Lone Justice: Crash! is the new graphic novel from the Harvey award nominated team of Robert Tinnell and Mark Wheatley. This two-fisted pulp adventure began Monday on ComicMix, but how does it all come together?
Mark Wheatley has taken the time to set up a video camera and show you exactly how he puts the entire package together. Take a look:
Today’s installment of comic-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest…
* The Simpsons are ramping up for their 20th Anniversary. Yes, you really are that old.
* J. Steven York finds a picture of a new species of flying Beetle.
* Ever wonder what Schroder was actually playing in the strips? It really was Beethoven.
* Whoopi Goldberg has returned to acting, working for a new SF/horror series run by our friends at FEAR.net.
* Sam Raimi wants Morbius in Spider-Man 4? Veeeeery interestink.
Anything else? Consider this an open thread.
Mexican actor Ricardo Montalban, best known to ComicMixers as Khan Noonien Singh or the enigmatic Mr. Roarke, died today at age 88.
According to the Associated Press, Montalban died this morning at his home in California. No cause of death was provided.
"The Ricardo Montalban Theatre in my Council District – where the next generations of performers participate in plays, musicals, and concerts – stands as a fitting tribute to this consummate performer," city council by president Eric Garcetti said in a written statement.
The flamboyant actor began his acting career in his native land before coming to Hollywood to become a star for MGM. He made his American debut opposite swimming star Esther Williams in 1946’s Fiesta.
As a working actor in the 1960s, Gene Roddenberry cast him as Khan, the Genetics War exile in the 1966 episode of Star Trek, “Space Seed”. Years later, director Nicholas Meyer was captivated by the performance and wondered what Khan would be like 15 years later, leading to the story behind Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
In between, Montalban also played the heavy in the Cathy Lee Gibson Wonder Woman telefilm before straddling the line between good and evil as the host of Fantasy Island. In his white suit and twinkling eyes, people’s fears and desires were made manifest from 1978-1984.
He was also a long running automobile pitchman, waxing rhapsodic about the car’s rich Corinthian leather, which was later parodied for years.
A crippling back injury occurred during the filming of 1952’s Across the Wide Missouri. He was thrown by a horse and stepped on a second horse. When it recurred in 1993, he was limited to a wheelchair and surgery only made the situation worse, limiting his film and television work over the last 15 years although he did manage to appear in including The Naked Gun as well as two films from both the Planet of the Apes and Spy Kids series.
Patrick McGoohan died Tuesday in Los Angeles after a short illness, his son-in-law, film producer Cleve Landsberg, said. He was 80.
Patrick Joseph McGoohan was born March 19, 1928 in Astoria, Queens, NY, raised in Ireland and the UK. He rose to fame in the British film and TV industry by starring in the 1960s television series Danger Man (renamed Secret Agent when exported to the US) playing John Drake, a role which made him the highest paid actor in England at the time.
McGoohan won two Emmys for his work on the Peter Falk detective drama Columbo, and more recently appeared as King Edward Longshanks in the 1995 Mel Gibson film Braveheart. He portrayed the father (and predecessor) of the Phantom in the 1996 movie.
But he was most famous as the character known only as Number Six in The Prisoner, a sci-fi tinged 1960s British series in which a former unnamed spy is held captive in a small enclave known only as The Village, where a mysterious authority named Number One constantly prevents his escape. McGoohan not only starred in the series, he created it, and wrote and directed many episodes. It’s currently being remade as a miniseries for AMC.
At the time of his death, McGoohan was mostly retired, living in Los Angeles, California with his wife of 57 years, Joan Drummond McGoohan. Along with his three daughters, he had five grandchildren (Sarah, Erin, Simon, Nina, and Paddy). On June 11, 2008, he became a great-grandfather to Jack Patrick Lockhart.
To promote its new reinterpretation of the show which just wrapped shooting and scheduled to premiere in November, AMC started streaming the original series in full screen last week. If you’ve never seen them before, go look.
