Previews and Reviews that are Z's Views
The grave to the right of J.F.K. assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald is empty.
Yet, it has a grave marker with the name Nick Beef.
It also turns out that Nick Beef is alive and well… and the name Nick Beef is a stage name.
Want to know what gives? Mystery Solved.
Thanks and an extra conspiracy theory to MSN.com.
Dave Wachter is back and he brought his take on Sly from the Bullet to the Head. I met Dave a few years ago and became an instant fan. I wasn’t the only one to discover Dave’s fantastic sketches! How can you not like a great guy who is a terrific artist?
At HeroesCon this year I asked Dave to draw Sly from his first major movie, the Lords of Flatbush and another piece of Sly from his latest film, Bullet to the Head. Last week, you saw Dave’s take on Sly as Stanley Kowalski, so this week we have Sly as Jimmy Bobo.
You can see more of Dave’s art at his site. – Craig
I posted about Zero before. At that time I said it was a new comic series by Ales Kot [writer] and Michael Walsh [artist] that looked interesting. Here’s how the advance solicitation described it…
SAVING THE WORLD. ONE MURDER AT A TIME.
Edward Zero is the perfect execution machine – a spy who breaks the rules to get things done. When a stolen device appears in the center of a long-running conflict, Zero comes to retrieve it. The problem is, the device is inside a living, breathing, bio-modified terrorist and there’s an entire army after it.
I just learned that although the series will contain a series of rotating artists, each doing one issue. I also discovered a bit more about Edward Zero…
ZERO is a secret agent. Edward Zero. He’s the perfect execution machine, in a sense — throw him at a problem and he wil solve it. Just remember that the way he reaches the solution may not always be to your liking, because he’s a bit of a sociopath.
But what happens when a sociopath realizes ideas and systems he based his life upon are deeply broken and not at all what they were supposed to be?
I was just five when President Kennedy was assassinated. I was on vacation with my grandparents in Florida. My grandfather had taken me with him on a quick trip to a supermarket. A man came running into the store yelling that the president had been shot. All of the adults seemed scared. We hustled back to the hotel and my grandparents stayed glued to the tv to get the latest updates.
As the years passed, there was always a lot of talk about “who was really behind” the assassination. Was it the mob? LBK? Castro? With each passing year it seemed another theory rose up to explain how the most powerful man in the world was killed. I read each theory and filed it away. None seemed more plausible than it was a lone nut with a high powered rife.
Still, I was always willing to give the next theory a listen.
Now there’s a new documentary that is …
based on the work of Colin McLaren, a veteran Australian police detective who has undertaken a four-year investigation into the killing.
His theories are based on the work of Howard Donahue, who spent two decades probing the assassination and whose work was presented in the book Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK, by Bonar Menninger.
This theory postulates that Oswald fired the first shot that hit President Kennedy. Then as Secret Service Agent George Hickey drew his weapon and jumped on the back of the President’s Limo, his gun accidentally discharged shooting President Kennedy in the back of the head. This theory also explains the…
…the different ballistic profiles of the two bullets that struck Kennedy… Mr Menninger insisted that they do not believe that Agent Hickey intentionally fired at Kennedy. Rather, the Huffington Post reported him as saying, ‘this was a tragic accident in the heat of the moment.’
But the pair do allege that the government moved swiftly, with the help of Kennedy’s brother Robert, to cover up the Secret Service’s involvement and save the agency from embarrassment.
While I don’t think that this new theory is more likely than a lone gunman with a high-powered rifle, I am willing to give it a listen. JFK: The Smoking Gun will be broadcast on the Reelz Channel on November 3.
Thanks to Joey and the Huffington Post for the link.
Double Indemnity is one of my favorite noir movies. I’ve seen it a bunch of times.
Raymond Chandler, who wrote just seven novels, is one of the founding fathers of modern detective fiction. I’ve read a lot of Chandler and knew he co-wrote the screenplay [along with director Billy Wilder] adaptation of James M. Cain’s novel of the same name.
