…which, I suppose, is why some people made a video saluting him.
(DEAR GOD NO NOT SAFE FOR WORK)
What’s amazing is that I know a bunch of women who have expressed similar sentiments about the man’s writing. Now if only other comic book writers got the same treatment…
The Award-winning author Ray Bradbury will be returning to television with the announcement yesterday of The Bradbury Chronicles, which will be a six hour miniseries based on his works. White Oak Films announced the deal although no network has picked up the project for broadcast.
White Oak’s John Philip Dayton will executive produce with Merrill Capps, Todd Klick, Cory Travalena and Dale Olson doing the actual production chores. Bradbury will be an executive producer with input over stories selected and overseeing the adaptations themselves. Dayton previously partnered with Bradbury on Showtime’s The Ray Bradbury Theater, which ran from 1985-1992.
The author, now 89, remains largely confined to his home given declining health, but continues to write with Summer Morning, Summer Night his most recent work, due out in paperback next June.
Today’s list of quick items that don’t fill a full post on their own:
“Cops were called to the scene after receiving a flurry of calls from gridlocked commuters near the Rosh Ha’ayin intersection who reported a man in a Spiderman costume throwing ropes at cars, the improvised lassos presumably meant to substitute for the web-crawler’s famous mechanical web-shooters.”
When the individual woke up in the hospital, he said that he had no idea where the costume came from.
Clearly, this is going to be the evil costume’s fault. Via Haaretz
Anything else? Consider this an open thread.
Born in the Bronx, New York, in 1915, Julius “Julie” Schwartz is considered one of the most influential editors in comic book history.
Schwartz got his start in science fiction and fantasy, publishing a fanzine called The Time Traveler in 1932 with his friends Mort Weisinger and Forrest J. Ackerman. He and Weisinger also formed Solar Sales Services, which represented H.P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury, Alfred Bester, and other popular SF authors.
In 1944, Bester introduced Schwartz to the people at DC Comics, who hired him as an editor. A few years later, Schwartz was put in charge of DC’s new SF comics, and in 1956 he added Showcase to his list of responsibilities. The first few issues of Showcase didn’t do particularly well, so Schwartz decided to bring back and revamp an old, Golden Age character—and thus the new Flash was born and the Silver Age of comics began.
In the 1960s, Schwartz began editing the Batman titles, and in 1971 he took over on Superman, helping to modernize both characters. Schwartz retired from DC in 1986 but continued to be active in fandom until shortly before his death in 2004.
Schwartz received many awards over the years, including an Alley, a Shazam, and an Inkpot. He was inducted into the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1996 and the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1997. In 1998, Dragon-Con created the Julie Award for universal achievement in multiple genres. Schwartz presented the awards personally.
Sometimes you write the article, sometimes the article writes you.
You’ve seen it a million times. The head table, on a dais, faces the audience. The honored guests take the stage to applause. The microphones are adjusted, name cards arranged, the host begins the program.
But when the greatest living science fiction writer is the guest, the gods are aware and send us a message, lest we begin to imagine that we are in charge of the agenda.
Ray Bradbury is in a wheelchair these days. The Comic-Con arranged for a nifty, new-looking wheelchair elevator to be at the end of the stage. Ray’s people wheeled him across the front of the stage to a round of applause. They wheeled him into the elevator, a glass box (waist high, if you’re standing, if you’re sitting, it’s up to your neck) on a lifting platform, glittering, unmarked by fingerprint or key scratch or any marks of human inhabitation. It was also innocent of any rehearsal, the hallmark of every smooth use of any stagecraft more complicated than a hat.
If it was President Roosevelt, two guys would’ve lifted him and his chair the two or three feet from floor to the stage. It might have taken an extra guy, Comic-Con folks not usually bringing Secret Service beef to the table. But we have modern technology—no sweat, no strain.
In 2007, still without our silver jumpsuits, faced with an untried, miniature elevator, Ray sat there a prisoner, his unfailing good nature in no danger from this silly snag, for ten minutes. They fiddled with the lock, they looked concerned, they did their impression of Wile E. Coyote in the moments between realizing the scheme has misfired and feeling the faint breeze that announces the arriving boulder. They moved the platform up an inch, they moved it down three inches. They did these things for ten minutes with no help sought or offered from any authority. Finally, they blundered upon the right sequence of actions and the gleaming glass and steel doorway opened and Ray Bradbury was freed from The Crystal Prison of the Festival of Fans.
MTV News talked to Todd McFarlane about the new Spawn movie he’s financing himself. (Wait…isn’t he also claiming he’s bankrupt? Now I’m confused.)
The LA Times has noticed that the dying-by-degrees traditional comic-book market isn’t looking quite as sickly as it had been recently.
The inferior4+1 reports on a DC Comics press release which says that Walter Simonson will be writing a new comics series based on the popular MMORPG World of Warcraft.
PopMatters has an interesting (by which I mean silly) theory that Generation X loves Transformers because it symbolizes their wish to “transform” into adults. (That would be more interesting if they meant the old Marvel series Generation X, but they’re talking about the Americans born in the late ’60 and early ’70s.)
The San Diego Union-Tribune has an article on comics today to get ready for some kind of event happening in their fair city later this week.
Fantasybookspot reviews GI Joe: America’s Elite #25.
Monster & Critics reviews Amazing Spider-Man #542.
Publishers Weekly has a handy chart comparing and contrasting four recent superhero-themed novels.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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