Neilalien : A Doctor Strange Fansite : A Comic Book Weblog  

Happy Halloween, everyone!

What a great holiday.

Comics were on 60 Minutes II last night as billed [The Superheroes on CBSNews.com; folks weigh in at Newsarama and Pulse]

  1. Steve Ditko not mentioned. All night it was "Stan Lee's Spider-Man." And Stan thinks he's getting screwed?
  2. It was good to see Art Spiegelman and Chris Ware adding a little class and diversity.
  3. Was that really a flash of the pitch-meeting for the Namor movie?
  4. Always in search of the underbelly, 60 Minutes had to push for Stan Lee bitterness. Although seeing Avi Arad bullshit with a straight face that the old creators are getting a fair shake was troubling. "With great power..."
  5. Would have liked to see more about the actual comic books, the art form, the mystique- and less Arad sitting on a pile of gold like an old evil dragon.
  6. There was also very little analysis about why comics are hot in Hollywood ("They make money" was all we got, or is that it?) or the current paradox with comic book sales historically being so down. Superheroes are "back"- Why? And/But in a very different medium. Why? That's the story.
  7. The stock footage for every mainstream story was there- the "embarassed to read comics" story, the "Spidey appealed to losers" bit, the obligatory dressed-up conventioneer.
  8. Overall, it was a good quickie exposure for the medium. "We're storytellers... of the heroic ideal."

Marvel has rosy 3Q [Pulse]
Publishing was up. They're finally getting the licensing big bucks. Toys boomed after years of being a huge drag. Moving that movie money around. Still lots of debt.
Journalista has an analysis.

Critiquing critique [Journey Into Comics]
The ancient mantra of the web: "Dude, don't just say it sucks. Tell us why you thought it sucked."

Marvel Universe: The End [Newsarama]
Jim Starlin's going to squeeze more out of the Thanos stone. At least Doctor Strange usually gets some good treatment in his cosmic stories. The Akhenaten villain sounds interesting.

Posted 31 October 02002 - Permalink

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Neilalien had a great time at the first installment of the Superheroes In The 60's: Comics & Counterculture lecture series at CUNY by the caped Arlen Schumer. Last night was Carmine Infantino goodness. Next week is the big one, Doc fans! Steve Ditko. (Some other artist named Kirby will also be covered.) See you there!

Marvel Comics Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada will be on 60 Minutes II tonight [Newsarama]

An Italian comics e-zine is running a cover story about Ditko [ComicUS.it #2 via Ditko-L]

McFarlane files to overturn decision [Pulse]
Okay, Neilalien's had enough of this crap. No, not this court battle. Okay, that too. But is it Todd McFarlane or MacFarlane? It's ever changing. Google spell check: McFarlane ~38,100; MacFarlane ~11,500.

Printers are finding ways to accomodate smaller print runs- good news for small press comics [Journalista]

Transformers Season 2: Part 1 DVD Box hits the streets 28 November [ICv2]
Transform-ed History [huge must-read for any fan on Newsarama]
There is also a Transformers UK item in this week's Gutters.

Neilalien's feeling that his Transformers nostalgia trip might be ending. He's primarily interested in G1 stuff- the G1 mini-series is at an end, and he's not picking up any of the other books. Season 2 on DVD is going to kick butt- he'll certainly rent that for a couple weeks when it comes out. But that basically covers all interest at this point. Neilalien will probably be blogging less about Transformers in the future. Although, he's threatened that before- and then those vehicles turn into big robots and out comes the kid again.

Wizard bias (say it ain't so)?, Hasbro v. Diamond re: Transformers, nice pro-reader rant, JMS not slow (again), Watchmen film, Marvel t-shirts about to become collector's items, another rant about the Hibbs suit [this week's Rage (rumors only)]

Baltimore Comic-Con sounding like a dud in this news item and resulting discussion thread [Pulse]
That's too bad. Maybe they couldn't get out from under the sniper's shadow after all?

