According to Hollywood Reporter Richard and Wendy Pini’s long-lived and very popular comics series ElfQuest may be the latest comics property to be adapted for cinema. Warner Brothers have picked up on the series (which has seen more than one attempt to adapt it to a film or TV series over the years since it first appeared in the mid 70s) while Rawson Thurber is down to write, produce and direct, although no word yet if it will be animated, motion-capture or live action (although in fantasy films now with the level of CGI effects I’m not sure ‘live action’ is the proper descriptive term).

(lovely fantasy scene from Elfquest: Siege at Blue Mountain, borrowed from the official ElfQuest website - where you can browse a huge amount of art and entire comics - and (c) Wendy and Richard Pini)

(extreme extermination in Exterminators #1 by Simon Oliver, art by Tony Moore, published DC Vertigo)

Elsewhere on Hollywood Reporter the comics to movie/TV rush continues unabated - Simon Oliver and Tony Moore’s Exterminators, published by DC, is also slated for an adaptation by cable company Showtime for a possible drama series, with Dexter (a show I love) exec producer Sara Colleton on board; we know film and movie types love their concise pitch and in this case they are describing it as Six Feet Under meets pest control. If you haven’t read Exterminators the first issue is available as a free PDF to read via DC’s site.

London Underground Comics makes a cryptic announcement - Low Energy Day coming, er, sometime, with events including, er, well, actually I have no idea. Machiavellian master of promotion Oli Smith would only comment on LUC’s FaceAche, sorry, I meant FaceBook page that “the rumours should begin.” The rumours I’ve heard (or perhaps just made up from the voices in my head) involve Indy comics creators, Red Bull, Lucozade, rechargable batteries, seven elastic bands of varying sizes, HB pencils, some juggling penguins and Oli dancing to the Popeye music as he munches spinach while selling comics. More, no doubt, to come…

Following his Flickr pictures (see yesterday) Pádraig Ó Méalóid now blogs his weekend trip to the European Capital of Culture for 2008, Liverpool, for John Reppion’s Haunted Liverpool book launch, an event which included a number of comics and book folks, from John himself and other half Leah Moore to Alan Moore, Melinda Gebbie then later horror-writer supreme Ramsey Campbell and Deb Delano, one of the publishers of Aargh! And John seems to have done very, very well on the book sales front at the gig, which is good news.

(John Reppion, on the left, accepts his award for finest British cavalry officer moustache and beard combo in supernatural publishing; pic borrowed from Slovo Books Flickr and (c) Pádraig Ó Méalóid)

Andy ‘Gollum’ Serkis talks (briefly) to the BBC’s Newsbeat about getting into character for the first of the trilogy of Tintin movies(which Doctor Who’s Steven Moffat is scripting) as he prepares to play Captain Haddock (please feel free to annoy those around you by exclaiming “blistering barnacles!” several times, very loudly). As to whether Peter Jackson may want to put a slightly darker edge on the classic Belgian comics character, Serkis wouldn’t be drawn, simply saying that the script was finalised yet and so far they had mostly being doing test sequences, not necessarily material that may end up in a finished movie, although he seems quite happy to be working with the Lord of the Rings director again, as well as Steven Spielberg: “Peter’s always in control of his material, he’s got so many brilliant ideas, he’s such a visionary so they’re just bouncing off each other in a really exciting way. It’s fantastic to be around.” Principal photography commences shooting in September, with the first of the films featuring Hergé’s immortal, bequiffed character (played by Thomas Sangster) due to hit the cinema screens in 2009; Andy Serkis’ website can be found here.

(Hergé’s Tintin and Snowy, (c) Moulinsart)

One of the most popular manga genres is the “magical girl” story. Initially inspired by the domestic and mischievous witches from the American sitcom Bewitched, magical girls are often the natives of a realm where magic is commonplace and taken for granted. Their stories revolve around the development of their magical abilities - which, much like superheroes gaining control of their powers, is typically framed in terms of coming of age and growing in maturity and responsibility. They’re also usually really cute.

Moyoco Anno’s Sugar Sugar Rune is a top-notch recent example of the genre. Two young witches, Chocolat and Vanilla, are the best of friends, but they must compete to determine which of them will become queen of the magical realm. The form of the competition is a race to collect the hearts of human boys: humans have stronger emotions than witches, so witches can collect their hearts in the form of brightly coloured jewels without harming them. Every emotion has its own colour: yellow for fear, orange for an instant crush, pink for sweet love, red for passionate love. Each of the girls needs to make human boys fall in love with her, so as to collect a valuable pink or red heart. But they must not fall in love themselves, for witches only have one heart, and if a witch loses her heart when it’s pink or red, she’ll die.

