The Point Mocca Recap
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Transcript
Hello, it's Mike Raub. Welcome to The Point where all parts of pop culture come together. While we're back from Boca, we got the lowdown of what went on there over the weekend and we're more than willing to share. Mary Jane is back, which is good news. It was a knockdown, drag out fight at the box office. And the next big comic publisher might be The Army. It's Monday, June 8th, 2009, and we get to The Point right now.
This is The Point, The Point radio, get The Point radio. It was a sunny, hot and humid weekend in June, the perfect environment again for the Boca Art Festival in New York City. A celebration of independent comics with a collection of some of the greatest minds and talents from just about everywhere, showing their future, current, and even some of their past work as well. Now, this year, Boca was a little different, moving to a brand new facility that was a lot different from where it had been over the past few years.
Carl Erickson, director of Boca, explains exactly why that move came. We had a greater demand for exhibitors and attendance, so we had to go to a bigger venue to accommodate everybody. And also so we could arrange it in a more democratic fashion for all the exhibitors. Nobody's tucked away in a corner and everybody's just out in the same spot. There were new faces and bloody of room for old friends to spread out just a little more.
Alright, I should say we have about a hundred more tables, so some exhibitors, you know, were able to take out an extra table because of this, and some new people are here as well. So what was the reaction? Well, we talked to a number of people, including Bobby Timoney from Twin Comics, who was making his first Boca appearance. I think it's a really nice space. I mean, it got really hot, but I like that it's all in one space, and the armory is really cool. It's a huge building, and it's nice that, I mean, in past years at Boca, they've been on different floors and stuff. How was the crowd?
The crowd's been amazing. We've had a really nice reaction to our stuff here. Another first-time exhibitor was Matt Rossetti from the feature Growing Up comics, and Matt was pretty pleased with how everything went down over the weekend. I love it. I've come as a fan for many years. I enjoy the new space that we have. It's a little stuffy and hot, but I like it that it's all on one floor. And response to his work was positive as well. A good response. People are responding to my brother's work because it's more of the mainstream stuff, which you don't get a lot here.
He worked on the Venture Brothers cartoon show. He works for WWE Kids. A lot of fans like that type of stuff. Like I said, I get the comic fans who see what they loved about comic books in my work, but then we get a lot of young kids and also adults who say, oh, this is something for my young kids. Of course there will be another Mocha festival next year, but in the meantime, the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art has a lot going on, including a very special exhibit over the summer, as Karl explains. Sounds and Paws is the comics of David Mazzachelli. And David has a new book coming out right now called The Stereos Pop-up. It's a beautiful book. I highly recommend everybody looking at it and coming to the exhibit.
And to get more information on Mocha, that's easy too. Sure, you can find the museum at www.moccany.org. It's Monday, June 8, 2009. Here's what we're looking at in pop culture this week. It was an up and a down weekend at the box office based on Friday's numbers. It looked like the R-rated comedy Hangover might end up being number one for the weekend.
Not so up took that place again, but only by barely a million dollars. Up was number one with about $44 million in ticket sales over the weekend. The Hangover came in at number two with about $43 million in sales. Also in there, Land of the Lost, considered by a number of people to be the first, well, not so good movie of the summer. That came in at number three with barely 20 million. In fact, a little less than that.
Star Trek hung solid at number five this week. Terminator Salvation went down to number six on the list. And X-Men Origins Wolverine is at number 11 in the box office race. As we start on this new week, there's a publisher you might not have expected to hear from. The U.S. Army has announced America's Army, the graphic novel.
It's a free online publication that was based on America's Army 3 or AA3. The PC game, which will debut later this summer, is said to reflect Army life and training, technology and career advancements as well. And the graphic novel, like we said, is already available on the Army website. It involves some interesting talents from the comic book industry, including Emma Zachary Sherman, Michael Penick, and Jay Brown, who also used to be associated with Marvel's Thunderbolts comic.
And the website is americasarmy.com. Follow this under the title of Here We Go Again. Last week, Marvel distributed an image on the Internet. Apparently one of the covers to Amazing Spider-Man number 600. It is clearly a wedding invitation, covered in part by a piece of the Spider-Man costume.
