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ComicMix at Toy Fair ’08: A Bulk of ‘Incredible Hulk’

  • News
  • February 17, 2008

Hulk and Iron Man have had their share of dust-ups throughout Marvel history, from the days of the old gray armor to the recent "World War Hulk" story arc. More often than not, though, the Green Goliath whips Tony Stark’s pampered playboy butt.

With both characters expecting big things from live-action films this year, Toy Fair 2008 was shaping up to be another battle of epic proportions — at least on the licensing front.

Unfortunately, this battle between the two Marvel heavyweights ended up more lop-sided than most, with Incredible Hulk products popping up in just about every other booth at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center while the guy in the metal suit was yesterday’s news.

Along with yo-yos and radio-controlled planes (Why would Hulk have a plane? Because he can, puny human.) the big green guy was also spotted on puzzles, bop-bags and — my personal favorite — a puffy backpack that allows you to walk around all day with hulk’s massive arms wrapped around your neck in a gamma-fueled sleeper hold. 

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Last Chance For Free Limited Editions!

  • News
  • February 17, 2008

 It’s Toy Fair 2008 here on the east coast, in New York specifically, and we are hip deep in action figures, licensed projects and movie hype – all of which we’ll be digesting for you here on ComicMix and on ComicMix Radio coming up over the next few days and hours. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t take a minute to toss you a few quick links:

So you are that one person who hasn’t seen the trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull , either on this site or even in movie theaters. Then stop being left out and go here – it really isn’t as bad as your friends said it was!
 
The networks are running amok trying to figure if they want to salvage the TV season and if so how to do it. TV Guide continues to post the most up-to-the-minute changes on retuning shows here. Trust us, in some cases the info is even more up-to-date than what your TiVo is telling you. 
 
If finding out what Big Brother is up to is more your thing (and we aren’t talking about the reality TV show), then going here might be of interest. Basically, the Pentagon has developed live, internet talk shows aimed to inform their internal audiences, the public and the blogger community about Pentagon activities and initiatives. Insert any pop culture spy reference you wish here. 
 
The clock is ticking and time is running out to get us your e-mail answer to the trivia question we tossed out in the last ComicMix Radio broadcast. Getting it into to us at podcast@comicmix.com could get you an exclusive limited edition, variant comic from Graham Crackers Comics – but it has to be to us by 9am EST THIS Tuesday, February 19th! And yes, this is yet another hint shown to the right!!

 

ComicMix Columns For the Week Ending Feb. 17, 2008

  • News
  • February 17, 2008

The WGA writers are back at work, thank goodness, so there’s finally some good stuff to watch this President’s Day weekend (how can one have a "day weekend" anyway?).  Meanwhile, our ComicMix columnists have been typing away as usual; here’s what we’ve done for you this past week:

Just as a reminder, Denny O’Neill’s column was a bit waylaid this week so we didn’t get to enjoy it until Friday, but he’s still listed in his usual date order above…

ComicMix at Toy Fair ’08: Tonner Does DC and Spider-Man

  • News
  • February 17, 2008

In the first of a series of reports from Toy Fair 2008 in New York, ComicMix checks out the comics-inspired dolls of the Tonner booth, featuring characters from Spider-Man 3 and a cast of DC superheroes and villains.

 

[Gallery After the Jump]

 

 

 

 

 

 

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On This Day: National Nightmares Paris HIlton and Britney Spears

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  • February 17, 2008

The stars collided, conspired or what have you on this date, for it can be no coincidence that it is both the birthday of hotel heiress Paris Hilton and the anniversary of the beginning of the end for pop-star Britney Spears. Yes, today in 1981, Paris was born. Who knew that little bundle of joy would grow up to be an amateur porn star, a failed pop singer and a national (hell, global) punch line?

But today, one year ago, was also when Britney Spears, following a one-day stay at rehab, shaved her own head. Hey, that adolescent rebellion stage had to kick in at some point, even if it was latent. Readers, beware the ides of February (ok, two days after the ides), lest your babes grow up to be paparazzi fodder.

He-Man and the Nine Amateurs, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • February 17, 2008
 
amateurs-2380932Note to producers: either retire words like “phenomenal” and “unbelievable” from your vocabularies or think thrice before allowing yourself to be filmed for DVD special features. Rest assured it will only help your cause. The aforementioned suggestion comes as a result of watching two long overdue DVD offerings back to back. If you watch only the extras, you’d think The Amateurs was the movie to see rather than The Nines. Neither movie will ever usurp the place of, say, the newly hi-deffed Lawrence of Arabia, but they surely prove how influential special features can be.
 
The Amateurs (known as The Moguls in the U.K. and Australia) is a cute, contrived, long-shelved, high-concept project from the indie upstart First Look Studios, while The Nines is a convoluted, contrived, high-concept project written and directed by the screenwriter of Corpse Bride, Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, and Titan A.E. One big difference between the two is that the former has an amazing cast serving a creaky script, while the latter has a small, solid cast laboring to bring home a script that may not be more than a sum of its well-done parts.
 
It’s also great to compare the director/producer relationships. On The Amateurs, novice writer/director Michael Traeger is well served by temperate producer Aaron Ryder. On The Nines, writer/director John August is so outrageously lauded by producer Dan Jinks that the overstatements are hard to accept. Nevertheless, The Nines is the better film, which some critics, at the time of release, had a hard time understanding. 
 
