Category: News

Tyrese Gibson wants Luke Cage

tyrese-9095585Fresh from the set of Transformers, Tyrese Gibson sat down with the boys over at IGN and spilled his guts on how much he wants the titular role of Marvel’s Luke Cage big-screen project.

"We’ll see, man," he says. "You know, they’re doing the rewrites on it right now. I have not officially signed on to be a part of it, but they have me in mind, so I’m honored."

Having third billing in Transformers may be a big deal, but Tyrese told us that he’d have to step it up even more for Cage. "I’m gonna have to get my body at 199.99 percent," he says. "The Luke Cage fans are out there. I see the emails and the blogs — they want the best for the character. Hopefully, I’ll be that guy… if the script is right."

Kevin Feige, Marvel Studios President of Production, recently indicated that the movie rights to Luke Cage have went back to the studio after Sony couldn’t commit to a "decent" script.

"We never got a script on Luke Cage while it was at Sony that did it justice from our point of view or [director] John [Singleton]’s point of view," Feige says. "The rights since have reverted back to Marvel, but I would love to do a Luke Cage movie — again, looking for ways to continue Marvel movies with fresh content and different points of view. I think Luke Cage would absolutely fit into that."

Of course, we’ll have all the latest as news develops on this project right here at ComicMix.

Luke Cage art copyright Marvel Characters. All RIghts Reserved. Tyrese Gibson copyright Tyrese Gibson.

MIKE GOLD: My All-Time Favorite Comic Book Cover

mikegold100-3788233They don’t draw comic book covers like this any more. And, well, that might be a good thing.

These days, we’re in a phase where covers are particularly boring. When it comes to the great American staple, the heroic fantasy comic, most are over art directed and too posh for their own good. Few actually have anything to do with the story inside; they are simply generic poster shots. When I stare at the big Wall-O-Comics at most shops, my eyes quickly glaze over. They generate little enthusiasm and manage to completely ignore the sense of wonder that makes comics magic. At best, I walk away from the Wall thinking “gee, that Captain America cover sure would make a swell statue.”

Yes, I still use the word “swell.” I’m trying to bring it back.

Look at a few of the really great covers. If you’re at all interested in the genre, how can you pass ‘em up? They are exciting, intriguing and most of all, they appeal to the sense of wonder.

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Yeah, they’re all ancient. But don’t try to tell me they’re childish. Putting on a mask and fighting crime and/or evil as the result of some event that wouldn’t even cut it in Greek tragedy is childish. We’re simply negotiating the price.

However, some covers were simply wonderfully absurd. They are so far over the top you’ve just got to check them out. In fact, there are so many of them that there’s an entire website devoted to the topic, run by cartoonist Scott Shaw!. It’s called Oddball Comics and you’ve got to check it out. He’s got about a trillion such covers there. But I don’t know if he’s got my all-time favorite comic book cover.

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ComicMix columns declare independence

Between the final episode of this season’s Dr. Who airing on the Beeb last night, and this afternoon’s "live" (read: an hour delayed) VH1 running of the Concert for Diana (sure, I could have seen the actual live stream online, but then I wouldn’t be able to do anything else with my computer), it seems this weekend as though England must have won that war a couple hundred years ago, at least the cultural end of it.  Nonetheless, our ComicMix columnists have been doing our all-American best to keep you entertained this past week, and here’s your weekly wrap-up of our latest:

Did you catch Mellifluous Mike Raub‘s "Words and Pictures" below?  If you want to relisten to the Big ComicMix Broadcasts to which he’s referring, here they are again:

Lastly, we extend a laurel and hardy handshake welcoming Andrew Wheeler to our happy little gang!

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Indiana Jones and the Legend of the Greasers?

harrison-ford-and-shia-labeouf-ride-a-motorcycle-filming-indiana-jones-fourHere’s a new picture of Harrison Ford and his on-screen son Shia Labeouf from next May’s unnamed fourth installment of the Indiana Jones franchise (working title: Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods). From the looks of it, the story seems to take place in the late 50s/early 60s and gives us an old and very gray Dr. Henry Jones Jr.

From what I’ve seen of this movie, and it hasn’t been much, I am looking less and less forward to its release next May. Thanks to our friends over at Splash News for the picture.

