Blake Hennon

It’s been 20 years since “The X-Files” opened to viewers’ wanting-to-believe eyes, and the hit paranormal investigation drama’s creator, Chris Carter, doesn’t quite know what to make of that phenomenon. “It’s surreal,” he told a sold-out crowd Sunday at the Hero Complex Film Festival shortly after entering to a standing ovation. “It’s like an X-File…. Twenty years’ missing time.” Asked what he might do differently if he made the show now, he said, “It was of its time…. You probably could make the show today, but, I don’t know why, it just feels like it was made exactly when it should have been made.” The festival’s closing night was devoted to the acclaimed Fox series, and included screenings of three fan-picked episodes – the pilot, which he wrote, “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” and “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose.” Carter said […]

Earth’s victory over alien invaders in “Independence Day” may have been but the first battle in a war. The film’s co-writers — director Roland Emmerich and producer Dean Devlin – told the Hero Complex Film Festival audience at a matinee screening of the 1996 blockbuster Sunday that they have ideas for a sequel (and maybe more) but, as Devlin put it, “things have to align … the planets have to get together.” And planets getting together is a thrilling prospect for fans of these spectacle specialists. Emmerich said he and Devlin have discussed why the aliens came in the first place, what the bigger story is. The director called the aliens a “swarm intelligence, and we are individual intelligence – and even if we kill each other … we have something very special, we have this indomitable human spirit.” So, […]

Taking his chair after the intense, haunting ending and solemn credits of “The Mist,” its star, Thomas Jane, seemed newly rattled by it. “I just slipped in and caught the last 10 minutes or so because I got here a little early,” the actor, a surprise guest at the Hero Complex Film Festival, told the crowd Saturday afternoon. “I kind of wish that I hadn’t. … That was really hard. That’s powerful, man.” “You know this movie came out on Thanksgiving weekend?” he asked, to audience laughter. “Nothing says the holidays like flesh-eating tentacles,” added the film’s writer-director, Frank Darabont. The 2007 horror film follows a group of people trapped in a shopping market after a mist envelopes their town. As they learn of the presence of deadly, unearthly creatures outside, debate over what to do splinters the survivors, with […]

“American Vampire” continues to show signs of life – or, well, undead-ness – during its hiatus. Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque’s Eisner Award-winning Vertigo series about a new breed of bloodsucker has been on a planned break since January, but Hero Complex has the exclusive announcement that “American Vampire Anthology” No. 1, an 80-page special, will be released Aug. 7, and offers readers a first look at the cover by Albuquerque, right, showing a more-dapper-than-usual Skinner Sweet. “Anthology” comprises eight “lost tales” of familiar favorites and new characters by a star-studded roster of writers and artists including multiple Eisner winner Greg Rucka (“Whiteout,” “Stumptown”), Jeff Lemire (“Animal Man,” “Sweet Tooth”), Gail Simone (“Batgirl,” “Secret Six”), Ray Fawkes (“Constantine”), Becky Cloonan (“American Virgin”), Francesco Francavilla (“The Black Beetle”) and the Brazilian brothers behind the Eisner-winning limited series “Daytripper,” Fabio Moon and Gabriel […]

For a man about to start a war, Geoff Johns seems calm. Upbeat, even. Upstairs from Golden Apple Comics in Hollywood in an office lunchroom ahead of a signing for Free Comic Book Day on Saturday, DC Comics’ chief creative officer, sporting just-tearing-at-the-knee jeans, a red plaid shirt and a weathered Aquaman baseball cap, occasionally pets his bulldog while discussing the summer event he and collaborator Jeff Lemire are scripting in their respective “Justice League” and “Justice League Dark” titles, and together in “Justice League of America.” (You can see a larger version of Ivan Reis and Joe Prado’s triptych cover for the first issues here.) “Trinity War,” which unfolds in six parts across those three series’ July and August releases, with tie-ins including “Trinity of Sin: Pandora” No. 1 (written by Ray Fawkes), is DC Comics’ biggest event since launching […]