The DVD itself showcases Entertainment Weekly’s review: “You’ll go ‘huh?’ but you won’t feel cheated.” Their confusion is fairly odd, since I felt the twee flick, which obviously took to heart Joan Osbourne’s song “What if God Were One of Us,” straddles the genres of Memento and Meet Joe Black (i.e. Death Takes a Holiday) in a fairly obvious way. In other words, I didn’t go “huh,” but I nearly went “so what?”
 

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Format Wars: We Have A Winner

  • News
  • February 17, 2008

If you have a HD-TV and you bought a Blu-Ray DVD player to watch Spider-Man 3, 300 or X-Men The Last Stand in all their high-definition glory, congratulations. You win. It looks like Toshiba is about to throw in the towel on their HD-DVD format.

Left at the alter by such outlets as Netflix, Best Buy and Wal-Mart and supported by an ever-shrinking number of studio releases, Toshiba tried slashing the price of their players and their discs – to no avail. Now Microsoft is talking about making its next X-Box compatible with Blu-Ray, a format also supported by a great many computer companies; Toast and other DVD authoring software also burn to Blu-Ray discs.

Sony had hoped for an immediate win with its Blu-Ray, but its delays in marketing the Playstation 3 game machine and software put them in second position. As movies became available and people could see the difference between the two formats, consumers voted with their credit cards.

So when the Iron Man movie comes out on DVD this fall, you won’t have to toss the dice. You’ll be able to see each and every hair in Tony Stark’s goatee with alarming clarity.

Screenwriter Removes Name From ‘Punisher: War Zone’

  • News
  • February 17, 2008

Kurt Sutter, co-producer and writer for the television series The Shield, has requested that his name be formally removed from the screenwriting credits for Punisher: War Zone.

Sutter claims that, after rewriting a script by Nick Santora for the film, his script was later rewritten and changed to such a degree that he no longer feels his name should be included in the film’s credits.

In Sutter’s post about the decision, he explains that the only piece of his script to appear in the film is the set piece in which Jigsaw, the villain of the film, earns his nickname. Sutter adds that his original vision for the film — a a departure from what he saw as standard comic-book adaptations — is quite different from the actual story used in production.

The other reason I removed my name is because I didn’t want credit. My pitch, my vision, for the Punisher franchise was something much different. I tried to rip Frank Castle from the comic book world and place him in the real streets of NYC. Castle is the only superhero without powers. He’s a tortured, highly skilled soldier with a really bad anger problem. I always felt we should see Frank in some place uber-real and gritty. I threw away the first draft written by Nick Santora and did a page one rewrite. I changed the locations, the characters, the story. I dropped Frank in a real New York City with real villians, real cops, real relationships. To me, the Punisher deserved more than the usual comic book redress. It shouldn’t just follow the feature superhero formula.

Sutter also acknowledges previous Punisher actor Thomas Jane’s disdain for his script, writing, "I’m not saying my draft was perfect or even good for that matter. God knows, Thomas Jane wasn’t fond of it."

It’s also worth noting that Sutter followed up his initial announcement with another post the following day — an apology of sorts — stating that his decision should not be interpreted as a negative assessment of the Punisher: War Zone film or its working script.

Punisher: War Zone is scheduled for a Sept. 12, 2008, release.

 

signal-the-4815394

On the Wavelength of ‘The Signal’, by Michael H. Price

  • News
  • February 17, 2008

 
signal-the-4815394The dramatis personae roster for a soon-to-open, three-author film called The Signal lists a multitude of roles identified only as “random bodies,” “struggling people,” “deranged people” and so forth. If the casting, as such, suggests chaos, then such must be precisely the intent. From a premise of frenzied malevolence, writer-directors David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry and Dan Bush have crafted a smart and orderly, if cryptic, chiller that owes many debts of influence but also brings some welcome new twists to an old and over-familiar formula.
 
The menace appears to stem from the electronic gizmos that have dominated civilization since the middle of the last century – television as a murderous influence, compounded by telephones and computers and anything else capable of transmitting a disruptive signal. The Bruckner/Gentry/Bush screenplay might trace its ancestry as far back as a 1935 movie called Murder by Television (back when TV, still a dozen years away from commercial acceptance, was popularly regarded as a science-fictional concept), in which a high-tech breakthrough yields “the interstellar frequency that is the death ray.”
 
The Signal is, of course, creepier and hipper by far than the bland and stodgy Murder by Television. The new film imagines a force that transforms ordinary working-class souls into maniacs – borrowing extensively from hither and yon, although co-director Gentry will hasten to point out that “our killers are not mindless zombies.”

 

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Warren Simons on ‘Invincible Iron Man’

  • News
  • February 16, 2008

Marvel’s new Invincible Iron Man series kicks off this May right about the same time Tony Stark and Co. hit theaters in the live-action Iron Man film.

Over at Marvel.com, series editor Warren Simons explains the connection between the new title and the film, as well as the reasons behind the choice of Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca as the Invincible Iron Man creative team.

Warren Simons: We’re aiming to provide a kick-ass entry point into the Marvel Universe for fans of the film, while also telling great stories for already established Iron Man and Marvel fans. With INVINCIBLE, we’re focusing on Tony as a super hero, and downplaying the espionage angle and Tony’s role as Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Civil War? Never happened.

Even so, the art looks beautiful and Fraction can spin a fun tech-driven tale. This one could be worth keeping an eye on.

 

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