Grand Theft Auto IV: Less NYC, More Chicago’s South Side?
The hub-bub over the recent release of Grand Theft Auto IV is finally starting to die down, but of all the stories popping up around the InterWebs about the controversial videogame, one really caught my eye.
Slate recently posted an analysis of the real-world dynamics of life on the wrong side of the law – and those who are forced to live and work with that dynamic every day – as echoed in GTA IV. While the landscape of the videogame is based on the New York City Metro area, the author contends that the true real-world equivalent of life in the GTA IV universe can be found in Chicago’s South Side neighborhoods.
The last time I visited Chicago, I stopped by 59th Street, near Washington Park (and only a few short blocks from the picturesque University of Chicago). Two of the local gangs were fighting each other in full view for control of a prime sales spot, a hotel. For a monthly fee, the proprietor had promised to allow one gang to turn the place into a bordello—drugs, prostitution, stolen merchandise. For the gangs, winning meant more than simply getting rid of their enemy. Neither controlled the area surrounding the hotel. Anyone bringing drugs (or women, or guns, etc.) to the hotel would have to run the gantlet formed by other enemy gangs, who would be at the ready to shoot down the transporter.
Author Sudhir Venkatesh goes on to compare the decisions GTA IV’s protagonist must make over the course of the game, and compares those choices to many of those made by residents of South Side streets where the criminal element provides the only semblance of structure.
Read the full article on Slate.com.
Why should Marvel and DC be the only comic book companies making serious bank at the box office? Top Cow Productions has officially begun work on a live-action feature adaptation of their popular Witchblade comic book series.
Lemire is in the middle of an impressive thematically-related trilogy of stories about a rural bit of Ontario, Canada – the first book was 
, in early 2007, and the third, [[[The Country Nurse]]], will be along in October of this year. [[[Ghost Stories]]] is the middle book, but it’s a completely independent story – you don’t need to know anything about Tales to read it.
The hit BBC series 
is now in its fourth season on the Sci-Fi Channel, and since we’re all big fans here at ComicMix, we’ve decided to kick off an episode-by-episode analysis of the reinvigorated science-fiction classic.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1915, Anthony Joseph “Tony” Strobl graduated from the Cleveland School of Art in 1937 (along with Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster—Strobl helped them fine-tune a character concept they were working on, which they called "Superman") and began working for Disney a year later.
I have always been a major league comic book fan. Always. As a child, whenever my parents dragged me out of town I would make them stop at every possible drug store, newsstand and dime store so I could check out the comics stock. In those days we had no forewarning of what was coming out when, and few outlets carried every title. Some even ignored entire publishing lines.
Once again, a bunch of things that haven’t quite generated a post of their own, but deserve some sort of mention…
To be filed under "Hey! that’s OUR thing, man!" Cracked.com recently posted a list of "The 6 Creepiest Comic Book Characters of All Time," leaving me wondering why they chose to make it a list of six characters. Why not five… or ten? "Cracked Six" just doesn’t sound right, while 
