Tagged: ComicMix

Bruce Timm offers New Insights

  • News
  • February 19, 2010

Executive producer Bruce Timm offers new perspective on the creation of Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, the latest entry in the ongoing series of DC Universe animated original movies,  and The Spectre, the inaugural DC Showcase animated short, in an all-new Q&A with the guru of super hero animation provided to ComicMix by Warner Home Video.
The full-length animated Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths on February 23 as a Special Edition 2-disc version on DVD and Blu-ray, as well as single disc DVD, and On Demand and Download. We will be reviewing this on Sunday.Timm, the executive producer has been the creative force behind many of Warner Bros. Animation’s modern-day successes, elevating DC Comics’ canon of super heroes to new heights of animated popularity and introducing generations of new fans to the characters via landmark television series and made-for-DVD films. The latter task includes the creation of the current series of DC Universe animated original movies, which have drawn critical acclaim and further whetted the public’s appetite for comic book entertainment.

Question: What excites you about Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths?

Bruce Timm: In a weird kind of way, this is a return to my favorite show Justice League Unlimited. The original script was intended to be the bridge story between Justice League and Justice League Unlimited to explain how we went from seven heroes to more than 50 super heroes. We loved the story and the script, and it floated around here for years while we tried to figure out what to do with it – it was considered for a comic, but fortunately that got shot down. Then we took a look at it and, with just a few slight tweaks, we jumped at the chance to make it a DC Universe movie.

Question: What sets it apart from the TV version of Justice League?

Bruce Timm: It’s a very satisfying, grand scale adventure movie with a big cast of interesting, quirky characters. It’s amazing how much it feels like a great episode of Justice League Unlimited as a big, epic film with slightly different visual stylings. That’s a good thing.

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Neil Gaiman to Edit Best Comics Collection

  • News
  • February 17, 2010

Houghton Mifflin announced the editor for their 2010 Best American anthologies. The well-regarded line of books continues with familiar names handling many of our favorite genres.ComicMix readers can start saving up for the Comics collection to be edited by Neil Gaiman.

Here’s the complete list:

The Best American Short Stories 2010: Richard Russo

The Best American Essays 2010: Christopher Hitchens

The Best American Comics: Neil Gaiman

The Best American Nonrequired Reading: Dave Eggers (guest introducer: David Sedaris)

The Best American Science and Nature Writing: Freeman Dyson

The Best American Mystery Stories: Lee Child

The Best American Travel Writing: Bill Buford

The Best American Sports Writing 2010: Peter Gammons

The Best American Noir of the Century: Otto Penzler and James Ellroy

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Happy 3rd anniversary, ComicMix!

  • News
  • February 10, 2010

Boy, it’s been a long three years. And that’s not even counting the months of prep beforehand. But on this day in 2007, ComicMix went live. (We were supposed to debut the day before, but went down for a few hours because of a previously undiscovered security hole. We went back up the next day, and we’ve been moving along ever since.)

Over three hundred and fifty comics installments and seven thousand posts later, we’re still at it.

There are a lot of people we’d like to thank– the hundreds of contributors and the thousands of commenters, our tech providers at CrowdFusion, our print partners at IDW, all the press people who’ve covered us and interviewed us, the wide and varied sources who feed us tips and stories both on and off the record, everybody who’s ever linked to us or retweeted a post.

Through the heartache and ulcers, the many many many late nights, and all the things that go along with creating in some of the most vibrant art forms ever created, we’re still at it. We don’t know what tomorrow may bring… but we’re glad you’ve been here for the ride.

Thank you for supporting us. We try to be worthy of your attention and your commerce.

2010 home entertainment preview: not what you will be watching but how

The future for home video in 2010 is taking shape
and as 2009 winds down, ComicMix, like everyone else, is looking ahead. The VHS
tape is gone, replaced by DVD and that too is now quickly getting replaced by
the Blu-ray. The Digital Entertainment Group says Blu-ray Disc set-top player
sales grew 112 percent over the same period last year. Blu-ray devices are at
the top of many consumers’ holiday wish lists this year are projected to be in
15 million U.S. homes by the end of this year.

With players now as cheap as $150, the penetration rate is
skyrocketing and the studios are cognizant of this. They also know that people
are reluctant to pay more for Blu-ray discs to replace their standard DVDs so
these new discs are coming in fancier packages and with lots of extras.

