As I wrote a few weeks ago, this is a great time to enjoy non-realistic fiction. Technology has evolved to the point that, even with no budget, people can tell the most fantastic, unimaginable stories without spending millions of dollars.
As an example, there are two different broadcast network television shows this year based on classic fairy tales. They’re very different, appealing, I suspect, to different audiences. Let’s discuss.
NBC’s Grimmis, in my opinion, the better show. It’s premise is that there is a race of people, Grimms, who hunt down supernaturally evil creatures from folklore, like trolls and ogres and giants. The last Grimm is a young married police detective, Nick Burkhardt, played by David Giuntoli (who looks a lot like Brandon Routh). He is helped in his investigations by a charming werewolf, Silas .
As you might expect from that premise, this series owes a lot of its structure to Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. So you won’t be surprised that the producersworked on Buffy show and the spin-off, Angel, as well as movies. The other two producers have experience in comedy.
The show is paced very much a police procedural, with a crime committed at the beginning of the show that must be solved by the end. The only difference is that the criminals are almost all supernatural, and Burkhardt is the only one who knows. There’s also a continuing story about some kind of conspiracy against the Grimms, one that the chief of police seems to be in on. The relationships among the characters seem real, the town seems like a place where people actually live, and the hero is happily married (at least so far), which is refreshing. Too many shows rely on the sexual attraction between two characters and a “will they or won’t they” dynamic to provide suspense.
By contrast, Once Upon a Time is much more of a soap opera, which is appropriate, given that it’s the lead-in for Desperate Housewives. The premise here is that the fairy tale characters have unknowingly left their dimension because of a spell by the Evil Queen, and now live Storybrooke, with no memory of their true identities.
As with Grimm, every week there is a mystery to solve. The sheriff, Emma Stone, is a former bail bondsman who was brought to Storybrooke by her long-lost son, Henry, who was adopted by Regina, the Mayor. As you might expect from that name, Regina is the evil queen.
Appropriate to a series with a queen, Once Upon a Time is campy fun. There are lots of knowing winks to Disney films, and the comic book rack at the drugstore has only Marvel titles. The child psychologist who works with Henry is, in the fairy tale universe, Jiminiy Cricket. Hilariously, his name on our world is Archie.
Best of all, the mysterious Mr. Gold is played by Robert Carlyle, an actor who can do anything. In Trainspotting, he was a scary psychopath. In The Full Monty, he was adorable. He was a Bond villain. He was Hitler. This show doesn’t give him enough to do.
The Evil Queen is always evil. The good guys are always good. The characters are not as complex as those on Grimm. However, half the time, they get to dress up like royalty.
As I said, I think Grimm works better overall. If you can only watch one, choose that. I can’t imagine why you would have to so limit yourself. Maybe that will be next season’s fantasy series.
In 2009, we ran an article about Astro Boy and the then-upcoming movie. We got some grief from the law firm representing the movie studio IMAGI, complete with cease and desist letters, over using earlier released concept art as an illustration for the article. We responded by posting the C&D letter, and telling Imagi that we would remove not only the image, but all articles about the Astro Boy movie, and would no longer provide coverage for any IMAGI properties, just to be safe. The President of IMAGI apologized for the “error” and backed off.
Luckily for us, SOPA was not a law.
If it was, the law firm could have simply decided to not even contact us at all, but instead simply shut us down. Completely. Without warning and without legal recourse.
This is a prime example of what SOPA, the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (and the US Senate version of the same bill, PIPA) is intended to do by design: a law written by Hollywood interests that give them the right to shut down a website for “copyright infringement”. Ostensibly the law would protect against piracy, but as written, the law is overly broad and dangerous, putting the burden on website owners to police all material and allowing for the unnecessary blocking of entire sites without notification and without exemptions for fair use, and no safe harbor provisions. Small sites such as ComicMix won’t have sufficient resources to defend themselves, let alone survive a protracted shutdown.
We here at ComicMix believe that SOPA is designed to give corporations the ability to silence any web site they don’t like, with no oversight and no appeal. We are further disturbed that not only have DC and Marvel’s corporate parents, Time Warner and The Walt Disney Corporation, have come out strongly in favor of SOPA, but that Marvel has gone above and beyond in declaring their support for it.
One simply has to wonder how much Marvel would like SOPA if the heirs of Jack Kirby decided to shut down Marvel.com.
Numerous other sites such as Wikipedia, Google, Reddit, and WordPress have gone dark today to signal their opposition to SOPA and PIPA. We add our voices to the chorus, and ask that you contact your representatives and senators today to add yours.