Until recently I didn’t know that Chandler had a cameo in Double Indemnity. What makes this an even greater find is that there are no known film or television interviews with Chandler!
Thanks and a tip of my fedora to Adrian Wootten and The Guardian.
Steven Grant is a writer than I’ve written about many times.
Grant is the co-creator of Damned with Mike Zeck. Grant is also the writer of the first Punisher mini-series [which took the character from a second-tier guest star to one of the most popular Marvel characters of all-time] as well as the best Punisher stories ever told.
Grant is also the creator [along with artist Mataes Santolouco] of the comic mini-series Two Guns. As, you’re probably aware, Two Guns is now also a movie starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg. Grant has written an interesting article that he calls Temporary Madness: Lessons Learned from Watching “Two Guns” Get Made. You can read part one here and part two here.
Thanks and a front row seat to Two Guns for CBR.com.
I seldom run a straight press releases, but IDW’s announcement below is an exception:
San Diego, CA (July 20, 2013) – Darwyn Cooke’s acclaimed Parker series from IDW continues to expand with the classic Slayground. In this newest graphic novel, Parker is put to the test against crooked cops and sleazy gangsters after a heist goes south and he finds himself trapped in an amusement park closed for the winter, and embroiled in a deadly game of cat and mouse… a game that slowly starts to favor the mouse.
“A boarded up amusement park was an inspired setting for Parker,” said writer/artist Darwyn Cooke, “and Westlake made the most of it. A great story that I’m enjoying the hell out of adapting.”
Based on the influential novels by Richard Stark, AKA, Donald Westlake, Parker is a coldly calculating master criminal, one with a very rigid code. The IDW adaptations by Darwyn Cooke of The Hunter and The Outfit have received multiple Eisner and Harvey awards. The Score, released last year, is nominated for an Eisner Award at this week’s San Diego Comic-Con International. Slayground will be the fourth Parker adaptation in the popular and much lauded series.
Darwyn Cooke’s distinct style has made him a premier writer and artist in the comic book industry. A former animator, Cooke entered mainstream comics in 2000 with his critical hit Batman: Ego for DC Comics.
Donald Westlake, writing as Richard Stark, was the acclaimed author of the Parker series. He was a three-time Edgar Award winner, as well as being named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, that prestigious societies highest honor.
THAT is awesome news.
I knew Cooke was working on Slayground, but I had no idea I could expect it for Christmas.
[Of course, if you’re looking for a great crime comic to read NOW, you can’t do better than theFREE webcomic Gravedigger by Christopher Mills and Rick Burchett.]
I’m diggin’ that crime comics are taking off. Dead Body Road by Justin Jordan and Matteo Scalera premieres in November.
Dead Body Road is a six issue mini-series that tells the story of an ex-cop named Gage who is killing those he feels are responsible for his wife’s death. According to Jordan it’s a modern-day western, crime thriller, with noir sensibilities.
Can I put in my order now?
Thanks and a quickloader to CBR.com.
[And if you’re looking for a great crime comic to read NOW, you can’t do better than the FREE webcomic Gravedigger by Christopher Mills and Rick Burchett.]
Many of you are going to let out a groan or even stop reading when you move to my next sentence; but please read on.
The cult classic film that was Brandon Lee’s last starring role, The Crow, is gearing up for a remake.
I know. I know.
I agree. There is no need to remake or reboot The Crow. Heck, even James O’Barr felt the same way…
I was 110% against it. There was no point or need for a reboot. In my mind, you could throw a $100 million at it, put Johnny Depp in it and had Ridley Scott direct and it wouldn’t top what Alex Proyas and Brandon Lee did.
But after talking with director, Javier Gutierrez O’Barr’s feelings changed and he came on board. Principal photography starts in October.
The original Crow mini-series was published by Caliber Comics in 1989. I loved it. The Crow movie was released in 1994 and I liked it a lot.
