Mad's 20 Dumbest: Entertainment outtakes

Mad Magazine's annual list of the 20 Dumbest People, Things and Events of the year hits the stands this week. The list includes, in typical Mad fashion, the usual gang of idiots (Britney, Lindsay, George W.) as well as a few newbies (Michael Vick, American Idol's Sanjaya). But the best of this year's crop is No. 13 on the list: Alternate Sopranos Endings That Would Have Been Better. Click on the image below for an advance peek (warning — the image has to be pretty large to be legible, so you may want to download and look at it in an image editor).

Also worth a look is No. 9: The Giant Toy Recall, at right. In the meantime, we can look forward to next year's edition, which will surely include some kind of commentary on the writer's strike.

DC bridges 'Lost Boys' pics

More than 20 years after Corey Haim schooled Corey Feldman on proper retail placement of Superman comics in "Lost Boys," the vampire movie is set to come to comics courtesy of DC in a four-issue miniseries bridging the gap between the original film and the upcoming sequel, "Lost Boys 2: The Tribe."

The series will be written by Hans Rodionoff, who also wrote the sequel film and penned the low-budget 2005 film adaptation of Marvel's "Man-Thing," with art by Joel Gomez, whose credits include Wetworks. The sequel, currently listed on IMDB.com as a direct-to-video features, will see Feldman reprise his role sans pal Haim and is set to come out in 2008.

More Events: super*Market, 'Heroes,' CBLDF, Bug auctions

The super*Market minicon is back after a few years off, moving from UCLA to Meltdown Comics on Sunset Boulevard tomorrow, Dec. 15, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Slated to appear are Jordan Crane, Martin Cendreda, Johnny Ryan, Steven Weissman and Batton Lash and Jackie Estrada of “Supernatural Law” fame, among others. You can check out further details at these fine sites.

The Jules Verne Adventures Film Festival is going on this weekend, with a special appearances by the cast and creators of “Heroes” and a tribute to Stan Lee set for Saturday night at the Los Angeles Theater. Appearing from the show — currently on hiatus pending the settlement of the WGA strike — will be creator Tim Krink, co-exec producer Jeph Loeb and cast members Jack Coleman, Dana Davis, Dania Ramirez, Masi Oka, Greg Grunberg, Cristine Rose, Adrian Pasdar, Milo Ventimiglia, Sendhil Ramamurthy and special guest Malcolm McDowell. The event is set for 6 p.m., and tickets can be purchased here.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is hosting a party for members (old, new and yet-to-join) on Wednesday, Dec. 19, from 6 to 9 p.m. at Golden Apple Comics on Melrose. Comics pros in attendance will include Brian K. Vaughan, Percy “MF Grimm” Carey, Rob Schrab, Gerry Duggan, Marc Andreyko, Christos Gage and Larry Marder. Festivities will include a charity auction, food and drinks, and discounts and gift bags for org members.

On the topic of worthy causes, the Comic Bug shop in Manhattan Beach is auctioning on eBay 10 classic Silver Age Marvel comics signed by Stan Lee and certified by the CGC, with 10 percent of the proceeds going to the Hero Initiative. There’s still a few days left in the auction to get your mitts on such key books as Amazing Spider-Man #4 in 6.5 grade, an Iron Man #1 in 7.5 or an X-Men #1 in 3.0. The list of titles can be found here.

News: JLA costumer dies; Myriad deal; Wonder Woman; X-Men manga

After some much-needed time off in the tropics (sans Internet), we’re back to see what’s been going on the past week.

* Marit Allen, costume designer on the still-in-preproduction Justice League of America film, died Nov. 26 of a brain aneurysm in Sydney.

