic fight with Doctor Death above Gotham City, the Joker toxin attack that turned everyone in Gotham City into a laughing maniac, and the Dark Knight’s mech battle with a giant monster called Bloom.
Snyder’s favorite moment of all? It’s a single page from Batman #50 (2016).
“I think my favorite moment might still be when he came back after being dead and Jim Gordon is Batman at the moment, and [Bruce] comes back in the real Batman costume and he’s like, ‘Hello Jim, who died and made you Batman?'”
But eight years is also a long time. While Snyder recently wrapped up a 39-issue run on Justice League and Capullo took a break from DC to draw a creator-owned book for Image, most of their work between 2011 and 2019 has been tied to Batman. It’s not surprising, then, that both creators have called Last Knight on Earth the last Batman-centric story they’ll work on together.
“I think we both want to do other things,” Capullo says. “It feels good and I think we’re leaving on a high note. I’m grateful that people received what we did, and they can judge it for how they judge it. I just did my best with what [Scott] was giving me, and that’s it, man.”
Next up for the team is Dark Nights: Death Metal, a new event book that looks more insane than anything they’ve attempted before. It’s a dark, horror-tinged story that ties the different eras of DC history into a cosmic battle against the evil goddess Perpetua and the Batman Who Laughs. Batman’s in the story, of course, as the leader of an army of zombies that he controls with a Black Lantern ring, but Death Metal is really a Justice League story that picks up where Snyder’s run left off.
As their time with Batman comes to an end, what do the creators hope readers take away from their eight years of storytelling? What is the message?
“I hope that what people take away from ours is that we tried really hard to make it personal. And for me, what made our Batman personal was the idea that he was less about scaring bad guys into the shadows than inspiring people, good people, to come out into the light and try and do something effective with their lives. He was more a symbol of hope and inspiration,” Snyder says. “I think there’s still a lot of fears, all of these kinds of worries about big cataclysmic disasters. And Batman says, ‘Get out of your house, do something good today.'”
BOOM! Studios, comics publisher behind some of the most acclaimed titles of the last 15 years, announced on Monday that they had agreed to a first look deal with Netflix for the next two years. “We generate 20+ new original series a year and are thrilled to partner with a streamer that is as prolific as we are,” said BOOM!’s CEO and founder, Ross Richie. “BOOM!’s unique partnership model benefits creators by positioning them to be packaged with high-end directors, screenwriters, and producers. We’re thrilled to continue our track record of translating our best-selling award-winning library with the best TV talent in the business but now with the undisputed leader of the new streaming era.”
The deal gives Netflix first crack at developing live action or animated series based on BOOM! Comics like The Spire, Lumberjanes, or Giant Days. “BOOM! characters are innately special, they’re colorful, diverse and varied and their stories have the power to ignite something in all of us,” said Brian Wright, Vice President, Original Series at Netflix. “We can’t wait to bring these stories from the page to the screen to fans in every corner of the world.”
BOOM! previously had a deal with 20th Century Fox, with a number of projects in the pipeline. Lumberjanes, the immensely popular (and terrific) comic from Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, Shannon Watters and others, was in the works, and an adaptation of David Peterson’s Mouse Guard was weeks away from production when Disney, after purchasing 20th Century, canceled the projects. No word on whether Stephenson’s experience with Netflix as She-Ra’s showrunner will help get Lumberjanes made, but one can attempt to speak it into existence.
The company now has James Tynion IV and Erik Donovan’s Memetic in pre-production with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s production team. There are also several more projects in the works around Hollywood, including a Netflix partnership for Cullen Bunn and Jack T. Cole’s The Unsound. And Bunn and Vanessa Del Rey’s The Empty Man is set to be released by 20th Century as a feature this August, though with all the release delays in cinemas, it’s not certain if that date will stick or get pushed. It’s unclear how much of this deal will benefit creators directly – Ritchie and BOOM! President of Development Stephen Christy will executive produce anything that comes of this deal, but individual creators are not called out in the announcement.
Jim Lee, Chief Creative Officer of DC Comics is the very definition of a comics lifer. And as a lifer with an audience and a platform, he’s stepping up to help comic shops that are closed because of COVID-19 stay-at-home orders around the world.
Lee decided as these stay-at-home orders started to roll in that he would draw one sketch a day for 60 days; auction the sketches on eBay; let the auction winners pick the subject of the next sketch; and donate the proceeds to the Book Industry Charitable (BINC) foundation. And we are excited to reveal Lee’s next sketch subject: Grifter and Zealot
Grifter and Zealot are original creations of Lee’s, part of his super team WildC.A.T.S. when he created his own superhero universe for Wildstorm.
