I got an IM from a friend recently: “You’ve heard of Zumba, right? Dance fitness?”
Me: “Not really… why?”
Her: “Somehow, I went from Zumba Fitness to Zombie Fitness. And now I desperately want to see a zombie fitness video.”
So this is for you, kiddo.
This weekend, you’ll see ComicMix contributors Aaron Rosenberg, Robert Greenberger, Alan Kistler, Jen Rosenberg, Dayton Ward, Kevin Dilmore, and me (and possibly Ian Bonds) at Shore Leave 32, just outside Baltimore, MD. Come on up and say hi.
Or come to see Edward James Olmos, Katee Sackhoff, Torri Higginson, Kevin Sorbo, Catherine Hicks, Dominic Keating, Allyn Gibson, Ann C. Crispin, Bob Jones, Christopher L. Bennett, Dave Galanter, David Alan Mack, Eric Kotani, Gerri Leen, Greg Cox, Howard Weinstein, Ilsa J. Bick, Kathleen David, Keith R. A. DeCandido, Kirsten Beyer, Lawrence M. Schoen, Lorraine Anderson, Marco Palmieri, Michael Jan Friedman, Mike W. Barr, Peter David, Richard C White, Rigel Ailur, Roberta Rogow, Scott Pearson, and Terri Osborne.
It’s a fun show, and we hope to see you there.
Clifford Meth is not a nice guy.
That doesn’t mean he’s not a good guy. Anybody who puts as much time as he has helping out comic book creators in need, like William Messner-Loebs, Dave Cockrum, and most recently Gene Colan, is clearly a decent human being (and yes, he’s also written things for ComicMix in the past).
But he’s not a nice guy. He’s clearly spent a certain amount of his life contemplating what Nietchze had in mind when he spoke of the abyss. He’s a card-carrying Neutral Good. He’s passionate, acerbic when needed, and his writing has a taste like sulfur and gunpowder.
Which brings us to the new short story collection, [[[The Whorehouse Madrigals (of Hank Magitz)]]] from Clifford’s publishing house, Aardwolf Publishing.
I tried to not be the guy here reviewing it, I consider Cliff a friend and didn’t want the conflict of interest. But two people I handed it to wrote back and said that the book just wasn’t for them. The hasteed to point out the book wasn’t bad, but definitely not to their taste. I couldn’t argue with them.
Now that said, I think it’s a funny book. But if the title isn’t a tipoff, it’s not a book that can be shared with your maiden aunt. Think of the tone of these stories as like Harlan Ellison, but mean. James Thurber this ain’t.
To give you an idea, here’s an adaptation of one of the stories inside, “Korean Math”– and for ghu’s sake, it is in no way safe for work. But if you have a black sense of humor, you’ll like it. Following a frustrating “massage incident,” author Hank Magitz calls
Charles Windsor-Smith, his publisher, to complain…
Tis the season to order Lone Justice, Volume 1— so do it today when you go to the comics store! Tell them that you want it, and to make sure they order it!
And for retailers: If you order 3 copies of Lone Justice TPB, you’ll get one free copy of Frankenstein Mobster Book 1: Made Man
TPB ($19.99 retail value). Order 6 copies of Lone Justice TPB, and get one free hand-drawn Mark Wheatley sketch.
LONE JUSTICE, VOLUME 1 – Coming in September!
Robert Tinnell, Mark Wheatley (writer) . Mark Wheatley (art & cover)
He’s been the city’s greatest champion, battling tirelessly to keep us safe from harm. But what could spell the end for Lone Justice? What could destroy the hero of the century? In the days of the Great Depression, a man born to wealth and power finds himself fighting injured and disillusioned against evil, authority, and the law. When a man loses everything he discovers what he stands for. A violent, gut-wrenching tale for our time!
Trade paperback, Full Color, 140 pages, $19.99
Printed by IDW Publishing
LONE JUSTICE Volume 1 is solicited in the July PREVIEWS (now available).
The Diamond Item Code is JUL100357.
I don’t know details except that this is being done in Japan of course (which means it will be known by the original name of Space Battleship Yamato) but I am impressed by the effort:
See our previous articles:
Space Cruiser Yamato/Star Blazers Returns
Star Blazers Redone Right
Devil’s Due Publishing has pulled its distribution of comics and graphic novels from Diamond Comic and Diamond Book Distributors, effective today. The publisher will soon be announcing its new book store distribution partners, and will offer product direct to comic book retail outlets, as well as distribution through Haven Comic Distributors.
“For almost over a year Devil’s Due has been in an unwinnable situation wherein Diamond garnishes our revenues to pay back returns and fees it claims are owed from 2008 and 2009, making it impossible for us to keep up with payments to talent, printers, and other expenses while maintaining a stable business,” said Josh Blaylock, president of Devil’s Due, who was forced to wind down the company’s publishing rather than ramp up as it originally planned to do when hit with a rough economy in 2008. “We’ve exhausted every resource to get on track, with a primary focus on catching up with talent payments first and foremost, but when Diamond controls the money flow, that becomes impossible.”
The decision did not come lightly, adds Blaylock, “Of course this is the last thing a company wants to do in the Diamond dominated comic book industry, but it is necessary if we are going to be able to ever again be able to turn the money faucet back on. I am hopeful that we will be able to work something out with Diamond in the future. Until we verify a number of questions regarding sales from late 2008 through the present, DDP will be utilizing other avenues of distribution to move back stock, as well as limited releases of select new material.
To order direct, DDP encourages customers to contact the numbers and emails below.
Haven Distributors
1-877-HAVEN-50(1-877-428-3650)
http://www.havendistro.com/
Devil’s Due Direct Sales: j.blay@devilsdue.net
It also welcomes fans to purchase digital downloads on Graphic.ly, iVerse through the iTunes App store, and comiXology, the latter of which currently has over 100 comics available at https://comics.comixology.com/#/devils_due including the never-released-in-print Hack/Slash – Mercy Sparx: A Slice of Hell crossover special, as the sales from these companies are going in large part towards paying off moneys owed to licensors and talent.
It’s getting closer to San Diego Comic-Con, which means we’re going to start seeing more leaked movie trailers and TV shows. Here’s one of the newer entries, Rubicon.
The show is a conspiracy thriller starring James Badge Dale (who earlier
this year headlined HBO’s The Pacific) as an analyst at a New
York City-based federal intelligence agency who is thrown into a conspiracy
where nothing is as it appears to be. Henry Bromell (Homicide,
Chicago Hope, Brotherhood) has signed on as showrunner. The
one-hour, 13-episode weekly series is produced by Warner Horizon
Television and premieres August 1 on AMC.
But because we like you, here’s the first episode in its entirety. Enjoy.
Oh, and SPOILER ALERTS for everything in the comments.
Proving that everything goes faster and better with Yakety Sax.
A century ago today, the Fight of the Century was fought.
Today is the centennial of the fight between the first black heavyweight champion of the world, Jack Johnson, and the former heavyweight champion James J. Jeffries, who retired undefeated. The fight took place on July 4, 1910 in front of 20,000 people, at a
ring built just for the occasion in downtown Reno,
Nevada.
Jeffries came out of retirement to fight Johnson, saying, “I feel
obligated to the sporting public at least to make an effort to reclaim
the heavyweight championship for the white race… I should step
into the ring again and demonstrate that a white man is king of them
all.” Jeffries had not fought in six years and had to lose weight to get back
to his championship fighting weight. Johnson proved stronger and more nimble than Jeffries. In
the 15th round, after Jeffries had been knocked down twice for the first
time in his career, his people called it quits to prevent Johnson from
knocking him out.
The “Fight of the Century” earned Johnson $65,000 and silenced the
critics, who had belittled Johnson’s previous victory over Tommy Burns
as “empty,” claiming that Burns was a false champion since Jeffries had
retired undefeated.
If you’d like to know more about Jack Johnson, we are proud to present The Original Johnson. You can start from the beginning, or read the latest installment in our serialization online… and if you’d like to jump ahead to the Fight of the Century, Sports Illustrated has an excerpt available in this week’s edition of their iPad app.
“Straight on till mourning!”
That was the end of the last public announcement of science fiction author F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre, when he posted a note that said he’d be getting away from it all for a while and might be some time in getting back. At the time, some folks thought it was a typo.
Sadly, it wasn’t. It appears that he was tremendously depressed and killed himself last Friday by setting his Brooklyn apartment on fire.
“Froggy” was a was a Scottish-born journalist, novelist, poet and illustrator, who
lived in Wales and New York City. His writings include the
science-fiction novel The
Woman Between the Worlds
and his anthology of verse and humor pieces MacIntyre’s Improbable Bestiary. As an uncredited “ghost” author, he was known to have written or
co-written several other books.
In the early 1960s, under his previous name, MacIntyre was an
employee of Lew Grade and worked as a trainee technician on the crews of
the television series The
Champions and The
Prisoner— which explained the jacket you often saw him in, the one in the photograph.
I didn’t know him well, and I’d be hard-pressed to say anybody did– Teresa Nielsen Hayden reminded me, “Right after 9/11, every NYC group and community was constantly,
informally checking to see whether anyone was missing. In the New
York-area SF community, MacIntyre was the last person I know of who was
confirmed to be okay, and the confirmation came a month or two after the
attacks.” I remember commenting at the time, when we were all searching– how would we know? Who could we check with?
He was a man who lived his life in a sort of constant pain– he took the name Gwynplaine from the Victor Hugo novel The Man Who Laughs, which comic fans know was made into a film which served as the inspiration for the Joker– a man twisted by devastating events into something horrific. That he chose to reference that gives you an idea about the man.
It will be strange not to see him on the periphery of events anymore. He will be missed.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
Stephen Colbert, we have your writer for “The Chronicles of Amber”!
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