He sees you when you’re sleeping… and he feels your presents…
Merry Sithmas!
Here’s the link to the original.
The Mix : What are people talking about today?
‘Doctor Who’ meets ‘Sliders’ as Jerry O’Connell cast in David Tennant’s new pilot
The explorer of alternate universes is about to meet the last Time Lord.
Jerry O’Connell, best known to genre fans as Quinn Mallory in Sliders, will co-star opposite Doctor Who‘s David Tennant in the pilot of NBC’s dramedy Rex Is Not Your Lawyer, replacing Sendhil Ramamurthy just days after he was cast in the role. (Ramamurthy, who also stars on NBC’s Heroes, stepped aside because of scheduling conflicts.)
According to Cynopsis, O’Connell will play an ambitious though good-natured lawyer who was used to playing second fiddle to Rex (David Tennant) until Rex’s career changes. O’Connell’s character also falls in love with Rex’s fiance. The pilot has also cast Lindsey Kraft to play Rex’s assistant and Cleo King as a practical-minded private school bus driver.
And the fan-fiction crossovers are starting on LiveJournal right… now.
The Point Radio: Backstage At ‘The Cleveland Show’
Love it or hate it, fans of FAMILY GUY seem to be equally divided on Seth McFarlane’s spin off, THE CLEVELAND SHOW. This week, we go backstage of the show Fox has renewed for TWO seasons. Plus another classic weekend at the Box Office and can you imagine The Nutcracker as an action hero?
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Review: Three Collections of Classic Adaptations
Comics don’t have to be bad for you, you know. They can be edifying and uplifting, partaking of the greatest glories of the finest books even written. At least, that’s what the purveyors of various adaptations of “the great books” – curiously, nearly all of which were conveniently out of copyright and thus didn’t require any licensing fees – have claimed for the past fifty-some years. I have before me three very different books that all adapt mostly old and out of copyright works for a modern audience, so let’s take a look at what’s going on these days…
Classics Illustrated: The Raven & Other Poems
By Edgar Allan Poe; Illustrated by Gahan Wilson
NBM/Papercutz, May 2009, $9.95
Classics Illustrated is the longest-running brand-name in the adapting-old-books space, dating back to 1941 (when the line was launched as Classic Comics), and was the educational comic of choice for an entire generation of parents (and the crib-sheet for their generation of children) until it ended, for the first time, in 1971. There have been periodic attempts to re-ignite the brand since then – this particular book was originally published during one of those attempts, by First Comics around 1990 – but none have been as broadly successful as the main thirty-year sequence from the Gilberton Company.
This particular book, [[[The Raven and Other Poems]]], is an outlier in the Classics Illustrated series, since it doesn’t adapt and abridge a single long-form story (usually a novel, with some plays or other works) into comics, but instead reprints, in their entirety, nine Poe poems with illustrations by Wilson. So it’s not really a graphic novel at all, but the kind of illustrated collection that any publisher for younger readers might publish. (It’s also quite short, at only 48 pages of Poe-Wilson material.)
Aside from “The Raven,” these are primarily shorter Poe verses, mixing his best-known lines (“Annabel Lee,” “The Conqueror Worm”) with poems that only Poe devotees will recognize, like “Lines on Ale” and “The Sleeper.” It’s inherently a small, scattershot selection, but it does give a decent sense of what Poe was like as a poet – morbid, ostentatiously wordy, with that galumphingly even rhythm through his long lines – so that new readers can decide if they like him or not. (And – who knows? – there’s always a new generation of morbid goth/emo kids to glom onto Poe, so it’s not the forlorn hope it might seem.)
Wilson is the perfect choice to illustrate Poe; he’s spent his long illustrative career in the realms of the humorously macabre, and his lines can be just as grotesque – and as carefully, deliberately so – as Poe’s. This isn’t new Wilson work, of course, but it’s a strong collection of Wilson illustrations, and it’s great to have them back in print.
How Superman REALLY helped America win World War Two
Today is December 7th, a day that will live in infamy as the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor that ushered the United States into the second World War.
