Film Adaptations of Comic Books in the New Millennium

Sweet Jebus!  There have been over 50 films released since 2000 that are based on comic books.

Marvel and DC have by far the most comics made into movies, with Marvel being extremely dominant. 

Marvel has released 20 films (12 of which were sequels) since 2000.  All of them were super-hero films, and all but Punisher: War Zone made money.  Unfortunately, while these films grossed a ton of money, only 3 of them were actually any good: X-Men, Spider-Man, and Iron Man.  Marvel has plans to release many more bad but high-grossing movies including more X-Men and Avengers sequels, another Ghost Rider movie and a Spider-Man reboot.

DC has only released 10 movies since 2000, with both Catwoman and Jonah Hex failing miserably.  Though they haven't release as many movies as Marvel, or made as much money, DC also has the Vertigo and Wildstorm imprints that rely on other themes besides super-heroes.  So we don't just have to witness lame Superman and Batman movies (though Christopher Nolan's Batman reboot has been excellent).  We get Alan Moore's characters in Constantine, V for Vendetta, and Watchmen, and other non-super-hero movies like The Losers and Red.

Thankfully independent comics and comics from small publishers give us a much wider variety of topics (though still giving us shit like Hellboy and LXG).  300 is the top small publisher comic adaptation to date, and had a 601% return of investment (larger than any other comic book film) and was probably why producers decided to back Frank Miller's The Spirit which was a box office disaster.

Marvel / DC
2000 - X-Men (Marvel)
2002 - Spider-Man (Marvel)
2002 - Blade II (Marvel)
2003 - Daredevil (Marvel)
2003 - Hulk (Marvel)
2003 - X2 (Marvel)
2004 - Catwoman (DC)
2004 - Blade: Trinity (Marvel)
2004 - The Punisher (Marvel)
2004 - Spider-Man 2 (Marvel)
2005 - Elektra (Marvel)
2005 - Constantine (DC)
2005 - Fantastic Four (Marvel)
2005 - Batman Begins (DC)
2006 - X-Men: The Last Stand (Marvel)
2006 - V for Vendetta (DC)
2006 - Superman Returns (DC)
2007 - Spider-Man 3 (Marvel)
2007 - Ghost Rider (Marvel)
2007 - Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (Marvel)
2008 - Punisher: War Zone (Marvel)
2008 - Iron Man (Marvel)
2008 - The Incredible Hulk (Marvel)
2008 - The Dark Knight (DC)
2009 - Watchmen (DC)
2009 - X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Marvel)
2010 - The Losers (DC)
2010 - Jonah Hex (DC)
2010 - Iron Man 2 (Marvel)
2010 - Red (DC)

Small Publisher / Indie / Foreign Publisher
2001 - From Hell (Indie/Top Shelf)
2001 - Ghost World (Indie)
2002 - Road to Perdition (Paradox Press)
2003 - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Indie/Top Shelf/DC)
2003 - Bulletproof Monk (Indie)
2004 - Hellboy (Dark Horse)
2004 - AVP: Alien vs. Predator (Dark Horse)
2005 - Sin City (Dark Horse)
2005 - A History of Violence (Paradox Press/DC)
2006 - 300 (Dark Horse)
2007 - 30 Days of Night (IDW)
2007 - TMNT (Mirage)
2008 - Hellboy II (Dark Horse)
2008 - The Spirit (Indie/DC)
2008 - Wanted (Top Cow)
2008 - Speed Racer (Shogakukan)
2009 - Surrogates (Top Shelf)
2009 - Astro Boy (Kodansha)
2009 - Whiteout (Oni Press)
2009 - Dragonball: Evolution (Shueisha)
2009 - Solomon Kane (Dark Horse/Marvel)
2010 - Kick-Ass (Indie/Marvel)
2010 - Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Oni Press)
2011 - Priest (Daiwon C.I./Tokyopop)

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AgAGaKD0clcNdGtJaDFiM0libnpndUZ5ZGdaay1Jc0E&hl=en&authkey=CKLq46UG

Actors doing multiple comic book characters:

Chris Evans is the king of Comic Book films with 5 different characters:

•     Fantastic Four (2005)  [Johnny Storm]
•     4: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)  [Human Torch/Johnny Storm]
•     TMNT (2007)  (voice)  [Casey]
•     The Losers (2010/I)  [Jensen]
•     Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)  [Lucas Lee]
•     Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)  [Steve Rogers/Captain America]
•     The Avengers (2012)  [Steve Rogers/Captain America]

Character actor Jason Flemyng gets around, too:

•     From Hell (2001)  [Netley, the Coachman]
•     The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)  [Dr. Henry Jekyll/Edward Hyde]
•     Solomon Kane (2009)  [Malachi]
•     Kick-Ass (2010)  [Lobby Goon]
•     X-Men: First Class (2011)  [Azazel]

Ryan Reynolds with 3 different characters:

