Posts Tagged ‘ Buffy ’

One panel that I would have gone to if I’d actually gone to Comic-Con would be the Ringer one, today.

The new show starring Sarah Michelle Gellar as twins (stop it) marks her return to TV after some indy movies and a few mainstream ones that never quite hit. The premise seems pretty promising – loser sister moves in with rich sister when she’s in trouble with the law, only to have rich sister die and loser sister take over her life, but then rich sister isn’t really dead she’s just eeeeevil. Or something.

Sure, it sounds hokey and I’m not sure how they can sustain it for more than a season, but then I say that about a lot of shows – and this has a few things going for it; first there’s Gellar herself, who I’m a fan of. Second, there’s supporting turns from Nestor Carbonell (he of the ridiculously dark eyelashes from Lost) and Ioan Gruffud (who’s actually very good when he isn’t Mr Fantastic).

It also has the benefit of being on The CW, which means that the ratings don’t have to be as high to stay on the air. So yes, I’d check out the Ringer panel if I was at Comic-Con.

Which I’m not.

…a Pop Idol, that is.

That’s what the UK version of American Idol was called, way back before there was an American Idol. Remember before there was an American Idol?

I digress.

Anyway, according to Bleeding Cool who are reporting on a BBC America press release, Will Young – the winner of the first Pop Idol – is starring in a UK supernatural show Bedlam alongside a bunch of other people from shows you may or may not recognize, including Gavin and Stacey‘s Joanna Page (the Stacey of the aforementioned stars of the comedy, definitely an acquired taste that I’m still unsure on) who may be better known as the woman who played the body double Love, Actually character who simulated movie sex scenes with Martin Freeman, formerly Tim of The (far superior UK) Office, currently Watson of the brilliant Sherlock, and the man who will be Bilbo.

Everything’s coming up a bit Love, Actually around here at the moment isn’t it?

And again, I digress.

Because the point of this post was Will Young. He won Pop Idol, released some technically quite good but aurally excruciating albums, came out to nobody’s surprise, then vanished before cropping up in some TV shows and movies that didn’t do much over here. But now he’s going to be on a supernatural show on BBC America which means it may get watched.

So I thought you should know what you’re in for:

David Gallaher knows. And he’s probably crying right now.

Incidentally, buried in that mammoth press release that Bleeding Cool runs is the news (well, it’s news to me anyway) that the next season of Doctor Who will be split into two blocks in Spring and Fall with a cliffhanger between them. Dammit.

I’ll just come right out and say it: thus far, ‘Season 8′ of Buffy‘s adventures has been a huge disappointment for me. From experimenting bisexual Buffy to unexplained character turns to spaceship-flying bugs to constantly transforming Dawn to sex-created alternate dimensions to giant Hindu gods and flying submarines, there have been so many things that didn’t work in it that at this point I’m hard-pressed to name anything that did work.

Well, except for one thing: Jo Chen‘s covers for the series have been consistently fantastic – and here almost all of them are, just missing out the final unreleased trade. (Note that Chen didn’t work on the covers for #12-15 or #29-30)

Click on any of the images launches them into a larger pop-up, while clicking on ‘slideshow’ launches…well, a slideshow.

Here we go…

Red Robin #12 – The end of the first year, and the last issue before Fabian Nicieza takes over the book. Still a great read, and Tim Drake remains one of the best characters in the DCU.

War of the Supermen #1 – I was looking forward to this but after the lackluster Last Stand of New Krypton I have my reservations. At least its going to be over pretty quickly.

Amazing Spider-Man #630 – The much-hyped return of the Lizard begins.

Deadpool Team-Up #893 – Captain Britain and Deadpool? Oh yes!

Spectacular Spider-Girl #1 – I was going to pass over this, but as its now been reduced to a mini to gauge sales I’m going to pick it up. It’s a good book, always has been, and the way that it gets bounced around makes me feel bad for all its fans.

The Many Loves of the Amazing Spider-Man #1 – I’ll be picking this up. Look, its Spidey.

Buffy #35 – Last issue was terrible, but there’s not too many left so I’m sticking with it. Also, great cover.

