Author: Robert Greenberger

One of the reasons World War II is called the last good war is that the stakes were clear and unambiguous. Those years spawned countless stories of heroism, sacrifice, and loss that never cease to fascinate subsequent generations. Some movies have gone to great lengths to recreate what the horrors of war must have been like while others go for a different approach, going for a stark contrast to exemplify the acts of one or a few. The pilots resulting from the Tuskegee training program deserve proper treatment in mass media of their experiences.

It was long known that this was a passion project for filmmaker George Lucas, who has been discussing making this story for over 20 years. Not surprisingly, the bean counters at the studios balked at an all-Black film fearing it wouldn’t play well domestically and fare even worse overseas. Thankfully, Star Wars made Lucas a wealthy man and allowed him to help finance and see his project to fruition. During the intervening years, he brought survivors of those years to his ranch and interviewed them, capturing their tales while the men were still around to provide first-hand accounts.

He assigned the scripting to John Ridley and the direction to Anthony Hemingway and the story was shot in 2009. Dissatisfied with the results, Lucas himself helmed reshoots using script material from Aaron McGruder. The resulting film was released earlier this year and will be out Tuesday from 20^th Century Home Entertainment. Given the amount of time devoted to research and the passion from Lucas, one would have hoped for a more satisfying yarn. Once more his vaunted storytelling skills failed him as Lucas neglected to make the characters anything more than cardboard constructs, each filling an archetype but denying them a chance to shine via personality or dialogue. Instead, the 332d Fighter Group are as flat and wooden as the war movies made decades ago. (more…)

Before Star Trek was Fringe and Lost, and Alias and before Alias was Felicity. It may be hard to recall that genre wunderkind Abrams actually broke into television by making a splash in 1998 with the WB series about a college girl. Created with Cabin in the Woods collaborator Matt Reeves, the series is worth a second look given the storytelling, music, and keen eye for casting that first introduced to an armload of performers who have gone on to success, including repeat appearances in later Abrams productions. Or do you think Keri Russell’s cameo in Mission: Impossible 3 was an oddity?

Lionsgate has resurrected the first two seasons in newly packaged DVDs, both out this week. The WB knew that a female-skewing series with a high concept would be a good fit for their struggling network so when Abrams and Reeves turned up with the concept, there was excitement. Susanne Daniels excitedly listened as Abrams outlined a five season arc for Felicity Porter, who would chuck everything she and her parents planned for, to follow a boy from California to New York. The boy barely knew she existed but all it took was for him to sign her yearbook and she was hooked.

So was Daniels who has written, “He brings heart to a pitch and can tell you clearly why anyone would or should care about the world he’s describing. But the single most impressive thing about J.J. is the depth of analysis he lays out in a compelling, almost professorial way. He can tell you everything about every character and their story arcs. And he can tell you how and why his show fits into your network, in the television business, and the world at large, and how the audience will relate to it.” (more…)

In many entertainment fields, people hold closely valued opinions, making their decisions of what to purchase or reject based on these beliefs. Moviegoers won’t respond to strong female leads. Men don’t read. And so on. The problem is that no one knows where these beliefs come from since so few of these businesses actually do any demographic research. DC Entertainment made a big splash last year when they actually surveyed fans and held focus group meetings. It was the first time the comics field was analyzed in at least a decade.

That’s one reason why the industry collectively rejoiced today when Bonfire Agency sent out the following press release because it may begin to give us some real time information that publishers and retailers can use to improve their businesses.

Give this a read and see if you want to get involved:

(April 23, 2012—New York, NY) – Bonfire Agency, the advertising and marketing firm dedicated to helping companies better understand and deepen brand engagements with more than 5 million passionate comic and pop culture enthusiasts, announced today a new phase of recruitment for the agency’s proprietary “FanPan” consumer input panel.  Consumers interested in joining the panel may do so online at www.bonfirefanpan.com. (more…)

Marvel has been allowing the Japanese to adapt their characters for nearly 40 years now and the results have always been hit or miss. Thankfully, the most current offering is more successful than most. Back in 2009, Marvel announced it had cut a deal with Madhouse and Sony to let them produce four anime series based on Iron Man, X-Men, Wolverine, and Blade, which at the time were guaranteed film franchise successes. To Madhouse’s credit, they hired Warren Ellis to pen the scripts and help create an integrated, consisted Marvel Anime Universe.

The shows began airing in Japan on Animax in spring 2010 before finding a domestic home on G4 with the last new episodes airing earlier this month. Now, Sony Home Entertainment releases Iron Man and X-Men on DVD this Tuesday. Each two-disc set contains the complete twelve episode arc plus some extra features.

Madhouse, born in 1972, is known for Ninja Scroll and Vampire Hunter D among many other productions. Here, they hew close to the movie versions of the characters, making minor modifications to allow for animation. There’s a distinct anime look and feel to the civilians and a handful of the heroes, notably Storm.

