Tagged: DC

59, by John Ostrander

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  • April 24, 2008

Numbers represent. They don’t really mean.

Any meaning associated with numbers – or words for that matter – are what we assign to them. My social security number identifies me to the government but it’s not who I am. It has importance, yes, and if unscrupulous people get a hold of it, it can have a terrible impact on my life. It is not, however, my life. The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. The road map is not itself the road.

I turned 59 last Sunday and I’ve asked myself “What does that mean? Am I different in any essential way than I was on Saturday?” No. “Do birthdays have meanings?” If we give them some – yes. I like to celebrate the birthdays of those close to me more than I like to celebrate my own. I celebrate the fact that they were born, that they entered this world, and I get to be a part of their lives. I don’t dislike my birthday; I don’t have a problem with having one. I am thankful for the thoughts and good wishes expressed and any excuse to have a double chocolate cake is a good one.

The real use to me of my birthday these days is a bit more meditative. The number 59 has meaning in context with numbers 1 to 58. They are mileposts in my journey thus far. Milepost thirty-three – my first published comic book work. I remember that because I was pleased to be a rookie at anything at 33. Milepost thirty-eight – I married Kim Yale. Talk about being a rookie! Milepost forty-seven – Kim died and the world collapsed only to begin again a few mileposts later with Mary Mitchell. Life goes on. Death gives way to new life. (more…)

NYCC Kids Report: Archie Comics Panel

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  • April 23, 2008

[Editor’s Note: There was a big emphasis on kids at this year’s New York Comic Con, with a sizeable chunk of Sunday’s programming geared toward the youngest of the comics-reader age bracket. While we consider ourselves a pretty young-at-heart crew, we thought it best to go to an actual member of the event’s target audience for this report on Sunday’s kid-savvy "Growing Up With Archie" panel. The author of this report (with a little help from our own Martha Thomases) is Lillian Baker, daughter of popular writer/artist Kyle Baker, and an aspiring artist in her own right. -RM]

We attended Sunday’s presentation by Archie Comics.  The room was nearly full, with lots of girls sitting next to their mothers.  The panel included Archie Comics editor-in-chief Victor Gorelick, publisher Michael Silberkleit, managing editor Mike Pellerito, artist Dan Parent, creators Barbara Slate, Fernando Ruiz, Misako Rox and ComicMix’s own Andrew Pepoy.

After a slide show that presented Archie and his friends through the ages (including a character named Wilbur we had never seen before), Mr. Silberkleit said that parents can trust Archie Comics to always tell good stories.  He let everyone introduce him or herself (Mr. Gorelick has worked at the same company for nearly 50 years!) and talked about some new projects, including a new look for Jughead and a series called Archie’s Freshman Year.  He said there would be stories about the characters applying for college, too.

Since Archie has been around more than 60 years, we asked, "Shouldn’t they be old geezers asking for pills instead of going to college?”  Mr. Silberkleit asked if anyone wanted to read those stories, and only a few people said, “Yes.”

We also asked, “Why do Betty and Veronica like Archie so much?  He’s the nerdiest guy in the school. He drives a crappy car.  He doesn’t have any money.  He doesn’t look great and he has freckles and crosses on his head.”  Dan Parent said all of this gave hope to him when he was a kid.

They talked about a bunch of new series, including Riverdale Jones and the Temple of Food.  The company is also publishing a “Who’s Who” of the MLJ superheroes, such as The Shield, The Fly and The Web.  Andrew Pepoy is doing a new Katy Keene graphic novel that will be out in August. There’s also going to be Archie’s Vault, which will reprint all the old stories, like the DC Archives.

The stories look like they’ll be fun, and you can find them at newsstands everywhere.  You can also find them at places like Wal-Mart.

Our thanks go out to Lillian for providing this special report from the show!

New York Comic Con: The Brain-Dump Roundup

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  • April 23, 2008

Here we are, two days after the beast that is New York Comic Con settled back into hibernation, and all that’s left of the big show are piles of discarded promo cards, comics with dinosaurs fighting tanks, and a bunch of skrull masks missing their rubber-band straps. Welcome to my post-NYCC highlight reel, folks.

All things considered, the convention was a fine time. Sure, the bar was set pretty low when you consider the debacle of the first NYCC show, but even when one adds all of the other recent conventions to the frame of reference, this year’s NYCC fared pretty well. With a few exceptions, it felt like just the right level of crowd — not packed to an uncomfortable San Diego Comic-Con level, but not the empty, depressing little ghost towns of Wizard World Texas and Philadelphia. The creators I spoke with seemed happy about the show, too. They weren’t hustling to cover the cost of their attendance or feeling frazzled by crowds, contradicting policies or inevitable scheduling issues that pop up at these types of events.

