Category: News

ComicMix Radio: Torchwood Series Three Less Is More

  • News
  • August 9, 2008

Our exclusive talk with the creative minds at BBC Television continues with Julie Gardner, executive producer of all things Doctor Who as she talks about her next career move and the reasoning behind next years shortened season for Torchwood, plus:

  • William Katt and Robert Culp share feelings on the return of The Greatest American Hero
  • Mark Millar hits the road this week for War Heroes
  • Sold Out books and shipping changes are updated all nice and neat for you

And for another Torchwood scoop, check out this earlier article. Meanwhile, there is lots to cover here so buckle up and Press the Button!

 

And remember, you can always subscribe to ComicMix Radio podcasts via badgeitunes61x15dark-2306016 or RSS!

 

Adams, Kubert and Lee Come To Aid Of Concentration Camp Artist

  • News
  • August 9, 2008

 

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The perfect trifecta of living comic book legends –  Neal Adams, Joe Kubert, and Stan Lee – have come to the aid of Nazi concentration camp survivor and animator Dina Gottlieboa Babbit in her fight to retrieve her long stolen artwork from a Polish museum.

According to today’s New York Times, Ms. Babbit survived two years at the infamous Auschwitz Polish concentration camp by painting watercolor portraits for the notorious butcher of Aushwitz, Dr. Josef Mengele. Many of these paintings are in the possession of the Aushwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum; as her work, Ms. Babbit claims ownership and has long demanded its return. The Museum has refused, and Neal, Joe and Stan have taken up the effort.

To help raise awareness, Neal teamed up with Rafael Medoff, the director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, to produce a six page comics story detailing the situation. The story was inked – in part – by Joe and sports an introduction from Stan. 

They are presently looking for a publisher.

Since her liberation, Ms. Babbit had worked as an animator for Jay Ward Productions, Warner Bros. Animation, and MGM.

The Iron Man Ultimate DVD Commeth!

  • News
  • August 9, 2008

If you’ve grown tired of watching that bootleg copy of Iron Man that you’ve crammed onto your iPod/iPhone, then you will be happy to know that details of the Iron Man DVD release are now available for you to drool over.

First off, you can get your hands on the movie on DVD and Blu Ray September 30th, and rather than aim for the wallet and release seven versions over a period of two years, Paramount is putting out the two-disc "Ultimate Edition" first. This doesn’t mean that there won’t be a Super Deluxe Buy Me Now Edition with a piece of Robert Downy Jr.’s hair.
 
One of the coolest features announced is that the Blu-ray disc will include an exclusive "Iron Man IQ", which will allow you to create quizzes based on clips from the film and share them with your friends. This probably won’t enhance your movie-watching experience, but will allow you to educate your friends on "how many buttons Tony Stark’s suit has." Here are the rest of the details.
 

Disc 1:
 
– Feature film
– Deleted and Extended Scenes
 
Disc 2:
 
– I Am Iron Man Documentary Series
          o The Journey Begins
          o The Suit that makes the Iron Man
          o The Walk of Destruction
          o Grounded In Reality
          o Beneath the Armor
          o It’s All in the Details
          o A Good Story, Well Told
 
– The Invincible Iron Man
          o Origins
          o Friends & Foes
          o The Definitive Iron Man
          o Demon in a Bottle
          o Extremis and Beyond
          o Ultimate Iron Man
 
– Wired: The Visual Effects of Iron Man
– Robert Downey Jr. Screen Test
– The Actor’s Process (scene rehearsal with cast)
– The Onion “Wildly Popular Iron Man Trailer to be Adapted into Full Length Film”
– Image Galleries

Superman and My Homies, by Martha Thomases

  • News
  • August 9, 2008

The month of July was a veritable traveling sideshow for me. Between professional obligations and family emergencies, I barely saw my husband … and my kitty even less. I’ve had to seek out new, ever more tantalizing kinds of cat food for her to tolerate my continued presence in our home.

All of this makes me think of Superman.

When John Byrne relaunched the series, there was a lot of talk about Superman being not just the Last Son of Krypton, but the last Kryptonian. That didn’t last very long, and today we have remnants of the old continuity, with Supergirl and the Phantom Zone and the Bottled City of Kandor.

I like that Superman, but he’s not the character with whom I grew up. My Superman is the pre-Crisis version, the one published from the late 1950s up to the Byrne reboot. Sent to Earth shortly after his birth, his memories of Krypton are vivid but brief. He was already a toddler when the Kents found him in that field in Kansas.

Maybe it was because the character had been around for such a long time, and the creative teams were having trouble coming up with new ideas for stories, but there is a certain melancholy about the Man of Steel in that era. Kal-El had huge responsibilities, and no one close to him. His parents died with his planet; his foster-parents died before he left for Metropolis. He was afraid to commit to the women he loved, not because of anything as terrestrial as a fear of close relationships, but because he was afraid he’d put them in danger. Even his own cousin, who could have been a close confidante, was kept at arm’s length so he could train her to protect their adopted home.

