The Mix : What are people talking about today?

REVIEW: “The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley” is as fun as fun can be, I must say.

  • Uncategorized
  • February 15, 2013

God bless the deranged maniacs at the Warner Archives and their desire to not let anything be forgotten.  As part of their exponentially-growing manufacture on demand DVD program, they’ve added to their already impressive list of animated releases with a 2-disc release of Hanna-Barbera’s The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley.

misadventures-ed-grimley12-2844551Martin Short has had a wide and varied career in comedy, and inamongst appearing on SCTV, Saturday Night Live and his film career, he created a character named Ed Grimley.  Formed from equal parts of sight gags from his SCTV days and a voice he used to do to annoy his wife, Ed caught on with America during Short’s SNL run.  When NBC and Hanna-Barbera looked for a way to compete with CBS’ Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, the hyperkinetic Mr. Grimley was tailor-made.

Featuring a mini-reunion of the SCTV gang, the series features Martin in the titular (a word you want to hear more often, and so seldom do) role, with Andrea Martin and Catherine O’Hara, with Joe Flaherty reprising his SCTV creation Count Floyd.  Jonathan Winters rounded out the crew, adding in his comedy genius.

The comparison to Pee-Wee is easy to make on the surface, but at its base, Ed’s show was a surreal take on a sitcom, as opposed to the kids show parody of Mr. Herman.  Ed has no desire to find adventures; he’s more than happy practicing his triangle and enjoying the company of his neighbors at the palatial Freebus Arms.  But adventure seeks him out, and before you can say “Uncle Balfour’s favorite Mantovani record” he’s running n a horse race or getting a new identity after testifying in a robbery trial or being whisked to Kansas via a hurricane.

Ed Grimley was one of the last shows made at Hanna-Barbera before their purchase by Turner, and was one of its last truly original works.  With character work and story direction by Scott Shaw! the show had a unique voice that stood above the sadly dying world of Saturday Morning cartoons.  It’s popped back up on Cartoon Network on occasion, but thanks to Warner Archives, fans can get their triangle on whenever they please.

The 2-disc set is available from The Warner Brothers Shop.

ALL PULP’S EBOOK BEST SELLER LIST FOR WEEK OF FEBRUARY 15, 2013!

  • News
  • February 15, 2013

ropes51-8488140
Welcome to All Pulp’s New Pulp EBook Best Seller List, inspired by the work of Barry Reese! Before we get to what you’re all waiting for, here are the rules by which this little list comes together.

1)    This list only tracks Kindle sales through AMAZON. It does not keep track of sales through Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, or anything else!

2)   
This list only tracks DIGITAL sales. Exactly how Amazon calculates these things is mostly a trade secret and they vary wildly from day to day. If I checked this tomorrow, the list could be very different. This list reflects sales ranks as of Friday morning, February 15, 2013. 


3)   In order to keep the focus on new releases, eligible works must have been published within the last three months. So, since this list is being done on February 15, 2013, we are only looking at books published since November 15, 2012. Please keep that in mind before complaining that Title X is not listed. Also, keep in mind that for the most part, we are tracking sales from smaller and mid level press publishers who actively publish New Pulp material. We won’t generally track sales from Simon and Schuster or places like that — they have the New York Times Bestseller List for that. If one of the major publishers starts doing The Shadow or something, we’ll track that, but some publishers will not be listed here in order to keep the focus on the publishers actively working to produce and promote New Pulp.

4)   
Like the name suggests, we’re tracking “New” pulp —not sales rankings for reprints of classic material. In order for something to qualify for this list, it has to be at least 50% new material that has not been printed in book form before.


5)    We are human. If you are aware of a title that should be listed below (keeping in mind all the rules above), please let us know and we will make sure to remedy the situation.


6)    This information is garnered mostly from All Pulp, New Pulp, the Pulp Factory mailing list and a few other sites. If you think we might miss your release, let us know in advance — drop All Pulp a line and tell us when it’s being released.

