San Diego Comic-Con Special Edition 2017 by Den of Geek

DEN OF GEEK

SAN DIEGO COMIC-CON • JULY 2017 • DENOFGEEK.COM

SAN DIEGO COMIC-CON SPECIAL EDITION

S R E D N E F E D E TH ES UNITE

MARVEL'S STREET SMART HERO

SON ON GHOSTED

BIN RO AIG CR • RS WA R STA OF CH UR CH E TH • ON YPT KR Y'S SYF K: PLUS FIRST LOO JULY 2017

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EXCLUSIVE FIRST LOOK AT SEASON 2 with JOHN C. McGINLEY, JANET VARNEY and DANA GOULD THURS, JULY 20 2PM | ROOM 5AB

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COMING THIS FALL

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CONTENTS

SAN DIEGO COMIC CON 2017

24 INTERVIEWS 21 22

FIRST LOOK: SYFY’S KRYPTON David Goyer on the highly anticipated Superman prequel. JESSICA HENWICK The Iron Fist and Defenders heroine discusses her role in the Marvel Universe.

PREACHER: THE MAKING OF ARSEFACE We answer the question every Preacher fan is asking: How the hell did they create Arseface?

DANA GOULD MEETS THE MONSTERS The creator of Stan Against Evil picks his favorite monster movies.

VALIANT’S SECRET WEAPON Oscar-nominated screenwriter Eric Heisserer comes to comics.

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NICKELODEON’S ‘90S COMEBACK The creators of Rocko’s Modern Life and Hey Arnold! come to SDCC with big plans.

COMIC-CON PREVIEW 6

A WORD ABOUT JACK KIRBY Comics legend Jack Kirby’s 100th birthday is this August. We wouldn’t be here without him.

GHOSTED You know things will get weird with Craig Robinson in Fox’s new paranormal comedy.

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THE DARK TOWER Lifelong Dark Tower fan Nikolaj Arcel finds himself in the director’s chair for this Stephen King adaptation. THE EISNER AWARDS 2017 Den of Geek offers our picks on which comics will be awarded top honors at SDCC.

PRINT EDITION EDITOR

Chris Longo CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Kaitlyn Richert ASSISTANT PRINT EDITORS

David Crow Alec Bojalad Nick Harley John Saavedra DESIGNERS

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Emily Gloria Miller Pinky Weber

12 VIRTUAL REALITY

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Sarah Litt

FEATURES

DEN OF GEEK.COM CEO

Jennifer Bartner Indeck PUBLISHER

MARVEL'S THE DEFENDERS New York’s street smart heroes unite for the ultimate Marvel Netflix series.

VIRTUAL REALITY The VR industry is growing, but is America ready to embrace the new medium?

OP-ED: WHY WHITEWASHING DOESN’T WORK Recent hits have shown that diversity pays in Hollywood.

THE CHURCH OF STAR WARS A galaxy far, far away, a fandom divided.

THE LOST ART OF VIDEO GAME DISCOVERY Rental stores became gaming’s grindhouse. Now where do gamers go to discover hidden gems?

Matthew Sullivan-Pond EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Mike Cecchini DEPUTY EDITOR

Chris Longo FILM EDITOR

David Crow

DARK TOWER

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Detail from Dream Machine by Jack Kirby

FROM THE EDITOR:

A WORD ABOUT JACK KIRBY

Jack Kirby’s 100th birthday is this August. We wouldn’t be here without him. BY MIKE CECCHINI

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every Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, from titans like Thor, Iron Man, and the Hulk to the more offbeat Ant-Man, Groot, and Ego. Kirby’s work for DC produced characters and concepts that have become cornerstones of their line, and they’re bound to make their way to the big screen sooner rather than later (the villains of the upcoming Justice League movie are Kirby creations, for example). When I was a kid, Jack Kirby was one of the first comic book creators whose work I recognized. The acrobatic fight scenes that seemed to move on the page, the ornate technology that looked like nothing I had ever seen in sci-fi movies, and the mythic, cosmically-powered heroes and villains that were immediately recognizable. As an adult, I was drawn to Kirby, the impossibly hard working man, who went from brawling in the streets of New York City’s Lower East Side to fighting Nazis in World War II, to the artist who produced consciousness-expanding works when he was far older than the “flower children” of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and finally to the elder statesman who patiently dispensed advice to every aspiring writer and artist who approached

him in the early days of San Diego Comic-Con (where he was a guest of honor every year until his death in 1994) or tracked him down at his California home. Jack Kirby is the reason I get to do what I do for a living. My fascination with “the King of Comics” led me to an internship with the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center in college, and it was while working their booth at a comic con that I met the people who eventually hired me at Den of Geek. I’m now a trustee of the Kirby Museum; I’m proud to assist in their efforts to keep Kirby’s name in the public eye and aid them in their ongoing quest to build a permanent museum in honor of this towering figure. Aug. 28, 2017 will mark the 100th anniversary of Kirby’s birth and every day, San Diego Comic-Con is presenting panels to honor him and his work. When Marvel unveils their next big project, when the Justice League movie introduces its cosmic villains, or even when you spot some cool Thor or Silver Surfer cosplay, remember the guy who helped make it all possible. Without Jack Kirby, none of us would be here this weekend.

IMAGE: JACK KIRBY MUSEUM, BOOTH #5520

here shouldn’t be any need to remind anyone who reads comics, watches superhero movies and TV shows, or attends conventions about Jack Kirby’s towering accomplishments. But somehow, despite the fact that he’s one of the pillars (arguably the pillar) that Marvel’s entire empire was built on, Kirby’s name isn’t as ubiquitous as you’d expect. When you think of pop culture in the 20th century, the name Jack Kirby should occupy the same stratosphere as George Lucas, Jimi Hendrix, and Bruce Lee: innovators who made indelible impressions on the collective consciousness. Unlike those men, Kirby was almost impossibly prolific, producing tens of thousands of pages of story and art over a career that spanned five decades. With partner Joe Simon, he brought Captain America into the world in 1941. When the public lost interest in superheroes after World War II, Simon and Kirby branched out into war, crime, and romance comics, the latter of which they virtually invented. Kirby’s collaborations with Stan Lee brought forth characters that are now the bedrock of nearly

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YOUR (GEEKY)

SUMMER READING LIST BY KAYTI BURT

Is there anything better than lying out in the sun and reading a good science fiction or fantasy book? It can be hard to keep up with all of the genre novels hitting the shelves, but if you’re looking for an opportunity to slow down and spend a few days immersed in a new, fantastical world, we suggest one of these recent or upcoming titles.

THE STONE SKY

WONDER WOMAN: WARBRINGER

Leigh Bardugo AUGUST 29 Random House Can’t get enough Wonder Woman? Check out this young adult tie-in novel to the film, which tells the story of Diana before she became the superhero we know and love. Warbringer checks in with Diana when she is still just a teen girl trying to prove herself to her Amazon sisters. When she saves a mortal named Alia Keralis, Diana not only breaks Amazonian law but unwittingly puts herself in the middle of a war. You see, Alia is a Warbringer and a direct descendant of Helen of Troy. She’s also someone fated to bring about bloodshed and misery. Yikes.

(Broken Earth #3) N.K. Jemisin AUGUST 15 Orbit

As the final book in the Hugo Awardwinning Broken Earth series, The Stone Sky continues the tale of a civilization struggling for survival in the face of apocalypse. The series is set on a planet with a single supercontinent called Stillness where, every few centuries, its inhabitants must face a period of catastrophic climate change known as the “Fifth Season.” The Stone Sky picks up after The Obelisk Gate, diving back into the uncertain lives of Essun and Nassun. This is subversive, thought-provoking science fiction at its best.

Michael Crichton OUT NOW HarperCollins

As the sequel to the quirky, compelling, and culturally-aware Heroine Complex, Sarah Kuhn’s Heroine Worship continues the story of AsianAmerican superheroines Evie Tanaka and Aveda Jupiter as they protect San Francisco from demonic threats. This second installment in the trilogy pivots the point-of-view from Evie to Aveda as the recovering diva struggles to figure out who she is now that her best friend is also a kickass superhero.

DOWN AMONG THE STICKS AND BONES

(WAYWARD CHILDREN #2) Seanan McGuire OUT NOW Tor Books

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RAVEN STRATAGEM

(Heroine Complex #2) Sarah Kuhn OUT NOW DAW

FURTHER READING... DRAGON TEETH

Catherynne M. Valente OUT NOW Saga Press The term “fridged” refers to the common trope in which female characters are “killed, raped, brainwashed, driven mad, disabled, or have their powers taken so that a male superhero’s storyline will progress.” You can probably think of a dozen or so examples off the top of your head. In a collection of six linked stories, this collection gives those same female superheroes and female partners of superheroes a voice. If you’ve ever been angry after watching a female character treated badly in a comic book narrative (or perhaps wondered why others were), The Refrigerator Monologues is for you.

HEROINE WORSHIP

BATTLEFRONT II: INFERNO SQUAD

Christie Golden JULY 25 Del Rey A tie-in to Star Wars Battlefront II, Inferno Squad fills in some of the gaps between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. The novel follows the eponymous Inferno Squad, a group tasked with hunting down members of Saw Gerrera’s Partisans and avenging the destruction of the Death Star. If you’re counting down the days until The Last Jedi, this Star Wars novel might be a good way to pass the time.

THE REFRIGERATOR MONOLOGUES

(The Machineries of Empire #2) Yoon Ha Lee OUT NOW Solaris Books

Get ready for the follow-up to the Hugonominated novel Ninefox Gambit. The sequel revisits Captain Kel Cheris and undead traitor general, Shuos Jedao, as they continue their fight against the heretics of the hexarchate. The worldbuilding in this military science fiction series is not for the faint of heart. The story takes place in a future society that has its basis in social mathematics. But if you lean into this kind of ambitious setting, you will be rewarded with a compelling story that questions the true cost of war and grounds its hard sci-fi elements in the fascinating relationship between Cheris and Jedao.

VALERIAN: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION VOL. 1 Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézièrs OUT NOW Cinebook

LEIA: PRINCESS OF ALDERAAN

Claudia Gray OUT SEPT 1ST Disney-Lucasfilm Press

Den of G

Discover THE VERY BEST IN SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY Join us for promotional giveaways and in-booth signings with Cory Doctorow, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Annalee Newitz, Edward Gross, Mark A. Altman, and many more!

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CULTURE COLLECTIBLES

THE NEW HEROES OF ARTISTS' ALLEY

DC’s lineup of vinyl figures merges indie design with the most iconic heroes and villains in the DC Universe. BY MICHAEL AHR

hen it comes to most fan conventions, the dealers’ room, where licensed merchandise is sold, and artists’ alley, where the comics world’s best talent sell their wares, are separate. But now DC Collectibles has combined one of the most popular convention souvenirs—vinyl figurines of fan favorite characters—with the singular vision of the artists in attendance by introducing highly detailed, limited edition PVC statues in a product line designated as “DC Artists Alley.”

Participating artists include Christopher Uminga, a Connecticut-based painter and illustrator with a unique “creepy but cute” style; HaiNaNu “Nooligan” Saulque, a comic creator and graphic designer from Sacramento who combines contemporary technique with a nostalgic flare; and Sho Murase, whose European upbringing and Japanese/Korean heritage inform her Western-influenced, manga-style art with a dark twist. Uminga has previously designed figures for Batman and Superman, Saulque has creat-

ed statues for Joker and Harley Quinn, and Murase has showcased Catwoman. New figures introduced at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con include Uminga’s vision of Wonder Woman (pictured below), Saulque’s depiction of Batman, and Murase’s interpretation of Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn. The DC Collectibles figures are 6.75 inches tall and will be accompanied by a print of the original artwork behind the design. The first wave of Artists Alley figures will be released in 2018 and are now available for pre-order.

IMAGES: DC COLLECTIBLES

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A NEW

REALITY

A year of chasing down stories on virtual, augmented, and mixed reality paints a picture of a digital medium still ahead of its time. BY CHRIS LONGO | IMAGE: RAW DATA / SURVIOS

irtual reality will soon be inescapable. From electronics stores to major cultural events like South by Southwest and Comic-Con, companies are practically begging consumers to test out headsets and immerse themselves in the latest VR content. In an unassuming warehouse space turned VR studio on the outskirts of ritzy Santa Monica, California, Jaunt VR is churning out cinematic, 360-degree videos at a furious rate. They’ve produced over 300 pieces of original storytelling in the past four years alone. “Our CEO likes to say we're a four-year-old company in a two-year-old industry,” quips Tom Vance, head of content for Jaunt VR. Major brands are clearly buying into the hype. Jaunt VR’s video content is so highly sought after that they’ve already developed partnerships with companies like Lexus and Land Rover. It’s also easy to see why virtual reality is exciting for firms used to one-dimensional marketing opportunities. Each project opens the door to a different application of VR technology, from a 200-foot descent down the canopy of the Amazon rainforest to the filming of a Zero G stunt in The Mummy, or an emotionally uplifting ESPN piece about a 17-year-old Ohio State football super fan who suffers from a form of muscular dystrophy. “Underpinning all of [our content] is our ability to tell stories in a new way that brings the audience closer to stories than ever before,” Vance says. “One of the things that we’re really focused on is delivering not just compelling VR experiences, but how can we create a new reality?” Content is king in any visual medium, and Jaunt VR is making an aggressive push to broaden the scope of VR. But as the industry moves forward, and users come to expect more than what Google Cardboard and a smartphone can offer, the question still remains: Can these companies convert an interested consumer into a VR enthusiast, one who is willing to shell out anywhere from $200 to $800 for an advanced headset even before factoring in the cost for games? And, as VR technology advances at the speed of light, does the industry have the patience to let the market catch up? “It feels like we're in the MP3 player phase before the iPod,” Vance

says. “We're in the earliest phase of adoption.” Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and companies around the globe are investing significant resources in the next generation of visual storytelling, but they’re doing so at a time when a large segment of the population has yet to be exposed to the latest incarnation of the industry’s groundbreaking technology. 2016 was supposed to be the year when consumers fully embraced this digital trend after all the major high-end headsets—including PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Google Daydream View, and the new version of Samsung Gear VR—launched within the last 18 months. It hasn’t happened as fast as many in the industry would like. Most executives I’ve spoken with are quick to acknowledge that the adoption of virtual reality technology by the mass market has been slow. According to Forbes, 100 million VR units shipped in 2016, but 96 percent were low-cost Google Cardboard. Overall, the industry pulled in $1.8 billion in revenue in 2016, according to research firm SuperData. That’s a long way off the estimated $5.1 billion the same firm projected in January of 2016. None of the lingering questions and hesitations about virtual reality— motion sickness and high prices among them—have derailed Jaunt VR, which in 2015 received a $66 million round of funding led in part by Disney to bring its total investment to over $100 million. Jaunt VR has delivered on their goal to create compelling media. But outside of the steady cashflow of major brands, the industry needs to convince consumers that headset technology is a worthwhile investment. Viewing a trailer on digital video game marketplaces like Steam or GOG is not the most practical way to gauge the value of purchasing an Oculus Rift. Consumers like to test electronic products, whether in store or through friends, before making a financial commitment. Companies like Jaunt VR would ideally like to get headsets on as many heads as possible and let the quality of their storytelling sell itself. While constant on-the-ground activations to engage new users are costly and time consuming, the industry may get a big assist from one of the most well-known names in entertainment. DEN OF GEEK.COM 13

“IT FEELS LIKE WE'RE IN THE MP3 PLAYER PHASE BEFORE THE IPOD."

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potentially be hundreds of AMC theaters. They are planning a slow expansion with eight more locations around the world to open in 2017. Thus far, over 20,000 people have entered the flagship (non-theater) location in Los Angeles in Q1. The New York VR Centre, with little-to-no marketing support, did more business in its first week than LA did in its fifth. “We really want to perfect marketing in the theater first,” Lister says. “There’s about a million people that come through [the theater] a year. The more people find out about it, the more you're going to get people to come in an hour early to do this before the movie and after the movie.” Suddenly, what was supposed to kill the movie theater industry—home gaming, hi-def screens, and easy access to countless media— could actually help redefine the multiplex as a multipurpose entertainment venue. It’s a safe bet for both IMAX and AMC, who are using empty space to showcase VR instead of building out costly, full-scale immersive entertainment centers. The IMAX VR player’s lounge in New York is purposefully designed to encourage moviegoers to engage with the open-air pods. If IMAX aggressively expands to theaters around the country, this will become the introduction to VR for much of the general public, a community experience akin to the arcades of old. Guests who love IMAX VR, which is equipped with $800 HTC Vive headsets, can’t simply or cheaply bring that same experience home with them. However, the future may already be in your hands. If the final frontier is the home experience, and you can’t afford fullscale VR, you could try your luck in the realm of augmented reality. However, one would have to travel to the Norwegian capital of Oslo to participate in what

IMAGES: THE FUTURE GROUP / IMAX

In May, IMAX, in partnership with AMC theaters, launched its second-ever IMAX VR Centre in New York. The company turned empty lobby space at AMC Kips Bay 15, one of the theater chain’s most trafficked cinemas, into VR “pods,” essentially a large demo for high-end tech like HTC Vive. The IMAX experiences cost around $1 per minute with most running between seven and 15 minutes. Among the games I demoed at the launch event, the soaring Eagle Flight, a bird’s-eye version of capture the flag, was a standout, as was the sci-fi action shooter Raw Data, which is about as close as you can get to entering the world of The Terminator. With AMC offsetting operations and space costs, IMAX is in a unique position to capitalize on its theater and studio partnerships and quickly corner the market for installation-based VR. “The fact that the consumer proposition [for VR] has been a little challenging so far represents an opportunity for us,” says Robert Lister, chief business development officer for IMAX. “There are more people who want to experience VR but don't want to spend $2,000 on a headset and PC. They know they can get a premium experience here.” Much of what IMAX has to offer will be original VR content, but the company is also relying on tentpole franchises. The IMAX VR Centre in New York opened with a film tie-in experience for The Mummy and, soon after, they announced a deal with Warner Bros. to release three new pieces of VR content, including tie-ins for Justice League and Aquaman. Those experiences will have an exclusive window at the VR Centres before they’re released for home purchase. IMAX does everything big. In the short term, however, they’re willing to closely monitor their New York and LA centers and listen to consumers before branching out in what could

could be a transformative experiment for live TV, gaming, and augmented reality. A company called The Future Group lays claim to the term “mixed interactive reality,” a technology they’ve developed that overlays synthetic images on the real world and distributes that content live on multiple devices, meaning the same video would translate seamlessly from TV to mobile to VR headsets. As applied to their first television series, the Norwegian game show Lost in Time, it represents a breakdown of the fourth wall. In the eight-episode first season, the coexistence of physical and virtual objects create visual effects that are groundbreaking for television, as contestants compete in challenges like riding on the back of dragons or doing construction work in 1920s New York. Seriously, the visuals are so stunning you need to Google the show to believe it. Through an app, audiences at home can play along with the in-studio contestants. “[Lost in Time] answers one of the many questions the broadcast industry is asking: What’s next for television?” says Halvor Vislie, Future Group’s chief operating officer. “It’s novel in its visuals but the fact that you can play along with it and engage differently is a brand-new concept. It’s something that makes the TV property live on outside of broadcast hours.” Each week, an in-studio winner and one lucky player on the app take home what would translate to $120,000 USD. It gives users incentive to return to the app and improve their skills when the show isn’t airing. The stat that Vislie enjoyed throwing around was that there were nearly three times as many games played on the app as the population of Norway. “We have an average session length of over 20 minutes,” Vislie says. Comparing the fan involvement to a feedback loop, he adds, “It tells us that this way of approaching content distribution really works.” The Future Group’s Lost in Time, even with a relatively small sample size in its test market of Norway, captured what VR and augmented reality (and now interactive mixed reality) companies are aiming for: audience retention. While the opportunities are infinite for VR and AR, a breakthrough like Lost in Time is flying under the radar. When looking at the VR industry as a whole, it still feels like early adopters are privy to an underground movement rather than a digital revolution. So why haven’t average American consumers invested in VR technology yet? Likely it’s because potential adopters haven’t had a transformative moment where they feel fully immersed in another reality—if only for a few seconds. That’s a good problem for the industry to have though, making products so cutting edge that you can’t get people in headsets fast enough for a test run. And with the VR community growing every day, it’s easy to see why optimism nevertheless abounds. “What keeps each of us inspired is that nothing is easy right now and that's really fun,” Vance says as he’s rushed away into another meeting. “We may look back in five years and say, ‘Oh, what about the good old days when we were hacking everything together?’ But I'm enjoying this because every single thing, for the lack of a better term, is a science experiment.”

