Tagged: Superman

MICHAEL DAVIS: Bad Boys For Life

michael-davis100-8878627I was talking to Kevin McCarthy a day or so ago about writing another book for me at The Guardian Line. He’s doing a fantastic job on The Seekers and has done great work for most of the major publishers in comics for a while now. If you don’t know Kevin’s work, you should. He is without a doubt one of the most talented and original people working in comics today. He is a GREAT writer and just as talented as an artist. In fact I would say that Kevin is on the leading crest of creators today.

While talking to him I realized that one of the things I don’t do enough of is talk to creators about the process. I miss the days when I could just sit down and make up a universe or develop a story line. I spend more time dealing with the “deals” in comics and television than I do actually working on the “idea.”

That sucks.

The single greatest thing about working in any creative field is the creative process itself. To sit in a room and just make things up is so unbelievable cool that words fail to describe the feeling when things are just right. Talking to Kevin made me wish for the days when I could just sit down and write a story. This got me thinking about just how long I have known Kevin and how we met. We met because someone introduced me to him and he became part of my life and I his as a mentor.

Late last week I sat down with Marv Wolfman and Len Wein to talk about a business deal. Sitting with us was a young lady who was taking notes. I am a mentor to this person. She asked some really great questions and had some real cool insights. Marv, Len and I were happy to have her there but she was ecstatic about sitting with legends…and with me. Truth be told, at that time during that meeting we were all her mentors and she appreciated our knowledge and was humbled in our presence. OK, she was humbled in Marv and Len’s presence and I just happened to be there…it was my house.

This young lady will soon turn the world of comics and illustration on its ear with her original take on the medium. Like Kevin McCarthy she is a fresh face with fresh ideas that our industry needs. It’s amazing to think that Marv and Len have created some of the biggest icons on the planet between them and they still take the time to share that knowledge with younger people.

Over the years I have seen these guys take the time to talk to many young people about the industry. I have watched time and time again how their information lit up the faces of those they were talking to. I’ve been around a bit but there are some people I still consider mentors: Paul Levitz, Mike Richardson, Mike Gold and Jim Shooter to name a few.

Each of those guys has taken me aside on more than one occasion and shared their valuable insight with me. I remember one Comic Con years ago I was standing with Paul Levitz in a hotel bar when a young colorist confronted me. He told me that I was an idiot for letting a writer go on a project and that I was using his (the colorist) name to promote myself. He said some other things that were just as bad. I was about to respond like he was a Crip and I was a Blood when Paul placed his hand on my shoulder and quietly shook his head “no.” When the colorist walked away (like the little bitch he was, yes I’m still pissed) Paul said to me, “It comes with the job, Michael. The bigger you are the bigger the target on your back becomes.” He was so right.

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Superman: Doomsday Contents Announced

image-proc-6699688Superman: Doomsday, the first of Warner Home Video’s new series of original animated movies to be released on DVD, will be abailable on September 18.

Rated PG-13, the D2DVD carries a cast different from Superman: The Animated Series. Adam Baldwin voices Superman, Anne Heche is Lois Lane and James Marsters plays Lex Luthor. Equally important to comics and animation fans, long-time animation producer, sometime comics artist and full-time Jack Kirby fan Bruce Timm is the producer.

Based upon DC’s "The Death of Superman" (which WHV claims to be the best selling graphic novel of all time; the trade paperback omnibus edition will be released tomorrow), Superman: Doomsday contains many extras, including  the documentary "The Clash of the Juggernauts," the usual interviews with the  animation staff, a preview of the upcoming WHV D2DVD Justice League: The New Frontier.

Superman: Doomsday is listed for sale in this month’s Diamond Previews and will be available (at least for advance order) from your friendly neighborhood comics shop. It retails for $19.98. WHV has (you guessed it) a website with a preview clip.

MICHAEL H. PRICE: The Long Shadow of Boody Rogers

305_4_01-6254468People and events of consequence cast their shadows before them, never behind. Oklahoma-born and Texas-reared Gordon “Boody” Rogers (1904 – 1996) owns one of those forward-lurching shadows – an unlikely mass-market cartoonist whose oddball creations anticipated the rise of underground comics, or comix, and whose command of dream-state narrative logic and language-mangling dialogue remains unnerving and uproarious in about equal measure.

