Category: News

Happy birthday, ABC!

  • News
  • October 14, 2007

On October 14, 1943, Edward J. Noble bought the Blue Network for $8,000,000. So what, you say? A bit of media history to explain first…

In the 30’s and 40’s, the National Broadcasting Company was a radio network and its big star was Jack Benny. NBC was made up of two separate units, the Red Network and the Blue Network, which were created in 1928 to better manage the company’s increasing number of radio affiliates. By 1938, the Red Network was producing roughly 75 percent of NBC’s commercial shows, with the only big hit on the Blue Network being Amos and Andy.

A few years later, the FTC was wary of monopolies taking over the industry, so they mandated that companies would no longer be allowed to control more than one network. NBC was forced to sell one of its divisions and, of course, chose the weaker Blue Network to put on the auction block. The aforementioned Edward Noble, who had already earned millions from sales of his popular Lifesavers candy, bought the network, promptly renaming it American Broadcasting Systems. And a year later, Noble changed the name again, this time to what has become a more familiar title… the American Broadcasting Company.

More fall classics

  • News
  • October 14, 2007

Our readers aren’t the only ones falling for ComicMix‘s new format. We Phase I-ers are really excited over Phase II as well; that handy-dandy Latest News search box has made doing these weekly wrap-ups easier than ever!  And the powers that be aren’t done tinkering yet!  Here’s what our columnists have offered you this past week:

And don’t forget to click on Mellifluous Mike Raub‘s latest Big ComicMix Broadcasts over there on the right!

Get ‘Em While You Can! Free!

  • News
  • October 14, 2007

In our on-going effort to help you avoid getting sucked into the baseball play-offs (or worse yet – the World Series) here is the quick list of cool things we found this week:

If you want to grab those limited edition variants of Return To Wonderland from U.K. retailer Fantastic Realm, go here. Remember, there are six issues and each exclusive edition will be limited to 1000 copies apiece. Here in the U.S., the standard Return To Wonderland #3 hits stores on October 17th.

Those two new Nickelodeon-branded digital versions of classic Hasbro board games, Monopoly: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition and Candy Land: Dora The Explorer Edition can be down loaded here; there are versions for both PC and Mac.

This year’s big December mini-series from SciFi will be a Wizard Of Oz based project called The Tin Man and you can not only preview it here but you can also "step" into scenes from the show. It premieres December 2nd on the SciFi Channel. (more…)

Hostel II Hostel, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • October 14, 2007

As author of For One Week Only: The World of Exploitation Films (as featured in People magazine and the National Enquirer [when the National Enquirer was the National Enquirer]) and the original head writer for Fangoria magazine, don’t get me wrong: I love horror films. Of course what I’m dealing with in this installment are not horror films, no matter how often the filmmakers and actors refer to them as such. Horror is fear of the unknown. These are terror flix, involving the fear of the known.

But I dabble in semantics, which is only fitting because semantics are crawling all over the ample special features on the DVDs for the two-disc Hostel: Director’s Cut, and the single disc Hostel Part II: Unrated Director’s Cut – both of which are dragging their tortured carcasses into stores October 23rd.

First things first. If you loved Hostel, the overkill (all puns intended) of the Director’s Cut edition will leave you writhing in bloody delight. To give you an idea just how much you need to love it, there are four, count ‘em, four, audio commentaries – every single one with director/producer/writer Eli Roth, each supplemented with different friends; from “Presenter” Quentin Tarantino to aintitcoolnews.com honcho Harry Knowles. Yes, they expect you to watch the movie four times as Roth brings in producers, executive producers, and others to tell you what they did and how much they liked it. (more…)

Happy birthday, Winnie the Pooh!

  • News
  • October 14, 2007

81 years ago, A.A. Milne’s Winnie-The-Pooh was published, sparking generations of happy fans to revel in Pooh’s adventures. Yes, our beloved fuzzy bear is a pretty old guy — and a good thing for it. Had he been introduced today, Pooh might have been shunned as figure of obesity what with his addiction to honey and prescribed Rozerem to get through sleepless nights of Heffalumps and Woozles.

