Baltimore Comic-Con 2010 summed up in three pictures
Even though the show is still very family friendly, you still get creepy old guys and fruits showing up…
…and by the end of the day, your kids look like this:
The Mix : What are people talking about today?
Lost ‘Dial M for Monkey’ Cartoon Surfaces!
Hey there kiddos. We were playing around working hard to find you awesome content the other day when we stumbled across this little gem! For those who recall the most excellent Dexter’s Laboratory cartoon, once shown on Cartoon Network (now being shown on Cartoon Network’s dump for it’s old toons and Hanna-Barbara classics, Boomerang!), had within it several “mini-shows”. While we were huge fans of the “Justice Friends” mock reality cartoon (in which Major Glory, the Infragable Krunk and the mighty Valhallan shared a small apartment…) the real gem of the extras was “Dial M for Monkey”. Monkey, an homage to SHIELD, Dial H for Hero, and several spy/superhero thrillers in the 60s, always spoke to me. Why? Cause super-powered monkeys are hilarious. Even more-so, super-powered monkey’s having to face off against a flamboyantly gay Silver Surfer homage, and his master, the planet eating Barbequor is too funny to pass up.
While the episode ran once in 2002 on Cartoon Network, it’s since been pulled from the run, due in part to the portrayal of said Surfer, but probably more due to the Infragable Krunk getting intoxicated, throwing up, and having to be driven home. Kids these days… so innocent. Don’t want them copying what they see on the the ole’ teevee now do we? But we trust you, loyal ComicMix fan. We’re gonna post up this “lost” episode for your enjoyment anyways. Cause we’re rebels like that. Rebels that love monkeys.
Review: ‘Amulet Book Three: The Cloud Searchers’
Amulet Book Three: The Cloud Searchers
By Kazu Kibuishi
Scholastic/Graphix, 208 pages, $10.99 (paperback)
When last we left the cast of [[[Amulet]]], they were in the forest being chased by the bad guys and things were slowly starting to make sense for Emily, keep of the powerful stone. They managed to survive the evil king’s forces but it took a toll, damaging the mechanical tree house they used for a refuge.
Now, a year later, the third installment in Kazu Kibuishi’s fantasy graphic novel series continues from Scholastic’s Graphix imprint. Across 200 colorful pages, Kibuishi manages to explain a bit more about what is going on, raising the stakes, and moving the players to a new level.
Unfortunately, the overly familiar story gets feels even less original as they wend their way to Mos Eisley in search of a pilot wiling to take them to the cloud city of Bespin. That’s pretty much all that happens from a big picture standpoint but we also see Emily accept the power of her stone and begin to train with it. She and the prince, Trellis, forge an unusual bond.
The remainder of the cast is woefully underutilized so Emily’s mom, her brother Navin, the titular leader Leon Redbeard and others are all along for the ride but are given virtually nothing to do. Instead, we meet Enzo, the grizzled pilot of the Luna Moth, who of course has an unexplained history with Selina, owner of the floating fueling station.
Filling out the rest of the book are either chase scenes, fight scenes or aerial combat scenes that must be fun to write and draw but do little to make the world seem any more real or interesting. There are also all-too-brief interludes such as a nice bit between Emily and her mom, but doesn’t make either character any more interesting.
There’s no recap page so anyone starting with volume three is somewhat lost nor do we have a sense of how many volumes it will take for Emily the Stonekeeper to fulfill her destiny and rid her world of the evil king.
The world of Alledia, described as a land of “wildly imaginative and dangerous things”, is the most imaginative part of the series and Kibuishi is ably assisted by an army of colorists who do a nice job. The notion of an order of stonekeepers protecting the world is a timeworn concept that should offer some twists and turns but seems to be merely a semi-sentient object of power.
While these books remain top sellers for Scholastic, I can’t help but want something fresher and more imaginative for the 9-12 readers who seem to gobble these books up.
Season 11 of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ Released!
ABC’s Dancing with the Stars announced the star-studded celebrity participants for the upcoming 11th season! This fall taking the stage will be:
- Brandy, who will reignite her career right out of the grave it’s been sleeping in since it keeled over in 1998.
- Jennifer Grey, who will prove once more why “Baby” shoulda’ stayed in the corner.
- Margaret Cho, who will show off all the fat she shed back in 2005, when people still didn’t find her funny. Cho, famous for calling herself a “fag hag” will be an instant fan favorite for the target of DWTS… the “hyper-gays”.
