Author: Glenn Hauman

You can’t say they don’t know their audience.

Just in time for San Diego Comic-Con, Sony is pushing hard for next year’s release of The Amazing Spider-Man. First, Columbia Pictures grabbed the cover spot in this week’s Entertainment Weekly along with a hefty photo spread, and now we’re seeing the (legitimate!) release of this teaser trailer:

We fully expect to see some of the cast in Hall H at San Diego, particularly Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone. But personally, we’re pulling for Denis Leary. His reaction to seeing the audience at San Diego could rival Shatner’s “Get a life!” speech.

But still– there’s something about the costume revamp that just (sorry) bugs me.

Finally, a week after the official poster was released, we can run the trailer for The Dark Knight Rises, the finale in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy starring Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Gary Oldman. Enjoy.

After netting nearly 300 million dollars worldwide in ticket sales, no one can question the motives behind making the final HARRY POTTER film in 3-D. We talk to the men who guided the movie to the top and the screenwriter who helped bring J.,K. Rowling’s stories to life. Plus we are set fore ComicCon 2011 – are you? No worries, we’ve got your FREE PASS right here.

Check out The Point Radio for constant pop culture updates – and please check us out on Facebook right here & toss us a “like”.

There’s a scene in Sleepless In Seattle where Tom Hanks, whose libido has been dead in the water since his wife died, comes home from work to discover his young son hanging out with a friend in his room – and that’s a literal hanging out, as the two of them are cozy cuddling on one of those mod hanging chairs built for one. Oh, did I forget to mention that the son’s friend is grrrl? One of those 9-going-on-24 types who seem to have waaaay too much information ‘bout the birds and the bees and who looks on grown-ups as burnt-out Muggies without a clue about the magic in the world and who you just have to tolerate because, well, that’s just the way life is.

“H-A-G,” the girl says to Tom. And, proving her point, he says, “Huh?”

“Hi and good-bye,” she sighs with a sad shake of her head.

“Oh. Yeah. Right” says Tom, and closes the door. Now Tom is such a brilliant actor, and you can just see the thoughts going through his head about just being kicked out of his son’s room, number one being, my 9 year old son is gettin’ some! And number two being fuck that! And the soundtrack gears up and Gene Autry sings “I’m Back in the Saddle Again” while we watch Tom going through his Rolodex and dialing the number of that cute interior decorator he works with.

So how does that relate to comics? As you’ll learn as you read my columns, my mind works in mysterious ways and I have given up trying to understand how that works.

See, it was a Saturday. A few days earlier Mike Gold had asked me to write for ComicMix. I was so flattered that I said yes immediately, and then after we hung up I’m like, “What the hell am I doing? Why did I say yes? I haven’t written anything in years. I’ve haven’t been involved with comics for years. I don’t even have an account at my local comics store anymore. I’m calling him back and telling him, thanks, but no thanks.” Only I didn’t. I watched Sleepless on HBO instead.

So the next day is Sunday and I’m driving out to Watchung to see my parents, and I’m listening to the Buffy “Once More With Feeling” soundtrack for like the millionth time and singing along and all of a sudden in the middle of I’ll Never Tell my mind flashes on that scene with Tom and his son and the wise-ass girl and Gene Autry singing in the background and I say to myself, Back in the Saddle Again. What a great title for my column.

So here I am.

I was going to write today about how I got into comics. See, I’m a nurse. An R.N. With extensive education and fancy certificates. I don’t talk about my “other career” at work. (For a reason. I’ll tell you about that later on, maybe.) But somehow someone always finds out. Through their kid, or their cousin, or their accountant, who are readers or collectors and “your name came up in conversation yesterday and my boyfriend asked me if you’re the Mindy Newell who wrote Wonder Woman. And I googled you and, wow, you worked for DC?” And then, you know, gossip, and in the middle of a laparoscopic cholecystectomy, the surgeon says to me, “Somebody told me you wrote the Legion of Super-Heroes. I loved the Legion. Read it all the time when I was growing up.” Once I had a patient who couldn’t get over that the writer of the Amethyst mini-series was his nurse.

