ComicMix Radio: Peter David and ‘The Incredible Hulk’

You can’t surf the ‘Net without running into something about the Iron Man movie, but what about the Incredible Hulk feature set to hit screens just 30-plus days later? Peter David, the man who probably knows ol’ Greenskin better than anyone has seen the script and isn’t shy about sharing , plus:

— Marvel open up shop on Facebook — ComicsPro takes on 24 Hour Comics —  Yes, there will be a new 24 this year! —  Plus a brand new trivia question and another chance to grab an exclusive Graham Crackers Comics variant by e-mailing us at: podcast [at] comicmix.com — And catch us live tonight on “Comic Book Novice Radio”!  Get details at: www.mfc-studios.com

Press The Button – because you know what happens when we get angry!     And remember, you can always subscribe to ComicMix Radio podcasts via or RSS!

Transcript

Broadcast 172. ComicMix.com! ComicMix Radio! Where, where, where, where, where the f- We need more-

That's a lot of fun. That's a lot of fun. In the system. Well kept secret or secret disaster? Hi, it's Mike Raub, ComicMix Radio.

You know, in the wake of the big promotional machine that's telling us daily new things about the Iron Man movie, what about the Hulk? Did you even know there's a Hulk movie that comes out just a month after Iron Man? A lot of people don't except one celebrated Hulk fan who's actually seen the script. And he's willing to talk right here in just a few minutes on-

March 6th. 2008. ComicMix News. Marvel Comics has made another gutsy move on the web by launching their first digital comics application on Facebook.

The Facebook application allows fans to dig into the entire Marvel Digital Universe Unlimited Collection. That's the one that Marvel launched back in November. So basically gonna serve as a hub for all things Marvel on Facebook. Now a lot of other publishers have turned up on MySpace.

Marvel was the first one to move to Facebook. Anybody who fills out the application on Facebook will be eligible to look for free at some sample Marvel Digital Comics and browse the more than 3,000 Marvel Digital Universe Unlimited titles by series, creators, characters, or recent editions as well. And Marvel promises a lot more coming to their Facebook area in the weeks ahead.

Meanwhile in a related note, Steven Spielberg is preparing to launch his own new social network on the web. This will be one to attract users interested in sharing paranormal or extraterrestrial experiences. Continuing their effort to expand the comics market, the direct market retailer trade

group ComicsPro is taking over the organization and the workload behind the 24-hour Comics Day. That's the annual comics creation event where pros and aspiring pros as well get together to produce a 24-page comic in just 24 hours. As we've told you in the past, usually these events are held at comic stores and venues

around the country as a big promotion and now ComicsPro hopes to make that promotion even bigger. To begin with, this year Ohio State University will house all of the submitted 24-hour comics entries, providing a permanent home to the archives within the Cartoon Research Library, which also has a lot of original art and regular comic art exhibits on the campus in Columbus.

ComicsPro will announce more dates, including this year's 2008 24-hour Comics Day coming very soon. Fox 2000 is option Jeff Kinney's best-selling illustrated novel Diary of a Wimpy Kid for a live-action movie. Now you know you've heard us talk about this before.

Kinney's novel is a collection of his popular online web comic and it was published first in a collection last April by Abrams. Right after that it became a New York Times number one bestseller. And Jeff promises there's a lot more volumes to come. Yes, absolutely.

It's going to be a three-book series. It's definitely going to be a three-book series and I think it's going to be made into five. So that's, hopefully it'll be my bread and butter for a while. We're guessing Jeff is eating well this month. Abrams is published at a second volume in the series.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Roderick Rules, which is available in bookstores right now. There's some more good anime on the way to television. The YouTube network has picked up the U.S. broadcast rights for Blue Dragon from Biz Media. Blue Dragon is the Japanese animated series developed by the folks who did Final Fantasy

and also based on that popular Xbox 360 game. At the 24-episode Speedgrapher series makes its debut just in a couple of days. It'll be on Friday night on the big anime block for the independent film channel premiering at 11 p.m. Eastern time. Speedgrapher is an older teen-aimed series that mixes social criticism of Japan's capitalistic

elites with some kinky elements. We're all calmed down to the New York Comic-Con, which is just a little over a month away. And the web videographer known as Just Some Random Guy has put together a trio of videos to help promote the New York Comic-Con. You can check him out at the Comic-Con website or this weekend.

