New York, N.Y. (September 17, 2012) – Titan Merchandise, a leading international licensee of pop culture icons and Captain Action Enterprises, licensors of the popular Captain Action line, have teamed up to produce a series of T-shirts, mugs, I.D. holders and more. These products will be on sale internationally in late 2012.
Captain Action is based on the action figure created in 1966 by Stan Weston for Ideal Toys and sold internationally. The hero came equipped with a wardrobe of costumes allowing him to become many different heroes such as Batman, The Lone Ranger, the Green Hornet and many more. In 1967, Captain Action proved so popular that the line was expanded to include a sidekick, Action Boy and a blue skinned alien foe with bug eyes, the nefarious Dr. Evil. The following year, DC Comics licensed the character from Ideal and published five issues of Captain Action featuring industry luminaries such as Jim Shooter, Wally Wood and Gil Kane.
The line has experienced as strong resurgence, complete with an all-new toy line that debuted earlier this year.
“I’ve been a massive fan of Captain Action since my late 60s childhood in the North West of England” said Titan director Andrew Sumner. “Back then, my grandfather kept me supplied with a steady diet of US comic books and I was filled with excitement every time I read a Captain Action advertisement in the back pages, I would have done ANYTHING to own the action figure. Stan Weston’s costume design blew my mind, which was blown even further when I picked up Jim Shooter and Wally Wood’s first issue of the DC comic. By the time Gil Kane and Wally Wood’s classic, way-ahead-of-its-time issue five rolled around, I was hooked for life! It’s our absolute pleasure to be working with the awesome team at Captain Action Enterprises on such an iconic, brilliantly-designed property.”
“We’ve been big fans of all Titan’s products and are proud to be part of their line-up, “ said Ed Catto of Captain Action Enterprises. “From Doctor Who to Star Trek to the classic Hammer horror movies – Titan’s products always seems to be top-notch in quality and lovingly created.”
Current plans call for the first wave to include a distressed T-shirt with the Captain Action logo, a coffee mug and an I.D. holder.
The new products will debut at New York Comic Con at the Javits Center from October 11 to 14, 2012.
Tomorrow (as I write this) is the big day, a day as important as my birthday and for a similar reason, and yet I don’t know how to celebrate it. I don’t even know what to call it. “Lazarus Day?” That’s certainly appropriate, but it carries some lumpy baggage. “Resurrection Day?” Same problem: “resurrection” has acquired connotations I’d rather avoid.
Why the fuss over a rather undistinguished September Monday? Why do I think it deserves special notice? Well, for you, it probably doesn’t, but for me? Ten years ago, on September 10, 2002, while having lunch with Mia Wolff and her son Virgil at a restaurant in Piermont, New York, I fell off the chair and lay dead on the floor. According to Mia, I’d been talking about the afterlife and my lack of faith in it when I went down. She thought I was trying to be funny. But after a while, she looked at me and knew something was very wrong. Her call for help was answered by the restaurant’s owner, John Ingallinera, whose other job was being a New Jersey fireman. John could identify a corpse when he saw one and he knew that next door there was a portable defibrillator. He ran to get it, and with the help of Lizzie Fagan, Michael O’Shea and Bryan Holihan, put the paddles on my chest and pressed the button – three presses – and then my heart was beating and the paramedics had arrived.
I was laying in an unfamiliar bed and Marifran was leaning over me, asking if I knew what had happened to me. I didn’t and so she told me. The rest went by the book: western medicine is superb at certain tasks, and cardiac surgery is one of them. A short stay in a local hospital, an ambulance ride across the Hudson to another hospital, doctors, tests, a trip to an operating room on a gurney and… some cool looking scars and recovery.
Anything special happened while my cooling self was cluttering up John’s floor (and probably playing hell with his lunch business)? Nope. No bright light at the end of a tunnel, no disembodied entities hovering around, no long deceased relatives welcoming me to the Other Side. Just: sitting in a restaurant/lying in a hospital. Like a splice in a film.
