Monthly Archive: November 2007

A Tribute to Bill Mantlo on December 6

  • News
  • November 6, 2007

rom-annual-2-100-2046026Floating World Comics will host a benefit show for comics writer Bill Mantlo, who suffered severe head trauma when he was struck by a car while rollerblading in 1992. He currently resides in a brain injury rehabilitation nursing home.

Jason Leivian, the owner of Floating World, has asked "hundreds of artists" to donate an illustration of Rom the Spaceknight, a minor Marvel character, toy figure and cult icon that most recently appeared in an episode of South Park. All proceeds from the December 6 show will be delivered to Bill’s brother and caregiver, Mike Mantlo.

Aquaman Co-Creator Paul Norris, dead at 93

  • News
  • November 6, 2007

Artist Paul Norris died yesterday at the age of 93.

Along with writer/editor Mort Weisinger, Norris created Aquaman, one of comics’ most enduring superheroes and one of only five to be continuously published since earliest days of the medium. A versitile and gifted artist, Norris also drew such major characters as Tarzan, Flash Gordon, Sandman, Secret Agent X-9, Magnus, Robot Fighter, Jungle Jim and – most notably – Brick Bradford, an assignment he maintained for 35 years. He continued to draw and make convention appearances until recently.

"I decided to color Aquaman green and orange, and the editors really liked that," Norris once said. "He’s worn green and orange almost the whole time he’s been around, and I still get royalties for every time they use those colors with him!"

Norris was one of the very last of the major golden age of comics creators.

Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • November 6, 2007

Before we get to this week’s official topic, a continuation of our discussion of how superheroes have been evolving, I’d like to remind you all that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. I’m sure all you fans of the late 19th century biologist Ernst Haeckel – and I know you’re legion – remember that this means that the development of an organism exactly mirrors the evolutionary development of the species.

Okay, now that that’s settled…consider any given story genre the organism and storytelling as a whole the species. The first stories, maybe told around campfires, were not long on characterization. According to some anthropologists, they were basically religious, an effort to give an identity to the forces that shaped people’s lives, the forces they were already acknowledging, maybe, with rituals. Not much characterization in these yarns. They were more about what happened – some deity decides to create the world – than the nuances of the protagonists’ personalities. As storytelling evolved, from an element of religion to entertainment, the characters began to have personalities, sort of, until by the time Homer smote ‘is bloomin’ lyre the good guys and bad guys were acting for reasons peculiar to who they were. And by the time of Greek drama, which, again, was part of religious festivals, they were pretty individualized.

Shoot forward about 2,500 years…Along came comic book superheroes (as opposed to all the other kinds of superdoers, who are a bit outside our boundaries, though I’m sure they’re very nice) and…well, they weren’t quite as uncharacterized as those campfire deities. But we do find ontogeny-recapitulating phylogeny, sort of. Clark Kent was, after all, “mild mannered” and Lois Lane was ambitious, but the stories were plot driven – the stuff was more about what the heroes did rather than why they did it. (Batman comes close to being an exception; a few issues into his initial run in Detective Comics, writer Bill Finger actually motivated him. But unless there are a lot of stories I haven’t read, the emphasis on what makes Bruce Wayne tick came later.)

(more…)

Gordon Lee trial ends in mistrial

  • Uncategorized
  • November 5, 2007

Straight from the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund:

The case against Gordon Lee took another in an ongoing series of bizarre turns this afternoon when statements made by State prosecutor John Tully during opening arguments led to a mistrial.

Lee and his legal team, paid for by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, appeared in court this morning for jury selection and returned in the afternoon to begin the actual trial. Before the jury was brought in to begin the trial, lead counsel Alan Begner argued an oral motion in limine asking the judge to instruct prosecutors that they could not admit statements from their witnesses alluding to Lee’s character and previous legal actions Lee has been party to. Prosecutors assured the court that they had instructed their witnesses not to address Lee’s previous conviction for selling adult comics to an adult. Then during opening statements in front of the jury, prosecutor Tully said witnesses will testify that Gordon was defensive and that Gordon had told police, “I’ve been through this before,” a clear reversal of his earlier statement to the judge that prosecutors would not be entering such statements into the record.

When Tully made his statement, defense counsel stared at each other in disbelief before Begner leapt up to demand a mistrial. Judge Larry Salmon put his head in his hands and called a 15 minute recess.

Upon returning to the courtroom, as a result of Tully’s statement, Salmon declared a mistrial, because the statements alluding to the prior incident contaminated the jury beyond repair for a fair trial.

(more…)

Masi Oka supporting One Laptop Per Child

  • News
  • November 5, 2007

Heroes star Masi Oka will be serving as global ambassador for the non-profit One Laptop Per Child initiative headed up by MIT Media Lab’s Nicholas Negroponte, which has set out to design, manufacture and distribute laptops to developing countries for under $100 each.

The Brown University Math/Computer Science grad is a dual threat in the digital space, known not only as an actor but also as a SFX guru with George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic.

