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Jimmy Olsen and the new ComicMix Podcast

Jimmy Olsen and the new ComicMix Podcast

We preview this week’s new comics and DVDs and tell you how you can see some of the new television pilots, we reveal brand new Marvel mini-madness and tell you all about the return of Pirates without pirates, and we tell you what Joss Whedon is up to! Plus – the lowdown on Jimmy Olsen: will he really be the next Captain America?

The ComicMix Tuesday Podcast springs out of your computer… when you press this button:

Angelina Jolie is Wanted

Angelina Jolie is Wanted

Angelina Jolie, James McAvoy and Morgan Freeman in will be starring in the film adaptation of Top Cow’s Wanted mini-series for director Timur Bekmambetov, according to Universal Pictures.

Variety reports Jolie took on the role after the screenplay, written by Michael Brandt and Derek Haas, was rewritten for her by Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life writer Dean Georgaris.

The Mark Millar / J.G. Jones mini-series, according to Millar’s agent, was sold to Universal before the final chapters were even plotted.

Wanted begins shooting in May.

DENNIS O’NEIL: Death Dedux

DENNIS O’NEIL: Death Dedux

It’s getting so a man can hardly turn on his television set without seeing someone he knows. A couple of weeks back, there was my old boss, Stan Lee, playing a jovial bus driver on NBC’s Heroes. And a few days ago I was surfing through the news channels when I saw a familiar face belonging to Joe Quesada, once my co-creator on a comic book called Azrael and now Marvel’s editorial honcho. I caught the very end of Joe’s appearance and so didn’t hear what he was talking about. But the next day’s New York Times told me: Captain America is dead! Then, that evening, Comedy Central’s Colbert Report devoted a whole segment to Cap’s passing.

Well, okay, but before you transfer all your issues of Captain America to black mylar bags, remember that, in comics, death is not necessarily permanent. I myself presided over the termination of Jason Todd, aka Robin the Second, and these days he’s again on the scene, quite chipper. This is not even the first time Cap has returned from that Great American Legion Hall In The Sky. Some time in the 60s, Stan featured, in one of his superhero titles, a guy impersonating World War Two’s greatest hero – yes, Captain America – and, as I understand it, when the reader response was positive, did a story in which our flag-bedraped hero was found to be, not dead, as people had assumed, but frozen in an ice berg. Thawed, he was good as new.

The post-WWII Cap presented creators with problems because he was, unavoidably, an anachronism, a fact that later writers incorporated into plotlines. He was created at the outbreak of the war by two very young and patriotic men and wore his allegiance on his back, literally, in a restitching of Old Glory. There was a lot of implied chauvinism in his early adventures, and I mean that as no criticism. In those days, the nation faced a real and present enemy and everyone was ultra-patriotic except for a few fringe folk who were widely considered loony, or worse. Cap was one of a long line of protagonists for whom conventional virtue was the only virtue.

In the years before the war, some pop cultcha good guys showed signs of rebelling against conservative notions of right and wrong. The first World War, the one that was supposed to end all wars (and all may now laugh bitterly), had served up a massive helping of disillusionment which was reflected in the private eyes and rogue adventurers who populated the pulp magazines, and radio, and even movies – swashbucklers and truth seekers who knew authorities were not to be trusted. (Later, they were admired by the French existentialists as men who, living in an essentially meaningless universe, created and lived by their own morality.) They were maybe truer to reality than their predecessors, these lonely rebels in business suits; after Viet Nam and the Nixon administration; only the innocent and naive could believe that persons of authority were incorruptible.

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300 @ 152 & counting

300 @ 152 & counting

Frank Miller’s 300 has turned into quite a little motion picture empire, grossing not only a portion of its audience but a whopping $152,000,000 worldwide in its first 10 days of release.

Of course, by "worldwide" we mean that portion of the world that’s showing the movie thus far. Most of the planet has yet to enjoy the experience. By the way, 300 is doing quite well in Greece.

Given a lengthy stay in theaters, openings in the rest of the world, and DVD sales later this year, Warner Bros. is expecting to see well over $300,000,000 in total grosses. Not bad for a flick that cost $65,000,000 to make.

Dark Horse is rushing another 80,000 copies of the original graphic novel to the bookstores.

Manga toilet paper

Manga toilet paper

There are those people in the American comics market and readership that says that the manga coming in from overseas is printed on cheap paper, the stories are incomprehensible, and they just keep churning out more and more of them so much that they’re clogging up the shelves.

This will not help matters:

TV Commentator and 4-panel manga artist Yakumi Tsuru (real name: Hatakeyama Hideki) announced on Friday that paper goods company Banbix will be selling toilet paper with his manga drawings and 4 panel comics printed on it. The toilet paper, called "Food Toipe", can be purchased in cases of 50 rolls from the Banbix website for 8,500 yen (approximately 80 US Dollars), and will be available as of March 2nd.

