Voices From Krypton

PART 2: EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW -- KEVIN J. ANDERSON ON SUPERMAN/BATMAN "FIRST ENCOUNTER"

In this exclusive interview with Voices From Krypton, Kevin J. Anderson continues his preview of the followup to The Last Days of Krypton, First Encounter, which chronicles the first meeting between Superman and Batman. You'll find the audio file after the excerpt below.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: These days it seems that Superman is a little more comfortable with being a part of humanity, but in the book it feels like there’s still a pretty large gap as far as he’s concerned.

KEVIN J. ANDERSON:  That’s a lot of the internal struggle of Clark/Kal-El in that he is trying to relate and at one point he throws up his hands to his mom and says, “I don’t understand these people. I don’t understand their problems. “ Martha says, “Do you think we understand them, Clark?” She tries to make him see that the things he doesn’t understand about humanity is a perfectly normal part of being human. It’s very poignant, because he’s Superman and when he’s sitting there in her kitchen eating apple pie and drinking milk, he says, “What right do I have pretending to be Clark Kent and living a life of my own? People need saving 24 hours a day. If I’m having coffee with Lois Lane for that hour, how many people die in car accidents or plane crashes? Shouldn’t I be Superman 24/7? And Martha Kent is insisting he deserves his own life and has to be among human to understand humans. This isn’t just a book of chapter after chapter of Superman stopping bank robberies, saving crashing airplanes and beating up bad guys. I think that’s the difference with the novel; you can really get into the reality of everything. On a comic book page, you can’t have pages of the character’s face as he ruminates. In a novel you can at least do it a little more in depth.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: How do you view the relationship between Superman and Batman?

KEVIN J. ANDERSON: The structure of the novel, and I don’t know if I should say this, is that it’s almost like a classic romance. First they get together, they hate each other, they’re at odds, then they gain an understanding and they come together.  There’s a lot of friction because Superman does not agree with Batman’s tactics, and Bruce is having a lot of problems with Luthorcorp. He also figures out that the only other company that can create these things – the bullet proof suit, the ability to fly -- is Luthorcorp, so Superman has to be working for Luthor. Who else could have made someone like him? So there’s an immediate at odds and the situation worsens. They also look at their duty in a completely opposite way. Batman kind of wants to stop the little criminals – the muggers in the alleys, the rapists, the thugs – whereas Superman wants to promote world peace and stop wars and keep the governments from killing each other. So it’s a big picture or little picture thing. Obviously something happens where they have to work together to do both.

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MEET THE DARK COMMANDOS

What if Michael Bay directed a vampire film?

If the director of such films as Bad Boys, The Rock, Armageddon and Pearl Harbor did choose to turn his focus to the undead, the resulting film would undoubtedly be along the lines of something like “Vampire Marines” – a team of young, good-looking, kick-ass vampires working on assignment for the U.S. government.

At least that’s the conclusion that Tom Sanders and Ed Gross came to when they turned that particular question over in their minds and created Dark Commandos, the live-action Internet series. The show, airing in three-to-six minute installments, chronicles the adventures of the Undead Brigade as they take on the missions that no one else can handle.

“The idea of a team of vampire commandos was originally Ed’s,” says Sanders, “and I have to tell you, when I first heard it, I had my doubts. Ed’s always been into vampires, but I honestly felt that the genre had been beaten to death. But we started tinkering with it and, as usually happens when he and I start writing something, sending scenes and drafts back and forth, fleshing out the characters and developing a storyline. We both got excited about the material and pretty soon it was all either of us were thinking about.”

Dark Commandos originally began existence as a script called Millennium Rising. That story told the tale of New York Detective David Manning and his struggle against a blood cult headed by one Timothy Jenson, whose ultimate plan was to trigger a war between humanity and his vampire army. Additionally, Manning had to deal with the return of his late wife – a victim of Millennium Rising – who has returned as a vampire and who conceivably holds the ultimate clue on how to stop Jenson.

“We really saw it as a tragic love story set against the backdrop of an epic struggle for the survival of the human race,” says Gross with a smile. “Granted we were aiming high.”

Things were progressing well, until the aforementioned references to Michael Bay and Vampire Marines entered the picture. At that moment, Dark Commandos was born. Manning’s story was temporarily shelved (intending to be resurrected later in the show’s run) and a group of all new characters were introduced instead.

