R.I.P. Eduardo Barreto

I am stunned today by the sad news of the passing of my friend and colleague Eduardo Barreto. I had the great pleasure and privilege of working with him on Mickey Spillane's Mike Danger in the mid-90s as his editor, and, for the past few years, we had been collaborating on a planned Sinbad graphic novel - an exciting project that, sadly, will never see completion now. We were also putting together a proposal for King Features to revive Secret Agent X-9 as a daily & Sunday comic strip. With the current sad state of newspaper publishing, Eduardo knew it was a longshot when he asked me to write X-9 for his pitch, but he very much wanted to get back on the comics page - and we both loved the character.

My heartfelt condolences to his family and friends. All of us who knew him will remember him fondly, and all admirers of his work - and they are legion - will never forget his talent and superb storytelling skills.

R.I.P. amigo.

Eduardo's pin-up for my Perils On Planet X project

Page 1 of Sinbad & The Coils Of The Serpent

Spread 'em!

Here are a couple of double-page "spreads" from two of the comics projects I'm working on. Click on the images for a larger view....

First up are pages 2 & 3 of the Skorpion graphic novel I'm developing with Gravedigger artist Rick Burchett. Skorpion is a 60s international adventure inspired by European super-criminal comics like Diabolik and Kriminal. Skorpion is in that tradition, but also incorporates a lot of other pop culture tropes of the era, with influences including kung fu flicks, Jonny Quest, Eurospy movies, and British TV shows like Danger Man and The Avengers.

Then there's this - pages 2 &3 of Sinbad: The Coils of the Serpent, drawn by Eduardo Barreto, wherin the dashing Persian mariner and his crew engage in battle with a brutish cyclops. I've previewed a lot of this project here, and expect that Eduardo & I will have the proposal doing the rounds by the end of February.

Both of these projects are currently without publishers, but I'm hopeful that they'll get picked up.

O Masters, O Noble Persons....

Here's the first page of the Sinbad: The Coils of the Serpent graphic novel/proposal, with art and colors by Eduardo Barreto and script & letters by me. Click on the image for a larger view.

The project is coming along, and I hope to be shopping it around to publishers shortly after the first of the year.

Sinbad in the Caliph's Harem

Here are Eduardo Barreto's rough layouts for two pages of our Sinbad: Coils of the Serpent graphic novel, wherein our swashbuckling Persian mariner gets caught dallying in the Caliph's harem. (Click on the image for a larger view.)

With luck, we'll have our proposal ready to be shopped around to publishers just after New Year's. I'll keep you posted, of course....

Character Art by Barreto

Cool, huh? This is Olu, one of Sinbad's crew in The Coils of the Serpent, the Sinbad graphic novel I'm developing with Eduardo Barreto. Eduardo's working on the first chapter now, and I'm hoping to see some finished pages shortly. Then, I'll be putting together a pitch package for publishers again.

This is fun.

Setting Sail Again... One More Time

Okay... I don't know if anything's going to come of it this time, either, but there has been some forward movement on the Sinbad graphic novel that I've wanted to create with artist Eduardo Barreto (Teen Titans, Marvel Knights, Star Wars, The Shadow Strikes, Batman, etc.) for the past several years. Back in '06, we had a publisher lined up, but they disappeared off the face of the Earth once they were supposed to send contracts. We had another company that was interested, but couldn't come to terms. Up until two years ago, I was still trying to find a publisher willing to take the project on... but by then, a couple other publishers were doing their own Sinbad comics, and I just couldn't seem to put together a deal.

Then, Eduardo fell ill. Seriously ill, and it looked like my chance to collaborate with my friend - and, frankly, one of my favorite comics artists of all time - simply wasn't going to happen. He even had to reluctantly give up the Judge Parker newspaper strip, and I was very worried about him.

Well, Eduardo is apparently on the mend and feeling much better, and has contacted me, eager to start work on Sinbad: The Coils of the Serpent. I've begun sending him story pages to draw, and am eagerly awaiting the artwork. I even have a publisher that's interested in seeing it, and I'm guardedly optimistic, since this is a legit outfit and the top guy already has a history with Eduardo going back many years.

