Marvel comics is known for many things, their patriotic super heroes and controversial crossovers (i.e. Civil War) amongst a lot of other things over the 50 or so years they’ve been called Marvel. They’ve made many series, released hundreds of issues, and brought about some of the most famous writers and artists the Comic book industries has to offer. Each week they release several issues of their series, ranging from some that have lasted for decades, to other series that remodel their old characters for a contemporary audience. All of this done on a safe, wood-grainy paper. However in our modern society, a world where everything from ordering pizza to taking a digital dump, the webcomic has become king. Despite the bad jokes and worse art the old school Comic book companies are jumping into the dumpster for some diving.

DC Comics has launched Zuda Comics, an online community where webcomic creators can pit their creations against others for a chance at internet popularity. It’s quite impressive, once you get over the fact most of the comics are attempting to mimic the ever popular Anime art style. Marvel, on the other hand, has seemed to run out of ideas after all of the time they’ve spent licensing their superheroes to film studios for sometimes good, but mostly bad movies. Instead of releasing new comics made by industry unknowns, they decided to take all of their old back issues that are collecting dust in the warehouses and toss them on the internet.

Personally, I’m tickled pink (as odd as the phrase maybe) to be able to read up on all of the years I’ve missed reading about some of my favorite heroes. The collectors on the other hand are pissed. Really pissed. Suicide bombing pissed…. well perhaps not that far. The Marvel’s online website has seemed to have been hacked, this happening less than a week after the new service’s announcement. While this could be attributed to Marvel’s servers crashing due to the overwhelming response, it’s exceptionally unlikely. The site is no longer available as any attempts to check the site are faced with the deus ex machina himself Doctor Strange plaguing your URL bar. The collector’s have retaliated with a bad hack job that would make /b/tards laugh. While this probably won’t last more than a few days, it’s very amusing to watch. The mighty comic icon brought down by it’s own fans.

My question is this. Where is Stan Lee to make a poorly produced reality TV series about it when you need him?

[Via: USAToday, Marvel.com, Mashable]

Years ago Tim Schafer, creator and writer of games such as Grim Fandango and Secrets of Monkey Island, created a game for the Xbox called Psychonauts, it was critically praised for it’s gameplay, level design, story, humor and just about everything else under the son. The game did not sell so well (as many aesthetically pleasing games do), but it became a cult classic. Despite the game’s poor sales Double Fine Studios and Tim Schafer signed a contract with Vivendi Universal to create another game for them. For many months it was unknown what this game would be called, or what it was about.

Double Fine eventually released the next game they were working on, but it wasn’t what most expected. It was a flash fighting game (which can be seen on their website), and it was rather funny, but it was no Psychonauts. Then Jack Black, the world famous comedic actor known for his role in School of Rock and in the band Tenacious D, was seen wearing a T-shirt. No big surprise there, but what was on it was a hint on what was to come from Double Fine.
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[Update] - Check out more of our Cloverfield Coverage!

 

It’s been months since the original teaser came out, indeed we’re just a week away from the Transformers movie DVD release. Since the original trailer the stream of hype has begun to slow to a slight trickle. The biggest development about the secret monster movie isn’t that important, and barely worth mentioning.

The official website, 1-18-08.com, has recently added a new picture. The picture? A curiously angry (happy? excited? constipated even?) Japanese chef holding a platter with what looks like an omelet on it. Itself, not at all helpful, but upon flipping the picture over we are given a Japanese recipe for a fictional meal. Translated the recipe features many items not too out of the ordinary, except for one very important item, a pinch of Deep sea nectar. Why is this important? Well anyone whose looked through slusho.jp knows that one of the big ingredients in their slurpee like product is an ingredient that comes from the bottom of the ocean floor.

So what does this mean? Well obviously that the monster is a giant culinary monstrosity out to destroy all of the fast food chains in the world…. or perhaps not much. What else has been found is a company that goes by the name of Tagruato Corp. This website does seem to be tied with Slusho, making it a part of the viral marketing campaign. The subsidiary page talks about Slusho amongst 3 other companies, most of which seem to be tied with, in someway, deep sea venturing. All of this points more to the point that the monster has some significant connection with this deep sea nectar.

Other than that, there’s nothing really going on in J.J. Abrams land. Keep your eyes and ears open for another trailer though, there are only 3 more months until the movie’s release.

[Via: First Showing and 1-18-08 live journal]

Several years ago Joss Whedon, the creator, executive producer, and a lead writer for both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and it’s subsequent spin off Angel created a futuristic western for Fox called Firefly. The series didn’t do immensely well ratings wise and was canceled after the first eleven episodes. However, like many of Whedon’s TV series, the series developed a dedicated cult following. A movie spin off was made by Paramount called Serenity. Despite positive critic reception the movie didn’t perform as well as hoped in theaters.

