Preview of Bad Night, Part Three.

Comic Book Resources recently posted a brief preview of Criminal #6, the third chapter in the four-part story, "Bad Night." We see a little bit more of the big city in which the series is set, including an industrial area that's been run-down for probably decades, and we have a brief, vague suggestion of what young Jacob did as a kid, probably with his friends Leo and Tracy.

CBR also has Marvel's January solicitations, but Newsarama has the scheduled on-sale dates. The second issue of Incognito is scheduled to be released at the beginning of the month, and the trade paperback collection of "Bad Night" will be released at the end of the month.

I have more to write about Incognito, hopefully over the weekend. In the meantime, the latest issue of Criminal is in stores tomorrow.


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Screenwriter Hired for Sleeper Adaptation.

As Sean Phillips pointed out at his blog, Variety reports that a screenwriter has been hired by Warner Bros. to adapt Sean and Ed's Sleeper.

A brief search online doesn't reveal much about the screenwriter, Brad Ingelsby. The Variety article notes that he sold his first script earlier this year, and a little more info about Ingelsby can be found in an LA Times article about the resurgence of Hollywood's practice of buying original scripts for considerable sums of money. When the 27-year-old Ingelsby sold his first script, for a film called "The Low Dweller", for $650,000, he was apparently a complete unknown.

Relativity outbid several other suitors, including Warner Bros. and Sony, for Ingelsby's dark drama about an ex-con avenging his brother's death in 1986 Indiana. It certainly helped that the ubiquitous Leonardo DiCaprio and Ridley Scott were attached, but even disinterested readers say Ingelsby's screenplay merits a comparison to the tone and nature of the Coen brothers' Oscar-winning "No Country for Old Men" and praise for its lived-in regional dialogue.

Ingelsby, an American Film Institute graduate, has been living with his parents in the Philadelphia area and working at his father's insurance company while tapping the keyboard every night. He remembers that when he left AFI, where he began writing "Low Dweller," one professor said that any graduate actually making money as a screenwriter within the first six or seven years should consider himself lucky.

"It's an unnerving experience already," says Ingelsby, very aware of his good fortune. "I really never expected it to be like this. It's amazing. It's overwhelming."

I would prefer Ed Brubaker to write the script if the task won't be fielded by a seasoned pro, but the big names attached to both "The Low Dweller" and the Sleeper adaptation are encouraging, as are what little details can be gleamed about this earlier script.

And, the fact that a screenwriter is already being hired, might imply that the film will be made and released sooner rather than later.


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Bullets: Wired, Sleeper Extras, Incognito Merchandise.

A couple quick points as the weekend begins...

• Wired Interview with Brubaker. Wired's "Underwire" blog just posted a brief interview with Ed Brubaker, covering things from his favorite noir, to his work on Captain America, to the upcoming mini-series Incognito. About the latter, Ed explains that the comic is "about identity and morality on a few levels, as well as this twisted noir supervillain explodo fantasy."
  
  
• Upcoming Sleeper Extras. In one particular thread at the Jinxworld forum, Ed has been discussing Incognito quite a bit. The entire thread's worth browsing, but the most interesting news that hasn't already been covered here, concerns the new editions of Sleeper that we mentioned earlier. Ed relayed that he doesn't yet know the release date(s) and that the books might not be hardcovers, but he also wrote that the books would be longer, including a reprinting of a prequel story for the book's second "season." Ed elaborated that this prologue isn't the Coup D'etat story but is, instead, from a WildStorm sampler. So far as I can tell, this story hasn't been republished before.
  
  
• Incognito Merchandise. Finally, over at his blog, which fans should frequent anyway, Sean Phillips announced that he is already offering Incognito merchandise through CafePress: two tee-shirts featuring the logo and a poster of the artwork for what is presumably the cover to issue #1.

We'll keep rolling along here with news and notes about all of Ed and Sean's projects, but if anyone has a scoop, please do leave a comment or shoot us an email.


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Brubaker on INCOGNITO.

Newsarama has just posted an interview with Ed Brubaker about the upcoming comic book he and Sean Phillips are doing, Incognito.

In brief, it's a five-issue story that Ed admits is something of an inversion of Sleeper. Instead of a superhero pretending to be evil, it's a villain pretending to be good while in Witness Protection. Like Criminal, it not only features a wraparound cover and bonus material in the single issues, it's being promoted with a "teaser" that appears to be included in the Newsarama article, and which Ed is asking fans to pass along.

