Captain America still dead
In case you didn’t get to your comic shop today, Steve Rogers is still dead after two weeks. That is all. Carry on, if you can.
Courage.
Author: Glenn Hauman
Next Nexus
Via Heidi MacDonald at The Beat, we see that new adventures of Nexus, our favorite interstellar killer of mass murderers, will be coming out in July.
Clearly, this leaves us with a large hunk of questions over here at ComicMix. After all, if Nexus can come back in this day and age, complete with the original creators, what could possibly be next?
John Ostrander and Timothy Truman on GrimJack?
Mike Grell doing new Jon Sable Freelance?
Del Close coming back from the grave for new Munden’s Bar stories?
Obviously, if we have any information about any of these properties, we’ll let you know.
Soon.
Unless something else comes along to eclipse that news.
Superman sequel shelved to make way for JLA?
Step-sister site Cinematical (say that three times fast) reports on the rumor that the next Superman film may be put on the shelf for a while to make way for Brandon Routh appearing in the Justice League film. "According to Moviehole (who have some pretty good inside studio sources), the highly-anticipated Superman Returns sequel (currently titled The Man of Steel) might be placed into turnaround so that Brandon Routh (and the Superman character) can be used in the upcoming Justice League flick instead."
Well, now. That’s one way to make the merchandising people happy. And with Wonder Woman already delayed, this could solve a few problems at WB.
Marvel to build billion dollar theme park in Dubai
Crain’s New York Business is reporting that Marvel has teamed up Al Ahli Group to develop a $1 billion theme park in Dubai based on Marvel superheroes. Think Island of Adventure, but with a lot more sand.
Crain’s notes: "The agreement marks the first major deal completed by Marvel Studios’ new Chairman David Maisel, who was named to the post earlier this month amid a shakeup of the company’s feature film business. Michael Helfant, who had been president and chief operating officer of Marvel Studios, was ousted."
The park is scheduled to open in 2011, and will be the first global destination theme park in the Middle East. I, for one, look forward to the new fanboy question replacing "Who’s stronger, the Thing or the Hulk?" with "Does the Invisible Woman need to wear a burqa?"
New Miyazaki film announced
Studio Ghibli and Toho Films have announced that Hayao Miyazaki’s next movie project is slated for theatrical release in Japan in July 2008. Gake No Ueno Ponyo, which translated into English means Ponyo On A Cliff, is an original screenplay which, according to the movie’s producer, is somewhat based on the childhood experience of Miyazaki’s oldest son. The movie follows the story of Ponyo, a goldfish princess who wants to be human, and her friendship with Sousuke, a five-year-old boy. The movie will feature simple child-like drawn pictures and no computer generated animation.
Miyazaki is best known in this country for films like Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Princess Monomoke, which was translated into English by Neil Gaiman.
SFWA election update
John Scalzi has posted Michael Capobianco’s platform on his website, and there’s a lot of activity in comment threads. A quickie election blog has sprung up, and it’s turning into one of the most viewed blog contests on the web.
Which proves Scalzi’s point about operating in Internet time.
Manga toilet paper
There are those people in the American comics market and readership that says that the manga coming in from overseas is printed on cheap paper, the stories are incomprehensible, and they just keep churning out more and more of them so much that they’re clogging up the shelves.
TV Commentator and 4-panel manga artist Yakumi Tsuru (real name: Hatakeyama Hideki) announced on Friday that paper goods company Banbix will be selling toilet paper with his manga drawings and 4 panel comics printed on it. The toilet paper, called "Food Toipe", can be purchased in cases of 50 rolls from the Banbix website for 8,500 yen (approximately 80 US Dollars), and will be available as of March 2nd.
Yakumi Tsuru, who is also the self-proclaimed "biggest toilet paper collector in Japan", said in a statement that "Toilet paper is often confined to hidden places in the home. I made food the focus of the manga [on the toilet paper] when I thought about the paper sitting on the table instead of just in the bathroom."
