Cinemax Spy Series Hunted Premieres Tonight

Cinemax's latest UK co-production spy series Hunted (formerly known as Nemesis) premieres tonight on the American cable network. I've heard good things about it, and reviews tend to shorthand it as Rubicon meets Alias, which sounds pretty intriguing, or compare it to Spooks/MI-5, which also sounds good. Strike Back's Frank Spotnitz produces and Alias's Melissa George leads a cast that also includes Adam Rayner (Undercovers), Stephen Dillane (Spy Game), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Killer Elite, Strike Back), Lex Shrapnel (Captain America: The First Avenger), Uriel Emil (The Bourne Ultimatum), Patrick Malahide (The World Is Not Enough, The Long Kiss Goodnight) and Stephen Campbell Moore (The Bank Job, Johnny English Reborn). Hunted premieres tonight at 10pm on the pay station. (I wish I got it!) Here's a trailer:

Another New Skyfall Trailer!

With only a little over a week left until its UK opening, Sony have released another new trailer for Skyfall:

Tradecraft: Brenden Fraser is Legendary

Deadline reports that Brenden Fraser (The Quiet American) has been cast as the lead in Howard Gordon's long-in-development TNT spy pilot Legends, based on the book by Robert Littell. According to the trade blog, Legends "follows Martin Odum (Fraser), a deep-cover operative who has an uncanny ability to transform himself into a different person for each job." Hm. I don't instantly see Fraser as a Peter Sellers- or Lon Chaney-like man of 1000 faces who can transform himself that effortlessly either physically or mentally, but on the other hand, I do think that Fraser is at his best when he's doing drama as opposed to fluffy kids' comedy. He's terrific, for instance, playing an idealistic CIA agent opposite Michael Caine in Phillip Noyce's Graham Greene adaptation The Quiet American, and in the James Whale biopic Gods and Monsters. Not so terrific in movies with cartoon animals. I haven't read the book (though I finally bought it recently with that intent!), but I don't think there are any talking critters in Legends, so hopefully this will prove to be a good fit after all! With a track record including Homeland and 24, I'm on board for any Howard Gordon spy show. (And there's another one in development this season at Fox.) He's producing Legends alongside Jeffrey Nachmanoff (Traitor) and Mark Bomback. As previously reported, David Semel will direct the pilot. TNT has a good track record with Littell material, having scored a hit with a miniseries based on the author's Agency epic The Company.

Clark Gregg Joins Joss Whedon's S.H.I.E.L.D. TV Show

WARNING: This article contains spoilers about the movie Marvel's The Avengers. But is there really anyone on the planet who hasn't seen that movie by now?

Earlier this week, I posted a lengthy primer on the espionage organization of the Marvel Universe, S.H.I.E.L.D., including some of the characters so far announced for Joss Whedon's upcoming S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show for ABC. Today, Deadline reports that another name has been added to that list: Agent Phil Coulson, played by Clark Gregg. Since all of the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents listed were brand new characters, it's nice to see a familiar face from the films. Even if Coulson was never in the original comics, he's arguably the most familiar S.H.I.E.L.D. agent to movie fans from his appearances in Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Thor, Marvel's The Avengers and a couple of Marvel Studios short films included on those movies' DVDs and Blu-rays. The film character proved so popular, in fact, that he was written into the comic book Marvel Universe in Battle Scars, the same story that introduced a new, Sam Jackson-like Nick Fury Jr. into continuity, and booked a recurring role, voiced by Gregg, on the current Spider-man cartoon, Ultimate Spider-Man. But his momentum suffered a small setback in Whedon's Avengers film: he died. In fact, his death was a major turning point in that film. So what's the deal with Gregg on the TV series? Does that mean that the series (which has an official title now: Marvel's S.H.I.E.L.D.) will be a prequel? Or will Gregg appear regularly in flashbacks? Or will his death be somehow undone, wiped from the records? Well... as it happens, the S.H.I.E.L.D. of Marvel Comics has a long history with fake deaths, and a ready explanation for them: LMDs. LMDs or Life Model Decoys, are robotic doubles of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Conveniently, whenever a regular S.H.I.E.L.D. agent gets killed, it usually turns out to be an LMD. Nick Fury himself seemingly died in the final issue of the Sixties run of Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (an issue weirdly guest-starring Country Joe and the Fish!), but it was later revealed (in an issue of The Avengers collected in the third Marvel Masterworks S.H.I.E.L.D. volume) that it was actually a Fury LMD shot by the assassin Bullseye. Since then, that exact same scenario has repeated itself at least three more times in the comics. Whenever Nick Fury appears to be dead, no matter how real it looks and how much Marvel's editorial team assures the press that it is, they always fall back on this convenient device. I'm not saying that that will be the excuse for Coulson not dying (I have no idea), but I am pointing out that Marvel has a convenient device for circumventing death pre-built into the S.H.I.E.L.D. universe. (There was even an allusion to LMDs in the Avengers movie.) So it would be kind of cool if they used it...

A S.H.I.E.L.D. Primer, Including More on Joss Whedon's TV Show

Variety (via Dark Horizons) offers a few extra details on the new ABC S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show, first reported by Deadline a little over a month ago. According to the trade, Joss Whedon told a WGA audience that "the storyline for the proposed series will be largely 'autonomous' from the Avengers sequel feature that is also in the works. The series will revolve around the activities of the top-secret S.H.I.E.L.D espionage [organization] featured in Avengers." Whedon will co-write the pilot with his brother Jed and his sister in law, Maurissa Tancharoen (who's married to Jed). All three previously worked together on Dollhouse and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. The Marvel's The Avengers helmer hopes to direct, schedule permitting. If the pilot is ordered to series, the trade reports, the three of them "will serve as showrunners/exec producers with Jeffrey Bell. Marvel TV topper Jeph Loeb, an alum of Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, will also exec produce."

Zap2It uncovered even more details last week. Apparently the show will deal primarily with new S.H.I.E.L.D. agents created for television by Whedon and his cohorts, rather than focusing on familiar characters from the comics and movies. Here are the breakdowns for some of those new agents, as obtained by the website:

Agent Grant Ward: A gruff, anti-social manly man in his early 30s who's great at his job but not so great at getting along with his coworkers. Ward has a strong moral foundation and isn't without his charm.

