DC/WB developing a Hawkman movie?

I know, I know, I'm on hiatus, but I saw this on twitter and felt obliged to post it. Flying around the net* this morning are rumours of a Hawkman movie! That means that hopefully Carter Hall, with his obscenely large wings and waxed pepperoni-nippled chest, will be coming to a cinema near you in 2013. Warner Bros, presumably banking on Green Lantern being a success, are shopping for writers as we speak. For the uninitiated, here is their pitch;


"Part INDIANA JONES/DA VINCI CODE, part GHOST tentpole about the fictional superhero that appears in D.C. Comic books. He used archaic weaponry and large, artificial wings attached to a harness made of the Nth metal that allows flight. Most incarnations of Hawkman work closely with a partner/romantic interest named Hawkgirl or Hawkwoman in his fight against supervillains. Based on the DC comic."


First thing's first; Hawkman looks ridiculous. Look at the image from Smallville below. Look at it very carefully and decide if you'd pay eight quid to sit through that for two hours, probably in 3D. There are other more deserving DC heroes to adapt, such as the Flash and Wonder Woman. Household names, that need their films before (let's face it) the superhero blockbuster bubble inevitably bursts. There are other reasons not to adapt Hawkman; his convoluted history for one. I mean, I consider myself very well-versed in comic lore, and even I couldn't tell you what "Nth Metal" is. As well as his origins being tied to ancient Egypt, he is also linked with the alien race known as Thanagarians for no real reason I can comprehend, despite spending the better part of an hour on Wikipedia. I'm sincerely hoping they leave that bit out.



But Smallville did an excellent job with the character, delicately balancing his past lives and tragic storyline very well with his hardass-mace-man persona. The project has potential; a pissed-off, tooled-up Indiana Jones flying around Nazi-bashing sounds like an appealing prospect, and if done straight-laced could be a real feather in DC's cap*. But what finally convinced me was a youtube clip from someone in the CBM comments section, from a film entitled Legion that I've never seen before.





With the mace, and the wings... stick a helmet on him and you get some idea of what to expect. As long as it sticks to a period setting I'm all for this, but not at the expense of a decent Wonder Woman movie. This is all speculation anyway; if Green Lantern flops, the Hawkman movie will sadly never get to spread its wings*.


*Puns fully intended. I regret nothing.

Back-issue blog: Mark Millar's Superior

About six months ago, I would have assumed Mark Millar could do no wrong. This is the guy that wrote Kick-Ass, Marvel Knights: Spider-Man and perhaps most importantly Civil War. It's a terrific run; "The Last Stand" was the Spider-Man story that got me reading comics properly in the first place. But Nemesis, his other big mini-series, was sadly a misfire. Some terrific moments and truly diabolical scheming by the titular anti-hero were wasted on the cardboard cut-out characters and I was afraid that Superior, Millar's attempt at a Superman story, was going to go the same way. Millar is teetering on the brink of overexposure with these projects, Kick-Ass 2, his new film and London comic-con, and I was worried that the slippery slope of success had got to him. However, I'm happy to report that four issues in and it's looking good. Not Kick-Ass good, but good nonetheless.


So let's recap: a disabled twelve-year-old boy is approached by a monkey in a space suit and offered a "magic wish" that turns him into his favourite comic-book hero, Superior.

Hang on, what?!

Past the slow start and ridiculous premise, the book is actually rather good. It's a character story, the sole reason that Superior succeeds where Nemesis failed. The comic forces us to actually care about the plight of poor little wheelchair-bound Simon Pooni, Millar's very own mystically transfigured Tiny Tim. But all this character development is a double-edged sword; this comes at the expense of much of the action, putting off casual readers.

Once the supporting cast expands by issue #4, Millar gets off his backside and kicks the story into gear. A maverick female journalist and even Barack Obama prompt some great moments by Superior, showing not only the hero inside of ourselves, blah blah et cetera, but the frightening realisation that a twelve-year-old boy, unused to walking, can now lift buses with one hand and threaten the school bully with exposure. Even the monkey's big reveal by the end of issue #4 was a genuine "Oh shit" moment for me, something that not many comics are able to accomplish.

Let's talk about the art. Leniell Yu is probably one of my favourite artists in comics at the moment; his art has this raw, sketchy, effortless quality that really makes it shine. While his work on Secret Invasion was nice, it was more personal, moodier comics like Wolverine and New Avengers that really won me over. Let me tell you, the man draws one hell of a Wolverine. This cannot be overstated. Given his art style, he would not have been my first choice for this project but it works. It really does. The book looks gorgeous.

It's a slow starter, perhaps unnecessarily so, but Superior is a return to form of sorts for Millar. I strongly suggest you jump on the book before it's over, if you haven't already. Grab some back issues and get up to speed before issue #5 hits the stands.

Back-issue Blog: Usagi Yojimbo

"Back-issue Blog" is my little infrequent comics column. This week, we're looking at an introduction to Dark Horse's rabbit ronin with Usagi Yojimbo #136 and #137.

