The Mix : What are people talking about today?

Come Join Us In THE FORTRESS OF AWESOME!

  • Uncategorized
  • August 26, 2009

media-images-job-pictures-interior-designer-needed-for-the-fortress-of-solitude-24ca908579482962da5b968d0f0bcd35-rg-png-2007998If you are looking for a place to hang out where you can ask your most inner-geek questions and pick up some cool comic trivia as well, then here’s your invite to hit THE FORTRESS OF AWESOME!

Noted comic historian ALAN “Sizzler” KISTLER is your host and on tonite’s premiere show he covers everything from why Chris Claremont’s X-Men Forever is a fun read, to the real reason why Stan Lee created Sgt. Fury And His Howling Commandoes. Plus there are details on how you can win some cool prices by playing “Stump Sizzler”!

You can hear the debut of THE FORTRESS OF AWESOME tonight at 8pm (Eastern Time) or catch encore shows Thursday (8/27) at 1pm, Friday (8/28) at 11pm, Saturday (8/29) at 3pm, Sunday (8/30) at 1pm and Monday (8/31) at 4pm (all times Eastern) – Just click below!

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN LIVEFOR FREE or go to GetThePointRadio for more including a connection for mobile phones including iPhone & Blackberrys



american-red-cross-vampire-diaries-7480524

‘Starve a Vampire. Donate Blood.’

  • Uncategorized
  • August 26, 2009

american-red-cross-vampire-diaries-7480524

This, literally, doesn’t suck.

The CW Network, Alloy Media + Marketing and the American Red Cross are teaming to host blood drives in over 230 high schools and college campuses nationwide to help save lives as well as to promote the series premiere of The Vampire Diaries.

The “Starve a Vampire. Donate Blood” campaign began this week and will carry on for five weeks. At each school blood drive, specially branded The Vampire Diaries materials will be one hand as well as themed refreshment stands and footage from the show playing on TV monitors. Every student participating will receive branded promotional items.

The Vampire Diaries premieres on The CW September 10 at 8p.

And even if you like vampires– donate anyway.

Let’s gossip about gossip in the comics industry

  • News
  • August 26, 2009

It’s hot out there, and we just had a weekend or two without a major convention, so we’ve all been talking amongst ourselves. And as a result, we’ve been talking about… talking.

The major flare-up has been on Heidi MacDonald’s blog, chroncling a heated discussion between Gail Simone and Rich Johnston…

Sometime in the night, the marvelous Gail Simone went on Twitter and spoke thusly: Do We Need Tabloid And Gossip Comics Journalism?
which Rich Johnston picked up at the above link. Simone is no stranger
to the message board, so the debate continues in the link and its very
own Twitter topic.

…with comment thread cameos from Mark Waid, Mark Engblom, Kurt Busiek, and Dwayne McDuffie, and since the comment thread has closed down over there, I’m reopening it over here.

Let me throw in an example, and try to give some of an idea as to what we’re trying for here at ComicMix.

Very late last night, someone IM’d me that an editor had been laid off. Reasonably impeccable source, and I know the editor. Should I post it on ComicMix?

Well, no. If it’s true, I don’t think that person would appreciate personal employment issues being broadcast to the world. If it’s false, it’s even more damaging to their career and possibly the freelancers that editor employs. So there’s a good reason to hold back on it, until confirmation.

But wait! If that editor is truly gone, then that means that an entire line of publications goes down as well! Does that make it newsworthy then?

The scales tip a bit here. Because now you’re beginning to impact a number of other professionals (who I also know) who may suddenly find themselves out of work, and a number of businesses who will suddenly have their stock (and backstock) affected because books may be canceled.

Then it’s a puzzlement. In that case, there’s a case to be made for private gossip– check with the affected pros privately to give them a heads up, mayhaps. But it’s fluid. We make our choices day by day, and yes, we have our
own sacred cows and things we don’t like to talk about. We don’t want
to tick off publishers– we’re publishers. We don’t want to tick off
retailers, we publish print editions– but then, we also do electronic
versions of our books. We could pick on some websites when they go down, but then we look like idiots when we have technical problems.

