Catch Up On THE WALKING DEAD
It seems like an eternity before we get new episodes of AMC’s WALKING DEAD. Series star Andrew Lincoln talks about the show’s huge success, the next run of episodes and that nifty new BluRay DVD. Plus…THIS is Ma Kent??
The Mix : What are people talking about today?
Reading Is Fundamental Funding Dies
In comics, we always have to keep an eye on where our next generations of readers will come from– and it’s just become a bit harder, as earlier this week Congress and President Obama eliminated funding for the literary organization, Reading Is Fundamental (RIF).
CEO Carol H. Rasco made this statement:
RIF’s ability to provide 4.4 million children with free books and reading encouragement from RIF programs at nearly 17,000 locations throughout the United States is in jeopardy. RIF programs are in schools, community centers, hospitals, military bases, and other locations that serve children from low-income families, children with disabilities, homeless children, and children without adequate access to libraries. For 44 years, RIF has provided millions of children the opportunity to choose free and high-quality books to read and keep for themselves.
But it’s okay– it’s not like comic sales are going down or anything. Besides, you don’t actually have to know how to read to read comics. Amirite?
Captain America Movie Red Skull Works For…?
Loyal and even semi-conscious comics fans know that Captain America’s arch-nemesis (love that phrase) the Red Skull was a big-time Nazi in the 1940s. The next decade, he was a Commie, proving you don’t have to be a Republican to conflate the two extreme opposites. In the 1960s – and ever since – he’s worked with (more or less) lots of organizations but was always in it for himself.
The movie Red Skull is a bit more confusing.
Entertainment Weekly released the above photo of Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull (a.k.a. Johann Schmidt) in this summer’s Captain America: The First Avenger, an origin story largely set in World War II. But if you take a close look at that belt buckle he’s wearing, it appears that at some point in the movie Skully gets… Hydrated.
Unless the shot is actually from the 2012 Avengers movie.
ALL PULP’S A BOOK A DAY IS SPYING ON YOU!!!
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ALL PULP’S SITE SPOTLIGHT TAKES A LOOK AT THEPULP.NET!
From the site-
Long before TV, when movies were silent and radio was rarely heard, the pulp magazines burst onto the scene. The cheaply produced magazines offered an eager populace with a pasttime that carried them to far–away places on adventures far beyond their everyday lives.
Those stories live on in the brittle pages of the aging pulp magazines. Collected on these virtual pages of ThePulp.Net are articles and information about the pulps and scores of links to sites with even more details.
Review: Bambi: Diamond Edition
Walt Disney was a genius on many levels but one that doesn’t get talked about often enough was his way of directly reaching children in gentle and moving ways. He emphasized strong stories and inventive characters, letting the animation style and music convey the emotions. From the title sequence to the first song, “[[[April Shower]]]”, you are transported into the world of [[[Bambi]]]. The latest in Walt Disney Home Entertainment’s long line of high definition restorations, [[[Bambi Diamond Edition]]] is out this week and automatically goes on the Must Have list.
I don’t remember seeing this as a kid, but watching it twice through my children’s’ eyes made this message work across then generations. I’ll tell you upfront that the Blu-ray edition is gorgeous to watch and listen to. Thanks to the patented multi-plane process, the subtle colors and painterly approach to the forest and its denizens have never looked better. Given its emotional wallop about halfway through, it makes sense that the story feels simple but is actually streamlined.
Once we meet Bambi and his mother, we move into the deer’s world. That’s when the cartoony look arrives with the arrival of Thumper. Despite his talkativeness, there are long silent stretches where the score and beautiful scenery get to shine. The flora and fauna are detailed enough to feel real without overwhelming the animals inhabiting the land. Thumper, the owl, and Flower the skunk are some of the best animals Disney’s Nine Old Men created because they studied the real things as well as young children, finding commonalities that can be used to entrance the young audience.
And when Bambi’s mother dies, the loud crack of the rifle remains one of the most riveting sounds in all cinema. The unseen enemy, man, is not condemned but accepted as one of life’s dangers. As Bambi’s father arrives to take responsibility, he stands majestic, his place in the animal hierarchy secure. Bambi has to grow up sooner than most of his peers but does so and the transition from child to teen to adult is one of the stronger threads holding the film together. (more…)
Twitter Updates for 2011-03-04
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ALL PULP NEWSSTAND NIGHTHAWK EDITION, 3/3/11
ALL PULP
NIGHTHAWK EDITION
3/3/11
NEW PULP COLUMN AT COMICS RELATED!
Mark Halegua, noted Pulp Enthusiast and Entrepeneur, debuted a Pulp centric column at the top notch comic and pop culture site, Comics Related! Mark’s column, PULPS 1st, opens today with a background history on pulps that long time fans will enjoy and new readers can get just enough out of to make them want to know more! Mark will cover Pulp with his inimitable style of hardcore fan and a knowledge base of just what Pulp should be in coming columns! ALL PULP congratulates Mark on his debut and Comics Related for getting the right man for the job!
