The Gathering Storm
Written by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
Publisher: Tor Books
Released: October 27, 2009

It’s time for fans of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series to stand up and celebrate. The release of a new book is upon us. Even more than just a new book, this is the beginning of the end; the final book in the series. Okay, so there’s actually three books remaining, but they were meant by Jordan to be one book. Unfortunately (or perhaps, very fortunately depending on your point of view), the story became too large to release as one volume, so the editors decided to break the final book into three parts, the first of which, titled The Gathering Storm, saw release on October 27th, 2009, with the other two seeing release at a later date, hopefully in 2010 and 2011.

Unfortunately, the book split isn’t the big story about this release. No, the big story concerning this book was the untimely passing of original author Robert Jordan on September 16, 2007. With Jordan’s passing, many feared that we would never see the end to his sprawling series. Fortunately, Jordan had written a large portion of the book before his passing, and left detailed notes on the rest and writer Brandon Sanderson was quickly chosen by Jordan’s editor and wife to finish the series, putting fans’ minds at ease [...]

Law Abiding Citizen
Director F. Gary Gray
Starring Gerard Butler, Jaime Foxx, Colm Meaney
Rated R
Release date: October 16, 2009

I love stupid mindless revenge movies. Man on Fire, Payback, Taken; pretty much any movie where a guy is driven to kill as many people as necessary in the name of some kind of justice. Most of these movies are not what I would call great movies, but when done well, they’re all fun, and they appeal to a certain part of me that wishes that the kind of uncompromising justice portrayed in these films would work in the real world. The realistic part of me understands that it wouldn’t, but who wouldn’t like to see righteous justice handed down to those who deserve it. Law Abiding Citizen is now resides in a warm place in my heart along with the rest of these films. Is it perfect? Hardly. Does it have plot holes you could drive a truck through? Definitely. Is it going to win any kind of awards? Certainly not. Did I have a fun time watching it? Hell yeah! And sometimes, that’s enough for me.

In the film, Gerard Butler plays Clyde Shelton, a man who is forced to watch his wife and daughter brutally murdered in front of him, and then sees the justice system break down as the man who actually killed his family is given a reduced sentence so that callous District Attorney Nick Rice, played by Jaime Foxx, can keep his high conviction percentage. Unfortunately, Shelton is a very driven man who has the skill, intelligence, and determination to see his revenge through to the end. From there, we get the standard game of cat and mouse, as Clyde continually shows that he is smarter than Rice, as the bodies keep piling up in brutal fashion [...]

Adventure Comics #1
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Francis Manapul
Colors by Brian Buccellato
DC Comics
Price: $3.99

I may be the only one who signed up to get Adventure Comics based solely on the strength of Francis Manapul’s art. I became a fan of his work after reading it in the pages of Jim Shooter’s recent Legion of Superhero run. It’s a shame that the run was cut short, because his art was perfectly suited for that book. His art on that book showed that he could handle any kind of action sequence that was thrown at him. Fortunately, he’s on to bigger and better things, with this new (old) series that features the new adventures of Superboy.

Connor Kent is back from the dead, killed by Geoff Johns in the pages of Infinite Crisis, and returned from the grave by Johns in Final Crisis: Legion of Three worlds. Those in the know will remember that DC had run into some legal troubles over the use of the name Superboy, but they were able to clear that all up, and now he’s back and ready for action. This issue picks up with him trying to get back to a normal life. He has moved back to Smallville, and is living with Ma Kent, meanwhile he’s trying to live up to Superman’s legacy. Unfortunately for his peace of mind, Connor is only a half-clone of Superman, with the other half belonging to Lex Luthor, and this leads to him questioning what is behind his motives. Is he Superman, or is he Luthor? The first issue gives us a good set up for what should be a good run [...]

A couple of weeks back I was able to talk with Robert Venditti, author of The Surrogates comic book series, as well as its follow up, Surrogates: Flesh and Bone. We were able to talk about not just his books, but also the film adaptation released this weekend starring Bruce Willis and Ving Rhames. Here’s what he had to say.

Geeks of Doom: What was the genesis of The Surrogates?

