Retro-Blog: Comic Book Movies on Cable

I have to say, I was pretty impressed with Painkiller Jane which debuted Saturday night on the Sci Fi Channel. For something that premiered on cable, it was actually pretty good. If you missed it, it's supposed to be showing again Thursday night. Although it was obvious from the movie, the buzz is that they'll probably use it as a pilot for a series. If the series is as well made as the movie, I'll be watching it.

Retro-Blog: More Comic Book Films

My two favorite mediums are movies and comic books. Most of all, I love movies based on comic books. One of my favorite past-times is finding little-known comic book movies (superhero movies count, even if they're not based on comics). Whether it's the movie that's not well-known (The Return of Captain Invincible), or the comic (Mystery Men), or both (American Splendor), it's just something I enjoy doing. As you can tell, I also like to review them. (Sorry for the shameless self-promotion. Hey, that's alliterative! Hey, alliterative's a word!).

The Sci Fi Channel has been jumping on the bandwagon lately. In April, it premiered Man-Thing, based on the Marvel comic, which was coming out on DVD a month later. I was finally able to see it. I had it TiVo'd it back when it premiered, and finally tried to watch it a few weeks ago, but about 10 minutes into it, I realized it was very edited (very edited? I'm sure somewhere a copy editor is having convulsions). So this weekend I finally got the DVD from the rental store. It was edited for good reason - being a horror film, it's a pretty solid R and cable wouldn't have been able to show it uncut. It was better than I thought it might be for a straight-to-video. My review is at the above link.

I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, but as coincidence would have it, I was scrolling through upcoming events on Sci Fi Channel and Cartoon Network last night, and found that Sci Fi was premiering Painkiller Jane today. From what I can tell, this is a comic book previously published by Event Comics (which I can't even find when Googled), but now seems to be with Dynamite Comics? Sounds complicated to me. I don't know anything about it, except what I've seen in the movie previews, but my curiosity is peaked. If you're interested in seeing it, it will also be on at 9 (Eastern?) Thursday night (Dec 15).