Author: Elayne Riggs

Seven Heroes of Victory

225px-ssov4-9127345Wired Magazine’s Annalee Newitz believes the plotline of Heroes bears more than a few similarities to that of the recent Grant Morrison-written DC series 7 Soldiers of Victory.  Because, you know, nobody’s ever done assemble-the-squad plotlines in the history of  television or comic books. 

Actually, her point is "the fact that I could fruitfully compare them means that Heroes is finally coming into its own as a good comic book story".  Or as, one would assume, a good dramatic story — period.

Smallville without Lex

rosenbaum-9422981Even though some of us think that superhero stories would be swellerific if only it weren’t for those bad guys, that notion flies out the window when a villain — or a villain to be — is given such a consistently nuanced and rich portrayal.  The actor who does that for Lex Luthor on Smallville (and whom many consider one of the best aspects of that show), Michael Rosenbaum, has confirmed that he will be departing the series at the end of next year’s season. 

Even though that’s a long way away, viewers are doubtless already wondering who if anyone could take Rosenbaum’s place, and speculating that, if the show’s creators are wise, they’ll wrap up the entire series next year and go out with a bang.  Of course, it’s based on comics, so you could always have Lex die and be resurrected as another actor…

Who could have guessed?

grant02-3294431With Christopher Eccleston making such a big hit in Heroes, one could scarcely have imagined anyone else that could have brought forth the intensity and range to the first season of the revived Dr. Who series.  Well, David Tennant, of course, who’s done a bang-up job on Series 2 and (from what we hear) 3 and is wonderfully easy on the eyes to boot.  But — Hugh Grant? 

According to Paul Hayes at Outpost Gallifrey, "actor Hugh Grant has expressed his regret at not taking on the role of the Doctor when the BBC Wales production team offered it to him on the off-chance back in 2004."  Grant is quoted as saying, "I was offered the role of The Doctor a few years back and was highly flattered… "The danger with those things is that it’s only when you see it on the screen that you think, ‘Damn, that was good, why did I say no?’"  Grant doesn’t rule out future guest shots, though:  "I’m in talks about a one-off role. I’d prefer to be a baddie. They’re always much more fun to play."  The possibilities are a bit overwhelming.  Not to mention the setup lines.

Of course, Hugh had already played the Doctor previously, in the Comic Relief benefit piece, The Curse of Fatal Death, co-starring Rowan Atkinson, Jonathan Pryce and Joanna Lumley.

Starz coming out for NYCC

starz-2560923The New York Comic Con is beginning to look like San Diego East.  Expect lots of stuff that’s comics-related but isn’t necessarily graphic storytelling on paper. 

Case in point: ICv2 reports on Starz Home Entertainment’s presence at the con, where they’ll ill screen the second direct-to-DVD Hellboy movie, Hellboy Animated: Blood & Iron, on Saturday morning at 10:30, and sponsor a panel featuring Mike Mignola later in the day.  Starz is also sponsoring a panel featuring Stan Lee at 1 pm on Saturday, where Stan-the-Man will discuss his animated shows that Starz is distributing on DVD.

Personally, I want to meet that lady who does the 30-Second BunniesTheatre toons!

Counting down with DC

Wizard has a nice overview of DC’s upcoming weekly series Countdown, including an interview with head writer Paul Dini, who will supervise other writers (including Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, Tony Bedard and Adam Beechen) plus a revolving cadre of artists (including Jesus Saiz, Jim Calafiore, Carlos Magno and David Lopez) working over Keith Giffen breakdowns, the same way that the company’s current wildly popular 52 is arranged.  Buzz and expectations are already high for this one, and it isn’t even coming out until May!

countdown_t-9059593

For those who still can’t get enough, Newsarama has an interview with DC Senior VP-Executive Editor Dan Didio and Senior Editor Mike Marts (who will be editing the series) talking about the project in greater detail. The first block of four covers will be done by Andy Kubert and Tim Townsend.  This is a very big deal for those of us who’ve only ever seen Tim’s magnificent and award-winning inking work at DC’s "crosstown rivals."

Elayne Riggs: Rennies, Wonks and Fen

elayne200-5514998Have you ever seen a Venn diagram? Here’s an example:

venn-1822279John Venn first published these diagrams in 1880, although similar diagrams were used up to a century earlier. In the above example, the adjectives "happy," "short" and "male" all intersect in the middle, with overlaps also occurring between happy short females and sad short males and so on.

