James Lipton, host of Bravo’s Inside the Actors Studio, ever more closely resembles the caricature Will Ferrell once played of Lipton. After self-aggrandizing turns on Arrested Development and in a Geico commercial, Lipton’s now turned up in a comic movie promo.
Check out the below ad for the quickly approaching Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, featuring an interview with Ron Perlman in full Hellboy gear. "Boo yah," indeed.
Last week, ComicMix commenter Alan Coil and I got into a brief discussion about what constitutes decent comic book sales. It is certainly fair for Alan to compare sales against current trends; I like to compare sales against sales potential in the marketplace.
There’s a market for comic books. This is borne out by the fact that ComicMix, much like Wizard Magazine and other venues over the past decade or so, attracts a bigger audience than the vast majority of all comics published in the United States, as measured by the number of different people who actually read the stuff. Yet despite all the success of comic book product in other media – from Iron Man to Road To Perdition – there has been little if any increase in domestic comics sales. How could this be? Herein lies a history lesson.
Forget about the never-ending über-convoluted and oft-retconed continuity. I’ve bitched about all that before, and, happily, our commenters comment consistently thereupon. To look to the root of this particular evil, we must set our WaBac Machines way back to, oh, around 1948. That’s when the comics publishers started to piss in their own soup.
In 1948, comic book publishers were sailing in dire straits. Average sales were down, the number of titles were up, rack space was getting crowded, and super-heroes weren’t selling like they used to. Clearly, that trend was winding down. Magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post and Reader’s Digest were telling parents that comic books caused juvenile delinquency and promoted homosexuality. Neighborhood candy stores and newsstands started to disappear, as did local drug stores. Bolstered by the G.I. Bill, young adults with small children were leaving for the suburbs – a mysterious land with higher-rent open air shopping strips where drug store owners couldn’t make a buck off of selling high-maintenance items for 10 cents.
Creeping Werthamism aside, comics publishers were not alone in this situation. The diminishing presence of traditional newsstands grossly affected newspaper and magazine sales across the board. Papers raised their price from three or four cents to a nickel; a substantial increase, percentage-wise. Magazines raised their prices in a similar fashion; the dime novel, which by now was 15¢, was being replaced by the 25¢ paperback book.
So what did comics publishers do? Did they follow the other publishers in raising cover price? The other publishers weren’t fighting PTAs and major magazines and, eventually, senate subcommittee hearings as they were. They felt that increasing their price to 15¢ was a bad idea. So they cut content. (more…)
Leonard Kleinrock was one of the men who helped create the Internet, and on his Web site at UCLA he gives the following anecdote that Superman played a big role in the whole undertaking.
It all began with a comic book! At the age of 6, Leonard Kleinrock was reading a Superman comic at his apartment in Manhattan, when, in the centerfold, he found plans for building a crystal radio. To do so, he needed his father’s used razor blade, a piece of pencil lead, an empty toilet paper roll, and some wire, all of which he had no trouble obtaining. In addition, he needed an earphone which he promptly appropriated from a public telephone booth. The one remaining part was something called a "variable capacitor". For this, he convinced his mother to take him on the subway down to Canal Street, the center for radio electronics. Upon arrival to one of the shops, he boldly walked up to the clerk and proudly asked to purchase a variable capacitor, whereupon the clerk replied with, "what size do you want?". This blew his cover, and he confessed that he not only had no idea what size, but he also had no idea what the part was for in the first place. After explaining why he wanted one, the clerk sold him just what he needed. Kleinrock built the crystal radio and was totally hooked when "free" music came through the earphones – no batteries, no power, all free! An engineer was born. …