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Pack up and head to Camp North Star this summer as Lionsgate debuts the wacky comedy Meatballs on Blu-ray Disc, Digital Download and On Demand for the first time. Directed by Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters), the hilarious summer camp adventure stars Oscar® nominee Bill Murray (Best Actor in a Leading Role, Lost in Translation, 2003) in his first leading role. The film also stars Harvey Atkin (TV’s “Law & Order: SVU”) and Kate Lynch (New Year). Featuring a new audio commentary with director Ivan Reitman, Meatballs makes its high-definition premiere on June 12^th, for the suggested retail price of $14.99. The DVD will also be available for the suggested retail price of $9.98.

Tripper (Murray) is about to have a summer he will never forget. As head counselor at Camp North Star, an off-the-wall summer getaway, Tripper guides his loveable campers and spirited staff members on a quest for fun in the sun. But when the season begins with a runaway camper, an accidental blackout and Tripper’s amorous attack on a female counselor, everyone knows that the tales by the fireside will only get more outrageous as the summer goes on.

The Art of Daniel Clowes
Edited by Alvin Buenaventura
224 pages, $40, AbramsComicarts

The world appears to have caught up with Daniel Clowes, the artist who looks at the ordinary and conveys that feeling of loneliness and cluelessness so many of us feel on a daily basis. When he grew up, just three years behind me, he saw the pop art era in a vastly different way, an artist’s way I suppose. He had an unremarkable childhood and was trained at the Pratt Institute, graduating in 1984. He desperately wanted to find a commercial art job.

“I was trying to get work as an illustrator in the ’80s, but no art directors actually ever called, which is what led me to throw up my hands in despair and slink back to comics. Originally, I was hoping to find a writer to collaborate with, since I was much more interested in the drawing part of the equation, but that didn’t work out. And so I began writing my own stories. I didn’t really intend to write ‘personal narratives,’ but somehow that’s what happened,” he told The Atlantic.

And thank goodness for that. The artist’s work is being celebrated this month, first with the release of the monograph The Art of Daniel Clowes. On April 12, the Oakland Museum of California opened “Modern Cartoonist: The Art of Daniel Clowes” which was organized by Susan Miller and René de Guzman. As a result, he has been interviewed and profiled from the mainstream press with regularity.

Clowes amused himself in 1984 with Lloyd Llewellyn, which he managed to sell to Fantagraphics. The title didn’t see print for two years and while he sought a fulltime position he freelanced, notably illustrating “The Uggly Family” for Cracked. As time passed, though, it was clear his idiosyncratic and hard to pin style wasn’t going to get him hired. Instead, he found himself making a living as a comic book artist, telling his stories, his way. This resulted in the anthology Eightball which has won every major industry award and gave us numerous features that have been collected. One such serial became Ghost World, which Clowes adapted with director Terry Zwigoff as an indie film in 2000 (giving us a young Thora Birch and Scarlet Johansson).

Since then, Clowes became one of the faces of the independent comics movement as he continued to explore society in Pussey!, Orgy Bound, David Boring, and Ice Haven among other books. Additionally, he went on to do more film work including Art School Confidential and screenplays for films yet to be born.

Not that he’s sold out to The Man, but Clowes has also done artwork for twenty CDs and commercial work for Coca-Cola’s failed OK soda. He’s produced a one-sheet for Todd Solondz’s Happiness and DVD covers for a trio of Samuel Fuller films.

Still, it’s his inventive and captivating work in graphic storytelling that led to the book and exhibit. In 2007, he launched a twenty-part serial for The New York Times, Miser Wonderful, which was his idea of a romantic story which has since been collected and lauded. While his father lay dying, Clowes filled a sketchbook with notes that became his mostly work, Wilson, which was published in 2010 and is now being adapted for film by Alexander Payne. That story, about the lost adult, is drawn in a wide variety of styles, aping the comic strips he read as a kid to experimenting with his own work. There’s a command to his page construction and line work that keeps his pages fresh and always interesting.

Alvin Buenaventura, the book’s editor, opens the volume with a lengthy interview that gets the artist to open up on topics he’s barely discussed in the past including the two years he lost to heat disease. Only after a seven hour operation, a year after his son Charlie was born, was Clowes finally feeling energetic to return to the drawing board.

The 9.25” x 12” book is copiously illustrated from across the man’s career and is nicely designed by Jonathan Bennett. Accompanying the art and interview are critical essays by Miller, Ken Parille, Ray Pride, Chris Ware, and the ubiquitous Chip Kidd.   Overall, I gained a new appreciation for Clowes’ versatility and vitality as a storyteller and observer of our mundane lives. Familiar with his work or not, you can learn a lot about the breadth of graphic storytelling by studying his illustrations and reading the analysis that enriches the work.