It was brought to my attention by Pepsibones about a month ago that Warner Bros. was scrambling to get a Superman movie off the ground. This is because the rights to a bunch of Superman’s background, powers, and storylines are reverting back to the families of Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel. I had forgotten about it until today, when Bleeding Cool posted a link to this article. Here’s the Sparknotes from the aforementioned and credited article:

In 2008, it was ruled that the Siegels had recaptured (as of 1999) copyright in Action Comics No1, giving them control of the Superman character, including his costume, his alter-ego as reporter Clark Kent, the feisty reporter Lois Lane, their jobs at the Daily Planet working for a gruff editor, and the love triangle among Clark/Superman and Lois.

—

In the latest twist, as reported by Variety, Judge Stephen Larson has now ruled on August 12 that Siegel’s heirs also had rights to additional works, including the first two weeks of the daily Superman newspaper comic-strips, as well as portions of early Action Comics and Superman comic books.

This means the Siegels now also control depictions of Superman’s origins from the planet Krypton, his parents Jor-El and Lara, Superman as the infant Kal-El, the launching of the infant Superman into space by his parents as Krypton explodes and his landing on Earth in a fiery crash.

The sound you hearing is Warner Bros. shitting their pants. While WB still owns Superman’s ability to fly, his powers, as well as Lex Luthor and Jimmy Olsen, jesus sweet christ.

Let’s just think about this. Unless WB can negotiate to use the rights, they’re going to have to tell a Superman movie that doesn’t include Clark Kent. Or Lois Lane. Good luck with that one.

Personally, I’d be intrigued by the idea of telling this storyline. Who knows what they could do with it. But in the eye of the general public? The WWE-watching, Nascar-loving yokels who text into American Idol. Holy sweet Christ, there will be confusion and anger. They better film it as a fucking Focus Features film if they hope to recoup their money on this one. Either that, or swallow their pride, and realize if they want to turn a profit they’re going to need to work something out with the family of the creators.

Good luck with that one, boys.

In addition to the twist conclusion of Ed Brubaker’s entire run, Daredevil #500 features an addendum that happens to bring with it a hope for tomorrow. More precisely, the pin-up section includes a piece by Rafael Grampa that can only be described as fucking amazing.

Grampa’s Daredevil (pictured above) is both refreshing and reverent — the old yellow/red costume has never looked more vibrant or alive, full of that indefinable essence that readers perceive as artistic enthusiasm.

Staring at the pin-up for quite some time, I became enamored with its realistic depiction of Matthew Murdock. Although much more impressive than my scrawny frame, the physique of this Daredevil appears to be no greater than that of any modern mixed-martial artist. Furthermore, the bootlaces, shirt, leather straps and boxing gloves summon the same spirit Paul Pope conjured for Batman Year 100, the notion that maybe, just maybe, superheroes could exist.

Having never heard of Rafael Grampa, I decided to find out for myself whether he was just a rip-off artist of Paul Pope (of whom I have invested much of my fanboy stock) or a legitimate talent. After making my way to his blog, I am now ruling in favor of the latter.

Rafael Grampa, which (according to my nonexistent understanding of Portuguese) roughly translates to Raphael Grandfather, is apparently quite the sensation in Brazil. He is a well-known graphic artist, designing not only comics but t-shirts, animations, toys, and even concepts for ESPN ads. The man even has a column at the website for MTV Brasil, which I would check out if English weren’t my only language.

So once I understood Grampa to be a respected (rising) star of sequential art, I made the egregious mistake of wondering, “What other superheroes can he draw?!?!” It didn’t take me long to find this:

In my estimation, that is a sick Batman and an even better Robin. I really love the over-sized mask and the band-aid on Robin, adding an element of youthful inexperience which is generally overlooked. Again, this style does have a tinge of Pulphope in it, but not to the point that accusations should be flung.