Dark Commandos in its current form stars Justin Neal Thompson as team leader Non Agememnon Gage, who is over 500 years old. Transformed during the Crusades, he served the vampire who turned him for several years, until the man’s unrelenting brutality caused him to flee. Non survived on the run for the next several centuries, until an unexpected meeting with his progenitor resulted in Non being forcefully buried in Austria in the mid 1800s, where he was left – presumably forever. During World War II, however, the forces of the Third Reich discovered his amazingly preserved body and brought him to Hilter’s top secret “Theosophic Research” facility, where his blood was sampled by Nazi scientists who hoped to use it to create an undead army. Their experiments produced several hideous false starts, but Hitler’s vision remained unrealized when American Commandos “rescued” Non, effectively drafting him into. Despite what he is, Non remains a spiritual man who continues to practice his Catholic faith (a point emphasized in episode five). On the one hand, Non would love nothing more than final death, but in the back of his mind is the fear that he would be denied entrance into Heaven. The alternative is too frightening to contemplate.

Dreyfuss, second-in-command, is played by Bradley Upton. Turned during the Spanish-American War, Dreyfuss was actually on a suicide bid when he was attacked by a female vampire, suddenly finding himself cursed with eternal life. After years of self-imposed isolation, he emerged as a solider of fortune, hiring out his skills mostly to Third World countries with little regard for his employer’s stance. He never revealed to them what he was; they knew him only as an efficient covert leader and killer. It was in this capacity that he crossed paths with Non several times and was eventually persuaded to join the DC in the 1970s. Of the Commandos, Dreyfuss is the most resigned to what he is, wasting no energy debating the morality of killing to live.

Christopher Boicelli is cast as Ed “The Kid” Torin. Chronologically, Ed is about 50, but physically (and some would say emotionally), he’s in his 20s. His father was a friend of Non’s and when Ed was dying in a Vietnam POW camp, Non went in and saved him the only way he knew how – by turning Ed into a vampire. The Kid desperately tries to hold on to his youthfulness. He embraces whatever is trendy at the moment, but it’s a kind of desperate clinging rather than a real exuberance. Feeling he was cheated out of his youth, first by Vietnam and then by Non’s life-saving “cure,” Ed has a soft spot for children, particularly the abused. While his youthful idealism makes him a spirited fighter, it also leaves his emotions raw and his impulse control lacking. At the same time, in many ways Ed embraces what he is, and approaches vampirism as something of a super hero gig, serving as Robin to Non’s Batman.

Amber Phillips is Sue Janic, the newest Commando. In her early ‘20s, Sue is a top CIA agent who is persuaded by someone high up in military intelligence to join the Undead Brigade. In Sue the audience witnesses the deconstruction of a human soul and its rebirth into the unnatural state of vampirism. Sue at first embraces this journey, as it seems to offer a path to the enlightenment she has long sought, but the transformation ultimately takes her to places darker than she could have ever imagined. Even as Non privately searches for his own redemption, Sue plunges headlong in the opposite direction, prodded along by Ed’s well-meaning, but ill-advised companionship. In many ways, Sue’s journey will be the audience’s into this bizarre world of the undead.

More behind the scenes information will be featured in next week’s installment. Below, check out episode one of Dark Commandos.

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- EPISODE ONE -

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If you've checked out episode one of the original web series Dark Commandos (about a team of vampires carrying out covert missions for the government), then you can probably appreciate the challenges of producing a show like that on an extremely limited budget. To provide an inside look at the process involved, this video shows how the car chase for the episode came together.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: KEVIN J. ANDERSON ON THE SUPERMAN/BATMAN NOVEL "FIRST ENCOUNTER," PART 1

After the success of last year’s The Last Days of Krypton, it’s not surprising that author Kevin J. Anderson has been given the chance to dip back into the DC well and what he’s emerged with his First Encounter, the 2009 novel that will chronicle the first time that Superman and Batman meet.
   “These are big books, not paperbacks, so you want to do something significant,” says Anderson. “So I thought the best way to go would be the first meeting between Superman and Batman. But I was still wrestling with it a lot, because I personally love the superheroes in the past. I did a JSA series set in the ‘40s and I just think those heroes belong in the ‘40s and ‘50s; that’s just my preference.”
   Then he was struck with the idea that if they were to meet each other in the 1950s, it would place the books setting during the Cold War between America and the Soviet Union.
   “Then all of these things came up,” he says. “That was the beginning of the UFO craze and the time of all of those great – or not so great, depending on your point of view – sci-fi movies, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, Them and Invaders From Mars. Everybody was seeing UFOs. This would be set eight or 10 years after the Roswell crash. I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun for Perry White to have Clark Kent look into the UFO crazy and find out if there were any of these little green men wandering around on earth?’ Of course, Clark wants to find out if he’s the only alien on earth, if he’s truly the Last Son of Krypton or if there are others. So he’s passionate about that. I’ve also got Lex Luthor, who’s pretty much promoting the Cold War. He’s trying to increase international tensions with his counterpart, a KGB general in the Soviet Union, because Lex is making so much money selling weapons. There’s also the element of Bruce Wayne’s board of directors being blackmailed by Luthorcorp for sensitive information.
   “The other thing I thought was the most fun,” Anderson continues, “is that Bruce Wayne is just fascinated by this Superman guy. How does he fly? How do bullets bounce off of his chest? Bruce is down in the cave working like crazy to figure out how to make a suit so that bullets can bounce off his chest and whether or not he can rig something so he can fly. Bruce Wayne is a rational guy, he doesn’t believe Superman can be some alien from space flying around. I just had so much fun tracing these ideas and seeing how they can all come together.”

