The Mix : What are people talking about today?

Marvel Studios promotions

Marvel Studios promotions

As Marvel’s Iron Man movie heads into production this week, we get word of a lot of promotions and changes of job titles at Marvel Studios. At the top, David Maisel is now Chairman of Marvel Studios and Kevin Feige is President of Production. Maisel, who joined Marvel in 2003, is credited for the conception and execution of the new film production effort, including establishing the strategy for self-financing the endeavor. Feige has worked on all of Marvel’s movies since 2000, and is currently producer on Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk.  In his expanded role, Feige will now also oversee creative for the studio’s animated projects for TV and DVD, as well as video games. 

Additionally, Marvel Studios has recently added and promoted a number of executives in senior management, including:

  • Tim Connors as EVP/Business Affairs and Operations
  • Ross Fanger as EVP/Physical Production
  • Michael Brown as SVP/Marketing
  • Charlie Davis as SVP/Post Production
  • Rod Smith as SVP/Production Finance
  • Elizabeth Lynch as VP/Business and Legal Affairs
  • Jean-Claude Boursiquot as Director/IT and Studio Technology
  • Matt Finick as SVP/Studio Finance and Corporate Development
  • Ryan Potter as Associate Counsel.
  • Eric Rollman as EVP/Animation and Television
  • Ames Kirschen as SVP and Executive Producer/Video Games
  • Craig Kyle as SVP/Animation
  • Jeremy Latcham as VP/Development and Production
  • Stephen Broussard as Creative Executive
  • Joshua Fine as Story Editor/Animation

With everybody moving up a notch or two, someone has to make way at the top — in this case it’s Michael Helfant, President and COO, who will "pursue other opportunities."

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Desperado goes it alone

Desperado goes it alone

Yesterday, Joe Pruett announced on the Desperado website that his company would be parting ways with Image this summer after a partnership of 2½ years. Black Mist #4, solicited for May, will be their final co-publishing venture, and other titles like Common Foe and Paul Jenkins Sidekicks will finish out their run at Image.  Pruett’s company Desperado Publishing will begin publishing under its own banner with eight solicited titles this coming July.  The website itself will be redesigned throughout this month.

Pruett admitted, "Some people may feel that we’re being overly aggressive with our upcoming publishing schedule (8 -10 titles per month), but the fact is that we’re not really a new company — we’ve been publishing for over two years now — but rather an existing company that is expanding by just a few titles per month. We’re just not going to be listed under the Image banner any longer."

Pruett said the company would continue to "focus on diversity. The market needs to be diverse if it is to grow in all of the exciting new avenues that are presenting themselves to our industry. We plan to a part of that movement by allowing our creators to be as diverse with their projects as they need to be, as long as the quality remains high."

Auschwitz paintings update

Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, has emailed industry professionals an update on their efforts to help Dina Babbitt, a survivor of Auschwitz whose portraits of fellow concentration camp victims (which commandants forced her to paint) are currently in the possession of  (and on display at) the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland.  Mrs. Babbitt, a retired animator and ex-wife of legendary Disney animator Art Babbitt, has been struggling to have her original artwork returned to her for three decades, and last fall Dr. Medoff enlisted the help of fellow animators, cartoonists and comic book creators – an effort  spearheaded by comics legend Joe Kubert.

Dr. Medoff’s latest letter states that "In recent weeks, the Wyman Institute has been circulating a petition among attorneys and legal scholars, supporting Mrs. Babbitt’s struggle.  It will be sent shortly to the Polish authorities, and released to the public and media."

The Wyman Institute is organizing an auction of comic and cartoon artwork to support Mrs. Babbitt’s struggle.  I The auction will include artwork donated from Ralph Bakshi, John Romita Sr. and John Romita, Jr., "Butch" Guice, Walter Simonson, Don Perlin, Lynn Johnston, Drew Geraci, Dave Simons, Sal Amendola, Jon Bogdanove, James E. Lyle, Jim Keefe, Guy Gilchrist, Mike Vosberg, Rob Stolzer, John Cassaday and Greg Theakston, with many others pledging to contribute. 

ComicMix will bring you auction details as the date approaches.

