'Watchmen' ski masks? Alan Moore won't be amused

I'm headed over to see a "Watchmen" screening Tuesday and then Wednesday it's on to the press junket at the Four Seasons. It's exciting to see this movie reaching the final leg of its long and tortured marathon to the silver screen and I'm eager to see what Zack Snyder has accomplished with his quest to film the unfilmable movie.

Alan Moore has made it clear that he won't be going to see the film and if you were holding out hope (I know I was) that he might change his mind, well, I think that's just a pipe dream now. Why? Well, this new crush of tie-in merchandise is staggering and each item -- from the doomsday ball-caps and Dr. Manhattan lunch boxes to the coffee mugs, wall pennants and booze flasks -- will be like a sharp jab in the eye to Moore, an iconoclast who loathes American corporate culture and its soul-sapping commercialism.

Seeing the extent of all this stuff made me groan. Anyone who read and loved "Watchmen" as a genre-challenging masterpiece in the 1980s will probably agree that this crass gear feels as tone-appropriate as "Catcher in the Rye" pop tarts. But if you do indulge in this odd retail orgy, well, you can always hide your face afterward -- one of the catalog items is a Rorschach ski mask ...

-- Geoff Boucher

RECENT AND RELATED

The trailer for "Tales of the Black Freighter"

Jackie Earle Haley finds the voice of Rorschach

"Watchmen" will be the "GoodFellas" of cape movies

Zack Snyder's son plays young Rorschach

"Watchmen" producer: Blame Fox

WANT MORE? All "WATCHMEN" coverage at HERO COMPLEX

Photos courtesy of Warner Bros.

 

On the page, one of the most gripping aspects of "Watchmen" was the story-within-a-story of "Tales of the Black Freighter," the gruesome maritime yarn about a sailor watching the world around him tumble into dark madness. "Freighter" brought such story symmetry and symbolism value to "Watchmen" that many people (including Alan Moore) often cite it when they declare the comic-book epic to be simply "unfilmable." "Watchmen" the film hits theaters on March 6, and while the running-time restraints of Hollywood make the secondary tale completely impractical, director Zack Snyder  has been outspoken in his desire stay aboard the "Black Freighter" in some fashion. Here's his solution....

This animated adaptation from Warner Premiere of the grim pirate tale will be sold on DVD ($27.95) and BluRay ($35.99) and hits stores on March 24. "Freighter," which is R-rated, features the voice of Snyder's old "300" buddy, Gerard Butler, as well as Jared Harris ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"). Snyder co-wrote with Alex Tse (the same scripting tandem behind the feature film) while Daniel DelPurgatorio is directing.

(Daniel DelPurgatorio? Wow, a name that evokes both the author of "Robinson Crusoe" and the writings of Dante...that's pretty spot-on for the ethos of "Black Freighter"!)

Welcome to your Tuesday morning edition of Everyday Hero, the roundup of handpicked headlines from across the fanboy universe.

ALAN MOORE SAYS 'BWAH-HA-HA-HA!': Well, not really, but I just love posting this photograph of him  any chance I get and I do suspect that he would express some glee about the ugly corporate feud that has raised doubts about the planned release of "Watchman," the big Warner Bros. adaptation of Moore's epic. I would call Moore and ask him directly, but the last time we spoke he made it quite clear that he was done talking about the film and Hollywood in general because he more or less loathes the film industry. A judge's surprise ruling last week has created the very real possibility that "Watchmen" might not hit theaters in March -- a shocking development but, now that I think about it, when Moore talked to the Hero Complex in September he seemed to have some mystic premonition of this latest development. "Will the film even be coming out? There are these legal problems now, which I find wonderfully ironic. Perhaps it's been cursed from afar, from England. And I can tell you that I will also be spitting venom all over it for months to come." Spooky! Well, the guy does wear metallic talons and worship an ancient Roman snake god, so I wouldn't want to get on his bad side. And what is the latest on the "Watchmen" case? Here's a statement from Warner Bros.:  "We respectfully but vigorously disagree with the Court’s ruling and are exploring all of our appellate options. We continue to believe that Fox’s claims have no merit and that we will ultimately prevail, whether at trial or in the Court of Appeals. We have no plans to move the release date of the film." "Watchmen" has joined the list of truly contentious Hollywood projects. What are some of the other ones? Check out our new photo gallery "Big Hits, Bitter Battles." 

A DIMMER 'TWILIGHT'?: Reporter Michael Cieply (a former colleague here at the Los Angeles Times) has always been a smart and savvy chronicler of the movie industry, and his take on the real story behind the 2008 box-office returns is especially insightful: "What a year for movie openings. I mean, who could forget 'Twilight'? Teenagers screaming for free tickets outside the dual-theater Westwood premiere here. Mayhem in the malls. Girls thirsting for Robert Pattinson. Box-office projections growing bigger and bigger as online vendors sold out theater after theater. It was amazing. When all is said and done, maybe 24 million tickets will be sold to that movie, based on current sales. That makes it almost as big as, what? 'Patch Adams,' the No. 10 movie of 1998. Or roughly the size of 'George of the Jungle,' which placed No. 13 the year before. Or any number of films that are fondly remembered as midsize hits. Looking back, in fact, 2008 may be remembered as the year when Hollywood succeeded in redefining the Big Event. A "movie of the century" — something that made you want to dress up, get in line, and act silly just to see it — used to come along every year or two. The "Star Wars" films had that quality. So did "Titanic," in a quieter, dreamier sort of way. But heart-stopping film events like that have been popping up every few weeks this year.... Even this year’s really big one, "The Dark Knight," was never quite as big as it felt. Clear away the urgent reports about 6 a.m. screenings and Imax-size demand, and you are left, according to an always-sobering tally kept by the Box Office Mojo website, with the 26th-most-popular movie of all time, in terms of tickets sold. A smart, counterintuitive article, and again you can read the rest right here. [New York Times]

A BRIGHTER "TWILIGHT"?: Remember that Will Rogers line about lies, damn lies and statistics? Joal Ryan has a look-on-the-bright-side article compared with that New York Times piece; Ryan points out that, considering its budget, "Twilight" was a bigger hit than "The Dark Knight" (although it ignores the fact that Warner Bros. made a gazillion dollars on all the product and licensing deals for "Dark Knight"): "If only Wall Street had bet on Twilight. Or Hannah Montana. Or Kirk Cameron. With a $167.3-million overall domestic take as of Sunday, per Box Office Mojo, Twilight made more than four times its reported $37-million production budget — the best rate of return on any film in the 2008 Top 10, including 'The Dark Knight.' The Batman epic was a pretty good investment, too, very nearly tripling its gargantuan $185-million budget with a $530.8-million domestic take, Hollywood's second-biggest ever. Still, 'The Dark Knight' was nothing compared to these off-the-charts performers: 'High School Musical 3: Senior Year' ($89.7 million), which grossed about eight times its $11-million budget; the Hannah Montana concert movie, which made about nine times its $7-million budget; and, Cameron's 'Fireproof,' which cost $500,000 to produce, and made $33.1 million — or, more than 60 times its budget." [E! Entertainment News]

'Y'? BECAUSE WE LIKE YOU: One of the more intriguing comics-as-film projects kicking around town is the D.J. Caruso adaptation of Brian K. Vaughn's wry, sublime series "Y: The Last Man." I talked to D.J. a few months back, and he was mightily enthused about the prospects of making the film with his familiar on-screen muse Shia LaBeouf, but in a recent conversation with Edward Douglas it sounds as if the last-man-on-earth tale is presenting the filmmaker with some headaches: "Yeah, it's been a while. I think it's one of those that the source material is fantastic stuff, it's great, but it's a tough one to lick into getting into a screenplay. I've tried to feel like it's a trilogy of movies and I think everyone sort of agrees, but at the same time, just getting the first movie right and getting the right beats and knowing what to put in, it's been really tough. You have great minds like David Goyer and you've got Carl Ellsworth and you've got Brian K. Vaughn, and I'm working with them to just kind of crack it and get it down. And we're almost there. I know it's a slow process, but I think eventually we'll get it. We're going to get it and we'll get it right, but we had a pretty good breakthrough a couple of  weeks ago in the final act, and hopefully we'll get there.... If you're familiar with the source material, there's so much great stuff and he meets so many great characters but it's over the course of a long period of time. When you're telling the story — yes, the fanboys and all the people who love it will go and see it — but if you're just seeing the movie from a filmgoers' perspective and you're not familiar with the source material, you have to make sure you make the movie that they understand and they love, too. Like I said, it's been more difficult than I thought, but we're getting close." [Comingsoon.net]

LOOK, UP IN THE SKY: Here's some consumer news for you fans of the classic Superman cartoons, this from Robert Greenberger's short article: "Warner Home Video is finally releasing their own version of the Superman cartoons produced by Max Fleischer and Dave Fleischer. The 17 classics have been in the public domain and collected repeatedly over the last 20 years. Come April 7, though, the first authorized collection will be released. In addition to the Paramount cartoons, released in 1941 and 1942, the two-disc set will include two extras: 'The Man, The Myth, Superman' and 'First Flight: The Fleischer Superman Series.' The set will retail for $26.99 and if you have never seen these cartoons, they are well worth it." [Comic Mix] If you'd like to see a few snippets from the genius work of the Fleischers on the Man of Steel, there's some video at the bottom of this post. 

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE: Empire magazine has some exclusive photos from Michael Bay's "Transformers 2" and you can see them right here.

ON THIS DATE: Author Lewis Shiner, whose work began in cyber-punk, drifted into magical realism and often deals with the slippery nature of reality and history, celebrates his 58th birthday today. Today is also the 27th birthday of Kristin Kreuk, the Canadian actress who is best known in the role of Lana Lang on "Smallville," but I especially liked her with Miranda Richardson in the wonderfully weird 2001 television movie "Snow White: The Fairest of Them All." So to celebrate, let's avoid all bad apples today.

EXCLUSIVE: The second installment of our three-part interview with Neil Gaiman finds the writer musing on the "British Invasion" in comics, describing his love for "mythology mash-ups" and wondering if maybe he pulled off the impossible with sustained excellence of "The Sandman"

(Read Part One and Part Three)

GB: How would you describe Morpheus, your flawed Lord of Dreams, to someone who was coming to the tale for the first time?

NG: He's a lot like me, only with an immortal's superpowers and no sense of humor of any kind. Hmm. So in fact, he isn't anything like me at all but he does have very messy hair. [Laughs] That was a great point of correspondence between me and the character. He's much paler than I am too. No, really, with the character, it was an idea of trying to take something very literally: What would it be like to live in dreams? A lot of that came out of terror. I was a young writer and had never written anything monthly. I needed a story shape that could take me anywhere because my fear was: What if I run out of stories? So I thought, "I will have somebody who has existed since the dawn of time, so that gives me the entirety of human history to play with for stories."

And I wanted someone who is absolutely and utterly powerful. It's interesting because at the time, John Byrne had just taken over Superman and had announced that he was making Superman less powerful because he had become too powerful and you couldn't write interesting stories about people that were too powerful. That started me thinking, "Well, no, actually you can, because what makes a person interesting or not interesting isn't how powerful they are, but who they are."

GB: There's also the compelling problems that come with that power. Your Morpheus may be able to bend reality to his wishes but he still has to deal with the consequences of his excesses and his relationships.

NG: Which is why I created Dream, this god-like being of immortal power, and then I gave him a family. Most characters in comics simply didn't have any families, and it was something I loved. It was something I loved to write about. When I first came out to America, people told me that in "The Sandman" I created a dysfunctional family, which was not a phrase I had heard before that in England. I talked to people about it, and I realized that what people in America called "a dysfunctional family" was the same thing that we in England referred to as "a family." You didn't see a lot of functional ones. So I gave him a family, the Endless. I gave him Death and Delirium and Desire and Despair and Destiny and Destruction.

GB: It became such an amazing tapestry as the series moved on. There was the feeling of epic fantasy on a scale that wasn't really there in those earliest issues.

NG: At the beginning it was a horror comic. Those first eight issues was a sort of horror comic. After that it became more of, I guess, a fantasy tale, but one that allowed me to go off and write about Shakespeare or history or do a modern-day road trip or really go anywhere I wanted to with an unlimited special effects budget. [Laughs]

GB: I was fascinated when you began plucking the deities of different cultures and putting them together in a sort of mythology mash-up. It was something you would come back to in your non-comics work later with the "American Gods" novel ...

NG: It was something that I had always loved so much about the nature of comic-book universes. Those Marvel and DC heroes all seemed to exist in worlds where you had gods and you had fairies and robots and aliens. It was all there, and there was the potential for this amazing mash-up. All I did was take joy in it and mash it up much, much further. It was all there to be mashed, but nobody had mashed it up just yet in that way.

GB: Well, in Marvel Comics, when Thor and Hercules both ended up in Manhattan, they tended to blend in with the superhero except for their Old Vic accents. Your stories, though, presented the gods as mistrustful tribes forced into the same room.

NG: That's it, yes, the idea of putting them together wasn't something that nobody had done before; it's just that whenever it had been done, they tried to downplay the awkwardness. I wanted to revel in the joy of that awkwardness. It's something I keep coming back to. This wonderful, great-big, post-modern grab bag. It's all up for grabs; it's all metaphor and mythology, and if I can find a kitchen sink, I'm throwing that in too.

For the record, Alan Moore has not softened his view on Hollywood nor its plan to bring his classic graphic novel "Watchmen" to the screen next March.

"I find film in its modern form to be quite bullying," Moore told me during an hour-long phone call from his home in England. "It spoon-feeds us, which has the effect of watering down our collective cultural imagination. It is as if we are freshly hatched birds looking up with our mouths open waiting for Hollywood to feed us more regurgitated worms. The 'Watchmen' film sounds like more regurgitated worms. I for one am sick of worms. Can't we get something else? Perhaps some takeout? Even Chinese worms would be a nice change."

Moore is often described as a recluse but, really, I think it's more precise to say he is simply too busy at his writing desk. "Yes, perhaps I should get out more," he said with a chuckle. In conversation, the 54-year-old iconoclast is everything his longtime readers would expect -- articulate, witty, obstinate and selectively enigmatic. Far from grouchy, he only gets an edge in his voice when he talks about the effect of Hollywood on the comics medium that he so memorably energized in the 1980s with "Saga of the Swamp Thing," "V for Vendetta," "Marvelman" and, of course, "Watchmen," his 1986 masterpiece. The Warner Bros. film version of "Watchmen" is due in theaters in March although the project has encountered some turbulence with a lawsuit filed by 20th Century Fox over who has the rights to the property. Moore has no intention of seeing the film and, in fact, he hints that he has put a magical curse on the entire endeavor.