I'm not going to get my hopes up too high though - I've started on this sea voyage before, far too many times. But I've got a good feeling about it....

Keep your fingers crossed!

BTW - that image above is Eduardo's original concept art, digitally painted by Alfredo Lopez, Jr., who did the same with Joe Staton's pencils on the Femme Noir comic covers.

Wednesday Covers: Sinbad!

In recognition of Ray Harryhausen's famous series of Sinbad adventures, here's a quartet of comic book adaptations of those selfsame cinematic fantasies: both Dell and Marvel adapted 1958's The 7th Voyage of Sinbad into 4-color form (decades apart), and Marvel also produced a two-part adaptation of 1974's Golden Voyage of Sinbad when that fantastic film came out.

The comics are fun, but the movies - featuring Harryhausen's stop-motion marvels - are better!

Sinbad 2010

As some of you already know, one of my favorite fictional characters is the legendary Persian mariner, Sinbad the Sailor, from the Arabian Nights. Depending on when you ask me, 1974's THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD is likely to be among my top ten movies of all time, and I'm a big fan of most of the other cinematic voyages of the character as well. Hell, I even like the 90s syndicated TV show, and paid way too much to buy the Canadian DVDs.

So, when I found out that microbudget moguls The Asylum planned their own Sinbad film, to ride the coattails of this summer's PRINCE OF PERSIA, I was interested. Admittedly, I was less interested when I discovered that they were making a contemporary, 21st Century version of the character, but I was still willing to give it a chance. I'm glad I did.

THE 7 ADVENTURES OF SINBAD (2010) introduces us to Adrian Sinbad (Patrick Muldoon, STARSHIP TROOPERS), the young CEO of a major shipping company. When one of the company's oil tankers is hijacked by pirates in the Indian Ocean, his partner Simon Magnusson (Bo Svenson, INGLORIOUS BASTARDS) sends him out to negotiate. He arrives just in time to see a giant, tentacled creature drag the tanker beneath the sea before a storm crashes his helicopter. Soon, he - and a handful of survivors from his helicopter and the tanker - washes up on the shore of a tropical island, where a mysterious woman (lovely Sarah Desage) tells him that an ancient prophecy says that he must face seven trials and save the world. Then the island is revealed to be a gigantic monster.... and he's off.

Co-written and co-directed by Ben Hayflick & Adam Silver, THE 7 ADVENTURES OF SINBAD is definitely one of the better action fantasies to come out of The Asylum.

The filmmakers may have contemporized the story (including some uncomfortably timely stuff about crude oil spills) for budgetary reasons, but they clearly have an affection for the Ray Harryhausen classics of the 60s and 70s. The script is thin, but the performances are much better than usual for an Asylum picture, the Chris Ridenhour musical score is excellent, Mikey Jechort's cinematography is professional and slick, the Belize locations are lush and picturesque, and the CGI creatures are really quite decent - especially for (all together, now) an Asylum film.

The monsters - which include classics like a giant crab, a cyclops, a flock 'o rocs, etc. - may lack the personality and charm of Harryhausen's stop-motion beasties, but they're reasonably well-designed and animated, and much more detailed than I expected.

Muldoon, the latest in a line of very whitebread Sinbads, may lack charisma, but he acquits himself adequately in the lead, while Svenson seems to be a bit more animated than usual as Sinbad's treacherous partner. Sarah Desage is quite good, and makes for some sexy eye candy, as well.

The Asylum's DVD sports a fine 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, 5.1 Surround and 2.0 Digital audio options, a "Making of" featurette, deleted scenes, gag reel, and the usual Asylum trailers.

I was quite pleasantly surprised, and would rate this among the studio's best productions. It's a surprisingly solid fantasy B-movie adventure with some decent production values and acting, and reasonably cool monsters. If you can handle your Sinbad wielding a machine gun instead of a scimitar, you might enjoy it.

John Phillip Law R.I.P.

Cinema Retro is reporting that International film star – and the best Sinbad ever – John Phillip Law passed away earlier this week at the far-too-young age of 70.