As you can see enough to know that the names on the wedding invitation look like Mary Jane Watson and certainly Peter Parker. Assuming we're to believe all this, is this pretty much the conclusion of the One More Day storyline? That Marvel pretty much rammed down the throat of every Spider-Man fan not that long ago. Well, nothing stays hidden on the Internet too long, but if it does, the very drop-dead deadline will know everything is when Amazing Spider-Man number 600 hits comic stores, and that is on July 15th. Even though we're still days away in most places for school to be out for the summer,
a group of librarians organized by Diamond Comics last week at Book Expo put together a list of the fall's hottest graphic novels. So tuck this away for the end of the summer when you're headed back to school so you'll have something to read then. It's all divided up between kids, teens, and adults, and there's some pretty interesting things on here as well, including in the kids' category a book called Tune Treasury of Classic Children's Comics. It's edited by Art Spiegelman, by the way, and has a great amount of beautiful Golden Age material in there that really fits almost any age.
For the all-important tween category, there's a number of different titles. Notable one, though, is Outlaw the Legend of Robin Hood by Tony Lee and Sam Hart. That's done by Candlewick Press, by the way. In the teen category, a couple of familiar names. There's Star Trek Missions and another one of the Star Trek books produced by IDW, this one by Ty Templeton,
and the Umbrella Academy Dallas Collection from Dark Horse. In the adult category, well, a number of choices there as well. One of the most interesting is G.I. Joe Origins, again by IDW, the one produced by Larry Hama, and Strange Suspense, the Steve Ditko archives. Great material there, reprinted from the very peak of the incredible Steve Ditko's career.
That from Fantagraphics. If you want to check out the whole list, do so at icv2.com. Hope you got your tickets to the San Diego Comic Con. As you've probably heard, they already are pretty much sold out. And if you're a Lord of the Rings fan, well, you're going to be a little more disappointed than ever now that
Peter Jackson will be making his very first appearance at Comic Con this year. Big news! He even made the New York Times. He's coming in support of District 9. That's an upcoming science fiction film done by Jackson's protégé Neil Bluntkamp.
Meanwhile, District 9 hits theaters on August 14th. Amongst all the noise for The Beatles, Halo, and Metal Gear Solid at E3 last week, there was some interesting news that came out about the new DC Universe online game, at least a progress of that, and Marvel's Ultimate Alliance 2. The DC Universe game still going along, still in the Alpha stage, as it has been since February.
Reports were seen, though, that there was some interesting character development in things like Harley Quinn, Batman, Bizarro, Lex Luthor, and other characters. Many outsiders say that the DC Universe MMO will be available for at least some sort of a public demonstration by San Diego Comic Con. Meanwhile, September looks like a solidative release for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. Some interesting new characters in there seen at E3 include some from Young Avengers, which is kind of interesting.
The game is just about set, and you will see a major preview of that more than likely at San Diego Comic Con as well. But again, it will be available for you to actually take home and play from Activision in September. Online TV programming is not unlike everything else. They have new debuts as well, in case you have not been following what's going on at the WB.com. There's a new program on the way there called The Lake. It premieres in August. It's directed by Jason Priestley, the guy from Beverly Hills 90210, and more lately, True Calling a couple years back.
It's a drama that follows four families who spend every summer together at a fictional lake. It will be 12 initial episodes, each about 10 minutes in length, and again coming to the WB.com in August. Some interesting choices out there in the casting of next season on NBC's Heroes. Remember the guy who played T-Bag on Fox's Prison Break series over the past couple years? His name is Robert Kepper. He's going to be another bad guy in Heroes next year.
And Ray Park, you know him as Darth Maul from the Star Wars movies. He's also been added to the cast of Heroes as well. The new season is set to begin in the fall at a new time, 8 o'clock on Mondays. For the first part of the season, that means Heroes will debut sometime in September and then end its run right before the holiday break. Summer IDW has another page to the book of the history of Angel with another new miniseries this time.
Angel only human, involving, well, what exactly has been happening with Illyria and Gunn. And now both those characters have their humanity at the end of Angel after the fall. And how they go about dealing with that. Our work will be by David Messina and there'll be some variant covers available with the series as well, starting with the first issue. That'll be in comic stores from IDW in August.
