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Mike Gold: The Lenticular Corridor

  • Uncategorized
  • April 3, 2013

gold-art-130403-2086799Well, this is fun.

As I type these words – 20 hours prior to posting – ComicMix is in the following situation. Glenn Hauman is about to board a plane taking him from WonderCon to San Francisco to Newark, New Jersey. We should see him sometime late next year. Martha Thomases and Arthur Tebbel are wandering around Japan hoping the whole North Korea is-gonna-nuke-us thing is a joke. Bob Greenberger is somewhere vaguely north of the White House staring at boxes and wondering how he got so old so fast. Adriane Nash is floating around North Haven Connecticut holding a candle. Vinnie Bartilucci is in Who Heaven studying the 50th anniversary show read-through photos pixel by pixel. Marc Alan Fishman is trying to come up with a way to spend more time with his son Bennett without having to go to Japan. Some of the above are planning on this weekend’s MoCCA Arts Fest.

That leaves me here at ComicMix Central. Always a dangerous thing.

And then my iMac started acting up.

Oy.

I’ve had more than 29 years of experience with all things Macintosh, so I should be able to fix things while Wizardboy Hauman is on the Left Coast. And, while I’m at it, I should be able to shoot down flying monkeys with my psionic death rays.

Turns out that psionic death rays thing might have been easier to pull off. I’ve spent 24 hour doing PRAM zaps and SMC resets, swapping cables, connecting and disconnecting USB cables (2.0 and 3.0), connecting and disconnecting USB devices, fussing with Bluetooth and WiFi, blowing off sundry start-up apps and rebooting like a cobbler on meth. And I still get five copies of the “You’ve got a USB device that’s draining too much power, asshole” error messages cascading across my screen on the average of every 20 seconds.

OK. Every once in a while computers, cars, and human beings break down and I’m way, way past my due. When Adriane isn’t wandering around New Haven county, we’ve got a zillion machines here including iPads and iBooks and iBalls. Unfortunately, Adriane is wandering around New Haven county with some of the above equipment, so I can’t boot my machine as a target disk.

Which means, in English, that I can’t do squat until I’ve fixed it. I’ve got to post Michael Davis’s Tuesday afternoon column (this wouldn’t have been a problem if I got the column on time, as opposed to just past midnight Monday morning; Michael’s got an excuse and it’ll probably be next week’s column) and I’ve got to write and post my column and do all kinds of other important stuff. I can do a lot of this on my iPad and I have, but in order to edit art and post properly, I need that iMac.

And then, literally 55 minutes before Michael’s column is to go up, I find it. Well, maybe not “it” but something that, if disabled, seems to cure about 90% of the problem. That’ll do… and maybe that other 10% will disappear when I reboot.

Or maybe the iMac will go Nagasaki on me: that’s how computers, cars and human beings tell us they want to be replaced.

But at least I’ve got a column out of it.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

 

The Point Radio: HANNIBAL Creeps Up On Us

  • Uncategorized
  • April 2, 2013

pt040113-4687921

The much anticipated HANNIBAL has finally made it to NBC, but fans are wondering how this version differs from the books and movies that we all know. Executive Producer Brian Filler and actor Hugh Dancy (“Will”) tackle that topic and more. Plus The Rocketeer meets The Spirit, cable ratings have a great weekend and we finally get to see the original STAR WARS.

Take us ANYWHERE! The Point Radio App is now in the iTunes App store – and it’s FREE! Just search under “pop culture The Point”. The Point Radio  – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun for FREE. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE on any computer or on any other  mobile device with the Tune In Radio app – and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

Amelia Williams’ Summer Falls latest Doctor Who e-book tie-in

  • Uncategorized
  • April 2, 2013

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BBC Books will be releasing Amelia Williams’ children’s classic Summer Falls in e-book form, tying in with its appearance in the Doctor Who episode The Bells of Saint John.

