Tagged: ComicMix

2010 Glyph Comics Awards Nominations; ‘Original Johnson’ snags 4 nominations

2010 Glyph Comics Awards Nominations; ‘Original Johnson’ snags 4 nominations

The Glyph Comics Awards, designed to “recognize the best in comics made
by, for, and about people of color from the preceding calendar year,”
have released the names of the comics and creators that make up their
2010 nominee slate.

We are incredibly proud that The Original Johnson
has received four nominations in the categories of Best Artist, Best Cover, Best Male Character, and Story Of The Year.

“It’s wonderful to see Trevor Von Eeden’s life-work receive such recognition,” ComicMix editor-in-chief Mike Gold said. “He’s been working on The Original Johnson for 15 years, and we’ve been working with him for the past three. It has taken an extraordinary amount of effort to produce this book, and recognition from the Glyph awards makes every drop of it worthwhile. We are proud to be associated with Trevor and this amazingly intense work. My personal thanks and gratitude to Trevor and to all of those who have been involved in the effort.”

The awards will be presented at the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention in Philadelphia on May 14th and 15th.

The full list of nominees:

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Happy 3rd anniversary, ComicMix!

Happy 3rd anniversary, ComicMix!

Boy, it’s been a long three years. And that’s not even counting the months of prep beforehand. But on this day in 2007, ComicMix went live. (We were supposed to debut the day before, but went down for a few hours because of a previously undiscovered security hole. We went back up the next day, and we’ve been moving along ever since.)

Over three hundred and fifty comics installments and seven thousand posts later, we’re still at it.

There are a lot of people we’d like to thank– the hundreds of contributors and the thousands of commenters, our tech providers at CrowdFusion, our print partners at IDW, all the press people who’ve covered us and interviewed us, the wide and varied sources who feed us tips and stories both on and off the record, everybody who’s ever linked to us or retweeted a post.

Through the heartache and ulcers, the many many many late nights, and all the things that go along with creating in some of the most vibrant art forms ever created, we’re still at it. We don’t know what tomorrow may bring… but we’re glad you’ve been here for the ride.

Thank you for supporting us. We try to be worthy of your attention and your commerce.

Apple unveils iPad, prescribed newest tablet

Apple unveils iPad, prescribed newest tablet

Once again, the mighty Steve Jobs took the stage in front of scads of Mac-o-philes to present them another device they need so bad it hurts. The iPad debuted to the standard “ooohs” and “oys”, and we here at ComicMix feel no need to wax poetic. We know you don’t care about our awesome alliteration adeptness. How about a little meat n’ potatoes:

  • It’s meant to bridge the gap between a smart phone (like that iPhone already collecting dust in your pocket) and a laptop (that horrendously underpowered Macbook Pro heating up your desk).
  • It operates on a hybrid OS from the iPhone, on it’s Apple A44 1ghz processor. Meaning you can use all 14.4 bajillion iPhone apps on it, right out of the box.
  • iPhone apps will run at a pixel to pixel representation, or you can “double” the size at the same resolution for a faux-full screen effect.
  • The aspect ratio is closer to 4:3 than 16:9… A 9.7″ IPS Display.
  • Has already won this season’s American Idol (unconfirmed).
  • The keyboard pops up like on an iPhone, though it’s now close to lifesize (as in your normal keyboard.)

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Interview: ‘Farscape’ and ‘Scorpius’ writers David Alan Mack and Keith R.A. DeCandido

Interview: ‘Farscape’ and ‘Scorpius’ writers David Alan Mack and Keith R.A. DeCandido

BOOM! Studios announced today Farscape: Scorpius, an ongoing series starting in April. Written by series creator Rockne S. O’Bannon and David Alan Mack (the Star Trek novelist, not the artist on Kabuki, just to get it out of the way early) it finds everyone’s favorite black leather clad villain deposed from his throne on Hyneria and making a bold new discovery that could put him back on top of the Uncharted Territories.

We took some time to chat with Dave (with Keith R. A. DeCandido, the scripter for the Farscape ongoing series, throwing in little bot mots because as readers of ComicMix know, he just shows up everywhere) and asked him about the new series, and what it’s like to write a story from the antagonist’s point of view.