* In an increasingly common scenarios, Myriad Pictures has signed a deal with Studio 407 to develop feature film versions based on the company’s comicbook properties. If you haven’t heard yet of Bangkok-based Studio 407 or its titles — Tiger and Crane, Night and Fog and Hybrid — that’s because they’re all still coming sometime in 2008. (The last two titles above sound like comics designed to promote safe driving in adverse conditions and sell cars.) Deal also allows Studio 407 to develop graphic novels based on Myriad properties. With so many new comics houses teaming up with studios, it’s starting to look like a crowded corner of the movie biz. Yes, comics movies have done very well and will continue to do well, but there’s still only so much demand for material that’s obviously “comicbooky,” i.e., superhero-like, and it’s highly unlikely that there’s enough demand out there to support all the Platinums, Virgins, Radicals, Devils Dues and Myriads that are trying to stake a claim in this area — either in the direct market or in Hollywood. And while the money in publishing is minimal compared to the norms for film and TV, a crush of comics properties that are popular or proven neither as movies or as comics is likely to hasten the inevitable day when superhero movies (regardless of whether they have capes) become yesterday’s fad.

* Grady Hendrix, who writes the Kaiju Shakedown blog at VarietyAsiaOnline.com, writes in the New York Sun about Wonder Woman and why most people know so little about a character who’s been around for so long.

Even people with a tenuous grasp of pop culture know that Superman is from the planet Krypton and works at the Daily Planet. They know that millionaire Bruce Wayne saw his parents murdered in Gotham City and became Batman. But they're a little foggier on Wonder Woman. She's an Amazon from ... Amazon Island? No one's even quite sure what she does. Ambassador? Warrior? Gym teacher? Few people know that she's really Princess Diana and that she has two mothers. Formed from clay by the Queen of the Amazons, she was imbued with the attributes of the Greek gods by Athena — "beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena, swifter than Hermes, and stronger than Hercules."

Wonder Woman has the benefit of being the defining superheroine of the Golden Age, which explains why she’s survived so long and is so widely known, but suffers from a career of extreme creative inconsistency and even indifference that is perhaps only explained by the simple fact that for decades the men who wrote comics were just not interested in giving a female character the same sort of attention to plot, character and mythology that they are male superheroes. What even the most talented of today’s creators are left with is a character whose premise and mythology is confusing and vague, yet at the same time nearly impossible to change because no one knows what the essential elements are to this character. The closest I can recall to Wonder Woman being an interesting character and well-crafted comicbook was nearly 20 years ago, when George Perez et al. relaunched the character after Crisis on Infinite Earths. But even that remains a largely ignored storyline for a character desperately in need a definitive storyline that can set a direction fot this character to move beyond familiar cypher to compelling character and essential mythology.

* Marvel and Del Rey announced at last weekend’s New York Anime Festival they would collaborate on two new X-Men manga projects. First would be a two-volume shojo (girls’) manga written by Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman with art by Indonesian artist Anzu, and set to debut in spring 2009, described in a press release as follows:

As the only girl in the all-boys School for Gifted Youngsters, Kitty Pryde, a mutant with phasing abilities, is torn between the popular Hellfire Club, led by flame-throwing mutant Pyro — and the school misfits, whom she eventually bands together as the X-Men.



The second series also is set to debut in Spring 2009 and will focus (surprise!) on Wolverine.

I’ll believe this will work when I see it. It’s not that it’s a bad idea, though if you’re going to turn X-Men into manga (it’s been done before), it makes little sense to me to try to turn it into a shojo romance rather than go for an action-packed title of the type that could appeal to the boys who made the 1990s animated series such a smash hit.

TONIGHT: Boom! Studios' Holiday Party

Boom! Studios is hosting an open Holiday Party tonight at 7 p.m. at Meltdown in Hollywood. Best part, for those who may swing by the shop at 7522 Sunset Blvd., is FREE BEER. Here's the flier:

Crossing the Line 3 — Spider-Man: One More Day

Books and creators: The Amazing Spider-Man #544, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #24, Sensational Spider-Man #41; written by J. Michael Straczynski, art by Joe Quesada and Danny Miki

Marvel, color, 48 pages, $3.99 each.

So? Of all the A-list franchises in comics, Spider-Man has had probably the least success with the line-wide crossover saga. That’s at least partly due to the number of books the web-slinger usually stars in, which are usually fairly tight in terms of continuity and lessening the need for a true crossover event.

But there are times when Marvel needs or wants to draw attention to Spider-Man, and that’s about as good an explanation as you’re likely ever going to find for “One More Day.” Hyped as a major turning point in the lives of Peter and Mary Jane, this turns to be exactly what fans have expected all along: A way for Marvel to “erase” their marriage so Peter Parker can go back to being a single geek for whom girls are nothing but trouble. Marvel’s editor in chief, Joe Quesada, has been vocal about how the two characters’ marriage 20 years ago (yipes!) undermined what he thinks was a key part of Peter Parker’s original appeal.

