DC Universe: The Source

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Superman Returns is still leaving a bitter taste in many fans’ mouths, and with WB’s decision to shelve all of their superhero films for the time being in order to plan the direction they should take, this seems a bit premature.

I would LOVE to see an awesome new Superman movie, but I’d like to see one that IS NOT THE START OF ANOTHER DAMN TRILOGY. Concentrate on ONE film at a time, and we won’t end up with something as watered down as Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns. That film had so much studio intervention in it that it was hard to see which bits of it had remained intact.

The best thing to do would be to sign the brothers up fir one film and see how it goes- don’t make any attempt at a trilogy unless it is something really different and exciting, y’know, like Doomsday, followed by Reign of the Supermen, followed by The Return of Superman. It’s not like there aren’t enough stories to tell.

GHOST RIDER 2
A sequel to Ghost Rider is moving forward and is due to go into production in the coming months. While the first film wasn’t exactly a huge hit at the box office, it did well enough on DVD to warrant a sequel. The new film will again star Nicholas Cage as Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider.

THING PREQUEL
The remake/prequel to John Carpenter’s version of THE THING is heading into production soon too. The film, which takes elements of the original version, Carpenter’s version and new prequel material, is set to start off a series of THING movies for a new generation.

RESIDENT EVIL 4
Sony are developing a fourth entry in the RESIDENT EVIL movie series. The project already has a script, written by Resident Evil veteran Paul WS Anderson, but that’s about all there is in the way of details so far, other than it will apparently take place in Alaska.No word yet on whether Milla Jovovich will be involved.

PREDATOR REBOOT
The trend of remaking everything in sight continues with the news that the PREDATOR movie series is to start over again with a proposed remake of the 1987 movie that saw Arnold Schwarzenegger face off against the ruthless hunter alien. This will apparently not get in the way of the next Alien Vs Predator film, which is said to be entitled ALIEN Vs PREDATOR: DARK FORTRESS and take place on a derelict prison ship.

FINAL WATCHMEN POSTER
To get the bad taste of remakes out of your eyes, check out the final poster for WATCHMEN here…

Some of you have been asking us just recently to tell you some of the history of Solomon Grundy in DC Comics. As you know this villain makes regular appearances over the years and is firmly entrenched as part of the DC Comics mythology. I will give you a few clues below to finding him in various comics and graphic novels, without giving too much away, so you can hunt some down and really enjoy your Halloween reading.

First you may know that “Solomon Grundy” is a  traditional 19th century children’s nursery rhyme and was presented by an English Shakespearean scholar.  James Orchard Halliwell-Philips in 1842. The poem was meant as a riddle in which the life of Solomon Grundy appears to take place in just one single week.

Solomon Grundy,

Born on a Monday,

Christened on Tuesday,

Married on Wednesday,

Took ill on Thursday,

Grew worse on Friday,

Died on Saturday,

Buried on Sunday.

That was the end of

Solomon Grundy.

However it is soon apparent that the answer to the riddle is that each day’s events represent the so called seven ages of man.

But did you know, a fine piece of trivia we found for you to treasure,  that the name “Solomon Grundy” is said to have first derived from the English food Salmagundi, which was integrated into the English language from the French in the 17th century? This is a salad, not for vegetarians, of cooked meats, lettuce, anchovies and eggs, with other condiments. The name of the salad was corrupted, particularly in the United States in the 18th century, to Solomon Gundy.

In Batman the Long Halloween DC Comics expert writer Jeph Loeb used the already well established DC villain Solomon Grundy but with a new twist on the lyrics, to include words illustrating the week’s prevailing weather rather than just about Solomon’s ‘brief’ life:

Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday,

Christened on a stark and stormy Tuesday,

Married on a gray and grisly Wednesday,

Took ill on a mild and mellow Thursday,

Grew worse on a bright and breezy Friday,

Died on a gay and glorious Saturday,

Buried on a baking, blistering Sunday.

That was the end of Solomon Grundy.

The original DC Comics version of Solomon Grundy depicts him as a large, heavy, strong creature type supervillain perhaps bearing some resemblance to that old classic, Frankenstein’s monster. The sorry tale begins in the late 19th century when a wealthy merchant named Cyrus Gold is brutally murdered and his sorry body dumped in the dreadful Slaughter Swamp, near Gotham City. However some fifty years later, the submerged decayed corpse is reanimated as a huge shambling zombie-like figure merged and entangled with putrid swamp matter. Solomon by now has understandably scant memory of his past debauched life.

Gold discovers and murders two hapless escaped criminals who are hiding out in the soggy marsh and steals their, at this stage quite useful, clothes to cover his obvious embarassment at being naked. He then finds his way to a somewhat sombre hobo camp. When questioned over his name, one of the few things he can recall is that he was “born on a Monday”. One of the men at the camp recalls the nursery rhyme character Solomon Gundy, who was born on a Monday, and Gold adopts that name and the rest is DC Comics history.

Strong, vicious, and having virtually lost his mind, Solomon Grundy quickly and naturally falls into a life of terrible crime. Over the years he regularly battles Green Lantern and his fellow members of the Justice Society of America. There are run-ins with Superman including classic combats across two Earths before – or should that be after? history is changed with DC Comics pivotal Crisis on Infinite Earths.

In Batman: The Long Halloween Grundy forms a strange friendship with newly-disfigured Harvey Dent when he escapes to the sewers to plot his revenge on the ruthless crimelord Carmine Falcone.

