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Watchmen: The Real Owlship??

  • News
  • August 11, 2008

In news that can only be classified as weird and off-putting while still bordering on cool, there is a new blog entry on the Watchmen official site. In the latest entry, titled "A Mysterious Discovery in New York," production designer Alex McDowell recounts a story where he and director Zack Snyder received a call from a location scout in New York about a house that they "just needed to see." They then rush to a brownstone in Chelsea, to an abandoned building that was days away from destruction. Here’s part of the post:

“The scout tells us that the tunnel and chamber was once a spur of a forgotten subway, an underground maintenance area for the cars, built in the 1920’s. In 1955, the tunnel suffered a collapse that flooded this section of the system, and the lower portions of the track were abandoned. 100 yards from the repair yard the tunnel now opens up directly to the East River.”

“Clearly someone had broken into the chamber from above, probably in the sixties, and build the steel stair that connected directly the basement we’d stumbled into.”

I suppose McDowell and/or Snyder’s plan here is to allude that the two really went on this "trip" and really found Dan Drieberg’s Owlcave. Viral marketing for this film is completely expected, given Snyder’s fanaticism of the source material and the success DC and Warner Bros. had with the bombardment of Dark Knight virals. With this in mind, one has to wonder how dumb they think the fans are.
 
Are we supposed to believe that this place exists? Or that these perfectly lit, professionally shot pictures were done on a whim? Come on guys, show me hundreds of twenty-somethings with Comedian buttons on, or billboards for Nostalgia, but keep the faux Blair Witchery out of this. Check out more pics of the "real" Owlship below, and you can check out the full blog entry here.
 
   
 
 

 

ComicMix Quick Picks: 8/11/08

The weekend window-closing wrap-up:

11 Superheroes That Look Like Supervillains: No. When one of them is called "Evil Ernie" and is, from your own article, "tasked with killing all of humanity" I don’t think he qualifies as a superhero.

From FailBlog: well, think of it as a strange kind of crossover.

Colleen Doran provides the most useful post of the day: how freelancers can get health insurance, complete with links and her own insurance stories. Just because you haven’t got an exclusive deal with one of the big publishers, you don’t have an excuse. Now if someone would take the time and do a similar post on freelancers and life insurance…

Wanted: pre-1965 money for time travel. So if the market is suddenly glutted with mint condition early Marvels, you’ll know why.

Via John Cole: One of the largest and most photographed arches in Arches National Park has collapsed. Wall Arch collapsed sometime late Monday or early Tuesday. The arch is along Devils Garden Trail, one of the most popular in the park. For years, the arch has been a favorite stopping point for photographers.

Before:

After:

 
Not pictured: the coyote at the bottom of the ravine with the defective Acme product.

Hammer of the Gods 2: Modi Alone

  • News
  • August 11, 2008

In today’s brand-new episode of Hammer of the Gods 2: Back from the Dead, by Michael Oeming and Mark Wheatley, Modi’s men are dead, slain in battle with the Chinese witch.  Can Modi save Odin by himself?  Will he be able to return the king of the gods to Asgaard?  Will he be able to concentrate while the witch taunts him?  What’s up with all the taunting, anyway?  Why can’t people fight silently?  Isn’t losing a limb or a lot of blood a lot to think about by itself?

 

Credits: Mike Oeming (Artist), Mike Oeming (Writer), Mark Wheatley (Colorist), Mark Wheatley (Letterer), Mark Wheatley (Writer), John Staton (Colorist)

 

The New Star Trek 4

  • News
  • August 11, 2008

After teasing us with just four close-ups of selected cast members of next May’s new Star Trek film, Paramount has released four additional teases. This time we can see Scotty, McCoy, Chekov and Sulu. While we can’t see the modified uniforms, we can tell the pointy sideburns remain in tact for which there will no doubt be much rejoicing.

 

Paramount’s publicity roll out appears to be carefully designed to release drips and drabs of clips and information before the first full trailer which is now not expected until the holiday season. Word is that a rough assemblage of the film was shown to enthusiastic execs at the studio and director J.J. Abrams indicated the film would have been ready for its initially planned Christmas release. Of course, the last few Trek films to open during the holiday season haven’t fared well so slotting it to kick off the summer 2009 season may actually be a blessing.

 

The Funniest ‘Dark Knight’ Review You’ll Read

  • News
  • August 11, 2008

dark_knight_joker-1798911This is probably the tardiest and possibly the funniest review of The Dark Knight you’ll see, as TV writer Ken Levine writes on his blog about how much it must suck to live in Gotham City.

Jesus! You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting six mob bosses. And then there’s the town’s super psycho villain – they couldn’t find someone a little more aesthetically pleasing? Children watch those televised truck chases too, y’know. And Juneau appears to have more daytime in the winter than Gotham City. Does it get dark everyday at noon?…

Quick aside: Wouldn’t you love to see AMERICAN IDOL open auditions in Gotham City? Paula would be mistaken for the Joker.

I used to think the Joker was a brilliant mastermind until I realized a number of his fiendish plots were a direct lift from SAW.

