In Memoriam: Jim Henson
Seventeen years ago today, it got just a bit less easy to be green.
Here’s to you, good fellow. (Hat tip: Lisa Sullivan.) (more…)
Category: News
Frank Miller’s Will Eisner’s The Spirit picked up
Our good friends at Variety (the outfit that also brings us the New York Comic Con) tell us North American and British distribution rights Frank Miller’s film version of Will Eisner’s The Spirit, produced by Batfilm’s Michael Uslan, has been picked by Lionsgate, distributor of Marvel’s many D2DVD titles.
Frank has written the script and will be directing the movie as soon as he and Robert Rodriguez wrap up Sin City 2.
Wow. Sounds kinda incestuous, doesn’t it?
The producers are out in Cannes with Frank’s script selling international rights, even as you read these words.
Artwork for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund copyright Will Eisner. All Rights Reserved. Hat tip: Lisa Sullivan.
Ellison and Groth to mediate?
Back on April 1st, we ran a little piece entitled "Ellison, Groth sign historic peace accord". Because of the date, many readers thought we were engaging in an April Fool’s joke and making the whole thing up.
Now columnist Rich Johnston reports: "I understand that both Fantagraphics and Harlan Ellison were asked if they would participate in mediation over their current legal confrontation and that both have, at this time, gladly agreed. This will occur on May 29th at the Federal District Court Of Appeals in California. It will be attended by Ellison, Groth and their respective legal representatives. Given the good will from both sides regarding this approach, maybe we could indeed see peace in our time."
Don’t worry. We only use our predictive powers for good. We tried using our powers to find out the ending of Lost, but there the future is truly unwritten, as are the scripts.
ELAYNE RIGGS: Living in the moment
John Lennon once observed, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” And another John, ComicMix‘s own Mr. Ostrander, recently wrote here about a lesson learned (he calls it a “strange gift”) in the wake of his wife’s death:
“One of the gifts I got was a deeper understanding of now. That’s what we have — now… now… now. This second. This second. This second. Now. We should never assume we get the next second. Kim realized, at the end, that she hadn’t done all the writing she wanted to do. That she could have done. She found ‘reasons’ but, at the end, none of them were more than excuses. Regret is what you have when you waste the now… Do you have something you want to write? Do it now. Is there something you want to do? Get started now. Is there someone you love? Love them now. It’s what we have; the next second is not promised to anyone.”
It’s not right, it’s not fair, but sometimes grief has a way of clarifying ideas you’ve heard before so that you understand them in a new way. And “now” is one of them. I completely “get” this concept in the wake of my father’s death, in a way I didn’t even see it after my best friend Leah passed away. There’s no going back at this point. Leah and I were close for over a decade, but I’d known Dad my entire life. He was one of the two pillars on whom my existence rested for close to 50 years. And now that pillar is gone, and I feel like I’m going to be off-balance and teetering for the rest of my life.
The illusion that, if things got really hard, I could always regress to a time and place where I felt completely safe and protected, where I didn’t have to be a grown-up, is forever shattered. I’ve never been blessed with children, so I can’t even relive my childhood through the eyes of the next generation. I have to be the grown-up all the time now, caught between that which is no longer and that which will never be, while unforgiving time still insists on creeping along in only one direction. My world is nothing but “now”s. (more…)
Dune redubbed, 2001 sped-up
Courtesy of the folks at Sequential Pictures, this re-imagining of Dune is just so very wrong.
I’m the only one who actually liked the original Dune flick, aren’t I? sigh Also, via Fanboy.com, it’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in 5 Seconds:
That length seems about right to me…
DENNIS O’NEIL: The kryptonite reality
Once again, life has imitated comics. Maybe comics should sue.
This latest instance was reported in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago and has to do with kryptonite, the stuff from Superman’s planet or origin which can lay the Man of Steel low, or even all the way down. As far as I know, kryptonite was introduced in the early 40s by the writers of the Superman radio show. Since I was only a year or two or three old at the time, I’ll forgive them for not getting in touch with me and telling me why, exactly, they introduced it. But a guess might be: to facilitate conflict, which is widely considered to be a necessary ingredient in drama, and especially melodrama.
These guys – I assume they were guys – and their comic book counterparts were facing a fairly unique problem: how to get their hero in trouble and thus create conflict/drama, and do it not only once, but several times each month, or even more often.
