Stereo Comics   +  Justice League: Mortal

Daniel James Cox's Hellboy

Just saw a piece of work in CBR's The Line It Is Drawn feature I liked, by movie concept artist Daniel James Cox, a parody of the cover art to Iron Maiden's THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST.

You'll have seen Cox's work in all sorts of place before, on movies you didn't like (FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER - not his fault it sucked, obviously, his concept art for Galactus looked just about right compared to the mess that ended up on screen) and TV series you did (SPARTACUS: GODS OF THE ARENA). He was signed up to work on George Miller's dead-in-development-hell Justice League: Mortal movie before it disappeared: a victim of the writer's strike; pulled Australian tax breaks; and intra-Warner Bros politicking. It was supposedly fully cast, actors were being fitted for costumes, and script readings had taken place in Australia before the plug was pulled on it. God knows what that would have turned out as. I'm a great fan of Miller, but the last script synopsis I read for it sounded terribly Geoff Johns. I did like Miller's idea of casting relative unknowns, models and TV actors, to save money from the budget with which to boost production coffers. This sort of casting does tend to freak out the trolls on AICN, mind, something which may well have spooked the money men. That said, in all fairness to the trolls, some of the mis-cast names bandied about were fully mental decisions. Cox's blog reveals an artist obsessed with classic comics, so I'm sure he was probably producing acres of great art for the project that none of us will ever get to see. Bugger.