Hi, remember me? It’s been a while. School’s been pretty tough, but I’m in my last quarter! I’ve finally got time to write again. Let’s talk about the news!
First, we’ve got a couple of line items in the comics-to-be-adapted category:
- ElfQuest, the 1978 brainchild of Richard and Wendy Pini, is set to be adapted into an hour-long animated drama at Fox, with Susan Arneson (The Tick) serving as showrunner.
- Channing Tatum confirmed that he’s adapting Sam Kieth’s 90s darling The Maxx as a movie. Tatum was effusive in his enthusiasm, describing the way he use to sneak episodes of the MTV cartoon adaptation when he was grounded as a kid. Here’s hoping that energy translates to a successful project!
Former WWAC alum and current Popverse editor Tiffany Babb is offering a micro grant for comics criticism after the most recent debacle regarding the Eisner Awards! Why are there so many debacles lately? Seems weird that the category being removed is the one that reports on them.
Speaking of awards ceremonies, here are the comics nominees for the 35th annual GLAAD Media Awards:
Outstanding Comic Book
Adventures of Superman: Jon Kent, by Tom Taylor, Clayton Henry, Darick Robertson, Norm Rapmund, Jordie Bellaire, Wes Abbott (DC Comics)
Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain, by Tini Howard, Vasco Georgiev, Erick Arciniega, Ariana Maher (Marvel Comics)
Hawkgirl, by Jadzia Axelrod, Amancay Nahuelpan, Adriano Lucas, Alex Guimaraes, Carrie Strachan, Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (DC Comics)
Killer Queens 2, by David M. Booher, Bradley Clayton, Harry Saxon, Lucas Gattoni (Dark Horse Comics)
The Neighbors, by Jude Ellison S. Doyle, Letizia Cadonici, Alessandro Santoro, Becca Carey (BOOM! Studios)
New Mutants Lethal Legion, by Charlie Jane Anders, Enid Balam, Elisabetta D’Amico, Matt Milla, Travis Lanham (Marvel Comics)
The Oddly Pedestrian Life of Christopher Chaos, by Tate Brombal based on an idea by James Tynion IV, Isaac Goodhart, Miquel Muerto, Aditya Bidikar (Dark Horse Comics)
Poison Ivy, by G. Willow Wilson, Atagun Ilhan, Marcio Takara, Guillem March, Kelley Jones, A.L. Kaplan, Luana Vecchio, Arif Prianto, Ivan Plascencia, Jose Villarrubia, Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (DC Comics)
Star Wars: Doctor Aphra, by Alyssa Wong, Minkyu Jung, Natacha Bustos, Jethro Morales, Rachelle Rosenberg, Joe Caramagna (Marvel Comics)
Tim Drake: Robin, by Meghan Fitzmartin, Riley Rossmo, Ricardo Lopez Ortiz, Serg Acuna, Nikola Cizmesija, Lee Loughridge, Josh Reed, Tom Napolitano (DC Comics)Outstanding Original Graphic Novel/Anthology
Blackward, by Lawrence Lindell (Drawn & Quarterly)
Carmilla: The First Vampire, by Amy Chu, Soo Lee, Sal Cipriano (Berger Books/Dark Horse Comics)
Cosmoknights (Book Two), by Hannah Templer (Top Shelf Productions)
Four-Color Heroes, by Richard Fairgray (Fanbase Press)
Heartstopper Vol. 5, by Alice Oseman (Graphix/Scholastic)
Light Carries On, by Ray Nadine (Dark Horse Books)
Northranger, by Rey Terciero, Bre Indigo (HarperAlley)
Parallel, by Matthias Lehmann (ONI Press)
Roaming, by Jillian Tamaki, Mariko Tamaki (Drawn & Quarterly)
Us, by Sara Soler, Joamette Gil (Dark Horse Books)
Congratulations and good luck to everyone nominated!
After the hullaballoo regarding Steamboat Willie entering the public domain at the start of this year, Variety reminded us that Superman and Batman will do the same in a decade or so. What does that mean? Well, to start, it means that only the versions of those characters as they existed in the late 1930s will be up for grabs. Your Batman’s gonna have purple gloves! He’ll be allowed to shoot a gun! He won’t have a sidekick named Robin, and he won’t fight the Joker until that character enters the public domain a few years afterward. Your Superman will be able to beat up slumlords, but not fly. On the upside, he won’t have a weakness to kryptonite, which didn’t exist in his first stories!
We’ll undoubtedly see a slew of hasty projects announced, as we did this month with Mickey, but truth be told I’m actually a little more excited for the possibilities here. After all, cape comics love a granular exploration of a hero’s early days, and indeed we’ve gotten some fun updates of public domain heroes already—Dynamite got a fair bit of mileage out of Miss Fury in 2013, the original Lev Gleason Publications Daredevil has popped up both in Image’s Savage Dragon and in also in Dynamite’s Project Superpowers (as “The Death-Defying ‘Devil”), and most recently, Stardust the Super Wizard just had a successful funding campaign on Zoop.
All of this is to say that superheroes entering the public domain can be an incredibly exciting prospect, even with Disney and Warner Bros’ corporate lawyers breathing down our necks. I’m excited to see what thoughtful creators can do with resources like this.
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That’s all I’ve got. It’s tough out there lately, take care of yourselves, huh?