Posted 30 October 02002 - Permalink

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New Hamas Comic Book Praises Terrorism To Children [VirtualJerusalem.com via WFC News; Journalista's picked it up]
Meanwhile, American kids get Fantastic Four #60 in their schools [Pulse]

Guide to Milwaukee's comic shops [OnMilwaukee.com via WFC News]
Neilalien is just heartened to see that Milwaukee has that many comic shops.

Funny Kurt Busiek item about working Hostess ads of the 1970s into continuity [Pulse MB]

Posted 29 October 02002 - Permalink

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Very interesting speculation that Dr. Strange was inspired by the 01963 movie The Raven [rec.arts.comics.marvel.universe (Google Groups)]
"Stan Lee mentions an old Mutual radio show, "Chandu the Magician," to which he listened as a kid, as a source of inspiration for Dr. Strange in "Origins of Marvel Comics."

ICv2 has lots of retailers responding to Jemas/no-overprint/Must Haves right now. Go check it out if you haven't burned your eyeballs out over it already.

More hackage: Looks like the entire ViewAskew universe is down (which includes Comics Newsarama).

Posted 28 October 02002 - Permalink

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A call for a premier news site/portal for web comics [Talk About Comics via Modern Tales; more on the Comics Journal MB]

"The genre of superheroes are best understood as the third type of idea-centric or "speculative" fiction, and not just simply as power fantasies..." [Insolvent Republic of Blogistan]

Super-heroes don't suck [column on PopImage]

What's so special about telling tales in comic form? [Ninth Art]

Making the weblog rounds: Tobacco ad comics from the 30's-50's [Tobacco.org]
Comics, like most technology, can be used for good or ill.

Consider subscribing to the PanelBleed e-zine, it sounds interesting [PanelBleed; FAQ]

Neilalien is honored to be a part of In Sequence's Meet The Cast.

Posted 27 October 02002 - Permalink

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Blogger's been hacked again. Neilalien stopped storing his server password on there after the last hackage. Typing in the password with every 'Publish' is a pain, but Blogger is nice, and there are much bigger pains. Better go change your server password now, Blogger fans!

If we can't show the Brooklyn Bridge getting blown up in our comics, then the terrorists have won! [Millar defends Ultimate War images; via Newsarama]
More: Joe Quesada responds to Ultimate War explosion [Pulse]
Ultimate War: insensitive oppportunism or "Get over it!" or writing about the real world? U-Decide!

The Comics Journal now has a weblog [¡Journalista!]

An Invincible preview [Newsarama]
This book is already on Neilalien's radar. Seeing that clean, sweet art is just his style, too.

Sniper spree ends just in time for local comic book shops [Pulse]

Frank Cho goes from angry to accepting to apologetic after finding his free Spider-Man con sketch on eBay.

Boy, did Transformers G1 #6 suck!
(No, it didn't, really. It was okay, not great [see this review]. Neilalien's just being nice to his non-North American readers who'll never see the series finale after buying #1-5. As reported in this week's Rage, Hasbro has informed Diamond they were not authorized to sell any Transformers stuff outside N.A, effective immediately. Oops!)

Neilalien didn't follow it all, but he thinks there's also a long item in the above Rage link highlighting why comic book creators, the internet, lawyers and young girls should never, ever mix.

Posted 25 October 02002 - Permalink

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DocWatch: A quick search of Joe Quesada's Q+A Answer Archive on his message board reveals nothing new. Just this older exchange: Q. Any Dr. Strange coming up? A. Perhaps. Don't break out the champagne. But it's better than a terse No. Unless it's just mean teasing. That would be worse.