And your parents thought you had a weird collection. If you want them (and can read Japanese) you can order them here — but really, you’re just flushing your money away.
(Via Fanboy.com. Hi, Mike!)
By the way, this isn’t the first time comics have been printed on toilet paper. An English-language Spider-Man vs. Hulk story appeared in this format about 20 years ago. We’re not aware of it being reprinted as of yet.
300 comic to screen
How John Rogers said that 300 was unfilmable is beyond me. Here Solace Cinema has shown how Frank Miller laid it all out for the filmmakers to follow in a handy Flickr slideshow.
And people say that inkers do nothing but trace. What does that make Zack Snyder?
GLENN HAUMAN: Literature of ethics, revisited
I’ve been kicking around these ideas around for a while but never codified them until Jim Henley wrote his famous blogposts and essay on the Literature of Ideas. Henley’s thesis boils down to “If science fiction is the literature of ideas, the superhero story is the literature of ethics. Or say, rather, it should be.”
Now for the backstory. This isn’t verbatim, but as I know and at least briefly worked with all the people here, I suspect it’s pretty close.
In the early 1970’s, the late great Julius Schwartz took over editorial duties on the Superman comics line from Mort Weisinger. Julie hired Dennis O’Neil to write the series, and O’Neil knocked Superman’s power levels down to about the level of his earliest appearances — no heat vision, no x-ray vision, no super-breath, no flying through space unaided, and so on. O’Neil was quoted saying that the reason for the change was that he found it difficult and/or uninteresting “to write about a character who could destroy distant galaxies by listening hard.”
O’Neil’s tenure on Superman lasted for about a year, and then the reins were handed over to Elliot S. Maggin. Elliot bumped Superman’s power levels back up to where they were, and approached writing Superman this way: if you have a character who can do anything, the only story avenues left to you are ethical ones. But in this area, there’s a lot of ground: “What was Superman’s relationship to his charges, the people of the Earth? To the authoritative functionaries of the rest of the Universe like the Guardians and, by extension, those who might be considered deities? What were the limits of Superman’s responsibilities? Were there differences between the real limits of his responsibilities and his perception of those responsibilities? What role did his heritage, both on Earth and among the stars, play in the determination of his actions? What long-term effects were coming about as a result of his intercession?”
GLENN HAUMAN: John Scalzi for SFWA President
John has announced he’s a Write-In Candidate for President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and I’m supporting him, mainly for this:
"I don’t believe that Michael Capobianco, the fellow running for SFWA President, is at all the right person for the job. Let me note again that this is not a reflection on his personal character; I’ve not met him outside the online SFWA newsgroups and a few other online venues, so I cannot speak as to whether he is a nice guy or whatever. I’m sure he is. Likewise, Mr. Capobianco is a past president of SFWA and has won the organization’s service award, which suggests that in the past, at least, he has been viewed as a reasonable choice for leading the organization. The question in my mind is not his past service, of which I have no experience (it was before my time) but whether he’s the right person to lead SFWA forward now.
"I don’t think he is for two reasons. First, he hasn’t had a novel published in this century; his last published novel, White Light, which he co-wrote with William Barton, was published in hardcover in 1998. Essentially, he’s a decade out of practice with the practical aspects of publishing science fiction. This matters if one believes, as I do, that SFWA should primarily be a professional service organization; it particularly matters if one believes, as I do, that the publishing world in the 21st century, even this early on, is manifestly different than it was in the 20th century. I have books professionally published in both centuries; I know how much it’s changed, and I deal with the publishing world on a daily basis.
"Second, I believe that based on what I’ve read from him Mr. Capobianco is fundamentally afraid of the changing publishing world, and the changes in the world of speculative fiction, and that this fundamental position will cause him to make his tenure as SFWA backward-facing and defensive, rather than forward-thinking and innovative. This will make SFWA even more irrelevant to working writers — that is, the people who are shaping science fiction — than it already is.
