“So there I was, about to embark on an amazing journey through time, when my bat-phone rang.”
“Bruce? It’s Steve. Rogers. Captain America? Oh come on! Kurt and George made us fight a ton back in JLA/Avengers! Say, listen… I heard you got your Bucky to fill in for a while? Good. Let me tell you about this opportunity we have over here at the House of Ideas…”
“Long story short? Sorry Grant… I don’t want to see how many creepy perverts you’ve got stored throughout time. I got a posh gig at a new mansion in New York. Bats-out!”
Straight from Heidi at The Beat comes word that the Big Apple Con has been purchased by Wizard and will move to a new venue, Pier 94, and an October date for this year. If this date holds for next year it would put the show in direct competition with the New York Comic-Con which is moving to a fall date next year.
The Big Apple Con had been held at the rapidly decaying Penn Plaza Hotel– a great location, a lousy facility. Wizard has had its own problems with the cancellation of their Texas show, the postponement of their Los Angeles show, and the cutbacks in their publishing line. The Chicago and Philly shows are still planned. As with other Wizard shows, the new Big Apple Con will be partnered with another pop culture show, this time the Video Game Expo. Here’s the press release:
Gareb Shamus, CEO of New York-based Wizard Entertainment, today announced he has acquired Big Apple Con, one of the trailblazing brands in the comic book and pop culture world, and the longest running annual show in New York City. The “new” Big Apple Con is moving to Pier 94 in Manhattan the weekend of October 16-18, 2009.
“I’ve been going to shows in New York City since I was a kid and I have a fondness for Big Apple Con,” Shamus said. “Today’s acquisition fulfills a dream of running a mega-show in New York City unlike anything there’s ever been.”
This move also enjoys tremendous support and enthusiasm from industry leaders. “Diamond is really looking forward to working closely with our friends at Wizard as they expand into the New York market,” said Bill Schanes, Vice President for Purchasing at Diamond Comics. “We anticipate a great event based on their ability to attract key talent, to promote and market the event, and at the same time to give consumers a tremendous value for their admission price.”
Ed Fleming, CEO/Founder of Video Game Expo (VGXPO), the largest East Coast expo of its kind, announced recently its partnership with Wizard World Philly. Now, VGXPO will expand its relationship to include Chicago Comic-Con and Big Apple Con as well. “Our partnership provides VGXPO with the ability to rapidly grow our footprint from Philadelphia to Chicago and now New York City,” he said. “We look forward to working and sharing our passion for video games with all the fans in New York.”
Michael Carbonaro , the longtime and current producer of the show, will continue to provide his limitless creativity and enthusiasm to the show.
Here is today’s list of comic-related news items that might not generate a post of their own, but may be of interest…
* The last holdout in publishing has gotten nailed: Harper Collins announced that they’re offering early retirment packages to employees over age 55 and with at least five years experience. The offers went out this morning and the company would like to here back by February 3 from those who are interested in the buyout. Spokesperson Erin Crumb wouldn’t disclose how many positions HC is looking to cut, but a large number of packages are reported to have been prepared.
* And the shoes keep dropping: Realms of Fantasy magazine is shutting down. Thanks to SF Scope for the tip.
* And for that matter: Village Voice Media is suspending all of its syndicated cartoons, including the popular "This Modern World" By Tom Tomorrow (a.k.a. Dan Perkins). The affected cartoonists lose readers in (deep breath) Dallas, Ft. Lauderdale, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Nashville, Orange County, Kansas City, Denver, Seattle, and New York. He’s covering it, along with the other cartoonists affected.
* On the bright side, Christopher Reeve’s dream is starting to come true: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared the way for the first-ever human trial of a medical treatment derived from embryonic stem cells.
* And finally, a link to the shirt of the day, for all the Buffy The Vampire Slayer fans who are just a little bit tired of Twilight and their sparkly vampires. (Thanks, Teresa.)
Autopsy Report: “Power Hungry” From Fox: “When it’s discovered that a rather simple man has the ability to harness electricity, dangerous and deadly occurrences follow, and our unlikely trio investigates this super-charged oddity. Meanwhile, Olivia has a high-voltage encounter of a different kind when she is rocked by a blast from her past, and Dr. Bishop turns to his feathered friends and enlists homing pigeons to help him break the case.”
Doctor’s Notes
Hot off the heels of Fringe‘s best episode to date comes its worst. “Power Hungry” is a boring, by-the-numbers procedural that weakly nods its head to the previous installment. Just as [[[Fringe]]] proved its merit as innovating and captivating in “The Arrival,” this episode displays just how boring the high concept show can get.
