EVIL DEAD The Comic - UPDATE

I visited the lovely Dark Horse offices in Milwaukie Oregon last week, where I got to see the almost finished artwork for our EVIL DEAD adaptation/expansion. I know I've posted this before, but artist John Bolton is absolutely pulling out all the stops on this baby. Every page is a full color painting, and John's renderings of the demonic goings-ons are absolutely horrific.

Remember, this isn't just a straight adaptation, but an authorized "expansion" of the first movie, with new scenes. For instance: for those familiar with the film, there's a sequense where the Scotty character runs from the shack, only to return battered and broken. Well, for the first time you're going to see exactly what happened to poor Scotty in the woods. And it isn't pretty!

Finally, for those comic fans who are concerned about scheduling, 3 1/2 issues of the 4 issue series are in-house, done, finished, complete! So when this series is finally solicited, you're going to get four slabs of on-time, monthly hell-on-Earthness. Beautiful art, Bruce Campbell, Evil Dead and timeliness! Is this a great world or what?

A Question Re: MY NAME IS BRUCE

Anonymous asks the following in the comment section:

"I'm really looking forward to this film. But can you confirm that the "Ash" character & the "Evil Dead" movies are ever mentioned in this film? I've found your previous statements ambiguous when it comes to that topic. Can you clear it up once & for all for the fans? Thanks for your time!"

First of all, ambiguity is our friend. That said, I can flat out say, without fear of contradiction, that "Evil Dead" is name-checked in MNIB, but in ways no sane person could anticipate. I hesitate to get more specific because we gotta leave a few surprises for when the movie finally comes out, right? Right!

A Minor MY NAME IS BRUCE Update

Like the headline says, I don't want to oversell this "news", but I've seen a new cut of the movie with temp music and sound fx, and guess what -- it's still funny! Actually, the music and fx add a lot to the insanity, which was already there. In spades, my friends, in spades...

Meanwhile, "stuff" continues behind the scenes as we get MNIB into optimum release shape. And there has been some fun, very early talk about a... gulp... will this jinx us? "Sequel."

So far there have only been a few photos released to whet your appetite for this epic, but hey, I'm the writer. To hell with the visuals!! Here is some actual, genuine, non-sequitur dialogue that you'll be hearing in the upcoming Dark Horse Indie Epic, MY NAME IS BRUCE:

BRUCE: "I don't care if you're the king of Kiss-My-Assia, I want some answers, chop chop!!"

More to come... IF YOU CAN TAKE IT...

Battlestar Galactica: DIRTY HANDS

Tonight on Battlestar Galactica, "Dirty Hands." And if you think it's about a soap shortage in the fleet, you're wrong! Chief Tyrol finds himself navigating difficult waters when he discovers an injustice in the fleet. Written by Jane Espensen and Anne Cofell-Saunders, it's an exploration of a little seen corner of the BSG universe, and a powerful story about how everyone in the fleet has given up so much to survive.

I suspect we'll be competed against the Oscars on the east coast, but hey, "Babel" is going to win Best Picture, so don't bother sticking around for that snoozefest, come over to Sci-Fi! Sunday night at 10:00 PM, the Sci-Fi Channel, be there!

Star Trek Funny

Courtesy of my pal John (check out his Beatles blog!), a pretty funny take on the original Star Trek to the tune of "White Rabbit."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUA35XQxxw8

The Amazing Fletcher Hanks

Paul Karasik and Fantagraphics are going to be releasing a book collecting the best work of early comics artist Fletcher Hanks sometime this Spring, and the world will never be the same. Hanks wrote and drew about 60 stories from 1938 -1941, and they remain unique and utterly original. I became obsessed with Hanks a few years ago and finally managed to collect every single one of his stories, and now I will be able to share with you, since many of the stories in the Hanks volume were scanned by yours truly.

Here's a quick interview with Paul about the book along with a representative sample of Fletcher Hanks art. Prepare to discover a true comics genius!

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6405736.html?nid=2789

Meet The Press For Idiots

From the Conan O'Brian show, a slightly revised version of the venerable news program. Come watch "Meet the Press For Idiots."

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/02/20/conan-meet-the-press-for-idiots/

Battlestar Galactica - "A Day In The Life"

This Sunday on BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: Admiral Adama reflects back on his life, both in the service and before, and we get an idea of why his son Lee was so cranky when they were first thrown together on Galactica. Meanwhile, Tyrol and Cally find themselves in a dire, life-threatening situation. To quote the great tag-line from the original TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, "Who will survive, and what will be left of them?" Actually, I'm not sure that quote really fits their situation, but...

