Cross-Gen Revived

Marvel Launches Crossgen Imprint in March
This just in from Scoop:

Marvel Comics will launch a new imprint, Crossgen, in March 2011, with two four-issue mini-series, Ruse and Sigil.

Mike Carey (Age of X) and Leonard Kirk (New Mutants) will be the creative team on Sigil #1, and Mark Waid (Stan Lee’s The Traveler) and Mirco Pierfederici (Tron: Original Movie Adaptation) will kick off Ruse #1.

You can read the rest of the Marvel Launches New Cross-Gen Imprint article at the Scoop site.

ABC News covered this matter, So has ComicsNexus, and others will no doubt get vocal as the March debute draws near. This is a fairly big deal as it involves a defunct publisher's relic-IP being zombified resurrected (and Marvel-ized! for your protection & comfort) by Marvel through the back-door of its corporate parent-company Disney. One look at this story and it is apparent to anyone with more than two functional brain cells currently in simultaneous operation that this is a very low-risk test-case scenario for Disney-Marvel. What other old, defunct, gobbled-up properties are there to be re-discovered and trotted out from deep wtihin the recesses of Disney's manifold corporate corpus?

It feels as though Disney/Marvel has been on the verge of becoming the IP-equivalent of Shub Niggurath spewing forth Revised, Revamped, Rebooted, Reconfigured, Ret-Conned and Regurgitated versions of various defunct and assimilated properties for a while now. They have been dipping into the older Atlas stuff that they inherited to develop the intriguingly off-beat quasi-Noir Agents of Atlas, they've reprised and extensively ret-Conned the Invaders (mostly to good effect, though Blazing Skull is NOT Ghost Rider...he's a Tulpa, DUH!) and there are other examples of this sort of thing, too many to fully catalog. DC is doing the same things with Red Circle (which they've assimilated after dropping the Impact line), etc. Maybe it's a competition? Could it be some sort of strange comic book arms-race of obscure and defunct titles/characters being resucitated and sent out to compete in the marketplace-arena of modern comics fandom. It's also a very old, time-honored and integral practice within comics publishing. As one publisher absorbed the defunct, stunned or stone-dead husk of another publisher, they have rebooted and incorporated any of those older characters into the 'current' line-up as they saw fit. Consider Fawcett's characters like Captain Marvel, or Charlton's Blue Beetle or Captain Atom in the DC universe. Look at how DC has brought back a DC-ified relaunch of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. It's an absolutely fascinating ongoing process of tulpa-like evolution and memetic-exchange and re-discovery. Heck, the Blue Beetle had already been handed-off between at least three different publishers before he landed at DC, so at least he's used to this sort of thing.

Shared universes aren't all that new of an idea, and the comics industry has been exploring some rather interesting approaches to reconciling the collision and assimilation/integration of parallel universes and inherited characters for decades now.

What I find most compelling and intriguing about this ongoing cycle of integration and amalgamation is the way it is all managed and directed and driven by market forces, not the creative process. This is a blatant intrusion of economics into the mythosphere and we've pretty much all just taken it for granted. Ho hum. So some obscure nitwit in tights used to be featured in stories put out by this company or that now-defunct publisher and now they're the property of some other company. Yawn. Who cares? Maybe someone ought to care. Like Rupert Murdoch did for news, a few megacorps are swallowing-up the remnants of the past and while they are at it, they are making substantial land-grabs of otherwise Public Domain characters. Older, neglected and lost characters are getting revised by the corporate titans so that they can establish and defend a trademark on characters that they have no more claim to than you or I...but once they have Their Trademarked Version of these characters, it effectively puts a major chill on anyone else's use or devleopment of them. It blocks other expressions, other versions, and makes the process of using these legacy properties/characters more of a mine-field than is ethical, reasonable or right. These are often the same people who preach the gospel of the so-called Free Market and Nonintervention by 'Big Government', despite their lobbying for extensions, protections and special treatment any time it looks like the Copyright Law might finally apply to them. But we can let the rhetoric/non-politics hang. There's work to be done, opportunities to go develop and Amazingly Cool Things to Do.

Companies that have built their fortunes upon the Public Domain ought to respect the source from which their wealth has come and respect the Public Domain. But Disney absolutely does not respect the Public Domain, despite having pilfered it ruthlessly and often from the very beginnings of Walt's non-union shop. It is just plain wrong to base your work on the Public Domain and then prevent anyone else from doing the same in return to your works. I'll refrain from invoking Steamboat Willy. This is a topic that used to get me steamed. Now it's something that I find engages my problem-solving tendencies along fun and potentially productive avenues. Why get het-up when you can do something about it? Look at what Dynamite is doing with Public Domain characters in their incredible Project Superpowers projects like at this Squidoo page, Wikia, or Wikipedia. Things are far from grim. If anything, there's more opportunity to delve into the Public Domain in a really big way now, more than ever before. Besides, time is on the side of the Public Domain. Even Disney will one day find it no longer cost-effective to legally game the system. But that's a tangent, and we can come back to it another day.

Getting back on track with the whole CrossGen/Marvel thing, this reminds me of how DC has been integrating a lot of their inherited properties of late, like the Phantom Lady and Uncle Sam. Over at Wikipedia, you can find a list of Quality, Fawcett & Charlton Characters Who Have Not Appeared in DC Comics Yet. Consider it a checklist that DC editorial will no doubt be examining for ideas soon enough.

It isn't just DC and Marvel that ahve been mining the Obscure and the Forgotten-- Moonstone, Boom! , AC and Dynamite have been bringing back older, often forgotten characters. Some of these are more successful than others, such as the enjoyableThe Last Phantom series from Dynamite. Despite the 'Last' in the title, maybe there's a chance we'll finally see a black Phantom before the next millennium? Who knows. There's a black Heimdall in Thor, so maybe some measure of progress is taking place after all...after a fashion...so to speak...

