Tagged: ComicMix

Review: Three Pieces of Middle

These three books have almost nothing in common – they’re from three different publishers, in entirely different genres, and by very different creators. But they all are middle chapters in long-running series, so they raise similar questions about maintaining interest in a serialized story – when the beginning was years ago, and there’s no real end in sight, either, what makes this piece of the story special? (Besides the fact that it’s printed on nice paper and shoved between cardboard covers.)

exmachina-621-7885143Ex Machina, Vol. 6: Power Down
By Brian K. Vaughan, Tony Harris, Jim Clark, and JD Mettler
DC Comics/Wildstorm, 2008, $12.99

Ex Machina gets to go first, since it’s the shortest and it’s also the closest to the beginning of the series. (Both in that it’s volume 6 and because all of the [[[Ex Machina]]] collections are so short – this one collects issues 26 to 29 of the series, so we’re only into the third year of publication.) The premise is still the same – an unknown artifact/item gave then-civil engineer Mitchell Hundred the power to hear and command all kinds of machines, which he used to first become a costumed superhero (stopping the second plane on 9-11, among other things) and then successfully ran for mayor in the delayed election of 2001-2002.

This storyline begins in the summer of 2003, and provides a secret-historical reason for the blackout of that year. (This is too cute a touch for my taste – Hundred’s world is different enough from our own that this “explanation” couldn’t be true in our real world, and so the fact that both worlds had identical-seeming massive blackouts, on the same day, from different causes, stretches suspension of disbelief much too far.)

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The Bronx is Up and My Battery’s Down, by Elayne Riggs

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  • April 16, 2008

As you probably know, except for the LA-based Michael Davis, every ComicMix columnist lives in the NY-NJ-CT metropolitan area. The famous magazine cover at right chides our perspective as somewhat skewed, but in reality I think New York City and its surrounding suburbs offer a pretty good microcosm of modern civilization. Not for nothing are we the melting pot of the world.

The thing is, for a relatively small island, Manhattan is so much bigger than most people can cover, either on foot or in the media. Leaving aside for a moment the vast array of cultures inhabiting the "outer" boroughs (our northeast Bronx neighborhood seems to be a mix of mostly Jews and Irish but it appears to be diversifying at last), there’s just so much within NYC (the way many of us in the boroughs abbreviate New York, New York) itself that you can hardly take it all in. Manhattan never ceases to fascinate me, and I’ve been lucky enough to see a lot of it these past few months while searching for a job.

Job search hours tend to be peculiar, because you’re usually coming into or leaving The City while other people around you are either on holiday or working. So I see the passing parade in a different way than I would if I were cooped up in an office for the better part of eight ours, only coming out to commute with the masses. And I’ve been able to pretend I’m sightseeing at the same time, revisiting old haunts as well as traveling to areas I never had the time or inclination to check out when I actually worked in NYC. (more…)

ComicMix Radio: Uncle Sam Says Pay Up Or Else!

It’s Tax Day – like no one else has reminded you of that. After the pain of filing, drown your sorrows with an amazing stack of new comics and DVDs, which we preview, then get set to go with us to The Big Apple for the New York Comic Con – all weekend and all FREE here at ComicMix, plus:

— Adams draws Ali – but it isn’t Neal

— Tori Amos picks her comic favorites

— Batman:Gotham Knight to premiere at Wizard World Chicago

—  It’s your LAST chance to win  an exclusive Graham Crackers Comics variant  by e-mailing us at: podcast [at] comicmix.com …then great ready for our GRAND PRIZE drawing this week!

Just like filing online –  Press The Button and your pop culture refund comes right back at you!

 

 

And remember, you can always subscribe to ComicMix Radio podcasts via badgeitunes61x15dark-4404397 or RSS!

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Interview: Zak Penn on The Grand, X-Men Fans and Co-Writing Hulk

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  • April 15, 2008

ctonymark-com[UPDATE: After posting this interview, a representative of Zak Penn contacted ComicMix to state that Penn is not attached to a Captain America film at this time, despite the timing of his response during this interview (and our accurate transcription of the interview as it occurred). -RM]

In Hollywood, where "overnight success" can often take many years, writer/director Zak Penn is one of those exceptions that proves the rule. Rocketing to A-list screenwriter status right out of college with his first script, Last Action Hero, Penn has had a varied and successful career during the intervening years.

Since his first sale, Penn has written or contributed to screenplays for films such as Inspector Gadget, X-Men 2, X-Men: Last Stand, The Mask of Zorro, Men In Black, Fantastic Four and the soon-to-be-released Incredible Hulk. In addition to writing, Penn has also taken turns behind the camera and directed two films. His latest directing effort, the improv comedy The Grand, opened last month in Los Angeles and New York — with a wider release to come later this month. 

Recently, ComicMix caught up with the talented Mr. Penn to get all the latest news on The Grand, Incredible Hulk, X-Men, as well as his thoughts on dealing with fan reaction to his work and the comic book movie he really wants to make someday.

COMICMIX: Zak, thanks for taking the time to talk. How are you doing?

