Hellboy Reboot Announced

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One of the strange things about the modern age of blockbusters is that despite ‘superhero’ being the biggest genre in the world heroes that don’t come from Marvel or DC just can’t manage to break through.  This rule has been in place pretty much from the dawn of the modern blockbuster/superhero romance in 1978, though there are a few notable exceptions.  

There was a time in the ‘90s when Savage Dragon and Spawn commanded genuine respect, the Witchblade/Darkness franchise has always flirted around the edges of relevance,  and even now the folks at Valiant Comics are committed to turning Bloodshot and Ninjak into multimedia success stories. 

Still, for every one of those examples, there are five or six superheroes that never break through or fail within their first year.  By in large, the public will just never care as much about the likes of Supreme, X-O Man of War, the Occultist, or Green Hornet.  However, we cling to exceptions to this rule that we’ve managed, like the continued viability of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Static Shock.  As such, it really shouldn’t come as this much of a surprise that Hellboy is getting rebooted. 

Static Thoughts - Beauty and the Beast (1987)

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This Friday marks the premiere of Disney’s live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast.  The hotly anticipated film will be Disney’s 7^th live-action fairy tale blockbuster and is basically the company’s way of planting their flag onto the fantasy genre.  There were sporadic competitors but ultimately Disney’s brand of big-budget fable has become the defining name in post-Game of Thrones mega-fantasy.  What’s more, the film is the first major live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast in decades, certainly the first major attempt to try and realize the Beast with CGI. 

Given the occasion, I thought it’d only be fair to take a look back at the last time this particular fairy tale was given a major release.  Back before Disney’s animated adaptation became the Oscar-winning success that completely defines this story there was another Beauty and the Beast, a bizarre 1987 TV series that time has more or less rejected despite featuring Linda Hamilton, Ron Perlman, and George RR Martin, the father of modern fantasy.  With such a pedigree how is this series not more widely known; let’s find out. 

Cover Story - Top 12 Tick Covers

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While The Tick may not be on everyone’s mind this week he’s certainly on my mind.  His new live action show premiered Friday on Amazon mostly to widespread apathy but it’s reignited my curiosity for the character.  Like him or not, the wild blue yonder is one of the most successful indie superheroes there is, emerging out of the bubbling stew of creativity that was 1980s underground comics to be a major media force in the 1990s. 

In his over 20 year career the Tick has been adapted to live action, animation, video games, and a whole avalanche of comics, to the point that I’d say he deserves to be counted alongside the likes of Hellboy, Spawn, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as one of the truly iconic superheroes not to come from DC or Marvel.  Given all that, and the fact I’ve now got an excuse to re-examine some of his stuff, let’s dive into the shallow end and get the cover story on the top 12 covers featuring The Tick. 

Disney Announces Rocketeer Reboot

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Edited by Robert Beach

Now that we’ve crossed the midpoint of the 2010s, one thing has become very clear: superheroes aren’t going away.  The genre never really went away after it emerged through Batman in 1989, but for a time, people were expecting there to be a peak or finale to things. However, after eight years of Marvel blockbusters coming out like clockwork along with FOX reviving the X-Men in 2011 and DC/WB getting their act together, the superhero has simply become a constant part of our cultural diet. While this is an exciting prospect, it does raise the question of what happens to those companies without access to the superhero IP of DC or Marvel. 

The answer, clearly, is that they’ll dive into lesser-known heroes, either from the public domain, smaller publishers, or creator owned. We’ve already seen this with the 2000s’ Hellboy, yet it seems the key people jumping on this bandwagon now are, shockingly, Disney. Yes, even though the house of mouse already owns Marvel, they’re hungry for more. Their first aim is a reboot of their 1990s underrated superhero classic The Rocketeer with the new Rocketeer allegedly being conceived as a black woman. 

12 Series Telltale Should Adapt Next

Edited by Robert Beach 

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Another E3 has come to an end, and even though I’m not a video game blog (I leave that for my day job), I am a citizen of the Internet. Thus, I am aware of the goings on in the nerd domain.  There wasn’t much comic book-related stuff coming out of this E3, but we did see some interesting stuff about Telltale Games’s new Batman game.  

While many folks love their morality test set-up, I had trouble contextualizing it before I realized what kind of games I’d like to see it deployed in. I’m more on board with Telltale now compared to the past, even though I’m not a big fan of them doing a Batman game.  As such, I came up with 12 series that would really benefit from a Telltale game; let us list them. 

Cover Story - Top 16 Walking Dead Covers

What can you say about The Walking Dead?  Well, I can say that another season of the hit AMC comic book show has come to a close, which is the entire reason this article is getting written.  More than that, though, I can say that it is pretty impressive how much AMC’s The Walking Dead has managed to elevate the place of independent comics in terms of their marketability.  Previously, indie comics hadn’t really been a major force outside the comic market since the speculator bubble burst in the ‘90s. 

Back then, names like Youngblood, Spawn, and Savage Dragon were all big names and even though we had Hellboy in the mid-2000s the idea of adapting creator owned indie books to the small screen was more or less written off till Walking Dead got big.  So even though I haven’t read the comic in forever and really don’t like it or the show very much I certainly acknowledge that good things came out of this multimedia phenomena.  So, with that said let’s dive into the shallow end and get the cover story on the top 16 Walking Dead covers.

Comics Rainbow - Satan

Let’s talk about Satan.  Currently, Satan is enjoying his slow crawl into the hearts and minds of the public thanks to Fox’s fairly successful Lucifer show, the TV series reboot of The Omen entitled Damien, and the upcoming TV reboot of The Exorcist.  That’s a lot of Satan to go around and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more given the fantasy genre’s current fascination with seminal works of fantastical literature that we’ve all been aware from an incredibly early age.  I mean if King David is getting a TV show and Noah got a blockbuster movie I can see Satan getting more screen time.  As such, I’ve decided to dive into the world of Satan in comics because believe me it is one twisted hell of weirdness and nonsense.

Astro City #27 Review

I take a look at the latest issue of Astro City in my review that Kurt Busiek doesn't want you to see (I assume he doesn't anyway, he tweeted about something about it I am told) check it out over on All-Comic.com http://all-comic.com/2015/astro-city-27/