Tagged: Iron Man

DENNIS O’NEIL: On Writing Comics

  • News
  • September 18, 2007

 

I don’t remember a lot about the first time I ever did a cable TV show. It must have been in the 1980s because I know I was working for Marvel, and it was probably on one of those public access channels which still exist but never seem to have anything on them. The evening’s host might have been Carl Gafford. I do recall, to a certainty, that my co-guest was Jo Duffy and we were debating a topic with, surely, international if not cosmic consequence. To wit: which is the better technique for producing comic book scripts, the so-called Marvel method or the full-script method.

Why the networks, or at least the New York Times, did not report this momentous colloquy I know not. Just another example of the ineptitude of American journalism, I suppose.

Jo had the Marvel side of the dialogue and I championed the full-script side. I have no idea what either of us said or did, but it’s now years later and we’re both still alive, so it couldn’t have been too bloody.

Which brings us, via a prolix pre-digression, to this week’s topic. I put it to you, my friend: which is better, Marvel style or full script?

But before you answer, let’s be sure we’re all talking about the same things and that’ll require some definitions. Here we go.

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DENNIS O’NEIL: Comics Education

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  • September 11, 2007

If you’re a dedicated reader of movie end credits, the name Michael Uslan might be familiar to you.  If it isn’t…let’s remedy that.

If you know of Mike, it’s probably because he was executive producer of all the recent Batman flicks, including Catwoman and The Dark Knight, coming to a theater near you next June.  He’s also been involved in producing a lot of other stuff for screens both large and small.  And he’s done considerable writing, some of which was for comic books.  I first met him when he was a law student at Indiana State University in Bloomington, where he was teaching the first accredited college course in comics and a related correspondence course; he was nice enough to invite me to meet his class.

Mike’s latest project – and here we come to this week’s real subject – is a documentary movie on comics super heroes to have its world premiere on September 15 at the Montclair Art Museum which is located, no surprise, in a town called Montclair in a state called New Jersey, a short drive or train ride from New York City.  The movie screening is part of a much bigger deal, an exhibit of about 150 examples of comics art and related stuff at the museum that is currently there and is not leaving until January 13th of next year.  The screening is scheduled for 4:30 in the afternoon.

And if you’re still not satisfied, if that isn’t enough…On October 13th the museum will shelter a panel discussion on comics which will put Mr. Uslan, Danny Fingeroth, Tom DeFalco, and me in front of anyone who cares to show up, listen, ask questions.  Genuflecting and flinging rose blossoms at us are optional.

I haven’t visited the exhibit yet, but everything I know about it indicates that it’s worth going a bit out of your way to see. If you do – go out of your way to see it, that is, or even if you plan to see it without going out of your way – you might want some info. You can get it by visiting www.montclairartmuseum.org or phoning (973) 746-5555.  And while I’m in reporter mode, one final thing, the museum’s address is 3 South Mountain Avenue, Montclair, NJ 07042

I believe that at one time it would have been customary to, at this point, urge you to “be there or be square.”  Aren’t we glad that time is past!

And aren’t we glad that comics have come to a place where respectable institutions promote and host educational efforts on their behalf?  Well, yes, with some qualification.  Producing comics isn’t the informal, loosey-goosey business it once was, and so maybe a little less fun.  And I, for one, am not entirely comfortable with all this respectability.  I’m not happy that pretty young women behind checkout counters call me sir, either.  But better respectability than oblivion and, come to think of it, better being called sir than oblivion, too.

RECOMMENDED READING:  Walden and Civil Disobedience, both by Henry David Thoreau.

Dennis O’Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of comic books like Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern and/or Green Arrow, and The Shadow, as well as all kinds of novels, stories and articles.

BIG BROADCAST’s Stories Behind The Sounds!

  • News
  • September 10, 2007

rainbow425-3840140Some ups and some downs this week in our little pop culture playground. DC takes a few steps back with some scheduling issues and then brings Jim Shooter back in the spotlight, while the internet seems to be crammed with some very taste time wasters.

