Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Dark Knight and Hellboy 2: The Golden Army reviews

I just realized I had yet to get around to reviewing these movies, two weeks after the fact.

Let's keep it simple.

1. Dark Knight is awesome. Go see it on the big screen if you haven't already. Heath Ledger steals the show, though I don't think he's quite Oscar worthy. It's less dark than the first movie but the fight scenes still suffer from being shot far too close.

2. I honestly like Hellboy 2: The Golden Army better. Visually, it's a much more interesting film and not just because of the costuming and make-up - the cinematography is amazing, as you might expect in a DelToro picture.

Fast Thoughts - The Weeks of 7/23/08 & 7/30/08

Since there's been so much negativity in the world lately, I'm going to focus on the one thing I liked most about all the books I got this week - all of which are well worth picking up.



AMBUSH BUG: YEAR NONE #1 - The best thing? Ambush Bug's quest for a refrigerator that DOESN'T have a dead DC Comics female character in it and the spiral of increasingly bizarre dark comedy that continues throughout the book.


COMIC BOOK COMICS #2 - The best thing? The image of a cigar-chomping Jack Kirby having to write the advice columns for the romance comics he drew.


GREEN LANTERN #33 - The best thing? Using a flashback to expand on the past of the characters, even as they set-up the future of the series, re: The Blackest Night.


GREEN LANTERN CORPS #26 - The best thing? Mongul, son of Mongul is finally dead and no more creepy cradling the corpse of Mongal ever again!


HUNTRESS: YEAR ONE #6 - The best thing? Huntress telling everyone who is trying to control her to bloody well piss off.


JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #23 - The best thing? Dwayne McDuffie actually surprised me with the clever use of Vixen's altered powers. It's so rare for a comic to actually surprise me these days...


KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #141 - The best thing? Bob and Dave turn a children's educational game on how global government works into an odd mash-up of RISK and Liar's Poker.

Comics/Comic-Con Humor Round-Up

All of this was on-line other places this morning. Amazing, no? Don't look at the last one at work, unless you want people asking why you're looking at a website called toplessrobot.com


Comic-Con: The Musical!

Short, but cute.


6 Worst Comic Book Super-Husbands

Good list, even if it was totally written by a Marvel fanboy. Then again, how many married DC heroes are there who were truly bad husbands?

Personally, I would have put Cyclops at #1. Bad as Reed is, he didn't quit his job and abandon his friends just after his wife died, get married and have a kid with a woman who was the spitting image of his wife and then abandon THAT family once he heard that his first wife wasn't really dead.


The 10 Cosplayers Who Just Barely Cared, and the 8 Loveliest Leias of SDCC

I'm amazed the live-action Rick Roll guy didn't have a black eye and several bruises.

And fair warning: the "Loveiest Leias" include a Padme.

My favorite caption: This picture also serves as a seek-and-find puzzle—see if you can locate: Marion Ravenwood, the Burger King, a unicorn, Superman, an X-Wing pilot, and any fanboy not taking a picture to prove to his girlfriend that see, a lot of girls do it.

Monday, July 28, 2008

I'm writing a comic again!

Make a long story short, Don Cook (a.k.a. Dr. Deranged of Deranged Comics) was kind enough to let me write an arc for his web-comic Every Day Is Halloween.




Feel free to post comments here, but please cross-post them to Don's comic-writing journal. You could use another LJ Friend, anyway. :)

Sunday, July 27, 2008

The Best News All Weekend...

No, not Shia LeBeouf getting arrested for drunk driving after suffering a head injury. This is even better.

SOURCE: Torchwood Star Barrowman Up for Captain America Role

Now for those of you who aren't Doctor Who fans, let me explain. John Barrowman is a very good actor who plays the character Captain Jack Harkness - a time-traveling con-man with a heart of gold. Barrowman has dual UK/US citizenship (born in Scotland, lived in the US during most of his childhood, went back to the UK as an adult) but you'd never know from his accent that he's not a life-long American. And coincidentally, when he first appeared on Doctor Who, it was in a story taking place during World War 2 and Captain Jack was masquerading as an American volunteer fighting Nazis during the Blitz. Captain Jack was so popular after his first appearance in the first series of the new Doctor Who, he was given a regular role in Torchwood - the first new Doctor Who spin-off.

So why do I mention all this? Well, I do think it's a rather inspired and perfect casting choice - Barrowman being a great leading-man figure and a fine action hero who has the right look for Steve Rogers. But I also think it's a very brave casting choice.

