Tagged: comics

‘Wanted 2’ on the Boards

  • News
  • November 6, 2008

Chris Morgan confirmed he will be writing the sequel to Wanted for Universal.  He spoke with MTV and said, “Yes, I will be writing it. I’m actually leaving this conversation with you to go to a meeting with the director, Timur [Bekmambetov], and we’re talking about the story.”

Despite confirming interest in a sequel to June’s action thriller starring Angelina Jolie, Universal continues to negotiate with writer Mark Millar who wrote the original comic miniseries, with artist J.G. Jones. A deal is said to be imminent.

“As far as I know, the studio is finishing their deal with Mark [Millar], and then we’re all going to get together and collaborate,” said Morgan, a longtime comics fan. “And that’s something I’m very excited about.”

After all, the movie deviated from the comic, creating its own mythology and now has to explore new facets of that world. Terence Stamp has already hinted to the press his Pekwarsky will return in the sequel which may be wishful thinking.

“That is the challenge here,” laughed Morgan, “but the point is to continue the journey that Wes started in the first film. Wherever he ended up at the end of the film, now it’s time to move him forward.”

The $75 million movie went on to earn good reviews and more importantly, scored $134,327,125 domestically plus an additional $203,210,478 in foreign box office.  The 
$337,537,603 global total before licensing and home video revenue more than justified Universal wanting a sequel. 

The DVD version will be released on December 2 in multiple versions: single-disc widescreen and full frame DVD editions, 2-disc Special Edition DVD and Blu-ray Hi-Def versions, and deluxe collector’s sets. The limited edition 2-disc versions and collector’s sets include a digital copy of the film.

Question for the ComicMix Brain Trust: What web comic solutions do you like?

  • News
  • November 6, 2008

The release of ComicPress Manager 1.20 for ComicPress (which in turn is for WordPress) and D.J. Coffman’s post on how to host your own friggin’ webcomic prompts me to ask: what’s the current state of the art for posting comics online? Who likes what versions and why? Is there a decent way to post comics using Movable Type or LiveJournal, say, or even MySpace or FaceBook? Do you find it more useful to create your own content management system, as Zuda, Marvel, and we have done?

We’d really like to hear from people who are already using the tools. Feel free to link to your comic sites in your comments as well, show us what you’ve been doing.

ComicMix Radio: Free Comics For The IPhone

IVerse offers up some great free comics, including Shadowhawk, Oz:The Manga & more.  We tell you how to find them, plus:

  • Spider-Man 4 gets a writer – maybe
  • Todd gives Spawn a sell out
  • This week’s new comics and DVDs plus the Best Bets we love to share

Just like you are doing elsewhere, exercise your right and Press the Button!

And remember, you can always subscribe to ComicMix Radio podcasts via badgeitunes61x15dark-4196946 or RSS!

 

Purple Haze, by Martha Thomases

  • News
  • November 1, 2008

Originally, I wasn’t supposed to have a column.

Mike Gold wanted to have regular writers contributing during the week, Monday through Friday. He had the list of people he wanted to include – comics veterans like John Ostrander, Denny O’Neil and Michael Davis, plus popular blogger Elayne Riggs – and he wanted a soapbox for himself.

Me? I’m the publicist. I’m supposed to draw attention to the product, not to myself. The best publicist is the one you don’t see.

However, I’m also a team player. And an egomaniac. So, when the website started, and we didn’t always have a lot of content, I started to write. I wrote short essays that could get thrown up on the site when we were short on material. I’ve only been reading comics for 50 years, so there was always something on my mind.

One day, Mike said that, since I seemed to be writing regularly, perhaps my writing should have a name and a regular time slot. And so was born Brilliant Disguise, named for one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs, from one of the more depressing Bruce Springsteen albums. It’s about love and loss, and the lies we tell ourselves so we can take care of each other through the tough times. How appropriate. (more…)

‘Torso’ Grows Legs

  • News
  • October 29, 2008

3652-1-9925674Bill Mechanic, the former chairman of 20th Century Fox and now founder of independent production company Pandemonium, told Collider that the long planned adaptation of Brian Michael Bendis’ Torso is heading into production soon.

"Torso is moving right towards the starting gate," Mechanic tells the site. "We’ve got a screenplay and we’re waiting for Paramount to decide when to make it."

He also confirms what many have heard: David Fincher will direct the feature.