"Will the film even be coming out? There are these legal problems now, which I find wonderfully ironic. Perhaps it's been cursed from afar, from England. And I can tell you that I will also be spitting venom all over it for months to come."

Moore said all that with more mischievous glee than true malice, but I know it will still pain "Watchmen" director Zack Snyder when he reads it. The director of "300" absolutely adores the work of Moore and has been laboring intensely to bring "Watchmen" to the screen with faithful sophistication. But I don't think there's any way to win Moore over, he simply detests Hollywood. Moore said he has never watched any of the film adaptations of his comics creations (which have included "V for Vendetta," "From Hell," "Constantine" and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen") and that he believes "Watchmen" is "inherently unfilmable." He also rues the effect of Hollywood's siren call on the contemporary comics scene.

"There are three or four companies now that exist for the sole purpose of creating not comics, but storyboards for films. It may be true that the only reason the comic book industry now exists is for this purpose, to create characters for movies, board games and other types of merchandise. Comics are just a sort of pumpkin patch growing franchises that might be profitable for the ailing movie industry."

For those who have wondered what Alan Moore is thinking, not just on the upcoming "Watchmen" movie (only 195 days left!), but "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and other titles, then "The Mindscape of Alan Moore" is probably for you.

We say probably because we haven't seen it.  But we have seen this:

Wow. Do we really want to be inside the mind of Alan Moore?  Could we handle it?  Sites like Comic Book Bin have put out the word that the Shadowsnake Film DVD is coming Sept. 30, and they are excited about it.

The documentary won a special recognition award for creative achievement in documentary filmmaking at the San Francisco World Film Festival.  The film's website is not up yet, but you can be sure it'll get traffic once it's functional.

Those who aren't heavily into comic books may not know him, but just as an interesting individual with different ideas about what we might think are mundane things, Alan Moore is really someone you should learn more about.

-- Jevon Phillips

I just got a copy of "The Darker Mask" in the mail, and I'm really looking forward to checking it out this week when I hop on a flight to Florida.

The book is part of percolating subgenre right now: Comics-inspired tales that tell their stories without pictures. So it's pure prose, but the spirit is out of the four-color cousins with the word balloons. This is hardly a new idea, of course.

"Hellboy: Odd Jobs," an anthology of short stories about Big Red, came out eight years ago, and waaay back in 1990 was "Words Without Pictures" (a hard-to-find book now), which was edited by Steve Niles and had wonderful work in it by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Jon J. Muth others. Those are just two I can see sitting on my bookshelf from where I'm sitting.

Anyway, "The Darker Mask" (edited by Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers) has impressive names attached. Here's a rundown of the book from Tor Books:

Expanding on the concept behind Byron Preiss's Weird Heroes from the 1970s, George R. R. Martin's Wild Card series, and Michael Chabon's McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, The Darker Mask is a collection of original prose stories recalling the derring-do of the beings we call Superheroes and the worlds they fight to save.

Down at Comic-Con International, Paul Levitz told us about a major new print run for the "Watchmen" graphic novel and I see in a short item in the New York Times that it's still going gangbusters:

The film trailer for “Watchmen” is proving to be a considerable boost to sales of the graphic novel the movie is based on. “As far as we can tell from our conversations with the book industry people, there has never been a trailer that did this,” said Paul Levitz, the president and publisher of DC Comics, which has printed 900,000 additional paperback copies of the novel since the trailer began running in mid-July. The book, about a conspiracy to discredit and murder a group of superheroes, was written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, and has been on the best-seller lists of Amazon.com, USA Today and The Washington Post. Mr. Levitz said “Watchmen” would have a print run of more than a million copies this year. Last year it sold about 100,000.

Zack Snyder says he will be happy if his movie is a "three-hour advertisement" for the graphic novel, and after visiting his Vancouver set (and seeing the same movie trailer that you've certainly seen by now) there's no doubt in my mind that the "300" director is intent on remaining absolutely faithful to the story that Moore wrote (and Dave Gibbons drew) more than 20 years ago.

That has me wondering if Moore, who loathes Hollywood types after watching their mistreatment of his printed darlings, will eventually embrace this new project? It's going to be difficult to reel the gifted eccentric back in; Moore swore off Hollywood years ago. 

T.J. Kosinski, one of our talented interns this summer here at The Times, wandered around Comic-Con International a few weeks ago and interviewed some of his favorite comics creators. Here is the first of his guest posts.

"The biggest collection of near-sighted people in the world." That's how the quirky and enigmatic Eddie Campbell summed up the madness and mass of Comic-Con. The Scottish comics creator, best known for the horrific and scratchy art of writer Alan Moore's "From Hell," was somewhat frustrated with his experience at crowded expo. He explained how the convention used to be a small gathering centered on celebrating the medium, but now it's metastasized into “a huge extravaganza of baloney.”

Why put up with it all? Campbell has the newly released "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard," and he was at Comic-Con to promote it. He arrived, though, with plenty of cautious cynicism. "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard" is a “what-if” story that imagines a future where the nephew of Jules Leotard (the famed trapeze performer and creator of the leotard), secretly takes on his uncle’s identity. It’s an adventure that takes place throughout the 19th century and toys with many staple elements of the superhero genre.

Campbell said an inspiration for "Leotard" was a Will Eisner quote about all modern comics finding their prototypes under the tents of circuses. Campbell in the story presents a sideshow act billed as Le Quartette Fantastique with members that parallel a certain well-known Marvel Comics team. With a winking expression, Campbell noted that the main character in "Leotard" lives up to Eisner’s adage: He wears a fake mustache to conceal his true identity, dons a vibrant costume for action and, to the crowd, seems to possess the power of flight. Sounds super doesn't it?

Around this time next year, an exhaustive omnibus of Campbell’s semi-autobiographical "Alec" works will be released by Top Shelf Comix. In addition to out-of-print work from the highly regarded series of graphic novels, Campbell plans to add roughly 40 pages of new material.

Campbell, who is based in Australia, has seen his work yield a film (the 2001 "From Hell," directed by the Hughes brothers, adapted the 572-page book and starred Johnny Depp as the lawman on the trail of Jack the Ripper) and now there is a television project that is even more personal. Campbell is also in talks with Australian television producers to create a program that centers on his daily life, a sort of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" meets "American Splendor" with an Aussie flavor. Although things are far from finalized, the series has been optioned and Campbell seems entertained by the prospect of “Alec” on television.

-- T.J. Kosinski

Artwork from the cover of "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard," courtesy of First Second

Gerard Way, the lead singer of My Chemical Romance and the author of "The Umbrella Academy," is our featured contributor on The Essential Shelf, and this is the final installment of his Top 10 all-time graphic novels. You can find the first installment here and the second one here. Below are Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 on his list:

"Watchmen" by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
This is the first graphic novel I tell people to read if they are slightly unfamiliar with comics, and it is the graphic novel that changed the way I thought about superheroes and mainstream comics.  I often refer to 'Watchmen' as a gateway drug because that’s exactly what I think about it. It’s the one graphic novel that leads you to more cerebral, “outside-thinking” works. In suggesting this first to people, I realized that it actually does help to have an understanding or nostalgia for traditional superhero works, because that’s exactly what it deconstructs.

"The Dark Knight Returns" by Frank Miller
The other work that comes to mind from the '80s that pushed what you thought about traditional superhero comics, specifically Batman. A total deconstruction of the character, altering everything you thought about the character, his supporting cast, and even Superman, who is portrayed as a government tool. This is Batman past 50 years old, at his grittiest, his darkest, and it paved the way for a whole generation of “darker heroes.”

"The Doom Patrol: The Painting That Ate Paris” by Grant Morrison
This is the 2nd collection of Doom Patrol stories by Grant Morrison, and you should definitely pick up the first volume before reading this one, but this is the one where it really cements itself as the first “post modern superhero comic.” There are insane concepts and wild ideas on every page, from sleepwalking super-villains to sentient streets. This was the main influence in starting "The Umbrella Academy" and Grant Morrison is my favorite writer of all time for the sheer volume of ideas on every page, and the wit and style in which he presents them. Way more than deconstruction of the hero, Grant actually loves superheroes and writes with a nostalgia for the Silver Age of comics while at the same time creating something entirely new.

"The Sandman: Preludes And Nocturnes" by Neil Gaiman.

I remember this being the first comic where the best way to describe it was "literary." Drawing upon folklore, mythology, mysticism, and Shakespeare, Neil Gaiman created one of the most original comics of our time, using a very simple concept as a vessel for imaginative and thought-provoking stories. This is the kind of idea and storytelling you are jealous of as a creator, because you will always wish you had dreamed it up.

Thanks Again to Gerard for taking the time to share his favorites with Hero Complex. Check back here for more guest commentary in The Essential Shelf feature.

-- Geoff Boucher

FIRST LOOK: 'Black Freighter' from 'Watchmen' sets sail on March 24

On the page, one of the most gripping aspects of "Watchmen" was the story-within-a-story of "Tales of the Black Freighter," the gruesome maritime yarn about a sailor watching the world around him tumble into dark madness. "Freighter" brought such story symmetry and symbolism value to "Watchmen" that many people (including Alan Moore) often cite it when they declare the comic-book epic to be simply "unfilmable." "Watchmen" the film hits theaters on March 6, and while the running-time restraints of Hollywood make the secondary tale completely impractical, director Zack Snyder  has been outspoken in his desire stay aboard the "Black Freighter" in some fashion. Here's his solution....

This animated adaptation from Warner Premiere of the grim pirate tale will be sold on DVD ($27.95) and BluRay ($35.99) and hits stores on March 24. "Freighter," which is R-rated, features the voice of Snyder's old "300" buddy, Gerard Butler, as well as Jared Harris ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"). Snyder co-wrote with Alex Tse (the same scripting tandem behind the feature film) while Daniel DelPurgatorio is directing.

(Daniel DelPurgatorio? Wow, a name that evokes both the author of "Robinson Crusoe" and the writings of Dante...that's pretty spot-on for the ethos of "Black Freighter"!)

Welcome to your Tuesday morning edition of Everyday Hero, the roundup of handpicked headlines from across the fanboy universe.

ALAN MOORE SAYS 'BWAH-HA-HA-HA!': Well, not really, but I just love posting this photograph of him  any chance I get and I do suspect that he would express some glee about the ugly corporate feud that has raised doubts about the planned release of "Watchman," the big Warner Bros. adaptation of Moore's epic. I would call Moore and ask him directly, but the last time we spoke he made it quite clear that he was done talking about the film and Hollywood in general because he more or less loathes the film industry. A judge's surprise ruling last week has created the very real possibility that "Watchmen" might not hit theaters in March -- a shocking development but, now that I think about it, when Moore talked to the Hero Complex in September he seemed to have some mystic premonition of this latest development. "Will the film even be coming out? There are these legal problems now, which I find wonderfully ironic. Perhaps it's been cursed from afar, from England. And I can tell you that I will also be spitting venom all over it for months to come." Spooky! Well, the guy does wear metallic talons and worship an ancient Roman snake god, so I wouldn't want to get on his bad side. And what is the latest on the "Watchmen" case? Here's a statement from Warner Bros.:  "We respectfully but vigorously disagree with the Court’s ruling and are exploring all of our appellate options. We continue to believe that Fox’s claims have no merit and that we will ultimately prevail, whether at trial or in the Court of Appeals. We have no plans to move the release date of the film." "Watchmen" has joined the list of truly contentious Hollywood projects. What are some of the other ones? Check out our new photo gallery "Big Hits, Bitter Battles." 

A DIMMER 'TWILIGHT'?: Reporter Michael Cieply (a former colleague here at the Los Angeles Times) has always been a smart and savvy chronicler of the movie industry, and his take on the real story behind the 2008 box-office returns is especially insightful: "What a year for movie openings. I mean, who could forget 'Twilight'? Teenagers screaming for free tickets outside the dual-theater Westwood premiere here. Mayhem in the malls. Girls thirsting for Robert Pattinson. Box-office projections growing bigger and bigger as online vendors sold out theater after theater. It was amazing. When all is said and done, maybe 24 million tickets will be sold to that movie, based on current sales. That makes it almost as big as, what? 'Patch Adams,' the No. 10 movie of 1998. Or roughly the size of 'George of the Jungle,' which placed No. 13 the year before. Or any number of films that are fondly remembered as midsize hits. Looking back, in fact, 2008 may be remembered as the year when Hollywood succeeded in redefining the Big Event. A "movie of the century" — something that made you want to dress up, get in line, and act silly just to see it — used to come along every year or two. The "Star Wars" films had that quality. So did "Titanic," in a quieter, dreamier sort of way. But heart-stopping film events like that have been popping up every few weeks this year.... Even this year’s really big one, "The Dark Knight," was never quite as big as it felt. Clear away the urgent reports about 6 a.m. screenings and Imax-size demand, and you are left, according to an always-sobering tally kept by the Box Office Mojo website, with the 26th-most-popular movie of all time, in terms of tickets sold. A smart, counterintuitive article, and again you can read the rest right here. [New York Times]

A BRIGHTER "TWILIGHT"?: Remember that Will Rogers line about lies, damn lies and statistics? Joal Ryan has a look-on-the-bright-side article compared with that New York Times piece; Ryan points out that, considering its budget, "Twilight" was a bigger hit than "The Dark Knight" (although it ignores the fact that Warner Bros. made a gazillion dollars on all the product and licensing deals for "Dark Knight"): "If only Wall Street had bet on Twilight. Or Hannah Montana. Or Kirk Cameron. With a $167.3-million overall domestic take as of Sunday, per Box Office Mojo, Twilight made more than four times its reported $37-million production budget — the best rate of return on any film in the 2008 Top 10, including 'The Dark Knight.' The Batman epic was a pretty good investment, too, very nearly tripling its gargantuan $185-million budget with a $530.8-million domestic take, Hollywood's second-biggest ever. Still, 'The Dark Knight' was nothing compared to these off-the-charts performers: 'High School Musical 3: Senior Year' ($89.7 million), which grossed about eight times its $11-million budget; the Hannah Montana concert movie, which made about nine times its $7-million budget; and, Cameron's 'Fireproof,' which cost $500,000 to produce, and made $33.1 million — or, more than 60 times its budget." [E! Entertainment News]

'Y'? BECAUSE WE LIKE YOU: One of the more intriguing comics-as-film projects kicking around town is the D.J. Caruso adaptation of Brian K. Vaughn's wry, sublime series "Y: The Last Man." I talked to D.J. a few months back, and he was mightily enthused about the prospects of making the film with his familiar on-screen muse Shia LaBeouf, but in a recent conversation with Edward Douglas it sounds as if the last-man-on-earth tale is presenting the filmmaker with some headaches: "Yeah, it's been a while. I think it's one of those that the source material is fantastic stuff, it's great, but it's a tough one to lick into getting into a screenplay. I've tried to feel like it's a trilogy of movies and I think everyone sort of agrees, but at the same time, just getting the first movie right and getting the right beats and knowing what to put in, it's been really tough. You have great minds like David Goyer and you've got Carl Ellsworth and you've got Brian K. Vaughn, and I'm working with them to just kind of crack it and get it down. And we're almost there. I know it's a slow process, but I think eventually we'll get it. We're going to get it and we'll get it right, but we had a pretty good breakthrough a couple of  weeks ago in the final act, and hopefully we'll get there.... If you're familiar with the source material, there's so much great stuff and he meets so many great characters but it's over the course of a long period of time. When you're telling the story — yes, the fanboys and all the people who love it will go and see it — but if you're just seeing the movie from a filmgoers' perspective and you're not familiar with the source material, you have to make sure you make the movie that they understand and they love, too. Like I said, it's been more difficult than I thought, but we're getting close." [Comingsoon.net]

LOOK, UP IN THE SKY: Here's some consumer news for you fans of the classic Superman cartoons, this from Robert Greenberger's short article: "Warner Home Video is finally releasing their own version of the Superman cartoons produced by Max Fleischer and Dave Fleischer. The 17 classics have been in the public domain and collected repeatedly over the last 20 years. Come April 7, though, the first authorized collection will be released. In addition to the Paramount cartoons, released in 1941 and 1942, the two-disc set will include two extras: 'The Man, The Myth, Superman' and 'First Flight: The Fleischer Superman Series.' The set will retail for $26.99 and if you have never seen these cartoons, they are well worth it." [Comic Mix] If you'd like to see a few snippets from the genius work of the Fleischers on the Man of Steel, there's some video at the bottom of this post. 

