Since its initial release in 1962, MARS ATTACKS has made an indelible impression on pop culture, inspiring legions of fans around the world.  Now, Topps is proud to announce MARS ATTACKS’ triumphant return to its trading card roots. Coinciding this summer with the landmark half-century milestone the company is pulling out all the stops for collectors to re-connect with the cult classic while ushering in a whole new generation of fans.

The commemorative trading card set, currently in development for release in July, is a cornerstone of the 50^th anniversary campaign. In addition to reprinting the 55 iconic cards which comprised theoriginal series, Topps is adding 25 never-before-seen subjects.

Ten cards, painted by Jason Edmiston, are based on storyboarded sketches from original series pencillers Wally Wood and Bob Powell that did not originally appear in the 1962 card set. Edmiston’s finished works pay homage to the pulp sci-fi style of Norm Saunders, the master painter who first gave MARS ATTACKS its signature look. Fifteen all-new cards are provided by Eisner award-winning comic book artist John McCrea, the acclaimed illustrator of IDW’s forthcoming MARS ATTACKS comic book series.  McCrea is known to comics fans as the co-creator of Hitman (in collaboration with writer Garth Ennis), among numerous other high-profile assignments.  His new, powerful imagery for the card set will provide fans with added insights to the comics as well as to the all-new MARS ATTACKS universe.

A variety of extra inserts are also designed to add collectibility and fun: limited edition multi-colored parallels and 3D lenticulars will be randomly included in packs. And, for the very first time, Topps will be including MARS ATTACKS sketch cards in boxes. Many talented artists are on board to provide their one-of-a-kind hand-rendered sketch art.

The original MARS ATTACKS series enjoys the distinction of being the most sought after and valuable non-sport trading card set of all time. Its legacy status has earned the new series Topps’ full “Heritage style” treatment.  In order to preserve the product’s retro sensibility, all cards will be printed on thick, old fashioned card stock. Similarly, the design treatments for the display box and wrapper mimic the now-classic 1962 packaging.

“I’m a huge fan of MARS ATTACKS from a long way back. I own about half the original card set from 1962 and have a pretty big collection of collectibles and doodads,” Layman said in a press release. “It’s always been a dream of mine to destroy the Earth and inflict huge degrees of suffering on the rest of humanity. With this series, I finally get my chance.”

2012 marks the 50th anniversary of MARS ATTACKS, so keep your eyes open for a number of related product launches throughout the year.

Step back in time and take a look at the entire original run of MARS ATTACKS cards from Topps!

Here is a preliminary synopsis: Visionary filmmaker Ridley Scott returns to the genre he helped define, creating an original science fiction epic set in the most dangerous corners of the universe. The film takes a team of scientists and explorers on a thrilling journey that will test their physical and mental limits and strand them on a distant world, where they will discover the answers to our most profound questions and to life’s ultimate mystery.

And these are the only two official stills from the film–one recently debuted at Comic-Con:

Earth-centric alien invasion movies, eat your heart out. This is space exploration at its most epic.

CJ Cherryh has been in front of a great many themes now commonplace at ComicCon and elsewhere.  Readers and fans have acknowledged her chops by voting her three Hugo Awards, three Nebula Awards, and fistfuls of other accolades over an illustrious thirty-year career.  Her worlds of the imagination range from deep space to the Russian forests, from the intricacies of the human heart to the vaudeville of Hell itself.  Her novels Downbelow Station, Finity’s End, Cyteen and others, set during the “Company Wars” of the 25th Century, built up a gritty, realistic universe of working men and women surpassing the similar visions of the Alien series or Blade Runner. Cyteen is, in this writer’s opinion, the finest exploration of the ramifications of human cloning yet written.  Her Foreigner series has long explored the conflicted loyalties of a human envoy to an alien world, while her Fortress in the Eye of Time and its sequels form a heroic fantasy as deep and rich as those of the acknowledged masters of the genre.

FM: Please talk about your connections to Forrest J Ackerman and “Famous Monsters of Filmland”.

CJ: I knew Forry when I was a novice as a published writer. I remember he had Bela Lugosi’s ring, quite a massive silver and onyx piece, which he wore. Once at a room party, someone happened to ask me about early books I’d read, and I happened to mention Anthony Gilmore’s Space Hawk, which it seemed only Robert Heinlein had read — he referenced it in Glory Road. I commented that I thought it was interesting because of its social impact: the copilot in the story, the sane guy whose principal role was to keep the hero from going off the deep end, was the hero’s best buddy, a black man, which was revolutionary at the time it was written. Forry happened to be sitting next to me, and he exclaimed, speaking of Gilmore, “He was a client of mine!” Well, I was amazed. And what should happen a month later, when I was back home and when I had totally forgotten the conversation, but a package from Forry, and a note that this was for me. It was a copy of Space Hawk. I was delighted to find it still read very well. Forry was, to my experience, a very sweet and generous man.

