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Review: Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files: Storm Front, Vol. 1: The Gathering Storm

  • Uncategorized
  • June 10, 2009

Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files: Storm Front Vol. 1: The Gathering Storm
Adaptation by Mark Powers; Illustrated by Ardian Syaf
Del Rey, June 2009, $22.95

It’s never a good sign when anything gets named “[[[The Gathering Storm]]]” – that’s possibly the most generic title in a world filled with blandness and non-specificity. I suppose it’s more understandable when you’re adapting a novel named [[[Storm Front]]], and you have to call the separate volumes something, and then that phrase rises up out of the collective unconsciousness, and you can’t think of anything better…but, still, it’s a flabby, overused title that needs to be retired for two or three generations to have any hope of not being a laughingstock.

But [[[The Gathering Storm]]] is only the very end of an exceptionally long title, so exhaustion is a plausible excuse. This particular Gathering Storm is the first part of a comics adaptation of the novel Storm Front by Jim Butcher, which itself was the first volume in his bestselling (and now eleven volumes long) “[[[Dresden Files]]]” series. In the books, as in this comic, Harry Dresden is Chicago’s only consulting wizard – he’s a real wizard, doing real magic, and protecting people in his mushy post-Chandler pseudo-PI way from the various supernatural nasties that all really exist in this world.

Though this book adapts the beginning of the first “Dresden Files” novel, it’s actually the second “Dresden Files” graphic novel, since Butcher wrote a comics-only prequel about a year ago – subsequently collected as Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle, and reviewed here by yours truly – which was a pleasant enough monster-of-the-week story to introduce Harry and his world. Syaf was the artist on that first story, so he’s established the look of Dresden and his Chicago for this series. He’s a solid modern mainstream comics artist – his people look consistently the same across different pages and from any angle, and he can draw them in different clothes when necessary (unlike so many folks drawing steady paychecks). He’s good at facial expressions, which is very important for a book like this that’s as much about talking as it is fighting supernatural monsters.

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Futurama comes back from the future

  • News
  • June 10, 2009

Matt Raub at the Flickcast confirmed it for us:

Comedy Central has picked up the rights to renew 20th Century Fox Television’s Futurama for 26 new episodes, six years after getting initially canceled by the Fox network. In a recent EW interview with a 20th Century Fox spokesman, they say the DVD sales and reruns have had a “blockbuster” performance: “When we brought back Family Guy
several years ago, everyone said that it was a once in a lifetime thing
— that canceled series stay canceled and cannot be revived,” 20th
Century Fox TV Chairmen Gary Newman and Dana Walden said in a joint
statement. “But Futurama was another series that fans simply
demanded we bring back, and we couldn’t have been happier when Matt and
David agreed that there were many more stories yet to tell.” Both creators David X Cohen and Matt Groening were of course ecstatic about the news, Groening adds “We’re thrilled Futurama is coming back. We now have only 25,766 episodes to make before we catch up with Bender and Fry in the year 3000.”

But as far as Matt’s hope that if Family Guy and Futurama can return from the grave, then Greg The Bunny could come back too– probably not. Dan Milano, the man behind (and under and inside, for that matter) Greg The Bunny was just signed to write the remake of Short Circuit, so he’s going to be busy for a bit.

Review: ‘Nobel Son’ on DVD

Every now and then you see a movie advertised as coming to video and you scratch your head wondering why you’ve never heard of it. Nobel Son, which opened December 8 and is available on DVD today, is just such a case. The film stars Alan Rickman, Bryan Greenberg, Eliza Dushku, Shawn Hatosy, Mary Steenburgen, Bill Pullman, Ted Danson and Danny Devito. Pretty nifty cast.

Now, check out the official synopsis: On the eve of Barkley Michaelson’s father receiving the Nobel Prize, Barkley is kidnapped and the requested ransom is the $2,000,000 in Nobel Prize money. When his father refuses to pay it starts a venomous tale of familial dysfunction, lust, betrayal and ultimately revenge.

Sounds like it should be a pretty cool thriller. And yet. And yet the film lasted a mere three weeks during the holiday season and earned a meager $540,382 at the box office. As we’ve discussed previously, the timing for serious dramas was off this holiday season, a factor no one could anticipate or program around. Instead, films opened and the studios hoped for the best.

This film probably deserved a better audience, but it also deserved a sharper script. Randall Miller and his wife Jody Savin co-wrote the script which Miller directed and the story has flash-forwards and flashbacks, and weaves one scheme after another. However, by the time you get to the last scene, you’ve seen everyone scheme, everyone outsmart the next guy and it got too convoluted and clever for its own good.

One of the film’s failings has to be that they don’t round out any of the characters. You have the good son, the son-of-a-bitch father, the pretty and smart wife, the psycho girl, the dogged detective and little else. Admittedly, there are a few surprising character turns by the end, but there’s little to set these up and some feel tacked on or coming from left field. Instead, we needed to really care about one or two of the characters and keep things from being twisty and turny for its own sake.

