Meet a talented lady with an unforgettable name – Miss Lasko Gross (yes, Miss is her first name). Her best selling graphic novel is soon to be joined by a sequel. Plus Mike Gold bashes Broadway, how Wolverine almost didn’t meet Your Mother and The Big Apple screams “Cowabunga”!
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The theme is more random than ever this week, because – let’s be honest – it would be difficult to find four manga series that aren’t about teenagers. But these three books offer exceptionally varied takes on the eternal problems of adolescence, and that’s good enough for me!
Wolverine: Prodigal Son, Vol. 1
Story by Antony Johnson; Art by Wilson Tortosa
Del Rey Manga, April 2009, $12.99
Yes, that the X-Men Wolverine; the one whose big movie opens a week from today. But here he’s ripped out of the Marvel Universe and dropped into a manga-fied version of his life, where he’s a sullen teenager attending an all-martial-arts all-the-time high school somewhere in darkest Canada. And he’s not yet the best at what he does, though what he does, as ever, is not pretty. (Or nice, if you subscribe to Eastern Orthodox Wolverineism.) He’s also a lot whinier than you’d expect from Wolverine, with a host of insecurity issues.
That’s what makes it manga-style I suppose: the school setting, the bizarre hair, the complicated school projects-cum-training-sessions, the teenage protagonist who thinks no one likes him. The extended fight scenes and ninjas, though, were in Wolverine stories almost from the beginning, so any manga influence is buried under Claremont and Miller and Wein.
So Wolverine is tormented and misunderstood, having mysteriously appeared at this school with no knowledge of his past, and he coasts through his all-hitting school work by being really really good at martial arts. He’s got an almost-love affair going with Tamara, the daughter of the school’s head, and he’s in regular conflict with some other, more stereotyped members of the class.
But then the boss of the school takes him to New York as a treat, and things get really bad. The aforementioned ninjas show up, and…well, the back half of this volume is pretty much wall-to-wall fight scenes, with short breaks for emoting and monologing. There will be more, of course – there’s never a “volume one” without a two – and the last few pages have some higher-up villains cackling and wringing their hands as a preview of what’s in for Logan in that volume.
Prodigal Son is a serviceable mash-up of X-Men and shonen, but it’s also entirely disposable and has no real reason to exist besides pure brand extension. I guess it’s really for kids who might like to read stories about Marvel Mutants, but will only read comics if they’re drawn manga-style. (more…)
“[[[Iron Man:Armored Adventures]]]” returns Shellhead, and the first two of 26 animatedepisodes will begin airing on Nicktoons tonight at 7 PM.
Here’s a brief description of this high tech new action adventure series:
Tony Stark, heir to a billion-dollar corporation, lives a life of luxury,free to pursue his chief interests — seeing extreme thrills, solving scientific mysteries, and creating mind-boggling inventions.
But everything goes horribly wrong when a tragic accident robs Tony of his father and nearly costs him his own life. Now dependent on his ownamazing technology for survival and dedicated to battling corruption,Tony must reconcile the pressure of teenage life with the duties of asuper hero.
Inside his remarkable invention, Tony Stark is geared for high-speed flight,high-tech battles and high-octane adventure! He is IRON MAN!
And here’s a preview:
Scientists make super-strong metallic spider silk
LONDON (Reuters) – Spider silk isalready tougher and lighter than steel, and now scientists have made itthree times stronger by adding small amounts of metal.
The technique may be useful for manufacturing super-tough textiles andhigh-tech medical materials, including artificial bones and tendons.
“It could make very strong thread for surgical operations,” researcher Seung-Mo Lee of the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics in Halle, Germany, said in a telephone interview.
Lee and colleagues, who published their findings in the journalScience, found that adding zinc, titanium or aluminum to a length ofspider silk made it more resistant to breaking or deforming.
They used a process called atomic layer deposition,which not only coated spider dragline silks with metal but also causedsome metal ions to penetrate the fibers and react with their proteinstructure.
Lee said he next wanted to try adding other materials, including artificial polymers like Teflon.
The idea was inspired by studies showing traces of metals in thetoughest parts of some insect body parts. The jaws of leaf-cutter antsand locusts, for example, both contain high levels of zinc, making themparticularly stiff and hard.
Yeah, sure. We know where they really got inspired– Web of Spider-Man #100.
I’ve spent too long today looking at typefaces while trying to design the new print editions of ComicMix books, so this is either funny or painful:
A bold future, indeed. (Hat tip: Teresa.)
These three books don’t represent the comics community of the Philippines: I know almost nothing about that community and I’m sure of that. Extrapolating from these three stories – from the three comics stories I happen to have – is futile and silly and I’m going to try not to do it. Drawing any conclusions about the larger Philippine comics market would be like reading [[[Iron Fist]]],[[[ Scott Pilgrim]]], and [[[Fun Home]]] and from them alone creating a unified theory of North American comics.
So all I really want to say up front is this: these may be some of the best Philippine comics. But I seriously doubt that they’re all of the best. There’s probably even some projects even better than these. It’s a big world out there. (I also want to thank Charles Tan, who sent me a big box of Philippine comics and SF late last year, and without whom I wouldn’t have heard of any of these books.)
Elmer (issues #1-4)
By Gerry Alanguilan
Komikero Publishing; May and Oct 2006, Nov 2007, Nov 2008; 50 Philippine pesos ea.
There’s something about the comics form that attracts really unlikely premises – flying men, teenagers who want to do their homework, retellings of operas without music, and whatever[[[Alice in Sunderland]]] is. [[[Elmer]]] is another in that proud and odd lineage: it’s a serious contemporary story set in a world where chickens suddenly became intelligent in 1979.
Yes, chickens. The protagonist is a young chicken named Jake, who comes back from his dead-end life in Manila to the rural farm where he grew up, because his father, Elmer, has had a stroke and isn’t expected to last long. He rejoins his sister May (a nurse) and brother Francis (a movie star) there, and stays there after his father’s death. Except for the chicken thing, the plot set-up is very like an indy movie, some Philippine [[[Garden State]]]. (more…)
Dave Mack has been pushing this lately, and I can’t blame him: Want To Save Your Favorite TV Show? Stop watching it on television.
The number of viewers that is reported in the press—the 24.4 million people who watch American Idol, say—is extrapolated from the readings from those Nielsen boxes. The “save our show” campaigns are ill-advised because they fail to take into account this all-important gap between the sample size and the size of the sampled audience.The alternative is to drive people where they can actually be counted—and these days that’s online. The Internet offers metrics everywhere you turn. The networks can analyze the number of streams, number of ad impressions, number of page views, number of visits, number of visitors, number of comments, etc. It’s a democratic space where the eyes and participation of fans can actually be seen by the network bosses making the decisions. Unlike with analog TV, online fans can actually speak directly to power. So whether it’s through iTunes, Hulu, or one of the networks’ proprietary streams, the smart way to campaign for a show’s renewal is to stream it after the fact.
You hear that, Sarah Connor fans? Get clicking!
Of course, no one will ask what happens if you click on the viewer, and then go to work while it plays to an empty room. Because that would be wrong.
I’m not sure what’s harder to believe: that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have just hit their 25th anniversary, or that the Empire State Building will be lit up green tonight to honor that fact. But there it is. So take a look tonight as they light the Turtle-Signal. Or something.
Me, I’m going to break out my stash of TMNT Pudding Pies. You can’t tell if they’ve gone bad because the insides are already green.
I’m running this image just to tick off Alan Kistler.
He asked me for input on eco-aware comics characters. I mentioned Captain Planet. His response was… charged:
HE SUCKED!
He was not a character!
He was a literal Deus Ex Machina.
These kids have powers, and there are five of them, yet despite this, they eventually get too scared and figure screw it, we’ll call up the non-entity with the green mullet who will take care of it for us.
To see the list that he finally came up with, go to MTV’s Splash Page here.
And if you’d like to see more of Captain Planet, you can see episodes here.
UPDATE: The original title of this post said SERIES FINALES. My bad– I meant SEASON and typed SERIES. That’ll teach me to write blog posts at 4 AM. (No, it probably won’t.)
The quick hit list. Ladies and gentlemen, start your TiVos:
On ABC:
May 6 – Scrubs at 8p
May 10 – Brothers & Sisters at 10p
On CBS:
May 3 and May 10 – Cold Case two-part sixth season finale at 9p
May 10 – The Amazing Race 14 at 8p; The Unit at 10p
May 11 – The Big Bang Theory at 8p
May 13 – The New Adventures of Old Christine at 8p; Gary Unmarried at 830p
May 14 – CSI at 9p
May 15 – Ghost Whisperer at 8p; Numb3rs at 10p
May 17 – Survivor: Tocantins at 8p
May 18 – How I Met Your Mother at 830p; Two and a Half Men at 9p; Rules of Engagement at 930p; CSI: Miami at 10p
May 19 – NCIS at 8p; The Mentalist at 9p; Without a Trace at 1001p
May 20 – Criminal Minds at 8p; CSI: NY at 10p
On FOX:
May 8 – Dollhouse at 901p
May 11 – House at 8p
May 12 – Fringe at 9p
May 13 – Lie To Me at 8p
May 14 – Bones at 8p; Hell’s Kitchen at 9p
May 15 – Prison Break (series finale) at 8p
May 16 – MADtv (series finale ) at 11p; Talkshow with Spike Feresten at 12a
May 17 – King of the Hill at 730p; The Simpsons at 8p; Sit Down, Shut Up at 830p; Family Guy at 9p; American Dad at 930p
May 18 – 24 at 8p
May 19 – American Idol Part 1 at 8p (followed by series preview of Glee at 9p)
May 20 – American Idol Part 2 at 8p
On NBC:
April 27 – Chuck at 8p; Heroes at 9p
May 1 – Howie Do It at 8p
May 10 – The Celebrity Apprentice at 8p
May 12 – The Biggest Loser: Couples at 8p
May 14 – Parks and Recreation at 830p; The Office at 9p; 30 Rock at 930p
May 21 – Southland at 10p
Hat tip: Cynopsis.
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