Tagged: Mike Gold

ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending May 11, 2008

ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending May 11, 2008

Greetings from Asbury Park the wilds of New Jersey, where I’m visiting my Mom for Mother’s Day!  Hope all you moms out there are having a good one.  Here are some loving presents we’ve given you, and every other ComicMix reader for that matter, this past week:

Hey, why not take your Mom to see Speed Racer today?  After all, Susan Sarandon plays the protagonist’s mom, doesn’t she?

Name Dropping, by Mike Gold

Name Dropping, by Mike Gold

I’ve been around the northeast quadrant a bit since the New York show a few weeks ago and I’ve seen a lot of people. Good people, old friends, new collaborators, strange and unusual folks. That’s what my life’s about, and I’m proud of that.

I enjoy going to the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention. Compared with, say, the mass of hustling humanity at comics shows in New York, San Diego or on WizardWorld, the Windy City show is like a weekend at the spa. Anthony Tollin was there along with his latest Shadow and Doc Savage trade paperbacks; we talk about them here all the time. I was able to have a solid conversation with frequent ComicMix commentator Russ Maharas, I got to go over the next Simone and Ajax plot with Andrew Pepoy for a bit, FOC (that’s “friend of ComicMix”) George Hagenauer gave Adriane Nash a swell history lesson on 1950s pin-up art, Rob Davis and Ron Fortier told me about a new project that fascinated the hell out of me, and I had the chance to talk with master cartoonist Jim Engel once again.

The next day we had lunch and dinner with FOCs Charlie Meyerson and his wife Pam (Charlie of Chicago Tribune fame; Pam’s a lawyer and bon vivant) and Rick Oliver and his wife Jade (Honest Rick of First Comics, Jade was a swell comics colorist). George, Charlie and Rick have given us a lot of advice and opinion ever since ComicMix was just a gleam in our eye – Rick is a major commenter in these precincts – and the whole bundle of ‘em are brilliant conversationalists.

Since the best thing to do in Chicago is eat until you burst, we were particularly fond of our dinner with the aforementioned Mr. Pepoy, Simone and Ajax colorist Jason Millet, Hilary Barta (Munden’s Bar, The Simpsons, The Thing, Power Pack, New Mutants, Alan Moore’s Tomorrow Stories), and writer / professor Len Strazewski (Prime, Justice Society, The Fly, Starman, Phantom Lady). Sort of like the fabled Algonquin round table, but a lot more snarky.

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Del Close Close Up, by Mike Gold

Del Close Close Up, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • April 28, 2008

Well, it’s about time.

Author Kim Howard Johnson, former comics newsman (the late, lamented Comics Scene), occasional comic book writer (Superman: True Brit, with John Cleese and John Byrne), and frequent ComicMix commenter, has written the definitive biography of his mentor, collaborator and friend, comedy legend Del Close.

It’s called The Funniest One In The Room: The Lives and Legends of Del Close (Chicago Review Press, $24.95), and I’ll admit right off it’s impossible for me to not absolutely love a book in which I am mentioned in the second paragraph. I could have titled this column “Me and My Ego” but, no, this one’s about Del’s ego.

Comics fans may be familiar with Del’s work in collaboration with John Ostrander on Munden’s Bar during its original First Comics run, and/or their work together on the even-more-over-the-top Wasteland, the one we did at DC Comics. In fact, it was Del who suggested the title.

Students of American cultural history know Del as a Shakespearean actor who also performed on television and in movies and plays by Steve Martin, Jules Feiffer, William Saroyan, Judge Julius Hoffman, and Kaufman and Hart. But he is best known for his work as a director, teacher and mentor to – to name but a very, very few – John and Jim Belushi; Brian Doyle, Joel, and Bill Murray; Howard Hessman; Rob Reiner; Joe Flaherty; Harold Ramis; Betty Thomas; George Wendt; Tim Kazurinsky; John Candy; Chris Farley. Tim Meadows; Andy Richter; Stephen Colbert; Steve Carell; Kim Yale… and literally hundreds more. Oh, yeah… he was also rehearsal director of Saturday Night Live for a couple years and he created the format for SCTV.

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Superman Blue … Archie Orange, by Mike Gold

Superman Blue … Archie Orange, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • April 21, 2008

In the comments section of my column of two weeks ago, I told Van Jensen that today’s broad spectrum of color could not be printed on the cheap toilet paper employed in the days of yore. That stuff would soak up ink like a spirit gets sucked into Harold Ramis’s ghost trap. Back in those days just after the invention of papyrus, color artists were limited to a palette of three values each of red, blue and yellow, plus black. Not a lot to work with.

Still, as Van implies, the end result was fine. It didn’t bother us, just as riding a horse to work didn’t bother us. Except… except … it bothered me.

To be specific, blue hair bothered me.

I understand why hair was blue: if it were black, it’d just look like Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne had a big blob of India ink atop their brainpans. You couldn’t make it look like hair, and not everybody could have brown, red, or blonde hair. The blue stuff was supposed to suggest highlights, but with a few dozen colors to choose from, what can you do? 

