Who watches the Watchmen?

Watchmen Speed Graffiti

OK, this is just fun to watch, (plus it is Watchmen-related)...

All in color for a buck!

After the relative success of Watchman the Movie, Dc began re-issuing a number of their touchstone comics initial issues for a buck, with an “After Watchmen What's Next?” banner. These included Identity Crisis, Saga of the Swamp Thing, Kingdom Come and others.

I picked up several of those titles and rather enjoyed several of them. Well, Marvel has (finally) caught on with what a smooth marketing concept this is, and is re-issuing a few of their own recent comics for a buck under the “Marvel’s Greatest Comics” banner.

Now while I personally would argue with parts of this (and some of their choices), but I understand where they are coming from, and certainly applaud their (and DC’s) attempt to interest fans in other comics that they might have missed.

Personally, I think that (as I’ve stated previously) that both companies would sell more comics if they used less expensive (and totally necessary) paper stock and lowered the price point on their respective lines.

Again, the likelihood for that happening, is , well pretty much non-existent, but mostly because it makes way too much sense.

Resistance is Futile

I’m posting this here because, well, it is hysterical.

Deadpool and the Watchmen

Watch this all the way to the end. It goes exactly where you think it is going to go!



It doesn’t get any better than this.

Slice and Dice

So, yeah, I went out last night with my son (who, while he didn’t turn 18 at midnight (10:43 a.m. if I recall correctly) will — in all probability — will be 18 by the time you read this). For comicbook fans, it will be a good deal of fun, seeing Wolvie back up on the big screen, but I’m not sure that a back-story flick of “not quite the X-Men” will completely fly with the general populace.

Still it was good, and should do at least as well as Watchmen, though I don’t expect it to be the blockbuster that was any of the X-Men films. I did a quick, first-impression review of the film, and will certainly do a longer form review which will show up at my column.

In the mean time I do want to wonder if the combination of a bad economy, the early on-line posting of the film, the lack of the other X-Folk, and prequel/back story nature of the film will keep people away; and this odd confluence of events does, will it spell the beginning of the end of superhero/funnybook films. I, for one, hope not.

When Parodies go bad

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m as big a fan of goofy crap as the next guy (yeah, this includes parodies) but this is such a tricky genre, that it can go horribly wrong, so quickly. That’s what I’m assuming happened with this badly-don Watchmen parody.

Sure, I suppose that when it was written, the author and his backer simply assumed that satirizing Watchmen was good enough, only it really takes more than that. This book was such a big swing and a miss that I felt the breeze from here.

Truth of the matter is that, I’ve read some parody comics from Marvel years after the event that they were parodying, and had that same sense of WTF I had when I read this piece of dreck.

Tomorrow, I’ll have more pics of new Spidey stuff I’ve acquired.

We Gotcher Watchman Rite Here!

Yep, you heard me, these days DC Comics is all Watchmen all the time. So much so that the company has gone so far as to re-issue a number of ground-breaking series with a yellow “Beyond Watchmen” logo bar over them.

While I personally that the re-issuing of these non-Watchmen series(that have nothing at all to do with Watchmen) is completely whorish on the part of the company, the fact that the single-shot comics are being issued for only a buck apiece certainly goes a long way to diminish that feeling. So if you were to see any of these comics in your local shop, I highly recommend that you check them out. You may not like the comics themselves, but you just might encourage DC (and other companies) to continue to offer “sampler” comics at a low price to the public to help stimulate the market.

The three books in question that hve been (thus far) been issued are Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson, Swamp Thing by Allan Moore, Stevenph Bissette & John Totleben, and Preacher by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. All of these series were ground-breaking in their own right and all deserve to be sampled by today’s audiences.

So if you never caught these series the first time around, I think that you would do youself a favor by checking them out now. At a buck an issue, you certainly can’t beat the buy-in.

Watchmen are everywhere...

This one is from my buddy Walt, and I thought it was worth re-posting here:

The Watchmen are here!

Well, not so much here, as well, here. Yeah yeah they are out this weekend (and I will be seeing it, but this is not that post), This is more of the Watchmen frenzy that is surrounding the release.

To Wit:



Meanwhile everyone from The Wall St. Journal to The New York Times have already published reviews.

While the Journal shouts “Pow! Bam! 'Watchmen' Batters Public” and tells us:

...watching "Watchmen" is the spiritual equivalent of being whacked on the skull for 163 minutes.

The Times states:

Indeed, the ideal viewer — or reviewer, as the case may be — of the “Watchmen” movie would probably be a mid-’80s college sophomore with a smattering of Nietzsche, an extensive record collection and a comic-book nerd for a roommate. The film’s carefully preserved themes of apocalypse and decay might have proved powerfully unsettling to that anxious undergraduate sitting in his dorm room, listening to “99 Luftballons” and waiting for the world to end or the Berlin Wall to come down.

Me? Well I’ll tell you what I think after I've seen it.

In there mean time there is still this...



And, well, this:

DVD Focus

Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic (2009)

It's fascinating to watch this animated version after the live-action sensory assault on the big screen. The tone is solemn, the figures move slowly -- they're panel-for-panel reproductions of the book in extremely limited animation -- and one actor, Tom Stechschulte, does all the voices, male and female, in an unaffected, almost uninflected style. Yet the colors are dazzling, at least on the Blu-ray disk that arrived a few days ago, and the effect is hypnotic. You not only see clearly but feel strongly, since those colors, words and images all carry emotion, and there's ample time to process it.

