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Sunday’s Free Hot Comics Links!

  • News
  • February 10, 2008
Drained by an overdose of football and politics, this week we’ve got just a few quick links left on the desk to share,  but some great ones.
 
The animation portal MyToons.com launched a branded channel to showcase the work of its community of animators. Take a few minutes and browse through the work – some of it is truly  amazing. 
 
Assuming you really want one, it’s just about your last chance for a replay of your favorite Superbowl commercials. Hulu beta subscribers can check them out here. 
 
Filmmaker Ryan Schifrin, creator and co-writer of the Devil’s Due military horror series Spooks, has launched the official Spooks web site here. The site features a lot of original content, including Spooks music by Ryan’s dad, Lalo Schifrin (Mission: Impossible), and Andy Garfield.
 
From our No Comment Files: Lasagna Cat is a very odd live action series based on the Garfield comic strips. You can see it here. Don’t saw we didn’t warn you. 
 
Just in case this comes up in day to day conversation, there is a list here of every reason why Dr. David Banner (Bill Bixby) turned into The Hulk on that old TV show. And despite what you think, it always wasn’t just about being angry. 
 
It might be all about hearts and flowers in the week to come, but for us it’s the true love of cool new comics and DVDs we showcase for you – and better yet, it’s our First Anniversary Celebration, plus, with a little luck, the end of the Writer’s Strike. See you right here for ComicMix Radio on Tuesday!
And as always, you can subscribe to our podcasts via badgeitunes61x15dark-1451831 or RSS!

Turok: Son of Stanley Kramer, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • February 10, 2008

 

Unarguably, one of the things DVD has way over VHS is its compression. Far more discs fit in any given space than cassettes – allowing producers to create compact yet extensive homages to filmmakers or genres. A welcome addition to this group arrives this week in the form of the Stanley Kramer Film Collection. We’ll now take a moment for average film-goers to say “who?” and film-lovers to go “ahhhhh!”
 
For the a.f.g.’s amongst you, Kramer was a true maverick-altruist among those about whom the great comedian Fred Allen once said: “You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer’s heart.” Kramer’s filmography was chock-ablock with socially-conscious challenges which were as ground-breaking as they were entertaining. As producer and/or director, he constantly strove to do both the right and best thing, including breaking the iron rule of the blacklist and rampant racism.
 
Amongst his classics not in this six-DVD set are The Defiant Ones, Death of a Salesman, High Noon, Inherit the Wind, Judgment at Nuremberg, The Caine Mutiny, and (arguably) It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. This collection, however, features some of his rarer (The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T), most influential (The Wild One), heartfelt (The Member of the Wedding, and ambitious [Ship of Fools)] efforts — culminating with the 40th Anniversary release of his last great masterpiece Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. 
 
The latter film has a special edition disc of its own, featuring deserved kow-tows from Steven Spielberg, Quincy Jones, Tom Brokaw, Alec Baldwin, and many others. It also has a two-part “making of:” one for the daring interracial romantic comedy-drama itself, and one just on its final pairing of Katherine Hepburn and the dying Spencer Tracy (when the cast and crew recount his final day on the set, delivering the film’s final speech just a fortnight before he passed away, I’ll defy you not to be as misty-eyed as they are).

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Matt Fraction on ‘Thor: Ages of Thunder’ and ‘The Order’

Newsarama has posted an interview with Matt Fraction about Thor: Ages of Thunder, his upcoming peek at the war-torn history of Marvel’s Norse Gods.

Newsarama: Matt, what’s Ages of Thunder about, and how does it tie into the Thor mythos?

Matt Fraction: It’s a Thor graphic novel, told in parts, that plugs the pure Stan-and-Jack interpretation of Thor and the Asgardians into the Norse myth cycle. It sort of exists outside of any current incarnation of Thor – one of my favorite things about the Norse myths is that it’s cyclical; that Ragnarok has survivors and the stories begin again.

So we’re using that as a motivation to look at Thor and his pantheon throughout various different eras of Ragnanroks, with various different visual interpretations. Each time they’re living through these insane and colossal stories that build on top of one another, each chapter presenting us with another way of seeing Asgard as it rages towards its inevitable destruction and rebirth.

