Dinosaurs Attack From IDW In February

Dinosaurs Attack

Gary Gerani (w) • Herb Trimpe, Earl Norem, George Freeman (a) • Earl Norem (c)

They're BACK! 25 years after Topps' original "DINOSAURS ATTACKS!" trading cards took a bite out of candy counter sales, the original Eclipse graphic novel written by creator Gary Gerani returns, this time released in its entirety with pencils by Herb Trimpe and paintings by veteran illustrator Earl Norem.

TPB • FC • $19.99 • 136 pages • ISBN: 978-1-61377-862-3

Bullet points:

• “The overall enjoyment of reading this comic resembles the nostalgia one would feel opening up an old pulp novel or science fiction terror comic.” - Comic Bastards.

Preview : Dinosaurs Attack #1

Travis Beacham on Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero

From SuperHeroHype.com

Anticipation is slowly building for the monsters vs. robots movie Pacific Rim, director Guillermo del Toro's first movie in five years and one of the few truly original concepts of the summer i.e. it's not a sequel!

On June 5, over a month before the release of the movie, Legendary Comics is releasing "Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero," a hardcover graphic novel written by screenwriter Travis Beacham and drawn by Sean Chen, Yvel Guichet, and Pericles Junior with a cover by Alex Ross, which tells some of the backstory of the universe seen in Pacific Rim. It specifically shows the very first Kaiju (monster) attack, the very first Jaeger (robot), as well as the roots of the Jaeger Academy seen in the movie.

SuperHeroHype got on the phone with Beacham last week to talk about the book and its connections and parallels to the movie.

SuperHeroHype: Before we get to the book, which I haven't read yet--and I haven't seen the movie yet either, obviously--as the original writer, how exciting is it for you to see these monsters and robots you'd written about come to life on screen?
Travis Beacham: I'm super, super, super excited. I've seen it three or four times already in various stage of completion. I think the last time I saw it, it was practically done and it was close to the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life. I have to admit, I'm a little biased, but I was totally blown away.

SHH: I went to the set last year and saw a bunch of concept art and maquettes, but then seeing the CinemaCon trailer, I have never seen anything like that and I couldn't begin to imagine what I saw on set would be something that amazing.
Beacham: Oh yeah, I was sort of surprised they showed as much as they did. I was thinking they were going to keep the monsters more under wraps than that. I think there's still, ah geez…there's still a handful of monsters that you don't see at all in the trailer, but I was surprised they showed as much as they did. I'm glad, actually, because the parts of the movie that I've seen were just full of all this really, really, really lavish and amazing visual stuff that I don't think the first trailer really got into.

SHH: Let's talk about the graphic novel. I assume you and Guillermo created some sort of bible for the world before you started the movie. Did you have a lot of extra stuff and decided just to kind of spin it off into the graphic novel or is this stuff from the original screenplay that would have made the movie too long?
Beacham: It was a bit of both, actually. Basically, the movie is constructed in such a way where it's kind of a world unto itself - well, not unto itself, I guess, because it spills off the edges of the movie. The movie kind of drops you into this war as it's happening and you're experiencing sort of history in progress. By the time it really gets rolling, the first Kaiju attacked happened like a decade ago, so in creating all the kind of history we needed for this world and then sort of filling out the world outside the movie, we had a lot of supplemental material and a lot of interesting stories, so when the time came to talk about doing the graphic novel, whether than do a straight up adaptation, we thought it would be cool if we did something that was really kind additive to the experience of the movie and sort of fill out a lot of the back story that we didn't really get into in the movie. That's not to say that the movie's an incomplete work. I think you could watch it and totally get everything that you need from it. It explains everything that you need to understand for the movie, but in the context of the bigger world, if there's anything you have questions about or any mysteries or bits that you'd like to see fleshed out or just curious about, I think the graphic novel is a great place to get that sort of texture from.

SHH: I remember when I was on set they were talking about the fact the Kaiju came from out of the hole in the sea, so is this shown in the movie or is this just explained or referenced in the present day sometime or is there an introduction that explains this?
Beacham: Yeah, it's dealt with very briefly. Broadly speaking, it's not the sort of movie where it's like "bacon and eggs, morning commute and aliens land." It kind of drops you in. That said, there's a bit at the beginning that kind of gives you the broad strokes.

SHH: Since the movie takes place ten years after the first Kaiju attack, I'm going to assume the graphic novel fills in the space beforehand.
Beacham: In a timeline of like 12 or so years, the movie would be the last couple (years) - the graphic novel would be the first three or four. It's a little episodic and it generally covers the first Kaiju attack, it covers the first Jaeger. It covers the Jaeger pilots in the Academy, so those are the three episodes we're dancing around in the graphic novel.