ZAK PENN: Good, man. Hectic as usual.

CMix: You’ve got a movie you directed that’s just come out in L.A. and New York and opening wider this month. Tell us a little about it.

ZP: The Grand is an improvisational ensemble comedy, set against the backdrop of a World Series Of Poker-type tournament.  It’s basically Woody Harrelson, David Cross, Richard Kind, Chris Parnell, Cheryl Hines, Dennis Farina, Ray Romano, Werner Herzog, Gabe Kaplan . . .

CMix: So, a bunch of unknowns, then…

ZP: Yeah, a bunch of nobodies. [Laughs] And Gabe Kaplan and Werner together… So good. I did it like I did my last movie, using an outline and just [improvising] off of it. We shot it and it premiered at Tribeca last year and now its out and expanding to 20 cities this month.

CMix: That’s great. So as a screenwriter, obviously you’ve written a lot of movies, so why improv?  Why not write a script?

ZP: I think it kind of forces me to get away from the stuff that I do, you know? I’ve kind of gotten used to writing in a certain style and falling back on certain types of scenes and this forces me out of it. I can’t do those things.  So I think part of it is to kind of create a new discipline for myself to get something different done.

One of the things I liked about this movie is, I never would have written this script.  If I sat down, I wouldn’t have thought of going in the same directions this movie does, so it’s new to me and fresh to me. It’s almost like having an entire cast of co-writers.

CMix: Because you’re creating it as you go along, basically, with all of your actors?

ZP: Yeah.
 
CMix: Did you get into screenwriting with a plan to direct someday?

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Review: ‘Tônoharu, Part One’ by Lars Martinson

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Tonoharu: Part One
By Lars Martinson
Pliant Press/Top Shelf, 2008, $19.95

This is another one of those books where it would be dangerous to assume too much, but it’s so tempting to do so. Martinson is a young American cartoonist who “lived and worked in southern Japan as an English teacher for three years.” The main character of this book, Dan, is a new English teacher in the Japanese town ofTônoharu. To make it even more complicated, [[[Tônoharu]]] has a prologue from the point of view of another English teacher in Tônoharu, Dan’s successor, who may or may not be Martinson. From the prologue, we already know than Dan will only last a year in Tônoharu, and that he’ll go home with “that ever-present look of defeat on his face.”

We also know that Dan’s unnamed successor isn’t particularly happy with his life in Tônoharu – the prologue sees him wrestling with the choice of staying for a second year, or bailing out – and the beginning of Dan’s story shows his unnamed predecessor leaving Japan after only a year, along with the predecessor’s only friend, another American teacher. So what is it about Tônoharu – or about Japan in general – that burns out and drives away Americans?

The main part of the story shows Dan feeling isolated and cut off from Japanese society, but he also doesn’t seem to be making much of an effort to connect to it. He has long periods of idleness at the school, which he’s supposed to use to prepare for class, but his language skills don’t get any better, and he’s always badly prepared. He doesn’t have much of a life in Tônoharu, but it’s hard to tell why that is – he says, at one point, that his hobbies are watching TV and sleeping, and he’s apparently honest about that. Honestly, he doesn’t seem to do anything, or to want to do anything in particular – he just wants not to be doing whatever he is doing.

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The Shadow’s Web, by Dennis O’Neil

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  • April 15, 2008

With the kind permission of Anthony Tollin and Mike Gold, this week’s column is an adaptation and condensation of an introduction I’m writing for a forthcoming edition of Mr. Tollin’s repackaging of the original Shadow novels. No formal recommended reading this time, but the volume in which the much longer version of what’s below will appear – Shadow #19 – will be on sale in the latter half of June.

Let us, for just a little while, indulge our wish that the great mythic and fictional heroes did and do exist. We are told – and remember, we’re in believer mode – that a diligent historian named Maxwell Grant was privy to the life and thoughts of a mystery man who, though he was probably born Kent Allard often assumed the identity of Lamont Cranston, one of those gentlemen of wealth and leisure who seemed to proliferate in the 30s, the years of the Great Depression, and become almost extinct after World War Two. We are assured that many years ago, while traveling in the Orient, that he acquired certain extraordinary skills – they might even be termed “powers” – and that these aided him in the activities of another of his personae, the relentless and dreaded nemesis of crime known only as The Shadow.

Now, let us entertain a hypothesis. It’s possible, perhaps even probable, that our eastern sojourner, during his investigations, came across reference to Indra’s Net, perhaps while thumbing through a yellowing old volume he found in a bookshop located in a winding Calcutta alleyway. (Would the book have been written in Hindi? Likely. Would Mr. Allard have mastered enough of that language to read it? Again, likely.) Being the ever-curious investigator he had to have been in his salad days, Mr. Allard would have made further inquiries regarding this “Indra’s Net.”

Here is what he might have learned:

In Svarga, the realm of the god Indra, there is a network of gems arranged in such a manner that if a person looks at one of them he sees all the others reflected in it.