Robert Venditti: When I was in grad school at the University of Central Florida, I was in a class called the Literature of the Internet, we read a book called The Cyber Gypsies, which was a non fiction book a guy had written about people addicted to the internet, mostly through online gaming, and people would create these personas for themselves, and they would so identify with those personas, they would lose their jobs or get divorced because they would spend so much time maintaining that persona in the computer. So that was an idea that stuck with me, the sort of basic need we all seem to have to be something other than who we are, and that kicked around in my head for a year or two. And then I started to see a lot of shows on TV about people getting radical plastic surgery, like Extreme Makeover, Dr. 90210, and then that idea melded with the idea from the Cyber Gypsies and made me think about what would happen if we take the world now, where you create this persona for yourself on the internet, what if the technology existed where you can create this persona and that could go out into the world and live your life in your place. And that was where the whole idea started [...]

The Surrogates
The Surrogates: Vol 1
The Surrogates: Vol 2: Flesh & Bone
The Surrogates Operator’s Manual: Vol 1 & 2 (Hardcover)
Written by Robert Venditti
Art by Brett Weldele
Top Shelf Productions
Available Now

The Surrogates caught me by surprise when it came out a few years ago. Here was a book with a unique premise, which appealed to the Sci-Fi fan in me, as well as the crime drama/mystery fan. The story was fairly unique to me: In the future most people will not leave their houses at all, they do all their business and interactions through the use of realistic looking robots called Surrogates. These surrogates have changed all aspects of society: cops don’t have to worry about being killed in the line of duty; gender roles are easily switched by using a surrogate opposite of the users actual gender; and body image is no longer a problem, since your surrogate can be as good looking as you want it to be. All of this changes when someone begins to go around destroying other people’s surrogates. What follows is an examination of how we interact with each other in an online world, the role of religion verses technology, and really just a well crafted mystery.

The original Surrogates mini-series, by Robert Venditti is an interesting piece of work. It’s one of the most thought provoking series that I have read over the last few years. The world we live in today is one where people can go years without actually meeting people they interact with every day. You can keep up with complete strangers via any number of message boards, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, or a million other social networks. You can raid a dungeon in World of Warcraft with someone who could be half a world away, or they could be your next door neighbor, and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. The Surrogates takes the concept of this isolation that many people live their lives in today, and asks what would happen if no one had to leave their house if they didn’t want to. The best thing it does though, is take this interesting concept, and wraps it up in an also interesting murder mystery [...]

9
Directed by Shane Acker
Starring Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau
Studio: Focus Features
Release date: 9/9/09 (clever right?)

I’m a big fan of animation in all its forms, but I’m also an adult, and I want a good story to go along with what I’m watching. That’s what I was hoping for when I first started seeing previews for the film 9. It looked like more of an adult action film, which just happened to be done with CG animation. Add in the names Tim Burton, whose done great animation work before with the Nightmare Before Christmas and the Corpse Bride, and Timur Bekmambetov, who directed Wanted as well as two very visually experimental movies in Night Watch and Day Watch, and you’ve made a movie that I’ll want to see. See is the operative word when it comes to 9, because while it is spectacular looking, the rest of my mind could never get into the film.

The story is fairly simple. A creature made out of cloth (voiced by Elijah Wood) wakes up in a strange room, with a mysterious round object. (I’d accuse the filmmakers of ripping off LittleBigPlanet’s Sack-boy if I didn’t know that the short film this is based on hadn’t come out well before the game.) He can’t speak and doesn’t know anything about what’s going on, so he ventures out until he runs across another cloth man, who says his name is 2 (Martin Landau), and sees that the new one has a 9 on his back, so that’s what he calls him. 2 is also nice enough to hook 9 up with a voice box so he can speak. Shortly after, 2 is captured by some kind of monster and taken away. 9 is determined to rescue him and sets off to the factory where he saw 2 was taken. Along the way he meets a number of creatures just like him (voiced by John C. Reilly, Christopher Plummer, Jennifer Connelly, and Crispin Glover), and then he ends up almost dooming what remains of life. Then the creatures run around, learning where they come from, why they were created, and how they can save whatever life remains on the Earth [...]

I know I’m not the only one looking forward to the October 27, 2009 release date of The Gathering Storm, the first posthumous novel in Robert Jordan’s massive Wheel of Time series (the book was co-written by Brandon Sanderson).

On this day, the second anniversary of the author’s death, Tor Books has blessed us by releasing the first chapter of The Gathering Storm on their webpage. If you go to Tor.com and register (registering is free), you too can read the first chapter.

The chapter, titled “Tears of Steel,” starts as every other Wheel of Time book begins, with the familiar phrase “The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.” [...]

