Saturday, October 1, 2016

Movie Novelization Blog now a website!!! - Villainnews.com

To get a comprehensive home for all my penchants, I launched a website dedicated to Literature and Film entertainment.

Link: http://villainnews.com/


Horror, Sci-fi, Fantasy, and Comic books will be the main themes of most articles. There will be reviews, villain profiles, news articles, original movie novelizations, interviews, and other topics within those genres.

Message me for any requests you may have. Or if you wish to submit an article to be featured on the site, send me a pitch on your topic. I've been writing all sorts of prose this year--fiction and non-fiction. I tend to be a fickle writer, bouncing between different projects instead of focusing on one and completing it. There will be a number of more novelization reviews to come--Suicide squad, Batman (1989), Conan the destroyer, Halloween, Friday the 13th part 2, The Funhouse.

I'm also adapting several horror movie scenes into novelizations. One of them is the opening scene of Scream (1996), for the 20 year anniversary. It'll be around 4k words in length. This december 2016 I plan on completing my novelization of the 1977 ghostly horror film Cathy's Curse.

Sunday, May 29, 2016

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) Novelization Review

Title: Terminator 2 Judgment Day
Tagline: "He's Back."
Based on the screenplay by James Cameron & William Wisher
Novel by Randall Frakes
Page Count: 256
Published: June 1st, 1991 (Spectra)


Do you think Arnold was told this would be the cover?
 
  In the spring of 2016, I went on a massive Terminator binge. It's such a rich franchise and always worth wallowing in every few years. Now I wasn't too fond of the rebooted sequel in 2015 and felt that took the whole Time Travel aspect a bit too far. But we aren't gonna focus on the films right now.

  After listening to the Terminator (1984) novelization on youtube, I was dazzled by the splendid prose of Randall Frakes and William Wisher. But, with the rarity of the first novel, I haven't felt the urge to purchase it yet, being that the price of it ranges from $35-$50 on Ebay. Even so, after I complete the audiobook, I will review the original on this blog by the end of the year, so be sure to check that out.

  Now onto T2.
 
  Randall Frakes wrote this book without the aide of William Wisher, who co-wrote the original with him. And the the loss of him is felt. Randall Frakes does excel in many areas, mainly with action scenes, technological phenomenon, and metaphors. The man has a military pedigree and he's able to flesh out the carnage in graphic detail, and overall the prose is great. However, he does fall into a lengthy tedium in this book, starting with the intro of John and his foster parents and it doesn't end until the arrival of the terminator and John at the asylum.

  In this lull, Frakes commits a slew of writing sins--beginning sequential sentences with the same word (usually "THE"), unleashing a series of cliche phrases ("Parted like the red sea." "Every nook and cranny." "Flung like a ragdoll.")

  But those are all minor gripes. The man also provides the reader with a ton of scientific, technological, and mechanical terms that i've never come across. And if anyone knows me, I do enjoy learning new words to add to my thesaurus. I'll take them. Frakes's affinity for motorcycles was also blatant. Much of that material was bloated and verbose.

  Alright, enough of my critique on the writer. Now onto the extra info we learn in the novelization.

  In the opening chapter, Sarah Connor is traversing the arid landscape of the mexican desert. It's essentially an introspection on the events of the first film and her accepting the onus of being a messianic mother to John Connor.

back cover.
  In the following chapters, we jump ahead to the future--July 11th, 2029. All of these scenes aren't in the film, featuring the apocalyptic world of ruined cities and rampant robots engaged in warfare with humans. There's some great action here and tremendous thrills to get you amped up for the rest of the book.

  We learn that Sarah Connor was killed along with her convoy in combat by HKs in Mexico. With solemn grace, John takes the news as if it's just another casualty. Or so that's the front her puts on to other soldiers.

