Tagged: ComicMix

Review: ‘The Whorehouse Madrigals (of Hank Magitz)’

Review: ‘The Whorehouse Madrigals (of Hank Magitz)’

Clifford Meth is not a nice guy.

That doesn’t mean he’s not a good guy. Anybody who puts as much time as he has helping out comic book creators in need, like William Messner-Loebs, Dave Cockrum, and most recently Gene Colan, is clearly a decent human being (and yes, he’s also written things for ComicMix in the past).

But he’s not a nice guy. He’s clearly spent a certain amount of his life contemplating what Nietchze had in mind when he spoke of the abyss. He’s a card-carrying Neutral Good. He’s passionate, acerbic when needed, and his writing has a taste like sulfur and gunpowder.

Which brings us to the new short story collection, [[[The Whorehouse Madrigals (of Hank Magitz)]]] from Clifford’s publishing house, Aardwolf Publishing.

I tried to not be the guy here reviewing it, I consider Cliff a friend and didn’t want the conflict of interest. But two people I handed it to wrote back and said that the book just wasn’t for them. The hasteed to point out the book wasn’t bad, but definitely not to their taste. I couldn’t argue with them.

Now that said, I think it’s a funny book. But if the title isn’t a tipoff, it’s not a book that can be shared with your maiden aunt. Think of the tone of these stories as like Harlan Ellison, but mean. James Thurber this ain’t.

To give you an idea, here’s an adaptation of one of the stories inside, “Korean Math”– and for ghu’s sake, it is in no way safe for work. But if you have a black sense of humor, you’ll like it. Following a frustrating “massage incident,” author Hank Magitz calls
Charles Windsor-Smith, his publisher, to complain…

Classic Comics Press Continues Reprinting Great Forgotten Strips

Classic Comics Press Continues Reprinting Great Forgotten Strips

  • News
  • June 29, 2010

Although some of the more familiar comic strips have garnered tremendous press as a part of IDW’s Library of Comics, some of the best strips being collected have been overlooked. For the last several years, Classic Comics Press has been re-presenting Leonard Starr’s Mary Perkins and Stan Drake’s The Heart of Juliet Jones and these are just as deserving of readers’ time and attention.

Publisher Charles Pelto has turned a labor of love into a business that is surviving despite tough economic times. Along with James Gauthier, he has been slowly growing his operation, adding two new series this year. ComicMix had to the chance to chat with the two and in part one, we look at CCP’s origins and why these two strips launched the line.

ComicMix: Charles, how long have you been interested in comic strips?

Charles Pelto: I learned how to read from the daily and Sunday funnies. In the early 50’s there were a lot more papers available in Detroit, where I grew up. I delivered the Detroit Free Press (with Mary Perkins), but also regularly read The Detroit News, and a number of suburban papers. Around the age of 15 to 17 I used to ride my bike to a newspaper in Utica, MI that printed Secret Agent Corrigan. The paste-up guy used to save me the proofs and I’d ride my bike up there every other week or so to pick them up. For a while I was a bit fanatical, I started receiving papers from all over the country just to get a particular strip. It drove my father crazy.

CMix: And what led you to form Classic Comics Press? When was this?

Pelto: I left comics for a long time, sometime around my early 30s. For some reason my interest in comic art was rekindled about eight years ago and I started buying stuff off of eBay. For a while there I was buying lots of comics but to be honest they were boring the hell out of me. Things like Local Heroes, Preacher, 100 Bullets, Criminal and the like really turned me on, but the normal, run of the mill comic book just didn’t grab me. I still enjoy a good Batman story and I like what they’ve been doing with Superman off and on, but for the most part I still don’t buy comics. After a while, I just naturally gravitated towards the comic strips I’d read as a kid.

CMix:  How did you decide on which strips to pursue? Right now there’s a lot of competition between IDW’s Library, and efforts from NBM, Fantagraphics, and Hermes Press.

Pelto: At first it was only On Stage. I was buying all the various reprints out there, as well as Sundays, and what dailies appeared. I stumbled across Jim’s email address on the Rules of Attraction website and contacted him. Jim happens to have become Leonard’s archivist and he started sending me binders containing a year’s worth of On Stage from the beginning.

As I continued to read through the years I could not believe that no one had taken a serious interest in reprinting the strip from the beginning. So being the impetuous fool that I am, I contacted the offices of Tribune Media Services and asked if the rights were available. From that point it took about a year and a half to actually get a contract.

With Juliet Jones, it was a natural compliment to On Stage.

(more…)

Annie’s Unending Cliffhanger

  • News
  • June 17, 2010

Damn, the old kid’s gone. And she’s taken the papers with her!

