Browse the history of “Comics Buyers Guide”
Over at the Comics Buyers Guide Web site, cbgxtra.com, the staff is archiving the covers of the publication, as well as some notes about each individual issue. It’s a great way to see some classic fanzine art and follow some of the debates and issues of the time. It doesn’t archive all the articles – that would be pretty great – but it still is a good resource. I’m planning to eventually read through all the recaps.
Check out CBG founder Alan Light’s flickr set for some photos from the early days of the publication, which makes a nice companion to the archive.
– Matt Price
Comics vodcast: Nova, Deadpool, Solomon Kane, Captain America
Kyle Roberts and Matt Price discuss Superman #680, Nova #17, Deadpool #2, Solomon Kane #1 and Captain America #42.
Wizard World Texas to host Fear Fest
Press release:
Congers, NY (September 26, 2008) – Wizard World Texas just got even bigger with the announcement today that the pop culture extravaganza will host the hottest horror show in Texas, Texas Fear Fest, as part of the festivities November 7-9 at the Arlington Convention Center.
On top of the impressive list of comic book talent already attending at this year’s Wizard World Texas convention, Corey Feldman (“The Lost Boys,” “Friday the 13th 4” & “5”), Danny Trejo (“From Dusk Till Dawn,” “Rob Zombie’s Halloween”) and cast members from “Friday the 13th: A New Beginning,” “Monster Squad” and “Halloween 4” will be on hand to meet and greet their fans. In addition to the guests, there will be special events, including screenings of “Friday the 13th: A New Beginning” and “Monster Squad” and Fear Jam, a concert featuring Michale Graves, formerly of The Misfits, FirstJason, and The Horrifics with special guest Eerie Von of Danzig and Samhain.
“Wizard is thrilled to be able to play host to such a popular event and work with Texas FearFest partners John Gray and Sean Clark,” said Wizard Senior VP/Operations Joe Yanarella. “This amazing opportunity allows us to bring in more guests and more excitement and grow our show larger than ever before.”
“This really is a merger of powerhouses,” said Fear Fest’s John Gray. “What a fantastic opportunity for the fans of Fear Fest and Wizard! It also lets me combine my two great loves—horror and comics, so I am personally ecstatic!”
“Being able to join forces with an established and well respected company like Wizard World is truly a blessing for us,” added Sean Clark.
For complete information on guests, events and tickets, visit txfearfest.com. Texas FearFest is sponsored by pitofhorror.com, dreadcentral.com and conventionallstars.com.
Wizard World, the largest family-friendly comics and pop culture convention in the United States, returns to Texas November 7-9 at the Arlington Convention Center.
“Doctor Fate” collects final Gerber stories
By Matthew Price
WORD BALLOONS
Steve Gerber’s final stories, recently collected by DC Comics, show the iconoclastic writer never lost his touch. Gerber passed away at the age of 60 on Feb. 10 in Las Vegas. This month, DC Comics released “Countdown to Mystery: Doctor Fate,” the seventh issue of which Gerber worked on from his hospital bed.
In “Countdown to Mystery,” the new Doctor Fate is Kent V. Nelson, a psychiatrist related to the original Doctor Fate. With the art team of Justiano and Walden Wong, Gerber introduces a new Fate in a world where the rules of magic have changed.
Nelson has hit rock-bottom as the series begins. After failing in his duties, Nelson succumbs to depression and alcoholism. When the mystical helmet of Fate finds him, he’s lying in a Dumpster after being beaten in a filmed bum-fighting bout.
The helmet doesn’t immediately turn Nelson into a hero, however: He still must battle his own demons before he can face external evil threats.
The original Doctor Fate was created by Gardner Fox and Howard Sherman in “More Fun Comics” No. 55 in 1940. Gerber titled his story “More Pain,” in homage to the original character, and reflective of the difficult path the new Fate must traverse.
After Gerber’s death, Adam Beechen, Mark Evanier, Gail Simone and Mark Waid each wrote possible finales for the series. While it hasn’t been revealed which – if any – of the endings will be canonical, Gerber made Doctor Fate both original and personal while also setting the character up well for a possible future ongoing series. However, whether anyone could properly write that series other than Gerber is debatable.
Gerber came to prominence in the 1970s, perhaps the most important of the second wave of Marvel creators. His deconstructive run on “The Defenders” expanded the limits of what could be done with a Marvel comic book. He created “Howard the Duck” for Marvel, which became a hit, expanding from comic book to magazine to newspaper strip. When Marvel removed Gerber from the newspaper strip, Gerber fought one of the first battles for comic-book creator rights, filing suit against Marvel.
