GET READY TO RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE IN JANUARY!
Fight Card Books has released a teaser for their upcoming January 2013 ebook release, Rumble In The Jungle by Jack Tunney. Learn more at http://fightcardbooks.com.
The Mix : What are people talking about today?
iVerse and Top Cow Launch Try ’em before you Buy ’em Program
WACO, TX – 12/5/12- iVerse Media and Top Cow are offering, for a limited time, free trial programs to help celebrate the recent relaunches of Witchblade, the Darkness and Artifacts. These three popular franchises recently kickstarted fan passions with new storylines. In order to continue to drive excitement, iVerse wants fans to be able to sample each of these series at no risk.
“We’re thrilled to help spread the word on these exciting series,” said iVerse CEO Mike Murphey. “We like what Top Cow is doing and want to do whatever we can to help fans find out what which series they like best.”
Fans can use the codes below to get the issue for free:
Artifacts #14-22 Bundle = TCARB12
Darkness Bundle #101-107 = TCDRB12
Witchblade Bundle #151-161 = TCWRB12
Fans can just go to the “more” section in the ComicsPlus app, click on “redeem” and enter in these codes. But fans are encouraged to hurry, as this offer expires on March 5, 2013.
MOONSTONE BOOKS FOR APRIL
Moonstone Books has released their solicitation information for their pulp titles appearing in bookstores and comic book shops April 2013. These titles are available now for pre-order through your favorite bookseller.
DOMINO LADY/SHERLOCK HOLMES #1 (of 2)
Story: Nancy Holder
Art: Reno Maniquis
Colors: James Brown
Cover: Paul
33pgs, color, 7” x 10”, $3.99
Join NY TIMES best-selling author Nancy Holder in this 2-part murder mystery set against the backdrop of ancient Egypt!
Domino Lady and Sherlock Holmes team up to solve the riddle of the Sphinx…ok, not really, but they do solve this riddle of passion, identity, and antiquity!
DOMINO LADY: BLONDE BOMBSHELL TPB
Author: Nancy Holder
Art: Danny Sempere, Reno Maniquis
Colors: Jason Jensen
Cover: Matt Larson
240pgs, color, 7” x 10”, $25.95
ISBN: 978-1-936814-40-4
PREVIEWS EXCLUSIVE!
Nancy Holder’s murder mysteries set in old Hollywood featuring the hypnotically alluring Domino Lady! She’s tough as nails, and sexy as all hell!
This massive color tome reprints “Domino Lady #1-5”, “Domino Lady: Noir”, and “Domino Lady: 3 some”!
LAI WAN: THE DREAMWALKER TPB
Author: CJ Henderson
Art: Kieran Yanner
Cover: Michael Stribling
120pgs, 6” x 9”, grayscale, sc, $9.99
ISBN: 978-1-936814-06-0
Lai Wan: the Dreamwalker, seer and prophet, able to walk between realities, feared by any who embrace evil because of her one, terrible power–the ability to always know the absolute truth. At long last, Moonstone has gathered all the graphic stories of Lai Wan, CJ Henderson’s fantastic break-out character from his popular Teddy London novel series, into one beautiful collection, while adding two great prose bonuses: a team-up between Lai Wan and Kolchak, and a never-before seen novella, Terrible Anticipation, a sequel to H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror!
Learn more about Moonstone Books at www.moonstonebooks.com.
BROTHER BONES VS ALIEN GODS
PRESS RELEASE:
Airship 27 Productions, and Dynamic Ram Audio are very, very happy to announce the release of the fourth Brother Bones audio pulp adventure as read by Mark Kalita with production by Sound Engineer Chris Barnes.
Following the successful previous three tales from Airship 27 Productionsâ book BROTHER BONES â THE UNDEAD AVENGER, his fourth entry is titled âÂÂSee Spot Kill,â and has a gruesome zombie dog prowling the streets of Port Noir.