The AudioComics Company is pleased to announce the casting of San Francisco Bay Area stage actor John Strain in the title role ofThe Black Bat, part of the production company’s Pulp Adventures anthology series, and a pivotal character in the forthcoming Moonstone AudioComics offering,Battle for LA. As withThe Domino Lady, The AudioComics Company’s world-premiere productions featuring The Black Bat will mark the first time that the pulp character has graced the airwaves.
The Black Bat first appeared in the July 1939 issue ofBlack Book Detective, in the origin story “Brand of the Black Bat” written by Norman Daniels under the house name G. Wayman Jones. Both the Black Bat and Batman hit the newsstands around the same time, and both Thrilling Publications and National Comics (respective publishers of the characters) claimed the other was a copy. National (now of course known as DC) editor Whitney Ellsworth, who had previously worked for Thrilling’s head Ned Pines, negotiated an arrangement between the two companies, allowing both characters to exist (staving off potential lawsuits).
The world believes that District Attorney Tony Quinn is blind from a gangster’s attack. In truth, he is able to see, the result of a secret operation where the corneas of a murdered small town sheriff were grafted onto Quinn’s eyes. To everyone’s surprise, not only can Quinn see normally, but he can see in complete darkness. While blind, he had developed the necessary skills of the blind, all of which stay with him after he regains his sight. Posing as a blind man to throw both cops and criminals off the trail, “Special District Attorney” Anthony Quinn, armed with a pair of .45’s, becomes The Black Bat, a vigilante determined to bring those who slip through the system to justice…by any means necessary. For this reason he is wanted not only by the underworld but by the authorities as well. Aiding Quinn is his “girl Friday” Carol Baldwin, daughter of the slain sheriff; Butch O’ Leary, the over 6’5” giant with fists of fury; and Quinn’s “valet,” one-time hood-gone-straight Norton “Silk” Kirby.
John M. Strain holds a BA in Literature with an Acting minor from San Francisco State University, an MFA in Acting from UC Irvine, and a Teaching Credential from Chapman University. Some of his Bay Area roles include Bobby from David Mamet’sBobby Gould in Hell,Festefrom Shakespeare’sTwelfth Night, and Mendoza inThePolitics of Decay. Southern California roles include Linder inA Raisin in the Sun, Eddie inFool for Love, and Zarius Michaels in the short film Hold On!(Semi-finalist, Triggerstreet.com). Most recently, John played Robert in the AFI shortMorning Latte, and Adolf Hitler in the premiere stage production ofDisney in Deutschland. John currently teaches English, Study Skills, Journalism and helps run “Read Aloud” public speaking tournaments for young adults in the city of San Francisco.
As mentioned, John will first suit up as The Black Bat in a San Francisco recording studio this spring, when the character appears alongside The Phantom Detective, G-8, Secret Agent X, and The Domino Lady (Karen Stilwell) inBattle for LA, based on the Moonstone one-shot by CJ Henderson and Mark Sparacio.
Walt Disney has released their classic Beauty and the Beast in 3-D, hoping to capitalize on the success of their Lion King in 3-D release. We here at ComicMix think it’s merely a cash grab since the up-conversion doesn’t really add anything new to the story or songs but for those dwindling few who still buy into the current 3-D fad. Still, it does allow Disney to give us Tangled Ever After, the followup short to 2010’s surprisingly charming film.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/E6-H0HBjifE [/youtube]
And look, here’s another trailer to Finding Nemo in 3-D because you can’t just have enough re-releasees in 3-D.
Disney XD will launch Marvel Universe, a dedicated Marvel programming block, with the new series Ultimate Spider-Man as its centerpiece, on SUNDAY, APRIL 1, it was announced today by Gary Marsh, President and Chief Creative Officer, Disney Channels Worldwide at the Television Critics Association Press Tour in Pasadena, California. Marvel Universe on Disney XD will be the ultimate place for fans to find exclusive Marvel content, including new animated short-form series, live-action interstitials and the series return of The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. The block will be home to Marvel’s biggest superstars, such as Spider-Man, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain America and many more to introduce dynamic stories of action, adventure and heroism to a whole new generation.
Marsh said, “Iconic Marvel heroes and villains and stories with core values of accomplishment, discovery and growth make Marvel Universe a perfect complement to Disney XD and a destination for parents and kids to experience together.” (more…)
If you you’re inclined to keep an eye out, heroes pop up like Kleenex. Steve Niles just made the cut.
At the 2010 Baltimore Comic-Con Harvey Awards dinner, Mark Waid offered a courageous keynote address which offered a simple message: digital comics are here to stay, there is an international bootlegging community and we as creators and industry doyens must learn to deal with it. For this, Mark was roundly booed, hassled and harassed by his peers. Astonishingly, one of his tormentors was the otherwise quite gentlemanly Sergio Aragonés.
