Author: Mike Gold

Who’s On Fifth?

  • Uncategorized
  • September 4, 2007

doctor_who_s2_doomsday-7568936Well, at last the word is out. The BBC has found a way around David Tennant’s commitments to Shakespeare and Russell T. Davies’ desire to stretch. Both will be back in 2009 for a season-between-seasons consisting of three Doctor Who specials, the last probably being the annual Christmas special. Whereas Torchwood is likely to continue, the official start to the official fifth season will happen in 2010.

No word on if Tennant and Davies will be back for Season Five, but it seems doubtful the Doctor will regenerate during the Christmas Special. Unless Santa Claus is from Gallifrey.

Season Four starts transmitting in the U.K. in 2008, following the second season of Torchwood.

Jack Kirby At The Supermarket

  • Uncategorized
  • September 3, 2007

new-scan-5417418A couple weeks ago I opined that the loss of the Weekly World News makes the supermarket a less enjoyable experience. While gathering grub for my big family Labor Day barbecue blowout this weekend, I found a small gem.

Disney Adventures, which is about to go out of business, publishes an occasional reprint digest called Comic Zone. Not bad; it’s worth checking out. Keep an eye out for their fall 2007 edition, because it reprints the first part of Jack Kirby’s Sunday newspaper strip adaptation of The Black Hole.

In case you hadn’t seen it – and, please, keep up the good work – The Black Hole was the Evil Empire’s attempt to cash in on the Star Wars/Trek fad of the time. The movie was done in Disney’s typically clueless fashion, lacking only in style, drama, script, and energy. Starring Maximilian Schell, Tony Perkins, Robert Forster, Ernest Borgnine, and Slim Pickens, Disney actually pulled off the impossible: making a movie with Ernest Borgnine and Slim Pickens that completely sucked. I thought so, the now-former editor of the Weekly World News who sat next to me thought so, and the nine year old sitting behind us thought so.

Jack Kirby’s adaptation was far better, even in the confining space of the newspaper strip. Art-wise, it’s one of Jack’s better post-70s efforts. Storywise, the art is one of Jack’s better post-70s efforts. Because it was in the papers, a lot of Kirby fans missed it. Ergo, check out Comic Zone. Jack did the art and is credited with the script. This reprint adds Paul Mount’s full color palate to the effort.

Kudos to Comic Zone comics editor Jesse Post. And I sure hope you still have a gig; we need comics for kids, sold at places where kids can get them.

Artwork copyright 1979 and 2007 Disney. All Rights Reserved. Never mess with the Mouse.

MIKE GOLD: Belabor Day

  • News
  • September 3, 2007

mike-gold-2-100-7210334As our own Martha Thomases pointed out  last Saturday, today is Labor Day. Martha made an interesting comparison between Manhattan and the Bottle City of Kandor without once referencing Rudy Guiliani as Brainiac. Nice self-restraint, Martha!

Like Martha, I, too, come from a city of Big Labor, one that has thus far managed to avoid the menace of Wal-Mart, the worst drug that has invaded American shores. I was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW; the Wobblies) until I became an editor, a.k.a. “management.” So I tend to look at the world from the point of view of the working person, and I’ve got the financial stability to prove it.

So on this, ComicMix’s first Labor Day, I thought I’d make a few comments about the comic book business and its workers.

Creators who work in this medium are, by and large, freelancers. They are, by and large, responsible for their own health care and retirement. This means that most comics people have no health care or retirement. I know people on the Right consider this to be their fault, the result of the fact that they’re not as smart as people on the Right. These are fools who have never had to face the prospect of going without food or lodging. It’s amazing how fast your priorities change when you’ve got nothing on the table and in a few weeks no place to put that table. As a comics editor, I’ve always remembered this: the people upon whom I depend to pay my rent are living tits to the wind.

Not everybody in comics management remembers this. Back in the 1960s a number of important creators at DC Comics tried forming a guild to protect their jobs and provide some security. DC, of course, was (and is) in the heart of Manhattan. These were creators who were important to the company: they were involved in producing some of the company’s more successful features over the course of their tenure. And within about a year, each and every one of them was gone from the company.

