Monthly Archive: December 2007

Court subpeonas Disney and Warner Brothers characters

Court subpeonas Disney and Warner Brothers characters

  • News
  • December 5, 2007

Sufferin’ succotash. From the AP:

ROME — Tweety may get a chance to take the witness stand and sing like a canary.

 An Italian court ordered the animated bird, along with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and his girlfriend Daisy, to testify in a counterfeiting case.

In what lawyers believe was a clerical error worthy of a Looney Tunes cartoon, a court in Naples sent a summons to the characters ordering them to appear Friday in a trial in the southern Italian city, officials said.

The court summons cites Titti, Paperino, Paperina, Topolino — the Italian names for the characters — as damaged parties in the criminal trial of a Chinese man accused of counterfeiting products of Disney and Warner Bros.

 

Heroes – Volume Two, a bitchy review by Mike Gold

Heroes – Volume Two, a bitchy review by Mike Gold

  • News
  • December 4, 2007

Warning! Spoiler Alert! If you’ve got the past half-dozen episodes of Heroes TiVoed, you just might want to skip this review. On the other hand, if you’ve got the past half-dozen episodes of Heroes TiVoed, I just might be able to add six hours to your life.

 

Once upon a time, some clever Hollywood people hired some talented comics people to help create a teevee show about a bunch of human with abilities far beyond those of mankind. It was a pretty good show – maybe it could have benefited from the loss of any three characters – and it was successful. The Peacock gods smiled upon the program, and thus it was renewed.

And it turned into a meandering piece of crap.

“Heroes – Volume Two” consisted of the first, and because of the writer’s strike maybe only, 11 episodes of its second season. Having a story arc that was a half season long was a good idea. It was their only good idea.

They introduced a number of new characters, and most of them seemed to have been killed off. They played the “good guy is really the bad guy is really the good guy” bit like Ginger Baker played the drums on “Toad.” By the tenth episode, you couldn’t tell who was being naughty and who was being nice – except for Sylar, the show’s only consistent villain. And the actor, Zachary Quinto, went straight from Heroes to Spock The Next Generation, which makes him a de facto good guy for ever and ever.

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Comics against pedophile priests

Comics against pedophile priests

  • News
  • December 4, 2007

Sometimes, a picture really is worth a thousand words.

From Newsweek:

After years of humiliating sexual-abuse scandals, Roman Catholic Church officials are trying harder than ever to convince parishioners that they’re doing everything they can to prevent such tragedies from happening again. That means public education, training programs and—in the New York Archdiocese—a surprisingly direct, abuse-themed coloring book for kids that’s being sent to parishioners across the area. At first glance, "Being Friends, Being Safe, Being Catholic" is what you’d expect from a Christian handout: lessons in loving thy neighbor and knowing we’re all special in God’s eyes, plus a fun word search with names of people whom kids can trust (parents, counselors, teachers). Many of the book’s cartoon-sketch drawings, which were created by a church volunteer, are light in tone and narrated by an angel looming overhead. But on one page, the angel warns of an online predator—with chest hair exposed—who attempts to chat with a child; on another (shown above), the angel implies that children should make sure they’re never alone in a room with a priest.

Uh… okay. Me, I’m waiting for the inevitable Jack Chick anti-Catholic screed.

Happy Hannukah, everyone. (Hat tip: Boing Boing.)

Demons Speak Directly To You!

Demons Speak Directly To You!

The choices are many and the product is great this week on the comics and DVD shelves, from clever trade paperback collections to classy hard covers and some nifty DVDs – it’s beginning to sound a lot like Christmas – and ComicMix Radio previews it all, just in time for your holiday hinting!

Plus:

• Now that you’ve seen Demons Of Sherwood – FREE right here on ComicMix – get the inside story from creators Bo Hampton and Robert Tinnell on where it came from and where it’s going!

• Batman gets another sales boost from Ras Al Ghul

• Can you guess what the Top Ten Most Searched-For TV shows are on the web? Would you believe Heroes isn’t one of them?

Do What The Lady says – Press The Button!

I for one welcome our new robot overlords

I for one welcome our new robot overlords

  • News
  • December 4, 2007

Comics and TV scribe John Rogers and Tyrone are having lunch again.

John: … No.

Tyrone: Listen, all I’m asking is that you give the idea a decent —

John: Robot overlords. You are "pro-robot overlords".

Tyrone: They bring world peace, universal health care —

John: At the cost of our freedoms!

Tyrone: MY POINT EXACTLY. We’re already giving up our freedoms — our right to privacy, gone. Warrantless arrest, gone. Right to have your vote counted is super-gone depending on the state you live in, right to stand trial, gone — we have torture. We already have all the downsides of a supposed robotic takeover, but we’re being cheated of the upside! I say, if this is the world we’re gonna live in anyway, at least let the robot overlords have their shot. World peace, technological utopia — and no crime! The robot overlords’ crime control is swift and merciless.

