Author: Mike Gold

Considering he’s about to lose a leg, author Michael Moorcock certainly is in good spirits.

The creator of Elric, Hawkmoon, Count Brass, and Jerry Cornelius, the author of such award-winning books as Behold The Man and Gloriana, singer/songwriter for Hawkwind and the Heavy Metal movie, former editor of the British Tarzan comics, screenwriter of The Land That Time Forgot, and, by the way, author of the latest Doctor Who novel, Michael Moorcock is facing the amputation of a leg. As he stated on his blog: “I apologize for being a bad correspondent with many over the last couple of months. All efforts to save my wounded foot without resort to surgery have been made and now, somewhat inconveniently, I’m seeing a surgeon tomorrow (Monday) re. amputation. Shouldn’t be too serious, though, as I said somewhere, I feel a bit fed up with constantly supplying Mrs Lovett for tidbits for her bloody pies… I AM a little nervous but it’s mostly to do with more things going wrong (caused by medical staff) than anything else.”

As our pal Rich Johnston notes at his Bleeding Cool site: “Michael seems to be taking this, as much as everything in his life, with good humour, if a touch on the gallows’ side. All at Bleeding Cool wish him well tomorrow and in the days to come.” We’ll toss in the staff and friends of ComicMix as well, Rich.

As a Moorcock fan of 40 years standing, I’m not the least bit surprised about his attitude. The man virtually invented steampunk, the man who virtually invented the “grim and gritty” hero (Elric; and I should know, having coined the term for GrimJack), the British Jew who moved to Texas and espoused radical thought, and cosmic rocker extraordinaire, the 70 year-old writer is expected to make a complete recovers… except for one of those legs of his.

Hey, look. At least it’s not one of his arms. Take care, Michael.

So far, sales of 3-D TVs haven’t exactly set the world on fire. Maybe… just maybe… that might change. Maybe.

Our friends at Apple have told the London Daily Telegraph they’re working on new 3-D technology that would function without special glasses. Oh, and it handles holographic images as well.

Apple’s patent reads: “An exceptional aspect of the invention is that it can produce viewing experiences that are virtuallyindistinguishable from viewing a true hologram. Such a ‘pseudo-holographic’
image is a direct result of the ability to track and respond to observer movements.”

OK. Wow. They didn’t say when this technology will become available, but Apple hopes to apply it to computers, to televisions and to movie screens.

Leander Kahney, who wrote a book called The Cult of Mac, noted “As well as
watching 3-D movies, Apple’s system would have a ton of applications in science, engineering, design and education, while 3-D iPhones and iPads would be killer. It’s easy to imagine things like amazing 3-D textbooks and instructional videos. 3-D gaming on an iPad would be an incredibly immersive gaming experience.”

The problem isn’t technology. It’s content. Thus far I haven’t come across a single movie that motivated me to spend the money to see the 3-D version, and of course my 3-D cable channel remains unlit. I’m not sure what it’ll take to get my business, but if 3-D follows the trends of previous media launches, it’ll be the porn industry that makes it happen.

What do you get when you take one of those live action and cartoon hybrids and take out all the live action? You get Tron: Uprising.

Hot on the heels of the mild success of Tron: Legacy, screenwriters Adam Horowitz and Eddie Kitsis told Box Office Magazine they’ve written a ten-part animated miniseries for television, and they’ve got franchise star Bruce Boxleitner to lend his voice.

They’ve also secured the services of Elijah Wood, Linda Moore, Lance Henriksen, and good ol’ Pee-Wee Herman himself, Paul Reubens.

The miniseries will be set between the two movies, which should be no problem as there was a 28-year gap between the releases. Lots of little details that, sadly, niggled few if anyone, will be revealed.

Why do I get a Clone Wars vibe off of this?

While no broadcast or cable network has been announced, one assumes it will be carried by one of Disney’s many channels (ABC, ABC Family, Disney, ToonDisney; probably not ESPN El Ocho) or, if it really sucks, go direct to the Internets.

I’ve seen a lot of dissatisfaction online with Joe Straczynski’s Superman storyline, the one where he ambles across the nation. Well, that’s show business; I rather like it, at least thus far. I think if JMS were to have done this story as a
graphic novel, say around 120 pages, it would have gone over better with the
bloggers. The basic idea worked for Thornton Wilder in his play Our Town, and taking this energy into
the superhero myth is a clever idea. But watching it unfold in monthly
installments – with fill-ins – does not do this concept justice.

However, Joe’s story reveals the major, overwhelming problem with today’s mainstream comics. It simply takes too damn long to tell a story.

