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05/05/22 @ 2:23 pm EST
 DF Interview: Zack Kaplan unleashes a sci-fi techno thriller about grad students who put mind control into an app, in ‘Mindset’By Byron BrewerWhen an introverted tech geek accidentally discovers mind control, he and his friends do something unexpected – they put the science into an app to help users break their technology addiction. But as their Mindset app achieves a dangerous cult following, lies, conspiracies, and murder come to light. Are they helping people or controlling them? From Vault Comics comes Mindset by writer Zack Kaplan and artist John Pearson. The storyline pulled me in immediately, so I paid another visit to friend and scribe Zack Kaplan to chat up this new series. Byron Brewer: Zack, before we begin talking about Mindset, how does it feel to be doing your very FIRST comic for Vault? Zack Kaplan: Vault Comics has impressed me ever since I first met Adrian and Damian and the whole clan at SDCC 2016, which was both my first professional con and theirs. I instantly became an avid Vault reader as they put out one amazing book after the next. Vault has a real special slate of comics, and I’ve been talking with them for years about wanting to do something together, but this was finally the moment when the algorithms synced up. And I think it’s really a perfect match and well worth the wait, especially with the exciting creative team of John Pearson and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou. Byron: As you have said, I do not believe this mag could be more timely. Starting not that many years ago, the situation has grown by leaps and bounds: our own dependency on technology. We even make jokes about it, but it’s true now more than ever. Talk a little as you can about how this is addressed through Mindset? Zack Kaplan: Let me just check my phone first. Yes, the devices are controlling us, but we’re totally okay with it, because we know it’s happening. This seems to be the new phase of humanity response to danger: as long as we know it’s there, it’s okay. What an odd sociological phase! But in fact, the technology is changing who we are and the way we interact with each other, and Mindset explores all of that. How we’ve become obsessed with our own online relevance, how we cannot define ourselves without social media and how we are okay manipulating others for influence. I think that’s what makes it resonant so much, because modern technology is mind control. I can say it’s a sci-fi idea, but it’s actually happening now. How many likes did that answer get? Byron: Haha!… Give readers a kind of overview of the book, or at least this first arc. Zack Kaplan: In 140 characters or less, right? Mindset is a sci-fi techno thriller about a group of grad students who accidentally discover mind control and try to do something good with it by putting it in a meditation app, which goes viral to a billion-user following and results in a twisted power struggle, murder and mayhem, and a dangerous question amongst the group – just who is controlling who? It’s really everything you’d want in a dark thriller about mind control, from a riveting character drama, a modern romance story and a lot of twists and turns. I would just say strap in and get ready! Byron: Introduce us to your protagonists. Zack Kaplan: Ben Sharp is really meant to be all of us who grew up in the shadow of social media, and watched as technology slowly boiled our lives. He kind of started life as a child with this idealism and optimism, but then found his dreams falling flat and his direction in life floundering. It’s juxtaposed with seeing others achieve success without substance through a social media lens, and so really, it’s looking at how technology makes us feel about each other and ourselves. And what do those feelings push us to do? Ben teams up with his two geeky friends Kushal and Josiah, as well as an enigmatic student named Eitan Moses and together they launch their mind control app: Mindset. It’s a very tight knit crew that has some major soul searching to do as they navigate the world of tech start-ups and their rags to riches success story. I’m also excited for readers to meet our love interest, Atlanta Hanna, who is this really strong, authentic vivacious young woman surviving in the world of elite Silicon Valley phonies. Lastly, there’s a VC named Winfield, a billionaire with some secrets, but I’ll leave it there. Byron: The chaos catalyst in Mindset is the discovery of mind control and its placement into an app, ironically designed to help users break their tech addictions. But is there any behind-the-scenes corporation or boogeymen? Or are the featured geek squad their own worst enemies? Zack Kaplan: The story really has a lot of layers to it, and a lot of things are viewed through a very subjective lens. John, Hassan and I really set out to explore a narrative that allowed the readers to dive deeper, to perhaps go back and read it again, and have a thought-provoking experience with the series. I say all of this because I don’t think that anything in the series is black or white, boogeymen or villains. The antagonist is technology and society and the question is how can you use mind control and technological influence in a positive way, or is it destined to lead to manipulative outcomes? My hope is that readers will come for the thriller, stay for the character drama and sleep with the themes. Byron: Elephant in the room: Zack, talk about enslavement (like