In the first of what I'm sure is going to be a long line of tie-ins in comics and books, The Titan Publishing Company is releasing Kick-Ass the Movie Book in September. It's 176-page trade paperback with over 200 color photos, plus commentary, of course, from the creator, Mark Millar. Lots of artwork from the comic as well, all in preparation for the Kick-Ass Movie. Not that far behind this. It'll be the one with Nicolas Cage, directed by Matthew Vaughn, by the way.
And it's set to hit theaters later this year. Meanwhile, they're also releasing from Titan a new Kevin Smith trade paperback, involving Kevin's, well, shall we say, more frank discussions from his online diary. Lots of conversations with his friends and co-workers and backstage stuff as well. Always interesting to see this. There's going to be a major push for this book on radio and TV, and of course, a big promotion coming up at the San Diego Comic Con.
Never one to let a good title just go to waste. Marvel's going to relaunch A Strange Tales, this time at A Strange Tales Max. It's a three-issue miniseries, featuring some different takes on the Marvel universe, by some pretty interesting names of the independent comic world, starting with A Hulk Story by Peter Bag. It was one of us done a few years ago. They're using that to lead off the series as well. Other creators include Paul Pope and Molly Crabapple, the burlesque-queen turned comic illustrator,
that we've talked to a couple of times here on The Point. The first issue of Strange Tales Max has a cover by Paul Pope, and will be in comic stores this summer for more. Weird scenes inside the gold mine. She was a winner. That became the darkest in her. She never meant that much to me. I used to write for a newspaper called The Chicago Seed. For many years, we occupied the entire second floor above what was then Chicago's best-known blues club, and Alice's Revisited. Everybody played Alice's. Muddy Waters, Home Wolf, Otis Rush, Muddy Guy, Junior Wells.
Youngsters like Mighty Joe Young, War, and Styx. You get the point, and I don't have a time machine. The backstairs went straight down to Alice's tiny backstage, so I saw and heard the very best of Chicago Blues. I can't begin to tell you which performances I enjoy the most at Alice's, and at similar blues clubs, but I can tell you which performer knocked me over each and every time I heard her. That would be Coco Tejor. Her title was Queen of the Blues, but Coco Tejor was a true force of nature. Ask anybody who'd seen her work. Ask anybody who'd ever been in her band.
She worked hard to get that sound, and she worked her sidemen just as hard. It paid off. Coco won a record 25 W.C. Handy Awards. When Coco stopped singing, there was a vacuum in the air. She had used up all the sound, and the air's very molecules had to rest and regroup. Power, attitude, talent, amazing. Hey, hey, yo! For the nature's back in town. I'm here to take care of business. Ain't got time to fool around. I'm looking for my man, yo! I'm since this is a heart attack. Now one of you women stole him, and I'm here to get it back. Don't mess with mother nature, cause you'll be sorry if you do. Coco Tejor died last week at the age of 80. I hope there's an album worth of tracks in a vault somewhere, and I'm just not ready to let go.
I'll be hosting a tribute to Coco Tejor on Weird Sounds Inside the Gold Mine this coming Sunday at 7pm Eastern at GetThePointRadio.com. It'll knock you over. This is Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine. I'm Mike Gold, On The Point. We're gonna pitch a ball down to the union hall. We're gonna rob and drop to midnight. We're gonna fiddle and fight to daylight. We're gonna pitch a playing game. The boys is what's cool. We're gonna play a story of Mysterious Stranger. It's a four issue mini series that starts this week from Boom. Bad Man finally starting to heat up and catch up to what's going on. We're getting Bad Man number 687 finally this week, and I know a lot of folks waited for that. The Flash Rebirth series also from DC, and again another interesting change in the DC universe and some incredible work by Geoff Johns that does deserve your attention.
The first official issue of Buck Rogers from Dynamic Forces is this week as well. If you caught, he issued zero and it caught your attention. Well, here you go. This is where everything begins. And so far it looks pretty interesting. And finally from Marvel, one more 70th anniversary special, The Miss America Comics number one, and all the other anniversary specials and some interesting material in that. Here's all the hard stuff, all those second printings and variant issues that are tough to find sometimes in comic book stores. But if you have a list of them prepared, well, that's almost half the battle. It begins this week with a second printing variant to Muppet Show number two from Boom Studios. There's also a variant covered in this week's release of Toy Story Mysterious Stranger number one. Over DC, there's a third printing variant to Bad Man number 686 and a regular hard to get variant issue to this week's Bad Man number 687. Just like the third printing of Flash Rebirth number one is on the shelves this week, hopefully.