Why? Well, casting a semi-Brit to play Captain America is pretty brave. Casting an openly gay semi-Brit who is the poster-boy for the Equal Rights for Homosexuals movement in the UK as Captain America...

Either this is the ultimate in bravery or part of an organized plot to cause every right-wing radio host in America to spontaneously hemorrhage. Either way, I can get behind it.

Friday, July 25, 2008

The Conan Fan In Me Is Pleased




This just came out of ComicCon, as did this news regarding the movie and various rumors that sprung up on the web over the last week.

* While he's stuck in a contract that won't allow him to officially direct the movie, Robert Rodriguez said that he's handing over the duties to one of his 2nd Unit men and will basically be co-directing the movie in all but name.

* Rose McGowan and Robert Rodriguez are still together and are still happy, despite rumors of a break-up shortly after the announcement she would be playing the role.

* There is no truth to the rumor that McGowan is out and Jessica Alba is in to play Sonja OR Barbarella in the remake of that comic movie Rodriguez is signed on to direct.

* The movie will reportedly stick closer to the Roy Thomas comics (no surprise, if he's still writing the script) and the movie will focus entirely on Sonja's origins.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

The world is trying to annoy me today.

Shia LaBeouf is Y: The Last Man?

Why are they rewarding all the hack actors from Constantine with starring roles in comic book movies?

First Djimon Hounsou gets to play Thulsa Doom in a movie that has jack and squat to do with the original Robert Howard novels and is going the extra step of reinventing Thulsa Doom as a flawed anti-hero rather than an Evil with a capital E necromancer.

Doom was a King Kull enemy! And he was never a hero by any stretch of the imagination!

And now, Shia LeBeouf is going to mince his way through an adaptation of one of the best books to come out in the last decade.

Then, I hear about this.

MTV readies 'Rocky Horror' redux

*sighs* What's next? Judd Winick gets permission to write a Jack Knight series?

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

HEROES: Season 3 Preview Trailer



So here's what we know from the trailer...

* The major thrust of the season will involve the escape of 12 criminals from Level 5 - a prison within The Company used to hold the worst of the worst. 12 criminals all reportedly the equal of Sylar in power and psychosis.

* Expect lots of Sylar early on since - before the writer's strike - they shot a LOT of material with him so that he could still "be" in the show while he was shooting the Star Trek movie.

* Hiro will gain a new arch-enemy - a woman with super speed powers. Adam aka The Original Kensei from Season 2, will also be returning at some point looking for revenge.

* One of the first new episodes will involve an alternate future and show the deaths of most of the major Heroes. If the trailer is to be believed, Claire is one of killers or the killer.

* According to the gent who plays him, Nathan is not quite dead yet and will spend most of Season 3 working with Peter against their mom. No word on how he survived the end of Season 2 but the smart money is that they knew the attack was coming and faked his death.

* Future Hiro - or A future Hiro - will be returning.

* Kristen Bell WILL be coming back to play Elle. Not as a regular, but she will be a part of the action in one of the major story arcs.

* Niki survives, in a sense. Word is that Niki "dies" but that a new personality will be taking over. No word yet on if she'll be a hero or a villain.

* William Katt (aka The Greatest American Hero) will have a recurring role as a reporter who hounds Niki... or a woman that looks a lot like her.

* Bruce Boxleitner (aka Captain John F***ing Sheridan) will have a recurring role as a politician.



Yeah. Looking good.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Dark Knight and Hellboy 2 Reviews Are On Their Way...

I just got out of a double-feature, movie-marathon session where I saw both movies today.

I also just found out - about ten minutes ago - that one of my dearest and oldest friends, Daniel, just died.

I hope you'll forgive me if I'm not in much mood to talk movies right now. I'll write the reviews later, I promise.

For now though - because I think this would amuse Daniel given how we met through Rocky Horror Picture Show and because he loved George Carlin and any rants about people being stupid - here's a quick list of three socially unacceptable behaviors I'd like to see outlawed at movie theaters.

1. Attempting To Meet New People - There are many good reasons to go to the movie theater, but generally, making new friends is not one of them. I'm at a theater, I'm in the dark, I'm sitting on the back row in the corner, I want to be left alone to focus on the film. I do not want some frat boy with his beer pitcher plopping down next to me, trying to get my opinions on how sacrilegious it is that they are making another Terminator movie without Ah-nold.

