Battlestar Galactica is underway and Apollo weighs in on where the final nine are headed, big treasures in the comic stores this week, More stars are coming to NY ComicCon and why you really need to see FanBoys.
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ComicMix’s Frank McLaughlin is profiled in today’s Connecticut Post, talking about his career and new role as professor of cartooning at the Sterling House Community Center.
In discussing his long career, McLaughlin noted the change of emphasis from newspparer comic strips to comic books to the Internet. "Comics and newspaper comic strips have been on the decline for years now," McLaughlin said. "The days of light-hearted comic strips are over. Now, the movies have made characters like Batman very dark and serious."
That allowed him a chance to plug White Viper, which ran here in 2008 and can still be read in case you missed out. The serial was written by his daughter, Erin Holroyd, and pencilled by McLaughlin’s long-time art partner Dick Giordano.
Greg Pak is a very busy man. Between the just-launched War Machine, Skaar: Son of Hulk, Magneto: Testament, and Incredible Hercules, which he co-writes with Fred Van Lente, it seems like he’s writing half the Marvel Universe.
It’s an incredibly diverse body of work—Skaar brings to the table the same combination of cosmic Marvel and high fantasy that his very well-received Planet Hulk storyline did, while Incredible Hercules is a more tongue-in-cheek buddy adventure that’s very much rooted in the recent goings-on on Earth. Magneto: Testament presents, at long last, a cohesive and historically accurate origin for the mutant master of magnetism. Finally, War Machine casts Jim “Rhodey” Rhodes as the planet’s lethal protector.
But don’t take it from me. Greg Pak agreed to take some time out from his busy schedule to answer a few questions about his various series—and provide a few teases. Spoilers abound, so you might want to make sure you’re all caught up on these books before you continue on.
ComicMix: Magneto: Testament has been getting a lot of attention, both for attempting to tell the definitive origin of Magneto and for placing it in a meticulously specific historical context. Would you mind telling us a little bit about where this project came from?
Greg Pak: Marvel editor Warren Simons has wanted to tell this story for years. And from the minute he started telling me about the project, I knew I had to be a part of it. I researched the project for about three years before we finally went to script. And Warren and I have spent hours and hours talking through the history and the nuances of the story beats. I think everyone working on the book has felt the same kind of responsibility to getting the story right. Artist Carmine DiGiandomenico and colorist Matt Hollingsworth in particular have gone above and beyond, bringing just the right tone and nuance and gravity to the images while making constant tweaks to ensure the book is as historically accurate as we could make it. And we owe a thousand thanks to our historical consultant, Mark Weitzman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
CMix: When it’s done, will it represent the canonical last word on where Magneto came from, or is this outside of continuity?
GP: As Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada recently confirmed in his MySpace Comics column, Magneto Testament is indeed in continuity. Feel free to start updating your wikis, Mags fans! (more…)
The YIVO Institute presents one-on-one interviews with Al Jaffee, Jules Feiffer, and Harvey Pekar. YIVO’s “Comics and the American Jewish Dream” series kicks off Wednesday, January 21 at 7:00 pm with:
"The Mad, Mad, Mad (Jewish) World Of Al Jaffee"
A graduate of New York’s High School of Art and Design, Jaffee worked as an editor, writer and artist for Stan Lee at Timely (later Marvel) Comics during the 1940s. In 1955, Jaffee joined “the Usual Gang of Idiots” at Mad Magazine, where he’s been a mainstay ever since, entertaining generations with his Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions and Mad Fold-Ins. Join us as Jaffee provides snappy answers to provocative questions about his art and life, including his new book, Tall Tales, published by Abrams.
Series curator and moderator Danny Fingeroth, a longtime writer and editor at Marvel Comics, has spoken about comics at the Smithsonian Institution and The New School. He’s the author of Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero (Continuum) and The Rough Guide to Graphic Novels (Penguin).
Wednesday, January 21, 7:00
The YIVO Institute For Jewish Research
15 West 16th Street / New York, NY 10011
The series will continue with:
Jules Feiffer: Tuesday, February 3, 7:00 P.M.
Harvey Pekar: Tuesday, February 17, 7:00 P.M.
Admission to programs: $25 / YIVO members: $18 / students: $12
For tickets: call 212-868-4444 or visit www.smarttix.com
For more info visit www.yivo.org
If you’re like me, you’re wondering how to write blog posts on comics-related stuff and other neat things on the web, without getting too distracted by what else is on the web. It’s not an easy task, as anyone who’s seen my computer desktop, with 50 different windows open for different sites that I keep meaning to write up into blog posts are.
Luckily, one of those windows has an article from Cory Doctorow, who’s one of the most wired-up folks I know. IDW recently adapted a bunch of his short stories into comics, he’s one of the guys behind BoingBoing, and…
…sorry, I just spent ten minutes catching up on BoingBoing– apparently there’s a job opening for a science fiction writer, 16 grand for four months, but you have to be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident of Canada, dang it.
