Tagged: comics

DC/Warner Bros. Shut Down Childhood Cancer Fundraiser

superdrunk-9327448BoingBoing recently put the spotlight on Warner Bros. decision to shut down a series of original art auctions on eBay benefitting a childhood cancer charity. Apparently, many of the pieces of art in the auction (which the organizer had requested of his contacts in the comics community and they were more than happy to provide) depicted DC characters such as Batman and Superman.

From organizer Thomas Denton’s blog, Say It Backwards:

I just got notice that two of the Superman related auctions have been removed from the site and the rest are probably next. I don’t know what to do now. I have to start canceling auctions and issuing refunds. That means all the fees and such I’m now responsible for which is money i just don’t have, and I have no idea if I’m still obligated to the middleman ebay uses for their charity auctions.

…

I am heartbroken. I am really sorry to any one this is any trouble for. Legally, I was in the wrong. I used their intellectual property without their permission. I’m not going to play the victim on that front. I swear I just wanted to do something good.

Denton offered some further thoughts on the whole kerfuffle in a later post, as well as notice that he would probably be shutting down his site — which had been a vocal supporter of all things Superman and DC over the years — once the dust had settled.

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Review: ‘The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard’

leotard-1710289Eddie Campbell has always done comics his way, without worrying about other people’s expectations or preferences — one of his two major series has been a fictionalization of his own life as a comics creator, and the other, a superficially more populist sequence about Greek gods in the modern world, was itself about storytelling more often than not. So it’s no surprise that his latest graphic novel — co-written with Dan Best — is more about telling its story than it is the story being told.

The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard
By Eddie Campbell and Dan Best
First Second, August 2008, $18.95

[[[Monsieur Leotard]]] will be published by First Second — who published Campbell’s last book, The Black Diamond Detective Agency, and have been putting together an impressive list of graphic novels for adults and younger readers for the past few years — in August, and the first thing to note is that it’s not the story the reader expects.

You see, the famous acrobat Jules Leotard lies dying of smallpox on page 12. So, we think, the book will be a series of flashbacks showing his life? No, he’s dead by the bottom of page 13, and the story moves on. So far, so very Campbell.

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ComicMix on Twitter, MySpace and Facebook!

Attention ComicMix Readers: Even though we’re still not convinced that these InterWebs are more than just a passing fad, we’ve taken steps to make sure you can find ComicMix all over them… just in case the ‘Net sticks around for a while.

Here are some of the places you can find us:

ComicMix on Twitter: Have a Twitter account? Get updates via Twitter about all of the new columns, features, reviews, interviews and other original content you love on ComicMix. Follow the feed at: https://twitter.com/comicmix

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See you on the ‘Net!

Barack Obama and the Comic Book Time Machine, by Mike Gold

I have always been a major league comic book fan. Always. As a child, whenever my parents dragged me out of town I would make them stop at every possible drug store, newsstand and dime store so I could check out the comics stock. In those days we had no forewarning of what was coming out when, and few outlets carried every title. Some even ignored entire publishing lines.

So when I think back on those trips, I can date them by the comic books I had seen along the way. For example, I encountered Lois Lane #1 at a roadside inn on the road between Gary and Indianapolis Indiana, since replaced by Interstate 65. Ergo, that trip was at the very beginning of 1958. I was seven years old.

In the corner behind the comics rack, I encountered separate drinking fountains: one said, “Whites” and the other said, “Colored.” That confused me, and I asked my father why they needed two. “Because some people are damn idiots,” Dad replied in undisguised disgust.

We were in central Indiana, a place that just a few decades earlier had been the focal point of the Ku Klux Klan. Now, mind, you, if not for the Ku Klux Klan I wouldn’t be alive today. (more…)

I Lost It at the Movies, by Martha Thomases

Last weekend, my son and I went to see Iron Man. We went in the middle of the day to a movie theater in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood that is rarely crowded, so the only other people there were geeks like us.

We had a great time, and that’s what this column is about. Tomorrow is Mothers’ Day, and last week is the last time I’ll be able to go to a superhero movie with my son, without involving an airplane. He’s moving to Los Angeles next month. That’s as far away as he can go without crossing an ocean or a border.

Our movie-going habits started early. When he was six weeks old, we went to see the original Ghostbusters, with the baby in a Snugli. It’s not that we were those horrible parents who take a screaming infant everywhere, as if the world deserves to share their headache. We knew his sleep schedule, and we knew that if we fed him just before the movie started, we should have at least two hours before he woke up. And we went in the middle of a weekday when there would be few other people, and sat in the back, near the aisle, so we could make a hasty retreat if our calculations proved wrong.

Later, as he grew older, my son developed a love of comics that rivaled my own. Even though he was barely five years old, there was no way he would let us go see the first Batman film without him. Being afraid of nightmares, I found a book that explained how the special effects were done, so he’d know that Jack Nicholson didn’t really hurt anyone. The effects didn’t scare him, but he did remark on how out of character it was for Batman to use a gun.

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Eric Reynolds on ‘How I Pissed Off Steve Ditko’

Fantagraphics’ upcoming Steve Ditko retrospective Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko will be available next month, so resident Fantagraphics jack-of-all-trades Eric Reynolds recently took the opportunity to share a story with readers that he’s called "How I Pissed Off Steve Ditko."

Reynold’s tale is one of those personal experiences with industry legends that I love to hear about, as it puts some substance behind the names and faces of people I’ve never been lucky enough to interact with myself.

