We want to wish a happy silver birthday to Billie Piper, best known here in the States as Rose Tyler, the recent companion of Doctor Wh– pardon? Why are we covering the birthday of an actress that has nothing to do with comics?
Three reasons: first, there is going to be a Doctor Who comic book from our good friends over at IDW coming out this December. Second, she might be making a return appearance to Whoville.
Third, Because We Want To:
Neil Kofsky bets his buddies he can jump his motorcycle over a pile of bikes behind a bar. He clips the last cycle in the bunch, and has to escape from its owner through the alleys. He tries to hide in a coal chute when the bottom vanishes and he finds himself falling onto a floating man of war 15,000 feet in the air.
This is no ordinary floating boat. It’s battling fighter planes.
All this happens in the first three pages of Black Ice, the new graphic novel from the legendary Mike Baron and Nick Runge, a new artist whose first work was Mike Baron’s Detonator (October 2005).
Mike Baron has been one of the most innovative and honored creators in comics since he broke into the field with Nexus fifteen years ago with artist Steve Rude.
Mike has written numerous mainstream comics, including Marvel’s The Punisher and DC’s The Flash and Deadman. He is also the co-creator of Badger, Feud, Spyke and a number of other renowned titles.
He has been nominated for Best Writer in the Kirby, Harvey and Eisner Awards numerous times, and has won several Eisners for his work on Nexus. In his spare time, he writes novels, short stories and screenplays, works out, and rides his motorcycle through the countryside.
Nick Runge is 22 years old. His parents are both artists – his father teaching painting, drawing and design at a local college, and his mother is a graphic designer. He was studying art in Fort Collins, CO in 2004, when he met Baron, who saw Runge’s paintings in a gallery. His other work includes inking Gene Simmons’ House of Horrors for IDW and Fear Agent for Image. He’s also penciling and inking the covers for IDW’s new Badger mini-series.
Here’s what the boys have to say about their new project.
CM: Tell us about Black Ice.
MB: Black Ice is a heroic fantasy about an American teen who falls through a wormhole into an alternate universe. Two civilizations are at war: the sky-dwelling Luftar, and the militaristic Helmut. Young Neil finds himself in the middle of the fight, attracted to the captain’s daughter, and forced to fight to the death against a jealous prince. And that’s just the first issue. The series is really about how alien technology (Neil’s) affects civilization. It’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court for the space age.
The deals are taking their positions by the pole, ready to make “Go, Speed Racer, go,” next year’s biggest catch phrase. Just announced by Speed Racer Enterprises are a series of new licensing deals; the most interesting (to you readers) is IDW landing comic book rights.
In addition to all new comics, they have the rights to collect previous incarnations of the anime series, one of the earliest to be imported from
IDW expects to have their first releases out in the first quarter of 2008 to catch the anticipation of the new feature length film from the Wachowskis, due May 9. Speed racer joins IDW’s growing line of licensed books which already includes Angel, Star Trek, and Transformers.
A new animated series, entitled Speed Racer: The Next Generation, will also debut with twenty-six episodes on Nicktoons. LionsGate has already announced the first DVD collection of this series will also be available in 2008. The original fifty-two episodes are already available in a multi-volume DVD set.
I received an urgent, earnest e-mail asking me to sign a petition expressing my indignation at how the Democrats went belly-up once more to the White House bullying tactics and passed the Security Bill which limits our freedoms just so they won’t appear weak on security in the next election.
Sorry, gang, but the indignation ain’t in me this round.
It’s not that I don’t feel that the legislation isn’t an assault on our liberties or that is unnecessary and useless; I do. I just don’t think the Dems can be shamed into changing their vote at this point. Despite their pre-election rhetoric before the elections in ’06, they haven’t voted to end the war in Iraq or cut off the funding for it because they are more concerned about maintaining and widening their control in Congress and gaining the White House as well. That, more than anything else, is their real objective.
Power.
Same as anyone else in politics.
It’s turned into the political Catch-22. To do anything, you must gain power. To continue to have the ability to do anything, you must maintain power. Actually do anything and you risk losing power. So instead we get smoke, mirrors, theatrics, and power plays. That’s on both sides of the aisle.
The Bush Administration has, at least, understood the concept of using the power accrued; they’ve just made a terrible hash of it. Can we all agree that the WMDS were always an excuse, that 9/11 had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein, and that the Bushies knew it, know it, and didn’t and don’t care? The real basic premise of the Bush Neo-Cons was to get rid of a murderous dictator that even the other Arabs didn’t much care for and, in his place, create a functioning democracy that, by its success and example, would begin to change the face of the Mideast. 9/11 simply offered a justification. All in all, it was a seemingly laudable goal but it was attempted by a crew that didn’t know the language, didn’t know the culture or the people, and couldn’t be bothered to learn. There was no contingency planning. It was a perfect storm of arrogance and ignorance.
