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For those excited about the upcoming Playstation Network debut of Powers, the live action adaptation of Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming‘s superhero procedural, here’s an 8 minute featurette detailing how the production came to be and lots of new footage.

Powers, which stars Sharlto Copley and Susan Heyward, will be the Playstation Network’s first original series. It should make for a fascinating experiment for the network going forward, particularly to see how many viewers opt to pay the per-episode rate rather than get a Playstation Plus subscription.

Powers will be available on PSN starting March 10th.

Via Brian Michael Bendis’ Tumblr page, here’s your first cast photo from the upcoming Playstation Network series Powers, based on the former Image, now Icon title by Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming.

The series will be free to Playstation Plus subscribers, but all Playstation owners will be able to view the pilot for free when its made available later this year. The pilot was written by Charlie Huston (Moon Knight) and directed by David Slade (30 Days of Night).

Powers centers on Detectives Christian Walker (Sharlto Copley) and Deena Pilgrim (Susan Heyward) as they investigate cases involving superheroes and supervillains, working in a special homicide division called “Powers”. The cast also includes Michelle Forbes as Retro Girl, Eddie Izzard as Wolfe, Noah Taylor as Johnny Royalle, and Olesya Rulin as Calista.

The original Bendis-Oeming collaboration was a critical smash when it debuted, winning the Eisner Award for Best New Series in 2001.

The first trailer for POWER, the Playstation series based on Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming’s longrunning comic, debuted at theNYCC panel for the show. Sharlto Copley stars as Christian Walker and Susan Heyward as Deena Pilgrim. Copley is minus most of his outrageous accent, but he’s still nutty as hell and I love it. Also, f-bombs and maybe Walker is Bi?

It's official!

The above image is the final cover for the thirds and final book in the Forts series, Endings and Beginnings!

The OFFICIAL WEBSITE is also in the process of being updated to reflect the look of the new book and I'll be adding some goodies on there over the next few weeks!

Steven

One of the most magical storytelling tools in the novelist’s arsenal is that of point of view, or POV for short. Your choice of point of view will determine the quality of the connection your reader feels, not only to your character, but to the point you’re discussing within your story. Who do you want the [...] No related posts.

All week on the OUPblog we will be celebrating the Lincoln Bicentennial.  Be sure to read Jennifer Weber’s post on how Lincoln almost failed, the excerpt from James M. McPherson’s Abraham Lincoln, and come back tomorrow for Craig L. Symonds post. In the original piece below Allen Guelzo, author of Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction, answers some FAQs about Lincoln.  Check back tomorrow for part three of this series.  You can read part one here

OUPblog: Lincoln had the highest regard for the U.S. Constitution, yet he assumed extraordinary powers during the Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation. When we look at this story for lessons about the conduct of a government today, what should we find?

Allen Guelzo: When we say that Lincoln exercised “extraordinary powers,” it sounds as though we were accusing him of making himself a dictator. But the Constitution itself gives the President some extraordinary powers when it designates the President as Commander-in-Chief in time of war or rebellion – and Lincoln was certainly willing to use those “war powers” during the Civil War. But looked at in retrospect, Lincoln used them very cautiously. Even the Emancipation Proclamation was issued as a “war powers” proclamation, with all kinds of restraints and caveats to keep it strictly within the legal bounds of military necessity. The Constitution was, for Lincoln, the frame mounted around the “apples of gold” in the Declaration of Independence, and you could not damage one without damaging the other.

OUPblog: During the Civil War, Lincoln declared martial law and suspended habeas corpus. He ordered the arrest of draft resisters and opponents of the draft, newspaper editors, judges, and other prominent opponents. He argued that it was an issue of self-preservation of the nation, as described in Article II, section one of the Constitution. What about opponents of the President’s policies?

Guelzo: Lincoln was a far better lawyer than I am, and he could answer that question with much more attention to constitutional law. But it is significant that the same issues are once again before us – not only that, but the same accusations of violations of rights, and the same response that the nature of the threat justifies extraordinary actions in national self-defense. One thing to bear in mind is that Lincoln has, on the whole, been judged fairly mildly, first, because the threat to the survival if the United States in 1861-65 has been seen as very real, and second, because, at the end of the day, the steps Lincoln took were not out of balance with the nature of the threat. (Those steps, by the way, included suppressing draft riots, executing a slave trader, and even exiling a political dissident). If anything, Lincoln once said, his administration would probably be remembered for treading too lightly on wartime civil liberties cases.

