We continue our visit backstage at NBC‘s FEAR FACTOR as Joe Rogan talks about the stunts he’d like to try, and how he still misses NEWS RADIO. Plus SHERLOCK 2 fails to save the Box Office but wait – here comes Tom Cruise.
Enjoy the Shlomones, “The World’s greatest Jewish Rock Band”, and their attempt to turn The Rocky Horror Picture Show from a Halloween to Hannukah classic!
And have a Happy Hannukah!
It’s been almost twenty years since Batman: The Animated Series hit the airwaves and kicked off the doors of what could be done with the character and with animation in general and television animation in particular, in the wake of the successful Michael Keaton movies.
Ever wonder what it might be like if they made The Animated Series today, in the wake of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight? Perhaps it would be something like this…
Just imagine if he made this using the Animated Series skins for [[[Arkham City]]]…
As a nice Jewish girl, I’ve always loved Christmas and Chanukah and Festivus for the rest of us.
We lived on a “not quite” cul-de-sac that had an island in the middle of the street. On that island was a huge old fir tree, and every holiday season all the “cul-de-sac’ers” would decorate it for Christmas. Yep, it was “National Brotherhood Week” on Hodges Place – I always wondered if the street was named for Gil Hodges of the Brooklyn Dodgers. I doubt it – this was on Staten Island, not Brooklyn – but it would make a nice story, wouldn’t it?
Anyway, my brother and I didn’t feel cheated in mid-December – like every snotty, young, selfish Jewish kid, Chanukah meant eight days of presents. And latkes ; potato pancakes for the uninitiated. But truth to tell, we also thought the story of the oil in the Temple miraculously burning for eight days was pretty cool, and the candlelight was so pretty. My brother and I didn’t lose on Christmas either.
Christmas Eve was when my mom took me, my brother, an done friend each into Manhattan for our annual visit to Rockefeller Center and the Christmas Tree, then to skate on the Rockefeller Center ice rink, then to Radio City Music Hall to see the movie and the Christmas show, then to walk down Fifth Avenue to see the fantabulously animated window, and finally to then meet up with our Dad at Macy’s, where we would all bundle into the car for a trip through the tunnel and home. And once at home, bathed and tucked into bed – with visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads – dad and mom would hang Lord & Taylor’s, or Saks Fifth Avenue, or Bloomindales or B. Altman ‘s (yeah, I’m that old) shopping bags for Santa to fill – I guess jolly ol’ St. Nick was kosher, but real stockings were trafe.
So here’re some suggestions for your shopping bags and/or stockings, trafe or not. Some political – hey, it wouldn’t be my column with at least one political comment, would it? – and some not.
With our troops “officially” coming home from Iraq – my girlfriend is in the Army and she knows soldiers who have gotten marching orders to Baghdad to help protect the nearly 20,000 “diplomats” who will remain in the Emerald City Otherwise Known As The United States Embassy, it’s time for you to really understand how the fuck we got involved there in the first place.
As for me? What do I want for Christmas, Chanukah, and Festivus for the rest of us? Oh, say, it’d be nice to part of the 1%, wouldn’t it? C’mon, you know you’d like it, too. I’m joking. (Or am I?) A guarantee that President Obama will have a second term, this time with a Congress that’ll work with him instead of demonizing everything about one of the smartest men to ever hold the office. Barring that, a Presidency for Hillary – and yes, I know she said she’s done with politics after winding up her term as Secretary of State. To write Wonder Woman again.
Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men.
Yeah. I like that one.
Ho, Ho, Ho!
TUESDAY: Michael Davis
Let’s see how long this stays up… either way, we’ll have the official release on Tuesday.
The Dark Knight Rises, the final chapter in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy starring Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy, and Michael Caine, will be in theaters in Summer 2012.
Like everyone else, I watch too much TV and see the occasional movie or read a book or two and I have my own reactions to them. Here’s some of what I’ve seen, good bad and indifferent.
