The Mix : What are people talking about today?

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MIKE GOLD: Would Superman trust the president?

  • Uncategorized
  • April 30, 2007

ac309b-3000792Would you trust the President of the United States with your most precious secret?

If the polls are even remotely accurate, today a substantial majority of Americans would not. Perhaps any reasonable person would not trust any politically motivated opportunist with such knowledge. But there was an unfortunate time when Superman did.

In Action Comics #309, cover dated February 1964, The Big Red S needed someone to cover him at an event where it was necessary for both Superman and Clark Kent to be in attendance. I won’t trouble you with the details – Batman was similarly engaged – but Supes asked the President to stand in. Evidently having nothing better to do, John Kennedy said “sure, you bet, champ” and did the Iron Mask bit. Superman closed the story with “If I can’t trust the President of the United States, who can I trust?”

Sigh. Young-uns, now you know why we Baby Boomers long for the good old days.

Of course, the good old days weren’t always so good. Sharp-eyed reader that you are, I’m sure you noticed how this particular issue was cover-dated “February 1964.” History-aware that you also are, you knew President Kennedy was murdered in November, 1963. You probably did the math, remembered that cover dates were well in advance of newsstand release dates, and figured they (sorry about this) dodged the bullet.

No such luck. Action Comics #309 appeared in distributors warehouses about two weeks after the assassination. Editor Mort Weisinger, who by that time was well on his way towards finishing Action #313, didn’t remember the JFK story had yet to see print. Few others at the company knew of the issue’s contents. The book was not recalled at the distributors level. Comics got the lowest priority on the shipping chain: imagine Fed-Ex offering “Overnight,” “Two-day,” and “Eventually” and you’ll begin to grasp the problem.

Not that it stayed on the racks very long. Enough people saw it to express outrage, not knowing the molasses-like nature of the newsstand distribution process in those days. So word got out and many (certainly not all) retailers removed the issue. In those days, many distributors split their top-selling comics, distributing a part of the print run once again several weeks later. Those who were paying attention pulled Action #309 from this second round.

But there was Superman, answering the question: Who do you trust?

What would The Man of Steel do today? I wonder.

Mike Gold is editor-in-chief of ComicMix.com.

Artwork copyright 1963 National Periodical Publications, Inc. Renewed by DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Marvel’s new Classics line

  • News
  • April 29, 2007

mohicans1-7552280So I’m catching up on Previews magazine (more about which in my Wednesday column) and I notice this drop-dead gorgeous art in the Marvel Previews insert that caught my eye and made me stare at the page for like a minute and a half.  And I’m one of those “usually more into the words than the art” comics people.

It was either an interior page or Jo Chen’s cover art for Last of the Mohicans #1, adapted from the James Fennimore Cooper novel by veteran scribe Roy Thomas.  Okay, probably the cover, but the interior pages in that Marvel Previews issue were equally gorgeous, with rich, lush inks.  I wish I knew who did those inks.  The pencillers are listed as Steve Kurth and Denis Medri, and their scene-setting and composition is indeed wonderful from what I’ve seen, but geez Marvel, whom do I have to bribe to get inkers’ names into your PR?

In any case, particularly having just come from the Kids’ Comic Con, I find this news of Marvel doing Classics Illustrated-type stuff to be welcome indeed.  Last of the Mohicans is the second title in the nascent Marvel Illustrated line If you haven’t yet grabbed Jungle Book by Gil Kane, Jo Duffy and P. Craig Russell, get it now), to be followed by Treasure Island and the Man in the Iron Mask.  Hey, can a woman-written classic be far behind?  I know Frankenstein‘s been done to death, so to speak, but how about some Virginia Woolf or a Bronte or two?

Sunday go-to-reading day

  • News
  • April 29, 2007

Where has the week gone?  We’re still not recovered from the last few 9to5’s of our day job, so it’s a good thing we have Sunday to peruse all the regular ComicMix columns from this past week:

Okay, we confess, we actually read all of those already.  We even wrote one.  But listening time has been nonexistent, so today’s activity will definitely consist of getting up to speed with Mellifluous Mike Raub‘s last three podcasts:

Now that I’ve switched back to first-person singular and taken care of the review of and visuals from yesterday’s Kids’ Comic Con (see below), I’ll be awaiting the Pittsburgh news from the rest of the crew whilst I spend the rest of the day catching you up on all the items I haven’t had time to write for the past few days…

Hey, kids and comics!

