Tagged: comics

Being A Sport, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • March 17, 2008

You might not have realized it, but this is the time of year when more Americans engage in more illegal activity than just about any other. Nope; it’s not drunk driving or tax cheating, it’s March Madness… and the crime is called gambling.

Studies suggest March Madness is the high school student’s portal to gambling. On-the-job productivity plummets. An estimated $2.4 billion dollars will be put on the line against the law, some of it with organized crime – which wouldn’t be the case if it were legal, unless you are like me and you consider bankers to be their own strain of organized crime.

I’ll admit, I don’t get it. I don’t have the gambling gene (or maybe I’m just too cheap), and I’m at best a second-tier sports fan. I follow hockey and I follow the Iditarod because being a hockey fan isn’t as weird as it used to be. I follow the Chicago Cubs because as a native northside Chicagoan I am compelled to do so. Much like Yankee fans, we believe that there’s some issue of “sports” involved with the team. And that’s pretty much it. My lifetime contribution to sports-related at-risk financial endeavors is zilch.

But I am a comics fan and a student of our culture. So I wonder, with all this interest in sports and all this money changing hands, why hasn’t there been a successful sports-themed comic book series?

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On This Day: Dan Adkins

  • News
  • March 15, 2008

Born on March 15, 1937, in Midkiff, West Virginia, Dan Adkins grew up in rural areas where he could indulge his love of wandering and exploring. When he was 11, however, rheumatic fever left him paralyzed from the waist down for six months.

He passed the time by reading comics books and became fascinated with the artwork in particular. Adkins joined the Air Force after high school and became a draftsman, then an illustrator. It was during that time that he started the fanzine Sata, in 1956.

After leaving the Air Force Adkins moved to New York, where he did freelance illustration for several years before joining Wally Wood Studio in 1965, which gave him his start in comics. Since then he’s worked for DC, Marvel, Eclipse, and others, and done many magazine covers as well. Adkins is probably best known for his work on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, Strange Tales, and Doctor Strange.

Dark Horse and Universal Announce Production Deal

  • News
  • March 15, 2008

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Universal Pictures and Dark Horse Entertainment today announced an exclusive production and distribution agreement which effectively makes Universal the new home for all of Dark Horse’s film, television and comics properties for the next three years.

Specifically, this deal gives Universal the rights to all of the properties currently held by Dark Horse as well as anything that the company may want to aquire or develop in the future. It’s not a one-way street, however, as Dark Horse is able to tap into Universal’s vast financial and development resources to develop, finance and distribute projects of its own.

Of course, many of Dark Horse’s properties have already been made into films including The Mask, Barb Wire, Timecop and Mystery Men. In addition, Universal is currently behind the latest Dark Horse comic book project: Hellboy 2: The Golden Army.

Given this new deal one wonders if we might end up seeing feature film version of some of the most popular Dark Horse titles like Angel: After the Fall or or even Buffy: Season Eight? As a fan of both of those comics, I hope so.

Manga Friday: With the Light

  • News
  • March 14, 2008

This time, we’re focusing entirely on one series, and specifically the two volumes of it published in English so far.

"Is Wheeler slacking off?" ask the punters.

No, he is not – each of these books is well over 500 pages, so I’m actually reviewing more manga, by weight, than usual this week.

With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child, Vols. 1 & 2
By Keiko Tobe
Yen Press, 2007-2008, $14.99 each

Every so often, those of us who love comics get a great object lesson with which to confront our friends who are not so open-minded: something that’s not only excellent as a comic, but challenges people’s preconceptions of what comics can do.

Maus was the biggest one, but, since then, we’ve had projects like Blankets, From Hell, The Cartoon History of the Universe and Bone to show off to people who think “comics can’t do that!”

And now there’s With the Light, as well. I’m not saying that it’s as good as those other books – it’s well-crafted, and good at what it sets out to do, but isn’t quite on that level – but it’s another great example of comics story-telling applied to new material.

With the Light is a work of fiction, but it’s based closely on true stories. (And it also shows what a really full comics-publishing ecology, such as the one in Japan, can be capable of.) It tells the story of Hikaru Azuma, an autistic boy in an average Japanese city, from his birth, in the voice of his mother Sachiko.