•  If you miss the premiere of the Iron Man footage on MTV’s The Hills Monday night, it will show up on Tuesday on Apple’s trailer site.

•  The questions rare on concerning that J.J. Abrams "monster" flick, and there are continued updates, opinions and more than one red herring (as far as I’m concerned) here . If you are at work, keep a hand on the speaker so the scary sounds don’t freak out the guy in the next cubicle.

•  Speaking of controversy, the fight over "the best costume in comics" rages on and you can see one list of choices now here.

•  You probably already went there days ago, but in case you still haven’t seen Alex Ross’ amazing cover to DC’s upcoming Heroes hardcover, it is here

Meanwhile, here at the ComicMix Hall Of Justice, we are gearing up for our own Big Week. If you are lucky enough to be at the Baltimore ComicCon, you know what I mean – but the rest of us will see AND hear it right here on the site in a couple of days!

Summer Box Office Closing Report

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  • September 5, 2007

The summer is now officially over and our minds are already beginning to turn to… the Christmas movie season.  But first, let’s take stock and see where we are with comic book-based movies.  We have just one left for release this year, the feature version of Steve Niles’ 30 Days of Night, but that’s waiting for the appropriate Halloween period.

Much has been made of the $4 billion summer box office and how it set a new record, until you adjust for inflation and then it doesn’t beat 2002.  Studios say that’s okay, because the hits will also prove strong sellers this holiday season in DVD (regular, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, collect them all!).  With average ticket prices creeping up to $6.85 (it’s $10.25 in Connecticut, where on earth is it only $6.85?), the receipts have also risen.

Here’s an updated look at the genre films released this year with their total box office to date followed by their budgets. Again, following that logic, 300 remains the clear winner by traditional Hollywood logic.  When all the home video sales get counted next spring, we’ll see if that remains the case.

Ghost Rider, $115,802,596 / $110,000,000

300, $210,250,922 / $65,000,000

TMNT, $42,273,609 / $34,000,000

Spider-Man 3, $336,530,303 / $258,000,000

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, $131,451,007 / $130,000,000

Stardust, August 10, $31,912,000 to date / $70,000,000

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D2DVD REVIEW: Strange Thrills

What to do with Doctor Strange?

That’s a question Marvel creators have been asking ever since Steve Ditko left town with the original Eye of Agamotto. A lot of people gave it a shot over the past five decades, and, to be fair, several did a first-rate job. But they had a hard time recapturing the original magic.

This week, Marvel Studios released its [[[Doctor Strange]]] D2DVD, and, being a self-contained 75-minute effort, they took some liberties with the ever-evolving and sometimes contradictory comics versions. Overall, I think they did a good job.

This D2DVD is not quite a superhero effort; certainly, not as defined by their previous animated movies ([[[Ultimate Avengers]]] 1 and 2, [[[Iron Man]]]). They keep the most basic elements of the various origin stories and they don’t really alter anything of substance: Stephen Strange is still starts out as the egotistical, self-absorbed, money-grubbing surgeon supreme and within and hour and a quarter is fast-tracked to beatific altruistic sorcerer supreme. Which, if you think about it, is not a good thing for Strange’s master, The Ancient One.

Along the way, though, we see Strange’s journey to supremacy, we get to appreciate his frustrations and see him grow past his ego and get redeemed. Oh, and he gets to fight Mordo and Dormamuu and a boatload of demons along the way. Our Japanese friends could learn a thing or two from Doctor Strange’s approach to limited animation: Marvel took full advantage of the fluidity of the animation form to allow for the mystical poop to really pop.

Of course they made Wong politically correct, so I guess my desire for an all-Asian cliché-fest crossover with the Blackhawk’s Chop-Chop isn’t going to happen any time soon. And they even teased us with a sequel set-up.

