Amazing what a difference (less than) a year can make in comics
I wrote this a year ago last Friday. Amazing how time flies, doesn’t it?
Category: News
Monday Mix-Up: The Midichlorian Rhapsody
Hey there, kids! Remember when Star Wars was awesome? Yeah, we do too. Then ole’ George fired up his bank of super computers, “wrote” a script, and here we are years later still trying to figure out what happened to the Star Wars of our youth. But, prequels be damned! Give the credit to the YouTube viral nation, for spawning an amazing creation that’ll melt that polar ice cap you have in your heart when you hear the word… midichlorian.
Well, the video vanguards have put together a mix-up of Star Wars saga of one troubled youth, and married it with “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Blend it well, add an umbrella and slice of pineapple and you get Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff’s masterpiece, the Midichlorian Rhapsody.
MOONSTONE MONDAY IS HERE!!
Welcome once again to MOONSTONE MONDAY, a spotlight on one of the most prolific modern publishers in the Pulp genre! Interviews abound today from writers and staff involved in Moonstone’s comic line RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS!!! Our Featured Interview is Moonstone’s Main Man, JOE GENTILE!!! Click on the Interview tab and read words from Win Scott Eckert, Tim Lasiuta, Howard Hopkins, Eric Fein, and Aaron Shaps! Also check out Barry Reese’s latest column for a tip of the hat to Moonstone on its handling of a classic character! And check back in this evening for Reviews, Reviews, Reviews!!! All on ALL PULP and MOONSTONE MONDAYS!!
Nine years on, I am hereby declaring it’s okay to watch this trailer again
No, we aren’t going to forget– but we aren’t going to let it paralyze us any longer either, or keep us from being kind.
If you feel like paying your respects, go watch 110 Stories. Or give a pint of blood today. Or help a scout troop. Give two Korans for every one that’s burned. Or just build something. Illegitimis non carborundum.
‘MAD’ Comes to Cartoon Network
For those who missed it (including us, to be honest), on Labor Day, a funny thing happened; at 8:30 PM, Cartoon Network aired a ‘MAD‘ cartoon. And guess what? It wasn’t a one-time fluke! Our friends over at HeroComplex snagged the new animated sketch show’s producers Mark Marek (of Crank Yankers fame) and ‘Emmy winner’ Kevin Shinick (of Robot Chicken) and sat them down for an interview. For those who are too lazy to click that link and read their awesome interview, allow us to give you the 411:
The show is a 15 minute sketch cartoon show meant to carry the programming of Cartoon Network’s normal schedule to it’s [ironically bumpered] Adult Swim block of shows. Taking a ‘film festival’ approach to presentation, the MAD cartoon show will feature short cartoon sketches in a variety of styles. Mimicking the work and look of long time MAD contributors like Sergio Aragonés, the late Don Martin, and Al Jaffee, as well as including anything animated ranging from photo montages, flash animation, to stop motion sketches all in a single episode. Crediting the writing to “the Usual Gang of Idiots” means the material featured will provide wonderfully skewed takes on current events… targeting an audience that’ll range from the ‘kiddies about to say goodnight’ crowd to the ‘college frat kids just waking up’ demographic.
The show comes as a welcome surprise, as the last “MAD” penned show, Fox’s MADtv did little to take the real MAD brand to the masses. For those who tried to forget, we implore you to recoil in horror as you remember that the show provided the world with a sub-SNL quality sketch show with even more annoying repetitive characters (The UPS guy! Ms. Swan!), and literally no material ever gleaned from the pages of the long-running magazine. OK, that’s a bit of a lie. The show did feature a ‘Spy vs. Spy” cartoon, but it was cut after the second season, we assume because the average Fox viewer at the time was too confused by the high brow humor and subtle racial undertones of ‘Spy vs. Spy’.
Well, let’s wash our minds of that dreck, and check out ‘MAD’ on Cartoon Network… Mondays at 8:30 CST. I mean, if the show is as good as we think it’ll be, dare we say it… “What, Me Worry?”
Check out Cartoon Network for a short sneak preview.
Painting the Pulps-Interview with David Burton
Artist David Burton has a special place in his heart for painting scenes and characters from classic pulp fiction. Learn from his interview his technique of working on pulp art, his favorite characters, and the reasons he has a passion for this medium! Click on the INTERVIEWS tab and enjoy the full conversation!
Spider-Man The Musical Sneak Preview on GMA – UPDATED
Spidey-Fans, make sure you’re up Friday morning for a chance to sneak a peek at the upcoming Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark on Good Morning America. The musical, which is rumored to be one of the priciest to swing into the Foxwoods Theatre, opens November 15. Lucky for all us musical theater geeks, director Julie Taymor and Spidey himself, Reeve Carney, will bring a solo song to GMA via a performance at the Hudson Theater, with fans invited to come down for the free show. We television viewers will enjoy a post-performance interview with the director and the authors of the music and lyrics, Bono and The Edge. Word has it that aside from this musical, both men dabble in rock and roll in a quartet by the name of U2.
