The Mix : What are people talking about today?

Everything Old is New (Year) Again, by Elayne Riggs

  • News
  • January 2, 2008

elayne100-8464252It’s the first business day of 2008 and, as I noted a few weeks ago, time for many pop-culture mavens to present their Best of 2007 lists. Alas, I will not be one of those. I can’t remember most of what I read in 2007, a blur of a year for me at the best of times due to the losses I suffered. But this isn’t new for me; I can barely remember the fiction I read or watch more than a half hour or so afterwards. It’s just the way my mind works. The only time I was able to do yearly wrap-ups and "Best Of"s was when I was regularly reviewing about a dozen comics every week, because I could refer to my previous work, but even then it was tough because I didn’t grade the stuff, I just talked about it.

My low retention rate is one reason why re-reading cherished books I’ve had for years is so fulfilling to me. It contains both the comfort of revisiting something vaguely familiar to me and the excitement of seeing it all anew. I was very happy to have received so many comments on my last column (thanks so much, all!). Obviously children’s books are beloved by a lot of adult pop culture geeks besides me. That’s really wonderful, and I think it proves the point that all-ages stuff really does mean stuff written for the young and the young-at-heart, rather than exclusively for the young. (It probably doesn’t hurt that we’re all comics people too, and have all experienced the knee-jerk reactions of many non-comics readers that we’re too old for our hobby, with its accompanying implicit assumption that all-ages literature ought not be enjoyed by, well, all ages.)

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Leveling down, by Dennis O’Neil

  • Uncategorized
  • January 1, 2008

images-2954862New Year’s morning.  Cold, wet, bleak.

I’m sure that within easy walk of where I’m sitting, there are people who are wishing they’d done something else last night.  The wages of sin are, indeed, death — death is the wages of everything, sooner or later — but sin can have some more immediate wages in the forms of headaches, sick stomachs, dry-mouth. The self-inflicted results of having a good ol’ time.
 
In Times Square, poor devils who work for the New York City sanitation department are busy cleaning up the detritus from the annual big hoo-hah.  Watching it on television was like glimpsing purgatory: crowds and noise and chaos — not my idea of fun anymore, if it ever was.  But the would-be poet in me is responding to the chilly, soaking sanitation men symbolize: get rid of the old to accommodate the new.  Yeah, ‘t’was ever thus, but we resist the notion, which is really an incarnation of the inevitable, particularly in our national politics.
 
Given the kinds of things the candidates spend most of their energies fussing over, it would seem that we’ve learned nothing in the past seven years.  
 

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A ‘Star Trek’ Fiction Primer

  • News
  • January 1, 2008

Hitting shelves around the country is Star Trek: A Singular Destiny by Keith R.A. DeCandido, the first novel in the Star Trek universe after the status quo was shaken up in the just-complete Star Trek: Destiny trilogy by David Mack.  When we spoke with Mack a few months ago, he said, “All I’m willing to share at this point is that characters who are dead before the trilogy starts stay dead; characters killed during the trilogy will stay dead afterward; there is no reset button at the end of the story; worlds we’ve heard of before will be destroyed; a species will cease to exist.”

For many intrigued by this, the prose works can seem daunting since they carry the storylines forward from the last season of Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Deep Space 9 and The Next Generation feature films.  DeCandido provided ComicMix with a reading list for those interested in seeing what’s been happening:

Pre-Nemesis

There was a nine-book series that set the groundwork for Nemesis as well as many of the post-Nemesis books. None of them are critical. All nine provide some nice background, particularly on Christine Vale, the security chief on the Enterprise-E who goes on to become Riker’s first officer on Titan, and the final five books set up Riker’s captaincy and engagement to Troi (both established in Nemesis), as well as the political situation we see going forward. It’s also, in essence, Data’s final arc, which runs through all nine.

These books take place from late 2378 to late 2379 (the film took place in late 2379).

A Time to be Born by John Vornholt
A Time to Die by John Vornholt
A Time to Sow by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore
A Time to Harvest by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore
A Time to Love by Robert Greenberger
A Time to Hate by Robert Greenberger
A Time to Kill by David Mack
A Time to Heal by David Mack
A Time for War, a Time for Peace by Keith R.A. DeCandido (more…)

Thar Was The Year That Was

The ball has dropped and Time Square is swept clean, but ComicMix Radio wants to be among the last to drive a nail into 2007 with our own lists of the Cool and the Not So, including our choice for one of the most under appreciated runs in comics (and the picture gives it away) .

Plus:

• It’s quality over quantity this week in our list of new comics and DVDs, which might give you a chance to catch up on all the stuff you bought in December

•  Todd McFarlane shows off The Simpsons

• Image restarts The Golden Age Of Comics

Pressing The Button now is even cooler than it was last year!

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Hail and Farewell, Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes

  • News
  • January 1, 2008

Ah, the new year. A time to freshen up, begin anew and reflect upon the past. For some of us, this means looking back to a fateful new year’s day in 1995, when after exactly 15 years of service to the absurd and hilarious, Gary Larson finally put The Far Side to rest.

Who can forget those restless chickens, philosophical cows and people whose brains were full? They were the iconic markers of an era with a drier, if odder sense of humor.

We still miss those odd phone calls from God. However, Far Side products still exist, from the giant omnibus edition to a new DVD release of their really strange Halloween special from a few years back. Here’s a look:

 

 

Yesterday was also the anniversary of another sad day in comics, as a year after The Far Side went off the rails for the last time, a boy and his tiger sledded off into the sunset as Calvin and Hobbes came to a close.

