Author: Elayne Riggs

Fan Comics Celebrate ‘Doctor Who’, ‘Torchwood’

Fan Comics Celebrate ‘Doctor Who’, ‘Torchwood’

  • News
  • February 12, 2008

Pia Guerra may have her work cut out for her.  While Guerra’s first issue of IDW’s Doctor Who comic book series is scheduled to come out in July, fan-drawn strips about the British sci-fi phenomenon and its spinoffs are already well underway.

Pseudonymous LiveJournal bloggers calling themselves spastasmagoria and jigglykat have created Torchwood Babiez, which is so unbearably adorable it could give Cute Overload a run for its money.  So far the ladies are up to Page 10, and they’re just getting rolling.

Meanwhile, Rich Morris is currently up to Page 81 of his wonderful strip The Ten Doctors, which can be enjoyed by casual viewers of the show but is really designed for the more fanatic trivia buff who remembers over a quarter century of Doctors, companions, villains and planets.  Only three of the story pages have been inked and colored so far, but Rich’s art is worthwhile even in pencil form.

Doubtless there are a ton of other fan-based comics making the rounds; we’d be especially interested to see any paying tribute to the kid-friendly "Sarah Jane Chronicles."

ComicMix Columns For The Week Ending Feb. 10, 2008

ComicMix Columns For The Week Ending Feb. 10, 2008

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  • February 10, 2008

There’s a new Marshall in town, and he’s laid down the law against punny headers.  So let’s just get down to business and rustle up this past week’s worth of ComicMix columns:

So if ComicMix newbee Rick is the Marshall, does that make me the schoolmarm with the heart of go — nah, I’m more like the extra mumbling "rhubarb" in the background…

Update on Marie Severin’s Recovery

Update on Marie Severin’s Recovery

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  • February 7, 2008

Cliff Meth reports on his blog that, as of today, comics great Marie Severin "has moved on to an assisted living facility out on Long Island. It’s been a solid, steady recovery. Her spirits are high (but weren’t they always?) and she acts like nothing much has happened. And nothing much has.

"Except for retirement. Marie isn’t drawing anymore. Isn’t taking coloring assignments either. Time has finally caught up with the First Lady of Comics and she’s spending her twilight years relaxing and doing fun stuff. Whatever fun stuff means."

We at ComicMix send our best, as always, to Marie, and suggest that some of her fun stuff include reading our many free comics and news items.  Provided the assisted living place has WiFi, of course.

Birds of a Feather, by Elayne Riggs

Birds of a Feather, by Elayne Riggs

  • News
  • February 6, 2008

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m already burnt out on the 2008 primary season. Okay, to tell you the truth I was burnt out sometime last autumn. The other day I was watching Tom Brokaw’s documentary about 1968 (highly recommended) and one of the political facts mentioned was that Bobby Kennedy didn’t even enter that year’s Presidential race until after the New Hampshire primary! Can you imagine such a thing today, a candidate not even declaring until after an "important" primary has already been run? This year almost all of them dropped out before yesterday’s Super-Duper Pooper-Scooper Fat Tuesday.

It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of Catholics out there are considering giving up following politics for Lent. It’s not like there’s anything in it for us any more. People joke about the campaigns turning into another version of American Idol, but if you think about it the parallels are valid. You have performances evaluated on TV by a bunch of millionaires, and you’re given the illusion of choice among a very narrowly-acceptable band of telegenic hopefuls running more on the basis of style over substance (hey, they have machines now that can "correct" even live voices so they all come out on-key and synthetically perfect). The big difference with politics, besides the sad reality that the results of this contest matters to our lives and the future and the rest of the world, is that the contestants are also millionaires. Have to be; they wouldn’t be considered "viable" candidates otherwise.

"Viable" is one of those nebulous, never-defined vagaries like "freedom" that means whatever the person using it wants the people hearing it to think it means. The less you define something, the less you can be pinned down and expected to stick to your definition. So when you assume everyone believes "freedom" means the same thing, when most of the time those who employ the term equate it with "unfettered capitalism and false consumer choice" even though others still consider it to mean "having bodily autonomy and not being homeless nor starving nor spied upon nor told how or whether to worship," they’re able to completely circumvent actual communication and not have anything they say be actionable! And "viable" is a media-created term — they don’t have to admit that their use of "viable" means "rich and part of the political machine and accepted by the corporations we’ve allowed to actually run this country" if they can get us to believe it means "intelligent and experienced enough to be taken seriously despite their income level or circle of cronies." I mean, we should have known that ship had long since sailed when the last guy got elected despite having mostly negative experience and far too little intelligence for the job.

