Yearly Archive: 2008

Law and Order Over There

Law and Order Over There

  • News
  • January 3, 2008

Just when you thought Law and Order was wearing out its welcome, it turns out there are plans for a fourth – no, make it fifth (one flopped) series. But, according to The Hollywood Reporter, it ain’t gonna be set or filmed in New York City.

Kudos Film and Television, producers of the brilliant British shows Hustle and Life On Mars, is in negotiations with NBC Universal and Wolf Films to do a series presently called Law & Order: London. It would emulate the format employed by all those NBC shows.
 
This wouldn’t be a first for Dick Wolf. There are Russian versions of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (a.k.a. The Sex Show) and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. The latter program also appears in its own unique French version.

Dave Sim and Captain America!

Dave Sim and Captain America!

The concept of a "silent" or pantomime comic strip isn’t exactly new (Little King anyone?) but creator Mark Tatulli has combined the concept with the wondrous imagination of a little boy in his daily Lio. ComicMix Radio lets Mark tell the story of where Lio came from and what’s coming up.

Plus:

  • Dave Sim is back and this sure ain’t Cerebus
  • Get ready for another Lost trailer
  • 24 lives in another new comic
  • We figured out what really happened to Captain America

And you won’t find out unless you Press The Button!

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The GOP Primary Field as Buffy the Vampire Slayer villians

The GOP Primary Field as Buffy the Vampire Slayer villians

  • News
  • January 3, 2008

On the day of the Iowa caucuses, we bring you this post from Neil Sinhababu: The GOP Primary Field as Buffy Villains.

Note Rudy Guiliani as Angelus:

A genuine threat to destroy the world, with a string of broken hearts behind him. 

We’d add: Seems to only shine when the end of the world is nigh. Spends most of his time trying to disavow past actions. Intimately connected with evil law firm which may eventually bring him down.

Solitary Pleasures, by John Ostrander

Solitary Pleasures, by John Ostrander

  • News
  • January 3, 2008
Well, foo.
 
I was working on this great C.O.M. (Cranky Old Man) rant for this week’s column about how technology was making us all more isolated. It was a nice rant, too – it started with the Luddite vision of how, in the old days, people sang together or told stories in order to entertain themselves. It was a group thing and it bound people together. The rant then traced how technology – movies to begin with – changed us from participants to observers and then radio changed it into small family sized units until it was replaced by TV. The rant went on – oh, how it went on – about how the dawning of iPods and cell phones and texting and the Internet was further fracturing us into isolated units and blah blah blah. Really, I was working up a nice head of steam. 
 
Then I looked at what I was doing. At this. At words such as these on the screen or printed on a page. Usually written by one person and then read by one person. What we’re doing, right now, you and I. Reading, in general, is an isolated act, a solitary pleasure. It made mincemeat of my rant.
 

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Torchwood Two Sports James Marsters, Freema Agyeman

Torchwood Two Sports James Marsters, Freema Agyeman

  • News
  • January 3, 2008

Torchwood, the more adult brother to Doctor Who, will be returning to the airwaves on Wednesday, January 16th for another 13 episode run.

To the BBC in the United Kingdom, of course. Its North American debuts will happen… later.

Buffy’s James Marsters (well, also Smallville’s James Marsters and Without A Trace’s James Marsters) is set to become the series’ main villain, a rogue Time Agent named Captain (!) John Hart. As promised, Freema Agyeman will drop by for several episodes mid-season in her role as The Doctor’s companion Martha Jones. After her Torchwood stint, Martha will be returning to Doctor Who to team up with several other companions, present and past. And Torchwood star John Barrowman is expected to be around for the finale to next season’s Doctor Who as well.

But first, Captain Jack must survive Captain John, as well as a slew of other menaces as they "visit" such times as World War I and the 51th Century.

 

Sure Hope Lex Luthor Doesn’t Read This

Sure Hope Lex Luthor Doesn’t Read This

  • News
  • January 2, 2008

According to BBC News, a new mineral matching the configuration of Kryptonite has been discovered in Serbia.

The crystals aren’t green – it’s white and, according to London mineralogist Chris Stanley, it is harmless. Kal-El could not be reached for comment. Hmmmm.

Mining researchers discovered the unusual mineral and could not match it with anything known previously to science. When Dr. Stanley unravelled the mineral’s chemical make-up, he discovered the unique formula was already referenced in literary fiction. I guess there are fanboys everywhere.

"Towards the end of my research I searched the web using the mineral’s chemical formula – sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide – and was amazed to discover that same scientific name, written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen by Lex Luthor from a museum in the film Superman Returns," Stanley told the BBC.

