Feature Details
Interviews
ComicMix Interviews.
News Articles Featured in Interviews
Mon Jan 28, 2008 — by Brian Alvey
Mahalo Daily Interviews Stan Lee
Join the Merry Mahalo Marching Society
I have often been told that Stan Lee is the easiest interview subject in the world. You put him on stage or on camera, do a quick introduction and then stand back and let him talk.
Mahalo Daily featured an interview with Stan Lee today. One of the highlights? Stan Lee explaining how the first X-Men movie could have made twice what it did if they had given him a speaking role.
Of course, the Mahalo team has to be thrilled with Lee's endorsement of Mahalo after the credits at the end of the video.
Mon Jan 28, 2008 — by Rick Marshall
Webcomic Interview of Persepolis Creator
It's a comic about about interviewing the creator of a comic... Get it?
Even though I don't live in Portland, OR, where CulturePulp creator Mike Russell's "journalism comic strip" is based, I find his work to be an endless source of amusement. That's why I was so pleased to see this recent comic based on an interview with Marjane Satropi, the creator of the critically praised graphic novel Persepolis.
Over the course of the interview, Satrapi takes Russell on a philosophical tour of both her celebrated graphic novel and the animated film based on the book that opened this week. It's a wonderful bit of comics-on-comics appreciationand contains this highly quotable, made-to-be-sloganized piece of wisdom, courtesy of Satrapi:
I know one thing: culture and instruction are really weapons of mass construction.
In addition to Russell's comic-based version of the interview, he also provides the full transcript of his 40-minute discussion with Satrapi.
Also worth checking out: this 2005 CulturePulp strip about the upcoming (at that time) release of the film Aeon Flux.
Sat Jan 26, 2008 — by Mike Raub
ComicMix's Interview With Heath Ledger
Heath Ledger taking on the Joker, Dark Knight, Witchblade vs The Darkness, Marvel's Twelve, Urban Monsters
Exclusive To ComicMix Radio: Heath Ledger On Taking On The Joker
The untimely death of any celebrity leaves a lot of questions and speculation. In the wake of Heath Ledger's passing, some are looking at his overly dark portrayal of The Joker in Warner Bros' upcoming Dark Knight Batman film. In a ComicMix exclusive, Heath Ledger tells us just why he took on such a demanding part.
Plus:
- NBC props are up for sale – again
- Monsters invade Hollywood – we have proof
- Witchblade
vs. The Darkness
- Marvel's Twelve
- Urban Monsters goes to Hollywood
- What were the top selling comics and graphic novels in recent week? We've got the list!
All it takes is for you to Press The Button!
Or you can now listen to our podcasts via 
or RSS!
Fri Jan 25, 2008 — by Rick Marshall
Martha Thomases Interviewed!
ComicMix VPCC on her career, women in comics and, of course, ComicMix!
Sure, pride goeth before a fall and such, but we can't help pointing out this interview with ComicMix VP of Corporate Communications Martha Thomases over at Friends of Lulu.
The interview touches on Thomases' long and winding path through the comics industry, including one of her best-known roles: Head of Publicity at DC Comics during the "Death of Superman" event. Having served in both an editorial and PR capacity for various publishers, she provides some insight into the way these two aspects of the industry rely upon each other and the reasons they often appeal to similar personality types.
I told stories. I looked at what we were publishing and tried to figure out who would care about those titles, and what was the most effective way to get the word to them. I dealt with the mainstream press, not the comics press, so I looked for human interest stories. After all, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are at least as interesting as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
Thomases also chats at length about the changes she's witnessed in both the comics industry and the role of women in it.
Tue Jan 22, 2008 — by Rick Marshall
Interview with Blank Label Comics
Webcomics crew talks design, promotion and... no pants
Mustachioed maverick Gary Tyrrell over at Fleen.com points us to a fun, insightful roundtable discussion on ComixTalk with the six webcomic creators who make up Blank Label Comics. The interview blends questions from readers with some additional questions from the ComixTalk staff, and touches upon the difficulties of promoting your webcomic, the advantages of forming a collective and the solidarity of going pantsless. (Yes, you read that last bit correctly.) It's as funny as it is enlightening... seriously.
ComixTalk: If I do the math right (and that's not necessarily a good bet) BLC will be entering its third year this coming February. What's different now than when you started this group and are there any lessons you can pass on to others just starting out together.
