Monthly Archive: May 2008

Interview: Josh Hechinger on ‘Grave Doug Freshley’

Joshua Hechinger still hasn’t reached drinking age (that comes in July), but he’s already crafted a true comics gem in Grave Doug Freshley, a mash-up of comedy, horror and Spaghetti Western.

Cowboy and tough guy Doug Freshley takes a bullet to the head at the story’s start, but that’s not enough to stop him from a zombified revenge mission in the five-issue series from Archaia Studios Press. Hechinger recently spoke with me about where that idea came from, his love of Westerns and his upcoming projects.

COMICMIX: First, I’m curious about your choice to do a Western. Is that a genre you’ve long held an interest in? How did the idea of the book come about?

JOSH HECHINGER: I didn’t really care about Westerns one way or another for a while, actually. And then in high school, a friend of mine lent me The Good, The Bad and The Ugly… Pow, that was it. Instant Western fan.

As for Doug, well, a few weeks after watching The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, I was doodling in class instead of paying attention. And I doodled this zombie cowboy and a kinda Huck Finn-y kid. I didn’t really do anything more with it, but it sort of hung around in the back of my head until Marv [artist mpMann] came calling.

CMix: How much comics writing had you done previously?

JH: Well, this is my first real book. But I’d been writing comics nobody else saw since eighth grade or so, and I wrote something like 400 pages of various scripts in a year and change of college. I was doing three to five pages a session, twice a day. Although to be fair, most of it was kinda completely crap.

But anyway, by the time I started Doug, I at least knew how to sit down and just pound out pages. The pages probably weren’t crackling with genius, but I find it easier to clean up something than to nail it on the first draft anyway. The important thing was that I wasn’t sitting down and getting psyched-out by a blank page.

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Battlestar Galactica Webisodes and TV Movie Update

Battlestar Galactica Webisodes and TV Movie Update

Chicago Tribune blogger Maureen Ryan recently posted an update on the future of several Battlestar Galactica projects that BSG fans have been buzzing about for quite some time now.

Not only will there be a series of "webisodes" produced that will link the first and second half of the current season, but a trio of BSG TV movies is also a very likely possibility.

According to Ryan:

Executives are now doing number-crunching for these proposed films, and any deals for these movies are far from done. However, it would make sense to make more “Battlestar” TV movies while the show’s creative team and actors are still all in one place, as it were.

According to one source at the network, the talk about the films is just idle chatter “at this point.” But several other sources close to the show says there is good reason for “cautious optimism” about one to three future “Battlestar” films, which would get made this summer, if they get the green light.

More on the webisodes, movies and a few links to great BSG content found elsewhere around the InterWebs over at Ryan’s blog, The Watcher.

And remember to check back here on ComicMix every Monday after a new episode of Battlestar Galactica airs for our BSG Weekly interviews with series co-executive producer Mark Verheiden.

Indiana Jones and the Secret to Adventure, by John Ostrander

Indiana Jones and the Secret to Adventure, by John Ostrander

Spoiler warning: Spoilers. Why did it have to be spoilers?! I hate spoilers. Hate ‘em! Unfortunately, I can’t talk about what I want to talk about regarding the latest Indiana Jones flick unless I spill some beams. So I’m warning you upfront. The spoilers won’t appear until after the break and I’ll give you a final warning before I go into them. If you want to just skip the column this week, I’ll understand… this week. Don’t make a habit of it. I know where I live.

Wait. That didn’t come off right.

Okay, I’ve gotten out the fedora and went off to see the new Indiana Jones flick, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. As much as I’m a Star Wars fan (and I’d better be – I’ve been writing Star Wars for about eight years now and you can see what I’m doing in Star Wars: Legacy and, yes, that’s a plug), I’m a bigger goon for Dr. Jones. Even before Raiders of the Lost Ark came out, I was a fan because George Lucas talked in interviews about how his new movie originated in his and Steven Spielberg’s love for the old Saturday Matinee Serials. I knew exactly what he was talking about. I loved ‘em, too. Still do.

Saturday Matinee Serials are also known as “chapter plays” and originally were shown in movie theaters on Saturdays as a way of getting the kids to come back, week after week. They would last 12 to 15 chapters and each one would end with a cliffhanger for the hero or heroine with no way out. Of course, when the next chapter appeared, they showed you the segment that they hadn’t previously shown you which allowed said hero/heroine to escape just in the nick of time. The serials date back from the dawn of cinema to the early 50s when they fell prey to the confangled new invention that was to blight/enrich all out lives, television.

