Category: News

JOHN OSTRANDER: Pros and Cons

News
August 2, 2007

Well, seeing as last weekend was Spam Diego, I suppose it’s time to do my Convention wrap-up.

Not that I was at SD. Not this year. But I’ve been to quite a few over the years. In fact, I’ve been at any number of comic conventions, both as a fan and as a professional. Actually, always as a fan and, for the past 25 years, as a professional as well. But something can happen and I can turn back into a drooly mouthed fan boy at a moment’s notice. Some cases in point:

During my early years in the biz, my sometimes partner in crime and often evil twin Timothy Truman and I were at a Con together. Will Eisner was in attendance and neither Tim nor I could summon up the nerve to go say hello to him. We finally got on the courtesy bus taking us from the hotel out to the airport as said convention ended and the only other passenger was – Will Eisner. So he strikes up a conversation with us and we had a really great trip out to the airport. Will got off the shuttle first and Tim and I looked at each other and decided we were such idiots because we could have spent the entire weekend with him.

I think I’ve told the story elsewhere how at a Chicago Con I had to get Julie Schwartz (who I already knew and was a legend himself) to get me to introduce me to Jack Kirby because I was completely and utterly incapable of doing it myself because this was the goddam KING of comics, goddamit!

Likewise, at a San Diego Con, I had to get Murphy Anderson (another legend who I already knew) to introduce me to John Broome, the legendary writer. Mr. Broome, on being introduced, gives me the eye, looks me up and down and said, with mock severity, “Ah, the competition, eh?” No, Mr. Broome, I’d have to be in your league first.

Yes, there are others who can make me like that and, no, I’m NOT telling you who they are.

I’ve also met any number of friends at conventions. I think Michael Davis has talked about our first meeting; I know he wound up in the suite with Mike Grell and myself (and a few others) as Iron Mike watched the first episode of the Jon Sable, Freelance TV series that wound up being on for about two minutes one season. The TV show hasn’t lasted but I’m glad to say that my relationship with Michael has.

Another friend met at a Con was Aussie writer, Dave DeVries, who we designated “that mad Australian” as a result of that weekend. We keep in touch still and he’s a good mate. Dave’s also been a pal and a bane to Brother Grell and has one of the best bar stories about him I’ve ever heard. Dave, if you see this, get on the comment line and tell it. Or maybe we can get Grell to do it.

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The New Lara Croft Lowdown

Podcasts
August 1, 2007

While at SDCC last week, I sat down with Ricardo Sanchez, VP of Content for Gametap and creator of Gametap TV’s Re/Visioned series, and writer Gail Simone (Wonder Woman, Birds of Prey) to learn a little more about what the gaming site had in store for fans with their re-interpretation of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.

For those unfamiliar with Gametap.com, it’s a PC gaming site that has both free ad supported and a subscription service. With their biggest coup having made the 10th Anniversary Tomb Raider game available to subscribers for download the same day it was out in stores. Owned by Turner and a sister company to the Cartoon Network, they’re taking advantage of their position by trying to be a gaming lifestyle site, rather than just a place to play and download games. Part of that move is Gametap TV, an Internet broadcast channel that was launched with A Day in the Extra Life series.

Gametap decided to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Lara Croft in several ways, the aforementioned game launch, a retrospective documentary that is available for viewing on the site and a ten episode run launching the Re/Visioned series with a wishlist of great artists and writers, including Peter Chung, Jim Lee, Warren Ellis and Gail Simone. Actress Minnie Driver will be voicing Lara for all the episodes.

There will be seven different Lara stories in total, starting with the three part “Keys to the Kingdom” by Peter Chung (Aeon Flux) which is already up on the site, along with the Brian Puludo / David Alvarez comedic episode “Revenge of the Aztec Mummy.” The very thought of an Aztec mummy was so humorous (or, perhaps, ludicrous) to Warren Ellis he couldn’t help himself from fits of laughter during the SDCC Gametap panel. Ellis’ story is a two-parter entitled “Angel Spit” (art by Cully Hamner) which was screened at SDCC and should be up this week.