  John Connor and the resistance exact a successful assault on Skynet's main hub, all during a simultaneous raid on the Colorado compound where Skynet's computer grid is destroyed. Once they breach the complex, he encounters Kyle Reese. He has indifferent feelings about Reese, because of the oddity of the situation. Nonetheless, he had gifted Kyle with the original pic of his Mom, while giving out other copies of the photo to other soldiers. It's kinda weird, but it's meant to be a piece of inspiration to the soldiers except most probably used it to jerk off to. It had to the number one source of porn to the guys, just like how boys will use a Sears catalog to get aroused.

  Anyway, John and his soldiers locate a room of deactivated terminators, with two missing. They also notice the time machine was recently used, meaning they hadn't entirely thwarted the machines. Surprisingly, this future John Connor isn't as adept with technology as the 1991 John Connor. So he instructs his techies to enable the machine for activation. If it weren't for the Tech Specialists analyzing and cracking Cyberdyne's data codes, they would not have conquered the machines.

 Of course, Kyle Reese volunteers to go back to 1984 and save John's Mom from Termination. This scene is replicated in Terminator Genisys and probably featured in the screenplay for T2, but it's unclear if James Cameron ever filmed it back then. Knowing his existence depends on Kyle Reese being sent back, John approves the mission. Kyle is swabbed in "Conductance Jelly" and shipped back.

  While inside this room of deactivated terminators, the squad is baffled to find a strange liquid metal substance. None of them had ever encountered a liquid Terminator before, and this kicks off the events that led to them reprogramming and sending back a T-101 to protect John in 1991.

  With the extended prologue out of the way, we now enter the scenes depicted in the film. Additionally, all the deleted scenes featured on the 2-disc dvd are included into the novelization. Yes, that includes the Kyle Reese ghostly hallucination and the plotline of how the liquid terminator can involuntarily morph into whatever metal he touches. I abhor that one and am thankful it was axed from the final cut.

  I must get to the important background info on Miles Dyson and the rise of Cyberdyne. Miles Dyson grew up in Detroit and had aspired to be a basketball player growing up. After that inevitably fell through, his High school counselor made him retake his SATs, which he ended up scoring high in Math. So high, in fact, he received a federally funded scholarship to CalTech in Pasadena, California. It turns out he had a " tremendous affinity for equations & formulae". During grad school, Cyberdyne wooed him to join their company and that brings us up to date on that.

  But how did Cyberdyne become a juggernaut in the Technology sphere?

  If you remember he ending to Terminator (1984), the T-101 is crushed in a compressor machine and left for the cops to clean-up. Well, it turns out that that company was called Kleinhaus Electronics located in LA. The next morning, Jack Kroll came to work and stumbled upon the destruction while the cops were there taping off the crime scene. Out of sheer curiosity, he slipped past the line unnoticed and purloined a few of the items--the severed Terminator Arm and a bit-sized wafer chip.

  After discovering its amazing features, he along with his co-worker Greg Simmons quit Kleinhaus Electronics, borrowed a ton of money, and started Cyberdyne. It took them a few years of studying the labyrinthine chip's many complexities before they ever turned a profit. Sadly, Jack Kroll died of a brain tumor before ever fully succeeding, though he did create the template for the wafer circuit. For a span, the company was in limbo until the talented Lab Tech Miles Dyson came along.

  Eventually, they went from a micro-company to megamillion dollar corporation. Dyson was only one of three people ever to work on the futuristic circuitry. Greg Simmons was now the CEO and considered as more of a salesman and money raiser than an adept code writer.

  Another intriguing scene added to the novelization was the freak-out of Dr. Silberman. This is the hyper-realistic psychologist that never believes Sarah's warnings of Terminator machines and time-travel warfare. When Silberman witnesses the battle of Terminators in the hallway, he's petrified an left speechless in the scene. He's never seen again in the movie, but in the book that revisit him in a hysterical panic. While being wheeled onto an ambulance, he raves about how the Terminators are real and he was wrong the whole-time. I prefer the naysaying Silberman. Even faced with the surrealism, I feel Silberman is so indoctrinated by societal beliefs that he would try and make sense of the whole otherworldly instance.

