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Review: ‘High Moon’ Volume One

  • Uncategorized
  • October 1, 2009

High Moon
Dave Gallaher & Steve Ellis
DC Comics, 192 pages, $14.99

DC’s online imprint, Zuda Comics, has certainly been a hit or miss affair but when it hits, there’s a pleasure in discovering new talent or new concepts. While [[[Bayou]]] was a breakout hit, the most consistent entry remains [[[High Moon]]], written by former ComicMix contributor Dave Gallaher, illustrated by Steve Ellis and lettered by Scott O. Brown.

Gallaher had this notion for years but managed to earn one of the inaugural slots when Zuda went live in late 2007 and the strip won the first reader contest. It has since received plaudits from around the field and now DC is releasing the first three stories in a trade paperback.

The three stories comprising the first volume mix the western and horror genres with a dash of steampunk and overly, it’s a breezy, entertaining read. The focal point surrounds the Macgregor family, a line of detectives, currently working as a branch of the famed Pinkertons. Matthew Macgregor takes center stage in the first story while brother Tristan arrives for the second tale and then Tristan and Fergus deal with demons in the final tale. Linking all three, though, is Eddie Conroy a werewolf with a haunted past.

Each tale takes place in a different locale, starting with the drought-stricken Blest, Texas, then moving on to Ragged Rock, OK before concluding in South Dakota.

Across these stories are vampires, werewolves, demons, sexy Indians and a lot of atmosphere. We are given details in drips so reading the three stories in one sitting helps build the world of High Moon and it’s a nice place to visit.  Gallaher’s dialogue is spare and distinct while Ellis works wonders with the static format of the Zuda reader, playing with page design when the action demands it. His use of color goes a long way towards giving the strip a nice atmosphere.

We could use a little more grounding in the time and place when these stories take place and what the ground rules are for the occult aspects but these are minor quibbles for what is a strong series which returns to the web with a fourth installment this fall.

Fathers and Sons: reviews of Danica Novgorodoff’s ‘Refresh, Refresh’ and ‘The Big Kahn’ by Neil Kleid and Nicolas Cinquegrani

  • News
  • September 30, 2009

I should start by quoting something weighty – the most
obvious would be that old Tolstoy saw about happy and unhappy families – but
let’s take that as written, shall we? Comics have given short shrift to
families for the past seventy years – at least, the American comic-book
industry has, though strip comics grew fat and bloated on the hijinks of
aggressively “relatable” families for that long and longer.

Even the undergrounds – typically about countercultural
types, who occasionally complain about their parents but try to avoid them as
much as possible – and the modern alt-comics movement (Alienated Loners R us!)
avoided family dynamics. Sure, there are exceptions, from Will Eisner to art
spiegelman, but the average American comics protagonist is an orphan – or wishes
he was.

Maybe that’s starting to change, or maybe I just have a couple
of anomalies on my hand. Either way, today, I have two books where that isn’t the case – not to say that these dads might not be
dead, absent, or problematic, but they’re definitely part of the story. And
their sons care who, and what – and where – their fathers are.

Refresh, Refresh
A graphic novel by Danica
Novgorodoff, adapted from a screenplay by James Ponsoldt based on the story by
Benjamin Percy
First Second, October 2009,
$17.99

What do men do? For many in the comics reviewing world,
that’s an easy question: men punch each other in the face. But they don’t have Refresh,
Refresh in mind when they say that. This graphic
novel is set in a small Oregon town, just a couple of years ago, where most of
the adult men are off fighting with the Marines in Iraq. And their sons –
mostly Cody and Josh and Gordon, three highschool-aged boys who are at the core
of this particular story – talk about joining up when they’re old enough, or
working in the local factory, or maybe even getting out.

But Refresh, Refresh
is based on a literary short story, and if there’s one thing we all know, it’s
that there’s no getting out of a story like that – it’s all doom and gloom
until the moment-of-clarity ending. So this town is stifling and without any
options, the boys drifting – from backyard boxing to underage drinking in bars
to racing around on motorbikes and sleds – as they rebel without any fathers to
drag them into line. (The narration – presumably taken from the original Percy
story; I don’t want to blame Novgorodoff for any of it – is particularly
heavy-handed in that area, such as this sequence from p.83: “We didn’t fully
understand the reason our fathers were fighting. We only understood that they
had to fight. ‘It’s all part of the game,’ my grandfather said. ‘It’s just the
way it is.’ We could only cross our fingers and wish on stars and hit refresh,
refresh, hoping they would return to us.”)

