Tagged: comics

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JOHN OSTRANDER: Bourne To Run

  • News
  • September 6, 2007

bourne-art-4988901Spoiler Alert: This week I’m discussing the three Jason Bourne movies and I may wind up revealing plot points, especially of the most recent film out, The Bourne Ultimatum. If you’re planning to see the movie, go see it first. More fun that way.

Just recently I got around to seeing The Bourne Ultimatum, the third in the Jason Bourne series of films starring Matt Damon. All are supposedly based on novels by the late Robert Ludlum – at least, to the degree that the James Bond films were based on the Ian Fleming novels, which meant they basically used the title and one or two elements, if that.

Which is one of its problems for the Ludlum fans. From what I understand, they also don’t like Matt Damon, saying that he’s too young or not right. While I haven’t read the Bourne novels, I have read one or two other Ludlum books and enjoyed them well enough. And I do have sympathy for their position. I complained about the SciFi Network’s version of The Dresden Files because they had so little to do with the actual series of books, which are wonderful. The TV series wasn’t. I sometimes wonder why H’weird buys up properties and then makes wholesale changes in them to the point that they have very little to do with the original concept. The current Flash Gordon series which both I and ComicMix EIC Mike Gold loathe (Mike, you lasted an episode more than I did) is a case in point.

All that said – I’m a big fan of the Bourne movies and more so after the third. I stumbled on the three by accident. (For the record, the three films are The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum.) I happened to come across the Supremacy while I was channel surfing one evening, coming in after it started and found myself hooked. When the movie was on again, the lovely and talented Mary joined me and was also drawn in. We kept on missing the opening and it took about three viewings before we finally saw the film all the way through. We then got a hold of the first film and now have the first two on DVD. Supremacy, in particular, has become one of our favorite films.

A quick general summary is in order. Jason Bourne is an amnesiac Black Ops agent working for a super-secret program within the CIA called The Treadstone Project. He’s created to be a human weapon, a master assassin, with mad skills and an ability to improvise. When The Bourne Identity begins, the man known as Jason Bourne is hauled out of the sea by some Mediterranean fishermen. He’s been shot and he has amnesia. Numbers tattooed on his hip turn out to be a Swiss banking account. In a safety deposit box he finds passports and lots of money.

 

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It’s the BIG COMICMIX BROADCAST for September 5th!

sbaby-4074367Want to start a lively discussion with your comic fan buddies? Ask them who has the best costume and watch the sparks fly. Get the heat started when we fire up the Big ComicMix Broadcast and tell you where to find the list of what some fans call "the best" — plus the holiday is over and it’s back to the comic racks for a run of new titles out this week, and a great line up of DVDs, too,  especially if you are a TV fan.

 

You know – a really cool costume would have a BUTTON like this YOU CAN PRESS!

 

 

ELAYNE RIGGS: The PFVM Principle

  • News
  • September 5, 2007

elayne100-2362892There’s been a flurry of posts lately in the comics blogosphere, including Glenn Hauman’s last column here, about perceived value for money (let’s just call it PVFM) when it comes to comics. The consensus seems to be, American comics periodicals from the Big Two are usually about 22 pages long and take mere minutes to read through, which is Not Good. Added to that the current buzzword in vogue for what used to be called "padding," now rechristened "decompression," and the PVFM aggravation level shoots way up as the time actually spent reading the thing goes way down. And the conclusion is, there just ought to be more words per page, and possibly more pages per pamphlet, so the reading time (and thus the presumed enjoyment time) increases and fans don’t feel like they’re being ripped off and more readers will return to comics and all will be well with the world. It’s gotten so bad that I’ve actually seen online comics pages where a writer/artist will put up a page of wordless story and apologize for the lack of dialogue on it!

Allow me to ask: When did PVFM become a condition upon which entertainment should be created? Do all stories have to be dense, or should all stories strive instead to be good?

Look, I understand PVFM. I frequent an all-you-can-eat sushi place, for cripe’s sake. The sushi’s very good there, or I wouldn’t frequent it. But I’ve been to lots of AYCE places that made me wish I paid more for less-but-better stuff. As anyone who’s visited a 99-cent store would agree, quantity isn’t always synonymous with quality.

