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Show From Borders to Hollywood: A comic book's story Roger Moore THE ORLANDO "Terminator 3"), with screen- SENTINEL a lot of young men, Venditti went to with big dreams. "I was going to be the next Hemingway," he says. As he earned his BA from the University of Florida and a masters from the University of Central Florida, he figured out "you can't just graduate from college and apply for a job as a fiction writer." Law school was out. He had a taste of that in a summer job "and realized it wasn't the life for me." e But there was that job, the one that started in South Florida and moved to Springs and then Winter Park, Fla., as he attended grad school. He worked at Borders Books, and that changed his life. That's when Venditti first picked up a comic book. "I thought, like a lot of people, that comics were just a juvenile medium," Venditti, 35, says from his home in Atlanta. "But my buddy Marques Robinson got me to read 'Astro City: The Confessor.' The complexity of the ideas, the characters, the way the visuals help tell the Like part-tim- U; "h writers from "Terminator 3." "I've been involved, at least in the loop," he says. "I looked at it from the perspective that these other people were creative minds in their own right. If they're inspired by something I did to bring their own creativity to it, I'm taking that as a compliment and letting them do what they want. They were staying true to the themes and adding their own ideas and plot lines and characters. You know they're going to add explosions. "Sinha studied people addicted to the Internet. Obsession with alternate reality was causing divorces, people were losing their jobs. By 2002, all these 'extreme makeovers' were all over the media. What if there was a technology that allowed people to fulfill that basic human need to be someone other than yourself? What would that world look like?" His "Surrogates" was such a success that he just released "Flesh & Bone." a prequel He has another comic, "The Homeland Directive, in the That's Hollywood." Venditti's works, and is adapting the Brett Weldele) hits theaters. story, really appealed to me. I story should be an novels of Percy Jackson into a started researching comics, try- It's a comic-boo- k writer's inspiration to anyone hoping to comic. If lie hasn't given up his version of win- break into comics. He worked Hemingway dreams, Venditti ing to figure out how you got to any writer's write for them." his way in the door with a tape does sound very much like a ning the Lotto. man who is sold on his new He figured it out, all right. "The minute I heard Bruce gun. In 2003, Venditti's comic-boo- k medium: "I'd moved to Atlanta, transWillis was cast was the first "Great novelists like Michael series "The Surrogates" hit moment I allowed myself to ferred to a Borders up here, Chabon ("Wonder Boys") and stores. Entertainment Weekly and I'd heard of this comichope that this might actually called this tale of people who book company, Top Shelf Jonathan Lethem ("The Forget turned into a movie," Venlive vicarious lives through ditti says with a laugh. "A protress of Solitude") are crossing Productions, that was having their artificial (and artificially over into graphic novels." ducer who had just hung out his a rough patch," he says. He His ambition may have been offered to come in and use his shingle called me up Max gorgeous) "surrogates" "a He shopped it around, to be "the new Hemingway." resplendently grimy commenexpertise packing books as a ran into a studio guy who had volunteer. A few months of that But in a world where "Sin City" tary" on our times. Friday, Venditti's success just seen 'Sin Gty' and wanted and he showed the company his and "Watchmen" are classics, could reach a whole new level idea for a comic, one inspired Venditti has found a reality that 'something edgy, comic-bookas "Surrogates," a thriller starlike that. So Mandeville Films allows him to realize that ambiby Indra Sinha's book, "The in books where pictures which he had read tion ring Bruce Willis based on got involved, then Jonathan in grad school at UCF. Venditti's book (with artist Mostow (director of "U571," help tell the story. Touchstone Bruce Willis stars in "Surrogates. Pictures ' Borders-to-Hollywoo- . Han-delma- n. 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