Movies to see this week: 'Batman Forever,' 'Ghost Dog,' 'Mermaids'
It's hot enough that movie theater air conditioning is again appealing, if the greatness of Sinners or the below repertory screenings isn't enough.
Here's what you can catch at Twin Cities area theaters this week.
Thursday, May 15, at Emagine Willow Creek
The third entry in a run of four '90s-ish Batman movies, Batman Forever has gotten a lot of flak for its absurdity. Decades later, it deserves a little love. It was deeply over-the-top, leaning into its comic book source material in ways that the Tim Burton-directed movies didn't. The late Val Kilmer's Batman was not a gritty version of the hero. Instead, he plays Bruce Wayne as the straight man to the hammy antics of Tommy Lee Jones' Two-Face and Jim Carrey's Riddler. Enjoy it for the camp, delightful sets, and producing one of Hollywood's best behind-the-scenes stories. 9900 Shelard Pkwy., Plymouth ($11.60)
Friday, May 16–Sunday, May 18, at The Trylon Cinema
One of the delights — I'd argue there are many — of watching Jim Jarmusch movies is that they're usually recognizable as one of his despite his tendency to jump between genres. They're uniformly packed with patient cinematography, idiosyncratic dialogue, and a reverence for film history, whether he's making a western (Dead Man), zombie movie (The Dead Don't Die), vampire movie (Only Lovers Left Alive), or following an assassin (The Limits of Control).
Ghost Dog is one of his most successful in that regard. It stars Forest Whitaker as an assassin who thinks of himself as a modern samurai, reading from the Hagakure and deeming himself a retainer of his mod employer. It mashes up conventions of mob and samurai movies. Though, like any of Jarmusch's films, it's more interested in small moments than big action sequences. 2820 E 33rd St., Minneapolis ($8)
Friday, May 16—Thursday, May 22, at The Main Cinema
This one might not quite fit into how we're typically listing repertory fare, but we're rolling with it since Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted has played in town during Sound Unseen and MSPIFF, where it won an audience award.
The week-long run at The Main Cinema includes an MN Made screening on May 15 that will have local directors Isaac Gale and Ryan Olson in attendance. (You may recognize their names as MN-based musicians in bands such as Marijuana Death Squads and Poliça.) The documentary focuses on the titular musician, often described as a cult R&B musician since the '70s, and his tumultuous history, unique home with Moogstar and Guitar Shorty, and, of course, his musical legacy. 115 SE Main St., Minneapolis ($13)
Monday, May 19, at Alamo Drafthouse
Mermaids is a tender family drama that gets into the subtleties of family dynamics. There's no saccharine finale, but the complex, messy reality of family. Cher stars as Mrs. Flax, a mother of two who moves from city to city, dragging her kids, played by Winona Ryder and Christina Ricci, through her ordeals and discarding their struggles in favor of her own. Bob Hoskins plays Cher's flawed and charming suitor. 9060 Hudson Rd., Woodbury ($15.18)
Times and theaters vary (see below)
It's a big week for fans of L. Frank Baum's Oz. The Wizard of Oz (1939) is playing at a few Emagine theaters. Emagine White Bear is also bringing Wicked (2024) back to the big screen. (It's currently streaming on Peacock, too.) Then, The Wiz (1978) is playing on Sunday and Tuesday at AMC's Rosedale and Southdale outposts, as well as Emagine Eagan, Oakdale Cinema, and West End Cinema.More movies screening this week:
May 14: The Wizard of Oz (1939) at Emagine Eagan, Emagine Lakeville, and Emagine White Bear (Wicked is also playing)
May 14: Fight Club (1999) at The Parkway Theater
May 14: Before Sunrise (1995) at Edina Mann Theatres
May 14: Kingdom of Heaven (2005) director's cut at AMC Eden Prairie, AMC Rosedale, AMC Southdale, Emagine Eagan, and Oakdale Cinema
May 14: We Are Fugazi From Washington D.C. (2023) at The Trylon Cinema
May 14: Una Noche con los Rolling Stones (A Night with the Rolling Stones) (2023) at The Main Cinema, part of the Minnesota Cuban Film Festival
May 14: Ma (2019) at AMC Rosedale, AMC Southdale, Oakdale Cinema, and West End Cinema
May 14, 16, and 18–19: Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train (2021) at Alamo Drafthouse, AMC Coon Rapids, AMC Rosedale, AMC Southdale, Emagine Willow Creek, Oakdale Cinema (also May 17), and West End Cinema
May 14–21: Pride and Prejudice (2005) at St. Michael Cinema
May 15: Ratatouille (2007) at Taste the Movies
May 15: True Romance (1993) at Grandview Theatre
May 15: It Should Happen to You (1954) at Heights Theater
May 15: 'Bone Saw Is Ready' (2025) at The Trylon Cinema
May 15: Batman Forever (1995) at Emagine Willow Creek
