Tagged: comics

Anime, Manga Bites The Big Apple

  • News
  • July 30, 2007

New York City has a lot of things, but not everything. Whereas this will come as a shock to some Big Appleites, perhaps their outrage will be softened with the news that their hamlet will be honored with its first major anime festival.

The New York Anime Festival will happen December 7 – 9 at various locations in Manhattan, including the always overcrowded, hard-to-get-to Javits Convention Center and, in a brilliant stroke, the ImaginAsian Theater on East 59th Street. That bodes well for a whole lotta screenings, and the location couldn’t be more significant. Kudos.

The show is being run by Reed Communications, the same folks who bring us the horribly managed New York ComicCon. It calls itself a celebration of classic and cutting-edge anime, manga, and Japanese culture, and it’s about time New York got in on the action.

Here’s hoping the show will come off better than their comics show did the past two years.

More info: http://www.nyanimefestival.com/en-us/index.cfm

SDCC Day 4 on The Big ComicMix Broadcast!

The San Diego Comic-Con 2007 goes out with a mega-size bang as they crank out yet another sold out day, and we at The Big ComicMix Broadcast do our best to close off all our loose ends. SciFi is reviving FARSCAPE … but at least one cast member isn’t ready, we uncover a great forgotten comic series … direct from the artist and then we evesdrop as DC’s writers and editors cop to their biggest mistakes.

PRESS THE BUTTON and let’s take this puppy home!

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GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: The Saga of the Bloody Benders

benders-9425765It’s been twenty years since Geary’s original A Treasury of Victorian Murder was published – and who would have thought, then, that a slim book of arch graphic short stories about little-known murders in Victorian England would be the beginning of the comics Geary would spend most of the decades to come creating? The first of the smaller-format, single-case volumes, Jack the Ripper, followed in 1995, with a new book every other year through 2005’s The Murder of Abraham Lincoln. Then 2006 saw The Case of Madeleine Smith, and this year yet another new Geary murder case.

Except for the first volume, each “Treasury of Victorian Murder” is a small book – about 5½ “ x 8¼” with roughly eighty pages of comics – about a particular, somewhat famous murder case from 19th century England or the USA. He’s covered the deaths of two Presidents – Lincoln and Garfield – and the cases "H.H. Holmes," Lizzie Borden, and Jack the Ripper. The remaining two books – about Mary Rogers and Madeleine Smith – are about famous sensational cases, crimes of passion.

The Bender “family” – there’s some doubt as to whether they were actually related, as they claimed to be – of Labette County, Kansas are not quite as famous as most of those cases (though I hadn’t heard of Madeleine Smith before, either). But they were certainly actively murderous and impressively mysterious, so their story gives Geary quite a bit to dig into. The Benders arrived in that raw, rural area of Kansas in 1870, very soon after the Civil War and not much longer after Kansas became a state in 1861. They set up a single-room (divided by a hanging canvas) inn and grocery on the major trail through the area, and settled into the community – considered eccentric, certainly, but basically accepted.

(more…)

MICHAEL DAVIS: In The Ghetto

  • News
  • July 27, 2007

michael-davis100-9494775I hate to see stereotypical images of black people, like the thug with the gold teeth who speaks in horrible English:

I was on the way to the crib, you knows wha I’m sayin? When I gots dare tis ho wanted to hang out, you know what I’m saying? You know what I’m saying? You know what I’m saying?

        

No, I don’t know what you’re saying. Nobody knows what you are saying.

I hate to see large black women with little itty-bitty short skirts and 10 inch nails that hook at the end. I hate to see black men grab their crouches. I hate to see black kids with their pants down to their ankles.

Here’s the thing: these are not stereotypes. I know black people like that. I’m sure you know black people like that, or at least you have seen black people like that.

Hey! Keep your hands away from the “comment” button! I’m about to make a point!

Yes, there are black people who act in the ways I mentioned above. There are also lazy black people, black people who love watermelon, black men who love white women, black men with really large (insert word here) and, yes, there are loud angry black women.

These types of black people do exist. I can’t stand most of that behavior, although I have eaten my share of watermelon and dated my share of white women. I have been lazy; when I was a kid I grabbed my crouch. Lastly, I have said, You know what I’m saying?

You know what I’m saying?

None of the above acts makes up a stereotype. I have seen black people engage in every one of those acts. I myself have engaged in a few.

They become stereotypes when you assume every black person acts in such a manner all the time.

That is just crazy.

To assume that all black people behave like this is simply freakin RIDICULOUS! To think that any race of people behaves in one way as a whole is just madness. 

Every race of people has its share of people who are, let’s say “undesirable.” Black people have “niggers,” white people have “white trash,” Latinos have “spics,” Asians have “chinks.” You name the race I’ll tell the stereotypical name.  (more…)

Overheard at San Diego, part 1

  • News
  • July 26, 2007

Seventeen years ago yesterday in San Diego, Roseanne Barr sang the National Anthem at a Padres game.