Greg:I think we're all just a bit wiser, mostly. We've managed to really learn some of the ways we can make this (cartooning) work for us, and we're helping each other accomplish those goals very well.
Southworth: As I said, there's always room for more spooning.
Paul T.: I learned not to eat convention hot dogs.
Mon Jan 21, 2008 — by Rick Marshall
Richard Thompson Interviewed
Cul de Sac creator weighs in on balancing his schedule, political cartooning and more...
Over at The Comics Reporter, Tom Spurgeon has posted a great interview with Richard Thompson, the creator behind Cul de Sac and Richard's Poor Almanac, among other projects.
The interview provides a look at the daily routine for a creator balancing multiple ongoing projects and the struggle to keep things fresh. It also provides a few funny examples of the relationship between a creator and his/her editor, as described below.
Nowadays my editor, Ann Gerhart, doesn't ask for a rough, or even any idea of what I'm doing, so I guess we've reached a level of trust, or maybe nobody's reading it still. The only complaint I ever remember getting from Gene [Weingarten, a former editor of Thompson's], whose motto is that he edits for humor but not for taste, was when I used the phrase "fart-catcher" to describe a presidential aide twice in as many weeks and he found that excessive.
Mon Jan 21, 2008 — by Rick Marshall
Prince Caspian Photos and Interview Hit the 'Net
New gallery of photos from the second 'Narnia' installment debut.
USA Today has posted an interview and gallery of photos from the set of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, set to hit theaters May 16. The photos feature the returning cast from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, as well as many of the second installment's new characters. The interview focuses on how filmmakers conquered one of the series' most frustrating obstacles: how to "bring the sexy back" to Narnia.
... But with a quartet of mostly unseasoned child actors as the Pevensie kids, the 2005 release was severely lacking in an elixir that fuels many fantasy epics: sex appeal.
But that was then. This is wow. Ben Barnes, 26, the British newcomer who plays the title role in Prince Caspian, has visitors to the film's Internet Movie Database message board virtually drooling.
What, putting Warwick Davis in a lead role wasn't sexy enough? Come on, people!
Fri Oct 19, 2007 — by Andrew Wheeler
Graphic Novel Review: Del Rey Manga Round-Up, Part One
Guardians and Dracules and killer princesses and hockey!
Let me be honest: I don’t know all that much about manga. I’ve read a few series (going back to Area 88
We’ll start off with some books from Del Rey (all originally published by Kodasha in Japan), mostly aimed at young teenagers. (At least, all but one of these is marked “Teen: 13+,” but, from the content, I suspect the real Japanese readership, and possibly the American readership as well, is tweens to young teens.) This week’s batch also are primarily aimed at girls -- I think.
First up is Shugo Chara!
Okay, I have to back up already. Amu, our heroine, is explicitly in fourth grade -- we’re told that several times -- though the structure of the school, and the maturity of the characters, would seem to put them more naturally in middle school. (Trust me; I’m the father of a fourth grader.) And, from an American perspective, it’s really bizarre that a story about fourth graders would be marketed to teens – or even tweens, as I suspect is actually the case here. In the US, kids generally only want to read about other kids their own age (maybe) or, preferably, a few years older. Fourth and fifth graders read stories about middle schoolers, middle schoolers read Sweet Valley High
Continue reading Graphic Novel Review: Del Rey Manga Round-Up, Part One ›
Sat Jul 28, 2007 — by Andrew Wheeler
Interviews and Interrogations
Not to mention discussions, profiles, and confrontations
The Washington Post profiles Hate! cartoonist Peter Bagge, focusing on his current work for the magazine Reason.
Comic Book Resources infiltrated a Comic-Con panel with Matt Wagner talking about 25 years of Grendel – and they report back what they learned.
Wizard interviews Mouse Guard creator David Petersen.
Heidi MacDonald video-interviews Scott McCloud, creator of Making Comics (and, of course, Zot!).
The Orange County Register talks to Kevin J. Anderson about Slan Hunter, the novel he completed from A.E. Van Vogt’s outline and incomplete draft.
Forbes quotes from a USA Today interview with J.K. Rowling, in which she mentions that she’s already working on two non-fantasy projects – one for children and one for adults.
Sun Jul 15, 2007 — by Andrew Wheeler
Links & News & Interviews & Cats
Various topics, linked medium-well
Time magazine, which manages to get so much wrong so much of the time, oddly is very accurate and interesting on the subject of LOLcats. [via The Beat]
Not science fiction, but only because it didn’t happen: the British military is denying sending giant, man-eating badgers to terrify the citizen of the Iraqi city of Basra.
