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Happy 69th birthday, Derek Jacobi!

  • News
  • October 23, 2007

Today in 1938, the classically trained turned fantasy actor Derek Jacobi was born. Sir Derek (knighted twice over, no less) is probably best known to older audiences for his critically acclaimed portrayal of Claudius in the series, I, Claudius and Brother Cadfael in the Cadfeal mysteries. Younger audiences may recognize him for his work in The Secret of NIMH, Dead Again, Jason and the Argonauts, Underworld: Evolution, the remake of Doctor Who and the much anticipated The Golden Compass.  He also won an Emmy in 2001 for parodying his Shakespearean backround on an episode of Frasier:

While Jacobi trained at the University of Cambridge alongside the great Sir Ian McKellen, he never knew until much later in life that Sir Ian had a crush on him that McKellen now admits was "a passion that was undeclared and unrequited."   Alas, poor Ian… although it looks like things pretty much worked out for the both of them.

Frank Miller Gets Sent Up

  • News
  • October 22, 2007

There are a lot of people who owe a LOT of their careers to parodying Frank Miller. Exhibit A: Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Now, sadly, it looks like the movies are following suit.

We are not particularly proud to present Meet The Spartans, starring (left to right) Carmen Electra, Diedrich Bader, and Kevin Sorbo. Brought to you by the same people who bring you Scary Movies, I suspect that the only surprise in the film is what you see in this photo: that Diedrich Bader actually has a six pack.

We’re going to just recommend you save the price of a ticket and ninety minutes of your life and go watch United 300 instead:

GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: Postcards edited by Jason Rodriguez

Everyone has a story – at least one. Every human life could be told in some way, to illustrate a point, or evoke an emotion, or just entertain an audience. Postcards attempts to tell some of those stories, or to create stories based on tiny pieces of real people’s lives, almost randomly – to invent stories out of the smallest of seeds.

Jason Rodriguez, author of the Harvey-nominated Elk’s Run, gathered up a bunch of vintage postcards, sent them to various artist-writer teams he knew, and asked for comics about the people who sent the postcards. In theory, it’s a great idea. (Of course, everything is wonderful in theory.) In practice, this particular collection of postcard-inspired stories are nearly all sad, depressing tales, and the relentless one-note gloom keeps any of the stories from really standing out. It’s not clear whether Rodriguez’s instructions were responsible for this, of if the choice of creators led to the unremitting bleakness, or if it was just bad luck. Rodriguez’s prefaratory notes to each story do make him seem like a micro-manager, though, with explanations that he gave this postcard to this person expecting X, and that he was sure another artist would be just right for another postcard because of Y.

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Gore, Mayhem and Violence, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • October 22, 2007

Unless you’re new to  or you’ve been avoiding our online comics (hey, c’mon, they’re FREE!) or our comments sections (where the real action is), you’ve probably figured out that I am among a number of cultural recidivists who hang out in this corner of the ether. Mark Wheatley, Andrew Pepoy, John Ostrander… well, damn, most of us, now that I think of it.

So it will come as no surprise that I’ve been reading Girasol Collectibles’ Pulp Doubles series (orderable at your friendly neighborhood comics shop and dozens of other online sources), featuring the original Master of Men, The Spider. The real one. The original. The man who best typifies pulp virtues, where the extreme is commonplace and New York City is destroyed every month.

It’s Jim Steranko’s fault. In the first volume of his History of Comics (and, yes, I, too, have been waiting patiently for volume three for over 35 years), he started off writing about the various costumed pulp heroes who influenced (or, in some cases, were blatantly ripped off by) sundry comic book creations. I had never heard of The Spider before, but Jim praised it as being so purple it would make a French king wince in pain.

Instead of filling space telling you what that means, I will instead tell you some of the plot points in The Spider #49, “The City That Dared Not Eat.” It’s one of my favorites, and it’s in Girasol’s Pulp Doubles #1. I don’t know how you can better that title, but, damn, author Wayne Rogers (no relation to Trapper John) certainly beats it to a pulp. Here’s just a few of the story’s highpoints:

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Dr Who Meets Dr Who Again For The 1st Time

  • News
  • October 21, 2007

The London Sun reports the fifth man to play the Doctor, Peter Davison, will team-up with the tenth man to play the Doctor, David Tennant, this November 19th on a special BBC-TV "charity bonanza" for Children In Need.