DARK KNIGHT was a fun ride and Heath Ledger steals the movie (and everything else). But is it just me? I’m reaching the superhero saturation point. I’ve sympathized enough with tortured reluctant caped crusaders. And these movies all seem to turn on the heroes’ inability to kill the mass murderer psychopath villain because of some “code”. That doesn’t seem real. Oh… wait. We’re talking about guys who wear spandex suits and can fly – strike that last objection.

That’s all good and fun, but then there’s the following, which is a worrisome note about superhero movies wearing out their welcome.

DARK KNIGHT is worth seeing but please Hollywood, no more comic books. The only character left is Bazooka Joe.

It’s just one opinion (well, that and some commenters), but it’s worth considering that these projects are hitting a saturation point and the average (non comics fan) viewer is getting tired of it.

fart-party-1970935

Review: ‘The Fart Party’ by Julia Wertz

  • Uncategorized
  • August 11, 2008

fart-party-1970935

The Fart Party
By Julia Wertz
Atomic Book Company, May 2008, $13.95

Julia Wertz’s comics would be terribly juvenile if they weren’t wonderfully juvenile – little snippets of life from a young woman in San Francisco, obsessed with beer, cheese, bicycles and comics. (Not to mention the occasional outburst of cartoony violence.)

Wertz has been posting her autobiographical comics at www.fartparty.org for nearly three years now, with occasional published-on-actual-paper minicomics as well, but this is the first collection that sits comfortably on a shelf. It seems to collect roughly the first year of the online strips, when Wertz was living in San Francisco with her boyfriend, Oliver, though the book itself doesn’t say that, or have dates on any of the strips. (Wertz’s life has changed a bit since the time of these strips; she’s currently ensconced in Darkest Brooklyn.) The strips here do form something of an arc, and have a natural ending, which is rare for any collection of regularly published comics, from the web or anywhere else.

Wertz’s style is simple and cartoony, but springs out full-formed from the beginning of the book with all its rubber-armed, pointy-eyed, casually-violent energy. Wertz does include a couple of strips she created earlier, in a more conventionally “realistic” style. But she buries those strips in the middle of the book, and they’re definitely less distinctive than her current style. I’m sure the fine-art brigade will hate her work – as will the good-taste brigade, which is similar but not identical to the first brigade – but she’s a real cartoonist, and that’s something to be celebrated. There’s still room for improvement in her style; her faces are only intermittently expressive at this point, and the figures’ body language tends to huge, stagy gestures even when those aren’t appropriate.

(more…)

George Lucas Hangs Up The iPhone

  • News
  • August 11, 2008

Those who own or know people who own an iPhone have probably come in contact with an application that has been on the iTunes top 25 applications since the birth of the App Store, and easily one of the most entertaining. The PhoneSaber app is a very simple yet enjoyable application which uses the accelerometer of the iPhone, turning the phone into a makeshift Lightsaber, sounds and all – minus the ability to cut off your bastard son’s hand.

Well, it looks as if Star Wars creator and ultimate ruiner of all things good George Lucas has expressed that he is not pleased with the fact that there is a Lightsaber application, seeing as how his video game developer, LucasArts, along with sister company THQ, have all the rights for handheld Star Wars video games. This coming on the heels of the I Am Rich App scandal, Apple has pulled the popular PhoneSaber from the App Store.

There are currently talks about LucasArts retooling the application under thier name to coincide with the "Unleashing the Force" iPhone game later this year, with better functionality (and a price). Either way, if you own the application, and don’t feel like spending $4.99 in six months to buy the exact same thing, make sure you don’t delete it in a fit of rebellion.

Comics Out Of The Closet, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • August 11, 2008

My old pal Joe Staton, one of the most brilliant graphic storytellers in the history of this medium, is currently enjoying a long-overdue exhibition of his work at the Storefront Artist Project in Pittsfield, MA. Peculiarly titled The Art of Joe Staton, it runs through August 31. We talked about this here at ComicMix a while ago; click-through and read to your heart’s content. Better still, go there and check it out.

This could have been the shortest column I’ve ever written, but no, I aim towards broader context. We’re seeing more and more of this sort of thing. Mark Wheatley and Marc Hempel’s Breathtaker was among the dozen or so graphic novels recently honored at the Norman Rockwell Museum, and that exhibit is now touring the nation. There have been many theme-based exhibits of comic art all over the country – too many to mention.

Oh, boy. We’ve been accepted as a real art medium. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth (for a change), I just wish this happened a couple decades ago.

Will Eisner and Stan Lee lived long enough to feel the full brunt of public acceptance; Jack Kirby really didn’t. He was honored as the ABC News Man of the Week after he died, but I’m sure that didn’t massage his ego any. Wally Wood got bubkis. The fact is, the first generation of comics creators is almost entirely gone, and most died with a stigma attached to their names. Sure, Stan and Joe Kubert are still around (thankfully) and are still producing stuff (also thankfully), but that’s because they entered this craft while still pre-pubescent. (more…)

ComicMix Columns & Features for the Week Ending August 10, 2008

  • News
  • August 10, 2008

Don’t bother me, I’m watching the ‘lympics.  As if I followed any of these sports at any other time.  We’ve had some good sports here in ComicMix too; here’s a bit of what they’ve done for you this past week:

Now will someone please put some proper shorts on those female volleyball players?

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