Archive for July, 2008
Contest of Champions 1-3
Y’know what this is? The first ever “Limited Series” from Marvel Comics, a sprawling tale of such cosmic proportions that it requires three entire issues of its own free-standing series to tell! I pity the reader who missed these books on the spinner rack, because none of the other books from Marvel‘s line referred to the series in their own storylines that summer. Unreal!
Simpler times. Hope everyone out there is enjoying reading their super-decompressed, eight issue, one-ply toilet paper called Secret Invasion and it’s eleven weekly crossovers. This baby I’m reading here may one day grow up to be Hitler, but he sure is a cute little fella.
The series features comic book plot #17: two superbeings are assembling teams of the mightiest heroes on Earth to fight on their behalf over a cosmic prize. The Earth is held hostage, and beneficial rewards are offered to motivate the separate teams to fight. The Grandmaster and a mysterious hooded being do the choosing, and…
The editors apparently decided that it would be absurd if every superhero in the world was a white guy from New York; a wise notion, except they hadn’t bothered to create more than a handful of foreign characters in the preceding twenty years, so they had to invent a bunch just for this series. As a result, the benefit of an interesting multiethnic cast is tempered by the fact that you’re getting shortchanged by not seeing many of your old favorites appear in the series, which is presumably the point of a gathering like this. It would have been understandable if these characters had gone on to be used in other series’, but I don’t believe that happened. To be fair, I love one of these newbies: five brothers from communist China that merge into a single being known as The Collective Man, with the ability to draw on the power of his entire race. That’s right– he’s as strong as every Chinese person on the planet. Okay, he’s definitely in, but he should have fought the Hulk instead of Sasquatch.
One of the coolest set pieces I’ve ever seen in a comic comes in issue 3 of the series, as the Black Panther battles Wolverine amidst the terracotta army statues which were discovered guarding the tomb of an ancient Chinese emperor a few decades back. Too bad this takes place in such a crowded comic; the idea deserves to be explored a bit more. Sadly, Wolverine’s star was on the rise at this point, so he is the winner of the tussle.
Next up, a couple teams featuring Blitzkrieg, Storm, Captain America, and Shamrock (and the aforementioned Collective Man, putting the hurt on Sasquatch) mix it up in a jungle setting. Shamrock’s “luck o’the Irish” powers get the better of Cap, but Storm sensibly pastes her German opponent.
The Grandmaster and his pawns ultimately win the game, but his opponent is revealed to be Death, so the outcome is rigged against him. His goal was to bring his dead brother, The Collector, back to life, and Death grants his wish for that opportunity– by exchanging his own life force. We readers were given a similar dubious outcome with this series; a great idea for a wonderful limited series, which would one day grow into many-headed monsters like Civil War.
…and Newsarama chimes in with a mini interview about my upcoming Terminator Salvation mini series…
“Newsarama: Dara, with the Igor Movie Prequel and now, the Terminator Salvation Prequel, you must’ve earned the reputation as the go-to writer for IDW’s prequel comics based on film franchises, no?Dara Naraghi: Yeah, I suppose I can see that. To borrow a joke from Flight of the Conchords, I’m the fourth most popular Iranian-American right-handed go-to writer for IDW’s prequel comic book mini-series based on film franchises! “
Anybody seen the new X-Files movie? Did you like it? I’m desperately looking for a reason to get excited about it.
X-Files was my favorite show of the 1990s, but I was pretty well done with it by the end. Confused storylines and Duchovny’s massive ego pretty much killed it for me. I have no idea how it ended. Skully became the believer? Mulder was a deadbeat dad? Mulder was Jesus? And then the Terminator showed up? Beats me.
I was looking at a wall of X-Files DVDs the other day, and they had a bunch of collections dealing with the mythology arcs. The black oil, the alien bounty hunters, super soldiers … I don’t recall what those were about, if I ever really understood. I feel like I’d need a refresher before I could even think about watching the movie.
I dunno. What do you guys think? Is it more of a standalone, or more of a myth-arc story? The standalones were usually better, imho.
MTV news just posted a short article about the Terminator Salvation movie prequel I’m writing for IDW:
“The people “around him” aren’t actually in his immediate physical presence — Connor’s started doing nightly radio broadcasts to communicate with surviving humans around the world. Those people include a resistance leader named Elena Maric, a former LAPD officer now waging a campaign to fight the machines’ takeover of an auto plant in Detroit, and Bem Aworuwa, the former lead engineer of an open-pit uranium mine in Niger, Africa. “The films are always set in and around Los Angeles, and I wanted to show what was going on in the rest of the world,” Naraghi said. “What are other people doing?””
