“Wally Wingert Voicing Hank Pym In 'The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes'! - COMICBOOKMOVIE.com” plus 3 more

Wally Wingert Voicing Hank Pym In 'The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes'! - COMICBOOKMOVIE.com
Sylvester Stallone reloads old-style heroes in The Expendables' - The Sun News
Comic-Book Heroes Drawn From Reality - New York Times
New Avengers Animated Series Coming This Fall - Wired News

Wally Wingert Voicing Hank Pym In 'The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes'! - COMICBOOKMOVIE.com

Posted: 17 Jul 2010 02:32 AM PDT

As we are all aware, to coincide with Marvel Studio's 2012 film extravaganza, The Avengers, an animated series will be made in time to air next year in order for younger audiences to familiarize with The Avengers before the big screen film hits.

Now in an exclusive interview with Wally Wingert from Keloland, Wingert has revealed that he will voice Hank Pym in the upcoming The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

Wingert mentioned: "We're wrapping up the second season of Avengers from Marvel; I play Ant Man, Giant Man, soon to be Yellow Jacket."

So... wait, they are completed with the second season? That is a little shocking, but what should be exciting for some of us fans is that Pym will be suiting up as all three of his superhero counterparts in the show. Lets hope the animated series is similar to The Spectacular Spider-Man, which was not full of nonsense made for kids.

Whoever would have thought the announcer for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno would be Hank Pym?

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Sylvester Stallone reloads old-style heroes in The Expendables' - The Sun News

Posted: 21 Jul 2010 09:51 AM PDT

LOS ANGELES - The lights were down low in Sylvester Stallone's Beverly Hills office on a recent afternoon so it was impossible to see the 64-year-old movie star's eyes behind his plum-tinted sunglasses. His snug Italian suit emphasized his still-muscular frame as he sat ramrod straight. His face doesn't move much, either, so he seemed like a statue, until he started recounting the moment when he knew that he was becoming expendable.

"It was that first Batman movie," he said, referring to the 1989 film starring Michael Keaton, an actor never known for biceps. "The action movies changed radically when it became possible to Velcro your muscles on. It was the beginning of a new era. The visual took over. The special effects became more important than the single person. That was the beginning of the end."

Yes, even action heroes get misty-eyed at times. In the 1980s, Stallone was one of the biggest names in Hollywood in movies in which he punched, shot or (in a film rightly called "Over the Top") arm-wrestled his way past overpowering odds as an especially sinewy everyman. And, despite the arrival of an era when actors such as Keaton, Johnny Depp or Tobey Maguire could play the action hero, Stallone never really went away. He didn't become small; Hollywood's collective bench press did.

"I wish I had thought of Velcro muscles myself," Stallone mused. "I didn't have to go to the gym for all those years, all the hours wedded to the iron game, as we call it," he said, a reference to weight training.

But Stallone is back in the heavyweight game this week, at least for a day. On Thursday, he will be in San Diego at Comic-Con International, the pop-culture expo which runs through Sunday at the convention center and where Velcro muscles are practically handed out at the door. He's not going there to get vengeance on the nerd heroes (although that might actually be entertaining), he's going to promote his ridiculously retro film "The Expendables," due in theaters next month.

The movie is a low-tech, deliriously unironic return to the sort of commando movies that were a popular cinematic sector during the Reagan era. Movies just like it get relegated to the small ballrooms at Comic-Con all the time, but "The Expendables" will be front and center in Hall H, the 6,500-seat hangar of a room where Angelina Jolie, Nicolas Cage, Will Ferrell and Jeff Bridges will be part of a celebrity parade during the four-day expo.

How did Stallone rate? Simple: He drafted an army of new friends and old rivals into "The Expendables" for a sort of "Magnificent Seven" approach to his battle-zone fantasy. Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger appear in the film (briefly). So do Mickey Rourke and Eric Roberts. And British tough-guy Jason Statham and Chinese superstar Jet Li. There's also a former NFL player (Terry Crews), a pro wrestling icon (Steve Austin), an Ultimate Fighting Championship star (Randy Couture) and Dolph Lundgren, who Stallone enjoyed punching back in the good ol' Cold War days of "Rocky IV." Not every hot-shot he-man actor participated; Jean-Claude Van Damme, Forest Whitaker and Ben Kingsley demurred.

Stallone plays Barney "The Schizo" Ross, a mercenary who has assembled a team of paid killers who look like the models for a "United Colors of Harley-Davidson" ad campaign. Statham plays Schizo's second-in-command, Lee Christmas. A mission takes the team to South America where nasty surprises await. Rourke plays a tattoo artist and sometime spiritual advisor; Roberts is the bad guy.

Willis and Schwarzenegger play mysterious kingpins who meet with Stallone's character for a fleeting underworld summit staged in a church - perhaps they are the trinity of American action movies for fans of a certain age. The three actors have a history - they were partners in the 1991 launch of Planet Hollywood, the theme-restaurant chain, and seeing them meet on-screen is the tantalizing lure of the movie's trailers and posters. Stallone says his old screen rivals showed up for no pay as a gesture of support.