- Audrina Patridge, who was on some show on MTV called the Hills. I had to look that up on Wikipedia, so that pretty much shows you just what class of celebrity passes for a “Star” on this show.
- Florence Henderson, who will remind us why she was on VH1’s “Surreal Life”… because even on a show surrounded by Z-listers, ole’ Carole Brady can brighten a screen long enough for you to remember her acting ability is much like her star power. By the way, did you know she’s hocking internet service for seniors now? I rest my case.
- Bristol Palin, who will prove to America that with a little charm, a little limelight, and a mother who looks like Tina Fey… anything is possible. Just a quick network note, if for any reason Bristol needs to attend to her child, her spot will be replaced by someone with as much ‘star cred’ as Bristol; Remember Joe the Plumber?
- Michael Bolton, who will show the wit, class, and grace he’s always shown when in the public eye. In order to combat the instant narcolepsy effect that will occur when people see him, ABC will cut all his performances in with clips from Pokemon.
- Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino, who will, to no one’s surprise, dance all numbers without a shirt. This should create high drama with the judges, and gay population rooting for Chunk-Lite Cho.
- David Hasselhoff, fresh off his comedy central roast, will dance as long as he is paid in plastic bottles of Vodka, purchased from the drug store down the street from the set.
- Kurt Warner, this season’s token athlete, fresh off his 2008 Super Bowl loss as an Arizona Cardinal. We’re not actually knocking his NFL career, he was amazing. But as a dancer? We’re hoping for a career ending injury.
- Kyle Massey, who we also had to look up on wikipedia, is from Disney’s That So Raven. Seriously? Is Raven Symone too good for the show, that they instead hire a 4th rate Keenan Thompson?
- Rick Fox, the second token athlete… with 3 NBA championships under his belt, and a recent 2009 loss on Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? Fox is set to ballroom dance his way back to the lowest tier of page 20 in People Magazine.
We can’t wait to tune in to see who eventually takes home the golden dance shoes. In an unrelated story, Spike TV is bringing back the third season of it’s hit show, 1000 Ways to Die. SPOILER ALERT. #957? Watching Dancing with the Stars, 10 seasons after it peaked.
Henson Family Donates Original Muppets to the Smithsonian
Alongside his not-as-famous pals, Kermit the Frog was donated to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History by Jim Henson’s wife, Jane, this past Wednesday. Originally cast as a post-news puppet show, Kermit and the original Muppets debuted in 5 minute sketches, usually lip-syncing to popular music, after the local news.
While most today won’t recognize the other puppet-cohorts of Kermit, the museum plans to show clips from early appearances, and help promote the new display in the Pop Culture Gallery, set to debut in November. Curator Dwight Blocker Bowers (say that three times fast) said the Muppets would be a welcome addition to the museum’s collection. “It certainly shows the Muppets at the beginning of the career of a large family of entertainers,” he said. “More than anything, I think it shows the genius of Jim Henson.”
In order to hype this donation, and future installation, a road show has been set up, with a first opening in the Windy City, opening on September 24th at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.
Jane donated this first batch of Muppets, with plans to continue the donation in the years to come. We hope in time to take out own children (when we have children, mind you) to the Smithsonian to see some of our favorites from Henson’s workshop, including any Muppets who made their way into Bill Cosby’s show. You know that episode we’re talking about. Doc eats the sausage sandwich, and have some weird dreams, ala Muppetland. He’s visited by the Hippocritic Oaf, and eventually opens the fridge to find all the contents to have been transformed into puppetry. But we digress… At very least, expect Kermit’s longtime female companion, the far-from-kosher Ms. Piggy to join her lime-green romeo soon (in tow, we’re sure, with other actual major Muppet players). In the mean time… Expect Kermit and his pals to enjoy the sans-pig-silence.
Tip of the hat to artdaily, for sharing. Cause sharing is caring.
Review: ‘FlashForward The Complete Series’
In 1999, Robert J. Sawyer wrote FlashForward
, a clever science fiction novel that showed how the world reacted to a suddenly global blackout and people glimpsing their futures 21 years hence. The catalytic event was centered at the CERN supercollider in Europe and largely focused on the scientists who worked there.
Interestingly, it was optioned for television and was being developed into a series at HBO, which decided it was trending more towards a prime time broadcast network show, so the rights got to ABC. With great fanfare and terrific initial reviews, the show debuted on September 24, 2009.
