Punisher: War Zone Teaser Movie Poster

Today I’m happy to post about a pretty cool new teaser promotional movie poster for the upcoming feature film Punisher: War Zone directed by Lexi Alexander and starring Ray Stevenson (Rome) as Frank Castle, a.k.a. The Punisher, and Dominic West as the villain Jigsaw. This movie is an official sequal to 2004's The Punisher starring Thomas Jane as the vigilante hero and will be in theaters December 5th, 2008. The fact that The Punisher is now already on his second feature film brings me to an interesting topic, the dramatic rise in fortune of Marvel Comics super hero movies compared to DC Comics films.


I just can’t get over the different direction the two companies’ movies have gone in in such a short period of time. In the 80’s and 90’s, DC Comics, with its parent company Warner Bros. behind it, ruled the super hero movie landscape with two very successful franchises, Superman and Batman, and a mildly successful syndicated television show in Swamp Thing. Once the Batman franchise deteriorated, so too did DC’s ability to make movies. Back then DC’s affiliation with Warner Bros. was considered a huge benefit to the company and a drawback to Marvel’s ability to get projects green lit. Marvel was then regulated strictly to television where it could only muster a series of made for TV movies including The Incredible Hulk spin-off movies, where the Hulk would team-up with other heroes like Daredevil and Thor, as well as pretty bad Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D starring David Hasselhoff (I won’t even get into the disaster of a flick that was Howard the Duck and the Dolph Lundgren Punisher film).

What’s amazing now is that what was once a benefit to DC has now become a major nuisance. Having to always use Warner Bros. to develop the company’s movies, when other studios may be better equipped to handle their stable of characters, has become a huge problem. It’s amazing that a studio can have so many well crafted stories handed them on a silver platter and they still seem to screw it up. As it is, Batman seems to be their only stable franchise, with Superman Returns stumbling out of the gate and the many rumored movies centered on Wonder Woman, the Flash, the Justice League and the Teen Titans all stuck in perpetual limbo. In fact, the only movies DC seems to be able to jump start anymore are their non-super hero titles coming from their adult oriented content such as V for Vendetta, Watchmen and Constantine.

On the other hand, Marvel has now been dominating DC for over a decade and found a way to utilize their “free agent” status among the big movie studios. Not only that, but Marvel has been able to parlay their success into creating their only studio to move their summer blockbusters in house and reap a larger portion of the profits. Because of their success we not only have movies based on their top tier characters like the Spider-Man trilogy, X-Men trilogy, and Iron Man, but have gotten a whole slew of movies centered on the publisher’s second tier heroes like Punisher, Daredevil and Elektra. While many of these movies may not have all been great, they all did relatively well at the box office.

Since the first X-Men film in 2000, Marvel has made a ton of super hero movies while DC has made three. Heck, in that amount of time Dark Horse Comics has gotten two Hellboy films in theaters and Image now has Wanted coming this summer. All in all, as a DC Comics fan this is really disappointing. I just can’t figure out what DC’s problem is. Super hero movies are at an all time high in popularity and yet DC seems stuck in neutral. How hard is it to write a great script for a Green Lantern or Aquaman movie? The first thing Warner Bros. should have done after the success of Entourage two years ago is get an Aquaman movie into theaters ASAP. Instead, I’m sure we won’t ever see the Wonder Woman or Justice League films that have been in preliminary production for months. In the meantime Marvel is pushing head with movies focusing on other second tier characters such as Ant Man and the Black Panther. This is just another reason why Marvel seems to dominate the comic book sales chart month in and month out, because they know how to satisfy their fan base. Hopefully DC will get their act together soon before it is too late and the super hero craze dies out.

