We tend to pass on geeky burlesque here because we don’t want to be the site that does a full post whenever a star of the Justice League Porn Parody sneezes.

But Dr. Sketchy’s recent tribute to Neil Gaiman‘s Sandman blew us away.  Dr. Sketchy’s isn’t exactly pure burlesque.  Referring to itself as an Anti-Art School, it’s an international franchise that mixes burlesque with life-drawing.  From Wikipedia:

A Dr. Sketchy’s class may consist of a burlesque dancer (such as Veronica Varlow) or some type of performer (drag queens, trapeze artists, or roller derby girls) as the featured model, with drawing contests during breaks. Sketchers are known as “art monkeys”, a term borrowed from the Madagascar Institute. Dr. Sketchy’s features heavy drinking games, comedic skits and onstage go-go dancing.

What makes the Sandman tribute so amazing is a combination of costuming, casting, and performer characterization.

The performers were dressed as Death, Delirium, and Desire, three of the seven Endless siblings.  Sandman focused on mainly on Dream, the anthropomorphic personification of creativity, story, and the unconscious.   His sister Death appeared mostly as a… well, big sister, happy to dispense useful advice and/or a motivational kick in the pants when needed.  She’s considered one of the most friendly of the Endless to mortals, because unlike the others, she meets all of them at least twice.

Desire, one of Dream’s younger siblings, is neither one gender nor the other.  I’ve often remained skeptical at the ability of a live performer to present a truly androgynous Desire, but I think Dr. Sketchy’s nailed this one.  Naturally, Desire is one of the cruelest of the Endless, probably even worse that its twin Despair, and spends most of the books idly plotting against its brother without really considering the possible consequences of its actions.

Delirium’s appearance changes each time she shows up in the books, sometimes mid-scene.  Gaiman himself has written that the tragedy of Delirium is that despite being older than stars, older than cultures, she will always be the youngest of the Endless.  She used to be Delight, way back when Earth was still mostly molten rock, and we’re never really told why she felt she had to change.

What?  Of course I have an extensive theory as to why!

There are many more pictures over at DrSketchy.com, all of them (including the ones in this post) taken by Lauren Goldberg.  Oh, and btw, this month the NYC Dr. Sketchy’s is doing a Transmetropolitan tribute. Allow us to personify our feelings towards this:

(via Neil Gaiman’s Journal.)

We love Better Book Titles because it helps us feel like good little anti-literary-establishment rebels by thinking “Hah, yeah, there really wasn’t much else to that classic work of art, was there?” when we actually like nothing better than the pretentious joy of having slogged through a classic book that no one actually reads anymore.

In case you are confused, Better Book Titles is a blog that condenses the content of famous books into the few words that should have been on the title, to save us all a bunch of time.

This week they did graphic novels and it is awesome.

(Ghost World)

(David Boring)

(Blankets)

(From Hell)

Fan sites are trumpeting the news today that Stephen King‘s Dark Tower has been greenlit for a film adaptation. But for television, or movies, you ask?

Both.  The idea is to have a trilogy of movies that aren’t completely consecutive, narrative-wise.  The story in between each movie will be done as a television show that will run in between the theatrical releases.

We’ve never read the Dark Tower series, but we find ourselves really intrigued by this proposed method of adaptation.  It is an extremely elegant solution to adapting a serial story that nevertheless really needs a big screen and big budget to do it justice, without the necessary serialization that occurs in miniseries.  And we’ve seen it before, in an incredibly successful way.  Remember Clone Wars?

We’d like to see this approach put towards other works as well, even though, as some have rightfully pointed out, it is unorthodox, logistically tricky, and incredibly expensive.

A few examples:

• Bone

Bone is something of the odd one out here, in that it would probably best be done as a high budget live action movie with plenty of motion capture for the non-human characters, and its television incarnation, for budget reasons, would have to be animated.

The way I see it, it would be best to start off with a movie, probably covering up through the end of The Great Cow Race, the point at which all the main characters have been introduced and the basic conflicts have been set up, but there’s still a certain amount of closure before the plot moves on.  Then we could probably stay in television territory until it came time to cap off the whole story in Treasure Hunters and Crown of Horns.

• Otherland

Sometimes I think I’m the only person in the world who has read Tad Williams‘ Otherland series, and I’ve even read it twice.  Though it is four books, it is essentially one story, with more than a dozen main characters, told over the course of four seven-hundred-page paperback books.

Each book builds slowly to a climax, usually the kind of big events that raise more questions and start more plot threads than they finish.  And so it seems natural that a seasons if the television show might be punctuated regularly with a movie that brings all the characters together at the end of City of Golden Shadow, covers the events at Troy in Mountain of Black Glass, and the wrapping of the entire story in Sea of Silver Light.  Believe me when I say that a visual adaptation of this story would be incredibly exciting to fans.  The length is daunting, but there is a lot of creativity in there.

• Sandman

Well, if you must make a film adaptation of Sandman, Mr. Kripke, if you absolutely must, this might be a good way to do it. That way we can get the big budget film effects for events like those of Season of Mists (think of the ensemble cast!), A Game of You (the most self contained of the volumes), Brief Lives (a classic buddy/road trip plot), and The Kindly Ones (high-fantasy/horror); but can still keep the serial format that would most suit the shorter stories in the series, like Hob Gadling’s introduction, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the story of Emperor Norton, and Orpheus’ tale.