DC has also incorporated Eisner's The Spirt, Doc Savage, and The Shadow into their universe. Which is not new, either, as both Marvel and DC (as well as Gold Key, Street & Smith, Skylark, Millennium & Dark Horse) have done their own comic book re-interpretations of both Doc Savage and The Shadow over the years. It can get confusing, but there is a wonderful flowchart that maps out how things migrate from Copyrighted to Public Domain that might help out a little. If you care. Which I do.

So. CrossGen is coming back. More or less. This is akin in many respects to the Return of Atlas. Maybe it's a trend? Nah. It's busienss as usual in the Comics Industry, and that makes it all the more interesting and just plain weird all at once. Do petty godlings sit around boardroom tables discussing the relaunch of previously Ragnaroked universes? They do in the Comics Biz. Regularly and often.

What Once Was...

And What Will Be...

and...

Some CrossGen Links

• CrossGen at MyComicShop
•  A site featuring a ton of CrossGen covers
• Crossgen Comics site ...which appears to be just a placeholder. Maybe Marvel-Disney need to get their digital ducks in a row, or perhaps they let the domain lapse. I wonder if they'll make an offer or send in the lawyers?
• CrossGen at the Big Comicbook Database
• A nicely nostalgic article on the Pre-Marvel/Disney CrossGen
• Former CrossGen creators speak out
• Marvel Exec Tom Brevoort: Marvel to reimagine CrossGen properties
• CrossGen Picelist at Top Shelf Comics, for an example--watch those prices now that a new and Marvelified CrossGen is coming...just like how Atlas has seen a slight bump in collector-value...

CamC: Cross-Gen Revived

This just in from Scoop:

Marvel Launches Crossgen Imprint in March
Marvel Comics will launch a new imprint, Crossgen, in March 2011, with two four-issue mini-series, Ruse and Sigil.

Mike Carey (Age of X) and Leonard Kirk (New Mutants) will be the creative team on Sigil #1, and Mark Waid (Stan Lee’s The Traveler) and Mirco Pierfederici (Tron: Original Movie Adaptation) will kick off Ruse #1.

You can read the rest of the Marvel Launches New Cross-Gen Imprint article at the Scoop site.

ABC News covered this matter, So has ComicsNexus, and others will no doubt get vocal as the March debute draws near. This is a fairly big deal as it involves a defunct publisher's relic-IP being zombified resurrected (and Marvel-ized! for your protection & comfort) by Marvel through the back-door of its corporate parent-company Disney. One look at this story and it is apparent to anyone with more than two functional brain cells currently in simultaneous operation that this is a very low-risk test-case scenario for Disney-Marvel. What other old, defunct, gobbled-up properties are there to be re-discovered and trotted out from deep wtihin the recesses of Disney's manifold corporate corpus?

It feels as though Disney/Marvel has been on the verge of becoming the IP-equivalent of Shub Niggurath spewing forth Revised, Revamped, Rebooted, Reconfigured, Ret-Conned and Regurgitated versions of various defunct and assimilated properties for a while now. They have been dipping into the older Atlas stuff that they inherited to develop the intriguingly off-beat quasi-Noir Agents of Atlas, they've reprised and extensively ret-Conned the Invaders (mostly to good effect, though Blazing Skull is NOT Ghost Rider...he's a Tulpa, DUH!) and there are other examples of this sort of thing, too many to fully catalog. DC is doing the same things with Red Circle (which they've assimilated after dropping the Impact line), etc. Maybe it's a competition? Could it be some sort of strange comic book arms-race of obscure and defunct titles/characters being resucitated and sent out to compete in the marketplace-arena of modern comics fandom. It's also a very old, time-honored and integral practice within comics publishing. As one publisher absorbed the defunct, stunned or stone-dead husk of another publisher, they have rebooted and incorporated any of those older characters into the 'current' line-up as they saw fit. Consider Fawcett's characters like Captain Marvel, or Charlton's Blue Beetle or Captain Atom in the DC universe. Look at how DC has brought back a DC-ified relaunch of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. It's an absolutely fascinating ongoing process of tulpa-like evolution and memetic-exchange and re-discovery. Heck, the Blue Beetle had already been handed-off between at least three different publishers before he landed at DC, so at least he's used to this sort of thing.

Shared universes aren't all that new of an idea, and the comics industry has been exploring some rather interesting approaches to reconciling the collision and assimilation/integration of parallel universes and inherited characters for decades now.

What I find most compelling and intriguing about this ongoing cycle of integration and amalgamation is the way it is all managed and directed and driven by market forces, not the creative process. This is a blatant intrusion of economics into the mythosphere and we've pretty much all just taken it for granted. Ho hum. So some obscure nitwit in tights used to be featured in stories put out by this company or that now-defunct publisher and now they're the property of some other company. Yawn. Who cares? Maybe someone ought to care. Like Rupert Murdoch did for news, a few megacorps are swallowing-up the remnants of the past and while they are at it, they are making substantial land-grabs of otherwise Public Domain characters. Older, neglected and lost characters are getting revised by the corporate titans so that they can establish and defend a trademark on characters that they have no more claim to than you or I...but once they have Their Trademarked Version of these characters, it effectively puts a major chill on anyone else's use or devleopment of them. It blocks other expressions, other versions, and makes the process of using these legacy properties/characters more of a mine-field than is ethical, reasonable or right. These are often the same people who preach the gospel of the so-called Free Market and Nonintervention by 'Big Government', despite their lobbying for extensions, protections and special treatment any time it looks like the Copyright Law might finally apply to them. But we can let the rhetoric/non-politics hang. There's work to be done, opportunities to go develop and Amazingly Cool Things to Do.