With this kind of rationale for its existence, it’s almost impossible to judge this story on its own creative merits. Quesada is undeniably a talented penciller, and the script from the departing J. Michael Straczynski tries very hard to execute a concept that’s a hugely difficult pill to swallow in just about every way.

The third part of this four-part story, in Sensational Spider-Man #41, has Peter and MJ encountering Mephisto — Marvel’s version of Satan, Lucifer, etc. — who offers to save the life of Aunt May, who is certain to die after being mistakenly shot by a sniper who was trying to kill Peter, in exchange for their marriage. The idea is they’ll forget they were even married, except for a small part deep down in their souls that will despair at the loss, and it’s that part that will satisfy Mephisto.

Aside from Mephisto not being the type of villain that works in Spider-Man stories, this strains credulity and raises more questions than it answers about how Marvel intends to go forward with the character and his place in the entire Marvel Universe. Given that everyone in the Marvel Universe knows Peter is Spider-Man after he unmasked in Civil War #2 and that he’s married to Mary Jane, any sort of “mindwipe” affecting the entire universe is just plain unbelievable. It’s not clear if MJ will still be around at all, or if she and Peter will be adults or go back to being teenagers or if they’ll still be dating at all. What are they going to remember about the last few years of their lives? If the unmasking is undone at the same time, how does that affect every book that was tied into Civil War? Even the stated of goal, of having Peter go back to worrying about girls, is strange and seems unlikely to work unless you take him back to high school age. A single adult who works as a teacher, photographer or scientist and can’t get a date is far less sympathetic than a geeky teen who can’t get the girls at school to notice him.

The motive here also is hard to figure out, as the “classic” conditions this series is trying to restore already exist in the very popular Ultimate Spider-Man series, and already does a far better job of playing with them than the new, three-times-a-month Amazing Spider-Man series likely will. Why not just have multiple versions of the character for different audiences, and let people read the one they like? De-emphasize MJ if you like, but for anyone who’s been reading and liking the book for the last few years, this is going to be a majorly difficult pill to swallow, with seemingly very little potential gain. The sooner this is over, the better — a sentiment sure to be shared by comic shop owners who’ve endured delays as this weekly series has turned at least monthly and left them with a fraction of the usual number of new Spider-Man comics to sell. Grade: D

Crossing the Line 2 — Batman: The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul

Books and creators: Batman #670, written by Grant Morrison, art by Tony Daniel and Jonathan Glapion; Robin #168, written by Peter Milligan, art by Freddie E. Williams II; Nightwing #138, written by Fabian Nicieza, art by Don Kramer and Wayne Faucher; Detective Comics #838, written by Paul Dini, art by Ryan Benjamin and Saleem Crawford.

DC Comics, color, 32 pages and $2.99 each

So? Focus again helps make the first Batman crossover in quite a while, “The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul,” work as a reasonably entertaining crossover.

This shorter event — running one prologue and seven chapters through Batman, Detective Comics, Robin and Nightwing — begins with the return of the nominal villain, whose consciousness has been residing in a rapidly decaying alternative body since his “death” in Batman and the Maidens. Ra’s is looking for a new permanent vessel, and has his eyes set on his grandson, Damion, the child of his daughter Talia and Batman. Throw Batman’s current Robin and adopted son, Tim Drake, as well as Dick Grayson’s Nightwing into the mix, and you’ve got a pretty good setup, which is no surprise with the likes of Grant Morrison and Paul Dini each writing a book.

Now about halfway through its run, “Resurrection” has kept up a good pace, features fine artwork and has been quite easy to keep track of as it moves from character to character and book to book. Those basics covered, however, this lacks the kind of scope demanded by a story deemed worthy of a crossover. While X-Men: Messiah Complex is about saving mutants from extinction, the conflicts here are internal and again seem to rotate around Damion, Tim and how Batman should feel toward them or choose between them. Damion, as a fairly new character, hasn’t earned enough audience sympathy for his death to be a loss anyone would care much about. In fact, his whiny obnoxiousness so far recalls Jason Todd, whose stint as Robin was so reviled that he was killed off by fans in a high profile phone-poll event almost 20 years ago.