With my urges to see men in tights and capes subsided, I was able to look into the Grampa’s more substantial work. As I discovered shortly thereafter, Rafael Grampa created 2008’s Mesmo Delivery, which tells the tale of an ex-boxer turned transporter and is tinged with a Twilight Zone otherworldliness. The one-shot has received crazy critical acclaim and is actually sold out. This puts me in a shitty situation, as I can either wait until Dark Horse reprints it next year or shell out some serious cash. I’ll probably suck it up and spend the money now, as I can’t stop looking at whatever previews/teasers I can find:

Deep down, I really hope that Rafael Grampa does whatever it is that he finds artistically fulfilling. But I’d be hard-pressed to deny the appeal of that Daredevil pin-up. In my ideal world, he’ll do what a lot of artists find themselves doing — both the artsy stuff and the commercial properties (which pay the bills). It is my belief that when genuinely talented creators put fresh spins on the dependable franchises, the readers finally get to see their favorite characters elevated (if only for a brief period) to higher strata.

Here’s to hoping Rafael Grampa sticks around to help us get to those upper echelons.

It’s Saturday night and the gang of villains, molesters, and deviants that I call best friends are hanging out in my basement. Per usual our attention is divided between sparkly movements on the slab of plastic my consoles are hooked up to, and my computer. This is simply the way things have been, are, will be, as long as my friends and I hang out. One could only hope. Maybe someday there will be children and recitals and stoic boredom, but for now, our rituals are complete and typical.

It makes sense then, that I was showing my friend Bags the latest Diablo 3 videos that evening. For like my room, like our vulgarity and flatulence, Blizzard itself has become rote in our lives. It’s funny that I can say our lives, meaning my friends — all of them. You see, Bags doesn’t play Warcraft. Neither does my friend Jesse. Neither does Pepsibones.

But after listening to what has to be hundreds of hours of talk about raids, and dungeons, and Molten Core, and various bullshit going on in Vent while they were over, all my friends   have a working knowledge of the Blizzard universe. It has become ingrained, ritual, a part of our lives.

My girlfriend turns to me during the weeknight:

“Do you have to raid tonight?”

I remember explaining World of Warcraft and my uh…addiction to it when I first began dating Sam. I wasn’t aware of the extent of her nerdiness at the time. You see a beautiful blonde girl obsessed with fashion and you think one thing:

“I’m burying this lifestyle as deep as possible.”

I was living in the Warcraft closet. I mean, she knew that I played videogames. That was common hat. But as anyone who plays WoW seriously knows, WoW eschews being a video game and becomes a lifestyle.   Telling your new girlfriend you play videogames is one thing. Telling this to your girlfriend is another:

“Yeah, you see…On Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday…I sort of have to…like…every night I have to be online at 10 o’clock. Yeah. Like, I just have to be. I need to raid.”

“What’s raiding?”

“You see that’s a good question…”

And the conversation spirals from there. Luckily my girlfriend likes to get human amounts of sleep. You know, eight hours or some shit. I’ve heard about that. Sounds neat. I prefer going to bed at 1:30 am and waking up in time for class, whenever that may be. So it works out. She sleeps, and I continue the caffeine and sleep deprivation cycle that is ultimately going to kill me.

But now she gets it, now she knows. And now she asks me if I’m raiding on evenings.

As I said, it’s ingrained, it’s never ending. If you know me, it’ll infect you eventually.

Saturday evening again and we’re still peering over the videos. One of my best friends, Dave, walks over from the plastic slab where Madden is being played to the computer. We’ve moved on from the Diablo 3 videos. Now we’re watching the trailer for WoW: Cataclysm. The next expansion. The newest drug to snare us. It’s never ending.

Every couple of years Blizzard dangles new content in front of the junkies to get us excited, to keep us playing. New characters, continents, abilities, experiences. They know their clients well, they know how to keep us engaged. We’re watching the trailer and of course I’m losing my mind. It’s new WoW! Holy fucking shit!

Dave and I have been the comrades in Blizzard arms since 2000. Nine years now. We have spent a third of our lives plowing through hordes of demons. Dave’s the pusher, really. He got me into Diablo 2 back in the day, and the rest is history. I often tell the story of how my senior year of highschool was all Diablo 2 and Wendy’s.