I wouldn’t even care if no actor wanted to play Dream for all of those different adaptations.  In fact, I think I’d prefer seeing his character spread out over different people.

The downside here is that the large but contained stories in Sandman don’t occur with much rhythm, and their placement would probably be confusing to those unfamiliar with the comics. Also, the final bits of the story would occur in the television show, not on the big screen.

The show’s development into a TV series is still in its “early stages”; the biggest impediment right now is that Warner is still “in the midst of acquiring television rights” for the show from DC Entertainment – a process which may be made easier considering that DC Entertainment is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Entertainment — and Warner is “in talks with several writer-producers about adapting the 1990s comic.”

Their current top pick to direct TV Sandman, supposedly? Supernatural creator Eric Kripke. Topless Robot’s Rob Bricken is excited by the prospect of this:

[F]rom everything I’ve heard about the show, Kripke sounds like the perfect choice to make a Sandman series. He knows how to make weird material exciting and watchable to modern audiences, without dumbing down the material, and can handle both serialized storylines and overarching plots with panache. If he’s any kind of a nerd — and I’m guessing he is — I imagine he’d treat the source material with the respect it deserves, too.

A word of caution: This follows several unsuccessful attempts to adapt Sandman, first as a film through the ’90s, then as an HBO series. One key question here is which network this would be for: A Sandman adaptation on, say, a broadcast network like The CW would presumably have to be toned down a lot more than Sandman for a cable network. A watered-down TV Sandman would be more of a heartbreaker than more than no show at all, but it’s still exciting that this is a live possibility once more.

(Heat Vision via Topless Robot)

It’s not everyday you see the Associated Press link to Neil Gaiman‘s blog. So what’s all the fuss about? Yesterday, a federal court judge ruled that Spawn creator Todd McFarlane owed royalties to the Sandman writer, over three derivative characters—Dark Ages Spawn and shapely warrior angels Domina and Tiffany—based on Gaiman’s own “Medieval Spawn” characters, created when he guest wrote issue #9 in 1993.

We recount the case’s history, which stretches back over seven years, after the break.

For those of you unfamiliar with Spawn, the comic book was launched in 1992 under Image Comics, which was also responsible for launching series like WildC.A.T.s, Gen¹³, and Witchblade. In 1997, it was adapted into a TV series for HBO as well as a well-received feature film.

In 2002, a federal jury found that Gaiman, who had been invited by McFarlane himself to write an issue of the then-new Spawn comic, was a co-copyright holder in the characters of Medieval Spawn, the angelic bounty hunter Angela, and one-time ally Count Nicholas Cogliostro; exactly how much profit is owed from these properties are still being determined 17 years later.

Meanwhile, Gaiman asked for a trial on the issue of three characters from the 1999 crossover series Spawn: The Dark Ages. District Judge Barbara Crabb, the newest geek-loved judge in Madison Wisconsin, ordered an evidentiary hearing to be held on June 14. At that time, Gaiman testified that he thought the Dark Ages characters in question were imitations of his past creations. Last week, Crabb ruled in agreement of that claim.

Taking her job seriously, Crabb had evidently immersed herself in the mythology of Spawn. If the hellspawn only arrived on Earth every 400 years, she noted, why did McFarlane choose to introduce two Spawns from the same time period?

“…why not make him a Portuguese explorer in the 16th century; an officer of the Royal Navy in the 18th century, an idealistic recruit of Simon Bolivar in the 19th century, a companion of Odysseus on his voyages, a Roman gladiator, a younger brother of Emperor Nakamikado in the early 18th century, a Spanish conquistador, an aristocrat in the Qing dynasty, an American Indian warrior or a member of the court of Queen Elizabeth I? It seems far more than coincidence that Dark Ages (McFarlane) Spawn is a knight from the same century as Medieval (Gaiman) Spawn.

Crabb also offered an amusing observation of the similarities shared by Angela, Domina, and Tiffany, calling them “kick-ass warrior angels” with “voluptuous physiques, long hair and mask-like eye makeup. Their ‘uniforms’ consist of thong bikinis, garters, wide weapon belts, elbow-length gloves and poorly adjusted armor bras.”

On McFarlane’s part, he defended himself by claiming the rules of the Spawn universe were never constant, and that the characters were distinct from one another. “Certainly they are similar enough to be infringing if they had been produced and sold by someone other than the copyright owner,” Crabb wrote.

She ruled that the comic creator has until September 1 to provide Gaiman an accounting of money earned from any comic books and other merchandising in which Dark Ages Spawn, Domina, and Tiffany appeared. Gaiman, now holding copyright interest in these characters, would be entitled to half of the profits.

In a blog post last Friday, Gaiman wrote about his reluctance about the whole matter:

“I wish I took some kind of joy in this, but I don’t. At this point all I hope is that Todd can do an accounting for all the comics I wrote for which he paid no royalties, and the rest of it; and that he’ll settle up and I will make some comics charities very happy.”

