The Mix : What are people talking about today?

Jewy McJewJew, by Martha Thomases

Jewy McJewJew, by Martha Thomases

About a year ago, I wrote about The Adventures of Rabbi Harvey: A Graphic Novel of Jewish Wisdom and Wit in the Wild West. A series of short stories inspired by Jewish folklore and set in the Old West, the book was charming, light and funny – a great way to introduce young children (and their grandparents) to graphic storytelling.

Now, artist/writer Steve Sheinkin has created a sequel, Rabbi Harvey Rides Again: A Graphic Novel of Jewish Folktales Let Loose in the Wild West. It’s an unusual book. There are plenty of disagreements, but no fighting. The most action takes place on a baseball field. The women can be differentiated from the men, not by their massive cleavage, but by their lack of beards … and occasional dresses.

So why do you want to read it? Or, more precisely, why do you want to read it if you are neither a young child nor a grandparent? What if you aren’t Jewish?

Don’t worry. Rabbi Harvey, although a rabbi, does not proselytize, nor does he spend much time in his synagogue. He’s the kind of rabbi Andy Griffin would play, if he played a rabbi instead of a sheriff in Mayberry. This isn’t surprising when one considers who created the show and its characters.

The art style is not in the least bit sophisticated. There isn’t a lot of detail in the drawing, nor perspective. Heads seem to be a bit large, and shoulders are small. Most people are about the same height. The effect is actually quite charming, working well with the gentle intelligence of the stories.

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Wizard World Chicago 2008: Marvel Ultimates Panel

Wizard World Chicago 2008: Marvel Ultimates Panel

Friday, Day One at Wizard World Chicago and it’s the Marvel Ultimates Panel featuring Brian Bendis, C.B. Cebulski, editor Bill Rosemann and moderator Jim McCann. As Rick Marshall previously reported about the "Mondo Marvel" panel, this particular panel was also relatively light on earth-shattering announcements. It also had some technical problems at the beginning which prevented the slideshow from working. So, to start the panel off, Jim McCann dove right into it with a couple of announcements and then some Q&A while they waited for the slides.

First up, Rosemann announced, "No, we do not know when Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk will come out." Bendis also announced that Ultimate Spider-Man is "not cancelled," that "everything is connected" and that there will be an Ultimate Spider-Man Annual which will focus on Peter and MJ’s "physical relationship."

According to Bendis, "It was the hardest sell I ever had. I just thought that remembering my glory years of 15 and 16 that it’s an important issue. Not having dealt with it felt false to me. It’s gonna be drawn by David La Fuente."  The book is double-sized and will be out in October.

At that point, the kinks were finally worked out and the slides started. Fans of Marvel’s Ultimate Universe were then treated to several slides featuring, among other things, upcoming covers for issues of Ultimate Origins featuring Captain America, Magneto and Hulk as well as a few pages of the actual Cap origins issue itself. There was also an alternative Origins cover featuring "Cap’s butt" as drawn by Gabriel del Otto.

Also, slides from Ultimatum showing the Fantastic Four, Dr. Doom, Namor, and the Ultimates 3 cast of the Ultimates featuring Black Panther and Captain America next to each other on the slide. This slide highlights, according to Bendis, an "organic but massive disaster" which happens to the Ultimate Universe. The disaster will be seen in Ultimate Spider-Man.

Then, once the slides were done (which took about five minutes) it was back to the Q&A which, as you may expect, pretty much became the Brian Bendis show as the vast majority of the questions were directed to him. Some of the highlights of the Q&A follow but it started off with Bendis’s explanation of his thought process when the Ultimates universe was being created.

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Editing Challenges Trouble ‘Watchmen’ and Other Movie News

Editing Challenges Trouble ‘Watchmen’ and Other Movie News

Fans have long wondered how any director could condense Watchmen into a feature-length film (I always liked the suggestion of doing it as an HBO miniseries), and now director Zack Snyder is feeling that pinch.

The Geek Files blog has a comprehensive entry about Snyder’s difficult editing task. The current length sits at an epic three hours, and this is already after the Black Freighter storyline and other material has been excised into a wholly separate film that will come out as a companion DVD.

[Snyder] added: "I’ve lost perspective on that now, because to me, the honest truth is I geek out on little stuff now as much as anybody. Like, people will go, ‘We’ve got to cut. You don’t need that shot of Hollis Mason’s garage sign.’ And I’m like, ‘What are you talking about? Of course you do. Are you crazy? How will people enjoy the movie without s**t like that in it?’

"And we had Dave Gibbons in there, too, and he would draw on our books, and it was just sick cool.

