Green Lantern finally gets a Movie

Variety and Newsarama report that we will finally be seing a movie based on my favourite comicbook series, Green Lantern.

It's about time, because really, Every major comicbook character like Spider-Man and Batman have had movies already, and even lesser characters such as Elektra and Catwoman. Even the Flash had a TV Series back in either the 80's or 90's (which I remember being done quite well... so, I'm quite happy it's happening.

I'm even happier its not the rumoured Jack Black comedy take on the series. Green Lantern has more in common with Star Wars or Star Trek than the Mask or School of Rock.

It's being written by a Greg Berlanti, who apparently pitched his concept for a Green Lantern movie series last year when the Jack Black fiasco was going down. Presumably he is intelligent enough to know that a GL movie would do far better if it stayed true to the comicbook series (merchandise wise, future sequels wise) than to have Jack Black do some sort of Comedy. Really, making Green Lantern a comedy.. insane! Comedies do not do the same business Sci-Fi type movies do. Space cops with future science rings that do anything they will them to? C'mon.

I'm only slightly apprehensive about what I read about this so far. It seems Hal Jordan comes across a dying alien who gives him his power ring.. now, not to be nitpicky, but the dying alien actually crash lands on earth and the ring searches for a replacement, gets confused, and choses Hal Jordan (as opposed to Guy Gardner) due to his proximity to the crash site. It really is an important little aspect of things as it allows for future movies with different Green Lanterns yet allows the story to progress.

So other than that, what touchpoints should there be in the movie?

Hal Jordan should go into space, we should see other Green Lanterns who could be CGI or whatever, we should hopefully see Kilowog, who is a great visual character, and perhaps Sinestro.

Hopefully Sinestro is the main villain here, or if he isn't, he could be a Green Lantern who turns bad and sides with whatever villain the movie has. Perhaps the Qwardians.

I would like to see a scene involving Guy Gardner, John Stewart, and Kyle Rayner. Just quick cuts say if theres an alien invasion or some sort of explosions, you have a school teacher saving some kids (Gardner), John Stewart perhaps in the army or something, doing something fearless, and maybe a little kid named Kyle drawing outside while his mother tells him to get inside. I'm sure someone could think of better ideas, but it'd be nice for us Green Lantern fans to at least quickly have our fears assuaged that we'll never see our favourite characters.

We need to see the Guardians in some form, either ephereally or in person, and Hal should get some sort of training with the ring and not have to stumble and figure it all out on his own.

Carol Ferris should be in it in some fashion as the love interest. Though Hal Jordan has gone through more women than Batman probably.

The ring isn't magic, its not midi-chlorians, its super-science created by an advanced race. thats important.

NOT everyone can be a Green Lantern. A Green Lantern has to possess great willpower and be free of fear.

It would be prudent to have the storyline reflect the current state of the world, like transformers included the army in its storyline, although not to the same extent, it shouldn't be an anti-war propoganda film, it should be escapist "shit gets blown up and this guy has the greatest weapon in the universe" deal.

It should be stand alone, but lay the seeds for future storylines. Also, go Big or Go Home. It's Green Lantern, the technology exists to make it great, I'm sure the more talented people at ILM and other places would beg to work on this if done right.

Now, I'm not 100% convinced it's going to be done right, but I'll give this Greg Berlanti credit for stopping the Jack Black thing, so he better not dissapoint me and give me a Spider-Man love story with Mary Jane thing. Thats fine for Peter Parker, who is a loveable dweeb, but Green Lantern, and this is EVERY Green Lantern, not just Hal Jordan, are not Peter Parker. They're Cops/Soldiers/Space Sherriffs. They're the least Super-Heroic type characters in the DC Universe. They use a weapon, they follow orders, its a JOB for them. A DUTY. Hopefully the movie reflects that.

DONT SCREW THIS UP GREG BERLANTI. The world has been waiting for something to replace the Star Wars and Star Treks and such of the world. This is it.

Fucking Bombers! @$^%

If, like me, you are from Winnipeg, then you've made this statement many times over the course of your life. The Winnipeg Blue Bombers, our CFL team, needed to win one game to lock up first place. They failed, and now the odds of them getting that first place position and the bye week that acompanies it is in the hands of Saskatchewan. If Saskatchewan beats Toronto, and the Bombers win their next game, they can still make first place and beat Toronto. But the odds of that are like 5%. So the Bombers blew it yet again.

I've never attended a Bomber game where the Bombers have won. Maybe I don't go to enough Bomber games, but them winning when it counts (like a game against Hamilton, CMON) would go a long way to convincing me to shell out money more often. I understand you cannot win them all, but why is it that every Bomber game I go to they lose? They still lose when I don't go, but I try to go to games where they're playing the worst teams in the league to give them a chance to win when I go to their games, but no! They always lose those stupid games. But thats beside the point.

