Tag: Steve Niles

Next month marks the 70th anniversary of “More Fun Comics” No. 52, which brought a strange and enduring apparition into the page of DC Comics: The Spectre, that scowling avenging force from beyond the grave. The supernatural being scared the bejesus out of me when I was a kid; when I 5 or 6, I got a hold of a Spectre story in which the spooky hero turned some bad guys into wood and then ran them through a sawmill. Wow, if Superman had that kind of finish-the-job attitude, Lex Luthor wouldn’t keep breaking out of prison, would he? The core premise of the Spectre has changed through the years, but the most recurring concept is that Jim Corrigan, a hard-bitten cop, was murdered but then came back to the living world with a connection to a powerful undead spirit. That classic story foundation is back ...

This is a longer version of my story that is running Monday on the cover of the Los Angeles Times Calendar section. Even when the movies ended up bad — and they usually did — crime novelist Donald E. Westlake never had a problem taking Hollywood money for his ideas. But with his signature creation, the ruthless career criminal known simply as Parker, Westlake insisted that the names be changed to protect the guilty. Westlake, who died at age 75 this past New Year’s Eve, saw seven movies made from his Parker novels (which were all published under his pseudonym Richard Stark), but in each film the main character’s name was changed; even when Lee Marvin, Robert Duvall or Mel Gibson was in the role, Westlake wouldn’t entrust his favorite brand name to anyone else. That changed, though, in the final months ...

Barry Levine is focused on Hollywood aspirations these days, but he came up in the music world as a photographer for KISS and Mötley Crüe, so he knows a gold rush when he sees one. Crüe was part of the 1980s Sunset Strip metal scene that stirred an industry craze just as Liverpool and San Francisco had done in the 1960s and Seattle would in the 1990s. “Right now in Hollywood, the rush is on, comic books are the new sensation and they are not going away,” Levine said with an insider’s assured nod at he sat in front of a plate of pasta at a Los Angeles sidewalk café. “What’s happened already is impossible to ignore but what’s happening now and what’s going to happen next is even more interesting.” The past-tense statement was a reference to “The Dark ...

I just got a copy of "The Darker Mask" in the mail, and I’m really looking forward to checking it out this week when I hop on a flight to Florida. The book is part of percolating subgenre right now: Comics-inspired tales that tell their stories without pictures. So it’s pure prose, but the spirit is out of the four-color cousins with the word balloons. This is hardly a new idea, of course. "Hellboy: Odd Jobs," an anthology of short stories about Big Red, came out eight years ago, and waaay back in 1990 was "Words Without Pictures" (a hard-to-find book now), which was edited by Steve Niles and had wonderful work in it by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Jon J. Muth others. Those are just two I can see sitting on my bookshelf from where I’m sitting. Anyway, ...

Horror fans should drop by fearnet.com to check out the first chapter in a six-part mini-movie called "30 Days of Night: Dust to Dust," which stars "Saw" scream-queen Shawnee Smith. Each chapter of the vampire tale "Dust to Dust" picks up after "Blood Trails," a FEARnet miniseries last fall that the website says was viewed more than 5 million times. There’s a limited edition "Dust to Dust" tie-in comic book (only 10,000 copies printed) and poster that will be given out at Comic-Con International in San Diego. Shawnee Smith and others involved in the project will be signing stuff at the Sony Pictures Entertainment booth (#4313) on Saturday at noon. Here’s the lowdown on "Dust to Dust" from the press release: ‘Dust to Dust’ continues the New Orleans storyline from Blood Trails where fans first met George, an ex-junkie who, ...