FM: What were and are the major artistic influences upon you?

CJ: Well, classical: I was a Latin-Greek major, and spent a lot of time trying to cram Vergilius Maro’s concepts into equally terse English.  A hard job, I’ll tell you. My father started me off on Edgar Rice Burroughs when I was about 7, and after that, I hunted down ‘the good stuff’, be it Jack Williamson, Andre Norton, Burroughs, Frank Baum (when I was 7 and broke my arm), and Robert E. Howard.

FM: What interests you in imaginative entertainment today?

CJ: Besides books — I like certain animes, like Bleach, Descendants of Darkness, Kyo Kara Maoh, Saiyuki…

FM: If you could bring to life a lost or forgotten work, which one would it be?

CJ: Probably Gilmore; maybe Jeffrey Farnol — an American writer of adventure novels who had to go to England to get published; I liked H Rider Haggard, too — a little wordy by today’s standards, but Eric Brighteyes was always a favorite. Not to mention the “gateway” books of science fiction, the juveniles that used to give new readers an easy bridge into the field, and that now are hard to find: Andre Norton, CL Moore, Poul Anderson, Robert Heinlein, Asimov’s juveniles, Leigh Brackett… If you can’t find them otherwise, look online. More and more SF works are turning up as e-books. I’m putting out my own backlist that way — but be sure you get them from a source that pays the writer or the writer’s estate! Don’t patronize the pirates!

FM: Thanks, CJ — we won’t!

Discuss this story on the official Famous Monsters of Filmland Forum!

On February 9th, 2010, the New Beverly Cinema hosted the Grindhouse Film Fest’s tribute to Dan O’Bannon, with a double feature screening of “Lifeforce” and “Return of the Living Dead.” To experience Dan’s authentic adaptation of Colin Wilson’s seminal novel “The Space Vampires”, and his loopy, dead-on riff on zombie movies, in a Hollywood revival theater full of rabid fans, is to know what imaginative entertainment is all about.

In addition to such on-screen delights as an unveiled Matilda May, and demented lines such as “Send more cops!”, an informal RotLD cast reunion occurred.

Clu Galagher, James Karen, Don Calfa, Thom Matthews, Beverly Randolph and others shared stories and reminiscences.

Artist William Stout, whose first credit as Production Designer came on RotLD, made a last-minute appearance and explained Dan’s key place in film and comic history.

Kudos to Grindhouse Film Fest and Dan’s many friends for putting on this event!  Dan’s memory will also be part of the book launch party for “The Bleeding Edge Anthology” at Mystery & Imagination Bookshop in Glendale, CA, this Saturday, Feb. 20, starting at 3:00pm.

On February 9th, 2010, the New Beverly Cinema hosted the Grindhouse Film Fest’s tribute to Dan O’Bannon, with a double feature screening of “Lifeforce” and “Return of the Living Dead.” To experience Dan’s authentic adaptation of Colin Wilson’s seminal novel “The Space Vampires”, and his loopy, dead-on riff on zombie movies, in a Hollywood revival theater full of rabid fans, is to know what imaginative entertainment is all about.

In addition to such on-screen delights as an unveiled Matilda May, and demented lines such as “Send more cops!”, an informal RotLD cast reunion occurred.

Clu Galagher, James Karen, Don Calfa, Thom Matthews, Beverly Randolph and others shared stories and reminiscences.

Artist William Stout, whose first credit as Production Designer came on RotLD, made a last-minute appearance and explained Dan’s key place in film and comic history.

Kudos to Grindhouse Film Fest and Dan’s many friends for putting on this event!  Dan’s memory will also be part of the book launch party for “The Bleeding Edge Anthology” at Mystery & Imagination Bookshop in Glendale, CA, this Saturday, Feb. 20, starting at 3:00pm.

What if the world of today, the early 21st Century, looked the way our predecessors thought it would, back in 1949?

What if Mars were the world imagined by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein? And what if America’s most fun and famous couple flew to Mars in search of a missing brother and became embroiled in interplanetary intrigue, local wars, desert dangers and lost Martian civilizations?

This was the concept for The Lost Hieroglyph, the first of several “Brackett & Burroughs Adventures” set in an imaginary retro-future Solar System inspired by the great pulp science fiction stories and art of yore.

A lifetime’s affection for 20th-Century pop culture (of the sort now made huge by Comic-Con) eventually percolated into a sudden document in the late 1990′s. The concept lay dormant, with occasional proddings to see if it still breathed, until the fall of 2008.

The trials of that heady year brought the realization that life is fleeting and finite, and that glorious dreams must be attended to immediately. With that existential urgency in mind, I resurrected The Lost Hieroglyph and discovered the old art of stop-motion animation; its disciplines and traditions, its involvement with so many other crafts, and most especially, the wonderful community of its fans and practitioners.