Skye: A quintessential Whedon woman, Skye is described as "bubbly and goofy" but "also warm, edgy and witty." She's in her late 20s and can more than hold her own in any situation.

Agent Althea Rice (a.k.a. The Cavalry): A strong, silent type, still damaged by harrowing combat duty, Rice is in her late 30s and is both an ace pilot and a weapons expert.

Agent Leo Fitz and Agent Jemma Simmons: A twosome so connected to each other they're known as "Fitz-Simmons." They're in their late 20s but already highly respected agents. Nerdy yet attractive, they bicker like brother and sister. His specialty is weapons, gadgets and cutting edge technology. Hers is life sciences (both human and alien).

Of course, this breakdown doesn't answer the question of whether Samuel L. Jackson will make occasional appearances as Nick Fury, or Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill (this is rumored to be the last season of her sitcom How I Met Your Mother), but it does sound a bit like the Grant Ward character could be a surrogate for the younger version of Fury from Marvel's Sixties comics. For those unfamiliar with the S.H.I.E.L.D. concept, Marvel has put out all the essential comic book stories in nice collections over the past couple of years. The book began at the height of the Sixties spy craze as Marvel's answer to the popularity of James Bond and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. The company's WWII hero, Sgt. Fury, was aged a few decades, promoted to Colonel, outfitted with an iconic eyepatch, and set up as the director and star agent of a high-tech spy outfit. (You can even read Fury's wartime adventures in an affordable compilation now, Essential Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos - Volume 1.) Some of his wartime Howling Commandos like Dum Dum Dugan and Gabe Jones also made the transition to S.H.I.E.L.D. agents (at that time the clunky acronym stood for Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage, Law Enforcement Division), joined by Atlas Comics veteran Jimmy Woo and new characters Jasper Sitwell and the Contessa Valentina Allegra di Fontaine. While Marvel mainstays Stan Lee and Jack Kirby respectively wrote and illustrated the earliest S.H.I.E.L.D. stories in the anthology comic Strange Tales, it was writer/artist Jim Steranko who really creatively defined the character and the organization for the era. Steranko's issues were artistically bold, combining collage and pop art and innovative page designs into the traditional comic book form. He also dared to draw entire sequences without dialogue or captions, letting the art totally drive the story. While this is common in the medium today, at the time it was such a radical departure that Stan Lee refused to pay him as a writer for those pages, just as an artist! Steranko's issues were also characterized by frequent, artistically stunning psychedelic sequences. It seemed like once an issue Nick Fury succumbed to some sort of druggy gas grenade (or something like it) and found himself suddenly navigating a melting, Salvador Dahli-like landscape. The term "_____ on LSD" is a cliche now, but Steranko's Nick Fury issues really did read like U.N.C.L.E. on LSD. For fans of Sixties spy pop culture, they're as essential as that series, or as Goldfinger for that matter.

A pair of out-of-print trade paperbacks collect all of Steranko's Nick Fury material from Strange Tales and the secret agent's subsequent, eponymous book. But if you want the best presentation possible for material that really deserves it, you're much better off shelling out for the beautiful hardcover archival Marvel Masterworks editions. Marvel Masterworks: Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Volume 1 compiles the earliest S.H.I.E.L.D. stories from Strange Tales (mostly Lee/Kirby material, with a little bit of Steranko at the end), as well as a pre-S.H.I.E.L.D. issue of Fantastic Four in which Fury appeared as a CIA agent with both eyes intact. Volume 2 is the true treasure of the batch, collecting nearly all of the Steranko material from both Strange Tales and the early issues of Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. If you only get one Nick Fury collection to sample, this is the one to get! Finally, Volume 3 collects the rest of the original Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. run after Steranko's departure (and these issues shouldn't be underestimated), as well as a fantastic standalone story from the Seventies drawn by Howard Chaykin in which the WWII vet's seeming agelessness is explained away by means of an "infinity formula." Only in comic books! It's all wrapped up in the most iconic of all the Steranko covers. These books are beautifully, lovingly made. They're printed on acid-free paper and they're stitched, not glued, so you can spread them open on the table before you and fully appreciate Steranko's two-page spreads without risking breaking your book's spine. They also include informative introductions and other bonus material. They belong on every Sixties spy fan's shelf right between your Man From U.N.C.L.E. DVD box set and your Donald Hamilton paperbacks. They're great stuff.

Throughout the Seventies Nick Fury made a lot of guest appearances in books like Iron Man, Captain America, Nova, Marvel Two-in-One, Spider-Woman and others. Unfortunately, these appearances have never been collected together. (I'd love to see Fury get the Essential treatment one day with the first volume covering the Sixties solo stuff and the second one including all of these guest spots collected together.) S.H.I.E.L.D. (but not Fury, who only had a cameo in the first issue) next took a starring role in an unlikely place. They became Marvel's in-house kaiju hunters in a licensed Godzilla comic book! That run, surprisingly, has gotten an Essential collection (it's now out of print, but still easy to get), reprinting the entire series in black and white. I kind of doubt Joss Whedon's TV S.H.I.E.L.D. will hunt Godzilla, though.

In the Eighties, Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. made a surprising comeback in a high-profile, prestige-format miniseries tailor-made for the Iran-Contra era: Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. This storyline is a perfect case study in how drastically the public perception of spy agencies had changed since the Sixties. (Even the Steranko cover clearly displays the difference in eras; instead of pop art, it looks like a Rambo poster.) Once portrayed as heroic, S.H.I.E.L.D. was now duplicitous and untrustworthy. So much so that even Nick Fury had to go rogue and battle his own organization. (This would become a recurring theme in the ensuing decades.) Marvel recently collected Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. in a nice, high-quality hardcover that makes a perfect companion piece to the Sixties Masterworks. (The spine is slightly different, but the size is the same.)