âÂÂVoice actor Mark Kalita totally puts his Master Storyteller hat on this time,â Airship 27 Managing Editor Ron Fortier praised. âÂÂThis is one of those tales that lends itself to a dark rainy night with folks gathered around the family radio to share the chills.âÂÂ
âÂÂDynamic Ram AudioâÂÂs Sound Engineer, Chris Barnes, loaded the forty minute recording with lots more sound effects this time around,â added Fortier. These elements add so much creepiness to the entire listening experience, I know our fans are going to love this.âÂÂ
Airship 27 Production is selling each of the original stories individually for $2 each as mp3 downloads from their website. After all seven have been produced and released individually, the entire book audio package will go on sale for $9.99, a $4 savings.
Art Director Rob Davis has provided cover images from the illustrations he drew for each story. SEE SPOT KILL is an audio pulp written by Ron Fortier and read by Mark Kalita is now on sale and is the perfect âÂÂtreatâ for this Halloween season.
A brand new edition of the book is available on Create Space, Amazon, Indy Planet and Kindle.
BROTHER BONES â Audio Tales #4 The Scales of Terror is now available for download here.
Airship 27 Productions â Pulp Fiction For A New Generation!
Other Brother Bones adventures still available from Airship 27 and Dynamic Ram Audio:
THE BONE BROTHERS
SHIELD AND CLAW
SCALES OF TERROR
Marc Alan Fishman: DC Entertainment – Trouble Every Day
Did you hear? Did you hear? The sky is falling! That’s right! There’s no time to pack a bag. Just grab your cell phone and head towards my car. Now get in! Call your loved ones. Tell them to do the same. Where are we going? How the hell should I know? They just told me to grab you and leave, leave, leave!
Wait, hold on. I just got a text. Shut up, I know I shouldn’t text and drive. But I can’t help it, we’re in the middle of a crisis! I’m not sure which crisis. The sky is white, so it’s not Crisis on Infinite Earths. The sky isn’t red, so it’s not Final Crisis. The sky isn’t upside down, so it’s not Flashpoint.
Oh. Oh! OK, this makes sense. Yup. DC is going belly up. No, I’m not kidding. My credible source here says so. No I won’t stop the car. Hear me out.
My pal, who likes to remain a little anonymous – we’ll call him R. Johnston, wait no, that’s too easy. Rich J. texted me just now that there’s a storm a’ brewin’ in New York. No, it’s not Hurricane Sandy. Rich is great with these things, trust me. He’s like spy mixed with fly on the wall. For reals.
So, he got wind of a super secret set of individual meetings at DC HQ which he’s speculating (which totally makes this real, you know) means big things for our boy blue. Here’s the hot tip:
With Vertigo Honcho Karen Berger going on the lamb, there’s mutterings this is the beginning of a mass exodus to Burbank. Yup, with the last bastion of the Paul Levitz era seeking refuge in other parts of fiction (if at all), DC’s ties to it’s former home seem more sentimental than anything else. What with everything going digital these days, wouldn’t it behoove the couldn’t-be-for-profit publishing side to just nestle itself closer to the teat of Movies, TV, and Other Media by Papa Warner?
And since the rumor mill is chugging along, we also have word that maybe these meetings (which again we have no actual proof happened, or any notion of who was in them) could also entail the stepping down of one Diane Nelson as head of the company. Maybe these meetings hold the secret to the new head cheese … Speculation is abound!
And Richie also told me (via text – don’t worry, I can read really long texts while driving) that these meetings could mean a big upheaval of publishing policy! I don’t even know what that means, but I’m scared poopless. I mean, first Karen leaves … then Diane steps down … and then the whole company goes only digital, moves to California. What’s next? Superman stops wearing his red underwear. Oh. My. New Gods! OK, I’m pulling over. Get out, pal. Just run for the hills! It’s all coming down. We might as well get some fast food, and wait for the universe to reset.
Sigh. All joking aside, unlike some bloggers, let me make this even more clear: I write my articles several days ahead of time. As the writing of this column, this story over on Bleeding Cool was a rank-and-file piece of absurdity. While Johnson makes all-too-clear he has no clue what’s going on, rather than get some sources and crank out a piece, he buried this little Chicken Little story in an attempt to what… get us commenting? Ranting and railing? I’m not entirely sure.
