Vikings Season 1 delivers a visceral journey to a thrilling ancient world in this epic new series about history’s bravest and most brutally fearsome warriors.
Vikings follows the adventures of the great hero Ragnar Lothbrok (Travis Fimmel), a Viking chieftain seeking to fulfill his destiny as a conqueror, alongside his ambitious brother Rollo (Clive Standen) and loyal wife Lagertha (Katheryn Winnick). Throughout his quest, Ragnar faces a path of betrayals and temptations to protect his freedom, family, and life. When Ragnar teams up with his boat builder friend Floki (Gustaf Skarsgard) to craft a new generation of intrepid ships capable of conquering the rough northern seas, the stage is set for conflict.
Exclusively featured on the Blu-ray™ and DVD, “Birth of the Vikings” looks at the creator’s approach to, the series challenge in re-creating the period, and the wonders of shooting the series in Ireland’s beautiful, Wicklow mountains. “Birth of the Vikings,” is an all-access look at the creation of VIKINGS.
For a chance to win your copy of the Blu-ray just answer this question: Which Viking discovered North America before Columbus?
Have your answer posted by 11:59 p.m. Saturday, October 19. The decision of the ComicMix judges will be final and this contest is open only to readers in the United States and Canada.
With nine sets of core games, six generations of characters, and eighteen years of history, one would think that Pokemon might be approaching the end of the tall grass. But with Pokemon X & Y selling over four million copies worldwide on its premiere weekend, the series show no weakness at all. The new game, the first to run exclusively on the Nintendo 3DS (and the new low-budget option for new gamers, the 2DS) adds a lot of new characters, new battle formats and a beautiful 3-D design to make it easily the most beautiful game in the series, as well as the busiest.
The basic gameplay remains unchanged – select one of three Pokemon to start your journey around the world, this time the lovely Kalos Region, a land based on the architecture and design of France. Use that Pokemon to catch other wild Pokemon, raise and train them to more powerful levels, allowing you to catch even more powerful creatures, lather, rinse, repeat. But as with each game, there’s a whole new set of interesting critters to catch and collect, and almost unlimited strategy potential as you choose the most powerful moves for your characters, as well as choosing the most versatile fighting types to meet the challenge of both wild monsters, but other trainers, both in the game and in the real world. The game is fully rendered in 3-D, taking advantage of the power of the 3Ds to deliver a new view of the characters, no longer the sinple top-down look of past games. Battles feature sweeping camera angles as the characters battle, much in the style of the Pokemon Coliseum games for the various console systems. There’s endless little details in the animation – your character drops to one knee when chatting to children, you see them actually pick up found items, and errant breezes make the trees sway and the grass rustle. For the first time, the circle pad lest you move in diagonals, not the simple four directions of the games with only a D-pad. Indeed, it’s so easy to move around, it takes some getting used to – you need to take an extra moment to make sure you’re actually lined up with items and characters you want to interact with.
Over and above the basic battle of the game, X & Y give you new ways to train and interact with your Pokemon. Minigames allow you increase your friendship with your little friends and raise their battle stats. Pokemon-Amie is a feature to the Nintendogs games, where you can pet your Pokemon, feed him treats and more, via the 3Ds touchpad. The system’s camera is used for basic facial recognition, allowing you to play “monkey-see monkey-do” with them. Super Training is a series of minigames designed to increase their battle stats like strength and speed.
About the only hardware feature of the 3DS that isn’t used to its fullest potential is Street and Spot Pass. The game will receive messages of game updates and promotions from Nintendo in the game via Spotpass through an in-game device called the Holo-Caster, but interaction with other players only happens while the game is in play. The Player Search Service allows you to interact with friends that you’ve met using friend codes, and if you connect to the Internet, any random players from around the world that are playing at the a moment. Trading is much faster now, and more flexible. An upcoming app release, Pokemon Bank, will allow you to store up to 3,000 characters on the Cloud, for a small monthly fee.
Each new Pokemon adventure brings new players and cartoon viewers to the series, and for long time players like me (seriously – the only thing I’ve done uninterrupted in my life that play Pokemon is be married), sparks the excitement of the series anew. X and Y are easily the best new addition to the franchise in years, and if you were looking for an excuse to pick up or upgrade to a 3DS, you’ve got your reason.
Take THE DATING GAME, add in LOVE CONNECTION then connect it with Facebook and you have an idea of MTV’s new relationship show, THE HOOK UP. Comedian & Host Andrew Schulz explains it all plus how he got the sweet gig of being on shows like this, GUY COURT and more. Meanwhile, New York ComicCon packs them in and Marvel has big plans for some lucky network .
