Tagged: comics

Podcast Feud: iFanboy Vs CAGcast?

  • News
  • April 25, 2008

It’s happened to all of us at some point. As a comic book fan you attend a convention with hopes of making a personal connection with a creator or personality you admire. Then reality shatters your expectations when you find that he or she’s, well… sort of a jerk.

Wombat, the co-host of the popular Cheap Ass Gamer podcast (aka CAGcast), is a well-known comic book fan and has gone off-topic on his show many times to talk about comics. It’s no surprise that the New York CIty native was planning to attend the New York Comic Con. In past episodes of the show, he’s mentioned that he enjoyed the iFanboy video podcast. So what happens when he spotted them on the convention floor?

According to Wombat, after introducing himself to the iFanboy crew, they promptly gave him the cold shoulder. CheapyD, the other CAGcast co-host, made the segment into a wickedly funny Internet video.

 

 

At the end, Wombat reports that Josh from iFanboy apologized and no hard feelings are held on either side.

Wombat, ComicMix Radio promises to never slight you — because now we’ve seen what happens!

 

 

Frank Miller: Comics ‘Strip-Mined’ by Movies

  • News
  • April 25, 2008

The Los Angeles Times just had a story about the boom in comics-to-film. In a recent six-week stretch, some 22 comics properties were optioned, the paper reported.

That includes Locke & Key, the supernatural thriller by Joe Hill for IDW (cover at right). While this is great news for many and illustrates the growing popularity of comics, not everyone is looking at the boom with rose-colored glasses.

"It’s accelerating because right now it’s fashion," says Frank Miller, who created the graphic novels behind "Sin City" and "300," and whose early-’80s series "Ronin," about a reincarnated samurai battling evil in a futuristic New York, is being adapted by Joby Harold ("Awake") for Warner Bros. "I think we can expect it to calm down. Comic books have always been this vast mountain range that gets strip-mined and left behind."

The main point of the story, though, is that one reason so many comics are adapted is that comics and graphic novels are substantially easier to read than screenplays. Miller calls screenplays the "single [worst] story form" and "unreadable."

Comicspace/Webcomics Nation Merger: The Interview

  • News
  • April 24, 2008

Gary Tyrrell of the popular webcomics blog Fleen doesn’t do a lot of interviews, so when he does have the opportunity to do one, he makes it count. Case in point: His recent conversation with Webcomics Nation founder Joey Manley and John Boeck, one of the primary investors in comics-focused social networking site ComicSpace, on the recent merger of the two online entities.

While much of the discussion focuses on the pair’s plan for the two projects and how the new union could fit into the greater webcomics scene, it’s an interesting read for anyone of the industry-watching mindset. The duo claim that comics publishing isn’t one of their goals, but instead they’re setting plans in motion to "allow the artist to delegate the secondary tasks that aren’t writing and drawing, and to pay a fair fee for those services, not to have to give up the IP in exchange for those services."

Intriguing it is, yes…

My favorite part of the interview, however, has to be Manley’s explanation of what attracted him to Boeck and his investment group, E-Line Ventures:

Theirs was the first proposal that didn’t skeeve us out. They didn’t want to just write a check, they wanted to work with us — they’re teaching us, they’re not out to steal the IP.

Head over to Fleen for the full interview.

59, by John Ostrander

  • News
  • April 24, 2008

Numbers represent. They don’t really mean.

Any meaning associated with numbers – or words for that matter – are what we assign to them. My social security number identifies me to the government but it’s not who I am. It has importance, yes, and if unscrupulous people get a hold of it, it can have a terrible impact on my life. It is not, however, my life. The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. The road map is not itself the road.

I turned 59 last Sunday and I’ve asked myself “What does that mean? Am I different in any essential way than I was on Saturday?” No. “Do birthdays have meanings?” If we give them some – yes. I like to celebrate the birthdays of those close to me more than I like to celebrate my own. I celebrate the fact that they were born, that they entered this world, and I get to be a part of their lives. I don’t dislike my birthday; I don’t have a problem with having one. I am thankful for the thoughts and good wishes expressed and any excuse to have a double chocolate cake is a good one.

