Tagged: ComicMix

About the 2009 Eisner Award nominations…

  • News
  • April 8, 2009

Now that the 2009 Eisner Award nominations are out, we’d like to again congratulate all of the nominees– but we’d like to also take a moment of your time and explain why we aren’t among them.

It’s really simple– we didn’t submit anything for the Eisner nominations this year.

This probably comes as a surprise to a number of our fans, and certainly all of the talented folks that work for us and created award worthy pieces. No, we didn’t even submit EZ Street, even though it got a Harvey nomination for 2008 as Best Online Comic.

The reason is shown in the photo to the right of the Eisner judges. See the big guy with the glasses on the far right? That’s Andrew Wheeler. He does a lot of reviewing for us here at ComicMix, and we’ve paid him for them. Filthy lucre has changed hands.

We were as surprised as he was when he was selected for the judging panel– and we knew immediately that we were in a potential ethical bind. Could we submit work without putting Andrew in a bind? Heck, there’s a category for which Andrew is indirectly eligible, Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism. And yet, we couldn’t in good conscience ask Andrew to recuse himself; he’s a damn fine reviewer and that’s why we love him, and a look at the nominations makes you realize exactly how good he is. But if we were nominated in any category, it would call Andrew’s impartiality into question and taint the awards.

Ultimately, we just decided to give this year’s Eisners a pass, rather than let there be even a hint of impropriety. We’re sorry that this unfairly penalizes our creators, but we didn’t see a better way.

So once more, congratulations to all the nominess. And we’ll see you this year at the Harvey Awards… and watch out for us next year in San Diego!

I-Con 28: ‘Under the Radar: Comics You’re Missing’

  • News
  • April 7, 2009

alien-loves-predator-3955576Among the exciting adventures at I-Con was a panel titled "Under the Radar: Comics You’re Missing." The panelists (Carl Fink, Bob Greenberger, Glenn Hauman, Andy Weir, Bernie Hou, and me) and attendees came up with the following list, which we promised we’d post for reference. You should check them out if you aren’t reading them already:

Webcomics:

Print Comics:

Of course, the real takeaway from the panel was that you should be getting your comics news and reviews from ComicMix.com!

Glenn Hauman To Leave ComicMix

  • News
  • April 1, 2009

ComicMix co-founder, production manager and news site scribe Glenn Hauman will be leaving his position at the end of the week to focus on his growing career as a male nude model.

"I’ve been offered a stimulating position out in Long Island," Hauman stated, "and like all native Long Islanders I long for the opportunity to return. And I really mean long."

Glenn had been debating this prickly decision for some time. "I enjoy comics and I can tolerate my partners, but let’s face it — I won’t be young and handsome forever, and I owe it to humanity to squeeze every last drop out of my nature-given charms." Word has it he’s in negotiations with the renown Flava-Punisher agency.

In response to this announcement, ComicMix editor-in-chief Mike Gold stated "Are you kidding me? The guy’s 40! He can’t bend over, let alone dance! Good luck with this one, pal!"

 

NPR’s Studio 360: ‘Watchmen’ in pop culture

  • News
  • March 6, 2009

This week on NPR’s Studio 360, you’ll be hearing a roundtable discussion between Farscape comic writer Keith R.A. DeCandido, Star Trek author David Mack, comic book historian Alan Kistler, ethicist Alexandra Honigsberg, editor Jeness Crawford, ComicMix contributor Kim Kindya, and yours truly, discussing Watchmen and its impact on pop culture. It’s wide ranging and a lot of fun. Take a listen:

 

It’s midnight — ‘Watchmen’ reviews & open thread

  • News
  • March 6, 2009

"At midnight, all the agents
and their superhuman crew
go out and round up everyone
who know more than they do."

It’s finally midnight. The movie is now in the hands of the audience. So tell us what you like about it, what you didn’t like about it, link to any reviews, tell us if there were any cool trailers, is it worth seeing in IMAX, etc. Assume there be spoilers ahead.

And just to sweeten the pot, we’ll give one of these now-collector item tickets of the preview screening from the MoCCA exhibit "The Art of Watchmen" to the person who provides, in the opinion of ComicMix, the most thoughtful comment in the thread. The comment has to be in by March 15th, which should give you plenty of time for multiple viewings.

So go ahead. Show us that you know more than we do.

Interview: The scans_daily moderators

  • News
  • March 4, 2009

livejournal-logo-8165535With all the hullaballo as to what happened to scans_daily, we decided that we should hear from as many of the players as possible, especially the ones who have been silent so far. We’re still waiting on an official statement from LiveJournal, but we have been in contact with two of the moderators from the former scans_daily group, "Stubbleupdate" and "Rabican", and they’ve graciously responded to our questions.