After their first announcement at San Diego four years ago that they had obtained the rights, Marvel Comics announced last weekend at New York Comic Con that reprints of the original Alan Moore / Neil GaimanMiracleman series would begin in January 2014. Gaiman will then continue the story with issue 25, which he said was completed, but never released, back when Eclipse was publishing the series.
Joe Quesada made the announcement at his “Cup O’ Joe” panel at the convention, to an appropriately appreciative audience. Marvel will be reprinting the entire series, starting with its first issue as seen in the UK magazine Warrior, reprinted in Eclipse’s Miracleman #1. The early issues were written by Alan Moore, but his name is not being used in any publicity for the series.
Originally named Marvelman, the character became “Miracleman” in America after Marvel Comics contacted its US publisher, Eclipse, and asked it be changed to avoid confusion in the marketplace. Marvel, who has been referring to the character as “Marvelman” since their first announcement of the acquisition, has decided to reprint the series under the US title of Miracleman after all. Tom Brevoort explains, “Gaiman and Buckingham worked on Miracleman, and that’s the name under which the series is best known in the States. So Miracleman it is.”
The series will be re-lettered and re-colored, but there no editing or alteration of the art is planned. Some of the violence was quite intense in the original series, and issue nine featured very graphic depictions of childbirth, so the plan not to censor the art is good news indeed.
Marvelman was created by Mick Anglo when the British comics publisher who was reprinting the popular Fawcett Captain Marvel needed material when the various Captain Marvel titles ended, pursuant to a DC lawsuit. Marvelman bore more than a slight thematic resemblance to Captain Marvel – young boys given a word of power to change into a powerful hero – a deliberate choice by the publisher.
Marvelman (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In the early eighties, Alan Moore wrote new adventures for the hero, the first of his “Everything you know is wrong” style of completely revamping a heroes origin while still paying respect and adherence to the stories that were told. He would do this again with great success on Swamp Thing when he came to the US to work for DC.
The issue of ownership of the character has been a rats’ nest of red tape, even during the original run in Warrior. To attempt to summarize the tale would not come close to getting across the complexity – The management suggests you seek out the exhaustive work of Irish comics journalist Pádraig Ó Méalóid, whose exhaustive history of the boondoggle puts all obsessive comics writers to shame.
Specific details of the schedule and format of the Miracleman reprints will arrive shortly with the January solicits. If the book is published monthly, with the same page count of the Eclipse issues, it would Neil’s new material would not be seen for two years. But considering the nigh-legendary status of the run, new readers will finally have a chance to read this seminal series, both in the careers of the creators involved and the exciting storytelling style.
The BBC has confirmed the recovery of nine episodes of th Patricke Troughton era Doctor Who, a complete set of The Enemy of the World, and all but part three of The Web of Fear. Both adventures are available now from iTunes, with DVD releases to follow. Part three of Web of Fear, still missing, is included with a restored audio track and a series of telesnaps. It’s unknown if it may at some time receive the animated treatment that many past adventures have gotten.
The rumors circulating around fandom since the early summer have ended up being truer than many assumed, but not as true as most hoped. The episodes, hailing from Nigeria (not Ethiopia, as the rumor claimed) and ended up falling far short of the outlandish tales of a hundred or more episodes.
While it was standard practice to record the broadcasts onto 16mm film, those films (And those of many shows, both British and American) were lost as stations wiped tapes and destroyed films as a cost cutting measure. In the early days of television, most assumed there’d be no desire to re-watch television programs, also resulting in the lack of residual agreements for so many stars of early American TV.
The episodes were sold to foreign markets after their initial broadcast, and many times the episodes were passed on through several countries as they continued to be sold. The tapes/films usually came with an order to return or destroy the masters upon broadcast. It’s only through that ordered being ignored that allows these episodes to be found today.
It can only be hoped that more episodes may be found in TV station vaults, but as time passes, the possibilities dwindle. Unless more episodes were found here and are secretly awaiting restoration, this may be the last big score we’ll see in quite a while.
Until the discovery of time travel of course, which will likely first be used to recover our recent history than ancient history. Yeah, it’s be nice to record the Sermon on the Mount, but I for one would rather get all those Ernie Kovacs Shows back.
Did you catch the premiere of The CW‘s TOMORROW PEOPLE? WE take you backstage with the cast and creators to talk about where the series will be headed over the next few weeks, plus we preview some of the cool secrets coming up at New YorkComicCon.
