The Mix : What are people talking about today?

All right, just a little more Harry Potter

  • News
  • July 26, 2007

In an exclusive interview with Meredith Viera on NBC’s Today show, J.K. Rowling reveals more of the information that got left out of the epilogue of the book– the magical equivalent of the ending of American Grafitti, I suppose. If you missed the interview, there are video clips at the link, plus the interviw will be rerun tonight on Countdown on MSNBC. Part two of the interview will air tomorrow on the Today show and again in the evening on Countdown, check your local listings for times.

AS IF WE NEED TO TELL YOU: Spoilers abound at the link. Proceed at your own whim and danger.

Overheard at San Diego, part 1

  • News
  • July 26, 2007

Seventeen years ago yesterday in San Diego, Roseanne Barr sang the National Anthem at a Padres game.

While we can’t promise you anything quite like that from any Hollywood types in town for this year’s San Diego Comic-Con International, we’re bringing you the most quotable things we can eavesdrop on.

At the Newark Airport terminal: "It’s tough to tell who’s going to the convention on this flight. You used to be able to tell at a glance." "Yeah, no one’s wearing comic book shirts." "Everybody’s reading Harry Potter, but that doesn’t tell you anything."

On the floor of the convention: "We’re opening up new boxes to sell books on Preview Night. In the first hour. I hope we’ve got enough to last the weekend."

Outside the hall: "I think they’re going to use those Superman bags as tents for emergency housing."

What have you heard? Send your snippets to overheardSDCC@tips.comicmix.com, or come up to us at the show– we’re the one’s in the ComicMix shirts.

JOHN OSTRANDER: Apres Harry

  • News
  • July 26, 2007

ostrander100-2266346Well, wasn’t that an exciting conclusion to the Harry Potter saga?! And who could have seen that twist coming? You know, the one . . . the one where he . . . I mean, she . . . I mean they . . .

Okay, at the time I’m writing this I haven’t yet read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It hasn’t been released yet. I won’t go near the sites that purport to have the text and published it online. Through the miracle of weekly deadlines that have been shuffled about because of the impending San Diego Comic Con (or Spam Diego, as I like to call it because that’s usually how I feel after the end of it if I go to one – a can of Spam), I get to pretend that the last Harry Potter has been read and probably consumed and can ask the burning question on everyone’s lips:

Now what?

The Harry Potter books took us to an alien world – England, to begin with, which is alien enough for most of us on this side of the Pond. (I once demanded of my good friend and excellent artist Steve Pugh why did the English persisted in driving on the wrong side of the road in their country. Steve smiled kindly and gently told me it was to confuse the French and we poor Americans simply got caught in the middle. “Well,” I said, “ so long as there’s a good reason . . .” Where was I? Oh yes – alien worlds.)

It took us into the world of magic and English academia; it’s hard to say which is stranger to Americans. It gave us a new experience vicariously, through the joy of reading. I once heard film critic Roger Ebert remark that one of the things he looked for in films – and one of the things he really liked about the original Star Wars – was when it took him to a new world, gave him a new experience. Or, I would add, make what we know seem new or give us a different perspective so it feels like a new experience. The Potter books, in my opinion, succeeded on both levels.

So, the Potter story is now complete. It’s a closed world. The remaining movies will translate that experience to the medium of film but it won’t be altogether new. Assuming, gentle reader, you want something more in that line, where can you go? I, like many others, have a few suggestions drawn from my own reading experience. Assuming that we take it as a given that they are not Harry Potter nor are they trying to be Harry Potter, they may be books that you’d enjoy.

They are also not intended as children’s literature, so don’t think of it as a sharing experience with the kids.

(more…)

slaughter-1360269

Comics! Getcher Comics!

  • Uncategorized
  • July 25, 2007

slaughter-1360269

GalleyCat reports that Karin Slaughter, a popular thriller writer from the UK, and Oni Press are teaming up to create Slaughterhouse Graphic Novels, which will adapt prose fiction into comics form. The idea is to emulate Stephen King’s Dark Tower, and not Isaac Asimov’s I-Bots, I think…

(By the way, Slaughter is our covergirl for this installment.)

