Boy, It's Vintage! FLASH GORDON...Or 'Why We Wanted Hotpants For Christmas'

Today, Camp remains King,  but Starling Film's Flash Gordon bombed when it debuted back in December 1980, a sci-fi treat that couldn't compete with the expectations set the summer  before when The Empire Strikes Back.  A big helping hand (voice?) from Freddie Mercury and the progressive love for 'Retro' (not to mention the evolving sophistication of movie audiences and an aging Generation X) have transformed Flash Gordon into a cult fave and a yet-enduring testament to Alex Raymond's comic strip creation.

If sticking around for the new wave of classic sci-fi revamps is good enough for Buck Rogers and Dan Dare, then don't count Flash out, either. Sony Pictures and director Breck Eisner (Michael Eisner's kid) have epic plans for the space jockey, promising 3-D but no Queen when the character returns to the silver screen.  Whether we'll see Flash in tight leather -- which  would be soft-core porn in 3-D, not such a bad thing at the box office -- is debatable, but definitely not out of the question.  

Though Eisner's made it quite clear his Flash won't be another Clash of the Titans  disaster, his flick is still searching for its script and its tentative 2012 release will likely be rescheduled.  That would put Flash Gordon in a place more dangerous and far more competitive than Mongo -- Earth, early 21st century, where it's not camp but  costumed superhero cinema that reigns supreme.  If Flash gets clad in ass-less chaps, few people will probably even notice.

Star Trek Triology: NIMOY Retires, SHATNER Aspires, and CHRIS PINE Inspires A New 'Jack Ryan'

Unlike his longtime friend and fellow Final Frontier explorer William Shatner, a man who craves and indeed thrives on the bridge of popular attention***, Leonard Nimoy's long-preferred a less direct light. Where Star Trek's Mister Spock was concerned, the spotlight became a brilliance Nimoy once chose to avoid completely.  Even before publishing his 1975 autobiography I Am Not Spock, Nimoy had well-separated himself from the role that made him famous.  


You can read about Nimoy's reconciliation with his Vulcan alter-ego in his 1995 follow-up autobiography, I Am Spock, but despite the amelioration, the actor's preference for the fringe has remained intact since.  In that light, it's poetic irony that Nimoy, who just finished taping his final appearance as William Bell, the chairman of Massive Dynamic on J..J Abrams' Fox television series Fringe, has announced that he is officially retiring from his acting career - for good. 

Fox will be renewing Fringe for a third season, and the second film of Abrams' reimagined Star Trek franchise is currently in the works and set for a summer 2012 release. For the fans who've been wondering if Nimoy, who appeared as Spock in the new Trek last year, would do the same in the sequel, the speculation is over. Nimoy prefers to fully pass his Star Trek heritage on to the 'Science Officer' of the next generation (actor Zachary Quinto) and instead turn his attention to final convention visits and then his hobby, photography.  "I’ve been doing this professionally for 60 years," Nimoy told the Toronto Sun  on Sunday. "I love the idea of going out on a positive note. I’ve had a great, great time."

Much like the man who created the role that's now become his, Chris Pine is today's Captain of the Enterprise and a charismatic actor who adores the bright lights every bit as much as William Shatner.  Last year, Pine took Shatner's iconic Kirk and made it his own when Paramount Pictures rebooted Star Trek; this year, now that Paramount's confirmed plans to reboot another of its franchises, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Pine has been signed to do so again. 

Clancy's character, CIA Analyst Jack Ryan, made his first fictional - and later, cinematic - appearance in The Hunt for Red October, published in 1984. The movie adaptation came six years later, with Alec Baldwin playing Ryan.  Harrison Ford took over for the next two films, succeeded by Ben Affleck in the 2002 movie, The Sum of All Fears.  Four actors and eight years later, Pine is set to assume control in Moscow, the first film in the franchise not directly based on any previous Clancy novel.

Moscow explores the untold chapter of Ryan's life following Red October to before he became an analyst for the CIA. According to Clancy's back story for the character, Ryan was a stockbroker working for Merill Lynch.  Moscow will find Pine's Ryan embroiled in a global financial meltdown.

