The infamous scene written by David S Goyer in Action Comics #900 where Superman tells the US president’s national security advisor of his decision to “quit America”.

 

The irony of Superman renouncing his American citizenship in Action Comics #900 – five days before US Seals put “boots on ground” during a secret mission in Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden – has not been lost on political commentators. But the phenomenon of the nationally-identifiable superhero is still strong. 

 

 

Pavitr Prabhakar of Spider-man: India

 

Bookish Pavitr Prabhakar of Mumbai gains his spider powers from a yogi and, after the death of his Uncle Bhim, uses them to save Auntie Maya and love interest Meera Jain from demonic crime lord Nalin Oberoi in Spider-man: India.

 

 

Superman: Red Son asks what if the Man of Steel had been raised in Stalin’s Soviet Union?

 

He may not be American anymore, but in Mark Millar’s Elseworlds tale Superman: Red Son, he never was. Raised on a Ukrainian collective farm to embrace Truth, Justice and the Socialist Way in Stalin’s Russia, Superman’s 50-year link with the motherland sees his “adopted” nation overtake the USA as leader of the free world. Until President Lex Luthor, fur-capped Batman and troubled Vietnam veteran Hal Jordan, decide otherwise.

The Sentinel of Liberty went black-and-blue as Nomad in Captain America #180

 

Marvel’s flag-wearing patriot, Captain America, didn’t go so far as to quit his citizenship but he did give up the red, white and blue uniform for five issues in 1974 when he became the disillusioned Nomad after it was heavily hinted a Nixon-esque American government official was behind the terrorist Secret Empire.

 

 

Batman’s Club of Heroes, clockwise from top left: France’s Musketeer, Australia’s Dark Ranger, Italy’s Legionary, the Swedish Wingman, Native American Man-of-Bats, Argentinian El Gaucho and Man-of-Bats’ sidekick, Raven Red.

 

Batman has inspired imitators from around the globe in the form of the Club of Heroes during the 1950s, until Grant Morrison brought the band back together in 2007 for a bit of murder in the mansion in The Black Glove. Now the caped crusader is actively recruiting suitable international candidates in Batman, Inc.

 

 

The espresso and nicotine fuelled Italian Spiderman

 

Italian Spiderman can do everything a spider can’t: teleport, mind control penguins, change the size of motorcycles and cause chickens to lay eggs, or packs of his favourite cigarettes, in this spoof of superhero misappropriation.

 

 

Japanese Spider-man calls in trusty giant robot sidekick Leopardon

 

Japanese Spider-man ran for 41 episodes in 1978, but the only similarity between Peter Parker and young motorcycle racer Takuya Yamashiro is the outfit in this licensing deal from Marvel. Takuya stumbles upon alien spaceship Marveller from the planet Spider and gains a bracelet giving him spider-like powers – along with the ability to transform the ship into mighty robot Leopardon to aid in his battle against nemesis Professor Monster and his Iron Cross Army.

 

 

Dutch fan Hans Jensen meets his hero Spider-man after becoming Amsterdam’s answer to the web-slinger.

 

The Dutch Spider-man, aka Hans Jansen, lacked his American idol’s powers, but that didn’t stop him inventing his own web shooters which fired glue distilled from canal water in 1989.

 

Would you mess with Captain Italia?

Captain Italia is a nigh-on indestructible cyborg sold by the Japanese to an evil mastermind for Venice. However, the cyborg overcomes its evil programming.

The comic Captain Chile.

Captain Chile has done it all: defeated alien terrorist Ozamu bin Alien, helped culinary-challenged Tragactus plan his meals, curtailed the threat of violent, erotic comics pouring out of Otakuland and prevented a corrupt politician from giving away the Chilean sea.

Speedster and lightning-thrower Gundala from Indonesia.

Indonesian scientist Sancaka devised an anti-lightning serum, only to be struck by a bolt out of the blue, transporting him to Lightning Land and gaining the power to fire lighting and run at “typhoon speed” as Gundala. He fights alongside the Superman-esque Gudam and marine hero Aquanus. Gundala also sparked his own 1980’s movie.

Godfrey Ho martial arts fest Catman in Lethal Track

Indonesian scientist Sancaka devised an anti-lightning serum, only to be struck by a bolt out of the blue, transporting him to Lightning Land and gaining the power to fire lighting and run at “typhoon speed” as Gundala. He fights alongside the Superman-esque Gudam and marine hero Aquanus.  Gundala also sparked his own 1980’s movie.

After being scratched by a radioactive cat, Catman of Chinese martial arts fest Catman in Lethal Track was imbued with super strength, laser vision and even TV remote control vision.

In December of 1996, horror fans were faced with one question, “What’s your favorite scary movie?”  Total Box Office earnings of $173,046,663 revealed the answer to be Scream, directed by horror master Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson.

     Originally conceived under the title, “Scary Movie,” Scream tells the story of Sidney Prescott played by Neve Campbell, who lives in the fictional town of Woodsboro, California, where a masked killer with a penchant for horror movie trivia is stalking her and her friends.

     By the mid-1990’s, Craven had grown weary of being known as the “Master Of Horror,” and wanted to escape the genre for awhile to test his directing abilities in a less bloody genre.  After teaming up with Eddie Murphy on the horror/comedy, A Vampire In Brooklyn, he slipped back into more familiar, bloody territory with a proposed remake of Robert Wise’s 1963 classic, The Haunting.

    During this time, other directors such as Robert Rodriguez (From Dusk Till Dawn, Machete) and Danny Boyle (28 Days Later) were approached to helm the film.  Concerns arose when Rodriguez, Boyle and other directors who read the script interpreted it as a comedy instead of what it was; a satirical horror film.  It wasn’t until production fell through on The Haunting that Craven accepted Bob Weinstein and Kevin Williamson’s offer to direct.

     Filming for Scream began on April 15 in Santa Rosa, California on a budget of $14 million.  When Williamson sold his script to Miramax, he was asked to remove many of the gorier scenes, fearing they would inhibit the salability of the script.  Once Wes stepped into the director’s chair, all the deleted violent scenes were written back into the script.

     Even though Scream provides horror hounds with plenty of the red stuff, the film was written to be more of a self-referential “whodunit.”  The characters in Scream are very aware of horror films, with the character Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) giving a very passionate speech on the “Three Rules You Must Know In Order To Successfully Survive A Horror Movie.”

     What sets the series apart from those generic and formulaic teen slashers being regurgitated by the studios around this time is its theme of a horror film within a horror film.  It references well-known horror films such as Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare On Elm Street.  In fact, Drew Barrymore’s character Casey is an homage of sorts to the Marion Crane character in Psycho, in that you have a well-known actress that gets killed fifteen minutes into the movie, throwing the audience off completely.  Among the film’s many references, there are some cameos sure to excite those hard core fans including Linda Blair from The Exorcist, playing a reporter on the high school campus after the murder of Casey and her boyfriend.  Only a true horror fan would catch the more subtle references scattered here and there throughout the film including the character Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) as being named after Sam Loomis, Donald Pleasance’s character in 1978’s Halloween.  Also, when Casey’s parents arrive home to find their daughter missing, her father tells her mother to drive down to the McKenzie’s and call the police, similar to when Jamie Lee Curtis’ character, Laurie Strode in Halloween, tells the two little kids she is babysitting to go across the street to the McKenzie’s and call the police. 

     Wes Craven is known for giving up and coming actors and actresses their start in the business.  The most famous being Johnny Depp, who made his feature film debut in A Nightmare On Elm Street, and Shocker’s Peter Berg.  Craven wanted to continue this tradition until the decision was made to cast actors and actresses who already had a substantial body of work.

     Party Of Five star, Neve Campbell was given the lead role of Sidney Prescott, because of her “girl next door” looks.  Wes believed that, despite her innocent appearance, she had the ability to handle the physicality that the role demanded.  Other members of the cast include Courtney Cox (Friends), David Arquette (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Rose McGowan (Encino Man), Matthew Lillard (Ghoulies 3: Ghoulies Go To College), and Skeet Ulrich (The Craft).  And who can forget the iconic, masked killer himself?  After a long search, Roger L. Jackson was picked to play the voice.

     Kevin Williamson in his script described the killer as only wearing a ghost mask of sorts.  This lack of character description left Wes Craven and executive producer Marianne Maddalena scrambling to come up with a killer that would prove to terrify audiences.  It was Marianne who came up with the concept of dressing the killer all in black and the mask that Wes found at a house while location scouting.

     As mentioned before, Scream splattered itself onto theater screens in December 1996.  It opened in 1,413 theaters, taking in $6,354,586 in its opening weekend.  It went on to take in $87 million during its initial release, and on April 11, 1997 it was re-released to theaters, where it went onto make another $16 million.  Fans considered Scream to be a breath of fresh air compared to the teen slasher films of the 1980’s and their unsuccessful sequels.  They praised Williamson’s script for its cleverness and self-referential, social commentary on the horror/teen slasher conventions audiences were so familiar with at the time.

     With the film grossing $103,046,663 domestically and $173,046,663 internationally, it wasn’t long before the studio was clamoring to cash in on the success of the first film with a sequel.

SCREAM 2:

     Scream 2 was green lit in March 1997, just one month after the re-release of Scream into theaters.  Williamson admitted that when he initially wrote the script for the first Scream, he perceived the story as being part of a trilogy.  Production for Scream 2 began in July 1997, with another December release date set for that same year.

     Wes returned once again to the director’s chair along with: Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, Jamie Kennedy, and David Arquette reprising their roles from the previous film.  Newcomers included Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Jerry O’Connell (Jerry McGuire), Jada Pinkett (The Nutty Professor), and Liev Schreiber (who had a small part in the first film) returns as suspected murderer, Cotton Weary.

     Scream 2 picks up two years after the events of Scream.  Sidney and Randy have moved on with their lives and are now attending Windsor College.  True to her nature, Gale Weathers has written a bestseller titled, “The Woodsboro Murders,” which helped to free Cotton from his unjust incarceration for the supposed murder of Sidney’s mother, Maureen Prescott, three years prior.

     If Scream was a horror film within a horror film, then Scream 2 is the events of the first film made into a horror film (Stab), within a horror film.  And, since Scream gave us the rules to successfully survive a scary movie, then Scream 2 gives us (via Randy) the three essential elements that go into make a successful horror film sequel: “The body count is always bigger.  The death scenes are always much more elaborate, with more blood and gore.  Never, ever, under any circumstances assume the killer is dead.”

     When Stab hits theaters, the real life events of what occurred two years ago come back to haunt Sidney in the form of a new killer.  Once Dewey catches wind of a new Ghostface (Roger L. Jackson) stalking Sidney and her friends, he flies out of Woodsboro to protect her.  One by one the body count rises and everyone is a suspect, including Sidney’s new boyfriend, Derek played by Jerry O’Connell.

     Production suffered major setbacks when the script was leaked on the Internet, which revealed the film’s plot, including the finale and the identity of the killers.  Wes and the rest of the cast and crew were forced to throw out the parts of the script that were leaked, and continue filming with only a partial shooting script.  Williamson would go off to rewrite scenes to be shot that day, even changing the film’s finale and the identity of killers and his intended victims.  Security measures were taken so that no more information would be leaked.  The cast were not given the last scenes of the script until days before shooting, and the killer’s identity was not given until the day the final reveal was to be filmed.

     Despite these problems, Scream 2 grossed $33 million its opening weekend.  Many critics praised the film for being both funnier and scarier than its predecessor.  By the end of its theatrical run, Scream 2 had taken in a cool $101 million.

SCREAM 3:

     Fans would have to wait three years for the return of Ghostface to slash his way back onto theater screens.  Wes and the rest of the cast returned once again to close the book on one of the most successful horror film franchises since A Nightmare On Elm Street and Friday the 13th.  Unfortunately, this time around, Kevin Williamson would not be able to fulfill screenwriting duties, due to his involvement on the film Teaching Mrs. Tingle, that he wrote and would soon be making his directorial debut.

     Ehren Kruger (The Ring, The Ring 2, Skeleton Key) was hired to write the script for Scream 3.  Kruger developed a script based on an outline written by Williamson, but quickly swayed far from both Wes Craven’s, Harvey Weinstein’s, and Kevin Williamson’s script.  Sidney was written as a Sigourney Weaver-type heroine, mixed with the pumped up, badass-type Sarah Connor character in Terminator 2. 

