Spielberg Review

 

Spielberg Review

Writer, Artist, Colorist & Letterer: Amazing Ameziane

Publisher: Titan Comics

Book Description: 192 Pages, Full Color

Paperback Price: $24.99 US

Kindle ebook: $23.74

Release Date: October 13, 2026

 

His father enjoyed repairing TVs. His mother loved to dance. Together, they inspired their son to make movies. Even though they would eventually part, the Spielbergs supported their young son’s interest in filmmaking. Then, young Steven saw a movie that made him wonder if he had what it took to be a director.

 

Instead of giving up his dream, Steven returned to the cinema to watch Lawrence Of Arabia again. As he rewatched the movie, Steven began to understand how David Lean alternated spectacular imagery with the personal and seemingly ordinary. So, when he moved to Hollywood to study filmmaking, Steven took guided studio tours. Then, he snuck onto the set of another director he admired and watched him until he got thrown out.

 

How would Steven Spielberg get his start as a movie director? And how would he go on to make some of Hollywood’s biggest films? Let’s grab some popcorn, leap into Spielberg, and see!

 

Story

When Sid Sheinberg saw Steven's college movie, the Universal TV exec signed the aspiring filmmaker to a 7-year deal. At first, Steven struggled to find his feet. But in his second year at Universal, he became one of the studio’s busiest directors. Steven had to learn how to work with people of all ages. As he impressed actors, crew members, and studio execs with his artistry and finished episodes on time, Steven found a project that propelled him into the movie business.

 

Spielberg shows how things didn’t always go his way. Some movies, like JAWS, could have ended the director’s career. Still, he aimed high and strived to tackle subjects in unexpected ways. When one of his films proved a big success, he used the opportunity to film a passion project. Steven climbed the Hollywood ladder with some ambitious friends, including George Lucas and Martin Scorsese. While he helped them when he could, both directors guided Steven to make some of the most important films of his career.

 

After portraying Steven Spielberg’s youth in the 1960s, Amazing Ameziane devotes additional chapters to the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. Perhaps because some critics hail 2002’s Minority Report as Spielberg’s last great film, the author combines the director’s 21^st-century work into one final chapter. Yet this later period produces some of Steven’s most personal films. All these lead up to 2022’s The Fabelmans, which fictionalizes his journey toward Hollywood success.

 

Art

While Amazing Ameziane shares how Steven Spielberg’s films inspired him, he allows the director to tell his own story. A full-face view of Steven often dominates a page, with dialogue balloons introducing the movie, his struggles, or the people in his life. Friends and collaborators interact with the director. Actors appear in character amid film settings in Ameziane's Spielberg.

 

Interactions with his friends may appear in Black and White. Amazing Ameziane usually adorns films with a limited or full palette. Vibrant colors adorn full-face portraits. Some of his highest-grossing films receive one or two pages. Some popular films are only mentioned in passing, if at all. While JAWS gets 10 pages, two passion projects equal or receive more. Schindler’s List, the film in which Steven confronts his heritage, receives 16. Pixel art characters enliven Steven's stories about making his movies. They star in their own version of a game that once dominated arcades. Still, the shark that rarely worked in the ocean lurks beneath the story, before unexpectedly arising to attack pages.

 

While Steven speaks to the reader through dialogue balloons, narrative boxes also showcase off-camera dialogue. He also shares his thoughts and provides commentary between panels and on the sides, bottoms, or tops of pages. As the director ages, his appearance diverges from the image that readily sticks in our minds. But then, the director often challenges viewers' assertions about his career in Spielberg. Thanks to Titan Comics for providing a physical review copy.

 

Final Thoughts

As Steven Spielberg sought to make his mark in Hollywood, he invested in his heritage. Yet while living his childhood dreams, his parents’ divorce haunted him. So as he made movies about aliens, dinosaurs, or archeologist adventurers, Steven Spielberg also made movies about the struggles that bind families together and tear them apart. He may have adopted Martin Scorsese's suggestion as his career formula. Yet as Spielberg nears the end, Quentin Tarantino points to another reason for the director's extraordinary success.

 

Rating 9.8/10

 

For a look inside see Spielberg SC Preview. 

Spielberg SC Preview

 

I first caught the Steven Spielberg train with Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The story swept me into a world of mystery and wonder. Star Trek "The Trouble with Tribbles" author David Gerrold likened Roy Neary's quest to discover the truth about his UFO sighting to a Biblical prophet meeting an angel in Starlog Magazine. That was how I felt, when I discovered this amazing movie.

