Tagged: comics

MIKE GOLD: Death to Floppy!

  • News
  • April 23, 2007

bucky_beaver_ipana-6184370I was combing through the Diamond catalog, placing my family’s orders for whatever month I’m ordering for. Oh, yeah: it’s April, so I’m looking at the March catalog do order stuff coming out in May, if at all. People who grew up at comic book cover dates have a hard time working a calendar.

As every month, I am struck by the impossible number of “alternate covers” being produced by the publishers. Of course, only a fraction of them are actually solicited: some publishers slap on new covers for subsequent reprintings. This sorta makes you wonder how they knew they’d sell out early enough to commission those new covers.

I don’t have a problem with alternate covers. Whereas I rarely indulge, there are enough collectors out there to make the gimmick work, and that’s fine by me. I collect all sorts of weird stuff myself – I’ve been trying to get Denis Kitchen’s Betty Boop blow-up doll for 30 years. Certainly there’s nothing wrong doing an alternate cover stunt to celebrate a truly significant issue. But it’s being done on damn near everything these days, on routine issues of routine books, just to turn the sucker into a collectible.

Therefore, while I see nothing wrong with alternate covers, I do feel they portend the end of the world as we know it. (more…)

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On-screen comics?

  • News
  • April 20, 2007

cw-home-7995482If you saw last night’s episode of Smallville – even on TiVo – you probably noticed a vaguely animated "comic book" story starring their version of the Justice League (Green Arrow, Aquaman, Cyborg, and a Flash), as opposed to, say, DC’s version or the version they’re trying to bring to the big screen in a few years. This comic book is actually a commercial for the Toyota Yaris, and it will continue through the show’s next-to-last season finale on May 17.

It’s almost good.

The interesting part of all this is that the comic book / commercial is promoting a contest whereby the winner can get one of those Yaris (wasn’t that an old video game called Yaris’ Revenge?). Until recently, advertisers thought superheroes could only sell Underoos and POGs, so this is a great leap forward in consumer recognition.

You can see / read / experience the comic book, play the game, and enter the contest by going to the appropriate spot on The CW’s website.

MICHAEL DAVIS: The Blame Game

  • News
  • April 20, 2007

4203157070-8623360Monday April 17, 2007 at Virginia Tech University a gunman took 32 lives. I am writing this the following day, Tuesday April 18. To give this piece a little more perspective I tell you this: I lost my sister and grandmother some time ago and when ever I hear of any random act of violence like what happened at Virginia Tech I always pause and think of what the families are going though. I say a silent prayer and hope that somehow the pain that they feel now will ease a bit over time. It never goes away but I hope that they find some comfort from what will seem like an eternity of grief.

My family unit was my mother, sister, grandmother and myself. So half of my family was taken from me. I had to deal with losing my sister and grandmother; my mother had to deal with losing her first-born child and her mother. It hit us both very hard. We were lucky enough to have friends and family around us to comfort us. After a while – a great while we had to deal with the why of what happened. Why them? Why now? Why not me? Why were they there? Etc, etc.

There was always a why.

Those questions are as biting now as they were then. My mother and I still deal with those questions every single day. As I said we had help getting though it.

In the last 24 hours I have heard the Virginia Tech Massacre described in many ways by many people in the media.

A National tragedy

A Nation mourns

America is saddened

United as one

We all feel this (more…)

Counting down on MySpace

DC Comics has just announced it’s partnered with the comic books section of MySpace to preview the first two issues of its much-anticipated Countdown series, which has reverse numbering because we aren’t confused enough.

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The first 10 pages of Countdown #51 will be up on MySpace/comicbooks on May 4, followed on May 11 by the last 12 pages of that issue and the the first 12 pages of issue #50. The final ten pages of Countdown #50 will be on the site on May 18.

Why the sudden interest in the site? Well, DC’s also launching its own DC Nation MySpace page on May 2, so that could have something to do with it.

