ALL-STAR SUPERMAN PREVIEW

Greetings, Leaguers.

As you may have heard, writer Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely have teamed up to create an all-new Superman tale under a new banner for DC COmics "All-Star Superman". The All-Star refers to the creative team more than the actual cast of characters.

Originally the All-Star line was thought to compete directly with Marvel's Ultimate line, but this isn't really the case. Instead, DC is allowing top creators to write and draw the best possible DC stories without worrying about what's going on in the monthly titles.

All-Star Superman is coming soon, and Newsarama has a preview (which appeared already in Wizard this month, but what the heck...) which should give you a feel for what Quitely and Morrison will do with the Man of Steel.

Honestly, in issue 2 I'm sort of feeling as if All-Star Batman is going off the rails, but I think the five pages here more or less re-assure me that Morrison is going to make me happy with his crack at the Big Blue Boyscout.

Included in the Newsarama article is an interview from a while back on how Morrison became inspired in his take on The Man of Steel. Good stuff.

Read the article and check out the previews here.

Apparently, I'm some sort of communist.

Take the test and find out what kind of commie YOU are.

You are a Social Liberal (71% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (21% permissive) You are best described as a: Strong Democrat

To Take the test yourself, click here.

I apologize for the previously posted broken links. You should all just know, it was Randy who broke them. Not me. I was totally innocent.

So The League sort of took the day off from work.

I had thought Jamie had an appointment today, but it wasn't today, so, you know... no harm, no foul.

We woke late, finally getting up around 9:30, and went to IHOP to try to see what it's like to eat breakfast out without a thousand screaming kids surrounding you as they do on Saturdays and Sundays.

For some bizarre reason I had it in my head that "Roll Bounce" looked like a fun movie, so we went to a mid-day show.

Look, Roll Bounce just wasn't a very good movie, and if I wanted to get all film school 101 on you, I had some serious questions regarding the portrayal of women in the film. The movie also suffered from the age old problem of trying to cast either really good roller-skaters or people who could act. They decided to fall in the middle and cast people who could sort of skate and sort of act, giving you the worst of both worlds.

Steanso has suggested that he might guest blog on the film sub-genre of roller skating movies. Let's all cross our fingers and hope he steps up.

Now, here was the interesting bit. The theater was totally empty. I haven't been in an empty theater since 1985 or so when we went one sunny day to see Adventures in Babysitting. At some point during today's movie I wanted to get up and start running up and down the stairs flapping my arms or doing the robot. It was a Thursday at lunchtime and school is in session. Freaking nobody was around. Just Jamie and me and a whole heck of a lot of empty theater.

It was nice. We got to boo the bad previews and talk badly about the products advertised before the movie. So very liberating. It must be how most other people in Chandler/ Gilbert feel even when the theater is completely sold out.

I'll tell you this much, I now want to build a movie theater in my front room just so I can do the robot during the trailers.

I also got to catch up on my comic reading (JLA, JLA: Classified, Batman, Adventures of Superman all good reads. Not to mention the sort of ending to OMAC.). And the season debut of Smallville bowed. Kryptonians, the Phantom Zone, Fortress of Solitude and Brainiac all made appearances. Not all bad.

Anyway, that's my post for tonight.

And I AM NOT picking on Randy. I just think he's a really good dancer.

I'm not at work today, so I thought I'd pop in with a mid-day report.

I ran some variables through the mainframe here at League HQ, and here are the results:

What if Randy took on the mantle of The Dark Knight Detective?

click here for the answer

(use speakers for full effect)

The upcoming Superman film (due in July or so) is going to mean a lot of Superman product hitting the shelf. In addition to an onslaught of t-shirts, toys and Dr. Pepper cans, Warner Bros. may be releasing a "Director's Cut" of Superman II.

Quick background: Superman I and II were shot simultaneously by Richard Donner. However, do to a lot of disagreements, the producers of the films (the Salkinds) fired Donner before production was entirely complete on Superman II. They brought in television director Richard Lester who reshot scenes and re-worked certain parts of the film.

What I don't know, and I'm not sure anybody but Richard Donner knows, is what the original film was supposed to look like. While most folks like Superman II due to the action elements, in The League's opinion, Superman I is just a much better realized film. One wonders what a cohesive Superman I and II would have looked like.

According to an interview I read a few years ago with Jack O'Halloran (Non from Superman I and II), Lester was brought in to do everything quickly, cheaply, and not to care too much if the actors were going nuts. Reportedly using TV set-ups (such as multi-camera set-ups) and other short-cuts, Lester did little to endear himself to the returning cast.

Anyway...