Without further ado, here’s the completely and totally unofficial New Pulp Ebook Bestseller List as of right now (title, then publisher, then release date, then sales rank):

1) The Cestus Concern by Mat Nastos (Nifty Entertainment, December 28,2012) 2,731

2) Finn’s Golem by Gregg Taylor (Autogyro, January 10, 2013) -63,637

3) Whack Job by Mike Baron (Mike Baron, December 25, 2012)- 66,170

4) Fight Card Against the Ropes by Terrence McCauley (Fight Card Books, February 11, 2013)-66,970

5) Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective, Volume 4 by Various (Airship 27, January 19, 2012) – 75,826

6) The Detective, The Woman and the Winking Tree by Amy Thomas (MX Publishing, January 22, 2013) – 81,190

7) Tier Zero by Henry Brown (Virtual Pulp, January 13, 2013) – 101,021

8) Sherlock Holmes and Young Winston: The Deadwood Stage by Mike Hogan (MX Publishing, November 19, 2012) – 120,456

9) Monster Earth by Various (Mechanoid Press, January 13, 2013) – 133,118

10) Legion I- Lords of Fire (The Shattering) by Van Allen Plexico (White Rocket Books, January 26, 2013) – 193,627

Just missing the list were: Fight Card : The Knockout by Robert J. Randisi (Fight Card Books, December 1, 2012) – 213,403, Prohibition by Terrence McCauley, (Airship 27, December 15, 2012) – 241,449 Fight Card: Rumble in the Jungle by David Foster (Fight Card Books, January 8, 2013) – 243,473, and Sentinels: Metalgod by Van Plexico (White Rocket Books, December 10, 2012) – 244,801.

There’s definitely some shifting of numbers, but Mat Nastos hangs onto the top spot for two weeks in a row with extremely impressive numbers.  New titles enter into the mix, making this list, much like its sibling- The Bestseller Print list- a Holmes list with three titles featuring the classic detective. Terrence McCauley’s Fight Card entry enters the list at number 4, a good showing.   Every book on this list came in under 200,000, so that says quite a bit for how well ebooks sell.  

As far as Publishers are concerned, MX Publishing has two books in the debut EBook list, with Virtual Pulp, Nifty Entertainment, Mechanoid Press, Autogyro, White Rocket, Airship 27, Mike Baron, and Fight Card Books all checking in with one.  But remember, readers, take it all with a grain of salt. 

Martha Thomases: Udder Catastrophe

thomases-art-130215-4551025There are two totally unrelated things I want to talk about this week. Well, not entirely unrelated. Both have actual connections to comics, something my last column managed to completely miss.

  1. In a move that reminds absolutely everyone of Dick Tracy, Apple may be developing the twenty-first century version of the two-way wrist radio. This would be a flexible all-class device that one would wear on the wrist. There is speculation the screen would be 1.5 inches in diameter.

I hate this idea. I can barely type on the keyboard of my phone with two thumbs. There is no way I could tap out anything even vaguely intelligible on my wrist with one hand.  There is only a slightly larger chance that I would be able to read anything on a screen that small, so I guess that would limit the amount to typing I would need to do.

There is apparently an entire department at Apple that is developing wearable computers. The article alludes to the possibility of Apple sunglasses as well.

My first reaction was to get excited, because I would look much cooler in sunglasses, and also, Neuromancer. However, the more I think about it, the more I think it’s either a bad idea, or requires more refinement. I mean, it’s difficult enough to walk a city sidewalk now, when the multitudes are so engrossed with looking at their phones that they walk into traffic. And they have to actually take their phones out of their pockets and hold them in their hands to look at those screens. With glasses, even that little bit of effort is superfluous. As you walk down the sidewalk (or, God forbid, drive your car) you won’t be able to tell who is or isn’t paying attention.

We’re all doomed.

At least, with a watch, there’s the possibility of fighting crime.

