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JOHN OSTRANDER: Bourne To Run

  • News
  • September 6, 2007

bourne-art-4988901Spoiler Alert: This week I’m discussing the three Jason Bourne movies and I may wind up revealing plot points, especially of the most recent film out, The Bourne Ultimatum. If you’re planning to see the movie, go see it first. More fun that way.

Just recently I got around to seeing The Bourne Ultimatum, the third in the Jason Bourne series of films starring Matt Damon. All are supposedly based on novels by the late Robert Ludlum – at least, to the degree that the James Bond films were based on the Ian Fleming novels, which meant they basically used the title and one or two elements, if that.

Which is one of its problems for the Ludlum fans. From what I understand, they also don’t like Matt Damon, saying that he’s too young or not right. While I haven’t read the Bourne novels, I have read one or two other Ludlum books and enjoyed them well enough. And I do have sympathy for their position. I complained about the SciFi Network’s version of The Dresden Files because they had so little to do with the actual series of books, which are wonderful. The TV series wasn’t. I sometimes wonder why H’weird buys up properties and then makes wholesale changes in them to the point that they have very little to do with the original concept. The current Flash Gordon series which both I and ComicMix EIC Mike Gold loathe (Mike, you lasted an episode more than I did) is a case in point.

All that said – I’m a big fan of the Bourne movies and more so after the third. I stumbled on the three by accident. (For the record, the three films are The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum.) I happened to come across the Supremacy while I was channel surfing one evening, coming in after it started and found myself hooked. When the movie was on again, the lovely and talented Mary joined me and was also drawn in. We kept on missing the opening and it took about three viewings before we finally saw the film all the way through. We then got a hold of the first film and now have the first two on DVD. Supremacy, in particular, has become one of our favorite films.

A quick general summary is in order. Jason Bourne is an amnesiac Black Ops agent working for a super-secret program within the CIA called The Treadstone Project. He’s created to be a human weapon, a master assassin, with mad skills and an ability to improvise. When The Bourne Identity begins, the man known as Jason Bourne is hauled out of the sea by some Mediterranean fishermen. He’s been shot and he has amnesia. Numbers tattooed on his hip turn out to be a Swiss banking account. In a safety deposit box he finds passports and lots of money.

 

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Swamp Thing On Shorts

  • News
  • September 5, 2007

If you’re one of the millions of Americans who are pissed you’re too big for Underoos, you can take comfort in the knowledge that next spring adult sportswear manufacturer Salvage is going to be coming out with a line of clothing that incorporates Superman, Batman and next year’s Dark Knight movie.

No word on Wonder Woman being part of the line. Some will find this to be quite disappointing; personally, I’m holding out for Swamp Thing.

Summer Box Office Closing Report

  • News
  • September 5, 2007

The summer is now officially over and our minds are already beginning to turn to… the Christmas movie season.  But first, let’s take stock and see where we are with comic book-based movies.  We have just one left for release this year, the feature version of Steve Niles’ 30 Days of Night, but that’s waiting for the appropriate Halloween period.

Much has been made of the $4 billion summer box office and how it set a new record, until you adjust for inflation and then it doesn’t beat 2002.  Studios say that’s okay, because the hits will also prove strong sellers this holiday season in DVD (regular, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, collect them all!).  With average ticket prices creeping up to $6.85 (it’s $10.25 in Connecticut, where on earth is it only $6.85?), the receipts have also risen.

Here’s an updated look at the genre films released this year with their total box office to date followed by their budgets. Again, following that logic, 300 remains the clear winner by traditional Hollywood logic.  When all the home video sales get counted next spring, we’ll see if that remains the case.

Ghost Rider, $115,802,596 / $110,000,000

300, $210,250,922 / $65,000,000

TMNT, $42,273,609 / $34,000,000

Spider-Man 3, $336,530,303 / $258,000,000

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, $131,451,007 / $130,000,000

Stardust, August 10, $31,912,000 to date / $70,000,000

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It’s the BIG COMICMIX BROADCAST for September 5th!

sbaby-4074367Want to start a lively discussion with your comic fan buddies? Ask them who has the best costume and watch the sparks fly. Get the heat started when we fire up the Big ComicMix Broadcast and tell you where to find the list of what some fans call "the best" — plus the holiday is over and it’s back to the comic racks for a run of new titles out this week, and a great line up of DVDs, too,  especially if you are a TV fan.

