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The Big Little Book Time Machine

  • Uncategorized
  • October 30, 2007

I’ll admit: I’ve got a thing for self-published fan projects. Nothing shows fannish commitment better than these books, and over the years a wealth of encyclopedic information about our culture has been gathered in such efforts.

Once upon a time, there was a whole category of comic books that measured just a couple inches wide but were about a full inch thick. Actually, they weren’t really comic books – they were illustrated fiction. But many, if not most, featured comics characters such as Popeye, Dick Tracy, and Flash Gordon – complete with illustrations often by the creators and their studios. They were called Big Little Books – BLBs – and were highly collectible. And so they remain.

A fan named Larry Lowery has self-published a fantastic reference book on BLBs, with great cover repros and every detail you can imagine. The 400 page compendium lists all the Whitman BLBs and peripherals related to Big Little Books from 1932 through 1980, as well as similar publications by Dell, Saalfield, Lynn, 5-Star, and such. It’s a great reference book for serious collectors with photos of every BLB. Check it out here.

Thanks to our pal Dean Mullaney for the lead.

On this day: War of the Worlds broadcast

  • News
  • October 30, 2007

Sixty-nine years ago tonight, the radio program Mercury Theater on the Air presented Orson Welles’ production of H.G. Wells’ "War of the Worlds", a fictional drama about a Martian invasion in Grovers Mill, New Jersey. The program sparked a panic among listeners who believed the play was an actual news broadcast. Of the six million listeners who heard the show, more than 1.7 million reportedly believed the story was true.

Those who were lucky enough to tune in from the start of the show were alerted to its fictional nature and were spared the fate of the others who went into nationwide panic over alien invasion. Most creative artists in the fantasy field only hope to convey the emotional reality of fictional circumstances. Welles was able to make those circumstances real, if only for an ephemeral hour and if only for a gullible few.

We salute you, Mr. Welles and Mr. Wells, for setting the standards of illusory paranoia, and giving the rest of us something to aspire towards.

If you’ve never heard it before, have a listen.

Top 7 reasons to root for a writers strike

  • News
  • October 30, 2007

I didn’t think I’d be writing this, but I think I’m actually looking forward to Hollywood having a writer’s strike.

Why? What sort of un-American bastard would be hoping for the shutdown of production across TV shows and movies across this great land of ours? My god, man, you might force the audience to think or something! Sorry, no. I can think of seven good reasons.

1. The writers deserve to be compensated. First and foremost, this is the biggie. As Mark Evanier points out, "the same studio execs who say there’s no more money are elsewhere bragging about record profits and taking home seven, eight and even nine figure annual salaries." Some studio heads are saying that they need to cut upfront costs. My reply is that it’s the studios’ own damn fault, because nobody trusts them to ever pay out any money on the back end. If you could be trusted, you wouldn’t have to shell out all the money in advance. If you were fair in sharing the revenue from home video and DVD sales in the first place, you wouldn’t be in this fix now. (more…)

The Legend of Grimjack, Vol. 8: Review

  • News
  • October 30, 2007

Yes, we’ve hit the point where reprints of medium-level ‘80s comics can run to eight volumes – and, since the comic in question is GrimJack, that is perfectly dandy with me. Since GrimJack was gone for a good decade (before the recent Killer Instinct miniseries, and, of course, these trade paperback reprints), I suspect that some of you might not know what the man and his world.

Well, let me quote myself to bring you up to speed:

John Gaunt, aka GrimJack, is a cop/secret agent/PI in an aggressively multi-dimensional (and arbitrarily immense) city, and he walks down those mean streets, yadda yadda yadda. It’s hard-boiled fantasy adventure, in a setting where anything can pop up and probably will. Everybody betrays everybody (especially the dames), and everybody but our hero is corrupt as all hell. This is the kind of comic that the comics world thinks of as being vastly different from superheroes, even though John Gaunt:

  • wears the same clothes all the time, which instantly identify him
  • saves people (and the world) regularly
  • has what amounts to a codename
  • has a couple of similar friends who he "teams up" with on occasion
  • appears in 4-color pamphlet form

This volume reprints issues 47 to 54, right in the middle of the 81-issue run, with stories that originally saw print at the end of the ‘80s. Most of this book consists of the end of a long storyline that started in the comics collected in Volume 6 and saw John Gaunt killed and resurrected, among other changes. That big storyline (which doesn’t seem to have an official name) had kicked off when Tom Mandrake took over penciling this series, which was the first time he and Ostrander worked together extensively. (They would later rack up long, successful runs on Spectre and other series at DC.) (more…)

dennyoneil200_sepia-1714086

Fear Factor, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • October 30, 2007

dennyoneil200_sepia-1714086Boo.

Did I scare you?

About that boo…Frankly, it’s a sleazy and probably ineffective way to get your attention. But it is sort of appropriate because it’s a word often encountered in late October and I’m perpetrating this opus a few nights before Halloween, which seems like an appropriate time to be both booing and writing about comics. Because, you know, comics and Halloween are kissing cousins.

Comics, like Halloween, often deal with unearthly phenomena and unlikely characters and, yes, costumes. Both comics and Halloween offer reassurance that after sojourn spent confronting ghouls, goblins, ghosts, vice-presidents and assorted other hellish manifestations of ghastliness, you can retire to someplace comfy and safe.

Fairy tales do that, too, and despite people, including me, frequently comparing comics to mythology, they’re at least as much fairy tale as myth. They don’t, after all, offer cosmic explanations of why we’re here and where we come from, as myths are wont to do, and they almost always end happily. According to a psychologist named Bruno Bettelheim, those happy endings are what make fairy tales useful to little kids. The message is, you can confront ghouls, goblins, ghosts and even vice presidents and you can prevail – you can go home again and maybe score some hot chocolate.