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE: Empire magazine has some exclusive photos from Michael Bay's "Transformers 2" and you can see them right here.

ON THIS DATE: Author Lewis Shiner, whose work began in cyber-punk, drifted into magical realism and often deals with the slippery nature of reality and history, celebrates his 58th birthday today. Today is also the 27th birthday of Kristin Kreuk, the Canadian actress who is best known in the role of Lana Lang on "Smallville," but I especially liked her with Miranda Richardson in the wonderfully weird 2001 television movie "Snow White: The Fairest of Them All." So to celebrate, let's avoid all bad apples today.

EXCLUSIVE: The second installment of our three-part interview with Neil Gaiman finds the writer musing on the "British Invasion" in comics, describing his love for "mythology mash-ups" and wondering if maybe he pulled off the impossible with sustained excellence of "The Sandman"

(Read Part One and Part Three)

GB: How would you describe Morpheus, your flawed Lord of Dreams, to someone who was coming to the tale for the first time?

NG: He's a lot like me, only with an immortal's superpowers and no sense of humor of any kind. Hmm. So in fact, he isn't anything like me at all but he does have very messy hair. [Laughs] That was a great point of correspondence between me and the character. He's much paler than I am too. No, really, with the character, it was an idea of trying to take something very literally: What would it be like to live in dreams? A lot of that came out of terror. I was a young writer and had never written anything monthly. I needed a story shape that could take me anywhere because my fear was: What if I run out of stories? So I thought, "I will have somebody who has existed since the dawn of time, so that gives me the entirety of human history to play with for stories."

And I wanted someone who is absolutely and utterly powerful. It's interesting because at the time, John Byrne had just taken over Superman and had announced that he was making Superman less powerful because he had become too powerful and you couldn't write interesting stories about people that were too powerful. That started me thinking, "Well, no, actually you can, because what makes a person interesting or not interesting isn't how powerful they are, but who they are."

GB: There's also the compelling problems that come with that power. Your Morpheus may be able to bend reality to his wishes but he still has to deal with the consequences of his excesses and his relationships.

NG: Which is why I created Dream, this god-like being of immortal power, and then I gave him a family. Most characters in comics simply didn't have any families, and it was something I loved. It was something I loved to write about. When I first came out to America, people told me that in "The Sandman" I created a dysfunctional family, which was not a phrase I had heard before that in England. I talked to people about it, and I realized that what people in America called "a dysfunctional family" was the same thing that we in England referred to as "a family." You didn't see a lot of functional ones. So I gave him a family, the Endless. I gave him Death and Delirium and Desire and Despair and Destiny and Destruction.

GB: It became such an amazing tapestry as the series moved on. There was the feeling of epic fantasy on a scale that wasn't really there in those earliest issues.

NG: At the beginning it was a horror comic. Those first eight issues was a sort of horror comic. After that it became more of, I guess, a fantasy tale, but one that allowed me to go off and write about Shakespeare or history or do a modern-day road trip or really go anywhere I wanted to with an unlimited special effects budget. [Laughs]

GB: I was fascinated when you began plucking the deities of different cultures and putting them together in a sort of mythology mash-up. It was something you would come back to in your non-comics work later with the "American Gods" novel ...

NG: It was something that I had always loved so much about the nature of comic-book universes. Those Marvel and DC heroes all seemed to exist in worlds where you had gods and you had fairies and robots and aliens. It was all there, and there was the potential for this amazing mash-up. All I did was take joy in it and mash it up much, much further. It was all there to be mashed, but nobody had mashed it up just yet in that way.

GB: Well, in Marvel Comics, when Thor and Hercules both ended up in Manhattan, they tended to blend in with the superhero except for their Old Vic accents. Your stories, though, presented the gods as mistrustful tribes forced into the same room.

NG: That's it, yes, the idea of putting them together wasn't something that nobody had done before; it's just that whenever it had been done, they tried to downplay the awkwardness. I wanted to revel in the joy of that awkwardness. It's something I keep coming back to. This wonderful, great-big, post-modern grab bag. It's all up for grabs; it's all metaphor and mythology, and if I can find a kitchen sink, I'm throwing that in too.

For the record, Alan Moore has not softened his view on Hollywood nor its plan to bring his classic graphic novel "Watchmen" to the screen next March.

"I find film in its modern form to be quite bullying," Moore told me during an hour-long phone call from his home in England. "It spoon-feeds us, which has the effect of watering down our collective cultural imagination. It is as if we are freshly hatched birds looking up with our mouths open waiting for Hollywood to feed us more regurgitated worms. The 'Watchmen' film sounds like more regurgitated worms. I for one am sick of worms. Can't we get something else? Perhaps some takeout? Even Chinese worms would be a nice change."

Moore is often described as a recluse but, really, I think it's more precise to say he is simply too busy at his writing desk. "Yes, perhaps I should get out more," he said with a chuckle. In conversation, the 54-year-old iconoclast is everything his longtime readers would expect -- articulate, witty, obstinate and selectively enigmatic. Far from grouchy, he only gets an edge in his voice when he talks about the effect of Hollywood on the comics medium that he so memorably energized in the 1980s with "Saga of the Swamp Thing," "V for Vendetta," "Marvelman" and, of course, "Watchmen," his 1986 masterpiece. The Warner Bros. film version of "Watchmen" is due in theaters in March although the project has encountered some turbulence with a lawsuit filed by 20th Century Fox over who has the rights to the property. Moore has no intention of seeing the film and, in fact, he hints that he has put a magical curse on the entire endeavor.

"Will the film even be coming out? There are these legal problems now, which I find wonderfully ironic. Perhaps it's been cursed from afar, from England. And I can tell you that I will also be spitting venom all over it for months to come."

Moore said all that with more mischievous glee than true malice, but I know it will still pain "Watchmen" director Zack Snyder when he reads it. The director of "300" absolutely adores the work of Moore and has been laboring intensely to bring "Watchmen" to the screen with faithful sophistication. But I don't think there's any way to win Moore over, he simply detests Hollywood. Moore said he has never watched any of the film adaptations of his comics creations (which have included "V for Vendetta," "From Hell," "Constantine" and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen") and that he believes "Watchmen" is "inherently unfilmable." He also rues the effect of Hollywood's siren call on the contemporary comics scene.

"There are three or four companies now that exist for the sole purpose of creating not comics, but storyboards for films. It may be true that the only reason the comic book industry now exists is for this purpose, to create characters for movies, board games and other types of merchandise. Comics are just a sort of pumpkin patch growing franchises that might be profitable for the ailing movie industry."

For those who have wondered what Alan Moore is thinking, not just on the upcoming "Watchmen" movie (only 195 days left!), but "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and other titles, then "The Mindscape of Alan Moore" is probably for you.

We say probably because we haven't seen it.  But we have seen this:

Wow. Do we really want to be inside the mind of Alan Moore?  Could we handle it?  Sites like Comic Book Bin have put out the word that the Shadowsnake Film DVD is coming Sept. 30, and they are excited about it.

The documentary won a special recognition award for creative achievement in documentary filmmaking at the San Francisco World Film Festival.  The film's website is not up yet, but you can be sure it'll get traffic once it's functional.

Those who aren't heavily into comic books may not know him, but just as an interesting individual with different ideas about what we might think are mundane things, Alan Moore is really someone you should learn more about.

-- Jevon Phillips

I just got a copy of "The Darker Mask" in the mail, and I'm really looking forward to checking it out this week when I hop on a flight to Florida.

The book is part of percolating subgenre right now: Comics-inspired tales that tell their stories without pictures. So it's pure prose, but the spirit is out of the four-color cousins with the word balloons. This is hardly a new idea, of course.

"Hellboy: Odd Jobs," an anthology of short stories about Big Red, came out eight years ago, and waaay back in 1990 was "Words Without Pictures" (a hard-to-find book now), which was edited by Steve Niles and had wonderful work in it by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Jon J. Muth others. Those are just two I can see sitting on my bookshelf from where I'm sitting.

Anyway, "The Darker Mask" (edited by Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers) has impressive names attached. Here's a rundown of the book from Tor Books:

Expanding on the concept behind Byron Preiss's Weird Heroes from the 1970s, George R. R. Martin's Wild Card series, and Michael Chabon's McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, The Darker Mask is a collection of original prose stories recalling the derring-do of the beings we call Superheroes and the worlds they fight to save.

Down at Comic-Con International, Paul Levitz told us about a major new print run for the "Watchmen" graphic novel and I see in a short item in the New York Times that it's still going gangbusters:

The film trailer for “Watchmen” is proving to be a considerable boost to sales of the graphic novel the movie is based on. “As far as we can tell from our conversations with the book industry people, there has never been a trailer that did this,” said Paul Levitz, the president and publisher of DC Comics, which has printed 900,000 additional paperback copies of the novel since the trailer began running in mid-July. The book, about a conspiracy to discredit and murder a group of superheroes, was written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, and has been on the best-seller lists of Amazon.com, USA Today and The Washington Post. Mr. Levitz said “Watchmen” would have a print run of more than a million copies this year. Last year it sold about 100,000.

Zack Snyder says he will be happy if his movie is a "three-hour advertisement" for the graphic novel, and after visiting his Vancouver set (and seeing the same movie trailer that you've certainly seen by now) there's no doubt in my mind that the "300" director is intent on remaining absolutely faithful to the story that Moore wrote (and Dave Gibbons drew) more than 20 years ago.

That has me wondering if Moore, who loathes Hollywood types after watching their mistreatment of his printed darlings, will eventually embrace this new project? It's going to be difficult to reel the gifted eccentric back in; Moore swore off Hollywood years ago. 

T.J. Kosinski, one of our talented interns this summer here at The Times, wandered around Comic-Con International a few weeks ago and interviewed some of his favorite comics creators. Here is the first of his guest posts.

"The biggest collection of near-sighted people in the world." That's how the quirky and enigmatic Eddie Campbell summed up the madness and mass of Comic-Con. The Scottish comics creator, best known for the horrific and scratchy art of writer Alan Moore's "From Hell," was somewhat frustrated with his experience at crowded expo. He explained how the convention used to be a small gathering centered on celebrating the medium, but now it's metastasized into “a huge extravaganza of baloney.”

Why put up with it all? Campbell has the newly released "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard," and he was at Comic-Con to promote it. He arrived, though, with plenty of cautious cynicism. "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard" is a “what-if” story that imagines a future where the nephew of Jules Leotard (the famed trapeze performer and creator of the leotard), secretly takes on his uncle’s identity. It’s an adventure that takes place throughout the 19th century and toys with many staple elements of the superhero genre.

Campbell said an inspiration for "Leotard" was a Will Eisner quote about all modern comics finding their prototypes under the tents of circuses. Campbell in the story presents a sideshow act billed as Le Quartette Fantastique with members that parallel a certain well-known Marvel Comics team. With a winking expression, Campbell noted that the main character in "Leotard" lives up to Eisner’s adage: He wears a fake mustache to conceal his true identity, dons a vibrant costume for action and, to the crowd, seems to possess the power of flight. Sounds super doesn't it?

Around this time next year, an exhaustive omnibus of Campbell’s semi-autobiographical "Alec" works will be released by Top Shelf Comix. In addition to out-of-print work from the highly regarded series of graphic novels, Campbell plans to add roughly 40 pages of new material.

Campbell, who is based in Australia, has seen his work yield a film (the 2001 "From Hell," directed by the Hughes brothers, adapted the 572-page book and starred Johnny Depp as the lawman on the trail of Jack the Ripper) and now there is a television project that is even more personal. Campbell is also in talks with Australian television producers to create a program that centers on his daily life, a sort of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" meets "American Splendor" with an Aussie flavor. Although things are far from finalized, the series has been optioned and Campbell seems entertained by the prospect of “Alec” on television.

-- T.J. Kosinski

Artwork from the cover of "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard," courtesy of First Second

Gerard Way, the lead singer of My Chemical Romance and the author of "The Umbrella Academy," is our featured contributor on The Essential Shelf, and this is the final installment of his Top 10 all-time graphic novels. You can find the first installment here and the second one here. Below are Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 on his list:

"Watchmen" by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
This is the first graphic novel I tell people to read if they are slightly unfamiliar with comics, and it is the graphic novel that changed the way I thought about superheroes and mainstream comics.  I often refer to 'Watchmen' as a gateway drug because that’s exactly what I think about it. It’s the one graphic novel that leads you to more cerebral, “outside-thinking” works. In suggesting this first to people, I realized that it actually does help to have an understanding or nostalgia for traditional superhero works, because that’s exactly what it deconstructs.

"The Dark Knight Returns" by Frank Miller
The other work that comes to mind from the '80s that pushed what you thought about traditional superhero comics, specifically Batman. A total deconstruction of the character, altering everything you thought about the character, his supporting cast, and even Superman, who is portrayed as a government tool. This is Batman past 50 years old, at his grittiest, his darkest, and it paved the way for a whole generation of “darker heroes.”

