The Mix : What are people talking about today?

Alex Cox on ‘Repo Man’ Sequel: ‘Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday’

  • News
  • February 11, 2008

Alex Cox, the man behind the cult-classic film "Repo Man", is planning a sequel. And yes, that strange feeling you just experienced was the world becoming significantly weirder.

Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday is the graphic novel that will serve as the sequel to Cox’ bizarre-beyond-words 1984 film, and it’s scheduled to hit shelves on March 31. The story is set a decade after the end of "Repo Man" and features the return of the film’s main character, Otto, who has no idea where he’s been for the past ten years and insists upon everyone calling him Waldo.

That’s about as much sense as I can make of the plot, but EW has an interview with Cox about Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday that might clear things up.

ALEX COX: He’s been away on a journey in a car for 10 years and just returned. He thinks he’s only been gone for the evening. Now, he may indeed be Otto. He may have been transmogrified on the way back into Waldo. Or that may have happened to several people at the same time. Like, how Lee Harvey Oswald and all these other U.S. Marines defected to Russia at the same time. And then they all came back a couple of years later. So, maybe a whole bunch of people were picked up by aliens in a similar way and made prisoners on Mars, and then released 10 years later when they were of no further use.

Okay, maybe not.

Well, they also have a five-page preview of Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday, featuring the art of Chris Bones. You can check it out while you’re waiting for your head to stop hurting.

 

Common Cast as Green Lantern in ‘Justice League’ Film

  • News
  • February 11, 2008

Hip-hop musician Common recently confirmed to MTV that he will be playing the role of Green Lantern John Stewart in the upcoming "Justice League" film.

"It’s a blessing really, to know that I could potentially be this superhero,” he enthused. “Justice League itself is an honor, and Green Lantern is an incredible character to play. It’s a blessing to be associated with it.”

As previously reported, "Justice League" production was initially delayed by the WGA strike, but now could begin again this year. The film is tentaively scheduled for a 2010 release, but nothing is certain at this point.

 

Roundup: Cartoonists of Color Sit-In

  • News
  • February 11, 2008

The Daily Cartoonist has a great roundup of yesterday’s Cartoonists of Color Sit-In, with links to participating strips and mainstream coverage of the event, as well as some interesting statistics related to the issues at the heart of the sit-in.

In case you missed our mention of the Cartoonists of Color Sit-In a while back, the event was organized as a protest of what participating cartoonists perceive as limits newspapers set on the number of comic strips with primarily non-white casts of characters. Each of the participating cartoonists used the same script for the day’s comic, written by Watch Your Head creator Cory Thomas.

Among other coverage of the event, Thomas appeared on lastnight’s CBS Evening News to discuss the event (links provided in Daily Cartoonist article).

 

Valerie D’Orazio on DC, Comics Culture and the Female Presence

  • News
  • February 11, 2008

In a wide-ranging interview over at The Comics Reporter, Tom Spurgeon talks to Valerie D’Orazio, former DC editor, current Occasional Superheroine blogger and president of Friends of Lulu.

Over the course of their conversation, D’Orazio discusses her former employer(s), the state of women in comics and the industry as a whole, and even shares a few thoughts about what readers should and shouldn’t expect from publishers.

Oh, and she offers up a word or two about the best targets for fans’ outrage, too:

SPURGEON: Is there any issue in the last three years that you think has been underplayed? Overplayed?

D’ORAZIO: I understand a lot of the outrage some readers have about stuff like T&A in comics. But this stuff is never going away. The primal need to look at a pair of breasts is never going away. Now, saying something like "I don’t want this cherished comic book heroine to be a slut" or "kids shouldn’t read that stuff" or "mixing images of women with sexualized violence can be dangerous" makes sense to me. But take the case of Top Cow’s Witchblade. It’s erotica. It’s like our generation’s Vampirella or Barbarella. I can laugh at this or that aspect, but the title isn’t a menace that needs to be stopped. It serves a function for men, the same function Laurell K. Hamilton’s books serve for women — the blending of horror/fantasy with erotica.

As with many of Spurgeon’s interviews (and in the interest of disclosure, I was one of ’em), the conversation is quite lengthy but worth every word for anyone interested in learning about the culture, business and behind-the-scenes environment of the comics industry.

