Comic Book History

According to the NY Times, Netflix and DreamWorks Animation have agreed to a deal for the studio to provide 300 hours of original programming. They could have gone with a cable channel, but instead, they chose the subscription service (who’s been hurting for kids’ programs with the end of their deal with Nickelodeon). DreamWorks reportedly finds the movie business overly volatile and seeks the relative safety of a TV structure. One of their more recent films, Rise of the Guardians, was a flop that required an $87 million write-down and damaged their stock performance. The new programs will be “inspired” by characters from past DreamWorks Animation franchises, which include Shrek and The Croods, and its coming feature films. Series will also come from Classic Media, which the studio bought last year. Classic Media’s holdings include characters like Casper the Friendly Ghost, Lassie, She-Ra, and Mr. Magoo. DreamWorks Animation currently has DreamWorks Dragons: Riders of Berk running on Cartoon Network and three others made by Nickelodeon. One of the Netflix shows, debuting in December, will be Turbo: F.A.S.T., based on the movie opening July 17 about a fast snail. Childrens’ programming is apparently considered less risky than other types, according to this analysis: Children are avid streaming consumers, particularly overseas, and cartoons allow the company to pitch itself to parents as a commercial-free alternative to television. Animated shows for younger viewers are also less likely to appear on the pirated-content sites that compete with Netflix for viewers. Similar Posts: Paramount Launches Animation Unit, May Cut Ties With DreamWorks § Netflix Streaming Doesn’t Have the Biggest Movies § Everything You Like About Netflix? Analysts Think That’s a Bad Idea § Warner Thinks Waiting to Netflix DVDs Will Help Sales § DreamWorks Dragons: Riders of Berk Series Coming to Cartoon Network This Fall

To promote the upcoming film The Lone Ranger, in theaters starting July 3 and starring Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer, Disney has released two behind-the-scenes featurettes. They do the job, since I’m more interested in seeing the movie after viewing these promos. In “The Craft”, producer Jerry Bruckheimer talks about the practical effects and settings, and Depp almost gets trampled by his horse. The footage included is quite impressive, particularly the stunts. “Hi-Yo Silver”, as you might expect, looks at the horses involved in filming. Similar Posts: Howard the Duck § Tom and Jerry Return in New Cartoon Network Series § Dark Shadows § Cowboys & Aliens Comes to Blu-ray, DVD December 6 § *Gray Horses — Recommended

I’m thrilled that Warner is finally putting out a big package of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, because it’s a terribly fun show with lots of entertainment for all ages. TV Shows on DVD reports that the Complete Season 1 will be available on October 8. I can’t find a preorder yet on Amazon, but I’ll be signing up as soon as I do. Suggested retail is $26.99 US for 26 episodes on four discs. I hope the second season follows. Similar Posts: Warner Changes Scooby-Doo DVD Release Strategy § Superman, Justice League Complete Series DVDs Coming in November § Jem and the Holograms Season 2 Announced § The Holidays Are Coming: Cool Gift Sets for Batman Beyond, Scooby-Doo § The Richie Rich/Scooby Doo Show Volume 1

Fantagraphics' Kim Thompson, Dead at 56: A giant in comics publishing and editing, a fine translator and interviewer, and a wickedly funny man, Kim Thompson has died from the lung cancer the public was informed of just a few months ago. Working alongside copublisher Gary Groth, Thompson exposed me, quite simply, to some of the most important artists and art of my life. We’ll miss you, Kim. —Christopher Allen

