Turok is how old?

Shows how much I know.

I've got that cool foil cover of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter #1 from Valiant floating around in my comics collection. It's not worth anything - you can buy it on eBay right now for about a buck. And I remember playing Turok on my brother's Playstation many moons ago. I always figured it was a cheap comic that was based on the video game. Come to find out, the Valiant comic (1993) came out about four years before the first video game (1997). So I was obviously wrong there.

But now I just found out that Turok's been around since the 50s. How'd I miss that? Spending too much time working and not enough time reading comics, I guess. So, anyway, Turok made his first appearance in 1954 in Gold Key's Four Color Comics #596. He's had several incarnations as well as several video games since then.

What's the point of all this? In February, Genius Products and Classic Media will be releasing Turok: Son of Stone, an animated feature on DVD. Going for about $20, the hour-and-fifteen-minute animated film was supervised by Tad Stone (who is responsible for the Hellboy animated movies - see that blog to the right). It looks interesting, but I'm not sure it'll be worth buying. Here's the trailer.



It looks like it coincides with the release of a new Turok game for Playstation 3 and XBOX 360. This trailer looks a little more interesting.

Sonic Boom!

OK, this isn't entirely comic-book-related. Though it's not completely un-comic-book-movie-related since Udon has been releasing comics based on the title. But, as you may know, Capcom is working on a new version of Street Fighter.

But what I wanted to mention here were some hilarious movies I came across - Street Fighter: The Later Years. Zangief and Dhalsim round up the gang to capture some of the old magic. Here's episode 1:



They've got five full episodes up at the link above.

And in case you haven't seen it, here's the trailer for Street Fighter IV.

XIII: The Conspiracy

While looking up some other comic book movie connections in A History of Violence, I stumbled across the fact that a XIII mini-series is in the works. If you're not familiar with it, that's the Belgian comic that the Ubisoft game is based on. Don't know why this is so under the radar (unless it's because it's not a done deal - though that never seems to stop anyone), but after a little hunting, and translating of French web pages, I finally came across some information.

The series is called XIII: The Conspiracy (even if you Google that, there are only 20 hits: second-hand news sources, foreign-language web pages, and the text of a book with a 13th chapter that starts out "The conspiracy..."). The mini is slated to be in production right now, starring Stephen Dorff (as XIII) and Val Kilmer (as Mongoose). The best information came from the British production company Power, which seems to be one of the companies involved in making the XIII mini-series. Here's their October 2007 story. Unfortunately, Google must not crawl their sites - I had to translate a French blog to find this (my French isn't that good - I had to use the Google translator).

The series starts out like the game (and I'm assuming the comic). XIII washes up on the beach with amnesia, only to find out he's being hunted for the assassination of the president. Judging from the cult following, it makes for a great comic book; from personal experience, it makes for an amazing game. If you don't know the story, here's a more complete synopsis of the adaptation from Power's page:

XIII: The Conspiracy opens with the assassination of the first female US President Sally Sheridan who is shot dead by a sniper during her Independence Day speech. Her assassin narrowly escapes the scene with his life, national security hot on his heels – or so it seems.

Three months later, an elderly couple discover the body of a wounded man washed up on a beach. The young man (Stephen Dorff) cannot remember the slightest thing about his own identity. The only clue is a tattoo on his neck, “XIII.” Meanwhile, in the Whitehouse, government intelligence is still conducting the search for the President’s killer. With the elections just weeks away, a confirmed suspect could swing the vote for the administration. Hours after XIII’s location is picked up by covert intelligence, elite special ops forces are swarming the couple’s house in Cape Fear. Running on adrenaline and instinct, XIII tactically takes out the soldiers one by one. Is this who he is – a killer?

On the run, clinging to one desperate clue after another, XIII begins to piece back his life, fragments of his memory returning. Finally captured, he learns that he has been given a stolen identity and placed undercover to flush out a group of conspirators threatening to overthrow the government. Ensconced within the highest echelons of power the conspirators run their own security agency alongside the Government’s. Both are out to find him.

The only way for XIII to get his own life back is to play bait. A dangerous game, especially when you don’t know who you really are.

The official IMDB page lists a number of actors attached to the series (including Greg Bryk from History of Violence), but doesn't include Dorff and Kilmer.

If anyone has any more current info, I'd love to hear about it.

Top Cow comes to XBox

I'm sure this won't be Gears of War or Halo, but it looks pretty cool nonetheless. I've always been a fan of the first person shooter...



I happened to notice this commercial the other day sitting in a restaurant that had some game on the TV - it looked interesting, and I was suprised when I saw what it was - based on the Top Cow comic The Darkness.

XIII

I guess I'm just way behind the times. When I recently read in Marvel Previews that they would be publishing a XIII graphic novel, I just assumed that it was based on the Ubisoft game, XIII. Little did I know that it was a Franco-Belgian comic book released in 1984. If you're not familiar with the game, it was released in 2003 and has the most amazing comic-book look to it; and it's one of the most fascinating first-person shooters I've ever played. The animation has an inked comic look; the text is in word balloons; there are comic book sound effects. The game is extremely playable and the comic-book feel just adds to the fun. The game (and apparently the comic) starts with the main character waking up on a beach with amnesia, only to find out he's being hunted by thugs and is wanted for the murder of the President of the United States. The drama intensifies from there.

Apparently, there were 18 volumes originally published in the series, and the game only covers the first 5. The Marvel Comics release (actually published by Dabel Brothers, distributed by Marvel) is of the first volume, Day of the Black Sun. This first volume is 144 pages and will be going for $14.99. I guess I better decide soon if I'm going to have Kim at my comic book store order it for me.

Wikipedia: XIII, the game XIII, the comic

Comics, Cartoons, and Television

A lot of premiers over the next month. I need to write them down all in one place so I remember to set the DVR.

New stuff:

First, Fantastic Four hits Cartoon Network on September 2.

While checking to see which ep of The Batman landed on my DVR today, I noticed a commercial for Legion of Superheroes which premiers September 23 (on The WB). Hmmm...that will just about coincide with the VS Customizable Card Game Expansion, if you're into that sort of thing. There's a ton of information on the show here on Wikipedia.

Hellboy Animated comes to Cartoon Network in the form of a movie on October 28. (The DVD will be released on February 6.) Upperdeck will also be releasing a Hellboy VS deck, but not until next spring.

Returning shows:

Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo (Cartoon Network) debuts on September 15. I'm not sure if this will kick off a new season, but they're replaying all of the old episodes on Sept. 5-30.

The next season of The Batman (The WB) is supposed to start on September 23. The Complete 2nd Season is released on DVD on the 19th.

Up in the air:

Tonight, I watched the debut episode of Amazing Screw-On Head that I had recorded, and it was just as good as when I watched it on Sci Fi Pulse. I'm hoping they run with this one. If you missed it, it's on again tonight, August 20, at Midnight/11C.

Thanks to Comics2Film and Comics Continuum for the Comics Continuum links above.