I had discovered the artist’s more unsettling work as a schoolboy during the 1960s, via the used-funnybook bin of a neighborhood shop called The Magazine Exchange. One such title, Babe, amounted to such an exaggerated lampoon of Al Capp’s most celebrated comic strip, Li’l Abner, as to transcend parody. (One lengthy sequence subjects a voluptuous rustic named Babe Boone to a gender-switch ordeal that finds her spending much of the adventure as Abe Boone – almost as though Capp’s Daisy Mae Scragg had become Abner Yokum.) Such finds drew me back gradually to Rogers’ comic-strip and funnybook serial Sparky Watts, a partly spoofing, partly straight-ahead, heroic feature about a high-voltage superman.

Rogers resurfaced in my consciousness quite a few years later. A college-administration colleague showed up one day around 1980 sporting a canvasback jacket adorned with cartoons bearing an array of famous signatures – Al Capp and Zack Mosely and Milton Caniff among them. The garment proved to be one-of-a-kind.

“Oh, it’s my Uncle Gordon’s,” my co-worker explained. “Kind of a family heirloom, I guess – something his cartoonist pals fixed up for him on the occasion of his retirement. He lends it out to me, now and then.”

Okay, then. And who is this “Uncle Gordon,” to have been keeping company amongst the comic-strip elite?

“Oh, you’ve probably never heard of him,” she said. “He was a cartoonist, his ownself. Went by the name of ‘Boody.’”

Not Boody Rogers?(Yes, and how many guys named Boody can there be, anyhow?)

“None other. So maybe you have heard of him?”

Well, sure. Used to collect his work, to the extent that it could be had for collecting in those days of catch-as-can trolling for out-of-print comic books and newspaper-archive strips.

So, uhm, then, he’s a local guy?

“Well, not exactly right here in town,” answered my colleague. “But he lives not far from here” – here being Amarillo, Texas, in the northwestern corner of the state – “over to the east. Do you ever get over to Childress? You ought to drop over and meet him.” (more…)

Verheiden + Teen Titans = Big Time Movie

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Writer/producer Mark Verheiden (Smallville, Battlestar Galactica,Timecop, The Mask, My Name Is Bruce) who’s also been known to write more than a few major comic books (Superman/Batman, Aliens, The Phantom, The American), will be handling the script for the new Teen Titans motion picture.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the movie is being produced by Akiva Goldsman and Kerry Foster, who are also handling the upcoming movie adaptations of The Doom Patrol and The Losers. All these films will be released by Warner Bros, parent company to DC Comics, which publishes all this stuff. Warners also has The Dark Knight and Watchmen coming up, along with a Justice League film and a sequel to Superman Returns.

It has yet to be determined exactly which members of the Teen Titans will be in the movie, other than everybody’s favorite ex-Robin, Nightwing.

Gee, you’d think these superhero movies are making money or something.

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DENNIS O’NEIL: Two-Fers, part one

dennyoneil10020-7843397Mr. Robert Joy, of DC Comics, informs me that Green Arrow and Black Canary are getting married this summer. Allow me to assume a Victorian mien and sniff, “About time.”

How long have they been “going together” anyway? I guess that depends on whether we’re talking about the first Black Canary, Dinah Lance, or her daughter, Dinah Laurel. I confess: I’m no longer sure who was involved with whom, or when, which may mean that senility is knocking at my door, or that the continuity has become a tad confusing.

Well, I am sure of one bit of Black Canariana, and that’s that the hot mama, Dinah Lance, the original Canary, was an alien – even more alien than Superman or the Martian Manhunter. At least The Man of Steel and the green detective from the red planet were of this universe. Not so, Dinah: In one of Julius Schwartz’s annual teamings of the forties superheroes, whose club was called the Justice Society, and the new superheroes, whose club was The Justice League, we saw Dinah’s husband, Larry Lance, die. So grief-stricken was the Canary that she followed the Leaguers into another dimension to insure that she would be free of anything that could remind her of her late spouse. I mean, think about it: another dimension! That makes Superman’s migration from (I guess) another galaxy seem pretty paltry. And the Manhunter’s trip from Mars? Another planet, not only in the same solar system, but one of Earth’s nearest neighbors? Pah! Hardly worth mentioning.

