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Take your kids to comics day

Take your kids to comics day

Thursday was the annual Take Your Kids to Work Day (used to be Take Your Daughters to Work Day until the gender that rule the world started whining about the one little thing in which they weren’t front and center, but that’s another story), which always happens the day after Secretaries Day (otherwise known as Ignore Your Secretary Day and give her so much work for the rest of the week that she’s too busy and tired to blog for ComicMix, but that’s another story).  But this weekend features what I like to call Take Your Kids to Comics Day.

It’s the first ever Kids’ Comic Con, and ComicMix (okay, li’l ol’ me) will be there for the inaugural celebration!  We’ll be at the Bronx Community College throughout the day, snapping photos and maybe even scoring some interviews for Mellifluous Mike Raub’s podcasts.

As we’ve mentioned before, lots of cool folks will be there, including Kyle Baker and the Comics Bakery (separate folks despite the name; the latter is Marion Vitus and Raina Telgemeier and John Green and Dave Roman) and Jamal Igle and Jane Fisher and — well, pretty much my peeps.  Should be tons of fun — nothing makes me smile more than seeing kids with comics!  Say, did you know that "I believe that children are the future"?

A big round of applause to Alex Simmons for bringing everyone together for this event.  Time to get ready!

MARTHA THOMASES: Child is father to the man

MARTHA THOMASES: Child is father to the man

There is hardly anything more annoying than listening to a bunch of us Baby Boomers talking about the good old days: the music, the sex, the drugs, the sit-ins and be-ins and love-ins, even the comics. We act like we invented rebellion, and we don’t think anyone else will ever care about the world as much as we did, and certainly no one else will make changes as important as the ones we made.

We’re wrong.

A recent article in USA Today describes “Generation Y”, those born since the early 1980s, as one that has endured a lifetime of public tragedies. My generation lived through the Kennedy assassinations and the murder of Martin Luther King, the Kent State shootings, the Viet Nam War and Watergate, and these things were horrible. However, kids today witnessed the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle explosion, the Waco standoff, the Oklahoma City bombing, the attack on the Atlanta Olympics, school attacks on Columbine, the Amish school in Pennsylvania, and the recent Virginia Tech massacre. They’ve seen a tsunami devastate Southeast Asia, and Hurricane Katrina destroy New Orleans. In my day, we watched a half-hour evening news broadcast, while today there is a 24-hour news cycle. They say that Viet Nam was the first war fought on our living room television, but the “Shock and Awe” attacks on Baghdad four years ago had so much advance hype and so many on-the-scene embedded journalists, they practically had official sponsors.

The horrific moments that changed my personal world occurred when my best friend’s brother died in Viet Nam, followed shortly by the Kent State slaughter which was just a few miles from my house. Before that, my feelings, although sincere, were based more on ideas than on events. My son saw the World Trade Center collapse outside his classroom in lower Manhattan, but not before he saw burning bodies falling from the windows.

Just as the Sixties didn’t turn everyone into a protesting hippie peacenik, these events have not shaped a single personality type among today’s twenty-somethings. Most of the mass media would have us believe that the values of this generation establish a new low of shallowness, exalting the likes of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. But their taste and values go far beyond American Idol or the Pussycat Dolls.

The USA Today article quotes social historian William Strauss: “the Millennials’ baby-boomer parents were anxious about political assassinations because that’s what they witnessed growing up. But their children’s fears are different – because they witnessed mass killings of children by peers whose motives nobody can seem to understand.”

He continues, “The fact that this sort of thing can happen calls into question the super-achieving, high-stress life some of them lead.” He says that Generation Y will be less concerned with “having it all” than with having a balance. Unlike many in my generation, who traded in their values for SUVs, private schools and second houses and the long commute to jobs that paid for everything, there is hope that this generation will enjoy every day with their families as well as meaningful work.

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Todd Goldman sending cease-and-desist letters

Todd Goldman sending cease-and-desist letters

Boy oh boy. We’re a little late to the party, here’s the quick recap: Todd Goldman is the founder of "David and Goliath," a merchandise company which produces clothing, posters and other merchandise featuring a variety of artwork and slogans that he theoretically created all by himself. According to the Wall Street Journal, the sales volume of "David and Goliath" was US$ 90 million in 2004. Earlier this month, Goldman was accused of plagiarism by webcartoonist Dave "Shmorky" Kelly, in a post on the Something Awful forums, claiming that Goldman’s piece "Dear God Make Everyone Die" was taken directly from a 2001 comic by Kelly.

Since Kelly’s initial accusation, other bloggers and webcartoonists have found numerous other cases of alleged creative tracing. In the meantime, Goldman (or someone claiming to be him) has accused Kelly of pedophilia, posted pornographic images to defame Kelly which ended up being seen by minors, hijacked the MySpace account of the person who originally reported the theft, openly mocked anyone who expressed concern about this… and has enlisted his lawyer to threaten anyone who reports on any of the above, even when such reportage sticks to verifiable facts. As a result, Publisher’s Weekly has now taken down posts from Heidi MacDonald on the issue.

Dirk Deppey, Gary Tyrrell, and Tom Spurgeon have been all over this story, and now it’s gotten the attention of Boing Boing, Penny Arcade, and Slashdot.

Mr. Goldman, meet the Internet – filled with lots of people from all over the planet who do their research and hate bullies and like crusades.

What’s Next with Magneto & Iron Man

What’s Next with Magneto & Iron Man

No, not what’s Next, that’s opening up this weekend. It’s based on a Philip K. Dick story and starring Nicholas Cage, Jessica Biel, and Julianne Moore. To paraphrase Lawrence Peter Berra, it’s Deja Vu all over again.