Chris Roberson looks at two different projects bringing back public domain superheroes.

Comics Fodder wants to see the return of footnotes to superhero comics – you know, the little boxes that said things like “The Fabulous Sheep-Man, last seen in ish #3,141 – Parsimonious Pete.” I think that reviewer needs to look up the phrase “continuity porn,” because he’s soaking in it.

Your cognitive dissonance headline of the day: “Euro Books transforms ‘Agatha Christie’ into graphic novels in India”, which is for an article about, yes, a company making all of Agatha Christie’s books into graphic novels in English for the huge Christie-loving Indian market.

Exclaim!, a Canadian music publication, looks at DC’s new Minx imprint.

Brian Cronin, at Comics Should Be Good, makes fun of every single one of Marvel’s October covers.

First Second announced today (in a press-release e-mail, so I don’t have a link) that they’ll be collecting Paul Pope’s cool THB series in 2009 as a color, four-volume, 1200-page set under the title Total THB. But, before that, they’ll have a new Pope series for young readers, Battling Boy, published in two simultaneous volumes in 2008.

(more…)

ythelastmanlogo-8325032

Y: The Last Man movie moves forward

  • News
  • July 25, 2007

ythelastmanlogo-8325032ICv2 reports: "New Line Cinema has announced that D.J. Caruso will direct and Carl Ellsworth will write the big screen live action adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan’s epic science fiction comic book series, Y: The Last Man.  Caruso and Ellsworth recently teamed up on the sleeper hit Disturbia, which starred Shia LeBeouf in a clever reworking of the storyline of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, with wheelchair bound photographer Jimmy Stewart replaced in Disturbia by a grounded teenager played by LeBeouf (who is rumored to be a prime candidate to portray Yorick in Y: The Last Man)."

Now I know everybody’s in a rush to get out the door for San Diego, but they’re mixing their Stewart/Hitchcock films. Disturbia was a reworking of Rear Window, not Vertigo. Vertigo, as we all know, has the cool blonde in it. You know– Karen Berger.

black-4850554

GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: The Black Diamond Detective Agency

black-4850554

The Black Diamond Detective Agency is a bit of an anomaly for Eddie Campbell – it’s a book he wrote and illustrated alone that nevertheless is not concerned with stories or storytelling in any way. Campbell’s probably best-known for illustrating From Hell from Alan Moore’s famously copious scripts, but most of his work has been writing and drawing his own stories, sometimes with help from a loose band of local Australian cartoonists.

His two long-running sequences are both deeply about story: Bacchus consists of the tales of the few remaining Greek gods in the modern world, and contains many tales-within-tales, retold stories, and other storytelling conceits. The “Alec MacGarry” stories are even more entwined with stories, since they’re Campbell’s thinly-veiled autobiography about his own life as a comics creator, and are, at their heart, about the process of creating art and stories.

So it’s a bit odd to find that Black Diamond is a conventional detective story – a murder mystery, to be precise – set at the turn of the 20th century in the American Midwest. (That last is also surprising since Campbell is a Scot long resident in Australia – middle America isn’t his part of the world at all.) The story begins with a mysterious man in Lebanon, Missouri witnessing the explosion of a train during a demonstration and then helping to pull the wounded from the wreckage. He’s soon arrested and questioned, since the boxes of nitro used to blow up the train have his name on them.

It gets more complicated from there, but the focus is on that man of several names and on the investigation run by the Black Diamond Agency (which stands in for the real-life Pinkertons) of the explosion and related events. And, showing its origin as a screenplay, there’s a Big Secret at the end, which will be familiar to many – we’ve seen a story much like this many times before.

(more…)

On The Road Again…

  • News
  • July 25, 2007

A quick note to tell you the ComicMix editorial team is on its way to the San Diego ComicCon International, so we’ll probably be a little light on contributions today. But we’ll more than make up for it the rest of the week!

