Category: News

Let’s Go Burn Some Books, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • December 10, 2007

I haven’t seen the movie The Golden Compass, but I will, and soon. I don’t care if it’s a complete piece of crap – I want to see it because the Religious Right told me not to.

They say that sort of thing a lot. Here’s what pissed me off. They said the author of the books upon which the movie is based, Philip Pullman, is an atheist. They’re afraid that if your children like the movie, they might actually pick up the book and read it. Somehow, the book will destroy their belief in the unigod.

Now that seems a little paranoid to me, but even if it happens, well, damn, we sure don’t want kids to make up their own minds – overruling the evidently flimsy influences of their parents, their relatives, their pastors, and their friends just by reading a damned book, right?

This sort of thing frightens me. According to these folks, we live in a Christian nation, founded by good Christian god-fearing men who were really, really stupid when they built religious freedom into our Constitution.

I’ll tell you what scares me even more. Last week, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said, and I quote, “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.”  Say what? Historically, organized religion and its militant outreach has been an astonishingly awesome suppressor of freedom. That’s history, folks, and we’ve had a hell of a lot of wars, crusades, pogroms, inquisitions, cross-burnings, and Jihads to prove it.

“In recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning,” Romney went on to say. “They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America – the religion of secularism. They are wrong.” (more…)

ComicMix columns burn brightly

  • News
  • December 9, 2007

As some of us celebrate the Festival of Lights, it’s time once again to catch up with our ComicMix luminaries and see what they’ve brought us this past week:

Remember, don’t fill up on too many latkes and donuts!

Bourne Potter, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • December 9, 2007

I have a special relationship with Jason Bourne. But, before I elaborate on my entirely self-manufactured rapport, let’s establish something at the outset. Bourne (and/or 24’s Jack Bauer, for that matter) literally wouldn’t exist without James Bond. You don’t think that all their initials being “J.B.” is a coincidence, do you? In fact, the late author Robert Ludlum created the Bourne book series with the brilliantly simple and engaging high concept of “what if 007 got amnesia?”

   

So, perhaps I should rephrase my declaration: I have a special “bond” with Jason Bourne. Dr. No was the first “adult” film I ever saw. The Bourne Identity is the most recent movie I saw with my brother at a cinema. I saw its sequel, The Bourne Supremacy, on Christmas Eve, the last day of my first tenure as Santa Claus at the Danbury (CT) Fair Mall. Sitting alone in a dark hotel room as the snow fell outside, watching director Paul Greengrass’ frenetic, yet somehow followable, chases on a hotel’s small TV screen – prior to heading out for a Christmas celebration with my family – created an evocative memory.

   

Now there’s The Bourne Ultimatum, out this coming Tuesday as a single, non-special edition DVD. I originally saw the film at its New York screening, but truly appreciated seeing it again on an HDTV, since the DVD remote control allowed me to slow down the frenzied editing so I could truly enjoy the jigsaw-designed chases and hand-to-hand battles (especially a frantic fight in a cramped apartment where Bourne proves that the book is mightier than the knife).

   

Although it remains one of the worthiest second sequels in film history, I still found the DVD lacking for two small reasons. First, despite truly fascinating featurettes on the action sequences – “Rooftop Pursuit,” “Planning the Punches,” “Driving School,” and “New York Chase” – character building “deleted scenes,” which were excised when Greengrass decided that he was making a “violent ballet” rather than a character-driven drama, and a doc called “Man on the Move: Jason Bourne,” none (or all) of them really don’t communicate how agonizing the film’s production actually was. (more…)

Tippy Tacker’s Yuletide Travails, by Michael H. Price

  • News
  • December 9, 2007

tippy-tacker-1997-01-cover-7913124December of 1938 saw the arrival of an ad hoc comic strip called Tippy Tacker’s Christmas Adventure, signed by one Robert Pilgrim and distributed to the daily-newspaper trade by the Bell Syndicate.