Friday was manageable, Saturday was tolerable and Sunday was actually somewhat relaxing. The temperature allowed attendees to dress comfortably — no winter jackets to increase the sweat level once you enter the building, and no oppressive heat outside to raise the humidity levels before you even reach the front door. The big programming dust-up on Saturday, in which a perfect storm of late-running panels and big-name guests prompted the convention staff to close the panel area for a short time, was the only major problem I had with the show — and only because it made me slightly late to the panel I planned to attend. (more…)

We Become What We Deserve To Be, by Elayne Riggs

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  • April 23, 2008

It’s now been three days since NY Comic Con 2008 ended, but I had to save my con report until now because it usually takes me this long to fully recover and gather my thoughts. The older I get and the more convention time I’ve logged, the more a few patterns begin to present themselves, and this con pretty much ran the gamut for me.

Friday was our longest stint at the con, and is pretty much a blur to me now. I’d had no set plan other than touching base with the ComicMix office and wandering around Artists’ Alley to see friends, but I was determined to give the exhibition hall as thorough a perusal as possible during the "trade only" portion of the con in the morning. But between the non-comics media stuff and the dealers in which I had little interest, it all ran together far sooner than I’d expected, and I quickly found myself in "seen one, seen ’em all" mode, wishing I’d prearranged specific meetups with blog friends and such. Thing of it was, though, I wanted to wing it. I’ve had to insert so much structure into my life what with the job search that I just wasn’t up to organizing anything having to do with fun, leisure activities.

Speaking of organization, I should mention that this was hands-down the best run NYCC yet, even with the reported surge in attendance. The volunteers were helpful without being intrusive, polite to a fault (one even asked if we needed help finding anyone in Artists’ Alley) and extremely professional. What a total pleasure! We saw a queue on Friday to get into the Javits, but nothing like the chaos of previous years. And here I must confess that part of the reason we may have seen only the sunny side was that we’d decided to truncate our time on Saturday and Sunday to about four hours rather than the entire day.

We have to face facts — these days, even in our home town, a full convention day takes a lot out of us, between all the walking and the hour-plus bus rides (which turned into two hours going back, as the crosstown bus from the Javits tended to arrive at Sixth Avenue moments after our express bus departed, leaving us to wait another 30 minutes for the connection). We’re not about to keel over or anything, we make it up and down the two flights between our apartment and the sidewalk just fine, but neither are we cut out any longer for the more frenzied activity we could handle ten years ago. (more…)

NYCC: ‘Webcomics: Threat or Menace’ Panel Report

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  • April 22, 2008

I’m not certain whether anyone determined if webcomics were a threat, a menace or a combination of the two during Saturday’s "Webcomics: Threat or Menace" panel at New York Comic Con, but it was a lively discussion all the same.

Gary Tyrrell of Fleen moderated a panel that featured an intriguing spectrum of webcomics interests, consisting of Rich Stevens (Diesel Sweeties), Robert Khoo (Director of Business Development for Penny Arcade), Richard Brunning (Senior VP and Creative Director for DC) and Jeremy Ross (Director of New Product Development for Tokyopop).

The discussion kicked off with a hard look at the definition of webcomics found in the convention programming schedule, and its curious (one would hope, tongue-in-cheek) view on the potential effects of the webcomic evolution:

There’s a dizzying array of different models for delivering comics over the Web, from Webcomics, to PDFs for a fee, to ad-supported PDFs, to PDFs as promotional tool, and behind it all is the backdrop of illegal file sharing of comics. Are comics on the Web going to be a tool to increase the popularity of paper products, an alternate distribution channel that takes sales from retailers and circulation from libraries, or a threat to legitimate channels as illegal downloads grow?

While all of the panelists agreed that the definition and potential implications of webcomics in the booklet left quite a bit to be desired, that was pretty much the only point at which everyone was on the same page with regard to webcomics, where they’re headed and what the ripple effect might be for print publishing. (more…)

Superman Blue … Archie Orange, by Mike Gold

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  • April 21, 2008

In the comments section of my column of two weeks ago, I told Van Jensen that today’s broad spectrum of color could not be printed on the cheap toilet paper employed in the days of yore. That stuff would soak up ink like a spirit gets sucked into Harold Ramis’s ghost trap. Back in those days just after the invention of papyrus, color artists were limited to a palette of three values each of red, blue and yellow, plus black. Not a lot to work with.

Still, as Van implies, the end result was fine. It didn’t bother us, just as riding a horse to work didn’t bother us. Except… except … it bothered me.

To be specific, blue hair bothered me.

I understand why hair was blue: if it were black, it’d just look like Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne had a big blob of India ink atop their brainpans. You couldn’t make it look like hair, and not everybody could have brown, red, or blonde hair. The blue stuff was supposed to suggest highlights, but with a few dozen colors to choose from, what can you do?  (more…)

Happy Birthday: John Ostrander

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  • April 20, 2008

Born in 1949, ComicMix creator/columnist John Ostrander loved comics from early on but initially followed a different love: religion. Raised Roman Catholic, Ostrander wanted to become a priest and attended a year of seminary before deciding it wasn’t right for him. Instead he turned to acting.