For hundreds of hours during my senior year, Dave and I, parked across the city from one another, would play Diablo 2 until the wee hours of the morning. I remember with a nostalgic grin the only thing that could bring a stop to our gaming. One of us would inevitably say:

“Fuck, I’m hungry. Want to go to Wendy’s?”

But of course the trip to Wendy’s, the conversation at Wendy’s, the conversation from Wendy’s was all and only raving Diablo 2 madness. Holy shit mana leech ring blah blah Cow World blah blah Mephisto run.

And of course, the only logical conclusion is that we went back to our grinding on our computers immediately upon our return.

Dave, staring at the monitor, staring at Blizzard’s newest drug, rubs a palm against his eyes and says with a laugh:

“Fuck, I’m never going to be able to quit this game.”

But what would we do, if we quit the game? Or specifically, if we quit Blizzard? It sounds so pathetic when I type it, I’ll admit that. But to our defense we have full lives filled with nights with friends, madness at diners in the early mornings, I have tricked a girl into dating me. But there is this other side of us, punctuated by Blizzard. Always Blizzard.

You know you’ve been involved with Blizzard for too long when you can identify parts of your life by the product of theirs you were playing. It’s like asking your Dad what he was doing by asking him to talk about various seasons of his favorite sports team.”

“The 1982 Bruins? Oh yeah, I was…”

I can do the same thing with Blizzard. It freaks me out.

Diablo 2? Senior year.

Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction? Freshmen year of college, DT’s new album, Lord of the Rings.

WoW? We decided to play it during New Year’s Eve, 2004. I got it for my birthday.

WoW: The Burning Crusade? I spent the better part of it addicted to sleeping pills.

WoW: Wrath of the Lich King? The midnight release at Gamestop. Playing it until 3 am. Going to class the next day.

And so on, and so forth. It’s comforting and it’s ritualistic. I look forward to being able to associate future events with points in my life. Who knows what I’ll be doing when Diablo III hits? Finishing my Master’s Degree? What will I be playing when I have my first kid? Will I have to rearrange my honeymoon to fit the release of Galaxy of Starcraft or whatever they drop on us next?

Just kidding. I wouldn’t do that.

Wink.

In ten-thousand years, when they are harvesting the ashes of our remains from whatever sort of self-inflicted calamity we end ourselves with, I hope they find this video on some server somewhere. I hope they play it, look at one another, and then say:

Yeah, that about makes sense.

Kid Cudi is mainstream hip hop’s next potential savior.

Ok, let me step back and add a preface — I’m a twenty-two year old, white & nerdy (-6 points for the Weird Al reference) suburbanite who grew up listening to metal and drumming in a prog-metal band. With that being said, I truly believe that Kid Cudi is going to be next great, worthwhile hip hop act.

“Well, Pepsibones, what makes you think that?”

Well, three key points (which, for my sake, can be conveniently listed) stand out:

1) Exposure — This dude is getting pushed hardcore. As I said, I generally keep my ear turned to the harder hitting scenes/bands. And yet, I can’t help but hear about the sickness that is Kid Cudi. Between the Day’n’Nite single receiving continuous (or is that incessant?) radio play and features such as that in last month’s Spin, Cudi seems to be sneaking into the (pop) cultural consciousness. I mean, fuck, when I loaded up OL today the guy popped into the banner at the top and said hello to me.

In short, Kid Cudi is getting the media push needed to help hip hop. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m sure there are plenty of better (whatever that means) underground rappers — but without the exposure their words aren’t going to reach the masses. While I might have hoped for last year’s Esoteric vs. Japan: Pterodactyl Takes Tokyo! to have received more attention, I wasn’t surprised when it didn’t blow up and change the game; the exposure just wasn’t there. With Kid Cudi, it is.

2) Stylistic Plurality — When I subject myself to the radio or MTV, I usually find myself balking like the old man on the block, “Bah! All this rubbish sounds the same!” In the era of five-second ringtone hooks and a reliance on autotuner that makes Kirk Hammett’s wah-pedal use look like occasional experimentation, anything that breaks the mold is greatly appreciated. Not only does Kid Cudi bring a different, more earnest perspective, he presents it a number of different ways.