In the episode, the Fringe crew pursues Joseph Meegar, a man who can discharge high amounts of electricity due to the experiments enacted on him by a scientist named Jacob Fischer. Meanwhile, Olivia deals with the ramifications of her strange visions of former lover John Scott, who is thought to be dead. By episode’s end, Walter reveals that part of John’s consciousness is actually stuck in Olivia’s brain as a result of their mind-melding in the series pilot. Mystery solved.
We’ll save you the trouble by answering the obvious question: Yes, that’s really all that happens this episode in terms of any plot movement. It’s true that John literally being inside of Liv’s head is fairly unique, but the whole figment-of-the-imagination thing has been beaten to death before. The fact that “The Arrival” concludes with John Scott showing up at Olivia’s home is resolved by him being a mental projection is very boring. Maybe it would’ve more exciting if the previous episode’s ending didn’t hinge on the reveal, but it did. As a result, the answer is wholly unsatisfying, as the mystery behind why Massive Dynamic has Scott’s body ends up being a completely separate entity.
French Milk
Lucy Knisley
Touchstone Books, October 2008, $15
These days, people record their every inner thought and deed via Twitter, LiveJournal, Facebook and other social networking sites. It’s a fast and easy way to tell the multitudes what you’re up to. This is especially true for people who travel far from friends and family.
As a result, Lucy Knisley is a throwback. The 23-year old grew up on comic books and has studied art in Chicago and New York, developing a distinctive style and voice that earned her a small but dedicated following. She recorded her six week sojourn in France by using pen and paper, recording a graphic diary of her trip to celebrate her 22nd birthday and her mother’s 50th. Upon her return, she gathered up her dozens and dozens of pages and self-published through Monkfish Book Publishing.
While showing [[[French Milk]]] to people at a MoCCA event, she was discovered by Amanda Patten, senior editor at Fireside/Touchstone. Now, the book is receiving a big PR push and is on sale as today and has already been receiving positive notices.
Knisley has a keen eye for atmosphere and detail, finding joy in the simplicity of a baguette or a rude American tourist. Her observations are sharp and we can share her delight in fresh, unadulterated whole milk, from which the book takes its name. We follow mother and daughter as they sightsee, shop, dine and relax together. She does a nice job recording the details to bring their flat to life along with shops, Laundromats and restaurants.
The book’s publicity tells us of the changing relationship between moth and daughter but the book barely scratches the topic. There’s one sequence when mother tries to discuss financial planning to Lucy but that’s about it. They share the flat and bed and seem to get along without any tension, quarrel or serious issue. Lucy Knisley, it seems, missed having sex but remained faithful to her boyfriend, whom she stills has a relationship with. But she seemed content to be a homebody and never craved going out to experience Paris nightlife on her own with people her age. If anything, the relationship seemed very close and stable.
The pair had been to Paris before and her observations about seeing things after a few more years’ growth and maturity is interesting. But her diary is all surface. We did this, ate that and went to sleep. There’s precious little about the culture or differences with her life back in the states. Her observations are all micro with no attention paid to the larger issues facing a young woman on the cusp of adult independence.
The book benefitted from the occasional photograph so we can compare the real people with Knisley’s fun drawings. It could have benefitted from some summing up beyond a one-pager at the end.
Knisley has great potential and she’s working hard to achieve her place in the comics field. This is a terrific, albeit flawed, first major effort. Her current material at Knisley’s website show continued development.
In news that can only be classified as weird and off-putting while still bordering on cool, there is a new blog entry on the Watchmen official site. In the latest entry, titled "A Mysterious Discovery in New York," production designer Alex McDowell recounts a story where he and director Zack Snyder received a call from a location scout in New York about a house that they "just needed to see." They then rush to a brownstone in Chelsea, to an abandoned building that was days away from destruction. Here’s part of the post:
“The scout tells us that the tunnel and chamber was once a spur of a forgotten subway, an underground maintenance area for the cars, built in the 1920’s. In 1955, the tunnel suffered a collapse that flooded this section of the system, and the lower portions of the track were abandoned. 100 yards from the repair yard the tunnel now opens up directly to the East River.”
“Clearly someone had broken into the chamber from above, probably in the sixties, and build the steel stair that connected directly the basement we’d stumbled into.”
I suppose McDowell and/or Snyder’s plan here is to allude that the two really went on this "trip" and really found Dan Drieberg’s Owlcave. Viral marketing for this film is completely expected, given Snyder’s fanaticism of the source material and the success DC and Warner Bros. had with the bombardment of Dark Knight virals. With this in mind, one has to wonder how dumb they think the fans are.