And there's a new variant to this week's Flash Rebirth number three. There's a variant addition to this week's Green Lantern Corps number 37 from DC and one to Red Robin number one as well. There's some real hard to get variants to Dynamic Forces Buck Rogers number one. Good luck with those. Over in Marvel, there's a second printing variant to Cable number 14, a second printing Mike Diodato variant to Dark Avengers number four. There's a second printing variant this week to Deadpool number 10. There's also a regular interesting variant to this week's release of Miss America Comics, the Marvel's 70th anniversary special. There's also a regular couple of variants this week to the release of Scar, Son of Hulk number six and number seven. There's a second printing variant to New Mutants number one and also from Marvel, a second printing variant to Ultimate Wolverine versus Hulk number five. Only a couple of Dark Rain tie-ins this week from Marvel, Amazing Spider-Man number 597 and Deadpool number 11. But by the way, there's a couple of trade paperback compilations of earlier Dark Rain stories. Those are on the shelves and comic stores this week from Marvel.
The Point Time Machine. I think you're going to like this one because we're going back to 1976. Voters in Ohio, California, and New Jersey put an end to the nation's longest running presidential primary casting votes for Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Jimmy Carter. Despite his ceasefire, heavy fighting erupted in Beirut between Syrian and Lebanese forces. The average price of a haircut of the US rose alarmingly to an all-time high of $4. In the movies, there was Manson, Missouri Brakes, Jaws was still in the theaters. Ron Howard made his mark in cinema for the first time in E! By Dust, and there was Bill Cosby's Mother, Jugs and Speed along with Raquel Welch, and of course a song in the background from Peter Frampton.
On TV tonight, well news took the forefront with the political coverage of the presidential primary. Interspersed with an episode of Bash, one of Happy Days, and on NBC, Police Woman. Time Machine. On the radio, a former member of Sean On-Ow, whose hit this year was written about the death of Beach Boy Carl Wilson's Irish setter. Here's Shannon and Henry Grose. I hardly know what to say, but maybe it's better that way. If Papa were here, I'm sure he'd tell her. Shannon is gone, I'll come, she's drifting on the sand. She always loved to swim and play.
We're not done yet, back now to the vintage year of 1964. Cack Ruby told the Warren Commission he had no previous connection with Lee Harvey Oswald when he shot him. Lebanese police turned firehoses on teenage girls trying to rush the Beatles during a stopover there at the airport on their way to Hong Kong. Senator Barry Goldwater headed into the Republican National Convention as the front-runner for the presidential nomination. In the movies, everything was prim with love with a proper stranger. There was Billy Liar in the movie that is not only a classic, but produced a theme song that is absolutely timeless. Love, Pink Panther.
On TV tonight, comedy was king with episodes of Danny Thomas and Andy Griffith. There was a little mystery and I've got a secret and to tell the truth. Monday Night at the Movies was on NBC along with Sing Along with Mitch and there was Wagon Train and Outer Limits too. On the radio, riding the winds of the British invasion were Chad and Jeremy. Yesterday, and yesterday's gone. We walked together hand in hand. Caught smiles and miles of golden sand. But now it's over and done. Cause that was yesterday, and yesterday's gone.
That puts a cap on our Monday. Do not forget though that The Point continues 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And you can listen free with just a click at GetThePointRadio.com, ComicMix.com or MichaelDavidsworld.com. We're back here on Friday with more on Mocha as well and you can catch those broadcasts at ComicMix, Michael David's World, CZ Comics.com and Raven's Wolf Studios.com. The regular broadcasts are also downloadable from iTunes. You can hear them on MyPodcast.com and Podbean too. How about some comments? Love to hear about anything that's on your mind. Get in touch with us and listen at GetThePointRadio.com.
I'll see you again on Friday. Thanks for watching.