This is hardly the first time the sitting (wandering?) Doctor has met up with his past, but it’s the first time since the series was brought back to life almost four years ago. There’s a 20 year age difference between the two; the elder doctor told the Sun “It’s an honour for me to make the connection.”

This should not be confused with the rumored season four Doctor Who final episode, wherein at least four of the doctor’s companions team up with the Doctor and Captain Jack.

Darn you, Westinghouse!

  • News
  • October 21, 2007

On this day in 1925, the first photoelectric cell was publicly demonstrated by the Westinghouse Electric and Mfg. Co. at the Electrical Show at Grand Central Palace in New York.  That palace no longer exists, having been replaced by an office tower, but it seems photoelectrics will always be with us in one way or another.  Heck, you’re probably soaking in them right now.  And with that cheery thought in mind, here’s your weekly one-stop ComicMix columnist shopping:

As you can see in our previous item, Ric is across the ocean from us, probably having the time of his life, and will return next week.  And now to return to my current masters, the television/DVD combo…

Judd Aptow, Will Ferrell, and Gunsmoke

  • News
  • October 21, 2007

If you’re like me, you are already bored with most of the new TV season, there certainly aren’t any movies that are compelling me to buy a $10 ticket and Countdown is making my head hurt. Best way to solve it all – let’s go to the web:

TV Land has relaunched its website here adding full-episode streaming of classic shows like The Andy Griffith Show, Leave It To Beaver and Gunsmoke. Be sure to check out the music player featuring songs, commercials and movie themes and then look fort another upgrade on the site scheduled to launch Nov. 1.

Go to Scud creator Rob Schrab’s website here for more info and previews on how he is concluding the book with that four-part miniseries. Incidentally, the guest covers on those issues will be:

    #22 – Jim Mahfood (March 2008) “Challenge of the Over-Used Muse”

    #23 – David Hartman (April 2008) “Retaliation of the Over-Used Muse”

    #24 – Doug Tennapel (May 2008) “Death of the Over-Used Muse”

You have just over a week left to bid here on one (or all) of the charity auctions benefiting The Hero Initiative, featuring lunch with Marvel Comics Legend John Romita Sr.  The events themselves will take place November 27-30 in New York City and, as a special bonus, John will be accompanied by his wife, Virginia Romita, on each of these events (Virginia was the longtime production manager at Marvel Comics) and each of the winners will also receive a Romita head sketch of your favorite character over lunch. (more…)

Happy 51st birthday, Carrie Fisher!

  • News
  • October 21, 2007

Today could not go by without our wishing a happy birthday to one of the greatest figures in sci-fi film history, Ms. Carrie Fisher. Fisher, who famously portrayed Princess Leia in the original Star Wars movies, was born in 1956. She adorned a golden bikini while kicking Jabba’s butt, winning the hearts of boys all over and her ear-muff hair-do became her character’s trademark. Certainly wardrobe had a thing to do with it, but it is also the lady who carried the look that really sealed her iconic status. Happy Birthday, Princess!

On the off chance you’ve never seen it, here’s Carrie’s audition. Note the day player she’s acting against:

The Perils and Pleasures of Moviola, by Michael H. Price

  • News
  • October 21, 2007

I’ve been sorting through the newspaper-cartoon backlog lately, beefing up the digital-image archive while determining whether anything from a busy stretch at the drawing board during the 1990s might bear resurrecting for fresh publication. Much of this material involves a Hollywood-lampoon strip called Moviola, which originated as a weekly feature for the Star-Telegram of Fort Worth, Texas, during its last years as a higher-minded publication.

The first movie parody I ever encountered – and thus, a building-block of my long-stretch involvement in cartooning and film scholarship – came from my Uncle Grady L. Wilson, a theatre-chain manager. Grady could concoct the damnedest jolly nonsense from the flimsiest of material, and keep a straight face in the bargain. He announced to me one day in 1954 that he had booked a picture called "The Preacher from the Black Lagoon."

Now, I was six years old at the time and as impressionable as Silly Putty, and so I found it necessary to witness the arrival of Jack Arnold’s Creature from the Black Lagoon on the big screen before it dawned on me that my uncle had been just woofing.

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