Maybe it should have stayed a limited run series on the premium channel. The resulting 22 episodes had lofty goals and a dynamite cast, but the sprawling story was messy, with way too many things not holding up well enough to sustain viewer interest. Ratings suffered after the show took a break at the midpoint and was finally ended on May 27. On Tuesday, ABC Studios is releasing FlashForward: The Complete Series
as a five disc set.
One of the creative problems was that the producers had no idea how much time they had to tell their story. They received an initial order for thirteen and it was a month after the debut before ABC ordered the back nine and subsequently added three episodes to the order. As the ratings nosedived, the order was trimmed from 25 to 24 and finally the standard 22. The feeling that they were spinning their wheels makes sense now that you see what they had to deal with.
Additionally, the personnel guiding the characters and storylines also shifted which led to altered tones. The show was initially being run by Marc Guggenheim, David S. Goyer and Brannon Braga but shortly after the full season was ordered, Guggenheim left the show and Goyer took over until February when he moved away from the sinking ship, letting his wife Jessika, Lisa Zwerling and Timothy J. Lea complete the series.
What should have been a limited series run made substantive changes to Sawyer’s novel beginning with altering the flash forward from 21 years to a handful of months, April 29, 2010. The ensemble cast was centered not at CERN but at the Los Angeles branch of the FBI. Over the course of the first few episodes, it was fascinating to see people react to their visions or lack of visions. The FBI team, led by an overly dour Ralph Fiennes, discovered a vast conspiracy behind the event and their investigations let us meet many people around the world and get a greater sense of what was experienced and how society was being altered.
‘Spider-Man’ caught by Australians
Dateline: Sydney! It seems a fickle Frenchman, nicknamed “Spider-Man” was nabbed by Aussie Police after he scaled a 57-story building in Sydney, with his bare hands! Alain “So not Peter Parker” Robert is a noted building climber… having scaled over 70 buildings, (as only a spider can.) including the 41-story Royal Bank of Scotland building in Sydney, The Sears Willis (ugh) Tower in Chicago, and the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lampur.
It seems this Spider-Man has had plenty of run-ins with the law, having paid a whopping $676 dollar fine once before to the Aussie Feds for his previous scaling of the aforementioned Royal Bank, as well as numerous arrests for his previous climbs. “I’m sad he’s been arrested, but hopefully he’ll get out soon and we can have some champagne,” said his agent, Max Markson. We can only assume Robert and Markson’s next scaling may be away from the land-down-under. We suggest Chicago’s Trump Tower next. Why? Cause the Donald loves publicity stunts, and his half-filled building needs a little TLC from the media.
We stopped the editor of the Daily Bugle, one J. Jonah Jameson, who had this to say: “If we only knew the identity of our own city’s wall-crawler we could fine him too for all the buildings he’s scaled. I talked to our attorney, Matt Murdock, and he’s certain that if that French kid gets arresting for just climbing a building, our web-spinning, car-flipping, joke-spewing ‘Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’ would get an instant ‘Go to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200’ card! And we’ll figure out WHO the web-crawler is too… All we need is one more day.”
Kudos to Yahoo! for this one.
The Point Radio: WHITE COLLAR Stands Out
Add WHITE COLLAR to the list of summer hits on the USA Network – and series star MATT BOMER talks about what he feels makes the show work, plus his possible return to CHUCK as well. And comics on Tuesdays – but not for most of us! Diamond sets the rules again!
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Review: ‘Batman: The Brave and the Bold Season One, Part One’
Growing up in the 1960s, DC’s super-heroes were proud to don their uniforms and battle for truth, justice, and the American way. They had a relatively easy camaraderie with one another and they used their wits and their powers to get out the devilish death-traps they inevitably found themselves in every now and then.
While DC’s heroes and villains have been successfully translated to animation through the years, none have quite captured that colorful joy in being a super-hero. As successful as Warner Animations[[[ Batman]]], [[[Superman]]] and [[[Justice League]]] have been for the current generation of fans, [[[Batman: The Brave and the Bold]]] is the show that those of us from an earlier era have been waiting for. No Wonder Twins, no Wendy & Marvin – our heroes and villains doing what they do best.
The first thirteen episodes of the Cartoon Network series are collected on Batman: The Brave and the Bold Season One, Part One. The two-disc set, without any extras whatsoever, is being released Tuesday and is a joy to have. Producers James Tucker and Michael Jelenic have designed a show that celebrates the heroic and it is brighter, jazzier, and in many ways more action-packed than its predecessors. Each episode opens with a teaser that shows the conclusion of another successful team-up between Batman and a member of the heroic community then we get a complete tale with a different collaboration.