According to the e-mail from Nathan Cone today:

From www.thedigitalbits.com:

Also today, there are online reports from various Superman-themed websites(including Superman Cinema ) that Warner Bros. and producer Ilya Salkind have finally negotiated a deal for the release of director Richard Donner's original unused footage from Superman II. This would allow for the creation of a long-awaited Superman II: Director's Cut that would be closer to the film Donner was crafting before the film was taken away from him by the studio back in 1979 and given to replacement director Richard Lester. Donner, as many of you know, also directed the original Superman: The Movie (the two films were shot, for the most part, simultaneously). The idea behind all of this, of course, is that Warner wants to release new DVD special editions of Superman II, Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace in conjunction with the theatrical or DVD debut of Bryan Singer's currently in production Superman Returns. The new film is expected to hit theaters in June 2006.

Honestly, I always sort of assumed the Richard Donner cut was an urban myth. Like the guy who wakes up in the tub with his kidney missing, or Delaware.

You know The League will be watching closely as news develops.

I am now all iPod'd up and rolling. I still have twenty or so albums to put on iTunes, but the vast majority of what I wanted on the ol' iPod is now there. I also sold my crappy radio tuner and bought the far superior radio tuner from Monster. Not only does it work much better (no horrible 100K squealing), but it also has a nifty red light on it so my car looks much more future when I turn my car on.

Jim and Randy had each and separately suggested Arcade Fire's album "Funeral" to The League. The League is now in a mode where he has to have a minimum of three recommendations before he'll buy an album, and I think Randy's comments were number four, so I downloaded the album from iTunes. And, yeah, I know I'm totally late on this, but it's a darn skippy little record. Good recommendation, Leaguers. We're always open to suggestions on music. I may not actually buy what you recommend, but I will put the suggestion in the ol' Rolodex.

In the wake of Hurricane Rita, it sounds like Jim's place in Beaumont is okay. My folks are pretty much back to normal (for them) and Josh and Shannon's summer chateau, La Casa de Mil Monos Furiosos, survived largely intact. Sure, the hurricane may have been deflected by the oppressive heat wave currently resting on the Texas Coast, but people are still rejoicing that Galveston is not under four feet of water.

My comic reading is getting a little overwhelming in the swamp of excellent DC titles currently hitting the shelf. I am very far behind, and I have a Wonder Woman and Superman collection to dig into. Also, I sort of quit doing everything I normally do thanks to City of Heroes.

I more or less abandoned old StarSentry as he wasn't very much fun to play. I'm now playing a character by the name of "Commander Argos".

Commander Argos. Seriously.

I apologize. I just couldn't think up a good name to save my life.

Anyway, CA keeps getting killed, but it's all in good fun, I suppose. I "spoke" with a guy last night who had been playing for quite some time and kept trying to demonstrate to me how cool his character was. Apparently you CAN get a cape in this game, but you can't get it until you're on level 25. At level 30, you can be shiny. Which makes this game a cross between Dungeons & Dragons and Scientology. Upon review, the game is pretty Airwolf, and I'll probably play it for a while longer.

I think the League is officially no longer watching "Bones". We tried to watch last night, the first time I haven't watched the show in Closed Captions or while playing CoH, and, you know... I could probably spend a few paragraphs taking the show apart, but what's the point? I'm a big fan of the Deschanel sisters, but even I can take only so much poorly thought out characterization and forced tension. I understand that they're trying to mix both CSI-style procedural with soap in order to get people invested, but you need characters who are sort of interesting in order to pull that off. Two-dimensional walking cliches with poorly scripted banter don't really make me want to stick around.

After having wandered off in the middle of "Lost" last season, I have promised Jamie I will try to watch with her this year. As long as the show doesn't devolve into "the many problems of the tank-top model", I will try to stick around. Brother.

Tomorrow night Smallville Season 5 premiers, and while The League swore off the show at the end of last season, The League has heard that there is an entirely new writing team on-board. Well, let's see what happens. I think we have some Kryptonians or Daxamites in the season opener, Aquaman is making an appearance, and the Fortress of Solitude will play some role.

There's added pressure to make the show better with Superman Returns right around the corner, so we'll see. Also, I've heard that there's going to be lots of hot, teen sex this season, which, believe it or not, The League can do without. Perhaps one day The League shall write a lengthy post on why TV sex isn't a big draw for us, but today is not that day.

Anyway, this is a long enough post, right?

The End

MOST AIRWOLF POST EVER

Hey. You guys have probably long forgotten the idea of entering the word "Airwolf" into the lexicon as a synonym for "cool". As in "My new bike is totally Airwolf!"

Well, Dave over at Dave's Long Box is still fighting the good fight. Check out his detailed post on usage of "Airwolf".

read here