Yeah, Robert Burns got it right…

  • News
  • January 1, 2008

No doubt you’ve seen the awesome (and I mean that in the traditional sense of the word) response to John Ostrander’s column last week in tribute to our friend Paul (Zeus) Grant. As of this writing, there have been 78 responses to John’s piece — quite a lot for an upstart operation such as ours. Lots of good people: old friends, folks I haven’t heard from in a while, industry professionals, fellow comics fans. Damn, what a turnout.

Paul would have been pleased. Well, not with the "his death" part – we all could have done without that. But as one of the very first comic fans to understand, appreciate and act upon the relationship between the Internet and comics fandom, he was the grandfather of this project, as well as the many, many others to be found online. So it is most fitting that this genuine outpouring of love, this virtual wake we’ve been having, is being done in honor of him.  Coming at the end of the year, at the moment of auld lang syne... how fitting. And how grounding.

Comics fandom was founded, in part, to honor the first generation of writers and artists who had no choice but to survive the humiliating travails of Fredrick Wertham and the funny book burnings of the late 40s and 50s. Most of those folks are gone now, but most of them knew the respect that we have for their work. They knew their names would live on. They might not have seen efforts such as the Grand Comic Book Database, but they saw their names in the fanzines, the comics history books, and on the autograph pads at decades of conventions.

And now we’re losing the first generation of comics fans. Jerry Bails died about 13 months ago, Paul this past month. Others of our founding fathers and mothers passed previously, of course, but now it’s becoming clear that we must honor those who got the ball rolling, in mimeo-zines all the way up to the Internet.

John did a swell job last week honoring those who put it all together. Thanks, bro.

*  *  *  *  *

Seeing as how I’m filling in for Denny, I want to honor this time-slot with a RECOMMENDED READING offering. But, unlike Mr. O’Neil, I’m going to recommend a comic book — a mini-series one-third done that will no doubt be anthologized: Kyle Baker’s take on Iraq War II, Special Forces, from Image Comics. Perhaps the most important comic on the racks right now.

The last holiday post of 2007

  • News
  • December 31, 2007

We couldn’t let the year go without this wonderful holiday greeting from our friend Liam Sharp & family:

You can check out all of Liam’s offerings at his Mamtor site, which also includes this intriguing preview for something called Viking Zombie Elvis:

Did you spot the Simon Bisley cameo? I think Paul Neary may be in there as well…

Out of Picture, Vol. 1 Review

  • News
  • December 31, 2007

The animators of Blue Sky Studios were finishing up their work on the movie Robots in late 2004 when a group of them decided that was the perfect time to do a collection of more personal stories. (A similar impulse is behind the Flight series of anthologies, to which more miscellaneous animators, illustrators, and cartoonists have contributed.) The first edition of Out of Picture – published in hardcover by a French house – debuted at 2006’s MoCCA show, and was a surprise hit there. Now, Villard has brought out an expanded edition of Out of Picture in paperback, with the promise of a second volume to follow next year.

I do first have to admit that the art is absolutely stunning – the different artists are varied in their approaches, but all are successful in creating their own worlds. On the other hand, Out of Picture is reminiscent of Robots (and other Blue Sky productions, such as Ice Age) – the visuals are amazing, showing deep thought and amazing skill, but the stories those visuals tell are much less original or special.

For example, Nash Dunnigan’s “Night School” uses a dark, chiaroscuro palette and well-chosen camera angles to tell a somewhat clichéd, “If This Goes On” style story about religious domination in the mid-21st century. And David Gordon’s “The Wedding Present” is visually stunning, with a great sense of design and the audacity to make his terrorist characters into brightly-colored funny animals. But the story, again, doesn’t really go anywhere. (more…)

The Happy Optimist, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • December 31, 2007

 

As I write these words on the final Friday of 2007, I’m already tired of all the “best of” lists on all the media, so I’m going to go in the other direction and point my antennae towards the future. Chipper li’l guy that I am, here’s some of the reasons why I’m looking forward to 2008.
 
• Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark in the Iron Man movie. I can’t think of a better casting choice, except maybe for Howard Chaykin – and I’m not sure Chaykin could pull off the moustache thing. Downey’s got the right look, the right attitude… we’ll see if he gets the right screenplay.
 
• The inauguration of ComicMix: Phase Three and ComicMix: Phase Four. Actually, Brian tells us Phase Four might be ready before Phase Three. If so, we’ll probably rename Phase Four Phase Three. I went to school for this, you know.
 
• The end of Campaign 2008. Maybe we’ll get somebody worthy of the job. There’s a better chance of that if we all go out and vote at least once. I suspect I’ll be voting twice, as I once registered in Chicago.
 
• The most amazing and astonishing Munden’s Bar story ever told. With luck, we’ll have it done in 2008. It’ll be worth the wait.
 

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Hail the new, ye lads and lasses

  • News
  • December 30, 2007

While it’s been a rather quiet week news-wise, our weekly ComicMix columns have seen lots of activity.  We were particularly honored to host an online wake of sorts last Thursday, reuniting members of the old CompuServe Comics and Animation Forum (myself included) in the comments section of John Ostrander’s touching remembrance of Paul "Zeus" Grant.  Here’s what else we’ve written for you this past week:

We wish everyone all you wish for yourselves in 2008 and beyond.

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