May 16: Toy Story (1995) at Taste the Movies
May 16–18: Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai (1999) at The Trylon Cinema
May 16: Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted (2024) at the Main Cinema
May 16–17: Bitterroot (2024) at Walker Art Center
May 17: Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) at The Parkway Theater
May 17 and 20: Dog Day Afternoon (1975) at Alamo Drafthouse
May 16–17 and 21: "Tall Tales" (2025) at The Main Cinema
May 17–21: Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) at AMC Eden Prairie, AMC Coon Rapids, AMC Inver Grove Heights, AMC Rosedale, Emagine Eagan (not May 21), Emagine Lakeville (not May 21), Emagine White Bear, Emagine Willow Creek (not May 21), Oakdale Cinema, Parkwood Cinema, Southbridge Crossing Cinema (not May 21), St. Michael Cinema, and West End Cinema
May 17–18 and 21: Labyrinth (1986) at Emagine Eagan (not May 17), Emagine Lakeville, and Emagine White Bear
May 18–19: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) at Oakdale Cinema, Parkwood Cinema, and West End Cinema
May 18 and 20: The Apartment (1960) at Grandview Theatre
May 18: 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) at Audrey Rose Vintage
May 18: Cooley High (1975) at Alamo Drafthouse
May 18–20: The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) at The Trylon Cinema
May 18 and 20: The Wiz (1978) at AMC Rosedale, AMC Southdale, Emagine Eagan, Oakdale Cinema, and West End Cinema
May 19: Talk to Me (2023) at Alamo Drafthouse
May 19: Mermaids (1990) at Alamo Drafthouse
May 19: Anchors Aweigh (1945) at Heights Theater
May 19: Alone in the Dark (1982) at Emagine Willow Creek
May 20: Constantine (2005) at Alamo Drafthouse
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Yahoo
‘Batman Forever' and ‘Batman Begins' share an anniversary week — and a surprising Oscar connection
Holy double anniversary, Batman! Two Dark Knight features are celebrating milestone dates this week, as 1995's Batman Forever hits the big 3-0, while 2005's Batman Begins turns one year shy of legal drinking age. At first glance, it's tough to see what thses two very different Bat-movies might have in common apart from their summertime release dates and, of course, that masked vigilante with a lot of wonderful toys. But zoom out for a minute and the riddle of how the films connect becomes less difficult to solve. More from GoldDerby 'Rosemead,' starring Lucy Liu, takes top prize at Bentonville Film Festival Tony Talk: Our extremely early 2026 awards predictions for 'Ragtime,' 'Waiting for Godot,' Kristin Chenoweth, and all the buzzy new shows 'The Last of Us': How the 'Lord of the Rings' VFX team (and marshmallows) made the Battle of Jackson For starters, each movie famously placed a new actor under the cowl. Val Kilmer proved that Michael Keaton wouldn't be Batman forever, while Christian Bale provided the character with a new beginning after George Clooney botched his big Bat moment. Both films are also odd-numbered entries designed to undo the real and/or perceived errors of their even-numbered predecessors. Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever (released on June 16, 1995) followed Tim Burton's Batman Returns, a sequel that was considered 'too dark' upon its 1992 release, but arguably holds up as the best of the bunch. Warner Bros./courtesy Everett Collection Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (released on June 15, 2005), meanwhile, was a course correction after Schumacher careened into day-glo nightmare territory with 1997's Batman & Robin, the fourth and final entry in the original Bat-cycle. (Not to be confused with that other Batcycle.) And here's a cinematographic connection you may have forgotten about: the two films were nominated for the same Oscar — Best Cinematography — exactly ten years apart. Batman Forever's director of photography, Stephen Goldblatt, received the second of his two nominations for the 68th Academy Awards. A decade later, the 78th Academy Awards brought Nolan's then-regular D.P. Wally Pfister the first of his four nominations. While neither cinematographer ended up taking home the statue, both nominations were significant notches on the utility belt for the Batman film franchise, not to mention comic book movies in general. Warner Bros./courtesy Everett Collection To date, only six comics-derived movies have been recognized in that category, and four of them are Caped Crusader-affiliated; The Dark Knight and Joker were later nominated in 2009 and 2020, respectively. (Dick Tracy and Road to Perdition round out that particular justice league.) In honor of this unique Bat-iversary, here's our rundown on how each movie earned — and lost — its shot at a Best Cinematography award. In Goldblatt's Gotham City, the night is dark and full of… colors. Primary reds, neon greens and deep purples abound in Batman Forever, which embraces both Silver Age comics and super-saturated '90s music videos. The embrace of Dick Tracy five years earlier showed that Academy voters at the time clearly preferred their comic book characters to inhabit a more colorful universe, and that's what Goldblatt delivered. 