The feature appears to have run its month-long course with little fanfare and only desultory, though complete, documentation of its passage. The microfilm archive in which I had found Tippy Tacker shows no advance promotion, no front-page come-ons, and no particularly prominent placement. The daily installments appear away from the formally designated Comics Page, plunked down at random amongst the general-news and advertising columns. Just a business-as-usual, matter-of-fact deployment, with no attempts to steer the reader toward a Yuletide-special attraction.

The piece came to light around 1990. I was rummaging through the files of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, my home-base newspaper for a long stretch, in aimless pursuit of who-knows-what. The Depression-era back issues had yielded considerable raw material for my contributions to the original Prowler comic-book series, along with motion-picture advertisements relevant to my Forgotten Horrors series of movie-history books. Robert Pilgrim’s Tippy Tacker cropped up during one such eyestrain marathon at the microfilm station.

Sometimes, obscurity alone is cause for a resurrection, even though many outpourings of the Popular Culture (“history in caricature,” as the novelist and cultural historian James Sallis puts it) will lapse quite deservedly into obscurity. But I happen to have built a career around the defeat of that Old Devil Obscurity — starting with the Forgotten Horrors books and progressing, or digressing, from there — and Tippy Tacker’s Christmas Adventure seemed to fit that pattern.. (more…)

Well, Not Quite Like A Virgin, a review by Mike Gold

  • News
  • December 8, 2007

If I were to tell you that a major British icon has returned, and you hadn’t read the headline above, what image would first pop into your head? Winston Churchill? The Union Jack? Pete Townshend?

Well, all those icons are still around, but I’ll admit that if I weren’t a comics fan, Pete jumping in his jump suit would certainly come to mind. But I am a comics fan, so that space in my filing lobe belongs to Dan Dare.

In case you didn’t know, Dan Dare was to the Brits what Superman is to Americans: their seminal comics hero. This makes Judge Dredd the Brits’ Spider-Man, which, to me, is a funny image. Sadly, Dan hasn’t fared quite as well as the Man of Steel, and he’s suffered through almost as many “reboots.” Created in 1950 by Frank Hampson, who drew most of the stories in that decade. A number of artists succeeded him, first and foremost the astonishingly talented Frank Bellamy. Since the Brits tend to favor (okay; favour) the anthology format, Dan Dare appeared in Eagle (after which the awards were named) and later in may different titles, including the birthplace of the “modern” British comics movement, 2000 A.D.; Dave Gibbons was among the artists on that venture. Much of his career has been chronicled in album reprints and he’s had his share of video games, audio dramas and spud guns.

Dare was a science fiction hero in the classic sense: perhaps more like Buck Rogers than Flash Gordon, but with the requisite sexless British stiff-upper lip. He’s been referenced in rock songs, and a band named itself after his Doctor Doom, a little green tyrant named The Mekon.

Okay. That’s the backstory. The new story is, Virgin Comics has leased the rights and relaunched the series, the first issue of which is on sale now. And it’s damn good.

This is no surprise. Garth Ennis and Gary Erskine are the creative team, under alternate covers by Bryan Talbot (pictured) and Greg Horn. Virgin honcho Richard Branson is a long-time fan and has also glommed onto film, television and video game rights. (more…)

For Better Or For Worse, Lynn Johnston Speaks!

  • News
  • December 8, 2007

For nearly three decades, artist Lynn Johnston has entertained millions with her daily For Better Or For Worse comic strip. Now, she has taken the already innovative property in a totally new direction – and she tells ComicMix Radio just what’s ahead. Plus

• Superman gets a new artist

• Dale Keown returns to Darkness… for a bit

• Another sellout for The Sword

• Meet the group that eventually became The Archies. Anyone remember The Detergents?

Hey! Lynn’s waiting to speak to you… so Press The Button!

Happy 57th birthday, Rick Baker!

  • News
  • December 8, 2007

Today is the birthday of one of Hollywood’s most employed make-up artists, Rick Baker. Baker made an impressive career start on The Exorcist, helping make the otherwise innocent Linda Blair into a believable demon. He went on to films like Star Wars, The Rocketeer, Men in Black, The Nutty Professor, Planet of the Apes, Hellboy and many, many others.

