Once Upon a Geek

I didn’t realize until very recently that Alan Moore inspired much of the Sinestro Corps War and Blackest Night stories.  I had no idea!  Turns out that Moore wrote a short story entitled “Tygers” in Tales of the Green Lantern Corps Annual #2 back in 1986.  This 12-page story featured the creation of many of the elements that play heavily into the Sinestro Corps War and Blackest Night.  Only Alan Moore could influence so many future Green Lantern comics with so few pages.  Obviously this short story resonated tremendously with Geoff Johns, enough so that he incorporated nearly all of it into his Green Lantern run.  Here is a rundown of the items Alan Moore created for this short story that resurfaced again during Geoff Johns tenure on the series:

• Sodam Yat (a.k.a. Ion)
• Ysmault (Home world of the Red Lanterns)
• The Five Inversions (of Ysmault)
• A tremendous war in which the Green Lanterns are devastated (possibly the Sinestro Corps War or Blackest Night)
• Ranx the Sentient City
• Children of the White Lobe
• The Empire of Tears
• An explanation for why Abin Sur was flying a spaceship when he died (also touched upon in the recent Green Lantern Secret Origin)

Below is one page from that story.  This one page represents a large majority of Alan Moore’s creations that play into recent Green Lantern storylines.  Click the image to enlarge.

You can find the entire 12-page story reprinted in the trade paperback, Green Lantern: In Brightest Day.  This is a good one to get because Geoff Johns selected all the stories in the trade and provided commentary on each.  A great companion piece to the Blackest Night storyline.

If you’ve been reading about San Diego Comic Con, then you’ve already heard that Marvel Comics has purchased the rights to Marvelman.  While Marvel has purchased the rights to Marvelman from the original creator, it’s unlikely they will be able to reprint the 80’s & 90’s material that was published as Miracleman.

If you are not familiar with Marvelman/Miracleman, then the following will help.  About two years ago, I posted the following on THE UNIQUE GEEK list serv:

You need to read the “Miracleman” comic.

I’ve recently had the good fortune to borrow the graphic novels reprinting “Miracleman”. I read these many, many years ago, but it was a real treat to read them again. This was a comic published in the 1980’s and early 90’s, and which has since become legend. It was written by a little-known author named Alan Moore. He wrote 16 miraculous issues and then handed off the reins to another little-known author named Neil Gaiman who did another 8 issues.

The Miracleman comic book began life as “Marvelman”, a British Captain Marvel/Shazam rip off in the 1950’s & 60’s. He was basically a carbon copy of the Captain Marvel/Shazam character, even with his own “Marvel Family”. In 1982 Alan Moore revitalized the character, eventually changing the name to “Miracleman” (due to legal pressure from Marvel Comics). The series started as an interesting take on the Shazam mythos…. It progressed into areas no one could have predicted.

They even published an anthology mini-series called “Apocrypha” that allowed other writers to take a shot at the amazing Miracleman universe. Just a few other little-known authors from the “Apocrypha” mini-series: James Robinson (Starman), Matt Wagner (Grendel), and Kurt Busiek (Marvels, Thunderbolts).

Miracleman was great, thought-provoking, and way ahead of it’s time. Unfortunately, the rights to Miracleman have been in legal limbo for a number of years. Therefore it can’t be reprinted right now, and back issues and old trade paperbacks are extremely scarce.

If you are interested in reading it, you can get it through the following torrent. Normally I don’t endorse this method of acquiring comics, however, you can’t get the issues anywhere right now. So this really is the only option. <<TORRENT URL DELETED>>

If you’d like further information on Miracleman, you can read the Wikipedia entry here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracleman

If you check it out, let us know here at the Unique Geek. Enjoy! I know you will.

Shag

PS: Ever since issue #18 of Miracleman was published (back in 1990 I think), I’ve dreamed of having my very own “Bates” pendant. I want one even more now.

I stand by my statements about how amazing the Miracleman series was. While the Miracleman material still probably resides in limbo, at least Marvelman will see life again.  It will be interesting to see who Marvel gets to work on this book and what direction they’ll take it.  They could make the new series a continuation of the 80’s/90’s material (without the rights to reprint that material), however, I think it would be very hard for new readers to grasp what is happening. More than likely, they’ll have to go in a new direction.

In case you find yourself shirtless, you can already purchase Marvelman t-shirts from Marvel.  For a good rundown on the  confusing Marvelman/Miracleman publication history, click here.

Regardless what happens, it should be interesting to watch.

The Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter animated DVD is scheduled for release this coming Tuesday, March 24!  Also on the DVD will be Under the Hood, a live action adaptation of the original Nite Owl’s autobiography!  Hot dog!

To watch the trailer for either, click here and then select Tales of the Black Freighter.

