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Happy Birthday: Mark Wheatley

Born in 1954, Mark Wheatley has made a career of creating clever and innovative comic books. He is probably  best known for his 1984 First Comics series Mars, the 1994 Vertigo mini-series Breathtaker, and his Insight Studios series Radical Dreamer and Frankenstein Mobster, but his list of titles extends far beyond that impressive handful.

Wheatley founded Insight in 1978 as an illustration and photography source, but in 1980 Marc Hempel joined him and they expanded the studio to include comic books and comic book production work.

Wheatley has won numerous awards, including the Inkpot, the Speakeasy, the Gem, and the Mucker. In 2008 he was a guest lecturer at the Library of Congress. Wheatley currently runs Insight and writes and illustrates the series EZ Street for ComicMix.

ComicMix Radio: Grab Your Wallets, Kids – We’ve Got Comics!

While you’re back to daily grind today, take solace in the fact that, in 48 hours, your local comic shop will be filled with a pile of surprises — including many of the titles we’ve been waiting on! We cover them all,  plus:

— Indy conquers the box office – big!

— A second Watchmen movie set for 2009

— Battlestar Galactica sees ratings glory!

It’s a four-day week anyway – so kill a little time and  press the button!

 

 

And remember, you can always subscribe to ComicMix Radio podcasts via badgeitunes61x15dark-4515150 or RSS!

Worst Album Covers by Comic Book Artists

Over at LA Weekly’s geek culture blog, Topless Robot, they’ve put together a list of the worst album covers designed by artists from the comics industry.

Among the examples on their list is Canadian hip-hop group Swollen Members’ 2003 album Heavy, featuring a cover by Todd McFarlane.

McFarlane has at least one respectable album-cover credit: the five-times platinum Follow the Leader by Korn. (Oh, c’mon, don’t act like you didn’t own it, or at least headbang to “Freak on a Leash.”) That was in 1998, and five years later the Spawn creator/lawsuit magnet/frivolous spender agreed to pencil a cover for a—wait for it—Canadian hip-hop group that dubbed themselves the Swollen Members. From what we REAL North Americans can tell, these guys’ only notoriety comes from this album cover and an appearance in National Lampoon’s Going the Distance, whatever the hell that is. Heavy just reinforces what a great idea it was for McFarlane to quit drawing.

According to Spawn.com, McFarlane also directed one of the group’s videos, too. I feel obligated to mention, however, that the Swollen Members’ Wikipedia page actually makes them seem like a decent band… as far as Canadian music goes.

Head over to Topless Robot for the full list.

(Oh, and just kidding about the "as far as Canadian music" thing, folks… I promise.)

Netflix Adds Wealth of Comics Films and TV to Online Selection

incrediblehulk-7088548As part of its plan to take over the movie-watching world (or so I hear), Netflix has been increasing the numbers of movies and TV series offered online over its Watch Instantly system.

I had a bit of free time over the weekend to parse the offerings for fellow comic nerds/Netflix members to come up with a watch list (one note: you have to have Internet Explorer to use their viewer).

Not all are comics-related.

  • The Incredible Hulk (with Lou Ferrigno), multiple seasons
  • Quantum Leap, multiple seasons
  • Battlestar Gallactica, the original series
  • The Tick, complete live-action TV series
  • Hellboy Animated: Sword of Storms and Blood & Iron
  • Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker
  • Superman: The Movie and Superman III
  • G-Men From Hell
  • Doctor Who, multiple series and seasons

Happy Birthday: George Freeman

Born in Canada in 1951, George Freeman didn’t start out in comic books. He was actually designing tombstones in 1975 when he encountered the first issue of a new Canadian comic book, Captain Canuck. Intrigued, Freeman went to see series artist and co-creator Richard Comely in Winnipeg.

Comely was impressed by Freeman’s art samples and hired him on—Freeman colored the second issue, inked the third issue, and penciled and inked the fourth issue. When Comely moved to Cardston, Alberta in fall 1976 to run the local weekly newspaper, Freeman and colorist/inker/French translator Jean-Claude St. Aubin moved with him and got jobs on the paper while continuing the comic.

A few months later, they left Cardston for Calgary, which was less to Freeman’s liking—he returned to Winnipeg instead. He rejoined the Captain Canuck team in early 1979.

Captain Canuck ended with issue #14 in 1981 and Freeman moved on to other comic book work. He drew Green Lantern, Aquaman, Jack of Hearts, and The Avengers, drew a story in Batman Annual #11, and was one of the artists on the horror comic anthology Wasteland.

He also worked on the Elric series for First Comics, the Black Orchid series for Vertigo, and more recently, the Albion series for Wildstorm, among others. In 1996 Freeman was nominated for an Eisner for Best Colorist on The X-Files.

‘Tales of the Black Freighter’ Sails onto DVD

One of the big looming questions with the Zack Snyder adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen was how they would handle the Black Freighter side story.

Now we have an answer: It’s going straight to DVD, says The New York Times (via Cinematical). For those unfamiliar, the story of the Black Freighter is contained within a comic book that’s being read by a character in Watchmen. It features a man who had been captured by undead pirates and escapes, only to meet an even worse fate.

Instead of filming the Black Freighter story and splicing it into the Watchmen film (as Moore does in the graphic novel), Snyder decided to break it out into a separate film. The Times, which doesn’t usually cover such Hollywood business, uses the news as an example of efforts to drive up DVD sales, which have been stagnant:

The second film, tentatively called “Tales of the Black Freighter,” follows a side “Watchmen” storyline about a shipwreck and will arrive in stores five days after the main movie rolls out in theaters. The DVD will also include a documentary-style film called “Under the Hood” that will delve into the characters’ backstories.