Pretty day outside, if you like bleak. Mist, rain, a world of grey. October in the northeast. Bleak.
Not much better inside. It’s becoming a chore to watch some of my favorite television programs. The other night, after sitting through about 10 minutes of The Daily Show, I walked out of the room. I deeply admire Jon Stewart: he’s a national jester and as such, one of our treasures. Four nights a week, he manages to inform and entertain simultaneously, and he does this nifty trick consistently, show after show. He was riffing on the shutdown of the national government and suddenly I didn’t want to hear about it anymore, not even when Jon Stewart was the messenger and the message was leavened with comedy. To hear yet again of the antics of that herd of egotistical narcissists who are our elected leaders – enough! Let them take the nation to hell. I’ll just shut my eyes and cover my ears and try not to breathe in the dust.
Remember the words of Thomas Jefferson: “Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice can not sleep for ever.”
I’m not blaming the politicians. They are what they have to be. In a system that values greed above all else, in which congressmen, who are charged with regulating an enormous and ever increasingly complex commonwealth must spend 30 hours a week on the phone begging for money instead of learning what they should know, and in getting what they beg for place themselves in indentured servitude to the check writers, who were taught that education is passing tests, whose egos might need to be damaged before they can even aspire to the jobs they hold, and who have begun to behave like history’s great mischief makers, zealots who are incapable of questioning their zealotry, who are unable to identify with human suffering other than their own…yeah, they are more to be pitied than hated. But such creatures can foster ruination, pitiable or not.
There’s nothing I can do about the Washington mob that’s shaping our collective destiny. But please don’t ask me to share an elevator with any of them.
So I ducked an episode of The Daily Show. Then, the following evening, I got over my snit, stopped wishing that reality to be something other than what it is, and tuned in for my eleven o’clock Jon Stewart fix.
• • • • •
And now to answer a question you may or may not be asking: can’t we please, for the love of Pete, end on a cheerier note? Okay, how about a dose of…
Lez Vamps is an anthology of vampire stories inspired by one single painting by award winning comic artist Mark Wheatley. The book features additional illustrations by Mark, inspired by the stories. It is a vastly entertaining exploration of blood sucking and lust! A perfect Halloween Gift for the, ah, oldest kids you know!
Last year, Mark Wheatley was looking for ways to promote his Facebook fan page, his website and his experiments with online self-publishing. Putting out a freeeBook might help drive some traffic.
Now, Mark liked the idea of a free eBook. But he was too busy creating art to write a free book himself. So he opened up the process to his fans. He posted one of his paintings to his Facebook page and anyone inspired could write and submit a short story based on their interpretation of the art. The best submissions, would be bundled together and put it out as a freeeBook. It’s a novel way of involving his fans with his art and his Facebook page!
Well, Mark doesn’t do things half-way. So, he got a crew of professional writers and editors to read through and judge the submissions. And he didn’t just slap the book together, but got the project edited by Gary Henry. Mark also designed the interior pages and added even more art inspired by the stories to the final mix. The book is a collaboration of many people, fans and professionals, all brought together and inspired by Mark Wheatley and his vivid vision of vampires!
The result is a short, freeeBook of sexy, scary, funny, strange and eclectic vampire stories.
Lez Vamps will be free for the entire month of October. Lez Vamps is available in three standard eBook formats – ePub, Mobi and PDF. The PDF version is an elaborately illustrated book! When we say free, this isn’t “With a Qualifying Purchase: Free” or “Sign Up for this Mailing List: Free,” but the actual “Just Grab it and Run, with No-Strings-Attached” kind of Free!
Those who were waiting for the BBC itself to weigh in with a statement can stop waiting. BBC News announced on their website today that “a number” of lost Doctor Who episodes have been found, and returned.
As discussed in our story from earlier in the week, the titular “number”, reaching as high as 106 in rumors that have circulated for most of the summer, may be “two”. The Radio Times reported two found adventures over the weekend, quietly following a more bombastic and hand-wavey piece by the tabloid The Mirror that went with the more sensationalist 106 figure.
The rumors (repeated almost verbatim in the Mirror piece) claim the questionably-sized cache was found in a TV station vault in Ethiopia. The BBC piece (which can be assumed the least apocryphal, or at least, the least wildly inaccurate, ) avoids any specifics of source, other than that some episodes have been recovered. This lack of detail may indicate that even they are just reporting the existence of a rumor. Some writers have reminded the populace that even BBC News gets it wrong about events in their own organization.
