The San Diego Comic-Con 2007 goes out with a mega-size bang as they crank out yet another sold out day, and we at The Big ComicMix Broadcast do our best to close off all our loose ends. SciFi is reviving FARSCAPE … but at least one cast member isn’t ready, we uncover a great forgotten comic series … direct from the artist and then we evesdrop as DC’s writers and editors cop to their biggest mistakes.
PRESS THE BUTTON and let’s take this puppy home!
It’s been twenty years since Geary’s original A Treasury of Victorian Murder was published – and who would have thought, then, that a slim book of arch graphic short stories about little-known murders in Victorian England would be the beginning of the comics Geary would spend most of the decades to come creating? The first of the smaller-format, single-case volumes, Jack the Ripper, followed in 1995, with a new book every other year through 2005’s The Murder of Abraham Lincoln. Then 2006 saw The Case of Madeleine Smith, and this year yet another new Geary murder case.
Except for the first volume, each “Treasury of Victorian Murder” is a small book – about 5½ “ x 8¼” with roughly eighty pages of comics – about a particular, somewhat famous murder case from 19th century England or the USA. He’s covered the deaths of two Presidents – Lincoln and Garfield – and the cases "H.H. Holmes," Lizzie Borden, and Jack the Ripper. The remaining two books – about Mary Rogers and Madeleine Smith – are about famous sensational cases, crimes of passion.
The Bender “family” – there’s some doubt as to whether they were actually related, as they claimed to be – of Labette County, Kansas are not quite as famous as most of those cases (though I hadn’t heard of Madeleine Smith before, either). But they were certainly actively murderous and impressively mysterious, so their story gives Geary quite a bit to dig into. The Benders arrived in that raw, rural area of Kansas in 1870, very soon after the Civil War and not much longer after Kansas became a state in 1861. They set up a single-room (divided by a hanging canvas) inn and grocery on the major trail through the area, and settled into the community – considered eccentric, certainly, but basically accepted.
George McManus (1884-1954), once a household name via his long-running domestic-shenanigans comic strip Bringing Up Father, stands as a practical embodiment of the comics’ industry’s cinematic possibilities. The last of his comics-into-movies adaptations, Jiggs and Maggie Out West (Monogram Pictures; 1950), came to hand recently during the excavation process for a fifth volume of novelist John Wooley’s and my Forgotten Horrors film-book series.
What? Bringing Up Father’s Jiggs and Maggie in a horror and/or Western movie? Well, not precisely so – but close enough to fit the Forgotten Horrors agenda. The books’ greater point all along has been that of isolating the weirdness in a range of motion pictures beyond the narrowly defined genres of horror and science-fantasy. And more peculiar than William Beaudine’s Jiggs and Maggie Out West, they don’t hardly come.
Born in St. Louis to Irish parents, McManus registered early in the last century as a newspaper cartoonist capable of finding a resonant absurdity in everyday domestic life, and of veering into dreamlike fantasy in the manner of Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland. With McCay, during the 1910s, McManus began exploring the finer possibilities of cartoon-movie animation: It is McManus, in a live-action prologue to the 1914 animation-charged Gertie the Dinosaur, who stakes a wager with McCay about the challenges of bringing a prehistoric beast to a semblance of lifelike motion. McManus’ larger filmography dates from 1913, as source-author, animator, and occasional actor.
Monogram Pictures’ formal Jiggs and Maggie series spans only 1946 -1950, but the funnypapers’ Bringing Up Father – a broadly parodic but subtly satiric study of an Irish-immigrant workingman, Jiggs, and his social-climbing wife, Maggie – had become fodder for the movie business many years beforehand.
Day Three at San Diego Comic-Con 2007 was a record breaker even before the sun went up … and The Big ComicMix Broadcast is on the case, talking to new friends, seeking our a famous face or two and taking our place in the fan packed premiere of Superman: Doomsday. We talk to producer Bruce Timm about DC’s DVD future, and then we go girl watching with a guy from Kill Bill. Just a typical day in San Diego…
Blonde or Brunette? Decide and Press The Button
A few news items of note from the various panels and such at the San Diego Comic-Con:
• Marv Wolfman and George Pérez will be reunited to do Teen Titans issue #50.
• Warren Ellis will be taking over for Joss Whedon on Astonishing X-Men next year. The title will change to Astonishing X-men: Second Stage.
• And per some confused mumbling of Dan DiDio at a panel on Thursday: there is a new All Star Squadron project in the works. However, it will not be tales of WWII, because as Mike Carlin summed up: “Um, Hitler lost.”
In movie/teevee news, the DVD Sneak Peek panel offered up some details on upcoming DVD packages but started off with Javier Soto describing next year’s Hellboy 2: The Golden Army as “Hellboy plus Pan’s Labyrinth on steroids.”
It seemed that the opinion of the panelists was that there isn’t much new left to do in the world of special features and they are all working finding a way to provide content on DVDs that goes beyond deleted scenes. And rather want to bring audiences a more than what they got in the theater (or on TV) in the feature.
With The 4400 Season 4 DVD, we’ll also be getting the season finale director’s cut.
