As long as I’m wishing, I wish this was a replica and not the actual prop from the movie. Then I might be able to afford it.
John Byrne’s Compleat Next Men
IDW is collecting the entire series of John Byrne’s Next Men, including the 2110 prequel one-shot and a bunch of extras. I hope it does well and attracts a lot of new readers because Byrne is not-quite-promising that he’ll continue the story if the collections do well.
Joanna asks if that kind of promise is a sort of blackmail and sums it up as, “Buy my old unfinished series — and if enough of you do, maybe I’ll finish it.” I don’t think it’s quite as nefarious as that. Next Men works beautifully well just like it is. It doesn’t need to be finished to get a complete story.
But, as someone who really loved the series – it’s the best thought-out time travel story I’ve ever read, and it features the first appearance of Hellboy (pre-datingeven “Seed of Destruction”) – I’d love to see more of it. I interpret Byrne’s statement as wishing-out-loud, not blackmail. Buy it because it’s good; not because Byrne may or may not make a sequel if you do.
Would’ve fought the midnight crowds if the movie was going to be more like this…
Actually, I’m getting more and more excited about it. Or maybe “curious” is a better adjective. Looking forward to Thursday when I’ll finally be able to see it.
Spectacular Spider-Man: Attack of the Lizard
Now this I’m looking forward to. My son is going to freak.
Cartoon Network Saturday nights
Cartoon Network announced its Saturday evening programming block that will include the Clone Wars cartoon, Ben 10, and “a new animated incarnation of Batman.” Presumably the Brave and the Bold series that’ll team him up with different superheroes each week.
Hallmark’s Nerdaments
Hallmark has unveiled its line-up of nerd-themed ornaments for the year. Topless Robot – as always – has the right perspective on it in their post title.
I love Stykman. It’s been a long time between issues, but in the most recent newsletter from aka Comics, creator/publisher Jonnie Allan explains that he had to drop Diamond as his distributor.
Truth be told, we allowed a certain distributor … to in a sense dictate how we would continue to publish our books. In their “wisdom,” they decided to no longer carry The Miscellaneous Adventures of STYKMAN™ in individual issue form, but rather distribute it solely in Trade Paper Back (TPB). In other words, if you wanted issues 4 and 5 you would have to purchase the TPB – Basically forcing fans and retailers alike who have already purchased issues 1-3 to buy them again. Although we begrudgingly played along for a little while, in the end we decided that was not the way we wanted to do things. All orders for our first TPB were cancelled by us and a departure from said distributor was made.
So what now? One thing is for sure, STYKMAN™ has not been thrown into the wood chipper, cast onto the firewood pile or gone the way of the dinosaur. In fact, the first licensed collectible is on its way from China and is now available for order. As for the comic series, our plans are to continue publishing STYKMAN™ in individual issue format collecting it in TPB once all issues have been produced and offered to our adoring fans like yourself. Our plans are to offer our title directly to you through our website and conventions, as well as alternative distribution methods.
More details are promised.
I’m mentioning this partly – like I said – because I love Stykman and I’m anxious for more comics about him. But I’m also mentioning it because – although I’ve always liked Jonnie Allan – I’m especially proud of him for making a bold move away from Diamond. Diamond’s the only distributor in the country for a lot of comics stores, so Jonnie’s automatically cutting out an enormous potential audience by making this decision. That he’s doing it because he believes it’s the right thing to do by his current readership is nothing short of stunning. I hope you’ll check out the website and order the first three issues. You won’t be sorry.
Why Cate Blanchett kind of sucked in Crystal Skull
As disappointed as I was in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the Castle Vardulon blog hated it more. Enough to run a 20 day “I Hate Indiana Jones” series. While I don’t agree with all the posts there, I think he makes a really good point about why Cate Blanchett’s character is pretty weak.
…Cate Blanchett’s utter inability to have useful psychic abilities hurts the film more than a little. By this, I mean that if she’d actually been psychic, the film could have gotten rid of the useless ‘Mac’ character. Instead of a close friend betraying Indy to the Russians, the information they needed could have been plucked from Indy’s head. Instead of using a radar setup to follow Indy to the Valley of the Crystal Skull, Cate could have just followed their psychic traces.
It was only a matter of time before Warner Bros. and DC realized that they really need to get their act together. (Although – as Kevin points out in the link – it’s not like they haven’t had any success with their movies so far.)
Hard Case Crime editor Charles Ardai has announced a new pulp series titled THE ADVENTURES OF GABRIEL HUNT. Debuting next May, the novels will be issued once a month in true serial fashion, ghostwritten by several Hard Case authors under the nom de plume of Hunt himself, the globetrotting adventurer, with painted covers by Glen Orbik. “These books are for anyone who grew up reading H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs or watching Harrison Ford wield his bullwhip at the movies,” said Ardai. “We’re talking classic adventure fiction, complete with horses, snakes, shovels, pickaxes, torches, traps, bottomless pits, barroom brawls, jungles, jewels, and just about everything else that’s ever made your heart beat faster.”