And on the other side, the people who do read and work in comics, they always find it fascinating that I work in the operating room. A lot of them – maybe it has do with being comics fans? – always ask me about the blood, they all think there’s a lot of blood in the operating room, they’re like “how do you handle all that blood and guts and stuff?” and their eyes are glowing with excitement, and I swear, some of them, their mouths are watering, and I know they think I work in The Tomb of Dracula, but I love to fuck with them, and so I tell them that there really isn’t a lot of blood in the operating room, and that it can really be quite boring, but no one ever believes me, and they look so disappointed, so for those of you who really need that blood gratification, I will say that, yeah, sometimes there is tons of the red stuff, and that’s when it’s Avengers Asssemble!!

I promise I’ll tell you next time how I got into comics.

Oh, and one more thing.

I love being back in the saddle again.

Hope you’ll join me.

TUESDAY: Michael Davis!

To lay the groundwork for next week’s premiere, or in anticipation of San Diego Comic-Con, or simply to take some of the wind out of Harry Potter‘s sails, Paramount and Marvel released four new clips from Captain America: The First Avenger.

First how Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) got the job from General Hammond (Tommy Lee Jones) and Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci):

Then how he got the body:

Then how he got the shield:

(more…)

The world of fine arts is even more male-dominated than the world of popular arts. Although both trivialize the work of women, there are more respected women working in creative departments of film, television, even comics than there are in the better galleries and museums.

As if to prove the point, there is a new graphic novel from the Feminist Press, Who Is Ana Mendieta? Ana Mendieta was a Cuban-born artist best known for her earthworks, which combined her cultural heritage, her body, and specific sites. And, to the broader public, she is best known for her marriage to artist Carl Andre and her death under questionable circumstances.

This book is part of Blind Spot, a series of graphic novels from Feminist Press, which, according to their press release, “reconstruct these cultural biographies to tell a different story.”

Who Is Ana Mendiata? uses the graphic novel medium to full effect. The perspective jumps around from the persona – Ana’s life and relationships – to the professional – the upward trajectory of her career, and her developing themes as an artist – to the political – the art world environment and its attitude towards women. The word balloon placement guides the eye deftly, so that none of this is the least bit confusing. The slightly cartoony art style makes it easy to accept the contradictory opinions of the different characters, even as it encourages a healthy skepticism in the reader.

It makes me a little bit nostalgic to see the debates of the late 1970s to mid-1980s about the importance of women’s contribution to the arts. Critics like Lucy Lippard (who wrote the introduction to this book), artists like Barbara Kruger and Judy Chicago (just a small sample, read the book for more), and the Guerrilla Girls collective, made it an exciting time. Anger makes good graphics.

The same anger also made great music.

It’s interesting that now, more than 25 years later, we still have these arguments. It’s now accepted that women work “outside the home,” as we used to say. And we accept that women can be artists and managers and executives and airline pilots and ditch diggers.

And yet.

Women are still defined primarily as creatures who breed other humans. Our professional accomplishments are limited by our fertility, and the law considers us little more than incubators. Men can be fathers and successful, but women are still expected to choose one or the other area in which to excel.

Life is a good thing, and I’m in favor of continuing the human species. However, I think we limit ourselves when we concentrate on women’s wombs at the expense of their brains. Rosalyn Yalow‘s commitment to life was profound. If she couldn’t type, those people – and her genius – would have been lost to the rest of us.

Whether or not Ana Mendieta created work that appeals to your aesthetic, you owe it to yourself to check out this book … and her art.

[[[Who Is Ana Mendiata?]]]
Christine Redfern & Caro Caron
Introduction by Lucy Lippard
Hardcover: $18.95
ISBN: [[[978-155861703-2]]]
The Feminist Press

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman!

We’ve already heard a few complaints about the two comics racked above.

What’s the complaint? One’s an Avengers book, the other’s Captain Britain. They both look like retro-throwbacks to the 80’s, and they both look like they’re tying into The Iron Age miniseries, right? Okay, they’re a little pricy at $4.99, but–

–wait a minute. Open them up.

They’re the same comic.

These are both covers for The Iron Age #1. The series title is right up there, in that little red bar at the top of the issues. The Captain Britain cover? Marvel is considering that to be a variant cover.

Look at that picture of them on the rack. Would you have thought they were just variant covers, or would you have thought they were the same book? And would you be angry when you got home and discovered you paid $4.99 for a duplicate you didn’t want?

Consider this a public service announcement to help save money in these tough economic times. And the next time somebody behind the counter at your local comic book shop yells at you for looking through the books with the time-honored “This ain’t a library, bub!” you can simply tell them that you have to because comic book publishers are pulling stunts like this.