Companies that have built their fortunes upon the Public Domain ought to respect the source from which their wealth has come and respect the Public Domain. But Disney absolutely does not respect the Public Domain, despite having pilfered it ruthlessly and often from the very beginnings of Walt's non-union shop. It is just plain wrong to base your work on the Public Domain and then prevent anyone else from doing the same in return to your works. I'll refrain from invoking Steamboat Willy. This is a topic that used to get me steamed. Now it's something that I find engages my problem-solving tendencies along fun and potentially productive avenues. Why get het-up when you can do something about it? Look at what Dynamite is doing with Public Domain characters in their incredible Project Superpowers projects like at this Squidoo page, Wikia, or Wikipedia. Things are far from grim. If anything, there's more opportunity to delve into the Public Domain in a really big way now, more than ever before. Besides, time is on the side of the Public Domain. Even Disney will one day find it no longer cost-effective to legally game the system. But that's a tangent, and we can come back to it another day.

Getting back on track with the whole CrossGen/Marvel thing, this reminds me of how DC has been integrating a lot of their inherited properties of late, like the Phantom Lady and Uncle Sam. Over at Wikipedia, you can find a list of Quality, Fawcett & Charlton Characters Who Have Not Appeared in DC Comics Yet. Consider it a checklist that DC editorial will no doubt be examining for ideas soon enough.

It isn't just DC and Marvel that ahve been mining the Obscure and the Forgotten-- Moonstone, Boom! , AC and Dynamite have been bringing back older, often forgotten characters. Some of these are more successful than others, such as the enjoyableThe Last Phantom series from Dynamite. Despite the 'Last' in the title, maybe there's a chance we'll finally see a black Phantom before the next millennium? Who knows. There's a black Heimdall in Thor, so maybe some measure of progress is taking place after all...after a fashion...so to speak...

DC has also incorporated Eisner's The Spirt, Doc Savage, and The Shadow into their universe. Which is not new, either, as both Marvel and DC (as well as Gold Key, Street & Smith, Skylark, Millennium & Dark Horse) have done their own comic book re-interpretations of both Doc Savage and The Shadow over the years. It can get confusing, but there is a wonderful flowchart that maps out how things migrate from Copyrighted to Public Domain that might help out a little. If you care. Which I do.

So. CrossGen is coming back. More or less. This is akin in many respects to the Return of Atlas. Maybe it's a trend? Nah. It's busienss as usual in the Comics Industry, and that makes it all the more interesting and just plain weird all at once. Do petty godlings sit around boardroom tables discussing the relaunch of previously Ragnaroked universes? They do in the Comics Biz. Regularly and often.

What Once Was...

And What Will Be...

and...

Some CrossGen Links

• CrossGen at MyComicShop
•  A site featuring a ton of CrossGen covers
• Crossgen Comics site ...which appears to be just a placeholder. Maybe Marvel-Disney need to get their digital ducks in a row, or perhaps they let the domain lapse. I wonder if they'll make an offer or send in the lawyers?
• CrossGen at the Big Comicbook Database
• A nicely nostalgic article on the Pre-Marvel/Disney CrossGen
• Former CrossGen creators speak out
• Marvel Exec Tom Brevoort: Marvel to reimagine CrossGen properties
• CrossGen Picelist at Top Shelf Comics, for an example--watch those prices now that a new and Marvelified CrossGen is coming...just like how Atlas has seen a slight bump in collector-value...

Jess Nevins is a Superhero

Jess Nevins is a Scholar. He's the type of Bibliophile & Pop-Cultural Scholar that would be right at home in Riskail, and I mean that in the best possible way. His work in Annotating various comic book series such as Kingdom Come led into his compiling a series of in-depth Annotations for Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neil's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen which in turn led to the publication of his annotations (plus some essays, a great introduction and an interview with Alan Moore as well) as Heroes & Monsters . A second volume, A Blazing World, was likewise compiled from Nevin's erudite annotations and informed ruminations concerning the League's Second Series. He has also gone on to annotate The Black Dossier in his Impossible Territories, and Century: 1910, which is an on-going project that you can find here.

If you want a quick idea of just how formidable a task it is that Nevins took on in annotating the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, take a look at this list of the literary characters appearing in these 'funny-books.'

But that's just one example/project. Jess Nevin has also compiled a very thorough and eminently readable & enjoyable essay on Timely Comics, the shop that became Atlas and then Marvel. He has also expanded upon that essay with a number of follow-up essays on many of the classic and criminally neglected Timely Comics Characters such as The Blue Blaze, The American Avenger, Dakor The Magician, The Invisible Man, Hercules, The Thin Man, The Black Widow, Merzah The Mystic, The Black Marvel, and even Sub-Earth Man. Whew. And there's more. Like the 3Xs, but that's enough for now. Fascinating stuff. The Thin Man isn't Nick Charles, he's a super-scientist from a happy valley in the Himalayas who can turn himself super thin to get into places ordinary guys can't. Oh and he has a beautiful assistant named Oalla who helps him out. Likewise the Timely Comics' Black Widow isn't a Russian spy who bears an uncanny resemblance to Scarlett Johanssen, but rather is the "...strangest, most terrifying character in action picture magazines - the Black Widow. You've heard of the black widow spider - that evil creature whose bite spells doom. Now start the adventures of another black widow - a human tool of Satan whose very touch means death." Yeah. You read it. They wrote it. This is a character that I definitely want to learn more about, and probably would never have learned about at all if it hadn't been for Jess Nevins--Superhero Scholar and Librarian of the Lost Antiquities of Pop Literature. Ah the Golden Age of Comics, the more I learn about it, the more I come to realize just how short-changed we've been thanks to corporate myopia and greed...but that's a topic for another day, another post.

