Author: Elayne Riggs

Our weekly haul

By the time this posts I should be nearing my comic shop (which I’m visiting for the first time in ages) to pick up the last couple weeks’ worth of comics, so why not treat y’all to the last week of ComicMix columns first?:

And crank up that MP3 player for Mellifluous Mike Raub‘s most recent podcasts:

That should keep us all pretty busy for awhile!

System of a down

Even if you have a pretty new computer these days, you might be out of luck when it comes to new diversions.

A brand-new web-only science fiction series called Sanctuary has debuted, and I couldn’t even get the preview to play on my new Macbook without it freezing and reloading four times in two minutes.  And that’s with the most updated version of Flash.

And Blizzard has just announced StarCraft II — which also freezes up the machine when we try to play the trailer.

Heck, I can’t even grab any artwork to show you, it’s all Flash and fancy stuff.  If you think your machine can take it, you now have the links.

Have I mentioned there are tons of computer users (like my mom) still on dial-up?

Glyph winners announced

  • Uncategorized
  • May 19, 2007

staggerlee-3551452He may be a bad, bad man, but he’s a good, good comic.

Derek McCulloch and Shepherd Hendrix’s Stagger Lee garnered four trophies at last night’s Glyph Comic Awards, which signalled the opening of the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention (ECBACC) in Philadelphia.

The list of nominees is here; the winners appear below.  Congratulations to everyone!

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Glyphs kicking off ECBACC

  • Uncategorized
  • May 18, 2007

This weekend Temple University in Philadelphia, PA is hosting the annual East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention, but itf you look at the poster you’ll note that the first event, the Glyph Comic Awards recognizing "the best in comics made by, for, and about people of color from the preceding calendar year," is actually taking place at the African American Museum on 701 Arch Street.

ecbacc-8152424

While ECBACC is still fairly new, their online presence could use a bit of beefing up — nowhere in the website is there a schedule of events or panels, even though there are some intriguing teasers about workshops.  Nor does the AAMP even have the Glyphs listed on their calendar of events; I only found out the start time (7PM) from Mikhaela Reid’s blog (her fiance Makesha Wood is up for the Rising Star award). 

But from what I’ve heard of ECBACC, they more than make up for the lack of online detail with their in-person organizational presence.  ComicMix looks forward to hearing about all the details from our intrepid correspondents!

 

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Queenie for a day

me-theaustralian-5386919Del Rey has just announced the newest addition to its growing lineup of original graphic novels, as it has acquired the rights to publish comic book stories featuring Dean Koontz’ popular Odd Thomas character ("I see dead people. But then, by God, I do something about it.").

Wisely, Del Rey has enlisted the services of manga superstar-to-be Queenie Chan (that’s her self-portrait at right) to take on the writing and art chores for this project.  Chan is no stranger to supernatural mystery, the genre of her book The Dreaming (not to be confused with the Neil Gaiman work of the same name), of which two volumes have already come out with a third on the way this autumn.

The as-yet-unnamed graphic novel "will follow Odd’s race to solve the murder of a young boy whose killer appears to be stalking a second child. It is set in the time before Odd Thomas [Koontz’ first OT book in his series] and takes place in Pico Mundo."  It’s slated to come out in the summer of ’08.

Second Life much like the first

bigswitchsmall-8084350Found by our Spin Queen, and because conspicuous consumers just don’t have enough guilt.:

Author Nicholas Carr (that’s his new book at right) knows a bit about evolving technology.  So he decided to answer the question about whether the massively popular mutliplayer game Second Life was ecologically sustainable by doing the math and presenting his theoretical analysis.

And what he found was, "your average Second Life avatar consumes about as much electricity as your average Brazilian. Which means, in turn, that avatars aren’t quite as intangible as they seem. They don’t have bodies, but they do leave footprints."  One of Carr’s commenters adds his findings about how this in turn affects CO2 emissions.

I’d suggest just reading a book instead, but of course that all starts with killing trees…

Kool komputer komics from the 80s

  • Uncategorized
  • May 17, 2007

radioshack-2377457Wil Wheaton found a bunch of comics that Radio Shack/Tandy put out two decades ago to teach kids about computers, written by Paul Kupperberg with art by Dick Ayers and Chic Stone.  Wil samples some of Kupperberg’s dialogue, which in hindsight seems very reminiscent of Bob Haney’s "so hip it’s instantly dated" flair.  (‘S okay, Paul, we still love ya!)

Here’s the whole lot of them, online.  Say, did you know you can use your computers to communicate with information services that will store old PSA comics?  It’s true!

Today’s comics movie casting news

  • Uncategorized
  • May 16, 2007

tjane-6851670In addition to the news about Lionsgate acquiring distribution rights to Frank Miller’s film version of The Spirit, we wanted to pass along a couple of casting notes:

Thomas Jane tells Ain’t It Cool News (in a very strange email) that he’s dropped out of the sequel to The Punisher, said to be darker and grittier than the original, if such a thing is possible.

And Slice of SciFi is reporting that Angel and Bones star David Boreanaz has auditioned for the title role in Marvel’s upcoming flick based on the Sub-Mariner comics.  Can a Namor "comiquette" be far behind (pun intended)?

ELAYNE RIGGS: Living in the moment

elayne200-5741978John Lennon once observed, "Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans." And another John, ComicMix‘s own Mr. Ostrander, recently wrote here about a lesson learned (he calls it a "strange gift") in the wake of his wife’s death:

"One of the gifts I got was a deeper understanding of now. That’s what we have — now… now… now. This second. This second. This second. Now. We should never assume we get the next second. Kim realized, at the end, that she hadn’t done all the writing she wanted to do. That she could have done. She found ‘reasons’ but, at the end, none of them were more than excuses. Regret is what you have when you waste the now… Do you have something you want to write? Do it now. Is there something you want to do? Get started now. Is there someone you love? Love them now. It’s what we have; the next second is not promised to anyone."

It’s not right, it’s not fair, but sometimes grief has a way of clarifying ideas you’ve heard before so that you understand them in a new way. And "now" is one of them. I completely "get" this concept in the wake of my father’s death, in a way I didn’t even see it after my best friend Leah passed away. There’s no going back at this point. Leah and I were close for over a decade, but I’d known Dad my entire life. He was one of the two pillars on whom my existence rested for close to 50 years. And now that pillar is gone, and I feel like I’m going to be off-balance and teetering for the rest of my life.

The illusion that, if things got really hard, I could always regress to a time and place where I felt completely safe and protected, where I didn’t have to be a grown-up, is forever shattered. I’ve never been blessed with children, so I can’t even relive my childhood through the eyes of the next generation. I have to be the grown-up all the time now, caught between that which is no longer and that which will never be, while unforgiving time still insists on creeping along in only one direction. My world is nothing but "now"s.

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Dune redubbed, 2001 sped-up

  • Uncategorized
  • May 15, 2007

Courtesy of the folks at Sequential Pictures, this re-imagining of Dune is just so very wrong.

I’m the only one who actually liked the original Dune flick, aren’t I? sigh  Also, via Fanboy.com, it’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in 5 Seconds:

That length seems about right to me…

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