While it’s always good to see major corporations paying attention to the netroots, let’s hope smaller efforts aren’t completely usurped by the bigger fish.

Marc Andreyko speaks to ComicMix Podcast!

Today’s pop quiz includes the brain busting questions of who was Dickie Goodman, where has Manhunter been, why is someone ripping off Richard Dawson, wow does The Doctor get to the fast lane, and WHO was "John And Ernest?" We give you good news on a much loved DC book, dig into Doctor Who’s latest romp, we hear from comics writer Marc Andreyko, and much more.

After all that, wouldn’t you feel guilty if you DIDN’T press the button?

JOHN OSTRANDER: Perverse Pleasures

  • News
  • April 19, 2007

c86650lf4qn-8422755We all know what a “guilty pleasure” is – some movie, book, song, whatever that we are ashamed to say we actually like – nay, sometimes love. While we may be embarrassed by our affection we should, at the very least, be able to claim, “Well, anyway, I like it.” Even if nobody else does. I have my list of those and I suspect you do as well.

This is not the same as the strange, little known things that you love that are, in fact, pretty good. I have my list of those things also and it might be useful to talk about these odd delights at some other time.

Neither of the above are the same as what I call my “perverse pleasures.” I’m not talking about sexual kinks and peccadilloes. I’m talking about music, books, movies and so on that I know, in fact, are awful and that I don’t like but feel a weird compulsion to own them anyway.

On to confession.

The first item is Pat Boone’s 1997 CD In a Metal Mood; No More Mr. Nice Guy wherein the King of White Bread Music decides to do his covers of Heavy Metal songs. We’re talking songs such as Stairway to Heaven, Smoke on the Water, Love Hurts, Enter Sandman and plenty of others. Oh, my ears! He doesn’t do them as Heavy Metal, of course; his arrangements turns them into Big Band tunes. When Mr. Boone sings, he’s usually off the rhythm, flat, or just speaks the lyrics. I have yet to get through a complete cut.

This is completed with a cover shot of the aging Mr. Boone in leather pants, leather vest, and no shirt, fixing the buyer with a steely stare that defies said buyer not to purchase the CD. I, of course, succumbed.

To top it all off, I was doing a guest shot on my friend Bill Nutt’s radio show, The Nutt House, on WNTI. I decided to play a cut of the CD on his show. Hey, they’re not my ratings. My better half, the lovely and talented Mary Mitchell, was listening in. I should explain that Mary is a heavy metal fan. Most people wouldn’t suspect it to look at her but she’s pretty knowledgeable and has her criterion: a good heavy metal band should look and sound like trolls. Pat Boone comes nowhere near that ideal.

Mary asked me what was on my mind to play that track. I explained that none of us at the radio station actually listened to it; we turned off the monitors about thirty seconds into the song so we didn’t have to listen to it. I think that’s where I lost Mary as a regular listener to my radio hijinks. She did listen to the track all the way through.

This is one of my definitions of love – despite having trick-bagged her into listening to something that I couldn’t, she still cares about me.

If Mary hasn’t found the CD, I probably still have it around somewhere.

Wandering over to the DVD section, I find my copy of Barb Wire. I knew the Dark Horse comic on which the movie was based and stumbled on the movie starring Pamela Lee Anderson while channel surfing late one night. I, like millions of Americans, ignored it in its theatrical release but I thought it was worth pausing long enough to see if Pam popped out of whatever she was wearing. It was late night and my standards of viewing are pretty low after midnight. (more…)

DENNIS O’NEIL: Who knows what evil lurks…? Part 2

  • News
  • April 17, 2007

Suddenly, the air was full of bats!

The “air” here is metaphorical and if you’d allow me to fully ripen the trope, possibly to the point where it emits a faint odor, it might read, The air of popular culture in the 30s and 40s was full of bats.