Marifran says that maybe I had to be a believer before I could see what believers see. Okay, so we’re dealing with an economy size Catch 22 here. I can’t get the evidence I require to believe something unless I already believe it?
All right, then did the experience change me? Transform me into some kind of secular saint? Make me cherish every breath I take? I wish. But, no.
But I am grateful for these past ten, good years and I want to celebrate them. I have no memory of being born, but being reborn? A lot of that I remember and I want to cheer, to testify that, although I’m often oblivious to it, each moment is all we have.
We’ll probably think of something.
FRIDAY: Martha Thomases, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Kyle Baker, Garth Ennis, Paul Pope and… Men’s Fashion?
The greatest pitfall television series featuring high school cast members has is that the cast is already older when the series begins and they age out rapidly. Smallville stopped setting stories in the high school because the cast looked ridiculous on the sets. Confronting the inevitable graduation challenges the producers to find tortured ways to keep the cast intact after the caps and gowns are put away. Even Buffy the Vampire Slayer suffered from this challenge so it is refreshing to see Glee take graduation head on in the third season of the Fox series.
Glee the Complete Third Season came out on DVD last week and seeing it without the weeks-long breaks between cycles, allows you to see how they handled the coming graduation and choices the teens are being asked to make. While the series has never really focused on the kids’ academics, there was almost zero interest in ACTs or college visits, so it was always in the ether but never the focal point of the stories. Instead, it was all about getting to Nationals in New York and succeeding. The season opened with the need for fresh members thanks to a rival Glee Club set up by Shelby Corcoran (Idina Menzel) while Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) ran for Congress on an anti-arts platform.
Clearly, the producers had no real idea of where to take the characters as motivations and the status quo changed, twisting them beyond recognizabilty. The most ill-served may have been Quinn (Dianna Agron) who started off trying to steal back her baby, given to Shelby for adoption, then embracing the final year of high school until her driving accident (don’t text and drive) and recovery. Somewhere along the line, this sympathetic character, who in season two recognized she was a small town girl stuck in Ohio, gained 50 IQ points and got into Yale and was Ivy League bound. Huh? The best teen villain has become a hero. All the edges to characters are gone, from Puck (Mark Salling) to the divas Mercedes (Amber Riley), robbing the students of interesting character variety. Santana (Naya Rivera) was also softened although her coming out as a lesbian and rising as a performer were among the season’s highlights.
Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith) and Rachel Berry (Lea Michele), the romantic couple at the center of the storm, decided to get married and their arc dealt with that reality and the choices each need make for themselves and each other. This rang far more true than the disastrous marriage between Coach Beiste (Dot-Marie Jones) and Cooter Menkins (Eric Bruskotter), which formed a mini-arc in the final third of the season.
While each of the 22 episodes is entertaining and often heartfelt, as a season-long arc for the faculty and students it’s a mess and by now Ryan Murphy should have a very clear idea of who they are and where these characters are going. Instead, he seems to have lost any sense of edge in Sylvester, giving her instead a rival in Roz Washington (NeNe Leakes). Even the show’s most intriguing character, Burt Hummel (Mike O’Malley), somehow found himself running for Congress and winning, stealing him from Kurt (Chris Colfer), just as his son’s dreams of going to NYADA are crushed.
Musically, the show remains strong, aided by the welcome addition of Darren Criss’ Blaine to the New Directions. Sam Evans (Chord Overstreet) is also back after a brief contract issue. Some of the winners of the reality series, The Glee Project, wind up added to the cast but are little more than hangers-on with little learned about them and rarely given a showcase. The quest for a championship takes a backseat to the fall musical, West Side Story, which featured some terrific reimaginings of the classic numbers.
In the finale, eight of the cast graduate and turnover in the New Directions will fuel the fourth season as it begins in a few weeks. Most of the graduates will continue to appear so the ensemble swells which is not always a good idea.
The four disc set looks amazing and of course sounds terrific but we’ve come to expect that from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. A neat feature to the set is that the menus will help you keep track as you work your way through the season, remembering where you are.
