Elephantmen: more details on film emerge

Following up on our previous story about Comicraft/Active Images Elephantmen, more details have been released about the planned film of the comic created by top British creator and former Marvel UK Group Editor Richard Starkings.

Comicraft has now officially announced Elephantmen has been by Zucker Productions for major motion picture development and the treatment for the movie is being drafted by Richard Starkings, creator and writer of the book.

"I'm very pleased to be working with producer Janet Zucker and everyone at Zucker Productions, says Richard. "Janet has a wonderful instinct for story and totally understands the more subtle tones of the Elephantmen series."

"Richard has created a world of implausible ideas and impossible characters, a world where transgenic animals and human beings come together in a dark, yet hopeful universe," says Janet Zucker. "Jerry [Zucker, director of Ghost] and I can't wait to bring the stories of Hip, Horn and Sahara to life on screen in a way that will simply take your breath away

Starkings reveals he was approached by a number of companies and directors interested in optioning the project, but until recently he brushed them away, preferring to concentrate on putting out a good book.

"On the road to the creation of Elephantmen, I talked to everyone else in the business and listened to their advice. It's taken a very long time to build the series -- I created these characters 15 years ago -- and I'm very grateful for our loyal readers and the incredible professional support that the book has received." says Starkings. "I didn't set out with a movie in mind, but I am grateful that this opportunity has come along and allows me to continue to write something that is very dear to me."

Elephantmen -- a brilliant commentary on racism, miscegenation, global warming, stem cell research and warfare -- is an Eisner Award winning series first published in 2002 under Starkings' Active Images imprint. In 2006, Image Comics, a leading US comic book and graphic novel publisher founded in 1992 by a collective of best-selling artists, approached Starkings to bring the book under their umbrella.

Featuring art by the likes of Ladrönn, Moritat and Boo Cook, the story of the Elephantmen takes place in Los Angeles in the not too distant future -- in a world where human/animal hybrids were created to fight a war between Africa and China. Scarred by their experiences in war and seeking to somehow find their own humanity, the Elephantmen are now scattered throughout the world amongst the humans they were created to kill.

• Elephantmen #25 (DEC090405), a 32-page full colour comic book for $3.50, will be available in specialist comic stores in the UK from 21st April. Collections of the ongoing series include Elephantmen 01: No Surrender, Elephantmen 02: Wounded Animals and Elephantmen 03: Dangerous Liasons, and others.

• Hip Flask Official web site

• Elephantmen Official Site

• Elephantmen Blog

• Active Images

• Comicraft

• ComicBookFonts.com

Starkings' Elephantmen stampede to silver screen

Elephantmen, the creation of former Marvel UK Managing Editor Richard Starkings and Chief Tiger of Comicraft and publishing house Active Images, has been optioned as a movie.

Comic Book Resources reports that Richard announced that his creator-owned series Elephantmen has been optioned to be “a major motion picture,” over the weekend at WonderCon, San Francisco. He added that directors and actors are currently being approached.

Originally created by Starkings as a spinoff from another of his comics, Hip Flask, Elephantmen takes place in a dystopian future in which human/animal hybrids struggle to integrate into society after being rescued from a brutal life as mindless, corporate soldiers.

Artists on the title include the brilliant Boo Cook, Moritat and Ladronn.

The series will reach issue Issue 25 later this month and the anniversary issue features 25 pages each drawn by a different artist. Among those recruited are Tim Sale, Dave Gibbons, Ian Churchill, Whilce Portacio, Paul Grist and Dougie Braithwaite.

Reflecting Richard's love of British comics, the title has featured plenty of back up articles on British comics in its pages.

Richard's latest success getting his creation optioned is well deserved, considering his lifelong dedication to comics and comic creation. He pushed Marvel UK toward experimenting with US-sized comics such as Dragon's Claws and Death's Head back in the 1980s, along with masterminding the creation of hugely successful weekly comics for the comic such as The Real Ghostbusters which helped launch the comics careers of a number of British writers and artists, including Dan Abnett, John Freeman (who?), John Carnell, Andy Lanning and many others.

Richard, who founded lettering company Comicraft in 1992, counts font design, comic book lettering, editing and writing among his many talents and was of course one of the early pioneers of computer-based comic book lettering. Active Images began in 1995 and began publishing comics - including Hip Flask - in 2002. His Balloon Tales web site is an invaluable resource for new letterers.


• Hip Flask Official web site

• Elephantmen Official Site

• Elephantmen Blog

• Active Images

• Comicraft

• ComicBookFonts.com

Combat Colin: The New Brickman

Brickman is dead and there's a new Brickman patrolling Guffon City - ex-Marvel UK hero of the 1980s, Combat Colin!

The bobble-hatted bucaneer ditches the bobble hat for a black cowl and cape in US publisher Active Images Elephantmen #20 on sale now in all good comic shops.

Brickman, a wonderful Batman parody, is the creation of top British cartoonist Lew Stringer. Originally created as a character for Marvel UK and featuring in titles such as Action Force, ownership of Combat Colin was assigned to Lew by Paul Neary, back when he was Editorial Director in the 1990s. This was part of a wider move by Neary to make good on promises that certain strips and characters - particularly those that featured in Marvel UK's Strip! comic - would be creator owned.

Let's hope this is just the start of a long overdue Combat Colin revival.

Talking of Lew Stringer, however, folk here may know he has been publishing a superb blog about British comics for many years, but, unfortunately, he's had to scale back on that.

"My apologies for a lack of blogs of late," he commented earlier this week. "I'm currently undergoing hospital eye tests for a potentially serious problem so it's quite a worrying time and probably best to keep away from the computer except for work.

