Monthly Archive: October 2007

The Perils and Pleasures of Moviola, by Michael H. Price

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  • October 21, 2007

I’ve been sorting through the newspaper-cartoon backlog lately, beefing up the digital-image archive while determining whether anything from a busy stretch at the drawing board during the 1990s might bear resurrecting for fresh publication. Much of this material involves a Hollywood-lampoon strip called Moviola, which originated as a weekly feature for the Star-Telegram of Fort Worth, Texas, during its last years as a higher-minded publication.

The first movie parody I ever encountered – and thus, a building-block of my long-stretch involvement in cartooning and film scholarship – came from my Uncle Grady L. Wilson, a theatre-chain manager. Grady could concoct the damnedest jolly nonsense from the flimsiest of material, and keep a straight face in the bargain. He announced to me one day in 1954 that he had booked a picture called "The Preacher from the Black Lagoon."

Now, I was six years old at the time and as impressionable as Silly Putty, and so I found it necessary to witness the arrival of Jack Arnold’s Creature from the Black Lagoon on the big screen before it dawned on me that my uncle had been just woofing.

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Happy anniversary, Return of the King!

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  • October 21, 2007

This day in 1955 brought us the publication of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Return of the King, the last part of The Lord of the Rings series. Had Tolkien been around for recent transformations, or more accurately, annihilations of books into film, he might have perished merely at the thought of his masterpieces being turned into movies. Rest easy, Mr. Tolkien, as director Peter Jackson was a thankful exception to usual butchery, for the large part maintaining the stories’ integrity in film form. Here’s hoping he can resolve that bitter battle with New Line surrounding the compensation on his first three films so that he can get to direct The Hobbit.

Dick Ayers On … Stan Lee!

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  • October 20, 2007

Our Weekend Big ComicMix Broadcast begins our look at the career of Dick Ayers. From the days of Jimmy Durante to the creation of Ghost Rider and the trek toward the Marvel Age Of Comics and his decades-old friendship with Stan Lee.  Plus there’s news updates on:

• A chance to win dinner (for four) with comics legend John Romita Sr.

• Chaotic jumps from Saturday morning TV to the gaming table

• Fox’s Terminator series gets a premiere date

And much more, including a look back at a year when Julia Roberts riled the box office and an overly aggressive British band made political waves.

The spooky guy on the horse says  Press The Button!

Mothership Connection, by Martha Thomases

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  • October 20, 2007

There’s been a lot of conversation lately in the girls’ section of the comics blogosphere about the way women’s lives are depicted in superhero comics. Even so-called strong, independent female characters are little more than an excuse to show tits’n’ass. Some site evidence that female characters are used as plot points, citing the “women in refrigerators” syndrome. More recently, discussions have centered on the premise that married characters are boring.

A lot of this is a reflection of the larger pop culture, which is at least as male-dominated as comics. The people who can greenlight movies, or put a television show on a network, are most likely Penile-Americans. Book publishing tends to be more diverse because there are more women in positions of authority, and (this is related) book publishing tends to pay less than other mass media.

Most of it, however, is lazy pandering to the perceived target audience. It’s assumed that boys find the single life more glamorous and more exciting than marriage. Up to a point, I agree. The thrill of the chase is, well, a thrill. That said, even the new gets old after a while. Dashiell Hammett used Nick and Nora Charles to show that marriage can be sexy and fun. Why can’t comics? (more…)

Happy 61st birthday, Philip Pullman!

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  • October 19, 2007

Today is Philip Pullman’s birthday, who, sad to say, does not yet share the deserved household name status of his colleague, J.K. Rowling. Mr. Pullman was born in 1946 and penned the brilliant and award-winning series, His Dark Materials. The first of the series, The Golden Compass (or Northern Lights if you read it in the U.K.), starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, is being released as a movie this December 7th. Here’s the latest trailer:

Here’s hoping the film does better than the last Kidman/Craig outing, The Invasion… 

Kiwi kast as Dr. McCoy

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  • October 19, 2007

The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed the last of the major castings for J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek prequel, scheduled to begin filming next month.

The role of James Tiberius Kirk will be played by Chris Pine (left), and the plum part of Leonard McCoy goes to New Zealand actor Chris Urban (right), known to genre film fans as Eomer in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Other cast members include John Cho as Sulu, Simon Pegg as Scotty, Zoe Saldana as Uhura, Anton Yelchin as Chekov, and of course Zachary Quinto from Heroes as Mr. Spock.  Eric Bana will also appear as the movie’s antagonist, Nero.

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Graphic Novel Review: Del Rey Manga Round-Up, Part One

shugo1-8375909Let me be honest: I don’t know all that much about manga. I’ve read a few series (going back to Area 88 and Kamui, twenty years ago during the first attempt to bring manga to the US), but I’ve never really gone really deeply into the field. Well, I’m hoping to remedy that now. I’ve got a big pile of first volumes of various manga series, and I’ll be doing weekly reviews of about four of them at a time. (I’m aiming for Fridays; let’s see if I can hold to that schedule.)

We’ll start off with some books from Del Rey (all originally published by Kodasha in Japan), mostly aimed at young teenagers. (At least, all but one of these is marked “Teen: 13+,” but, from the content, I suspect the real Japanese readership, and possibly the American readership as well, is tweens to young teens.) This week’s batch also are primarily aimed at girls — I think.

First up is Shugo Chara!, which translates roughly to “Guardian Characters.” It’s by two women who work under the name Peach-Pit, and it’s about a fourth grader who discovers three eggs in her bed one morning.

Okay, I have to back up already. Amu, our heroine, is explicitly in fourth grade — we’re told that several times — though the structure of the school, and the maturity of the characters, would seem to put them more naturally in middle school. (Trust me; I’m the father of a fourth grader.) And, from an American perspective, it’s really bizarre that a story about fourth graders would be marketed to teens – or even tweens, as I suspect is actually the case here. In the US, kids generally only want to read about other kids their own age (maybe) or, preferably, a few years older. Fourth and fifth graders read stories about middle schoolers, middle schoolers read Sweet Valley High and the like, and high school students either stop reading for pleasure entirely or read stories about people in their twenties. Maybe, like so much else, that’s different in Japan – there is the well-known love of the small and cute there

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