Last week brought us big news in the comics world when Marvel Comics was bought by Disney [Read: Disney To Acquire Marvel Entertainment], and today has brought us big news from the other member of the Big 2 as Warner Bros Entertainment announced that they are restructuring and renaming the DC Comic brand as DC Entertainment. Along with the restructuring comes word that long-time DC President and Publisher Paul Levitz will step down and take on more of a consulting job, as well as returning to writing.

The announcement describes the newly formed DC Entertainment Inc as “a new company founded to fully realize the power and value of the DC Comics brand.” The rest of the press release tends to go on in a lot of corporate double speak, but what it means is that Warner Brothers and DC have seen what Marvel has done with its studio and realized that they desperately need to catch up.

What does this mean for comics fans? Probably very little. There will be a new name on the indicia as Diane Nelson steps in to replace Levitz. Nelson has worked for Warner Brothers for 20 years, and she has recently overseen the franchise management of the Harry Potter property, and I’d say that has turned out pretty well for the creator, studio, and the fans, so that’s a good sign. The odds are that the restructuring will be more about producing more films and TV shows, and that the publishing division will continue to do its own thing, same as it has done in the past [...]

Spider-Woman: Agent of S.W.O.R.D. #1: Marvel Motion Comic
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Alex Maleev
Marvel Comics
Released: August 19, 2009
Price: $.99 (on iTunes)

Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev have been trying to get this Spider-Woman series off the ground for what seems like a decade, and they’ve finally managed to do it. However, Marvel has decided to make this series the first in their big push of Motion Comics, similar to what DC has done with Watchmen, and is currently doing with Superman: Red Son. I’m not sure who decided these motion comics are the next big thing, but somebody’s putting a lot of money behind it, so we’re going to keep getting them for a while. The interesting thing with this series is that we will see a print version of this story in a few months, but we’re getting the motion version of it first. The one thing this really has going for it is the price point of 99 cents on iTunes (available for the first two weeks, then the price jumps to $1.99). It’s much easier for me to make an impulse buy on this when the price is so low, and if they maintain that price, I could see picking this series up.

The story in this one follows Spider-Woman, or Jessica Drew to her friends, as she is recruited to become an agent of S.W.O.R.D. (as it says right there in the title). S.W.O.R.D. is in charge of protecting the Earth from alien invaders, and Spider-Woman is tasked with tracking down one of the Skrulls who recently attacked. She travels to the seedy Asian port of Madripoor where she ends up confronting him [...]

In an announcement that caught comic book fans by surprise, The Walt Disney Company has purchased Marvel Entertainment for the tidy sum of $4 billion dollars in cash and stock. Details are short at this time, but the press release from Disney said that the move has been approved by both companies’ boards and must now get clearance from the government as well as Marvel shareholders.

If everything goes through, Disney will then have access to the Marvel stable of over 5,000 characters, which includes popular superheros like Iron Man, Spider-Man, the X-Men, Captain America, the Fantastic Four, and Thor.

What does this mean for Marvel as a company and the industry as a whole? One can hope that it’s a good thing. Marvel now has a stable base of money, much the same way that DC does (because of their relationship with Warner Brothers); however Marvel must now answer to a different set of business people that it never has before, and who knows if or how they may interfere with the publishing arm [...]

On Wednesday, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe was at GamersCom in Cologne, Germany to announce that they are releasing a digital reader that will work on the Sony PSP (or Playstation Portable, as it’s known to its acronym-deficient friends).

Not only will the PSP play games, music, and video, but users will also be able to use it to read access the digital library of Marvel comics. Starting in December, according to Marvel, PSP owners will be able purchase and download classic and digital first comics direct from Marvel, and then read them in a page by page or panel by panel style (however they prefer). This is a great new feature for PSP users and I’m curious to see exactly how the system works. I’ve had trouble reading comics on computers in the past, but I’m willing to give this a try [...]

G.I. Joe
A Real American Hero: Season 1.1
Starring Chris Latta, Michael Bell, Frank Welker, Arthur Burghardt
Shout! Factory
Released July 14, 2009

GI Joe is the codename for American’s daring highly trained special mission force.

Its purpose, to defend human freedom against Cobra — a ruthless, terrorist organization determined to rule the world.

If I had to list my favorite cartoons when I was a kid, one of the shows that would show up on that list would be GI Joe. I can fondly remember waking up before school, getting a bowl of healthy cereal (because my Mom would never let us have the sugary stuff), going downstairs, and watching GI Joe and Transformers. It was a great ritual for me, and thanks to the magic of DVD, I can relive those days. GI Joe has been released on DVD before, but the old sets have been long out of print. Fortunately, there’s a new movie to cash in on, so the show is coming back into DVD.