About ten years ago we had the great fortune of publishing a new series by Mr. Ditko, STEVE DITKO’S STRANGE AVENGING TALES. This was incredibly exciting to me, having been a lifelong Ditko fan. Unfortunately, I did not get to interact much with Mr. Ditko. See, I do all of our promotion, and to say that Mr. Ditko is not big on promotion is like saying the Pope is not big on gay marriage. And, he preferred snail mail to phone. As such, I did not have many opportunities to interact with one of the greatest comic book artists of all-time. Except one.

You can also check out a 10-page preview of Strange and Stranger on the Fantagraphics website.

Of course, one of my main reasons for posting this is the fact that I’m fortunate these days to interact with a number of industry veterans every day here on ComicMix — many of which have had their names grace some of the greatest comics ever created — and I wonder what they’ll have to say about Reynolds’ story.

 

(via Journalista)

Review: ‘Harbinger: The Beginning’ by Jim Shooter and David Lapham

I had forgotten how much superhero comics had changed in the past 15 years when I picked up Valiant’s new Harbinger: The Beginning collection ($24.95), which revives the book’s first issues from 1992.

It’s impossible to evaluate the stories without looking at the context of their era. True, [[[Harbinger]]] never reached the excessive silliness of Liefeld’s [[[X-Force]]], but it’s populated by edgy characters with dated nicknames like “Torque,” who spout even more dated phrases like “buttlick.”

Since the crash of the ’90s, comics have largely moved toward a more serious and realistic tone, and Harbinger (created by Jim Shooter and David Lapham) stands in stark contrast. All the same, in many ways the book holds up, probably no surprise since it once garnered a great number of fans.

What’s especially appreciable about Harbinger is how it strays from the superhero stereotype, something even today’s books struggle to do. The protagonist, Pete, is not a clear-cut hero; instead he’s an immature and often egotistical teen who doesn’t understand the dangers of his powers. The villain, Harada, is no great man, but his central goal is to protect the world from Pete.

As much as anything, Harbinger is about the folly of youth and the lessons to be learned from those mistakes. It falls into cliché and hollow edginess, but more often jumps in surprising directions and offers a new (again, in context) take on heroes.

Where Are The Superheroine Movies?

shehulk025-1292861Over at Cinematical, Elisabeth Rappe responds to all the acclaim for Iron Man by pointing out a deficiency in the booming business of comics being adapted to film.

Looking around the cinematic landscape, at the likes of Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Bruce Wayne, Hellboy and the like, Rappe notices something missing: superheroines. And, even worse, Marvel’s recent announcement of more male heroes headed to the screen and ongoing delays in a Wonder Woman project, it looks like no female heroes will be hitting the big screen anytime soon.

It has been eight years since X-Men made comic book movies big business, and we have yet to see a proper superheroine. Ant-Man is on a faster production track than Wonder Woman – and who is more recognizable to the general public? Why is Thor more palatable to the mass audience than Black Widow? I don’t buy that there isn’t a mass appeal for these stories.

It probably doesn’t help the studio perspective that the only two comic heroines allowed to fly solo were disasters. But was there ever a smidgen of care given to either Elektra or Catwoman during the writing or production process? Neither film was entered into with that Iron Man spirit; they were careless and cheap, and turned out predictably awful. It’s no surprise that a movie bombs because it sucks – but surely, the suits are ascribing that largely to heroines being lousy sells. It says volumes that neither are worth the kind of relaunch The Incredible Hulk is getting. Why not bring back Elektra to revise big screen history? I’d pay to see it in a heartbeat.

A lot of food for thought, and plenty to agree or disagree with. Interestingly, Rappe doesn’t place any of the blame on the comic book industry, which has been called out for giving women short shrift plenty of times.

Reviewing Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s ‘Essential Thor’

I don’t normally post links to reviews on other comics news sites, since we have so many of our own hitting the site here every day, but I had to make an exception for Tom Spurgeon’s recent review of the third volume of Marvel’s Mighty Thor "Essential" collection.

Thor has never been a favorite character of mine, as his dialogue always seemed a bit hokey and he’s pretty much the definition of a deus ex machina. But Spurgeon’s review of the collection, which features Stan Lee and Jack Kirby doing exactly what made them legends in the industry, has me contemplating a change of heart.

He describes the collected stories’ overall tone as "verily, there are asses over yon we doth must beat" repeated ad infinitum — which is a big selling point for me.

Spurgeon goes on to summarize the collection as follows:

It’s quite fun. The panels where Thor is not punching people so hard their light source changes are stuffed to the brim with either a) cool-looking Kirbyana almost always in the form of monsters and machinery, b) Volstagg, a fat coward who can bench press a bus, providing J. Wellington Wimpy-style comedy relief, or c) Thor screaming at someone about how awesome he is in preparation of punching them so hard their light source changes.

I love a well-written review, and this is certainly a great example of one. Head over to The Comics Reporter to read the rest of it.

Marvel Super Hero Squad Game Announced

squad2-7678603

Gamers, get your insulin shots ready. THQ has signed a deal to make videogames based on the too-cute Marvel Super Hero Squad toy line. You know the ones we’re talking about: The two-inch, superdeformed action figures where even the grimiest anti-hero and baddest  bad guy look incredibly happy. Even the Punisher is smiling.

Like the toys themselves, the game is aimed at a younger audience, but should prove popular with adult comic book fans. The first game is scheduled to come out in 2009 for multiple systems. Will one of the missions include turning Doctor Doom’s frown upside down? we’ll see.

Also noted in the press release linked above was that Marvel will be launching a multimedia campaign for the Marvel Super Hero Squad toy line in 2009 with a dedicated animated series and comic books to come.

Oh, and you heard it here first: I predict a crossover in 2010 with Disney, where characters from the two properties will fight, but then realize that the real enemy was cavities. Okay, maybe not… but you never know.

 

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