Jotham Knight’s Round Table

Wondering where I went? Click the pic to find me

Here are the updates from Comic-Con 2007 Day 1

** At the Paramount Comic-Con press conference, J.J. Abrams dropped some details on his as-yet-untitled horror/monster flick slated for a 1/18/2007 release. In spite of internet buzz, the movie will not be called “Monstorous.” Abrams said the goal is to produce an American monster movie on-par with Japanese big-rubber-suit classics like Godzilla. Abrams said shooting is all but complete, a new trailer, a poster and more footage are on the way.

** At the just-completed press conference for Indiana Jones IV at this year’s Comic-Con, there were a few surprises. Beamed “from the set” were Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford (in the Indiana Jones costume), Shia LaBoeuf (in a beard), and, for the first time, Ms. Marion Ravenwood herself, Karen Allen. From all accounts, Karen looked surprisingly young and hot as ever. Spielberg promised that the film, which will be released in May, 2008, will be “just for the fans.” For his part, Dr. Jones himself said that it was great to be back in the “dirty, sweaty clothes” of his most popular character. More news as it comes.

** Star Trek XI producers J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof along with writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzmann announced some big news for the film. First, Zachary Quinto, who is most famous for being a student of Carnegie Mellon University and a Pittsburgh native (or Sylar on Heroes, whatever), will be playing Sr. Spock in the film. Quinto appeared on stage and told fans that he would play the character in his own way, but stay respectful to Nimoy’s performance. Then, Leonard Nimoy himself came out to announce that he would also be playing Spock in the new film. Bwah?! Two Spocks! Kirk is still up in the air and the producers are still trying to figure out some way to work Bill Shatner into the film.

** Paramount revealed the one-sheet post for upcoming serial murder/cannibalism movie Sweeney Todd. According to Dark Horizons, the black and white, Con-only poster of Johnny Depp as Todd features “Depp in costume sitting in a large arm chair in a rundown house looking sinister. The one bit of color on the poster is the armchair which is a bright blood red.”Sounds creepy, eh? We’ll post it when we get it.
GOT IT
The movie comes out on December 21st, 2008.

** LOST video game trailer is released. See it HERE

**CBS has announced that they will be releasing the original Star Trek series on HD-DVD with a ton of extras, and calling it Star Trek - The Final Frontier. Though there is yet to be a release date for the Season One package, they have announced a ton of extras for the set. Eyewitness reports from Comic-Con say that the footage is absolutely clean, clear and beautiful. Trekkers will likely soil their Federation jumpsuits over this information.

** DC is hard at work on a graphic novel based on the hit television show Heroes, they announced at Comic-Con today. The novel will be written by famous comic writer Tim Sale, he of the Batman: The Long Halloween classic tome. Sale’s art is also featured on the show in Isaac’s paintings, so the look will be consistent with the visuals on the show. The novel will be released in the fall of this year, to coincide with Season 2 of Heroes, and will be published by DC’s WildStorm label. Look for it in about September.

** Adult film queen Jenna Jameson is going somewhere no one has ever gone before…the world of comics. She won’t be playing herself, however. Nope. She’s going to be a seriously bad ass warrior woman in Shadow Hunter, the comic she’s producing with Virgin Comics. There’s not going to be any sort of sex in the comic, whatsoever. As a matter of fact, according to the press release, Shadow Hunter is “the story of a provocative superheroine who survives a brush with death only to find herself fighting the legions of hell for her very soul.” The press release adds that “while provocative and sexy, [the comic] contains no nudity and is intended for a mainstream audience.” Hmm…mainstream Jenna Jameson. Interesting.

** The producers of Lost gave us an early tidbit when they announced yesterday that Harold Perrineau (Michael) will be returning to the cast for the upcoming Season 4 of the series. For those who might have been hiding under a rock for the past year or so, Michael was last seen taking his son, Walt, in a boat and escaping the island. Since then, all hell has broken loose. It will be interesting to see what Michael’s return will do for the show. Is he marooned on the island with the survivors? Is he part of the future, as was established at the end of the Season 3 finale? Only time will tell. Sadly, or maddeningly, as the case may be, Lost will not return until early 2008.

** Ubisoft made the Heroes videogame official today, announcing the development of a game based on the popular NBC television series. The game will, apparently, be a third-person superhero action game that brings the series characters, locations and story lines to next-generation game consoles and the PC. The untitled game could be in stores as soon as late 2008. According to The Hollywood Reporter: “Instead of highlighting a specific character’s heroic journey, the game will focus on the entire ensemble cast. The game also is expected to play a crucial role in how the show’s writers explore cross-platform storytelling for future seasons.” Reportedly, Ubisoft will most likely hire its own writer for the game script and develop the game at one of its internal studios; the TV series writers will supervise and consult on game design and story.

