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Battlestar Galactica Interview: Mark Verheiden on Starbuck’s Relationships and Cylon Motives

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  • April 21, 2008

Welcome to the latest installment of Battlestar Galactica Weekly, our recurring Q&A with Mark Verheiden, co-executive producer of the hit Sci-Fi Channel series Battlestar Galactica. Each week, we’ll interview Verheiden about the events of the week’s episode, what those events might mean for both the season and the series, and hopefully unearth some clues about what to expect as the final season of Battlestar Galactic nears its conclusion.

Along with posing our own questions to Verheiden, we’re also taking questions from fans — so be sure to send your questions to me, your official BSG Weekly interviewer, after each episode airs at chris [at] comicmix [dot] com. New episodes of Battlestar Galactica can be seen every Friday at 10 PM EST on Sci-Fi Channel. You can view previous interviews via the links at the end of this article.

This week, Verheiden answers questions about the third episode of Season Four, “The Ties That Bind,” which aired April 18, 2008. Note: These questions contain spoilers so read at your own risk.

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COMICMIX: (from reader Susan): It makes sense that you want to break Kara and Sam up to make way for Kara and Lee to get together in the final season, but what’s with her brutal treatment of him in this episode? In seasons two and three, it seemed like she truly cared about him in spite of her deeper feelings for Lee, now her behavior seems truly unsympathetic. Why is this continuing, while Lee/Dee got to end cleanly?

MARK VERHEIDEN: Kara has never been the most stable of characters. She’s been through and continues to go through some extremely difficult, frustrating experiences. Not the least of which involves disappearing for two months, being almost shot by the President, and now struggling to command a ship looking for…well, something she can’t quite put her finger on. 

It’s sort of a truism that you hurt the ones you love, and maybe Anders caught the brunt because he was the only one who stood there long enough so she COULD go off on him.  But please remember this is Battlestar Galactica, where emotional entanglements can change on a dime…

CMix (from reader Molly): Are Kara’s words to Sam, like when she tells him “she’s not the girl he married” meant to be taken at face value? I always thought that what she said in “Rapture” was true, that she loved and hated both Sam and Lee. And I liked that ambiguity as it made Kara more sympathetic.

(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 Radio at NYCC: Orson Scott Card on Marvel and ‘Enders Game’

Science-fiction novelist Orson Scott Card is back in familiar territory as he brings Enders Game to Marvel with two distinct (yet similar) series. We get the full story from Orson exclusively from the floor of the NY Comic Con in this edition of ComicMix Radio.

 

 

And remember, you can always subscribe to ComicMix Radio podcasts via badgeitunes61x15dark-5422325 or RSS!

 

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.

Prowling for “Sh! The Octopus,” by Michael H. Price

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  • April 20, 2008

octopus-01-title-card-1-3254172In his frank and provocative “Writing under the Influence” commentary at ComicMix, John Ostrander speaks of imitation as “the starting point for what you eventually become” as a storyteller: “Nothing is created in a vacuum,” John avers.

Writing may often seem the loneliest of professions – and certainly so, if one lacks a reality-check communion with one’s customers and kindred souls in the racket – but who has the time to wallow in loneliness when besieged by the insistent Muses of Narrative Influence? Derivative thinking can make for an ideal springboard, given an ability to narrow the onrush of influences and a willingness to seek new tangents of thought and deed.

I have spent the past several months – with a stretch yet ahead – on a 20-years-after return to a comic-book series called Prowler for ComicMix, starting with a digital-media remastering of the original Eclipse Comics stories (1987-1988), moving into a short-stack file of unproduced scripts and raw-material ideas from that period, and settling in at length with a new novel-length Prowler yarn that will tie up some raveled plot-threads from the Eclipse episodes and then head off in other directions.

The reunion of the primary creative team (Timothy Truman, John K. Snyder III, and Yrs. Trly.) re-summons the influences with which we had sought to develop 4Winds Studios’ 10 Prowler books as a Mulligan Stew of such persistent interests as ancient Hebraic Law and American frontier vigilantism; the Deep Southern blues and gospel-music traditions as a response to repressive social and economic conditions; the now-horrific, now-heroic irrationalities of Depression-era pulp fiction; and the bizarre extravagances of Old Hollywood’s low-budget horror-movie factories.

Tim Truman and John Snyder had defined two vigilante Prowler figures, each representing a distinct generation of indignant humanity, by the time I signed on with the project, late in 1986. While Truman and I were sharing a bookstore tour to promote our respective titles at Eclipse – Tim, with Scout and Airboy, and my ownself with the movie-history book Forgotten Horrors – Tim came up with the idea of twisting the plots of some of those 1930s-period Forgotten Horrors titles to accommodate the early-day exploits of the Prowler. (more…)

ComicMix TV: Milo Ventigmiglia on ‘Heroes’ and ‘Rest’

Here’s our first feature straight from the floor yesterday: An exclusive ComicMix interview with Heroes star Milo Ventimiglia (Peter Petrelli).

The actor-turned-writer talks about this season on the hit series and his new Devil’s Due book Rest.

Enjoy!

 

 

Is Ma Kent Old?, by Martha Thomases

  • News
  • April 19, 2008

As I sit here, it’s Monday. TCM is kindly running The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca so I have snappy dialogue in the background. The sun is bright, my blueberry bushes are full of flowers, and it looks like it’s going to be a beautiful week.

However, as you read this, a momentous event is occurring. It’s my birthday. I’m 55 years old. When I was a child (until I was 31, at least), I thought 55 was old. People I knew who were that age had grown children, and were either biding their time towards retirement or starting out on new careers. How could they do it, I wondered, when so much of their life was over?

It’s a good question. How can I do it? I don’t feel like I’m 55 (see Column #47). More to the point, I’m not sure what 55 feels like. I don’t know what it looks like. Do you see women of a certain age in the media? Yes, you do. However, most of them have had so much cosmetic surgery, or Botox, or hair-dye, or liposuction, that there’s no way to see what they really look like.

In fact, I don’t have the personal medical records of famous women my age. It may be that Katie Couric or Diane Sawyer, for example, just naturally looks the same as they did 15 years ago, with no gray hair and full cheeks, while Tom Brokaw gets white hair and laugh lines. For women, wrinkles prevent one from delivering the news. Goldie Hawn is older than I am, but you can’t tell by looking at her recent photos. (more…)

ComicMix TV: New York Minute #1 – Captain Action is Back!

This weekend, beloved 1960s hero Captain Action makes a triumphant return to the comics scene courtesy of Moonstone Books and a big debut at this year’s New York Comic Con. Manhattan comics mainstay Jim Hanley’s Universe recently hosted the Captain Action creative team of Fabian Nicieza, Mark Sparacio and Ruben Procopio for a pre-convention signing and celebration of all things Captain Action.

ComicMix was on the scene with this report:

 

 

 

 

For more on Captain Action, read our ComicMix interview with writer Fabian Nicieza.

 

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