Category: News

Aluna

Paula Garcés Brings Comic Book Character To Video Game

b2b_aluna-6348603Independent game maker S2 Games is joining up with  actress and producer Paula Garcés to add a brand new main character, Aluna, to the session-based, multiplayer, action-RPG Heroes of Newerth (HoN). Seen in Clockstoppers, the Harold and Kumar film franchise, and Warehouse 13, Garcés adds her attractiveness and ability to HoN as the personality and voicepowering the  Legion hero Aluna, the character made for Aluna Comics. To watch Aluna come alive fans can visit the Nvidia booth at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco where Garcés is going to be appearing to sign autographs on March 2nd and 3rd.

Aluna blurs the lines of the entertainment and gaming fields by delivering the look of a Maxim Hot 100 model with the powers of a Latina superhero to life in Newerth. “I wanted to bring the Aluna character to new mediums and HoN is a perfect fit,” said Garcés. “The HoNfans will appreciate Aluna’s unique story and welcome her as a hero inthe game.” Stunning and spirited, Aluna bears within her the essence of Earth itself – the old Earth  long since lost to the decay of ages. Carrying the power of the moon within a magical gem, Aluna attacks  her daemonic enemies with lethal swiftness. Because of her expertise in battle, she’s expected to be a star among the heroes of Newerth, resembling the life of the celebrity behind the hero.

Paula Garcés is known for her part as “Officer Tina Halon” on the FX series The Shield, where the role earned Paula a 2008 Alma Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Her tv credits include repeat roles on Law and Order: SVU, CSI Miami, and SyFy’s hit show Warehouse 13. Paula most recently finished her notorious role as “Maria” for the third installment of the Harold and Kumar film franchise, expected to launch Christmas Day 2011. Paula also just announced the season two premiere date for The Look, a style magazine  show she co-created and executive produced. It airs Saturday, March 5th, 2011 at 3 p.m. on mun2 network.

ALL PULP NEWSSTAND 2/27/11

ALL PULP NEWSSTAND
NIGHTHAWK EDITION
2/27/11
CALL FOR MUNSEY NOMINATIONS!
From Mike Chomko-
poptxt_pf2011-7083069
With Spring fast approaching, it’s time to get your Munsey Award nominations to PulpFest. All members of the pulp community, whether they plan to attend PulpFest 2011 or not, are welcome to nominate a deserving person for this year’s achievement award.

Named after Frank A. Munsey, the man who published the first all-fiction pulp magazine, the Munsey is presented annually to a deserving person who has given of himself or herself for the betterment of the pulp community, be it through disseminating knowledge about the pulps, publishing, or through
other efforts to preserve and to foster interest in the pulp magazines we all love and enjoy. All members of the pulp community, excepting past winners of the Munsey or Lamont awards, are eligible for this prestigious
prize.

For further details, please visit www.pulpfest.com and make your nomination.

NEW FROM NOHO NOIR!
From Katherine Tomlinson-
This week, Mark Satchwill and I bring the Noir with a tale of secrets and sex.  We hope you like it.

 

PULP ARK AWARD DESIGN ANNOUNCED
In anticipation of the approaching announcement on March 1, 2011, of the winners of the 2011 Pulp Ark Awards, the first ever given from this new convention/conference for pulp creators and fans, Tommy Hancock, Pulp Ark Coordinator announced the planned design for the ten awards to be given Saturday, May 14, 2011 at the event.
“Each award is a wooden plaque,” Hancock reported.  “8 X 10 with the outline of the state of Arkansas laser engraved into it.  Within the state’s outline will be the PULP ARK name and year and the award and the recipient’s name, also laser engraved.  I designed the award and local business owners Ron and Toy Siler of Southern Charm, a trophy and awards store in Batesville, will produce them.  Mark Herrington, a supporter of pulp creators and a local businessman in the area, is covering the costs of the awards.”
Hancock stated that the winners of the Pulp Ark awards would be announced the morning of March 1, 2011.  Voting for all qualified voters ends at 11:59 PM, February 28, 2011.