     Craven moved in and helped rewrite the script so that the characters and story were more faithful to the previous films. The change that Ehren Kruger made to the script, that made it into the finished film, was the movie’s location.  Which moved the characters from Woodsboro to Hollywood.

     Scream 3 finds Sidney Prescott living in a secluded area in California, working from home for a crisis prevention hotline.  When Cotton Weary is murdered, police detective Mark Kincaid, played by Patrick Dempsey, enlists the help of Dewey and Gale to help provide clues as to who the woman is in a picture left behind at the crime scene. The woman is later identified as Maureen Prescott – Sidney’s mother.

     Meanwhile, in Hollywood, production is underway for “Stab 3,” which fans of the series can appreciate as being the real life film franchise referencing itself as a trilogy within a trilogy (Stab 1,2,3).

     Ghostface has managed to find Sidney and informs her of the murders that have taken place.  She flies out to Hollywood to meet up with Dewey, Gale and Detective Kincaid.  The killer has begun targeting the cast members of “Stab 3,” which includes Jenny McCarthy as Sarah Darling, Parker Posey as Jennifer Jolie, Matt Keesler as Tom Prinze, and Patrick Warburton as Steven Stone.  The ironic twist is that these characters are portraying the real life characters of Sidney, Dewey, and Gale.

     Though here Kruger’s script placed more emphasis on the humor and satire, rather than the violence, the studio was still nervous about the violence and red stuff in the film.  Rightly so, because the media was laying the blame on horror films around this time, following the tragic events of the Columbine shootings that occurred not long before the filming of Scream 3.

     Despite the media scrutiny, Scream 3 opened on 3,467 screens in the United States alone on February 4, 2000.  Grossing $34 million its opening weekend (just $1 million more than the previous film), Scream 3 spent two weeks in the #1 spot in the North American Box Office, eventually earning a total of $161 million worldwide by the end of its theatrical run.

     Scream 3 became the highest earning entry in the famed trilogy, but received mixed reviews from critics and fans alike.  Just as some people praised Scream for revitalizing the horror genre, Scream 3 is said to have spoofed it.  Maybe it was a good thing that this was the last film in the series, as it was suffering the same fate that Freddy Kruger did in later Nightmare On Elm Street films, when he was seen as the jokester killer – like Ghostface was fast becoming.  By the time Scream 3 was made, Ghostface’s antics were more of the slapstick variety, rather than a faceless killer seen as scary.

     As the year 2000 drew to a close, so did the film series that turned the teen slasher sub-genre on its face.  Or so it seemed.

SCREAM 4:

     Ten years later, after many false starts, Bob Weinstein approached Kevin Williamson to pen the fourth installment to what is rumored to be a brand new trilogy, with Scream 5 and 6 soon to follow.

     With a budget of $40 million, Scream 4 began filming on June 28, 2010, with Wes Craven back in the director’s seat.  Cast members David Arquette and Courtney Cox returned to familiar territory as Deputy Dewey and Gale Weathers.  Sidney Prescott herself was almost played by someone else. Luckily for both the production and the fans, Neve Campbell agreed to return to the series.

     Ten years after the tragic events at Woodsboro, Sidney is now the bestselling author of a self-help book.  While finishing up her book tour, she makes a pit stop in Woodsboro, where she meets up with Dewey and Gale, who are now married.  She also is there to visit her cousin Jill, played by Emma Roberts (Nancy Drew) and her aunt Kate, played by Mary McDonnell (Dances With Wolves).  Sidney’s presence back in her old stomping grounds lures Ghostface, once again voiced by Roger L. Jackson.  He begins stalking and killing Jill’s friends.  Just as obsessed with horror films, Ghostface has now begun referencing horror movie remakes and basing his murders similar to the killings of the characters in “Stab.”  To survive and stop Ghostface’s killing spree, Sidney, Dewey, Gale and Jill must follow the rules set by horror films of the 21st-century.  Also joining the Scream family are Hayden Panettiere (Heroes), Anthony Anderson (Scary Movie 3 and 4), Adam Brody (Jennifer’s Body), Anna Paquin (True Blood), and Alison Brie (Mad Men).

     Like the films in the series to come before it, Scream 4 wasn’t without its trouble and controversies.  Though Kevin Williamson did return as screenwriter, Ehren Kruger was once again brought in to perform rewrites on the script, and argued that, despite Kruger’s rewrites, it was still very much Kevin Williamson’s script and vision in terms of characters and plot.  To prevent the script and identity of the killer(s) from being leaked on the Internet, like on Scream 2 and 3, the cast and crew were only given 75-pages of the 140-page script.

     Despite the setbacks and extra security surrounding the filming of Scream 4, production wrapped on September 24, after a 42-day shoot.  Now seven months later, a whole new generation of gore hounds will be able to witness what is sure to be another groundbreaking trilogy, sure to give the horror genre the boost it so desperately now needs.

Rogers and Deering are back together again. OK, to be more precise it’s Gil Gerard and Erin Gray who have teamed-up again. Sadly, Buck and Wilma haven’t returned to our screens, but their real-life alter-egos have both appeared in a new movie, are making joint convention appearances, and join Starburst for an exclusive interview.

Let’s flash back to the distant past of… the 20th Century. It’s 1979, and hot on the heels of Battlestar Galactica, Glen A Larson unleashes Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century, the weekly exploits of astronaut William ‘Buck’ Rogers. Frozen in time in 1987, Buck wakes up in the far-flung future of 2491 and joins the Earth Defence Directorate, pairing up with tough talking Colonel Wilma Deering. The most expensive show on TV at the time, Buck Rogers limped halfway through its Second Season before being cancelled. Fast forward to the 21^st Century and Gil Gerard and Erin Gray are at the SF Ball convention in Bournemouth, reminiscing the halcyon days when Buck and Wilma ruled the airwaves.

It has to be said that Erin and Gil (Gilbert C) are both looking great. Gil has shed  over 150 pounds following major weight-loss surgery, as documented in Discovery Channel’s Action Hero Makeover, while Erin looks after herself by (among other healthy activities) running Tai Chi sessions, a class of which is an unusual addition to this sci fi convention’s regular agenda of autograph sessions and photo opportunities. “We’re having a great time,” enthuses Erin. We get on together so well, and working together on film projects or at appearances like this could never really be considered work.”

With Battlestar Galactica being successfully re-imagined for TV and Flash Gordon (arguably not so successfully) a short-lived weekly TV show, isn’t it about time for Buck and Wilma (not forgetting diminutive robot Twiki) to return for a 21^st Century makeover? “Absolutely, I think it’s a wonderful franchise,” Erin agrees. ” A lot of people love it and would eagerly embrace a return, but there are problems with the people who own the rights to it. They are at a stalemate with negotiations and can’t seem to move things forwards.” Gil joins in. “I tried to deal with the copyright holders shortly after the show was cancelled because I wanted to do a feature film with the ideas that I’d had for Season Three (see separate sidebar), but it proved impossible. I think they felt like they were protecting the legacy of the creator (Philip Francis Nowlan), but I get the feeling that he personally would have wanted his character to grow and be updated for a modern audience.” 

In the absence of a revival, there are still 37 episodes to savour, and Erin guesses why the show is still being talked about over thirty years after its original transmission. “I think it’s because Buck was such a likeable and cheeky character, and you don’t see much sci fi that has that level of humour any more,” she suggests. “I guess it also got people thinking what the planet will be like in five hundred years – what will be familiar and what will be starkly different – and finally I think it’s great that the whole family could sit down and watch it together. A lot of sci fi is so dark now that the kids really shouldn’t be watching it, but our show had universal appeal.” Indeed, the adults loved Buck, many a teenage boy had pin-ups of Wilma on their bedroom wall (hey, don’t judge me!) and the kids wanted a real-life Twiki.

Aside from the broad family appeal, Buck Rogers presented something of a rarity for Seventies sci fi… a strong female role. “When I joined the show they gave me a ‘bible’ on Wilma’s background – about how the Earth had been through a Holocaust and everybody got jobs based on their abilities – man or woman,” Erin explains. “For me, my character was strong in this aspect and yet very much a virgin and inexperienced when it came to men and relationships. In fact, Gil fought for the other women in the show so that they were represented in a positive way.” Gil recalls these battles. “Wilma was the standard bearer for all these women – the best of the best. If she was the only one in power then she would have been just a token. By being the leader of others, it made her even stronger, and that’s why I pushed for female technician and pilots around her.”

Erin’s Wilma Deering proved to be a credible role model, and she has been told stories of how the character convinced many women to join the armed forces and other previously male-dominated careers. Erin herself cuts a strong authority figure and was in the final five alongside Genevieve Bujold and Kate Mulgrew when it came to the casting of Captain Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager. However, while Wilma was at her authoritative best in Season One of Buck Rogers, Season Two saw a dilution of the mix following the addition of a new sidekick for Buck, the birdman Hawk. “I became the weak female stereotype in the second season,” Erin laments. “It was really disappointing. I had seen her become stronger in terms of her ability to fight and do martial arts. They had a character that obviously the fans enjoyed and wanted to see more of, and then they just missed the boat.”

The second season of Buck Rogers not only saw a reduced role for Wilma, but a new emphasis on searching for lost colonies in the stars on the Searcher, making it more like a recycled Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica. Gil was not happy. “Obviously it wasn’t my decision to make those changes, and in fact I came up with an alternative for Season Three to bring things back on track again.” Gil’s idea brought Buck and Wilma back to Earth, exploring the post-holocaust planet. “Not only would it have been better creatively but economically because they wouldn’t have to spend so much on special effects,” he rationalises. ”I spent two years going through the correct channels, trying to get someone to listen to my ideas, but I was continually rebuffed. Finally I went over everyone’s head straight to the executives at Universal. I had a meeting with the president, who said ‘That’s the best idea we heard in two years. Why haven’t we heard this before? If we pick the show up for a Third Season that’s exactly the direction we’ll go in.’ It became a moot point though because we weren’t picked up.”

Of course, Wilma was not Buck’s sole female interest. He also received the attentions of the evil Princess Ardala, as played by Pamela Hensley. “Buck certainly thought Ardala was beautiful, but he didn’t trust her. He recognised that she was devious and manipulative, whereas he had complete respect for Wilma,” Gil clarifies. And what of Twiki’s occasional outbursts, such as ‘Biddi biddi, she’s foxy!’ Would it be fair to say that these politically incorrect retorts represented Buck’s inner most thoughts? “Not at all!’ Gil responds, possibly offended.” I haven’t heard that theory before. That was Twiki’s own inner monologue coming out. I always felt that Buck said exactly what was on his mind, so why would he need a surrogate? He certainly wasn’t shy about coming forward.”

Sidebar 1: Buck to the past

Instead of propelling five hundred years into the future, let’s reverse the process and go back to the past – destination 1979. With hindsight, how might Gil and Erin have done things differently? “I think that if I had to do it over again I would have gone to the ‘powers that be’ right off the bat and told them what changes needed to be made,” Gil decides. “Instead I wasted two years going through the correct channels and got nowhere. With my ideas they could have saved up to a million bucks an episode on the special effects,” he sighs. Erin shares her thoughts on what she might have changed. “I regret not standing up for my character when they changed her so drastically in Season Two,” she suggests. “Part of me gave out emotionally at the time because I really didn’t want to fight that battle. Looking back on things now it was a battle I should have fought.” So, no regrets about those slinky figure-hugging cat suits? “I thought that Wilma would have looked good in silver or grey outfits, but I accept that a lot of people liked the brightly-coloured ones,” she smiles. For the record, Erin no longer owns the original outfits, she asked for them to be burned!      

Sidebar 2: Saving the Earth… again!

Gil and Erin joined forces again for a 2007 TV movie directed by Fred Olen (Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers) Ray called Storm Effect. At least that’s what we thought its name was. “I think it’s called Meltdown now,” Erin corrects. “They changed the name from Storm Effect, Nuclear Hurricane or Atomic Hurrican.” Gil joins in: “Is that so? I hadn’t realised. I don’t pay attention, just so long as the cheque clears…” he laughs. “It was great fun, and the first time that we’ve worked together since Buck Rogers. Gil played my boss and got to fire me, and I got to stomp off,” Erin chuckles. “We were really naughty and frisky in the interviews we did afterwards. I really hope those things don’t air any time soon. It was at the end of a long day!” Independently of Gil, Erin has also completed work on mystical family drama Dreams Awake where she was teamed up with Tim O’Connor, who played Dr Huer in the first Season of Buck Rogers. Gil has worked with Bruce Boxleitner and Walter Koenig on monster movie Bone Eater, and dino-epic Reptisaurus. There is no truth in the suggestion that he’ll be joining up with Twiki for a remake of Robocop, or with Hawk for The Birdman of Alcatraz.

