ComicMix Quick Picks – what day is it? March 32nd?
What it’s been like here recently…
Just way too much stuff to go through, and we’ve been very busy with the print announcement and rushing to get things ready for the Previews catalog, and I have dozens of tabs open to blog about and consolidate. Wheeee!
So this will be more of a high-speed link dump from the last few days. Onward:
- The cast and crew of Battlestar Galactica at the United Nations – "We are all Cylons. We are all Colonials." Alex Epstein’s take on the last episode of BSG: Seriously? That’s What You Got? My favorite comment on the finale, from Sabrina: "There can be no more spoilers for BSG, because they spoiled it themselves."
- Don’t forget tonight’s Family Guy/Star Trek The Next Generation crossover.
- Non-comics link of the day: John Mellencamp on The State of the Music Business:
Over the last few years, we have all witnessed the decline of the music business, highlighted by finger-pointing and blame directed against record companies, artists, internet file sharing and any other theories for which a case could be made. We’ve read and heard about the "good old days" and how things used to be. People remember when music existed as an art that motivated social movements. Artists and their music flourished in back alleys, taverns and barns until, in some cases, a popular groundswell propelled it far and wide. These days, that possibility no longer seems to exist. After 35 years as an artist in the recording business, I feel somehow compelled, not inspired, to stand up for our fellow artists and tell that side of the story as I perceive it. Had the industry not been decimated by a lack of vision caused by corporate bean counters obsessed with the bottom line, musicians would have been able to stick with creating music rather than trying to market it as well.
Hmm– maybe it is a comics link after all.
- ‘The Phantom’ will be on SciFi or SyFy or whatever they’re calling it. Impress me: get Billy Zane to do cameos.
- Speaking of SciFi’s name change: SciFi Founder Hates Syfy, Issac Asimov would have hated it, and yo9 for the win.
- Dharma wants you… since the 70’s apparently.
- Hey, Ted Chiang wrote a story this year! It’s a classic, at the same time brilliant and wrong. It’s hard to explain how it’s intentionally wrong unless you read it, and you really should.
- Tom’s Glossary of Book Publishing Terms. My favorite: DEADLINE: An item that exists to be renegotiated and revised. In his famous paradox, the Greek philosopher Zeno proved that deadlines can never be met.
- Scottish Uni Launches Comic Writing MA. Of course Alan Grant and Mark Millar are to blame.
- Disney in talks for rights to "Stoneheart" books.
- Robot VI on Marvel’s ‘indie’ anthology. (Yes, I put VI instead of 6. The cadence and rhyming between Robot 6 and ComicMix is getting distracting.)
- And finally, Former CNN Anchor Moves to The Onion. Quality of reporting improves.
Anything else? Consider this an open thread. (Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.)
Today’s list of quick items that don’t fill a full post on their own:
A collection of news items that have come in over the last few days while we’ve been recovering from NYCC.
Remember the last time comics were in serious economic troubles? Remember when Marvel went bankrupt?
Hermes Press recently signed a deal to publish Star Trek: A Comics History, described as “the complete saga of the Star Trek universe in comic books and comic strips.” The March release is being written by Alan J. Porter, best known for his James Bond: The History Of The Illustrated 007. The 208-page, all color, large format deluxe trade paperback is expected to chronicle the four-color history of Star Trek from the first Gold Key comics to the English newspaper strip, to Marvel and DC’s Star Trek titles and the present-day comic and manga iterations.
A few weeks ago, I 
were.
Ang Lee’s [[[Hulk]]] film failed because he spent too much time on the Jekyll/Hyde aspects, the very ones that inspired Stan Lee. After all these years, people wanted to see the Hulk leap and smash things. When he leapt, we cheered, but there just wasn’t enough of it.
, is largely the Army hunting the Hulk as Bruce Banner searches for a cure. While that worked fine in the 12-page [[[Tales to Astonish]]] stories, it’s not nearly enough for a feature film. The biggest problem with Zak Snyder’s story is that the Super Soldier formula that is now linked to the Hulk and the Abomination is clearly able to turn people into weapons of mass destruction and all the military sees is a weapon. Not a single person in uniform saw it as anything else and frankly, we’ve seen this theme before and done better elsewhere.
Comic books, admittedly, don’t have a great history when itcomes to video game adaptations.
have this mighty gem.
Typhon
