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Neal Adams, Trailblazing Comic Book Creator, Dies at 80



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Neal Adams, the trailblazing comic book creator who helped bring about some revolutionary changes to the industry, died April 28. He was 80 years old.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Adams died on April 28 in New York from sepsis. He is survived by his wife of 45 years, Marilyn Adams; sons Josh, Jason and Joel; daughters Kris and Zeea; grandchildren, Kelly, Kortney, Jade, Sebastian, Jane and Jaelyn; and great-grandson Maximus. "It wasn't until I sat at tables at conventions next to the same people I would watch treat my father with such reverence that I understood: He was their father, too,” Josh Adams said in a statement. “Neal Adams’ most undeniable quality was the one I had known about him my entire life: He was a father. Not just my father, but a father to all that would get to know him.”

After graduating high school in 1959, Neal Adams started working for Archie Comics. The 1960s also saw him work on Ben Casey, a daily comic strip based on the medical drama series of the same name. By the late 1960s, Adams landed at DC and began working on titles such as Action Comics #356 and Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane #79.

During his time at DC, Adams helped create, launch and introduce a number of recognizable characters to fans. He's largely known for his iconic Batman run with writer Dennis O'Neil, which revitalized the character with a darker tone compared to the Adam West television series. While working on the series, Adams introduced a number of new Batman characters fans now know and love, including Man-Bat, Ra’s al Ghul and his daughter, Talia al Ghul. Apart from Batman, Adams also revamped Green Lantern and Green Arrow with O'Neil. The two of them debuted Jon Stewart, a fan-favorite Green Lantern, for the first time in 1972's Green Lantern #87.

Adams also worked for Marvel during the late 1960s and 70s on titles such as X-Men, The Avengers and more. In 1984, Adams founded his own publishing company, Continuity Comics (also known as Continuity Publishing). Known for being grittier than some of the mainstream comics at the time, Continuity Comics held a number of titles, including Armor, Toyboy, Echo of Futurepast and more.

Along with being a great influence for many creators, Adams forever changed the comics industry as he was a major creators-rights advocate who helped Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster secure pensions and recognition for creating DC's Superman character. He helped Stan Lee create the Academy of Comic Book Arts in the 1970s and eventually became president of the organization, which was designed to fight for writers' and artists' creative rights. "My father was a force,” Josh Adams said. “His career was defined by unparalleled artistic talent and an unwavering character that drove him to constantly fight for his peers and those in need. He would become known in the comics industry as one of the most influential creators of all time and champion social and creators’ rights. When he saw a problem, he wouldn’t hesitate. What would become tales told and retold of the fights he fought were born out of my father simply seeing something wrong as he walked through the halls of Marvel or DC and deciding to do something about it right then and there.”
 
Imax Inks Deal to Show Summer Game Fest, Game Awards In Theaters


The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley announced via Twitter Thursday that this year’s Summer Game Fest will kick off on Thursday, June 9. That’s not all: In a first for Summer Game Fest and The Game Awards, which is scheduled for this December, both events will screen in select IMAX theaters across the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom.


 
RIP : George Pérez, Comic Book Artistic Icon, Passes Away at Age 67

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Comic book icon George Pérez, one of the most popular and acclaimed American comic book artists of the last half-century, has died at the age of 67 due to complications from pancreatic cancer.

Pérez is probably best known for launching the New Teen Titans in 1980 with writer Marv Wolfman, where the two created Cyborg, Raven and Starfire and had Dick Grayson become Nightwing. Wolfman and Pérez later reshaped the DC Universe with Crisis on Infinite Earths, which, in turn, led to Pérez rebooting Wonder Woman in 1987 with a beloved five-year run that redefined Diana for a new generation. At Marvel, where Pérez got his start in comics, he is likely best remembered for two separate runs on the Avengers; with Steve Englehart in the 1970s and then with Kurt Busiek in the 1990s, where the two relaunched the series in 1998 to great acclaim.

Born in the South Bronx of New York City on June 9, 1954, Pérez knew that he wanted to be an artist from a very young age, starting to seriously draw when he was just 5 years old. He wasn't even 20 yet when he went to work as a studio assistant for Marvel artist Rich Buckler (Buckler's other assistants of that era included star artists like Denys Cowan, Arvell Jones and Keith Pollard). Pérez's first published comic book work for Marvel (and outside of a short story in the indie anthology, Hot Stuf a couple of months earlier, his first published comic book work period) was a short satire of Buckler's work on Deathlok in Astonishing Tales #25 in 1974.