Make your world bigger Samsung Gear VR transforms virtual reality with a new handheld controller that responds to organic movements to make virtual experiences more spellbinding than ever before.1

Shop Samsung.com/US 1 Gear VR not for children under 13. Read included health and safety warnings before use and see oculus.com/ warnings.

Compatible with the following Samsung Galaxy smartphones: USB Type-C: Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+, microUSB: Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 edge, Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge and Galaxy S6 edge+. Galaxy smart-phone sold separately.

DEN OF GEEK.COM 15

TELEVISION STREAMING

BOOMERANG STREAMING GUIDE A subscription service devoted to cartoons? Sign us up. BY DANIEL KURLAND

here is no stronger drug than nostalgia. It’s the reason studios and networks are hot on revivals. The launch of a Netflix-like subscription service that offers classic and new cartoons couldn’t come at a better time. The popular retro cable channel, Boomerang, now has a streaming service that provides cartoon fans with over 5,000 episodes from the animated libraries of Warner Bros., Hanna-Barbera, and MGM. Furthermore, it’s now

WHAT’S IT LIKE?

the only place streamers can watch Looney Tunes, Scooby-Doo, The Jetsons, Tom and Jerry, and The Flintstones. That’s nothing to shake a stick of TNT at. But that’s not all, folks! We’ve outlined some of the most memorable, hilarious cartoons in Boomerang’s lineup... Editor’s note: Titles with an asterisk* will be heading to the service in the next few months. Boomerang is available for $4.99 a month, or for $39.99 for a full year.

BEST EPISODE:

Monty Python’s Flying Circus meets The Muppet Show

1039 Episodes

“Duck Amuck”

The Honeymooners meets Land of the Lost

166 Episodes

“The Flintstone Flyer”

The Strain meets Pinky and the Brain

40 Episodes

“Puzzle Madness”

WACKY RACES*

Rick and Morty meets Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations

17 Episodes (34 Segments)

“See-Saw to Arkansas/Creepy Trip to Lemon Twist”

COURAGE THE COWARDLY DOG

Lassie meets Carnivale

52 Episodes (102 Segments)

“The Mask”

THE MAGILLA GORILLA SHOW

The Incredible Hulk meets The Odd Couple

31 Episodes (93 Segments)

“Mad Avenue Madness/Space Sheriff/Heir Conditioning”

SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU!

Bored to Death meets Penny Dreadful

41 Episodes

“A Night of Fright is No Delight”

Monk meets Curb Your Enthusiasm

13 Episodes (39 Segments)

“Sheep Thrills/Screwball Out West /The Maltese Fossil”

Fraggle Rock meets The Prisoner

256 Episodes (418 Segments)

“Gargamel’s Time Trip”

Black Sails meets Ash vs Evil Dead

231 Episodes

“Goonland”

LOONEY TUNES THE FLINTSTONES BUNNICULA

DROOPY, MASTER DETECTIVE THE SMURFS POPEYE THE SAILOR

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IMAGE: BOOMERANG.

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NEXT FILES Craig Robinson and Adam Scott bring Ghosted, their paranormal buddy cop series, to TV so we can all get a little weird. BY ALEC BOJALAD

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IMAGES: SCOTT COUNCIL AND KEVIN ESTRADA/FOX

ox’s new series Ghosted might have the greatest elevator pitch of all time. It’s The X-Files as a half-hour comedy! It’s Ghostbusters in LA! It’s This is the End, the TV series! If the elevator ride were long enough, you could just cycle through all of those pitches and more. Beverly Hills Cop could come up—maybe Stranger Things or even The Leftovers. For the actor portraying one of the lead characters, however, no off-the-wall, high-concept elevator pitch was needed after he read the initial script. “I read it, and it was like a badass black dude with an afro in his car peeling around the corner, and I was like ‘that’s me!” star Craig Robinson says. Yes, Fox’s upcoming show Ghosted is about as high-concept as half-hour comedies get, which is fitting for the network that pioneered the “apocalyptic TV comedy” genre with Last Man on Earth, not to mention the show that kicked off a renewed golden age for sci-fi/horror on TV in The X-Files. The new series stars Robinson (The Office, This is the End) and his Hot Tub Time Machine 2 co-lead and friend, Adam Scott (Parks and Recreation, Big Little Lies). Robinson plays a cop, and Scott plays a Stanford professor, before they’re turned into a pair of paranormal investigators. While struggling with private lives filled with mystery and misery, Max Jennifer (Scott) and Leroy Wright (Robinson) are recruited into the Bureau Underground, a secret society that investigates the paranormal. What kind of paranormal activity? The pilot alone features a man with a removable head, a car being drawn into the air by a glowing red light, and Leroy’s perfect rendition of Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love.” Granted, one of those isn’t exactly paranormal, but it might as well be. But while the weirdness is probably intriguing enough for many to tune in, the real appeal for those involved goes beyond mere premise. Creator Tom Gormican (best known for writing and directing That Awkward Moment) developed the role of Leroy specifically for Robinson and approached the actor with a shortened version of the pilot script. “It played like I was a higher version of

myself,” Robinson says. “I was like, ‘This dude is bad!’ I love it. It’s gone through some changes since that first synopsis, but I still love the character.” Those changes involved beefing up the paranormal premise and, more importantly, introducing a buddy cop dynamic by giving Robinson’s Leroy a partner to both clash and bond with: disgraced ex-professor Max. According to Gormican, who will run the show alongside TV vet Kevin Etten (Workaholics), the idea to expand the cast came from Robinson. “It was a one-hander at the time just for Craig,” he recalls. “It was a character that I thought would be fun to see him play—someone investigating the paranormal. It was a riff on the Beverly Hills Cop character. This badass cop, and it was set at the time in New York. It was something I hadn’t seen him do and something I knew he could do. He was really excited about it and then he said, ‘Hey, let’s get Adam Scott.’ Then the show was built out and

“YOU DON’T OFTEN SEE ‘MYTHOLOGY’ AND ‘MULTIVERSE’ IN A HALF-HOUR.”

changed into a real two-hander.” Gormican clearly appreciates having a show with such a unique premise and also landing two ludicrously charismatic movie stars for leads. “The initiation of the idea was basically looking at the things that were on TV and the things that were not,” he says. “There was no real horror-comedy on TV. Nothing that is like an ‘80s or early ‘90s show with a central relationship. And then combine that with our love for The X-Files. Getting Craig and Adam on very early is how the whole thing coalesced.” The actors’ and producers’ faith and interest in character-driven storytelling and humor is well-earned. The pilot for a show with such a divergent concept should be at least watchable, but Robinson and Scott’s effortless chemistry makes it something even more unusual and borderline paranormal for a pilot: good. The exposition burden on a pilot for such a high-concept show is massive and Ghosted just gleefully burns through it all in 22 minutes and saves plenty of time for jokes. Of course, it helps when one scientist character declares to our kidnapped heroes a few minutes in, “I’m Barry. I’m your kidnapper. I work for a top secret government agency and that’s all I can tell you about that!” and then immediately follows up with: “Okay, that’s not very fair. I work for The Bureau Underground. We investigate the paranormal.” The X-Files is a clear inspiration and jumping off point. That’s inescapable when two characters, one a skeptic and the other a true believer, are assigned to investigate the paranormal. Max fills the “Mulder” role as the character who genuinely believes in the supernatural. He’s a former Stanford professor, now a disgraced bookstore employee creeping out customers by casually revealing that his wife was abducted by aliens. Leroy is more grounded in reality, or in X-Files terms, the “Scully.” He’s been kicked off the LAPD for an incident involving his partner and is hesitant to join in on any of these paranormal shenanigans. Sometimes “Scullys” don’t work so well on television, as their admirable pursuit of the rational

DEN OF GEEK.COM 19

THE ROOTS OF

GHOSTED The movie and TV inspirations for Ghosted are as diverse as they are numerous. Here, Craig Robinson, and producers Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten reveal their inspirations.

CRAIG ROBINSON "Star Trek, Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Men in Black, X-Files; I’m a fan of Rick and Morty, for sure; it’s similar to This is the End, Westworld, and Underground. Would Westworld be sci-fi? Love that show; Underground I was watching. American Dad; I do like intelligent comedies like Futurama, you know. It gives you little puzzles. Clever stuff."

KEVIN ETTEN "For both of us, we talk about This is the End, a lot. That, to me, is equal parts funny, it has good scary, crazy moments. It has a really grounded relationship between Seth and Jay. When I went to see that movie it felt so new. It was a whole hilarious, weird, new thing. For me, that’s the one that I always point to tonally. They really nailed it."

TOM GORMICON "Early John Carpenter, Repo Man, Ghostbusters, Midnight Run. There’s a lot of disparate elements that we’re pulling from and are trying to create a tone that we haven’t seen before. Sci-fi concepts and techno horror like Black Mirror type stuff. And of course sci-fi novels and Twilight Zone. Things that can’t be explained by science—our interest in that has grown. Stranger Things, and the Edgar Wright catalog (Shaun of the Dead in particular). Then also buddy comedies like Lethal Weapon and Beverly Hills Cop."

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Adam Scott and Craig Robinson star in Ghosted. The series premieres Oct. 1 on Fox.

can veer toward the delusional in light of all the clearly paranormal events they’re witnessing. Ghosted is well aware of that dynamic and while it promises to keep Leroy firmly in the world of the rational,the showrunners want to keep a level of ambiguity to “protect” the character. “Ambiguity is important to us,” executive producer and showrunner Kevin Etten says. “It needs to be something that is seemingly paranormal or could have a real world, rational explanation. Keeping that dynamic alive was important—with Max being a true believer and Leroy having a rational point of view. We want to protect the character [Leroy] in that dynamic. As the series goes on, it will get more and more open to the paranormal but it’s not where it starts.” For as important as the characters are to Robinson, and as intriguing as the concept is to, well, everyone else, Gormican is focused on making sure the tone works. “One thing that was important to us tonally is keeping the show actually scary while being funny, having real characters, and keeping a real sense of danger,” he says. “When you’re trying to hit on what amounts to a new tone, the details are important. It’s everything—whether it’s story design, the set, the actors and how they’re playing it, it all creates this kind of tone.” The focus on character and tone is encouraging. Gormican even references Stranger Things in passing as the kind of mood the show is looking to establish, and the pilot goes a long way in doing so. Everything from set design to music is eerily reminiscent of an ‘80s pastiche, while somehow remaining undeniably modern. But for all the investment in

tone and character, there are still two “m” words that viewers are hoping to hear. “Tom has this whole mythology to go with the program,” Robinson says. “It’s about multiverses and stuff. He’s into it big time.” Gormican confirms that there is indeed mythology and multiverses, and other weird stuff. “The multiverse plays into the overarching mythology of the show,” he says, before adding: “You don’t often see ‘mythology’ and ‘multiverse’ in a half-hour.” You sure don’t, and certainly not on network TV. That’s the real promise of Ghosted. Viewers have been sitting around for years, waiting like good boys and girls, for sci-fi/horror/nerd culture to seep from cable back onto “normal” television. Ghosted debuts on Sunday, Oct. 1, smackdab between The Simpsons and Family Guy, and the notion of alternate universes being casually discussed between trips to Springfield and Quahog should be exciting to all. Robinson says that in real life, he’s more of the “believer,” while Scott is the skeptic. “I just know I’ve seen some things out there. Adam is just the opposite. And our characters are opposite. In the show I’m the cynic, skeptic and he’s the true believer. In real life I’m like, ‘I’ve seen ghosts’ and he just says ‘ehhh, I don’t believe it.’” In discussing some of his favorite moments on-set, however, Robinson lets slip that Scott might at least believe in predetermination. “When we were filming, I was like, ‘Yeah, Adam is correct.’ We’re supposed to do this. This was meant to be.” That’s TV for you. Turning Scullys into Mulders every day.

FIRST : LOOK

SYFY’S KRYPTON Syfy will tell the story of Superman’s grandfather, but this isn’t your ordinary prequel. BY MIKE CECCHINI

IMAGE: SYFY

avid Goyer is no stranger to Superman’s doomed home planet. As the writer of 2013’s Man of Steel, he gave audiences a more detailed look at Krypton than had ever before been shown onscreen. So much effort went into designing Kryptonian culture and history for that film, that Goyer wanted to explore it further. He’ll get the chance with Syfy’s Krypton series, which Goyer is writing and executive producing. Krypton centers on Superman’s grandfather, Seg-El (played by Cameron Cuffe), a minor figure in DC Comics history who coincidentally popped up in a 1999 Starman story that Goyer co-wrote. But the character first appeared in The World of Krypton, a 1987 mini-series by John Byrne and Mike Mignola, which serves as one of the inspirations for Syfy’s new show. If you’ve seen the trailer or images from Krypton, you may have noted some visual similarities to Man of Steel. Goyer says that, while the show “isn’t an official prequel… I don’t think there’s anything we’re doing that contradicts what was set up in Man of Steel.” He further promises that all eras of Krypton’s pop culture history are “on the menu,” from the comics to Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie. Still, don’t be fooled by the fact that you know the planet’s tragic fate. Krypton takes place 200 years before that fateful explosion,

which means these are all new characters with plenty of life in them to explore. “Even in the comic books, no one has ever said what the fate of Superman’s grandfather was, nor is the fate of any of the characters that we're introducing in the series known,” Goyer says. “I think that's a real positive in terms of dramatic storytelling. It's not like we know character X will grow up to be hero Y.” While those who majored in Kryptonian Studies might recognize the names of some of the key players, Krypton should work as a science fiction show independent of its distant superhero connections. “Of course we’re making this show for fans,” Goyer says, “but we’re hoping it’s something that will appeal to people even if they’ve never seen a Superman movie or picked up a comic [or] aren’t even necessarily science fiction fans.” Goyer compares this adaptation approach to Game of Thrones. While George R.R. Martin’s books had a devoted group of fans who were already intimately familiar with its rich mythology, the TV show still has to stand on its own as a story “We’re introducing quite a few characters in the first season that DC readers will know about,” Goyer says, “but the mantra with everyone involved is ‘don’t assume the wider audience will know who these characters are.’”

“WE’RE MAKING SOME UNEXPECTED ADDITIONS TO THIS SUPERMAN WORLD.” It even sounds like Krypton will surprise fans with its ties to the wider DC Universe. “There are a lot of other characters from the Superman canon, some of which have been linked to Krypton before, some of which haven’t, that are also included,” Goyer says. “There are also some other DC Universe characters that aren’t specifically part of the Superman canon that will play a role.” Sadly, despite my best efforts, he wouldn’t confirm if this means we’ll see Thanagarians or members of the Green Lantern Corps. “We’re definitely doing some things that I think people won’t expect,” Goyer promises. “And we’re making some unexpected additions to this Superman world that I’m excited for audiences to see.” Krypton will premiere in 2018 on Syfy. You can read our full interview with David Goyer at denofgeek.com/us/krypton DEN OF GEEK.COM 21

TELEVISION INTERVIEW TELEVISION

JESSICA HENWICK KICKS ASS Iron Fist’s breakout star is back to defend Hell's Kitchen. BY MELANIE SCHMITZ

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the thriller Underwater. But it was her leading turn in Marvel’s Iron Fist that pushed the actress directly into the spotlight. Based on the comic book series of the same name, Iron Fist follows the journey of Danny Rand, a martial arts master who was orphaned as a child and trained in the mystical city of K’un-Lun. After returning to New York as a grown man, Danny meets Colleen (Henwick), who is running a dojo in Chinatown. Together, they attempt to take back his father’s multi-billion dollar business from the clutches of the Hand, a secret cult of martial artists. The Netflix series suffered a number of setbacks

early in the process. Some fans felt Marvel missed an opportunity to cast an Asian actor as Danny Rand while critics met the series with, at best, lukewarm reviews. Though Iron Fist eventually found its footing, Henwick’s Colleen Wing consistently stood out to audience members and critics alike. (“Why couldn’t Henwick be the star of Iron Fist?” Variety’s chief TV critic Maureen Ryan, lamented in an early review, calling Henwick’s character “underwritten” for her talent.) Taking a break from filming Underwater in New Orleans, Henwick spoke with Den of Geek about Colleen’s mindset, her decision to take the role, and where fans will see her character next.

