Yearly Archive: 2008

Fundraiser Update: DC/Warner Bros. Cancer Charity Fiasco, Gene Colan News

It seems as if DC/Warner Bros. have relented a smidge in their decision to shut down a set of auctions benefitting a childhood cancer charity… but only a smidge. Actually, it’s more like a half-smidge. Or possibly a micro-smidge. Anyways…

Thomas Denton reported on his blog this week that DC/Warner Bros. has allowed him to reactivate one of the charity auctions the company had previously shut down. After noticing that the auction had been reinstated on eBay, Denton claims that he sent a letter to DC/Warner Bros. (which he’s posted on his site) asking if this meant he could reactivate all of the aborted auctions.

One of DC/WB’s anti-piracy department representatives responded, telling Denton, "We made a [sic] exemption for the item that was relisted."

Denton writes that he’s currently investigating whether it will be feasible/worthwhile to relist the piece, a Paul Salvi illustration pictured here, but reminds readers that he still has a number of impressive, non-DC properties available on eBay.

In other news, Cliff Meth recently reported on his website that he has spoken with unnamed "executives at Marvel" who "offered Adrienne [wife of suffering artist Gene Colan] and I some of the many things that they plan to do for the Colans to provide immediate and long-term relief." However, Meth offers no further details about the arrangement.

We reported earlier this week on the various ways the industry has rallied to support legendary illustrator Gene Colan as his family struggles to pay for mounting medical costs related to his kidney failure.

Spider-Man 4 and 5 to be Filmed Together?

Cinematical is boasting quite the scoop today, reporting that one of their industry insiders confirmed that Zodiac writer James Vanderbilt has turned in a script for Spider-Man 4 that will stretch over multiple films. Negotiations regarding the script are still going on, so there’s no certainty that Vanderbilt’s two-part story arc will end up on the big screen.

From Cinematical:

… according to our source, "his story arc has encompassed two films, making Spider-Man 5 shootable at the same time. The studio saw dollar signs and is in the process of reworking his deal to snatch up the story arc."

Sure, everyone’s happy now… but wait until they hear the working titles for the films: Spider-Man 4: Brand New Day and Spider-Man 5: The Clone Saga.

sigh

 

Vogue, by Martha Thomases

There is a special exhibition at the Costume Institute at New York’s Metropolitan Musuem of Art called Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy. I haven’t been able to go yet, but according to the exhibit’s web site, the show features costumes designed around these groups:

•The Patriotic Body (Wonder Woman, Captain America)

•The Virile Body (they cite The Hulk and The Thing, which sort of creeps me out)

•The Graphic Body (Superman and other characters with logos)

•The Paradoxical Body (Catwoman and other hyper-sexualized heroines)

•The Armored Body (Iron Man, Steel)

•The Aerodynamic Body (The Flash)

• The Mutant Body (they cite Rogue)

• The Post-Modern Body (Ghost Rider, Punisher).

The show and its parties are sponsored by Conde Nast, DC and Marvel, and Giorgio Armani. The opening night was extremely glamorous, with attendance from stars like George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Tilda Swinton, and the Olsen Twins. Heidi has written great stuff about it at The Beat and the Fug Girls are all over it.

Some of these groupings I understand, and some seem to be redundant (really, is Rogue that much different from Catwoman in the way she’s presented in this show?). However, none of them seem to consider superhero garb the way I did, when I was considering being a superheroine.

It’s true that I was designing my costume when I was eight years old, when fashion was not my foremost concern, nor did I need to worry about where I was going to keep my breasts at that time. I wanted something that would allow me to hide in the shadows, mysteriously, even while showing off my beautiful blonde hair (I had a few blonde cousins, and thought all I needed was more time in the sun to achieve the same golden tresses). Midnight blue, I thought, was the perfect color, at least among those choices in my Crayola box.

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Review: ‘The Question: Poisoned Ground’

  • Uncategorized
  • May 16, 2008

After 20 years, DC is finally collecting Dennis O’Neil and Denys Cowan’s run on The Question, with the second volume, Poisoned Ground ($19.99) out now.