The supplemental documentary is first-rate. Not as first-rate as the extras on the new [[[Popeye]]] box-set, but damn good. Their “[[[Origin of Doctor Strange]]]” delves fully into the comic book roots, showing off a lot of art, giving Stan Lee and (particularly) Steve Ditko their due, and interviewing the hell out of the always-eloquent Steve Englehart, whose own run as Doctor Strange writer (much of it with Frank Brunner as artist) was among the series’ very best.

Overall, a nice effort from supervising director Frank Paur and writer Greg Johnson. I suspect all but the most anal-retentive [[[Strange]]] fans will enjoy the experience.

DENNIS O’NEIL: On The Road Again

  • News
  • August 21, 2007

Jack Kerouac’s novel On The Road is 50 years old.

“And this has exactly what to do with comics?” demands the snotty guy in the corner. Well, actually, not much, but maybe if we stretch, a little something. Patience, please.

If you know people my age, or a bit younger, you may have heard On The Road stories. Mine is pretty banal: I was fairly unhappy at school (I was always fairly unhappy at schools, except when I was actively miserable) and I read and had my mind altered by Kerouac’s book which is, among other things, a paean to travel and the highway. So, one morning, I went down to breakfast, borrowed about forty bucks from my father and, blowing off university exam week, got on a bus for New Orleans.

Once there, I didn’t do much: checked into a Y, hung out, walked around, had a friendly lady on Bourbon Street offer to teach me everything about life for only five dollars. I kind of guessed what she was talking about and, being the Good Catholic Boy that I was, politely declined. Then I boarded another Greyhound and went home. No hitchhiking, not that trip, though there was plenty later. (And, by the way, don’t try this at home. Hitchhiking in the 50s and 60s was not without hazards, but not nearly as dangerous as it is now.)

“Did someone mention comic books? This column, this whole dern website, is supposed to be about comics.” The snotty guy in the corner again. Okay, be at peace, brother, and give me another paragraph or two.

Kerouac was, as I’m sure everyone except the guy in the corner knows, the most famous and visible member of a loose confederation of novelists, poets, and musicians that became known as The Beat Generation. I’ve never heard, or read, any of them even evidencing knowledge that comics existed. But they were contrarians that believed that most conventional wisdom was erroneous, that genuine American values involved peace and understanding and, incidentally, that maybe mainstream literary and critical folk – the Establishment – did not own the last word on artistic matters.

Jump ahead a few years to the mid-60s and here we are, on college campuses, and what are the bright rebels reading? Well, a few – those who still wear ties on Sunday – are still delving into Catcher In The Rye, and a few more are grokking Stranger In A Strange Land, but the real nonconformists, the bright ones, are into comics, particularly Marvel comics.

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DENNIS O’NEIL: Spoiler Alert!

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  • August 14, 2007

Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! Danger Will Robinson! Alarums and excursions! Better watch out, better not cry, better not pout…Beware! Mayday! Here there be dragons! Detour, there’s a muddy road ahead…

Okay, enough of that.

What I’m warning you about is the ending of The Bourne Ultimatum, now playing at a multiplex near you, recipient of good reviews, maker of serious bucks and, in the opinion of residents of this house, a pretty good popcorn flick.

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Marvel’s upcoming slate

  • News
  • August 8, 2007

In presenting its 2Q 2007 report yesterday, Marvel unveiled that it is producing Hulk Smash, a new animated direct-to-DVD movie that will be released by Lionsgate in October 2008.  Concerning its first two self-produced live-action feature films, Marvel has completed production on Iron Man while The Incredible Hulk began production in July, and the two movies are slated for release in 2008 on May 2 and June 13 respectively.  Marvel’s additional movie, TV and stage projects in the works include:

  • Wolverine (Fox) – Gavin Hood to direct and Hugh Jackman stars
  • Punisher 2 (Lionsgate) – Lexi Alexander will direct, starring newcomer Ray Stevenson.

