Category: News

CONVENTION REPORT: Gencon 2007

  • News
  • August 25, 2007

At last weekend’s Gencon 2007 it was clear that almost no one is launching a game without a popular license attached. In a market defined by Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering it can often seem like those are the only two games left that crafted their own setting.

Upper Deck Entertainment is the poster child for the modern game company. Their strongest selling game is Yu-Gi-Oh, a game that they don’t even design on their own; they get most of their cards from the Japanese company that invented it. Their newest hot game is the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game, which is, of course, based on the ludicrously popular computer game. I got a chance to demo it and the game mechanics seem to be one part Magic, one part Alderac Entertainment Group’s Warlord.

The marketing for this game is brilliant though; some fantastically rare cards unlock unique items in the computer games to show off to people there. In addition, every con attendee got a starter pack of the game when they checked-in for the weekend giving them access to potentially thousands of new customers. Even after the demo they gave me, my free pack remains unopened.

Also at the Upper Deck booth I got a chance to check out the Vs. card game, a game featuring heroes and villains from DC and Marvel comics. The demo decks were out of their recently released Hellboy set. This may have been a mistake because their booth was decked out in huge Alex Ross paintings of DC and Marvel characters. I was set to see Superman take on the Hulk, not Hellboy versus Rasputin.

The game uses a scaling resource system that is becoming increasingly standard in the industry, one more resource each turn almost regardless of what’s in your hand. So, having a character that cost the maximum amount you could spend in a turn was important. I knew the game was lost when on my sixth turn I had to settle for a second turn and fourth turn characters while my opponent got a massive sixth turn guy capable of dealing massive damage to my guys without any fear of retaliation. This seems to lend itself to a game that is all but over before any iconic characters could hit the field. This was a disappointment because any card game that could dedicate an entire set to the Green Lantern Corps and another to the Legion of Superheroes clearly knows what kind of comic game I want to play.

(more…)

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Saturday Morning Cartoons: Happy birthday, Transformers!

  • News
  • August 25, 2007

microman_mini-4620021Twenty-three years ago today, Hasbro brought the Autobots and Decepticons to store shelves all across America. Initially reusing previously-released toys from the Japanese Takara toylines Diaclone and Microman, Hasbro issued the toys under the name Transformers. The basic back-story of the toyline and subsequent comic books and cartoons was developed by the Marvel Comics writers Jim Shooter and ComicMix‘s Dennis O’Neil; it was O’Neil who actually changed Convoy’s name to Optimus Prime.

Oh, and speaking of Optimus Prime, he now seems to be doing reviews with Alan Kistler, reviewing such recent fare as the new Bionic Woman pilot, the new Flash Gordon series, Eureka and Torchwood. But be warned — Optimus Prime has gone through a few transformations of his own.

If you haven’t heard yet, Transformers: The Movie will be released in IMAX September 21 with extended footage. And finally, we have the most impressive Transformer costumes that I’ve ever come across…

MARTHA THOMASES: Wild in the Streets

  • News
  • August 25, 2007

martha100-6322812Maybe it’s because this presidential campaign is lasting more than two years, but lately, I’ve heard a lot of people bemoan their feelings of helplessness.  The system is unchangeable, they’ve decided, and there’s nothing they can do.

When I was a teenager, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, we thought we could fix everything.  War, poverty, pollution, inequality – it didn’t matter what the problem was.  All we needed was ourselves, our energy and resolve (music and drugs were optional, but helpful).

Today, not so much.

I don’t know precisely how, but our cool rebellion and anti-materialist hedonism got co-opted by the very corporations we despised.  The very culture we created sold us out.  Maybe it was the 1970s, when the music business got huge, segmented radio and split us apart in order to sell to us more efficiently.  Punk started in protest to this, but was co-opted even more quickly.  MTV turned rock’n’roll into long-form commercials.  By the time grunge was hip, Calvin Klein already had Time Square billboards with underwear models looking strung-out in Seattle.

Movies didn’t do much better.  The rebellious, independent filmmakers who gave us Taxi Driver, MAS*H, Easy Rider and others were rejecting Hollywood’s glamour, glitz and phoniness.  Somehow, they and their rebellious stars were absorbed into the studio machine even more quickly that the rockers.  Maybe Jane Fonda wasn’t the deepest political thinker, but she looks like Noam Chomsky compared to Lindsay Lohan.

