Category: News

‘Iron Man’ Premieres Thursday at 8 PM

  • News
  • April 27, 2008

Hooray, hooray, the first of May; outdoor– er, Iron Man begins today!

Paramount is planning to open Iron Man at 8:00 PM on Thursday, May 1, instead of one minute past midnight on May 2nd as originally planned. The studio is apparently hoping that great word-of-mouth will help boost box-office business for the weekend.

Early buzz has been strong, let’s see how big a weekend it’s going to be, shall we? Place your bets in the comment section. I’m starting with $115 million for the first four days.

Amos ‘n’ Andy ‘n’ Independents (sic), by Michael H. Price

  • News
  • April 27, 2008

andycalhoun-9466253An earlier installment of this column had examined a 1931 gorillas-at-large movie called Ingagi as an unlikely long-term influence upon the popular culture as a class. Ingagi, a chump-change production built largely around misappropriated African-safari footage and staged mock-jungle sequences, tapped a popular fascination with apes as a class even as it fostered a generalized anti-enlightenment toward natural history and racial politics.

Strange, then, that the film should have inspired a sequel (unofficial, of course, and certainly in-name-only) from a resolutely Afrocentric sector of the motion-picture industry. The production resources behind 1940’s Son of Ingagi stem from white-capitalist niche-market corporate interests – but the screenwriter and star player, and his supporting ensemble cast, all represent a trailblazing movement in black independent cinema.

From momentum that he had developed beginning with Son of Ingagi at Alfred Sack’s Texas-based Sack Amusement Enterprises, Spencer Williams, Jr., attained recognition that would lead him to a role-of-a-lifetime breakthrough in 1950, with his casting as Andrew Brown on a CBS-Television adaptation of a long-running radio serial called Amos ’n’ Andy. Though created by white-guy talents Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, Amos ’n’ Andy needed black artists for its on-screen representation. (Gosden and Correll had gotten away with blackface portrayals in 1930’s Check and Double Check – the tactic would not have borne repeating by 1950.) The partners hired a pioneering showman of the pre-Depression Harlem Renaissance period, Flournoy E. Miller, as casting director for the CBS-teevee project, and Miller came through with such memorable presences as Williams, Tim Moore as George “Kingfish” Stevens and Alvin Childress as Amos Jones, Andy Brown’s business partner. (more…)

ComicMix Radio: Grab Your Video Camera and Live The Dream!

Thomas Edison did it, Stephen Spielberg did, too. And following in those traditions is filmmaker Shane Felux, who turned a maxed-out credit card into an Internet film phenomenon. Now, he is producing an ABC-backed, sci-fi thriller just for the web, and we have the story , plus:

— Amanda Conner returns to Power Girl

— Gears Of War hits the table top

— And just when you thought you had seen all the lists, how about “The Most Awful Songs From Geek Movie Soundtracks.” Get ready to have your head filled with stuff you won’t clear out until Monday!

Press the Button and you can start the argument!

 

 
 
And remember, you can always subscribe to ComicMix Radio podcasts via badgeitunes61x15dark-9032686 or RSS!

Convention Queen for a Day, by Martha Thomases

  • News
  • April 26, 2008

With New York Comic-Con receding into the fogs of memory, I’m girding my loins to face another season of conventions. Last year, as part of the ComicMix Inaugural World Tour, I went to more shows than I had ever attended before. However, with the long lull between Mid-Ohio and New York, I managed to block out some of the more disturbing experiences that typify what it means to go to a comics convention.

NYCC is not a typical show. It’s huge, it’s crowded, it’s noisy, and it has attitude. That’s because it’s in Manhattan, but it’s also because it wants desperately to be San Diego. People come to see movies and television previews at least as much as they come to see comics. And that’s cool. Maybe some of these people will also buy a few comics.

Still, it does make for long lines and the attendant short tempers. If you want to enjoy a comics convention, go to Heroes World or Mid-Ohio, or Baltimore. The size is manageable, you can meet a few of your favorite pros, and you can hear yourself think over the noise of the crowd.

However, any show would be more fun if everyone followed these simple rules, which I will enforce when I’m named Queen: (more…)

drwho-leakvid-2587036

Random (Leaked) Video: Doctor Who in Monmouth… and Cybermen!

  • News
  • April 25, 2008

drwho-leakvid-2587036Earlier today, YouTube user AFRAIDOFSUNLIGHT1 posted video from the set of an upcoming episode of Doctor Who — possibly the next Christmas Special for the hit BBC science-fiction series.

The video features a pair of actors in and out of uniform as Cybermen, as well as some shots of David Tennant (The Tenth Doctor) rehearsing lines on the set and then filming (and re-filming) the corresponding scene with an unfamiliar partner. The video looks to be have been shot by an extra or bystander of some sort, as the video concludes with Tennant chatting up the people around the cameraman and signing autographs.

The YouTube user has disabled embedding of the video, so you’ll need to <a href=”

here to check it out. Remember: video clips play automatically when you view them on the YouTube site — check your volume before heading over there.

itsjustsomerandomguy01-3163960

ItsJustSomeRandomGuy and ‘Hi, I’m a Marvel… and I’m a DC’ at NYCC

  • News
  • April 25, 2008

itsjustsomerandomguy01-3163960It started out so innocently. Michael Agrusso made a silly video for his girlfriend. He thought it was too funny not to share, so he created a YouTube account with the username ItsJustSomeRandomGuy — just in case someone decided to sue. So began the Internet sensation “I’m a Marvel… And I’m a DC”.

