Latest News
Sat Oct 3, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'Star Trek: TOS' Season 2 on Blu-ray
After a rocky first season that ended with the letter writing campaign to save Star Trek from cancellation, the second season opened in a horrible Friday night time slot but was a stronger series. Creator Gene Roddenberry continued to oversee everything as an Executive Producer but John Meredith Lucas took over as the line producer, aided by Roddenberry’s former secretary, D.C. Fontana becoming the script consultant. These changes made for a strong start as witnessed on Star Trek: The Original Series Season 2, now out on Blu-ray from Paramount Home Video.Things had started to gel for the series as the characters became more sharply defined and the writers began to tailor the by-play accordingly. The backstory grew stronger so it was clear what the United Federation of Planets was all about and that the starship Enterprise was truly exploring space and fought only when necessary.
The season opened with “Amok Time”, written by SF great Theodore Sturgeon and explored Vulcan and Spock’s place among his people. It’s a great opening but also one that acknowledged the rising popularity of the character and Leonard Nimoy, placing him ahead of star William Shatner.
Roddenberry and Lucas began exploring more of Spock’s backstory, starting with “Amok Time” but later in “Journey to Babel” which memorably introduced his parents. Fortunately, attention was paid to others, as well. Bowing to criticism from Pravda, the Russian navigator Pavel Chekov joined the crew, ending the rotating supernumerary opposite Helmsman Sulu. With George Takei’s work on The Green Berets prolonged, Chekov got plenty of screen time, much to Takei’s regret and Walter Koenig’s delight.
Continue reading Review: 'Star Trek: TOS' Season 2 on Blu-ray ›
Fri Oct 2, 2009 — by Mike Raub
The Point Radio: STARGATE UNIVERSE Danger & Sex In Space
Plus John Cho FLASHES FORWARD to The Enterprise
STARGATE UNIVERSE (SyFy Channel's next step in the SG francise) debuts tonight with a new cast and a definite new direction. We begin our backstage access today as the cast explains just what they have to do to survive lost in the multi-verse (and it isn't playing video games) - plus John Cho talks about his future on not only FLASH FORWARD, but maybe back on The Enterprise or even The White Castle. 
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Fri Oct 2, 2009 — by Mike Gold
It's No New Comics Week
Oh Christmas/New Years, Where Is Thy Sting?
Back in the days before direct sales and specialty shops overwhelmed comic book sales, you couldn't find a new comic book on the newsstands to save your soul. The theory was, nobody buys magazines between Christmas and New Years Day, and even now "weekly" magazines like Time and Newsweek skip that week. The fact was, the newsstand distributors and shippers thought that would be a swell week to take off, so they did.
Well, those sing-along days are back. Diamond will not be shipping anything the week of December 30, 2009. Nada. Zippo. Nothing.
There's a bit of a difference between modern times and those thrilling days of yesteryear. Maybe the old mom and pop stores could survive selling Brylcream and Ipana, or maybe they'd take the week off as well. But today's comics shop owners can't afford to close down that week – yes, comic book selling is that marginal a business – and they've still got to pay the rent.
Expect a lot of in-store post-Christmas sales, which might be lucrative for those retailers whose customers get cash as holiday presents.
Fri Oct 2, 2009 — by Andrew Wheeler
Manga Friday: Supernatural Teens
Reviewing Wicked Lovely: Desert Tales: Sanctuary, Yokai Doctor, and Amefurashi
Where would comics be without the stories of young people with amazing powers? Oh, sure, you could cobble together a world canon of stories with no supernatural stuff at all, but it would have to be a masterpiece of the gerrymanderer’s art. And why would you want to – when you can have all of the moody, or conflicted, or ridiculously innocent teenagers with amazing abilities you ever thought of? Like the main characters of these three books, for example…
Wicked Lovely: Desert Tales, Volume 1: Sanctuary
Written by Melissa Marr; Art by
Xian Nu Studio
Tokyopop/HarperCollins, May 2009,
$12.99
Wicked Lovely is the name of a novel by Marr, and it also seems to be the umbrella title for her novels about teens and faeries (and teen faeries, and faerie teens) in the modern world. The novels seem to be about a girl named Aislinn – no self-respecting teen-novel heroine ever has a name like Doris or Mabel – and her travails in high school and the Faerie Courts. But this manga volume – it says on its back cover that it’s “manga,” if you don’t believe me, and never mind that it reads left-to-right and was written by an American – is set somewhere in the western desert, where once-mortal Rika lives quietly, trying to avoid both humans and the local faeries.
