Tagged: Death

Comic-Con News: Wednesday

  • News
  • July 24, 2008

Comic-Con International officially kicked off last night, and already there’s plenty of news to report:

The early hit of the show? Heidi MacDonald of The Beat says it’s the model Owl Ship that Warner Bros. brought from the Watchmen film. "Cooler than dirt," Heidi says.

Ed Brubaker makes the jump to scripting live-action, as Sony has announced they’ll make an online series out of Brubaker’s Angel of Death. It’ll appear on Crackle, Sony’s online video outlet. More information right here.

Darwyn Cooke also announced his new project for IDW, a potential series of four graphic novels based on the Parker crime novels by Donald Westlake. The first will be Hunter, and IDW will have some cards promoting the project that they’ll distribute at San Diego.

On a related note: "And IDW did a nice job with the collateral material as well, handing out Cooke artwork with a disc, as well as Parker T-shirts to the press. Well done, guys." I guess the whole "journalists don’t accept gifts from sources" thing doesn’t apply to the comics world?

"Tossing a bus on an unsuspecting villain never gets old." And that’s the highlight quote from the DC Universe Online panel. Check right here for more.

Blog@ has a nice collection of photos from day one.

Bully makes a smart move with the California excursion and loads up on In-N-Out.

Twitters from Pop Candy, and be sure to note the uber-creepy Photoshopped image of Whitney turned to She-Hulk.

And, lastly, the legend of The Bag.

The Truth Behind the Death of Harry Horse

  • News
  • July 14, 2008

ogopogo-1050379On Jan. 10, 2007, police found the bodies of Richard Horne, known as Harry Horse, the illustrator, and his wife, Mandy. Word came out that the two had taken their own lives as part of a suicide pact, made after Mandy began to suffer severely from multiple sclerosis.

It’s taken a year and a half for the full story to come out — that Richard brutally murdered his wife, then himself. The Times of London has a lengthy piece on the crime, and it’s a great piece of journalism, though a difficult read because of the ugliness of the incident.

If you do read the story, or the below excerpt, be prepared for graphic descriptions of violence. From the Times:

That evening, Harry and Mandy had their last visitors: two brothers from New Zealand. As relayed by Williamson, Harry was in a demented state, roaming the house and proclaiming: “It’s a wonderful night for a killing.” Mandy was distressed, and did not want the friends to leave. At 9.40 the next morning, January 10, the friends came back to retrieve an item of clothing. The front door was unlocked, so they pushed it open. Inside they saw the bodies of Harry and Mandy lying close together on Mandy’s bed. There was blood on the floor, windows and walls. Harry, so it proved, had butchered Mandy to death with a knife. By the medical examiner’s count, he had stabbed Mandy more than 30 times, fetching a second knife after breaking the first inside her. Then he turned the knife on himself, crisscrossing his arms with cuts and mutilating his genitals, 47 wounds in all. The death certificates record that both died of “exsanguination”: because he’d failed to deliver a lethal blow, both had bled to death. As a final token of horror, he also killed their dog, a chihuahua Mandy liked to cuddle, and their cat.

George Carlin: Death and Coincidence

  • News
  • June 23, 2008

This editorial cartoon was published in the Cincinnati Enquirer, before word of George Carlin’s death.

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I know this is a somewhat different definition of the word "comic" than we usually address here on ComicMix, but Carlin did much – perhaps more than anybody else – to mold and shape our attitudes over the past 40 years. He will be greatly missed.

Thanks and a tip of the hat to the Chicago Tribune’s Charlie Meyerson. His paper also published this cartoon before news of Carlin’s death.

And no, I won’t say "passing." Carlin hated such euphemisms. 

ComicMix at Toy Fair: Mezco’s Hellboy II, Heroes and Warriors

  • News
  • February 19, 2008

I was already looking forward to Hellboy II: The Golden Army, but after seeing Mezco Toyz’ lineup of figures based on the film, it looks like I’ll be buying a ticket and making a little more room on the "geek shelf" (as my friends call it).

New, old and in-production films and television series inspired the bulk of Mezco’s lineup for Toy Fair ’08, with products based on Hellboy II and Heroes occupying the lion’s share of the booth. And while it’s not exactly comics-related, I wanted to let go with a big ol’ fist pump when I saw the 9-inch figures based on the film The Warriors lined up on one of the booth’s display shelves.

