Tagged: Spider-Man

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ComicMix Six: Celebrity Team-Ups

[EDITOR’S NOTE: In previous editions of ComicMix Six, our contributors have given you their lists of comics’ top political campaigns, the best and worst movies based on comics, and even a few reasons why a Skrull invasion isn’t anything to worry about.

This week, we have a special guest contributor, Vinnie Bartilucci, whose name can often be seen in the comment sections here on ComicMix. We thought he had a great idea for this week’s list, so without further introduction… Take it away, Vinnie! -RM]

Comics work fine all by themselves, in their own little universe. But at some point, just like on television, someone always says, “Hey, let’s bring in a guest star!” 

Maybe it’s because the star in question is a comics fan, or they thought it’d bring the book some publicity if the star help it up on The Tonight Show, or any of the other inspirations that come after a late night of pacing the floor with a stomach full of pastrami. But the real world and the world of comics clashed a lot of times over the years.

sman62-tm-4127706Sure, comics creators would often put themselves in the books – Julie Schwartz made more than a few appearances in the DC titles after the discovery of Earth-Prime, and Stan Lee almost deserves his own ComicMix Six for all the times he appeared in the books. Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis even had their own titles for many years. But it’s the one-shot, “Hey, did that just happen?” crossovers I’m honoring in this article today.

So here they are, in no fixed heirarchy, my ComicMix Six list of the The Best Celebrity Team-Ups in Comics:

 

SUPERMAN AND ORSON WELLES: One of the earliest examples I’m aware of, the creator of Citizen Kane and later spokesman for the Paul Masson Wineries Orson Welles appeared in Superman #62. While working on his latest film, Black Magic, Welles accidentally stumbles across the launch site for an unmanned rocket to Mars, and while exploring the ship, it varooms off to the red planet, not as unmanned as previously presumed.

On Mars, he is confronted by the Martian’s tyrannical leader, “Martler.” Martler had taken that name because of his admiration of the Earth Dictator, and patterned his armies after the Nazi example. Apparently he didn’t get the last few news items… Welles naturally refuses his offer to become propaganda minister of Earth, and forces them to show him how to broadcast to Earth. He beams an impassioned plea home with news of the coming invasion, but you guessed it, thanks to his little prank a few years earlier, people don’t believe him this time. Well, nobody but Superman.

Superman arrives in the traditional nick of time and helps stop the “Solazi” invasion fleet, while Welles keeps the soldiers on the ground spooked with a few cheesy magic tricks, a skill that would serve him well later in life on Merv Griffin. He eventually knocks out Martler, and using him like a puppet, fakes a broadcast (irony!) to the people of Mars telling them to stand down. Martler is banished to an unpopulated asteroid, where we must assume he remains to this day.

 

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Interview: Chris Hastings on ‘The Adventures of Dr. McNinja’

mcninja-200-1913785Chris Hastings’ ongoing webcomic The Adventures of Dr. McNinja is one of my favorite pay-it-forward comics. It was recommended to me a little more than two years ago, and I’ve been recommending it to anyone with even a passing interest in webcomics ever since.

While the series remains a consistent source of great storytelling and endlessly amusing, over-the-top action cliches presented in proud, black-and-white glory, I think it’s the tagline that really sells it. Go ahead and Google "Dr. McNinja," and you’ll see what I mean.

According to the InterWebs gods:

Dr. McNinja is a doctor who is also a ninja.

And there you have it.

Sure, I could tell you about the series’ excellent, ongoing and continuity-laden stories featuring a man torn between his medical oath to heal and his ninja oath to kill, as well as the raptors, ghost wizards, pirates, giant lumberjacks and flying sharks he finds himself battling time and time again, but when everything is said and done, that tagline really sums it up best.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Hastings is a witty, approachable creator who continues to seem pleasantly surprised by his status as one of the ‘Net’s most prominent webcomic creators. I recently had the opportunity to send some questions to Hastings about Dr. McNinja, the perils of giving characters a backstory and who he would cast in the big-screen version of Dr. McNinja. (*nudge* Take a hint, movie people, and get on this one!)

COMICMIX: While a lot of webcomics rely on the one-shot model with little continuity between episodes, The Adventures of Dr. McNinja thrives as an ongoing series with a massive, ever-expanding cast of characters. Why do you feel this is the right model for the stories you want to tell?

