Stan Lee, Jack Kirby speak on ComicMix Podcast #21

April Fool’s weekend, and we offer nothing but the truth from Sushi Based Super Heroes to a Close Encounter From Jean Luc & Q to the Secret Origin Of How Stan Lee’s Secretary Got Me Through Puberty. We’ve got the low down on the new Spider-Man animated series AND the new Santo animated show (our editor-in-chief is a big Santo fan).

All this, Timeline, e-mailbag, and Vanessa Williams on ComicMix Podcast #21 – available by clicking right here:

Transcript

www.mix.com Quiet! You numbskull! I'm broadcasting. Here we go! The weekend is here and always right in the land of pop culture. Hi, I am Mike Raub with another podcast and today we'll wrap up the news for the week. We will dig into a delightful diva that I think you'll find absolutely delicious.

And have a little of the kind of fun that can only be enjoyed before midnight tonight. No April Fool here. All that and more on… March 31st, 2007. ComicMix News! Our buddies at Dynamite Entertainment have announced the first five-issue story arc of the classic Battlestar Galactica series they've been doing. We'll be collected in a trade paperback that will be out sometime in August.

The classic Battlestar trade is going to be in two different editions. One, a regular bookstore edition with a cover by Dale Dorman. And then a comic book store edition that will have cover art by talent Caldwell. Both will have bonus material, complete cover gallery, and a special preview of the new Battlestar Cylon Apocalypse mini-series that will also be out from Dynamite this summer. Well a few days back we talked to you about Nickelodeon and some of the new series they had planned for the summer and the fall.

Now the other kids networks have announced some things they have coming and I think you'll find a few of these interesting. Starting over on the Disney Channel with the new fall series called Wizards of Waverly Place. It's a live-action comedy about a girl and her two brothers that are wizards in training. On the kids WB which is on the CW, don't ask me to explain that. Imagination is an animated series about a teen hero transported back to an ancient mystical land.

There's the Eon Kid, an adventure about a kid with fighting powers. But most interesting coming in February of next year is Spider-Man which takes him back almost ultimate style to being a 16 year old high schooler who has to conceal his identity while surviving a teenager and fighting real world super-villains. Not to be outdone, the Cartoon Network has a series that will come up in August called Re-Animated. It's based on the live-action movie about a seventh grader who after having a brain transplant sees cartoon figures. There's Santo which comes early in 2008, an action series about a Mexican wrestler or a luchador.

And The Secret Saturday is about a family of adventure scientists who saved the world. Over on PBS Kids there's Word Girl, a mild-mannered fifth grader who becomes a superhero called Definition Dynamo. And probably the most interesting of all, and again I just read them, I don't explain them, coming up on CBS Sushi Pack, premiers in September. Superheroes are fashioned out of the animated raw fish that come to life when lightning strikes the cell phone tower interrupting a takeout order. Love to see the action figures on that one.

ComicMix.com Before coming on board with Tokyo Pop, Amy memberson worked for Disney Tunes in Sydney, Australia. She was an assistant animator there and she co-created the now retired webcomic, As If. Meanwhile, her partner Dee Campbell was the writer-creator of the comic series Fans, Rip and Terry, Search Engine Funnies and Penny and Aggie. She's also edited several websites, ran several blogs, podcasts, hadn't done anything else he thought he could do.

Meanwhile, when T and Amy got together, they were runner-ups in the fifth volume of Tokyo Pop's Rising Stars of Manga Collection. That story, entitled Pop Star, is the basis for Devalicious. Now, just what is Devalicious? Let Amy explain it to you. Devalicious is basically the story of Tina Young, who is basically America's top music sweetheart. You open Teen Vogue, you open People magazine, you'll find Tina in there somewhere.

And it's basically her lives and times and her struggles to get to the top of the charts using some slightly unorthodox methods sometimes. But she loves music and she loves her fans and she's a very, very funny young girl. So how many volumes of Devalicious will there be? We're set for three volumes at the moment, but that could grow to more and with possible other spin-offs later on and stuff like that. We're just moving on with the initial volumes at the moment.

So what's next for Tina Young? Movies? Television? Total Request Live? Oh, who knows? Who knows? Yeah. Thanks, Amy. Don't forget to check out Devalicious. Volume 1 is out right now from Tokyo Papa. There are two more coming down the pipe. ComicMix.com. ComicMix. Timeline. March 31st. 1992. In comics, this was the time DC had those great impact books and this week we got Jaguar number seven.