 

You know – a really cool costume would have a BUTTON like this YOU CAN PRESS!

 

 

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In Memoriam: Carol Kalish

  • News
  • September 5, 2007

carolkalish-3047402Sixteen years ago today, Carol Kalish, vice president of new product development at Marvel Comics died suddenly at the age of 38.

The best tribute, to this day, came from Peter David in his But I Digress column for the Comic Buyer’s Guide.

We still miss her.

Photo by Alan Light, taken at the 1982 San Diego Comic-Con.

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COMICS LINKS: Unbelievable Things

  • News
  • September 5, 2007

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Comics Links

Costumes? Check. Vigilante activities? Check. The KKK were always closer to mainstream superheroes than we’d probably like, but it took Craig Yoe to dig up the bizarre ‘20s newspaper comic strips in which a flying KKK squad do good deeds.

Political cartoonist Steve Bell is interviewed by the Sunday Herald. [via Forbidden Planet International]

Wizard has photos from Fan Expo Canada 2007.

TrekWeb interviews IDW editor Andrew Steven Harris about the future of Star Trek comics.

Comic Book Resources interviews Christos Gage about the upcoming House of M: Avengers mini-series.

Heidi MacDonald remembers Disney Adventures Magazine at The Beat.

ICv2 interviews DC Comics’s King of All Media, Paul Levitz.

On the Fantagraphics Blog, Gary Groth interviews Alias the Cat creator Kim Deitch.

New Scientist employs the theory of social networks to explain why super-heroes always win.

MangaBlog has a longer version of an interview with Mark Crilley that originally ran in Publishers Weekly’s Comics Week.

Comics Reviews

Bookgasm reviews John Porcellino’s King-Cat Classix.

At Comic Book Resources, Augie De Blieck, Jr. reviews two recent TwoMorrows books and other things.

Comics Reporter reviews Monte Beauchamp’s Devilish Greetings.

Warren Peace Sings the Blues reviews Gilbert Hernandez’s Chance in Hell. (more…)

ELAYNE RIGGS: The PFVM Principle

  • News
  • September 5, 2007

elayne100-2362892There’s been a flurry of posts lately in the comics blogosphere, including Glenn Hauman’s last column here, about perceived value for money (let’s just call it PVFM) when it comes to comics. The consensus seems to be, American comics periodicals from the Big Two are usually about 22 pages long and take mere minutes to read through, which is Not Good. Added to that the current buzzword in vogue for what used to be called "padding," now rechristened "decompression," and the PVFM aggravation level shoots way up as the time actually spent reading the thing goes way down. And the conclusion is, there just ought to be more words per page, and possibly more pages per pamphlet, so the reading time (and thus the presumed enjoyment time) increases and fans don’t feel like they’re being ripped off and more readers will return to comics and all will be well with the world. It’s gotten so bad that I’ve actually seen online comics pages where a writer/artist will put up a page of wordless story and apologize for the lack of dialogue on it!

Allow me to ask: When did PVFM become a condition upon which entertainment should be created? Do all stories have to be dense, or should all stories strive instead to be good?

Look, I understand PVFM. I frequent an all-you-can-eat sushi place, for cripe’s sake. The sushi’s very good there, or I wouldn’t frequent it. But I’ve been to lots of AYCE places that made me wish I paid more for less-but-better stuff. As anyone who’s visited a 99-cent store would agree, quantity isn’t always synonymous with quality.

Particularly where such a subjective experience as entertainment is involved. Perhaps I’m the wrong person to ask this, what with my swiss-cheese retention abilities, but were all the stories you really remember fondly real long ones? I’ve been to some long, dense movies that were full of sound and fury and signified less than nothing; the concession candy had more fulfillment. And I’ve spent two minutes reading various pithy blog posts that stick with me far longer than the screens and screens of blather that, frankly, I usually can’t even make it all the way through. But okay, let’s be fair — comics aren’t blog posts, where brevity and getting to the point is often prized. And they’re not movies, where unspoken movement can convey so much that a constant stream of words isn’t necessary.

So tell me, without looking: what’s your favorite comic book story, and how many words does it contain?

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Who’s On Fifth?