Around that same time, Fury also teamed up with X-Men's Wolverine a few times. These three team-ups (drawn by the likes of Howard Chaykin and John Buscema) directly continued one of Steranko's Sixties storylines, and were recently collected in the trade paperback Wolverine & Nick Fury: Scorpio. I wish it came in a hardcover edition to match Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D., but instead the paperback matches the next chronological collection.

Bob Harras, author of Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D., also penned a more traditional continuation in an ongoing 1990s revival of the series Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Honestly, I never expected to see this run collected, but Marvel surprised me by doing just that this summer! The 272-page trade paperback Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Classic - Volume 1 compiles the first eleven issues in one satisfyingly massive full-color volume. In this series, Fury assembled a new team of young S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. It kind of reminds me of the 80s/90s TV revival of Mission: Impossible, which paired an aging Peter Graves with a new, young team. If Steranko's Sixties run dabbled in the fantastic, Harras' run fully embraces it. These stories are far from straight-up espionage. In the Nineties, with the Evil Empire dead or dying, Marvel's spy agency found itself countering a growing number of extraterrestrial or monstrous threats. That's not really my cup of tea, but I still like having this era collected and I hope Volume 1 sells well enough to justify subsequent editions. It's kind of funny to think of the Nineties version of a Sixties original branded as "Classic" (at the time, these issues seemed anything but!), but I suppose that label is meant to differentiate the title from the current incarnation of S.H.I.E.L.D.—particularly the popular "Ultimate" version of Nick Fury. Before we get to that, though, there's still another important chapter in the life of Classic Nick.

In his most recent starring ongoing series, Secret Warriors by Jonathan Hickman, Nick Fury once more went rogue, and once more found himself battling his own agency. The first story arc was tellingly titled Nick Fury, Agent of Nothing. Speaking of trends, this incarnation once again found the eyepatched spymaster recruiting a new team of young agents to help him—the titular Secret Warriors. While each arc has been collected in its own trade paperback, Marvel collected the entire run of Secret Warriors (which tells one complete story with a beginning, middle and distinct end) in the truly enormous Secret Warriors Omnibus. It's pricey, but still a better deal than buying all the trades individually. The only drawback is the comfort of reading a six pound, 900+ page hardcover! Make sure you've got a table handy.

Prior to Secret Warriors, Fury made even more guest appearances than ever before during the first decade of this century, including an important presence in Ed Brubaker's epic run on Captain America. But with more bearing on this new TV series was his memorable guest appearance in the first volume of Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men, Gifted. Not only did John Cassaday draw a great, Steranko-style jumpsuited Fury, but Whedon proved that he definitely had the character's voice down pat, which bodes well for his TV show, even if that's likely to feature a different version of Fury, should he be on it at all.

In the 2000s, Nick Fury also mutated into a couple of different variations. Personally, I'll always take the classic Steranko version, but Garth Ennis's take on Nick Fury for Marvel's adult-oriented line MAX found a lot of fans and even made Rolling Stone's annual "Cool List." Ennis's first attempt at the character, Fury MAX, was a hyper-violent, darkly humorous look at an old Cold Warrior addicted to war, liquor and prostitutes. He toned down some of the excesses when he brought the character back in an arc of his MAX Punisher run entitled Mother Russia. (He's crude, but the Punisher version of the character is a lot closer to his traditional Marvel Universe equivalent.) This year, Ennis penned another Fury MAX miniseries of a very different tone called My War Gone By. While still very much adult in language and content, this version is also adult in its storytelling, unlike the sophomoric ribaldry of the first Fury MAX miniseries. The 2012 Fury MAX, in fact, is my very favorite take on the character besides Steranko's. It's what I've always wanted to see: Nick Fury in a serious Cold War espionage story. Be careful not to mix it up with its predecessor (that's easy enough, as that one is out of print and consequently pricey as a collection), but make a point of sampling the current Fury MAX if that sounds like your cup of tea.

Another alternate version of Nick Fury worth mentioning from the first decade of the new century is Neil Gaiman's Sir Nicholas Fury from his epic Marvel 1602. Gaiman's story explores a divergent timeline in which the Marvel Universe comes into being during the late Elizabethan age, and he turns the comic book characters into analogues for real historical figures. Fury, quite obviously, fills the shoes of Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth I's famous spymaster. (Walsingham was memorably portrayed by Geoffrey Rush in the film Elizabeth.) The result is true to both the fictional character and the factual one, providing one of my favorite incarnations of the eyepatched superspy at his most Machiavellian.

The third alternate version from that decade is by far the most famous, now, thanks to the Marvel films. That's the "Ultimate" version. In the early 2000s, Marvel decided to create an alternate universe to that in which their primary comics take place so that they could tell stories about Spider-man when he was still a teenager and the X-Men before they got bogged down in decades' worth of impenetrably dense continuity. In other words, comics that someone who had just walked out of one of those movies could pick up and make sense out of. It was a good idea. Some characters were similar to their regular Marvel Universe versions; some were wildly different. Nick Fury was the only one I know of in the initial batch to change race. But he's not just the Nick Fury we know and love with a different skin color. No, writer Mark Millar went further than that and modelled Ultimate Nick Fury on Samuel L. Jackson. The character has played an even bigger role in the Ultimate Universe than he does in the regular Marvel titles, and since the Ultimate Universe has served largely as a blueprint for Marvel Studios' films, it made sense that director John Favreau turned to Jackson himself when the time came to cast Nick Fury for a cameo in Iron Man. Thanks to the massive popularity of the films, this is the version of Nick Fury that mass audiences are now most familiar with, and presumably the one who exists in the world of the Whedon TV show, whether he actually turns up in person or not.  Despite his popularity, Ultimate Nick Fury has never starred in his own solo book, instead playing a major role in The Ultimates, Ultimate Spider-man and other Ultimate titles.

Thanks to the success of the films, Marvel has even felt pressure to work a more Samuel L. Jackson-y version of Nick Fury into the primary Marvel Universe. This summer, they introduced a black Army Ranger character named Marcus Johnson in a comic called Battle Scars. By the end of the story, he'd lost an eye, gained a patch, shaved his head, and been revealed to be the illegitimate son of Nick Fury. Thus he was rechristened Nick Fury, Jr. He seems poised to take over his father's job as the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., and the elder Fury will be slowly retired to the background of the Marvel Universe. I'm just glad he'll still be around at all, and not completely replaced!