I’ve long thought of my life as a series of intersecting Venn diagrams, overlapping and looping back across time and friendships. For as long as I’ve been socialized I’ve been a joiner, but once I discovered pop culture I both narrowed and widened my spheres of comradery. David Cassidy fandom was probably first; although he was a major media star in the early ’70s, it was the age before personal computers, when paper ruled in the form of fan magazines and newsletters and penpals. At one point I had about 150 penpals (it was okay, stamps were only about 6¢ each in those days), about half of whom were Cassidy fans. We considered ourselves part of a secret cult, sharing a special bond that nobody else could understand.

Because connections in those days were much slower and lower-key than today (and entertainment choices considerably fewer), they were sustained longer. Where today someone could be branded a pariah within the space of a few hours for committing a faux pas an in online fan group, it took months for me to be kicked out of David Cassidy fan clubs for daring to suggest we were all gaga over a fictional media creation and that was still okay. Or maybe these leisure activities just seem more leisurely in nostalgic retrospect. Perhaps everyone thinks the hobby or media crush they were into as kids is more intense than the same interests seem to them later in life.

 

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Sales spurt continues into ’07

civil_war_1-9124191Good news from our friends at ICv2 — the rise in sales of periodical comics last year is continuing, thanks largely to event comcis like Marvel’s Civil War and DC’ 52.  There was a less than 5% drop between Civil War #s 5 and 6, and the most recent issue sold more than twice as much as the #2 title (another Civil War tie-in), Civil War Return.  

As expected, Marvel titles constituted 7 out of the top 10 best-selling titles and 15 out of the top 25.  Six titles sold over 100,000 units to retailers, and the next six sold above 90,000, including four issues of the weekly 52.  Full details at ICv2!

Glyph Awards nominees announced

baker_thebakers_2-2991579Rich Watson has announced the nominees in the second annual Glyph Comic Awards, honoring the best in black comics and creators.  The awards ceremony will be held at the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention (ECBACC) on May 18-19 at Temple University’s Anderson Hall in Philadelphia.  Besides Rich, the other judges will be Johanna Draper Carlson, Pam Noles, Calvin Reid and Hannibal Tabu.

There is one fan-based award for favorite black comic in a poll to be posted at the ECBACC website for the month of March.  Fans can write in their choice or select from the following nominees:

Black Panther: The Bride, Reginald Hudlin, Scot Eaton & Klaus Janson

Crisis Aftermath: The Spectre, Will Pfeifer & Cliff Chiang

Firestorm #28-32, Stuart Moore, Jamal Igle & Keith Champagne

New Avengers #22, Brian Michael Bendis & Leinil Francis Yu

Storm, Eric Jerome Dickey, David Yardin & Lan Medina and Jay Leisten & Sean Parsons

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Milestones in new comics media

I may be typing this on a MacBook but mostly I’m old.  Ever so much older than I used to be. A real 20th century kinda gal.  So I’m way behind the curve on what those crazy kids are up to when they’re not trampling my theoretical lawn or treating the comics shop like a reading room. 

lab_brats-6657958For one, they’re reading lots of comics online — by one estimate there may be as many as 36,000 different web-only comics out there, and that’s not even including syndicated print comic strips reproduced online.  There’s just no time to read them all, so we rely on others to announce special events, like today’s online ceremony for the 2007 Webcartoonists’ Choice Awards (congratulations to all the winners!), or the announcement that Ed Dunphy’s and Max Velati’s science humor webcomic Lab Bratz has just hit its 100th weekly episode.  At least the latter milestone makes us feel a bit better, as Dunphy used to write for such print titles as Munden’s Bar, Mongrel, Slash and Splatter.

I got those credits from ComicSpace, a sort of MySpace spinoff for comics folks.  Feel free to befriend me there; I don’t know how it works anyway.  It’s apparently "a community of over 12,500 comic fans and creators… hosting over 3,000 comic galleries… containing over 28,300 comic pages!" so, you know, who has time for that, a full-time job and sleep?  Well, MySpace now has its own comic book section, with over 20,000 "friends" so far.

The Internet is rapidly becoming the most expansive force in comics. It’s exciting to watch it grow.

Superbaby may suggest cure for muscular dystrophy

A 7-year-old German child with a myostatin mutation that makes him super-strong led pediatric neurologist and geneticist Markus Schuelke and fellow doctors to step up efforts to design drugs that could let muscles flourish without onerous side effects, holding great promise for patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. 

Wyeth came out with an experimental antibody drug which produced bulked-up mice in 2002, and results of a trial in adults with MD are expected as early as March.  Schuelke is still in contact with the boy, who is completely healthy despite fears that his heart muscle might grow too thick. He’s still strong, but no longer abnormally so.