Who cares! Written by yours truly, directed by Rod Hardy, "Day In The Life" debuts SUNDAY NIGHT on the SCI-FI CHANNEL at 10:00 PM! Check it out!

Graham Parker - 103 Degrees In June

I've been a fan of GP's since seeing him live (with Rachel Sweet opening!) at a $2.00 show in Portland Oregon... ahh, those were the days. That same year (1978), I saw Springsteen (twice!), Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Robert Gordon, the Boomtown Rats, the Fabulous Poodles, Elvis Costello and probably a half dozen more. At $2.00 a show, you just couldn't go wrong.

And I didn't go wrong with Mr. Parker, who was still touring with the Rumour back then and cranked out a fantastic set. Parker's had a bunch of career ups and downs since, but he's still fighting the good fight, performing and recording. "103 Degrees In June" is a soundboard recording of GP and his new backing band, The Figgs, live circa June 2005. You get your classic catalog oldies and hard rocking newies and everything in between, and as usual, it's absolutely worth your time and $$$.

This edition is limited to 2000 copies, signed and numbered by Mr. P. himself, and available through the Bloodshot Records website:

http://www.bloodshotrecords.com/album/grahamparker/282

So support Parker and pick up a copy!

Hannibal Rising - Spoilers!

Reviews haven't exactly been kind to the latest chapter in the Hannibal Lecter saga, and I'm afraid I'll be doing a little piling on. From "Manhunter" to "Silence of the Lambs" and even into "Hannibal", there was always a sense that Mr. Lecter was a complicated, conflicted fellow, a maze of psychological influences. So it's a little disappointing that Thomas Harris, the creator of Lecter, has chosen to reduce to Lecter's need to kill down to one incredibly superficial, "quid-pro-quo" piece of emotional history. Basically, young Hannibal was forced to watch impotently as nasty World War 2 profiteers ate his beloved little Sister. And so from this terrible moment "Hannibal The Cannibal" was born.

Even basing Lecter's entire emotional life around this one event would be okay if something interesting came out of it, but "Hannibal Rising" is essentially a tedious version of "Death Wish," with a cannabalistic killer as hero. There is something so perverse about making Lecter our rooting interest that I want to give points just for that. Unfortunately, "Hannibal Rising" eschews the creepiness of "Manhunter," the intelligence of "Silence" and the over-the-top madness of "Hannibal," aspiring apparently to be little more than just another horror movie. And as that, it's pretty much a dud.

Worse than that, moments are just plain risable. The young Hannibal has all the preternatural skulking ability of Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger. In one scene, he's able to figure out the exact POV of an oncoming assailant and set up a diversion, a diversion the bad guy would have spotted if he'd moved just one inch to the right as he peeked around a corner. At another moment, learning his Chinese stepmother is being held captive on a houseboat (don't ask), Lecter rushes to a bridge at the exact moment the boat is going past and jumps on board... how the hell he knew WHICH bridge, or even which river, given the paucity of info received, is just another of those unanswered mysteries. It's one thing to suggest Lecter is capable of great deductive reasoning, but in this movie he's just one lucky Super-cannibal, appearing where he needs to appear to keep the story moving.

It's too bad, because Hannibal Lecter really is one of the great villains... maybe it's time to let the ol' cannibal rest awhile.

Battlestar Galactica Renewed For Season Four

It's official, the url below will take you to the Los Angeles Times article. I'm just back from a lovely weekend in Las Vegas, where season four was discussed and Manhattans were consumed. By me, anyhow.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-et-galactica12feb12,1,7910575.story?coll=la-headlines-entnews&ctrack=1&cset=true

More details to come, but there you go. BSG is BACK, baby!

Battlestar Galactica Sunday - "The Woman, King"

We're back with a new episode this weekend, "The Woman, King", written by Michael Angeli. For those of you wondering if Doc Cottle's the only physician in the fleet, you will wonder no more. Plus, to steal a refrain from "The Sound Of Music", "what do you do with a problem like Doc Baltar?" Remember, that's SUNDAY night at 10:00PM on the Sci-Fi Channel. Consider it your patriotic duty to watch!

The Smokehouse

Mark Evanier has a nice rememberance of times spent at the Smokehouse restaurant in Burbank, which was evidently a hotbed of animation writers/artists back in the day. The restaurant is literally across the street from Warner Brothers and designed to handle large parties... so if you ever want to see a lot of TV writers in the same place, visit the Smokehouse on a Monday in late May or early June, when all the shows are coming together and the showrunners take everyone out for their first lunch.

