itt: consternation and wailing about Zach Snyder's upcoming SUPERMAN/BATMAN film/sequel to MAN OF STEEL -- official title: BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

What's the movie equivalent of foil-stamped covers?

Retrofitted 3D?

lol

http://www.movieweb.com/news/fake-batman-v-superman-script-written-and-leaked-by-kevin-smith

We just received an interesting tip from an anonymous source deep within the Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice production. This comes just moments after we posted a story about the introduction of three new, lesser-known heroes in the movie. Badass Digest has gotten their hands on a pdf that claims to be the legitimate shooting script, and in it, there are a number of new secondary characters and locations. This came hot on the heels of Latino Review claiming four new villains were going to appear alongside Lex Luthor. Well, guess what? If we're to believe the email we just got our hands on, not only is the script fake...It was written by Kevin Smith!

He explains that having the "v" instead of "vs." is a way "to keep it from being a straight 'versus' movie, even in the most subtle way.

so subtle it's literally just a legal drama and batman and superman are now lawyers

http://static.tvgcdn.net/MediaBin/Galleries/Shows/G_L/Ha_Hh/HarveyBirdman_AttorneyAtLaw/crops/HarveyBirdman3.jpg

Yeah, I liked Sean O'neal's take:

And he discussed how he originally had no intention of introducing Batman to Superman’s world so soon, believing he’d one day get around to that by making an adaptation of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. “But on the other hand it seemed organic the way our story was unfolding to start to feather him in,” Snyder said, of this very natural progression to jumpstart a comic-book movie universe to compete with Marvel’s as soon as possible.

otm tho rilly it's not like warner/dc's competing with marvel for anything but style points and I guess maybe "not looking like complete idiots"

real losers are producers shopping big budget non-comic projects, as there are now even fewer prime release slots. so much for Hudson Hawk II...

Good enough place to post this long Chris Sims piece about DC's "Marvel problem." I missed it when he published it at Comics Alliance last year but Business Insider ran it last week. DC's identity problems extend to the films as well, imo.

http://www.businessinsider.com/dc-copies-marvel-2014-6

Great article.

Entertaining read for sure. Boy, does he hate Bob Kane!

The shoutout to the Conan issue of What-If (unquestionably its high point) made me smile.

Is the one where Wolverine somehow ends up in that time period?

There's some anti-Kane, pro-Finger sentiment brewing these days because Kane is apparently going to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame or whatever it's called. Mark Evanier's been blogging it up a bit lately.

xxp

Here's Chris Sims on why he dislikes Bob Kane:

http://comicsalliance.com/ask-chris-164-bob-kane-is-just-the-worst/

It's a lot like if Stan Lee not only took all the credit for Marvel superheroes, but denied that Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, or Steve Ditko ever existed.

That gravestone is pretty unbelievable

It looks like Conan was a popular subject for what-if. There are 4 issues apparently. One I remember has him becoming a pimp and walking a leopard on a leash (referenced in the article), which must be WI#13 from 1979. Then there's this one http://www.comicvine.com/what-if-what-if-conan-the-barbarian-were-stranded-in-the-20th-century/4000-23995/ from 1985 with a sick bill sienkiewicz cover that has him on the verge of joining the avengers at the end. I also remember one where he becomes buddies with Thor (who dies) and the final panel is Conan climbing up a mountain with Mjolnir. The Wolverine one is from the later relaunch of What If in the 90s.

(xpost)

ahh i see

good piece

as an outsider it feels like there's a lot of narrativizing and that he also really just doesn't like DC despite his constant assurances otherwise but still good piece thanks for posting

He also loves Batman more than anything

we all say things to make batman feel better, don't have to mean them

okay that tombstone

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--00NL7eOa--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/19dfys1yex2wxjpg.jpg

Sims piece is pretty good at explaining DC's current actions/predicament (not that they were really that difficult to grasp to begin with). I think it conveniently elides some basic facts in the service of maintaining the overall argument about the companies narratives though - for one thing, it's weird to act like these corporations, the ownership and direction of which has shifted multiple times over the decades, during which huge swathes of their respective creative departments switched back and forth, have any kind of inherent, coherent behavior patterns. These are not distinct individuals. They are constantly shifting conglomerates that have continuously tried to adapt to market pressures. They don't have a philosophy beyond making money. I know that in this glorious day and age corporations are people too, my friend, but talking about Marvel and DC like they're a couple of neurotic siblings is not really reflective of reality.

Also, it seems one-sided in its assessment of DC's chasing Marvel's trends. Marvel has ripped off plenty of shit from DC over the years, for the same reasons DC ripped off Marvel - they saw the other making money and tried to copy it. Thanos/Cosmic Cube/Capt Marvel saga are a pretty blatant rip of Kirby's Fourth World. Man-Thing and Swamp Thing. Marvel's alternate universes (Ultimate etc.) and DC's Earth-2, Earth-Prime, Earth-C whatever. It's all a rich tapestry of opportunism. Where there's some divergence (at least afaik) is that occasionally DC has gone out on a limb and succeeded and Marvel didn't even bother to try to compete - thinking primarily of DC's Vertigo imprint and their importation of the Brit troika of Moore/Gaiman/Morrison (if Marvel made some corresponding moves to capture the college-girl market the way Sandman did I'm not aware of it).

I look forward to sic correcting whatever factual errors I may have made with this post and defer to his voluminous knowledge of publication/comics history but Sims' piece oversimplifies this stuff imo.