Italian director Lucio Fulci (1927 – 1996) was labelled many things throughout his career. Heralded and lambasted in equal measure fans called him, with great affection, ‘the Godfather of Gore’, whilst others dismissed him as a misogynist and undeserving of distinction.

 

Fulci, for added notoriety, held the dubious honour of having three films on the famous Director of Public Prosecutions List, drawn up during the height of the Video Nasties scare in the UK.

He’s a filmmaker with a reputation as a peddler of grotty exploitation titles, but that fails to acknowledge the larger picture. Since his death in 1996 his films have continually been discovered in the UK and some territories. largely on home entertainment formats and before that (in the 1980s and 1990s), on pirated videos. Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979), particularly, is a rite of passage for many horror enthusiasts.

It’s fair to say Fulci does retain and receive admiration, especially from the gorehounds, but there’s been very little critical exploration to re-assess the films themselves. There appears a strong vein of surrealism in Fulci’s oeuvre, which goes beyond an empty stylistic device. It’s not an attempt to mark him out as a practitioner of high art either, far from it.

Fulci was inspired by French writer and actor Antonin Artaud, progenitor and executor of ‘the Theatre of Cruelty’ maxim. Are Artaud’s theories evident or traceable throughout Fulci’s films? Perhaps not in a deliberate artistic statement, but Fulci’s attack on the supposed reality of film, or its unreality, is striking.

Both artists appear to be interested in delivering ideas, however unpalatable. With Fulci being Italian it is easy to mistake these notions as the preoccupations of a Catholic brain (now there’s an unused horror movie title).

In 1969, the direct influence of Artaud was clearly pronounced when Fulci directed a screen version of Beatrice Cenci with a fragmented time frame heavily influenced by Artaud’s famous play, which ran for a mere fourteen shows back in 1935. This little seen film is available on YouTube, in original Italian, and well worth checking out as an example of the director’s openly experimental side in a non-horror setting.

Fulci began his film career in comedy working with the iconic Toto in a flop called The Thieves (1959). Although starting out initially as a screenwriter he veered into directing and made features in a variety of genres. Horror and giallo pictures claimed him for posterity and etched his name in the pantheon of genre masters, but also made four spaghetti westerns, one with Franco Nero. This side is all but forgotten now yet Massacre Time and Four of the Apocalypse are worth viewing.

He studied at the Experimental Film Centre in Rome and was taught by world cinema masters Michelangelo Antonioni and Luchino Visconti. According to an interview he gave to French magazine, L’Ecran Fantastique, Fulci was admitted to the school after borderline insulting Visconti over his classic Ossessione (1943).

As he climbed the career ladder he concentrated on the burgeoning and popular giallo movie with the occasional horror, thriller and spaghetti western thrown into the mix. This genre hopping puts critics off the trail somewhat.

In 1972, he directed one of his most praised titles, A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin. It garnered notices and a legal inquiry due to Carlo Rambaldi’s gruesome special effects work during a scene that featured disembowelled dogs.

Although a rightly praised classic scene, it demonstrates Fulci’s use of a surrealist aesthetic too. The scene is inexplicable, violent and unforgettable. Yet apparently he wasn’t best pleased with the effects and said Mario Bava would have designed the scene much better.

Nevertheless it is a grand statement and such displays of naked horror would grow until we reach the apotheosis in the Gates of Hell trilogy: those splatter classics of such seeming incoherence many dismiss them as bad filmmaking instead of the exciting vision it proposes.

Fulci will always prove problematic given the sheer volume of work and its varying quality in the eyes of critics and some fans. He once barked at a journalist in Draculina magazine: “I’m bored with all the critics who talk of a “Trilogy”. I think my real golden time was in the early seventies, with Perversion Story, Don’t Torture A Duckling… But yes, of course, the beginning of the eighties brought me much fame.”

It’s very true Fulci’s inconsistence doesn’t help a retrospective of his work and has led critics to be selective, ignoring those titles which do not fit into their personal criteria. One day there should be a full retrospective study of his 1960s features, the action films and occasional fantasy or sci-fi flick such as Conquest (1983) and The New Gladiators (1984).

Some movies are better than others, but each to their own. Over time, fresh eyes and considerations rescue forgotten films from the doldrums. Is there any point in searching for stolen moments of greatness if there aren’t any to be gleaned? The answer is yes.

What is often called Fulci’s ‘golden age’ began with scriptwriter Dardano Sachetti. This provided the leap into infamy and allowed for plenty of invention and experiments in dream logic. It was no symbiotic relationship between writer and director. The films often had up to four contributors. Fulci and Sacchetti’s creative partnership ended in acrimony.

The steadying application and use of surreal-like techniques and strange narrative structures became more pronounced. Fulci explained his vision for horror movies in an interview with L’Ecran Fantastique.  “I wanted to make a nightmare film where horror is ubiquitous, even in apparently innocuous forms.”

The Beyond (1981) is one of the best horror pictures ever made. Fulci’s sublime work is loaded with a Lovecraftian fear factor and truly pushes our acceptance of what movies can be while retaining the gloss of a genre picture.

The popular consensus notes a decline in quality after his split with Dardano Sachetti in the early 1980s. Did Fulci peak with the Gates of Hell trilogy? Those three films taken out of context or in context represent a startling vision of cinema and confirm Fulci as a filmmaker experimenting – either deliberately or by sheer accident – and coming up with a new type of horror movie.

Nevertheless it is fair to say Fulci made some absolute stinkers and the anecdote goes the quality depended on material mixed with how desperate he was for money. Lucio was fond of the gee-gees, apparently.

The partnership with Sachetti (despite ending bitterly with later accusations of ‘idea theft’), yielded some landmark gialli and horror pictures. Then there’s the contribution of Sergio Stivaleti, the special effects legend, and cinematographers such as Sergio Salvati and musician Fabio Frizzi. These craftsmen would be employed many times and more than helped lend a hand to proceedings, they were part architects in building Fulci’s mad world. How collaborative this team were needs to be defined. Did they share distinct goals or were they simply making the best movies they could with the budget and constraints?

Sachetti and Fulci’s first collaboration was Seven Notes in Black (1977). It is an unusual giallo which incorporated a smart narrative device in which a psychic believes she’s witnessed a murder from the past without realising it’s actually a premonition – her own death! Although sluggishly paced, Seven Notes in Black’s atmosphere is another example of where Fulci and Sachetti, as writers, were headed.

The giallo gained prominence in Italy during the 1960s. A subgenre of the crime thriller, it takes its name from the Mondadori publishing outfit started in 1929, which published novels with a highly distinct yellow background.

Mass genre cinema was still churned out for wide theatrical release. Italy made use of tax breaks and incentives to offer enticing prospects to international production companies. The giallo may have been ‘made in Italy’ but its appeal and outlook were international. The protagonists were largely rich professionals who enjoyed freedom to travel, lived exotic jet-setting lifestyles and made their homes in palazzos and villas. Italian culture is replaced with international bourgeois living. The threat to this existence is usually a psychologically disturbed individual – not a supernatural being.

Fulci’s gialli brought with them a more supernatural, spiritual angle. He stamped his own authority by producing generic works yet ones invested in trying something a bit different. Not always successful, sure, but he tried.

Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace (1964) provided a template on which to build this modern mystery crime genre. Fulci once said, rather famously, “Violence is an Italian art.” We can see such statements put to the test throughout his career. But does this cinema of excess portray more than gratuitous violence? Is it, perhaps, the rendering of a belief or ideal on screen?

We know from his work in horror he would earn the sobriquet ‘the Godfather of Gore’, but it detracts from his other attributes. Most of all, it detracts from his skills as a filmmaker by reducing the films to pictorial displays of grotesquery. Atmosphere in Fulci’s work is also heavily predominant. Providing the stage on which bloodletting and horror occurs. He needs to make us uneasy and frightened before the corporeal and spiritual mutilation of characters.

A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, which Fulci wrote himself, is the story of a woman haunted by a next door neighbour’s murder. Do they share some kind of Sapphic bond? The mystery (and the twist in the tale) involves somebody remembering and picking apart mental clues. Will they like what they find?

Films such as Lizard in a Woman’s Skin and Seven Notes in Black offer variations on the giallo and explore psychological states with a dream logic framing. It is tempting to acknowledge how Fulci’s work cuts to the heart of the matter of how we view cinema itself. We are always aware we are watching a fantasy and make believe. There’s no attempt to ground it in any other reality other than a cinematic one. Genre films guide an audience but it can also lead them astray into dark avenues and kingdoms.

In both films, the viewer knows as much as the lead protagonists, played by Florinda Bolkan and Jennifer O’Neill. The mysteries are the propulsion of their demise. Each clue brings them closer and closer. The grim finales, ever so downbeat, are another of Fulci’s signature styles. There’s no such thing as a happy ending.

The foray into gore and the zombie genre with Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979) helped Fulci gain international fame and become firmly fixed as a master of horror. Marketed in Italy as a sequel to George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, Zombi 2 sets its narrative against Caribbean links to voodoo. It returns the zombie to its potent historic milieu.

Opening with a gun pointed at the audience (Scorsese is praised for his use of this set up that Fulci ignored), and after the usual international co-production opener set on New York City’s waterfront (taking in all the cultural landmarks), the story moves to a Caribbean island where death and its fetid stench are evident all around. Again the sickly atmosphere conjured marks Fulci’s technical skill. It may have been promoted as a cheap exploitative Romero knock-off to pull in the audience but Zombie Flesh Eaters is a masterwork of the macabre.

Two scenes wowed audiences. The first features a stuntman dressed as a zombie attacking a shark. Again, like A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin’s dog scene, it’s a true ‘is that what we’re really seeing?’ moment.

The eyeball piercing is iconic and as demented as it is dated in its special effects – yet still manages to cause revulsion. The scene provided a major reason for it to be banned in the UK, too. Fulci’s majestic display of ocular mutilation is a great reminder of the director’s playing with surrealist ideas. And don’t the best horror movies attack our senses as well as our sensibilities?

Fulci here positions himself as an agent provocateur. Cinema is more than passive entertainment for the masses. It is not theatre or literature transposed on screen, either. It’s a proposition, for those willing to acknowledge the message.

The slowing down of the inevitable moment is Fulci in full attack mode. The audience’s fear and discomfort is the true effect – not what is happening on screen. Yes, the effect is theatrical in a sense, but its large-ness and extreme closeness is cinematical. A giant eye and a giant splinter of wood meeting – cuts to enhance the tension.

After Zombie Flesh Eaters, Fulci’s Gate of Hell trilogy baffled critics and audiences alike, they were relegated to the dungeons of the cult enthusiast for ever more. Yet this unholy trinity of mad horror further demonstrates the surrealist-leaning director within. The City of the Living Dead, The House by the Cemetery and The Beyond all feature actress Catriona McColl in various roles. Taken as standard horror fare they’ll likely confound and look silly.

Fulci was no idiot. He battled budgetary and creative restrictions – even his own personal issues. Do the movies work in spite of their low budget and generic nature? Isn’t this how genre cinema throws up interesting titles?

As stated previously, The Beyond is a masterpiece of cinema (not just horror). The ending, in which two protagonists become trapped in a barren, otherworldly landscape, is a supreme vision. In the mad finale, two characters – Liza and John – travel from a hospital via the basement of a house into a smoky tunnel and straight into another world or reality. There’s absolutely no logic. Time and space have collapsed and folded. This playfulness is rather run of the mill today. Recall how Michel Gondry used it towards the end of The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Yet Fulci’s clever set up is never really commented upon. A major reason is the lack of insight some critics have into horror and genre cinema. To call Fulci an artist back then might have been an absurdity too far. It might be today, too. Fulci himself explained The Beyond as: “It’s a plotless film: a house, people, and dead men coming from The Beyond. There’s no logic to it, just a succession of images.”