  Let's skip to the ending.

  After the termination of the liquid metal terminator and the execution of the T-101, Frakes gives us an epilogue set in the distant future. The year is 2029 and a 45 yr old John Connor is a US senator with two kids. There was no Judgment Day and the Machines never rose to dominance. Instead, Sarah records a tape talking about how lucky mankind is for averting the cataclysm. Still, she broods about how one day mankind will unwittingly create machines to overtake mankind, but for now it was at least postponed for awhile.
 

Overall grade: A-
 
 



Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Warcraft (2016) Official Movie Novelizaton

--INFO--
Based on: Warcraft (2016) Film
Genre: Fantasy_Video Game
Release Date: June 7th, 2016 (film is released 6/10/16)
Screenplay: Charles Leavitt & Duncan Jones
Author: Christie Golden
Publisher: Titan Publishing; MTI edition


Official Cover


Official Synopsis: The peaceful realm of Azeroth stands on the brink of war as its civilization faces a fearsome race of invaders: orc warriors fleeing their dying home to colonize another. As a portal opens to connect the two worlds, one army faces destruction and the other faces extinction. From opposing sides, two heroes are set on a collision course that will decide the fate of their family, their people and their home. So begins a spectacular saga of power and sacrifice in which war has many faces, and everyone fights for something.


This novelization will be a double bonus for me. Not only am I a freak for Novelizations, but this one happens to be written by an author I'm very fond of--Christie Golden. In the summer of 2014, I found pristine, unread copies of the first two novels she ever published. Vampire of the Mists (1991) & Dance of the Dead (1992), both of which are set in the legendary realm of Dungeons & Dragons lore. The woman has a talent for storytelling and has written novels for Star Trek, Star Wars, Starcraft, & several World of Warcraft books as well.

Now I'm not much of a video gamer, and therefore I'm rather ignorant to World of Warcraft games. However, I along with many people out there have at least heard of the franchise, for it has pervaded throughout American pop culture since the mid-2000s. In fact, over 100 million accounts have been created by online gamers.

From my understanding, the franchise  essentially combines Fantasy, Horror, & Science Fiction elements, thereby giving gamers a menagerie of characters to play with--Aliens, Goblins, Humans, Elfs, Witches, Sorcerers, etc.

As for the film, It's been on a long journey on its way to development since 2006. For a span in the early 2010s, Sam Raimi was attached to direct it. By 2013, David Bowie's son Duncan Jones (MOON) joined the project as director and that's when the film's progress gained momentum, appearing on Movie websites sporadically.

Based on a storyline from game designer Chris Metzen (Diablo, Warcraft, Starcraft), the screenplay was written by Charles Leavitt (Bllod Diamond, Seventh Son, In the Heart of the Sea).

*** Expect a review on here at some point in the summer of 2016.***

Thursday, March 31, 2016

Alan Dean Foster writing a book on his Novelization Career!


ADF...waiting for his palmistry results.

The object of my idolatry, Alan Dean Foster, recently announced the completion of his memoir titled: "The Director Should've Shot You", recounting his long tenured career of writing Novelizations.

From Luana to Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), ADF vows to include all anecdotes and frequently asked questions over the years he has received appertaining to his life as the top novolizationalist.

As of spring 2016, ADF's agency is fishing for a publisher and claims he included covers to each one of his movie tie-ins, with hopes that more pictures are included throughout the book.

I'm overly delighted by this news and will definitely go out of my way to purchase this one. Even though he's been very open and detailed about his past experiences in various interviews, It'll be an immense aide for me to have all this info in one tome. This way I can cram more factoids about his novelizations into future article reviews for everyone to enjoy. I just completed the original Star Wars novelization tonight and hopped onto his website for research, only to discover this wonderful news. I already have drafts for 'Clash of the Titans' and 'Star Wars', and now i'm thinking i should wait until this memoir is released before i publish those articles.

