ComicMix Radio: Meet Jane And The Dragon

Already a children’s classic book and a worldwide TV success, Jane & The Dragon are now both a part of NBC’s Saturday morning line-up and the local DVD rack. Here’s what you are missing, plus:

• Darwin Cooke tackles Madman
• Conan gets a tribute
• Marvin The Martian gets a film to himself

Let your imagination run a little wild and Press the Button!
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Transcript

Broadcast 247 3, 2, 1 ComicMix.com A worldwide phenomenon hits the U.S. ComicMix Real

Hi, it's Mike Raub with the story of Jane and the Dragon, a CGI animated series now on NBC and just about ready to break the DVD market as well. I'll fill you in coming up on… August 16th

2008 ComicMix News DC New Frontier artist and creator Darwyn Cooke is collaborating with writer Jay Bone for an all-new story in the world of Mike Allard's Madman. It all takes place coming up in just a couple of months in Madman Atomic Comics number 14 from Image,

set to be in comic stores on November the 19th. Artist Paulo Riviera, you know him from a lot of his painted work on the Mythos series, the various ones from Marvel, now is going to be doing regular work for Amazing Spider-Man beginning in a couple of months. It won't be painted, it'll be the regular pencil styles.

And Riviera begins in Amazing Spider-Man number 577, which is an oversized issue, a special one, written by Zeb Wells and featuring The Punisher. Another sellout for Secret Invasion, this time it's Black Panther number 39. There's a second printing on the way for that one as well. That will be in stores right around the 10th of September from Marvel.

Another thing you might have missed at San Diego were the Halo 3 con exclusive figures done by McFarland Toys. Now they're offering them to the general public as well, but it is still limited to a total of 3,000 sets. And there's a limit of 4 sets per person as well. If you'd like to get them, they cost around $30 and you can see them or place an order at store.spawn.com slash SDCCOH. It's a long overdue celebration of Conan coming in October from Hermes Press.

It's called By This Axe I Rule. It's an all new art book that details the Victorian history of Conan. Throughout the years from pulp magazines to paperback covers to comics and to the movies too as well. Writer, playwright and comic journalist Tom Stewart has compiled the full color hardcover. It covers everything like we said from the early Weird Tales in the 30s all the way to the very latest comics by Dark Horse. And that totals some 250 illustrations.

And again, we'll be in the stores in October. It's about time on this one Warner Brothers is teaming with Alcon Entertainment to create a family targeted movie featuring Marvin the Martian. The character created by the late great Chuck Jones. It's mixed CGI animation and live action and when it's produced it'll be set for a holiday release. Wizards of the Coast have decided they're going to refocus their publishing program on their two core brands.

That's Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons. While they are publishing some other things this year in 2009, any books scheduled that aren't tied to Magic or D&D will be removed from the 2009 publishing lineup. Hi, this is Adam Hughes. I draw your favorite Bimbo comic book covers and you're listening to ComicMix. ComicMix Radio. Jane and the Dragon has been a children's book classic for years and Arthur Martin Bayenton said that he'd never really considered taking the project to television.

Jane's never been out of print for 20 years. So it's sort of become a classic and I approached Weta with it about four and a half years ago and said I would, you know, I've always been very low to turn books into television. But, you know, if anybody's going to do a great job on it, it would have to be Weta. And Richard Taylor had, who in the end partnered with me on Jane and the Dragon, just said, well, funnily enough, we actually want to look at making television. And we worked at making this, you know, setting up a model for making this as a show.

And just the process has been absolutely wonderful from start to finish. Now a CGI animated series on NBC on Saturday mornings, the show has also been a success worldwide. It's aired, it's been on air for about two years in other countries and it was number one in Australia, number one in the UK for a little while. And it continues to be on air. It's never gone off the air in those territories. Certainly there are 26 episodes of Jane and the Dragon out there, but Martin says even though everybody wants more, before that happens, there's some things to consider.

It depends on whether we can make them as good as the first 26. The issue for me is that I don't want to ever let down Jane. And there's a huge pressure in the marketplace to bring out properties more cheaply and find ways to actually cut costs and that means cutting the quality. I would rather have 26 unbelievable episodes of Jane out there than another 26 that aren't quite so good. So where did the concept of Jane and the Dragon come from?