This is the Superman who needed a Fortress of Solitude, where he could escape, at least for a while, the cries for help that flooded his every waking moment. Amid the cold from the top of world, he could conduct experiments, write to his intergalactic pen-pals, and build enormous monuments to his dead parents. (more…)

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Manga Friday: Here We Go Again

  • News
  • August 8, 2008

 

kaze-no-hana-2-9687297This time around I have a volume two, a volume three, and a volume four – all in series that I’ve read at least some of the earlier books. Let’s see if I can still remember what went before – since manga often don’t have “who the heck are these people and what are they doing” pages – and whether they’re getting more or less interesting.

Kaze No Hana, Vol. 2
By Ushio Mizta and Akiyoshi Ohta
Yen Press, August 2008, $10.99

This is the series about an amnesiac teenage girl, Momoka, who is part of a family that wields magical swords to drive monsters away and protect their city. I reviewed the first volume in April, and had to admit then that there were too many characters with too few faces for me to keep them all straight.

Well, this time, we get even more characters, including another sword-wielding family that likes the monsters and wants to see them take over the earth or rampage through Tokyo or do whatever it is these particular monsters would do. Their leader is the cute girl Kurohime – and the only thing more dangerous than an old man in a Hong Kong movie is a cute girl in manga – and they have “sacred swords,” which are utterly different from the heroes’ “spiritual swords” in ways that perhaps don’t entirely translate well.

(more…)

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Milestone: If You’re Not There, You Just Won’t Get It, by Michael Davis

  • News
  • August 8, 2008

m-invite-1-1308510Denys Cowan and I were hanging out watching the crowds inside the convention center at the San Diego Comic Con. It’s 1991. As we walked the floor we were kidding around as always. Kidding around and looking at girls. Hey, that’s what we did when we walked the floor at conventions. We joked and looked at girls. We tried looking at guys but we both agreed that made us look pretty… gay.

We were having a pretty good time when Denys got quiet. I thought it was because of this real fine Asian girl we were looking at. Denys turned to me and said “We should start a comic book company that will create some characters of color.” I said, “That’s the stupidest idea I have ever heard. Will you look at that girl?” Denys did not look. That’s when I realized that he was being serious. I said “That’s a great idea.” After that we spent most of the rest of that day and evening talking about what the company could be and whom we should include. This is the first time I have really talked about Milestone outside of a VERY few interviews over the last 15 years. Milestone is the story of five – that’s right FIVE black creators and we all have a story tell.

This is my Milestone story…

Denys and I spent the rest of that day and evening talking about what the company could be and whom we should include. In 1991 there were ample black creators we could have included but we wanted to make sure we got this right. It’s important to note that we were not trying to be exclusive by only inviting black creators – we wanted to create black superheroes and wanted to do so with black creators first. If you really look at Milestone you will soon realize that we were never a black company, we were a black owned company. In truth we were a true multicultural company that counted among our talent many, many different races. We went out of our way to include talent from many different walks of life.

(more…)

Watchmen: Inside the Owlship and Owl Weapons

  • News
  • August 7, 2008

On the heels of the latest trailer, a new Watchmen production journal was released with an inside look at Nite Owl II’s ship. You can check out the video here, but don’t ask me why nobody ever refers to it as "Archie."

 
 
 
And over at prop master Rick Gamez’s (Iron Man, Indiana Jones 4) personal site, he has posted pictures of the new Nite Owl weapons that he had a hand in designing for the new film, which may not be from the book, but are still pretty cool. 
 
UPDATE: Looks like the powers that be at WB didn’t like that Gamez had posted pics of the props, so you can check out the pics for yourself here. Enjoy!

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ComicMix Radio: Doctor Who Times Three, Four Or More?

  • News
  • August 7, 2008

whos-6556695Our exclusive interview with the next Doctor Who head writer, Steven Moffat, continues. we explore his take on bringing back established characters, killing them off and the inevitable hope of another multi-Doctor story plus:

  • Dabel Brothers taking books into comics
  • Battlestar:Galactica gets “super sized”
  • Dan Jurgens can go home again

Christopher Eccleston and Peter Davidson together, could it happen? Find out when you Press the Button!

And remember, you can always subscribe to ComicMix Radio podcasts via badgeitunes61x15dark-6215662 or RSS!

 

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Star Wars, James Bond and Daredevil bring top prices at Hollywood Auction

  • News
  • August 7, 2008

xxx-9555757If you wanted that original T.I.E. fighter miniature from Star Wars, you missed your chance.  You could have outbid the person who spent $402,500, and it would have been yours.  At an auction in Calabasas, CA, on July 31 and August 1 from Profiles in History sold a variety of items for more than $4.1 million.

What else was there? 

(more…)

Online Animation: An Olympic Train Wreck?

  • News
  • August 7, 2008

Cartoonist / animator / musician Joe Fournier has been doing some sweet stuff online, including this clever black-and-white cartoon about Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics… something about a… train wreck?

Joe’s illustrations have appeared in all sorts of places – Playboy, Forbes, Premiere, and all sorts of newspapers – and he plays a vital role in the burgeoning online animation field. His cartoons have been seen on the Sci-Fi Channel, at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, and the National Gallery of Art.

It’s good stuff. Check him out. 

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