Platinum Studios has hired Col. John B. Alexander, an expert on high tech and unconventional weapons who has advised novelists Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton, to provide technical advice and potential scenarios for a variety of projects.  The four-year deal will allow Platinum to produce a series of original comic books and graphic novels incorporating Col. Alexander's concepts.  In addition to comics, Platinum plans to adapt these scenarios for film, television and interactive gaming.  Platinum has already signed an agreement with video game developers Blue Shift and Handheld Games to exploit Col. Alexander's ideas in a series of video games.  According to Variety, Platinum has begun working on comic books based on a number of scenarios outlined by Col. Alexander, some of which could be published by the end of the year.

After a 32-year career in the Army, Col. Alexander spent time at the super secret Los Alamos National Laboratory, advised the Army's Special Forces Command as well as the super secret National Intelligence Council.  Platinum Studios Chairman Scott Mitchell Rosenberg described a couple of the potential scenarios suggested by Col. Alexander including the use of  'electromagnetic pulse weapons that could cripple a country by wiping out all its electronics and controlling insects with pheromones that stimulate exponential reproduction that could make cities uninhabitable.' 

While most contemporary comic book-based movies (including the Men in Black films, which Rosenberg produced from Lowell Cunningham's comic book series) combine elements of fantasy and science fiction, Rosenberg, as evidenced by his hiring of Col. Alexander, is clearly thinking ahead to a time when the pendulum shifts and audiences may desire movies and television series that are more firmly grounded in reality.