The Asylum's A Field Guide to Cryptozoology

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Official Press Release:

VANCOUVER (June 29, 2012) – Arcana Comics is excited to announce they will be teaming up with The Asylum, the movie studio behind such “monstrous” films as MEGA SHARK VS CROCOSAURUS and TRANSMORPHERS, at San Diego Comic Con! To celebrate, Arcana Comics is releasing a limited edition, SDCC Exclusive, A Field Guide to Cryptozoology, featuring creatures from The Asylum‘s films.

Drawn by the talented Mike Dubisch with writing and design work from Michael David Nelsen (SIDESHOWS, CHAMPIONS OF THE WILD WEIRD WEST), the field guide shows off the creatures of The Asylum films in spectacular fashion, and only people attending SDCC this year will be able to pick up a copy.

Look out for booth 2415 at SDCC this year starting on July 11th (Preview Night) to find Arcana Comics and The Asylum, and be sure to pick up a copy of this limited exclusive before it’s gone!

Time to scout around on Ebay in a few weeks to score a copy of this!

Cryptozoology The Asylum

The Red Star graphic novel getting movied

[adrotate banner=”1″]The Red Star is yet another comic series I’ve only heard of but not read that’s making its way to the silver screen now, directed by Josh Trank (of Chronicle fame) and written by Jason Rothenberg. The comic series is set in an alternate Soviet Union, featuring magic and future technology, and the big villain is basically Magic Stalin:

Over the course of several generations, the once mighty empire known as the United Republics of The Red Star slaughtered millions of it’s own people by the order of a single man. The man was their leader, Imbohl, a mighty sorcerer whose insanity turned his people’s Utopian dreams into a nightmarish scheme driven by the desire to create his own immortality. Haunted by the ghosts of their nation’s tragic past, the Heroes of the Red Star discover the true nature of their nation’s struggle, abandon their duties as soldiers of the Red Fleet, and embark upon a quest to liberate their people from Imbohl’s dark legacy. The Battle of Kar Dathra’s Gate is a fictionalization of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Kids love Soviet invasion of Afghanistan movies, and they’ll love them twice as much with wizards! Am I the only one who sees all the Soviet stuff as a stumbling block? But maybe it will do well and clear the way for Superman: Red Son to finally get made (yeah, right, we’ll be lucky if that becomes a WB direct-to-DVD cartoon!) I admit I would see this film, I just don’t know if America will see it. Though there is a Red Star video game, so who knows? Certainly not The Shadow, that guy just looks up things on Wikipedia while pretending to know. I’m on to you, Shadow!

The Red Star

Sky Captain THIS!


Pic via

Cowboy Ninja Viking Movie

[adrotate banner=”1″]No, not dadaist prose, Cowboy Ninja Viking is another upcoming comic book movie! We all know Cowboy Ninja Viking, right? That graphic novel by AJ Lieberman and artist Riley Rossmo about a secret government program that turns schizophrenics into assassins. And then the main character escapes the program with the skills of Cowboys, Ninjas, and Vikings, and hunts down the billionaire who bankrolled the whole thing. It sound ridiculous but is apparently set up more serious than you’d think. Marc Foster (Quantum of Solace and World War Z) is slated to direct, with the film coming out of Universal (after a brief layover at Disney!) I am sure a comic book with a dumb title like this will make an excellent films, one only has to look at prior example Cowboys and Aliens to… Why are you all laughing???

Deadline via BeyondHollywood

Cowboy Ninja Viking

Devil Dog – Books I Done Been Reading!

[adrotate banner=”1″]Devil Dog: The Amazing True Story of the Man Who Saved America
by David Talbot, illustrations by Spain Rodriguez.
Pulp History series

Pulp History is a series of books that attempt to bring history alive by chronicling the feats of larger than life figures from American history, whose lives aren’t well known but are filled with experiences over decades that make you keep reading to find out what happened. Devil Dog follows Smedley Butler, the most decorated Marine in history, as he fights in wars ranging from the Boxer Rebellion to the Spanish-American War, Nicaragua, Haiti, World War I, and even the war against booze during the Prohibition period. Butler is a warrior, but not a dumb grunt following orders, Butler gets the job done, and gets the job done better. Much of his time is spent cleaning up after other idiots who couldn’t manage a Dairy Queen, preventing US troops from committing war crimes, and saving lives. Even after he retires from military service, he’s called in to be the top cop in Philadelphia during Prohibition. But Butler ruffles feathers as he doesn’t give the high society buffoons a break, and busts them just as much as the lower class folk for flaunting their alcohol use. Even after being forced out by the mayor, Butler’s reputation is not sullied. And when broke veterans march on Washington during the 1930s, Butler helps organize and keep them safe, despite Hoover sending in the army.

Butler literally saves America as he helps thwart the attempted coup against FDR cooked up by some businessmen in the 1930s/40s. The fact that most of those involved were not punished due to their social status is one of the many injustices we have had to deal with as a nation. Butler wrote War Is a Racket in 1935, which is a great booklet, with quotes such as:

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

The whole booklet is available online.

The Pulp History series isn’t a comic book, but it is filled with illustrations that come straight out of underground comix art. Combined with the narrative and sidebar stories, the pictures help make the book interesting and fill in visual gaps that photos and historical artifacts of the eras don’t quite do by themselves.

Butler is a hero of the working class, a true American patriot, and not the kind of “patriot” that has become the merit badge of teabagging idiots raging against the very things that keep their lives from falling to pieces. Devil Dog tells his story well, and makes me proud that I share the same country as this man. It doesn’t glorify him, Butler wasn’t perfect and many of the campaigns he was on had problems, but a non-whitewashed history is the real history, and the history we should all know about and acknowledge.
Devil Dog David Talbot Smedley Butler
Devil Dog Smedley Butler

Books I Done Been Reading! name shamelessly stolen from Vault of Buncheness

Beasts of Burden film

[adrotate banner=”1″]Beasts of Burden is a Dark horse comic about dogs (and 1 cat) that solve supernatural mysteries. Beasts of Burden is the brainchild of Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson. It is very very good, one of the comics that make you remember why you read comics. And it’s going to be an animated film from Reel FX. If you’re like me and had no clue what Reel FX was, it is a company run by Ed Jones (a former ILM exec) and Cary Granat (former Walden Media CEO) that made such wonderful things as Open Season 2. Andrew Adamson (director of Shrek 1&2 and Chronicles of Narnia 1&2) will produce, along with Dark Horse Entertainment’s Keith Goldberg and Strange Weather’s Jeff Fierson.

Beasts of Burden comic
THR via CulturalGutter

Penny Arcade single strip The New Kid optioned for film

[adrotate banner=”1″]Just when you thought optioning things couldn’t get any weirder, a single strip from the online comic Penny Arcade has been optioned by Paramount for a film. The strip is called The New Kid, and it will be written by Gary Whitta (Book of Eli, the upcoming Jaden Smith/M. Night Shyamalan movie)

The New Kid