As usual, the extras are heavy on the music, the show’s hallmark. We get more from the Glee Music Jukebox, although you get clips and not the full songs that were edited to air. Some of the non-musical bits include “Glee Under the Stars” (7:45), a kickoff event at Santa Monica High School. “Glee Give a Note” (7:46) shows stars Jayma Mays and Jones present Culver City Middle School a check for $10,000 for arts education.
You can enjoy some extended and deleted scenes throughout the discs. The highlight here is a Sue Sylvester flashback that should have found its way on air. “Glee Swap: Behind the Scenes of ‘Props'” (5:41) is a nice look at the fun body-swapping episode. “Meet the Newbies” (13:20) spends more time with the new cast members than the series seemed to. “Saying Goodbye” (15:19) is a good look at the emotional toll the finale took on one and all. Lynch’s acerbic Sylvester is found on “Ask Sue: World Domination Blog” (6:07) and “Return of Sue’s Quips” (2:58).
One can hope that the freshened cast will ignite some greater dramatic consistency to match its musical excellence. For now, we have this set which is maddeningly enjoyable while being frustratingly inconsistent.
Economix By Michael Goodwin and Dan E. Burr 304 pages, $19.95, Abrams ComicArts
Having never taken economics in college, I find the world of high finance needlessly complicated and confusing. You spend what you need to make a good; you sell it for a reasonable profit. Repeat. The problem, though, is that the world makes it far more complicated to determine how those goods are made or what a reasonable profit might be. And as globalization has altered the way everyone on Earth lives and works, things have grown ever more complex.
Thankfully Michael Goodwin saw the need for a basic primary on how the economy currently works and how we got here. Better, he decided to really make it easy to follow thanks to using the comic format, hence the graphic novel Economix. Nicely illustrated by Dan E. Burr, best known for Kings in Disguise, the book from Abrams starts off in The Distant Past and walks us on a parallel path between what really happened and how the early economist philosophers thought it should happen.
Along the way, Goodwin makes it clear that for too long, people hewed to theories that sounded great on paper but were impractical in the real world which is why the early bubbles occurred. He also introduces us to the keep economic and political players, and how he talks about them makes it clear which ones he finds laudable and which ones deserve mockery.
This is not a classroom textbook but has a distinct point of view so the result is that some people and events have their dimensionality stripped away, leaving a caricature to make his point. This trait is on display beginning with the Industrial Revolution all the way through the modern day economic woes (the book’s information is nicely current through mid-2011 so it remains relevant).
He makes it clear that the bigger corporations got, the less and less they were to be admired. Instead, they prove to be the villains you expect in graphic fiction and while there’s a lot here that’s true, it’s certainly just one point of view. Goodwin is also harsh to many people, notably Calvin Coolidge and Warren G. Harding, who watched America’s economy grow, burst, and couldn’t figure out how to pick up the pieces. Using their own words against them, certainly sounds convincing.
Where Goodwin excels is simplifying the verbiage so even guys like me can follow it. He also pauses to show what is happening around the world, since opening trade with Asia or the Russian Revolution certainly had a bearing on American dollars and cents. The book also doesn’t expect you to remember everything, constantly pointing you back to relevant pages such as “That’s right – we live in a mixed economy, not in pure capitalism. For instance, let’s take another look at modern New York. We saw on page 24 how trying to control everything wouldn’t work…”
Obviously, the most interesting chapters are the ones covering the times we live in. The book pointedly takes us from Reagonomics through the housing bubble, pausing to chart how our National Debt has grown through various presidential administrations and the decisions they made. Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan both get taken task in this recounting. Clearly, today’s mess began in the 1980s and continues today. A large part of the problem was the repeal of the 1932 Glass-Steagall Act in 1998 and today, many a politician and businessman has come to regret that – note the comments sandy Weill made last week.
Burr’s artwork nicely captures the text and makes it visually comprehensible with some fun portraits of how the economic machinery works, using iconic images of farmers, merchants, businessmen, and so on. He caricatures key figures and keeps his pages packed but not cluttered. On just a few cases his page layout and balloon placement challenge even the most veteran of comics readers so this might be a tough read for some novices but its well the effort.
