Monday, September 9, 2002

JUSTICE LEAGUE ANIMATED UPDATE

Bruce Timm, producer of Cartoon Network's Justice League animated series, said that using the Injustice Gang was one of his prerequisites for doing the show.

The Injustice Gang is featured in "Injustice For All," the second part of which airs Friday at 7 p.m. (ET/PT) on Cartoon Network.

"Once you get on a show like the JLA, there are just certain givens that you just have to do," Timm said. "You have to do the Injustice Gang or Legion of Doom or whatever you want to call them.

"What's cool about the Injustice Gang is that they're cool, but they're uncool. They're kind of corny. We tried not to fight the corniness of it. This is the one show where literally all the super-villains team up and fight all the super guys. It's just a really fun episode."

The voice cast for "Injustice For All" includes Clancy Brown as Lex Luthor, Mark Hamill as the Joker and Solomon Grundy, Olivia D'Abo as Star Sapphire, Ian Buchanan as Ultra-Humanite, Sheryl Lee Ralph as Cheetah, Steve McHattie as Shade and Efrain Figueroa as Copperhead

Jason Marsden also returns as Snapper Carr, who is a television news reporter in the series.

Click on the thumbnails for images from part two of "Injustice For All."

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In other Justice League news:

* The first part of "Metamorphosis," which features Metamorpho, will premiere on Friday, Oct. 4. Clips from the episode were previewed at the DC Comics booth during the recent Comic-Con International in San Diego.

Stan Berkowitz wrote the first part and Dwayne McDuffie the second part of the episode.

* Look for more on Justice League later this week here in The Continuum.

MUTANT X UPDATE

The Continuum has obtained two new images from the second season of the Mutant X television series.

The images are from the episode "The Future Revealed" and are of Sandrine Holt, who plays Patricia, a member of Gabriel Ashlocke's Links.

Gabriel, the first New Mutant and played by Michael Easton, first appeared in the first-season finale as his group, The Strand, took over Genomex and put Mason Eckhart in a stasis pod.

Easton's Gabriel will appear in three episodes in the second season.

Holt, 29, has nearly two dozen televisions credits. She appeared in two episodes of Witchblade.

"The Future Revealed" is set to air in syndication the week of Oct. 28.

The episode "Past as Prologue" kicks off the second season of Mutant X the week of Sept. 29.

Click on the thumbnails for larger and fuller images, Look for more news and images from the show soon here in The Continuum.

OLIVER CHIN'S NINE OF ONE

Immedium has announced a December release for its debut comics title, Nine of One: A Window to the World by Oliver Chin.

A three-issue limited series, Nine of One shows how nine California teenagers cope make sense of the tumult following the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Here's how Chin describes the mini-series:

"The students from James Madison high school are chomping on the bit of adulthood. But in the wake of September 11th, they confront the words and deeds of adults who have tipped their world off its axis.

"In Nine of One a high school class from Union City grapple with the aftershocks of a catastrophe. But their 11th grade history teacher steers his students forward: they themselves can be reporters who seek the answers within a conflicting mix of emotions, facts, and points of view.

"Overcoming their initial confusion, these students fan out to interview strangers in their midst. From an increasingly multicultural community comes a spectrum of opinions: American and Native American, Afghani and Soviet, Arab and Jew, Asian and Indian, and Latino and Black.

"With open minds and sharpened pencils, these teens scratch through the surface of misunderstanding to find that this story is not simple or uniform. Who is with Us and against Them? Is good and evil in the eye of the beholder? Listening to locals who share worldwide tales, these students rediscover a time-honored truth. We have to learn from history to not repeat it.

"Through the eyes of these nine teenagers, readers will encounter diverse walks of life and uncomfortable opinions, and thereby confront the validity of their own views. Can the next generation sort out a world, growing smaller by the day but yet more divided? Our future may well depend upon it.

"In light of what's happened during the past year, people are still trying to make sense of 9-11. Giving witness to vantage points too often ignored by the mainstream, Nine of One provides a nuanced, unconventional, and poignant commentary that will resonate with young adults around the world who face an array of grown up choices. From Generation Y to their Baby Boomer parents, readers will respond to Nine of One and appreciate how a land of a thousand voices can find common ground."

Each issue of Nine of One will be 32 black-and-white pages. Below is a preview of the first issue.

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SMALLVILLE ONLINE STORE

Warner Bros. Television has announced the opening of an online store where officially licensed Smallville merchandise is available.

The site features the signature Smallville High School crow emblem and official school colors. Products for sale include backpacks with MP3 pockets, leather varsity jackets, pen/pencils sets, notebooks, baseball caps and more.

The store can be accessed by logging directly onto http://www.smallvillehighschoolstore.com or through the official Smallville site, http://www.smallvilleledger.com. Changing weekly with each broadcast, the site takes the form of the fictional town's newspaper, the Smallville Ledger, which is often referred to in the show. The Ledger links to Smallville High School's own student publication, the Smallville High Torch (http://www.smallvilletorch.com), from which Web surfers may also access the Student Store.

The overall site, which realistically maintains the fictional world of the television series, includes news stories and editorials about life in the strange town of Smallville, classified ads and background information on LuthorCorp (http://www.luthorcorp.net), the company owned by Lex Luthor's (series star Michael Rosenbaum) family.

In the Torch section, visitors learn more about Clark Kent (series star Tom Welling), Lana Lang (series star Kristin Kreuk) and their high school friends.

Fans of the show can actively participate by e-mailing letters to the editor and receiving online responses as if they were citizens of Smallville. And sharp-eyed viewers who follow the constantly evolving site will gain inside information on upcoming storylines from clues placed throughout the articles.

X-MEN: EVOLUTION UPDATE

Kids' WB! has announced a new episode of X-Men: Evolution will air on Saturday, Sept. 28.

The episode, the third of season, is titled "Mainstream." It was written by Michael Merton, with a story by Greg Johnson.

The third season of the show premieres on Saturday at 11:30 a.m. (ET).

In other X-Men: Evolution news:

* To the left is Wolverine in his new uniform for the third season. Click on the image for a larger and fuller look.

* The season's second episode, "The Stuff Of Heroes," is the first directed by animation veteran Curt Geda, who joins the X-Men: Evolution crew this season.

* Animation for the fourth episode of the season, "The Stuff Of Villains," has arrived from overseas. It's likely Kids' WB! will air four consecutive new episodes to launch the season.

FIRST LOOK: NEW X-MEN #132

New X-Men #132 will arrive in stores on Wednesday from Marvel Comics. The issue is written by Grant Morrison, with art by Phil Jimenez and a cover by Frank Quitely.

Here's how Marvel describes the issue:

"One year after 9/11, the X-Men confront their own great loss! 12 months after tragedy, Professor X and Storm return to Genosha -- the island of mutants obliterated by Cassandra Nova -- and discover that everything is not as it seems! Guest-starring -- from the pages of X-Treme X-Men - Storm."

New X-Men #132 will be 32 pages and will cost $2.25.

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