But there's much, much more. Jess Nevins has also done a great deal of research and annotation involving the Golden Age Superheroes and the Pre-Fantastic Four #1 Superheroes of Marvel Comics (The comics Giant that grew out of Timely above...).  He offers you a glimpse into the forgotten and buried secret history of the Blazing Skull, Dynamic Man, The Eternal Brain, KaZar (before he became a hippy), and Vagabond & the Fighting Hobo (Both of whom sound like off-beat heroes that you might meet in The City), amongst many, many others. (Some of whom overlap with the aforementioned Timely characters, being in fact direct continuations or revisions of those earlier superheroes--comics, especially older comics, are more than a little cannibalistic as well as incestuous.) There is even a page devoted to the Lost Generation of Marvel heroes active prior to the Fantastic Four's fateful (and all-too-often-and-Badly-RetConned) rocket-trip. You can find more details on the Lost generation characters here.

He has also has contributed some rather intriguing things to the Wold Newton Universe community such as the priceless You Weren't Nuthin' But A Hound Dog essay that really throws the WNU to the dogs by speculating on the canine descendants of a bitch irradiated by the meteor that set all of the WNU into motion in 1795. You can find a set of links to Nevin's WNU essays here. The essays on The Carters of Virginia: A Tragedy and Reach For Yuh Genealogical Charts, Stranger are really well-done. It is especially weird and wonderful to consider the implications of John Carter (Warlord of Mars) being related to Randolph Carter (the Silver Key wielding Dream-master from HPL's tales).  It certainly is one way to make a Statement. Nevins is also a contributor to the Win Scott Eckert edited anthology of P. J. Farmer WNU-focused parascholarship Myths for a Modern Age.

Have you ever heard of Captain Mors aka der Luftpirat? You can find out about this forgotten hero of the German Dime-Novels of the Early Twentieth-Century. In some respects he gives a German spin on Verne's Robur the Conquerer (with some Robin Hood style quasi-socialism) and might even be considered a distinct predecessor to Perry Rhodan. His adventures were far-ranging to say the least, extending out unto the rest of our solar system and possibly beyond in at least 165 installments, most of which remain in German. The dime-novel series featuring Captian Mors was very possibly the first Science Fiction magazine, but that's an argument for Scholars to settle with their swords. In the meantime, you can check out one of the two E-Text versions of Captain Mor's adventures here, thanks to Jess Nevins (and Justin Gilbert who translated it over from the German). Like Perry Rhodan and Dray Prescott, there is a great deal of this stuff that is trapped in German language just begging to be translated and unleashed upon an otherwise unsuspecting English-reading audience...

If you are at all interested in doing research into Literature, Art, Books, Comics, Maps, Medieval Stuff, History, or Role Playing (amongst many other things), Jess Nevins provides pages upon pages of links and references for you to make use of including his exceptional list of Reference Texts. And yes, I realize that his page of Role-Playing links is a bit out of date, but with all the stuff this guy has going on, that's perfectly understandable, and besides, it's still a very extensive list that is worth investigating. The Anarchy & Espionage page is perhaps my favorite of the bunch, but that's because it is the most appropriate to the next few Riskail posts. You can find a directory-list of Jess Nevins assorted Bookmarks here. It's quite a lot of resources, so you'll definitely want to bookmark it yourself.

Nevins has also built an Online Directory to Golden Age Heroes that offers a listing of just about every known Golden Age Hero from 1935-1949, all arranged from A to Z and navigated via the little box on the upper left. This is an incredible treasure-trove of obscure, esoteric and mostly forgotten information sure to help others in their research efforts. It's a handy reference for digging back through the accumulated data-debris in order to look up or locate obscure old characters that might have fallen not only into obscurity, but the Public Domain. Alternative sites in this area include The Mystery Men & Mystery Women Encyclopedia, Hero Goggles' Golden Age Superhero and Villain Encyclopedia, Cash Gorman's Golden Age Encyclopedia, Mikel Midnight's Golden Age Directory, and others whom I hope to get to in the near future. And of course there is Jeff Rovin's amazing Encyclopedia of Super Heroes. You might also want to check out Lev Gleasons' Comics Page for a bunch more Golden Age links.

If you're a fan of the classic superhero Lee Falk's Phantom then you might want to check out these posts over at Nevins' No Fear of the Future blog: Painted by Pygmies, and The Color Purple (as rendered in black newspaper ink).  He also maintains a Livejournal that is simply fascinating, if you are interested in the market shares of the old Pulps from back in their hey day, which I actually am. All those numbers came out of the process of assembling The Pulp Magazine Holding Directory, which is about as rampant a bit of nerdistry as you can shake a stick at, but it's damn cool...to anyone really, really interested in the Pulps.

You can also find a wonderful article at io9 by Jess Nevins that details the development of Science Fiction from out of the Pulps.

And if you are interested in the Pulp and Adventure Heroes of the Pre-War Years then you need to go here. Right now. No fooling. Jess Nevins has compiled another incredible collection of Heroes dragged from the cold wreckage of the earliest days of the Pulp and Adventure magazine days, all of it alphabetized, annotated and presented as a wonderful jumping-off point for really diving into this are of the Pop Cultural Underworld/Wasteland for days on end.

Then there's the vast amount of Fantastic Victoriana stuff that Jess Nevins has likewise compiled, annotated and converted into an Encyclopedia of the Fantastic Victoriana. The site offers you a wealth of incredible, well-researched and fun essays that range from A to Z.  He has also included at this site a detailed list of links for researching the Fantastic Victoriana all for yourself--a true gift to every would-be steampunk and Victoriaphile out there.

Is this the end for Jess Nevins? Not by a long shot. But it is the end of this post.

Bela Lugosi is Dead, and Monsterverse Has Him...



