Category: News

Spidey-Fans, make sure you’re up Friday morning for a chance to sneak a peek at the upcoming Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark on Good Morning America. The musical, which is rumored to be one of the priciest to swing into the Foxwoods Theatre, opens November 15. Lucky for all us musical theater geeks, director Julie Taymor and Spidey himself, Reeve Carney, will bring a solo song to GMA via a performance at the Hudson Theater, with fans invited to come down for the free show. We television viewers will enjoy a post-performance interview with the director and the authors of the music and lyrics, Bono and The Edge. Word has it that aside from this musical, both men dabble in rock and roll in a quartet by the name of U2.

While most comic fans are skeptical of their favorite web-spinning hero spinning songs and soliloquies on the Broadway stage, stranger things have become a success. Lest we forget, the Evil Dead Musical was damn good. So, before we light our torches, let’s give the ol’ webhead a chance to sing his spandex off.

UPDATE: So, we watched the telecast, action figure firmly placed in our palms, ready to watch our hero make his way to the stage. Would it be webtastic or a kill a little bit of our soul, like One More Day? Let’s let some pasty white people wax poetic first:

A “pop-up book” set? Those costumes? The Swiss Miss? Is this some kind of cruel joke? Is Norman Osbourne financing this play in hopes of murdering the wall-crawler on the stage? Our high hopes haven’t been crushed this hard since the dance sequence of Spider-Man 3: Attack of Emo Parker. And to put the final nail in the coffin? How about a song from the show:

Let’s be honest here. The song is actually catchy. And because it’s being performed with a rock band, with absolutely no context to the final play, we’ve no idea how terrible this will be once it’s sewn into the “pop-up book” scenery and gaudy costumes. Kudos to Bono and The Edge for writing a catchy rock song (a feat that shouldn’t be that hard, given their 20+ years doing it), but frankly we’re scared for the final product. A lanky rock singer running around in a body sock, whilst a cast of dancing, prancing chorusmen flail about over a rock-and-roll score? Someone give us a copy of the “Death of Gwen Stacy” so we can recall the last time Spider-Man was worth our fanfare.

Jordan Mechner’s Prince of Persia has been an acclaimed video game and he is one of the fortunate creators to be intimately involved in the adaptation from game to feature film. Mechner managed to write the screen adaptation, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arterton. The Disney feature was released to middling reviews and so-so box office in May and comes to home video tomorrow. Disney provided us with this conversation.

QUESTION: What were your feelings when you finally saw the film?

JORDAN MECHNER: Firstly, the original Prince of Persia was a character 40 pixels high on the Apple II screen, running and jumping. The technology at the time was quite primitive, I think in my mind I imagined a much grander spectacle, and to see Jake [Gyllenhaal] in the best shape of his life running around the rooftops of Morocco and doing parkour and all this stuff was more than I could imagine.

QUESTION:  What initially drew you to the setting of Ancient Persia? And how does that culture and mythology inspire you?

JORDAN MECHNER: I was inspired 25 years ago to make the game really by the tales of the Arabian Nights, and by old Persian legends like the Shahnameh, the Persian Book of Kings. And also those great old Hollywood swashbuckling movies like the 1940 Thief of Baghdad, by Alexander Korda.  As a kid I must have heard those stories, the storybook versions are in all of our cultural DNA. We know of that world without really knowing exactly where or when we first heard it.

QUESTION:  How did you start the world of Prince of Persia ?

JORDAN MECHNER: You go back to 1985 when I was right out of college and I took my brother down to the parking lot across the street from the high school. He was in a pair of baggy trousers and I had him run and jump and climb and fall down and I video-taped him doing these moves. Then I set about the three year process of bringing these animations into the computer and that was the first Prince of Persia . (more…)

Have you enjoyed or been enraged or somewhere in the middle by All Pulp yet?  Have you wanted a chance to offer your comments on what we do right, wrong, and in between?  Need All Pulp to know if you liked a book we reviewed or didn’t care for an interview we did?  Now you have your chance!  Your very own COMMENTS page on All Pulp!  Yes, that’s right, get on the horn by clicking on COMMENTS and let us know what you think!  And please, put the weapons away…we hear ya…honest…

Many days, we will find ourselves in heated debates with the uninitiated when it comes to the general quality of comic books. Yes, super muscular guys in spandex parading around in violent battles with other super muscular guys and overly boobed chicks in impossible costumes isn’t what we’re calling haute artistic visual fiction. But we’ve got those pocket references ready for the nay-sayers, don’t we? Watchmen. Sin City. Maus. Ghost World. Justice League International… And then they drop a bomb on our argument. They’ll reference a comic they heard about on the nightly news, or in the “lifestyles” section of the paper, or from some pinko-liberal-starbucks-blog they read on their iPads whilst they wait for a triple-grande-non-fat-latté. And with the mere mention of that book, our arguments are as potent as a pinch of salt in the ocean.

