Written by The Punisher’s Rick Remender this 3 part series tracks back and forth over a gangs last heist before there can be no crime in the USA.

That’s it, that’s all you need to know. That was the premise that drew me to the book and I’m glad I got it.

The story is well crafted with no loose end left by the end. It has some well rounded characters and shows their histories and motivations well. Throughout the book you get glimpses of the characters outside the main thread, which all come together at the end. To do that over three issues and to make it feel like more is a work of art.

Greg Tocchini’s art work really well here, from the sex, to the violence and talking heads, you get a good feel for how the characters are feeling at the time.

Also, I love the 1st issue’s front cover!

Along with our main protagonist and supporting cast, you get a feel for the underground in this America. The story is interspersed with news about the switch on of the anti crime signal, but this doesn’t interfere with the story.

What I would like to see is more of this from Rick Remender and co., Radical have an excellent title here and I am glad to spread the word!

Click the cover image to learn more about Last Days or click here to go to this article at 3MillionYears.co.uk.

The blue light ghosts started appearing fifty years ago, clinging to technology, but they’ve been easy to manage. People like Alice Hotwire have kept the peace, but the blue lights aren’t acting normal, someone has been weaponizing them while no one was paying attention. The city is plagued with riots, and the police have their hands full, too focused on them rather than the bigger danger the blue lights pose, and the Homeland Enforcement is getting ready to step in, a move no one wants. Hotwire is the only hope of stopping the Blue lights, and last time we saw her she was about to be swept away as they flushed the tubes to neutralize the blue light.

The rioters continue to rage, and the police have lost all control, forced backwards at every turn. The Commanders worry about their image, what the TV is capturing, but the end is no where in sight. Mobey calls in with his status report. His entire retrieval team has been lost, but at least the weapons factory has been contained.

Everyone assumes that Alice is dead, but she’s far from it, and so is the last Blue Light they were trying to destroy. Alice had an unusual and fantastic upbringing, surrounded by technology, even though it was a time when technology was not trusted because of the blue lights, which lead to a hard time for Hotwire and her family. Now, Hotwire was ready to die, but she didn’t, the blue light, Malik saved her. He wasn’t a bad man, not evil like the rest of the blue lights had been, he’d resisted them, and manipulated them into making him stronger than all the rest, which is a huge problem as he heads towards Police city central. Between Homeland Enforcement, and the Ghost bomb, the folks of the city are the ones in for a bad time.

The action picks up, as all the story rushes to a satisfying close. Tempers flair, and ghosts bombs are out of control, its almost more fun than one comic really should be allowed. Steve Pugh’s masterful writing paired with the expressive panels cannot be beat, and he tells me that the trade has an even better ending. I’m not sure how that can be so, but he’s a genius so I believe him. Hotwire is one of the best comics out there!

Click here to go to this article at Museled.Blogspot.com or click the cover image to learn more about Hotwire.

This week, Universal Pictures participated in CinemaCon for the first time in a couple years. They premiered new footage from nine of their upcoming films, including the Tom Cruise-starrer science fiction film Oblivion and the Dark Horse Comics adaptation of R.I.P.D. (which stars Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges). [...]

Even though production has just begun on Joseph Kosinski‘s Oblivion, Universal showed footage from the first few days of filming! In the brief snippets of footage we saw Tom Cruise commanding a ship, Morgan Freeman looking badass with a cool looking beard, and the beginnings of an action sequence. For those unfamiliar with the film, Cruise plays a veteran soldier who’s banished to the surface of a post-apocalyptic Earth, and tasked with repairing ships that hunt down the aliens who destroyed our planet. When a mysterious woman (Andrea Riseborough) crash-lands nearby, their encounter sets off an eye-opening chain of events. Again, since we only saw concept art and raw dailies, I won’t say more than it looked cool and it’s definitely on my radar.

Click the image below to go to this article at ComicBookMovie.com .

Tom Cruise’s new sci-fi epic Oblivion has just started shooting, but Universal is already unveiling footage from the secrecy-shrouded project.

“It’s very rare when you feel equally excited about the words in a script and the visuals from a director, but Oblivion offers that combination,” said Universal Pictures chairman Adam Folgeson. “It’s one of the most beautiful scripts we’ve ever come across.”

The clips previewed at CinemaCon, the annual Las Vegas convention for theater owners, were a combination of early concept art, rough animation, and unfinished dailies. “It does not begin to demonstrate how spectacular the film will look,” Folgeson said, adding with a laugh: “And it gives you virtually no idea what the film is about.”