Bela Lugosi's Tales From The Grave

You can hear Peter Murphy crooning sinisterly in the background, or at least you could if you clicked here or hit the play button down below to the left a bit.  Ah Bauhaus.  The good old days.




Monsterverse is a fresh new alternative comics publisher that is reviving and resurrecting the genre of old school Horror Comics like EC, Warren and a lot of other Pre-Comics Code publishers used to crank out long ago and far away.  You can find out a bit more about them here, Read their blog, or watch a Preview or a teaser-clip for the recently released Bela Lugosi's Tales From the Grave, which is available here.  Issue one features a beautiful portrait of Lugosi as Dracula by Basil Gogos himself.  They also feature Reprints of Famous Monsters of Filmland on the Monsterverse Store-page, which is very cool.

Bela Lugosi died August 16, 1956 after a memorable career in the movies that hit its peak with Tod Browning's Dracula in 1931...and arguably hit its nadir with his involvement in Ed Wood's gloriously terrible Plan Nine From Outer Space, though that point could be argued by hardcore Lugosi-fans, depending how they feel about some of the other less than awesome roleshe had to take on in order to make a living. It is Lugosi's performance in Dracula for which most people remember him, and this is for good reason.  Just watch the classic trailer:



Some Suitably Macabre Bela Lugosi Links
Bela's page at Findagrave
Bela at Findadeath
Bela Lugosi Bio at the NY Times site -- Full Biography is here, a filmography is here
A nice Fan Site for Lugosi, including another filmography, just in case
Lugosi at the International Movie Database site
The obligatory Bela Lugosi Wikipedia entry
Lugosi at AllMovie
Lugosi at the Internet Broadway Database
Info on the Stage Production of Dracula at the IBD site
More info on Lugosi at a site that is mostly in Hungarian
Biofile page on Bela Lugosi
Lugosi at Rather Grim Tales
Lugosi at Netflix
Some Bela Lugosi Quotes
Lugosi at The Pit
Lugosi Bio at the Who2 site
Bela at NNDB

"I have never met a vampire personally, but I don't know what might happen tomorrow."

Bela Lugosi

Atlas Rides Again, Sort Of...

Atlas Comics are (almost) returning from the beyond, and this time they're out for vengeance...err...or maybe this time they're Not out for vengeance?!?  WTF?  Well, in either case, two particular titles from the Atlas Comics all-too-brief hey-day are coming back, whether or not you care, remember them or want them to--because no IP, no matter how obscure or marginal or buried will escape the latest craze for comics sweeping Hollywood.  There's money in them there funny books.

The Press Release is available at the Atlas Archives site.  It reads as follows:

In 1974, Martin Goodman, the Founder of Marvel Comics, created Atlas Comics. On October 8th, 2010, Jason Goodman, the grandson of Marvel's Founder, will re-launch Atlas Comics at the New York Comic-Con.

Goodman, in association with Ardden Entertainment, will release Atlas' first two titles, THE GRIM GHOST and PHOENIX. Both series will draw from the original Atlas library that featured stories and art by such industry legends as Neal Adams and Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko.

THE GRIM GHOST and PHOENIX are the first of many Atlas properties that Goodman plans on releasing. "Although my grandfather eventually sold Marvel, he insisted on keeping Atlas Comics in the family. As a result of his vision, Atlas Comics is the largest individually-held library of comic book heroes and villains on the planet."

Goodman continues, "We have twenty eight titles and hundreds of characters imagined by some of the greatest minds in the industry. They will now find a new life in comics, television, and movies. We are thrilled to finally bring these great characters back for the world to enjoy."

Co-President of Ardden Entertainment and comic book industry veteran, Rich Emms, and Brendan Deneen, Co-President of Ardden Entertainment and a former development executive for Scott Rudin and Bob & Harvey Weinstein, add, "Ardden has had success and critical acclaim for our own Flash Gordon and Casper the Friendly Ghost re-launches. We are very excited to be working with Jason and his Atlas team on revisiting a group of characters created by some of the biggest names in the business."

Ardden's Editor-in-Chief and legendary comic writer, J.M. DeMatteis, concludes, ""The Atlas universe is filled with characters of tremendous potential. I look forward to being a part of this re-launch as we re-imagine these wonderful characters and send them off on new adventures for the first time in thirty-five years."

For more information, contact Jason Goodman at Jason@NemesisLtd.com  or Brendan Deneen at Brendan.Deneen@GMail.com.

J. M. DeMatteis has cleared-up some of the accelerating Atlas-hype here on his blog.

So, yeah, we get two titles coming out as Zero issues at New York Comic Con...if they do well, we might get to see more of these two, and that opens the door for the dot dot dot part.  When I first heard the tale and read the various snippets and rumors, I was shocked that anyone would be so daft as to resurrect Atlas as a company, but reviving a couple of its characters, that might be fun and who knows where that might lead?

Guess the Grim Ghost has dropped the Revolutionary War-era get-up and got hisself all modernized and re-Grim-ified.  I like the typography...but the bulgy muscles don't really suit this character.  He's a ghost who has come back from Hell to send bad people there in his place.  He has a pair of supernatural flintlock handguns.  He's not a bruiser, more of a marksman or spiritual highwayman on the road to perdition, trying to go the otherway just a tad bit too damned late.  The core concept has a ton of potential inherent in it that never got the chance to really unfold in the first 3-issue run.  Compare the dark, brooding modern cover to this one from 1974:

That's quite a bold leap forwards on several levels.  It might even be an improvement, depending on the contents behind that cover.  I'm skeptical about the whole 'updating' approach, as it usually means dumbing-down, neutering and throwing away all the good stuff in order to present a bland, shallow, ultimately empty version of a character that can now be summed-up in fifteen words or less.  The same goes for dropping details from the costume and making everyone dress like a slacker or a hooker.  But then drawing historically accurate costumery is tough enough without having to do it on the killer schedule that producing a comic book requires.  I'll reserve judgement, for now, but they better not have reduced Matthew Dunsinane to some sort of emo lackwit with an overwhelming guilt complex over the souls he sends to hell in his place like some twisted outlaw psychopomp with blazing flintlocks and a centuries-old score to settle.  This is a guy facing the ultimate challenge to not become a cold-hearted, absolutely ruthless bastard of the worst sort...and seeing him struggle with that challenge would be wonderful...especially as he sends the all-too-deserving A**holes on to a suitable final reward...this could be dark, sinister, brutal and give Dennis Wheatley nightmares.  And That would be Cool.

