The Mix : What are people talking about today?

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ComicMix takes Manhattan

  • Uncategorized
  • February 23, 2007

To quote Dr. Seuss, "We are here, we are here, we are here!"

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Pictured above, from left to right: Standing, we have Brian Alvey, Mike Gold, Mike Raub and Glenn Hauman.  Seated are Martha Thomases and me, Elayne Riggs, as the Beav — oh no wait, people might think that’s something other than a reference to SCTV, never mind.

Anyway, we’re here at the New York Comic Con all weekend, through today’s trade hours of 10 AM through 4 PM then the open-to-public show itself (4 to 9 tonight, 10 to 8 tomorrow, 10 to 5 Sunday), getting news and views and definitely some schmooze. We have our cameras and recorders and other digital goodies to get the full story from anyone who flags us down or veesy-versey, so please look for us and give us feedback.  We look forward to seeing all of our friends not just from NY but from all over the world.  "San Diego East" has begun!

Kyle Baker goes bananas

  • News
  • February 23, 2007

From Cartoon Network’s Class of 3000, here’s some Kyle Baker work.

Did we mention Kyle will have a booth at the New York Comicon? Did we mention he’s doing caricatures? Did we mention the pretty women who will be at the booth? Go forth and find him and buy many copies of his books. Tell him ComicMix sent you.

Michael Davis: Nut jobs

  • News
  • February 23, 2007

michael-davis100-5416924I said in my first article that I was a pretty simple guy. I see clear distinctions between right and wrong, good and evil, love and hate, and Republican and Democrat. Blah, blah, blah. To that end, I think there are some things that people don’t talk about but should. Clearly in comics there is a subject or fifty that we don’t talk about. Well I’m going to talk about one right now. That subject is… nuts.

Not the nuts that come in a can, but rather people who are nuts… as in crazy.

No, I am NOT talking about people who have a real mental illness. I am talking about those people who have convinced themselves (sometimes with plenty of help from friends and family) that they are entitled to something that nobody else sees. Or their way of doing something is the only way something should be done regardless of any logical reasoning. (more…)

Anime charity event turns into scam

  • Uncategorized
  • February 22, 2007

Via Alan Kistler at Monitor Duty, an ugly convention story out on the west coast:

Anime Film Foundation (AnimeFF) was founded as a charity for breast cancer research, specifically the Susan G. Komen Foundation. The group launched the “Tour for the Cure” anime con and stated that all proceeds would be donated to breast cancer research. They recruited several people in the anime community, including those at TheOtaku.com and Richard Stott, founder of the Anime Vegas convention. MTV was ready to video tape part of the convention.

And then things went bad. It turned out that no one signed the contracts for the convention rooms. The convention had to become a single day thing when it had originally been intended to last three days. Several events were canceled. Guests were told that promised accomodations weren’t available.

At the end of the day, AnimeFF representative Jeff Borncamp told the convention center people that the show was over, at which point he allegedly left with all the registration money and dealer deposits. What was supposed to be a charity event appeared to observers to be a "hit and run" scam on not only the anime and gaming communities but on people who thought they were involved in donating money to breast cancer research.

TheOtaku.com has promised to dedicate their resources to bringing all the facts to light and ensuring that this kind of thing never happens again. As far as we know, the Susan G. Komen Foundation was merely having their name taken in vain, and they do good work.

Podcast #5 up and running

  • Uncategorized
  • February 22, 2007

Our second reviewer, longtime comics writer Tony Isabella, makes his debut as a ComicMix podcast critic and spells out his rules and regulations. Archie Comics takes on Marvel Comics in "Civil Chores." More previews of this weekend’s NYCC. 

Mike Raub delivers the news and the goods on ComicMix podcast #5 — which you can get right now by pressing play:

(more…)

Wizard appoints new wizard

  • News
  • February 22, 2007

Scott Gramling rejoins Wizard Entertainment as the new Editor-in-Chief of Wizard. Gramling will be responsible for continuing to build circulation and awareness of the Wizard brand and overseeing content for Wizard, InQuest Gamer, ToyFare and Anime Insider, in addition to the website and The Wizard World Tour.  This marks his’s return to Wizard, where 12 years ago he began as an associate editor.