•     Blade: Trinity (2004)  [Hannibal King]
•     X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)  [Wade Wilson]
•     Green Lantern (2011)  [Hal Jordan/Green Lantern]
•     Deadpool (2012)  [Wade Wilson/Deadpool]

The same for  Morgan Freeman:

•     Batman Begins (2005)  [Lucius Fox]
•     The Dark Knight (2008)  [Lucius Fox]
•     Wanted (2008)  [Sloan]
•     Red (2010/I)  [Joe Matheson]

And Scarlett Johansson:

•     Ghost World (2001)  [Rebecca]
•     The Spirit (2008)  [Silken Floss]
•     Iron Man 2 (2010)  [Natalie Rushman/Natasha Romanoff]
•     The Avengers (2012)  [Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow]

And Bruce Willis:

•     Sin City (2005)  [Hartigan]
•     Surrogates (2009)  [Tom Greer]
•     Red (2010/I)  [Frank Moses]

And Jeffery Dean Morgan:

•     Watchmen (2009)  [Edward Blake/The Comedian]
•     Jonah Hex (2010)  (uncredited)  [Jeb Turnbull]
•     The Losers (2010/I)  [Clay]

And Nick Cage:

•     Ghost Rider (2007)  [Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider]
•     Astro Boy (2009)  (voice)  [Dr. Tenma]
•     Kick-Ass (2010)  [Damon Macready/Big Daddy]

And Ben Foster:

•     The Punisher (2004)  [Spacker Dave]
•     X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)  [Warren Worthington III/Angel]
•     30 Days of Night (2007)  [The Stranger]

And finally Samuel L. Jackson also plays 3 characters:

•     Iron Man (2008)  (uncredited)  [Nick Fury]
•     The Spirit (2008)  [The Octopus]
•     Astro Boy (2009)  (voice)  [Zog]
•     Iron Man 2 (2010)  [Nick Fury]
•     Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)  [Nick Fury]
•     The Avengers (2012)  [Nick Fury]

* Information gathered from Amazon's IMDb and Box Office Mojo sites.

--

Dave Maez
sellout:DM.upYP1ZArCc:0:0:Dave Maez:/us/SC/Greenwood:/bin/ksh

snmp hell

So I set about to learn SNMP today. I think I have the basic concepts down. All I really want to do is query every interface port on a Cisco switch we have for ifName, ifDesc, ifOperStatus, ifInOctets, ifOutOctets. I tried in perl with Net::SNMP first, but I don't want to use the OID, I want to use the MIB names. Then I tried plain ole SNMP, but the damn package is broken for ubuntu lucid lynx. Suck.

I then tried to look for some Python netsnmp examples. I'll be dammed if I can find a single code example. Apparently no one codes SNMP scripts in python.

I'm getting the nagging feeling that what I'm trying to do is stupid simple. I just can connect the dots.

Any suggestions from anyone? I'd prefer python or perl as due to work requirements, I'm bound to those languages. Yes, Dave, I know those both suck, but I gotta work with what I got. I guess I could live with a bash/bourne script, but it's got to be able to shove the In/Out numbers into an rrdtool database, and I'm pretty sucky with bash scripts. 

BTW - Yes, I'm still an electrical engineer.  I'm just trying to improve our departments IT infrastructure.

Jack Chick

So I saw someone had uploaded Jack Chick's "Happy Halloween" and I downloaded it with glee. Of course I had forgotten that most of these are available online: http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0032/0032_01.asp.  My favorite section of the tract:

So these two dudes' friend, Timmy, died right in front of their eyes after having been struck by a car.  Their first reaction, "He's in Heaven right?"  Fucking assholes.  Maybe if you dicks had spent less time in Sunday School and more time in First-Aid, your "friend" would still be alive.  And of course their super-Christian mom knows just how to comfort and console her grieving children who blame themselves for his death: "Fuck no, that bastard is burning in HELL!"  Gee, thanks, Mom, I'll never get to sleep again... ever.

She loved that boy... but she doesn't anymore, she fucking hates Hell's tortured souls.  And, thanks again, Mom, for explaining that our friend, Timmy, was in your Sunday School class, since you force us to attend as well, we'd have never known that... Holy shit—Timmy's "worldly" friends are complete bad-asses!  He's like taking part in some real-life awesome version of Easy Rider.  There's a Satanic 1%er and a 30 year old pot-head!  How the hell was he cool enough to hang with these guys?  He must have been some kind of drug mule, since no one would ever believe a sweater-wearing douche would be up to no good.

Timmy's thought bubble, "Nice rack.  She's a crazy Jesus Freak, but I'd still hit it."  What I find most surprising is that Timmy isn't going to Hell for participating in Halloween.  I'd have thought that was a one-way ticket in Jack Chick's eyes.

