Tagged: comics

Avengers Second Screen App now Available

Marvel Studios has announced that people with iPods and iPads can now download the Avengers Second Screen app to access additional bonus material to extend your Avengers film experience.

Here’s the fact sheet:

App Overview:                     Second Screen transforms the movie watching experience by allowing viewers to explore the story behind the film perfectly synched on a second device, like an iPad™ or laptop, without interrupting their enjoyment of the movie. By accessing the Second Screen companion application on their Internet-connected device, consumers are able to dive deeper into the film by engaging with key elements of the movie.

This groundbreaking new application allows users to interact with their Blu-ray™ player by simply starting the Blu-ray movie, and then syncing Second Screen to the film automatically by following the easy on-screen instructions.  Once connected, they can explore interactive galleries, play games, and learn interesting facts about the scenes they’re watching.

Features:                              Enter the S.H.I.E.L.D. database on your second screen device accessing personnel files, comic book origins and exclusive interactive content with The Avengers Initiative: A Marvel Second Screen Experience. By downloading the app, you can:

–          Become a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and participate in the Item 47 Comic-Con experience either remotely or in the field.

–          Examine the confidential files of the Avengers including heroes, agents and villains.

–          Sync to the movie and explore exclusive behind-the-scenes interactive content such as visual effects labs where you can explore sequences layer by layer.

–          Seamlessly link the characters, stories, and scenes of the movie back to their comic book origins through the interactive Marvel digital reader.

–          View the major events of the Marvel Cinematic Universe – Phase 1 on the definitive timeline of all 6 movies.

Devices:                                                iPad or PC/MAC computer with FLASH

Formats:                               Optimized for Blu-ray™ and included in Combo Pack releases.

NEW – Now works with iTunes Extras

Access:                                  Visit http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/avengers-initiative-marvel/id539555261?mt=8

Select your version (either iPad™ or Web)

Sync to the movie or explore on your own

Currently only available in US and English-speaking Canada

Monday Mix-Up: My Little Death Dealer

  • Uncategorized
  • July 2, 2012

This week’s Monday Mix-Up comes to us from zedew, who brings us a tribute to the late great Frank Frazetta and his most famous painting of all, Death Dealer, the inspiration for more paintings, a line of novels, and various comics. And now we have this vision, seen through the prism of My Little Pony… yes, it’s My Little Death Dealer.

Somehow, I don’t think Molly Hatchet will be using this as an album cover. Although if they did a kids album… hmm.

What he’s not telling you: the blood on the axe? It’s Strawberry Shortcake.

via BoingBoing: If Frazetta was a bronie.

Review: The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, adapted by Seymour Chwast

Yes, that credit does have the faint whiff of “by William Shakespeare, additional dialogue by Sam Taylor” to it, but it can’t be helped. Anything needs to be adapted if it’s going to work in another medium — which is a big “if” — and having it done by one person, who then lays out and draws the thing himself, is about as pure an auteur case as you can get.

And it’s not as if most people encounter The Canterbury Tales in their pure form, anyway — when I read them, way back in college years, my class was atypical in using an edition with Chaucer’s original spelling and grammar, but even we read an abridged version. The full-on Early Modern English Canterbury Tales has been primarily for scholars for generations now, so any time it comes close to a mass audience — which is not that often — you’re looking at an adaptation.

Chwast does Chaucer well with his adaptation of The Canterbury Tales — he does have them riding motorcycles, but otherwise doesn’t modernize the occupations or the world — these stories are still told by a Pardoner and a Franklin, a Clerk and a Reeve and a Manciple, and take place in their own times and places. Chwast does use modern spelling, and clearly uses only a fraction of Chaucer’s text, but he keeps enough to give the sense of Chaucer’s world, obsessed with religion almost as much as sex or honor. (Maybe it’s not all that different from our own, after all?)

Chwast came to graphic novels late — this is his second, after an adaptation of Dante’s Divine Comedy — after a long career as a noted graphic designer and illustrator. And his Canterbury Tales is well-designed, but not as overly designed as I was worried it would be. Chwast’s line is stiff and illustrative, giving all of his pages the look of bas-reliefs; his panels aren’t windows into a world of story but clearly pictures, drawn and placed just so.

