PULPED! The Official New Pulp Podcast presents: THE RUBY FILES GETS PULPED!
Host Tommy Hancock brings on a whole herd of Pulp Cats to talk about Airship 27 Productions’ latest original anthology – THE RUBY FILES! Listen as Ron Fortier, Rob Davis, Bobby Nash, Sean Taylor, William Patrick Maynard, Mark Wheatley, and Andrew Salmon discuss noir, hard boiledness, gumshoes, dames, and more! Learn about the creation, writing, and art behind this brand new chapter in the history of Private Eye Pulp!
I’ll tell you right up front that I had a stronger emotional reaction to the film than most audience members, largely because of the theme of loss that permeates most of the story. As a result, I found myself loving the We Bought a Zoo and have been recommending it to families ever since. Now that it is out on DVD from 20th Century Home Entertainment, I’m here to recommend it as a purchase as well.
Since we’re all about to fall in love with Scarlet Johansson all over again when she kicks ass in The Avengers, it’s good to see her actually acting here, paired nicely with Matt Damon, the grieving patriarch who needs to change his life in some way and chooses to do so in a rather radical fashion. (more…)
What has gone before – the quick and dirty recap. 1999: I pitched and sold what I consider the greatest idea I’ve ever come up with to DC Comics. Before I pitched the idea I checked with three of the best writers in the industry, Keith Giffen, Lovern Kindzieski and David Quinn. They all thought it was a great idea. Keith Giffen called it one of the greatest ideas he’s ever heard.
After hearing praise from those guys I ran the idea pass Dwayne McDuffie. Dwayne liked the idea so much he said he wanted to write it. It was with that in mind I pitched the idea to Jenette Kahn who was running DC Comics at the time.
Jenette loved idea and said “Let’s do it.”
Jenette Kahn is no longer head of DC. She makes movies now. Big movies. Jenette produced the Clint Eastwood film Gran Torino.
Like I said, big movies.
From the moment I met Jenette, I liked her. I’m glad to say she liked me also. We hit it off right away. We talked about anything and everything. One day, Jenette and I were talking about fine artists and she asked me if I knew the work of William T. Williams. I did. In fact, I knew his work so well Jenette was impressed. I knew more about his work than Jenette and at one point she remarked that I must be a huge fan. “I’d better be.” I told Jenette. He’s my cousin.”
Jenette said she would like to meet him so right then and there I made a call and in a few days Jenette was being given a studio tour by my cousin. In my entire life I’ve only asked my cousin to give two people personal studio tours. Jenette was one of them.
That’s a big deal because my cousin is a huge artist.
How huge?
He’s in the Janson History Of Art, the definitive book on art history.
That’s how huge.
My cousin is my mentor and my surrogate father. He and my mother quite literally saved my life while I was growing up. I’m fiercely protective of my cousin. Every mofo with a serious bank account asks me to hook them up once they find out William T. Williams is my cousin.
Nope.
He’s too important as an artist and as my family for me to make a call on anyone’s behalf just because they can drop a million bucks or more (yes, you read that right) on some art. So I’ve only made that call twice and Jenette was one of them.
I made that call because Jenette is simply a wonderful person and I knew my cousin would enjoy meeting her as much as she would enjoy meeting him.
Some years before that, Jenette and I had talked about me coming to DC as the first black editor. As cool as I thought that was I couldn’t do it. Frankly, I couldn’t afford the pay cut. What I did do was make a list of some people whom I thought would be great choices. Jenette thanked me for thinking of that and actually someone from that list was hired. No, I didn’t get them the job nor do I know if anything I said had anything to do with him getting the job. What mattered to be was DC comics had a black editor.
I tell you the history with Jenette and I because of the importance of what happened to the project I sold to DC. The project I considered the greatest idea I’ve ever had.
Project X was green lit by Jenette and assigned to an editor at DC.
Me not being an idiot, asked Dwayne McDuffie to write it based on my overview and I was to handle the art. Dwayne said yes and I was doubly excited. The editor chosen, loved the idea, and couldn’t wait to do it.
I’d done it.
I’d sold the greatest idea I ever had. This would be an important project, written by an important writer, published by an important publisher with art by an artist with something to prove. I’d had two big projects before this from DC. ETC, the first series ever published by DC’s imprint Piranha Press and Shado, a four issue mini-series written by Mike Grell.
Neither of those projects were my finest hour.
Although, believe it or not I still get fan mail from France on ETC. Two months ago I received an email from a comic club in France asking if I was coming to France in the future. I just so happen to be going to France this September on some business and the club asked if they could take me to dinner and talk to me about ETC.
Damn. The French must do a lot of meth… and coke… together.
Back to Project X.
I was on cloud 9! I was about to begin work on what I still consider the greatest idea in the history of comics! Yes, I’m well aware it’s not the greatest idea in the history of comics but to me it certainly felt that way.