Amelia Williams, née Pond, and her husband Rory, The Doctor’s previous companions, were transported back to 1930s New York at the end of The Angels Take Manhattan. Based on the evidence, she became part of the publishing industry, writing this book and publishing the Melody Malone adventure The Angel’s Kiss.

This is the third tie-in book produced for the series, the first two being the aforementioned Melody Malone adventure and The Devil in the Smoke, an adventure featuring Madame Vastra, Jenny, and Strax the PotatoSontaran.

Summer Falls will be released on April 4th, and is available now for pre-order on Amazon.com.

Michael Davis: And A Dollar Short

  • Uncategorized
  • April 2, 2013

davis-art-130402-9348152Denys Cowan, Dwayne McDuffie, Derek Dingle, Christopher Priest and I founded Milestone Media 20 years ago.

Really.

I know to some that feels impossible, but it’s true. 20 years ago Milestone Media was formed and still to this day is the most successful African American owned comic book company in history. It’s hard to believe and even harder to believe that I was just five years old when Milestone began.

Heh.

Over the last 20 years Milestone has continued to make history. The amazing success of Static Shock on television, continued publishing of the Dakota Universe over the years and a ever growing and loyal fan base.

This year the legend of Milestone will be cemented for all time when Comic Con International, the biggest pop culture event in the world, honors Milestone 20th anniversary.

That’s huge but what I’m about to reveal here is even bigger.

Milestone is back.

The rumors are true, Milestone Media, although never really gone, will begin publishing monthly in September of this year under the Marvel comics banner.

The press release goes out this week but as promised some time ago in this column I’m breaking the news here.

Not only will Marvel comics be the new home of Icon, Static, The Blood Syndicate and Hardware next February in celebration of Black History month Marvel will launch Blackout, the event to beat all previous event.

Blackout will be the month every single Marvel superhero will become black and we are talking about their race, not their costumes although they will be black also.

Marvel’s commitment to the project is incredible.

Keeping with Milestone’s promise to its fans to “keep it real.” all of the super villains in the Blackout event will be white. “Keeping it real” is something that Milestone is known for, and that’s why the cost of Blackout will be half of what it would be if the superheroes were still white.

In addition all the storylines of Blackout will center around an inner city family where the father is not just absent but also in jail or on the streets involved in drugs. Because we are concerned with stereotypes, the drug storyline will not feature an absent father stung out on drugs.

The storylines will depict the father as the drug dealer.

Duh.

Because he’s black in Blackout the drug dealer will be seen as a hero in the black community because we all know that’s real and we know that because that’s how Hollywood keeps it real and Hollywood only depicts what’s real and we do want a movie deal so…

I can’t really go into too much more detail as I may have given away way too much. I will tell you this, the black Tony Stark will still date only white women.

He’s black, successful and mega-rich.

Duh.

WEDNESDAY: Mike Gold

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

 

Emily S. Whitten: Promote Your Awesome Friends Week!

  • News
  • April 2, 2013

whitten-art-1304021-8094383Or at least, that’s what I’ve decided this week will be, here in my column. And it’s my column, so as Loki would say (and I am fond of quoting), “I do what I want!” Mwahaha!

Seriously, though – I have a lot of fantastically talented friends, and it just so happens that two of them are currently involved in fun Kickstarters that I think are deserving of attention. So without further ado, here they are:

1) Stage Production of Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters:

Anybody who knows me probably knows that I’m a huge fan of Terry Pratchett and his Discworld series. What you might not know (even if you’re a Discworld fan) is that over nineteen of Terry’s books have been adapted to the stage since 1991 by the Audie Award-winning voice actor and Discworld collaborator Stephen Briggs, who has also voiced a large number of the Discworld audiobooks. Stephen regularly stages Discworld plays with the Studio Theatre Club [http://www.studiotheatreclub.com/LastProduction.html ] in Oxford, UK to popular acclaim; and his adaptations have been used around the world to stage Pratchett’s works.