Prior to Infinite Crisis, Solomon Grundy is manipulated by Gorilla Grodd via mind control into attacking Batman and Superman for President Luthor for the bounty of one billion dollars in Superman/Batman. In Infinite Crisis #7, Solomon Grundy is seen fighting against the Blood Pack in the Battle of Metropolis.

As if not enough, through the years the villainous Solomon Grundy has also crossed paths with Starman, Green Arrow, Doctor Fate, Hawkgirl and many more famous DC Comics characters

Solomon Grundy later appeared in The Batman animated series. Here Grundy takes the form of a zombie as created by the poorer citizens of 19th century Gotham City. They cunningly made him in order to get horrible revenge and wreak havoc on the selfish rich landowners that polluted the local lake with toxic industrial waste. This incarnation of Grundy is shown as less heavy but certainly a good deal more ghoulish than the earlier Justice League monster version. There bears a closer resemblance to an actually rotted, desiccated corpse. Being “born” in Gotham, he naturally becomes a true Batman villain of the first order.

Local Gotham City legend has it that Solomon Grundy will again arise on a Halloween night when there is a total lunar eclipse in order to take more revenge by attacking the descendants of the rich landowners; fearful Gotham City residents therefore refer to this Halloween as “Grundy’s Night”.

Lunar Eclipse 2897

Fortunately for the residents of Gotham City, although total lunar eclipses do occur on Halloween, they are not very often. The last one took place over 800 years ago, in 1175. The next will occur in 2897, 889 years from now. Let’s hope the timeless Batman will still be as vigilant as ever!

Ladies, gentlemen, boys, girls, Daleks and Klingons, we are proud to bring you STARSTORECAST, the new podcast series from STARSTORE.COM and The Last Picture Show. Presented by Andrew Hawnt with Jonathan Winwood and Rich Thorp, the show brings you chat, reviews and all the geek infighting you can eat. Covering the latest in movies, TV, comics and collectibles, the current episode of STARSTORECAST is available to check out on the player below! You will soon be able to subscribe to the podcast too! Check back soon for the next episode!

STARSTORECAST EPISODE 1

First up, be sure you’re going to get a title you’ll be interested in. If you’re not into the idea of spandex and men flying and want something a bit more adult oriented, try Preacher, Hellblazer, Lucifer, Sandman, or pretty much anything else published by DC’s famous offshoot, Vertigo. If you want full-on Superhero action, you can’t go very wrong with the big names, Superman, Spider-Man, etc. If you want to jump into a well established series, such as X-men, it might be an idea to check the series out on Wikipedia or the Marvel site to get to grips with the continuity a little.

Confused by the terminology involved? Again, just ask. Not sure what a graphic novel is? A graphic novel, or trade paperback (sometimes shortened to just ‘Trades’) are collections of comic books that tell a whole story together. Some collect full series/miniseries of one title, where others just collect individual story arcs for easy consumption.  A mini-series, or Limited series, is a standalone story told in four issues or so. These don’t always have to be part of the continuity of the individual universe they take place in, and are on many occasions much more satisfying reads in that they have a better collective story arc. One shot? A one-shot is a story told in a single issue, published outside of an ongoing series.

A crossover? Crossovers are lengthy stories that take place over various titles, for example the recent SECRET INVASION storyline from Marvel, which took place right across the Marvel Universe and thus parts of it were published right across their whole range. Maxi series? A maxi series is a longer version of a mini, running for twelve issues or so, which allows for greater character development and a more gripping plot.

But industry terminology aside, how do you actually READ comic books and graphic novels? Okay, the obvious answer is ‘open them, read the words and look at the pictures’, but there’s more to the medium than just that. Many times you will find the stories are told more by what is going on in each panel rather than the dialogue or narration. Look deeper than just what the people are doing or saying. Check out their body language, their expressions, the background, the things that aren’t said. These things are called graphic novels for a reason- they are novels in which you can delve deeper and garner more detail from what you see in the lines of the art.

The comics industry is so much more than simple talks of derring-do and heroism against powerful villains. The indie titles are full of real life drama and emotion, while even the most commercial superhero titles on the market will carry some dramatic weight. Comics aren’t stupid, they really aren’t. Some of the finest writers alive today make up the higher echelons of the comics pantheon, people like Neil Gaiman, J Michael Straczynski, Brad Meltzer,  Warren Ellis and the ubiquitous Alan Moore. There are any number of fascinating and addictive universes out there to enjoy. All you have to do to enter them is browse and ask.

DOCTOR WHO- BBC DENIES RUMOURS
The BBC have openly denied the rumours of Paul McGann’s return in the Doctor Who specials that spread across the UK media recently. No surprises there really, as they’ve denied everything from the Daleks coming back in series 2 to the Master and Rose’s return along the line, so the rumour is probably more true than the BBC care to admit. Either way, it really is time the eighth Doctor was given another chance to shine. After all, Paul McGann is one of the British acting profession’s most talented men.

THE DARK KNIGHT… RETURNS?
Warners will be rereleasing The Dark Knight in cinemas in January, just in time for Oscars season. Whether the film will be rereleased over here is not yet known, but I can’t see them missing out on milking another few quid out of the film before people’s interest wanes.

HOT TOYS PREVIEW TWO-FACE FIGURE
Following on from the hugely popular large format Dark Knight Joker figures from Hot Toys, a figure of Harvey Dent/Two-Face has been previewed on the HT site that looks set to carry on the interest in the range. Once we have something other than the teaser image (which doesn’t show much at all, hence it being a teaser), we’ll post it here. Looks promising though.