The Kaiser has a plan
An edition about the new Polar adaptation project and other tough guys
WELCOME TO A NEW EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER
Hello, guys! I advanced this edition of the newsletter due to the recent news you surely read in my social media. I wanted to chat a little and share some of my feelings about it. And this happens because…
FROM POLAR TO KAISER
Due to the Cannes festival, a new Polar project has been announced. This new take of the original graphic novels (“not a prequel, not a sequel” producers say) titled The Black Kaiser.
“The plot of the new film follows the Black Kaiser, the world’s deadliest hitman, as he uncovers a deadly conspiracy protecting a powerful syndicate of killers, unwittingly becoming their number-one target.”
The Black Kaiser movie in the news:
The Hollywood Reporter
Variety
Deadline
Collider
Like in the Polar previous film, Robert Kulzer and Jeremy Bolt are producing through Constantin Film and JB Pictures in association with Dark Horse Entertainment. Jayson Rothwell and Jonas Åkerlund return in their roles of writer and director, and Mads Mikkelsen, Martin Moszkowicz, Mike Richardson and Keith Goldberg are the executive producers.
Mads was executive producer for the first time with Polar, and in this new adaptation he is also credited as co-writer of the script with Jayson. So his commitment with the character is absolute and I couldn’t be more happy about it.
I am pretty excited about having XYZ films as executive producer. They have been behind movies I absolutely love like The night comes to us, Mandy, Color out of Space, Artic (with Mads), The Raid 1 & 2, Brawl in Cell Block 99 or I kill giants. Netflix is not currently involved, like it wasn’t at the beginning of the production of the first Polar film. So they could join the production later, who knows.
Things are a little premature yet, so I will not begin to spend a lot of money on sports cars and giant manors… Anyway, it’s cool to see how much this little graphic novel is capable of doing and generating. Polar was something special to me, don’t forget this book was born as a free webcomic (still being it) in a time of my life when I desperately needed to recover the joy of drawing and telling stories. This book helped me in a lot of senses.
But this book series, like other books from other authors, is not something which simply plucked out of the air. I remember a headline from the Spanish newspaper El periodico when the movie was released: “Polar, Victor Santos’ bingo”. The article was pretty correct, and I suspect the headline was an editor’s contribution but, well… “Victor 's bingo”… It sounds like I was walking on the street and suddenly a movie deal fell over me.
Polar is the consequence of all the things I have learned doing comics, especially noir comics. It was the sum of the creators I love (Steranko, Miller, Muñoz, Timm, Wagner) and the crime graphic novels I have previously done in Spain (Pulp Heroes, Intachable, Protector and many more) and USA (Filthy Rich). I think Polar worked so well due to this quality of synthesis of all my background. So it didn't appear magically. All roads (and years walking them) lead to it.
And of course, if this beautiful story of self-knowledge and self-improvement touched you, feel free to buy my books, published by Dark Horse (or their pertinent international editions, though the series is not completed in all the countries).
Polar in the Dark Horse site (with previews and links to different platforms and sellers) and their digital editions.
GINGER BANNERS
Have you noticed that I design a new banner for every Ginger Revenges new chapter? This is something I took from American Sunday strips. The Ginger banners so far:
FRED WARD
Some personalities who were part of our lives left us recently. I don’t need to talk about what George Perez and Neal Adams mean for the comic-books readers of the world. I must confess I discovered their work when I was in college. I never was a superhero reader when I was a kid (the USA comics I read were versions from TV show franchises like TMNT, MOTU or Transformers) and like other readers of the first “manga generation”, we readed Crisis on Infinite Earths or the Kree-Skrull War (or Watchmen and The Dark Knight returns) later, out of their time. So I hadn’t this emotional connection with them, like others of my fellow authors. Just my admiration as the giants of their field they were.
But I wanted to talk about other star who left us, Fred Ward, due to more emotional and particular reasons. I chatted with other friends of my generation (like my buddy, the writer Miles Gunter) and we have in common that Ward was the kind of guy who created bonds between my generation and our fathers. The kind of guy and the kind of movie you see with your old man. I remember Remo Williams: The adventure begins (titled in Spain with the colorful title “Remo: Unarmed and dangerous” because nobody knew the character or have read the books in Spain) was one of the first movies I rented with my dad. Ok, if we watch it now, it’s a pretty stupid story with some racist elements (Joel Grey playing an impossible Asian man) but I can’t help feeling care for these macho films building bridges between the family male members. And one of these macho actors with tough guy glare and stony features, always present in our lives, was Fred Ward.
Today, I’m lucky to continue this tradition dad-son with the Daniel Craig’s Bond movies and western films. And I saw Polar for the first time with him and my mother in a special screening arranged in Barcelona. And I’m sure my mom liked it, but I’m sure my father loved it.
And this is all for the moment. If you have the chance, spend some time with your beloved ones even doing things you hate (like watching bad movies). But you are doing those things with them, and that’s the point. See you in oncomings newsletters and chapters of Ginger revenges!
Copyright © 2022 Victor Santos. All rights reserved.
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