Despite this, there seems to be a sad lack of Discworld in theater in the United States, at least in my observation. But worry not! My friend Kevin O’Shea of the excellent geeky Made of Fail podcast and productions is seeking to remedy that with a group of other dedicated Discworld and theater folks. They are striving to produce the stage adaptation of Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters from Thursday to Sunday during the last two weeks of July this year, at the Side Project Theatre in Chicago (just off the CTA Red Line; the Jarvis station between Loyola and Northwestern Universities).

Aside from knowing first-hand about Kevin’s passion for Discworld, dedication to geek projects, and overall reliability, I’ve looked at the project’s Kickstarter page, and it seems like a fun and solidly constructed project to me, with some cool donation rewards (I want a hand-knitted model of Discworld!). I think it’s worth backing, for any Discworld fans who want to see more Discworld theater in the U.S., and particularly for those who might be able to actually make it to the play if (when!) it hits Chicago in July. As of this writing, the project has received approximately 72% of the $5,000 they will need in pledges to reach their goal and stage the production. That’s pretty darned good, but they only have until April 10 to raise the other 28%. So if there are any Discworld fans out there who haven’t given yet but want to support this great project, now’s the time!

The Turtle Moves!

2) CineManiac: Horror Edition:

Ben Fisher is a funny guy. I’ve already positively reviewed some of his humorous writing in comics, and since then, we’ve become friends, and I’ve learned first-hand just how zany and occasionally…twisted his humor can be. (And, full disclosure, we are currently working on an un-related-to-this-topic project, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere). I’ve also learned that he’s a huge gaming geek, as well as a horror fan and aficionado of storytelling tropes; so when he told me he’d designed an interactive, humorous card game you play while watching horror films, I wasn’t surprised. I was excited, though, particularly after seeing that the talented Mike Henderson was going to be doing the art for the cards. Mike’s got a great style for the dramatic, the ominous, and the terrifying. (He’s also got a slightly twisted sense of humor.) Who better to do the art for a funny game about horror movies and horror movie tropes?

The basic game itself looks simple enough to play without distracting unduly from the enjoyment of watching the movie (and like it will add to that enjoyment for anyone with a sense of humor who knows horror movies); and the addition of “curse cards” to the basic mechanic of gameplay makes it sound like a whole lot of fun. As the Kickstarter says:

“But at the center of its little black heart, CineManiac is a party game. And what’s a party game without the ability to humiliate your competition? Curse cards force your opponents to reenact scenes, impersonate horror icons, and otherwise do your dastardly bidding!”

… Yeah, I’d play that game.

The Kickstarter has some great donation rewards for those of us who have a weakness for collecting original art or exclusives, like the signed original art from the card of your choice, or exclusive limited edition bonus cards. And, as it turns out, the project is also doing a giveaway contest through April 8th at the Tabletop Gaming News site, so you can also head on over there and enter if you want to, for the chance to win inclusion of your likeness in the art for one of the cards, or, for runners-up, an autographed print of art from the game.

This Kickstarter still has 28 days to go, but it needs a lot of love to reach its goal, so if you think it sounds awesome, as I do, go check it out (and watch the fun trailer!) and consider pledging here.

I’d love to see both of these projects make it to their final goals. If you would too…go pledge!

And until next time: Servo Lectio!

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

WEDNESDAY MORNING: Mike Gold

 

Davis Named DC President, Publisher

davis-april-fool-art-7478628Today I became president and publisher of DC Comics.

Shortly, I will be detailing my agenda which includes renaming DC, Milestone, the termination of all white people on staff as well as freelancers and moving the NY office to Harlem and the LA office to Compton.

To avoid any silly “racist” talk I will keep my white girlfriend.

Disney Is Watching Your Skin

  • News
  • April 1, 2013

hee6530f5-7724787When we started hearing rumors and reports from WonderCon this weekend, we thought we knew what the story was going to be: Disney/Marvel was following in the footsteps of Warner Bros/DC Comics and going after tattooed fans in an attempt to get a piece of the still-growing body modification dollar.

We were wrong.

Sort of.