Explicit gore is a high point and not a distraction. It would appear like the famous Grand Guignol Fulci’s obsession with mutilation and suffering is perhaps less Catholic and more surrealist. The major obsession is with the eye. And after all didn’t Georges Bataille write The Story of the Eye to discuss its merits as a surrealist trope? And didn’t Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí announce their intentions to the film world with the slashing of an eye by a razorblade in Un Chien Andalou?

In The Beyond we get a scene in which an eye is pierced, gouged and mutilated. It is not simply a moment of grotesquery for horror thrills. One imagines if Buñuel and Dalí ever saw Zombie Flesh Eaters or The Beyond they would have approved.

Fulci’s post-Sachetti films, although the preserve of the connoisseur, are worth checking out. Dismissed at the time, the increase in derangement, sexual violence and gore is noteworthy. There are admirers who champion this later period.

Fulci directed around sixty percent of Zombi 3 (Zombie Flesh Eaters 2) in the Philippines. Apart from one sequence in a desolate hotel, it is forgettable stuff. The Door to Silence, released in 1991, would be Fulci’s last time behind the camera.

Endlessly fascinating, Lucio Fulci’s vision of cinema is highly complex in places and understands the true power of dreams and nightmares. Fulci may not have set out with a grand plan or film theory, but surrealist influences seeped into his work through various channels. It is more than a stylistic pose. He understood the dreamlike aspects of cinema and set about investing them into genre pictures.

He was bound to no group of artists or school and at heart a mainstream filmmaker. Yet he was certainly much cleverer and interesting than simply being tagged a gore merchant and exploitation director.

My earliest memory from Doctor Who is of the giant black and gold Dalek Supreme chasing the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith through the jungles of Spiridon. Shortly after that, I remember an episode ending with Sarah Jane sitting alone in her living room, a giant maggot creeping up from the hall doorway behind her. Chilling stuff!

    I grew up with Lis Sladen, you see. I was too young to appreciate who the characters in Doctor Who were, and it was the monsters that I was concentrating on. By the time I was old enough to actually recognise the regulars, Sarah Jane Smith had replaced Jo Grant, and all the memories I had of that earlier character became associated with the one I knew now, the one who had replaced her. It was the Target novels that put me right, a few years later.

     In the meantime, Sarah Jane Smith had given me a few proper memories of her own: I’ve never been more scared in front of a television than I was when Sarah Jane was alone on the planet Exxilon, never more excited than when she and I together watched Davros unveil his Mark III Travel Machine, and never more shocked than when her face fell off revealing the circuitry of an android beneath. Even as an eight-year-old, I felt terribly sad when the Doctor dropped a reluctant Sarah Jane home at the end of The Hand of Fear, recognising that the end of an era had arrived.

     I was still (just about!) young enough, a year or so later, to assume that the Doctor would go back and look for Sarah Jane after Leela’s departure in The Invasion of Time. Of course, by the time Romana left, I was far too old for such fanciful notions – and that’s when Sarah Jane did come back, albeit without the Doctor’s help (except for the box he sent her in the post). This was in K9 and Company, of course. Yes, Sarah Jane Smith is the only companion to have been given her own spin-off series twice.

     For Doctor Who fans specifically, and fans of television and sci-fi in general, the terrible sad news of Sladen’s death has come as an incredible shock – and the reaction has been as great as it would be for the passing of a Doctor. The fact that it’s only a few weeks since Nicholas Courtney also passed away is also heartbreaking; it’s like the break-up of the most popular and pleasurable regular cast the programme ever had, in the most shattering way. For these two actors and characters were as much a part of the legend of the series as any of the Doctors were, having between them appeared opposite all but three of those Doctors on the screen, and spanning every decade that the series has been regularly on air. Lis Sladen’s first appearance was in 1973, and there are still a half a dozen episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures yet to be broadcast. That’s a serious legacy.

     Like many of the fans of the show who had never even met her, I still felt like I knew Elisabeth Sladen. As with many companions and Doctors, there’s an awful lot of Lis in Sarah Jane, and probably an awful lot of Sarah Jane in Lis too. Spunky but caring, daft but devoted, forthright but thoughtful; that was Sarah Jane. And that was Elisabeth Sladen too.

    When she reappeared in School Reunion in 2006, it was almost like she’d never been away; it was just that right. From that point onwards, The Sarah Jane Adventures seemed almost like a no-brainer; it might have seemed like madness to have a sixty-year-old woman as the eponymous lead of a CBBC series, and yet watching the programme, you can’t imagine a time when it wasn’t so. In my head, The Sarah Jane Adventures have been happening since October 1976, since Doctor Tom dropped her back off in South Croydon (or Aberdeen, or wherever it was). And now another generation of children have been blessed with having Sarah Jane as their heroine.

     Jon Pertwee was the first Doctor Who I ever encountered, and Tom Baker was the Doctor I grew up with. But Tom went on a little too long in the part, became a little too frivolous, and a little too serious. Thanks to Elisabeth Sladen and the magic she brought to the part, Sarah Jane Smith was my “Doctor”.

     “Some things are worth getting your heart broken for,” Sarah Jane says in School Reunion. “Everything has its time, and everything ends.” Sadly, for an untold number of fans, that time has now come for Elisabeth Sladen. She will be as missed as anyone who has ever worked on the show.

Turning 18, it’s a big deal. All the sins become legal here in the UK for the first time: buying fags, drinking booze, voting. But turning 18 is also known as “coming of age.” It’s the point some religions consider you to have reached adulthood and maturity. But one comic company has been running the strapline “suggested for mature readers” for 18 years as of March this year. So step forward, Vertigo, and receive your birthday bumps.

The mature line of comics that come out of the DC stable was, paradoxically, born out of Death. It was this spunky emo girl who started the long publishing run in March 1993 hot on the heels of the successful The Sandman by Neil Gaiman. But Death was not alone. Other DC titles that were considered a bit too grown up for the spandex crowd also transferred over to the new comics line, masterminded by executive editor Karen Berger.

Dream fails to recruit an outcast wise old advisor in The Sandman #74 Art by Jon J Muth

These were Animal Man #57, Doom Patrol #64, John Constantine: Hellblazer #63, Sandman #47, Shade, the Changing Man #33 and Swamp Thing #129. And it is no surprise that some of the writers most associated with these works – Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman and Peter Milligan – were headhunted by Berger some 30 years ago during the famed “British invasion” of American comics.

Morrison wasn’t writing any of the above titles at the time they were folded out of DC continuity. And neither was the grandfather of mature comics, Alan Moore.

He may have turned the shambling C-rater Swamp Thing into an A-lister being of godlike power, but he had stepped well away from the vegetable one at the time he was subsumed by Vertigo.

In an interview with Jonathon Ross the bearded magician said of Vertigo: “The thing I find a bit of problem is that their atmosphere, their ethos or whatever, seems to be based on the bad mood that I was in about 18 years ago. It’s not even their bad mood.”

However, he did credit some of the titles as “great”. This may be because Berger established Vertigo as DC’s mad lab of ideas from the get-go, with the imprint’s first creator-owned series, Enigma (a young man’s tale of coming out against the backdrop of metafictional super villains) launching soon after Vertigo did.

Yorick meets a familiar face in Y: The Last Man #60 Art by Pia Guerra

The contractual agreements between creators and Vertigo have come under criticism. But the “Bergerverse”, has always been considered a separate dimension where good stories are told and crossovers heavily frowned upon. Though last summer it was announced all character born and bred in the DC universe, from Animal Man to Swamp Thing, were summoned home to the roosting ground.

Some crossover oddities have slipped through the cracks. Morrison respectfully appropriated the new Dream from The Sandman into his acclaimed run on JLA. And more recently Gaiman consented to Death appearing for a narrative-driven heart-to-heart cameo with mortal Superman baddie Lex Luthor in Action Comics.

A conspiracy theorist starts to go mad when the visage of JFK starts talking to him in Shade, the Changing Man #2 Art by Chris Bachalo

Gaiman remembers the early 90s as a time when comic fans snapped up foil-wrapped, limited edition first runs in packs of 25 in the vain hope their worth would skyrocket like shares in the future. In the foreword to The Vertigo Encyclopedia he consigns these speculator books to the tip and credits Vertigo’s success to Berger and co’s desire to publish books they themselves would enjoy reading.

That’s not to say Vertigo titles weren’t immune to looking distinctive on the comic shop shelf. Most will remember the vertical strip down the staple-side of all its titles’ covers. The line has also been credited to kick-starting the boom in trade paperbacks, possibly because titles – apart from a certain chain-smoking English magician among the launch titles – had a finite lifespan and tended to end around the 70 to 75 issue mark, thus making them easier to collect into bound volumes.

But the transition from monthly issues to trade paperbacks for Vertigo’s starting line-up has not been a quick one. While The Sandman trade paperbacks charted the rise and fall and rise again of the dream king in the late 1990s, it took a lengthy 15 years for Morrison’s 1988-1990 eco-fixated Animal Man run to be fully collected.

King Mob remembers the good old days in The Invisibles volume 3 #1 Art by Frank Quitely

Meanwhile, the initial arc of Morrison’s Doom Patrol – a surreal band of accident survivors with less-than respectable superpowers in 1989 – only took three years to be collected … and then nothing. Fear of a legal challenge from the Charles Atlas body building company over the Flex Mentallo character arguably delayed publication. Mentallo, a parody of Atlas’ notion of turning beach-bound weaklings into mighty men, appeared prominently in later story arcs, making collection without his presence impossible. But when the suit was dismissed in 2000 the Crawling from the Wreckage paperback was republished, closely followed by five other volumes collecting Morrison’s run between 2004 and 2008.

Milligan’s 1990 breakthrough Shade, The Changing Man – a stranded inter-dimensional alien battling the mental neuroses of America while possessing the body of a serial killer – took 13 years for the first six issues to be bound together in 2003, with a reprint in 2009 paving the way for his American Scream storyline to be curtailed inside three trade paperbacks.

Animal Man has the secret of superhero immortality explained to him in Animal Man #26 Art by Chas Troug

John Constantine: Hellblazer currently stands at a bookshelf-bowing 32 trade paperbacks – not including spin-offs, specials and uncollected material – while The Sandman is contained in ten books … or four telephone directory Absolute editions. And don’t forget several characters from the Sandman-verse like Lucifer and denizens of The Dreaming enjoyed their own spin-off titles, numbering around the 70 issue mark, too.

And with Vertigo’s family tree roots entrenched in the fertile ground of Moore’s Saga of the Swamp Thing run, respectable comic buyers are sure to have the six volumes containing this on their bookshelves. But despite critical praise of the 1984 to 1987 series, the trade paperback hiatus kicked in when the first seven issues were put together in the same year Moore left the title. The final, long-awaited Reunion volume was released in 2003 – 16 years after the series concluded.

Swampy was also the first Vertigo character to be adapted for the big screen. Well, he wasn’t Vertigo-owned at the time in 1982 when Wes Craven adapted him. But he certainly was when the 1989 sequel The Return of the Swamp Thing came out.

That dizzy Vertigo-wait kicked in then until 2005 when Keanu Reeves pulled on the Silk Cut chuffing, trench coat-wearing persona of Sting-influenced Scouser John Constantine. Except this time he’s a suited-and-booted Los Angelite with a terminal lung cancer from Ennis’ Dangerous Habits storyline. Ironically, the comic was renamed Hellblazer to avoid confusion with Clive Barker’s Hellraiser and the movie adaptation was renamed Constantine to avoid the same legal landmine.

Judge Dredd co-creator John Wagner enjoyed celluloid praise when David Cronenberg adapted A History of Violence in the same year. Another title subsumed by Vertigo and turned into a big-budget blockbuster was V for Vendetta. Creator Moore continued to vent his own vendetta against DC by demanding his name be removed from the project, which film critic Sean Burns said “It’s not hard to see why”.

A face pack-wearing Christopher Chance confronts a mystery assassin in the Human Target miniseries Art by Edvin Biuković

Darren Aronofsky, once tipped to direct Batman Begins, instead released The Fountain, later turned into his own Vertigo graphic novel. The production was troubled after Brad Pitt withdrew his considerable clout from the title, prompting the director to say: “I knew it was a hard film to make and I said at least if Hollywood fucks me over at least I’ll make a comic book out of it.” Some critics booed the hard film at the Venice Film Festival while others gave a standing ovation.

