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Review: ‘Planet Saturday Comics: Volume One’ by Monty S. Kane

Planet Saturday Comics: Volume One
Written and illustrated by Monty S. Kane
Planet Saturday, LLC, $12.95

[[[Planet Saturday Comics: Volume One]]] collects short vignettes previously published on the Planet Saturday Web site. The stories, apparently based on the writer/illustrator’s own life, all concern either the child Emory (aka M, as in Monty), and his attempts at [[[Calvin and Hobbes]]]-like flights of fancy, or the 40-year-old Emory and his travails parenting his daughter Dorothy. (I’m not sure where the mother is in this picture. In real life, Kane’s wife helps him run the site.) Each vignette is accompanied by an entirely unnecessary text explanation that seems to be there solely to pad out the book.

Critiquing Planet Saturday feels a bit like kicking a puppy. The characters are just so darn sweet, and if you buy the book directly from the site, they’re donating $1 to health care for uninsured kids. Nevertheless, if I don’t kick the puppy, I must at least nudge it gently back into its owners’ yard; it’s not getting a particularly warm reception over here, despite its almost desperate eagerness to please.

It’s unfair, considering that so many of the mainstream newspaper features have moved online, but I still expect Web-only comics to be a bit more edgy or niche-oriented than the stuff I read in the local daily. I really can’t see what this strip provides that I couldn’t find in [[[Stone Soup]]], [[[FoxTrot]]] or (shudder) the [[[For Better or for Worse]]] retread. Emory’s kid imagination is pretty garden variety (I wish I could fly so I could escape the local bully; I ruined my shirt pretending to be a caveman), and his parent’s-eye view offers no insights we haven’t seen before (my daughter plays her music too loud and she’s growing up too fast). The strip’s just not funny, or quirky, enough to really grab your attention. The art is nice (appealingly rounded, slightly exaggerated figures against a softly detailed background), but that’s about all this book’s got going for it.

If you simply must see the strip for yourself, I’d advise sampling the free milk online, rather than paying for the print version of the cow. (You can still donate that dollar to children’s health, though, if it’ll make you feel better.)

Amy Goldschlager is an editor for FindingDulcinea.com.

Pixar’s Up for New York Comic Con

  • News
  • February 3, 2009

New York Comic Con and Disney*Pixar have just announced that the first 50 minutes of the forthcoming movie Up will screen for the first time at New York Comic Con.

Up is the story of Carl Fredricksen, a man who spent his entire life dreaming of exploring the globe and experiencing life to its fullest. But at age 78, life seems to have passed Carl by, until a twist of fate (and a persistent 8-year old Wilderness Explorer named Russell) gives him a new lease on life.

The screening will be introduced by director Pete Docter and begin at 6:30 PM on Saturday, February 7 in the IGN Theater inside NYCC. Methinks you should get on line Friday.

Life on Mars, with yet another potential Watchmen tie-in

  • News
  • February 3, 2009

NASA and Google released a new Mars overlay providing 3D views of the canyons and mountains of the Red Planet, part of the beta launch of the downloadable Google Earth 5.0 client application. Now all we’re waiting for is for them to find this somewhere on the planet’s surface…

zuko-8891766

‘The Last Airbender’: Dev Patel in, Jesse McCartney out

  • Uncategorized
  • February 3, 2009

zuko-8891766They must have been reading our comments thread.

Now it’s Dev Patel, who’s getting all the buzz in Hollywood for starring in Slumdog Millionaire, who will be playing Zuko in writer/director M. Night Shyamalan’s live-action feature film The Last Airbender, according to Variety.  Patel takes on the role of the Fire Nation’s evil Zuko, which was originally to be played by Jesse McCartney until "schedule conflicts arose", which could be code for "cast at least one non-white actor in a film about Asians, please".

Exiled from the Fire Nation by his father, Zuko is sent to capture the Avatar in order to restore his honor and right to the throne.

The Last Airbender, based on Nickelodeon’s Avatar anime, will still be released July 2, 2010.

The golden anniversary of ‘The Day The Music Died’

  • News
  • February 3, 2009

Fifty years ago, a single-engine plane crashed into a Iowa field, instantly killing three men and officially opening rock ‘n’ roll heaven.

The years haven’t dimmed the fascination with the night of February 3, 1959, when 22-year-old Buddy Holly, 28-year-old J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson and 17-year-old Ritchie Valens performed in Clear Lake the night before and then boarded the plane for a planned 300-mile flight to their next gig. Their deaths would be immortalized in the Don McLean song "American Pie" as The Day The Music Died.