Let’s see.  There was a Mary Roberts Rheinhart novel and an early talkie adapted from it, both called The Bat, and there was a pulp hero also called The Bat and, a bit later, another pulp do-gooder who labeled himself The Black Bat.  Am I forgetting anyone…?  Oh yeah.  A comic book character that was introduced in Detective Comics #27, dated May 1939, as Batman.  Like an estimated eighty percent of your fellow earthlings, you may have heard of him.

And, again metaphorically, standing behind the Batman and maybe some of the others was one of the greatest pulp heroes, The Shadow.  The writer of the early Batman stories, Bill Finger, made no secret of his admiration for the Shadow novels.  He went so far as to admit that the Shadow’s influence on his batwork was extremely direct when he told historian (and author and artist and publisher) Jim Steranko, “I patterned my style of writing Batman after the Shadow.”  And: “My first script was a take-off on a Shadow story.”

Which brings us to Anthony Tollin.  Remember him?  I introduced the two of you a couple of weeks ago in this very feature. I told you that a company Anthony owns has been issuing reprints of the Shadow books. Recently, he sent me an early copy of one of those books, titled Partners of Peril, and suggested that I might want to compare it to the first Batman adventure, The Case of the Chemical Syndicate. 

Of course there are differences.  After all, the Shadow novel is probably around 50,000 words long and Batman’s debut is six comic book pages.  But there are also similarities.  I won’t even try to describe them all – see Robert Greenberger’s ComicMix article, or Anthony’s text piece in the book itself – but they are manifold.  In a phone conversation a few hours ago, Anthony mentioned the most obvious, among which are:

  • Both are about a – yes! – chemical syndicate.
  • The heroes of both get involved in the proceedings while visiting a law-enforcing friend.
  • Both feature virtually identical death traps, which each hero beats in the same way.
  • Both heroes offer the same whodunit-type explanation at the adventure’s end.
  • Both heroes spend a lot of time on a rooftop after a safe robbery.
  • The denouements of both stories are, again, virtually identical.

Et cetera.

As I wrote in the earlier column, anyone with even the dimmest interest in pop culture or comics history, or who just wants to sample the kind of entertainment that kept pops or granddad reading by flashlight under the covers, or who’s just in the mood for capital-M Melodrama combined with capital-H Heroics, might want to see if the Shadow has anything for them.

For me, the stuff has another aspect, one which is as modern as hip-hop. But that’s for next week.

RECOMMENDED READING: Awww…you know.

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.

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The Secret is out

I’ve been rooting for Pulp Secret to flourish ever since their executive producer, my old college friend David Levin, first gushed to me about it.  And in the short time they’ve been around the site has branched out from their 5-minute video news segments to a weekly talk and interview show to David making good on his vow to give away items in his prized comic book collection on a regular basis.

But for me, there was still something missing.  And some of it had to do with me not being able to tell the three young white male self-amused hosts apart.  I’m sure they’re nice guys and all, but it was (as the Brits say) much of a muchness.

Now finally, with webcast #18, the video news segments have a female face.

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She’s Ana Hurka-Robles, a director and writer from NYC who’s been behind the camera until now.  Says AHR, “I’m part of a small crew that produces the episodes, so I get a chance to direct, shoot, write, research, and edit. I know that film degree would come in handy some day!”  (I think someone else may have “edited” her name up there.)  You can catch her on-screen debut here, at about 3:45 into the webcast, but she narrates capsule reviews in webisodes 10 and 15 as well.

Thanks, David & co., for expanding PS to include the other half of the population!

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A look at Sunderland

  • News
  • April 16, 2007

sundereview-3215641Forbidden Plant International leads us to another glowing review of Bryan Talbot’s amazing Alice in Sunderland by Steve Flanagan. The catch is that Flanagan’s review is illustrative, done in the style of the book it’s discussing.

Flanagan’s 7-part comic strip review discusses Talbot’s presumed influences for this book, his stylistic choices, perceived structural weakness and subject matter.  Pretty heady stuff, and Flanagan’s not afraid to puncture his own pomposity.

It works better, of course, if you read the book first.  By that time maybe the traffic will have died down from Flanagan being BoingBoing’ed.

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