More Whovian Hallowe’en goodness
Your video of the day, courtesy of Lisa at Sequentially Speaking:
Lisa also links to the how-to at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, for the truly creative and talented among us.
Author: Elayne Riggs
An Artistic Vocabulary, by Elayne Riggs
For a few years in the ’90s, I wrote weekly comic book reviews which I published online in the Usenet rec.arts.comics groups and CompuServe’s Comics Forum. As I was one of only a handful of women reviewing comics at the time (I remember there was me, Johanna Draper and Denise Sudell online and of course Maggie Thompson in print), my "Pen-Elayne For Your Thoughts" reviews were noticed and commented on fairly frequently, both by other readers and by the professionals who worked on the books I discussed. (My review of a Legion annual prompted the book’s inker to email me, and a couple years later we were married.) It was a cool self-publishing gig which led to all sorts of goodies, from being "recognized" by name at conventions (especially helpful when working the Friends of Lulu booth) to being sent freebies and previews to drum up interest and get the comment threads going (about the actual story rather than the anticipation thereof).
I cherished my interactions with pros, particularly artists. Writing I understood. I’d been a writer for decades, I intrinsically got the process. But art — here was a foreign realm, one to which I could never hope to aspire. These folks created magic that I’d never hope to duplicate. I felt a driving need to at least familiarize myself with the hows and whys of graphic sequential storytelling. After all, I reasoned, if you take into account time spent in the actual creation of a comic book story, the art is far more than half of what goes into it. Every line on the page has a reason to be there, and I wanted to find out what it all meant.
In order to do so, I needed to cultivate an artistic vocabulary.
Who’s Who for Hallowe’en
The Guardian reports on a "must-have" item among British children for the upcoming holiday season: a mask modelled on the Dalek-human hybrid which appeared in the Doctor Who episode "Daleks in Manhattan" and which "changes the voice of the wearer to the metallic scream of the doctor’s mortal enemies." Parents everywhere will no doubt be thrilled.
The mask featuress two play buttons; the first activates a Dalek question, followed by Dalek Sec Hybrid’s reply, and the second activates the Dalek Voice Changer Function. The product was mentioned in the context of many other TV-based toys available for Christmas which are expected to be best-sellers, but what about those who need to have it for Hallowe’en?
Never fear, it’s available now, at least in the UK. Sure beats "Anna Rexia," if you ask me!
More fall classics
Our readers aren’t the only ones falling for ComicMix‘s new format. We Phase I-ers are really excited over Phase II as well; that handy-dandy Latest News search box has made doing these weekly wrap-ups easier than ever! And the powers that be aren’t done tinkering yet! Here’s what our columnists have offered you this past week:
- Mike Gold – Whizzy’s Wazoo #35: Name Dropping
- Dennis O’Neil – The Four-Color Answer #35: Darkness in Four Colors
- Me – It’s All Good #34: The Fifth Freedom
- John Ostrander – Off in the O-Zone #35: Obit the Living
- Michael Davis – Straight, No Chaser #35: The Fanboy Guide to Girls • Part 2
- Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise #26: (We Could Be) Heroes: Top Ten Rock Songs About Superman
- Michael A. Price – Forgotten Horrors #26: Cowpuncher cartoonist J.R. Williams
- Ric Meyers – DVD Xtra #20: Fantastic Up Creature – Rise of the Surf’s Comforts: #21: Hostel II Hostel
And don’t forget to click on Mellifluous Mike Raub‘s latest Big ComicMix Broadcasts over there on the right!
ELAYNE RIGGS: The Fifth Freedom
Last week was the American Library Association’s annual "Banned Books Week." What bothers me most about Banned Books Week isn’t its concept, but its name. Even its proponents admit it’s not about banned books, but challenged ones. Even at our country’s most fascist periods (like, um, now), I don’t believe our federal, state or local governments have actually banned books in decades, if ever. But apparently "banned" has a more alliterative cachet than "challenged" or "endangered" or even scrapping the misnomer altogether in favor of something like "Freedom to Read Week" which is more in keeping with the point of the event — to "celebrate the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stress the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them."
Oh sure, lots of backwards-thinking people, the kind who usually believe every word in the Bible is true (rather than seeing the book as allegorical fiction and an interesting take on history by multiple authors, the way a lot of rationalists view it), seek to limit others’ imaginations and freedoms and generally stir up trouble by whining in the courts about any piece of fact or fiction they don’t like, from science texts to Harry Potter. And these attempts at censorship should be and are condemned and fought by patriots and book-lovers everywhere they crop up. Partly because of these efforts, no attempts have succeeded.
And yet, people’s hobbies and even lives have been ruined by this repression. Even in our hobby, the CBLDF abounds with stories of comic shop owners who paid for a misstep or a failure to predict ever-shifting "community standards" usually embodied by the community’s loudest kook.
Menagerie bows in theatres
Next month will mark the release of the remastered 10-disc DVD (and HD-DVD) set of the original Star Trek series, and the Trek publicity machine has been busy. We’ve seen an asteroid named for George Takei, both Takei and Nichelle Nichols appearing on Heroes (which also houses the proto-Spock), and the world will even witness William Shatner’s upcoming receipt of the Jules Verne Lifetime Achievement Award in Paris in December.
But for some Trekkers, that just isn’t enough. They need their own version of the Buffy musical phenomenon. And the powers that be are more than happy to oblige, at $12.50 a pop.
On November 13, the two-part remastered version of "The Menagerie," made using footage from the original ST pilot "The Cage," will be shown in select theatres throughout North America. The event will include an "in-theatre exclusive greeting from creator Gene Roddenberry’s son, Eugene ‘Rod’ Roddenberry" and of course the evening wouldn’t be complete without the mandatory making-of-behind-the-scenes self-congratulations. Bear in mind, the "event content," as it’s called, will be shown in its original (TV) format, 4×3.