** Blade Runner is arguably the greatest, and most influential sci-fi movie of our time. The brooding, fatalistic vision of the future laid out by Philip K. Dick presented through the dark yet realistic vision of Ridley Scott became a motion picture event that changed everything we knew about cinematic portrayal of near-future science fiction. In case you haven’t figured it out by now, The Pull Box is a fan. In celebration of the 25th anniversary of it’s release, Blade Runner will recieve the royal treatment. On December 18th the film will be released in 2, 4, and 5 disc DVD sets, as well as HD-DVD and Bluray versions of the 5 disc set, containing a brand new three-and-a-half-hour documentary called Dangerous Days, 45 minutes of deleted and alternate scenes recovered from deep storage, featurettes about script development, conceptual design, trailers, tv spots, and a piece about how the film led to the development of the cyberpunk scene. Scott stated that he has been working on this version of the film since 2000, and after almost 7 years of research and restoration, this is the definitive director’s cut of Blade Runner. Period.

** Eddie Izzard is going to replace Jeremy Piven as the voice of Schadenfreude in the upcoming Igor, about a competition for evil scientists. The animated film will also star John Cusack, Steve Buscemi, John Cleese, Jennifer Coolidge, Arsenio Hall, Jay Leno, Molly Shannon, and Sean Hayes. The addition of Izzard makes this one of the coolest and most eclectic animated casts of all time. We can’t help but wonder if this recasting has anything to do with the just-materialized feud between fomer best friends Piven and Cusack, who is apparently none to supportive of Piven’s success on HBO’s Entourage. We’re thinking that it might be, and hoping for a fistfight.

** Looks like the Watchmen have been cast. Warner Brothers announced that Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson and Matthew Goode have been cast in the upcoming adaptation of Alan Moore’s series of graphic novels. Crudup will play Dr. Manhattan, Wilson is Night Owl, and Goode will be Ozymandias. Snyder is planning on using the green screen technique he used to make 300, which will cut costs and give the film a ton of style

Wow what a weekend! I went to the Motorcity Comic Con with a few friends of mine on my very first assignment as a net journalist. The plan was to update my blog at the end of each day, but the free wi-fi connection at the hotel was less than okay. It was like being back on a 56k line! Loading pics from the weekend would have taken forever, so I ‘m dong it now. So what follows here are my event of day one.

The weekend started by meeting Dick Ayers Silver Age comic legend who’s artistic style helped define the Marvel Universe. He worked on such titles as Sgt. Fury, Avengers, Captain America and just about every Marvel title. He and his wife were very kind until my cohort Eric (pictured) slammed Dick’s hand in the door of the hotel shuttle van. Dick’s hand unusable for about half a day, but he got better. Now we have the quote for the weekend, “Dude! You broke Dick Ayers!”

Eric and I had the pleasure of meeting Billy Tucci, creator of Shi and publisher of Crusade Entertainment. He is currently working on Hero For Hire for Marvel, and he was great. Billy first made it big in the mid 90’s when Todd McFarland and Rob “The Knob” Lifeield who the bad-boys of comics. Publishers tried to tap that same feel with Billy and it didn’t work, and I can see why. He was an amazingly nice man who was kind enough to sign a whole lotta stuff that will be sold to support children’s cancer research. There are not enough good things to say about him, great guy.

Here’s Eric and I with Bruce Jones. He’s a comic writer on Nightwing, Warlord, Batman/Scarecrow and Vigilanti along many other DC and Marvel titles. Good guy, good writer. He was kinda quiet at first, but when two large men with Scandinavian root descend upon you, people kinda take a moment before they realize we’re not going to shake them down for their Little Debbie snack cakes, but we got him talking. The Hulk is one of my favorite characters and he’s written lots of Hulk stories. Good guy to talk with.

Not a great pic (sorry), but here is Dave Finch, artist on Moon Knight and cover artist on The Avengers, Fallen Son #4, Aphrodite and many other projects. His stuff is awesome! Even if you’re not a comic book fan, you would look at his stuff and go “wow”. He was there with his lovely wife and they were kind enough to sign an entire box of comics for our charity drive (THANK YOU SO MUCH). I first saw Dave’s work on a book call Ascension. It was a mid-90’s comic about the angelic wars in heaven. Fun stuff and his warrior angles cemented my mind’s eye of what Archangels should look like. Fun guy who loves his fans.