Chicago’s new mayor isn’t the fake one we actually wanted.

twit_emanuel-9226256Listen up, you mutha-cluckers… Chicago has a new boss in town. Why does this matter to you? Because I said so. Why did I say so? Because the Second City is known for a few big things: The Chicago Style Hot Dog, Deep Dish Pizza, Da ’85 Bears, and maybe just an eensy-bit of good old fashioned corruption. But now it can be known for one more big thing. Our new mayor? Former White House chief-of-staff Rahm “The R-Bomb” Emanuel. When our current boss mayor, Richard Daley announced he’d retire this year from his post… Emanuel left his job in Washington to take his home city by the horns. But it’s been a long journey to get there. He took 54% of the vote, despite having his Chicago residency being challenged. He beat out the former city chief of staff, the former city clerk, and a former U.S. Senator for the title. But if you ask me? He didn’t beat one important candidate, his psuedo-self. In a paradoxical sub-dimension high atop City Hall, in a secret greenhouse known only to our beloved Mayor Daley… and @MayorEmanuel, the dimensional doppelganger of Chicago.

What’s that you say? You’ve not heard? @MayorEmanuel is the twitterverse’s Rahm Emanuel clone. The account started shortly after the “real” Rahm declared his intention to run. And boy did things escalate from there. @MayorEmanuel’s story unfolded over the months, and became an epic yarn with a full cast of characters. It began as a string of foul-mouthery perhaps poking a jovial jab towards the obvious; Rahm is known for his temper, his drive, and his competitive nature. He raised 11 million dollars to take his campaign to the streets of Chicago. He shook hands and kissed babies. We can only assume he attended secret cabal meetings, and struck backroom deals that we kindly city-folk won’t find out until they hit the nightly news a few years after his mayoral run ends… if it ends. His twitter counterpart followed the whole ride, as only a comedic four-letter-word-dropping twitter clone could do. And as the race for mayor drew closer to the vote, so did the drama.

Twitter to many is just that little corner of the interwebs where we drop a snarky one liner, or tell people where we are at. It might be a place for celebrities to tell us how normal they are, shopping for soup and whatnot, or how not-normal they are, like other Chicago Celebutaunt Kanye West. @MayorEmanuel used twitter to create a piece of short fiction (OR IS IT!?) that was truly original. A few bloggers followed the best of the posts and relayed just how awe-inspiring they were. And important people took notice. The “real” Rahm made and attempt to bribe his twitter-sibling with a donation to charity, to “out” himself. Smartly the anonymous fingers behind the 140 character-at-a-time hasn’t shown his face. Perhaps he escaped down the aforementioned time well in his tweets.

Give a gander at the saga, and kick yourself for not living here (that is, if you don’t…) and living through this live alt-meta-super fiction happening. In the mean time, the real Rahm is prepping his mayoral suit, and perhaps, setting aside a bit of our future city tax dollars towards a special “find @MayorEmanuel and break his hands” task force. I think I’ve said too much. All Hail Rahm! All Hail Rahm!

FX producing ‘Powers’ pilot

FX has ordered a pilot episode for a series based on Powers, the comic series from Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming.

The network’s SVP of public relations made the announcement yesterday on Twitter. Bendis himself twittered:

Powers pilot was just greenlit by FX! it’s official! your window of reading Powers while it was still cool is running out :)

The potential series is a co-production between FX Productions and Sony, and the pilot episode will be scripted by Charles Eglee, who has bonafides in both mysteries and cop shows (executive producer of The Shield and Dexter and the creator of Murder One) and comics and SF (exec producer of The Walking Dead and creator of Dark Angel).

Powers follows a pair of detectives as they investigate a number of murders in a superpowered world. The creator-owned series was launched by Image Comics in 2000, before moving over to Marvel’s Icon imprint in 2004. A television series has been rumored for years, and was known to be Eglee’s next project after leaving The Walking Dead months ago.

Bendis writes too much stuff for Marvel to list, while Oeming is known for Hammer Of The Gods with Mark Wheatley for ComicMix, as well as Mice Templar, Thor, Alpha Flight, Bluntman and Chronic,Hellboy, Catwoman, and Quixote. Congrats to both of them.

ALL PULP NEWSSTAND BULLDOG EDITION 2/25/11

ALL PULP NEWSSTAND
BULLDOG EDITION
2/25/11
WIN SCOTT ECKERT CROSSES OVER TO THE BOOK CAVE!

