Tagged: ComicMix

ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending March 23, 2008

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  • March 23, 2008

I’m still recovering from my yearly giggle-fest as my husband and I spent last night MST-ing the Biblical epic The Ten Commandments, which for some reason was shown on Easter weekend rather than Passover weekend.  Always remember, Eliezar, he passed over your holiday!  So many great quotable lines in that film.  ComicMix columnists have been serving up their own quotables this week as well:

Here at ComicMix, love is not an art to us, it is life to us!

‘Superhero Movie’ Review by Michael H. Price

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  • March 23, 2008

superhero-movie-1s-4938097

The superhero, and I don’t mean sandwich, has been a staple of the popular culture since well before the Depression-into-wartime beginnings of Superman and Batman. Those characters’ nascent comic-book adventures of 1938-1939 served primarily to focus a popular fascination with superhuman struggles against extravagant menaces – but similarly conceived protagonists had existed all along in ancient mythology and mass-market popular fiction. And how better to explain the superior heroic intellect of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Seabury Quinn’s phantom-fighting Jules de Grandin, or the beyond-normal escapades of Robin Hood and the Scarlet Pimpernel?

People need heroes, he said – if I may adapt a thought from Mike Gold’s recent Hope Versus Fear commentary at ComicMix. Such characters spur the imagination to assume hope in the face of fearful real-world circumstances, even if their activities and abilities (and allegorical antagonists) seem patently outside the realm of possibility. And the spiritual generosity of superheroism is such that people are willing to fork over either hard-earned cash or Daddy’s Money to experience the fantasy: Hence the proliferation of super-hero comic books in the immediate backdraft and long-term vapor-trails of Superman and Batman, and hence those characters’ fairly prompt leap into motion pictures during the 1940s.

Many people regard the superhero movie phenomenon as a fairly recent development, traceable as “far back” as Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man breakthrough of 2002, or maybe to the perceived “antiquity” of Richard Donner’s Superman pictures of 1978-1980. Not by a long shot.

Nor are the inevitable superhero parodies – as seen in David Zucker’s collaborative production of Superhero Movie, due March 28 – any particular innovation. Just as there is something awe-inspiring about some guy in long-john tights, hurdling buildings or piercing the veil with a blast of X-ray vision, there also is something innately ridiculous about such a spectacle. Even some of the earlier superhero films, such as Columbia Pictures’ Batman serials of the 1940s, emerged as unwitting parodies despite (or because of) their more earnest aims.

The formal parodies are a rarer breed. Zucker had proved himself a capable spoofer with 1980’s Airplane! – a well-received lampoon of the large-ensemble disaster-movie genre – much as Mel Brooks had parodied such genres as the Western epic and the Gothic horror film (1974’s Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein) to pleasing effect. Both artists were springing from the influence of Harvey Kurtzman’s Mad magazine of the mid-century, with its recurring demonstration that a parody must harbor an affectionate understanding of the story it intends to spoof.

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New at ComicMix: Comic Reader Updates and More!

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  • March 20, 2008

If you’re a faithful reader of ComicMix (and we hope you are), you may have noticed that we didn’t post the new episode of Simone & Ajax: The Case of the Maltese Duck. It’s not because anything bad happened to our favorite dinosaur and his cute friend Simone. We’re giving Andrew and Jason a bit of a breather.

However, we have just installed some new bells and whistles to the site that will make it more fun for you to use.

You know how they made a hit television show out of the premise that you want to go to a place where everybody knows your name? Well, ComicMix now remembers how you like to read your comics. When you set a preference for single pages or double-page spreads or for a certain degree of magnification, that’s how the settings will stay, until you choose to change them again. And you can bookmark individual pages – if you want to check out page 3 of Simone & Ajax: The Case of the Maltese Duck, you can now do so directly.

You say you want more? Well, coming up in the near future we’ve got a couple of massive additions to our site – a world of entirely new features – and we’ll be bringing back Munden’s Bar and Black Ice, as well as starting up Giordano/McLaughlin/Holroyd’s White Viper and Trevor Von Eeden’s The Original Johnson. Plus new outings from John Ostrander and Ian Gibson and Joanna Estep… and more. A whole LOT more.

Stay tuned.

The Weekly Haul: Reviews for March 20, 2008

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  • March 20, 2008

After skipping town last week, I’m back with an all-new spate of reviews for this week’s comics issues. Lots of super hero fare this week, with a few studs and a whole lot of "meh."

Book of the Week: Captain America #36 — I know, I know. Not a very out-there choice. But, c’mon, this is simply the best superhero book coming out right now. Ed Brubaker sets it up perfectly to test Bucky, the new Cap, by pitting him against some serious supervillains. And we get to see how Bucky is different from Steve Rogers, for good and bad.

And while Bucky brawls his way through that challenge, the defining moment of the issue comes when Bucky can’t summon the Captain America aura to calm a riotous crowd. And, if that’s not enough, Butch Guice’s fill-in art is so good that I didn’t realize he’d replaced Steve Epting until I looked back at the credits.

