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I saw the movie this week and I wil write about eventualy, but I had to post this video I just ran into on you tube.
Watchmen cartoon

It is brilliant! And not that implausible, I recall cartoons being made from innapropriate source material pretty regularly, although none of them spring to mind just this second.

Also It’s Just Some Random Guy has been doing a Watchmen series as well.
Random guy watchmen #1
random guy watchmen #2
random guy watchmen #3

Regardless of how I felt of the movie, the release has wrought these and that is good.

I just saw the trailer for a new series starting in the UK in a few weeks, No Heroics.  It looks like a cross between The Office and Cheers with a little bit of Hancock thrown in.  The trailer is entertaining, but it’s long enough that they could’ve thrown in all the good stuff from the series.

Of course, having a sitcom like this, as well as movies like My Super Ex-Girlfriend, and even Hancock means that we’ve crested the wave, and now are sliding in to the time when a genre becomes a parody of itself.

It’ll start airing on ITV in the UK on 10 September, and is produced by Tiger Aspect, who have a long history of television comedy (League of Gentlemen, Dame Edna, Mr. Bean).

UPDATE: Click here to watch the trailer on YouTube.

As someone stuck up here in Minnesota rather than in California for San Diego’s Comic-Con, I basically just have to sit back and watch the news roll in from everybody else. But this report about the panel on Dr. Horrible is just too good not to share. Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, Felicia Day, Simon Helberg and of course Joss Whedon himself were all present.

There was much banter — repartee even! — at the expense of scoopage. After an audience member playfully accused Whedon of liking to kill off his female characters, Harris deadpanned, “You do kill a lot of chicks.” Retorted Whedon, “I have two tricks. You’re either out, or your dead.” Fillion, meanwhile, cracked some choice phallic “Captain Hammer” jokes, then claimed that Harris, vis-a-vis Doogie Howser, invented the blog. And Harris? He claimed he didn’t recall said show, referring to that time in his life as his “heroin years.”

But there were a few revelations among the revelry. On the ever-enduring Buffy front, we learned:
• Joyce Summers had Whedon’s favorite death on Buffy. Said Whedon: It was “the most time I got to spend with something that close to me.” Awww.
• Oz will return to Dark Horse’s most-excellent Buffy comic(!).
• Willow was basically outed only because Oz left the show.
• And, no, Whedon was never going make Xander gay.

And in Dr. Horrible news:
• Harris did some of his own MTV Cribs-like choreography in the musical, including that beloved shoulder shimmy in the second act.
• While filming, Whedon sang as Hammer to Felicia’s character. And cowriter Maurissa Tancharoen has it on tape.
• They’re hosting a contest for “Evil League of Evil” video submissions that are no longer than three minutes. The top 10 will be on the Dr. Horrible DVD.
• The Dr. Horrible soundtrack will be available for download in a couple of weeks.
• Lastly, if you want to be an agent of doom, and rock an iPhone, you too can log onto the very same interface Doc Horrible used in the film at www.thesoftwire.com/horrible_remote.html.

Pretty cool, huh? Here is more coverage of the panel including a video, and confirmation that Whedon said there will be more Dr. Horrible.

More comic-con news: EW’s Popwatch, Wizard’s SDCC news central, and finally Newsarama’s coverage guide. There’s tons more where that came from, but who has time to read it all?

I picked up Chuck #1 on a whim…I’d been looking for something different from the usual Marvel superhero fare I’m used to. The art looked kinda cool and the pages I skimmed through looked intriguing enough. Then I read it and I had to admit, I was a little confused. There’s this guy named Chuck who daydreams at work about Gilligan’s island inhabited by his coworkers at a Best Buy knockoff that gets blown up. Apparently he’s some spy type of person in some agency that employs psychics and there’s some sort of “intersection” in his head. Whatever that means.

