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When Black Friday comes…

  • News
  • November 20, 2007

This week it’ s all about the shopping (and maybe that eating thing, too, but…) – ComicMix Radio kicks it off with our preview of new comics and DVDs that hit your stores even before the bird is stuffed or the parade kicks off, plus:

  • Valiant keeps bouncing back – this time with some new X-O Manowar
  • Captain Marvel and Mice Templar both go *poof*
  • Tim Burton & Disney bring back Alice
  • Coming Soon – 3-D without those annoying glasses

We’ve even got a link to a sneak peek of Black Friday deals on books & DVDs – so Press The Button!

 

 

King Arthur, Iron Man, and Brooks Brothers, by Dennis O’Neil

  • Uncategorized
  • November 20, 2007

To…oh, say, King Arthur, if he ever existed, you would have superpowers. I mean, look at you. You can travel 100 miles an hour (but that red light flashing in your rearview mirror can’t be good) and you can cause a blank pane of glass to light up and show you what’s happening on he other side of the world, or what happened last week, or both, and you can twist your wrist and cause flame to appear atop that table-thing in the kitchen, with no protracted fussing with flint and stone… To Arthur, it would appear that you’re employing magic.

Living when he did, Art never read another Arthur’s observation that any form of technology sufficiently advanced would appear to be magic, at least to lumps like us. (I refer to Arthur C. Clarke, but you knew that…) So Arthur, (the king, not the science fiction writer) might watch you doing your stuff and conclude that you must be magic and because you’re magic you must be special. He wouldn’t know that you bought your powers, at a discount, at that big, ugly mall about a mile west on the freeway.

Remember, he had a special sword, Excalibur, and he had it because he deserved to have it. And so it was with other talismans, amulets, and assorted weapons and mystic hoo-haws that super good guys got hold of during their adventures down through the ages.

Which brings us to Tony Stark.

(more…)

ComicMix Goes National, Part 2

  • News
  • November 19, 2007

Where were we this morning?  Ah yes, it was actually noontime on Saturday, where we headed upstairs to the Hotel Penn’s Sky-something ballroom for the Mark Evanier-moderated panel "Marvel in the 60s and 70s."

Just look at those luminaries.  Gary Friedrich; Dick Ayers (in his old Army outfit that still fits!); Herb Trimpe; Joe Sinnott.  Truly amazing gentlemen, with the usual stories you’d expect.  But the best anecdote may have been one in the making, as Mark received an email from Stan Lee during the panel, emailed him back that he was currently moderating a panel and did Stan have something to say…

…which of course, about a half hour later, he did.  It went something along the lines of "Tell those gentlemen they need to get out of that hick town and come to Los Angeles, where they can join me for a real Marvel panel!"  Mark should have the exact text up on his blog shortly, I’m sure.

"But," you say, "you promised us purple pants!"  Well, here’s a Wizard to warm you up:

The bearded gent on the right, come in all the way from Israel, is Mike Netzer.  Or is he the one on the left?  I’ll never tell.  Purple pants aplenty below! (more…)

Boneyard, Volume 6 Review

  • News
  • November 19, 2007

Boneyard is a series about a guy – Michael Paris is his name – who inherited a cemetery way back in issue #1, and arrived to find it full of various monsters from myth and legend. Luckily, the vampire, werewolf, troll, gill-woman, and so on were friendly, and convinced him not to sell out to evil forces. As you can see from the cover, we’re up to the sixth collection by this point, so the series has settled into itself, and is somewhat predictable. (On the other hand, these are all thin collections, of about four issues apiece, so we’ve only gotten up to issue #24 – it’s not in any huge rut, just a comfortable status quo.)

The major overall plot of the Boneyard series involves the machinations of Certain Forces – culturally literate readers might take Mayor Wormwood’s surname as a major clue – to buy the cemetery from Michael or to obtain it in some other way. (For nefarious reasons, of course.) The main subplot centers on Michael’s very, very slowly budding romance with Abbey, the cute ancient vampire. (Given that much of Boneyard creator Richard Moore’s other work is pornographic, I find it amusing that his characters either immediately have sex upon meeting or are too shy to even talk to each other.)

This volume, though, isn’t really about either of those plots – it touches slightly on Abbey’s long-time rivalry with Lilith (another ancient, powerful vampiress), but it’s mostly about the cast going to a big dress-up party thrown by a previously unmentioned ultra-powerful supernatural being called the Luminary (who is called the Illuminary on the back cover). (more…)

ComicMix Goes National, Part 1

  • News
  • November 19, 2007

It’s always nice when a convention takes place in your own backyard, a mere express bus or train journey away, and despite the weather turning chillier this is a great time of year to be out and about in NYC.  Michael Carbonaro has been running his bimonthly Big Apple comics and media expos for at least a dozen years now, and every November he gathers industry luminaries and showbiz greats together in his signature extravaganza, the National.  Naturally, ComicMix was there this year, and although I could only make it on Saturday I snapped plenty of photos and talked to lots of friends!

ComicMix Media Queen Martha Thomases knows how to keep her hands busy at the booth; the pink cashmere layer in her latest knitting endeavor felt absolutely gorgeous!

Here was the view of the left side of our row, with Bob McLeod in the foreground, then my husband Robin Riggs (I shuttled the few feet between the CM table and our location for much of the day), then Scott Roberts, and in the background Rodney Ramos.  More on those two below.  In fact, more of everything below! (more…)

Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, and the High Price of Irony, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • November 19, 2007

Last Thursday, Alex Rodriguez signed a 10-year contract in excess of a quarter billion dollars that allows him to continue working for the New York Yankees, a team about which, in the interest of full disclosure, I couldn’t care less. A couple hours later, the government indicted San Francisco Giants player Barry Bonds for lying to a grand jury.