It actually came from talking to a young girl. There were a lot of talking in schools and a young girl said that she didn't like fairy stories because the girls were such wimps. You know, they hang around waiting to be rescued by a guy or to get married or they never actually do heroic things themselves. And that kind of stuck with me and I thought I must write for that girl in your mind. There's always a particular person. So I wanted to write a contemporary fairy story where a girl was the master of her own destiny and came up with the idea of Jane and the Dragon who's a lady in waiting, training to be a lady in waiting. She's 12 years old, but she wants to be a knight. She wants to be an apprentice knight, which of course back in, you know, when this is sad in medieval times, I was just unthinkable.

The girls should do anything other than normal girl stuff. And so it was a tremendous backdrop for being able to tell quite contemporary stories, but in a beautiful and kind of romantic setting because I'm huge. I love the medieval period. I love knights and the whole kind of romantic drama that surrounds that. So I've always wanted to make and write a set of books in that atmosphere. And now what? Well, you know, if you can do your best work and we know that you're because the incredible response from parents and children for Jane and the Dragon who fall in love with the show and just plead us for another 26. I know that they wouldn't want us to make a 26 with Wintersgood. So I'm going to work very, very hard with Richard to try and find a business for others to make more episodes at the standard or better than we have with the first 26. If we can do that, we'll do it. In the meantime, if you'd like to sample the show, it's easy. There's a brand new DVD collection just released. We're so excited. It's coming out on DVD because we've had we get so many emails saying so when's the DVD coming out?

When's the DVD? This is from children right through to grandparents. Our demographic goes right up to the ages in the nineties. Just love Jane and the Dragon. A lot of them watch it on their own without children around. Well, probably one of the biggest demographics for the show is in the thirties. Jane and the Dragon on DVD and Saturday mornings on NBC. We love to get mail. Podcast at ComicMix dot com. ComicMix radio. ComicMix timeline. August 16th. 1982. Chances are there might have been a new comic book store crop it up in your neighborhood this week. They were popping up all over the U.S. You went in to find some good stuff from DC that included Green Lantern number 158. House of Mystery number 310. Legion of Super Heroes riding very high at the top of the buy list at number 293.

Gene Colins Night Force along with Marvel Wolfman. That was at number four. Sergeant Rock had his own title for a bit up to number 370. It was Brave and Bold number 192 and Saga of the Swamp Thing number seven. Over at Marvel we got Avengers 224. Remember Team America. They were at number five and the Micronauts came in at number 46. We got What If number 35 and the Frank Miller Wolverine miniseries. Was riding high. We got issue number two this week from Marvel. 1982. In the news the Senate and the House gave final approval to a nearly one hundred billion dollar tax increase bill. A Japanese teenager died when a bomb planted under his seat on a Pan Am jet exploded and an economic survey showed that more married women and younger ones were entering the workforce in the U.S. In the movies there was officer of the gentleman at the top of the list secretive Nim the re-release of Star Wars. We didn't see that you probably caught E.T. for a second time and a film destined to now be a cult classic.

Great soundtrack and a good film to Fast Times and Ridgewot High. TV Tonight had an episode of Little House on a Prairie in a show that was destined to be acted a couple of weeks on ABC. But still I remember it fun. In days of your in Western lore a man returned from Civil War his heartbeat pure. He needs his best. His name was best best of the one season only it was called best of the West. Also tonight a two hour special called Rock and Roll the first 25 years with some great vintage footage of this classic performance. One two three o'clock four o'clock rock five six seven o'clock eight o'clock rock ten eleven o'clock twelve o'clock rock we're going to rock around. On the radio a British American rock band formed back in 1967 and decade after decade they switched personnel but kept coming back with album after album. Last year their top of the chart album Tusk met with no small amount of controversy but this year's album Mirage was much more of a critical faith. 1982. The nice thing about Fleetwood Mac was on every album every member had a chance to have a hit. This time it was Christine McVie and Hold Me.

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