Ultimately, these stories present to us with the reasons why Odin saw fit to curse Thor with the humanity of Donald Blake, and who he becomes because of it. That’s the uniting thread that, no matter what apocalypse he’s skyrocketing towards, Thor had this flaw, and this ultimate redemption because of it, told in giant, divine terms. It was danced around back in Thor#159, if you want to get all continuity-guy on it; Ages of Thunder is a kind of explicit play-by-play, where Thor’s lack of humility triggers all of these wonderful, horrible things.

Along with making a passing comparison of Thor to Wu Tang Clan, Fraction shows off a few pieces of art from the series and also weighs in on the "real" reasons his series The Order is coming to an end with issue #10.

Thor: Ages of Thunder hits shelves April 30, 2008.

 

Michael Avon Oeming on ‘The Mice Templar’

  • News
  • February 10, 2008

In this brief interview at The Pulse, Jennifer M. Contino speaks with Michael Avon Oeming about his "labor of love" on The Mice Templar, his bimonthly series with Bryan Glass that touches upon various mythologies with a cast of mice and other anthropomorphic characters.

Oeming’s made it abundantly clear over time that the idea has been brewing in his head for quite a while now, but here explains what readers can expect from the series:

It’s an EPIC story. I don’t think the SCOPE can even begin to be seen until the first arc is done with issue Six. This isn’t me bragging, this is me talking about what Bryan has done. The story is huge yet focused. We take our time with it and have been criticized for it, but I’m okay with that, I’m not going to rush the story. This one has to breathe more because it has such life. That’s Bryans doing, not mine.

In the interview, Oeming continues to shower Glass with love, and explains some of the specific influences behind the series. The third issue of Mice Templar is currently on shelves.

 

What are the Alpha Lanterns of Green Lantern Corps?

  • News
  • February 10, 2008

With the debut of the "Alpha-Lanterns" in the most recent issue of Green Lantern, many readers (myself included) are wondering exactly what the heck these part-organic, part-robotic "police" are and what role they’ll play in the greater Green Lantern universe.

Luckily, Newsarama has an interview with writer Sterling Gates about his upcoming arc in Green Lantern Corps that provides some back story for the mysterious new members of the Green Lantern mythos.

NRAMA: We saw a little bit of what the Alpha-Lanterns do in Green Lantern. But can you elaborate on what role the Alpha-Lanterns play within the Corps?

SG: The Alpha-Lanterns act as "Internal Affairs" for the Green Lantern Corps. If someone isn’t doing their job right, they get flagged, and one of the Alpha-Lanterns is sent in to see why they’re not doing the job.

You know, Grant [Morrison] really hit on a wonderful idea and started the ball rolling with the Alpha-Lanterns, conceptualizing them, then Geoff developed the idea even further in Green Lantern. I’m focusing in on one of them in particular and really delving into her character and what drives her to be an Alpha. So as we follow Boodikka’s investigation, we’ll also be exploring her past and why she left her family behind. This story really serves as an origin story for Boodikka, looking back at her life while moving her forward as a character and an Alpha.

Gates’ Green Lantern Corps storyline begins with this month’s issue #21.

George A. Romero’s ‘Diary of the Dead’ in Review, by Michael H. Price

  • News
  • February 10, 2008
 
The film-trade press tends increasingly to hail Pittsburgh’s George A. Romero as “the godfather of gore,” in a smirking nod to his new picture, Diary of the Dead, and to the persistent influence of Romero’s breakout film of 1968, Night of the Living Dead. The facile assumption, here, is that Romero’s films must rely more upon visceral shock value than upon narrative ferocity or scathing social criticism – qualities that constitute his larger impact as a filmmaking artist.
 
The medium is outright and unapologetic horror, of course – a perennially hardy escapism-or-allegory genre that had embraced gratuitous “gore” as a ticket-selling commodity several years before Romero had seasoned Night of the Living Dead with such incidental excesses. If any human agency counts as a “godfather of gore,” it must be the short-lived partnership of Herschell Gordon Lewis and David F. Friedman, whose first-of-a-kind collaborative films Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs and Color Me Blood Red (1963–1965) had championed the pageantry of bloodletting spectacle to the near-exclusion of storytelling values. (Interesting to see a homage-to-Lewis sequence turn up in the Jason Reitman’s indie-film Oscar-bait hit Juno. Enough with the digressions, already.)
 