One of the key differences between standard DVD and Blu-ray
is that the BD Live function allows studios to continue offering fresh content
even after the disc goes on sale. McG, for example, did a live screening of Terminator Salvation with questions from viewers. As more filmmakers figure out
how to gain maximum mileage from this direct communications, it will keep the
Blu-ray more vital.

Over the past year, Walt Disney has been collecting their
films in two and three packs. Like most studios these days, you get the DVD and
a digital copy presuming you wish to download the film to watch on your device
of choice. Disney then added the Blu-ray, DVD, and digital disc to form the
mega set, so there’s just one version to sell to one and all – of course,
up-priced so the profits are fatter.

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‘Lone Justice: Crash!’ wraps up today in a double-sized finale

  • News
  • December 30, 2009

It may be a skip week for the rest of the comics industry, but not here at ComicMix, where we bring you the conclusion of a story over a year in the telling!

Read the giant-sized finale of Lone Justice: Crash! by Robert Tinnell and Mark Wheatley right now!

Or if you’re just joining us, start at the beginning!

And if you want to read it in paper, the first issue of Lone Justice will be coming out from IDW in February, followed by a trade paperback of the Harvey-nominated EZ Street in March!

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Review: ‘Logicomix’ by Doxiadis, Papadimitriou, Papadatos, and Di Donna

logicomix-1535552

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth
Written by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou; Art by Alecos Papadatos; Color by Annie Di Donna
Bloomsbury, September 2009, $22.95

Ever so often, there’s an object lesson that proves the saying so many of us like to make: that comics aren’t just for adventure stories, that they’re suitable for any kind of story. If we’re lucky, those paradigm-breakers are also really successful – and [[[Logicomix]]] is both of those things. It’s a major graphic novel on an unexpected topic – the life of Bertrand Russell, with a strong emphasis on his work attempting to create a solid foundation for mathematics, and thus all of learning – and it’s been quite commercially successful, alighting on bestseller lists occasionally and moving a surprising number of copies.

Logicomix, though, is also a piece of metafiction – the first character we see, on the first page of this graphic novel, is co-author Doxiadis, talking to the reader about this very story, and introducing us to co-author (and logician/computer science professor) Papadimitriou, and then to the art team, Papadatos and Di Donna, and their researcher, Anne. The authors and illustrators return to the stage – very literally, in one case at the end – several times in the course of the graphic novel, mostly to explain the details more carefully, and, occasionally, to lightly debate with each other about the meaning and import of the story.

After that bit of throat-clearing, Logicomix starts up in earnest…with another frame story, in which Bertrand Russell arrives to speak on logic at an unnamed “American University” on the eve of WWII, in 1939, and finds himself interrupted by protestors who want him to stand up unequivocally for pacifism, as he did during The Great War. Russell instead launches into his speech, which forms the narration boxes – and occasional interludes – for the rest of the graphic novel, as the panels depict first Russell’s youth and then his early mature years, as he worked on the foundations of logic.

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‘Terminator Salvation’ Ducati and DVD giveaway

  • News
  • December 5, 2009

The real winner of the summer movie sweepstakes may well be motorcycle manufacturer Ducati, which managed to have their sleek cycles appear in two of the box office behemoths: Terminator Salvation and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. In the latter, the Hypermotard merged with two other cycles to create the female Autobot Arcee.

In Terminator, the DVD of which went on sale this week, the film featured a Moto-Terminator, inspired by the Ducati Hypermotard 1100 bike. To celebrate this fact, Ducati, Warner Bros. and ESPN have teamed up to offer a contest, ending today. The winner receives a 2010 Ducati Hypermotard 796 Motorcycle, worth a cool $10,340.

To learn more about the cycle and how it was turned into a Terminator, check out the featurette on the DVD.

What? You haven’t rushed out to get it yet? ComicMix can help. Warner Home Video has given us a standard format DVD to award to one of our fans.

Here’s the deal: like the ESPN contest, we’ll give you until Saturday, midnight Eastern time, to post a comment in this topic using your name and e-mail address. We will select a lucky winner at random who will have the DVD mailed out in time for holiday enjoyment.