John: But it’s completely … uncaring All people will be punished equally regardless of circumstance!

Tyrone: I’m sorry, did you forget I was black?

Read, as the kids say, the whole thing.

Note: this was submitted when this first came out but had originally been cut by UberEditor Gold because he didn’t quite see a timely link to anything, nothing newsy. To which I reply: It’s Christmas! Everything goes better with Christmas music! Look at this piece from Jonathon Coulton and see if you don’t agree.

Nudity and the Editorial Process, by Dennis O’Neil

Nudity and the Editorial Process, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • December 4, 2007

In my dotage, I’m coming to believe that a little adolescent rebellion is usually a good thing, and if the rebellion creeps a year or two into full, card-carrying adulthood, that’s okay. Much after the fact, I learned of some things my kid did in his Greenwich Village youth: I’m not sorry he did them and I’m glad I didn’t know of them until much later.

(As for myself…let me note that the principal of my high school told my mother after graduation that they never, ever wanted to see me again. I must have done something…)

Father does not always know best and either does Mother. Like generals, they’re fighting old wars and kids are caught in new wars, which means the kids have to find their own way, which is a process of experimentation, which means that Junior and Pops can’t and shouldn’t march in lock step,

We will now retire the military metaphors and explain what any of this has to do with our current topic, the evolution of superheroes.

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Rob Liefeld’s 40 worst drawings? You missed a few…

Rob Liefeld’s 40 worst drawings? You missed a few…

  • News
  • December 3, 2007

This list is making the rounds, The 40 Worst Rob Liefeld Drawings, highlighting his particular style of anatomy, perspective, teeth-gritting and shoulder pads. If you can get through to the site, it’s worth a view. However, the compilers missed an entire category of sins. Look below:

The first image is from New Mutants #93, cover date September, 1990, reprinted here. I would normally say that it’s by Rob Liefeld except when you look at the second image, from Fantastic Four #247, by John Byrne back in October 1982, reprinted here— well, it’s not quite Rob’s art, is it now?

If you have other examples of other places where Rob Liefeld has been less than a scrupulous stickler for credit, list it in the comments below and we’ll find the art and post it.

ComicMix: the widget!

  • News
  • December 3, 2007

A number of people have come here from Peter David’s beloved weblog — specifically that neat bar on the right sidebar that he has that lists our headlines. And a number of folks have said, "Hey! I have a weblog! Can I get that fancy feed of yours on my weblog?"

Absolutely. Just grab it from here:

You can go for partial articles or headlines only, and can even tweak the size and color of it to fit in with your own design. Enjoy — and thanks for putting us on your site!

Note: for those of you who just want a simple RSS feed, you can still get that at http://www.comicmix.com//rss/.

Demons of Sherwood debuts today

Demons of Sherwood debuts today

  • News
  • December 3, 2007

Today, ComicMix takes you back to Sherwood Forest in Demons of Sherwood.  It’s twelve years after the end of the Robin Hood story you know, when Robin restores Richard to the throne and regains his castle. 

Happily ever after? Not really…

Robin is a drunk.  He hasn’t seen Marian since the end of their adventures with his merry men.  He hasn’t seen much of them, either.  And now comes word that Marian is in trouble, jailed as a witch by the Inquisitor from Rome…

Written by Robert Tinnell (co writer of EZ Street, and writer and director of the upcoming film Feast of the Seven Fishes, based on his comic), Demons is co-written and painted by the legendary Bo Hampton. Bo knows comics.  He has worked in comics and related media since 1978 as an artist and occasionally as a writer. He painted Viking Glory for DCComics and Legend of Sleepy Hollow for Image.  Last year he co-plotted with writer Tinnell and drew Sight Unseen, a graphic novel for Image. Bo, his wife Teresa, their daughters Caitlin and Callie, and their dog Tickets, currently reside in Atlanta, Georgia. He describes himself as a Southerner who never thought he had an accent until moving to New York to attend Art School whereupon he discovered that he was, after all, a hillbilly. But the kind of hillbilly that says "whereupon".

What is Demons of Sherwood about?

Bob:  Demons of Sherwood picks up the story of Robin Hood around more than a decade after his "glory days."  The Merry Men have moved on with their lives and Robin is pretty much a falling down drunk.  Worse, he hasn’t seen or heard from Marian in the intervening years – until now.  There’s a new breed of tyrant in the neighborhood, a self-proclaimed "Witchhunter" – and he’s tried Marian, found her guilty and sentenced her to death by burning.  So Robin’s got to get his act together.  Unfortunately, for all parties there really are demonic forces at work in Sherwood Forest…

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