Yearly Archive: 2008

Don Rosa Recovering From Emergency Surgery

  • News
  • March 26, 2008

It probably goes without saying that an artist’s most significant tools are his eyes. People have figured out alternate ways of drawing, but they’ve got to see what they’re doing. So it is with great trepidation that we note legendary Disney Duck artist Don Rosa, a regular at many a convention and fan event, underwent emergency surgery last week to cure a detached retina.

It will not be known if the procedure was successful for several more weeks, but Don is resting at home (in a prone position) and will have to undergo six months of recovery downtime. He hopes to return to the convention scene this fall.

Following in the websteps of Carl Barks is not easy, but Don has always made it look like a cakewalk by combining a variety of influences (notably Mad‘s Willy Elder) with his own unique gifts to bring Uncle Scrooge and the sundry Ducks to a whole new generation across the world. His work has been anthologized and is available at better comics shops across the planet.

ComicMix wishes Don a speedy, painless and successful recovery.

Happy Birthday: José Luis Garcia-Lopez, Brian Bolland, and Mark Verheiden

dcp1g1-4128278Today is a popular birthday for comic book creators! Three very different comic book luminaries all share March 26.

José Luis Garcia-Lopez was born in Spain in 1948 but moved to Argentina in 1952. Growing up he worked on several Argentinian comic strips, and in the late 1960s he began doing romance titles for Charlton Comics. Garcia-Lopez moved to New York in 1974 to work for DC. He’s best known for his art on Superman.

Brian Bolland was born in 1951 in Lincolnshire, England, and began drawing at age 10. He went to art school and published work in various underground magazines, then met Dave Gibbons at a comic convention in 1972. Gibbons recommended him to Bardon Press Features and Bolland began drawing comics professionally. In 1977, he found work on the new British comic 2000 AD, and soon became a regular artist on Judge Dredd. In 1979 Bolland began working for DC Comics, doing both covers and shorts. Perhaps his most famous image is the cover to Batman: The Killing Joke.

Mark Verheiden was born in 1956. He started writing comics in 1987, creating The American for Dark Horse. The following year he wrote his first Aliens comic. Verheiden then wrote several Superman stories and a Phantom maxi-series for DC Comics. He also works in television and film, and has contributed scripts to Smallville and other series. He currently serves as co-executive producer of the popular Battlestar Galactica television series.

‘Star Trek: Year Four’ Review

  • News
  • March 26, 2008

When I was a wee lad of, oh, let’s say 13, to hear the words "untold tales" was a thrill in itself.

"What’s that, you say? In this story, I will discover that Wolverine met Spider-Man’s parents for about an hour several months before the web-spinning super-hero was even born? And it turns out Green Lantern’s landlord was once involved with the Russian mob? Awesome! How did I live before now?"

But now, I am in my mid-20s, long past the prime of life, and my standards are a mite higher. A story that fills in gaps of the past for its own sake just isn’t enough. It must also be a good story by itself. It must be able to entertain me and interest me and, if at all possible, elicit emotional reactions from me that would make even a positronic android react with a cry of "Neat!"

And so, let’s talk about the first comic book miniseries entitled Star Trek: Year Four (IDW Publishing), which was written by David Tischman and penciled by Steve Conley, and which has recently been collected as a trade paperback. In the original Star Trek TV series, Kirk informed audiences every week that the Enterprise was engaging in a "five-year mission" of exploration. Sadly, the show was cancelled after its third season. Tischman and Conley’s series attempts to inform us all about just what happened next, long before the time that the Star Trek films picked up. (more…)

NPR on Joss Whedon, Jodi Picoult and Percy Carey

  • Uncategorized
  • March 26, 2008

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My favorite source of commute-killing entertainment, National Public Radio, just posted online three interviews with three very different comics writers.

While comics is their common thread, Joss Whedon, Jodi Picoult and Percy Carey are each coming into the industry in their own way. Whedon we all know about, and most are familiar with Picoult, who was actually the first female writer on Wonder Woman (not Gail Simone, as the New York Times wrote) after having a successful run of novels.

Carey is the most unique, having gritted his way to superstar status in the underground rap scene, only to fall into dealing drugs and constant gang fights that eventually left him crippled.

Here’s an excerpt:

For Percy Carey, who raps under the stage name MF Grimm, writing graphic novels meant not just learning to speak a new language, but also appreciating the value of the story he was telling. While Whedon and Picoult were dealing with the fantastic, Carey’s graphic novel, Sentences, is an autobiographical account of the shooting that left him paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair.

