The Mix : What are people talking about today?

Mothership Connection, by Martha Thomases

  • News
  • October 20, 2007

There’s been a lot of conversation lately in the girls’ section of the comics blogosphere about the way women’s lives are depicted in superhero comics. Even so-called strong, independent female characters are little more than an excuse to show tits’n’ass. Some site evidence that female characters are used as plot points, citing the “women in refrigerators” syndrome. More recently, discussions have centered on the premise that married characters are boring.

A lot of this is a reflection of the larger pop culture, which is at least as male-dominated as comics. The people who can greenlight movies, or put a television show on a network, are most likely Penile-Americans. Book publishing tends to be more diverse because there are more women in positions of authority, and (this is related) book publishing tends to pay less than other mass media.

Most of it, however, is lazy pandering to the perceived target audience. It’s assumed that boys find the single life more glamorous and more exciting than marriage. Up to a point, I agree. The thrill of the chase is, well, a thrill. That said, even the new gets old after a while. Dashiell Hammett used Nick and Nora Charles to show that marriage can be sexy and fun. Why can’t comics? (more…)

Happy 61st birthday, Philip Pullman!

  • News
  • October 19, 2007

Today is Philip Pullman’s birthday, who, sad to say, does not yet share the deserved household name status of his colleague, J.K. Rowling. Mr. Pullman was born in 1946 and penned the brilliant and award-winning series, His Dark Materials. The first of the series, The Golden Compass (or Northern Lights if you read it in the U.K.), starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, is being released as a movie this December 7th. Here’s the latest trailer:

Here’s hoping the film does better than the last Kidman/Craig outing, The Invasion… 

Kiwi kast as Dr. McCoy

  • News
  • October 19, 2007

The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed the last of the major castings for J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek prequel, scheduled to begin filming next month.

The role of James Tiberius Kirk will be played by Chris Pine (left), and the plum part of Leonard McCoy goes to New Zealand actor Chris Urban (right), known to genre film fans as Eomer in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Other cast members include John Cho as Sulu, Simon Pegg as Scotty, Zoe Saldana as Uhura, Anton Yelchin as Chekov, and of course Zachary Quinto from Heroes as Mr. Spock.  Eric Bana will also appear as the movie’s antagonist, Nero.

More Whovian Hallowe’en goodness

  • News
  • October 19, 2007

Your video of the day, courtesy of Lisa at Sequentially Speaking:

Lisa also links to the how-to at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, for the truly creative and talented among us.

shugo1-8375909

Graphic Novel Review: Del Rey Manga Round-Up, Part One

shugo1-8375909Let me be honest: I don’t know all that much about manga. I’ve read a few series (going back to Area 88 and Kamui, twenty years ago during the first attempt to bring manga to the US), but I’ve never really gone really deeply into the field. Well, I’m hoping to remedy that now. I’ve got a big pile of first volumes of various manga series, and I’ll be doing weekly reviews of about four of them at a time. (I’m aiming for Fridays; let’s see if I can hold to that schedule.)

We’ll start off with some books from Del Rey (all originally published by Kodasha in Japan), mostly aimed at young teenagers. (At least, all but one of these is marked “Teen: 13+,” but, from the content, I suspect the real Japanese readership, and possibly the American readership as well, is tweens to young teens.) This week’s batch also are primarily aimed at girls — I think.

First up is Shugo Chara!, which translates roughly to “Guardian Characters.” It’s by two women who work under the name Peach-Pit, and it’s about a fourth grader who discovers three eggs in her bed one morning.

Okay, I have to back up already. Amu, our heroine, is explicitly in fourth grade — we’re told that several times — though the structure of the school, and the maturity of the characters, would seem to put them more naturally in middle school. (Trust me; I’m the father of a fourth grader.) And, from an American perspective, it’s really bizarre that a story about fourth graders would be marketed to teens – or even tweens, as I suspect is actually the case here. In the US, kids generally only want to read about other kids their own age (maybe) or, preferably, a few years older. Fourth and fifth graders read stories about middle schoolers, middle schoolers read Sweet Valley High and the like, and high school students either stop reading for pleasure entirely or read stories about people in their twenties. Maybe, like so much else, that’s different in Japan – there is the well-known love of the small and cute there

(more…)

The Casting Couch, by Michael Davis

  • News
  • October 19, 2007

I have not gotten into trouble in a while so because I know I will be in Japan when this article runs, I can be safely away from the crap when it hits the fan.