We'll see what the new improved Atlas via Ardden delivers.

I'm not much of a fan of Phoenix/The Protector.  That short-lived series was an atrocious mess that was so badly kludged together that even the main charcter was ready to kill himself over how messed-up the book was...and they sorted him out by having aliens give him a shiny new suit, new powers and a new name in the third issue.  Arrgghh.  This one bites.  If they are reviving the character, maybe they'll play-up the aliens a bit more, maybe look to Roy Thinnes' role in The Invaders and go for a more Invasion of the Body Snatchers kind of vibe (like here, here or here)  with superpowered agents of competing pod-factions/alien forces who want Earth for breeding grounds.  That'd make more sense, and be a lot more fun than the way it got all mangled and messed-up the first time around.  In fact, you could easily take the way the original series re-vamped the main character to heart in a sort of bent and demented E. E. Doc Smith sort of approach and have him scavenge more and more technologies off of different servitor races and slave troopers and agents of the various competing powers kind of like a DIY junkyard-Iron Man who hybridizes things not meant to work together and winds up with a cyborg that only HPL could see coming...now that would rock.  I wonder what the new and improved revived version of this Atlas character is actually going to be like, though the ultra-manly pose and all those glistening muscles remind me of those sword-and-sandal Steve Reeves movies...just sayin'...

Okay, so Atlas might not be coming back exactly, but if I had to pick two titles to test the waters and see if there was any life left in the library, I'd pick differently.  Very differently.  The Destructor could easily get modernized into something very off-beat and cool, especially if the main character winds up doing some time in Afghanistan or found himself landed smack in the middle of a food riot in Haiti right after a nasty hurricane.  He also has the makings of a twisted take on the Executioner or Destroyer, and might wind up dropping the costume in order to use his powers more covertly...that one title could go a lot of different directions besides just parodying the whole Peter Parker stuff.  I'm a big fan of Remo Williams (Chiun!), Mack Bolan, and Nick Carter, so why not have a superpowered punk kid get trained-up to be some sort of superspy that isn't Jennifer Garner or Maggie Q...though the new Nikita is looking really good...

Now, as I've made clear previously, I'm a big fan of Atlas' Planet of the Vampires and I really liked the potential in their goofy Destructor and Chaykin's Scorpion would be awesome to see revived...again...away from the Marvel Universe...if that's even possible now.  (Same for Demon Slayer/Devil Slayer, I would guess...)  But the friggin' Phoenix?!?  Again: WTF!?!?  Phoenix!?!?!??  Why not Cougar, Wulf the Barbarian, or even Morlock 2001?  Grim Ghost I can see.  Heck, even IronJaw might have a shot at making the big time, really, but Phoenix is a flaming toxic waste spill amidst an earthquake during a full-out atomic war...talk about a mess to clean-up.  Ye Gods, even Tarantula makes more sense as an opening gambit than that train-wreck in the midst of oh so many other train-wrecks of bat-shit insane series/gonzo characters and off-the-wall concepts that proliferated within the pages of the first incarnation of Atlas.  You can check out the best maintained guide to Who's Who in the Atlasverse over at the Atlas Archives site, and decide for yourself.  (It opens on the letter 'B' since there are no characters in the Atlasverse with names beginning with 'A.'  It's just that friggin' weird of an operation.  Welcome to Atlas...)

Oh well, I guess that by merging the shiny-new Protector-suit from issue 3 with the clueless astronaut-jock-dude allows you to go for the more tried-and-true territory of the spandex-homoerotic tales of heroic man bondage and derring-do that we've come to expect from 'superhero' titles.  Sigh.  If anyone would take a chance and do something gloriously insane and offbeat, you'd think that it would be Atlas or someone seeking to revive Atlas...but Phoenix looks like someone is playing it really, really safe and comfortable and tapping into the vast reservoir of knock-off-itis and copy-cat syndrome that pretty-much killed things off the first time around.  We don't need another Superman Clone, what would be cool is to really, really stand all the cherished tropes on their heads, set them on fire and drop-kick the whole mythos into the gutter right before taking a seat in the pub.  But they aren't working with Warren Ellis, are they?  They ought to be.  Ellis could really sink his teeth into the Atlasverse and make it scream beautifully as he transformed it into something less derivative and more outrageous and feral than anything we've seen up to date.  I won't hold my breath for that to happen. But damn it would be fun.

Alas, for what might have been, The Scorpion is perhaps my all-time favorite Atlas title...but then how can you go wrong with Howard Chaykin at the drawing board and typewriter word processor -- in short: You Can't.  Don't even get me started on Iron Wolf...as that'll be a post of its own in the near future.  Promise.