Well, that last part isn’t exactly true.

While there wasn’t any outright exposition, and the overall plot remains oblique, the scene gave us a small taste of the strange, futuristic world this film will explore, and it confirmed some speculation about the script.

The footage opens on a perfectly blue sky, and a series of glass and white steel platforms floating among the clouds. Picture The Jetsons by way of modernist architect Mies van der Rohe.

A small vehicle is perched on one of the platforms. It’s a kind of cross between a helicopter and a private plane. Inside is Cruise’s character: “This is Commander Jak Harper. Pre-routing electrical guidance and nav systems, all go.”

“Copy that, are you ready to go?” a computerized female voice asks.

Cruise’s character has a cocky look on his face. He’s done this a lot. “Oh, I’m ready to go.”

The copter-plane lifts off of the platform, but instead of rising, it plunges down through the clouds. Soon we see Cruise’s character gliding through a hole chopped into the roof of an old municipal building, what looks to be an early 20^th century library, with lots of stone and wood and dusty chandeliers hanging in stark shafts of light.

Cruise is armed, and prowls through the library with his rifle drawn. We don’t know what it is he’s looking for, but he’s clearly expecting something hostile.

The comic book source material, co-written by the movie’s director — Tron: Legacy filmmaker Joseph Kosinski — can shed some light on what’s happening: “In a future where the Earth’s surface has been irradiated beyond recognition, the remnants of humanity live above the clouds, safe from the brutal alien Scavengers that stalk the ruins.” Jak (that’s not a misspelling) is a repairman, not a policeman. It’s just that one of his tools is a firearm, and his job is to look after the surface world on behalf of the 1-percent above.

Whatever he’s looking for, he finds it. Or it finds him.

There’s a small black device with a blinking light on it – some kind of trap. As soon as Cruise’s character sees it, he has time to whisper only “Oh s–t …” before a cable snares around his leg and yanks him across the room through a collapsing wall.

In the shadows are dozens of figures, and the light reveals one of them: Morgan Freeman, sporting round goggles. “I’ve been watching you, Jak,” he says.

Intrigued?

Oblivion opens roughly a year from now – April 26, 2013.

Click here to read the full story at InsideMovies.EW.com.

March 22, 2012, Los Angeles, CA – Radical Publishing is excited to announce the release of its comics and graphic novels in digital format through iTunes.

Beginning this week, Radical will be releasing several of its series, including Caliber: First Canon of Justice, The Last Days of American Crime, and Time Bomb, along with other fan-favorite trades and graphic novels, for iBooks 2.0.

Additional graphic novels released include Aladdin: Legacy of the Lost, City of Dust: A Philip Khrome Story, Driver for the Dead, Hercules: The Knives of Kush, Hotwire: Requiem for the Dead, Legends: The Enchanted, The Lords of Misrule, Mateki: The Magic Flute, and Shrapnel: Hubris.

Fans of Radical can link directly to the iTunes store from the “Titles” section atwww.RadicalPublishing.com or search the Apple bookstore for these titles to read and interact with Radical’s state-of-the-art imagery.

Over the coming weeks, Radical will continue to release more of its award-winning catalog through the iTunes bookstore.  Stay informed about new digital releases by liking Radical’s Facebook page at www.Facebook.com/RadicalPublishing, following Radical’s YouTube channel at www.YouTube.com/RadicalPublishing, or following @RadicalComics on Twitter.

About Radical Publishing: Radical Publishing is a division of Radical Studios, a leading multimedia company producing award-winning print, digital, and motion picture content, including Horizons, Hercules, and The Last Days of American Crime. The company was founded in 2007 by Barry Levine and Jesse Berger.  For more information, visit www.RadicalStudios.com or contact Teddy Cabugos, Director of Promotions, at Teddy@RadicalPublishing.com.

Click here to go to this press release at 3MillionYears.co.uk or click here to visit Radical’s “Titles” section, where you can find digital copies of many of our books!

Hollywood’s love affair with comic book properties is the stuff of summer blockbuster legends, and Friday’s “Hollywood and Comics” panel at WonderCon 2012 brought together several experts working in both arenas to give insight, guidance and a list of best practices to aspiring writers and filmmakers.

Moderated by Benjamin Jackendoff, a producer at Zenescope Entertainment, panelists included writer Kevin Grevioux (“Underworld”); director Jon Schnepp (“Metalocolypse”); writer Martin Shapiro (“Chopper”), producer and Chairman of Platinum Studios, Scott Mitchell Rosenberg; Joe LeFavi of Quixotic Transmedia; and Executive Vice President at Radical Studios, Jesse Berger.