I love the entertainment business for the most part. That’s for the most part. There are some areas of the business I don’t like and what I don’t like most of all are some in the acting profession.

I just don’t like certain actors. That’s certain actors. Most actors I’m cool with, this rant is not for them.

No, this rant is for the two types of actors I can’t stand. The first type is those who think what they do isn’t a profession, it’s a divine right. These “thespians” think they are involved with an art form of the highest ilk. Those conceited, self centered, cocky, arrogant, little brain, stuck-up creeps don’t take acting seriously and really piss me off. (more…)

DC’s Bunch of Bananas

  • News
  • October 18, 2007

Today’s Big ComicMix Broadcast brings you the story of Mark McKenna from DC’s Countdown series who has branched out (no pun intended) on a new project that includes work from some of his top comic colleagues. Banana Tail isn’t just a children’s book or just a comic book… and we let Mark explain it himself!  Plus we’ve got news updates on:

• The wrap-up of Scud, but the return of Jack Staff from Image

• DC makes a major change right before the launch of Batman & The Outsiders

• Viper Comics’ Middleman gets ready to make the move to ABC Family

And much more including a trip look back a week where 25¢ got you a Batman 80 Page Giant and The Association were all over the radio.

How can you resist a cute monkey?  Press The Button!

Writing Under the Influence, by John Ostrander

  • News
  • October 18, 2007

Nothing is created in a vacuum. Though the artist may like to think that the work springs forth Zeus-like full blown from their brow, the truth is any number of different other works influence your own. The works that move and affect us as artists also teach and guide us in our own expression. 

We prize originality but it is said there’s only x amount of plots when you boil them all down (the number has varied according to who is defining it, but it’s usually low) and they were all created by the Greeks. The greatest writer in the English language – William Shakespeare – rarely came up with original plots, most usually re-working older plays or tales from history. What is original often is how you combine the elements.

Imitation is the starting point for what you eventually become. In writing, you become influenced by certain writers because of the types of stories they tell, or their command of language, or the depth of their themes and thought or even just their success or all of it together. It is through imitation, I think, that we truly learn such things as structure. With writing, you can take all the classes and read all the books but, ultimately, you really only learn how to write by writing.  Hopefully, as you grow older and wiser – better – you discard the overt forms that you imitate to find your own voice, your own style. What starts out as something that you borrow has to become something that you own.

GrimJack began that way. As a writer, I very much fall into the camp of wanting to write because of the pleasure I’ve had in reading, especially certain writers. I’ve noted elsewhere that GrimJack was created as a cross between hard-boiled detectives and sword-and-sorcery heroes (making him what I sometimes laughingly refer to as a “hard-boiled barbarian”) but I haven’t talked about which sword-and-sorcery heroes went into the mix. Some might assume Robert E. Howard’s Conan but I’ve always been more drawn to Solomon Kane, Howard’s Puritan wanderer/adventurer. Conan as a character isn’t very reflective; Kane was, even though he was driven by a wanderlust that he couldn’t explain. (more…)

Cory Doctorow’s Futuristic Tales of the Here And Now #1: Review

  • News
  • October 17, 2007

Cory Doctorow is either very arrogant or very smart.

Anyone who knows Cory would dispute the first bit, but consider: he gives away all of his writing to readers for free. If you want to read his website at boingboing, by all means; if you want to download his novels, go to Cory’s website and do so, he encourages it and wants you to spread the word. And he expects that he will make money doing this, that his stuff is so good that people will send him money in one way or another. So he either is very arrogant about the quality of his work– or he knows something about the workings of the world that you don’t. Which makes him, if not very smart, then certainly a born science fiction writer. And since he does make money doing this, he’s certainly not dumb.

IDW has begun to adapt his shorter fiction pieces into comic book form, starting with 2004’s "Anda’s Game". You can read the story (for free, of course) here, so the question is: does it work in comics? It certainly does. Esteve Polls’s art reminds me of the work of various Filipino horror comics artists of the 70’s, and Dara Naraghi does a solid condensation and adaptation of Cory’s story. Give this book a shot– the stories are done in one issue, and it’s worth the time.

Disclaimer: I help package books for IDW, and in fact, I’m already late delivering the art for the Munden’s Bar trade paperback…

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