Tagged: Iron Man

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What’s Wrong With Wonder Woman, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • September 8, 2008

ww-1-3961715In this space on Friday and Saturday, my esteemed colleagues Mr. Davis and Ms. Thomases waxed on about the political situation of the day. Whereas there is no more important issue facing us as Americans in this moment in time (and it has considerable impact on non-Americans as well), I will not follow in their wake this week. I’m sure I will in the future.

Instead, I’m going to take a point central to their themes, and those expressed to a somewhat lesser extent by Ms. Riggs last week, and talk about comic books. Specifically, about Wonder Woman.

Since I’m in a name-dropping kind of mood, I should point out that my comments have been heavily influenced by recent conversations with Ms. Adriane Nash, a frequent commenter here at ComicMix, as well as our new editorial proofreader (for those items that come in early enough to be proofread…). And, oh yeah, she’s my savvy and opinionated daughter.

So what’s wrong with Wonder Woman? Positioning. Not unlike what many people think the McCain campaign did by selecting a fundamentalist book burner as their vice presidential candidate, under the theory that women are so stupid they’ll simply vote for one of their own no matter what her position is on the issues. You know, just like the conservatives.

Ahem. Sorry. Back to comics.

Back in the 1940s, Wonder Woman was fabulously successful. She had as much exposure as any DC/AA hero (but not as much as, say, the real Captain Marvel). She had her own title, she starred in a monthly anthology book, she starred in a regularly published giant-sized star-studded superhero thing, and she briefly had her own newspaper strip. All she was lacking was a cheap movie serial.

By the time the 70s rolled around, DC had a hard time giving Wonder Woman away. As of this date, she’s undergone more revisions, reboots (one, quite literally, brought her original boots back), reinterpretations, and make-overs than Madonna. What happened?

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Turning Comics Into Manga, By Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • September 1, 2008

If you’re a student, or a teacher, you may not be reading this when Mike Gold posts it. Unless there’s a glitch he’ll be doing digital voodoo-hoodoo that I don’t understand – me and Johnny Mac, Luddites and proud of it – and making these words available to interested parties, if any, on Tuesday morning. The reason you’re not reading this on Tuesday morning, if you’re a teacher or student, may be that you’re in school and presumably putting your laptop to other uses. (I didn’t say “better.” I said other. Let’s not be judgmental.) Here in Rockland County New York, school begins early this year and unless the unforeseen happens, Marifran is, on the Tuesday-to-come, down the hill, beginning her forty-seventh year of teaching and I’m… oh, eating breakfast. Reading the paper. Sleeping. Something. I hope Mari didn’t wake me when she left.

For comics professionals, these fine, crisp September days are often a lull – an easy interval between the frantic, convention-going days of summer and the rush to finish and get to press the upscale books that publishers hope will be under a whole lot of trees on Christmas morning. Not much happening. The only items of interest that have come to my attention recently are the demise of one of the new comics publishers and Marvel’s announcement that it will tailor its superheroes for the Japanese market.

That market has been something of an enigma. The Japanese are, as a nation, the world’s largest comics consumers and have been for decades. Why? One theory is that experiencing narrative through the medium of pictures is natural to many Asians because their written language is pictorial – it may have begun as actual drawings and has evolved into a series of highly stylized glyphs. Neither a new idea, nor one restricted to comics: the great Russian director and theorist Sergei Eisenstein offered a similar explanation for Asia’s quick adoption of movies.

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Given You A Number, by John Ostrander

  • News
  • August 28, 2008

It’s a good thing for this column that I listen to NPR. I don’t know if I’d have the number of column topics that I’ve had without it. This time I was listening to a debate between a former college/university president and the head of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The topic was whether the drinking age should be lowered to 18. I like to think I would have been more Pro on the topic back when I was 18 myself, but the fact was in those days I was so square I was cubed.

Both sides had pretty fair arguments, but the one that struck home most for me was this: a young man or woman can sign up for the Armed Forces, be taught to kill, be put in situations where they can be killed, and are expected to exercise quick and accurate decisions between friend and foe, even when the foe dresses like everyone else. Yet, those same young people cannot be expected to responsibly decide how much to drink. They can die for their country but they can’t have a beer because they’re too young.