"I’m hoping we’re shooting in March or April … [so] it should be [Fincher’s next project]," says Mechanic.

And while he has a ton of faith in the project, he does admit that there will be departures from the source material, much in the way that the movie Fight Club broke off from the novel.

"Torso the movie, which may not be called Torso the movie at the end of the day … makes the book better reading because it doesn’t follow [the book] literally," Mechanic says.

Though he’s known today for revitalizing The Avengers, killing all the mutants in House of M and making Skrulls a threat again in Secret Invasion, Brian Bendis’ roots as a comics creator go back to his days at Caliber Comics. He published a string of noir crime comics with Caliber, including Fire (1993), A.K.A. Goldfish (1994) and Flaxen (1995). His most known early works are Jinx (1996), which is the namesake of his Web site JinxWorld, and the comic in question, Torso (1998). It may be hard to believe with top artists Leinil Yu and others illustrating his work, but Bendis actually illustrated a large part of his early work, including Torso. Bendis also co-wrote the novel alongside Marc Andreyko (DC’s Manhunter).

Torso is a historical fiction limited series published by Image Comics. The story focuses on the "Torso Murderer," an actual serial killer in the 1930’s who left behind only the torsos of his victims, making them very difficult to identify for police without DNA testing. The investigator on the case and protagonist of Torso is Eliot Ness, Cleveland Chief of police and one-time head of the Untouchables, the police task force that enforced Prohibition and went after crime lord Al Capone.

Though no official casting has been made, Mechanic did tell Collider that "a lot of things being written [online] about [the film] are probably true." Jake Gyllenhaal and Matt Damon are the two actors long rumored for Torso, so perhaps they’ll be the guys to star in the feature.

Growing Out Of Comics, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • October 27, 2008

It was the very end of summer, I had just turned 11, and – heaven help me – I was just beginning to tire of comic books.

Not that I was considering getting that four-color monkey off of my back. My enthusiasm was waning. The Superman books were beginning to get silly, the Batman titles had already become silly, and Julie Schwartz’s books like The Flash and Green Lantern were beginning to feel repetitious. I had exceeded the five-year point in my comic book reading life, that moment when the publishers felt you were on your way out, trading comics for sports, girls, and/or life. Being a precocious reader, I was at that portal at an age somewhat younger than the norm, but there was no doubt about it, comics weren’t quite as exciting to me as they had been.

At that time, DC had the market on super-hero titles lock, stock and barrel. Few new titles were launched; indeed, DC’s two debut books – Showcase and The Brave and the Bold – often recycled previous unsuccessful attempts like Cave Carson: Inside Earth and the original Suicide Squad to give them another shot at the marketplace. Each run generally consisted of three issues, so at best there would be four debuts each year, and most of those (like Cave Carson and Suicide Squad) were not of the super-hero genre. Today, of course, we get four such debuts a week.

So when it came time to drive my sister to college, my father did something unique. He stopped at a drug store – one of those places that actually had a massive wooden rack plus two comics spinner racks exclusively dedicated to comic books – and told me to pick out a few for the ride, in the hope that I would not be a bother. He then dashed across the street to pick up a dozen bagels at Kaufman’s, the original one on Montrose and Kedzie in Chicago. They boasted the best bagels in the country, and they were right.

When he returned to the drug store, I had nothing. Absolutely nothing. I had read each and every superhero title in the vast expanse of rack space. Even Lois Lane.  Even the war comics, about which I was ambivalent at best, although I was not ambivalent about Joe Kubert’s art. (more…)

i-remember-the-future2-5160581

Review: ‘I Remember The Future’

i-remember-the-future2-5160581For more than a decade, writer Michael A. Burstein has been publishing tales of speculative fiction in the anthology magazine [[[Analog]]]. Several of these stories have been nominated for various Hugo and Nebula awards, including Best Short Story, Best Novella and Best Novelette. In 1999, his short story “[[[Reality Check]]]” was nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. “[[[TeleAbsence]]]” won the 1995 Analytical Laboratory Award for Best Short Story and “[[[Sanctuary]]]” won the 2005 Analytical Laboratory Award for Best Novella.

These works and more have now been collected into one large volume from Apex Publishing entitled I Remember the Future: The Award-Nominated Stories of Michael A. Burstein. The book will be published on November 1, but you can pre-order at Amazon.com  if you so wish.