SHH: How involved has Guillermo been able to be with the graphic novel? I imagine he's been pretty busy finishing up this movie as well as having a number of movies he's produced in between. Was he able to give notes or be more involved than that?
Beacham: Oh yeah, he was very involved. He was involved from the concept to the final pages. There was a time in between there where he was pretty busy, but at the points that we were getting pages daily from the pencillers we had on it, Guillermo was in the loop and giving very specific notes. But yeah, he was very, very involved in the process.

SHH: Are any of the characters from the movie also in the graphic novel and they'll make an appearance or are you focusing on completely different characters in the graphic novel?
Beacham: Generally, it's a mix. Pentecost (Idris Elba's character) is in the graphic novel and you find out a bit more about him than you do in the movie because I think in the movie, he's necessarily mysterious and has kind of a mystique about him. You do get a bit of character background on him going into the movie if you've read the graphic novel. Other characters sort of dip in and out, but I think he's the one who's in it the most. That said, we're bringing new characters in and sort of historical figures that are in the world history, who are important to the mythology."

At this point, publicist Adam Fenton jumps in with a bit more information, knowing we hadn't seen the book yet:

"We learn more about the backstory of Mako (Rinko Kikuchi's character) in the graphic novel and we see Raleigh (Charlie Hunnam's character) as a child, but then we really see him and Yancy, his brother, when they first enter the Academy, and they become instant stars at the Academy, but we definitely do learn back story on a few of the major characters in the movie."

Beacham: That's 100 percent right, and the movie I think is a very kind of linear story and very kind of contained story. The graphic novel is definitely more of an exploration of the world through the eyes of those characters.

SHH: How did you pick the artists? I know Guillermo is pretty well versed in the comic book world and knows a lot of guys. Did you have some sort of audition process to figure out which artist would work best with each story?
Beacham: We definitely had lists that we put together, and it had a lot to do with whose style was right for any given part. Also, just who had the time for it. We were putting this script together sort of at a full speed pace, and the book itself came together really, really fast, so timing was definitely a factor in deciding who could do it. But, we were also extremely interested in each part having its own sort of discreet work, like that it wasn't all these pencillers trying to match each other's styles, and that each part had its own sort of style and its own sort of look about it. That's something we were very conscious of and something that we wanted from the beginning.

SHH: The Alex Ross cover is great and would make a great poster.
Beacham: I love it. I love it. The first time I saw it, it really reminded me of Marvel, that cover, that ground's eye view of this amazing thing that's happening. I was like, I love that cover.

SHH: I know you've talked about doing sequels to the movie. If the graphic novel does well, will you try to pull together ideas to do another graphic novel or will you save that stuff for the sequel to the movie? What's the overall plan as far as the comic side of things?
Beacham: Well, we're fortunate in that the world, it's really big enough that it can support a lot of ancillary explorations and stories. The movie taking place as it does over the course of a few years at the end of a 12-year timeline, and the people likely taking place after that, it leaves a ton of back story to sort of play around in. I personally, I would love to do another graphic novel. I had a blast doing this one. There was a bit of a learning curve, having been used to writing for the screen, it's a difficult transition I think because you have to think about space differently and you have to think about time differently and pacing differently because people, they just read graphic novels a lot differently than they watch movies. It's a totally different experience. So as a storyteller, you really have to think about how you structure your story with respect to that. I'd like to think I got the hang of it. I certainly had fun doing it, so I would love to do another one.

SHH: Obviously you've been working on "Pacific Rim" for some time so have you had time to do anything else in that time?
Beacham: (Laughs) Well, it's been a lot of "Pacific Rim." At the moment, I'm working on a sci-fi TV show at AMC, sort of like a cable space thing that's kind of a cross between "Chinatown" and "Battlestar Gallactica." (Note: It's called "Ballistic City" and he's developing it with Oblivion director Joseph Kosinski.) I hate describing things in combinations like that, it never does the actual thing justice, you know? (laughs) But yeah, that's what I've been doing. I think television and comics, what's appealing to me as a writer about both of those mediums is that they allow you to sort of let the story unfold in its own time as opposed to trying to compress it into a two-hour discreet unit of narrative.

