Category: News

Remember Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg? Roy Crane’s Buz
Sawyer and Captain Easy? Alex
Toth? How about much of that beautiful black and white art in Warren’s
magazines Creepy, Eerie and Blazing Combat?

The one thing they all had in common – along with a hell
of a lot of other great art – is the fact that they were drawn on Duoshade
boards. That’s a certain rather expensive type of paper that allowed an artist
to brush a developer solution over an inked drawing creating different types of
horizontal lines for shading. Originally, they boards replaced the painstaking
task of cutting and pasting the effect onto the original art. It allowed certain
types of dramatic shading and feathering techniques (that’s a line that
consists of teensy tiny lines, giving a softer edge to that line).

Note my use of the past tense.

Now Graphix, the company that makes Duoshade boards (as
well as the Unishade boards, which is a similar type of stuff) has discontinued
production because production has grown more difficult and costly to produce
and demand as declined over the years. Younger artists use their computers –
not necessarily a complete substitute – and many are unaware of the existence
of the product.

Sadly, this comes at a time when the reproduction of comic
art in America has never been better. In the past, some of these types of
effects would close up or turn to mud. With better printing and better paper,
Duoshade – when properly used – gave us some beautiful artwork.

Yep, it’s that time of year again, it’s International Talk Like A Pirate Day, an important holiday in the Church Of The Flying Spaghetti Monster. Extra points if you conduct your Rosh Hashanah services while talking like a pirate.

If you need pointers, watch this:

In honor of this sacred day, I’m curling up with a bottle of rum.

Candace Bushnell, the writer whose Sex And The City columns were the inspiration for the TV series and movie, has bounced back from last year’s cancellation of Lipstick Jungle on NBC and chosen the web for her new venture– a new series called The Broadroom, starring Jennie Garth and Jennifer Esposito. (Warning: if you click there, your cursor turns into lipstick. You wish I was kidding.)

Now, I watched the series when it was on HBO– okay, my wife watched it and I was in the room a lot– so I decided to give this one a try, see where the revenue stream is, and so on. And just shy of 2:40 into the first episode, entitled “Husband Hijinks” I’m treated to this monologue:

Ahh… men. I know nothing about them. I haven’t had a date in, like, ten months. All my girlfriends are, like, where are the guys like us? Responsible, ambitious, normal… they’re in their parents’ basements trying to start up their comic book company, or they’ve suddenly decided to become a screenwriter at the age of thirty-nine. It’s awesome.

My first thoughts on hearing this:

1. Yes, I started a comic book company in my basement. Mine. My house. I own it.
2. I don’t have the time to do screenwriting, although everyone knows that comics are the way to break into movies nowadays anyway.
3. Someone’s feeling a bit prickly that her film wasn’t in the top ten grossing films of 2008, and was beaten out by Iron Man and The Dark Knight.

Feel free to take a look for yourself:

And people wonder why there’s some worry about Diane Nelson.

To the surprise of few, IMAX Corp. and Columbia Pictures announced that Spider-Man 4 will be released to IMAX theatres simultaneously with the film’s worldwide release on May 5, 2011. Spidey 4 reunites director Sam Raimi with stars Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, and will be the first Spidey film under the new regime.

Hence the image.

Quite seriously, if you thought the Spidey-Cam was tough to move around before, just imagine what it’s going to be like to move a Spidey-IMAX-Cam…

Now the Photoshop mockups are coming from the people who are taking serious time to do them. Go look. And there’s still time to enter yourself.