Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! Danger Will Robinson! Alarums and excursions! Better watch out, better not cry, better not pout…Beware! Mayday! Here there be dragons! Detour, there’s a muddy road ahead…
Okay, enough of that.
What I’m warning you about is the ending of The Bourne Ultimatum, now playing at a multiplex near you, recipient of good reviews, maker of serious bucks and, in the opinion of residents of this house, a pretty good popcorn flick.
It would be silly if I didn’t enjoy being a comics and popular culture mini-mogel. It’s fun to have movie stars call you up; that just happened. Getting into movie screenings is swell. People give you cool stuff. I’ve been friends with Will Eisner and Dick Sprang, and Dick Giordano was at my birthday party last week. I get to work with my closest friends, with people I respect, and with folks with whom I am in awe. Coupled with my fantastic, loving family, I live out Randy Newman’s great song from 1983: My Life is Good.
Of course, Newman’s a bit sarcastic, but then again, so am I. But I prefer to think of me as edgy. Randy, on the other hand, writes songs for Disney movies. We all have our outlets.
And comics is one of mine. A big one. It’s been the thread that’s run through my entire life. I learned how to read by trying to decipher Pogo and Li’l Abner on the comics page of the Chicago Daily News. I left broadcasting in 1976 to work for DC Comics, and I’ve never looked back. It’s how I met my wife and daughter (figure that one out).
So now that I’ve turned 57, I once again find myself in the middle of another “summer” comics convention season. In the past couple months we ComicMix folk have been to, oh, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, Long Island, San Diego, Chicago, four or five different shows in New York City, and probably a couple I’m temporarily forgetting. I’ve still got Tarrytown NY, Baltimore MD, and Columbus Ohio to go this year, along with at least one other show in Manhattan. And one thought has been clattering against my brainpan for the last several weeks:
I’m really getting too old for all this.
Right now, I want to go see The Simpsons Movie and Sicko and the Bourne Whatever, and I want to sit down with a stack of comic books as tall as Glenn Hauman and just chill out and read ‘em.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. I’m whining. There’s a difference.
I love ComicMix, I love seeing old friends at these here conventions, and I truly enjoy meeting comics fans. But, right now, I don’t think we’ve got a show scheduled for October (I refuse to check) and, damn it, I’m going to go trick-or-treating and I’m going to go to a couple hockey games with my daughter.
You see, my life IS good.
Mike Gold is editor-in-chief of ComicMix.
The Big ComicMix Broadcast winds up Wizard World Chicago with a roll of the dice and an in-depth look at the many sides of the new gaming product previewed here at the show – from the new 24 game based on the TV show to a peek at the 40th Annual GenCon starting up ion just a few days. And did you know there is a red hot new pro wrestling organization that is on TV and toy shelves but isn’t spelled W-W-E? Then it’s a a quick shot from the Planet of the Apes guy from the day when he used to travel with a different bunch.
Roll The eight sided dice, kiss the wizard and PRESS THE BUTTON!
Wild Weather on the East Coast Friday stranded most of the Mondo Marvel panelists in New York (hmmm… wonder how ComicMix‘s E.I.C. made it out that evening), leaving Joe Quesada and C. B. Cebuliski to fend for themselves while sharing with the crowd images and news from upcoming Marvel projects.
One other panelist, Rob Liefeld, who was there to talk about his new Killraven series. Apparently thought up at a bar in San Diego last year, Liefeld and Rob Kirkman will be bringing us an all-new take on the charactertarting fresh and looking to integrate Killraven into the Marvel Universe of the future – a world where our heroes are gone but their artifacts remain, one piece of art had Killraven holding Captain America’s shield. Look for the book in mid-2008. Reminding us that the creators of comics were and are comics fans themselves, Liefeld took some time to talk about his love for the character (and his DC counter-part Kamandi) during his childhood, you could hear the 11 year old Rob coming through loud and clear.
Luke Cage is back in his tiara and yellow shirt now that writer/artist (and Cartoon Network legend) Genny Tartakovsky has gotten a hold of him. The new artist on Punisher War Journal is Corey Walker. Doing his first work for Marvel, Tan Eng Huat (Doom Patrol) will be the artist on the mini-series Silver Surfer: In Thy Name, to be written by Simon Spurrier (2000 A.D.). I wonder if that news blows the ending of the current Silver Surfer mini.
Up next for Paul Jenkins will be a limited series drawn by Paul Guluay called Penance: Relentless about “the most hated man in America.”
Quesada and Cebuliski also said there are some big shake ups (an end?) coming to the Ultimates Universe by year’s end, and we’ll be seeing the "real" Nick Fury back in action next year.
Once again we’re away from Second City comic book happenings here in the First City, but at least we can all share Chicago nickname puns as well as the Perseid meteor showers this evening from pretty much wherever we live. That, and the ComicMix columns from this past week:
As you might expect, Mellifluous Mike Raub is in attendance at WizWorld Chicago, meaning more Big ComicMix Broadcasts than usual:
The interesting thing about many vacations is how much you want to do at the beginning and how little you’ve done at the end. Mine has gone according to plan in terms of reading (see my column linked above) but not writing. Ah well, maybe next time…
You just can’t live in Texas if you don’t have a lot of soul, as Doug Sahm would have it. No, and you can’t live in Arizona if you don’t have a sense of Yuma.