2. Inconsiderate Parents- I'll admit this complaint is nothing new, but I found a new sub-strata in this ancient rock today. There have always been parents who refused to take their crying babies, bratty toddlers and inquisitive kindergartners into the lobby when they got noisy. Until today, though, I had never seen a parent who refused to take a child who was scared by a movie home. This one kid behind me was crying - scared, and rightly so, by the antics of The Joker. But this parent... they shhhhed the kid and told them to quit being a wimp.

3. People Who Try To Teach Narrative Awareness To Their Kids At The Theater- For those of you who don't know, Narrative Awareness is the technical term for knowing how a story works. It's knowing cause and effect, how actions lead to reactions and basically being able to have an attention span greater than that of your average summer blockbuster audience. It is one of the six key skills that make up literacy. It is also something that can be easily taught by asking a child questions as you read them a story or watch a show together. It is a very good and wonderful thing to teach your children as early as possible. However, I would venture to say - as a trained professional librarian, mind you - that there are certain places it should probably not be attempted. One of them is a movie theater on opening weekend at a PG-13 movie! And it definitely should not be a movie where you describe the action with the words "So Joker blows up the police station because he's naughty..."

Friday, July 18, 2008

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Watchmen Trailer is Out!

It was supposed to show up with The Dark Knight tonight... but it got leaked early.





If you no likely embedded video, check out: http://www.movieweb.com/video/V08G4asxyEIKST

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

A Special Review of Conan The Cimmerian #1

Oh gods... and it was going so well.

It's not that this comic is bad, really. Parts of it are bad, including...





1) The Cover, which pretty much proves everything everyone ever said about how Frank Cho cannot draw anything other than monsters, animals and women and how when in doubt, he'll always go for the out-of-proportion ass-shot. Also, look at the expression on the woman! You're surrounded by ape-men, a severed head is just inches away from your feet and a big burly man is standing over your body! How can you look bored?

It's a bit like that one skit on Mystery Science Theater 3000, where the robots have Mike trying to guess the emotion Kathy Ireland shows during different scenes of the movie and the answer, no matter how traumatic or shocking the scene, is always "Dull Surprise". Only in this case, Cho can't even manage 'dull surprise'. He has the dull part down, but there's no surprise.

Conan's not helping matters either. He's just standing there posed! No raised weapon. No fierce expression as he growls a warcry or curses in Crom's name. Just a vaguely menacing stare. Which, while appropriate to most social situations Conan is in, hardly seems fitting for facing an entire horde of beastmen.

2) The artwork in the flashback scenes, which is even more out of proportion than the asses of the women in Frank Cho's pin-ups.

3) The story - which isn't all that bad on it's own but... the book is called Conan The Cimmerian! I want to read a Conan story! Not watch Conan cozying up to the fire as a mysterious soothsayer tells Conan stories about his grandfather!

I'm not holding out much hope for the next issue either, since the preview shows YET another posed Frank Cho cover and the flashback ends on a cliff-hanger. But we can hope.

Fast Thoughts - The Week of 7/16/08



BIRDS OF PREY #120 -

Still kind of on the fence about Bedard so far. The best part of the issue comes early as Black Canary fights Manhunter and proves that unlike certain other writers we won't mention, he does have a handle on how a fight with Black Canary should be handled.

Manhunter: So why, with all the heat I'm packing, aren't you cutting loose with your famous Canary Cry?

Black Canary: Frankly Kate - I'm trying REAL hard not to put you in the hospital.


Anyway, Dinah chews out Babs about sending someone to spy on her family. Babs claims she was actually having Manhunter scout out Mia for her, but I don't believe it and neither does Dinah. And then Babs chews out Dinah for not having been exactly honest with her how her adopted daughter Sin "died" and Dinah walks off, telling Babs that the next time she wants to know what is going on, she should call her.

Priceless.

Too bad the rest of the issue isn't nearly as good or as interesting, except for the introduction of Babs' newest operative: a "ghost" who can walk through walls and see into the minds of dead people called Infinity.

Slight tangent: Is Infinity a new character? She seems oddly familiar but I can't find anything about her on-line.

The rest of it is more of the blah blah blah about Platinum Flats, more grade-Z super-villains who even Blockbuster wouldn't employ coming out of the woodwork and the ultimate sign of desperation... Joker has been brought in as a special guest villain.

All in all, the character moments are great and Bedard has a real handle on the core team. Would that he could come up with a menace that actually seemed... uh, menacing... for The Birds to deal with.