Based on the tentative title, I assume ADF receives more criticism for his adaptations than praise. Knowing how fanboys can be, this isn't too surprising. I myself understand he's put in a difficult situation where he hasn't seen the film and is working off a draft of the screenplay. Therefore, as a fan, you have to create your own canon and choose what to exclude and include in your mind.

Until then, look forward to reviews on The Fog, Halloween III, Re-Animator, and Dragonslayer. Also, I'm dying to procure a copy of April Fool's Day by Jeff Rovin.
 
 

Halloween III: Season of The Witch [1984] - Novelization - Review

Based on: Halloween 3: Season of The Witch (1982)
Genre: Horror_Sci-Fi_Witchcraft_Halloween


The night no one came to the theater.


Backcover Plot: The streets are quiet. Dead quiet as the shadows lengthen and night falls. It's Halloween. Blood-chilling screams pierce the air. Grinning skulls and grotesque shapes lurk in the gathering darkness. It's Halloween. The streets are filling with small cloaked figures. They're just kids, right? The doorbell rings and your flesh creeps. But it's all in fun, isn't it? No. This Halloween is different. It's the last one.



Throughout the novelization, an exorbitant amount of ink is spent in the malaised mind of Dr. Challis. In the beginning, he constantly stresses over his alcoholism, the turbulence of his divorce, and the disconnection he has with his kids. Moreover, the unremitting hype for Halloween this year has him scorning the world everytime that irking jingle rang. No need to get into detail, but the book needlessly expands upon his misfortune to the point of frustration. It almost felt like I was the one paying his child support.
 
It seems as though Challis constanly went over his misery on a daily basis, counting his troubles and woes.  After getting called into the hospital, I was amazed he didn't blow off his head before chapter 3.
 
One additional scene has him shopping for the masks that he eventually gives to his kids; where as in the film, he just shows up and gifts his kids with silver-shamrock knockoff masks, only to have them shun them in favor of the ever popular silver-shamrock ones.

Now that i've read the novelization, I notice the undertone of Challis' aversion to children mirroring that of Conal Cochran. And I only needed Dennis Etchison to hammer it in my head for a series of paragraphs to accomplish this.


'Get me childproof everything.'

Once again, Etchison delivers a savory death-by-fire scene.  I'm, of course, referring to the scene where an android torches himself in the hospital parking lot. It's as though Etchison was born to describe fire and light. NASA needs to attach this guy to a rocket and have him prose the cosmos on a looping voyage. Frankly, It would be much better than the blurry images they provide.

Excerpt Time: "Challis rocked back and shielded his face as the entire car exploded and an enormous mushroom cloud erupted into the night sky. A fire ball rolled heavenward, orange at the center and then deep red, veined with black smoke, seering trees and lighting up the night with the terrible beauty of an unearthly glow." - Jack Martin's Android death scene in parking lot.

One thing Etchison Nails is the jolly, daft attitude of the Kupfer family. Ostensibly, Challis is affable to the bunch. Inside, their annoyance scrapes at the last remaining nerves the Man's got.

After arriving in Santa Mira, Challis' suspicions are on high alert from the start. A lot of small extra info is revealed about the town; a number of businesses are talked about, and how Cochran supports them all. It appears as though Cochran led a massive Irish Exodus to the town, forcing all the locals out of employment and involvement. 

For the last two acts of the story, much of the dialogue is additional or altered. By that, i mean it's additional drivel spoken by the silly clowns that have embarked at ground zero for samhain sacrfices on halloween.

The most noticeable omission from the film was the absence of the autopsy scene in which Challis phones the female doctor in regards to the results. Remember, She was then executed by an android? Yeah, that was expurgated entirey and replaced with a frantic phone call by Challis to his surly ex-wife, warning her of the dangers of the Silver Shamrock masks. She blows him off curtly, calling him a drunk, jealous fool. She was only half right in her claim, though.