Last Sunday marked the end of the classic comic strip, Little Orphan Annie. That’s sad, but that sort of thing has been going on for a long time now and it was inevitable,
despite some first-rate work on the feature by Jay Maeder, Jay Maeder and artists Andrew Pepoy, Alan Kupperberg and Ted Slampyak. Ignobly, the syndicate ended Annie in mid-story.

Newspaper comic strips were invented for one reason and one reason alone: to give the paper a competitive edge. If you were a New Yorker and you preferred Joe Palooka and Li’l Abner to Dick Tracy and Orphan Annie, chances were you bought the New York Daily Mirror instead of the New York Daily News.

The pompous New York Times turned not having comic strips into a virtue, but in fact at the time they could not afford to color presses needed to compete with Pulitzer and Hearst.

Today there is no such thing as newspaper competition:
most towns are lucky to have one daily paper, and most all papers carry the
exact same comics. With circulation zeroing in on zero, publishers are cutting back and, since they no longer need comics to compete, they’re vaporizing.

Ironically, we live in a time when virtually every major, important newspaper comic strip is being anthologized in hardcover and is readily available at the big-box bookstores. Without the newspaper comic strip
we wouldn’t have the comic book, and without the comic book I would have had to get a real job.

So goodbye, Annie and friends. And thank you.

ComicMix
editor-in-Chief Mike Gold performs a weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking music and blather radio show on The Point every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, replayed three times during the week (check the website for times). Likewise, his Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind political and cultural rants pop up each and every day at the same venue.

Win a Peanuts DVD set!

Win a Peanuts DVD set!

  • News
  • June 10, 2010

Our good friends at Warner Home Video have provided us with copies of the new Peanuts: 1970’s Collection, Vol. 2 (which includes Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown; You’re a Good Sport, Charlie Brown; It’s Arbor Day, Charlie Brown; What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown; It’s Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown; and You’re the Greatest, Charlie Brown), and we’re sharing them with you.

We’re offering you five different ways to win. Here’s how you can win one:

  1. Follow @comicmix on Twitter. That enters you to win one copy of the DVD.
  2. Simply tweet “Just entered to win a Peanuts DVD. Just follow @comicmix and
    retweet. http://www.comicmix.com” That enters you to win another copy of the DVD.
  3. Become a fan of ComicMix on FaceBook. That enters you to win yet another copy of the DVD.
  4. Link to ComicMix on your website (or use the ComicMix widgetbox from the sidebar) and let us know where in the comments (not anonymously, please). That en– aw, you know this by now.
  5. Come up with a title for your own Peanuts special (for example: “It’s The Great Old Ones, Charlie Brown!”) and put it in the comments. The opinion of the judges for the most amusing title wins. Note: The title must be broadcast and kid safe.

We’ll close the contest to entries on this Sunday, June 13th, 2010 at Midnight, Pacific Daylight Time. We’ll choose the winners at random, except for the title naming category.

Good luck!

Marvel Ups Joe Quesada to Chief Creative Officer

Marvel Ups Joe Quesada to Chief Creative Officer

ComicMix congratulates Joe Quesada on his justly deserved promotion, recognizing the strides he has made in salvaging Marvel as a creative entity in the years since the company emerged from bankruptcy.

Here’s the official release:

New York, NY – June 2, 2010 – Marvel Entertainment, LLC announced today that it has promoted Joe Quesada to Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Entertainment.  In this new role, Mr. Quesada will work alongside Alan Fine, Executive Vice President, Office of the President and Chairman of Marvel Studios’ Creative Committee, to ensure that all portrayals of Marvel’s characters and storytelling remain true to the essence of Marvel’s rich history. Additionally, Mr. Quesada will provide creative oversight of all areas of Marvel’s business including theatrical, television, publishing, animation and games, while also actively participating in all story and script development for Marvel’s films and animation. Prior to this promotion, Mr. Quesada held the role of Chief Creative Officer & Editor-In-Chief, Marvel Animation & Publishing and oversaw the creative aspects of Marvel Comics and Marvel Animation. The announcement was made today by Mr. Fine, to whom Mr. Quesada will report.

Mr. Fine stated, “I am excited to have Joe join me as Marvel Entertainment enters the next chapter in our history. Joe has already played an instrumental role as Editor-in-Chief in changing the face of the comic book industry with bold new ventures and an unprecedented penetration of the mainstream consciousness. His love and passion for Marvel, along with his experience guiding publishing for the last decade, will be invaluable as we bring our characters to life in new media.”

“I am honored to take this new position at Marvel Entertainment and work with Alan to bring the rich history of Marvel to a brand new audience” said Mr. Quesada.  “Together with the incredible talent here at Marvel, in all our divisions, I look forward to making Marvel an even bigger part of the entertainment industry and showing why we’ve been an industry leader for over 70 years.”

