Sniff Test

I was working really late at the office on Wednesday, so between the two of us Kris is the only one who’s had a chance to sample the latest installment of The New 52. Missing out has been rough. I’ve been trying to avoid reviews until I get a chance to read things, but the overall consensus sounds pretty positive. Kris definitely likes what he’s read, but you’ll hear more about that next week.

I missed this when it original leaked, but sometime last week there pictures of Michael Shannon’s Zod from Man of Steel showed up on the Internet from their rural farm set. Hearing that you’d think we would get to compare the new Zod’s costume to the old Zod, but in fact that’s the one thing we can’t do. The pictures of Shannon that leaked showed him wearing a motion capture suit that would be used for CGI work. This week Shannon has confirmed Zod’s costume would be CGI. This is really interesting considering there’s also been leaked pictures of Faora, the other villain in the movie, and her costume is definitely not a CGI costume. Shannon didn’t say what the CGI outfit will actually be, but I can’t think of anything from Zod’s character to explain the need for a CGI uniform. I wonder maybe Zod is still partially trapped in the Phantom Zone during all or part of the movie. If that’s the case, then Zod could be fuzzy, distorted, or partially transparent and thus the use of CGI. This is the second confirmed use of CGI mobcap suits for Man of Steel with the first being somebody who will be particularly tall who was seen with Faora. I’m betting that one will be some sort of Kryptonian monster or Non, which would be pretty cool.

Along with Wonder Woman, there were several comic book based TV pilots that didn’t get picked up as new shows. Most disappointingly, this included the pilot for a Locke & Key series. I’m not a follower of Locke & Key, but I’ve read some free issues and found the series particularly intriguing. I was hoping the show would get picked up and I could use it to test out whether the comic would be worthwhile. Unfortunately, Fox passed on it and so it looked like the series would never see the light of day. However, the pilot was very highly reviewed and was screened at Comic-Con in San Diego so that fans would get a chance to check it out. MTV saw the pilot there and is now expressing interest in the series. There’s no guarantee that it will happen, but all is not lost for those hoping to explore Key House on the small screen.

Speaking of Locke & Key, IDW has released a bunch of graphic novels on Apple’s iBooks. We’ve talked in the past about my interest in digital comics and one of my concerns for everybody’s faith in ComiXology is the lock-in for their proprietary file format. With something like iBooks, you do get DRM that would lock you to that particular app, but iBooks uses the industry standard ePub file format. If for some reason Apple were go to belly up (the horror), then it could be possible to remove the DRM from the books and still have a file that could be read by another app. With ComiXology’s case, you have both DRM and a proprietary format so you’d be really screwed if they went belly up. I’ve grabbed a sample of Locke & Key volume 1 on iBooks and it’s an interesting setup. By default, regardless of what orientation you hold the device, the book is presented as a two page spread. However, double tapping on a page will zoom in to that page to the full iPad screen. However, since a regular comic page is narrower than the iPad screen, part of the other page in the spread is also visible. This is an interesting effect since it helps you to get a sense of how the page you’re viewing ties with the rest of the piece. I don’t know if this is how IDW is choosing to do it or whether any publisher selling through iBooks would display the same way. I’ll have to buy a whole graphic novel on iBooks to really try it out, but at first blush I feel the reading experience is comparable to ComiXology. I am definitely intrigued.