After some brief introductions, Jackendoff steered the conversation toward LeFavi, who has worked with the Jim Henson Company and Archaia to license those properties across different transmedia platforms. Jackendoff asked why the word ‘licensing’ was considered a dirty word and LeFavi spoke about a general feeling of mistrust. “Particularly, if you look at not just comics, but picture books and all other things involved with licensing, there is a certain manipulation and exploitation there,” LeFavi said. “If people can get past the idea of comics being an ancillary right and actually being a major component of building these worlds and paying respect to these worlds, I think a lot can change for us.”

Berger, whose Radical Studios just began production on “Oblivion,” a science fiction movie from “Tron: Legacy” director Joseph Kosinski and starring Tom Cruise, spoke about the creative process at his company. “We always say there’s no budget in art illustration. When you’re making a film you’re always going to have someone saying, ‘This set piece is too big’ or ‘This is going to cost too much money,’ but when you’re doing it on the page it’s pencils, it’s inks, it’s colors and so we do not hamper the idea,” Berger said. “You sometimes get lucky where you have a really, really big concept and then you have a studio that sees it with the same scope, but we always say that sometimes it will be ten to fifteen percent of a high concept that will get into the film or the television show, or whatever.”

Berger also spoke about using art as a visual tool designed to get projects made. He then related a story about how his company had created a single piece of art that inspired Kosinski. “That piece of art was sent to Joe and Joe got back to us instantaneously and was like, ‘Oh my gosh, my whole — everything that I thought this was and could be — is encapsulated within this single image,’” Berger said. “It really is about the idea, and making sure that the core idea is unhampered with, in this medium which is a visual, illustrated medium. Then from there it’s only about inspiring a third party financier.”

Grevioux, who is also an actor, wrote the story for “Underworld” and he explained why he would never again pitch without having a comic book or art support. “Believe it or not, at one time, it was thought to be unprofessional to include art with a script. Studio executives and aids and producers were proud to say that, as if they were right,” he explained. “I wisely drew some art for ‘Underworld,’ tucked it in the script and because it had those pages in it, that piqued Kate Beckinsale’s curiosity when she had a bunch of scripts to read: ‘Oh, what’s this? Ooh art. Wow this is cool. I want to do this movie.’”

Grevioux went on to say that without a visual aid like a comic, which can be relatively cheap to produce, it can be difficult to stand out in and amongst the stacks and stacks of scripts that development executives have to read every week. “They might make a decision on your script just by virtue of the fact that they have to go home over the weekend and read ten of these bad boys,” he said. “If you can give them a twenty-two to sixty-four page comic book or whatever and they can sit down and read it and they like the art — even if they don’t — they like the concept, they get it.”

“Yeah, that’s what I did,” Shapiro said, explaining that he commissioned comic artist Juan Ferreyra to create two issues that he could show to producers, which eventually got his “Chopper” project optioned. “I invested in good art and it paid off. I ended up selling it for a lot of money.”

Grevioux also had another piece of important advice for anyone pitching an idea to a studio or a producer. “You can’t go in and pitch with just one idea, you have to have a few because if they don’t like what you come up with — with what you come in with — that’s a short conversation and that’s embarrassing and you don’t want that.”

Berger ended the panel discussion by explaining that everything really comes down to packaging in Hollywood. “I think that’s a key factor to have in your mind while you’re making and shepherding your project and believing in it — that if you can figure out how to create a road map that gets you to that money, you’ll end up getting there eventually.”

Click here to go to this article at CBR.com.

In the (not so distant) future, the American government has decided not only to phase out cash money in lieu of plastic cards, thus making all transactions traceable, but they are also going to broadcast radio waves that will render Americans incapable of committing acts that they know are illegal.  This means that our ‘hero,’ Graham, only has 2 weeks to commit the perfect- and last- crime.

Once again, this is a very good example of ‘just because there are pictures does not mean this book is for children.’  At all.  I enjoyed this- it was dark, gritty, and definitely in the vein of noir crime novels.  I consider the main character to be an homage to Sin City‘s Marv, but I could be wrong.  Expect the same level of violence, etc.

Click here to go to this article at JCL Reads or click the cover image to learn more about Last Days.