So, comics?  They fall somewhere in the middle, and off to the side, as they do in so many conversations about media.  Originally reprints of newspaper strips, comic books were seen as disposable, cheap fun, so anything could happen.  There’s amazing, subversive energy is Jack Cole’s Plastic Man, just to pick one example.  When comics became popular, the people in power objected, and put through the Comics Code to keep the kids in place.  Hippies re-discovered comics, and started to make their own.  From these underground comics came new distribution, then the direct market, and now, with the exception of a few political titles like World War 3, independents have replaced undergrounds..  (more…)

MICHAEL DAVIS: It’s a real mad mad mad world part 2

  • News
  • August 24, 2007

michael-davis100-2162058Last week my article started with what I see is an obvious trend among comic book companies. That trend was the ‘mad angry look” that many comic book superheroes spout when they are looking out from a cover or poster. While writing the piece I came upon an idea to create some “Happy Heroes.”

So I created a super group called Happy Heroes! (Happy Heroes tm & copyright Michael Davis 2007 any unauthorized use will result in a harsh letter from the firm of Starve And Die, Attorneys-at-Law.)

When last we left the Happy Heroes, The Grin, Smiley and Gay-Man were being attacked. By the way that’s Gay as in:

1.    Full of light-heartedness and merriment

2.    Brightly colored

3.    Having or showing a carefree spirit

4.    Gives great dinner parties

As I was saying, when last we left the Happy Heroes The Grin, Smiley and Gay-Man were being attacked by their archenemy Dark Comedy. He had already blasted The Grin in the chest and had turned his attention and ray gun to Smiley. Gay-Man was hiding…eh, I mean seeking refuge in a closet so he could plan his next move.  

Page 4.

Panel 1.

Dark Comedy is now pointing his weapon at Smiley. Smiley is looking around for Gay-Man and by Gay I mean:

1.    Full of light-heartedness and merriment

2.    Brightly colored

3.    Having or showing a carefree spirit

4.    Likes Dick…Tracy

Dark Comedy: Where’s Gay-Man?

Smiley: I’ll never tell.

Panel 2.

Dark Comedy shoots Smiley in the kneecap.

Smiley: AHHHHHHHHHGGGG! GAY-MAN IS IN THE CLOSET!!!

Panel 3.

Dark Comedy is standing above Smiley who is rolling around on the floor holding his knee. (more…)

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Hayden Panettiere turns legal

  • News
  • August 23, 2007

haydenvote-7816011Yep, fandom’s favorite cheerleader (all right, I remember her as Princess Dot from A Bug’s Life, but I’m weird) turned eighteen on Tuesday. And what did she do to commemorate it? She registered to vote:

Exercising her civic right, star of NBC’s Heroes, Hayden Panettiere, celebrated her 18th birthday today by registering to vote utilizing the Declare Yourself campaign’s easy-to-use online registration process. Panettiere is an official spokesperson for the Declare Yourself, the national nonpartisan, nonprofit youth voter initiative aimed at empowering and encouraging America’s 18-year-olds to register and vote in the 2008 primaries and general election.

Like millions of other young people, Panettiere logged on to the campaign’s official site at http://www.DeclareYourself.com, completed the voter registration form online, printed it out and then mailed it off. She was also able to have any voting related questions answered through Declare Yourself’s FAQ section.

Now that’s a way to save the world.

Grace Paley, gone

  • News
  • August 23, 2007

509grace_paley-3196619Via Maud Newton comes word that Grace Paley has died at the age of 84.  I met Grace a few times through the War Resisters League, working the table at rummage sales.  She was like the greatest possible combination of my idol and my grandmother,  Her short stories were an important part of my personal literary odyssey, and her poetry was so personal to me that I read some at the memorial service for Kim Yale.  You can get a collection of all her short stories.  Her non-fiction prose, often about her time spent on the picket line to end war, combat racism or sexism, or her trips to Viet Nam, can be embarrassing in their enthusiasm and honesty.  Once, years ago, she agreed to write a Superman story, which never came to be.  I thought it would be cool for Martha Kent to talk to other moms in Washington Square Park. 

For me, this passage from one of my favorite stories, says it all:

The kids!  The kids! Though terrible troubles  hang over them, such as the absolute end of the known world quickly by detonation or slowly through the easygoing destruction of natural resources, they are stilll, even now, optimistic, humourous, and brave.  In fact, they intend enormous changes at the last minute.

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COMICS LINKS: Definitely Not Kansas

  • News
  • August 23, 2007

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Comics Links

Variety reports that Todd McFarlane’s toy-based re-imagining of The Wizard of Oz is being developed as a movie. (See all the toys here; everyone else went with Dorothy as the obvious illo, but I thought his vision of Toto was just as bad, but even weirder.)