The BINC foundation is a 501(c)(3) dedicated to helping bookstores and bookstore employees in need. They are doing some heavy lifting in the COVID crisis, adding comic shops to their portfolio and offering grants to help pay operating expenses for shops who have lost their already thin margins.
Lee’s efforts have raised over $90,000 so far for the BINC foundation, and he’s not the only one helping. DC is backing the art legend up with an additional $250,000 donation, and Image Comics and BOOM! Studios have also committed support. And Lee is roping a ton of friends in as well – Bryan Hitch, Rafael Albuquerque, and Ivan Reis are just some of the artists who are also auctioning art to benefit closed shops.
These efforts are desperately needed. Comic shops are anchors of the real world comic book ecosystem, places where a community that shares a love of the medium and the characters can be developed and nurtured, and where new voices can be shepherded into the medium. And almost all of them are in trouble. Some stores have been able to subsist on internet sales of existing stock, but it’s been several weeks since new issues have been shipped to stores, and there’s no clear end in sight. If you would like to help your shop, check out Comic Shop Locator and give them a call or an email to see what they’re still selling, then order something and have it delivered (via USPS, too – they could use a hand as well).
For more on how you can help your LCS, or for more on what you can read while you’re in semi-lockdown, stick with Den of Geek!
San Diego Comic-Con has been officially canceled. The unsurprising news broke after numerous other pop culture events have been removed from the entertainment calendar over the last few weeks as the coronavirus pandemic continues to run virtually unchecked around the world. This marks the first time in SDCC’s 50 year history that it has been canceled.
“Recognizing that countless attendees save and plan for its conventions each year, and how many exhibitors and stakeholders rely upon its events for a major portion of their livelihood, they had hoped to delay this decision in anticipation that COVID-19 concerns might lessen by summer,” reads a statement on the CCI website. “Continuous monitoring of health advisories and recent statements by the Governor of California have made it clear that it would not be safe to move forward with plans for this year.”
If you’ve already purchased badges, SDCC assures everyone that “individuals who purchased badges for Comic-Con 2020 will have the option to request a refund or transfer their badges to Comic-Con 2021. All 2020 badge holders will receive an email within the next week with instructions on how to request a refund.” Similarly, any hotel reservations made for SDCC 2020 will be canceled and refunded automatically.
“Extraordinary times require extraordinary measures and while we are saddened to take this action, we know it is the right decision,” said David Glanzer, spokesperson for the organization in a statement. “We eagerly look forward to the time when we can all meet again and share in the community we all love and enjoy.”
An email sent to exhibitors promises that there will be some kind of online presence for SDCC 2020, however.
“Information will be forthcoming in the next few weeks regarding the Comic-Con@Home initiatives we have planned for 2020. Currently, we are in the planning stages of our Online Exhibit Hall, our Invited Guest Online Interviews and Panels and some special projects and options that we can’t yet discuss.”
Far more hopefully, they’ve already set the dates for SDCC 2021, which will be held at the San Diego Convention Center from July 22-25, 2021. SDCC parent company CCI also runs Los Angeles’ WonderCon, which would have taken place over Easter Weekend, but was also wisely canceled. WonderCon has similarly been rescheduled for March 26-28, 2021 at the Anaheim Convention Center.
It’s an unfortunate but unavoidable and wise move. The novel coronavirus still hasn’t been contained despite unprecedented social distancing measures that have swept the country over the last 6 weeks. While there are some early and encouraging results in some of the hardest hit regions that social distancing measures are starting to work, the idea of gathering hundreds of thousands of people together for an event on the scale of San Diego Comic-Con remains unthinkable at this time, and may remain so until a vaccine is found.
Stay home, stay safe, and look after each other, and we’ll all be able to enjoy SDCC 2021 together.
Mangamo, a new manga streaming app built by executives from Hulu, Crunchyroll, Netflix, Viz, and others has launched with hundreds of titles and a two month trial, perfect for testing the waters on new books or a new comics format. The app is available on iOS devices initially, and we got a chance to test drive it for you. As the web’s foremost manga connoisseur*, I felt uniquely qualified to give an official opinion.
*I’m definitely not that. I have read and enjoyed a good amount of manga prior to checking out this app, but most of what I’ve read can be classified as “Greatest Hits” – a lot of stuff that was adapted into anime and sent over here on Toonami, for example, as well as the titans of the genre like Akira and Pluto. So actually, I think I’m just the right person to review this: I have a phone, very little background knowledge, very little money to spend, and plenty of time to kill. Let’s read some manga on
THE APP
The user experience on Mangamo is pretty good right out of the gate. The whole point of Mangamo is promotion: to get new books and new concepts in the eyeballs of new readers, and in that, the app is very effective.
