IDW @ NYCC

While the big news for NYCC is going to be from this Sunday's big presentation by Summit Entertainment featuring footage from the upcoming CG animated Astro Boy movie by Imagi, the comic book gurus at IDW Publishing were also there to announce some new information about their adaptations of the film.

The picture to the right has nothing to do with Astro. I just think it's funny.

Anyway, Newsarama brings us the scoop in their NYCC '09 IDW panel report.

Scott Tipton will be writing the Astro Boy Movie Prequel. Tipton’s also writing the adaptation of movie this September. Ashley Wood illustrates the cover of prequel, and E.J. Su, who was inspired to become a cartoonist by Astro Boy, will draw the adaptation.

Scott Tipton has written other IDW comic projects such as Star Trek and Angel, and also has a website called Comics 101.

Looks like I was right about Ashley Wood's involvement in the comics, but it was a pretty safe estimate given how much he's already done with IDW.

E.J. Su is an artist I've been a fan of since I first saw his pieces in the Transformers: Genesis art book. He's been penciling Transformers comics for IDW and is an excellent choice for drawing Astro Boy. In fact, when I first heard that IDW was doing Astro Boy comics for the movie, his name immediately sprang to my mind.

Here is a piece of Astro Boy artwork that E.J. did, though I'm fairly certain this was just done for himself and not for anything official.




So, with this in mind it can safely be said that E.J. pretty much rocks the house.

More from the IDW panel:

Tipton said that the footage he’s seen of the Astro Boy movie “looks fantastic, it looks really fun.” He said that writing Astro Boy has been a work in progress, because he “can’t really make with the quips.” He’s had to learn “how to make a ten-year-old boy with machine guns in his butt funny.” Ryall said that the movie is very “true to [Osamu] Tezuka’s spirit.”

So there you have it. Actual news on the upcoming comics! I wonder how the story of the prequel comics will work out before the movie? How much of Astro do we see in the prequel comics if the movie is about how he was created in the first place? They must have something in mind, so I guess we'll find out!