As we noted in yesterday’s Big ComicMix Broadcast, in development at Marvel Studios we have:

  • Ant-Man, writers Edward Wright and Joe Cornish; Wright also directs
  • Captain America, David Self/writer
  • Nick Fury, Andrew Marlow/writer
  • Thor, Mark Protosevich/writer
  • The Avengers, Zak Penn/writer.

In animated TV series development:

  • Spider-Man, with Sony, with a distribution deal in place with Kids’ WB
  • Wolverine and The X-Men (26 episodes) developed by India’s First Serve Toonz
  • Iron Man (26 episodes) developed by Method Films in France.

There are two more animated direct-to-video DVDs with Lionsgate: Doctor Strange comes out next week and Teen Avengers is slated for July 2008.

And finally, the most terrifying project that’s literally in the wings: Spider-Man the Musical, featuring music and lyrics by U2’s Bono and The Edge the show will be directed by Julie Taymor, and produced by Hello Entertainment/David Garfinkle, Martin McCallum, Marvel Entertainment, and SONY Pictures Entertainment.

Whew.

DENNIS O’NEIL: One Upon A Time

  • News
  • August 7, 2007

dennyoneil10017-7473629Once upon a time, way back, I was just a tiny bit afraid that the stepchild of American publishing wherein I labored, comics, would not be properly documented – that the right people weren’t being interviewed, the right information preserved. I needn’t have worried. Thanks largely to an army of scholars-without-portfolios – we called them fans – I think comics are likely to be the best documented art form in history. These people, and more recently the academics that involve themselves with popular culture, must have found sources of information completely unknown to me, and I applaud them for it.

Among my current sprinkling of projects is writing introductions for a collection of essays concerning what I guess we can unblushingly call the Batman mythos. More documentation and, I’d like to believe, welcome. The next intro I’ll do will be for a piece by Paul Lytle on Arkham Asylum. That name – Arkham Asylum – is familiar to Batman devotees and maybe to some folk not quite so devoted because it played a prominent part in the last mega-budget Batman movie. It is, for you who are not devotees and those who weren’t paying attention while you watched Batman Begins, the place where the criminally insane of Batman’s rollicking home town, Gotham City, are sent for incarceration and rehabilitation though, judging from results, the staff of the institution aren’t very good at either task.

But – here comes our big reveal, and I’m mostly addressing devotees, though the rest of you can stay – have you ever wondered where that distinctive name came from? Oh sure, the better read among you will recognize the word “Arkham” from H.P. Lovecraft’s tales – Arkham was the spooky burg where Lovecraft’s things went bump in the night. But who had the inspiration to associate it with the residence of Gotham’s host of loonies? I was pretty sure I knew, but, as you may remember, a couple of columns ago I trusted my memory and erred. So I sent an email. Here, in part, is the reply:

Our original conversation regarding where criminals such as the Joker and Two-Face should be incarcerated took place in March of 1974, when you and Len Wein were guest speakers at Jim Dever’s and my comics history course at the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts). The first mention of Arkham was in your Two-Face story that appeared in Batman #258, which was cover dated September, 1974.

 

 – JCH

 

The JCH that signs the letter stands for Jack C. Harris, a veteran writer, editor, historian and, for the past decade, give or take, a comics writing teacher at the School of Visual Arts in lower Manhattan. Credit where it’s due – where it’s long overdue.

If Jack were here, I’d ask him to take a bow.

RECOMMENDED READING: Awareness, by Anthony de Mello. Those of you who look at this blather every week may have guessed that I’m not a huge fan of organized religion these days, largely because of the misuses to which it’s currently being put, and the book recommended above is by a Jesuit. Well, if the Jebbies who presided over my university years were like de Mello, I might lay some bucks on the alumni fund once in a while.

Dennis O’Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of comic books like Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern and/or Green Arrow, and The Shadow, as well as all kinds of novels, stories and articles.

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