In fact, DC’s then-management actually brought in an editor, Dick Giordano, who would bring in his own creative crew from Charlton. Without knowledge of the situation – he was still in Connecticut at the time – Dick found himself replacing many of these creators. When he told me that story (at the same Westport bar where he was hired by DC), it was clear he hated having been cast as something of a patsy. One of the many reasons I respect him.

Another attempt at guild-making came in the late 1970s. Fresh from his successful campaign on behalf of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Neal Adams helped organize a guild that included a wide variety of comics writers and artists, one that, for a while, looked like it might carry some real weight.

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Fanboy Meltdown: Picard Meets the Doctor

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  • August 30, 2007

jean-luc-picard-9898202davidtennant-2070499Patrick Stewart, aka Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek : The Next Generation, is teaming up with David Tennant, aka the 10th Doctor of Doctor Who, in The Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Hamlet. Tennant has the lead, Stewart does Claudius, and tickets will go faster than a Beatles reunion after Yoko drops dead.

Hamlet runs July 24 through November 15, 2008. Right after that, Tennant plays Berowne in Love’s Labor’s Lost, which, I believe, is a spin-off from last season’s "The Shakespeare Code" episode of Doctor Who, That show runs October 2 through November 15, 2008. So David will be a bit preoccupied next summer and fall.

If you’re planning on seeing either performance, get your passport ready. As one might assume, The Royal Shakespeare Company is in Britain.

 

Buffy Spin-Off Ripper Finally Happening

  • Uncategorized
  • August 28, 2007

anthony_stewart_head_01-1173530The Ripper a spin-off from Buffy The Vampire Slayer, is headed to the small screen at long last. According to FIlmick, at the Collectormania Glasgow event Anthony Stewart Head revealed the Ripper series is finally going into production next summer, under creator Joss Whedon’s charge.

Ripper was originally proposed some years ago as a BBC co-production while Buffy The Vampire Slayer was still at The WB," Filmick notes. "It’s to be set in the UK and Anthony Stewart Head is to lead a line-up of new characters, much the way Angel did when he went to LA."

Don’t get your hopes up for any Buffy characters showing up – at least, not without a lot of negotiations and legal wrangling.

Much thanks to our pal Larry Shell for the lead.

The New Year’s Spirit

  • Uncategorized
  • August 28, 2007

eisner_thespirit-3633478So, what are you doing on January 16, 2009?

According to comingsoon.net, chances are you’ll be thinking about paying ten bucks a head to see Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, Eva Mendes, and Scarlett Johansson in the big-screen version of The Spirit, as written and directed by Frank Miller. This assumes the shoot goes swell; they begin in October.

Artwork copyright Will Eisner Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Battlestar Galactica Goes Unrated For Christmas

  • News
  • August 28, 2007

cover_a-2648449There’s this great scene at the very beginning of The Simpsons Movie where Homer is at the movie theater watching Itchy and Scratchy – The Movie and then asks why anybody would want to pay for something they’re used to seeing for free. Then they cut to the opening titles.

The Sci Fi Channel is doing the same thing, only backwards. The two-hour Battlestar Galactica: Razor movie will be broadcast on November 24, 2007. On December 4, NBC Universal will release the Battlestar Galactica: Razor Unrated Extended Edition. Hmmm… were I a BG fan – and, well, I am – I’d just wait the ten days and watch the real thing, if for no other reason than in hope that there’s some seriously X-rated material in the unrated extended edition. When it comes to "extended," perhaps I misunderstand their meaning. But if I were buying ad time on the Sci Fi broadcast, I’d want a discount.

By the way, I’d love to see Itchy and Scratchy – The Movie.

Sarcasm aside, our correspondent Robert Greenberger adds significant detail to this story:

The DVD, retailing for $26.98, is said to contain an additional fifteen minutes of footage in addition to the usual assortment of extras. Among the extras will be the eight mini-episodes the channel will begin airing in October. The lead-in material, which will also be available at their website, will set up events seen in the movie and edited into the home video version. The miniseries features young William Adama, to be played by Nico Cortez and is likely to be about the early Cylon War with glimpses of the original Cylon designs from the ABC series.