2). Those of you who keep track of my every utterance may remember how appalled I was last year when the editorial brain trust at DC Comics decided that super-powered female lizards have breasts

http://comicmix.com//columns/2012/03/23/martha-thomases-what-would-women-worldkillers-wear/. For one thing, I kept formulating a joke in my head (“Like tits on a lizard, these are the Days of Our Lives“) that no one would understand anymore.

But, mostly, it upsets me that purportedly adult humans either know nothing about human biology or think the customers who pay their salaries are stupid tools who are easily manipulated. Both of these alternatives fill me with despair.

And this week, as I read my DC Comics, I was let down in exactly this way by a few books I normally enjoy.

The first was the end of the “Rot World” storyline, taking place in the #17 issues of Animal Man and Swamp Thing. Our title heroes and their allies are fighting creatures who have been overtaken by The Rot, so that they are desiccated zombies or monsters. Among the zombies are Superman and Wonder Woman. They are skeletal, except for Superman’s enormous muscles, and Wonder Woman’s muscular arms and giant breasts.

It makes no sense whatsoever for Wonder Woman to have a body that indicates she has no fat, but the gigantic breasts belie that. I suppose it’s possible that her breasts are full of pus, which would be scary, but also disturbing.

And then, in Dial H for Hero #9, the woman with a dial turns into a Minotaura, a female minotaur. She is covered with hair, has horns on her head, again with the exaggerated musculature, and again with ginormous boobies.

Think about it. A minotaur, half man and half bull. The female version would be half woman, half cow. No horns. And, if mammary glands, just as likely to be an udder as breasts.

Consider the possibilities of the super-powered udder. There could be jet-propelled milk, used to knock opponents off balance. A full udder is heavy, and an empty one could be flexible. It would be awesome.

But it wouldn’t give the fanboys boners, so I guess it’s not to be.

I await the Apple computer that gets built into bras.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

 

EARTH STATION ONE CELEBRATES EPISODE 150!

Dearly beloved geeks! We celebrate our 150th episode with the most guests ever! We gathered together at the new Titan Comics and Games in Smyrna, GA to discuss the current state of geekdom. ESO cohosts Mike Faber, Mike Gordon, and Bobby Nash presided over the event with the following representatives: Anthony Taylor, award-winning artist Mark Maddox, Alex Autrey (7th Row Center Podcast), Doctor Q, Mark Heffernan, Nikki Rau-Baker, Andrea Judy, Patrick Freeman, CD Ske, John Strangeway, Peter Cutler, and Victor Fishman. And there was much filibustering! God bless the United States of Geekdom!

Join us for yet another episode of The Earth Station One Podcast we like to call: The State of Geekdom 2013 at www.esopodcast.com
Direct link: http://erthstationone.wordpress.com/2013/02/14/earth-station-one-episode-150-the-state-of-geekdom-2013/

Recording ESO episode 150

Share Paperman with your Valentine

  • News
  • February 14, 2013

PapermanWalt Disney Animation sets hearts aflutter with their charming blend of hand-drawn and computer animated short Paperman. This short ran last year with Wreck-It Ralph, making for a double-barreled win for the stuido.

Here is a chance to see it for the first or fifth time and it’s perfect to share with your Valentine on this red letter day.

Dennis O’Neil: Snow Business

  • Uncategorized
  • February 14, 2013

O'Neil Art 130214I guess the angels were scratching their heads real hard, and so when I awoke yesterday there was three feet of white stuff all over everything. It’s still there, mostly, except for the streets, where our tax dollars have been at work, and the driveway where a nice man who didn’t ask for a king’s ransom shoveled it off.

I like it when the angels scratch their heads, except if I have to go someplace or the electricity kerfutzes, which it did during the recent hurricane – angels blowing out birthday candles? – and then the angelic behavior is plenty vexing and old folks have to seek shelter in hotels and if you think that’s easy to find, you’ve never sought shelter after a big wind!

I guess this is why some folks who have reached or exceeded their three score and ten choose to reside in places like Florida. You know – beaches on both sides of the state and plenty of sunshine headin’ their way, zippety-doo-dah.

