Category: News

MICHAEL H. PRICE: Movies Is Comics and Comics Is Movies

price-brown-100-1768211I’ve gone into some detail elsewhere about how my Forgotten Horrors series of movie encyclopedias (1979 and onward) dovetails with my collaborative comic-book efforts with Timothy Truman and John K. Snyder III. More about all that as things develop at ComicMix. This new batch of Forgotten Horrors commentaries will have more to do with the overall relationship between movies and the comics and, off-and-on, with the self-contained appeal of motion pictures. I have yet to meet the comics enthusiast who lacks an appreciation of film.

Although it is especially plain nowadays that comics exert a significant bearing upon the moviemaking business – with fresh evidence in marquee-value outcroppings for the Spider-Man and TMNT franchises and 300 – the greater historical perspective finds the relationship to be quite the other way around.

It helps to remember a couple of things: Both movies and comics, pretty much as we know them today, began developing late in the 19th century. And an outmoded term for comics is movies; its popular usage as such dates from comparatively recent times. The notion of movies-on-paper took a decisive shape during the 1910s, when a newspaper illustrator named Ed Wheelan began spoofing the moving pictures (also known among the shirtsleeves audience as “moom pitchers” and “fillums”), with cinema-like visual grammar, in a loose-knit series for William Randolph Hearst’s New York American.

Christened Midget Movies in 1918, Wheelan’s series evolved from quick-sketch parodies of cinematic topics to sustained narratives, running for days at a stretch and combining melodramatic plot-and-character developments with cartoonish exaggerations. Wheelan’s move to the Adams Syndicate in 1921 prompted a change of title, to Minute Movies. (Don Markstein’s Web-based Toonopedia points out that the term is “mine-yute,” as in tiny, rather than “minnit,” as in a measure of time. No doubt an intended sense of connection with the Hearst trademark Midget Movies.) Chester Gould showed up in 1924 with a Wheelan takeoff called Fillum Fables – seven years before Gould’s more distinctive breakthrough with Dick Tracy. (more…)

The Secrets Behind The Comics debuts!

Just in time to butter up good ol’ Mom, the Big ComicMix Weekend Broadcast is here – and the debut of our Secrets Behind The Comics feature – we take a look at the guy in charge of making Catwoman and Wonder Woman look their best, plus news on how you can write your own ending to your favorite TV show, where you could soon find some great classic TV and how to survive Life Without Heroes, plus a trip back to when Spawn was red hot on the comic shelves.

Press The Button. Mom said it was OK!

Flash gets real

quinto1-4595847Gina Holden will be starring with Eric Johnson in the SciFi Channel’s new Flash Gordon series, debuting this August. No stranger to heroic fantasy projects, the Canadian actress previously appeared in Fantastic Four, The Butterfly Effect 2 and the upcoming Alien vs. Predator 2.

Based upon Alex Raymond’s classic newspaper comic strip, SciFi has already committed to a full 22 episode season. Jody Racicot (Night at the Museum) will play Dr. Hans Zarkov, and John Ralston (Earthstorm) will play the greatest villain of all time, Mongo’s Emperor Ming the Merciless. Anna van Hoft will play Ming’s daughter Aura, who has the hots for Flash and, therefore, doesn’t like Dale very much.

No word on who’s going to play Vultan, king of the original Hawkmen. Brian Blessed, who played the role in the 1980 motion picture, is currently filming Doctor Who.

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RSS feeds good, online comics better

RSS feeds are funny things.  They let folks with newsreaders and busy lives know when you’ve posted something new, but they (either the feeds or newsreaders) can be spotty at times and you almost miss stuff.  Take Gene Yang’s terrific responses to MySpace making American Born Chinese a featured book, an essay he calls Does acknowledging a stereotype perpetuate it?.  It was posted on May 1 but didn’t show up on my newsreader until a few days ago.  I’m still shaking my head that Yang’s essay was even necessary, as it addresses people who haven’t even read his book but are complaining about a character deliberately portrayed as offensive.  (There’s actually a blog term for folks like this; we call them "concern trolls.")

ctdwn_50-4-2035590Speaking of MySpace, all 22 pages of DC’s Countdown issue 51 are now up on the Comicbooks blog, as well as the first half of issue 50.  MySpace blogs do have site feeds (here’s the Comicbook blog’s feed) so you can read at least partial blog entries without joining the service.  The feeds are often tricky to find (you often need to be on the blog in the first place to see the "RSS" choice at the top right), but worth it if you want alerts on new posts.

I grabbed Vulture’s site feed from New York Magazine as soon as I saw they were featuring weekly graphic novel excerpts the same way many magazines feature prose novel excerpts.  This week it’s Nick Bertozzi’s The Salon.

Were it not for Becky Cloonan (who has a site feed) I wouldn’t have known at all about Amy Kim Ganter serializing the second issue of Sorcerers and Secretaries, because Amy’s site doesn’t seem to cater to RSS readers.