Is it just me or does anyone else think this is pretty screwed up thinking?

Both eighteen and twenty-one are “magic numbers.” Are we really “adult” by either one of those birthdays? Some folks are, some aren’t. Some never are. If you’re one of those whose criterion for voting for a particular candidate is whether or not you would want to have a beer with them, then you’re not old enough to vote. I don’t care how many birthdays you’ve had; you’re not old enough. (more…)

Heroic Gloom, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • August 26, 2008

Tuesday, August 26: 146 days.

They continue to dwindle down, the days, but maybe not fast enough. If Dennis Kucinich is right in a New York Times interview, Georgie just might launch an attack on Iran sometime between now and the election because…well, we don’t want to switch leadership in the middle of a military crisis and we have to be tough on terrorism, et cetera. And lest we think that this is lefty paranoia from a vegan who is, after all, a friend of Shirley MacLaine’s, just look at the last eight years…

But enough gloom on this fine pre-autumn day, at least enough political gloom. Let’s switch to some nice television gloom. This is not a good week for Okay, I’m gonna bust in here. In case we haven’t met before, I’m Randy Hyper, a fictional character that dweeb O’Neil made up ‘cause he hasn’t got the cojones to tell you about the stuff he’s doing that he wants you to know about. (And if there’s a bigger loser in comics, don’t tell me ‘cause I don’t feel like crying.) Anyway…what el dweebo wants me to tell you is that he’s again teaching a course in writing comics and graphic novels at New York University, beginning next month, September 24, and running until December 3 on Wednesdays from 6:20 till 8:40. Course number is X32.9372. Phone is 212-998-7171. I can tell that he’s looking forward to this gig ‘cause last semester’s group were what he might call “cool” which just goes to prove that even he isn’t wrong all the time. Now back to our regularly scheduled blather. so if you like sports, this is your week. The last gasp of the Olympics, preseason football, the big tennis matches, plus the usual baseball action – lots to keep you sports fans amused. As for the rest of us…not wonderful.

And if you’re a Lois Lane – a superhero lover – the season beyond this week isn’t awfully promising, either. As far as I can tell, there are no new superdoers on the television schedule and one of last year’s, the revamped Bionic Woman, won’t be returning. This despite the fact that the summer movie schedule was pretty superhero-intensive and two of the entries do for this kind of fantasy-melodrama what the films of John Ford, Howard Hawks and maybe John Huston did for westerns: mature them. No longer are the cape-and-tights crowd fit only to provide the airiest of light entertainment; they now have a claim on art, of maybe even Art.

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Marvel Lets Japan Recreate Its Heroes

  • News
  • August 25, 2008







circle-01-3037080Marvel Comics announced a deal with Japan’s Madhouse that will have their core super-heroes reimagined for Japanese audiences.  Originally designed as animated fare, the long-range plans call for the Marvel Japanese Universe to be found on mobile devices and comic books.

Essentially, the heroes will experience new origins taking into account Japanese culture and society.  Their problems, foibles ands villains will all reflect the country of origin, using “something that is part of the fabric of society” according to Jungo Maruta, the president and chief executive of Madhouse. He told the New York Times, “Marvel gives creators freedom to fly.”

The first characters to undergo transformation will be Iron Man and Wolverine in thirty-minute anime intended for Japanese television in 2010. “Although they say, ‘I want Japanese anime,’ it’s not what they actually want. They want a hybrid between Japanese and Western animation,” Alex Yeh, the chief operating officer of the studio, told the Times.

“Marvel has continuously looked to push the boundaries with the Marvel Universe and seek new mediums for our characters. Madhouse is helping us expand the Marvel brand with a truly global vision tailored to themes and artistic styles popular in Japan, creating a uniquely localized and cross-cultural adaptation of the Marvel Universe,” said Simon Philips, President, International & Worldwide Head of Animation, Wireless & Gaming for Marvel Entertainment in a release.

