@sojourner I don't believe The Elite story line is currently collected in a trade. When Dan DiDio used to do his 20 Questions with Newsarama this would be constantly brought up by fans as wanted stories that haven't been collected yet.
Slate of three DC animated movies for 2012 revealed
- Thread starter Out Of My Vulcan Mind
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It had very good sales, better than Green Lantern: First Flight and about on par with All-Star Superman.
It actually has been collected in the "Justice League Elite, Vol. 1" Tpb (together with "JLA" #100, some pages from a Secret Files & Origins book and the first four issues of "Justice League Elite") and in "Superman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told, Vol. 1".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What's..._Justice_&_the_American_Way?#Collected_format
Yes it's a stand alone issue and no it was the regular price that it was back when it first came out. @Kai, thanks for that I had no idea that it was collected. Perhaps fans were talking about a completely new collection for it then.
World's Finest has reported that The Dark Knight Returns will be a two-part release. They haven't got it 100% confirmed yet, but they believe both parts will be released in 2012.
In other news, Lauren Montgomery has left her job at Warner Bros to join the production team on Nickelodeon's The Legend of Korra, so Batman: Year One and the attached Catwoman short will be her last directing assignments on the DC line for now.
In other news, Lauren Montgomery has left her job at Warner Bros to join the production team on Nickelodeon's The Legend of Korra, so Batman: Year One and the attached Catwoman short will be her last directing assignments on the DC line for now.
It was already confirmed at SDCC that it would be the first two part DTV. That's unfortunate about Lauren, she was one of my favorite animated directors.
http://bluray.ign.com/articles/118/1183821p1.html
http://bluray.ign.com/articles/118/1183821p1.html
Aww, dang it, why does that overrated thing warrant a 2-parter when all the others that would've been worth doing as 2-parters have to get severely cut down?
On the one hand, it'll be a shame to lose Lauren Montgomery from the DCU movies; she's the best director they have (not counting Joaquim Dos Santos, who's only done the shorts). On the other hand, it's great that she'll be working on Korra (though it'll be confusing if A:TLA director Lauren MacMullan returns as well, since I've had trouble keeping their names straight in the past).
"The Dark Knight Returns" is overrated? It's sequel is atrocious and should never have happened but I've not heard from a fan that TDKR is overrated. Care to offer why you think it's overrated Christopher?
TDKR was certainly influential for its time, but I think it became regarded far too much as the be-all and end-all of Batman, rather than the alternative take on the character it was supposed to be. And looking back on it, I find it has a lot of the same excesses that render so much of Frank Miller's later work so ludicrous and ugly, the same complete and utter lack of anything resembling subtlety or restraint. When I first read it, I found it fascinating (it was my first exposure to a serious take on Batman, which is kind of like going from the kiddie pool to being thrown into the rapids), and I read it several times, but eventually I just got sick of its darkness and violence and general excess. It does have its merits, but it has a lot of other stuff I just didn't care for.
And like I said, there are other comics stories that are at least as deserving of a 2-part adaptation as TDKR. Granted that it was a very important work, and a good one in its way, but I don't think it's more deserving of special treatment than The New Frontier or All-Star Superman is.
If anything, I think an adaptation of TDKR would be better-served by a streamlined, 75-minute treatment, because that would allow trimming out the excesses and self-indulgences and focusing more tightly on the core of the story.
And like I said, there are other comics stories that are at least as deserving of a 2-part adaptation as TDKR. Granted that it was a very important work, and a good one in its way, but I don't think it's more deserving of special treatment than The New Frontier or All-Star Superman is.
If anything, I think an adaptation of TDKR would be better-served by a streamlined, 75-minute treatment, because that would allow trimming out the excesses and self-indulgences and focusing more tightly on the core of the story.
The reason they are doing it is because the comic is popular. And popular = $$$
I am surprised they are doing a two-part release. Personally, I find that to be a bit sleazy. Given that these films are approximately 70 to 75 minutes, couldn't they break the mold and just make a longer-than-usual animated feature? Along those same lines, if they adapted every single thing from the comic, would TDKR really fill an approximate total running time of 2 1/2 hours? I can't think it would.
I am surprised they are doing a two-part release. Personally, I find that to be a bit sleazy. Given that these films are approximately 70 to 75 minutes, couldn't they break the mold and just make a longer-than-usual animated feature? Along those same lines, if they adapted every single thing from the comic, would TDKR really fill an approximate total running time of 2 1/2 hours? I can't think it would.
Damn, so far her movies have been some of my favorites. Any idea if they're going to replace her, or are they just using one less director?
^ They will probably find a replacement. She was one of their main directors in their rotations.
@Christopher you make some interesting points, and I've read and heard the ones you make in your opening statement. I didn't get around to reading "The Dark Knight Returns" until well into my teens. I'd of course heard about the graphic novel and it's impact but just never got around to reading it. IIRC it was originally meant to be a kind of satire on the character when Miller first wrote it. Now it has spiraled off into it's own continuity with the All Star Batman and Robin line and the atrocious sequel.