When you open the app, new books and new chapters are highlighted at the top, and as you scroll down, books are highlighted by some helpfully specific genres, like “Time Travel” or “Don’t Read This At Night.” The promotional art for each series is, as far as I can tell, extremely effective. There are some striking images that are cropped really effectively to draw readers in.
Once you pick a series, you again get some helpful promo art on the series page. You get the option of choosing the chapter to begin on, or you get brought to the last page you read if you’re continuing a story.
The biggest issue I had were some occasional long load times, which may be explained by the fact that I was using a test build – the final release will likely perform better.
THE READING EXPERIENCE
Once in a book, everything worked great. I was a little worried going into it that they might try and change the scroll to left-right instead of the correct right-left panel flow. Swapping directions feels like the comics equivalent of speaking bad English very loudly in a foreign country – it doesn’t help anyone understand, but it certainly makes you sound like an idiot. Thankfully, they did not. Everything moves in the correct direction. Unless you choose vertical scroll, which is an option, but don’t do that.
To me, the books read beautifully. I am a guided view purist (in that I hate it and don’t use it), and I was happy to discover that it didn’t exist on Mangamo, and that zooming in would still give you the easy ability to scroll around the panel and take in all of the fine detail of the page.
The art looks great, by the way. The best thing that digital comics production did was revolutionize the way colorists practiced their trade, but that revolution obscured how great some of these devices make inks pop. Good manga art looks really good on Mangamo.
The rest of the production quality is suitably professional. A lot of the manga internet is built on fansubs, which is a moral grey area not worth litigating here, but professional localization makes a noticeable difference in the reading experience.
THE SELECTION
The genre listings are exceptionally helpful in choosing what to read, but the most impressive thing about them is that they’re mostly not one-offs. There’s a lot here, even in the limited reviewer access. Even if you’re just looking for high profile stuff like Attack on Titan, you will probably find something you recognize. But the app makes it so easy to try new things, you’ll probably be able to find something you haven’t heard of easily and dig into it.
THE VALUE
Considering how much I read, a two month free trial is a no brainer, even with three other comics streaming services on my phone. And that’s certainly enough time to assess whether you want to pay $4.99 a month to continue on past the trial period. The biggest impediment to a continued subscription is probably the glut of other services out there – I’ve taken to turning some streaming services on and off depending on what my month looks like, and I suspect that’s what I’ll be doing with Mangamo as well. I don’t think I’ll regret it when I am paying for it, though.
The usual gang of idiots at MAD will put MAD Magazine #13 on sale next week and it might be the saddest thing to happen to music since Eminem replaced Marilyn Manson as America’s Worst Nightmare. The issue is called “MAD Mocks Music,” and it is filled with spoofs and comedic cartoons about the esteemed and infallible music industry, bless the very steady rhythms of its heart.
Mad’s had it in, and out, for music since neither of their Musically Mad LP or Mad ‘Twists’ Rock ‘n’ Roll records charted in the late 50s and early 60s. But this isn’t just about moldy oldies, contemporary artists like Billie Eilish are also relegated to scary babysitting duty in the pages of the upcoming issue. Alfred E. Newman’s What Me Worry Band continues to rebuke the Beatles musical progression with a tone-deaf alternative.
Meanwhile, the people at Mad presented us with an exclusive page reveal for the upcoming “MAD Mocks Music” issue. Written by Ian Boothby and Illustrated by Pia Guerra, “Meanwhile” isn’t so much about alternative music as it is about alternatives to music. Fiddlers you have a problem with? They’re the tip of the iceberg, and we’re not talking about the heartbreaking problems of aging Elvis impersonators. Think about busking bagpipers, no matter how good they are at it, they sound like they’re practicing. But one of the panels shows how much foresight David Jones of the King Bees had when he decided not to name himself David Swiss.
You can see the four-paneled exclusive reveal here:
The rest of the issue pokes fun at the whole musical spectrum, with some classic throwbacks offering filler music for new material — some as perennial as whether metal singers grab their groins to remind them what they’re singing about or sneak a quick scratch on the itch of their crab lice. And if you need music festival life hacks, the issue takes a special glee skewering music festivals. This also is personal.
The issue was originally planned to be on-sale the same week as Coachella, but the festival has been delayed until October and MAD is stuck with all these issues. “The show must go on,” they swear, and with all the recent virtual concerts happening, the theme is as relevant as MAD is irreverent.