The show has taken great pains to explore the far-reaches of the DC Universe, across the stars and through the years. As a result, one never knows who will be seen next which brings a sense of delight to the viewing experience. Batman is equally comfortable in the past, fighting Morgaine le Fey alongside Etrigan the Demon, as he is battling in the years of the Great Disaster, aiding Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth. The writers have demonstrated not only a keen understanding of the core elements that make each hero and villain distinct, but adapts them well to television in order to avoid having them appear too similar to one another. The exception is Green Arrow, and the rivalry between the two heroes provides some welcome comic relief. Aquaman, king of the seven seas is also seen as a dim blowhard, eager for an adventure, always struggling to come up with an engaging name for it.
About the only adaptation that has failed to work for me is portraying Metamorpho, Black Lightning and Katana – the Outsiders – as a group of snotty teens. The most successful might be Jaime Reyes, the current Blue Beetle, who is one of the most frequent guest stars and is seen as a hero in training, struggling to gain the respect and approval of his mentors.
While bright and shiny, they still show death and its ramifications, as witnessed by the recap of Bruce Wayne’s youth and other random, senseless acts of violence. Batman has overcome those dark days and is a tireless, driven crimefighter, ready to take on any threat. His square-jawed design is evocative of how he was depicted by the likes of Sheldon Moldoff and Mike Sekowsky in the early 1960s, just before the “New Look” era began. The one element I feel does the show a disservice is the ability for his cape to morph into a jetpack while the Batmobile is an all-in-one sea to surface to air vehicle. While these are lovely animation shortcuts, they take us a step beyond the Batman they are celebrating.
And don’t think its all adventure as many stories also deal with emotional themes such as Red Tornado’s quest for humanity and Wildcat struggling with age.
The first half season ends with a two-part visit to a parallel world and the Injustice Syndicate, as batman struggles to fit in disguised as his counterpart Owlman. As one would expect justice triumphs but not without putting up a vigorous fight.
This set is a welcome addition to the DC video library and comes well recommended.
2010 Harvey Awards Announced!
The Harvey Awards, named for famed writer/cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman, once again hit the Baltimore Comic Con in style. Emceed by PvP’s esteemed artist and writer Scott Kurtz (not only because his name is close to Harvey’s, but because he’s genuinely funny!), is held in tandem with a celebratory dinner and ceremony. Our intrepid Glenn Hauman was on scene tweeting the winners to us all, and shucks, he even joined the folks for the after-party. We here at ComicMix congratulate all this years nominees and celebrate the victories for this years winners! Did your favorite take home the ole’ Harv’? Find out below!
Best Writer:
This years nominees are:
- Jason Aaron, Scalped, Vertigo/DC
- Geoff Johns, Blackest Night, DC
- Robert Kirkman, The Walking Dead, Image Comics
- Jeff Kiney, Diary of a Wimpy Kid #3, Amulet Books
- Mark Waid, Irredeemable, Boom! Studios
And the winner: Robert “Suck it Johns, I PWN Zombies” Kirkman!
He joins other Harvey Winners like Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Brian K. Vaugn, and Neil Gaiman!
Best Artist:
This years nominees are:
- Robert Crumb, Book of Genesis, W.W. Norton
- Guy Davis, BPRD:Black Goddess, Dark Horse Comics
- Brian Fies, Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow, Abrams ComicArts
- David Petersen, Mouse Guard: Winter 1152, Archaia Entertainment
- Frank Quitely, Batman and Robin, DC
- JH Williams III, Detective Comics, DC
And the winner: Robert Crumb!
He joins other Harvey Winners like Dave Gibbons, Alex Ross, Mike Mignola, and Brian Bolland… but c’mon. He’s already had a movie about his life. Gibbons, Ross, Mignola, and Bolland should be proud they now share this award with Robert.
Best Cartoonist:
This years nominees are:
- Darwyn Cooke, Richard Stark’s Parker: The Hunter, IDW
- Jeff Kinney, Diary of a Wimpy Kid #3, Amulet Books
- Roger Langridge, The Muppet Show Comic Book, Boom! Studios
- David Mazzucchelli, Asterios Polyp, Pantheon
- Seth, George Sprott (1894-1975), Drawn and Quarterly
And the winner: Darwyn “Now who do I fight next?” Cooke!
He joins other Harvey Winners like Paul Chadwick, Jeff Smith, Chris Ware, and Sergio Aragones!