This week on the Book Cave-Win Eckert is back and we find out about Crossovers and more.
Win Scott Eckert
Home page: http://www.winscotteckert.com
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Win-Scott-Eckert/e/B002BM6T3W/

Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World 1 & 2 (Black Coat Press)
http://www.blackcoatpress.com/crossovers.htm

Tales of the Shadowmen series (Black Coat Press)
http://www.blackcoatpress.com/talesshadowmen.htm

Sherlock Holmes: The Crossovers Casebook (Moonstone Books)
Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/4uyylet

Meteor House (publisher of The Worlds of Philip José Farmer series)
http://meteorhousepress.com/books/

Moi, Tarzan
A French documentary about the origin and history of Tarzan, with three Tarzan experts. Made for French television, it was shown on the TV channel Arte in 1996 and 2007. Features Philip José Farmer discussing Tarzan as a real person. Video-on-demand: Online at http://www.documen.tv/asset/Tarzan.html – in English, for $4.99 [Full-screen on your computer. The French is subtitled in English.]
RJCroxton1@yahoo.com
Store: http://www.cafepress.com/thebookcave
PayPal: RJCroxton1@yahoo.com
Coming Attractions – http://members.cox.net/comingattractions/index.html
All Pulp –  http://allpulp.blogspot.com/

LAST WEEK ON THE BOOK CAVE-

Art and Ric are joined once again with writer Barry Reese as they talk about his current novel “The Damned Thing” along with his other books. Tommy Hancock returns this week with the All Pulp news.
Barry Reese – http://www.barryreese.net
RJCroxton1@yahoo.com
Store: http://www.cafepress.com/thebookcave
PayPal: RJCroxton1@yahoo.com
Coming Attractions – http://members.cox.net/comingattractions/index.html
All Pulp –  http://allpulp.blogspot.com/

AND STILL MORE ON THE BOOK CAVE-

Ron Fortier and Rob Davis joins Art and Ric to talk about the second annual Pulp Factory Awards coming to Windy City. My recording program stopped close to the end and muted my mic. You aren’t missing much, just Ric yelling like a crazy nut trying to tell the others that he was no longer recording. I think it was a couple of minutes before they realized I was gone.  ;-)  no All Pulp news this week, Tommy Hancock couldn’t get the nurses to let him out of his room in the nursing home. Be sure and check out the All Pulp site to see what is going on for this week.
Ron Fortier –
Airship27.com
Mr.Jigsaw
GoPulpsInfo
Airship27Hangar.com
Rob Davis –
The pdf store is: airship27hangar.com.
The Print on Demand store with the 25% discount off retail is: gopulp.info.
robmdavis@mac.com
website: http://homepage.mac.com/robmdavis/
blog: http://homepage.mac.com/robmdavis/iblog/index.2.html
RJCroxton1@yahoo.com
Store: http://www.cafepress.com/thebookcave
PayPal: RJCroxton1@yahoo.com
Coming Attractions – http://members.cox.net/comingattractions/index.html
All Pulp –  http://allpulp.blogspot.com/

NEWS FROM NOHO NOIR!!!
From Noho Noir-

noho-3108608
That’s right…This week there are two NoHo Noir stories…
Published today, “Fools Rush In,” a cautionary tale about a gambler who doesn’t know when to fold ‘em and the consequences of that.
Check it out:

Also from last week-  I think you’ll enjoy this episode.  It’s a round-up of most of the characters. 
In other news…
The webseries pilot is a go.
If you Facebook, please “like” the NoHo Noir web page.  http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/NoHo-Noir/111051172304683
It’s just been created so more functionality has to come. 
If you need more coffee cups, check out the swag Mark Satchwill created in his zazzle store: 
There are also t-shirts with some of the designs from episodes like “Cosmos” and “Blockbuster” and “Molecules.”
If you have time to sign up on the patch site, please do and comment.  The sites are now being run by Ariana Huffington and our mandate is “interaction” with the readers.  Hitting the “like” and “recommend” buttons is great; but actual comments are even better. 
As always, thanks for your support.

ALL PULP PANEL-WHY THE FIRST WAVE ENDED??

Here’s a Panel Topic everyone should sound off on. We all know that DC announced this week that its FIRST WAVE line, the one that combined Batman, Doc Savage, the Spirit, and other Golden Age pulp and comic characters into one sort of ‘timeless’ universe where dirigibles and cell phones coexisted, is being cancelled. This extremely controversial line of comics, made so by the fact that many pulp fans saw the portrayals of their favorite characters as mishandled at best, blasphemous at worse, has definitely stirred up a lot of talk. Here’s the panel topic-Was DC’s First Wave as bad as all that? If so, why? What does the cancelling of this line mean for the future of pulp centered comics, if anything? Email your panel responses to allpulp@yahoo.com and they’ll be posted here!

