In today’s brand-new episode of Hammer of the Gods: Back from the Dead, by Michael Oeming and Mark Wheatley, Odin decides he needs a break from the rigors of Asgard, and goes to the mortal realm to relax. And he’s taking travel advice from a raven. Can anything good come from this?
Credits: Mike Oeming (Artist), Mike Oeming (Writer), Mark Wheatley (Colorist), Mark Wheatley (Letterer), Mark Wheatley (Writer), John Staton (Colorist)
After a pretty unambiguously down second season, the NBC show Heroes is looking to get the magic back from its debut season that marked it as the network’s most important show.
In an interview with the New York Times, Heroes creator Tim Kring gave some insights into what’s to come, as well as reflecting back on what went wrong last year.
The scale tipped toward disappointment at the start of last season, as Mr. Kring acknowledged in an interview way back in November, just after production was abruptly cut off by the writers’ strike that shut down Hollywood. At that time he cited a list of early missteps, including introducing too many new characters, dabbling too much in romance and depositing one of the fans’ favorite characters, Hiro, in feudal Japan for too long. …
The new volume, which will run in 13 episodes, is called “Villains” and will focus on a single big story line, Mr. Kring said, relying almost totally on its core of main characters, and will return the show to exploring what he called “the primal questions” from Season 1: “Who am I? What is my purpose?”
The third season (volume, whatever) begins on Sept. 22.
If you watched the first full trailer for Frank Miller’s upcoming adaptation of The Spirit, you could be forgiven for thinking it had little more than the title in common with Will Eisner’s comic series.
Miller insists that’s not the case, though, in a story in the New York Times.
“The only ways they resemble each other are the ways that I learned from Will Eisner: the use of black and white, certainly the rapturous approach to women.” Mr. Miller spoke after an editing session in Culver City in June, wearing a straw hat, a gray shirt and a loose black jacket; his voice, faintly adenoidal, stems from a long relationship with Winston Lights.
Where “Sin City” was bleak, “The Spirit” seems playful, quirky. For someone who exalts Ayn Rand and has vigorously defended America’s military response to 9/11, Mr. Miller seems to have tempered his cynical machismo. As for the strip’s most nettlesome character — Ebony White, the black sidekick with the Stepin Fetchit patois— he has been jettisoned.
But, as is always the case, not everyone agrees:
But the current film-comic infatuation isn’t for everyone. “I think they once made a movie out of ‘Ulysses,’ the Joyce novel, and it can’t be done,” said Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novelist behind “Maus.” “I’m not saying that Eisner is Joyce, but the things that are great” about “The Spirit” “are likely to be lost in translation.”
NPR ran a feature on All Things Considered, the daily news program, about the solid sales of foreign graphic novels in the United States.
One interesting note was that foreign novels don’t sell, but comics do. That seems to indicate comics readers are a bit more cultured than the general public, doesn’t it?
A few big comics people are quoted in the piece, including Heidi MacDonald of The Beat.
Heidi MacDonald, who blogs about graphic novels for Publishers Weekly, says the Japanese invasion has helped pry open American markets to authors and illustrators from other parts of the world, including Marjane Satrapi.
"Marjane Satrapi … she’s definitely one who has had a huge breakthrough commercially and critically," says MacDonald.
There are more than a few mysterious elements coming up at Comic-Con this week, and one of the big question marks hovers over the return of Greatest American Hero, the goofy superhero TV show from the ’80s.
Sounds like a comic book series is in the works, if not more. According to a press release (check it after the jump), a whole slate of original stars will be on hand in San Diego. There’s also a mysterious teaser video posted after the jump — which seems to be scaled far too large for embedding on most websites.
The hit BBC series Doctor Who
Every week, I’ll do my best to go through the most recent episode with a fine-tooth comb (or whatever the "sonic screwdriver" equivalent might be) and call out the highlights, low points, continuity checks and storyline hints I can find to keep in mind for future episodes. I’ll post the review each Monday, so you have ample time to check out the episode once it airs each Friday at 9 PM EST on Sci-Fi Channel before I spoil anything.
Missed a week? Check out the "Doctor Who in Review" archive or check out any of the past editions of this column via the links at the end of this article.
Keep in mind, I’m going to assume readers have already watched the episode when I put fingers to keyboard and come up with the roundup of important plot points. In other words, SPOILER ALERT!
Let’s begin now, shall we?
Season Four, Episode #11: "Turn Left" (more…)
Meet and greet the best talent online and on paper! Here’s the schedule for artists signings at Booth #2308 — ComicMix and Insight Studios. Please stop by and say hello!
THURSDAY, July 24
10 AM – Noon
Jerry Carr (Cryptozoo Crew)
Noon — 2 PM
Rick Marshall (ComicMix News)
2 PM – 4 PM
Mike Gold (ComicMIx Editor-in-Chief)
4 PM – 6 PM
Alan Gross (Cryptozoo Crew)
DC Comics’ boring old Web site saw a big relaunch over the weekend, perhaps coinciding with the record-breaking debut of The Dark Knight film.
Not a ton of new features on the site, which you can view right here, but it’s a whole lot prettier than the previous incarnation.
There is a nice feature called "30 Essential," which lists 30 of what DC views as it’s can’t miss graphic novels. That’s sure to be useful for new readers, though it’s old ground for long-time readers.
You can find that feature right here.
Time Magazine recently turned the spotlight on a sport that’s worth noting here for two reasons: First, it sounds so bizarre that it could have been ripped off the pages of a comic book; and second, it was pulled from the pages of a comic book.
Welcome to the world of "Chess Boxing," folks.
The chess-boxing combo traces its roots back to a 1992 comic book, titled The Nikopol Trilogy, in which the men of the future box on a chessboard floor. The image inspired Dutch artist Iepe Rubingh to hold — and compete in — the first official chess-boxing bout in Amsterdam in 2003.
According to Time, chess-boxing competitors "alternate between three-minute rounds of boxing and four-minute rounds of speed chess, with one-minute breaks in between to get the gloves off and hunker down at the chess table." Victories are earned via knockouts, checkmates, or referee decisions.
The current Chess Boxing champion is a19-year-old Russian math student — which makes it that much more interesting, as far as I’m concerned.
As all interested parties get ready for this week’s Comic-Con International, a couple other municipalities are preparing to try to wrest the massive convention away from its historic home in San Diego.
Both Los Angeles and Las Vegas have their eye on Comic-Con, according to Variety. The event’s extreme growth has been a boon, but San Diego can’t handle the demand anymore, Comic-Con marketing director David Glanzer said.
That means Comic-Con may have to embrace the marketing mayhem that became a fixture of E3 before it downsized a year ago. So, even with the convention locked into San Diego for the next four years, cities such as Las Vegas and Los Angeles are actively trying to lure Comic-Con away.
“We don’t like to go in and infringe on other people’s leases when they are in the middle of doing business,” says Chris Meyer, VP of convention sales for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Bureau. Nevertheless, he admits, “We will be down in Comic-Con 2008 to have some discussions.”
The way he sees it, Las Vegas has some dramatic advantages, including twice the floor space and a surplus of competitively priced hotel rooms. Meyers notes, “I’ve got more rooms on my corners than they do in most of their downtown area.”
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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