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Playboy talks to Matt Groening

Playboy talks to Matt Groening

The cartoonist who created one of the world’s longest teevee series talks in depth to Playboy, and just in time for The Simpsons’ Movie.

Here’s the link for a small part of the interview, which is not safe for work if your boss will give you a hard time about going to the Playboy website.

Matt Groening discusses The Simpsons, the future of Futurama, and Life In Hell, as well as providing a lot of valuable child-rearing advice:

"I appalled some of my friends with how undisciplined I was as a parent. My kids talked back to me, and I laughed it off. Now they tell me I’m not funny anymore. My son said he wishes Seth MacFarlane were his father."

All this plus Woody Allen, Gahan Wilson, Don Rickles and Playboy Party Jokes.

(Artwork copyright Fox. All Rights Reserved. Tip of the hat to our own Glenn Hauman for making the call.)

Staying Lost for another three years

Staying Lost for another three years

ABC is announcing a commitment to Lost for another three seasons, according to the New York Times. “We have always envisioned Lost as a show with a beginning, middle and end,” executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse said in a statement, which was released over the weekend to The Hollywood Reporter and to the rest of the news media on Monday. “By officially announcing exactly when that ending will be, the audience will now have the security of knowing that the story will play out as we’ve intended.”

This assumes, of course, that no cast member becomes suddenly unavailable due to death, contract disputes, or long-term incarceration.

After the current season the remainder of the series will play out in three 16-episode stretches, with each season’s episodes being broadcast over consecutive weeks without interruption. By spreading the remaining episodes over three seasons instead of two, however, the network and its ABC Television Studio unit, which produces the show, will ease the production requirements, which in the past have resulted in the show’s convoluted broadcast schedule. Think of it as a Sopranos thing.

Of course, with a shortened schedule, we have to ask: Does this mean Damon Lindelof will now have enough time to finish writing Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk?

Happy Birthday, Dianetics!

Happy Birthday, Dianetics!

Fifty-seven years ago today, science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, which led, through a long and twisted path, to the movie Battlefield Earth. Oh, and Scientology®.

And what is Scientology®, you ask? Luckily, we have a handy instructional video…

 

 

 

 

VINNIE BARTILUCCI: ComicFest from the inside

VINNIE BARTILUCCI: ComicFest from the inside

In the early 90’s I had made a fair to middling name for myself in comics fandom. I was a regular on the CompuServe forums, was running a comics APA of my own, THWACK!, and had started submitting to CAPA-Alpha. I had started writing articles for Wizard magazine, which is how I made friends with Pat O’Neill, their first Editor-in-Chief.

One night Pat contacted me to tell me that Gareb Shamus (Wizard‘s owner) was looking to do a comics con, and wondered if I was interested in running it. Well, he was close to being right — it was a friend of Gareb’s, David Greenhill, who had made a fortune in the sports card industry, and was looking to move to comics. Not as a speculator (there were soon to be plenty of them) but as the promoter of a comics show.

David’s idea was to bring a lot of the "business" of the card industry to comics. His ideas were good – too many comics shops were (and still are) run as if they were hobbies, and most comics shows didn’t make any attempt to market to the general public. He planned to change that. He planned to hire a major PR firm to push the show, get the publishers to invest in the show both financially and with publicity, a lot of big ideas. He just didn’t know how to actually run a show.

Well neither did I, but I wasn’t tellin’ him that…

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ELAYNE RIGGS: The Golden Age of ComicFest

ELAYNE RIGGS: The Golden Age of ComicFest

The crazier my responsibilities get (yes, I’ve missed posting here as well) and the more I lurch toward the Big 5-0, which I will now commemorate near year’s end without a father and without a best friend, the more I yearn for simpler times. Of course, "simpler" is as relative and subjective a term as they come. In political parlance, it usually means "a time in the hazy past whose values were clearly espoused on fictional TV shows that we can no longer distinguish from reality because they either filmed before we were born or they encompass the way we wish things were or should have been," which explains a lot about our current administration because it’s never a good idea to consciously try to fit reality to fiction, whether you’re talking about Father Knows Best or 1984 or even Star Trek.

In a personal sense, "simpler" usually means "before my life had as much heartache and difficulty, and when there were supportive pillars that I always thought would be there." And it’s weird, because "always" isn’t always as permanent as we seem to think it is.

Take my Golden Age of Comics. A writer once opined that everyone’s Golden Age of Comics is 12. Not for me. For me it began in my mid-20s when my first husband, Steve Chaput, got me hooked for good on indies and, thanks to Crisis on Infinite Earths, the new streamlined DC Universe. (My best friend in college, the late great Bill-Dale Marcinko, tried mightily to get me interested in late-70s Marvel fare, but it was all too soap-opera’y for me back then. In those days I hated the idea of soaps. Nowadays I can’t wait for the next episode of Ugly Betty. Go figure.) By 1993 Steve and I had discovered online fandom, which still consisted mostly of folks in the CompuServe Comics and Animation Forum (yep, this was pre-Usenet; I wouldn’t make my first tentative posts to those comic groups until 1994), and we were making plans to help out our friend Vinnie Bartilucci (who had actually introduced us to the wonders of email and suchlike) with the running of the Greatest Comic Convention Ever.

