I guess comic books are still a dependable source for movie material, but studios must now be sifting through the cheapie bins looking for hidden gems. "Hey, what’s this stuck between Bloodpool and D.P.7? Power & Glory? Never heard of it! Looks good, here’s my quarter!"
New Line has rescued Howard Chaykin’s comic Power & Glory from the long-box graveyard, and plans to give it the feature treatment. If I recall correctly (man, does anyone remember Bravura Comics?), the story was a spin on the mismatched-buddy genre, about a government-engineered image-friendly superhero who was actually an unbearable jackass, coward and touch-freak, and his "handler", a no-nonsense Nick Fury-ish former agent.
Chaykin is a comic industry veteran whose groundbreaking work on books like American Flagg more than exonerates him from later involvement with Mutant X. New Line has handed the Power & Glory adapting assignment to Freddy vs. Jason guys Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, who seem to be their new staff writers for this type of thing — just last week they also got charged with scripting the Hawaiian Dick comic flick.