Mark Evanier writes about Robert Kanigher and his Metal Men.

Nick Bertozzi has posted the proposal he and James Sturm put together in 2003 for a graphic novel adaptation of a screenplay called The Black Diamond Detective Agency. (The owners of the property ended up giving it to Eddie Campbell to turn into a GN, which came out earlier this year.)

Jayme Lynn Blaschke visits Metropolis, Illinois, and takes pictures of all of the Superman stuff there.

Comics Should Be Good casts their usual beady eye on DC’s November covers.

Occasional Superheroine believes everything is wrong with DC Comics, and explains their problems in great detail.

The Elmira Star-Gazette is happy to see the new comic based on a video game, Halo: Uprising.

Dick May or May Not Read Your Blog begins an odd, quixotic series on the career of Rob Liefeld with a long post about his work on Hawk & Dove.

 

Comics Reviews 

Wizard reviews Mike Allred’s Madman, Vol. 1 and Marvel’s X-23: Target X.

Comics Reporter reviews a mini-comic called Click by Sara Ryan.

Jog of The Savage Critics looks at Bill Jemas’s reign at Marvel, the “progressive” era, Igor Kordey, and, finally, the first eight issues of Soldier X. (more…)

JOHN OSTRANDER: Widgets

  • News
  • August 23, 2007

ostrander100-6411617karl-marx-1801863Theories are great. I love theories. Usually they’re a wonderful conflation of thought and imagination. We all have our own pet theories on things and we teach them to do tricks or rub their tummies and have fun with them. For example, my sweetie, Mary, on a regular basis comes up with new theories of how the universe was created. They’re different each time and always fun. Sometimes they stumble near quantum theory and that gets a little spooky but, all in all, I enjoy them almost as much as she does.

My problem with theories is when they become ossified into dogma. This happens not just in religion but in all walks of life, including economics and business. Communism is a good example of an economic theory gone to dogma. One of its charming hypotheses was that, once communism had spread around the globe – as Karl Marx felt it inevitably would – all government would evaporate because we would have achieved the workers’ paradise. That theory, unfortunately, is not based on any human trait I’ve ever seen. Capitalism, on the other hand, being based on human greed, is and that’s one of the reasons it has survived and communism has not.

Capitalism and business, especially in recent years, have had their own bits of theories that are endlessly repeated like mantras until they too have become dogma. They’re applied whether they fit the situation or not, sometimes out of stupidity and other times from cupidity.

One of my least favorite bits of economic dogma is “They’re all widgets.” The word “widget” was coined, I believed, by playwright George S. Kaufman for his 1924 play Beggar On Horseback in which the protagonist must choose between his work as a composer and a steady but soul draining job in a “widget” factory. Since it was never defined, a “widget” – in the economic sense – is a synonym for “product” or, when dealing with a creative artist, the term “talent” is used. What it comes down to is that it doesn’t matter what the widget is, certain business and selling rules will apply. Soap, beef, talent, cars, drugs, beer, games, comic books, movies, TV shows – they’re all widgets. One theory fits all.

Except it doesn’t always do that. In 1989, Marvel was bought by Ron Perelman’s MacAndrews and Forbes; at the time, Marvel had maybe 70% of the sales of a very healthy direct sale market. Before Perelman’s little junket was done, Marvel was in bankruptcy and the market was in tatters. Why? Because they decided they were selling widgets. They didn’t need to know anything about comics or the market; they were going to apply sound business principles and make comics respond accordingly. (I had plenty of friends on the inside keeping me abreast of the latest theory.) Nobody could tell these guys nothing. Their business model was not simply Disney but McDonald’s which not only sells hamburgers but own the bakeries that makes the buns, the cattle ranches that supply the beef and so on.

Marvel started to bring its licenses inside the company with the idea that they would supply the product. Since trading cards were so popular, they would buy the trading card companies. They bought the companies after the interest in trading cards had already crested. Perelman’s suits were consistently behind the curve. (more…)

Stan Lee and… Paris Hilton?

  • News
  • August 22, 2007

paris-hilton-nip-slip-5820045From Film School Rejects : Stan Lee told NY Post columnist Cindy Adams he’s planning to make an animated cartoon TV show with Paris Hilton. “A hip comedy in the superhero comedy-adventure genre. We get on very well. This is a charming, very likable person. Sophisticated. Great comedic sense. A fine voice. And seriously hard-working. Totally unlike whatever the public is led to believe. And she has input. She attends every meeting. What we plan to do is truly tasteful.”

It’s good that Paris is getting involved in comics — I was wondering who was going to write fill-in issues for Jenna Jameson.

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