After 3 separate DVD incarnations over the years, a copy of the movie resting up in the International Space Station, and many many efforts to increase DVD, we’re finally seeing some positive news. The sales from the recent release of the collector’s edition has reignited the chances of a Serenity sequel. Alan Tudyk, the actor who played Hoban “Wash” Washburne in the Firefly series and Sonny in the I, Robot remake, says that there are talks within Paramount to make a Serenity 2, either as a theatrical release or a straight-to-DVD release.

While it’s not been greenlit yet, Whedon and the rest of the Serenity cast (well perhaps no Tudyk considering his character’s demise in the movie) will likely jump at the chance to make another movie if given the chance. While this might not jump start a chance at a second season for Firefly, considering Whedon’s disposition on working with Fox again, I’m sure all of us Browncoats would love to see another movie, regardless of how big or small the release. Keep flying my friends, keep flying.

[Via sources: Moviehole and AICN]

Tron, one of the first movie to use digital effects instead of practical effects, and probably the first to do it well. It’s been a cult classic for many years, and a point of inspiration for many game designers and digital effect engineers, yet we’ve never seen a sequel. Well it seems that some development is a brewing with in good ‘le Buena Vista. In recent years there have been attempts at making a sequel to the original movie, a notable one being that CGI studio Pixar was going to make one. Now, however, we have a report from the Hollywood reporter that the Light Cycles, MCP and Tron will be returning to the silver screen.

The report says that the original writer and director, Steven Lisberger, will be producing the movie with a man named Sean Bailey(producer of Matchstick Men). The movie’s writers will be Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, of Lost fame. The director? A relative no name, Joseph Kosinski, who will be directing the 2010 remake of Logan’s Run. There’s no set date or year when we’ll see it, but I doubt it’ll be soon.

Personally, I’d love to see a sequel. The first movie stands up well for a movie about video games before the big Nintendo boom. The movie’s art style blends beautifully with the digital effects they used for the movie. A sequel’s also troubling though with how video games are seen today. The first Tron was a fun, family friendly sci-fi classic, but I fear they might make it a preachy anti-violent game movie, or even worse, a cliche’d video game geek comedy-sci-fi fusion. Hopefully, with the original director and Lost’s writers on the project, we’ll see a sequel that’ll stand up as well as the original… but if they ruin the light cycles the wrath of thousand’s of people’s childhood memories will come crashing down around them.

[Via: Hollywood Reporter]

Earlier this year Real Time Worlds released their flagship title on the Xbox 360. The game’s development was lead by Doug Jones of GTA glory, with the release being supported by the addition of Halo 3 beta on the game. 1.5 million units were sold, the beta was a hit, the game was a hit, fans rejoiced. The Development team had gone on the record as stating that they would make a sequel if it performed well commercially. That was in Feburary. 6 months later the game’s a huge success, the DLC packages that were released on the Xbox live Marketplace sold extremely well, and Real Time Worlds is making us fans cry.

According to Real Time Worlds producer Phil Wilson we won’t be seeing a sequel to the game at all because “Microsoft were a little late in stepping up to the plate to ask for Crackdown 2, and by then we had already started working on bigger, better things.” Oh goodie, set up the ending for a sequel, then shoot down our hopes. What are these bigger and better things you may ask? Well they have two titles in development right now. One is an unknown title tentatively scheduled to be released in 2009. The other is another Doug Jones project called A.P.B., or All Points Bulletin, an MMO were you get to play as either a group of criminals or cops fighting the other group for the PC and 360. It features customizable vehicles and characters, but didn’t Saint’s Row and 25 to life?

While we might not be seeing another Crackdown in the future, we still have Prototype to look forward to later next year.

[Via: Source]

[Update] - Check out more of our Cloverfield Coverage!

Ye Olde series of tubes blog Ain’t It Cool has released a new article about Cloverfield’s plot. The article mentions that the information comes from two untested, and thus somewhat unreliable, sources. The article mentions that the trailer we’ve seen was the beginning of the movie, a shortened version of the opening at that. After the trailer the main characters are in a dark corridor, and one of them is a girl whose badly bruised.

Blah blah blah, so on and so forth. I could repeat everything the article mentions here, but honestly, I don’t think it’s significant. Much of the rumors that AICN posted sounds like a blow by blow translation of the Korean Monster movie The Host. Some people survive a monster attack, one of them is seemingly “infected” and they’re quarantined by their government while the monster spouts out some minions and the government fails to stop it. The entire rumor, should be taken as just that, a rumor. Much of the official information we’ve seen says that the opening of the movie is a group of people mulling around a destroyed New York City finding the camera with all of the information. Not much, could have been avoided in the write up, but somewhat important to point out. Another piece of information is that there have been several Myspace accounts set up echoing the characters from the movie, might be fake, but doesn’t appear so. The accounts show more than three main characters like AICN says. Hit the jump for more.
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