Complicating the story is the fact that Chocolat and Vanilla have opposite personalities: while Vanilla is shy, sweet and nervous, Chocolat is pushy and fierce; and while Vanilla is happy for Chocolat to win, she finds that the boys of the human world are much more attracted to her than to Chocolat - quite contrary to their expectations. A further complication is added by the appearance of “Prince” Pierre, a mysteriously aloof older boy at their school in the human world. Chocolat is enthralled by him, but she must fight her feelings so as not to lose her heart; meanwhile, Pierre has his own sinister agenda.

Sugar Sugar Rune is exactly the kind of sweet, light, fluffy treat the title implies: it’s very much an all-ages book, and although it’s not without its serious moments (as when Chocolat remembers her dead mother and resolves to win for her sake), it’s got a gentle, light-hearted tone that stops it from bogging down. With a message of “be true to yourself and stick with your friends”, it’s not going to win any awards for originality of ideas - but it doesn’t need to. Sugar Sugar Rune is a perfect example of a comics work that hews to the conventions of its genre with such charm and wit that it would be churlish to ask for more. It is what it is, and what it is, is delightful.

Katherine Farmar writes regularly on comics and culture from around the world, you can read more on her comics blog Whereof One Can Speak.

Boing Boing reports that the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle has a job opening, for an Education Co-ordinator. Somewhere one of our fellow geeks is looking at a possible dream job…

A postcard to JRR Tolkien’s wife has been found behind the fireplace of their former home in a bungalow in Dorset. The postcard is dated 1968 and may possibly be from author Lin Carter. The postcard and the fireplace will be auctioned, while the home itself is being demolished; the property developer has promised that if they find a hobbit under the floorboards they will tell the public. (via the BBC)

Not comics, but I thought this rather unusual artwork deserved some attention - the BBC has an article on Nasser Azam, a UK-based artist who is about to embark on a rather unusual art project - creating art inspired by zero gravity (or I suppose micro gravity if you want to be more technical). Nasser will be leading a team of five artists on a special parabolic flight designed to simulate the effects of zero gravity, a training practise used by astronauts (space geeks like myself are probably familiar with these special plane’s nick-name of ‘vomit comets’). Nasser’s work often has an interest on how bodies can be depicted in different states of motion and tension according to the Beeb article, so I’d imagine zero-gee would be fascinating to him, not just for the visual impact but the actual bodily sensations he will experience (think on that feeling you get from a fast elevator then multiply 50 times). Currently training in Russia’s Star City facility the artists will take flight next Tuesday; Nasser hopes to complete two triptychs (entitled Homage to Francis Bacon) he has been working on while weightless, although he will need to switch from acrylic to oil-based paints because the acrylic is more likely to float away.

(” Anatomica: Skull 1″ by Nasser Azam, borrowed from his very interesting website - well worth a look - and (c) the artist)

The new runway models for this year’s designer T-shirts for the well-dressed urbanite for the summer season - Messrs Alan Moore and Pádraig Ó Méalóid strut their funky stuff, with Pádraig looking particularly sharp in his Reppion’s Zombie Army T, which regular readers will remember started a while back as a one-line gag which kind of spread out of control, which a good gag should do anyway. Pádraig was over for John Reppion’s book launch for Haunted Liverpool, which I mentioned last week (John has a blog for the book up here) and looks like he bumped into someone else there to offer support. (Pic (c) Pádraig Ó Méalóid, taken by Brian Showers - check the Slovobooks Flickr stream for more pics of John Reppion’s recent book launch; you can read Pádraig’s recent, massive and fascinating two-part interview with Alan Moore on the blog - here for part one and here for the second part )

This week a special treat for you as Darryl has a double-helping of Super-Sam to let us start to understand the recent events. I don’t know about you, but much as I love the gag strips I’m also really enjoying these later strips which are connecting the dots and expanding the characters and storyline.