If Fury does show up on Whedon's S.H.I.E.L.D. show, it won't be his first foray into television. He previously appeared in the form of David Hasselhoff in a 1998 FOX TV movie written by future Batman Begins/Dark Knight Rises scribe David S. Goyer. It's not awful (but it's not great either), but I'm afraid Hasselhoff was no more suited to playing the classic Fury than Jackson. (Decidedly less so, in fact--though he did manage to look the part thanks to some savvy costume and production design.) He apparently thought he was, though, and recently made headlines for resenting the fact that he wasn't asked to play the role in the bigscreen Marvel movies! Well, perhaps he can take some solace in the knowledge that the out-of-print DVD of his Nick Fury movie now commands prices upwards of $60 on Amazon... Fury also made semi-regular appearances on the animated Spider-man series of the 1990s. (He even ended up immortalized in plastic for the first time in the toy line based on this show, though there have been better Fury figures since.) Fury's Ultimate-based, Samuel L. Jackson-styled incarnation plays a fairly major role (not voiced by Jackson, though) on the current kid-oriented cartoon Ultimate Spider-man.

There have been some other famous agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. over time, too, foremost among them (thanks again to the films) the sexy former Russian spy Natasha Romanoff, aka The Black Widow. Three Marvel Premiere hardcovers (again, beautifully produced) collect this secret agent's most essential adventures in matching volumes. Black Widow: The Sting of the Widow presents the character's first appearance (in a silly costume in an issue of Iron Man) and earliest solo adventures from the early Seventies, after she'd gotten an Emma Peel makeover, ending up in the black catsuit with which she's still most closely associated. These early Black Widow comics will surely be of interest to collectors and hardcore fans, but casual fans looking for a great introduction to the character are better off picking up the second volume in the series, Black Widow: Web of Intrigue first.

Black Widow: Web of Intrigue offers an excellent primer on the character containing some of her classic appearances from the early Eighties, including an excellent comic drawn by my second-favorite spy artist (after Steranko), Paul Gulacy.  (Look for a cameo appearance by Michael Caine!) Black Widow: Web of Intrigue contains this and several other seminal tales of the red-haired Russian superspy. A third volume, Black Widow: The Itsy Bitsy Spider collects a pair of Marvel Knights stories from the late Nineties (including one by Queen & Country scribe Greg Rucka).

My two favorite modern-day Widow storylines have yet to receive the hardcover treatment, sadly, but are available in a pair of out-of-print trade paperbacks. Richard K. Morgan's Black Widow: Homecoming and Black Widow: The Things They Say About Her put the focus on espionage above superheroics and are among the very best Marvel spy stories of recent vintage. I hope they end up in the next Premiere volume. Other recent Widow stories include Black Widow: Deadly Origin, Black Widow and the Marvel Girls, Black Widow: The Name of the Rose and Black Widow: Kiss or Kill. Most of the character's adventures with Daredevil from the 1970s are included in Essential Daredevil: Volume 3. The character currently appears in the ongoing series Winter Soldier, Secret Avengers and Captain America.

They may be more famous for their superheroes, but the Marvel Universe actually contains a nice little niche of superspies as well. And they're worth reading up on before they become more famous than ever in a new Joss Whedon TV show! (And if you do decide to take the plunge on any of these titles, please feel free to support the Double O Section by using the Amazon links provided.)

Listen to Three Tracks From Thomas Newman's Skyfall Score

You can now sample three tracks (totaling nearly seven minutes) from Thomas Newman's eagerly anticipated score to Skyfall. Newman's effort marks the first James Bond score by anyone other than David Arnold in 15 years, and the series newcomer has some large shoes to fill. It will take more than three tracks for me to form an opinion, but if you've formed one already, please share it! Listen here:

Tradecraft: Mission: Impossible Land?

Deadline reports that Paramount (no doubt inspired by the success of Warners' nearby Making of Harry Potter attraction) is in the early stages of developing a new theme park in the Thames Estuary near London. According to the trade blog, "the deal includes Paramount’s highly valuable movie properties. Rides and attractions are likely to be themed around IPs like Star Trek, Mission: Impossible and Transformers, though the form they will take has yet to be set in stone." Mission: Impossible theme park attractions? Sounds potentially very cool to me! I hope they don't just slap the name and logo on a generic roller coaster, but actually put some thought into creating a creative and fun ride or attraction that really captures the spirit of the films. (I'd prefer the spirit of the TV show, of course, but we all know it's the films they're talking about.) Even more thought than creating a Burj Khalifa Tower of Terror. Something that simulates dangling, ideally... 

Interview With Steed and Mrs. Peel Writer Caleb Monroe

Joseph Michael Linsner variant cover to #1

BOOM! Studios' new comic book chronicling the further adventures of the original—the real—Avengers, Steed and Mrs. Peel, got off to a fantastic start last month with issue #0 (review here). Sometimes it takes months to get follow-ups to zero issues (or years, in the case of Marvel's Captain America miniseries by Loeb and Sale!), but BOOM! has rewarded fans with a quick follow-up. A few weeks later, the ongoing STEED & MRS. PEEL series began. Comics legend Mark Waid (Kingdom Come), who penned #0, is joined by regular writer Caleb Monroe and artist Will Sliney. Monroe was kind enough to venture over from the Ministry to the Double O Section for long enough to discuss the new series, and all things Avengers!

Hi Caleb, thanks for chatting. Can you tell me a bit about how the first original comic book stories about Steed and Mrs. Peel in two decades came about at Boom!, and how you got involved?

Afraid I don’t know how it all originated, exactly. I know BOOM! started by reprinting the Grant Morrison/Anne Caulfield/Ian Gibson STEED & MRS. PEEL comics originally put out by Eclipse in 1990 [soon available in trade paperback -ed], and decided to launch a new ongoing with Mark Waid. I’d done several books for BOOM! before, most while Waid was EIC; they thought my sensibilities would be a good match with the property and asked if I wanted to be a part of it, which I did!