I was curious as to how a writer goes about taking a character people know from an established game and tells a compelling new story. In our sit-down I posed that question to Gail Simone, who said her take was to “decide what character traits Lara would have in place” if she “dialed her back” to her preteen years. Simone’s story places a 12-year old Croft in boarding school. From there the “story wrote itself.”

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The Two Rays

News
August 1, 2007

Sometimes you write the article, sometimes the article writes you.

You’ve seen it a million times. The head table, on a dais, faces the audience. The honored guests take the stage to applause. The microphones are adjusted, name cards arranged, the host begins the program.

But when the greatest living science fiction writer is the guest, the gods are aware and send us a message, lest we begin to imagine that we are in charge of the agenda.

Ray Bradbury is in a wheelchair these days. The Comic-Con arranged for a nifty, new-looking wheelchair elevator to be at the end of the stage. Ray’s people wheeled him across the front of the stage to a round of applause. They wheeled him into the elevator, a glass box (waist high, if you’re standing, if you’re sitting, it’s up to your neck) on a lifting platform, glittering, unmarked by fingerprint or key scratch or any marks of human inhabitation. It was also innocent of any rehearsal, the hallmark of every smooth use of any stagecraft more complicated than a hat.

If it was President Roosevelt, two guys would’ve lifted him and his chair the two or three feet from floor to the stage. It might have taken an extra guy, Comic-Con folks not usually bringing Secret Service beef to the table. But we have modern technology—no sweat, no strain.

In 2007, still without our silver jumpsuits, faced with an untried, miniature elevator, Ray sat there a prisoner, his unfailing good nature in no danger from this silly snag, for ten minutes. They fiddled with the lock, they looked concerned, they did their impression of Wile E. Coyote in the moments between realizing the scheme has misfired and feeling the faint breeze that announces the arriving boulder. They moved the platform up an inch, they moved it down three inches. They did these things for ten minutes with no help sought or offered from any authority. Finally, they blundered upon the right sequence of actions and the gleaming glass and steel doorway opened and Ray Bradbury was freed from The Crystal Prison of the Festival of Fans.

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The Vertigo Deluge

News
August 1, 2007

DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint announced a few new projects at their “Looking Over the Edge” panel in San Diego last week.

First up: next month’s Un-Men, the old Swamp Thing foes and stars of the American Freaks mini-series. The monthly book, written by John Whalen and pencils by Mike Hawthorne, revolves around how the Un-Men are now running a tourist attraction at the nuclear test site reservation that was established at the end of the 1994 mini-series.

Bill Willingham and Matthew Sturges will be bringing a monthly House of Mystery revival. It will not be a traditional anthology, but will have ongoing story arcs and one-shot stories within. The series kicks off with Cain arriving home from a visit to Abel and finding the house has been stolen and turned into a pub where patrons have to tell the story to pay their tab, a gambit reminiscent of the Sandman story that featured Cain and Abel. We’ll take this chance to again say the “place has been turned into a bar and tell a story” format sounds awfully familiar, particularly to GrimJack fans.

Out this spring will be a monthly Madame Xanadu title penned by Matt Wagner with art by Amy Hadly. The series will explore her relationship with The Phantom Stranger, revealing why it is they dislike each other so much and how she got the name “Xanadu.”

In October, UK teevee writer Si Spencer (Torchwood) offers up a slice of British sub-culture in the crime-noir Vinyl Underground about a group of four occult detectives in London.

In November Vertigo celebrates the 20th anniversary of the monthly Hellblazer title with Hellblazer: Pandemonium graphic novel. (The cover date of Hellblazer #1 was January 1988) Jamie Delano’s story takes John to Iraq and is a commentary on the current political situation.

November will also see the release of the graphic novel Cairo. A story structured like 1001 Arabian Nights about a genie trapped in a hookah features various occult characters form the Vertigo universe which will all be pulled into one story. Also out: Absolute Sandman Volume Two, which will feature lots of behind the scenes material.

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News of the World

News
August 1, 2007

SF Diplomat deconstructs Iron Man. I don’t see what all the hubbub is about. So he’s an alcoholic, workaholic, control-freak millionaire military contractor who is his own superpowered bodyguard and often runs his own foreign policy — what’s the big deal? I don’t see anything odd there…

Neil Gaiman was kissed during the Eisner Awards by U.K. TV star (and major comics fan) Jonathan Ross, and has posted the snogging on his blog for all to see.