Several of the figures Mezco had on display weren’t available for photography, as they were either still awaiting approval by the licensors. Here are some of the highlights of those that were camera-ready, though:

  (more…)

Death, Warmed Over, by Elayne Riggs

  • News
  • January 30, 2008

elayne-riggs-100-5281129As I type this I’m struggling through a pretty bad flu, which I am convinced I contracted on Thursday. That’s when I went for a job interview at the World Financial Center, a hermetically-sealed office and mall complex sandwiched squarely between the Hudson River and the now-cavernous World Trade Center site in downtown Manhattan. I’m unsure whether it was the biting winds or the horrendously long "pedestrian walkway" past the gaping hole of Ground Zero and back to the nearest subway that could get me home now that the Cortlandt Street stations are, it seems, permanently closed, but I haven’t been the same since I shrugged off the interview suit upon my arrival home. The next day Robin met his latest deadline, and we were looking forward to a somewhat active weekend — and then it hit. And it’s still hitting me, and has started hitting him. Funny how, at my age, "lucking out" translates into "thank goodness Robin and I got sick whilst I’m unemployed and he’s between issues!"

But you know, in the back of my head I can’t help but wonder whether I got ill, in part, from breathing in dead people. After all, we all know how the EPA of a government renowned for its repeated lies about everything else also lied to citizens about the air quality in that area. I know it’s over seven years later, but there’s still a ton of construction kicking up dust in that area, and the "walkways" offer scant protection, particularly on a cold and windy day.

Living through 9/11, being in the city the day the towers were attacked, one learns never to take life for granted. This is my 50th It’s All Good column for ComicMix, a milestone number of sorts, and so it seems fitting that I come back around to a subject touched upon in my first column here last February 15, scarcely a month after I’d lost my best friend. In fact, this would have been It’s All Good #51 but for the untimely death of my father. Sometimes the Reaper seems inescapable. Because in the end, of course, it is. And as it touches us all in real life, personally or otherwise (as with Heath Ledger’s recent demise), some of us find much less entertainment and amusement in its fictional counterpart.

(more…)

Sex and Death, by Andrew Wheeler

  • News
  • January 25, 2008

 

sundome-9226480This week: three manga series featuring sex and death in high school. (I don’t know about you folks, but if my high school was like some of the ones in manga series, I wouldn’t have bothered to graduate.)

Case in point: Sundome by Kazuto Okada, a story about a young woman who may just be the single biggest tease in the history of the human race. (By the way, the title is pronounced “sun-do-may” and is a Japanese term meaning “stopping just before.” And, yes, the general implication is pretty much what you think it is.) Her name is Kurumi Sahana, and, in time-tested manga fashion, she’s the transfer student who arrives at this high school on page two. Narrator Hideo Aiba falls for her immediately, and thus tries to resign from his “roman club” – a collection of three other exceptionally geeky young men dedicated to vague “romantic” ideals. One of the rules of the club is that members must remain virgins until graduation, and Hideo, being an honest young man, is hoping he can break that vow, and, being very Japanese about it, wants to quit first.

What follows is a very exaggerated but not completely unbelievable sex comedy. Hideo is a whiny little schlub – of course, he’s the hero of a sex comedy manga, so I’m repeating myself – and Kurumi knows exactly what he wants and refuses to give it to him. On the other hand, she’s more than willing to torment him, with a glimpse of this or a touch of that, to get him to do what she wants. One of the things she wants, though, is for Hideo to grow a spine and stop being such a wimpy little stereotype, so she doesn’t come across as a bitch. Manipulative, yes. More than a little cruel, clearly. Not someone to introduce to your mother, absolutely. But she’s honest, and not capricious, and she does follow through on what she says.

(Another girl – somewhat more conventional but also in her way tormenting Hideo and his fellow members of the Roman Club – shows up about halfway through the book.)

I feel I should apologize for liking Sundome, but I did enjoy it. It’s “sexy” in a completely sophomoric way, full of panty shots and nipples straining against fabric, but it’s authentically tawdry and juvenile. It’s probably not a book for women, or for men who have completely outgrown their own childishness (which I clearly haven’t), but if you’ve ever wished Superbad was a book, you are in luck.