SHH: You've been involved with writing a couple remakes over the years because obviously you wrote "Clash of the Titans," but you were also involved with the screenplay of "The Black Hole" and "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea?" Are you still involved with any of those or did you just do a pass on the script and move on?
Beacham: Usually, you turn in a first draft and then it sort of just kind of moves on without you. That's, for better or worse, it's just kind of the natural way that it works. I was very lucky on "Pacific Rim" to have a very different kind of experience where I was on set and I've become kind of the de facto cheerleader of all the continuity details that they go through every once in a while. It's really been a lot of fun for me working on that and totally atypical of other movie experiences, which like I said, is usually just you do a first draft that you're deeply and passionately in love with and you think it's just the best thing in the world, and you turn it in, and they go and do something else based on what it needs for production or if they need the time, they need the budget, and that sort of thing. But as a screenwriter, it's sort of like sending your kids out to sea and saying "I'll see you in five years!"

SHH: Well, Guillermo likes writers. He's a great writer himself, but he likes working with other writers and that's why I think the movie's going to be great because it's just the two of you creatively and not doing the normal studio thing where you have 500 writers rewriting stuff.
Beacham: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And Legendary, too. I think as producers, when they're committed to something and they believe in something, it's like 100 percent. They never really go halfway on it, which was really, really gratifying to me because when I came in with the concept for "Pacific Rim" and the outline, I think it would've been really easy for them to say, "Well, this isn't based on anything. You know, there's no prior title" or whatever and kind of dismiss it. But, immediately, immediately, they believed in it and saw what it could be. That was intensely gratifying because it's fantastic to have a director like Guillermo and it's fantastic to have a good script, but I think one of the things that any property needs, that any movie needs, is producers who really believe in it.

"Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero" hits comic shops on June 5, so you can have plenty of time to read it before the July 12 release of Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim. You can also order it from Amazon starting June 18.

First Kaiju Vs. Jaeger Fight in the Pacific Rim Graphic Novel

From Wired.com

In a summer packed with adaptations, sequels and prequels, director Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim stands out as something pretty different: an original story. And whereas a lot of the season’s hot properties are adapted from comics — Iron Man 3, The Wolverine — his flick is flipping the script and adapting its source material into a graphic novel prequel.

Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero, in stores tomorrow, was created out of the bible of information that del Toro and screenwriter Travis Beacham developed to flesh-out the canon of their cinematic universe — 12 years of history leading up to the kaiju-vs.-Jaeger battles in the film. Their master documents also have detailed histories on 21 different Jaeger models and 51 kaiju, most of which don’t even make their way into the film.

“We’ve listed every single battle that happens, where it takes place, when it takes place, what the kaiju’s name was, what the Jaeger’s name was, who the pilots were, and the circumstances of the battle,” said Beacham, who also wrote the graphic novel.

The very first Jaeger versus kaiju fight, teased above in some exclusive panels from the graphic novel, involved a Jaeger prototype named Brawler Yukon near Vancouver with a test crew at the controls, said Beacham, who wrote the graphic novel. “Up until now, nuclear weapons have been the only way any kaiju has been killed. The outside world has never seen or heard of Jaegers,” Beacham told Wired. “This is the battle that changes everything. The narrator [on these panels] is Dr. Jasper Schoenfeld, an engineer who will come to be known as the Father of the Jaeger Program.”

The bulk of Tales From Year Zero focus on the very early days of the kaiju invasion, and the “in order to fight monsters, we created monsters of our own” idea that Charlie Hunnam’s voiceover mentions in the Pacific Rim trailer. Its intent is to dig deeper on all the ways earthlings tried to fight off the kaiju invasion. Each section of the history has a distinct look, Beacham noted, because each era was penciled by one of five different artists (Sean Chen, Yvel Guichet, Pericles Junior, Chris Batista and Geoff Shaw).

In addition to helping craft that historical story arc for the graphic novel, having a huge narrative already written gives Pacific Rim an advantage at the multiplex too.

“With bad sci-fi – sci-fi that I don’t really like – you watch it and get the impression that you’re just seeing exactly what they created because they needed it in the movie,” Beacham said. “You feel like there’s nothing more beyond that. But with the good stuff you feel like the world has depth and has texture and that if you stepped in and you looked around the corner you would see that the streets kept going and there was other stuff happening. I’ve always thought that was important, especially for genre stuff.”

It also provides a good fodder for that Pacific Rim sequel that’s already in the works, despite the fact that the first film isn’t even in theaters yet. Beacham said he and del Toro are still working on what the story for the sequel could be, but it will very much live in the universe the pair are unleashing onto the world this summer.

“Both with the graphic novel and with these sequel talks, it’s all stemming from discussions we’ve had in creation of the first movie,” Beacham said. “It’s all kind of rooted in the same world, they’re all branches off of the same tree.”

