Tagged: review

Viral Marketing and ‘Futurama: Beast With a Billion Backs’

  • News
  • June 25, 2008

The Earth is being invaded!… sort of. While Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs hit DVD shelves this week, the giant titular beast, Yivo, (pictured here) has been making his way across America all this week with "invasions" in various cities.

From ilovebender.com:

CENTURY CITY, CA – The Yivo invasion has arrived! Crash landing in key markets nationwide, Yivo has a tentacle span of 20 feet, and will be in constant tentacle motion! In Boston, Detroit, San Diego, Minneapolis and Chicago, each Yivo inflatable will be accompanied by “Space Babes” who will be distributing out-of-this-world promotional items, including T-shirts, tattoos and signed DVDs.

A “Mega-Invasion” is approaching Philadelphia when a 30-foot-tall Yivo takes over Love Park. In addition to “Space Babes” and giveaways, visitors will have a chance to meet Bender himself and get “Yivo-ized” via green screen!

According to various reports, Yivo’s next big invasion is planned for Wizard World Chicago this weekend. You can find out more about Yivo, shlis or shler lovers, check out shlis or shler (trust me, I’m typing that correctly) on MySpace and Facebook. You can also check out my ComicMix review of Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs.

 

Review: ‘Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War Vol. 2’

sinestro2-7811134This past weekend at Heroes Con, a panel of some of comics’ biggest stars weighed in on collaboration and, eventually, the art of the crossover.

Mostly, that meant griping about the impossible task of tying into a Final Crisis or Secret Invasion. Matt Fraction went so far as to say he opted out of some crossovers because the stress of it would take years off his life. Jimmy Palmiotti essentially acknowledged the failure of DC’s Countdown.

Clearly, it’s not that hard for a big superhero event to careen right off the tracks. Which means we should all pay attention when one works particularly well, as in Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War (Volume 2 is out now in hardcover at $24.99).

The story is simple enough: Sinestro breaks loose and raises the most terrifying army ever seen, including all of DC’s strongest villains except for Darkseid. And the Green Lanterns fight back.

In this second half of the story, we see the classic turning of the tide back in the heroes’ favor, although Geoff Johns and crew add enough wrinkles to make the inevitable victory quite shadowy, if not outright pyrrhic.

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Review: ‘Maps and Legends’ by Michael Chabon

mapslegends2-9137528Maps and Legends
By Michael Chabon
McSweeney’s Books, May 2008, $24.00
 
Michael Chabon has had the good luck to be writing in an era when it’s possible to both be a respected, bestselling literary writer and have a public, abiding love for some of the more disreputable genres. His best-known novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay, is not only a fictionalized story of the fledgling comic-book industry during World War II, but also has a very definite fantasy element. And his latest novel, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, is a detective story set in an alternate history – tying it into two types of genre fiction.

If he’d started writing twenty years earlier, or even ten, he probably wouldn’t have been able to do that; only in the last decade or so have writers like Chabon (and Jonathan Lethem, who transitioned from genre science fiction straight into the “literary novel”) been able to admit to their love of genre. Previously, literary writers could go slumming and use genre ideas once in a while – think Doris Lessing with the “Canopus in Argo” series, or The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood – but they could never admit to reading or liking books actually published in that genre. Kurt Vonnegut, after all, was only taken seriously because he ritually denied being a SF writer every day before breakfast.

But Chabon goes even further than his pop-culture-loving compatriots do; he doesn’t just admit to liking science fiction and detective stories – he’s even willing to claim that comics can be pretty damn good, and that some of them have influence him.

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Doctor Who in Review: Season Four, Episode #8 – Silence in the Library

The hit BBC series Doctor Who is now in its fourth season on the Sci-Fi Channel, and since we’re all big fans here at ComicMix, we’ve decided to kick off an episode-by-episode analysis of the reinvigorated science-fiction classic.

Every week, I’ll do my best to go through the most recent episode with a fine-tooth comb (or whatever the "sonic screwdriver" equivalent might be) and call out the highlights, low points, continuity checks and storyline hints I can find to keep in mind for future episodes. I’ll post the review each Monday, so you have ample time to check out the episode once it airs each Friday at 9 PM EST on Sci-Fi Channel before I spoil anything.

Missed a week? Check out the "Doctor Who in Review" archive or check out any of the past editions of this column via the links at the end of this article.

Keep in mind, I’m going to assume readers have already watched the episode when I put fingers to keyboard and come up with the roundup of important plot points. In other words, SPOILER ALERT!

Let’s begin now, shall we?

Season Four, Episode #8: "Silence in the Library" (more…)

Review: ‘MuZz, Vol. 1’ by FSc

MuZz, Vol. 1
By FSc (Foo Swee Chin)
SLG Publishing, May 2008, $14.95

There’s a train that runs to MuZz – or, at least, it’s supposed to – carrying ideas and thoughts whose creators have lost interest in them. They’re all pretty odd and motley, as you might expect: a black whale, a phantom cat, and things I couldn’t even begin to describe.

But, on this particular train, there’s also a figure that looks like a teenage girl missing an eye. She’s Modorelin Farllee, she’s an actual human, and she’s not even dead. (Well, I don’t think she’s dead, but I don’t want to be too definite about any plot points concerning [[[MuZz]]].)

Farllee remembers nothing of her past, and wakes up on the train in such a frantic, grouchy mood that she shakes her elf guide to death and has to rely on the standard pamphlet and the advice of her fellow passengers to figure out what’s going on.