A text like this would certainly help high school and college students gain their first taste of financial literacy and it comes recommended for the rest of us.
Tonight, a Master Class with Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy The Pinhead:
GRIFFY’S TOP 40 LIST ON COMICS AND THEIR CREATION:
The Daily Life of a Working Cartoonist: Pencilling, Inking and Making People Laugh, Maybe.
Single session: Wednesday July 25, 7:00 PM-9:00 PM. Tuition: $60. For more information and to register, call 212-228-2810 or go to: http://sohodigart.com/Calendar.html
Subjects discussed by legendary comix creator BILL GRIFFITH in this class will be: Creating a cast of characters (one of which may be yourself) and learning the language of comics (writing, humor, pacing, finding your voice, understanding panel and page composition as well as specific hints on drawing in pen & ink).
Attendees may bring photocopies of a small sample of their work, which Bill will critique after the class via email. There will also be a question and answer period at the end of the class. Feel free to ask anything except how to draw superheroes.
BILL GRIFFITH is the creator of the “Zippy the Pinhead” daily comic strip, seen in over 150 newspapers and newspaper websites. “Zippy” has been nationally-syndicated since 1986, by the first and oldest comics syndicate, King Features. Griffith got his start in the underground comics scene in New York and San Francisco in 1969, contributing to dozens of comic books and magazines throughout the last four decades. Fantagraphics Books has just published a collection of Griffith’s early underground work, [[[Bill Griffith: Lost and Found: Comics 1969-2003]]].
While the rest of the pop culture community prepares for Comic-Con International in San Diego, I’m in Las Vegas. Since I don’t gamble, it has been an interesting sociological experience for me. And also, the spa at my hotel is awesome.
I have been to Vegas four times now, and to SDCC about fifteen times. The two share more than one might think. Both are really crowded at all hours. Both mostly take place indoors, but if you need to go outside, you probably won’t get rained on. There’s a lot of noise about every little thing, so that you lose all sense of proportion.
And both count on dazzling you with enough glitz and glamor that you won’t notice how much you’re being hustled.
Still, I’m having a great time on The Strip, and I never need to go to Comic-Con again. What’s the difference?
Although things have improved somewhat in recent years, the city of San Diego doesn’t feel welcoming to me. I went once for a library convention, and that was much more pleasant. As a Comic-Con visitor, I feel like the city regards me as a pig, a beast to tolerate because I spend money. The convention brings in celebrities, whom I’m sure are treated well (if only because they have people on the payroll to guarantee it), but me? I’m the rube paying $4 for a bottle of water.
The water in my Vegas hotel room mini-bar is $8. And I don’t drink it. But you know what? A lovely woman comes by twice a day to ask if I want anything. She is thrilled when I have a request for her, even if it’s just for more free shampoo.
At Comic-Con, I have to stand in line for hours to see a panel, which I may not get to see because thousands of other people want to see the same panel. In Vegas, if the hot new Batman slot machine is being used, there are more around the corner, or down the street.
At Comic-Con, if I don’t make a dinner reservation by five, I can forget about eating anyplace where I can sit down. In Vegas, there are world-class restaurants (many outposts of places I love in New York) stacked up on top of each other.
I was a little afraid to come to Vegas as an older, single woman, afraid I would feel unattractive and unworthy. The hotel at which I’m staying, the Cosmopolitan, goes out of its way to make women feel welcome. Everyone who works there is super-friendly and helpful. In San Diego, there are, instead, lots of jokes about how unsexy geeks can be. True, lots of those jokes come from us geeks. I don’t think that kind of self-hatred would be funny anyplace else.
My friend Pennie used to live here, back in the days when the Mob were the new guys in town. She says that there is a tradition of service here because the populace knows that’s how they keep their jobs. San Diego, on the other hand, is a city with more than just a hospitality industry. I don’t mean to say that San Diego is rude (because, as a New Yorker, how would I know?), but they don’t make me feel like my needs are a priority.