This is admittedly an odd book — an adaptation of a classic most readers never think about, into a format most serious readers still scorn. It’s certainly quixotic, but admirably so — Chwast clearly enjoys Chaucer, and wants to share his love with the rest of us.

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Manga Friday: CBLDF Contributes Additional $10,000 to Ryan Matheson’s $75,000 Legal Defense Costs

  • News
  • June 29, 2012

cbldf-contributes-additional-10000-to-ryan-mathesons-75000-legal-defense-costs-thanks-to-donors-4274847The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is pleased to announce that thanks to the support of its contributors, the organization has disbursed an additional $10,000 to Ryan Matheson to help pay off the $75,000 legal defense costs that he incurred defending himself against false charges brought by Canada Customs in a case involving manga comics on his laptop computer.

Earlier this year, charges against Matheson were dropped in a case where Canada Customs illegally detained and wrongly charged the American with importation of child pornography for humor and fantasy manga on his laptop. The CBLDF came to Ryan’s aid in 2011, providing substantive and financial support for his case, including arranging expert testimony that contributed to the charges being dropped. With this most recent disbursal, the CBLDF has provided $30,000 to Ryan’s $75,000 legal defense costs. Last year, Canada’s Comic Legends Legal Defense Fund contributed $11,000 towards Ryan’s defense. CBLDF seeks contributions to help pay off Ryan’s remaining $34,000 in legal expenses.

In a message to CBLDF supporters, Matheson says, “Thank you so much to everyone who contributed to the CBLDF! The donations raised so far have given me enough financial stability to finally get back on my feet and live my life normally instead of worrying about money so much. It’s really encouraging to know that there are so many people out there that want to help stand up for comics and manga. I used to feel so isolated and alone but now I’ve realized that the comics and manga community is definitely one that cares about the things we love and is willing to stand up for our rights. Your donations really do help a lot and I am so grateful for all the support I’ve received so far. Thank you!”

After a search of his laptop in 2010, Canada Customs wrongfully accused Ryan of possessing and importing child pornography because of constitutionally protected comic book images on that device. This case represented a severe disruption in his life, including a two-year period during which he was unable to use computers or the internet outside of his job, severely limiting opportunities to advance his employment and education. Ryan suffered extreme mistreatment at the hands of Canadian authorities, and was subjected to abusive treatment by police. Matheson’s cruel and unusual punishment included being denied food and blankets, and not being allowed to contact the American Embassy. Matheson was even told by police transporting him to prison that “if you get raped in here, it doesn’t count!” The defense detailed these and other abuses and outlined that the comics at issue are constitutionally protected in the United States, the client’s home country, contributing to the charges being dropped earlier this year.

This summer, Matheson will be appearing on panels at San Diego Comic-Con and Otakon to discuss his case, where CBLDF will also be distributing literature advising convention goers of their rights.

CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein says, “The CBLDF is elated that our efforts have made a difference in Ryan’s case, and we’re grateful that our supporters have generously contributed to our efforts to pay off expenses tied to his legal defense. We are moved by Ryan’s courage in speaking out on his case, and look forward to working with him this summer as we go on the road to help raise awareness of how comics and manga are still being targeted by the authorities. We’re glad that his case had a positive outcome, but comics are still vulnerable to attack. It is our hope that our efforts will help prevent others from suffering the same fate that befell Ryan and his family.”

Please make a donation to CBLDF to help the organization continue to pay off Matheson’s legal defense costs and to support their important work raising awareness of the rights facing comics and manga readers. To learn more about Ryan’s case, please visit the CBLDF Case File R. v. Matheson, which includes the original defense documents, and special advisories for travelers crossing borders with comics books.

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REVIEW: “One Soul” by Ray Fawkes

Every art form has stories that can only be told this way: novels that can’t be turned into movies, operas that must be seen in person, movies that could only be flickering pictures in the dark. Comics is still a new art, and only has a few examples so far.

But Ray Fawkes’s 2011 graphic novel One Soul is one of them: it’s a story that couldn’t be anything but comics, a multi-threaded examination of what it is to be alive…and not. Using the famous nine-panel grid, and sticking to it strictly, Fawkes tells eighteen life stories — one for each panel on the two facing pages, and tells one single story at the same time.

Eighteen babies are born, in all times and places, in splendor and in squalor, in wealth and in poverty. They grow up, they live their individual lives — long or short, as it happens — they make their ways in the world and think about what they want and need and feel. And the flow of their lives, of all of their lives, is the story of One Soul.

