Archive | October, 2006

Time Traveller’s Wife

31. October 2006

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Audrey Niffenegger’s unusual and intriguing novel The Time Traveller’s Wife is to be adapted for film according to Book Standard. Rachel McAdams is signed up to appear in it with Robert (who helmed Flightplan) Schwentke directing. Despite the time travelling component the book was mostly sold to the non-SF readership and has clocked up vast [...]

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Literary wills

31. October 2006

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Neil Gaiman has posted up some information on his journal including a link to a PDF you can print out to create a template for a literary will. Basically, motivated by the recent death of his friend, the writer John M Ford, he has talked with a lawyer friend about how writers (and artists, photographers, [...]

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Halloween zombie musical treat

31. October 2006

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Simon from Brit indy publisher team Flying Monkey Comics (home of Hope For the Future), lets me know that the guys have a treat especially for Halloween on their site, a very cool animated zombie musical (try not to sing along to “there is nothing like a brain”, it’s too hard to resist!). There’s something [...]

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Least Among Us reviewed

31. October 2006

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Martin O’Shea and Tony Wright’s UK small press publication, The Least Among Us, has picked up a favourable review here, notable for being outside the usual comics community (which is great since he hoped to reach out beyond it with this book). Martin (his pen name, an understandable precaution given the subject matter) kindly sent [...]

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Scaredy-cats

31. October 2006

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BBC radio and their website carry news of audience members fainting in terror at screenings of Saw III. Apparently one cinema in Stevenage had to call out the ambulance three times for scaredy-cat audience members who were so overwhelmed they swooned. A spokesman for the ambulance service pointed out that if you are squeamish you [...]

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Singer returns to Superman

31. October 2006

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Comics Continuum quotes Variety as reporting that Bryan Singer has signed up with Warner Brothers to direct a second Superman film following Superman Returns, which, despite a mostly good repsonse from fans and critics worldwide, didn’t do as well at the box office as expected (potentially damaging given the enormous budget). Singer is said to [...]

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Corto Maltese’s Hugo Pratt

31. October 2006

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Paul Gravett has posted a good piece on Hugo Pratt, the creator of the nautical hero Corto Maltese, who, as mentioned here the other week, is finally returning to print in English. (link via the good offices of Journalista).

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Cool covers

30. October 2006

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Boing Boing has a link to this site which carries cover images of Astounding Stories and Analog Science Fiction Magazine from the delightfully pulpy days of the 30s to 2005. I love this one from February 1941 with ‘noble’ barbarians finding the ruins of our civilisation as nature reclaims New York (nature would obviously have [...]

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Atwood does comics

30. October 2006

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I had no idea about this at all until Heidi mentioned it on The Beat: award-winning Canadian author Margaret Atwood enjoys creating the occassional cartoon, which includes pastiching her own book The Blind Assassin and the supporting author tour and awards bestowed upon it. Wow, I’d never come across this before; I know she has [...]

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Borg War

30. October 2006

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SF Crowsnest carries news of another Machinima animation, this time based around Star Trek: Borg War. The brainchild of Geoffrey James, the $200 animation has so far clocked up some 100, 000 downloads and features the voices of Patrick Stewart, Tim Russ and Brock Peters; go and have a look.

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Graphic novels shouldn’t be eligible for book awards

30. October 2006

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Newsarama’s blog drew my attention to this post by Wired writer Tony Long, who was considering the shortlist nomination of Gene Yang for a National Book Award (as reported here earlier) for his American Born Chinese graphic novel. Most commentators have been pretty delighted at this development (although admittedly most, including myself, are keen supporters [...]

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Stardust Visual Companion

30. October 2006

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The UK’s own Titan have secured the world-wide rights for the Stardust Visual Companion, which will accompany next year’s movie, based on the illustrated fairy tale for adults written by Neil Gaiman, with luscious artwork from Charles Vess. World Fantasy Award winner Stephen Jones (a name quite familiar to fans of the fantastical genres) is [...]

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2000 AD news

30. October 2006

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It’s good news all round on the 2000AD front this morning; for starters you may recall many a barbarian gnashing his teeth in frustration when the latest Slaine graphic novel, the Books of Invasions 2, was misprinted, meaning all the copies were faulty. Well, looks like Rebellion have really pushed through a new (corrected) print [...]

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Latest newsletter special – EC Archives

30. October 2006

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The latest newsletter special is the forthcoming EC Archives: Two Fisted Tales; in case you’ve missed this, Gemstone are treating the classic EC comics (hated by a generation of teachers, parents and ministers, beloved by comics-readin’ kids) with huge respect, giving them similar treatment to DC’s Archive Editions or Marvel’s Masterworks, with restored artwork on [...]

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Libel against cartoons dismissed

27. October 2006

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Comics Reporter pointed me to this article in the Guardian today: a Danish court has dismissed a libel action brought by various Muslim groups in the country again Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper which published the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad which stirred up such incredible outrage (court cases being the more civilised end of the events [...]

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