Witchblade artist interviewed; Silent Hill movie sequel greenlit

It’s really kind of crummy that the AMS situation came to light right before the New Year, when everyone’s gone home and may not even find out about this until they return to work (I’m not saying this was intentional, but the timing couldn’t have been worse.)  Heidi MacDonald is already soliciting for reactions on The Engine forums, and I’m linking to the thread now so I can readily find it.

Edit: Via The Comics Reporter, a Business Wire release, which paints a not-so-dire picture with the distributor having secured a $75 million in financing, promising services will continue, and vendor accounts paid.

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Newsarama has a short interview with the upcoming Witchblade Takeru artist, Kazasa Sumita.  Meanwhile, CBR has the first colored pages… and it looks like the screentones were not removed for coloring process.

While there’s nothing wrong with the coloring per se, I must say that the intensity of the colors (the common style in your average superhero comic) seems almost gaudy applied to the delicate linework of this manga.  Of course, this was done to appeal to Top Cow’s core readers, and they’d probably have a much more positive take on this than I.

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Now for some non-comics, horror movie news… 

Just came across the site for The Messengers, by Asian horror directors The Pang Brothers.  Their output has been hit-or-miss, and some may question whether the Asian horror wave has any steam left, but I’m still quite interested to see what these guys can do with a Hollywood budget and some competent writers.  Even at their worst and most derivative, they still exhibit a good eye for visuals.

Info culled from Silent Hill Heaven… The second movie adaptation of Silent Hill is apparently a go, according to DVDrama.  I’m filled with both hope and dread… this movie may be a direct reworking of the second in the game series, arguably the one with the deepest storyline and characters, and certainly my favorite.  Yet my attachment to the game may very well amplify any faults in the movie.  Mistakes that were forgivable in the first, I will not look kindly upon in this installment.

One interesting wrinkle… one forum poster indicated that Neil Gaiman would somehow be involved with the writing, but the man himself shoots down the rumor on his blog.  However, he doesn’t rule out the possibility of collaboration with screenwriter Roger Avery, if he were asked to participate…