ComicMix Radio: Kevin Smith and Deadlines
With tongue in cheek, Kevin Smith pokes fun at when we can expect the next two issues of this week’s Batman mini series, plus:
- Guillermo DelToro fills us in on the Hellboy DVD extras
- Get your checkbook – BSG props for sale
- A Beatles Rock Band?
All that and more – but only when you Press the Button!
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Transcript
Broadcast 280. ComicMix.com. Big danger in the comic book store. ComicMix.com. Hi, it's Mike Raub. You know, owning a comic book store wasn't easy even before the economic crisis.
But there's an organization out there dedicated to make things better for every comic shop. You can find out how it can help your local store coming up on October 30th, 2008. ComicMix.com. We've talked before about Disney's new online and direct DVD reimagining of Tinker Bell. And now if you'd like to find out what it's all about, you can do so free at Disney.com slash Tinker Bell.
The movie, which was released on DVD and Blu-ray this week, is previewed there, at least a few minutes of it. You can see what it's all about. And if you'd like to, bring on somebody from your family who might enjoy the newly relaunched virtual world called Pixie Hollow. It is involved with the movie story. It's an in-game event where players search for the hidden party location to earn badges and get party favors. Also from Disney, just in time for the weekend, and you may not have known about this either, is the release of Nightmare Revisited. It's been on the CD stands for just about a month. It's a 20-track collection of cover versions of tunes from The Nightmare Before Christmas.
The movie from Tim Burton that has been re-released again this year and just won't go away. There are cuts from Marilyn Manson, Corn, All American Rejects, Rise Against, Shiny Toy Guns, Plain White Teas, and Polyphonic Spree, which you hear right now. You can get more information and actually hear the tracks completely for free at SPIN.com. The New York Comic Con has announced their first major guest, and that will be the Guest of Honor, with the title going to J. Michael Strosinski. He'll be Guest of Honor at the 2009 event, which takes place in New York, February 6th through the 8th at the Jacob Javits Center.
Strosinski in the media spotlight right now as being the writer of the Clint Eastwood movie Changeling, but between now and then, he'll be helping relaunch all the Archie superheroes for DC in the upcoming Raven Bull title. Hey, come on, who doesn't love Legos? Well, at the ToyZone.com this week, you can see something really cool. It is the 20 best album covers of all time, recreated in Legos. There's Morrissey, Nirvana, and a whole bunch of Beatles that are really cool. I can't tell you any more verbally without saying just go there and see it. It's at thetoyzone.com.
For the next time, you and your pals are sitting around speculating who's going to be the next Batman villain in the next movie. While pointing them in the direction of Christine Aguilera, her new video for a song called Keeps Getting Better has her dressed as Catwoman, and there's a lot of rumors out there that say she's very interested in the role on a full time basis. By the way, the video was directed by Hancock director Peter Berg. I'm just saying. Boom Studios has announced Eureka coming to comics. Of course, there's some connections there.
Boom Studios' co-founder is also the co-creator of Eureka. He's Andrew Crosby. He's released a new video on the Boom comic site that will announce the new series, which in continuity will be sort of a season 1.5 between different episodes to fill in the gaps there. By the way, once this regular print series debuts, Boom also plans to launch a Eureka webcomic. That'll be done by Colin Ferguson, who also stars in Eureka. Hey, this is Terry Moore with Strangers in Paradise, and you're listening to ComicMix.
Serious, but not fatal. That's the situation in comic shops today, and no, we're not talking about Secret Invasion or Final Crisis. But the fact that comic stores all over are struggling at only a fraction of what they were ten years ago. Now there is strength in numbers, and the numbers all come together in a group called Comics Pro, formed by retailers for retailers. Comics Pro spokesperson Amanda Eber lays out the basics. We also provide, by banding together, we can provide a unified voice for retailers in the industry discussion.
So anytime that, if there's a term to sale that come up, or any other problems, that retailers aren't usually represented when it comes to the publisher distributor talk. So when our members get together and they have a, you know, basically a decision that they make on behalf of the membership, we can take it to the publishers. We can take it to distributors to talk about, well, here's what our retailer members are thinking, and here's exactly what works in their stores. So we just become a more unified voice for all of them. So what does Comics Pro do to keep the stores in the loop?
Well, we communicate constantly. We've got a member forum that's for members only. We talk about issues. We're in constant communication with all of the publishers through our board of directors and through other members. We go to many conventions to talk to retailers, the retail summits and everything like that. We try to get a big presence in the industry to say that we are here for retailers, and we can talk to them wherever they are. More and more comics fans shop online, and more and more stores are opening up there in a virtual reality.
So what about these retailers? Well, right now our focus is brick and mortar retailers, and that was to do a small focus at first to provide a stronger set of benefits for our core companies. For our core group, and as we grow, and the membership is growing every single year, and as we grow, we want to encompass more aspects of re-healing. So it's a narrow focus at first, but we're trying to build bigger. You or your local store owner can get in touch with Comics Pro very easily.
Well, our website is comicspro.org, this is dot org, and our contact email is just info at comicspro.org, and they can reach us at any time, basically. Like just about everybody at Comics Pro, by the way, Amanda is a store owner, too. Check her store out. It's Muse Comics in Missoula, Montana. ComicMix Radio. ComicMix.com.
ComicMix timeline. October 30th. 1972. There was a spectacular Neil Adams Superman photo cover that greeted his son as Spinning Rag this week. It was all part of the fact that they were announcing Julia Schwartz to become the editor of Action Comics, and boy, was that good news when we picked up Action Comics number 419.
That's the good news in Adventure Comics number 425. The superhero strips in there were all gone, and things were going from bad to worse. Detective Comics was holding its own with the number 430. There was also from Beyond the Unknown number 20, Ghost number 10, and lots of Golden Age reprints and wanted the world's most dangerous villains number 4. From Marvel, we got Thor number 207, Amazing Adventures number 16, which had a beast story.
The Claws of the Cat number 2, Chamber of Chills number 2. Marvel teamed up in the early days with issue number 6, this time with Spider-Man, The Thing, and the Puppet Master. It was the first issue of The Monster of Frankenstein, and with great artwork by Mike Pluke, and Rawhide Kid number 107. Dark Shadows had been off the air for almost a year, but the comic was still out there with issue number 17 this week. There was also Magnus Robot Fighter number 34, and Just in Time for Halloween, Nightmare number 10 from Skywalled, and creepy number 49 from Warren.
In the news, the Vietnamese peace talks were at a stalemate when the president of that country called it Communist Proposals, dark plans to take over my country. Protests, marred campaign stops by President Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew, and Major League Baseball great Jackie Robinson died of a heart attack at age 53. In the movies, there was Last House on the Left, some uncomfortable things happening in Deliverance, Goldie Hawn and Butterflies are free, and Woody entertaining in everything you always want to know about sex. TV Tonight had episodes of Maud, Hawaii Five-O, Marcus Welby and NBC's The Bold Ones.
Also on NBC, it was just about the last round up for Bonanza. I always said it was because you didn't hear this great theme anymore. Instead, for the last season, they changed the theme of Bonanza to this. The guys put one of their guys up front, his name was Harry Carmen, and put themselves in giant purple tuxedos and poofed their hair up in Pompadour's, and started a trip to the top that would last a long time.
Here's Go All The Way and the Raspberries. ComicMix ComicMix Radio ComicMix Radio