The Rock IS Adam

  • News
  • November 5, 2007

Dwayne Johnson, the wrestler/actor formerly and yet forever known as The Rock, has signed on as Black Adam in the upcoming Shazam! movie. Not only does he look the part, he’ll fill out the costume just fine.

Directed by Peter Segal (Get Smart, also co-starring the Rock) andwritten by John August (Corpse Bride), William Goldman (All The President’s Men) and Bryan Goluboff (The Basketball Diaries) and co-produced by Michael Uslan (the Batman movies, Frank Miller’s Will Eisner’s The Spirit), shooting is expected to begin in about a year. Assuming the writers’ strike is resolved by then.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remember, remember the Fifth of November

  • News
  • November 5, 2007

Today in 1605, Sir Thomas Knyvet, a justice of the peace, found Guy Fawkes in a cellar below the English Parliament building, involved in a plot to blow up Parliament itself. The day was later known as "Guy Fawkes Day" and served as an inspiration for Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s graphic novel, V for Vendetta.

Yes, today the folks across the pond remember, remember the fifth of November in honor of a sense of independence and a shaking of fists at British authority. While we reserve fireworks for summery July 4th, today is their excuse to blow things up and set things on fire. Really, every country should follow some such tradition of blowing things up in good spirits, but in light of recent world politics, let’s not go there. 

Or if we do, let’s wear an awesome mask while we’re at it.

Neil Gaiman, an ex-pat Brit, held an annual Guy Fawkes party at his home for many years. John M. Ford, Neil’s favorite writer and good friend, once decided to write directions to that party, with great wit and style. (more…)

The evolution of outrage, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • November 5, 2007

Running Press Book Publishers released a 1,200 page, 15 pound tome called The Completely MAD Don Martin, reprinting all the work Don Martin did for Mad Magazine, back when in the days Mad was a force to be reckoned with.

That means it upset our parents.

That function must necessarily pass from one venue to another. Mad pretty much owned that turf from its inception in 1954 until the mid-60s. It passed on to its own children: the underground cartoonists. They, in turn, begat Matt Groening. Remember when The Simpsons was going to bring down civilization as we knew it – you know, 18 seasons ago? Then Mike Judge and Beavis and Butthead were going to burn your house down. South Park was too obscene for late-night cable teevee. As Kurt Vonnegut (another candidate for this list) famously said: So it goes.

I first encountered Don Martin when I was eight years old: my sister had discovered Mad and I had discovered my sister’s comics stash. Whereas his artistic style was in the spirit of the time, sort of Virgil Partch crossed with Basil Wolverton, his intrinsic bizarreness leapt off the page and attached itself to my obdula oblongata. It shaped my worldview… which probably explains a lot.

The feature was called “The Paper-Pickers” and it was about two sanitation workers picking up scrap in the park. One is a virtuoso of his craft who can spear paper with aplomb. The other is jealous. Why, I don’t know. The virtuoso is doing all the work; the other guy is just taking a walk on a nice summer day. But the competitive spirit prevails, and the also-ran flips out, spears the virtuoso to death and stuffs him in his refuse bag with a smile of evil satisfaction that would frighten Hannibal Lecter after a nice meal. (more…)

An extra hour to read

  • News
  • November 4, 2007

Move those clocks back and use the exta time to settle in with ComicMix columns, why don’tcha!  Here’s what we’ve brought you this past week:

Now that’s an hour well spent!

Spider-Rat, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • November 4, 2007

Last week I discussed how great, illuminating, extras can turn a flawed film into a DVD must-have. This week, the worm has turned. I now aim to show that all the extras in the world can’t make a misguided movie a keeper.

Spider-Man 3 was a mess. It was especially disappointing because director Sam Raimi showed such a sure helming hand on Spideys one and two. But, perhaps because he thought number three would be his last, he apparently decided to do everything else he ever wanted to do in one go. Whatever the cause, there were too many plots, villains, love interests, moods, approaches, and concepts.

It also suffered from a severe case of co-starilitis – the same affliction which struck Superman Returns’ Lois Lane and Rise of the Silver Surfer’s Sue Storm – in that the heroine’s desire for communication and closure trump any concern for the good of the many, be it city, world, or movie audience. The result is that scenes of relative insignificance go on for what seem like forever, while important junctures are dismissed within seconds (the teaming of Sandman and Venom) or just ignored (the new Goblin’s blackmail of Mary Jane).

What also happens in a film as overstuffed, and therefore unavoidably unfocused, as this one is that the filmmakers develop tunnelvision – concentrating on the “cool” parts (like the multi-million dollar cgi Sandman intro) and ignoring what obviously doesn’t work or come together. Thus we have Spider-Man 3: Two Disc Special Edition, which has reams and reams of extras, signifying essentially nothing.

Normally such stuff as featurettes, documentaries, and audio commentaries are completed during post-production – that is, in the time between the shooting wraps and the finished film premieres — so no talking head yet knows how the film actually fared in the big bad world. So it can be both entertaining and edifying to hear just how misguided the producers, actors, and director were (the techs are mostly invulnerable to these embarrassments, because their work is invariably exceptional and it’s not their fault that the core staff bit off more than they could eschew). (more…)

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