AUTHOR ANNOUNCES NEW DIGITAL NOVEL!!!
From Teel James Glenn-
I’m excited to announce the publication of “Shadows of New York” Published by BooksforaBuck.com
About the Book:
In the 1930s, the world stands at the brink of war, Japan is intent on its conquest of China, and criminal masterminds are using the confusion to carve out their own empires. Into this world strides Dr. Shadows.
When his plane was shot down over Korea by the Japanese, Dr. Shadows was nearly killed, being rescued by Korean monks who nursed him back to health with an herbal treatment that turned his skin an ashen gray, but that also gives him a speed and agility unmatched by others. After years of healing and martial arts training, Dr. Shadows is back in New York where he’s established the Shadows Foundation for Justice. Through this organization (and with the help of sidekicks Slugger Harris and monk and martial artist Dr. Hoon and perky Lee Han Ku (Hank)) he’ll attempt to right wrongs, solve crimes, and defeat crimelords whose greed is spurring the world toward war.
Author Teel James Glenn creates a pulp-fiction hero who would have been at home with the pulp action characters of the 1930s–Doc Savage, Batman, the Shadow, and Secret Agent X, and who would have battled arch-fiends like Fu Manchu. Glenn’s New York is not the glamorous stage for theater and the super-rich, but bars, Chinatown, and secret societies.
Fans of pulp fiction will enjoy the name-dropping of mostly-forgotten characters, and the careful reconstruction of an era that is now in the past and perhaps never fully existed.
And as an added incentive the book is only One Dollar for the remainder of March at booksforabuck.com!!!
THE PANEL THAT JUST WON’T STOP!!!
We originally said ‘Here’s a Panel Topic everyone should sound off on’ and we were right….people keep sending responses, so we thought it’d be good to repost just in case you weren’t caught up…Got a response of your own? Send it in!
We all know that DC announced this week that its FIRST WAVE line, the one that combined Batman, Doc Savage, the Spirit, and other Golden Age pulp and comic characters into one sort of ‘timeless’ universe where dirigibles and cell phones coexisted, is being cancelled. This extremely controversial line of comics, made so by the fact that many pulp fans saw the portrayals of their favorite characters as mishandled at best, blasphemous at worse, has definitely stirred up a lot of talk. Here’s the panel topic-Was DC’s First Wave as bad as all that? If so, why? What does the cancelling of this line mean for the future of pulp centered comics, if anything? Email your panel responses to allpulp@yahoo.com and they’ll be posted here!
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From Teel James Glenn, writer in the pulp tradition….
Why did the First Wave fail? the art wasn’t bad and even some of the ideas were interesting, but the basic premise seemed to be that even though pulp chracters have endured in their original form for 70 years the writers at DC knew how to ‘fix’ them. Why fix what isn’t broken? I doubt any of the writers actually read any of the books they were ‘improving’ by changing basic premises and characters. It is the same problem most movie adaptations have; everyone thinks they can violate the very core of the creations they SAY they are ‘reimagining. Bullflock!
Uncreative people feed off other people’s creations and bring the level down. You have to honor the work of those who came before and then you can prehaps–prehaps- move forward with new creations that can interact with them. Always look at the ‘character/series’ bible and honor it as if it was gospel–because it is.
If DC wanted to do pulps right they should have hired pulp writers not guys who said in interviews “I never read the books”–arrogance like that deserves to be discarded…
From Barry Reese, Member of the Spectacled Seven….
Where do I start? DC mismanaged the entire line, starting with a series of interviews from creators that alienated the hardcore fans and made newer fans wonder why they should try a bunch of characters that even the main writer talked about with disdain. Then go on to the launch miniseries, which still hasn’t finished… Here’s a clue: don’t launch a new line of books with a book that’s supposed to set up the whole thing but doesn’t come out on time. Makes the entire affair look half-assed and poorly planned. Then you have a book (Doc Savage) that after a mediocre beginning slides into outright crapitude with shifting writers and artists. And don’t get me started on The Avenger stuff, which was such an insult to the original characters that I wish DC had just renamed it.
They shouldn’t have solicited the kickoff mini until it was completed. They should have hired people who not only understood the characters but who genuinely loved them — you can update the characters and still maintain their core… but you have to *want* to do that. And why include Batman in this universe if his only appearances would be in a one-shot special and the mini? They should have had a Bat-Man series set in this universe that the other books could have orbited around — the Bat guy sells, you know.
Mishandled and poor creative decisions. I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did.
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From Tommy Hancock, another of the Spectacled Seven
Mine will be short. It will be short because I didn’t read anything but the first issue of the FIRST WAVE mini series and the first three issues of DOC SAVAGE. Well, I say the first three issues, I actually only read the full first issue because I couldn’t stomach anymore of what they jokingly referred to as THE AVENGER.