I've been there for several of these events, including a couple awkward times when writers who have been fired from one show and moved on find themselves in close proximity to their previous employers. In the words of John Stewart, "awwwwk-waaarrrrd."

But the food isn't bad and there's a full bar, an absolute necessity when you're dealing with writers. Mr. Evanier's article can be seen at:

http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2007_02_08.html#012896

Battlestar Galactica - Day In The Life Video

There's a nice video-blog piece on the location used for the Adama home on Caprica up at the Sci-Fi Channel website. This sequence appears in "A Day In The Life", written by yours truly, and due up Sunday after next. In "Day" you will meet Bill Adama's ex-wife and learn some interesting new tidbits about the Admiral...

You'll notice narrator Colin reveling in the sunshine on the location day... weather's always hit or miss in lovely, albeit sometimes/often wet Vancouver. While scouting the house, there was much discussion about what to do if it happened to rain on the shoot day... it can get pretty complicated, logistically, especially since there's a large koi pond in the background. If it rains and you can see the pond, you're going to see rain drops splashing. If it stops raining for a different set up, well, then somebody has to start throwing some rain down into the pond so the shots match. Meaning you either bring a rain machine, just in case, or tent over the pond so there IS no chance of rain, or... shoot away from the pond. Which kind of defeats the purpose of finding a very cool house with a very nice pond in the first place...

Fortunately, nature cooperated this time and as you'll see, they got a pretty day on a very lovely location. Anyhow, the link is:

http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/video/
index.php?cat=videoBlog&vid=60346

Enjoy!

Star Trek Remastered - Doomsday Machine

I was always a fan of the original STAR TREK series more than the later extrapolations (a situation some might find ironic, given my current employer), down to buying all the original episodes on DVD and being able to trade quips about iconic dialogue. My fave episode was probably "The Doomsday Machine", partly because it was such a great sci-fi conceit (a "doomsday device" set loose by some unknown civilization that continues to rampage long after the original creators died), it was all set in space (no Greeks/Lincolns/alligator-head men), and Kirk does some cool deductive reasoning to solve the problem.

So now they're remastering the original episodes, rejittering the original effects and improving the music. I haven't actually seen one of these new episodes yet, but from the photos that have been appearing on Ain't It Cool News (http://www.aintitcool.com/node/31496) the people in charge are doing a pretty incredible job. I'm not really a stickler when it comes to maintaining every flub and flaw from the older show, as long as the repairs are in sync with the original intent. And these fixes sure seem to be that...

Very First TV Appearance of Spider-Man And Thor!

Via "The Comics Reporter" (www.comicsreporter.com), a link to:

http://newtoons.frederator.com/post/3128

The very first television appearance of the Amazing Spider-Man AND Marvel's Thor, and they're both in the same frame! Copy and paste the link to check out a frame grab from an episode of "Naked City." It's actually very cool to see copies of Amazing Fantasy #15 and Journey Into Mystery #83 hanging from clothes-pins (!) in some street vendor's booth. At today's prices, we're looking at $70,000+ worth of funny books there. Available back in the day for less than a quarter!

Videoscope: Good Mag, Annoying Omission

I've been subscribing to "Videoscope" magazine for years now, and I enjoy the interviews and the sci-fi/horror genre focus. The new issue, Winter 2007, features interviews with actors Irwin Keyes (Wheezy Joe from "Intolerable Cruelty") and Clancy Brown, reviews, a look at the first "Stepfather" movie and much more. In fact, with the death of "Psychotronic", "Videoscope" is probably the best mass-market mag covering obscure horror still going.

All good, right? So what annoys me? For some reason, the reviews do not include the name of the screenwriter in the brief header listing each film's credits. We get the director and the top few actors, but the writer? Nowhere to be found.

Now, the reviews occasionally-to-often mention the writer(s) in the body of the piece -- but not always. And so you can end up with something like their review of the new "Omen" remake which opens with the following: "How suspenseful can a horror film be when it's a scene for scene remake of an earlier, well known film -- especially when both have the same screenwriter and many scenes sport identical dialogue?" But nowhere in the review is that rather important crew member (David Seltzer) actually mentioned by name.

In a review of "Calvaire: The Ordeal", the director/co-writer is commended, but the other "co-writer" goes unnamed. "The Covenant: Brotherhood Of Evil" evidently wrote itself, along with "Desolation Sound", "Disorder"... okay, enough of the alphabetical rundown, now I'm officially depressed.