There has been talk for years of moving Comic-Con to Las Vegas. I don’t think it would work. This city is too expensive. It would be a lovely idea, however, to move Las Vegas to Comic-Con.
Long rumored to be moving (perhaps due to the giant FOR RENT sign on the building), Forbidden Planet, one of NYC’s longest-running comics shops, is moving a few doors down the street to larger digs, according to manager Jeff Ayers. The new location, 832 Broadway (between 13th and 12th Streets), provides 3400 sq. feet of space for comics, toys and games, and it’s the largest of the three spaces the store has held on that same block over the years.
“This expansion has been necessary for some time now, and will allow us to provide our customers with even more product selection and depth, while streamlining the store’s layout to one convenient floor,” said Ayers in a statement.
The new store opens Tuesday, July 24th 2012 in a “soft launch,” but there will be a bigger launch party later. The olde shoppe closes on Sunday, July 22nd.
The olde shoppe had a nice corner location but definitely was a bit cramped and narrow…we’ll look forward to checking out the new space.
Before you head out to see “The Amazing Spider-Man,” now in theaters and IMAX 3D, watch Spidey’s creator Stan “The Man” Lee as he shares more about his cameo in the film in a special vignette below!
Check out the full clip right here on Marvel.com, and for more Webslinging-action, see Spidey outrun New York’s finest or school Flash Thompson in some basketball. Better yet, get a glimpse of the villainous Lizard as he terrorizes Gwen Stacy!
The Amazing Spider-Man comes out in theaters tomorrow– and it also happens to be the birthday of Amazing Spider-Man writer Dan Slott! Celebrate it at Manhattan Comics with cake, signings, and sales!
Dan will be at Manhattan Comics, 10 E. 23rd St., 2nd floor, New York, NY between 12 and 1 PM tomorrow, July 3rd. Stop in and say hi!
The Supreme Court finally ruled on the Affordable Care Act. Hallelujah! They went my way!
Now I don’t have to worry about that chance the court might strike down the individual mandate, which would mean my premiums would have gone up – in New York, if one is self-employed, one pays gigantic premiums. My worrying didn’t make the difference, however, so let’s consider something really important.
Can super-heroes get health insurance?
Barry Allen was already working for the police department when the lightning bolt caused those chemicals to drench him and made him The Flash. Usually, public employees get good insurance. He should be okay. We can only hope that Tea Party pressure hasn’t weakened his union’s negotiating power and force public workers to take a worse policy.
Bruce Wayne not only has enough money to pay any medical bills he might have out-of-pocket, but he also has Alfred on staff, who, in addition to his butler skills, also seems to be something of a battlefield surgeon.
Reed Richards is a doctor. Presumably, he can take care of many of his colleagues. Those he can’t might be cared for by Dr. Strange, or Dr. Mid-Nite.
But what about the others?
Once you’re bitten by a radioactive spider as a teenager, you have a pre-existing condition. And, as a self-employed person in New York (at least when he started freelancing at the Daily Bugle), Peter Parker probably got a policy with a high deductible, if he got a policy at all. Here’s hoping that radiation didn’t cause cancer along with a spider sense.
Can test pilots get insurance at all? Even if he wasn’t a Green Lantern, is Hal Jordan the kind of guy who could get a policy?
Among those without powers, masks or capes, there might be circumstances that make it difficult to get a coverage. It seems that just living in certain areas invites life-threatening accidents. I know that living in the New York area means I pay higher rates, so I guess most of the Marvel Universe does as well. Metropolis, Gotham, Coast City et al. are probably no bargain either.
Who pays for those over-worked emergency rooms, especially after an alien attack?
If ever there were places that could use single-payer health insurance, it’s the DC and Marvel Universes.
New York, N.Y. (September 17, 2012) – Titan Merchandise, a leading international licensee of pop culture icons and Captain Action Enterprises, licensors of the popular Captain Action line, have teamed up to produce a series of T-shirts, mugs, I.D. holders and more. These products will be on sale internationally in late 2012.
The line has experienced as strong resurgence, complete with an all-new toy line that debuted earlier this year.