Since we've been following a very subtle Star Trek theme with today's comicsblog, we figured there couldn't be any better time than the present to give y'all an anatomy lesson. Nope, we're not posting naked pics of Channing Tatum - we'd get ourselves into all kinds of trouble. The only kind of trouble we don't have a problem with is of the Tribble kind.

Tribbles, of course, made their first television appearance on 'The Trouble with Tribbles' episode of the original Star Trek, back in 1968.  Unquestionably real yet barely seen, these little balls of joy are more than simply balls of fur.  Aside from being able to annoy Klingons with their high-pitched twitters, Tribbles have other internal organs that human scientists are just beginning to chart, study, and understand. 

Buzzfeed just made public the first scientifically valid and anatomically correct chart of a Tribble -- at least, it's the first we've ever seen. Crude, but explaining so much, it's good to see modern medicine and today's technology catch up to Star Trek yet again.  First the iPad and now this...2010 is turning out to be quite a year.

[Source]

*** Shatner's love of the limelight was recently validated in an unofficial poll  conducted by the Canadian news site TheMarkNews.com. The site, building on momentum generated by a 10,000 strong Facebook  fan page that has identified Shatner as their candidate in Canada's  Governor General election this year, ran the former 'Captain' against the current twelve hopefuls for the office. In the final results announced earlier today, Shatner received 43% of the vote, while Rick Hansen, the country's leading political candidate, came in a distant second with just 11%.

LOGAN'S RUN: Journey...or Destination? PLUS: William F. Nolan Signs in Portland Tomorrow!!

"Sometime in the 23rd century...the survivors of war, overpopulation and pollution are living in a great domed city, sealed away from the forgotten world outside..." 

If those words strangely compel you to slip into a skin-tight black jumpsuit and go for a jog like the one we just got back from, then you're either a fan of Logan's Run or just really, really weird.  Oddly enough, either notion's appropriate, considering that Logan's Run creator William F. Nolan's idea for the 1967 novel he co-wrote came from a presentation he gave for Twilight Zone writer Charles Beaumont's science fiction class at UCLA in 1963.

Nearly fifty years later, Nolan's protagonist Logan is poised for not just a new 'run,' but potentially a marathon.   One leg of this futuristic race will happen just 24 hours from now, when Portland-based comics retailer Things From Another World (TFAW) hosts a special in-store event with Nolan himself.  If you're in the area, abbracadabbling your way over to TFAW's Portland location to meet the legendary science fiction author and geek his signature would be a very worthy way to spend the afternoon, we think.  Get your directions to TFAW and the event's 411 right HERE.

While Nolan and co-author George Clayton Johnson's milestone science fiction novel was published while Star Trek was airing on television,  Logan's Run's influence on science fiction  was most directly felt thanks to the 1976 MGM movie adaptation starring Michael York. The  movie version did alter several facets of the book before it was brought to the big screen, but the essence remained the same.  The story follows the adventures of Logan 3, a “Sandman” charged with hunting those who flee rather than surrender themselves to “sleep.” A jewel embedded in each person's hand at birth changes colors every seven years, marking the stages of life, until it turns black after 21 years -- one's lastday. As Logan himself nears the completion of his allotted years, he begins to hear whispers of a place called Sanctuary where runners can escape the Sandmen and the obligation of Sleep. Logan resolves to use his lastday to find Sanctuary and destroy it... but of course doubts cloud the way.

The movie's popularity also spawned a short-lived Logan's Run television series, an ongoing comic strip published in the United Kingdom, and an equally short-lived comic book series published in 1977 by Marvel Comics here at home.  (Logan's Run was also attempted unsuccessfully a few years later by former publisher Malibu Comics).

But now Nolan and Logan's Run are back in comics - and going strong.  Although Nolan himself was a comic book writer by trade, having worked before his novel years for Whitman Comics, a division of Walt Disney, writing Mickey Mouse stories, he's not the chief scribe behind Logan's latest comic incarnation. Instead, he's licensed his creation to Vancouver, Washington-based Bluewater Productions, who developed the idea for a new the ongoing series, Logan's Run: Lastday, written by Paul J. Salamoff with art by Daniel Gete.