And it was there that I discovered the Saturday Serial. The old serials were re-packaged for Saturday Morning TV kid’s fare and, like the old matinees, were part of a package. It was here that I discovered these often cheesy pleasures. I remember Tim Tyler’s Luck – a 1937 Universal jungle adventure adapted from the comic strip of the same name. The strip petered out only in 1996. I also remember Don Winslow of the navy, also based on a comic strip of the time. In fact, it’s amazing how many of the comic strips and books of the time were adapted into serials – Dick Tracy, Superman, Batman, the Shadow (yeah, he had a comics strip), Spy Smasher, and an excellent version of Captain Marvel, among others.

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Review: ‘Janes in Love’ by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second in a series of reviews of the five books coming out from DC’s Minx imprint this year. Previously, Van Jensen reviewed Rebecca Donner’s Burnout. -RM]

There’s a touch of classic teen lit like The Babysitters Club to Minx’s Plain Janes series of books, as it features the not-so-original plot of a disparate group of teenaged girls bonding together for a cause and surviving adolescence.

That the series, with the second installment Janes in Love ($9.99) out in September, transcends its genre owes to writer Cecil Castellucci, who takes the conventional setup and spins it in unconventional ways.

The group of friends – all named Jane – in this case unite for the cause of art, seeking to beautify their small town through subversive means. Picking up from the first installment, the main Jane is caught up at Valentine’s Day with affection for two boys and a lack of funds to continue her art.

While those seem simple enough problems, the true center of the book are the unresolved tensions from the terrorist attack in the first volume, which sends main Jane’s mother into a near-coma. Subtly, all the plot threads take a similar tone as the characters, teenagers and otherwise, struggle with fears and insecurities.

The subtle complexities of the characters are captured with reserved perfection by Castellucci and rendered with great skill by artist Jim Rugg, who wields a masterful command of expressions in each panel.

The two [[[Plain Janes]]] books not only have been the best of the books Minx has published thus far, but also among the very best of young adult fiction. Sure, the cover’s pink and has flowers on it, but this is a comic for just about everybody.

Van Jensen is a former crime reporter turned comic book journalist. Every Wednesday, he braves Atlanta traffic to visit Oxford Comics, where he reads a whole mess of books for his weekly reviews. Van’s blog can be found at graphicfiction.wordpress.com.

Publishers who would like their books to be reviewed at ComicMix should contact ComicMix through the usual channels or email Van Jensen directly at van (dot) jensen (at) gmail (dot) com.

EZ Street: Crash!

EZ Street: Crash!

In today’s brand new episode of EZ Street, by Mark Wheatley and Robert Tinnell, things go bump in the night.  It’s enough to make a man question his entire career, assuming he makes it out of the crash in one piece.

Credits: Mark Wheatley (Artist), Mark Wheatley (Colorist), Mark Wheatley (Letterer), Mark Wheatley (Writer), Mike Gold (Editor), Robert Tinnell (Writer)

More: EZ Street

 

Neil Gaiman to Write ‘Doctor Who’ in 2010?

Neil Gaiman to Write ‘Doctor Who’ in 2010?

Rich Johnston ignited a flurry of discussion among both comics fans and Doctor Who fans this week by reporting a rumor in his weekly "Lying in the Gutters" column that author Neil Gaiman had been approached to write an episode of the popular BBC series in 2010.

According to Johnston:

Such as the rumour running around my BBC sources that Neil Gaiman being approached to write an episode for 2010. That would be this Neil Gaiman, comic author, fantasy novelist, screenwriter, poet and writer of the Duran Duran Biography 1985. With possibly the most non-committal non-confirmation I’ve ever read. And I’ve read the responses of current Labour ministers.

In fact when I asked Neil if he’d care to comment, he pleaded the Francis saying, "You may very well think that, but I could not possibly comment."

I do very well think that. I do.

Of course, nothing will actually have been commissioned by the BBC at this stage, and there’s many a slip ‘twixt cup and prosthetic lip, but it’s looking good.

For more on the rumor, including other "potential facts" regarding the future of Doctor Who, check out this week’s "Lying in the Gutters."

And remember to check back here on ComicMix every week after a new episode of Doctor Who airs in the U.S. for our weekly Doctor Who in Review analysis of all the Easter Eggs, hints and continuity checks from the current series.