"The Doom Patrol: The Painting That Ate Paris” by Grant Morrison
This is the 2nd collection of Doom Patrol stories by Grant Morrison, and you should definitely pick up the first volume before reading this one, but this is the one where it really cements itself as the first “post modern superhero comic.” There are insane concepts and wild ideas on every page, from sleepwalking super-villains to sentient streets. This was the main influence in starting "The Umbrella Academy" and Grant Morrison is my favorite writer of all time for the sheer volume of ideas on every page, and the wit and style in which he presents them. Way more than deconstruction of the hero, Grant actually loves superheroes and writes with a nostalgia for the Silver Age of comics while at the same time creating something entirely new.

"The Sandman: Preludes And Nocturnes" by Neil Gaiman.

I remember this being the first comic where the best way to describe it was "literary." Drawing upon folklore, mythology, mysticism, and Shakespeare, Neil Gaiman created one of the most original comics of our time, using a very simple concept as a vessel for imaginative and thought-provoking stories. This is the kind of idea and storytelling you are jealous of as a creator, because you will always wish you had dreamed it up.

Thanks Again to Gerard for taking the time to share his favorites with Hero Complex. Check back here for more guest commentary in The Essential Shelf feature.

-- Geoff Boucher

'Watchmen,' D.J. Caruso and 'Twilight' in Everyday Hero headlines

Welcome to your Tuesday morning edition of Everyday Hero, the roundup of handpicked headlines from across the fanboy universe.

ALAN MOORE SAYS 'BWAH-HA-HA-HA!': Well, not really, but I just love posting this photograph of him  any chance I get and I do suspect that he would express some glee about the ugly corporate feud that has raised doubts about the planned release of "Watchman," the big Warner Bros. adaptation of Moore's epic. I would call Moore and ask him directly, but the last time we spoke he made it quite clear that he was done talking about the film and Hollywood in general because he more or less loathes the film industry. A judge's surprise ruling last week has created the very real possibility that "Watchmen" might not hit theaters in March -- a shocking development but, now that I think about it, when Moore talked to the Hero Complex in September he seemed to have some mystic premonition of this latest development. "Will the film even be coming out? There are these legal problems now, which I find wonderfully ironic. Perhaps it's been cursed from afar, from England. And I can tell you that I will also be spitting venom all over it for months to come." Spooky! Well, the guy does wear metallic talons and worship an ancient Roman snake god, so I wouldn't want to get on his bad side. And what is the latest on the "Watchmen" case? Here's a statement from Warner Bros.:  "We respectfully but vigorously disagree with the Court’s ruling and are exploring all of our appellate options. We continue to believe that Fox’s claims have no merit and that we will ultimately prevail, whether at trial or in the Court of Appeals. We have no plans to move the release date of the film." "Watchmen" has joined the list of truly contentious Hollywood projects. What are some of the other ones? Check out our new photo gallery "Big Hits, Bitter Battles." 

A DIMMER 'TWILIGHT'?: Reporter Michael Cieply (a former colleague here at the Los Angeles Times) has always been a smart and savvy chronicler of the movie industry, and his take on the real story behind the 2008 box-office returns is especially insightful: "What a year for movie openings. I mean, who could forget 'Twilight'? Teenagers screaming for free tickets outside the dual-theater Westwood premiere here. Mayhem in the malls. Girls thirsting for Robert Pattinson. Box-office projections growing bigger and bigger as online vendors sold out theater after theater. It was amazing. When all is said and done, maybe 24 million tickets will be sold to that movie, based on current sales. That makes it almost as big as, what? 'Patch Adams,' the No. 10 movie of 1998. Or roughly the size of 'George of the Jungle,' which placed No. 13 the year before. Or any number of films that are fondly remembered as midsize hits. Looking back, in fact, 2008 may be remembered as the year when Hollywood succeeded in redefining the Big Event. A "movie of the century" — something that made you want to dress up, get in line, and act silly just to see it — used to come along every year or two. The "Star Wars" films had that quality. So did "Titanic," in a quieter, dreamier sort of way. But heart-stopping film events like that have been popping up every few weeks this year.... Even this year’s really big one, "The Dark Knight," was never quite as big as it felt. Clear away the urgent reports about 6 a.m. screenings and Imax-size demand, and you are left, according to an always-sobering tally kept by the Box Office Mojo website, with the 26th-most-popular movie of all time, in terms of tickets sold. A smart, counterintuitive article, and again you can read the rest right here. [New York Times]

A BRIGHTER "TWILIGHT"?: Remember that Will Rogers line about lies, damn lies and statistics? Joal Ryan has a look-on-the-bright-side article compared with that New York Times piece; Ryan points out that, considering its budget, "Twilight" was a bigger hit than "The Dark Knight" (although it ignores the fact that Warner Bros. made a gazillion dollars on all the product and licensing deals for "Dark Knight"): "If only Wall Street had bet on Twilight. Or Hannah Montana. Or Kirk Cameron. With a $167.3-million overall domestic take as of Sunday, per Box Office Mojo, Twilight made more than four times its reported $37-million production budget — the best rate of return on any film in the 2008 Top 10, including 'The Dark Knight.' The Batman epic was a pretty good investment, too, very nearly tripling its gargantuan $185-million budget with a $530.8-million domestic take, Hollywood's second-biggest ever. Still, 'The Dark Knight' was nothing compared to these off-the-charts performers: 'High School Musical 3: Senior Year' ($89.7 million), which grossed about eight times its $11-million budget; the Hannah Montana concert movie, which made about nine times its $7-million budget; and, Cameron's 'Fireproof,' which cost $500,000 to produce, and made $33.1 million — or, more than 60 times its budget." [E! Entertainment News]

'Y'? BECAUSE WE LIKE YOU: One of the more intriguing comics-as-film projects kicking around town is the D.J. Caruso adaptation of Brian K. Vaughn's wry, sublime series "Y: The Last Man." I talked to D.J. a few months back, and he was mightily enthused about the prospects of making the film with his familiar on-screen muse Shia LaBeouf, but in a recent conversation with Edward Douglas it sounds as if the last-man-on-earth tale is presenting the filmmaker with some headaches: "Yeah, it's been a while. I think it's one of those that the source material is fantastic stuff, it's great, but it's a tough one to lick into getting into a screenplay. I've tried to feel like it's a trilogy of movies and I think everyone sort of agrees, but at the same time, just getting the first movie right and getting the right beats and knowing what to put in, it's been really tough. You have great minds like David Goyer and you've got Carl Ellsworth and you've got Brian K. Vaughn, and I'm working with them to just kind of crack it and get it down. And we're almost there. I know it's a slow process, but I think eventually we'll get it. We're going to get it and we'll get it right, but we had a pretty good breakthrough a couple of  weeks ago in the final act, and hopefully we'll get there.... If you're familiar with the source material, there's so much great stuff and he meets so many great characters but it's over the course of a long period of time. When you're telling the story — yes, the fanboys and all the people who love it will go and see it — but if you're just seeing the movie from a filmgoers' perspective and you're not familiar with the source material, you have to make sure you make the movie that they understand and they love, too. Like I said, it's been more difficult than I thought, but we're getting close." [Comingsoon.net]

LOOK, UP IN THE SKY: Here's some consumer news for you fans of the classic Superman cartoons, this from Robert Greenberger's short article: "Warner Home Video is finally releasing their own version of the Superman cartoons produced by Max Fleischer and Dave Fleischer. The 17 classics have been in the public domain and collected repeatedly over the last 20 years. Come April 7, though, the first authorized collection will be released. In addition to the Paramount cartoons, released in 1941 and 1942, the two-disc set will include two extras: 'The Man, The Myth, Superman' and 'First Flight: The Fleischer Superman Series.' The set will retail for $26.99 and if you have never seen these cartoons, they are well worth it." [Comic Mix] If you'd like to see a few snippets from the genius work of the Fleischers on the Man of Steel, there's some video at the bottom of this post. 

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE: Empire magazine has some exclusive photos from Michael Bay's "Transformers 2" and you can see them right here.

ON THIS DATE: Author Lewis Shiner, whose work began in cyber-punk, drifted into magical realism and often deals with the slippery nature of reality and history, celebrates his 58th birthday today. Today is also the 27th birthday of Kristin Kreuk, the Canadian actress who is best known in the role of Lana Lang on "Smallville," but I especially liked her with Miranda Richardson in the wonderfully weird 2001 television movie "Snow White: The Fairest of Them All." So to celebrate, let's avoid all bad apples today.

EXCLUSIVE: The second installment of our three-part interview with Neil Gaiman finds the writer musing on the "British Invasion" in comics, describing his love for "mythology mash-ups" and wondering if maybe he pulled off the impossible with sustained excellence of "The Sandman"

(Read Part One and Part Three)

GB: How would you describe Morpheus, your flawed Lord of Dreams, to someone who was coming to the tale for the first time?

NG: He's a lot like me, only with an immortal's superpowers and no sense of humor of any kind. Hmm. So in fact, he isn't anything like me at all but he does have very messy hair. [Laughs] That was a great point of correspondence between me and the character. He's much paler than I am too. No, really, with the character, it was an idea of trying to take something very literally: What would it be like to live in dreams? A lot of that came out of terror. I was a young writer and had never written anything monthly. I needed a story shape that could take me anywhere because my fear was: What if I run out of stories? So I thought, "I will have somebody who has existed since the dawn of time, so that gives me the entirety of human history to play with for stories."

And I wanted someone who is absolutely and utterly powerful. It's interesting because at the time, John Byrne had just taken over Superman and had announced that he was making Superman less powerful because he had become too powerful and you couldn't write interesting stories about people that were too powerful. That started me thinking, "Well, no, actually you can, because what makes a person interesting or not interesting isn't how powerful they are, but who they are."

GB: There's also the compelling problems that come with that power. Your Morpheus may be able to bend reality to his wishes but he still has to deal with the consequences of his excesses and his relationships.

NG: Which is why I created Dream, this god-like being of immortal power, and then I gave him a family. Most characters in comics simply didn't have any families, and it was something I loved. It was something I loved to write about. When I first came out to America, people told me that in "The Sandman" I created a dysfunctional family, which was not a phrase I had heard before that in England. I talked to people about it, and I realized that what people in America called "a dysfunctional family" was the same thing that we in England referred to as "a family." You didn't see a lot of functional ones. So I gave him a family, the Endless. I gave him Death and Delirium and Desire and Despair and Destiny and Destruction.

GB: It became such an amazing tapestry as the series moved on. There was the feeling of epic fantasy on a scale that wasn't really there in those earliest issues.

NG: At the beginning it was a horror comic. Those first eight issues was a sort of horror comic. After that it became more of, I guess, a fantasy tale, but one that allowed me to go off and write about Shakespeare or history or do a modern-day road trip or really go anywhere I wanted to with an unlimited special effects budget. [Laughs]

GB: I was fascinated when you began plucking the deities of different cultures and putting them together in a sort of mythology mash-up. It was something you would come back to in your non-comics work later with the "American Gods" novel ...

NG: It was something that I had always loved so much about the nature of comic-book universes. Those Marvel and DC heroes all seemed to exist in worlds where you had gods and you had fairies and robots and aliens. It was all there, and there was the potential for this amazing mash-up. All I did was take joy in it and mash it up much, much further. It was all there to be mashed, but nobody had mashed it up just yet in that way.

GB: Well, in Marvel Comics, when Thor and Hercules both ended up in Manhattan, they tended to blend in with the superhero except for their Old Vic accents. Your stories, though, presented the gods as mistrustful tribes forced into the same room.

NG: That's it, yes, the idea of putting them together wasn't something that nobody had done before; it's just that whenever it had been done, they tried to downplay the awkwardness. I wanted to revel in the joy of that awkwardness. It's something I keep coming back to. This wonderful, great-big, post-modern grab bag. It's all up for grabs; it's all metaphor and mythology, and if I can find a kitchen sink, I'm throwing that in too.

For the record, Alan Moore has not softened his view on Hollywood nor its plan to bring his classic graphic novel "Watchmen" to the screen next March.

"I find film in its modern form to be quite bullying," Moore told me during an hour-long phone call from his home in England. "It spoon-feeds us, which has the effect of watering down our collective cultural imagination. It is as if we are freshly hatched birds looking up with our mouths open waiting for Hollywood to feed us more regurgitated worms. The 'Watchmen' film sounds like more regurgitated worms. I for one am sick of worms. Can't we get something else? Perhaps some takeout? Even Chinese worms would be a nice change."

Moore is often described as a recluse but, really, I think it's more precise to say he is simply too busy at his writing desk. "Yes, perhaps I should get out more," he said with a chuckle. In conversation, the 54-year-old iconoclast is everything his longtime readers would expect -- articulate, witty, obstinate and selectively enigmatic. Far from grouchy, he only gets an edge in his voice when he talks about the effect of Hollywood on the comics medium that he so memorably energized in the 1980s with "Saga of the Swamp Thing," "V for Vendetta," "Marvelman" and, of course, "Watchmen," his 1986 masterpiece. The Warner Bros. film version of "Watchmen" is due in theaters in March although the project has encountered some turbulence with a lawsuit filed by 20th Century Fox over who has the rights to the property. Moore has no intention of seeing the film and, in fact, he hints that he has put a magical curse on the entire endeavor.

"Will the film even be coming out? There are these legal problems now, which I find wonderfully ironic. Perhaps it's been cursed from afar, from England. And I can tell you that I will also be spitting venom all over it for months to come."

Moore said all that with more mischievous glee than true malice, but I know it will still pain "Watchmen" director Zack Snyder when he reads it. The director of "300" absolutely adores the work of Moore and has been laboring intensely to bring "Watchmen" to the screen with faithful sophistication. But I don't think there's any way to win Moore over, he simply detests Hollywood. Moore said he has never watched any of the film adaptations of his comics creations (which have included "V for Vendetta," "From Hell," "Constantine" and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen") and that he believes "Watchmen" is "inherently unfilmable." He also rues the effect of Hollywood's siren call on the contemporary comics scene.

"There are three or four companies now that exist for the sole purpose of creating not comics, but storyboards for films. It may be true that the only reason the comic book industry now exists is for this purpose, to create characters for movies, board games and other types of merchandise. Comics are just a sort of pumpkin patch growing franchises that might be profitable for the ailing movie industry."

For those who have wondered what Alan Moore is thinking, not just on the upcoming "Watchmen" movie (only 195 days left!), but "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and other titles, then "The Mindscape of Alan Moore" is probably for you.

We say probably because we haven't seen it.  But we have seen this:

Wow. Do we really want to be inside the mind of Alan Moore?  Could we handle it?  Sites like Comic Book Bin have put out the word that the Shadowsnake Film DVD is coming Sept. 30, and they are excited about it.