"And so then you come back from that experience, and you go to the studio, and the studio’s cool, don’t get me wrong, but they don’t love it like we do. Right? It’s like just a movie, like, ‘Oh, we have this movie, Watchmen, and it’s ****ing long.’ Like, ‘What are these superheroes? They look crazy.’ So you have that experience. So for me, right now, I’m in the middle of that."

Snyder has already said he is planning a 4hrs 30mins Director’s Cut DVD edition of the movie. There will also be a companion DVD called Tales of the Black Freighter, based on a background story depicted within the panels of Watchmen.

There’s also some other comics movie news:

The New Jersey Star-Ledger reports some anecdotal evidence that successful films are boosting sales of actual comics at shops.

And the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette offers an early look at Wanted and another article on the best and worst comic-to-film adaptations.

Webcomic News Roundup: Love, Life and Poop

Webcomic News Roundup: Love, Life and Poop

Marriage proposals happen a lot of ways these days, but leave it to Ian McConville of gaming webcomic Three Panel Soul to present the big question in the form of an 8-bit videogame he created on the sly. McConville offered up a few screenshots from the game, but won’t be posting a playable version online, because "it was made for an audience of one."

Congratulations to McConville and his special Player 2. (via Fleen)

One of the biggest news items of the week was the announcement by Diesel Sweeties creator Rich Stevens that he would be returning to web-only publication of his popular comic, ending print syndication of the series in mid-August.

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Wizard World Chicago 2008: Mondo Marvel Panel Report

Wizard World Chicago 2008: Mondo Marvel Panel Report

If Friday morning’s "Mondo Marvel" panel was any indication of what the rest of the weekend had in store for attendees at Wizard World Chicago, it’s going to be a loooong convention.

Marvel PR guru Jim McCann moderated a panel that featured Peter David, C.B. Cebulski, Tom Brevoort, Mike Perkins, Brian Reed, Bill Rosemann and Mike Perkins, and the "official" announcements were done and over in just under 15 minutes. The rest of the panel consisted of a Q&A session which yielded a few items of note. With San Diego Comic-Con International looming, it appeared that Marvel was among the many publishers saving any significant announcements regarding new projects for the big show next month.

Newsarama and Comic Book Resources have the standard, pre-arranged (and in somes cases, pre-written) coverage of the specific announcements (as well as images from the slideshows), so feel free to head in that direction for the round-up of who’s gone "exclusive," which characters are being market-tested in their own miniseries and general rundowns of which dead horses are being kicked.

As far as the Q&A portion of the event, writer Peter David (She-Hulk, X-Factor and Fallen Angel) announced that he’ll be moving the X-Factor team to Detroit, having originally considered Chicago as a destination but settling on Detroit due to the city being home to artist Larry Stroman, who he’ll be reuniting with on the title.

A fan who asked about the potential for any future Master of Kung-Fu projects was told by Marvel editor Tom Brevoort that legal issues surrounding the rights to the character of Fu Manchu, who was originally a pulp novel villain created by author Sax Rohmer, have complicated the return of any Kung-Fu titles.

"If it comes out and his name is changed to ‘Bob Manchu,’ you’ll know why," added David.

When a fan asked David about his thoughts regarding stories set far in the future, citing his work on the "One Million" crossover story arc for DC several years ago, David provided a lengthy explanation of his thought process when scripting the stories for Marvel’s rival publisher — much to the agitation of some of the Marvel editorial staff sitting on the panel.

The cross-company jabs didn’t stop there, however, as a DC fan later asked about the return of the bumbling superteam known as the Great Lakes Initiative. When David responded that there wasn’t much need for them, seeing as how X-Factor would be based in Detroit, the fan added, "But they’re not funny."

McCann quickly jumped into the conversation, telling the DC fan, "If you want funny, pick up [Final] Crisis #1"

One of the last items of note was C.B. Cebulski’s acknowledgement that he had declined to serve as writer for the next Marvel: Ultimate Alliance videogame, which will be based on the events of the Civil War storyline. The first game was wel-received by comics and gaming fans alike, with many citing Cebulski’s work on the game’s script.


The image pictured here is from the upcoming 30-part Marvel series based on Stephen King’s epic novel The Stand, for which Mike Perkins will provide art.

Happy Birthday: Butch Guice

Happy Birthday: Butch Guice

Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1961, Jackson “Butch” Guice started out drawing for fanzines and designing patches and emblems for a company in North Carolina.

