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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!

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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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Happy 25th birthday, compact discs!

  • News
  • August 18, 2007

compact_disc200-6883338One hundred and thirty years ago this past Wednesday, Thomas Edison made the first ever audio recording, which consisted of him reciting "Mary Had A Little Lamb". It entered the charts at #1.

But twenty-five years ago today, the world’s first compact disc was produced at a Philips factory in Germany, ushering in a new world of audio and laying the groundwork for digital copying, MP3s, Napster… well, at least we got rid of all the hisses and pops, right?

Sigh. Edison hate future.

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The All-New 1982 Show

  • News
  • August 17, 2007

evanier-2752483Comics Links

The Beat has a few choice photos from the 1982 San Diego Comic-Con – sure, it was smaller and easier to get around, but look at the clothes they had to wear! (This photo of Mark Evanier, and the others at this link are by Alan Light.)

Todd Allen is not entirely positive in this Comics Should Be Good report on Wizard World Chicago.

Grumpy Old Fan (at Newsarama) pokes at the current legal issues around Superboy’s ownership.

The Beat has posted the official, lawyer-approved settlement agreement between Fantagraphics and Harlan Ellison.

Comics Reviews

Charleston City Paper reviews a few comics collections, including Flight, Vol. 4 and Linda Medley’s Castle Waiting.

Blogcritics reviews the first issues of Black Adam and Metal Men.

The A.V. Club has a comics review column this week, starting off with Fletcher Hanks’s I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets and covering over a dozen other compilations or original GNs.

Comics Reporter reviews Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened.

Comics Reporter reviews Gilbert Hernandez’s Chance in Hell.

Brian Cronin at Comics Should Be Good reviews Good As Lily, the new Minx comic.

The Savage Critics usually has a couple of reviews every day (and I’m too lazy to link to every single one of them); here’s Graeme McMillan writing about a bunch of comics that came out last week.

Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing reviews Death Valley. (more…)

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Marvel movies made messy by mortgage meltdown?

  • News
  • August 17, 2007

marvelsuits-7625009My spidey-cents are tingling, and I don’t know that I like what I’m thinking.

First we have a piece from the Financial Times (via Salon) that says MGM may have delays in raising funding for a number of upcoming blockbuster movies, including the next installments in the James Bond and Terminator franchises due to the global credit crunch that is causing chaos in financial markets. Then we have a piece in Variety that shows that the bill for Endemol, the European production giant famous for "Big Brother" and "Deal or No Deal," has become a bit pricier thanks to the same credit crunch, and that it’s also put a hold on the planned sales of Virgin Media, the U.K. cable outfit.

So now I’m thinking about the $525 million in financing that Merrill Lynch has lined up for Marvel to produce its slate of films, which is really little more than a credit line — and I’m wondering how stable it really is. Does anybody how secure Marvel’s financing really is at this moment?

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