Rika was discovered and turned – not exactly “seduced and abandoned,” since she wasn’t able to give him what he wanted – many years ago by the Summer King, Keenan, who turns up early in this book to give an excuse for some backstory and to fail to get her to swear fealty to him. She refuses, of course – she’s solitary now, and happy that way. What does it matter if most of the solitary fay are nasty enough to make “mischievous” a very weak term to describe them?
But they’re just there for spice; this is a series for teenage girls, which means Rika has to see a cute boy – Jace, who paints, like she does – and save him from those nasty fay, who try to kill him for no good reason. He’s sweet and innocent enough to stare wide-eyed at her abilities – those nasty wild fay don’t give up, or there wouldn’t be a plot here other than “elf girl and artist boy meet cute and gaze into each other’s eyes,” – and the book is low-key enough that they’re just mildly kissing by the end. (Which seems awfully tame for a fairie who’s hundreds of years old.)
Wicked Lovely: Desert Tales: Sanctuary has too many colons in its title and a thin plot, but I have to expect that it’s just the kind of thing teen girls will want: a bit of angst, a wish to be alone that doesn’t actually lead to loneliness, and a cute boy that the girl gets to protect and pursue. I’m just twenty years too old and the wrong gender to appreciate it properly.Fri Oct 2, 2009 — by Glenn Hauman
Happy 50th Anniversary to 'The Twilight Zone'!
On this day in 1959, Rod Serling and CBS introduced us to a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a
dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the
middle ground between light and shadow, between science and
superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit
of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area
which we call... the Twilight Zone.
The Twilight Zone ran for five seasons on CBS, then entered the dimension of infinite reruns to this very day-- often with rerun marathons on July 4th and New Years Eve in local markets, a tradition that extends to its current home on the Syfy Channel. It won numerous Emmys and Writer's Guild awards and spawned two series revivals, a movie, a song by Golden Earring, and countless other homages, and may be one of the most influential shows to air on television.
If you're a fan, you can't do better than the DVD compilations
Thu Oct 1, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'High Moon' Volume One
High MoonDave Gallaher & Steve Ellis
DC Comics, 192 pages, $14.99
DC’s online imprint, Zuda Comics, has certainly been a hit or miss affair but when it hits, there’s a pleasure in discovering new talent or new concepts. While Bayou was a breakout hit, the most consistent entry remains High Moon, written by former ComicMix contributor Dave Gallaher, illustrated by Steve Ellis and lettered by Scott O. Brown.
Gallaher had this notion for years but managed to earn one of the inaugural slots when Zuda went live in late 2007 and the strip won the first reader contest. It has since received plaudits from around the field and now DC is releasing the first three stories in a trade paperback.
The three stories comprising the first volume mix the western and horror genres with a dash of steampunk and overly, it’s a breezy, entertaining read. The focal point surrounds the Macgregor family, a line of detectives, currently working as a branch of the famed Pinkertons. Matthew Macgregor takes center stage in the first story while brother Tristan arrives for the second tale and then Tristan and Fergus deal with demons in the final tale. Linking all three, though, is Eddie Conroy a werewolf with a haunted past.
Each tale takes place in a different locale, starting with the drought-stricken Blest, Texas, then moving on to Ragged Rock, OK before concluding in South Dakota.
Across these stories are vampires, werewolves, demons, sexy Indians and a lot of atmosphere. We are given details in drips so reading the three stories in one sitting helps build the world of High Moon and it’s a nice place to visit. Gallaher’s dialogue is spare and distinct while Ellis works wonders with the static format of the Zuda reader, playing with page design when the action demands it. His use of color goes a long way towards giving the strip a nice atmosphere.
We could use a little more grounding in the time and place when these stories take place and what the ground rules are for the occult aspects but these are minor quibbles for what is a strong series which returns to the web with a fourth installment this fall.
Wed Sep 30, 2009 — by Andrew Wheeler
Fathers and Sons: reviews of Danica Novgorodoff's 'Refresh, Refresh' and 'The Big Kahn' by Neil Kleid and Nicolas Cinquegrani
I should start by quoting something weighty – the most obvious would be that old Tolstoy saw about happy and unhappy families – but let’s take that as written, shall we? Comics have given short shrift to families for the past seventy years – at least, the American comic-book industry has, though strip comics grew fat and bloated on the hijinks of aggressively “relatable” families for that long and longer.
