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ROBERT GREENBERGER: Strip show

ROBERT GREENBERGER: Strip show

Johnny Hart passed away the other day and in one of the obituaries I read, it stated Creators Syndicate intended to keep his strips, B.C. and Wizard of Id, still going. It seems Hart had been receiving help from family for some time now and much of his work exists as digital files for repurposing.

Upon reading it, my first thought was, ”Why?” The strips stopped being funny some 20-25 years ago and were coasting on momentum. B.C., which Hart wrote and drew, also was delving into his religious faith with increasing frequency over the years and was far from entertaining.

All of this brings up a host of issues regarding newspaper comic strips and their future. It used to be that the comic strips were a selling point, a way for papers to distinguish themselves. After all, the news, stocks and sports score were the same so why buy the New York Daily News if you also read the New York Post? The News knew comic strips were a key and filled page after page with the best strips possible. The Sunday edition was wrapped in the comics’ section – growing up, the Sundays were started with the latest Dick Tracy on the front and Dondi on the back and in between, there were more than a dozen other features.

The first generation or two of comic strip creators were a fertile, wonderful bunch that gave us enduring figures from Little Orphan Annie to B.C. As a result, as people aged, moved out of their parents’ home and started subscribing to a hometown paper, the comic strips remained a tool to entice and retain readers.

Whenever newspapers conduct reader surveys to figure out which features to drop in favor of new ones, the old standbys still score strongly because of that ingrained habit. Locally, the comics editor at the Connecticut Post admitted that “the blue-haired old ladies” threatened to cancel their subs if beloved strips vanished. And with circulation dwindling, papers have to hold on to every last reader.

The problem, though, has become that many strips have outlived their entertainment value and continue to run only out of habit. B.C. and Peanuts and Marmaduke and many others stopped being entertaining and fresh and interesting decades ago. When the creators have retired, or died, others have continued the features, recycling the same puns, gags and stale humor.

Some of the younger, hipper, creators recognize that such recycling is a kiss of death these days. Jim Davis gave Jon Arbuckle a girl friend in Garfield and Cathy Guisewite married off her pathetic Cathy a few years back, each mining new strip possibilities.

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DC’s big 52 – 52 and lots of … SpongeBob?

DC’s big 52 – 52 and lots of … SpongeBob?

Slightly more sincere than a Don Imus apology (which one?), ComicMix PodCast #25 asks the question "Why didn’t you see Grindhouse?", covers the cool new comics and DVDs waiting to meet your credit card and runs back to the day when the CB was the ultimate "IM." DC 52 #52 goes 48, SpongeBob gets two different items, very varied variants, and… why weekly Wonder Woman?

All this and more in our silver anniversary edition of ComicMix PodCast, and you can hear it… right here:

Ghost Rider goes to court

Ghost Rider goes to court

Long-time comics writer Gary Friedrich has sued Marvel Comics, Sony Pictures and their Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, Relativity Media, Crystal Sky Pictures, Michael De Luca Productions, Hasbro Inc. and Take-Two Interactive for copyright infringement over his version of Ghost Rider.

Filed last week in Illinois, Friedrich claims 21 separate copyright and trademark violations based upon the “production and marketing” of the recent blockbuster motion picture. He claims the copyrights used by the defendants reverted from Marvel to him in 2001.

According to Reuters, Friedrich alleges copyright infringement and accuses Marvel of waste for failing “to properly utilize and capitalize” on his character. Marvel’s attempts to do so, Friedrich claims, have only damaged the value of his work by failing to properly promote and protect the characters and by accepting inadequate royalties from co-defendants. Friedrich also claims that toymaker Hasbro and videogame firm Take-Two have improperly created merchandise based on the characters.

Even though Marvel has published this version of Ghost Rider off-and-on since 1971, it’s predecessor company, Magazine Management, failed to register the work with the Copyright Office, according to Friedrich’s complaint.  He states that, following federal law, he regained the copyrights to Ghost Rider in 2001.

As of this writing, neither Marvel nor Sony has responded to the suit. It is expected they will adopt the initial position that the complaint “bares no merit,” as if it did, the crack of the whip could severely undermine the profitability of both Marvel and DC Comics and their parent companies.

Grindhouse to amoeba?

Grindhouse to amoeba?

Grindhouse executive producer Harvey Weinstein has been on a spree explaining why the movie  tanked last weekend. Without revealing the fact that the reviews and word-of-mouth generally noted people’s tastes running towards one of the two movies on the double bill and against the other – with little consensus on which is better – Weinstein said the three hour running time was a major deterrent to sales. Certainly, film exhibitors agree.

So he’s floating a trial balloon. He’s "thinking" about rereleasing Grindhouse as two individual movies: Robert Rodriquez’s  Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof. That should do wonders for this weekend’s box office.

But here’s Weinstein’s dirty little secret: when they made Planet Terror and Death Proof, extra footage was shot. Yeah, that’s always the case. But in the case of these two movies, a lot of extra footage was shot. Enough to add at least 20 minutes to each movie. The plan, of course, was to release "extended versions" on DVD and to seperate the movies for some overseas audiences. Now, it looks like these extra 40 minutes (give or take) is becoming Plan B.

Thus making Grindhouse ironically the longest trailer ever released.

