NYCC: Dynamite Nabs the Grimm License

Police procedurals and crime shows are a dime a dozen on TV these days. Grimm broke from the pack by offering a new twist on a familiar formula. The show centers around Detective Nick Burkhardt, who discovers that he is a member of a line of defenders called Grimm who protect the world from mystical creatures known as Wesen. The show features characters inspired by Grimm's Fairy Tales and similar stories.

Evidently NBC felt the time was right to expand the Grimm franchise beyond the confines of network TV. At NYCC today, Dynamite Entertainment announced that they've acquired the rights to produce comics and graphic novels based on Grimm. Grimm joins various other licensed properties at Dynamite, including Flash Gordon, The Lone Ranger, Green Hornet, and Voltron.

"The opportunity to delve even deeper into the Grimm universe is an exciting prospect. One we hope fans of the show and comic books in general will equally enjoy." said Executive Producers David Greenwalt and Jim Kouf in Dynamite's press release. "The medium will allow the story to go places we never could within the constraints of a television production. It's pretty cool."

Meanwhile, Dynamite President Nick Barrucci said, "Grimm is one of the hottest new genre shows on TV. We had asked NBC numerous times since Season One about licensing this great TV show as a Dynamite comic. They weren't ready to license in the first year, as they were still building the mythology. The second they opened up the license for proposals we offered an aggressive creative, financial, and marketing plan. Fans of the TV show will enjoy what we have in store and how the comics will complement the TV series."

Dynamite hasn't revealed what form these new comics might take or which creators will be tapped to produce them. It should be interesting to see how the Grimm comics compare to current fairy tale-inspired series like Bill Willingham's Fables and Zenescope's Grimm Fairy Tales franchise. We'll keep you updated as Dynamite releases more information.

Jesse is a writer for various IGN channels. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

Microsoft Job Listing Outs "Next Generation Surface"

In more than a dozen job listings on the Microsoft Career site spotted today by TechRadar, the Redmond, Washington technology giant let slip a hint that its Surface tablet releasing on October 26 this year won't be the last of its kind. A post on the Official Microsoft Blog echoes the sentiment, calling Surface "our new family of PCs".

While this could be a case of some bad or antiquated terminology (possibly referring to the already-announced Surface as the next generation of PixelSense, for example), the listings were posted after the reveal of the tablet on June 19.

The listings themselves also imply that these new positions will involve working on a different set of devices, as one listing mentions "understanding of touch display architecture and experience in mechanical integration of large touch displays into electronics products". "Large" is a relative term in the world of displays, but it could refer to a desktop monitor or integration with TV monitors.

If these listings do represent a new breed of Surface devices, then they may well feature some unique components mentioned in to the job requirements. "Alternative power sources" seems to imply that the next generation will be even greener than the first, though another listing does include AC/DC power expertise, which means battery-powered machines.

As much as Microsoft has lauded the already-announced Surface tablets for their unique cooling architecture, new developments in "passive and active cooling thermal designs" could further innovate on those models and allow for more powerful processors.

Whatever the next Surface looks like, it's no surprise that Microsoft is getting an early start on preparing it for consumers. Given past software cycles, its likely that these newer Surface devices would still run Windows 8, and that third-party hardware manufacturers will still get shafted as Microsoft dives headlong into the hardware space.

Source: TechRadar 

Dan Crabtree is an I.T. guy and freelance writer with words on IGN, and a league of other gaming news outlets. His dog is considered handsome and well-read. You can find him (the human) on Twitter and IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com