While we can’t promise you anything quite like that from any Hollywood types in town for this year’s San Diego Comic-Con International, we’re bringing you the most quotable things we can eavesdrop on.

At the Newark Airport terminal: "It’s tough to tell who’s going to the convention on this flight. You used to be able to tell at a glance." "Yeah, no one’s wearing comic book shirts." "Everybody’s reading Harry Potter, but that doesn’t tell you anything."

On the floor of the convention: "We’re opening up new boxes to sell books on Preview Night. In the first hour. I hope we’ve got enough to last the weekend."

Outside the hall: "I think they’re going to use those Superman bags as tents for emergency housing."

What have you heard? Send your snippets to overheardSDCC@tips.comicmix.com, or come up to us at the show– we’re the one’s in the ComicMix shirts.

JOHN OSTRANDER: Apres Harry

  • News
  • July 26, 2007

ostrander100-2266346Well, wasn’t that an exciting conclusion to the Harry Potter saga?! And who could have seen that twist coming? You know, the one . . . the one where he . . . I mean, she . . . I mean they . . .

Okay, at the time I’m writing this I haven’t yet read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It hasn’t been released yet. I won’t go near the sites that purport to have the text and published it online. Through the miracle of weekly deadlines that have been shuffled about because of the impending San Diego Comic Con (or Spam Diego, as I like to call it because that’s usually how I feel after the end of it if I go to one – a can of Spam), I get to pretend that the last Harry Potter has been read and probably consumed and can ask the burning question on everyone’s lips:

Now what?

The Harry Potter books took us to an alien world – England, to begin with, which is alien enough for most of us on this side of the Pond. (I once demanded of my good friend and excellent artist Steve Pugh why did the English persisted in driving on the wrong side of the road in their country. Steve smiled kindly and gently told me it was to confuse the French and we poor Americans simply got caught in the middle. “Well,” I said, “ so long as there’s a good reason . . .” Where was I? Oh yes – alien worlds.)

It took us into the world of magic and English academia; it’s hard to say which is stranger to Americans. It gave us a new experience vicariously, through the joy of reading. I once heard film critic Roger Ebert remark that one of the things he looked for in films – and one of the things he really liked about the original Star Wars – was when it took him to a new world, gave him a new experience. Or, I would add, make what we know seem new or give us a different perspective so it feels like a new experience. The Potter books, in my opinion, succeeded on both levels.

So, the Potter story is now complete. It’s a closed world. The remaining movies will translate that experience to the medium of film but it won’t be altogether new. Assuming, gentle reader, you want something more in that line, where can you go? I, like many others, have a few suggestions drawn from my own reading experience. Assuming that we take it as a given that they are not Harry Potter nor are they trying to be Harry Potter, they may be books that you’d enjoy.

They are also not intended as children’s literature, so don’t think of it as a sharing experience with the kids.

(more…)

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Y: The Last Man movie moves forward

  • News
  • July 25, 2007

ythelastmanlogo-8325032ICv2 reports: "New Line Cinema has announced that D.J. Caruso will direct and Carl Ellsworth will write the big screen live action adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan’s epic science fiction comic book series, Y: The Last Man.  Caruso and Ellsworth recently teamed up on the sleeper hit Disturbia, which starred Shia LeBeouf in a clever reworking of the storyline of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, with wheelchair bound photographer Jimmy Stewart replaced in Disturbia by a grounded teenager played by LeBeouf (who is rumored to be a prime candidate to portray Yorick in Y: The Last Man)."

Now I know everybody’s in a rush to get out the door for San Diego, but they’re mixing their Stewart/Hitchcock films. Disturbia was a reworking of Rear Window, not Vertigo. Vertigo, as we all know, has the cool blonde in it. You know– Karen Berger.

DENNIS O’NEIL: “No wizard left behind”

  • News
  • July 24, 2007

At the end of last week’s exciting episode, the cute schoolteacher and I were involved in a tense debate about which showing of the new Harry Potter movie we would attend. (Yes, we media people do have lives that throb with excitement.)

We decided, and went.

The schoolteacher, who really does carry Potter devotion to an extreme, at least in one Muggle’s opinion, was enthralled. The Muggle – me – thought it was a pretty good summer flick. I’m a Muggle who can enjoy some good, old-fashioned, British Acting-with-a-capital A, and the Potters are full of A-list thespians. (There may be a pun in there somewhere, but, trust me, it’s not worth the effort needed to find it.) I think British movie acting is still partly influenced by its grandiloquent, stage-bound forebears, and that makes it appropriate to material that is the antithesis of realism, much as Brando’s naturalistic Method acting was appropriate to Tennessee Williams’s realism.

But the Pottery pleasure the teacher and I could share equally began when Dolores Umbridge entered the story. Miss Umbridge, splendidly embodied by a pink-clad Imelda Staunton, is an educational bureaucrat whose saccharine exterior conceals a heart of bile. She’s a stooge for the local politicians whose mission is to insist on a largely useless curriculum and on tests which accomplish nothing except make it impossible for real educators to do their jobs.

