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MIKE GOLD: Comic Conned-Out

  • News
  • August 20, 2007

mikegold100-7174689A whole bunch of us ComicMixers have been attending various and sundry comic book conventions over the past half-year, and, having just come back from Chicago Wizard World, I’ve got a few observations.

For the record, we attended Comic Con in New York, Comic Con in Pittsburgh, I-Con in Stony Brook, New York, Heroes in Charlotte, North Carolina, MoCCA in NYC, the Big Apple Con in NYC, Comic-Con in San Diego, and Wizard World in Chicago. We also did the annual Book Fair and the Licensing Show, both in Manhattan. We’ve got at least three more shows coming up: the Baltimore Comic Con, another Big Apple show in Manhattan, and Mid-Ohio Con in the middle of Ohio.

MOST INTERESTING SIGHT: Scalpers hawking one-day passes at the San Diego Comic-Con. Just like at sports events and concerts. Pretty amazing. I wonder if SDCC saw many counterfeits? I wonder if I could trade my pass for two tickets to The Police?

adam-strange-1216399BEST COSTUME: This is a close call, and sadly I don’t know the name of the winner. But he dressed up as Adam Strange in a costume so on-model Murphy Anderson would have swooned. Take a look; he’s the guy with the ray guns.

BEST PRESENCE OF COSTUMED FANS: I-Con, in Long Island. Damn near everybody was in a costume. Some furry, which confuses some people. But if you’re looking for the thrill of being surrounded by hundreds of costumed college students, many of whom are armed, I-Con won’t let you down.

BEST EXPOSITORY MOMENT: When Adriane Nash explained the concept and activities of “furries” to Michael Davis while at dinner in Chicago. ‘Nuff said.

BEST REUNIONS: Len Wein and I are old friends, but for some reason we haven’t been in contact for a while. A sweet, gentle, funny, talented man, Len will be visiting Munden’s Bar sometime soon. Len and I got together at Michael Davis’s SDCC dinner party, which was my second favorite meal of the convention season thus far (and it was a close second). Also, and equally, Mindy Newell, at MoCCA. Mindy used to write comics; Mindy should be writing comics. Or something. A great talent, a wonderful human being. Hiya, Mindy!

BEST MEAL: The post-Wizard World decompress at Chicago’s Gulliver’s Restaurant, the only place I can get genuine Italian beef with barbecue sauce along with the Italian beef goo. ComicMixers Adriane Nash, Mike Raub, Kai Connelly, Andrew Pepoy, and Chris Burnham joined my wife Linda and me, along with artist Reilly Brown and writer, professor and fellow Gulliver’s habituater Len Strazewski. (more…)

Big Doctor Who Crossover Next Season?

  • Uncategorized
  • August 19, 2007

7p-video-4282238According to Outpost Gallifrey, at a convention in New Zealand the Seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy, stated Peter Davison, the Fifth Doctor, is going to appear in a multiple Doctor episode this coming season. He did not say that he, McCoy, would be appearing, nor did he say that any of the other surviving Doctors (other than David Tennant, of course) would be in attendance.

As usualy, the BBC has no comment. The original series offered at least three shows where previous incarnations of the Doctor popped up to help save – and/or confuse – the day.

Thanks to our pal Lisa Sullivan for the lead.

Another ComicMix summer party

  • News
  • August 19, 2007

Can’t stay long, gotta get back to ComicMix‘er Kai Connolly’s birthday party.  ComicMix columnists wrote stuff this past week.  Here it is:

And that’s not even including tons of news wrapups from Andrew Wheeler, loads of reviews, even a pool-playing post!  By the way, today’s bash emanates from the home of Mellifluous Mike Raub, who has arranged it all and still had time for his Big ComicMix Broadcasts:

The me who wrote this entry this morning hopes the Raub Residence will be as air-conditioned as the Riggs Residence…

RIC MEYERS: The Dark Labyrinth

  • News
  • August 19, 2007

ric-meyers-100-2021640Twenty-five years ago, the late, great Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets, tried to beat Lord of the Rings to the cinematic punch by co-writing and co-directing a similar and derivative, yet pioneering and daring, “adult” fantasy. Four years after that, approximately twenty-one years ago, he tried to combine Star Wars, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Where the Wild Things Are, and M.C. Escher, among other things, to create a new coming of age teen tale.

This week, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is releasing handsomely packaged, two-disc, special editions of both these cult classics – The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. In each, Henson managed to find a mature theme to impart (that living beings are a combination of good and bad, not one or the other, and that teens should choose their own path and not put themselves in others’ power, be they loves or peers), but, unfortunately, communicated them in a stagy, plasticky, Las Vegas/ DisneyWorld/ Universal Studios Theme Park kind of way.

darkcrystal-5125456He seemed to have little choice, of course, since his chosen medium was the puppet, and, back in the 80s he was limited to what those puppets could achieve, no matter how hard he pushed their envelope. What these new DVDs have over his old movies is that very knowledge. Once a viewer knows how hard he tried and how much work was put into pulling the difficult concepts off, new admiration for the attempts, if not the finished products, is hard to suppress.