My only personal take on it the matter? Always punch up. Picking on an editor who’s doing the bidding of a large company is fair game. Picking on an editor fired by a large company? No. Or, if you prefer, comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.

Or, simply enough– what would crusading columnist Oliver Queen do?

Superman supports health care and welfare!

  • Uncategorized
  • August 25, 2009

superman-supports-welfarre-7751765

From back in the day when Superman used his moral force to say we should do this because it’s the right thing to do for our neighbors, never mind if it cost us some tax dollars.

Of course, today he’d be attacked for his position because, after all, he’s an illegal immigrant.

And like so many other illegals, we just want him to clean up our messes and do the jobs we can’t do for ourselves for non-existent pay, but that doesn’t mean we have to acknowledge when he might have a point.

But I could be mistaken. Is there someone out there who can explain why Superman is wrong?

(Hat tip to Kevin H and Wesley Osam.)

scream-queens-9762373

Are you dying to make it in horror? ‘Scream Queens 2’ is casting

  • News
  • August 25, 2009

scream-queens-5819714

VH1 and Lionsgate are casting for the second season of Scream Queens, seeking beautiful, confident and uninhibited actresses. Ten women will be selected to compete in the VH1 show with one winning a role in a Lionsgate horror film. Interested applicants must be between 21 and 30 years old, have a competitive attitude and the desire to become Hollywood’s next “scream queen.” Since the winner of the first season will be appearing in Saw VI, there’s a definite chance for advancement.

Two casting calls are scheduled in Los Angeles on August 29 and in New York City on September 12. If applicants are unable to attend the casting calls, home videos can be mailed and a possible Skype interview may be set up with the casting director. For more information, send an email to ScreamQueensCasting@gmail.com.

The Point Radio More With PSYCH

  • News
  • August 24, 2009

We wind up our backstage visit to USA Network’s PSYCH by talking to the man who created the show and we get the secret origin of that pineapple.  Plus BASTARDS does big box office, you could be the next Charles Schultz and there are Five Things you need to see in the comic store this week and we list them right here!pt082409-2-9127414

PRESS THE BUTTONto Get The Point!

And be sure to stay on The Point via iTunes - ComicMix, RSS, MyPodcast.Com or Podbean!

Follow us now on and !

Don’t forget that you can now enjoy THE POINT 24/7. Updates on all parts of pop culture, special programming by some of your favorite personalities and the biggest variety of contemporary music on the net.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN LIVEFOR FREE or go to GetThePointRadio for more including a connection for mobile phones including iPhone & Blackberrys



b-p-r-d-10-warning1-9243532

Review: B.P.R.D., Vol. 10: The Warning by Mignola, Arcudi, and Davis

b-p-r-d-10-warning1-9243532

B.P.R.D. Vol. 10: The Warning
Written by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi; Art by Guy
Davis
Dark Horse Comics, May 2009, $17.95

[[[The Warning]]] is the tenth volume
collecting the adventures of the [[[Hellboy]]]-less Bureau for Paranormal Research
and Defense, and the first in what the creators are calling the “[[[Scorched Earth
Trilogy]]].” The afterword by co-writer John Arcudi claims that events will get
bigger and more dangerous from here – though he does note that this volume
includes, among other thing, “[name withheld] gets kidnapped, … entire fleet of
helicopters gets wiped out, and gigantic robots trample [name withheld] into
rubble.” And previous volumes of this series (and, of course, of the related Hellboy)
have been no slouch in the near-Armageddon sweepstakes – particularly [[[The Black Flame]]]. That’s a lot of promise, but Mignola’s fictional
world does always teeter on the verge of utter supernatural chaos, in his very
Lovecraftian way. It would be wise to take Arcudi at his word.

The Warning begins with the team going
in two directions at once, urgently following up recent events – Abe Sapien
leads an assault squad out into the snowy mountains to try to find and retrieve
the Wendigo-possessed former leader of their team, and the others have a séance
to contact the mysterious ‘30s costumed hero Lobster Johnson, whom they think
will have information about the robed man taunting and manipulating firestarter
Liz Sherman in her mind. But neither one of those leads works out as the
[[[B.P.R.D.]]] hopes, and, before long, they’re face-to-face with another
high-powered menace and seeing another city being assaulted by giant robots.