During the war, almost every comic shifted to a wartime footing, with covers of our heroes kicking the crap out of Nazis and fighting saboteurs in the pages within. But in at least one case, superheroes did a lot more.
See that cover to the right? That’s the cover of a special edition of Superman, based on issue #33 of the regular series that was produced for the U.S. Army.
The Army had a problem at the time — they were drafting thousands of men a year, but many of them had no education to speak of, with large swaths of them functionally illiterate, and they were expected to operate complex machinery pretty quickly. They had to learn how to read, and fast. The troops also needed cheap and portable entertainment, something that could be carried through the battlefields of Europe and Asia.
So with the cooperation of National Periodical Publications, the forerunner to DC Comics, this edition was produced by the War Department with simplified dialogue and word balloons. Hundreds of thousands of copies were distributed to GIs, and it helped them learn to read and to pass the time. And of course, copies of the comics were handed out to kids in faraway lands, as gestures of goodwill.
A total of 23 issues were produced in this manner and these rare variants are among the first examples of using comic books to teach, not just entertain.
So we weren’t surprised when a study came out last week showing that comics can be used to improve literacy. The United States government has known it for decades.
‘Terminator Salvation’ Ducati and DVD giveaway
The real winner of the summer movie sweepstakes may well be motorcycle manufacturer Ducati, which managed to have their sleek cycles appear in two of the box office behemoths: Terminator Salvation and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. In the latter, the Hypermotard merged with two other cycles to create the female Autobot Arcee.
In Terminator, the DVD of which went on sale this week, the film featured a Moto-Terminator, inspired by the Ducati Hypermotard 1100 bike. To celebrate this fact, Ducati, Warner Bros. and ESPN have teamed up to offer a contest, ending today. The winner receives a 2010 Ducati Hypermotard 796 Motorcycle, worth a cool $10,340.
To learn more about the cycle and how it was turned into a Terminator, check out the featurette on the DVD.
What? You haven’t rushed out to get it yet? ComicMix can help. Warner Home Video has given us a standard format DVD to award to one of our fans.
Here’s the deal: like the ESPN contest, we’ll give you until Saturday, midnight Eastern time, to post a comment in this topic using your name and e-mail address. We will select a lucky winner at random who will have the DVD mailed out in time for holiday enjoyment.
McG Talks Terminator Salvation on BD-Live Tomorrow
We just got an alert from our friends at Warner Bros. that on Saturday, at 6 p.m. PST, Terminator Salvation director McG will particiate in a discussion with fans via BD-Live. Here’s the official release:
Experience the first-ever audio-enabled Live Community Screening (LCS) exclusive to owners of the Terminator Salvation Blu-ray Disc and hear director McG answer your questions during this BD-Live exclusive LCS on December 5th, 2009. The Terminator Salvation LCS marks the first time that real-time audio will be available to enhance the interactive experience.
The LCS, which showcases the expansive capabilities and interactivity offered with Blu-ray and Warner Bros. BD-Live, will take place on December 5th at 6:00PM PST (9:00PM EST) live from Los Angeles. The LCS will allow fans that own a BD-Live capable Blu-ray Disc Player the ability to simultaneously watch the movie with McG and hear an interactive Q&A where they can submit questions about the blockbuster film to McG, directly from their home via their internet-connected computer or mobile device. The LCS will also feature the questions and answers in text form on screen.
Warner Bros. BD-Live is an interactive feature exclusive to the Blu-ray format that allows users to experience a variety of exclusive features. In addition to access to the audio LCS, other exciting BD-Live content available to Terminator Salvation Blu-ray owners include:
- Compilation of 10 viral videos from the “Resist or Be Terminated” alternate reality game revealing SKYNET’s secret plans.