Sidenote: Could Shia look anymore like Seth Green? Do I smell a Robot Chicken crossover??

For a truly young Indiana Jones, May will also see box sets of completely remastered versions of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles television series plus major documentaries about the various historical figures who appear in the series. 15 episodes, each 90 minutes, with one featuring Harrison Ford in character.

In Memoriam: Sterling Lanier

lanier-7816285 Jane Jewell, Executive Director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, has received word of the death of Sterling Lanier on Thursday, June 28th at the age of 79.

Sterling Edmund Lanier worked as both a writer and editor in the science fiction field beginning in the early 1960s; he was published extensively in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, especially with his "Brigadier Ffellowes" club stories. As an editor, he worked for Chilton for various periods in the ’60s, and, most famously, was responsible for the book publication of Frank Herbert’s Dune in 1965. Starting in the 1970s, he worked mostly on a freelance basis, as a sculptor, jeweler, and writer.

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His best-known novel is his second, Hiero’s Journey (1973), an adventure story set in a far-future world long after a nuclear war. Its sequel, The Unforsaken Hiero (1983), was nearly as popular with SF readers. Speculation about a possible third Hiero book continued, but Lanier had no new publications, or substantial contact with the SF field, since the mid-80s.

He had spent recent years in Florida with his wife, Ann.

RIC MEYERS: Fantastic Fantastic Clock

ric-meyers-100-8435766I’’m spoiled already. Seven weeks into this column, and I yawn when I see a DVD with “only” one audio commentary. It wasn’’t even seven weeks when I succumbed to the “Critic’s Disease,”– judging each new entertainment against the one I had seen the day, week, month, or year before.

For the most part, the illness’ symptoms aren’’t as egregious for DVDs as they are for films, since it’’s likely most people see more DVDs than go to the movies, and therefore have touches of the malady themselves. Besides, as I pointed out before, expectations are far lower for films seen on TV than they are in the cinemas.

Even so, some worthy discs (or double discs) can slip through the cracks while I’’m la-di-dahing. Such is the case for Fantastic Four Extended Edition I first mentioned a column or two back. Don’’t get me wrong: the actual film, despite the twenty minutes of reinstated footage, still isn’’t as good as it could or should have been. But in the weeks since reviewing it, my memory keeps going back to the special features.

ffext-3150340So now I feel I could have been a bit more adamant about the edition’s charms, especially with this site’s readers. Maybe I should have mentioned that the extras come in two categories: the film, and the comic book. And it is in this latter category where the glory of this version truly lies. There are new, lovingly created docs –each more than an hour long – on the history of the comic from the 1960’s until today, and on co-creator/artist supreme Jack Kirby.

Each features the cream of the comic world’s crop (Stan Lee, Jim Lee, George Perez, Marv Wolfman, Walt Simonson, Len Wein, Alex Ross, and many others) waxing enthusiastically about their writing and artistic contribution to the series (save for John Byrne, whose absence is accusatory, though his input is lauded) as well as the man who inspired them. Remember, grasshoppers, that the climatic locale for the first season of Heroes was called Kirby Plaza for a reason. The docs do a nifty, pleasing job of balancing art images with talking heads, and the overall effect is a warm and fuzzy feeling for a film that wasn’t that rousing to begin with.

The first Fantastic Four film should be so lucky as to be remembered with the same fondness as it’s “fantastic” predecessor, Fantastic Voyage. In addition to sharing an adjective (or is that an adverb?), 20th Century Fox has released special editions of their respective DVDs at the same time. But Voyage, incongruously, is part of Fox’’s “Cinema Classics Collection.” (more…)

Science Fiction/Fantasy News & Links

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Variety reports that Robert E. Howard’s most famous sword-swinger, Conan the Barbarian, may be coming back to the screen via New Line Pictures, mere weeks after Warner Brothers lost the rights to the Cimmerian. [report – but not link – originally from SciFi Wire]

Warming us all up for the publication off Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in less than a month, the Californian provides a short history of the boy wizard, with lots of learned quotes.

Time Magazine, also on the Harry Potter beat, talks to the “brain trust” at Scholastic – J.K. Rowling’s US publisher – about all of the security measures in place to keep the events of Deathly Hallows secret.