Those annual teamings of the superdoers of different eras is what’s really interesting (and, incidentally, the point of this blather, if it has one.) The reason is this: the stories ran over two issues. If you were born before, oh, say, 1966, you might be asking, so what? Because if you’re that young, you don’t remember a time when continued stories were rare. But until Stan Lee made them standard procedure at Marvel in the 1960s, they were next to unheard-of. The reason, someone back then told me, was that publishers couldn’t be sure that just because a certain newsstand had this month’s issue of Detective Comics, there was no assurance that it would carry next month’s. Comic book distribution was a hit-or-miss affair in which those involved paid attention to the number of comics entrusted to a given retailer, but none at all to individual titles. Funny animals, superheroes, wacky teenagers – made no difference. It was all just product.

How, then, was Mr. Schwartz able to perpetrate his annual continued stories? I once asked him this and his answer was that he just did it, and no one ever complained. Stan’s answer would be different. I remember that he said somewhere – in his autobiography? – that doing continued stories saved him the trouble of having to think of so many plots – and there, my friends, speaks a true professional!

I don’t think we’ve exhausted this subject so – you guessed it! – you can consider what you’ve just read as Part One, to be continued…

RECOMMENDED READING: God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hitchens.

Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern and/or Green Arrow, and The Shadow, as well as all kinds of novels, stories and articles.

Dennis O’Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of comic books like

Superman takes Bollywood

Today’s YouTube find comes courtesy of BoingBoing, so you’ve probably already seen it, but what the heck. Presenting Govinda as Superman and Kimi Katkar as Spider-Woman:

Govinda’s shoulders may not be all that broad, but he really knows how to work that cape. I wish they still made American musicals like this…

JOHN OSTRANDER: That’s A (TV) Wrap Part 1

ostrander100-7854594It’s May which means, out in TV-land, it’s the final sweeps period of the season. Yeah, a few of the final shows have yet to air but I might as well look back on what I liked/disliked over the past season. This may not be what you watched, liked or disliked but, hey, it’s my column.

Battlestar Galactica. I finally succumbed and started looking in on the series. I’d been afraid that it would be too dense at this point, that there was too much backstory, to be accessible to late viewers like myself but I found I was able to pick things up as I went. Yes, it would be better if I knew more of the backstory and I plan on picking up the DVDs but I’ve gotten into the series. I’m not certain why finding Earth is such a good idea for these people or why so much of their culture seems to be very post-1940’s American culture but I’m willing to hang in and find out. Yes, I liked it overall.

Boston Legal. A tip of the hat to ComicMix head inmate Mike Gold for getting me to watch this series. Mary and I started watching late last season and it’s become one of our favorites. I was resistant because I’m not really a big David E. Kelley fan but this show causes me to laugh out loud. It makes brilliant use of some old pros – James Spader, Rene Aubenjois, Candace Bergen, and the simply amazing William Shatner – as it talks about current issues, goes consistently over the top, touches the heart and simply entertains me more than almost any other show in a given week.

Deadwood. Big fan of this show and I can’t tell you how pissed off I am that HBO didn’t let it continue. Yeah, they talked about two movies to finish it up but a) that’s not the same and b) I haven’t heard that those are actually going forward. Creator David Milch had said that the concept was the advance of civilization as seen through the focus of the town of Deadwood, South Dakota, originally a boom camp for the gold found in the hills nearby. Real historical figures intermingled with totally fictional creations much the same way real history was mingled with a lot of inventive writing (and serious profanity). It’s not a technique unknown to me; I did the much the same thing when I wrote my historical graphic novel The Kents. The show boasted some fine performances topped by Ian McShane’s incendiary Al Swearingen.

All that said, I have to confess that Season 3 turned out to be a disappointment to me. The through line was the gradual take-over of the town by George Hearst (given a dynamite performance by Gerald McRaney). Hearst was an actual historical figure, the farther of William Randolph Hearst who, in turn, was a model for Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, and that was both the attraction and the problem. The actual Hearst himself never visited Deadwood, so far as my researches showed, although he did wind up owning several big mines there.