- The first episode of Terminator Salvation Machinima Series
- Digital version of Issue #1 of the Terminator Salvation official movie prequel comic (available for a limited time only)
Warner Bros. BD-Live community members who have registered and signed up for the Terminator Salvation LCS will receive an emailed invitation to participate in the event. The first 100,000 members who RSVP will secure a spot for the screening. WB BD-Live registered users who own the Blu-ray Disc and have signed up for the BD-Live LCS event will be able to insert the disc, connect to WB BD-Live via broadband and logon to the LCS at this designated time to participate in this ground breaking exclusive event.
BD-Live is only accessible through a BD-Live enabled Blu-ray Disc™ played on an Internet-connected Blu-ray player (including PlayStation®3) with BD-Live capabilities and sufficient data storage. Please consult your Player Manual or Player Support Website for more information.
The Point Radio: Hello ‘Scrubs’, Goodbye ‘Monk’ – We Talk To The Stars
This week not only saw the return of SCRUBS to ABC primetime, but tonight marks the end of an eight season run for MONK on the USA Network. Donald ‘Turk” Faison tells us how SCRUBS came back from the dead, while MONK himself, Tony Shalhoub, shares what it’s like to end a 120+ run of episodes. Plus Dynamite gobbles up Dabel and STAR WARS parties it up big next summer.
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David Tennant’s final ‘Doctor Who’ episodes scheduled for BBC America
All good things must come to an end, and they’ll be ending at pretty much the same time here as in the UK.
BBC America will air the US premieres of the three Doctor Who specials where David Tennant ends his turn in the title role. Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars airs on December 19 at 9 PM Eastern; Doctor Who: The End of Time, Part One airs December 26 at 9 PM Eastern; and the final special Doctor Who: The End of Time, Part Two airs January 2, 2010 at 9 PM Eastern.
But worry not– Tennant will be back on TV soon on NBC, no less, in the new series Rex Is Not Your Lawyer, being prepped for a fall premiere. Let’s see if he can do a Chicago accent…
Manga Friday: High School Girls With Superpowers, Mark Two
Manga-format comics have a tropism
for high school even stronger than that of sunflowers for the sun – it is possible to find manga without a hint of high-schoolery in
them, but serious digging is required. But you couldn’t loose an arrow in a
manga warehouse without hitting at least one book about girls in sailor outfits.
(Hm. Did I just inadvertently explain the appeal?) So we reviewers have to
specialize even further. This week I have three a) second volumes in series b)
set in high schools c) with female lead characters who d) have amazing and
unexpected powers.
Even there, I’m sure a devoted
reader could name a dozen or more series that fit qualifications b) through d)!
Sumomomo, Momomo, Vol. 2
By Shinobu Ohtaka
Yen Plus, October 2009, $10.99
Ohtaka’s comedic piss-take on the
“martial arts high school” genre here veers more towards the overwrought drama
and fighting technique minutia of its targets than the tight, original satire
of the first volume, which is disappointing – there’s a center of gravity of
standard manga traditions that has the force of a black hole in Japanese
comics, dragging every outlier to be closer to the generic standard. And so the
supposed main character of Sumomomo, Momomo – Koushi Inuzuka, scion to a great family of karate
champions, who only wants to be left alone to study and become a great
prosecutor – is either pushed aside entirely or relegated to running and
cowering, like any other weak young man in a manga. (If this is opaque to you,
perhaps you need to drop back to my review of the first volume.)
Oh, it’s still funny – very funny
at points, particularly when it’s picking on the ex-Olympic gymnast gym
teacher, Daigoro, who is a fine self-satisfied gym rat caricature and gets shown
up repeatedly by a cute little girl. And the new enemies this volume are fun as
well: teenage Yakuza hit-girl Iroha Miyamoto and her overly emotional sidekick
Hanzou. But Iroha falls in love with Koushi nearly the moment she shows up, and
is under the impression that Koushi is in love with her. And so Sumomomo, Momomo comes one step closer to being yet another harem manga.
I hope I’m wrong, and that
the next volume sees more of Koushi being a budding lawyer and talking his way
out of problems, and less karate and pretty girls throwing themselves at him.
But I know which way to bet when it comes to manga! (more…)
