Updates in the CCDB

I finally found the time to upload some files today (4th october), though I still need to upload a few. At least, the Serenity crew is ready on the database now. Enjoy it!

More Serenity

Only 8 days to go ...


River Tam


Zoe Warren

Serenity: Dark Horse

In my humble opinion, Josh Whedon's Firefly is the best sci-fi series ever, but it only lasted half a season for reasons that escape my limited wits. Fortunately, Serenity, the movie is coming in september, 30. I'm not sure it will be released in Spain as well, but, hey, planes to NYC are fairly cheap, anyway! Meanwhile, this month Dark Horse has released Serenity#1 (comic series) in continuity with "Objects in space" and previous to the movie. Nice art, Firefly-like plot and good dialogue. Got the Mal cover, myself!!

And, while I wait, I can do some drawings on the crew ...

Miserere

The second volume of Miserere, an epic saga about a Middle Age spanish wandering warrior in confrontation with the Black Prince and king Pedro I has just been released the past week. To celebrate it, the authors will meet the fans and sign the comic next friday july, 15 in Malaga. Further information can be found in the Miserere blog.

Year of the living dead

"When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth"

So vampires are out! We had our deal of vampire projects both in films (Blade, Underworld, Dracula ...) and comics (20 days of night, I am legend ...) some time ago, but zombies seems to be in now.



Zombies were traditionally soulless bodies meant to obey a sorcerer as slaves, both in chinese and voodoo folklore. However, their rol in horror mostly started in 1968 with Romero's Night of the living dead", where they served no master, but an insatiable hunger for living flesh. Zombie basics were stated here: i) they are awaken by some virus or experiment; ii) they can only be killed by destroying their brains; iii) they are driven by hunger; and iv) if you're bitten, you are a goner. Zombies are dumb and slow, and their strength lies in their number and also in the fact that they are virtually unstoppable unless beheaded. Plus maybe you knew some of them in life ...

"Dawn of the dead" and "Day of the Dead" soon followed and then, for a while, almost everyone did a gore zombie flick. Some people stuck loyally to zombies even in the 90s. For example, Peter "LotR" Jackson did Braindead in 1992 and Raimi's Ash trilogy. I personally enjoyed Tom Savini's "Night of the Living Dead" 1990 remake, with Pat Tallman as a Barbara definitely more lethal than the poor undead. However, the zombies revival would not come until the last years and it was probably another remake, "Dawn of the Dead", that brought them back. The novelty of the film: now zombies ran like hell!
Obviously, the Resident Evil games and films helped as well. RE1 was very cool -as any Paul Anderson film- and had an intelligent plot that absorbed my attention all the way to the end. RE2, however, seemed boring to me and the characters, even Alice, were flat.


I also have a thing for The Undead, but, be warned, you really need a sense of humour to watch this one!
We also had the horrible -in a bad sense- "House of the Dead" and the somewhat different, "Shaun of the Dead". But let's talk comics now.


I guess the current run started with Dark Horse "Zombie World", by Mignola and McEown. Mignola was already well into Hellboy and he wrote the first limited series of this short lived project. An evil ancient priest came back from the dead and tricked humans into blasting him to pieces, despite the efforts of the main characters, a group of paranormal investigators. Of course, his "death" brings the dead back to life and he becomes their king. These series were released prior to the new zombie fever and only lasted for 3 limited series and a few specials.


IDW released Niles and Dwyer's Remains, a very well drawn series with a somewhat simple script. Some brain decides to destroy all nuclear weapons by putting them all together in a so called "nuclear oven" and burning them in a public exhibition, only there's free access to jackasses and a red button with a bright sign "Do not touch me". Obviously, there's an accident and the resulting blast turns everyone around into zombies. The main characters, however, were locked inside a vault in Reno -don't ask- and save their lives only to find themselves surrounded by thousand of hungry zombies. Hungry evoluting zombies.



Next zombie project is a cool one: Kirkman's "The Walking Dead", a very well told soap opera with zombies. The series start like "28 days". Rick Grimes awakes alone in an empty hospital. While he has been in a coma, the world has gone to hell. Somehow, the dead are now roaming the country and eating everyone and he has to find his family in the reigning havoc. However, the series is not about killing zombies, but about relationships, social dynamics and human interaction in a extreme situation. Not that there's no zombie killing, also :)



And now, things I have not read yet ...

-Barbara's zombie chronicles: Barbara was one of the main characters of Night of the Living Dead and, being the main character in these series, she must have been taken from the remake (she did not end that well in the original film), so expect guns and attitude! The art is not my piece, but maybe the story is ok ...

-Containment: zombies in space! Apparently, something goes VERY wrong with hibernating astronauts in a ship ... Haven't seen anything on this one yet.

-Romero's Toe Tag: A classic. In a nick of time, the undead have taken control of Earth and a few survivors struggle to keep surviving... It's Romero, after all!