Upon busting into the toy factory, Challis stumbles into Cochran's mancave; a tinkerer's paradise as it's described.

Instead of getting background narrative on Cochran, they make him more garrulous in the final act.

In comparison to the nefarious performance of Dan O'Herlihy, this approach diminishes his evil presence. Like i stated before, we're only viewing the story from one perspective--Challis'.

At one point he expresses how his ancient ancestors (Irish Celts) would be astonished by the technical progress he and his team of docile androids have accomplished. He admits they lacked the ability to harness their power.

In Cochran's epic speech revealing his intentions and motives, Cochran has several additional lines, although I think it came off much scarier in the film. He gets pretty brash when he maligns humans and the christian religion. When Challis inquires about which Pagan God Cochran worships, he even directly profanes Jesus!

So much of the dialogue is altered (slightly) throughout his polemic on the blasphemy of the contemporary Halloween. Also, he mocks mankind's inability to understand the rudimentary workings of their own anatomy.

Here's a good one: When Challis asks him why he's targeting the children, Cochran tells him it's because they are less defiant, wretched, and come out of the dirtiest part of women

Finally, a gray suit is present, three masks in hand, for Cochran to choose a skull mask.

Jumping to the finale, Challis and Ellie escape the exploding factory just in time. Challis cogitates on the magnitude of the situation, knowing that the ancient evil they had just destroyed was only one manifestation of evil. Knowing that Evil will endure forever in many forms for many Halloweens to come.

Overall, I was disappointed with the narrow-sighted narration of the novel. It seems as though Etchison was instructed by John Carpenter to not expand upon Cochran's origins or background. Due to its pagan subject matter, Halloween III: SOTW happens to be one of my favorite horror films of all-time. In the end, the film is far superior to the novelization.


Screenplay: Tommy Lee Wallace (Nigel Kneal & John Carpenter)
Author: Jack Martin (AKA Dennis Etchison)
Release Date: October 1st, 1984
...
My Rating: B+


Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Cathy's Curse (1977) Original Novelization - Prologue


Cathy's Curse: Eyes of Jade

Original Adaptation by J.B. Midura

Based on: Cathy's Curse (1977) film
 
 

Prologue:

December 1947 – Westmount, Quebec

Veering around the chain link entrance bend at fleeting speed, dark silhouettes formed into articulately designed mason manors in the bright beam of a red locomotive's headlights. The motor slowed down as it tore through a streaming sheet of misty drizzle flowing from the street lamp's yellow cone. Tiny newborn zephyrs swirled under the lamp's shaft, yet the sparkling drizzle was invisible in the darkness beyond.

The car's tires came to a skidding halt at a stately home, breaking the neighborhood's salubrious silence.

Westmount, a thriving suburb of Montreal, had been inhabited since the earliest days of the French colonial settlers' migration in the middle of the seventeenth century. By the twentieth century, the area had progressed into an opulent enclave for Anglophone businessmen.

A dusting of crystallized snow rested on the rocky entrance way of the Gimble manner, glistening on the trail . Before the engine's pistons could cease, Mr. Gimble, dressed in a brown suit and tie, with a thick mustache that commanded dignity, rushed hastily upon the porch of his posh residence. He over gripped the doorknob with savage force, aggressively twisting and squeezing it.

In an anxious fury, he burst into the foyer, not even bothering to shut the door behind him. It slammed up against an empty coat rack, incurring a transient wobble. "Joanne! Joanne?" He shouted, eyes searching around for any sign of human activity. The lights were fully shining about the house. Still, he felt the dark despair that filled the place. The silence hemorrhaged the senses into fraught and warped vibes. Mrs. Gimble's perfume was largely absent, though it still lingered in the air—sweet and tangy.

Coming from upstairs, he heard the faint whimpers of a dejected wail. He hurried his way up the staircase, hand gripping the oak railing, ascending past an array of oil paintings and formal family portraits in black and white. The painted green pastures and smiling faces were a drastic contrast to the grave paroxysm of Mr. Gimble.