Particularly where such a subjective experience as entertainment is involved. Perhaps I’m the wrong person to ask this, what with my swiss-cheese retention abilities, but were all the stories you really remember fondly real long ones? I’ve been to some long, dense movies that were full of sound and fury and signified less than nothing; the concession candy had more fulfillment. And I’ve spent two minutes reading various pithy blog posts that stick with me far longer than the screens and screens of blather that, frankly, I usually can’t even make it all the way through. But okay, let’s be fair — comics aren’t blog posts, where brevity and getting to the point is often prized. And they’re not movies, where unspoken movement can convey so much that a constant stream of words isn’t necessary.

So tell me, without looking: what’s your favorite comic book story, and how many words does it contain?

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GLENN HAUMAN: How to create your own webcomic!

  • News
  • September 4, 2007

yourownwebcomic-7193174People have been speculating that we here at ComicMix were going to start up with a webcomic any day now, but we had a secret shame — we didn’t actually know how to create 21st century cutting edge webcomics that all the kids read today. But thanks to Ridiculopathy (with a hat tip to Dirk Deppey) we finally know how to do it!

Rule #1 – Don’t draw anything. Illustration is hard work and a time-consuming skill to acquire. Thanks to modern technology, most notably the copy & paste feature found on most modern computers, it is now completely unnecessary. Grab a random image from Google Image Search and add some speech bubbles. Don’t even draw the speech bubbles- just search "speech bubble" on your pal Google Image Search.

Easy enough. Who needs real artists and letterers anyway? They’re always late, and just make you tired and grouchy.

Rule #2 – Don’t write actual jokes. Other than the mistake of spending time drawing a comic, the second most common mistake newcomers make is writing one. Some people waste hours wracking their brains for a funny premise or clever line, but it’s utterly pointless and only exposes you to the danger of your readers just not finding your jokes funny. Instead, start from a very specific audience (most often based on a fandom, fundamentalist religion, or bizarre sexual practice) and tell them what they want to hear in four-panel format.

Hey, we can skip over getting writers too? Hot damn! Brian, we just dropped our burn rate down to, like, nothing! We can put it all back into T&A — er, sorry, T&E. Travel and Entertainment. Really. Honest.

Rule #3 – Don’t be gracious. A great way to generate buzz for your web comic is by picking a fight with another web comic, preferably someone with a more established site so that the inevitable "look at what this moron just said" links on his forum will boost your server stats. Again, you can’t and probably shouldn’t write jokes about them, so just barf up a few panels about calling your target names and making them cry.

This keeps getting better and better! Hey, um — who do we want to pick on today? Scott Kurtz? No, we’ll see him this weekend. Warren Ellis? He’s not crossing the Atlantic for a year, but his fans are scary. Wait — Bendis! He’s under an exclusive contract, he wouldn’t be able to write for us anyway, so we don’t have to suck up to him. Hey, Bendis! Get a toupee!

Rule #4 —

Oh, who cares at this point? We’re ready! We know everything! Time to start up a web comics publishing empire!

I wonder if we can have a press release ready in time for Baltimore….

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MIKE GOLD: Belabor Day

  • News
  • September 3, 2007

mike-gold-2-100-7210334As our own Martha Thomases pointed out  last Saturday, today is Labor Day. Martha made an interesting comparison between Manhattan and the Bottle City of Kandor without once referencing Rudy Guiliani as Brainiac. Nice self-restraint, Martha!

Like Martha, I, too, come from a city of Big Labor, one that has thus far managed to avoid the menace of Wal-Mart, the worst drug that has invaded American shores. I was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW; the Wobblies) until I became an editor, a.k.a. “management.” So I tend to look at the world from the point of view of the working person, and I’ve got the financial stability to prove it.

So on this, ComicMix’s first Labor Day, I thought I’d make a few comments about the comic book business and its workers.

Creators who work in this medium are, by and large, freelancers. They are, by and large, responsible for their own health care and retirement. This means that most comics people have no health care or retirement. I know people on the Right consider this to be their fault, the result of the fact that they’re not as smart as people on the Right. These are fools who have never had to face the prospect of going without food or lodging. It’s amazing how fast your priorities change when you’ve got nothing on the table and in a few weeks no place to put that table. As a comics editor, I’ve always remembered this: the people upon whom I depend to pay my rent are living tits to the wind.