A psychological thriller needs clear patches so the twists come as a surprise. Here, it’s all surprise and you wonder. Danny Devito’s OCD tenant in the home owned by Rickman and Steenburgen is a perfect example. He shows up, helps move the story along then his arc is dramatically closed but you wonder why he’s there at all. Similarly, Ted Danson plays Rickman’s Dean and has absolutely nothing to do in the film. Rickman plays a wonderful pompous ass but you have no clue why he’s married to Steenburgen, who is underutilized. Dushku plays a variation on her usual character and plays nicely off both Hatosy and Greenberg.

There’s a great story here, one that could have made for a real enjoyable experience but the writer didn’t service the director and the director didn’t visually add anything to help the writer. Being the same person, Miller failed his own film.

The movie comes with a bare bones assortment of features including three deleted scenes, one of which is an alternate ending that doesn’t change much. The Making Of featurette is lackluster and self-congratulatory.

What do Apple’s iPhone announcements mean for comics?

iphonecomic-6079316If you have a Macintosh or a iPhone, yesterday was a high holy day for you, as Apple’s WWDC Keynote Speech was given yesterday, outlining Apple’s hardware and software plans for the next few months. We’ll let other people such as The Unofficial Apple Weblog cover the full release info and instead concentrate on the items that are going to impact comics the most.

Hardware: Sadly, no one’s announced the iPad yet, that long rumored half-tablet, half-netbook. But a new iPhone was announced, to go along with the over 40 million iPhones and iPod touches that have already been sold to date.

While the price on the new iPhone is a bit hefty, what will interest people is the price drop for the old iPhone– the 8GB iPhone 3G will sell alongside the iPhone 3GS for $99 (with contract, obviously). While not the ideal comics reader, it certainly will continue penetration into the market. Even more, as parents upgrade their own iPhones to the newest models, they’re likely to hand their old ones to their kids as it’s  a (comparitively) cheaper upgrade.

Software: iPhone 3.0 releases in a week and a half on June 17, free for iPhone users, $9.95 for iTouch users. Biggest changes for comics fans:

  • The App store now has “in app purchasing”. That’s where you can purchase another app or service from within an app. Obvious usage: You get to the end of issue #1 and then immediately buy #2, or other comics which the publisher has thoughtfully linked for you to buy.

  • The software will also allow subscriptions to be made on a month-to-month basis. Again, the usage is obvious: subscribe to the latest book, and when it’s ready, it’ll be pushed to your iPhone.
  • Parental controls have been improved in iPhone 3.0, which will allow for the sale of more adult content. Again, the implications are huge, as hundreds of independent titles that might have fallen afoul of Apple’s occasionally odd policies for content will now be able to be distributed online.

All in all, a pretty productive update. Expect to see products taking advantage of the relaxed restrictions rolling out from comic publishers shortly after June 17.

If you don’t already own an iPhone, will this make you more likely to buy one? If you’re already using it, will this make it more likely that you’ll read comics on your iPhone? Discuss in comments.

Twilight’s Dr. Cullen and a diagnosis of TMI

  • Uncategorized
  • June 9, 2009

From the San Francisco Chronicle via Tom Galloway:

Actress Jennie Garth (Beverly Hills 90210) has an unusual way of
spicing up her marriage to “Twilight” actor Peter Facinelli — she
makes him pretend to be his vampire character.

Facinelli plays Dr. Cullen, the father of Robert Pattinson’s character, in the original film and in upcoming sequel “New Moon.”

And
the actor admits his wife is so fond of the fang-toothed doctor she
makes him constantly roleplay to keep their eight-year marriage steamy.

He
tells the New York Daily News, “She has me dress up like all the time.
She says, ‘Put the doctor’s coat on!’ I’m like, ‘Again?'”

Ooooookay… no wonder he’s so eager to play a doctor again in Nurse Jackie.

The Point Mocca Recap

  • Uncategorized
  • June 8, 2009

A new facility and a great turn-out for the MOCCA Art Festival in New York – we’ve got your recap plus the newest comic publisher happens to be Uncle Sam, Peter Jackson got his ticket to ComicCon and Marvel gives us some Strange.


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Review: The Collected Doug Wright: Canada’s Master Cartoonist, 1949-1962

  • Uncategorized
  • June 8, 2009

The Collected Doug Wright: Canada’s Master Cartoonist, 1949-1962
Edited by Seth and Brad Mackay
Drawn & Quarterly, May 2009, $39.95
 

Some claims come with the seeds of their own mocking built right in, and I’m afraid that “[[[Canada’s Master Cartoonist]]]” is right up there with “the premier crimefighting vigilante of the Quad Cities area” – it sounds impressive briefly, and then there’s a lull while we all wait for the punch line. Doug Wright is indeed an excellent cartoonist, and also Canadian – quintessentially Canadian, even, having spent his entire career in Montreal working on strips for purely Canadian markets – but this book’s glowing surety that Canada has precisely one “master cartoonist” and Wright is it comes across as the stereotypical Canadian fresh-faced naïveté that exists only to be foiled.

