Monthly Archive: April 2008

The Race Card, by Michael Davis

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  • April 4, 2008

I’m writing a book on race and…hey, I’m serious. I’m writing the book with my boy Rusty Cundieff, whose long list of director credits include the films Fear Of A Black Hat and House Party 2. Rusty was also the director of The Dave Chappelle Show. I came up with the project three years ago and Rusty came aboard two years ago. Why has it taken so long? It’s one of those projects that just takes the time it takes (hear that, O?). The book is called Every Thing You Wanted To Know About black People But Were Afraid To Ask.

I had a fair amount of interest from some publishers over the last two years but lately there has been a flurry of interest from many publishers. I have no doubt the recent focus on race in the presidential campaign has made the book a lot more relevant.

The book is written by two black men and is based on our experiences.

Now, what does that mean? It means that two black men are going to talk about our experiences as black men. We do not speak for every single black person. Rusty and I are also professional television writers who LOVE to write comedy, so you KNOW what that means…fun, laughs and WHITE WOMEN!

If you have the ability to read and reason then you must feel like I do about racism and that is that racism is just plain stupid. I just don’t get racism at all. It’s stupid, stupid, STUPID.

I mean to dislike someone just because of the color of their skin is nuts. The only thing dumber is hating on someone because of his or her religious beliefs. What’s next, hating someone because they eat apples and you like oranges?

The rest of the world should take a page from the comic book world. We don’t see color. I have been to hundreds of comic book conventions all over the planet and never felt even the hint of racism. Now there were some times in the convention city where racism was a real issue.

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Happy 33rd Anniversary, Paul Kupperberg

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  • April 4, 2008

On this day in 1975, Paul Kupperberg made his first professional sale to Charlton Comics. It was a five-page story titled "Distress" that would ultimately be published in the December 1975 issue of Scary Tales (pictured here) drawn by a kid named Mike Zeck.

Yes, Paul, you’re right — you’re o-o-old. On the other hand, you churned out a good 600+ comics stories since, created Checkmate, Arion, and Takion (how’d you miss creating Ion?) and they turned the cover of a comic book you wrote into a US postage stamp. Your page rate has even gone up since that first story.

And look at the bright side — you’re actually reading this. Which means that this isn’t an obituary post. At your advanced age, that’s always a concern.

 

Black Ice: In the Sky!

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  • April 3, 2008

In today’s brand-new episode of Black Ice, by Mike Baron and Nick Runge, Neil’s motorbike is gone, along with Prince Crom. With it, our heroes may have lost the war.

Can Neil show them how to make another bike? Does Mark Twain hold the answer?

Credits:Bob Pinaha (Letterer), Matt Webb (Colorist), Mike Baron (Writer), Mike Gold (Editor), Nick Runge (Artist)

More: Black Ice

Review: Four Books for Pre-Adults

I had a pile of books more-or-less for kids, and thought: why not review them all together? And so I will:

[[[Flight Explorer, Vol. 1]]]
Edited by Kazu Kibuishi
Villard, 2008, $10.00

The popular [[[Flight]]] series, officially for adults but containing a lot of all-ages stories, has spun off a younger sibling. The cast of cartoonists is pretty much the same, and the editor is still Kibuishi, but this book is shorter, cheaper, smaller, and contains many more characters seemingly designed to headline a series of stories.

The stories are all fairly short – there are ten of them in a book just over a hundred pages – long enough to introduce what mostly seem to be series characters and given them a situation to deal with. The cover-featured “[[[Missile Mouse]]],” by Jake Parker gets the most adventurous, and will probably be the most appealing to the boy audience. (There’s nothing obviously aimed at the girl comics-reading audience – or maybe I mean nothing trying to poach some of the manga audience – though there are several strips with female protagonists, like Ben Hatke’s “[[[Zita the Spacegirl]]].”

The art is still mostly clean-lines enclosing solid colors – an animator’s palette – though the book gets more painterly towards the end, in the pieces by Ben Hatke, Rad Sechrist, Bannister, and Matthew Armstrong. It’s all quite professional and fun – all in all, a great book to hand to an 8-12 year old interested in comics.

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‘Hellboy II: The Golden Army’ Trailer Online

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  • April 3, 2008

Yahoo Movies has posted the first trailer for Hellboy II: The Golden Army. 

The trailer features all the things you’d expect from a Hellboy adaptation and a Guillermo del Toro film: huge monsters, fantastic art direction, action-packed fights and plenty of grumblings from the big red hero.

The sequel to 2004’s Hellboy, the film follows the B.P.R.D. as they attempt to once again save the world and protect innocent people from magical creatures. There are no evil Nazi experiments this time, but the crazy creatures more than make up for it.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army hits theaters July 11 and stars Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones and John Hurt.

First Posters for ‘The Spirit’ Revealed

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  • April 3, 2008

Frank Miller’s adaptation of The Spirit won’t hit theaters until January 16, 2009, but the marketing hype is already underway. The first outdoor artwork posters for the upcoming movie have been revealed and are highly reminiscent of the visual style employed by Miller’s Sin City.

The film is an adaptation of Will Eisner’s popular comic series about a cop that returns from the dead in order to fight the criminal element in Central City.

Miller shared credit with Robert Rodriguez on the adaptation of Sin City, but The Spirit marks his solo debut in the director’s chair. The film stars Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, Sarah Paulson, Paz Vega, Jaime King and Eva Mendes.

High resolution photos of the posters can be viewed at Superhero Hype.

 

Happy Birthday: Jay Garrick

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Born in Hibbardsville, Kansas, in the early 1920s, Jason Peter “Jay” Garrick had an uneventful childhood. It wasn’t until he went to Keystone City for college, studying chemistry and physics at Midwestern University, that fate singled him out for greater things.