Criminal will be put on hold while Incognito is being released. Ed suggests that he and Sean might interrupt the Criminal story once "every few years" to try new stories and new approaches. The hope is that Incognito might draw new readers to Criminal, but the occasional productive break might be good for Criminal either way.

Ed confirms that Criminal will return quickly after this short break. The new arc, which will begin with issue #8, features the much-anticipated return of Tracy Lawless.

UPDATE: The Comics Reporter has the press release for Incognito, including larger images of the cover art and two-page teaser. The highest-quality images of the teaser are available at Sean's blog, here.


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Sleeper: CBR Interview, New Editions Forthcoming.

A couple brief notes about Sleeper.

First, a couple weeks ago Comic Book Resources featured an early, somewhat lengthy interview with Ed Brubaker, about the news of a possible movie for his and Sean's Sleeper. He explains that the story's use of characters from the wider WildStorm universe doesn't pose a significant problem, as the movie could rename and slightly tweak these characters while keeping the basic narrative structure intact.

Ed notes, "all but four characters were created by me and Sean just for 'Sleeper.'"

For the life of me, I can only think of three "outside" characters: Lynch, TAO, and Grifter. Sleeper's prologue, a mini-series called Point Blank, features a couple others, including Midnighter and Hawksmoor, but I can't think of a fourth such character that was in the story of Sleeper proper.

Second, last week Sean posted at his sight early drafts -- here and here -- of artwork for "a new printing" of Point Blank, by Ed and artist Colin Wilson.

(Sean also revealed an insightful and quite amusing look at a reference photo he used for Criminal, for what it's worth.)

In the notes at the back of the excellent new issue of Criminal that was released yesterday, Ed confirmed what Sean's blog posts suggested:

"...for Sleeper fans, there are new editions of Sleeper in the works, I just found out, so keep your eyes peeled for those."

This doesn't appear to be the Absolute edition I'm hoping for -- and I do hope that that comes out right before the movie, at the latest -- but this is very cool news nevertheless.

We'll keep readers posted on new info about Sleeper, in print and on film. In the meantime, how about "Bad Night"? The understated revelation about how Jake was crippled, and why, was simply brutal.

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Bullets: Eisner, the Sleeper Movie, and More.

News and notes from the world of Criminal...

• Another Eisner for Brubaker! In its rookie season last year, Criminal won the Eisner Award for Best New Series, and Ed Brubaker won an Eisner for Best Writer in part because of his work on the crime noir series. As we noted earlier, Ed was nominated again this year, and at San Diego's Comic-Con last month, the winners were announced. Ed won Best Writer for his work on Criminal, alongside Marvel's Captain America, Daredevil, and Immortal Iron Fist.
  
  
• The First Brubaker Interview for the Sleeper Film. MTV.com has the apparent first interview with Ed Brubaker concerning the possible film for Sleeper. In the brief story, Ed recounts how quickly things happened, and he hints that possible legal issues might be avoided in the Sleeper films by excising some WildStorm characters from the story. That would be one way to address the issues mentioned in the Hollywood Reporter story mentioned in the previous blog entry:
  
  "Sleeper" takes place in the same publishing universe as other Wildstorm books, and integrally featured characters from the company's flagship title "WildC.A.T.s" as well as characters from another book, "Gen 13."
  
  Both "WildC.A.T.s" and "Gen 13" had been set up at different places around town and some of those deals were made before DC bought the imprint in 1999.
  
  Warners, now involved in a legal wrangle with Fox over the rights to "Watchmen," appears determined to cross all the t's and dot all the i's in its contracts for "Sleeper."
  
  Frankly, I wouldn't want to see a Sleeper movie deviate too much from the books, and though Sleeper's really my only in-depth exposure to the WildStorm universe, it does seem like there are some WildStorm characters that were pretty indispensible to the narrative. (H/T Blog@Newsarama for the MTV interview.)
  
  
• More than one Sleeper movie? There's another line worth mentioning from that Hollywood Reporter article:
  
  The project is being eyed not only as a starring vehicle for Cruise but also as a possible franchise for the studio.
  
  There's an obvious trilogy in Point Blank, Season One, and Season Two, but it would be an unconventional trilogy in that Holden Carver isn't Point Blank's protagonist. And, the idea of a franchise would be a reason I would prefer not seeing Tom Cruise play Carver. Cruise already has Mission: Impossible, and the most successful franchises seem to involve rising stars, e.g., Damon as Bourne, and now Daniel Craig as 007.
  
  Tom Cruise can seem very emotionally detached, and he often does best in roles that use this fact, such as in Magnolia or Jerry Maguire, so that's one thing that would lend itself to his playing Holden Carver. But I would reiterate what I've already seen online once or twice, that Tom Cruise would make an excellent TAO.
  
  Either way, a series of Sleeper movies would probably improve the chances that the comic's complex story would be more faithfully adapted.
  
  
• Tangentially Related Articles. I've bookmarked a couple articles that, at best, only tangentially involve Criminal, Ed, or Sean, but Criminal fans might still find them interesting. First, in a Newsarama interview regarding how the movie industry affects comics, writer Steve Niles discussed the opportunity of introducing comics to new readers.
  
  "It's about to happen," Niles said, "and all we need to do is have [Ed] Brubaker make a movie out of Criminal, and then we've opened up another genre. I mean, I've sold horror comics, there are people selling crime comics, we've had Ghost World, we've had A History of Violence. We can do this."
  
  With the news about Sleeper, we're one step closer.
  
  Second, at a panel at ComicCon, several people in the comics industry discuss whether the comic book as a periodical is dying as a format. They discuss how to make monthlies attractive, the "break-even" point for monthly comics, and the risk of cancellation if too many fans "wait for the trade" for a particular book. This latter risk is what Brubaker is specifically addressing by offering exclusive content in the monthly issues of Criminal. I share his hope that those who can support the monthly format, do so.
  
  Finally, Waking Dead's Robert Kirkman posted a video editorial calling for high-profile creators to leave DC and Marvel and focus entirely on creator-owned comics, for the good of the entire industry. The argument is that the sophisticated work they're doing for the mainstream superhero titles isn't attracting younger readers to keep those titles from dying. So long as they don't work solely on creator-owned projects, their fans will have the choice to focus on their mainstream work, and they will exercise that choice.
  
  I'm not sure I find the argument completely compelling, as I doubt I would have been so easily drawn to Sleeper and Criminal if it weren't for Ed's work on Gotham Central. The leap from Daredevil to Criminal is a short one, so I wonder if the net effect of following Kirkman's footsteps out of mainstream work would really be a positive.
  
  
• Brief observations on Criminal. In the last few weeks, we've seen the release of Liberty Comics, featuring a brief Criminal story, and Criminal #4 with the opening chapter of "Bad Night."
  
  "No One Rides For Free" is the five-page contribution to Liberty Comics by Ed, Sean, and Val Staples. It's a good story, and there's a minor bit of history being made with the short tale: it's the first Criminal story featuring first-person narration from a Lawless.
  
  And in Criminal #4, Ed conducts an interview with Charles Ardai from Hard Case Crime. This interview might be why future bonus material isn't publicized quite so much: it was mentioned at least as far back as December, originally to be included in issue #1 of the second volume.
  
  In the interview in issue #4, Ed confirms that Criminal and the noir paperback imprint did some "ad-swapping", and since I'm now getting hip-deep in Hard Case Crime, I will reiterate here that I would love to see Ed do a Criminal story for the imprint, with Sean doing the cover.
  
  And I know I'm not the only one to have had this idea.

In addition to our usual coverage of Criminal, we'll post more news about the Sleeper film(s) as news becomes available.

With any luck, we'll be discussing similar news for Criminal, too, in the not-too-distant future.

CBR Brubaker Interview, Details on "Bad Night."

In promoting the publication of "The Dead and The Dying", Ed Brubaker conducted an interview with Comic Book Resources, published here on Wednesday. In the interview, Ed reveals the original plan for showing how Gnarly ended up at the Undertow, and he confirms that the parallels between Teeg and Tracy Lawless was intentional.

The interview focuses on the upcoming arc, "Bad Night." I misread the original solicitation and thought the story would be set a few years before "Lawless." Instead, it's set about a year after. In addition to putting the spotlight on Jacob, the story introduces the staff of an all-night diner -- the Blue Fly Diner, apparently -- and the story has elements that would fit in stories by David Goodis or by Jim Thompson. The issue's bonus material will feature an interview with Charles Ardai, editor of Hard Case Crime, the excellent imprint that focuses on old-school paperback noir, and this CBR interview includes six black-and-white preview pages of Criminal #4.

To follow "Bad Night," Ed already has other stories in the planning stages, and he suggests that, if Criminal ever draws to a close, the final and longest story arc may be the untold story that was alluded to in "Coward" and that casts a shadow on all who survived: what Ed simply alludes to as, "Leo’s screw up."