Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Black Terror

Some time last year I found out that a whole collection of comic book characters has ended up in the public domain.  A few companies went bankrupt and never filed for copyrights when we still had to do this and therefore their property lapsed into the public domain.  One such company was Nedor.  Most if not all of these characters are from the Golden Age of comics and are therefore a little naive in their origins and/or powers.  The strongest character I felt was Black Terror and we decided to use him (with major twists) for our series.

For years I have been trying to do a superhero comic.  For a while, I even optioned Mark Shainblum's excellent Northguard property - but I kept hitting snags along the way - Canadian producers just don't seem to get it and/or are afraid the institutions won't back such a project, something in which they are most likely right.

Another project I was involved with, The Hunter, another superhero project that involved intricate wire gags created by Jeff Pruitt ended up going nowhere and after years of frustrations, we decided to do it for the web.

I took my ideas for the Hunter and integrated them with the origins and concepts of Black Terror, plus we added a hint of a horror twist to it and the character was born.

Here's Félix Laflamme amazing rendition of the character:

Sunday, February 21, 2010

New Trailer and Web Series of the Week on VLOG!

Vlog, a Montreal TV show about the best (and the worst) of the web has featured us as the Web Series of the Week on their popular show.

For the occasion, we whipped up a Trailer:

You can view it here:Heroes of the North Trailer

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The New Messiahs...

It seems every time there is a turmoil, there is a breed of people racing to become the "leaders" to guide the lost masses to a safe haven.  Nothing wrong with that in principle but unfortunately, a lot of times, these people seem to be merely preying on distressed folks, trying to sell them a dream of salvation...  in exchange for their hard earned money...

Manifestos explode all over the place, making outrageous claims, people become overnight experts and present models that will save the entire industry, most of it under ludicrous claims or poorly thought out opinions...

Most of these require your financial support, often only to prove that it works...


I am doing a lot of research these days in order to find a solution that works in light of all that is happening and it seems to me that if you do not subscribe to a specific model or view, or if you point out flaws, you are automatically assaulted while the ones selling the models are hailed as experts and messiahs yet no one has anything concrete to show for themselves - their argument is resuming itself to: give me your money and I'll show you it works - or something to that effect... For me, it feels like people are preying on desperation and a lot of people have left their critical sense at the door.  Which tends to happen when people are afraid.  They want to feel safe again and are willing to follow anyone with a glimmer of an answer.

Every discussions (almost) are shot down by a loudmouth who claims to have a plan - but it always involves either giving them money or hare brain schemes that make no business sense whatsoever...

When did we fall so low as filmmakers? Is that a side effect of the democratization of the tools? Are we a bunch of loudmouthed morons now?