Monthly Archive: December 2008

When Milton Caniff broke away from [[[Terry and the Pirates]]] to create (and own) [[[Steve Canyon]]], he began an odyssey that lasted from January 13, 1947 until his death and the strip faded with him on June 4, 1988. Along the way, he populated the strip with friends, family and enemies, bringing a serialized melodrama to the newspapers while also supporting the armed forces.  Canyon was an ex-WW II pilot who re-enlisted when America entered the Korean conflict. He never left the service from that point, which allowed Caniff to send our hero around the world multiple times.

While the strip was popular with readers, and respected by fellow cartoonists, it didn’t spawn the usual assortment of merchandise.  Few today recall there was even a short-lived television series that aired on NBC from 1958-1959.  In all, there were 34 episodes which began with Canyon as a traveling nomad until halfway through the season when he became commanding officer at Big Thunder Air Force Base. At $48,000 per episode, it was the most expensive show from the three networks and its middling ratings didn’t justify renewal.  After rerunning on ABC in 1960, it vanished.

Fans of Caniff have worked with the estate to lovingly restore the series and has begun releasing the series on DVD.  Three volumes, collecting all 34 episodes, are expected with the first being released a few weeks back.

Dean Fredericks stars as Canyon and resembles his print counterpart, playing the role with a deadpan, serious demeanor.  As happened in the 1950s, our television stars are flawless role models who always know best.  None of the rich supporting cast made it to the series, which left the show all the poorer.  In fact, the show seriously lacked supporting characters to play off Canyon which also made the show feel thin.

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In May 2009, NBM Publishing brings back one of the 20th century’s great comic strips. George McManus’ Bringing Up Father is the third and latest in NBM’s Forever Nuts series of classic screwball strips. In 1913, McManus started a comic strip about Jiggs and Maggie, a lower-class couple who came into money. “While the snobbish Maggie and beautiful daughter Nora (referred to various times as Katy and Mamie in the strip’s early days) constantly try to ‘bring up’ Father to his new social position,” comics expert Clark Holloway has said, “Jiggs can think of nothing finer than sitting down at Dinty Moore’s restaurant to finish off several dishes of corned beef and cabbage, followed by a night out with the boys from the old neighborhood. The clash of wills that ensued often resulted in flying rolling-pins, smashed crockery, and broken vases, all aimed in the general direction of Jiggs’s skull.“ McManus’ Bringing Up Father became the 20th century’s second longest running strip. It ran from January 12, 1913 until its end on May 28, 2000.

Now, Forever Nuts presents all the dailies of this classic comic strip’s first two years, many of which have not been reprinted since they first appeared nearly a century ago. Discover why McManus became known as one of the greats in the field.

George McManus’ Bringing Up Father will be a jacketed hardcover, 11” x 6” inches,with black-and-white interior art — the same handsome format as the previous FOREVER NUTS books, Mutt and Jeff and Happy Hooligan.

KBS TV, a South Korean network has reported that SSD has signed an agreement with Fox TV Studios to co-produce and distribute a live action TV series based on Tsukasa Hojo’s City Hunter manga.  ICv2 reports the 13-episode first season of City Hunter will be written in English like a and translated for worldwide distribution. 

The series is about Ryo Saeba, known as a “sweeper”, who tries to eliminate crime from Tokyo.  He’s aided by Kaori Makimura, a young woman who tries to handle his business affairs. He’s hired by people who scrawl XYZ on Shinjuku Station’s blackboard.

Korean actor Chung Woo-sung has already been signed to play the lead and SSD, a Korean production entity, hopes to populate the series with “many famous Hollywood stars.”  The Korean network notes Chung Woo-sung will be the first Asian actor to play the lead in a domestic drama. Many other series have had Asians as supporting layers or part of an ensemble. Production begins in the first half of 2009, shooting in Tokyo and Seoul.

Japan’s Shonen Jump was home to City Hunter from 1985-1991, and spawned four anime series, three TV specials, two OVAs, an anime feature, and a 1992 live action Hong Kong movie starring Jackie Chan. In America, it was serialized in Gutsoon!’s Raijin Comics through volume five only.
 

The Spirit earned a mere $6.5 million during the three day holiday weekend, good for just ninth place on the top ten.  Based on numbers from Box Office Mojo, the Lionsgate film earned an average of $2595 per screen compared with the number one film’s $10.632.

Marley & Me, like The Spirit, earned lackluster reviews but given an adorable dog and Jennifer Aniston, the movie was essentially critic proof and just the kind of warm, cuddly feel-good film audiences have been craving since the economic downturn began this fall.  The movie exceed expectations by about $10 million and took in $37 million. It also broke the previous Christmas Day record, talking in $14.7 million.

In comparison, Frank Miller’s interpretation of Will Eisner’s classic character met with horrified reviews from those familiar with the source material and poor reviews from everyone else.  Even factoring in Christmas Day, the film earned a mere $10,352,000 and is considered the second straight misfire for Lionsgate, which also flopped with Punisher War Zone at the beginning of the month. It already left theaters by Christmas Eve and was not tracked in the top 50 films.  Since its opening, the $35 million production earned only $8,050,977   domestically.

Adam Sandler’s comedy Bedtime Stories took second place, earning $28.1 million while Aniston’s ex, Brad Pitt, saw his Curious Case of Benjamin Button grab the third slot with an opening weekend gross of $27 million, exceeding expectations. The latter film is already appearing on 10 Best lists and has earned multiple awards nominations.

Fourth place went to Valkyrie which, despite mixed reviews, also exceeded expectations with $21.5 million in ticket sales. Yes Man fell from first place to fifth in just one week, taking in an addition $16.5 million and a 10 day gross of $49.6 million.

Will Smith’s charm may prove more of a draw than expected as his Seven Pounds saw it drop a mere 9.8% and it took in another $13.4 million, raising its two week total to $39 million. The Tale of Despereaux also saw a slight dip from its opening weekend, a mere 7.3% slide and earned an addition $9.368,000. Keanu Reeve’s The Day the Earth Stood Still, dropped 20% and took in just $7.9 million, good for $63,615,000 after three weeks.

Twilight is slowing down gently but with $167 million, it has more than earned a tidy profit for Summit Entertainment.

Disney’s rollout of sleeper hit Slumdog Millionaire continues to grow and has earned $19,661,000 as it widens its reach while continuing to hit top 10 lists.

A lot of the other serious fare continues to perform in limited release and will more than likely dominate the charts in January as the platform release patterns grow.

As 2008 winds down, the future looms large and one of the murkiest predictions regards the future of newspapers.  With people increasingly getting their news from the Internet, newspapers seem to serve readers with advertising circulars, classifieds and the comics. As various papers struggle with declining advertising revenue, they have shrunk newsrooms, dropped pages, reduced their size and trimmed features.  Newspapers that carried two or three pages of comic strips are half that size and it gets harder for new cartoonists to gain a toehold.

Today’s New York Times takes a look at the future of the comic strip as it reaches beyond newsprint to reach audiences.  The article quotes Pearls Before Swine’s Stephan Pastis as saying, “Newspapers are declining. For a syndicated cartoonist, that’s like finally making it to the major leagues and being told the stadiums are all closing, so there’s no place to play.”

The article went on to cover United Feature Syndicate’s increased emphasis on free archives of their strips at Comics.com and Universal Press Syndicate’s Uclick mobile phone option. As for the cartoonists themselves, the Times says they’re searching for survival by posting their works on the web at sites such as Comic Genesis and Webcomics Nation.