Are we supposed to believe that this place exists? Or that these perfectly lit, professionally shot pictures were done on a whim? Come on guys, show me hundreds of twenty-somethings with Comedian buttons on, or billboards for Nostalgia, but keep the faux Blair Witchery out of this. Check out more pics of the "real" Owlship below, and you can check out the full blog entry here.
Over at MTV, Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon talks about the big new direction for the comic book series, which sees Buffy and crew going off into the future.
In case, like me, you don’t hold a Ph.D. from Whedon University, it’s a good primer on all the implications that take hold with issue 16 (cover at right). In the issue, Buffy and Willow go to New York as a mystic event messes with time, into the world of Fray.
"The world of Fray has been a huge influence, in fact, the influence on season eight," Whedon said. "At the end of the series, I had something that categorically did not connect, and rather than throw out continuity, I used that. The present is so interesting with tons of slayers, and the future as we know it is quite the opposite. So why is that? And is that the death of magic?"
There’s also this, which is sure to set some nerdy hearts aflutter:
Also, we’ll be seeing a naked Willow soon.
"I had my fiancee pose for that one," [artist Karl] Moline said of the drawing. "It’ll be a nice, special-looking pose."
"It’ll be tasteful, unless he does it the way I wrote it," Whedon laughed. Don’t assume it’s another sex scene with Buffy, but something is about to happen that will rock the Scoobies’ world. "Things really start to change after the Fray story arc," Whedon said, "and the next thing we’ll be doing is seeing that from various points of view, with stand-alone issues dealing with larger issues of the world of the slayer and Twilight. There’s someone in the picture who hasn’t been there before, and the trick is, what’s the most unexpected, and who’s the most obvious and where’s the most pain?"
[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third in a series of reviews of the five books coming out from DC’s Minx imprint this year. Previously, Van Jensen reviewed Rebecca Donner’s Burnoutand Cecil Castellucci’s Janes in Love. -RM]
Brian Wood is a very good writer. Ryan Kelly is a very good artist. That makes the failure of the duo’s new book from Minx, The New York Four ($9.99) all the more disappointing.
Wood, who has shown a masterful understanding of NYC in his series [[[DMZ]]], shifts his focus here to NYU and a quartet of freshmen, each with their quota of baggage. At the center is Riley, who had a sheltered childhood and finally experiences some freedom.
Not a bad premise, but Wood doesn’t really do much with it. The girls sort of bounce off each other in one low-key scene after another, and their problems are never substantial or interesting enough to invest in the plot.
The characters come alive (one triumph of the talented creators), but even they seem underwhelmed by the mundanity of their lives.
There’s also an air of forced hip-ness to the book, which tosses in little elements like character bio-boxes, New York factoids and half-baked Real World-style confessional moments. And the lesson, as always, is that you can’t fake the funk.
Van Jensen is a former crime reporter turned comic book journalist. Every Wednesday, he braves Atlanta traffic to visit Oxford Comics, where he reads a whole mess of books for his weekly reviews. Van’s blog can be found at graphicfiction.wordpress.com.
Publishers who would like their books to be reviewed at ComicMix should contact ComicMix through the usual channels or email Van Jensen directly at van (dot) jensen (at) gmail (dot) com.
Edward Zane Carroll Judson was born on March 20, 1886 in Stamford, Delaware County, New York. He ran away from home as a boy and took to the sea, taking on the name Ned Buntline, which he would use for the rest of his life—a “buntline” is the rope at the bottom of a square sail.
Buntline stayed at sea several years, fighting in the Seminole Wars and achieving the rank of midshipman, before retiring and creating various eastern newspapers, including Ned Buntline’s Own. While in Fort McPherson on a lecture tour, Buntline crossed paths with Wild Bill Hickock and tried to interview him for a dime novel. Hickock refused and ordered Buntline out of town at gunpoint. Instead, the reporter located Hickock’s friend William Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, and decided to write about him instead.
The Buffalo Bill Cody-King of the Border Men dime novel series was an enormous success and Buntline followed it with a play, Scouts of the Prairie, which opened in Chicago in December 1872. The two men had severe differences of opinion and temperament, however. As a result, the show closed in June of the following year, and Buntline and Cody went their separate ways.
Buntline continued to write dime novels, but none matched his earlier success—he was close to penniless by the time he died of congestive heart failure in 1886.
Straight from 
* The last holdout in publishing has gotten nailed: 
Note: 
French Milk
Over at MTV, Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon talks about 
[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third in a series of reviews of the five books coming out from DC’s Minx imprint this year. Previously, Van Jensen reviewed Rebecca Donner’s 
($9.99) all the more disappointing.