Joe Quesada on ‘When I Grow Up’

Joe Quesada on ‘When I Grow Up’

Any kid worth his Harry Potter books knows who Scholastic is; the multimedia publisher that educates and entertains school children.

As part of their When I Grow Up series of web articles, the publisher recruits adults to tell kids what their jobs are like. The latest grown-up to provide career advice is Joe Quesada, Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics.

Here are some of the highlights:

I  play with Spider-Man for a living!

When I was a kid, I wanted to be: A baseball player for the New York Mets.

My father bought me my first comic in 1968 because he had seen in the news that Stan Lee and Marvel were introducing a new comic book that preached against the evils of drug abuse, and he thought it would be a great way to get the message across.

It’s a cute article, aAnd let’s face it, we all want to grow up to be the guy who runs a comic book company, right?

Happy Birthday: Lynn Johnston

Happy Birthday: Lynn Johnston

Born in Collingwood, Ontario in 1947, Lynn Ridgway was raised in North Vancouver and attended the Vancouver School of Art. She worked at an animation studio after college but married in 1969 and moved back to Ontario, where she worked as a medical artist for several years.

She drew her first book, David We’re Pregnant while expecting her first child in the early 1970s—it was published in 1973. She divorced a short while later and quit her job to do freelance commercial and medical art—her second book, Hi Mom! Hi Dad! came out in 1975, just before she met and married dental student Rod Johnston.

In 1978, the Johnstons moved to Lynn Lake, Manitoba and Universal Press Syndicate asked if she would do a regular comic strip for them. Six months later, For Better or For Worse appeared. It now appears in over 2000 papers and more than 20 countries. Johnston has won many awards, including The Reuben in 1985—the first woman, first Canadian, and youngest artist ever to win it—as well as the Gemini in 1987, and the National Cartoonist Society award for Newspaper Comic Strip in 1991.

In 1993, she was nominated for a Pulitzer and in 2007 she received the Order of Manitoba. Johnston is still producing For Better or For Worse, but she announced in January that starting no later than September the strip would become a hybrid of earlier strips and new material—or reworked older material—about the younger versions of her beloved characters.

‘Hobbit’ Film Details Emerge During Jackson/Del Toro Q&A

‘Hobbit’ Film Details Emerge During Jackson/Del Toro Q&A

The Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson Q&A I told you about last week seems to have been fairly interesting and full of information for eager Hobbit fans.

Over at The Frodo Franchise, Kristin Thompson has a nice roundup of some of the highlights, including this bit:

Peter hints that Gandalf the Grey will be important in both The Hobbit and what’s currently just called Film 2. That seems to hint that Ian McKellen is willing to act in both, since later on Peter says that only characters whose actors will return for the second film will be written into its script.

There’s also a transcript of the full Q&A available at the Weta website.

Review: ‘How to Love’ from Actus Comics

Review: ‘How to Love’ from Actus Comics

How to Love
By Batia Kolton, David Polonsky, Mira Friedmann, Itzik Rennert, Rutu Modan, and Yirmi Pinkus; translated by Ishai Mishory
Actus/distributed by Top Shelf, August 2008, $29.95

Actus is an Israeli comics collective that publishes one joint project annually; their members are the six contributors to this book. This book was published in Israel by Actus, but is being distributed on this side of the Atlantic by Top Shelf Comics. (And was translated by Ishai Mishory, implying that there was a prior edition in Hebrew.) It’s officially publishing in August, but I can’t find it on any of the US online booksellers, and I got my copy several months ago – so it’s anyone’s guess when it will show up in your local comics shop (if ever). Top Shelf is selling it directly, so there’s at least that way to get it.

[[[How to Love]]] has six stories, one by each of the contributors, each about twenty pages long. (The subtitle calls them “graphic novellas,” which stretches a bit too far for my taste – is there anything wrong with short stories?)

It opens with Batia Kolton’s “Summer Story,” in which pre-teen Dorit watches her nameless older neighbor kissing a boyfriend on the street, then has the neighbor accompany her family on a trip to the beach. It’s a very slice-of-life story; Dorit is clearly learning about relationships through the neighbor, but the story doesn’t get inside her head; we see everything from outside, so we don’t know what Dorit thinks about any of it. The art is a clean-line style, very reminiscent of Actus’s most famous member, Rutu Modan.

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