He swung open the door to his daughter Laura's room, knelt down at the edge of the bed, and consoled his saddened child. "Where's your mother and your brother?" He asked calmly, wiping the tears from her eyes.

"Mommy's gone. She's taken George with her," Laura murmured, clutching a tattered doll.

He stood up immediately. "Your mother's a bitch!" Mr. Gimble asserted, sternly emphasizing the insult. "She'll pay for what she did to you." He snatched up Laura's hand and they exited the home, leaving the house as it was.

Luckily, conveniently, inexplicably, Laura had a hold of her coat, along with her rag doll. Ever since her mom had gifted it to her for Christmas days earlier, the bizarre happenings effects on her and the house.

Horridly tattered, the doll's eyes were stitched shut. Supposedly, Mrs. Gimble had purchased the doll at a Gypsy roadside sale. On a vile quest to find the most hideous gift imaginable, she'd rummaged through a heap of threaded fodder until she stumbled upon the foulest thing available.

She'd ignored the decrepit old lady's incoherent grumbles, curtly waving the gypsy woman off. Spending only pennies, she still felt it to be a waste of money. Laura was Mr. Gimble's most cherished asset. Scarring his baby girl's mind indirectly was a cunning tactic, she had thought.

But she'd thought wrong. Horribly wrong!

The horrors harbored in that doll were as uncontrollable and perilous as a Wizard's wand in the hands of a simpleton. The curse had empowered Laura with a fiendish will, wreaking terror and malevolent dominance over anyone in its range. Its power flourished wherever it was welcomed.

Infuriated, Mr. Gimble had sensed the strong urgency to rush home that evening after Mrs. Gimble's telephone tirade 20 minutes earlier. The threats of leaving the two of them behind and bolting with their youngest kid, George, felt real this time. The holiday tension had boiled in the household until its exploding point.

Mr. Gimble was, for the most part, oblivious to the emotional drama in the household and the severity of how wretched his marriage had become. Renowned as a shrewd and stern businessman, he never tolerated dissension in the house, never once left work to attend a family crisis until now.

Strapping the belt over her scarlet dress, Mr. Gimble tucked Laura into the passenger seat of his apple-red Plymouth He'd grabbed nothing to shelter him from the weather, for his rage-scorched blood heated him thoroughly. With a swift click, the engines roared to life and the headlights penetrated the eerie darkness ahead. Mr. Gimble gripped the wheel hard, his brown eyes deciphering the night beyond him.

Chilling organ music came from the car speakers, amplifying the stress of the moment. The windshield wipers whipped from side to side, slashing away glossy snow. It assailed from the dark sky, thick and heavy. The further they drove, the harder it got.

Laura propped herself up to get a read on her Dad's mood, as well as a read on the evening's cold, tempestuous mood. Their neighborhood was well behind them now, a small blob of yellow dots in the rear view window.

Suddenly, out of some ethereal realm, an albino Rabbit pranced across the blacktop. Mr. Gimble, knowing the extreme rarity of these wondrous creatures, swerved frantically around it in an attempt to preserve their posterity, clipping a snow bank. The roadside castle of ice crumbled like the walls of Jericho. Laura flashed a terrifying expression at her father, her heart thumping. Shock choked her scream, paralyzing her fright.

Snow camouflaged the Rabbit's pure white fur, but its soft tracks visibly dotted up the hill.

He jerked the wheel back across the slippery street, skidding wildly into a snow-crusted ravine. In his panic, he had over corrected the vehicle. The heavy metal was crunched into the frozen ground, its grill crushed inward.

Tendrils of black smoke rose from the cracked engine, a precursor to combustion.

Orange flames began to gush from underneath the crumpled hood, hissing in the icy air. Mr. Gimble, unconscious, was hunched over the steering wheel, obstructing their escape. The sound of crackling flames and agonizing shrieks resonated over and over, seething, sizzling inside. Trapped!