Forbidden Planet International examines the website for the Watchmen movie. I imagine, if you ask them, they’d also read tea-leaves to see how good the movie is going to be.

Industry News has some documents from Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster’s 1947 lawsuit against National Periodical Publications, part of a larger collection of material from the lawsuit that is now for sale.

I thought Comics Reporter had already done his big Comic-Con wrap-up, but here’s another one.

Again with the Comics goes there to wonder how Ben Grim makes sweet, sweet love. [via Journalista!]

USA Today profiles Neil Gaiman.

DC is getting some impressive press coverage for their new Minx line – why, they even cracked the powerful York Journal today.

Paul Kincaid at Bookslut admits that he likes Philip K. Dick’s mainstream novels as he reviews the last previously-unpublished Dick book, Voices from the Street. Ah – he’s the one!

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Scott Shaw! Did you hear me? I said, “Scott Shaw!”

News
August 1, 2007

Now, more than ever, do we need Scott Shaw!’s Oddball Comics.

He has followed his bliss and ours to the last swap meet, the dustiest quarter box of mixed comics to save the comics that no one else would save. We all know about the great comics that everyone’s mom threw out. These are the comics that every self-respecting kid threw out. The ones even our kid siblings wouldn’t save from the trash.

These are the comics that put the funny in funny book, both “ha-ha” and “peculiar.” And fewer are the howlers put out as advertising tools than you’d think. Most of the show are comics put out by entertainment professionals. They’re just wrong. For every genuinely, intentionally funny comic book cover over the years there must be a hundred that are so stupid, so venal, so slapdash as to be the dictionary illustration for “laughingstock.”

Being in the hands of a seasoned performer like Shaw! is a relaxing pleasure. You pick up the rhythm and laugh along as long as the schedule will allow. He is the king of the slideshow side shows, a wonderful reminder of the great heights we attempt and the depths to which we can fall. Here are freaks for geeks.

This is the first, maybe decisive verdict of history on these comics. One look and the specialists in the field, that is, the entire audience, can’t help but laugh out loud. There are fewer professionals in attendance these days, but that’s because they’ve all seen it, some since they’ve been in middle school.

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The Truth About San Diego

News
August 1, 2007

Dirk Deppy’s ¡Journalista! opens today with the following quote:

“We’ve put up the superheroes and now we’re on to the people with actual talent.”

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, looking forward to American Idol.

Mr. Sanders is an asshole.

While in San Diego last week, ComicMix podcast producer Mike Raub and I did a quick estimate on the minimum amount of cash the San Diego Comic-Con pumped into the local economy. With 140,000 in attendance, most of whom staying in hotels, using taxis and public transportation, going to parties, using convention facilities, doing a bit of shopping, paying local and state taxes and dining at local restaurants during the four day show, we estimate comics fans spent a minimum of an eighth of a billion dollars in Mr. Sanders’ town – and most likely more than twice that.

What did we get for our money, outside of the Comic-Con itself? Hotel service that was indifferent at best (hotels were sold out; some folks had to commute in from damn near the Mexican border), and lousy restaurant food with incredibly rotten service. I go to over a half-dozen conventions each year, and never was I treated worse than I was in San Diego last week. Mr. Sanders’ city simply sucks.

Then again, if Sanders thinks American Idol candidates have "actual talent," his head’s so far up his ass he probably thinks the food at the Blarney Stone smells good.

General Zod in 2008

News
August 1, 2007

"When I first came to your planet and demanded your homes, property and very lives, I didn’t know you were already doing so, willingly, with your own government. I can win no tribute from a bankrupted nation populated by feeble flag-waving plebians. In 2008 I shall restore your dignity and make you servants worthy of my rule. This new government shall become a tool of my oppression. Instead of hidden agendas and waffling policies, I offer you direct candor and brutal certainty. I only ask for your tribute, your lives, and your vote."

Look, it’s not like the Republicans have offered up anybody better for this election so far. Zod in 2008!

