Articles by glenn-hauman
Mon Feb 25, 2008 — by Glenn Hauman
Hercules Goes Green
Shrek unavailable for comment
All but admitting that replacing the Hulk in his own book with Hercules was a mistake, Marvel is trying to rectify the problem by spray-painting Herc green. It's clearly a rushed and uneven job, as paint seems to be collecting in big drips under his chi--
--beg pardon? This is something about a Skrull invasion?
Geez, they're just going to say every mistake Marvel made in the last few years was a Skrull, aren't they?
Coming soon: It wasn't really a clone of Spider-Man, it was a Skrull pretending to be a clone of Spider-Man. And Harry Osborn? Skrull. Rhodey? Skrull. Crusader? Skrull. All the members of the Skrull Kill Krew? Skrulls.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: The copy editor for these promo posters? Also a Skrull. -RM]
Mon Feb 25, 2008 — by Glenn Hauman
Nebula Nominations Announced, Plus A Comment
Back of the line for you, comic boy
The Science Fiction Writers of America have announced the final ballot for the 2007 Nebula Awards. As a paid-up SFWA member, I'd like to point out two items:
► The movie adaptation of V For Vendetta has been nominated as one of best science-fiction scripts of the year.
► The original comic book on which it's based is not considered a sufficient work to qualify the authors for membership in SFWA.
In fact, you could combine all of Alan Moore's comics work -- including Watchmen, one of Time's 100 Books of the 20th Century -- and it wouldn't be deemed worthwhile. Yet the movie script adapting the work is considered sufficient work to join SFWA.
Nor is this the first time this has happened. Last year, Batman Begins was up for the same award. X-Men was nominated for 2002. The comics on which they were based? Not worthy as membership credentials.
My written response to this logic would trigger a lot of web-filtering software. My preferred response would be seen as deriviative of the movie.
And folks wonder why SFWA is considered a laughing stock by so many people. Let's not even get started on the candicacy of Andrew Burt...
(Artwork by John C. Worsley. Take a look at his site, there are some very neat illustrations there.)
Fri Feb 22, 2008 — by Glenn Hauman
Batcave Home Theater
Where does he get those wonderful toys?
Valerie D'Orazio points us to this Gizmodo story about a home theater system company that built their very own Bat-theater.
While it's pretty dang cool, it's not quite as impressive as the comic book professional who converted his basement into his own Batcave, complete with:
- giant screen TV
- desk carved in the shape of a bat symbol
- hidden door to the stairway
- atomic turbine, and
- working batpole hidden behind the bookcase that leads from the first floor to the basement office-- for when inspiration struck and the stairs were too slow, I guess.
But that's not the impressive part. It's that, since he was doing it for his home office, and that he was a comic book professional and it helped him get in the right mindset to create, it was all tax deductible. The only person who could write this off would be Michael Uslan.
Fri Feb 22, 2008 — by Glenn Hauman
Re: The Writers Strike Ending
When you care enough to hit 'send'
I think this card sums up my feelings about the end of the Writers Strike with disturbing accuracy:
Thu Feb 21, 2008 — by Glenn Hauman
Blue Moon, You Saw Me Standing Alone
Now if only some pigs would fly by my window...
If you've ever said something happens once in a blue moon, well, today's the day.
According to the Farmer's Almanac definition of the third full moon in a quarter of the year when there are four full moons, today is a blue moon.
So now you need a new excuse.
Wed Feb 20, 2008 — by Glenn Hauman
The Eagle (Awards Nomination Forms) Have Landed
Vote early, vote often...
Nominations for this year’s Eagle Awards are now open. The nomination site appears to be in beta right now, so it might be wise to leave off participating until they’ve got the bugs ironed out. However, it appears that anyone can participate.
The winners of this year’s Eagles will be announced at the Bristol Comics Expo in May.
The Eagle Awards 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 30 years.