Posted 24 October 02002 - Permalink

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Marvel to blunt any no-overprint pain with faster Must Have reprints!? [Newsarama]

Huge list of JMS online posts about writing [JMS on Writing via a post on The Speech Balloon]

Stuart Moore: Comics and WWII [A Thousand Flowers]

Posted 23 October 02002 - Permalink

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Jemas gets all the attention he ever could hope for by having a character in his crappy comic Marville #2 do something politically-incorrect and insinuate the 'n' word (and bash Mexicans too) [open letter from Jemas responding to criticism: Newsarama, Pulse; Pulse got some reactions from Black creators]
Note Neilalien's phraseology. It's just a stunt to get attention. Don't be the politically-correct police and make his "point" for him (Marville has a "theme"?). It's more a response- barely an apology. And "crappy comic." Very crappy. But in Jemas' defense: It's a character he writes who says it (almost), not him.

If your first name is Peter, your last name is Parker, or full name is Peter Parker, you can get the Spider-Man DVD cheap [Half.com promotion found via Pulse]
Man, it sucks to be Parker Posey right now.

This new mini-series on Bast from the Sandman mythos sounds incredible! [Newsarama]
First Y: The Last Man, and now this. Two good Vertigo books? Neilalien had better go get his shots now.

Posted 22 October 02002 - Permalink

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Marvel's Avi Arad named one of the most powerful people in entertainment by Entertainment Weekly [Splash]
Let's use some of that power to get a good Dr. Strange movie on the silver screen!

There's some other recent interesting threads on Comicon.com:
Heidi vs. Jemas: The title kinda says it all, right? Has some good bits in it, including an open letter to Marvel brass about the no-overprint policy. A debate about grammar rounds things out.
Unbiased news coverage?: Or maybe this title is more your fancy?
What, no weeping for the Warren Ellis Forum?: Neilalien hadn't caught that solid Dave Cummings post.

Chris Claremont lights up Bowling Green, KY [Bgdailynews.com via World Famous Comics]

Posted 20 October 02002 - Permalink

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Missing page from Powers #24 [Page 24; Bendis; via Alan David Doane]

Neilalien's ended up adding quite a bit of discussion text at that Pulse article he linked to yesterday. He hasn't had his knickers in this much of a bunch since the Seven Spheres War debate on the Defenders Message Board! Neilalien just thinks, quite strongly, that people who style themselves as journalists/reporters should not also write opinion columns. There's a reason why it's clearly separated in other news media- because when they do, crap like this happens: (1) Jemas was able to call out Heidi, and (2) the news we got wasn't complete. Ah well, not the greatest text or most important thing in the world (snipers, anyone?). But if it's a little pit-bull voice in a small chorus that stormed the creator/retailer/columnist/reporter insular elite overlap back room and got a tiny (if still insufficient) positive policy change on Pulse, then it's good. And heck, Neilalien can't appear any worse in public than Mr. Jemas often seems to do. Neilalien: Media critic? Guardian of journalistic ideals? Or gasket blower? U-Decide!

Posted 18 October 02002 - Permalink

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Let's link to some ICv2 goodies. They deserve it.

Jemas bristles at someone's suggestion that retailers dislike the no-overprint policy [ICv2]
Notice how ICv2 freely publishes who Jemas' target was- Pulse reporter Heidi MacDonald- but Newsarama's coverage of the press conference bends over backwards to keep the columnist's identity unclear, and Pulse's coverage of the press conference doesn't even mention the incident. The omissions don't smell like "journalistic integrity," do they?

Marvel's Ultimate War, Crossover [ICv2]

Sexy Ad on Marvels 'Just Slipped Through' [ICv2]

Last week there was news that Conan the Barbarian had new owners. Neilalien didn't consider the item linkworthy here, but something about it stuck in his feeble brain. Now he knows why. This ICv2 blurb reminds him that the now defunct Stan Lee Media was the previous owner of Conan. How ownership was transferred "isn't clear."