I guess, like most people, when I think about horror comics, I think about EC, Steve Niles, Robert Kirkman and… that’s about it. Or at least it was it, until I read Driver for the Dead by John Heffernan, a name the more astute of you might recognise from the credits of Snakes On A Plane. And Mass Movement 31. Where was I? Oh yes, Driver for the Dead, a high octane voodoo chiller featuring a brooding, gun toting ex-military hero who transports the special cases, both dead and undead, to wherever it is they have to go, in a V8 GTO repurposed as Hearse, who finds himself butting heads with two hundred year old necromancer intent on stealing the heart, and thus power, from the corpse of one of the most powerful magicians to have ever walked the Bayou. It’s a non-stop rollercoaster ride filled with action, blood, guts, gore and more, that riffs on Greek and Norse mythology whilst establishing the hero (Alabaster Graves) past and his purpose in life, explaining why his “job” (or calling) chose him rather than the other way around. Sharp dialogue, pitch perfect plotting and incredible artwork courtesy of Leonardo Manco combine to make ‘Driver For The Dead’ one of the best horror books to have hit the shelves since the century clock ticked over to twenty one. Seriously, you need to check this out and check it out like yesterday before the bigwig lizard people (thanks Mr. Icke!) who rule Hollywood snap it up and transform it into a Summer Blockbuster. Which they will, and if you haven’t read it before it rings tills in Multiplexes the world over, well, you’ll just be lame, won’t you? And you don’t want to be lame do you? Didn’t think so. The Unholy Triumvirate just became the Four Horsemen…

Click here to go to this article at Mass Movement Magazine or click the image to learn more about Driver for the Dead.

EXCLUSIVE: Melissa Leo has been set for Oblivion, the Joseph Kosinski-directed futuristic Universal Pictures thriller that stars Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Andrea Riseborough and Olga Kurylenko. Production just got underway in Baton Rouge. Leo, who won the Best Supporting Actress for The Fighter, will next be seen in the Robert Zemeckis-directed Denzel Washington-starrer Flight, and she’s currently shooting the third season of HBO’s Treme. Peter Chernin and Dylan Clark are producing Oblivion with Barry Levine and Kosinski. Michael Arndt rewrote drafts by William Monahan and Karl Gajdusek. Leo’s repped by CAA and Untitled.

Dolmen Editorial introduced us, a few weeks ago, to a new title from Radical Books: Time Bomb, a curious mix of science fiction and war genres. Created by Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray and Paul Gulacy, is a curious experiment that works and provides a good read.

The plot revolves around the discovery of a hidden city beneath the streets of Berlin, where Hitler’s doomsday weapon — an Omega bomb designed to destroy the entire human species–  is activated by accident.

Therefore, a team of experts with weapons and more advanced equipment must travel back in time to prevent the bomb’s explosion. However, they soon discover that instead of traveling a couple of days back in time as expected, they have been sent back to the heart of Hitler’s Germany!

Time Bomb is the third title from comic book publisher Radical in Spain, a work that follows the premises of the previous two (it’s a short project created by artists under the premise of seeking possible film adaptation), and the truth is that after the good taste of Hotwire and FVZA, Time Bomb does not disappoint. Of course, this time we leave a little of the fantastic premises of the previous two to find ourselves in a sci-fi thriller about time travel to destroy a Nazi invention that is about to end the world, but is not just an excuse to give us a Tarantino-style war movie (and there much of his Inglourious Basterds in this comic).

This is a team of operations who are urged to travel through time via a revolutionary device, for once in the past, they must prevent the detonation of a device that contains a virus that is destroying Europe and threatens to do the same to the rest of the world in just a few hours. Unfortunately, something goes wrong and they are sent to the twilight of the Second World War, although, of course, they are men of action, and if it’s necessary to go to Berlin to destroy the bomb… then why not kill Nazis on the way?

Time Bomb is a delight in war comedy, the element of time travel is very well done, Palmiotti and Gray have fun like crazy with the script, and the odd fact is that the excesses make it an enjoyable read. As for Paul Gulacy’s drawing, we have to praise his pages, as he is able to make us remember some of the best war movies of the genre.

This book, like the previous two, is impeccable. Dolmen has been working hard on this project and there is no possible complaint. It is a wonder for the price.

Three of three. Dolmen are trapping us with this interesting imprint… I hope someone in Hollywood decided to adapt these comics to the big screen, I shudder to think of the possibilities!

Click here to go to this article in Spanish at Via-News.es or click the cover image to learn more about Time Bomb.

Note: This article has been translated from its original Spanish. If you notice any significant errors, please let us know in the comments section below and corrections will be made. Thank you!