ComicMix: There are precious few comics that have been
focused on the bad guy in the story… but is Scorpius a bad guy?

David Alan Mack: He
certainly doesn’t see himself that way. From his point of view, he’s probably
the only rational actor in a universe populated by fools and madmen. Of course,
Scorpius is not going to judge his own actions using our brand of moral
compass. He is, in many respects, an amoral individual.

In my opinion, Scorpius is willing to espouse a sense of
duty and offer his loyalty to whomever appears to be on his side, and in the
moment when he makes such a declaration, it’s possible he even means it. But if
he needs to betray his allies to accomplish what he thinks is the most
desirable outcome for himself, he won’t hesitate to put knives in their backs
and twist the blades.

Keith R.A. DeCandido:
Oh, he’s definitely a bad guy—at least by the standards of the people
reading the comic book (and who watched the show). When we first met him at the
end of the first season, he tortured Crais for no good reason, just to be
absolutely sure about something. Scorpius admitted up front that the accusation
Crichton had made simply had to be false, but Scorpius was still willing to
torture a Peacekeeper captain just to be 100% sure.

ComicMix: And yet
he does it in such a mannered and genteel style. Very precise. Play out a little bit of the Scorpius series for us. Where are we starting from?

DAM: We catch up
to Scorpius while he’s in self-imposed exile. He’s been kicked off Hyneria by
the triumphantly returned monarch Dominar Rygel XVI. Left with nowhere to go,
Scorpius is on what one might consider a contemplative retreat.

Then, as Bogart said in Casablanca,
“destiny takes a hand.” Scorpius finds himself in the right place at
the right time, and he makes the most of a new opportunity.

ComicMix: So this
is a decent place for new readers to jump in and get up to speed?

DAM: Absolutely.
The first four-issue arc of Scorpius is
designed to introduce the character to new readers by interspersing flashbacks
from his past, while detailing the new political situation brewing in the Farscape universe, especially in the
Uncharted Territories.

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Jonathan Mostow Talks ‘Surrogates’

Jonathan Mostow Talks ‘Surrogates’

To celebrate this week’s release of Surrogates on DVD, director Jonathan Mostow sat down with the press for a virtual press conference and ComicMix was in attendance. Here are highlights from that conversation. Our review of the film and DVD ran yesterday.

ComicMix: Mr. Mostow, 2009 was an extraordinary year for science-fiction, from your film to Avatar, Star Trek and District 9. Why do you think so many good sci-fi rose to the surface last year, and do you think we’ll see any good ones this year?

Jonathan Mostow: First of all, thank you for mentioning our film in the same breath as those other movies — all of which I loved. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that 2009 was a good year for sci-fi. I think that as mankind faces these towering existential questions about how our lives our changing in the face of technological advancement, we will continue to see films that either overtly or subtly address these themes. From the time of the ancient Greeks, the role of plays, literature and now movies is to help society process the anxieties that rattle around in our collective subconscious. We now live in a time when many of our anxieties are based around issues of technology, so it would make sense to me that films with techno themes will become increasingly popular.

CMIX: This isn’t your first time dealing with a high concept of man versus machine. Can you talk about why this concept intrigues you?

Mostow: It’s true that I’ve touched on this thematic material before — in fact, I think all my films in some way have dealt with the relationship between man and technology, so apparently, it’s an idea that fascinates me. I assume your question implies a relationship between the ideas in Terminator and The Surrogates , so I’ll answer accordingly… Whereas T3 posed technology as a direct threat to mankind, I see The Surrogates more as a movie that poses a question about technology — specifically, what does it cost us — in human terms — to be able to have all this advanced technology in our lives. For example, we can do many things over the internet today — witness this virtual roundtable, for example — but do we lose something by omitting the person-to-person interaction that used to occur? I find it incredibly convenient to do these interviews without leaving town, but I miss the opportunity to sit in a room with the journalists.

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2010 home entertainment preview: not what you will be watching but how

2010 home entertainment preview: not what you will be watching but how

The future for home video in 2010 is taking shape
and as 2009 winds down, ComicMix, like everyone else, is looking ahead. The VHS
tape is gone, replaced by DVD and that too is now quickly getting replaced by
the Blu-ray. The Digital Entertainment Group says Blu-ray Disc set-top player
sales grew 112 percent over the same period last year. Blu-ray devices are at
the top of many consumers’ holiday wish lists this year are projected to be in
15 million U.S. homes by the end of this year.