'Joel wanted to literally make it comic book looking …. For the lights, I didn't use normal rigging. It was all rock 'n' roll rigging. I had a concert lighting guy and his crew. I could adjust the color and the intensity, the direction and the diffusion of each lamp without having to go to each lamp. They were all fed down to consoles on the stage floor. We could move very, very quickly. The conventional way could have taken days. It gave it that rock 'n' roll comic book look' — as told to The Hollywood Reporter 'Schumacher's Batman Forever returns the story to its pop origins. It may be dark, but it ain't heavy.' — Hal Hinson, The Washington Post 'Batman Forever is a sound-and-light show that jumps from the screen and spreads itself out to every corner of the house.' — Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle 'The visuals seem less like images than like a light show. Quick cutting, garish costumes and visual special effects are not thrilling; they're numbing.' — Barbara Shulgasser, San Francisco Examiner Michael Coulter, Sense and Sensibility Emmanuel Lubezki, A Little Princess John Toll, Braveheart Lü Yue, Shanghai Triad In a devilish twist, Batman Forever's resident Riddler Jim Carrey was enlisted to present the Best Cinematography statue at that year's ceremony. Bringing a set of Toy Story action figures onstage with him, Carrey characteristically clowned around for a bit before getting to the nominees — and notably declined to mention his specific connection to Goldblatt. Ultimately, Toll took home the "lord of all knick-knacks" for his work on Mel Gibson's Best Picture-winning Scottish epic. Post-loss, Goldblatt reunited with Schumacher for Batman & Robin... a Bat-assignment that didn't return him to Oscar contention. Later credits included Closer, The Help and Red, White & Royal Blue; in recent years, he's stepped away from the film industry to focus on his photography. Relaunching a franchise is a monumental task, and Nolan constructed a monumental production that employed an army of skilled artisans committed to his vision of a grounded real-world take on a vintage comic character. In that way, Batman Begins was a notable contrast not just to previous Batman movies, but also ascendent superhero spectacles like Sam Raimi's Spider-Man and Bryan Singer's X-Men, which occupied heightened realities. Through Pfister's lens, Gotham resembled a real city... even if it had a big Bat problem. 'Tim Burton's Batman came from a very visionary and idiosyncratic view of the character… [and] they created an environment for Batman that was as exotic and extraordinary as Batman himself. That worked very well, but Batman has never had a film that portrayed him as an extraordinary figure [amid] a relatively ordinary and recognizable world. That was the thrill I've been seeking—the thrill of being amazed and of seeing the ordinary citizens of Gotham be as amazed about Batman as we are.' — as told to American Cinematographer 'Unlike the earlier films, which delighted in extravagant special-effects action, Batman Begins is shrouded in shadow; instead of high-detail, sharp-edged special effects, we get obscure developments in fog and smoke, reinforced by a superb sound-effects design.' Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times 'Half the time Batman stalks his criminal quarry unseen, or as a barely glimpsed, utterly ominous shadow; there are echoes of Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse series, not to mention Metropolis, and the cinematography by Nolan regular Wally Pfister is noir and then some.' Marc Savlov, Austin Chronicle 'The film accurately, and refreshingly, refuses to shy away from the slightly deranged madness of its titular hero. Such harshness is reflected in Wally Pfister's night-swathed cinematography and Nathan Crowley's production design, which casts Gotham as an open urban sore in which poverty, crime, and squalor co-exist in virulent symbiosis,' Nick Schager, Slant Dion Beebe, Memoirs of a Geisha Robert Elswit, Good Night, and Good Luck Emmauel Lubezki, The New World Rodrigo Prieto, Brokeback Mountain As the lone contemporary blockbuster among the nominees, Batman Begins found itself in a pitched battle with four period pieces. And the past ended up triumphing over the present. John Travolta presented the Oscar to Beebe, who transported audiences back to pre-World War II era Japan in Memoirs of a