Images courtesy Legendary Comics

Screenwriter Travis Beacham On “Pacific Rim” The Movie And The Graphic Novel

From Crave Online

CRAVE ONLINE: First things first, I just want to say thank you, because after the mess of Godzilla 1998, I was convinced I would never see a giant monster movie taken seriously enough to work the way it looks like Pacific Rim is going to work.

TRAVIS BEACHAM: I hope so, yeah.

CO: Was part of the genesis of this project a response to that – the need to make a monster movie right?

TB: Absolutely, absolutely. Ever since I was a kid, I've been nuts about that stuff. I remember watching Voltron, I would burn out the local Blockbuster and all the old Godzilla titles and everything. I come at it from a place of these being the first movies and first narrative experiences I'd ever had. When I'd gotten into the industry, I was thinking "they should really do a modern robot vs. giant monster movie," and then at some point I just realized that I was the 'they' in this equation. I was a screenwriter, and if ideas couldn't come from me, what was the point? Yeah, I just really, really wanted to see that kind of movie is basically the most honest explanation of where it came from.

CO: Thank you again for realizing that. However, once you get past the initial idea stage, how do you go about writing this and grounding it in a compelling reality? Because it's such a difficult task to make a movie at this scale while also giving it a human element that we actually care about – and we're not just waiting for the next giant robot/monster scene.

TB: When I first had the idea and just wanting to see that on a movie screen, it's not necessarily an idea to begin with. It's just a scene that you want to see. I knew the monster stuff was going to be fun to write, and I knew the robot stuff was going to be fun to write, but I didn't have any idea at all until I knew the parts in between were going to be fun to write. The notion that really changed what the movie was and really allowed it to come together was the realization that it took two people to run the Jaegers. Not only did that make sense practically, based on the size of the machine and how many functions the machine had, but it put the relationship between two people at the core of the movie. How it worked really depended on how well they worked together. They're neurally linked up, you know, their minds are connected. That let the story spin from human character stuff in a way that made sense to me, and that made it an exciting movie to do. Otherwise, I think I would have been at a loss and would never have had an idea to pitch anyone. But it was really the idea that you have two different pilots and their relationship is the engine of this machine that really allowed the emotional subject of the story to come to the surface.

CO: How exactly does that telepathic connection work? Is it all mindspeak or do they actually talk to each other despite the linkup or something else?

TB: They do talk to each other, but they are kind of emotionally synched up, and their thoughts are bleeding back and forth. While they're talking, they're kind of thinking the same thing in an abstract way. The explanation I give is that – when you see the trailer, you see them moving in sync, and I've had people ask why they have to move in sync, and my answer is they don't have to move in sync, but they happen to be moving in sync because their minds are connected. So that's part of what drives the robot, but the whole reason that they're in sync to begin with is that they're kind of thinking the same thing – not in a Borg-like hive-mind mentality kind of way – they're not totally synthesized into one being. They're still two distinct human beings there, but there's a definite flow of thoughts between them. That's where a lot of the conflict of the movie comes from. You have to trust the person next to you so implicitly and so naturally that you can't just be thrown in there with some stranger. You have to make a decision to trust someone and be vulnerable to them for it to work.

CO: Now, the graphic novel is a prequel to the film – does that give us the origins of the kaiju or just their first appearance? Do we ever get the origins of the kaiju?

TB: The movie takes place about a decade or so into the war, as it is. Already, in the first scene of the movie, we're years ahead of when the first kaiju arrived, and Jaegers have been around for a little while, so it drops you in. That's not to say that it's confusing or anything. I think it explains everything you need to know for the movie's sake – you can watch the movie and totally see it as a complete work. The graphic novel is in the same world, but it takes place earlier and shows you how our world became the world of the movie. You get to see the first kaiju attack and you get to see the first Jaeger, and you get to see what it's like to train to be a Jaeger pilot. You meet a few of the characters in earlier phases of their lives. It sets up the world of the movie in a really organic kind of way.

CO: You co-wrote the screenplay for the film with Guillermo Del Toro, but did you enjoy the chance to write the graphic novel on your own, or would you have preferred his input there as well? He seems like a fun guy to work with.

TB: Oh yeah, he's a really fun guy to work with, and he did have input on the graphic novel. It's just that the way our working relationship goes, it's more of a bounce-back-and-forth kind of thing than it is writing at the same time. I'll give him a script, and he'll do tweaks on it. I had a head start on Pacific Rim in that I had the idea in 2007 or something. So, way before the movie got rolling, I just sat on it and let the world come together and percolate for a while before it was in a shape where I was comfortable talking to people about it or anything like that without sounding insane. I think Guillermo is comfortable letting me handle certain things about the world. I'm obviously always eager and grateful for his input when he has time, and he has a great attention to detail and gave a lot of notes. He got pages of the comic at the same time I was getting pages on it. We'd both put suggestions in, we'd both give notes. At the same time, he was working on the movie and splitting his time between this and that. So I can only hope to do right by him if his attention is divided.