The telefilm’s story is told in present day and will feature the entire Galactica cast but will have extensive flashbacks to a mission of the other Battlestar, the Pegasus, which was helmed by Admiral Helena Cain (Michelle Forbes).  As a result, familiar faces from that ship will appear as guest stars, including Steve Bacic as Colonel Jurgen Belzen.

What’s a razor, you ask? In “Resurrection ship, Part 1” Cain told Fisk she needed people who were,"…completely reliable. Completely loyal. Razors."

Producer Ronald D. Moore has indicated the story is an important piece of the bigger picture and elements introduced here will pay off in the fourth and final season, which Sci-Fi is expected to schedule to debut in January. Much of Cain’s background will be explored including a hint of romance with Gina. Additionally, part of the story shows Lee Adama in charge of the Pegasus and his search for an XO which introduces Stephanie Chaves-Jacobsen as Kendra Shaw.

Two trailers for the event have already run on Sci-Fi and can be found on their website.

MIKE GOLD: Dangerous Old Farts

  • News
  • August 27, 2007

mikegold100-5090676murrayOur popular culture likes to mock young celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and that Federline guy. That’s fine; there’s no reason to take our celebrities seriously. But I think we’re showing our ageist leanings by making it look like these children differ from their parents and grandparents. There are a lot of old fogies up to no damn good, and they deserve to be outed as well.

For example, last week actor Bill Murray was arrested for DWI. While driving a golf cart. Down the middle of a public road. In Sweden. As it turns out, he “borrowed” the golf cart from Stockholm’s Café Opera, although the owner is not pressing charges. In fact, he’s milking it for all it’s worth.

Well, Lenny Bruce pointed out society perceives a difference between dirty screwing and fancy screwing, and I’ve got to admit, getting busted for driving a golf cart down the middle of a public road in downtown Stockholm is fancy screwing. Or it’s the plot to one of Murray’s earlier movies; it’s kind of hard to tell.

William Shatner evolved from the butt of jokes to my personal hero. Nobody has turned his image around like Bill, thanks to a wonderful self-effacing sense of humor and a great role in Boston Legal, an amazingly iconoclastic teevee series. But even Bill has his meltdowns.

At a Star Trek convention in Las Vegas Hilton earlier this month, Shatner publicly railed against producer J.J. Abrams for casting Leonard Nimoy in next year’s Star Trek movie – but not him. According to the New York Daily News, “Shatner was so manic onstage that Leonard Nimoy actually said, ‘We’re worried about you.’”

0514shatner-7478775293457613_49ede24aca-6503500Then there’s George W. Bush. He’s always good for a few laughs. Rick Oliver, my old friend and successor as First Comics’ EIC, sent along this priceless quote: “One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens, whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like ‘boat people,’ ‘re-education camps’ and ‘killing fields…’”

So much for “no child left behind.” George’s reference to the killing fields had nothing to do with Vietnam; that was Cambodia, under the petit-Hitler Pol Pot. Proportionately speaking, he was the greatest monster of the 20th Century, having slaughtered through slave labor, malnutrition, poor medical care and execution some two million of his people – fully one-third of Cambodia’s population.

Pot’s killing fields and re-education camps were brought to an end in 1979 by the Vietnamese – the same Commies Bush and his friends like to point to as an excuse for their continued gang-rape of Iraq. For the record, the world has the Vietnamese to thank for putting his career to an end. Pol Pot was kept under close house arrest for twenty years, until the day he died.

Nice going, Georgie. In comparison, President Paris Hilton doesn’t sound so bad.

Or should that be President Freedom Hilton?

Mike Gold is editor-in-chief of ComicMix.com.

D2DVD REVIEW: Strange Thrills

What to do with Doctor Strange?

That’s a question Marvel creators have been asking ever since Steve Ditko left town with the original Eye of Agamotto. A lot of people gave it a shot over the past five decades, and, to be fair, several did a first-rate job. But they had a hard time recapturing the original magic.

This week, Marvel Studios released its [[[Doctor Strange]]] D2DVD, and, being a self-contained 75-minute effort, they took some liberties with the ever-evolving and sometimes contradictory comics versions. Overall, I think they did a good job.