We'll give you a direct link on the broadcast blog right here at ComicPinks. The TV networks are trying desperately to win us back in the post-strike world. And right now there's a couple of bits of good news that we found interesting. TV1 has picked up the thriller series Daybreak. That was the one from last season with Tay Diggs that you never got to see the resolution

to. They're going to air all 13 episodes, including seven that were never seen on television. Those will begin on March 16, 10 p.m. Eastern on TV1. And if you're a 24 fan, here's some great news. You won't have to wait until 2009 for your next episode.

There'll be a two-hour prequel being developed to air in the fall on Fox. Again, usually there's a little bit of a prequel that turns up on the DVD set. This year, though, they're going for two full hours. It'll bridge the gap between the seasons. And it should air in Fox sometime during the early part of the fall 2008 TV season.

My name is Jim Staranko. I am with the Comics Brotherhood and welcome to ComicMix. ComicMix Radio. Quiet, numbskulls, I'm broadcasting. A quick egotistical note here.

Later on tonight, if you're listening to this on Thursday, we're going to be on the radio. Join us on the Comic Book Nother Show. It is on AM 1240 WGBB in the New York area. You can hear it tonight, 9 p.m. Eastern time. Or anywhere else on the planet on the web at www.am1240wgbb.com.

And the Comic Book Nother's website as well will have us up there at mfcstudios.com. Host Mark Torres and I will talk about comics and then Mark is going to come along here on the broadcast in a very short time and tell us about how he ended up doing comics on the radio. We've got a winner!

ComicMix Radio. All right, here we go. The process is simple. We give you a trivia question. You give us an answer and providing we pick your email with a correct answer, you get

a limited edition variant issue from Graham Crackers Comics. Graham Crackers, famous in the Midwest with nine stores in Chicago and as close as your computer anytime at Grahamcrackers.com and also famous for producing these limited edition variant comics with low print runs and exclusive covers and you get one, a real collectible. If you can answer our question, the rules are simple.

You get your answer to us by the deadline we set in every broadcast. We draw one winner randomly from all the correct emails we receive and duplicate emails do not count. Now let's get another winner. What we ask was is now that Wolverine has another miniseries that hit the stores this

week, what was the title of the very first Wolverine miniseries back in 1982? It was a pretty easy answer. It was Wolverine drawn by a guy named Frank Miller. Congratulations to Sal Laurier. He got the correct answer.

A lot of emails came in, but the one that everybody seems centered on was Kitty and Wolverine, another miniseries that came out not too far away from that same time, but it wasn't the first one. All right, you're ready to try your luck. Here's our next question.

The Hulk TV series ran in the late 1970s and even into the 1980s with some made for TV movies. Can you name one of the two Marvel superheroes who made their live action TV debut in that series? All right, the deadline is coming up.

We need it by 9 a.m. Saturday, March the 8th. So hurry, get us your answer right now at podcast at comicpix.com. Once again, podcast at comicpix.com. Type carefully and good luck. There we were sitting around just a little before midnight waiting for the crowds to

roll in to have Peter David sign copies of Dark Tower 2. And when you got a little free time with somebody as well rounded as Peter, well, the first thing you ask is what are you up to these days? Fallen Angel continues from IDW from Marvel Comics, X Factor and She-Hulk, both of which I'm having an absolute blast with.

I have the novelizations of both Iron Man and the Incredible Hulk movie will be coming out in the next couple of months. And in June I have a book called Tiger Heart. Although to some degree it's a young adult book, it's really all ages in the same sense that Harry Potter is.

And it's a Peter Pan pastation. I think that that's going to be really exciting. Ah, that Hulk movie. The one no one has seen anything from. I had to ask, did Peter have any dirt?

Well, I've written this. I've written the novelizations, so I'm pretty darn familiar with the script. I mean, the thing that I've learned is that you cannot predict what a movie is going to be like based upon the script. All you can do is comment on the quality of the script itself.

In terms of the script itself, I think it's excellent. Writing a good superhero movie isn't anything near an easy task, especially when the word good can be almost a relative term. When I first read the original script for the Spider-Man movie, I thought this could be a kick-ass Spider-Man movie.

When I read the script for the first Hulk movie, I thought this could be a really good Ang Lee movie. And you know, you see the difference. In reading the Hulk script, I get the same vibe that I got off of the Spider-Man film. That is, this could be a really good Hulk movie.

