That Was the Week That Was - August 20th: Watchmen & Super Stupor

Busyness still abounds, as I juggle jobs, wedding plans and some form of sleep. Sadly, this has reduced my posting frequency, something which I am working on correcting. One of the positive side-effects is that I have a ton of blog post ideas waiting for the time to unleash them on an unsuspecting readership.

Will Anyone Watch the Watchmen

I brought you the 'Watchmen' trailer recently as the excitement amongst discerning comic readers was palpable. This film has been in development hell for twenty years, so finally getting to see that they might not necessarily destroy Alan Moore’s wonderful book was a huge moment.

According to Wired and many other sources, it seems to be a moment that Fox – for now – wants to deny us. They have decided to fight Warner Bros in the courts over the rights to the property, saying that not all of their interests in the property had expired when WB took over the project.

Of course, it’s just a money grab. There’s no advantage for Fox in preventing release completely. They can see that WB are going to make enough money to settle the national debt of a few African nations and – despite being unable to get the project to work for nearly twenty years – they want a piece.

Comic fans have become gun-shy when it comes to court battles over creative rights. Usually it means bad news for the fans as we are denied something we love. It has been fourteen years since #24 of 'Miracleman', just to give you one heart-felt for instance. #25 is nearly completed but has been sat in limbo through court case after court case as Todd (boo-hiss) McFarlane fights Neil (hooray) Gaiman over who actually has the full rights to the character. The result? I, and thousands of other die-hard fans, get no 'Miracleman' comics.(For the record, my screen name of 'Kimota' is the magic word spoken by Mike Moran to transform him into 'Miracleman'.)

As an aside, while researching links for this section I came a cross a very recent news piece reporting on the 'Miracleman' controversy and how it has been adapted in Melbourne Australia into a stage play!

We’re used to disappointment, which is why some fans are worried that the ‘Watchmen’ movie could be another case of ‘so-close, yet so-far’. Thankfully, I think the worst we can expect is a delayed release. After all, we’ve waited twenty years. Surely a few extra months won’t kill us.

Super Stupor

Okay, I love this site. 'Super Stupor' has been delivering great superhero comic strips for less than a year, but I love it. Recently, a printed edition was released to coincide with Comic-Com.

Go on. Subscribe. You know you want to.

Kimota on the Web

Thanks are due for Daniel Smith over at Smithereens this week for inviting me to supply a guest post. If, like me, blogging has become a central theme in your life, you should probably read ‘15 signs that you're a blogging addict and 7 things you can do about it’.

And Finally…

Listening to… ‘UNKLE – End Title… Stories for Film’. A new album that isn’t really a new album as it collects pieces performed by UNKLE for various video projects, games etc. Close enough to new stuff to keep me happy, anyway.

As you were. Class dismissed.