MoCCA 02003 news! [Pulse]
More MoCCA news! [Pulse]

Posted 17 October 02002 - Permalink

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Face it: Comic books are about dumb superheroes [Steven Grant's Master of the Obvious column on CBR]

Chatty Star Wars spy nabbed by LucasFilms [Pulse]

Posted 16 October 02002 - Permalink

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Marvel's Squadron Supreme returns, by J. Michael Straczynski and Gary Frank [Pulse]
Neilalien is thinking that if this has been JMS' secret Marvel project all along, it's extremely bad news for Dr. Strange fans.

The return of Peter Paul? [Splash]

The last sixteen weeks of rumors: how accurate? [this week's Gutters]
No mention of the recent JMS/Dr. Strange speculation.

JMS defends himself against those who think he's slow [this week's Rage]
There was only a very-9/11-related hiccup re: Amazing Spider-Man.

Preview of Transformers G1 #6 [Pulse]

Neilalien has a new Halloween style sheet! Hope you like. If you've Personalized Your Neilalien Website ExperienceTM, you'll need to re-personalize to see it.

Posted 15 October 02002 - Permalink

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Stan Lee bio on the Biography Channel: 18, 19, 21 October [heads up from Mark Evanier]
Must... get... cable...

Up, Up, and Oy Vey [Jewsweek]

Interesting Shazam! fan page [via Insolvent Republic of Blogistan]

Nicolas Cage nets $1.6 million in comic book auction [AP on Washingtonpost.com]

Posted 13 October 02002 - Permalink

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Another new comic book weblog found! [Read Comics In Public]
Since Neilalien lamented last month about the dearth of comic blogs, he's found a couple new ones. That's good! Found via BugPowder.

Weblogs and Comics: How weblogs can help the comics community [BugPowder essay via LinkMachineGo]

Stan Lee is agnostic [Onion A.V. Club 'Is There A God?' via LinkMachineGo]

Josh Neufeld and his Titans of Finance comic at a Nader Rally [via BugPowder]

Marvel giving away comics for 25 cents! [CBR; Newsarama; Pulse]
New slogan: Marvel Comics- Straight to the quarter bins!

Shrink-wrap probs with Marvel Encyclopedia? [Usenet post]
Neilalien can think of one problem with the shrink wrap: can't check out the Dr. Strange entry, if there even is one...

Help, Spider-Man stranded off U.S. West Coast! [Yahoo! News (link will die quickly) via World Famous Comics' News]
3,000 Spidey replicas for the DVD movie release are stuck due to the West Coast's port strike.

Bunch of good comic reviews; Creature Tech's 'heavy-handedness' mentioned [Breakdowns column by Chris Allen on Movie Poop Shoot via Alan David Doane]

Posted 10 October 02002 - Permalink

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Peter David puts the U-Decide praise in perspective [Not So Marvel-ous]

Fade From Blue's Myatt Murphy interviewed [Movie Poop Shoot via Newsarama]

Neilalien was wondering what happened to the third part of Millar's The Chair interviews, the one with DC... [Comic Book Resources]

Failure Magazine profiles the Women in Refrigerators website [current Arts & Entertainment section; found by following an Anil Dash link]

Posted 9 October 02002 - Permalink

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New Fantagraphics 244-page hardcover about Steve Ditko slated for June 02003! [Newsarama]
This was announced on the Ditko-L Yahoo Group two weeks ago. That'll teach Neilalien to check there more often. Anyway- what a fantastic item! Ditko has long deserved a book like this. This interview with Blake Bell is quite good. Can't wait for Steve Ditko: The Mysterious Traveler.

Near-mint CGC Daredevil #131 (1st app Bullseye) goes for almost $1,000 on Ebay [CGC Hall of Shame via a Usenet post]

Marvel canceling titles; CrossGen's relationships with comic book news sites [this week's Gutters]
See also: HeroRealm CrossGen Coverage Ends: CG Recommends Pulse! Neilalien happened to avoid this mess by never linking to CrossGen softballs.

