In the first of a series of reports from Toy Fair 2008 in New York, ComicMix checks out the comics-inspired dolls of the Tonner booth, featuring characters from Spider-Man 3 and a cast of DC superheroes and villains.
[Gallery After the Jump]
If you have a HD-TV and you bought a Blu-Ray DVD player to watch Spider-Man 3, 300 or X-Men The Last Stand in all their high-definition glory, congratulations. You win. It looks like Toshiba is about to throw in the towel on their HD-DVD format.
Left at the alter by such outlets as Netflix, Best Buy and Wal-Mart and supported by an ever-shrinking number of studio releases, Toshiba tried slashing the price of their players and their discs – to no avail. Now Microsoft is talking about making its next X-Box compatible with Blu-Ray, a format also supported by a great many computer companies; Toast and other DVD authoring software also burn to Blu-Ray discs.
Sony had hoped for an immediate win with its Blu-Ray, but its delays in marketing the Playstation 3 game machine and software put them in second position. As movies became available and people could see the difference between the two formats, consumers voted with their credit cards.
So when the Iron Man movie comes out on DVD this fall, you won’t have to toss the dice. You’ll be able to see each and every hair in Tony Stark’s goatee with alarming clarity.
They Say It’s Your Birthday…
As we celebrate the kickoff of Year Two, ComicMix Radio notes our own anniversary by bringing back our very first guest, the shy and retiring ComicMix editor-in-Chief Mike Gold, who is eager to share what’s next for the site in the clicks to come.
Meanwhile, we’ve got the details on how you can WIN copies of Exclusive Graham Crackers Comics variants of some of the hottest titles – FREE.
Plus —
(To be sung) “Happy Birthday to us, Happy Birthday to us, Please Press The Button, Happy Birthday To Us!”Â
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Well, comics fan, it looks like you might have something to buy with that Pottery Barn gift certificate you received at your wedding after all.
Brandweek reports that Marvel Entertainment has partnered with Pottery Barn to begin offering a line of Spider-Man products, including bedding, lighting and various home decor and furniture, starting this spring. The agreement between the upscale chain and superhero product provider is part of a broad strategy on Marvel’s part to tap into the more affluent portions of the consumer market.
Pottery Barn, a relative novice in entertainment licenses, felt Spider-Man was a good fit for its mom-heavy consumer demo.
Jill Larue, senior vice president and general merchandise manager of catalog for Pottery Barn Kids, said it “pairs well with the classic and timeless approach” of its furnishings.
In order to fit in with the stable of Pottery Barn merchandise, the two companies toned down the standard, brightly colored Spider-Man presence on various products and plan to offer "a vintage look with lots of solid colors and less frenetic character images" on the products that will be exclusive to Pottery Barn — primarily children’s furniture and other home furnishings.
(via mmm)
Former Spider-Man Group Editor Danny Fingeroth has a new book out titled Disguised As Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero, in which he examines the "cultural origins of the superhero" with special attention to the way Jewish creators and their experiences influenced the early years of the industry.
Over at CBR, Fingeroth explains how the book came about and provides a few examples of the Jewish influence in comics that forms the basis for the book:
“My favorite involves Marvel’s Mighty Thor, who I’d never seen in a Jewish light before. And why would I, or anyone? He’s a Norse deity! But in his early stories, covering the first several years of the character’s existence, a recurring subplot–that eventually became a main plot–was Thor’s love for his alter ego Dr. Blake’s nurse, Jane Foster. Odin, ruler of the Norse Gods, and Thor’s father, forbade him to marry her because she was a mortal and he was an immortal god.”
Fingeroth noted there are often prohibitions in Jewish and other ethnic communities against marrying outside the group, and that the modern tension of breaking away from this system can be seen in the story of Marvel’s thunder god. “Stan Lee and Jack Kirby could arguably be interpreted as having been using Thor and Jane to work out their own feelings about the taboos around intermarriage they had grown up with,” Fingeroth said. “I’m not saying they did this consciously–just the opposite. But in retrospect, I found it fascinating and worthwhile to discuss that kind of topic in ‘Disguised as Clark Kent.’”
DC Executive Editor Dan DiDio made it official at this weekend’s Retailers Meeting: The publisher’s next weekly series is titled Trinity and will be scripted by current Superman writer Kurt Busiek, with art by longtime Marvel Ultimate Spider-Man artist Mark Bagley.
The weekly series will begin this June and feature a story each week involving the trio of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Busiek will leave Superman with issue #675. According to Busiek, each issue of Trinity will feature 10 pages co-written by Busiek and Fabian Nicieza and 12 pages of a solo story by Busiek.
In an interview with CBR, Busiek commented on Trinity and the rumors that Jim Starlin’s recent Death of the New Gods miniseries cleared the way for DC’s "Big Three" to get the spotlight in Trinity — and that the series is simply leading to another big event.
“No, ‘Death of the New Gods’ is one of the series that is leading into ‘Final Crisis.’ ‘Trinity’ is not ‘Final Crisis’ related. It is a relatively self-contained story that follows its own track. It’s part of the DC Universe, but it’s not one thread in the giant plot structure that is a big event. It is its own story. It has a beginning, a middle and an ending. There will be repercussions, yes. It has new characters that are introduced that I sure hope will spin off into their own mini-series or series or things like that, but it’s not leading to ‘Final Crisis 2: This Time It’s Personal.’
Busiek also tried his hand at sorting out the web of storylines that make up DC’s final-countdown-to-infinite-crisis-on-52-multiple-worlds events and explaining where Trinity will fit into the greater DCU:
’52’ came out of ‘Infinite Crisis’ and itself was a repercussion of a big crossover. ‘Countdown’ is leading into a big crossover. Each time DC does a weekly, they want to do it differently. ‘52’ was about a world without the heroes, ‘Countdown to Final Crisis’ is building up to an event about the heroes and ‘Trinity’ is about the heroes. Front and center.