The idea that he could tell his story as a graphic novel came to him after he discovered American Splendor, a series of comics based on author Harvey Pekar’s life.

"Once I came across American Splendor, it convinced me that I wanted to take a chance and step in the medium of graphic novels. I just have a lot of respect for the form," says Carey.

Interview: Brandon Jerwa on ‘Battlestar Galactica: Season Zero’

  • News
  • March 26, 2008

Writer Brandon Jerwa has had a varied and interesting career since beginning in comics early in 2001. Not letting rejection deter him, he persevered and eventually landed a job as a writer for the G.I. Joe comic book series. Later, Jerwa took on other television tie-in comics such as Highlander from Dynamite Entertainment — which he co-wrote with Michael Oeming.

During that time, he also wrote a backstory series about the Battlestar Galactica television character Tom Zarek. Due in part to his success with Zarek, Jerwa next took on a new comic for Dynamite titled Battlestar Galactica: Season Zero — a prequel of sorts to the Sci-Fi Channel TV series.

Now, with Season Zero rocketing towards a thriling conclusion in issue twelve, ComicMix caught up with Jerwa to talk about how he became the "go-to" guy for Battlestar Galactica at Dynamite, what we can expect from Season Zero as it finishes up and what other plans Jerwa has up his sleeve.

COMICMIX: Brandon, for people who might not know, can you give us a bit of info on your background? Did you read comics as a kid?

BRANDON JERWA: My first comic was an early issue of Star Wars when I was 4 or 5. I had all those early issues and they were definitely a huge thing to me, but I think Spider-Man and Batman made their way into the house pretty quickly after that! I don’t really remember a time when I didn’t have comic books.

My parents were supportive of the habit, so I’d always get at least one new book every time we’d go the grocery store or Kwik-E-Mart (ah, those were the days) and a long road trip was a surefire guarantee of a big pile of comics.

CMix: What were your favorites?

BJ: My favorites as a kid were Star Wars, Avengers, all the Spider-titles, including the most awesome  one, Marvel Team-Up; along with Marvel Two-In One, Detective Comics, Power Man and Iron Fist, Justice League of America and Teen Titans. G.I. Joe obviously made a huge impression on me.

I also have an undying love for Rom: Spaceknight.

CMix: How did you get started writing comics?

BJ: Well, I’m told that I’m the exception to the rule. I was living with my wife and infant son in Portland, Oregon when I started. It was 2001 and I was unemployed, so I thought I’d use my time playing stay-at-home dad to shoot for the Big Dream.

I wrote two scripts – one a G.I. Joe pitch for Devil’s Due and an original superhero piece for Dark Horse. A few months later, Dark Horse had given me my first rejection letter, but Devil’s Due apparently thought I was the man for the job.

My two-part script was extended to four parts and became my G.I. Joe: Frontline arc "History Repeating." Just a few months after those issues hit stands, I was the new regular writer of G.I. Joe.

CMix: How much did you know about Battlestar Galactica before you started writing any of the comics? Are you a fan of the Sci-Fi Channel show or the original ’80s version? (more…)

Play and Win: Classic ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Game

  • News
  • March 26, 2008

Can you hear me now?

Oh, Verizon. Not only do you sponsor some of our favorite shows with your funny ads starring the quality assurance tech, but you’re buying our love by sponsoring a contest featuring three of our favorite things – comics, games, and ’80s nostalgia.

Starting today, gamers who play the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1989 Classic Arcade Xbox 360 game online after registering at the Verizon Family Game Night Play and Win Sweepstakes website are automatically entered for a chance to win an Xbox 360 120GB Hard Drive and Xbox 360 Universal Remote. The TMNT portion of the contest ends March 31st, so hurry up and kick some shell.

(ComicMix apologizes for not telling you about last week’s Spider-Man: Friend or Foe portion of the Play and Win contest. How’d we miss that?)

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In My Ears and In My Eyes (Part 2), by Elayne Riggs

  • News
  • March 26, 2008

whirledpeace-8842297So as I was saying last week, by the time I hit college I went full-force into my first round of Beatlemania. I must have frequented my share of Beatlefests (as noted in the comments to last week’s column, there’s one coming up in NJ this weekend), but really only remember going to one because that’s where I got Harry Nilsson’s autograph, on the cover of his album A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night (for a reason I no longer remember, I have Jimmy Webb’s autograph on the back). From what I hear, they’re still going on. But the Beatles started influencing pretty much everything else in my life.

