Marvelous May, DC’s scheduling nightmare, Stan Lee and tons of news and previews — we it all in the fourth Comicmix Podcast, now downloadable right here, right now:
Plus — Timeline, a guide to new variant covers, a reveal on Battlestar Galactica, Buffy and … John Wayne?
If you missed any of our earlier ComicMix Podcasts, here they are.
No, not that war, I regret to say. That war is going to take a while. And probably a major turn-out at the polls late next year.
According to our good friends at Diamond Distributors, Marvel’s Civil War ends this week with the shipping of the seventh issue of the core mini-series. Joey Quesada and his roommates are to be congratulated, not only for finishing it off (believe me, I know how much work is involved) but for pulling off a remarkable task.
This whole mega-crossover event thing started inadvertently back in the summer of 1963 as a two-issue meeting of the Justice League and the Justice Society. It was a great story and an even better event. It put into action a bunch of characters most of us had only heard about, and it changed the nature of the DC universe forever. Twenty-one years later, Marv Wolfman and George Perez did a 12 part mini-series called Crisis on Infinite Earths, purportedly to straighten out DC’s continuity hiccups and train wrecks. They did a fine job. In fact, Marv and George established the benchmark for all future mega-crossover events.
There was a great deal of hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth when word leaked out of Hollywood that Joss Whedon had left the Wonder Woman film project and David Goyer would no longer write and direct a Flash film. Similarly, people reacted in horror at the notion of Joel Schumacher having anything to do with a Sandman movie.
Here’s the thing: none of this is shocking. Disappointing, yes, but we long time fans have gotten our hopes raised and dashed countless times through the years.
For those less familiar with Hollywood’s inner workings, the studios are always looking for the next great thing, uncertain of what it might be and where they may find it. So, in addition to buying original stories from screenwriters or ideas from producers and stars then assigning the stories to screenwriters, Hollywood goes shopping. They will receive yet-to-be-published books in galley form, they will scour the news for stories to dramatize, and they will see what their kids are listening to, and so on.
I’m a pretty simple guy. I see clear distinctions between right and wrong, good and evil, love and hate and Republican and Democrat. In this age of political correctness and doing the right thing I don’t make decisions because they’re popular. I make decisions because I think something is right.
Remember the days when someone punched you in the face and you could punch him (or her) right back without having much to worry about — well, besides getting your ass kicked. After the fight (or, in my case, ass whipping) you and the other party would decide to be friends or continue to hate each other. Either way you knew where you stood with that person. NOW if someone punches you in the face — YOU may get sued — and worst, with the current state of our world you don’t know where you stand. I don’t know about you but I would like to know where I stand after I’m punched in the face.
I grew up in the projects in New York City during the days when a threat sounded like this: "I’m going to kick your ass, Davis." Back then my response was "You will have to find me first, lady." Now I simply call my lawyers.
Here is the full list of NYCC panels — seven pages printed out, which I needed to do in order to actually see the panel times because they didn’t show up against the black background on screen unless I first selected all the text. (This appears to have been fixed.)
To tell you the truth, I found more of interest on Friday than on the weekend days. Friday’s where they seem to be sticking all the "women and comics" panels. But why are they putting "Capturing Female Readers" opposite "Comics Bloggers" (Friday at 2:30 PM)? What are female comics bloggers supposed to do about that, huh? Considering that, I’d warrant, most new female comics fans are coming to the hobby via blogging, it’s just a weird counterprogramming move. "Mothers and Daughters: Female Graphic Novelists and the Family" (Friday at 6:30 PM) also sounds interesting, and it’s opposite Vertigo, which is not family friendly, and Stan Lee, who is not female, so that’s perhaps a good move.
Books about comic books and comic book characters have grown in volume over the past few years. While some, such as Bob Handelman’s biography of Will Eisner, have received mainstream notice, many others fly under the radar.
Texas-based publisher BenBella Books has begun including comic book characters in their SmartPop series of essay collections. They dipped into the world of four-color heroes last year with collections pondering the X-Men and Superman.
