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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

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  • 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.

Green Lantern movie signs director

  • News
  • October 29, 2007

Warner Bros. inked a deal with Greg Berlanti to direct its live-action Green Lantern movie, based of course on the DC Comics character.  Known primarily for his writing and executive producing TV credits (e.g. Everwood, Dawson’s Creek, Jack & Bobby, Brothers & Sisters), Berlanti will pen the script for the movie with Brothers & Sisters writer/producer, Marc Guggenheim and Heroes co-executive producer Michael Green. 

Guggenheim and Green are no strangers to comic books or fans, with Guggenheim having written for Marvel comic books such as Amazing Spider-Man and Wolverine among others, and the latter for DC Comics including Superman/Batman, and was also a writer/producer on Smallville.  Donald de Line is set to produce the picture, with Andrew Haas serving as executive producer.

Of course A Is A, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • October 29, 2007

I finally got around to watching Jonathan Ross’s excellent BBC-TV documentary In Search of Steve Ditko and I’ve gotta tell you, this week’s Wazoo is going to be about one-third disclosures.

Disclosure #1 – I know Jonathan Ross. I gave him his first tour of DC Comics. At the same time, Karen Berger was giving Neil Gaiman a tour. Jonathan is a major teevee star out in Britain but was largely unknown in the States at the time. A long, long time comics fan (he owned a London comics store with Rolling Stone correspondent and seminal letterhack Paul Gambaccini), I think Jonathan was really into the anonymity of the tour… until we turned the corner and smacked into Gaiman. Being British and familiar with Ross’s work, Neil turned into a babbling fanboy. Being a comics fan, Jonathan was already a babbling fanboy. The two got along famously, while Karen and I were having a nice chat on the side. This connection actually becomes relevant anon.

Disclosure #2 – I know Steve Ditko. I love his stuff; all of it. We worked together on several comics projects, one of my personal fanboy highlights was standing in his studio in the then-lower rent portion of Times Square, and we’ve had lunch and dinner together on several occasions, usually with my pal and his frequent collaborator Jack C. Harris. We talked politics (go figure) and philosophy. In private, Steve was always free about his experiences at Marvel. This, too, actually becomes relevant anon.

One of the more interesting experiences I enjoyed was introducing Steve to Ross Andru. Both came into the business at roughly the same time and, coincidentally, both had drawn Spider-Man… although, of course, only one had co-created the character. Ross was as quiet as he was fascinating. He was well-versed on the Illuminati conspiracy, which was a favored topic of ours. I digress. (more…)

Worldly Serious

  • News
  • October 28, 2007

Out in the land of baseball humidors, the Beantown Bombers seem poised to win it all.  But here at ComicMix we like to think our columnists hit home runs every day.  Or at least we’re somewhere in the ballpark.  Here’s what we’ve served up for you this past week:

I have to retire all my baseball puns until next spring now, don’t I?

The Super Powers Myth, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • October 28, 2007

The last time I’ve spoke to Jackie Chan he said to me: “I’ve done everything three times” – meaning that he’s finding less and less ways, and reasons, to top himself. Unfortunately that also results in schizo, ultimately unsatisfying, films, further hampered by his unwillingness to mature his screen persona. Even so, he keeps looking for ways to challenge himself and keep busy, despite the repetition of his movie and charity work.

But Jackie’s last great film was Legend of Drunken Master (HK: Drunken Master 2) in 1994. He’s made two dozen movies since then – all which included some exceptional sequences, but none which held together anywhere close to his classics of the mid-1980s. Clearly his best films are the ones which showcase his kung-fu, but as he grows older, he keeps trying to avoid that by dwelling on vehicular stunts or repeated attempts to balance his physicality with cgi.

Even so, Sony Entertainment has taken on the task of selling his most recent productions to the American DVD market. Their latest release, and one of Chan’s most creatively bold conceptions, is The Myth, hitting stores on October 30th. It’s also one of the most expensive films in Hong Kong history, and is, if nothing else, a visually splendid treat. Sadly, the film’s central flaw is showcased by Jackie’s admonition that he wasn’t brave enough to make what his director/co-writer Stanley Tong originally wanted: an entire film about a Qin Dynasty general. (more…)

The Latest ComicMix Radio Hot Links!

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  • October 28, 2007

Yesterday on ComicMix Radio we talked about the ultra-rare, ultra hot limited edition comic. Here is where you can check out that very rare variant for The Lone Ranger series from Dynamite Entertainment. It is being offered by Comic Collector Live and is limited to just 250 copies.

Artist Colleen Doran comments here about her work being used as props in an upcoming episode of the CBS show Numb3rs . The episode, titled ‘Graphic,” airs November 23, right at the end of sweeps, so slap a sticky note on your TiVo before you forget.

There are still a few days left before Halloween, which should give you plenty of time to dive into the horror-themed interactive series,  “How To Survive A Horror Movie: All the Skills to Dodge the Kills”. Based on book of the same title by Seth Grahame-Smith, the two-minute webisodes can still be seen here.

Lewis Trondheim, award-winning cartoonist behind the Dungeon books and other best-selling graphic novels, now has a cartoon blog on NBM Publishing’s website.  NBM, which is collecting Trondheim’s blog postings into the upcoming book Little Nothings, delivers one entry per day here. Little Nothings Volume 1: The Curse of the Umbrella is due out in January and features funny snippets from everyday life, with the cartoonist drawing himself as a chicken-headed Everyman. (more…)

R. Crumb’s Music Madness and Me, by Michael H. Price

  • News
  • October 28, 2007

The life and times of R. Crumb, a mensch among men and one of the more steadfastly brilliant practitioners of American (resident or expatriate) cartooning, have been sufficiently well covered in Terry Zwigoff’s documentary film, Crumb (1994), and in Peter Poplaski’s The R. Crumb Handbook (M.Q. Publications; 2005) and innumerable column-inches of The Comics Journal, that I feel no particular need to pursue any generalized biographical tack here.

In a recent letter, Crumb brings things somewhat up to date: “I’m in the middle of a big project – comic-book version of the Book of Genesis, approx. 200 pages when finished.” This involvement had prevented his traveling to Texas in 2006 to take part in a new experimental-theatre staging of R. Crumb Comix with director Johnny Simons and Yrs. Trly. Simons’ Fort Worth-based Hip Pocket Theatre troupe has adapted Crumb’s stories on several occasions since 1985.

Robert Crumb’s larger career might reasonably find itself crystallized in two warring viewpoints: The authoritative critic Robert Hughes’ earnest likening of Crumb to Pieter Brueghel the Elder, greatest of the Sixteenth Century’s Flemish painters, vs. this published declaration from Crumb his ownself: ‘Broigul I ain’t… let’s face it.’ (more…)

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