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Spider-Man 3 covers costs

Spider-Man 3 covers costs

When the ticket stubs were counted in 107 markets, Spider-Man 3 made $382 million this past week.  This covers the cost of production, variously estimated to be between $250 million and $350 million.  Marketing costs have been estimated to be as much as another $150 million.

SM3 set records as the biggest opening weekend in 29 different countries, including the US, Canada, Japan, South Korea, China, Italy, Mexico anad Brazil. 

According to a company press release, the flick earned three times the money in South Korea as the previous record holder.  The film also set a record for the largest domestic gross at IMAX theaters, with $4.8 million.

So, what do you want to do next weekend?

Opus and friends waddle to the movies

Opus and friends waddle to the movies

The next biggest name in comics movies? Quite possibly Berkeley Breathed, who has three projects going right now.

His newspaper hero Opus (from Bloom County, Outland and of course the current Opus) is swimming its way to the theaters. Opus: The Last Christmas is scheduled for release December 19, 2008 from the Weinstein Company, with Breathed directing the project. 

Breathed’s latest hardcover, Mars Needs Moms! is also headed to the screen with Robert Zemeckis (Back To The Future, Forest Gump, Tales From The Crypt) set to direct. Breathed and Zemeckis are playing with the screenplay.

Finally, Breathed’s Flawed Dogs: The Year End Leftovers at the Piddleton “Last Chance” Dog Pound is also on the production charts, to be directed by Gore Verbinski, of Pirates of the Caribbean fame.

No word on Keith Richards’ availability on that last one.

(Artwork copyright Berkeley Breathed. All Rights Reserved.)

Palmotti talks Countdown

Palmotti talks Countdown

Can we handle another weekly comic? Countdown writer Jimmy Palmotti tells us why this will be the series to watch over the summer. Plus – the excitement from Free Comic Book Day has just settled, but we’ve got the behind-the-scenes action as we debrief some of of the nation’s better retailers on just what happened in their stores. All this and your weekly comic & DVD wish list, news on the girl who will end up in The Hulk’s hands – and a little ditty from the Blondie who isn’t married to Dagwood!

The 37th Big ComicMix Broadcast is in the air! Press The Button… or Jimmy Olsen dies!

DENNIS O’NEIL: On triskadekaphobia

DENNIS O’NEIL: On triskadekaphobia

Do my hands tremble as I type these words? Are there creaks and groans coming from the room behind me? Is the air chill and sticky?

What could be happening?

Ah, I think I have it! Triskadekaphobia – that must be it! And what is triskadekaphobia? My computer’s dictionary defines it tersely and simply: An irrational or obsessive fear of… (that number between 12 and 14.) (Parentheses and paraphrasing mine.)

This is the that number of these whatever-they-ares that I’ve written and that, my friends, is scary. That it is also irrational goes without saying, at least to the non-believers among you.

My irrational fear of… that number is not exactly new. If you look at any of the comics I’ve written in the last dozen (nor baker’s dozen!) years or so, you won’t find the dialogue balloons and captions on any single page totaling that number unless the editor added or subtracted or conflated something, in which case it’s on his or her head. And if I’m doing a script and reach the end of page 12, I either quit or make myself charge on until I get to page 14, even if I run out of steam half way through that page.

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Spider-Man 3: Girls Talk

Spider-Man 3: Girls Talk

by Lillian Baker and Martha Thomases

We went to see Spider-Man 3 on Sunday afternoon in the East Village. Even though it was dinner-time, the movie theater was full. “We” are Lillian Baker, age 8, and Martha Thomases, age 54. Here’s what we thought. Beware of spoilers.

MT: I enjoyed myself in the theater, although there were some draggy parts. To me, the best part of the Spider-Man films is the way New Yorkers claim Spider-Man as one of their own. He’s a home-town boy.

LB: At the end, you find out that Venom doesn’t like sounds.

MT: Venom was a strange villain. When Peter Parker wore the black suit, it changed his personality. When Eddie Brock was infected, it changed his teeth.

LB: I guess that’s because he was wearing a costume. The other guy didn’t have a mask on to cover his teeth.

MT: The friendship between Peter and Mary Jane and Harry was wonderful. I thought it felt like a lot of relationships that last through different parts of your life. I was glad Harry redeemed himself.

LB: I really liked that Venom guy. He didn’t last very long.

MT: It seems to me that New York City isn’t a good place for a creature that doesn’t like loud noises.

LB: I agree with that. The girl was screaming and that was a loud noise. I just don’t get it.

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