Author: Elayne Riggs

Hail the new, ye lads and lasses

Hail the new, ye lads and lasses

  • News
  • December 30, 2007

While it’s been a rather quiet week news-wise, our weekly ComicMix columns have seen lots of activity.  We were particularly honored to host an online wake of sorts last Thursday, reuniting members of the old CompuServe Comics and Animation Forum (myself included) in the comments section of John Ostrander’s touching remembrance of Paul "Zeus" Grant.  Here’s what else we’ve written for you this past week:

We wish everyone all you wish for yourselves in 2008 and beyond.

UN Teams with Marvel

UN Teams with Marvel

  • News
  • December 29, 2007

The Financial Times reports that the United Nations Office for Partnerships will be working with Marvel Comics to create "a comic book set in a fictional war-torn country with superheroes working alongside UNICEF aid workers and U.N peacekeepers."

Notes UPI somewhat sarcastically, the partnership is designed in part to bolster the UN’s "international image damaged by the unilateral diplomatic efforts of some Western countries by teaching children the value of international cooperation."

And by "some Western countries, " read "the scary guy with the mustache who wants to lop off the building’s top ten floors yet somehow got a recess appointment to be our ambassador to the organization, and who was forced out in deserved disgrace about a year ago."  The UN hopes to distribute the comics to about 1 million US children initially, and one can only hope Spider-Man & co. are more powerful than Ornery Moustache Dude.

Doctor Condemned, Ratings Extolled

Doctor Condemned, Ratings Extolled

  • News
  • December 28, 2007

Seems that Christmas entertainment is not without its controversy even in an officially Christian country like the UK.

On the heels of the massive ratings success of this year’s Doctor Who Christmas special, "Voyage of the Damned," which garnered a 50% share of the total British TV audience (increasing to 55% at its peak), an obscure group with way too much un-Christ-like anger (think the UK equivalent of crazy Bill Dohonue’s Catholic League) has complained about the portrayal of the Doctor as a savior figure as "completely inappropriate."  Why this complaint wasn’t lodged at the end of Series Three (see photo) is beyond me.

In addition, Millvina Dean, the last living survivor of the Titanic disaster, criticized the episode sight-unseen, saying "I think it is disrespectful to make entertainment of such a tragedy."  No word on whether she made the same complaint to James Cameron a few years back.

Who’s on First for Christmas

Who’s on First for Christmas

  • News
  • December 26, 2007

Paul Cornell reveals a true horror story hidden inside a mystery, and writes a Dr. Who story of the season for the London Telegraph.

Newsarama has previews of the upcoming series from IDW. A very Brady Christmas indeed.

And it took a little longer than I predicted, but the first of the Dr. Who Christmas episode segments (featuring David Tennant and Kylie Minogue) are now up.  Here’s part one of a promised eight-parter by an enterprising Whovian:

One in-joke that’s probably not really an in-joke but which I appreciated tremendously is the appearance, about three minutes in, of Geoffrey Palmer, probably best known on this side of the pond as Lionel in As Time Goes By (co-starring Dame Judy Dench), but who also did a terrific reading of A Christmas Carol a couple years ago.

‘Zat You, Santy Claus?, by Elayne Riggs

  • News
  • December 26, 2007

"Childhood is the time of man’s greatest content," said Ak, following the youth’s thoughts. "’Tis during these years of innocent pleasure that the little ones are most free from care."

One of the promises I made to myself during my temporary unemployment period was to finally read and reread all of the Oz books that I own. It’s a pleasurable if somewhat daunting goal, as L. Frank Baum wrote 14 volumes in all, then Ruth Plumly Thompson carried on with 19 more, and although I had my period of fanatic Oz collecting and I did make it through all of Baum’s volumes I believe I stopped somewhere after the third or fourth Thompson book.

[As you might be able to discern from the photo above, my last four Thompson volumes aren’t even out of shrink-wrapping yet (hence the glare from the flash), and that out of many, many other "official" Oz books I also own tomes by Eric Shanower (Giant Garden, Salt Sorcerer and all his Oz graphic novels which are shelved elsewhere), Eloise and Lynn McGraw (Rundlestone), Edward Einhorn (Paradox) and Rachel Cosgrove Payes (Wicked Witch). Of those I’ve only read Eric’s comics, so I have a lot of great reading still to come!]

But I digress; for now I’m still working my way through Baum, and I’ve just started his seventh book. Despite the fact that he was hardly what you’d call ahead of his time (he advocated the extermination of American Indians, his work contains a fair amount of assumptions about gender roles), I’m finding his Oz books a real comfort, not only because he wrote of a time and place with which I have absolutely no first- or even second-hand experience (my grandparents were all immigrants and I’ve never lived in the middle of the country), but because he understood what it meant to write for children.