The Texas Two-Step Of Voting Then Caucusing Is A Joke

For the first time in my life The Blot caucused last night. It turns out Texas has one of the weirdest presidential primaries in the country. You see of the states 193 delegates, only 2/3 of those delegates are distributed by the popular vote (126 to be exact). The remaining 67 delegates are distributed by a three tiered caucus process. And you know what, it was probably the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever been a part of. As my friend Mark liked to say last night as he watched CNN’s coverage of the election results, “Texas should be ashamed of itself.” And the state really should. I’m guessing this has never been an issue before because of Texas’ late primary date, and as far as I could tell from my experience last night no one in the state had ever caucused before. That was definitely the impression I got as I watched people scrambling around trying to figure out how to organize the caucus and get things started.


I have a problem with it on two folds. The biggest gripe I have is that most people just didn’t know about the caucus and even when they did it’s near impossible to get people to turn out to a polling location twice in the same day. It almost seems anti-democratic to allow people to vote and then almost in an almost clandestine way have a caucus where a fraction of the people who voted previously get to decide on a third of the delegates. Wasn’t this country based on 1 person, 1 vote? And yet here we are giving some people 2 votes in the same primary. I think it’s unfair to the working men and women who left home early or took time off of work to vote in the first place and then expect them to be able to leave their families and return at 7 pm that night to caucus. Texas needs to pick one style of primary and stick with it, either a popular vote or a caucus but not both.

What really ticked me off is how unofficial the caucus was compared to the popular vote. The biggest issues I have with elections, especially since the hanging chad incident in Florida, is that all votes cast need to be accounted for in a fair and orderly fashion. When I voted a week ago during Texas’ early voting period I was very impressed. The polling location had computers with all registers voters names in it. A registered voter could bring in their voter registration card or a state issued photo identification card and have their id and voter status verified immediately. Then voters were directed to a private voting booth where they could vote electronically for the candidate of their choice. Everything seemed very legitimate and official, which I found very comforting since we were voting for a candidate to be the next President of the United States.

When it came time to caucus though, I had the complete opposite feeling. I know the informal nature of the experience is what caucusing is all about, but something just felt fishy about it. Especially when, because of the format, it could have been extremely easy for someone to artificially increase a precinct’s turn out. In fact, the people signing constituents in had absolutely no idea what they were doing or how to do their job. It really discouraged me when I went to sign in and ended up knowing more about what was going and what I needed to do than the gentlemen stationed at the sign in table. Also, there is was no way to check a voter’s information in a timely fashion since everyone filled in their personal information by hand, including voter id number, on page after page of generic caucus forms. To me this seems like a very unnecessary and drawn out process that could take days to be verified and become official.

I for one think both candidates would be better served if all delegates were assigned based on the popular vote, especially when tens of thousands of more Texans turned out for the popular vote than the relatively small amount who participated in the caucus last night. It is times like these, when an election is so close and every delegate matters, that I realize the problems that still exist in our country’s voting process. You’d have thought that after all of these elections, especially after the Presidential election of 2000, that things would have been straightened out by now. Yet here we are again…it just goes to show that the more things change, the more things stay the same.

The Police Are Back…Already?

Wow, the concert no one was clamoring for is already back less than a year later. The fact that The Police are already coming back to Houston this fast means they feel like there is more blood and money to suck out of their nostalgia “reunion” act and Police fans hoping to catch a glimpse of their past. I’m really disappointed in Sting, Andy and Stewart, mostly because the show I saw last June was at Houston’s Toyota Center was kind of a let down. I was expecting so much out of their reunion tour and the show just felt really flat. On top of that, The Police are still selling memberships to their fan club for the ability to purchase pre-sale tickets for the low, low price of $99.99! Who wants to join the fan club of a band that just got back together for one very long reunion tour!?! Plus you still have to pay $225 per ticket after that.


I will admit it was cool to see The Police in concert, but it wasn’t worth $550 plus service fees and tax to see them! Thankfully Al and I got lucky and scalped great tickets for way below face value. I can never tell with a reunion tours like this if demand is really that high or, like with the Hannah Montana concerts, if scalpers are just buying up all the tickets, therefore lowering availability to the general public an pushing price sky high. The show at the Toyota Center was packed, but I wonder what the actual price the average person was paying per ticket.

