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Mark Millar's War Heroes Up Next - Battling Grunts Adaptation

by Alex Billington
September 18, 2008

Mark Millar has got to be one of the hottest comic book authors currently around. Whether he's just really good at getting the attention of fans or has a really good publicist, I'm not entirely sure. But he's been in the news constantly for the past few months and continues to show up more and more. I might even say he's the new "Miller" in town - it's time for Frank Miller to move over! We know that Kick-Ass, one of his comics, is being made into a feature film right now. And we know he's fighting to get his Superman script made. And now we can add War Heroes, one of his other comics, to the list as well. Millar has confirmed via his website that they're currently pitching the rights to his comic to various studios and expects it to hit big.

"Pretty much all the big guys in town are going in for this and things should really start moving in the next couple of days," Millar reports. As always, Millar is updating fans on all the latest on his site, so if you're curious about the minor details, then check it out. This isn't actually the first time we've heard this news. In fact, it was just a few days ago that Peter from SlashFilm uncovered the news, but his story is a bit more interesting. He reports that there is a behind-the-scenes battle going on between War Heroes and a comic book called Grunts. Apparently Steve Buscemi has been involved with the Grunts project (as producer and potential star) and is getting a bit nervous, because studios execs around town are claiming Grunts came out first and has a similar concept, but War Heroes is getting more attention. Which one will win?

War Heroes (published by Image Comics) is described as "Full Metal Jacket meets The X-Men" and is about a time in the near future where John McCain has won the election and the war in the Middle East is getting bigger, so they resort to the last weapon with any hope - superpower pills that turn soldiers into superhumans. It's only in the second issue so far. Grunts (published by Arcana Studios), on the other hand, is described as "24 meets The X-Men" with "Tom Clancy on speed" military style action. In that comic, an American squad encounters a German superhuman assault squad in during WWII and starts a race over superhuman powers that lasts until the present day. This comic was first published in 2006. Both comics aren't exactly mainstream in the comic world, but both have followings, which makes this interesting.

The concepts for the two are quite similar, but considering I'm a fan of Mark Millar, I'm leaning more in his direction. For some peculiar reason, I've got a feeling War Heroes will turn out better. However, we'll wait to see how this pans out and see what studio ends up with the rights to War Heroes first.

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