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First things First
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Fall is here and that means that the holidays are not that far away and then the start of a whole new year. October 31 is our intrepid editor's birthday so be sure to send her some sort of birthday card (e-card or regular card) and also it brings out the the little ones (and not so little ones) in costumes as well. Sheryl Roberts, The Collector Times editor, always does something at Halloween that I've always wanted to do. She gives out comic books (age appropriate) as well as candy to the Trick-or-Treaters (T-o-T) that come by her house. My older brother was with us one year and had a whole stack of comic books and it went over rather well along with the candy. Unfortunately if last year is any indication, this year there will be very few visitors to the house this year. I have a lot of Batman Brave and the Bold and Superfriends issues that I no longer want and figure they would go to a better home if I gave them out to T-o-T rather than keeping them. There's some really good stories in those books that kids would enjoy.
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Something that bugs me
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I have just about sworn off the Comic Book Resources web site all together because some of the posters on their message boards decide to have a sort of Street Fighter II type battle involving characters from popular culture. Call me a giant stick in the mud, but I don't think your web site will get any more traffic because you are having an imaginary throwdown between Toad (Marvel) and Copperhead (DC) or are pitting Vegeta (Dragon Ball Z) versus Wonder Woman (DC). It's crap like this that really turns me off from web sites like CBR because it is on their front page day after day. Not just those imaginary battles, but there are lots more. I'm swearing off CBR just because of this. I don't know whose idea it is to throw characters from different universes together and make them fight when one is obviously superior to the other. Take the Wonder Woman versus Vegeta battle; while Vegeta may get some good licks in early he's going to get exhausted while Wonder Woman will just pound the living snot out of him. "What about his Super Sayan form?" you ask. He won't get a chance to transform because he'll just stand there and Blah-Blah about how he's the best and that no woman will beat him.
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Dear Hobbit Film Company
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To the film studio that is trying to get the Hobbit movie off the ground, please make up your mind on who is directing and who is going to have a starring role. You've gone though the likes of Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro supposed to be directing and then all of a sudden, I'm on Bleeding Cool and there's another name being floated around, Neil Blomkamp, that is supposed to be taking Del Toro's place as director. Then there was the rumor that the former 7th Doctor on Dr. Who, Sylvester McCoy, was up for the role of Bilbo. Then that rumor gets squashed by talking to him and he says he's playing Radagast the Brown in the Hobbit film. Now there's talk of the actor that plays in John Watson in the Sherlock series on the BBC, Martin Freeman, will play Bilbo in the movie. This is the problem with the internet. It gets all the fans of popular culture in a twitter about something just to make it turn out it was not true.
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Alan Moore sure is wordy:
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This link to an interview that Adi Tantimedh did with Alan Moore a few months ago on the Bleeding Cool web site talks about how Moore was offered the rights back to the Watchmen comic in return for DC being able to do sequels and prequels of the Watchmen franchise. I did not bother reading the whole thing because Mr. Moore is very wordy and while he does get to the point right away, he takes explaining things to a whole new level.
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The Sky is Falling! The Sky is Falling!
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This link at the Bleeding Cool web site shows the trade paperback orders for the months of July and August of 2010. Most people would look at this and think that the market for comic books is shrinking, but I think this is the usual August slowdown. Scott Pilgrim was coming in August so most stores would have stocked up before then so if there was a demand of people running to their local store then they would have stock and happy customers. Another reason for slow sales in August is because there were no major trades coming out for things like DC's Blackest Night or Marvel's Siege and the biggest thing on anyone's radar was the Scott Pilgrim movie.
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WHAT!
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This Link at Bleeding Cool is all about an appearance Neil Gaiman is doing on the PBS Kids show Arthur. It'll be on October 25th so everyone start checking your DVR's or on screen guides soon. The name of the episode is "Falafelosophy" which makes me think it is going to have something to do with the kids on Arthur trying new food. I think this is not something new, but a repeat of an older episode because I seem to remember hearing about this before.
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Clone Wars is Greatness
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The Star Wars: The Clone Wars third season started towards the end of last month and I must say the second episode "ARC Troopers" was good, while the first one was just kind of blah. I'm not going out on a limb and say that the first episode was boring, it had its moments and kind of shined a light on what happened to the clones we saw in the first season episode "Rookies." "ARC Troopers" was by far the most action packed episode I have seen in the past two seasons. It was just so crammed full of goodness that I wanted it to go longer. They introduced a defective clone by the name of Ninety-Nine and I really liked his character even though he was only being used as a plot device. Shaak-Ti is the Jedi in charge of training clones in the first episode and they have hired out a couple of Bounty Hunters to help in the rookie Clone Cadet's training. One of the bounty hunters I could have sworn was voiced by James Woods, but I have been known to be wrong. This bounty hunter has it out just to fail Domino Squad because he seems to get his rocks off on that sort of thing. The third episode of the season is going to be Jar-Jar and Senator Organa intensive so we have to see if the fans will pan this episode like they did the other Jar-Jar centered episodes. I liked how Jar-Jar was used in the "Blue Shadow Virus" episodes where he was not so much comic relief, but a major force of good. Later this month the second season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars comes to Blu-Ray and DVD and the first season is already out in both formats as well so if you like what I have said and want to see more then by all means go to Amazon and buy them or I'm sure they might have them on one of those video on demand services that you get with cable television.
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DC Realignment
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DC announced late last month that they were going to make their operations bi-coastal. As a result of that, they are going to not only shut down the Zuda comics brand as well as shut down the Wildstorm comic brand. They also announced that they were laying off 80 personnel. I'm guessing most of these 80 will be from Zuda and Wildstorm as they try to streamline things and integrate the Wildstorm universe into the DC universe proper. I have no idea what this is going to do for the universe in the future.
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Star Wars Nothing but Star Wars!
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Hasbro had announced earlier this year that they were going to be releasing six lines of action figures on old school cards. Some of them would be reproductions like the "Empire Strikes Back", "A New Hope" and "Return of the Jedi" while they would be releasing versions of "The Phantom Menace", "Attack of the Clones" and "Revenge of the Sith" on old school type cards. Hasbro in their ever infinite wisdom decided to cancel the "A New Hope" line of figures and integrated the Sandtrooper into the "Revenge of the Sith" line. I was so looking forward to having some old school card versions of characters like Luke, Han, Leia and Chewbacca but now that will never happen. I'm happy though because we are getting versions of the prequel figures on original type cards. I would have liked them to carry over the design to the back and have a shot of the figures that were going to be out in this line and the previous line like they did on the old school cards.
That's all for this month. As always you can email me story ideas or things that you find that I should know about on the internet.
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