Sachiko soon begins to worry that her son isn’t normal – he hates being held, he cries a lot, and, at his eighteen-month-year check-up, a nurse declares that he’s deaf because he doesn’t respond to her. The real diagnosis follows quickly, but it doesn’t help all that much – Sachiko is under a lot of pressure from her workaholic husband Masato and his interfering mother to be a perfect mom. And the measure of a perfect mother is how her child behaves – so a badly behaving child proves that she’s a failure. “They say children grow up as they were raised,” the mother-in-law screams at Sachiko in a full-page panel, “It’s all your fault!” (more…)

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ComicMix Radio: Keith Giffen Is A Free Man!

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The grind of weekly comics is tough on fans, so imagine the guy who has just finished off TWO weekly series! Fresh over Countdown (and still reeling from 52), Keith Giffen vents and talk about returning to fun stories again in this clip from an interview that will be on the site in full next week, plus:

— Buck Rogers – and Alex Ross!

— Got a late comic? Just make it fatter!

—  You should be crazy to work in comics – so let’s welcome Britney Spears…

—  There was a trick answer to our last trivia question, but we had a winner.  Here’s a new one and another chance to grab an exclusive Graham Crackers Comics variant by e-mailing us at: podcast [at] comicmix.com

Yes, we said Britney – Just Press The Button: 

 

And remember, you can always subscribe to ComicMix Radio podcasts via badgeitunes61x15dark-4684825 or RSS!

Atari Comics Receive Digital Reprint

  • News
  • March 13, 2008

The Steam online digital distrubution system announced that Atari PC games would be added to their catalog of programs. One of the games, Atari 80 Classics in 1, is more of a bargain then meets the eye. A collection of retro Atari games from the arcades and the Atari 2600 game system, the package includes a bonus not listed in any of the marketing materials.

Each game in the collection has an Extras bonus content section. Usually this includes box art and original manuals. But the Atari archivists were very thorough and included the bonus mini-comics that were published in conjunction with DC Comics. These comics, while never valuable, do entertain on a cult status level. Atari comics had surprisingly high quality for what was essentially a marketing pack-in item.

Comics included in the collection are as follows:

Swordquest #1-3. Written by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway, but the real star of these comics is the amazingly great art by George Perez and Dick Giordano. Swordquest was intended to be an epic multi-part adventure game. Each game in the series would include a comic to explain the story while the games would be puzzle adventures based on mythology.

Atari Force #3. Sci-fi from Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas. Artists included Ross Andru, Gil Kane, Dick Giordano and Mike DeCarlo. Atari Force proved popular enough that DC Comics published a second volume in the regular, monthly comic format. Unfortunately, the games collection only includes one of the issues since the rights for the other games that included the comics are no longer held by Atari.

Centipede #1. A light-hearted kids’ book in the style of Harvey Comics. An evil wizard turns Oliver the Elf’s forest friends into monsters. Who knew Centipede had a deep back story? We thought we were just shooting bugs.

Atari 80 Classics in 1 is available at Steampowered.com for $18.95. That’s 80 games and five hard-to-find comics… Why not?

Free ‘Incredible Hulk’ and ’30 Days of Night’ TV Goes Online

  • News
  • March 12, 2008

The Incredible Hulk. Hulu.

Now that you have a silly Hawaiian image stuck in your head, here’s the scoop: We’re talking about Hulu.com, the online streaming service that lets online viewers watch entire television episodes legally and, most importantly, without cost. Hulu is the product of a cooperative effort by several movie and TV studios in the wake of YouTube and other services where users frequently uploaded copyrighted content. The service was in private beta form until now, but recently went public.

For comic book fans, the top program offered on the site will likely be the entire first season of the classic 1970s series The Incredible Hulk. The show followed Dr. David Banner (the late Bill Bixby) in his search for a cure to his rampaging alter-ego, the Hulk (played by Lou Ferrigno). The show is considered one of the best comic book adaptations in mainstream media because it was faithful to the spirit of the character and treated its subject matter seriously. Lou Ferrigno, looking as impressive as ever, is a popular fixture at comic book conventions to this day.

But the Hulk isn’t the only comic-book monster on the site. 30 Days of Night: Blood Trails, the web-based miniseries based on the popular vampire comic by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith created as a prequel to the recent film adaptation, will also be available.