When Black Friday comes…

  • News
  • November 27, 2009

…you should just stay at home and read some of our comics, and if you need gifts, then order some wonderful books from ComicMix.

In fact, even if you don’t want our books (blasphemy!) click through anyway and help support ComicMix— a percentage of everything you order on Amazon will help keep the lights on here. Amazon has their own Black Friday sales, take a look.

Giving thanks

  • News
  • November 25, 2009

It’s that time of year again.

A time when you need to remember just how got you’ve really got it–
because no matter how annoyed or inconvenienced or sad you may be,
somebody else out there has got it as bad or worse.

Just consider that somewhere tomorrow:

Somebody will be missed at the table because they have to work.

Somebody was in that car accident that kept you stuck in traffic for an extra hour.

Somebody will be sharing dinner with someone who molested them– maybe earlier that day.

Somebody will be wondering how they’re going to pay for this dinner now that the job’s gone.

Somebody will be able to smell the turkey, but for the first time not be able to see it. Others won’t be able to hear the dinner
conversation. A few won’t remember the people that they’re eating with.

Some will have to make do with hospital food. Many of those folks will have to have help in being fed. Some won’t be able to keep their food down because of the chemo treatments.

Some families will have no kitchen to cook a dinner this year. Some have no homes to have a dinner in.

For many, this will be their last Thanksgiving ever. Some folks will
know it and savor what they can. Others won’t know it’s the last one
until it’s too late.

And somebody– too many somebodies– just won’t have any dinner at all.
For you and yours from all of us here at ComicMix, have a happy Thanksgiving. Be grateful for what you
have, mindful of what you have taken, and share what you can.

And even
though it may be hard to remember all this when you’re stuck on the
road, just remember– the traffic behind you is worse. Be thankful.

Review: ‘Gone with the Wind’ 70th Anniversary DVD

Since Gone With The Wind’s release in 1939, David O. Selznick’s adaptation has become one of the most hailed and loved feature films of all time. Adjusted for inflation, it remains today the number one box office champion with a total gross of $1,450,680,400. It deservedly won 10 Academy Awards and continues to be included in Top 10 lists with many catch phrases entering the public lexicon followed plus a score that is instantly recognizable.

On Tuesday, in time for your holiday shopping needs, Warner Home Video is releasing the 70th Anniversary edition of the film in a variety of formats. What was provided to ComicMix was the standard two-disc “plain vanilla” edition. We can tell you that it looks and sounds great and we suspect looks even more spectacular in its Blu-ray format.

Is there anything left to say about this beloved film? I had heard of it growing up but until HBO first broadcast it for the first time, I had no clue what the fuss was about. I still recall a bunch of us gathering at Beth Zemsky’s house to watch this spectacular without interruption and we were all caught up in different ways. For me, I enjoyed the sweep and spectacle, some of the performances and the nostalgic look back at a bygone era. The girls loved the romance.

In rewatching the film now, I find zero chemistry between Trevor Howard and Vivien Leigh, still befuddled over why she loved him. I also find it confusing to see how both Ashley and Melanie were so blind, in their own way, towards Scarlett’s spoiled rich girl ways. Only Rhett saw her for what she was and loved her for it. Rhett Butler is also the only one to see the South as an unsustainable culture and apparently the only man in the whole of the Confederacy to understand they couldn’t compete with northern factories. As a result, his decision to enlist towards the middle therefore makes no sense.

Honestly, the best character arc is Scarlett’s and there’s little more stirring than her return to Tara, seeing what had become of the lifestyle she understood and then declaring, set against a beautiful backdrop, she would never go hungry again. As the music swells and the intermission sign appears, you could have sent everyone home and they would have been thrilled. Instead, we get the second half which is far too melodramatic leading up to the immortal final scene.

Selznick spared no expense and the film is sumptuous, well cast and filled with enough extras to give it the sense of scale required for the needed emotional impact. From a technical standpoint, there’s not a single false note and the movie holds up during repeated viewings. SO, the bottom line comes down to the Margaret Mitchell novel and the characters adapted to the screen. If this is your sort of story then you can’t miss seeing the film. As for owning the new edition, that’s a subjective call. The new digital master seems superior to the last version but it’s the extras that will decide it for you.

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