"Hopefully normal service will be resumed shortly."

We wish Lew all the very best at this time.

• More info from the the official Elephantmen website!

Sleeze Brothers Return!

The Sleeze Brothers are back! Those anarchic, lunatic and downright shady PIs, the creation of John Carnell and Andy Lanning back in the 1980s, are being given a brush up (and probably, a good spanking) just in time for their 20th anniversary.

The return of the Sleeze Brothers is the work Comicraft's publishing arm, Active Images, which recently remastered David Hine's Strange Embrace for Image Comics and is currently digitally remastering The Sleeze Brothers on the occasion of the book's 20th anniversary.

The Sleeze Brothers, published by Marvel UK in the late 1980's under Archie Goodwin's Epic imprint, was the first (and, sadly, the last) creator owned monthly comic book published by Marvel's British operation. (Some strips published in the title Strip were creator-owned, but despite the best efforts of Dan Abnett while editor at the publisher, planned monthly books featuring them were never realized in favour of projects such as The Knights of Pendragon).

Created by John Carnell and Andy Lanning before, during and after their successful work on the weekly UK comic The Real Ghostbusters for latterday Marvel UK editor (and present day Elephantmen creator, Richard Starkings). "The Sleeze Brothers dared to be funny and a little off the wall in an industry dominated by straight ahead action adventure titles," says Richard today.

Who are the Sleeze Brothers? Well, imagine the bastard offspring of the Blues Brothers and Blade Runner and you're probably halfway there. El Ape and Deadbeat Sleeze have been described as the "wisecracking, dirtiest P.I.s in the Big Apple". They certainly aren't the quickest thinkers in the world, nor the most moral, but they stumbled their way through seven adventures with help from their digitally operated secretary/receptionist, Doris.

Despite building quite a cult following in a pre-Internet age, Marvel UK shelved the series after the sixth issue and -- but for a one shot and short story, Some Like It Fresh, published by Marvel US's Epic imprint and an appearance in a Doctor Who strip -- The Sleeze Brothers seemed destined to be fondly remembered but largely forgotten until the rights reverted to Carnell and Lanning in the late 1990's.

Under the auspices of John Carnell and Andy Banks' Foof Productons, a series of short web cartoons are currently in development (the first directed and scripted by John) and so John and Richard decided the time was right to re-present, and re-master, the original series.

Digitally remastering involves Comicraft's Secret Weapon, John JG Roshell, deleting the lettering from the scans of the original artwork and performing a little digital art restoration so that Ace Colourist, Gregory Wright, can colour the complete art before Richard Starkings adds the digital lettering. (There have been some problems with doing this, as Richard himself relates on the Elephantmen blog...)

The Sleeze Brothers debut in an eight-page prologue in Elephanthmen #16 published by Image Comics this February and feature on a 'flip' cover of the issue (above).

In addition to the Sleeze Brothers animations, John, whose credits also include a graphic novel adaptation of Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and has for the past few years working on film scripts, has revealed Foof Productions also plan to launch another animated series, Animentals, for mobile phones. He's also working on a children's trilogy, The Dingbats, the story of a bunch of dysfunctional homeless bats fighting to save their village sanctuary from ruthless developers.

It's great news that the Brothers are on their way back. While the humour might be offbeat and not to everyone's taste, the characters still has a fan following to this day, and there was such a buzz about this project in the Marvel UK offices when the book was first launched and both John and Andy were -- and still are -- some of the most enthusiastic advocates of comics I can think of.

Those of you who head to your comic shops in February and can't find this new incarnation might need to look out instead for this stunning "A side" cover to Elephantmen #16, surely a reason to buy the comic for that alone...

Sleeze Brothers Check List
(1989-91, Epic/Marvel Comics)

• Issue 1: Nice And Sleezy
• Issue 2: Reel To Real
• Issue 3: The Big Leap
• Issue 4: Murder In Space
• Issue 5: Down In The Sewer
• Issue 6: The Maltese Egg
• The Sleeze Brothers: Some Like It Fresh - one off issue for Epic
• The Sleeze Brothers: Saturday Night Special - short story published in Dave Elliot's A1 anthology for Epic.
• The Sleeze Brothers also appeared in Follow That Tardis a strip published in Doctor Who Magazine #147 in April 1989
• The original six-issue series was also collected by Marvel UK in 1990 as The Sleeze Brothers Case Files.
• An early version of The Sleeze Brothers animated show is on YouTube

More War Toys from Starkings and Moritat

Elephantmen: War Toys #2 (or 3), from US publisher Active Images, goes on sale next week (27 February) in all sensible (and some insensible) comic shops.

Written by former Marvel UK head honcho and First Tiger Richard Starkings (he who got me into the world of comics publishing in the first place) War Toys #2 features by Moritat, recently singled out by Newsarama's Ryan the Iowan as Best Penciller of the Year in his Yearly Review Power Rankings.

The cover is by Boo Cook, with a variant cover also on offer by Ladrönn.

In War Toys, Africa and China are at war. The battlefield: Europe. Enter: MAPPO's genetically engineered soldiers, The Elephantmen with Starkings and Moritat telling the story of the war to end all wars in a special three issue mini series!

In this latest issue of the future saga, France has fallen to MAPPO... but even the Elephantmen have sustained heavy casualties. As Africa's forces advance into the North of Europe, Hip Flask, Ebony Hide and Obadiah Horn find that their way forward is not as easy as they thought it would be.

• Click here for a special five-page preview