While entertaining, this doesn’t feel special enough for a crossover and likely would have benefited by playing out in a single title, where a writer would have had more room and time to turn it into a compelling story. Grade: B-

Crossing the Line 1 — X-Men: Messiah Complex

Books and creators: X-Men: Messiah Complex #1, written by Ed Brubaker, art by Marc Silvestri, Joe Weems and Marco Galli; The Uncanny X-Men #492, written by Brubaker, art by Billy Tan, Danny Miki and Allen Martinez; X-Factor #25, written by Peter David, art by Scott Eaton and John Dell; New X-Men #44, written by Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost, art by Humberto Ramos and Carlos Cuevas; X-Men #205, written by Mike Carey, art by Chris Bachalo and Tim Townsend.

Marvel, color, 32-48 pages and $2.99 to $3.99 each

So? Crossovers are a fact of life in superhero comics. No matter how often fans complain about them — how they fail creatively and require buying more books than normal to get the whole story — the votes that really count, i.e., sales, show otherwise.

While universe-wide crossovers like Infinite Crisis and Civil War have dominated of late at DC and Marvel, this fall sees the return of crossover to the families of books that used to define event publishing for superhero comics.

The X-Men pioneered this kind of crossover with 1986’s Mutant Massacre, and are back at it with Messiah Complex, the first such X-event in several years.

Following the depowering of all but 198 mutants in 2005’s House of M and Beast’s attempts in the Endangered Species backup series to save the small mutant population from eventual extinction, Messiah Complex sees the birth of the first new mutant and starts a race between the remaining mutant factions to find the child.

As far as concepts go for crossovers, this so far is working quite well. Having a point is more than half the battle when it comes to crossovers. Having a focus also benefits the crossover structure, which in this case goes between four different books, all of which have to both advance the overall story and spotlight its own cast of characters. That’s why parallel plots are common in crossovers, and they work here because the stakes are large enough to justify giving each group its own thing to do in pursuit of the overall goal. It also cannily revisits popular characters and, in some instances, restores at least some of the status quo on characters such as Mr. Sinister and Gambit.

Combine that with very good art from the likes of Marc Silvestri, Chris Bachalo and Humberto Ramos; excellent and consistent coloring; and a distinctive cover design, and you’ve got a good chance of achieving the nominal goal of bringing back lapsed fans for at least a look.

In the end, this appears to be a series that will neither excite fans the way 1995’s Age of Apocalypse did nor bore them as did Operation: Zero Tolerance. The biggest disappointment is that for all the effort put into making this coherent and competent — qualities that most X-overs have struggled to achieve — it isn’t even trying to deliver the kind of change the X-Men truly line needs to redefine itself as an exciting and accessible reading experience that can draw in new readers. That may be an unfair judgment, given that Messiah Complex was never intended to be that kind of story, but when all you’re shooting for is to recapture old fans, there’s little chance of sparking the kind of idea that’s going to truly capture the imagination of readers of any kind. Grade: B

Digital comics updates and experiments

The Z-Cult FM story continues, with the site receiving and complying with requests from DC Comics and Top Cow to remove all trackers to scans of their comics.

Top Cow comics have been available for legal download at Direct2Drive for a while now, while it’s safe to assume some kind of service for DC’s print comics will be coming at some point.

But it’s interesting to watch this blow up now, as the timing is strangely random. Glenn Hauman over at ComicMix talks about meeting with execs at DC about 2½ years ago in which he laid out an online strateg for the company. The result is telling:

They thanked me for my time, but suggested that a certain higher-up at DC would never go for it-- even though there would have been more than enough support from the online advertising market and from their corporate parents, and even though it would have been an obvious source of revenue that would have benefitted DC's bottom line and supported all sorts of new comic initiatives.

He also recalls meeting with Marvel more than six years ago to discuss building an infrastructure for managing the company’s assets, both digital and not.

Meanwhile, “High Moon” won the first competition at Zuda Comics, which is currently “between competitions.”