The plot for the show is right there in the theme song. The Joe team spends all their time trying to stop Cobra and their dastardly plans to take over the world [...]

Green Lantern: First Flight
Single-Disc Edition
Directed by Lauren Montgomery
Starring Christopher Meloni, Victor Garber, Tricia Helfer
DC Animation/Warner Brothers
Released: July 28, 2009

DC Animation has hit on something with their recent direct-to-DVD releases, particularly the Batman: Gotham Knight and Justice League: The New Frontier movies and the streak continues with their newest film, Green Lantern: First Flight. DC/Warner Bros picked a good time to release this, what with the Green Lantern comic series being the best it’s been, arguably ever, and big news being thrown around with Ryan Reynolds being cast as Hal Jordan in the upcoming live-action movie. Let’s be honest, Green Lantern has never been as big a name to the non-comics world as say Batman or Spider-Man, so it’s nice to see that DC hasn’t forgotten about him. Is this movie as good as the current series? I wouldn’t say that, but it does a good job of introducing the characters and world of GL, so it succeeds in that part.

One thing to be said about the story is that it isn’t a straight adaptation of a story already told in comics, ala Superman: Doomsday or New Frontier. It’s a completely new story, although it does borrow elements from the entire series, and specifically some elements from the Sinestro Corp War [...]

G.I. Joe Volume 1
Written by Chuck Dixon
Art by Robert Atkins

G.I. JOE: COBRA
Written by Christos Gage and Mike Costa
Art by Antonio Fuso

G.I. JOE: Origins Volume 1
Written by Larry Hama
Art by Mike Hawthorne

I had not really cared about any of the G.I. Joe comics being produced by Devil’s Due Comics for the last few years, which is not to say they were good or bad, just that I couldn’t be bothered to actually buy them. However, when I heard that IDW had picked up the license and was going to be making a new series, I was intrigued. I was further intrigued when I heard of their plan to release three series, all focusing on different aspects of the G.I. Joe mythos. Then they suckered me in with G.I. Joe #0, which came out last year, and gave a preview of all three series. Since they’ve started, I’ve been eagerly waiting for each new issue, mostly because each series has its own place in the story, but also because each has its own unique feel.

The main series, G.I. Joe, is the most traditional of the three series. It’s got all the characters you enjoy, running around in their familiar costumes, fighting crazy robots controlled by Destro, and looking for Cobra. It’s a fun series, particularly if you’re a fan of the original. It’s got everything I’m looking for in a G.I. Joe comic [...]

G.I. Joe Classic Vol. 1-4
Written by Larry Hama with Herb Trimpe and Steven Grant
Art by Various
IDW Publishing
Available Now

As much as I loved G.I. Joe when I was a kid, I never read too much of the comic series that Marvel released in the 80’s to tie into the phenomenon. And let me tell you, I loved the toys growing up, had a ton of them, and still have great memories of waking up before school to watch the show. Fortunately for me, IDW has set out to reprint the entire comic book series, and has done a great job with them. Having read the first four volumes that are out now, I realize that it’s kind of a shame I didn’t read these as a kid, because these are some damn fine books for readers of all ages.

The first volume is kind of weird, at least to someone more familiar with the G.I. Joe cartoon series than the comics, as these issues have a very different tone from the show. Gone are the goofy costumes (for the most part) and a lot of the classic characters. No, the series actually starts as a more or less straight war comic, with more focus on the regular soldiers than on any crazy technology.

Reading the first few volumes, you could almost forget that the comic was designed to sell the toys, but that does creep up more as the series goes on, with the Joe’s or Cobra getting a new vehicle every issue. Sure, there are bits of the stuff I remember; Cobra Commander and the Baroness are still the big enemies, Snake Eyes and Scarlett are hanging around, but a lot of the Joes I remember don’t start showing up till around volume 3 [...]

Those of us lucky enough to check in on the smaller panel “Cartoon Books and Abstract Studios Happy Hour” at the San Diego Comic-Con last weekend by Jeff Smith (Bone) and Terry Moore (Strangers in Paradise, Echo) were privy to some exciting news from both of the artists, as well as just a fun discussion.