 

Looking up our own

Looking up our own

Despite my first claim to "fame" being a self-published zine in the ’80s called INSIDE JOKE, I admit to having a limited tolerance for deconstruction and meta-winks in storytelling. To me that sort of linking and meta-footnoting belongs in essay-writing and blogging; in fiction, more often than not it becomes a form of cultural cannibalism largely practiced by creators (a) with only a surface knowledge of comics history who believe it’s cooler to point back to a story which readers recall fondly than to come up with original story ideas themselves, or (b) who believe not so much in writing stories as in structuring gags which they’re betting will amuse their audience and editors as much as the setups and punchlines amuse themselves.

I can understand the impetus. The more experienced you are as a writer, the more you need to keep up your own interest in your work. That’s why many writers enjoy experimenting with different storytelling formats, like starting the action in media res or recounting events backwards. They need to keep from getting bored, and they hope that their readers will also appreciate them shaking up expectations a little. And when it works in service to the story, it’s a treat to note all the different kinds of ways a tale can be spun. But the problem is that these kinds of tricks, when overdone, often become more about the writer than about the story.

 

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WTF? MySpace?

WTF? MySpace?

As someone whose first reaction to the news about Bravo acquiring Television Without Pity was, "Uh, what’s Television Without Pity?", I greatly identified with, and applauded, this clever substitution of Captain America’s dialoge from a page of Civil War Frontline #11, wherein one Sally Floyd conflates pop-culture trendiness with actual American values instead of a weak parody thereof.  Tetsubo observes, "note that Sally’s dialogue is unchanged and untouched."  Domo arigato, Tetsubo.

Brazilians love comics TV

Brazilians love comics TV

Here’s your useless bit of trivia for the day: Brazilians love US TV shows based on comics themes. Of the top 10 US series on broadcast TV in Brazil for January 2007, six of them are animated.

#2: X-Men: Evolution, with 839,390 viewers

#4: Totally Spies, with 789,000 viewers

#5: Jackie Chan Adventures, with 762,370 viewers

#7: The Simpsons, with 710,900 viewers

#8: Justice League Unlimited, with 706,180 viewers

#10: Danny Phantom, with 671,900 viewers

Via Cynopsis.

Cabot comes to comics

Cabot comes to comics

More good news for all those teen readers!  Meg Cabot, author of the popular Princess Diaries series, will be making the foray into comics with Avalon High: Coronation, a manga sequel to her novel Avalon High brought to us by the ever-expanding Tokyopop (which also answers the question "whatever happened to Jinky Coronado?", as Coronado is set to draw the graphic novel).  This should hit stores in July.

This is the result of a joint effort by Tokyopop and HarperCollins to create a progressive new line of co-branded (i.e., licensed) manga titles based on key young adult franchises from the HarperCollins list.  The other title, set to release in May, is Warriors: The Lost Warrior, based on the Erin Hunter series, to be written by Dan Jolley and drawn by James Barry.  Hey, it’s cats, go wrong!

It takes a man

It takes a man

For my money, there’s no manlier comic book-type name out there than pop-culture and political blogger Lance Mannion.  Can’t you just imagine what his comic book equivalent would look and sound like?  I sure can, and reading Lance is even more fun than picturing his character.  This week he presents his musings on casting for the upcoming Iron Man film, complete with copious illustrations.

Meanwhile, comics writer (and pop-culture and political blogger) John Rogers begs our forgiveness for a conversation he had five years ago with a young director in which he expressed certain doubts, and assures us that crow is indeed a very tasty meal.

Bakers talk baseball

Bakers talk baseball

It’s coming on baseball season again, and Team Comics is gearing up!  If you have no plans for Sunday, April 22, why not join Kyle Baker and family for A DAY TO BELIEVE: AUTISM AWARENESS DAY at Shea Stadium, as the New York Mets take on the Atlanta Braves?  More details at Kyle’s blog.

Top ten videogames announced

Now that comics have earned mainstream respectability, can videogames be far behind?  Henry Lowood, curator of the History of Science and Technology Collections at Stanford University, is at the forefront of gaining recognition of this hobby and industry as having "a history worth preserving and a culture worth studying."

So last Thursday at the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Lowood, along with game designers Warren Spector and Steve Meretzky, academic researcher Matteo Bittanti and game journalist Christopher Grant, announced the committee’s list of the 10 most important videogames of all time.  For the final list, see below.

The list ranges chronologically from 1962 (!) through 1994, and was closely modeled on the work of the National Film Preservation Board, which every year compiles a list of films to be added to the National Film Registry.  So expect a lot more additions in the future of this still-nascent industry — a future that looks brighter and more competitive every day, reports the BBC in this article about the stiff competition of talent trying to break into game designing.  And you thought getting into comics was hard!

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