It’s little wonder that both special editions were released at the same time, since the extras for both were obviously made at the same time. Both include the original, Henson-produced “making of” documentaries released back in the 80’s, as well as two new behind-the-scenes featurettes incorporating “rediscovered” test footage and 21st century interviews with those involved – most of whom worked on both movies. Entertaining discoveries can be enjoyed on both.

For The Dark Crystal, co-directed by Henson (Kermit) and Frank Oz (Miss Piggy/Yoda), it becomes clear that Henson was the level-headed yin to Oz’s more forceful yang, and, like the team of Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder before them, never were quite as good separate as they were with each other.

The biggest kick on Labyrinth is the discovery that Star Trek the Next Generation’s doctor, Cynthia “Gates” McFadden, was the film’s dance choreographer. She expresses admiration for the project and love for Henson, as does the likes of conceptual artist Brian Froud, scriptwriter and Monty Python member Terry Jones, and producer George Lucas. (more…)

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MIKE RAUB: Beyond the Broadcast!

  • News
  • August 19, 2007

jenna-4617498I think when it is all done, we’re are going to call this season Catch Up Summer. It seems that every time we sit down, it’s a race just get caught up to where we should be starting!  Here’s our notes from this week’s Big ComicMix Broadcasts, some items dating back to our visit to Wizard World Chicago last weekend:

 • If you are ready to submit your own music video to Current TV’s The Daily Fix, go here and when you do, you might notice other opportunities for showcasing your video skills. Conceive, edit and upload all you want. Just remember all of us here at ComicMix when you are rich and famous!

 • Consider this a "reverse" link. JennaComix.com, where we told you to go see previews of the new Shadow Hunters comic being produced by Jenna Jameson and Virgin comics and written by Witchblade’s Christina Z is NOT launched yet,  so DON’T go there. If you really want to see stuff on Shadow Hunters, the best place at the moment is Virgin’s website. We’ll let you know when Jenna’s site goes live.

 • If you REALLY want to interact with a TV/movie actor, then come to the aid of Apollo and help Battlestar Galactica’s Richard Hatch perfect the gaming portions of his new property, The Great War of Magellan. To get started, take a look here.

In a couple of days we will begin our week-long look at collectible toys. We cover it all ranging from the current scene of what is out there and which figures are hot  or cold, we give you some tips on collecting and preserving your goodies and then we talk to a major toy company about to give a make-over to some of comics’ most familiar heroes. That and more start up on Tuesday’s Big ComicMix Broadcast – don’t miss it!

MICHAEL H. PRICE: The canine Frankenstein from 1934

  • News
  • August 19, 2007

price-brown-100-7438729The kinship between science and fantasy runs deep into antiquity – deeper, yet, than the well-aged but comparatively modern notion of science fiction. The filmmaker Ray Harryhausen, in his foreword to my revised edition of the late George E. Turner’s Spawn of Skull Island: The Making of King Kong (2002), invokes the spirit of the alchemist Paraceleus (1494 –1541) in describing the imaginative zeal necessary to bring (seemingly) to life the impossible creatures of cinema.

Paraceleus, of course, believed that the power of imagination also was necessary to the development of real-world scientific breakthroughs. His speculations about the creation of life in a laboratory setting prefigured nothing so much as that most influential novel of science fiction, Mary W. Shelley’s 19th-century morality play Frankenstein, or a Modern Prometheus. (Prometheus, of course, had beaten both Ms. Shelley and Paraceleus to the punch, if only in the realm of ancient mythology.)

History and science have long since validated Frankenstein as a plausible argument. Real science absorbs the most extravagant science-fictional influences, wonders, “Why not?” – and then proceeds to maneuver fiction into plausible fact. Hence the experimentation that has long since led to the transplanting of limbs and organs in workable, life-saving terms, if not to the creation of Life Its Ownself. The relationship will continue apace as long as Big Science holds humankind in a thrall of mingled hope and unease.

life-returns-1975875One of the odder collisions between science-fantasy and credentialed research took place during the spring of 1934, in a University of California research laboratory at Berkeley. Here, Dr. Robert E. Cornish announced that his team had restored life to a dog, Lazarus by name, that had been put to death by clinical means. Cornish bolstered his claim – a purported breakthrough that seems to have led no further – with motion-picture footage. The resulting publicity attracted such attention that the college’s administration booted Cornish off the campus. A June-of-1934 report in Time magazine describes a saddening follow-through:

With undying hope in his voice, hollow-eyed young Dr. Robert Cornish last week repeated, over and over, the name of the dog he had killed almost two months ago with ether and nitrogen, revived with chemical and mechanical resuscitants … Lazarus gave no sign that he heard.