A press conference, originally announced for Tuesday, was postponed to later in the week. No specific details of the conference have been shared, but the BBC article suggests that news about how these episodes will be made available for viewing will be included. This parallels the Radio Times’ report that the episodes will be available via iTunes.
So, very slow progress, but considering that more than a couple experts had once posited that all the episodes that would ever be found have been, ANY progress is monumental. And as Steven Moffat has discussed himself in a recent interview, the media knows that reporting anything about Doctor Who will bring eyes to their pages, traditional or electronic.
Watch this proverbial space for more news, likely occurring over New York Comic Con, where the staff of ComicMix (including yr. obt. svt.) will attempt to separate the news from the rumor, and likely then going ahead and reporting both.
At this point, we must assume that there is nothing that can be assumed, and as sage advice, I shall draw your attention this dialogue from the classic of political satire, Yes, Minister:
Bernard Woolley: (I’ve heard) that there is £1 million worth of diamonds from South Africa in a Downing Street safe, but of course it’s only a rumour. James Hacker: Is that true? Woolley: Oh, yes. Hacker: So, there ARE all those diamonds in Downing Street! Woolley: Are there? Hacker: You just said there were. Woolley: No, I didn’t. Hacker: Yes, you did! You said you’d heard this rumour, I said is it true, you said yes! Woolley: I said yes, it was true that it was a rumour. Hacker: You said you heard it was true! Woolley: No, I said it was true that I heard it!
The comedy will be available on Blu-ray and DVD October 22 , but our friends at 20th Century Home Entertainment have a copy available to give away to one of our readers. All you need to do is tell us which of the following is your favorite of the following films and why. Tell us no later than 11:59 p.m. Monday, October 14. The decision of the ComicMix judges will be final and the contest is open only to United States and Canadian readers only.
The Internship reunited two of the central members of the frat pack, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn. The guys from the frat pack have been creating comedic gold for years now. In honor of the home entertainment release of the newest frat pack film, let’s take a look back at some of the greatest moments from the pack.
In The Internship, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson team up to crash the digital world in this laugh-out-loud buddy comedy you’ve been searching for! Trying to reboot their obsolete careers, old-school salesmen Billy (Vaughn) and Nick (Wilson) talk their way into an internship program at the state-of-the-art Google campus, vying for a handful of spots among tech-savvy college students who are half their age and twice as smart. The competition is fiercely funny as Billy and Nick break all the rules in a hilarious quest to land their dream jobs!
Wedding Crashers
Wedding Crashers, the film that proved Wilson and Vaughn had perfect comedic chemistry, brought the laughter and good times. To this day, men still dream of crashing a wedding with John and Jeremy. Maybe they can’t fulfill their dreams, but everyone can rest assured knowing the rules of wedding crashing; “blend in by standing out” to “be gone by the sunrise.”
Zoolander
Zoolander is certainly one of the most memorable frat pack movies with Will Ferrell playing a crazed fashion designer and Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller taking on the role of two pretty boys. The Blue Steel look developed by Derek Zoolander will go down in movie history. Wilson and Stiller were hilarious as they portrayed self-centered models obsessed with perfecting their hair and their runway walk.
Anchorman
Ron Burgundy is arguably the best character that Will Ferrell has ever played. He is a legend, a ladies man, and a role model for friends like Brick and Champ. In a moment of sheer brilliance, Anchorman brought together six members of the frat pack for a street fight between anchormen. Five of the frat pack guys were representing various news channels and carrying weapons such as a trident, a wooden post, and a chain.
Old School
Many people consider Old School to be the golden ticket that brought the frat pack together and placed them on the map as the big names in comedy. Ferrell, Vaughn, and Wilson were hilarious as they went back to their glory days and reminded the audience why college is exactly where you want to be. This classic comedy is one that can be enjoyed for generations to come.
Dodgeball
Who doesn’t love the idea of watching grown men and women dressed in uniforms and playing intense games of dodgeball? (Especially if two of those men are Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller.) In the movie that taught us the five D’s of dodgeball: dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge, we got to witness another perfect moment between members of the frat pack. Dodgeball may have only had two members of the pack, but it definitely makes the list of the greatest frat pack movies!
Vikings Season 1 delivers a visceral journey to a thrilling ancient world in this epic new series about history’s bravest and most brutally fearsome warriors.
With nine sets of core games, six generations of characters, and eighteen years of history, one would think that Pokemon might be approaching the end of the tall grass. But with 
After their first announcement at San Diego four years ago that they had obtained the rights, 
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