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Dare We Dream? – The Sandman Coming to Television?

Dare We Dream? – The Sandman Coming to Television?

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morpheusMany of my contemporaries believed that one of the most amazing comic book series ever was Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, which ran from 1989 through 1996 – formative teenage years for me and my peers – originally by DC Comics and (from issue #47) under their Vertigo imprint. Now it looks like The Sandman has been re-optioned for consideration as a television series. Though the series creator isn’t associated with the show, there’s still reason to be hopeful.

A Current Dearth of Viewing Pleasures

The last few years haven’t been great for science fiction and fantasy on television. Heroes started out great, but quickly collapsed for a variety of reasons. The quirky series Pushing Daisies – about a man who could re-animate dead people for 60 seconds – never quite found its audience, despite critical acclaim. Legend of the Seeker was pushing out some impressive storylines toward the end, but was ultimately canceled with its season 2 finale.

Among harder science fiction, great concept shows like Dollhouse and FlashForward suffered from some awkward initial storytelling and were ultimately cancelled, while the lackluster V will return for a second season.

In fact, going into this season there isn’t much in the way of science fiction or fantasy on television.

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Die Hard With Avatars: A review of Surrogates

Die Hard With Avatars: A review of Surrogates

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surrogates-dvdEarly on in this film we see Bruce Willis with hair and looking young, and not Die-Hard bashed up, and we wonder absently if this time he’ll actually finish the film as scar-free as he began it. The Willis we begin with is quickly established as a ‘surrogate,’ the robot avatar of the real Willis character, Tom Greer, and it doesn’t take long for both Greer and his surrogate to get bashed up in familiar form.

The problem for the inhabitants of near-future Boston — as well as of the rest of the world — is that mind-boggling economies of production have resulted in custom made, universally affordable, avatars brought to market for just about anyone who wants one, and now real people are vegetating alone in their homes while vicariously carrying on social interaction with each other through their surrogates.

The two inventors have had a falling out as to how much of a good thing surrogates really are. The ousted partner, Lionel Canter (James Cromwell) has decided they are robbing humankind of their humanity and has taken steps to sink the business.

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Blogging Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon – Part One: “Flash Gordon on the Planet Mongo”

Blogging Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon – Part One: “Flash Gordon on the Planet Mongo”

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Alex Raymond created Flash Gordon for King Features Syndicate to compete with the successful science fiction strip, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Raymond’s creation was decidedly more space fantasy than science fiction, combining elements borrowed from Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sax Rohmer, Alexandre Dumas, and Anthony Hope to great effect. Flash Gordon debuted January 7, 1934 with the strip, “Flash Gordon on the Planet Mongo” which would be serialized each Sunday through April 15, 1934.

fg-blb-1The strip kicked off with an exciting documentary-style depiction of an unforeseen catastrophe assailing our world. An unknown planet mysteriously appears in our solar system and is hurtling rapidly toward Earth. Destruction seems unavoidable. We are quickly introduced to a scientist, Dr. Hans Zarkov who is rapidly completing a rocket ship which he plans to man on a suicide mission to try and divert the oncoming planet from Earth’s trajectory.

“Flash” Gordon is a Yale-educated world-renowned polo player (I’m sure we can all name a handful of world-renowned polo players). He and a young woman named Dale Arden are the only known survivors of a plane struck down by a meteor heralding from the approaching planet. Flash and Dale parachute just outside of Dr. Zarkov’s observatory. Paranoid from overwork, Zarkov pulls a gun on the startled plane crash survivors and forces them to accompany him on his suicide mission to space. The first installment ends with Zarkov’s rocket ship on a collision course with the rapidly hurtling planet.

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Goth Chick News: Best In Show; The Chicago Comic Con

Goth Chick News: Best In Show; The Chicago Comic Con

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wizardworldHave you ever woken up in an extremely good mood, found you were left enough hot water for a skin-peeling shower, stepped on the scale and found it down two pounds in spite of the bacchanalia of the night before? Have you ever leapt out of bed feeling euphoric and thought, “I really love my life?”

For me, the sun rose over the Chicago skyline last Saturday and found me gleefully clutching my press pass to the Chicago Comic Con.

It was about to be one of those days.

