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§ A film adaptation of Paul Pope’s Battling Boy series has been on again and off again, but it seems it’s on again, with Patrick Osborne named as director. Osborne directed the animated short “Feast” which accompanied Big Hero 6 in the theater. The film is set up at Paramount. Pope’s lush epic recounts the rise of a young boy who is fated to save the land of Acropolis from various dangers. The first volume of the story came our from First Second a few years ago, but it’s since been spun off with books about Battling Boy’s predecessor Haggard West, plotted by Pope and drawn by the stunningly talented artist David Rubin. The first one was The Rise of Aurora West, co-written by J.T. Petty with art by Rubin, and a new one comes out in October, The Fall of the House of West.

§ Miles Teller who is playing Reed Richards in the new Fantastic Four movie which is creeping into theaters this week, is one of the brave celebrities who admits that comics aren’t really his thing:

“I think I collected comic books at one point in my life just because I thought that was a phase I’d go through as a boy. But it was more of a collectable thing, I didn’t really get much out of reading them,” he admitted to British newspaper The Independent. “But the comic book format didn’t really speak to me.”


Now they do, now they do. Although my favorite part of the new FF is when J. Jonah Jameson comes up to Reed and hits him with a rolled up newspaper yelling “Was it ahead or was it behind?”

§ When you see a headline like Comic Con is growing faster than the city can keep up, you assume it’s about the San Diego Comic-Con but SURPRISE — it’s the Tyler Rose City Comic Con which will be held Oct. 23-25 at the East Texas State Fair in Tyler, TX. It seems this regional show has grown from 2,000 people in 2013 to 6,000 in 2014, and there weren’t even enough hotels to hold everyone! Sound familiar? This time they’ve spread out to other venues and expect as many as 10,000 people.

With those large crowds comes an inevitable benefit to the city. Jones estimated the 2013 comic con brought in about $200,000 in revenue for the area. At triple the size, last year’s numbers grew as well, Jones said. All five partner hotels sold out thanks to the convention.

“It’s a great thing for East Texas,” Keohane said. “Look at how big Dallas Comic Con has become.”


That show drew 70,000 attendees in May.