The weekend is almost here! What geeky things are you all doing? Sound off in the comments below! While you think about that, here’s some comic news and a review from around the web.
Writer Dan Watters Artist Lamar Mathurin Cover A: Andie Tong Cover B: Photo Cover Cover C: Claudia Ianniciello FC, 32pp, $3.99 On Sale January 26, 2022
BASED ON THE NEW NETFLIX LIVE-ACTION ADAPTATION OF THE ORIGINAL ANIME!
An original story set in the year 2171. The bounty hunter crew of the spaceship Bebop chase an ex-gang member who holds a vest which gives the wearer unlimited luck.
New Netflix series starring John Cho (STAR TREK), Mustafa Shakir (LUKE CAGE) and Daniela Pinada (JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM).
Cowboy Bebop is an action-packed space Western about three bounty hunters, aka “cowboys,” all trying to outrun the past. As different as they are deadly, Spike Spiegel (John Cho), Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir), and Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda) form a scrappy, snarky crew ready to hunt down the solar system’s most dangerous criminals — for the right price. But they can only kick and quip their way out of so many scuffles before their pasts finally catch up with them.
Based on the beloved anime series, Cowboy Bebop is executive produced by André Nemec, Jeff Pinkner, Josh Appelbaum and Scott Rosenberg of Midnight Radio, Marty Adelstein and Becky Clements of Tomorrow Studios, Makoto Asanuma, Shin Sasaki and Masayuki Ozaki of Sunrise Inc., Tim Coddington, Tetsu Fujimura, Michael Katleman, Matthew Weinberg, and Christopher Yost. Nemec serves as showrunner. Original anime series director Shinichirō Watanabe is a consultant on the series, and original composer Yoko Kanno returns for the live-action adaptation. The series also stars Alex Hassell and Elena Satine.
Watch Cowboy Bebop, a live-action series, only on Netflix Nov. 19.
Cowboy Bebop is an action-packed space Western about three bounty hunters, aka “cowboys,” all trying to outrun the past. As different as they are deadly, Spike Spiegel (John Cho), Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir), and Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda) form a scrappy, snarky crew ready to hunt down the solar system’s most dangerous criminals — for the right price. But they can only kick and quip their way out of so many scuffles before their pasts finally catch up with them.
It’s time to blow this scene. Who’s in? Cowboy Bebop arrives Nov. 19.
Cowboy Bebop is an action-packed space Western about three bounty hunters, aka “cowboys,” all trying to outrun the past. As different as they are deadly, Spike Spiegel (John Cho), Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir), and Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda) form a scrappy, snarky crew ready to hunt down the solar system’s most dangerous criminals — for the right price. But they can only kick and quip their way out of so many scuffles before their pasts finally catch up with them.
Based on the beloved anime series, Cowboy Bebop is executive produced by André Nemec, Jeff Pinkner, Josh Appelbaum and Scott Rosenberg of Midnight Radio, Marty Adelstein and Becky Clements of Tomorrow Studios, Makoto Asanuma, Shin Sasaki and Masayuki Ozaki of Sunrise Inc., Tim Coddington, Tetsu Fujimura, Michael Katleman, Matthew Weinberg, and Christopher Yost. Nemec serves as showrunner. Original anime series director Shinichirō Watanabe is a consultant on the series, and original composer Yoko Kanno returns for the live-action adaptation. The series also stars Alex Hassell and Elena Satine.
Based on the live-action adaptation of the anime, Cowboy Bebop #1 comes to comic shops on December 8. Written by Dan Watters with art by Lamar Mathurin the comic is an original story set in the year 2171. The bounty hunter crew of the spaceship Bebop chase an ex-gang member who holds a vest which gives the wearer unlimited luck.
Titan Comics has revealed the covers for the first issue from Stanley “Artgerm” Lau, Claudia Ianniciello, Afu Chan, Yishin Li, and a photo cover.
Titan Publishing has announced a new collaboration with Netflix to publish the official fiction, non-fiction, and comics for the eagerly anticipated upcoming series, Cowboy Bebop, set to premier on Netflix on November 19 2021. A prequel novel to be published in November 2021 will be followed by a beautiful coffee table art book detailing the making of the series in Spring 2022. These will also be accompanied by an original comic book series featuring the characters from the show, which will debut in December 2021.
Based on the worldwide phenomenon from Sunrise Inc., COWBOY BEBOP is an action-packed space Western about three bounty hunters, aka “cowboys,” all trying to outrun the past. As different as they are deadly, Spike Spiegel (John Cho), Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir), and Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda) form a scrappy, snarky crew ready to hunt down the solar system’s most dangerous criminals — for the right price. But they can only kick and quip their way out of so many scuffles before their pasts finally catch up with them.
