The Mix : What are people talking about today?

Lost Heroes and Apple Teasing

  • News
  • January 27, 2008

It was a pretty hectic week at ComicMix Radio, and we ended up with a few stories that didn’t make it in the broadcast, all of which have some cool links to check out:

 
We did manage to tell you that NBC.com is conducting another prop auction here, all still to raise money for the Mona Foundation. That’s the group that supports global education initiatives and women’s rights. Items up for auction include canvas print reproductions off the Heroes set from artist Tim Sale plus stuff from The Office and 30 Rock.
 
Days from now Lost returns to prime time TV. Ok, it’s only for eight weeks but that’s something. If you want to catch up on anything, ABC is making it easy with all three seasons posted here. And there is also a fun little site dedicated to Oceanic Air here
 
Cartoonist Dash Shaw has started a new online comic here that he describes ad a "romance about body and mind telepathy." BodyWorld is here and new episodes are posted on Tuesdays. 
 

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Life of Groundhog, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • January 27, 2008

 

Oh, it’s been a good week. Two of my (diametrically-opposed) favorite comedies are coming out on remastered special edition DVDs this coming Tuesday (one which was embraced by all religions while the other was roundly condemned by all religions) and I could hardly be happier. The operative word here is “hardly,” because, for while both DVD editions are good, one, in particular, could have been great.
 
But this is sour grapes on my part. I love Groundhog Day, and appreciate the skills of its star, Bill Murray, so much that I shouldn’t begrudge his disinterest in participating with the 15th Anniversary release’s special features – but yet, I still do. I shouldn’t be so petty, too, because of Bill’s absence, the true value of director/co-scripter Harold Ramis comes into sharp focus.
 
I’m a big fan of Ramis as well, ever since I saw him as harried station manager Moe Green on the original import of the milestone Canadian comedy series SCTV. I can never forget his delivery as the evil boss in the show’s satire of The Grapes of Wrath, The Grapes of Mud; “You think this land is urine … but it’s all our land, not just urine” (you had to be there, I guess).
 
Ramis left SCTV early, which I also begrudged, come to think of it. But all was forgiven when he started helming, or being intimately creatively involved with, such comedy mainstays as Animal House, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, As Good As It Gets, and Analyze This. Groundhog Day could be his masterpiece, however, given that it’s a romantic comedy fantasy classic.
 
Columbia Pictures, minus Murray’s input, could only muster a single, pretty poorly photoshopped, disc, but Ramis is all over the extras. There’s a commentary with him, which I lapped up with my admiring head nestled on my hands. There’s also a video talking head grandly titled “A Different Day: An Interview with Harold Ramis,” which I watched appreciatively with my chin on my fist. Then there’s the making-of doc called “The Weight of Time” (borrowing a phrase by story creator and co-scripter Danny Rubin), which I watched with the back of my head resting on my sofa top. 
 

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Perhapanauts Return With New Publisher

  • News
  • January 27, 2008

If you haven’t had a chance to check out the under-the-radar series The Perhapanauts, written by Todd DeZago and with art from Craig Rousseau, you owe it yourself to do so. Lucky for you, they’re returning to comics shelves in February with a new annual and a new publisher in Image Comics.

ComicBookResources recently featured a chat with the creators of the series, which focuses on a government-sponsored team that operates in secrecy and investigates supernatural events. The team is made up of living, breathing representatives of various cultural myths, including a sasquatch and a chupacabra.

Of course, this could also explain why The Perhapanauts might have found itself falling under a pretty large shadow at its previous publisher, Dark Horse Comics, whose well-established Hellboy and B.P.R.D. titles offer up stories that might seem similar from a back-of-the-book perspective.

According to DeZago:

… in the beginning people compared us to ‘BPRD’ and, when they debuted ‘Proof,’ Alex [Grecian] and Riley [Rossmo] were compared to us. But I think all three of them are very different books and, while they may tread some of the same ground — ‘Proof’ and ‘The Perhapanauts’ in particular — they are worlds apart. I would hope that anyone who wishes to make that comparison will pick up the books and see for themselves.

DeZago goes on to discuss why they eventually made the change in publishers and what they have in store for the Perhapanauts team down the road.

 

So You Think You Have Problems?

  • News
  • January 27, 2008

Looking for that special comic from 40, 50, even 60 years ago to give your loved one struggling with VD, diabetes, AIDS, marijuana, guns or just about anything else?  Musician Ethan Persoff may have just what you seek.

Comics With Problems collects various unintentionally hilarious public service advertisements in the form of comics, with titles like Rex Morgan M.D. Talks About Your Unborn Child and A Message about Sniffing for Young People, and presents them in their entirety for your edification and amusement.  I D.A.R.E. you to keep away from perusing it!

Elsewhere on his site, Persoff’s other ambitious project on his site is collecting an online archive of all issues of Paul Krassner’s seminal zine The Realist, but I notice he doesn’t have any from the ’80s when I was getting it.  Persoff — call me, I still have ’em all.  And say, you wouldn’t happen to know of an old comic warning of the dangers of being a packrat, would you?

MySpace and BBC Reach Doctor Who Deal

  • News
  • January 27, 2008

MySpace users will soon be able to view bits, pieces and even full episodes of BBC original programming, thanks to a deal between the two entities announced last week.

According to the deal, the site’s video platform, MySpaceTV, will present selected programming from the BBC, including interviews and episodes of programs such as Doctor Who, Torchwood and Robin Hood. The deal is the first of its kind for social networking site MySpace, which is heavily concentrating its efforts on video and multimedia development.

MySpace launched MySpaceTV in June 2007. The BBC video channel on MySpaceTV can be found at: www.myspace.com/bbcworldwide.

