Been catching up on my spec sale logline reading (so we’re not as timely with this as The Beat) and noticed an interesting announcement a few days ago:

The Shadow
A crime-fighter skulks in the shadows wearing a hat and cape, and has the power to cloud men’s minds. Produced by Buckaroo Entertainment and Comic Book Movies.

Let’s see… took ’em 12 years to consider taking another shot at bringing this character to the big screen (maybe this one will have less Baldwin in it).  But that’s not really what I want to discuss.  I want to discuss this production company, “Comic Book Movies”.  Why?  Because of the name, of course.  With all these companies and people out there trying to get those fancy (often times crazy) names to establish something cool, hip, trendy, different, and odd enough to push through a trademark without hitting one held by someone else, it’s nice to see a simple name that says what it does right there in the title (we’ll just overlook the fact that they’re producing a film about a comic book based on a radio show and popular pulp magazine series).

From what I can tell, the production company was established by Michael Uslan.  Uslan’s listed as a producer on such comic-to-film epics as Swamp Thing (and The Return of Swamp Thing), Batman (pretty much all of them since the late 80s… live action and animated; good and bad), Catwoman, and Constantine.  He also shows up as a producer for the movies (in varying stages of development/pre-production) The Dark Knight, The Spirit, and one I’ve mentioned in this blog before… Shazam!  At the very least, he does have some comic-2-film street cred (yeah, I know… there are some not-so-great movies in that bunch, but on the streets, a rap sheet still gives you some rep), and the Comic Book Movies production company does have a strategic partnership with LucasFilm’s Skywalker Sound.

And besides all those comic book films, I did find another tidbit on Uslan that earned a little respect from me (within the realm of comic books)… looks like he once donated 30,000 comic books from his private collection to the Lilly Library (Indiana University).  I know I have a lot of comic books myself (longboxes stacked practically to the ceiling), but I don’t think I have even half that many comics… and if these were donated out of his private collection, that probably means he has a lot more stashed away somwhere.
Okay, enough rambling from me for now.