Oh, and then – SPOILER – there’s that little cliffhanger that a certain dead person might not be so certainly dead.

Runners Up:

The Brave and the Bold #11 — Here’s another "can’t go wrong" series (at least until Mark Waid jumps ship). The Challengers see just how tough Megistus is (and just how crazy), then Superman and Ultraman have a zany little team-up only after Ultraman impersonates Clark and runs roughshod through the Daily Planet newsroom. The too-big, too-fun antics culminate in one of those straight-from-the-silver-age moments, when Megistus throws a Green Lantern (the actual lantern, not a hero) into the sun and turns it green. Bad news for Ultraman and Superman.

The Immortal Iron Fist #13 — I’d be calling this book the best of the week if it weren’t for a weaker than usual outing from artist David Aja. His work isn’t as polished as usual, which means it’s still decent but not great. That aside, this Seven Cities of Heaven storyline is finally coming together in a big way. What’s really remarkable about this issue is how Brubaker and Matt Fraction keep up the excitement with only a couple punches thrown. It’s a perfect setup to the big brouhaha coming down the pike next issue, and offers the line of the week when Danny finally reveals his plan to the villainous Xao: "So we can get out, you dumb son of a bitch."

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‘King of the Hill’ Parodies ‘Invincible’ Comic

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  • March 20, 2008

King of the Hill, the Emmy award-winning animated television series created by Mike Judge and Greg Daniels, gave a sly wink to comic books on their Sunday, March 16 episode "Behind Closed Doors."

The soft-satirical parody of Texas middle America found housewife Peggy Hill questioning her family’s unity. When entering son Bobby’s room, she finds him reading "Unvincible," a comic that bears a striking similarity to Image’s Invincible by Robert Kirman and Cory Walker.

This is not big, breaking news but ComicMix thinks it’s pretty cool that instead of taking the easy mainstream route of spoofing Superman or Spider-Man, the show wore its comic book fan pride by choosing one of the great indie superheroes.

Faith Based Economics, by John Ostrander

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  • March 20, 2008

333832254_1bdb784010-8275717I don’t know much about economics. It’s all voodoo to me. Unfortunately, the same appears to be true of the corporate bosses of Bear Stearns, the “hallowed” investment bank that was sold over the weekend for pennies on the dollar to JPMorgan Chase. That was made possible by a thirty billion (“B” billion, not “M” million) dollar hand-out from the United States Federal Reserve Bank to cover Bear Stearns assets that would be “difficult” to sell off, meaning the U.S taxpayer will be stuck holding that bag.

“How could this happen?!” Actually, how could it not? Bear Stearns, along with a lot of other investment banks, were using “mortgage based securities.” Essentially, as I understand it, they lent the money to the guys lending the money to the people who were buying homes. Mortgages. They issued and traded bonds that used these mortgages to secure the money for the people who bought the securities. So long as those mortgages were prudent, it was not necessarily a bad idea.

However, the guys making the mortgages invented a new category – sub-prime mortgages. Many of those mortgages were given to people who didn’t have the funds really to make the payments and weren’t going to have them. That’s okay. Just re-finance! And the “worth” of the houses being bought kept going up and up. Anyone with half a brain knew that the housing market was WAAAAAY over-priced. It was crazy.

The reason the houses and land were worth that much was because everyone agreed they were. They believed it as deeply as any Born Again Christian grabs hold of the Bible. The loaves and the fishes with which Jesus fed the multitude didn’t multiply as much or as fast as some of the housing prices. It had to be true. Shout down the un-believers and naysayers. Except, of course, it all wasn’t true.

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DC Bringing ‘Chuck’ to Comics

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  • March 19, 2008

The long delay ’til the next season of NBC’s Chuck gets a bit of a reprieve this summer when DC Comics — via the Wildstorm imprint — releases a six-issue Chuck comic book miniseries.

From DC’s solicit, it sounds like the series will be trying to expand the scope of the TV series, which has a little thing called "budget" hemming it in.

From the solicit:

The hit NBC television series comes to comics as Chuck Bartowski and his friends are about to take the world by storm—literally! From series co-executive producer Peter Johnson (Supernatural: Rising Son) and series writer Zev Borow joined with artists Jeremy Haun (The Leading Man) and Phil Noto (Jonah Hex) comes an adventure too big for television!

In this globe-trotting, action-packed adventure, Chuck will see many exotic locales, dodge numerous bullets, and be tortured by the world’s greatest…tickler?

This sounds fairly similar to the globally expansive central storyline to last year’s Heroes graphic novel, another NBC-to-DC synergistic development. (Check out the haiku review of Heroes, another ComicMix greatest hit.)

Call me cautiously optimistic about this one. I really like the premise of Chuck, and I enjoyed the first few episodes. But things became very repetitive very quickly, and the gaps in logic became too unfathomable even for a "fun" show. Still, it has the chance to be this generation’s Get Smart, and that’s nothing to sleep on.