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ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending April 21, 2008

ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending April 21, 2008

  • News
  • April 20, 2008

Welcome to all New York Comic Con attendees discovering ComicMix via our coverage and con presence!  Do stop by Conference Room 10 (mid-level by the bathrooms and Kinko’s sign) to say, "hi," pass along news tidbits and so forth!  In the meantime, as Rick Marshall mentioned in Friday’s "The Changing Face of Online Journalism" panel, one of the things that makes any comics site standout is its unique columnists, of which we have many.  Here’s what we’ve written for you this past week:

Oh, and happy Passover!  Rumor has it that Danny Fingeroth will have chocolate macaroons at the "Disguised as Clark Kent" panel at noon today…

DC’s Killing Fields, by Mike Gold

DC’s Killing Fields, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • April 14, 2008

How many times can you run a stunt into the ground in one month before you just look like you’re totally bereft of originality? DC Comics’ June, 2008 solicitations, as published in Diamond Distributing’s Previews catalog, offers no less than six phony death and/or resurrection stunts.

Gotham Underground #9 asks the musical question “Will Penguin pay the ultimate price?” Well, who cares? If he’s dead, he’ll get better. Death has no sting in the DC universe.

Batman #678 is the third part of their “Batman R.I.P.” arc. “Is it truly the end for one of the world’s finest heroes?” the solicitation asks.  Forgive me, but how many times have the sundry world’s finest heroes R’ed in P? Hell, I’ll bet if you ask them they would have wanted to stay dead at least a bit longer in order to get some rest in peace. I should add Robin #165 to this list as it ties in to Batman #678 and has Robin holding a dead-looking Batman on the cover. Maybe – probably – the old buzzard isn’t dead. The fact is, it doesn’t matter.

Booster Gold #10: “Someone from his past must live and someone must die!” My wife informs me (happily) that Ted (Blue Beetle the Second) has already been resurrected. The death – if it actually happens – well, again, who cares? If it was somebody important, he/she/it wouldn’t be killed off in Booster Gold. Unless the stunt has grown so lame that DC is willing to bury it in a title such as this.

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Money, by Mike Gold

Money, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • April 7, 2008

I started thinking about money.

Well, actually, I probably haven’t stopped thinking about it since the day I realized my daily school lunch would buy me three comic books and one candy bar. But being older yet no more mature, this time around I started thinking about the price of gasoline.

Right after the New York Comic Con, my wife, daughter and I are going to pile into my 2005 Ford Focus hatchback and drive across New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana to spend time in Detroit and Chicago. Mostly work, but lucky for me I work with my friends, which is sort of like spending my lunch money on comic books.

Here in Fairfield County Connecticut the price of a gallon of gas is $3.45. It’s about time they dropped that “9/10ths” thing – I’m sure they will when the price of gas goes above $9.99 a gallon. If previous trips (I do this about three or four times a year, mostly for conventions) are any indication, I suspect I’ll be paying about $3.19 a gallon in Pennsylvania and Ohio. The drive, in total, runs about 1800 miles and my Focus gets about 35 miles to the gallon – this is mostly highway driving, so I’ve got the right car for the job. That’s about 52 gallons for the trip, which I figure will run about $170.00 plus tolls. Call it $200.00; if I flew in alone the car rental would cost more, let alone my airfare.

This brings me back to my lunch money. I am so damn old that my school lunch only cost my parents 35 cents, and therefore the comic books I bought with that lunch money only cost a dime (when the price went up to 12 cents, I just stared at the cover as though it said the Communists had just seized control of the drug store). Today, the average cost of the standard format mainstream comic book costs $3.00. That’s a thirty-fold increase. A gallon of gas in the late 10-cent comics era was about 30 cents, so we’ve only suffered a little more than an eleven-fold increase.

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ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending April 6, 2008

ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending April 6, 2008

  • News
  • April 6, 2008

Hollywood icon Charlton Heston is no longer with us.  Cineleet has a nice overview of his roles in three classic sf movies, but of course he was so much more, both on the screen and in real life.  Whatever one might think of  his politics, the fact that he and his now-widow Lydia were married for 64 years is enough to earn my respect and admiration.  As April is National Poetry Month, feel free to add your poetic thoughts about Heston in the comments section, and don’t forget to check out this past week’s ComicMix columns:

Godspeed, Chuck – not that you need it, you probably have the inside track after all those Biblical epics…

Breaking The Mirror, by Mike Gold

Breaking The Mirror, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • March 31, 2008

One of the more disgusting experiences I suffered through in my professional life was the reaction of one DC Comics executive – no longer with the company; not for quite a while – to the new El Diablo series back in 1989. His response was “not a lot of those people buy our comics.”

Without this executive’s support, the series didn’t have a chance. It lumbered on through 16 issues despite good work from a respected team. A lot of people didn’t know the title existed. Your reaction might very well have been “El Diablo?? Oh, yeah, I think I remember that…” Sigh. When I hired a black man as a full editor at DC, a first for the company, a couple of my fellow editorial staffers made their displeasure quite well known to me, and to my boss.

This is no criticism of DC: they had a large staff even at that time and these clown were hardly the only bigots in the building. That’s America, and these people (as opposed to those people) sometimes get their way. Sometimes we watch them on CNN; sometimes we elect them to office.

Comic book universes have been slow to reflect the spectrum of humanity: too many white men running around with other white men for way too long. Yep, that’s been changing somewhat more slowly than in other sectors of our popular culture, but I’ll bet we’ve still got another black superhero coming out named “Black” something. At least Marvel is unlikely to create another black sidekick named Bucky.

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ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending March 30, 2008

ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending March 30, 2008

  • News
  • March 30, 2008

Wow, March seemed to fly by even faster than February, didn’t it?  But opening day is finally upon us, allergy season is already in full swing and ComicMix columnists are nipping things in the bud as usual:

Congrats to Martha and Michael on their columns reaching the Big Five-Oh!  Presumably Dennis O’Neill is on spring break, and we look forward to his return.

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