No, I’m talking about what’s coming down the pike. First, from USA Today, here’s a new pic of Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark:

Second, from Cinematical, we see that the ever busy David Goyer (Blade, Dark Knight, Jumper, Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD) has been tapped to direct the new Magneto prequel movie. While my immediate scary thought was Hannibal Rising with mutant powers, Patrick Walsh comes up with something even scarier: "Ashton Kutcher in a purple helmet and Seann William Scott in a bald cap. "

Go go Godzilla! 51st years of stomping in US

Go go Godzilla! 51st years of stomping in US

Fifty one years ago today in New York City, the horrors of atomic mutation came home to roost as a guy in a giant rubber suit a gigantic lizard the size of a whale came to life on the silver screen in Godzilla, King Of The Monsters.

Starring Raymond Burr as Steve Martin (?) the big galoot would later go on to star in comics from Marvel and Dark Horse, an animated series (Godzooky!) oodles of video games and dozens of other films, including this personal favorite…

…and the inevitable sequel. Because it’s so rare for Godzilla to do a sequel.

 

 

Sigh. History shows again and again how nature points up the folly of men.

Pittsburgh -– Get READY!

Pittsburgh -– Get READY!

If you’re going to be at this weekend’s Pittsburgh Comicon, you’ll be seeing a lot of folks wearing ComicMix t-shirts and such. That’s because a whole lot of us are going to be there – Timothy Truman, Mike Grell, Robert Tinnell, Martha Thomases, Mike Raub (podcasting and videotaping, no less), Kai Connelly, Chris Burnham, and yours truly.

Many of us will be on a panel together on Saturday at 1:00 – ask us about the new GrimJack and Jon Sable Freelance projects, badger us about Phase 2. No doubt Mr. Raub will try to stick a microphone in your face at some point; he’s a broadcaster so he can’t help himself. Timothy, Mike, and Chris will also have tables in Artist’s Alley.

We hope to see you this weekend at the Pittsburgh Comicon. For more information, click here.

MICHAEL DAVIS: You’ve got a friend in me… a comic book story

MICHAEL DAVIS: You’ve got a friend in me… a comic book story

For most people, comics are a small part of their lives. By that I mean if your comic book collection and your girlfriend were hanging by a cliff and you could only save one your choice would be simple.

Your choice would be simple, right? If not then you should really seek some professional help.

As much as I love comics I have never thought that comics would affect my life in any significant personal way. By personal I mean that outside of my love for the medium and income from the business, comics would not play a major role in my life. I have always thought that comics were an important but small part of my life.

Boy, was I wrong. Sometimes it’s the small things that lead to the big things.

My birthday is Sunday and I have been thinking about my life and my friends lately. Everybody in the comic book industry who knows me knows that Denys Cowan is my best friend. I don’t have a lot of friends (insert your joke here) but those friends I do have are great people. I know I’m a bit hard to get to know-truth be told people meet me and they either love me or (insert your next joke here) hate me.

Of those friends I consider among my best friends: Mike Stradford, Lovern Kindzierski, Roger Klohr, Jason Clark, Ehrich Van Lowe, Lee Speller, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, David Quinn and Denys. Of those guys Denys has been around the longest except for Lee, and we go back to Junior High. I would take a bullet for every one of those guys. That said, Denys and I grew up and went to school together – even if we did not know it.

So how do you grow up together and not know it? Here’s how. I grew up in Queens, New York: Jamaica, Queens then Rockaway, Queens then back to Jamaica, Queens. In all the years I lived in Jamaica, Denys literately lived around the corner from me and we NEVER met.

That’s nothing special until you consider that we went to the same specialized high school, The High School Of Art & Design in Manhattan and we still never met.

Consider this: Denys and I lived around the corner from each other, we rode the same bus, from the same bus stop took the same subway train from the same subway station everyday. We then had to walk the same blocks to the same school in Manhattan. We did this for years and never met. What are the odds?

How did we meet? Why did we meet?

Comics.

We literally met at Marvel Comics years after high school because a mutual friend of ours thought that two black guys working (or in my case trying to work) in comics should know each other. We both resisted that meeting but our friend Darlene was smarter than both of us and arranged it. She asked me to have dinner with her one day and told me to meet her at Marvel where she was the receptionist. When I got there she asked me to Xerox something for her. I went to the Xerox machine and standing there was Denys Cowan.

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Dragon and Dungeon magazines fold

Dragon and Dungeon magazines fold

Paizo Publishing and Wizards of the Coast today announced the conclusion of Paizo’s license to produce Dragon and Dungeon magazines effective September 2007. The final issues will be Dragon #359 and Dungeon #150, both of

which will contain special content commemorating the history of these magazines. Dragon and Dungeon have been the backbone of Paizo Publishing for five years since they spun off from Wizards of the Coast’s periodicals department in 2002, and both magazines have been an integral part of the RPG publishing world for decades.

The magazines have a long history of publishing comics content, including Phil Foglio’s What’s New and Aaron Williams’ Nodwick.

“Today the internet is where people go to get this kind of information,” said Scott Rouse, Senior Brand Manager of Dungeons & Dragons®, Wizards of the Coast. “By moving to an online model we are using a delivery system that broadens our reach to fans around the world. Paizo has been a great partner to us over the last several years. We wish them well on their future endeavors.”

Subscribers should go to Paizo to learn more about the future of their subscriptions. Multiple options will be available for customers whose subscriptions extend beyond the final issues of the magazines.