Whatever Happened to Jim Lee's Watchmen?

At San Diego Comic-Con in 2008, Jim Lee was supposed to unveil a Watchmen jam piece from him and all his studio buddies. The above art is the the only thing I've seen online about it and that was back during summer 2008 here. Lee just did the layout.

Has anyone seen the finished product? WAS it finished?

Either way, this Lee layout is rad. Can't wait for the movie on March 6.

AIM Adventures: Ben & Kiel's new venture

Out of nowhere, Kiel has an idea...

Kiel: Ben, you should get a job just coming up with new franchises for giant media companies to exploit
Ben: Yeah?
Kiel: Example: give me a reimagined Disney property that could inspire brand loyalty across multiple plat forms in the hip, snarky 11-year-olds of the new Millenium
Ben: Peter Pan set in modern day New York City and the Lost Boys are a street gang
Kiel: GOLD!
Kiel: We'll use hip hop in it too
Ben: Obviously
Kiel: That suggestion is why i get a creative executive credit

Like a Virgin: FABLES VOL. 3

As I said over in the first installment of this column, I fancy myself a well-read comics fan, but there's tons of highly praised stuff I just haven't made it to, yet.

So, I've decided to tackle Fables from Vertigo Comics and I'm posting my reactions to each collection here. Watch out for spoiler if you haven't read the books!

This time it's Vol. 3: Storybook Love.


Written by Bill Willingham
Art by Mark Buckingham, Lan Medina, Bryan Talbot and Linda Medley
Inked by Steve Leialoha, Craig Hamilton, Talbot and Medley
Covers by James Jean and Aron Wiesenfeld
Collects Fables #11-#18

What I knew going in (remember: there will be spoilers!):

• Snow White and Bigby Wolf are going to have babies.
• Gapetto is the Adversary/series creator Bill Willingham intended for the Adversary to be Peter Pan before it was discovered that copyright laws in certain places didn't have Pan in the public domain, which is a criteria Willingham uses in his recruiting for the characters in the series.
  
• James Jean is a dope-ass artist.
• I originally bought and read issues #1-15 of the series as they came out and just stopped one day because I was spending too much money and it landed on the chopping block for no good reason.

What I thought as I read:

• Lookit Aron Wiesenfeld doing his cover thang! I dunno why he did the cover for issue #11's standalone story, but he did. He also did the late teens/early 20s covers for Y: The Last Man, too. He's a solid artist I first noticed from his spectacular covers on that anthology book WildStorm!, and you can check out his line art here:

So, when I saw him in Fables, I was tickled and baffled. And both were very welcome feelings. I think this cover may be only one of two for the entire series NOT done by Jean. The first being that Maleev variant for issue #1.

• Zombie farmyard animals? Rad.

• I gotta say, as much as I enjoyed Medina's art in the first volume, his art in this volume's two-issue story about a journalist who thinks the Fables are a community of vampires was top-notch. Great layouts and angles and pacing all over. Wow.
• Did I mention this story is about a journalist who thinks the Fables are a community of VAMPIRES!? Fuck, that's exactly what I meant in my vol. 1 writeup when I said I was excited about the story possibilities this series could present. And seeing a group of the male characters stumbling around in heist fashion to steal any evidence the journalist had is so much fun to watch.
• Seeing Bigby knock Bluebeard down a peg was pretty cathartic considering Bluebeard is kind of a tool. But I wasn't prepared to see BB cry like that - and even more unprepared for how sorry it made me feel for the formerly murderous pirate.

• Forget my crush on plain ol' Beauty - I now have a crush on SLEEPING Beauty:

• Cold, Bluebeard. Yer cold as ICE:

• Tiny patrolmen on mice?! YES!

• The sparring match between Bluebeard and Prince Charming that ran across the bottom of the pages in issue #14 was a little distracting at first, but I didn't mind the switch-up in structure by the end.
• Goldilocks and Bluebeard?! Ew, lah lah!:

• Heroes:

• Not sure I dig the way Buckingham draws Bigby's mouth (or lack of a mouth) under his facial hair. Maybe I'll get used to it...

