It’s blonde vs. brunette on today’s brand-new episode of Jon Sable, Freelance: Ashes of Eden, by Mike Grell.
The stakes are higher than a date with a cute guy — the winner gets to decide to nuke New York!
Credits:Glenn Hauman (Colorist), Glenn Hauman (Assistant Editor), John Workman (Letterer), Mike Gold (Editor), Mike Grell (Artist), Mike Grell (Writer)
More: Jon Sable Freelance: Ashes of Eden
An imp from the 5th dimension, Mr. Mxyztplk is an inveterate troublemaker and jester. Because he’s from another dimension, Mxyzptlk is not bound by our universe’s laws and can produce a variety of magical effects with a single thought.
Shortly after arriving on our world, Mxyzptlk encountered Superman, and the the imp has delighted in tormenting the Man of Steel ever since that first meeting. The only way to get rid of Mxyzptlk is to trick him into saying his own name backwards—this sends the imp back to the 5th dimension for at least 90 days.
It never lasts long, though, and soon Mxyztplk is back to tease and confuse Superman yet again.
I had all but given up on newspaper comic strips in recent years. My favorites (Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, Peanuts, etc.) had disappeared and every new innovative comic appeared online, not in the funny pages.
Then a friend pointed me to Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson of the Washington Post. Like many of the great strips, Cul de Sac features a young central character (Alice, in this case) who simultaneously looks at the world with the dreamy innocence of youth and the cynical sensibilities of an adult.
That balancing act is consistently funny on a daily basis, as Thompson finds the most creative ways to point out the lunacy of the world from both children’s and adult’s perspective. My favorite strip might be the one below, in which Alice’s brother opines on the world of comic books:
So, I have a new newspaper comics strip. Maybe the "funnies" page isn’t dead yet. Or maybe it is: I read Cul de Sac online.
Looking back at the stories we’ve covered over the last year, it would be hard to make anything up that actually — in comics — couldn’t be true! Instead, we leave the whoopee cushions to others and deliver our dead-serious list of new comics & DVD releases for the week, plus:
— More on Warren Ellis’ exit from Thunderbolts
— Devil’s Due Publishing brings their comics to your cellphone
— Jae Lee awaits words from the fans on Dark Tower sequel
— And, no joke, another exclusive Graham Crackers Comics variant could be in the mail to you — if you win by e-mailing us at: podcast [at] comicmix.com
Just press the button and nothing bad will happen!
And remember, you can always subscribe to ComicMix Radio podcasts via 
or RSS!
In a new interview with SuperHeroHype, actor Terrence Howard gives an inside look at the filming of this summer’s Iron Man, as well as more than a few hints for the future of the franchise.
Howard indicates pretty clearly that his character, a military man who’s initially skeptical of Tony Stark, will eventually take up the white and gray armor. In fact, when asked why he took the role, Howard simply answered, “War Machine.”
To get a good sense of what’s in store for his character, Howard said:
You read the comic book? If you read the comic book then you kind’ve know what happens. But you’ll still have to wait ’cause ya’ll ain’t taking away my next two movies.
Howard also said that while he wasn’t a huge comic book guy, his father was:
It was funny, I call my father because he used to be a big “Iron Man” fanatic and he loved the War Machine aspect of it. I asked him, “When you were reading it, did you have any idea that inside your loins you’d have the one putting that on?” [laughs]
Writer / Producer Mark Verheiden is one of those fortunate individuals who has been able to make a living doing what he loves. His list of career accomplishments crosses most of today’s media landscape from feature films to series televison to comic books.
Starting off many years ago writing comics like The American
In addition to his producing and writing duties on Battlestar, Verheiden has also been hard at work adapting DC Comics’ The Teen Titans
COMICMIX: Mark, thanks for taking the time to talk with us.
MARK VERHEIDEN: Of course. Always a pleasure.
CMix: How are you doing these days?
MV: Good. Now that you’re recording, I’ll say nothing incriminating.
CMix: Okay… unless you want to say something incriminating…
MV: No, not me.
CMix: Okay, let’s get to it then. You’re back from the writer’s strike. Hard at work on BSG?
MV: Oh yes, we’re back and right into it again.
