Category: Geeky Fanboy

Neil Gaiman lists part of the original Comics Code

1) No comic magazine shall use the ord “horror” or “terror” in its title.
2) All scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, masochism shall not be permitted.
3) All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated.
4) Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly nor so as to injure the sensibilities of the reader.
5) Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited.

Cripes. That’s everything on my shelf. (Except for Bone, which would probably be banned for the title alone. Top 10 (thanks to ***Dave and Randy for showing me that) is probably the funniest, most light-hearted romp I’ve read in years, except for the pedophilia rings, blatant racism (from a lead character, even), difficult questions about alternate lifestyles, alien porn death conspiracies, my favorite character getting killed by drug-addled power-mad leaders-of-the-people.

Downloading one of the three unaired episodes of Firefly right… now.

So I was digging through my videotapes tonight, and I was reminded of a really good show I liked a lot.
Doomed, though.
See, it was a genre show. Great acting, really good cinematography, a concept that hadn’t really been done before, and a lot of really talented, dedicated people working on it.
But it aired on Fox. They put it in a crappy time slot and, get this, aired the episodes out of order — ruined the continuity of the thing. Show only aired about thirteen episodes before Fox cancelled it.
Firefly? Nah. Brimstone.

I’ve got The Ring and Road to Perdition on DVD, finally. Those as were asking are now free to check it out of the Testerman Lending Library.
Unrelated: caught the end of the second Harry Potter movie when I got home last night (Jackie and Justin had put it in) and reinforced my opinion that it lies somewhere between the first HP and … let’s say the Dungeons and Dragons movie. What a disappointing piece of crap.

Adam Baldwin still stops in regularly on the Fox Firefly message boards. He’s currently in Vancouver filming an SG-1 episode and dropped in from a cybercafe to give an update of sorts: a call from Joss yesterday with good news.
Excerpts:

“I’ve heard an inkling of storyline for feature [film]… You’re all gonna love it!”

“It’s BIG! Real BIG!”

“… but when I got the call from the boss… I was literally dancing down Robson Street! Hollering too!”

and Joss says “Tell them we’ll fly again.”

Good stuff. In other news, Joss is writing and directing the Season Five opener of Angel.

Neil Gaiman’s doing a miniseries for DC Marvel (?!?) called 1602. No one really knows what it’s about. (Gaiman’s reply to this question is “about 140 pages”.)
Also, he’s got a new Sandman thing coming out — seven stories, each with a different artist — called Endless Nights.

Joss Interview — I believe it’s spoiler-free, for those living in DVD-time.

THR: What happened to the plans for the animated series?

Whedon: We just couldn’t find a home for (it). We had a great animation director, great visuals, six or seven hilarious scripts from our own staff — and nobody wanted it. I was completely baffled. I felt like I was sitting there with bags of money and nobody would take them from me. It was a question of people either not wanting it or not being able to put up the money because it was not a cheap show.

One thing I was very hard-line about was, I didn’t want people to see it if it looked like crap. I wanted it to be on a level with “Animaniacs” or “Batman: The Animated Series.” And that’s a little pricier. But I just don’t think it’s worth doing unless it’s beautiful to look at as well as fun.

144 episodes. Whew.

From Sci Fi Wire

Meanwhile, Fillion (who played Capt. Mal Reynolds) said that he is completing audio commentaries for the complete DVD set of the Fox series’ 15 produced episodes, including three that never aired. “I just finished commentary with Alan Tudyk [Wash] on ‘War Stories,’ an episode where he and I got tortured… and then, Monday, I go in to do audio commentary with Joss Whedon for ‘Serenity,’ the two-hour pilot.”
The DVD will also include on-camera interviews and maybe even some of Fillion’s own behind-the-scenes home video and photos.

He also mentions stuff about a Firefly movie directed and written by Joss, and some of the stuff that’s on the DVD.
—
Related Whedonesque news: Buffy Season 4 DVD is out June 10th.