“Adventure Never Looked This Good”

I set out to create a cute couple modeled on the great screwball couples of the 20th Century: Dashiell Hammett’s “Nick and Nora Charles;”  Howard Hawks’ screwball comedies and his Bogie/Bacall pairings; Indiana Jones and his female sidekicks; even the TV silliness of Hart to Hart. I wanted to give them classic American back-stories — farm kid made good and debutante tomboy, baseball player and mystery writer.

Pretty soon, Ray and Ceel began speaking to me in their own voices. Like any good pair of heroes, they have complementary powers: Ray’s a crack shot and throws the fastest pitch on the planet, while Ceel is an Olympic medalist in fencing and horsemanship. Expect gunfights, swordplay and daredevil riding, and of course, plenty of snappy dialogue!

“Rocket” Ray Brackett made history with his legendary no-hitter in the last game of the 1999 World Series between the Giants and the Cubs (hey, this is alternate history) His 110-mile-an-hour fastball is still the fastest pitch on record. His sports prowess led to a brief career in Hollywood, first in The Longest Inning, then in Biff Blaster, Ace of the Spaceways. The first soared, the last flopped, and Ray soon tired of the Business. He met Ceel Burroughs during the MidPacifica caper and they married soon after. Since then Ray has found himself in one adventure after another, often involving his and Ceel’s extensive circle of friends. Ray’s younger brother Mike is a distinguished archaeologist. Their late father was also a Major League ballplayer. Ray often taps his friend Stanley G. Weinbaum’s engineering skills for custom gear and weapons.

Catherine Louise “Ceel” Burroughs has never cared for her first name; it’s hard to live up to her amazing grandmother Kate. She publishes her best-selling “Kit Kipling” mystery novels under the name “C. L. Burroughs”, but everyone calls her “Ceel” (rhymes with “seal”). At her debut she made waves by honoring both her late father “Hap” Burroughs, the legendary rocket pilot, and her stepfather Fritz Leiber*, the famous author and literary agent. (She danced with an android version of “Hap” as well as with Fritz!) Her mother Margaux, the celebrated movie star, saw that Ceel was educated at private schools and Stanford; she excelled in fencing and horsemanship as well as literature, leading to Olympic medals in epeé and steeplechase.

Exotic Places, Familiar Faces

Heroes require suitable stages upon which to act, and the settings and characters of The Lost Hieroglyph are as rich and resonant as I can make them.

Earth and Mars are depicted as exotic worlds of mystery and adventure, and the technology and style of 1949 shape this fictional 2009. There are an awful lot of inside jokes in The Lost Hieroglyph, ranging from cameo appearances by famous sci-fi authors and Hollywood actors, to entire shots that echo classic films, comics and literature.

Notes

Like the first cut made for Comic-Con 2009 (not screened but shown around), this cut has missing shots. A complete version of Episode One is forthcoming.  Meanwhile, if you like this sort of thing, check out D.B. Grady’s Red Planet Noir, and read news about Disney/Pixar’s forthcoming John Carter of Mars!

*Fritz Leiber appears courtesy Dr. Justin Leiber & Richard Curtiss.

Ceel Burroughs’ likeness features components © Integrity Toys, and are used with permission.

The Lost Hieroglyph and “The Brackett & Burroughs Adventures” are ™ & © Steve Weintz.

BURBANK, Calif. (January 15, 2010) – Principal photography is underway in London for Walt Disney Pictures’ “JOHN CARTER OF MARS.” Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton brings this captivating hero to the big screen in a stunning adventure epic set on the wounded planet of Mars, a world inhabited by warrior tribes and exotic desert beings. Based on the first of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Barsoom Series,” the film chronicles the journey of Civil-War veteran John Carter, who finds himself battling a new and mysterious war amidst a host of strange Martian inhabitants.

Produced for Walt Disney Pictures by Jim Morris (“WALL•E,” “Ratatouille”) and Colin Wilson (“Avatar,” “War of the Worlds”), the live action/animation film marks Academy Award®-winning director/writer Andrew Stanton’s (“Finding Nemo,” “WALL•E”) first foray into live action. Stanton directed and co-wrote the screenplay for Disney•Pixar’s “WALL•E,” which earned the Academy Award and Golden Globe® for Best Animated Feature (2008); Stanton was nominated for an Oscar® for the screenplay. He made his directorial debut with Disney•Pixar’s “Finding Nemo,” garnering an Academy Award-nomination for Best Original Screenplay and winning the Oscar for Best Animated Feature (2003). He has worked as a screenwriter and/or executive producer on Disney•Pixar’s “Toy Story,” “A Bug’s Life” (which he also co-directed), “Toy Story 2,” “Monsters, Inc.,” “Ratatouille” and “Up.”