Now, Amazing Ameziane is shining the spotlight on Steven Spielberg's life and work. How will it enhance your understanding of your favorite Spielberg movie? And will it give you a greater appreciation for his career?

Here's all the info from Titan Comics:

 

SPIELBERG

Author/Artist: Amazing Ameziane

Publisher: Titan Comics

SC, 192 pp, FC, $24.99

ISBN: 9781806184071

On sale: September 15, 2026

 

From Amazing Ameziane, the creator of Quentin by Tarantino and Don Coppola, comes the next insightful book in his saga of Cine graphic novels.

 

Based on the lives and films of acclaimed cinema icons, this book spotlights the inimitable, multi-award-winning Steven Spielberg, director of Jaws, E.T., Back to the Future and countless other masterpieces.

 

With over a dozen Academy Awards (among many others), Steven Spielberg is considered the most acclaimed director in modern cinema history. From classic escapist thrillers like Jaws and Jurassic Park, magical family movies like E.T., to thoughtful historical dramas like Schindler’s List, Spielberg has something to offer everyone.

 

In this retrospective graphic novel, Ameziane takes a dive into the mind of the auteur himself, imagining exactly how the cinema icon would tell his story, through his humble beginnings and rise to fame, as well as the struggles and crucial moments of his career. You might know his works, but now you can get to know the man behind the camera.

 

Created and illustrated by Amazing Ameziane, Spielberg is the fifth instalment in the author’s Cine series, illustrating the behind-the-scenes stories of some of Hollywood’s biggest hitters. 

 

 

Now, let's take a look inside:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

Pre-order it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, and Forbidden Planet for the UK & Europe.

 

 

Thanks to Titan Comics for sharing this preview with us. 

 

David Gerrold’s Protégé

What's bugging Mr. Spock?
(Not to mention Katalya!)

The “Star Trek” novel Vulcan!, written by Kathleen Sky, includes an introduction by David Gerrold.  He wrote this, he says, not at the invitation of the author or the publisher, but because he insisted on it.  In eight pages, he describes his friendship with Kathleen Sky, and how he has watched her grow and mature as a writer.  He describes the pride he felt when she wrote a story good enough for his anthology Generation, even though “she claims she was a student of the David Gerrold Bludgeon and Blast school of science fiction criticism,” in which he threw each manuscript into the air, and jumped up and down while yelling at her how terrible each story was. 

In my teen years, I found David Gerrold a consistent source of entertainment and inspiration.  Each month, I paged through “Starlog” magazine, seeking out his columns.  I remember how he compared Roy Neary’s experience with UFOs in Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” to that of a believer who claims to have been visited by an angel.  Reading his columns every month made me want to read his books, and I still regard two of his novels, When HARLEY was One and The Man Who Folded Himself, as all-time favorites.  Then, of course, there was his book The Trouble With Tribbles, in which he offered a behind-the-scenes view of how the “Star Trek” TV show took his story from the initial pitch stage through to a filmed episode. 

In Kathleen Sky’s novel, the Enterprise is sent to investigate the planet Arachnae.  Mr. Spock believes the inhabitants to be sentient, but the scientist sent to study them, Dr. Katalya Tremain, contends they are no smarter than insects.  The creatures resemble the bugs in “Starship Troopers,” the movie version of Robert Heinlein’s novel portrayed so vividly (and viciously) by director Paul Verhoeven.  Could the Arachaens be capable of rational thought, and worthy of joining the Federation?  This is not the only source of contention between the two officers who will lead the expedition.  Dr. Katalya Tremain, a scientist Spock has previously respected for her logic, loathes not just him, but the entire Vulcan race.

Dr. Leonard McCoy finds himself defending Mr. Spock against her attacks, when he is usually the one who derides Spock for his cold, unemotional nature.  As deplorable as he sees her racism, Dr. McCoy cannot help his growing attraction for her.  Thus he studies her as he woos her, yearning to rid her, if he can, of what he sees as an inexplicable psychological disorder.  He ends up worrying over both of them when an Arachnaen attack kills all expedition members but Katalya and Spock, and circumstances prevent the Enterprise from beaming the two back to safety.  So it is Mr. Spock, the man she hates, who must unravel the twisted threads of Katalya’s past, while the two investigate (and are attacked by) these bugs that may or may not be sentient, but are definitely lethal.