Boss, on Starz starring Kelsey Grammar as a tough mayor of Chicago. I’m an old time Chicago boy and a series set in Chicago, dealing with its mayor, and using actual Chicago locations, will always attract my eye. I was so looking forward to this. However, by the third episode, I was taping it and I haven’t gotten around to watching those episodes and then I just stopped. I didn’t care. Too much melodramatic bullshit.
The main character, Tom Kane (obviously named for Tom Keane, a formerly very strong alderman in Chicago, later imprisoned), is diagnosed in the opening moments with some sort of brain disease that can’t be cured, can’t be operated on, and is going to mess him up royally before the end and, of course, he opts to tell no one. We never get a chance to see who he is without the disease; it’s part of what defines the character from the beginning. His wife is an ice queen although very supportive politically. They have a daughter who is now an (I think) Episcopal minister. The parents are estranged from her because she has also been a junkie in the past and looks like she’s going to be that way again. The mayor also has a young female aide who is pretty and has sex with inappropriate men apparently in semi-public places because, you know, ratings.
The creators have a good cast but they don’t apparently trust the setting enough to generate real material because they saddle it with all the nonsense above. You only have to look at political drama in Chicago and Illinois in recent years to find plenty of material. The prison bound Rod Blagojevitch alone could have been a stunning model for a TV series if some of his doings (real or alleged) didn’t appear so preposterous. He sounds too made up. He’s also a hell of a lot more interesting to me than Boss turned out to be.
You want something of Chicago that has real snap and bite? Max Allan Collins has released a volume collecting his Nate Heller short mysteries called Chicago Lightning. I recommended his Nate Heller novel, Bye Bye Baby, earlier and I’m equally enthused for this. It runs the gamut of Nate Heller’s career and is great reading. Highly recommended.
Anyone who knows me knows that I’ve gotten heavily into Westerns. I’ll plug myself by reminding folks that DC is releasing The Kents historical western miniseries that I wrote. It was originally done in twelve monthly issues and then gathered into a single TPB. This time they’re releasing it in three 100-page spectaculars, each gathering four issues (it was written that way, every four issues an arc). The first two of these are now out and the third will be out next month. Some of my best stuff, I think, and my artists – Timothy Truman and Tom Mandrake – have been my partners-in-crime for a long time.
Anyway, this is really a prelude to my looking in on AMC’s western Hell On Wheels. Another series I was looking forwards to and, again, I started taping it and then abandoned it. Very violent (which is okay but it seems violent for the sake of violence) and I haven’t gotten into the characters. You could spot who was going to be dead early on. It wants to be Deadwood which, even with its faults, was superlative. I may give it a try again at some point but I’m just not feeling drawn to it right now.
Finally, to end on an up note – Martin Scorsese’s Hugo. Saw it and loved it. It’s a love letter to the movies from a master film maker who loves movies. It drew me in from the opening frames. There’s a long tracking shots (who does long tracking shots these days? How many directors can?) that pulls you right in. I’ve seen some grumblings about its length and pace, but you won’t hear that from from me. Scorsese loves movies but he also loves story and he weaves a wonderful, rich, emotional story with a wonderful cast and an eye towards detail.
We saw it in 3-D and that’s how it should be seen. Simply one of the best uses of 3-D I’ve seen, and I’m including Avatar. This is what happens when a master filmmaker gets a new tool – not a gimmick, but a tool – and figures out how to use it. Every effect is to tell the story and make it more real, more immediate.
I also know a lot of people who are waiting to see it on DVD or their iPhones or iPads or whatever and that would be a mistake. It’s meant to be seen in a theater; if I could find it somewhere near me in IMAX, I would go see it that way. I’ll own the eventual DVD but it will simply remind me of the experience I had at the movie theater. That’s what Hugo was for me – an experience and one I’m so glad to have had.
All the above are just my reactions. Your mileage may vary.
MONDAY: Mindy Newell
This week’s Reviewing the Mail begins with a long-distance shout-out to Ellen Wright, who started at Wiley the first week I did, but has since moved up and on to working in Publicity with the fine folks at Orbit US. My pipeline of Yen Press titles — Yen being the manga arm of Orbit — had dwindled recently, probably because I hadn’t reviewed many of their books in that same period [1], but I now have a batch of them here, and I hope they’ll continue. (Though, again, I imagine I’ll need to review some of those books for Yen to want to keep sending me books — it’s really not difficult to see how this works, if you’re capable of consider other people’s point of view.)