At least now with the show being at The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion the worst seats in the house will be law seats at $47.00 a ticket. This is so much better than the worst seats at the Toyota Center which were behind the stage staring at the band’s sweaty backs! And don’t even try to tell me the stage was “in the round,” I’d say Sting walked back there and looked at the audience behind the stage for maybe 10-15 minutes of the show. How they charged people $90 a ticket for those seats is beyond me. The Police should offer those people refunds or at least give them free lawn seats. The fans sitting there were most definitely sold those tickets on the premise that this was The Police’s only stop in Houston on their reunion tour.

With the band now touring indefinitely and already back in Houston I’d imagine a lot of people would not have bought those tickets if they didn’t think this was their one and only chance to see The Police together on stage. I just can’t imagine there are more people out there willing to pay $500+ to see The Police who didn’t already see them the first time they were in town. If there are people out there paying that much to see them again then more power to them, but I’d recommend for a better listening experience busting out some of your old Police cds and rocking out at home.

The only redeeming part of going to see The Police this time around is the opening band. This time they are joined by the legendary Elvis Costello & The Imposters. I’ve always loved Costello’s music, and there is no doubt in my mind he’ll put on a great show. It’s unfortunate he wasn’t on tour with Police last time around. Last June we got stuck watching Sting’s son perform with his band Fiction Plane, who were just plain horrible and gave a totally unintelligible performance.

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers Hit the Road

There are very few things in this day and age that shock The Blot, but the email I received today from Live Nation announcing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ upcoming tour with Steve Winwood did just that. What shocked The Blot about Tom Petty’s 2008 tour is the ticket price…they’re charging $99.50! And this is before you add in the $40 charge for joining Petty’s fan club for the pre-pre-sale and all of the ridiculous service charges they tack on top of that.

Let me preface this by saying I like Tom Petty and would love to go see him, but I’m sorry, did I miss something? Is Tom Petty a much bigger act than I realized? He hasn’t even released a new album, just a DVD/CD documentary. Maybe the fact that he’s performing at halftime of the Super Bowl went to his and Live Nation’s heads, but come on. I’ve already read numerous articles questioning whether Tom Petty is a big enough act to headline the Super Bowl. I’m assuming if people are questioning whether he can headline a Super Bowl, he probably isn’t in a place to be commanding $100 a ticket for his shows. I go to a ton of concerts and I can’t think of many artists, if any, that I’d be willing to shell out a hundred bucks to go see. I know for a fact I’ve only come close to that price once, maybe twice, and I’d have to think long and hard about how bad I wanted to see an artist before shelling out that kind of cash.

In fact, I can still remember when Petty and the Heartbreakers came to Austin while I was in college. A group of my friends wanted to see him and they ended up getting pretty good tickets for the show. Any idea how much those tickets were back in the latter half of 2000? If I had to guess, because my memory of that time period is a little fuzzy, I’d say they were $20-30 a ticket plus tax and a service charge which made them out to be $30-40 a ticket, max. Now here we are, less than 8 years later and they’re charging $100 for the same show?

I’d love to see Petty, but I have to imagine they’re pricing themselves out of a huge number of people who like Petty but would never spend that kind of money on a concert. I don’t care if they’re marketing the tour to baby boomers or not, if The Police and Genesis reunions, not to mention the never ending farewell tour of The Rolling Stones, can’t sell out with $100 ticket prices Petty doesn’t stand a chance. He’s not even on their level. It’s too bad they’ve set such a high price too, because all this does is keep Petty from reaching the real ticket consuming audience of today, 16-25 year olds who will have just watched him perform live at the Super Bowl.

