We preview this week’s new comics and DVDs and tell you how you can see some of the new television pilots, we reveal brand new Marvel mini-madness and tell you all about the return of Pirates without pirates, and we tell you what Joss Whedon is up to! Plus – the lowdown on Jimmy Olsen: will he really be the next Captain America?
The ComicMix Tuesday Podcast springs out of your computer… when you press this button:
As someone whose first reaction to the news about Bravo acquiring Television Without Pity was, "Uh, what’s Television Without Pity?", I greatly identified with, and applauded, this clever substitution of Captain America’s dialoge from a page of Civil War Frontline #11, wherein one Sally Floyd conflates pop-culture trendiness with actual American values instead of a weak parody thereof. Tetsubo observes, "note that Sally’s dialogue is unchanged and untouched." Domo arigato, Tetsubo.
Looking for that video of Stephen Colbert accepting the mantle of Captain America last night (apparently Marvel has just discovered the shield missing), or decrying the death of Steve Rogers in his Word segment from last Thursday? Don’t bother going to YouTube for ’em. Comedy Central’s parent company Viacom announced today that it has sued YouTube and its parent company Google, seeking more than $1 billion in copyright infringement damages.
The lawsuit was not exactly unexpected — last month Viacom demanded that YouTube remove more than 100,000 unauthorized clips after several months of talks between the companies broke down.
Considering the fight is about who can make more money "out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others’ creative works," so far it looks like, whoever wins, the fans might still be the losers.
With 300’s $70 million opening weekend, everyone’s eyes lit up. No one expected this number, with the best estimates at least $20 million lower. Now everyone is scrambling to read the tea leaves and try to understand what just happened.
A few thoughts from our corner of the universe. First, this will make 2007 the best year ever for comic book movies. There are six feature films scheduled for release this calendar year and I will guarantee you that combined, they will add up to huge box office receipts.
As a result, this will fuel future comic book-into-movie activity. It also makes Frank Miller a suddenly bankable name. Forget his work on Robocop 2 and look at Sin City and now 300. Once he begins directing The Spirit later this year, expect that to get onto a release schedule ASAP.
Projecting ahead, there are five more comic book movies have firm release dates for 2008 with at least two others penciled in (see schedule, below).
I’ve said all along that the comic book adaptations will continue until there are enough flops to sour Hollywood on the genre. This year opened with Ghost Rider opening to surprisingly huge numbers and then had legs. With 300, the reverse seems to be happening. I suspect production heads will fast track properties in the various studio pipelines and we’ll see one or two more movies added to 2008 and 2009 could possibly get jam-packed even though all that’s for certain that far out is the next Bryan Singer Superman release and Captain America.
Discussion about the death of Captain America probably won’t die down for awhile, and that’s just how Marvel likes it. But that doesn’t mean we can’t glean all the humor we can out of this event. To that end, in Episode 95 of The Fred Hembeck Show, the cartoonist presents a scenario wherein he sees dead people. Right said, Fred.
"But who will avenge him? If only there were a group of ‘avengers,’ if you will, organized for that purpose."
(Copyright 2007 The Onion)
One of the more interesting comments on Captain America’s passing was this from blogger Ari Emanuel on the Huffington Post:
"It’s hard to be a star-spangled Super Soldier these days. Given the lip-service-only support this administration gives our troops, the patriotic hero would have to fight evil with a substandard red, white, and blue shield, and be stop-lossed into an endless tour of duty.
"The only upside to the good Captain’s death? If he had survived his wounds, he might have been sent to Walter Reed."
But more to the point, this follows what we saw at the end of Civil War. Cap’s side was winning everything but the argument – and that was more demoralizing to him than anything else, that the people didn’t understand his point of view, and were happy to knuckle down to authority.
Cap’s death is relevant because now we get to have a real debate as to who we want as the symbol of our country. Who picks up the mask? Who gets handed the shield? Who will speak for America – and who should?
Expect a big debate on this, here on ComicMix and in the rest of the world at large.
Sources tell us that Joe Simon was interviewed for tonight’s episode of Nightline on ABC about his creation, Captain America. Check your local listings for times.
I got a note from a long time comic book reader on Wednesday. He was incensed that Marvel disgraced themselves by killing Captain America. Worse, they did it sneakily, without telling the retailers this was the issue so it sold out to the fan boys before the general public could see the bloody body for themselves.
Marvel certainly got a nice boost from the coast-to-coast coverage Captain America’s death received.
But, is Captain America – Steve Rogers – really dead?
It used to be that a death to a major character was a major event. Writers would find themselves running out of interesting stories to tell with a character and decided to shake up the title character’s life by killing off a familiar face. Spider-Man writer Gerry Conway has always said that’s why Gwen Stacy had to go.
That happened time and again, at both DC and Marvel and it made the fans uneasy, since you never knew what would happen next. That certainly helped sell comics for a while. Then, killing the title character seemed the next logical step. Jim Shooter and Jim Starlin helped pioneer that with the Death of Captain Marvel graphic novel and then there was the phone in stunt that saw Jason Todd, the second Robin bite the big one.
We at ComicMix are dedicated to bringing you as much stuff as we can, but we also know that means sometimes you miss things. We know you want tagging and site feed and comments and that’s all coming down the pike real soon, but in the meantime here’s your handy-dandy guide to the second round of entries by our regular columnists.
Look for Mike every Monday (in fact, his latest should be right below), Denny on Tuesday, me on Wednesday, John on Thursday, and Michael on Friday, and guest features on the weekend. For those of you who, like me, grew up with the Marvel superhero cartoons in the ’60s, that means Mike = Captain America, Denny = the Hulk, me = Iron Man, John = Thor, and Michael = Namor. (Hey, don’t knock it, that’s how I first discovered that Thursday was named after Thor!)
We also gave you a special "mother and child reunion" pair of featured columns this past weekend:
And our latest podcasts, hosted by Mellifluous Mike Raub, continue:
Happy reading and listening!
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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