Last year the caper-driven antics of Andy Diggle and Jock’s The Losers reboot hit the summer cinema screen. The timing was not good, with the similarly caper-driven but bigger budgeted A-Team coming out at the same time. But something good came out of it: a pair of hefty omnibus-size trade paperbacks released to tie into the film’s expected success.

Finally, former Vertigo cowboy Jonah Hex, back in the DC stable since 2005, moseyed into cinemas in 2010 to ugly-face up to nemesis John Malkovich. He rode off into the sunset, saddled with a pair of Golden Raspberry nominations.

On the smaller screen, one of Vertigo’s lesser-known darlings has had two shots at TV. The Human Target, the story of a master assassin-cum-identity thief who adopts the personas of people in the firing line, was first aired in 1992 and again last year. The revival could be credited to Milligan, who wrote two blistering miniseries on the character, opening the door to an on-going series which sadly ended after 21 episodes.

Yet one of Vertigo’s mightiest players, Preacher, failed to get face time with the Lord under the helm of Daredevil and Ghost Rider director Mark Steven Johnson. Not even the word of God could convince HBO execs to air the love triangle of a lapsed punch-drunk reverend, his hitwoman girlfriend and scene-stealing Irish vampire buddy.

The vampire Cassidy on the disadvantages of being immortal in Preacher #26

Conversely, the small screen has seen an influx of writers from that medium coming over to the printed form instead. After rethinking his pitch for a TV show about a band of kooky bug exterminators versus an immortal Egyptian evil, Simon Oliver found a more receptive audience at Vertigo. Ironically, this led to the comic being optioned for a TV series, where it sits in limbo.

Aging grizzled Scottish detective Rebus may be known to fans in equal parts as the TV character played by John Hannah and the star of 17 “Tartan noir” books that claimed 10 per cent of the crime novel market. Creator Ian Rankin has now penned a Hellblazer hardback graphic novel as part of Vertigo’s newest sub-imprint devoted to crime.

Happy 40^th birthday, John Constantine, back in Hellblazer #63, 1993

The sub-imprint move echoes earlier ones by a younger Vertigo in the mid-1990s with its city-themed Vertigo Pop! titles focusing on locales like Bangkok, London and Tokyo. The poor-selling science fiction line Helix collapsed, but the popular future journalist Transmetropolitan series by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson was brought under the shelter of the Vertigo umbrella. There was also the cinematic Vertigo Vérité attempt to break away from the supernatural themes dominant in the imprint; the creator-owned Vertigo Voices collection of miniseries and Vertigo Visions, an attempt to resuscitate new life into dusty characters like The Geek, The Phantom Stranger, Doctor Occult and teen president Prez.

If Marvel is dubbed The House of Ideas, then Vertigo could rightfully claim the moniker of Mad House of Ideas, with current titles including American Vampire that tells bloodsucker stories against locations like LA and the Wild West, with input from horror maestro Stephen King; the brainy iZombie recasting of golden oldie monsters, including a were-terrier; the unstoppable storybook reimagining of the immortal Fables, John Constantine’s arcane backstabbing, reservation savagery of Scalped, warzone hostility of DMZ and the magically mature Harry Potter-esque The Unwritten.

New logos and new sidebars for Vertigo titles Animal Man and Shade, the Changing Man

With more than 200 titles born out of Vertigo over nearly two decades, there has been a fair share of successful children. The world is a lot darker and interesting with works like the Machiavellian 100 Bullets, offbeat Air, frustrated American Virgin, voluminous Books of Magic, rebellious The Invisibles, and engendered species of Y: The Last Man.

There has been copious binge drinking, careless sex between demons and angels, language so foul Richard Pryor would cringe, enough Marlboros smoked that the stubs lain end to end could connect Hell to Heaven – and that’s just Preacher. John Constantine’s decades-long career is all that to the power of 23 in the business. But the English magician, like Judge Dredd, is not immune to the ravages of time and allegedly turned 58 on May 10^th 2011.

Perhaps that’s why he is the only one of the debut titles still going 18 years later. Like his fans, he ages in real-time, too. Ages, but unlike his suggested audience, never matures. Belated happy birthday, John. Keep up the bad mood. And happy birthday, too Vertigo.

Yes indeed. Another Doctor Who series brings with it, as it always should, another pun-titled Doctor Who article. But it’s an accurate title; Doctor Who is well and truly back! I doubt there were many disappointed faces angled toward BBC One’s output on the evening of April 23rd. It smashed back onto our screens in an opening two-parter unlike any other; The Doctor (Matt Smith), Amy (Karen Gillan) and her husband Rory (Arthur Darvill) returned, along with new enemies The Silence and old friend River Song (Alex Kingston).  And wow, it was special! Some called it confusing. But confusing or not, there’s no arguing with the vast majority who have rated this opening two parter as some of the best episodes we’ve had – in all aspects – since the show returned in 2005. We got lots of “creepy”, a fair bit of “timey wimey” and a massive serving of “River Song being awesome as usual and then some”.

Ah, River Song… Last year we all watched as River’s identity became even more of a mystery than when we first met her! So, now she’s a murderer, imprisoned for killing “the best man ever knew” and had sordid links to big, blue, black-market time-travel salesmen! When we watched her ‘die’ in Forest Of The Dead she was a respectable scientist on a morally sound rescue mission! Or will be… Because the thing about River Song is that she’s not meant to make any sense at all – not yet at least. Her life plays out of order. Her appearances have, to date, preceded each other as the Doctor’s story progresses. She’s a complete mystery. For now. This year, we get to know her – we get to know who she is and, more importantly, what she is! (There’s a few massive spoilers out there regarding River’s identity – I promise not to mention them here). And we’ve been given a hell of a start! That kiss – surely that hints strongly at, at the very least, a romantic involvement! Should we make a connection between River and the title of tonight’s (14^th May) episode – The Doctor’s Wife?

We have all been made to wait so long for this sixth (yes, SIXTH! Can you believe it’s been back so long?) series; to see the footage taken during ‘that week’ spent in Utah. It has been torture! If you’re a Whovian then it’s unlikely that you missed the photos that were flying about at the time the American Block began shooting, though, if you did manage to stay completely unspoiled then I envy you. Seeing the sweeping landscapes on-screen was breathtaking. Budget cuts? What budget cuts? I couldn’t tell. The show has never looked so rich and vast. The scenes shot in Monument Valley looked not only vast and epic, but frighteningly cinematic. And with creepy hotels filled with clowns and ventriloquist’s dummies, a doll’s house that isn’t as lovely as it looks and PIRATES (this excites me, in particular) all cropping up, we’re in for a whole new few weeks of “amazing” (eyes open, too, for a few familiar faces and places). Also, there are some truly magical names cropping up on the guest-star list. Daniel Mays, Lily Cole, Suranne Jones, Marshal Lancaster, Sarah Smart, Mark Sheppard, Hugh Bonneville, Frances Barber, David Walliams and Michael Sheen to name but a handful! What a list! Although, Doctor Who has always had a great track record where guest-stars are concerned.

But this year there is a difference to the series that has, ironically, split fandom. The powers-that-be at Upper Boat, South Wales (where the show has been made for much of the “new era”) have decided that, this year, we should get our fix of Who in two sizeable chunks. Some like the idea of a split-series (as I do. The way I look at it, it’s just that the finale-quota has been doubled) but some do not. ‘The Man Himself’ seems to put forward a pretty good argument for the decision, though!

Speaking at the Edinburgh Television Festival Doctor Who Masterclass, showrunner Steven Moffat said, “What this show needs is a big event in the middle. We do 13 episodes, which is two series worth, so this year we’re going to make it two series. It will come back for seven episodes at Easter, build to an Earth-shattering climax… honestly, a gamechanging event for Amy, The Doctor and Rory.” Now what that Earth-shattering climax is to be is anyone’s guess! What is clear is that it’s going to be one hell of a bumpy ride. And the publicity machine for this new run has never worked harder, by the looks of things. Finally, now it’s here! But can we live with just 7 episodes to start with? Will any of us survive the wait until AUTUMN for the concluding six episodes? How hard will we all cry when “that mid-series cliff-hanger” lands on us in June? This wait is going to be a killer…

Don’t worry too much, though, because there’s a little show called Torchwood popping its shiny head out of the darkness to make an appearance this summer. That should at least help to plug the gap. Once again, we’re promised it will be bigger and better than ever before. When Children Of Earth, Torchwood’s tweaked-format third series, aired over one week in the summer of 2009 it took critics, fans and non-fans alike by complete surprise. The story was still silly and OTT – it wouldn’t be Torchwood without the odd feeling of “Uh?! What?!” – but had a maturity that was missing, or at least misinterpreted, in its previous run. Difficult decisions about the survival of loved ones replaced those about what flavour pizza to have, or who to shag where. A whole host of excellent supporting characters were ushered in to help the lead actors out. It was simply wonderful television. A proper “event”. And Russell T Davies’ new offering, Torchwood: Miracle Day – a BBC Wales/BBC Worldwide/Starz co-production – promises to match the awe we felt before, if not surpass it!

The story goes thus: One day, nobody dies. And they keep on not dying without any explanation as to why. Before long, the world’s population is growing to unmanageable numbers and something needs to be done. CIA agent Rex Matheson (8 Mile star Mekhi Phifer) realises that the only people who could possibly help are a secretive and now-defunct British agency called Torchwood. So the surviving Torchwood team are called back into action (don’t think about Ianto, eh? *sob*) and a brand new adventure begins. An adventure that spans continents. Miracle Day has a shockingly good cast, including old favourites John Barrowman (Capt Jack), Eve Myles (Gwen), Kai Owen (Rhys) and Tom Price (hapless but wonderful PC Andy) as well as new faces that should be recognisable to anyone with eyes, Bill Pullman (as Danes), Lauren Ambrose (as Kitzinger) and Wayne Knight!

But just how will Torchwood translate now it’s been relocated to “across the pond”? In my eyes Torchwood has always been a very American-feeling show, despite its very Welsh roots and setting. People always complained that “all these aliens seem to turn up in Cardiff all the time! It’s not very believable, is it?” Well, no. It’s not. It’s a show about a secret Government Agency, led by a two hundred year old immortal space conman, who fight monsters in the sewers of . But the Cardiff bit is believable enough! Nobody complains that Washington or New York or LA are “not very believable locations” when they’re invaded on screen, ad nauseum, do they? Maybe the part-US setting will inject a little realism into your alien invasion drama. Torchwood is silly, true, but it can also be powerful, moving drama. And Miracle Day looks to be as thoughtful and wondrous as Children Of Earth was two years ago.

I personally cannot wait to see what the world thinks. Both Torchwood and Doctor Who are huge sellers overseas, they make the beeb a lot of money and that money makes these shows what they are – utterly spellbinding! It’s only right that, this year, both shows will be rewarding the loyalty of their respective North American audiences by paying them an onscreen visit.

So the Spring/Summer 2011 season seems ready to deliver a Whoniverse of great science fiction fun, with new faces and old (and, in the case of Doctor Who, very old) keeping us all glued to the television. It feels like forever since we last saw any of these characters that we know and love – even though, in the case of the TARDIS crew, it’s only been a month, maybe less – but now we have them back. The wait is over; the blue box is flying once more. When it stops again, just for a while, we’ll have an all-new cast of Torchwood heroes to carry us as far as it can through the gaping, empty summer. But then, you know what that means don’t you? That’s right, another long wait… The second half of the Sixth Series of Doctor Who lands in “autumn” and unless they show Torchwood biweekly there will be another hungry hole to fill in our geek-bellies. And, I don’t want to frighten you, but bear this in mind: The wait we had to stomach between A Christmas Carol (6.X) and The Impossible Astronaut (6.01) was “empty-space” where anything could happen. This time, we have “that game-changing mid-series cliff-hanger” to ponder about. We will need to overcome “the urge to spoil ourselves” – because the internet will be teeming with leaked information. Indeed, the torrent has already begun!

The way I see it, there’s no better time to whip out the old Series Five DVDs and look for clues again than during this gap. Not only is it always fun to re-watch Doctor Who, but I have a very funny feeling that we’ve already been given the bare bones of where the long and complex tale of The Doctor, Amy Pond and Rory Williams is heading; where it will end. And, for our poor companions at least, I fear it will not end well. Who is the mysterious Madame Korvarian? Will we see the Silence again? Who killed the Doctor and why?

