Tagged: ComicMix

MIKE GOLD: Comic Conned-Out

  • News
  • August 20, 2007

mikegold100-7174689A whole bunch of us ComicMixers have been attending various and sundry comic book conventions over the past half-year, and, having just come back from Chicago Wizard World, I’ve got a few observations.

For the record, we attended Comic Con in New York, Comic Con in Pittsburgh, I-Con in Stony Brook, New York, Heroes in Charlotte, North Carolina, MoCCA in NYC, the Big Apple Con in NYC, Comic-Con in San Diego, and Wizard World in Chicago. We also did the annual Book Fair and the Licensing Show, both in Manhattan. We’ve got at least three more shows coming up: the Baltimore Comic Con, another Big Apple show in Manhattan, and Mid-Ohio Con in the middle of Ohio.

MOST INTERESTING SIGHT: Scalpers hawking one-day passes at the San Diego Comic-Con. Just like at sports events and concerts. Pretty amazing. I wonder if SDCC saw many counterfeits? I wonder if I could trade my pass for two tickets to The Police?

adam-strange-1216399BEST COSTUME: This is a close call, and sadly I don’t know the name of the winner. But he dressed up as Adam Strange in a costume so on-model Murphy Anderson would have swooned. Take a look; he’s the guy with the ray guns.

BEST PRESENCE OF COSTUMED FANS: I-Con, in Long Island. Damn near everybody was in a costume. Some furry, which confuses some people. But if you’re looking for the thrill of being surrounded by hundreds of costumed college students, many of whom are armed, I-Con won’t let you down.

BEST EXPOSITORY MOMENT: When Adriane Nash explained the concept and activities of “furries” to Michael Davis while at dinner in Chicago. ‘Nuff said.

BEST REUNIONS: Len Wein and I are old friends, but for some reason we haven’t been in contact for a while. A sweet, gentle, funny, talented man, Len will be visiting Munden’s Bar sometime soon. Len and I got together at Michael Davis’s SDCC dinner party, which was my second favorite meal of the convention season thus far (and it was a close second). Also, and equally, Mindy Newell, at MoCCA. Mindy used to write comics; Mindy should be writing comics. Or something. A great talent, a wonderful human being. Hiya, Mindy!

BEST MEAL: The post-Wizard World decompress at Chicago’s Gulliver’s Restaurant, the only place I can get genuine Italian beef with barbecue sauce along with the Italian beef goo. ComicMixers Adriane Nash, Mike Raub, Kai Connelly, Andrew Pepoy, and Chris Burnham joined my wife Linda and me, along with artist Reilly Brown and writer, professor and fellow Gulliver’s habituater Len Strazewski. (more…)

Another ComicMix summer party

  • News
  • August 19, 2007

Can’t stay long, gotta get back to ComicMix‘er Kai Connolly’s birthday party.  ComicMix columnists wrote stuff this past week.  Here it is:

And that’s not even including tons of news wrapups from Andrew Wheeler, loads of reviews, even a pool-playing post!  By the way, today’s bash emanates from the home of Mellifluous Mike Raub, who has arranged it all and still had time for his Big ComicMix Broadcasts:

The me who wrote this entry this morning hopes the Raub Residence will be as air-conditioned as the Riggs Residence…

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MIKE RAUB: Beyond the Broadcast!

  • News
  • August 19, 2007

jenna-4617498I think when it is all done, we’re are going to call this season Catch Up Summer. It seems that every time we sit down, it’s a race just get caught up to where we should be starting!  Here’s our notes from this week’s Big ComicMix Broadcasts, some items dating back to our visit to Wizard World Chicago last weekend:

 • If you are ready to submit your own music video to Current TV’s The Daily Fix, go here and when you do, you might notice other opportunities for showcasing your video skills. Conceive, edit and upload all you want. Just remember all of us here at ComicMix when you are rich and famous!

