Why we study comics, part 24

From Hero Complex/LA Times interview with Barry Levine:

“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 Knight,” “Iron Man,” "Hancock," “Wanted” and other 2008 comic-book films that have been piling up box office receipts that, collectively, are astounding. “The Dark Knight” alone is closing in on a billion dollars in ticket sales and may even end up as the first comic-book movie to fly high at the Oscars.

The interesting future, according to Levine, is on the way because Hollywood players are climbing over each other for comic-book properties, both famous and obscure, like gamblers trying to pump coins into the same slot machine. Levine is taking a different approach –- he’s built his own slot machine.

Levine is co-founder of Radical Publishing, a company that began publishing comics this year with sleek production values and the proud agenda of treating every comic book as if it is a storyboard for a film that’s just waiting to be made. Some people make pitches in Hollywood, Levine hands out comic books.

I have to say, the guy seems to have a pretty good sensibility for the contemporary cinematic version of the fantastic; the comics he is putting out sound like movies. There’s “Caliber,” the tale of King Arthur reimagined as an Old West adventure where the magic sword is replaced with a six-shooter and Merlin is a Native American shaman; the future police-state tale “City of Dust,” a sort of tricked-out “Blade Runner” channeling of George Orwell's thought-crime fears; and a bloody take on “Hercules,” where the embittered man-god runs with an ancient, all-star mercenary group, a sort of “300” version of “The Magnificent Seven.”

Yes, at Radical it’s all high concept, all the time. And Hollywood is paying attention."

Read the rest here.