By the way, these images are just promo pieces. The series artist is going to be Alan Robinson, and I’ll post some of his character designs as soon as I get the ok from IDW.
Busy, busy day today. And my stupid cold/strep throat/black plague or whatever it is I’m fighting didn’t help any. So much so that I’m back at the hotel to crash early, instead of drinking down at the Hyatt bar with the other 200 comics creators.
So today was the signing, and I sat next to Chris McKenna, the screenwriter of the Igor movie.
MGM has apparently supplanted the Weinsten Brothers as the movie’s distributor, so the promotion machine was in full swing. Here’s a shot of me with Igor, and the con promotion team:
I also caught the Lost and Terminator Salvation panels. I’ll try and write up a bit about them when I’m not dead tired, but here are a few pics I took of the panelists projected on the huge screens around the auditorium that sat about 6500 people…
(L to R) Carlton Cuse, Damon Lindelof, and Matthew Fox at the Lost panel:
And at the Terminator panel, (L to R) director McG, and cast members Sam Worthington, Moon Bloodgood, Anton Yelchin (playing a young Kyle Reese), Bryce Dallas Howard (playing John Connor’s wife, Kate), and rapper Common:
…er, Character Saturday # 10?
I’ll be filling in for Dara this week. Hope you were able to score that SDCC exclusive My Little Pony for me!!
This week’s character…Matt Feazell’s Cynicalman.
If you don’t know Matt, then you haven’t been around enough small press shows…shame on you.
Took a break from the crowds and madness of the con today in favor of some fresh air and sunshine.
Started the day by taking the ferry to Coronado island:
Here are a couple of shots of the Coronado Bridge, one from the water, and the other from a bike trail on the island:
Rented a bike and explored the bike trails and side streets, and finally hit the beach:
Hotel del Coronado:
My agenda for the day:
So overall, a great, relaxing day (although I did get a bit sunburnt, despite the sunscreen). Tomorrow it’s back to the madness of the con, starting with a 10-11 signing at the IDW booth.
So it looks like one of the producers on the new Terminator Salvation movie is my brother!
Well, ok, that’s not him exactly. Just someone with the same exact name as him. But seriously, how many Bahman Naraghi’s are there in the US?
A week or so ago, Dara posted a review of Alan Moore’s thwarted Twilight of the Superheroes pitch. One of the ickier aspects was the incestuous relationship between Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel.
It got me thinking … Alan Moore often depicts weird sex, doesn’t he? Aside from Lost Girls (which I haven’t read) there’s also:
1. The May-December relationship between Mina Harker and Alan Quatermain in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Mild considering, Kevin O’Neill draws a pretty disturbing old man butt.
2. One of the villains in Top Ten is the “Chicken Supers,” a ring of superhero pedophiles. But it also reveals that Captain Jetman has been with his boyfriend since he was a young boy. In addition to being a pederast, the boyfriend was also a supervillain. So in this series, Moore presents both sides of the pedophilia argument.
3. Also in Top Ten, Sgt. Kemlo begins a relationship with Neural ‘Nette, even though she’s a human and he’s a doberman.
4. At the end of the Smax miniseries, Smax realizes there’s nothing wrong with marrying his sister.
After two years living in this house, I’ve finally got around to organizing the Jungle Room, my secret underground pleasure den (okay, the basement where I keep my comics and crap– maybe I‘ll post some pics later). Part of that project included going through some boxes full of mementos that I received after my mother passed away.
One of the few gems I discovered was a ninth grade English project: a 26-page satirical comic adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey. I was fourteen years old in the year George Orwell named a book after; anyone familiar with my work on The Ineffables might spot a couple familiar elements…
This wasn’t my first self-published work; a few issues of “The G-Men” had been passed around the halls of school a few months before this. Those are sadly (?) lost forever.…and his name is Matt Madden. He’ll be running a graphic novel workshop on Saturday at the Wexner. It’s currently full. If you’re scratching your heads as to who Matt is, he penned a graphic novella a while back called Black Candy. Published by Alternative Comics. I got to meet Matt at SPX a while back. Nice guy. His latest book is 99 Ways to tell a Story. He also coedited with Jessica Abel (his wife) the next Best American Comics anthology. Which I’m hoping is better that the last few. Maybe this time all the comics will have actually come out in the timespan that they set.
I just listened to Barack Obama’s speech live from Tiergarten Park in Berlin, Germany. I’ve also been listening to a lot of Michael Franti lately, especially yesterday during my flight out to San Diego. It just struck me that the lyrics to Franti’s song “Hello Bonjour” from his 2006 album Yell Fire! fit in perfectly with the themes of Obama’s speech…