This photograph, shamelessly ripped off of Neil Gaiman‘s website, provides illustrative proof that yesterday afternoon (as the British reckon afternoon) noted comics couple Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie created the sequel to their mega-graphic novel Lost Girls: they, indeed, got married.
ComicMix congratulates Alan and Melinda and wishes them a long and happy life together.
For more pics, check out Neil‘s site, and, maybe, eventually, the Alan Moore Fan Site.
Funny thing about Fred Wertham.
Dr. Fred, in case you don’t know, was the guy who, back in the late 40s and early 50s, was concerned about all the sexual imagery and violence he saw in comics and its harmful impact on our nation’s youth. He, and those many folks of similar mind, waxed poetic about this crawling evil in the pages of such then-popular general interest magazines as The Saturday Evening Post and Reader’s Digest. He later wrote it all up in a best-seller called Seduction of the Innocent, which helped lead to the establishment of the Comics Code censorship board.
It also lead to the establishment of a noisy all-star rock’n’roll band that starred Bill Mumy, Miguel Ferrer, Steve Leialoha, and Max Allan Collins. They released an album called, appropriately, The Golden Age. It was loud, and it featured Weird Al Yankovic on one track. But this has absolutely nothing to do with my point.
My point is, if sexual imagery and violence in comics were to be considered bad, then Dr. Fred wasn’t incorrect in his analysis of the medium. He was merely premature.
What he thought he found in the children’s comics (a redundancy) of the 50s can be easily discovered on the walls of any comic book shop today. Now, the industry’s defense might very well be “but these books are not for children,” and they’d be right. At today’s cover prices, with all the intertwined continuity and story arcs that command a commitment to multiple purchased, children can’t afford them. Heck, damn few adults can afford them, but adults should have the option of buying any sort of reading material they want.
But you would think that in these times of rising religious fundamentalism and “family values,” at least somebody would be bitching about all the blood and guts and astonishingly huge-breasted crime fighters, both female and male. I know my friends at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund might disagree, but they fight for the comics retailers and creators who get nailed. I’m glad to see they don’t have to extend their meager resources any further than they have to.
Spider-Man 3 still rules the box office charts, pulling in $60 million dollars in its second weekend, far outdistancing all comers.
Whereas it suffered a 60% drop from its opening weekend, Media By Numbers president Paul Dergarabedian noted "To me this is an appropriate second-weekend drop. Any studio would be happy to have a movie opening with $60 million, let alone a second weekend with $60 million."
These figures are only represent ticket sales in North America. The domestic total is just below a quarter-billion dollars; total worldwide projections run close to twice that number.
According to the charts, all other movies this weekend sucked big time at the box office: 28 Weeks Later ($10 million), Georgia Rule ($5.879 million), Disturbia ($4.802 million), Delta Farce ($3.5 million), The Invisible ($2.2 02 million), Hot Fuzz ($1.655 million), Next ($1.604 million) and Meet the Robinsons ($1.6 million).
Tony Millionaire has made it to television.
The creator of Sock Monkey, Billy Hazelnuts and Uncle Gabby previously known as Scott Richardson has leased his Drinky Crow character to Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, which, evidently, is in need of more jokes about vomit and poop. Drinky the alcoholic crow appears in Maakies, Millionaire’s weekly strip syndicated to "what-to-do-this-weekend" papers all over the country.
The pilot goes up tonight and is available on the Adult Swim website. After that, Cartoon Network is going to think it over.
(Artwork copyright Tony Millionaire. All Rights Reserved.)
Gina Holden will be starring with Eric Johnson in the SciFi Channel’s new Flash Gordon series, debuting this August. No stranger to heroic fantasy projects, the Canadian actress previously appeared in Fantastic Four, The Butterfly Effect 2 and the upcoming Alien vs. Predator 2.
Based upon Alex Raymond’s classic newspaper comic strip, SciFi has already committed to a full 22 episode season. Jody Racicot (Night at the Museum) will play Dr. Hans Zarkov, and John Ralston (Earthstorm) will play the greatest villain of all time, Mongo’s Emperor Ming the Merciless. Anna van Hoft will play Ming’s daughter Aura, who has the hots for Flash and, therefore, doesn’t like Dale very much.
No word on who’s going to play Vultan, king of the original Hawkmen. Brian Blessed, who played the role in the 1980 motion picture, is currently filming Doctor Who.
Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art will be featuring the Zines, Comics, and Other Hip Lit Fair this Sunday, May 13, from noon to 4 PM. According to their website: Celebrate independent press in all forms, including zines, comics, graphic novels, artist books, and much more with readings, signings, and serious book shopping featuring emerging and well-known authors, artists, comics, and poets selected by Quimby’s Bookstore and the MCA.
The festival will feature presentations from Mark Todd and Esther Pearl (Whatcha Mean, What’s a Zine?), writer and editor of Punk Planet magazine Anne Elizabeth Moore, underground author Al Burian, and zine writer Aaron Cynic (Diatribe and Vices Make My Life More Interesting).
Co-presented with Quimby’s Bookstore, the event will be at the MCA’s Robert B. and Beatrice C. Mayer Education Center Lobby, 220 East Chicago Avenue, near the massive American Girl Emporium zombie-machine. Best of all, admission is free.
If the fighter jet scenes in next year’s Iron Man movie look very realistic, that’s because they were filmed at Edwards Air Force Base with about a dozen Marines, 150 Airmen, and real Air Force aircraft – and some of the newest stuff at that!
Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Lt. Col. Jim Rhodes (Terrence Howard) share what the American Forces Press Service described as a "heated scene" in front of 20 Air Force "pilots" — all active-duty airmen and Marines who auditioned to be extras — between a F-22 Raptor and a bulb-nosed Global Hawk.
Director Jon Favreau said brought realism to Iron Man. "This is the best back lot you could ever have," he said. "Every angle you shoot is authentic: desert, dry lake beds, hangars."
"This is a movie about superheroes, and my son might watch it," Sergeant Danny Vaughn told the American Forces Press Service. He’s hoping 7-year-old Danny III will get to see his dad acting as 2nd Lt. Eric Huppert, one of Rhodie’s pilots in the hangar, or as an Army special operations Soldier walking across the camera during the previous day’s shoot.
Iron Man is scheduled for release in May, 2008.
(Special thanks to John Tebbel for the legwork.)
As Montgomery Scott could tell you, things don’t always work out the way they were intended.
Some of the ashes of actor James Doohan, who played Chief Engineer in the classic Star Trek teevee series and movies, were launced into outer space on April 29th. Some of the late astronaut Gordon Cooper accompanied Doohan on the ride.
The capsule was scheduled to return to Earth, and so it did, in the New Mexico desert. Where it has yet to be found.
Space Services Inc. spokeswoman Susan Schonfeld told Reuters news service "The terrain is very mountainous; it’s not somewhere that you can walk or drive to. My understanding is that it will take some time to get up into there."
Blaming the problem on "horrendous" weather, Schonfeld concluded "they know the general location, and we have the utmost confidence that they will recover it."
NBC has picked up David Eick’s remake of The Bionic Woman for the 2007 -2008 season.
Eick was best known for his work as executive producer of the remake of Battlestar Galactica, running on NBC’s Sci-Fi Network. Now he’s best known as teevee’s go-to guy for science ficiton teevee revivals.
The revisioned series stars British actress Michelle Ryan as Jaime Sommers. Eick has said that they only used the title of the series as their starting point and that the show will go in its own direction. So we know Ryan will have a chip on her shoulder – as well as everyplace else – and, well, that she’s a woman.
Galactica‘s Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck) co-stars in the pilot as the mandatory evil bionic woman. Whereas she worked on this during her brief time-off from Galactica, since Eick wrote the pilot we shouldn’t be astonished if we see her come back – certainly, after Galactica wraps its next and final season.
No word on any reappearance of The Six Million Dollar Man. Today, six mill wouldn’t buy you a used Dalek.
Director Peter Segal is in discussions with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson about playing the lead – the original Captain Marvel (a.k.a. The Big Red Cheese) in the forthcoming Shazam! movie.
The Rock, the WWE wrestling star who has impressed many critics and movie-goers in such films as The Scorpion King, The Mummy Returns and Gridiron Gang (even if some of those movies themselves did not), is awaiting John August’s screenplay before he makes a final decision.
Johnson told ComingSoon.net Marvel’s famous red-and-yellow costume might be updated, although "Pete also understands the importance of getting that right; he’s a big comic-book fan."
Until then, Rock fans (well, "The Rock" fans) can await his performance as Agent 23 in the upcoming Get Smart movie.
August’s screenwriting credits include Corpse Bride, Charlies and the Chocolate Factory, and Titan A.E.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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