Aquaman was in his second series of the early 90s, issue number four came out this week. Remember those really bad British books that Marvel did for a while? Well, this week, Depp's head number one was in our bag waiting for us. And that wasn't scary enough. There was a fair to middle an issue of Fantastic Four. We got number 362 this week. In news, Jamaican sought a new president. Pope John Paul II said the church should be more welcoming to Catholics who were divorced or remarried. And hijackers in Moscow released a busload of hostages which included two policemen unharmed.

In movies, it went from your basic chick flick, fried green tomatoes, to a family chick flick, my girl, to scaring chick flick, basic instinct, and the one that just had a lot of… Swing, swing. Ted Paul. She's a babe. She's magically babelicious. She tested very high on the strokeability scale. On TV tonight, we flip from Perfect Strangers to Golden Girls to Empty Nest and then there was classic Picard. Jean-Luc, it's wonderful to see you again. How about a big hug? Ready, lads? Battle stations? All systems are functioning with the normal specifications.

And on the radio, we went from bad to grunge in the early 90s, but one beauty queen went from the middle of Playboy to a nice acting career with a stop off at the top of the chart this year. It was Vanessa Williams. I'm not sure why I called this week because it is almost April Fool's in a few hours, but I gotta tell you, honestly, this is true, true, true. It's not a joke. Here's the email. It comes from DeGester555 at Yahoo.com and he says, I know in the early days of Marvel they did some really wacky stuff, but I also heard Stan Lee made a record. Is that true? Does this thing exist? Yeah, well, first of all, it is true. You can get it today if you search around on eBay. Last time I checked, it went for about 40 bucks.

But the history of it goes like this. Early at Marvel, they formed this little club called the M M M S. Mary Marvel Marching Society. It was 1965, which you had to do with send in three hard earned quarters, 75 cents and back in the mail, you got a pad, stickers, a button and this small little acetate record. That was the size of a 45, but it actually played it 33 and a third, which probably means nothing to you with the iPod in your hand. It was on this very thin, almost a plastic like material. Now, more important, keep it this time. No one had ever really seen Stan that much outside the New York area and whatever conventions there had been those first couple of years. It wasn't like comics today where people would turn up on Conan or David Letterman. Johnny Carson sure wasn't going to have Jack Kirby on at this time.

So we had no idea who Stan was or what he sounded like except for what we saw in the comics. So imagine our thrill when we dropped the needle on the record for the first time and heard, okay, out there in Marvel and face front. This is Stanley speaking. So anything is liable to happen. You know, as we look back, this M M M S record was obviously staged, but I gotta tell you, they did a great job of getting some of the biggest names there. Well, well, Jolly Jack Kirby, say a few words to the fans. Okay, a few words. By the way, Jack, the readers have been complaining about Sue's hairdo again. What am I supposed to do? Be a hairdresser? Next time I'll draw a bald head.

Keep in mind that being a kid that was on the cusp of puberty at that time, I was particularly thrilled to hear this one. Say hello to the fans, Flo Steinberg. Hello, fans. It's very nice to meet you. As Marvel's corresponding secretary, I feel as though I know most of you from your letters. You know, they even had a little Stanley like humor as staged as it was. Stan DeGears is on the phone. Let's surprise him. Hi, Dick. We have a recorder playing and you're talking to millions of people right now. You some kind of nut or something. I just want to tell you I want to raise.

Dick, don't you understand? People are listening. You're talking to the whole world. I always knew you'd crack some daily. Just my luck. It had to happen when I asked you for some more dough. I gotta tell you, like the early comics, there was something very innocent about that first M M M S record. One that was never really recaptured, even when they did a second one a couple of years later. Thanks very much, Jester. You can write us your questions. Of course, we'd love to hear from you. Easy to reach.

We are at podcast at ComicMix dot com. Oh, what was in that second kit? You had to ask. You belong. You belong. You belong. You belong to the very marble. Our society. Connectness. That was fun. Let's do it again. Hey, kid, you bother me. All right. Before we go, a couple of quick notes. We did not get to our battle star season three review.

Why you ask? That's because our TV movie guy ran off to see some film called Grind House sneak preview tickets. He had something he was crying. I don't know what that was about. We'll find out when he stops back in on the podcast at the first of the week. We'll also talk about the brand new season of Doctor Who season three premieres across the pond this weekend. But we're going to tell you what happened and maybe give a little spoiler info, too.

So bring your earmuffs. All right. Excuse me. Do you mind not farting while I'm saving the world? All that was a big week of comics coming up and anything you want to hear, you know how to get in touch. We're a podcast at ComicMix dot com and we'll talk to you in a couple of days. Bye. Www dot ComicMix dot com. ComicMix.