Stallone, who co-wrote the screenplay with Dave Callaham, said he was "a nervous wreck" on the day of the shoot. And, as a reflective director, it got him thinking about the three actors he would be guiding.

"Each of us chose a different style. Arnold was king of the one-liners. Bruce was witty and talkative; he had all these verbal pirouettes. And I was pretty silent. My guys seemed haunted, a lot of the time, but Bruce's guys were usually Teflon. Arnold was relentless, like this perfect machine. People asked if I could have played the Terminator. Are you kidding? Not a chance, I never could have played the Terminator."

Stallone didn't complete the corollary, but Schwarzenegger could never have inhabited the role of everyman Rocky Balboa, the neighborhood lug with hound-dog eyes and a heart full of sadness who never gives way to surrender.

Willis, for his part, has promoting to do for his big film called "Red," based on the comic, in which he portrays a former black-ops agent, but says he enjoyed "The Expendables" so much he'd like to work with Stallone again. "He's a very efficient and creative director; the experience on 'The Expendables' was great."

Willis will appear with Stallone on Thursday, which will surely send the genre-loving fans of Comic-Con into delirium. Director Edgar Wright, who is going to Comic-Con to promote "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World," said he gets goose bumps thinking about the reception that the old war horses will get. "It's going to be like when 'Rocky' won the Oscar for best picture. I can't wait."

The trio of "Die Harder," "T2: Judgment Day" and Stallone's "Rocky III" helped propel Hollywood down the path of franchise obsession. The high-concept, high-explosive approach to cinema makes Stallone a founding figure of sorts at Comic-Con, where action heroes never die, they just become video-game characters.

As robust as the Comic-Con reception might be, it might not even be the highlight of Stallone's day. He and other "Expendables" cast members will stop Thursday night at Camp Pendleton to screen the movie for Marines.

Here are some things you will encounter if you sit in the dark with "The Expendables": compound fractures, stab wounds, an abusive boyfriend beat down, bodies flying over sandbags in slow motion, testicle jokes, fiery debris, tropical airstrips, a major amount of C4 explosives, cocaine kilos stacked in a cave, water torture, cigarette-burn torture, tough love and tattoos. The movie reeks of cordite and is drenched in testosterone - there are women in it but they're treated pretty much as props.

There's a scene in which a villain is engulfed in flames and staggers toward death. The director wasn't satisfied with it though so, despite the expense, Stallone went back to shoot more footage and ordered up some CG effects. Now, he proudly explained, the immolation has an exclamation point and "The Expendables" is the first film in history in which a good guy goes up to an on-fire bad guy and punches him in the face.

Stallone is candid that the movie lurched and stalled a number of times. It was supposed to be a comedy but then, after seeing early footage, he realized directing a commando comedy is a lot harder than it sounds.

"I think it would have been a disaster," he said, adding that a documentary team recorded much of the production, for posterity. "The Expendables" ended up as a straightforward wolf-pack adventure that recalls some textures of the old "Missing in Action" films (which starred Chuck Norris, who somehow didn't get called to duty).

Stallone is a man of action but has aspired too to be a warrior-poet in his own way. Critics have savaged him through the years with some notable exceptions (he was praised for his nuanced turn in the 1997 "Cop Land," for instance). He got decent reviews in "Rocky Balboa" (which dropped the Roman numerals for the digital age) but his retro commando film may be marching to a beat that leaves young audiences confused.

Sitting in his office - next to shelves full of action figures, prop weapons and a latex decapitated head plucked from the set of a Rambo film - Stallone explained the mindset of the characters in his new film, but he seemed to be talking about more than movies.

"When the battle is on, that's easy. When boxers are in the ring they're simple. It's when the fight is over, that's when the other fight, the real fight, begins. That's the problem. It's like Frank Capra said in his book: Reality started when he drove through the gates of Paramount. The surreal life started when he drove back home. Why do some actors want to do nine films a year? It's their element. They're more comfortable in the unreal world."

"Expendables" is a curious film to handicap, commercially. The cast and Comic-Con will stir interest, but will the film win over young fans whose word-of-mouth is essential? Lionsgate saw the hard-knuckle comic book movie "Kick-Ass" light a fuse of public interest and press but fail to deliver any big bang; the studio picked up the Stallone project, which conceivably could be a rerun.

Stallone doesn't seem fazed. He's more interested in chewing on the story of the film and the old lions who reload for one more mission.

"People that spend time in a foxhole - they're never going to find that relationship anywhere else again ... everything else pales next to that. When you think about the Second World War vets - more than even the Vietnam vets - there's a brotherhood. They're 90 years old now, and they're still wearing the hats. The way they feel about each other. Time stopped. That was the ultimate of life. Everything after it was anticlimactic. After that it just wasn't the same ..."

Stallone paused, went back to statue mode. Then he found the metaphor he was searching for, behind those shades. "After that, their life was straight-to-video ..."

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Comic-Book Heroes Drawn From Reality - New York Times

Posted: 28 Jul 2010 03:34 PM PDT

Leah Nash for The New York Times

Darren G. Davis of Bluewater Productions.