There have never been so many unanswered questions… What a journey we have ahead of us.

Doctor Who Series Six began on April 23^th, and will run for seven episodes, then returns for six more exciting stories in autumn 2011 on BBC One.

Torchwood: Miracle Day airs on BBC One (exact date TBC) and US Network Starz on July 8th.

Endings are hard, we all know it. How many times has a show been loved right from the start, only for its final few moments to betray that blind loyalty? It’s true that some of the most celebrated series in recent memory have lasted short of just one season, while others draw out their inevitable climax for years, sometimes losing viewers in the process. It’s open to debate which one would be harder to create or what’s eventually more satisfying for the fans but drawing a line in the sand after an entire decade seems particularly brutal. This is the monumental task currently facing the Smallville team in the coming weeks and it would be fair to say it’s been a long time coming.

After ten years on the air, the little show that started with the much grander hope of following America’s best loved superhero throughout his younger years now holds the crown for longest running superhero show on television. Back in 2001, audiences were introduced to a 15-year-old Clark Kent and, with a schedule filled with female heroes like Buffy and the Charmed sisters, Superman fans and newcomers alike seemed to welcome him with arms wide open. It was still early days but, taking their lead from Roswell, creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar managed to construct not only a credible hero, but an interpretation of the DC universe that effortlessly mixed high school soap opera, incredible special effects and classic science-fiction.

One can only assume that the networks were similarly infatuated. It’s no secret that the fickle world of television production openly favours an episodic format over a complex serialised narrative; to which early Smallville fit the bill like a glove. Remember, these were the simpler days before the long-running mysteries of Lost had made their impact on the televisual landscape, meaning the ‘freak-of-the-week’ format of these first episodes were the ideal tactic for allowing viewers to pick up and leave off at their leisure. Plot lines and relationships were always neatly tied up within the 40-minute running time and it was rare for anything fundamental to change from week to week. Despite this apparent simplicity in inception however, audiences responded positively and as the show progressed, the quality rapidly started to rise.

Smallville has never and probably will never be the critical darling that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was. Although it received an optimistic acceptance from fans when it first appeared on the scene, early seasons were patchy at best; derivative and repetitive at worst. It was a case of too many meteor-freaks spoiling the broth at times, and the writers were slow in realising these not insignificant flaws. It has, however, achieved moments of true greatness over the years and has most often triumphed in fully realising those characters previously resigned to the archetypal hero/villain roles. Thus, icons like Lex Luthor and Lana Lang have been allowed to take on new life through the show’s contemporary interpretation, while Smallville has been able to put its own stamp on the mythology.

Lex has of course been vastly re-imagined as the anti-hero of the piece, while resident sidekick Chloe has been introduced into the official DC universe due to her growing popularity. The show has also tapped into its rich heritage more and more as it has evolved, allowing for much loved characters and arcs like Zod or the Justice Society of America to appear more often. But now it’s time for Clark to finally grow up, don those famous tights and take flight at last. Our big blue boy scout has gone from awkward teenage farm boy to the confident hero we all knew he’d become over the last ten years; we’ve physically moved from the Kent Farm to the Daily Planet and girl-next-door Lana Lang has been ousted in favour of more sassy and sexy Lois Lane. We’ve come a long way so, as the show nears its end, there seems no better time to take stock and reflect on what’s been a thrilling journey from myth to man.

But before we delve any deeper, we need to meet the man himself. Former model Tom Welling is Superman, as he embodies everything Clark Kent should be with ease, along with the strength and morality of his alter-ego. However, from the get-go, Smallville rewrote the conventions, beginning with the devastating meteor shower that brought our hero to earth. This epic teaser re-establishes the rules for a whole new generation of fans, while emphasising the importance of our ‘three orphans’ to the casual viewer. Clark, Lex and Lana were our magic three from the start (if not by the end), so to revisit these moments is as rewarding for long-serving viewers as it was as a beginner.

 As Smallville took its first steps, it could be seen borrowing generously from more established successes, past and present, in order to appeal to its desired viewership. The teen drama had been around in some form since Beverly Hills 90210 in the 90s, but the mixture of high school and fantasy hadn’t really come of age until Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 1997. By scattering pieces of Clark’s home-planet across town, the show had a ready-made plot device that would explain away a weekly threat. Like Buffy’s ‘hellmouth’, the meteor rocks would infect the students with powers tied to their personalities, manifesting themselves in deviant behaviour. Each week it was Clark’s job to stop them and, aided by his friends: wannabe reporter Chloe Sullivan and best friend Pete Ross, stand up for “truth, justice and… other stuff”.

 It was these sly references to its source material that made original fans take Smallville to their hearts so immediately. Alongside recognisable characters like Lex Luthor and Lana Lang, there were various sneaky shots of the red, blue and yellow colour scheme along with famous lines ironically uttered at regular intervals. Clark’s barn was dubbed his ‘fortress of solitude’ by his dad; while an ‘S’ was painted on his chest as he hung from a cross in the very first episode. But while Clark had his own investigative team on call (Chloe and Pete serving as Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen in training), his not-quite-requited crush on Lana kept the show firmly placed in high school.

Once the show had established a fan-base and ironed out some of the kinks, the second season really had the freedom to delve a lot deeper into its mythos. While the writers had proved they could do Clark Kent, Superman was still nowhere to be seen. In order to free itself from some of the soapy trappings that had plagued its reputation, this sophomore effort introduced more powers, high-profile guest stars, and a no-holds-barred exploration of Clark’s heritage. By the second episode, he had developed heat-vision; by the fourth, red-kryptonite had come into play. The moment the show really came alive, however, was in the Christopher Reeve-starring ‘Rosetta’, which included notions of Krypton, Kal-El and the true meaning behind legends of Smallville’s Kawatche caves for the first time.

Nevertheless, for many, season three saw a decline in creative energy. What had always set it apart from more conventional interpretations was Clark’s relationship with the enigmatic Lex Luthor and, to this day, Lex remains one of the shows most dynamic and well drawn creations. The third season was his chance to shine, with many of his and dad Lionel’s storylines often proving more interesting than the A-plot; as well as providing welcome relief from the now tired Clark and Lana dynamic. Michael Rosenbaum’s elusive billionaire was written out of the show way back in 2008 but fan demand and a certain amount of unfinished business mean he’ll be returning with a vengeance for the upcoming series finale. But which side will he be on?

The show’s other masterstroke was to make the emotionally charged alliance between Lex and Clark seem like it had always been there. It goes without saying that fans responded to their relationship as his reconstruction injected some much needed maturity and cynicism into what essentially began as a family action-adventure show. It’s a testament to the conception that the scene in which the two literally collide on Loeb bridge has become as iconic as much more established images from past incarnations. When the time came for Lex to leave, he was much more recognisable as the arch-enemy of Superman we were already so familiar with; although this change worked better in some points more than others.

We all knew that the inter-dependent ‘romance’ between Lex and Clark would have to be lost at some point in order to complete the story, but this open knowledge of their shared destiny soon became less an ironic awareness than a suffocating set of chains for the writers. In season seven’s ‘Arctic’, the episode in which Lex finally discovers the big secret, we become painfully aware that, should it have been allowed, Lex would have known about Clark for a while. It was clear that the writers needed Rosenbaum to stick around for the apocalyptic finale, but valuable character development and audience pay-off were largely lost in the process. When it worked, Lex could often be the more sympathetic of the two rivals, and his death at the hands of Oliver Queen in the eighth season was, like his marriage to Lana Lang, a huge betrayal of the character for fans.

Lex’s father, the charismatic patriarch Lionel Luthor, had no such restrictions upon his characterisation. Billed originally as a special guest star, John Glover was upgraded to a regular for the show’s second season and soon became its most vibrant and enduring figure. In contrast to Lex, Lionel’s death was a triumphant moment, pushed from the Luthorcorp tower by his own son whilst protecting Clark’s secret. This was the moment when Lex truly became the villain of the piece, and Lionel’s absence has been sorely felt ever since. He too has returned for Smallville’s final season, although as an earlier version of the character, so as the first character to appear on screen in the shows premiere, it will be interesting to see the part he plays in its end.

Lionel served as father figure to both Clark and Lex at various points and in a show so focused on notions of identity and family, he was one of the biggest influences on the outcome of the show. Prior to season five, however, Clark’s over-arching father figure came in the form of humble farmer Jonathan Kent, whose reappearance in this year’s premiere, ‘Lazarus’, brought some home truths for his now grown-up son. Clark’s adoptive parents were always a feature of the Superman backstory, but Smallville had the unique opportunity to fully explore the dynamics between Clark, Martha and Jonathan, as well as the roles they could play in shaping his future. It became the scaffolding that held the show together, their scenes on the farm often beginning and ending each episode, and Jonathan’s death in the 100th episode was a defining moment for the characters as much as it was a turning point for the show.

Despite the missteps of season three, the fourth and fifth season bravely dealt with what would happen to our teens after high school. Considering that for countless shows, what awaits outside the safety of those halls is the cruel hand of cancellation, it was clear that some big changes would have to be made if Smallville were to survive. While, for many, season four had been the most disappointing yet, it did effectively introduce Lois Lane, as well as wisely recruiting Chloe as Clark’s secret-keeper after the earlier departure of spare-part Pete. These modifications were risky but, for a show as often tediously slow as Smallville, they were necessary in order for it grow up. The risks paid off, as the character of Chloe took on new life as Clark’s tech-savvy confidant, while Lois moved the show to Metropolis; introducing the now familiar basement set of the Daily Planet in the process.

With all of this the show quickly became much bigger in scope. While teaser characters like Bart Allen and Perry White had been popping up for a while, we now had some fully-fledged superheroes in our midst. ‘Aqua’ introduced Arthur Curry as the H20-enhanced member of the Justice League and by the time Green Arrow entered onto the scene in season six, we had a ready-made team of crime fighters. Season five also saw James Masters’ Braniac as Clark’s undercover college professor and the big-bad of the season turned out to be none other than General Zod. Although the makers quickly abandoned the idea of dorm rooms and lecture halls as Chloe entered the seductive world of journalism and Clark got busy saving the world, these developments moved the story into the outside world, expanding the universe as the characters expanded their horizons.

 Season six was arguably the first run of episodes to introduce an over-arching villain, with creatures released by Clark from the Phantom Zone tying the story strands together for a big finish. Justin Hartley’s Oliver Queen was a much needed breath of fresh air and Chloe’s role grew swan-like from generic super-sleuth to tragic heroine almost overnight. As the cast were largely split two ways, with newly-wed Lana and Lex resigned to the mansion and Lois engaging in some extra-curricular activity with Green Arrow, Clark and Chloe’s companionship became the heart and soul of the show. Like the Kent’s before her, the long-suffering blonde served to anchor each episode (and Clark), in reality. Even after she developed a meteor power of her own(?). Lana, on the other hand, grew further and further away from Clark’s life as she began to get closer to his secret.

When speaking to fans and haters of the show alike, their biggest problem with Smallville is usually the development of Lana. With a combination of viewer-pandering and writer’s loyalty, the character stuck around as the primary love interest right up until season eight, a whole four years after the introduction of Clark’s inevitable love, Lois Lane. Season six saw the character marry into the Luthor family after an ill-judged romance with an increasingly dark Lex but, one fake pregnancy and staged murder later, she was back in Clark’s arms and living with him on the farm. Although the character has always seemed unpopular, hers is arguably one of the most interesting arcs of any of the characters. Going from doe-eyed fairy princess to kick-ass superhero over eight seasons gave her character some depth at last, but her final departure allowed things to finally move past the trappings of small town life.

Season seven was maybe the most hated of all because (unlike season four), we weren’t in high school anymore. After seven years of waiting, most viewers felt that Clark should have been showing signs of becoming the ‘man of steel’ at some point. Perhaps to counteract these queries, the writers introduced Kara (Clark’s cousin and future Supergirl) but, instead of injecting some much needed Superman lore into things, Kara’s introduction felt camp and unnecessary next to the more realistic and believable members of the Justice League. She was quickly disposed of at the end of season seven along with the floundering Lana and Lex. With them gone, the move to the Daily Planet, Clark’s suit and glasses combo and his romance with a certain Miss Lois Lane – there seemed to be a natural progression, and the show upped its game once again.