With an exclusive adventure leading into the events of the series, COWBOY BEBOP: A SYNDICATE STORY: RED PLANET REQUIEM is written by Sean Cummings, a staff writer on the series. Explore the rich history of Cowboy Bebop through the eyes of a young Spike Spiegel and Vicious.
COWBOY BEBOP: MAKING THE NETFLIX SERIES captures the epic journey behind the scenes of Netflix’s live-action Cowboy Bebop adaptation! Featuring an exclusive foreword by showrunner André Nemec, this official companion is packed full of beautiful concept art and revealing behind-the-scenes photography, as the cast and crew tell the story of how one of the most influential anime series of all time was translated over to live action in this much-anticipated series produced by Netflix and Tomorrow Studios (Snowpiercer).
COWBOY BEBOP: THE COMIC SERIES will introduce fans of the series to a never-before-seen comic story. Set in the year 2171, the bounty hunter crew of the spaceship Bebop chase an ex-gang member who holds a vest which gives the wearer unlimited luck. This new series will be penned by DC comics veteran Dan Watters with art by Lamar Mathurin and will debut with a range of fantastic covers including cover art by comics legend Stanley ‘Artgerm’ Lau. #1 of this four-issue story will arrive in stores December 2021 with a collected trade paperback coming May 2022.
It’s new comic book day tomorrow! What are you all excited for? What do you plan on getting? Sound off in the comments below. While you decide on that, here’s some comic news and reviews from around the web in our morning roundup.
In 2020, the Los Angeles-based Secret Movie Club is hosting screenings of some of the most beloved anime of all time, as part of their Anime Buffet programming slate, which will run from January through April 2020. The Anime Buffet slate is scheduled to include such films as Ghost in the Shell, Perfect Blue, Paprika, Millennium Actress, Metropolis (2001), The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Vampire Hunter D, Grave of the Fireflies, and Tokyo Godfathers. Screenings will alternate between two different locations: the Vista Theater in Los Feliz, the historic single screen theater built in 1922, and the Club, Secret Movie Club’s new downtown location.
Attendees can purchase limited edition SECRET MOVIE CLUB posters for every screening at all events, which feature new art by contemporary illustrators. Each film is preceded by a brief talk from Secret Movie Club founder Craig Hammill and a trivia question for the audience.
COWBOY BEBOP: THE MOVIE
(2001, Sony, dir by Shinichiro Watanabe, 35mm, 115mns)
Friday, January 10, 2020 @ 11:59p, The Vista
In 2071, earth has been ravaged by catastrophe. Humans have colonized other planets and the universe is a new Wild West. A group of Bounty Hunters travel on the spaceship BeBop in search of quarry and rewards. When a contagion gets released in a truck disaster on Mars, our heroes-Spike, Jet, Faye, Ed, and Ein (a dog with human-grade smarts due to artificial enhancement) go off in search of the culprit and the reward that goes with it.
“One of the great things with Japanese anime, as with all cinema and art, is how each set of creators imbue the genre with their own personal style and stamp,” said Craig Hammill. “Cowboy Be Bop, as its title itself implies, is a mashup of sci-fi, westerns, Hong Kong action movies, and an improvisatory iconoclastic jazz rhythm that make the viewing experience a total blast and totally singular.”
VAMPIRE HUNTER D
(1985, Sentai Filmworks, dir by Toyoo Ashida, 80mns)
Friday, January 17, 2020 @ 7:30p, The Club, 1917 Bay Street, 2nd Floor, LA, CA 90021
The movie centers on Doris Lang, the daughter of a werewolf hunter, who gets bitten by 10,000 year old Count Magnus Lee one night. She then meets a strange vampire hunter, who only goes by the name D, and employs him to take on the long-lost vampire lord and try to help her from becoming a vampire herself.
“Vampire Hunter D is one of the earliest examples of Japanese anime that was made explicitly with teenagers and adults more in mind than children,” said Hammill. “Made for the then emerging direct to video market, Vampire Hunter D had a smaller budget than its feature film peers. But in a strange way, this freed up director Toyoo Ashida to make a more exciting, violent, sensual animation. Ashida has gone on the record as saying his intent with the movie was to make something thrilling that tired students could enjoy during study breaks rather than make an anime that further exhausted them. Full of genre mash-ups, amazing art and design, and storytelling, Vampire Hunter D definitely serves as a prototype and torch in the darkness for future directors like Satoshi Kon, who will take anime into ever more complex, adult, shadowy realms.”
GHOST IN THE SHELL
(1995, Lionsgate, dir by Mamoru Oshii, 85mns)
Saturday, January 18, 2020 @ 11:59p, The Vista:
Often the cyberpunk genre, which would come to full flourish here in the United States with the Wachowski’s The Matrix, can be traced most directly to two Japanese anime parents: 1988’s Akira and 1995’s Ghost in the Shell. Often considered one of the greatest Japanese anime movies of all time, Ghost in the Shell, dives head first into the darker, deeper waters of more adult sci-fi.