When ComicMix launched a year ago, we were especially pleased to include the legendary Dennis O’Neil as one of our regular columnists. Denny has written and/or edited every major character in comics, including Batman, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Superman, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Iron Man, the Question, Azrael, and Millie the Model.
Back in the day, when comics had letter columns, Denny would usually share his reading preferences with readers. We’re delighted to have continued this tradition here on ComicMix in Denny’s weekly columns.
To celebrate the last 52 weeks of Denny’s contributions to ComicMix, here’s a list of what he’s recommended so far, in the order he recommended them and with his thoughts on the recommendations (when he provided them). You’ll notice that, sometimes, he suggests the same book more than once. And sometimes, he suggests more than one book at a time. That’s the kind of reader Denny is — he takes his time, and he’s eclectic.
Good reading!
2/13/07
Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud
This is the one essential book for anyone with a genuine interest in the subject.
2/20/97
The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, by Sam Harris
2/27/07
Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames, by Thich Nhat Hanh
As I type this I’m struggling through a pretty bad flu, which I am convinced I contracted on Thursday. That’s when I went for a job interview at the World Financial Center, a hermetically-sealed office and mall complex sandwiched squarely between the Hudson River and the now-cavernous World Trade Center site in downtown Manhattan. I’m unsure whether it was the biting winds or the horrendously long “pedestrian walkway” past the gaping hole of Ground Zero and back to the nearest subway that could get me home now that the Cortlandt Street stations are, it seems, permanently closed, but I haven’t been the same since I shrugged off the interview suit upon my arrival home. The next day Robin met his latest deadline, and we were looking forward to a somewhat active weekend — and then it hit. And it’s still hitting me, and has started hitting him. Funny how, at my age, “lucking out” translates into “thank goodness Robin and I got sick whilst I’m unemployed and he’s between issues!”
But you know, in the back of my head I can’t help but wonder whether I got ill, in part, from breathing in dead people. After all, we all know how the EPA of a government renowned for its repeated lies about everything else also lied to citizens about the air quality in that area. I know it’s over seven years later, but there’s still a ton of construction kicking up dust in that area, and the “walkways” offer scant protection, particularly on a cold and windy day.
Living through 9/11, being in the city the day the towers were attacked, one learns never to take life for granted. This is my 50th It’s All Good column for ComicMix, a milestone number of sorts, and so it seems fitting that I come back around to a subject touched upon in my first column here last February 15, scarcely a month after I’d lost my best friend. In fact, this would have been It’s All Good #51 but for the untimely death of my father. Sometimes the Reaper seems inescapable. Because in the end, of course, it is. And as it touches us all in real life, personally or otherwise (as with Heath Ledger’s recent demise), some of us find much less entertainment and amusement in its fictional counterpart. (more…)
Marvel recently announced plans to reunite Civil War writer Mark Millar and artist Steve McNiven on an upcoming arc of Wolverine that takes the "ol’ Canuknucklehead" years into the future to a post-Apocalyptic Marvel Universe.
In this interview with IGN, Millar discusses the connections between Clint Eastwood, John Constantine, Hulk and Wolverine that influence his upcoming eight-issue storyline.
According to Millar, the arc begins with a Wolverine that has sheathed his claws and sworn off violence, but quickly becomes one of the bloodiest tales he’s ever scripted – quite the claim, given the page-after-page killing spree of Millar’s last turn on Wolverine, the ultra-violent "Enemy of the State" storyline.
I do have a theory on this. It’s that the guys that tend to do the funny animal comics in real life are really, really creepy. –laughs- They’re always really creepy! You feel uneasy around them like they’re undressing you with their eyes or something, you know? Whereas the guys that do the really violent stuff are always quite normal and quite nice. So I think we get it out whereas those guys that sit around drawing Bugs Bunny all day, you just end up a pervert. –laughs-
Millar goes on to hint at some of the current and future-born characters that will be making cameos in the arc, including Hawkeye, Bruce Banner and… Spider-Bitch?
Millar explains:
You see Spider-Man’s granddaughter in it. She’s called Spider-Bitch.
Check out IGN for the rest of the interview, as well as several pages of interior art.
Sure, we heard about this whole Civil War thing that was going on in the Marvel Universe a while back, but as far as we’re concerned, that was small potatoes compared with the epic, universe-spanning shenanigans occurring throughout the Annihilation saga.
Okay, so Civil War left Captain America on a slab and Spider-Man unmasked. We’ll give you that, because they were all big deals at the time, but we challenge you to come up with a bigger event than the Annihilation Wave strapping Galactus to a freakin’ spaceship and using him as a gun, people! Seriously!
… But we digress.
Where were we again? Ah, yes, we were about to direct your attention to this great behind-the-scenes peek at the creation of the Annihilation: Conquest covers. The feature includes plenty of art from both cover artist Aleksi Briclot and Conquest editor Bill Rosemann, the mastermind behind the whole Annihilation event, and it serves as a great "director’s commentary" of sorts for both the storyline and the creative process.
"For the first cover, which I created for the Conquest Prologue, Bill gave me a lot of art suggestions (Joan d’Arc in space, a cinematographic and epic feeling, movies references…)," Briclot recalled. "Over time he also sent me new character concept art (all designed by Marko Djurdjevic), work in progress pages and lots of ideas. Then it was the usual process for each of those covers: sharing ideas and notes via e-mail, making some early quick sketches, a new discussion step, choosing the final content of each covers… Then it was up to me, polishing each picture and trying to produce the most impressive and attractive cover illustrations."
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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