The handsome actor starred in various films, most of which were made in Europe. He was the lead in two of my favorite movies: Mario Bava's amazing Danger Diabolik, where he played the masked super-criminal, and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, where he played the only film Sinbad who didn't look and sound like he came from the American Midwest. He was also featured in Barbarella as Jane Fonda's sightless, nearly-nude angel lover, and in the memorable Spaghetti Western Death Rides A Horse, opposite the great Lee Van Cleef.

I always liked watching Law, and when I picked up the Diabolik DVD a couple years ago, I was pleased to find that he had recorded a commentary track. I was even more pleased when I heard it – Law came across as a very intelligent, erudite and witty individual, with a genuine love of his craft and an appreciation for his eclectic career. His commentary was insightful, humerous and filled with fascinating anecdotes about filmmaking on the Continent in the swinging Sixties.

As a fan of outre cinema, I'm really going to miss him.

Feeling the Love...

Our pal Michael May wrote about my proposed Sinbad graphic novel over on the Newsarama Blog, and sure enough, it didn't take long for one of their infamous trolls to find his way over here, as the most recent comment, from "anonymous," in the "Lost At Sea With Sinbad" post shows:

"Why not create your own character instead of hinging on someone else's creations and then making your interpretation of a story already done? Why be a hack? It's pathetic."

I wonder if Alan Moore gets e-mails like this?

Sigh.

Random Musings from Ground Zero

• Friday I received the new Burke's Law DVD set from VCI Home Video. This early-60's detective series was produced by Aaron Spelling, and like his later productions, it's slick, a little sleazy, and lgimmicky. And man, Burke's Law may just be the most gimmick-laden detective series ever!

The first gimmick is that Amos Burke (Gene Barry), a L.A. homicide captain, is a multi-millionaire, spending his nights in an alcoholic haze, romancing starlets and debutantes and engaging in the other sordid pursuits of the insanely rich. But, when duty calls, Burke orders his Asian manservant Henry to bring around the Rolls Royce, and is chauffeured to the crime scene – usually still in his black tie and tux.

The second gimmick is that each episode is loaded with big name guest stars, both the young, fresh faces of 1964, and a whole lot of Hollywood legends and almost-legends. This first set includes the first 16 episodes of the first season, and the guest stars in those episodes alone include: William Bendix, Bruce Cabot, Rod Cameron, Zasu Pitts, Will Rogers Jr., Elizabeth Montgomery, Soupy Sales, Jim Backus, Mary Astor, Zsa Zsa and Eva Gabor, Paul Lynde, Lizabeth Scott, Chill Wills, Joan Blondell, Juliet Prowse, Barbara Eden, Don Rickles, Ed Begley, Rita Moreno, Keenan Wynn, Arlene Dahl, Sammy Davis Jr., Burgess Meredith, Diana Dors, Carolyn Jones, Nick Adams, Cesar Romero, Howard Duff, Ida Lupino, Tina Louise, Niancy sinatra, Gloria Swanson, Edward Everett Horton, Dean Jones, June Allyson, Jack Haley, Agnes Moorehead, Yvonne DeCarlo, Hoagy Carmichael, Broderick Crawford.... and a whole lot more.

The third gimmick is "Burke's Laws," pithy little bits of wisdom that the suave homicide cop occasionally likes to pass along to his junior officers.

But, gimmicky as it is, it's also damned entertaining. If you're a fan of old TV detective shows or enjoy spotting familiar faces – as the wife and I both do, since we're huge old movie buffs – Burke's Law is definitely worth checking out. The writing is sharp (two of these episodes were penned by Harlan Ellison), the production values slick, Gene Barry is charming, and the mysteries are engaging.

VCI's set is pretty decent, with really nice transfers and some vintage television commercials. My only complaints are that it's only half the season on 4 discs, and each disc has its own, full-sized DVD case. For a guy with over 3,000 DVDs, I have some serious storage issues, and, frankly, this set eats up too much shelf space. I really wish VCI had packaged these 4 discs in a couple of two-disc slimpaks – it would have taken up probably about a third of the space, and be more in line with most other TV-on-DVD releases.