Anyway, Cory’s written a piece about writing in the age of distraction, which you should read. Or at least open it up and promise yourself you’ll read it later.
Oh, and the picture of Cory is from xkcd. A truly amazing likeness. Wonder what else is in the archiv– no. Stop. Take the win. Stop and post.
From Kevin Colden:
I’ll be doing a hometown signing for Fishtown THIS SATURDAY, January 17th at:
Cool Stuff Comics and Collectibles
417 Burmont Rd.
Drexel Hill, Pa.
3PM-5PMMiss will also be there signing copies of Escape From "Special" and showing off pages from her forthcoming follow-up A Mess of Everything.
Well? You heard the man. Get going. Ten miles west of Philadelphia. Can’t miss it.
Ted Rall and David Essman have released a new short animated political cartoon called "Behind the Rubric: The Bushies", a surrealist, rock-n-roll-super-group spin on the outgoing George W. Bush’s resume, along with what happens now that the band is breaking up…
Only mildly unfair and rude. Which for Ted Rall is pretty good.
Okay, this one is complicated. Bear with us.
Variety reports that Columbia won an auction late Thursday for screen rights to Foundation, Isaac Asimov’s science fiction trilogy quad series. The film will be developed as a directing vehicle for Roland Emmerich. This is a surprise development, possibly stemming from bad blood between Warner Bros. and Fox over Watchmen.
The property was originally developed by Fox and producer Vince Gerardis, then found its way to New Line (a division of WB) and went with Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne as the first major project announcement after the former heads of New Line got bounced formed Unique Pictures at WB.
Gerardis, whose "Created By" formerly represented the Asimov estate, was attached as producer. And Fox would have had to be compensated for its development costs. That became a problem for WB (can’t imagine why, after the pleasant experiences with Watchmen) and the studio let its option lapse, expecting to quietly make a new deal with a clear chain of rights that would have left Fox and Gerardis cut out. So it went to auction. WB bid for Unique and director Alex Proyas, Fox bid for Gerardis. Emmerich and Sony were last minute bidders– it seems that Emmerich’s partner Michael Wimer at Centropolis Pictures had been tracking the availability of the rights since he was Emmerich’s agent at CAA, and Columbia Pictures president Matt Tolmach grabbed it.
Just another Hollywood ending.
Foundation was originally published as a series of eight short stories in Astounding Magazine beginning in 1942, "Foundation" is a complex saga about humans who are scattered on planets throughout the galaxy, living under the rule of the Galactic Empire. Hari Selden, a psycho-historian who can scientifically predict the future, sees an imminent empire collapse, and sets in motion a plan to save civilization and the knowledge of mankind.
Manga Friday took a little holiday for the last couple of weeks, and it may take more holidays in the weeks to come. Looking back on my recent columns, I’ve said an awful lot of “and here’s the next volume in a series I’ve reviewed four times” and “this week’s books have nothing in common” – and neither of those are quite what I’d hoped. I think I’m reviewing too many of the same manga, too often, so I expect to cut back on Manga Friday substantially in 2009, unless I start seeing more different things.
I expect to keep reviewing stuff here on Fridays, but there may be somewhat less of the specifically Japanese/Korean stuff for a while. (Or possibly not – whenever I try to predict something like this, I’m usually wrong.) But I’ll save the name “Manga Friday” for when I’m looking at books that would be called manga by that legal construct, the “reasonable man.”
So, for this week, I have three books, arranged in ascending order of volume number:
The Manzai Comics
Story by Atsuko Asano; Art by Hizuru Imai
Aurora, January 2009, $10.95
This opens with an odd hint of yaoi, as large, athletic, energetic, popular student Takashi Akimoto begs small, weak, timid (generic manga hero Type 1) Ayumu Seta to “please go out with me” and “do it with me.” Takashi actually wants to form a manzai comedy team with Ayumu, but he’s either too dim or too focused on himself to actually say that for several pages.
(Apparently – I have no personal knowledge of this, but several references agree – the dominant form of comedy in Japan is manzai, two-person acts, rather than sketch comedy or stand-up or improv. Think Abbot & Costello or Crosby & Hope.)
Ayumu is not just an ordinary shy boy – well, he’s a manga hero, so you know there’s got to be some horribly dramatic thing in his past – he considers himself responsible for the car-crash death of his father and older sister because he was clinically depressed (and completely untreated as well). So he has the standard “I just want to be normal” complex of the dweeby manga hero in spades. (more…)
Battlestar Galactica‘s final ten episodes have begun and Baltar stops in to say farewell, Mike Gold tells us what to watch, DC has the best selling thing in the comic stores plus David & Maddie together again? Can it be true?
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Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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