Romero’s investment in the genre, however, involves a steadfast commitment to bigger and more troubling ideas about the fragile state of civilization. Imitations, remakes and homages abound, but Romero stands apart as the Genuine Article. (Among the more sharply attuned nods to Romero: Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, from 2002; Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s Shaun of the Dead, from 2004; and Robert Kirkman’s comics-chapbook novel The Walking Dead, from 2003 et seq.)
 
Romero’s previous such picture, Land of the Dead, goes so far as to channel the humane, defiant desperation of John Steinbeck, suggesting a Grapes of Wrath-like prophecy of America as a Third World country – harshly divided amongst a small monied class, an impoverished mass population, and a gathering horde of once-human predators, with no remedies in sight and no perceptible middle-class buffer zone. Romero, like Francis Ford Coppola with his Godfather suite or Ingmar Bergman in his film-by-film search for a Meaning of Life, has accomplished more with one recurring concern, so outlandish that it becomes plausible, than many another writer–director from either the maverick or studio-establishment ranks could perform with any succession of self-contained ideas.
 

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Guillermo Del Toro to Direct ‘Dr. Strange’?

  • News
  • February 10, 2008

With Hellboy behind him and the upcoming Hellboy 2 on the way, director Guillermo Del Toro is mulling over another comics-related project that could be one of his next films — that is if he doesn’t take on The Hobbit or At the Mountain of Madness first. According to Empire News, he is seriously considering bringing the Sorcerer Supreme, Dr. Strange, to the big screen.

Not only is Del Toro’s interest potentially great news for Dr. Strange fans, but there’s more: Del Toro has also been talking to one of the comics world’s most successful creators about taking on the film’s writing duties. Who, you may wonder? None other than Neil Gaiman. According to Del Toro:

"I talked with Neil Gaiman [about writing it]. I said, that’s an interesting character because you can definitely make him more in the pulpy occult detective/magician mould and formula than was done in the Weird Tales, for example…the idea of a character that really dabbles in the occult in a way that’s not X-Filey, where the supernatural is taken for granted. That’s interesting…But I wouldn’t use the suit!"

So, that’s a Dr. Strange movie directed by Gueilerrmo Del Toro and written by Neil Gaiman? Is it just me or does that sound like a pretty fantastic collaboration that could yield a teriffic film?

 

Happy 7th Anniversary, Neil Gaiman’s Blog!

  • News
  • February 10, 2008

What started as a little thing to chronicle the writing of American Gods has grown and grown to the point of– well, something really big and blog-like. And dressed in black. And a turban. And some such.

So here’s to you, old man. And one of these days, we’re going to run that interview of you from way back when– but we just might save it for the 20th anniversary of the interview. Which, scarily enough, is only a year away.

Now if we could only find a way to rescue your old topic on GEnie…

Joanne Woodward Gets a STAH

  • News
  • February 9, 2008

Okay, so she never played a heroine or a supervillain, but still, couldn’t you at least imagine that Joanne Woodward could have?

Today in 1960, Woodward received the very first star on the Hollywood walk of fame, toting an Oscar for her performance in The Three Faces of Eve. She currently resides in Westport, Connecticut with this other actor no one’s ever heard of named Paul–what is it? Newman? Neuman? I forget.

The Sci-Fi Currency Exchange Rate

  • News
  • February 9, 2008

We’re not quite sure what they’re putting in the water coolers over at io9, but it’s producing some bizarre  (yet strangely attractive) reading material. Case in point: This feature on the rate of exchange for various forms of currency in the science-fiction world.

Galactic Standard Credits, the money used by the Republic and the Imperial regime in Star Wars. It’s a remarkably stable currency, having expeirenced no inflation whatsoever over a 4,000 year period. Eat your heart out, Allen Greenspan!

Exchange rate: I’m guessing about $0.50 to the GSC. Luke Skywalker got just 2,000 credits for his worn-out land speeder, which is also what Han Solo charged for passage to Alderaan. A hyperspace-capable starship costs a bit more than 10,000 GSCs.

So what did we learn? Well, apparently I got ripped off when I bought my Hyundai for the same price as a pair of landspeeders. sigh

 

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