Be that as it may, unless anything concrete is published on this subject, here’s my two cents: most of what Rich conjures from the ether sounds pretty plausible. The New 52 sales seem to have leveled off, and the books, while low in number, are all very much akin to their brethren before the fall of Rome; predictable, great in parts, boring in most others, with plenty of worthless crossovers to go around. The fact is DC’s ties to New York are only superfluous at this point. Creative teams are assembled via the Internet. Books are compiled digitally and whisked off to Canada, or China or Apokolips to be printed and distributed.
We can also safely assume with Harry Potter done and over with, WB is putting heads on the chopping block if Justice League doesn’t pull off Avengers-like hype and profits. Diane Nelson may not want to be around when they inevitably miss the mark there (and I’m no less hopeful, just realistic). And to round it out … what “big publishing initiative” could they announce, aside from a hike in price for physical books? I’m yearning to be surprised.
At the end of the day, the sky ain’t gonna fall. Superman will be around for plenty of years to come. And there will always be too man-Bat books on the shelf. And we’ll always be here, to lap up the rumors like starving dogs, and fight one another over these oddly plucked bones of potential news. But, consider my inner Gold here to leave you on this thought:
Been checkin’ out the news
Until my eyeballs fail to see
I mean to say that every day
Is just another rotten mess
And when it’s gonna change, my friend
Is anybody’s guess
(From “Trouble Every Day” by Frank Zappa¸©1966 whatever publishing company Frank had in 1966, All Rights Reserved.)
SUNDAY: John Ostrander
RICHARD STARK’S PARKER GOES SOFT!
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| New softcover cover by Darwyn Cooke |
Softcover that is.
IDW’s adaptation of Richard Stark’s Parker: The Hunter by Darwyn Cooke is now available in softcover.
The Hunter, the first book in the Parker series, is the story of a man who hits New York head-on like a shotgun blast to the chest. Betrayed by the woman he loved and double-crossed by his partner in crime, Parker makes his way cross-country with only one thought burning in his mind-to coldly exact his revenge and reclaim what was taken from him!
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| HC art by Darwyn Cooke |
Richard Stark (AKA Donald Westlake) was a master writer of crime fiction and Parker is arguably his greatest Creation-having been featured in more than a dozen novels and several well-regarded films (including Point Blank with Lee Marvin and Payback with Mel Gibson), and an upcoming one starring Jason Statham and Jennifer Lopez that will be released this fall.
Master storyteller Darwyn Cooke has won nearly every award available to comics creators. His DC: The New Frontier was turned into an Emmy-nominated animated feature. The Hunter is the first in a series of Parker graphic novels that Cooke is adapting, the first two earning the comics Auteur more Eisner and Harvey awards for his already crowded mantle.
Parker: The Hunter is now available in 6×9 softcover.
160 pages
Full Color
Retail price: $17.99
Read a free preview of IDW’s Parker: The Hunter by Darwyn Cooke here.
A Doctor A Day – “The Unquiet Dead”
Using the new Doctor Who Limited Edition Gift Set, your noble author will make his way through as much of the modern series as he can before the Christmas episode, The Snowmen. This is not a mere shadow play.
If you want to get picky, this is a Christmas episode before they started doing them officially. On Christmas Eve in 1869 Wales, The Doctor, Rose and of all people, Charles Dickens, join together to fight…
THE UNQUIET DEAD By Mark Gatiss Directed by Euros Lyn“In what way do you resemble a means of keeping oneself cool?”
Having shown her the future, The Doctor plans to show Rose the past. Aiming for 1860 Naples, they land in 1869 Cardiff. Now, as a rule, the TARDIS doesn’t land where there’s nothing going on, and this was no exception. At a local funeral home, the dead are rising again, and at an increasing rate. This evening, an old woman rises and continues on with her planned events of the day, which included a trip to the theater to see Chares Dickens live. This causes some consternation at the theater, which draws the attention of The Doctor.