Even the undergrounds – typically about countercultural types, who occasionally complain about their parents but try to avoid them as much as possible – and the modern alt-comics movement (Alienated Loners R us!) avoided family dynamics. Sure, there are exceptions, from Will Eisner to art spiegelman, but the average American comics protagonist is an orphan – or wishes he was.
Maybe that’s starting to change, or maybe I just have a couple of anomalies on my hand. Either way, today, I have two books where that isn’t the case – not to say that these dads might not be dead, absent, or problematic, but they’re definitely part of the story. And their sons care who, and what – and where – their fathers are.
Refresh, Refresh
A graphic novel by Danica
Novgorodoff, adapted from a screenplay by James Ponsoldt based on the story by
Benjamin Percy
First Second, October 2009,
$17.99
What do men do? For many in the comics reviewing world, that’s an easy question: men punch each other in the face. But they don’t have Refresh, Refresh in mind when they say that. This graphic novel is set in a small Oregon town, just a couple of years ago, where most of the adult men are off fighting with the Marines in Iraq. And their sons – mostly Cody and Josh and Gordon, three highschool-aged boys who are at the core of this particular story – talk about joining up when they’re old enough, or working in the local factory, or maybe even getting out.
But Refresh, Refresh is based on a literary short story, and if there’s one thing we all know, it’s that there’s no getting out of a story like that – it’s all doom and gloom until the moment-of-clarity ending. So this town is stifling and without any options, the boys drifting – from backyard boxing to underage drinking in bars to racing around on motorbikes and sleds – as they rebel without any fathers to drag them into line. (The narration – presumably taken from the original Percy story; I don’t want to blame Novgorodoff for any of it – is particularly heavy-handed in that area, such as this sequence from p.83: “We didn’t fully understand the reason our fathers were fighting. We only understood that they had to fight. ‘It’s all part of the game,’ my grandfather said. ‘It’s just the way it is.’ We could only cross our fingers and wish on stars and hit refresh, refresh, hoping they would return to us.”)
What they hit “refresh, refresh” on is their e-mail in-boxes; that scene recurs several times in the story. Oddly, though, it’s the only incursion of modern technology into a story that could otherwise be Vietnam-era. They don’t follow their fathers’ platoon on CNN.com or an Armed Forces website; don’t call each other on cellphones; don’t think about or track or seem to notice the war on TV or the Internet; even their laptops seem to be screwed down to tables, for all the moving they do.
Refresh, Refresh is a very traditional story about young men in small towns; I could probably quote half-a-dozen Bruce Springsteen songs on roughly the same topic, and with pretty much the same moral and tone. (And that’s without diving into the world of the realist short story, where kitchen-sink dramas almost require young men with promise to be squandered.) Novgorodoff tells this version with a bit too much self-conscious artistry – too many deer looking up at airplanes, too many of those explaining-the-theme narration boxes – but she keeps the focus tight and specific, on these three boys and their world, their choices and possibilities. A story like this is nearly always about badchoices, though, so it would be best to come to Refresh, Refresh with a MFA-teacher’s fatalism, and not expect anything so comic-booky as a happy ending for the boys who punch each other in the face.
Wed Sep 30, 2009 — by Matthew Weinberger
ComicMix Quick Picks: NY Anime Festival grows, comic sales hold, and Hugh Jackman doesn't stop the show
Get ready for a special
"still-recovering-from-fasting-on-Yom-Kippur" edition of ComicMix Quick
Picks. Yesterday was pretty busy, and here's a roundup of the stuff we didn't get to:
- New York Anime Festival attendance was up 16 percent from last year. And according to data from this past August, comic sales have held very steady, even through the econopocalypse. Are these signs of a recovering economy, or signs that our kinds of people just can't cut this stuff out of our budgets?
- Popular British football (that's soccer to us heathen Americans) comic strip Striker ended its 24-year run in British newspaper The Sun ended--without telling readers. Hilarity ensues.
- Marvel second-in-command Tom Brevoort explains why Alpha Flight seems to be unable to stick around for very long in their own series: "But when you drill down, the core concept of the series is based on geography, which is very limiting -- they're like the Avengers, but in Canada."
- Sam Rockwell, who's playing Justin Hammer in Iron Man 2, dropped some plot SPOILERS in an interview, if that's your thing. We'll say no more.
- Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig stopped a performance of their Broadway show "A Steady Rain" in the middle to chastise-- you guessed it-- someone who forgot to turn off their cell phone. After pissing off Wolverine and James Bond, it's a wonder the guy made it out of the theater alive.
- Heroes ratings continue to disappoint. Who wants to place bets on the exact date and time it gets canceled?
- Columbia Pictures just bought a spec script for a movie called Supermax, about a prison full of people with creepy superpowers. The problem is that they've also been developing Super Max, a vehicle for DC Comics hero Green Arrow, also about a prison for people with powers. Now, the rumor is that even if it gets a name change, the thematic similarities may kill the comic book-flavored movie in favor of the new one. How fair is that?
- Former Terminator Summer Glau has been upgraded from "Dollhouse guest star" to "Dollhouse regular cast." Joss Whedon's been wearing out his rolodex for the show's cast, huh?
Tue Sep 29, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Media Short Takes
Olivia Wilde, who we adore on House and look forward to seeing in the sequel to Tron, will join The Ruins’ Jonathan Tucker in the cast of The Next Three Days, a thriller directed by Paul Haggis for Lionsgate. The cast already includes Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks, which is said to be the story of a woman (Banks) imprisoned for a murder she claims she didn't commit while her husband (Crowe) who tries to vindicate her.
The Wizards of Waverly Place, the popular Disney Channel series, has received an order for an additional eight episodes. Now in its third season, the show was awarded an Emmy this month in the children’s programming category. It also scored huge ratings when a feature-length version aired in August. It’s no surprise that the show has a rabid following with Disney raking in bucks from consumer products ranging from video games to books and even clothing lines.
Tue Sep 29, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
'Terminator' Rights Once More in Question
Halcyon's Chapoter 11 Filing Causes Concern
Pity Skynet. They rule the world of the future but can’t seem to get it right in the present. Rights to the Terminator franchise have been handed from one company to another and now Halcyon Holding Group is undergoing Chapter 11 reorganization which will affect plans for the Terminator.
Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood reports that Halcyon has retained FTI Capital Advisors to help them determine the best course of reorganizing. The production entity wound up this way after a dispute erupted between them and Pacificor, a Santa Barbara-based hedge fund.
“Based on our extensive due diligence, we believe the value of the Terminator franchise alone is substantially greater than the $30 million Halcyon paid for it in 2007,” Kevin W. Shultz, Senior Managing Director of FTI Capital Advisors, said in statement. “In our view, Halcyon enjoys a wide variety of strategic options and we intend to explore them all.”
In addition to the still-popular Terminator, Halcyon has first-look rights to the complete works of Philip K. Dick.
Terminator: Salvation suffered from weak reviews and poor box office, hoping to rake in some fresh cash when the DVD is released December 1. Producers from the television version, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, continue to hope to continue the saga in some new manner, possibly as direct-to-video tales. The second season DVD set was released last week.
Tue Sep 29, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
MGM's Cash Woes Imperils 'The Hobbit'
Bankruptcy not out of the Picture
Deadline Hollywood’s Nikki Finke broke the news that MGM is having severe cash flow issues and may have trouble financing eagerly awaited films starting with The Hobbit two-picture project along with the next installment in the revitalized James Bond franchise.
MGM execs held a conference call with their lenders and admitted this year’s releases missed their targets and left them short of operating capital. "The implication was that it's teetering on bankruptcy," one source told Finke. The studio reportedly stuck its hand out and begged for $20 million just to cover immediate needs plus the $150 million they budgeted for the Guillermo del Toro-directed adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien novel.
The call, she reported, did not go well. As a result, the equity holders have seemingly given up on the studio with bondholders suspecting the studio is overvalued given their poor track record and management. Bankruptcy is a possibility but no one wants to see the once venerable studio go under or lose valuable rights, such as Bond.
Should the unthinkable actually occur, studios are poised to swoop in and fund the existing projects. Pre-production continues Down Under with full casting for The Hobbit expected in the coming months. The next Bond film is also in the works with a 2011 release being eyed.
Tue Sep 29, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
'Primeval' Gains Unexpected 13 Episode Renewal
New Episodes due in Early 2011
Primeval, the much loved but low-rated British series has been given a fourth season order after ITV1 cut a deal with the digital channel Watch. According to a report in the Guardian, the series will be co-funded between the two with an order given for 13 new episodes, to be shown in two arcs.