Geisha, directed by Rob Marshall. (Another cool coincidence: Emmanuel Lubezki was a repeat Bat-foe, nominated for A Little Princess in 1995 and The New World in 2005.) Unlike Goldblatt, Pfister's Batman follow-up awarded him a repeat trip to the Oscars. Released in 2008, The Dark Knight built on the promise of Batman Begins and remains the most-nominated Batman-centric movie to date—although it controversially missed out on a Best Picture nod, inspiring a category expansion that continues to this day. Pfister eventually won an Oscar for Inception and collaborated with Nolan on the trilogy-capper The Dark Knight Rises before striking out on his own as a of GoldDerby Tom Cruise movies: 17 greatest films ranked worst to best 'It was wonderful to be on that ride': Christian Slater talks his beloved roles, from cult classics ('Heathers,' 'True Romance') to TV hits ('Mr. Robot,' 'Dexter: Original Sin') 'It almost killed me': Horror maestro Mike Flanagan looks back at career-making hits from 'Gerald's Game' to 'Hill House' to 'Life of Chuck' Click here to read the full article.
TechCrunch
a day ago
- TechCrunch
Cartoonist Paul Pope is more worried about killer robots than AI plagiarism
Paul Pope has written and drawn some of the most gorgeous comics of the twenty-first century — from 'Batman: Year 100,' in which Batman challenges a dystopian surveillance state, to 'Battling Boy,' in which an adolescent god proves his mettle by fighting giant monsters. But it's been more than a decade since Pope's last major comics work, and in a Zoom interview with TechCrunch, he admitted that the intervening years have had their frustrations. At one point, he held up a large stack of drawings and said the public hasn't seen any of it yet. 'Making graphic novels is not like making comics,' Pope said. 'You're basically writing a novel, it can take years, and you work with a contract. No one can see the work, so it can be very frustrating.' But there's good news on the horizon. A career-spanning exhibition of Pope's work just opened at the Philippe Labaune Gallery in New York, while with an expanded edition of his art book, now called 'PulpHope2: The Art of Paul Pope,' is due in the fall — as is the first volume collecting Pope's self-published science fiction epic 'THB.' It's all part of what Pope described as 'a number of chess moves' in what he grudgingly admitted is an effort to 'rebrand' himself. Pope is reemerging at a fraught time for the comics industry and creativity in general, with publishers and writers suing AI companies while generative AI tools go viral by copying popular artists. He even said that it's 'completely conceivable' that comic book could be replaced by AI. The contrast is particularly stark in Pope's case, since he's known for largely eschewing digital tools in favor of brushes and ink. But he said he isn't ruling out taking advantage of AI ('any tool that works is good'), which he already uses for research. Techcrunch event Save $200+ on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Save $200+ on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Boston, MA | REGISTER NOW 'I'm less concerned about having some random person create some image based on one of my drawings, than I am about killer robots and surveillance and drones,' he said. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. Image Credits:Paul Pope/Archaia You have a gallery show coming up, and it coincides with the second volume of your art book, 'PulpHope.' How did those come about? I got contacted by Boom Studios, I think it was late 2023, and they were interested in possibly collaborating on something [through their boutique imprint Archaia]. So we went back and forth for a bit, I came on as art director, and I was able to hire my own designer, this guy Steve Alexander, also known as Rinzen, and we spent about nine months [in] 2024 putting the book together. And then, coincidentally, I know Philippe Labaune, just from having been to the gallery, we have mutual friends and things, and he made the offer to show work from not only the book, [but] kind of a career retrospective. It's ballooned into something really nice. Are you somebody who thinks about the arc of their career and how it fits together, or are you mostly future-oriented? I'd say a combination of both, because — I have said this elsewhere, but I think at a certain point, an artist needs to become their own curator. Jack Kirby famously said, 'All that matters is the 10% of your best work. The rest of it gets you to the 10%.' But then in my case, I do a lot of variant covers. I've worked on many things outside of comics that are kind of hard to acquire, whether it's screen prints or fashion industry stuff. And I thought it'd be really cool if we do something that's a chronological look