In 1982 he ghosted some artwork for Pat Broderick on the Rom annual, and drew the first two issues of the independent comic book Southern Knights. Then Marvel editor Al Milgrom offered him a chance to draw Micronauts #48. Guice penciled Micronauts until its cancellation with #58 and did other titles for Marvel as well, including work on X-Men, Dazzler, The New Mutants, and X-Factor.

In 1987 Guice teamed with Mike Baron on several projects for First Comics (Badger, Nexus, and The Chronicles of Corum) and DC (including the second Flash series). Guce has continued to work for both Marvel and DC since, and also did books for Dark Horse, Valiant, CrossGen, and Acclaim.

In July 2007 he signed an exclusive contract with Marvel, where he is currently drawing Captain America and Ultimate Origins.

 

Manga Friday: Girls and Boys, Boys and Boys

Manga Friday: Girls and Boys, Boys and Boys

 This week’s "Manga Friday" features titles from two Aurora imprints that are for adults only. I’ll try to keep the review itself safe for somewhat younger readers, but, if you’re twelve or so, picture me shaking my finger sternly at you and saying you should move on to something more age-appropriate.

Next week should see Manga Friday return to a variety mix, so you kids can come back then.

Most of the manga that get translated for the US market are either shonen (boys’ comics, like Naruto and Bleach) or shojo (girls’ comics, like Fruits Basket) – stories for tweens and young teens, mostly. (That’s the biggest audience for manga in Japan, too, so there’s more of those kinds of stories to translate to begin with.)

But there are also seinen (stories for “men” – mostly in their twenties – like Lone Wolf and Cub) and, the smallest subset, josei (stories for adult women). The books this week are all josei, roughly the Japanese comics equivalent of American romance novels.

(My initial plan was to review two redikomi – books about boy-girl romances, with some tasteful sex – and then two yaoi – boy-boy romance stories for a female audience. But I only managed to get through one yaoi book, so there are only three reviews here this week.)

Love for Dessert
By Hana Aoi
Aurora/Luv Luv, May 2008, $10.95

Love for Dessert has six stories, all with a (sometimes very loose) food theme – the title story sets the tone. Koyama is a young woman who’s just gotten a full-time job at a big ad agency, working for a tough young boss, Kuze.

She’s also been befriended by “Morimoto from Sales,” who indulges her sweet tooth, and eventually (once the big rush job, which has been causing agida and getting Koyama behind, even after lots and lots of overtime, is done) gets her drunk and tries to seduce her.

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12 Overlooked Comics in 12 Years

12 Overlooked Comics in 12 Years

Tom Spurgeon of The Comics Reporter has always been great at introducing me to comics I might never have been aware of were it not for his recommendation, so I was particularly intrigued by his recent list of the "Twelve Mostly Overlooked Comics Published In The Last Twelve Or So Years."

While the list includes quite a few small-press titles that flew under my radar and seem well worth the time to hunt down, Spurgeon also has some kind words for a title with ties to a certain comics-to-film blockbuster:

Maybe the craziest Marvel book ever, US War Machine is emblematic of that brief time in mainstream American comics when it seemed like a terrific idea for the major property-owning players to mess around with its second-tier characters by marching them through the violence, language and sexual implication wringer common to a TV show on HBO or Showtime.

But the title that really caught my eye was the Motofumi Kobayashi manga Apocalypse Meow:

It’s like The Boys From Company C as played by the Muppets, only you keep waiting for a musical number that never arrives and Fozzy Bear gets capped before they get off the boat. Apocalypse Meow (its original title was the even better Cat Shit One) exudes loopy qualities from every pore in a way that makes it a time capsule of its historical moment, when translated manga seemed poised to take over the comics world no matter what the hell might be happening on the page.

Consider me sold.

Head over to The Comics Reporter for the rest of Spurgeon’s list.

MTV Spotlights Comics Based on Videogames

MTV Spotlights Comics Based on Videogames

Once or twice I’ve written about all the comics that were based on videogames. But I’m relieved to find I’m not the nerdiest comic gamer out there. Tracey John at the MTV Multiplayer blog has posted an amazingly comprehensive list of every videogame that has been ported over to comic books.

There’s the sweet kids’ comics from our youths, like Sonic the Hedgehog, as well as upcoming ones like Gears of War. There’s even the ridiculously infamous Doom comic.

But wait! They left off Mercenaries (with a Mike Turner cover, no less) from Dynamite Entertainment and the upcoming Brothers in Arms. Also conspicuously absent are the Capcom comics Bionic Commando and Lost Planet from Devil’s Due Publishing that were announced here on ComicMix.

I guess my nerd crown is safe… for now.