I don’t recall if Steve Niles was at the dinner, but if not, it’s likely he heard about it. Suggesting that any acknowledgement of those who pirate comics is akin to taking a dump on the bible. This is true throughout the media: records (yeah, it’s okay to call them “records;” look it up), movies and teevee shows, even books. And you thought nobody was reading.
The media industry’s response to this has been to advocate passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act, a.k.a. SOPA. Simply put, SOPA allows any intellectual property (IP) owner to legally compel any Internet Service Provider (a.k.a. ISP; we’re shooting for the entire alphabet this week) to kick off any website suspected of copyright infringement.
Well, here’s a clue for you. Well over 99% of the websites on the Internet infringe copyrights and trademarks. Pick-ups of news items, graphics used to illustrate anything, sound bytes and even some You Tube links – they are all infringing upon somebody’s IP. You rip off the Superman logo font because you’re artistic and just being cute? Well, that logo is a registered trademark, and you are now Lex Luthor.
So Steve, bless his 30 Days of Night heart, took a stand. “SOPA does more than go after so-called ‘piracy’ websites,” said he. “SOPA takes away all due process, shuts down any site it deems to be against the law without trial, without notification, without due process… Nobody seems to give a shit, or either they’re scared. Either way, very disappointing. I guess when it affects them they’ll get mad… I know folks are scared to speak out because a lot of us work for these companies, but we have to fight. Too much is at stake.”
He tweeted all these comments; I got them from our pals at Digital Spy, except they asterisked “shit.” We here at ComicMix are beneath that.
Here’s some facts. Every time somebody unlawfully downloads IP – and note I said “unlawfully” because it is unlawful – the media racket sees that as a lost sale. This is overwhelming bullshit. People sample, people are curious, people’s friends make a recommendation and said people check ‘em out. There’s plenty of stuff that you’d check out before laying down your plastic sight unseen. The actual number of downloads that defraud the owner (which is usually not the creator) is a fraction of the total. These downloads are still illegal, but IP moguls should pull the stick out of their ass and tell the truth when they are babbling about how much bootlegging is costing them. They are liars.
There are a great many services that allow you to legally purchase IP, and the largest of these is Apple’s iTunes, which offers music, television, movies, books, magazines, newspapers, software (a.k.a. “apps”) and probably jpg’s of papyrus scrolls. As of around October 2011 – the date varies by category – iTunes has sold over 16 billion songs, about one half-billion movies, videos and teevee shows, some 20 billion apps, and Crom knows how many books, magazines and newspapers.
Here’s the rub: in each and every one of these approximately 40,000,000,000 cases, the purchaser could have downloaded the damn thing for free. In most cases, it is far easier to illegally cop a boot than it is to purchase one. Let’s start with the fact that you don’t need to have a credit card or room left on your credit limit to procure your illegal bootie.
So. 40 billion downloads from just one – the biggest one – online merchant in a world that only houses seven billion people. That’s an average of four and one-half perfectly legal downloads for each and every person, including babies in the Amazon who don’t even have access to Amazon.
Hey! People are inherently good. Go know!
Of course SOPA is being supported by all the big IP companies, including Disney (Marvel) and Time Warner (DC). If only they were so moral about how they treat their creative talent, without whom both companies would constitute another real estate bust.
On the other side: Facebook, Google, Twitter and Wikipedia, the latter of which threatens to disappear should SOPA pass. Then students will actually have to do research, and we can’t have that.
Also standing proudly on the other side: Steve Niles. Good for you, pal.
Holiday-themed comics have long been a tradition, along with holiday-themed… everything else. That’s cool; if you can’t make a buck pushing Santy Claus, when can you?
As far as our four-color medium is concerned, we inherited the tradition from the newspaper strips. These guys went all-out, and back when there were still a lot of continuity strips stories would be interrupted for Christmas and New Years (Hanukkah rarely, Kwanza, Ramadan and Saturnalia never) or, better still, holiday themes would be incorporated into the ongoing story. This was carried over into proto-comic book form when Will Eisner and his largely Jewish crew produced their annual “Christmas Spirit” story.
Outside of Santy-themed covers, it took a while for the comic book publishers to reliably produce annual holiday fare. The two that lasted the longest where Archie’s Christmas Stocking (with variations on that title, including the all-embracing evil “holiday” word) which started in 1954, and DC’s Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, licensed from Robert L. May, who owned the glowing streetkill. That title commenced in 1950. Dell had special Christmas editions of the various Disney and Warner Bros. cartoon characters, and before long most other publishers jumped on the sleigh.