But we were talking about Texas, where you also just can’t live without an immersion in the lore of Billy the Kid. Folklore and pop-fiction, that is, as opposed to factual knowledge or even perceived truth. By the time of the post-middle 20th century, such mis-familiarity had so thoroughly outstripped the facts in the case of this most notorious badman that most of the B.T.K. legendry bombarding the youth of America – and not merely the Texas / New Mexico Plains region – came not from Texas, but rather from Texas as filtered through the movies and the comic books.
For years on end, my most vivid images of Billy the Kid came from Toby Press’ Billy the Kid Adventure Magazine (29 issues, spanning 1950 – 1955 and boasting efforts by the likes of Al Williamson, Frank Frazetta, and Harvey Kurtzman) and from the after-school telecasts of an extensive run of low-budget movies starring, by turns, Bob Steele and Buster Crabbe. At a turning-point for such awareness, while visiting Northwest Texas’ Panhandle–Plains Historical Museum with the folks, I noticed a display containing this document:
Tascosa Texas
Thursday Oct 26th
1878
Know all persons by these presents that I do hereby sell and diliver [sic] to Henry F. Hoyt one Sorrel Horse Branded BB on left hip and other indistinct Branded on Shoulders, for the Sum of Seventy five $ dollars, in hand received.
[Signed] W.H. Bonney
Witness
Jos. E. Masters
Geo. J. Howard
“You know who wrote that, don’t you?” asked my Dad. “Your teevee-cowboy hero, Billy the Kid – that’s who. Billy Bonney.
“Except he wasn’t any teevee hero,” Dad continued. “More of a juvenile-delinquent punk, if you ask me.”
“They had juvenile delinquents in 1878?” I asked in reply, missing the point altogether. I was sufficiently flabbergasted by the revelation that Billy the Kid had been a Real Guy – or that the movies and the comic-book series (both loosely conceived and dense with internal contradictions) could claim a basis in fact – to find myself at a loss for words as to this larger issue.
The right words would occur to me later. My father had heard at first hand some harsh accounts of Billy’s dealings, via a Depression-era acquaintance with Elizabeth “Frenchy” McCormick (ca. 1852–1941), last survivor of the long-abandoned frontier settlement known as Tascosa. So Dad and I had plenty to discuss – my Hollywood-and-funnybooks perception, vs. Dad’s owlhoot-punk opinions. (more…)
Day Two at Wizard World has presented us with a lot of cool stuff to bring you on the Big ComicMix Broadcast— starting with an adorable lady who is putting her heart and soul into her love of comics and producing her own work completely on her own. Then Battlestar: Galactica‘s Richard Hatch unveils his newest passion project, The Great War of Magellan , and we give you a chance to work with him on the development of the concept! Then there’s a tip on how you can be your own comic book star – and a trip back to when there was a group on the charts whose front man was doing the pirate things a long time before Johnny Depp!
Ready to work with Richard? Then PRESS THE BUTTON!
Summertime, and the livin’ is easy. Fish are jumpin, and the cotton is high. Or so I’m told. Living in a major metropolitan area in the twenty-first century, I have to take such things on faith.
This summer, the fun times for someone like me are largely political. The presidential election is over a year away. The first primaries are six months away. Nothing is going to be decided any time soon, so I can pretend it will all turn out for the best.
I spent the summer I was 15 going “clean for Gene,” campaigning for Eugene McCarthy, who was running against Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic nomination on an anti-war platform. Four years later, I ran as an alternate delegate for George McGovern. Four years ago, I nearly got arrested outside the Republican convention up the street from here. Presidential campaigns are fun!
Which is not to say they couldn’t be much more fun. The problem is that presidential candidates tend to be politicians. They spend all their time hustling campaign funds, writing policy, and meeting the public. They go on the Sunday morning news shows and show how serious they are. They go on Oprah or The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to show they’re regular folks who can take a joke.
They don’t save the world from alien invasions. They don’t even fight crime.
Presidential campaigns would be a lot more fun if, instead of Republicans versus Democrats, it was Marvel versus DC. For example debates between:
Captain America and Superman on immigration reform.
Luke Cage and John (Green Lantern) Stewart on affirmative action.
Thor and Wonder Woman about the separation of Church and State.
Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne on the inheritance tax.
Storm and Aquaman on global warming.
The Punisher and Batman on prison reform.
Professor X and Green Arrow on family values.
The Avengers and the Justice League on national security.
Today the Big ComicMix Broadcast is at Wizard World Chicago, where the US Post Office kicked off the way by unveiling the Marvel Stamp Collection, plus the debut of the Ultimate Spider-Man Project from the Hero Initiative which was unleashed here as well. DC dropped a few news bombs which we cover and then there’s a new Venom series to talk about from Marvel and so much more.
PRESS THE BUTTON now so we can dish!
Perhaps the coolest event in Chicago at the start of this year’s Wizard World involved costumed characters and big cars, but it wasn’t at the convention center. It was downtown, right in front of the offices of the Chicago Tribune.
Yes, Li’l Oscar got a ticket.
Illegal parking. $50.00 fine. Damn, how many quarters would it take to feed the meters?
Matt Smith of Chicago’s Streets and Sanitation Department told the Tribune they could have towed the big weiner. "We have access to tow trucks that could have handled a Polish sausage, not just a hot dog." Ah, but would they tow an Italian Beef sandwich?
Thanks to the Tribune’s Charlie Meyerson for the lead, and thanks to Jamie Brockett for the joke. Photograph copyright 2007 Chicago Tribune, All Rights Reserved. With mustard and onions. The author is about to jump on an airplane and fly to Chicago for one of those fantastic Italian Beef sandwichs, and, oh, some sort of convention.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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