Were you a fan of The Avengers already?

I was a fan, but a young one. My first exposure was seeing the film version when it came out in the 90s, but it was the Morrison reprints that renewed my interest in the TV show.

 What other spy stuff do you like? Anything from the Sixties?

I love the Bond films, of course (and the great connection between them and The Avengers in the form of Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg playing significant roles in both… Blackman as infamous Bond Girl Pussy Galore and Rigg in the role my editor Chris Rosa refers to as “the only true Bond Woman”). My personal favorite films in the spy genre are probably Ronin, Spy Game and Three Days of the Condor. I also take a depraved sort of enjoyment from the madness that is the 1966 Modesty Blaise film adaptation.

That's a guilty pleasure of mine as well. Dirk Bogarde makes that movie as the villain! So what did you do to bone up on the show before tackling the comic? Did you find any particular resources particularly helpful?

Just watching and rewatching the show, really. That’s where I’ve taken all my cues from. There’s a reason it’s a classic! I’ve consciously only watched the two seasons with Emma in them, wanting to get the specific flavor of that infamous partnership just right without having it blurred by memories of Steed’s other partner relationships.

There’s one book I do enjoy and use quite a bit for quick reference, and that’s The Avengers Dossier: The Definitive Unauthorized Guide, co-written by comics’ own brilliant Paul Cornell. You have to walk the line between having a comprehensive knowledge of the source material but not being so entrenched in it or loyal to it that you’re afraid to make the changes or try the new approaches that will lead to the best possible new stories.

I agree absolutely, and I can see why The Avengers Dossier appealed to you, in that case. It's probably my favorite Avengers reference book, mainly because the authors aren't afraid to have an opinion—or at times be irreverent. You should also definitely check out Andrew Pixley's The Avengers Files if you haven't already, for great character backgrounds. 

So Mark Waid wrote the zero issue, and now in #1 he's credited with "story" and you're credited with "script." Can you please illuminate the differences in those two aspects of writing this comic, and discuss your collaborative process with Waid?

The concept of the arc comes from Mark, it’s a great follow-up story to his zero issue. Our general take on the world and the characters was also set up by his solo issue. Then I take that plot and precedent and script it, breaking it down into issues, pages, panels, dialogue, etc. Essentially, Mark provided me with a skeleton and it’s my job to put the meat and skin on it. Or maybe the skin’s down to series artist par excellence, Will Sliney. I think I’m starting to mangle this particular metaphor. But that’s the gist of it. For me, in a lot of ways, it’s the best of both worlds: I get to work with one of the industry’s best writers and idea men, but at the same time he’s given me plenty of ways to make it my own. Or plenty of rope to hang myself with. I’ll leave it up to the discerning audience!

While #0 followed a very traditional Avengers TV episode formula (someone is murdered, Steed and Emma are needed, certain eccentrics are questioned leading to a confrontation with villains involving some judo), this first issue strikes new territory. While it evokes "The Nutshell" to some degree, this storyline seems like a bit of a departure for the characters. Was that always the intent?

There’s an old Hollywood adage: “Give me the same thing…only different!” As I said earlier, there’s a reason the show is a classic, so we don’t want to mess with that too much. On the other hand, the show had a very limited budget throughout its history that reigned in some of the types of stories they could attempt. The unlimited budget that pen and ink gives us allows us an opportunity to imagine what the original show might have attempted in the 60s if they’d had an unlimited budget of their own. We also have more variety of format available to us in an ongoing series. The original episodes all had to be the same length and be self-contained; that was just part of the format. I really enjoy that about the series, but we’re working in a different medium that gives us some different options. So look for self-contained issues, two-parters, three-parters…basically whatever the story calls for we can attempt. It’s actually a very exciting position to be in!

Sounds like it! Without giving too much away, can you discuss the direction this story is headed in? Will we find ourselves in more familiar Avengers territory before it's all done, or is the goal to put these beloved characters in an entirely new sort of experience?

I’ll just say, “Yes.” To both.

More than art, more than setting, even more than story, the number one most important thing in writing The Avengers is dialogue, and both Mark Waid in #0 and now you here have really nailed the distinctive banter between Steed and Emma. How did you go about getting their back-and-forth just right?

I wish I was a more self-aware in my process, but I’ll do my best to give you a straight answer. First, I watch(ed) the show and try to get a feel for its flow. If my schedule allows I like to watch an episode beforehand and go straight from that into scripting, with the rhythm of it still ringing in my ears, so to speak. Other than that, I don’t know exactly how to describe the process. I write an exchange, I say it out loud to myself, rewrite it, say it out loud again, polish it again…basically until I don’t see any other ways to improve it. Sometimes I’ll nail a scene right off the bat and will barely touch it again, sometimes I have to redo it again and again. I have no idea why it’s the former sometimes and the latter other times. When I say it out loud, in my mind I’m picturing Macnee and Rigg saying it, since just because it’s dialogue that sounds good doesn’t mean it’s something those two specific characters would necessarily say. If I can see them delivering those lines, I feel good about it.

Do you have any particular favorite exchanges from the TV show that inspired you?

I love them all! There are two scenes in particular, though, that finally helped me wrap my mind around Emma’s character. I was struggling early on with this dichotomy the show had: on one hand she’s this incredibly talented, groundbreaking feminist ideal, and on the other she’s constantly being bound, fetishized and threatened. She actually reminds me a lot of Wonder Woman in that way.

Then I was watching “A Surfeit of H2O,” and there’s this scene near the end where she’s literally being pressed to death in this machine. There she is, being painfully crushed, which also makes it difficult to talk, and as the villain gloats she says, “You diabolical mastermind, you.” Then he leaves and Steed comes up through a trapdoor—the classic “rescue”—and she sees him and says, “Gentlemen should knock before entering.” I realized that while she may have regularly found herself physically victimized or threatened, she was never a victim in attitude. She never takes these bindings on as any legitimate part of her reality, never lets them shape any part of her identity. She knows they’re outward expressions of the inner shortcomings of the (usually male) villains. The whole affair has very little to do with her in that regard.

