Wolverine as you’ve never seen him before
I’ve been looking for some place to use this image for a loooong time, and I’m tired of waiting.
Think of it as a magic of Christmas thingie.
Consider this an open thread.
Author: Glenn Hauman
Happy 80th birthday, Fandom!
Patrick Nielsen Hayden at Tor.com reminds us that on December 11, 1929, the world’s first
club devoted to science fiction met for the first time in a Harlem apartment. They called
themselves the Scienceers and within three years would count Mort Weisinger and Julius Schwartz among their members, along with the original Ray Palmer. Years later, in 1961, one of their original
number recalled those days in a fanzine article which can be read here.
And within a year, there was already a schism in the group, starting a tradition that continues to this very day.
Happy Hannukah… er, Chanukkah… um…
…Happy Festival of Lights to you all!
(And as an aside, I thought it was Reed’s face that stretched like rubber, not Sue’s.)
Incidentally, the above is from Marvel Digital’s Holiday Special, in a story written by Stan. So enjoy.
Frazetta break-in update
Continuing from our earlier article: Frank Frazetta’s son breaks into father’s museum using backhoe, attempts to take $20 million in paintings
See this? It’s Frank Frazetta’s “Berserker”, used as the cover to Conan The Conqueror. It hung in the Frazetta Museum for ten years until about a month ago, when it was sold to a private collector for one million dollars.
That link is interesting, because it also mentions that Frazetta contradicted himself at times… so if he told his son to get the art and then later said he didn’t, well… that could put his son’s words in a new light.
Heidi MacDonald has been doing great work on this story, and she adds a connection I didn’t make: one of the people who assisted in the break-in was Kevin Clement, who lived next door to the Frazetta museum. Clement is a familiar figure to east coast fantasy fans are the organizer of the Chiller Theatre Expo horror conventions held twice a year in New Jersey. Clement, it is important to note, has not been charged with any crimes.
She also reports:
Over the years Frank Frazetta Sr. has held on to his artwork,
refusing huge sums to sell such iconic works as his Conan covers.
However, after Ellie’s death, Frazetta’s three other children, Heidi,
Holly and Bill retained art dealers Robert Pistella and Steve Ferzoco
to start handling the artwork, licensing and other business matters.
The two formed Frazetta Management Corp. and the way Frazetta’s art was
being handled began to change — in November for the first time one of his legendary Conan covers was sold for $1 million. Not chump change and just the beginning of a likely goldmine.It’s not exactly a secret that there are a lot of legal questions regarding Frazetta’s iconic artwork — the Frazettas had a legal entanglement
with David Spurlock/Vanguard productions, for instance. With mentions
of a family lawsuit, and other infighting it’s clear that just how to
run the family business has become a matter of contention to the point
where a backhoe was brought in.
This story is just getting started, I think.
So let me ask all the creators who are reading this: have you updated your will yet? How about your power of attorney? When writer John M. Ford died, Neil Gaiman was extra saddened to discover that his good friend and favorite writer had not made out a will to deal with his literary estate. So he went and commissioned a simple boilerplate will that anyone could use so no one would have to suffer this grief and creators’ works would be handled the way the creators would want.
US Justice Department won’t support ‘Original Johnson’ pardon
From the AP via Yahoo: Justice Dept. won’t support Jack Johnson pardon
The Justice Department is refusing to back a posthumous pardon for Jack Johnson, the black heavyweight boxing champion who was imprisoned nearly a century ago because of his romantic ties with a white woman.
In a letter obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, the department’s pardon attorney, Ronald L. Rodgers, told Rep. Peter King
that the Justice Department’s general policy is not to process
posthumous pardon requests. In cases like Johnson’s, given the time
that has passed and the historical record that would need to be
scoured, the department’s resources for pardon requests are best used
on behalf of people “who can truly benefit” from them, Rodgers wrote.
The letter was in response to one that King, R-N.Y., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had sent to President Barack Obama
in October urging a pardon. In that letter, the two lawmakers noted
that both houses of Congress has passed a resolution calling for a presidential pardon
and said they hoped the president would be eager to “right this wrong
and erase an act of racism that sent an American citizen to prison.”
Rodgers
wrote that notwithstanding the department policy, Obama still has the
authority to pardon whomever he wishes, “guided when he sees fit by the
advice of the pardon attorney.”
And he did cite two cases of posthumous pardons: President Bill Clinton’s
1999 pardon of Lt. Henry O. Flipper, the Army’s first black
commissioned officer, who was drummed out of the military in 1882 after
white officers accused him of embezzling $3,800 in commissary funds;
and President George W. Bush’s
2008 pardon of Charles Winters, who was convicted of violating the
Neutrality Act when he conspired in 1948 to export aircraft to a
foreign country in aid of Israel.
In Winters’ case, Rodgers said, the pardon request was not processed by Justice’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, due to the department’s posthumous pardon policy.
King said in a telephone interview that he and McCain probably will continue to urge Obama to issue the pardon.
“What they’re doing here is bucking it back to President Obama,” King said. “So I would respectfully urge him to grant the pardon. This is the president’s call.”
The White House had no immediate comment on whether Obama would consider the request.
To read more on the life and times of Jack Johnson, read The Original Johnson by Trevor Von Eeden. The latest installment has just been posted today, or you can start from the beginning.
The first volume will be out in print before Christmas, and you can preorder the book now from Amazon.com, or request it from your local comic book store.
Frank Frazetta’s son breaks into father’s museum using backhoe, attempts to take $20 million in paintings
This may be one of the strangest stories in comics of the year– and potentially very sad.
Pennsylvania state police charged Frank Frazetta Jr. with theft, burglary and trespass after he and two other men used a backhoe to pull the door off the hinges of the Frank Frazetta Art Museum. Police said once inside, Frazetta stole about 90 paintings and was loading them into a truck when he was caught by police.
The elder Frazetta is known for his work on characters including Conan the Barbarian, Tarzan and Vampirella. He was in Florida at the time of the theft.
His son’s motive stems from a family feud over assets. Frank’s wife and Alfonso’s mother, Ellie, died earlier this year. According to Frank Jr.’s wife, Lori Frazetta, Frank Jr. and Ellie ran the family business until Ellie’s death, when the infighting over Frank Sr.’s paintings began. Frank Sr. is said to be suffering from dementia.
Frazetta Jr. was arraigned and sent to the Monroe County jail. Bail was set at $500,000. Officials didn’t know whether he had a lawyer yet.
A trooper who responded said Frazetta claimed he had been instructed by his father “to enter the museum by any means necessary to move all the paintings to a storage facility,” according a police affidavit.
The elder Frazetta told police that his son did not have permission to enter the museum or to remove any artwork. Frank Frazetta’s attorney, Gerard Geiger, said the stolen paintings were insured for $20 million, according to court documents.
Here’s the news story from WNEP:
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Merry Cthulhumas!
In deference to the Great Old
Ones, Tor.com has devoted this December to everyone’s favorite cosmic
tentacled thing-that-cannot-be-described from Vhoorl.
We celebrate by including this image we came across (but now can’t find the source of, sorry) which we hope will inspire an upcoming episode of The Brave and the Bold. It is our hope that this will please great Cthulhu so that he will eat us first.
‘Twilight Saga: Eclipse’ goes IMAX
It was almost inevitable.
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, the third movie in Summit Entertainment’s adaptations of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight books, will be released in IMAX theatres simultaneously with the movie’s nationwide release on June 30, 2010. The first Twilight movie to be released in IMAX theatres, IMAX Corporation and Summit Entertainment will digitally re-master Eclipse to enhance both the image and sound quality. Eclipse once again stars Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner.
The interesting question: for how long? New Moon had a huge opening and didn’t last long, so it will only stay in IMAX for two weeks, then be replaced on July 16th by Christopher Nolan’s Inception.
Weird headline of the day: ‘Doctor Who Tried To Save JFK Dies’
When I read this headline, I thought that Doctor Who had gone back to November 22, 1963– the day that Doctor Who premiered on the BBC, by the way– and had tried to save John F. Kennedy.
But no. The story merely notes the passing of Dr. Malcolm Perry, who was the ER doctor on duty in Dallas on that fateful day.
But we all know the Doctor was there, right? No? Well, then perhaps you may want to read this, with an even more confusing title:
Originally published by Virgin Publishing Ltd in 1996, Who
Killed Kennedy has long been out-of-print and consequently has become much
sought-after by Doctor Who book collectors, but is now available online as an e-book.