• Over the weekend, I re-read the Richard Stark novels Nobody Runs Forever and Ask the Parrot, and then read the latest installment in the Parker saga, Dirty Money. If you're a Stark fan, I highly recommend you do the same, as these three volumes comprise a single narrative, a marvellous, twisty caper that's probably Stark's magnum opus. When Nobody Runs Forever was released a few years back, I remember finding it a rather unsatisfying read, but now that the story is finally completed, I think it's one of the stronger books of the "second wave" of Parker titles. Good stuff.

• Remember the doughnut adventure? Well, I got screwed again. For a long time, I've wanted the DVD set of the first season of the 90's Adventures of Sinbad syndicated television series. After writing those Sinbad posts last week, I finally decided to see if I could find a set online to buy. Well, the set was only released in Canada, and is long out of print, and I couldn't find a set for sale anywhere. None... except – a single private seller had it offered on the Canadian Amazon site.

Well, the price seemed reasonable, so I placed my order. But when I contacted the seller today to get an ETA on my discs, I was confused when she asked me if I wanted to buy the "other volumes" at 50% off. Other volumes? As far as I'd been able to determine, only the first of the series' two seasons had been released on DVD. I started to be concerned that maybe I'd bought some bootleg DVD-Rs instead of the authorized, commercial release, so I wrote back and asked for a clarification.

It was actually worse. What I bought was "Volume 1" of Season 1 – the first disc of the 5 discs in the Season 1 set. The seller had broken up the set and was selling each of the five discs separately. The "reasonable price" – in Canadian dollars, mind you – was actually pretty damned unreasonable for just three or four episodes! Seriously, who the hell would sell a TV box set that way?

So now, I've been exchanging a bunch of e-mails with the seller and Amazon.ca trying to figure out how I'm going to get my money back. Sigh....

• My favorite sword & sorcery flick from the 1980s is Albert Pyun's 1982 epic, The Sword And The Sorcerer. I won't claim that it's particularly high art, but it's fast-paced, funny, and friggin' entertaining. It's got an appealing lead in Lee Horsley, some great make-up effects, bare boobies, well-staged action scenes, and a rousing score. And an incredibly silly, rocket-propelled tri-bladed sword.

I love this movie!

Well, at the end of the movie's credits, the producers promised a sequel: Tales of the Ancient Empire... and according to Ain't It Cool News, that long-promised follow-up film is finally being made. Apparently, Lee Horsley is returning, and genre vets Kevin Sorbo, Christopher Lambert, and Yancy Butler (Witchblade) will also be in the cast. The original film's director, Albert Pyun, is allegedly shooting Tales now.

I'm really curious about this one – The Sword And the Sorcerer is a real anomaly in Pyun's filmography in that it's actually watchable; most of Pyun's movies are unbearably bad. And around 26 years have passed since the original film, so I'm wondering just how much of a sequel it's really going to be...

Wednesday Cover: Son of Sinbad

According to the Grand Comics Database, this beautiful cover is from St. John Publishing's only issue of Son of Sinbad, and is the work of a young Joe Kubert (Tor, Tarzan, Sgt. Rock). The Caliph's Dancer certainly looks like one of Joe's women, and the composition is certainly dynamic enough. Man, I'd like to get my hands on a copy of this 1950 comic!

Lost At Sea With Sinbad

One of my very first posts in this blog (the third, in fact), back in September of '06, was about the legendary Persian mariner Sinbad, and my affection for movies that featured the character. I wrote then about my love of the Ray Harryhausen Sinbad trilogy, the Doug Fairbanks Jr. film, and even the goofy Lou Ferrigno version. I also mentioned at that time that a publisher had expressed interest in a Sinbad graphic novel that I had plotted and that the great Eduardo Barreto had agreed to draw.

Well, that publisher turned out to be, let's say, somewhat less than trustworthy, and when the promised contracts failed to materialize, and then he stopped answering my e-mail and phone inquiries... well, it doesn't take a house to fall on me. Not usually, anyway.