IMAGE: NETFLIX

olleen Wing will kick your ass—that’s how actress Jessica Henwick describes her Iron Fist and Defenders heroine, anyway. The fictional martial arts instructor and samurai master at the center of Marvel’s Netflix universe has quickly become a fan favorite—and that’s a tough hill to climb, all things considered. Henwick herself is no stranger to a challenge though. The 24-year-old has spent the past nine years jumping tirelessly between genre roles like Nymeria Sand in HBO’s Game of Thrones and X-wing fighter pilot Jess Pava in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Recently, she picked up a role opposite Kristen Stewart and T.J. Miller in

Q: Colleen Wing has undoubtedly become a fan-favorite in the Marvel world. What drew you to the role in the first place? A: I had been in talks with Marvel prior to Iron Fist and I had researched all the prominent female roles that I was interested in. Colleen Wing came up really early in the process, and I had a strange feeling. Iron Fist had already been announced, but no other news about it had been released. And so I wrote to my agent and I said, “If that ever goes into production, and you ever hear about a character that has these characteristics, let me know.” And lo and behold, a year ago, she messages me and she says, “Okay, so there’s this project, and it’s got a codename— and the character is called ‘Christine,’ but she matches all the characteristics you had mentioned. I think it’s the one you were talking about.” So I read the sides, and it was immediately clear to me that was it. There were so many things that I liked about her. She’s strong but she’s vulnerable. She’s got this hard, New York exterior to her, but the Japanese culture [from which she hails] is so counter to that. So she’s kind of this walking contradiction, and I just thought there were a lot of places I could go with her. So I made a self-tape, flew to LA, auditioned with [Finn Jones], got on a plane, and when I landed, I had a phone call from [Iron Fist producer] Jeph Loeb, saying, “I have three words that are gonna change your life forever: Welcome to Marvel.’” Q: The show itself has gathered a dedicated following since its debut in March but it’s also faced some controversy, specifically over what some believed was a missed opportunity to cast more Asian actors. What ultimately convinced you to take the role? A: Jeph Loeb. He rang me and he told me about Colleen’s journey. Normally, the actors are kept in the dark about what happens to their character. But he rang me and said, “Look, I’m just gonna lay it out for you.” And he told me everything that would happen in the first season… He told me all the secrets and then he said, “If we go forward with you and with this character, this is what she’d do in The Defenders. This is what she’d do beyond that even.” So I saw the scope of the possibilities, and that was what convinced me—it was always Colleen that convinced me.

so much about her lack of self-belief. She portrays this confident exterior—she pushes it out onto the world—but at the end of the day, she’s never truly believed in herself, which is why she fell into the clutches of the Hand. It’s why she’s never pushed herself, even though her skills far exceed what she shows her students. Danny kind of sparks in her this idea of, “You have this fire in you! Why do you limit yourself to saying that you’re just a karate teacher?” She has this absolute inability to believe in herself born out of all these things that happened to her as a child, and that scene was obviously a [culmination] of that. But she also got a kick out of [the fight]. She got an adrenaline rush. And so it wasn’t hard to get into that mindset. When you are doing the full fight—and we would run the fight top to bottom from every angle, it’s like a fiveminute fight—I felt that adrenaline rush. And when I walked in and saw these guys… I felt that “I’m not good enough” feeling as well. So I was going through all of Colleen’s emotions. Those days, filming those scenes, were some of my favorites, and also some of the hardest and most trying experiences on that show. Q: With filming on The Defenders now wrapped, fans are eager for details. Will they get to see Colleen’s character develop more in the new series? How involved is she in the storyline? A: Yes! Colleen is a pretty large part of The Defenders. The Defenders picks up a bit after Iron Fist. Some time has passed since we left Colleen on Iron Fist—when she was in K’un-Lun with Danny and they realized that K’un-Lun is gone—and we pick up a short time after that. She’s with Danny still, not in New York, and they’re both searching for answers. But she’s been with Danny 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and she hasn’t really had any time to come to terms with all the things that happened in Iron Fist. And neither has Danny. So they’re both kind of at the boiling point, and what we see in The Defenders is they have to crack. Something has to happen, something has to break, because the amount of tension in both of those characters is insane. Q: Final question: In one word, how would you describe Colleen Wing to new fans just dipping their toes into the Iron Fist series for the first time? A: I want to say “badass!” Yeah, definitely ”badass.”

Q: There’s a scene in one of the first few episodes in which Colleen takes part in a two-on-one cage fight and wins after brutally beating both opponents—a huge shift from earlier when she lectured a student for doing the same. The moment marked a turning point in her character’s arc and was ultimately one of the most powerful moments on the show. How did you get into that frame of mind and what were you feeling when you went to film the scene itself? A: The thing I loved about that scene was that there was so much to it—it wasn’t just a fight; it revealed so much about her. She tells her student Darryl, “Preserve your honor, because you have it. Preserve your integrity. Don’t fight for money, you’re better than this.” And then she goes and does exactly what she told him not to do, which reveals

“I HAVE THREE WORDS THAT ARE GONNA CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOREVER: WELCOME TO MARVEL.” DEN OF GEEK.COM 23

RETURN OF THE NICKTOONS Against all odds, Rocko’s Modern Life and Hey Arnold! are picking up exactly where they left off.

BY CHRIS LONGO

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er in his run at Nickelodeon, and he asked them what they, the employees, thought Nick should be doing. And a lot of them said, ‘Why don’t you bring back Hey Arnold!?’” Bartlett didn’t need much convincing. He originally planned a second Hey Arnold! film that would answer the questions of the 2004 series finale, but Nickelodeon decided to cancel the series and leave Arnold’s story on a cliffhanger. “I felt really bad for a long time,” Bartlett recalls. “I made this cliffhanger and broke the hearts of children everywhere. It wasn’t intentional. That’s the ups and downs of showbiz.” In the emotional finale, “The Journal,” Arnold learns more about his long-lost parents when he stumbles upon his father’s old journal and finds a map that could lead to their whereabouts. Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie will finally give Arnold the chance to go on the adventure of a lifetime and search for his parents. Stylistically, Arnold is getting a light refresh (don’t worry, he still has that football-shaped head), but they shied away from a complete reboot. “It’s not only supposed to be this satisfying conclusion to Arnold’s questions of where his parents are, but it’s also supposed to reintroduce all these characters to the next generation,” Bartlett says. Nickelodeon is taking a similar approach with Rocko’s Modern Life,

IMAGES : NICKELODEON

t a time in Hollywood when old intellectual property is constantly being repackaged as a hot new fall show, or networks drum up half-hearted nostalgia by giving past-their-prime sitcoms a victory lap, Nickelodeon is in the unique position of having fans actively campaign to revive their favorite cartoons from the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. This fall, Hey Arnold! returns to Nickelodeon for a feature-length TV special called Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie. It will kick off a slate of revivals, which will include Rocko’s Modern Life and Invader Zim specials, that are set to air in 2018. The executives at Nickelodeon rang up the creators of these beloved cartoons seemingly out of the blue. They saw interest from outside—Nickelodeon has had a successful run with its ‘90s programming block called “The Splat”—and from within. “I think one of the big factors is the fans grew up and became part of the professional workforce, part of the media, social media, and animation,” says Hey Arnold! creator Craig Bartlett on the roots of the Nicktoon revivals. “Russell Hicks [former president of content development at Nickelodeon] told me a third of Nickelodeon’s employees were of that age—25 to 30—and fans of the show. They had a town hall meeting earli-

hoping to bridge the gap from old fans to the network’s youthful core audience. Rocko’s Modern Life: Static Cling will be a meta take on Hollywood’s wave of nostalgia projects, bringing Rocko, Filburt, Heffer, and Spunky into 2018. Joe Murray, the creator of Rocko’s Modern Life, felt satisfied enough with the show’s original four seasons to blast his main characters off into space in the series finale. Rocko, the anthropomorphic wallaby who taught us Garbage Day and Laundry Day are both “very dangerous” days, is going to land on Earth 22 years after we last saw him. Plenty has changed since. Rocko is slow to adapt to technology and believes nostalgia can save him from the cruel modern world while Filburt and Heffer are quick to embrace the joys of the internet age. The transition should be smooth for a series that was way ahead of its time. “Conglom-O Corporation” is basically just Amazon at this point. Rocko’s Modern Life got a second wind from “The Splat,” and Murray says he has noticed a renewed activity in recent years, from merchandising opportunities to a big uptick in interest on social media. But even he was caught off guard when Nickelodeon was circling Rocko as its next classic Nicktoon special. “I was one of the most surprised of anybody,” Murray says as he takes a long pause before filling the silence with a loud chuckle. For the project to work, Murray brought back the entire original voice cast and aimed to keep it as close to the original as possible, which like its predecessor Ren and Stimpy, appealed to all ages. “Even in the ‘90s, we were always keeping in mind that it was a younger audience, but that it would appeal to different age groups,” Murray remembers. “There’s a kid issue involved in the main storyline and there’s lots of great visual animation. It serves all the audiences.” Nostalgia may be at the heart of the Nicktoon revival, but for Bartlett it’s just as much about unfinished business. For Murray, he has something to say about our current times and believes he can do it in a way that is true to the tone of the original run. Both Bartlett and Murray took a break from production to speak with Den of Geek about the upcoming revivals, and what the future could hold for their beloved Nicktoons.

CRAIG BARTLETT CREATOR OF HEY ARNOLD! DEN OF GEEK: Were you always looking to bring Hey Arnold! back? How did we end up with a new feature-length movie? CRAIG BARTLETT: Fifteen years ago this summer, we had just put out The Hey Arnold! Movie. We had already been developing another one, which we always called “The Jungle Movie,” and they’re like, “Well, we’re not going to do it. This is kind of one and done for the feature.” The problem was we made our last regular episode that one-hour special called “The Journal,” which was meant to be a prequel to “The Jungle Movie.” Arnold finds his dad’s old journal and learns a lot about his missing parents in the back at the very end. He opens the last page, it was kind of stuck together, and he finds this map. And it’s like, “Grandma, Grandpa, I found the map!” Dun dun dun dun, big cliffhanger music and out. And so, I had originally done that on purpose to dare Nick Movies to not make The Jungle Movie. But the show still got cancelled. It’s just the way it goes. That’s the ups and downs of showbiz. It really did seem like an idea whose time came, because the fans grew up and were in the most powerful position to influence the culture. You know? So that’s a really cool story. I love that story. DOG: The film will be closure for the old fans. But it also needs to introduce the cartoon for a new generation. How did you approach that? CB: We always talk about our actual audience, the kids. It's not only supposed to be this satisfying conclusion to Arnold’s questions of where his parents are, but it’s also supposed to reintroduce all these characters to the next generation. And I tried to make it end in a way where it was set up that they were going to go into sixth grade. Wouldn’t that be cool if it got rebooted, and we could do a season 6 where they’re now two years older and they’re going into sixth grade? So I tried to do all those things; answer all the questions; and set it up so they could go on.

DEN OF GEEK.COM 25

I think to kids now and 20 years ago, and 20 years from now, they love stories about friendship. And so Arnold’s best friendship with Gerald, and Helga’s best friendship with Phoebe, are really featured in the movie and then dramatized as much as I could, because kids love stories about friends going on an adventure. DOG: On the creative side, you’ve talked about how fans of the show have grown up and now work for Nickelodeon. Did you look to mix up the creative team with old and new talent? CB: That was a big part of the discussion. We said we had acknowledged the fact that kids have grown up and become adults, super fans, and many were working in the biz. So Nickelodeon said, “We think that’s a good story. We think a really cool part of this narrative is that the fans have grown up and now they’re cartoon makers. It would be really cool if they work on the show.” And so it was a negotiation between me and Nickelodeon to add the next generation to the crew. It’s a really cool mix of old school Hey Arnold! people who made the show in the first place, and new school Hey Arnold! super fans who were really into it.

JOE MURRAY

CREATOR OF ROCKO’S MODERN LIFE DOG: Rocko’s Modern Life has to be one of the most underrated Nicktoons of all time. How did a revival happen? JM: When I first heard about it, I thought “maybe it’s not a good idea.” I felt like we had done a really good job with the seasons that we did. Why mess with it? I said I had to think about it for awhile. It was too abrupt for me to wrap my head around. We were optimistic we could do something and we started kicking around some ideas of how Rocko would be in current times. DOG: Did they come to you with the idea to do this revival as a movie? JM: The only choices they gave me were doing a long-form project or some shorts. I opted for the long-form project, an hour movie. I thought we could tell a good story and expand what we did before. In the last episode of Rocko, we blasted him off to into space. I thought it would be perfect if we had him come back and land 20 years later. DOG: A long-form piece is a different animal than completing 13 individual episodes. How did you approach it narratively? JM: It didn’t seem like such a stretch because we were used to telling three-act stories. We just expanded it. I came up with the story that was really relevant to what is going on now. There’s a twist in there [that] will be a surprise when it comes out. There wasn’t really anything they had discussed with me as far as what they wanted to do. They wanted to know if I wanted to refresh the series and the characters. I actually wanted it to be as close to the original as possible. When we approached the production, we did all the backgrounds the same way, hand-painted. We pulled recurring characters from the old series. It’s pretty close to what it was. It’s the ‘90s show being brought back in 2018. How modern life is now and how the characters would have evolved. DOG: With social media, do you think younger audiences are more mature now than during the original run? JM: We did all the gags with social media and technology. That was fair game. And of course Rocko is still used to VCRs and he suddenly comes into the 21st century, and it’s all new to him. It’s fun to see

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The original voice cast of Rocko’s Modern Life will return for the TV special, set to air in 2018 on Nickelodeon.

someone experiencing all this new technology. Filburt and Heffer embrace it, and Rocko is averse to change. That’s really how the story evolves. It’s all about change. But also what I found, and maybe this is why the show was gaining popularity over the years, was that we did a lot of weird stuff. We had characters that were really demented. Some of the audience didn’t really catch on to it. It was a little strange to them. Over the years, things have gotten a little weird. Not only in kids entertainment but look at the TV shows kids are watching these days. They really don’t have to make sense, and they’d probably rather it didn’t. I’m feeling like a lot of our non-sequitur weird stuff is pretty much the norm now. We really poured it on. It’s more accepted these days than when we first came out. DOG: So many animated series have taken big risks since, but Rocko, along with Ren and Stimpy, felt like the beginning of that visually and tonally. JM: It was good that we had Ren and Stimpy pave the way. I think Nickelodeon was more open to doing the weird stuff we wanted to do. We started developing the show right around the time Ren and Stimpy came out. We had just done the pilot for Rocko. I saw that it was on there and what they were doing, and I felt optimistic we could get away with the stuff we wanted to. I came into it thinking I don’t really care if they say no to it. They came to me and said, “Do your independent film work and put it on television.” It was nice that Nickelodeon was open to the risk, because Ren and Stimpy and Rocko didn’t look anything like what was out there. I give a lot of credit to that.

From the national bestselling author of

comes a familiar story with a dark hook— a tale about

Peter Pan

and the friend who became his nemesis, a nemesis who may not be the

blackhearted villain Peter says he is . . .

here is one version of my story that everyone knows. And then there is the truth. This is how it happened. How I went from being Peter Pan’s first—and favorite—lost boy to his greatest enemy. Peter brought me to his island because there were no rules and no grown-ups to make us mind. He brought boys from the Other Place to join in the fun, but Peter’s idea of fun is sharper than a pirate’s sword. Because it’s never been all fun and games on the island. Our neighbors are pirates and monsters. Our toys are knife and stick and rock—the kinds of playthings that bite.

Peter promised we would all be young and happy forever.

Peter lies. ooks b d s anale at g n i sign e for s 5G r o Authavailabl TH 151 BOO DEN OF GEEK.COM 27

THE FOURTH WALL TELEVISION TELEVISION FEATURED BEHINDSHOWTHE SCREEN

It takes over two hours to transform Preacher’s Ian Colletti into the tragic Eugene Root. BY MARC BUXTON

THE PROCESS

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IMAGE: LEWIS JACOBS/SONY PICTURES TELEV; MICHELE K. SHORT/SONY TELEVISION/AMC

CREATING ARSEFACE

MC’s Preacher had the unenviable task of translating the hideous visage of Eugene “Arseface” Root from the comics page to the TV screen. But Eugene isn’t a monster or a villain, so the show had to find an actor who could convey the character’s gentle soul and earn the audience’s sympathy. And he had to be able to do it under prosthetic makeup that covers over half his face. Carey Jones, the KNB EFX Group’s special effects makeup project supervisor, and actor Ian Colletti told us about the challenges of creating Arseface. CAREY JONES: I gave Greg Nicotero a call, and Evan [Goldberg] and Seth [Rogen] came to the shop. We just kind of went over a lot of ideas, and one of the things we kept coming back to was that we had to get the Arseface character right. We went into design really quickly. Right after that meeting, Greg and I sat down and kept throwing out ideas with our designer and came up with different ideas and designs of what the character would look like from a practical sense. IAN COLLETTI: It’s a more difficult process than people realize. What you see on my face is not reusable. It’s a new appliance we put on my face every day. We’ve been able to cut the time down a little bit. Last year it was about two and a half hours on average. Now we do it in about an hour and 15 minutes. I’m amazed what these guys did by taking this guy off the page and making him come to life in live-action. CJ: Ian Colletti’s face and how he emotes in terms of his brow and his eyes, that has a lot to do with it in terms of getting the sympathy and all that stuff. He translates it very well. On top of that, you have to make sure the prosthetic is not too thick and it works with his face. So when he does talk and he does move, it moves with him and doesn’t hide any of the emotions and things he does with his face. In terms of the actual shock of the look…There were a lot of different factors we had to look at. One was that we had to make sure it felt like the graphic novel, so when people saw it, those fanboys out there would see it in the makeup. At the same time, it couldn’t be too horrific. There’s a fine balance. You don’t want something you’d look at and be horrified, especially with how much he’d be on-camera. IC: I never wanted him to be pitied. I wanted people to have empathy for him but not pity. In a way, I think he’s heroic in a universe where there are so many immoral characters. CJ: We began with the most extreme and worked backwards. I think there’s a really extreme version where every part of his face is smooshed in except his right eye. We kind of ticked away at it, brought back some of the humanity and brought it to a place where viewers could look at it and not be horrified by it. IC: Honestly, in my mind I was going over this character and doing my actor-y type things: going over his backstory and doing the voice, and going over his physical characteristics. When I finally looked in the mirror and saw it, it was the final piece in understanding where this character can go.

Top: Ian Colletti during his two hours in the makeup chair. Bottom: The Arseface prosthetic that covers 50 percent of the actor’s face.

CJ: It’s a prosthetic that covers 50 percent of his face. He has to wear it during 13 or 14-hour days, and sometimes more. Now that we’re in New Orleans, the weather is not forgiving. Ian is a huge piece of this in terms of temperament and willingness to wear it. Whenever you do a prosthetic like that, you’re always nervous about how the actor will take to it in terms of the glue on the face and sitting in the chair and all that. And then when we passed that hump, it was about getting the blending down, getting the coloring right, getting the buckshot in the right places. Ian was such a sport about it, it made everything else fall into place.

DEN OF GEEK.COM 29

THE FOURTH WALL TELEVISION TELEVISION FEATURED BEHINDSHOWTHE SCREEN

DANA GOULD MEETS THE MONSTERS The Stan Against Evil creator offers his favorite monster movie picks. BY DANA GOULD

t was a simple enough request. Write a little something about my four or five favorite horror films. My answer? Yes! But no. What if I wrote about my four or five favorite monster movies? I like monsters. Some supernatural thing that’s not supposed to be here but is killin’ and/or stompin’ on stuff ? I’m in! And so, with that caveat in mind, here is a little something something on my four or five favorite monster movies. Wait! Can it be my favorite four or five hundred? My God, it’s like picking your favorite child. If I pick War of the Gargantuas, will The Crea-

ture from the Black Lagoon never speak to me again? Like many of you, monster movies are baked into my DNA since childhood. As Matt Weinhold, the host of the excellent podcast Monster Party likes to say, “Horror movies were my football.” And so, with profuse apologies to the movies left out, here are five of my favorites. No, these are not the five unequivocally greatest monster movies of all time. These are my favorites, plain and simple. And if you’re not on the list—I’m talking to you, Gill-man—it doesn’t mean I don’t love you just as much as everyone else.

1. AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON This one has it all. As a child, my favorite monster was the Wolf Man, and this movie’s favorite monster movie is also The Wolf Man. With copious references to the Lon Chaney Jr. original and the Oliver Reed Hammer version, American Werewolf is a monster movie that is also a fan of monster movies. Scary, funny, smart as a whip—with the best transformation scene on film and Griffin Dunne’s hilarious performance as poor, undead Jack—this little beauty is good enough to watch every full moon.

2. JOHN CARPENTER’S THE THING Oof! The King Kong of monster movies (next to, well… you get it). Carpenter remakes the Howard Hawks original with a healthier dollop of John W. Campbell’s novella, "Who Goes There?" and a heapin’ helpin’ of Rob Bottin taking practical effects into another dimension entirely. Carpenter’s The Thing also gives us the, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” of monster movies when David Clennon’s Palmer watches Norris’ head scuttle off like a spider and says, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding.” Nope. Deadly serious.

3. THE NIGHT STALKER

4. FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN Can’t have a list of monster movies without a Universal classic, and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, though not the greatest of the series, is my favorite. The film boasts a cauldron of charms and oddities, from Lon Chaney Jr.’s best Wolf Man transformation on film to Bela Lugosi’s doomed, miscast turn as the Frankenstein monster, plus a bitchin’, if too-short, fight at the end. Also, for a film aimed largely at kids, it boasts a hero (Chaney) whose main drive in the story is to find a way to successfully kill himself (!!). I also love that the title doesn’t presume the two horror titans would fight. It could have been called “Frankenstein vs. The Wolf Man,” but they must have thought, “Let’s just have them meet and see what happens.”

5. PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE To steal a line from Ketty Lester, every frame of this film is a love letter straight to my heart. Ed Wood’s magnum opus has the reputation of the worst film ever made, but if the biggest crime a film can commit is to be boring, then Plan 9 is actually one of the greats. Vigorously bonkers in every conceivable way, it gets everything wrong that it possibly can in the most profoundly lunatic way. It’s awkwardly acted, incompetently edited, and makes less sense than a letter you’d find in the dumpster behind an abandoned mental hospital. But every incompetent frame groans with affection for all the things I love. Graveyards, zombies, Tor Johnson, Bela Lugosi, Vampira, Criswell, flying saucers... I could go on and on. Are there better movies that I could have included in this list? Yes. Will I write that list one day? Maybe one day. In the future. And we are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I will spend the rest of our lives!

IMAGES: IFC, PHOTOFEST

In 1972, ABC aired a nifty little made-for-TV movie about a newspaper reporter named Kolchak chasing what only he believed was a real, living vampire running rampant through the streets of modern-day Las Vegas. The obvious joke about a bloodsucker in Las Vegas was lost on no one, but what was a surprise was that it exploded in the ratings and became the most watched TV movie of all time, up until Roots in 1977. The film was written by Twilight Zone and I Am Legend legend, Richard Matheson, who was working from a book by Jeff Rice and starred Darren McGavin as the intrepid reporter, Carl Kolchak. The Night Stalker may not be the greatest vampire film

of all time, but it moves like a freight train, is scary as the dickens, and spawned a sequel and a short-lived TV series beloved by a generation. Mine.

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DEN OF GEEK.COM 31

DEFENDING 32 DEN OF GEEK â&#x2013; SAN DIEGO COMIC-CON

NEW YORK Marvelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s The Defenders unite this August on Netflix. Getting them together took a superhuman team effort. BY MIKE CECCHINI DEN OF GEEK.COM 33

Luke Cage (Mike Colter) and Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox).

34 DEN OF GEEK ■ SAN DIEGO COMIC-CON

Ritter ( Jessica Jones), Mike Colter (Luke Cage), and Finn Jones (Iron Fist) all took the stage together, the Marvel faithful jumped to their feet to let loose deafening howls of approval. “I was definitely not prepared for the wild fan reaction,” Ritter recalls via email. “No one could have prepared me for that. I thought that our first New York Comic Con for Jessica Jones was epic, because we had a pretty major reaction from the crowd after showing our first episode! But for Defenders? That room went NUTS!” Getting the stars of all four Marvel Netflix shows on a stage for a few minutes is one thing. Getting them together on-screen is another story. For Iron Fist star Finn Jones, who had gone straight from wrapping six months of shooting Iron Fist to a day with press and fans at NYCC on roughly three hours of sleep, “It was very overwhelming and super intense.” Jones reflects, “It was fun, but… I was kind of numb to it all because I was just so tired by that point.” After his appearance at NYCC, Jones only had two weeks before he had to begin work on The Defenders. At the time of this writing, Ritter and Colter are deep into filming the second seasons of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, with their own work on Defenders only recently completed. (Due to the Luke Cage Season 2 shooting schedule, Colter was unavailable for interviews for this article). And now imagine you’re the producer

and writer tasked with not only creating a crossover series that carries all the weight of fan expectation, but you also have to do it while coordinating with three other shows. Fortunately, The Defenders showrunner Marco Ramirez is no stranger to the difficulties of balancing stories for a group of recognizable heroes. Ramirez has been with the Marvel Netflix universe since the beginning, having worked as writer and executive producer on the first season of Daredevil. Ramirez learned he landed The Defenders gig just as production was coming to a close on Daredevil Season 2 where he served as co-showrunner. That season had the added challenge of introducing high-profile Marvel characters like the Punisher and Elektra to a mix that already included Matt Murdock, Wilson Fisk, and the Hand. “In some ways, Daredevil Season 2 felt like a dry run to what The Defenders really was,” Ramirez tells me by phone. “It was a slow game of three characters that were all major pieces of Marvel IP, and now [with Defenders] we're doing four. Some of the exciting challenges in Daredevil were that we were kind of creating Elektra and Frank Castle in that world. We were casting them. We were figuring out what their voices sounded like. [It] was really exciting.” By the time The Defenders went into production, Ramirez had to integrate three characters in Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Danny Rand, who had headlined their own series, each from a different showrunner.

IMAGES: SARAH SHATZ/NETFLIX; JESSICA MIGLIO/NETFLIX

he Defenders aren’t the Avengers or the Justice League. Those are the crown jewels of superhero intellectual property, instantly recognizable icons with decades of history in everything from comics to toys to video games. Most of Marvel’s roster of Netflix heroes—collectively known as the Defenders—operate under their real names and don’t even bother with costumes. They’re literal social justice warriors, working to change their neighborhoods, not the world, for the better. The Defenders are underdogs, and if there’s one thing New York City loves, it’s an underdog. Marvel’s interlocking group of Netflix shows are not only set in New York City, they’re shot and produced there too, with recognizable Midtown, Brooklyn, and Harlem exteriors allowing the city to take on the same role it has always had in the comics. Other superheroes operate in fictional locales like Metropolis or Gotham, but Marvel heroes have always called NYC home. A fan can wander through Hell’s Kitchen and imagine where Nelson and Murdock, Attorneys at Law, might hang their shingle. So of course when the cast of The Defenders united on the New York Comic Con stage together for the first time last October, it felt like superhero history was being made. This might seem like an overstatement. After all, star-studded superhero announcements at comic cons are hardly new. But when Charlie Cox (Daredevil), Krysten

"I THINK ONE OF THE GREAT THINGS ABOUT THESE SHOWS IS YOU MEET SUPERHEROES WHO ARE KIND OF LONELY.” - CHARLIE COX Sigourney Weaver plays Alexandra, the mysterious villain the team must confront.

It’s a process he refers to as “leasing the car” before he has to return the characters to their respective homes. “The actors certainly have really good senses of who they were,” Ramirez says. “They already exist on their own shows. I was just seeing where those voices fit into this world and how those voices sounded when they bounce off each other.” As the first Marvel Netflix hero, Cox had already worked with Marco Ramirez on two seasons of television, making him uniquely qualified to describe how things have changed between Daredevil and The Defenders. “I can't even imagine what it was like for [Ramirez] to write this show with four characters, all of whom already exist, three of whom you've never written for,” Cox says in a phone interview. “All of those guys have other people who wrote their individual shows, and he has to try and find the voice that matches what was already filmed and put on-screen. And then he's got to try and tell a story involving all four of those people that remains true to everything that's been done so far.” Complicating things further as creative work on The Defenders commenced was that neither Luke Cage nor Iron Fist had been completed. “Marvel had a sense of all the threads that would need to be picked up from Iron Fist,” Ramirez says. “I think Luke Cage was in the process where they were still writing the last couple of episodes, so the writers for The Defenders got to see the first couple of episodes of Luke Cage before they came out, so they

got a good sense of who Mike [Colter] was, how Luke sounded, and what his world was.” Since all of the shows work out of New York City, it allows everyone to remain in touch. In particular, Ramirez struck up a friendship with Luke Cage showrunner Cheo Coker, who helped him keep Luke and Misty Knight’s voices consistent. Ramirez describes it as “all making stuff from the same DNA.” There’s also a lot of continuity with members of the camera and production teams, many of whom have worked on multiple Marvel Netflix shows. “They're very familiar with the world, they're very familiar with the system, and they’re very familiar with the secrecy of how we have to shoot in New York,” Ramirez says. To give you an idea of how much is shared between these productions, Jones once stepped out of his Brooklyn apartment and found himself, completely accidentally, on the set of Jessica Jones Season 2, surrounded by many of the same crew he had just finished working with on The Defenders and Iron Fist. This consistency appears to be paying off. What’s immediately striking in those first two episodes is how true they are to the tone of each hero's individual show. “Ideally, I feel like we're carrying over everybody's stories into the next chapter,” Ramirez says. “So this should also feel like Luke Cage season 1.5 and Jessica Jones season 1.5 to a certain degree.” “By the time we got into The Defenders, it was very much an equal playing field,” Cox says. “We were all given a similar amount

of material, similar storylines. We got on fantastically well, the four of us. There was no feeling at any point that any of us are more or less important than the others. It never felt like I've been there the longest. At least, it didn't for me.”

The show is in no hurry to bring the team together early on, and that’s by design. After all, it’s relatively easy to assemble the Avengers in the Marvel Cinematic Universe when there’s already a government agency with jurisdiction over things like super soldiers, thunder gods, and billionaire inventors. It’s a little harder to find reasons to put a blind lawyer, a super strong private eye, a bulletproof ex-con, and a mystical martial artist in the same room. Ramirez admits it took “a couple of months” to figure out the right way to do it. “One of the first things I think I knew was that we had to take our time,” Ramirez tells me. “One of the great benefits of working on a Netflix show is, because they release all the episodes at the same time, there's the ultimate promise to the audience to just stay with us, we'll get to the stuff you came for. It really felt like we could use the format as a way to tell the story really organically.” The strong voices of each of the characters presented its own challenges. “Jessica Jones has so much agency, Luke Cage has such a drive, Matt Murdock is so complicated,” Ramirez says. “Everyone's just so unique. It DEN OF GEEK.COM 35

just felt wrong to get them all on the same page and not make that part of the story.” What brings these characters, who might not play well with others, together? “I think one of the great things about these shows is you meet superheroes who are kind of lonely,” Cox says. “They don't fit into the world. They feel like freaks of nature. And they're ashamed about what they're doing in many ways, as well as recognizing the importance of it. You have four people who have absolutely no interest in being part of a team but who are forced into a situation where they have to work together, and from a human point of view that is really interesting.” “I would say Jessica [ Jones] is there reluctantly, and she seizes every opportunity to say so,” Ritter says of her character, “Which lends itself to some laughs for sure! At the end of the day, her participating in the Defenders roller coaster is reluctant but also her moral responsibility. Even though she often has such contempt for her abilities, JJ is still a powered person and she knows she can help. And if put to the test, she freaking will. Which is what I love so much about her.” Comics fans will note that there are natural pairings between the four heroes, and those will all be represented on-screen. Matt Murdock and Jessica Jones have a unique friendship in the comics, and they share some fun moments in the first trailer for the series. “The highlight of The Defenders for me is working with Krysten Ritter,” Cox says. “I think she's a phenomenal actor and an incredibly inspirational human being; she's a real go-getter; she's a master of many trades. I'm not traditionally very funny, so it was really fun for me to try to explore being funny, and she's knockout funny every time. It was really fun to try exchanging witticisms with Krysten on a regular basis. And I'm pretty sure—I haven't seen the show yet—but I'm pretty sure she wins most of the banters.” “Charlie Cox is one of my favorite humans on the planet,” Ritter writes via email. “We have similar acting processes and working styles on-set… He and I would always look out for each other, share ideas, brainstorm how to make moments deeper, funnier, you name it. That's really the case with all of us in the entire cast. I loved our scenes together, because these are two strong, loner characters who don't really look for, ask for, or accept help. It was kind of a game of feeling each other out and really earning each other's trust.” The more well-known pairing, of course, is Luke Cage and Danny Rand, who have a long history of co-headlining comics like Power Man and Iron Fist and Heroes for Hire. Their few minutes together in the first two episodes of The Defenders, however, show a more difficult start for that particular friendship. “I love Mike [Colter]. He's a great guy,” 36 DEN OF GEEK ■ SAN DIEGO COMIC-CON

Jones says. “We get on really well together as actors, but also as the characters, there's some really good chemistry there. I think we're kind of blessed that we get on with each other so well.” While the actors get along, the characters are another story, and the reason this particular friendship takes time is all in what we already know about them. “There's friction there at the beginning, and it's pretty obvious because we come from two different worlds,” Jones says. “Luke Cage is from the streets. And he's trying to do good. He cares about community, he cares about lifting the bottom up whereas Danny comes from a completely different side of New York, one of privilege, power, and money. And so when they come together, they definitely have a clash of ideals which, throughout The Defenders, they are coming to grips with.” Don’t worry. As you might expect, it sounds like they eventually work it out. “I think what holds them together, despite their huge differences, is that on a base level, they are just two men who are outsiders who have these powers and this responsibility but are totally lost,” Jones says. “And through that lost-ness, and that vulnerability, I think they see a real kindred friendship within one another. And I think the way that Marvel has written the beginning of this friendship, it feels very real. It feels like it comes from a very genuine place. I'm really excited to see where that friendship develops after The Defenders because I think it lays the groundwork for some really interesting story developments over time.”

In addition to making sure that the characters can work together, there are also story threads from four different shows that need to be developed. Luckily, Ramirez, who wrote and co-wrote a number of Defenders episodes, had considerable freedom to shape the team’s story. “Marvel didn't have story specifics in terms of what needed to happen in The Defenders,” he tells me. “It was more like opening a curtain and saying, ‘This is what's happening on these other shows because you absolutely need to know.’” Ramirez points out that The Defenders picks up “weeks to a couple of months” after the final episode of Iron Fist, and it shows Danny and Colleen Wing fully engaged in their quest to take down mystical ninja clan the Hand. Since the Hand were established as the primary villains on both seasons of Daredevil, you can see the connections between these series start to form within the first few minutes, even before the characters have met. This will get more difficult when it comes to Luke Cage and Jessica Jones. “Danny Rand and Matthew Murdock have experience with these people, with the Hand,” Cox says. “So the story for them is already

personal. It's up to Danny and Matt to explain who these people are [to Luke Cage and Jessica Jones], because they've never even heard of them… They're the ones that have to go on the journey of disbelief through to ‘holy shit.’ If someone says there's an ancient evil organization who are capable of destroying an entire civilization, it's very easy for someone like Jessica Jones to say ‘Okay, good luck with that.’” When you’re talking about superhero crossovers, whether it’s on the page or screen, it’s a fair assumption that there’s going to be a certain amount of escalation. But The Defenders is the culmination of four shows that pride themselves on keeping their superheroics street level. It may be the same New York City that was ravaged by the special effects extravaganza of 2012’s The Avengers, but that kind of action would feel out of place here. “We don’t fight in the sky on this show,” Ramirez assures me. “To a certain degree, sure, it gets a little bit bigger as it opens. But in terms of spectacle and scale, these are really character-centered shows and really grounded ones. And so, you know, the biggest things that might happen in later episodes are the characters making big decisions.” Even in the first two episodes, you can see those “big decisions” coming into play. Matt Murdock has apparently hung up his red suit to focus on defending the innocent in court rather than the streets, but a mysterious turn of events sends him out to the rooftops and alleys of Hell’s Kitchen for some non-costumed, extra-curricular activity. “I've always wanted the show to feel like the emotional impact of what happens to the characters is relatable,” Cox says of the show’s charac-

“I FEEL LIKE WE'RE CARRYING OVER EVERYBODY'S STORIES INTO THE NEXT CHAPTER.” - MARCO RAMIREZ

ter-driven nature. “It really is terrifying. It should feel really scary. And it should feel painful, emotionally as well as physically, what these characters go through. I don't think the shows ever want to glamorize violence.” “It wasn't always about special effects, spectacles, and big bombastic fight scenes,” Ramirez says. “Sometimes, it was just about moments you know that the audience have been waiting for that we would finally give them in the last couple of episodes. You know, a certain team-up or a certain nod to the comics in a big way that people may have been waiting for for several seasons. That felt just as big as something practically big, like cars exploding or stuff getting thrown around.”

Simply uniting the Defenders would have been a perfect way to close out NYCC’s Saturday, the night when comic cons traditionally reach their peak. Fans would have gone home happy, journalists would have had their headlines, and the cast and crew would have known they made their mark. But Marvel still had their special guest villain to announce. So when Sigourney Weaver walked out onto that stage, the atmosphere shifted to something akin to a playoff baseball game. The crowd, which had already been on its feet for several minutes, had nowhere to go but into the aisles where strangers hugged and high-fived. A chant of “holy shit,” usually reserved for pro wrestling events when someone emulates a superhuman by leaping from the top of a cage or something similarly crazy, broke out. “I myself was like, ‘Holy shit,’” Ritter recalls, “It was totally insane and amazing.” It seemed like the only sane response to the revelation that an icon like Weaver had joined the Marvel fold. Even devoted fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe will admit that, with few exceptions, the big screen villains lack a certain gravitas. That isn’t a criticism that can be leveled at their Netflix shows, which have given us standouts like David Tenant’s Kilgrave on Jessica Jones, Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk on Daredevil, and Alfre Woodard’s Mariah Dillard and Mahershala Ali’s Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes on Luke Cage. None of those characters are traditional supervillains, and all have some serious acting chops behind them. “It’s tricky to even call them villains,” Ramirez admits. “Something I noticed when working on [Daredevil] Season 1 was we never really talked about Fisk as being bad. He was just this other character who wanted another version of New York. I think you could probably say that about Cottonmouth

REOPENING ALIAS INVESTIGATIONS Krysten Ritter was deep into filming Jessica Jones Season 2 while we were conducting interviews for this article, but she was kind enough to respond to some questions via email. Q: When did you first realize what a tremendous impact your performance as Jessica was having? A: I definitely felt it once people started seeing the show, after some of the early reviews and reactions from our first New York Comic Con. And then [again], once the show was launched out into the world. It was so exciting and exceeded any expectations I could have had. I shot the show in such a bubble [with] crazy prep work and then just one day at a time. I actually wasn't allowed to see any of the cuts until after the entire season was finished. I had a sneaking suspicion that we were doing some special work, but of course you never know how everything will line up. It's been a truly wild ride. I'm so grateful to have such a good part that not only challenges me creatively but that has something to say and has made such an impact on the fans.

knowing her to the bones. So those tools and experiences were already ingrained in me. In the sense that I wasn't starting from scratch, yes, that's easier. But JJ carries a lot of emotional weight around with her as a result of her past traumas, and that doesn't go away. Q: You’ve worked with Sigourney Weaver before [on Amy Heckerling’s 2012 vampire comedy, Vamps]. What’s it like working with her this time around? A: It was so awesome to get to see Sigourney again. I simply worship her. Who doesn’t?! It turns out she was a big Jessica Jones fan and she told me that she thought it was one of the best roles of the past few years, and that just tickled me pink. Q: Your interpretation of Jessica Jones is the definitive one as far as the public is concerned. More people have seen the show than have read the comics.