Admitting defeat, I sheepishly turned to the internet to find out more about this comic. That’s when I found out that this was a comic adaptation of a TV series…one I don’t watch. The comic was obviously written for fans of the show (which makes me wonder how successful they hope the comic will be? Is there a huge market for comic versions of somewhat obscure TV shows?), and was thus lost on me. I was more intrigued by what I at first thought the story was about…some poor geek at the “Buy More superstore” who dreams these fantastic situations he puts himself and his friends in…and makes this his reality. But since I’m not a fan of the show and they didn’t really make the comic that accessible to a new audience, I most likely won’t be picking up any more. Which is unfortunate, because there is some genuinely witty dialogue and storytelling here. If anyone else watches the show, though, I’d be interested in what they thought.

Chuck is Written by Peter Johnson and Zev Barow with art by Jeremy Haun and Phil Noto

It seems like at one point or another, just about every super-hero has had some sort of film or television appearance.  And if it’s something that never actually aired on tv, you can bet that someone made a pilot for it that never went anywhere.  Just recently, I got the opportunity to see something I had been trying to find for years, the unaired live action Power Pack tv pilot.  Alex, Julie, Jack and Katie might’ve had their very own tv series, had this show impressed some execs just a bit more.  Judging by the style of the show, they were going for a Saturday morning, or mid-afternoon show, seeking the coveted Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers audience.  What they made, though, was a little closer to Small Wonder.  Most people might say that’s a dis, but at the time, I loved Small Wonder.  And I can see me back then, eating this up with a spoon.  However, being made in 1991, the producers missed the Small Wonder boat by a few years.  Not enough action for MMPR, too young for Saved By The Bell, I’m not sure which fan base they were really going for here.

As far as the story goes, the origin is similar.  The kids still got their powers from an alien named Whitemane, the powers are mostly the same, but they’re not super-heroes.  They don’t fight Snarks.  Their parents know about their powers.  And most of the situational plot comes from not letting the neighbours know about their powers.  They’ve just moved to a new town, and they get a lecture from Mom & Dad about how important it is that they fit in here, so no using powers in public.  Their powers are similar to what they have in the comics, with some twists.  Alex is pretty much the same, Julie is super-fast, but couldn’t fly (at least not in this episode–she does pedal a bicycle at superspeed with the rainbow trailing her), Jack appears to only be able to shrink, and Katie…well, she has some sort of energy powers, but I have no idea what they are.  What was shown in the episode was her creating a glowing globe in her hand, and releasing some sort of energy at a ghost, but not explosive energy.  Plus she doesn’t have to “charge up” by disintegrating matter.

The production quality was that of a pilot, never meant to be aired.  The producers were trying to sell the episode, so the effects are pretty dicey.  The background music during the beginning was from Beetlejuice and in one scene, the radio is playing New Kids on the Block.  I can’t say I blame the executives from giving this one a pass, but I’d like to see what could’ve been had the show been greenlit. It wasn’t unenjoyable, but it was a little bit closer to Alf or Bewitched than it was to the Marvel comic that meant so much to me as a kid.

The entirety of The Tick (the live action series) is now available on Hulu.com. When I first saw this version of the tick, it was at a thanksgiving family reunion, and we literally watched all nine episodes at least two or maybe three times that weekend. Hysterical stuff.

My only previous exposure to The Tick had been in my Latin courses at college. The professor was absolutely nuts for The Tick, and would quote it regularly. I think he even went so far as to bring in some clips from the animated series for us to watch. Then about two years ago I got into the Tick comics, and had to collect them all in Trade Paperback.

So… just to add some links to this post, and spruce things up a bit, I started googling for the Tick, hoping to find a cool weblog by the creator or something. Instead, I found out that Ben Edlund, the creator/artist for the comics, was also a writer/producer for Firefly and Angel, and furthermore has written episodes of The Venture Brothers! He also wrote Titan A.E., which I didn’t think was nearly as bad as everyone said it was). His latest writing/producing credits are on a show called Supernatural, which I haven’t heard of, (or if I had, I didn’t care at the time), and which I will now gleefully Tivo!

Here is a choice quote from an interview with Edlund that I found on slashdot:

The Tick is a work in stupid. Just as others may choose clay or stone or paint, I and my compatriots have chosen stupidity as our medium. But stupid must be worked and mastered like any other material; during this experimental stage, the viewer of the work may feel he or she is observing “perceptiveness” or “art.” This is simply an illusion.