Ostrander was part of a Chicago theater company in the early ’80s, and in addition to acting he co-wrote a play called Bloody Bess with William J. Norris. ComicMix Editor-in-Chief Mike Gold was starting First Comics at the time and had seen and liked the play—he knew Ostrander was a big comics fan and invited him to try his hand at writing comics. Ostrander wrote several stories for First’s Warp series before creating the character of GrimJack.

By the time First Comics closed in 1991, Ostrander was working for other comic companies as well, and he continued to do so. He has written The Spectre, Firestorm, Justice League of America, and Wasteland for DC, X-Men, Heroes for Hire, and The Punisher for Marvel, Lady Death for Chaos!, Eternal Warrior for Valiant, Star Wars: Republic for Dark Horse, and many many others. Ostrander has also written audio plays and short stories, and he currently writes for ComicMix, producing both a regular column and new issues of  GrimJack and Munden’s Bar.

ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending April 21, 2008

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  • April 20, 2008

Welcome to all New York Comic Con attendees discovering ComicMix via our coverage and con presence!  Do stop by Conference Room 10 (mid-level by the bathrooms and Kinko’s sign) to say, "hi," pass along news tidbits and so forth!  In the meantime, as Rick Marshall mentioned in Friday’s "The Changing Face of Online Journalism" panel, one of the things that makes any comics site standout is its unique columnists, of which we have many.  Here’s what we’ve written for you this past week:

Oh, and happy Passover!  Rumor has it that Danny Fingeroth will have chocolate macaroons at the "Disguised as Clark Kent" panel at noon today…

NYCC: The New ‘Dark Knight’ Trailer

  • News
  • April 20, 2008

It was Day 2 at New York Comic Con and fans were practically jumping out of their seats with excitement as DC Comics Prez. Paul Levitz announced they would be getting to see, for the first time anywhere, the brand-spankin-new trailer for Batman: The Dark Knight. Unfortunately, Levitz told us we can’t tell you what happened in it, who appears in it or pretty much describe it in any way, shape or form on penalty of severe punishment.

However, here at ComicMix, we have no fear — plus, other sites like Wizard Online have already posted info on the trailer —  so we’re going to give you at least something to make you wish you’d been here at the Jacob Javitz Center in New York to see it.

What we can tell you is that it contained footage not seen before featuring several characters that have not appeared in past trailers for the film. Also, it has a lot of action, fights, bad guys, good guys, politicians and several things explode in extra cool ways. Plus, there’s a certain white-faced bad guy who makes several more appearances in this new trailer and we also get to hear him speak a lot more as well.

All in all, a very nice addition to the current lineup of trailers and other info for the movie.

As soon as we can give you more details about the film and the trailer itself — which is scheduled to be released in about two weeks — we’ll bring it to you.

Batman: The Dark Knight is set to hit theaters July 18.

NYCC: Vertigo ‘Welcome to the Edge’ Panel – Getting Bullish on Grant Morrison and Seaguy

  • News
  • April 19, 2008

vertigo_logo-6314305

When you attend some of these publisher panels, you’re usually shown a few slides and given a brief description of upcoming titles — kind of like someone reading the Diamond Previews catalog out loud. So, instead of just parroting the entire affair, I’ve assembled an account of what you need to know  about Friday’s "Vertigo: Welcome to the Edge" panel at New York Comic Con.

Before we get started, I just want to note that the room was surprisingly packed. Being a fan of the Vertigo Comics imprint, I’ve attended a few of these over the years and they’re usually well attended, but not crowded. Maybe this one is the exception because New York is the home of literati?

Here are my notes from the panel:

Karen Berger, Executive Editor of Vertigo Comics, takes the stage. Instead of introducing the panelists in order, she starts with Grant Morrison in the middle. The benefits of being a comic book rock star, eh? Introductions follow with Amy Hadley, G. Willow Wilson, Joshua Dysart, Jason Aaron, Brian Wood, Brian Azzarello (big applause, even a few yells), David Tischman and Russ Braun. Mark Buckingham arrives just in time and gets a big reaction out of the audience.

House of Mystery – Berger explains that this project will not be an anthology. It’s about a waitress stuck in a mysterious house with strangers who tell their stories, illustrated by a different artist every month. So basically it is an anthology — with a framing device. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…

Madame Xanadu – The mystic DC character finally receives an origin. Since she’s nigh immortal, her stages of life take decades. Puberty must’ve been hell. [Sidenote: This news was responsible for Olivia Newton-John’s "Xanadu" getting stuck in everyone’s head later at the ComicMix HQ.

(more…)

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