For those of you who haven’t read the actual Watchmen graphic novel, Tales of the Black Freighter was  a comic-within-the-comic.  This story actually appeared within the pages of the Watchmen graphic novel as a comic book read by a young man in New York City. Tales of the Black Freighter tells the story of a young mariner’s journey to warn his home town of the coming of the Black Freighter after he survives the destruction of his own ship. During his journey, the young seaman is “forced by the urgency of his mission to shed one inhibition after another” and experience horrible events along the way.  The turbulent events the sailor endures seem to mirror those in the world of the Watchmen, specifically the events surrounding Adrian Veidt.

The Tales of the Black Freighter comic-within-the-comic was very reminiscent of the old E.C. Comics.  The art and colors were very rich; the story dense with a sense of foreboding. If you love those old E.C. Comics, then you’ll go nuts for Tales of the Black Freighter.

The Tales of the Black Freighter DVD features the voices of Gerard Butler (300) and Jared Harris (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and is directed by Daniel DelPurgatorio and Mike Smith and written by Alex Tse (Watchmen) and Zack Snyder.

Under the Hood, Hollis Mason’s tell-all autobiography, chronicles the events in Hollis Mason’s life that led to him to become the masked avenger Nite Owl and discusses how the Minutemen were formed. It features the original Sally Spectre, the Comedian, Moloch the Mystic, along with Hollis Mason, the original Nite Owl.

Under the Hood is directed by Eric Matthies, written by Hans Rodionoff and produced by Eric Matthies and Wesley Coller. Stars Carla Gugino, Matt Frewer, Stephen McHattie and Jeffrey Dean Morgan appear as their characters from the theatrical Watchmen film in this live-action documentary style special.

This DVD looks awesome!  I’m especially excited about the Under the Hood segment.  I’m a sucker for golden age/silver age superheroes.  I can’t wait!

Believe it or not, there was a time when Watchmen wasn’t the pinnacle of comic book achievement.  Back in 1987 it was simply a comic book being published by DC and was subject to the same exploitation as all other mid-80s comic books.  To be specific, it was the subject of three role-playing supplements from Mayfair Games.  The most shocking fact about this is that Alan Moore actually approved these RPG supplements, making them the only Watchmen spin-offs to be endorsed by Alan Moore himself.

I own one of these RPG supplements (seen above) and have included scans of the Watchmen statistics below.  These supplements expanded upon the Watchmen characters and provided previously-unrevealed information on items in the Watchmen-verse. The three supplements were: Who Watches the Watchmen?, Taking Out the Trash, and Watchmen Sourcebook.

Who Watches the Watchmen? by Dan Greenberg is a pre-Keane Act adventure module which contains complete statistics for the Watchmen characters. This supplement also includes original artwork by Dave Gibbons.  This is the supplement I own and the one the scans below come from.

Taking Out The Trash by Ray Winninger and Alan Moore, the second adventure module, included an eight page pull-out sourcebook featuring “Veidt’s Plan for World Peace and Unification,” statistics and background details for the Minutemen, and a “Watchmen Chronology: 1938-1985.” It also included “The World of the Watchmen,” an essay co-written by Alan Moore, which gave a capsule history of the characters and world, including information not given in the comic mini-series.

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Watchmen Sourcebook by Ray Winninger was published in 1990. This 128 page volume was presented in the same style as the comic mini-series, where the readers progressively piece together the story as they go along. Its “scrapbook” format provided additional background information on the Watchmen universe and its characters including newspaper articles, movie scripts, letters to and from family members of the heroes, and friends of the Watchmen and Minutemen.

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Here are the scans of the Watchmen RPG statistics.  If you are interested in reading the text, click the image for a larger version.

In a fantastic interview by Comic Book Resources, both Dan Greenberg and Ray Winninger say that Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons were extremely helpful during the development process of these RPG supplements. Below is an excerpt from that interview.  You can read the entire interview by clicking here.

Greenberg emphasizes how helpful Alan Moore was, noting that he was “particularly generous with his time and patience in giving detailed answers to my inexhaustible questions. I was especially honored when he started calling me to talk about his latest ideas.”

Winninger had similar experiences with his collaborative efforts: “On all of our various DC Heroes projects we received a lot of cooperation from various DC creators, Alan and Dave included.” “Shortly after I picked up the Watchmen assignment I called Alan in Northampton,” says Winninger. “He was unbelievably nice and excited about the project. During that first call he spent almost two hours telling me exactly what was about to happen in the next nine issues of the comic, down to the level of individual panels and page layouts.” Winninger adds, “I still remember him saying ‘Right, issue 12. We open with six pages of corpses.’ I spoke with him several times thereafter to bounce my ideas for the adventure off of him, to clarify details to get his approval on the manuscripts and such.” And, as Winninger points out, Dave Gibbons provided original cover art for the Mayfair “Watchmen” books and added new interior art as well.

Alan Moore was supportive of everything Winninger planned for the “Watchmen” role-playing game supplements. Winninger says, “I don’t recall him ever vetoing anything. I certainly wouldn’t have used anything he didn’t like. He and I riffed together on some of the new stuff — backgrounds for some of the Minutemen is one detail I remember.”