To his credit, McFarlane graciously tweeted the following late last night:

COMMENT: Neil Gaiman has the absolute right to defend his position. That’s one of the great privileges we all have in this country. TODD

Here are images of the characters, so you can decide for yourselves:

(L to R: Dark Ages Spawn and Medieval Spawn, via)

(L to R: Angela, Tiffany, Domina, via)

(via AP, Wiconsin State Journal, and CBR)

I’ve never bought an issue of Action Comics before, but that’s all set to change. October’s issue is going to have a very special guest star: Death herself.  And yes, according to The Source, Neil Gaiman approves.

Death is the second oldest of the Endless, and a major character in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, which, though neither Vertigo or DC mention it very often, is a part of the DC Universe.  Apparently, she has a date with Lex Luthor.

Ok, not a literal date, but that would explain why she’s bringing him flowers.  It would also niche nicely with the effect she has on any mortal she meets before their actual death: they fall in love with her.

According to The Source:

Luthor, as fans of the series know, is in the midst of a storyline that takes him on a winding and dangerous quest for power – a quest that will bring the megalomaniacal villain into close proximity with characters in and beyond the far reaches of the DC Universe.

It doesn’t get much more far out than Death.  Good luck, Mr. Luthor.  Even when encountering the most, ah, social of the Endless, you’re going to need it.  Here’s the full cover of Action Comics #894 (click for incredibly high rez):

At the beginning of this week we were saddened by the news that Guillermo del Toro will no longer be working on The Hobbit movie.  Among other things, we were really looking forward to seeing his Mirkwood, and to watching Weta Workshop‘s triumphant return to Middle Earth. But we are comforting ourselves by imagining all the other projects he is now free to pursue.

Below, we outline four of our Guillermo del Toro dream projects, and a few bonus projects that, you know, might actually happen.

1. Hellboy III

This one’s a no-brainer, but seems less likely considering del Toro’s schedule.  After the beautiful second film, which managed to take all the elements that we loved in the first (hidden supernatural world, tight design aesthetic, fiddly relationship between the paranormal characters and the normal ones) and just do them more.  We really want to see del Toro pick up the story where Hellboy II left off.  Preferably with Hellbabies.

2. Anything by Neil Gaiman

Anything. Seriously. My first thought on this was that even though I think it’s impossible to translate Sandman to cinema, if Guillermo del Toro tried, I would watch it. Then I realized the he could do the hell out of an American Gods movie/miniseries. Then I realized that pretty much every Neil Gaiman story would be right up his alley. Neverwhere, Murder Mystery, or We Can Get Them For You Wholesale. Make it so, sirs.

3. Garth Nix’s Sabriel

Sabriel is a young adult novel by Australian writer Garth Nix, that takes place in a world half-medieval, half-steampunk.  Literally.  The two countries in the setting are separated by a centuries old wall.  South of the wall, technology has reached the industrial revolution.  North of the wall, spirits walk, necromancy reigns, and anything more complicated than a simple machine simply breaks down.  The novels’ protagonist, Sabriel, is the only child of the Abhorsen, and so will one day follow in her father’s footsteps to become the Old Kingdom’s only defense against necromancers living and dead.

There are two factors that make Sabriel perfect for del Toro’s taste in subject matter.  First, its density of design.  Nix paints the world of the book with detail, from clothing, to vehicles, to architecture.  The realm beyond life, which characters frequently visit in order to talk to the dead or put risen souls back where they belong is a treacherous realm of endless water.  In its first level, the current simply tugs at your feet, willing you to give in and let it carry you through.  Further levels are far less subtle.

Second: the walking dead.

4. Clive Barker’s Abarat

Do I need to say anything more about a possible collaboration between horror masters Guillermo del Toro and Clive Barker?

Oh, all right.

Abarat is Barker’s young adult novel series, which he writes and illustrates.  Yes, illustrates.  The protagonist is a sixteen-year-old girl with an abusive alcoholic father who stumbles into the Abarat, an archipelago of magical islands, each of which represents a different hour of the day.  The main villain is a man named Christopher Carrion, the Prince of Midnight.  He looks like this.  His mouth is surrounded by scars because when he was a boy, his grandmother sewed his mouth shut for saying the word “love.” His clear collar is filled with some kind of liquid.  The worms swimming in it are his nightmares.  He uses them to torture people by letting them swim up their ear canals.

Did I mention that he’s kinda-sorta romantically interested in the protagonist?

5. Bonus Things: They’re Actually Probably Going to Get Done!

Del Toro stepped down from The Hobbit because the delays in greenlighting it would have caused its production time to cut into other film commitments that he had already made.  And among those commitments are…

Frankenstein, At The Mountains of Madness, and Slaughter-House Five.  Yes, that’s right, the original science fiction novel about the nature of humanity and scientific ethics, H.P. Lovecraft’s most expository tale of the Cthulhu mythos, and Kurt Vonnegut‘s most popular novel about war and the purpose of life.  Universal is counting on del Toro directing them, and has him on contract until 2017.

Needless to say, whatever Mr. del Toro winds up doing, we look forward to it.