News: JLA costumer dies; Myriad deal; Wonder Woman; X-Men manga

After some much-needed time off in the tropics (sans Internet), we’re back to see what’s been going on the past week.

* Marit Allen, costume designer on the still-in-preproduction Justice League of America film, died Nov. 26 of a brain aneurysm in Sydney.

* In an increasingly common scenarios, Myriad Pictures has signed a deal with Studio 407 to develop feature film versions based on the company’s comicbook properties. If you haven’t heard yet of Bangkok-based Studio 407 or its titles — Tiger and Crane, Night and Fog and Hybrid — that’s because they’re all still coming sometime in 2008. (The last two titles above sound like comics designed to promote safe driving in adverse conditions and sell cars.) Deal also allows Studio 407 to develop graphic novels based on Myriad properties. With so many new comics houses teaming up with studios, it’s starting to look like a crowded corner of the movie biz. Yes, comics movies have done very well and will continue to do well, but there’s still only so much demand for material that’s obviously “comicbooky,” i.e., superhero-like, and it’s highly unlikely that there’s enough demand out there to support all the Platinums, Virgins, Radicals, Devils Dues and Myriads that are trying to stake a claim in this area — either in the direct market or in Hollywood. And while the money in publishing is minimal compared to the norms for film and TV, a crush of comics properties that are popular or proven neither as movies or as comics is likely to hasten the inevitable day when superhero movies (regardless of whether they have capes) become yesterday’s fad.

* Grady Hendrix, who writes the Kaiju Shakedown blog at VarietyAsiaOnline.com, writes in the New York Sun about Wonder Woman and why most people know so little about a character who’s been around for so long.

Even people with a tenuous grasp of pop culture know that Superman is from the planet Krypton and works at the Daily Planet. They know that millionaire Bruce Wayne saw his parents murdered in Gotham City and became Batman. But they're a little foggier on Wonder Woman. She's an Amazon from ... Amazon Island? No one's even quite sure what she does. Ambassador? Warrior? Gym teacher? Few people know that she's really Princess Diana and that she has two mothers. Formed from clay by the Queen of the Amazons, she was imbued with the attributes of the Greek gods by Athena — "beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena, swifter than Hermes, and stronger than Hercules."

Wonder Woman has the benefit of being the defining superheroine of the Golden Age, which explains why she’s survived so long and is so widely known, but suffers from a career of extreme creative inconsistency and even indifference that is perhaps only explained by the simple fact that for decades the men who wrote comics were just not interested in giving a female character the same sort of attention to plot, character and mythology that they are male superheroes. What even the most talented of today’s creators are left with is a character whose premise and mythology is confusing and vague, yet at the same time nearly impossible to change because no one knows what the essential elements are to this character. The closest I can recall to Wonder Woman being an interesting character and well-crafted comicbook was nearly 20 years ago, when George Perez et al. relaunched the character after Crisis on Infinite Earths. But even that remains a largely ignored storyline for a character desperately in need a definitive storyline that can set a direction fot this character to move beyond familiar cypher to compelling character and essential mythology.

* Marvel and Del Rey announced at last weekend’s New York Anime Festival they would collaborate on two new X-Men manga projects. First would be a two-volume shojo (girls’) manga written by Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman with art by Indonesian artist Anzu, and set to debut in spring 2009, described in a press release as follows:

As the only girl in the all-boys School for Gifted Youngsters, Kitty Pryde, a mutant with phasing abilities, is torn between the popular Hellfire Club, led by flame-throwing mutant Pyro — and the school misfits, whom she eventually bands together as the X-Men.



The second series also is set to debut in Spring 2009 and will focus (surprise!) on Wolverine.

I’ll believe this will work when I see it. It’s not that it’s a bad idea, though if you’re going to turn X-Men into manga (it’s been done before), it makes little sense to me to try to turn it into a shojo romance rather than go for an action-packed title of the type that could appeal to the boys who made the 1990s animated series such a smash hit.