Since the release of the first Crow mini-series by O’Barr there have been many attempts to bring back the character or to pass the Crow mantle on to others. I’ve given each a chance but none has the power of the original. I have to wonder can lightning in a bottle be caught once again?
Thanks and a wave of a crow’s wing to Shock Till You Drop.
Sly Stallone as Jimmy Bobo from Bullet to the Head by Ron Salas. Obviously I’m a huge fan of Ron’s art. If you’re a sketch collector, you should be too!
Check out more of Ron’s art here.
Hearing that Duane Swierczynski is writing an new series called Ex-Con for Dynamite Crime had me smiling enough to star in one of those many “happier than“ Geico commercials.
I’ve been a Duane Swierczynski fan since I first read The Wheelman almost seven years ago. Since then I’ve read and enjoyed every one of Swierczynski’s crime novels. Ex-Con sounds like a winner. Here’s how Swierczynski describes it…
As the name implies, we’re going to be following a jailbird freshly sprung from San Quentin after five brutal years… This is a high-level con artist who thought he could out-think the cops, his marks, his competitors — pretty much everybody — and five years later, he’s still reeling. To stay alive inside, he had to promise a favor to a convict who’s pretty much a living nightmare in a cage, and now that our man is out, he dreads having to pay up…
With Swierczynski writing and Tim Bradstreet providing the covers, the only thing left to take this series to the top is the right interior artist. Unfortunately, one hasn’t been chosen yet.
Two artists that came to mind for something like this are Phil Hester and Cully Hamner. I have no idea if Hester or Hamner would be considered or if they would want to do the series, but from this fan’s perspective, they were the first two artists that I thought of.
Thanks and an early parole to Comicosity and CBR.com for droppin’ a dime.
[And if you’re looking for a great crime comic to read NOW, you can’t do better than the FREE webcomic Gravedigger by Christopher Mills and Rick Burchett.]
Francesco Francavilla’s Black Beetle is a comic fans love to love. Part of the reason is that Francesco is such a swell guy. He gracious, humble and talented.
Francesco has a love — a passion — for comics, monsters, old movies, heroes, and basically all the things that we find cool. So it was a real joy to discover that his comic mini-series The Black Beetle: No Way Out combined all of those things into a rockin’ story that was a hit with fans and critics alike.
Soon Francesco will be back with The Black Beetle: Necrologue. You can learn more about it, here thanks to the fine folks at CBR.com.
Don’t you dig this Gold Key cover mock-up for Gravedigger?
Chris Mills explains how the faux cover came about:
I had so much fun mocking up that Gold Key Comics-styled Femme Noir cover yesterday, that last night I dusted off the terrific, painted Gravedigger: The Scavengers variant cover by my friend Fred Harper, and knocked out this retro/faux Gravedigger piece. There’s something kinda subversive about seeing the squeaky-clean Gold Key trade dress & logo on this hardboiled title…
Don’t forget that Gravedigger: Hot Women, Cold Cash by Chris Mills and Rick Burchett is available! It gets my highest recommendation.
Gravedigger by Chris Mills and Rick Burchett is the best web comic going. Heck, drop the web comic distinction because Gravedigger is one of the best comics of any kind regularly published these days.
If you’re a fan of crime stories, Lee Marvin, or great comics [as in amazing writing and art] then you should be reading this free web comic. [Keep in mind that Gravedigger is not for children since adult language and situations sometimes appear — it is a crime comic after all.]
I’d like to see Gravedigger and the talents of Chris Mills and Rick Burchett reach a wider audience. So, I’ve come up with the Gravedigger Challenge.
Give Gravedigger a try and if you don’t like it, I owe ya a Coke [or Diet Coke, if you prefer]. If you do like Gravedigger, you owe me nothing.
I would appreciate it though, especially if you like Gravedigger, if you would help spread the word. Send out a Tweet, a Facebook / blog post or, simply tell a friend!