We recently launched Powers of Persuasion: The Inside Story of British Advertising by Winston Fletcher. Today, I am pleased to be able to bring you an original essay by Winston on the period where the British led the way in the advertising world. Check back tomorrow for photos from the party at London’s Somerset House.

Conventional wisdom has it that America is the home of advertising, where it all began. That is not quite right. Unquestionably America is the world’s largest advertising market, and American advertising agencies now dominate the world. But advertising began in ancient Athens (if not earlier), and advertising agencies started in Britain more than a century before they appeared in the USA. During 1970s and early 1980s British advertising led the world. It did so creatively – but it did so in other ways too, which underpinned the creativity, making it more effective and successful.

The emergence of Britain started slowly. At the Cannes Festival, which was then – and still is – the arbiter of global advertising creativity, Britain was outpaced by the USA throughout the 1960s, and in 1970 and 1971. Then the British climb began. In 1972 British and American advertising agencies took home an equal number of Gold Lions (4 apiece), and Britain won the cinema Grand Prix. The next year Britain won more awards than any other country, though most of these were Silvers.

In 1974 the British Gold rush really got going. That year Britain collected 18 Gold and Silver Lions and the Palme D’Or. In 1975 the festival moved to Venice for a year, and the British trade press headline simply read ‘Venice Goes British’. Come 1976 the festival returned to Cannes and the headline ran: ‘Britain Sweeps The Board’. The Brits had again pocketed the Palme D’Or, plus 10 of the 19 Gold Lions. In 1977 it was ‘Britain Comes Out Best Again’, with the Grand Prix for television and another 6 Gold Lions. Then, in 1978, Britain reached its zenith. The Brits won the Grand Prix for both television and cinema – a rare occurrence – and garnered a massive 80 Gold, Silver and Bronze Lions.

After 5 years at the top, there followed a couple of relatively fallow, but not wholly unsuccessful, years (1979 & 1980). But in 1981 the British made a come back (‘Britain Comes out Best Again’) with more Gold and Silver Lions than any other country. And Britain’s creative leadership continued throughout the first half of the new decade, when it collected 45 Gold Lions against America’s 23.

What caused this burgeoning of British advertising creativity? A combination of factors. Commercial television had begun in Britain in 1955, and for the first two decades British television advertising was dominated by American advertisers – particularly household cleanser and other packaged goods advertisers, whose approach to creativity was strictly formulaic. Every commercial had to abide by the ‘proven rules’. During the 1970s British advertisers started to become much more important in their home markets, and more confident, and allowed British creativity much more freedom. Creativity flowers in freedom. Moreover this occurred against the background of a recovery in Britain’s economic performance, after a long period of economic tribulation. But probably most important of all, there happened to be in London during those years a raft of quite exceptionally talented advertising people, who worked both as colleagues and as rivals to outperform each other creatively, in a highly charged competitive atmosphere.

Additionally, their creativity was underpinned by other developments which also helped British advertising leap ahead. More or less simultaneously, two London agencies (Boase Massimi Pollitt and J Walter Thompson London) invented a new system of campaign development called ‘account planning’. Account planning integrated research into the creative process in a way that had not been done before, and in a way that creative people found far more sympathetic than they had found earlier systems. Account planning spread slowly at first, but it is now generally accepted around the globe as the best way to develop new campaigns.

At the same time, in the mid-1970s. Britain developed the world’s best system of advertising self-regulation – a system that maximises creative freedoms within responsible constraints. And advertising began to be used more and more by British Governments to promote worthwhile social causes, from blood-giving to drink-less driving. Simultaneously Britain began to build what has become the world’s largest advertising archive, ‘The History of Advertising Trust.’ Out of this ferment of activity two commercial giants emerged: Saatchi & Saatchi and the WPP Group. Both joined the world’s advertising leaders, though Saatchi & Saatchi later stumbled and fell.

For the British advertising industry the second half of the 20th century was a heady era – when it reached peaks that it will probably never quite achieve again.

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Deborah Lynn Jacobs is the author of two new intriguing books for young adults - Choices, and Powers.

Listen as Book Bites for Kids host, Suzanne Lieurance, talks to Jacobs about her two new books and what it’s like to write YA novels.

Learn more about Deborah Lynn Jacobs and her books at her website.