FINAL CRISIS: ROGUE'S REVENGE #1 - It's Geoff Johns' writing with Scott Kollins' artwork doing a story about The Flash Rogues' Gallery. If you liked Johns/Kollins run on The Flash, you'll probably love this. If you didn't, stay away. It's just that simple.

For the rest of us... well, I'm afraid that this story may be too little/too late. Johns has his hands full trying to explain away three separate Flash-related messes, including...

1) The death of Bart Allen and how - while everybody seemed to be living to make Pied Piper and Trickster miserable in Countdown - the rest of The Rogues got ignored for the better part of a year.
2) The cheap-ass way in which The Trickster was killed and what he was really up to.
3) Barry Allen's return from the dead.

Still, give Johns credit. While he might not be able to explain away all these problems, he does give us a lot of good character moments with The Rogues. And he does explain away one of the bigger questions that most people who hate The Rogues have - namely, Why do a bunch of guys with ice guns, flame-throwers and mirror powers who have no chance of honestly fighting a man with superspeed even bother when they can't really hurt The Flash?

The answer? It's not about hurting him. It's definitely not about killing him. It's about slowing him down just enough to make a living. And from that perspective it makes a lot of since. Sure, Captain Cold knows he'll be lucky to hit the Flash with his freeze ray. But he can endanger enough people to keep The Flash busy long enough to make a getaway.

Think I'll easily see this one through to the end, if only to see Inertia as Kid Zoom. :)


HELLBLAZER #246 - Very understated issue, this one. We don't get to see the big fight between John and the big-bad. Then again, we don't need to. We see plenty of horror as John walks toward the confrontation, thinking of all the friends he's lost, all the innocents he's hurt and everything that has gone wrong because of Newcastle.

Interesting experiment - read this comic while Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" plays in the background. It really brings out the torment of John's cursed life as well as what the lousy punk music John's band created as a youth must have been like.


HUNTRESS: YEAR ONE #5 - Lots of good, time-line and character defining moments here. We get a foundation for Barbara Gordon's longtime hatred of The Huntress that goes deeper than "But I'm Supposed To Be Batgirl!" and "She Slept With Nightwing!" and the idea that Catwoman helped Huntress out with getting established in Gotham. This is, simply put, the best book that nobody is reading right now and we need to get Ivory Madison on a regular monthly title ASAP.

Friday, July 11, 2008

Fast Thoughts - The Week of 7/10/08



COMIC FOUNDRY #3- The least enjoyable issue of this magazine so far, but I'm willing to concede that's a personal thing. See, I can't stand G4TV or any of the people on it. So while there probably are people who will enjoy a interview with Blair Butler, I'm not one of them.

Give them credit though - she's sensibly dressed in jeans and a t-shirt throughout. None of the bikini model shite you see in other comic-book/pop-culture magazines.

Thankfully - from an article on the much maligned art of inking to a profile of several couples who both work in the comic business - there's a lot in this issue to enjoy despite the cover story. And there's plenty of humor, as always. My favorite bit is the Summer Comic Convention Bingo card featuring such entries as "Rob Liefeld Lynch Mob" and "Hungover Creators".


FINAL CRISIS: REQUIEM - This is the comic Final Crisis #2 SHOULD have been. At the very least, it is the send-off that J'onn J'onzz deserved.

How do I love it? Let me count the ways...

1. I love the extended fight scene, because it reveals that what we saw in Final Crisis #2 was just the first blow and not the death blow.

2. I love that it reveals that J'onn was tranquilized WELL before the scene in Final Crisis #2 and that it was Effigy - who I've always liked as a villain - who brought him down.

3. I love that the villains - at the very least, Effigy and Libra - treat J'onn as the threat that he is.

4. I love that even tranquilized and on fire, J'onn is STILL able to take on at least a dozen villains at once. Nice someone remembered how powerful he is.

5. I love how J'onn telepathically attacks the villains with their vision of their respective enemies and that nearly all of them imagine dying at the hands of a hero. Luthor imagines Superman punching through his chest. Effigy imagines drowning in a Green Lantern construct. And I love that Talia - by contrast - imagines Batman sweeping her off her feet and kissing her.

6. I love the subtle clues for the fans that "the cavalry arriving" is an illusion, even before the "killing" starts. Hints like Aquaman still being human and Ralph Dibny still being alive.

