Manhattan Comics Labor Day Sale! Extra discount for ComicMix readers!
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Author: Glenn Hauman
Aquaman killed — in Dick Tracy?
R.I.P. Arthur Curry– better known to the rest of the comics reading world as Aquaman.
In today’s Dick Tracy comic strip, by DC Comics veteran Joe Staton and Mike Curtis, aquarium director Arthur Curry is revealed to have been murdered. Arthur Curry is the secret identity of Aquaman. Even miscolored, you’ll notice the resemblence, right down to the scales on his shirt.
Curry was killed by a villain named Phishface a few strips earlier. We look forward to Dick Tracy bringing the killer to justice in the days and weeks ahead– and we are even more amazed that the killer wasn’t Geoff Johns.
Kick “Molly Danger” by Jamal Igle off right!
Jamal Igle’s new creator owned graphic album series is about the world’s most powerful 10 year old superhero — but it’s not going to happen without your help, and there’s less than two days to make it happen and there’s still time to get in on the ground floor!
Molly Danger is the story of the world’s most powerful 10-year-old girl. A seemingly immortal, super strong hero, Molly has protected the city of Coopersville for the last 20 years. Kept in constant isolation and watched closely by D.A.R.T. (The Danger Action Response Team) an organization created to assist in her heroic deeds and monitor her movements, Molly battles the Supermechs. A team of cybernetically enhanced beings with unusual powers, Molly always defeats them and yet they always managed to mysteriously escape. Molly longs for a real life, with a real family, something she’s been told she can never have. She believes she’s an alien, whose family died when their ship crash-landed on Earth and before the atmosphere could fully alter them. She also believes that she’s alone, the last of her kind.
Everything she knows is wrong…
Keep Joss Whedon’s “S.H.I.E.L.D.” from being cancelled!
We would like to get ahead of the curve and start the first official campaign to keep Joss Whedon’s S.H.I.E.L.D. on the air and avoid premature cancellation.
Never mind that the show was just announced yesterday. Ignore the fact that there has been no casting for the series yet. Forget that Whedon has a contract with Marvel for the next three years. This is a Joss Whedon television show. The clock is already ticking down to its inevitable demise.
We don’t know how it will happen this time. It could be a remade pilot, or a pilot put in at the end of the season. It could have its budget cut. It could be put on Friday night, always a favorite. It could have the network shot out from under, but it’s unlikely that could happen to ABC (although not impossible). It could be a combination of all of them.
But this time, we can get a head start! Because we know that people are going to be trying to strangle this show as soon as humanly possible, we can prepare months, nay, years in advance. We can create cool social media campaigns! We can start making t-shirts, and buying up eyepatches in bulk for the inevitable mail-in to executives claiming that if they’re so blind as to cancel a show as brilliant as this, they should have Nick Fury’s eyepatches! (However, threatening to pluck out network executive eyes, while fun to contemplate, should be saved for later when we start sending telegrams.)
So we’re calling on you, faithful ComicMix reader. Retweet this post! Like it and share it on Facebook! Digg it! Put it on Reddit! Use StumbleUpon! Heck, even use LinkedIn, even though it’s supposed to be for work! There’s no time for work! This is important! This is your new job now! Click all those buttons below this article! Joss Whedon’s vision depends on you! If you don’t do it, he won’t be able to take your favorite characters and emotionally torment them… and mess with their heads… and then gratuitously kill off your favorite one, just because he was in a bad mood that day…
…nah. Joss wouldn’t kill off S.H.I.E.L.D. agents just for the heck of it, would he?
Watch the first clip from “The Dark Knight Returns: Part 1”
Warner Home Video has releases the first official clip from Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1, the next entry in the popular, ongoing series of DC Universe Animated Original Movies, is produced by Warner Premiere, DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation. The all-new, PG-13 rated film arrives September 25, 2012 from Warner Home Video as a Blu-ray™ Combo Pack and DVD, On Demand and for Download. The Blu-ray™ Combo Pack will include UltraViolet™.
But really– they couldn’t get Frank Miller, Klaus Janson, and Lynn Varley to do the cover?
PULPSTERS DESCEND ON ATLANTA THIS WEEKEND!
Meet some of pulp’s finest this weekend at Dragon Con (August 31 – September 3) in Atlanta, GA.
Just a few of those in attendance includes Van Allen Plexico, Nancy Holder, Bobby Nash, Sean Taylor, Bernadette Johnson, James Burns, James Palmer, Mike Lee, Jonathan Mayberry, Jason Momoa, Gil Gerard, Erin Grey, Mark Maddox, Barry Reese, and so many more.
Learn more about the convention at http://dragoncon.org.
Tell ’em All Pulp sent ya.
Monday Mix-Up: Bender2-D2
From Star Wars Celebration VI and the photography of Swankmotron, we have Bender Rodriguez cosplaying R2-D2.
Gee, you never thought R2 would want to kill all humans, would you?
Jerry Nelson: 1934-2012
This is a Muppet News Flash: Puppeteer Jerry Nelson, the man behind Sesame Street muppet Count von Count, died yesterday at age 78. Nelson, a cast member of the show for over 40 years, also brought to life the characters Herry Monster, Fat Blue, Sherlock Hemlock and the Amazing Mumford.