Not everybody in comics management remembers this. Back in the 1960s a number of important creators at DC Comics tried forming a guild to protect their jobs and provide some security. DC, of course, was (and is) in the heart of Manhattan. These were creators who were important to the company: they were involved in producing some of the company’s more successful features over the course of their tenure. And within about a year, each and every one of them was gone from the company.

In fact, DC’s then-management actually brought in an editor, Dick Giordano, who would bring in his own creative crew from Charlton. Without knowledge of the situation – he was still in Connecticut at the time – Dick found himself replacing many of these creators. When he told me that story (at the same Westport bar where he was hired by DC), it was clear he hated having been cast as something of a patsy. One of the many reasons I respect him.

Another attempt at guild-making came in the late 1970s. Fresh from his successful campaign on behalf of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Neal Adams helped organize a guild that included a wide variety of comics writers and artists, one that, for a while, looked like it might carry some real weight. (more…)

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COMICS REVIEW: Amazons Attack

23630_4_006-8429163At Heroes Con in Charlotte this past June, one convention goer asked DC EIC Dan DiDio what was the point of Amazons Attack. “What’s the point of any comic?” DiDio quipped back, leaving me to believe that the point was in fact simply to separate me from eighteen dollars and eat up ten minutes of my life for each of six months.

It’s been a couple of shaky years in the world of [[[Wonder Woman]]] fandom; turning her into a killer, handing the mantle off to Donna Troy – which you would have missed if you blinked, the “who is Wonder Woman?” plotline which I’m not even sure has started but was touted as ”next” at the end of issue #4, which then begs the mention of the sporatic publication of the book itself mere months into the re-launch of the series.

After all that, “the first major comics event of 2007,” as the house ads touted, should have given us six action packed issues that could not be contained in the regular monthly title. Instead, [[[Amazons Attack]]] was confusing, boring and left me month after month echoing that Charlotte fan’s question.

Why was this a mini-series? This story could have easily been told in the pages of the monthly [[[Wonder Woman]]] book, and then perhaps they wouldn’t have replicated numerous scenes in multiple publications across one month, while leaving questions up in the air because it was so easy to not pick up a tie-in or read them out of order. Was the project ill-conceived or just poorly managed?

The art was amazingly varied from the main AA book to the tie-ins, it was sometimes hard to see where they tied in since there visual cues were often non-existent. Sadly, the art in the main title fell short: there was something lacking in what Pete Woods did that left the characters looking very flat and ill-defined facially.

It only being a few hours since I finished the series, it hasn’t sunk in yet that the whole thing served only one purpose: to set up Jim Starlin’s The Death of the New Gods.

***Spoiler Alert (but I see it as saving you the trouble of reading this mess)**

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BIG BROADCAST talks with Roy Thomas!

roy-6265082He calls himself the "Super Adaptoid" of comics and we can easily say he’s done it all – from Sgt. Fury to the Justice Society and from Millie The Model to Conan. How did a school teacher from Missouri end up writing so much comics history for the last four decades? Roy Thomas tells The Big ComicMix Broadcast all about it in an exclusive interview!

Meanwhile we’re covering more title changes at DC, MTV’S VIdeo Music Awards get remixed and we rundown of a bunch of new stuff on the web to look at if you get bored over your three-day weekend.

You have the day off, so PRESS THE BUTTON and let’s party down!

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MICHAEL DAVIS: That’s Just Wrong

  • News
  • August 31, 2007

michael-davis-100-6337867For the last two weeks my articles have been light hearted and funny. Well I thought they were funny. I think I’m a funny guy (not in a brokeback way) but in a kind of “That Michael Davis is a funny guy” in a ha-ha kind of way.

Now there are plenty of people who think I’m not funny. That’s fine. There are people who think I’m an idiot. That’s fine. There are even some people who think I’m a genius. That’s fine. In fact that’s my favorite assessment of me.

Notice a trend here? If you don’t think I’m funny, if you don’t like my column, heck if you don’t like or agree with me, that’s just fine.

From day one of this column I have been right up front on where I stand. Actually it has been a staple of my writing. For those who may be new to this site and my column here’s a very small snapshot of some of what I am about.