“ Help, Daddy, open the door,” Laura cried out, beseeching him to locate his bravery.

But her dire weeps went unheeded.

Mr. Gimble's skin sprouted revolting pits of caustic flesh about his neck and face, cherry color, the fire quickly charring his bones to iron black. Laura's teary eyes were extinguished by the rapid spike of incinerator-like temperatures as she reached out at the morbid rictus of Mr. Gimble's glowing skull. She struggled against her dooming fate until her aqueous humors went as dry as the sands of Egypt. Her bright red dress darkened to crimson, then black ash.

The car was swallowed up by scorching flames and smothered by blackening smoke. Metal ripped and contorted, pinballing bolts underneath the bent hood. The sound grew to an excruciating decibel.

Along the hillside, the albino rabbit witnessed the roadside pyre that it had engendered, its sanguine eyes reflecting the cavorting blaze. With grace, the divine creature hopped up the embankment and into the labyrinth of a shadowy forest, a forever panorama stretching beyond optical limits. The rabbit zagged through the towering Junipers, which stood like imposing Kremlins, contoured by the silver moon hovering behind.


Stay tuned for Chapter 1 coming soon!!!

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Dick Tracy (1990) Novelization - Review

Based On: Dick Tracy (1990) Film
Published: May 1st, 1990 (one month before Film's release)

Author:  Max Allan Collins


Shadow of a tough guy.

To me, the film was a saturday morning favorite of mine growing up i the '90s. My dad had recorded Batman (1989) and this film on the same VHS. After The Joker had fallen to his doom, the tape would roll over to the start of Dick Tracy for an epic double feature. Rewatching it in 2015, I feel the film still holds up as a clever and stylish feature. Plus, the ensemble cast of eccentric Gangsters was an impressive array of talent for the era.

Like The Dark Knight Novelization, adaptation duties went to a writer who was already familiar with the character--Max Allan Collins. His reputation as a Crime Writer is as prolific as any, having contributed to comic books, dozens of novels, an assortment of established series, and over twenty novelizations: Waterworld (1995), Air Force One (1997), U-571 (2000), G.I. Joe Rise of Cobra (2009).

In 1977, Collins replaced Chester Gould, the comic strip's creator, as the lead writer of the Dick Tracy strip after his retirement. As a fanatic of the comic since his childhood, Collins restored the tone of the series to its original crime concept, purging out Science Fiction elements. The redux edition brought back original golden-era characters that had long been absent. In addition to the novelization, Collins also wrote two follow-up novels--Dick Tracy Goes to War and Dick Tracy Meets His Match--before leaving the character in 1992.




Because of the vast amount of characters in the film and the plethora of writers working on the script, a number of aspects were altered in the movie tie-in--including Junior's role, the impact and mystery of Blank, the actions of Tracy, and more. The screenplay itself went through substantial rewrites for over a decade as Warren Beatty first began to orchestrate a film adaptation back in the mid-'70s.

The entire vibe of the novelization divulges a darker edge to it than the gaudy, comical film version. This is usually what I covet from an adaptation and Collins infuses a gritty tone that kept me engaged throughout. The prose is solid but not fantastic. The peculiar characters is what makes the series standout from other Crime Comics: Lips, Mumbles, Pruneface, Flattop, Big Boy.

You know, it's only a matter of time before a Dick Tracy reboot is announced as the next comic book revival, but i don't see them ever eclipsing this garish canvas. It may not be a great film, but the performances are make-up effects were well executed. Nowadays, they drain most comic book franchises of their iridescent colors. I understand bright colors don't transition well to live-action (ala, Schumacher's Batman films), yet Dick Tracy was the most successful at capturing the imagery of the comics.

If you ever go on a Dick Tracy binge, make this novelization a must to check out. It can usually be found floating around ebay for less than $10 USA. Even though it has its share of monotonous moments, there's a bevy of added tidbits and an alternate ending to look forward to.

Overall:  B-