Fri Feb 15, 2008 — by Glenn Hauman
Harlan Ellison on the Writers Guild Strike Settlement
Owch.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: This is taken from Harlan Ellison’s online community, reproduced in its unedited entirety. If there's one person whose words you don't change without checking with him, it's Harlan. -- GH]
HARLAN ELLISON ON THE WRITERS STRIKE SETTLEMENT
YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION TO RE-POST THIS ANYWHERE:
Creds: got here in 1962, written for just about everybody, won the Writers Guild Award four times for solo work, sat on the WGAw Board twice, worked on negotiating committees, and was out on the picket lines with my NICK COUNTER SLEEPS WITH THE FISHE$$$ sign. You may have heard my name. I am a Union guy, I am a Guild guy, I am loyal. I fuckin’ LOVE the Guild.
And I voted NO on accepting this deal.
My reasons are good, and they are plentiful; Patric Verrone will be saddened by what I am about to say; long-time friends will shake their heads; but this I say without equivocation…
Continue reading Harlan Ellison on the Writers Guild Strike Settlement ›
Tue Feb 12, 2008 — by Glenn Hauman
Are Your Comics Contributing to Global Warming?
Is your superhero fix helping wreck the planet?
This musing was brought up by an article in the Wall Street Journal, blogged by Jeff Matthews, on how Staples was no longer going to be doing business with Asia Pulp and Paper because of environmental concerns.
The article detailed why:
In the past, [Asia Pulp and Paper] has said it is moving toward relying for all of its wood on plantation trees but needs to cut natural forest to maintain production levels.
APP runs one of Asia's largest pulp mills on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and has operations in China. The retailers worry that APP is destroying natural rainforest to feed its mills.
Concerns over rainforest destruction have been heightened in recent months because new data show that Indonesia is the world's third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping greenhouse gas, behind the U.S. and China. Fires set to clear natural forests and forested peat swamps after they have been logged are the major cause of those emissions.
APP last year sought permission to use an environmentally friendly logo issued by the Forest Stewardship Council. In October, after inquiries from The Wall Street Journal about APP's planned use of the logo, the FSC barred the company from using it.
The problem is that a lot of comic books and graphic novels are being published in China, South Korea, and Indonesia, from a variety of smaller printers that are bundled and sold by larger printing firms here in the United States to publishers of all sizes, from the smallest of independents up to Marvel.
Does any production person for any company want to shed any light on this? More to the point, with multiple layers and language barriers between the comics publishers and the actual printers, can anybody reliably answer that they're sure their books aren't made from clear-cutters?
Sat Feb 9, 2008 — by Glenn Hauman
Happy 7th Anniversary, Neil Gaiman's Blog!
Will he dress in a brighter shade of black?
What started as a little thing to chronicle the writing of American Gods
So here's to you, old man. And one of these days, we're going to run that interview of you from way back when-- but we just might save it for the 20th anniversary of the interview. Which, scarily enough, is only a year away.
Now if we could only find a way to rescue your old topic on GEnie...
Fri Feb 8, 2008 — by Glenn Hauman
On This Day: The Communication Decency Act
The dark side of '24 Hours in Cyberspace'
Twelve years ago today, as part of the 24 Hours In Cyberspace event, Bill Clinton signed into law the Telecommuncations Act of 1996. A section of the bill came to be known as the Communications Decency Act, which imposed criminal sanctions on anyone who:
knowingly (A) uses an interactive computer service to send to a specific person or persons under 18 years of age, or (B) uses any interactive computer service to display in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age, any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs.
The law also explicity made it illegal to discuss abortions online, and implicitly outlawed a wide variety of non-obscene material.
The online community jumped into action immediately, with the Black World Wide Web protest which encouraged webmasters to make their sites' backgrounds black for 48 hours (making 24 Hours In Cyberspace literally darker than planned), the Electronic Frontier Foundation starting up the Blue Ribbon campaign, and a number of plaintiffs (including, I'm proud to say, me and my company, BiblioBytes) joining the ACLU to get a preliminary injunction to prevent the act from ever taking place, and then taking it all the way to the Supreme Court (Reno v. ACLU) to get the thing unanimously overturned.
Yes, we shot a law in Reno, just to watch it die.
Sadly, bad parts of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 live on -- most notably, the deregulation of media ownership which has led to the massive consolidation of the last decade or so (see ClearChannel and NewsCorp). But at least we're able to put adult comics online.