If by some chance you live in Houston and are willing to pay $100 for covered or uncovered seats (law seats are a more reasonable $37.50) to see Tom Petty at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion on Friday, August 29th, tickets go on pre-sale tomorrow, Friday, February 1st at 10:00 am. You’ll need the special password to access the pre-sale, but don’t worry, The Blot’s got your back. The Tom Petty pre-sale password is song. If you live in the DFW area and want to get pre-sale tickets for the Dallas tour stop the pre-sale password is SUPERBOWL.

Dane Cook’s 7 Hour Stand-Up Act Sets New Comedy Record!

Is this a joke? I’m not even questioning its validity because it sounds like something Cook would do. What The Blot wants to know is who in the hell is sitting at a comedy club in those really uncomfortable seats for 7 straight hours listening to Dane Cook ramble on about the things Dane Cook rambles about!?! I love Dane as much as the next guy, but after 2 hours my butt would start falling asleep and I’d be glancing at my watch every 10 seconds wondering when his show would end.


If you haven’t heard or didn’t gleam from the post’s title, “Dane Cook has broken a Laugh Factory endurance record set less than a month ago by Dave Chappelle” by performing for 7 straight hours Tuesday night/Wednesday morning in Los Angeles. (link) The history given by the article is actually pretty interesting. Evidently Richard Pryor had held the record since 1980 with a record of 2 hours and 41 minutes. This record stood for over 25 years until Cook broke it last April with a Stand-Up act of 3 hours and 50 minutes. Chappelle, having none of that, went on to break it twice since then, once later that April and again in December with a set of 6 hours and 12 minutes. (link)

I’m just praying this showmanship ends here. A 2-3 hour set is impressive and neat for the audience once in a blue moon (and the comedian is probably still funny to the audience). But, when we’re talking 4-7+ hours then things just start getting silly. It’s not only impossible to stay funny for that long but you know you’ve lost your audience when half of them are asleep in their seats. Either that or they’re not even there for the comedy anymore but instead just the anomaly of seeing a new record set. At that point is it still comedy or has the comedian turned into some twisted version of David Blaine without the cool illusions?

Dane didn’t end his set until almost 7 a.m. Wednesday morning and there was still an audience, do people not work in L.A.? At least the article says he “sent out for food to keep the audience fed and happy.” (link) Um, I don’t think it’s possible to be happy at 5:30 a.m. listening to stand-up unless you’re really drunk or there was some non-prescribed medicine snuck into the audience’s food. I wanted to go see Dane when he came to Houston on tour, but after hearing about this I’d be too afraid to go in the off chance he wanted to set a new record and I was locked into my seat for the next 10 hours.

What the article didn’t mention, but I’m assuming to be the case, is that this is a Laugh Factory record and not an actually documented all time stand-up comedy record. But I can’t imagine a comedian has ever set out to accomplish such a monumental feat as a 7 hour set before, so maybe. It’s just that the 2 hours and 41 minute set by Pryor in 1980 doesn’t seem that ridiculously long that no one in 27 years thought to try and break it. Who knows, maybe we’ll hear some tale of a young Paul Reiser before his rise to fame in My Two Dads performing a set in Butte, Montana to 15 people for 3 hours and 38 minutes. It could have happened, right?

The Thin Red Line Between News and Gossip

The Blot had a request a few weeks back for more posts about “rumors” as one particular reader put it. I’m assuming the Russian Space Station (as she is commonly referred to) meant gossip, but since The Blot won’t go that low here’s some recent headlines that caught my attention and maybe fall somewhere in between News, Gossip and pointless Ramblings by me.

1. Buffy No More?

Us Weekly is reporting that Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar has legally changed her name. I know this is a shocker for many because who doesn’t love the three name moniker? I tried to pull it off but “The Blot Says…” just doesn’t roll off the tongue like “The Blot” does. The story is that for her and hubby Freddie Prinze, Jr.’s fifth wedding anniversary, SMG had her last name officially changed to Prinze. No word on whether or not Gellar will use Prinze professionally or stick with her signature three part name. (Zap2it.com) Gellar’s latest movie Southland Tales, written and directed by Donnie Darko’s Richard Kelly and also staring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Seann William Scott and Justin Timberlake arrived in select theaters this past weekend.