Yes, this morning we had the unveiling of the officially licensed tattoo flash with sheets featuring Disney, Marvel and Star Wars characters.

But that’s not the story here. The real story is what happened when corporate executives approached attendees at the Anaheim California Convention Center and what occurred at area tattoo shops.

Unlike the cease-and-desist letters fans received from Warner Bros/DC two years ago, Disney (which now includes their Marvel and LucasFilm divisions) has taken a wholly different tack with fans. “I guess they don’t want the pics from spring break of that guy doing body shots off of me up on Facebook” said one female fan whose right arm has a huge Dark Phoenix tattoo.

“We feel that fans are acting as ‘brand ambassadors’ when they sport tattoos of our characters, and as such have a responsibility to maintain our company’s image, as well as that of our properties’. Therefore we are asking our “inked” fans and devotees to please take care and be mindful of behavior that may be deemed improper,” is how the opening statement of the packets handed out to attendees with the applicable visible ink.

They go on to outline what basically amounts to a morality clause, asking that tattoos be covered up if the wearer insists on participating in objectionable or questionable acts. And Disney “insists upon curtailing the posting of any images to social media outlets where our property is visible while such actions as drug abuse, alcohol use, smoking, or illegal activities are taking place, as well as usage in any nudity or sexually explicit content whatsoever.” Disney states the cease-and-desist letters will be issued should these requests not be fulfilled, adding a bunch of legalese that boils down to threats of copyright infringement lawsuits.poo-tattoo1-3547130

Ah, yes. Copyright Infringements. Because Disney wants to control the images of their characters in the literal sense too. “They asked me where I’d gotten my work done,” WonderCon attendee Sean Law told ComicMix. “They were really interested in it – and really unhappy about it” he laughed, then showed us his tattoo of a maniacal Winnie the Pooh holding Piglet’s bloody head rather than a honeypot.

The Orange County tattoo artist who did Law’s tattoo, as well as artists at dozens of other area shops, received visits from lawyers this morning. Law’s artist was told he had violated Disney’s copyrights by doing the piece. “They objected to both the image and the execution, dude said it wasn’t ‘on model.’ Can you believe that?

“Then he handed me a style guide!”

BOBBY NASH NAMED APRIL’S FEATURED AUTHOR AT IPULPFICTION.COM

  • Uncategorized
  • April 1, 2013

iPulpFiction.com turns the spotlight on New Pulp Author Bobby Nash beginning today, April 1st (and nope, this isn’t an April Fool’s Joke). Look for Bobby’s stories from Frontier, Doc Dresden: The Immortal, The Green Hornet, Lance Star: Sky Ranger, and Domino Lady, all specially formatted for your mobile devices. Perfect for those who like to read on the go.

PRESS RELEASE:

Coming in April to iPulpFiction.com

This April, iPulpFiction.com is proud to featured works from the 2013 Pulp Ark Award Winner for Best Author Bobby Nash

From his secret lair in the wilds of Bethlehem, Georgia, Bobby Nash, the 2013 Pulp Ark Award Winner for Best Author, writes a little bit of everything including novels, comic books, short prose, novellas, graphic novels, screenplays, media tie-ins, and even a little pulp fiction just for good measure. And he sleeps at least once a week, whether he needs it or not.

Two new iPulp series, Frontier and Doc Dresden: The Immortal will be available on April first, along with stories featuring Lance Star: Sky Ranger, Domino Lady, and The Green Hornet.

WHAT LIES BEYOND THE FRONTIER?

Frontier is a collection of sci-fi themed short stories from 2013 Pulp Ark Award-Winning Best Author, Bobby Nash. With Frontier, the author of Earthstrike Agenda, Evil Ways, and Deadly Games! presents a collection of rarely seen tales presented tales as well as some never before published stories. From Earth to alien planets and to the deepest recesses of space, Frontier features action, adventure, horror, and even a little romance.