*****
From Teel James Glenn, writer in the pulp tradition….

Why did the First Wave fail? the art wasn’t bad and even some of the ideas were interesting, but the basic premise seemed to be that even though pulp chracters have endured in their original form for 70 years the writers at DC knew how to ‘fix’ them. Why fix what isn’t broken? I doubt any of the writers actually read any of the books they were ‘improving’ by changing basic premises and characters. It is the same problem most movie adaptations have; everyone thinks they can violate the very core of the creations they SAY they are ‘reimagining. Bullflock!

Uncreative people feed off other people’s creations and bring the level down. You have to honor the work of those who came before and then you can prehaps–prehaps- move forward with new creations that can interact with them. Always look at the ‘character/series’ bible and honor it as if it was gospel–because it is.
If DC wanted to do pulps right they should have hired pulp writers not guys who said in interviews “I never read the books”–arrogance like that deserves to be discarded…

From Barry Reese, Member of the Spectacled Seven….

Where do I start? DC mismanaged the entire line, starting with a series of interviews from creators that alienated the hardcore fans and made newer fans wonder why they should try a bunch of characters that even the main writer talked about with disdain. Then go on to the launch miniseries, which still hasn’t finished… Here’s a clue: don’t launch a new line of books with a book that’s supposed to set up the whole thing but doesn’t come out on time. Makes the entire affair look half-assed and poorly planned. Then you have a book (Doc Savage) that after a mediocre beginning slides into outright crapitude with shifting writers and artists. And don’t get me started on The Avenger stuff, which was such an insult to the original characters that I wish DC had just renamed it.

They shouldn’t have solicited the kickoff mini until it was completed. They should have hired people who not only understood the characters but who genuinely loved them — you can update the characters and still maintain their core… but you have to *want* to do that. And why include Batman in this universe if his only appearances would be in a one-shot special and the mini? They should have had a Bat-Man series set in this universe that the other books could have orbited around — the Bat guy sells, you know.

Mishandled and poor creative decisions. I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did.

*********

From Tommy Hancock, another of the Spectacled Seven

Mine will be short.   It will be short because I didn’t read anything but the first issue of the FIRST WAVE mini series and the first three issues of DOC SAVAGE.  Well, I say the first three issues, I actually only read the full first issue because I couldn’t stomach anymore of what they jokingly referred to as THE AVENGER.

I am not a purist.  I am also not a ‘we have to make changes to everything’ sort either.  I like what I like and I like companies and writers to produce things I like.  It helps when they are producing stuff I like based on other stuff I already like.  What didn’t work in this regard is DC not only didn’t produce stuff that I liked based on characters I adore, but they ignored me.  I didn’t want DC to ask me my opinion, well, maybe I wanted them to, but didn’t expect it.  But I, being a pretty big pulp fan, was simply left out of the equation when DC got their hands on these great characters.  My opinion, my interests, my desire to see these characters live again…didn’t matter at all.  The bad part for DC was that these new readers I guess they were trying to appeal to…didn’t have any buy in at all to these concepts and saw them for what they were…poorly handled editorially misdirected imitations at best, toilet paper with pictures on it at worst.  And me, my buy in…it went to Moonstone, Doc Savage reprints, and new pulp…

Just sayin’…
***********

From Derrick Ferguson, yet another of the Spectacled Seven

I read the first three issues of DOC SAVAGE (hey, there was no way I wasn’t going read it) and was unimpressed.  I have to admit that the idea of all these classic pulp characters and certain DC characters like The Blackhawks and The Spirit, who in my mind are pulp characters, appealed to me.  But the execution was, in a word, lousy.
Here’s what I can’t wrap my head around: why in the world would you hire writers who plainly have no love or liking for the characters they’re writing about?  Wouldn’t it have made more sense to hire writers who actually know, love and have a true desire to write the best possible Doc Savage or Avenger stories they possibly could?  Stories that would not only thrill and delight old time fans but make newer readers sit up and understand why these characters are cool and remain so after so many years?
And yeah, I agree with Barry: it didn’t help to have interviews with writers who I felt were giving me the digitus impudicus for loving pulp and had really snotty attitudes toward not only the work they were producing but who they were producing it for.