While most comic fans are skeptical of their favorite web-spinning hero spinning songs and soliloquies on the Broadway stage, stranger things have become a success. Lest we forget, the Evil Dead Musical was damn good. So, before we light our torches, let’s give the ol’ webhead a chance to sing his spandex off.
UPDATE: So, we watched the telecast, action figure firmly placed in our palms, ready to watch our hero make his way to the stage. Would it be webtastic or a kill a little bit of our soul, like One More Day? Let’s let some pasty white people wax poetic first:
A “pop-up book” set? Those costumes? The Swiss Miss? Is this some kind of cruel joke? Is Norman Osbourne financing this play in hopes of murdering the wall-crawler on the stage? Our high hopes haven’t been crushed this hard since the dance sequence of Spider-Man 3: Attack of Emo Parker. And to put the final nail in the coffin? How about a song from the show:
Let’s be honest here. The song is actually catchy. And because it’s being performed with a rock band, with absolutely no context to the final play, we’ve no idea how terrible this will be once it’s sewn into the “pop-up book” scenery and gaudy costumes. Kudos to Bono and The Edge for writing a catchy rock song (a feat that shouldn’t be that hard, given their 20+ years doing it), but frankly we’re scared for the final product. A lanky rock singer running around in a body sock, whilst a cast of dancing, prancing chorusmen flail about over a rock-and-roll score? Someone give us a copy of the “Death of Gwen Stacy” so we can recall the last time Spider-Man was worth our fanfare.
Talking Games and Movies with Jordan Mechner
Jordan Mechner’s Prince of Persia has been an acclaimed video game and he is one of the fortunate creators to be intimately involved in the adaptation from game to feature film. Mechner managed to write the screen adaptation, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arterton. The Disney feature was released to middling reviews and so-so box office in May and comes to home video tomorrow. Disney provided us with this conversation.
QUESTION: What were your feelings when you finally saw the film?
JORDAN MECHNER: Firstly, the original Prince of Persia was a character 40 pixels high on the Apple II screen, running and jumping. The technology at the time was quite primitive, I think in my mind I imagined a much grander spectacle, and to see Jake [Gyllenhaal] in the best shape of his life running around the rooftops of Morocco and doing parkour and all this stuff was more than I could imagine.
QUESTION: What initially drew you to the setting of Ancient Persia? And how does that culture and mythology inspire you?
JORDAN MECHNER: I was inspired 25 years ago to make the game really by the tales of the Arabian Nights, and by old Persian legends like the Shahnameh, the Persian Book of Kings. And also those great old Hollywood swashbuckling movies like the 1940 Thief of Baghdad, by Alexander Korda. As a kid I must have heard those stories, the storybook versions are in all of our cultural DNA. We know of that world without really knowing exactly where or when we first heard it.
QUESTION: How did you start the world of Prince of Persia ?
JORDAN MECHNER: You go back to 1985 when I was right out of college and I took my brother down to the parking lot across the street from the high school. He was in a pair of baggy trousers and I had him run and jump and climb and fall down and I video-taped him doing these moves. Then I set about the three year process of bringing these animations into the computer and that was the first Prince of Persia . (more…)
BEEN WANTIN’ TO CALL ALL PULP AND LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK? NOW YOU CAN!! SORTA…
Have you enjoyed or been enraged or somewhere in the middle by All Pulp yet? Have you wanted a chance to offer your comments on what we do right, wrong, and in between? Need All Pulp to know if you liked a book we reviewed or didn’t care for an interview we did? Now you have your chance! Your very own COMMENTS page on All Pulp! Yes, that’s right, get on the horn by clicking on COMMENTS and let us know what you think! And please, put the weapons away…we hear ya…honest…
The Snark Files: Beating the Betty White Horse To Death
Many days, we will find ourselves in heated debates with the uninitiated when it comes to the general quality of comic books. Yes, super muscular guys in spandex parading around in violent battles with other super muscular guys and overly boobed chicks in impossible costumes isn’t what we’re calling haute artistic visual fiction. But we’ve got those pocket references ready for the nay-sayers, don’t we? Watchmen. Sin City. Maus. Ghost World. Justice League International… And then they drop a bomb on our argument. They’ll reference a comic they heard about on the nightly news, or in the “lifestyles” section of the paper, or from some pinko-liberal-starbucks-blog they read on their iPads whilst they wait for a triple-grande-non-fat-latté. And with the mere mention of that book, our arguments are as potent as a pinch of salt in the ocean.
Now, gentle reader, what book could I possibly reference (without even reading it mind you) to encapsulate the entirety of how low we can go, when it comes to our sequential funny books?
Why, I direct you to Bluewater Comics’ Female Force: Betty White.
Yup. The fine folks behind the Justin Bieber, Sarah Palin, and forthcoming Fame: The Cast of Glee comic books is releasing a biographical comic book about America’s favorite only living Golden Girl, Betty White. Now, before you ignite your flaming arrows, let me be clear: I love Bette White. She was hilarious in the aforementioned ‘Girls, as well as numerous other sit-coms. Her recent turn as Facebook-demanded Saturday Night Live Host was one of the better shows of recent memory. Hell, even her cameo in last week’s Emmy show was adorable. But seriously… a comic book bio? Allow me to fire up the rant and raving engine.