The point is, the Bombers cannot withstand any little injury to the team. There are certain players who are good, who win games, and then theres the rest of the team who are mediocre at best.

So now the Bombers have to take the hard road to win the Grey Cup. I've never seen them take the Hard Road and end up showering us with anything but excuses for when they inevitably lose. I suppose it could be worse, I could've been born in Hamilton. I mean the Bombers are at least in Second place right? Whats so bad about that? Do they deserve to be in second place though? Theres no awards for coming in second.

So now us fans in Winnipeg can watch as those Fucking Bombers blow another season and become the first team to get knocked out of the playoffs. Fucking Bombers.

SIGH.

OK. Well. Go Bombers. Convince me I'm wrong. Please!

Heres a video someone made of the Bombers in better times

Calvin & Hobbes

I was putzing around bannination.com as I tend to do (see the RSS feed on your right) and along came a story about this guy who is trying to collect little seen Bill Waterson/Calvin and Hobbes related drawings and such. Anyways, the discussion at bannination.com is at http://www.bannination.com/comments/5014791#436886 and the web page titled RaRE bill waTTERSoN aRt is at http://ignatz.brinkster.net/cbillart.html. In any case, its part of a general Calvin and Hobbes related web page. The point is here:

In the early years of Calvin and Hobbes (1986-89), when newspapers announced the comic strip as a winner of their annual "reader polls," Watterson would occasionally draw an original sketch for their articles. I'm actually looking for fellow Calvin fans in these cities to go to the public library, look up the following reader poll articles (in microfiche archives, etc.) and see if there are any such sketches:

* Chicago Tribune - January 04, 1987
* Times-Advocate (Escondido, California) - March 08, 1987
* Westchester Rockland Newspapers (New York) - March 22, 1987
* The Press Enterprise (Riverside, California) - March 22, 1987
* Sacramento Bee - April 23, 1987 (found!)
* The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin) - September 28, 1987
* San Diego Union - November 01, 2004
* Rocky Mountain News (Colorado) - December 06, 1987
* Dayton Daily News: The Journal Herald (Dayton, Ohio) - December 06, 1987
* Houston Chronicle (Texas) - January 31, 1988 (found!)
* Westchester Rockland Newspapers ("The Journal News" in New York state) - May 01, 1988
* Winnipeg Free Press - July 01, 1988
* The Ledger (Lakeland, Florida) - July 17, 1988
* The State (Columbia, South Carolina) - July 10, 1988
* San Antonio Express-News (Texas) - September 25, 1988
* Sunday Camera (Boulder, Colorado) - October 16, 1988
* Toronto Star - November 25, 1988
* St. Louis Post-Dispatch - December 04, 1988
* The Philadelphia Inquirer - December 13, 1988
* The Hartford Courant - January 06, 1989
* The Chicago Tribune - January 29, 1989

Thanks for the help!

My 10 year old self little realized that my local leftie nutjob newspaper.. err.. I mean, the Winnipeg Free Press, was one of the earlier newspapers to carry this strip. In any case, the love for Calvin and Hobbes was great even within its first years of existence, and it shows in the article that acompanied the drawing Bill Waterson made that I am about to show you.

I decided, HEY, I know where the Library is, I can take the Microfiche from July 1st 1988 and get the picture and help the guy out. Alas, July 1'st of every year in Canada is Canada Day, and the Winnipeg Free Press don't work holidays (which I don't mind on Christmas, but how hard is it to publish an issue on Canada Day? It's always bugged me)

I decided to hang in there, like the original LOLCat, and lo and behold, the image was on July 9th, with an Acompanying article. So first, here is the image as drawn by Bill Watterson before the cruel world broke his spirit and bade him to stop writing anything Calvin and Hobbes related.


Cute. Not his funniest work, for sure, its basically quoting a humourless Winnipeg woman who may or may not be in a mental institution today, who was most assuredly also lamenting the lack of Beetle Bailey or Family Circus strips on Sundays.

Anyways, whatever I can do to help the world document one of the greatest comic strips of all time, I will. Heres to you, guy whose name I don't know who put together the Calvin and Hobbes web page I referred to earlier, and heres to you Bill Watterson, wherever you are, Thanks for making me realise at an early age that as talented as I was at making Comic Strips, I would never achieve the brilliance of a Calvin and Hobbes or Far Side. No, I decided, I would not subject the world to another Hi and Lois or Family Circus. Also my humour is lost if I cannot curse. Perhaps I should write a screenplay for a comedy involving teenagers trying to have sex instead.