A: Upon returning, I did have the luxury of

A: It's exciting to originate Jessica Jones. There's obviously more freedom in that versus playing a well known character. I'm so happy that my creative choices that were inspired by the comics and the scripts were well received. I try to just work hard and bring my best to do the character justice, and that's all I have control over.

in some capacity on Luke Cage, whereas Kilgrave is most definitely a villain.” “I really think it's just that TV is different than film, and in TV, scenes are king, not massive fights or big spectacle, or costume, or anything like that,” Ramirez says. “When I think about the things I love most about Kilgrave and Cottonmouth, it always comes down to great scenes, great monologues, great moments. We've just always been encouraged [by Netflix] to make [the villains] as complicated as possible. This is the network that gave us House of Cards. They're not interested in black-and-white villains.” You don’t see much of Weaver’s Alexandra in the first two episodes of The Defenders.

And, as expected, what we do see is the kind of serene screen presence we’ve come to expect from the actress. The understated performance makes her potential for villainy even more intriguing. “We talked about this character as a Sigourney Weaver type,” Ramirez remembers, pointing out they even kept her headshot on the wall in the writers’ room. “We never expected to get Sigourney Weaver on the line, and much less on-set. Not only has my lifelong dream come true of working with Ripley, it's also that was a character we've been talking about for so long. So really, it was one of those dream scenarios.” Of course, the villains of the other shows all

Q: Was this an easy role to slip back into after a year or so away from Jessica?

THE REDEMPTION OF DANNY RAND Danny Rand doesn’t truly embrace his heroic destiny until The Defenders.

Luke Cage (Mike Colter)

have histories that stretch back decades in the comics. So which world-famous Marvel villain is Weaver playing? “Alexandra is a character that’s—” Ramirez, who has been forthcoming and easygoing throughout our chat, hesitates as that infamous Marvel secrecy rears its head for the first time. “You know what? I can’t answer that question.”

The first two episodes of The Defenders are so methodical in their approach, so careful about establishing the relationships between the four leads and revealing the motives of its mysterious villain, that it feels about a million miles away from big screen superhero fests like Captain America: Civil War or the annual DC superhero crossover on the CW. It’s as radical a departure from the team-up concept as Daredevil or Jessica Jones are from typical superhero fare. The Defenders is built on a solid foundation but it has to accomplish superhuman feats of storytelling to

connect the dots. None of that would be possible if the characters weren’t already so distinctive. Ramirez grew up reading comics by Jeph Loeb and Joe Quesada. Loeb is now the executive vice president and head of television at Marvel TV, and Quesada is the chief creative officer of Marvel Entertainment. “You have these comic book geniuses who are legends,” he says. “So whenever they have notes on how Matt Murdock would do something, I listen real close.” But he also notes that “I'm writing for a new medium, so those conversations have been interesting and exciting in terms of [what] would work best.” Whether hero or villain, the key to these shows’ success is clearly character driven, and that’s not something that Ramirez will forget. “This is [a] kind of new realm that Netflix has given us to play in,” Ramirez says. “It's really about the characters and who the people are. The superpowers and the origins, that all comes way, way later on the importance scale, I think.”

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Iron Fist was the last of Marvel’s four solo superhero shows on Netflix to go into production. So you might think that means its star Finn Jones knew how his character would fit in The Defenders as the latter got underway. That was not the case. “They didn't tell me anything past the first two episodes of Iron Fist,” Jones says with a laugh. “That's what Marvel is like. They're very secretive. I just took it on good faith that the showrunners at Marvel were going to do me right.” Critics of Iron Fist noted how Danny’s arc felt incomplete. As it turns out, this may be by design, and Danny could be the hero who learns the most from his time with The Defenders. “At the end of Iron Fist, [Danny] doesn't even know what a superhero is,” Jones says. “So then to suddenly be interacting with these three... [They] really make him kind of wise up and come to terms with his responsibilities a lot more. From the beginning where we see Danny in Iron Fist to where he ends up in The Defenders, he has made that complete origin arc. He has shed his immature self. The idea is, in The Defenders, he has in a sense become the Iron Fist.” The only thing missing is the costume. But then again, with this particular group of characters, a costume could feel out of place. Even Daredevil, the one member of the team with traditional superhero gear, doesn’t suit up in the early episodes of The Defenders. Jones, who admits he would “love” to see Danny Rand wear the “classic yellow mask,” is coy about whether that will happen before The Defenders wraps up. “The thing with all of these shows is not that we're shy to bring the costumes,” Jones says. “It's that we want them to feel authentic when it does happen. Danny's on this journey to understanding what his responsibility is. And throughout all of [Iron Fist] Season 1, he was in no state of mind to put a suit on. That would've been ridiculous because he was not fully accomplished as the Iron Fist yet and he certainly didn't have the right or the responsibility to be putting on a superhero costume. He needs to work his shit out. And certainly by the end of The Defenders, it will feel right.”

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CLIMBING THE

DARK TOWER Director Nikolaj Arcel on adapting Stephen Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s The Dark Tower. BY DON KAYE

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many fans of King’s beloved story cycle didn’t think was possible: shooting a film adaptation of The Dark Tower. “I was a Stephen King fan since I could read English,” Arcel says when we speak on the phone just a few weeks out from The Dark Tower’s Aug. 4 release. “I didn’t learn to read English until I was in my very early teens, but I started actually reading Stephen King novels in English because I was so caught up in them. He kind of taught me a lot of the written language. I think I was maybe 17 when I read The Gunslinger [the earliest novel in The Dark Tower series] the first time. Since I read that, I was totally hooked, so I’ve been a lifelong fan of The Dark Tower saga for 25 years or something like that.” Years after first reading the books and with his own career well underway, Arcel remained a fan while the cinematic Dark Tower went through its torturous development. “I’ve always been following it, reading about the adaptations and hearing, ‘Oh, now this guy’s doing it, and now they’re trying it again,’” he recalls. “I always thought it was going to be extremely hard to adapt the series to a film but when I then read the first script by Akiva Goldsman, I went, ‘Wow, actually this works in a very interesting way.’ It combined elements from several of the novels while still staying true to it being the first part of a longer saga. I thought, ‘This is actually something that would satisfy me as a fan.’ That’s why I actually got really excited and interested, and fought to get it.” As Arcel notes, the script for The Dark Tower does not exclusively follow the storyline of The

SUPPLEMENTARY READING The Dark Tower series connects many of Stephen King’s most famous novels and stories into one multiverse of heroes and monsters. Check out these King novels if you want a bigger picture: • Salem’s Lot • The Stand • The Talisman/Black House • IT • The Eyes of the Dragon • Insomnia • Hearts in Atlantic • Everything’s Eventual: “Everything’s Eventual”; “The Little Sisters of Eluria” • Desperation • The Regulars • Rose Madder • UR

IMAGES: SONY/ILZE KITSHOFF

ust as the monolithic structure that provides its title is the nexus of all reality, Stephen King’s The Dark Tower is considered the center of the legendary author’s entire literary output. Consisting of eight novels and one novella—but with references embedded in many of King’s other works—it’s the story of Roland Deschain, the last in a line of warrior-knights known as “gunslingers” who live in an alternate universe called Mid-World. Roland’s world is slowly decaying or “running down,” as demons, monsters, and sentient machines run rampant. His only hope is to find the Dark Tower at the center of all universes and stop it from being toppled by a malevolent being known as the Crimson King. The idea of bringing The Dark Tower to the screen has been around for years, initially under the purview of J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot company, which eventually abandoned the project and let the rights revert back to King. The rights were then picked up by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, who spent a decade developing the film under their Imagine production company banner. After Howard decided not to direct, he and Grazer found Danish filmmaker Nikolaj Arcel, whose credits include A Royal Affair (2012) and three other Danish-language features. Taking the original script by Akiva Goldsman and rewriting it with collaborator Anders Thomas Jensen, Arcel cast Idris Elba as Roland and Matthew McConaughey as his nemesis, the sorcerer and Crimson King agent Walter Padick (also known as the Man in Black). The director soon found himself doing something that

Left: Idris Elba stars as Roland Deschain. Top: Elba on set with director Nikolaj Arcel. Bottom: Elba’s Roland will square off with Matthew McConaughey’s The Man in Black.

Gunslinger. Instead, as Arcel and King himself have revealed in previous interviews, the movie draws upon aspects and plot points from all of the books to turn the film into a sequel of sorts to the entire eight-novel cycle. King’s story is, by its very nature, circular, meaning that the film— or films, which we’ll get to—could tell Roland’s story from the beginning, while also acknowledging that it has been told before. “For people who have never read the books, it will be a perfect introduction to the world,” Arcel explains. “As well as the characters, what the possibilities are, and what the saga is going to become. For the fans, what they will notice is that, first of all, we have taken elements from various novels. We’ve taken elements from the first one, from The Drawing of the Three, even from the third one and from the fifth and sixth one. This has been with Stephen King’s blessing because he always felt he was writing his way towards some end goal, and in order to start out the film as part of a film saga, you need to introduce some of these elements a little earlier, rather than waiting three films.” The overall tone of the movie was another challenge for Arcel, since King’s story blends elements of horror, sci-fi, magical realism, Westerns, and fantasy into one highly unique hybrid. “I wanted it to feel like I felt when I was reading The Drawing of the Three or The Waste Lands, sort of an adventurous feeling,” Arcel says. “It would probably have been fun

to say, ‘Okay, let’s do a series of films where the genre changes every single film,’ because that’s actually what Stephen King did with his novels, but that’s sort of a little bit impossible… we wanted to hit a tone and a genre for the film that was broad. It’s adventure. It has elements of all those things that the book has. It has sci-fi, it has horror, but it is an adventure and it has modern day New York in it.” The modern New York element is introduced via Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor), a boy from our world who becomes a crucial companion to Roland in his quest for the Tower. In the novels, Jake is the first member of Roland’s ka-tet, the small band of loyal, steadfast companions who join Roland on his epic journey. Although we don’t meet the other members of the ka-tet—Eddie and Susannah Dean, and the strange raccoon-like creature known as Oy—in this movie, Arcel says the ka-tet is the element of the novels he is most taken with. “What I enjoy most about stories is when there is a family dynamic that is formed,” he acknowledges, though his plans to introduce the other major characters in a second film remain vague for the moment. It all depends on how well the first movie does. “That always sort of draws me in: Strangers coming together, getting to know each other, almost becoming like a family, especially when they have to fight evil. I always loved that when I

was younger, and I still love that.” Howard and Grazer’s plan, assuming that The Dark Tower is successful enough to open the door for more movies, is an ambitious, multi-platform one. They originally mapped out three movies with two TV mini-series bridging them. With work on the movie nearly finished at the time of our conversation, Arcel informs us that he is writing the show bible and the first two scripts for the TV component, which will be based primarily on the fourth book, Wizard and Glass. “What we’re doing in the TV show is we’re showing Roland’s upbringing in Gilead,” the director explains. “It’s a little bit more high fantasy, and it’s very, very close, very faithful to the novel.” Arcel has corresponded regularly with King himself about the movie and screened it for him, soliciting opinions on the script and advice on specific elements of the story. For the filmmaker, it’s all part of his own surreal quest that began when he first read about Roland and the Tower as a teen in Denmark. “I still can’t quite wrap my head around it,” he says. “I’ll be in the middle of a scene, editing or doing something, and suddenly I’ll get an email from Stephen and I’ll suddenly just check myself. Like, is this actually happening or is this just a dream? That can be quite weird and funny, but it’s also very cool, and it’s been very natural, but of course, it’s a total fanboy dream come true.” DEN OF GEEK.COM 43

MOVIES INSIDE THE NUMBERS

THE BOX OFFICE IS

FINE, IT’S THE MOVIES THAT GOT SMALL

As summer box office dwindles, the onus should not be placed on audiences. BY DAVID CROW

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a disheartening trend for moviemakers and one that should be studied and learned from. But perhaps the solution was already gift-wrapped for studio decision-makers in 2017. Just a few short months ago, exhibitors were crowing about how brazenly successful early spring and late winter were for box office grosses. Often known as the dumping ground months for movies with little wide or critical appeal, studios are traditionally happy if a few of the more prestigious efforts that previously bowed in limited release can overperform during the months of January or February due to an Oscar nomination bump. But the first three months of 2017 saw a staggering increase in movie attendance, up 5.5 percent from 2016 and with more tickets sold than at any point in the same timeframe since 2004. In other words, the beginning of 2017 saw movie theaters’ best early-year run in over a decade. Buzzfeed noted the trend in March and wondered if it was merely political backlash— flocks of liberals rushing to a movie theater to quell their anxiety. Maybe that is the case for a few of the films that blew up with audiences, but considering things are just as dire now as they were six months ago, a more likely explanation is the actual movies themselves. As per tradition, the beginning of the year is a time for holiday blockbusters to finish mopping up while smaller fare struggles for mainstream credibility and schlock sinks after its first week-

end. All of these elements were in play too— Rogue One: A Star Wars Story earned a total of $532.2 million in the U.S. while Resident Evil and Underworld both failed to clear $35 million. And yet, an interesting thing happened in the margins. Original, medium-budgeted films that had as much appeal for adults as teens, if not more so, opened strong and then played even better while reaching a variety of audiences. Whereas the summer movie season tends to target “four-quadrant” audiences (i.e. everyone), the underlying reality is that they need to be most accessible to young moviegoers. Nevertheless, this spring saw movies that played well with differing age groups without being specifically engineered for them. On the Oscar season side, more than being critical or highbrow industry darlings, both La La Land and Hidden Figures were genuine crowd-pleasers that pursued a creative vision first. They also were expensive enough concepts that only studios, namely Lionsgate and 20th Century Fox, could afford to produce them. For their efforts, they were not only rewarded with Oscar love but were also embraced by the public. If any movie’s success was a reaction to a disappointing political season, it was likely these life-affirming zeitgeist-grabbers, one a musical fantasy in the mold of 1930s hits from yesteryear, and the other the most aspirational of biopics about three African American women overcoming institutionalized racism

IMAGE: UNIVERSAL.

he American box office is fine. Don’t panic. Feel better? You should, because it’s the truth. In recent months, a familiar narrative has taken hold of Hollywood trade and industry gossip: audience attendance and ticket receipts are down this summer. Again. Could moviegoing be dying? It’s an enticing rationalization for this seemingly annual quagmire. With the advent of peak television, social media mobilization, video games, and a myriad of other distractions for younger audiences, going to a multiplex appears increasingly antiquated. This rationale and the scapegoating of low Rotten Tomatoes review scores is often used to explain away uncomfortably soft opening weekends. For instance, these were the familiar rationalizations when The Mummy debuted with a deadly $31.7 million, a number that could haunt Universal’s Dark Universe for the rest of its franchised life. Yet during that same timeframe, Wonder Woman proved a boffo miracle, dropping a mere 41.8 percent in its second weekend and showing the kind of staying power that was thought to be a forgotten dream. By comparison, almost everything else in the early summer seemed to be doom and gloom. Take comScore’s prognosis that May (a summer month in Tinseltown) saw box office revenues drop 10 percent from what they were in 2016 and a total of 20 percent from what they were during the early beach season of 2015. It’s

to help NASA succeed in the space race. La La Land made $151 million and Hidden Figures earned $169 million domestically. Neither cost more than $30 million to produce. That’s a budget out of reach for most independent efforts, and something Hollywood has likewise become recalcitrant with in recent years. Meanwhile, supposedly niche genre offerings turned into nine-figure earners in North America. Conventional wisdom would suggest these types of runs are unusual, but not when they’re derived from the quality of Split ($138 million) and Get Out ($176 million), both of which Blumhouse Productions spent less than $10 million to produce. Each also featured top-notch talent in front of and behind the camera with Split benefitting from M. Night Shyamalan’s compelling screenplay and a feast of scenery for James McAvoy to chew on; then Jordan Peele’s Get Out more ambitiously challenged audiences (even those supposedly aggrieved liberal ones) on hot button social issues in a clever and entertaining way. None of these movies cater to the same broad audience, yet all of them found plenty of box office dollars in a moviegoing era that is now drowning in summer tentpole sameness. All that crossed the $100 million threshold in the U.S. differed from their peers. The first non-Star Wars tentpole targeted a decidedly older and mostly female demographic—Fifty Shades Darker. Beauty and the Beast, meanwhile,

granted Disney another $500 million-earner in the U.S. And like La La Land, it was a musical and thus considered a niche genre. Also similar to La La Land, Beauty and the Beast sets up no prequels, sequels, or shared universes. Rather, it gives a definitive, satisfying story. Logan remains, though, the most striking of the traditional 2017 blockbusters. From its inception, it was intended to be contrarian with its extreme violence and language. But in addition to these blue flourishes was the surprising realization that this was not necessarily a sequel or part of a larger universe; it was a hopelessly nihilistic standalone Western about mortality. James Mangold has repeatedly, and explicitly, explained in the press how his blood-splattered anti-superhero movie was liberated to make something of a higher ambition simply by not trying to appeal to everyone else or by jumping on the industry’s bandwagons. In one interview

"THE BEGINNING OF 2017 SAW MOVIE THEATERS’ BEST EARLY-YEAR RUN IN OVER A DECADE."