I’m even stupider than I thought. I accidentally added this to be posted in the PM instead of the AM, which means that my last post makes little sense. Maybe now it will.

After what has been a heavy few weeks, this one is finally a little smaller.

Batman & Robin #5 – I was pretty impressed with Tan’s work last issue after my doubts; that’ll learn me.

Batman Annual #27 – Probably not. I have little interest in the new Azrael in spite of Fabian Nicieza’s involvement.

Justice League: Cry for Justice #4 – This has become a must-read for all the wrong reasons.

REBELS Annual: Starro the Conqueror – Again, probably not. The title’s hanging by a thread with me and I don’t really need the origin of a villain I’m not interested in.

Superman: World of New Krypton #8 – Kal’s in charge of the Kryptonian army and the Thanagrians are invading. Where’s Hawkman when you need him, eh? Oh, dead…

Amazing Spider-Man #608 – ‘Who was Ben Reilly’ kicks off – and I think that mean that Kaine’s on his way back. Color me excited! That was ’90s slang for you. I’m so hip.

Astonishing X-Men #31 – Still being published? Ellis is joined by Phil Jiminez; expect big ideas, detailed artwork and big delays.

Dark Reign The List Secret Warriors – As I’ve said before, I’m sticking with Secret Warriors till Dark Reign’s done, but then I’m out unless there’s a major change in focus and direction.

Doctor Voodoo Avenger Of The Supernatural #1 – Probably not picking this up, but…but…I’m interested.

X-Babies #1 – Once again, probably won’t pick this up (even though I liked the X-Babies back in the day), but that’s a nice cover.

X-Men vs Agents Of Atlas #1 – The title that won’t die comes back with an X-Men mini to boost interest. I’ll be there.

Proof #24 – These stand alone issues are often better than the arcs. This one focuses on one of the fairies, which sounds bad but probably won’t be.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #29 – Things finally seem to be picking up momentum. One that probably reads better in trades, but I’ve been saying that for a while now.

Posted via web from Comic By Comic’s Wonderous Posterous!

Some might say it’s a stupid (perhaps monumentally so) idea but would a Buffy remake without the input of Joss Whedon really be so bad?

I mean, what could possibly go wrong? THR says:

Vertigo and Kuzui are looking to restart the story line without trampling on the beloved existing universe created by Whedon, putting the parties in a similar situation faced by Paramount, J.J. Abrams and his crew when relaunching “Star Trek.”

Well then the answer then is simple: time travel, gentle reader, time travel.

At some point in the future, a member of the Buffy cast – not one who’s working, recognised, or expensive – so, let’s say the obvious one is Tom Lenk (sorry, Tom, it’s not that I’m saying you’re not any of those three things, it’s just that I haven’t seen you on TV since you played coffee guy #2 in some show that I was flicking past).

So we have Andrew, travelling back through a rift in space-time to contact…well, he won’t be contacting Giles, as he wasn’t the first watcher assigned to Buffy; instead he’ll be warning Merrick, played by Donald Sutherland in the original movie. This time though he’ll be played by Kiefer Sutherland!

Because this Watcher doesn’t just! watch! dammit! he! DOES!

Andrew’s mission is to make sure that the evil Nobody Guy (a brand new villain with little or no backstory introduced just for this movie) doesn’t destroy the world by killing Buffy before she has a chance to go to Sunnydale, where she’ll end up saving the world several times over. He intends to do this by killing Buffy when she’s six years old before she develops her powers.

Of course, Merrick doesn’t believe Andrew and tortures him at first – eventually, though they’ll team up to foil Nobody Guy’s attack on Buffy. Andrew will die heroically, causing Nobody Guy to go and lick his wounds for – let’s say ten years. Or maybe Andrew won’t die, he’ll go to England to work with the Watchers Council. That would work and we could use him in future movies if we needed to!

Unfortunately Buffy’s parents die in the attack leaving her alone, bitter and disillusioned – and even though Merrick takes her under his wing, she rails against her destiny. We can do a quick montage of Merrick training the young Buffy – kind of like Leon (or as you Americans know it, The Professional).

