Oh, boy… We’d nearly forgotten what we’re in for, and this video reminded us all over again:
Yes, the ComicMix crew will be there in force. Be sure to say hello, ask for autographs, throw fruit, what have you. And if you’re really smart, ask us where to get food outside of the Javitz Food Court.
They say there’s nothing new under the sun. Well, now I’m saying that as well, but I’m saying it about science fiction.
S-F was supposed to look forward and, at its best, teach us something about today’s human condition. You can look forward by looking into the past, but you’re not looking forward by burying your nose in your belly button. Sadly, our popular fiction has been spending the past decade or so snorting lint.
After a lengthy rest, Star Wars returned to us with a three-part prequel renown for its tedium and lameness. Star Trek countered with Enterprise, which told us the secret origin of a starship. It was pretty good – after two exceptionally lame seasons. At least those who hung in there were slightly rewarded. Boosted by the enormous success of the show’s concept (it was the most short-lived of those that followed the original series), now Paramount is polishing up a “major” motion picture about Kirk, Spock, McCoy and friends at boarding school. I think Mickey Rooney and Liza Minelli are playing instructors.
Now we see that our friends at Battlestar Galactica are doing a pilot for a spin-off show. No, make that another spin-back series. Entitled Caprica, instead of capitalizing on all the careful and intricate concepts established in the original series (itself a remake of one of the worst S-F shows of all time), it’s set 50 years prior. The big deal: the Cylons are created. I’ll bet you didn’t know the Cylons were created. Certainly not, if you hadn’t watched either of the original shows. (more…)
I’m still recovering from my yearly giggle-fest as my husband and I spent last night MST-ing the Biblical epic The Ten Commandments, which for some reason was shown on Easter weekend rather than Passover weekend. Always remember, Eliezar, he passed over your holiday! So many great quotable lines in that film. ComicMix columnists have been serving up their own quotables this week as well:
Here at ComicMix, love is not an art to us, it is life to us!
After a week away fighting the March "blahs", we’re back with a few links to enjoy while biting the head off that very special chocolate bunny you got today:
The revamp of Nickelodeon’s websites contines as they add 1,600 new games in the very near future. Of the new games, about 600 will be exclusive, original games to the sites, with the remaining 1,000 coming from outside publishers. (Just to put this in perspective, Nickelodeon’s current library is comprised of 5,000 games). You can find highlights of some the exclusive, original games at Nick.com, TurboNick, Nicktropolis and Nick Junior, where 185-plus games are being added, with a focus on multiplayer, cooperative games such as 3D Nicktoons SlimeBall on Nicktropolis, and an Avatar multiplayer global game set for this fall 2008. In addition, Nick.com will fully redesign its game experience with the debut of a new games landing page. At Nick Junior, some 35 new original preschool games are set to bow including Spin Art, which allows kids to create their art; Diego’s Snowboard Rescue and The Wonder Pets Storybook (end of March).
Meanwhile, NeoPets expands into multiplayer games, which include a new retail convergent element with Key Quest, along with tournaments with the return of Daily Dare and Altador Cup. Neopets’ Key Quest is a new multiplayer gaming and collecting experience tied to Neopets retail product.
Finally, AddictingGames will introduce 75 exclusive self-published and licensed games, along with 600+ new titles from game developers around the world, in 2008.
To help you live through the next four weeks without Lost, <a href=”
here and, in the continuing effort to make us forget we won’t see new episodes until the fall, NBC has posted the new Heroes soundtrack here. Sorry guys. It didn’t work.
To watch the ongoing process of Dynamite Entertainment’s revamp/relaunch of Buck Rogers, go here but keep in mind that new material will be added regularly and to look for a big reveal close to ComicCon.
And if you just plain forgot to go see Britney Spears’ anime/superheroine video for “Break the Ice,” you can still do so, at least for a few more days. Come on — you know you want to!