The documentary won a special recognition award for creative achievement in documentary filmmaking at the San Francisco World Film Festival.  The film's website is not up yet, but you can be sure it'll get traffic once it's functional.

Those who aren't heavily into comic books may not know him, but just as an interesting individual with different ideas about what we might think are mundane things, Alan Moore is really someone you should learn more about.

-- Jevon Phillips

I just got a copy of "The Darker Mask" in the mail, and I'm really looking forward to checking it out this week when I hop on a flight to Florida.

The book is part of percolating subgenre right now: Comics-inspired tales that tell their stories without pictures. So it's pure prose, but the spirit is out of the four-color cousins with the word balloons. This is hardly a new idea, of course.

"Hellboy: Odd Jobs," an anthology of short stories about Big Red, came out eight years ago, and waaay back in 1990 was "Words Without Pictures" (a hard-to-find book now), which was edited by Steve Niles and had wonderful work in it by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Jon J. Muth others. Those are just two I can see sitting on my bookshelf from where I'm sitting.

Anyway, "The Darker Mask" (edited by Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers) has impressive names attached. Here's a rundown of the book from Tor Books:

Expanding on the concept behind Byron Preiss's Weird Heroes from the 1970s, George R. R. Martin's Wild Card series, and Michael Chabon's McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, The Darker Mask is a collection of original prose stories recalling the derring-do of the beings we call Superheroes and the worlds they fight to save.

Down at Comic-Con International, Paul Levitz told us about a major new print run for the "Watchmen" graphic novel and I see in a short item in the New York Times that it's still going gangbusters:

The film trailer for “Watchmen” is proving to be a considerable boost to sales of the graphic novel the movie is based on. “As far as we can tell from our conversations with the book industry people, there has never been a trailer that did this,” said Paul Levitz, the president and publisher of DC Comics, which has printed 900,000 additional paperback copies of the novel since the trailer began running in mid-July. The book, about a conspiracy to discredit and murder a group of superheroes, was written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, and has been on the best-seller lists of Amazon.com, USA Today and The Washington Post. Mr. Levitz said “Watchmen” would have a print run of more than a million copies this year. Last year it sold about 100,000.

Zack Snyder says he will be happy if his movie is a "three-hour advertisement" for the graphic novel, and after visiting his Vancouver set (and seeing the same movie trailer that you've certainly seen by now) there's no doubt in my mind that the "300" director is intent on remaining absolutely faithful to the story that Moore wrote (and Dave Gibbons drew) more than 20 years ago.

That has me wondering if Moore, who loathes Hollywood types after watching their mistreatment of his printed darlings, will eventually embrace this new project? It's going to be difficult to reel the gifted eccentric back in; Moore swore off Hollywood years ago. 

T.J. Kosinski, one of our talented interns this summer here at The Times, wandered around Comic-Con International a few weeks ago and interviewed some of his favorite comics creators. Here is the first of his guest posts.

"The biggest collection of near-sighted people in the world." That's how the quirky and enigmatic Eddie Campbell summed up the madness and mass of Comic-Con. The Scottish comics creator, best known for the horrific and scratchy art of writer Alan Moore's "From Hell," was somewhat frustrated with his experience at crowded expo. He explained how the convention used to be a small gathering centered on celebrating the medium, but now it's metastasized into “a huge extravaganza of baloney.”

Why put up with it all? Campbell has the newly released "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard," and he was at Comic-Con to promote it. He arrived, though, with plenty of cautious cynicism. "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard" is a “what-if” story that imagines a future where the nephew of Jules Leotard (the famed trapeze performer and creator of the leotard), secretly takes on his uncle’s identity. It’s an adventure that takes place throughout the 19th century and toys with many staple elements of the superhero genre.

Campbell said an inspiration for "Leotard" was a Will Eisner quote about all modern comics finding their prototypes under the tents of circuses. Campbell in the story presents a sideshow act billed as Le Quartette Fantastique with members that parallel a certain well-known Marvel Comics team. With a winking expression, Campbell noted that the main character in "Leotard" lives up to Eisner’s adage: He wears a fake mustache to conceal his true identity, dons a vibrant costume for action and, to the crowd, seems to possess the power of flight. Sounds super doesn't it?

Around this time next year, an exhaustive omnibus of Campbell’s semi-autobiographical "Alec" works will be released by Top Shelf Comix. In addition to out-of-print work from the highly regarded series of graphic novels, Campbell plans to add roughly 40 pages of new material.

Campbell, who is based in Australia, has seen his work yield a film (the 2001 "From Hell," directed by the Hughes brothers, adapted the 572-page book and starred Johnny Depp as the lawman on the trail of Jack the Ripper) and now there is a television project that is even more personal. Campbell is also in talks with Australian television producers to create a program that centers on his daily life, a sort of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" meets "American Splendor" with an Aussie flavor. Although things are far from finalized, the series has been optioned and Campbell seems entertained by the prospect of “Alec” on television.

-- T.J. Kosinski

Artwork from the cover of "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard," courtesy of First Second

Gerard Way, the lead singer of My Chemical Romance and the author of "The Umbrella Academy," is our featured contributor on The Essential Shelf, and this is the final installment of his Top 10 all-time graphic novels. You can find the first installment here and the second one here. Below are Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 on his list:

"Watchmen" by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
This is the first graphic novel I tell people to read if they are slightly unfamiliar with comics, and it is the graphic novel that changed the way I thought about superheroes and mainstream comics.  I often refer to 'Watchmen' as a gateway drug because that’s exactly what I think about it. It’s the one graphic novel that leads you to more cerebral, “outside-thinking” works. In suggesting this first to people, I realized that it actually does help to have an understanding or nostalgia for traditional superhero works, because that’s exactly what it deconstructs.

"The Dark Knight Returns" by Frank Miller
The other work that comes to mind from the '80s that pushed what you thought about traditional superhero comics, specifically Batman. A total deconstruction of the character, altering everything you thought about the character, his supporting cast, and even Superman, who is portrayed as a government tool. This is Batman past 50 years old, at his grittiest, his darkest, and it paved the way for a whole generation of “darker heroes.”

"The Doom Patrol: The Painting That Ate Paris” by Grant Morrison
This is the 2nd collection of Doom Patrol stories by Grant Morrison, and you should definitely pick up the first volume before reading this one, but this is the one where it really cements itself as the first “post modern superhero comic.” There are insane concepts and wild ideas on every page, from sleepwalking super-villains to sentient streets. This was the main influence in starting "The Umbrella Academy" and Grant Morrison is my favorite writer of all time for the sheer volume of ideas on every page, and the wit and style in which he presents them. Way more than deconstruction of the hero, Grant actually loves superheroes and writes with a nostalgia for the Silver Age of comics while at the same time creating something entirely new.

"The Sandman: Preludes And Nocturnes" by Neil Gaiman.

I remember this being the first comic where the best way to describe it was "literary." Drawing upon folklore, mythology, mysticism, and Shakespeare, Neil Gaiman created one of the most original comics of our time, using a very simple concept as a vessel for imaginative and thought-provoking stories. This is the kind of idea and storytelling you are jealous of as a creator, because you will always wish you had dreamed it up.

Thanks Again to Gerard for taking the time to share his favorites with Hero Complex. Check back here for more guest commentary in The Essential Shelf feature.

-- Geoff Boucher

Neil Gaiman: 'Alan Moore got to be the Beatles. ... I was Gerry and the Pacemakers'

EXCLUSIVE: The second installment of our three-part interview with Neil Gaiman finds the writer musing on the "British Invasion" in comics, describing his love for "mythology mash-ups" and wondering if maybe he pulled off the impossible with sustained excellence of "The Sandman"

(Read Part One and Part Three)

GB: How would you describe Morpheus, your flawed Lord of Dreams, to someone who was coming to the tale for the first time?

NG: He's a lot like me, only with an immortal's superpowers and no sense of humor of any kind. Hmm. So in fact, he isn't anything like me at all but he does have very messy hair. [Laughs] That was a great point of correspondence between me and the character. He's much paler than I am too. No, really, with the character, it was an idea of trying to take something very literally: What would it be like to live in dreams? A lot of that came out of terror. I was a young writer and had never written anything monthly. I needed a story shape that could take me anywhere because my fear was: What if I run out of stories? So I thought, "I will have somebody who has existed since the dawn of time, so that gives me the entirety of human history to play with for stories."

And I wanted someone who is absolutely and utterly powerful. It's interesting because at the time, John Byrne had just taken over Superman and had announced that he was making Superman less powerful because he had become too powerful and you couldn't write interesting stories about people that were too powerful. That started me thinking, "Well, no, actually you can, because what makes a person interesting or not interesting isn't how powerful they are, but who they are."

GB: There's also the compelling problems that come with that power. Your Morpheus may be able to bend reality to his wishes but he still has to deal with the consequences of his excesses and his relationships.

NG: Which is why I created Dream, this god-like being of immortal power, and then I gave him a family. Most characters in comics simply didn't have any families, and it was something I loved. It was something I loved to write about. When I first came out to America, people told me that in "The Sandman" I created a dysfunctional family, which was not a phrase I had heard before that in England. I talked to people about it, and I realized that what people in America called "a dysfunctional family" was the same thing that we in England referred to as "a family." You didn't see a lot of functional ones. So I gave him a family, the Endless. I gave him Death and Delirium and Desire and Despair and Destiny and Destruction.

GB: It became such an amazing tapestry as the series moved on. There was the feeling of epic fantasy on a scale that wasn't really there in those earliest issues.

NG: At the beginning it was a horror comic. Those first eight issues was a sort of horror comic. After that it became more of, I guess, a fantasy tale, but one that allowed me to go off and write about Shakespeare or history or do a modern-day road trip or really go anywhere I wanted to with an unlimited special effects budget. [Laughs]

GB: I was fascinated when you began plucking the deities of different cultures and putting them together in a sort of mythology mash-up. It was something you would come back to in your non-comics work later with the "American Gods" novel ...

NG: It was something that I had always loved so much about the nature of comic-book universes. Those Marvel and DC heroes all seemed to exist in worlds where you had gods and you had fairies and robots and aliens. It was all there, and there was the potential for this amazing mash-up. All I did was take joy in it and mash it up much, much further. It was all there to be mashed, but nobody had mashed it up just yet in that way.

GB: Well, in Marvel Comics, when Thor and Hercules both ended up in Manhattan, they tended to blend in with the superhero except for their Old Vic accents. Your stories, though, presented the gods as mistrustful tribes forced into the same room.

NG: That's it, yes, the idea of putting them together wasn't something that nobody had done before; it's just that whenever it had been done, they tried to downplay the awkwardness. I wanted to revel in the joy of that awkwardness. It's something I keep coming back to. This wonderful, great-big, post-modern grab bag. It's all up for grabs; it's all metaphor and mythology, and if I can find a kitchen sink, I'm throwing that in too.

For the record, Alan Moore has not softened his view on Hollywood nor its plan to bring his classic graphic novel "Watchmen" to the screen next March.

"I find film in its modern form to be quite bullying," Moore told me during an hour-long phone call from his home in England. "It spoon-feeds us, which has the effect of watering down our collective cultural imagination. It is as if we are freshly hatched birds looking up with our mouths open waiting for Hollywood to feed us more regurgitated worms. The 'Watchmen' film sounds like more regurgitated worms. I for one am sick of worms. Can't we get something else? Perhaps some takeout? Even Chinese worms would be a nice change."

Moore is often described as a recluse but, really, I think it's more precise to say he is simply too busy at his writing desk. "Yes, perhaps I should get out more," he said with a chuckle. In conversation, the 54-year-old iconoclast is everything his longtime readers would expect -- articulate, witty, obstinate and selectively enigmatic. Far from grouchy, he only gets an edge in his voice when he talks about the effect of Hollywood on the comics medium that he so memorably energized in the 1980s with "Saga of the Swamp Thing," "V for Vendetta," "Marvelman" and, of course, "Watchmen," his 1986 masterpiece. The Warner Bros. film version of "Watchmen" is due in theaters in March although the project has encountered some turbulence with a lawsuit filed by 20th Century Fox over who has the rights to the property. Moore has no intention of seeing the film and, in fact, he hints that he has put a magical curse on the entire endeavor.

"Will the film even be coming out? There are these legal problems now, which I find wonderfully ironic. Perhaps it's been cursed from afar, from England. And I can tell you that I will also be spitting venom all over it for months to come."

Moore said all that with more mischievous glee than true malice, but I know it will still pain "Watchmen" director Zack Snyder when he reads it. The director of "300" absolutely adores the work of Moore and has been laboring intensely to bring "Watchmen" to the screen with faithful sophistication. But I don't think there's any way to win Moore over, he simply detests Hollywood. Moore said he has never watched any of the film adaptations of his comics creations (which have included "V for Vendetta," "From Hell," "Constantine" and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen") and that he believes "Watchmen" is "inherently unfilmable." He also rues the effect of Hollywood's siren call on the contemporary comics scene.

"There are three or four companies now that exist for the sole purpose of creating not comics, but storyboards for films. It may be true that the only reason the comic book industry now exists is for this purpose, to create characters for movies, board games and other types of merchandise. Comics are just a sort of pumpkin patch growing franchises that might be profitable for the ailing movie industry."

For those who have wondered what Alan Moore is thinking, not just on the upcoming "Watchmen" movie (only 195 days left!), but "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and other titles, then "The Mindscape of Alan Moore" is probably for you.

We say probably because we haven't seen it.  But we have seen this:

Wow. Do we really want to be inside the mind of Alan Moore?  Could we handle it?  Sites like Comic Book Bin have put out the word that the Shadowsnake Film DVD is coming Sept. 30, and they are excited about it.

The documentary won a special recognition award for creative achievement in documentary filmmaking at the San Francisco World Film Festival.  The film's website is not up yet, but you can be sure it'll get traffic once it's functional.

Those who aren't heavily into comic books may not know him, but just as an interesting individual with different ideas about what we might think are mundane things, Alan Moore is really someone you should learn more about.

-- Jevon Phillips

I just got a copy of "The Darker Mask" in the mail, and I'm really looking forward to checking it out this week when I hop on a flight to Florida.

The book is part of percolating subgenre right now: Comics-inspired tales that tell their stories without pictures. So it's pure prose, but the spirit is out of the four-color cousins with the word balloons. This is hardly a new idea, of course.

"Hellboy: Odd Jobs," an anthology of short stories about Big Red, came out eight years ago, and waaay back in 1990 was "Words Without Pictures" (a hard-to-find book now), which was edited by Steve Niles and had wonderful work in it by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Jon J. Muth others. Those are just two I can see sitting on my bookshelf from where I'm sitting.