I am a liberal Democrat, except when it comes to violent crime. In fact if it was up to me I think violent criminals should be put to death during half time at the Super Bowl. So it’s fair to say that I am a conservative when it comes to crime. I think people should be able to worship whoever or whatever they want. I think that people who treat their dogs like members of the family are nuts. I think DC comics are the best in the industry. I don’t think people should insist you believe what they believe. I love hip hop, I hate bluegrass. I think the Beatles are the greatest band in the history of popular music. I think Michael Jackson is the greatest performer ever. I love Frank Sinatra. I hate the TV shows Real World and Sweet 16. I love the TV shows All My Children and Family Guy. I think George Bush is the worst President in the history of America. Lastly, I firmly believe that you CANNOT regulate morality.

The above is just the tip of the iceberg on what I believe. You may agree or not. In fact if you don’t agree with anything I said and think I’m an asshole, that’s fine to.

But I’m not wrong.

On the flip side I don’t believe that you should be able to ride a motorcycle without a helmet, smoke cigarettes, climb a mountain, jump out an airplane, hunt deer, eat raw fish. I don’t believe that dogs should see therapists, that Paris Hilton is sexy, that NASCAR is a sport. If you believe any of that then more power to you my friend.

I think some of those things I don’t believe are just stupid. As an example, I think riding a motorcycle without a helmet is your suicide waiting to happen. I ride a motorcycle and I won’t even look at it without my helmet. In fact in over 10 years of ownership I have never been on a highway. (more…)

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BIG BROADCAST Showcases The Devil’s Panties!

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Take a girl who has had her share of wacky jobs, including one behind the counter in a comic store. Then give her pen and paper and a twisted sense of humor. Now you’re got the basis for The Devil’s Panties as The Big ComicMix Broadcast introduces you to the lady who started it all – and you’ll find out why she is chasing men with a leaf blower!

Meanwhile, DC has ravaged their Showcase line-up (by, by Suicide Squad!) and we give you the good and bad on that – and we’ll tell you how Saturday morning cartoons still exist, at least on one channel.

Don’t bend over when you PRESS THE BUTTON – there’s a girl with a leaf blower behind you!

JOHN OSTRANDER: Fighting Words

  • News
  • August 30, 2007

john-ostrander100-7183946Well, crap.

Just when I think there’s nothing more coming from the Mess in Iraq that can appall me, they find a new spoonful of shit to shove down my throat. Here. Go read this link from MSNBC.

Blood boiling yet? Quick summary for those of you who didn’t click the link: those people, the whistleblowers, who have spoken up about the corruption and the fraud, the outright diversion and theft of funds going into Iraq – our tax dollars! – are being vilified, harassed, fired, detained, tortured and, in general, getting their lives ruined. And our government – surprise! – is a big part of it.

There’s a purpose to all this: discourage anyone else who might think about speaking out. What makes the folks perpetrating this travesty think they can get away with it? The fact that they are getting away with it! Small companies to large and by large, I do mean Halliburton and its subsidiary KBR which got the lion’s share of money going to Iraq to “rebuild” it.

You remember Halliburton – the corporation Dick Cheney headed before going into public service as President – whoops, Vice-President. It’s no longer an American company; it’s now a United Arab Emirates company. I thought you weren’t supposed to be working for the government if you’re also going to be a company’s lobbyist but either I’m misinformed or Cheney is uninformed on this point. The amount of no competition contracts Halliburton or its KBR subsidiary received for the rebuilding on Iraq is staggering as was the price gouging and corruption. Here follows the testimony of one whistleblower:

“Julie McBride testified last year that as a ‘morale, welfare and recreation coordinator’ at Camp Fallujah, she saw KBR exaggerate costs by double- and triple-counting the number of soldiers who used recreational facilities.

“She also said the company took supplies destined for a Super Bowl party for U.S. troops and instead used them to stage a celebration for themselves.” — Iraq corruption whistleblowers face penalties,” Associated Press Aug 25, 2007

That last bit was just crooked, petty, and arrogant. Done because they could. Why could they? Because one political party controlled both the White House and both houses of Congress. I don’t care if it’s Republican or Democrat – to me, that’s just looking for trouble. And this Administration has worked hand in glove with certain Big Business to the point we’ve become a government Of the Corporation, By the Corporation, and For the Corporation.

What has happened to Ms. McBride? Let her tell it. “After I voiced my concerns about what I believed to be accounting fraud, Halliburton placed me under guard and kept me in seclusion,” she told the committee. “My property was searched, and I was specifically told that I was not allowed to speak to any member of the U.S. military. I remained under guard until I was flown out of the country [Iraq].” (more…)

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