at the life of an artist — [something that] focuses mainly on comics, [with] a lot of stuff that people have either never seen or it's hard to find. It's the first of a number of chess moves that I've been setting up for a long time. And the gallery is — I would call it a second chess move. I have another announcement later in the summer for a new project. Making graphic novels is not like making comics. You're basically writing a novel, it can take years, and you work with a contract. No one can see the work, so it can be very frustrating. This stack here, this is my current work, and it's all stuff that basically hasn't been published yet. So I thought this was a great way to either reintroduce my work or — I hate the term 'rebrand,' but rebrand myself. In your essay 'Weapons of Choice,' you talk about all these different tools you use, the brushes and pens, the Sumi ink. Has your working style been pretty consistent, pretty analog, for your entire career? I would say mostly. I did start incorporating Photoshop for coloring and textures, kind of late to the game — I'd say it was not 'till around 2003 or so. I developed carpal tunnel around 2010, so I've tried to steer away from digital as much as I can, but I still use it. I mean, I use Photoshop every day. It's just [that] most of what I do is the comics purism of ink on a paper. Image Credits:Paul Pope/Archaia Do you think of ink on paper as objectively better, or it just happens to be how you work? I don't think it's better, to be honest. I think any tool that works is good. You know, Moebius used to say that sometimes he would draw with coffee grinds, he drew with a fork. And I have some friends, in fact, a number of friends, who are doing highly popular mainstream books, who have gravitated toward digital work, or its various advantages. And I just don't like that. But one thing [is,] I sell original art, and if you have a digital document, you might be able to make a print of it, but there is no drawing. It's binary code. Also, I feel an allegiance to the guys like Alex Toth and Steve Ditko, who took time to teach me things. Moebius, I was friends with him. Frank Miller. We all work in traditional analog art. I feel like I want to be a torchbearer for that. How do you feel about the fact that comics-making is increasingly digital? I think it's inevitable. The genie is out of the bottle at this point. So now it's a matter of being given a new, vivid array of tools that artists can choose from. When you talk to younger artists, do you feel like there's still a lane for them to do analog work? Absolutely. One of the challenges now is, you can download an app, or you can get an iPad Pro and start drawing. I think the learning curve in some ways is a little quicker, and you can fix, edit, and change things that you don't like. But it also means the drawing never ends. One thing I really like about analog art is, it's punishing. [One] piece of advice I got early on was, your first 1,000 ink drawings with a brush are going to be terrible, and you just have to get through those first 1,000. And it was true, it was humiliating — every time I sat down and tried to draw with the brushes, a lot of the work is going to be in your your fingers or your wrists, and it's easy to make mistakes, but gradually you get an authority over the tool, and then you can draw what it is you really see in your mind. Before we started recording, we were also talking about AI, and it sounds like it's something you've been aware of and thinking about. Yeah, sure, I use it all the time. I don't use it for anything creative outside of research. For example, I just wrote an essay on one of my favorite cartoonists, Attilio Micheluzzi. His library is being published by Fantagraphics right now, and I did the intro for the second book. It's amazing, because there's a lot of personal detail about the man that was really, really hard to find, unless you could literally go to — he died in Naples, but he spent a lot of his time in North Africa and Rome. This guy's a man of mystery. But you now can get the dates of his birth and his death, what caused his death, what did he do? And AI helps with that. Or sometimes, I work on story structure. But I don't use it directly to create anything. I use it more like, let's say it's a consultant. My nephew writes [code] and he describes AI as a sociopath personal assistant that doesn't mind lying to you. I've asked AI at times like, 'What books has Paul Pope published?' It's kind of strange, because maybe 80% of it will be correct, and 20% will be completely hallucinated books I've never done. So I tend to take my nephew's point of view on it. You have this skepticism, but you don't want to rule out using it where it's useful. No, absolutely not. It's a tool. It's