Warner, the No. 1 distributor of DVDs, bills the effort as a way to renew retail excitement for little silver discs now that the once-booming market has matured.

After years of blistering growth, domestic DVD sales fell 3.2 percent last year to $15.9 billion, according to Adams Media Research, the first annual drop in the medium’s history. While it is still a blockbuster business, any decline is cause for concern because DVD sales can account for as much as 70 percent of revenue for a new film. Results for the first quarter this year were mixed, with overall sales flat but notable softness for some new releases like Warner’s box office hit “I Am Legend.”

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Interview: Bob Rozakis on Creating an Alternate History for the Comics Industry

  • Uncategorized
  • May 27, 2008

superfriends_dvd-200x-6558086The notion of retelling history with a twist has become a very popular sub-section of fiction, heavily mined by Harry Harrison and by Philip Roth. In comic books, Marvel’s What If? title and DC’s Elseworlds imprint also explored possible scenarios.  But no one has ever looked at how a single element could propel comic book history in an entirely new direction.

Until now, that is.

Bob Rozakis has begun writing a series of articles tracing just such an alternate history for TwoMorrows’ Alter Ego and Back Issue. Rozakis is certainly no stranger to comics, given his lengthy tenure as DC’s Production Manager, co-creator of ‘Mazing Man, and writer of titles such as Superman, Freedom Fighters and Secret Society of Super-Villains.

COMICMIX: As DC’s "Answer Man," what can you tell me about the origins of your new article series?

BOB ROZAKIS: I had proposed an Elseworlds back in 1998; just after I left staff, in which Green Lantern and Flash were the heroes who survived the Golden Age instead of Superman and Batman. In addition to the story itself, I had created an "outside the box" chunk of history to go with it. The proposal was rejected, but the idea kept percolating.  Finally, I approached Roy Thomas and Michael Eury with the concept of writing the entire alternate history and they were both quite enthusiastic.

CMix: What was the key event that would change comic book history?

BR: In 1946, after spinning off his All-American Comics line from DC, Max Gaines sold his share back to Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz. In my alternate reality, Gaines buys them out instead… and the DC line becomes part of AA Comics.

(more…)

Science Friction, by Dennis O’Neil

The following will be about a column I didn’t write and it’s Vinnie Bartilucci’s fault. But that’s okay. I forgive him.

What Mr. Batilucci did was beat me to recommending Physics of the Impossible, by Michio Kaku. This Mr. B. did in a comment on last week’s column which, some may remember, described how awkward I felt being a published science fiction writer who was abysmally ignorant of science and how one of my earliest attempts at remedy of this ignorance was reading One…Two…Three…Infinity, by George Gamow.

My plan was to save recommending Dr. Kaku’s much more recent book – it’s on current best-seller lists, in fact – for this week.

Said recommendation would have come at the end of a blather that would have mentioned yet another elderly book, The Two Cultures, by a remarkable man who was both a scientist and novelist named C.P. Snow. According to the endlessly useful Wikipedia, “its thesis was that the breakdown of communication between the “two cultures” of modern society – the sciences and the humanities – was a major hindrance to solving the world’s problems.” I encountered Mr. Snow’s slim volume in college, probably when I should have been reading something some teacher had assigned, and it must have impressed me. (I mean, here we are, all these years later, and I still remember it.) The unwritten column would have culminated in the reiteration of something I mentioned some months ago, advice from my first comic book boss, Stan Lee. Stan said, in effect, that it’s a waste of space to “explain” comic book “science” because readers will accept what we tell them.

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Review: The Complete Peanuts, 1967 to 1968 by Charles M. Shulz

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The Complete Peanuts, 1967-1968
By Charles M. Schulz; foreword by John Waters
Fantagraphics, February 2008, $28.95

By 1967, [[[Peanuts]]] wasn’t just another comic strip in the local newspaper, it was a media phenomenon. The first TV special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, had won an Emmy amid universal acclaim two years earlier, and You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown was about to open on Broadway. It was the epitome of mainstream entertainment – on May 24th, California Governor Ronald Reagan and the state legislature even proclaimed it “Charles Schulz Day.” The strip hadn’t quite hit its ‘70s mega-merchandising heyday, but it was getting there.

At the same time, not all that far from Schulz’s Santa Rosa home, Berkley was roiling with anti-war fervor and the Summer of Love had hit San Francisco. Peanuts had been seen as an edgy, almost countercultural strip in the early 1950s, but those days were long past, and Peanuts was the Establishment. In those days, you were with the pigs or with the longhairs, right? And where did Peanuts stand?

From the evidence here, Peanuts stood where it had always stood: on its own, only rarely commenting on specific issues of the day (such as the “bird-hippie” who would become Woodstock in another year or two), but talking around those issues in ways that most of America could laugh at… some more uncomfortably than others. Schulz was never one to declare himself on one side of an issue or the other; he’d just write and draw his cartoons, and let others make their interpretations.

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Random Video: Iron Man, Hulk and Spider-Man vs. Giant Robots

While I realize I’m a bit late happening upon this video, I can’t help posting it here anyways — just in case I’m not the only person who missed it. To be honest, I’m not entirely certain what this "Iron Man’s Adventure" video is intended to promote. It looks like a cinematic from a videogame, but with a cast of Spider-Man, Iron Man and Hulk, I can’t help but assume it’s tied to some sort of film promotion. Feel free to post a comment if you have any additional information about it.

Nevertheless, it features the three characters I mentioned, as well as some big honkin’ robots and some really superb CG animation. The dialogue is a bit "meh" (Spider-Man is spot-on, but Iron Man and Hulk don’t sound quite right, in my humble opinion) but the action is worth the price of, well… just check it out.

You can also watch a larger, high-res version at Marvel.com. 

 


 

 

 

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