Lastday's first issue hit shelves in late 2009, but what ever additions to the post-apocalyptic world of  Logan's Run the comic may make, it's Daniel Gete's new costume designs for the series - like the new look for the stormtrooper-esque Sandmen - that are of particularly important to Nolan.

Under his arrangement with Bluewater, Nolan has approval of all story and design elements for the new Logan's Run series.  While many creators would want such an agreement to ensure  their visions aren't somehow terribly disfigured by other creators, Nolan's control is of greater significance.

While he hasn't directly stated why the 'look' of his new Logan's Run comic is so important, Nolan did tell Comic Book Resources last summer that part of his reason to get Logan back in the the fan boy public eye was to push Warner Bros along on their much-delayed Logan's Run movie remake.  Warner's optioned Logan's Run twelve years ago, with seven writers and four directors having been attached to the project since. More recently, Joel Silver has been named as the film's producer, but Logan's Run is just one of a dozen-plus films Silver appears to have on his plate for the next several years. Even so, and with Bluewater's help,  Nolan's trying his best to 're-energize' Logan's Run so that the race his character began a half-century ago will finally find a suitable finish line.  

Bluewater Productions has built most of their comics lines around properties like Logan's Run.  Aside from their biographically-slanted titles Female Force and Political Power, their most popular books include Ray Harryhausen Presents, William Shatner Presents, Vincent Price Presents, and Legend Film's Plan 9 From Outer Space.   So, for Logan's Run to find new and deserved life in comic book form - especially at Bluewater Productions - is a fitting realization for an older yet still-resonant science fiction property.

Yet unlike their other creator-licensed titles (with the possible exception of William Shatner's), Nolan's involvement with comic books seems primarily motivated by his feature film aspirations.  To us, this brings up an entirely new matter of debate - namely, comic books not being an end unto themselves, but simply as a potential marketing vehicle that exists only as material for an eventual Hollywood pitch.

It's the hope of any creator - writer or artist - that their work might one day reach today's highest pinnacle of media success and become the next summer blockbuster, but few (Radical Publishing's The Last Days of American Crime being one) have been positioned like Nolan's new Logan's Run series.  Despite the intentions and the comic's purpose for Nolan, a comic book's purpose is to entertain -- and to the extent Salamoff and Gete's Last Day does, we think, should be the sole reason to support the series or judge it by.  Beyond that, our jury's still out, and only two things are certain. (1) You can bet your Nike's that we'll be returning to this topic in a later blog and (2) if there's any good reason to find yourself at Things From Another World's event with William F. Nolan tomorrow, it'd be to address this very question with the author himself.

If we're not on the blog tomorrow, you'll know exactly where we are. 

Our love of science fiction and graphic design's wave of minimalism meant we had to share this fantastically redesigned Logan's Run movie poster by Tom Muller.  Muller included the piece as part of the Now Showing exhibition at London's Cosh Gallery. Although it ain't cheap, Muller's Logan's Run has been made available as a 50 cm x 70 cm Giclée print on Da Vinci Archival Art Paper in a limited edition of 25 , offered by Wear It With Pride on their site HERE.  And you can check out more of Muller's sweet designs on his website, HERE.

Back to the 25th Century: Buck Rogers Begins Filming

As much as I've fallen in love (or in love-hate) with hi-tech, my Dad completely despised it. If he was still alive today, no amount of coercion or trickery would get the man to so much as even touch a computer keyboard. However, the very current albeit slowly-building buzz over Buck Rogers' return to live-action as a new web-only series might just have been enough to change his mind.

Putting it that way, my dad really was a lot like Buck Rogers; he always was a man displaced in time. But while Dad grew up reading Philip Francis Nowlan and John F. Dille's 1928 serialized Buck Rogers comic strip and listed to his radio show exploits, my kid-self was thrilling to Glen A. Larson's prime-time sci-fi series, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

It's kinda hard to imagine that was over thirty years ago. But just like bell-bottoms have returned to vogue, pop culture's going retro -- or Retro-Contemporary -- too. And Sci-Fi Retro -- a la Star Trek 2009-- is leading that charge.