Florida has the reputation of being paved with greyheads, but the last time I was there I saw more young than old. Maybe it helped that I was attending a comics convention. But I remember a movie in which the main characters were twenty-somethings who ended up in Florida. (Okay, one of them didn’t quite reach his destination due to dying en route.) I have to thank my man in another sunny locale, Ken Pisani, currently residing in Southern California with the lovely Amanda, for informing me that I have a small participation in the flick. Very, very, very small.

In the brief clip Ken sent me, Jon Voight is riding in a bus next to a little girl who’s reading a comic book – that I wrote. It’s one of my early Wonder Woman issues (though, come to think of it, arguably there were no later Wonder Womans by me because I didn’t last long on the title.) Well, golly!

I saw the movie, Midnight Cowboy, during an early run, probably the first and probably at a Times Square theater – one of the classy ones on Broadway, not one of the stick-floored grind houses on 42nd Street. But I don’t remember the bit with the comic book and that’s curious because I was still close enough to my Catholic boyhood to be aware that the film was considered to be…you know, smutty. Near occasion-of-sinny. And I sure as hell(?) wasn’t used to seeing my work anywhere except on newsstands and in editorial offices. I would have reacted and having reacted, I would have remembered.

But I didn’t and I’ll worry about that as soon as I deal with global warming and the legal implications of drone warfare.

I’m forgetting something…

Oh, yeah. Later today, Marifran will be reading this blather off the computer and when she gets this far, I’ll be wishing her a happy birthday.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

 

FIGHT CARD NEWS

  • Uncategorized
  • February 14, 2013

New Pulp Author/Publisher Paul Bishop shared some Fight Card updates with All Pulp.

Lots of news to cover, so I’m going to get right down to it.  Our January offering Fight Card: Rumble in the Jungle from David Foster got 2013 off to a great start for us.  This is David’s second Fight Card novel (after Fight Card: King Of The Outback) and he really blows the pulp doors off in this tale …

Fight Card: Rumble in the Jungle

Hell’s Kitchen, 1953

Brendan O’Toole is on a downward slide. When his wife dies in a freak car accident, he quits his job and hits the bottle hard. Half tanked in the ring, he allows himself to be knocked out, ending his boxing career.

O’Toole, hits rock bottom. After a night of boozing, he is brutally mugged and left for dead. But O’Toole has friends, even if he can’t see it. One of them is Danny Reilly, a barman with a heart of gold. He arranges for O’Toole to join a construction crew set to work on a hotel being built in the Central African jungle nation of Sezanda. It’s O’Toole’s last shot at redemption.

Sezanda, Central Africa, 1954

As things begin to look up for O’Toole, the Sezandan government is overthrown in a military coup. All foreigners are taken prisoner and locked in concentration camps. O’Toole is sent to the worst, HELL CAMP XXI, under the control of a brutal ex-Nazi, Kommandant Krieger. Krieger has a special way of keeping his prisoners under control. In the camp, he has erected a boxing ring. And anyone who steps out of line is forced to face off against his man-mountain, wrecking machine, Crator – a man whose sole purpose is to inflict pain.

Fate has destined Brendan O’Toole to don the gloves one more time, in a fight not just for his life, but his very soul.

Attached you will find complimentary Word file of Fight Card: Rumble In The Jungle to send on to your Kindle or read on your computer, as well as a jpeg of the cover.

You can find Fight Card: Rumble In The Jungle on Amazon.

Next up is our February release, Fight Card: Against The Ropes from acclaimed New Pulp author Terrence P. McCauley.  In December, Terrence saw his novel Prohibition – featuring Terry Quinn, ex-boxer turned mob enforcer in 1920’s New York – released from top pulp publisher Airship 27. Prior to the release of Prohibition, Terrence pitched the prequel – telling the tale of Terry Quinn’s boxing years – as a Fight Card novel.  While the 1920’s was new ground for Fight Card, the character and writing was so strong, it was immediately a done deal. Fight Card: Against The Ropes is the result.