DOC DRESDEN: THE IMMORTAL
340 year old Nathanial Dresden, “Doc” to his friends, is an explorer and adventurer at heart. For the last several centuries he has had many fantastic adventures. In present day, he works at (and secretly co-owns) Solutions Inc., a think tank/troubleshooting company. Solutions Inc. is the go to company when you need answers. Join Doc and his comrades as they travel the globe in search of adventure.

ABOUT iPULP

“With the whole world wallowing in pointless, plotless fiction, iPulp greets the reader like a breath of fresh adrenaline.” — David Lubar, Award-winning author of Hidden Talents

In the past, dime novels and other forms of pulp fiction influenced writers of genre fiction such as Ray Bradbury, Raymond Chandler, and H. P. Lovecraft. It was a time when kids carried a dime novel folded in their hip pocket or nestled out of sight in their schoolbooks.

Today, the pulps are mostly gone. iPulpFiction.com reinvents the genre short story market by taking pulp fiction to the mobile generation — to be hidden among digital textbooks on a tablet or tucked away on a smartphone in a hip pocket.

Visit iPulpFiction.com to learn more.
Learn more about 2013 Pulp Ark Award Winning Best Author, Bobby Nash at www.bobbynash.com

Welcome to ipulpfiction.com

Superman Silver Announced

  • Uncategorized
  • April 1, 2013

superman-silver-6706239In the run-up to Man of Steel, the most eagerly-anticipated super-hero film of the year, DC Comics just can’t seem to keep its new Superman initiatives secret for very long. ComicMix has learned that, in the wake of unprecedentedly strong orders for the print version of Batman ’66, DC has started work on Superman Silver. Like the Jeff Parker-Jonathan Case series, Superman Silver will exploit Boomer nostalgia for an earlier incarnation of one of its two biggest super stars. Obviously, “going retro” to appeal to an aging readership has paid off big-time for the publisher, since it’s decided to commission this series even before having metrics on Batman ’66.

Work on the new seven-week series, edited by Bobbie Chase and scheduled to begin in June, is only just beginning, but a few details have been leaked to ComicMix. Each issue will recreate the style, look, and tone of a Mort Weisinger-edited “Superman Family” title of the Silver Age, with several issues offering three 8-page stories.

While DC is still finalizing the lineup, we’ve learned that the series will kick off with Superman Silver: Superman, featuring a book- length Imaginary Story, “The Death of Van-Zee and Sylvia” by Howard Mackie and Alex Saviuk. This will be followed by Superman Silver: Action presenting a Superman lead, “When Superman Became Congorilla!” by Ralph Macchio and Terry Dodson, and a Supergirl back-up story, “Jeff Malverne, Super-Horse – Comet’s Rival for Supergirl’s Heart!” by Ann Nocenti and Patrick Olliffe. Week Three brings Superman Silver: Jimmy Olsen, whose cover story, “The Bedbug Boy of Metropolis,” is by Roger Stern and Javier Salteris.

To date, no creative team has yet been assigned to Superman Silver: Adventure, whose book-length story will feature the Bizarro Legion of Super-Heroes. Artists are still being sought for the remaining titles, Superman Silver: Lois Lane, Superman Silver: Superboy, and Superman Silver: World’s Finest, all of which will be written by Tom DeFalco.

ALL PULP TO CLOSE END OF THIS WEEK!

  • News
  • April 1, 2013

Approximately four weeks ago, Tommy Hancock, one of the original founding members of All Pulp as well as Editor in Chief, announced that he was stepping down from All Pulp, except as an incidental contributor.  At that point, Hancock stated that the position of Editor in Chief was open if anyone was interested in taking it on.  Although some have considered it, none have come forward.

“Based upon the fact,” Hancock says in a statement today, “that the Editor in Chief position at All Pulp remains open and that the site will not function in the same capacity at all without not only a body, but an active person in that position, I must announce today that, unless that position is filled by Saturday, April 6th, 2013, All Pulp will cease operation.”
Anyone interested in the position of Editor in Chief of All Pulp should contact Hancock at allpulp@yahoo.com or proseproductions@earthlink.net or at 870-834-4022.

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