Onelowerlight has thrown down the gauntlet: Serenity is “not good SF” because it has too much sex and is “preachy” about things that blogger does not agree with. The sound you hear is a million browncoats screaming in unison… [via SF Signal]

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The Big ComicMix Broadcast: Words and Pictures

benturpin-2683289I thought it would be pretty darn polite if we created a weekly spot here at ComicMix where we could post the links and contacts for some of the things we cover during the week in our trice-weekly Big ComicMix Broadcasts. Let’s jump right on what went down over the last few days:

We covered a few more comics you might not be aware of in our Summer Reading feature – including The Black Coat, Ben Lichius’ adventure strip about likeness-2092196America’s First Super Patriot. You can see more & even order issues here.  For something completely different, there is In His Likeness, which is primarily seen on the web here but creator James Hatton has a collection of the first 100 strips in a trade you can order.

In the event your local comic shop doesn’t carry Dave Nestler’s Blonde & Gagged, you can see it here, plus much more of Dave’s work and it is a good place to follow progress of the proposed B&G film.

oct-1927795It was great taking with all three creative partners in 12 Gauge Comics’ Occult Crimes Task Force. The Trade pb of the first series is out in stores now, but you can see a lot more on the 12 Gauge Website here and even get a signed copy of the first issue, neatly scribbled on by Dave Atchison, Tony Shasteen and Ms. Rosario Dawson as well!

Finally, if you want to get ready to grab that Anita Blake black & white variant, the line begins here, but the sale starts on July 13th.

Next week, we gear up (no pun intended) for Transformers fever (we’ll be interviewing star Mark Ryan at the San Diego ComicCon), plus more summer reading and another Secrets Behind The Comics.

Please send us your thoughts and comments, Keep your ears clean and we will see you on Tuesday!

Likeness is copyright James Hatton. All Rights Reserved. OCT is copyright 12 Gauge Comics, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

MICHAEL H. PRICE: Cartooning Trumps Polite Portraiture

price-brown-100-4725268My home-base city of Fort Worth, Texas, has since the 1950s, complicated its countrified essence with a set of class-and-culture bearings that range from the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition – America’s “So, there!” riposte to Khruschev and/or Tchaikowsky, dating from a peak-period of the Cold War – to four heavy-duty art museums of international appeal and influence. The local-boosterism flacks crow about “Cowboys ’n’ Culture!” at every opportunity, with or without provocation. But apart from the self-evident truths that Old Money (oil ’n’ cattle) fuels the high-cultural impulse and that the cow-honker sector finds chronic solace in the Amon Carter and Sid Richardson museums’ arrays of works by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell, these communities seldom cross paths with one another.

The détente was tested beyond reasonable limits in 2001, when a yee-haw country-music promoter moved a mob-scene outdoor festival from the Fort Worth Stockyards to the fashionable downtown area – at precisely the moment the Cliburn Competition was settling into the nearby Bass Performance Hall, itself a grand assertion of an Old World civilizing stimulus for the New Linoleum. I mean, Millennium.

Yes, and the juxtaposition of clashing tribal imperatives scarcely could have been more emphatically pronounced. I should add, speaking of Horrors Beyond Forgetting, that it wasn’t the Cliburn audience that left that mound of shattered beer bottles in the City Center Parking Garage. Never the twang shall meet.

We can skip over a lot of the rest. (This all-purpose transition comes from Steve Gerber. Just so you know.)

Despite the persistence of “Cowboys ’n’ Culture!” as a rallying cry for the tourism racket, either element fares very well without the other’s interference. The North Side’s Stockyards area has Billy Bob’s Texas and the restless ghosts of the meat-packing industry. The West Side’s Cultural District has, well, its notions of Culture. And so who gets to call it “Art,” anyhow? (more…)

Who’s Watching the Watchmen Movie?

So you are all worn out after waiting on line for that iPhone yesterday? We’ve got a Heap O’ Hot Summer Stuff on the Big ComicMix Weekend Broadcast, including that Watchmen rumor everyone will be talking about, a tip on what will be the hottest variant comic of the summer, plus more Summer Reading Previews and a look at something in the comic stores just for the grown ups!

Press The Button. Who knows – maybe an iPhone will pop out of your disk drive!

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