Dark Knight Babies
In news that isn’t really news, but still needs to be shared; this video popped up on College Humor. Be forewarned: it involves children not acting their age…
The Mix : What are people talking about today?
EZ Street trailer from San Diego
A lot of folks asked about the trailer we were showing at the booth at San Diego for EZ Street, so we’re posting it for everyone who couldn’t make it this year– or who couldn’t hear it over the crowds.
This is also a good place to remind people that EZ Street is nominated for the Harvey Awards this year, and that the deadline is this Friday. So if you’re a comics pro who’s eligible to vote and hasn’t yet, we’d like to remind you to vote and to keep EZ Street in mind when filling out your ballot.
Review: ‘Scout, Vol. 2’ by Timothy Truman
Scout, Volume Two
By Timothy Truman
Dynamite Entertainment, July 2008, $19.95
This, as you might have guessed from the title of the book, is the second collection of Tim Truman’s [[[Scout]]] series, originally published over twenty-four issues starting in 1987 from Eclipse Comics. (You young ‘uns won’t know from Eclipse, but they were one of the major “indy” comics companies, back before anybody used that term.) The first Scout collection came out last year, and I reviewed it then.
To recap: Scout is set in a world of the worst fears of mid-‘80s liberals: global warming ran riot, turning most of the US into a desert; the US government collapsed into corporate fascism; the US economy basically dried up and blew away; and everything generally went to hell. It also went to hell really, really quickly, since Scout starts in 1999, only twelve years after it was originally published. By the beginning of this volume – the eighth issue and the start of a new plotline – it’s possibly a year later than that, but everything is still horrible, and getting even worse. (It’s one of those post-apocalypse settings in which regular people, like you and me, seem to have all died off quietly, without even leaving rotting corpses or giant piles of bones behind, so that the tough survivalist types can battle it out over the scarce resources left.)
But Scout’s world is different from our own in other ways: it’s not really a science-fictional world, despite being set in the near future. Various kinds of magic and mysticism really do work, and our hero, former Army Ranger Emanuel Santana, is explicitly on a mission to destroy a series of legendary monsters that are behind the USA’s troubles. (The first storyline was called “[[[The Four Monsters]]];” in that, he tracked down and killed four monsters from Apache mythology, all masquerading as powerful humans. At the beginning of this volume, his spirit guide – a talking prairie dog called Gahn – leads Santana to the next monster, which is a part of him.)
Is Hillary Clinton Really The Thing? By Dennis O’Neil
I never talked to either Jack Kirby or Stan Lee about politics, so I don’t really have any idea where they stood on the subject. My guess would be that following their political spoor wouldn’t take you very far west and that they didn’t have much sympathy for the hippie-rebels of the 60s (and here allow me to blush and hide my face). After all, they and their parents (and my parents) fought for a place in the American mainstream because, finally, acceptance meant an increased chance of survival and for those outside the tribe, who suffered the Great Depression, not surviving seemed to be a real possibility. Then here came the snotty kids with their tie-dye and their girly haircuts and their wiseass slogans saying that a place in the tribe was not worth struggling for – in fact, the tribe itself was stinking of corruption.
Both generations were, in their own way, right; both had a piece of the truth.
Stan and Jack were – are – of the first of the two generations and so they were – are – probably politically a bit to the right of me and maybe you (and my parent and most of my siblings.) But events of the past week make me guess that their greatest creations were liberals. I refer to the Fantastic Four who, along with Spider-Man co-launched Marvel Comics, as one or two of you might have heard. True FF aficionados know, and perhaps relish, the tendency of the members of this supergroup to squabble among themselves. Two of the four, The Human Torch and The Thing, seem particularly apt to indulge in petty argumentation.
Remind you of any particular political group?
Yeah, right. Liberals. Witness the recent news: Ms. Hillary Clinton’s die-hard supporters are threatening to vote for John McCain, the Republican candidate, unless Ms. Clinton’s presidential aspirations are accorded full acknowledgement at the Democratic convention, which will be soaking up media time in about two weeks. This despite the fact that Ms. Clinton has already lost the nomination to Barack Obama, whose crew must be thinking harsh and uncharitable thoughts about the Clintonites.
Scientists One Step Closer To Invisibility
CNN.com has reported that scientists are having continuing success in developing invisibility technology.
The scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, are to going to release their findings later this week in the journals Nature and Science.
The technology to avoid not only human sight but also radar and other forms of detection has understandable military applications. For instance, just imagine: invisible ninja!
Or is that repetitive?
Want more? Check out the link!
Watchmen: The Real Owlship??
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.
Not pictured: the coyote at the bottom of the ravine with the defective Acme product.
Hammer of the Gods 2: Modi Alone
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
A
fter teasing us with just four close-ups of selected cast members of next May’s new Star Trek film,
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
This 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.
