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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.

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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."

Bring me the head of Garfield Cat!

  • Uncategorized
  • February 22, 2007

garfield-1322639Someone gave the Garfield statue near downtown Marion, IN’s Riverwalk a little too much love.

Seems 23-year-old Joseph P. Savarino didn’t know his own strength.  Savarino said he panicked when the cartoon character’s head came off when he hugged it, so he made off with it and left it alongside a road where it later was found.  Perfectly understandable, we all do silly things when we panic upon squeezing off a comic strip character’s statuesque head.

The cops noticed the head was missing last December 15. On the 18th an employee with the Army Corps of Engineers found the fiberglass head and retrieved it from the side of a road near the Mississinewa Reservoir. The statue’s base has since been moved to the Grant County Parks and Recreation maintenance building to protect it from further overly-enthusiastic fans who just can’t get enough of Mark Evanier ‘s television cartoons.  No word on whether base and head have since been reunited, but we like to think they joined again sometime around Valentine’s Day and went out for a nice lasagna dinner.

Girl meets geeks at NYCC?

  • News
  • February 21, 2007

The Hey Lady isn’t about to let anyone disabuse her of the notion that comic book conventions are attended mostly by stereotypical male comic book geeks.  Not even when they have huge manga and anime contingents (very popular with girls and women), all sorts of tie-ins with other media, and are run by professional convention planners.  No sirree, she’s a’comin’ to the New York Comic Con with the sole intent of wranglin’ her a May-un!  She seems equally intent on not noticing the many, many, MANY women who will be attending, and most likely not even paying attention to all the cool stuff around (besides male geeks) that might even interest her.

Surviving NYCC: finding the panels

  • News
  • February 21, 2007

I was at lunch today with a bunch of comics people, and they were talking about the NY Comicon and complaing how hard it was to find things on the site, like when the panels were and the like. And we’re always happy to help out here.

New York Comicon Panels

See you there.

Hasslehoff in Vegas career move

  • News
  • February 21, 2007

hasslehoff-2868687David Hasslehoff (Knight Rider, Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD, and some lifeguard show) has taken on the role of Roger DeBris in the newly mounted verson of The Producers at the Paris Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Broadway.com has opening night video and interviews with Hasslehoff, Mel Brooks, and other cast members.

Let’s see if the Germans still love him after this performance.

Seven Heroes of Victory

  • News
  • February 21, 2007

225px-ssov4-9127345Wired Magazine’s Annalee Newitz believes the plotline of Heroes bears more than a few similarities to that of the recent Grant Morrison-written DC series 7 Soldiers of Victory.  Because, you know, nobody’s ever done assemble-the-squad plotlines in the history of  television or comic books. 

Actually, her point is "the fact that I could fruitfully compare them means that Heroes is finally coming into its own as a good comic book story".  Or as, one would assume, a good dramatic story — period.

Party hardy

  • Uncategorized
  • February 21, 2007

Heidi McDonald’s already done the heavy lifting on where all the post-NYCC parties are going to be. A word to the wise: sleep is not an optional item. You need to rest sometime. On the other hand, if you’re used to pulling all-nighters to hit deadlines, go wild.

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