I've always seen Atlas Comics as being sort of the Arduin of the comics world: off-beat, off-kilter, weird, gonzo and wonderful for making the attempt, whether or not they ever succeeded. They Tried To Do Things Differently. Sure a lot of both of their work is ultimately derivative, even sometimes blatantly so (Brute=Hulk Duh!)  But a LOT of imaginative literature, sequentially illustrated or not, is derivative of everything else that has gone before it.  Consider Moorcock's Elric; if it hadn't been for Howard's Conan to mock/reverse, there'd be no Elric.  Atlas might not have produced a new Elric, nor even given us a decent Conan-clone, but it did produce Wulf, Ironjaw and other properties that had they been given time, might have developed into distinct, unique characters that blazed fresh trails.  At least I like to think that they might have done so, given the opportunity.  Maybe, maybe this time around things can be different somehow.  If the rebellious, gonzo spirit of Atlas gets revived, not just the Trademark and the library of IP that they still have on hold...that'd be damn cool.
Here's what other people are saying about the return of Atlas Comics over at Techland, CBR and again at CBR, SciFiPulse, Newsarama, and Comix411.  Wow.  Tom Mason over at Comix411 really cut the BS and stated things pretty much the way I might have, but now I don't have to; definitely read Mason's write-up.  I think that he's right on the mark, except that Planet of the Vampires is only tangentially any sort of knock-off of Heston's The Omega Man.  The suits those vampires are wearing are unmistakable.  Too bad that they only really ever lifted the designer Italian leather suits from the movie, but that's a digression.  Besides, The Omega Man is an improvement over The Last Man on Earth (even with the wonderful Vincent Price), which in turn was a degenerative spawn of the 1954 Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend that got converted into the Will Smith movie that may be getting a Prequel.  But that's another digression.

To quote Heston from The Omega Man: "There is no phone ringing!"

Maybe the Eye will make a come-back, somehow and get his own title...

The people at Ardden Entertainment are already involved in bringing out the Flash Gordon: Invasion of the Red Sword series and Caspar and the Spectrals as well as reviving Atlas.  Ardden's Flash Gordon is derived from and uses the previous (timelessly cool) work of the legendary Alex Raymond as its springboard and the first series Flash Gordon: The Mercy Wars had a very pulpish feel to it, in the best possible sense.  It's as credible a re-working of the classic Sci-Fi/Fantasy/American Swashbuckler in a world of weird science run amok/sword and planet/planetary romance/pulp goodness that got started back in 1934. However you categorize it, genre-tize it or pigeonhole the over-arching thematic elements, Flash Gordon is fun stuff, the kind of thing that they just don't make any more because people are too damned uptight and concerned over labels, marketing categories, and literary movements. 

You know, now that I think about it a bit more, the future for Atlas Comics (with none other than J. M. DeMatteis at the editorial helm!) in conjunction with a company that is rolling out a very decent retread of Flash Gordon sounds very promising.  I just hope that they'll stay as far left of center as they began and run as hard and fast as they can out beyond the envelope of the safe, known, conventional and boring dreck we have too much of already.  Just as long as they bring back Planet of the Vampires.  Damn, I'd like to write that!  Reviving some of the old Atlas characters/concepts/series might be a lot of fun...

Are they looking for proposals/submissions over at Atlas?  Man do I have some ideas for them...

Magnus: Robot Fighter

Magnus: Robot Fighter is back.  The man in a manny-skirt and white go-go boots who beats robots to pieces with his bare hands has returned from the cloying foeter of obscurity and disappointment where he's languished since his last foray into comicdom was truncated preceipitously.  ComicBookResources has some details on the New Model Magnus and there's a nice piece about Magnus (the old version) over at Tor as well.  The 56-page spectacular debut of the New Magnus is available via Dark Horse.

Jim Shooter, the Editor-in-Chief of Valiant, who saw Magnus revived back in the Nineties is in charge of resurrecting the robot-buster from the year 4,000 one more time.  Dark Horse has begun the process of reviving the old Gold Key characters via what is being called Dark Key Comics which is good news to those of us who remember Turok: Son of Stone, Doctor Solar: Man of the Atom, Doctor Spektor, and Magnus.

Magnus is a very cool comic.  Think Billy Jack or maybe a Mexican Wrestler (like Santo or Mil Mascaras--but without a mask) combined withTarzan or Hercules in the future and with robots in need of smashing...with the guy's bare fists.  It's all about the adventures of this one lonely guy raised in the far future by a robot with human emotions, 1A, who is his Sensei, foster-father and mentor, and how this one warrior raised from birth is predestined by a computer-mind to be the savior of the human race in the face of another possible robot rebellion.  A lot of the character development over the course of the original Russ Manning series for Gold Key revolved around Magnus learning how to become more than a living weapon and become a man, a human being in his own right.  The training that he underwent dehumanized him more than a little, but that was seen as an acceptable cost for getting a warrior who could smash robots to pieces with his bare knuckled martial arts prowess and considerable strength.  Sorting out the Dell/Gold Key from the Valiant/Acclaim continuity is easier if you check out the Magnus page at the International Hero site.  Toonpedia also gives some details on Magnus.  You can also read an old Dell/Gold Key Magnus: Robot Fighter story "The Beasts of Steel" at Mykal Bantas' excellent Gold Key Stories blog.  There's a gallery of all the old Dell/Gold Key covers for Magnus at Comic-Covers(dot)com.  And if you prefer the Valiant/Acclaim version of Magnus, the folks at ValiantFan(dot)com have you covered.

What I particularly like about Magnus is that he is a prime example of an alternative Tarzan-esque Ranger (of the future) in D&D/Classic RPG terms.  He has a dedicated enemy: robots, and the specialized skills/attacks necessary to smash robots (some of which resemble a martial Monk's abilities).  But who says that a Ranger has to be Aragorn or Drizzt?  Who says that they even have to take a weapon other than their fists?  They don't.  There's just an entrenched expectation that they will, of course they will...but they don't need to...they could opt to go the route of a Magnus and become a dedicated almost Kensai-focused killing machine devoted to the complete extermination of a particular foe.

