Author: Glenn Hauman

A Tribute to Bill Mantlo on December 6

  • News
  • November 6, 2007

rom-annual-2-100-2046026Floating World Comics will host a benefit show for comics writer Bill Mantlo, who suffered severe head trauma when he was struck by a car while rollerblading in 1992. He currently resides in a brain injury rehabilitation nursing home.

Jason Leivian, the owner of Floating World, has asked "hundreds of artists" to donate an illustration of Rom the Spaceknight, a minor Marvel character, toy figure and cult icon that most recently appeared in an episode of South Park. All proceeds from the December 6 show will be delivered to Bill’s brother and caregiver, Mike Mantlo.

Gordon Lee trial ends in mistrial

  • Uncategorized
  • November 5, 2007

Straight from the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund:

The case against Gordon Lee took another in an ongoing series of bizarre turns this afternoon when statements made by State prosecutor John Tully during opening arguments led to a mistrial.

Lee and his legal team, paid for by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, appeared in court this morning for jury selection and returned in the afternoon to begin the actual trial. Before the jury was brought in to begin the trial, lead counsel Alan Begner argued an oral motion in limine asking the judge to instruct prosecutors that they could not admit statements from their witnesses alluding to Lee’s character and previous legal actions Lee has been party to. Prosecutors assured the court that they had instructed their witnesses not to address Lee’s previous conviction for selling adult comics to an adult. Then during opening statements in front of the jury, prosecutor Tully said witnesses will testify that Gordon was defensive and that Gordon had told police, “I’ve been through this before,” a clear reversal of his earlier statement to the judge that prosecutors would not be entering such statements into the record.

When Tully made his statement, defense counsel stared at each other in disbelief before Begner leapt up to demand a mistrial. Judge Larry Salmon put his head in his hands and called a 15 minute recess.

Upon returning to the courtroom, as a result of Tully’s statement, Salmon declared a mistrial, because the statements alluding to the prior incident contaminated the jury beyond repair for a fair trial.

(more…)

Masi Oka supporting One Laptop Per Child

  • News
  • November 5, 2007

Heroes star Masi Oka will be serving as global ambassador for the non-profit One Laptop Per Child initiative headed up by MIT Media Lab’s Nicholas Negroponte, which has set out to design, manufacture and distribute laptops to developing countries for under $100 each.

The Brown University Math/Computer Science grad is a dual threat in the digital space, known not only as an actor but also as a SFX guru with George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic.

E-mail from Marvel Comics…

  • News
  • November 3, 2007

Just got this email from Marvel:

Dear Marvel.com Registered User,

Thank you for registering with Marvel.com and for reading this email. We wanted to let you know that we have made changes to our privacy policy and terms and conditions effective as of April 11th, 2007. […]

April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November… jeez, does everything ship late from those guys?

Buffy writers and the Evils of Synchronicity

  • News
  • November 2, 2007

omnivore-4933806This may be turning into a bad series of coincidences. We wrote last week about the similarities between the Sci Fi Channel’s Warehouse 13 (co-written by Buffy writer Jane Espenson) and Steve Jackson Games’s Warehouse 23. Now we might seeing something similar happening again — and this time, it’s Buffy creator Joss Whedon.

As has been widely reported, Fox has given a seven episode order to a new Joss Whedon project called Dollhouse. The series is about a group of agents used for different assignments and between those assignments their minds and memories are wiped and they live in a dollhouse type environment.  One of the women, Echo (played by Eliza Dushku), tries to find out who she was before her memory was wiped.

All well and good, except there was something that tickled the memory of a correspondent — specifically, a similarity to Piers Anthony’s Of Man and Manta trilogy. He might have a point. Here’s an excerpt of the the first chapter of the first book, Omnivore, originally published in 1968, where the lead character Subble talks about himself:

(more…)

The return of Jon Sable Freelance!

  • News
  • November 2, 2007

Jon Sable FreelanceContinuing with our commitment to bringing you the best in online comics, ComicMix is proud to announce the return of Mike Grell’s Jon Sable Freelance in an all new adventure!

Jon Sable is many things: freelance bounty hunter, bodyguard, mercenary, even a children’s book author.  It’s true.  Under the pen name of “B. B. Flemm,” Sable is the author of a popular series of children’s stories about a troop of leprechauns living in Central Park. 

How did he get to this point in his bizarre life? Ivory poachers slaughtered his family when Sable was a professional hunter in Africa.  Deported back to the States, he drank himself to the bottom.  With the help of his mentor, Sonny Pratt, and his literary agent, Eden Kendall, he struggled to put his life back together.

In his newest adventure, Sable is hired by the head of an African diamond cartel to transport a magnificent raw diamond to an exhibit in New York. But his task is complicated by having to play escort, bodyguard and babysitter to the cartel’s corporate spokesperson, Bashira, a temperamental model with a history of drug problems. While Sable struggles to keep her under control and out of tabloid headlines he finds himself the center of a deadly hunt and a plot that reaches beyond the world of glamour and into the world of terror…

Jon Sable Freelance: Ashes Of Eden premieres today on ComicMix, with new installments weekly– all online, all free!

And if you’d like to read the previous exploits of Jon Sable, we recommend The Complete Jon Sable Freelance from IDW Publishing, reprinting the entire run from the 80’s. The cover to Volume 1 of this handsome edition is pictured here.

Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!

  • News
  • November 2, 2007

No, I haven’t read this book. But really, how can you not love a title like Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain! Cartoonist Ignores Helpful Advice? Although there are those in this industry that might suspect the subtitle is redundant.

So what is this book about? Oh, it’s just Dilbert creator Scott Adams spouting off on his blog and trying to turn his online antics into publishing success. Really, how can he hope to make money off of– what? That’s our business model?

As I was saying, Scott Adams is a freakin’ genius.

But even still, he has not come up with the best book title ever. That honor belongs to this book. (Hat tip to Ironic Sans.)

Happy 80th Birthday, Steve Ditko!

  • News
  • November 2, 2007

Eighty years ago on this day in Johnston, PA, Steve Ditko was born.

If you know anything about comics, you know Ditko’s work as the creator of Blue Beetle, the Creeper, Killjoy, Mr. A., the Odd Man, the Question, Shade, the Changing Man, and Speedball, and the co-creator of Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Captain Atom, Hawk and Dove, Doctor Octopus, Dormammu, Electro, Green Goblin, Kraven the Hunter, Mysterio, the Sandman, the Scorpion, Squirrel Girl, Stalker, the Lizard, and the Vulture.

He is, of course, well known for a great many other things:

  • Ditko hands.
  • His incredible ability to hit deadlines. There are stories of him receiving a script at 9 and completing the eight page story by 5, pencils and inks.
  • philosophical stands, well discussed by Dial B for Blog in this piece on Mr. A.
  • His one of a kind backgrounds, so completely impossible to reproduce by anyone else that they had to use his art for 1602.
  • His complete reluctance to be interviewed– the photo at left is one of only four photos known to exist of the man. While most of the BBC documentary In Search Of Steve Ditko has been taken offline, here’s a clip from the show of Alan Moore talking about Mr. A:

We of the web salute this one-of-a-kind creator.

Strike jitters scotch Heroes: Origins?

  • News
  • November 1, 2007

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Heroes spin-off , Heroes: Origins, will not be receiving its eight episode run, which was to begin in the summer of 2008. While NBC hasn’t officially said that the series is, ah, eclipsed, producers have not been given a date when it would be put on the schedule. During the network upfronts held last May it was mentioned that Origins would be spelling its older sibling during a late-season hiatus, and that Kevin Smith would be directing the first episode.

The big question: is it because of a pending writer’s strike, or is it because of tanking ratings for Heroes? To which the obvious reply is: Can’t it be both?

Either way, this will be touted as the first casualty of the writers’ strike, which I’m just interpreting as a propaganda stunt to get rabid fanboys ticked off at those mean writers. It’s the same reason that TV Guide runs all those alternate covers of anything remotely science fiction.

Incidentally, the strike jitters is the reason why we haven’t reported on the theoretical deal that Joss Whedon has to develop a new TV show on Fox with Eliza Dushku. Well, that and some other reasons we’re looking into. There are a few shoes waiting to drop…

How to apply Elvira makeup

  • News
  • October 31, 2007

Time to commence with the Halloween puns and posts, and we’ll start with something that might almost be useful: how to apply makeup in the style of Elvira.

elvira-makeup-6709577

Oh, and don’t forget the wig.

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