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Everything Old is New (Year) Again, by Elayne Riggs

  • News
  • January 2, 2008

It’s the first business day of 2008 and, as I noted a few weeks ago, time for many pop-culture mavens to present their Best of 2007 lists. Alas, I will not be one of those. I can’t remember most of what I read in 2007, a blur of a year for me at the best of times due to the losses I suffered. But this isn’t new for me; I can barely remember the fiction I read or watch more than a half hour or so afterwards. It’s just the way my mind works. The only time I was able to do yearly wrap-ups and "Best Of"s was when I was regularly reviewing about a dozen comics every week, because I could refer to my previous work, but even then it was tough because I didn’t grade the stuff, I just talked about it.

My low retention rate is one reason why re-reading cherished books I’ve had for years is so fulfilling to me. It contains both the comfort of revisiting something vaguely familiar to me and the excitement of seeing it all anew. I was very happy to have received so many comments on my last column (thanks so much, all!). Obviously children’s books are beloved by a lot of adult pop culture geeks besides me. That’s really wonderful, and I think it proves the point that all-ages stuff really does mean stuff written for the young and the young-at-heart, rather than exclusively for the young. (It probably doesn’t hurt that we’re all comics people too, and have all experienced the knee-jerk reactions of many non-comics readers that we’re too old for our hobby, with its accompanying implicit assumption that all-ages literature ought not be enjoyed by, well, all ages.)

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Leveling down, by Dennis O’Neil

Leveling down, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • January 1, 2008

New Year’s morning.  Cold, wet, bleak.

I’m sure that within easy walk of where I’m sitting, there are people who are wishing they’d done something else last night.  The wages of sin are, indeed, death — death is the wages of everything, sooner or later — but sin can have some more immediate wages in the forms of headaches, sick stomachs, dry-mouth. The self-inflicted results of having a good ol’ time.
 
In Times Square, poor devils who work for the New York City sanitation department are busy cleaning up the detritus from the annual big hoo-hah.  Watching it on television was like glimpsing purgatory: crowds and noise and chaos — not my idea of fun anymore, if it ever was.  But the would-be poet in me is responding to the chilly, soaking sanitation men symbolize: get rid of the old to accommodate the new.  Yeah, ‘t’was ever thus, but we resist the notion, which is really an incarnation of the inevitable, particularly in our national politics.
 
Given the kinds of things the candidates spend most of their energies fussing over, it would seem that we’ve learned nothing in the past seven years.  
 

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A ‘Star Trek’ Fiction Primer

A ‘Star Trek’ Fiction Primer

  • News
  • January 1, 2008

Hitting shelves around the country is Star Trek: A Singular Destiny by Keith R.A. DeCandido, the first novel in the Star Trek universe after the status quo was shaken up in the just-complete Star Trek: Destiny trilogy by David Mack.  When we spoke with Mack a few months ago, he said, “All I’m willing to share at this point is that characters who are dead before the trilogy starts stay dead; characters killed during the trilogy will stay dead afterward; there is no reset button at the end of the story; worlds we’ve heard of before will be destroyed; a species will cease to exist.”

For many intrigued by this, the prose works can seem daunting since they carry the storylines forward from the last season of Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Deep Space 9 and The Next Generation feature films.  DeCandido provided ComicMix with a reading list for those interested in seeing what’s been happening:

Pre-Nemesis

There was a nine-book series that set the groundwork for Nemesis as well as many of the post-Nemesis books. None of them are critical. All nine provide some nice background, particularly on Christine Vale, the security chief on the Enterprise-E who goes on to become Riker’s first officer on Titan, and the final five books set up Riker’s captaincy and engagement to Troi (both established in Nemesis), as well as the political situation we see going forward. It’s also, in essence, Data’s final arc, which runs through all nine.

These books take place from late 2378 to late 2379 (the film took place in late 2379).

A Time to be Born by John Vornholt
A Time to Die by John Vornholt
A Time to Sow by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore
A Time to Harvest by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore
A Time to Love by Robert Greenberger
A Time to Hate by Robert Greenberger
A Time to Kill by David Mack
A Time to Heal by David Mack
A Time for War, a Time for Peace by Keith R.A. DeCandido

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Thar Was The Year That Was

Thar Was The Year That Was

The ball has dropped and Time Square is swept clean, but ComicMix Radio wants to be among the last to drive a nail into 2007 with our own lists of the Cool and the Not So, including our choice for one of the most under appreciated runs in comics (and the picture gives it away) .

Plus:

• It’s quality over quantity this week in our list of new comics and DVDs, which might give you a chance to catch up on all the stuff you bought in December

•  Todd McFarlane shows off The Simpsons

• Image restarts The Golden Age Of Comics

Pressing The Button now is even cooler than it was last year!

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