In an interview with the LA Times and in a Twitter based Q&A session, Frank Miller has revealed some details of his upcoming Xerxes, a graphic novel prequel to the groundbreaking 300 with a decent shot at becoming another movie if all goes according to plan.  For example, while Xerxes is the title character, the “lead character” is Themistocles, whose historical role is actually super interesting.  Even Miller admits that the intellectual Athenian statesman Themistocles is the polar opposite of the Spartan war-king Leonidas.  The story will begin at the Battle of Marathon and cover ten years’ time, presumably wrapping up somewhere around the Battle of Thermopylae (i.e., 300).  Both Leonidas and Ephialtes will appear.

Well, that’s all the facts.  But we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out the details in there that stirred the sleeping beast of our nerdrage.  Stirred it, but did not rouse it to full wakefulness.

Also, why is it that even unaltered stills from 300 look like bad Photoshop mock-ups?

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This week, at the annual New York Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Festival, Frank Miller took part in a panel on the “art of superheroes,” where he grumpily confirmed that he is no longer making his 122 page “Batman Fights Al-Qaeda” opus.

Fellow panelist Kyle Baker mentioned that he prefers to keep politics out of his superhero comics, leaving such heady subjects as religious extremism and the war on terror to his self published work.  When he acknowledged that “trying to shoehorn Batman into Afghanistan” was more Miller’s speed, Miller replied “No, I’m not doing that anymore.”

This weekend is Wondercon and of course announcements are rolling out to let us know what to expect from the world of comics, movies, and science fiction. The two that have caught our eye are not exactly what we would call reassuring.

DC Comics has announced that Frank Miller and Jim Lee are still dedicated to the long running “deadline challenged” series of All-Star Batman and Robin, and will be starting up a new series Dark Knight: Boy Wonder, to begin running in February 2011. They promise that these issues will ship on time. Without, you know, switching to a bi-monthly schedule halfway through. And then a five month delay on the last issue which ultimately has to be recalled.

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To the joy of every fan who’s still sort of hoping for a Jurassic Park IV (10 years ago I heard there was going to be a Velociraptor/motorcycle chase and have clung to the idea ever since) IDW Publishing has announced that they will have a new Jurassic Park based series starting up in June.

The title is Jurassic Park: Redemption, and I can’t decide if that’s more awesome than it is hilarious, or more hilarious than it is awesome.

Fresh on the heels of Alice in Wonderland’s box office success, rumors are flying about not one, but two feature film remakes of The Wizard of Oz.  Now, there’s more than one way to retell a story, and there are a few ways to redo Wizard that would probably work.  The odds of Hollywood actually finding those particular ways is unlikely.

More and more often these days, I find myself shouting at movie trailers and announcements: “WHY would you remake that?” Clash of the Titans?  The Karate Kid? My Fair Lady?

I’d like to take some time and explain when a remake generally isn’t a good idea, and when it generally is, and whether or not this means that The Wizard of Oz is something we should revisit.

Legendary graphic novelist Frank Miller — you may know him as the guy behind The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, and 300, appears to have recently joined Twitter with the username FrankMillerInk.

The account has yet to be verified, so it may just be a hat-clad impostor, but MTV’s Splash Page reports that ““The Spirit” movie producer F.J. DeSanto and “Fanboys” director Kyle Newman have lightly verified the account with their own tweets.”

A few more points of evidence in favor of this being the real Miller: