If you’re like me, some of the happiest moments in the Spider-Man films came when Sam Raimi found a spot to slip in the theme from the ’67 animated series. So, for your listening pleasure, we have some cover versions of the song, from Michael Buble…
…to the Ramones.
And for some additional information about that animated series, we highly recommend Wallopin’ Websnappers for a look behind the scenes at the show.
Look out. Here comes the you-know-what.
Yes, today’s the 30th Anniversary of Star Wars, or as some folks have suggested, Universal Day of the Jedi. It’s also the 24th Anniversary of the release of Return of the Jedi. But did you know it’s also Towel Day?
Towel Day was created to commemorate the passing of that hoopy frood Douglas Adams, who passed away on May 11th, 2001, and it was the fastest date that people could agree on. A towel, of course, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value — you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. Anyone who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
It’s also, of course, the start of a three day weekend — always a cause for celebration — and I understand there’s some pirate movie that’s opening today. So go forth and enjoy. But make sure you bring a towel.
A long time ago (30 years ago today) in a galaxy far, far away… actually, for me it was the old Fox Theater on Route 347 in Setauket, on a screen the size of a battleship… a little film called Star Wars was released.
Worlds lived, worlds died, and the cinematic universe would never be the same again.
As for us, we here at ComicMix will be pulling up all sorts of personal memories all day, along with other Star Wars oddities we find on the net, and John Ostrander is already out at Celebration IV in Los Angeles signing copies of the new Star Wars: Legacy trade paperback at the Dark Horse booth with Jan Duursema, so if there’s any breaking news, he’ll let us know.
But really, how could we be bigger fanboys than Steve Sansweet? He literally wrote the book on the matter.
In the meantime, to kick things off, here’s a little bit of what we love about it.
Congrats, George. Love It. So when’s Clone Wars coming out?
It’s not all that surprising, but still shocking when you see it spelled out: Americans now spend roughly half of their spare time online during a typical weekday, according to the Netpop I Play report from Media-Screen, and more than half of this time is spent on entertainment and communications activities.
Forty-eight percent of young broadband users say they learn about entertainment through their online community of social networking sites, blogs, review sites and video sharing sites. Only a quarter of them say they learn about entertainment options through television. And that’s why Paul McCartney debuted his latest music video on YouTube last night.
Meanwhile, TV networks devalue their own brands by running advertisements for shoddy products, as Mark Cuban points out — which, come to think of it, has an eerie parallel in DC and Marvel Comics’s recent moves of dumping unsold ad inventory to put in house ads or ads for comics stores.
Greg Hatcher has an incredibly fun essay up about what he calls grindhouse comics: comics that are so heavily steeped in the pulp traditions that they make your teeth ache. Think Blade before he went Hollywood, and then dial it down a bit:
And it was a pretty easy leap, talking amongst fans, to start kicking around the idea of grindhouse comics. But here we ran into a little bit of a snag. Because, really, to be fair, from their beginnings on up through the early 70’s, they’re ALL “grindhouse” comics. That’s just the way it was….
The short version — for the sake of boiling it down to something that I can use here, I’d narrow the definition of ‘grindhouse comics’ to the comics I thought of in my youth as the B list. Comics that were, y’know, just okay. These were the books that I knew I could walk in on any time, that I knew would achieve a base level of entertainment that I would enjoy.
But I would not ever worry about missing an issue of one of these titles. They’d be there waiting for me when I got around to them again and nothing would change: they’d still be fun, continuity-free, amusing ways to kill half an hour. They have that Roger Corman vibe, that cheerful sense of, yeah, this is just something dumb and completely without social merit. We know it. So let’s all stop thinking about Art and just have a good time. Floor it.
Truthfully they were what I read in between issues of the books I REALLY liked. Used to be, when your favorite book was hung up because the writer was taking too long to craft his brilliant epic or the artist was late AGAIN, we just bought something else and read that instead. I did, anyway. You get a hanker on for a comic book, you want a comic book, damn it. (Nowadays I think the alternative impulse buy’s gotten to be too expensive a proposition for most of us; we end up just taking to the internet and bitching about late books instead.)
Go take a look at the article to see what he’s talking about, and you might get a better idea as to why everybody is trying to remake those kinds of books today, from Astro City’s Dark Age to Waid & Perez’s Brave and Bold, which Hatcher points to as Exhibit A of a grindhouse book — which makes sense, as it’s a double feature and all.
Our idea of a great grindhouse comic: Revenge Of The Prowler.
Artwork copyright Price, Snyder III and Truman. All Rights Reserved.
Stringer Lisa Sullivan tips us off to this piece in Variety: Warner Bros. and producer Joel Silver are working with Mattel to turn "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" into a live-action film. Justin Marks (currently best known to comics fans as the scripter for the Green Arrow Super Max movie) is set to write the script. Silver will produce.
As ICV2 notes: "The announcement of a major new live action motion picture initiative based on a popular property from the 1980s just six weeks before the big screen debut of Michael Bay’s blockbuster adaptation of another 80s animated series, the Transformers, a property owned by Mattel’s biggest rival Hasbro, is certainly not just coincidental. It is further evidence of a trend that also includes Warner Bros. live action versions of the Speed Racer and Voltron animated series."
Red Mile Entertainment has cut an exclusive worldwide licensing deal to develop and publish video games based on the Sin City graphic novels by Frank Miller.
“Taking Sin City into the world of video games is very exciting – games offer a whole new way to bring audiences into Sin City,” said Frank Miller. “The Red Mile team has impressed me with its dedication to creating Sin City video games that will remain true to Sin City as I’ve always seen it.”
Red Mile is best known for their “Heroes of the Pacific” game, and are currently working on games based on MTV’s show Jackass. The financial terms of the deal were not announced.
We noted back on Monday that Craig Ferguson had been touting on CBS’s Late Late Show had been pushing a show called Ghost Chimp, M.D. — a show that seemed to be exactly like an idea that Kyle Baker had developed for CBS back in the 90’s, and wrote up for an article in Vibe magazine.
But now we are happy to report that Kyle Baker has now been credited by CBS with, in Kyle’s words, THE WORST IDEA OF ALL TIME and all is right with the world again. Watch for yourself:
Ghost Chimp M.D. © Kyle Baker. All rights reserved.
Seventy-eight years ago today, Mickey Mosue uttered his first words, "Hot Dog!", in the short The Karnival Kid. Although it was Mickey’s ninth short, it was the first in which he actually spoke.
Mickey’s voice, of course, was that of his creator, Walt Disney.
It was fifteen years ago tonight that Johnny Carson took his final bow as the host of the Tonight Show. We mention this so that Mark Evanier doesn’t have to.
Okay, so the clip’s from the day before. Sue us. Here’s something from the final show, Johnny’s final words to us all:
"And so it has come to this: I, uh… am one of the lucky people in the world; I found something I always wanted to do, and I have enjoyed every single minute of it. I want to thank the gentlemen who’ve shared this stage with me for thirty years, Mr. Ed McMahon… Mr. Doc Severinsen… and… you people watching, I can only tell you that it has been an honor and a privilege to come into your homes all these years and entertain you—and I hope when I find something that I want to do, and I think you would like, and come back, that you’ll be as gracious in inviting me into your home as you have been. I bid you a very heartfelt good night."
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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