Marvel previously attempted this concept with an India-inspired Spider-Man which was a commercial and critical flop from Gotham Entertainment Group in 2004.

Madhouse was founded in 1972 and is seen as a creative powerhouse in Asia, perhaps best known for its Vampire Hunter D.

 

Framing The Question, by John Ostrander

  • News
  • August 21, 2008

There’s a lot of buzz on the Internet this last week stemming from new Image partner Robert Kirkman’s video-taped manifesto calling for … well, I’m not exactly certain what he called for. A subsequent article/interview on Newsarama said it was “a call to arms for fellow creators to focus solely on their original stories, instead of the licensed work from the big two comic book companies, Marvel and DC.” Although he is also quoted later in the article as saying, “I want everyone to understand, I’m not saying no one should aspire to write for Marvel and DC characters … I’m just saying that it shouldn’t be the pinnacle of a comic book career.”

The article adds: “While Kirkman sees contemporary creators who try to do both creator owned works, and books for the big two, he believes they’re hurting their opportunity to succeed with their original stories.” It then quotes Kirkman further: “You can’t put your feet on both sides of the fence you have to take that plunge … if I’m doing Invincible and I’m also writing Spider-Man, and I’m giving fans a choice to try my unknown book, or Spider-Man who they know, they’re going to choose Spider-Man.”

OR … maybe some of those fans try Invincible because they really like what the writer is doing on Spider-Man. The savvy ones follow the talent – whether it’s the writer or the artist. The majority, however, are reading Spider-Man because it’s Spider-Man and it doesn’t matter if a hundred monkeys are typing it – unless the monkeys do something really dumb with it like use a Mephisto ex machina to get rid of a pesky marriage or bring out a clone or something. Stoopid monkey!

The point is … more readers get exposed to the writer as a result of his work on Spider-Man. A fair question to ask is – did the sales go up on Kirkman’s own creator owned books after he started writing the webby wallcrawler at Marvel? If not, then he had no benefit from doing it. If they have gone up, however, then at least part of the reason will be his stint at Marvel.           

As I understand it, Kirkman wants to re-energize/save the comics’ industry. If all the established talent left DC and Marvel, he thinks the two companies would have to “re-focus the majority of their titles to the teen audience.” The established creators would then work on creator owned books, revitalizing the industry. (more…)

Robert Downey Jr: “F*ck DC Comics”

  • News
  • August 19, 2008

iron-man-photo-downey-jr-9492303Sure, we know that actors occasionally lose themselves in the role and start acting like their characters in real life. Robert Downey Jr. may have been concentrating too much on his Tony Stark role from this summer’s Iron Man movie in this interview with Moviehole.com.

What’s got everyone buzzing? Well, here’s an excerpt:

"My whole thing is that that I saw ‘The Dark Knight’. I feel like I’m dumb because I feel like I don’t get how many things that are so smart. It’s like a Ferrari engine of storytelling and script writing and I’m like, ‘That’s not my idea of what I want to see in a movie.’ I loved ‘The Prestige’ but didn’t understand ‘The Dark Knight’. Didn’t get it, still can’t tell you what happened in the movie, what happened to the character and in the end they need him to be a bad guy. I’m like, ‘I get it. This is so high brow and so f–king smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie.’ You know what? F-ck DC Comics. That’s all I have to say and that’s where I’m really coming from."

Yeah. Don’t be expecting a call to play the Riddler anytime soon, Bob.
 

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Oh, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • August 19, 2008

weill-1-4297233Sunday, August 17: 155 days left.

Our man the brush clearer is back in Crawford, taking it easy. Having already set a record for presidential vacation days, he’s obviously trying for a record that no future chief executive can possibly hope to break. This may not be how everyone would like to be remembered.