With players now as cheap as $150, the penetration rate is
skyrocketing and the studios are cognizant of this. They also know that people
are reluctant to pay more for Blu-ray discs to replace their standard DVDs so
these new discs are coming in fancier packages and with lots of extras.

One of the key differences between standard DVD and Blu-ray
is that the BD Live function allows studios to continue offering fresh content
even after the disc goes on sale. McG, for example, did a live screening of Terminator Salvation with questions from viewers. As more filmmakers figure out
how to gain maximum mileage from this direct communications, it will keep the
Blu-ray more vital.

Over the past year, Walt Disney has been collecting their
films in two and three packs. Like most studios these days, you get the DVD and
a digital copy presuming you wish to download the film to watch on your device
of choice. Disney then added the Blu-ray, DVD, and digital disc to form the
mega set, so there’s just one version to sell to one and all – of course,
up-priced so the profits are fatter.

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‘Lone Justice: Crash!’ wraps up today in a double-sized finale

‘Lone Justice: Crash!’ wraps up today in a double-sized finale

It may be a skip week for the rest of the comics industry, but not here at ComicMix, where we bring you the conclusion of a story over a year in the telling!

Read the giant-sized finale of Lone Justice: Crash! by Robert Tinnell and Mark Wheatley right now!

Or if you’re just joining us, start at the beginning!

And if you want to read it in paper, the first issue of Lone Justice will be coming out from IDW in February, followed by a trade paperback of the Harvey-nominated EZ Street in March!

Review: ‘Logicomix’ by Doxiadis, Papadimitriou, Papadatos, and Di Donna

Review: ‘Logicomix’ by Doxiadis, Papadimitriou, Papadatos, and Di Donna

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth
Written by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou; Art by Alecos Papadatos; Color by Annie Di Donna
Bloomsbury, September 2009, $22.95

Ever so often, there’s an object lesson that proves the saying so many of us like to make: that comics aren’t just for adventure stories, that they’re suitable for any kind of story. If we’re lucky, those paradigm-breakers are also really successful – and [[[Logicomix]]] is both of those things. It’s a major graphic novel on an unexpected topic – the life of Bertrand Russell, with a strong emphasis on his work attempting to create a solid foundation for mathematics, and thus all of learning – and it’s been quite commercially successful, alighting on bestseller lists occasionally and moving a surprising number of copies.

Logicomix, though, is also a piece of metafiction – the first character we see, on the first page of this graphic novel, is co-author Doxiadis, talking to the reader about this very story, and introducing us to co-author (and logician/computer science professor) Papadimitriou, and then to the art team, Papadatos and Di Donna, and their researcher, Anne. The authors and illustrators return to the stage – very literally, in one case at the end – several times in the course of the graphic novel, mostly to explain the details more carefully, and, occasionally, to lightly debate with each other about the meaning and import of the story.

After that bit of throat-clearing, Logicomix starts up in earnest…with another frame story, in which Bertrand Russell arrives to speak on logic at an unnamed “American University” on the eve of WWII, in 1939, and finds himself interrupted by protestors who want him to stand up unequivocally for pacifism, as he did during The Great War. Russell instead launches into his speech, which forms the narration boxes – and occasional interludes – for the rest of the graphic novel, as the panels depict first Russell’s youth and then his early mature years, as he worked on the foundations of logic.

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Last Minute Video Considerations: Clint Eastwood and Frank Sinatra

Last Minute Video Considerations: Clint Eastwood and Frank Sinatra

MGM Home Video has offered up thirteen different star-centered CD packs, all conveniently priced at $24.95 but savvy shoppers can find them for as little as $14.95. Each box set features four films from the studio’s vast library and neatly packages them together.

What you pay for in convenience, though, you lose in the rich DVD experience that many aficionados want from their home video. The films come with commentary and maybe the trailer but little else. So, if your recipient is a major fan of the films and/or stars, be warned.

Having said that, two that were sent for review, are pretty nice. The Clint Eastwood Star Collection offers up A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, and Hang ‘Em High. That’s 721 minutes of Clint in his spaghetti western days and the birth of a film icon. Oddly, A Fistful of Dollars and Hang ‘Em High come with widescreen versions on one-side and fullscreen on the other while the remaining duo are in standard widescreen,

Consider 1964’s A Fistful of Dollars, which effectively launched the careers of Eastwood, director Sergio Leone, and composer Ennio Morricone. This also was the first in the Man with No Name trilogy, a legendary everyman figure who has endured way beyond the films and even stars in his own comic book. The film was also a turning point in how westerns were made, beginning a new chapter for the then-tired genre.

While effectively a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, this film set up the standards of good versus evil as viewed through the prism of 1960s filmmaking, which had fewer restrictions than in previous decades and allowed the bad to be truly wicked and violent. There’s little doubt Eastwood’s silent, squinting figure inspired many a film knockoff and even contributed to the character of Jonah Hex (start making your comparisons when the Hex film opens next June). He had come a long way from Rawhide’s Rowdy Yates.

Four films in five years established Eastwood as a major actor and kept the genre vital, while inspiring a new generation of filmmakers to try new approaches to older material. You can certainly see it in the works of Coppola and even Lucas.

An odder assortment is the Frank Sinatra Star Collection which offers us Guys And Dolls, A Hole in the Head, Manchurian Candidate, and Sergeant’s 3 which are in no way thematically linked, just using Old Blue Eyes as the common denominator. All four films come only in widescreen and again with minimal extras.

I will admit to a fondness for Guys And Dolls and think the movie, flaws and all, is a delight to watch. Marlon Brando isn’t much of a singer but makes for a fine guy and the movie does give us Stubby Kaye’s rousing “Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat”.

During the 1950s, Sinatra was stretching his acting chops and his best work, Maggio in From Here to Eternity, is missing from this box set. Instead, we get the long-forgotten A Hole in the Head that asks us to accept Sinatra and Edward G. Robinson as brothers.

Based on the 1957 play of the same name, it does posit the notion of an Amusement Park in Florida with the wonderful Keenan Wynn as the Disney stand-in. The film, directed by Frank Capra, is amusing and has a nice cast, including a pre-Addams Carolyn Jones. It also gives us the Sinatra standard “High Hopes”.

By 1962 Sinatra was firmly gripped in the Rat Pack lifestyle and made numerous films with his buddies as embodied in Ocean’s 11. With Dean Martin and Peter Lawford, Sinatra also made the forgettable Sergeant’s 3, a lame remake of Gunga Din. The movie languished forgotten until it finally emerged on DVD just last year and is now slipped into this set.

Far more engaging is the same year’s Manchurian Candidate. The gripping drama is far superior to the recent remake and is a terrific Cold War tale with a strong cast including Angela Lansbury. For a time controversial, it is now one of the strongest Sinatra dramatic performances and a movie that holds up well despite the years and changing global politics.

Other sets of note to ComicMix fans include Gary Cooper, Jody Foster, Nicolas Cage, Robert Downey, Jr., and Sean Connery.

The Walrus Is Batman: A Paired Review

The Walrus Is Batman: A Paired Review

Superheroes die. It’s one of their best tricks – dying, tragically, to stop the Big Bad from doing whatever it is he’s doing. Luckily, another one of their best tricks is to come back from the dead – which they need to do, of course, since someone needs to star in their monthly comics, and you can’t let Jean-Paul Valley or John Henry Irons have the spotlight for all that long. (No one would stand for that.)

Batman died recently, more or less. (It’s always “more or less” when a character like Batman dies. Complication cling to them like barnacles.) And these are two of the books in which he did, or didn’t, die:

Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?
Written by Neil Gaiman; Pencils by Andy Kubert
DC Comics, July 2009, $24.99

Gaiman is a powerful and original writer, but he’s also drawn, again and again, to pastiches and homages, to working in the tradition or shadow of previous stories and creators. Even when he describes his original work, one will be the “Lafferty story,” or (more than once) a Lovecraftian tale. And so Gaiman’s Dead Batman story is explicitly the Dead Batman story of all of his favorite comics creators, influenced by Dick Sprang, Jack Burnley, Gardner Fox, Dennis O’Neil and everyone else. Gaiman’s introduction to the fancy-pants collected edition explains this; his very sensible starting point was that Batman will be dead and alive multiple times in his history, and that he (Gaiman) wanted to write a Dead Batman story that would transcend this particular death to be the Platonic ideal of the Dead Batman story, one that would apply to any Batman of past or future, dead or alive.