a very contentious point with cartoonists, and there are important questions about authorship, copyright protection. In fact, I just had dinner with Frank Miller last night, we were talking about this. If [I ask AI to] give me 'Lady Godiva, naked on the horse, as drawn by Frank Miller,' I can spit that out in 30 seconds. Some people might say, 'Oh, this is my art.' But AI doesn't generate the art from the same kind of place that humans would, where it's based on identity and personal history and emotional inflection. It can recombine everything that's been known and programmed into the database. And you could do with my stuff, too. It never looks like my drawings, but it's getting better and better. But I think really, speaking as a futurist, the real question is killer robots and surveillance and a lot of technology being developed very, very quickly, without a lot of public consideration about the implications. Here in New York, at the moment, there's a really great gallery on 23rd Street called Poster House. It's pretty much the history of 20th-century poster design, which is right up my alley. So I went there with my girlfriend last week, and they currently have an exhibit on the atom bomb and how it was portrayed in different contexts through poster art. There was this movement 'Atoms for Peace,' where people were pro-atomic energy [but] were against war, and I kind of liked that, because that's how I feel about AI. I would say, 'AI for peace.' I'm less concerned about having some random person create some image based on one of my drawings, than I am about killer robots and surveillance and drones. I think that's a much more serious question, because at some point, we're going to pass a tipping point, because there's a lot of bad actors in the world that are developing AI, and I don't know if some of the developers themselves are concerned about the implications. They just want to be the first person to do it — and of course, they're going to make a lot of money. Image Credits:Paul Pope/Archaia You mentioned this idea of somebody typing, 'Give me a drawing in the style of Paul Pope.' And I think the argument that some people would make is that you shouldn't be able to do that — or at least Paul should be getting paid, since your art was presumably used to train the model, and that's your name being used. It's a good question. In fact, I was asking AI before our talk today — I think the best thing is to go to the source — 'compare unlicensed art usage [for] AI-generated imagery with torrenting of MP3s in the '90s.' And AI said that there's definitely some similarities, because you're using work that's already been produced and created without compensating the artist. But in the case of AI, you can add elements to it that make it different. It's not like [when] somebody stole Guns N' Roses' record, 'Chinese Democracy,' and put it online. That's different from sitting down with an emulator for music with AI [and saying,] 'I want to write a song in the style of Guns N' Roses, and I want the guitar solo to sound like Slash.' Obviously, if somebody publishes a comic book and it looks just like one of mine, that might be a problem. There's class action lawsuits on the behalf of some of the artists, so I think this is a legal issue that is going to be hammered out, probably. But it gets more complicated, because it's very hard to regulate AI development or distribution in places like Afghanistan or Iran or China. They're not going to follow American legal code. And then on the killer robot side, you've written a lot and drawn a lot of dystopian fiction yourself, like in 'Batman: Year 100.' How close do you feel we are to that future right now? I think we're probably, honestly, about two years away. I mean, robots are already being used on the battlefield. Drones are used in lethal warfare. I wouldn't be too surprised, within two or three years, if we start seeing robot automation on a regular basis. In fact, where my girlfriend lives in Brooklyn, there's a fully robot-serviced coffee shop, no one works there. And the scary thing is, I think people become normalized to this, so the technology is implemented before there's the social contract, where people are able to ask whether or not this is a good [thing]. My lawyer, for example, he thinks within two or three years, Marvel Comics will replace artists with AI. You won't even have to pay any artists. And I think that's completely conceivable. I think storyboarding for film can easily be replaced with AI. Animatics, which you need to do for a lot of films, can be replaced. Eventually, comic book artists can be replaced. Almost every job can be replaced. How do you feel about that? Are you worried about your own career? I don't worry about my career because I believe in