The A Kid Named Cudi mixtape features mellow, introspective numbers like 50 Ways to Make a Record & Man on the Moon (which shares its name with Cudi’s full-length), the danceable stoner’s love song that is Maui Wowie, a couple of more freestyle-feeling showcases such as Cudi Spazzin’, and hometown anthem Cleveland is the Reason (it is shocking that I’ve yet to see this track supporting a montage of King James dunks).

If Man on the Moon makes use of even half of the styles found on Cudi’s breakthrough mixtape, we’re all in for a treat. Again, between the exposure and success of Day’n’Nite, the people are already going to give his shit a chance — and when they see that he offers something for everyone, they’ll be hooked.

3) Inspiring Kanye to Stop Sucking – Up until November 2008, Kanye West was a hero of mine. In spite of the fact that he is one of the most arrogant pop culture figures of recent history, I couldn’t help but love the guy. Every interview and appearance found him talking all sorts of crazy shit, but I would just laugh it off, preferring to bob my head rather than shake it.

Maybe it was the fact that at his best, Kanye managed to truly inspire me to look past the preconceived paths laid before me and carve my own way through the brush of life.

[Good Morning]

Look at the valedictorian scared of the future

While I hop in the Delorean.

Scared-to-face-the-world complacent career student,

Some people graduate, but be still stupid.

They tell you read this, eat this, don’t look around…

For a time, even Kanye’s most heedless lyrics were awesome in their own ridiculous, hilarious way.

[New Workout Plan]

1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and get them sit-ups right &
Tuck your tummy tight & do your crunches like this;
Give head, stop breathe, get up, check your weave
Don’t drop the blunt and disrespect the weed.

Yes, it’s hard to defend such songs as having any sort of deep literary merit, but they made me smile & laugh, and that certainly counts in my book.

But then Kanye broke up with a girl and lost his mind. Or something. The result: the dismal 808’s & Heartbreak which contains neither the mindful insights of personal empowerment nor humorous musings about girls and weed and drinking and all that other awesome shit. No, all that 808’s provides is autotuned ramblings about lamenting love.

[Coldest Winter]

Goodbye my friend will I ever love again?
Goodbye my friend will I ever love again?
Goodbye my friend will I ever love again?
Goodbye my friend will I ever love again?

Brilliant. And for those apologists that claim “It’s a heartfelt track about love!” I offer two counterpoints: 1) How heartfelt and raw can words be when processed until they sound like a robot? 2) Just because something is heartfelt doesn’t mean it’s any good.

But now we have Kid Cudi, carrying with him the inspiration to restore Kanye West to his former (admittedly arguable) greatness. Kanye enlisted Cudi to help him with 808’s & Heartbreak and the product was the slightly less reprehensible Welcome to Heartbreak. Since then, Kanye has dedicated himself to crafting tracks for Kid Cudi’s debut, including the reworking of Lady Gaga’s Poker Face into the much more overt lauding of oral sex that is Make Her Say. West even went as far as to contribute a verse, returning to his old jovial, fun-loving form in the process. Again, it may not be mentally dazzling, but even being entertaining is an improvement at this point.

Sure, the idea of Kid Cudi helping elevate Kanye back up to the plateau he once reached is wishful thinking. But even if this doesn’t become reality, Cudi’s good enough on his own to make a long lasting impression on the mainstream rap world that is, in my opinion, suffering from the fatigue of thematic repetition. Mark my words, Kid Cudi’s Man on the Moon is going to be the relevant rap album of 2009.

That is, of course, until Lupe Fiasco puts out Lasers in December.