Now, gentle reader, what book could I possibly reference (without even reading it mind you) to encapsulate the entirety of how low we can go, when it comes to our sequential funny books?

Why, I direct you to Bluewater Comics’ Female Force: Betty White.

Yup. The fine folks behind the Justin Bieber, Sarah Palin, and forthcoming Fame: The Cast of Glee comic books is releasing a biographical comic book about America’s favorite only living Golden Girl, Betty White. Now, before you ignite your flaming arrows, let me be clear: I love Bette White. She was hilarious in the aforementioned ‘Girls, as well as numerous other sit-coms. Her recent turn as Facebook-demanded Saturday Night Live Host was one of the better shows of recent memory. Hell, even her cameo in last week’s Emmy show was adorable. But seriously… a comic book bio? Allow me to fire up the rant and raving engine.

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NOW IN ALL PULP’S SPOTLIGHT…ALL PULP!!!

The Spectacled Seven have made their mark, at least with some!  This was shared with All Pulp today from a mailing list manned by noted Pulp writer and historian Tom Johnson.  Tom and his wife Ginger not only welcomed All Pulp to the Pulp/news game, but gave the Spectacled Seven quite an awesome and humbling comparison…Thanks so much, Tom and Ginger! Their endearing comments are posted below!

“Back in the late ‘70s, pulp historian Nick Carr started the Bloody 7, bringing together seven pulp fans from the community to form this new band of brothers. The 7 consisted of Nick Carr, Bob Sampson, Don Hutchison, Frank Hamilton, Earl Kussman, Jack Deveny, and Tom Johnson. Each was dedicated to the pulp community and keeping the interest in pulps alive for future generations. In June 1982, with the publication of the Special Issue of Echoes, Ginger Johnson wrote an article about the seven men. At the time we did not have the Internet, so our outlets were the many fanzines in the community. Eventually, with the passing of Bob Samson, Frank Hamilton, Earl Kussman, and Jack Deveny, and the printed fanzines, the Bloody 7 ceased to exist.

It is of interest that a new “7” has risen to replace the Bloody 7, and with the availability of the Internet, will continue to keep the pulp community informed.

Pulling its staff from across the field, All Pulp is manned by an eclectic, inspired group of seven writers and fans ready to bring their best to every word they write. Ron Fortier, Barry Reese, Sarge Portera, Derrick Ferguson, Bobby Nash, Van Plexico, and Tommy Hancock. http://allpulp.blogspot.com/

Tom and Ginger give a hearty welcome to this new group!

Tom & Ginger”

Frequent commenter and song-craftsman Russ Rogers tipped us off to a little contest he put together, and folks, it’ll slay you.

For those in-the-know (and those not…) Mark Wheatley and M.J. Butler have been toiling away at an homage to Conan and all things barbarian with their new project, Skultar the Unconquered! In viral barbarian fashion, Mark and M.J. decided on a great way to gain some much needed funding to get their bloody pet project off the ground (you did read Glenn’s article on just how much it costs to put out a book these days, did you not?). For various contributions to the project, you can get a slew of special prizes… ranging from exclusive behind the scene updates, signed Frankenstein Mobster comics, to the bigger prizes, like limited editions of the printed Skultar comic (with signed book plate!) to our personal favorite: being drawn into Skultar to be maimed, slaughtered, or otherwise killed… along with a signed death certificate and acknowledgment in the final book! Who doesn’t want to be vivisected in 4 colors by a master like Mark Wheatley? We thought so.

That brings us to Russ Rodgers, and the White Elephant Music Club! Starting today, everyone is welcome to enter the Skultar Sword and Sorcery Song Challenge! The rules are simple: Write a song, featuring lyrics about swords, sorcery, and other savage goodness. It can any genre, any style. Full band? Rock out. Solo acoustic? Folk it up. Bolivian flute and rap combo? The weirder the better. Write, record, and share your creation with the White Elephant Music Club on Facebook, and you’re entered. Want to increase your chances of winning? It’s simple: Mention Skultar in the lyrics! Sounds simple? We know. Want more points? Make some “conversion van quality” album art for your song. Submit a .jpg of your art with said song, and you’ll get some more bonus points. Want even more points? Record a music video for your song! Bam. More points. Want yet even more points, you grade grubber? Word is that if you promote your song and the contest on your own facebook / myspace / website / neighborhood juice bar… you’ll nab a bloody carcass full of bonus points! Judges for the contest will weigh your song-craft, bloody lyrical content, and add up your bonus points. The song’s are due September 24th, with the winner being announced September 30th.

For full details on the contest, do yourself a favor and click on over to the White Elephant Music Club page.

For more details on Skultar, and all of his bad-assery, click on over to his website before he smites you.

Now, all you rockin’ ComicMixers… plug that old Strat into your Marshall half stack. Hit that fuzz pedal and overdrive. Crank the volume to 11, and sing your heart out… before Skultar cuts it out from your girly chest.