So hooray for Yen, which will be the bulk of this week’s post. But, before I get into that, first comes the ritual explanation: this is all stuff, as you might have guessed, that came in my mail this week, all sent by publishers who hope I will review and love these books and thus urge all of you to buy and love them in turn. This is the crucial bit: I have not yet read any of these books, and it’s entirely possible (you should see the stacks of review copies I have!) that I won’t get to any specific book here. Thus, what I’m about to type at you is somewhere between an educated guess and a wild surmise, based on my prior knowledge and what these books themselves tell me when I examine them closely.
That’s enough preliminary blah blah blah; let’s see what Yen is publishing in December: (more…)
We were thinking of titling this tribute to Bill Watterson’s most famous creations “Just So We Can Get Peter David’s Hopes Up Again” but that’s horrible for search engine optimization. Enjoy.
Once upon a time there was a powerful Wizard who had evil in his heart. He saw the comic world as a place he could bend to his will. And for a time, publishing companies flocked to him as loyal lap-dogs. Their best artists and writers were doled out to him to make appearances at his traveling circus. He was gloriously powerful, but feared his mortality. Soon, his spells… terrible fluff charms with no bite or news illusions presented way past their prime… weakened his power. The Wizard flailed madly to stay relevant. The people of the comic world simply stopped paying attention. His power dwindled. His traveling circus became a geek show of tired acts. He was left with no choice. He took the few followers he’d kept a grasp on, and sucked their life force… and ran into the forest. And there he stayed, seething, and cursing the public for abandoning him. When a court jester dared make fun of him, he shot from the darkness! But the shot was less than even a first year spellcaster’s magic missile. It fizzled, and died before it could even hit. He-who-everyone-knows has quit magic altogether.
There was a time when the word “Wizard” was synonymous amongst comic book fans as a glorious thing. Wizard Magazine was the zeitgeist of the comic community. Wizard also put on amazing shows featuring top talent, insightful panels, and legitimately helpful workshops. And then the Internet became a thing.
Slowly Wizard became more and more out of touch. As comic book news was published more frequently, its articles became old hat by the time they reached print. The helpful price guide that anchored the last third of the magazine ceased to be of any value. And their shows? I think anyone who has long frequented my writings here know all to well that a Wizard Convention fell from grace harder than Lucifer. Most recently, Wizard shut down its publication arm. It took subscribers’ cash, refused to refund it, and started publishing an e-magazine. No one read it. It shut down too. And should the Internet be believed… the now resigned CEO, Gareb Shamus, perhaps attempted to get an artist fired from his day job for making a scathing webcomic about him.
Shamus reportedly attempted to get an artist fired from his day job for a webcomic published on The Gutters. No other details aside from the strip’s writer (and Gutter EIC Ryan Sohmer) are available, aside from his post on the subject. As he said:
“Should you find yourself the subject matter of a Gutters page, and take offense to it, don’t go after my artists. Should you be so offended that you attempt to get someone fired from their day job, don’t be a coward.
“Come after me.”
Let’s pontificate on this, shall we? If this is to be true, Gareb needs his head checked. Last time I looked, the Internet is a place built on the idea that anyone can say anything they want about anyone else short of legal slander or accusation of murder or rape. I don’t actually know if that’s true, but it sounds right, doesn’t it?
Perhaps Shamus forgot he once ran a magazine that sent quite a few barbs towards Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, and anyone else in the pop culture arena. Half the fun of Wizard, in its hey-day, were its jokes crammed in the margins and in word balloons to article’s pictures. And not once did I read of them getting reamed by Rob Liefeld for drawing pretty man boobs… let alone have an artist potentially fired for drawing a commissioned strip. It’s mind-numbing if this indeed happened.