us all) to today’s tech. Was there any one instance (I can relate several about myself) of tech addiction for you that led to this comic? Zack Kaplan: I don’t think so. There are so many micro experiences, and I think the short-term picture is confusing. Obviously, social media is very talked about right now, and which platforms might be most conducive to the truth or for comfort amongst peers. But take a step back from which platform we’re on. Ten years ago, you could describe yourself as a professional or creative, without the question “Where can people find you?” Now, we must define ourselves by our platforms and the historical record of our posts. I think one thing we explore in Mindset is our predilection to scroll and our need to return to our phones. I try not to check my phone in the morning or right before bed, but it’s a struggle. How many of you go to sleep without your devices? Who do you say good night to last? What is driving that behavior? Byron: Talk about working with Eisner-winning artist John Pearson. Zack Kaplan: He might deserve to win again. His work in this book is that good. I think I had read series like Department of Truth and Blue in Green, and I wanted to play with this level of diversity and duality in comics. I was drawn to John’s work in Blue in Green, and reached out with this idea, and we both had an appetite to really do something in an elevated way that used the themes of mind control and technology’s influence on us. And Hassan on letters and Adrian Wassel on editorial and Tim Daniel on design, we all approached the story to ask how can we identify the emotionality of a moment and really enhance that. John and I especially put together a collaborative approach to the scripts and layouts, going back and forth at both stages to make sure our visions aligned. John is using a digital painting style with texture and a mix of realism and surrealism to really give readers a breath-taking experience. There’s a lot of motifs going throughout the book and levels as to how characters are seen and experienced. Hassan and Tim deserve recognition for some amazing lettering and design as well. I’m very proud of the art work in this series, and I think readers are in for something special. Byron: Zack, you are currently on a roll with your comics series! What else current or coming in the near future of your projects can you tell readers about? Zack Kaplan: I’ll be announcing another series soon which will be my fourth series for the year, and I’m already deep into a lot of exciting things for 2023. It’s crazy that we’re already doing stuff for next year, but you know how comics is. But if readers want to stay in the loop on Mindset and on all my new series, they can find the social media me at @zackkaps and the real me at my newsletter Zack Kaplan’s Technobabble on Substack or my website www.zackkaps.com Dynamic Forces would like to thank Zack Kaplan for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer our questions. Mindset #1 from Vault Comics is slated to be on sale June 29th! For more news and up-to-date announcements, join us here at Dynamic Forces, www.dynamicforces.com/htmlfiles/, “LIKE” us on Facebook, www.facebook.com/dynamicforcesinc, and follow us on Twitter, www.twitter.com/dynamicforces. 04/28/24 @ 3:00 pm EST
Is the future of physical media coming to an end? It used to be that DVD and Blu-Ray sales were the saving grace for some movies and you could walk into various stores and browse by genre in the same way you could for music. But like the music stores of the past, the days of swinging by your local shop and picking up the latest release are fading fast. Last year Netflix announced they were no longer doing the movie-by-mail program, so they wouldn’t be buying any more DVDs and Best Buy announced they were removing their Music/Movie sections as well. Now Target has come out and said they would be doing the same this year. A lot of studios have moved away from creating physical media, the exception being Disney who just made a deal with a third party to create their media and it has led to releases of WandaVision, Loki, Moon Knight, and the Mandalorian with SteeleBook editions. And when you purchase a movie or album digitally, there is always the chance that the hosting service you bought it on goes out of business, you will lose your purchases. While I don’t think there are any clear-cut answers here yet, I think the discussion definitely needs to be had. Physical media may seem antiquated to some, but when you computer crashes, your internet goes out or a company files bankruptcy… physical media may start looking a whole lot better.  04/28/24 @ 2:37 pm EST
The ouroboros created by the success of Marvel Studios is continuing with the latest round of speculation driven by nothing. With Marvel and other superhero films becoming so popular that it led to websites and YouTube channels focused on them and now those places need to keep feeding content to their viewers. So, when Michael B. Jordan reposts the trailer for the upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine, we get stories of how this means he is going to return as Johnny Storm from the 2015 Fantastic Four film. Jordan did play a version of the Human Torch, but he’s also played Kilmonger in Black Panther so he could return as either character… or he could just be promoting the next movie from Marvel because he feels connected to the studio? This is the same type of thing as James Gunn posting the original Superman logo to social media last week and everyone running around trying to figure out what it means. It could just mean that Gunn had some free time and wanted to post something Superman related. This week he posted the bloodied fist of a Green Lantern as drawn by Dave Johnson. There are now articles trying to figure out what this means. He also posted a picture of his cat and then his two dogs… I’m sure this is supposed to mean we’re getting a Krypto & Streaky movie soon…  04/28/24 @ 2:13 pm EST
