ComicMix regulars Bob Greenberger and Glenn Hauman will be speaking at Lunacon 50 this weekend in Rye, NY. Glenn will be there all three days, Bob will be there Saturday and Sunday, and there may be other ComicMix folks lurking about. Feel free to come up to any of them and say "howdy".
And yes, that is artwork by Wally Wood in the logo. When a convention’s been around for fifty years, they pick up stuff like that.
Oh, how I love financial and legal shenanigans. Stan Lee Media has one of the messier histories in the dot-com boom and bust, with tales of stock manipulation and attempted bribes to Bill and Hillary Clinton by partner Peter Paul. And it looks like we aren’t done yet.
Fresh out of bankruptcy, Stan Lee Media, Inc. filed a $5 billion lawsuit against Marvel Entertainment yesterday in US District Court in NY. In the suit, as reported by Marvel, Stan Lee Media claims it is shares co-ownership of some of Marvel’s superhero characters. Marvel says the suit is without merit.
The suit claims that Stan Lee throughout his employment with Marvel retained the co-creator rights to all his characters, and in August 1998 when Marvel terminated Stan’s employment, he regained those rights. Stan then went and formed the dotcom firm Stan Lee Media as a way to tap into the Internet boom, and on October 15, 1998, he signed over not only his creations to the new firm, but his likeness as well. Then in November, 1998, Lee individually entered an employment agreement with Marvel, signing over his Marvel characters and likeness to Marvel, despite having already signed over the rights to Stan Lee Media. The suit claims Stan Lee Media informed Marvel of their contract and that Marvel "independently and/or in collusion with Stan Lee, intentionally concealed the material terms" of Marvel’s new agreement from Stan Lee Media, the public and its own shareholders, and that Stan Lee Media is entitled to 50 percent of all revenue going back three years and going forward 50 years. (By law, they can only go back three years, not as far as 1998.)
To make matters even more confusing, Stan the Man himself is no longer affiliated with the recently emerged from bankruptcy Stan Lee Media. In fact, Stan and his current company, POW Entertainment (makers of Who Wants To Be A Superhero?) is suing the principals in Stan Lee Media alleging that they illegally took over his former company and infringed on his trademarks and copyrights. Stan has said that, “I do not support this action and believe the suit to be baseless.”
How did we get to this story before Warren Ellis did? A man has been found who likes having sex with cars.
The details of mechanic Chris Donald’s alleged romantic vehicular liaisons have been unearthed by The Sun, so take it with a grain of salt. In addition to a large number of cars, Mr Donald claims to have also done the dirty with two boats and a jetski.
"Mr. Donald apparently says that his sexual fetish may have been triggered by formative childhood experiences watching Knight Rider. ‘When I was a young boy I used to see human qualities in cars,’ he says. ‘As I grew up I noticed I was having feelings towards cars and they began catching my eye in a certain way.’ "
Brings new meaning to Super Pursuit Mode, don’t it? We can imagine the dialogue now. "Michael, it’s time for a turbo boost…"
David Gerrold’s shelved gay-themed Star Trek episode, "Blood and Fire", is being filmed by the folks at Star Trek: New Voyages, a fan-supported continuation of the original series that has already had appearances by George Takei and scripts by D.C. Fontana.
New Voyages is gearing up to begin filming its fourth episode in June, and it will be an updated version of Gerrold’s "Blood and Fire", both in switching from TNG era to TOS era, and in themes that can be discussed in 2007 versus 1987. The gay characters in this version are Capt. Kirk’s nephew, Peter Kirk, and his boyfriend, Lt. Alex Freeman.
This is not the first time gay characters have appeared in the Trek franchise. Bart Faulwell has been a crew member of the da Vinci in Star Trek: Corps of Engineers since its inception.
You’d think with the release of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 comic book yesterday, we would have had some mention of it on the site. After all, we know that every time we say Buffy the Vampire Slayer we get a lot of extra traffic to the website, and we aren’t above shameless Google-boosting. (Buffy! Buffy! Buffy!) But we couldnt find a timely hook, other than all the traditional press coverage.
