We the People

On last weekend's What are You Reading? feature at Robot 6, I talked briefly about what should have been an awesome comic. The descendents of Robin Hood, Sinbad, and Zorro taking to streets of a modern city? Sounds great! Unfortunately... not so much.

Homo Aquaticus

Sinbad



Who's volunteering to translate this into English and take my money?

Your 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Picture of the Day



By Alphonse de Neuville.

Your Marvel Classics Comics Cover of the Day



I'm digging through the back issue bins when I go to the store tomorrow.

The news just gets worse...



Look what horror Calvin's uncovered.

Homo Aquaticus



By Lyod Birmingham.

Creature from the Black Lagoon



By Brian Pelletier. The Movie Monsters category at DrawerGeeks is well worth checking out. I'll resist posting more from it and tell you instead that there's an awesome Nosferatu/Spongebob mash-up waiting for you as well as a great Giant Robot piece.

A Week at Sea: I don't think we're going for Play-Doh

Treasure Island



By Edmund Dulac.

Pirates!



Aardman Animations, creators of Wallace & Gromit, are working on an animated pirate movie.

Captain Swing and the Electrical Pirates of Cindery Island



Warren Ellis is working on something for Avatar Press with the word "pirates" in the title. Now you know exactly as much as I do about it. For all I know, these are space pirates, but that would be pretty cool too.

El Llamado del Mar (The Call of the Sea)



Blade II's Leonor Varela is producing and starring in a film about a wish-granting ghost ship. The catch is: you get a wish; the ship gets your soul. Sounds a bit like the Flying Dutchman from the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, but it's actually based on a Chilean legend.

Sinbad movie update



How I wish that was actual art from the Sinbad production instead of just artwork for a graphic novel I won't be able to read, but according to this short interview with director Adam Shankman, the movie they're making sounds promising on its own. There's not a lot of meat to the interview, but Shankman stresses big action and modern effects. That's in spite of the interviewer's suggestion that an homage to Harryhausen-style effects would be appropriate.

Listen, I like Harryhausen a lot too, but I agree with Shankman when he says, "If you go back and watch the Harryhausen movies, they are fun, but they're not good. You know what I mean? They're fun, and they're famous because of that initial work, but the Cyclops looks like Play-Doh. This is a $175 million movie, I think, so I don't think we're going for Play-Doh."

The most interesting part of the interview to me actually has less to do with the Sinbad movie than it does with the way movies are being made now in general. Asked about casting, Shankman says, "Movie stars in and of themselves aren't opening movies anymore. The people need to want to actually see the movies, not just because of who's in them. Amy Pascal's philosophy, and it was with Spider-Man, is [that] Sinbad is the title. That's what is bringing people in, so we don't need to have Will Smith play Sinbad. We don't require that to make this movie." I can't tell you how happy that turn of events makes me.

Your 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Picture of the Day



By Gil Kane.

Shark vs. Octopus



Okay, that looks really frickin cool, but I still contend that the Asylum's Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus can only disappoint. If you really want to see cool footage of a shark fighting an octopus, check out what Calvin discovered.



No wonder he and my son hate those things so much.

Creature from the Black Lagoon Remake Update



No, that's not actual art from this movie either. But they could sure do worse than that as the look of the Creature, huh?

There probably aren't any designs for the remake yet, but director Breck Eisner is trying to get it (and a Flash Gordon movie) pushed through. He says he's going for a "dark adventure tone," but that he wants it to be scary.

"Is this a piña colada which I see before me?"



Terrence Howard is producing and starring in his own version of Macbeth, set on a Caribbean island. Awesome. I'm thinking maybe voodoo priestesses instead of witches?

Captain Kirk vs. Space Pirates

Captain Kirk and the Flight of the Buccaneer

I don't link to Siskoid's Blog of Awesomeness - I mean, Geekery - enough, so let me take a step towards correcting that. After all, a post about Captain Kirk fighting a bunch of space pirates is pretty much tailor-made for me.

Siskoid recently finished up the daunting task of reviewing every single Star Trek TV episode and movie ever made and is following it with reviews of the comics and books, including that Voodoo one I posted about last Spring. It's Must Read Internet.

