Nerdy News

In this edition of Nerdy News a grumpy girl will get even grumpier, a group of L.A. kids gets some exposure and we say goodbye to a star composer.

Goth icon and all-around misanthrope Emily the Strange is finally getting her own movie. It was only a matter of time. Originally created for record stores and skate shops by Rob Reger, Emily quickly moved from stickers to her own clothing line and eventually to comic books. Dark Horse began publishing Emily in 2005 and Entertainment President Mike Richardson will be producing the feature film. A director has yet to be chosen and no word on whether it will be animated or live-action.

The Hollywood Reporter says the story, created by Reger, is being kept under wraps but will include Emily's backstory as well as her four cats. Thirteen new characters are also set to be introduced with names like Earwig and Umlaut. The film will provide the basis for a young-adult novel to be published sometime next year by Harper Collins. No word yet on the release date of the film.

I can see the tag-line now: "Emily wants YOU...to see another movie instead!

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Marvel continues on their non-stop train of comic-to-film announcements. Brian K. Vaughan is set to adapt his Runaways for Marvel Studios. This newest film is still in it's earliest stages considering Marvel has a lot on their plate through 2011. Marvel Studios' President Kevin Feige will act as producer.

Honestly, I don't know how Vaughan has the time for it. Besides his regular comic duties, he's a producer and sometimes writer on Lost and is developing Y: The Last Man for New Line Cinema. I have yet to read any Runaways but I've heard a lot of good things about it and the idea behind it sounds like something I'd enjoy. I promise, I'll get around to reading it before the movie comes out.

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Finally, it is with much regret I tell you about the passing of Alexander "Sandy" Courage at the age of 88. Courage was the composer of the theme to the original Star Trek series, which you can hear above. He passed away at an assisted-living facility in Los Angeles on May 15th. He had been in poor health for a few years.

He was born in 1910 in Philadelphia but raised in New Jersey. Courage began as an arranger at MGM Studios and composed and collaborated on some of the most famous musicals of the 50's and 60's. Showboat, Gigi, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, My Fair Lady and Fiddler on the Roof are just a few. In the 80's he composed the score for Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.

Also composing for another space TV show, Lost in Space, Courage had a falling out with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry over the theme. Roddenberry wrote lyrics to the song never intending on them to be sung on TV but simply entitling him to half the royalties. 

Funny enough, Courage wasn't even a sci-fi fan yet he created one of the most memorable themes in the history of televison. 

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I'm off to Wizard World Philly tomorrow. See you there!

Buffy Tarot Update

Just letting you know the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Tarot deck is now available for pre-order on the Darkhorse site. I told you about it previously along with the "Conversations with Dead People" board. They say it's $14.99 retail but it's only $11.99 at the site they direct you to pre-order it from. 

Lost hundreds of years ago, the Slayer's tarot is an important artifact from Slayer history that came into existence after a group of women shared a vision of a rogue Slayer who would love a vampire and who would be aided in her fight against evil by a group of mystical allies. The heretical prophecy led to the suppression of the deck by the Watcher's Council.

Written and conceived by Rachel Pollack, author of twelve books on the tarot, including the renowned 78 Degrees of Wisdom, she teams with long-time Buffy artist Paul Lee to create this one-of-a-kind tarot card set.

It's going to be a slow crawl until September folks.

Nerdy News

Welcome to Rapture. Or should I say Hollywood?

Take-Two Interactive is coming together with Universal Studios to develop the highly-successful and awesomely creepy video game "BioShock" into a feature film. Pirates of the Caribbean's Gore Verbinksi will be directing and producing. John Logan of Gladiator and Sweeney Todd fame is in talks to write the script. No other details have been given at this time.

Christoph Hartmann, President of 2K Games, said, "BioShock fans appreciate the depth and complexity of the game, and our partnership with Gore Verbinski will introduce the world of Rapture to an even wider audience. In addition to his impressive body of work, Gore is an avid video gamer and true fan of BioShock. That was extremely important to us in deciding to move forward with this project."

A sequel to the game, BioShock 2, is set to be release in late 2009.

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In other video game news, there's a new "LEGO Batman" trailer online. I know I say this a lot but, it's ridiculously adorable. Especially the little strut they gave Catwoman. But, no Poison Ivy?

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How would you like to attend an Unexpected Party? Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro are inviting you to a live internet chat about The Hobbit. This is similar to what Jackson did before production started on The Lord of the Rings.

"So this is how it will work: we ask all fans with an interest in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings to send one question to this website. As us anything! Guillermo and I will select and answer the 20 most common questions, so that we can both attempt to address the key issues as best we can," Jackson said in a statement.

The answers will be given during a one hour live web chat hosted by Weta. The chats will start May 1st and continue through May 10th. The date and time of the live chat depends on what part of the world you live in so check the site for details. Besides the chosen 20 questions, Jackson and Del Toro are willing to take additional questions live and chat about the project. They are suggesting it's a good idea to register in advance.

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There is some sad news to report. Illustrator, and one of the founders of Mad Magazine, Will Elder passed away yesterday morning at the age of 86. Journalista! was the first to give word and soon The New York Observer and others followed.

After leaving Mad, he and Harvey Kurtzman worked on an Archie Comics parody "Goodman Beaver Goes Playboy!" Though it resulted in a lawsuit by Archie Comics it garnered the attention of the original playboy, Hugh Hefner. The result was Elder's other famous work with Kurtzman, "Little Annie Fanny," which was published in playboy from 1962 - 1988 and in 2001 was published in trade paperbacks by Dark Horse Comics.