with Rolling Stone, he even admitted that the biggest appeal of making it R-rated was not getting any more pressure about simplifying the storytelling. “The movie suddenly never gets another note aimed basically at making sure the plot is decipherable for a nine-year-old,” the director confided. Again, this does not mean you cannot make good films that appeal to all ages. Beauty and the Beast is a standalone cultural juggernaut and Wonder Woman has been a runaway success. The latter is also fairly unique for a modern blockbuster, harkening back to the grand adventure stories in the mold of Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie and Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. Even a superhero movie can still be refreshing with the right directorial hand in this age of endless repetition. In contrast to Patty Jenkins’ marvelous affection for Wonder Woman, The Mummy appeared to be part of a marketing strategy. It was a finished film that’s as emotionally heartfelt as the Dark Universe press announcement that preceded it; seemingly little more than a studio raiding its ancient IPs to find something that can compete in this modern marketplace of shared universes. Does it matter that the Universal Monsters haven’t been seriously attempted in years or that none were originally conceived as action spectacles? In theory, it wasn’t supposed to. It was supposed to be good business. These mistakes of codified brands trying to be passed off as must-see, four-quadrant films have been repeated throughout the summer. Look no further than Warner Bros.’ May release of King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. Like The Mummy, WB tried to produce a movie that appeals to everyone (or no one) by mismatching a dozen ideas in the hopes of getting many more sequels and spinoffs. Guy Ritchie and the studio previously aimed to build up to six movies dedicated to Arthur. After all, this is now a superhero origin story, complete with copious amounts of CGI and PG-13 super-powered smackdowns. That’s what audiences want, right? Judging by how King Arthur has failed to clear $40 million domestically, I would say not. And when accompanied in a season of franchises in their fifth or sixth installments, and without an ounce of resolution or finality among them, it becomes a blur of franchise-building nausea. This does not mean the box office or moviegoing is in trouble. To the contrary, this past spring showed a cornucopia of options that appealed to horror fans, biopic lovers, musical romantics, erotica enthusiasts, older action fans craving some finality and drama with their superheroics, and even all ages for a tale as old as time. As it turns out, an interest in moviegoing is just as enduring. So as the studios retreat into the supposed “sure thing” of summer tentpoles, perhaps Steven Spielberg’s previous warnings about an industry implosion for this type of over-budgeted blockbuster moviemaking has more bite? Or to paraphrase a different, fictional screen legend, interest in going to the movies is big; it’s the pictures that got small. DEN OF GEEK.COM 45

DEAR HOLLYWOOD: OP-ED DIVERSITY WORKS

Why hasn’t Hollywood learned its lesson when it comes to whitewashing? BY MELANIE SCHMITZ

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The argument that diversity doesn’t sell has long been touted as the reason many films and TV shows stick to the tried and true white faces audiences know best. Proponents of that model claim that economics are the driving force behind every decision. But recent blockbuster successes should serve as proof to showrunners and directors everywhere that this simply isn’t the case. “The Fast and Furious franchise has repeatedly demonstrated that global audiences already embrace films with multicultural casts united as an onscreen family. And yet, Hollywood persists in thinking white equals box office might,” explains Craig Detweiler, Professor of Communication at Pepperdine University. “Hopefully, the resistance to the whitewashing of Ghost in the Shell can cure the studios of what ails them.” The numbers don’t lie. Ghost in the Shell raked in a total global haul of $170 million as of this writing. That might seem like a decent number, but given its global projections and the fact that it spent around $250 million in production, print, and advertising costs, according to Deadline, it’s a pricey blunder. In contrast, The Fate of the Furious—the franchise’s eighth

IMAGES: MURRAY CLOSE / NETFLIX / PHOTOFEST

ver the past few years, there have been a number of promising starts in Hollywood’s efforts for more diverse representation—films and television series like Rogue One, Luke Cage, and the recently cancelled Sense8 have been a welcome break from the regular slate of homogeneous time-fillers. But for every step in the right direction, a spate of controversial whitewashing decisions seems to follow close behind, often hindering (or at least perceived by some to have hindered) the projects' financial success. Production companies and executives are learning the lesson the hard way. When Rupert Sanders’ controversial Ghost in the Shell bet big on well-known white actress Scarlett Johansson to fill the shoes of a Japanese character (or at least a character that many have long assumed is Japanese)—“Major” or Motoko Kusanagi—the film was hammered at the box office, losing an estimated $60 million. Some argued that Ghost in the Shell’s box office failure was a result of backlash against the perceived whitewashing—a protest by those who had hoped to see a non-white take on a beloved anime series. Whatever the reality, the film industry continues to flounder under the weight of its own decision-making. It’s too risky to be diverse, and too risky not to be. Or so Hollywood studios seem to believe.

Left: Miguel Ángel Silvestre, Toby Onwumere, and Bae Doona of Netflix’s Sense8. Above: Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out.

installment since 2001—pulled in a whopping $1.197 billion overall within the first month of its release, give or take a few days. Its production budget was around $250 million. “Execs need to place more faith in filmgoers’ sensitivity to what’s true to the story and the diverse times we’re living in,” Detweiler says. Pointing to the success of films like Jordan Peele’s Get Out, which focuses on a young interracial couple, he adds, “Our colorful era deserves more imaginative casting decisions. Otherwise, studios may discover that audiences have decided to ‘Get Out’ of the movie theater.” While it was made on a budget of $4.5 million, Get Out—a thriller about a young black man who discovers that his white girlfriend’s family is hiding a dark secret—went on to achieve both critical success and a $245 million worldwide box office reward. Get Out may not have been an intentional blockbuster like The Fate of the Furious, but with its cast of minority actors and writer-director Jordan Peele behind the wheel, it too served as an important reminder to the rest of Hollywood that giving diversity a platform can literally pay off. Had Ghost in the Shell producers witnessed the phenomenon that was Get Out prior to making the decision to cast Johansson, would they have done things differently? It’s hard to tell. If booming franchises like Fast and the Furious weren’t enough to convince them, it’s unlikely a small-budgeted project like Peele’s surprise horror masterpiece would have done anything to convince them their strategy was flawed. Arguably though, it is those one-off hits, those indie films, and those underdog shows with a wide range of talent that will, going forward, alter the landscape the most. The impact they have may not be immediately apparent to studio execs, but slowly and surely they’re proving that a whitewashed cast with gleaming accolades isn’t nearly as lucrative as betting on a diverse, talented team to win over audiences. The film industry isn’t alone in its struggle. In early 2016, rumors began circulating that Marvel was floating the idea of casting then-27-year-old Game of Thrones actor, Finn Jones, in the lead role for its upcoming Netflix series, Iron Fist. Though the character, Danny Rand, was originally a white male in the comics as well, fans and critics alike argued that showrunners would be wise to instead cast an Asian lead. “A casting reversal would have turned a stereotypical narrative into a fresh story about an Asian-American reclaiming his roots,” Vulture’s E. Alex Jung wrote in an interview with Lewis Tan, a half-Asian (on his father’s side) and half-British (on his mother’s side) martial arts expert and actor who read for the role. (Tan was eventually cast as a villain in one episode and stole the spotlight with his portrayal of drunken assassin Zhou Cheng.) It certainly would have been a refreshing change of pace. Up until that point, Marvel, DC, and a slate of other studios had been rightly criticized

“IGNORING MINORITIES TO ENSURE A PRESUMED BOOST IN SALES PROJECTIONS MAY WORK FOR A TIME, BUT IN THE LONG RUN, IT WILL ONLY COME BACK TO HAUNT YOU.” for whitewashing roles meant for minority actors: Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One in Doctor Strange, Liam Neeson as Ra’s al Ghul in the rebooted Batman series, and Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness, to name a few. When Marvel finally announced that Jones had officially been cast as the series lead, the backlash was swift. Choosing a white actor to play a white role was understandable. But as Tan himself told Vulture, the casting decision felt like a “missed opportunity,” especially in an era when minority roles were already scarce. There was some glimmer of hope in the show’s secondary lead, Jessica Henwick. Henwick, who plays martial arts master Colleen Wing in both Iron Fist and The Defenders, was a breath of fresh air, and immediately became a fan favorite. But even Henwick admits it wasn’t an easy decision to sign on to the embattled project, although it was ultimately worth it, given her character’s stake in other Marvel productions. “I saw the scope of the possibilities, and that was what convinced me,” she says during a phone conversation with Den of Geek, remarking on what persuaded her to take on the challenge. “It was always Colleen that convinced me.” Critics might agree that there was little that could have saved Iron Fist. But, if nothing else, Henwick’s presence proves, once again, that there’s major value to be found in diverse casting. At some point, someone will need to step up and blast it over a loudspeaker: ignoring minorities to ensure a presumed boost in sales projections may work for a time, but in the long run, it will only come back to haunt you.

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THE CHURCH OF

STAR STAR WARS WARS Examining the power of pop culture as religion, the light side and the dark.

BY JOHN SAAVEDRA | ILLUSTRATION BY EMILY GLORIA MILLER

A CHURCH DIVIDED Strip away what Star Wars did for science fiction, blockbuster cinema, and special effects, and what’s left is the franchise’s most important legacy: its community of fans. The secret to why so many people from different walks of life connect with Star Wars is simple. Its very foundation is built on archetypes that go back thousands of years. The story of A New Hope is about David beating Goliath. We all want to see David in ourselves—the little guy who defeats the giant and becomes a hero. But that doesn’t mean we all rally around the same things. Since the resurgence of Star Wars-mania in the years after Disney purchased the franchise, there has been a tug of war on almost every major change, from the role of women in the saga to whether a black actor should get a starring role in a film. Even the inclusion of LGBTQ characters in the latest books has come as a shock to some. The fandom has become a bit like the saga it worships: two opposing forces with their own visions of what the galaxy far, far away should look like. While real-life politics, race relations, and the fight for gender equality intensify, Star Wars remains a progressive beacon of hope in its storytelling and representation of its vastly diverse church of fans. The religion is welcoming, accepting, helpful to those who need it, but as with all faiths, there are the extremists with the misguided notion that they own Star Wars, or that their interpretation of the story is the sole correct one. It’s a church divided.

THE LIGHT SIDE Within the halls of Celebration Orlando, the biggest gathering of Star Wars fans in the galaxy, you wouldn’t know there’s a division. Fans are in Orlando simply because they love Star Wars, whatever it may mean to them. Like Sunday mass, the crowd gathers in the lobby of the convention center as they wait for the church doors to open. Spending time with these fans makes you feel like there’s nothing wrong with the fandom at all. In fact, things might be better than they ever were. To the attendees, Star Wars is a lifelong passion, not a fleeting one. Forget the millions of children who fall in love with the saga every time Disney releases a new movie. It’s really the adults who have kept this franchise going for four decades and provide the most insight into this enormous fandom—perhaps the biggest in the galaxy, rivaled only by Trekkers and the would-be wizards dreaming of Hogwarts. The main doors of the convention center open up to somewhere far away. It’s like walking through the crowded streets of Mos Eisley for the first time: men dressed in big, furry Wookie suits; others scowling as the Sith; and, in several cases, men in gender role-subverting Slave Leia metal bikinis. Women are dressed as powerful Jedi Masters, many as Rey or Leia, but even more clad in Rebel pilot uniforms. Several people take advantage of the laissez faire dress code to dress up as sexy Ewoks: a lot of skin, a little fur, and a sharp spear. And all of these people party hard. If they’re not sitting in a tent outside of the convention center waiting for the doors to open for DEN OF GEEK.COM 49

Cosplayers dressed as stormtroopers stand in front of Milan's Duomo in celebration of Star Wars Day in May 2015.

The Last Jedi panel in two days’ time, they’re almost certainly taking part in cosplay gatherings, podcast hangouts, or going to one of the many shindigs and galas throughout the weekend. The 501st Legion, one of the biggest cosplay groups in the world, is going to throw a big party at the Hyatt Regency on Saturday night that costs $100 a head to attend and will feature a performance by “honorary member” Weird Al Yankovic. According to the invite, no food will be served, but it’s the place to be if “you’re on a liquid diet.” At a hotel bar a few blocks away from the convention center, they play the Star Wars films on loop and serve specialty drinks based on the movies, including a blue milk-inspired rum drink that’s probably not what Aunt Beru had in mind. Some attendees prefer something stronger though, like the Hennessy being consumed

by Hip Hop Trooper’s entourage. Yes, even Star Wars social media personalities have a crew willing to follow them around for the weekend. Hip Hop Trooper, whose real name is Eugene Brown, walks into a bar the night before Celebration’s opening ceremony with a squad of men and women wearing t-shirts that say “Run SWC” in homage to both this awe-inspiring gathering of fans and Brown’s favorite hip hop group, Run DMC. While Brown is not wearing his signature red Adidas-branded Stormtrooper armor or carrying his matching red boombox that first night, he’s still easily recognizable among the crowd at the bar. The Star Wars fan community has an ecosystem within itself, its own stars outside of the world-famous actors they worship. Brown, for example, has his own action figure that people flip for profit on eBay. That’s the

kind of fame that’s apparently afforded to folks with over 90,000 followers on Instagram. “Because my figures are on eBay, people buy them at retail and then sell them for five times as much. It’s unbelievable,” Brown says. “I look up the Vader from the day I was born and I’m worth more than him!” But despite superstardom within the community—and people really turn out for this guy’s dance routine—Brown doesn’t make a living off of being Hip Hop Trooper (although Adidas does send him the occasional swag bag). There’s something much more personal that makes him don the red armor: a tale of overcoming bullying in his native England one Star Wars action figure at a time. When he was a child, Star Wars really was a new hope. “I’ll tell you a story I’ve never told anyone,” Brown says. He remembers traveling a lot as a

HE FANDOM HAS BECOME A BIT LIKE THE SAGA IT WORSHIPS: TWO OPPOSING FORCES WITH THEIR OWN VISIONS OF WHAT THE GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY SHOULD LOOK LIKE.”

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IMAGES: FILIPPO MONTEFORTE, GUSTAVO CABALLERO, OLLIE MILLINGTON, GERARDO MORA / GETTY

Mark Hamill, Kelly Marie Tran, John Boyega and Daisy Ridley attend the Star Wars: The Last Jedi panel during the 2017 Star Wars Celebration at Orange County Convention Center on April 14, 2017 in Orlando, Florida.

kid and being bullied. There were days when Brown didn’t want to go to school at all. To cheer him up, his father would hide Star Wars figures in his son’s shoes. “I’d wake up in the morning and I’d put my shoe on, not wanting to go to school, and I’d feel—Oh! What’s this? And it would just bring me up.” Brown’s favorite figure was Boba Fett, the masked bounty hunter who is barely in the Original Trilogy at all but carries a mystique unmatched by any other character in the saga. Perhaps it was Fett’s implied man-with-no-name toughness that helped Brown cope with bullying. “The day I created Hip Hop Trooper, it was so easy because that was my life,” Brown says. “I had the hip hop culture and the hope of Star Wars.”

THE DARK SIDE There are plenty of other stories like Brown’s—tales of people finding hope in bad situations, connecting, and expressing themselves through the galaxy far, far away. There’s an ownership that fans feel for this saga, especially now that the franchise has switched hands from a sole creator to a new group of storytellers. When George Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney, big-name fans like J.J. Abrams, Gareth Edwards, Rian Johnson,

and Dave Filoni took on the responsibility of expanding the universe and moving it forward. While this ownership often translates into beauty—whether it’s a billion-dollar blockbuster premiere at Mann’s Chinese Theater or something on a smaller, more intimate scale, like the people getting Star Wars tattoos in a buzzing corner of a convention center—there’s also a dark side to feeling like something belongs solely to a specific group of people. A sort of exclusivity is born in the most hardcore echelons of fandom. In one such instance, a group of angry fans declared “spoiler jihad” on The Force Awakens after Disney erased much of the franchise’s old continuity, doing away with elements of beloved Star Wars books and comics from the 1990s and 2000s to accommodate the new movie. Their objective? To ruin the movie for as many people as possible. Angie Lewis, one of the fans getting fresh ink at Celebration Orlando’s Tattoo Pavilion (a little BB-8 on her shoulder), recognizes the issues with certain subsections of the community. “There are people who come around and they’ll be like, ‘Oh, you’re not a real fan.’ Not specifically to me, but I don’t like it when people say that at all. Because if you like it, you’re a real fan, right?” That rationale should make perfect sense, and while Lewis has ultimately found the community to be welcoming (many others share this sentiment), it’s no secret that it’s sometimes difficult to be a certain kind of Star Wars fan, whether it’s because of who you are or what you think. The last few years have seen widespread backlash against the push for more diversity in fantasy and science fiction. Disney-era Star Wars has received its fair share of criticism for casting women as the protagonists of both The Force Awakens and Rogue One. In fact, The Last

Jedi will be the third female-led Star Wars film in three years. Some fans have even willfully interpreted this as a plot to make Star Wars “anti-male.” These are the same people who feel that their childhoods have been stolen from them, replaced by a “social justice warrior agenda.” The idea that Star Wars is primarily a boys’ club is usually planted at a young age, such as in the case of Katie Goldman, a little girl who was bullied at school for liking something that’s “only for boys.” Her story went viral after her mother Carrie blogged about how Katie no longer wanted to like Star Wars because of the bullying. There have been several documented cases like Katie’s, where girls are mocked solely on the basis that Star Wars “isn’t for them.” Many of these stories have heartwarming endings with the community rushing to their aid, reassuring them that the things they love are for them and anyone else who wants in. The 501st Legion even gifted Katie and two other girls in similar situations with custom-made stormtrooper costumes and, in one case, a meeting with Weird Al, who somehow keeps popping up. The side in favor of diversity has its clear champions. Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, for one, hopes more women will be involved in the actual making of the films. “Fifty percent of our executive team are women. Six out of eight of the people in my Story Group are women. I think it’s making a huge difference in the kind of stories we’re trying to tell,” Kennedy told Fortune back in 2015. “I’m confident we will eventually hire a woman who directs a Star Wars movie.” As of right now, all of the directors hired for the new movies have been white men. Of course, for every Kennedy, there is someone lying in wait in internet comment sections, making ridiculous statements about DEN OF GEEK.COM 51

IKE SUNDAY MASS, THE CROWD GATHERS IN THE LOBBY OF THE CONVENTION CENTER AS THEY WAIT FOR THE CHURCH DOORS TO OPEN.”

how “women can’t survive in space,” referring to Rey, the protagonist of The Force Awakens. And then there are the accusations that Rey is a “Mary Sue,” an overpowered character who is too perfect, too capable. It’s disheartening when you consider that these fans worship the same franchise that gave birth to Princess Leia, a character who was revolutionary at a time when many of her sci-fi contemporaries were still oversexualized damsels. Of course the late, great Carrie Fisher faced her own challenges from these fans, the same ones who perhaps also took part in body shaming the older General Leia in The Force Awakens. “Please stop debating about whether or not I aged well,” was her perfect retort on Twitter. “Unfortunately, it hurts all three of my feelings. My body hasn’t aged as well as I have. Blow us.” Fisher’s advice to Daisy Ridley upon being cast as Rey in The Force Awakens echoed the older actresses’ attitude toward Princess Leia’s status as a sex symbol: “You should fight for your outfit,” she told

Hip Hop Trooper is a nerd convention mainstay, usually blasting music on his signature red boombox.