Nelson’s first job with the Muppets was The Jimmy Dean Show in 1965 as Rowlf the Dog’s right hand man, literally. After learning that the Muppets were used on Sesame Street, he rejoined Henson and Oz as a puppeteer, beginning in the second season. He received a number of his major characters early in the show’s run, including the Sherlock Holmes parody Sherlock Hemlock, a hapless magician named The Amazing Mumford, and the overly strong but sensitive Herry Monster (1970â2012). His most famous character is the arithmomaniac vampire Count von Count, which he voiced until his death. He was also the first puppeteer to perform Mr. Snuffleupagus. Jerry Nelson also made a cameo appearance as the giant in the “Sesame Street News” story of Jack and the Beanstalk.
Nelson also performed many characters on The Muppet Show, including Sgt. Floyd Pepper (the bassist of the Electric Mayhem band), Pigs in Space star Dr. Julius Strangepork, the boomerang fish-throwing Lew Zealand, Kermit the Frog’s nephew Robin the Frog, Gonzo’s girlfriend Camilla the Chicken, and the Phantom of the Muppet Show, Uncle Deadly. On Fraggle Rock he performed Gobo Fraggle, Pa Gorg and Marjory the Trash Heap.
Nelson has also performed character voices in Sesame Street cartoons and Private Public from Sheep in the Big City.
He reprised the role of the announcer in [[[The Muppets]]]. His final performance as the said announcer was part of the Jim Henson’s Musical World concert at Carnegie Hall.
Our condolences to his family, friends and fans.
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Josepha Sherman: 1946-2012
Josepha Sherman, folklorist, anthologist, and science fiction and fantasy author and editor, has died at the age of 65.
Josepha published many books over the years, know equally for her tie-in work on Star Trek, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Highlander, Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, and Xena, her original fiction such as the Prince of the Sidhe series, her anthologies such as Rachel the Clever: And Other Jewish Folktales and Urban Nightmares (which happened to be where my first original short story, “Dark Of Night”, was published) and her academic and educational books.
Her last fiction book was Epiphany: Vulcan’s Soul Trilogy Book Three, co-written with Susan M. Shwartz. Her masterwork, the 904 page Storytelling: An Encyclopedia of Mythology and Folklore which she edited and contributed to heavily, was published in 2008. With her focus on pop culture and folklore, collaborator Mercedes Lackey called Josepha “the common man’s Joseph Campbell”.
She was also a tremendous fan of the ponies, and she would invariably greet me whenever we met with, “So, who do you like in the (insert next big horse race here)?”
Funeral services will be held in Connecticut on Monday. Details to follow.
Our condolences to all her friends and fans.
FORTIER TAKES ON ‘WRITTEN IN TIME’!
ALL PULP REVIEWS by Ron Fortier
WRITTEN IN TIME
By Jerry & Sharon Ahern
Baen Science Fiction
Trying to decide what book I wanted to take with me when traveling to the Pulp Fest Convention in Columbus, several weeks ago, I grabbed a paperback that had been sitting on my To-Read stack for a few months. It was “Written in Time,” by Jerry & Sharon Ahern and appeared to be an action-adventure science fiction novel dealing with time travel; a favorite sub-genre of mine. While packing the book away in my backpack, a niggling memory surfaced in my mind about a particular post I’d seen recently on Facebook concerning a writer’s recent passing. For whatever reason, Ahern’s name was the one I remembered. Sadly my memory proved to be working just fine because, after finishing this truly excellent novel, I discovered that Jerry Ahern, age 66, had indeed passed away only last month, 24th July, 2012.
From what I gathered, he and his wife were best known for their sci-fi series called, “The Survivalist,” about an American family surviving in a world ravaged by a nuclear war. One of the hallmarks of Ahern’s writing was his expert descriptions of hand weapons employed in his fiction as he was himself an authority on handguns and contributed to many well known magazines such as “Guns & Ammo.”
“Written In Time” mirrors the Aherns a great deal as the protagonists are Jack and Ellen Naile, a popular husband and wife sci-fi writing couple. One day they receive a photo in the mail sent to them from a fan in a small Nevada town. The picture, a clipping from the local newspaper dated 1904 shows Jack, Ellen, their daughter Elizabeth and son David all wearing western garb and standing before a general store bearing their name, “Jack Naile – General Merchandise.” After several tests the two come to believe that the photo in the clipping is authentic and not a hoax; meaning sometime in the near future some bizarre event is going to hurl them almost a hundred years into the past.
From this point forward, the Nailes set about planning for the event and doing their best to prepare themselves for their new life in the past. Eventually the freakish event occurs and our cast is sent back in time. There they slowly begin to adapt to turn of the century living and the challenges it presents them while being careful not to affect any changes that may alter the future itself.
Unfortunately the Nailes’ nephew, Clarence, having been told of their coming time travel adventure becomes obsessed with duplicating the phenomenon and joining them in the past. In the process of successfully achieving this goal, he inadvertently sets into motion actions that ultimately expose their experience to an unscrupulous businesswoman. Being immoral, she sees the potential for riches and power to be won by shaping time to her own will. When Jack and Ellen become aware of this new faction that is about to invade the past to control the future, they scramble to find allies to help them thwart her deranged plans and save history. The person they recruit to their cause is none other than Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt.
The true fun of this book is that it really is two books in one; a fantastical science fiction adventure and a bona fide western actioner. The Aherns pull this off seamlessly and after finishing the book, this reviewer had to wonder if in the writing, both of them saw it as a very special, intimate dream fulfillment to cap their writing careers. That it would be their last book together lends a poignant credibility to that idea.
Sixty-six in our age is not a long time and yet Jerry Ahern seems to have filled it to overflowing with living a life of love and creativity. After reading, “Written In Time,” it is clear we’ve lost a truly gifted and original voice. R.I.P. Jerry Ahern and thanks.