This is a book that will make the entire outside world disappear; it has at least a whole world inside it, and it will take all of your attention and all of your emotions. Fawkes never has to name any of his characters — we know them from their places and their faces, and come to care for them all, good and bad, kind and cruel, lovers and fighters, happy and sad. One Soul is one of those works of art that are huge in ambition and scope, that try to encompass the entire world, all of human experience, inside itself. And it succeeds: One Soul is magnificent and lovely and frightening and compelling and sorrowful and wonderful and, in the end, utterly, utterly transcendent.

Mindy Newell: Success and Failure, Conclusion

 “All you can do is open up the throttle all the way and keep your nose up in the air.”

First Lieutenant Meyer C. Newell

P-51 Mustang Fighter Jock

Separated from his squadron, shot up and leaking hydraulic fluid somewhere in the skies over Burma

What is the measure of success? What is the measure of failure?

newell-column-art-120617-3202896In the previous three columns, I’ve told you a little bit – well, quite a bit, actually, about early failures in my life. And for a very long time I let my, uh, lack of success, hold me back, drag me down. That old albatross had a permanent nest on my shoulder. The Fantastic Four may have visited the Negative Zone, but, guys, I lived there.

In my mid-thirties I was divorced and living with my parents. Alix was two or three. She was sleeping in a portable crib, I was sleeping on a cot in the den. And then one day – sometime in my late thirties, I think – I was driving with my father in the car. I don’t remember where we were going; I think he was driving me to an appointment with one of the numerous psychiatrists and therapists I had seen in an attempt to “figure out what was wrong with me.” Oh, that was fun, let me tell you. One doctor put me through a round of physical tests and blood work to see if there was a physiological reason for my “blues.” (Tests came back. I was perfect.) Another doctor gave me his trench coat, telling me to cover up my legs because he was getting sexually excited. I went to a therapy group for newly divorced women; all I remember of that is the woman whose husband regularly beat the crap out of her. “Jesus, honey,” we would all say, “get the hell out of there.” She would just start to cry and go on and on about how much she loved him until the hour was up. We never got to talk about anything else. There was one doctor who talked to me for five minutes and gave me a prescription for Valium, the drug of choice in those days for women on the edge of a nervous breakdown. I took one Valium, fell asleep for 18 hours and dumped out the bottle. A week later I got a bill for $500.00 for “services rendered.” I called him and told him I was sending him $50.00, and just try to take me to court. Never heard from him again.

The best, though, was the shrink who was an Orthodox Jew. He told me that the only thing wrong with me was that I wasn’t married, so “I should stop dating the goyim, marry a nice Yiddisher man, and have lots of babies.”

Anyway, back to that day in the car with my dad. We weren’t talking much, just bits here and there. Suddenly my dad started talking about a mission he had been on during WW II. It had been a bombing and strafing mission somewhere in Burma, the objective being to destroy the latest installment of the railroad the Japanese were building – see The Bridge On The River Kwai for reference. They had met a lot of resistance, and on one strafing run my father’s P-51 got hit up badly. One of the hydraulic lines was hit, and he couldn’t keep up with the rest of the squadron on their flight back to the base. They had to leave him.

“Wow, Daddy, what did you do?” I asked. (The answer is above.) And then he said, “Know what I’m saying?”

And the light bulb suddenly clicked on over my head, just like in the old Looney Tunes cartoons. “Thufferin’ Thuccosthasth!” I said. “I do!” (No, not really. I mean, yeah, the light bulb went on, but I didn’t suddenly start sputtering and slovering like Sylvester the Cat.)

I’m not saying that all of a sudden my life was a bed of roses and that everything was hunky-dory. No. Quite the opposite. It took finding the right therapist. It took swallowing my pride and starting on an anti-depressant. But mostly it took a lot of hard work, a lot of tears, a lot of self-recrimination. Most of all, self-forgiveness.

These days I wonder. All my failures – but were they really failures? Weren’t they just part of the pattern that’s made me who I am today? And any failures, any successes that I continue to experience will just add to that person who I will be tomorrow, next week, next month, next year or in a decade.