It’s unfortunate that most people, if they remember “Howard the Duck” at all, will only remember the bomb of a movie released in 1986 (which had very little to do with Gerber’s vision). Gerber’s satirical take on society can still be found in “The Essential Howard the Duck,” and despite the changing times, it still holds up. As does “Countdown to Mystery: Doctor Fate,” available now in softcover.
(From Friday’s The Oklahoman)
Video game review – Mercenaries 2: World in Flames
From Friday’s The Oklahoman:
By Matthew Price
THE NEXT LEVEL
Pick up an assault rifle and pad out your bank account as a dangerous individual working for the highest bidder in “Mercenaries 2: World in Flames.”
In “Mercenaries 2,” the gamer takes his choice from a group of shifty-looking mercenaries, and takes on assignments based not on altruism, patriotism or political beliefs, but cold, hard cash. The gamer can choose from Mattias Nilsson, Jennifer Mui, or Chris Jacobs; which mercenary the gamer chooses has a slight affect on the game, but it isn’t a huge difference either in gameplay or storyline.
After completing a mission for Ramon Solano, he turns on the mercenary; thus, the mercenary is out for revenge, playing various factions in Venezuela against one another in an attempt to take Solano down. There are lots of items to blow up in “Mercenaries 2” and a lot of weapons to do the damage. In addition to rifles, grenade launchers and other handheld weapons, the mercenary can also call in air strikes from above to take out large targets.
There are some bugs and gameplay quirks, involving horrible AI. Additionally, the dialogue is pretty ham-fisted and repetitive.
But overall the fun of the game and the visual look overcomes these problems. There’s also online two-player co-op to blow stuff up with a friend. If you’re looking for a relatively quick shoot-’em-up, “Mercenaries 2” should fit the bill.
Electronic Arts created the sequel to “Mercenaries” for the PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. This review was written based on the Xbox 360 version.
“Mercenaries 2: World in Flames” is rated T for teens and older, and has a suggested retail price of $59.99.
Movie review: The Lucky Ones
The Neil Burger-directed “The Lucky Ones” follows three soldiers on a cross-country trip, each searching for something in their lives. It’s a little flip to call it a “Wizard of Oz” in the real world, but there are some similarities — including an over-the-top tornado.
Burger directed “The Illusionist,” and was the writer-director of “Interview with the Assassin.” He’s a writer-director here as well; he shares writing credit with Dirk Wittenborn.
After suffering an injury while on patrol, Sgt. T.K. Poole (Michael Peña, “Lions for Lambs”) is granted a one-month leave. When a blackout shuts down flights out of New York, T.K. shares a ride with two other stranded soldiers: Colee (Rachel McAdams, “The Notebook”), a private who is returning a guitar for a fallen friend; and Cheever (Tim Robbins), an older serviceman who’s finished his stint.
Cheever’s headed home to St. Louis. Colee and T.K. are heading for Vegas; Colee’s friend’s family lives there, and T.K., it turns out, is heading to Las Vegas for another reason. Before he visits his fiancée, he wants to make sure he still has the ability to function sexually — he was hit by shrapnel in a private area, and hasn’t been able to make things work since.
Stopping in St. Louis, Cheever is hit with a double whammy — things at home aren’t what they seem, and his son needs $20,000 in a matter of days to keep his scholarship to Stanford.
Thus, Colee, T.K. and Cheever head out on the road again, now all bound for Las Vegas. Colee in search of a family to replace the one she has no contact with; T.K. seeking a return of his mojo; and Cheever seeking $20,000. It’s part road trip, part comedy, part relationship film. The flotilla of mishaps that befall these three are reminiscent of “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles,” though “The Lucky Ones” is nowhere near that funny. “The Lucky Ones” would likely fare better with audiences if it had been either funnier or more serious; as it is, it’s stuck between. Still, the chemistry between the three actors makes “The Lucky Ones” worth a look.
— Matthew Price
MOVIE REVIEW
“The Lucky Ones”
R 1:55 2 ½ stars
Starring: Rachel McAdams, Tim Robbins, Michael Peña.
(Language and sexual content.)
From Friday’s The Oklahoman
Jeff Smith to auction in-store appearance
“Bone” creator Jeff Smith is auctioning off his only comic-book store appearance for 2008-2009 for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. The auction will be for members of the ComicsPRO trade organization only, with bidding held on the ComicsPRO forum from Oct. 5-12.
There’s still time for interested stores to sign up for ComicsPRO to get in on the bidding – for more info, visit www.comicspro.org.