The second exchange, one that helped me get a better feel for the dynamic between Steed and Peel, as well as one of the funnier lines of the series was in “Return of the Cybernauts”:

Paul Beresford says, “Surely Steed can handle this alone?

And Emma comes back with, “He could, but I musn’t let him find out.”

Yeah, those are both great exchanges! Emma's "diabolical mastermind" line in "Surfeit" is probably my favorite line in the whole series. Quintessential Avengers! And speaking of quintessential, The Avengers is a quintessentially English show, and you are very American. Yet you don't (to my own American ears, anyway) fall into any of the traps that some American comic writers do in capturing believable English dialogue. Was that a challenge?

Linsner variant cover to #0

It was certainly one of the things I was most concerned about. I have no perspective on whether I pulled it off, so it’s good to hear you say you thought I did! It was actually Rich Johnston from Bleeding Cool that helped put my mind at ease about the whole thing. We were discussing the upcoming series at Comic-Con and I told him he’d have to let me know when I inevitably mangled the Britishisms. But he told me not to worry about it: while made in the UK, the show’s biggest audience, particularly during the Peel years, was here in the US, so the language and word choice in the original show was already fairly “Americanized” to make it more palatable to Stateside viewers. Which means doing a flawed American conception of British speech could actually be more accurate to the source material. I still don’t intentionally try to Americanize anything, but that conversation alleviated a lot of my anxiety about making mistakes, that they wouldn’t ruin it.

Excellent point. This story begins with some surprisingly gruesome violence for The Avengers, and there's more gunplay before this issue's over than usually seen on the TV version. Was that an intentional move to modernize the show, to put it more in line with what contemporary comics readers expect from the spy genre? (Or were the blood spatters more the artist's choice?)

In some ways it goes back to what we were discussing before. Some of the way the violence worked in the show, and the amount of blood present, had to do with budget. Some of it also had to do with what was standard for that era of television. The opening of “The Master Minds” episode is a good example: to have someone get shot in the head with no visible blood was a convention of TV at the time. But if you did that now, the audience would lose their suspension of disbelief. They wouldn’t buy that someone could get shot in the head without a lot of blood being involved.

Fair enough. Is this an ongoing series?

It is indeed!

Fantastic! Obviously we've seen the Hellfire Club (from "A Touch of Brimstone") return already. What about the Cybernauts? Are there any other classic villains you'd like to revisit?

I can’t say at this point, partly because I don’t want to give anything away and partly because I’m still working out what, exactly, the future holds for Steed and Peel. The Cybernauts would certainly be interesting, wouldn’t they? I think they were the show’s most-recurring villain. Am I making that up?

No, you aren't! They even popped up again in The New Avengers years later. On the subject of The New Avengers, can we expect to see any of Steed's other partners or associates turn up in the future, like Gambit and Purdey, Cathy Gale, Tara King, Venus Smith, Martin King, David Keel, Hannah Wilde, Mother, or my personal favorite, Steed's whippet Sheba?

For the time being the focus will remain on Steed and Peel. This book will be a lot of people’s first exposure to the property and we don’t want to go diving into the deep end of the mythology too soon. Part of the genius of the show was it’s modular nature. You could jump in at any point and not need a continuity handbook to get it. My aim is to preserve that instant accessibility in the comic series.

I suppose that makes sense, but I do hope we see some of those other characters sooner or later, maybe even in a spin-off if sales justify it! I've got one last question for you, Caleb. Where else can comics fans find your work? What other series do you have in the pipeline?

I also currently write the all-ages ICE AGE book [for BOOM!]. In fact, the next issue of that and STEED & MRS. PEEL #2 both come out the same day this month (Halloween!). The BATMAN 80-PAGE GIANT 2011 has a story of mine in it…you can’t imagine how fun it was to create a new Bat-villain! Other than those, I currently have four creator-owned books in the early art stages, so hopefully 2013 will be a big year!

Indeed! Well, best of luck to you on those series and especially on STEED & MRS. PEEL, which I hope goes on for a long, long run. Thanks for your time!

While the individual issues are still forthcoming (and should be bought to support this title!), Caleb's first storyline is already available to pre-order as a trade paperback, available next May. Visit Caleb's website here for future updates on STEED & MRS. PEEL!

Reuben Fleischer to Helm Spy Hunter

This is another one of those projects that's been floating around in perpetual development at various studios for as long as I've been writing this blog. (Longer, in fact.) But studios remain determined to make a movie out of the popular 80s arcade game Spy Hunter, a vertical scroller in which a secret agent in a gadget-laden supercar, um, hunted spies (I guess) by blowing up lots of other vehicles (that was the important part). As I said last time I wrote about this project, back in 2010, Spy Hunter combines two of my very favorite things: spies and their cars. At that time I was blogging about a potential Chad St. John-scripted version at Warner Bros. Prior to that incarnation, the property had been churning at Universal for a number of years with The Rock attached to star, and first John Woo and later Paul W.S. Anderson attached to direct. Now Vulture reports (via Dark Horizons) that Warner is still keen to make this movie happen, but St. John appears no longer involved. Instead, the studio has tapped Zombieland and Gangster Squad helmer Ruben Fleischer to direct and executive produce. Apparently he's not using St. John's script, but searching for a new writer to flesh out his vision. (Spies and cars? My hand just went up, Warner Bros.!)

While most videogame adaptations immediately spark discussion of what actor could best realize a beloved pixelated hero, in the case of Spy Hunter the question is what car could play the famous Interceptor? I put forth a number of suggestions back in 2010, but of course the vehicular landscape has changed since then. Since the version depicted on the side of the arcade console looked kind of like a cross between a Lamborghini and a Lotus, I think my top choice now would be the brand new Lotus Esprit. It's a cool car, it looks the part, and of course the Esprit has a proud history with spy gadgets.  The 2013 Aston Martin Vanquish would be pretty cool, too, though that marque is obviously pretty closely associated with another spy franchise. (Still, when EON opted not to use the new Vanquish in Skyfall, they might have given up their claim on the car...) Lest I lean too heavily on former Bond vehicles, I'll also suggest the new Jaguar C-X75. Actually, that might be the best option! I still can't believe that amazing concept is actually getting made. It simply cries out for a starring role in a spy movie!