At the same time, “Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?” was conceived to be the Batman equivalent of Alan Moore’s 1986 tombstone to the Silver Age Superman, “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” – a two-issue story, published in the “last issues” of the character’s two iconic titles, before the decks were cleared for a major revamp. (Or, in Batman’s case, an extended absence due to temporary death.) But when Moore took on the end of Superman, revamps were a rarer and more tentative thing – superhero comics characters changed costumes and some life circumstances (married, team, solo, outcast, criminal, etc.), but hadn’t yet taken up the modern round of radical origin changes and multiple deaths on a seasonal basis. Moore had the benefit of novelty, and of being there at the right time – the Silver Age had ended, so he was able to eulogize it. Gaiman has no such advantages; no one would want an eulogy for the current era of mainstream comics, and it hasn’t even had the good grace to die.

But Gaiman does his best with what he has, and what he has is primarily Batman’s supporting cast. Batman has perhaps the best and most recognizable crew of villains in long-underwear comics – plus a fair number of sturdy supporters on the heroic side – and Gaiman lets each of them have their turn in the spotlight. What Gaiman has done in “Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?” is what DC probably expected, and what Gaiman has done often – perhaps too often, as it’s getting to be a stylistic tic – to tell a story about stories, a story made up of stories, a Rashomon of comics that adds up to that Platonic Dead Batman story Gaiman was aiming for. So a Golden Age Catwoman explains how Batman died, and then Alfred tells a very different story, and then Gaiman, getting into the second half of his tale, sketches quickly the outlines of a dozen other characters’ versions of Batman’s death. It’s The Wake all over again, or yet another cry of “the King is dead; long live the King!”

Behind and above that – first as a pair of off-page narrators, and then coming onstage in the second half – is a conversation between Batman and a mysterious female figure (luckily, not the one that we immediately suspect), which leads into Gaiman’s version of the core mythology of Batman towards the end of the story. It does not quite edge into metafiction – does not exactly imply that Batman is a comic-book character who will continue to have adventures, to win and lose and die, over and over again – but Gaiman does nod in that direction. It gets rather more Moorcockian than one would have expected, but it all makes sense during the reading.

And, at the end, Gaiman once again appropriates someone else’s work of fiction – I guess I can call it fiction – though he either didn’t get permission to use it explicitly or didn’t want to be that on-the-nose with the real thing. Whatever the explanation, if you grew up in North America in the last seventy years, I expect you’ll recognize it. And so Gaiman is here attempting to tell an emotionally-based story about one seventy-year-old corporately-owned character by using a parallel with a sixty-year-old book also owned by someone else. It’s a nice conceit, reinforcing his Batman-as-Eternal-Champion motif, but it also tends to pull even tighter the Ouroboros of superhero comics – that all references, and all supposedly “new” ideas, are versions and re-imaginings of thoughts that our grandfathers had. “Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?” is an excellent Dead Batman story, but – given that Batman and his ilk will never stay dead – one does have to question why we need to keep adding to the endlessly proliferating, self-referential taxonomy of Batman Stories to begin with.

The book Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? is filled out with a few sketchbook pages from Andy Kubert – I didn’t mention him above, because he’s the Grace Kelly in this book, doing everything impeccably without ever calling attention to himself, following Gaiman’s lead at all times – and with four shorter Batman stories from earlier in Gaiman’s career. Those stories don’t aim as high as “Whatever” does, and are more successful and more frivolous – a quick look at Batman and the Joker in the green room of comics, origins of Poison Ivy and the Riddler, and a framing story attached to that Riddler story. The Poison Ivy story, in particular, shows what Gaiman can do when given the freedom to invent and not hobbled by expectations and requirements.

I doubt Gaiman’s “Caped Crusader” will ever match the iconic status of Moore’s “Man of Tomorrow,” but attempts to match earlier achievements usually do fall short, so that’s only to be expected. As a classy, evergreen Dead Batman story, it’s about as good as we could expect.

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