CHRIS HASTINGS: I think the Internet is the right model for me, because there are a lot more people with computers in their homes than there are people who go to comic shops and conventions looking for indie comics. I also had to spend way less money to put the comic online than to print it myself (which I did do eventually, but only after having a demand for it).

I recognize that long stories and continuity aren’t necessarily a massive trend in comics online, since typically someone’s attention span is reduced to about 12 seconds once they open their browser. But it was already my style to have something funny or exciting or generally satisfying in each individual page or update. And after someone reads a few pages and likes them, hopefully they’re hooked, and they’ve got some investment in the story and characters.

CMix: Do you ever worry about getting bogged down in the continuity you’ve created?

CH: I do occasionally. Like this recent story has been going on for a little over a year now, broken up into chapters, and I’ll be quite happy to go back to doing shorter stories like the first few were. But years down the road if the continuity gets to be an actual burden, like it is for Spider-Man, the X-Men, and others, I have the freedom to deal with it however I like.

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Joe Quesada on ‘When I Grow Up’

Any kid worth his Harry Potter books knows who Scholastic is; the multimedia publisher that educates and entertains school children.

As part of their When I Grow Up series of web articles, the publisher recruits adults to tell kids what their jobs are like. The latest grown-up to provide career advice is Joe Quesada, Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics.

Here are some of the highlights:

I  play with Spider-Man for a living!

When I was a kid, I wanted to be: A baseball player for the New York Mets.

My father bought me my first comic in 1968 because he had seen in the news that Stan Lee and Marvel were introducing a new comic book that preached against the evils of drug abuse, and he thought it would be a great way to get the message across.

It’s a cute article, aAnd let’s face it, we all want to grow up to be the guy who runs a comic book company, right?

Random Video: Iron Man, Hulk and Spider-Man vs. Giant Robots

While I realize I’m a bit late happening upon this video, I can’t help posting it here anyways — just in case I’m not the only person who missed it. To be honest, I’m not entirely certain what this "Iron Man’s Adventure" video is intended to promote. It looks like a cinematic from a videogame, but with a cast of Spider-Man, Iron Man and Hulk, I can’t help but assume it’s tied to some sort of film promotion. Feel free to post a comment if you have any additional information about it.

Nevertheless, it features the three characters I mentioned, as well as some big honkin’ robots and some really superb CG animation. The dialogue is a bit "meh" (Spider-Man is spot-on, but Iron Man and Hulk don’t sound quite right, in my humble opinion) but the action is worth the price of, well… just check it out.

You can also watch a larger, high-res version at Marvel.com. 

 


 

 

 

Are Comic Books Hurting Movies?

ironman-9688286In about 355 BC, Aristotle laid down the ground rules of theater in Poetics, with the notable rule that “opsis,” or spectacle, is the least important element, and should never come before plot, character or theme. Nowadays, the summer movie season is all about spectacle. The bigger the better, with Iron Man and Indiana Jones and the Kingodm of the Crystal Skull just the latest to bring excitement to the silver screen.

But not everyone’s pleased. Writing on the Huffington Post, Jack Donaldson says the rising influence of comics movies has been negative because of the explosion of computer animation in all types of films.

By their very nature these films rely on effects a lot, making them commonplace and just not that impressive. When you watch a computer generated Iron Man climb to the reaches of Outer Space, it’s not nearly as impressive as trying to figure out where Chris Cooper’s teeth went, or Gary Sinise’s legs. It’s not that I have a thing for missing limbs … I have a thing for special effects that make the real world seem a little more spectacular. What does a 100-foot wall of sand, with a face and fists, that is set on destruction in Spider Man 3, really do for anyone? It seems that more and more movies are made like last year’s Transformer’s, which showcased almost no action scenes that featured real actors, and I’m not impressed.

While I certainly understand the sentiment, I’d say it’s misplaced anger, as the use of CGI was already spread far and wide before comics movies gained traction. Really, it was the evolution of CGI that allowed for believable superhero movies.

And if you look at the best comic book movies, they excel because of quality stories (see Iron Man and the first two Spider-Man films), and the computer animation simply adds a little spectacle, just as Aristotle intended.

ComicMix Six: The Best Movies Adapted From Comic Books

In a previous edition of ComicMix Six, I set forth my picks for The Worst Movies Adapted from Comic Books. Now, because a "worst" list is nothing without a "best" list, I’ve assembled another one for you. This time around, I’m casting the spotlight on the opposite of bad movies and highlighting The Best Movies Adapted from Comic Books.