Twin Peaks: The Definitive Collection (out October 30th) will have both pilots, the complete series, “tons of extras including deleted scenes” and a new documentary featuring interviews with the cast today in a roundtable discussion with David Lynch. In the clip that was shared with Comic-Con attendees, Lynch came off more than a little creepy-old-man-ish when discussing a kissing scene with actress Madchen Amick, Kyle MacLachlan mutely sitting to her right all the while.
The biggest treat of the panel was learning about what will be in the box for December 18th Blade Runner: The Final Cut. The 5-disc box set will have five versions of the film:
• The new cut Final Cut version, which includes a CGI correction of the scene where Zhora goes through the plate glass, Joanna Cassidy came back and refilmed for it.
• The international cut, which was described as "with extra violence."
• The Original 1982 version
• The 1992 Director’s Cut
• Work print
All will feature 16 x 9 aspect ratio and 5:1 audio.
Also in the set is the all new three and a half-hour long documentary “Dangerous Days.” And, yes, they got Harrison Ford to do it.
There will be a theatrical release of The Final Cut version in October in New York and Los Angeles, which might put something or other in contention for 2007 Oscars. Maybe.
The Seattle Times reviews Jasper Fforde’s “Thursday Next” series.
Slate looks at Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
The Agony Column reviews Alan Campbell’s Lye Street, a novella-as-a-book prequel to Scar Night.
Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist reviews Jeff Somers’s The Electric Church.
Blogcritics has what I think is their sixth review for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Honestly, I can’t keep track any more.
Book Fetish reviews a three-author linked erotic romance anthology called Hell on Heels. (Oh my God, the Twayne Triplets are back…and this time they’re porn!)
Bookgasm reviews Warren Hammond’s KOP.
Bookgasm also reviews A Dog About Town, a murder mystery told from the POV of a thinking dog, which is fantasy enough for my book.
The Henry Herald of Georgia reviews Kull: Exile of Atlantis by Robert E. Howard.
American Chronicle reviews Harry Potter and the…Half-Blood Prince. (ha HA! Fooled you!)
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.
People keep talking, and we keep taking notes…
"One guy asked me if I had my leg amputated to get the job." — Lacey Henderson, pictured at right, who’s been appearing as Cherry Darling to promote the DVD release of Grindhouse. Via USA Today.
"How did they make her look like that?" — A mother with two kids looking at Ms. Henderson working at the booth.
"How do they post for a job like that?" — ComicMix‘s Matt Raub
At the pilot screening for ABC’s Pushing Daisies:
Audience member: "There seem to a be a lot of symetric and palindromic references in this show — can you explain?"
(long pause from the writer, director, and cast)
Chi McBride: "Ummm, what? What did you say? This is COMIC CON. Repeat your question."
In the hall between panels: "It’s so crowded I couldn’t even get into the ballrooms for the studio panels, and I’m writing for Entertainment Weekly!"
“Hellboy plus Pan’s Labyrinth on steroids.” —Javier Soto describing next year’s Hellboy 2: The Golden Army
Introducing themselves at the GameTap Tomb Raider Re-envisioned panel:
"I’m Stan Lee." –Warren Ellis
"I’m Jack Kirby." –Brian Pulido
"I’m Peter Chung." –Peter Chung
Contributing spies: Kai Connolly, Adriane Nash.
Can we hear anything over this much hubbub? Of course we can… and our spies are everywhere.
Around aisle 2300: "I can prove the convention is too crowded. When a pretty girl walks by, and a second pretty girl walks by before you’re done staring at the first one, it’s too crowded."
Marv Wolfman: "The biggest celebrity here is Stan Lee. Everybody, young, old, knows who Stan Lee is, what he looks like, and what kind of personality he is. And of course everybody knows that Stan Lee created Superman."
At the "Writing About Comics" panel:
Tom Spurgeon: "I hope words continue to remain prominent in this field, becuase if we all go to video, I’m screwed."
Glenn Hauman: "Can I quote you?"
Tom: "Sure, and then I’ll link to you."
Douglas Wolk: "Good, and then Dirk can link to you linking to him."
Douglas Wolk: "I’m a little tired of all these comics that want to a movie when they grow up."
Nisha Gopalan, EW: "Isn’t that Virgin Comics’ business model?"
Tom Spurgeon: "It’s a little amazing that Variety and Enterainment Weekly are covering comics, when distribution is so sporadic– it’s writing about this great book that you might be able to find on such and such a time and maybe in such and such a place."
In the audience at "The Black Panel":
"What is Marv Wolfman doing on this panel?"
"He’s a token."
Times Online looks back at the British ‘80s craze for Fighting Fantasy.
The Millions has a looooong post (no, really, it’s long) about Harry Potter from a children’s librarian’s perspective.
Queen guitarist Brian May has gone back to school — to finish his doctorate in astrophysics. That’s a smart move – you always want to have a day-job to fall back on, if the music thing doesn’t work out.
John Scalzi has discovered a typewriter that sends e-mail.
Lou Anders explains patiently that SF is not dead. (Me, I’d have just pointed out that anyone who goes to a Nebula Awards Weekend in New York City – horribly expensive New York City, not to mention nightlife-dead Way the Hell Downtown NYC – and expects the demographic not to be “middle-aged to old” is deluding himself about the interests and finances of young SF-reading people.)
And you’ve heard about NASA’s drunk astronauts by now, yes?
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