This is an awful idea. The best part of Die Hard was that John McClane was just a normal guy who had never been thrown into a ridiculous situation before. If these comics show that he's been doing insane things all his life, it will take away from the first film. Not that a huge amount of people are going to read those comics anyway, but I'd imagine the only ones that will would be huge Die Hard fans who might be a little put off by this news.

I'll be honest if there put off by this news they'll most likely not read it.

Ben, this is an alternate reality where McClane's father was killed and he never joined the police force. And then, um, the cop that ate the twinkies in Die Hard travels back in time to convince McClane to enlist, er, I mean join NYPD.

I expect comic fans (and not just the huge ones) will also pick this one up. I will.
Don't be such a critic to work that you haven't even seen yet.
There's two things that can happen here:
1. It turns out to be a good (or better) comic, and you can buy it, read it , and (even)enjoy it.
2. It's not such a good book, and you can leave it alone and get something else from the shelf.
What's the downside?

sweet.

The third one down makes him look straight out of Planet of the Apes.

I don't think it will take FOX long to pick this up. It's just a question of who can play a young John McClane??

Come on obviously Shia LaBeouf.

I hope I'm right in my belief that's a really deadpan satiric comment. Otherwise I just wasted a thumbs-up on you. :-)

Well yes I'm glad that was got. I was half hoping for someone to get all angry and say I had a terrible opinion but satire clearly is still respected.

Ashton Kutcher?

duh its going to be Bruce Willis CGIed, did you not see him in the surrogates trailer?

as long as this stays a comic I am ok with it... but I have a feeling they'll find a way to make a movie out of it. Live Free of Die Hard was bad enough, this would just be atrocious. Let's just hope that it stays in comic form.

Why? Why do people do this? Why are people completely okay with a film franchise being further explored... as long as it's NOT in film form?

because it is easier to ignore when it isn't in film form... also once it becomes a film it officially becomes part of the franchise and then is a canonical part of the story.

Man, for a minute there all comics were being turned into movies. Now movies are being turned into comics. You think it's just to test the story with all intents to make it into a movie later? It's kinda like releasing the storyboards for public consumption when you don't want to drop the loot to film the movie.

This is a great idea for a comic and I have to disagree with most people here and say I wouldn't be up in arms if they tried to make it into a movie. If the prequel was grounded in reality and less over the top then the first Die Hard it could be good, casting young John McClain would be the hardest part and may not even be possible.

That doesn't make any sense. DIE HARD the movie *is* DIE HARD year one.

I'm going to make a prequel comic. It's BATMAN: YEAR ONE: YEAR ONE

wouldnt BATMAN: YEAR ONE: DAY ONE make more sens

"First Year Batman- Year One: The Starting 12 Months". I should probably copyright that before someone from corporate steals it.

I don't understand why this is considered a terrible idea. The more John McCLane, the better imo. To think that the character was just another boring cop patrolling the streets is ridiculous. John McClane can't stay out of trouble to save his life, I don't see why his earlier years as a cop should be any different. I'm all for a prequel movie if they get the right actor and director involved.

You guys realize that Die Hard is based on a book? A book that is a sequel to another book called 'The Detective'. So there is a story that goes on before the events in Die Hard.

I like the idea.

Sure, Ben makes a totally valid point, right up top, that the whole idea behind McClane is that until Die Hard, he was a perfectly normal cop and nothing too exceptional had ever occurred in his life. And if this was a true movie prequel, that would bother me.

But it doesn't make that much difference in a comic book, in my opinion. Comics are constantly doing similar retcons. This medium is made for the What If? and Ultimate sort of treatment. This is why DC had two or three (or four) simultaneous versions of characters for a while, and Marvel largely followed suit in its own alternative-universe lines.

I don't see any reason this comic series can't take the basic character of McClane and posit a reality where some really cool shit went down when he was a young NYC cop.

Also, Chaykin is one of the industry's most creative and colorful talents. Plus I love much of the art displayed on this post, indicating the series will have a great visual style. I'm more than willing to give it a shot.

These are my favorite movies and I think the comic prequels are very dumb. I agree with some of the other posts here, Die Hard (the first) is essentially Year One. No back story needed. Give me more sequels if anything, I could watch John McClane all day shooting people, blowing stuff up, and killing the bad guys. Yippee-ki-yay-motherfucker!

maybe you should revisit the first movie. it never said nothing ever happened to him before. were just to assume that nothing BIGGER ever happened to him.
they're some of my favorite movies too and i think this is an amazing idea.

Look at that hair!

How come every comic prequel post-"Batman: Year One" has "Year One" as the subtitle?

Which ones, other than batman? You said "every"?

They should have called it, "LIVE HARD".

With the sequels:

LIVE HARD 2: LIVE HARDER
LIVE HARD 3: LIVE HARD: WITH A VENGEANCE
and
LIVE FREE OR LIVE HARD

I'm so not buying this crap,,,

This really looks shameless to me.

They have been doing this sort of thing in comics forever. It's a fun hypothesis. Nothing more, nothing less.
When they put together the sequel to John Carpenter's The Thing in comic form, it was very cool - didn't ruin the film for me, and certainly didn't change the perfectly bleak ending of the film. It was a "what if" story.

I'll be picking this up, because good or bad, I'm curious.

How did I find out about this only now. Its been August now for 1 hour and 26 minutes. I NEED IT ON THE SHELVES NOW!

See, there's a line in the first Die Hard movie that makes me think that John McClane's life has not always been boring. I can't remember the exact line, but run with me here for a second - one of the Thieves says something about "You're a cop, you have rules." John shoots him dead, and replies with something like "My Seargent keeps telling me that."

I mean, clearly the guy's been living on the edge of right and wrong his whole life, I don't think it's safe to assume he's had a boring existance up until the first movie. I just don't think he did anything to merit National Attention prior to the first movie. I agree with the other assessment of McClane being physically unable to stay out of trouble his whole life.

I've also been dying to get my hands on a copy of those aforementioned books that the movies are based off of. :D Die Hard is easily one of my favorite franchises.

Either way, until I read the Comic, it's impossible to have an opinion about it - so, IMHO - it's silly to discredit the comic before even a single page has been read. Now if someone comes onto this forum and says "I read it, it sucks" then I might take that into consideration...