• Pinocchio made an odd design change between issues #13 and #15 - what's with the square jaw?:

• I just like this panel:

• Fucking hero:

• I like Prince Charming setting up some detective work of his own by hiring the tiny police agents from the farm. Just as I was thinking the guy was a one-note douche character, he pulls some stuff like that.
• Fucking EPIC hero:

See, it's the side battles and arcs like this that really keep me glued to this book. The Snow White and Bigby stuff is usually front and center and then you get smaller (literally smaller, as is the case here) intrigue from sprinkled bits like this. It usually leads to no fat in the series, which I like.

• It's cute to hear Bigby's proclamation of love to Snow White. Following up on the text piece from the end of the first volume, Bigby's explanation that Snow White, no matter all his work to make the fact not true, is his one eternal love...and he's known it for some time now. Genuinely touching stuff and surprising emotional responses from characters I thought I had pegged for sure.
  
• Here's my favorite splash of the series so far, courtesy of Bigby's huff and puff attack against a sniping Goldilocks. You can feel the power in the art:

• Speaking of which, finding out the Bigby's dad is the North Wind is a stellar touch! Looking forward to seeing THAT interaction followed up.
• Oh Snap! Bluebeard vs. Prince Charming? PC comes out on top. Poor Bluebeard.
• As if Goldilocks unloading a rifle into a full-grown Bigby's wolf mouth weren't brutal enough, in comes Snow White with the thwack:
• The following chilling panel reminds me of Brad Pitt in Fight Club whispering "What's that smell."

• And the fight goes on for a few panels. It's really beautiful, frightening survival of the fittest shit going on. The volume is worth a read for those few pages alone.
• Ah-ha! I did NOT know that was how Snow and Bigby got preggers. The poor couple.
• Notice in the standalone backup story from issue #18 that as the tiny adventurer and his brave bird fly back into the Homelands for a miracle to save his people, he tells his bird to fly "straight on 'til morning." Those, of course, are the final words of direction used in "Peter Pan" to explain how to get to Neverland. I dunno how long it was before Willingham decided not to go with Peter as the Adversary, but to get back to the Homelands you had to at least go through Pan's realm, so I'd assume it was still in Willingham's head in issue #18.
• My favorite cover in the collection? Right here:

It's dangerous, soft, stylized, leveled and pink. But here is my choice for second place, which is unfortunate, because I stopped buying the series initially just one issue before it. And you can see this is the collection where James Jean really starts feeling comfortable with his voice on the series' covers. As always, I love his pinks here. And the mood in this cover is just the right mix of noir and elegance for me.

Now on to volume 4...

I saw My Bloody Valentine 3-D!

Please please please, if you can still do it, go and see My Bloody Valentine in 3-D. It's like a roller coaster opened at your local theater and you had no idea. Seriously, when's the last time you could go see a wide-release slasher film in theaters? Jaws 3-D? GO! It's nuts fun. Yell at the screen! Eat some popcorn! Grab the person next to you! Bring 12 friends! Kidnap a baby, raise it to love slasher films, teach it how to master 3-D technology and bring about an army of 3-D movies for future generations in which a character has a pick-axe shoved through their eyeball!!!

And I'm not gonna try and review this beauty. Instead, I want to share with you something I didn't realize when I was going in to the theater:

Tom Atkins is in this motherfucker.



Yeah. Tom Atkins. He's still around and kicking all the shit out of bad guys. In honor of his surprise (to me) role in this film, I now give you the top 8 reasons I love Tom Atkins:

He plays Rehme in


He plays Stan in


He plays Dr. Dan Challis in


He plays Frank McCrae in


He plays Michael Hunsaker in


He plays Detective Ray Cameron in


He plays Nick Castle and (sleeps with Jamie Lee Curtis) in


And, of course, he made my heart happy by playing Sheriff Burke in


Thank you, Tom!

And you, reader, must go and have a good time asap at My Bloody Valentine 3-D. Just look at this picture I had a stranger take of me when I exited the theater with my 3-D specs still on and a bag of Watchmen (!) popcorn:

That's joy on my face.