Anyways, the Article is on the right. Hopefully it is legible enough. OCR scanning of the image seems to take a long time on Kubuntu, so, for now just an Image. You can click on it to get the full screen image, because its probably too tiny to read it this way.

It's a fun article, considering its almost 20 years old. A lot of the old people keeping certain comics published are clearly dying off, but their curmudgeonly work is done, the comics page is clearly not what it once was. Sure there are great strips, Pearls before Swine, and the rest, but Peanuts is still being published, which it probably shouldn't be (as much as I enjoyed it) Same with B.C.. and Beetle Bailey and Family Circus. Leave the classics to their collected books, and lets give more comic strip writers a chance to make something great again like Calvin and Hobbes (though not a horribly written wannabe like "Red and Rover" .. talking dog? C'mon.

Although, keep Marmaduke. It's only a crappy comic strip until you realise that Marmaduke is an Asshole. HE THINKS HE'S PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!



Followup: I looked closer, and realised this image is the same image as the one from the Houston Chronicle on January 31 1988. All that work, and Watterson was just being lazy. THANKS A LOT, WATTERSON. Anyways, the acompanying article at least is interesting, and the typed out alternate quote for Calvin is amusing, though one wonders if the editor put that in there, as it doesn't share the same lettering as Wattersons other strips.. Regardless, the guy who maintains the Calvin and Hobbes site can cross the Winnipeg Free Press off his list. I guess Watterson didn't think us yokels in Winnipeg would NOTICE. 20 YEARS LATER, YEAH WE NOTICED.

... cough.. anyways... whats done is done. Hopefully we get a personal apology from Bill Watterson for this grave insult. Hopefully in the form of a never before seen Calvin and Hobbes strip. ...............

yeah right :)

Where have I been!!! OH HERE AND THERE...

Well, I'm alive and well. I completely forgot about my blog.

So, whats happened in the last month?

Well, I bought 8 Feet of Bridgfort Beef Sausage stick from Wal-Mart. They also have Pepperoni, and for the longest time I was confused because last year I bought the pepperoni one, and it tasted like crap, and I swore the crap off. Still, I noticed the other day while I went to the recently (First in canada) 24 hour wal-mart that they had Beef and Pepperoni style, and I like Beef, so I bought it, and it was good. Still, you have to wonder, why do they say 8 feet of pepperoni? It's Canada, we use Metric. Isn't there some sort of weights and measures law or part of Nafta that regulates this stuff? Granted Feet are how we measure height generally still in Canada, one of the few holdovers from the imperial age of measurement, probably as a result of the Americans. In any case, It was good. I still hate wal-mart, but nobody else sells that brand of beef/pepperoni stick here so I'll go there for that. I don't shop there for the prices or convenience thats for sure.

I perfected my spaghetti and meatsauce making ability. If I ever find a woman who loves spaghetti and meatsauce, Steak, and breakfast, then I'm set.

I bought a Creative Zen Stone Plus. I bought it because I was tired of using my Windows Mobile device as an MP3 player. It works, but its cumbersome. Plus, the Zen Stone+ has FM radio features, which are quite well programmed. The interface isn't apple ipod-like in ease of use sadly, I hope apples patents on the scrollwheel run out soon. Still, I'd rather have this little device with cumbersome controls than the proprietary garbage ipod owners have to put up with. Plus the ipod shuffle has no screen or scroll wheel either. The Zen Stone+ has a cute design, barely weighs anything, and I like it well enough. SO THERE.

What else.. Oh, I bought a USB->PC Gameport adapter for my PC. Works great. got an old gravis controller from the garage, played commander keen via dosbox. Very old school. Quite fun.

Updated Kubuntu to the latest version of Gutsy Gibbon. I'd say Ubuntu/Kubuntu are one or two versions away from appeasing most users. Wine, the windows emulator, is getting surprisingly good at running random things you throw at it. Windows Vista's utter failure couldn't come at a worse time for Microsoft.

Fun linux trick.. if you have a desktop running linux and ssh, try doing fish://192.#.#.# to that box with konqueror. It makes saving files from your laptop to the desktop incredibly easy. No more using scp from the commandline all the time. Also, while using Kubuntu 64 bit edition I noticed it didn't come with lxsplit in its repository to join split files. but you can overcome that by doing cat file.0* > file.avi or whatever and it'l be pieced back together. You can even test it with par2 and it'l be fine.

And thats all I got for today. I should try to post something bi-weekly at the very least. Kindof defeats the purpose of having the blog otherwise. Firefox even forgot to remember my blog password! Crazy. One more month til the new Futurama DVD is out! YAY!