Paul Kupperberg tipped me off, Mark Evanier has the news: Jim Mooney, the incredibly prolific penciller and inker of everything from A-Team to World’s Finest, passed away over the weekend.
Jim was best known for his work on Supergirl and the Legion of Super Heroes in the sixties and Spider-Man in the seventies, but his career spanned from the forties to the nineties, as early as the Eisner-Iger shop and as late as Astro City.
Here, we have a self portrait of himself that he slipped into The Spectacular Spider-Man #41.
In today’s brand-new episode of Demons of Sherwood, by Robert Tinnell and Bo Hampton, our heroes seek refuge in a monastery where Friar Tuck keeps everyone safe.
He knows every hidey-hole and secret passage in the place, where he guards a most sacred treasure. What happens if he’s followed by someone who worships a different god?
Credits:Bo Hampton (Artist), Bo Hampton (Colorist), Bo Hampton (Letterer), Bo Hampton (Writer), Mike Gold (Editor), Robert Tinnell (Writer)
Liv Marie was born to Brian and Niki Alvey at 3:46 PM today, making this her zeroth birthday. She is 9 pounds 0 ounces and 19.5 inches long. Liv joins two very excited brothers and three doggies.
In case you don’t read the fine print, Brian is co-founder of ComicMix, and we wish the family nothing but the very, very best.
There’s something effortless about the comics of Jaime Hernandez. Both in storytelling and art, his Love and Rockets books glide smoothly, seamlessly along – perfect little vignettes into imagined lives.
This isn’t to say Hernandez doesn’t work hard at his craft. Take a deeper look at efforts like his latest collection, The Education of Hopey Glass (Fantagraphics, $19.99) and the attention to detail becomes eminently clear. But unless you will yourself toward that cause, it’s only too easy to slide right into the story and only come up for a breath when the last page has been flipped.
The first half of Hopey Glass is a particularly good example. More than just a glimpse into an unsettled life, Hernandez casts Hopey as a deeply shallow young woman suffering in the transition into adulthood, maturity and responsibility.
When her hedonistic impulses butt up against her new job as a teacher’s assistant, Hopey faces the pull of each world, and her anguish is palpable.
The book falters, though, when it suddenly drops that story and picks up the journey of Ray in his quest for women and success. While still a quality piece of comics, it’s much less compelling than Hopey’s story. And so the book as a whole becomes an incomplete puzzle, a collection of great but unfinished pieces.
On March 31, 1930, the Movie Producers and Distributors Association (the MPPDA) first instituted its Production Code, also known as "The Hays Code," because lawyer Will H. Hays headed the association.
The code prohibited filmmakers from producing anything that did not show “correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment.” This included any and all nudity, depiction of illegal drug use, offensive words, and ridicule of religion or marriage. On July 1, 1934, the Production Code Administration was established and every film was required to have a certificate of approval from them before it could be released.
The MPPDA became the Motion Picture Association of America (the MPAA) and continued to administer the Code until 1967, when MGM released the film Blowup despite being refused approval. The MPAA then worked on a rating system instead, and put it into effect on November 1, 1968. A modified version of that rating system is still used today.
Fifteen years ago today, while filming the adaptation of James O’Barr’s comic The Crow, the film crew filmed a scene in which Brandon Lee’s character walked into his apartment and discovered his girlfriend being raped by thugs. Actor Michael Massee, who played one of the film’s villains, was supposed to fire a gun at Lee as he walked into his apartment with groceries.
Because the movie’s second unit team were running behind schedule, it was decided that dummy cartridges (cartridges that outwardly appear to be functional, but contain no gunpowder) would be made from real cartridges. A cartridge with only a primer and a bullet was fired in the pistol prior to the scene. It caused a squib load, in which the primer provided enough force to push the bullet out of the cartridge and into the barrel of the revolver, where it became stuck.
The malfunction went unnoticed by the crew, and the same gun was used again later to shoot the death scene, having been re-loaded with blanks. Nevertheless, the squib load was still lodged in the barrel, and was propelled by the blank cartridge’s explosion out of the barrel and into Lee’s body. Although the bullet was traveling much slower than a normally fired bullet would be, the bullet’s large size and the extremely short firing distance made it powerful enough to fatally wound Lee.
When the blank was fired, the bullet shot out and hit Lee in the abdomen. He fell down instantly and the director shouted "Cut!", but Lee did not respond. The cast and crew filming rushed to him and noticed he was wounded. He was immediately rushed to the hospital where the doctors tried to revive him. It was too late however, and he was pronounced dead at 1:03 PM.
Ctrl+Alt+Del webcomic creator Tim Buckley recently dropped two pieces of news of interest to readers on his website.
The first is that Season Two of the Ctrl+Alt+Del Animated Series begins today. Like the property it was based on, animated CAD will premiere online first. Fans can buy individual episodes, the first of which will cost an introductory $0.99, or they can subscribe for the entire season in advance. This gives you access to the entirety of Season One, Season Two episodes as they become available and a discount on the DVDs. Subscribers get the whole package for $24.95 if they sign up today.
The second piece of news concerns the webcomic. Buckley admits that he was a fan of the Choose Your Own Adventure book series growing up. Before the webcomic gets too tied up with a wedding/pregnancy storyline, he wants to experiment with "Ethan MacManus: Space Archaeologist," a storyline where the CAD characters are reimagined in a cross between Star Wars and Indiana Jones. But here’s the best part: readers will be able to vote on the choices the pop-culture obsessed Ethan must make.
