Max Landis

As I watched the Power Rangers teaser yesterday in line at a Dunkin’ Donuts in a highway reststop (VIVA LE CINEMA!), I thought to myself “Man, this really doesn’t look like Power Rangers, but it really looks like Chronicle,” the 2012 film about a trio of high school kids who discover a strange object underground and gain superpowers. Although this Power Rangers still has costumes and big transforming robots and stuff, none of that is in this first teaser. Instead it’s about ... a group of school kids who discover a strange object underground and gain superpowers. Weird.

Max Landis is a divisive figure in modern pop culture, to say the least. The son of acclaimed director John Landis, he burst on the scene as the writer of the found-footage film Chronicle, about three friends who gain immense superpowers and find their friendships tested. He’s also known for his online rants about how Rey from Star Wars is a Mary Sue, or defending the casting of Scarlett Johansson in Ghost of the Shell. So he’s a man with opinions who likes to share them. He also recently finished up his first miniseries at DC Comics, Superman: American Alien, backed up by an impressive roster of A-list art talent, including Nick Dragotta, Jae Lee and Jock. The series follows Clark Kent at various points in his life from childhood through to his early days as Superman, and takes a more grounded approach to the Man of Steel, but often skims and bounces off the ground a bit too hard.

Devised by the Ignition Sequence (Isotope proprietors James Sime and Kirsten Baldock and iFanboy co-founder Ron Richards) MorrisonCon was first announced in January as a kind of hip, forward-thinking antidote to the organizational chaos and overt commercialism of the traditional comic book show...

What happens when you bring the writer behind the movie Chronicle and the producer of the Showtime political thriller Homeland together? According to reports, the answer is "a superhero crime drama that's been already been bought by the Fox network...

It's been awhile since we've seen screenwriter Max Landis explain comic tales. Turns out the "Cooking With Comics" pioneer who so succinctly explained Batman: Knightfall has been busy with projects including Chronicle, a major motion picture about psychic teens going psycho that opened up this weekend...