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“The idea to have Captain Metropolis engineer a plot to force the characters to work together popped into my head in the middle of my first phone call to Alan Moore,” says Greenberg. “I blurted out the idea while we were brainstorming, and he approved the plotline on the spot. He even made helpful suggestions which I adopted — like using Moloch as the logical fall guy for Captain Metropolis. Making Moloch a double patsy — first for Metropolis and then again for Ozymandias — could lend another layer of poignancy to the Moloch-Comedian scene in the comic.”

According to Dave Gibbons, the new Watchmen tie-in video game, Watchmen:  The End is Nigh, is based upon material from these role-playing adventures.  To read Gibbons interview, please visit click here.

Here are more scans from the supplement.  If you are interested in reading the text, click the image for a larger version.

While compiling information for this post, the Watchmen Comic Book Movie web site was an invaluable resource.  To read their write-up on the Mayfair Watchmen supplements, click here.

Back in July 2007, the gang from THE UNIQUE GEEK got together to discuss the Watchmen graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. On the call was Jon, Patrick, Todd, Holly, Cary, Maria, Sterling, Michael Bailey, and myself. We discussed the themes, characters, and who is hotter – Dr. Manhatten or Night Owl.

You can play the podcast right here on the ONCE UPON A GEEK  site with the handy-dandy player below! Running time 1 hour and 21 minutes.

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Click here for a recent and lengthy interview with Alan Moore from Wired magazine.  There is some good Watchmen stuff in there.

There is just no making Alan Moore happy.  Someone finally makes a movie that is incredibly faithful to Moore’s original source material, and he still finds something to complain about.

How will Watchmen do at the box office is a topic we’ve been debating over at THE UNIQUE GEEK and my friend EDP’s blog, I DON’T READ MY BLOG EITHER.  I think everyone agrees the movie will be great, but the questions are how will it be received by the general public and will it make any money.

How Will it be Received by the General Public?

My opinion is that geeks everywhere will praise this movie. I think intellectuals will praise the movie.   I think the general American public either won’t care/won’t see it, or won’t “get it” if they do watch it. Superhero movies are fairly common nowadays, so people are beginning to ignore them.  Here come the Watchmen, a superhero movie composed of superheroes that the general public has never heard of.  That could be a hindrance in getting the general public to come out for it.  Also, there is SO much merchandise out there for Watchmen right now. With all the marketing and merchandising, I’m afraid the general public is expecting the next Superman or Spider-Man. As we all know, it certainly won’t be that. Finally, I think the general public will struggle to reconcile the spandex outfits with the heavy subject matter.

How Much Money Will it Make at the Box Office?

I think Watchmen is likely to perform very well the first couple weeks, then quickly fall off.  Besides the factors I mentioned above, there is the issue that the film is rated “R”.  That will seriously restrict those that can see the movie legally.  I’m sure tons of under-17 kids will see it, but will they pay for Street Fighter and simply sneak into Watchmen?  That won’t help Watchmen’s profits.

For some perspective, here are some other comic book movie box office grosses.  For further information on superhero movie box office returns click here (worldwide gross) and click here (US gross).

• Dark Knight – $997 million worldwide gross; $812 million profit
• Spider-Man 3 – $890 million worldwide gross; $632 million profit
• Iron Man – $571 million worldwide gross; $431 million profit
• Fantastic Four – $330 million worldwide gross; $230 million profit
• Daredevil – $179 million worldwide gross; $101 million profit
• Hellboy II – $99 million worldwide gross; $14 million profit margin

Out of this list, I think Daredevil and Hellboy II are probably the most applicable films to compare to Watchmen.  I believe Hellboy II had more advertising than Watchmen has had, and yet it only made $99 million.  Watchmen does have the phenomenally-selling graphic novel right now to help them out.  So my guess it that Watchmen will gross somewhere around $150 million.

If I’m right, that might not be good news for Warner Brothers.  After all, we know they’ve reported that Watchmen cost over $100 million to make.   Typically those types of figures are understated, so they probably spent more.  Also, I don’t know what happened in that FOX lawsuit, but Warner Brothers may have to share some portion of their profits from Watchmen with FOX.

I honestly hope I’m wrong.  I want this movie to succeed.  I want it to make a gagillion dollars and sweep the Oscars… I just don’t think either is going to happen.

I will say that it’s a safe bet the DVD releases will be a HUGE success.  Geeks have proven time and again that we can make DVD sales go through the roof.  I also think this will be one of the more illegally downloaded movies.  Geeks are bad about that too.

What do you think?  Vote in the new poll here at ONCE UPON A GEEK.  How much do you think Watchmen will gross worldwide?

Freakin’ awesome!!!

If you can’t see the embedded video, please click here.  Or you can watch a really clear version online at Superhero Hype.