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Ridley during a Q&A for Interview magazine, specifically referencing her Slave Leia costume from Return of the Jedi. “Don’t be a slave like I was.” Fisher never saw that infamous metal bikini as something to be sexualized. To Fisher that costume and the scenes it pertains to symbolize both a literal and metaphorical breaking of the chains of misogyny. She was practical about those who criticized the costume as a bad influence on little girls. When confronted by the disapproval of parents, Fisher told The Wall Street Journal, “Tell them that a giant slug captured me and forced me to wear that stupid outfit, and then I killed him because I didn’t like it. And then I took it off. Backstage.” In the last three years, Star Wars films have certainly become more inclusive of women. The Last Jedi, for example, boasts at least five female characters: Rey, Leia, Captain Phasma, Rose (played by Kelly Marie Tran), and Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo, a high-ranking Resistance officer portrayed by Academy Award-winning actress Laura Dern. Better yet, a woman now pilots the Millennium Falcon, arguably the most well-known spaceship in all of science fiction. It’s comforting to know that the films are starting to live up to the promise of its more diverse Expanded Universe of TV series, books, comics, and video games. For years, the EU has featured great female characters, such as Mara Jade, Jaina Solo, Asajj Ventress, and Ahsoka Tano, and in recent years has pushed for the inclusion of more LGBTQ characters as well. Of course, the introduction of LGBTQ characters has also been met with criticism from the more conservative corners of the fandom. When Star Wars: Aftermath author Chuck Wendig introduced a former Imperial Officer (and therefore a white man) named Sinjir Rath Velus in Star Wars: Aftermath, it struck a particular nerve. While Sinjir isn’t the first gay character in Star Wars canon—that honor goes to Imperial officer Moff Delian Mors, a lesbian, who first appeared in the novel Lords of the Sith by Paul S. K`emp—he is currently the franchise’s most prominent. Wendig came to the defense of Sinjir and LGBTQ fans in an uncharacteristically direct and confrontational manner with a blog post after the release of Aftermath in 2015. “And if you’re upset because I put gay characters and a gay protagonist in the book, I got nothing for you,” Wendig wrote. “You’re not the Rebel Alliance. You’re not the good guys. You’re the fucking Empire, man. You’re the shitty, oppressive, totalitarian Empire. If

you can imagine a world where Luke Skywalker would be irritated that there were gay people around him, you completely missed the point of Star Wars.” The outrage surrounding Aftermath was nothing compared to what followed a year later, only days before the release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. A group of fans rushed to Twitter, determined to boycott the new movie. #DumpStarWars was born in response to a pair of tweets posted by screenwriters Chris Weitz and Gary Whitta in which they asserted that the films were anti-white supremacist. “Please note that the Empire is a white supremacist (human) organization,” wrote Weitz. Gary Whitta’s reply: “Opposed by a multi-cultural group led by brave women.” Many took this to mean that the film was anti-Donald Trump. While Star Wars’ anti-fascist, anti-xenophobic message has always been clear to some—including Lucas, who used Nazi imagery and language to inform the Empire’s units—there’s a group of people that gleaned a completely different message from Star Wars. #DumpStarWars wasn’t even the first time a group of fans have threatened to #BoycottStarWars. In 2015, Twitter trolls urged people to boycott The Force Awakens because of a black actor’s prominence in the film. According to The Guardian, one troll even claimed that actor John Boyega’s casting in the film was promoting “white genocide.” At one point, even the Chinese promotional poster for The Force Awakens came under scrutiny after it allegedly minimized Boyega’s role to appeal to the country’s audience. “I’m in the movie, what are you going to do about it?” Boyega told V magazine in response to the blatantly racist remarks. “You either enjoy it or you don’t. I’m not saying get used to the future... [it] is already happening. People of color and women are increasingly being shown onscreen. For things to be whitewashed just doesn’t make sense.” As you meet members of the fan community, you’ll find the majority are glad that the franchise represents more than one group of people. There’s a solidarity in the crowd at Celebration Orlando. These fans are just happy to be with other people who love what they love. Star Wars is no longer “The Great White Void,” as actor Raymond St. Jacques put it in a letter to the LA Times in July 1977. For those who have missed the entire point of Star Wars, there must be a growing fear that time has passed them by, that their complaints will someday be completely forgotten. No opening crawl will tell their story.

Cosplayers dressed as Aayla Secura and Darth Talon from Star Wars on Day 2 of Birmingham MCM Comic Con.

THE UNIFYING FORCE Despite the obvious fracture in the fandom, Celebration Orlando’s confrontations are all for show. A group of more than 50 Rebel pilots reenact the huddle before the Battle of Hoth, while the 501st Legion’s stormtroopers and Imperial officers block the corridors outside the expo floor like true oppressors. Soldiers salute each other in the hallways, an Imperial smiles while referring to another group of cosplayers as “Rebel scum.” Jedi and Sith are tempted to break into an epic duel of the fates, but they know they’ll probably get escorted out by security. Everyone at Celebration Orlando is perfectly happy, sharing the love of the timeless story that brings them all together. Yet there’s something somber hanging over everyone’s head, especially on Thursday and Friday. It’s the first Celebration without our princess. During a beautiful tribute to Fisher at the “40 Years of Star Wars” panel, many sob quietly. In that moment, Leia isn’t just a woman or a senator, a soldier or a leader. Maybe not even a character. She’s a symbol of hope. Everyone feels it in the room as John Williams conducts the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra in a rendition of “Princess Leia’s Theme.” Leia will always represent the spirit to be better, to fight for your beliefs, and to persist in the face of adversity. As voice actress Vanessa Marshall put it during the Rebels news conference later that weekend, “We have hope. There’s something

about that that I think we all need right now.” It’s at this same conference that many of the faithful gather to listen to Dave Filoni, arguably the most brilliant mind working on Star Wars since Lucas essentially left the keys to him and Kathleen Kennedy. Now with three seasons of Rebels under his belt, Filoni is his own kind of celebrity. At one point, Filoni is surrounded by ravenous fans in the lobby of the convention center. They don’t let him get through to the escalators. They want to shake his hand, take pictures, touch his hat, touch him. He greets as many people as he can before security finally splits the crowd right through the middle. From the top floor looking down, people call eagerly for their loved ones to come look, see the man who inherited Star Wars, before he’s gone. Just prior to this, Filoni, archbishop of Star Wars, shares what he’s learned about these stories, what he understands them to be about. A group of reporters at the Rebels news conference listen to the showrunner evangelize about the ultimate truth of the Force: “Belief in the Force itself is part of what drives it,”says Filoni. “Not everybody in the Star Wars universe believes in it, which is interesting because its actions and abilities are on display quite often. So why doesn’t everybody believe in it? Because it takes discipline and training and practice, and commitment and faith to believe in this thing that gives you power that flows through you. It’s in all of you. And that’s great and it’s also dangerous.”

It feels like he’s no longer talking about Star Wars but of our current times, of the choices for which we will be remembered. Will future generations, 50 years from now, a hundred, look back on us, on our world, and conclude that we got it all wrong? Will they be better? Filoni is trying to save all of us now, while we can still course correct. As Anakin proved in Return of the Jedi, it’s never too late for that. It’s goodness the long way around. “It’s the ultimate choice: do you follow wickedness or do you, in the face of fear, turn to good? Fear is the root of all evil. Fear destroys everything,” he says. “And if you take nothing else from Star Wars, it’s that you should make no decision out of fear.” Filoni is almost whispering now. He’s thought about every single word of this gospel. His message is one of love, a reminder that when “the Emperor stands before you” and you feel “powerless,” you have to remember to “throw your weapon away.” The gathered are in a trance. “I love the person next to me. I love my father, I love my mother, and nothing you do can destroy that. Nothing. And you stand on your commitment. And then that inspires the hope, that inspires the love, which is something evil doesn’t understand. That’s the core of Star Wars.” There’s an overwhelming silence. A room full of quiet consideration. Maybe for a fraction of a second, the power of the Force. And then all of his followers break into enthusiastic applause. DEN OF GEEK.COM 53

COMICS THE EISNER AWARDS

THE BEST OF THE

EISNER AWARDS The Eisner Awards, comics’ most prestigious honor, are handed out at San Diego Comic-Con, and as always there are plenty of deserving honorees. We picked our favorites from a handful of the categories.

BY JIM DANDY

BEST CONTINUING SERIES

BEST SHORT STORY

Astro City by Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson VERTIGO/DC

The Comics Wedding of the Century by Simon Hanselmann in We Told You So: Comics as Art FANTAGRAPHICS

Kill or Be Killed by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips IMAGE The Mighty Thor by Jason Aaron and Russell Dauterman MARVEL Paper Girls by Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang IMAGE

City is experiencing something of a reOUR TAKE Astro vival. Critics are saying it’s as good or better

than it’s ever been. If nothing else, Astro City is due for some kind of “lifetime achievement” recognition. It has been a delight for over 20 years.

Good Boy by Tom King and David Finch, in Batman Annual #1 DC Monday by W. Maxwell Prince and John Amor, in One Week in the Library IMAGE Mostly Saturn by Michael DeForge, in Island Magazine #8 IMAGE Shrine of the Monkey God! by Kim Deitch, in Kramers Ergot 9 FANTAGRAPHICS tough call between“Mostly Saturn” OUR TAKE It’sanda“Good Boy,” but you can’t go wrong

in this category.

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IMAGES: VERTIGO/DC, MARVEL, IDW/DC, BOOM!

Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples IMAGE

The Dark Nothing by Jordan Crane, in Uptight #5 FANTAGRAPHICS

DEN OF GEEK EISNER PICKS

BEST LIMITED SERIES

BEST NEW SERIES

Archangel by William Gibson, Michael St. John Smith, Butch Guice, & Tom Palmer IDW

Black Hammer by Jeff Lemire & Dean Ormston DARK HORSE

Briggs Land by Brian Wood & Mack Chater

Clean Room by Gail Simone & Jon Davis-Hunt VERTIGO/DC

DARK HORSE

Han Solo by Marjorie Liu & Mark Brooks MARVEL

Deathstroke: Rebirth by Christopher Priest, Carlo Pagulayan, et al. DC

Kim and Kim Magdalene Visaggio & Eva Cabrera BLACK MASK

Faith by Jody Houser, Pere Pérez, and Marguerite Sauvage VALIANT

The Vision by Tom King & Gabriel Walta

Mockingbird by Chelsea Cain & Kate Niemczyk MARVEL

MARVEL

Vision is one of the best, most intense OUR TAKE The comics of any genre I’ve ever read. Tom

King, Gabriel Walta, and Jordie Bellaire told a story that was like a Marvel Comics cross between Sergio Leone and American Beauty.

isn’t a single book that’s less than OUR TAKE There excellent in this entire batch. Deathstroke

is top-notch storytelling and Mockingbird was a joy to read. Black Hammer is a little different though because it’s immediately familiar, but also unlike anything we’ve seen before.

BEST WRITER

BEST ANTHOLOGY

Ed Brubaker Criminal 10th Anniversary Special, Kill or Be Killed, Velvet IMAGE

Baltic Comics Anthology š! #26: 'dADa' edited by David Schilter & Sanita Muizniece

Kurt Busiek Astro City VERTIGO/DC

Island Magazine edited by Brandon Graham & Emma Rios IMAGE

Chelsea Cain Mockingbird MARVEL

Kramers Ergot 9 edited by Sammy Harkham FANTAGRAPHICS

Max Landis Green Valley IMAGE/SKYBOUND Superman: American Alien DC

Love is Love edited by Marc Andreyko

Jeff Lemire Black Hammer DARK HORSE Descender, Plutona IMAGE Bloodshot Reborn VALIANT Brian K. Vaughan Paper Girls, Saga IMAGE was a remarkable piece of OUR TAKE Mockingbird comics storytelling all around, but the writing

KUŠ!

IDW/DC

Spanish Fever: Stories by the New Spanish Cartoonists edited by Santiago Garcia FANTAGRAPHICS is Love, written in response to the Pulse OUR TAKE Love nightclub shooting, is 128 pages of heart and

earnestness from some incredibly gifted creative teams. Giving an Eisner to Love Is Love is basically giving it to the entire industry—DC and IDW were the publishers on the spine, but Aftershock, Dynamite, and Archie all had a hand in its creation.

was particularly sharp. Chelsea Cain’s Bobbi Morse was honest, earnest, funny, smart, and badass.

DEN OF GEEK.COM 55

DEN OF GEEK EISNER PICKS

BEST PENCILLER/INKER OR PENCILLER/INKER TEAM Mark Brooks Han Solo MARVEL Dan Mora Klaus BOOM! Greg Ruth Indeh GRAND CENTRAL PUBLISHING Francois Schuiten The Theory of the Grain of Sand IDW Fiona Staples Saga IMAGE Brian Stelfreeze Black Panther MARVEL

OUR TAKE

Fiona Staples will probably win this category, and she certainly deserves it, but Dan Mora’s work on Klaus was just as inventive, and he has become one of our favorites.

BEST COLORING Jean-Francois Beaulieu Green Valley IMAGE/SKYBOUND Elizabeth Breitweiser Criminal 10th Anniversary Special, Kill or Be Killed, Velvet IMAGE Outcast by Kirkman & Azaceta IMAGE/SKYBOUND

Sonny Liew The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye PANTHEON

Laura Martin Wonder Woman DC Ragnarok IDW Black Panther MARVEL Matt Wilson Cry Havoc, Paper Girls, The Wicked + The Divine IMAGE Black Widow, The Mighty Thor, Star-Lord MARVEL

story in The Mighty Thor is crazy and OUR TAKE The weird, and Matt Wilson’s psychedelic palette

only enhances the pencils and story. He’s a gifted colorist, as you can see from the rest of his work, but he has taken Thor to an entirely new level.

BEST COVER ARTIST FOR MULTIPLE COVERS Mike Del Mundo Avengers, Carnage, Mosaic, The Vision MARVEL

BEST REALITY-BASED WORK

David Mack Abe Sapien, BPRD Hell on Earth, Fight Club 2, Hellboy and the BPRD: 1953

Dark Night: A True Batman Story by Paul Dini and Eduardo Risso VERTIGO/DC

DARK HORSE

Sean Phillips Criminal 10th Anniversary Special, Kill or Be Killed IMAGE Fiona Staples Saga IMAGE Sana Takeda Monstress IMAGE Del Mundo has been the best cover OUR TAKE Mike artist in comics for years. The reason he’s

so effective is he uses the same skill he utilizes on his stellar interiors to tell a concise story on every cover. His painting is magnificent, and he’s overdue for some recognition.

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Glenn Gould: A Life Off Tempo by Sandrine Revel NBM March (Book Three) by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell TOP SHELF Rosalie Lightning: A Graphic Memoir by Tom Hart ST. MARTIN’S Tetris: The Games People Play by Box Brown FIRST SECOND question in this category isn’t “who will OUR TAKE The win,” it’s “Why isn’t March nominated in more

categories?” The story is structured exceptionally well, but Powell’s art and lettering are the best in any comic I’ve read this decade.

VALIANT’S SECRET WEAPON It’s not every day that an Oscar-nominated screenwriter comes to comics. BY MIKE CECCHINI

ric Heisserer, who was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for 2016’s Arrival, is playing with a different kind of science fiction these days. Heisserer has written scripts for two upcoming Valiant adaptations for Sony Pictures: Bloodshot and Harbinger. He’s also writing Secret Weapons, a new comic book series about offbeat heroes with quirky powers, featuring art by Raul Allen. Heisserer spoke to Den of Geek about how he ended up working on both sides of the comics-to-screen process.

IMAGE: VALIANT ENTERTAINEMNT

Q: How did you end up writing movies and comics for Valiant? A: A couple of years ago, I was made aware that they were looking for someone to write the adaptation of Harbinger as a feature film. I fell in love with that set of books, and so I went in and pitched my heart out for that job. I managed to land that gig and just proceeded to try and find a way to make myself indispensable for other Valiant projects. I kept pitching [Valiant CEO and CCO, Dinesh Shamdasani, and Editor-in-Chief Warren Simons] other ideas for Livewire. They reminded me that there isn’t a Livewire movie, but if I wanted to write a book that featured her, we could do that. I jumped at that opportunity, because part of my personal goal is to try and do something in a non-screenwriting medium every year to improve my craft as a writer. I felt this scratched a lot of itches at once.

A: I think the way to crack that was to focus on what the story was beyond having it being a comic book movie. For Bloodshot, I saw it as a science fiction thriller, first and foremost. And if you happen to know that it was based on a comic character, then you’d have a little extra information, but you didn’t need to feel that in the narrative. Harbinger is a little different because you’re dealing with people who have powers, so that’s more of an easy jump to comic books. I feel confident that we gave it its own voice, and it really started with the idea that Pete Stanchek is basically what happens if you gave Jesse from Breaking Bad Jedi powers. Q: Why did you choose to make characters with seemingly “useless” powers the focus of Secret Weapons? A: I’d been walking through the process of what Harada uses to turn a latent into an active member of this [superhuman] community. We see what happens when it goes really

well, and you become a badass like Ion or Stronghold. But what happens when you have a power that’s not so sexy? If that goes wrong, how do you come out of that process? That gave me space to tell a story I was invested in. To be able to come back from that and learn that you are part of a community, that’s a steep calling. And who better to help with that than Livewire, who I feel is one of the most compassionate characters in the Valiant universe? Q: Even though these are “useless” powers, there’s a real compassionate tone, and nobody is treated like a joke in this story. That scene where Nicole is talking to pigeons is really kind of touching. A: Early on, I shared with Raul Allen what the pigeon is saying back so he can draw them with the proper expressions. Nicole feels that power is rather useless, but we will see her cleverly use that relationship with the birds time and again. Hopefully, as readers we’ll be like, “Hey, that’s actually kind of cool.”

Q: You’re really on the ground floor of creating not just one franchise, but a whole cinematic universe. A: I made a promise to myself just to focus on these as self-contained stories that hint at a larger world beyond it, but weren’t reliant upon that. I find it frustrating as an audience member to experience a film that constantly nods at other films or potential sequels. My goal was to make a great Harbinger script and a great Bloodshot script, and if audiences love those stories, and we were honored enough to come back and revisit those characters, great. Q: How did you try to distinguish Harbinger and Bloodshot from the competition? DEN OF GEEK.COM 57

COMICS YOU MUST READ

A TV FAN’S GUIDE TO

DC SUPERHEROES

e’ve reached that point in the summer when fans of superhero television start getting antsy. You’ve blown through a rewatch of the latest seasons of Supergirl, The Flash, Arrow, and Legends of Tomorrow, and there’s still a solid two months to wait until they’re back on your screen. This is now the perfect time to get hooked on DC Comics. Thanks to their recent Rebirth relaunch, these superhero books are now much more accessible to new readers and will keep you busy until October.