Plus there are more projects, included in this zombie comic list.

Drop me a line!

I'd like to know your opinion about my site or any comments you'd like to make, so feel free to post them here.

Wonder Woman: from Perez to Rucka

Cliché as it may sound, Wonder Woman was most likely the series that hooked me up to US comicbooks. But, then, of course, I was lucky: the very first issue I put my hands on was Wonder Woman #1, new series, by George Perez. Perez completely rewrote the character and gave her a solid base, with nice references to classic greek mythology and his usual amazing art, only more so.



The series started with the origin of the amazons, apparently, women who had died because of the brutality of men and who were revived by the goddesses of Olympus. However, they had apparently not learnt the lesson the first time, as Heracles and his men -who had to get Hyppolita's belt as one of his jobs- drugged them, enslaved them and took by force what they could have obtained gently. Ashamed and burning with fury, Hyppolita made a promise to the goddesses: if they freed her so she could get revenge, the amazons would retire to a lost island and guard the doors to Tartarus for eternity. Centuries later, the queen would learn that she had been pregnant with a child when she was murdered and she received the ability of creating life from clay so she could give birth to her baby. So, Diana was born in Themyscira. She would most likely have stayed there happily if Ares, god of war, had not developed a plan to bring nuclear world war and involved the amazons in it. After winning a contest, against her mother's will, Diana became champion of the amazons and travelled to our world, Patriarch, to stop Ares. After her first public appearance, the newspapers nicked her Wonder Woman and that was that.



As usual in Perez’s books, secondary characters were of key importance in the original series and everyday life made solid plots in the book. He did an excellent profile of a woman who has never left an isolated island were everyone lives in harmony and arrives to modern US. Diana was pretty naïve and relied on her friends in Patriarch: professor Julia Kapatelis and Steve Trevor, no longer her eternal boyfriend, but an elderly US pilot. She also developed a sister-like relationship with Nessie, Julia’s daughter, the first teenager she had ever seen. Perez also brought back old villains like the Silver Swan and Cheetah under a new light. And, finally, they managed to explain why a greek woman would wear the US flag colors!
After Perez left the book, though, it followed no particular direction and soon lost interest. Diana’s character was no longer solid and oscillated depending on the writer. Not even Brian Bolland’s superb covers could save the series. They even did the “costume change” trick. Heck, we even got Diana working at Taco Bell!! And even though Lee Moder did okay, I’ve never liked Deodato much. However, the worst was still to come … John Byrne decided to completely rewrite the series after issue #100 in his own way!!!



I’ll make myself clear. I used to like Byrne a lot when he did the X Men, Alpha Flight … he even did backgrounds back then. However, if something works, don’t fix it! Wonder Woman was not going well, but it had a solid origin and Perez’s was the best approach to the character we had seen so far. But, of course, he had to change that. So let’s see how original he was. In his first issue, Diana arrives to Gateway City, whereas in Perez’s she arrived to Boston. In Boston, she found Julia Kapatelis in Harvard library, archaeology professor and widowed mother of teen Nessie. In Gateway, she goes to the Museum of Cultural Antiquities to look for Helena Sandmarks, curator and single mother of … teen Cassie!!. During their first meeting, Nessie awoke a greek statue that Diana had to defeat. Cassie did the same thing with a … you’d never guess … yep, a greek statue. Perez’s second arc confronted Diana with god Zeus and took her to Tartarus. Byrne’s confronted her with … god Darkseid and took her to Apokolips. Next, Perez introduced witch Circe, who wanted to take Wonder Woman’s body for herself and had a very short personal aidee. Byrne decided to be original and introduced witch Morgana –plus short aidee, of course- who wanted … nah, better figure it yourself. Byrne’s only contribution was probably to make Diana goddess of truth. Congratulations, John. Fortunately, they managed to remove that.



After Byrne left, again no directions and again cool covers: Adam Hughes this time. And, finally, we got lucky again: Phil Jimenez took the series as writer and artist. And he most likely was fond of Perez, because he tried to go back to Diana’s beginnings. In plots and arts. He was not as outstanding as Perez, but, hey, he tried hard! My only criticism was the appearance of insufferable Trevor Barnes, the politically correct, Mr Perfect boyfriend who had no flaw at all (and got himself killed!). And, then, finally, Greg Rucka. I’m particularly fond of Rucka and Brubaker, even though I did not like much some of Greg’s choices in Gotham Central. He was great, though, in Batman, I like Queen and Country a lot and Whiteout was very good. In Wonder Woman, he does not exactly follow Perez’s guidelines. Diana is not naïve anymore and she can not have much of a private life as JLA member and Themyscira ambassador. But that is the logical evolution of the character. Olympus is back. Themyscira is important once more. He has introduced new villains and recovered old ones with ability and, after a slow start, things are starting to fit again. Plus his first TP has cool xtras :)



Images linked from Wonderland, the Ultimate Wonder Woman site