“I have been waiting my whole life to see the characters and worlds of ‘John Carter of Mars’ realized on the big screen,” says Stanton. “It is just a wonderful bonus that I have anything to do with it.”

The stellar ensemble cast is led by Taylor Kitsch (NBC’S “Friday Night Lights”, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”) in the title role, Lynn Collins (“50 First Dates,” “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”) as the warrior princess Dejah Thoris and Oscar® nominee Willem Dafoe (“Spider-Man 3,” “Shadow of a Vampire”) as Martian inhabitant Tars Tarkas. The cast also includes Thomas Haden Church (“Sideways,” Spider-Man 3), Polly Walker (upcoming “Clash of the Titans,” “Patriot Games”), Samantha Morton (“Elizabeth: The Golden Age,” “In America”), Mark Strong (“Sherlock Holmes,” “Body of Lies”), Ciaran Hinds (“Munich,” “There Will Be Blood”), British actor Dominic West (“300,” “Chicago”), James Purefoy (“Vanity Fair,” “Resident Evil”) and Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad”). Daryl Sabara (“Disney’s A Christmas Carol,” “Spy Kids”) takes the role of John Carter’s teenaged nephew, Edgar Rice Burroughs.

The creative team includes Oscar®-nominated production designer Nathan Crowley (“Public Enemies,” “The Dark Knight,” “Batman Begins”), costume designer Mayes Rubeo (“Avatar,” “Apocalypto”), cinematographer Daniel Mindel (“Star Trek,” “Mission Impossible III,” “Spygame”) and video effects supervisor Peter Chiang (“The Reader,” “The Bourne Ultimatum”).

JOHN CARTER OF MARS

WALT DISNEY PICTURES

Genre: Adventure/Sci-Fi

Rating: TBD

Release Date: TBD

Cast: Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Samantha Morton, Mark Strong, Ciaran Hinds, Dominic West, James Purefoy, Daryl Sabara, Polly Walker, Bryan Cranston, with Thomas Hayden Church and Willem Dafoe

Director: Andrew Stanton

Producers: Jim Morris and Colin Wilson

Screenplay by: Andrew Stanton & Mark Andrews (credit not final)

Based on the story by: Edgar Rice Burroughs

From Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton (“Finding Nemo,” “WALL-E”), JOHN CARTER OF MARS brings this captivating hero to the big screen in a stunning adventure epic set on the wounded planet of Mars, a world inhabited by warrior tribes and exotic desert beings. Based on the first of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Barsoom Series,” the film chronicles the journey of Civil-War veteran John Carter (TAYLOR KITSCH), who finds himself battling a new and mysterious war amidst a host of strange Martian inhabitants, including Tars Tarkas (WILLEM DAFOE) and Dejah Thoris (LYNN COLLINS).

Notes:
· Edgar Rice Burroughs was born in Chicago and is best known for writing and creating Tarzan – still one of the most successful and iconic fictional creations of all time. JOHN CARTER OF MARS is based on Burroughs’ first novel, “A Princess of Mars.”
· Academy Award®-winning director/writer Andrew Stanton directed and co-wrote the screenplay for “WALL•E,” which earned the Academy Award® and Golden Globe Award® for Best Animated Feature of 2008. He was Oscar® nominated for the screenplay. He made his directorial debut with “Finding Nemo,” garnering an Academy Award® nomination for Best Original Screenplay and winning the Oscar® for Best Animated Feature Film of 2003. He was one of the four screenwriters to receive an Oscar® nomination in 1996 for his contribution to “Toy Story,” and went on to receive credit as a screenwriter on subsequent Pixar films “A Bug’s Life,” “Toy Story 2,” “Monsters, Inc.,” “Finding Nemo” and “WALL•E.” He served as co-director on “A Bug’s Life,” and was the executive producer of “Monsters, Inc.,” the 2006 Academy Award-winning “Ratatouille” and the 2009 smash hit “Up.”
Set in the wounded planet of Mars, JOHN CARTER OF MARS chronicles the journey of Civil-War veteran John Carter (TAYLOR KITSCH), who finds himself battling a new and mysterious war amidst a host of strange Martian inhabitants, including Tars Tarkas (WILLEM DAFOE) and Dejah Thoris (LYNN COLLINS).

Spoiler TV

The currently untitled film, to directed by Matthijs Van Heijningen, from a script by Ronald D. Moore (Battlestar Galactica) and Eric Heisserer (the upcoming A Nightmare on Elm Street remake), would follow the Norwegian expedition that first unearthed the space-borne shapeshifter in Carpenter’s version.

Both films are based on the original 1951 Howard Hawks/Christian Nyby classic The Thing From Another World, itself based on the 1938 novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr.