The Point Radio: MERLIN Hits Season Three

MERLIN might be the best show you’re missing. Season 3 just kicked off on The SyFy Channel and series stars Colin Morgan and Bradley James talk about what makes the show so cool, plus a change At The Top over at Marvel Comics and the Spidey musical finally gets a (good) break! And be sure to stay on The Point via , RSS, MyPodcast.Comor Podbean! Follow us now on and ! Don’t forget that you can now enjoy THE POINT 24 hours a Day – 7 Days a week!. Updates on all parts of pop culture, special programming by some of your favorite personalities and the biggest variety of contemporary music on the net – plus there is a great round of new programs on the air including classic radio each night at 12mid (Eastern) on RETRO RADIO COMICMIX’s Mark Wheatley hitting the FREQUENCY every Saturday at 9pm and even the Editor-In-Chief of COMICMIX, Mike Gold, with his daily WEIRD SCENES and two full hours of insanity every Sunday (7pm ET) with WEIRD SOUNDS! CLICK HERE TO LISTEN LIVE FOR FREE or go to GetThePointRadio for more including a connection for mobile phones including iPhone & Blackberrys.

Transcript

Hello, it's Mike Raub. Welcome to The Point where all parts of pop culture come together. The third season of the series, Merlin, has begun on the Sci-Fi channel. If it's been under your radar, well, you're making a mistake. We've got the cast here to tell you why. In the meantime, a new guy at the top at Marvel Comics and the Spidey Broadway play does something right. It's Monday, January 10th. Let's get to The Point right now.

This is The Point, The Point radio, get The Point radio. Sci-Fi channel series Merlin has kicked off season number three with a cast headed by Colin Morgan as Merlin and Bradley James as Arthur and a new twist on an old legend, as Bradley explains. Growing up in Britain, you find yourselves sort of ingrained into your psyche a little bit without you realizing it. They're very sort of inspiring, kind of

heroic stories. So I will sort of have an interest in it beforehand. Not a sort of specific interest that I followed it religiously or anything, but certainly when the opportunity to work on the show came up, I'd already had a sort of previous knowledge of what the story was about and what the legends sort of told. And it's kind of obviously been enhanced by doing the show and research for the show has kind of just improved my knowledge of various

aspects of the legend. And there can't help but be a few similarities to another pretty popular fantasy series. Well, I always say that we've completely butchered the legend and sort of reworked it for a sort of Saturday Night escapism because anyone who's kind of quite strictly religious to the legend, perhaps will take a bit of time to get used to what we've done to it. But I think we've taken a legend and kind of, I mean, the producers

like to sort of compare it with the sort of smallville idea of having Superman before he was Superman and this is Merlin before he was Merlin and Arthur before he was King Arthur. So it's kind of the prelude story to the familiar tale that everyone's aware of. Colin's take on his own series brings it even closer into the world of smallville. I don't think, I think as an audience member, being aware of where these characters end up

and knowing that they become the legends that they are, that Arthur and Gwen become King and Queen, that Merlin becomes being accepted as Arthur's advisor and a wizard and that magic is out in the open. I think when you know that that's where they end up, I think it can always be possibly a sense of frustration when you want that to happen quickly and in reality, things don't happen that quickly. It takes time for those to happen and I guess as well,

that's from a story point of view. I guess from a particular point of view, they want to, they don't want to rush things too quickly but I do believe that things are happening at quite a pace already in terms of character relationships. It's just I think that we're, as an audience, we're in the know of where they're supposed to be. For over two seasons, Colin has wielded the powers, the magic powers of Merlin and had something he's really enjoyed.

Definitely, I mean who wouldn't want to be, at least for a day, as long as you didn't have the dilemmas and the situations that Merlin himself was thrown into, I'd be happy. If you could actually use them to have a bit of fun and do something good for the world and maybe for yourself, whereas Merlin's kind of limited that he has to look after Arthur but it's also good. In addition to Colin and Bradley, you'll see some other familiar faces in the show and voices as

well. Anthony Head and John Herder are among the familiar faces you'll see as well as a few others from another big magical franchise. I don't think they've been cast in Merlin because they've been in Harry Potter. I just think we've, the producers have gone out and found people who, you know, would enhance the show and that's how it's felt on set for us as well. We've got more with the cast of Merlin coming up in the meantime, catch episodes on sci-fi.com and new episodes Fridays

on the Sci-Fi channel. It's Monday the 10th of January 2011. Here's what's going on in pop culture. Slight change at the top at Marvel for the new year. Axel Alonso is now editor-in-chief of the company and Joe Cassata, who's been editor-in-chief for a full decade now, is going to become chief creative officer with new duties directly involving the talented Marvel. Alonso will oversee Marvel publishing division. Couldn't be in a better year to do that. In addition to this, it was also

announced that Tom Brevoort has been promoted to senior vice president in charge of publishing. Just like in the past, WizKids has taken their big convention premium, the giant Dr. Manhattan hero clicks from last year and created a version of it that they'll be releasing to the general public this year. The new version of Dr. Manhattan will be a little bit repainted in some places. It will stand about 15 inches tall with the base about 10 inches by 6 inches. It weighs about 2

pounds and it also has redesign campaign rules, a character card and a lot more as well. It will be released by WizKids in April of this year for the hero clicks line. It has a price of about 80 bucks retail. One of the best bits of news on MCES is the long-awaited release of Star Wars on a Blu-ray version. It's the entire Star Wars saga complete all six films, 30 hours of special features and a lot more, all with never before seen deleted and alternative material as well. Star Wars archive

stuff they've dug up and well just lots of cool. Star Wars the Complete Saga retails for about $139. In the meantime, if you want to separate the movies you can get the last three in a set called the prequel Blu-ray trilogy, three discs with episodes one through three, or you can get the original Blu-ray trilogy which has the first three movies known as episodes four through six. That'll both retail for about 70 bucks a piece. That and the complete saga all on shelves in

September. So what was selling in the bookstores during the month of December right up to the holiday? Well as far as comic graphic novels go it was a pretty solid list and some familiar names on there as well including DC's year by year visual chronicle hardcover cracking the top 20 at number 12. In the top 10, six of them were Scott Pilgrim graphic novels at number 10, nine, eight, six, four, and at number two the first volume of Scott Pilgrim. What filled up

the rest? Well at number seven Vampire Knight from Viz Media volume number 11 and then The Walking Dead volume 13 at number five The Walking Dead volume one at number three. Best-selling book in bookstores over the December period? Well was Walking Dead the Compendium. Well worth its weight with all the early issues in one easy to read package from Image Comics. Once Marvel didn't you knew DC wouldn't be far behind. DC has announced the release of a comic

this week both digitally and in stores done what they call day and date with Batman Beyond number one. The new ongoing series based on the original animated series as well. DC's hoping the digital release will reach the audience that may have enjoyed the cartoon show but have drifted away from comics as well. Other DC projects to be released with digitally day and date include Justice League Generation Laws number 17 and 18, Young Justice Zero and The Driver Special number

one all to be out over the next few weeks from them. Marvel announced last week by the way as you know that it'll release issues in the death of Spider-Man storyline digitally and at the same time in comic stores as well. Here's something obviously getting a lot of comments online. The San Diego City Council president Tony Young talked to the media in his area about his plans to open up the San Diego Comic Con this year with a parade. It'll take place allegedly on the

Wednesday before the show. No word yet on how that's all going to come down or who'll be involved with it. Sadly a lot of the folks will be in the parade probably won't be able to get in the convention. A lot of them may not want to anyway and I'm sure a number of San Diego ones are still going to be upset that this is just one more thing and clogs up the city's traffic during that four day weekend. Just doesn't seem like you're going to see a live-action Wonder Woman anytime soon.

Word is that David E. Kelly's proposed new series based on the Amazon has now been shelved for the most part for political reasons. Looks like Fox and both ABC passed on working on the series. Fox for whatever reason they decided and ABC well because they are owned by Disney and Disney owns Marvel and they have their own properties they can do for a lot less on the bottom line. No word from CBS on whether they'd be interested and of course the CW well just doesn't have the money

to put behind it. Past this rumor along fast enough and maybe it'll become true with Dark Horse getting ready for Buffy the Vampire's Lair season nine said to come from Dark Horse later this year. The word is they're gathering creators right now to work on that and one of the names being tossed around is Gail Simone from Birds of Prey and Secret Six and a number of other great projects at DC. No word on yet as to whether Gail's going to say yes. You are aware that there's no guarantee we'll

see another season of Mad Men right? The deal is not out there yet although it looks likely that it will happen. Over the week at a special press conference involving the upcoming drama The Killing folks from A&E said they were confident that they would begin negotiating in good faith for a fifth season of Mad Men to premiere later on in this year. If you're following the history of the series well last year we were pretty much at the same position and right after a big win at the Golden

Globes things seemed to fall right into place. Well the overall picture is it wasn't as bad as it could have been. Reports are in for what the top 10 comics and top 10 graphic novels were for the year 2010. According to the store sales reported through diamond comic distributions and again it wasn't as bad as it could have been. If you look at things well at the end of the third quarter they were pretty bad we told you about that as well but an upswing in sales in the fourth

quarter of 2010 made things a little bit better and overall comic sales only dipped about three and a half percent between 2009 and 2010. Top 10 comics for the year started at number 10 with DC's Bad Man Returner Bruce Wayne number one, Siege number two was at number nine, Brightest Day number one and Brightest Day number zero were at number eight and number seven respectively. New Avengers number one was at number six, Brightest Day number seven was at number five, Siege number one was at

number four, Blackest Night number eight was at number three, Glory Launch of the X-Men was at number two for Marvel and another marvel was the number one best-selling book for the year that was Avengers number one. When you go to the top 10 best-selling graphic novels for the year a completely different story. In fact if you listen carefully you'll first of all see nothing in here from Marvel or from DC except for a couple of side projects nothing involving the major characters

per se. At number 10 Scott Pilgrim volume two, The Walking Dead volumes 13, 2 and 12 held down positions number nine, eight and seven. Scott Pilgrim number one was at number six. The one DC on the list was Superman Earth One not a regular Superman title but an elseworld story at number five. At number four Scott Pilgrim volume six, number three Walking Dead volume 11. Number two the only marvel on the list and again nothing involving a major marvel character.

It was kick-ass the premium hardcover at number two and the number one best-selling graphic novel for the year The Walking Dead volume one. Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, sir. I can't help it. I'm a greedy swab. It's my hobby. This is my gold. You know some days it just doesn't pay to be a witch. Literally. In the nation of Romania, home to the real Vlad Dracula, witches, astrologers and fortune tellers

are up in arms or wings or whatever about a new income tax that went into effect on January 1st. For the first time in their history, Romania now taxes witches, astrologers and fortune tellers. No kidding. One witch proclaimed quote, this law is foolish. What is there to tax when we hardly earn anything? The lawmakers don't look at themselves at how much they make, their tricks they steal and they come to us asking us to put spells on their enemies, end quote.

Damn, those witches sound exactly like the tea party. To be fair, I didn't know witches hardly earn anything. You'd think it would be more of a seller's market. They now have to pay 16% income tax and contribute to health and pension programs. Anyway, a dozen witches tossed the poisonous mandrake plant into the Danube to put a hex on those government officials. If it works, well, you know, our election in 2012 is gonna get pretty weird. This is my gold on America's true

pop culture channel. GetThePointRadio.com. Breaking rules this week by going over our list of the five usual things that we tell you to look for in comic stores. We're actually going to go for a little more than five and it's a week to break the rules anyway because a lot of things are changing in the stores with Diamond Comics distributing books to stores a day earlier now, giving your local retailer a chance to get the

things out and to merchandise things in a way to give you a chance to see more and more of the good stuff that you may just walk by and not have any idea exists. We begin in DC with a collection of Doom Patrol from recent months. It's the Brotherhood trade paperback, a great story arc in that series, a one that definitely needs a look. Wonder Girl gets her own series this week with the first issue from DC. You may want to check that out. A lot of comic stores have the ability

this time to get the Alan Moore magazine that for the most part has usually been available only in Britain. It's called Dodgem Logic. The sixth issue is what is available this week in US comic stores. If you have a smart retailer where you shop, Spawn hits number 200 this week. That's worth at least a look. Plenty of variant covers on that too, which we'll cover for you a little bit later on. Daredevil also gets a reboot with Daredevil Reborn, a four issue series. It begins

this week for Marvel. And finally, there is a bunch of those must-have collections, the ones where Marvel takes books that have sold out and packages them all into one edition. It's almost a variant, but not quite because they're pretty easy to get in most stores. There's a Daikon Dark Wolverine Empire must-have this week and a Wolverine Goes to Hell must-have as well. All these and more in comic shops all over America,

now able to get their books a day early to get things out for you on a nice and orderly fashion every Wednesday. Find out what's going on in the stores in your area by first finding the stores with the comic book locator service and one 888 comic book or on your iPhone, your iPad, or your iTunes with a free app available in the iTunes app store. That's a wrap for our Monday. We've got more with the cast of Merlin coming up in a couple of days

and a few surprises as well. And in the meantime, well, even more to surprise you with as we would continue with updating pop culture 24 hours a day, seven days a week on The Point Radio. You can listen free right now for a couple of clicks. That's all it takes at GetThePointRadio.com. This podcast is produced twice every week by Malkoten Media for great websites like ComicMix.com and MichaelDavidsworld.com. We're in the podcast directory in the iTunes store under The Point

Radio and you can always talk back to us anytime at Listen and GetThePointRadio.com. Have a great week. We'll catch you right back here on Friday.