He was also the first person to ever win an Academy Award for Best Makeup for An American Werewolf in London (pictured here) and he’s won five more since.

I Pity the Poor Immigrant, by Martha Thomases

  • News
  • December 8, 2007

According to my reading of the nightly news (between 4 PM and 7 PM, we watch CNN, BBC, and NBC), illegal immigration is a huge issue as we go into the primary season for the various presidential nominations.  According to various estimates, there are as many as 12 million people living in the United States who are in the country illegally.  Some entered legally, as students or tourists, and didn’t leave when they were supposed to.  Others snuck in without going through the proper channels.

Neither party has a consensus on what its position is, but, to greatly oversimplify, the Democrats want to find a way to more quickly legalize the illegals while the Republicans want to deport them.

My opinions on the subject are greatly influenced by the comics I read now and read growing up as a child.  As a DC fan, I know:

  • Superman is an illegal immigrant (since granted citizenship), whose adopted parents committed perjury when they claimed he was their biological child. (more…)

Jon Sable Freelance continuity

  • News
  • December 7, 2007

Promoting a question from the comments on the latest installment of Jon Sable Freelance: Ashes of Eden, Lee Houston Jr. writes:

Okay… as usual great Mike Grell story and art, but it leaves me scratching my head because sadly I do not remember when this first appeared. When and how do Ashes of Eden and his guest appearance in Shaman’s Tears fit into the overall Jon Sable continuity?

That’s because Ashes of Eden is appearing here first, on ComicMix. It’s all new. Tell your friends. (Tell them it’s new GrimJack and Munden’s Bar stories, too.)

As for continuity — let’s see if I have this straight:

Since everybody asks, Marv Wolfman’s Sable series, while exceptional in many regards, is not part of Mike Grell’s continuity. Think of it as existing on Earth Sable2, if you must. Perhaps we can get Marv to write a story combining the two earths — no, because then someone else will come along and mess it up in 2017.

Besides, Marv’s Munden’s Bar story comes first.

Glenn Hauman is associate editor of Jon Sable Freelance: Bloodtrail, Jon Sable Freelance: Ashes of Eden (which he also colors), and of the IDW Sable reprints. He’s also production director of ComicMix, has had the thankless job of putting up with editor Mike Gold for about a decade (hey, thank you, Glenn!) and spends his spare time writing Star Trek stories and roaming the streets of eastern New Jersey.

gin-5066764

Manga Friday: Wandering Assassins

  • News
  • December 7, 2007

gin-5066764Manga are just as full of fossilized genres as any other popular media, as I’m coming to discover. A case in point is this week’s haul: three series, all from the same publisher, all of which can be vaguely characterized as being about a wandering assassin.

OK, I’m stretching the term too far with the first book, Gin Tama. Our title character, Sakata Gintoki, is a samurai on a near-future Earth economically dominated by aliens, where carrying a sword has been outlawed. He doesn’t actually go around killing people for money – though he will kill them along the way to doing other things, if they really deserve it – but instead works various odd jobs, which tend to require violence by the end. At the beginning of the book, he picks up a sidekick, our viewpoint character, Shinpachi – who was also trained to be a samurai, but has few skills and is in the book mostly to be the reader identification character (pop-culture- and food-obsessed, slightly overweight, glasses wearing – these Japanese creators know how to pander like no one’s business). They pick up a third member of their team in the middle of this volume, but I shouldn’t give away her secrets ahead of time.

Gin Tama doesn’t take itself all that seriously; it’s clearly a historical story (set in the Meiji period, more or less) moved bodily into a SF setting, with only minor changes to make things fit. And, like a lot of comics, it’s easier to enjoy something mildly silly if it knows that it’s silly – Gin Tama is quite aware that it’s quite generic, and quite hard to believe, but it’s ready to entertain anyway. I appreciate that, even if I find the winking at the audience and obvious melodrama a bit much. This isn’t the greatest samurai comic out there, but it’s a fun samurai comic that I don’t expect will ever get terribly serious, and there’ll always be a market for that.

(more…)

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