Soon after, Pérez received his first regular feature, drawing the Sons of the Tiger feature (about a multi-ethnic team of martial artist heroes) in Marvel's black and white magazine, the Deadly Hands of Kung Fu. Pérez did some other minor assignments before getting his biggest gig yet, drawing the Avengers in the summer of 1975. He quickly added the Fantastic Four and the young artist was doing regular work on two of Marvel's biggest series for the next few years. During this period, while Pérez primarily worked with Jim Shooter and David Michelinie on The Avengers and Roy Thomas and Len Wein on Fantastic Four, he also did a Fantastic Four Annual with Wolfman that marked their first comic book collaboration.

In 1980, after Wolfman left Marvel for DC (joining Wein there, who had left a couple of years earlier. Roy Thomas then soon joined them at DC, as well), Pérez started getting his first work for DC, initially drawing the Firestorm back-up feature in Flash with writer Gerry Conway. Then, while still drawing the Avengers for Marvel, Pérez started drawing Justice League of America following the death of longtime Justice League artist Dick Dillin. This meant Pérez was simultaneously drawing the most famous heroes at both Marvel and DC. It was this remarkable achievement that led to Pérez wanting to draw the Justice League of America/Avengers crossover that was scheduled to be released in 1983. However, the project fell apart after Pérez had already drawn a number of pages for the book.

Before he got to that failed crossover, though, Pérez and Wolfman would relaunch the Teen Titans as the New Teen Titans, adding three new characters that Wolfman and Pérez created (Cyborg, Starfire and Raven) to the original Teen Titans (Robin, Wonder Girl and Kid Flash) with a renamed Beast Boy from the Doom Patrol (now going by Changeling) joining the team, as well. The comic book was a sensation and soon became DC's highest-selling title. Pérez was heavily involved in the story of the series and would soon be listed as the series plotter alongside Wolfman. The two also created Deathstroke the Terminator and Vigilante for the series, both of whom would get their own spinoffs.

Pérez left The New Teen Titans in 1985 (after launching a second volume of the series in 1984) to work on the expansive crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths with Wolfman. The series, which would alter the continuity of the DC Universe, showed off Pérez's uncanny ability to draw lots of characters in very detailed fashion. However, the scope of the event was so dramatic that Pérez was drawing practically hundreds of distinct characters in every issue.

Once Crisis on Infinite Earths was over, rather than returning to The New Teen Titans, Pérez instead rebooted Wonder Woman with writer Greg Potter (and then scripters Len Wein and Mindy Newell), relaunching the hero into a new series with a new background in 1987's Wonder Woman #1. Pérez plotted the series and was the main penciler on the book for the first two years. He remained on the series as its writer for the next three. During this time, Pérez also took over writing and art duties on Action Comics after briefly reuniting with Wolfman as the co-writer/artist on New Teen Titans (with the book being re-titled simply New Titans).

As Pérez was wrapping up his Wonder Woman run with the War of the Gods crossover event, he was also drawing the first half of Marvel's Infinity Gauntlet, with writer Jim Starlin. Pérez was replaced by Ron Lim for the back half of the six-issue series. The early 1990s were a bit of a strange period for Pérez, as the comic book industry was going through a speculator's boom and the top artists were seemingly all doing creator-owned work, but Pérez's only creator-owned work during this time was an Epic Comics miniseries with Peter David called Sachs and Violins in 1993.

After the hit prestige format miniseries Hulk: Future Imperfect with David (which introduced the evil future version of the Hulk known as the Maestro), Pérez was given a big contract (Pérez would later recall that it was three times his page rate that he was getting at Marvel at the time) to go work for Malibu Comics on its Ultraverse line of superhero titles. Pérez drew the Break-Thru crossover event and then helped launch the Ultraverse's answer to the Avengers, Ultraforce. He was given an even bigger contract to draw the short-lived Isaac Asimov's I-BOTS series for Tekno Comics.

