§ Nice Art: Some sketches auction pieces from HeroesCon

Brian Stelfreeze!

Jim Rugg!

https://twitter.com/jeffdekal/status/875189552843042816

Jeff Dekal!

I actually wasn’t familiar with Jeff Dekal but he’s done some variant covers that caught my eye.

§ While trawling for the above, I ran across this Adam Hughes process tweet.

I can see why the licensor wasn’t more of Lara Croft’s face but the original has so much character!

§ Recently Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige appeared at a talk with Amy Pascal, former head of Sony and currently producer on Spider-Man and the upcoming Venom and Black Cat movies. And when she suggested that these films would be part of the Spider-Man Universe, and thus connected to the MCU in a way (Tom Holland Spidey is a joint Sony/Marvel production) Feige literally swallowed hard a couple of times.

https://twitter.com/CraigLin/status/876450047088623617

And this led to a take off on the classic #SadAffleck video.

Now, whenever I feel sad or need a laugh I watch Sad Affleck because, it just never gets old, like David Pumpkins or Four Yorkshiremen. Sad Feiege isn’t quite that great – it doesn’t have a perfect punchline–but it is damn amusing. It could also be that Feige is just a little uncomfortable listening to yet ANOTHER studio head rip off his shared universe concept, which, to be fair, only Feige has been able to pull off thus far. OR maybe he just doesn’t like the idea of Venom trampling around his perfect, curated movie verse.

Here’s the un-Simon & Garfunkled clip.

https://twitter.com/ComicFade/status/876443828370255874

And heres Collider explaining what it all really means:

This is a tad confusing, especially since Sony had previously stressed that these films were not connected to the Peter Parker movies, but Feige does smile at the end of the answer here. It’s unclear if that’s a knowing smile, or a polite “That’s not exactly what we’re doing” smile. Pascal went on to say there’s “a chance” that Peter Parker could appear in Venom or Silver & Black while also laying out that Sony is not-so-secretly copying from the best when it comes to creating its Marvel Universe:

So…all just talk and chatter.

§ Even for a dedicated Perlmutter-ologist such as The Beat, the Issac Perlmutter/Harold Peerenboom lawsuit/feud is a bit hard to follow. After dragging on for six years, it’s now all about who mailed what letters to who and why and…oh god. Even THR’s sturdy legal correspondent Eriq Gardner seems to be wandering helplessly through the tangle in this update. But the newish news is this:

1. Ike Perlmutter is best pals with Donald Trump, the president of the United States.

2. Lawyer Marc Kasowitz is representing Donald Trump as POTUS is investigated for obstruction of justice.

3. Kasowitz is ALSO representing Peerenboom, Perlmutter’s sworn mortal enemy.

4. Profit!!!

Of more interest, perhaps, is a recent appellate court ruling that said Perlmutter’s Marvel emails were not privileged information and could be entered into evidence in the lawsuit. Now that could be tasty!

§ As long as we’re just talking about Marvel and films and what not, Claire Napier digs in to the strange history of the program Mutant X, which apparently ran for years without any one noticing:

The Inhumans aren’t the first example of Marvel trying to wheedle their way around the live-action restrictions to any and all X-Series the company brought for itself when Avi Arad, in his Marvel Films role of the time, sold off these rights in 1993. Spirits were high at Marvel then; you can read the editorial excitement in old issues of the time. And it makes sense: X-Men: the Animated Series (also sold and Executive Produced by Arad, and bought for Fox Kids by Margaret Loesch, previously CEO of Marvel Productions [later Marvel Films]) was a five-year success that primed huge swathes of new comic book and toy product audience, myself included. But things went south and Fox retained the seed patent without producing any fruits. Sold for a flat fee, the ever-popular, endlessly minable X-Men were out of Marvel’s creative reach, up to and beyond Fox’s eventual, and for them very profitable, release of X-Men in 2000. What did Marvel do? What did Avi Arad do? They bootlegged their own product. They created Mutant X.

 

§ The esteemed fashion house Prada just held their latest fashion show, and it was heavily influenced by graphic novels. Specifically James Jean and Ollie Schrauwen were hired to design backgrounds and inspire the men’s line. Jean has worked with PRada before but Schrauwen’s fever dream, geometric work is an inspired choice!

Miuccia Prada took inspiration from graphic novels for her latest collection, which aims to create a dialogue between the virtual world and the real world. The virtual world is in an exhibit at the brand’s Fondazione Prada contemporary art exhibition space. Fashion is Prada’s reality. She employed two artists – James Jean from Los Angeles and Ollie Schrauwen of Belgium – to create graphic stories on a human and not superhero scale that covered the walls of the showroom and became the prints that defined Sunday’s menswear collection in Milan. Scenes included a robot monkey and an oversized spider descending to pick up houses. Prada said she was attracted to the comics because they turn out information in bit-size pieces — much the same way social media does today.

 

If the internet gods are working, there’s a slideshow of some of the clothing embedded below.

If not, check out this Getty Images page.

§ Returning briefly to actual comics, here’s your weekly Jillian Tamaki profile, this time at The Atlantic

An ambitious and eclectic set of tales, it focuses on the interior lives of unexpected subjects: the writer of a pornographic sitcom, a shrinking woman, a plant-nursery employee with an internet doppelganger, even a fly. Boundless uses a constantly varying visual treatment that keeps readers on their toes and mixes and matches artistic styles with a proliferating set of genres, from speculative fiction to domestic drama to magical realism. If a reader comes to Boundless with assumptions about visual storytelling, Tamaki will confound them.

 

§ You have probably seen that Joss Whedon’s unproduced ten year old Wonder Woman screenplay got dragged to the stake and burnt alive over the last few days, as typified by the Daily Dot’s Joss Whedon’s ‘Wonder Woman’ Screenplay Is a Sexist Nightmare. First off, this script has been floating around for years, and until an actual Wonder Woman movie was made, no one much paid any attention. Sure, it is an earlier, inferior attempt, but i’m sure this script was a sexist nightmare for all 10 years without anyone noticing. Or caring. Until now.   Second off, “sexist nightmare”? I get that Whedon-hating is in fashion but 10 years ago, there was even more fear and suspicion of a female-led action movie than there is now, and a lot of the slaws soudns like they were meant to address this. I’m not saying it’s a great feminist text, but I wish some of the kindling that was piled up around this particular stake had a little more context. But, internet.

2 COMMENTS

  1. I wasn’t watching Mutant X, but I was well-aware that it was a red-headed stepchild of the X-Men franchise. I’m sure that many, many others realized this as well.

    I keep in mind that Whedon’s Wonder Woman screenplay was written for studio executives who (allegedly) could not or would not clearly explain what they wanted–assuming that they knew that themselves. I’m sure it might be very interesting to track the evolution of various treatments and drafts for the script.

  2. I think it comes off, retroactively, as a “nightmare” when people compare it to the not-male-gazey Wonder Woman movie that we got. Without the contrast, it doesn’t look as bad.

    And of course, it has never been confirmed as real, and it wasn’t a final draft. I have my doubts because there’s a DISCOVERY CHANNEL reference in World War II. Wat. That can’t be real.

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