Then we’ll skip forward ten years so that we can get an actress playing Buffy that we can put into skimpy clothes that rip a lot. Merrick’s moved her to Sunnydale early so that she can be in place for the future, and Nobody Guy returns to kill her again – only this time, he’s going to do it by opening the Hellmouth, and he offs the Master to do this. That way we can really show that this isn’t the original timeline.

And let’s say that Nobody Guy is going to open the Hellmouth using something that Andrew brought back with him so there’s a kind of irony there. Maybe some kind of crazy axe? Or a red ball of hell stuff?

Anyway, because she’s in Sunnydale we can have lots of winks to fans of the show with little in jokes – maybe Merrick ends up as the reluctantly gruff librarian at the school; there’s a nerdy girl and guy that Buffy ignores because she’s so angry; we can have a dark haired bitchy girl be killed by Nobody Guy in his first attack, that kind of thing.

We can throw in some teen angst too, with one of those Gossip Girl pretty boys as a love interest if the demos need it. Kids love that kind of unnecessary love plot, I hear.

In the final battle – and that needs to be in a high school gym, obviously – Buffy not only destroys Nobody Guy, but she manages to close the Hellmouth once and for all, so all of the future stuff that we saw in the show never happens. And we see this, like, homeless vampire pining over her in the final fight, but she dusts him without even knowing that it was Angel. That’s kinda poignant, right?

And then it’s like a completely new timeline from here on out. Just in case that wasn’t obvious. No doomed love or anything like that. And maybe next time round we can bring in Spike and Dru – only making Spike, like, a Bon Jovi wannabe instead of all English and stuff.

But the movie ends with Buffy and Merrick going on the road, fighting demons all the way to the next Hellmouth. Say, in New York. Or Cleveland.

Awesome.

I’m in. Seriously, who needs Whedon?

Wasn’t Lost great last night?

More on the smoke monster (or as I now call it, Anubis‘ pet dog), more on Widmore and Ben, more on Richard ‘of-course-I’m-not-Egyptian-or-Jacob‘ Alpert, more on what happened to Penny and Desmond, more on Locke, more on the new castaways, more Frank and much, much more on Ben!

One continuity screw-up does annoy me, though – specifically, Ben and Ethan living with the Others when Alex, born in 1988, was less than a year old, even though Ben was still living with the Dharma crew when the Purge happened in 1992.

For me the episode raised a few questions -

Why was Ethan spared in the Purge?

Is Smokey is some form of Egyptian god (or god’s dog), then why is he stuck on the island?

Why exactly don’t we see John around when smokey’s doing something? Shades of 7th-season Giles? Buffy fans will know what I mean. Hopefully.

Why is Richard Alpert so content to play kingmaker when he obviously knows more than everyone else? Unless of course he actually is Jacob or Anubis or something…

What does lie in the shadow of the statue, anyway – and how did the new crashees (not even a word) contract the virus – assuming that’s what’s happened?

Lost‘s on a roll this season – and next week’s Miles-centric episode looks like another good one!

For some reason, having Oz on the cover of Buffy #26 makes me very happy indeed – although the series itself has been in a slump for months now.

Oz FTW!

…so…it’s, er, not very good is it?

Look, I’m a fan of Whedon’s stuff. I love Buffy. I love Angel. I love Firefly and Serenity (even though on my first attempt to watch the pilot I bailed after ten minutes) and Dr Horrible.

But Dollhouse…

I saw Whedon talking about the show at NYCC. He seemed to know that the show was going to be controversial, that it was going to get people talking. He seemed to know that he was going to be facing an uphill battle.

And you know what, the show is controversial. The Dollhouse itself is basically renting out sex slaves and wiping their memories – and let’s face it for a creator who talks a lot about women’s rights and the mistreatment of women (even though he’s also managed to piss off some feminists), it’s a tough stance to make.

But that’s not the problem with the show. The problem is that it doesn’t engage. It’s difficult to root for a character that’s virtually non-existent. Dushku’s Echo is clearly beginning to remember some of her past, but that doesn’t make up for the fact that she as a character doesn’t have much going for her. Sure, she looks good in a tank top but so what?