Yet despite an increasingly uptight audience, a glossy make-over by Disney to account for it, countless empty jars of honey and a conversion to Tao Buddhism, Winnie-the-Pooh remains as ever, our silly, willy-nilly, old bear. Good timing, Mr. Milne!

For extra fun throughout time and space, we suggest Peter David’s The Tardis at Pooh Corner.

Cowpuncher cartoonist J.R. Williams, by Michael H. Price

  • News
  • October 14, 2007

williams-jr-out-our-way-01-3997422Great cultures yield great artists, and I’m not talking necessarily about Ancient Rome or the Renaissance periods of either Italy or Harlem. The cowboy culture of the Southwestern Frontier has spawned its share of artistry, from poets and musicians to painters and, yes, cartoonists.

Conventional wisdom holds that Charles M. Russell (1864-1926), was the most gifted of the Western cartoonists. Russell’s illustrated correspondence, as preserved at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, helps to shore up this belief. But Russell’s leanings toward the presumably finer arts prevented him from pursuing cartooning as a career.

A near-contemporary of Russell’s, James R. Williams (1888-1957), took a different tack, becoming a working cartoonist who based a long-running daily newspaper feature upon his younger days as a ranchhand. (more…)

Meet the Real Mad Man

  • News
  • October 13, 2007

Pop culture in the 60s was made up of a lot of familiar faces, but few were as instantly recognizable or seen by so many as Alfred E. Neuman. Former Mad Magazine editor Al Feldstein reveals the secret origin of the "What Me Worry" guy. Plus…  we lay out some scoops on the new Tin Man mini series, Mike Hawthorne’s new web comics, how to get Devils Due titles on your phone and catch a live TV gig from Mama Cass.

PRESS THE BUTTON or we’ll give Alfred your sister’s cell phone number!

(We Could Be) Heroes: Top Ten Rock Songs About Superman, by Martha Thomases

  • News
  • October 13, 2007

What does one hum on the way to the comic book store? If you’re a person of a certain age, with a certain history with certain illegal substances, you probably have a few songs about the original super-hero stuck in the part of your brain that should be storing French vocabulary words.

Even if you aren’t old, you probably listen to a few songs about super-heroes. The Marvel superhero movies have had fantastic soundtracks, even if most of the songs weren’t written specifically for the movies. The Prince Batman soundtrack is a winner (Vicki Vale!), and the Ramones did a fabulous cover of the cartoon Spider-Man theme.

And yet, the Man of Tomorrow is still the foremost inspiration for popular songs. From the alt-folkie to Eminem, there are Superman songs. Alas, some of the more hard-core take a rather literal approach to the term, “super-man” and imagine all kinds of sexual possibilities that seem to have nothing to do with Truth, Justice and the American Way (nor Kryptonian physiology, nor anything human – entertaining, though).

Here is my choice for the Top Ten songs about Superman: (more…)

Is Snappy Sammy Smoot The Real Fishhead?

  • News
  • October 12, 2007

Our pal and ComicMix columnist and Fishhead co-writer Michael H. Price sent me one of those "seperated at birth" things… sort of a crossover between his Fishhead and our first Munden’s Bar story, as produced by John Ostrander and Skip Williamson. The beauty on the left is called "Snappy Sammy Smoot," he’s a long-time hero of the underground comix, and is copyright 2007 Skip Williamson.

Check out both features – for free – right here at ComicMix. Just click the comics tab on the home page!

 

The Boys Goes To Star Trek

  • News
  • October 12, 2007

Variety reports that, among those cast in J. J. Abrams’ new Star Trek movie is Simon Pegg, star of Shawn of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. He’s slated to play Scotty, the role made famous by James Doohan. The same story says John Cho (Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle) will be Sulu. The film is scheduled to go into production next month, with a Christmas 2008 release date.

(For those of you who don’t get the image at the right, Darick Robertson based the look of character Wee Hughie on Simon Pegg. So even if you haven’t seen Shawn of the Dead or Hot Fuzz or even that Doctor Who episode he did, you know what he looks like. Simon also did the introduction to The Boys trade paperback, and is a big comics fan.)

The Star Trek movie, co-starring Leonard Nimoy, has been fully cast with one important exception: the role of James T. Kirk. William Shatner holds out hope.

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