CO: So who's doing the art on the graphic novel, and how is it working with them?

TB: I think we have five pencillers on it – it's naturally divided up into episodes. Sean Chen, Yvel Guichet, Pericles Junior, Chris Batista and Geoff Shaw, I think are the pencillers that we have. I didn't have a lot of back and forth between them because there were so many. A lot of that was mediated by the editor, but there was a lot of back and forth between them and between me and Guillermo. It was a very, very busy process. We were getting in pages every day. It was great, I really looked foward to getting that dump of files every afternoon and seeing the new things that they were coming up with. At the same time, it was an extremely busy process, interacting with a lot of people.

CO: The question that must be asked, what with Legendary Pictures doing a new Godzilla film as well, about the crossover potential between Pacific Rim and Godzilla – and as a bonus, given Guillermo's relationship with Peter Jackson, might we even get King Kong in the mix? Given how difficult that would be to get a film going with all of that, would you be interested in writing a comic book crossover?

TB: (Laughs) That would be a fantastic crossover. I would love to be involved in that. A lot of that would have to do with the story and how that shapes up. I would definitely hope that Pacific Rim proves its mettle to that extent. I think before any of that, I would love to see Pacific Rim get up on its own two feet and nest itself in its own world, but somewhere down the line, I can't rule anything out. I would think that was just cool and be as excited for that as anyone.

CO: Given the relationship you described going back and forth with Del Toro, I imagine you might have some say in the production process as well -

TB: I wouldn't say 'say,' necessarily.

CO: 'Input,' at least?

TB: Yeah. He's definitely the captain of it, but yeah, I've been more in the loop on it than I've been with anything, and I've been extremely grateful for that.

CO: Have there been any significant changes from your original script?

TB: There have been, yeah. Substantial changes, but all for the better, I think, and they're all coming with Guillermo from a very earnest place with being a fan of the medium and a fan of the story. Your script is always going to get changed, the first draft is always going to get changed, and the worst way it can go down is that it's changed in such a way that you don't recognize the soul of what you started with, and it feels like a different movie. I'm lucky to say that when I see Pacific Rim now, despite all the changes that have come along with doing the production stuff and getting everything worked out, it still feels like the idea that I originally had. The soul of it and the heart of it still feels very familiar to me, and that's just miraculous. I love that that's been the case. It's no great loss for any of the ideas that have been jettisoned with previous drafts because the world is big enough that anything we like that we couldn't necessarily find time for in the movie could find its way into some other iteration of the world. It's been a very, very rewarding experience, and it's a sandbox that I could play in for a long time.

CO: It sounds like a blast, yeah. What kind of tone are you trying to hit with both the film and the graphic novel? I'm assuming it's not going to be as tongue-in-cheek ridiculous as the Roland Emmerich Godzilla, but is it going to be a lot more "slam-bang," or will it be a mix between that and the deathly serious 'holy shit, what if this actually happened?' kind of thing?

TB: It is a total mix of that. I think I would be extremely disappointed if it had turned out to be entirely slam-bang. One of the things that I fell in love with in the beginning was not only the robots and monster stuff, but the character stuff, too. The people in it aren't at all monster fodder to me, but are kind of real, living, breathing people who I'm desperately in love with. The tone of the movie is a very human interpretation of this sort of story. It's wildly fun and the visuals are great, but at the end of the day, I look at it and think it has a lot of heart. I think a lot of that comes through in the graphic novel, too, where we get to find out a bit more about characters who appear in the movie, but don't necessarily reveal all of the details of their lives. Stacker Pentecost, Idris Elba's character in particular, has a very deliberate mystique in the movie, and I think in the graphic novel, you find out a bit more about what makes him tick before you see the movie, and I think that's fun. I wouldn't call it overly solemn or bleak, but it's definitely serious.


CO: Thank you so much. It sounds exactly like what I wanted so badly back in 1998 when that Godzilla movie hit. Finally, someone was going take the giant monster seriously, but… nooo.

TB: (laughs) Yeah. I agree. I agree. I'm so pleased. Given all your questions, I think you're really going to like it. I hope you are.  It feels that way to me.

Pacific Rim : Other Comic Preview Pages

Pacific Rim : Tales Of Year Zero Teaser Page