With a new production team and additional characters in the mix, there was a sense that season eight was going to be a very different beast. A show that was once so stuck in relationship drama and love triangles was now well and truly exploring the mythology surrounding the Superman comics, but this came along with its own problems. Although devout fans of the expanded DC universe started to respond to this new-found crossover, casual viewers started to get pushed aside. Characters and plot developments would be introduced with little explanation, but offered a gravitas not understood by those out of the loop. A notable exception to this rule was the introduction of Doomsday as season eight’s main villain who, barring a disappointing final showdown, was given time to fully develop as a character unique to Smallville.

Doomsday’s character also shone a spotlight on Chloe, who became a much darker character after the events of the season eight finale. Her husband, Jimmy Olsen, had been killed by Doomsday’s human alter-ego as a result of some bad decisions, so there was no going back to the cosy co-dependence they‘d once shared. Season nine acted in much the same way as Buffy’s post-death depression arc had, with characters isolated and much darker themes allowed to fester. The season finale ended with Clark sacrificing himself for humanity‘s survival and his struggle with his own identity was brought front and centre across the year. Tess Mercer’s replacement of Lex also brought back an ambiguity that had been lost long ago, and the introduction of Zod provided a slow-building nemesis past seasons had lacked.

Still, it is not until a show’s final season that you can really begin to know what it thinks of itself. Lost’s finale presented the proceeding six years as a relationship drama, with different souls brought together by extraordinary circumstances, while Supernatural’s planned last episode cemented ideas of family in the midst of insurmountable odds. Judging by what Smallville has offered its viewers this year, it too has been about family. But which family? The past ten years have seen an epic rivalry between the Kents and the Luthors, which has gone much further than the opposition between Clark and Lex. Both characters have been taken in by the opposing father figure at some point in the series, and loyalties have shifted back and forth indiscriminately over that time. The show has brought Jonathan and the Luthors back for one final outing and the introduction of Connor Kent as Lex and Clark’s ‘genetic lovechild’ is not just the stuff of fangirl’s dreams, but an underlining of Smallville’s central themes.

 It’s interesting to wonder how Smallville will be remembered over time. Some shows get lucky and remain in the cultural zeitgeist despite weaker seasons and mistakes along the way; while others cannot be redeemed quite so easily. It remains true, however, that almost no show in history has been able to do what Gough and Miller started all those years ago; they accomplished what they set out to do and more. What started as a teen drama with musings on family and self has actually taken viewers all the way from Clark Kent to Superman in one fell swoop. It can’t be denied that it lost its way many times along the way, ‘jumping the shark’ more times than you’d care to count, but the thought of it being cancelled before reaching its climax doesn’t even bare thinking about. Will it be remembered for its many achievements or plagued by its failings? Only time will tell. But with a new Superman movie in production and a superhero-saturated media landscape, it would be a shame if it got lost in the shuffle.

Welcome back for another installment, dear readers. Even though parts of the Internet have been taken offline due to the Artifex Union’s conflict with the major studios, I’ve managed to cast my eyes over some of the films that have escaped the firewall blockade. This week: we take a look at transmedia bad boy Xomsky’s retelling of a classic science fiction tale; the latest superhero reboot and the first in the groundbreaking trilogy of movies based on Ben Pennington’s Kingdom of the Arachnae series.

PART THE FIRST: A DISTURBANCE IN THE FORCE

We’ve seen science fiction tropes reused and recycled for years, the most obvious of these being the J.J. Abrams Star Trek series, a re-imagining of the original Roddenberry Classic. Three films in and still going strong, that franchise has all the potential to spin off a web series or better still; find itself a home on Netvision’s sci-fi feed. Still it takes real courage to attempt what indie director Xomsky has put forth: a re-envisioning of Star Wars.

As Xomsky is mostly a Net phenomenon, a bit of exposition: Xomsky is one of the new generation of artists creating feature-level content for the web. He’s taking advantage of the fact that all but a few movie theaters are shutting their doors thanks to the movie renaissance that increased home bandwidth and 3DHD have brought to homes across the developed world. In the first of the three artistic manifestos: he declared the days of Old Studios dead; declared Hollywood dead and left a rallying call for the people to take back their entertainment by any means necessary. Wanted in the U.S. and the EU for copyright violations too numerous to count, Xomsky has released work heralded by many as genius. To date, he’s only ever granted one interview, and that to Xeni Jardin for Boing Boing. To date, it is one of the most read articles on the world’s most popular blog.

Xomsky’s posted the following to his Qlatch stream when asked about the project:

“Star Wars was the lingua franca of our parents’ generation. It informed their lives; it spawned spiritual movements and television series. The phrases from the original script are more embedded in modern culture than Shakespeare, more common than Superman. Yet, Lucas’s construct remains unchallenged, unexamined. It is my hope that my retelling of these classic tales, told in their original order, will shed new light on the mythos and give us perspective on a classic.”

While I balk at any comparison of Lucas to Shakespeare (I am an old English major, after all), I cannot deny my curiosity. How would Xomsky retell one of the classics?

Brace yourself. Because Luke…is a girl.

Wait, wait. Come back. It actually works. Sort of.

What Xomsky has done is switched Luke and Leia, so that Leia is raised on Tatooine and Luke is the young Prince of Alderaan. Han Solo is still male, and Chewie…well…how could you tell? (Wait…don’t answer that. I’m not sure that I want to know.)

Xomsky’s themes in the film do not stray far from the original: the coming of age story of a young person, facing the darkness in the world, and learning to trust oneself or, in this case, the Force. However, switching the gender of the main character causes the story to take on a different flavor entirely, and it is not unwelcome. To be clear: Leia’s character and her personality are not all that different from the original film: somewhat arrogant, guarded, but generally kind beneath the surface. The thing that makes it interesting is that she is NOT the gawky loser that Luke was; she has a self-confidence from the start of the film which, even if feigned, brings new life to the story.

The end result is a surprisingly lucid tale of a young woman coming in to her own power while finding her place in the universe. Xomsky’s script is significantly better than the original, but saves some of the favorite bits (“That’s no moon” and “I’ve got a bad feeling about this…” for example) so that fans have some touchstones.

At first I was not sure what to think but then the idea grew on me. Chandra Ginn is a believable young Leia, trapped in her small desert world yet ignorant of the power she holds within her. When her mentor, the old hermit Ben Kenobi, finds her and starts to teach her, she finds her rhythm and becomes a commanding presence far faster than Luke did in the original. By playing on gender differences beyond the physical, Xomsky crafts a tale which is at once fresh and familiar.

Too familiar at times. For all its brilliance, once I realized I was watching Buffy the Sith Slayer, it all started to unravel for me.

Perhaps this is unfair, but with the dialogue being tighter than the original, and the gender change, and the mystical undertones of the Force, I started to wonder if Xomsky wasn’t really a frustrated Whedon fan.  Perhaps one does not preclude the other. The point is, even with some truly top-notch names starring in this film (Jared Gladstone as Han Solo, Michael Clarke Duncan as the voice of Darth Vader) it is hard to swallow. It’s a good effort, and I expect it will ignite a firestorm when it is released to streaming sites, but I don’t think your average entertainment-seeker is going to enjoy it. In that way, it’s a bit like watching one of those historical-period sitcoms that never quiet caught on a few years ago: you really have to know something to get the joke.

I predict that opinions will be sharply divided on this one. I can recall the furor caused when Ronald Moore turned Starbuck into a woman in his rework of Battlestar Galactica, even though Katee Sackoff acquitted herself quite well on the whole. Star Wars fans love their myth with a near religious fervor, and messing with the formula may alienate a good half of the fan base.

This will not surprise Xomsky. In fact, I rather think it’s his plan.

How better to drive people to see the film? Get a bunch of fans good and pissed, and they’ll grouse about it all year on their Qlatch streams – let alone their fevered essays posted to blogs all over the world. The curious will need to see what everyone is complaining about. And since the film’s revenue is no-doubt driven by impressions and Google Eyetracker, every curious watcher is money in Xomsky’s already formidable wallet.

This is not some schlocky work filmed in a warehouse. Xomsky’s work is cutting edge CGI, using the latest 3DHD camerawork and, unless I’m very much mistaken, he’s customized the recently open-sourced Imageforge software to render some of his actors. For instance, C3PO is not a very thin man in a brass suit anymore; he’s entirely computer designed, down to the inflection of his voice. There’s no actor behind the robot. I foresee a trend started years ago in movies like Final Fantasy, Lord of the Rings, and Tron: Legacy which were carried forward by increased processing power and more realistic computer voices. The end result? Fully computer generated movies. No actors at all, not even for voice work. Look for it coming to a screen near you, mark my words.

PART THE SECOND: DEL TORO AND THE SPIDERS

Switching gears, let’s take some time to examine Guillermo Del Toro’s latest release, “Tangled Web”, the movie adaptation of Ben Pennington’s young adult “Kingdom of the Arachnae” books. Del Toro has had a challenge on his hands since the beginning; attempting to adapt the most popular youth book series since Harry Potter would have caused many lesser directors to flee outright. After agreeing to take on the film in 2015, he had this to say:

“I’m really looking forward to taking Ben’s vision and making it a reality. He’s constructed an amazing world filled with rich, interesting characters; characters who speak to today’s generation. It will be an honor to bring this dynamic story to the screen. “

In case you’ve been under a rock for the past three years, Kingdom of the Arachnae is the story of Jenna Brown, a young girl who is the last surviving member of House Tegenaria, the rightful rulers of the Arachnaen Kingdom. The Kingdom is found at the center of the Hollow Earth, and the story follows Jenna’s five year road from suburban outcast schoolgirl to the Queen of the Arachnaen. Critically acclaimed, the books have spent a total of 468 weeks at the top of Amazon’s bestsellers’ list.  A movie deal was hardly a surprise, though the fact that Pennington himself is one of the producers certainly was.

Admittedly, the man has made a mint on his creative work, but he had no previous experience as a producer. The closest he’d come was a minor writing credit on 2013’s Evil Dead remake. Judging by the reception of that film (not even the cameo by Bruce Campbell could save it…sort of like Raimi’s Spider Man 3), his career in Hollywood seemed over. Not so, as he landed a lucrative contract the following year and when the first book in the series hit the shelves it sold like wildfire.

Judging by the film itself, that lack of experience might have lent to the fresh, energized feeling positively oozing from the screen. Matthew Macfadyen leads the cast as Ardomo, the seasoned Knight of Arachnae who finds, rescues, and then teaches young Jenna (played by newcomer Andrea Newton) how to take back her rightful place in the Dance of Webs. Supporting cast includes Lena Headey as Artima, Jack Gleeson as Iago the Younger, Helen Mirren as the Oracle of the Winds, and Famke Jenssen as the Dread Queen.

About Andrea Newton: she’s brilliant. I’m not sure where they found this young woman, but she’s a godsend. Comparison with Daniel Radcliffe is inevitable, and the comparison clearly falls in Ms. Newton’s favor. She possesses a confidence on screen that belies her youth and experience to date. She holds her own even in scenes with the formidable Helen Mirren which is nothing short of impressive. Ms. Newton has a bright future ahead of her if her performances continue to be this strong.

A word about the settings in the movie: I saw the film twice, once in standard 3D, once in 3DHD. If you’ve been avoiding 3DHD or are waiting for it to mature…wait no longer. The word I choose for the world Del Toro has brought to life is SUMPTUOUS. In 3D, it was amazing, in 3DHD, you could almost reach out and touch the plants, the cave walls and the swords of the dueling combatants in the Arena of the Shadows. Combine that with the standard surround sound and Pantifex’s AromaTech and you have a fully immersive experience. Sometimes it feels as if you are standing in the narrow caves, part of the small band of heroes trying to find their way to the Chamber of Wind and Words.

One word of warning: if you don’t like spiders, this is not the film for you. Especially in 3DHD. Again, for those who do not know the books, the Kingdom is populated by humans and an intelligent form of giant spider. The spiders are stunningly realistic, and will definitely disturb the faint of heart and the very young. You have been warned.

I’ll cut to the chase: I loved the film. In honor of the late Roger Ebert I give it two thumbs up. Though Roger might have viewed the 3DHD as a mere gimmick, even he would have a hard time dismissing the strength of the performances in this film. Go see it. You won’t be sorry.