That’s a nice slice of irony. When Rodriguez “quit” the Yankees he announced his decision during the final game of the World Series, effectively destroying the momentum of the business’s most holy event – particularly if you’re from Boston. Still, it was bad form and I enjoyed seeing those chickens come home.

So now A-Rod (not to be confused with L-Ron or Kal-El) gets a nice locker at the new Yankee Stadium. But what goes around comes around and then goes around again: part of Rodriquez’s deal is that he gets all kinds of bonuses for accomplishing major feats that will inure to the financial benefit of his employer. Among these is breaking Barry Bonds’ home run record. I love irony.

That’s just become a whole lot easier. Bonds is without a contract and is now, effectively, unemployable. Like Willie Mays, he’s now standing still and breaking his record is much easier. Not that A-Rod doesn’t already have enough money to buy Mongo air-turf from Prince Vulcan, but still, we probably won’t have to worry about asterisks for very long.

While still wallowing in the synchronicities of irony, I listened to Dave Ross’s editorial on CBS Radio. Dave pointed out that Bonds is over 18 and if he wants to pump dangerous drugs into his veins, that’s his right. Dave lives in Seattle; they think like that up there. If it violates the rules of Major League Baseball, that’s the business of Major League Baseball and not our courts. He lied to a grand jury in 2003? It didn’t physically harm anybody except himself and gamblers. If a grand jury looked into lies that actually harmed people in 2003, Dave pointed out, they wouldn’t have any problem finding people to indict.

(more…)

Alan Moore Turns Yellow

  • Uncategorized
  • November 18, 2007

simpsons164-gif-for-web-large-8189287It’s the lull before the holiday week, as we recover from being jam-packed and roasted at The NYC National convention. Most of the table talk in The Big Apple centered on how life was or will be affected by the WGA strike. Still, we managed to dig up a few nuggets of interest:

Former Marvel Comics editor Andy Schmidt (Annihilation) had launched Comics Experience here – a new full-service comic book creating school and career consulting service, which will be begin classes soon. Courses will include: Introduction to Comics Writing, Advanced Comics Writing, Introduction to Comic Book Art and Advanced Comic Book Art. Future guest lecturers will include Peter David and Dan Slott.

TV Guide in canceling its live Online Video Awards ceremony in lieu of the labor dispute between the WGA and AMPTP. The awards will continue online here, with winners of 18 separate categories to be announced on November 26. More than 1.6 million votes have been cast so far, according to TV Guide.

(more…)

Time Crashes On

  • News
  • November 18, 2007

I’ve been told to try to keep news bits to only one Dr. Who reference a day, but as we all know Time Crash premiered at this year’s Children In Need special, and naturally it’s now all over the YouTubes.  Here’s the grab we’re passing along.  Intro by Terry "Tight Pants" Wogan and John "Captain Jack" Barrowman from Who spinoff Torchwood:

Le sigh.  Peter Davison was my favorite Doctor before David Tennant came along.  Now for your happy dance:

Whorythmics iPod spoof via Laura Gjovaag.

Unconventional reading

  • News
  • November 18, 2007

Some of us not being nearly as young as we used to be, yesterday’s National convention in NYC pretty much wiped us for the weekend.  Other ComicMix folks will be in attendance today, but we’re resting our aching back and legs and never-you-mind, and catching up on the past week of columns:

And, although it goes without saying, don’t forget to click on our free online comics as well!

Live Free or Hairspray Hard by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • November 18, 2007

When I was attempting to explain the joys to be found in a good kung-fu film in my Martial Arts Movie books, I suggested that the exhilaration of a great wushu battle is only really comparable to the delights of a good movie musical. Both feature operatic emotions with balletic energy. I was reminded of that comparison when watching Hairspray, one of my three favorite summer o’07 films (Ratatouille and Superbad were the others). I admired it so much I even included it in my Inside Kung-Fu magazine media column (after all, the word “kung-fu” actually means “hard work”).

   

Now the DVD is out, and in a two-disc “Shimmy and Shake Edition,” too. After the too-few extras on the Ratatouille and Help! DVDs, it’s nice to find a release with the reams of special features about the kung-fu I so enjoy. There’s two audio commentaries – one with star Nikki Blonsky and director/choreographer Dan Shankman, and the other with two producers (Neil Meron and Craig Zadan). The latter is a little more informative but the former is a lot more fun.

   

Joining them on the first disc is a “Hairspray Extensions” featurette that lives up to its title – in that it shows six musical numbers as they were built, step by step, from rehearsal to filming. For Dancing With the Stars fans, there’s also a “Step by Step Dance Instructions” featurette that carefully and completely teaches you two of the film’s signature boogie-woogies. Finally, there’s a “Jump to a Song” feature which allows you to avoid all those pesky dialog scenes.

   

Then there’s the second disc, which balances extensive and exhaustive “making of” docs (on the music by Marc Shaiman, who also composed the South Park movie, dancing, design, costumes and cast) with historical context featurettes on the original non-musical John Waters film, the actual Baltimore TV dance show the film was inspired by, and the Broadway musical that was adapted from Waters film. But, as they say on TV, that’s not all. Rounding out the second disc are a bunch of deleted scenes, including an evocative song that was cut from the film (probably wisely – though effective, it clearly slowed the film’s pace). (more…)

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