Yakumi Tsuru, who is also the self-proclaimed "biggest toilet paper collector in Japan", said in a statement that "Toilet paper is often confined to hidden places in the home. I made food the focus of the manga [on the toilet paper] when I thought about the paper sitting on the table instead of just in the bathroom."

And your parents thought you had a weird collection. If you want them (and can read Japanese) you can order them here — but really, you’re just flushing your money away.

(Via Fanboy.com. Hi, Mike!)

By the way, this isn’t the first time comics have been printed on toilet paper. An English-language Spider-Man vs. Hulk story appeared in this format about 20 years ago. We’re not aware of it being reprinted as of yet.

Buffy does Anna

Buffy does Anna

Well, we might not have Anna Nicole Smith to kick around any more, but that’s not going to stop NBC’s Law & Order: Criminal Intent from giving it the old college try. And they’re doing so with a very unusual cast.

Kristy Swanson, the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer, plays the ersatz Anna Nicole – a former stripper and widow of a billionaire whose son dies shortly before she does. Subtle, isn’t it?

It gets better. The episode also stars David Cross, of Arrested Development and The Colbert Report fame, as the wannabee father of the dead woman’s baby. And Peter Bogdanovich, noted director / historian / actor (The Sopranos) plays a publisher with ill-intent.

So what can L&O:CI do as a follow-up? Remember former NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak, of diapers-to-Florida fame? You know, Must-Pee-TV?

300 comic to screen

300 comic to screen

How John Rogers said that 300 was unfilmable is beyond me. Here Solace Cinema has shown how Frank Miller laid it all out for the filmmakers to follow in a handy Flickr slideshow.

And people say that inkers do nothing but trace. What does that make Zack Snyder?

MIKE GOLD: The kids ARE alright

MIKE GOLD: The kids ARE alright

There’s an ad campaign on radio right now demanding that all movies that show people smoking cigarettes be handed an R rating. This is based upon the perception that despite parents’ best and most consistent efforts, kids who see somebody smoking a cigarette in a motion picture will turn into hopeless addicts.

This is amusing, as the baby boomers that are making these noises represent the first generation to turn their backs on smoking. Of course, we baby boomers were raised on cigarette commercials, our teevee heroes smoked like chimneys, our movie stars didn’t need fogged up lenses to hide the wrinkle lines, and, oh yeah, our parents and our grandparents were complete tobacco fiends.

Virtually all of our finest movies would have to be reclassified as R-rated. Casablanca, Citizen Kane, the Marx Brothers movies … I think about 95% of the movies the American Film Institutes’ Top 100 list wouldn’t make the cut. I’m not sure about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs – why do you think they called him Dopey?

So instead of actually raising our young with standards and values, it’s easier to simply have somebody else erase history for us. Forget about learning from our mistakes, let’s just stick our head in the sand and pass a law demanding everybody else does the same.

Here’s a fact. Parents want somebody else to raise their children for them. Offended? If I had said “Too many parents want somebody else to raise their children for them” would you still be offended? In the 1950s we looked at comic books said “somebody should stop kids from reading that.”  Then we heard rock music and said “somebody should stop kids from listening to that.” Then the villains became long hair, video games, rap music… it will never end.

The problem is, we have millions and millions of baby boomers who read comics and/or listened to rock who have grown up to be productive, or at least normal, citizens. Kinda fat, though. Maybe our parents should have spent their time bitching about Dr. Pepper and Froot Loops.

Parents, raise your children yourselves. Leave our history and our culture to fend for themselves; they do a great job without interference from lazy busybodies.

As for our children, well, they’ll make some mistakes. That’s their job. Be there to help them learn from those mistakes and remember, 99.5% of them will survive just like you did.

The Who said it best, and they said it 42 years ago: The Kids Are Alright.

Mike Gold is editor-in-chief of ComicMix.com. He watches a lot of old movies and he does not smoke. So there.

August denies Gyllenhall gab

August denies Gyllenhall gab

John August sets the record straight on his blog:  Jake Gyllenhall is not considering the lead role in the Captain Marvel project which August has been tapped to write.  He continues, "I can pretty much assure you he’s never heard of the project. And we’ve never discussed him. We’ve never seriously discussed anyone.

"After several months of meetings, casting has come up exactly zero times. There’s no casting list. If there were a list, Gyllenhaal’s name would probably be on it, but trust me: there is no list. There’s no start date, no release date, no movie whatsoever. There’s just a script to be written. Which I should probably get back to."  Aww no, baseless internet speculation is tons more fun than doing actual work!  On to the next trumped-up rumor, then: Emma Watson — in or out?