Author: Mike Gold

The British media have been busy snapping photographs of "Porg" (not his real name), who’s been hanging around the set of  "Voyage Of The Damned," this year’s Doctor Who Christmas special. This is the one that hooks U.K. pop singer Kylie Minogue up with the temporarily companionless Doctor, as currently played by David Tennant.

It seems Porg – that’s just his on-set nickname, by the way – crashes the Titanic’s launch party by donning a white dinner jacket. Hey, look, Superman fooled people by putting on glasses… Anyway, it is believed the alien will not be smoking cigarettes on-camera.

The Doctor finds his TARDIS materializing on the Titanic, where he is joined by an on-ship waitress named Astrid (Minogue) to save the planet from the evil red spikey thing and, no doubt, tons of CGI. Mr. Tennant has some scenes where he doffs his trademark longcoat for a tuxedo.

The one-hour ""Voyage Of The Damned" airs on the BBC, aw, you guessed it, on or around Christmas. The second season of the spin-off series Torchwood is expected to begin a couple weeks later.

Over here on ComicMix, we’ve been talking about The Shadow a lot recently – prompted by Denny O’Neil’s fine columns and Robert Greenberger’s first-rate interview with Shadow pulp reprint editor / publisher Anthony Tollin. Without belaboring a point, I’d like to refer you to another remarkable effort concerning comics’ most influential icon.

There’s this really great site called Dial B For Burbank. It’s operated by “Robby Reed,” who had previously run an equally amazing site called (wait for it) Dial B For Blog. I bet you thought I was going to say it was called Dial H For Hero; no, that trademark was owned by some publisher. Dial B For Blog had all kinds of wonderful articles about comics, my favorite being an in-depth look at classic letterer / logo designer Ira Schnapp, inventor of most of DC’s logos and house ads from about 1940 until the mid-60s. Schnapp also lettered title cards for silent movies and chiseled the words on the front of the New York Public Library. Robby also did some amazing production work, much of it of a satirical nature – to wit, the Adventure Comics cover shown here, with the genuine Ira Schnapp logo intact.

Let’s just assume “Robby Reed” is his real name.

More recently, Robby shifted his attention to The Shadow and launched the aforementioned Dial B For Burbank. All the effort, all the research, all the amazing production skill we saw on B For Blog is here… and more. Robby also added a 10 part video documentary called The Shadow Knows covering all aspects of The Shadow, from the pulps to radio to comics to the movies to television. He might have missed the short-lived newspaper comic strip; there’s only so much you can squeeze into 124 minutes.

Uncovering rare photographs and selecting some of the best artwork from George Rozen, Edd Cartier, Jim Steranko, Bernie Wrightson, Mike Kaluta and others, his documentary pretty much gives you the full story – not only of The Shadow and his pulp creator Walter Gibson, but of his many predecessors, successors, and imitators. Interviews and voice-overs from such folks as Gibson, Tollin, and Shadow performers Orson Welles, Bill Johnstone, Brett Morrison, and Alec Baldwin abound.

It’s a stunning effort. All the more stunning: it’s free.

You can download it from the Dial B For Burbank website; each of the 10 chapters in a quality sufficient for quality DVD burning, or in a lower-resolution QuickTime version.

If he sold this effort for, say, twenty bucks on DVD I would give it my highest recommendation. For free, well, heck, he’s not going to pay you to watch it, so that’s as good as it gets.

O.K.  I’ve got to admit this: I can’t remember the last time I’ve had so much fun with something I’ve pulled out of my weekly Diamond Distributing box., Betty Boop blow-up dolls notwithstanding.

At first glance, The Marvel Vault might appear to be just another well-designed history book. And who better to write such a tome than master comics writer and former longtime Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas and noted comics historian Peter Sanderson? Well, Roy’s a noted comics historian too, but I’ve got a thing for the "editor-in-chief" title. Whereas there have been somewhat more comprehensive histories of Marvel (more-or-less including "corporate-approved" volumes), everything you need to know to understand and appreciate the publishing house is here, along with a great deal of inside information and well-informed observation that other books are lacking.

Nope. What makes The Marvel Vault amazing fun is the surplus of bells-and-whistles. It’s subtitled "A Museum-in-a-Book with rare collectibles from the World of Marvel" for a reason: it’s got tons of removable reproductions of all kinds of cool stuff produced by Marvel and its predecessor imprints Timely and Atlas over the past 70 years. To name but a few: original sketches of the early 1940s Sub-Mariner and Human Torch by Carl Pfeufer, including work from the history-making 50 page crossover from Human Torch #8; Bil Everett’s illustrated postcards to his daughter; a John Severin color piece denoting himself and fellow Atlas artists Bill Everett and Joe Maneely; the plot synopsis to Fantastic Four #1, a ton Merry Marvel Marching Society stuff; the program book to the 1975 Mighty Marvel Convention, Bernie Wrightson’s Howard The Duck For President art; Marvel Value Stamps from 1974; the Marvel No-Prize Book; a Marvel stock certificate from 1993; Andy Kubert’s Wolverine sketches from Origin… and, as the saying goes, a lot more.

The spiral-bound Marvel Vault was designed by Megan Noller Holt, and she deserves notation and praise. The Marvel Vault makes for a wonderful gift, particularly to yourself. It’s available at comic book stores (either in-stock or by special order), online retailers and better big box outlets. When it comes to being a Marvel fan, if, on a one-to-ten scale, you are anything north a "2" you’ll love this book.

The Marvel Vault, by Roy Thomas and Peter Sanderson
US $49.95, CAN $60.00, UK £29.99
ISBN: 9780762428441
ISBN-10: 0762428449
Published by Running Press

Craig Yoe is not the most unusual man I’ve ever met. However, this is a statement that reveals more about me than it does about him, and since this is a review of his work I’ll try to stop scaring people.

Craig Yoe runs this place called Yoe! Studios, which is really just one single studio filled with talented people, a lot of energy, and great fun. They do all kinds of stuff: they create the Big Boy Comics (yes, they’re still being published), they do those astonishingly packaged comics figurines that Dark Horse sells and they do design work and create toys and sundry chachkis for such clients as Kraft, Warner Bros. and Microsoft. They hand out Yoe! Studio whoopee cushions and thongs at important business trade shows. He used to run the Muppet Workshop. He actually looks like the Kelly Freas drawing, slightly dispelling the myth that if you don’t look like Corporate America, you won’t fit into Corporate America.

Craig Yoe is also a major, long-time comics fan, among the best and brightest Ohio has had to offer comics, which is saying a lot (the tip of the iceberg: Jerry Siegel, Tony Isabella, Maggie Thompson, Mike W. Barr, Harlan Ellison, ComicMix’s own Martha Thomases and Mike Raub). But, to no one’s surprise, his tastes are as unusual as he is.

For the past couple years, he’s been foisting his line art fantasies on the general public with his Arf series, published by Fantagraphics. There are three such books out right now – in order, Modern Arf, Arf Museum, and Arf Forum. No matter how hardcore a comics enthusiast you might be, there’s a lot of weird stuff in these volumes that you should see, that you would want to see.

His roster of reprinted talent includes (in alphabetical order): Ernie Bushmiller, Charlie Chaplin, Robert Crumb, Salvadore Dali, Dan DeCarlo, Jack Davis, Rudolph Dirks, Max Ernst, Jimmy Hatlo, Hugh Hefner, Reamer Keller, George Herriman, Frank King, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Patrick McDonnell, Pablo Picasso, Artie Spiegelman, Mort Walker, and Wally Wood. That’s a really eclectic group of cartoonists; and, yes, I meant cartoonists. You might not have perceived some of the above as such.

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