“Don’t blow your whole wad on Coachella tickets this year-Mad #13 is making (fun of) music for $5.99 (cheap),” reads the official press release. “Laugh at acts you’d never pay to see…from the comfort of your own toilet (no porta-potties necessary)! Sure, we may not have the sad crooning of Thom Yorke, but we could have a hilarious cartoon of him! Enjoy classic Mad music spoofs, plus an all-new Spy vs. Spy, “A Mad Look at…”, and more!”
The bathroom humor in that quote refers to “A MAD Look at…Port o Potties,” which Sergio Aragonés presents as a way to avoid those lines. The issue also gets into investigative music journalism as former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan earns his street cred checking out the hip hop world of Eminem. The issue also contains a flashback to Woodstock, which leads to a bad trip with Lawrence Welk and a whole lotta boys who want to be George. Even Black Spy and Whte Spy cut in on the dancefloor.
“Batman is the only character in the world I didn’t create that I want a shot at,” True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto revealed in a lengthy Instagram post about his interest in tackling the Caped Crusader. “He’s the only piece of geek culture I have an affinity for.”
The novelist and showrunner shared his thoughts on his interpretation of the Dark Knight and how he would approach the DC character were he given the opportunity. The scribe of grim crime shows and Rust Cohle’s nihilistic monologues has a somewhat unsurprising, dark take on Batman that he said deferred from the “man-child who can’t get over his parents’ death” he hates seeing “everywhere — especially in the movies.”
In the post, which is captioned with “Hi, DC👋 DC, Hi 👋 …WILL WORK FOR FREE,” Pizzolatto described his interpretation of Batman as a “Saint [who] turned a life-defining tragedy into the pinnacle of human achievement and the single greatest humanitarian crusade the world has ever known.”
Pizzolatto doesn’t care about the fact that Bruce is incredibly rich and that allows him to lead a crusade against crime, not to mention acquire the medical resources he needs after taking a beating night after night.
“His money doesn’t matter; it’s merely a convenience,” Pizzolatto said. “It actually adds to his heroism: his wealth means he could have done literally ANYTHING else than what he devotes his life to. Batman’s superpower is not money. Batman’s superpower is that he thinks of everything. And he has the strongest will of the species.”
The writer goes on to say that “Batman could credibly beat God” if “he had some time to strategize,” and that he doesn’t believe the Joker could ever pose any real threat to the Dark Knight: “Lex Luthor could be problematic for Batman…but a frail, twiggy man who won’t stop smiling? Dressed like a clown, you say? I cannot imagine any scenario where that takes more than ten minutes.”
Is it possible that Pizzolatto is looking at the match-up between Batman and the Joker a bit too literally? Either way, the writer thinks Batman has a much more allegorical arch-enemy.
“Batman’s no-kill policy exists because Batman’s real and eternal enemy is death. Death is his real enemy,” the writer said. “Batman’s no-kill policy is valid and should always remain. But the policy does not exist because ‘killing makes me as bad as them’ or some kindergarten bullshit. That never held any water.”
Well, that’s certainly an opinion.
Outside of guest-writing an issue of Batman for DC Comics, it’s unlikely Pizzolatto will get a shot at the Caped Crusader until director Matt Reeves has had his turn. Coming up for the writer is Redeemer, an FX crime drama that will reunite him with Matthew McConaughey. He also wrote the screenplay for Universal’s Ghost Army, a movie to be directed by Ben Affleck, who will also star.
Meanwhile, Reeves’ movie, The Batman, was scheduled to be out in 2021, but who knows how that release date will shift now that the coronavirus emergency has shut down the production. But after that movie — and potentially an entire trilogy of Reeves movies — has his theaters, might Pizzolatto get a chance to send the Dark Knight on a trip to Carcosa?
Sony Pictures is looking for a new superhero franchise that has nothing to do with Spider-Man, Venom, or anything in between. So enters One Punch Man, a popular Japanese manga that is about to get the Hollywood big screen treatment. And if you have any doubt of what that means, know that it’s being produced by Avi Arad of Arad Productions and with a screenplay from Scott Rosenberg and Jeff Pinkner.
The announcement, which was broken by Variety, revealed the project is getting the high priority treatment at Sony and Columbia Pictures with the aim of birthing a new franchise that is not based on a Marvel Comics character. The series was created by Japanese artist ONE as a web comic in 2009 before quickly going viral. It entered print in 2012 under Shueisha’s Young Jump Next with illustrations by Yusuke Murata, as well as ONE, before being translated into English in 2015. Yet even before entering Western markets in earnest, it sold 30 million copies in the early 2010s, and then saw its first two English language volumes, published by VIZ Media, appear on the New York Times manga bestsellers list, going on to be nominated for an Eisner and Harvey Award.