Most recently Gramling served as Sections Editor, Deputy Editor and Editor-In-Chief at FHM.  Before that, he was the Associate Editor of Sports Illustrated For Kids‘ book division.

John Ostrander: Scattershot – Past / Present

  • Uncategorized
  • February 22, 2007

johnostrander200-1212402Perhaps it’s a sign of aging when you’re more attuned to what came before than what’s going on now, especially in entertainment. Oh, I’m up on what’s going on with movies and TV (less so in music) and I certainly have my faves in those areas. Recently, however, I’ve been re-discovering some music I’d had before, some TV I had seen when I was a boy, and have found that some of my favorite movies were created before I was born. This column is a grab-bag (hence "scattershot" — it’ll be our code for columns that have a variety of topics) of some of those. Given the age of the material, these are probably less reviews than post-mortems.

• We Five came out of San Francisco about 1965 when I was still in high school. If you know this folk-rock group at all, it will be for their one big hit, "You Were On My Mind". I not only loved their big single, I bought their two albums, the first named for the hit single and the second was "Make Someone Happy". They broke up after the second album and later reformed with new members. I’ve discovered that the reformed We Five still plays venues today.

(more…)

The evolution of the comic book

  • News
  • February 22, 2007

Hard as it may be for some of us NYCC-centric folks to believe, comic book events are also happening outside of our little enclave.  Take Northridge, for instance, whose CSU branch’s Oviatt Library features a new exhibit starting this coming Monday mapping the evolution of the comic book.  The show’s curator, university archivist Tony Gardner, notes that comcs "have a very interesting history, and I’m trying to tell that history using our collection from the 1930s to the 1990s," with particular attention given to Senator Estes Kefauver, who led the public hearings on comic books in 1954. 

The exhibit runs through August 3, in case any San Diego Comic-Con attendees want to travel up the coast this summer…

Down home hospitality at NYCC

  • Uncategorized
  • February 22, 2007

window_magenta-8182782We know New York can be a scary place for out-of-towners, many of whom are using today as a travel day to come in for the New York Comic Con starting tomorrow.  That’s one reason why some local comics folks will have all kinds of fun stuff for visitors to their booths during the weekend. 

For example, Kyle Baker will be drawing complimentary caricatures for children at Booth #953, where his 8-year-old daughter Lillian debut her book "The Dumb People Convention", as well as a few other funny mini-comics.  And Marion Vitus announces that she, hubby John Green, Raina Telgemeier and her hubby Dave Roman have given themselves the collective name The Comics Bakery (Dave’s idea), and will "be serving up minis, graphic novels, and T-Shirts among other delectable delights" in Artists Alley table A206 in the Galleria. 

Knowing the time these folks have put into staffing the Friends of Lulu booths in the past, we wouldn’t be surprised if some variation on the FoL booths’ ubiquitous Hershey’s Kisses winds up on the menu.

The twelve levels of fan agreement

  • News
  • February 22, 2007

Via Dirk Deppey at ¡Journalista!, we have Ragnell the Foul’s 12 Levels of Comic Book Fan Agreement.

No, it’s not a twelve-step program to combat comic addiction. Rather, it’s a fan hierarchy, ranging from number 1: "Your favorite series is my favorite series" to number 12: "I think your favorite series would be better this way, I won’t even look at it until its changed to be that way, you’re a fucking idiot for disagreeing with me, and I write terrible fanfiction to demonstrate the rightness of my way with a thinly veiled self-insertion character, and a character from another series that I felt was fucked up unless written my way too. Oh, and if you think my fanfic is bad/un-entertaining/uninteresting/not as good as your favorite series, you must personally hate me and everyone who shares my interests."

It’s very good, and I’m tempted to write the 12 Levels of Comic Book Pro Agreement — except we’re going to have certain levels beyond 12 that will include things like "I think your favorite series would be better this way, and I’m going to write a 12 issue maxiseries that shows why I won the Wizard poll" and "I’m the editor, and I don’t care what you think; what I say goes."

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