Not one to put all our colored eggs in one basket, lert’s just say this will be a big week on ComicMix Radio. Starting with our new comics and DVD rundown to our preview of a new independent film set at the San Diego Comic Con. And we get geared up for the return of Battlestar Galactica with our exclusive talk with Executive Producer Mark Verheiden.
Get off that sugar rush and be here on Tuesday!
The role of the titular character in the upcoming Tintin films has been filled.
The adventure-seeking reporter will be played by 17-year-old Thomas Sangster, a London born actor who appeared in Love Actually and Nanny McPhee.Sangster joins Andy Serkis on the film, who has already been cast as Captain Haddock.
Directors Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are collaborating on the upcoming Tintin trilogy, which will employ motion capture technology. Spielberg is scheduled to direct the first film in the series, which begins principle photography in September 2008.
(via Daily Mail)
The fill-in artist is a staple of comics and webcomics alike, but Michael Rouse-Deane is making a year-long event out of the practice — and for a good cause.
April 1 is the scheduled start of The Guest Strip Project, in which a different webcomic creator will provide a strip each week, with proceeds from the advertising, store and donations headed to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The project is described as follows:
One artist can only do one guest strip, they won’t be asked back, once their page is completed it’ll go into the archives and they can never return. This means its much more complicated but also allows other talented people out there to have a chance of making an impact.
At the side of each page are banners and also donation buttons where people can donate money to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. There’s also the store which will every so often have exclusive merchandise as well as spin-off books, posters, t-shirts and artwork up for grabs all donating to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Keep in mind that the project will be presented in the standard, no-charge webcomic format, so it will be interesting to see how successful a unique campaign like this, which relies upon advertising, merchandise sales and donations, will end up. Although the roster of creators currently expected to provide strips hasn’t been posted at this point, the "Links" page could provide some indication of the talent tapped for the kick-off.
(via Fleen)
Any regular reader will no doubt have noticed something by now. I think I may have mentioned it once before, early on, but there should be no harm in repeating it: this column isn’t really for the big-time releases any DVD fan already know exist. Naturally, by all rights, I, like everyone else, should review I Am Legend and maybe even The Mist, but hey, you’re going to watch, or not watch, those without any input from me – no matter how good or bad the special features are.
Instead, I most like to consider the DVDs that may have slipped under your radar, like Wakeful Nights, which is really an amazing movie for several reasons. Japan in general, and Tokyo specifically, is two different places. It’s an amazingly exciting, beautiful, cultured, exotic place for people who don’t speak or understand Japanese, and it’s an incredibly perverted, sex-soaked, practically demented place for those who do. Wakeful Nights is a DVD that both reveals the lusty fun just under the well-designed, well-dressed surface, as well as revels in the classic art of filmmaking and the ancient delights of Rakugo (Traditional Comic Storytelling).
Director Masahiko Makino was inspired by his grandfather, who was credited with initiating a “100 Years of Japanese Filmmaking” celebration, so he brought together generations of actors, writers, and singers to create a lewd, crude, but loving tale of a family gathering for a master comic storyteller’s funeral. Deciding to release this iconoclastic comedy in America, the good folk at AnimEigo had their translating and subtitling work cut out for them. But, for the most part, little is lost in translation … which is really saying something, considering the content and subject matter of the romp. Much of the time they have to put everything in context for American eyes, while still maintaining the momentum of the warped, culturally-punny jokes.
That’s where the extras help. They include some deleted scenes that contain some of the least effective diversions, but the real fun is to be had with the additional songs and their karaoke companions. First you get to watch two characters have a “Geisha Idol” contest to see who best can deliver the jolly performance and raunchy lyrics of classic sexy songs usually performed by pretty hostesses at mens-only parties, then you get to try your luck at the same songs, with the help of phonetic lyric subtitles, and the occasional actor pop-up. It’s fun to watch and hilarious to try.