  • News
  • April 29, 2007

It was a lovely day in the Bronx yesterday, perfect for the 5-minute jaunt southward to attend the first ever Kids’ Comic Con at the Bronx Community College.

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I thought this was a terrific venture for the first time around.  Lots of tables geared, as it should be, specifically for kids, who responded with wonder and enthusiasm.

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The convention was the brainchild of Alex Simmons, seen here giving the welcoming address.  Alex, who has over 30 years of experiencing working with children and the creative arts, is also terrific at introducing like-minded adults to one another; I was mostly there to take in the event for ComicMix rather than participate, but I still found myself acquainted with at  least a half dozen "new" folks thanks to Alex!

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Alex also serves as Educational Outreach Director for MoCCA, and it’s always great to see this organization at any local convention.  They’re one of the most visible faces of NY comics, and hold lots of must-attend events! (more…)

Religion in comics, the current version

  • News
  • April 29, 2007

Believe it or not, there’s other ways to use comics to reach the faithful than those little Jack Chick pamplets prostelytizers hand to you.

joemax-6929544In the more traditional way, we have The Guardian Line, a line of comics put out by traditional comics pros like Michael Davis, Mike Baron, and Lovern Kindzierski. They have three titles so far with a fourth on the way, all intended for a young urban audience who are more comfortable with traditional action/adventure stories.

Then we have The Manga Bible, brought to us by British religious publisher Hodder & Stoughton. This is a manga adaptation of the TNIV Bible, itself an updated and current language version of the Bible. The Manga Bible only adapts the New Testament, but the Old Testament should be done by the end of the year.

Although I really do wonder where all the cherry blossoms come from when Jesus is dying…

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And finally, we go from traditional comics to manga to webcomics. Called Today is an online web presence from the National Office for Vocation which uses webcomics to help illustrate the myriad ways that people can follow a religious calling today.

Of course, we all know that Superman’s just one great big Christ metaphor, right?

Hat tip to Wired for the Manga Bible info.

The Big ComicMix Broadcast From Pittsburgh

sundae-4193947We’re here at the Pittsburgh Comiccon – sorry we’re a bit late, but we’ve been doing all sorts of  interviews and we’ve got some amazing stuff we’ll be telling you about today and in Big ComicMix Broadcasts to come.  As always, we’ve got the latest comics and media news and an interview with legendary Flash and Batman artist Carmine Infantino.  We’ll tell you about a bunch of television season finales, what exclusive Voltron product will be exclusive to comics shops, and ComicMix.com editor-in-chief Mike Gold lays some top secret info on the masses.

You’ll get all this (yes, and more!) by pressing this button:

 

 

Take your kids to comics day

  • Uncategorized
  • April 28, 2007

kcc-logo_final-1274727Thursday was the annual Take Your Kids to Work Day (used to be Take Your Daughters to Work Day until the gender that rule the world started whining about the one little thing in which they weren’t front and center, but that’s another story), which always happens the day after Secretaries Day (otherwise known as Ignore Your Secretary Day and give her so much work for the rest of the week that she’s too busy and tired to blog for ComicMix, but that’s another story).  But this weekend features what I like to call Take Your Kids to Comics Day.

It’s the first ever Kids’ Comic Con, and ComicMix (okay, li’l ol’ me) will be there for the inaugural celebration!  We’ll be at the Bronx Community College throughout the day, snapping photos and maybe even scoring some interviews for Mellifluous Mike Raub’s podcasts.

As we’ve mentioned before, lots of cool folks will be there, including Kyle Baker and the Comics Bakery (separate folks despite the name; the latter is Marion Vitus and Raina Telgemeier and John Green and Dave Roman) and Jamal Igle and Jane Fisher and — well, pretty much my peeps.  Should be tons of fun — nothing makes me smile more than seeing kids with comics!  Say, did you know that "I believe that children are the future"?