One of the best things about having an RSS reader is that you get to save posts to write about later.  Thanks to this site feed report, I’ve now closed four or five saved posts.

And yes, ComicMix has a site feed — stable but ever evolving, like the rest of this site.

(Artwork copyright 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.)

RIC MEYERS: The Thai’s have it

ric-meyers-100-7603117 As a contributor (audio commentaries, on-camera interviews, liner notes, and packaging copy) to more than three hundred DVDs in America and Asia, I’’ve always wanted a source for what ComicMix is now allowing me to do — review DVDs specifically on the quality of their extras (audio commentaries, makings-of, et al). When deciding upon which DVDs to buy and which to rent, that’’s often the deciding factor.

All too often in DVD reviews, the extras are simply listed, which is misleading at best, since I’’ve suffered through dry, taciturn, frustrating commentaries from a star-studded roster (the pre-ultimate edition The Spy Who Loved Me), but also reveled in funny, enlightening, seemingly drunken revelries (Conan the Barbarian). And even in the most prestigious publications, the critics get bogged down in their opinions of the films in question, leaving precious little copy for the quality of the extras accompanying them on the disc.

But enough raison d’’etre. Now it’s time for shameful confessions. Naturally, I wanted to fill this first edition with insightful analysis of the most famous, anticipated DVDs on the market, but find myself presently concerned with quirky titles many of you might not have even heard of.

So, what to do, what to do: detail the flowing bounty of extras to be found on the consistently entertaining but hardly hilarious Night at the Museum or well-made but uninvolving Dreamgirls, or tell you about the demented delights of Thai cinema?

Well, given that this site is called ComicMix, and I’’m best known for Jackie Chan comics and my annual three-hour San Diego Comic-Con Superhero Kung-Fu Extravaganza, I’’m going for the stuff that’s as exhilarating and under-reported as comic books. Staggering into video shops this week are some DVDs that will either have you trawling for Thai flicks forever or keep you from seeing another ever again.

born2fight-8833677 More accessible and superheroic is Born to Fight (Dragon Dynasty [The Weinstein Co.] Two-Disc Ultimate Edition), which is flailing feverishly to get out of the shadow of Thailand’s most famous and popular action export (Thai Warrior, aka Ong-Bak). The same fearless stunt crew worked on both films, but the latter starred Muy Thai boxing great Tony Jaa, who’s attitude and strength mirror Bruce Lee while his acrobatics and films crib from Jackie Chan’’s homework.

In order to differentiate itself from Tony, the Born to Fight crew decided to create even sicker, and more bone-breaking stunts, while catering to Thai patriotism, in a plot that has a village overrun by nuke-carrying terrorists on the same day it’s being visited by the Thai Olympic team. The disc’s main extra — an hour-long behind-the-scenes documentary – lays it all out in loving, if repetitive, detail, with many interviews and glimpses at the set-ups for the insane stunts.

It’’s hard not to marvel at the filmmakers’ passion, love for Thai tradition, and the crew’s willingness to risk their lives to gain America and Asia’s respect. The result is a flick that balances goofy and great (featuring one stomach-turning moment of near-suicide as a stuntman nearly gets ground up under a tractor-trailer’s wheels). (more…)

Happy 70th birthday, George Carlin!

George Carlin.  Seven decades of living, five decades of performing. From the Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television to Mr. Conductor on Shining Time Station to Rufus from the Bill & Ted movies, Cardinal Glick in Dogma, and Fillmore in Cars. With extra cool points for being arrested at the same time as Lenny Bruce.

"Things that you want to change in the world have to start inside yourself. You can’t just acquiesce. You can’t be at the mall, with a fannypack on, scratching your nuts, buying sneakers with lights in them. You have to be thinking. You have to be resisting. You have to be talking."

Happy birthday, man.

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MARTHA THOMASES: Mom’s the word

martha-arthur-1683535Tomorrow is Mothers Day. To some, it’s the most important day of the year. To others, it’s a crass exploitation, using real feelings to sell flowers, brunch, and long-distance calls.

In superhero comics, it’s pretty much a non-event. Good mothers are almost non-existent, if not dead. The good moms send their children away (see Lara) or die in a rain of pearls (Martha Wayne). Living moms are over-bearing control fiends (Phantom Girl’s mom in the 31st Century) or distracted career women (Queen Hippolyta). Recently, the mother in Blue Beetle looks like she has the most realistic relationship with her kids.

Except for Sue Storm, there aren’t any premiere super-hero moms.

The best moms in comics are those who adopt. Martha Kent, Aunt May, even Alfred Pennyworth did fabulously maternal jobs raising children who would grow up to make the world a better place.

Why is this? Some of it may be a remnant from folk tales, where heroes are orphaned so they may have adventures without familial responsibilities or ties to complicate the quest. More to the point, superhero comics are power fantasies, often aimed at adolescents (of all ages) who are extremely frustrated with their bodies. Imagining super-strength, flight, and other extraordinary abilities is comforting and satisfying to someone experiencing growth spurts, hormonal fluctuations and acne.

