Carl Barks' 'Somewhere Beyond Nowhere' finally published.

This week, the Dutch Donald Duck magazine finally featured 'Somewhere beyond Nowhere', the last twelve page comic plotted by none other then Carl Barks himself in 1996!

The story was originally called 'Somewhere in Nowhere', with a script by John Lustig and art/inks done by Pat Block. Intended as a ten-pager it was turned into a longer story (two times 14 pages, so 28 in total) which was first published in Italian in November 2000. Artwork for this reworked version (with a slightly different title) was of course done by Dutch Disney artist Daan Jippes (left), based on a new script by Lustig, which keeps closer to Barks' original outline.

This is the first time ever this story features in the Dutch DD Weekly magazine, the original version was only published in the so-called 'Winterbook' in 2002, a special compilation of stories and little puzzles, published yearly during the holiday season in The Netherlands and Belgium since 1980.
Jippes has already recreated many of the later Duck stories Barks wrote, as he's really the only one who's perfected his way of drawing to emulate Barks own comic style.

The Jippes Version (2008).

Jippes' version, created in 2008 for Danish publisher Egmont was first published in Finland (Aku Ankka 11) in March last year, followed by Denmark (Anders And & Co. 15) and Sweden (Kalle Anka & Co. 15) in April. (Swedish translation was done by Reine Mårtensson, Danish version by Thomas Harder and the Dutch version by Jos Beekman.) The story was published in the USA last february by Boom Kids in 'Donald Duck' issue 363!

Check out this weeks great cover:

Barks final Duck Story.

The original story for 'Somewhere in Nowhere' was plotted by Barks in 1996 on his way to Orlando, Florida. (Barks was at the age of 95 then!)  John Lustig was hired as a freelancer by the Carl Barks Studio to write up the script, while Pat Block created the artwork, which he finished in April 1997.

Carl Barks (left) and John Lustig (middle) with Pat Block (right) in 1997 at Barks' birthday celebration at Disney World. Block shows his finished artwork for 'Somewhere in Nowhere'.
According to Block, Daan Jippes was already involved back then. Bill Grandey, Barks' manager had first asked Jippes to do the artwork and layout as well as flesh out the story, which grew from an initial tenpager into a more voluminous story, but he never got to make the final artwork. Having other commitments (apparently working on Disney's 'Tarzan' feature animation) Block was called in to do the job, which he gladly took upon him.

Although the story was finished in 1997, It wasn't published until Disney Italia aquired it and published it in a numbered, limited hardcover book in November 2000 (after Barks had passed away on August 25 at the age of nearly 100 years).

Beneath: cover of the orginal 28 page version, as published in the US in 2005 (Gemstone's Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge no.1). It features original concept art by Barks with final artwork done by Pat Block with colors by Gemstone's assistant editor Sue Kolberg:

Carl Barks' original plot for the story, as set up by himself back then:

Here's the original concept art sketch for the US cover from the master himself, and some preliminary artwork for page 13B (by Block) with notes. Underneath that the resulting colored page:

John Lustig wrote a lot of Disney stories and cooperated on  many of them with American Disney artist William van Horn. Beside scripts for Disney, he also writes for his own comic 'Last Kiss', based on artwork from old romance comics. Make sure to check out his official Last Kiss homepage or the entry on his blog on the rewrite with Daan here (with some Black/White original artwork too!)

Disney artist Pat Block continues to draw comics and is married to Egmont script writer Shelly Block. They always work together on their Disney stories. Check out her twitter page.  

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V-Ray 2.0 for Maya: Chaos Group unleashes new renderer!

Last week Autodesk released new versions of their major software titles and introduced a series of suites, bundling several of their programs needed for specific workflows, which come in three versions: Standard, Premium and Ultimate. Now Chaosgroup has announced the public beta for their new compatible V-Ray renderer, making the long awaited V-Ray 2.0 for Maya 2012 finally available at the end of this month! Autodesk released six unique suites:

· Building Design (with Revit Architecture)

· Entertainment Creation (with either Maya or 3ds Max)

· Factory Design (AutoCAD Architecture and Inventor)

· General Design (AutoCAD)

· Plant Design (AutoCAD/Plant 3D)

· Product Design (with Autodesk Inventor)

Above: The Factory Design Suite comes with AutoCAD Architecture, Inventor and 3ds Max Design.
Maya comes standard with it's integrated Mental Ray renderer, but many artists prefer using ChaosGroup's V-Ray to render out their 3D images and scenes. Mental Ray is a quality renderer, used for feature films as The Matrix Trilogy, Star Wars II (AOTC) and The Hulk, so what's the difference? The discussion has been long and hard between FX artists.The overall opinion is, that if you know what you're doing, Mental Ray is excellent. But others disagree: V-ray is faster, more powerfull and excellent for rendering fur and hair.