ComicMix: What do you know about the circumstances of the shutdown? Has LiveJournal told you what prompted the shutdown? Were you given any warning, or any ability to address the situation?

Stubbleupdate: I crawled out of bed on Saturday morning (which meant that the community would have been deleted late evening/night on Friday, America time) and saw that my inbox had a lot of LJ friends requests from people on the community. I get that sometimes, but four overnight is unusual. They all wanted to know where the community had gone, which is the first that I had heard of it. A lot can happen in six hours on the internet.

There was also an email from the LJabuse team telling me that the account had been permanently suspended. That was it. LJ tends to take a “Shoot first, ask questions later” approach to getting rid of communities that it’s been told are against its policies or laws, so that part shouldn’t be surprising.

As for correspondence from LJ, they didn’t say what had prompted it, just that it had happened. I don’t expect them to.

Rabican: The shutdown occurred overnight while the mod team was asleep, so we’ve had to pull together the story of the shutdown from multiple accounts. The most likely scenario we’ve surmised is that Peter David reported a group of X-Factor #40 scans to Marvel around the 24th; Marvel complained to Livejournal, and the Livejournal Abuse Team shut us down the night of the 28th (US time). We were given no warning whatsoever and told that the account was permanently suspended. The justification, given by form mail, was that our community existed "primarily to host copyrighted material without the permission fo the copyright holder" and this was against Livejournal’s TOS. We’re still looking into finding out the details of the abuse report made to the LJ Abuse Team.

It’s worth noting that both Livejournal and, I suspect, most of the major comics publishers have known about us for years, so it’s interesting to speculate what prompted them to move against us now. It’s possible Peter David making the report removed all possibility of plausible deniability. Or, Marvel wasn’t nearly as well-informed as we thought they were. We don’t know whether they thought the poster had uploaded most or all of X-Factor #40 rather than the half she did upload, although legally it doesn’t matter. The Peter David situation may have been a coincidence and it wasn’t Marvel at all, but Livejournal doesn’t move against copyright violations without a complaint from the copyright owner, so we know it was a comics publisher.


(more…)

‘Suicide Squad’ coming to the silver screen

  • News
  • February 26, 2009

DC Comics’ Suicide Squad is on its way to the most dangerous mission yet– to Hollywood. Warner Bros. has hired screenwriter Justin Marks to adapt the property for the movies. (Does that make the contract he signed a Suicide pact?)

The current version of the Squad was created by ComicMix contributors John Ostrander and editor Robert Greenberger, introduced in the 1986 Legends miniseries, edited by Mike Gold. The revolutionary concept was to mix super villains and fallen heroes, giving them one last shot at redemption by the government by undertaking missions that will most likely kill them. Spinning off from Legends, the series lasted for 66 issues, and spurred a 12-issue maxiseries in 2000 and Ostrander returned for an eight issue mini-series in 2007. The particular characters involved have yet to be determined, but strong candidates include Amanda Waller, Rick Flag, Bronze Tiger (who just appeared in an episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold) and Deadshot.

Marks, who is doing a rewrite of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for Disney, also wrote the Green Arrow comic-book movie project Supermax, which could conceivably connect with Suicide Squad as they both take place at Belle Reve prison. John Ostrander is currently writing Star Wars: Legacy for Dark Horse and GrimJack and Munden’s Bar for ComicMix.

I just got off the phone with John Ostrander, who had just heard about the project this morning. He’s looking forward to seeing what happens next.

Me, I’m looking forward to DC reconsidering whether or not to put out those Suicide Squad reprint collections now. Hint hint.

Webcomics You Should Have Read: ‘The Parking Lot Is Full’

  • News
  • February 15, 2009

I beg of you, gentle ComicMix readers… take a journey with me back in time. Step one? Dust off a pair of “wide leg” jeans. Don your favorite pair of Airwalk low-tops. Grow your hair out a little, and put a Pearl Jam Compact Disk into your brand new Diskman. Step Two? Power up your personal computer. You know the one, with that brand new Intel Pentium chip the kids all talk about. Fire up that 14.4 Baud Modem, and hop on that newfangled ‘Information Super-Highway’. Welcome to 1993 folks! Now that you’re here, you should check out a little known webcomic called “The Parking Lot Is Full”.

The brief history on said comic comes from it’s own tombstone, procured from their site instead of that wiki-pedia thing you “next-gen users” all like so much…

 

“From 1993 – 2002, The Parking Lot is Full was the comic strip love child of artist Jack McLaren and writer Pat Spacek. Starting as crude little strips published in their university newspaper, the comic quickly took on a life of its own, eventually becoming one of the most popular and infamous comic strips on the internet. After nine years of ups and downs, the creators decided that they’d said everything they wanted to say, so the comic was wrapped up and all the toys put away.”

