Knitted Daleks
This is specifically for Martha Thomases, our in house media maven and knitting nut: A knitted and stuffed Dalek from Dr. Who.
Can you feel the plush evil?
The Mix : What are people talking about today?
Cartoon characters invade classic paintings
Worth1000 is running one of their periodic Photoshop contests. This time, the contestants are asked to update an old painting, placing a cartoon character in the original work.
Pictured at right, we present The Dancing Hippo by Degas. Soundtrack, of course, by Allan Sherman.
Writers take on JLA movie
Via Sci-Fi Wire, Variety reports that Warner Brothers has hired husband and wife team Kieran and Michele Mulroney to write the script for its hoped-for Justice League of America movie. It’s the first major action the studio has taken on the project, the trade paper reported. The studio isn’t saying which heroes may be included in the film.
Development of the film is complicated by the fact that Warner has already revived its Batman and Superman film franchises, with Christian Bale’s Batman Begins and the upcoming The Dark Knight and Brandon Routh’s Superman Returns and its upcoming sequel. The studio is also developing a Wonder Woman film.
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Kieran and Michele Mulroney wrote the screenplay for the horror film Mirrors, which is in pre-production with Kiefer Sutherland attached. Kieran is also an actor, with credits in Enterprise, Seinfeld, and Star Trek: The Next Generation, among others.
NYCC – Panel reviews
During the most crowded day of a comics convention (or even on the other days), it’s never a bad idea to take in some panels. The best conventions offer a wide variety of programs in comfortable and intimate settings that you just can’t duplicate at a booth or exhibition hall. They represent just about any interest and subculture related to comics and other "geek-centric" entertainment, and create a participatory and egalitarian feel among panelists and attendees.
This NYCC saw a diversity of topics to please everyone from moviegoers to Japanophiles to old-school aficionados to the creators of tomorrow. One of the best things about it was the implicit acknowledgement that about as many women as men were expected to take in the programming. At least four panels so far have dealt with women in comics (real women storytellers as opposed to fictional women characters), and yet other panels having nothing to do with that topic featured female panelists as a matter of routine. This is the very type of situation advocacy groups like Friends of Lulu hoped to work toward for so many years, and it’s a real privilege to see it come to fruition.
Here’s a photo from a Friday panel. Some thoughts on it and a couple other panels attended so far:
X-Men strand Gen Y
Getting a hologram card of Wolverine in a pack of the first series of Marvel Universe Trading Cards is one of my fondest childhood memories. I was five. I showed almost all the guys in my class. Unfortunately, if this kindergartener had been inspired to buy the Wolverine comic around that time it would have been tough sledding: in that story Wolverine learns his memories are a result of brain implants. The next arc ended with Wolverine promising a man that he would return to remove a part of his body every year until nothing remained.
Comics were convincing themselves that they were for adults, and that adults required mature, violent stories. But no one told the licensing people whose job it was to pump children’s playthings into the market. I think this is why there are so few of my contemporaries reading comics. As children, we had to claw our way into the medium despite its best efforts to keep us at arms length, the better to succeed as a medium for teenagers and adults.
Kirk discloses more Agents of Atlas
Leonard Kirk writes, "Jeff Parker had already let it slip that the Agents of Atlas will be making an appearance in a future issue of the all ages title, Marvel Adventures: The Avengers! Well, for those of you impatient fanboys (and girls) who just can’t wait for anything related to ATLAS," Leonard posts a few select panels on his blog to whet fans’ appetite. Lovely stuff as always from one of our favorite transplanted Canucks!
Courting justice with editorial cartoons
Mikhaela Reid is working on what she calls an "alternate reality cartoon" series for Lambda Legal (a national organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and those with HIV through impact litigation, education and public policy work) imagining what life might be like in a world where courts did not uphold Constitutional law. Life Without Fair Courts is also running in The Advocate magazine, which is sponsoring the series along with Prism Comics, a nonprofit organization that supports LGBT comics, creators, and readers.
The educational endeavor also features a nationwide contest to find the best representation of what the artists’ own lives would look like without fair courts. Prizes include exposure in The Advocate and donated shopping sprees from Diamond Comics Distributors. Contest judges include Reid, Joan Hilty, Phil Jimenez and George Stoll (The Advocate’s Art Director) for The Advocate. Submissions to the contest will be accepted through March 15.
Let’s hope all entries remain in the realm of fiction!
NYCC – Minx for teens
At the first-ever panel for DC’s Minx line, editor Shelly Bond (described by Marketing Director Gayley Carillo as "the mastermind" behind the imprint) talked about the inception of her quest to bring interesting modern stories to a whole new demographic.
About 3-4 years ago, Bond was in a bookstore and noticed a number of teenaged girls crowding around the manga section. That’s when she became determined to seek out creators from all different areas to write and draw "edgy, evocative and fearless" stories that would appeal specifically to today’s teen readers.
Part of that appeal, Minx hopes, will be inherent in the surface form of the imprint, like the trade dress and price point. Each book will be 176 pages, with color covers and interiors done in black and white and greytones. Each will feature a free preview of another book in the line. And each will cost under $10.
Performance art comics?
Metronome is described as "a 64-page graphic novel by Véronique Tanaka: a ‘silent,’ erotically-charged visual poem, an experimental non-linear story using a palette of iconic ligne clair images. Symbolism, visual puns and trompe l’oeil conspire in a visual mantra that could be described as ‘existential manga’ if it wasn’t for the fact that there is a very human and elegantly-structured tale providing a solid foundation to the cutting-edge storytelling."
The graphic novel will be published next year by NBM, but it’s available to view as a 17-minute animated (actually, still-shots) movie on this site if you fork over the equivalent of about four bucks. I confess I didn’t last more than a minute and a half, two minutes tops. Not only did I see no storytelling, but it seemed to have all the earmarks of a pretentious performance art piece worthy of the likes of a young Yoko Ono.
If Grapefruit were a graphic novel-imagined-as-an-animated movie, it might look something like this. Only without the grapefruit, and with a lava lamp, a fly, a piano, and a metronome, among other things.
NYCC – Much Marvel madness
During the New York Comic Con’s "Cup o’ Joe" panel Saturday, Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada dropped some exciting new announcements concerning a few projects in Marvel’s coming year.
First off, the award-winning team of Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev will be taking the creative helm for Marvel’s Halo, based on the critically acclaimed video game franchise. The book is expected out this summer.
New Avengers/Transformers was nnounced for this summer. The book will be a joint effort by Marvel and IDW Publishing. Taking the helm for the "widescreen" book is Stuart Moore & Tyler Kirkman.
Orson Scott Card will be penning the "Ender’s Game" story-appearing in the Red Prophet hardcover ONLY!
Finally, Arthur Suydam (Marvel Zombies cover artist), and Marko Djurdjevic (gaming artist) were announced as Marvel exclusives, and will be attached to a number of books including Marvel Zombies vs. Army of Darkness and Daredevil starting this Spring.