(click the pic to visit full-size version and the complete archive of Darryl’s previous Super-Sam and John-of-the-night strips. Art ©2008 Darryl Cunningham; if you want permission to reproduce any part of it you should ask him)

According to the French news blog Actua BD, this year’s edition of the BD-Fil festival in Lausanne, Switzerland, promises to be even more of a success than last year’s edition, when more than 30,000 people gathered to celebrate Swiss and international comics alike.

Even though the festival is still a few months off, the BD-Fil website already gives a full listing of the exhibitions that they will host this year. French cartoonist André Juillard and Swiss graphic genius Thomas Ott both have one-man shows, with Juilllard’s giving an overview of his whole career, while Ott’s focuses on his masterful, almost Kafka-esque album, The Number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8. BD-Fil will also host a couple of travelling exhibitions, most notably the Smurfs’ Anniversary show (which will probably clog the streets of Lausanne with white Smurf statuettes) and the Toy Comix exhibition, which earlier was hosted by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs à Paris, and was created in close collaboration with French publisher L’Association. Toy Comix features work by an international gathering of cartoonists, such as Renée French, Jim Woodring, Tom Gauld, Matt Konture, Max Andersson and Aleksandar Zograf.

(Fantagraphics English-language edition of Thomas Ott’s Number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8)

In 2007 SOS-Aircraft showcased the work of Swiss cartoonists at the festival. This year, a second creative project, Poya Express, does the same for twenty Francophone and German-speaking Swiss cartoonists, such as Cosey, Derib and Zep. Similarly, the exhibition “Dessinateurs/Dessinatrices de Demain 2008″ showcases the best projects from this year’s New Talent competition.

(a lovely example of André Juillard’s art)

Two documentary exhibitions make this very rich plethora complete: “Femmes de bulles” gives an overview of the role of women in comics, and “Alter Egaux” shows 160 extracts from stories by people like Enki Bilal, François Bourgeon, Will Eisner, Gotlib, Hergé, Jijé, Chantal Montellier, José Munoz, Joe Sacco, Marjane Satrapi, Art Spiegelman, and Tezuka, all about racism and anti-racism in comics.

As yet, no official guests have been announced. Two important publishers will be present however: Fluide Glacial (bringing their 2008 tour to the festival) and Dupuis (hosting a special conference at which young talent can present themselves).

Wim Lockefeer lives in Belgium and when not thinking about the significance of finding a waffle shaped like Tintin’s head on his breakfast plate writes extensively on comics culture and art; you can read more of his work on his own Ephemerist blog.

Scalped Volume 1: Indian Country
Written by Jason Aaron
Art by R.M. Guera, Cover by Jock.

The worst thing I can say about Scalped is that it looks, feels and reads like a host of other Vertigo books. It’s just too damn similar to many things that have gone before. I could easily finish the review here by telling you it’s Hellblazer/ Losers/ Preacher/ 100 Bullets/ Transmetropolitan transplanted to an Indian reservation and leave it at that, because you’d have a damn good idea of what to expect from the book right there.

Now, having said all that, you’d think I hated it wouldn’t you? But in truth I actually quite liked it.

It’s a story about returning to your past and identity, both personal and racial. Dashiell “Dash” Bad Horse left the Reservation fifteen years ago as a boy, looking to find a better life away from the Reservation. He got as far as Kosovo, serving with the US Army before taking a slow return home, but he returns to find that home is undergoing rapid and violent change as well. When he left, he walked away from the poverty and despair of the Reservation and now, on his return he finds it’s merely become worse. The people still live in poverty. The despair is still there, but this time it’s exacerbated by their own Tribal leader; Lincoln Red Crow. He’s set himself up as Al Capone, ruling the Reservation, controlling both organised crime and bureaucratic corruption. He controls both the crime and the law in the Reservation and is currently trying to present a clean façade to the developers of a new Casino on Reservation ground. Within the first few pages Bad Horse runs rampant through Red Crow’s men and then ends up working for him in his Tribal Police.

(Spider Jerusalem’s back? Not quite, although the similarities don’t necessarily end with the imagary. Dashiell “Bad Horse” returns home to a less than warm welcome. From Scalped Volume 1, art by R.M. Guera, published DC Comics.)