Fight Card: Against The Ropes

New York City – 1925

The boxing ring was the only world Terry Quinn had ever known. He’d entered the hallowed halls of St. Vincent’s Home for Boys in New York City as a fighter and left as a boxer. Years of training and honing his skills finally paid off as he fought his way to the top. Only one more fight stood between Quinn and shot at the heavyweight championship against Jack Dempsey.  It was the glory he’d been waiting for all his life.

But things have never gone easy for Terry Quinn. As he starts training for the biggest fight of his career, a crew of Tammany thugs and fix-it men tell him to throw the fight or face dire consequences. Even before he has a chance to consider their offer, those dire consequences come home to roost when one of his long time corner men turns up dead.

The identity of the killer isn’t in question. The only question is what is Terry Quinn going to do about it.

Against The Ropes is a tough New York tale played out while the Roaring Twenties roared their loudest. Crooked cops, Tammany hacks, has-beens, and even the great Jack Johnson, all play a role in Quinn’s decision – is his quest for justice worth his future, and possibly … his life.

You will also find attached complimentary Word file of Fight Card: Against The Ropes to send on to your Kindle or read on your computer, as well as a jpeg of the cover.

You can find Fight Card: Against The Ropes on Amazon.

In other news, our March release will be Fight Card: The Last Round Of Archie Mannis from Joseph Grant.  This will be a different style of Fight Card novel, echoing the biographical pieces done by the great Jack Kofed in many of the sports pulps.

April will see a Fight Card triple combination debut at the 2013 Pulp Ark convention where Fight Card co-creator Paul Bishop (yeah, me) will be the guest of honor.  Pulp Ark will herald the unveiling of the first two novels under the Fight Card MMA banner – Fight Card MMA: Welcome To The Octagon from Gerard Brennan, and Fight Card MMA: The Kalamazoo Kid from Jeremy Brown.  Both Gerard and Jeremy sport extensive critical acclaim for their prior works and have delivered dynamite stories that leap off the page.

The third punch of the combination will be Fight Card: Swamp Walloper –
the sequel to Fight Card: Felony Fists – from yours truly, Paul Bishop.  Fight Card: Swamp Walloper will send LAPD cop Pat Flynn and his partner Cornel Tombstone Jones deep into the Louisiana swamps on a mission of two-fisted vengeance – and it won’t take long before they are in the fight of their lives against a sadistic prison warden and a chain gang of swamp rats.

Beyond April, we will see books from John Kenyon (Fight Card: Get Hit, Hit Back), Derrick Ferguson (Fight Card: Brooklyn Beatdown), Tony Hancock (Fight Card: Fight River), Anthony Venutolo (Fight Card: Union Of Snakes), Rory Costello (Fight Card: Flyweight Fury), Bobby Nash (Fight Card: Barefoot Bones), Nick Ahlhelm (Fight Card: MMA: Rosie The Ripper), and an as yet untitled tale from returning Fight Card author Kevin Michaels … Whew!  There is a lot of hard punching Fight Card action on the horizon …  There is also a lot to juggle, so if I’ve forgotten anybody, please, please let me know …

As always, artist Keith Birdsong has been doing yeoman work on the covers for our e-books, and David Foster has been very generous in helping to get out our top-notch paperback covers.

Thanks to Terrence P. McCauley for taking over the Fight Card Twitter feed @FightCardPulps, to Robert Evans for keeping up the Fight Card Linked-In Group, and to Jeremy Brown for helping out with the Fight Card website.

With the able assistance of David Foster, a new issue of Fight Fictioneers Magazine will also be making an appearance in April and will be promoting all of the Fight Card novels to be published since our last issue.  We are continuing to work on audio versions of our Fight Card titles and hope to have more solid information soon.

A GIRL AND HER CAT!

  • News
  • February 13, 2013
honeywest_thecat-2636108
(Promotional art – not actual cover)

New Pulp Author Win Scott Eckert announced on his blog that he is writing a new novel for Moonstone Books, Honey West and T.H.E Cat: A GIRL AND HER CAT!