Upcoming Spy DVDs: Scarecrow and Mrs. King: The Fourth and Final Season

TV Shows On DVD reports that Warner Home Video will release Scarecrow and Mrs. King: The Fourth and Final Season on DVD on January 22, 2013. That's a few months earlier than expected! (They've been on roughly a yearly schedule so far, and Season 3 came out in March.) It also means that fans will have a complete set of the only bona fide American spy TV hit of the 1980s on DVD. Since it was among the last successful shows of its era to appear on the format, I was perpetually concerned that Warner wouldn't finish on the same format the started on, and might relegate later seasons to MOD, which would have inevitably made them costlier. But now the fourth and final season is slated for official release, of the sort you can actually buy in brick-and-mortar stores! (As well as on Amazon, of course.) Mission: Impossible fans, too, should take note, as this season contains a great Barbara Bain appearance, in which the actress plays a full-fledged spy! (She even gets an exciting escape across the Soviet border.) The 5-disc set will contain all 22 episodes of the show's last season and retail for $39.98, though it can already be pre-ordered on Amazon for substantially less.

Read my review of Scarecrow and Mrs. King: The Complete First Season here.

A View To A Clip... From Skyfall

Among all the official videos released online today to mark Global James Bond Day, this one might be the most tantalizing, because it offers us 30 seconds of continuous footage from an action scene in Skyfall! It can be tough to judge action scenes from trailers, since they're all cut up. (For instance, who would have guessed from the excellent Quantum of Solace trailers that the action scenes would be even more cut up in the movie itself?) 30 seconds might not be much, but it's the best chunk of footage we've yet laid eyes on to judge how Sam Mendes handles action... and I like what I see! It's also our first definitive chance to hear new composer Thomas Newman's take on 007, and, again, I like what I hear! (It's kind of hard to judge because it relies heavily on the Bond Theme, but I'm happy to know that he does use the Bond Theme in action, as historically not all 007 composers have!) This clip comes from the pre-credits sequence, so it doesn't contain any plot spoilers, and the major stunt is one we've already seen in the trailers, so I deem it pretty safe for all but the most squeamish about spoilers.

New Skyfall Videos For James Bond's 50th Anniversary

Two new official videos have been released today in celebration of Global James Bond Day. The first is another videoblog from the official 007 website with Broccoli, Wilson, Craig and other Skyfall production personnell discussing the anniversary. The second is a much more in-depth, 10-minute video examining "The Secrets of Skyfall." While it doesn't actualy give away any major plot points, it does give a much clearer picture of the film as a whole than any of the trailers have, so if you're hoping to go in fresh, you might want to hold off watching that one. However, if you simply must ingest every bit of Skyfall you can get your eyes on before the movie premieres, then you'll be in 007th heaven.

New James Bond Documentary Everything or Nothing Airs Tonight

Everything or Nothing: The Untold Story of 007, the feature-length James Bond documentary celebrating 007's fiftieth anniversary that we first heard about back in January, debuts tonight in America on the HD channel EPIX. It's the main attraction in the celebration of Global James Bond Day. And you don't even need to subscribe to the cable channel to see the movie. If you have DISH, Cox, Verizon or Charter cable, then you can take advantage of the EPIX free preview weekend and watch Everything or Nothing on TV. (It premieres at 8pm tonight.) Otherwise, you can also sign up on their website for a free trial (you don't even have to enter credit card info), and watch the documentary online for free. EPIX have released a number of clips to give you a taste of what's in store:  

Happy Global James Bond Day!

On my way into work this morning as I listened to my freshly updated Bond songs playlist on shuffle to see how Adele's "Skyfall" fit in with the canon (quite well!), I passed two Aston Martins. Not that rare in LA, but it still felt affirmingly appropriate on the morning of Global James Bond Day. I'm shocked at how much I enjoy that notion (and actually saying "Happy Global James Bond Day!" to random people), but it makes me feel good (a nice feeling after several particularly crappy months) that there is such a day and that it's today and that there's a brand new James Bond movie opening very soon! (I saw my first LA billboard for Skyfall last night, adding further to that sense of anticipation.) While I'm very much looking forward to attending the Music of James Bond event at the Academy tonight, I don't feel like you need a big event in your city to enjoy Global James Bond Day. I suppose that I'm taking the role of a cartoon elf and saying that the true meaning of Global James Bond Day isn't found in splashy events or buying Blu-rays; it's found within all of us! (Please picture me rising up on a pedestal like Woody Allen's Jimmy Bond in Casino Royale as you read that, but with Nina's "Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown?" playing in the background.)

Anyway, besides the foolishly giddy feeling I get thinking about it, it is a pretty amazing accomplishment that this film series has run continuously for fifty years. When Dr. No opened in Britain fifty years ago today, it was a different world. It was a world divided between East and West, locked in a seemingly eternal Cold War that has come and gone. It was the dawn of a Jet Age, also sadly come and gone, which suddenly made the possibility of world travel open to everyone--even if traveling in the style of James Bond was still beyond the means of most families. A lot has changed in those fifty years, and it's pretty amazing that, thanks to numerous reinventions by the series' producers, 007 remains not only relevant but hugely popular. It's even more amazing to look fifty years on the other side of Dr. No. Going back the same amount of time that's passed between then and now, we find a world that hadn't yet experienced two world wars, let alone a cold one. A world where cars were still rarities. Thinking about it that way makes fifty years seem like a really long time to me. But I know why James Bond has remained popular for such a duration, and why he will remain popular for the next fifty-year increment as well. I know it for the same reason that anyone reading this blog knows it. The things that appeal to fans in James Bond are not rooted in the Cold War, the Jet Age, or any specific time. They're things audiences in any age will always enjoy: exotic locations, beautiful people, impressive technology and, above all, a call to adventure. So on this Global James Bond Day, I'm thankful to everyone who shaped this film franchise I love so much fifty years ago, and the custodians of it who have continued to provide me with so much enjoyment ever since. And I don't feel the least bit corny about typing that.

