The Mix : What are people talking about today?

Spider-Man puts thief in jail for seven years… really!

I’ve waited years to write a headline like that and have it be true.

Scott Meherg, 28, pleaded guilty to theft yesterday for obtaining
Amazing Spider-Man #2 from Graham
Crackers Comics in Naperville, IL in 2007 with a $980.99 forged bank check, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The comic book has never been recovered, and the judge ordered Meherg to pay $980.99 in restitution.

Meherg fled the area after police
identified him through a photo lineup and his fingerprints on the phony
check but was arrested last fall on a deceptive
practices charge. He faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

J. Jonah Jameson could not be reached for comment.

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Robert Downey Jr. photos from Iron Man 2

  • Uncategorized
  • May 8, 2009

robert-downey-jr-as-iron-man-6919022From Elisabeth Rappe at Cinematical: First Look at Downey Jr. as Iron Man in Sequel.

It’s so geeky to say so, my childish heart of hearts just leaps at a photo like this. Iron Man was definitely an amazing way to kick off last summer, and it helps erase the pain of this year’s superhero film to know that Iron Man 2 is in the wings.

Now
come on, Favreau! Give us a photo of Scarlett Johannson or Mickey
Rourke in costume! We have a long way to go, and we need something to
make the long, long months even more unbearable.

Film status report: Wolverine, Deadpool, Dead of Night

Let’s take a few minutes and clear the decks of superhero film news before we all get wrapped up in Star Trek coverage…

  • Yes, another Wolverine sequel is already in the works. According to Variety, the sequel will focus on the X-Men comic’s samurai storyline, the Japanese locale setup for which is teased after this film’s end credits. In the meantime, Hugh Jackman will be working with Anne Hathaway in the big screen adaptation of the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Carousel. Since Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals did very well for him when he was playing Curly in Oklahoma… a role that was later taken over by Patrick Wilson, who went on to play Nite Owl in Watchmen.
  • Yes, there’s a Deadpool spinoff in the works at Fox. Ryan Reynolds is attached to come back for what for now is
    simply being called “Deadpool.” Lauren Shuler Donner and Marvel
    Studios would act as producers. What, you’re surprised?
  • Yes, there are now photos from Dead of Night, which is based on the Italian comic Dylan Dog. It stars Brandon Routh and Sam Huntington (where have we seen those two before) and Taye Diggs. This may be the property that keeps Platinum Studios alive. FirstShowing.net has the photos.
  • And this just in, also from FirstShowing: Neil Gaiman and Henry Selick May Work Together Again?! Coolness. Any guesses as to what, since The Graveyard Book is already in the works elsewhere?
  • Finally, we hope to have some Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen news shortly, as soon as we’re allowed to talk about it.

The new Kindle DX: Closer to comic ready, but…

kindle-dx-1-6852613Amazon has released the Kindle DX, the 2.0 version of their e-book reader. And you already know if it works for books, but we know the really important question– is it the holy grail for reading comics?

Well, the screen’s bigger. It’s bigger than the average tankoubon manga page (5 x 7.5 inches) but smaller than the average US comic page. The screen auto-rotates when you rotate it, so it zooms nicely. And miracle of miracles, it has native PDF support. It holds over twice as much data as the original Kindle.

But. It’s still not color, it’s 16 gray levels. It still has all of the Digital Rights Management that allows Amazon to turn your machine into a paperweight if it so decides. There aren’t a lot of comic books available for it yet. And at $489 for the device alone, that’s a few months of comics buying right there.

So I’m torn. It might be the perfect manga reader, but I’m not sure it’s there yet for most of the books in America. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it to give it a full test, but I still don’t think I’m giving up my MacBook Pro and ComicBookLover yet.

I still think Joy Of Tech has the best take on it so far…

league-3-century-1-5945175

Review: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century: 1910

  • Uncategorized
  • May 6, 2009
league-3-century-1-5945175

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. III: Century #1
: “1910”
By Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill
Top Shelf, April 2009, $7.95
 

The usual rule in comics is that nothing with two or more colons in its title – not to mention two or more separate numbering schemes – is nothing but rubbishy hackwork, and should be avoided. In this, as in so much else, Alan Moore is the Great Exception, as his newest miniseries comes with a jaw-breaker of a title that sounds like a piece of summer crossover from a stranger and much more literary world than our own.

This volume begins the third major “[[[League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]]” story – last year’s [[[Black Dossier]]] doesn’t quite count, for complicated Moorian reasons – and it continues with the survivors of the team from the first two stories (Mina Harker and a rejuvenated Alan Quatermain posing as his own son), augmented by several more fictional characters (Orlando, Raffles, Carnacki) to continue their work preserving England from obscure horrors, reporting in to the secret group headed by Mycroft Holmes.

There will be two more volumes in this story – each set in, and titled after, a different and widely spaced year in the last century – so 1910 is mostly set-up. Moore re-introduces the League and sets them to squabbling, since superteams must always fight among themselves. The battling is less ominous this time around: none of the team are as immediately dangerous as Mr. Hyde, nor as sneakily obnoxious as the invisible Mr.Griffin. (So we get Raffles’s sniffing attempts to maintain his requisite stiff upper lip in circumstances he never expected and Orlando engaging in high-quality mincing whenever the slightest opportunity arises, along with Mina’s usual Serious Girl act and very little from the increasingly colorless Alan.)

(more…)

Survey: How much of a discount are you getting for your comics?

This question was prompted by:

  • Free Comic Book Day, where a whole lot of comics were handed out at a 100% discount, and;
  • this comment from Vinnie Bartilucci about a firm being “the last chain in the history of the world to try and get list price for almost their entire catalog.  I despise them.”

So it got us to thinking– what are people actually paying for comics nowaday? Not how much are they consuming, we have decent numbers about that– but at what discount? That may give us a better idea as to what sort of margin stores are working on nowadays, and how comic readers are behaving.

So please, take a minute and
click here to take the survey
. We’ll post the results shortly.


online surveys

Texas Bill Might Require Sex Offenders To Register Online IDs

From G4: A bill that passed the Texas Senate today would change sex offender
registration regulations in the state so convicted sex offenders would
have to provide law enforcement with each “alias, assumed name,
nickname, or pseudonym, including a screen name, used by the person.”
Presumably, the law includes gamer tags, twitter user names, MySpace
names, and other public online identifiers– including IDs on ComicMix.
The additional information would not be made public but would be
available to law enforcement and social-networking sites, and
presumably, video game companies. This gives companies the ability
reject people from joining based on their inclusion on the list. The
bill, introduced by Sen. Florence Shapiro, is headed to a vote by the
Texas House… and should it pass, the governor’s desk. 

Chicago attorney and video gamer Wesley Johnson said, “It appears
this law would apply to gamer tags, although the final definition of
what’s covered in the law is up to the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice.” Here’s the Full Text of the Bill.

Like Mike Diana hasn’t had enough grief in his life.

Hat tip: Frank Meyer.

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