The Avengers fight the Intelligentsia, a spaceknight turns into Ultron, Hank Pym defeats said mad robot with a computer virus and psychology, the Age of Ultron is averted. And time breaks.Thus concludes another Marvel event. Or rather, 'concludes'. The main focus of the story, the alternate world created by Ultron, is tied up, but a whole bunch of related threads are begun. And rather shamelessly, if you ask me.Because the book ends with a series of epilogues: Ultimate Spider-Man sees something scary over New York; Hank Pym gets an idea; and the Big Mystery Character so Big and Mysterious That This Comic Comes In a Plastic Bag vows vengeance against whomever got her shifted across universes. Each of these vignettes is followed by a house ad telling us where the storylines continue. It's like a free sampler, but for 'free' read '$3.99'. As I said, shameless - Marvel doesn't even pretend the Age of Ultron event meant anything, that it might have earned a moment in which readers might consider, and compliment, the ride. Nope, it's more 'now toss your dollars on these new bonfires'. Because if these spin-offs - Hunger, Avengers AI and a Guardians of the Galaxy arc - are as well-thought- through as Age of Ultron, they'll be thin gruel indeed.For Marvel have given up on following their well-established rules of time travel, leading to one hot mess. Wolverine and Sue Storm have changed their own timeline a couple of times, when decades of storytelling have it that if you go back and, say, kill Dr Doom as a baby, when you return to 2013 he's still around - you've simply created a timeline in which Mr and Mrs Von Doom have had a terribly sad life. And the heroes have likely created extra Logans and Sues in their own timeline - Rich Johnson explains it all over at Bleeding Cool.I'm not quite sure what Tony Stark's line 'we broke the space-time continuum' means, beyond various heroes making faces at montages - are aspects of alternate timelines seeping into their universe? Is the Thing now in his Blackbeard persona from Fantastic Four #5, 50 years ago? Is Wolverine getting the memories of alt-Logans? The illustrations are striking, but baffling - a few words from Brian Michael Bendis - him being the writer and all - would help enormously here. Are we getting a Marvel version of Crisis on Infinite (actually, I think that would be seven) Earths? Please God not a Flashpoint-style Earth Mash-Up.As for the enigmatic wifey, actually, I can reveal all, as Marvel themselves spoiled it weeks back. It's Angela, minor Spawn character, of interest to some because she was created by Neil Gaiman, but me, I read 1602. Why Marvel fans are expected to get excited about a scowly tart twirling tickertape I have no idea. Her upcoming stopover in Guardians of the Galaxy won't prompt me to purchase because, well, I really don't know anything about her beyond press release stuff; this isn't DC bringing back the original Captain Marvel, it's Marvel reviving someone most everyone had forgotten - if they'd actually heard of her in the first place.There are incidental pleasures in the book. The odd Bendis line (...a group of fairly intelligent criminal masterminds'). SWORD's term for a cosmic threat being Code Phoenix. The artwork of Bryan Hitch, Paul Neary, Brandon Peterson, Butch Guice, Carlos Pacheco, Roger Bonet, Tom Palmer, David Marquez and Joe Quesada is suitably flashy. The artwork of Alex Maleev is distinctly unflashy, and makes Hank Pym talking to Hank Pym my favourite scene.What a bitchPeterson's cover is an effective mood piece. Beats me who that figure with the glowing circles is, though. The Harlem Globetrotter Cosmic?Overall though, this issue could win an award for the disparity between amount of hype surrounding it, and success in terms of emotional, intellectual and visceral payoff - it's just superheroes going through the motions, and more promises of great things. Heck, we're told Hank's plan to take down Ultron on the recap page and it goes o

Beware the Batman, announced this past spring and planned for a year before that, has gotten a premiere date and time on the Cartoon Network: Saturday, July 13, at 10 AM. The network states: this action-packed detective thriller deftly redefines what we have come to know as a “Batman show”. Featuring cutting-edge CGI visuals to match the intricate twists and turns of the narrative, Batman steps out of the shadows and into the spotlight for an entirely new generation of fans. They’re teaming the show up with Teen Titans Go! at 10:30 AM for a DC Nation block with “all-new animated shorts”. The voice cast is mostly unknown to me: Anthony Ruivivar (Banshee) as Batman/Bruce Wayne JB Blanc (The Count of Monte Cristo) as Alfred Sumalee Montano (ER) as Katana Wallace Langham (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) as Anarky Grey DeLisle (Green Lantern: The Animated Series) as Magpie Udo Kier (Scooby-Doo! Mystery Inc.) as Mr. Toad Lance Reddick (Fringe) as Ra’s al Ghul Brian George (The Big Bang Theory) as Professor Pyg Judging from the stills shown below, the show will be too dark and stylized for my taste, but I’m not the target audience and I felt the same way about the movies. You can see Batman fight Magpie, drive his car, and blow up a building in this sizzle reel trailer: Similar Posts: Cartoon Network Cancels Young Justice, Green Lantern; Launches Teen Titans Go!, Beware the Batman § Batman Returns to Cartoons in CG § Warner Announces Best of Green Lantern DVD to Promote New Animated Series § Green Lantern: The Animated Series Sneak Peek § New Scooby-Doo Movie, Curse of the Lake Monster, Announced With Sweepstakes

Hey, he's got my vote.