BY MIKE CECCHINI SUPERGIRL There are more entry point options for Supergirl comics than for some of the other DC characters, but Supergirl: Reign of the Cyborg Supermen by Steve Orlando, Emanuela Luppachino, and Brian Ching is probably the easiest way into Kara’s comic book world. It’s certainly the moment when things become the most recognizable to fans of the TV show, with the Danvers family and Cyborg Superman getting new, readerfriendly makeovers and the reintroduction of Cat Grant to the comics world, this time as a mentor to Kara. Your other option is to go a little further back and check out 2011’s Last Daughter of Krypton. While this is earlier in Kara’s comics history, the villain introduced in this volume, Reign, is the big bad of Supergirl Season 3. Consider this a little homework to get you through until the show returns in October.

ARROW

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THE FLASH If you’re a regular viewer of The Flash TV series, the last thing you need is an origin story, right? Good. Instead, Lightning Strikes Twice reads like a future season of the show. You already have a pretty good handle on Barry Allen and his world, and this volume gives you everything you need to navigate the comic book version, which isn’t all that different from what you get each week on the tube. Joshua Williamson and Carmine Di Giandomenico are crafting Flash stories that should feel immediately familiar to TV fans, but they also play with the entire scope of Barry Allen’s 60-year history in the DCU. Lightning Strikes Twice is the perfect gateway into the Speed Force, and introduces a powerful new villain to the mythology. We wouldn’t be surprised to see the evil Godspeed on our TV screens one of these days.

LEGENDS OF TOMORROW There has never been a Legends of Tomorrow comic that deals with the TV show’s particular group of heroes engaged in their distinctive brand of offbeat superheroics. So what’s a Legends fan to do? Time travel 30 years into DC’s past to check out Justice League International Volume 1. This isn’t your average Justice League comic. Instead, the team consists of mostly B-listers who can hardly stand each other and spend as much time bickering as they do fighting supervillains. Hilariously written by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis, and with expressive, equally fun art by Kevin Maguire, Justice League International is the spiritual ancestor of Legends of Tomorrow and a great intro to the wider DC Universe.

Arrow fans don’t need a tutorial on how Oliver Queen became Green Arrow. We’ve had five seasons of TV tell us all about that. Nevertheless, if that’s what you’re in the market for, Green Arrow: Year One by Andy Diggle and Jock is the volume that inspired the first season of the TV series. If you prefer some fully-formed superheroics, then Green Arrow: The Death and Life of Oliver Queen is for you. Green Arrow and Black Canary are finally reunited in a story that brings both characters back to basics and has plenty of the high-kicking action you’d usually tune in for. Benjamin Percy’s lively dialogue will appeal to TV fans, and the art by Juan Ferreyra and Otto Schmidt makes this one of DC’s bestlooking books right now.

The heroes united for “Invasion” on Legends of Tomorrow.

HIGH SCHOOL WILL NEVER BE THE SAME

special, as we come together to rethink American high schools. Visit XQSuperSchool.org/live to get a sneak peek at the future of education.

DEN OF GEEK.COM 59 XQ Institute and the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF) are 501(c)(3) organizations.

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Join the biggest stars in entertainment for an unforgettable, live

GAMES RETRO

How rental stores became gaming’s grindhouse BY MATTHEW BYRD

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thought would rent.” Stores like Avanti couldn’t always afford to take the risk of stocking a game that wasn’t going to rent, but sometimes the store’s owner would overestimate the popularity of a game or take a chance on a title that ultimately didn’t catch the attention of casual renters. Nevertheless, Shaw remembers that the store’s regular customers ultimately defaulted to these titles at some point. “Regulars might run out of choices in our store and would branch out to whatever was novel,” Shaw says. “If I was passionate about a title, I could usually get renters to try it by striking up a conversation while they were browsing.” Much like grindhouse films, the more offbeat games featured at rental stores were typically exploitative in some way. Many of them tried to capitalize on the popularity of a more established title and others promised an experience that mainstream titles would never deliver. More often than not, this subculture of exploitation resulted in such forgettable titles as the unfathomably bad Super Mario clone, Normy’s Beach Babe-O-Rama; Max Payne wannabe Drake of the 99 Dragons; and the shockingly violent Contra rip-off known as Doom Troopers. But occasionally, a true gem emerged from the drek of the unknown. Run-and-gun cult darling Vectorman; the 20-years-ahead-ofits-time masterpiece, Earthbound; and even the Troma Films-inspired gross-out game, Boogerman: A Pick and Flick Adventure, found their way into the hands of many gamers by virtue of being the last titles available on a Friday night. More importantly, the rental store offered a safe space from the fears that once crippled the industry during the great video game crash of 1983, which was caused by a flood of subpar titles from companies looking to make a quick buck. At a time when video games were still thought of as a fad, major companies ranging from Atari to Fairchild Semiconductors designed their own consoles and games in the hopes of getting in before the bubble burst. Mainstream retail outlets were

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he spirit of grindhouse cinema isn’t based on aesthetics; it’s about discovery. Theater owners who opened their doors during the Hollywood Golden Age found themselves in an unstable market by the time the ‘60s and ‘70s rolled around. Instead of closing up shop, they began screening the kinds of films “legitimate” theaters wanted nothing to do with. These venues helped movies like Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left, blaxploitation touchstone The Mack, and revenge film Thriller: A Cruel Picture become classics. With their dingy atmospheres and relatively cheap entertainment, arcades were sometimes referred to as gaming grindhouses, but in reality the average arcade was closer to a megaplex. The high cost of arcade manufacturing and distribution ensured that most early games came from major companies, such as Atari and Namco, instead of independent developers. This exclusivity helped ensure that arcades became the one place people would go for video game entertainment outside of their own homes. In contrast, video stores offered the game industry a true grindhouse venue to call its own. Your standard rental franchise, like Blockbuster or Hollywood Video, needed to fill a lot of shelf space with various options. More often than not, these selections were presented to branch owners through a catalog containing all the latest hits and a variety of relatively obscure games and movies at discount prices. Store owners had little to lose by using cheap titles to fill gaps in their inventory. The same principle often applied to mom-and-pop operations that needed to make a little extra income by offering rentals through their business. However, some small-time outlets were much more selective about which titles they stocked. “At that time, the owner of the store simply kept his eye on games news websites and predicted demand for the more popular games,” says Lyle Shaw, who worked from 2001 to 2006. in a now-defunct video store in Toronto known as Avanti Video Ltd. “He would order through a distributor and specify one or two games each week that he

corrupted by a complete lack of quality control. Eventually, people treated purchasing games as a risk they couldn’t afford to take. The most a gamer had to lose by taking a chance on a rental was $5 and a few hours. Like the grindhouse patrons of old, gamers who walked into a rental store often did so unburdened by worries of quality. They were looking for cheap entertainment. Anything surprisingly great they stumbled upon was a bonus. Years before he became a video game journalist, Leif Johnson was a young gamer looking for a new medieval adventure. He remembers the thrill of being surprised by the unknown and recalls the two games he decided to take a chance on based solely on the appeal of their box art. The first was an ultimately forgettable adventure, Astyanax. The other? “It was Final Fantasy,” Johnson says. “I didn’t know anything about the game. I just liked its medieval fantasy cover.” Johnson was one of many gamers who took a chance on Final Fantasy based on the experience promised on the box rather than any actual knowledge of what was inside. At this time, the job of video game box art was to capture the spirit of an experience and help it stand out rather than relay its actual visuals. This technique was popularized by grindhouse film directors who knew that a movie’s poster had to promise sex, violence, and the movie they wish they could have made with a larger budget. While this practice sometimes led to deception, it also encouraged early adopters to turn titles like Final Fantasy into video game dynasties. Yet those same gamers who helped turn the unknowns into cult classics have grown into crafty consumers who rarely make blind purchases. Recently, Johnson wanted to play a game featuring martial arts combat. Any game would do. He eventually found a game called Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise. He recalls feeling the need to perform light research on the game before downloading it. It’s an instinct he admits extends to even simple purchases. “The other day, I spent time looking up reviews for a new pair of shoelaces,” Johnson says. “I wanted to make sure that I got the pair that had the most five-star reviews. For shoelaces.” In the age of Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes, and other review aggregators, numbers are king. What should just be a general indication of merit has kickstarted a new era of selectiveness. For many, even a score in the 70 to 80 percent range can represent an inferior product. Remarkably, this caution seems to have bred fear rather than curb it. YouTubers John Bain (who goes by TotalBiscuit) and Jim Sterling recently took a trip to the office of game developer, publisher, and distributor Valve to talk about the upcoming changes to the Steam digital video game marketplace. Among the topics discussed was the difficulty of game discovery. Steam may offer more games than your local Blockbuster could have ever hoped to stock, but some argue that it is the root of the platform’s problems. Blizzard art director Samwise Didier recently commented on how the limited resources he had to work with while developing StarCraft inspired him to be creative. He likened it to making the best out of a box of broken restaurant crayons. That analogy certainly applies to the rental store where broken crayons were always in stock. Steam, however, is more like a 200 ct. box of Crayolas with detailed instructions on why Mango Tango is the optimal shade of orange. There may be more options, but there is less incentive to stray. Valve has stated that they intend to place a greater emphasis on their curator system—which is made up of both tastemakers specifically chosen for Steam and volunteer users—in an effort to stop the influx of barely playable titles made to look like hidden gems. They’ve even promised to openly display the details behind why Steam is recommending a certain game to you. You’d almost think they’re trying to recreate the role of the video store clerk. In a way, Valve is chasing the days when the thing guiding you toward new entertainment wasn’t an algorithm that gamers are supposed to believe is infallibly scientific. The kids at the video store weren’t a perfect resource, but they recommended games because it was their job and because

they had an interest in not seeing people rent the same titles every day. They knew the people they recommended games to were going to be back. There was a measure of accountability and enthusiasm that an algorithm cannot offer. Despite the fact that several reputable gaming outlets and critics have curator profiles on Steam, there are still those who use this status for things other than helping gamers. Some online curators troll fellow players, some don’t update their selections for months at a time, and some even promote their own games. For many, there’s just no incentive to maintain a curator profile. Even if there was, Valve still struggles to help the right curators find the right gamers. At the moment, GOG.com and the Humble Store, two of Steam’s main competitors, boast more selective libraries. GOG, for example, has a specific process for choosing what games will be featured on the platform. “The whole process of choosing games starts with our business development team, who reaches out to game creators and decides if a game is something that our users would like,” says Lukasz Kukawski, Senior PR Manager at GOG. “Then the game goes to our review department—where the most dedicated gamers from GOG.com work. And these guys and gals, with all their gaming knowledge, play all titles from start to finish and review them for us. Based on those reviews and our own feelings about every game, we decide if it’s a good fit for our catalog or not.” In theory, this process is helpful to consumers. By curating games that aren’t simple cash grabs, GOG is ensuring that gamers get titles that are worthwhile. This curation system certainly counteracts many of Steam’s big flaws, but it also means that there’s a gatekeeper and that something like Boogerman still might not make the cut. “Of course if a game is not available on GOG.com, it doesn’t mean it’s bad. Let’s put it in a different way: we make sure that if you come to GOG.com and pick any game from the catalog, we know it is well worth your time.” The efforts of companies like GOG may indeed be the light at the end of the tunnel, but there is still a very real fear that invention has starved necessity and that the days of necessary exploration are firmly behind gaming culture. “There was something exciting about being able to hold a game in your hands. It felt like you were about to go on an adventure,” Johnson says of times gone by. “I don’t know if those days are coming back. I

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VIDEO STORES OFFERED THE GAME INDUSTRY A TRUE GRINDHOUSE VENUE TO CALL ITS OWN. sometimes worry we’re heading towards another crash. People say they want new things, but there are so many options out there that they sometimes just fall back on what they know.” Johnson speculates that a streaming service might help alleviate this fear of discovery. Subscription services like PlayStation Now and Xbox Game Pass allow you to access a large library of titles for a monthly fee. They allow gamers to taste test different experiences. Programs like Humble Monthly offer a random assortment of monthly titles at a highly discounted price. GameFly and Redbox are keeping rentals alive. These services are designed to encourage exploration but each is hampered by doubt. GameFly and Redbox are struggling to combat the convenience of digital purchases. Streaming and subscription services are battling against the fear of something new. It remains to be seen whether they will be successful. So long as there are gamers who are willing to forsake money and safety for the thrill of being surprised, the rest of the world will continue to benefit from their discoveries. Un-

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fortunately, surprise is quickly becoming a luxury that many forgo in favor of what they have been told is a sure bet. But there are no sure bets, and that’s why discovery matters. The eclectic selections that dominated grindhouses and rental stores served as reminders that your comfort zone isn’t the world. Perhaps these places no longer have a role in society, but the ideas they represented are more valuable than ever because they too are ceasing to exist.

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GAMES NINTENDO SWITCH

A BIGGER

SPLAT

How Nintendo’s Splatoon created a new fan community. BY BERNARD BOO

intendo changed the world when they introduced two of the most enduring characters in video game history: Donkey Kong and Mario (named “Jumpman” at the time), in 1981’s monumental Donkey Kong arcade cabinet. In subsequent years, the company created many more franchises, each starring new heroes and villains that make up their now world-famous stable of iconic characters. Link, Luigi, Samus Aran, Kirby, Princess Peach, Yoshi, Fox McCloud, and Bowser became some of the most recognizable figures in pop culture, earning Nintendo the infamously loyal fan base it boasts to this day.

“SPLATOON AND THE INKLINGS HAVE TAKEN THE GAMING WORLD BY STORM.” Nintendo was a veritable star factory in the ‘80s and ‘90s, but when the new millennium rolled around, the company struggled to create new characters that could match the iconic status of their established, marquee cast. That 64 DEN OF GEEK ■ SAN DIEGO COMIC-CON

all changed in 2015, however, with the arrival of third-person competitive shooter Splatoon on the Wii U: a wonderfully weird new franchise starring the Inklings–adorable, humanoid squid-things–that have been capturing the imaginations of young gamers in the same way Mario did three decades before. From fast-selling amiibo figures to a deluge of Inkling fan art, the game’s community exploded, making Splatoon Nintendo’s most successful new IP in years. The game stands as the sixth-best selling Wii U game of all time, outdone only by Nintendo Land and five games starring the legendary Mario himself. That’s elite company, and with a warm reception from critics and gamers alike, the possibilities are endless. The success of Splatoon can largely be attributed to the ingenuity of its concept. Competitive shooters have always been a blind spot in Nintendo’s library, largely due to the inherent violence of the genre. However, Splatoon creator Shintaro Sato found a clever workaround by making the Inklings essentially unkillable (but very splat-able) and focusing the shooting mechanics on multi-colored turf warfare. Finally, young Nintendo fans could utilize their itchy trigger fingers in a ferociously competitive but decidedly age-appropriate environment. Now, the game’s highly anticipated sequel,

Splatoon 2, is upon us, dropping on July 21 for the Nintendo Switch.The follow-up offers new modes, weapons, game mechanics, amiibo, and a text-based backstory that introduces some unexpected drama into the series’ lore. Splatoon and the Inklings are providing family fun at a time when gaming mostly favors adult content. The Wii U wasn’t a great console by any measure but it brought fans a fantastic franchise that breathed new life into a company often accused of relying too heavily on old favorites. In time, the game could be remembered as one of the seminal titles in Nintendo’s history, signifying a new initiative to take bigger risks on new, unknown IPs.

MAKE BRE AKFAST HAPPEN SO KIDS CAN BE HUNGRY FOR MORE

Photo By: Peggy Sirota

S:7”

I was one of our nation’s hungry kids growing up. Today, 1 in 6 children in America struggle with hunger. But when they get breakfast, their days are bigger and brighter. Learning, attention, memory and mood improve. Together, we have the power to get breakfast to kids in your neighborhood — let’s make it happen. Go to hungeris.org and lend your time or your voice. Viola Davis, Hunger Is Ambassador

Hunger Is® is a joint initiative of the Albertsons Companies Foundation and the Entertainment Industry Foundation, which are 501(c)(3) charitable organizations.

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T H E

S P E C T R U M S PA N N I N G T H E DI AL I N T H E WOR L D OF T E L E VI SI ON

AN ODE TO GRINDHOUSE Syfy’s Blood Drive brings grindhouse to the small screen by paying subliminal and subversive homage to B-movies. BY TONY SOKOL

A JOKES PER MINUTE RECORD! BY ALEC BOJALAD

obody sets out to make a bad movie. “You make an A-movie that turns out to be not that great,” declares actor Colin Cunningham, who plays Slink, the master of ceremonies at Club Mayhem in Blood Drive. The new road rage series from Syfy and Universal Cable Productions was produced on the same kind of threadbare budget that grindhouse films were made on. We asked the minds behind Blood Drive, James Roland and John Hlavin, which movies they credited as inspiration. Here’s the skinny on their favorite grindhouse and indie classics:

VIDEODROME

X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES

Writer/director David Cronenberg was the first filmmaker to promote Snuff TV in the hallucinogenic science fiction cult masterpiece, Videodrome (1983). CIVIC-TV President Max Renn (James Woods) is looking for something as new and exciting as his sexy pop psychologist Nicki Brand (Deborah Harry), who brings as much heat to a cigarette scene as Bogie and Bacall did in To Have and Have Not. You don’t have to be Professor O’Blivion to see the impact this film made on low-budget conspiracy cinema.

Director Roger Corman spent three weeks making the sci-fi horror film X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes in 1963, and you can see every penny of his $300,000-budget on the screen— without goggles. Ray Milland’s Dr. James Xavier opened our eyes so wide we could spot Don Rickles holding back his sarcasm.

HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE Robert Townsend borrowed against his check from A Soldier’s Story and maxed out every credit card that came in the mail to make his tour de force directorial debut, Hollywood Shuffle, in 1987. The indie satire continues to inspire filmmakers to gamble on their potential.

Con-versation Starters

Independent filmmaker Tom Laughlin kicked serious ass in bare feet in his 1971 hippie revenge drama, Billy Jack. After laying waste to Hell’s Angels in The Born Losers (1968), Laughlin spent two years in the Arizona heat to sweat out this vision of a reluctant hero, and he never took off that hat.

ick and Morty’s Season 3 premiere dropped as an April Fool’s Day surprise, and it was also notable for not only having the most Jokes Per Minute of any Rick and Morty episode, or any episode of any other show we’ve ever recorded, but for also shattering the record. The previous record for total jokes on Rick and Morty was Season 2, episode 4 “Total Rickall” with 150, which is good for a 6.98 JPM. “The Rickshank Redemption” now breaks it with 205 jokes and a 9.13 JPM. That’s absolutely insane. This is a towering achievement for Rick and Morty and really all of television.

Conventions are built around the idea of communal experiences. With that in mind, we have a surefire way to break the ice with your fellow attendees or start a fierce debate amongst friends: BY DANIEL KURLAND

BEST CHARACTER FROM A COMEDY?

MOST HATED CHARACTER ON TV?

WEIRDEST ADULT SWIM SHOW?

IMAGES: SYFY/ADULT SWIM/FOX/NETFLIX/AMC

BIGGEST BADASS ON TV?

BILLY JACK

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