New Sinbad movie

In other pirate news, looks like there's a new Sinbad movie in the works. According to SCIFI Wire, "The story centers on Sinbad and his crew, who are marooned off the coast of China and embark on a quest to find the lamp of Aladdin."

The image to the left there is Sinbad, but otherwise has nothing to do with the movie. It's from Pierre Alary's upcoming graphic novel that I'm very impatient about.

1001 Arabian Nights: The Adventures of Sinbad

So we're three issues in and I absolutely love the story Dan Wickline is telling in his Sinbad comic. It's only fair to tell you that Wickline's a pal of mine, but if I didn't like Sinbad, I just wouldn't post about it. I'm telling you about Sinbad because I think you're missing out on an awesome story if you're not reading it.

It strikes all the right notes that I'm looking for in a Sinbad story: mystic artifacts, strange creatures, a diverse crew with various supernatural powers, a roguish hero, double-crosses, hidden islands, and lots of beautiful women.

I'm not as fond of the art on the first couple of issues as I am of the writing though. Paolo Pantalena has an angular, stylized look that I'm not sure was right for the story. As soon as I type this I'll think of an exception, but my favorite fantasy comics are usually ones that ground the wildness of the setting in a straightforward style. That's not to say that every fantasy comic should be drawn like Cary Nord - art doesn't have to be realistic to be grounded - but Pantalena's work is unsettling in its exoticness. I was never able to sit back and just enjoy the story. I always felt like I was interpreting his pictures.

Still, the man draws some awesome action sequences. He's dynamic as hell.

But back in the negative column, Pantalena's Sinbad sometimes looks malevolent when I think he's supposed to be cocksure. I saw this same expression on Sinbad a lot in Pantalena's issues.



Sinbad looks like his ideas may have as much to do with carving her up and dressing in her skin as they do with fooling around with her. Rest assured though, he's thinking about fooling around.

As you might expect from a Zenescope comic, the series is pretty bawdy. There are lots of barely dressed women and plenty of leering and groping from the fellas. That's not a complaint - it is what it is and the women give as good as they get in the series - but since most of the stuff I talk about here is fairly kid-friendly, I thought I should mention that this isn't. But even though I wouldn't read it to my six-year-old, it's great fun for me.

I mentioned the diverse crew with supernatural abilities. One of the main ones is Wilhelm, a cursed sailor whom Pantalena draws beautifully. Witness this entrance:



That's a great design. I'd buy a Wilhelm series if Pantalena drew it.

For the most part though, I prefer Tone Rodriguez's art in the third issue. He's got a more realistic style and he also gets Sinbad's grin right.



There's still some danger to that smile, but it doesn't look like he's about to cook and eat you.

Some of my fondness for the third issue may also have to do with the action's really picking up in it. There's nothing wrong with the pacing of the first two, but Sinbad and his crew do spend a lot of time sneaking around and gathering information. It's necessary and Wickline makes it interesting with lots of sword-play and intrigue and secret passages and whatnot; it's just especially nice when the dragons and flying lions show up in #3.

All-in-all it's a cool series. There are more artistic changes coming in future issues and I'd like to see Zenescope get that settled quickly, but Wickline's story is awesome. I'll be sticking with it.

Adventureblog Gallery: Indy, a couple of Hoppers, Wonder Woman, Sinbad, and a space monster

Indy and Marion



By Grant Gould.

Eleven AM

So, I'm reading Stephen King's Duma Key right now and on page 360 I get to this passage where the narrator is visiting an old woman in her room and she's got a print of Edward Hopper's Eleven AM above her bed. King describes it as "an archetype of loneliness waiting patiently at the window for some change, any change." Then, two pages later, he says this:

Over her head, the loneliest girl in the world sat in a chair and looked out the window forever, face hidden by the fall of her hair, naked but for a pair of shoes.

Made me want to see what he was talking about.



By Edward Hopper.

Wonder Woman and Malcolm Magic



By Malcolm's co-creator Lawrence Etherington.

Sinbad



By Pierre Alary.

Giant Two-Headed Space Monsters and the Men Who Kill Them



By Berni Wrightson.

Adventureblog Gallery: Spies, Sinbad, Powerpuff Girls, and a dragon motorsickle

The name is Bond



By Cary Nord.

Spy Girl



By Dub.

Powerpuff Girls



By Sarah Mensinga.

Sinbad



By Pierre Alary.