Then comes AnimEigo’s vaunted program notes, which are exhaustive to a fault, and much welcome in this multi-layered anniversary effort. Despite their attempt to answer every query the film might elicit, they are also a great starting point for further research – a fact the company seems well aware of, because the final program note is a long list of websites where more material can be found. By the last frame, I felt indoctrinated into a special place in Japanese entertainment, rarely experienced by any outsider. But even if you don’t share that feeling, it’s hard not to appreciate a DVD that comes with the warning: “Contains adult situations and language, disgusting puns, sick jokes, filthy karaoke, and a traumatized Manta Ray.” (more…)
Brother J at PopCultureShock recently posted a comparison of interior art from the original Alan Moore/Brian Bolland one-shot Batman: The Killing Joke
The $17.99 hardcover edition was recolored by Bolland himself, and the result is a very different atmosphere for the classic tale:
The post also contains another page-to-page comparison that’s certainly worth checking out.
The superhero, and I don’t mean sandwich, has been a staple of the popular culture since well before the Depression-into-wartime beginnings of Superman and Batman. Those characters’ nascent comic-book adventures of 1938-1939 served primarily to focus a popular fascination with superhuman struggles against extravagant menaces – but similarly conceived protagonists had existed all along in ancient mythology and mass-market popular fiction. And how better to explain the superior heroic intellect of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Seabury Quinn’s phantom-fighting Jules de Grandin, or the beyond-normal escapades of Robin Hood and the Scarlet Pimpernel?
People need heroes, he said – if I may adapt a thought from Mike Gold’s recent Hope Versus Fear commentary at ComicMix. Such characters spur the imagination to assume hope in the face of fearful real-world circumstances, even if their activities and abilities (and allegorical antagonists) seem patently outside the realm of possibility. And the spiritual generosity of superheroism is such that people are willing to fork over either hard-earned cash or Daddy’s Money to experience the fantasy: Hence the proliferation of super-hero comic books in the immediate backdraft and long-term vapor-trails of Superman and Batman, and hence those characters’ fairly prompt leap into motion pictures during the 1940s.
Many people regard the superhero movie phenomenon as a fairly recent development, traceable as “far back” as Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man breakthrough of 2002, or maybe to the perceived “antiquity” of Richard Donner’s Superman pictures of 1978-1980. Not by a long shot.
Nor are the inevitable superhero parodies – as seen in David Zucker’s collaborative production of Superhero Movie, due March 28 – any particular innovation. Just as there is something awe-inspiring about some guy in long-john tights, hurdling buildings or piercing the veil with a blast of X-ray vision, there also is something innately ridiculous about such a spectacle. Even some of the earlier superhero films, such as Columbia Pictures’ Batman serials of the 1940s, emerged as unwitting parodies despite (or because of) their more earnest aims.
The formal parodies are a rarer breed. Zucker had proved himself a capable spoofer with 1980’s Airplane! – a well-received lampoon of the large-ensemble disaster-movie genre – much as Mel Brooks had parodied such genres as the Western epic and the Gothic horror film (1974’s Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein) to pleasing effect. Both artists were springing from the influence of Harvey Kurtzman’s Mad magazine of the mid-century, with its recurring demonstration that a parody must harbor an affectionate understanding of the story it intends to spoof.
The finalists for the Glyph Comics Awards have just been named, with a not overly surprising lot of contenders. There are, however, quite a few great comics and creators who make the list.
For a complete rundown of nominees, a full slate is available at Pop Culture Shock. Here are the “story of the year” contenders:
Hunter’s Moon, James L. White, writer, Dalibor Talajic and Sebastian Cardoso, artists
Nat Turner: Revolution, Kyle Baker, writer and artist
Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow, James Sturm, writer, Rich Tommaso, artist
Sentences: The Life of MF Grimm, Percy Carey, writer, Ronald Wimberly, artist
Welcome to Tranquility, Gail Simone, writer, Neil Googe, artist
I haven’t read Satchel Paige yet, but my pick without much trepidation would be Sentences. It’s the best, most honest book about the dark side of hip-hop that’s ever been written. I interviewed Carey when the book first came out, and that’s available right here.
The only big surprise to me was that Agent 355 from Y: The Last Man didn’t make the cut for best female character.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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