He may not be J.J. Abrams, but in his own smaller-scoped, smaller-budgeted way, James Cawley's reaching into the past to shape the future of the Sci-Fi landscape every bit as much as the Star Trek and Lost producer. His Cawley Entertainment Company quietly secured rights in January 2009 to produce and distribute a whole new web series based on the 'Generation One' Buck Rogers franchise, and the company announced just this morning that they've begun principal photography on the show's pilot episode. Cawley's also the Executive Producer on the project, which has been dubbed 'Buck Rogers Begins' as the storyline's told from the perspective of a 22-year-old Buck, thrust from the horrors of World War One into the far-flung future of the year 2500.

But the pilot episode won't necessarily be exploring the future right off; early filming's focusing on Buck's life on his family's farm in 1920's America. It's a cool start for Buck's future, and it's getting noticed. In fact, the show's premise attracted former Buck Rogers Gil Gerard and Erin Gray (Wilma Deering) to return to the 25th Century after a 30-year hiatus to play Buck's parents.

Actor Bobby Quinn Rice will be portraying the young Buck himself, and the series will introduce several other characters that, while true to Buck's comic strip origins, won't be familiar to fans who remember Gerard's TV series or who, like myself, are enjoying Buck Rogers comic book revival, thanks to Dynamite Entertainment.

Buck Rogers Begins -- okay, let's call it by its real name, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century -- is anticipated to hit the internet by early September 2010. Cawley will just be wrapping up his first episode filming this February, but that doesn't mean he's been slacking with his visual teasing. Not one bit. Buck's first promo hit You Tube last week, and we've got it on abbracadabbling -- our first video on the comicsblog ever! Dad, this one's for you.

Follow Buck as his future unfolds in 2010 at Buck Rogers Begins - here. [Link]

Get LOST! ABC Announces Final Season Begins February 2010

It's a forgone conclusion that a number of the comicsblog's dabblers are die hard Lost fans. So Dabbler's here to tell anyone who hasn't heard the news (granted, it's less than a day old) that ABC officially announced that the final season of Lost will begin February 2nd, 2010.

The network hasn't confirmed if their premiere series will take a rumored hiatus for the duration of this winter's Olympics, but they have verified that Lost's final season will consist of 18 episodes. Four of those episodes will belong to the show's season premiere and series finale, each of which is a two-hour event. The network may even add a third hour to the February 2nd schedule by including a Lost recap hour as a crash-course in last season's events.

Which, if you haven't gotten 'lost' in the Fall shuffle, you'll recall include the sightings of previously dead characters on the island. Even our best guess as to what's going on is likely way off target, but we do know that resurrection via cameos galore is a staple ratings trick. Of course, this isn't the final season of ER (yaaawn) that we're talking about -- it's Lost. Unless they're getting greedy or have something to worry about, ratings tricks aren't needed. Especially when the show's fabric is practically woven with them.

If storylines were tunics, then Lost's would certainly be a full metal jacket. The cumulative TV Geek has gotten off on the mysteries wrapped in enigmas that drive every hour and have earned the show its title for five years running, and expectations will be higher than Anne Heche on a California highway come February's opener. Lost is well aware its viewers are no fools, and they know the package they unwrap this spring needs to be the mother of all pay-offs.

So the biggest Lost question in our mind is whether or not they'll deliver the money shot when the series wraps in May, or if Lost has gotten lost. Clearly the show's been at the top of the TV game for a long, long time -- and its been just as clearly misleading. With but 18 episodes left, Damon Lindelof and JJ Abrams have a multitude of complexities to both explain and resolve. Those are easy; the tough part is to do so in a manner consistent with Lost's internal logic and narrative precedent.

Because that's just good story-telling, something which JJ Abrams obviously believes in and executes quite well. The build-up to Lost's crisis point has been calculated and intense, and now the fun really begins. As the show's reputation rides with every sixth season episode, the promise of good television awaits all.

That's not to say that I don't harbor mischievous desires for Lost to take an easy out. Many good stories eventually find themselves way up a tree they can't climb down from, and Lost is several rungs above even the worst of those offenders. Maybe they'll climax and climb down with grace and skill, or maybe the Island'll just be another Bobby Ewing bad dream.