Everyone in Scalped is struggling against their identity or disguising their true nature, whether it’s Red Crow trying to be the respectable property developer, Bad Horse’s mother trying to keep her Indian Pride movement clean and away from a militant path or Bad Horse himself, returning to his home a changed man. Because he’s been away and served with the white man and has returned as an FBI agent to bring in Red Crow for the murder of two FBI agents committed 30 years previous. This is his big secret, and his reason to return (not entirely dissimilar to the film Thunder Heart - Joe). But it also marks him out as different from his people. And that’s really what elevates this above being just another Vertigo standard story. It’s that element of mixed identity, of moving beyond a cultural and racial stereotype and the trouble that can bring that makes it worth reading.

But whilst the story rises above what sometimes seems like Vertigo by the numbers the book has been badly let down by it’s art. The page above perfectly illustrates the muted colour palette of the book, all earth tones, subtle lines and detailed facial work. Unfortunately this is from the online issue of Scalped #1, free to download from the DC site.

The actual book isn’t so much earthy tonality as plain muddy, dark and a bit of a mess. This must have been devastating for the artist and particularly the colourist on the book as R.M. Guera’s art relies on a grim palette of earthy colours, yet it’s got that muddy colouring that Vertigo books always seem to have for a start (DC: If you’re going to do really nice art with muted subtle colours would it not be a good idea to invest in better paper that will take the colours properly?). So it seems that the original art and colouring is much lighter and sharper and the pages look so much better for it. It’s good art, especially when viewed online in it’s original form. But the finished product never really shines enough to be more than functional and enough to carry the story and move the plot along in an entertaining and easy fashion.

Scalped is superficially a mix of standard Vertigo styles and stories but there’s more than enough here that marks it out as new and interesting enough to make it worth keeping an eye on. It puts an interesting spin of the traditional noir crime genre and holds up pretty well to the comparisons I’ve already thrown at it of Preacher, 100 Bullets and The Losers. Whether it lives up to this initial promise will be seen in Volume 2 no doubt. Which is already out it seems - must look into that one. Scalped author Jason Aaron also wrote the Vietnam war tale The Other Side, which was reviewed here on the blog.

Richard Bruton is a lifelong comics fan and former Comic Book Store Guy; you can read more of his thoughts on comics and life on his blog Fictions.

Over on the Ephemerist Wim has started posting some archive Meneerke Peeters strips by Flemish cartoonist Joë Meulepas - better known as Pil - which kicked off in the newspaper De Standaard in 1957. I like when someone posts up some little bit of comics history I’d never previously heard of.

(Meneerke Peeters, art and (c) Joë Meulepas)

Sky News has an article reporting that a couple of thousand Doctor Who fans tried to dial the mobile phone number flashed on the screen during the show as a prompt to try and signal the Doctor (do you think the Doc is on a monthly plan or pay-as-you-go? Hate to think of the overseas roaming charges on his line). The excited fans were disappointed as the number was a fake - an inactive line number given by a phone company specifically for use in programmes. I wonder what those fans were going to say if they had received a reply…

This reminds me of the late, great Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams; when the TV version of the show was produced by the BBC the animated graphics of the Guide (so superbly done many people were convinced they were ‘real’ computer graphics) discussing how Arthur and Ford are rescued at a certain level of improbability. The on-screen graphics then re-arrange that large sequence of numbers to something more familiar - the number of a flat in Islington where Arthur Dent once went to a very good party. Years later I read an article in which Douglas said that the person who actually had that phone number was somewhat annoyed at the number of people who had rung it over the years. Like many Douglas Adams anecdotes I have no idea if this was real or just a tale he spun to a journalist, but it was funny. And as many of you will know, Douglas was once the script-editor for Doctor Who, so it seemed doubly appropriate to mention it. Is that too much Doctor Who-related posts for one day? Nah! We’re allowed!

Making Light (via Boing Boing and Matthew Badham) report that noted author Thomas M Disch died on July 4th, apparently by his own hand. He had been depressed following the loss of his long-time partner Charles and other worries and stresses seem to have pushed him beyond his tolerance limit, leading to suicide. Making Light quotes John Clute on Disch in the Science Fiction Encyclopedia: “Because of his intellectual audacity, the chillingly distant mannerism of his narrative art, the austerity of the pleasures he affords, and the fine cruelty of his wit, Thomas M. Disch has been perhaps the most respected, least trusted, most envied and least read of all modern first-rank SF writers.” Which is a very precise summary, I think; a lot of major SF readers will know and respect his reputation as a writer but often haven’t read more than a handful of works by him (that includes me - I know, its shocking, but you can’t read everything), which is a shame because what I’ve read is fascinating work. Terribly sad way for a life to end.