Our friends at FindingDulcinea.com have a great write-up about the performers.

ComicMix Quick Picks – February 2, 2009

  • Uncategorized
  • February 3, 2009

* the. Speak-er is shaped like a cartoon speech bubble. Of course, if it was a speech bubble, it would have speech recognition to render text on the fly. If it was really cool, it would look like John Workman lettering.

* ICv2 – First Second to Publish Scott McCloud. "First Second Books has announced that it will publish two upcoming works by Scott McCloud, the multiple award-winning author of Zot, Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics, and Making Comics.  First Second plans to publish a McCloud-penned fictional graphic novel, tentatively entitled The Sculptor, in the spring of 2013 followed by a non-fiction work."

* Val Kilmer to be king of Bacchus in New Orleans parade.

* Aaaah! Zombie filking… wait, I’m being redundant.

* More NYCC stuff: ICv2 says Joss Whedon will preview ‘Dollhouse’ at 12:45pm (EST) on Sunday, February 8th at the IGN Theater. Whedon will then conduct an autograph session starting at 2pm.

* The NYCC Indie After Party. I’ll be there… I’ll probably need the drink.

Anything else? Consider this an open thread.

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Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo coming from Reed in 2010

  • News
  • February 3, 2009

c2e2-1264395The city of big shoulders will soon hold up a second "as major as you can get in the midwest" comic convention. As announced today by the fine folks who bring you the New York City Comic Con, the newly dubbed Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (or for us locals, the aptly catchy ‘C2E2’) will take the city by storm April 16th-18th, 2010 in the ‘As Deep As Our Pizza’ McCormick Place Convention Center.

Boasting the fastest growing attendance list in recent memory, Reed Exhibitions promises to come to town with guns a’ blazing, Capone style. Lance Fensterman, Vice President and Show Manager (for this year’s impending New York Comic Con, and the aforementioned Chicago show) wants to let the fans know that they are “aiming big”:

“We plan to apply everything we have learned in launching and building New York Comic Con to our Chicago event and we intend for it to be a major attraction right out the gate. Of course, this not only means providing a customer friendly atmosphere but also providing dynamic programming that boasts top talent from across the pop culture spectrum, including artists, creators and celebrities from Hollywood, TV, comics, books, video games, toys,  Anime, Manga and all other applicable aspects of the popular arts.  But, most importantly, we will also seek to make adjustments so that our show reflects the essence of Chicago.  This will be critically important.  The city itself will form an important part of our identity.”

Prior to this, Chicago has been host to Wizard World Chicago, as well as the new-and-not-created-by-corporate-overlords-grassroots Windy City Con. Given the recent announcement of Wizard World Austin’s demise and the postponing of Wizard World LA, it seems the wave of change hitting the nation is hitting the con circuit too.

(more…)

Groundhog day…

  • News
  • February 2, 2009

…and the groundhog saw his shadow, so that means we have six more weeks to plan for New York Comic-Con, right?

No?

Dammit.

The Point – February 2nd, 2009

  • News
  • February 2, 2009
pt020209-2739613It may be Groundhog Day but we won’t be repeating anything here. There’s a new Guest Of Honor headed to NY ComicCon, Five Cool Things waiting in the comic shop this week and just enough time for the director of FANBOYS to tell you more reasons why you have to see this film. 

 

And be sure to stay on The Point via badgeitunes61x15dark-5807786 or RSS!

 

Whatever happened to Bill Jemas?

  • News
  • February 2, 2009

He’s gone from presenting his take on Spider-Man, the X-Men and the rest of the Marvel Universe to, well, his take on the creation of the universe, according to the New Jersey Star-Ledger:

Each morning before sunrise, for the last three years, the Rutgers and Harvard Law School graduate has labored over the Bible, specifically the Book of Genesis in Hebrew, the language in which it was first written.

His goal is to write an English translation of Genesis that is truer to the Hebrew text than are widely used English translations like the famed King James Version. He already has completed the first chapter, available online and in his book "Genesis Rejuvenated."

By presenting alternative English definitions for Hebrew words to those chosen by KJV translators in 1611, he hopes that his internet-accessible "Freeware Bible," as he calls his translation, will show readers that widely accepted Bible translations are inherently imperfect.

He acknowledges that this would be a gargantuan task even for a team of learned Bible scholars, let alone a man like himself without any formal theological training. And he knows that news of his endeavor will baffle comic-book fans who associate him more with Spider-Man and Wolverine than with Adam and Eve.

You can find the book at freewarebible.com. The illustration of Spider-Man’s Greatest Bible Stories was just too tempting to pass up. Sorry.

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