What IS it about not mentioning the writers? I mean, Videoscope is a magazine written by, *gasp*, writers. The writer of each review gets a credit at the bottom of his piece. The articles are carefully by-lined. So why not offer the same consideration to the folks who actually come up the ideas for the movies being reviewed?

I've written to Videoscope about this in the past, but this isn't a crusade and leaving the writing credits off the reviews isn't the end of the world. Hence this blog article's title reading "annoying" as opposed to "blight on humanity!" I fully intend to keep reading and supporting the magazine. But somehow, someday, it sure would be nice if they would rethink their review headers...

Wonder Woman, Whedon, "Intrigue."

According to Joss Whedon himself, he's officially off the WONDER WOMAN project at Warner Bros. And according to an article at...

http://icv2.com/articles/home/10016.html

...Warners has premptively picked up a Wonder Woman "spec script", ostensibly to ward off possible legal action. Have to admit, that piece of the puzzle leaves me baffled. Warner Bros./DC Comics OWNS Wonder Woman, so if anyone was trespassing on someone's rights, it was the guys who wrote the spec. So I suspect there's more going on than meets the eye, like someone actually liked the spec take and figured, what the hell, it might kick-start a new push. But with no inside info whatsoever, I'm just guessing like everyone else...

But it wouldn't be the first time I've heard of something like this going down. A writer named Peter Briggs wrote a spec ALIEN VS PREDATOR script way back when Fox was first mulling the crossover (early/mid '90s), and the studio wound up buying that script. The spec was eventually tossed, along with several other takes, when Paul Anderson did his writer/director thing. But I'm sure the check for the spec still cleared...

And in a final piece of Kevin Bacon-ism, Anderson went and named one of the characters in the first AVP movie after... me! (I die, so don't expect to see me in any sequels...) Even though I never actually wrote an ALIEN VS PREDATOR comic book, I did write the first three ALIENS arcs and the three PREDATOR series for Dark Horse. And to be honest, I was flattered by the name check, if only to hear people screaming "Verheiden!! Verheiden!!!!" on the big screen.

At Last The Super Bowl...

Ahh, yes, finally the big day has come. Two mighty teams meet on the field of battle in an epic competition of...

Sorry... who's playing, again? I guess I'm one of those un-American fiends who has never enjoyed football and couldn't care less about Super Bowl Sunday, except to note that it's a great day to hit the malls or have a nice, peaceful dinner out, since so many folks are glued to the tube. Me, I'm listening to the "dynamic guitar sounds of the Clee-Shays" (Sundazed CD 11049) and working on various projects until the game starts, then we're off to some desolate restaurant for some family fun.

Oddly, while I have no problem with people who DO enjoy football, there are a lot of people who are stunned insensible to discover someone has no interest in the sport. As your classic "big guy", I was always relgated to tackle or some other blunt-instrument position back in High School, so maybe that colored my experience a little. Anyhow, for those devoted to the sport, knock yourselves out!

There's no new BATTLESTAR this evening because of the game, but two repeats for those who may have fallen behind. At 11:00 PM, "Rapture" and at midnight, "Taking a Break From All Your Worries." Prime TiVo material, or a nice break after the interminable Super Bowl wrap-ups, analysis-es, post-mortems and "etc."

New Bruce Campbell/Old Spice Ad!

Another version of Mr. Campbell Old Spice ad aired on the DAILY SHOW last night (Thursday 2/1). This one features a different take and it's much shorter, with a trimmed down "old Spice ship" painting in the background. Bruce has to rush to get his truncated message across in the time alotted, but it's basically the same screwy doubletalk about "experience." The longer version is better and funnier, but hell, it's still Bruce!

What's New? Not Much.

That headline isn't quite true, there's all sorts of stuff percolating, just nothing that I can report quite yet. As mentioned in my interview over at Comic Book Resources, I've started work writing a pilot for the SPIKE network, details to come. It's pretty cool, in my not-so-humble opinion, but it's too early to do anything but say "I'm starting!"

Several other things are bobbing out on the horizon, but nothing's nailed down enough for comment. MY NAME IS BRUCE is still in process, looking at a release this Summer or Fall. No news re: a BSG renewal, at least as far as I know this evening. There isn't even a new episode BSG to push this weekend, just repeats while we await the dispersal of Super Bowl fever.

A number of other writer-based blogs offer tips to the novice scribe, and maybe this is a good place to offer one of mine: never count on (or boast about) anything until the check clears. (I used to think a signed contract was the breaking point, but I've had projects come apart even at THAT stage, so...) Because there are so many slips twixt the cup and the lip...