Anyway, "The Darker Mask" (edited by Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers) has impressive names attached. Here's a rundown of the book from Tor Books:

Expanding on the concept behind Byron Preiss's Weird Heroes from the 1970s, George R. R. Martin's Wild Card series, and Michael Chabon's McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, The Darker Mask is a collection of original prose stories recalling the derring-do of the beings we call Superheroes and the worlds they fight to save.

Down at Comic-Con International, Paul Levitz told us about a major new print run for the "Watchmen" graphic novel and I see in a short item in the New York Times that it's still going gangbusters:

The film trailer for “Watchmen” is proving to be a considerable boost to sales of the graphic novel the movie is based on. “As far as we can tell from our conversations with the book industry people, there has never been a trailer that did this,” said Paul Levitz, the president and publisher of DC Comics, which has printed 900,000 additional paperback copies of the novel since the trailer began running in mid-July. The book, about a conspiracy to discredit and murder a group of superheroes, was written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, and has been on the best-seller lists of Amazon.com, USA Today and The Washington Post. Mr. Levitz said “Watchmen” would have a print run of more than a million copies this year. Last year it sold about 100,000.

Zack Snyder says he will be happy if his movie is a "three-hour advertisement" for the graphic novel, and after visiting his Vancouver set (and seeing the same movie trailer that you've certainly seen by now) there's no doubt in my mind that the "300" director is intent on remaining absolutely faithful to the story that Moore wrote (and Dave Gibbons drew) more than 20 years ago.

That has me wondering if Moore, who loathes Hollywood types after watching their mistreatment of his printed darlings, will eventually embrace this new project? It's going to be difficult to reel the gifted eccentric back in; Moore swore off Hollywood years ago. 

T.J. Kosinski, one of our talented interns this summer here at The Times, wandered around Comic-Con International a few weeks ago and interviewed some of his favorite comics creators. Here is the first of his guest posts.

"The biggest collection of near-sighted people in the world." That's how the quirky and enigmatic Eddie Campbell summed up the madness and mass of Comic-Con. The Scottish comics creator, best known for the horrific and scratchy art of writer Alan Moore's "From Hell," was somewhat frustrated with his experience at crowded expo. He explained how the convention used to be a small gathering centered on celebrating the medium, but now it's metastasized into “a huge extravaganza of baloney.”

Why put up with it all? Campbell has the newly released "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard," and he was at Comic-Con to promote it. He arrived, though, with plenty of cautious cynicism. "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard" is a “what-if” story that imagines a future where the nephew of Jules Leotard (the famed trapeze performer and creator of the leotard), secretly takes on his uncle’s identity. It’s an adventure that takes place throughout the 19th century and toys with many staple elements of the superhero genre.

Campbell said an inspiration for "Leotard" was a Will Eisner quote about all modern comics finding their prototypes under the tents of circuses. Campbell in the story presents a sideshow act billed as Le Quartette Fantastique with members that parallel a certain well-known Marvel Comics team. With a winking expression, Campbell noted that the main character in "Leotard" lives up to Eisner’s adage: He wears a fake mustache to conceal his true identity, dons a vibrant costume for action and, to the crowd, seems to possess the power of flight. Sounds super doesn't it?

Around this time next year, an exhaustive omnibus of Campbell’s semi-autobiographical "Alec" works will be released by Top Shelf Comix. In addition to out-of-print work from the highly regarded series of graphic novels, Campbell plans to add roughly 40 pages of new material.

Campbell, who is based in Australia, has seen his work yield a film (the 2001 "From Hell," directed by the Hughes brothers, adapted the 572-page book and starred Johnny Depp as the lawman on the trail of Jack the Ripper) and now there is a television project that is even more personal. Campbell is also in talks with Australian television producers to create a program that centers on his daily life, a sort of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" meets "American Splendor" with an Aussie flavor. Although things are far from finalized, the series has been optioned and Campbell seems entertained by the prospect of “Alec” on television.

-- T.J. Kosinski

Artwork from the cover of "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard," courtesy of First Second

Gerard Way, the lead singer of My Chemical Romance and the author of "The Umbrella Academy," is our featured contributor on The Essential Shelf, and this is the final installment of his Top 10 all-time graphic novels. You can find the first installment here and the second one here. Below are Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 on his list:

"Watchmen" by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
This is the first graphic novel I tell people to read if they are slightly unfamiliar with comics, and it is the graphic novel that changed the way I thought about superheroes and mainstream comics.  I often refer to 'Watchmen' as a gateway drug because that’s exactly what I think about it. It’s the one graphic novel that leads you to more cerebral, “outside-thinking” works. In suggesting this first to people, I realized that it actually does help to have an understanding or nostalgia for traditional superhero works, because that’s exactly what it deconstructs.

"The Dark Knight Returns" by Frank Miller
The other work that comes to mind from the '80s that pushed what you thought about traditional superhero comics, specifically Batman. A total deconstruction of the character, altering everything you thought about the character, his supporting cast, and even Superman, who is portrayed as a government tool. This is Batman past 50 years old, at his grittiest, his darkest, and it paved the way for a whole generation of “darker heroes.”

"The Doom Patrol: The Painting That Ate Paris” by Grant Morrison
This is the 2nd collection of Doom Patrol stories by Grant Morrison, and you should definitely pick up the first volume before reading this one, but this is the one where it really cements itself as the first “post modern superhero comic.” There are insane concepts and wild ideas on every page, from sleepwalking super-villains to sentient streets. This was the main influence in starting "The Umbrella Academy" and Grant Morrison is my favorite writer of all time for the sheer volume of ideas on every page, and the wit and style in which he presents them. Way more than deconstruction of the hero, Grant actually loves superheroes and writes with a nostalgia for the Silver Age of comics while at the same time creating something entirely new.

"The Sandman: Preludes And Nocturnes" by Neil Gaiman.

I remember this being the first comic where the best way to describe it was "literary." Drawing upon folklore, mythology, mysticism, and Shakespeare, Neil Gaiman created one of the most original comics of our time, using a very simple concept as a vessel for imaginative and thought-provoking stories. This is the kind of idea and storytelling you are jealous of as a creator, because you will always wish you had dreamed it up.

Thanks Again to Gerard for taking the time to share his favorites with Hero Complex. Check back here for more guest commentary in The Essential Shelf feature.

-- Geoff Boucher

Alan Moore on 'Watchmen' movie: 'I will be spitting venom all over it'

For the record, Alan Moore has not softened his view on Hollywood nor its plan to bring his classic graphic novel "Watchmen" to the screen next March.

"I find film in its modern form to be quite bullying," Moore told me during an hour-long phone call from his home in England. "It spoon-feeds us, which has the effect of watering down our collective cultural imagination. It is as if we are freshly hatched birds looking up with our mouths open waiting for Hollywood to feed us more regurgitated worms. The 'Watchmen' film sounds like more regurgitated worms. I for one am sick of worms. Can't we get something else? Perhaps some takeout? Even Chinese worms would be a nice change."

Moore is often described as a recluse but, really, I think it's more precise to say he is simply too busy at his writing desk. "Yes, perhaps I should get out more," he said with a chuckle. In conversation, the 54-year-old iconoclast is everything his longtime readers would expect -- articulate, witty, obstinate and selectively enigmatic. Far from grouchy, he only gets an edge in his voice when he talks about the effect of Hollywood on the comics medium that he so memorably energized in the 1980s with "Saga of the Swamp Thing," "V for Vendetta," "Marvelman" and, of course, "Watchmen," his 1986 masterpiece. The Warner Bros. film version of "Watchmen" is due in theaters in March although the project has encountered some turbulence with a lawsuit filed by 20th Century Fox over who has the rights to the property. Moore has no intention of seeing the film and, in fact, he hints that he has put a magical curse on the entire endeavor.

"Will the film even be coming out? There are these legal problems now, which I find wonderfully ironic. Perhaps it's been cursed from afar, from England. And I can tell you that I will also be spitting venom all over it for months to come."

Moore said all that with more mischievous glee than true malice, but I know it will still pain "Watchmen" director Zack Snyder when he reads it. The director of "300" absolutely adores the work of Moore and has been laboring intensely to bring "Watchmen" to the screen with faithful sophistication. But I don't think there's any way to win Moore over, he simply detests Hollywood. Moore said he has never watched any of the film adaptations of his comics creations (which have included "V for Vendetta," "From Hell," "Constantine" and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen") and that he believes "Watchmen" is "inherently unfilmable." He also rues the effect of Hollywood's siren call on the contemporary comics scene.

"There are three or four companies now that exist for the sole purpose of creating not comics, but storyboards for films. It may be true that the only reason the comic book industry now exists is for this purpose, to create characters for movies, board games and other types of merchandise. Comics are just a sort of pumpkin patch growing franchises that might be profitable for the ailing movie industry."

For those who have wondered what Alan Moore is thinking, not just on the upcoming "Watchmen" movie (only 195 days left!), but "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and other titles, then "The Mindscape of Alan Moore" is probably for you.

We say probably because we haven't seen it.  But we have seen this:

Wow. Do we really want to be inside the mind of Alan Moore?  Could we handle it?  Sites like Comic Book Bin have put out the word that the Shadowsnake Film DVD is coming Sept. 30, and they are excited about it.

The documentary won a special recognition award for creative achievement in documentary filmmaking at the San Francisco World Film Festival.  The film's website is not up yet, but you can be sure it'll get traffic once it's functional.

Those who aren't heavily into comic books may not know him, but just as an interesting individual with different ideas about what we might think are mundane things, Alan Moore is really someone you should learn more about.

-- Jevon Phillips

I just got a copy of "The Darker Mask" in the mail, and I'm really looking forward to checking it out this week when I hop on a flight to Florida.

The book is part of percolating subgenre right now: Comics-inspired tales that tell their stories without pictures. So it's pure prose, but the spirit is out of the four-color cousins with the word balloons. This is hardly a new idea, of course.

"Hellboy: Odd Jobs," an anthology of short stories about Big Red, came out eight years ago, and waaay back in 1990 was "Words Without Pictures" (a hard-to-find book now), which was edited by Steve Niles and had wonderful work in it by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Jon J. Muth others. Those are just two I can see sitting on my bookshelf from where I'm sitting.

Anyway, "The Darker Mask" (edited by Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers) has impressive names attached. Here's a rundown of the book from Tor Books:

Expanding on the concept behind Byron Preiss's Weird Heroes from the 1970s, George R. R. Martin's Wild Card series, and Michael Chabon's McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, The Darker Mask is a collection of original prose stories recalling the derring-do of the beings we call Superheroes and the worlds they fight to save.

Down at Comic-Con International, Paul Levitz told us about a major new print run for the "Watchmen" graphic novel and I see in a short item in the New York Times that it's still going gangbusters:

The film trailer for “Watchmen” is proving to be a considerable boost to sales of the graphic novel the movie is based on. “As far as we can tell from our conversations with the book industry people, there has never been a trailer that did this,” said Paul Levitz, the president and publisher of DC Comics, which has printed 900,000 additional paperback copies of the novel since the trailer began running in mid-July. The book, about a conspiracy to discredit and murder a group of superheroes, was written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, and has been on the best-seller lists of Amazon.com, USA Today and The Washington Post. Mr. Levitz said “Watchmen” would have a print run of more than a million copies this year. Last year it sold about 100,000.

Zack Snyder says he will be happy if his movie is a "three-hour advertisement" for the graphic novel, and after visiting his Vancouver set (and seeing the same movie trailer that you've certainly seen by now) there's no doubt in my mind that the "300" director is intent on remaining absolutely faithful to the story that Moore wrote (and Dave Gibbons drew) more than 20 years ago.

That has me wondering if Moore, who loathes Hollywood types after watching their mistreatment of his printed darlings, will eventually embrace this new project? It's going to be difficult to reel the gifted eccentric back in; Moore swore off Hollywood years ago. 

T.J. Kosinski, one of our talented interns this summer here at The Times, wandered around Comic-Con International a few weeks ago and interviewed some of his favorite comics creators. Here is the first of his guest posts.

"The biggest collection of near-sighted people in the world." That's how the quirky and enigmatic Eddie Campbell summed up the madness and mass of Comic-Con. The Scottish comics creator, best known for the horrific and scratchy art of writer Alan Moore's "From Hell," was somewhat frustrated with his experience at crowded expo. He explained how the convention used to be a small gathering centered on celebrating the medium, but now it's metastasized into “a huge extravaganza of baloney.”

Why put up with it all? Campbell has the newly released "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard," and he was at Comic-Con to promote it. He arrived, though, with plenty of cautious cynicism. "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard" is a “what-if” story that imagines a future where the nephew of Jules Leotard (the famed trapeze performer and creator of the leotard), secretly takes on his uncle’s identity. It’s an adventure that takes place throughout the 19th century and toys with many staple elements of the superhero genre.

Campbell said an inspiration for "Leotard" was a Will Eisner quote about all modern comics finding their prototypes under the tents of circuses. Campbell in the story presents a sideshow act billed as Le Quartette Fantastique with members that parallel a certain well-known Marvel Comics team. With a winking expression, Campbell noted that the main character in "Leotard" lives up to Eisner’s adage: He wears a fake mustache to conceal his true identity, dons a vibrant costume for action and, to the crowd, seems to possess the power of flight. Sounds super doesn't it?

Around this time next year, an exhaustive omnibus of Campbell’s semi-autobiographical "Alec" works will be released by Top Shelf Comix. In addition to out-of-print work from the highly regarded series of graphic novels, Campbell plans to add roughly 40 pages of new material.

Campbell, who is based in Australia, has seen his work yield a film (the 2001 "From Hell," directed by the Hughes brothers, adapted the 572-page book and starred Johnny Depp as the lawman on the trail of Jack the Ripper) and now there is a television project that is even more personal. Campbell is also in talks with Australian television producers to create a program that centers on his daily life, a sort of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" meets "American Splendor" with an Aussie flavor. Although things are far from finalized, the series has been optioned and Campbell seems entertained by the prospect of “Alec” on television.

-- T.J. Kosinski

Artwork from the cover of "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard," courtesy of First Second

Gerard Way, the lead singer of My Chemical Romance and the author of "The Umbrella Academy," is our featured contributor on The Essential Shelf, and this is the final installment of his Top 10 all-time graphic novels. You can find the first installment here and the second one here. Below are Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 on his list:

"Watchmen" by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
This is the first graphic novel I tell people to read if they are slightly unfamiliar with comics, and it is the graphic novel that changed the way I thought about superheroes and mainstream comics.  I often refer to 'Watchmen' as a gateway drug because that’s exactly what I think about it. It’s the one graphic novel that leads you to more cerebral, “outside-thinking” works. In suggesting this first to people, I realized that it actually does help to have an understanding or nostalgia for traditional superhero works, because that’s exactly what it deconstructs.