I would agree that splitting it into two parts seems a bit...goofy but the purist fan will love that. I was amused while going through that article I posted above the same questions about "Kingdom Come" were asked. I really wish fans would listen to Bruce sometimes and quit bringing it up. He is well aware of how popular it is among us fans and has already stated countless times that he would love to adapt it...I wouldn't be surprised if it got the TDKR treatment in the future and billed as a Superman project. That'd be sweet.
@Christopher you make some interesting points, and I've read and heard the ones you make in your opening statement. I didn't get around to reading "The Dark Knight Returns" until well into my teens. I'd of course heard about the graphic novel and it's impact but just never got around to reading it. IIRC it was originally meant to be a kind of satire on the character when Miller first wrote it. Now it has spiraled off into it's own continuity with the All Star Batman and Robin line and the atrocious sequel.
I would agree that splitting it into two parts seems a bit...goofy but the purist fan will love that. I was amused while going through that article I posted above the same questions about "Kingdom Come" were asked. I really wish fans would listen to Bruce sometimes and quit bringing it up. He is well aware of how popular it is among us fans and has already stated countless times that he would love to adapt it...I wouldn't be surprised if it got the TDKR treatment in the future and billed as a Superman project. That'd be sweet.
It looks like Jay Oliva, who directed three of Lionsgate's Marvel animated movies and co-directed Green Lantern: Emerald Knights (the "Mogo Doesn't Socialize" and "Laira" segments), will step in as one of the main directors of the DC line. The bulk of the workload will probably be split between Oliva and Sam Liu.
Random aside: I'd suspect that if Kingdom Come is ever done, it'll be billed as a Justice League project as opposed to a Superman one.
No. It's just not practical from a budget or marketing standpoint to make a single animated DVD movie that's longer than 75 minutes. The beancounters won't go for it, because the return on the investment would be too low. The only way to do something that's twice as long (and costs twice as much, or thereabouts) is to do it as two separate installments, so that they can charge twice as much for the whole thing and thus recoup the expense of making it.
I was hoping for Joaquim Dos Santos to take over, but the "Laira" segment of GL:EK was the most impressive one on the entire DVD, so that's good news.
Still, it'll be unfortunate if the DCU movie line is left without any women in key creative positions. It's hard enough as it is to avoid an overly male-dominated viewpoint in superhero comics and their adaptations.
Nah, I'd use Miller's chapter titles.How much you wanna bet they call the second volume "Dark Knight Returns 2: Batman vs. Superman"?
The Dark Knight Returns for the first part, and The Dark Knight Returns: Hunt the Dark Knight for the second. I think two films will work; the first would be about Batman's reemergence and triumph, the second would be about the forces closing in around Batman in their attempt to bring him down. This works for me.
I actually get where Christopher is coming from when he says that DKR is overrated. I like DKR, I even have the DC Direct action figures on my desk at work (complete with the Frank Miller Batman stepping out of the Flight Control TARDIS), but I think Miller's story loses focus a lot in its last third, and I agree that a single 75 to 90-minute movie could trim a lot of the fat from the story. I don't think that Miller meant for the story to be taken quite as seriously as it has been, though, because, with the exception of Batman: Year One, none of Miller's other Batman work is meant to be taken as anything other than satire; Spawn/Batman and ASBAR were both laugh-out-loud funny, and for that matter so was Dark Knight Strikes Again.
On a tangential note, I think the serious reaction to DKR is why DKSA was as ridiculed as it was; it's an on-point (and incredibly prescient) satire of the Bush era, it's not a Batman story, and it makes more sense as an American response to Alan Moore's V for Vendetta than as a sequel to DKR. (Seriously. Miller's Batman is DKSA is the equivalent of Moore's V, and DKSA relates to the Bush administration in the same way that V for Vendetta relates to Thatcher.)
I might even argue that DKR is over-rated as the cause of the "grim and gritty" Batman era. The Batman comics of the mid- to late-80s were already trending in a serious direction, and I'd point especially to the runs of Mike W. Barr/Alan Davis and Alan Grant/Norm Breyfogle, both on 'Tec, and even the short story arcs like John Byrne/Jim Aparo's "The Many Deaths of the Batman" in the pages of Batman. The two advantage that DKR had in the public consciousness were the prestige format of its original publicaton and the permanent presence of the collected edition in bookstores in the years that followed. If Barr's work or Grant's work was more widely available, rather than being found only in back-issue bins, the perception of Batman's evolution in the public consciousness would be vastly different.
So, yes, I totally get Christopher's viewpoint.
Sounds like some fun projects to look forward to.
Regarding "The Dark Knight Returns", I love the whole series, but it may have something to do with the time frame I read it, my early teens, just getting into comics serioiusly. It was very different from other books I was reading at the time and the format was quite different for its time as well.
That said, I am surprised they felt it warrants a treatment that long. There are chunks of it that I think work better on paper as a comic than they would as part of a movie narrative.
And yeah - I'd SO be down for Michael Ironside doing the voice again.
Regarding "The Dark Knight Returns", I love the whole series, but it may have something to do with the time frame I read it, my early teens, just getting into comics serioiusly. It was very different from other books I was reading at the time and the format was quite different for its time as well.
That said, I am surprised they felt it warrants a treatment that long. There are chunks of it that I think work better on paper as a comic than they would as part of a movie narrative.
And yeah - I'd SO be down for Michael Ironside doing the voice again.