The problem in Season 3, for me, was that it was headed for an almost apocalyptic showdown between Hearst and his men versus the citizens of the town who, although usually at violent odds with one another, were brought together by a common threat. The season built in tension to what should have been a staggering climax and then – Hearst simply decides to leave town. Go on to his next location. The tension dribbles away.

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DENNIS O’NEIL: The kryptonite reality

Once again, life has imitated comics. Maybe comics should sue.

This latest instance was reported in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago and has to do with kryptonite, the stuff from Superman’s planet or origin which can lay the Man of Steel low, or even all the way down. As far as I know, kryptonite was introduced in the early 40s by the writers of the Superman radio show. Since I was only a year or two or three old at the time, I’ll forgive them for not getting in touch with me and telling me why, exactly, they introduced it. But a guess might be: to facilitate conflict, which is widely considered to be a necessary ingredient in drama, and especially melodrama.

These guys – I assume they were guys – and their comic book counterparts were facing a fairly unique problem: how to get their hero in trouble and thus create conflict/drama, and do it not only once, but several times each month, or even more often.

Oh, sure, there had been superhuman characters in world literature and myth before Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, but they were in self-contained stories, and not many of those, and the problem was pretty limited. But with Superman… well, here was a fellow who was faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound – and that was when he was in his infancy. (For the record: Superman is only a year older than me. That is, he appeared only about a year before I did, though I gestated for the customary nine months and Supes took a leisurely four years to progress from the imaginations of Joe and Jerry to the public prints. He was a slow developer, but once he got started…) And he literally become more powerful with every passing year. And he had to have a lot of adventures.

So, okay, how do you get this guy in trouble, often, and thus create suspense and interest? The question has been answered in many ways, many times over the years. Kryptonite was one of the earliest of these answers. According to the mythos, it is a fragment of – I guess mineral – from Krypton, where Supes was born. Something in the gestalt of our planet makes kryptonite dangerous to natives of Krypton. (All of which you almost certainly know, but we do try to be thorough here.)

We thought it was fictional. Some of us, of the professional writing ilk, further thought that it was neither more nor less than an answer to a plot problem and at least one of that ilk thought it was overused and temporarily retired it. But now, a Chris Stanley, of London’s Museum of Natural History, analyzed a substance some of his colleagues discovered and, according to the Times, “found that the new mineral’s chemistry matched the description of kryptonite’s composition in last year’s film Superman Returns.”

It is not known whether or not anyone collapsed near the stuff.

At this point, you can either shrug and get on with your life, or pause, and engage in some pretty wild speculation about the nature of reality.

Be warned: We probably aren’t finished with this topic.

RECOMMENDED READING: The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins.

Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern and/or Green Arrow, and The Shadow, as well as all kinds of novels, stories and articles.

Dennis O’Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of comic books like

2006 Eagle Awards Announced

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Since you couldn’t watch a new episode of Doctor Who this past Saturday, maybe you were at the Eagle Awards, as part of the Bristol International Comic Expo.

Established in 1976 by Mike Conroy, the Eagles are the comics industry’s longest established awards. Acknowledged as the pre-eminent international prizes, they have been featured on the covers of leading US and UK titles across the last three decades with such diverse titles as X-Men, Swamp Thing, Preacher, 2000 AD and MAD among those proud to display the Eagle Award emblem.

Winners are after the jump.

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Pros name 50 most influential visual effects film

On Friday, the Visual Effects Society announced the results of a membership poll, naming the 50 most influential films of all time in terms of special effects.  According to VES Executive Director Eric Roth, hese films have had a significant, lasting impact on the practice and appreciation of visual effects as an integral, artistic element of cinematic expression and the storytelling process."

Comics fans will be arguing about the placement of Sin City (43) and Superman (44).  No other comic book-inspired films made the list.

The films will be the backdrop of the 2007 VES Festival of Visual Effects, which those of you in Los Angeles can enjoy at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills from June 7 through June 10.  There, a panel that includes Douglas Trumbull, Richard Edlund, Dennis Murren and maybe John Dykstra (he’s tentative as we write this) will discuss the list. 

After the jump, the whole list.

 

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