As a child, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer confused me. That’s a statement you don’t often read, but it’s true. The original series ran for twelve years, which meant twelve issues. All were unnumbered. At some point I understood DC didn’t number their first issues (I later discovered why), but I knew Rudolph to be an annual event. A collector even as a child, I wanted to know how many issues I had missed. The title continued in various formats – giants, tabloids – until it was no longer worth the licensing fee. Yet holiday-dedicated superhero comics continued; DC was way ahead of the curve with its Holiday Special (sic) going back at least to 1980.
This year, we continue to have holiday output from Archie – including a trade reprint of Stocking stories – and a pretty nifty tome from Marvel that first appeared as individual digital stories. This latter book is one of my favorite Marvels of 2011. But unless I overlooked a page in the Diamond catalog, nothing from DC Comics. No Christmas title, no Holiday title, nothing from the company that pretty much started it all.
At first I thought Mark Waid just didn’t need the money this year and is probably overbooked writing every seventh title published. But then it dawned on me.
Maybe Bill O’Reilly is right. Maybe there is a War On Christmas. After all, those bleeding hearts at Warner Bros. studios now have full control of the company, and Bill and his friends at the New York Post keep telling us they’re heartless bastards. I guess this is proof.
O.K. Fine. I’ve got my Marvel holiday comic, and my Archie reprints, and besides, I firmly believe there ain’t no sanity clause. But I’m sentimental enough to wish you-all a wonderful holiday season.
Two Indy comics creators have been tapped to chronicle the further adventures of John Carter’s Mars for Marvel Comics. John Carter: The Gods Of Mars is the publisher’s latest collaborative project with the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate.
Sam Humphries, writer of the self-published comics Our Love is Real and Sacrifice is teamed withwith artist Ramón Pérez, the illustrator of Archaia’s hardcover graphic novel Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand.
John Carter: The Gods Of Mars is based on the 1918 Burroughs novel and is slated for five issues debuting March 2012, the same month John Carter, a live-action feature film from Marvel parent company, Disney, is scheduled for release. Currently, Marvel has two John Carter miniseries running; John Carter: World of Mars and John Carter: A Princess of Mars.
“From Landridge and Andrade to Edgar Rice Burroughs himself, there’s an impressive foundation of awesome John Carter stories to build on,” Humphries said in Marvel’s press release. “Combined with Marvel having the most exciting comics going on right now, and most talented editors in the industry — I can’t wait to get myself to Mars.”
For a movie based on a comic book set in the 1930s, The Rocketeer was actually ahead of its time. The movie was released as Disney’s big summer film in 1991, backed with tons of marketing, and planned as a big tent pole for their future.
The problem was, in 1991 there were precious few superhero movies creating a genre to support the fan following. When it opened that June there was nothing out there to support it and the groundswell of geekdom had yet to reach critical mass. Therefore, despite relatively positive reviews, the movie did minimal business, finishing 27th for the calendar and largely forgotten. Its director, Joe Johnston, went on to make a number of other hits and misses until he scored big earlier this year with Captain America. Now, taking his fame and the 20th anniversary into account, Walt Disney Home Entertainment has released [[[The Rocketeer]]] on Blu-ray and DVD today.
Please refer to part 1 and part 3 of this series for background. Part 2 was my attempt to try and underscore what I was trying to get across by writing these series of articles. Yeah, I still have no idea why I wrote part 2 either. To recap, I had an idea to get comics in the school system taught as a high interest low level reading curriculum.
Step by step my process was:
Come up with the idea.
Do the research.
Figure out the barriers to entry.
Developed two specific programs: one for Texas, one for California.
Wrote the business plan.
All above steps taken, so now I need a partner.
First rule of fight club: never talk about fight club.
First rule of business: never use your own money.
That’s my first rule anyhow, rather or not you talk about it is on you but the less said about who is writing you a check the better.
There was a period in my career when I wanted to own everything so I paid for everything. I had some success but realized later than I should have, paying for everything can be a dangerous road to travel on unless you have really deep pockets and can afford to lose a grip.
A “grip” is a lot of money. Sorry, sometimes I revert back to where I grew up. You can take the man out of the hood but you can’t take the hood out of the man.
That’s not entirely bad and I’ll get back to that later.
I’ve done quite a few deals where I put up the development money and took all back end… meaning I waited for the venture to start making money to recoup and profit from it.
Sometimes paying for everything was a great idea, sometimes not so much. I don’t regret paying for development the projects I did so one but except for a passion project of mine I doubt if I will ever do it again.