And so she quickly learns what I’ve just told you – she doesn’t believe that she’s actually a figment of someone else’s imagination, but she can’t prove that, and drops the subject. None of them are precisely sure what will happen to them in MuZz, but, for nearly all of them, it has to be better than their previous lives.

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ComicMix Columns/Features for the Week Ending June 22, 2008

  • News
  • June 22, 2008

You know the recent dire rumors floating about in the comics industry are heating up when they’ve made it to Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily blog, alongside a huge photo of Dan DiDio.  DHD was an indispensable resource during the recent writers’ strike; let’s see how Finke helps raise the profile of the funnybook business, for better or worse.  Meanwhile, our columnists and feature writers will keep bringing you what we do best!  Here’s what we have for you from this past week:

Stay tuned for more news and views!

Review: Futurama – The Beast with a Billion Backs

futurama_billionbacks1-1455062

Coming up behind their first direct-to-DVD film, “[[[Bender’s Big Score]]],” Futurama’s next title certainly fills the void that series junkies need but can’t get from running their season DVDs bare. And while “[[[Beast with a Billion Backs]]]” is certainly not as deep or emotional as “Bender’s Big Score,” there is definitely enough to keep you entertained for 90 minutes.

The premise of the “movie” (which is technically four interwoven episodes) begins up with a tear in the sky, seemingly to another universe. When panic ensues and the world’s two smartest minds battle it out to figure out who gets to explore it first, our hapless hero, Fry, jumps in the hole and stumbles across something Earth-shattering. There are several other subplots that all come together in the end a la [[[Seinfeld]]], but the main focal point is this interdimensional “beast.”

Each of these films seems to have a central theme, and if the theme of “Big Score” was time travel and friendship, the theme here must be love and jealousy. Even stated by Bender in the film: “You can’t have complete love without complete jealousy,” which may be poetic, but is still hilarious. The structure follows that of a cheesy romantic comedy, while still mocking itself by having the “romance” occur between the titular beast and every being in existence. (It’s your typical “beast meets everybody, they fall in love, everybody feels betrayed, they break up, then try to fix the relationship” story… but with robot pirates.)

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Manga Friday: Three Books from CMX

  • News
  • June 20, 2008

variante-6445598Just last week, a secret package of photocopied pages, marked "CONFIDENTIAL — DO NOT REPRODUCE" landed on my desk. Included were three books from DC’s newish manga imprint, CMX, from across the range of their titles. And so, through great personal travail — and with the assistance of someone at DC who must remain nameless, since there was no cover letter — here are the first ComicMix reviews of CMX books…

(Exciting, isn’t it?)

These are all forthcoming books, hitting stores starting in late September. So you can think of this review as a teaser, if you want.

Variante, Vol. 1

by Igura Sugimoto

DC Comics/CMX, October 2008, $12.99

This is the fourth and final volume of this Mature-readers series, so I’m going to be doing a bit of guessing about the beginnings that led to this ending. There’s a young woman named Aiko who’s being held prisoner by the requisite nasty corporation, Atheos. The head of Atheos is completely insane, and wants to turn Aiko into a goddess who will destroy the entire human race and create a new world just for him.

This is a not-impossible dream, since Aiko is a "second-generation chimera," a human with some sort of ill-defined powers — she seems to spead out her own flesh into shields and weapons, or maybe that’s supposed to be energy — who is also the daughter of people who also secretly had those powers. Also, Atheos has been involved, somehow, in turning people into chimera, which is nasty and unpleasant, even leaving aside the fact that chimera tend to go crazy and kill lots of people.

There are other bad guys — as usual, there are factions and intrigue within Atheos, and someone on the good guy’s side turns out to have worked for them long ago, before he turned good.

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Review: This Week in ‘Trinity’ – Part 3

trinity3-6010381It’s time we talked about Kurt Busiek.

He’s the brain behind this weekly operation and, in case you’re new to comics, he’s one hell of a writer. And there’s one particular quality that sets him apart.

His comics matter.

I don’t mean this in the sense that he does event comics (although Trinity certainly qualifies as such). What distinguishes a Kurt Busiek comic book has always been that he immediately instills the material with a sense of importance.

His big projects, like Marvels and Astro City, are perfect examples, but even in his post-Infinite Crisis take on Aquaman Busiek quickly remade that book into one that had to be read, and had to be taken seriously.

I say all this because, for a few reasons, I don’t get that sense from Trinity. So far, DC’s latest weekly series does not feel important. So far, it doesn’t matter. 

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Exploring Creators’ Rights With ‘The Incredible Hulk’

  • News
  • June 18, 2008

As a footnote of sorts to his recent review of The Incredible Hulk, Tom Spurgeon of The Comics Reporter made an interesting observation about a potential subtext in the Paramount/Marvel Studios blockbuster.

According to Spurgeon, one particular element in the relationship between the characters of Dr. Bruce Banner and Gen. "Thunderbolt" Ross might be worth a little more exploration — but don’t expect the House of Ideas to lead the discussion:

* in case you were wondering, Incredible Hulk continues Marvel’s weird Summer 2008 conversational subtext on creators’ rights issues, as General Thunderbolt Ross demands ownership of Bruce Banner’s body of work and licensing rights, and turns the Super-Soldier formula over to another work-for-hire creator. I can hardly wait for Thor’s exegesis on trademarks and public domain.

Good eye (or ear, in this case), Tom!

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