Last weekend, Wizard World made the Chicago stop on its nationwide tour, bring pop culture, comic books, toys and general weirdness to the Windy City. I brought my good friend and photographer Mr. Disney along, not only to help capture every precious moment on film, but to assist in with the non-stop stream of snarky commentary that was unavoidable at an event such as this.

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Goth Chick News: My Inner Geek’s Night Out

Goth Chick News: My Inner Geek’s Night Out

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interviewHas anyone ever asked what you would grab out of your house if it was on fire and you could only make one trip? Or maybe the question was, if you knew you were going to be stranded on a deserted island, what would you take with you?

If it comes up in conversation and it’s focused on food, that one’s easy.

Pez.

However, when it comes to actual items, the answer becomes a bit more complicated and largely depends on who is asking. If it comes up at a family gathering, I usually can say “my photo albums” with a straight face. But as I’m among friends here, allow me to lay out the real list (in no particular order):

  • My complete set of 1 – 12 Interview With a Vampire comics, with issue number one signed by Anne Rice
  • An unopened Monty Python and the Holy Grail collectible card game.
  • My Black Adder DVD collection
  • The set of Universal Studios movie monsters Pez dispenser set (got to have something to eat the Pez out of)

Having read this list it should come as no surprise at all that I’m counting the days to the Chicago Comic Con this weekend. Yes, this is the Chicago version of the biggie in California, but the line up is still good.

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Superman Saves Couple From Foreclosure

Superman Saves Couple From Foreclosure

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action-1ABC News is reporting that an American couple in the South, who have asked to remain anonymous, discovered a copy of Action #1 while clearing out their home in preparation for a foreclosure sale. 

It’s not clear if the couple immediately knew what that had.  They did have the presence of mind to contact an expert, Stephen Fishler, who brokered the record-breaking $1.5 million sale of a copy in March of this year.

Action #1, featuring the first appearance of Superman, is perhaps the most valuable comic in existence, and certainly one of the rarest. It appeared in June 1938, and while millions of copies were printed, only a handful are known to still exist in good condition.

The comic was part of a stash of old magazines and old comics the couple found as they were searching for boxes in the basement and preparing to move. Although Fishler reports he was initially dubious, he quickly became convinced when the couple texted him a photo.  He took the comic to the San Diego Comic-con in July for a valuation.

The comic was appraised at “Very Good” (5/10 on the strict comic grading scale), which is exceptionally high for a 72 year-old comic.  It is expected to net $250,000 or more when it goes up for auction through ComicConnect on August 27th.

As for the couple, ABC News reports that Fishler had to make a series of calls to the bank to convince them to hold off on the foreclosure while the auction goes forward.

Reports that a house down the street that discovered two dozen copies of Youngblood #1 in the basement was immediately bulldozed, have not yet been confirmed.

The Pre-Raphaelite Barbarian

The Pre-Raphaelite Barbarian

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The first thing you notice about Barry Windsor-Smith’s Conan comics is their beauty.

Starting in 1970, Smith drew almost two dozen of the first issues of Marvel Comics’ translation of Conan into a monthly color comic book, and added a few more stories in the oversized black-and-white companion magazine Savage Tales. Scripts for those stories, often direct adaptations of Robert E. Howard tales, were by Marvel veteran Roy Thomas, but Smith has stated that he had a prominent role in the plotting of the comics, sometimes even providing dialogue.

barry-conanSmith’s work has an elegance and power to it unusual in comics, then or now. His line-work is detailed, expressive, and precise: the right marks in the right places. Compositionally, his work is always clear, always energetic.

And it’s alive, because his characters are alive; they move through three-dimensional space, they have realistic body language — more than that, their forms express what they feel and think.

Perhaps above all, Windsor-Smith’s design — of clothes, swords, balustrades, towers, armour, even ships and stone walls — is constantly inventive, deriving from the organic forms of art nouveau and the near-hallucinatory realism of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

This has the crucial effect of building a world for Conan and his adventures, a setting with texture and, implictly, a history. We see the shining kingdoms and the jeweled thrones about to be trodden under sandalled feet, and we believe in them.

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Bram Stoker’s Dracula in Comics, Part One – The Novel Adaptations

Bram Stoker’s Dracula in Comics, Part One – The Novel Adaptations

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compdracWhile Bram Stoker’s infamous vampire count has been prevalent in comic books whenever the prevailing bluenoses of each generation have deigned to allow horror books to be printed, there have been surprisingly few attempts to faithfully adapt the classic novel in comic book form.