Some of us are just looking forward (or backward, as the case may be) once more to a female Number One.
Phasing in with more to come
Wow, it’s been some week for ComicMix, and we appreciate all the kind words of support and terrific reviews we’ve seen so far! Please let us know where you’ve seen our comics discussed, we don’t want to miss any feedback! In the meantime, here’s your weekly wrapup of our regular columns:
- Mike Gold – Whizzy’s Wazoo #34: Our Son Will Come Out Tomorrow
- Dennis O’Neil – The Four-Color Answer? #34: Plugging No-Face
- Me – It’s All Good #33: The Girls of Summer
- John Ostrander – Off in the O-Zone #34: Genius and Barbecue
- Michael Davis – Straight, No Chaser #34: The Fanboy Guide to Girls • Part 1
- Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise #25: Every Picture Tells a Story
- Michael A. Price – Forgotten Horrors #25: Shock! Theatre, 50 years later
As you can see, Mellifluous Mike Raub‘s Big ComicMix Broadcasts are now all accessible right from our front page, so no need to recap them here any more; just scroll down on the right sidebar and there they are! In fact, it just so happens that all of the above columns can currently be accessed from our section entitled "More Comics News" at the bottom of our front page, mixed in with our news items. Can a separate column archives be far behind? Well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?
Bungie cutting the cord?
On the heels of the phenomenal success of Halo 3, the rumors are flying fast and furious in the gaming world that Bungie Studios is about to separate from Microsoft.
The buzz apparently started with a gamer on 8Bit Joystick, citing the old standby, "A friend of mine who has someone close to them that works at Bungie…" and claiming Microsoft would retain the Halo property and let Bungie once more produce independent projects, listing among the proofs a search of the company’s global address book and Microsoft’s controlling nature. The rumor was then more or less contradicted at XYHD.TV, without the author getting around to flat-out denying it. Now it’s being spoken of on larger sites like Game Informer and CNet as if it may be a done deal, even though everyone’s still quite careful to use the "r" word.
Tantalizing food for thought includes "For an unstated, but significant amount of money, Bungie shareholders bought the studio name back from Microsoft" and "Microsoft was supposed to release the press release today [10/1] but if they wait till 10/6 the impact won’t affect the quarterly results." So I guess we all need to stay tuned until Friday to see whether this rumor becomes fact!
ELAYNE RIGGS: The Girls of Summer
The summer of 2007 is well and truly behind us now. The regular baseball season has wrapped, culminating in the promise of the playoffs and World Series, new network TV shows have debuted and returned, and October ushers in a new era for many of us. For ComicMix it means Phase II, the actual raison d’etre for this site (and I’m psyched to be sharing Wednesdays with EZ Street). For me it signals an imminent lifestyle change as the day job I’ve held for the last ten years is about to disappear, a part of my life destined to become an unpleasant memory in the very near future.
This job has taken much out of me emotionally this last decade, snipping away at little pieces of my soul and memory that I feared I’d never recover. But now that things are taking their course and I feel like I’m about to be paroled, I find many of those pieces are starting to return. Robin’s remarked that I remind him once again of the person I was when we met, the last time I was between jobs — healthier, happier, more energetic and optimistic, closer to my true self. And I’m having strange dreams that mix the past and present, where I can almost recall things that I’d thought gone forever.
The other night I dreamt I was back in college, only I was the person I am today. And for some reason, my roommate looked exactly like Sarah Silverman. (I often dream about celebs for whom I have no particular affinity in real life; the pheme of fame, as Stephen Fry calls it, seeps into my subconscious remarkably easily.) And I remarked to Sarah, in between trying to divvy up the laundry and other mundane chores, that I was impressed by all the youthful enthusiasm around me. "I remember when I used to have that kind of energy," I mused. "Heck, back when I was a day camp counselor I’d run around all the time…"
Then I woke up, thinking about day camp.
Everything old is new again
Only two days and counting until the next exciting phase of ComicMix debuts! Lots of familiar names with brand-new comics work, a couple of whom also double as regular columnists. Speaking of which, here are our contributions from the last week of September:
- Mike Gold – Whizzy’s Wazoo #33: Enough Is Enough
- Dennis O’Neil – The Four-Color Answer? #33: On Writing Comics, Part Two
- Me – It’s All Good #32: Still Life with Gadgets
- John Ostrander – Off in the O-Zone #33: Devil’s Advocate – Iraq
- Michael Davis – Straight, No Chaser #33: All My Children…Suck
- Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise #24: If I Could Talk to the Animals
- Michael A. Price – Forgotten Horrors #24: The folklore-into-fiction cycle persists
- Ric Meyers – DVDXtra #19: Bram Stoker’s Ninja
Mellifluous Mike Raub is smoothly into triple digits with his Big ComicMix Broadcasts; here’s what he’s had for us this past week:
And Media Queen Martha Thomases has been previewing our comics offerings for the last couple of weeks; here’s a compendium to get you up to speed:
- GrimJack – Every Tuesday (debuts 10/2)
- EZ Street – Every Wednesday (debuts 10/3)
- Black Ice – Every Thursday (debuts 10/4)
- Munden’s Bar – Every Friday (debuts 10/5)
- Simone & Ajax – Every Saturday (debuts 10/6)
- Fishhead – Every Monday (debuts 10/8)
Hope you’ll join us this coming Tuesday as we debut our free comics content by some of the industry’s greatest luminaries! Did I mention free yet?