Of the rest of the cast, only two are actually close to being likeable – Harry Lennix’s conflicted handler and Tahmoh Penikett’s FBI agent. The problem with these two is that Lennix’s Boyd Langton is so obviously conflicted that you wonder why he signed up in the first place (although I suspect he’s a Doll himself), and that Penikett’s Paul Ballard is on the periphery of the show. I understand that’s going to change but right now, it’s distracting.

The show’s ratings didn’t start well then dropped off for the second episode; Whedon has said that Dollhouse is probably the last TV show he’ll work on and that in the future he’ll concentrate on online work (and I suspect movies).

Honestly, that may be for the best – because Dr Horrible is a hell of a lot more enjoyable than Dollhouse.

I’m going to keep watching, though. Partly because I’m a glutton for punishment and partly because I want to see Alpha Doll in action…

You know, Alpha. He’s like a leaf on the wind, you know.

A while ago I asked who should play Captain America…and better late than never, and recorded for posterity now that I’ve taken the poll down, here are the winners!

With a massive 46 people voting…

In last place was Night Owl-to-be Patrick Wilson with 8% of the vote.

In fourth place was Captain Awesome himself, Ryan McPartlin, with 10%.

Third place went to former Riley Finn, Marc Blucas with 13% of the vote.

In second place with 26% was Someone Else – suggestions included James Spade (to Shatner’s Red Skull, of course!), Mark Valley (I like him but I think he’s too old for the role), Neal McDonough (ditto) and Travis Schuldt (thanks for someone obscure Mike!) and finally…

…the winner is the better half of the Winchester brothers, Jensen Ackles with a whopping 41% of the vote!

The people (all 46 of them) have spoken!

I don’t know why, but I really like these faux-magazine covers right now.

It’s a pretty big week this time out with a couple of issues that have been waited for forever..

Batman #681 – Finally! I’ve ripped on this a lot, but I’m still looking forward to it. Maybe it will finally all make sense!

JSA Special: Kingdom Come: The Kingdom #1 – The first two specials have been okay but not stupendous. Not expecting much more than that – which is pretty sad when you think how long this has been building.

Superman #682 – New Krypton thunders on. Good stuff.

Captain America #44 – Also good stuff. Gotta love Bru and Epting’s run on this!

Guardians Of The Galaxy #7 – One of Marvel’s best three books!

Incredible Hercules #123 – Another one of Marvel’s best three books!

Nova #19 – And that makes three for three!

Secret Invasion Inhumans #4 – I want an Inhumans ongoing. Now, please.

Secret Invasion X-Men #4 – Okay, but not amazing.

Wolverine Origins #30 – The conclusion. Fun little crossover.

X-Force #9 – Still enjoying it. Still can’t explain it.

Proof #14 – Honestly, this arc hasn’t been great. Which is a shame as it was doing so well…

Buffy The Vampire Slayer #19 – The issue months in the making…regular schedule, please!

Flash Gordon #3 – What, you didn’t read how good this book is?

Nuff said!

Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse has shut down production for a few weeks. According to Zap2It, the hiatus is to help Whedon get ahead on scripts:

…because Joss directed two of the three episodes already shot, he has not had sufficient time to be in the writers room and tailor the upcoming scripts to his liking. A rep from 20th Century Fox — the studio behind Dollhouse — said Joss came to them asking for a couple weeks to regroup and they were happy to give it to him…

And…

Said the rep, “We have every confidence that will allow Joss to make the show the best it can possibly be. It’s very rare that you have a head writer who is also directing two episodes in a row. But we are happy that Joss is directing, because this is his vision.”

Sounds good right?

However, according to TV Week, there may be more to it.

However, some executives at the Fox network are worried that Mr. Whedon may not have his “Dollhouse” in order.

A person familiar with the thinking of some Fox executives told TelevisionWeek that there have been concerns raised inside the network about the fundamental underpinnings of the show.