This is the first mention of ComicsML Neilalien has seen since he blogged it back in April 02001- and that's sad [Black Belt Jones via BugPowder]

Surfing Blogcritics reveals an entertaining review of Marvel Masterworks: Amazing Spider-Man Volume II and a great review of Unbreakable.

Marvel shares slide; preferred-to-common exchange offer will balloon the number of outstanding shares and dilute stock value [Splash]

Neat 80's Grant Morrison/Steve Yeowell Master of Kung-Fu five-pager is posted online [Barbelith Underground; at LinkMachineGo's insistence]

Posted 8 October 02002 - Permalink

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$49/year Netflix-type service for comic trade paperbacks [Trade Paperback Loaner Program Membership at Grey Haven Online Store (also Preordercomics.com) via Alan David Doane]
This could be good.

Dr. Strange trounces Dormammu over at Googlefight [via A Small Victory]
On the undercard, Neilalien defeats Baron Mordo.

Jury gives quick, complete, stunning victory to Gaiman over McFarlane in Spawn/Miracleman case [CBR; Newsarama; Pulse; ICv2]
Gaiman also wins decisively on Googlefight! Sounds as if justice has been done.

DocWatch: Bill Jemas posted to the Joe Quesada Message Board this week that "Tom Brevoort is cooking up some great new books on some great old characters. Tom's fast too - look for the launches early next year." If Doc ain't part of this, Neilalien's going to be hitting the bottle pretty hard.

Marvel investors left holding worthless paper once again [Splash]
Please, no comments from the peanut gallery about what kind of paper Marvel comic book readers are holding.

Sex museum to open in NYC [Miami.com via World Famous Comics]
Wonder Woman's little bondage thing will be there.

Posted 4 October 02002 - Permalink

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New comic book weblog found! [Flat Earth]
Seems new to Neilalien anyway. Sounds like it's (re-)started in reaction to the Barbelith Collective shut-down. It has potential- hopefully S. can stick with it. Growl- Blogspot archive links can be so flaky, can't link to specific stuff today. Over there right now is a good tracking of that whole McFarlane/Gaiman/Spawn/Miracleman affair (Neilalien doesn't seem too interested, but it's in trial now so maybe interest will rise) and an awesome MODOK link.

Great Ultra-Magnus Transformers item [Venusberg via Fluxblog also via Flat Earth]

Superhero creator avoids stereotypes [Detnews.com]
Detroiter Kenjji says most black characters are rife with negative images.

Coming to a 'Forgotten' Child's Rescue [ABCNews.com]
"Alonzo Washington created Omega Man 10 years ago to give African-American readers a positive, socially conscious black superhero, which he said had been lacking in the comic book industry. Omega Man has tackled issues such as drug abuse, gang violence, black-on-black violence and racism over the years. It seems only natural that the superhero and Washington, who has been a community activist in his resident Kansas City since he was 16, would take on missing children."

Comic book artist leaps into next venue [Business Journal of Jacksonville]
Don Perlin fights against the video games using the Stan Lee formula (teenagers with problems).

Religious seminar shows how Spider-Man and Superman are Christ figures [Bridgevillestar.com]
It's open to interpretation.

The above four links are found via the World Famous Comics' News Room, Neilalien's favorite site tonight.

Posted 3 October 02002 - Permalink

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Sex, Lies & Superheroes: A Comics Documentary [Newsarama]

Own the Batcycle from the 60's camp series [Ebay via Pulse]

Jess Nevin's excellent annotations to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen will be a book [Pulse]

Industry whore Wizard Magazine to be on every English-speaking street corner [good Rage this week]

Earliest Superman fragments go for $115K [Splash]

Marvel and Universal solidify relationship- Sub-Mariner movie looking more likely [Newsarama]

Aquaman's new duds [Newsarama; also Pulse]

Praise for New X-Men #132 [Psychicpants.net]

Posted 2 October 02002 - Permalink

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