"The Dark Knight Returns" by Frank Miller
The other work that comes to mind from the '80s that pushed what you thought about traditional superhero comics, specifically Batman. A total deconstruction of the character, altering everything you thought about the character, his supporting cast, and even Superman, who is portrayed as a government tool. This is Batman past 50 years old, at his grittiest, his darkest, and it paved the way for a whole generation of “darker heroes.”

"The Doom Patrol: The Painting That Ate Paris” by Grant Morrison
This is the 2nd collection of Doom Patrol stories by Grant Morrison, and you should definitely pick up the first volume before reading this one, but this is the one where it really cements itself as the first “post modern superhero comic.” There are insane concepts and wild ideas on every page, from sleepwalking super-villains to sentient streets. This was the main influence in starting "The Umbrella Academy" and Grant Morrison is my favorite writer of all time for the sheer volume of ideas on every page, and the wit and style in which he presents them. Way more than deconstruction of the hero, Grant actually loves superheroes and writes with a nostalgia for the Silver Age of comics while at the same time creating something entirely new.

"The Sandman: Preludes And Nocturnes" by Neil Gaiman.

I remember this being the first comic where the best way to describe it was "literary." Drawing upon folklore, mythology, mysticism, and Shakespeare, Neil Gaiman created one of the most original comics of our time, using a very simple concept as a vessel for imaginative and thought-provoking stories. This is the kind of idea and storytelling you are jealous of as a creator, because you will always wish you had dreamed it up.

Thanks Again to Gerard for taking the time to share his favorites with Hero Complex. Check back here for more guest commentary in The Essential Shelf feature.

-- Geoff Boucher

'The Mindscape of Alan Moore' is coming

For those who have wondered what Alan Moore is thinking, not just on the upcoming "Watchmen" movie (only 195 days left!), but "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and other titles, then "The Mindscape of Alan Moore" is probably for you.

We say probably because we haven't seen it.  But we have seen this:

Wow. Do we really want to be inside the mind of Alan Moore?  Could we handle it?  Sites like Comic Book Bin have put out the word that the Shadowsnake Film DVD is coming Sept. 30, and they are excited about it.

The documentary won a special recognition award for creative achievement in documentary filmmaking at the San Francisco World Film Festival.  The film's website is not up yet, but you can be sure it'll get traffic once it's functional.

Those who aren't heavily into comic books may not know him, but just as an interesting individual with different ideas about what we might think are mundane things, Alan Moore is really someone you should learn more about.

-- Jevon Phillips

I just got a copy of "The Darker Mask" in the mail, and I'm really looking forward to checking it out this week when I hop on a flight to Florida.

The book is part of percolating subgenre right now: Comics-inspired tales that tell their stories without pictures. So it's pure prose, but the spirit is out of the four-color cousins with the word balloons. This is hardly a new idea, of course.

"Hellboy: Odd Jobs," an anthology of short stories about Big Red, came out eight years ago, and waaay back in 1990 was "Words Without Pictures" (a hard-to-find book now), which was edited by Steve Niles and had wonderful work in it by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Jon J. Muth others. Those are just two I can see sitting on my bookshelf from where I'm sitting.

Anyway, "The Darker Mask" (edited by Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers) has impressive names attached. Here's a rundown of the book from Tor Books:

Expanding on the concept behind Byron Preiss's Weird Heroes from the 1970s, George R. R. Martin's Wild Card series, and Michael Chabon's McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, The Darker Mask is a collection of original prose stories recalling the derring-do of the beings we call Superheroes and the worlds they fight to save.

Down at Comic-Con International, Paul Levitz told us about a major new print run for the "Watchmen" graphic novel and I see in a short item in the New York Times that it's still going gangbusters:

The film trailer for “Watchmen” is proving to be a considerable boost to sales of the graphic novel the movie is based on. “As far as we can tell from our conversations with the book industry people, there has never been a trailer that did this,” said Paul Levitz, the president and publisher of DC Comics, which has printed 900,000 additional paperback copies of the novel since the trailer began running in mid-July. The book, about a conspiracy to discredit and murder a group of superheroes, was written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, and has been on the best-seller lists of Amazon.com, USA Today and The Washington Post. Mr. Levitz said “Watchmen” would have a print run of more than a million copies this year. Last year it sold about 100,000.

Zack Snyder says he will be happy if his movie is a "three-hour advertisement" for the graphic novel, and after visiting his Vancouver set (and seeing the same movie trailer that you've certainly seen by now) there's no doubt in my mind that the "300" director is intent on remaining absolutely faithful to the story that Moore wrote (and Dave Gibbons drew) more than 20 years ago.

That has me wondering if Moore, who loathes Hollywood types after watching their mistreatment of his printed darlings, will eventually embrace this new project? It's going to be difficult to reel the gifted eccentric back in; Moore swore off Hollywood years ago. 

T.J. Kosinski, one of our talented interns this summer here at The Times, wandered around Comic-Con International a few weeks ago and interviewed some of his favorite comics creators. Here is the first of his guest posts.

"The biggest collection of near-sighted people in the world." That's how the quirky and enigmatic Eddie Campbell summed up the madness and mass of Comic-Con. The Scottish comics creator, best known for the horrific and scratchy art of writer Alan Moore's "From Hell," was somewhat frustrated with his experience at crowded expo. He explained how the convention used to be a small gathering centered on celebrating the medium, but now it's metastasized into “a huge extravaganza of baloney.”

Why put up with it all? Campbell has the newly released "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard," and he was at Comic-Con to promote it. He arrived, though, with plenty of cautious cynicism. "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard" is a “what-if” story that imagines a future where the nephew of Jules Leotard (the famed trapeze performer and creator of the leotard), secretly takes on his uncle’s identity. It’s an adventure that takes place throughout the 19th century and toys with many staple elements of the superhero genre.

Campbell said an inspiration for "Leotard" was a Will Eisner quote about all modern comics finding their prototypes under the tents of circuses. Campbell in the story presents a sideshow act billed as Le Quartette Fantastique with members that parallel a certain well-known Marvel Comics team. With a winking expression, Campbell noted that the main character in "Leotard" lives up to Eisner’s adage: He wears a fake mustache to conceal his true identity, dons a vibrant costume for action and, to the crowd, seems to possess the power of flight. Sounds super doesn't it?

Around this time next year, an exhaustive omnibus of Campbell’s semi-autobiographical "Alec" works will be released by Top Shelf Comix. In addition to out-of-print work from the highly regarded series of graphic novels, Campbell plans to add roughly 40 pages of new material.

Campbell, who is based in Australia, has seen his work yield a film (the 2001 "From Hell," directed by the Hughes brothers, adapted the 572-page book and starred Johnny Depp as the lawman on the trail of Jack the Ripper) and now there is a television project that is even more personal. Campbell is also in talks with Australian television producers to create a program that centers on his daily life, a sort of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" meets "American Splendor" with an Aussie flavor. Although things are far from finalized, the series has been optioned and Campbell seems entertained by the prospect of “Alec” on television.

-- T.J. Kosinski

Artwork from the cover of "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard," courtesy of First Second

Gerard Way, the lead singer of My Chemical Romance and the author of "The Umbrella Academy," is our featured contributor on The Essential Shelf, and this is the final installment of his Top 10 all-time graphic novels. You can find the first installment here and the second one here. Below are Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 on his list:

"Watchmen" by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
This is the first graphic novel I tell people to read if they are slightly unfamiliar with comics, and it is the graphic novel that changed the way I thought about superheroes and mainstream comics.  I often refer to 'Watchmen' as a gateway drug because that’s exactly what I think about it. It’s the one graphic novel that leads you to more cerebral, “outside-thinking” works. In suggesting this first to people, I realized that it actually does help to have an understanding or nostalgia for traditional superhero works, because that’s exactly what it deconstructs.

"The Dark Knight Returns" by Frank Miller
The other work that comes to mind from the '80s that pushed what you thought about traditional superhero comics, specifically Batman. A total deconstruction of the character, altering everything you thought about the character, his supporting cast, and even Superman, who is portrayed as a government tool. This is Batman past 50 years old, at his grittiest, his darkest, and it paved the way for a whole generation of “darker heroes.”

"The Doom Patrol: The Painting That Ate Paris” by Grant Morrison
This is the 2nd collection of Doom Patrol stories by Grant Morrison, and you should definitely pick up the first volume before reading this one, but this is the one where it really cements itself as the first “post modern superhero comic.” There are insane concepts and wild ideas on every page, from sleepwalking super-villains to sentient streets. This was the main influence in starting "The Umbrella Academy" and Grant Morrison is my favorite writer of all time for the sheer volume of ideas on every page, and the wit and style in which he presents them. Way more than deconstruction of the hero, Grant actually loves superheroes and writes with a nostalgia for the Silver Age of comics while at the same time creating something entirely new.

"The Sandman: Preludes And Nocturnes" by Neil Gaiman.

I remember this being the first comic where the best way to describe it was "literary." Drawing upon folklore, mythology, mysticism, and Shakespeare, Neil Gaiman created one of the most original comics of our time, using a very simple concept as a vessel for imaginative and thought-provoking stories. This is the kind of idea and storytelling you are jealous of as a creator, because you will always wish you had dreamed it up.

Thanks Again to Gerard for taking the time to share his favorites with Hero Complex. Check back here for more guest commentary in The Essential Shelf feature.

-- Geoff Boucher

'The Darker Mask' signing in L.A.

I just got a copy of "The Darker Mask" in the mail, and I'm really looking forward to checking it out this week when I hop on a flight to Florida.

The book is part of percolating subgenre right now: Comics-inspired tales that tell their stories without pictures. So it's pure prose, but the spirit is out of the four-color cousins with the word balloons. This is hardly a new idea, of course.

"Hellboy: Odd Jobs," an anthology of short stories about Big Red, came out eight years ago, and waaay back in 1990 was "Words Without Pictures" (a hard-to-find book now), which was edited by Steve Niles and had wonderful work in it by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Jon J. Muth others. Those are just two I can see sitting on my bookshelf from where I'm sitting.

Anyway, "The Darker Mask" (edited by Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers) has impressive names attached. Here's a rundown of the book from Tor Books:

Expanding on the concept behind Byron Preiss's Weird Heroes from the 1970s, George R. R. Martin's Wild Card series, and Michael Chabon's McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, The Darker Mask is a collection of original prose stories recalling the derring-do of the beings we call Superheroes and the worlds they fight to save.

Down at Comic-Con International, Paul Levitz told us about a major new print run for the "Watchmen" graphic novel and I see in a short item in the New York Times that it's still going gangbusters:

The film trailer for “Watchmen” is proving to be a considerable boost to sales of the graphic novel the movie is based on. “As far as we can tell from our conversations with the book industry people, there has never been a trailer that did this,” said Paul Levitz, the president and publisher of DC Comics, which has printed 900,000 additional paperback copies of the novel since the trailer began running in mid-July. The book, about a conspiracy to discredit and murder a group of superheroes, was written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, and has been on the best-seller lists of Amazon.com, USA Today and The Washington Post. Mr. Levitz said “Watchmen” would have a print run of more than a million copies this year. Last year it sold about 100,000.

Zack Snyder says he will be happy if his movie is a "three-hour advertisement" for the graphic novel, and after visiting his Vancouver set (and seeing the same movie trailer that you've certainly seen by now) there's no doubt in my mind that the "300" director is intent on remaining absolutely faithful to the story that Moore wrote (and Dave Gibbons drew) more than 20 years ago.

That has me wondering if Moore, who loathes Hollywood types after watching their mistreatment of his printed darlings, will eventually embrace this new project? It's going to be difficult to reel the gifted eccentric back in; Moore swore off Hollywood years ago. 

T.J. Kosinski, one of our talented interns this summer here at The Times, wandered around Comic-Con International a few weeks ago and interviewed some of his favorite comics creators. Here is the first of his guest posts.

"The biggest collection of near-sighted people in the world." That's how the quirky and enigmatic Eddie Campbell summed up the madness and mass of Comic-Con. The Scottish comics creator, best known for the horrific and scratchy art of writer Alan Moore's "From Hell," was somewhat frustrated with his experience at crowded expo. He explained how the convention used to be a small gathering centered on celebrating the medium, but now it's metastasized into “a huge extravaganza of baloney.”

Why put up with it all? Campbell has the newly released "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard," and he was at Comic-Con to promote it. He arrived, though, with plenty of cautious cynicism. "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard" is a “what-if” story that imagines a future where the nephew of Jules Leotard (the famed trapeze performer and creator of the leotard), secretly takes on his uncle’s identity. It’s an adventure that takes place throughout the 19th century and toys with many staple elements of the superhero genre.

Campbell said an inspiration for "Leotard" was a Will Eisner quote about all modern comics finding their prototypes under the tents of circuses. Campbell in the story presents a sideshow act billed as Le Quartette Fantastique with members that parallel a certain well-known Marvel Comics team. With a winking expression, Campbell noted that the main character in "Leotard" lives up to Eisner’s adage: He wears a fake mustache to conceal his true identity, dons a vibrant costume for action and, to the crowd, seems to possess the power of flight. Sounds super doesn't it?

Around this time next year, an exhaustive omnibus of Campbell’s semi-autobiographical "Alec" works will be released by Top Shelf Comix. In addition to out-of-print work from the highly regarded series of graphic novels, Campbell plans to add roughly 40 pages of new material.

Campbell, who is based in Australia, has seen his work yield a film (the 2001 "From Hell," directed by the Hughes brothers, adapted the 572-page book and starred Johnny Depp as the lawman on the trail of Jack the Ripper) and now there is a television project that is even more personal. Campbell is also in talks with Australian television producers to create a program that centers on his daily life, a sort of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" meets "American Splendor" with an Aussie flavor. Although things are far from finalized, the series has been optioned and Campbell seems entertained by the prospect of “Alec” on television.

-- T.J. Kosinski

Artwork from the cover of "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard," courtesy of First Second

Gerard Way, the lead singer of My Chemical Romance and the author of "The Umbrella Academy," is our featured contributor on The Essential Shelf, and this is the final installment of his Top 10 all-time graphic novels. You can find the first installment here and the second one here. Below are Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 on his list:

"Watchmen" by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
This is the first graphic novel I tell people to read if they are slightly unfamiliar with comics, and it is the graphic novel that changed the way I thought about superheroes and mainstream comics.  I often refer to 'Watchmen' as a gateway drug because that’s exactly what I think about it. It’s the one graphic novel that leads you to more cerebral, “outside-thinking” works. In suggesting this first to people, I realized that it actually does help to have an understanding or nostalgia for traditional superhero works, because that’s exactly what it deconstructs.