Mental Ray (or M-ray as some call it) was developed by Mental Images in Berlin, the company founded in 1986 by computer scientist Rolf Herken which,since December 2007 has become a subsidiary of Nvidia.

V-Ray was developed by Vladimir Koylazov and Peter Mitev (left). They started their company Chaos Group and established a CG production studio for design and animation in 1997 in Sofia, Bulgaria.

They created their V-Ray render engine in 2002 which they provide through their daughter company Chaos software.

 In June 2009 they introduced and released V-ray RT, the first interactive renderer (for 3ds Max) and also created the Pdplayer - the production orientated image sequence player and viewer for the CG Industry.

Although V-Ray 2.0 was already released for 3ds Max 2011, it will not work with the new releases by Autodesk. An upgrade is in the works and will be ready by the end of this month, along with the new V-Ray 2.0 for Maya 2012, which will have interactive rendering on CPU and GPU, Python callback for access to and modification of the translated V-ray scene before rendering and support for the newest substance textures.

Check out the beta program for all the new feats Chaos has in store for you or read up on how VFX artist Scott Metzger used V-Ray for the 'Halo Reach' spot here which won Method studios the VES Award last Februari in LA!

DC publishes historic 900th issue of Action Comics!

As Writer Paul Cornell and artist Jesus Merino conclude their 'Black Ring' story arc, DC brings in Richard Donner, Gary Frank and Geoff Johns as Action Comics hits the 900 issue mark!

If you've never heard of Superman, you might have been in cryogenic sleep for the past several decades, or your name is Dr. Walter Bishop and you fell victim to your own experiments involving brain surgery. Anyway, the flying hero fighting evil mankind couldn't possibly face on it's own will have a small party this month celebrating it's landmark issue! DC Comics invites you to the party with a special 100 page celebration issue, due April 27th! (right, cover by David Finch).

He may have started out as a simple comic book character but has since grown into a pop culture icon. The 'S' logo on his chest has propably become one of the most prolific symbols of the last seventy years. But not everybody may be privy to the fact that he started out as a character in the first issue of Action Comics, in April 1938.

Action Comics became one of the longest running comic magazines in history, along with DC's other juggernaut 'Detective Comics' (starring Batman), who's currently running Scott Snyder's 'Hungry City' story arc in issue # 875.

Superman, named Kal-El (meaning 'star child'), the last survivor of his home planet Krypton, was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe shuster prior to WWII. Seeing his popularity in Action Comics, publisher National Periodical Publications (as DC was known back then) decided to give their hero his own self-titled monthly series a year later, in June 1939. Superman issue 710, featuring Michael Straczynski's 'Grounded' goes live this April 13.

The first issues of  'Action Comics' (left) and 'Superman' (right) went for $ 0,10 cents each at the time. Mint condition classics are rare these days, only a handfull remain. In 2010, an unknown A grade copy of the premier issue of 'Action Comics' was auctioned for a record $ 1.5 million dollars through ComicsConnect.  This one had layed unnoticed tucked inside an old movie magazine for 50 years. Creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had sold the rights to Superman for $ 130 dollars at the beginning of their careers.

New Superman movie.

Today, Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures announced that Michael Shannon will play Superman's enemy General Zod, in the new upcoming movie 'Superman: Man of Steel' directed by Zack Snyder ('Sucker Punch', 'Watchmen', '300') and produced by Christopher Nolan.

Henry Cavill ('The Tudors') will star as Clark Kent/Superman and Amy Adams will portray Lois Lane. Budget has been set at $175 million Dollars, a little under the 209 million for Bryan Singer's 'Superman Returns' (2006). Diane Laine and Kevin Coster co-star as Kent's parents.
Snyder has stated that anything Superman will do, will be visual effects enhanced CGI. The story will focus on Superman's early days, and will not be linked to previous movies.
General Zod first appeared in Action Comics # 283 (april 1961) and was created by Robert Bernstein and George Papp. Dru-Zod as he's actually named, was a general in charge of Krypton's military forces and attempted to take over the planet. Zod created an army of robotic duplicates but was sentenced to live in exile in the Phantom Zone.

Before 'Man of Steel' will hit the theatres in December 2012, Christopher Nolan's third and final Batman film will be released on July 20. Entitled 'The Dark Knight Rises' the movie will not feature unused footage of the late Heath Ledger (as rumored). Christian Bale will reprise his role of Bruce Wayne/Batman. The Post Gazette confirmed last tuesday that TDKR will be shot this summer on location in Pittsburgh. Nolan's previous Batman film, 'The Dark Knight' (2008) currently holds 7th place in the top ten highest grossing movies to date, crossing the 1 Billion dollar mark.