The Mix : What are people talking about today?

ROBERT GREENBERGER: Super-Heroes D2DVD to your home!

ROBERT GREENBERGER: Super-Heroes D2DVD to your home!

We’ve spent the last few weeks looking at how Hollywood operates, optioning properties, including comic books, which they think might work as a movie or television series. With the success of 300, we also paused to examine how full the calendar was getting the next few years and wondered if a glut was coming.

If that’s the case, what alternatives might there be?

Television remains skittish with comic book properties despite the runaway success of Heroes. Beyond Smallville, there are no comics-related shows on prime time and none likely to be added to the 2007-08 schedule (to be announced in May). Cable, with dozens and dozens of channels, has one: Painkiller Jane on Sci-Fi.

Animated fare, either for Saturday mornings or weekday afternoons, has turned away from comic books for source material, preferring anime imports or original productions. The last handful of attempts have not been resounding successes such as the WB’s Legion of Super-Heroes.

But there are new signs of life in the still growing Direct to DVD market, a.k.a. D2DVD. Here, producers go for the familiar as they crank out sequel after sequel on shoestring budgets and churn them out like so much shovelware, clogging the shelves at mass merchandisers from Sam’s Club to Best Buy. In 2006, D2DVD releases generated $1.3 billion in revenue, and that’s expected to grow 5% to 7% this year, according to Variety.

This is fertile ground for all the comic book publishers but so far only the majors are exploiting it to the fullest.

The earliest releases were not from DC, but from Warner animation, starting with Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. The story worked and the look matched that of the successful Bruce Timm/Paul Dini animated series and played better than expected so got upgraded to feature film release. Unfortunately, the subsequent efforts: Batman & Mr. Freeze: Sub-Zero, Batman vs. Dracula and Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman fared less well both creatively and financially.

The nadir may have been hit last year when they rushed out the ill-conceived Superman: Brainiac Attacks which resembled neither the animated continuity nor the Superman Returns feature film. Both were played off on the Cartoon Network.

Fortunately, it came and went with little fanfare and was totally eclipsed last summer when DC announced they were finally working as full partners with Warner animation in creating animated adaptations of classic DC stories from the company’s rich and deep library.

The first four announced releases, for those who missed the news, are:

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R2D2 handles your mail

Yahoo News has blown the pants off the USPS’ latest promotional gimmick, as it teams with Lucasfilm on March 28th, the 30th anniversary of the release of the first Star Wars movie, to remake some mailboxes in a familiar image.

About 400 mailboxes in 200 cities across the country will be wrapped in a special covering to make them look something like the droid R2D2 (judge for yourself at right).

The post office isn’t saying which ones, but they have a somewhat tepid teaser about the event.

The pants references above?  If you’ve never played Star Wars Pants, you’re really missing something.  Let’s hope it’s not those trousers, or I’d find your lack of pants disturbing.

(And if you didn’t catch the Annie Leibovitz photos from the Star Wars edition of Vanity Fair two years ago, they’re making the rounds again… love the group shot!)

Estrogen month update

Estrogen month update

Maybe it’s because of Women’s History Month, or maybe it’s the time of (wo)man.  But for those of us who like to idealize (rather than fetishize or objectify) women superheroes, there’s a lot of good stuff online right now.

Besides getting their fill of Buffy and Wonder Woman, readers can linger over Alan Kistler’s exhaustive two-part profile of the Amazon princess (here’s part one and part two).  On the artistic end, Project Rooftop and GirlWonder.org are co-sponsoring Supergirl Week, featuring entries from last month’s Draw Supergirl online artfest. And in the area of personal epiphany, Marvel artist Brian Denham talks about his moments of revelation and self-education about drawing women in comics.  Even the lone woman character with a speaking role in the movie 300 gets a nice review/analysis from Purtek at the Hathor Legacy.

As ever, When Fangirls Attack is your best bet for links to posts on the worlds of super-females.

Jay Kennedy RIP

Jay Kennedy RIP

According to an announcement from the Hearst Corporation, King Features Syndicate editor-in-chief Jay Kennedy died yesterday while on vacation in Costa Rica. He was 50 years old.

"Jay had a profound impact on the transformation of King Features as a home for the best new and talented comic strip creators in the country," said Bruce L. Paisner, executive vice president, Hearst Entertainment & Syndication. "He was an extremely creative talent himself and we are indebted to him for all he did."

Kennedy joined King Features in 1988 as deputy comics editor and became comics editor one year later. He was named editor in chief in 1997. He previously served as cartoon editor of Esquire magazine,and was a humor book agent and a cartoon consultant and editor for magazines and publishers, including People. In 1985, Kennedy guest edited r the "European Humor" issue of The National Lampoon.

Kennedy wrote articles about the history of cartooning, and profiled cartoonists and contemporary comics for magazines including New Age Journal, Heavy Metal, New York, The IGA Journal, and Escape, an English bi-monthly. He was also the author of "The Underground Comix Guide," published in 1982.

Before graduating with a sociology degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Kennedy studied sculpting and conceptual art at The School of Visual Arts in New York City.

I recall having corresponded with Kennedy on several occasions, probably asking some questions or other about women cartoonists at King Features, and always found him knowledgeable and pleasant.  ComicMix offfers our deepest condolences to his family and loved ones.