Watchmen are everywhere

Apparently the Skrulls weren't the only folk turned into Cows...



Then there is this from PVP Online...



You seriously have to love this stuff.

Who watches the Watchmen?

Well, we do, or rather we will when it hits the big screens in a couple of weeks, in the mean time, we have to do with trailers, on TV and and on the Intertubes, as well as stories like this from The Wall Street Journal

Who Watches the Watchmen?

I’m thinking that it has to be these guys...



Charles Schultz help us all!

Random Funnybook Stuff

First up, I want to apologize to the folks who have been loyally following this Blog, I haven’t been posting as much these days, and well, that is because I’ve been pounding the pavement for some new clients. A couple of my longest running newsletter clients have in-housed their newsletters (while a local publication to which I have been contributing went to a bi-monthly schedule), resulting in a serious financial setback to me, and requiring me to cast about for some new clients.

Hopefully I’ll be back on a more frequent postings as these things shake out.

In the mean time, why don’t you wade through this list of 75 comics that are being optioned for films slated to be released over the next couple of years. Please keep in mind that not all of these films will be made, and (if history is any indication) many of them will seriously suck.

On another funnybook front, it seems that The NY Times Bestseller list apparently doesn’t include graphic albums — which means that not only did you not see the re-release of Watchmen, but you also won’t see Dabel Brothers comic book publishers book; The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle, an original story by Jim Butcher.

In other funnybook news, I attended the National Comicbook convention in NYC this past weekend, and not only met up with old friends (some of which I hadn’t seen in years), but hopefully put some forward movement on a number of funnybook projects that I’ve had under development for much of this year. As we get closer to completion on these deals, I’ll let you all know. The really exciting about this is that while some of them are for print, a couple are intended for the web.

Now I have to go back to work.

Who watches the Watchmen?

I just came across this poster of the upcoming Watchman film. While I, like the rest of you am disturbed by the reports that the film may be held up due to some litigation over the distribution of it, I am ever hopeful that cooler heads (and deep pockets) will prevail, and the film will be out on time.

Beyond that I really have nothing to report, other than to hook you to a site that is comparing the film's trailer to panels from the comic itself, an (from what we can see) it seems that the film is following in the footsteps of the comic. This can only be good.

However, there are currently reports that the ending of the film has been altered from the comic (I can’t imagine why).

Put this firmly into the "might not be true" category of your brains, and then take it with an additional grain of salt. I hesitate to even spread this further because it is unverified, but I think it's worth discussing. And hey, maybe someone who caught the movie might weigh in.

Needless to say, I’m hoping this report is true. In the mean time, I’m loving this Lego Watchman poster.

The Watching has begun

If you have already seen The Dark Knight then you have already seen the trailer for The Watchmen. If you haven’t seen the trailer, or you just wanted to see it again, well, I’ve posted it below.

Oh yeah, as you can tell, Watchmen also made the cover of this week’s Entertainment Weekly, so you might want to rush out and get your copy now. Then you will want to go here and download (to your Itunes) the first animated installment of Watchmen. This half hour installment comes directly from the comic, complete with 3D animation and Dave Gibbon’s art. Interestingly enough, Alan Moore’s name is no where to be seen. Not really surprising as he has repudiated the entire Watchmen film.



Still, it is worth downloading and watching. Me, I can hardly wait for the film.

Knight of the Bat

Well superheroes and superheroines, it it now official, this past weekend Gotham’s Dark Knight dethroned Marvel’s corporate icon. That’s right. Batman’s latest film topped 155 million for its opening weekend, finally toppling Spider-Man 3 from the top of the heap.

This is more than just another superhero blockbuster summer thriller, this is a seminal event in both the lives of the characters as well as in movie making. Let’s stay away from the tragic death of its co-star Heath Ledger for the moment, and look at what we have. This is a roller coaster ride of epic proportions. not just a bad guy who robs a bank and is put down by a costumed vigilante this is a labyrinthine thriller the kind of which that are — generally speaking — reserved for films not so filled with men dressed in spandex.

What makes this film work so well is that not only is this The Batman, but it is also The Joker. Not the cackling Cesar Romero character nor even the (admittedly) more malevolently Jack Nicholson version, but this creep was downright chilling. He was no madman, but a preternaturally calm, and incredibly lucid figure. The film offers no origin for The Joker, preferring to go with the Joker’s own ever-shifting story of who (and what) he is. All the better.

Plus, the best parts of this film are the trailers. It is with this film that not only do we get an extended look at The Spirit, as well as a first look at Watchmen. And what could be cooler than that?

Who watches the Watchmen?

Now I’m as big a fan of Alan Moore’s Watchmen as is anyone, and I’ve been looking forward to the prospect of a Watchman-themed movie for like a decade or two, so when I saw this way-cool link, I thought it was fun, and interesting, and wanted to pass it along to all of you folks.

It seems that Zack Snyder, director of the upcoming movie adaptation of the wildly popular comic, is inviting you to create a advertisement for a fake product — if it’s good enough, it could make its way into the movie.



So, as video is a bit out of my league, I figure I’d turn this over to all of you.

Knock ‘em out!