Archaia’s panel consisted of four big announcements of new
titles the first being their partnership with Relativity on an anthology for
their new movie The Immortals. They talked a little about the film that’s being
produced by the same team that produced 300. The movie stars Mickey Rourke, Henry Cavill from the upcoming Superman re-launch and
Kellan Lutz from Twilight. After talking about the movie they went into their
partnership more and what the goal for the anthology was.
The Anthology will be a series of short stories
by a lot of comic super stars. The first part of the book will deal with the
Gods and the Titans fighting and how the Titans lost. The second half of the book is how the humans
arrived to their role in the film. The key thing is that it’s not an adaption,
but a series of stories that take place in the world of the movie. Some of the
talent working on the book includes Jock and Ben Templesmith.
The anthology is being put out under Archaia’s
Black Label which they jokingly said was their “whiskey brand” and treated it
as a label for creators who don’t know anything about comics or how they work,
can come to them with projects for them to help them. Essentially it’s a place
for big names in Hollywood to come and put a project together and turn it into
a comic. They stressed the fact that the book is not an adaptation and it’s for
fans of the movie that want to have a richer experience after the film, or for
people that want to go into the movie with a richer experience.
The book ships in September two months before the
movie releases on 11/11/11.
They then moved onto their partnership with Jim Henson
studios and spoke briefly about the upcoming Dark Crystal graphic novel
and the recently announced at c2e2 title A Tale of Sand which is an
unproduced script by Jim Henson that he wrote before the Muppets took off.
Their next Jim Henson project is Jim’s Storyteller stories. They discovered
an unproduced teleplay from the show and are working on another anthology of
stories from super star creators in that world.
The talent for this anthology includes: Roger Langridge, Janet
Lee, Evan Shaner, Jeff Parker with Tom Fowler, Katie Cook and Jim McCann with Janet
Lee
Next they discussed two original graphic novels coming in
the summer. The first is OCB which is set in the distant future and follows a
police officer living in Athens. Athens has been wrecked by a natural disaster
and rebuilt by a Japanese company. Now it looks like Tokyo, but with ancient
ruins still rest in the city. The book will be in black and white and is the
perfect meld between Japanese and European comics.
The next novel was Rust by Royden Lepp which is this year’s
all-ages book, much like Dapper Men was last years. It’s a mix of Iron Giant
and the Rocketeer set after a world war III type event. It takes place on a
small Midwestern town where a young boy is trying to be the provider for the
family after his father has died. That is until Jet Jones lands on the farm
wearing a jet pack and being chased by a 40 foot war bot. The book is also in black
and white.
They then added that Alan Ball is writing the forward to the
Lucid
Hardcover. They recapped Luicd which you can read the reviews of all the entire
series starting here and ending here.
Mr. Murder is Dead is the next Before the Door project. Described
as “what if Dick Tracy became a pissed off old man and then became a bad guy on
top of that? The story follows his career in the 40’s, 50’s and so on. When
flashing back to that era the comic style of the time will be represented as to
pay homage to crime drama comics. The format will be like a newspaper strip
style much like Bloom County from IDW.
The Days Missing: Kestus Hard Cover
forward will be written by Wil Wheaton. Out in May and again they recap the
book and you can check out the reviews for that here and here as well.
They moved on to Bleed Out written by Mike Kennedy.
What happens when oil runs out due to human intervention? A micro-organism that
can eat oil is used to clean up a spill, but then it continues eating all of
the oil. The story moves on to a post meltdown city where crime rules the city.
The book is coming out at the end of April or May. 14.95 graphic novel.
Q - Were you surprised by the success the Killer?
No it’s awesome. It’s always a challenge to bring foreign material into the American market. We’re all working on stuff we would like to read. Believe that if we love it then you’ll love it too. When we saw it we knew it was something America audiences would love.
Q - A Nerd with a sword asks how true the Immortals anthology will be to the original myths. Also he states that he’s a big mythology geek which is an understatement?
Showing a realer look the myths but keeping true to the myths. Sticking to what’s captivating about the stories not making the monsters big.
That’s about it, but I’m sure that’s enough information for now and I’m very sure that we’ll have coverage and reviews of basically all of these titles.