GLENN HAUMAN: John Scalzi for SFWA President

GLENN HAUMAN: John Scalzi for SFWA President

John has announced he’s a Write-In Candidate for President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and I’m supporting him, mainly for this:

"I don’t believe that Michael Capobianco, the fellow running for SFWA President, is at all the right person for the job. Let me note again that this is not a reflection on his personal character; I’ve not met him outside the online SFWA newsgroups and a few other online venues, so I cannot speak as to whether he is a nice guy or whatever. I’m sure he is. Likewise, Mr. Capobianco is a past president of SFWA and has won the organization’s service award, which suggests that in the past, at least, he has been viewed as a reasonable choice for leading the organization. The question in my mind is not his past service, of which I have no experience (it was before my time) but whether he’s the right person to lead SFWA forward now.

"I don’t think he is for two reasons. First, he hasn’t had a novel published in this century; his last published novel, White Light, which he co-wrote with William Barton, was published in hardcover in 1998. Essentially, he’s a decade out of practice with the practical aspects of publishing science fiction. This matters if one believes, as I do, that SFWA should primarily be a professional service organization; it particularly matters if one believes, as I do, that the publishing world in the 21st century, even this early on, is manifestly different than it was in the 20th century. I have books professionally published in both centuries; I know how much it’s changed, and I deal with the publishing world on a daily basis.

"Second, I believe that based on what I’ve read from him Mr. Capobianco is fundamentally afraid of the changing publishing world, and the changes in the world of speculative fiction, and that this fundamental position will cause him to make his tenure as SFWA backward-facing and defensive, rather than forward-thinking and innovative. This will make SFWA even more irrelevant to working writers — that is, the people who are shaping science fiction — than it already is.

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Bechdel goes to college

Bechdel goes to college

Alison Bechdel reports in her blog, "I just finished a two-day visit at Miami Dade College, sponsored by the Florida Center for the Literary Arts, where I talked  about Fun Home to a staggering array of classes, from Art to English to Human Growth and Development to The Graphic Novel." 

No fair, why couldn’t there have been Graphic Novel classes back in ancient times when I was in college?

Bechdel also spoke at the Gay-Straight Alliance meeting (whence this photo comes) and did a reading at the Broward County Public Library, which she details as one of her more interesting experiences in the Fun Home tour.  And speaking of libraries, she’s very happy to hear that the Marshall (MO) PL has voted to return Fun Home (as well as Craig Thompson’s Blankets) to their shelves, as are we.

Buffy wows ’em

Buffy wows ’em

The notable part of Dark Horse’s announcement about selling out its initial print run of Buffy: Season 8 #1 is that it actually announced how large that print run was.  It’s common to hear about sell-outs these days, but hard to tell whether they’re actually puffed up to look more important than they are because companies never say how many comics a sell-out constitutes.

So congrats to Dark Horse that this much-anticipated success lived up to the hype, as did the movie based on that little book of Frank Miller’s that they published a few years back.  Over a hundred thousand issues of any monthly comic book periodical these days is very welcome news, even more so when the book is presumed to have wide appeal beyond American comics’ usual demographic.

Needless to say, Dark Horse is going back to print.

Disney animates black princess

Somewhere, Ororo Munro is yawning.  And even the folks at Warner who parodied Snow White are wondering what took them so long.  But Disney is finally getting around to creating its first black princess to star in her own animated movie.

The protagonist’s name is Maddy, the fairy tale (which will debut in 2009) is to be called The Frog Princess, and the setting will be New Orleans, where Disney’s annual shareholders’ meeting is currently taking place.  It also marks Disney’s return to 2D hand-drawn animation.  John Musker and Ron Clements wrote the story and will direct the film (they co-directed The Little Mermaid and Aladdin so not too shabby there), and in a real shocker, Randy Newman was announced as doing the score.

Lest we forget the real reason the company makes these announcements at annual shareholders’ meetings in the first place, Disney assured the happiest crowd in the world that Maddy "will be added to its collection of animated princesses used at the company’s theme parks and on consumer products."

California dreamin’

California dreamin’

Winter may still have the northeast US in its icy grip this weekend as many NY-area sf aficionados take in Lunacon (see Glenn’s item below), but in southern California it’s as sunny as ever, and the warmth will be felt by fans and pros alike at WizardWorld LA, the first of this year’s four WizWorld conventions.

The con gets underway today, and special guests include Jeph Loeb, Michael Turner, Mark Silvestri, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley (doing that KISS Comics thang), plus there will be a number of actor-types on hand as you would expect given the venue (ooh, Lisa Loring looks lovely!) and plenty of comics creators like Peter David, Paul Jenkins, Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palimiotti, David Mack, Todd Nauck, Tim Sale, Dwayne McDuffie, Bill Sienkiewicz, about half the Wildstorm studios folk.  Not a lot of female comic creators listed, I count only four, but I’m sure there are lots of uncredited folks attending.

One of those is the swellerific Brad Walker, who mentions on the members-only photo section of his MySpace that he’ll be there selling prints of a Superman he pencilled and his buddy Livesay inked.  Marv Wolfman will be on a few panels and will probably have copies of his new book Homeland: The Illustrated History of Israel (more about which here).  Len Wein has confirmed he’ll definitely be on hand tomorrow and most of Sunday.

As usual, Heidi MacDonald has all the WWLA press releases (scroll down to yesterday’s items), and ComicMix hopes to hear from our left coast moles this weekend as far as any breaking news, so stay tuned, and stay warm!

ComicMix at Lunacon 50

ComicMix at Lunacon 50

ComicMix regulars Bob Greenberger and Glenn Hauman will be speaking at Lunacon 50 this weekend in Rye, NY. Glenn will be there all three days, Bob will be there Saturday and Sunday, and there may be other ComicMix folks lurking about. Feel free to come up to any of them and say "howdy".

And yes, that is artwork by Wally Wood in the logo. When a convention’s been around for fifty years, they pick up stuff like that.