Due to Kleinrock’s fundamental role in establishing data networking technology over the preceding decade, ARPA decided that UCLA, under Kleinrock’s leadership, would become the first node to join the ARPANET. This meant that the first switch (known as an Interface Message Processor – IMP) would arrive on the Labor Day weekend, 1969, and the UCLA team of 40 people that Kleinrock organized would have to provide the ability to connect the first (host) computer to the IMP. This was a challenging task since no such connection had ever been attempted. (This minicomputer had just been released in 1968 and Honeywell displayed it at the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference where Kleinrock saw the machine suspended by its hooks at the conference; while running, there was this brute whacking it with a sledge hammer just to show it was robust. Kleinrock suspects that that particular machine is the one that was delivered by BBN to UCLA.) As it turns out, BBN was running two weeks late (much to Kleinrock’s delight, since he and his team badly needed the extra development time); BBN, however, shipped the IMP on an airplane instead of on a truck, and it arrived on time. Aware of the pending arrival date, Kleinrock and his team worked around the clock to meet the schedule. On the day after the IMP arrived (the Tuesday after Labor Day), the circus began – everyone who had any imaginable excuse to be there, was there. Kleinrock and his team were there; BBN was there; Honeywell was there (the IMP was built out of a Honeywell minicomputer); Scientific Data Systems was there (the UCLA host machine was an SDS machine); AT&T long lines was there (we were attaching to their network); GTE was there (they were the local telephone company); ARPA was there; the UCLA Computer Science Dept. administration was there; the UCLA campus administration was there; plus an army of Computer Science graduate students was there. Expectations and anxieties were high because, everyone was concerned that their piece might fail. Fortunately, the team had done its job well and bits began moving between the UCLA computer and the IMP that same day. By the next day they had messages moving between the machines. THUS WAS BORN THE ARPANET, AND THE COMMUNITY WHICH HAS NOW BECOME THE INTERNET! …
From a comic book to cyberspace; an interesting journey indeed!
(via Wired)
As fans of Brian K. Vaughan drool in anticipation of the purported awesomeness of his movie spec script for Roundtable, Vertigo offered a last, wistful look at BKV’s Y: The Last Man by releasing the 10th and final collection, Whys and Wherefores.
It didn’t get much attention, in no small part because of the outpouring of attention that greeted the series’ final issue last year. There was even quite a party.
I took part in quite a bit of the celebrating/mourning, reminiscing on favorite moments and interviewing BKV. One of my favorite notes from that interview was Vaughan’s reluctance to read the final issue that he’d picked up from a comics shop. Like many others, he couldn’t bear to say goodbye.
But that’s the thing about successful comics. They never really go away.
Even though all 10 trades of Last Man are now out, odds are good we’ll see more before long. There’ll be anniversary editions and movie editions (assuming it gets made).
More likely than not we’ll see an "Absolute" version.
So, don’t fret. Yorick’s not gone for good. He’s just waiting for the next chance to cash in.
Lobster Johnson, Vol. 1: The Iron Prometheus
By Mike Mignolla and Jason Armstrong
Dark Horse, June 2008, $17.95
Lobster Johnson is the mystery man of the Hellboy
So here we finally get Lobster Johnson’s own story…in which he’s a mysterious, pulpish hero in 1937 New York who punches a whole bunch of evil things. The Lobster does have a secret lair, which gets some on-page time, and a group of [[[Doc Savage]]]-esque helpers – but we still don’t know who the Lobster is, why he fights evil, or even the point of his lobster-claw emblem.
On the other hand, we do get a vril-powered (look up your Edward Bulwer-Lytton) super-suit; its wearer, ex-lab assistant Jim Sacks; his kidnapped scientist employer Kyriakos Gallaragas; and the doctor’s requisite lovely daughter Helena, also kidnapped. Not to mention their kidnapper, an evil Asiatic villain.
(Said villain looks very familiar from other Hellboy stories, but he’s not named here, so I’ll leave it at that.)
The most awesome movie in the world features a villain with a hook hand and a glass eye that’s full of breathmints. It has extreme violence and horrific English dubbing. And it has Ricky, the real one-man army corps.
I happened across Riki Oh (also called The Story of Ricky) a couple years ago. It’s a little-known 1991 martial arts flick set in a futuristic prison run by gangs. If I had to guess, I’d say three quarters of the movie’s budget went to fake blood. Sure, it’s not comics, but it certainly qualifies as "comic book-esque."
