ComicMix Radio: Wimpy Over Watchmen
Not long before the buzz started on Watchmen, another graphic novel was also on just about everyone’s Must Read list, and it still is. Jeff Kinney’s Diary Of A Wimpy Kid is one of the cool comic creator success stories soon to be a major motion picture. In an exclusive interview, Jeff tells how it all got started and where The Kid really comes from, plus:
- Batman Black & White on iTunes
- New Battlestar Webisodes
- Can you guess the #1 Most Awesome Sci Fi Themed Music Video? We bet you can’t!
All that and more – but only when you Press the Button!
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Transcript
A graphic novel that success is bigger than Watchmen. Hi there Matt Raub from Mike Wally's Away and despite all the buzz about Watchmen there is actually another graphic novel that is sold more and is headed to the big screen. What is it? We'll tell you on…
December 11th 2008 Warner Brothers Digital Distribution announced that the graphic album Batman Black & White has debuted as a Warner Premier Motion Comics series available exclusively on iTunes and coming soon to other distribution channels including Amazon Video on Demand and Verizon Wireless Vcast.
Batman Black & White's Motion Comics series features 10 stories created by comic book legends that include Alex Ross, Dave Gibbons, Ted McKeever, Paul Levitt and others. The stories are currently available on iTunes as 5 episodes of 2 shorts each and can be purchased and downloaded for 99 cents per episode. In addition comic book fans can download a free podcast also available on iTunes featuring
Batman Black & White Illustrator Alex Ross. If you are in need for some holiday comfort viewing then check out Betamaxmus.com. It compiles various retro holiday TV clips including animated specials and holiday episodes of TV classics plus the TV Guide like interface makes it pretty easy to use. Fans of the cable cult classic Dead Like Me are in luck as it returns in a direct to
DVD feature early in 2009. Most of the original cast returned to this all new movie which could revive the series and the DVD hit stores February 17th while you can grab the complete DVD collection of the cable series on shelves now. ToplessRobot.com has compiled a list of the 10 most awesome sci-fi themed music videos.
There are some pretty interesting choices here including songs from the Eels, Tom Petty and Rick Springfield. What's number one? Nope Sticks hit at number two. The number one most awesome sci-fi themed music video is Billy Ocean's Loverboy.
Get to be Outdone Time Magazine has released its top 10 of everything list. Under the top 10 TV series of 2008 The Shield is at number one and due to the mixture of online and offline TV, Joss Whedon's Doctor Horrible's sing along blog hits at number five. Best TV episode of 2008?
Well, it was the constant for ABC's Lost. Starting on Friday, sci-fi will be posting 10 new Battlestar Galactical Webisodes that will lead up to the January 16th premiere. Fans will be able to get their Battlestar Galactica fix with two episodes each week and the three to four minute chapters will compliment the stories played out in the on
air episodes and give viewers more insight into the characters and events from the fourth season. The Webisodes titled The Face of the Enemy follow the story of a stranded raptor ship carrying a group of passengers including Gata and a number eight Cylon played by Grace Park.
When some of the people aboard suddenly start dying, chaos ensues as they realize a killer is among them. Colonel Ty and Lieutenant Hoshi also star in the story The Face of the Enemy which is by Battlestar Galactica writer Jane Espenson. Hello, this is Liam Tomp and you are listening to ComicMix.
ComicMix Radio. ComicMix Radio. One of the biggest success stories of the past couple years belongs to Jeff Kinney who took the webcomic diary of a wimpy kid from online to the top of the New York Times best seller list.
Fox Studios is in the process of bringing the kid to the big screen possibly with Hotel for Dogs director Thor for Yudinthal. So how did it all start for Jeff? Before that Jeff had taken his creation to the web. In 2004 I started running the book on Funbrain.com.
I felt very ambivalent about that because I wrote the book actually for adults and Funbrain is a kid site and but I knew that there was a huge audience you know of millions of kids and so I'm really glad I read out Funbrain because it's had over 60 million readers so far. Yeah and that helped a lot like when the book came out it got on the best seller list in
the first month and that's just because of its exposure I think online so I feel grateful for that. The question Jeff gets asked a lot is if he is the wimpy kid. It is it's got a lot of my family stories in there I don't want to go so far as to say it's based on my childhood or I'll have to get my lawyer involved probably but it definitely
like a lot of my family's DNA is in that book. And is his family okay with that? I think so yeah I think it's probably strange to see a twist you know a lot of the stories things are kind of true but not true and you know there's a lot of distortion but the essence of the stories are you know it's sort of like a mythology built around my family
my growing up. On the weekend we'll talk more with Jeff about his new book and the future of the wimpy kid right here on ComicMix Radio. Comic next timeline December 11th. In funny books down at the drugstore DC gave us Batman number 145 with the son of Joker.
Black Hawk number 169 the 40th issue of Brave and the Bold with Cave Carson. Justice League number 9 featured the origin of the Justice League. Lois Lane number 31. My Greatest Adventure number 64 and the 73rd issue of Mystery in Space. Meanwhile Marvel had Fantastic Four number 3 and from Archie we got laugh number 131 which
had a Jaguar story. In the news Adolf Eichmann was convicted of crimes he committed during World War II. An angry mob raided the US Embassy in the Congo region of Elizabethville and a huge snowfall in the nation's Midwest claimed 56 lives and several feet of snow from Arizona all the way to New Mexico.
In the movies your ticket got you in to see the thief of Baghdad Dr. Jekyll in his weird show Susan Slade, I bombed Pearl Harbor and Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's. On TV tonight episodes of National Velvet, Pete and Gladys, Danny Thomas, Yancey Derringer and A Rifleman
1961 On the radio a guy who a few years from now would become a sci-fi icon right after being trapped in the time tunnel. This week he got caught at the top of the charts. Here is James Derringer.
Back to you on the weekend as we continue our exclusive conversation with Jeff Kitty of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. You're not going to want to miss that and don't forget you're just a click away from subscribing to us on iTunes and another click or two will get you updates from ComicMix via Facebook, Twitter and Myspace.
See you Saturday.
