Fan Rants

I am at the Bill Willingham panel right now and I am stoked. Bill has been a comic creator for just about forever. Currently he is best known for his Fables series from Vertigo Comics, a DC Comics imprint. Fables for me is a Gateway Comic, in the sense that I can give it to a non-comic book reader and they will come back wanting more and more. In fact I have done that and have no shame for it!

Today he dropped some great news (spoilers ahead).

The upcoming Fables issues will be all about Rose Red and her recovery after loosing Boy Blue. This story arc will go for 5 issues and finish with Rose leading the animals of the farm into battle.

Another excellent bit of news is that there are two busts coming out, one for Bigsby and one for Snow. Both were shown to us and look great. Also they are putting out an updated Fables Covers edition collecting the first 75 issues. This is great news as the last covers edition is long sold out.

We also got a sneak on the next Jack of Fables storyline with a cover showing the Page sisters all in Charlie Angels battle poses. The real huh moment on that cover was due to one of the sisters cradling a baby, but who’s baby is it? Bill was not willing to revel that.

One of the questions asked of Bill was which Fables characters do you like to write about the most, he said Snow and Bigsby. This shouldn’t be a big surprise to the fans of the book, but one thing did strike us as odd, he said that Snow White was to be married in an upcoming Fables issue. But she is already married to Bigsby…dang him and his vague spoilers!

There were a lot of Wizard of Oz fans in the audience and they asked if they would be seeing more of their characters soon. Bill stated that Dorothy would be showing up soon in a big way later on and other characters would continue to be seen in the books.

Sometime last year we got news out of Hollywood that ABC had picked up the writes to Fables for a TV show. Unfortunately when Bill was asked about that he said that there is no news on the TV series and in fact made it sound like there was SO much dead air about it that its like it never was talked about in the first place. Guess we shall see.

His first prose novel based on the Fables universe came out last year with Peter & Max. He said that Peter will be showing up in the Fable comics in the future. Oh, and the next prose Down the Mysterly River was sold to Tor books recently. It is actually an old book that he had published a long time ago that he picked back up and rewrote. It’s about Max the Wolf, a young man who is sent to the wrong afterlife due to his name causing him to be mistaken as an animal. So its off to the animal afterlife for him. It’s a Young Adult book and sounds interesting. It is not tied into fables, but there are some pinpoint (non official) connections.

This was by far one of my favorite panels just because I am in love with the material so much. Here are some links for fans to check out!

Fablestown message board – clockworkstorybook.net

twitter: billwillingham

Well it has been an exhausting day at McCormick Place. Not only at the convention center but around town. And we really haven’t stopped until this weeks podcast was finished being recorded around 2am this morning.

The day started out well with a good breakfast and a lovely trip on the local bus to the convention center. Okay, strike that last part…our bus had someone previously throw up on it and it was NASTY smelling. But at least the breakfast was good before that. Welcome to Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (that’s me with my arms raised)!

I ran through most of the panels we attended today in individual posts. Overall we were impressed with the various companies and what they had to offer. All the comic publishers had some type of freebie to hand out. And DC really broke the bank by handing out about 15 of their newest comics, very cool!

At the Marvel booth we were graced by their editor in chief Joe Quesada. He was busy with an interview at the time but was very friendly with the fans. Oh, and they had some booth babes handing out comics and even Spider-Man showed up for a bit!

The Dark Horse booth had a special BPRD event going on, the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense from the Hellboy universe. We got honorary agent badges and pins. They also had Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy and Guy Davis, one of the major artists in his books, signing items. Great couple of guys. Another cool item they had at the booth was a mini-bust from the TV show Dexter showing Dexter looking at a piece of evidence while holding a knife behind his back. This statue will be released this fall.

On one side of the show they also had two vehicles on display, the classic Batmobile and the Delorian from Back to the Future. Very cool displays even if poor Batman looked quite cold in this tights.

Kevin entered a raffle for a custom tattoo to be inked on Sunday. Unfortunately he did not win, but the money went to charity so its still kinda a win…even if it was my $5!

After a long day of hanging out at the convention center we headed out for some time on the town. I have to say Chicago is definitely growing on me, hope to spend more time here in the future.

Coming this October to DVD, Talking with Gods: the Grant Morrison Documentary. If you’re not familiar with Grant, he has written and reworked many of the classic DC heroes like Animal Man all the way to Superman. He set a new dark tone for Batman with Arkam Asylum and recently set the DC universe with the Final Crisis storyline.

Today we got a special presentation of this upcoming documentary. On hand were the producer, director and principal photographer.

The documentary will be sectioned into three parts, focusing on his early career in the 70s, his odd ball crazy psychedelic writing of the 90s and then his recent work with DC Comics.

They wanted to do this documentary to explain how his life and history are intertwined with his comic writing. And while he comes across as a chaos magician it is really just his special view on life that makes him so appealing.

We were treated with several clips and it was like a lite appetizer before an awesome meal. Just tempting you for the later feast to come. It features extensive interviews with many top comic book creators that have worked with Grant over the years. And of course, plenty of interviews with the subject himself.

One of the surprises for the film makers was that Grant works non-stop. He has a great work ethic and is down to earth about his creations. Very committed to his work with a great aura about him.

Grant seemed bemused that someone would want to do a documentary about him. But he agreed, for one reason to put the facts right about his life. Many rumors are out there about extensive drug use, of which are put to rest.

Really looking forward to learning more about this iconic writer, October can’t get here soon enough! Oh, and for next year they have a new documentary that they just started working on: Warren Ellis – Captured Ghosts!

Awesome panel with Mike Mignola here at C2E2. Mike told us about an upcoming Hellboy comic centered on the American West and a 2 part Abe Sapian series based in Russia.

One of the questions brought forward was why he hasn’t done more with the Asian mythologies, of which he commented that it was very alien to him. In fact the recent comic with Hellboy in Japan made him realize he didn’t know how to draw a Japanese door! He feels that he needs to find the right artist for these stories. One of which he wants to base in China.

Some of the upcoming Hellboy stories will take place in that 50 year span where he roamed the world, before the prophecy came about on his destiny. This is excellent news as Hellboy comics have been absent from the book shelves over the last couple of years.

One thing he emphasized over and over is that he is doing his best to keep the Hellboy movie universe and comic universe very separate. He firmly believes that what Del Toro does with the films are very different than the comics. Obviously the Liz/Hellboy relationship are very different in the two, I hope he keeps to his guns on this.

Mike is expanding his art line on his website, www.mikemignola.com. He will be providing more limited edition prints and sounds like we have a lot to look forward too.

Well it looks like Marvel has found their director for the upcoming Avengers film, Joss Whedon! I can just hear all the Buffy fans and Browncoats yipping in glee right about now.

Deadline New York reports that Marvel Studios is in final negotiations with Joss to direct the biggest Superhero film of all time. The film is going to be fast tracked for release May of 2012. Right now we are expecting Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and maybe the Hulk (Edward Norton).

This is an interesting choice, considering that Joss is better known for character creation and writing than he is for directing. But he has had some great success with the Marvel line over the last few years, in particularly the X-Men franchise with The Astonishing X-Men.

Frankly I was hoping he would take on the Runaways movie (not the Joan Jett biopic) coming from Marvel next year.  He was one of the writers for the second volume of this excellent Marvel comics series and definitely his forte with young characters. But I am quite happy to see him taking the lead on this diverse property and wish him the best on this film.