2. Acclaimed Filmmaker Kevin Smith Finds His Leads



Variety is reporting that The Blot’s favorite writer/director and creator of all things ViewAskew (Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma) Kevin Smith has cast the lead roles in his new film Zack & Miri Make A Porno. The role of Zack will be played by newly christened comedy super star Seth Rogen (Knocked Up, Superbad, 40-Year-Old Virgin) and the role of Miri will be played by Elizabeth Banks (Invincible, 40-Year-Old Virgin). Smith hasn’t had much success with movies not centered in the ViewAskew universe, i.e. Jersey Girl, but hopefully this film will be able to showcase Smith’s unique style of writing and comedy genius. (Link)

3. Japan wants Panettiere…and not for a celebrity appearance.

When The Blot saw this one the first thing I thought was “What?” Evidently Heroes’ star Hayden Panettiere traveled to Japan and joined a group of Americans and Australians to protest the slaughter of Dolphins and Whales by Japanese fisherman. (Link) I’m guessing they knew they were breaking some laws because the article says they hightailed it out of Japan as soon as the protest was over. Now Japan has a warrant out for Panettiere. Normally I’d side with Panettiere and against animal cruelty but if it means getting rid of the cheerleader’s horrible storyline in Heroes this year maybe we should extradite her. HAHA, The Blot’s just kidding…but only because Heroes has gotten so much better in the last few weeks.

4. Celebrity Apprentice Contestants Announced

I, like most of America, used to love The Apprentice. Then sometime after the second season and before the end of the third season the show lost its allure. I’m not sure why exactly, it could be any number of reasons…whether I just got tired of Donald Trump, or the contestants just weren’t as appealing, or (and I think this might be the real reason) the show just got played out and was no longer original. Then again it could be because the competitions seemed to just be rehashed and the product placement became unbearable. Regardless when I heard there was going to be a celebrity edition my interest got piqued again. That is until the lineup came out.


You know a show has hit rock bottom when it’s draining the Reality TV landscape for contestants. At one time The Apprentice was on top of the Neilson ratings…that time has definitely passed us by. I don’t know if this counts as “celebrity” in your book, but bringing back first season contestant/Surreal Life cast member Omarosa just doesn’t cut it. Stephen Baldwin is kind of a name, but after seeing him embarrass himself on Celebrity Mole for a few seasons his allure is pretty tarnished too. About the only person I’m excited to see compete is former heavyweight boxing champ Lennox Lewis, who always came across as a pretty bright guy. If you’d like to read through the full list of contestants, which includes the likes of Kiss front man Gene Simmons (who also has his own reality TV show, Gene Simmons Family Jewels, on A&E) and Olympic gold medalist softball pitcher Jennie Finch, you can check out the Yahoo article here.

Thanks to Whitney at Pop Candy for a few of these headlines...you can find headlines like these every week day at USA Today's Pop Candy blog.

Matchbox Twenty's Exile To Houston

Did I miss something? Has there been a huge public outcry for Matchbox Twenty’s reunion? Has anyone bought their new greatest hits album Exile On Mainstream? As far as I know the album, with six new songs, isn’t really burning up the charts even if it was their highest debut on the charts. That stat is pretty misleading since album sales are at an all time low and it’s embarrassing the low number it now takes to reach the top 10 on the sales charts.

Look I’m as big a fan of Matchbox 20 as anyone I know. While it might be a little embarrassing to admit this, I’ve seen MB 20 in concert more times than any other band…somewhere between 11-15 times, but who’s counting. That’s partly because Matchbox got “big” in Birmingham before their first album spread across the country and they were playing there every few months.

That being said, I was really excited to hear after four years the band was getting back together and hitting the road. Their Exile In America Tour hits Houston February 28th at the Toyota Center and has the amazingly talented Alanis Morissette and MUTEMATH opening for them. When I heard Alanis was the opening act I was sold…until I saw the ticket prices. At that point I saw flashes of the Maroon 5 concert happening all over again.

