-

Then & Now, & Then Again


The previous post wandered into Harry Potter territory, and reminded me that The Books of Magic is being adapted into film. A DC comics (well, their Vertigo imprint) miniseries of that title introduced the comics-reading portion of the world to a young, bespectacled boy who had no idea he was destined to become the world's most powerful magician. Sound familiar? Well, this lad's name was Tim Hunter, and the year was 1990, long before Harry was born in print.

From the first time I'd heard a thumbnail sketch of Harry Potter I've wondered how much of an uphill battle it will be against public perception that Tim Hunter is some sort of Harry Potter rip-off. With the motion picture tentatively scheduled for 2006, it'll probably be a while yet before we find out, but it's coming.

It's darkly amusing to find that almost two years ago, when the script was being refined, that they felt that had to "un-Harry Potter Tim Hunter," according to Tim Hunter creator Neil Gaiman. (Well, the quote is buried in an interview at the first of these links, as the interview was strongly centered on Gaiman's then-new novel, American Gods, which is, sadly, one of his ultimately least effective efforts.) This largely tells me that they considered it a battle not worth fighting, one in which they would only engender more ill will than good.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

-
Image
Insurance Company-Driven Propaganda Storm It's almost heartening to see them go to these lengths - they're getting a little scared - though I worry how many wingnut media outlets will reference the report as if it's substantive..? ( From the Washington Post ) The Insurance Industry's Deceptive Report by Ezra Klein In the hallowed tradition of the tobacco and energy industries, the health insurance industry has commissioned a report (pdf) projecting doom and despair for those who seek to reform its business practices. The report was farmed out to the consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers, which has something of a history with this sort of thing: In the early-'90s, the tobacco industry commissioned PWC to estimate the economic devastation that would result from a tax on tobacco. The report was later analyzed by the Arthur Andersen Economic Consulting group, which concluded that "the cumulative effect of PW’s methods … is to produce patently unreliable results.&qu
Read more

The Tease of Things I Don't Need

-
Image
     The lure of things we don't need, could easily find greater needs to apply the cash to, and which we may not even have the space for, is a very First(ish) World Problem, to be sure.        HasLabs is a special projects division of Hasbro, that occasionally pitches large and/or elaborate items - oversized figures and/or vehicles - essentially crowdfunding each project. They set the price, and a funding line - the number of people who need to pledge to buy one (or more -- up to five) at the announced price, then collect the names and information of interested parties for a period of 45 days. Once the number of pledged buys hits the target, the project is greenlit.      A couple years ago there was a HasLabs special build project aiming to fund a production run for an oversized (32" tall), elaborately-articulated action figure of Marvel comics' Devourer of Worlds: Galactus. Back on July 18, 2021 I posted a piece on the project, which at the time was just two days
Read more

Oct.13-19 - More Returns and Changes

-
Image
      Even though I've already watched the pair of debut episodes of Frasier (see next paragraph), and this week's Star Trek: Lower Decks (which continues to do a stellar job of mining  previous Trek series for character, episode and extraterrestrial culture lore and deftly applying them at breakneck speeds), I still have multiple things I'm looking forward to catching up on, including new eps of Gen V (Amazon Prime), Loki (Disney+), and both Archer and Welcome to Wrexham (both on Hulu), along with the first two episodes of a final six for Doom Patrol over on Max... and that's just off the top of my head, so getting this week's streaming post out of the way brings those one step closer for me.       I've watched the two episodes of the new Frasier series that arrived on Paramount+ this week, and while it was a mixed bag it was good to see the character back, with him attempting to move into his third act by returning to Boston, where we first met the ch
Read more