It’s 2029 and the human body can be augmented with “smart” prosthetic cybernetics. The most recent innovation, and the most terrifying, is a cyberbrain, which allows humans to now go online/get hooked into the internet, straight through their neural pathways. Our hero, Motoko Kusanagi, is part of an elite squad that fights crime in “New Port City” in Japan. Currently, they are kept busy by an arch criminal known as “The Puppet Master” who appears to have the ability to hack into these “cyberbrains” and get folks to assassinate, kill, commit crimes. As Motoko further explores what’s going on with both the Puppet Master and the innovations in cybernetics, she stumbles across a revelation that goes to the very heart of our philosophical understanding of what makes us unique individuals: what constitutes our “soul”.
PAPRIKA
(2006, Sony Pictures Classics, dir by Satoshi Kon, 35mm, 90mns)
Friday, January 31, 2020 @ 11:59p, The Vista:
If Hayao Miyazaki is synonymous with a kind of all-ages wildly imaginative Japanese anime, then director Satoshi Kon is synonymous with a Japanese anime that dares to go to the very limits of what any kind of cinema can explore in terms of human psychology, fear, desire, imagination. And he does it in the most creative and miraculous of artistic ways.
Paprika is one of his wildest mind-bending creations of all. In the near-future, there is a device called the “DC Mini” which allows Dr. Atsuko Chiba to enter the dreams of her patients (using her alter-ego “Paprika”) to help try to discover the root of their fears, anxieties, and hang ups. But the problem is that the “DC Mini” is still in prototype mode with no restrictions or safety barriers whatsoever. And if it gets into the wrong hands (which of course it does), it allows the thieves to enter dreams for more sinister and nefarious reasons.
METROPOLIS
(2001, Sony, dir by Rintaro, 113mns total, 35mm, Japanese with English subtitles)
Saturday, February 1, 2020 @ 10:45p, The Club
Written by Katsohiro Otomo (writer/director of the classic anime Akira), Metropolis shares much of its DNA with that seminal anime classic including a central character who is rocked to their psychological core by the realization of their “super human” abilities and an impending apocalypse that threatens the entire foundations of a huge city.
MILLENNIUM ACTRESS
(2002, 11 Arts, dir by Satoshi Kon, 82mns, Japanese with English subtitles)
Wednesday, February 12, 2020 @ 8p, The Club
Millennium Actress tells the emotional story (in a decidedly surreal and modernist way) of famous actor Chiyoko Fujiwara, who tells her life story to documentarians and explains she only ever became an actress in the hopes of being recognized by an artist/political rebel she fell in love with as a teenager and never saw again. As Chiyoko tells her story, it becomes hard to tell what’s her real life, what are movie scenes she starred in, and where fiction/reality meet and diverge.
Special Note: There will be three originally written 3-4 minute monologues performed by three actresses ahead of the screening running a total of 10-12 minutes.
PERFECT BLUE
(1997, GKIDS, dir by Satoshi Kon, 35mm, 81mns)
Friday, February 21, 2020 @ 11:59p, The Vista
Kon fully commits to an anime that is as rich, dark, and complex as any Scorsese, Kubrick, Lynch, or Bergman movie. But with the added benefit of being able to cinematically represent psychological states of mind in a way that is often impossible in live-action cinema.
“If you want to see anime that absolutely succeeds in expanding the playing field of what cinema can do, come join us for Perfect Blue,” said Hammill.
THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME
(2006, Funimation, directed by Mamoru Hosoda, 98mns; English dubbed version)
Saturday, March 14, 2020 @ 10:30a, the Vista
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time tells the story of young teenager Makoto Konno who discovers a magical object in her high school that allows her to leap through time and prevent situations that caused her great embarrassment. This premise, as with all good premises fully explored, deepens into a meditation on wish fulfillment versus reality. Makoto, first using the device for frivolous things, comes to realize that the device has its price. And that she is not the only one using it. . .
GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES
(1988, GKids, directed by Isao Takahata, 90mns; Japanese with English subtitles)
Saturday, April 4, 2020 @ 10:30a, the Vista
One of the absolute greatest animes ever made, Grave of the Fireflies, directed by Isao Takahata, deals with siblings Seita and Satsuko, who have to rely on each other to survive after they’re separated from their parents during the American fire-bombing of Tokyo in the late stages of World War II.
Secret Movie Club is a group project among the founders and the audience. Audience suggestions are taken and often used. Secret Movie Club aims to celebrate the wonderful experience that comes from watching the world’s greatest movies in great movie theaters with great audiences.
It’s supposed to get hot here this weekend at GP HQ. We’ll be taking advantage of air conditioning while reading some comics. What geeky things will you all be doing? Sound off in the comments.
While you wait for the weekday to end and the weekend to begin, here’s some comic news and reviews from around the web.