I named my fictitious corporation Pen-Elayne (wordplay on "Penny Lane" and "the pen of Elayne") Enterprises, which pun I borrowed again for my weekly comics reviews Pen-Elayne for Your Thoughts and my current blog Pen-Elayne on the Web. Penny Lane really became my theme song; I’d always envisaged something I can only describe as God’s Hidden Camera following my every move, so the line "And though she feels as if she’s in a play, she is anyway" really resonated. Particularly now with Google’s Street View!

Having already gone through two years of Shakespeare in high school, I was primed to expand my Anglophilia, and the Beatles were a perfect outlet for my fascination of all things English. That interest has since culminated in marriage to an actual Englishman who, although four years my junior, is probably more knowledgeable about Beatles trivia than I’ll ever be, has hundreds of bootleg songs, keeps up on all the news items of what’s happening with their music, and generally makes my head spin. Oh, and even though Robin is a southern country boy, we like to goof around with pretty bad imitations of Liverpool accents (okay, his is better than mine, as you’d expect). Through Rob I also met artist Alan Davis and my lettering goddess Pat Prentice, who both share a birthday with Sir Paul. I seem to remember Alan introducing me to Pat by joking that she "sounds like Ringo," since she’s also from Mersey-way. (She doesn’t, although I find a female Liverpool accent as cute as a male one.) (more…)

‘Hellboy: The Science of Evil’ Screenshots Debut

  • News
  • March 25, 2008

Sure, Hellboy rebelled against Satan’s plan to conquer the world, but he’s doing just fine on his own these days.

Mike Mignola’s character debuted in comic books, but has gone on to be a hit  in novels, toys, movies and animation. Now, Konami has released new screenshots from their upcoming Hellboy: The Science of Evil videogame.

The game will allow fans to take on the roles of Hellboy, Abe Sapien, Liz Sherman and Johann Kraus against the evil Nazi Herman von Klempt. Although the game’s continuity is independent of the movies, it features the voice talent of actors from the original film, as well as the upcoming Hellboy II: The Golden Army, including Ron Perlman, Selma Blair and Doug Jones. 

The game will support online and offline multiplayer co-op for up to four players. Hellboy: The Science of Evil is scheduled for a summer 2008 release on PlayStation 3, PSP and Xbox 360.

Jon Sable, Freelance: A Nuke as Big as the Ritz

  • News
  • March 25, 2008

In today’s brand-new episode of Jon Sable, Freelance: Ashes of Eden, by Mike Grell, Jon gets to the bottom of the scheme behind the scheme to steal one of the world’s biggest diamonds.

Is it a plan to enrich the rich — or is it something much, much worse?

Credits:Glenn Hauman (Colorist), Glenn Hauman (Assistant Editor), John Workman (Letterer), Mike Gold (Editor), Mike Grell (Artist), Mike Grell (Writer)

More: Jon Sable Freelance: Ashes of Eden

 

 

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R.I.P. Fletcher Hanks Jr., Son of ‘Stardust’ Creator

  • News
  • March 25, 2008

In last year’s collection of Fletcher Hanks comics, I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets, one of its best features was an epilogue written and illustrated by Paul Karasik that explained his effort to track down Hanks, or at least one of his relatives.

Karasik ended up at the door of Fletcher Hanks Jr., a great man in his own right who shed a lot of light on his father. Strangely enough, Hanks Jr. had never even known that his father illustrated comics, let alone had become something of an idol in the indie comics community.

According to a story posted on Karasik’s Web site, Hanks Jr. died on March 16 after a March 8 auto accident. He was 90.

Among comics fans, Hanks Jr. will always be known as the son of the evil genius of the Golden Age. But it’s important to recognize his accomplishments, many of which overshadow his father’s legacy:

Hanks, known for his action-adventure life and strong opinions, is best known for his experience "flying The Hump," both in wartime and years later in the commemoration of his fallen comrades, and his book, Saga of CNAC 53, which chronicled those events. He often said his life’s work was remembering his 23,000 friends who died in the war.

From July 1942 to August 1945, Hanks, sometimes called "Christy" by his colleagues, flew 347 trips in unarmed C-47s delivering supplies to inaccessible areas of China using a path from India over the south ridge of the Himalayas called "The Hump." Years later, in 1997, he returned to China and he and a group of Chinese soldiers found the wreckage of CNAC 53, the airplane piloted by American Jim Fox and his Chinese co-pilot and operator.

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