There is no way Matchbox is currently as popular as Maroon 5, even with their new single being played on the radio over and over and over again. And yet they’re trying to sell out the same venue, with higher ticket prices, that Maroon 5 just played and couldn’t even fill up. All I can say is that it’s a really poor decision for a band with their best years behind them to go out on tour for the first time in four years and try to sell out arenas. Why not reward their long time fans with smaller shows that will definitely sell-out and drive up interest, instead of overcharging, turning fans off from even going to the show and playing to half filled stadiums.
I’ll tell you this much with prices of $40, $60 and $75 a ticket your average fans is going to say thanks, but no thanks, and will be leaving the scalpers with tons of tickets they can’t give away. Which is when I’ll swoop in and buy the $75 tickets off of some desperate scalper for $80 total and save a bundle. Too bad Matchbox doesn’t care enough about their fans to set prices at a reasonable level and allow a new, younger fan base, who are the ones that really spend money on music and concerts, to enjoy their show.

Headlines That Baffle The Blot

1. Lance Armstrong & Ashley Olsen’s Latest N.Y. Hookup (Link)

Many of The Blot’s fans know that I have, for many years now, had a great admiration for the Olsen Twins’ work. The Blot has tried to support them through thick and thin…the rumors of anorexia, drug use, excessive partying, etc. The Blot’s support has never waned. Until now that is. This is just gross. Maybe it’s all in my head, but the thought of LiveStrong Lance with little Michelle Tanner gives me the heebie jeebies.


2. Reid Has No Plans to Leave Eagles Despite Judge’s Criticism (Link)

Is Andy Reid, head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, the only one who doesn’t get it? Given the judge may have been out of line with some of the things he said and maybe he didn't know the whole story, but still, these two kids of Reid’s seem pretty out of control and I have to think his credibility with his players is at an all time low. If a player was caught dealing drugs, brandishing weapons, driving under the influence and smuggling drugs into prison I’m pretty sure they would be banned from the NFL for life. Obviously it wasn’t Coach Reid committing these offenses but I have to imagine it is taking its toll on him, the team and the entire organization. The best thing he can do is take a temporary leave of absence to help his children and let the Eagles try to find their way through their already tumultuous season.

3. Sources say Alex Rodriguez was looking for a $350 Million Dollar Deal from the Yankees (Link)

Say what!?! Is this guy kidding? A-Rod is good, no wait he’s great. On second thought he is absolutely amazing. But no way, no how is this guy worth $350 Million Dollars. I’d feel better giving that much to a stud pitcher. At least a pitcher, in theory, can win a game on his own. A-Rod is still the player who has brought a cloud of losing with him to every team he’s been on since leaving Seattle. He should try winning a championship before talking about those staggering kinds of numbers. That contract would have been the most ridiculous American sports contract in the history of sports contracts. Besides, A-Rod definitely doesn't need to give the general public another reason to dislike him.

4. Music Label EMI Will Crack Down On Artists (Link)


While it’s probably a good thing one of the big music labels has finally decided to clean house and try to right its sinking ship, I would file this headline under “Too Little, Too Late.” It’s great that EMI wants to crack down on advances and crack down on artists they view as not pulling their own weight, but much of the blame and outrageousness of how artists are paid and dealt with can be attributed right back to the record labels. No other industry is handled as horribly as the music industry and these same labels had no problem doing it this way for decades. Of course back then the labels used these same business practices to routinely screw over their talent and make millions off them in the process. Now that albums don’t sell as well the artists are to blame? Seems to me there is still a demand for good music, just not what the music labels are trying to sell.

The Rise of the Graphic Novel in Hollywood

And now back to our regularly scheduled post...