7. I love how Dr. Light apparently still lives in fear of a pissed-off Ralph Dibny constricting him to death.

8. I love the five perfect choices J'onn made to continue his legacy. Hal and Dinah, because they are the only two members of the original five JLA members left. Bruce, because of their days running JLI together and their connection as detectives. Clark, because of their bond as survivors of a dead world. And Gypsy, as his adopted daughter and the last surviving member of The Detroit Justice League.

9. I love this exchange - when Dinah gets a telepathic message and an illusion of her body being on fire as J'onn is dying. I apologize for the lack of a scan, but my scanner is still busted.

PANEL 1: SCENE: Ollie and Dinah in bed.

PANEL 2: CLOSE-UP: Dinah suddenly sits up with a start. Half of her face is Martian, as a foxfire glow fills the room.

PANEL 3: SCENE: Dinah looks down as the fiery glow covers her body.

Dinah: Um, Ollie? I'm on fire.
Ollie: (half-asleep) I know, babe. But I'm just too tired.

10. I love the quiet scene with Hal and Ollie and the conversation which appears to be leading into James Robinson's upcoming Justice League book. And I love that Ollie made the "My Favorite Martian" joke.

11. I love the history of the character - and the references to past stories in JLA and his all-too briefly published solo book - and how beautifully recounted it is. And I hate that nobody could think of anything better to do with him than give him a new costume and make him more "hard-core" in the wake of Infinite Crisis.

12. I love Batman slipping the Oreo into the coffin at the end. 80's JLA reference for the win!


RED SONJA #35 - This is the first issue with the new, permanent creative team of Brian Reed and Walter Geovani and it's a pretty good first issue, though I'm uncertain where we stand or where we are going. It starts in the usual fashion, with the quote from The Nemedian Chronicles regarding Sonja...

"Know also, O Prince, that in that selfsame days that The Cimmerian did stalk the Hyborian Kingdom, one of the few swords worthy to cross with his was that of Red Sonja, warrior-woman out of majestic Hyrkainia. Forced to flee from her homeland because she spurned the advances of a king and slew him instead, she rode west across the Turanian steeps and into the shadowed mists of legendry."

We then get this little addition, summing up the book until this point.

"Know this, reader of these texts - Red Sonja has perished! Fallen in battle with the vile sorcerer Kulan Gath, Sonja gave her life to save all of Hyboria. For a time, the red-maned warrior did journey through Hades at the side of the boatsman Charon. Here, she did learn the truth of her own creation at the hands of the face Goddess Scathach.

Twenty winters have passed since last Sonja walked the land. However, now that she has returned, her new incarnation has yet to learn the truth of her existence or the reason for her miraculous rebirth..."


The rest of the issue moves between two different storylines. The first involves a man - a warrior and shaman from the look of him - who battles a voice in his head as he tracks down Sonja's false goddess at the request of a shadowy figure who may or may not be Kulan Gath.

The other story involves a red-haired noblewoman named Sonja, the conflict between her husband's family and another noble house that is trying to take their lands and her awaiting his return from a quest to find a magical artifact that will protect them. This Sonja - though not the warrior we know - certainly has an admirable strength of character and her story is an intriguing one.

I'm not exactly sure where this story is going and what it has to do with the Red Sonja we all know and love. And I love that - for once - a story has not been spoiled for me and that I can't see where things are going. I have some idea that this may be Sonja's equivalent of "For The Man Who Has Everything" and that we may be seeing an ideal life made for Sonja - where she has power, safety and a man who respects her as an equal.

I'm reserving judgment until there's a few more issues. Color me intrigued but concerned. As for you new readers, now is the time to give Red Sonja a shot if you had ever hesitated before.


WONDER WOMAN #22 - The art isn't really helping this story at all. It looks good enough at times, but it's very difficult to identify certain characters. I didn't recognize anyone amongst the heads on pikes in the opening scene but Circe and Darkseid and I just now realized that the Conan look-alike from last issue was meant to be Wildstorm's cursed Conan-lite character Claw.

Still, Simone's writing is as good as ever. Though I suspect Ends of the Earth (hmm... Robert Howard reference?) may read better in one sitting. And now I really want to see Gail write a Red Sonja story.

Monday, July 7, 2008

Fast Thoughts - The Week of 7/2/08



DOCTOR WHO #5 - You know, this is the first issue that didn't have me groaning at the presence of Martha. This is, coincidentally, also the first issue where there weren't any moments of forced romantic tension between her and The Doctor. But that's my hang up and doesn't really have any relevance to the story.