The stories collected here cover a wide range of topics and emotions. There’s the murder mystery involving a killer who targets students while they’re online. There’s the deeply emotional tale concerning the dying wish of the last living holocaust survivor. There is the “[[[Broken Symmetry]]]” series, a trilogy of short stories concerning the consequences that occur when a breach opens between two parallel universes and the events that grow out of it.

Even if you’ve read these works before, this collection offers you new insight into old favorites. Every single story has an afterword by Burstein as he explains what went into it and what may evolve from it in the future. He also discusses changes made in editing, such as when he presents an alternate ending to “Kaddish for the Last Survivor.”

Along with these tales are two brand new stories. There is “[[[Empty Spaces]]]”, a continuation of the aforementioned trilogy, and the titular tale “I Remember the Future”, which gives us a present tense narration from a retired writer who fears that humanity has forgotten how to truly dream.

These stories are all heartfelt and entertaining and each one appeals to a different taste and preference. If you enjoy science fiction, pick it up. If you don’t normally go for sci-fi, hey, still pick this up. These stories are, at their core, about people and the world we all deal with. And who can’t find something to enjoy about that?

Alan “Sizzler” Kistler has been recognized by mainstream media outlets such as the New York Daily News as a comic book historian, and can be seen in the “Special Features” sections of the Adventures of Aquaman and Justice League: New Frontier DVDs. His personal website can be found at: http://KistlerUniverse.com. One of these days he’d love to write for DC, Marvel or Doctor Who.

ComicMix Poll: How should we display our comics?

  • News
  • October 23, 2008

We’ve been having an internal debate here at ComicMix, about possibly doing different things with the way we display comics– and we want your feedback, since, after all, you’re the people reading them.

Should we…

  • Run one or two pages a day from all of our series?
  • Run four to eight pages a week, alternating series daily?
  • Run twenty to twenty-four pages a month, alternating series weekly?
  • Run it however it works best for the story?

Please vote in the poll below, and feel free to discuss your thoughts on the matter in the comments. Your votes will help determine how we show our comics going forward. And thanks for taking the time to respond!

Get your own Poll!

minus1-3309779

Webcomics You Should Have Read: Minus

  • News
  • October 22, 2008

minus1-3309779One of the most endearing features of Calvin and Hobbes was Calvin’s overactive imagination, which created amazing scenarios of space battles, time travel, and talking tigers. What if it wasn’t all in his imagination, though?

Ryan Armand gives us a brief look at childlike innocence and imagination brought to life in the world of Minus.

Minus is a little girl who apparently can do anything she can imagine — she flies, creates worlds, travels in time, talks to spirits and grants wishes. And though this leads to the occasional retribution against bullies or mean adults, unlike Calvin, she also shares her gifts with her friends. Minus will offer someone a flying unicorn as easily as another little girl might offer a lick of her ice-cream cone.

Armand’s site also includes a serial comic called Socks and a collection of older stand-alone comics. He doesn’t have a storefront, though archived newsposts note that he used to do prints of Minus comics; he might be willing to start up again if requested.

Notable moments:

Drama: There’s always some drama when you’re tugging at heartstrings, but Minus’ world is not a world of adult problems and relationships; it’s a child’s world, where everyone eventually gets a happy ending, even if they’re occasionally bittersweet.

Humor: While many of the comics earn a chuckle, the focus is more on evoking a sense of childlike wonder. And it succeeds.

Continuity: Low to Moderate. Some strip string together in sequence, but knowledge of previous ones isn’t terribly necessary to enjoy later strips.

Art: Each minus strip is painted with watercolors on a 15×20" piece of Illustration board. The style implies an enterprising painter more than a traditional comic artist.

Archive: About 130 strips. Two years of weekly Sunday newspaper-sized comics, though many are several "strips" long.

Updates: "It’ll be updating every Thursday until I suddenly stop!" Armand stopped updating the strip in March 2008 and started updating Socks in monthly chunks.

Risk/Reward: Some comics are ongoing, telling complicated stories, the ongoing events in characters’ lives, or just a joke every day. Some comics say what they want to say and end. Minus ends on an up-note, keeping tone to the very end. It’s worth your time.
 

Categories

Archives

Everything you need to make great comics!

comicmix-pro-300x69-2

Nucleus X

Bookshop Zaks