Kind of changes things a bit, but it's inherently already codified right there in the essential concept of the Ranger class.  You just shift the weapon focus to unarmed combat and you're three-quarters of the way there.  Easy-peasy.

Of course Magnus has a ceramic-durium armored tunic (apparently it's not a skirt--Really) to go with those infamous white go-go boots.  Don't laugh, he'll whup your butt in a New New York minute.  This is a guy who breaks robots into scrap metal without any tools, gadgets, or foreign objects.

A specialist luchadore-martial artist Robot Fighter would be a fun class/sub-class/prestige class/whatever-class to develop for a setting with lots of maniacal, dangerous rogue robotic menaces running around...hmmm...gonna have to get busy: we need some more robots around here...

Planet of the Vampires (also a brief Atlas Comics tangent)

Planet of the Vampires.  A classic SciFi/Horror movie made in 1965, Planet of the Vampires was Directed by Mario Bava (Famed horror-director of such classics as 'Black Sabbath') and based upon an original Italian science fiction story by Renato Pestriniero's "One Night of 21 Hours," which I've never been able to locate in English anywhere.  And that's probably for the best.  Like the brief review in The Essential Monster Movie Guide by Jones and Ackerman, the plot almost makes sense.  But don't take my word for it; you can find a few other folk's reviews and coverage of this movie here, here and here.  Planet of the Vampires is far more memorable for its costume design and use of in-camera effects than the plot, acting or cast.  But the sets are interesting, the effects are clever for a B-movie getting done on the ultra-cheap back in the Sixties, and it has exerted a strange influence over later SciFi directors including Dan O'Bannon (Alien).  Here's the trailer:


As you can see from the trailer, Planet of the Vampires is definitely a movie of its time.  A real Spaghetti-Raygun movie, if you will.  One of the more interesting scenes that you've probably seen in another movie...like say Alien is the following scene:


Another thing that is memorable about this movie are the costumes.  The all-leather, high and notched Dracula-collars and the bold yellow racing stripes kind of resemble something that you'd find on an Italian race car driver and might have been designed by Gucci or one of the more fashionable houses of haute couture.  These costumes must have been hotter than blazes to wear, but they are still cool, they're very reminiscent of motorcycle leathers for outspace motocross.  Check them out:

...and...

These costumes also remind me of Northwest Smith's "Spaceman's Leathers," as Leigh Brackett once described his apparel.  Even Freddy Mercury very likely wouldn't have been able to find spacier leather gear outside of a Leather bar in Munich...

Back in 1975 Atlas Comics produced a short-lived comic series adapting Planet of the Vampires into a Post-Apocalyptic Free-For-All that actually was a lot of fun, even if it only lasted for three issues.   The comic series essentially re-wrote things so that a bunch of astronauts (as in Planet of the Apes) returned from a manned-mission to Mars (around 2010, plus they had one woman crew-member), and as they approach Earth they can't raise mission control.  There was a nuclear war.  They land in the middle of a royal mess, getting 'rescued' by dome-dwelling humanoids who turn out to vampires who are caught-up in a doomed never-ending cycle of internecine geurilla warfare with the more barbarous survivors outside the domes, sanguinous predation upon said survivors, and their own internal political squabbling within each of the various domes which have become xenophoobic, paranoid and ripe for overthrow by the heroic astronauts leading the assembled masses of the barbarian riff-raff hordes who would like nothing better than to destroy the bloodsuckers once and for all...except maybe kill one another off over various tribal squabbles.

It's a very fundamental RPG setting that retains the cool leather outfits for the vampires, but essentially rewrites everything else from the ground up.  Which, upon reflection, isn't a half-bad way to deal with this particular movie/story/setting.

I'm not sure who owns Atlas Comics' or rather I should say Atlas/Seaboards' IP right now (I originally thought that it was Marvel...but...Goodman left/was forced out from Marvel and started-up Seaboard/Atlas in the early Seventies and they were the ones who produced Planet of theVampires, Scorpion, Wulf the Barbarian, etc. not the Pre-Marvel Atlas, which is an entirely other entity), and I'm not sure if there is any hope to revive/resurrect the old Seaboard/Atlas version of Planet of the Vampires, but I, for one, would like to see it happen.  Those three issues from 1975 had a lot of untapped potential and it could easily be shifted into a more Pulp-ish sensibility, lifting tropes and trappings from related/parallel B-movies and possibly re-integrating the franchises' roots into the bargain.  It would be cool.  Just as long as you kept the leather spacesuits...

You can find a list of Seaboard/Atlas comics at the Grand Comics Database.  Steve Ditko's off-the-wall Destructor was a lot of fun, as were the first three issues of Howard Chaykin's Doc Savage-esque Scorpion which has long since been abandoned / re-worked into Dominic Fortune.  Ironjaw was just plain weird, and The Grim Ghost always felt like a rip-off of a Charlton comic especially as it was drawn by Ditko...and I won't even mention the weirdest title Atlas ever put out: Tarantula...

Yeah.  A guy gets cursed by a witch being burnt at the stake.  He transforms into a humanoid tarantula.  A bipedal, green spider-dude.  Bizarre stuff.  Not exactly their most enduring nor exactly memorable work, but also not entirely or totally derivative either.  In any case, out of all the Seaboard/Atlas titles that I remember the best and most fondly, it is Planet of the Vampires. It only has a tangential relationship to the movie it is derived from, but it is fun and boldly took things forwards in a very, very Seventies manner.  SyFy could easily adapt the comic into one of their schlocky productions...that'd be ... weird ... Maybe we'll see a Planet of the Vampires supplement for Terminal Space or Xplorers someday?  Heck, the alien-possessed crew of a returning atomic spaceship could get written into a War Rocket scenario even.  That'd be fun.

They don't make movies like this any more.

Or do they?