If you have the cash and want to control and own everything in your deal financing everything may work for you. But before you empty your life savings to finance, direct and produce and own your project give this a thought, would anyone but you pay to do what you are about to do?
Each time I sign a deal where someone else is investing in my idea that further validates that I just may be on to something.
I mentioned above a passion project that I want control all aspects of the production. I’m holding out to completely control 100% of everything so I may bite the bullet and write the check myself but for now I’m still looking for the right partner to underwrite the venture.
The right partner is what I needed for The Action Files, my comic book reading program for schools.
And I’m back!
When looking for a partner, be very careful to consider everything, not just the money. I don’t care how much money they bring to the table – it can be a nightmare.
I’ll say it again, it can be a nightmare.
I can’t go into particulars as to why a deal or two bankrolled by a partner turned out to be a nightmare (gag order, restraining order, hit men and a angry midget among other less pleasant things) but trust me it can be so think long and hard before you take that check.
I was lucky enough to have three different companies interested in The Action Files. I met with all three and decided the best place for The Action Files and myself was powerhouse publisher Simon & Schuster. At the time they were one of the biggest publishers of mainstream and educational materials in the world.
At the time they were one of the biggest publishers of mainstream and educational materials in the world.
After a series of meetings we came to an agreement and The Action Files was no longer an idea I came up with a year before it was now about to be a reality.
There is one more step that no one seems to tell young people.
One of the things it’s very important to remember which no one talks about is the vetting process. Any serious player who is about to invest millions of dollars in your idea is going to do their due diligence and vet you. That, in layman’s terms, means to check you out.
The process may be as simple as asking for references or as in-depth as a full background check. So don’t even think about telling a company you did something that you did not do when discussing your resume or bio.
I’m not just a seller of ideas (content) but I’ve run a few entertainment divisions at major companies and was a buyer. As head of my own company I’m often pitched projects for me to take to a film or television studio, comic company or mainstream publisher that I’m already in business with. I’m approached to find financing or finance projects myself or partner with someone to create a project. I’ve been very successful in brokering quite a few deals that I did not create.
I’m currently developing a slate of projects with Wayne Brady as an example of how a partnership would work. Wayne and I are working on a book and an animated project.
Unless I know someone well personality or someone comes to me from a real good referral I almost never get involved with other peoples’ projects. I’ll give advice all day long but I’ve been burned too many times to get involved with others I don’t know from Adam. It happens from time to time but it’s as rare as a black guy from Compton voting Republican.
The vetting process can killed your dream deal faster than a sex scandal can kill your hope to be President Of The United States… Herman!
Tell people the truth about what you have or have not done. If your idea is a great idea and you have no experience at all tell the buyer. More than likely the company will respect that and proceed with that in mind.
I’ve sold TV shows and I had noidea how to produce one when I sold my first show. I have a better idea now but I’d be an idiot to think that I could produce and an even bigger idiot to say that I wanted to.
The vetting process would have outted me faster than Ricky Martin on TMZ.
It’s not just making sure your background is legit – it’s also avoiding the one bullshit line that I’ve heard a million times and it’s just bullshit.
“Disney wanted to do this but I didn’t like the deal.”
I’ve heard that line at least a thousand times in 20 years.
It’s bullshit, and unless your name is Tom Hanks or someone of that stature using that line in a meeting will surely kill any deal you had dead if it was not dead already.
Yesterday at a restaurant some guy recognized me from a CNN interview I did years ago. He pitched me this project while I was waiting for a meeting. Frankly, the idea was pretty darn good and I was considering meeting with him to discuss it when he said…
“Disney wanted to do this but I didn’t like the deal, so I’m bringing it to you.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Whom did you meet with at Disney?”
Nothing from him but a blank look, because it was all bullshit. After what had to be a minute he said he had to check his notes and blah, blah, yada, yada, yada.
Bullshit.
So, if you have the next great idea and you manage to get a meeting to pitch someone, tell the truth my friend, nothing but bad things can happen if you don’t.
My project from idea to signed contract took a solid year and a lot of work. The Action File reading program started in 1996 and has since moved to Pearson Learning where it’s still going strong.
As you go forward remember my second rule of business: don’t let anyone discourage you or try and kill your dream. Dreams do come true and maybe there’s a tip or two within this series that can help a little bit towards yours, young Jedi. Good luck… and if Disney wants to do your project let them.
As I wrote a few weeks ago, this is a great time to enjoy non-realistic fiction. Technology has evolved to the point that, even with no budget, people can tell the most fantastic, unimaginable stories without spending millions of dollars.