It’s Honey West and T.H.E Cat, in the first new Honey West novel in over 40 years, A Girl and Her Cat!

Following on the heels of the first ever Honey West & T.H.E Cat crossover comic, Moonstone’s “Death in the Desert,” comes the Honey West & T.H.E Cat novel, A Girl and Her Cat…..

When an exotic green-eyed Asian doctor hires Honey to recover a stolen sample of a new influenza vaccine from a rival scientist, the blonde bombshell private eye—suspicious but bored—takes the case. But after she’s attacked not once, but twice, on her way from Long Beach to San Francisco to track down her quarry, she knows there’s more—much more—to her femme fatale client than meets the eye.

Along the way, Honey’s one-time paramour Johnny Doom—ex-bounty hunter and current Company agent—reenters the picture, and the gorgeous doctor’s insidious—and deadly—grandfather deals himself in. But when Honey questions whether Johnny’s playing her game, or just playing her for a patsy, she joins forces—as only Honey can—with the one man in Frisco who can help her recover the stolen vaccine-cum-bioweapon and prevent a worldwide epidemic—former cat burglar-turned-bodyguard Thomas Hewitt Edward Cat: T.H.E Cat!

Join writers Win Scott Eckert and Matthew Baugh, and cover artist Douglas Klauba, for A Girl and Her Cat, a groovy, racy 1960s romp coming in 2013 from Moonstone!

Mike Gold: The Nerddom Intelligentsia

  • Uncategorized
  • February 13, 2013

gold-art-130213-9046221There’s a new sun rising up angry in the sky

And there’s a new voice saying we’re not afraid to die

Let the old world make believe it’s blind and deaf and dumb

But nothing can change the shape of things to come

We all know how our mass media portrays nerds: people who are brainy, obsessive, with a penchant for wearing merchandising-related merchandise. We come in two sizes: gangly or Christie-clone. We couldn’t get laid at an orgy on the dark side of the moon. We have a life-long lust for our popular culture and cannot distinguish between low-brow and high-brow.

Actually, I’m rather proud of that last bit. Cultural elitism really pisses me off. But this is America, where the bottom line justifies everything. The day nerds became bankable was the day we became legitimate.

We helped. Picking up a lesson from my fellow hippie freaks of 1967, we have redefined the term “nerd” simply by accepting it as a reference to ourselves. My fellow ComicMix columnist Emily S. Whitten embraces this wonderfully, in nearly everything she writes for this site.

The Simpsons helped quite a bit. Comic Book Guy exposed a previously hidden reality: a goodly percentage of those who hang our at the comic book shop are members of Mensa, and more would be if we had even the most rudimentary social skills. Mind you, I’d only been to a handful of Mensa meetings and I found them pathetically tedious, but they were at the University of Chicago so I was probably asking to be bored.

The fact is, comic book reading among those older than nine used to be associated with stupidity, arrested development, and the complete lack of a social life. Now many understand that it’s the upper end of the brain rack that finds this stuff appealing.

Nerds might not be cool, but then again, why is it that nerds invent all the cool stuff? We might have very short attention spans and we’re easily attracted to that which is bright and shiny, but we’ve taken over the popular culture and we’ve taken over technological innovation and, quite literally, our toys have become the tools of revolution all across the world.

Remember Doctor Doom’s little flying teevee cameras that would allow him to view his mayhem all over the world? He borrowed them from Ming the Merciless… but that’s not my point. Today, for good or for bad or for both, we’ve got our flying cameras. They’re called drones. Some of them are capable of bombing people back to the Flintstones. We’ve got GPS in our pockets, transponders in our cars, cameras at most of the traffic lights and highways and stores and office buildings and not only do “we” know where you are, but we know where you have been.

Hey, I didn’t say nerddom was a force for good. It’s a human force. And it’s mainstream.

And we’ve got these massively overpopulated conventions all over the world. We can organize.

We can take over.

Maybe… we already have.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

 

Categories

Archives

Everything you need to make great comics!

comicmix-pro-300x69-2

Nucleus X

Bookshop Zaks