In an interview the other day, Nathan Fillion told the story of how he found out that he was going to be playing Guy Garner / Green Lantern in the upcoming Superman movie. The problem is that he made a slight error in his story, and it has led to a lot of online controversy. In the interview he said he ran into James Gunn at the premiere of Suicide Squad and was told there. Gunn took to social media to correct the statement, saying that it took place at the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 premiere instead. This made Zak Snyder fans come out and claim that Fillion’s story proves that Gunn had been lying about Henry Cavill and that now he was just trying to cover it up with his post. Supposedly the lie came about when Gunn said that he had no interest in taking over the DCU until Peter Safran came on board to do the “exec stuff” and could leave Gunn to do the creative stuff. Gunn stated he was confused and not sure who is supposed to have lied, he also made it clear that his Superman pitch was always geared for a new Superman from the beginning so it doesn’t really matter at which event Fillion found out, Gunn was never lined up to make a Cavill lead film.  04/27/24 @ 11:36 am EST
Being in Los Angeles in the late 90s gave you access to a local radio station, KROQ and their morning show Kevin & Bean. While the show was on for just shy of thirty years, it is notable for a couple of the people who made their name there before moving on. Impressionist and frequent Kevin Smith collaborator Ralph Garman was on the show from 1999 to 2017 and Matt “Money” Smith was on from 1999 to 2006 before going to work at ESPN. But the two biggest names were Adam Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel. Kimmel was “Jimmy the Sports Guy” from 1994 to 1999 before leaving with Carolla to start The Man Show before creating Win Ben Stein’s Money and eventually getting his own late-night variety show on ABC. Comedian Carolla was on the show from 1995 to 1997 as a character named Mr. Birchum, a woodshop teacher who would call in to give messages to his students. That character is coming back in a new animated series for the Daily Wire. And joining Carolla will be a voice cast that includes: Megyn Kelly, Brett Cooper, Roseanne Barr, Danny Trejo, Rob Riggle, Patrick Warburton, Tyler Fischer, Alonzo Bodden, Kyle Dunnigan and Jay Mohr. It was recently announced that Sage Steele would be replacing Candace Owens who recently left the news platform. The show is set to premiere on May 12 on the DailyWire+.  04/27/24 @ 11:12 am EST
New on Netflix is the Dead Boy Detectives, based on the comics from The Sandman creator Neil Gaiman. It follows a pair of ghosts who instead of crossing over into the afterlife, decide to stay and help other phantoms with their problems. In the comics, the boys exist in the same world as Morpheus and the other characters from The Sandman, which is the plan here as well, but because of timing the producers needed to tweak a few things. Showrunner Steve Yockey said: “We knew we wanted to hang on to the boys’ backstory as much as we could. We obviously couldn’t do the full “Season of Mists” backstory, because they have not done that on The Sandman yet. And we were trying to exist within The Sandman universe without stepping on any toes. So we had to slightly tweak their backstories. We held on to the friendship as the core thing, and obviously the detective agency. And then Crystal, to a certain extent, has the same backstory from the comics. Everybody else is either a new creation or a new version of something that was in the comic books. We did a lot of reappropriating and moving things around. So it will feel familiar to readers of the comic book, but also hopefully surprise them in good ways.” But they did keep how the ghosts work directly from the comics. “The rules about how ghosts operate are laid out like in a two-page spread in the comic book, where it’s like, ‘Here are the ghost rules.’ So we took that and we ran with it. Then we did everything in our power to just work that internal logic pretty rigorously. But these rules are the rules.” As for the theme of the series, Yockey gave what might be the best elevator pitch line ever, “I’ve said from the beginning that we were trying to make The Hardy Boys on acid.”  ... 04/27/24 @ 10:44 am EST
Recently we reported that Robert Downey Jr. has shown interest in returning to the role of Tony Stark / Iron Man in the future. The problem is that Iron Man sacrificed himself at the end of Avengers: Endgame, something that the directors of the movie mentioned when asked about RDJ’s comments. Anthony Russo told GamesRadar, “I don’t know how they would do it. I don’t know what the road to that would be.” Joe Russo added, “I mean, we closed that book, so it would be up to them to figure out how to reopen it.” And previously Kevin Feige had said, “We are going to keep that moment and not touch that moment again. We all worked very hard for many years to get to that, and we would never want to magically undo it in any way.” So, that’s the end of that, right? Probably not as anyone who reads comics know that a character death only lasts until the sales start to drop and if the MCU continues to have a few underperforming films, I would expect the writers would come up with a way for RDJ to suit up again.  04/26/24 @ 9:41 pm EST