“No wizard left behind,” I whispered to the schoolteacher, who nodded vigorously.

I don’t know much about J.K. Rowling, Potter’s creator, but I do know that she must have been writing the novel on which the current movie is based about seven years ago, and that she works and lives in England. Those facts make it unlikely that in conjuring up Miss Umbridge she was commenting on and/or satirizing the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind farce. So maybe art was anticipating life. Whatever the reason, Miss Umbridge could step from fantasy into the real life milieu of those involved in the president’s – ahem – educational efforts and feel right at home.

Spoiler alert!

Miss Umbridge gets hers, though it appears that she survives to be rotten another day, and I rejoiced. I think schadenfreude is a pretty crummy emotion when it’s directed toward people we know, but it’s perfectly acceptable, and maybe even expected – maybe even desirable – when aimed at creatures of the imagination. And despite what the schoolteacher might want to believe, J.K. Rowling does write fiction.

RECOMMENDED READING: The Assault on Reason, by Al Gore.

Dennis O’Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of comic books like Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern and/or Green Arrow, and The Shadow, as well as all kinds of novels, stories and articles.

MIKE GOLD: Getting Nostalgic For Nostalgia

  • News
  • July 23, 2007

mikegold100-3100131As these very words see the dawn of a new week, I shall be at home packing my ComicMix shirts for the San Diego Comic Con International. It’s the most important event in the comics year. Really; don’t read that with any sarcasm because I mean that. I agree with every word Michael Davis wrote in his column last Friday the 13th: it’s a hell of an effort, it’s a hell of a show, it’s a huge event.

But I can’t help but get a little nostalgic for the old comic book shows, where the primary focus was on comic books as a hobby and an art form. These days, most of Hollywood and all of New York moves out for the SDCC; it’s a massive business. Meetings, negotiations, mega-promotions, dealers dealing comic books made unreadable by being embalmed in plastic to other dealers for very high-stakes, lawyers, agents, managers, suppliers… it gets to be overwhelming.

My first national conventions were back in New York in the late 1960s, where the sainted Phil Seuling created the model for the comic book comic book convention. When I was involved with the Chicago Comicon (now Wizard World Chicago) back in 1976 – 1985, I shamelessly ripped off Phil’s format and approach; thankfully, he saw that as a tribute. It was a different world then.

As I recall, I was at the first Seuling show to crack the 300 barrier. That’s 300 fans. Today, San Diego has more than 300 pros in attendance. Hell, it’s got more than 300 lawyers in attendance. Back then, most of us were amazed there were so many of us all over the nation. For the first time, we realized we were not alone. We weren’t that unusual. Comics were not hip; hell, from a real-world point of view, they weren’t even very profitable. This was before the direct sales market – we have Phil to thank for that, too – and comic book stores only sold back-issues. There were no action figures or posters or alternate covers; in fact, there wasn’t much of an original art market as neither DC nor Marvel returned the art in those days.

As a young fan, I was exposed to older fans’ nostalgia. I read The Spirit and Justice Society, and I met people who gave me access to Milton Caniff and to The Shadow and to old time radio and movie serials and other relics of The Greatest Generation’s lost youth. Guys like Jim Steranko and Al Williamson would personally turn me on to great artists and concepts and projects. I was exposed to America’s popular culture history, and it was great fun. (more…)

The Big ComicMix Broadcast’s Home Game!

  • News
  • July 22, 2007

benturpin-8884284We can’t deny it – we at The Big ComicMix Broadcast have a bad case of San Diego on the brain this week, but why not? The nation’s biggest tribute to comics and pop culture starts in just days, but here’s a few things to occupy your browsers until then:

  • Hipflask and Comiccraft have A PREVIEW OF ELPHANTMEN #10 on their site, and they will be offering samples at their booth in San Diego. While you are there, it is a quick jump over to see all the great fonts offered by Comiccraft – yowzer!!
  • Burger King’s SIMPSONS promotional site is the place where you can submit photos of you or your friends and be transferred into Simpsons characters – which is much cooler than being an M&M!
  • To relive your fond memories of great 90’s Nickelodeon TV like CLARISSA EXPLAINS IT ALL, SALUTE YOUR SHORTS and more, check out the music video from the band XYZ Affair. See if you can spot the former Nick Stars in there.
  • unknown-9868578TokyoPop continues to add new episodes of their anime series like I LUV HALLOWEEN, RIDING SHOTGUN and A MIDNIGHT OPERA;  there are links to get soundtracks and books as well.
  • Check out that limited edition sketchbook offered by Bill Sienkiewicz . It goes on sale at ComicCon on a first come basis.
  • Finally – for all things ComicCon, there’s one place to go – the official site of course: http://www.comic-con.org/. 

The Big ComicMix Broadcast will be back here on Tuesday, we clear off the desk with our rundown of new comics and DVDs, talk to one of the people who helped form comics fandom and then pack our bags for the west coast! See you then!

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