Witchblade plus a Wolverine-esque tangent

So anyway, Blog@'s got a teaser poster for Witchblade.

I have to say, I'm not surprised but I am dreadfully disappointed by it. I mean, to be fair, it's a perfectly understandable marketing/design direction. Witchblade, for all that it's story is good as far as I know, is a T&A comic. Thus having a picture of a pretty girl, posed with quite prominent rear assets shall we say, looking coquettish toward the camera is fitting.

But as someone who adored the television version and Yancy Butler in her hot-yet-fully-clothed-and certainly not coquettish-badassery utterly spoiled me for every other version. (Also, tangentially, their Ian Nottingham was hot. Even though by the end of the first season I was really confused as to whether he could be considered her potential love interest, brother, son, or some other bizarrely pseudo-incestuous relationship. I was about to type that I trusted the comic version was must less convoluted and more comprehensible, but then I remembered that, DUH, comics. Comics are never less convoluted and more comprehensible, I think. It goes against their inner nature, or something like that. I'd imagine the backstory/interrelationship is quite different regardless.)

--Hmm, after reading the wikipedia entry I have to ask, what in the world is comic book's obsession with having all the dark too-cool loner types end up in Japan and falling in love with the culture. I myself fell in love with Japan enough to choose Japanese language and culture as my undergraduate major and spent the requisite year abroad, et cetera, but it seems a tad overused. I admit, it makes somewhat more sense for Nottingham as he's described than it does for, say, Wolverine. -Sorry, I know it's a huge part of his character, but if there's ever been a personality LESS suited for Japanese culture and society than Wolverine as he's generally characterized, I'm hard pressed to think of one.

Well, actually that's not true. I do think that Wolverine at his best does have a sort of Toshiro Mifune-esque quality that would suit perhaps the Sengoku or Edo periods. Samurai code and all that. Weird then that they established his birth as being so close to the Meiji Restoration period. By the time he's an adult, they'd be well into the rapid modernization/industrialization/growing nationalistic point of Japanese history, which I really don't see appealing to Wolverine at ALL. He's really not, I think, suited for modern Japan. Too bad they didn't set his birthdate a couple decades earlier, then he might have had the chance to slip in during the tail end of the bakufu days. It probably would have suited him more.

At least in Nottingham's case, from what I understand about the character, it does seem like modern Japan would suit his tastes and temperament fairly well. It still seems awfully overused though. I think I'd really like to see one of the badass types fall in love with a different culture for once. Like...I dunno. Chinese culture, or maybe Tibetan or Filipino. Or maybe not even Asian at all. Maybe Egyptian or South African or something like that. Or even French?

But I've digressed far enough, so I'll go back to the original topic. I'm not ready to dismiss the movie based on one crappy (to my taste) poster, but I'm not terribly enthusiastic either. I know pretty much already that given my biases, I'm doomed to disappointment as it will NOT be the version I love, but it could still be fun. I just hope they let Sara be appropriately ass-kicking, with or without the cheesecake. Also, that they cast someone hot as Nottingham. I'm shallow. :-)