Sony has pushed its reboot of Karate Kid from December 13 this year to May 30, 2025. This has created a bit of a backward domino effect but won’t rob the year of theatrical releases. Backfilling Karate Kid‘s spot is Sony/Marvel’s Kraven the Hunter, which goes from August 30, the Labor Day weekend frame, to December 13. The Aaron Taylor-Johnson movie will have Imax and PLF screens. Kraven the Hunter will be the only R-rated movie during the holidays, directed by J.C. Chandor, it will go up that frame against Warner Bros’ animated Lord of the Rings: The War of Rohirrim. The plus here on Karate Kid‘s move: The movie will now follow the sixth and final season of Cobra Kai, which was delayed due to the strike. The summer date will see 50% K-12 out on its opening day with great family-film spacing. Warner Bros has the weekend reserved for an untitled movie. Through five movies, the Karate Kid cinema franchise counts north of $620 million worldwide. (via Deadline) 04/26/24 @ 9:35 pm EST
The two most talked-about comic book icons of the year are co-starring in their latest team-up-series—DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE: WWIII. Brought to you by two of the characters’ most legendary creators, writer Joe Kelly and artist Adam Kubert, DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE: WWIII is a three-issue epic that’s a must-have for fans and a perfect entry point for newcomers to Wade and Logan’s comic book adventures. The debut issue hits stands next week, and to celebrate this highly-anticipated launch, comic shops will receive a special surprise DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE: WWIII variant cover! The Promo Surprise Variant Cover is an all-new take on acclaimed artist Gabriele Dell’Otto’s regular variant cover that features Wolverine in his beloved brown costume. WADE WILSON AND LOGAN AT THE ENDS OF THE EARTH - AND EACH OTHER'S THROATS! The most intensely mismatched team-up in comics and pop culture - the best there is and the merc with the mouth - undergoes a radical change in this three-part, globe-spanning saga for the ages! The mysterious Delta believes in change. Change is good. But as he sets his sights on Deadpool, and Wolverine is caught up in the plot, is the third time really the charm, or the curse? Get ready for WWIII to erupt on the scene with the wildest duo in comics! The DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE: WWIII Promo Surprise Variant Cover is the latest complimentary cover delivered from Marvel to show appreciation for retailers and build excitement for readers. Check out Dell’Otto’s variant cover below and inquire with your local comic shop regarding availability.  04/26/24 @ 8:46 am EST
James Bond alum Pierce Brosnan is returning to his espionage roots. The actor is attached to star in A Spy’s Guide to Survival from director Simon Barry, the creator behind Netflix series Warrior Nun. Uri Singer’s Passage Pictures is producing the project that centers around a reclusive, retired spy who is brought out of hiding by his enigmatic new neighbor, digging up both of their secrets in the process. Barry will also write the film based on a story by him and his father, Derek Barry. The project will mark Simon Barry’s feature directing debut. “As a longtime Pierce Brosnan fan, I’m extremely grateful to have the opportunity to work alongside someone I admire for their craft, character and humanity,” said Simon Barry. (via The Hollywood Reporter) 04/26/24 @ 8:35 am EST
This June, chaos reignites when Steve Orlando’s SCARLET WITCH run returns! Teaming up with X-Men Red’s Jacopo Camagni, Orlando’s SCARLET WITCH will continue to push the limits of what Wanda’s magic is capable of as she becomes the Marvel Universe’s prime defender against deadly mystical threats—new and old! Among them will be LORE, Wanda’s demonic counterpart from 1994’s Scarlet Witch limited series. Complete with a wicked new look from Russell Dauterman, fans can check out Lore on both the cover of August’s SCARLET WITCH #3 and Dauterman’s original design sheet. In addition, Dauterman will join Camagni as an interior artist on SCARLET WITCH #3 to bring Wanda and Lore’s epic battle to life. LORE RETURNS! Scarlet Witch’s fight to reach the land of the living puts her face-to-face with her necromantic multiversal counterpart! Lore won’t stop until her death at Wanda’s hands is avenged – but another one of Wanda’s nemeses may hold the key to her survival! "Redesigning Lore was a huge treat!” Dauterman said. “Lore is an evil Wanda variant, so I wanted to contrast the design I did for our Scarlet Witch, which was meant to be magical, vibrant, and super-heroic, by going dark and sinister, with a goth, undead vibe. I’m incredible excited to also be drawing some interiors in the issue where these two Wandas face off!" Lore, who destroyed her own world before trying to conquer the multiverse, represents Wanda’s worst fear—a version of herself that’s gone mad with power! Will Scarlet Witch need her own inner darkness in order to defeat her? Preorder SCARLET WITCH #1 at your local comic shop today! 
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