First ‘Incredible Hulk’ Abomination Images

  • News
  • February 11, 2008

Wondering what The Abomination, Hulk’s nemesis in the upcoming "Incredible Hulk" film, will look like? Well, a photograph of a flier posted by SuperHeroHype should provide you with a good idea of how the villain will appear on screen in the June 2008 film.

Although the story posted by SHH seems to have vanished from their site, there was no stopping dissemination of this image of the flier, which features an image of the Abomination toy with "steel" pipe weapon!

 

(via cinematical)

Kurt Busiek on DC’s Weekly ‘Trinity’

  • News
  • February 11, 2008

DC Executive Editor Dan DiDio made it official at this weekend’s Retailers Meeting: The publisher’s next weekly series is titled Trinity and will be scripted by current Superman writer Kurt Busiek, with art by longtime Marvel Ultimate Spider-Man artist Mark Bagley.

The weekly series will begin this June and feature a story each week involving the trio of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Busiek will leave Superman with issue #675. According to Busiek, each issue of Trinity will feature 10 pages co-written by Busiek and Fabian Nicieza and 12 pages of a solo story by Busiek.

In an interview with CBR, Busiek commented on Trinity and the rumors that Jim Starlin’s recent Death of the New Gods miniseries cleared the way for DC’s "Big Three" to get the spotlight in Trinity — and that the series is simply leading to another big event.

“No, ‘Death of the New Gods’ is one of the series that is leading into ‘Final Crisis.’ ‘Trinity’ is not ‘Final Crisis’ related. It is a relatively self-contained story that follows its own track. It’s part of the DC Universe, but it’s not one thread in the giant plot structure that is a big event. It is its own story. It has a beginning, a middle and an ending. There will be repercussions, yes. It has new characters that are introduced that I sure hope will spin off into their own mini-series or series or things like that, but it’s not leading to ‘Final Crisis 2: This Time It’s Personal.’

Busiek also tried his hand at sorting out the web of storylines that make up DC’s final-countdown-to-infinite-crisis-on-52-multiple-worlds events and explaining where Trinity will fit into the greater DCU:

’52’ came out of ‘Infinite Crisis’ and itself was a repercussion of a big crossover. ‘Countdown’ is leading into a big crossover. Each time DC does a weekly, they want to do it differently. ‘52’ was about a world without the heroes, ‘Countdown to Final Crisis’ is building up to an event about the heroes and ‘Trinity’ is about the heroes. Front and center.

 

Poll: Choose the Free Online Neil Gaiman Novel

  • News
  • February 11, 2008

This weekend we told you about the 7th Anniversary of Neil Gaiman’s blog, and it looks like the Sandman author has more to announce than his website’s birthday.

Publisher Harper Collins has given Gaiman the go-ahead to post one of his novels online, at no charge, on his site. Now, the question is: Which novel?

In order to make the decision, Gaiman has posted a poll to choose which Neil Gaiman novel goes online.

What I want you to do is think — not about which of the books below is your favourite, but if you were giving one away to a friend who had never read anything of mine, what would it be? Where would you want them to start?

The poll is only up for a week, so treat it like you would the ’08 presidential election: Vote early and vote often.

 

(via boingboing)

 

New ‘Iron Man’ Images Released

  • News
  • February 11, 2008

Gizmodo has posted a new gallery of images from the "Iron Man" film featuring, among other things, a few more shots of the Iron Man armor in action, as well as a few of the suit in a state that’s probably best described as "out of action."

There are also a few more shots of the film’s cast, including (of course) Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark), Terrence Howard (Jim Rhodes), Gwyneth Paltrow (Virginia "Pepper" Potts), a bald and bearded Jeff Bridges (Obadiah Stane), and a barely clothed Leslie Bibb (Christine Everhart).

"Iron Man" opens May 2, 2008.

On This Day: The First Science-Fiction Television Program

  • News
  • February 11, 2008

Today in 1938, the Brits did television a mitzvah when the BBC created the first sci-fi TV show, an adaptation of a section of the Karel Capek play "R.U.R.", which coined the term "robot."

For those of you who thought "The Matrix" was revolutionary, it was Capek who introduced androids that rebel against their human creators. We’re also pretty sure she wasn’t the first to think that one up either (the first probably being the golem stories from the Talmud).

Anyway, the piece was translated from Czech to English, which explains the etymology of the word, "Robot." In its original Slo, "robota" means "work."

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