(I mean, what about such widely disparate names as Dave Sim, John Byrne, Hal Foster, Julie Doucet, Chester Brown, and Lynn Johnston? Is every other Canadian cartoonist eternally a journeyman? These are the kinds of questions I ponder, late at night, with my face turned north towards Canada.)

[[[The Collected Doug Wright]]] is a gorgeous book – no online photos do justice to its shiny red cover and the oval die-cut that reveals an embossed image of Wright most famous character, the boy scamp Nipper – and Wright was nearly as gorgeous a cartoonist in his prime. The early strips reprinted here are uneven: the drawing is good but not as strong as it would become, and Wright mostly used his red accent color to frame each panel – often too tightly and not well – rather than as the accent he later evolved it into. But from the mid-’50s his drawings are energetic – they have to be, being focused on a hellion like Nipper – and filled with closely-observed scenes drawn from life. (And then turned into slapstick comedy, of course – Wright was a mid-century gag cartoonist, and he knew what his audience wanted.)

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CBLDF looking for summer interns

cbldf-logo-5228876The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is looking for interns to help with summer operations.
Duties include assisting office and inventory organization, updating
the inventory, and assisting membership and premium fulfillment.

Requirements:

  • At least 17 years of age
  • Good organizational skills
  • Office experience preferred
  • Proficiency in QuickBooks, Excel, and MSWord
  • A familiarity with the comic book industry and current trends
  • Book retail experience helpful
  • Able to lift 50lbs

If you meet these requirements, please send your resume to fundmgr@cbldf.org. And tell them ComicMix sent you.

Z-Cult FM pirate site is closing down… so what?

So, over the weekend, those of us with somewhat shady connections heard about the comic pirate site Z-Cult FM shutting down– living up to their slogan of “Give Me Comics Or Give me Death”, they’ve died. Rather than admit whether or not I got a copy of the good bye letter, I’ll claim I’m quoting from Comic Related:

Dear Cultist, I have decided that within the next few weeks Z-Cult FM
will be slowly closed down and the server put offline resulting in the
death of Z-Cult FM as we know it. Z-Cult FM was born in 2004 and over
the last 5 years has seen many high and low times. I would like to
thank everyone who was involved over the last 5 years in making Z-Cult
FM what it became. I would personally like to thank all the staff past
and present, all torrenters and supporters of the site. I did start
listing everyone by name but the list was too big and was scared I
would miss someone off. Thanks to everyone who posted and helped out in
any way possible. I would also like to unthank all the people who
during the 5 years have caused trouble for the site such as no-ip,
Marvel, DC Comics, etc etc list goes on….. least you made Z-Cult FM
into a soap opera with many dramas along the way. The future for Z-Cult
FM is currently a sad quiet death and a think about it’s future. If it
does return it will be just as a message board for the members who
still like to use it but we will see what future holds.
Thanks, Serj

R.I.P. Z-Cult FM 2004 – 2009

This now brings up the next question: so what? Is this going to make a dent in piracy? I got a note from one of the numerous shady characters I know, and the answer is– probably not.

My first reaction was – doesn’t affect me. I haven’t been to Z-Cult in at least 3 or 4 years. I stopped when it was still big, before they got all of their publicity. Why? Because it was a good place to start and then move on.

What was Z-Cult? Well, for me it was a place where I could find comic torrents to download. I would stop over every few days and see what had been posted. Usually I’d only get the latest comics for that week but sometimes there was something else I wanted. The only problem was that you had to either take the entire torrent or hand pick what you wanted. And if something went wrong, you got what you paid for (in other words, nothing). But as I said, I moved on.

I won’t say where I went or how I got there but eventually I got close to where some high quality scanners hung out. This got me the weeks comics much faster than Z-Cult ever did and also allowed me to get specific files I wanted. Listening to the people there gave me information I didn’t have, including the various troubles Z-Cult was having. But like I said, doesn’t affect me.

There are still things posted to torrent sites and you can find them if you know what to look for. And then there are specialty sites. I get my manga in raw (original scans) and scanlation (scanned with fan translations) formats on one ot two different sites. I read web comics such as Girl Genius from their author’s sites. I’ll even hit the site of a comic company to see what they have that’s nowhere else yet.

And yes, I still buy the comics I like. Sometimes I even get them on a per issue basis rather than in compilations. And if something I download really grabs my attention, I may go out and buy the back issues of it as well.

I don’t know what caused Z-Cult to finally shut down. I also know that there are too many other places to get comics, and there are still lots of people with scanners out there– including comics professionals. And there are still lots of people that want comics that they can conveniently read on their computers– including comics professionals.

Or, to quote the classics, “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

Flights of Fantasy: The Unauthorized but True Story of Radio & TV’s Adventures of Superman

I have not yet read Flights of Fantasy: The Unauthorized but True Story of Radio & TV’s Adventures of Superman.

That will not stop me from giving it a recommendation based on this simple fact: Mark Waid is reading it and learning things about Superman that he didn’t know before. He didn’t think it was possible, and neither did anybody else who has ever met Mark.

Click here to read pieces of it online.

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