Artist Colleen Doran writes about her experience trying to get Marvel’s new Digital Comics Unlimited service to work after signing up for it.

After poking around on the site at a few of the free samples on the site this morning, I was intrigued enough to give it a shot for a month or two to see if I will actually read a lot of comics in this format. While Doran had trouble, I had a surprisingly nice experience reading through a few comics such as The New Mutants Special Edition #1 (one of my all-time favorite superhero comics), the Ed Brubaker-Steve Epting Captain America #1 and Fantastic Four #251.

After a bit of experimenting, I found the “Smart Panel” mode was the easiest way to move quickly through the book, though there were some issues that I hope will be addressed: For some reason, the bottom of the page was sometimes cut off by the frame in the browser, forcing me to switch to another mode to read some balloons in this part of the page. There also were some strange zooms, especially on pages with large vertical panels. In some instances, I could click on part of the panel and the browser would zoom in, making the text easy to read and the art nice and big; but sometimes it didn’t and there wasn’t an easy work around aside from switching to another reading mode. (It’ll be interesting to see if Marvel will adapt the way it makes print comics to make them work more easily in digital formats.)

The comics themselves looked very nice and the way the browser zooms in on the art displays it at a much larger size than you see in the print version. In some instances, it gave otherwise small panels more of an impact and got me to see things I hadn’t seen in print. The art on the older books was sharp looking, keeping the classic color scheme of the era.

So far, I’m pretty happy with it. As long as it always works at least this easily, it’s definitely preferable to the experience of using a reader to look at cbr or cbz files, which usually require tons of scrolling and zooming to get through a page. My few attempts to try to read something in thsi format were frustrating enough for me to just drop the idea of reading books that way. I look forward to experimenting further and seeing if my interest in reading comics this way will hold up after the novelty wears off a bit.

Pics and clips: 'Dark Knight,' 'Watchmen'

U.K. film mag Empire gives us a new glimpse at Heath Ledger's version of Joker in next summer's "The Dark Knight." Here's the image in question:

In case you haven't seen it, here's a video clip from the IMAX site on the film's being shot in that supersize format.

Over in "Watchmen" land, Zack Snyder posts on the film's production blog some info about the backlot set built to replicate the look of New York in the graphic novel. A few goodies here include a shot of the newsstand reader poring over the latest issue of The Black Freighter and the must-have Nixon re-election poster. The page also includes larger versions of the images below.

Marvel, DC bite into BitTorrent

Now that both DC and Marvel have jumped into the digital comics space – albeit with completely different approaches – they’ve been forced to address the issue of comics piracy.

Working together, Marvel and DC sent legal letters last week to the operators of Z-Cult FM, a popular site for BitTorrent trackers that allow users to download comics, including the most recent issues of those publishers’ titles. According to posts at the site, the letters gave the site three days to act before the publishers would take further legal action.

The site, which is based outside the United States, has its own policy for allowing publishers to request their material be removed. After verifying the letters were authentic, the site says it agreed to take down all Marvel trackers from its site within seven days. While the site has confirmed the letter from DC is authentic, they have, as of this writing, not posted any reports of further talks. In lieu of any talks with DC, Z-Cult FM has decided not to allow trackers for any new DC titles until the book has been on sale in comic shops for 30 days.

The publishers also went after a prolific uploader of scanned comics named “Oroboros,” who decided to stop using Usenet forums, though will continue to “scan and release into the wild like I did a year ½ ago.”

You can be sure there will be more of this going on as each company gets further and further into the digital comics realm. There already are some people reporting easy workarounds for saving the hi-res images from Marvel’s new Digital Comics Unlimited site to your hard drive.

How far Marvel and DC will go is unclear. It seems unlikely they would go after end users who download comics the way the RIAA has with music downloads. But going after trackers and the sites that host them is futile, too, as there are already so many copies out there of pretty much everything those companies have published and no shortage of sites willing to post trackers that are beyond the legal jurisdiction of U.S. IP law.

As with music and movies, the best plan would be to make legit copies of comics available so easily and so inexpensively that it’s just easier to buy them than it is to steal them. But given how long it’s taken both companies to get this far, that’s unlikely to come along any time soon, especially with DC still not making any of its vast library available online in any way or at any price.