I’m guessing that most of you reading this either have no idea what a Graphic Novel is or why The Blot would be writing about them, but the term itself really rubs me the wrong way. Therefore, it’s time for The Blot’s first official rant. Do any of you know when the term Comic Book became a four letter word in Hollywood? I do, I peg it happening sometime around the year 2006. In fact, the term Comic Book seems to be fading from the lexicon of Hollywood almost as fast as the movie industry is raking in the dough from Comic Book based movies.

With two months left in 2007, do you know what the highest domestic grossing movie of the year is? If you thought Spider-Man 3 give yourself a gold star. As it stands now there are 5 Comic Book based films ranked among the top 35 grossing films of 2007 (Spider-Man 3, 300, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider, and TMNT). This isn’t a new trend either; in 2006 two of the top ten highest grossing films in the United States were Comic Book movies, X-Men: The Last Stand and Superman Returns. In 2005 there were four more movies in the top 35 which included Batman Begins, Fantastic Four, Constantine and Sin City. Then in 2004 there was another 5 Comic Book based films in the top 100 grossing films of the year…I could go on and on. The point is that Comic Book movies, their heroes, villains and amazing special effects have taken over summer box office and they don’t seem to be going anywhere with Iron Man and Batman: The Dark Knight hitting screens next summer. So at this point you might be asking yourself what’s the problem? The Blot’s problem is that sometime last year, around the time 300 was released the term Comic Book seems to have been replaced with the term Graphic Novel even when most of the time the term does not really apply.

You see, a Graphic Novel is, in its most simplistic form, a Comic Book. The original Graphic Novels were always short book length stories with a defined beginning and end. This is very different than your modern day comic book’s story line that, similar to a soap opera, could go on for months and years. They were called “Novels” because they were published in a format similar to books with a thicker spine and higher page count while a comic book’s format resembles a standard newsstand magazine. It used to be that Graphic Novels often dealt with a more mature subject matter than your typical comic book, but that’s really no longer the case. In fact the term Graphic Novel is really not even used in its proper context. Somehow due to the marketing geniuses in Hollywood the term Graphic Novel is now applied to any basic trade paperback, a term that means a reprinted collection of either a comic book mini-series or the collection of a specific storyline from an ongoing comic book into one book.

The most glaring abuse of the term Graphic Novel can be seen in the movie posters for the #1 film in America 30 Days of Night which proclaims “Based on the Hit Graphic Novel.” The only problem I see is that 30 Days of Night was not originally a Graphic Novel! I even have the comic books to prove it. 30 Days of Night was a three issue comic book that became so popular the publisher eventually reprinted it in trade paperback form which included all three issues in one book. And that is what’s bothering me about the term Graphic Novel. It seems like Hollywood has arbitrarily decided that when it needs a film based on a Comic Book to be considered more mature content or the studio doesn’t want the film to be lumped in with other super hero movies they tag the film with “Based on the popular Graphic Novel” instead of “Based on the popular Comic Book.”

What’s scariest about this whole topic to The Blot is that instead of the two main Comic Book companies DC and Marvel fighting Hollywood’s marketing departments on how they brand the industry, they’ve chosen to embrace it. Now almost every popular comic published is, at some point, repackaged into a trade paperback and labeled a graphic novel. Obviously these two things are not the same thing but with all the free publicity movie studios are giving the Graphic Novel, the industry figures it is worth following the trend in the hopes of bringing in new readers. Plus your regular chain book stores like Borders and Barnes & Noble are willing to carry the trade paperback/Graphic Novel style books over the traditional comic book, which opens the comic book industry to more stores and more readers. I guess you have to follow the money and I can’t completely fault them for that. But if this trend continues, the Comic Book industry might find itself in quite the predicament. By going for the quick buck and giving in to the movie industry’s marketing plan, the Comic Book industry loses its brand identity it has built up over the past 80 years and quite possibly the fan base that supports it. Like all trends in movies the super hero genre will eventually fade away and then where does that leave DC and Marvel? I for one am not so sure I am willing to stick around to find out.