Tradecraft: Rival Seal Team Six Movie Lands at NatGeo

In the wake of the successful Seal Team Six mission that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden, a number of studios and filmmakers raced each other to be the first to chronicle the historic events on film. Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow had the edge, because she'd already been developing a movie about the (the fruitless) hunt for the elusive terrorist. But she wasn't alone. Her Hurt Locker producer, Nicholas Chartier, was next out of the gate with a film directed by Jon Stockwell (Blue Crush), then called Code Name: Geronimo. It's since been acquired by The Weinstein Company and changed its title to Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden. And Deadline reports that it will actually beat Bigelow's movie by a month... though it will premiere on TV. Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden will debut on The National Geographic Channel on Sunday, November 4. Bigelow's movie, Zero Dark Thirty (trailer here) comes out in theaters on December 19. Both movies look good to me, and I'm eager to see the story of the most high profile successful American Intelligence operation of the last decade unfold on screen. Despite that title, it's not just an account of the fateful SEAL mission itself, but also of the extensive joint operation between the CIA and JSOC leading up to that night. William Fichter stars as a CIA honcho, along with Cam Gigandet, Anson Mount, Freddy Rodriquez, Xzibit, Kathleen Robertson, Eddie Kay Thomas, Kenneth Miller and Transporter 3's Robert Knepper. Watch the trailer:

Listen Now to Adele's Skyfall Theme Song!

The wait is over! Global James Bond Day comes early for American fans (insert Christmas Jones joke here), since the midnight(ish) release on Adele's website was timed for 0:07 British Standard Time, which is eight hours ahead of Pacific Time. Thanks to a French radio station that jumped the gun, I've been listening to this song continuously for the past four hours... and it's really grown on me. I wish it had more of a hook; I wish it had a tad more bombast, but it's still clearly one of the good Bond songs. I'm definitely not covering my ears in disgust like Madonna made me do. "You Know My Name" is in no danger of being supplanted as my favorite title track of the past decade, but I like what I'm hearing from Adele. I can't wait to see it synced up to a Daniel Kleinman title sequence! "Skyfall" will be available to download from Amazon and iTunes as of midnight tonight.

Daniel Craig Saturday Night Live Promos

Daniel Craig's already being funny, in these promos for his appearance this week on SNL. This is the "crazy straw" Craig, in fine form: 

Previously Unavailable Bond Blu-rays Now Available Individually at Target

When the Bond 50 Blu-ray set was first announced, some fans who had already purchased the 11 catalog titles previously issued on Blu-ray were concerned that the only way to get the remaining titles and comlete their collection would be to shell out $150 for the box set. I never feared that the additional titles would turn up individually within a year, but it turns out at least some of them are available even sooner... now! At least The Living Daylights, Tomorrow Never Dies and A View to a Kill are currently available as individual Blu-rays exclusively in Target stores. (They don't appear to be available on the store's website.) And they're bargains! Tomorrow Never Dies and A View To A Kill feature all the same bonus content as the versions in the box set (and the previous DVD special editions), and retail for just $9.99 each. Timothy Dalton for some reason commands a premium, and The Living Daylights is $14.95. (Still cheaper than most Blu-rays.) Apparently the rest of the remaining titles will be available within a few weeks as WalMart and Best Buy exclusives. So if you're willing to run around a bit, you should be able to complete your Bond Blu-ray collection much sooner than anticipated! (Of course, you'll still be missing out on the Bond 50 bonus disc.) The one big drawback (well, other than the annoying exclusivity) is that the cover artwork won't match your previous titles.

Tradecraft: Covert Affairs, Strike Back Renewed

Deadline reports that USA has picked up its spy drama Covert Affairs for a fourth season, which is certainly good news! A few bad episodes may have snuck in this season, but it remains one of my favorite must-view spy shows. And it will for as long as they continue to shoot on location around the world! (By the way, Piper Perabo fans should be sure to check out Looper. She doesn't have much to do, but the movie is pretty amazing!)

Speaking of cable shows that shoot on location, the trade blog also reports that Strike Back has been renewed by Cinemax for a... well, they say for a third season, but of course we all know it will really be the show's fourth season, counting the far superior, original UK season starring Richard Armitage (review here). I do wish they hadn't tried to make the Cinemax series a continuation of that, and just started from scratch with a semi-remake. All that they did with their John Porter bits served only to anger fans of the original series, not placate them. That said, the Cinemax version is great for what it is, so I'm happy to see it return. Its 2013 season will shoot in South Africa and Hungary. Producers Andy Harries and Michael Casey, director Michael Bassett, and writers Simon Burke, James Dormer and Richard Zajdlic will all return, but the cable network won't reveal which cast members will be back for fear of spoiling the yet-to-air Season 2(3) finale. Remember, this is a show where anyone can die...

Adele Confirmed For Skyfall Theme Song

Today the worst kept secret of the past year was finally officially confirmed: Adele will perform the theme song for the latest James Bond movie, Skyfall. Adele first hinted as much nearly a year ago and it's been persistantly rumored ever since, but for some reason EON has waited longer than ever to make the official announcement. The song will officially debut on Friday, October 5 (Global James Bond Day, and the day of the Bond music event at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles), at 0:07 BST on Adele's website. (That's 7:07pm, October 4, Eastern Time in America.) But, inevitably, clips have already leaked out. I imagine links will disappear quickly, but keep popping up until Friday's unveiling. Adele is possibly the biggest recording artist in the world right now (her last album, 21, was the bestselling album of the last two years), so this song seems to have a good chance of making the biggest Bondian impact on the charts since Madonna's "Die Another Day" in 2002. There's no word yet on whether there will be a physical CD single (fingers crossed, because I'd hate to curtail my collection of Bond singles!), but the digital download can already be pre-ordered on iTunes.