Oh Blizzcon, you continue to amaze me. Not only have you given me news on the next World of Warcraft expansion, and videos of Diablo 3, but now you’ve simply topped yourself. Apparently Tricia Helfer, known to nerds around the world as Six, is going to voice some bad-ass queen-lady named Kerrigan in Starcraft 2. I’ve never played Starcraft, nor read the thousands of novels and works of brilliant fanfiction, so when I read she was going to voice someone, I was like, oh, cool…Now what the fuck is a Queen of Blade? But then I consulted my friend Wikipedia, and dude hooked it up as usual:

Sarah Louise Kerrigan, the self-styled Queen of Blades, is a major character and the predominant antagonist in Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft series of video games and novels.

Well then! Yeah, I’m still lost. Let’s be honest though, who fucking cares? I was teetering on buying Starcraft 2 anyways, because of my crackhead addiction to everything Blizzard. But those bastards are good, and now they’ve really snared me. The mellifluous tones of Ms. Helfer cackling as some hot evil alien? Again? How the fuck can I say no to that?

Apparently in my hometown stomping grounds of Boston, Allston to be exact, there’s a giant mural featuring a Sentinel. The fact that this is out there and I haven’t seen it yet makes me want to bust my ass to its location and check it out. And I gotta fucking hurry. Why? While a Boston property owner allowed a young graffiti artist J.R. Mathews, to use the wall she owned (according to the reports, would-be lawyers) to create what is to me some pretty awesome graffiti, some locales have a stick up their ass.

Why am I not surprised?

Apparently, the Mathews will never get a chance to finish it, either. According to an article at Boston.com, difficulty with obtaining a sidewalk permit has stalled the project, and it has been decided to simply cover the rest up with paint and forget it occured. Bummer. Check it out while you can.

Brought to my attention by: Bleeding Cool

Pics courtesy of: Brad Searles’ Flickr

Spoilers Ahead. Serious Spoilers.

Quentin Tarantino’s new film, Inglourious Basterds, is about a lot of different things. On the surface, Basterds is a simple World War II-era story in which a band of Jewish-American soldiers travel into Nazi-occupied France in order to kill (and scalp!) as many Nazis as possible. Of course, when Tarantino is at the helm of such a plot, it can only be accompanied with brains bashed in with a baseball bat, shootouts, explosions, witty banter, a Mexican standoff, sexy women, and all of the director’s other trademarks.

But much more importantly, Inglourious Basterds is a film about film. About the subversion of film, to be more precise.

With that being said, it is worthwhile to first delve into the notion that Inglourious Basterds is actually an exploration of film itself. Conspicuously, many of the characters have various positions within the film industry; Shoshanna owns a cinema in Paris, Marcel helps maintain and operate said cinema, Frederick Zoller is a Nazi war hero starring in a biographical movie, German Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels is tasked with producing this movie, and German actress Bridget von Hammersmark is a double-agent working for the British. As these pivotal characters play a number of different (yet equally important) roles, Inglorious Basterds suggests that the consciousness of film is stocked with varying strains of the human condition.

More pragmatically, Inglourious Basterds’ advocacy on the behalf of film can be found in its plot. While the trailers and taglines are advertising the fact that the movie features a bunch of Jewish-Americans killing Nazis, they neglect to mention that the Basterds’ true aim is to assassinate several hundred top Nazi officials (including Hitler himself); conveniently (or is it thematically?), these officials are all going to be gathered together at Shoshanna’s cinema for the premiere of A Nation’s Pride, Goebbels’ newest piece of propaganda. Resultingly, the Basterds spend a good deal of their inglorious adventures trying to figure out how to get into the premiere so that their primary task can be completed. By centering his newest work on the idea that a movie theater can be the single most important place on Earth, Tarantino effectively demonstrates the power and magnitude of film.

Thirdly, Inglourious Basterds works as a sort of self-aware investigation of film through much of its overt exposition. The name-dropping of (ostensibly classic) foreign language films, actors/actresses, and directors becomes so ubiquitous that I began to sense myself tuning them out — every character seems to get a chance to talk about movies at one point or another. Even less subtle is  the brief narrative pause in which a Samuel L. Jackson  voice-over presents  an anecdotal history of 35mm’s more explosive qualities. And although this segment is well-done and wholly entertaining, other (less obvious) narrative devices could have been employed in order to convey the same information. But by deftly incorporating references to the film industry and even the literal film itself, Inglourious Basterds manages to keep the forefront of the audience’s mind more consciously concerned with movies.