************
From Adam Garcia, Scribe of the Green Lama

I never read first Wave, but I think it’s fair to say it failed on execution rather than concept. While I advocate change, I don’t necessarily think you need to change everything, to make things effective. I’m more a believer that to keep things one specific way is a mistake and to open to adaptation. I’m 100% certain that First Wave would have been considered amazing if the story had been effective. Take the new Star Trek film as an example, a bottom to top reinvention that was overwhelmingly loved, or Batman: the Brave and the Bold or even the massive massive changes made to the Joker in Dark Knight. That’s what I’ve been arguing. Reinvention isn’t bad, it’s frankly the nature of pop culture, but refusing to accept it is.
You may not like the adaptation, that’s a fact of personal preference, but with licensed character adaptation is the only way the stay alive. So First Wave might have failed creatively, but I applaud the effort.
 
 

FORTIER’S ALL PULP REVIEWS GETS WESTERN AND MYSTICAL!

MERKABAH RIDER
By Edward M. Erdelac
Damnation Books LLC
278 pages
Dec. 2009
ISBN 10 – 161572060X
ISBN 13 –  978-1615720606
mer-6492438
Although the straight forward, no frills western genre seems to exist only in today’s paperback market, the proliferation of the “weird” western tableau is visible everywhere.  Comics and prose anthologies have been expanding this pulp theme strongly and recently Hollywood has joined in with films such as “Jonah Hex”  (a cowboy who can speak to the dead), “The Warrior’s Way” (pitting Japanese Ninja’s against cowboys) and the soon to be released blockbuster, “Cowboys VS Aliens,” (the name says it all).
Up until a few weeks ago, I’d pretty much thought there was nothing else to be done with bizarre westerns.  Happily Edward Erdelac has proven me wrong with his “Merkabah Rider – Tales of a High Planes Drifter.”  The giveaway is in the spelling of the word planes.  For you see, the hero of this book is a Hasidic Jew mystic known as a Merkabah Rider because of his ability to travel out of his body and explore the higher and lower realms of heaven and hell.  In fact the Rider, as he prefers to be called, actually travels the post Civil War southwest on foot, pulling a dirty white onager behind.  An onager is an Asiatic wild ass.  I had to look that up too.
Through the four stories in this volume, we learn that the San Francisco born Rider interrupted his religious studies to serve in the Union Army during the war between the states; a decision that turned many of the elders of his order against him.  He returns home to discover all the members of this enclave, known as the Sons of Essenes, have been murdered by his renegade teacher, a man known only as Adon.  Feeling spiritually tarnished by his association with Adon, the Rider begins his quest to seek him out and exact vengeance.  In the process he travels the globe until his quest brings him full circle back to American desert lands of the southwest.
Which is where this first book begins. In the quartet of adventures collected here, the Rider battles a foul Demon sacrificing children in an Arizona mining town, combats a dust devil that animates a hellish windmill in a Mexican border town, goes up against a cursed gunman who slaughters entire towns and confronts a powerful, alluring succubus said to be the first wife of Adam.  Through these travails, the Rider learns that Adon is conspiring with the demon world to bring about an earthly holocaust which will herald the end of all mankind.  Unless he, alone, can stop him.
“Merkabah Rider” is a terrific read that captivated me from the first page to the last.  The exhilaration of discovering something new and vibrant in an old setting provided this reviewer with complete and unabashed entertainment.  The Rider is the most original western hero since Clint Eastwood’s Man-With-No-Name and his background in the exotic magic of ancient Hebraic mysticism make him a character this reader will not forget any time soon.     
Johnny Depp & Sub-Mariner

Johnny Depp and the Marvel Universe

depp-art-8713935Did you ever wonder who might be Johnny Depp’s favorite super-hero? Probably not, but I’ll bet you can figure it out.

Yep. You guessed it. Johnny Depp’s favorite super-hero is Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner. Of course, Namor isn’t quite a super-hero, having been bridging the gap between hero and menace for 71 years. Which is why I’m not surprised he’s Depp’s favorite.

Now, let’s not go nuts here. Depp is not suggesting he’s going to play Namor in the Avengers movie or some other place, and he’s not even suggesting wants to play the part. Right now he’s in the middle of at least four movies, including the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean and the new Dark Shadows movie, where he plays Barnabas Collins.

Depp was a real Marvel Comics fan, showing preference for both Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four… although he didn’t care for Captain America, and this was long before we ever heard of Al Qaeda. Depp also liked Sgt. Rock.  Depp told Hero Complex “The Sub-Mariner was the alternative one. The alt-superhero. He was the sort of Bohemian comic book. I like that.”

I know I said there was no movie involved, but if Depp were to give Subbie a go, maybe they could get Joaquin Phoenix to play the Human Torch.