It’s a collection that’s well worth the wait, and I’m not just saying that because the author is one of ComicMix‘s own. While the first collection (Zen and Violence) was good, [[[Poisoned Ground]]] shows the creative team truly finding their voice — think tough and hardscrabble like The Spirit, but with a philosophic bent.

O’Neil explores not just the mind of his hero (who still has plenty of questions for himself), but those of his villains (who are always far more complex than first impressions indicate). The narrative slips between harsh reality and even harsher dreams, a paean to the ugliness of the world.

The book features three standalone stories and one three-issue story, each in turns bizarre, troubling and inspiring. The art is creative, highly detailed and evocative, and O’Neil’s scripts are every bit as inspired and poetic as those of Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman.

Especially now, with Vic Sage having been killed off in the current DCU, these collections are a must-have for fans of The Question, or anyone who likes their comics with plenty of depth.

Happy Birthday: Insect Queen

Lana Lang was one of teenaged Clark Kent’s closest friends, and Superboy’s biggest fan—he was romantically interested in her as well, and she was sometimes referred to as “Superboy’s girlfriend.”

Lana was a normal human girl with no powers of her own—until one May 16th when she rescued an insectoid alien from a fallen tree. The grateful alien gave Lana a biogenetic ring that allowed her to gain the power and partial form of any insect or arachnid, though she could only duplicate a particular form once a day.

The newly empowered Lana decided to try her hand at superheroism and donned a costume to become Insect Queen.

Lana eventually became a reserve member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, but got tired of her double life and began using her ring more sparingly.

‘Marvel Universe Online’ – Why They Killed It

That’s weird. We were just talking about Marvel Universe Online a few days ago. The massively multiplayer online role-playing game (think World of Warcraft with Spider-Man and the X-Men) based on Marvel comics superheroes. Joystiq.com writer Christopher Grant got to have dinner recently with Shane Kim, VP of Microsoft Games Studios, and asked him why it was canceled.

Basically, Microsoft owned up to the fact they don’t do MMOs well.

"We don’t have a heritage of MMOs," said Kim. The article went on to list several MMO attempts that Microsoft attempted that failed. "It’s a hits-driven business … it’s all about quality, all about hits."

A link to a Gamasutra.com piece shed more light:

Given the rumors of confusion on the dev team about what the game was going to be like at a fundamental level, pulling support from the project seems like a no-brainer. That said, I think MUO’s death highlights Microsoft’s sordid history with Massively Multiplayer games.

I think that the fact that we’re still talking about Marvel Universe Online several months after it was officially canceled shows that the concept is still compelling and viable. But there’s no arguing that outside of a few MMO hits, the landscape is littered with flops from many different companies. Remember The Matrix Online or Star Wars Galaxies? Not surprising when you consider it’s a subscription-based business. How many of us just have HBO and consider that good enough instead of also getting Showtime?

I like to imagine, though, that Uatu the Watcher is spying on one of his "What If…?" universes where Marvel Universe Online game out and was more popular then Warcraft. Of course, the game would be populated by a thousand variations of Spider-Man and Wolverine with names like "5piDer-MaN" and "Wolverine Gets High."

The Weekly Haul: Reviews for April 3, 2008

  • Uncategorized
  • May 16, 2008

Let’s be honest: It was a forgettable week for comics. Both Marvel and DC are still trying to get their summer events off the ground, and the rest of their books seem to be treading water. And while a few decent indies hit the shelves this week, none were exceptional.

So, if that’s not enough to get you excited for a big batch of reviews, I don’t know what is.

bprd5-5398774Book of the Week: BPRD 1946 #5 — For a series that started out with three and a half low-key books, BPRD 1946 goes out with a frenetic climax, as Bruttenholm and pals do their darndest to prevent a payload of monsters from being launched into America.

There are also monkeys. Lots and lots of monkeys, all captured in crazed fashion by artist Paul Azaceta (read my interview with Paul right here).

This book continues to work well as narrative backfill, showing the Bruttenholm’s transition from fighting Nazis to raising Hellboy. While there are allusions to events to come, the story never obsesses with self reference, as it’s too busy having fun. Sample dialogue from the villain: "You’re in over your head, stranger! You and your popgun army!"