I’ve seen that kind of mixture before, on a much lesser scale, when Ron Perelman bought Marvel in 1989. With him came business types who were going to apply sound business theory to Marvel. Comic books were just another set of widgets and they would apply their Universal Business theories to make Marvel a combination of Disney and McDonald’s. (I’m not exaggerating or making this up; that’s what I was told by a Marvel insider at the time.) They took a company that had maybe 70% or more of a strong market and then bankrupted the company while nearly destroying the market. Again, a combination of arrogance and ignorance. Perelman and his people knew everything; they didn’t ask for the advice of people in the industry. They already knew better. Except they didn’t. They made choices that made everyone in the industry who did know something about how it was run start scratching their heads.
Midweek on The Big ComicMix Broadcast gives you some suggestions to beat summer boredom. We have new games to play and some films to create, we’ll tell you all about the return of Snoopy and fill you in on all the new Heroes stuff. And while we’re at it, we preview a book that would make a great read for your vacation, briefly recap the Eisner Awards and bitch about Jessica Simpson.
Press The Button and take a 11 minute vacation on us!
The most quotable things that have been said in public and overheard in private. Onward!
Overheard on the trolley, while looking at the guy to the right: "Is he getting off at the Imperial Transfer station to go to the Con or does he work at the Imperial Transfer Station?"
At the IDW panel, commenting on John Byrne’s art on the upcoming Star Trek: Romulans: "Everybody looks like Namor…"
DC’s new House of Mystery turns the old barn into a bar and restaurant where patrons sit around telling strange stories. Funny, but it seems like we’ve seen that in comics before… Something called Munden’s…
Mike Grell and Mark Ryan (Bumblebee in Transformers) announced a new project called The Pilgrim. Grell starts working on it after he finishes his latest Jon Sable Freelance graphic novel.
Len Wein: "When I first met Hugh Jackman, he said ‘I apologize for being so tall.’ [Jackman is 6’3"; Wolverine, which Len created, is 5’1".] And I said, ‘It’s okay — you play short.’ "
And finally, a special hat tip to Mark Evanier, who mentioned the most heard phrase from Wednesday night.
Contributing writer: Mike Gold
IDW announced at their SDCC panel this morning that they’ll be doing a Doctor Who comic series, featuring the tenth doctor and Martha Jones. It’ll be written by Gary Russell (Doctor Who story editor for the BBC) with art by Nick Roche. Russell T. Davies will be keeping his eye on the series as well. The series will make its bow in December 2007, starting as a 6-issue limited series, with more to follow.
They’ll also be reprinting the Dave Gibbons Doctor Who stories from many years back, many in color for the first time.
Waiting for a trolley: "I’m so glad, I just found out that Lucy Lawless is going to be here on Sunday. I hope I get to show her my tattoo!" And in case she doesn’t get a chance, everybody else can see it here.
Neil Gaiman, at the Paramount preview panel: "I’m growing vats of people like you all around the world. Eventually we’ll put a bunch of you in a room with knives, and whoever emerges alive will be the winner and can make the Sandman movie."
On Market Street: "IDT buying IDW? Aren’t they supposed to buy a company called IDU first?"
Marvel Studios has both Doctor Strange and Ant-Man in development as live action movies, along with gosh-darn near everything else in the catalog. The good Doctor, of course, will make his live action D2DVD debut in a few weeks. And, according to a source, a new slate of animated D2DVDs is in the works.
Contributors to today’s column: Adriane Nash, Matt Raub, Mike Gold
The Black Diamond Detective Agency is a bit of an anomaly for Eddie Campbell – it’s a book he wrote and illustrated alone that nevertheless is not concerned with stories or storytelling in any way. Campbell’s probably best-known for illustrating From Hell from Alan Moore’s famously copious scripts, but most of his work has been writing and drawing his own stories, sometimes with help from a loose band of local Australian cartoonists.
His two long-running sequences are both deeply about story: Bacchus consists of the tales of the few remaining Greek gods in the modern world, and contains many tales-within-tales, retold stories, and other storytelling conceits. The “Alec MacGarry” stories are even more entwined with stories, since they’re Campbell’s thinly-veiled autobiography about his own life as a comics creator, and are, at their heart, about the process of creating art and stories.
So it’s a bit odd to find that Black Diamond is a conventional detective story – a murder mystery, to be precise – set at the turn of the 20th century in the American Midwest. (That last is also surprising since Campbell is a Scot long resident in Australia – middle America isn’t his part of the world at all.) The story begins with a mysterious man in Lebanon, Missouri witnessing the explosion of a train during a demonstration and then helping to pull the wounded from the wreckage. He’s soon arrested and questioned, since the boxes of nitro used to blow up the train have his name on them.
It gets more complicated from there, but the focus is on that man of several names and on the investigation run by the Black Diamond Agency (which stands in for the real-life Pinkertons) of the explosion and related events. And, showing its origin as a screenplay, there’s a Big Secret at the end, which will be familiar to many – we’ve seen a story much like this many times before.
As the days roll by, I have two stacks of paper here on the Big ComicMixBroadcast Desk. One is labeled “Before San Diego,” the other is marked “Whenever.” That pretty much stands as a metaphor for things here right now as well. However, that doesn’t mean I have lost ANY of the notes I need to share with you from the week:
Back at you in a couple of days as we continue to edge closer to the San Diego ComicCon, marvel at Harry’s magic boxox office and clear off the shelf for a big pile of new comics and DVDs!!
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
Stephen Colbert, we have your writer for “The Chronicles of Amber”!
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