Seriously, if somebody dug up an old IBM, pulled it apart, and discovered God living in its CPU, who wouldn't be in Heaven? Lost's whole setting is like some tropical Purgatory, anyway. It would fit, and what's crazy is that for Lost, even an ultimate sell-out ending like that makes some kind of sense.

One way or another, in seven months time, somebody's going to get voted off that island. And then things will start getting ugly.

STAR TREK XI Concept Artists

Everybody -- and I mean everybody -- is working, playing, making strange noises that sound vaguely like a Mugato in heat, or otherwise is enjoying themselves at the Home Office. That would make today just like every other day, really, because we always have a lot fun when we're abbracadabbling.

Well, maybe not the Mugato impersonations. They were added into the mix just this morning by my next door neighbor and partner-in-crime Raley. She says they're her way of being excited for tomorrow's DVD and Blu-Ray release of JJ Abrams' Star Trek IX. And I guess her excitement rubbed off on the rest of us pretty quickly.

Abbracadabbling's going to be celebrating Star Trek's 'coming out day', too. We're bringing you all sorts of Trek on the blog today, tonight, and into tomorrow. If you're not in the mood yet -- you soon will be. You're invited to join us in The Ready Room.

Abbracadabblers dig (not Digg) sci-fi concept art. We've shown you Rodolfo Damaggio's work as he preps for Green Lantern, and today we follow up with the amazing lines, colors, and imaginations of concept artists Ryan Church and James Clyne. Their visions of the future assured Star Trek XI 's present magic.

Ryan Church has worked for Walt Disney Imagineering, Universal, and for George Lucas' Industrial Light + Magic at California's Skywalker Ranch outside San Francisco. His past film credits include War of the Worlds (2005), all three movies of the second Star Wars trilogy, Dead Space, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, and of course, Star Trek XI.

James Clyne's projects have included Star Trek XI, Transformers, AI, and X-Men3: The Last Stand. His earliest work was in video-game design and illustration, and he continues to purse projects on both fronts. Here, we show you our favorite Clyne-designed piece, the early destruction of Starfleet at the hands of Nero.

Concept Art for abbracadabbling courtesy of Ryan Church [Link] and James Clyne [Link] via Concept Art World [Link].

Studio 22: The Once and Future Battlestar Galactica

BREAKING NEWS!!

In a statement issued just before five a.m. PST this morning, producers from two of television's most popular science fiction series broke the news that the next time audiences see Star Trek's U.S.S. Enterprise on the silver screen, it will be pitted in battle against none other than the Battlestar Galactica.

While all sources close to this ambitious project are keeping mum, already the internet has become home to rumors that may well be more than speculation. Worth noting is that longtime Star Trek "baddies" The Klingons will return to Trek's newly altered time line...and they won't be alone! It seems they'll have a warship that's "more than a match for Kirk and crew," thanks to some nasty Cylon tech!

Isn't that like the absolute most amazingly best news you could ever possibly hope to wake up to -- ever?!?!??!!

Well, it's not true.... But if it makes you feel any better, I had me going there for a minute, too.

The Big Question

You're probably reading my blog today for one of two reasons: (a) you really find anything I write to be engaging and worthy of attention or (b) you freakin' love Battlestar Galactica.

If I was in your shoes, I'd pick (b). You did? I knew we had a lot in common.

For example, I know you think Syfy's Battlestar re-imagination of Glen A. Larson's 1970's TV drama was and still is the epitome of quality television programming. We truly are less of a nation without her airwaves.

Or take last spring, when you were watching Galactica's final episodes and you started to feel like President of the Colonies Laura Roselyn (Mary McDonnell) when she'd cry just a little each time she returned to her dry erase board to lower the Fleet's headcount while the Cylons were kicking serious human butt in 33? Well, I felt more like Apollo. But I won't make fun of you for pulling a Laura.

In retrospect, BSG's series finale really did a great job of tying up all the show's loose ends. They answered all the looming questions -- except for the one that mattered most:

What the frak are we gonna do now?