After that fell through, I continued to shop around the proposal for our graphic novel, The Coils Of The Serpent, for the next year or so. Unfortunately no one seemed to be interested. The biggest reason seemed to be that nobody could "see a movie in it." Their argument was, that since Sinbad is a public domain character, no studio would want to buy our story as a film property because they could come up with their own story for free. Well, sure. But I wanted to do a comic, not a movie – and apparently that's not the business we're in anymore.

Sigh.

We did find one other publisher that was interested, but his offer turned out to be unacceptable on numerous points, so we passed.

In the past year, at least two small publishers launched their own Sinbad comics miniseries. One, Bluewater Comics, has Sinbad, Rogue of Mars, allegedly based on an unfilmed Ray Harryhausen treatment. It's possible, I suppose, and he's certainly put his name on it, but I have difficulty imagining Ray coming up with a story so damned dull. Another outfit, Zenescope Entertainment, has something called 1001 Arabian Nights: The Adventures of Sinbad out now, as well. I haven't actually seen it, but the cover art on their website is frankly underwhelming.

Well, even with all the new competition, I haven't given up. I'm still pushing to make my Sinbad book happen. For one thing, I want to read a new Sinbad adventure that thrills me the way Harryhausen's films did when I caught them on Saturday afternoon TV showings as a kid. For another, I really want to have Eduardo Barreto draw a story that I've written. For my money, he's one of the best – if criminally under-appreciated – comic artists alive, and I've been a huge fan of his work since he took over DC's New Teen Titans back in the 1980's.

I'm talking to some people now, and I'm hopeful. One way or another, I'm going to make this happen, and when it does, it's going to be something very special. If you don't believe me, click on the Barreto illustrations accompanying this post for a bigger view....

Wish us luck.

The Cinematic Voyages of Sinbad

As I've got the legendary Persian sailor on the brain of late, I've been re-viewing some of the Sinbad flix in my collection.

Tonight, I watched the Douglas Fairbanks Jr. version, Sinbad the Sailor, for the first time (bought a VHS copy off Amazon for 3 bucks). Although it was surprisingly talky and utterly devoid of fantasy elements, I rather enjoyed it.

As I mentioned above, it was very dialogue-driven, but what dialogue! Anthony Quinn made a fine evil Emir, and Maureen O'Hara may have been unconvincing as an Arabian woman, but was, as always, lovely to behold.

It was also fun to see some of RKO's stock film noir personalities in atypical roles -- Sheldon Leonard as an auctioneer, Jane Greer as a harem girl, and Mike Mazurski as a loyal member of Sinbad's crew.

My favorite cinematic voyage, though, is the second of Ray Harryhausen's Sinbad Trilogy, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. While the monsters in 7th Voyage of Sinbad are cooler (nothing beats the Cyclops!), John Phillip Law is the least whitebread of the cinematic Sinbads, and the only one who plays him with any depth of personality, not to mention an accent! Also in the plus column is the delicious Caroline Munroe, the slyly evil Tom Baker and the sword-slinging statue of Kali!


The worst version – although still entertaining in a twisted sort of way – is the 80's Italian film starring Lou Ferrigno, Sinbad of the Seven Seas. Yeah, that's right: the Hulk followed up his two inane/insane Italian Hercules films with an even more bizarro Sinbad adventure. It really must be seen to be believed, and it is on DVD. (It must be admitted: I own it.)

With each viewing, I become less enamored of the similarly-titled Dreamworks animated film, Sinbad, Legend of the Seven Seas, with Brad Pitt. It's beautifully designed and animated, but it grates on me that the filmmakers chose to make the classic Arabian Nights character into a European, specifically a Greek. That, and the cheesy contemporized dialogue, which really didn't work in this case.

I discovered a while ago that the first season of the syndicated Adventures of Sinbad television series starring Zen Gesner is available on DVD in Canada. I enjoyed the few episodes I managed to catch when it originally aired, so I'm going to try and scrape up the dinars to buy it.


All of this viewing is in preparation, of course, for my long-planned Sinbad comics project with Eduardo Barreto, which I hope to start scripting next month... just as soon as the promised contracts are signed.

Keep your fingers crossed for us.