Plus we are getting into Ouroboros territory, as Marvel are about to have their own Crisis and merge the Ultimate universe with Earth-616.

haha waht

wait what? explain that!
I was gonna say, the Ultimate universe was sort of different take on DC's Crisis. The original idea - that the original universe is too complicated for new readers - was used, but they didn't kill off the original stories and then ran parallel. They were pretty dedicated to the idea that the universes would never crossover for a long time (until they did the Mile Morales/Peter Parker thing). They even teased it as a joke for Marvel Zombies and UFF.

Marvel has generally preferred gradual line changes rather than big event reboots. But as the Ultimate Universe started getting 5, 10 years on, it became just as screwed up as the 616. I haven't kept up in a long time, but my impression was that the Ultimate universe was rebooted post-Ultimatum when they killed off like 90% of the characters?

I just wish they would abandon the idea of continuity altogether. it's so fucking stupid and unworkable.

it might be kind of *more* workable in film where there's less product but it just seems so constricting. much prefer the near-nonsensical Silver Age DC approach - just make up whatever you want/use whatever you want and shoehorn in some ridiculous explanation if it serves the story, otherwise who cares.

They abandon whatever they feel like when it's convenient. (Peter and MJ married? Haw!) I wouldn't want them to abandon the idea altogether. I was rereading Age of Ultron last night and its callbacks to early Avengers and Pym history are its big strength.

xp -- we're definitely going to have to agree to disagree, Otis.

that the original universe is too complicated for new readers

also I think this gets at something that really bothers me about continuity - it's only too complicated because you end up with situations where you've got characters that have been used for 50+ years and you set them as if they have all this history/exist in the real world and yet they don't age in real-time (or they do when it's convenient? how old is Kitty Pryde now anyway?) I get the feeling this would not have been a problem with someone like Kirby at the helm because he would just create something, abandon it, and then move on to the next thing - but when you have companies that basically stopped creating flagship characters sometime in the 70s you just end up with all this baggage that requires such labyrythine explanation to even begin to make any sense it's just ... ugh.

xp

xp Right - the fact is that neither Marvel nor DC actually adhere to continuity anyway, and it's a really fun part of mainstream comics IMO. Even the early Ultimate stuff was pretty fun to have a unified universe, as they were trying to replicate the semi-realtime 60s Marvel era in spirit.

(Can't say I wasn't sad when they killed the Peter and MJ marriage though)

oh hell

I guess - I mean, one of the reasons I initially loved X-Men was BECAUSE it has such a crazy, labyrinthine universe! Even all the crazy crap they did in the Days of Future Past movie was a lot of fun.

uh oh we shitted up the Supes v Bats thread

You're right in that it would be nice if they gave up on tired old characters and passed the mantle on, as DC was doing prior to Crisis. I am really sick of Hal Jordan.

xp Ha, I forgot what thread this was for bit. I'll walk away

it's weird to act like these corporations, the ownership and direction of which has shifted multiple times over the decades, during which huge swathes of their respective creative departments switched back and forth, have any kind of inherent, coherent behavior patterns. These are not distinct individuals. They are constantly shifting conglomerates that have continuously tried to adapt to market pressures

No doubt it's strange, but both companies' success has been in large part by making the whole experience personal. Stan Lee, for whatever else he can be blamed for, was a master of this. I used to read letter columns and Stan's Soapbox religiously, felt like I knew Rascally Roy, was disappointed when Joltin' Jim Shooter left Marvel. Why, I ask myself- it's not like I knew what an Editor In Chief really did, or what business decisions were driving the creation or cancellation of any given title. But they were successful in selling that sense of personable familiarity. And the creators themselves, if they were memorable, were known and sought after, as any artist would be for a personal style, so it's easy for a longtime comics reader to continue to imbue a level of personal narrative continuity into the framework you've identified. (xxxposts)

uh oh we shitted up the Supes v Bats thread

whatever, it deserves it

You're right in that it would be nice if they gave up on tired old characters and passed the mantle on, as DC was doing prior to Crisis.

yeah I like Sims' stuff about the Legacy aspect of DC.

And yeah I get that both companies only defer to continuity when its convenient, really I'm fine with that. Maybe it's these giant, totally abritrary company-wide CONTINUITY EVENT things that put me off so much, because they inherently imply that everything in the company actually IS part of some continuity, and they're just an excuse to shuffle the properties around and make things even more complicated and stupid and to try out some new (usually terrible) ideas. And these things happen with an alarming regularity now. It's the companies' habitual cry for attention.

xxp

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/07/02/brian-bendis-teases-the-convergence-of-the-ultimate-and-616-universes-in-todays-ultimate-spider-man/

many xposts

I feel corporations do have patterns of behaviour regarding money-making strategies though, albeit rapidly evolving ones - I'd imagine there are certain standards and traditions which are expected to be upheld throughout various changes in management. In a similar way that a sports team will maintain a recognisable identity despite having barely any of the same personnel as even twenty years ago.

xp oh shit i saw that and went "huh i wonder where that's going" but couldn't have fathomed a Crisis maneuver

you mean like the traditions of ripping off your creative staffs, or being almost exclusively white and male (ok now I'm really derailing...)

xp

Well those ones go without saying.

time-honored

thx aldo

ChinButtBatFleck

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--GdxX-DeA--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/bajwd1lhgmw3ap722vly.jpg

the part catching the light looks like the pope mooning someone

is he taking a batnap

http://31.media.tumblr.com/318f93b810e7d54ba53c17b11e5251ca/tumblr_ms151fXzu11qgjynlo1_500.gif