Until we came across this: "The American Secret Service have launched an investigation into one of the candidates for the presidency in 2008 – after he pledged that as President, one of his first acts would be to impale President George W. Bush. The candidate in question is Jonathon ‘The Impaler’ Sharkey, and he is running as the only self-described satanic vampire candidate who has so far entered the 2008 race. Sharkey’s pledge to impale President Bush, he makes clear, will only come into effect if he is actually elected to office."
My favorite line from the piece: "But a legal expert is unsure if a case could be made against The Impaler. ‘Under the First Amendment, what it boils down to here is whether or not he’s a vampire who wants to impale the president,’ law professor Neil Richards of Washington University in St. Louis told the Chronicle. ‘I guess the question is, if he’s a vampire, why is he the one staking people? Shouldn’t he want to bite the president and feed on him?’"
And yes, it gives us an excuse to run this Alex Ross painting. Alex Ross! The Google hits just keep on coming!
First we hear Maggie Gyllenhaal is being courted to replace Katie Holmes in The Dark Night. Now the New York Daily News gossip columnists are reporting that her brother Jake Gyllenhaal is in line to play Captain Marvel in New Line Cinema’s proposed Shazam! movie, based on the DC Comics series.
The paper’s Rush & Molloy column, citing anonymous sources, reported that the movie is New Line’s bid for a franchise on the order of Batman and Superman. "They’re ready to spend up to $200 million to get it started," one source told the columnists.
The columnists also reported that director Peter Segal and his fellow producers want to nab Gyllenhaal before Spider-Man director Sam Raimi does, as Tobey Maguire has said he may let someone else play the webslinger in subsequent installments.
What, Fred MacMurray isn’t available to play the Big Red Cheese?
Cartoon Network will premiere Hellboy: Blood and Iron, the second feature Hellboy animated feature film, on March 17 at 7 PM Eastern. The movie features the voices of a number of the actors that appeared in director Guillermo del Toro’s live-action Hellboy movie including John Hurt, Ron Perlman, Selma Blair and Doug Jones. Tad Stones and Victor Cook direct the movie. Guillermo del Toro and Mike Mignola are creative producers.
The second Hellboy live action movie is scheduled for 2008, and a third animated feature is in finishing stages.
DreamWorks Animation has announced plans to produce all of its new films in full 3-D. they plan to produce their movies employing stereoscopic 3-D technology from the start of the movie production process, and has already begun production on its first movie to be made in this format, Monsters vs. Aliens (working title), slated for release in summer 2009.
According to DreamWorks, "this approach will increase its storytelling opportunities and create a more immersive movie-viewing experience." Up until this time many of the movies shown in 3D were produced for regular movie theater projection with the 3-D parts or full-length 3-D movies rendered for 3D projection in post-production (e.g. Chicken Little and others). As for where these movies will be shown, DreamWorks points to a significant increase over the past two years in the number of theaters that have the proper equipment to support stereoscopic projection, and claims that by 2009 there will be several thousand screens equipped for 3-D.
TNT has a few new series in development that could be of interest to us all:
As Marvel’s Iron Man movie heads into production this week, we get word of a lot of promotions and changes of job titles at Marvel Studios. At the top, David Maisel is now Chairman of Marvel Studios and Kevin Feige is President of Production. Maisel, who joined Marvel in 2003, is credited for the conception and execution of the new film production effort, including establishing the strategy for self-financing the endeavor. Feige has worked on all of Marvel’s movies since 2000, and is currently producer on Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk. In his expanded role, Feige will now also oversee creative for the studio’s animated projects for TV and DVD, as well as video games.
Additionally, Marvel Studios has recently added and promoted a number of executives in senior management, including:
With everybody moving up a notch or two, someone has to make way at the top — in this case it’s Michael Helfant, President and COO, who will "pursue other opportunities."
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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