The ancient Shamans were next called upon to do the hokey pokey and turn themselves around.

Looking to contact your vampire ex-lover from beyond the grave? How about finding out if you'll ever get out from under your kitten debt to that loan shark demon, Teeth? Well look no further folks. Presenting: The Buffy the Vampire Slayer "Conversations with Dead People" Board and the extra special Buffy the Vampire Slayer Tarot Deck!

Have I sold you yet? For most Buffy fans, myself included, there's no hard-sell needed. They will be mine and it will be glorious. The board, if you didn't already know, is named after an episode from Season Seven of BTVS. It comes with a fun extra too, a comic-style instruction booklet written by current Season Eight author Drew Goddard and illustrated by Paul Lee, who's also drawn some of Season Eight.

The tarot deck was written by established tarot writer, Rachel Pollack, who also wrote the Vertigo Tarot for DC/Vertigo a while back. The art here is also done by Lee and pulls themes and characters from all eight seasons of Buffy. They come with an instruction book f you actually want to learn how to use them but if you're like me you just want them because they're gorgeous. Either way you'll be happy but the extra cool thing is the book also explains how the deck fits into the Buffyverse and gives them their own backstory.

Comic Book Resources has a full write-up of the story behind the creation of the deck and previewed these two cards.

The Magician and Death cards

The Occasional Superheroine had a preview of two of the more, shall we say, thought provoking cards.

The Temperance and Devil cards

And just the other day Newsarama gave us a look at one more card. Who else could have been the High-Priestess?

The High Priestess

Both the talking board and tarot deck are set to be released in September. "Conversations with Dead People" is already available for pre-order on the Dark Horse website for $29.99. I would imagine the tarot deck will be up soon. Happy haunting, or slaying, as the case may be.

“All I want to do is graduate from high school, move to Europe, marry Christian Slater, and die.”

Those immortal words were spoken by Buffy (and quoted by me relentlessly) in the original film Buffy the Vampire Slayer starring Kristy Swanson. Let's see where we are with that after seven seasons of the television show starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and issue #12 of the Buffy comic, shall we?

Graduated high school? Check. Moved to Europe? Check. Married Christian Slater? Not quite. Unless Christian Slater is an Asian girl who Buffy just slept with. Died? Double check.

Did I just gloss over the fact that Buffy slept with a woman? No way! That's what this article is all about. Drew Goddard, a former writer for both the Buffy and Angel television series and now of Cloverfield fame, began a new arc with issue #12, "Wolves at the Gate Part 1." Four pages in you're hit with this shocker:

Obviously I needed to get online and see what other people were saying. My first stop was to the Dark Horse site where there is a letter from editor Scott Allie. That's when I realized this was a much bigger deal than I first thought. Sure, I was expecting to read a slew of posts on websites like Newsarama and IGN where they review and discuss comics. What I was not expecting was a New York Times article on the issue. The New York freakin' Times! Discussing not only Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but the Buffy comic! ABC News also ran a story as well as MTV.

I'll admit, when I first turned the page, my jaw dropped. I think I almost had the same reaction Xander did a few pages later after walking in on them; "Oh merciful Zeus! I didn't see anything, I swear! Oh, my eye, my burning beautiful eye." In fact, the entire scene where just about everyone else walks in and has their own unique hilarious reaction to seeing Buffy in bed with a woman, was almost lost on me because I felt awkward, like I had just walked into the room too. Drew Goddard easily made it feel like that scene came straight out of a Joss Whedon episode though, it really was hysterical. Kudos to him.

I didn't know what to make of this new development. I thought, are they making Buffy a lesbian? An odd choice seeing as how they already did that with Willow, to great effect, but why would you reuse an idea like that. Then I thought, didn't Buffy tell Satsu last issue that she wasn't interested in her? For those of you who don't know, Satsu is one of the many slayers Buffy now trains and commands. Early on in Season 8, Buffy was put under a Sleeping Beauty-type spell and was awakened when someone who was in love with her gave her a kiss. We found out last issue Buffy knew it was Satsu for some time and was flattered, but not interested.

After reading all the interviews with Joss out there I believe I can safely state they are not making Buffy a lesbian. This is a direct quote from him from the NY Times article linked above. "We're not going to make her gay, nor are we going to take the next 50 issues explaining that she's not. She's young and experimenting, and did I mention open-minded?"

I have been a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer since the original movie in 1992. That's almost 16 years of getting to know and love the character of Buffy. No one knows her better than Joss Whedon himself but in my opinion, what happened in this issue is out of character for her. That being said, any fan of Buffy knows how impulsive and, I'll say it, idiotic she can be. That's how you know Joss made a great character, she's human, she makes mistakes. It seems to me Buffy is making the same type of mistake with Satsu that she did with Spike. She knows Satsu is in love with her, not to mention sorta her employee, and she sleeps with her anyway because she's lonely. You'd think she would have learned, but hey, this is Buffy we're talking about. Anything is possible.

Putting aside all the hoopla about the sex scene, which I'm sure is burned into fanboy memory just like that Angel/Spike Buffy sandwich (#3) is in mine, the issue was great. Drew Goddard seems to be setting up a really interesting arc and I look forward to seeing where it goes. Not only was his dialogue fantastic but he brought back one of my favorite characters from one of my favorite Buffy episodes of all time. The Master. No, not that one, the other one. Dracula.