Specifically, because the heroine of the show, played by Eliza Dushku, has no free will or ability to do much beyond what she’s told to do, viewers might find it hard to root for her. In addition, some executives have expressed concerns that early episodes of the series have been confusing and hard to follow.

The report goes on to say that Fox has denied that there are worries over the show.

But then, Fox are the same network that screwed over Firefly years ago by showing the episodes out of order, starting with the weakest of the series and ending with the pilot that explained who everyone was.

And this is the same Fox that gave the promising-if-not-amazing Drive three episodes before announcing cancellation.

And this is the same Fox that continues to churn out enjoyable-but-unchallenging fluff like 24 and Prison Break. I like both shows, but neither of them suffers from an over-abundance of complexity.

So…I’m cautiously worried.

Then again, I’m surprised that Fox showed something like Fringe, which appears to be heading towards Lost-like complexity, given the ARG over at Massive Dynamic (I’ll be damned if its not related to the Hanso Foundation), so what do I know?

The translation of television to comic doesn’t always work too well. Whether it’s a combination of character likenesses, licensing approvals or whatever else, the comics rarely feel like the TV shows.

The four minute presentation for the long mooted Buffy Animated Series is up on YouTube…for now.

Alyson Hannigan, Nicholas Brendon and Anthony Stewart Head all returned for the promo, while Buffy was voiced by Giselle Loren.

Shame this didn’t happen.

Things don’t look too good for the Buffster in the variant to Buffy #19.

Yes, I said the Buffster…

It occurs to me that I’m only reading Trinity for one character.

As much as I like Busiek, Bagley, Nicieza et al I’m certainly not sticking around for the slow-as-molasses plot, the uninteresting new characters or the navel gazing as the trinity actually start to think of themselves as – Spoiler! – a trinity and wonder what that means.

No, I’m reading for Wonder Woman. I can get a pretty good Batman pretty much anywhere (except for Batman itself where I have no idea what’s going on), and I can get a great Superman right now in Action Comics – Robinson’s run on Superman is too soon to judge.

But Wonder Woman?

She’s pretty much a non-presence in Justice League, and as much as I wanted to see Gail Simone really succeed on the title, Wonder Woman is drowning in a sea of sub-mediocrity. While her run started off strong with ‘The Circle’, it’s pretty much unintelligible right now, with a trip through Hades or somewhere for some reason that doesn’t make sense or matter.

Current arc aside, it’s not Simone’s fault that she’s been stuck with a boring double-life/secret identity schtick for Diana, but it is her fault that she’s yet to do anything interesting with it.

It’s also not her fault that Wonder Woman’s villains are pretty dull. Giganta and Cheetah are just kind of there, and only the overused Dr Psycho is genuinely creepy. She doesn’t really have an archenemy outside of Circe (also overused) and while I like the idea of the upcoming Genocide (a being made of dirt from various sites of atrocities to counter Diana, made of the dirt of Paradise Island) I also kind of liked the idea of Devastation, and where’s she now?

Then there’s the supporting cast. Sarge Steel is, very broadly speaking, J Jonah Jameson with a gun. Nemesis is just kind of dull as love interests go. Etta Candy is virtually a blank slate these days….and while you can’t go wrong with warrior gorillas, I think the rest of the cast needs a revamp or at the very least more development.

And honestly, I wish DC would have the balls to just let Diana be gay – or bisexual at the least. If you can do it with Buffy and not have a huge backlash (apart from me moaning about it) then why not try it with Wonder Woman – except that she’s more iconic and Warner Bros hope that one day they’ll actually manage to make a movie with the character and they worry that having a gay or bisexual Diana might damage its success.

Answered my own question there, didn’t I?

Maybe it’s the central concept of the character – it’s difficult to sum her up in one sentence, unlike most other characters, and when she’s worked best in recent years it’s where she’s had a creator with a strong vision – like George Perez, Phil Jiminez or even John Byrne. Simone, so far, hasn’t demonstrated that she has that vision.

Anyway, back to what I started this little diatribe with: Trinity is the only place where I can currently read a well-written Wonder Woman.

And that’s kinda sad.

The cover to Buffy #18 via CBR