CMix: Did the strike have any effect on your plans for the show? Did you have time to think while you were off? (more…)
Brian Alvey spoiled the news, but now we can finally make the announcement:
In the wake of the recent landmark ruling returning 50-percent copyright ownership of Superman to the estate of Jerry Siegel, the Siegel estate has announced their first deal to publish Superman — and we’re proud to say, it’s with us. Starting in time for the San Diego Comic-Con, we will be publishing new Superman stories.
Mike Grell, fresh off of drawing Supes for Action Comics #861 (pictured here) will be drawing the new series, making this the first time in 25 years that he will be drawing a series that he hasn’t written himself. He will be starting as soon as he’s done with his current commitment to Jon Sable Freelance. Dick Giordano is coming out of retirement to ink the series, alongside veteran inker Frank McLaughlin.
John Ostrander will be writing the initial debut of Superman, detailing how he fell through an interdimensional portal and ended up in Cynosure and Munden’s Bar, where the usual confusion reigns until GrimJack intervenes to set things right. From there, he will be crossing over into various other universes (and series) all in an attempt to find his way back to his prime universe.
Mike Gold, ComicMix editor-in-chief, notes: "This will allow Clark to appear in all of our series– Demons of Sherwood, EZ Street, The Adventures of Simone and Ajax, our recently relaunched Black Ice— we can even work him into Trevor Von Eeden’s upcoming biography of Jack Johnson."
Other talent connected to the ongoing stories will be announced in time for the New York Comic Con, although you’ll hear about if first here on ComicMix. And of course, these will be free comics, just like all the rest of our series.
How does DC feel about this? Well, they really can’t do anything as long as the Siegel estate pays 50-percent of the revenue earned to DC. Of course, we expect that the Siegel estate may take a few decades splitting the revenues and making sure DC gets its fair share. Turnabout is fair play, after all.
As I sit down to write this, I’m less than five hours from midnight on March 23rd and so it might be appropriate to wish you a Happy Easter, or Happy Pasha if you’re an Oriental Christian, or Happy Purim. Or maybe I should give a shout-out to Aphrodite, Ashtoreth, Astarté, Demeter, Hathor, Ishtar, Kali, Ostara – all deities who were celebrated around the spring equinox and, as far as my extremely limited and unreliable knowledge goes, all of whom were connected to fertility, which figures: Spring equinox = end of winter = new life = let’s have a party.
Or…let’s let one stand for all and just celebrate the goddess whose name gives the holiday it’s name: No less an authority than The Venerable Bede, an early Christian scholar, wrote that Easter was named after the Saxon goddess Eostre, and if you can’t trust the Venerable Bede, well…
I like Easter, and tomorrow I may do something celebratory, even if it’s only to walk in the park down the road. (Yeah, us old guys really know how to tear it loose.) It’s a real holiday, as evidenced by all the ways it’s been celebrated over the millennia – see the goddess list above – and I think that means that it acknowledges and celebrates something deep in our collective culture, our life on this planet, probably our genomes. The catalogue of such holidays is short: there’s the various festivals of light that occur around the winter solstice – Merry Christmas, all – and around the fall equinox that generally involve harvests and eating, and Easter, et. al. All happen at seasonal changes and all involve the Basics: birth, death, light, dark, and survival.
You don’t have to believe in the literal truth of a mythology to accept the realities that underlie it.
Paul Kupperberg tipped me off, Mark Evanier has the news: Jim Mooney, the incredibly prolific penciller and inker of everything from A-Team to World’s Finest, passed away over the weekend.
Jim was best known for his work on Supergirl and the Legion of Super Heroes in the sixties and Spider-Man in the seventies, but his career spanned from the forties to the nineties, as early as the Eisner-Iger shop and as late as Astro City.
Here, we have a self portrait of himself that he slipped into The Spectacular Spider-Man #41.
He will be dearly missed.
In today’s brand-new episode of Demons of Sherwood, by Robert Tinnell and Bo Hampton, our heroes seek refuge in a monastery where Friar Tuck keeps everyone safe.
He knows every hidey-hole and secret passage in the place, where he guards a most sacred treasure. What happens if he’s followed by someone who worships a different god?
Credits:Bo Hampton (Artist), Bo Hampton (Colorist), Bo Hampton (Letterer), Bo Hampton (Writer), Mike Gold (Editor), Robert Tinnell (Writer)
More: Demons of Sherwood
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
Stephen Colbert, we have your writer for “The Chronicles of Amber”!
January 20, 2023
The Law Is A Ass #460: Those “For Life” Sentences Are Nonsense
February 24, 2022
