Jim Butcher's Dresden adapted by DBPro

Some definitions:

DBPro: aka the Dabel Brothers. Small group who have made their reputations doing faithful adaptations of literary works, such as George RR Martin's The Hedge Knight and the Anita Blake series. Magazine quality reproduction of the art.

Jim Butcher: If all you've seen is the TV show version of the Dresden Files, you haven't really seen Jim's work. (Unless you saw the rare copy of the pilot floating around. That was pretty close to the first novel in tone, until it got yanked from the original producers and Charmedified.) Dresden is a smartass PI who also happens to be a practicing wizard, and Jim's got a strong mythology background to ground his urban fantasy in, and magic always has a price. It's closer to Cast A Deadly Spell than Harry Potter.
Jim also wrote the Spiderman novel Darkest Hours. Harry Dresden has a very Peter Parker snarkiness to his sense of humor.

I got tagged for a Thematic Consultant gig for the adaptation. While I can't break the NDA, obviously, I can toss out news.

Release: Expected to be 1st quarter 2008, but not yet set in stone. Will be available in stores and direct subscription. (And they will ship internationally.) It's a monthly release.

What: Plans are for adaptations of the entire 20+ books, if sales keep up. (Jim only has 9 published now, with Small Favor due out next year.) In between each book adaptation, there's supposed to be an original story. They're kicking it off with an original, scripted by Jim, that takes place right before Storm Front and was inspired by a throw-away line in the pilot of series written by Hans Bemmler & Robert Wolfe. I believe it'll be a 4 ish storyline, then Storm Front. The books will not be adapted by Jim, as he still has 2 books a year to write for his publishers (Dresden and Alera).

Where they're at now: pre-production sketches and first draft of the first draft turned in by Jim.

My impressions: Hot...damn. These guys REALLLY want to get it right. They're serious about adapting things as closely as possible, and nailing the right look for everything. Jim's seriously in the loop, and they pop onto the Butcher boards to talk to the fans.
Artist: Very, very good. He did a pre-production sketch of Harry vrs the Toad Demon (with Susan) in the rain (from Storm Front), and it's gorgeous. He's got a good sense of the characters (and where he doesn't, he responds well to corrections.)
Jim's Script, Ish 1: Read it this morning. No problem transfering from novel format to script format...this is still the Harry Dresden we know and love...and Jim uses a few tricks here & there I haven't seen in years...and he does them well. It's a good story, and well designed. What the Dabels think of it, I don't know (I have a background in film scripts, not comic scripts), but I certainly like it.

Find a copy of the pilot....much better than what the show became.*

And the cool thing about a comic...same FX budget as a novel.

The DBPro site is in redesign, but should be up within a week or so (it's finished, they're just waiting on marketing to start their push before they launch). Art will be up then.





*Side note: Robert Wolfe was also producer for the pilot as well as the series. His partner left and got replaced by either the studio or SciFi by someone from Charmed. Robert's mum on the subject, but connect the dots.

It's planned to be:

Original Story.
Storm Front.
Original Story.
Fool Moon.
Original Story.
Death Masks.
Etc, etc.

The short stories will be adapted as well (I'm guessing Troll Bridge will be an exception, unless it's a flashback.)

And the next book, btw, is book 10, so expect major stuff

Side note for people who follow the books...other reccomendations: Simon Green's Nightside Books, and the Man with the Golden Torque. Glen Cook's Garrett series. Richelle Mead's Succubus Blues. Rachel Caine's Weather Wardens. Kelly Armstrong's Otherworld (from Stolen on forward). Karen Chance's books.

They're not the same thing, but they're in similiar veins, athough the last several are more chick orientated (doesn't bother me, but some might not like it...they're still good urban fantasy reads, not romance novels).

Garrett's the great great granddaddy of the sub-genre...and it was an accident. Cook was well established in fantasy, and wrote a noir detective piece for mainstream fiction. His agent said he could sell it, but since he was an unknown in THAT market, it wouldn't go for much.
So Cook got the idea to retool it as a PI in a fantasy world, and the sub-genre was born. (Sort of...there were some one-off novels by other people beforehand, but it never really took off until the Garrett books launched.)

DBPro has signed a deal with Del Rey for distribution, pushing them into some markets previously closed to them:
http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=136229

...and the website went live. Apparently, redesign launch was waiting on the above announcement.

http://www.dabelbrothers.com/

Concept art:
http://www.dabelbrothers.com/index.p...7_sectionid=25

(The Harry they're using is the 2nd pic.)

DBPro will also launch Dean Kootz's Frankenstein and George RR Martin's Wildcards this spring.

(oops)

Newer press release news...Jim's happy, and is writing the initial 4 issues as an original mini series before Storm Front is adapted.

http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=137640


“I couldn't be happier to see the Dresden Files hopping the gulf to a new medium--and to one where I think they'll have the chance to really shine,” Butcher said. “I've spent considerable portions of my life obsessed with comics. I like them, and they helped shape my imagination as I was growing up. The action in the Dresden Files has always been inspired by my favorite superhero titles--Spidey and the X-men--and several facets of Dresden himself were modeled on some of the same foundations as Peter Parker. For heaven's sake, my online handle has been ‘Longshot,’ after the sometime X-man, since my very first email account.”


On a side note, DBPro is also adapting Roger Zelazny's Amber series, with Trent Zelazny.