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ComicMix Columns For The Week Ending Feb 3, 2008

ComicMix Columns For The Week Ending Feb 3, 2008

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  • February 3, 2008

Snackies at hand?  Ready to cheer on the best ads in between the quarters?  Me, I’m psyched to see me some Tom Petty at halftime.  Before they take the field for Superbowl XLIIayeaye!!one!, why not warm up with this past week’s ComicMix columns?:

I love how the titles of those first three columns kind of go together… sex, hate, death (warmed over)… Anyway, Giants in, erm, four, just to be weird…

Death, Warmed Over, by Elayne Riggs

Death, Warmed Over, by Elayne Riggs

  • News
  • January 30, 2008

As I type this I’m struggling through a pretty bad flu, which I am convinced I contracted on Thursday. That’s when I went for a job interview at the World Financial Center, a hermetically-sealed office and mall complex sandwiched squarely between the Hudson River and the now-cavernous World Trade Center site in downtown Manhattan. I’m unsure whether it was the biting winds or the horrendously long "pedestrian walkway" past the gaping hole of Ground Zero and back to the nearest subway that could get me home now that the Cortlandt Street stations are, it seems, permanently closed, but I haven’t been the same since I shrugged off the interview suit upon my arrival home. The next day Robin met his latest deadline, and we were looking forward to a somewhat active weekend — and then it hit. And it’s still hitting me, and has started hitting him. Funny how, at my age, "lucking out" translates into "thank goodness Robin and I got sick whilst I’m unemployed and he’s between issues!"

But you know, in the back of my head I can’t help but wonder whether I got ill, in part, from breathing in dead people. After all, we all know how the EPA of a government renowned for its repeated lies about everything else also lied to citizens about the air quality in that area. I know it’s over seven years later, but there’s still a ton of construction kicking up dust in that area, and the "walkways" offer scant protection, particularly on a cold and windy day.

Living through 9/11, being in the city the day the towers were attacked, one learns never to take life for granted. This is my 50th It’s All Good column for ComicMix, a milestone number of sorts, and so it seems fitting that I come back around to a subject touched upon in my first column here last February 15, scarcely a month after I’d lost my best friend. In fact, this would have been It’s All Good #51 but for the untimely death of my father. Sometimes the Reaper seems inescapable. Because in the end, of course, it is. And as it touches us all in real life, personally or otherwise (as with Heath Ledger’s recent demise), some of us find much less entertainment and amusement in its fictional counterpart.

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Persepolis on The Colbert Report

Persepolis on The Colbert Report

  • News
  • January 29, 2008

For those of you who may have thought Marvel EIC Joe Quesada was Stephen Colbert’s major comic book guest this week, he had a nice surprise for those who read beyond the Big Two: superstar graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi, whose animated film Persepolis is nominated for an Oscar. Here’s the video:

 

We’re not sure if Satrapi knew what to make of Colbert, but she seemed to enjoy herself.

Good For What Ails You

Good For What Ails You

  • News
  • January 27, 2008

There’s something in the air, and unfortunately your author has caught it.  But it’s well worth rising from one’s sickbed to bring you the weekly roundup of ComicMix columnists!  Isn’t it?:

Apologies for not adding in Andrew Wheeler’s "Manga Friday" columns before now, but he’s only started numbering them himself.  And by the way, the best thing about being sick?  Erm, well, nothing, actually…

So You Think You Have Problems?

So You Think You Have Problems?

  • News
  • January 27, 2008

Looking for that special comic from 40, 50, even 60 years ago to give your loved one struggling with VD, diabetes, AIDS, marijuana, guns or just about anything else?  Musician Ethan Persoff may have just what you seek.

Comics With Problems collects various unintentionally hilarious public service advertisements in the form of comics, with titles like Rex Morgan M.D. Talks About Your Unborn Child and A Message about Sniffing for Young People, and presents them in their entirety for your edification and amusement.  I D.A.R.E. you to keep away from perusing it!

Elsewhere on his site, Persoff’s other ambitious project on his site is collecting an online archive of all issues of Paul Krassner’s seminal zine The Realist, but I notice he doesn’t have any from the ’80s when I was getting it.  Persoff — call me, I still have ’em all.  And say, you wouldn’t happen to know of an old comic warning of the dangers of being a packrat, would you?

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