You can now see this wonder <a href=”
its entirety on YouTube – but be warned, it’s extremely graphic in a not-quite-believable Evil Dead sort of way. File it under my highest recommendation.
[NOTE: This film also provided the crazy head-smashing scene used during The Daily Show‘s "Moment of Zen" feature for several seasons. -RM]
Here’s one of my favorite scenes:
If you’ve been enjoying Andrew Pepoy’s The Adventures of Simone & Ajax, published here at ComicMix, you’ll want to check out another of his comic book-related projects: A superhero tap dance opera.
While that phrase might seem like a Googlenope, the recently debuted The Hourglass and the Poisoned Pen is a sequel to The Hourglass in the Stop-Time Chronicles. The show is put on by the Chicago Tap Theatre, and is running at the Athenaeum Theatre in Chicago. (Show dates at the link.)
From an article at the My Dance Place blog:
Kendra Jorstad, who played the role of the Hourglass last year, has suited up again for a production that promises success even greater than that of the original show.
While speaking with DanceHere right before the show’s opening, [artistic director Mark] Yonally said that this year’s budget for Hourglass sets and costumes was more than twice what it was last year. And, they devoted twice the amount of time on developing the new story. "The good news," Yonally said of the increases, "is you see all of that on the stage."
The Hourglass set, alone, is stunning. Designed with comic book artist and Hourglass co-creator Andrew Pepoy, the set pulls audiences into the super-heroine’s world, where the good–in the form of a young woman wearing canary-yellow go-go boots–can subdue all wrongdoers. With the new set, costumes, story, and his company of dancers, Yonally thinks that The Hourglass and the Poisoned Pen is CTT’s "best story show by far."
Happy Independence Day, comicdom!
Here’s hoping everyone out there is well stocked with food to grill, beers (preferably Yuengling, from "America’s Oldest Brewery") to down and fireworks to potentially blow off your fingers. All that, a few Uncle Sam or Captain America comics, and you’re well stocked.
And make sure you wear that American flag lapel pin, lest you be mistaken for a terrorist. In a pinch, a Texas flag works too.
It’s a big day for me, but not for any comics reason. Or any patriotic reason either.
My wife and I first met while watching the big Fourth display during a break from our newspaper jobs. Fireworks.
Born in Philadelphia in 1930, Al Wiesner loved comic books as a boy but noticed a curious thing—there were plenty of Jewish writers and artists but no Jewish main characters.
At the tender age of 48 he decided to correct this deficiency, and released Mark 1 Comics, starring the mighty Shaloman! He has been writing and drawing the Kosher Crusader ever since.
In March 2007 KewlJu.com, a subsidiary of RJB Broadcast Corp., announced that it had signed a deal to take over the publication of Mark 1 Comics. Wiesner stayed on as the book’s artist and writer.
So far, the one saving grace of DC’s Final Crisis has been the superlative artwork of J.G. Jones, previously best known for his stunning covers to DC’s weekly series 52 and the art in Mark Millar’s Wanted.
Out of the "little known fact" department comes a profile of Jones in the Brooklyn Paper, where he previously worked as, among other things, an editorial cartoonist. I wish the paper would’ve reprinted more of his cartoons, but at least they pulled from the archives the one seen at right, which shows some skillful inkwork and an economic use of space to push a complex story.
The article is quite a good read, touching on many interesting subjects, including how the newspaper experience helped Jones succeed in comics.
“There’s no question that creating on deadline is the best experience,” Jones told The Brooklyn Paper via phone from his West Orange, N.J. home. “It’s the same thing in comic books. Just like at The Paper, we have some very long nights.”
Back in his glory days at The Paper’s old headquarters at 26 Court St., Jones worked part-time while he pursued his larger dream: to be a painter.
Ah, but that dream, like so many other dreams that newspaper people cling to like battered childhood dolls, never quite worked out.
(via Journalista)
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