The CW Network, Alloy Media + Marketing and the American Red Cross are teaming to host blood drives in over 230 high schools and college campuses nationwide to help save lives as well as to promote the series premiere of The Vampire Diaries.
The “Starve a Vampire. Donate Blood” campaign began this week and will carry on for five weeks. At each school blood drive, specially branded The Vampire Diaries materials will be one hand as well as themed refreshment stands and footage from the show playing on TV monitors. Every student participating will receive branded promotional items.
The Vampire Diaries premieres on The CW September 10 at 8p.
It’s hot out there, and we just had a weekend or two without a major convention, so we’ve all been talking amongst ourselves. And as a result, we’ve been talking about… talking.
The major flare-up has been on Heidi MacDonald’s blog, chroncling a heated discussion between Gail Simone and Rich Johnston…
Sometime in the night, the marvelous Gail Simone went on Twitter and spoke thusly: Do We Need Tabloid And Gossip Comics Journalism?
which Rich Johnston picked up at the above link. Simone is no stranger
to the message board, so the debate continues in the link and its very
own Twitter topic.
…with comment thread cameos from Mark Waid, Mark Engblom, Kurt Busiek, and Dwayne McDuffie, and since the comment thread has closed down over there, I’m reopening it over here.
Let me throw in an example, and try to give some of an idea as to what we’re trying for here at ComicMix.
Very late last night, someone IM’d me that an editor had been laid off. Reasonably impeccable source, and I know the editor. Should I post it on ComicMix?
Well, no. If it’s true, I don’t think that person would appreciate personal employment issues being broadcast to the world. If it’s false, it’s even more damaging to their career and possibly the freelancers that editor employs. So there’s a good reason to hold back on it, until confirmation.
But wait! If that editor is truly gone, then that means that an entire line of publications goes down as well! Does that make it newsworthy then?
The scales tip a bit here. Because now you’re beginning to impact a number of other professionals (who I also know) who may suddenly find themselves out of work, and a number of businesses who will suddenly have their stock (and backstock) affected because books may be canceled.
Then it’s a puzzlement. In that case, there’s a case to be made for private gossip– check with the affected pros privately to give them a heads up, mayhaps. But it’s fluid. We make our choices day by day, and yes, we have our
own sacred cows and things we don’t like to talk about. We don’t want
to tick off publishers– we’re publishers. We don’t want to tick off
retailers, we publish print editions– but then, we also do electronic
versions of our books. We could pick on some websites when they go down, but then we look like idiots when we have technical problems.
My only personal take on it the matter? Always punch up. Picking on an editor who’s doing the bidding of a large company is fair game. Picking on an editor fired by a large company? No. Or, if you prefer, comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.
Or, simply enough– what would crusading columnist Oliver Queen do?
From back in the day when Superman used his moral force to say we should do this because it’s the right thing to do for our neighbors, never mind if it cost us some tax dollars.
Of course, today he’d be attacked for his position because, after all, he’s an illegal immigrant.
And like so many other illegals, we just want him to clean up our messes and do the jobs we can’t do for ourselves for non-existent pay, but that doesn’t mean we have to acknowledge when he might have a point.
But I could be mistaken. Is there someone out there who can explain why Superman is wrong?
VH1 and Lionsgate are casting for the second season of Scream Queens, seeking beautiful, confident and uninhibited actresses. Ten women will be selected to compete in the VH1 show with one winning a role in a Lionsgate horror film. Interested applicants must be between 21 and 30 years old, have a competitive attitude and the desire to become Hollywood’s next “scream queen.” Since the winner of the first season will be appearing in Saw VI, there’s a definite chance for advancement.
Two casting calls are scheduled in Los Angeles on August 29 and in New York City on September 12. If applicants are unable to attend the casting calls, home videos can be mailed and a possible Skype interview may be set up with the casting director. For more information, send an email to ScreamQueensCasting@gmail.com.
This is the second part of a very long interview with Chris Claremont that started on the topic of X-Men Forever and branched into a number of other areas. Part one of the interview is here, and we recommend reading it to get up to speed. Warning: plot points are discussed up to X-Men Forever #5 at least, do not read this interview if you want to be spoiled.
ComicMix:X-Men Forever– this isn’t just you taking your old X-Men script from 1991 and picking up where you left off.
Chris Claremont: No. The point is that I took my concepts from 1991 and sat down and looked at the team and rethought the whole thing. The difference is that the scripts in 1991 were a whole series of arcs that in more than a few cases had ended up being echoed, if not outright adapted, by subsequent writers.
CM: In the same vein, since your initial run on the X-Men, a lot of your work and your own style has been adapted in other places; for example, your creation of Kitty Pryde has been cited as an inspiration for Joss Whedon on Buffy. Let’s not even get started on what people have been drawing on for Heroes and Lost. So now that people know your tropes and it’s become mainstream, what’s next? How do you go beyond that now that the rest of the world is catching up with you?
CC: Well, theoretically the rule we’re running with is if I’ve done it before, I can’t do it here. One of the rules that Mark and I are using is to try as much as possible not to take a story in directions that people anticipate. We’ll see what happens. Part of it is the nature of the characters themselves. My original impulse was to excise Cyclops from the cast because I wanted to focus on someone else– and he just wouldn’t go! Every time I wrote him out, he’d write himself back in. Some part of my brain refused to accept that perception of the X-Men’s reality; its vision was that Cyclops is a key and essential character. There comes a point, as a writer, when you have to listen to that part of your instinct, to ask “why is is saying this?” And once you find the answer, go with it. I am throwing everything up in the air. There are major changes to the eight characters in the series…
CM: Those being Storm, Rogue, Nightcrawler–
CC: Let me start at the top. Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler, Beast, Kitty, Gambit, Rogue, Nick Fury, and two others to be named later.
CM: Nick Fury’s a mutant, or just showing up a lot?
CC: Nick Fury’s a member of the cast. He’s the head of S.H.I.E.L.D., but we don’t have a S.H.I.E.L.D. book, so we can use him. His rationale for being there is the X-Men are a critical facet of the world community, just because of the power that mutants represent, and they need a minder. That, plus concerns he’s about to have in terms of S.H.I.E.L.D. itself, make it more convenient/essential for him to stay on scene with the X-Men to figure out what’s going on.
CM: Since you mention Nightcrawler and Kitty Pryde…
CC: They were in Excalibur, yes; they are coming back to the X-Men.
CM: A lot of people have been asking that very question.
CC: The opening circumstances of the book, as seen in the preview, are that this is taking place subsequent to the memorial service for Magneto, where all the X-Men have gathered. There’s one panel on page four where you see the group shot of whole bunches of mutants out back. That explains what they’re all doing there.
CM: So you’ll have all of the X-Men there, you’ll have X-Force there, you’ll have Excalibur…
CC: Those who wish to honor Magneto. Some of them may decide they’re not coming. Anyway, things start to happen from that point on. Essentially, for issue 1, Charlie temporarily closes the school and sends everybody home. He gathers a core team of X-characters to go out after Fabian Cortez, who killed Magneto, to bring him in, and to turn him over to S.H.I.E.L.D. and end this disaster before it gets any worse. Fury is there, saying this: You’re living in a dream world. Magneto threatened the world, and some of you X-Men helped him–you were mind-controlled, but you helped him. The rest of you X-Men stopped him. What makes you think the world’s going to stand back and accept the fact that you guys are unaffiliated, independent operatives and let you go on from there? You represent far too much power.
Rather than rehash all the excellent work Michael Pinto at Fanboy.com has done chronicling her amazing life, we’re just going to point you to his article:
At the end of the silver age of comic books (which was sometime the early 70s) there was a well known cigarette ad campaign which would proudly proclaim to the ladies “You’ve come a long way, baby.”
But sadly while the wider world of publishing started to open up to
women, the comic book biz was — and still today largely a boys club.
Now I can already hear the indignation from my fellow fanboys, but
here’s the evidence:
Tomorrow is the 80th birthday of a living legend in the field of comics — yet sadly in my humble opinion not enough people today know the name Marie Severin.
Yet like a Stan Lee or a Jack Kirby by all rights Severin should be one
of a handful of names that every fanboy (and fangurl too) knows.
Due to, as near as we can tell, Martians deleting folders in my RSS reader, I’ve lost every single one of the links to various comics and pop culture blogs. And we’re going to be spending the weekend rebuilding it, more or less from memory.
So I want to ask you. What news sources should be in our reading mix? What are we missing? Who should we be following? Stuff like that.
Please put your recommendations in the comments, and yes, feel free to hype your own blogs as well. Assume that if I don’t see it here, I may not remember it in the midst of debris.
Whether you are the unfortunate victim of a gamma radiation overdose
or just a guy trying to pull off a great presentation, the rule is the
same: Chill out! Things are going to go wrong. Outlets aren’t going to
work. You will forget your extra batteries on the day when your
batteries finally die. Yes. Your fonts are beautiful – and unfathomably
tiny. Here’s an idea: live, learn and laugh. You can’t prepare for
every factor that will mess with your perfect presentation. That’s why
should always be preparing to present the imperfect one. Trust me, throwing the lectern through the wall will solve nothing.
Personally, I always use Jedi skills when giving business presentations. They always work well on the weak-minded.
It’s hot out there, and we just had a weekend or two without a major convention, so we’ve all been talking amongst ourselves. And as a result, we’ve been talking about… talking.
This is the second part of a very long interview with 
Rather than rehash all the excellent work Michael Pinto at Fanboy.com has done chronicling her amazing life, we’re just going to point you to 
Due to, as near as we can tell, Martians deleting folders in my RSS reader, I’ve lost every single one of the links to various comics and pop culture blogs. And we’re going to be spending the weekend rebuilding it, more or less from memory.
This is the week for angry business stuff here, isn’t it? Yesterday, we had 