  • Uncategorized
  • September 4, 2007

doctor_who_s2_doomsday-7568936Well, at last the word is out. The BBC has found a way around David Tennant’s commitments to Shakespeare and Russell T. Davies’ desire to stretch. Both will be back in 2009 for a season-between-seasons consisting of three Doctor Who specials, the last probably being the annual Christmas special. Whereas Torchwood is likely to continue, the official start to the official fifth season will happen in 2010.

No word on if Tennant and Davies will be back for Season Five, but it seems doubtful the Doctor will regenerate during the Christmas Special. Unless Santa Claus is from Gallifrey.

Season Four starts transmitting in the U.K. in 2008, following the second season of Torchwood.

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GLENN HAUMAN: How to create your own webcomic!

  • News
  • September 4, 2007

yourownwebcomic-7193174People have been speculating that we here at ComicMix were going to start up with a webcomic any day now, but we had a secret shame — we didn’t actually know how to create 21st century cutting edge webcomics that all the kids read today. But thanks to Ridiculopathy (with a hat tip to Dirk Deppey) we finally know how to do it!

Rule #1 – Don’t draw anything. Illustration is hard work and a time-consuming skill to acquire. Thanks to modern technology, most notably the copy & paste feature found on most modern computers, it is now completely unnecessary. Grab a random image from Google Image Search and add some speech bubbles. Don’t even draw the speech bubbles- just search "speech bubble" on your pal Google Image Search.

Easy enough. Who needs real artists and letterers anyway? They’re always late, and just make you tired and grouchy.

Rule #2 – Don’t write actual jokes. Other than the mistake of spending time drawing a comic, the second most common mistake newcomers make is writing one. Some people waste hours wracking their brains for a funny premise or clever line, but it’s utterly pointless and only exposes you to the danger of your readers just not finding your jokes funny. Instead, start from a very specific audience (most often based on a fandom, fundamentalist religion, or bizarre sexual practice) and tell them what they want to hear in four-panel format.

Hey, we can skip over getting writers too? Hot damn! Brian, we just dropped our burn rate down to, like, nothing! We can put it all back into T&A — er, sorry, T&E. Travel and Entertainment. Really. Honest.

Rule #3 – Don’t be gracious. A great way to generate buzz for your web comic is by picking a fight with another web comic, preferably someone with a more established site so that the inevitable "look at what this moron just said" links on his forum will boost your server stats. Again, you can’t and probably shouldn’t write jokes about them, so just barf up a few panels about calling your target names and making them cry.

This keeps getting better and better! Hey, um — who do we want to pick on today? Scott Kurtz? No, we’ll see him this weekend. Warren Ellis? He’s not crossing the Atlantic for a year, but his fans are scary. Wait — Bendis! He’s under an exclusive contract, he wouldn’t be able to write for us anyway, so we don’t have to suck up to him. Hey, Bendis! Get a toupee!

Rule #4 —

Oh, who cares at this point? We’re ready! We know everything! Time to start up a web comics publishing empire!

I wonder if we can have a press release ready in time for Baltimore….

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COMICS LINKS: Back To The Rack

  • News
  • September 4, 2007

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Labor Day’s over and it’s back to work or school. Here’s some cheap thrills to get you through the day. (Our illustration is a recent Clay Bennett editorial cartoon.)

Comics Links

The Daily Cross Hatch interviews Evan Dorkin (in the first of what may be many parts).

Eddie Campbell remembers zipatone.

Comic Book Resources talks to Paul Jenkins.

Just in case you missed it: Monday was, in the Comic Curmudgeon’s words, Fööberdämmerung.

Comic Addiction talks to Ben Templesmith.

Newsarama slashes summer. No, really. That’s what it says.

The Montreal Gazette reports that a Dragon Ball Z live-action movie will be filmed there over the next year. OK, is there any chance that this won’t suck? [via Newsarama]

Comics Reviews

Brian Cronin of Comics Should Be Good reviews the first issue of the new magazine about comics, Comics Foundry.

From The Savage Critics:

SF/Fantasy Links

SF Scope reports that the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) have just suspended their ePiracy committee in the wake of SFWA Vice President Andrew Burt’s recent badly-handled complaints against the Internet text-sharing site Scridb. (The full SFWA motion is also available on their LJ community.)

Robert J. Sawyer thinks the process for the Canadian SF award the Prix Aurora is horribly messed up this year — but he has a suggestion to help fix it.

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