A Plan (sort of) Comes Together

Even before BSG went off the air in March, word was already out that fans could expect more new Galactica come the fall, thanks to series executive producer Ron Moore and the Syfy Channel. And that's still true -- for the most part.

Caprica, the BSG spin-off prequel starring Esai Morales and Eric Stolz, will finally make it to prime time when it takes over Battlestar's former Friday time-slot in January. Most BSG devotees, however, won't find anything new at first, as Caprica's two-hour pilot episode was already released as a DVD last April. Nine months to wait for new Caprica is a bitch, Syfy!

Apparently, Caprica's DVD debut was a sci-fi success -- successful enough, even, to make Syfy Channel president David Howe eat his own words.

Howe in June, and the network itself several times since Battlestar's finale, have advertised that fans could look to Syfy for an early November premiere of The Plan -- BSG's follow-up film of Galactica's early battles against the Cylons, now re-told from the Cylons' perspective. With Edward James Olmos in the director's chair, The Plan's promise of Cylon fun is more than enticing. But Syfy sent word early last week that the two-hour movie won't be airing on the network.

Instead, Syfy will release The Plan onto DVD /Blu-Ray October 27th, as scheduled. Presumably, The Plan will make it to cable sometime in 2010. But

But so far, Syfy's not saying. I say, Who cares? Especially when you can check out a very cool video trailer here, get the scoop on the DVD here, and pre-order your very own copy of The Plan today, courtesy of PM Comics and Amazon.com!

Universal Appeal

Glance back up the page at my False Breaking News for a second. What fanboy or fan girl among us wouldn't be overcome by excitement if Galactica Vs Enterprise was slated as next summer's blockbuster? Sure, the fundamentalists among us would get their panties in a bunch, maybe we all find our panties up and over our heads. A movie like that would certainly ruin everything, wouldn't it? Then again, it might be frakkin' awesome.

From where I'm sitting, Universal Studios could be fixin' to put Battlestar fans into a doomsday scenario a lot like the one I concocted. While not new news, the fact that Universal picked up the movie rights (from original series creator Glen A. Larson) to bring Battlestar Galactica to the Big Screen definitely came in under the radar. The deal was signed while every Battlestar fan on the planet was glued to their small screen, watching Richard Hatch sow mutinous seeds throughout the rag-tag fleet. You've gotta hand it to Universal: they struck while that iron was hot!

They've kept on striking ever since, too. On August 13th, when Universal officially signed one of my favorites, Bryan Singer (X2: X-Men United, Superman Returns, The Usual Suspects), to direct and produce a big-budget Galactica, they effectively hyper-jumped the films status nearly into pre-production.

One thing that I'd never heard (although one of the main Battlestar fan news sites has apparently had the info posted for years) was that Singer, back in the 2001 heyday of his first X-Men years, was actively co-developing (with Larson and partner Tom DeSanto) a Battlestar series at Universal for Fox TV. Although the specific reasons why Singer's show, which was intended to actually pick-up where Larson's series left off, have never fully been explained, multiple sources I've come across suggest the show's production came to a grinding halt due to the chaos which followed the September 11th World Trade Center attacks. The show, I guess, never recovered from those delays.

While no other names or writers or producers or talent other than Singer's have been attached to Universal's new Battlestar, the Studio, Larson, and Singer have all stated that their BSG will be yet another re-imagining of the franchise, completely self-sufficient science fiction that won't have anything to do with the canon Ronald Moore established over on Syfy.

Past is Prologue

And there you have it. All in all, there's Battlestar aplenty ahead for everyone. The Colonial Fleet sails from Ron Moore's safe Syfy harbor into the very capable awaiting hands of Bryan Singer.

Singer, I read somewhere, sees Battlestar as a white-hot property right now, one that definitely resonates with audiences and that has plenty of story left to tell those audiences. It's a Concept show that's not weighed down with the concerns of, say, Star Trek. BSG's characters of Adama, Apollo, and Starbuck don't come close to being the pop cultural icons that are Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

The stuff that shapes Galactica is much more malleable, and in the right hands, its already proven its potential.