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Tidings of comfort and joy

Tidings of comfort and joy

  • News
  • December 23, 2007

On the off-chance that anyone else out there is spending their Christmas holiday engaged in online reading rather than in more traditional pursuits (eating, opening pressies, eating, singing carols, eating, watching heartwarming holiday specials on TV, and eating), we herewith present this past week’s ComicMix columns:

Have a safe and peaceful Christmas, everyone!

Torchwood Two Trailer

Torchwood Two Trailer

  • News
  • December 21, 2007

Over at Freema Agyeman’s eponymous site, she’s posted a trailer for an episode of Torchwood‘s second series (or season, as they call it on this side of the pond) in which she appears.  Here’s a portion of a still from that episode:

Agyeman’s site also links to what she calls "the TARDIS Friends Network," consisting so far of the eponymous sites of David Tennant and Billie Piper.

In other Torchwood news, Series Two will also be airing specially-edited repeats of each episode which will be deemed more suitable for families and kids and, well, me.  Honestly, all this bed-hopping is driving me dizzy.  In further news, BBC America is still not available on our cable system, so it’s rather a moot point from this end.

More of My Favorite Things, by Elayne Riggs

More of My Favorite Things, by Elayne Riggs

  • News
  • December 19, 2007

The combination of my temporary unemployment and inclement weather has enabled me to catch up on my DC comp box reading, so I can finally pick up where I left off a few weeks back. Mind you, I was looking at October books at the time and since then the November box came in. Still, a couple of the same caveats apply as last time — I haven’t seen the comics from the last few weeks, which gives me a bit of a headache when Robin gets his Suicide Squad advance comps and the issue in question (#4, in stores now) cross-references an important plot point in a Checkmate issue I’ve yet to see. So a lot of these observations will be about the issue prior to the one most comic fans have already seen, but in most cases the artists are the same.

Also, as before, I won’t cover every artist who did a good or serviceable job, just the ones I considered my very favorites of this most recent batch. Any omissions are not to be taken as an assumption that I didn’t like other stuff. And yes, I’m still talking more about how the art affected me viscerally than using technical vocabulary, which makes these more overviews than reviews per se. I miss full-on reviewing, but I just don’t seem to have the time any more.

While I stopped at the letter "F" last time, I wanted to mention a couple books which hadn’t come out at the time. Onward, then:

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A Spacious Odyssey

A Spacious Odyssey

  • News
  • December 16, 2007

On this occasion of the 90th birthday of Sir Arthur C. Clarke, why not curl up in the capsule with a good ComicMix column or three?  After all, any sufficiently advanced ComicMix column is indistinguishable from magic!  Here’s a bunch from which to choose from this past week:

Now it’s time to leave that capsule, if you dare… Dave?  Dave?  ("Dave’s not here, man!")

Calls for artists

Calls for artists

  • News
  • December 15, 2007

Rich Watson passes along an invitation from Alex Simmons regarding an exhibition he’s putting together at the Bronx Community College, entitled THE COLOR OF COMICS: Reflections of Images Behind and Within the Pages.  Says Simmons, "this will be an exhibition comprised of characters of color in comics and the people behind them. Though the characters will be African, African American, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, etc., the creators may not be. Who, why, and how well it works — for the most part — is a story unto itself, and one we’ll let you and the viewers decide. The show opens the first week of February and runs through mid-March, 2008. It will contain images from a number of artist and publications, as well as works from the OTHER HEROES comic art exhibit, and the Africa Comics exhibition."  More information and submission guidelines here; the deadline is the end of this month.

As many have already noted, the installation of Val D’Orazio as Friends of Lulu National President has really revitalized the organization, which is currently holding a "Design-A-Lulu Initiative, a fundraising and increased public awareness effort in which we ask artists to dream up their own interpretation of our Lulu mascot."  Details can be found at Val’s Occasional Superheroine blog as well as the FoL site and, at last count, at least a dozen other places. The preferred deadline for this is the end of January.  We’re also quite pleased that Val has also undertaken a massive updating of the Women Doing Comics and Industrial Strength Women lists we originated on the national site.

Lastly, Upper Deck editor Mark Irwin has put out a call on his deviantART journal for artists for the Marvel Masterpieces 2 card sets; please click on the link for information on how to submit sample jpgs.  He’s planning to ship out the card blanks on January 24.

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