Tagged: Superman

If You’re Not There, You Just Won’t Get It – Conclusion, by Michael Davis

  • News
  • August 29, 2008

This is the last segment in this month long saga. If you are anything like me, you are sick of this. I mean four weeks of me reliving history is a bit much even for a guy who LOVES history. To that point, all I watch on TV is All My Children (the greatest show ever!), news, and The History Channel. I don’t even watch the shows I write or have created. I’m not kidding. I have never watched an episode of any show that I have been involved in.

I love history and I thought when I started writing this it would fill me with a wonderful sense of nostalgia.

Wrong. Now I’m just pissed.

Don’t get me wrong, Milestone is and will always be a BIG part of my life and career and I’m very happy to clear up some misconceptions about Milestone… particularly my involvement. Take a look at the previous installments to read about some of those misconceptions surrounding Milestone, Christopher Priest and DC’s “ownership” to name but a few.

Here’s my BIGGEST problem and the misconception that burns me to this day. There have been many, MANY articles and or books that have featured Milestone. A lot of them have said that I left Milestone quick, fast and in a hurry.

That, like the promise that Bush would be a good president, was a compete and utter lie. There’s more truth in the belief that the world is flat and women in L.A. don’t care about what you drive.

I was there the moment Milestone was created. I did not leave until two and an half YEARS after that. The writer Les Daniels (who’s books I enjoy, by the way) wrote in his book, DC Comics Sixty Years Of The World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes (1995) “A fourth partner, Michael Davis, quickly left to run Motown Animation.” (more…)

Siegel Murder Propels Book Of Lies

  • News
  • August 26, 2008

Today’s USA Today features a story from David Colton detailing the background for Brad Meltzer’s forthcoming novel, The Book of Lies, which was inspired by the death of Jerry Siegel’s father, Mitchell. The article explores how this tragic event may have been the catalyst for Siegel to go on and create Superman. 

The story discusses how the murder was largely kept under wraps until Gerard Jones covered it in his 2004 book Men of Tomorrow. "It had to have an effect," Jones said in the piece. "Superman’s invulnerability to bullets, loss of family, destruction of his homeland – all seem to overlap with Jerry’s personal experience. There’s a connection there: the loss of a dad as a source for Superman."

The actual events involved a robber who either shot the 60-year-old Siegel or the event triggered a fatal heart attack. Meltzer’s novel, on sale next Tuesday, uses the gun shot but in an afterward he explores the issue and admitted to Colton the truth was more likely a heart attack.

"In 50 years of interviews, Jerry Siegel never once mentioned that his father died in a robbery," Meltzer said in the piece. "But think about it," Meltzer says. "Your father dies in a robbery, and you invent a bulletproof man who becomes the world’s greatest hero. I’m sorry, but there’s a story there."
 

ComicMix Six: Batman’s Super-Powers

  • News
  • August 26, 2008

green-lantern-batman-6452727There’s an upcoming story in the Superman/Batman title that will involve our long-eared Dark Knight getting superhuman abilities (albeit, temporarily). Writers Michael Green and Mike Johnson have been doing great work on the title, so this promises to be an entertaining tale.

But did you know that this won’t be the first time Batman has been given super-human talents? Here are just some of the more interesting adventures that have occurred when Bruce Wayne wound up gifted with "power and abilities far beyond those of mortal men."

PLEASE NOTE: I am not including times where Batman used technology to help him out, such as a suit of armor or a rocket pack or New God weapons. Nor am I including times when he got powers for only a few pages, such as when he borrowed Hawkman’s wing-harness and Nth metal belt or the time that Hal Jordan let him try on his Green Lantern power ring for a minute. Those times may have been cool, but they lasted for only a scene rather than a fully story. Likewise, I am not including any Elseworlds tales, so deal with it.

 

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ComicMix Radio: Comic Book Catch Up

Apparently the end of August has been designated as catch up week, at least in the land of comics and DVDs. Over the next few days, you have the opportunity to jump into a number of critically acclaimed series, contained in trade collections or DVD sets . We lay them all out for you, plus:

  • Manga Marvel and Dark Superman
  • Marvels is back at last
  • Just in time for back to school  – a really cool online time waster!

And to find out what we chose as this week’s Best Bets – just  Press the Button!

 

And remember, you can always subscribe to ComicMix Radio podcasts via badgeitunes61x15dark-9086298 or RSS!

 

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Paul Levitz on Comics, DC and the State of the Industry

  • News
  • August 24, 2008

dclogo-00-5982662During San Diego Comic-Con, ICv2 conducted a fairly comprehensive interview with DC president/publisher Paul Levitz to chat about the state of the comics industry and the recent past, present and potential future. The interview was broken down into three parts, and each of them has some worthwhile questions and answers from DC’s head honcho.

From Part One, some frame of reference for the decision-making process when it comes to which characters/titles to put the spotlight on:

Some people think that Watchmen is a risky movie for presenting comics to a broad audience because it’s so dark. What are your thoughts on that?

The great successes are always the things that you can’t prove in advance will work or will not work. You get a Superman because it’s a departure from what was there before. There were ancestors of him in the creative process, but it represented a leap forward. And the same reason that my predecessors were nervous about putting him on the cover of every issue of Action Comics for the first few until they got the sales figures in, were the things that in part created the potential for him to be the breakaway at this time. I don’t think there’s a lot of mid-ground for Watchmen. I think it will either be very successful or it will be a passionate cult favorite. Everything we’re seeing so far indicates to me that we have a good shot at it being a breakaway.

From Part Two, an interesting observation of the economic status of what DC believes to be the typical comics buyer:

Do you predict any differences in how sales in the different channels will respond to the economic conditions?