Apparently it’s been happening from some time. But they’re not ghosts, but aliens, known as the Gelth, a gaseous lifeform who inhabit the bodies of the dead as temporary accommodations. Falling through a rift in spacetime, conveniently located in the basement of the funeral home, their request is simple – let them use the bodies of the recent dead so they can survive. But like so many times before, the aliens beg for an inch, and they want to take over. A simple chambermaid is the key to both their arrival, and their stopping.
Mark Gatiss (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Second only to Moffat (who will be joining us in a day or two), Mark Gatiss is the writer who is the closest to being genetically bred to write Doctor Who. Writing for many fan productions and acting in a couple as well, he brought decades of love for the series to the table, and his story is both a great Victorian adventure as well as a solid and emotional Doctor Who script. It’s peppered with tips of the hat as well, from the Dickensian name of the mortician, Sneed, and the door knocker that takes on a ghostly visage as the Gelth pass through it. And not to mention the idea that after seeing a series of ghosts on Christmas Eve, he’s inspired to change his life. One of the extra’s on the disc is a video blog of Gatiss talking about the process of writing the script, from the first meeting on. It’s interesting to hear about early ideas for the story, not to mention how seriously he’s taking the idea of bringing back a show he loves so much. A big moment includes a gang of four including Rob Shearman, Paul Cornell, and Steven Moffat, before and after the first readthrough. The level of suppressed glee among the four is priceless.
Simon Callow, the prominent stage and screen actor, is possibly more associated with Charles Dickens than any living performer. Appearing as the writer in several different works and media, he hesitated at playing the character in Doctor Who, fearing it’s be a simple cameo or camp parody. Only after reading Gatiss’ script did he agree, realizing he’d done a stellar job of getting Dickens’ character right.
This is also the second episode in a row where Rose talks to the service class folks, as equals. She has a nice conversation with a plumber in Platform One, and with Gwyneth here. In both cases, she gets them to open up a bit about themselves, and both seem quite appreciative to get a chance to just chat. Interesting that things don’t change much in five billion years – people don’t notice the help.
Once again we see that this is a very different Doctor from before. While everyone sees the idea of “spirits” taking over corpses as anything from shocking to blasphemous, The Doctor sees as perfectly reasonable, an extreme form of recycling. His practicality is…well, alien. Of course, the emotional response when he hears that once again, this is a race almost destroyed by the Time War, named for the first time here, colored that choice. And once again, he makes the wrong choice, and as a result, people die. That takes some getting used to.
Three episodes in, and we’re already starting to see the beginnings of the spinoff series, Torchwood. Eve Myles plays Gwyneth, the maid and assistant to the funeral home. Centuries later, her descendent (well, not HER descendant, clearly) Gwen Cooper will become a policewoman and become involved with the mysterious organization. Russell T Davies referred to Myles as Wales greatest hidden treasure, and begorrah, he’s not far wrong. This episode also introduces the rift under Cardiff, a source of extradimensional energy that will return as a plot point for both series, a fuel source for the TARDIS and a source of McGuffins for Torchwood.
TARZAN RELIVES THE RUSS MANNING YEARS
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| Art: Russ Manning |
Just in time for Tarzan’s Centennial Celebration, Dark Horse Comics is releasing Tarzan: The Russ Manning Years Volume 1. The hardcover collection will arrive in comic shops on Wednesday, December 12.
Tarzan: The Russ Manning Years Volume 1 features stories by Gaylord DuBois (Writer) and Russ Manning (Artist).
Experience three of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan novels as drawn by Russ Manning, the most beloved comic-book interpreter of the lord of the jungle! Collecting Tarzan #155 – #161, #163, #164, #166, and #167, from the 1960s, this volume is an essential addition to any comics fan’s collection!
Tarzan: The Russ Manning Years Volume 1 is 288 pages and retails for $49.99.
Enjoy this preview.
Click on images for a larger view.
The Point Radio: ARROW’s Aim Is Still True
As ARROW hits the halfway mark of the TV season, fans and critics alike say it keeps getting better. We go backstage with the creators and cast to find out how they got this far, and what lies ahead for new characters including one played by fan favorite John Barrowman. Plus How about Captain Kirk, Ron Burgundy or Spock doing your voice mail message? It can happen if you hurry.
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.