Someone should tell Jack Chick that the words "Hell" and "Devil" are proper nouns when used in relation to the Christian mythos.
Since Mrs. Baxter's God is insane, and let's "bad people" in Heaven over "good people" as long as they repent, I'd like to point out something: As someone who was raised with Christian brainwashing beliefs like Timmy, I know how easy it is to fall back on old habits when in grief. This is the third stage of the Kubler-Ross model.  As Perry Ferrel sung, "Hope is just another word for prayer."

Let's take a look at yesterday evening's events.  Timmy, Bobby and Dork-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had gone Trick-or-Treating and were greeted by crazy people who take their Halloween cos-play way too seriously:

Let me take you through Timmy's 5 stages of grief as he ran crying from the crazy people:

1. Denial - "I cannot believe I went Trick-or-Treating with these fucking losers!  Oh God, there is NOT a turtle head poking out!"
2. Anger - "I better not shit my pants in front of the dorks!  Why was I spending time with these losers anyway?  I should have been gang-banging some bitches with my 'worldly' friends."
3. Bargaining - "Oh Sweet Jesus, I'm sorry!  Please don't let me shit my pants!  I promise to stop staring at Mrs. Baxter's tits."
4. Depression - "Fuck! This sucks!"
5. Acceptance - "Ow, I just got hit by a car—and I shit my pants."

Thanks to stage 3, Timmy is now in Heaven, so screw you Mrs. Know-it-all Baxter. 

So in the end, poor Timmy got to go to Heaven, and his parents got rich from suing those crazy Halloween people and that guy who was driving over the speed limit in a residential area.  Sadly, Mrs. Baxter and the two dorks ended up stock-piling weapons at their friend's compound in Ruby Ridge until the FBI "accidentally" killed them all.

Thanks for the funnies, Jack.

--
Dave Maez
You got a Benz, I got a busket: Gimme a dollar!

Re: [FiveQuestions] Retards (was: Evolving Language)

On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 10:17 PM, Dave Maez <sellout@dharmadevil.com> wrote:

On 8/31/2010 8:59 PM, JZ wrote: 

PS - I don't get how people get so bent out of shape about words like "retard", changing the words doesn't change the meaning...

[then Dave wrote some great stuff about how the fervor over "retard" is really just some (heh, heh) retarded political correctness -- and that term is bullshit too, yo. Why do we have to be politically correct about some assholes who think they know how everyone else should act? ]

 

I think this is just another example of retards using a normal word to hurt others, and fucking it up for the rest of us because some other retards try to "fix" it. Like that retard "manager" I get every few years, who's such a pussy that he can't talk to the person whose behavior he thinks needs correction, so he sends a memo to everyone and vaguely, pussily talks around the problem. I guess those aren't all pussies, though: Edward 'Tiger Mike' Davis was most definitely not a pussy, but he did the same thing. With the memos. That's not a pussy, that's an asshole. Yes, there's irony in there, you retard.

Back to the matter at hand. See also nigger and other racial epithets, and, well, other epithets. That is, epithets started as words. [ if you're going to click on any link in this dopamine-fueled response, click that one, nigga ... what, what? Dopamine? Yeah, I'm talkin' to you, Substantia Nigra. ]

I think George Carlin expounded on this many times, as did Lenny Bruce. They blew it, though, when they argued from "they're just words." IMHO, words are the ultimate power of humanity. You can fuck your own self up if you tell yourself harmful things, and some of the most powerful dramas in human history are about one or more people fucking someone else over with words alone.

You may recall that I taught retarded adults for five years. My first stint was an ICF/MR5 facility, i.e., high functioning, needed exemptions for profoundly retarded people, and they lived there. It had a professional name, but we employees called it Richard's Retard Ranch because the QMRP (and director) was Richard Jordan, who also called them retards. He was great; he knew and taught that retarded people have to be better than normal people, i.e., they have to try harder and be conscious of their retardation, because everyone else can tell that they're retarded and tend to stare at them and wait for them to fuck up. Because, you know, they're retarded and I'm not.

That was the really weird, mind-bending part: They knew that they were retarded, and they could, and did maintain the meta-awareness to manage it. As long as they weren't in a bad mood, or distracted, that is. You know, just like "normal people." Yup, retards lose it, too, and in those moments, they seem to be the most normal, because, like everyone else, they act like idiots when they're upset.

Anyway, we said "retard" because we felt we'd earned the right after having been spit on, shit on, punched, kicked, lied to, and manipulated by the "residents" (hey, look, more irony). Richard, on the other hand, had written a dissertation and regularly presented at conferences about how important it was to defuse the word "retard" with retarded people, and especially with their relatives. He was so grown up about it that he could be a child with the people under his care.

Finally, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMpsttlXye8&NR=1, "rih-TARD" vs. "REE-tard." I could swear that Alan pointed out that the latter would be spelt with two e's, though.

-- 

Brad Morrison, brad.morrison@gmail.com. Part-time retard, full-time sysadmin. Go ahead, try and tell the difference.