A few thoughts on that Kryptonite Dunk

So I just got back from watching a pretty lackluster 2009 NBA All Star Game with my buds Kegmeister and Delv, and even though I've several more important things to do, I had to weigh in on Nate Robinson's "Kryptonite Dunk" from last night's installment of the annual Slam Dunk Contest. For anyone not in the know, in last year's competition Orlando Magic Center Dwight Howard took home the prize after donning a Superman outfit and Tomahawking a pretty bad ass jam from damn near the free throw line (Seriously, check it out: he pretty much flew the ball into the hoop.)

This year, Howard upped the ante on the bit with a phone booth transformation before throwing down a dunk on a 12 foot hoop, although the sequel didn't prove quite as popular as the original. Soon after, New York Knicks' 5' 9" point guard Nate Robinson ended up taking the whole show by donning a Kryptonite-green jersey, sneakers and ball and dunking over top of Howard's head, Lex Luthor style. You can read about the jam in the paper or get a comic reader's point of view at Comics Should Be Good. But while the initial impulse for many a fanboy may be to pat themselves on the back because their hobby inspired some famous athletes to get overly theatrical, I had to come out and let everyone know that I just can't get behind praising Robinson's performance.

"Why is that?" you might ask. Simply put...



ROBINSON'S GAME WINNER WASN'T THAT SICK OF A DUNK.

Go ahead and check out the video 'round the 1:15 mark and you'll see what I mean. Sure the idea is cute and all, but even ignoring the fact that Robinson had to leap frog off Howard's back to complete the feet, the actual dunk just falls pretty flat. It's all flash and no follow through. Nobody said, "Holy shit!" when he laid it down. The three of you reading this may argue, "So what? It was a cool idea," but I for one want a dunk, superhero or otherwise, to blow the doors off a joint. Howard did that last year, and no one did it this year despite all the costuming.

Just because I like comics and basketball doesn't mean I have to own a copy of "Steel" and it doesn't mean I have to accept sub-standard dunks because they come in capes. Better luck next year, guys.

And while I'm on the topic of next year, Lebron James' whole "semi-officially throwing his name into the consideration pool for the 2010 Slam Dunk Contest" thing is totally weak. Come on, Lebron. Everyone's been waiting for you to get in on this for like five years, and there's no way you won't be allowed in if you want it. Cowboy the fuck up and just announce you'll be there. Lame.

Like a Virgin: FABLES VOL. 2

As I said over in the first installment of this column, I fancy myself a well-read comics fan, but there's tons of highly praised stuff I just haven't made it to, yet.

So, I've decided to tackle Fables from Vertigo Comics and I'm posting my reactions to each collection here. Watch out for spoiler if you haven't read the books!

This time it's Vol. 2: Animal Farm.

Written by Bill Willingham
Art by Mark Buckingham
Inked by Steve Leialoha
Covers by James Jean
Collects Fables #6-#10

What I knew going in (remember: there will be spoilers!):

• Snow White and Bigby Wolf are going to have babies.
• Gapetto is the Adversary/series creator Bill Willingham intended for the Adversary to be Peter Pan before it was discovered that copyright laws in certain places didn't have Pan in the public domain, which is a criteria Willingham uses in his recruiting for the characters in the series.
  
• James Jean is a dope-ass artist.
• I originally bought and read issues #1-15 of the series as they came out and just stopped one day because I was spending too much money and it landed on the chopping block for no good reason.

What I thought as I read:

• I know Mark Buckingham goes on to become the regular Fables interior artist, so it was good to see his debut stuff here, especially because his rounded art style lends itself well to animals and fantastical creatures and those are exactly the type of characters predominantly seen in this volume. Makes me wonder if Fables was originally going to recruit artists in step with the tone of the stories as the series went on.
• I love how the tone of the story shifts by the end of the first issue thanks to that unexpected beheading. Guh, that was a punch to the stomach.

• And remember how Colin was seen in the background of the first volume a ton? Shit, he's on all the covers of the first volume's single issues trying to hide in the picture. Take a look:
  

He even crashed on Bigby's couch. At the time he seemd to just want to hang in the city, but it's clear here now that he wanted to live in the city because his peers on the farm were going bat-shit crazy.