 • Consider this a "reverse" link. JennaComix.com, where we told you to go see previews of the new Shadow Hunters comic being produced by Jenna Jameson and Virgin comics and written by Witchblade’s Christina Z is NOT launched yet,  so DON’T go there. If you really want to see stuff on Shadow Hunters, the best place at the moment is Virgin’s website. We’ll let you know when Jenna’s site goes live.

 • If you REALLY want to interact with a TV/movie actor, then come to the aid of Apollo and help Battlestar Galactica’s Richard Hatch perfect the gaming portions of his new property, The Great War of Magellan. To get started, take a look here.

In a couple of days we will begin our week-long look at collectible toys. We cover it all ranging from the current scene of what is out there and which figures are hot  or cold, we give you some tips on collecting and preserving your goodies and then we talk to a major toy company about to give a make-over to some of comics’ most familiar heroes. That and more start up on Tuesday’s Big ComicMix Broadcast – don’t miss it!

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Can you ReBoot?

  • News
  • August 16, 2007

reboot-8996452As part of a promotion for the ReBoot TV series (which Rainbow Entertainment is trying to revive), Zeroes 2 Heroes is going to publish a new ReBoot comic.  They’re looking for an art team with a contest online. 

Here’s what you do:  Pick a ReBoot character and sketch it.  Fans will vote and you’ll be notified in August and start work in September.

  1. The ReBoot pitches are found here; you need to be logged in.
  2. Launch the Flash viewer by clicking on any of the pitch thumbnails.
  3. Browse through the pitches and pick the character or world you think is the most interesting.
  4. Upload a sketch using the "Upload" button.

Then tell ComicMix how it goes.

JOHN OSTRANDER: My Way Or the Highway

  • News
  • August 16, 2007

ostrander100-5932297I’m not going to tell you that I’m an expert on marriages and relationships because that would be a gol-durned lie, but one item of contention seems to pop up regularly between men and women who are cohabiting.

Leaving the toilet seat up or down.

It may be an issue in same-sex relationships; I don’t know. I have heard quite a bit of it between male-female cohabitants to the point of it being a cliché’. It was, however, a real debate that I and my late wife, Kim Yale, had. Her argument was that if she went to the bathroom in the middle of the night and the toilet set wasn’t down, she would fall in, get wet, and then I was certain to be woken up to hear about it. My response is that if I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night and didn’t look down, I’d pee all over the seat. If I had to do check, why not her? Her response was that the seat could get gross and it was the guy’s responsibility. My response – well, my full response would get me a severe talking to by the women on ComicMix. Let’s just say I’d didn’t think she was any more fragile than I was and we both had the responsibility to make sure the seat was where we needed it to be. We never reached agreement on the topic.

These days I keep the seat and the lid down for two separate but very good reasons. One is that I read that, when you flush, a fine spray of toilet water – and any particulate matter in it – rises from the bowl and settles over the area, including toothbrushes. Plus, our cat Windy has a tendency to play full immersion Baptist in the toilet bowls in the lid is up.

The first reason alone would’ve reason enough for me. If Kim had hit me with that one, I would have had to concede the point. At the time, I didn’t feel like conceding the point because her argument didn’t make sense to me. It didn’t fall-in with my way of thinking. (more…)

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MIKE GOLD: Get a life? Why?

  • News
  • August 13, 2007

mikegold100-4635945It would be silly if I didn’t enjoy being a comics and popular culture mini-mogel. It’s fun to have movie stars call you up; that just happened. Getting into movie screenings is swell. People give you cool stuff. I’ve been friends with Will Eisner and Dick Sprang, and Dick Giordano was at my birthday party last week. I get to work with my closest friends, with people I respect, and with folks with whom I am in awe. Coupled with my fantastic, loving family, I live out Randy Newman’s great song from 1983: My Life is Good.

Of course, Newman’s a bit sarcastic, but then again, so am I. But I prefer to think of me as edgy. Randy, on the other hand, writes songs for Disney movies. We all have our outlets.

