After a few rough nights on the road, ComicMix Radio is back on schedule with a new week and a great post-holiday stack of new comics and DVDs to run through for you, plus:
You will never know how unless you Press The Button!
Brand extensions can be tricky things. Sometimes you end up with Lucifer, but sometimes you get Witchblade Takeru Manga instead. Jack of Fables, from DC, was a clear attempt to extend the brand identity of the Fables series, written by Bill Willingham and mostly penciled by Mark Buckingham, with a companion series about one of the more interesting characters from that world. As far as brand extensions go, it hews most closely to the Sandman Mystery Theater model: the writer of the main series is involved (though it’s always difficult to tell, from the outside, just how much involvement that is) and the tone and style is very close to the original.
I wasn’t completely thrilled with the first Jack of Fables plotline (which I reviewed on my personal blog), finding it a bit too heavy-handed and dark. Jack is an unrepentant rogue, and to care about a rogue, he has to either not be too nasty to people, or mostly run into much worse folks than himself. Either way, he has to have a lightness of touch – the story can’t focus on his worst impulses. (See Jack Vance’s novels The Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel the Clever for one of the best examples of the form.)
Jack is mostly acted upon in the title story of this volume, which is good: a rogue off balance is more interesting, and his scramblings add a feeling of urgency to the proceedings. But that’s actually the second story in this volume, so I have to backtrack.
Jack of Hearts, the book, starts with a two-issue story called “Jack Frost,” framed as a tale Jack tells some of his fellow escapes from the magical prison from the first volume. They’re hiding high in the mountains from those who would recapture them, and Jack mentions that he was once Jack Frost…and so of course has to explain. (more…)
So where we at? For the past month or so, we have, in a scattershot and disorganized way, been discussing the various elements involved in the evolution of superheroes. I don’t think we’ve come to any conclusions worthy of being preserved for the ages, nor should we: things change, darnit. But maybe a little tentative upsumming would not be inappropriate.
Upsumming:
Haberdashery: There is currently a trend away from putting superdoers in costumes, though the big bucks movie heroes are still wearing the suits and, judging from the films I know about that are in development, this will not change in the foreseeable future. But most entertainment consumers — I’m excepting comics fans here — get their heroism, super and otherwise, from television and maybe because of tv production hassles, costumes aren’t common.
Powers: We’ve agreed (haven’t we?) that for a long time the superbeings of mythology and folklore got their powers from some supernatural agency: they were gods, or demi-gods, or friends of ol’ Olympus, or something. Or they were agencies of darkness — black magicians of one kind or another. Then science became the rationale, most famously with Jerry Siegel’s extraterrestrial origin of Superman. Last, and decidedly least, there was technology allowing the good guy to do his stuff. And now…well, it’s anything goes time. Look at the current television offerings: we have a superhero private eye whose abilities are due to his vampirism, which we can call magic; a technology-enabled superhero(ine); and a whole bunch of peripatetic whose gifts have “scientific” explanations, or so it currently seems.
Direct from the floor of the Mid-Ohio Con in Columbus, we introduce you to a creator who has taken the joy and pain of working in a collectible toy store and made it into a fascinating web comic. Meet David Willis and his creation, Shortpacked! Plus:
• DC steps up and collects Starman in a great omnibus project
• Thor sells out again — deja vu?
• Terry Moore is back in the world of self publishing — an Echo of future past, as it were.
And you should meet Captain Ohio, so Press The Button!
Comics folk are known for their generosity year-round but, as the seasons turn and the nights turn colder, the spirit of giving seems to kick into overdrive.
Out in Portland, OR, Floating World Comics is all set to hold their Spacenight tribute to Bill Mantlo on Friday, December 6 (coincidentally, the birthdays of at least four comic book creators of which I know). As many people are aware, in 1992 the longtime Marvel mainstay was struck by a hit-and-run driver and suffered a closed-head traumatic brain injury from which he has never recovered, so as you can imagine the medical bills are formidable. If you can’t make it out to Oregon, you can always donate to the Spacenite – Bill Mantlo Fund via the above link. The Oregonian has more information about the event. And of course you can still order Mantlo: A Life in Comics from David Yurkovich’s Sleeping Giant Comics.
And the Hero Initiative blog features a very touching story about the latest recipients of that organization’s largesse. As Laura Gjovaag says, read the whole thing including the comments, "Then go to CBGXtra.com and click on the banner ad to donate a dime to HERO." Or more, if you can spare it!
A couple weeks ago, Linda and I were at the Norman Rockwell Museum for the opening of their graphic novels exhibit. If you can get to Stockbridge Massachusetts before the end of May, I highly recommend it. Even if you can’t get there by then, I highly recommend the Museum.
Well, I think I managed to break my record. I actually went off-subject in my very first paragraph. When I read this online, ten days from now (I’m writing ahead because I’ll be at the Mid-Ohio Con), I will really be embarrassed. But, again, I digress.
We were there at the invitation of the Museum and of Mark Wheatley and Marc Hempel. We did a graphic novel called Breathtaker, which was both published by and loathed by DC Comics. Joke’s on you guys: we were at the Rockwell. Anyway, it seems I’m digressing once in each paragraph. I promise I’ll be more linear.
Dave Sim, of Cerebus fame, was among the dozen or so honorees. Well deserved; he’s possibly the only single cartoonist to pull off a 6,000 page graphic novel. Dave, Linda and I got into a lengthy conversation about the medium and its future – occupational hazard, that – and in the course of discussion Dave suggested it was possible – possible, mind you – that it takes a higher level of intelligence than average to be attracted to the graphic storytelling medium (I think Dave called it “comics”). The Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy isn’t the exception, he may be the rule. And I’ll admit that most of the Mensa people I know are into comics, but that’s probably because a lot of comics people I know were in Mensa. And most of them couldn’t get laid there, either.