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   To hear the rest of the interview, please click below..

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THE OA REPORT: DAVID BOREANAZ AS GREEN LANTERN?

According to a report at Moviehole.net, David Boreanaz (Angel, Bones) was supposedly the inspiration in Brian Murray’s recently posted artwork for the currently-in-development Green Lantern, and may be in the running of the role of Hal Jordan. It could be an interesting choice, as the actor voiced the character in the animated adaptation of Justice League: New Frontier.
   “Hal’s an interesting character,” Boreanaz offered at the time. “Having been part of the Korean War, he’s kind of damaged goods, yet he’s striving to get back to being himself. I think Hal’s sense of duality is fascinating – his holding onto his past, overcoming it and being heroic with it. It’s about coming to an understanding of where your strengths are and where your weaknesses may be – and as an actor, to go into his dark place and work from there. I found that very appealing."
  For the Moviehole story, please click HERE.

JEPH LOEB ON BUFFY SEASON 8 & THE ANIMATED SERIES

Heroes executive producer and comic writer Jeph Loeb, who had helped to develop Buffy the Animated Series, has returned to the Buffyverse by penning issue #20 of Season Eight, "After These Messages... We'll Be Right Back." In this issue, which is a nod to both Pleasantville and The Wizard of Oz, Buffy gets to return to her freshman year in high school as she finds herself IN the universe of The Animated Series. The art is by Eric Wight, who did the original designs for the show. In this exclusive interview with Voices From Krypton, Loeb discusses both the issue of the comic and the proposed series itself. Note About Audio: Don't EVER conduct a phone interview with the air conditioner going and the TV on in the background. Not very conducive for great sound quality, but it seemed worth posting anyway.

    In the interview, Loeb explains, “Joss had this great idea that he was going to do all the season eight stories as comic books. Dark Horse needed to have some names attached to this, because to be perfectly honest, a licensed book has never worked. There are 40, 60, 80 issues of Buffy that no one cares about. But Joss had this wacky idea that he was going to do a Buffy comic and someone’s going to care. And now it’s a Top Ten book; a monster hit book. It’s the biggest book Dark Horse has ever had. It’s consistently beating out everything that DC has and it squeezes itself into the Marvel world.”
Loeb saw this as an opportunity to bring Buffy The Animated Series, on which he was to be co-executive producer, to life for an issue of the comic. “I wanted to tell a story where something happens to Buffy in the present and she wakes up Pleasantville-style and she’s on the animated show. And the part that is incredibly exciting is the animated series took place in year one, so it’s always episode 7.5. Which means that she knew Angel, but she did not know that he was Angelus. It was just a simpler time. Her mom was still alive, the biggest surprise would be that Dawn would be there and she’d be 10 years old. It would feature Principal Snyder and Cordelia would still be alive, and, you know, Willow had not gone dark. All the things that happened as the years go by. They were still kids trying to figure out how to stake a vamp. And Buffy gets dropped in this world. There’s a line that it’s ‘a Season 8 brain, Season 1 Bod,’ and she’s having a ball. It’s like The Wizard of Oz, but at what point does she decide to go home?”