 

Ingagi: Gorillas in Our Midst, by Michael H. Price

  • News
  • January 27, 2008

 

If a long-mislaid but vividly documented Depression-era motion picture called Ingagi should ever re-surface – in the manner that such lost-and-found titles as the 1931 Spanish-language Dracula or the 1912 Richard III have cropped up, in unexpected out-of-the-way locations – its rediscovery alone would justify a monumental curatorial celebration and an overpriced DVD edition.
 
The film probably does not deserve as much, except perhaps on grounds of sheer obscurity and an ironically monumental influence. Never having viewed the picture, I am of course ill prepared to dismiss Ingagi as an unwatchable trifle. But primary-source screening notes from my late mentor, the film archivist and historian George E. Turner, describe a muddled combination of silent-screen expeditionary footage with staged bogus-safari scenes.
 
Ingagi is hardly the first of its kind, but it appears to have established a precedent for presenting an imaginary journey into unexplored regions as an authentic record of a scientific expedition. As such, it collected a reported $4 million in box-office returns – back in the day when a buck was still a dollar – and inspired numerous imitations.
 
The cryptic title became a household word: Such comedy acts as the Three Stooges and Hal Roach’s Our Gang ensemble devoted gags to Ingagi, and as late as 1939–1940 the actor-turned-filmmaker Spencer Williams, Jr., invoked the term with an otherwise unrelated picture called Son of Ingagi. During a visit at Dallas in 1993, Julius Schwartz cited the original Ingagi and a 1937 knockoff called Forbidden Adventure in Angkor as inspirations for the recurring “Gorilla City” subplot that distinguishes DC Comics’ Flash series of the 1960s.

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James Kochalka on Life, Music and American Elf

  • News
  • January 26, 2008

James Kochalka has done it all, and we are green with envy.

Playback has a nice interview with Kochalka, the creator of the award-winning daily comic American Elf, the adults-only Super F*ckers and a host of other comics – not to mention the frontman for the multi-album band James Kochalka Superstar. In the interview, the multi-talented Kochalka reflects on the ways Elf has both documented and shaped his growth as a creator, father and, well… superstar.

When I started the diary, I was still working my job as a waiter at the Chinese restaurant, then a couple months into the strip I quit. The strip covers my entire career as a full-time superstar. When I quit I said I was quitting to be a full-time superstar, instead of just part-time as I had been.

Kochalka also discusses the recent design overhaul of the American Elf website, as well as his upcoming projects in both comics and music. One such project, as he explains it, overlaps between the two:

Yeah, I have a song called "Dragon Puncher" and I wrote this book called Dragon Puncher and I just can’t find anyone to publish it. I really drew it to appeal to little kids, but the whole thing is fighting. The whole book basically is this battle. I think the children’s book publishers are freaked out ‘cause it’s all fighting, and the publishers of more adult stuff are freaked out ‘cause it seems like it’s for little kids. Everyone needs to lighten up cause it’s an awesome book.

Seriously, what’s not to like about punching dragons?

 

Oprah Brings It

  • News
  • January 26, 2008

Not that it’s necessarily geek news, but fantasy writers beware! Using your eighth-grade trauma to inspire your superhero’s journey? Think again!  You can’t mix fiction with non-fiction, or you will get a taste of Oprah’s wrath. Well, let’s be honest. That’s if you claim that you actually were that superhero, and while we all know you’re prancing around in those blue-lined yellow action hero underpants on your own time, at least you’re not on national TV saying that it’s real, or bouncing on couches, like some numb nuts out there.

Today in 2006, James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces, was ripped into a million little pieces by Oprah when it was found that a detail in his so-called autobiographical experience was shall we say, embellished. Let that be a lesson to all writers out there: when presented with the golden calf of Oprah’s Book Club, tread lightly. No detail shall be exaggerated, no recollection blurred, lest her wrath be set upon you and your stories. 

$100 Million Earmarked for Chinese Comics/Animation

  • News
  • January 26, 2008

The People’s Daily Online is reporting that the Chinese province of Guangzhou has announced plans to spend nearly $100 million over the next four years on developing the local comics and animation industry.

According to the report, more than 120 comics and animation companies are located in Guangzhou, generating nearly a fifth of the nation’s total revenue in these industries. The plan would devote 180 million yuan (approx. $24.9 million) each of four years to development of domestic comics and animation projects, with 50 million yuan directed toward nurturing, recognizing and promoting new talent, and the rest toward new "development parks" for companies.

"There is a promising market for the comics and animation industry as the city has introduced a series of preferential policies to support and develop the industry," Fan Xu, director of the Guangzhou press, publication, and radio and television (copyright) bureau, said earlier this week.

 

Jack Harkness to Keep Torchwood Burning?

  • News
  • January 26, 2008

John Barrowman, the actor who plays Capt. Jack Harkness on the hit BBC series Torchwood, says he plans to stay on the series as long as they’ll have him.

In this interview with SciFi Wire, Barrowman said he hopes to see a few more seasons come out of the darker, more adult-oriented Doctor Who spin-off series. He added that he has no plans to vacate his command of the Torchwood crew, either.

If I was asked to do Jack for the next five or six years I would do it with a big smile on my face, because I absolutely love playing him.

Barrowman also provided a few hints at what viewers can expect from the second season of Torchwood, which already premiered in England, but is set to air its first episode in the U.S. tonight, Jan. 26. SciFi Channel will broadcast the episode at 9 PM ET.

You’re going to also see much more of Jack’s history. Our time travel in Torchwood is different. [In] Doctor Who, the Doctor gets in a Tardis and travels. Our time travel is done through memory.

 

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