I found reading the novel again every bit as satisfying as I remembered it.  Her engrossing story left me wondering if my own efforts might be improved by “the David Gerrold Bludgeon and Blast method.”  Sadly, I may never get to know him, or receive the benefit of his opinion concerning one of the novels I hope to publish.  Nevertheless, his books, stories, and columns fed my own dreams of becoming a storyteller.  Unlike Kathleen Sky, I may not have the honor of being called his protégé, let alone become his friend, but I can envy her for the relationship she shared with the great David Gerrold.

Remembering my early influences,

Dragon Dave

Related Dragon Cache entries

Star Trek: The Cage 

Robert E. Vardeman: Keeping Us on Course

Men in Black: Inspiring a Franchise

Imagine you’re driving along the highway with your friend, when he gives you an idea for a comic book series that will later become a multi-million dollar film franchise.  Well, that’s not exactly how it happened, but it was the start.  

Lowell Cunningham was driving through Tennessee with his friend.  When a large, black car passed, his friend quipped: that car could belong to the Men in Black.  “The Men in Black?” he asked.  “What are they?”

His friend went on to tell him stories about the Men in Black, people who investigate strange, “unearthly” occurrences.  They show up after a UFO sighting or a paranormal event, and after questioning the witnesses, make sure that “the truth” of what occurred never reaches the outside world.  As agent K would later tell his would-be protégé J in the first film, “A person is smart, but people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals.  Fifteen hundred years ago, mankind saw Earth as the center of the universe.  Five hundred years ago, the human race believed that the Earth was flat.  Five minutes ago, you believed that we are alone on this planet.  Imagine, if you join us, what you might know tomorrow.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Back in the 1980s, Lowell Cunningham was an unpublished writer.  He couldn’t know that movies based upon his work would be made, or that they would prove extremely popular.  But he was inspired by his friend’s tales, and thought they might make a nice weekly TV show.  The only problem?  How could he, a man in Knoxville, Tennessee without a single writing credit, get the Hollywood studios to look at his work?  So he asked himself what might be more achievable, and eventually hit upon the idea of a comic book series.  He had never penned a comic book either, but he believed he could.  

Lowell Cunningham: Comic Book Hero

He not only believed in his capabilities and in his ideas: he did something about them.  He submitted proposals to all the comic book companies.  Although they aroused varying levels of interest, all were eventually rejected.  Then he happened to talk with someone who had worked for Aircel Comics out in California, and his friend suggested, “If they’ll print my work, why not yours?”  So he sent them his proposal, and found that they not only liked his idea, but were willing to commission him to write a three-issue miniseries.  His comics proved so successful that he was asked to write another, and the following year Aircel, now Malibu Comics, published another three issues.  

As we all know, change can be both good and bad.  The bad news was that Malibu Comics made a business decision to concentrate their efforts more on the superhero market.  Lowell’s series, while popular, simply didn’t fit in with the company’s new direction.  Still, they liked him, and hired him to write for several more of their comics, including a series related to the “Alien Nation” franchise and some superhero work.  But his brainchild, “The Men in Black,” was seemingly forgotten.  Until, that is, Malibu’s publisher, Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, looked through what he had published and created several proposals of his own.  He sent them out to the Hollywood studios, and in 1992, Columbia Pictures purchased an option to make a Men in Black movie.

As the movie took shape, great names like Tommy Lee Jones, Wil Smith, Barry Sonnenfeld, and Steven Spielberg signed on to the project.  (In the case of Tommy Lee Jones, he committed to playing Agent K before any of the above, or even a script existed: he read the comics, and fell in love with the series).  Often star power isn’t enough, and the most promising projects falter before production can begin.  In this case, “Men in Black” was not only made, but proved so successful that it spawned a TV series and a sequel.  A third movie will arrive in theaters later this year.  And all because Lowell Cunningham believed in his idea, and persisted in submitting his proposals until someone finally agreed to publish his work.

Lowell Cunningham makes a little money in comparison to the above-mentioned Hollywood personalities.  He still lives in Tennessee.  He’s still a relatively unknown artist. “The Men in Black” miniseries never became a long-running, monthly comic.  But his brainchild has been used and shaped by others to bring pleasure to millions.  He has created something greater than himself.  His agents J and K have become cultural icons.  The “Men in Black” movies will surely influence future generations.  

Stories such as his inspire me to carry on with my own great work of writing fiction.  Whatever your interests, may his example lend you strength to keep pursuing your goals.

Related Dragon Cache entries

True Vision  

When All Hope Seems Lost

Audrey, Richard, and the Unknown Constable

Ling’s Faith and Persistence