Interview: Jacen Burrows on Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis and ‘Crossed’

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  • March 17, 2008

Artist Jacen Burrows has already had an impressive career in a relatively short amount of time. His talent, bold visual style and penchant for the darker, more sinister aspects of life have already earned him a place collaborating with some of the most popular and successful writers working in comics today.

Some of these writers include Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis and Alan Moore on projects such as Dark Blue, Scars, The Courtyard and 303. More recently, he’s worked on Chronicles of Wormwood with Ennis.

And, just yesterday at Wizard World in LA, it was announced that he’s doing a brand-new project with Ennis called Crossed — described by Avatar Press’ William Christensen as "a story about the worst people can possibly be, as a group of good people attempt to survive in a world of pure evil."

ComicMix caught up with Burrows at Wizard World LA to get some more details on Crossed, his other work with writers like Warren Ellis, what artists he admires and much more.

COMICMIX: Jason, thanks for taking the time to talk with me. Let’s get right into it with a little background. When did you first start drawing?

JACEN BURROWS: I’ve been drawing from the beginning. Three years old I was doing more drawing than anything else. And I think everyone does that. All kids draw but it was just the thing I happened to stick with because everyone would tell me I was good at it so I never stopped. When other kids were outside doing things I was inside working on my drawing. So, its kinda my curse.

CMix: Your parents encouraged you?

JB: Oh yeah, they were like "do what you want" and let me do my thing. Early on I had a tendency to draw the things that were fun to me, like war scenes with tanks and dead bodies.

Teachers would freak out and my mom would come in and tell them I was just being creative. Later, when I had art teachers, they would say it’s all perfectly normal.

CMix: You liked that kind of thing? Monsters, severed heads, etc?

JB: Yeah, I had a nice healthy obsession with drawing monsters, werewolves and things like that. It’s the fun stuff. (more…)

Interview: Paul Karasik Deconstructs Fletcher Hanks Revamp

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  • March 17, 2008

One of the surprise hits in comics last year was I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets, a collection of stories from Fletcher Hanks, a largely unknown comics creator in the Golden Age who is best described as "the Ed Wood of comics."

The bizarre tales – most featured "space wizard" Stardust, who came up with ever more creative and creepy means of dispatching villains – ended up a critical success, with the book making many "best of" lists, including my own.

The renewed attention to Hanks (his bizarre personal story is recounted with skill in an addendum at the back of I Shall Destroy) recently took another step, as Joe Keatinge and Mike Allred teamed up for an all-new Stardust story featured in the recent debut of Image Comics’ Next Issue Project #1.

Given this surge of attention in Hanks’ work, we thought it would be interesting to catch up with Paul Karasik, who edited I Shall Destroy and contributed the original Hanks background story to the volume.

Let’s just say he wasn’t happy with the new incarnation.

COMICMIX: The works of Fletcher Hanks, and Stardust particularly, have very much lingered in people’s minds and, as the success of I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets shows, retain a substantial appeal. Why do you think that is?

PAUL KARASIK: Fletcher Hanks is a master stylist and people are first attracted to style. Once you know what a Hanks story looks like you can always spot his work. In fact, this is one of the reasons I find it amazing that his work was not "discovered" years ago.

In fact, it seemed to me that many readers of I Shall Destory All the Civilized Planets were intrigued by the discovery aspect of my project. Not only was the work of a major comic book artist uncovered, but there was also a true-life mystery surrounding it all.

Finally, readers simply love the twisted quality of these brutal tales of maniacal retribution.

CMix: Given how dated those comics are and the idiosyncrasies of Hanks’ vision, should those comics be resuscitated by new creators?

PK: I can’t imagine a single reason to recreate Hanks’ work. It’s the same idea as remaking films you liked when you were younger. The impulse is fundamentally flawed and the results are categorically disastrous. (more…)

Kristen Kreuk to Briefly Return for Eighth Season of ‘Smallville’

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  • March 17, 2008

ComicMix previously reported that Smallville will be returning for an eighth season on The CW Network, but how many members of the principle cast will stay on board? Michael Rosenbaum (Lex Luthor) has already stated he won’t be returning for any future seasons and now Kristen Kreuk is scaling back her involvement with the show.

Kreuk posted a message on her Facebook account detailing her involvement with Season Eight:

So, I thought I would give those of you curious about Smallville a brief debrief. I am in Bangkok for a few more months. So, no shooting of the Ville for me. I will return for a undetermined, although small, number of episodes in season 8.

I am not really opening up the floor for lots of discussion, because it is not really the place for it. Obviously I have loved my time on the show, but I am equally as thrilled to move on to new endeavors. One of which is very dear to me, and that is GBD [Girls By Design]. So thank you all for your really fabulous support and passion!!! I hope this clears up most of the questions…

At this rate, the eighth season of the show will only feature Clark and Chloe. In other words, it will be a great season.

(via Krypton Site)

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