Back when I occupied the celestial throne that is the sinecure of all those noble beings known – here you may genuflect – as editors … make that Editors – this was the time of year when life got calmer. Big travel was done – no trips to distant cities to attend conventions – and the increased summer publishing load completed. We put out fewer issues in the fall because, conventional wisdom had it, the kids were too busy with school concerns to bother with funny books. The same logic dictated that during the summer we cram the newsstands because, presumably, the nation’s youth had nothing better to do with their long, humid days than to laze around getting massive four-color fixes and, besides, since they didn’t have to buy crayons or switchblades or whatever school kids bought, they had disposable income to spend on our productions. Which, of course, was why late spring and early summer demanded industriousness from editorial types. Those printing presses out there in the Midwest were maws…

All that was probably true once. But because the ways comics are marketed, and to some extent read, I doubt that it is true now. But I don’t know. Any editors – working editors, that is – care to enlighten the old man?

The point is, though I was a comics editor at the two major companies for about 23 years… I don’t know. I have a sense that the business has changed a lot in the seven years since I occupied the celestial throne mentioned three paragraphs ago (seven years already?). My skills might be more-or-less okay (though I’m not even sure of that), but my attitudes and assumptions would need work.

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Indiana Jones Opts For October DVD Release

  • News
  • August 13, 2008

ICv2 reports that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will be released on DVD the second week of October. Much like Iron Man, which hits shelves on September 30, the quick turnaround time on the Indiana Jones DVD is part of an effort to generate long-term sales in a crowded DVD market this fall. The fourth Indiana Jones film was the highest-grossing film in the franchise, earning $770 million worldwide.

According to ICv2, the DVD will find its way to shelves in three versions:

The Single-Disc version comes with two extras, "The Return of a Legend,” a feature about the evolution of the new film, and “Pre-Production,” a mini-documentary that follows director Steven Spielberg as he creates animatronic sequences and Shia LeBoeuf as he learns to swordfight. The 2-disc Special Edition contains a host of additional extras created with the collector and the serious fan in mind including “Production Diary: Making Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” a major behind-the-scenes look at all facets of the production, plus seven additional featurettes about various aspects of the filming process (special effects, action sequences, etc.), a special feature about Stan Winston Studio’s contribution to the film, plus galleries galore, production photographs, portraits, storyboards, set sketches and more.

ICv2 also points out that the trio of recent Indiana Jones-themed comics published by Dark Horse in recent months (the adaptation of Crystal Skull and two Indiana Jones omnibus projects) have been selling well, and the DVD release might mean good things for the publisher in October.

Is Hillary Clinton Really The Thing? By Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • August 12, 2008

I never talked to either Jack Kirby or Stan Lee about politics, so I don’t really have any idea where they stood on the subject. My guess would be that following their political spoor wouldn’t take you very far west and that they didn’t have much sympathy for the hippie-rebels of the 60s (and here allow me to blush and hide my face). After all, they and their parents (and my parents) fought for a place in the American mainstream because, finally, acceptance meant an increased chance of survival and for those outside the tribe, who suffered the Great Depression, not surviving seemed to be a real possibility. Then here came the snotty kids with their tie-dye and their girly haircuts and their wiseass slogans saying that a place in the tribe was not worth struggling for – in fact, the tribe itself was stinking of corruption.

Both generations were, in their own way, right; both had a piece of the truth.

Stan and Jack were – are – of the first of the two generations and so they were – are – probably politically a bit to the right of me and maybe you (and my parent and most of my siblings.) But events of the past week make me guess that their greatest creations were liberals. I refer to the Fantastic Four who, along with Spider-Man co-launched Marvel Comics, as one or two of you might have heard. True FF aficionados know, and perhaps relish, the tendency of the members of this supergroup to squabble among themselves. Two of the four, The Human Torch and The Thing, seem particularly apt to indulge in petty argumentation.

Remind you of any particular political group?

Yeah, right. Liberals. Witness the recent news: Ms. Hillary Clinton’s die-hard supporters are threatening to vote for John McCain, the Republican candidate, unless Ms. Clinton’s presidential aspirations are accorded full acknowledgement at the Democratic convention, which will be soaking up media time in about two weeks. This despite the fact that Ms. Clinton has already lost the nomination to Barack Obama, whose crew must be thinking harsh and uncharitable thoughts about the Clintonites.

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