It’s a sad tailspin the Wizard corporation seems to be in these days. I’ll be honest. I subscribed to their e-mailed magazine when it came out. I gave it three issues. And then it was junked, I unsubscribed, and moved on with my life. For all the good they used to represent, they simply never figured out a way to make their content current. Suffice to say with the utter glut of talent around the edge of this industry just waiting for a chance to write a nice op-ed piece, or jam on a funny strip… Shamus and company truly can’t see the forest for the trees. Well, I’m a nice guy.
And Steven Shamus was immensely helpful in getting Unshaven Comics into two very excellent conventions this year. So, here’s my good deed of the season; Wizard (are you paying attention?), here’s how you can fix your tattered reputation:
1. Have Gareb Shamus post an honest-to-Rao apology to the comic fans around the world. We need to know, in detail, why money was taken for subscriptions not filled, and nothing was done to even things up. We need an apology for promising content, and never delivering. If there’s a pool of people’s money sitting somewhere, you need to make it right. Take it, commission some jam pieces from the artists who still may like you. Better yet, get young, up and coming talent and commission them to do some great pieces. Then send that artwork to the former subscribers, with a big fat I’m sorry written on them.
2. Take the conventions you own and put them back in the hands of those who make the industry work. Ditch the aging wrestlers, and D-List sci-fi extras, and find a way to get back the creators who make these shows what they are meant to be… comic book shows. Not pop culture festivals. Mend fences with those you lost over the years. Comp them. Get them back into the buildings by any means necessary (like groveling)… so they can see their fans. Get them to interact in sketch-offs, trivia contests, and wicked debates. Make the conventions a place to be, and be seen; Not just an overgrown flea market, and autograph zone.
3. Take what resources you do have, and create timely content for other people’s more successful sites. The industry doesn’t need another Newsarama, Comic Alliance, Comic Book Resources, Bleeding Cool, or ComicMix. But all of those sites sure like a good article, a snappy comic, or relevant video. Create the content, release it for free, and excite the fans again. Earn back the goodwill you once had by doing what you should have done a while ago; Apologize. Work hard to earn back the trust and respect from the industry you took for granted, and produce something that stimulates the fan base… instead of pandering to your stock holders in an attempt to appear profitable.
We see through the spells, Wizard… and we know all your tricks already.
SUNDAY: John Ostrander
IDW Publishing announced today that Chief Operating Officer Greg Goldstein has been promoted to the position of president in recognition of his successes in helping grow the company’s business and presence in the industry. IDW co-founder Ted Adams will continue to drive overall strategy in his role as chief executive officer and publisher.
“With Greg’s help, we’ve been able to expand both the front list and back list of IDW’s publishing program,” said Mr. Adams. “I am excited about what the future holds for the company with Greg as president.”
With more than 20 years experience in entertainment, sports and video game publishing, Mr. Goldstein as president will continue to help expand IDW’s business, while maintaining oversight of the company’s day-to-day operations. Mr. Goldstein joined IDW in 2008 as the company’s first COO.
“Helping bring IDW to new heights has been very rewarding, both personally and professionally, and I am honored to take on this new role,” said Mr. Goldstein. “Each year at IDW has been better than the last, and I know we will continue that trend for many years to come, through our strategic expansion into new and growing categories, while increasing our core business of print and digital comics and books.”
As a company, IDW has grown impressively in recent years, expanding both its comics and book catalogs, and continuing its leadership in the digital space. Mr. Goldstein’s increased responsibility as president is part of the company’s strategy to explore potential acquisitions for growth.
“IDW has grown during each of the twelve years we’ve been in business to become one of the most successful publishers in the industry,” added Mr. Adams. “To further our success as a company, we are exploring new markets and potential acquisitions, and Greg’s role as president will allow me more time to focus on these avenues of expansion, while we continue to elevate our publishing program.”
The 2011 Eisner Award winner for Best Archival Collection/Project – Strips, Mr. Goldstein is a veteran transmedia entertainment executive with extensive experience in the publishing, interactive, and collectible categories, and tenures at Topps, Activision and Acclaim. A lifelong comics fan, Mr. Goldstein celebrated his 40th year of collecting last month, having attended his first comic book convention as a youngster in November 1971.
IDW Publishing is currently the print publisher of ComicMix.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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