Nim’s Island made me sad that there isn’t a real series of Alex Rover books to read. This is so made for me.
And Lucas is already figuring out ways to make it suck:
I haven’t even told Steven or Harrison this, but I have an idea to make Shia the lead character next time and have Harrison come back, like Sean Connery did in the last movie. I can see it working out.
That’s just depressing. George, you do realize you couldn’t call it Indiana Jones and the Whatever, don’t you?
No, you probably don’t.
Hey, you guuuuuuuys!
On a potentially much happier note, The Sesame Workshop is bringing back The Electric Company. I’m not holding my breath that it’ll have those Awesome Spider-Man segments or Easy Reader, but I bet Letterman’s a possibility.
Music to kill spies to
Bitter:Sweet’s first album The Mating Game was really darn good. Especially the title song, which someone should just build a James Bond movie around right now. Their new album Drama is coming out next month and from the tracks I’ve heard, it sounds even better than the first.
Seaguy returns
I was apparently too stupid the first time around to recognize the genius behind a heroic scuba-diver, a cigar-chomping tuna, and a moon-building Pharoah. Fortunately, opportunity sometimes knocks twice.
Flash Gordon reboot, take two
After the abysmal failure of the SciFi Network’s Flash Gordon series to be cool, it’s nice to hear that we may get to cleanse our palates with a fresh try. I’m guessing we have the upcoming Buck Rogers movie to thank for Hollywood’s interest.
Get it right, guys.
Captain America and Thor movie details (very general spoilers below)
Captain America will be a WWII period piece, though I’m guessing it’ll end with him in modern times (or that’ll happen early in the Avengers movie). Thor will be a fantasy film largely taking place in Asgard. It’s going to be so hard to get the Thor movie right, but I’m rooting for them.
This was going to be another installment of “Awesome List Catch-Up,” but one topic pretty much took over the post.
I mentioned yesterday how some “adult” Batman fans raised a fuss over the fact that Batman: The Brave and the Bold is a kids’ cartoon. Character designer Mike Manley couldn’t care less.
The message boards are already full of babymen angst about the show, how they hate the art, the idea of a kid friendly Batman and I have to just laugh at the ridiculous comments. IMO one of the biggest reasons comics suck ass and have since the ’80s is the rise and overtaking of the biz by the Babyman fan and the loss of kids reading comics as a hobby. Now we are stuck with an aging fanbase with limited taste, long memories, a twisted taste where the comic heroes have to be dark, gritty, sexy, adult…REAL!
I don’t expect the babymen to ever see what I’m talking about, they can’t. But the fact is their taste is not the taste of a large pool of average readers, it’s the taste of the fetishist, the niche collector. They so resist change and want such a limited type of product that unless you have been following this stuff for years it’s really not something the average reader could even get into.
I don’t know if I’d be quite as insulting about it, but I agree with him about this certain type of fan and can see why he’s not pulling any punches. I know the kind of fan he’s talking about and they don’t pull punches either.
I’m all for a show that includes kids in its audience. It doesn’t have to be dumb to be a kids’ show. And all superhero shows and movies shouldn’t be created exclusively for an adult demographic. That’s just silly.
…there will be an element of comedy, but that doesn’t mean that we’re skimping on the action. We’re trying as hard as we can to make sure the action will be as amazing and exciting as any previous incarnation of the Batman … Character-wise, Batman is still the same gruff perfectionist that he’s been for the last twenty-five or so years. Everyone here is a Batman fan too, so we want to do right by him.
Sounds great to me. If it’s anything like The Spectacular Spider-Man, which my six-year-old son and I absolutely love watching together, I’m very excited to see it.
Whenever I’m looking around for Wonder Woman stuff on the Internet, about two thirds of it is actually about the comic book character. The other third is women who use Wonder Woman as a term for women who “have it all” and “make it work.” They’re trying to balance the career, the kids; all that jazz.
I might get myself into trouble here and I certainly welcome feedback on what I’m about to say, but I think it’s sad for a couple of different reasons that Wonder Woman is used that way. First, I think it’s sad that career women with families (there’s probably a better term, but hopefully you know what I mean) feel like they’re the ones who have to make it work. Isn’t it horribly outdated to think that only the wife has to balance her career goals with children? Where are the husbands while their wives are comparing themselves to a superheroic ideal?
Secondly, it’s sad because Wonder Woman isn’t a career woman with a family. She not only doesn’t have kids; she’s not even in a serious relationship where she has to balance someone else’s needs with her own. She’s a beautiful role model for women who need to have more confidence in themselves, but she’s got it frickin’ easy when it comes to “having it all.”
Having said all that, Susanne Middelberg has a great photography gallery that includes photos of models dressed as Wonder Woman and the Flash trying to live everyday lives. I like it because it includes Dads, who ought to be just as harried and frantic as their wives.
It’s all very tasteful and artistic, but I still feel like I should mention that there are naked people in the link.
If I’ve done my job at all, I’ve got a couple of you curious about reading Red 5’s Atomic Robo. And if your local comics shoppe is any good, you’ll be able to get a free copy on May 3rd.