The comic shop owners are still more vulnerable to the high intensity-high value customer. Luckily a high proportion of our customers are in industries that have been doing relatively well—high technology kinds of things tends to pop up fairly frequently in the descriptions of jobs in our field, so hopefully that’ll be sustaining. The bookstore side of the world, I think, is just vulnerable to all of the challenges that book publishing is having now. Even if the graphic novels are a very bright spot in their world, and they seem to be, book publishing is not having an easy time right now.

From Part Three, some insight regarding DC’s plans for webcomics and their Zuda program:

The screen is a powerful method of delivery for a younger generation and it’s going to be part of our business one way or another, hopefully in a very complementary fashion. I think we start doing print stuff on Zuda in early ‘09 in the current schedule. And that will be an interesting test to see how that translates over.

 

Christopher Reeve Still Soars, by Alan Kistler

  • News
  • August 22, 2008

It’s been a rough week and I needed something to make me feel good about the world.christopher-reeve-american-flag-1179568

This past monday was the last day this year they were doing the Bryant Park movie. For you non-New Yorkers, HBO has sponsored movie screenings every Monday evening for the past 16 years during the summer, projecting films on a large screen at the edge of the Bryant Park. People gather with blankets and picnic baskets for when the lawn opens at 5 PM, and within 10 minutes there is an audience of well over 1000 people, all waiting for sunset when the movie begins.

This last week, it was Superman: The Movie (the director’s cut, specifically) with Christopher Reeve, Marlon Brando, Margot Kidder and Gene Hackman. I needed this and so I got a couple friends together to join me in the park. Some of us, myself included, were born after this film came out in theaters. Lucky for us, though, we still had the opportunity to see Superman: The Movie in something approaching that big-screen environment this week — because I’m quite certain that you haven’t truly experienced this film unless you see it on a massive widescreen surrounded by an enormous crowd. You can literally feel the electricity in the air that surges from a nearby person becoming a new fan.

When the "S"-shield blazed across the screen and the John Williams theme soared from the speakers, over 1000 people roared and cheered and applauded. When Clark Kent donned the costume for the first time, again, the entire park was filled with cheers and screams and shouts of "YEAH, CLARK!" It was like the moment in a sports game when your team makes an incredible play and you feel the joy of everyone around you. We laughed at Hackman’s sarcasm, we sighed at Lois and Clark’s flight over the clouds, and again, cheered our hearts out when Superman saved the day in the end and said "We’re all on the same team." (more…)

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“Mortal Kombat vs. DCU” Adds Wonder Woman and Deathstroke

  • News
  • August 22, 2008

normal-greenlantern-render-00-7075831JK Parkin over at Blog@ reports that Midway Games has released the identities of two more characters in the upcoming Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe videogame: Wonder Woman and Deathstroke the Terminator. A preliminary rendering of Wonder Woman is available on the site, as well as a rendering of Green Lantern (seen here) and a series of screencaps from the game featuring Green Lantern in battle, as well as other DC characters (including Joker, Superman and Catwoman).

The announcement was made at the Leipzig Games Convention, and along with the DC characters, Midway also announced the return of Mortal Kombat characters Raiden and Kano in the new iteration. The game is scheduled for release this fall. 

Movie-Style Trailer for DC Comics’ Trinity

Imagine if comic books had trailers like movies and TV shows to build up buzz and get mainstream audiences excited. Now imagine no more! DC Comics released a movie-style trailer for the new weekly comic Trinity. Starring Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, the series is being written by Kurt Busiek and drawn by Mark Bagley. Check out the video for yourself below.

 

Video: Trinity Animation

ComicMix Columns & Features for the Week Ending August 10, 2008

  • News
  • August 10, 2008

Don’t bother me, I’m watching the ‘lympics.  As if I followed any of these sports at any other time.  We’ve had some good sports here in ComicMix too; here’s a bit of what they’ve done for you this past week:

Now will someone please put some proper shorts on those female volleyball players?

Hey! Where is our ‘Dark Knight’ Video Game?

  • News
  • August 10, 2008

Since the birth of Tim Burton’s movie Batman in 1989, there has been a video game tie-in with every incarnation of the Batman film franchise. So why is it that we haven’t seen one for one of the most popular (and profitable) films for the character, if not for comic book films in general? It’s not as if there wasn’t a plan for a digitized Batman during the film’s production. Game publisher Electronic Arts had the rights to make a game for the Dark Knight film, according to an unnamed developer for the EA-owned Pandemic Studios. Speculation says that the lack of a game caused up to $100 million in missing sales, and would be the first time that the caped crusader didn’t have a game.

 
Speculation ranges from missing deadlines to Heath Ledger’s death, and even to the fear of success due to the poor quality of the last tie-in game with Batman Begins. Sales of movie-based games often parallel their box-office brethren. Last year’s Transformers games sold 2.6 million copies while the Spider-Man III games sold 2.1 million, according to sales data from NPD Group market research analyst Anita Frazier. Even the Iron Man games have sold 697,000 units following their release at the same time as the film in May.
 
If a Dark Knight game is still in the works, Batman could take a cue from Superman. Because of delays, the EA console games based on 2006’s Superman Returns didn’t take flight until the DVD release — and only then sold 705,000 copies. However, a Dark Knight game isn’t on EA’s release slate through March 2009, according an EA press release.
 
This is all not to say that there will be a shortage of Batman and his foes in the world of video games. You can catch them all on your console in September for Warner’s Lego Batman: The Video Game, then in November for Midway’s Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe, and finally later this year for Sony’s DC Universe Online.

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