human innovation. Call me an optimist. And the one distinct advantage we have over machine intelligence is — until we actually take the bridle off and machines are fully autonomous and have a conscience and a memory and emotional reflections, which are the things that are required in order to become an artist, or, for that matter, a human — they can't replace what humans do. They can replicate what humans do. If you're trying to get into the business of, let's say comics, and you're trying to draw like Jim Lee, there's a chance you might get replaced, because AI has already imprinted every single Jim Lee image in its memory. So that would be easy to replace, but what is harder to replace is the human invention of something like whatever Miles Davis introduced into jazz, or Picasso introduced, along with Juan Gris, when they invented Cubism. I don't see machines being able to do that. You were talking about the discipline needed to draw with a brush, and one of the things I worry about is, if we increasingly devalue the time and the money and everything it takes for somebody to get good at that, you can't decouple the inventiveness of the Paul Pope who comes up with these cool stories with the Paul Pope who spent all his time making drawing after drawing with brushes and ink. If we think we can just focus on coming up with cool ideas, it's not going to work like that. I do think about this. I think it would be very challenging to be 18, 19, having grown up with a screen in front of you, you can upload an app to do anything, within seconds, and that's just not the way most of human history has worked. I mean, I don't think we're at that term 'singularity' yet, but we're getting really close to it. And that's the one thing that worries me is whether we talk about killer machines or machine consciousness overtaking human ingenuity, it would almost be a forfeit on the part of the people to stop having a sense of ethics, a sense of curiosity, determination — all these old school, bootstrap concepts that some people think are old-fashioned now, but I think that's how we preserve our humanity and our sense of soul. The first big collection of your 'THB' comics is coming this fall, and it sounds like that's also a big part of the Paul Pope rebrand or relaunch, the next chess move. Is it safe to assume that one of the other next chess moves is 'Battling Boy 2'? Yes. It's funny, because for a long time, we had it scheduled — 'Battling Boy 2' has to come out before 'THB' comes out. But there was some restructuring with [my publisher's] parent company, Macmillan, and my new art director came on in 2023 and he said, 'You know what, let's just move this around. We're going to start putting 'THB' out. It's already there.' And I was so relieved because, again, 'Battling Boy' is 500-plus pages, and I'd work on it, then I'd stop working to do commercial work. I work on it. I stop. I work on the movie. It's like I'm driving this high performance car, but it doesn't have enough gas in it, so I have to keep stopping and putting gasoline [in it]. So it's been reinvigorating [to have a new book coming out], because it kick-started everything.
Gizmodo
a day ago
- Gizmodo
The Newest Marvel/DC Crossover Will Have Some Fun Team-Ups
In May, Marvel Comics and DC finally confirmed they were doing a new crossover for the first time in over 20 years. At the time, we only knew it'd involve Deadpool and Batman teaming up in a pair of one-shots from Zeb Wells and Greg Capullo (Marvel) and Grant Morrison and Dan Mora (DC). Thanks to the latest Marvel solicitations for the month of August, we know the full scope of the crossover on its side of things. Along with the previously announced duo, Marvel/DC: Deadpool & Batman will feature stories pairing Daredevil and Green Arrow (from Kevin Smith and Andy Kubert), Captain America and Wonder Woman (Chip Zdarsky and Terry Dodson), and superpets Jeff the Shark and Krypto the Superdog (Kelly Thompson and Gurihiru). Each story also gets its own variant cover, and you can see most of them down below. That's a solid lineup of fan favorites and heavy hitters, helped by the fact none of the human characters spent time together in prior crossovers. Marvel and DC have already confirmed there's more hangouts coming: Batman/Deadpool is dropping in November, and there's another set of one-shots coming in 2026. DC's currently mum on whether its one-shot will have extra stories, and both are just as quiet on other heroes waiting in the wings in future installments, or if these are leading to something bigger on the horizon. Superheroes do tend to get caught up in multiverse problems on a frequent basis, after all. Marvel/DC: Deadpool & Batman #1 hits shelves on September 19. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