A big round of applause to Alex Simmons for bringing everyone together for this event.  Time to get ready!

MARTHA THOMASES: Child is father to the man

  • News
  • April 28, 2007

There is hardly anything more annoying than listening to a bunch of us Baby Boomers talking about the good old days: the music, the sex, the drugs, the sit-ins and be-ins and love-ins, even the comics. We act like we invented rebellion, and we don’t think anyone else will ever care about the world as much as we did, and certainly no one else will make changes as important as the ones we made.

We’re wrong.

A recent article in USA Today describes “Generation Y”, those born since the early 1980s, as one that has endured a lifetime of public tragedies. My generation lived through the Kennedy assassinations and the murder of Martin Luther King, the Kent State shootings, the Viet Nam War and Watergate, and these things were horrible. However, kids today witnessed the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle explosion, the Waco standoff, the Oklahoma City bombing, the attack on the Atlanta Olympics, school attacks on Columbine, the Amish school in Pennsylvania, and the recent Virginia Tech massacre. They’ve seen a tsunami devastate Southeast Asia, and Hurricane Katrina destroy New Orleans. In my day, we watched a half-hour evening news broadcast, while today there is a 24-hour news cycle. They say that Viet Nam was the first war fought on our living room television, but the “Shock and Awe” attacks on Baghdad four years ago had so much advance hype and so many on-the-scene embedded journalists, they practically had official sponsors.

The horrific moments that changed my personal world occurred when my best friend’s brother died in Viet Nam, followed shortly by the Kent State slaughter which was just a few miles from my house. Before that, my feelings, although sincere, were based more on ideas than on events. My son saw the World Trade Center collapse outside his classroom in lower Manhattan, but not before he saw burning bodies falling from the windows.

Just as the Sixties didn’t turn everyone into a protesting hippie peacenik, these events have not shaped a single personality type among today’s twenty-somethings. Most of the mass media would have us believe that the values of this generation establish a new low of shallowness, exalting the likes of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. But their taste and values go far beyond American Idol or the Pussycat Dolls.

The USA Today article quotes social historian William Strauss: “the Millennials’ baby-boomer parents were anxious about political assassinations because that’s what they witnessed growing up. But their children’s fears are different – because they witnessed mass killings of children by peers whose motives nobody can seem to understand.”

He continues, “The fact that this sort of thing can happen calls into question the super-achieving, high-stress life some of them lead.” He says that Generation Y will be less concerned with “having it all” than with having a balance. Unlike many in my generation, who traded in their values for SUVs, private schools and second houses and the long commute to jobs that paid for everything, there is hope that this generation will enjoy every day with their families as well as meaningful work. (more…)

Todd Goldman sending cease-and-desist letters

  • News
  • April 27, 2007

Boy oh boy. We’re a little late to the party, here’s the quick recap: Todd Goldman is the founder of “David and Goliath,” a merchandise company which produces clothing, posters and other merchandise featuring a variety of artwork and slogans that he theoretically created all by himself. According to the Wall Street Journal, the sales volume of “David and Goliath” was US$ 90 million in 2004. Earlier this month, Goldman was accused of plagiarism by webcartoonist Dave “Shmorky” Kelly, in a post on the Something Awful forums, claiming that Goldman’s piece “Dear God Make Everyone Die” was taken directly from a 2001 comic by Kelly.

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Since Kelly’s initial accusation, other bloggers and webcartoonists have found numerous other cases of alleged creative tracing. In the meantime, Goldman (or someone claiming to be him) has accused Kelly of pedophilia, posted pornographic images to defame Kelly which ended up being seen by minors, hijacked the MySpace account of the person who originally reported the theft, openly mocked anyone who expressed concern about this… and has enlisted his lawyer to threaten anyone who reports on any of the above, even when such reportage sticks to verifiable facts. As a result, Publisher’s Weekly has now taken down posts from Heidi MacDonald on the issue.

Dirk Deppey, Gary Tyrrell, and Tom Spurgeon have been all over this story, and now it’s gotten the attention of Boing Boing, Penny Arcade, and Slashdot.

Mr. Goldman, meet the Internet – filled with lots of people from all over the planet who do their research and hate bullies and like crusades.

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