I am not a purist. I am also not a ‘we have to make changes to everything’ sort either. I like what I like and I like companies and writers to produce things I like. It helps when they are producing stuff I like based on other stuff I already like. What didn’t work in this regard is DC not only didn’t produce stuff that I liked based on characters I adore, but they ignored me. I didn’t want DC to ask me my opinion, well, maybe I wanted them to, but didn’t expect it. But I, being a pretty big pulp fan, was simply left out of the equation when DC got their hands on these great characters. My opinion, my interests, my desire to see these characters live again…didn’t matter at all. The bad part for DC was that these new readers I guess they were trying to appeal to…didn’t have any buy in at all to these concepts and saw them for what they were…poorly handled editorially misdirected imitations at best, toilet paper with pictures on it at worst. And me, my buy in…it went to Moonstone, Doc Savage reprints, and new pulp…
Just sayin’…
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From Derrick Ferguson, yet another of the Spectacled Seven
I read the first three issues of DOC SAVAGE (hey, there was no way I wasn’t going read it) and was unimpressed. I have to admit that the idea of all these classic pulp characters and certain DC characters like The Blackhawks and The Spirit, who in my mind are pulp characters, appealed to me. But the execution was, in a word, lousy.
Here’s what I can’t wrap my head around: why in the world would you hire writers who plainly have no love or liking for the characters they’re writing about? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to hire writers who actually know, love and have a true desire to write the best possible Doc Savage or Avenger stories they possibly could? Stories that would not only thrill and delight old time fans but make newer readers sit up and understand why these characters are cool and remain so after so many years?
And yeah, I agree with Barry: it didn’t help to have interviews with writers who I felt were giving me the digitus impudicus for loving pulp and had really snotty attitudes toward not only the work they were producing but who they were producing it for.
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From Adam Garcia, Scribe of the Green Lama
I never read first Wave, but I think it’s fair to say it failed on execution rather than concept. While I advocate change, I don’t necessarily think you need to change everything, to make things effective. I’m more a believer that to keep things one specific way is a mistake and to open to adaptation. I’m 100% certain that First Wave would have been considered amazing if the story had been effective. Take the new Star Trek film as an example, a bottom to top reinvention that was overwhelmingly loved, or Batman: the Brave and the Bold or even the massive massive changes made to the Joker in Dark Knight. That’s what I’ve been arguing. Reinvention isn’t bad, it’s frankly the nature of pop culture, but refusing to accept it is.
You may not like the adaptation, that’s a fact of personal preference, but with licensed character adaptation is the only way the stay alive. So First Wave might have failed creatively, but I applaud the effort.
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Elizabeth Tadehara: Fan of The Shadow
Elizabeth Tadehara: Fan of The Shadow
I was shocked and angry when I learned through All Pulp that DC had finally decided to end First Wave. Then I wonder why? Why was I angry? Why was I shocked?
The art was not some of the Best work, I know DC is able and capable of turning out. Take First Wave’s One Shot with Doc and Batman. The art work seriously rubbed me all the wrong ways. Yet, it greatly improved with the actually series came out. While the good Doc’s was beautiful and captivating from the get go. Nor was the story… I’ll emit to not picking up any of Doc Savage’s First Waves after the first story arch, and the ones I did, I immediately put down cause they went off on some ungodly random tangent that the first four issues had not prepared me for. While First Wave, itself, let much to desired because I still have absolutely no idea what in blue blazes is going on. It’s like the writers for the series decided over coffee one day. “Hey! Who needs a decent story when you can just throw some well known character together and sees what happens?” Sheesh.
Now to why I was angry at the announcement of cancellation of First Wave. I had it on good authority that when DC approached the current owners of Doc Savage’s rights for First Wave, that this great Comic publisher agreed to also buy the rights to The Shadow. As an obsessed (yes, I am emitting to IT!) of The Shadow. I was hopefully and optimistic, since there has not been a decent comic form since DC’s: The Shadow Strikes.
The shock of the said cancellation wore off a few hours later, after I had some serious time to think about it. Even though, I am an obsessed fan, I am not by a purist either… cause sometimes the obsession out ways the purist. So I’m somewhat thankful, after reading all the other options, that they never got their hands on The Shadow. We do not need a repeat… Not after DC’s attempted update in the 1980s or (shutters) The Archie disaster.
As to the future of pulp comics. You need look no further than Moonstone. Enough said.
ALL PULP’S A BOOK A DAY TIMES THREE!
http://www.bearmanormedia.com/
 Written by one who knew them
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 Discovering the Hudson:
New York’s Landmark Theatre
From Broadway’s Beginnings to Live Television,
Jack Paar and Elvis
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