Burn Notice is heading back to the USA Network tonight and in celebration of the new season the show has received it’s very own interactive graphic novel.

Fans of the Jeffrey Donovan starring vehicle can head over to USANetwork.com to interact with the novel called A New Day which brings together the story lines of the fourth season with the beginning of the fifth season

USA Network says the novel will run for 12 weeks and was created in partnership with DC Comics.

Even if you’re not into graphic novels you’ll want to tune into the show tonight if you’re a fan, as Michael Westen will be teaming up with his old agency to find and take down the people who burned him.

If you don’t want to read the graphic novel on the website you can also find it on Facebook or download it for your iOS or Android based device.

Burn Notice airs at 9 p.m. ET.

Burn Notice Season 5 Debuts Tonight, Show Gets Interactive Graphic Novel is a post from: The Inquisitr

Platinum Studios currently owns the rights to more than 5,000 comic book characters and announced on Tuesday that they will debut “Nightfall” through licensee Graphicly starting on June 15.

Graphicly is one of the premier destinations for digital comic books, currently attracting more than one million monthly visitors.

According to Platinum:

“Nightfall” tells the story of David Paxton who is sent to a tough Texas prison which is secretly run by vampires. Paxton’s only hope of survival is an uneasy alliance with a ruthless killer. “Nightfall” was created and written by Scott O. Brown with art by Ferran Xalabarder.

Also in development by the comic book company is “Unique” which is being created for the big screen with the help of “Harry Potter’ producer David Heyman at Walt Disney Pictures.

‘Cowboys & Aliens’ Creator Platinum Studios to Release “Nightfall” Graphic Novel is a post from: The Inquisitr

I’ve been in hog heaven lately with the glut of quality comic book movies that have been coming out recently. The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Hellboy 2 and The Hulk have all been superb movies that are unique and have expanded the genre (as well as paved the way for future quality adaptations to hit the silver screen). Another movie made possible by these successes and others like them in summers past is the film adaptation of the DC Comics short run series called The Watchmen.

The Watchmen has always been an influential work in both the science fiction world as well as the comic book world. Alan Moore, the writer, has seen subsequent graphic novels move to the big screen (like V for Vendetta and From Hell). After the comic run finished, it was later re-published as a graphic novel, something that is widely attributed as having popularized the format.

Unfortunately, there’s now a chance that The Watchmen may never make it to theatres. I caught the news yesterday on comic industry blog Uncivil Society that there’s apparently an intellectual property dispute between Fox and Warner Brothers as to who exactly owns the exclusive movie rights to the film, and Fox is threatening to block the films release entirely in an effort to protect their investment.

The evidence is pretty clear that Fox secured the rights back in 1990 (Uncivil Society has all the document scans), but turned down the production. The producer eventually ended up at Warner, who greenlighted the project, but clearly didn’t do the legal due diligence.

Does that mean the film will end up not seeing a public release? It’s doubtful it’ll come to that. Mike Massnick over at TechDirt does some reading of the tea leaves, and indicates he belief that the disagreement will “get settled long before the movie’s scheduled release in March of next year — but it will probably mean that Fox gets some of the profits for doing absolutely nothing.”

Should We Even Have Exclusive Rights in the First Place?
Mike then injects a bit of his typical libertarian approach to intellectual property matters and wonders why there even exists the idea of “exclusive movie rights”:

To be honest, the whole concept of selling off exclusive rights to a story idea for a movie never made that much sense. If multiple studios want to make multiple movies out of the same concept, why shouldn’t that be allowed, letting the best movie win in the marketplace? If the original content creators feel strongly about a vision, then they can sign up to work with one particular studio to make sure the movie is more true to life — but it shouldn’t require “exclusive” rights.

He then goes on to use as evidence for his point the fact that when actual news or riveting real-life drama happens, it’s a race to the finish as to who can come up with the best movie adaptation first. Without realizing it, though, he demonstrates why it’s a very bad idea to take competitive standards and apply them to artistic works.

While the movie adaptation of V for Vendetta was a commercial success and very well received by the fans of the graphic novel, Alan Moore was so notoriously displeased with the film that it was profiled in the New York Times. Mr. Moore is the embodiment of the desire for artistic integrity, and in a situation where all movie rights for films were up for grabs, gross misinterpretations of the underlying messages would run rampant.

From a business perspective, though, such a system would be incredibly damaging to many longstanding franchises. For years after Joel Schumacher and Tim Burton drove the Batman movie franchise off a cliff, the series became untouchable in Hollywood and sales of the comic book went down the drain.

Certainly, as is evidenced by both of these cases, the exclusive rights system doesn’t always prevent us from getting bad movies. Having a hoard of movie producers rushing towards a deadline, each one trying beat the other by a week’s release date certainly can’t help the quality of the films coming out, and I doubt seriously many major comic vendors are willing to gamble that way with their brand and their stable of titles.

Who Gets To Watch the Watchmen? is a post from: The Inquisitr