The real use to me of my birthday these days is a bit more meditative. The number 59 has meaning in context with numbers 1 to 58. They are mileposts in my journey thus far. Milepost thirty-three – my first published comic book work. I remember that because I was pleased to be a rookie at anything at 33. Milepost thirty-eight – I married Kim Yale. Talk about being a rookie! Milepost forty-seven – Kim died and the world collapsed only to begin again a few mileposts later with Mary Mitchell. Life goes on. Death gives way to new life. (more…)

Interview: Joshua Dysart on ‘B.P.R.D.: 1946’

  • News
  • April 23, 2008

bprd5-9590823One of this year’s big additions to the Hellboy universe has been the series BPRD: 1946, which puts the spotlight on Trevor Bruttenholm as he investigates the occult legacy of the Third Reich.

I recently caught up with series co-writer Joshua Dysart to talk about BPRD, working with Mike Mignola and Dysart’s strange journey into comics writing. Dysart also touched on the wealth of other projects he’s working on, including one based on musician Neil Young’s life and music.

COMICMIX: How did you end up working on BPRD: 1946 and being so closely involved with the Hellboy books for Dark Horse? 

JOSHUA DYSART: It was kind of a long and winding road, as these things mostly are. I first met Mignola and [Editor] Scott Allie in Dallas, Texas at the first Wizard World there in 2004. We hung out by the pool table in the bar together and just talked. Our aesthetic was very similar. About six to eight months later, Scott got me the job on the Van Helsing comic. Which, despite its source material, I’m still really proud of. When Mike was moving out to Los Angeles he showed interest in finding a local writer to work with. Scott mentioned my name. Then Mike went out to a local comic book shop and the owner, a close personal friend of mine, recommended me. We set up a luncheon date and I was terribly, terribly nervous. But I did my little song and dance and it worked out. That was late in 2006.

CMix: That has to be a little intimidating to go pitch yourself to somebody like Mignola.

JD: I was late to the meeting as well, by the way. I ride a bicycle everywhere and at the time didn’t have a cellphone. So on top of being terribly intimidated, I was late with no way to contact him. I thought for sure that being without a cellphone and a car was not going to bode well for me as a professional. But it turned out that Mike didn’t have a car or a cellphone either, and I think there was a sense of a shared value system in this — like two Luddites finding each other amongst the Blackberry/BMW wasteland of Santa Monica, CA. But all the way around it was a pretty terrifying thing, the notion of the meeting.

But in the end, it was fine. Mike is so enthusiastic about his creation — and as a reader, so am I — so I was put at ease very quickly. I don’t think he even noticed I was late.

The advice I got from Scott Allie before the meeting was, "Don’t act like such a fucking hippie."

(more…)

Review: Chris Ware’s ‘ACME Novelty Library, Vol. 18’

acme1-7237097ACME Novelty Library, Vol. 18
By Chris Ware
Drawn & Quarterly, 2007, $18.95

My friend and former colleague James Nicoll once said “Whenever I find my will to live becoming too strong, I read Peter Watts.” For me, Chris Ware fills the same function – Ware’s work is almost terminally depressing, but executed with such craft and skill that it’s impossible to look away.

This edition of [[[ACME Novelty Library]]] continues Ware’s current graphic novel, “Building Stories” – at least, that’s what this has been called before; there’s no page with that or any other title in this book – with a series of interconnected short stories about an unnamed woman who lives on the top floor of that apartment building. (Parts of this volume also appeared in The New York Times Magazine in 2007 as part of their cruelly-misnamed “Funny Papers” feature – Ware might have been the most bleak thing in that comics space so far, but all of it has been serious, most of it has been dour and none of it has been funny.)

(more…)

We Become What We Deserve To Be, by Elayne Riggs

  • News
  • April 23, 2008

It’s now been three days since NY Comic Con 2008 ended, but I had to save my con report until now because it usually takes me this long to fully recover and gather my thoughts. The older I get and the more convention time I’ve logged, the more a few patterns begin to present themselves, and this con pretty much ran the gamut for me.

Friday was our longest stint at the con, and is pretty much a blur to me now. I’d had no set plan other than touching base with the ComicMix office and wandering around Artists’ Alley to see friends, but I was determined to give the exhibition hall as thorough a perusal as possible during the "trade only" portion of the con in the morning. But between the non-comics media stuff and the dealers in which I had little interest, it all ran together far sooner than I’d expected, and I quickly found myself in "seen one, seen ’em all" mode, wishing I’d prearranged specific meetups with blog friends and such. Thing of it was, though, I wanted to wing it. I’ve had to insert so much structure into my life what with the job search that I just wasn’t up to organizing anything having to do with fun, leisure activities.