After the third season aired earlier this year, ITV canceled the series, leaving production firm Impossible Pictures, scrambling to salvage the show which has a strong following as witnessed by licensed books, audio adventures and a possible American feature film to be produced by Warner Bros.
The shows will air in early 2011 with BBC Worldwide handling international distribution. American fans most recently watched the series on BBC America. The current season was released on DVD on September 15.
The Guardian noted, “Watch – which already airs sci fi shows Doctor Who and Torchwood – will repeat it soon after and then premiere the fifth series later the same year, followed by ITV1.”
The full cast is expected to return including Hannah Spearritt, Andrew-Lee Potts and Jason Flemyng. Adrian Hodge remains showrunner.
Tue Sep 29, 2009 — by Mike Gold
Legend Irwin Hasen Creates Graphic Novel
What will you be doing when you're 91?
The legendary Irwin Hasen, co-creator of DC’s original
Wildcat who is best known for his work on the classic newspaper comic strip Dondi, has written and drawn a 128-page
graphic novel. Not bad for a guy 91 years old.
Loverboy, which purports to be something of a dramatized autobiography, will be released by Vanguard Publishing in December. Joe Kubert and Neal Adams contributed cover blurbs; Irwin has been a teacher at the Kubert School.
In addition to Wildcat and Dondi, Hasen had been a regular contributor to the golden age versions of Green Hornet, Green Lantern, The Flash and Justice Society of America, among many others.
Tue Sep 29, 2009 — by Mike Gold
Robot Chicken Goes Jughead
Probably Won't Need To Be Bleeped, Though
Archie Comics is perhaps the most innovative publisher
around these days, although for many comics fans they’re beneath the radar.
That’s a shame; folks are missing out on some great stuff.
Some fans are aware of their New Look digest books (“Ultimate Archie”?), and Mike Uslan’s Marriage of Archie and Veronica has made headlines. For me, well, I’m looking forward to their upcoming crossover with the 1950s/60s Archie Comics characters: Cosmo the Merry Martian, Super Duck, Seymour and friends. But the stunt they’ve just announced is the most provocative one yet.
Tom Root, co-head writer/ co-producer of Robot Chicken and co-creator/executive producer of Adult Swim’s new Titan Maximum parody series, is writing the 200th issue of Jughead. Yeah, that’s volume two of Jughead; you know how comic book numbering goes these days.
Both Robot Chicken and Titan Maximum are, to put it politely, hardly family fare… unless your family has the name “Manson” in it. The Adult Swim broadcasts are heavily bleeped – the DVD releases are not – and they tend to be quite violent and, dare I say it, irreverent. Oh, and extremely funny. Which probably tells you more about me than you wanted to know.
The story, “Something Ventured, Something Gained,” starts out with Jughead trading his, ahh, metabolism to a witch for a mega-cheeseburger. Bizarre wackiness ensues: Archie tries to cut a deal to trade the witch his awesome wholesomeness to restore his best friend to normalcy, Betty and Veronica try to cut a deal to restore Archie’s purity, and so on. All the while, Jughead actually gains weight!
It probably would have been easier for the Riverdale crew to just drop a dime on Sabrina, but hey, count me in! After all the mindless, in-perpetuity crossover events from DC and Marvel, I can use a self-contained book-lengther!
Tue Sep 29, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
'Superman/Batman: Public Enemies' on Sale Today
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies is released today in a variety of formats: Blu-Ray Hi-Def edition, a special edition 2-disc DVD, and a single disc DVD. Warner Home Video will distribute the action-packed movie, which will also be available OnDemand and Pay-Per-View as well as available for download that same day.
As you know by now, this animated feature is based on the Jeph Loeb/Ed McGuinness graphic novel collecting Superman/Batman #1-6. Bruce Timm is executive producer. Michael Goguen is supervising producer. Sam Liu is directing a script written by veteran Stan Berkowitz.
In the film, United States President Lex Luthor uses the oncoming trajectory of a Kryptonite asteroid to frame Superman and declare a $1 billion bounty on the heads of the Man of Steel and his “partner in crime,” Batman. Heroes and villains alike launch a relentless pursuit of Superman and Batman, who must unite – and recruit help – to stave off the action-packed onslaught, stop the asteroid, and uncover Luthor’s devious plot to take command of far more than North America.
ComicMix will be reviewing this in the near future. For now, enjoy the clip below.