The New York Times’s PaperCuts blog looks at the cover of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
David Louis Edelman, at DeepGenre, ponders The End of Science Fiction.
Paranormal romance writer Sherrilyn Kenyon is now listed in Cambridge Who’s Who, and sent out a press release to tout that.
The Readercon brain trust compiled the semi-official canon of Slipstream writing. Great! Now we can go back to arguing about what “slipstream” actually means…
If you happen to be in Luxembourg (and I can’t tell you how often I’ve found myself in Luxembourg without thinking about it), you might want to pop your head into the Tomorrow Now exhibition at the Mudam Luxembuorg, which “explores the relationship between design and science fiction.”
I’d expected something really weird from the Montgomery Advertiser’s reference to “Faulkner’s Narnia” -- just think about that for a moment, if you will – but it turns out that Faulkner University is putting on a stage adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as Narnia. Still, the idea of a Prince Caspian/As I Lay Dying mash-up is still out there for the taking…
Wed Jul 11, 2007 — by Andrew Wheeler
Interviews on the links!
Carey, Jones, Campbell...sounds like a law firm
Comic Book Resources interviews Mike Carey, comics writer and author of the novel The Devil You Know.
Publishers Weekly talked to Icarus Publishing’s Simon Jones about the joys and problems of publishing pornographic manga.
Publishers Weekly also has the second half of an interview with Eddie Campbell about The Black Diamond Detective Agency.
Reason Online profiles Grand Master Robert A. Heinlein, who would have been 100 this past Saturday.
SF Scope prints excerpts from a publicity interview with David Bilsborough, author of The Wanderer’s Tale.
The UK SF Book News Network has a video interview with Fiona McIntosh, about her new novel Odalisque, from her UK publisher, Orbit.
Speaking of Orbit, on their own blog they have an interview (in the old-fashioned "text" form) with Trudi Canavan.
Sun Jul 8, 2007 — by Andrew Wheeler
F&SF Interviews
Say something once, why say it again?
John Scalzi (wearing his Ficlets hat) interviews Justina Robson, author of Keeping It Real.
Cory Doctorow was interviewed by the CBC’s Q (a radio show of some kind, I think, though it could also be a godlike transdimensional entity) and that link above will take you straight to an MP3 of it. [via the author]
Reason Online has an article profiling Robert A. Heinlein, with a focus on his connection to Los Angeles.
SciFi Wire talks to Benjamin Rosenbaum about his Hugo- and Sturgeon- nominated story, “The House Beyond Your Sky.”
Pink Raygun interviews) horror writer David J. Schow.
Sat Jul 7, 2007 — by Andrew Wheeler
Science Fiction & Fantasy Interviews
Just your size, pretty, but does she talk?
The Agony Column interviews Austin Grossman, author of Soon I Will Be Invincible.
Wired talks to Kim Stanley Robinson about the future of the planet. [via Bruce Sterling]
Brooklyn Frank interviews Jeff Somers, author of The Electric Church. [via the author]
SciFi Wire talks to Jay Lake about the clockwork solar system of his new novel, Mainspring.
SFF World interviews Gail Z. Martin, author of The Summoner.
Fri Jul 6, 2007 — by Andrew Wheeler
Science Fiction/Fantasy Interviews
With added ninjas for extra flavor
Bookninja interviews Guy Gavriel Kay, author of Ysabel. Then they flip out and kill a whole lot of people, ‘cause that’s what ninjas have to do. [via Locus Online]
Adventures in Sci Fi Publishing’s twenty-fifth podcast features an interview with author Walter H. Hunt, plus publishing news and the first installment of “Ask a Writer,” with Tobias S. Buckell.
SciFi Wire talks to Michael Swanwick about his story “Lord Weary’s Empire,” currently a finalist for both the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and the Hugo Award.
Thu Jul 5, 2007 — by Andrew Wheeler
Science Fiction/Fantasy Interviews
They write, they talk -- is there anything they can't do?
Michael Cassutt’s new column at SciFi Weekly is also about Heinlein, and gives more details of the Heinlein Centennial going on this coming weekend in Kansas City (Heinlein’s birthplace).
The Globe and Mail lists and profiles Canada’s “best-kept secrets in the arts” – among them, Hugo-winning science fiction writer Robert Charles Wilson.
