Comics – Page 36 – ÜberSciFiGeek

Felicia Day’s “Horrible” Experience

Felicia Day as Penny in "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog"

Multi-talented actress Felicia Day was already recognizable for her work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer before she created the smash hit Internet series, The Guild. Now, she’s teamed up with Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly) to present another Internet event, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. She’s costarring along with Nathan Fillion (Firefly, Desperate Housewives) and Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother, Harold & Kumar, Starship Troopers) in this Whedon family project that will be premiering exclusively on the Internet beginning Tuesday, July 15th. Felicia took some time out of her very busy schedule to answer a few questions about Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.

ÜberSciFiGeek (ÜSFG) How did you get involved in the Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog project?

Felicia Day (FD) I had seen Joss on the strike lines a few times and he had mentioned the idea of a supervillain musical to me, perhaps made for the Internet. I thought that was the coolest idea I’d ever heard, A few months later he emailed me and it said, “Can you sing?” You can imagine I was a little taken aback, it’s not a question you hear every day!

(ÜSFG) With a name like Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, one of the first questions that come to mind is, “Does Felicia sing?”

(FD) Yes! I did musical theatre all my life, mostly as a dancer but I had singing parts as well. I moved around a lot so theatre kind of kept my childhood together. Throughout college I took lessons from a professor at UT Austin, Jess Walters.

(ÜSFG) Did you enjoy singing in Dr. Horrible? Have you been in any sort of musical production before, and would you like to be in more of them?

(FD) OMG, singing in Horrible was fun and intimidating! Neil’s voice is amazing, so singing opposite him was nerve-wracking, but as soon as we were done, I wanted to do more! I did a LOT of musicals as a teen and again during college, like Into the Woods and Fantasticks, Oklahoma, you name it. Since moving to LA I’ve had a few jobs singing, a part in Warm Springs, a few plays. It’s not my career but I do enjoy it and would love to do more of it in the future!

(ÜSFG) Was Dr. Horrible always conceived of as a musical, or did that come about only when Joss Whedon learned that you, Neil Patrick Harris, and Nathan Fillion have singing voices?

(FD) I can’t speak for him, but I know when he floated the idea on the strike line to me, it was always connected to the word “musical”. Joss has an amazing passion for music and musicals. His knowledge in the area blows me away. I love the idea of Joss, Jed, Zach and Maurissa getting together and writing this amazing script together and creating songs together, what a cool process!

(ÜSFG) Having worked with Joss Whedon on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, what was it like working with him again? How was it different and how was it similar?

(FD) The Dr. Horrible set was a lot more informal than being on a professional TV set. There was a sense from everyone this was driven by passion and enthusiasm rather than being a “job”. It felt way more like indie productions I’ve done. Of course the quality of production and the expertise of the cast and crew was equal to being on Buffy, because Joss attracts the best at what they do. There were stunt people on both sets : )

(ÜSFG) Captain Hammer has an online comic — will Penny also have an online exclusive? With your background as a gamer, perhaps a mini online game?

(FD) I don’t know anything about that end of it, but that would be cool! Float that idea out there! To be honest I don’t know if Penny is a gamer. I would think she’s more of a knitter or a baker.

(ÜSFG) You’ve produced a lot of Internet content now. How is it different as an actor and/or producer for the Internet than it is for television or film?

(FD) It’s night and day. When you have a huge professional set and 50 people working on it, everyone does only their job, and they do it at the height of their expertise. Internet content is much more blurry as far as those lines go. One day you’ll be producer, the next an actor, the next craft service. It’s necessary because there’s no money to pay people with most the time. But the great thing is you don’t have layers of people to interfere with your vision as a creator, and I think more and more, professionals will discover that to be an attractive area to play in.

(ÜSFG) If Dr. Horrible does well, is another film or related project planned?

(FD) You would have to ask Joss. I would love to play Penny again, in whatever capacity!

(ÜSFG) Your character, Penny, isn’t a superhero or supervillain like Captain Hammer and Dr. Horrible, but if you had to choose a superpower to have in your real life, what would it be and why?

(FD) Gosh, that’s hard. I think invisibility. I like to eavesdrop. I used to only play rogues in games so I could sneak in and steal things from the NPCs : ) I don’t do that in real life, btw.

(ÜSFG) Penny falls for Captain Hammer, at least initially. Who would you, as yourself, get a crush on — Dr. Horrible or Captain Hammer?

(FD) I’d have to say Dr. Horrible. He’s definitely the wounded type, and I would love to try to heal that in him. Hammer is hot, but I don’t go for guys who like to look at themselves in the mirror a lot ; )

The best way you can help us say thank-you to Felicia is to help spread the word! You can learn more about Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog at drhorrible.com. Act one of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog will be premiering online on Tuesday, July 15th. Act two will go up on Thursday, July 17th. Act three will go up on Saturday, July 19th. All three acts will be online until midnight on Sunday, July 20th. Also, if you are planning on attending San Diego Comic-Con, stop by the Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog panel on Friday. Felicia and the rest of the cast of The Guild will also be at the California Browncoats booth signing copies of The Guild DVDs throughout the event. Stop by and say hello!

