You can’t even say “Comic-Con” without preceding it with “San Diego”. The San Diego Comic-Con has been a yearly phrase ever since 1970, when it first began operations. But, with time comes change, and with success comes competition and this is what San Diego is facing now as several cities are making a big push to host future Comic-Cons.
Anaheim, Las Vegas and Los Angeles are the big three, licking their chops at the fact Comic Con’s San Diego contract expires in 2012.
Hotels near San Diego’s convention center have offered Comic-Con 300,000 square feet of free meeting space and have proposed doubling the number of dedicated convention guest rooms to 14,000 in an attempt to lock in the convention through 2015.
By then, convention center officials hope to have completed a planned expansion that would leave the event with ample space.
“San Diego and Comic-Con go hand in hand like Batman and Robin,” San Diego Convention Center Corp. spokesman Steven Johnson said. “We want to make sure that dynamic duo stays together.”
Comic-Con spokesman David Glanzer acknowledged that the event has been straining against the limits of its current home and that it is considering whether the San Diego proposal would assuage those concerns.
“We love San Diego. The majority of the people who put the show on live here,” said Glanzer, who did not know when a venue would be chosen. “But we have to make a decision that’s based on what really is best for the event.”
Frank Miller revitalized Batman in graphic novel form when he unleashed The Dark Knight, which told the tale of an aging Batman reluctantly coming out of retirement. According to an interview with the Hughes Brothers, who are set to open their latest movie The Book of Eli, Warner Bros studio approached the team about possibly making Miller’s version of Batman starring none other than Clint Eastwood.
“I remember how dark the comic book was. Batman was old. He had to rely more on his tools and other sh*t, and he was a decrepit, 60- or 70-year-old man in this comic book,” said Albert Hughes. “I remember saying to them back then, ‘We want to do this, and you should get somebody like Clint Eastwood to do it’.”
Even though the studio offered the project to the brothers several times, the feeling was that “The Dark Knight Returns” would be the end of Batman movies. “We were never going to do that. We were telling them it was the death of their franchise,” Albert laughed. “Looking back now, we definitely would’ve killed that franchise.“
A little-known comic from Studio 407 called Night & Fog has been purchased for a movie deal with producers Gil Adler and Shane McCarthy heading the project. Want to feel any good will towards this project evaporate? These are the producers behind the forgettable Superman Returns and the awful Constantine. Perhaps they’ll figure out how to make a good movie on the 3rd attempt.
Night & Fog sounds like its really stretching the boundaries: “…revolves around an infectious mist unleashed on a military base that transforms its victims into preternatural creatures of the night. But when the survivors try to kill them, they adapt and change into something even more horrific and unstoppable.”
Stan Lee, the man responsible for making our childhood (and adulthood) almost bearable, is celebrating his 87th birthday today. He still has his wit, still has most of his marbles, and is one of the few living legends of Geekdom we have left. Hell, Stan is so hip he even has a Twitter account, with his latest entry reading:
Now sleep ye soundly, True Believers, secure in the knowledge that right hath prevailed and wisdom hath triumphed over warfare! Excelsior!
Jack Kirby co-created countless characters for Marvel, including the Fantastic Four, X-Men, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Avengers, etc. His estate has sent out 45 notices of copyright infringement to such companies as Marvel Entertainment, Disney, Paramount, Sony and others, insisting they intended to own the full copyright for every character by 2014. This could be a major problem for Disney, who recently purchased Marvel.
Under copyright law, the author or his heirs can begin a process to regain copyrights a certain period of years after the original grant. If Mr. Kirby’s four children were to gain the copyright to a co-created character, they might become entitled to a share of profits from films or other properties using it. They might also find themselves able to sell rights to certain characters independently of Marvel, Disney, or the various studios that have licensed the Marvel properties for their hit films.
In July, a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that Warner Brothers and its DC Comics unit had not violated rights of the Siegel heirs in handling internal transactions related to Superman, but an earlier ruling had already granted the heirs a return of their share in the copyright. In the late 1990s, Mr. Toberoff represented a television writer, Gilbert Ralston, who sued Warner over the rights to the film “Wild, Wild West.” The suit was ultimately settled.
Copyright issues have become increasingly difficult for Hollywood, as it continues to trade on characters and stories that were created decades ago, but are now subject to deadlines and expiration dates under federal copyright law.
[Editor's Note: It's both interesting and sad to see how litigious the comic book industry is. In order to stay in business and to only spend tens of thousands of dollars defending ourselves rather than the necessary millions (???), by agreement we aren't allowed to discuss the matter's details, but we have been under legal threats and attacks ourselves in the recent past. Who with, you wonder? What about? Well what do you think of the cool fictional photoshop work below? Neat, huh? Yeah, child's college fund and an entire retirement savings worth of "neat". It's quite inspiring illuminating to see super-heroes® in action first-hand.]
Unlike a lot of the staff at some of the other gaming websites you may read regularly, most of us here at GameAlmighty are old enough to actually remember the prosperous years of the 1980s – all of them, not just the last 2 or 3. It’s what makes us such fans of them, and also allows us to provide our readers with accurate, 1st hand perspective on the great games and other phenomena, like G.I. Joe, that seem to be having an increasing influence on the movies, television, comics, and games you consume today.
Unfortunately, the same age that allows us to comment with authority on the things of yester-year also cause us to occasionally forget the things of yesterday and today. For instance, because we are such big fans of that decade, it was our intention to remind all of you that this past Tuesday the Joe-themed game, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, was being released and the movie was going to be in some theaters tonight. However, in spite of the big post-it note reminder on the wall, we still forgot to do it till now:
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra the game hit stores on Tuesday and the movie of the same name is in theaters now.
There. Now the sticky note can come down, and we can get back to reviewing it. Will we be cheering “Yo, Joe!”, or insisting it’s Scrap Iron? Check back in the next couple days for our verdict.
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(Ratings Average: 4.00 out of 5)
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