And yet, remember that note from Arcudi. The plot of The
Warning turns out to be just a warm-up; the antagonists here
are not the true enemies of the B.P.R.D. Near the end, that mysterious man
claims that he isn’t their real antagonist, either. The B.P.R.D. is
fumbling in the dark in The Warning, unsure of what the
real menace is, let alone how to stop it. But they go on, because that’s what
they do.

The Warning is a great installment
of a top-rank adventure series, filled with wonder and terror, eyeball kicks
and quiet character moments. It’s a magnificent brick in a more magnificent
wall, but it’s no place to start. If you haven’t read B.P.R.D.
before, go back to the beginning with [[[Hollow Earth
]]]– or, even better, go back to the beginning of Hellboy
with [[[Seed of Destruction]]]. But, if you enjoy adventure
stories with characters who don’t wear skin-tight outfits,
you should have discovered Mignola’s world by now.

Andrew Wheeler has been a publishing professional
for nearly twenty years, with a long stint as a Senior Editor at the Science
Fiction Book Club and a current position at John Wiley & Sons. He¹s been
reading comics for longer than he cares to mention, and maintains a personal,
mostly book-oriented blog at antickmusings.blogspot.com.

Publishers who would like to submit books
for review should contact ComicMix through the usual channels or email Andrew
Wheeler directly at acwheele (at) optonline (dot) net.

Interview: Chris Claremont on ‘X-Men Forever’, part 2

  • News
  • August 24, 2009

This is the second part of a very long interview with Chris Claremont that started on the topic of X-Men Forever and branched into a number of other areas. Part one of the interview is here, and we recommend reading it to get up to speed. Warning: plot points are discussed up to X-Men Forever #5 at least, do not read this interview if you want to be spoiled.

ComicMix: X-Men Forever– this isn’t just you taking your old X-Men script from 1991 and picking up where you left off.

Chris Claremont: No. The point is that I took my concepts from 1991 and sat down and looked at the team and rethought the whole thing.  The difference is that the scripts in 1991 were a whole series of arcs that in more than a few cases had ended up being echoed, if not outright adapted, by subsequent writers.

CM: In the same vein, since your initial run on the X-Men, a lot of your work and your own style has been adapted in other places; for example, your creation of Kitty Pryde has been cited as an inspiration for Joss Whedon on Buffy. Let’s not even get started on what people have been drawing on for Heroes and Lost.  So now that people know your tropes and it’s become mainstream, what’s next? How do you go beyond that now that the rest of the world is catching up with you?

CC: Well, theoretically the rule we’re running with is if I’ve done it before, I can’t do it here. One of the rules that Mark and I are using is to try as much as possible not to take a story in directions that people anticipate. We’ll see what happens. Part of it is the nature of the characters themselves. My original impulse was to excise Cyclops from the cast because I wanted to focus on someone else– and he just wouldn’t go! Every time I wrote him out, he’d write himself back in. Some part of my brain refused to accept that perception of the X-Men’s reality; its vision was that Cyclops is a key and essential character. There comes a point, as a writer, when you have to listen to that part of your instinct, to ask “why is is saying this?” And once you find the answer, go with it. I am throwing everything up in the air. There are major changes to the eight characters in the series…

CM: Those being Storm, Rogue, Nightcrawler–

CC: Let me start at the top. Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler, Beast, Kitty, Gambit, Rogue, Nick Fury, and two others to be named later.

CM: Nick Fury’s a mutant, or just showing up a lot?

CC: Nick Fury’s a member of the cast. He’s the head of S.H.I.E.L.D., but we don’t have a S.H.I.E.L.D. book, so we can use him. His rationale for being there is the X-Men are a critical facet of the world community, just because of the power that mutants represent, and they need a minder. That, plus concerns he’s about to have in terms of S.H.I.E.L.D. itself, make it more convenient/essential for him to stay on scene with the X-Men to figure out what’s going on.