ElfQuest: The Movie

by Borys Kit, from The Hollywood Reporter:

ElfQuest, the cult comic by Wendy and Richard Pini, is heading to the big screen courtesy of Warners Bros. and Rawson Thurber.

Thurber will write, direct and produce the feature, whose format is undetermined.

The original comic, which the Pinis initially self-published starting in 1978, followed a tribe of elves known as the Wolfriders in their attempts to survive and link with other dispersed elves on an Earth-like planet with two moons while on the lookout for tribes of humans and trolls, both of which acted as allies and enemies.

The series — which at certain points in its history was published by both Marvel and DC Comics — attracted a more mature audience as it went along, with scenes of battles and sexuality that were intense for that time.

Hollywood has long tried to adapt the series, and several attempts at an animated series or feature have been made over the years.

Courtenay Valenti is overseeing for Warners.

CAA-repped Thurber, a commercials director, broke through into features with the 2004 Ben Stiller hit “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.” He also wrote and directed “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh,” an adaptation of the Michael Chabon novel.

The Pinis are repped by RWSH and Hansen Literary.

Wendy Words — July 9, 2008: The Zwoot’s Out of the Bag!

Superheroes?

Superman is turning 70. I’ve been in love with Kal El since I was about 5. I had stickers from my chewing gum/trading card packs on my wall near my head. He was the first person I saw in the morning and the last person I saw at night. He was my hero. I’ve watched every TV show, cartoon and movie. I read the comics for so many years. They kind of lost me in the early 90s when they changed so much of his character.

I’m a comic book dinosaur, prefering the classic heroes to the post-modern flawed ones. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed X-Men and Alpha Flight in their early days, but they lost something, too. Today’s comics seem to me that they are neither good art nor good storytelling.

Every now and then something is a throwback to the good old art of storytelling, but mainly it’s just story after story of people with all of our flaws, all of our mistakes, all of our greed and selfishness, but with cool powers, that we always wish we had, so they can screw things up even worse. Even classic heroes like The Warlord and Turok are irreverently “revived” and rewritten. The problem with that is their “grit” was what made them so amazing in the first place and, lacking that, there is no appeal, nothing to set them apart from the other post-mod antiheroes.

Comics used to help us escape this world or make our own better. Kazar, The Warlord and Turok took us to the center of our own world where dinosaurs still reign. Atari Force took us where we never dreamed existed in the heart of the universe. Superman brought the heart of the universe to us, to make our world better. What do today’s comics give us? Where do they take us? To the confused, chaotic violence, greed and sexual promiscuity that we see every day on our streets, on our TVs, in our movies.

Where have all the heroes gone? Who will save us from ourselves?

ElfQuest Online Comics

from ElfQuest:

ElfQuest‘s 30th Anniversary Gift: Everything

Thirty years after its first appearance in early 1978, ElfQuest is poised to make its biggest online splash ever. Beginning March 14, and every Friday throughout 2008, Warp Graphics presents every ElfQuest comic book story from the Original Quest all the way up to 2006’s The Discovery.

With over 6000 pages of material to prepare and upload, the project will easily take the remainder of this 30th anniversary year. The initial offering will start off with an explosion of firsts: There will be the entire first graphic novel, to introduce new readers to the characters and world of ElfQuest, plus the first issues of all the spinoff titles produced during the 1990s. Each week will see several more issues added to the collection. Eventually, every published page will make its way to the online archive. A timeline and a catalog of all ElfQuest appearances are part of the package, so all readers will be able to experience the complete saga from start to present-day.

The official ElfQuest site is elfquest.com.

February 28, 2008:

It had to happen. Even with thirty years of more-or-less continuous publication, there’s a goodly chunk of the complete ElfQuest saga that has gone out of print. Many of the collected volumes are still available but raising a new audience one book at a time is slow. So after a lot of thought we have decided, over the course of ElfQuest‘s 30th anniversary year, to make every single ElfQuest comic available to you, to read, right here.

It’s going to take page-code revamping and a heck of a lot of scanning, but by year’s end you’ll be able to follow every tale, every adventure of every character who’s ever seen print. Keep watching here, or better yet, join the ElfQuest forum and Yahoo’s ElfQuest news group for other news and announcements, and to find out when new installments go up. (Which, given there’s over 200 issues, means several new chapters every week. High Ones help us!)

Launch of the new ElfQuest Online Comics site is set for Friday, March 14, 2008 — with new material coming every Friday after that for the rest of this 30th anniversary year. The countdown has begun!