What they hit “refresh, refresh” on is their e-mail
in-boxes; that scene recurs several times in the story. Oddly, though, it’s the
only incursion of modern technology into a story that could otherwise be
Vietnam-era. They don’t follow their fathers’ platoon on CNN.com or an Armed
Forces website; don’t call each other on cellphones; don’t think about or track
or seem to notice the war on TV or the Internet; even their laptops seem to be
screwed down to tables, for all the moving they do.

Refresh, Refresh is a very traditional story about young men in
small towns; I could probably quote half-a-dozen Bruce Springsteen songs on
roughly the same topic, and with pretty much the same moral and tone. (And that’s
without diving into the world of the realist short story, where kitchen-sink
dramas almost require young men with promise to be squandered.) Novgorodoff
tells this version with a bit too much self-conscious artistry – too many deer
looking up at airplanes, too many of those explaining-the-theme narration boxes
– but she keeps the focus tight and specific, on these three boys and their
world, their choices and possibilities. A story like this is nearly always
about badchoices, though, so it
would be best to come to Refresh, Refresh with a MFA-teacher’s fatalism, and not expect anything so comic-booky
as a happy ending for the boys who punch each other in the face. (more…)

ComicMix Quick Picks: NY Anime Festival grows, comic sales hold, and Hugh Jackman doesn’t stop the show

  • Uncategorized
  • September 30, 2009

summer-glau-8586915Get ready for a special
“still-recovering-from-fasting-on-Yom-Kippur” edition of ComicMix Quick
Picks. Yesterday was pretty busy, and here’s a roundup of the stuff we didn’t get to:

What else did we miss? Tell us in the comments.

Media Short Takes

  • News
  • September 30, 2009

Olivia Wilde, who we adore on House and look forward to seeing in the sequel to Tron, will join The Ruins’ Jonathan Tucker in the cast of The Next Three Days, a thriller directed by  Paul Haggis for Lionsgate. The cast already includes Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks, which is said to be the story of a woman (Banks) imprisoned for a murder she claims she didn’t commit while her husband (Crowe) who tries to vindicate her.

The Wizards of Waverly Place, the popular Disney Channel series, has received an order for an additional eight episodes. Now in its third season, the show was awarded an Emmy this month in the children’s programming category. It also scored huge ratings when a feature-length version aired in August. It’s no surprise that the show has a rabid following with Disney raking in bucks from consumer products ranging from video games to books and even clothing lines.

‘Terminator’ Rights Once More in Question

  • News
  • September 29, 2009

Pity Skynet. They rule the world of the future but can’t seem to get it right in the present. Rights to the Terminator franchise have been handed from one company to another and now Halcyon Holding Group is undergoing Chapter 11 reorganization which will affect plans for the Terminator.

Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood reports that Halcyon has retained FTI Capital Advisors to help them determine the best course of reorganizing. The production entity wound up this way after a dispute erupted between them and Pacificor, a Santa Barbara-based hedge fund.

“Based on our extensive due diligence, we believe the value of the Terminator franchise alone is substantially greater than the $30 million Halcyon paid for it in 2007,” Kevin W. Shultz, Senior Managing Director of FTI Capital Advisors, said in statement. “In our view, Halcyon enjoys a wide variety of strategic options and we intend to explore them all.”

In addition to the still-popular Terminator, Halcyon has first-look rights to the complete works of Philip K. Dick.

Terminator: Salvation suffered from weak reviews and poor box office, hoping to rake in some fresh cash when the DVD is released December 1. Producers from the television version, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, continue to hope to continue the saga in some new manner, possibly as direct-to-video tales. The second season DVD set was released last week.

MGM’s Cash Woes Imperils ‘The Hobbit’

  • News
  • September 29, 2009

Deadline Hollywood’s Nikki Finke broke the news that MGM is having severe cash flow issues and may have trouble financing eagerly awaited films starting with The Hobbit two-picture project along with the next installment in the revitalized James Bond franchise.

MGM execs held a conference call with their lenders and admitted this year’s releases missed their targets and left them short of operating capital. “The implication was that it’s teetering on bankruptcy,” one source told Finke. The studio reportedly stuck its hand out and begged for $20 million just to cover immediate needs plus the $150 million they budgeted for the Guillermo del Toro-directed adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien novel.

The call, she reported, did not go well. As a result, the equity holders have seemingly given up on the studio with bondholders suspecting the studio is overvalued given their poor track record and management. Bankruptcy is a possibility but no one wants to see the once venerable studio go under or lose valuable rights, such as Bond.

Should the unthinkable actually occur, studios are poised to swoop in and fund the existing projects. Pre-production continues Down Under with full casting for The Hobbit expected in the coming months. The next Bond film is also in the works with a 2011 release being eyed.