CM: Since you mention Nightcrawler and Kitty Pryde…

CC: They were in Excalibur, yes; they are coming back to the X-Men.

CM: A lot of people have been asking that very question.

CC: The opening circumstances of the book, as seen in the preview, are that this is taking place subsequent to the memorial service for Magneto, where all the X-Men have gathered. There’s one panel on page four where you see the group shot of whole bunches of mutants out back. That explains what they’re all doing there.

CM: So you’ll have all of the X-Men there, you’ll have X-Force there, you’ll have Excalibur…

CC: Those who wish to honor Magneto. Some of them may decide they’re not coming. Anyway, things start to happen from that point on. Essentially, for issue 1, Charlie temporarily closes the school and sends everybody home. He gathers a core team of X-characters to go out after Fabian Cortez, who killed Magneto, to bring him in, and to turn him over to S.H.I.E.L.D. and end this disaster before it gets any worse. Fury is there, saying this: You’re living in a dream world. Magneto threatened the world, and some of you X-Men helped him–you were mind-controlled, but you helped him. The rest of you X-Men stopped him. What makes you think the world’s going to stand back and accept the fact that you guys are unaffiliated, independent operatives and let you go on from there? You represent far too much power.

(more…)

sunshine-dvd1-3846420

Review: ‘Sunshine Cleaning’ on DVD

  • Uncategorized
  • August 23, 2009

sunshine-dvd1-3846420Most times, we read our comics and watch our movies and television programs and come in at the beginning or during an act of gruesome violence. Often, we then see the crime scene investigators do their thing and then leave. But what becomes of the crime scene afterwards?

Answering that question is the moving Sunshine Cleaning, an independent film starring Amy Adams and Emily Blunt. The well-received film comes out on DVD this Tuesday from Anchor Bay Entertainment.

Adams plays Rose Lorkowski, a single parent stuck in a dead end job, trying to raise her young son. Raised by her failed salesman father (Alan Arkin), it fell to Rose to raise her younger sister Norah. Rose was once on top of the world, captain of the cheerleading team, but there she is, a decade-plus later and she’s still sleeping with the quarterback (Steve Zahn), despite his being married to someone else. She aspires to more, maybe real estate, but life keeps dragging her down.

The quarterback turned police detective suggests try her hand at the lucrative crime scene clean up business.  Rose convinces the hapless Norah to join her in this new venture and [[[Sunshine Cleaning]]] is born. We watch them figure out what the business is all about, stumbling on their own, until they meet up with Winston (Clifton Collins, Jr.), proprietor of a cleaning supply company who provides advice.

For a 91 minute film, there are many themes touched on in Megan Holley’s debut script. Love and loss, taking responsibility, struggling to raise a child and sister and father, missing a dead mother and more. Everything is intertwined as the story progresses but it’s not all neatly tied up by the end. Life’s a messy business, the tag line tells us, and director Christine Jeffs does a nice job showing us exactly that. While Rose is serious and trying to do right by her family, she does so at the cost of her own freedom and happiness. Norah is directionless and gains her first taste of adulthood by working with Rose and by trying to befriend the daughter of a victim. Meantime, we’re left uncertain as to what is wrong with young Oscar (Jason Spevack) – is it ADD, a closet genius or something else. He’s also just trying to get by while being looked after by his grandfather and aunt.

The performances are somber and dead on. Adams, normally gorgeous and perky, allows herself to look dowdy and sad while Blunt, more of a chameleon actress, fully inhabits Norah. Arkin plays Arkin, a man past his prime, terrified of disappointing his family yet doing it again and again as his schemes to make a buck fail. The core cast is ably supported, notably by Collins in an understated part.

The movie comes in both widescreen and full screen, which is a somewhat unnecessary option. The sole unique extra is a wonderful 11 minute featurette interviewing two older women who really do this sort of work. They show where the film was dead on and where it took some liberties, plus showed how they did some of their work.

Categories

Archives

Everything you need to make great comics!

comicmix-pro-300x69-2

Nucleus X

Bookshop Zaks