How did this one pass me by? Well at least this one is more of a teaser than the Bendis and Romita Jr adjectiveless Avengers. Who could this be? And doesn't this team's remit sound very similar to X-Force 'getting the badass shit done that the normal Avengers can't', I'm of course paraphrasing there. Can't quite work out who it is from the silouette, maybe Black Panther? My fiorst thought Spiderman 2099 but surely not?! This'll be kicking off in May with Brubaker writing and Deodato on art duties making it pretty hard to pass up. Damn you Marvel you're winning back my blackened heart.

Link: http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=62262

It's all go in Hollywood at the moment when it comes to hiring and firing on several comic book flicks. According to Ainitcool Stuart Townsend is off Thor and being replaced by Joshua Dallas in the role of Fandral. The official line is this was due to 'creative differences' but there is a rumour circulating that it was because he turned up 6 hours late to a screen test. He's not one of the Warriors Three, he's a very naughty boy.

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Link: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2009/12/matt-fraction.html

Interesting news that Matt Fraction will be taking over the reigns of Thor in 2010, kicking off with a team-up between Thor and Iron Man for Free Comic Book Day with art by John Romita Jr. Seeing as these two characters have been opposed to each other since Thor's return to the (im)mortal coil it seems pretty safe to assume that The Siege will putting all the big players back where they belong, at each other's side.

CLICK IMAGE TO EMBIGGEN

No stranger to Thor, Fraction recently wrote the mini series Age of Thunder which chronicled Thor's Asgardian history but for the ongoing title Fraction will be dealing with the Thor we know now and the issues that arise with a God wandering around the Marvel Universe. For more on Fraction's intentions for his ongoing Thor check out the interview over at CBR.

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Link: http://www.latinoreview.com/news/jessica-alba-is-attached-to-the-insiders-8657

Bit of a different Friday feeling today as of course it's been Thanksgiving in the States so very little comic book news about. On a personal note I'm looking forward to the 10 girls in my work that are dressing in Original series Star Fleet Uniforms for tonight's Christmas party, expect many photos of me pimping with my hareem of Star Trek lovelies.

No stranger to comic book adaptations with Fantastic Four and Sin City under her slinky belt, Jessica Alba is set to star in the movie adaptation of The Insiders according to Latino Review. I don't know a lot about this book as it's Belgian and my European comic book knowledge sucks but is set to improve (more on that in future blogs). From what I can gather Alba will be playing a James Bondesque Colombian spy working for the U.S. infiltrating a crime syndicate and bringing them down form the inside. The title suggests however there may be more than one insider in this story, you heard it here first, or maybe I'm just reading too much into it? This film will see her reconnect with Sin City director Robert Rodriguez who will be acting as producer with JCVD director Mabrouk el Mechri attached to direct.

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Link: http://www.heatvisionblog.com/2009/11/sgt-rock-francis-lawrence-akiva-goldsman-joel-silver.html

Looks like another potential Sgt Rock feature is in the offing. According to the Hollywood Reporter it'll be directed by Francis Lawrence of Constantine and I Am Legend (neither of which I was a big fan of) fame. My exposure to the DC character has been extremely limited, I knew the name but it wasn't until his recent appearance in Wednesday's Comics, where he had his own one page feature each week that I got to know the Sarge. The new film proposes to take Rock from his usual period World War II setting and instead move the story to the distant future. Bad idea. From what I can tell part of the charm of Sgt Rock, created by Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert in 1958, is that he's a no nonsense hardcore military man of his time, a sort of pulp hero in the same vein as Indiana Jones; if he ain't fighting Nazis then what's the point?

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Link: http://erictanart.blogspot.com/

Ok confession time, I don't really know what's coming in the final season of Lost I just wanted an excuse to publish this most awesome poster by stunning artist Eric Tan. The poster is one of 16 that are being put out to celebrate and promote the final season of the now almost legendary tv show. You may remember we've featured his work before here because of the stunning X-Men poster he did. He's one of the guys that works on Pixar stuff and his latest work for Up! blew me away aswell as being hilarious, check it out.

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This was one of the freebies from our recent visit to BICS 2009. Skizz written by Alan Moore and drawn by Jim Baikie was first published in 1983, serialised over a number of 2000AD issues. The main character is Skizz an alien that crash lands on Earth and is helped by a school girl called Roxy. Its set in Birmingham UK which is very appropriate considering I picked up the book at the Birmingham Comic Con and I have lived in Brum for 11 years so have a certain attachment to it. I can confidently say that this definitely helped me along when reading it. It was nice to see that not only was there recognisable land marks in the art but also regional accents in the script.

When I started reading this book I didn't really know how old it was. I should have appreciated that Moore (see what I did there...), as at first I was feeling a little disappointed that all of the characters were utterly familiar. We have all met them all before and they were pretty unoriginal. The odd thing though was that although I felt like that I still wanted to read on. I think this is testament to actually how good Alan Moore's writing is, not only was I hooked but after checking out when it was written it made me think that the reason we are so familiar with these sorts of characters is because of Moore.

The artwork is not really quite to my taste. I didn't hate it but I felt there was a lot of unnecessary detail that confused the page more than it did anything stylistic. I generally like black and white though and after reading a few pages I got in to reading the art work.