Fri Feb 1, 2008 — by Glenn Hauman
Law & Order: Gotham City
Ba-BUM!
Found in some obscure corner of the Internet by Lisa Sullivan. Thanks, Lisa!
Wed Jan 30, 2008 — by Glenn Hauman
Happy 75th Anniversary to the Lone Ranger!
A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust, and a hearty 'Hi-yo Silver!'
On this day in 1933, to the strains of the William Tell Overture, the first of 2,956 episodes of The Lone Ranger premiered on WXYZ radio in Detroit, Michigan and later on the Mutual Broadcasting System radio network and then on NBC's Blue Network (which became ABC).
We hope we don't have to tell you who that masked man is, but just in case, return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear... when a Texas Ranger named Reid, who, as the series begins, was ambushed along with five other Texas Rangers by by Butch Cavendish, leader of the "Hole in the Wall Gang" and a man named Collins, who has infiltrated the Rangers for the gang as a scout, leaving almost every ranger dead.
Reid, the sole survivor, vowed to bring the killers and others like them to justice. So while he recovers, he asks his companion Tonto to make a sixth grave to make people think that he had died as well.
The Lone Ranger has gone on to appear on TV (both animated and the famous series starring Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels), in movies and serials, and (of course) comic books, most recently in publications from Dynamite Entertainment.
Hi-yo Silver! Away!
Wed Jan 30, 2008 — by Glenn Hauman
Interview: Jamie Delano on Narcopolis
Drugsand more drugs
Jamie Delano is back in the game. The British writer who helped usher in Vertigo with his launch of Hellblazer returns to comics with Narcopolis, his radical new vision of the future, out today from Avatar Press. In this exclusive, we took the chance to interview Jamie and got all sorts of answers about addiction, controlled substances, controlled people, and why you should be careful about getting drunk in a strange bar...
It's been twenty years since you burst onto the scene here in America, with some rather scathing looks at Thatcherite England and Reagan/Bush America. So what are you looking at now?
Is that the time already? Strange, how one's life passes. I guess you mean "bursting" in an antiheroic fashion...?
Not entirely sure just what it is I'm looking at now... some sort of ugly foetal monster of post-democracy is clawing its way down the birth-canal of history, though. The aberrant post-war half-century of social liberalism is choking its last, held face-down in the swamp of Terror.
Mon Jan 28, 2008 — by Glenn Hauman
Happy 50th Anniversary, Lego!
Is that the gold brick anniversary?
On this day in 1958, the first Lego brick was sold. Eleven minutes later, it was lost under a couch.
Children all over the world have played with Lego bricks for the past 50 years, and Lego sets are still right at the top of many wish lists. Industry and trade associations also recognize the Lego success. Just before the turn of the millennium, the Lego Brick was voted “Toy of the Century,” one of the highest awards in the toy industry, by both Fortune Magazine in the US and the British Association of Toy Retailers.
Of course, we recognize their various media tie-ins, like what they've done with Star Wars, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, and Batman, among so many others. And over the years, they've given back to film themselves:
So let's go build something!
Wed Jan 23, 2008 — by Glenn Hauman
Heath Ledger's Funeral to be Picketed
Church plans protest due to actor's portrayal of gay character
As much as sites like TMZ are picked on for being media whores, they've got nothing on Fred Phelps. Fred Phelps’s Westboro Baptist Church announced that it would picket the funeral of Heath Ledger, presumably because he starred in Brokeback Mountain.
"God hates fag-enablers," the WBC proclaimed in a news release issued yesterday, concluding with: "Heath Ledger is now in Hell and has begun serving his eternal sentence - beside which, nothing else about Heath Ledger is relevant or consequential."
Phelps and his followers are known for other fun picket-sign messages such as:
- "Thank God for 9/11"
- "Thank God for the Tsunami"
- "Thank God for Katrina"
- "Thank God for Dead Soldiers"
- "Thank God for IEDs"
- "Thank God for California fires"
- "Thank God for AIDS"
Hat tip: Lisa Sullivan.