So don’t send me comments about how there is no way I could have come up with the greatest idea in the history of comics. As I said, I know I didn’t.
It’s a close second…
So, let’s recap.
I’d sold the second greatest idea in the history of comics to one of the greatest publishers in the business. It was to be written by one of the greatest writers with art by a guy who was going to make sure this time he got it right.
Martin Powell shared with All Pulp a piece of teaser art from legendary comic book illustrator, Pablo Marcos, from the upcoming story, “The City That Couldn’t Sleep” starring The Spider from Moonstone Books. For twenty-three days no one in New York City had slept.
None could explain it. No one could escape it. The sickness had infected the entire teeming metropolis. The fierce and filthy streets were haunted by mass multitudes of shambling automatons trapped in a living, waking, and endless nightmare.
THE SPIDER returns in “The City That Couldn’t Sleep.” Written by me with stunning interior art by Pablo Marcos. Coming from Moonstone.
In the final contest of the tournament between Thomas Siddell’s Gunnerkrigg Court and Tarol Hunt’s Goblins, fans came out in force and it got a bit ugly in the stands. As a response to the vitriol that sprung up in the comment threads, both Thomas and Tarol agreed that whatever they won should be donated to Child’s Play, a game industry charity dedicated to improving the lives of children with toys and games in their network of over 70 hospitals worldwide.
To follow their example from their joint donation of $150, ComicMix is adding the $50 that was left over from nobody picking the Final Four contestants, to bring it up to an even $200.
We tip our hats to Tarol and Thomas for being gentlemen, and we hope you enjoy reading their works.
Oh… and congratulations to Gunnerkrigg Court for winning the 2012 Mix March Madness Webcomics Tournament, 22,159 votes to 21,226!
We thank all of you for participating, and hope to see you in a few days when we start taking nominations for our May Mayhem NSFW Webcomics Tournament!
To see the previous divisions and how they finished, click here, or look at our directory for all the nominated webcomics.
One of the busiest people within the New Pulp movement is author Bobby Nash. Amongst his credits is co-creating and contributing to the new anthology from Airship 27: The Ruby Files. Bobby was nice enough to take a few minutes out of his busy schedule to grant The Free Choice E-zine an interview.
New Pulp Author and The Ruby Files co-creator, Bobby Nash was the first guest for the new The Random 10 interview segment at the A Bit Too Old For Comics? blog.
“We talk turkey about writing bad-ass ninja chicks, working for Gene Simmons, and writing my favorite genre — the blender amalgamation of pulp, action, and lit,” Says Sean of the interview.
Since alien invasion films are nothing new, it all comes down to the execution. Having a vision of the characters and the nature of the attack will make or break a film and in the case of The Darkest Hour, it all falls flat. There’s a distinct lack of innovation to the set up or characters although director Chris Gorak and producer Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) get credit for setting the movie in Russia which at least gave us different visuals. But, the film then centers on a quartet of English-speaking foreigners with not enough of a fish out of water vibe to make it interesting. The movie, released in 3-D on Christmas Day was quickly dismissed by critics and audiences for being anything but a nice present.
The movie, out now from Summit Home Entertainment, focuses on Sean (Emile Hirsch) and Ben (Max Minghella), two Americans in Russia to sell a social networking concept only to discover they’ve been ripped off. Drowning their sorrows at a bar, they meet up with Natalie (Olivia Thirlby) and Anne (Rachael Taylor), and just then, the invasion begins. It takes a while to determine the full scope of the problems thank to an EMP knocking out all the electronics. There’s panic, there’s screaming and shouting and oh yeah, invisible alien attackers who can disintegrate you with a touch.
It becomes a survival and resistance story so the Russian locale is merely a backdrop that serves to complicate our protagonists’ journey but that’s about it. There really is weak writing from Jon Spaihts so the characters are interchangeable and not interesting enough for the audience to care who lives or dies. This could have been a really interesting character study fueled by adrenaline and special effects but instead, it has a sameness that spoils the story. While watchable, it’s just not special enough to seek out, making this a perfect cable time-killer.
There are some nice visuals, some good moments, some actual thinking going on as they figure out how to track the unseen foes and go on to build a Faraday Box to protect themselves. But it’s too little scattered over a poorly-paced 89 minutes. On the other hand, the movie looks and sounds terrific on Blu-ray. If as much effort went into the story as it did on the transfer we’d all have it on our buy lists.
As much as the film has a been there, done that feel, so do the extras accompanying the DVD. There’s Gorak providing some nice commentary about the film’s troubled production, shooting in Russia and so on. You also have a featurette “Survivors” (8:10) looking at the rest of the people in Russia as a supplement to the feature; “The Darkest Hour: Visualizing an Invasion” (12:09) which is the obligatory piece on the visual effects; and a few Deleted and Extended Scenes (4:48), with optional director commentary.