So if it’s not funny, you only have yourself to blame.
Newsarama reports that Warren Ellis will be leaving Marvel’s Thunderbolts with issue #121.
Ellis spoke about his decision to leave the title on his Whitechapel message board:
It’s as simple as this — if I don’t own it, I’m not going to spend my life on it. Joe Quesada and Dan Buckley know that, they’re fine with that, and they hire me on that understanding.
Or, if you like: you can only paint someone else’s house for so long before you start thinking that it might be nice to own your own house one day.
I’m okay with painting other people’s houses for short periods, because I’m good at it and it pays well and on nice days it’s fun. But I never ever confuse painting a house for owning that house. And if I spent every waking hour painting other people’s houses, I wouldn’t be able to build houses of my own.
The more creators who only took on housepainting as a part-time gig, the healthier this medium would be.
Christos Gage will take over writing duties on the title with #122, beginning a four-part tie-in to Secret Invasion.
With only four issues remaining in Countdown to Final Crisis, the looming end of DC’s year-long, weekly series marks not only the grand finale of a sprawling, epic storyline but also the conclusion of two years of weekly deadlines for industry veteran Keith Giffen.
After serving in the role of "breakdown artist" for the entire run of DC’s first weekly event, 52, Giffen jumped right back into a weekly production schedule last year as the breakdown artist and "story consultant" for Countdown (later renamed Countdown to Final Crisis). Two years and more than 100 issues later, the finish line is finally in sight for Giffen.
I spoke with the prolific creator about the highs, lows and upcoming end of Countdown to Final Crisis, as well as the last two years of weekly deadlines, last-minute changes and prolific output from the creators involved with each weekly series.
[Editor’s Note: For the spoiler-conscious, this interview contains discussion of some events occurring in both this week’s issue and future issues that, although hinted at and likely quite expected at this point in the Countdown storyline, are certainly worth a warning.]
COMICMIX: Keith, last time we spoke, I think you had just turned in the last issue of Countdown, right?
KEITH GIFFEN: Yeah, I had just popped in the final issue. Now, I can put weekly comics behind me for a while.
That was 104 in a row, man. Come on!
CMix: So, how are you feeling now that, for the first time in two years, you don’t have another issue that needs to go out as soon as you turn the last one in?
KG: Well, it wears on you. When I handed in that last issue of Countdown, the next day I was like, "I don’t have to do it anymore. The pressure is off."
It’s kind of nice. I can go back to my regular books now, and I can get back to my regular workload again. In a weird way, just like an abscessed tooth, you kind of miss it. It’s not there, but you’re kind of grateful it’s gone.
CMix: How did Countdown compare to 52?
KG: it’s really a whole different animal. It would be unfair to draw any comparisons between 52 and Countdown. The tone was different, the entire approach was dfifferent. The first time you do it, especially when it unfolds in real time, it’s an accomplishment. You did it!
The second time, you’re kind of expected to do it, because you did it the first time. It’s like a sequel to a movie — it’s not going to be as satisfying as the first time you saw it.
The overall thing is getting it done and putting these issues out. Certainly it wasn’t just me — it was an entire team of people pulling these projects along. Getting it out on time when so many monthly books seem to have trouble hitting the target, to do two years of a weekly and just nail it week after week, there’s a real sense of satisfaction there. Were there certain things I’d go back and redo if I had the chance? Sure. But I can say that about anything I’ve ever done. Hindsight’s always 20/20.
CMix: Was there anything you wanted to do in Countdown but couldn’t fit in due to the time constraints or other factors?
KG: Oh, yeah. We had lots of leftover ideas on 52 and we had lots of leftover ideas on Countdown, as well. I’m not going to go into them here because I never waste an idea, and I don’t want other people to waste the ideas, either. If everyone thought that it was a great idea and it didn’t make it into the series, you can pretty much guarantee that it will pop up somewhere else. Good ideas don’t die easy deaths.
One of the more disgusting experiences I suffered through in my professional life was the reaction of one DC Comics executive – no longer with the company; not for quite a while – to the new El Diablo series back in 1989. His response was “not a lot of those people buy our comics.”
Without this executive’s support, the series didn’t have a chance. It lumbered on through 16 issues despite good work from a respected team. A lot of people didn’t know the title existed. Your reaction might very well have been “El Diablo?? Oh, yeah, I think I remember that…” Sigh. When I hired a black man as a full editor at DC, a first for the company, a couple of my fellow editorial staffers made their displeasure quite well known to me, and to my boss.
This is no criticism of DC: they had a large staff even at that time and these clown were hardly the only bigots in the building. That’s America, and these people (as opposed to those people) sometimes get their way. Sometimes we watch them on CNN; sometimes we elect them to office.
Comic book universes have been slow to reflect the spectrum of humanity: too many white men running around with other white men for way too long. Yep, that’s been changing somewhat more slowly than in other sectors of our popular culture, but I’ll bet we’ve still got another black superhero coming out named “Black” something. At least Marvel is unlikely to create another black sidekick named Bucky.
Paul Kupperberg tipped me off, Mark Evanier has the news: Jim Mooney, the incredibly prolific penciller and inker of everything from A-Team to World’s Finest, passed away over the weekend.
books glide smoothly, seamlessly along – perfect little vignettes into imagined lives.
Newsarama
One of the more disgusting experiences I suffered through in my professional life was the reaction of one DC Comics executive – no longer with the company; not for quite a while – to the new El Diablo