So in Peter's opinion, what could make the movie work? What it's ultimately going to come down to, of course, is special effects. Whether the Hulk is going to be believable as a character, rather than just a really big CGI thing. And again, why keep this under wraps?

I mean, there are some people who are skittish because they haven't seen anything. But on the other hand, a few years ago, they released footage from the first Hulk movie before it was really ready to be seen, and it created all kinds of negative vibe about the film that I don't think it ever really overcame. This time, it seems that they're playing it closer to the vest.

Has the immediacy of the web made it difficult to promote a movie in a way that it can be judged fairly when it's seen and not before? How much time in advance do you need to decide that you're going to see this film? I wouldn't have the trailer of the Hulk movie out until the Iron Man movie. That's where I would put it.

I would put it in front of the Iron Man film. I mean, really, how much time do you need? You don't need six months to decide that you're going to see a movie. The more time that you have a film out there, in terms of bits and pieces, the more time you give for people to say negative things about it.

Basically, it all comes down to one thing. Bottom line is people are going to see it or they're not going to see it. So why not just wait until, again, to my mind, the Iron Man film, throw the trailer up there, and have people going, oh my god, as soon as this film is over, I'm going to go running out there and get, you know, lining up and get ready to see the next Marvel movie.

Thanks to Peter and, of course, all the guys at Midtown Comics as well for playing host to us during the big signing just a couple of days ago and to see everything that went on in full color. Check out ComicMix TV right now. Make us your home page.

ComicMix. Time line. March 6th. We need you to do the paper route twice this week to get enough money for all the comics that were on the spinner rack.

There was Aquaman number 27. We got Batman number 180 with that classic death knocks three times the story. There was Black Hawk number 220 from DC as well as Justice League of America number 44 where Metamorpho said no. And we got Lois Lane number 65 with another imaginary story.

One of the classic Silver Age stories this week was in Fantastic Four number 51. It was this man, this monster. We got X-Men number 20 this week as well as Daredevil number 16, which had Spider-Man number 2 and Sergeant Fury number 30. Charlton gave us the first issue of Judo Master even though it was number 89.

Figure that one out. We got the comic that none of our friends could pronounce from Del. It was Nucula number 3. And from that little known company that produced that strange Captain Marvel, we got the second issue of that character as well this week.

1966. In the news, 89 Americans were among those killed when freak air currents caused a British jetliner to crash near Mount Fuji. Rumors in Washington Circle that President Johnson had ordered the military to win the war in Vietnam by 1967 or else.

And 35,000 cubic feet of rock fell in an avalanche near Naples, Italy. In the movies, thanks to James Bond, there were spies everywhere. Dean Martin was in the silencers. James Coburn was in Arman Flint. They even took a couple of Uncle episodes and remade them as the man from Uncle starred

in this spy with my face. Ah, there was a little softer fare. It was actually My Fair Lady that was the number one movie of the week. Rex and Audrey in Fruglia Classic. On TV tonight, Lassie had an episode that was my favorite Martian, an NBC special called

War of the Roses, plus an episode of Perry Mason, and one of the more underappreciated series of the 1960s from NBC, the wackiest ship in the Army. On the radio was Pittsburgh resident Luigi Sacco, who actually had a couple of decent hits in the early 1960s. However, a stint in the U.S. Army and a short-lived love affair with Diana Ross from the Supremes

put his career on hold, at least temporarily. And with a brand new label under his belt, he began back in the recording studio, but the president of the new label, MGM, didn't like the first song. In fact, he tossed it in the garbage. Luckily, the singer's manager resurrected the song, got it promoted all over the country,

and it went to number one. For Luke Christie and… ! In comics, we always toss around titles. He's Charlie, he's John De You-Know-How-It-Goes, but there's been only one king in the history

of funny books, and his name was Kirby. As one writer who knew him personally and for decades has been the go-to guy when it came to knowing stuff about Jack. Find out on the weekend and you can grab us right now on iTunes so you don't miss anything. Don't forget, drop us that email, get that Graham Cracker's free, varied edition, by

writing us a podcast at ComicMix.com. And between now and then, some great free comics on the website. You got new GrimJack by Tim Truman and Simone & Ajax in full color by Andrew P. Boy. And a lot more, and again, it's all free right here at ComicMix. Talk to you in a couple of days.

Bye! You