Success couldn’t come at a worse time for Buddy Baker. As “Animal Man” No. 20 lands Wednesday, its titular superhero/actor is still grieving the death of his young son Cliff, who was felled trying to protect him. He’s also newly estranged both from his wife, Ellen, who has their child daughter, Maxine, and from the Red, the fauna life force that continues to give him his power to draw on animals’ abilities. At the end of the wrenching, funeral-centered Issue 19, the hero remarks, “I’ve never felt so alone in my life.” But soon, the trappings of newfound fame may make him wish the world would leave him alone. “It’s really using Buddy and using the superhero genre as a way to explore celebrity and our modern society’s obsession with celebrity,” series writer Jeff Lemire says of the new story […]

Think Superman and Batman are intimidating to criminals? Try writing for both of them. As Scott Snyder adds the upcoming “Superman Unchained” to his duties on the acclaimed, high-charting “Batman” and other projects, the Eisner Award-winning writer says he has to put on “horse blinders” to focus away from the pressure. He cites the “golden rule” of the class he teaches at Sarah Lawrence College: You can only write the comic that you’d like to read. “And with a story like this,” he said, “or with Batman, you have to follow that rule … and believe that because you love the characters enough, that in the DNA of that story will be the things that everybody else loves too – hopefully.” The new series, drawn by superstar artist and DC Comics co-publisher Jim Lee, arrives in Superman’s 75th anniversary year. […]

EXCLUSIVE One of the Marvel Universe’s most psychotic supervillains is coming back for a new reign of terror: The homicidal creature called Carnage will be loosed on the world in a new miniseries set to debut in July. The five-issue “Superior Carnage,” written by Kevin Shinick (“Avenging Spider-Man”) with art by Stephen Segovia (“X-treme X-Men”), finds the nightmarish threat where he was left at the end of last year’s “Minimum Carnage” story line — incapacitated and in captivity. Cletus Kasady, the serial killer whose body hosts a vicious alien parasitic “symbiote” that transforms him into a super-strong, ravaging red terror of fangs and tendrils, is catatonic, and the creature in his blood has been sedated. But as the new story begins, a certain other Marvel villain, one with a frightful intellect, wants to revive — and try to control — […]

Writer John Layman works closely with two highly unorthodox detectives – one is a billionaire who stalks the night in a cape and cowl, the other is a federal agent who quite literally takes a bite out of crime. The Phoenix-based comics creator had developments to detail about both his Batman series for DC Comics and “Chew” for Image Comics at WonderCon in Anaheim over the weekend. The latest “Detective Comics,” arriving Wednesday, is an extra-thick case file. The 80-page volume marks the title’s 900th issue but is numbered 19 because of DC Comics’ New 52 continuity revamp and series relaunch. Titled “Mystery of the 900,” it features the New 52 debut of Kirk Langstrom, inventor of the grotesquely and perilously transformative Man-Bat formula. The issue also moves toward next month’s conclusion of the larger story of Penguin henchman-turned-usurper Ignatius […]

WonderCon attendees wielding camera phones flocked around Dawn Bright, a video game concept artist from the Inland Empire area who donned a head-turning Queen Amidala costume of her own creation. Her lavishly embellished gown, black feathered headdress and trademark white-and-red painted face stopped “Star Wars” fans in their tracks as they ambled through the lobby of the Anaheim Convention Center on Friday. “I made the entire dress from scratch,” Bright said, proudly pointing out the spiraled embroidery on her cloak before posing for more photos. “I just finished this costume last night at midnight, and I’ll actually be participating in the masquerade tomorrow.” A few feet away, more WonderCon-goers (some of whom wore costumes of their own) snapped pictures of Bright’s husband, Daniel, and their 3-year-old daughter, Victoria, dressed as the heroes from Disney’s “Wreck-it-Ralph,” with little Victoria’s stroller decked out […]