So yes, it is obvious to even the least astute viewers that film may be the very crux of Inglourious Basterds. More interestingly, though, is the idea that Tarantino is commenting on cinematic subversion, an act to which he is no stranger. The spirit of subversion, of challenging the power structure at large in the hopes of building anew, is embodied in the plans of Shoshanna & Marcel.

Shoshanna conceives of a strategy with which she can effectively destroy the oppressive regime under which she has lived & avenge the death of her family; she allows the Nazis to premiere their newest propaganda film at her cinema so that she can:

A) Splice in footage of her own anti-Nazi sentiments.

B) Lock the doors and burn down the entire theater, killing her enemies in the process.

Furthermore, Shoshanna convinces Marcel that her collection of (highly flammable) 35mm films will be more than suitable to fuel the fatal fire.

The plan goes off (albeit not without a hitch or two), and Inglourious Basterds ends by revealing itself to be a sort of alternate-universe version of World War II, in which the Americans win in 1944. Therefore, the viewer is left with the impression that the subversion of film (the claiming for one’s own that by which he/she has been oppressed) can lead to the defeat of the most tyrannical of forces.

To reiterate, Shoshanna and Marcel take the weapon of the ruling power (film) and use it for their own purpose, which just so happens to be counter to that of those wielding the weapon in the first place. Playing to a crowd of shocked/confused/disgusted Nazis, Shoshanna’s filmed message instructs Marcel to burn it down, prompting him to flick his cigarette into the 35mm collection. This act is especially incendiary because it is brought about by two minorities (a Jew in hiding and a black Frenchman during the occupation), and there is something resonant in the idea that scourge of an oppressive regime can bring about its demise. And although the literal result of burning the evil Nazi crime lords to death is an amazing scene, its figurative implications are far more fulfilling.

In a sense, what Tarantino seems to be advocating is not for blanket imitation or pastiche; instead, he believes that the forms of yesteryear can be manipulated in such a way as to become new entities altogether – thereby allowing for the possibility of resisting the structure as it originally stood. Tarantino has always taken bits of pieces from various sources (spaghetti westerns, art house, grindhouse, Blaxploitation, kung-fu, etc., etc.) and added them together with new elements as to create original pieces that incorporate some previously established elements that have stood the tests of time.

Maybe I’m going on a limb here, but I can’t help but feel as though Inglourious Basterds is more than just an old-fashioned Nazi-killing jamboree. It’s about the power of narrative, the persuasive force that is propaganda, and the hope & possibility granted to those who defy the standards by reworking the supposedly predetermined into something liberating and novel.

In any case, I’m really digging Inglourious Basterds — all I have done since watching it tonight was ponder these (Insightful? Ridiculous? Misguided?) ideas and attempt to sling them into my word processor. It’s almost 4 AM and all I want to do is see the movie again. Too bad I have to do some other stupid shit first, like edit these two pages and then go to sleep.

Bah!

Blizz all up and announced today at Blizzcon that goons and dweebs like me are going to have the option of playing a Monk in Diablo 3 today. At first I didn’t know what to think. I made a living off of imagining that my female amazon in Diablo 2 was in fact some sort of transfigured Legolas. I spent hours pew-pewing cows and Mephisto and being all like THIS IS TOTALLY LIKE LORD OF THE RINGS WHERE LEGOLAS LOOKS AWESOME.

So when the new class wasn’t some sort of hunter-gatherer, big-breasted or not, I was bummed. But don’t fucking lament, yo! The Monk class looks pretty absurd. Depending on your nerdcorner du jour, you can either imagine you’re The Last Airbender, or Fist of the Northstar, or the epicenter of my early teen wet dreams: Tifa Lochhart. Check out the video, where you can froth over the kinetic ass-whupping of the monk. Then remember you won’t be playing this until your great-grandchildren are losing their baby teeth.

Yeah, your guess is as good as mine. But whoever Billy is, I want some of dem pills.