Eisner Awards judges announced

Jackie Estrada, the administrator for the annual Will Eisner Comic Book Industry Awards, has announced the judges for the 2008 honors, which will be presented at Comic-Con Intl. in San Diego on Friday, July 25.

As usual, the judges are pulled from various areas of the industry, including comics retailers, librarians, journalists, creators and industry people.

This year's judges are: John Davis, director of pop culture markets for bookstore wholesaler Bookazine; sci-fi author, book critic and comics writer Paul Di Filippo; Atom! Freeman, owner of the Brave New World Comcs store in Santa Clarita, Calif.; Entertainment Weekly writer Jeff Jensen; and Eva Volin, supervising children's librarian for the Alameda Free Library in Alameda, Calif.

Full details on the judges are in the press release, following in the jump.

Continue reading "Eisner Awards judges announced"

Review: Dan Dare #1

Creators: Garth Ennis, writer; Gary Erskine, artist

Virgin Comics, 32 pages, color, $2.99. On sale Nov. 28.

So? It’s tough for those of us who didn’t grow up in England and don’t know much about Dan Dare to truly evaluate whether this revival is true to the classic installments of Frank Hampson’s adventure pilot. As a single issue, this is promising start to what looks like a good, old-fashioned sci-fi space romp. This issue re-introduces Dan Dare, who’s lured out of a retirement where he dreams of the Green and Pleasant Land of Yore and back to a world where America’s been bombed back to the Stone Age and British space forces face a new threat from the alien Treen. As an archetypal British flying ace, Dare is an appealing hero even with a few years on him, still wearing his 1940s style leather pilot’s jacket. Ennis does a good job of setting things up here, but what will be more fun will be to see how Ennis’ usual sly humor and penchant for big stuff happening will play out. Erskine is a terrific choice for the art. It seems unlikely that die-hard fans of the character will be doing backflips over this first issue — it’s just too heavy on the exposition to really tell how the space stuff everyone wants to see will work out over the next six issues of the series — but it seems to have enough of the right tone and care put into it to be worth sticking with. Grade: B+

Review: Dock Walloper #1

Creators: Edward Burns, creator; Jimmy Palmiotti, writer; Siju Thomas, artist

Virgin Comics, 32 pages, color, #2.99. On sale Nov. 28.

So? If you like Martin Scorsese’s recent films ("Gangs of New York," "The Aviator"), this is the comic for you. Based on an idea by actor-director Ed Burns and written by Jimmy Palmiotti (is there anything he doesn’t either write or ink?), this is a gangster tale set in the 1920s about a down on his luck outcast named John Smith, whose enlarged right hand makes him a power to be reckoned with on the mob-infested docks of New York City. Along with Bootsy, his African-American friend from the orphanage, they arrive in the city and attract the attention of mobster Mugsy and his boss, Gentleman Jim. The script is lively enough and Smith and Bootsy are quite likeable, even as it’s obvious they’re going to end up in over their heads before this five-issue miniseries wraps up. It’s solid entertainment, though not as epic as its apparent inspirations. The art is clear and attractive, aided by some really nice color work that evokes the time and place without being overdone. Grade: B+

Comics doc screens at Bug's reopening

The film "Independents: A Documentary Guide for the Creative Spirit" will screen Sunday at 5 p.m. at The Comic Bug shop in Manhattan Beach.

The film features interviews with  indie comics creators such as Batton Lash, Tony Millionaire, Craig Thompson, Linda Medley, Shannon Wheeler, Carla Speed McNeill, Eric Powell, Jim Woodring, Wendy Pini, Scott McCloud, Jessica Abel, Gary Groth, and Dan Vado, as well as Comic Bug manager and comics writer Mike Wellman. Lash, Pini and Wellman will be signing at the celebration, which begins at 4 p.m., one hour before the screening.

Screening is part of a weekend-long celebration at the Bug, which is reopening in a new location after its previous spot was damaged in a fire. For a full schedule of the shop's plans, check their site here. The new Comic Bug is located at 807 1/2 Manhattan Beach Blvd (three miles from the Rosecrans exit off the 405) in Manhattan Beach.