Here we have David Peterson, remember that name because he’s going to be big…and I mean Brad Bird, Peter Jackson, George Lucas big. He has an amazing book called Mouse Guard that will knock you on your ass. Not kidding, read Eric’s comic review of Mouse Guard here! He was very kind and let us do a video interview that will be up as soon as we figure that out (we’re new at this). I would not be surprised if you see a Mouse Guard movie in the next 5 years. David Peterson is one of those creative minds that you meet once, maybe twice, in your life. If I wasn’t just a high school teacher and had a few million to invest, I’d invest in this guy. I would triple my money in 10 years, maybe more. Run, don’t walk, to your local book/comic store and get the Mouse Guard hard cover. You’ll thank me.
Here’s he Video inerview!!

This is Jason Howard. He’s co-creator and artist on The Astounding Wolf-Man from Image Comics, artist on The Pact #4, a writer for Sketch Magazine, and a cool guy. His new book, The Astounding Wolf-Man, was one of the book you could have picked up on Free Comic Day. If you didn’t, ask your local comic shop is they still have some issues to hand out. If they don’t, buy one. It’s very worth the cover price. He was great to talk with and was kind enough to do a sketch for my local comic shop as a gift to us.

Children and geeks who watch cartoons of teh mid-90’s, remember the show Reboot? It was a toon based inside a computer and hit just as the internet was becoming a household tool. Well This guy is Jim Su and he is one of the people responsible for Reboot, and has a very cool book coming out called Corzonia. His new project is based on two warring undersea cities of Atlantas and Corzonia, and the art is great! I also have a video interview with Jim that will be up soon. Check out Jim’s blog here
or Beach Studios here

The very fun Matt Delight (right) is a guy you want to hang out with. I can’t find this card right now (I know I have it!) but he was very fun, and so was his friend who’s name escapes me right now. I do remember that Matt’s friend runs a dance party in Detroit every month that looked like a blast. As for Matt, Goggle “Matt Delight” and you’ll come up with his stuff. I’ll post his link as soon as I find the card.

The only press I saw at the Motorcity Con was us and the local CW station. They covered Con celebs (no CW love for the comic guys, especially the inde people) and pimped their station by giving promo posters for Smallville and Supernatural. Funny this is, they screwed up. We came into the Con on Sunday and signs were posted all over saying “Adam West, TV’s Batman, is not at the Con. CW News made a mistake”. Obviously the CW news reported that Adam West was at the con and people started coming in looking for him. Oops! You would see those kinds of mistakes with HeroesTV.com coverage!

This is Gema, art teacher by day and comic writer/publisher by night. She has a great looking book called Clayshaper about a living clay rat. It looked like it would be great for middle school aged reader. She also had some great “Make your own comic” workbooks that I might be getting for my class. I know Eric has all her contact info that I will link to when I get if from him. Gema was a great gal to hang out with. She tore-up the karaoke bar on Saturday night, pics posted soon

Blurry pic, don’t know why. These are the two ladies who ran the HUGE Dukes of Hazard display. They’re two Canadian woman who have loved the Dukes for years and collected tons and tons of stuff. At some point they looked around the house and went “Aw crap, I got a lotta Duke stuff. What do I do with it?” Well I’ll tell ya what they did. They make a website and became the largest purveyors of Duke lore in existence. They now travel to Cons and share the love. You can check out their site here.

Here are the great folks at Young Amercian Comcs (YAC). Very fun people who are putting out some fun stuff. What caught my eye the most was a book called BIZMAR and a web comic called Scene Language. Here is a fun little inteervire I found with Tod and Corey Marie Parkhill.
I ahve to say that YAC books were some of the best inde books I saw at the show. Good art, solid writing, and production value that is on par with the big boys. No copy machine staple folds at YAC. Their stuff was all quality!

In part two I will cover more of what happened the second day of the Con. I do have a couple to DVD’s to review (that might take a bit), I’m working on getting my video interview up a running, and then of course the night life coverage. Also check out Eric’s (Stongbad’s) con converge. He was able to get things up quicker then I was.

More to come!

It’s Con season again!
This is the first year that I will attend cons as a web reporter for HeroesTV and we’re hoping to expand our readership out into the larger geek culture. NBCs HEORES is still the bread and butter of the site, but diversity and variety will keep a site going. To accomplish this, I’m attending the two biggest comic conventions in the Midwest (MotorCity and Wizard World Chicago). I have hope if getting to San Diego, but rumors are that it’s getting too big to handle.
So tell your friends and neighbors to visits my blog, Strongbad’s blog, and HeroesTV for all the con updates and keep the comments coming.

Over at Fox News they have an interview with George Lucas the covers Star Wars and Indy 4. He also takes time to through some pot shots at Spider-Man 3. Which is really funny because I walked out of Spider-Man 3 thinking it must have been a late 90’s early 00’s George Lucas film.

Find the interview here