We’ve got about a dozen of us attending the show, and most of us will be wearing our new multicolored ComicMix t-shirts for easy identification. So, please, feel free to stop any of us and tell us what you think of the site… what you’d like to see on ComicMix… and what you think is going to be involved in our just-about-to-be-announced ComicMix Phase II.

We look forward to meeting you. And for those who won’t be making the show, stay tuned to ComicMix. We’ll keep you right in the thick of things!

Mike Gold, Editor-In-Chief

ELAYNE RIGGS: Left Behind

  • News
  • July 25, 2007

elayne200-3862826It’s the day before the biggest convention in an American comic fan’s year — the San Diego Comic-Con International.  Just about every one of my ComicMix colleagues is heading out there.  (Don’t ask me how they got hotel rooms, it’s still a mystery to me.)  I’m not.  My boss told me a long time ago that I can’t go on vacation when he’s in the country (yes I know, but it’s still better than being unemployed and sans health insurance), and even if I could I just don’t think I could work up the enthusiasm any more for something so expensive and exhausting.  The closer I get to pushing 50, the more 50 pushes back harder.

I vaguely remember when I used to have the energy for Events.  When I was in college I enthusiastically queued up for a couple hours to see The Empire Strikes Back and was severely disappointed because I was expecting a movie, complete with a resolution, not a chapter.  (When Robin expressed much the same sentiment years later on Usenet, I responded with “Marry me,” and the rest is history, sort of.)  I get the idea of wanting to be a part of a phenomenon bigger that one’s self, wanting “bragging rights” to fill your anecdotage.  (I wish I could say I coined that word, but I didn’t, I got it from a Fred Astaire movie and goodness knows where the movie’s writer picked it up.)  When it’s organic and unexpected, the Event phenomenon can be quite fun.  But what’s really organic today?

San Diego grew out of comic fans’ love for their medium and the people who toiled therein.  And then it just grew, and grew, and grew.  It’s nigh unto unwieldy now.  Before Wizard took over the Chicago Comicon, it too was centered around the comics artform; now it’s just another notch on the WizardWorld bedpost.  The more cons grow, the more the fans can convince themselves of the comic industry’s health — but the growth ain’t about comics, it’s about product.

(more…)

Oh, My! More Book Reviews!

  • News
  • July 24, 2007

deathly-8027896

Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review looks at Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The Guardian reviews Scarlett Thomas’s The End of Mr. Y.

OF Blog of the Fallen reviews Daniel Wallace’s Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician.

Blogcritics reviews Warren Hammond’s KOP.

The Kansas City Star reviews The Dark River by the secretive and mysterious John Twelve Hawks.

In the Washington Post, Jeff VanderMeer reviews Ian McDonald’s Brasyl, Kay Kenyon’s Bright of the Sky, Susan Palwick’s Shelter, and more.

Book Fetish reviews Yasmine Galenorn’s Changeling.

CA Reviews looks at Kristin Landon’s The Hidden Worlds.

Powells Books Blog reviews Matt Ruff’s new novel, Bad Monkeys.

Kate Nepveu reviews  Vernor Vinge’s Hugo-nominated novel Rainbows End.

Visions of Paradise reviews C.J. Cherryh’s Inheritor.

(more…)

Roy Thomas and Walt Simonson Speak!

  • Uncategorized
  • July 24, 2007

As we pack up our ComicMix t-shirts and check our lists a few more times, The Big ComicMix Broadcast is ready to fly west to San Diego ComicCon International 2007 — but we have a LOT to leave you with.

This BIG Big ComicMix Broadcast has news on a new face for The Punisher, new voices for some of DC’s biggest stars and great stuff to grab in San Diego. Plus we talk to Walt Simonson about saying goodbye to Hawkgirl, listen to Roy Thomas tease us on the future of Alter Ego and still have time for a visit to one of the best loved amusement parks of the midwest, circa 1968!

Press The Button and tell the flight attendant we need more snacks!

Categories

Archives

Everything you need to make great comics!

comicmix-pro-300x69-2

Nucleus X

Bookshop Zaks