And comics is one of mine. A big one. It’s been the thread that’s run through my entire life. I learned how to read by trying to decipher Pogo and Li’l Abner on the comics page of the Chicago Daily News. I left broadcasting in 1976 to work for DC Comics, and I’ve never looked back. It’s how I met my wife and daughter (figure that one out).

0804-23-assemblesquad-8855189So now that I’ve turned 57, I once again find myself in the middle of another “summer” comics convention season. In the past couple months we ComicMix folk have been to, oh, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, Long Island, San Diego, Chicago, four or five different shows in New York City, and probably a couple I’m temporarily forgetting. I’ve still got Tarrytown NY, Baltimore MD, and Columbus Ohio to go this year, along with at least one other show in Manhattan. And one thought has been clattering against my brainpan for the last several weeks:

I’m really getting too old for all this.

Right now, I want to go see The Simpsons Movie and Sicko and the Bourne Whatever, and I want to sit down with a stack of comic books as tall as Glenn Hauman and just chill out and read ‘em.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. I’m whining. There’s a difference.

I love ComicMix, I love seeing old friends at these here conventions, and I truly enjoy meeting comics fans. But, right now, I don’t think we’ve got a show scheduled for October (I refuse to check) and, damn it, I’m going to go trick-or-treating and I’m going to go to a couple hockey games with my daughter.

You see, my life IS good.

Mike Gold is editor-in-chief of ComicMix.

WW-CHICAGO: Marvel Still Civil

  • News
  • August 12, 2007

Wild Weather on the East Coast Friday stranded most of the Mondo Marvel panelists in New York (hmmm… wonder how ComicMix‘s E.I.C. made it out that evening), leaving Joe Quesada and C. B. Cebuliski to fend for themselves while sharing with the crowd images and news from upcoming Marvel projects.

One other panelist, Rob Liefeld, who was there to talk about his new Killraven series. Apparently thought up at a bar in San Diego last year, Liefeld and Rob Kirkman will be bringing us an all-new take on the charactertarting fresh and looking to integrate Killraven into the Marvel Universe of the future – a world where our heroes are gone but their artifacts remain, one piece of art had Killraven holding Captain America’s shield. Look for the book in mid-2008. Reminding us that the creators of comics were and are comics fans themselves, Liefeld took some time to talk about his love for the character (and his DC counter-part Kamandi) during his childhood, you could hear the 11 year old Rob coming through loud and clear.

Luke Cage is back in his tiara and yellow shirt now that writer/artist (and Cartoon Network legend) Genny Tartakovsky has gotten a hold of him. The new artist on Punisher War Journal is Corey Walker. Doing his first work for Marvel, Tan Eng Huat (Doom Patrol) will be the artist on the mini-series Silver Surfer: In Thy Name, to be written by Simon Spurrier (2000 A.D.). I wonder if that news blows the ending of the current Silver Surfer mini.

Up next for Paul Jenkins will be a limited series drawn by Paul Guluay called Penance: Relentless about “the most hated man in America.”

Quesada and Cebuliski also said there are some big shake ups (an end?) coming to the Ultimates Universe by year’s end, and we’ll be seeing the "real" Nick Fury back in action next year.

MARTHA THOMASES: Hot Fun in the Summertime

  • News
  • August 11, 2007

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy.  Fish are jumpin, and the cotton is high.  Or so I’m told.  Living in a major metropolitan area in the twenty-first century, I have to take such things on faith.

This summer, the fun times for someone like me are largely political.  The presidential election is over a year away.  The first primaries are six months away.  Nothing is going to be decided any time soon, so I can pretend it will all turn out for the best. 

I spent the summer I was 15 going “clean for Gene,” campaigning for Eugene McCarthy, who was running against Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic nomination on an anti-war platform.  Four years later, I ran as an alternate delegate for George McGovern. Four years ago, I nearly got arrested outside the Republican convention up the street from here.  Presidential campaigns are fun!