(more…)

Wanted: your feedback!

  • News
  • October 29, 2007

It’s been four weeks since the rollout of ComicMix: Phase II. You’ve seen the first four installments of GrimJack, EZ Street, Black Ice, Munden’s Bar, Simone & Ajax, and Fishhead. You’ve used our comic reader, you’ve listened to the podcasts, you’ve played with the site, and we’ve still had the same great columnists.

In that time, our site traffic has spiked and the number of page views have grown by leaps and bounds.

But we’re still not satisfied. So we’re asking you: What do you think?

How can we improve ComicMix? What would you like to see? What have you seen enough of?

Consider this an open thread. Feel free to tell us what’s not working for you, what we should add to the site, what we should improve. Do you want more columnists? More news? More previews from other publishers? More comics?

Inquiring minds want to know. And while we try to read what other folks are saying elsewhere on the net, we don’t catch everything. So please, take the time and tell us here, so that we can continue to make this a better site for you.

Happy 50th birthday, Homer Simpson!

  • News
  • October 29, 2007

D’oh! We meant the voice of Homer Simpson, Dan Castellaneta, an incredibly talented actor in his own right. Besides voicing Homer (and Grampa Simpson, Barney Gumble, Krusty the Clown, Groundskeeper Willie, Mayor Quimby, Hans Moleman, Sideshow Mel, Itchy, and Kodos) he’s also voiced the Genie in Disney’s Aladdin tv series, Scarface and the Ventriloquist in the Batman animated series, Doc Brown in the Back To The Future animated series, and even portrayed Harvey Pekar in a stage version of American Splendor.

He even played Homer Simpson in an episode of LA Law.

A happy birthday to the man who now co-holds the record for the longest running portrayal of a fictional character on prime-time American television. He has portrayed Homer Simpson on The Tracey Ullman Show and The Simpsons from 1987 onwards, beating the twenty-year record held by James Arness for Gunsmoke and Kelsey Grammer for Frasier Crane.

OnlineComics.net and WebComicsNation merging

  • News
  • October 29, 2007

Just in time to suck the air out of the Zudacomics launch, Josh Roberts (owner of ComicSpace and Onlinecomics.net, and administrator of Comixpedia) and Joey Manley (owner of WebComicsNation, TalkAboutComics, Modern Tales, Serializer, Girlamatic, Graphic Smash, and Graphic Novel Review, among others) have announced that they have signed a Letter of Intent to merge our businesses into one corporate entity. The entire magilla will be under the ComicSpace brand.

They will be working with a company called E-Line Ventures, a New Jersey-based "double bottom line" early-stage investment firm (they say they look at both the financial and social impact of their investments) to secure the necessary funding and support for them to effectively merge and run the combined business. They plan to use money raised to facilitate the merger, hire programmers and develop new features for readers and creators, which they anticipate will be rolled out in a couple of months.

Joey’s press release is here. Josh’s is here.

We here at ComicMix wish them the best of luck. We need a healthier ecosystem for online comics, and this looks to be another giant step forward.

Hellboy, Vol. 7: The Troll Witch and Others — Review

  • News
  • October 29, 2007

This is another one of the periodic clean-up volumes to collect shorter Hellboy stories – like The Chained Coffin & Others (volume 3) and The Right Hand of Doom (volume 4). Shorter doesn’t necessarily mean less interesting, but these aren’t stories that advance the Hellboy mythos or continue his main story – they’re all set in his past (from 1958 through 1993, up until about the time of the first major Hellboy storyline, Seed of Destruction) and mostly feature retold bits of folklore or tales.

The most substantial work here is Makoma, a two issue series written by Mignola and with art mostly by Richard Corben (inside a Mignola framing story). It’s a little odd to see Hellboy drawn by someone else – Mignola has let other hands illustrate the B.P.R.D. stories, usually Guy Davis, but this was the first Mignola Hellboy story of any length illustrated by someone else. Makoma retells an African folktale – of the “series of trials of the hero” variety – with Hellboy taking the place, and name, of the original hero. Corben’s people are less stylized and fleshy than they sometimes are, which suits my tastes, but it might feel like lesser Corben to those who prefer him at his most distinctive. The story itself is pretty straightforward, and adapts well to Hellboy – Makoma also was the kind of hero who walked up to giant monsters and started hitting them until they either died or gave up – though it’s fairly thin. (more…)

Happy 38th birthday, Internet!

  • News
  • October 29, 2007

On this day in 1969, the first ever computer-to-computer link was estapblished on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.  It was developed by a U.S. Governmental team called DARPA, which sounds just a little too close for comfort to the plotline on Lost.  But it actually stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. 

Nope, that’s still pretty creepy. 

But creepy or not, those brainiancs are indirectly responsible for this website, this tidbit and your reading of it, coming into being. Switchboards, zeros and ones, hell who cares how they did it as long as I can  illegally download what happens next on Battlestar Galactica. Cheers to you, creepy governmental operations, and please keep ’em coming.

Incidentally, the first message was sent at 10:30 PM by UCLA student programmer Charley Kline and supervised by UCLA Professor Leonard Kleinrock. The message was sent from the UCLA SDS Sigma 7 Host computer to the SRI SDS 940 Host computer. The message itself was simply the word "login". The "l" and the "o" transmitted without problem but then the system crashed. Therefore, the first message on the Internet was "Lo". They were able to do the full login about an hour later.

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