Fast-forward a bit and not only has he not been sued, but some of the companies he’s lampooned have featured him on their official sites. Next thing you know, he’s got his own panel at the New York Comic Con.

Agrusso began the Saturday panel with a confession: He forgot to buy his girlfriend and co-producer of the videos, ItsJustSomeRandomGal, an airline ticket. His girlfriend was kind enough to her regards via YouTube, however.

The video side of Agrusso’s presentation continued with a DC-centric promotional film the New York Comic Con had commissioned that was created but not released on the Internet at the request of DC. Let’s just say Wonder Woman got hit on at the convention a lot.

The filmmaker then he announced that the series that grew out of his initial efforts, Marvel/DC Happy Hour, wll be launching its second season — with actual sets, special effects and bigger storylines. Same silly jokes, though. The first two-part episode of Season Two is posted after the jump:

(more…)

Podcast Feud: iFanboy Vs CAGcast?

  • News
  • April 25, 2008

It’s happened to all of us at some point. As a comic book fan you attend a convention with hopes of making a personal connection with a creator or personality you admire. Then reality shatters your expectations when you find that he or she’s, well… sort of a jerk.

Wombat, the co-host of the popular Cheap Ass Gamer podcast (aka CAGcast), is a well-known comic book fan and has gone off-topic on his show many times to talk about comics. It’s no surprise that the New York CIty native was planning to attend the New York Comic Con. In past episodes of the show, he’s mentioned that he enjoyed the iFanboy video podcast. So what happens when he spotted them on the convention floor?

According to Wombat, after introducing himself to the iFanboy crew, they promptly gave him the cold shoulder. CheapyD, the other CAGcast co-host, made the segment into a wickedly funny Internet video.

 

 

At the end, Wombat reports that Josh from iFanboy apologized and no hard feelings are held on either side.

Wombat, ComicMix Radio promises to never slight you — because now we’ve seen what happens!

 

 

Happy Birthday: Peter Sanderson

  • News
  • April 25, 2008

Born in Milton, Massachusetts in 1952, Peter John Sanderson, Jr. is proof that an obsession for comic books and consistency can be made into a viable career.

Sanderson is a comic book critic and historian, as well as a teacher at New York University (NYU). He is best known for his work with both Marvel and DC, helping each of those companies catalog their characters and continuities. Sanderson’s first professional job in the comic book industry—he had written for comic fanzines in the early 1980s—was reading every comic book DC had published since 1935.

That research was instrumental for both Marv Wolfman’s Crisis on Infinite Earths and Len Wein’s Who’s Who in the DC Universe. Sanderson then moved to Marvel, becoming their archivist and assisting with the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. He also wrote the Marvel Saga and Wolverine Saga limited series.

Currently, he writes the online column “Comics in Context,” reviews for Publishers Weekly, and teaches at NYU.

Manga Friday: Shoulder-a-Coffin!

  • News
  • April 25, 2008

This week, Manga Friday applies its lazer-like eye to one and only one book – luckily, this one is weird and confusing enough for any five regular volumes…

Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro, Vol. 1
By Satoko Kiyuduki
Yen Press, May 2008, $10.99

Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro is one of the few manga series I’ve seen with extensive color: about a half-dozen times in the first half of this book, a story begins with at least two pages in full color. That slows down as the book goes on, so I suspect this is done in Japan to launch “big” new series with a splash.

(I should also note that this probably hasn’t quite hit stores yet — the publication date is officially "May," which means it’s probably on trucks whizzing across North America right now. And "May" covers quite a bit of time, too.)

And, for those of us who have managed to train our eyes to read manga “backwards,” and have gotten moderately adept at that, Kuro throws us another curveball: it’s in 4-koma (four panel) style, so each page reads straight down the right-hand column and then straight down the left-hand column…unless one of the top tiers has a panel stretching across the page, in which case I have to read all the panels several different ways before I’m sure how it’s meant to go. Your mileage may vary, but do expect at least a few pages for your eyeballs to reboot on the new operating system.

And then, once I’d figured out how to physically read Kuro, I still had to work out what was going on. And that wasn’t easy, either. Kuro is the girl on the cover – she’s dressed up like a boy, and talks like a boy — so says the explanation; this may be clearer in Japanese — and thus people tend to assume she’s male. She’s also carrying a coffin, and refuses to explain exactly why. (It’s more likely to be for her than for whatever she’s looking for, though — that much is clear.) (more…)

Frank Miller: Comics ‘Strip-Mined’ by Movies

  • News
  • April 25, 2008

The Los Angeles Times just had a story about the boom in comics-to-film. In a recent six-week stretch, some 22 comics properties were optioned, the paper reported.

That includes Locke & Key, the supernatural thriller by Joe Hill for IDW (cover at right). While this is great news for many and illustrates the growing popularity of comics, not everyone is looking at the boom with rose-colored glasses.

"It’s accelerating because right now it’s fashion," says Frank Miller, who created the graphic novels behind "Sin City" and "300," and whose early-’80s series "Ronin," about a reincarnated samurai battling evil in a futuristic New York, is being adapted by Joby Harold ("Awake") for Warner Bros. "I think we can expect it to calm down. Comic books have always been this vast mountain range that gets strip-mined and left behind."

The main point of the story, though, is that one reason so many comics are adapted is that comics and graphic novels are substantially easier to read than screenplays. Miller calls screenplays the "single [worst] story form" and "unreadable."

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