During this period, Pérez was also doing some comic book writing work, including a Giant-Man miniseries and a run on Silver Surfer (which included writing a team-up between Silver Surfer and Superman) and Spider-Man: Team-Up. He also inked Dan Jurgens on Jurgens' 1996 Teen Titans reboot. Pérez planned on using the money from Teen Titans to help finance his first solo creator-owned series, Crimson Plague, which was initially published by Event Comics. The cost of self-publishing was high, though, and Pérez also grew frustrated with his writing gigs, so he wanted his next big assignment to be purely doing art and luckily, he got an excellent opportunity, as he returned to the Avengers to relaunch the series following Heroes Reborn. Working with writer Kurt Busiek, the new series was a major sales success and also became a critical darling. Pérez remained on the book for three years before helping to launch a new imprint, Gorilla Comics (published through Image Comics), with a revived Crimson Plague series.

However, soon after Gorilla Comics launched, Pérez was caught up in a bit of a bidding war, as Marvel and DC were finally willing to do a crossover of JLA and Avengers, but CrossGen was also wooing Pérez with a strong contract plus benefits. Ultimately, Pérez worked out a deal where he would be allowed to do both (CrossGen typically required exclusivity, but made an exception for this one project). However, he had to abandon Crimson Plague for these higher-profile (and better paying) assignments. He had started doing the series Solus with writer Barbara Kesel when CrossGen went bankrupt after just seven issues were released. Around the time that CrossGen went under, JLA/Avengers was released to a rapturous reception.

In 2007, Pérez drew the first 10 issues of a new Brave and the Bold series for DC. The following year, he drew the Final Crisis tie-in miniseries Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds with writer Geoff Johns, one of the last comic book projects by Pérez showing off his legendary ability to draw gigantic crowds of superheroes. In 2011, he helped launch Superman for DC's New 52 line of comics (Pérez would write the comic and do layouts for penciler Jesus Merino) and then split art duties on the first nine issues of Worlds' Finest in 2012 (with Huntress and Power Girl teaming up).

In 2014, he drew his last regular series, the creator-owned Sirens miniseries for BOOM! In 2017, Pérez was inducted into The Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame. In 2019, he officially retired from regular comic book art due to his declining health.
 
Avatar 2 Gets Title, 3D Teaser Unveiled -CinemaCon


After months, nay years, of suspense, Disney today unveiled the first trailer for James Cameron’s Avatar sequel, also giving the movie an official title. Now known as Avatar: The Way of Water, the 20th Century Studios sci-fi adventure releases overseas starting December 14 and heads to North America on December 16.

Producer Jon Landau came in from New Zealand to make the presentation on Avatar 2.

“The journey across all four movies will create a connected saga,” said Landau, “To achieve our goals, we need a strong partnership with you and the studio…an end-to-end community.”

Cameron beamed and sympathized with the exhibition about their closure during the pandemic, but he’s delivering something at the end of the year that must be seen in theaters.

He told the exhibition, “I just want you to hear it from me. Jon and I are here to work with you. The best way is by delivering content that is a must-see experience at the cinema.”

The Oscar-winning filmmaker said he was “hard at work putting the final touches on the film.”

The new films are “Pushing limits even farther with high frame rate, higher resolution 3D and greater reality in our visual effects. I wanted our return to Pandora to be something really special. Every shot is designed for the biggest screen, highest resolution, and most immersive 3D available. I think we pulled it off,” added Cameron.

The trailer will run exclusively in cinemas on Marvel’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, which rolls out next week, beginning May 4 internationally and May 6 domestically. That drew applause in the room. The Avatar 2 trailer will then go online a week later.

The logline of the movie: Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) lives with his newfound family formed on the planet of Pandora. Once a familiar threat returns to finish what was previously started, Jake must work with Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and the army of the Na’vi race to protect their planet.


What’s in the trailer?

As Cameron always promised, Avatar 2 takes place in and around the ocean. Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Saldana) have children. “Wherever we go,” says Sully, “I know one thing, this family is our fortress.” The sequel looks even more jaw-dropping in its deep-blue visuals than the 2009 film. All new creatures: We see the Na’vi on flying fish bird creatures, communing with a whale, and yet somehow divided despite their affinity with nature: The alien people are split, battling against each other in a guns vs. arrows fight. It’s truly a whole new world upping the stakes of the previous 3x Oscar-winning film.

It was also revealed that Disney will re-release the original 2009 Avatar on Sept. 23 around the globe. Pic is getting remastering audio and sound. That film is the highest-grossing movie of all time worldwide at $2.8 billion, having overtaken Avengers: Endgame during the pandemic.

The sequel stars Sigourney Weaver, Kate Winslet, Michelle Yeoh, Stephen Lang, Giovanni Ribisi, Oona Chaplin, Jermaine Clement, and more.


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