Speaking of organization, I should mention that this was hands-down the best run NYCC yet, even with the reported surge in attendance. The volunteers were helpful without being intrusive, polite to a fault (one even asked if we needed help finding anyone in Artists’ Alley) and extremely professional. What a total pleasure! We saw a queue on Friday to get into the Javits, but nothing like the chaos of previous years. And here I must confess that part of the reason we may have seen only the sunny side was that we’d decided to truncate our time on Saturday and Sunday to about four hours rather than the entire day.

We have to face facts — these days, even in our home town, a full convention day takes a lot out of us, between all the walking and the hour-plus bus rides (which turned into two hours going back, as the crosstown bus from the Javits tended to arrive at Sixth Avenue moments after our express bus departed, leaving us to wait another 30 minutes for the connection). We’re not about to keel over or anything, we make it up and down the two flights between our apartment and the sidewalk just fine, but neither are we cut out any longer for the more frenzied activity we could handle ten years ago. (more…)

ComicMix Radio: It’s Business As Usual Again, So Let’s Go Comic Shopping!

It’s a new week and a new round of comic books and DVDs to ponder, plus:

— The next step for the Wolverine manga series (art at right is not final)

— Stan Lee and his next "New Universe"

— Move over, Mickey Mouse, Marvel gets a a theme park!

It’s only been a a day, so you know how to press the button!

 

 

  And remember, you can always subscribe to ComicMix Radio podcasts via badgeitunes61x15dark-1575629 or RSS!

 

NYCC: ‘Webcomics: Threat or Menace’ Panel Report

  • News
  • April 22, 2008

I’m not certain whether anyone determined if webcomics were a threat, a menace or a combination of the two during Saturday’s "Webcomics: Threat or Menace" panel at New York Comic Con, but it was a lively discussion all the same.

Gary Tyrrell of Fleen moderated a panel that featured an intriguing spectrum of webcomics interests, consisting of Rich Stevens (Diesel Sweeties), Robert Khoo (Director of Business Development for Penny Arcade), Richard Brunning (Senior VP and Creative Director for DC) and Jeremy Ross (Director of New Product Development for Tokyopop).

The discussion kicked off with a hard look at the definition of webcomics found in the convention programming schedule, and its curious (one would hope, tongue-in-cheek) view on the potential effects of the webcomic evolution:

There’s a dizzying array of different models for delivering comics over the Web, from Webcomics, to PDFs for a fee, to ad-supported PDFs, to PDFs as promotional tool, and behind it all is the backdrop of illegal file sharing of comics. Are comics on the Web going to be a tool to increase the popularity of paper products, an alternate distribution channel that takes sales from retailers and circulation from libraries, or a threat to legitimate channels as illegal downloads grow?

While all of the panelists agreed that the definition and potential implications of webcomics in the booklet left quite a bit to be desired, that was pretty much the only point at which everyone was on the same page with regard to webcomics, where they’re headed and what the ripple effect might be for print publishing. (more…)

Review: ‘Fantasy Classics’ edited by Tom Pomplun

fantasy3-7944618Fantasy Classics: Graphic Classics Vol. 15
Edited by Tom Pomplun
Eureka Productions, 2008, $11.95

The “[[[Graphic Classics]]]” series most of the time sticks to a single author per volume, but not always – they’ve had [[[Horror Classics]]], [[[Adventure Classics]]], and [[[Gothic Classics]]] already, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see more along those lines. (There’s no one chomping at the bit for a full volume of Sax Rohmer or Anne Radcliffe, for example, and it’s also a way to do more Poe or Lovecraft without doing a full-fledged “volume two.”) 

[[[Fantasy Classics]]] has two long adaptations – of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and of H.P. Lovecraft’s “[[[The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath]]]” – that each take up about a third of the book, and some shorter pieces that fill up the rest. They’re all fantasy, as advertised, but they’re very different kids of fantasy from each other – many, in fact, consider [[[Frankenstein]]] to be science fiction, indeed the ur-SF novel – and none of them are much like what’s mostly found in the “Fantasy” section of a bookstore. There are no Tolkienesque elves or post-[[[Buffy]]] vampire lover/killers here.

The book leads off with a single-page adaptation of Lord Dunsany’s “After the Fire” by Rachel Masilamani; it’s fine for what it is, but basically a vignette.

(more…)

Categories

Archives

Everything you need to make great comics!

comicmix-pro-300x69-2

Nucleus X

Bookshop Zaks