This D2DVD is not quite a superhero effort; certainly, not as defined by their previous animated movies ([[[Ultimate Avengers]]] 1 and 2, [[[Iron Man]]]). They keep the most basic elements of the various origin stories and they don’t really alter anything of substance: Stephen Strange is still starts out as the egotistical, self-absorbed, money-grubbing surgeon supreme and within and hour and a quarter is fast-tracked to beatific altruistic sorcerer supreme. Which, if you think about it, is not a good thing for Strange’s master, The Ancient One.

Along the way, though, we see Strange’s journey to supremacy, we get to appreciate his frustrations and see him grow past his ego and get redeemed. Oh, and he gets to fight Mordo and Dormamuu and a boatload of demons along the way. Our Japanese friends could learn a thing or two from Doctor Strange’s approach to limited animation: Marvel took full advantage of the fluidity of the animation form to allow for the mystical poop to really pop.

Of course they made Wong politically correct, so I guess my desire for an all-Asian cliché-fest crossover with the Blackhawk’s Chop-Chop isn’t going to happen any time soon. And they even teased us with a sequel set-up.

The supplemental documentary is first-rate. Not as first-rate as the extras on the new [[[Popeye]]] box-set, but damn good. Their “[[[Origin of Doctor Strange]]]” delves fully into the comic book roots, showing off a lot of art, giving Stan Lee and (particularly) Steve Ditko their due, and interviewing the hell out of the always-eloquent Steve Englehart, whose own run as Doctor Strange writer (much of it with Frank Brunner as artist) was among the series’ very best.

Overall, a nice effort from supervising director Frank Paur and writer Greg Johnson. I suspect all but the most anal-retentive [[[Strange]]] fans will enjoy the experience.

OMNIBUS REVIEW: Giant-Size Steve Ditko

  • Uncategorized
  • August 23, 2007

61kwlc3ysml-_aa240_-3845203As we await Jonathan Ross’s BBC4 documentary “In Search Of Steve Ditko," I suggest reading Marvel’s Amazing Fantasy Omnibus; it’s one swell way to pass the time.

Sure, Ditko will be remembered forever as the creator and co-creator of Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, and maybe The Creeper and Shade the Changing Man. Jonathan’s documentary will help cement his role as comics’ most famous recluse, and many will continue to regard Steve as a man of principle, even if some disagree with that principle. The Amazing Fantasy Omnibus shows us what the man was up to the day before he co-created the Web-slinger.

In a sense, this hefty (416 page) tome is oddly named. It reprints the entire 15-issue run of… well, a book that was always titled “Amazing” and usually titled “Fantasy,” but was only once called Amazing Fantasy. And that was its last issue. The one that introduced Spider-Man.

Originally titled Amazing Adventures, the book was little more than an addition to Marvel’s dominant monster and mystery line – Tales to Astonish, Journey Into Mystery, Strange Tales, and Tales of Suspense. And like its sister titles, Amazing Adventures offered the efforts of writer/editor Stan Lee and artists Don Heck, Jack Kirby (inked by Dick Ayers) and Paul Reinman – on a series called Doctor Droom, no less. But with issue #7, the book morphed into Amazing ADULT Fantasy (emphasis mine) and it became pure Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. And it became magic.

A month earlier, I would not deign to pick up what we now call a Marvel comic book. I had just turned 11 and I didn’t care for monsters and mystery – at the time – and Patsy and Hedy didn’t do much for me either. At the time. But at the end of August in 1961 out of sheer boredom I picked up the first issue of a superhero-looking book called Fantastic Four, so I was open to their efforts.

But the title confused me. “Amazing ADULT Fantasy”? Would kindly Pharmacist Herman Orlove even sell this comic book to me? It said “The Magazine That Respects Your Intelligence” right there on the cover. Well, I was intelligent. Intelligent enough to hide the issue in the middle of my stack of comics, each and every one priced at 10 cents. Orlove never knew, and my place on his junior league baseball team remained safe.

The art … staggered me. I had seen nothing like Steve Ditko. It wasn’t good, in the sense that Kirby was larger than life and Curt Swan was life itself. But it was perfectly suited for the creepy stories in this comic book. I couldn’t explain it, and I still can’t. But I learned the lesson.

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