Apart from that... I dunno. It's not that this is a bad comic. But it just seems to drag compared to the TV show and the original comics currently being reprinted in DOCTOR WHO CLASSICS. It doesn't feel like Doctor Who, to me. It feels like an overly decompressed comic that just happens to have a character called The Doctor, who travels around time and space.

Still, I'll probably pick up the advertised The Forgotten Doctor Who special that is coming up, if only to see how an "official" Ten Doctors story stacks up compared to the fan-made fan-fiction comic The Ten Doctors.


FABLES #74 - Another "how they did it" issue, where we have the full details of The Free Fables war on The Adversary and his forces spelled out for us. No pun intended there as the major brunt of this issue - dealing with the invasion of the Imperial City itself - does involve a spell. I won't say more, though I suspect that at this point you all are either already reading this book as attentively as I am or you are wishing I would stop saying that you SHOULD be reading this book.


SAVAGE TALES #8 - Hamlet is widely regarded as the greatest of Shakespeare's plays and indeed the greatest play written in the English language. And yet, like everything in this wide world, it is infinitely improved by a woman in a scale-mail bikini.

In all seriousness, the opening story - in which Red Sonja visits a place much like Elisnore Castle - is an amusing spin on the habit of many pastiche writers to take a classic story and alter the heck out of it to make it into something fit for the sword and sorcery genre. Still, if one can get Forbidden Planet from The Tempest, why not Hamlet into Momento Mori? Even if the influence is obvious, one must give Vito Delsante credit for the conceit that the king's ghost was not really the king's ghost, but the ghost of his jester - getting revenge for his mistreatment in life by making his leige's son kill his entire family in the name of false vengeance.

The rest of the issue is made up of the familar back-ups of classic pulp literature. Another story on the Atlantis of Kull. The next part of an Alan Quartermain story. And for you fans of the monthly Red Sonja book, there isa story of Osin; the one-handed bard and his efforts to save the world on his own in the wake of Sonja's death which is easily the best thing in the book.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Ten Reasons Why Mark Millar Won't Be Writing The Next Superman Movie.

SOURCE:Mark Millar Has “Big Name Action Director” For a Superman Returns Revamp?

I hate to burst your bubbles, Millar-fans, but...

1) Mark's been trying to get this gig for a while now, with no success.

2) Mark's trying to take the momentum from Wanted's sucess and use it to snowball his way into this gig. The big problem is that - relatively speaking - Wanted didn't do all that well. The nicest thing anyone has said about the box-office is that it didn't get crushed going up against Wall-E. That's not shocking. That just means that all the teenagers who wanted to go see a movie and get out of the house this weekend chose to see the only other new movie instead of the kids picture.

3) I'd think if you were trying to get a job writing a character who is synonymous with "Truth, Justice and the American Way", the LAST thing you would want to do is tie yourself to the mast of a comic that is most famous for ending with the main-character insulting the reader and then showing the face he uses as he anally-rapes people. (BONUS QUESTION: Is this a metaphor for how Millar views his fans or an actual declaration of his desire to perform violent acts of sodomy on complete strangers? Discuss.)

4) Even if he is in talks regarding a script, there's no guarantee he'll be asked to write the script or that they will ever use his script. Just ask Kevin Smith about how well received HIS Superman script was, back when he had just made a moderately successful movie, had a ton of comic geek street-cred and everyone was cheering about how there was no way the script could be rejected with an honest-to-goodness comic-book writer working on the script.

5) As much as Mark likes to brag about his Hollywood connections and how in-the-know he is - especially with regards to Warner Brothers - he's been called on his B.S. before and lost.

6) For that matter, he's lied in the past about "sure things" regarding movies based on his work. (i.e. Eminem is DYING to play the lead in an adaption of 'Wanted' .

7) Assuming that Millar is telling the truth about being black-listed at DC Comics (and I think - given everything else we know about Millar's truthiness so far - that's a pretty big assumption), I can't imagine that they would be too thrilled about someone who is signed to an exclusive contract with their main competitor trying to weasel his way into a job.

8) I also can't imagine that his current employers are thrilled about how one of their major name, exclusive contract writers is putting so much effort into pimping for a job with their "Distinguished Competition".

9) Writers in Hollywood have no power. That's why Frank Miller got into producing/directing. So even if Millar does beat the odds, there's virtually no chance of his work going untouched or being recognizable by the time the focus groups are done with it.

10) Warner Brothers' can't be persuaded to make a Wonder Woman or Justice League movie right now - I REALLY don't think they're going to take a chance on another Superman movie bombing.