Oh, sure, there had been superhuman characters in world literature and myth before Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, but they were in self-contained stories, and not many of those, and the problem was pretty limited. But with Superman… well, here was a fellow who was faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound – and that was when he was in his infancy. (For the record: Superman is only a year older than me. That is, he appeared only about a year before I did, though I gestated for the customary nine months and Supes took a leisurely four years to progress from the imaginations of Joe and Jerry to the public prints. He was a slow developer, but once he got started…) And he literally become more powerful with every passing year. And he had to have a lot of adventures.
So, okay, how do you get this guy in trouble, often, and thus create suspense and interest? The question has been answered in many ways, many times over the years. Kryptonite was one of the earliest of these answers. According to the mythos, it is a fragment of – I guess mineral – from Krypton, where Supes was born. Something in the gestalt of our planet makes kryptonite dangerous to natives of Krypton. (All of which you almost certainly know, but we do try to be thorough here.)
We thought it was fictional. Some of us, of the professional writing ilk, further thought that it was neither more nor less than an answer to a plot problem and at least one of that ilk thought it was overused and temporarily retired it. But now, a Chris Stanley, of London’s Museum of Natural History, analyzed a substance some of his colleagues discovered and, according to the Times, “found that the new mineral’s chemistry matched the description of kryptonite’s composition in last year’s film Superman Returns.”
It is not known whether or not anyone collapsed near the stuff.
At this point, you can either shrug and get on with your life, or pause, and engage in some pretty wild speculation about the nature of reality.
Be warned: We probably aren’t finished with this topic.
RECOMMENDED READING: The God Delusion
Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern and/or Green Arrow, and The Shadow, as well as all kinds of novels, stories and articles.
Dennis O’Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of comic books like
Heroes: Origins coming to NBC
To stretch the normal 22-episode season of Heroes, which faltered after its long hiatus this year, NBC is adding Heroes: Origins to the summer break. The spinoff will introduce a new character each week, and viewers will select which one stays for the following season. The two series will have 30 new episodes for a year combined.
A brilliant move. Combine the storytelling of a scripted show with the "must watch in real time" necessity of a reality show, as those "must watch in real time" shows are the only ones that are getting quantifiable ratings (no time-shifting from DVRs, etc.). I have to hand it to them, this is a unique way of trying to solve the problem, and could very well work.
Now let’s see the real corporate synergy in action– combine it with sister network’s Sci-Fi Channel’s Who Wants To Be A Superhero?
2006 Eagle Awards Announced
Since you couldn’t watch a new episode of Doctor Who this past Saturday, maybe you were at the Eagle Awards, as part of the Bristol International Comic Expo.
Established in 1976 by Mike Conroy, the Eagles are the comics industry’s longest established awards. Acknowledged as the pre-eminent international prizes, they have been featured on the covers of leading US and UK titles across the last three decades with such diverse titles as X-Men, Swamp Thing, Preacher, 2000 AD and MAD among those proud to display the Eagle Award emblem.
Winners are after the jump.
Fate gets real
Steve Gerber reports his Doctor Fate series, already announced, solicited and then rescinded, will be appearing in a new double-length, double-feature book along the lines of DC’s recent Mystery In Space and Tales of the Unexpected titles. It should be coming out in September.
Personally, I think this is good news. It’s quite rare for me to get excited about still another plow-over of an old superhero, and Doctor Fate had some good runs over the decades. But Gerber and Fate seemed like a perfect match, and I look forward to his new series once again.
(Artwork copyright DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.)
More Groo for you
Ready that cheese dip, your favorite mendicant is about to return! Groo writer Mark Evanier has just announced that on August 1st Dark Horse will release The Groo 25th Anniversary Special, to be followed in September by debut of the four-issue miniseries Groo: Hell on Earth.
Groo — it’s one of those books where, if you have to ask, don’t.
Only really, do. According to the solicitation, the anniversary issue will feature our hero battling the menace of "The Plague," as well as presenting The Groo Alphabet, a primer of friends and foes (mostly foes), followed by a special illustrated text story on how this comic came to be and why it just won’t go away. Plus other silly features.
As if the features already listed weren’t silly enough.
(Artwork copyright Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragones. All Rights Reserved.)
