David Goyer is a writer/director whose productions can go both ways. I’ve often suspected he’s a great collaborator, but not exactly a great stand-alone director.

Here’s the rundown of his resume:

The Good: Dark City (w/Alex Proyas), Blade (directed by Stephen Norrington), Blade II (directed by Guillermo Del Toro), Batman Begins (w/Christoper Nolan), Blade: The Series (w/Geoff Johns).

The Bad: Blade Trinity, Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD, Kickboxer 2, Demonic Toys, Dollman vs. Demonic Toys.

The Ugly: The Puppet Masters, The Crow: City of Angels, Ghost Rider (executive producer).

Goyer has revealed some new facts to Wizard Magazine on more details of both his upcoming Magneto movie as well as the Green Arrow-in-Prison flick, Supermax.

First off, his spin-off will apparently deal with the origins of the X-Men. Though Professor Xavier was always part of the story, this adds a whole new dimension to the story, as intial reports put the story as mainly Magneto’s post-World War II experience. I’m curious if we’ll see early X-Men like Cyclops, Jean Grey and Beast - who were already confirmed to be long-time allies of the Professor - at a young age in the picture. According to Goyer, the picture is “halfway crewed up”, and scouting locations in Europe and Argentina.

The other project is Super Max - one which has surprised a lot of comic book fans. This one is an original story - not based on a pre-existing comic book - but one that uses quite a few comic book characters, including a framed Green Arrow imprisoned in maxium security with the very villains he put there.

Among them is Icicle, a character Goyer himself wrote about in the JSA, who often straddles the line between occassional hero and long-time villain. Beyond that, no other characters are named, though Goyer says all the villains will be obscure ones.

“What we did was present to DC a list of people we wanted, and then they went through it on a case-by-case basis and told us whether we could have them or not.” said David Goyer.

Negotiating with DC Comics really excites me. This means the list of possibilities is - at least now - endless. Like Justice League Unlimited, this is going to be one for the comic book geeks who never thought they’d see these characters on the big screen.

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