Dragonbike



Via.

The Awesome List: Burn Notice DVD, cute Indiana Jones, Adam Baldwin in Seattle, Sinbad (the cool one), US comics scenes, and robots vs. animals

It's getting late, so I'm gonna skip the Day Watch review until tomorrow. Here's your Awesome List.

It's true!



As if there was any doubt. June 17. Write it down.

Cute Indy

This may be cuter than I want Indiana Jones to be. Except for that Marion with the monkey. That I want. (Via.)

The hero of Seattle, the man they call Jayne

Adam Baldwin (Firefly, Chuck) will be at Emerald City Comicon. I've never wanted to go to Seattle as badly as I do right now. (Via.)

Dan Wickline's Sinbad



Dan's a pal of mine and Sinbad's a hero I have a lot of affection for, so this is an easy sell. Especially when Dan describes his series this way:

"Sinbad was by far, the world’s worst sailor. He went on seven voyages and never once came home on the same ship ... To me, I don’t think he was Sinbad the Sailor until after the voyages. He learned who he was and what he can do through those journeys. The Sinbad we have here is at his confident, charismatic and creative peak. Why just save the girl when you can do it with style? Why retreat when you can charge? And he will always have a plan, even if it’s made up as he goes along."

Comics scenes

Tom Spurgeon is collating a list of US cities and their comics scenes. "Kind of a first stop on who to contact if you were planning to relocate," Tom says, "or where to go if you were planning a visit, or who to invite if you were having a show, or who you might profile if you were writing a feature article." I've always known the Twin Cities has a great comics scene and now it's documented.

He's also soliciting updates to the list.

Robots vs. crocodiles and gorillas

Lady, That's My Skull has scans from "My Brother Was a Robot," a story in My Greatest Adventure #42. As Sleestak says, "I'm presenting 'My Brother Was A Robot' here not because it is particularly good, the plot is pretty dull actually and is an otherwise forgettable entry into the annals of comic history. What makes this story worth noting at all is that it features a robot beating the crap out of some crocodiles and a gorilla. Sometimes comics just don't get any better than that." Amen, my reptilian brother.

The Awesome List: Cool comics

Marvel and DC for April

Marvel and DC have both released information about their April comics. Here's the stuff I found interesting:

Amazing Spider-Man #555



I'm not a Spider-Man fan and I can take or leave Wolverine, but dang those guys they're fighting look cool.

Hulk vs. Hercules: When Titans Clash



Looks like a continuation of the current "Incredible Herc" storyline currently in The Incredible Hulk comic, but even if it wasn't I'd be into it. Looks like a glorious smash party.

Mighty Avengers #12



I really don't care much about the Secret Invasion of Skrulls, but I do care about "WHERE THE HELL HAS NICK FURY BEEN??"

Secret Invasion #1



That said, I'll give this a flip through and see if it's interesting.

Detective Comics #843



You can't tell it from the cover, but this issue features Zatanna and that's always a draw. Especially Paul Dini-written Zatanna.

Tangent: Superman's Reign #2



I've never been a Green Lantern fan, but I love the design of the Tangent version. I'm not afraid to admit that it's the big ass lantern-on-a-stick. I'm tempted to give this issue a try even though it's part of a storyline/event that I care absolutely nothing about.

New Guardians of the Galaxy

I've really enjoyed Marvel's Annihilation: Conquest mini-series, so I'm glad they're going to keep going with the same characters when it's done. I mean, any comic with a talking space-raccoon is a good comic.

But you know how you could make that comic better? Call it Guardians of the Galaxy and put an alien with a giant fin on his head in it. We're halfway there; I just need to know where the petition I need to sign is to include Yondu.



(I realize that not even Rocket Raccoon is a done deal for the series, but a man has to dream.)

Zenescope? Yes, Zenescope.

I haven't been a big fan of Zenescope's comics so far, but they've got some upcoming projects that sound really cool. One is Dan Wickline's ongoing Sinbad series.



The other is Ken Haeser and Buz Hasson's The Living Corpse. It's not as natural a draw for me as Dan or Sinbad comics in general, but the preview makes it look like fun.



Other comics I'm looking forward to

I forgot to mention it here at the time, but my Blog@ post last week was the Top 10 independent adventure comics I'm looking forward to this year.