Mr. Quesada will also continue to serve as Editor-In-Chief, Marvel Publishing, where over the past decade he has helped usher in bold new imprints such as Marvel Knights, the Ultimate Universe and Marvel MAX. During his tenure, Marvel received acclaim for its Heroes special to commemorate the events of September 11, 2001; the groundbreaking Death of Captain America storyline; and President Obama’s historic team up with Spider-Man. Mr. Quesada is also one of the industry’s most popular artists, providing cover and interior art to blockbusters such as Amazing Spider-Man, Daredevil, Invincible Iron Man and more.

(more…)

Comic art auction to help animal shelters in Nashville

Comic art auction to help animal shelters in Nashville

With all the devastation that’s occurred recently across the United States, it’s time we comic book fans do a little bit to help. ComicMix contributor (and recent birthday boy) Mark Wheatley has donated a pair of awesome sketches to an Ebay auction collection. The proceeds from these auctions will go to help the Nashville Animal Rescues & Shelters devastated by the recent flood, which caused over 1.9 billion dollars in damages to the area. Both sketches, one of Batman, the other, Conan, are 11″ x 14″ and are original black marker sketches by the artist. Do yourself a favor and click the links above to visit the auctions, or see what else is available and drive the bids up. It’s going to help a great cause, and could win you some great original art.

Is Captain America Unamerican?

Is Captain America Unamerican?

Tip of the hat to Yahoo! Movies for finding out our national hero, Captain America, will be filming his autobiography not amongst purple mountain’s majesty… he’ll be filming in limey Britain!

A wag of our finger to Marvel Films who, in the interest of saving a few Ben Franklins, moved production to the land of fish and chips. Our collective hearts weep at the thought of Steve Rogers hurling his mighty vibranium-iron alloy circular disk of patriotism to vanquish vile villains inside a faux-America set housed inside some sound stage; Washed over in the gray malaise of London fog. We can only hum a few bars of “Yankee Doodle” before our voices crack, at the mere notion that Steve Rogers, chock full of super-soldier serum, is punching Hitler on anything other than good old-fashioned American soil. And don’t go telling us that Captain America didn’t punch Hitler in America. We know he didn’t. But in our minds, we all know Cap should be thwapping the Third Reich on a Hollywood set, minutes away from succulent fish tacos and the best menudo money can buy.

We know the economy is rough these day, ComicMix Nation. And yes, the state of California imposes huge taxes on filming in L.A. And yes, we know Britain offers up to a 25% tax credit incentive to bring productions to it’s limp-wristed shores… And we might be ok if that figgie-pudding eating Edgar Wright filmed his supposed Ant-Man feature in his home country (cause face it, no one cares about Ant-Man. Not even Ant-Man cares about Ant-Man.), but face facts, America. Captain America should be filmed where all good American summer blockbusters are filmed:

Canada.

‘Jonah Hex’ Motion Comics available now

‘Jonah Hex’ Motion Comics available now

Before you see this year’s live action film of Jonah Hex starring Josh Brolin and Megan Fox, see the all-new Jonah Hex Motion Comics series that brings the pages of the book phenomenon to life.  Adapting Joe R. Lansdale and Timothy Truman’s Jonah Hex: Two-Gun Mojo, the series is now available on iTunes and Amazon Video with new chapters debuting each Wednesday.

Here are links to Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and Chapter 3 on iTunes, here’s the link to Amazon Video
, and here’s the trailer:

And of course, if you like the artwork of Mr. Truman, we highly recommend both GrimJack: The Manx Cat and The Black Lamb here on ComicMix.

Alan Coil: 1955-2010

Alan Coil: 1955-2010

We’ve just gotten word that Lewis “Alan” Coil, a regular commenter here at ComicMix and at many other websites, died last Friday, April 30, 2010 from an apparent
heart attack at the age of 55.

Paul Shiple posted the notification on Harlan Ellison’s web board. “I wish I could speak more of what a great friend he was to
me and my family, to me and all of my friends but I don’t have it in me
at this time. He is greatly missed by many.”

He was well known to many in the Ohio fan community, and was a regular at Mid-Ohio Con.

“Alan was also a frequent commenter over at at www.michaeldavisworld.com,” noted Mike Gold, ComicMix editor-in-chief and michaeldavisworld.com weekly columnist. “His observations and comments were witty and informative which just the right amount of fringy attitude that we find in the best bloggers. This news hits me like a ton of bricks, and I’m truly saddened by his passing.”

ComicMix extends its love and sympathy to Alan’s friends and family. He will be missed.

Categories

Archives

Everything you need to make great comics!

comicmix-pro-300x69-2

Nucleus X

Bookshop Zaks