In contrast to the worst films, these stellar examples of cinematic goodness are not only great comic book adaptations, they’re great movies, too. From brilliant direction, exciting visuals that enhance rather than obscure the story, to compelling peformances, these six films deliver in a big way.

They alse showcase adherence to, and reverence for, their source material and represent what happens when talented people who appreciate comics get together to make a movie. Plus, they’re just plain fun to watch.

So now, without further ado and in no particular order, here is my ComicMix Six list of The Best Movies Adapted from Comic Books.

 

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Piling It On, by Mike Gold

With great power comes… bloggers.

One of the first lessons I learned writing an Internet column – both here and on my soon-to-be-revived political rant Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind – is also the first lesson I learned when I started on radio shortly after Marconi found the electricity outlet: if you say it, some people will buy it. Either way, if it’s big enough people will debate it.

Joey Goebbels had some success with this concept… for a while.

We here at ComicMix strive for responsibility, and in that spirit I’ve had a great many column ideas that I rejected simply because they weren’t true. Oh, sure, I thought about selling them to Michael Davis, but then it dawned on me I can squeeze this column out of my spiked copy. Ergo, without further ado, here’s a bunch of columns I won’t get around to writing.

•     •     •     •     •

Oh, sure, Marvel rebooted Spidey to much loathing, but the reboot sells and if there’s one concept in comics that is engraved in stone it’s this: “Fool ‘em once, make big money. Fool ‘em twice and they’ll double-bag it.” In this spirit, Marvel has announced two exciting new projects. (more…)

When Superheroes Get Old

Geriatric superheroes appear to be all the rage these days, as a number of sites are linking to Italian artist Donald Soffritti’s illustrations of Superman, Spider-Man and a variety of other super-types in their Golden Years. Soffritti’s work is great, and I can’t help but giggle every time I look at his take on DC speedster The Flash.

(And please, for everyone’s sake, don’t tell DC/Warner Bros. about this stuff.)

(via ComicNerd.com)

 

Along the same lines, BoingBoing points us to a similar piece that fast-forwards the age of popular cartoon characters, including Popeye, Felix the Cat and Dennis the Menace (my personal favorite).

 

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Happy Birthday: Marv Wolfman

homeland-1397145Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1946, Marvin A. “Marv” Wolfman got his start in comic book fandom before joining DC in 1968. In 1972, he moved to Marvel Comics under editor Roy Thomas.

After Thomas left, Wolfman’s friend Len Wein became editor-in-chief, but  a year later he passed the position on to Wolfman. Wolfman missed writing, however, and chose to step down as editor-in-chief a few years later so he could return to creating the comics himself.

While at Marvel, Wolfman wrote for Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and Doctor Strange, but he is possibly best known for his work on Tomb of Dracula, including the creation of the vampire-hunter Blade.

In 1980, Wolfman returned to DC and created The New Teen Titans. He worked on Superman and Night Force, revived Dial H for Hero, and then launched the pivotal Crisis on Infinite Earths.

During the ’90s, Wolfman focused more on animation and television, and in the 2000s he has written a novel based on Crisis on Infinite Earths, the novelization of Superman Returns, and an animated movie, Condor, for Stan Lee’s Pow Entertainment. Wolfman recently took over the writing for DC’s Nightwing series.

In 2007, he wrote a nonfiction book, Homeland: The Illustrated History of the State of Israel, which won the National Jewish Book Award and the Moonbeam Children’s Book Award, among other honors.

ComicMix Radio: Living The Dream – Writing TV and Comics

He’s Marc Guggenheim, and if you didn’t know him from Brothers & Sisters, CSI:Miami or even the “Death Of Bart Allen” storyline in Flash, you may have encountered his current run on Amazing Spider-Man, his new Young X-Men series or even a little show called Eli Stone. So how does he work it all out? Marc is happy to fill us in, plus:

— The Scarecrow moves to Heroes

— Secret Invasion tie-ins dry up on the shelves

— Get ready for The Marvel Super Hero Squad and the “Wacky Adventures of Wolvie”

And there are at least three songs we play that you will not get out of your head until Monday morning, guaranteed – so just  Press the Button!

 

 

And remember, you can always subscribe to ComicMix Radio podcasts via badgeitunes61x15dark-9271046 or RSS!

 

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