You can listen to Matt Raub’s review on today’s ComicMix Podcast (below) or do a search for his ComicMix print review, which we ran last week.

Kids’ comics celebrated

Kids’ comics celebrated

Via Randi Mason, on Sunday, April 22 the fabulous and still-going-strong Books of Wonder store in NYC’s West Village will be hosting Graphic Sunday! with ten graphic novelists on hand to sign their children’s and young adult graphic novels.  Creator names and their works (all of which will be available for purchase at the store) are displayed prominently on the site.  Come on out and support comics for kids and teens as well as independent bookstores!

One of the Graphic Sunday! participants, Dave Roman, has a nice post about the event, as well as cluing us into another kid-oriented comics event put together by our neighbor Alex Simmons, called the Kids’ Comic Con.  This event will take place on Saturday, April 28 at the Bronx Community College, and lots of our friends will be there, so since I don’t live that far away it’s a pretty sure bet I’ll be there as well to represent ComicMix!

Convention reports collected

Convention reports collected

Seek and ye shall find!  Yesterday we talked about Heidi Meeley’s efforts at consolidating links to reports about the recent Emerald City Con.  Today we find two more comprehensive ECC link posts, from Laura Gjovaag and Tom Spurgeon, Tom calling his contribution "Collective Memory" which was just what we were hoping someone would start.  We’re sure somewhere on CR Tom has gathered all his Collective Memory posts, but we can’t find them in a cursory glance at his resources page.  Then again, we couldn’t find ComicMix listed either.

Yet.

There’s no need to fear

There’s no need to fear

Forget that god awful looking CGI pup we’ve seen in the movie trailers.  The one, true Underdog will be collected on a three volume DVD box set this summer.  Released by Genius Products, under license from Classic Media, the $29.98 collection will feature digitally re-mastered episodes with Wally Cox (the voice of Underdog) sounding better than ever.  Not only that, the DVDs will collect the 1960s television series as originally broadcast so fans can delight in the additional escapades of Hunter, Go Go Gophers, Klondike Kat, Tennessee Tuxedo, King and Odie, Tootie Turtle and Commander McBragg.  The release date has been listed as both July 24 and August 6 while the god awful-looking CGI movie opens on August 4.

Trivia point: did you know that the meek, sheepish Wally Cox once was Marlon Brando’s roommate? Underdog, indeed!

Paper v pixels examined again

Paper v pixels examined again

Amid the "it’s been three days, is Johnny Hart still dead?" cracks elsewhere in the blogosphere, over at the Huffington Post student Frankie Thomas remembers Hart by placing his comics firmly in her childhood, then continues, "Let’s face it: when it comes to comics, print media is dead." She goes on to talk about the webcomics which excite her nowadays, which is a good thing for webcomics as HuffPo is an extremely popular group blog, but a bad thing when she confuses form with venue by referring to comic strips themselves as "a lost art" after she’s just extolled them.  (I think what she meant to say was that newspapers were a lost cause as far as comic strips are concerned.)

Seems to me it’s always more enjoyable to read people who don’t feel they have to put down one thing (print) in order to appreciate the other (pixels), so I much preferred Wil Wheaton’s short list of the webcomics that have made him laugh lately (including, of course, one featuring him).

DENNIS O’NEIL: No evil lurks this week

DENNIS O’NEIL: No evil lurks this week

Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I know I promised, at least implicitly, to deliver Who Knows What Evil Lurks – Part 2 this week. But that will take some time and maybe digging, to write and, honestly, I have the luxury of neither. By the time you read this, I’ll either be at or returning from Juaniata, Pennsylvania, where I’ve been invited to be the guest of Jay Hosler and maybe shoot off my mouth in public a bit. I’ve been busy doodling notes for said mouth-shooting; hence no dissertation on lurking evil.

I thought about just blowing off this whole column thing, or delaying it until I was back here in scenic Upper Nyack, and rested. But… I promised editor Mike Gold and PR goddess Martha Thomases that I would deliver a minimum of 500 words each and every week. And I made the same promise to myself. Sternly, I said to myself that I had to respect the deadline, even if the deadline in question is largely of my own making.

By the way, I don’t hate deadlines the way a lot of writers and artists seem to. Maybe that’s just because I lived with them for so long – for over 40 years, they were a constant part of my life. What can be said against them is that they can be a pain in the ass. What can be said for them is that they can impart focus to a project and they can be an impetus to stop kvetching and worrying about your ability to leave civilization breathlessly in your debt (and maybe sit on David Letterman’s couch) and just, please, get the damn thing done.

A couple of paragraphs back – I’ll wait while you check – I mentioned Jay Hosler. Doctor Hosler teaches biology at Juaniata College, is a proponent of evolution, a comics enthusiast, a writer, and a cartoonist. He’s done two graphic novels which I found educational and very entertaining. You’ll find the titles below.

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Sacco on Iraq

Sacco on Iraq

Via Jessa at Bookslut, the good news is that comic artist and journalist Joe Sacco has a 16-page piece in the latest Harper‘s entitled Down! Up! You’re in the Iraqi army now.  You can see the thumbnails (like the one at right) here

The bad news is, you can’t see the full-size art to actually read the piece unless you buy the issue. Joe’s worth it.