The first news of the day was that Terry Moore’s newest book, Echo has been given a film deal by producer Lloyd Levin (Watchmen, Hellboy II) which means that we will be seeing a film adaptation at some point in the future. Echo is a sci-fi tale that tells the story of Julie Martin, a young photographer whose life gets turned upside down when she gets coated in a layer of metal that gives her strange powers. The series is currently on issue 14, with a planned run of 30 issues. Moore also said that his next goal is to get Strangers in Paradise produced as a TV series.

The other big news of the day came from Jeff Smith, who revealed much to the enjoyment of every Bone fan, that two new books will be coming out in the next two years [...]

Fans of DC Comics premier superhero have been happy for the last few months with the resurgence of the entire line, largely under the hands of writers Geoff Johns, James Robinson, Greg Rucka, and Sterling Gates, and they should know that the writers have a lot planned for the Big Blue Boy Scout in the coming months.

Here’s some of the news that come out of the San Diego Comic-Con panel on Superman:

Codename: Patriot will be the name of the next big storyline through all the books, and will place more of an emphasis on what’s been going on with the planet Earth while Supes has been away on New Krypton. The story will focus on Lois Lane’s father, General Lane, and will be the next step towards a BIG Superman event coming up in 2010. Codename: Patriot will be a big game changer and will affect all the characters for the next year. There will also be a Superman: Secret Files out to tie-in with Code.

The Young Justice era Teen Titans will be showing up in Geoff Johns’ Adventure Comics, as well as having what the creators call one of the best Krypto the Super-Dog scenes ever [...]

On Saturday at the San Diego Comic-Con, fans of Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy were shown footage of the show’s first spin-off, titled The Cleveland Show. The show follows Peter Griffin’s friend Cleveland Brown, as he and his son Cleveland Jr. move back to their home town. Once back, Cleveland rekindles his relationship with his high school sweetheart, who has two kids of her own.

The show will premiere on September 27th at 8:30pm EST. Judging from the footage shown, I’m still not sold on the series. I’m a pretty big fan of Family Guy, but I was surprised to see that they would be using Cleveland as a character on his own. The show had decent jokes at times, but on the whole it left me pretty cold. Who knows, maybe the good jokes were left out of the previews shown, and it could just be that the creators haven’t found the right tone for the show yet, but Fox had better hope viewers enjoy it more than I did, since they have already picked up the show for a second season, before even one episode has aired. So far, 22 episodes have already been made, and we’ll have to see if they all get shown on the air, or if they just have a lot of episodes to include on the eventual DVD [...]

UPDATE: Since the SDCC panel, there’s been an update on the Futurama casting dispute, with reports that so far three cast members have signed on for next season.

***

None of the voice actors for Fox’s animated comedy Futurama were present for the show’s panel on Saturday at the San Diego Comic-Con, as the actors were still in contract disputes and its still unclear as to whether they will return for the upcoming season. Series creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen (as well as some of the other show runners) were on hand at the panel, which turned out to be was a pretty laid back panel, with the writers discussing some of the ideas they have for the new episodes (which will be going forward, with or without the original cast).

Episodes will include the secret origin of Scruffy the Janitor; a storyline involving Bender and Amy getting married, which will lead to a debate on Robosexual marriage and will be voted on (in the show) Proposition Infinity [...]

Fans of the Fox animated comedy Family Guy were treated to a sneak peek of the next Star Wars parody episode, based on The Empire Strikes back, which is titled Something, Something, Something Dark Side.

We got to see about 10 minutes’ worth of the episode, and from the footage shown, fans of the show will be quite happy. All the humor that made the first Star Wars-themed episode a success was back on display. Show creator Seth MacFarlane said that the episode should be on around Christmas. They also revealed the title for the Return of the Jedi episode, which will be called We Have a Bad Feeling about This. Characters from all the Seth MacFarlane shows (Family Guy, American Dad, and the new Cleveland Show) will appear in the Jedi-themed episode. They didn’t say when that episode would air, but did said that work was beginning on it, and I would expect it to air next year.

One episode discussed for the next season was a show dealing with abortion that Fox has said they will not air. McFarlane did not seem upset with Fox’s decision on this, saying that they wrote the episode and submitted the script to Fox, which allowed them to produce it, but canceled the episode after seeing it. McFarlane said viewers could expect to see it on a future DVD release. It does seem odd that Fox would be okay with the episode at the writing stage, but would not have the guts to air the episode, but who can understand the inner workings of a television network [...]