These days most people would say that my life is a success. Well, I don’t know about that, but if it is, it didn’t happen without failures, some my own, some caused by outside factors. For instance, two years ago I got laid off. (Yes, Virginia, registered nurses do get laid off these days.) It sucked. I cried. I ranted. I worked at a couple of hospitals I wouldn’t send my worst enemy to. (Well, maybe I would.) But I also went back to school and finished my BSN, opening up new doors for me.

As for my other career, the one in comics? A lot of people in the comics industry have commented and complimented me on my “ear for dialogue,” my ability to get into the heads of the characters I have written. Maybe that wouldn’t be true if I hadn’t lived the life I have lived. I probably would never have submitted a story to DC’s New Talent program. I wouldn’t have written When It Rains, God Is Crying, or Chalk Drawings with a certain mensch who goes by the name of George Pérez. I wouldn’t know Mike Gold or Martha Thomases or Len Wein or Karen Berger or Neil Gaiman. And I wouldn’t be here writing this column.

Black and White.

Stop and Go.

Yin and Yang.

Success and Failure.

The ups and downs of life.

TUESDAY MORNING: Can Michael Davis Possibly Still Be Black?

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Can Emily S. Whitten Possibly Be Talking About Deadpool? 

John Ostrander: Death and Comics

ostrander-column-art-1206171-3150000At a convention I was at some years past I was having dinner with, among others, Howard Chaykin and Joe Rubinstein. Howard is always an interesting dinner companion; whether you agree with him or not on a subject, the conversation is going to be interesting. I didn’t know Joe Rubinstein much before that – except by his talent – but he raised a serious point with me. Joe knew about my late wife, Kim Yale, and her death and what he was interested in seeing coming from me was a story or stories about how you cope with the grief and the mourning that comes with the death of a loved one. It’s an interesting challenge and, while I’ve had some ideas about how to do it, I have yet to answer it.

I don’t think that comics, as a medium, deals well with death. It’s become a plot device, a sales gimmick, since we all know the character who has died is going to be back. I was staggered at the time of the Death of Superman storyline and by the number of people I knew who contacted me and breathlessly asked, “Is he really dead?” I pointed out that DC had too much money to lose from Underoos alone to let Kal-El stay dead.

Sure enough, Superman got better.

I will say that DC dealt well with the aftermath of Superman’s apparent demise in the World Without Superman follow-up storyline. There was real feeling, real emotion, by individuals and by the general population. And life went on without Superman.

That’s what happens. Your world ends; life goes on. The one you loved doesn’t come back. You cope however well or badly. You recover or you don’t.

I’m not saying that killing off a character can’t be effective or shouldn’t be done. When I was doing Suicide Squad over at DC, I was something of a literary mass murderer. I killed off lots of characters – mostly villains. I even killed off my own GrimJack character and brought him back albeit in a different, cloned body. I then reincarnated him somewhere further down his own timeline and, eventually, killed off that incarnation as well. So, how is that different, you ask.

Reincarnation doesn’t give you back the same body; it gives you a different one. The resiliency of the Doctor Who series rests on the title character’s ability to regenerate or reincarnate. Completely different actor, very different personality traits. There is change. That’s the difference and a key one.

Over at Marvel, the Pearly Gates is a revolving door. Captain America dies; oops, he got better. (Okay, it was really a “time bullet” but it was sold as the death of Captain America.) His teen sidekick in WWII, Bucky, dies in action. Oops, no, he gets better decades later. Both “deaths” generated interesting stories but is there anyone who really thought that the original Captain America wasn’t coming back?

Actions have consequences and death does as well. Grief should be shown; tears should flow. One of the major flaws, for me, of the first Star Wars film is that Luke barely sheds a tear at the death of the only parents he’s really ever known but then gets mopey about a mentor he’s known only a few days. Whereas, in the Harry Potter films, especially the later ones, when a character dies we see real grief and sorrow. It matters to the characters and therefore matters to us. And, yes, Harry dies and comes back to life but that doesn’t change my argument. His death grew out of the story and was, in fact, demanded by it; it was the way to resolve the story. That includes his resurrection. My gripe is with deaths that simply are “events” and meant to push sales.

Death in comics is too easy because resurrection is too easy. It doesn’t mean anything most of the time. It’s a cheat. Life – and death – doesn’t work that way. If death doesn’t mean anything, does life?

Monday: Mindy Newell and how she got that way.

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