Tuesday, May 28, 2002

MEN IN BLACK'S MICHAEL BAILEY SMITH

Michael Bailey Smith, perhaps best known as Ben Grimm in the Fantastic Four movie, updated The Continuum on his career, including a role in the Men in Black sequel.

Smith plays a character called Creepy in the second MIB film, and while he doesn't have a lot of screen time, he promises it will be memorable.

For the complete interview, CLICK HERE.

SPIDER-MAN MOVIE UPDATE

Spider-Man continued its record-setting ways over the Memorial Day weekend and is moving up the all-time charts.

Spider-Man finished second to Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones with $36.5 million over the four-day weekend, pushing its total to $334.3 million in 25 days.

The film became the quickest to reach $300 million, doing so in 22 days and beating the record of 28 days set by Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.

Spider-Man passed Forrest Gump to become No. 6 on the all-time box-office chart and is closing in on No. 5, Jurassic Park, which grossed $357.1 million.

"The top five is in our sights," said Jeff Blake, head of distribution and marketing for Sony, told The Associated Press. "We're not quite sure where it will end after that."

The top four are Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace at $431.1 million, #3 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial at $434.9, Star Wars at $461 million and Titanic at $600.8 million.

ONI'S ONE PLUS ONE

In September, Oni Press will unveil the latest addition to its line-up: Neal Shaffer and Daniel Krall's One Plus One.

A five-issue miniseries, One Plus One is a neo-noir comic book with dark shades of psychological horror, following a man who keeps fate on track when someone seeks to change the course of their natural destiny. The cover for each issue will be by Michael Avon Oeming.

"I met Neal and Daniel at San Diego in 2001," said Oni Press editor-in-chief Jamie S. Rich. "They came to the Oni booth and they had one of the most professional presentations we had ever seen. Neal had his pitches down, and Daniel had a portfolio that was extraordinary. There wasn't a question of whether or not we wanted to work with them, it was just a matter of where to begin. They had three mini-series ideas, all of them really good. We finally settled on One Plus One."

"Our working relationship grew out of a mutual interest in story," Krall said. "Both of us had been doing work separately outside of comics for a while. Neal had been doing journalism, and I was doing illustration, and painting. Comics have always been something I wanted to do, and sort of a natural conclusion to a lot of our ideas."

Here's how Oni describes the book:

"The story of One Plus One focuses on David Coulson, a man who travels the world making sure that the bad guys stay on their course and meet the dastardly end planned for them. His current quarry is a young gambler looking to play both ends against the middle, something David can't allow. It's up to him to take the gambler under his wing and give him the skills he needs to get stuck in the game forever."

"For us, David is almost a vessel," Shaffer said. "It's not so much about him as it is the people he encounters, the environment he lives in. And not just the people he targets, but the ancillary personalities he meets along the way. People like the woman in our story in the Oni Press Color Special 2002, whose job may or may not be the same as his. And Leonard, the man in the first story arc who can see folks as they will look after they die. It leaves us open to an almost infinite number of possibilities.

"The title comes from the Godard/Rolling Stones documentary of the same name. We're intentionally tweaking and playing with some of the ideas present there, in addition to setting David up as a sort of variable. His presence in an equation marks a fundamental change in the sum total."

"I knew Daniel and Neal from their association with Insight Studios," Oeming said. "Their talent and dedication is apparent to everyone who sees their work, and I knew they would go far. In some ways, you could see me doing covers as giving them an extra promotional boost for their first comic; in another, you could say I am hitching my wagon to the top talent of tomorrow."

One Plus One #1 goes on sale Sept. 11. The 32-page, black-and-white book will cost $2.95.

BRIEFLY