Paranoia: The novelization (just kidding...)
WELCOME TO THE AUGUST EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER
Are you ready?
PARANOIA IS FINISHED! (I THINK)
This month I launched the last issue of 4 of my Paranoia Killer miniseries.
Thank you very much to the supporters of the book and the Panel Syndicate site and above all the creators of this very special place, the artist Marcos Martin and the writer Brian K. Vaughan. About the continuity of the series or the chance of a new series in the platform, I must say PK was initially conceived as a self-contained story but, recovering these words from the afterword I wrote for this issue:
I still don't know if I would like to come back with a new creation or perhaps with a new foray into the Paranoia Killer universe (I am considering the idea of a one-shot or annual, in which we contemplate the consequences of the presence of a deity like “Nathalie Sombre” unleashed on the world without the control of any government).
So let’s see what happens. My plan right now is making the compilation of the series into a single digital volume, maybe with a release in a couple of months and trying to get a paper edition. My schedule right now is pretty weird and unstable, but still tight so I don’t know… Maybe I will simply wait what the wind brings…
NOVELS VERSUS MOVIES
Recently I bought the Once upon a time in Hollywood novelization written by Quentin Tarantino and my plan is reading it during my holidays. The director has tried to defend this concept of “promotional novelization” of movies, returning and working on his own script. Even though OUATIH is not of my favourite QT’s films, I found the idea so interesting that I couldn’t help but buy the UK paperback edition.
And it’s a beautiful vintage edition, I must say. I don´t know why the Spanish edition of the book goes in the opposite direction, with a simple and solemn design, like trying to say “Hey, this is high literature”. It’s funny how a publisher called “Reservoir Books” seems to know so poorly about the intentions of Tarantino.
When I was preparing the Dark Horse edition of my book Polar 0: The Black Kaiser (originally titled simply Black Kaiser, the Spanish original book where this hitman and spy made his first appearance before the Polar books) my idea was to publish it like one of these old cheap softcover paperbacks. This Black Kaiser was not exactly the same character, so I found it funny this book was a kind of cheap pulpy novel set inside the Polar universe. Finally the editor prefered to keep the coherence of the other Polar books and make a similar design, with a hardcover edition.
Recommendation: If you like The nice guys movie, Charles Ardai (headmaster of the noir label Hard Case Crime) wrote a super-funny novelization of the movie, expanding the original Shane Black’s script.
I must say I am a great defender of novels with the covers of the movie. Right now seems that if we use an image from the movie or TV show as a cover, we are "degrading" the original source but I don't see this way. Thanks to the movie adaptations I discovered writers like Donald Westlake, Agatha Christie, Elmore Leonard, Frank Herbert, Cormac McCarthy, Philip K. Dick, Margaret Atwood... And yeah, I would not have minded to see a Polar edition with Mads Mikkelsen on its cover... Even with his clothes on.
A COUPLE OF YOUTUBE INTERESTING CLIPS
My friend Tito James sent me this videoclip of $uicideboys, Materialism as a Means To an End made by Notorious (this is his channel) using clips from Polar, the movie adaptation of my first Polar graphic novel, Came from the Cold.
Here is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmIWMQtaPgs
And my good friend the artist Kenny Ruiz, sent me this trailer adapting the Osamu Tezuka’s Barbara manga book. I wrote a story set in the special universe of this book, with Belen Ortega’s absolutely gorgeous art for the Japanese magazine Tezucomi.
If you don’t know the story about my collaborations with Tezucomi, I explained it in this edition of the newsletter.
The movie is directed by Tezuka’s son, Macoto (who was the guy who gave the final approval to our pages for the magazine, a real keeper of his father’s legacy). Barbara is played by Fumi Nikaidô, an actress I discovered in the crazy, violent and hilarious movie Why don’t you play in Hell? by Sion Sono.
The trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2vKPj8gxkA&t=106s
AND THAT’S ALL FRIENDS
Be nice, get vaccinated (I finally got my two doses of Pfizer past month) and have fun if you have the chance.
Victor
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