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A ‘Star Trek’ Fiction Primer

  • News
  • January 1, 2008

Hitting shelves around the country is Star Trek: A Singular Destiny by Keith R.A. DeCandido, the first novel in the Star Trek universe after the status quo was shaken up in the just-complete Star Trek: Destiny trilogy by David Mack.  When we spoke with Mack a few months ago, he said, “All I’m willing to share at this point is that characters who are dead before the trilogy starts stay dead; characters killed during the trilogy will stay dead afterward; there is no reset button at the end of the story; worlds we’ve heard of before will be destroyed; a species will cease to exist.”

For many intrigued by this, the prose works can seem daunting since they carry the storylines forward from the last season of Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Deep Space 9 and The Next Generation feature films.  DeCandido provided ComicMix with a reading list for those interested in seeing what’s been happening:

Pre-Nemesis

There was a nine-book series that set the groundwork for Nemesis as well as many of the post-Nemesis books. None of them are critical. All nine provide some nice background, particularly on Christine Vale, the security chief on the Enterprise-E who goes on to become Riker’s first officer on Titan, and the final five books set up Riker’s captaincy and engagement to Troi (both established in Nemesis), as well as the political situation we see going forward. It’s also, in essence, Data’s final arc, which runs through all nine.

These books take place from late 2378 to late 2379 (the film took place in late 2379).

A Time to be Born by John Vornholt
A Time to Die by John Vornholt
A Time to Sow by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore
A Time to Harvest by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore
A Time to Love by Robert Greenberger
A Time to Hate by Robert Greenberger
A Time to Kill by David Mack
A Time to Heal by David Mack
A Time for War, a Time for Peace by Keith R.A. DeCandido (more…)

(We Could Be) Heroes: Top Ten Rock Songs About Superman, by Martha Thomases

  • News
  • October 13, 2007

What does one hum on the way to the comic book store? If you’re a person of a certain age, with a certain history with certain illegal substances, you probably have a few songs about the original super-hero stuck in the part of your brain that should be storing French vocabulary words.

Even if you aren’t old, you probably listen to a few songs about super-heroes. The Marvel superhero movies have had fantastic soundtracks, even if most of the songs weren’t written specifically for the movies. The Prince Batman soundtrack is a winner (Vicki Vale!), and the Ramones did a fabulous cover of the cartoon Spider-Man theme.

And yet, the Man of Tomorrow is still the foremost inspiration for popular songs. From the alt-folkie to Eminem, there are Superman songs. Alas, some of the more hard-core take a rather literal approach to the term, “super-man” and imagine all kinds of sexual possibilities that seem to have nothing to do with Truth, Justice and the American Way (nor Kryptonian physiology, nor anything human – entertaining, though).

Here is my choice for the Top Ten songs about Superman: (more…)

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…)

ROBERT GREENBERGER: Death be not proud

  • News
  • April 4, 2007

bobgreenberger100-9668217The rule of thumb used to be that the only characters that stayed dead are Uncle Ben, Bucky and Barry Allen.

Some version of Uncle Ben is running around in Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man; Bucky turns out to have survived and is now the Winter Solider; and if you believe Dan DiDio’s “slip” of the tongue, Barry Allen may be here soon.

It used to be a big deal when a character died. Amazing Spider-Man #121’s cover, as Spidey faced those nearest and dearest to him with a cover blurb promising one was going to die compelled us to buy that month’s issue. It worked, sales spiked, the status quo was different and people were buzzing.

In 1985, I participated in the planning and, ahem, execution of Crisis on Infinite Earths. One of the key housecleaning elements had to be the elimination of both major and minor figures, heroes and villains, civilians and loved ones. The hit list, as seen in the Absolute edition, evolved as editors and management weighed in. Killing the Flash and Supergirl were the shockers while few cared if the Bug-Eyed Bandit survived or not. Still, these deaths were supposed to be permanent changes to the DC Universe, although few of them have remained dead 20 years later.

By the time Superman died in 1992, the freshness had long since worn off as deaths had been faked (Professor X, Foggy Nelson), undone (Jean Grey, Iris Allen), or were too minor to care (I Ching).

Since then, characters have continued to die and come back with stunning regularity. As a result, the death of a major figure has been more of a blip than a major event, making one wonder what it will take to get people really stirred up.

Much has been made of Captain America’s death and I was among those scoffing at the permanence of his condition. Less has been said about the return of their first Captain Marvel, plucked out of the time stream before his death from cancer (as wonderfully told in a Jim Starlin graphic novel), an altogether new kind of cheat.

Marvel isn’t the only company wheeling and dealing with the Grim Reaper.

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