PART THE THIRD: LOOKING INTO THE DARKNESS

Finally…the latest in a long line of superhero remake movies. It’s Batman. Again.

Forgive me readers, I cannot even muster the enthusiasm for this. Oh look, poor Brucie lost his Mummy and Daddy and now fights evildoers with the power of billions of dollars, black leather, and his boundless rage.

Yawn.

Understand, I was a Batman fan. Once. I enjoyed the Tim Burton Batman films in my youth, and Christopher Nolan’s interpretation was good. I felt the latter films were overdone, but hey, different strokes for different folks, right? I could let them pass. But this…well…this is just ridiculous.

Replacing Gotham with New York?  Really?

Replacing Alfred with Wayne’s Grandmother?  Really?

Introducing a love scene between Batman and Nightwing?  Really?

This is not a comic book movie…this is slashfic with a budget. There’s reinterpreting the character, then there’s just derailing the whole thing and turning it into a farce. I cannot imagine what was going through director Bryan Sperry’s mind when he decided to accept and make this film. And I have absolutely NO IDEA why DC Comics accepted the deal after seeing the initial screening. I understand trying to make the material edgy and relevant, and in an era where most of the entertainment we consume is pumped directly to our homes, you need to make your work stand out to catch the attention of the viewer. But I think you can go too far with it.

This goes too far. Even Frank Miller, with his crazy “I’m the goddamn Batman” knew where to draw the line. This travels to the line and blows right past it.

No…I’m not homophobic. That’s not the point. The point is that by making Batman more “realistic” you lose the soul of the sort of hero he is. He’s the pinnacle of human willpower and persistence. He exists as a mere human in a world of super-powered mutants, gods, and aliens. And yet, he is one of the most feared and respected men in that universe.

You can’t sustain that persona if he’s buggering his former sidekick, buying off mob bosses instead of taking them down with fists and gadgets, and endlessly weeping over his lost childhood. The Batman is tough as nails, hard as stone, and yes, pretty messed up in the head. But he’s not trying to get in touch with his feelings…he’s using his rage as the fuel for justice…some might even say vengeance.

Sperry’s version of Batman is like a Lifetime movie. And a bad one at that.

Is it a bold vision? Yes. Unquestionably. It is bold. It is edgy. It’s also a parody.

You know what this reminds me of? Go back and read Garth Ennis’s The Boys. Look at the world of excess the “heroes” inhabit. Sperry’s version of the Bat is as if Ennis and Oprah co-wrote the script on a bender in Spain over a long weekend. It’s utter crap.

Save your money, save your sanity. You really don’t need to see Bruce Wayne dressed in leather brandishing a whip and shouting, “I’m the Batman, bitch!”

You really don’t.

Trust me.

*sigh, deep breath*

On that note, I leave you for this month. As usual, you can find me on Qlatch in the usual places, the Movie, Book, and Comic forums where I stir up trouble when not sending out nonsensical status updates to confuse and delight the masses.

Until next time, in the words of Stan Lee (who would never let Hollywood rape Spiderman the way DC let Batman get worked over), Excelsior!

Filed April 15th, 2017

I’m back from the Iron Man Film Festival, and man, I’m exhausted.

A little history and context: the Iron Man Film Festival is the newest international film festival to join the circuit made up of other major festivals like Cannes and Sundance. At many of the others there is a sense of occasion, tuxes are purchased, red carpets are rolled out, deals are made and contracts are inked. At Iron Man, you’re better served with a pair of comfortable sweats and a twelve-pack of Red Bull. The Iron Man Festival, much like the race of the same name, is about endurance.

The Iron Man Film Festival was born last year about this time, when Robert Downey Jr. announced that he was working with Marvel (and therefore Disney) to create a media experience suitable to the younger generation of media consumers.  Unlike Cannes and Sundance, he would look beyond the major studios when making his selections. He (or rather, the staff of the festival) would mine the indie studios and the Internet for content. The Festival would take over Disneyland in Anaheim, CA for a weekend and show everything.

There is one catch: you’re not allowed to sleep.

In order to attend, you need to take pledges for charity based on how long you think you can stay awake. Upon entering the park, you are fitted with a bracelet which measures your heart rate, breathing, and brain wave activity. If you fall asleep, you’re out. It’s a three-day festival, and that’s a long time to be active, caffeinated, and entertained.

I told my editor I wanted to go. He bet me one hundred bucks that I’d never make it past the second day. I took the bet,  packed a bag, and headed off to Disneyland.

Admittedly, this seemed a little crazy to me as well, but the key is this: I am not the target audience.  This kind of stunt is attractive to the 18-30 set, the folks who are living on energy drinks and love a bit of adrenaline with their entertainment. They love the challenge. The planning committee knows that, and have added fitness challenges between the theatres to allow people to take things up a notch or two. Admittedly, by the morning of the third day, the theatres probably smell like Fritos and ass, but by that time, you’re either so tired or so wired that you almost do not notice.

There were a few other oldsters there like me, strolling from showing to showing, souring our stomachs with strong coffee to keep going; but for the most part this is a younger man’s (and woman’s) festival. If you like watching things on screen, jumping into a wind tank for a little air surfing, running a mile to catch the next show while downing a Red Bull, and then repeating, this is the festival for you.

During the festival, I saw eight films. Here are my impressions:

The Strange Times of Abby MacTeague: This is a latest movie from Diablo Cody but is backed by Disney, which, given some of Cody’s past work, took me by surprise. In this movie Cody returns to some of the territory covered in Juno: a misunderstood teenaged girl faces some difficult life choice but deals with them with snark and tenacity.  Abby is a sixteen year old girl growing up in Colorado Springs, home of both the Air Force Academy and some of the largest Megachurches in the United States. When she makes an offhanded comment about prayer in school in class, a teacher overhears, takes offense, and Abby is taken before the Principal and suspended. From there, the story gains speed like a cartoon snowball rolling downhill. Each new twist is both absurd and yet somewhat believable, and that’s the key to the success of this script: absurd things happen, and the best we can do is deal and move along. Well-shot and well-executed, this is a worthy successor to Cody’s other credits.

Empire State: Based on the 2012 book by Adam Christopher, Empire State is set in two worlds. The first is New York City during the Prohibition, a time of speakeasies and illegal hooch, of brutal gangs and corrupt cops. The second is a dark mirror of the same time period called the Empire State, an island city (homage to Dark City? Perhaps…) which is ruled by a despot and is caught in the middle of a battle between two rocket-powered superheroes. The movie captures the Noir feel of the book by being in black and white even while being filmed in 3D. The result is a work of art and excitement which is remarkably true to the original plot. Even though “superhero movies” have become somewhat cliche in recent years, Empire State is more character driven, more interesting and less…comic-booky, to coin a lame phrase. The result is a sophisticated adventure, one well worth watching.

Djinn And Tonic: In 1872, a young man named Wilberforce Abernathy is unpacking an exhibit for the British Museum when he finds an ancient gold lamp. He rubs the lamp three times and, surprise, a young woman appears in a puff of smoke and offers him three wishes. So begins the High Culture-Low Humor Djinn and Tonic, a film whose premise springs unapologetically from the following question: “What would happen if the 1960’s I Dream Of Jeanie was a comedy of manners and society in Victoria’s London?”  The result is oddly satisfying. Crazy as it sounds, I found myself laughing at the movie which rises above the shtick of the old T.V. series to become something more like an Oscar Wilde play. Young Wilberforce wants nothing more than respect and to move up on the world and, with his Djinni’s help, he does so, with disastrous and hysterical consequences. I could see this being a fantastic date movie, so keep it on your list gentlemen.

Elric: This one hits a soft spot for me, as Michael Moorcock’s novels were a seminal part of my young life. Elric is the albino prince of the ancient empire of Melnibone. He is sickly and weak and is only bolstered by a mixture of drugs and magic. The movie, which condenses the plots of several of Moorcock’s books into a single story, picks up with Elric being deposed by this more ambitious and stronger cousin Yyrkoon.  Elric is exiled to a place where he finds the dark runesword of his ancestors known as Stormbringer. Stormbringer is known to be a weapon of power and evil; it drinks the souls of its victims and feeds them to its wielder in a form of magical strength. With this weapon, Elric returns to his empire to take his rightful place. The film has much of the same epic feel that was invoked by Jackson’s work on Lord of the Rings, and the CGI landscapes are visually arresting. While the plot can be arcane and even slow at times, the payoff at the end is well worth it, and also allows for a sequel if there is a good return on the original investment in the film. Definitely a movie for geeks, but a good one, nonetheless.

Eight Is Enough: This one hurts my soul. Some idiot decided that turning the 1970’s Dick Van Patten sitcom into a feature film would be a wise move. Mistake. For the uninitiated, Eight is Enough is the tale of the Bradford family: two parents and eight kids. AND HILARITY ENSUES. Or something. The plot of the film is fragile at best, nonexistent at worst. I think the overall premise might have worked if the director wasn’t going for the same tone as the original series which, let’s face it, these days is about as dated as Leave It To Beaver.  I suppose this might be a good flick for “family viewing,” but only if you kids have never seen a comic book, cartoon, or Pixar movie. Otherwise, give this one a pass.

Infected: Based on the 2008 novel by Scott Sigler, this production was a real hit with the crowds at the festival. It crosses the boundaries between science fiction and horror in a way that is both engaging and oddly comedic at times. The fact that Sigler was one of the writers that adapted the book to a script for production is a real strength. The story: spores fall from space that herald an alien invasion of Earth. The spores start to blossom into sub-dermal blue triangular growths once they make contact with human flesh. The triangles start to compel the infected people to do things…and that’s when all hell breaks loose. The director does a masterful job of invoking fear and horror without the movie turning into torture porn (though, there is a scene involving chicken scissors that will make every man in the audience wince and squirm).  I believe that Infected will be The Next Big Summer Movie, and frankly, it should do well enough to get the sequel, Contagious, made.

Magnum P.I: I’ll cop to a certain anticipation for this one. I was a fan of the show as a kid, and even though Hollywood has made millions by raping my childhood, I was hoping that this one would somehow be something decent. I’m happy to report that the film is quite good. It is the story of Thomas Magnum, private investigator in Hawaii. Rather than make a pure nostalgia piece and base it in the Eighties, the action takes place present day, and the characters have been updated accordingly. T.C. is a chopper pilot and veteran of the second Gulf War, Rick is still a business owner but is more of a techie than before. Higgins, played by a marvelous Stephen Fry, is still the butler with the acid wit. I do not want to spoil the plot (is there any worse way to spoil a mystery), but I can say that the twists and turns of the story are well-executed with a delightful lack of plot holes. All in all, a good picture. Go see it.

The Big Sleep: The success of books like the previously mentioned Empire State and AlephStudio’s groundbreaking game The Widow In Red has fueled a desire for more noir-style fiction.  Rather than develop something new, Warner Brothers has re-released the Bogart and Bacall classic, The Big Sleep. The first movie adaption on Raymond Chandler’s 1939 novel, the movie was originally released in 1946 and was directed by Howard Hawks (also known for his later work on Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and His Girl Friday). The story, set in Los Angeles, follows Philip Marlowe as he is hired by the wealthy General Sternwood for the purpose of resolving one of his daughter’s gambling debts. On the way out, Marlowe meets the General’s other daughter (played by Lauren Bacall), who suspects her father might have other motives. This re-issue has been digitally remastered and put into 3D which works surprisingly well. Given that the entertainment industry is all about the flash-bang these days, it was nice to see a piece of craft film-making. Go check this one out.

Now…if you are doing the math, you figured out that I should have seen more movies in a three-day period than this handful. You would be right: had I not fallen asleep in the middle of the latest dreck-filled romantic comedy, I would have seen more movies. Sadly, age and fast living have caught up with me, and I was escorted from the park at around the halfway point of the festival. I feel some small shame about this, and I think I might work out and try to get into better shape for next year’s Iron Man. Maybe. Just Maybe.

There you have it…my weekend at Disneyland in two thousand words or less. If you love seeing movies on the big screen and are a little insane, sign up now for next year’s Iron Man Film Festival. It is a weekend you will never forget. Until next time, you can find me on Qlatch, via email, or at home, sleeping.