Month: August 2004

Well, this is getting interesting. Now that word about my HULK limited series–which, for all anyone knows, could turn into a regular gig if the sales are there–is out there, I’m suddenly getting interview requests from every direction. I’m not knocking it, you understand. It’s just that, with all the stuff I’ve done that’s new and different, the thing that’s getting everyone jazzed is me going back and doing what I’ve done before–X-Factor characters and the Hulk. But hey, I’m happy to keep doing the q and a’s…especially since I manage to discuss FALLEN ANGEL in every one.

PAD

Tonight’s epsiode is all about free speech. If you missed the 10 PM showing tonight, they’re rerunning it at various times the next few days.

Enjoy.

So just out of curiosity, I bought the HULK handbook currently on the stands. I figured, if I’m back to writing him, even for six issues, I should get current, and I’ve been spotty in keeping up with him over the last few years.

So I read the entry on “Absorbing Man” and, much to my amusement, they actually stated that his bizarrely out-of-continuity appearance in “Hulk” was due to a temporal anomaly. Yes, that’s right, the slightly tongue-in-cheek notion that Captain Marvel’s re-creation of the universe in issue #6 was responsible for waves of discontinuity throughout the Marvel Universe has now been officially embraced by a separate Marvel reference volume.

Ya gotta love it. With fans complaining that Absorbing Man’s appearance in Hulk didn’t match up with his previous appearances, I tossed both Marvel and the fans a safety line, and they grabbed it with relish.

PAD

The fine folks at Paperbackreader.com have offered to sponsor a “Fallen Angel” book club, so to speak. In addition to having a contest to win a copy, participants will be invited beginning September 1 to talk about the trade paperback collection in specific and the series in general. I have, naturally, said that I will show up to participate.

Yet another step to boosting sales and awareness of the series.

PAD

A lot of fans are sighing with great relief that, for the moment, it seems the reports of Jack Black as “Green Lantern” were premature.

But ohhh, the hullabaloo the original announcement caused. The cries of outrage. The shrieks that this was a ridiculous idea, that a comedic take on Green Lantern was an insult–insult, I say!–was a terrible concept, rotten to the Corps.

I would like to respond to that with one word: G’Nort.

Yes, G’Nort, the long-standing member of the Lantern Corp who is nothing but a huge in-joke. He’s a canine incarnation of Art Carney’s Ed Norton. Not to be confused with that other height of seriousness, Ch’p, the Green Lantern squirrel. And then there’s Mojo, the Green Lantern sentient planet.

I mean, what the hëll?!? Fans are willing to accept that there’s a Green Lantern that’s basically a giant piece of sentient broccoli, but they draw the line at a short chubby man? Speaking as a short chubby man, I take great exception to this. I like to think that I’m at least as worthy of a power ring as sentient broccoli.

I personally wouldn’t have minded the notion of an unlikely guy acquiring a power ring, using it for all the predictable, self-serving purposes until he slowly comes to realize the potential for heroism and the selfishness of using such power for his own ends. Could be a darned good character arc…certainly more promising from a movie point of view than the adventures of a guy who has absolutely no sense of fear acquiring a ring and going off to unhesitatingly do good with it.

Then again, keep in mind that fans went nuts when Michael Keaton was cast as Bruce Wayne. And Spider-Man’s web spinners were going to be organic.

What is this inability that many fans have to be so unyielding in their preconceptions…especially in the case of Green Lantern, the most malleable concept in comics?

PAD

Newsarama has put up a preview of the first eight pages (plus cover) of the first issue of “Madrox.”

PAD

I hadn’t watched the JLA animated series for a while, mostly ’cause I was watching so many names of people I know scroll past in the credits and getting bummed out that no one’s ever asked me to write a script for them. But I tuned in last week because, hey, Supergirl was on it, so I just had to.

And then I watched last night’s and we’re about a minute into the episode, with Batman and Wonder Woman entering the Fortress of Solitude talking about Superman’s birthday, and I’m thinking, Dang, this seems familiar for some reason. Then the moment I saw Superman with the tentacled thing on him, I realized it was the Alan Moore annual story.

More than that: An astoundingly faithful adaptation by DeMatteis, right down to the key dialogue phrases that I remembered (including Superman’s terse “Burn” as he switches to heat vision and nearly lasers Mongul in half).

It was seriously cool, and if you missed it, check Cartoon Network listings to try and catch it.

PAD