Just out, in plenty of time for May 3’s release of Spider-Man 3, is their latest volume Webslinger: Unauthorized Essays on Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. Essayists include comic professionals, science fiction authors and other pop culture mavens. Guest editing is television writer and former DC and Marvel Comics editor Gerry Conway, who wrote a long, celebrated run of Amazing Spider-Man and provides some personal insights into the character in his introduction. The other writers are Darren Hudson Hick, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Robert B. Taylor, Lou Anders, Richard Hanley, Matthew Pustz, Michael A. Burstein, Joseph McCabe, Keith DeCandido, Robert Greenberger, Brett Chandler Patterson, J.R. Fettinger, Adam-Troy Castro, Paul Lytle, David Hopkins, Robert Burke Richardson, and Michael Marano.
SmartPop will also devote volumes to Wonder Woman and Batman, although neither are scheduled.
Former DC editorial assistant Valerie D’Orazio, who caused quite the stir late last year with her multi-post series "Goodbye to Comics," has written her second post about Supergirl wherein she expounds upon her belief that the best way to change a System for the better is from without, not within, particularly if the System perpetuates institutionalized sexism (and she does a nice job of differentiating between that and actual individual sexism).
One of the more eloquent voices working on changing institutionalized sexism from without belongs to Mely of Coffee and Ink (hat tip to Michelle Bacon for the pointer), who’s worth quoting in full (beneath the fold).
On the anniversary of the day Jack Kirby left this world, his longtime friend and colleague Mark Evanier has announced his planned two-volume biography of the King. The first volume, says Evanier, "will be a very nicely printed art book with a simpler but quite complete version of the Kirby biography. The volume will also be loaded with rare Kirby art, all of it in reproduced in full color, much of it shot from the original artwork.
That needs a bit of explanation. Many of the pieces will consist of black-and-white artwork in pencil or ink but we’ll be printing them in color so that you can see all the pencil marks, corrections, smudges and in some cases, notes in the margins. There will also be plenty of pages that print Jack’s art in pencil form and, of course, color pieces and some things you’ve seen before but not in the way we’re going to present them. This book will be called Kirby: King of Comics and it will be released in October of this year by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., which is one of the world’s most prestigious publishers of high quality art and illustrated books. It’ll be a hardcover volume, 9" by 12-1/2", all in color and with a gatefold and all sorts of nifty features that we hope will make it worthy of its subject."
Mark is also seeking "interesting and special Kirby art to include in the book… I’m most interested in pieces that are either historic or early… I’d like to locate the original art to some early pieces and especially to things that weren’t done for Marvel, or were done for DC in the forties or fifties. I’m also trying to find intricate pencil pieces and one or two really spectacular pages from the Fourth World material." Please contact Mark if you have anything along those lines.
Welcome to ComicMix — well, phase one of ComicMix.
This is the part where I’m supposed to explain who and what we are. In order to do so, I’m going to have to do something I rarely do and generally avoid: I’m going to speak seriously.
I’d like to say "welcome to the 21st Century," but I’m seven years late and not quite that pretentious. So I’ll get down to the details. Phase one of ComicMix is a community based around news, information, opinion and blogging, covering the entire range of the comic art medium and those elements in the broader media that we all tend to enjoy. We add this because, contrary to old-time fan thinking, we do not live in a vacuum.
We post the news continuously, we post our columns daily, we post our information and background stuff incessantly, we post our all-new podcasts thrice-weekly (starting Tuesday, February 13th; as they used to say in Pogo, "Friday the 13th falls on a Tuesday this month"), and we run our blogs continuously and irrepressibly.
Over at his blog, Jeff Smith advises Captain Marvel/Shazam fans to "visit DC Comic’s website to find the Monster Society Secret Decoder. On Friday, February 9th, I’ll hide a Monster Egg in my blog and you’ll need the decoder to find it… You will also need to know the code for a couple of lines in the comic book."
He further challenges "every member of the comics blogosphere, blog writers and readers, to do this: if you liked Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil, pick up one extra copy this week or next and give it to a kid you know who likes Harry Potter, Eregon, A Series of Unfortunate Events, manga or just plain loves reading. Promise them that if they like it, you’ll buy them every issue. And ask them to read it and tell you what they think. Do they want to read the next issue? And if they do, you have gotten them interested in comics. And, although it’s a baby step to a massive world, superhero comics."
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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