But the bony white mongrel was no longer crawling on his mat. He was walking, slowly, with stiff, dragging hind legs and vacant eyes. He ate regularly but without enthusiasm. Dr. Cornish realized that part of the dog’s brain was still dead, might remain so for months or years of apathetic existence.

Last week, too, Lazarus was no longer in the shabby little laboratory on the University of California campus where he had tasted four minutes of death. He was in the Cornish home in Berkeley, where Dr. Cornish had taken him when the university provost asked [Cornish] to vacate…

Cornish carried on, via a follow-through described in a credulous 1935 report from Modern Mechanix & Inventions magazine: (more…)

Ziggy Speaks To You!!!

  • Uncategorized
  • August 18, 2007

xxx-6162719For over 30 years he has been on greeting cards, t-shirts, coffee mugs, calendars and in hundreds of daily newspapers – and he wasn‘t created by Stan Lee. Ziggy is arguably one of the most successful comic creations of the late 20th century, and he is also the butt of a zillion jokes. Creator Tom Wilson tells The Big ComicMix Broadcast where Ziggy came from and where he is going.

Plus we’ve got big news of the new on-screen love for The Spirit (thanks to Frank Miller!), Twisted Sister is back in comics and there is hot new anime coming just in time for back to school.

Stop staring at Ziggy  and PRESS THE BUTTON!

Seth McFarlane’s new shorts

  • News
  • August 18, 2007

familyguycast-1461255According to Valleywag, Seth McFarlane, creator of "Family Guy" has just hooked up with Google, using its AdSense network to distribute original video shorts. The show, which McFarlane and Google hope will be paid for by embedded ads, will appear in banners Google serves on both its own and independent sites. The concept is that as ads, the videos will reach a larger audience than a single website would. Says VW: "For Google, it’s a way to fill unsold ad inventory and prove the notion of AdSense as a distribution vehicle, after a similar deal with Viacom‘s MTV Networks collapsed. And it could also have a long-run benefit for Google. By inserting content into ad banners, Google could be, in essence, retraining users to pay attention to the Web commercials they’ve long learned to ignore."

Leave it to Stewie to find a new and different way to attempt world domination.

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Women Spotted at Comics Convention

  • News
  • August 18, 2007

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Comics Links

Comic Book Resources investigates the existence of women – often attractive women, some of whom actually read comics – at comics conventions. Astonishing! (Illustration: one of those elusive “real women.”)

A long 1977 New York Times article about Harvey Kurtzman and Mad magazine has been posted by Mike Lynch. [via Mark Evanier, who had some comments on it]

The Times (of London) checks in with Cam Kennedy and lan Grant about their in-the-works graphic novel adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde.

Mark Trail likes squirrels. [via the Comics Curmudgeon]

Kleefeld on Comics posts scans from the mid-70s Mighty Marvel Comics Strength and Fitness Book. [via everyone else blogging about comics, basically]

Comics Reviews

Bookgasm reviews the second trade paperback collecting the DC series 52.

Richard of Forbidden Planet International reviews The Other Side.

Eddie Campbell reviews Robert C. Harvey’s biography of Milton Caniff.

Dana of Comics Fodder reviews this week’s Marvel comics.

Greg Burgas of Comics Should Be Good does that one better – reviewing a pile of this week’s comics regardless of their publisher. (more…)

MARTHA THOMASES: Death Trip

  • News
  • August 18, 2007

martha100-4373992At the recent Wizard World convention in Chicago, Jim Starlin was part of the DC Nation panel. Starlin created the brilliant graphic novel, The Death of Captain Marvel, which was so well done that it made me cry like a little girl even though I wasn’t that familiar with the character. A running gag throughout the hour was that, in the upcoming Final Crisis, Starlin was going to let loose and kill a bunch more characters in the DC Universe.

It’s bugged me for a few years that, in comics and sometimes in other media, death is the gag. Death is the only meaningful drama. The recent hype about the last Harry Potter book was whether or not Harry would die, and who else might join him. This misses the point.

Now, I realize that I made a lot of my reputation in this industry from the 1992 Death of Superman (and not just my extraordinary good looks and keen wit). Isn’t that what started this whole death-cult in comics?

Yes and no. I used to joke that DC had to kill Superman every seven years, whether or not he needed it. What made the 1992 event different? Some might think sold so much because the release coincided with the collector craze, but I’ve always thought it was more than that, and started even earlier. I thought it started in the fall of 1990, when Clark and Lois got engaged. The media went crazy, with stories on television news and national newspapers like USA Today. A few months later, it happened again when Clark revealed his secret identity to his beloved.

People felt like they knew the Superman family. A lot of them expected an invitation to the wedding. When they found out Doomsday was going to kill Superman, they felt like they lost a friend.

Marvel was able to evoke similarly honest feelings when Captain America died. Again, they had done their homework with the general public, explaining the central political conflict in the Marvel Universe. In this case, the increasing discontent with the Iraqi war may have also contributed to the emotional response. It’s a perfect storm of entertainment and real life.

(more…)

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