I'm going to be honest, I only picked this title up because I've stopped buying Marvel. Love the characters, love the films, slavering at the mouth for The Avengers et cetera, but having to suffer through Siege, One More Day and Cap's ridiculous resurrection (a "Time Bullet"? Really?) I decided to cut my losses before I broke something. No way on God's green earth was I going to shell out for four Avengers books a month. So like so many others before me have done, I looked for salvation on the internet. Turns out there are very few independent comics with unanimously positive reviews. I could either wade deep into DC's Brightest Day line or admit defeat and slink off back to Brian bloody Bendis and his four Avengers books a month. But just as I was about to bend over I noticed Usagi Yojimbo, a quaint little title tucked away in Dark Horse's output. The reviews were unanimously positive.

I must admit, I was put-off at first. The dialogue was simple, the art was cartoonish and more to the point, the lead character was a rabbit. While a great recipe for a children's book, it didn't sit well in a comic about a masterless samurai doomed to tread the warrior's path. And then, on closer inspection, it kind of did.

The dialogue was simple, true. It was elegantly simple. It was as if Stan Sakai, the man who has written, drawn, and inked the comic for 137 months and counting, took a sword of his own to his writing; every word that didn't build our understanding of a character or didn't advance the plot was mercilessly cut away. Sakai's art also shines; the attention to detail and the hand-drawn cross-hatchings are a breath of fresh air compared to the exquisitely computer-rendered environments of many more commercially successful comics. And say what you will about the rabbit, at least he's memorable. Iconic. Even his cute little ears are done up in a samurai topknot, and the variety of emotions that contort over Usagi's cute little face are so evocative of his character, a guard without a master struggling to find his purpose. Look at that face. That is unmistakeably the face of a badass.

Don't be put off by Usagi's childish nature. Scratch beneath the surface and you have an absolute gem of a genre comic that deserves a much, much wider audience. If you're like me and you're fed up with every superhero title on the shelf, you couldn't go far wrong with Usagi Yojimbo.

On Webcomics.

I'm going to put this straight out there; I really, really like comics. Don't get me wrong, I'm fully aware of the implications of that statement. I'm also exactly the sort of person that has contemplated getting a Superman tattoo and can name about fifteen Green Lanterns. But despite the evidence, it's not the superhero genre I fell in love with. It's the format of the comic itself. All art tells a story - comics just take that fact literally. Raised on the Beano and the Spider-Man cartoons of the early nineties, I've since graduated to Watchmen and Maus. The classics. Truly great literature, coated in a sugary shell for our reading pleasure.

A few years ago I came across a gaming website that hosted a comic, Ctrl-Alt-Del (webcomic fans, please don't judge me. I was young and naive, but more on that later). Serialised and funny like a newspaper comic strip, the humour was much more adult and it told an ongoing story like a regular issue. It was also free, which really helped. I started going back to the site every day for a month, scraping the last few comics from the bottom of the archive barrel. A quick bit of digging revealed an entire community of net-famous comic writers, all keeping themselves afloat with their creations. From anthropomorphic shapes to stick-figures, ninjas to dinosaurs (sometimes both in one comic) the level of talent in both art and writing swung wildly from one extreme to the other. After extensive research I soon found a little group of absolute gems to keep up with. Some creators were using their comics as their sole means of income, adding entrepeneur to their list of talents. They all seemed very genial and funny people, giving their contemporaries a leg-up or a shout-out when needed. It was great. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays became a lot more interesting.

Fast-forward to present day, and most of my favourites are still going. I abandoned Ctrl-Alt-Del after the writer, Tim Buckley, infamously introduced a very serious, very out-of-place miscarrage storyline into his zany gaming comic. Serious stuff certainly has a place, but not in a comic aimed squarely at short-burst gamers looking for a cheap laugh. I read XKCD for a long time, but some of the more advanced maths jokes went straight over my head and I didn't appreciated Randall Monroe, the former NASA worker who writes the thing, giving me homework.

I do, however, have a few favourites that I think more people should read. A Softer World is great, as is the DC Comics spinoff A Softer DCU. It doesn't tell a story, but if it did it would be a tale of a caring, sensitive, bitterly ironic mass-murderer. The humour is very black and more then a little shocking, but I'm assuming that's part of the fun. The very funny Circle Versus Square is sadly no longer running, but the archive is definately worth looking at. Dr McNinja is much more in the format of a traditional superhero comic, while keeping the serialised funnies intact. As expected, it chronicles the events of a Doctor who is also a ninja (his PHD hangs just above his Katana). Cyanide and Happiness is terrific, providing your sense of humour is as disgusting as mine. Dinosaur Comics is the other biggee; full of brilliantly whimsical, gentle humour. It's recognisably Canadian in it's good-natured-ness.

If there's one comic I follow religiously, it's Questionable Content. At first, it seemed remarkably pretentious; the never-ending tale of a group of good-looking indie rockers, updated five days a week. I hated it. I still hated it ten strips into it. Fifty strips later I was absolutely hooked. Once the comic stopped relying on music jokes, the characters work very hard to win the reader over. And they are great characters; some of the funniest moments in the comic come from their established little idiosyncrasies.

I've really invested in this little microcosm of creativity. That's not to say every webcomic is a good one; for every Dinosaur Comics, there are hundreds of identikit turds bobbing around the toilet bowl of the web. Dodge the floaters by following the list above, and take some time to peruse a couple of these gems. You won't regret it.