On the whole I enjoyed this. Its a quick hit short story that is well told and has a definite end conclusion, even if it was pretty predictable. I wouldn't say rush out and buy this as its definitely showing its age but if you see it for cheap some where and fancy a quick story in between something a bit heavier then do it. I guess its a bit like picking up a cheap DVD from the corner shop although that does read a lot harsher than it sounded in my head.

Some people have far too much time on their hands and all I can say is God Bless 'em. If it wasn't for people like Jason McDonald we wouldn't have this amazing Walking Dead themed Google map with issue by issue annotation. He's taken the time to map out the route taken by the characters in the Robert Kirkman written comic book by the events that happen in each issue but beware it's right up to date with issue #64 so if you're not caught up there could be spoilers.

The stunning brilliance of this effort got me thinking about all the other comic book maps I've come into contact with over the years and just how cool each one has been. Before we had the internet and the commonplace practice of viral marketing comic book maps were bringing a sense of the real world to fantasy locations such as Gotham City and Marvel's superhero packed New York. There's something so appealing about a good map, it helps build the world in your mind giving weight and real structure to places that as comic book fans we all know so well.

Sometimes the map can aid to help easily explain a change in status quo like this promotional map from the 1995 X-Men crossover event the Age of Apocalypse which supposed Professor Xavier died before forming the X-Men allowing alpha mutant Apocalypse to gain control of a world where mutants are the dominant species. This is not the marvel universe we know and love and the events and locations on the map help to demonstrate this whilst also adding that 'need to know factor' to the story. I particularly like the fact that London is the capital of the Human Council, as always good old Blighty stands up to the axis of evil.

CLICK IMAGE TO EMBIGGEN

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Link: http://www.marvel.com/motion_comics

She’s been kidnapped, impersonated and turned into public enemy number one—now Spider Woman wants revenge! Spinning out of New Avengers and Secret Invasion, Spider-Woman #1, from the Eisner-winning, New York Times best-selling team of Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev (Halo: Uprising), begins Jessica Drew’s mission to reclaim her life—but how do the enigmatic Agent Brand and the S.W.O.R.D. agency figure into her plans? Even if Spider-Woman succeeds, can she find a reason to keep going? This issue features covers by Maleev and superstar Alex Ross!

In August, no comic book fan can afford to miss the debut of Marvel’s first ever original motion comic on August 19th, as Spider-Woman hits iTunes! The first episode debuts exclusively on iTunes at a special price of 99 cents for the first two weeks—after this period, all episodes will be $1.99 each. These five episodes of Spider-Woman provide a groundbreaking new look at the Marvel Universe, with art not seen anywhere else! For more information on motion comics please visit Marvel.com.

SPIDER-WOMAN #1 (JUL090552)
Written by BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS
Pencils & 50/50 Cover by ALEX MALEEV
50/50 Cover by ALEX ROSS
Rated T+ …$3.99 for the paper copy!
On-Sale—23/9/09

Hollywood mining comic books for inspiration is not something new, it's been going on for a hell of a long time all the way back to Flash Gordon and the Saturday morning serials of the 1940's. Lately we've seen a boom in comic book adaptations, superhero chic is in and Hollywood exec's have fully embraced the concept purchasing the rights to every comic book and graphic novel they can get their grubby little hands on. In the last couple of weeks though we've heard there will be a Fear Agent movie, The Walking Dead tv show and now a Criminal Macabre movie looks set to hit the big screen.

What do these books all have in common? They're all very different in their approach but all beautifully executed but the main thing is they're all books I am in love with, you can find each one complete on my shelf perfectly preserved. Surely it must be that Hollywood have started spying on me, either that or they've started listening to the Sidekickcast (very unlikely) and they've thought there's a man that knows what he's talking about.

Of course what is more likely is that having exhausted alot of the mainstream books or publishers keeping hold of their properties for their own movie ventures, studios are now looking elsewhere for their comic book fix. Also they seem to have realised that there are only so many capes and tights stories you can tell before the masses get bored of the genre so they're reaching out to the indy creators and taking the most popular ones first.

I'm not going to keep banging on about Fear Agent (you can read that here) or The Walking Dead (you can read that here) but Criminal Macabre is a fantastic book by Steve Niles which follows the drug hazed exploits of paranormal investigator Cal Macdonald. When I say paranormal investigator I mean drunk private dick of the noir variety who due to a nasty near death experience can now see ghouls, ghosts and things that generally go bump in the night which put's him in a certain exclusive niche form of detective work. Steve Niles is not new to this comic book movie adaptation game as his vampire book 30 Day's of Night was translated into a fairly successful movie starring Josh Hartnett back in 2007. It seems as though he may've been courting this particular adaptation right from the start as he often has his close friend and business partner Thomas Jayne (The Punisher, The Mist) pose as Cal Macdonald for the covers to his books, surely a shoe in for the title role in the film. He would certainly get my vote to play Cal, the part requires a man filled with spit and venom being closer to The Last Boy Scout's Joe Hallenbeck than his film noir roots would suggest.

So let's assume for a second that I do have Hollywood's ear, here are my predictions for the next slew of comic book movie/tv adaptations based on what's on my shelf today:

1) Vertigo's Scalped as a HBO TV series. Jason Aaron's thriller on a native american reservation is a perfect candidate for the adaptation treatment and may already be in the offing.

2) Joe Hill's creepy otherworldly horror Locke and Key should definitely get the movie treatment. Will he follow in his father; Stephen King's footsteps and allow his work to be adapted for the big screen.

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