– Matt Price
(full press release after the break)
Director Burger talks “The Lucky Ones”
By Matthew Price
Director Neil Burger missed his country. So the homesick filmmaker wrote and directed “The Lucky Ones,” which follows three soldiers on a road trip across the United States.
“I did a movie called ‘The Illusionist.’ It was shot in the Czech Republic, so I was gone a long time, about six months,” Burger said.
“You come home as a filmmaker and you want to do something that more speaks to your time.”
In “The Lucky Ones,” three Army soldiers travel across the country in a rented van after a blackout shuts down flights out of New York.
Michael Peña, Rachel McAdams and Tim Robbins play the three soldiers.
The actors hadn’t met prior to being cast, which Burger said worked well for the film.
“Like the characters in the movie, they’re three strangers who then form this tight-knit bond, and that’s really what happened with the three actors as well,” he said.
A growing interplay and camaraderie among the three leads was critical for “The Lucky Ones,” and Burger was pleased with how his cast came together.
“You can’t manufacture chemistry,” he said. “As a director, I can push them in the right direction, but, you’re never quite sure. And you’re hoping to get it. But these guys were great together.”
The actors attended boot camp to make sure they knew proper military terminology and procedure. McAdams, who doesn’t have any scenes in which she is on military duty, nonetheless jumped wholeheartedly into boot camp.
“She learned some self-defense and became a crack marksman,” Burger said. “She had never shot before, but she had done a lot of yoga, of all things. Her yoga breathing … helped her be a better shot,” he said.
Novelist and former “Saturday Night Live” writer Dirk Wittenborn co-wrote the screenplay with Burger, and he and Burger retraced the journey of the characters while preparing to make the movie. Only a small part of their journey made it directly into the movie, but their travels informed the screenplay.
“We took that trip as research, Dirk and I. We saw a lot of things, met a lot of people, and had a lot of encounters, only a few of which made it into the movie. But we had to have that experience to know what we were talking about.”
Burger said he’d wanted to work with Wittenborn, and this premise seemed as if it would draw from both of their talents.
“It’s kind of a far-ranging story,” Burger said. “It’s a road movie, and there’s a lot of different characters and places that we encounter, and just politically and culturally the scope of the movie is pretty wide as well, so it’s good to have two brains on it.”
Coming up next for Burger is “Dark Fields,” about a pill that makes its users smarter.
“If there’s steroids, or other performance-enhancing drugs, why can’t there be a drug that makes your synaptic connections faster, so you can think quicker, think smarter?”
But the pill has an extremely limited supply and dangerous side effects.
“Disturbia” star Shia LaBeouf was scheduled to star, but his recent injury while filming “Transformers 2” has left some doubt as to how exactly “Dark Fields” will proceed.
“We’re trying to figure out whether we wait, or whether we recast,” he said.
(from Friday’s The Oklahoman)
DVD review: Robin of Sherwood, the Complete Collection
The adventurer Robin Hood gets a mystical slant in “Robin of Sherwood,” the 1980s version of the legend.
Michael Praed stars as Robin of Loxley, chosen by the supernatural “Herne the Hunter” to protect the forests and aid the weak. Loxley gathers his band of Merry Men, including Scarlet (Ray Winstone. “Sexy Beast”) and Little John (Clive Mantle).
They fight the oppression of the Sheriff of Nottingham (Nickolas Grace, “Brideshead Revisted”) and Guy of Gisburne (Robert Addie).
The film was shot on location in English castles, adding to the authenticity. The haircut of Praed and the music of Irish band Clannad probably date the programs, today, but they still stand up as one of the best interpretations of the legend.
“Robin of Sherwood” covers two of the main variants of the “Robin Hood” tale — Robert of Huntingdon, a nobleman, replaces Loxley as Robin Hood after Praed left the show. Thus, the Robin Hood of the series was in turn, a commoner and a displaced nobleman. In another interesting twist, Huntingdon was played by Jason Connery, son of Sean Connery, who himself played Robin Hood in 1976′s “Robin and Marian.”
— Matthew Price
(From the Sept. 26 The Oklahoman)
DC cancels Minx line
Newsarama confirms that DC Comics is cancelling its Minx line of graphic novels, which was aimed at the teen and tween girl market.
Interestingly, at the ComicsPRO meeting in Las Vegas last year, DC’s Bob Wayne said the direct market had supported Minx better than expected. Is Minx fallout from the current bookstore crisis? Does it have to do with Random House being more involved in DC’s book plans? I think probably both.
– Matt Price