Garrick was a junior in 1940 and working on an experiment to purify hard water and remove all radiation when a test tube dropped. The fumes knocked Garrick out and breathing the vapors all night somehow changed him, granting him the ability to run at super-speed (later evidence suggests Garrick always had this latent ability and the vapors simply activated it).

At first, he used his new powers for personal gain, becoming a college football star, but his integrity would not let him walk away from those in trouble, so Garrick donned a stylized winged helmet and a red shirt with a lightning bolt and began to fight crime as The Flash.

Garrick joined the Justice Society of America and the All-Star Squadron and became a well-known and well-respected crimefighter. Though he briefly retired and focused on his scientific career in the 1950s, Garrick could not stay away, and returned to heroics in 1961, just in time to meet his Earth-One counterpart, Barry Allen.

He has been active ever since, and is once again a key member of the Justice Society of America. Most younger heroes consider Garrick the elder statesman of superheroes, and all of them admire and respect him and appreciate his calm manner and his sage advice just as much as his flying fists and speedy feet.

Interview: From Animation to Print With James Farr and ‘Xombie’

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  • April 3, 2008

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In 2003, James Farr posted online the first chapter of Xombie, a short film he produced using Flash animation, on the ‘Net. The eerie tale introduced viewers to Zoe, a young girl who finds herself alone in a zombie wasteland with no memory of how she came to be there, as well as a sentient zombie named Dirge who rescues her from the menacing flesh-eaters.

Four years, 10 episodes and 13 million views later, Xombie: Dead on Arrival (as the series was later named) is widely regarded as one of the InterWebs’ first "cult classic" original animated series, and Farr  remains one of the most popular filmmakers from the early days of the Flash-animation scene. The series, with its well-scripted dialogue and pacing, as well as Farr’s use of talented voice actors who gave life — or rather, death — to many of the characters, continues to be held up as a prime example of the medium’s potential.

So, with a celebrated animated series behind him, what did the talented creator do next? He jumped into the world of comics, of course.

The first issue of Xombie: Reanimated, a six-issue series written by Farr with art from Nate Lovett, hit comic shops in 2007 courtesy of Devil’s Due Publishing, just a short time after the final episode of Dead on Arrival hit the online world. Reanimated continued the story of Zoe and Dirge, picking up ten years after the first adventure and moving Farr’s unlikely heroes (along with their zombie dog, Cerberus; the Egyptian mummy, Nephthys; and her zombie dinosaur, Chimaera) into a brand new medium.

According to Farr, Dead on Arrival and Reanimated provided the first two chapters in a trilogy that, he hopes, is breathing fresh air into the musty, recycled conventions of zombie-genre storytelling.

I spoke with Farr about the recent release of the Xombie: Reanimated collection, as well as the line of Xombie-inspired figures produced by DDP. We spoke about what’s next for the series, and his forays into manga, sniper-avoidance and his "big role" in last year’s live-action Transformers film.

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The Weekly Haul: Reviews for April 3, 2008

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  • April 3, 2008

A big week, with Marvel kicking off the summer event season with Secret Invasion #1, which earned a separate review. Plenty of other comics came out, with a couple of princes but way too many frogs.

omeg7-4890921Book of the Week: Omega the Unknown #7 — This issue earns "instant purchase" status for the amazing Gary Panter cover (seen at right) and his interior pages depicting a comic as drawn by the hero of the story (wrap your brain around that one).

So we learn a little more about the history of the invading aliens and how they began their essentially nanotech-style war on humanity (and other alien races before that). Back in the present, Omega remains caught in the Mink’s maze and unable to join the fight against the robots. He does, however, catch a rat to eat. I don’t know if that’s better or worse than when he ate a bald eagle in an earlier issue.

Titus, the seeming Omega protege, and friends end up sneaking into the Mink’s base to bust out Omega, only to make a pretty alarming discovery that I won’t spoil here.

This series is big and crazy and reckless, but I still get the sense that writer Jonathan Lethem is very much in control of the story.

Runners Up:

Action Comics #863 — Both in this series and in Green Lantern, Geoff Johns is pulling an interesting trick by going a ways into the past to develop upcoming big events. And while all this time travel and Legion of Superheroes stuff could just be an excuse to show off Johns’ mastery of continuity, this manages to be much more, with a slobberknocker of a fight and some classic teamwork. By the time it was over, I was more excited about Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds than I was about Final Crisis.

Nightwing #143 — A mysterious villain is nefariously reviving dead villains on his secret island base, then escapes in a rocket when Nightwing and Robin defeat him. Sounds like something right out of James Bond, albeit without the beautiful women and cocktails. Somehow it works really well, probably because of the great interplay between Dick and Tim, two characters who should work together more often. (more…)

ComicMix Radio: Keith Giffen Obsesses

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It takes a certain sort of comic creator to oversee 104 weekly comics in a two-year period, not to mention wiping out a bunch of heroes at the other comic company across the street. That guy is Keith Giffen, and he talks to ComicMix about where he’s been and where he’s going, plus:

— Comic creators dominate the Scribe Award nominations

— Finally –  American Flagg

— Stan Lee and Disney team-up

—  Sure, there’s another  exclusive Graham Crackers Comics variant that could be in the mail to you – if you win by e-mailing us at: podcast [at] comicmix.com

While you were waiting to press the button, Keith Giffen just finished three more comics!

 

 

And remember, you can always subscribe to ComicMix Radio podcasts via badgeitunes61x15dark-9221820 or RSS!

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