This is not compatible with feeling like somebody’s baby. And you will always be your mom’s sweet baby.

A mother is an even more uncomfortable reminder of sexuality. Until recently, one couldn’t be a mother without having sex. Children don’t like to think about their parents having sex. (Parents also don’t like thinking about their children having sex, even when their children are grown.) An adoptive mother can be pure and untouched, at least in the mind of her child.

And yet, being a mother is an astonishingly sensual experience. It’s more complicated and more pure than could be easily conveyed in a 22-page story, even by an expert, and almost certainly not by a man. The smell of your child’s head, the smoothness of a baby’s skin, the music of a toddler’s laugh – these are glorious sensations. Beyond this kind of intimate contact, having a child permits a mother to experience the wonders of life all over again. As an adult, you expect to see snow or rain or flowers in the spring, but these are new and awe-inspiring to a child. You know why a fire fighter wears red suspenders, but it’s all new to your kid.

(more…)

Iron Man gets real

ironmovieposter-5697589If the fighter jet scenes in next year’s Iron Man movie look very realistic, that’s because they were filmed at Edwards Air Force Base with about a dozen Marines, 150 Airmen, and real Air Force aircraft – and some of the newest stuff at that!

Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Lt. Col. Jim Rhodes (Terrence Howard) share what the American Forces Press Service described as a "heated scene" in front of 20 Air Force "pilots" — all active-duty airmen and Marines who auditioned to be extras — between a  F-22 Raptor and a bulb-nosed Global Hawk.

Director Jon Favreau said brought realism to Iron Man.  "This is the best back lot you could ever have," he said. "Every angle you shoot is authentic: desert, dry lake beds, hangars."

"This is a movie about superheroes, and my son might watch it," Sergeant Danny Vaughn told the American Forces Press Service. He’s hoping 7-year-old Danny III will get to see his dad acting as 2nd Lt. Eric Huppert, one of Rhodie’s pilots in the hangar, or as an Army special operations Soldier walking across the camera during the previous day’s shoot.

Iron Man is scheduled for release in May, 2008.

(Special thanks to John Tebbel for the legwork.)

Could it be… magic?

Some of us are total suckers for magic. I mean, let’s be honest, all that super-science stuff that purports to explain how people have superpowers and everything — how different is that really than just saying "He flies? She shoots beams from her eyes? It’s magic!"

To some of us it’s all much of a muchness, but superhero comics universes are peculiar about that sort of thing, they seem to demand differing levels of disbelief-suspension depending on whether we’re talking about Batman or the Spectre, Spidey or Dr. Strange.

At both Marvel and DC, magic is a part of their fictional universes but, like religion, is usually distinguished from the mythmaking involving superscience. The DC Universe has had a number of recent stories dealing with a transformation of how magic works in that fictional milieu, and now Marvel’s about to undergo a similar shift in their interpretation of the fantastic.

mahandbookpg00-8379095For my money, even though I’m not paying for it, the best story currently dealing with DC’s attitude towards magic and superheroes is the Doctor Thirteen backup tale currently running in Tales of the Unexpected, wherein superscience and magic and nonsense and fourth-wall breaking all collide in a fun romp that proves DC is well schooled on how to puncture its own pomposity. Maybe it’s not Ambush Bug-level surreality, but you can’t go wrong with talking pirate gorillas, parodies of the 52 writers, and Infectious Lass.

Now Marvel’s gearing up for their own big magic event this summer, Mystic Arcana, leading off with, appropriately enough, a Magik one-shot written by one of my personal heroes, Louise Simonson.  Firm believers in not being able to tell the players without a scorecard, Marvel’s also bringing out a companion guide called Mystic Arcana: The Book of Marvel Magic, 64 pages of bios and character sketches and probably not storytelling.

Meanwhile, Scott at Polite Dissent decries the use of the "humans only use 10% of their brains" misinformation employed so often in comic book fiction as a way of introducing magical (or even superhuman) abilities.  Dang, there goes about 90% of the captioning for future origin stories!

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Bionic Woman Returns

michelle_ryan-2k5-arena-calendar-5844310NBC has picked up David Eick’s remake of The Bionic Woman for the 2007 -2008 season.

Eick was best known for his work as executive producer of the remake of Battlestar Galactica, running on NBC’s Sci-Fi Network. Now he’s best known as teevee’s go-to guy for science ficiton teevee revivals.

The revisioned series stars British actress Michelle Ryan as Jaime Sommers. Eick has said that they only used the title of the series as their starting point and that the show will go in its own direction. So we know Ryan will have a chip on her shoulder – as well as everyplace else – and, well, that she’s a woman.

Galactica‘s Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck) co-stars in the pilot as the mandatory evil bionic woman. Whereas she worked on this during her brief time-off from Galactica, since Eick wrote the pilot we shouldn’t be astonished if we see her come back – certainly, after Galactica wraps its next and final season.

No word on any reappearance of The Six Million Dollar Man. Today, six mill wouldn’t buy you a used Dalek.

 

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