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Review: ‘Paul Goes Fishing’ by Michel Rabagliati

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Paul Goes Fishing
By Michel Ragabliati
Drawn & Quarterly, 2008, $19.95

[[[Paul Goes Fishing]]] is the fourth in a series of semi-autobiographical graphic novels by an illustrator-turned-cartoonist from Montreal named Michel, about an illustrator-turned-cartoonist from Montreal named Paul.

Nosy Parkers, such as myself, will immediately start wondering just how “semi” this autobiography is. Paul and Michel are about the same age, in the same line of work, from the same city, and have the same family details (a wife and one daughter). On the other hand, these semi-autobiographical cartoonists are sneaky – and someone like Ragabliati could also easily have just done a pure autobio comic (there’s no shortage of those). So I’ll refrain from assuming that anything about “Paul” is also true of Rabagliati.

Like the other “[[[Paul]]]” books, Goes Fishing wanders through Paul’s past, with some scenes set when Paul was young (mostly when he’s fifteen and so frustrated with his life that he tries to run away) and some when he’s an adult (mostly in the mid-90s). There’s some narration, in the voice of a contemporary Paul, to organize it all, and explain when each scene is taking place, but the structure is quite fluid, with scenes flowing according to memory or other connections than along purely chronological lines.

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Battlestar Galactica Interview: Mark Verheiden on Cylon Humanity and Boomer’s Motives

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  • April 14, 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 that 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 (chris [at] comicmix.com) after each episode airs. New episodes of Battlestar Galactica can be seen every Friday at 10 PM EST on Sci-Fi Channel. Previous interviews are available via the links at the end of this article.

This week, Verheiden answers questions about the second episode of Season Four, “Six of One,” which aired April 11, 2008.

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COMICMIX (from reader Mike): Is Sci-Fi hiring documentary filmmakers during the production of Battlestar? We’ve seen the short humorous videos for the video blog, but I mean longer Lord of the Rings-esque documentaries on the extended DVDs.

MARK VERHEIDEN: I don’t think there have been documentary teams roaming around, at least that I’ve seen, but I think Ron Moore plans to release more podcasts at some point, including ruminations from all the writer/producers on what the show has meant to them, fave episodes, etc. 

CMix (from reader Jeff):  Kara spoke of a yellow moon, yellow sun, and ringed gas giant while at Earth, but she also mentioned a comet and three blinking stars. This seems to foreshadow the Jesus legend. If the modified Greek mythology is what has shaped the human culture then the story must end with an Earth that has or can give rise to these gods, correct? After all if time is a closed loop, the end is the beginning.
 
MV: Unfortunately again, any answer I might give — from “yes” to “no” to “maybe” — takes us into spoiler territory, so I’ll just say “keep watching.”

CMix (from reader Katie): Was the scene between Kara and Roslin at the beginning of the episode meant to mirror the scene in “Home” when Sharon aims a gun at Adama and then turns it over to him to prove that she has free will?  If so, the very different way this showdown turned out, with Roslin firing on Kara, shows just how much has changed since Kobol.
 
MV: I don’t think it was meant to mirror that earlier scene, but the second part of your comment is certainly correct, in that much as changed for our characters emotionally since Kobol.  And you haven’t seen anything yet… (more…)

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DC’s Killing Fields, by Mike Gold

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  • April 14, 2008

chp-9129134How many times can you run a stunt into the ground in one month before you just look like you’re totally bereft of originality? DC Comics’ June, 2008 solicitations, as published in Diamond Distributing’s Previews catalog, offers no less than six phony death and/or resurrection stunts.

Gotham Underground #9 asks the musical question “Will Penguin pay the ultimate price?” Well, who cares? If he’s dead, he’ll get better. Death has no sting in the DC universe.

Batman #678 is the third part of their “Batman R.I.P.” arc. “Is it truly the end for one of the world’s finest heroes?” the solicitation asks.  Forgive me, but how many times have the sundry world’s finest heroes R’ed in P? Hell, I’ll bet if you ask them they would have wanted to stay dead at least a bit longer in order to get some rest in peace. I should add Robin #165 to this list as it ties in to Batman #678 and has Robin holding a dead-looking Batman on the cover. Maybe – probably – the old buzzard isn’t dead. The fact is, it doesn’t matter.

Booster Gold #10: “Someone from his past must live and someone must die!” My wife informs me (happily) that Ted (Blue Beetle the Second) has already been resurrected. The death – if it actually happens – well, again, who cares? If it was somebody important, he/she/it wouldn’t be killed off in Booster Gold. Unless the stunt has grown so lame that DC is willing to bury it in a title such as this.

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ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending April 14, 2008

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  • April 13, 2008

I’ve printed out the NYCC panel schedule but I don’t feel nearly ready for this coming weekend.  Stay tuned to these pages to find out where you can locate your favorite ComicMix people, including the ones who wrote these columns this past week:

So, it’s going to be a weekend of questions like "why did they schedule the Black Panel opposite Bryan Hitch’s spotlight and the Jenna Jameson ‘kick ass’ fiasco," isn’t it?

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