The Acadamy Awards aired last night, celebrating the best of the the big screen. But did you know many screenwriters,musicians and actors have dabbled in comics?
Archie Comics has recently been famous for pairing their characters with stars: Obama, Kiss, the cast of Glee, George Takei…now HBO’s Girls creator Lena Dunham has signed on to pen four issues of Archie debuting next year.
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| Archie Comics |
“I was an avid Archie collector as a child — conventions, first editions that l kept in plastic sleeves, the whole shebang. It has so much cultural significance but also so much personal significance, and to get to play with these beloved characters is a wild creative opportunity,” Dunham said in the press release.
Recently Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, writer of the critically acclaimed Afterlife With Archie, was internally promoted to Chief Creative Officer. “Roberto is the ideal person for the CCO role, and why this is the next logical step in Archie’s evolution as a real pop culture company — a place where the strongest, most unique voices can come and contribute to Archie’s world. The best part is — we’re just getting started.” CEO John Goldwater stated.
This follows the trend of celebrities flexing their writing talents…in comic book form. Actors Rosario Dawson and Tyrese Gibson have written for Image Comics in their own miniseries(Occult Crimes Taskforce and Mayhem!, respectively). Saturday Night Live’s Bill Hader and Seth Meyers tagteamed on a Spider-Man parody one shot: The Short Halloween(parodying the successful Batman:The Long Halloween). Longtime voice of the Joker and Luke Skywalker, Mark Hamill wrote The Black Pearl for Dark Horse. Jennifer Love Hewitt conducted a miniseries, Music Box at IDW. Nick Fury(aka Samuel L Jackson) wrote Cold Space for Boom Studios. Jada Pinket Smith wrote Menace for Awesome Comics. Patton Oswalt wrote for JLA(DC) and Kevin Smith has written for Daredevil(Marvel). Orchestrator of the Marvel cinematic universe, Joss Whedon wrote a definitive era for the X-Men in their Astonishing X-Men series.
See cover images and a more complete list compiled by Jason on Listal.
One of the factors behind DC’s cross country move to Los Angeles is for the publisher ties in this. It is rumored that they would like to tap the Hollywood screenwriters for potential comic book writers.