WHAT do Jesus, Lady Gaga, J. K. Rowling, David Beckham and the cast of "Glee" have in common? They are each the subject of a biographical comic book from Bluewater Productions.

And there are more yet to come: Carla Bruni-Sarkozy (August), Meredith Vieira (September), Olivia Newton-John (October) and the cast of "Twilight" (November).

Set in that middle ground between fanzines and traditional biographies aimed at the younger reader, these publications are the latest chapter in the publishing industry's presentation of fact-based comics. The man behind them all is Bluewater's president, Darren G. Davis, and the true-story comics have been the company's salvation.

"Without these comics, we wouldn't be alive," Mr. Davis said in a telephone interview. Bluewater, like many smaller comic book companies, was struggling with a tougher, smaller market and the declining sales of comics featuring the 10th Muse, a character Mr. Davis created, which was introduced in 2000. A Michelle Obama comic book from the new series sold around 65,000 copies, Mr. Davis said. By contrast, copies of the 10th Muse sell between 5,000 and 10,000.

The turnaround for Bluewater began with the 2008 presidential campaign. Another comic book company, IDW Publishing, released biographies a few weeks before the election telling the stories of Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. Those issues sold nearly 30,000 copies to comic book stores in the first month of their release.

Mr. Davis was inspired to follow up those comics with ones devoted to Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sarah Palin. (The cover of the book featuring Mrs. Clinton even mimicked the look of the covers featuring the male senators.) Mr. Davis said he was frustrated that the women "were being treated really unfairly in the press." He thought that the Bluewater biographies, which were released in February 2009, would help get their stories out. "You might not like them, but you have to respect them and their career," he said.

Having such powerful women starring in comic books fits into Bluewater's slate of "female empowerment" books, which include the 10th Muse, about a long-lost daughter of the Greek god Zeus, and comics featuring the Egyptian goddess Isis. The biographies of Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Palin were published under a "Female Force" banner that went on to include Michelle Obama; Caroline Kennedy; Diana, Princess of Wales; Condoleezza Rice; Barbara Walters and others.

Putting out the comic biographies allowed Mr. Davis to tap skills from his earlier career in marketing, publicity and advertising. He had worked for E! Entertainment Television, USA Networks and Lionsgate. "I know how to utilize the press," he said. "People are going to publicize a Sarah Palin comic rather than a small independent comic."

Comic book biographies are not new, of course. "There have been an awful lot over the years," said Mark Evanier, a comic book historian. One of the first regular series, Mr. Evanier noted, was Real Fact Comics, from National Allied Publications, the forerunner of DC Comics. The series ran from 1946 to 1949 and told the stories of famous folks like the musician Glenn Miller, the writer Jack London and the actor Lon Chaney. More recent biographical comics have run the gamut from Marvel's take on Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II, in the 1980s, to the story of Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco from First Amendment Publishing, in the 1990s.

Mr. Davis has since twice broadened the focus of Bluewater's line. Enter the "Political Power" series with Colin Powell, Ted Kennedy, Al Franken and Joseph R. Biden Jr. The company's latest effort is its "Fame" series, which chronicles the likes of Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and the cast of "Twilight" (individually and as a group phenomenon).

The "Fame" series will no doubt help Bluewater's bottom line, and it will also help meet another of Mr. Davis's goals and the Holy Grail of the comic book industry: attracting new readers. The biographies are sold at comic book stores, amazon.com and even Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft stores nationally. Mr. David said that signings at comic stores have attracted women who "didn't even know comic book stores existed." Getting those women in can sometimes lead to additional sales of other comics — for themselves or their children, he said.

The Bluewater books have had their share of mistakes and detractors. The first version of the cover of the Hillary Rodham Clinton comic depicted the American flag with 14 stripes. In a discussion with a caller on his show, Rush Limbaugh revealed that he did not have a cat named Banjo, as his comic book biography claimed. (His cat's name is Punkin.) Johanna Draper Carlson, who operates the Web site Comics Worth Reading, had concerns about the books' overall quality. "I'm afraid that anyone drawn in because, say, they're a fan of Lady Gaga would be so turned off by what they got that it wouldn't be a net benefit for comics," she told newsarama.com, a Web site that covers the comic book industry. "It could confirm the outdated stereotype of comics being sub-literate and for the uneducated."

"People say we get all our information from Wikipedia, but that's a total lie," Mr. Davis said. "We really go out there and do the research. We talked to Oprah's dad before Kitty Kelley did," he said.

And while some of the comics did not have the cooperation of their subjects, that may be changing. "We reach out to the celebrities and try to get them as involved as possible," he said. He offers to publish public service advertisements for causes the subjects support, or to donate a percentage of the proceeds. Olivia Newton-John and Charlaine Harris, the author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels on which the HBO series "True Blood" is based, have taken part in their coming biographies. "We've also heard from Taylor Swift's agent," Mr. Davis said. "There's a possibility we might be doing something with her."

While the bold-faced personalities for these books may seem infinite, Mr. Davis has drawn a line in the sand. "I'm not a big fan of the reality stars," he said. "You'll never see a comic book with Heidi Montag."

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New Avengers Animated Series Coming This Fall - Wired News

Posted: 29 Jul 2010 06:36 AM PDT

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