Savage Popcorn

Check out Friday’s Dork Tower.

So, biofuels were going to save us from global catastrophe until someone pointed out that growing fuel instead of food might have an impact on food prices. There is a solution: Soylent Petrol.

Check out Sunday’s Sinfest

Click on through for the punchline.

Check out Wednesday’s Dork Tower.

Dave Stevens, the graphic artist probably best known around these parts for The Rocketeer – the comic book that was such a big part of the Bettie Page revival in the 1980s, and which went on to spawn a film – has died from complications of leukemia at the age of 52.

He’ll be missed.

After the disappointment that was 300, my enthusiasm for Zach Snyder’s take on Watchmen has waned considerably. Granted, Snyder continues to say all of the right things but I am far from convinced that he can pull off a story as broad and complex as Alan Moore’s graphic novel.

The film is due to be released in a year’s time and the first images of the characters have been released. Obviously it’s difficult - if not impossible - to draw any conclusions from a bunch of stills, but here they are and, as a comparison, I have also added some scans of the original (comic book) versions.

I probably will see the film, but I still have the horrible feeling that it’s going to be another League of Extraordinary Gentlemen rather than a V for Vendetta.

A quick look at the news feeds today revealed a couple of rather interesting looking comic book adaptations on the way.

Firstly, from Twitch, comes the news that David Fincher is to direct a film version of Charles Burns’ Black Hole as scripted by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary.

And, you thought your adolescence was scary. Suburban Seattle, the mid-1970s. We learn from the outset that a strange plague has descended upon the area’s teenagers, transmitted by sexual contact. The disease is manifested any number of ways - from the hideously grotesque to the subtle (and concealable) - but once you’ve got it, that’s it. There’s no turning back. As we inhabit the heads of several key characters - some kids who have it, some who don’t, some who are about to get it - what unfolds isn’t the expected battle to fight the plague, or bring heightened awareness of it, or even to treat it. What we become witness to instead is a fascinating and eerie portrait of the nature of high-school alienation itself - the savagery, the cruelty, the relentless anxiety and ennui, the longing for escape. And, then the murders start. As hypnotically beautiful as it is horrifying (and, believe it or not, autobiographical), “Black Hole” transcends its genre by deftly exploring a specific American cultural moment in flux and the kids who are caught in it - back when it wasn’t exactly cool to be a hippie any more, but Bowie was still just a little too weird. To say nothing of sprouting horns and moulting your skin…

It will be interesting – to say the least – how much of this actually makes it onto the screen, but Fincher, Gaiman and Avery are three people who do have both the critical and commercial clout to pull it off.

I’m a bit more ambivalent about the news (from CHUD) that Garth Ennis’ The Boys is also about to make the transition to the big screen.

From the dark and twisted mind of Garth Ennis, co-creator of “Preacher” and “Hitman”, and the savage pencil of Darick Robertson, artist of “Transmetropolitan”, comes a darkly hilarious story that will change the way you look at superheroes forever! Meet Billy Butcher. He’s not a nice man, and neither are his team: the Frenchman, Mother’s Milk, and the Female. They hate “capes”…and so does Billy’s newest recruit, Wee Hughie, whose girlfriend has just become collateral damage in a super-brawl. But does Hughie know what he’s getting into? This hugely controversial new series - which caused an uproar upon original publication - explores the sordid side of superheroics!

It does sound like cracking stuff and Garth Ennis is an excellent writer. What does make me a little wary, however, is that Neal H. Moritz has been slated to produce the film and – as a quick look at his filmography will reveal – Moritz hasn’t explored the sordid side of anything.