One Punch Man follows a superhero named Saitama, who can defeat any opponent with a single punch, hence the name. However, he’s grown bored with criminals that can be so easily dispatched and thus quests not only to defeat an evil that is a worthy opponent and who will offer an actual challenge.
Rosenberg and Pinkner are popular at Sony after penning Venom, which grossed over $850 million worldwide. The press statement also notes they worked on the two new Jumanji movies, which has become one of the most popular family franchises of recent years, albeit 2017’sJumanji: Welcome to the Jungle had eight credited screenwriters, including Community’s Chris McKenna coming up with the body-swapping concept. Other screenplays Rosenberg and Pinkner have attributed between them include High Fidelity, Kangaroo Jack, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Sony’s The Dark Tower adaptation. Their most recent film, Jumanji: The Next Level, which they co-wrote with director Jake Kasdan, grossed $796 million worldwide.
While there is no director attached, one might speculate the success Sony had in Venom and Jumanji with a light, self-deferential tone could be similarly applied to this material.
The sequel to Venom, meanwhile, has been officially retitled Venom: Let There Be Carnage and has been delayed eight months to June 25, 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic. That film was written by Kelly Marcel (Saving Mr. Banks, Fifty Shades of Grey).
As stay-at-home orders started to crash over the world at the end of March, Diamond Comics Distributors announced that it would be suspending shipping of new books. Diamond has been functioning essentially as a monopoly for years, so this move meant, for all intents and purposes, the end of new comics releases, and it’s been that way for a month. But now, DC Comics announced that new comics will be hitting shops on April 28th, and the way they’re doing it could be a long-term shift in how we get the comic books we love.
The new releases are a scaled back list of new titles, not the full list of books one would expect to come from DC on a regular basis. Shipping on the 28th are Laura Marks & Kelley Jones’ Hill House book, Daphne Byrne #4; the final issue of Si Spurrier and Bilquis Evely’s run on The Dreaming; Batman GIANT #4, with a new Batman story from Second Coming/Wonder Twins’ Mark Russell; and reprints of Nightwing #70 (a Joker War prelude) and Batman #89, the first appearance of Punchline.
How they’re being shipped is the shocker, though. Two new companies – Lunar Distribution and UCS Comics Distributors – are going to handle shipping the books to stores (or shop owners’ homes – more on that in a minute). Lunar Distribution will be shipping to shops in the western half of the United States and Canada, while UCS will work with Eastern US/Canada shops. Lunar is owned by DCBS, a massive mail-order comics service. UCS is owned by Midtown Comics, the New York City megachain (at least relative to what we’d normally expect of comic shops), and another shop that does huge business online.
In The Before Time, when leaving the house was common and comics still shipped regularly, retailer criticism of Diamond was fairly standard operating procedure. They would routinely make mistakes in shipments, including shorting shops on their orders and damaging shipments. I don’t think I got my copy of Silver Surfer Black #2 until a month after the last issue came out, for example. And shops were left with no recourse – Diamond was the only game in town, so they had to deal with the distributor if they wanted to keep doing business.
However, now that two other options are available, many shop owners are furious at the idea of change. Brian Hibbs of San Francisco’s Comix Experience has a large post up on Facebook criticizing the move, and it’s been shared and boosted several times. The most relevant criticism is that much of the country remains in lockdown – many shops are not equipped to get books to their customers because many of them are not capable of shifting to mail order. However, shop operations were suspended in a number of states weeks before Diamond ceased distribution, and several already got a head start on mail distribution or other means of getting pull lists to their customers.
Meanwhile, while they’re not currently shipping new books to stores, DC has expanded their digital first offerings. This week sees the expansion of DC’s digital first offerings – the same initiative that gave us an extension of Batman: The Animated Series and the no-longer-surprisingly good video game interstitial Injustice comics. Starting this week, DC is going to be putting the original stories from the 100 Page Giant books into digital solo offerings. We start with Robert Venditti and Paul Pelletier’s Superman: The Man of Tomorrow; followed by two Batman stories (one from Sal Giunta, Jim Lee, and Brad Meltzer, and one from Larry Hama and Mirko Colak); a Wonder Woman story from Amanda Conner, Jimmy Palmiotti and Inaki Miranda; an Aquaman tale from Steve Orlando and Daniel Sampere; a Swamp Thing story by Russell and Marco Santucci; and others. They’re also launching DC Essential Reads, free first tastes of seminal DC stories like Watchmen, Mister Miracle, Crisis on Infinite Earths, or Batman: Hush.
For more on what’s next for the comics industry, COVID or non-COVID related, stick with Den of Geek!