   For more, check out the audio interview

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JOSS WHEDON INTERVIEW FROM WHEN "BUFFY SEASON 8" WAS FIRST ANNOUNCED

SUPERHERO NEWSROOM

In an interview with The Daily Record, Seth Rogen offered of THE GREEN HORNET, "We finished the script, we've met with directors and they want to make it. There's a tentative release date of 2010. I like the fact that it's not sacred like Spider-Man or Batman. We wanted it to seem very real, but we don't want to prevent the characters from being funny. It'll be a comedy action movie"....According to Montreal's The Gazette, Warner Bros. is taking the critical acclaim of THE DARK KNIGHT seriously: "Warner Bros. wants a statuette -- or 10 -- for The Dark Knight. The studio plans to re-release its blockbuster Batman sequel in January, the height of Academy Awards voting season. 'It's just a matter of bringing it back as a reminder for people,' a studio insider said. Warner domestic distribution chief Dan Fellman acknowledged ongoing talks with Imax about showing the film at some giant-screen venues in January. It's uncertain whether it also will reappear in conventional venues at that point"... Considering the global success of Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Hancock and The Dark Knight, it's hardly surprising that Canada's Times Colonist observed that superhero films "demonstrated comic book fare is no longer just a 'niche' project but valued as pop literature by millions. Superhero movies alone pulled in almost a third of the $4.1 billion box office grosses Hollywood had generated by the Labor Day weekend... The genre's newfound respectability is an observation on the movie summer worth noting as autumn approaches"... Comic Book movie featured a short interview with the GREEN LANTERN movie's Mark Guggenheim, who revealed, "It features Hal Jordan and is an incredibly faithful rendition of the character. It honors everything everyone loves about the hero. We approach it from a fan's perspective. Every step of the way, we ask ourselves what we want to see and what the fans will want to see." For the full story, click HERE... Australia's The Courier Mail reports that a Superman costume has become "a  reality." Says the paper, "Kiwi scientists have developed a revolutionary fabric that is stab and flame resistant, but as light to wear as wool. The superhero fabric can even withstand a blowtorch, said Peter Ingham, a scientist at NZ government-owned research group AgResearch. Dr. Ingham said the fabric's uses could include protecting soldiers from shrapnel, and prison wardens from inmates. 'It looks like a milled woolen material, but it is made using a new technology,' he said. 'There have been inquiries from New Zealand Post to prevent puncture wounds from dog bites.' The fabric is made by combining knitted vectran, an ultra-high-strength polymer, with wool fibres."

KNIGHT RIDER EXCLUSIVE: ONE-ON-ONE AUDIO INTERVIEW GARY SCOTT THOMPSON ON KITT & SCRIPTS

While there are undoubtedly many fans of the original Knight Rider who would disagree, to many it would seem that scripts were not high on the priority list of that show, the focus, instead, being on Michael Knight and his repartee with KITT. For this reason, it’s surprising to hear new series’ executive producer Gary Scott Thompson detail his approach to writing the show, and the efforts he and his staff are going through to ensure that Knight Rider has become a show for the 21^st Century and that KITT will be as “real” a character as any of the others.
   Below is AN EXCLUSIVE ONE-ONE-ONE AUDIO INTERVIEW conducted by VFK’s editor Edward Gross, in which Gary Scott Thompson provides an inside look at the writing of Knight Rider.

   “We went back to the original series to look at what made it work,” says Thompson. “We went through the pilot and we didn’t want to disappoint some of the fans of the two-hour, so we have four characters coming from that. So we made sure that those four characters clicked into what the new mythology was for the series. It’s 25 years later, so we have to update the car, update the people and be in touch with the times.”

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FROM THE WATCHTOWER: IS JL FILM STILL ALIVE?

From everything that's been gathered, the Justice League film is pretty much finished until the individual characters have been explored in their own films (at least that's the latest).  But what muddies the waters a bit is the fact that on September 5th, Daily Variety wrote about producer Dan Lin, saying, "He's lead producer on Guy Richie's Sherlock Holmes, which begins shooting with Robert Downey, Jr. in October, and is waiting for WB's marching orders on Justice League." Okay, so far, so dead. But today - while reporting that Lin would serve as producer of the scifi film Karma Coalition -- Variety stated, "Lin is producing a number of pics for the studio, including superhero film Justice League." Just makes one wonder what the status of the film really is.

THE COMIC SHOPPE PODCAST: 9/8/2008

BRENDAN FRASER ON J.J. ABRAMS' "SUPERMAN"

While speaking to actor Brendan Fraser about Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Voices From Krypton editor Edward Gross had the opportunity to speak to actor Brendan Fraser about both films. Additionally, the conversation veered to the J.J. Abrams screenplay for "Superman," for which Fraser was offered the title role. What follows are his reflections of that experience.

When you're finished listening, become a member of the Voices From Krypton Community (it's free) where you'll have your own page from which you can blog, ad photos music and video, interact with other members and, coming soon, check out exclusive interviews. Just click  HERE to join.

 

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