But we, as a micro-society deviant or otherwise, do seem to have a thirst for knowledge. So, with the kind permission of our DVD Extras columnist Ric Meyers, I can highly recommend the Young Indiana Jones DVD box sets. Not so much for the teevee movies contained therein, which I rather liked even though they lacked the action and pacing of the theatricals, but for the documentaries. The first box set (of two) contained 12 discs and some 38 documentaries, each running about 15 to 30 minutes. (more…)
I find it nothing short of astounding that ComicMix columns continue to get stronger as the year goes on. Here’s the past week’s worth of what’s shaping up to be a great legacy of reading:
Thank you again to all our readers for your participation via the comments!
Khaaaaaaaaan!
(What, you thought we were going to go with a Mr. Roarke reference? Get real.)
Happy birthday to the man, the myth, the Montalban. And yes, those really were his muscles in Star Trek II.
Prurient: “Having or intended to arouse an unwholesome interest in sexual matters.”
– Encarta World English Dictionary
That’s pretty much the only word anyone needs to explain I Know Who Killed Me starring Lindsay Lohan. The words “great,” “well-made,” “engrossing,” or even “entertaining” wouldn’t suffice. “Fascinating,” however, might fit, given this car wreck of a film perfectly represented the star’s car wreck of a life at the time of its production.
The term “car wreck” is carefully and purposely chosen, however, since watching Lohan’s human accident is much like slowing down for highway rubbernecking – thanks to the “celebrity” obsessed media (who’s far more interested in such things than the public they maintain they serve seems to be).
Much in the way you can chart any actor’s state of mind by the projects they choose, this unfocussed, confused, schizo, meandering, self-absorbed-slash-self-loathing-slash-self-aggrandizing-slash-self-mutilating effort can reveal anything you ever wanted to know about Lohan’s self-sabotaging lifestyle. Her stumbles are all the more sad since, of the troika of self-immolating “celebs” the media is micro-analyzing (Britney and Paris make up the rest of the 3 Stooges), Lohan is clearly the most promising and/or talented.
That talent is only vaguely on display in this slasher psycho-drama, leaving only the body the actress and media seem to have a love/hate relationship with. Within the pretentious, muddled, fairly dull film, she plays a college student, who, after barely surviving an abduction, torture, and mutilation by a serial killer, wakes up to maintain that she’s a self-destructive stripper. This allows the film to lurch hither and yon between both girls’ lives as somebody searches for the sicko, and director Chris Sivertson tries to out DePalma Brian DePalma when it comes to pointless “are they or aren’t they?” fantasies, dream sequences, and flashbacks.
The film not only represents Lohan’s life, but it also reflects the quality of the DVD’s “special” features. The “Alternate Opening” and “Blooper Reel,” especially, are as misleading as the film. The former is simply an extended sequence with several more shots of lights reflected in water, which doesn’t change the opening’s meaning in any way (alternate means “different from,” not “slightly longer”). The latter are just a few joyless instances of actors inadvertently confusing a character’s name or not knowing their lines (blooper means that said mistake be “humorous” or even “mildly embarrassing”).
So that leaves the “Alternate Ending” and what any real fan came for: the “Extended Strip Dance Scene.” The former is less than a minute, but long enough to give the connotation that all that preceded it was a fiction from within the mind of the college student. The latter is exactly what it says: a longer version of Lohan’s PG-13 stripper act (complete with R-rated support strippers around her). No question: she’s an attractive young woman who can languidly sashay around on high heels, act pouty/dirty, and even (in the sequence’s “climax”) open her legs. Whoop-dee-do. (more…)
Some recent installments of this so-called Forgotten Horrors feature – the title suggests a resurrection of obscurities more so than it proclaims any particular shivers – have established the music-making imperative as essential to the standing of Robert Crumb as a Great American Cartoonist. Other such pieces have touched upon the kinship that I have perceived over the long haul amongst comics, movies, and music. This inclusive bias was cinched as early as the moment I noticed, as a grammar-school kid during the 1950s, that a honky-tonking musician neighbor named “Honest Jess” Williams was (unlike most other grown-ups in my orbit) a comic-book enthusiast.
The connection was reinforced around this same time, when I met Fats Domino backstage on a Texas engagement and learned that the great New Orleans pianist included in his traveling gear plenty of issues of Little Lulu, Archie, and Tales from the Crypt. Later on, as a junior high-schooler, I discovered that a stack of newsstand-fresh funnybooks always seemed to exert their thrall more effectively with a hefty stack of 45-r.p.m. phonograph records on the changer. (“Flash of Two Worlds” plus Charlie Blackwell’s Warners-label recording of “None of ’Em Glow like You,” augmented with a wad of Bazooka-brand bubblegum, add up to undiluted pleasure – well, the combination worked for me, anyhow.)
This latest unearthed obscurity has more to do with music – and a peculiar strain of indigenous Texas music, at that – than with any other influence. But the parallel tracks of American roots music, comics, and motion pictures tend to cross spontaneously. There is only one Show Business, and if not for the early revelation that such a fine Western swing guitarist as Jess Williams followed the comic books avidly (his favorites were Tomahawk and Blackhawk, the comics’ great “hawks” after Will Eisner’s Hawk of the Seas), I doubt that conclusion would have struck home with me. (more…)
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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