• I like that Bigby isn't allowed on the farm upstate because of all the terrible shit he's done to the animal characters there. Amnestry or not, they don't want a serial killer in their midst. :)
• That troll thing that shows up is clearly an homage to Kirby art, right? I mean, look at those claws and the Kirby face detail lines.

• How big an asshole is Goldilocks?

• Yum! Bestiality!

• You try and eat Snow White and she'll shoot your ass until you fall off a cliff. Fucking brutal.

• This reminds me of Annette Bening's quick breakdown in American Beauty.

• I enjoyed the discussions about freedom in this volume and adding the philosophies on the subject to the idea that the Fables have been in the human realm for centuries never came off forced or ineffective. If anything, it all added a depth to the plight of the characters and illustrated how trapped they ALL are. Sad stuff.
• And even though I read it in single issues, the final scene of issue #9 still surprised me on this reading!

• And, of course, the shooting lead to the revelation that a Fable's invulnerability is directly linked to their popularity among humans. Snow White being so popular, she was able to shrug off a bullet to the head (though it did take MONTHS of therapy). Immediately it had me calling bullshit, though, cause of the death of Colin, one of the 3 little pigs, earlier in the arc. The 3 Little Pigs is a hugely popular story. So how was he capable of dying? But whatever, I guess his appearance to Snow in a vision after her death explains it well enough. Fables never really die, they just go to a sort of limbo.
• The "characters can't die if their stories are popular" rule also touched on the idea of Peter Pan as the Adversary for me. In Peter Pan, if you tell the fairies in the story that you don't believe in them, they die. But if you clap your hands, they come back to life. The ratio of popularity to death in both instances seem to mirror each other for me, though I also think I'm reaching here.
  
• Just like in the first arc, there's a nice, tidy resolution of all the loose ends as all the characters involved find themselves somewhere they weren't at when the story began. I liked this arc's resolution better than the first arc's and you can tell how comfortable Willingham was becoming with this world of characters.
• And the extras in this baby are rad! I loved it back when TPBs had extras like sketch material for fans. It showed a little somethin' somethin' for those who plunked down the cash for these things. Both Willingham and Jean provide sketches including Wuillingham's character concept images, which are great fun to look at thanks to Willingham's strong art style. It's also neat to see how the characters evolved from his ideas to the final product.
  
• I loved all the pinks in James Jean's covers this time around, and you can tell he's finding a new creativity in these issues thanks to the cover collection in the back of the trade. My favorite from this collection? Issue #10:

Though the wraparound cover to the trade is STUNNING.

And that's that! On to volume 3...

Paragraph Movie Reviews: Slumdog Millionaire

Boy howdy, this wasn't just an awesome movie, it was an incredible feat. It's been some time where I walked away from a film marveling at not necessarily a performance or a scene, but how well constructed it all was and my hat is off to Danny Boyle for one of the best directing jobs I think I've ever seen. This movie is like a perfect stew or a well-assembled machine in the way it takes so many disparate moving parts and matches them up into a final product that just takes your breath away. I haven't seen much praise for any of the individual actors, but that's not because they're not good, it's because they give stellar but unselfish turns and allow themselves to be as much a part of the process as the music or the scenery, but without overwhelming it. The framing sequence and the use of flashbacks is so well thought-out and expertly managed by Boyle and his crew as well as the writers that my eyes never wandered from this remarkably compelling story being told to me both on an intimate human level and a larger scope of a people's plight. The drama, the comedy, the family story, the love story and the cerebral "how did it all work" aspects mesh perfectly. The child actors are phenomenal--among the best I've ever seen. The use of music to complement action sequences and create a mood is not something I usually take note of, but it's impossible not to here, as the score and song choice is top notch. The panoramic view of Mumbai takes your breath away. I have a great deal of difficulty putting my finger on the exact things that makes this movie so standout, but I know I walked away impressed beyond belief, and there's not much higher praise I can give than that. This truly felt like something special.