 

What made ‘PLIF’ (get used to this folks, cause “The Parking Lot Is Full” takes a while to type) so enjoyable was it’s fascinating combination of Gary Larsen-esque illustrations combined with sharp writing and a touch of the macabre. Unlike several previous recommendations here on ComicMix, ‘PLIF’ had no continuity really to follow. Yes, there are a few reoccurring sock puppets in the later half of the series, but there’s no backstory to follow (well, anymore…). And to be honest, the really juicy strips are true non-sequiturs.

I’ll be frank, folks, this strip features some of the most laugh-out-loud-but-frankly-I-shouldn’t-be-laughing strips I’ve had the pleasure to read for free on the ‘inter-webs’. There’s no need for lengthy exposition on the progression of the art; It’s crude, in gray tones, and unpolished as my car in February. There’s no need to wax poetic about the subject matter; Generally ‘PLIF’ stuck to a cycle of topics including childhood, sex, religion, and conspiracy theories (sometimes in the same strip!). Simply put, if the ‘Far-Side’ was rolled through a plate of broken glass, you’d have “PLIF”. Suffice to say the content can disturb as much as it can inspire fits of laughter… and that’s what I appreciate about it. Now to the cream of the crop (…ahem. WARNING. These Strips Are Not Suitable For Children, and most adults now that I think of it):

 

• Well, this settles an age old debate.
• Safe Sex, by PLIF
• A Failed Experiment, by Ray Croc.
• "I fell out of my chair the first time I saw this"… said my roomate.
• You know it’d be true.
• A lesson from the Street… Sesame Street.
• If this Pre-Dates Animal Man, Grant Morrison should be worried.

So there you have it folks. Kick off the Airwalks, swap that Diskman for an iPod, and plug back into a nice cable modem. This trip back in time is over. Sadly, there is no more strips to be had after you’ve been through their archive. Do yourself a favor though… buy a collection of them in printed form from the ‘PLIF’ store, and show your support for those who dared release this evil into the world.

The Breakdown:

Drama: Well, this is kinda’ dramatic…

Humor: If you don’t find this funny, maybe you’ll find this funny.

Continuity: There’s some Sock Puppets that show up from time to time.

Art: It’s grey, it’s crude, and it’s wonderfully morbid when it needs to be.

Archive: From 1993-2002, you’re looking at quite a few strips. It looks like they didn’t update but several times a month at best… never the less, if you troll through it all, it’s a solid hour or two of fun.

Updates: Unless you suffer from that condition where you still believe it’s 1993-2002… alas, there is no more ‘PLIF’ to be had.

Risk/Reward: As always… it’s free… so there’s little risk involved. Unless you consider reading a strip like this to be dangerous. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

ComicMix At Two

  • News
  • February 10, 2009
Well, today ComicMix turns two years old. It’s a tad bittersweet, as the advertising cutbacks that have decimated other media outlets have had their impact upon this young site as well. So – as you’ve no doubt noticed – we’ve hunkered down for the long haul. We ain’t going to give in to this economy; we’re up for the fight.

I’m glad to report that, lately, we’ve made some truly significant progress. We’ll be making a major announcement soon, with a touch of luck – meaning the lawyers and number crunchers do what they do in a timely fashion. Most of the folks who’s been working with us and hanging in there are aware of the broad strokes, and there’s been some Twittering and blogging and such, but you’ll get the full story right here as soon as it’s finished.

I’m told we’re getting significantly closer to the launch of the long-awaited Phase Three improvements and additions. This, too, is exciting stuff and has taken an enormous amount of energy from our Tech Team. We all want to get it right the first time, to the extent that’s technically possible.

So hang in there. You’ll be seeing the fruits of these labors very soon. As always, we want to thank all the writers and artists and tech folks who have been part of ComicMix, and we thank you, our worldwide audience, for your continued interest and support. 

Chris Claremont returns to write X-Men, forever

  • News
  • February 6, 2009

The Cubs win the World Series. Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston get back together. Chris Claremont writes the X-Men again. One of those things, at last, has happened.

Chris Claremont, the writer of the X-Men for 16 years, from Uncanny X-Men #94 to X-Men #3, is returning to the characters that he made famous. Starting in May, Chris Claremont will be writing X-Men Forever, a new bi-weekly series that literally continues from where he left off. No really– right where he left off. X-Men Forever will create a fork in Marvel continuity, continuing the series the way he wanted. Artwork will be by Tom Grummett. The series will premiere in May, with preview issues in March and April.

Chris is also working on an original X-Men graphic novel with artwork by Milo Manera.

ComicMix will be running an in-depth interview with Chris Claremont shortly, which will explain where’s he’s going with it. In the meantime, leave your comments and questions for Chris here.

Welcome back to the X-Men, Chris– hope you survive the experience!

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