Other notable shows for comic book fans inculde Battlestar Galactica (both versions), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Crow: Stairway to Heaven, Family Guy, Firefly, Heroes, and Spider-Man (the CGI-animated series).

Hulu.com programs are free with limited commercial interruption, requiring only that users register.

Review: Jughead’s Double Digest #138

So there I was, at Midtown Comics, one of New York City’s better-racked shops, trying to find something my wife was looking for. That’s the only way you could get me into a comics shop on a Tuesday, the day before the new stuff is put on the shelves. Since I was there, I looked at everything else as well… and came across [[[Jughead’s Double Digest #138]]], a beneath-the-radar book that some will find of note.

This is the issue before the beginning of their latest “new-look” story, this time drawn by my pals Joe Staton and Al Milgrom, so I gave it a second glance. Above the logo, in type too small to be visible in the reproduction I cribbed from Archie’s website, is the phrase “Collectors (sic) Issue Featuring Jughead #1, 1949.” The cover art promised a story where the 2008 Jughead meets up with his 1949 counterpart. The one who only owned one shirt.

Unless you’ve been scouring the ComicMix comments sections lately, it is possible you are unaware that the Archie line is one of the best-selling newsstand comics ventures of our time. In fact, since their digests are available at most supermarket checkouts, they provide an unparalleled portal into the world of comics. Because their content appeals to readers of all sexes and age groups, they appeal to a group Marvel and DC barely acknowledge: the younger reader.

I should point out that Archie is also the last of the publishing houses still controlled by the family of its original owners. That comes across quite clearly in their editorial content, which is quite respectful of its roots.

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Review: Andi Watson’s ‘Glister’

Glister, Vols. 1-3

Andi Watson
Image, 2007, $5.99 each

Andi Watson has had a career more typical of a prose writer than a comics creator: he’s worked on a number of projects, pretty much all of them his own original ideas, nearly all of them with defined endings, for different publishers, and kept the copyright. Some of those projects span more than one volume, but, still, his stuff ends up on a shelf as if they were novels, and he’s hasn’t shown any sign of really wanting to be the next great Avengers writer or to re-vamp the Haunted Tank or do anything else horribly fanboyish and all-too-typical for his generation. And yet his work isn’t particularly literary or self-indulgent, either: Watson may have a bit of autobiography hidden around the fringes of his stories, but he’s mostly not talking about himself.

Watson’s recent books have generally been aimed at adults without being restricted to them; a book like Little Star is about parenthood in a way that teenagers probably won’t be interested in, but there’s nothing about it that would keep them out. His earliest works, though – Samurai Jam and Skeleton Key – were much more obviously all-ages books, and he’s returned to a younger audience with Glister.

Actually, if anything, Glister excludes adults: it’s a series about the continuing adventures of a preteen girl (Glister Butterworth), and its central audience is presumably girls of Glister’s age. Each of the three volumes so far are independent stories of about 64 pages each — the first is a bit shorter, but it also has a Skeleton Key back-up to fill out the pages. (more…)

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Generic Respect, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • March 11, 2008

reeve-dreams-4-3273602Don’t bother putting on airs, Messrs. Man (Super and Bat); you’re nothing special, not any more. These days, you’re just two more members of a rather large club that includes cowboys, cops, private eyes, combat soldiers and guys who fly space ships to other planets and solar systems and galaxies. Serial killers who slice and dice sexy teenagers are in the club, too. And critters that are normally harmless but mutate into gigantic sociopaths.

While you weren’t looking, you’ve become a genre.
 
Of course, if we want to get sniffy about definitions, you always were, in comic books. Almost from the beginning, here were cowboy comics and detective (or Detective) comics, and monsters and spaceship jockeys were early joiners, too. And you guys, the superheroes. You were the most popular and emblematic, of the comic book good guys, but you had peers.
 
Movies were another matter. Oh, you guys showed up on what was called The Silver Screen pretty early in the form of serials or, if we want to get fancy, chapter plays intended for the Saturday matinees, which were populated by kids who, in my memory, made a hell of a lot of racket. Even there, you were a bit of an aberration, outnumbered by the gumshoes and gunfighters, and not deserving, apparently, of cinematic and dramatic niceties. And, while there were cowboys and sleuths aplenty in the movies made for after-dark showings to the kids’ moms and dads, no superheroes ever made the leap to, ahem, serious entertainments.
 

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