With all the fuss that goes on over films at Comic-Con, it’s easy to forget that just as central to the event are, well, comics, and probably the best received new offering this year was Last Man Standing, a graphic novel from Heavy Metal Publishing.
As expected, Last Man Standing has now landed a movie deal, with Paramount taking the rights in a multiplatform deal that should include major movie. The creator of LMS told Geek Chic Daily that the story “takes place 600 years in the future, in an alternate universe and is about Gabriel, this invincible soldier, who’s been created to help win a war Earth got itself too deep into with Mars. After Gabe wins the war, he comes back down to Earth and is celebrated as this incredible hero. From there, he becomes somewhat of a celebrity, a Superman of this story, but then it all takes a quick turn. Gabriel is framed for an atrocious crime, by a terrorist organization known as Pandemonium and their leader, Dante. He is then sent to Level-9 Facility, where he’ll spend the next nine years in the worst prison of all time. Once Gabriel breaks out, only then does his true story begin, and the lies and twists unravel.
As for the entire series, it’s a story of mine I’ve been crafting over the past two and a half years. I want it to be a graphic novel series, but start it in a non-traditional type way. Where most comics start off with a first issue, this starts off with a 230-page bible of a book, Killbook of a Bounty Hunter, that sets up the entire universe of the LMS world. But not only that, the audience gets an incredibly deep perspective on the protagonist, Gabriel, and what his plans are now that he’s escaped from Level-9.
It could certainly make a great film, particularly as LMS is as much a coffee-table sized sci-fi art book as a graphic novel, with images that look as much like movie concept art as comic pictures. (Source: Deadline)