Whereas I enjoyed Brian Bendis and Mark Bagley’s Ultimate Spider-Man, it’s convenient for me to point out that the initial origin story only took Stan Lee and Steve Ditko 11 pages to pull off and Brian and Mark took five full issues. Different times, different storytelling techniques, but still we’re talking about a ten-fold increase in story length.

For me, this makes most “Big Event” stunts unreadable. I liked Marvel’s Shadowland, but my interest waned with each successive tie-in and mini-series. Same thing with Marvel’s Civil War / Dark Reign stunt, only multiplied by Warp Factor Four.

DC iced me with their Crisis on Infinite Final Crises event. What did they publish, about four thousand issues there? As for Brightest Day, I got burned out early on during Blackest Night so I never sampled the sequel. I don’t know who these characters are; DC keeps on changing its mind with each Big Event.

Yes, I understand – these Big Events do “quite well” in the marketplace. I respond, “Oh yeah? Compared to what?” Big-name comics publishers with big-name characters with big-time movie support are selling only to a small circle of friends in numbers so inadequate that 1960s Marvel publisher Martin Goodman and 1960s DC publisher Irwin Donenfeld would drop dead at the sales reports, if they weren’t dead already. Several years ago, I told Donenfeld – whose office was about a mile from my house – what Superman was selling, and he refused to believe it. “It’s Superman!” he said, shaking his head.

The sad fact is, the American comic book medium is no longer a mass medium. Nor is the rest of the publishing world. Readers are part of an ever-shrinking elite.

Will the Internet change that? Maybe. Will tablet computers with auto-subscriptions change that? I sure hope so. Otherwise, we’re in the buggy whip business.

There’s a lot of exciting stuff going on in comics today.
There’s a lot of solid writing from publishers both mainstream and otherwise.
Some great art, although with so many titles the great stuff is buried beneath
a ton of crap. There’s some wonderful concepts and some illuminating, even
inspirational stories. Sadly, very little of that is coming from the two
publishers who dominate what little market we’ve got left; the so-called
independent publishers (traditionally defined as “not Marvel or DC”) have
limited promotional resources, and direct sales comics shops can’t afford to
take much of a risk. They’ve got to order the Big Events, and as these stunts
get even bigger and segue directly into other Big Events, retailers have very
little money left over to take a chance on these independents.

That’s a shame. I go to conventions and I see more hopeful
wannabes than ever. I see more new kids with real talent, proportionately
speaking, than ever before. The interesting stuff that goes on at the larger
conventions isn’t at the major publishers’ showbooths, it’s in Artists Alley
and people you have never heard of are producing it.

So I gaze at the rapidly encroaching new year and I hope. I’d rather read good comic books, but at least I have hope.

The actor who starred in such movies as Ruthless People, Sleepless in Seattle, While You Were Sleeping, Spaceballs, Casper, and, of course, Independence Day has joined the cast of the Doctor Who adult spin-off, Torchwood.

Pullman will be playing Oswald Jones, a psychotic murderer and pedophile. Oddly, he’s not a nice guy, defined by the BBC as “repentant yet boiling with lust and rage.”

He should fit in nicely.

The fourth season of Torchwood will be broadcast in the United States on the Starz cable network beginning this summer.

The Beatles. You’ve heard of them.

Apple. The one that makes iPads, iPods, iMacs and the like. Not the one the Beatles own.

Tomorrow, if everything goes as expected and the Beatles’ semi-impoverished record label EMI doesn’t change its mind (evidently they have before), Apple’s Steve Jobs is going to stand on a west coast stage at about 10
AM Eastern time and announce that the Beatles will be available on iTunes – for Macs, iPads, iPods, PCs, and the whole nine-yards.

Merry Christmas, music-lovers!

According to a press release issued by Archie Comics, their newest character, Kevin Keller, is about to get his own four-issue mini-series.

Riverdale’s first openly gay man, Kevin Keller debuted last month in Veronica #202, the first Archie title to sell out and go into a same-month second printing on the direct sales market. His debut follows a number of chancy moves by the
America’s only remaining family-owned major comics house, including an
interracial kiss several months ago on the cover of Archie #608. Some of the most interesting events in recent comics history have come from those folks.

The Kevin Keller series will written and drawn by his creator, Dan Parent. “Kevin Keller has become larger than life!,” Archie Comics Co-CEO Jon Goldwater. “We are bringing him back with all the bells and whistles.”

Archie Comics notes the obvious: if this series does well, Kevin Keller would likely get an ongoing series.