Which is not to say they couldn’t be much more fun.  The problem is that presidential candidates tend to be politicians.  They spend all their time hustling campaign funds, writing policy, and meeting the public.  They go on the Sunday morning news shows and show how serious they are.  They go on Oprah or The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to show they’re regular folks who can take a joke.

They don’t save the world from alien invasions.  They don’t even fight crime.

Presidential campaigns would be a lot more fun if, instead of Republicans versus Democrats, it was Marvel versus DC.   For example debates between:

 

Captain America and Superman on immigration reform.

Luke Cage and John (Green Lantern) Stewart on affirmative action.

Thor and Wonder Woman about the separation of Church and State.

Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne on the inheritance tax.

Storm and Aquaman on global warming.

The Punisher and Batman on prison reform.

Professor X and Green Arrow on family values.

The Avengers and the Justice League on national security.

(more…)

WW-CHICAGO: The Big ComicMix Broadcast Hits Chicago!

drew-and-mike-5512873The ComicMix staff has landed at Wizard World Chicago just in time for tonite’s exclusive Preview Party. But even before the doors open, Wizard World Director of Communications Drew Seldin (on the left; I’m the other guy) gives a sneak peek of the weekend. Plus The Big ComicMix Broadcast showcases a new "relationship comic" that you can see on line right now, and gives you a quick trip back to when a west coast band made noise by covering The Monkees!

Come On To The Con – all you have to do is PRESS THE BUTTON!

ELAYNE RIGGS: World Enough and Time

  • News
  • August 8, 2007

elayne200-8061372Everyone around my age seems to have a Twilight Zone episode that sticks with them the most.  For me, it’s the Burgess Meredith-starring "Time Enough At Last," which title I always misremember as World Enough and Time.  (Just my luck I’m about to become even more confused as that’s also the title of the new George Takei-starring Star Trek: New Frontiers episode debuting in two weeks.)  It’s about an obsessive reader who’s delighted he finally has time to pursue his favorite hobby after improbably escaping a bomb that wipes out the rest of the populace, only to have his glasses fall off his face and break, fade to black.

It was one of those episodes for which I refused to suspend disbelief because I kept thinking of all the ways Meredith’s character could remedy his fate.  What was preventing him from looking for new glasses?  If the NYPL building was still standing I’ll bet some optometry places were still around.  And after all, he had to go food-gathering to stay alive, he’d undoubtedly (and likely literally) bump into something.  And bombs tend to fuse things into lenses anyway.  All that aside, I refused to believe he totally couldn’t read without his glasses; my prescription is pretty strong and I’m to the point in life where, if I didn’t have bifocals, I’d have to remove my glasses to read.  And eyesight has been known to improve without the use of glasses, by means of various exercises and–

Well anyway, my point is, I went over all these machinations in my head for years because I could see a lot of myself in that character.  I love to read, always have.  Got it from my mom (hi Mom!); Dad wasn’t big on reading, but she’s always taken to it, as have her sister and brother, from whom I learned to like all sorts of genre stuff from the Happy Hollisters mystery series to fantasy and science fiction to fairy tales to the very occasional non-fiction foray.  Reading actively engages my mind like little else.  Reading has always been the way I found out about life, about myself.  Reading is dreaming using words (and pictures, if you’re talking about comics).

I’m never as happy as when I have time to catch up on my reading.  This week, for instance, I’m on "enforced" vacation — meaning that, because I don’t get to use up my allotted vacation time when I want to (due to my boss requiring me to be at my post whenever he’s in the country), I wind up accumulating too many days to carry over into my next service year and must "use or lose" them before my anniversary (next Monday).  As of the time I wrote this column I had no idea what I was going to do during this week other than read, read, and read some more.

And even then, there’s never time enough.

(more…)

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