‘Primeval’ Gains Unexpected 13 Episode Renewal

  • News
  • September 29, 2009

primeval-gorgonopsid-dvdworks-6558866Primeval, the much loved but low-rated British series has been given a fourth season order after ITV1 cut a deal with the digital channel Watch. According to a report in the Guardian, the series will be co-funded between the two with an order given for 13 new episodes, to be shown in two arcs.

After the third season aired earlier this year, ITV canceled the series, leaving production firm Impossible Pictures, scrambling to salvage the show which has a strong following as witnessed by licensed  books, audio adventures and a possible American feature film to be produced by Warner Bros.

The shows will air in early 2011 with BBC Worldwide handling international distribution. American fans most recently watched the series on BBC America. The current season was released on DVD on September 15.

The Guardian noted, “Watch – which already airs sci fi shows Doctor Who and Torchwood – will repeat it soon after and then premiere the fifth series later the same year, followed by ITV1.”

The full cast is expected to return including Hannah Spearritt, Andrew-Lee Potts and Jason Flemyng. Adrian Hodge remains showrunner.

Legend Irwin Hasen Creates Graphic Novel

  • News
  • September 29, 2009

15927loverboy-lg-jpg1-5817004The legendary Irwin Hasen, co-creator of DC’s original Wildcat who is best known for his work on the classic newspaper comic strip Dondi, has written and drawn a 128-page graphic novel. Not bad for a guy 91 years old.

Loverboy, which purports to be something of a dramatized autobiography, will be released
by Vanguard Publishing in December. Joe Kubert and Neal Adams contributed cover blurbs; Irwin has been a teacher at the Kubert School.

In addition to Wildcat and Dondi, Hasen had been a regular
contributor to the golden age versions of Green
Hornet, Green Lantern, The Flash and Justice Society of America, among many others.

Robot Chicken Goes Jughead

  • News
  • September 29, 2009

Archie Comics is perhaps the most innovative publisher
around these days, although for many comics fans they’re beneath the radar.
That’s a shame; folks are missing out on some great stuff.

Some fans are aware of their New Look digest books
(“Ultimate Archie”?), and Mike Uslan’s Marriage of Archie and Veronica has made
headlines. For me, well, I’m looking forward to their upcoming crossover with
the 1950s/60s Archie Comics characters: Cosmo the Merry Martian, Super Duck,
Seymour and friends. But the stunt they’ve just announced is the most
provocative one yet.

Tom Root, co-head writer/ co-producer of Robot Chicken and co-creator/executive
producer of Adult Swim’s new Titan
Maximum parody series, is writing the 200th issue of Jughead. Yeah, that’s volume two of Jughead; you know how comic book numbering goes these days.

Both Robot Chicken
and Titan Maximum are, to put it
politely, hardly family fare… unless your family has the name “Manson” in it.
The Adult Swim broadcasts are heavily bleeped – the DVD releases are not – and
they tend to be quite violent and, dare I say it, irreverent. Oh, and extremely
funny. Which probably tells you more about me than you wanted to know.

The story, “Something Ventured, Something Gained,” starts
out with Jughead trading his, ahh, metabolism to a witch for a
mega-cheeseburger. Bizarre wackiness ensues: Archie tries to cut a deal to
trade the witch his awesome wholesomeness to restore his best friend to
normalcy, Betty and Veronica try to cut a deal to restore Archie’s purity, and
so on. All the while, Jughead actually
gains weight!

It probably would have been easier for the Riverdale crew
to just drop a dime on Sabrina, but hey, count me in! After all the mindless,
in-perpetuity crossover events from DC and Marvel, I can use a self-contained
book-lengther!

‘Superman/Batman: Public Enemies’ on Sale Today

  • News
  • September 29, 2009

Superman/Batman: Public Enemies is released today in a variety of formats: Blu-Ray Hi-Def edition, a special edition 2-disc DVD, and a single disc DVD. Warner Home Video will distribute the action-packed movie, which will also be available OnDemand and Pay-Per-View as well as available for download that same day.

nightshade-01-1645282As you know by now, this animated feature is based on the Jeph Loeb/Ed McGuinness graphic novel collecting Superman/Batman #1-6. Bruce Timm is executive producer. Michael Goguen is supervising producer. Sam Liu is directing a script written by veteran Stan Berkowitz.
In the film, United States President Lex Luthor uses the oncoming trajectory of a Kryptonite asteroid to frame Superman and declare a $1 billion bounty on the heads of the Man of Steel and his “partner in crime,” Batman. Heroes and villains alike launch a relentless pursuit of Superman and Batman, who must unite – and recruit help – to stave off the action-packed onslaught, stop the asteroid, and uncover Luthor’s devious plot to take command of far more than North America.

ComicMix will be reviewing this in the near future. For now, enjoy the clip below.

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