"The Dark Knight Returns" by Frank Miller
The other work that comes to mind from the '80s that pushed what you thought about traditional superhero comics, specifically Batman. A total deconstruction of the character, altering everything you thought about the character, his supporting cast, and even Superman, who is portrayed as a government tool. This is Batman past 50 years old, at his grittiest, his darkest, and it paved the way for a whole generation of “darker heroes.”

"The Doom Patrol: The Painting That Ate Paris” by Grant Morrison
This is the 2nd collection of Doom Patrol stories by Grant Morrison, and you should definitely pick up the first volume before reading this one, but this is the one where it really cements itself as the first “post modern superhero comic.” There are insane concepts and wild ideas on every page, from sleepwalking super-villains to sentient streets. This was the main influence in starting "The Umbrella Academy" and Grant Morrison is my favorite writer of all time for the sheer volume of ideas on every page, and the wit and style in which he presents them. Way more than deconstruction of the hero, Grant actually loves superheroes and writes with a nostalgia for the Silver Age of comics while at the same time creating something entirely new.

"The Sandman: Preludes And Nocturnes" by Neil Gaiman.

I remember this being the first comic where the best way to describe it was "literary." Drawing upon folklore, mythology, mysticism, and Shakespeare, Neil Gaiman created one of the most original comics of our time, using a very simple concept as a vessel for imaginative and thought-provoking stories. This is the kind of idea and storytelling you are jealous of as a creator, because you will always wish you had dreamed it up.

Thanks Again to Gerard for taking the time to share his favorites with Hero Complex. Check back here for more guest commentary in The Essential Shelf feature.

-- Geoff Boucher

'Watchmen' sales soar, what does Alan Moore think?

Down at Comic-Con International, Paul Levitz told us about a major new print run for the "Watchmen" graphic novel and I see in a short item in the New York Times that it's still going gangbusters:

The film trailer for “Watchmen” is proving to be a considerable boost to sales of the graphic novel the movie is based on. “As far as we can tell from our conversations with the book industry people, there has never been a trailer that did this,” said Paul Levitz, the president and publisher of DC Comics, which has printed 900,000 additional paperback copies of the novel since the trailer began running in mid-July. The book, about a conspiracy to discredit and murder a group of superheroes, was written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, and has been on the best-seller lists of Amazon.com, USA Today and The Washington Post. Mr. Levitz said “Watchmen” would have a print run of more than a million copies this year. Last year it sold about 100,000.

Zack Snyder says he will be happy if his movie is a "three-hour advertisement" for the graphic novel, and after visiting his Vancouver set (and seeing the same movie trailer that you've certainly seen by now) there's no doubt in my mind that the "300" director is intent on remaining absolutely faithful to the story that Moore wrote (and Dave Gibbons drew) more than 20 years ago.

That has me wondering if Moore, who loathes Hollywood types after watching their mistreatment of his printed darlings, will eventually embrace this new project? It's going to be difficult to reel the gifted eccentric back in; Moore swore off Hollywood years ago. 

T.J. Kosinski, one of our talented interns this summer here at The Times, wandered around Comic-Con International a few weeks ago and interviewed some of his favorite comics creators. Here is the first of his guest posts.

"The biggest collection of near-sighted people in the world." That's how the quirky and enigmatic Eddie Campbell summed up the madness and mass of Comic-Con. The Scottish comics creator, best known for the horrific and scratchy art of writer Alan Moore's "From Hell," was somewhat frustrated with his experience at crowded expo. He explained how the convention used to be a small gathering centered on celebrating the medium, but now it's metastasized into “a huge extravaganza of baloney.”

Why put up with it all? Campbell has the newly released "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard," and he was at Comic-Con to promote it. He arrived, though, with plenty of cautious cynicism. "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard" is a “what-if” story that imagines a future where the nephew of Jules Leotard (the famed trapeze performer and creator of the leotard), secretly takes on his uncle’s identity. It’s an adventure that takes place throughout the 19th century and toys with many staple elements of the superhero genre.

Campbell said an inspiration for "Leotard" was a Will Eisner quote about all modern comics finding their prototypes under the tents of circuses. Campbell in the story presents a sideshow act billed as Le Quartette Fantastique with members that parallel a certain well-known Marvel Comics team. With a winking expression, Campbell noted that the main character in "Leotard" lives up to Eisner’s adage: He wears a fake mustache to conceal his true identity, dons a vibrant costume for action and, to the crowd, seems to possess the power of flight. Sounds super doesn't it?

Around this time next year, an exhaustive omnibus of Campbell’s semi-autobiographical "Alec" works will be released by Top Shelf Comix. In addition to out-of-print work from the highly regarded series of graphic novels, Campbell plans to add roughly 40 pages of new material.

Campbell, who is based in Australia, has seen his work yield a film (the 2001 "From Hell," directed by the Hughes brothers, adapted the 572-page book and starred Johnny Depp as the lawman on the trail of Jack the Ripper) and now there is a television project that is even more personal. Campbell is also in talks with Australian television producers to create a program that centers on his daily life, a sort of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" meets "American Splendor" with an Aussie flavor. Although things are far from finalized, the series has been optioned and Campbell seems entertained by the prospect of “Alec” on television.

-- T.J. Kosinski

Artwork from the cover of "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard," courtesy of First Second

Gerard Way, the lead singer of My Chemical Romance and the author of "The Umbrella Academy," is our featured contributor on The Essential Shelf, and this is the final installment of his Top 10 all-time graphic novels. You can find the first installment here and the second one here. Below are Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 on his list:

"Watchmen" by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
This is the first graphic novel I tell people to read if they are slightly unfamiliar with comics, and it is the graphic novel that changed the way I thought about superheroes and mainstream comics.  I often refer to 'Watchmen' as a gateway drug because that’s exactly what I think about it. It’s the one graphic novel that leads you to more cerebral, “outside-thinking” works. In suggesting this first to people, I realized that it actually does help to have an understanding or nostalgia for traditional superhero works, because that’s exactly what it deconstructs.

"The Dark Knight Returns" by Frank Miller
The other work that comes to mind from the '80s that pushed what you thought about traditional superhero comics, specifically Batman. A total deconstruction of the character, altering everything you thought about the character, his supporting cast, and even Superman, who is portrayed as a government tool. This is Batman past 50 years old, at his grittiest, his darkest, and it paved the way for a whole generation of “darker heroes.”

"The Doom Patrol: The Painting That Ate Paris” by Grant Morrison
This is the 2nd collection of Doom Patrol stories by Grant Morrison, and you should definitely pick up the first volume before reading this one, but this is the one where it really cements itself as the first “post modern superhero comic.” There are insane concepts and wild ideas on every page, from sleepwalking super-villains to sentient streets. This was the main influence in starting "The Umbrella Academy" and Grant Morrison is my favorite writer of all time for the sheer volume of ideas on every page, and the wit and style in which he presents them. Way more than deconstruction of the hero, Grant actually loves superheroes and writes with a nostalgia for the Silver Age of comics while at the same time creating something entirely new.

"The Sandman: Preludes And Nocturnes" by Neil Gaiman.

I remember this being the first comic where the best way to describe it was "literary." Drawing upon folklore, mythology, mysticism, and Shakespeare, Neil Gaiman created one of the most original comics of our time, using a very simple concept as a vessel for imaginative and thought-provoking stories. This is the kind of idea and storytelling you are jealous of as a creator, because you will always wish you had dreamed it up.

Thanks Again to Gerard for taking the time to share his favorites with Hero Complex. Check back here for more guest commentary in The Essential Shelf feature.

-- Geoff Boucher

Eddie Campbell and the 'huge extravaganza of baloney'

T.J. Kosinski, one of our talented interns this summer here at The Times, wandered around Comic-Con International a few weeks ago and interviewed some of his favorite comics creators. Here is the first of his guest posts.

"The biggest collection of near-sighted people in the world." That's how the quirky and enigmatic Eddie Campbell summed up the madness and mass of Comic-Con. The Scottish comics creator, best known for the horrific and scratchy art of writer Alan Moore's "From Hell," was somewhat frustrated with his experience at crowded expo. He explained how the convention used to be a small gathering centered on celebrating the medium, but now it's metastasized into “a huge extravaganza of baloney.”

Why put up with it all? Campbell has the newly released "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard," and he was at Comic-Con to promote it. He arrived, though, with plenty of cautious cynicism. "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard" is a “what-if” story that imagines a future where the nephew of Jules Leotard (the famed trapeze performer and creator of the leotard), secretly takes on his uncle’s identity. It’s an adventure that takes place throughout the 19th century and toys with many staple elements of the superhero genre.

Campbell said an inspiration for "Leotard" was a Will Eisner quote about all modern comics finding their prototypes under the tents of circuses. Campbell in the story presents a sideshow act billed as Le Quartette Fantastique with members that parallel a certain well-known Marvel Comics team. With a winking expression, Campbell noted that the main character in "Leotard" lives up to Eisner’s adage: He wears a fake mustache to conceal his true identity, dons a vibrant costume for action and, to the crowd, seems to possess the power of flight. Sounds super doesn't it?

Around this time next year, an exhaustive omnibus of Campbell’s semi-autobiographical "Alec" works will be released by Top Shelf Comix. In addition to out-of-print work from the highly regarded series of graphic novels, Campbell plans to add roughly 40 pages of new material.

Campbell, who is based in Australia, has seen his work yield a film (the 2001 "From Hell," directed by the Hughes brothers, adapted the 572-page book and starred Johnny Depp as the lawman on the trail of Jack the Ripper) and now there is a television project that is even more personal. Campbell is also in talks with Australian television producers to create a program that centers on his daily life, a sort of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" meets "American Splendor" with an Aussie flavor. Although things are far from finalized, the series has been optioned and Campbell seems entertained by the prospect of “Alec” on television.

-- T.J. Kosinski

Artwork from the cover of "The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard," courtesy of First Second

Gerard Way, the lead singer of My Chemical Romance and the author of "The Umbrella Academy," is our featured contributor on The Essential Shelf, and this is the final installment of his Top 10 all-time graphic novels. You can find the first installment here and the second one here. Below are Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 on his list:

"Watchmen" by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
This is the first graphic novel I tell people to read if they are slightly unfamiliar with comics, and it is the graphic novel that changed the way I thought about superheroes and mainstream comics.  I often refer to 'Watchmen' as a gateway drug because that’s exactly what I think about it. It’s the one graphic novel that leads you to more cerebral, “outside-thinking” works. In suggesting this first to people, I realized that it actually does help to have an understanding or nostalgia for traditional superhero works, because that’s exactly what it deconstructs.

"The Dark Knight Returns" by Frank Miller
The other work that comes to mind from the '80s that pushed what you thought about traditional superhero comics, specifically Batman. A total deconstruction of the character, altering everything you thought about the character, his supporting cast, and even Superman, who is portrayed as a government tool. This is Batman past 50 years old, at his grittiest, his darkest, and it paved the way for a whole generation of “darker heroes.”

"The Doom Patrol: The Painting That Ate Paris” by Grant Morrison
This is the 2nd collection of Doom Patrol stories by Grant Morrison, and you should definitely pick up the first volume before reading this one, but this is the one where it really cements itself as the first “post modern superhero comic.” There are insane concepts and wild ideas on every page, from sleepwalking super-villains to sentient streets. This was the main influence in starting "The Umbrella Academy" and Grant Morrison is my favorite writer of all time for the sheer volume of ideas on every page, and the wit and style in which he presents them. Way more than deconstruction of the hero, Grant actually loves superheroes and writes with a nostalgia for the Silver Age of comics while at the same time creating something entirely new.

"The Sandman: Preludes And Nocturnes" by Neil Gaiman.

I remember this being the first comic where the best way to describe it was "literary." Drawing upon folklore, mythology, mysticism, and Shakespeare, Neil Gaiman created one of the most original comics of our time, using a very simple concept as a vessel for imaginative and thought-provoking stories. This is the kind of idea and storytelling you are jealous of as a creator, because you will always wish you had dreamed it up.

Thanks Again to Gerard for taking the time to share his favorites with Hero Complex. Check back here for more guest commentary in The Essential Shelf feature.

-- Geoff Boucher

Gerard Way's Essential Shelf, Part 3

Gerard Way, the lead singer of My Chemical Romance and the author of "The Umbrella Academy," is our featured contributor on The Essential Shelf, and this is the final installment of his Top 10 all-time graphic novels. You can find the first installment here and the second one here. Below are Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 on his list:

"Watchmen" by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
This is the first graphic novel I tell people to read if they are slightly unfamiliar with comics, and it is the graphic novel that changed the way I thought about superheroes and mainstream comics.  I often refer to 'Watchmen' as a gateway drug because that’s exactly what I think about it. It’s the one graphic novel that leads you to more cerebral, “outside-thinking” works. In suggesting this first to people, I realized that it actually does help to have an understanding or nostalgia for traditional superhero works, because that’s exactly what it deconstructs.

"The Dark Knight Returns" by Frank Miller
The other work that comes to mind from the '80s that pushed what you thought about traditional superhero comics, specifically Batman. A total deconstruction of the character, altering everything you thought about the character, his supporting cast, and even Superman, who is portrayed as a government tool. This is Batman past 50 years old, at his grittiest, his darkest, and it paved the way for a whole generation of “darker heroes.”

"The Doom Patrol: The Painting That Ate Paris” by Grant Morrison
This is the 2nd collection of Doom Patrol stories by Grant Morrison, and you should definitely pick up the first volume before reading this one, but this is the one where it really cements itself as the first “post modern superhero comic.” There are insane concepts and wild ideas on every page, from sleepwalking super-villains to sentient streets. This was the main influence in starting "The Umbrella Academy" and Grant Morrison is my favorite writer of all time for the sheer volume of ideas on every page, and the wit and style in which he presents them. Way more than deconstruction of the hero, Grant actually loves superheroes and writes with a nostalgia for the Silver Age of comics while at the same time creating something entirely new.

"The Sandman: Preludes And Nocturnes" by Neil Gaiman.

I remember this being the first comic where the best way to describe it was "literary." Drawing upon folklore, mythology, mysticism, and Shakespeare, Neil Gaiman created one of the most original comics of our time, using a very simple concept as a vessel for imaginative and thought-provoking stories. This is the kind of idea and storytelling you are jealous of as a creator, because you will always wish you had dreamed it up.

Thanks Again to Gerard for taking the time to share his favorites with Hero Complex. Check back here for more guest commentary in The Essential Shelf feature.

-- Geoff Boucher