Classics Illustrated tackled the book shortly before Dr. Frederick Wertham got his dirty little hands on the comic business and did his best to keep the children of the world safe from twisted people just like himself. The Classics Illustrated adaptation was professionally produced, if somewhat anemic.

Marvel Comics would later reprint it in the 1970s with new cover art to make it appear consistent with Gene Colan’s magnificent portrayal of the character for Marvel’s long-running Tomb of Dracula title. Happily, a superior adaptation was brewing in Marvel’s companion magazine, Dracula Lives.

Roy Thomas and Dick Giordano teamed up to provide a faithful, elegant, and leisurely-paced adaptation of the Stoker novel as an ongoing feature in the black & white comic magazine.

Unfortunately, sales were not on their side and the title was cancelled. The one unpublished chapter they had completed turned up in the pages of another magazine title, Legion of Monsters, before it too was cancelled. Their masterful adaptation was left incomplete for nearly thirty years.

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Fu Manchu in Comics

Fu Manchu in Comics

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drfumanchu_wallywood2From his first appearance in print in the pages of The Story-Teller in October 1912, Sax Rohmer’s criminal mastermind, Dr. Fu Manchu took the world by storm. While Rohmer would complete three novels featuring the character between 1912 and 1917, the Devil Doctor would extend his domain to include film and comics in the fourteen years before Rohmer bowed to commercial demand and revived the series.

Leo O’Mealia was responsible for adapting Rohmer’s three original novels into a daily newspaper strip, Fu Manchu from 1930 to 1931 while Warner Oland was occupied starring as the character in three feature films and a short for Paramount. Oland, incidentally, was the second screen Fu Manchu following Harry Agar Lyons in the 1920’s.

The comic strips were later colored and edited as a back-up feature in the pages of Detective Comics which top-lined a new comic character in the pulp tradition known as The Batman.

Despite the fact that Rohmer went to great pains to make it clear that the Devil Doctor was clean-shaven, the very first magazine illustrators to tackle the character were responsible for grafting upon his terrifying visage the stereotypical Chinese moustache known today as a Fu Manchu.

O’Mealia presented Fu Manchu devoid of facial hair in his daily strip, but in place of Rohmer’s famous description of “a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan,” the artist depicted a repulsive hunchbacked gargoyle.

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Al Williamson, March 21, 1931 – June 13, 2010

Al Williamson, March 21, 1931 – June 13, 2010

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al-williamson2Al Williamson, one of the finest science fiction artists of all time, died yesterday in New York City.

Williamson began his career assisting Tarzan cartoonist Burne Hogarth in 1948. His first professional credit was a three-page crime story, “The Last Three Dimes,” in Wonder Comics #20 (Oct, 1948), co-penciled with Frank Frazetta. In 1952 Williamson began working for E.C.Comics, joining the legendary Wally Wood, Frazetta, and Roy Krenkel on Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, and Incredible Science Fiction, illustrating stories by Harlan Ellison and Ray Bradbury, among others.

By 1966 he was drawing Flash Gordon for King Features, which garnered him an award from the National Cartoonist Society. In 1967 he took the reins on another Alex Raymond creation, Secret Agent Corrigan, which he drew for over a decade. Art historians note that Williamson used his own face as the model for secret agent Phil Corrigan, which made him easy to recognize at conventions.

In the 1980s Williamson began his famed Star Wars comic adaptations, starting with The Empire Strikes Back for Marvel. Williamson was reportedly George Lucas’ first choice for the Star Wars newspaper strip, as Lucas was a fan of his EC Comics and Flash Gordon, and Williamson drew the daily and Sunday feature until 1983. He did additional work throughout the decade for Pacific Comics (Alien Worlds), Marvel (including Blade Runner and Epic Illustrated), and DC (Superman #400).

Since 1998 half a dozen retrospectives of his work have been published, including Al Williamson Adventures, The Al Williamson Sketchbook, The Al Williamson Reader, Vol. 1, and Al Williamson: Hidden Lands. Most of these had tiny print runs, and I had trouble tracking several of them down a few years ago.  If you want copies, I suggest acting quickly.

Science Fiction site io9 has a gallery of some of the best work of this incredible artist, and comics writer and artist Jimmy Palmiotti has written a eulogy here.