Lots of credit to Mike Mignola and co-writer Joshua Dysart for pumping out yet another Hellboy property while keeping the quality sky-high. (You can also read my interview with Dysart right here.)

Runner Up:

DMZ #31 — This series seems to have finally pulled itself out of a long dry spell of one-and-done books that strayed too far from the central narrative. We’re back to Matty in his role of journalist/angry-young-dude, as he covers the campaign of Parco, a mix of Hugo Chavez and Barack Obama who’s trying to jostle the system. As expected, the system doesn’t like being jostled.

When this series is clicking, Brian Wood does a beautiful job of paralleling real events and politics without straining. The DMZ story works all by itself, but it still offers commentary on things like the current election season and Iraq.

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Manga Friday: Toto & Tokugawa

Manga Friday returns after a brief hiatus — I was on a secret mission in Darkest Florida, and unable to read manga and coherently think about them for several days — with a look at two very, very different books. We’ll start with the easier one to explain.

Toto!: The Wonderful Adventure, Vol. 1
By Yuko Osada
Del Rey Manga, May 2008, $10.95

Toto! is an adventure story about Kakashi, a boy who desperately wants to get off the small island he was born on and get out into the wide world to have adventures. (Not to do anything in particular, just to "have adventures." Manga boy-heroes are often oddly nonspecific. Kakashi’s father, similarly, was famous as "an explorer.") While somewhere there is probably a humorous manga series about a guy who keeps trying and failing to leave his hometown — come to think of it, I’d like to read something like that myself — Toto! falls into the more usual pattern, and Kakashi stows away on a blimp almost as soon as the story begins.

(Toto! is set in the indeterminate future, not an alternate history, depsite the presence of airships. It is an iron rule of alternate-history stories that every possible world but our own is completely covered in zeppelins, and I guess the same may hold true for odd, indefinite futures.)

But just getting onto the zeppelin is not nearly enough; it has been hijacked by the Man Chicken gang, who forced all of the passengers and crew to dive into the sea as they stole the airship for a quick getaway to their secret hideout. (more…)

‘Hellboy: The Science of Evil’ Gameplay Footage Released

What, you didn’t get to play the Hellboy: The Science of Evil demo at New York Comic Con? I’m so sorry. Your tears taste so sweet.

*Ahem* Sorry…

Well if you’re curious how the game looks in motion, Konami has released the first official gameplay footage. Hellboy faces off against goblins, werewolves, Japanese demons and weird stuff that could only be imagined by Mike Mignola. As you can see for yourself it takes cues from God of War and Ninja Gaiden type games: crazy, over the top beat ’em ups with big boss battles.

Opening up the videogame console war debate once again, there were slight differences in the game from system to system. The graphics on the PlayStation 3 version were crisper, while the Xbox 360 version played smoother. The PSP version was less detailed, but the difference was barely noticeable on the portable’s smaller screen. All three versions played the same graveyard level where Hellboy fought a host of goblins. The lock-on system was not easy or natural, but I did enjoy ripping a goblin’s head off to use as a grenade.

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Cool Like That, by Michael Davis

 

What is cool?

As comic book fans we are pretty much in the forefront of what cool is. The history of comics is an encyclopedia of coolness. If it were not for rock’n’roll, comics would be the absolute standard of coolness. Take a look all the stuff that comics are responsible for in popular culture.

We each have our own gauge of what cool is. Me? I’m all over the place with what or who I think is cool. I think George Clooney is cool and I have little respect for “movie stars,” as any regular reader of this column knows. I think that Gary Shandling is cool and one of the funniest men on the planet. I think that DC comics are cool even if I have had issues with them and they have with me. I think American Idol is cool mostly ,because so many so-called “hip” people think it’s lame. I think HGTV is cool. I think that Stan Lee is cool because he has earned that title. I think that Prince and Patrick Swayze are cool. To me Alan Greenspan is cool and so is Brian Williams.

The shows Family Guy and American Dad are cool but so is every one of those Law and Order shows. Mike Richardson and Dark Horse comics are cool. The staff at Comic Con International and the staff at The Westin Horton Plaza Hotel (especially Jean) are cool. I think the Amish are cool. I know that ComicMix is cool.

 
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