When androids dream, Syd Mead gets paid

News
August 1, 2007

Syd Mead (Tron, Alien, Blade Runner) is a professional artist. This explains why he doesn’t work more in the movies.

That’s professional artist. He does a lot of work for major corporations who are happy to meet his fee for his services without any phony penny pinching. When it’s the movies calling, he says, the price “starts at zero” and the artist has to “work his way up.”

There are many needy artists. Producers always can find someone to work on spec.

But they won’t get Syd Mead.

He also insists on a “one to one relationship with the director,” which means no intermediaries or departments of intermediation. And if they do agree to his fee, and his working conditions, he then makes sure that the exact amount of work is specified and the fees due for anything more. That means anything.

The last picture he worked on was Mission Impossible III, on the Mask Maker sequence.

I’m one of Syd Mead’s newest fans. Before I signed up to cover his panel at Comic-Con I didn’t know his name, though I’d enjoyed his work.

Though “artist” is a big enough term to hold him, he is sometimes called a “visual futurist.” But that’s a little silly. No one can predict the future. But an artist who is good enough can make images that speak to our sense of how we would like to improve the way things look and our need to make things that are better and more useful than the things that went before. Henry Ford wasn’t being a futurist when he made a Model A to replace his Model T automobile, but today we would call him one.

Most designers are making good livings doing renderings that gently recycle the images of the past, the better to please the client. This is why there are several hundred fake Tudor houses on Shady Bend for every saucer shape clinging to a hillside.

He is best known for his work on Blade Runner, though his career began in industrial design. Like many successful designers, his career has made many twists and turns. Designers work alone when they’re putting pencil marks and paint on illustration board, but they turn their work over to dozens, even hundreds of people who will then make a car or a building or a movie along the lines the designer suggests. Good designers like this process. They like working with directors and architects and other confident, creative people. People who are in charge of insane amounts of money, risked by other people to create things people will buy and take to their hearts.

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ELAYNE RIGGS: The Prodigal Child

News
August 1, 2007

White Rabbits! (Sorry, that supersition is how I start every month.)

So Robin and I were watching Godspell on TV the other day. Yeah, every now and then I like to revel in the best of ’70s kitsch. Godspell reminds me a lot of Finian’s Rainbow. They’re both earnest, so very very earnest, in their attempted appeal to perceived hippie consciousness, and there are sections of each that I love to bits… but my gosh, they’re so charmingly dated, bless their hearts.

And I was remembering how cool I thought the songs were when I was a kid, and how silly all the wide shots panning out over NYC look — and gasping when I suddenly realized the ending of one number was shot on top of the then-newly-built World Trade Center, and the title of the number was "All For The Best" — and Robin was comparing it to the version he’d seen on stage in England, and they came to the bit where that cast member who looks disturbingly like Ron Jeremy and a few other cast members were acting out the story of The Prodigal Son.

And I’m kinda caught up in the film despite myself, because I’ve always been fascinated by allegorical fiction, which is what most New Testament stories are, and all at once something just didn’t seem correct to me. It’s the same kind of "wait a second…" I did when I first realized the second most common interpretation of the moral of the Garden of Eden story was "always submit to authority rather than seeking to understand things for yourself" (the most common being "all dames are trash"). It made absolutely no sense to me that the prodigal son, who had sinned mightily and returned to his father’s fold, deserved the fatted calf more than the son who had dutifully loved his father and seen to his work and was a genuinely good person the entire time and who needed no prodding to be good. It didn’t work for me as fiction, it just wasn’t a satisfying resolution, because it rested on the assertion that it’s okay, even preferable, to cheat. And because so many people need an excuse to justify actions that in their gut they must know they shouldn’t do, that message is incredibly appealing to a wide segment of people.

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Category: News

JOHN OSTRANDER: Pros and Cons

The New Lara Croft Lowdown

The Two Rays

The Vertigo Deluge

News of the World

Scott Shaw! Did you hear me? I said, “Scott Shaw!”

The Truth About San Diego

General Zod in 2008

When androids dream, Syd Mead gets paid

ELAYNE RIGGS: The Prodigal Child

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