Alan’s War: The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope
By Emmanuel Guibert
First Second, November 2008, $24.00
French cartoonist Guibert met Alan Cope in 1994 on a small island off the coast of France, where Cope was living in retirement and Guibert was visiting on vacation. The older man gave the young man directions, and a friendship bloomed. Soon, Cope was telling Guibert the stories of his service in the US Army during WW II. The two expected to turn those stories into comics – and it’s not clear how much of this book had Cope’s direct input and corrections – but Cope died in 1999, partway through the project, and the final book bears only Guibert’s name.
But Alan’s War is very much Alan Cope’s story, in his own voice – it’s extensively narrated in Cope’s voice, with pages and pages of text that appear to be directly from Guibert’s notes and conversations.
Cope was born in 1925 in Southern California, and grew up in Pasadena when that was still a quiet area of orange groves. (Guibert says in his introduction that he has another set of notes and stories from Alan, about his childhood, and that he expects to turn those into a companion graphic novel some time in the future.) In February of 1943, Cope turned 18, and was immediately drafted – there was, of course, a war on at the time.
[[[Alan’s War]]] is divided into three sections, each originally published as a separate book in France. The first covers Cope’s time in uniform on American soil – he went over by train immediately to Fort Knox, but then stayed there for more than a year and a half, first learning to be part of a tank crew, then going to radio school, and eventually becoming a radio instructor. He was clearly good at all of these things – though we are getting the story from him directly, if that matters – but the upshot was that he stayed stateside for some of the bloodiest fighting of the war. There are plenty of entertaining stories in the first section, but they’re not essentially wartime stories; they could have happened to any conscript soldier at any time, since they’re all stories of training and friends on the base and going into town.
[[[
Mirrors]]] are a reflection of reality or can be twisted into something that reveals another way to look at the world. Ever since they were invented, the Greeks first thought your soul might be trapped within. Through the years, stories have been told about what mirrors do or do not reveal. Demons were thought to be revealed by mirrors while vampires do not cast reflections. It’s a rich subject that can make a wonderful thriller or horror movie. The summer 2008 Mirrors, directed by Alexandre Aja, is not a worthy addition to the sub-genre.
Largely based on 2003’s [[[Into the Mirror]]] from South Korea, the movie involves a mirror universe, a demon, a divided family, and lots of ominous music. Keifer Sutherland stars as Ben Carson, a New York police detective currently on suspension and taking a job as a night watchman at an abandoned department store to support his family. Carson’s a mess. He’s defined by his job and without it, he began drinking which led him to be thrown out of his home by his loving wife Amy (Paula Patton), deprived of access to his two children. Instead, he’s sleeping on his sister Angela’s (Amy Smart) couch and ripe for a mental breakdown. As a result, he’s slow to accept that he’s seeing things in the mirrors that remain remarkably clean.
Over the course of nearly two hours, he learns that there’s a malevolent spirit trapped in the mirror world and has been accessing the real world through mirrors to manipulate various people to try and free it. Being the good cop that he is, Carson traces the building’s history and learns it was once a psychiatric hospital, and its unique treatment room remains intact. He then traces the key patient who was treated there and learns she had been possessed by the spirit but it was cast into the mirror and others will continue to suffer and die until the demon is vanquished.
Over the course of nearly two hours, the audience is treated to a tremendous amount of unexplained characterization and world building. Carson’s predecessor sends him a box of clippings that provide a key clue, but since it was shipped after his death and to someone he never met, we’re never told how that worked. We know little of this mirror world and how some they move through space and time, which becomes a vital plot point towards the climax. The police investigations into some of these incidents, including Angela’s death, never seem to be carried out.
In the spirit of coming together, a number of stores are taking Amazing Spider-Man #583, featuring Spider-Man meeting Barack Obama, a comic that they know they’re going to sell out of when it goes on sale today, and are using the money to help others.
Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan has announced that they’re donating money from the sales to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.
Wonderworld Comics in Taylor, Michigan is offering a variety of deals: buy a store gift certificate for $100, for example, and get the Obama Spider-Man issue for free. Wonderworld is donating some proceeds to the Hero Initiative.
We think this should be encouraged, so if you are running any such benefits, or if you hear of any of them, send a quick note to us here, or post it in the comments, and we’ll update this entry to include it. (Hat tip: Patricia Montemurri, Detroit Free Press.)
First, the moment of zen:
So, since her next-to-last book only moved 126,000 units (we don’t have numbers on her new book yet) who should Ann Coulter be taking advice from?
Well, Stephenie Meyer, for one, who sold about 15 million books last year. (No exaggeration — her "Twilight" books held four of the top ten spots for 2008 in the US, according to Nielsen Bookscan.) Jeff Kinney, for another, who sold 721,000 copies of Diary Of A Wimpy Kid and 696,000 of Roderick Rules. (She should also be listening to Barack Obama, who sold 1.44 million books, though somehow I doubt she will; Jodi Picoult, J.K. Rowling, James Patterson, Christopher Paolini, and yes, Bill O’Reilly, who moved 387,000 of his new book last year.)
How about comics? Well, Secret Invasion moved 1.3 million issues total as the best selling comic of last year, I guess Ann has to listen to Brian Michael Bendis. And Peter David too, he sold about 460,000 issues of Dark Tower: Long Road Home. That will just make Peter’s day. Alan Moore, too, with the best-selling graphic novels of 2008– even 20 years old.
Now that Val Armorr’s dead, Hollywood thinks it’s safe to remake The Karate Kid. And now that Pat Morita’s dead, they’ve decided to cast Jackie Chan as Mr. Miyagi.
Variety also reports that the remake will star Will Smith’s son Jaden as the kid, and it will “borrow elements of the original plot” and shoot this summer in Beijing. But don’t worry, they’ll still have to run that disclaimer at the end of the film that acknowledges DC Comics. And I’ll bet cash right now they’ll have "wax on, wax off".
Today’s installment of comic-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest…
* Even Batman can’t save everybody at Warner Brothers from a lousy economy. Reuters reports the studio is considering ways to cut its budget by 10 percent, saving tens of millions of dollars via layoffs or other steps. "No decisions have been made," said a Warner Bros spokesman regarding the cost cuts, which are widely expected to result in an unspecified number of layoffs at the studio. Warner Bros is owned by Time Warner Inc, which last week projected a loss for the year, compared with a previous forecast of earnings of $1.04 to $1.07 per share.
Hey… isn’t DC Comics owned by Warner Brothers? Watch your backs, folks.
* Hexed #1. Free. Downloadable. CBZ file, even. Enjoy. I did.
* ICV2: "Titan Books has announced the expansion of its publishing agreement with Golden Age comics pioneer Joe Simon, the co-creator of Captain America. This summer Titan will launch The Official Simon and Kirby Library, which will now include full color hardcover volumes collecting Simon & Kirby’s horror, detective, and romance comics." I detect the fine hand of Steve Saffel in this; way to go, Steve.
* According to a recent study, forty-six per cent of Canadians can’t name a single Canadian writer. Here, let me give you two. Ty Templeton. Robert J. Sawyer. You’re welcome.
* Laurel Maury reviews Jonathan Lethem’s Omega The Unknown for NPR. (Come back to the Malibu, Laurel, we miss you!)
* Friday night’s airing of the start of season 4.5 of Battlestar Galactica will run 3.5 minutes long according to information released by SciFi. Dish Network has already adjusted the run time but you should double check any PVR’s you may have set up. You’ve been warned.
* An interview with Dean Mullaney.
* Why I dislike Batwoman too.
Anything else? Consider this an open thread.
Comic du jour from Hugh MacLeod, the creator of Mr. Hell.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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