I’ve always found stories of media censorship and attempted restraint interesting, because what offends people can be so arbitrary (and sometimes silly). This “oral history of taboo-breaking TV comedy” (as the subtitle has it) presents a collection of concerns over some of the best TV shows of all time, as told by the creators and executives involved. They’ll Never Put That on the Air The opening chapter serves as a brief history of the sitcom, including some reminiscences of Your Show of Shows and The Dick Van Dyke Show and discussion of the single advertising sponsor era and how network Standards and Practices came about. Then each chapter covers another classic show from the historical debate over The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour through the anarchy of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In to the ground-breaking Mary Tyler Moore Show. Also covered are All in the Family, M.A.S.H., Maude, and Soap. The last show tackled is Seinfeld, which doesn’t really belong here. They make a case for it being revolutionary in both format (so not a typical sitcom) and content (with the first discussion of masturbation, for example), but both the tone and era are so different that it doesn’t match well with the previous. Each chapter opens with a terrific caricature by Glen Hanson. They’re all very readable, entertaining, and informative, with quotes grouped by topic. When key principals disagree (as in the Laugh-In chapter, where everyone wants to take credit for the idea), their statements are presented without judgment. Reading these memories really took me back to some great television episodes and series. I’m tempted to ask “why can’t we get shows this good these days?”, but as Neuwirth acknowledges in his introduction, a whole ‘nother book could be done about the 80s and 90s, with such shows as The Cosby Show and The Simpsons. It was a different time back in the 60s and 70s, though, when a few powerful executives (such as Fred Silverman) could make decisions to get and keep shows like this on the air. If the right people liked the program, it could be allowed to grow and find its audience. And with only a few choices, viewers would try quality programs that maybe showed them something other than their own experiences. Of course, those decisions were still, at this time, made by older white men — while exploring a variety of viewpoints, and while there were a few female writers (whose presence is noted and included here, particularly with Soap, created by Susan Harris), the majority of comments are by those guys, many of whom all knew each other. It was a different era in a lot of ways. Great book, though. Particularly when it points out that they were doing things in the 70s that wouldn’t be allowed to air today. Leads to some intriguing ruminations on how our society has progressed and how it hasn’t. Similar Posts: Toronto Convention Trauma § *Library Wars: Love & War Book 1 — Recommended § Sepinwall Writes The Revolution Was Televised About Classic Modern TV Drama § Mystery Society #1 § *Scooter Girl — Recommended

I do believe NECA is putting out an update this year (check out Big Bad Toy Store for details!) but I found the old McFarlane Hicks Movie Maniacs figure at a yard sale. Two bucks with base, even! And of course Deadpool promptly stole his pulse rifle. I put this strip together while what I believe is the most recent DVD release of Aliens was on in the background. Every couple of years, they seem to re-release that movie with somehow more footage every time, so it may be well over six hours long the next time it comes out.

Karen: When I was putting together the post on soul music a little while ago, it made me think about when I first heard soul music. That would have been as a small child in my home. I started thinking about all the different music my parents used to play, and I thought it would be a pretty good idea for a post!Karen: My parents had very different tastes musically. My Dad leaned towards country music. The man in black, Johnny Cash, was a favorite. But I really remember my Dad less for playing records than for playing his guitar and singing. He had both an acoustic guitar and an electric (a Gibson, don't recall the specifics now sadly) and he would often strum and sing. Usually it was country music, but he surprised me and my brother once by getting the sheet music to the Monkees' theme song and playing that for us! One record I do recall Dad playing frequently, although it wasn't music, was a Bill Cosby comedy album. He loved that album -even today he'll talk about "chocolate cake for breakfast."Karen: My Mom listened to a variety of music. It was not unusual for her to put Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Tom Jones, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, or Otis Redding on the turntable. She had quite a collection of R&B singles too. When I was really small I recall her getting a lot of use out of the stereo. For awhile, we were members of one of those record clubs, and albums by the 5th Dimension, Santana, Blood, Sweat, and Tears, Three Dog Night, Elton John, and Chicago all made their way to our house. I think my brother had some influence over those selections, but I know my Mom liked lot of those artists. Later in life, she became a fan of Billy Joel -I think she always dug piano men.Doug: "Easy listening" would have been the prescription for our big console stereo. I have vivid memories of Dionne Warwick, Roberta Flack, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Olivia Newton-John, Anne Murray, the Mamas and the Papas, but especially of the Carpenters. I think my mom was the main influence for these artists -- did anyone notice that the singers are all women? The songs have stuck with me, and still bring a smile to my face, especially the melodies of the Carpenters. I have about 20 cuts from them on my iTouch and enjoy them often. I'd also like to add that my mom, when taking us somewhere in the car, indulged our preference for Top 40 AM radio. That was incredibly formative to my enjoyment of pop music from the 1970's.Doug: As an aside, my aunt (my mom's sister) had a nice collection of LPs, and the first time I ever heard Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was after removing it from one of her crates. On my dad's side of the family, I can recall a time when the family was together at my uncle's house to play cards. He had a very nice collection of Four Seasons 45s, and I spent part of one evening going through those. Great memories -- definitely moments frozen in time! Karen: These were our formative music experiences -what about yours?Doug: And totally off-topic, below you'll find the updated Bracketology standings.