Neilalien : A Doctor Strange Fansite : A Comic Book Weblog  

How much can we say that Steve Ditko was screwed if he refused to take the money? [Permanent Damage]
Also: "In [0]1967, Ditko was about the only guy in comics using mainstream comics for personal expression."

URLs taken at Blogspot: Fake Stan Lee (lots of good activity) and Fake Steve Ditko (a bit more stern and reclusive)

Rocketship's Alex Cox interviews Fred Van Lente; on working at Marvel for kids books [Comics Should Be Good]

Posted 30 August 02008 - Permalink

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Apple bans Murderdrome comic (and the whole Comic Reader generic viewer application that comes with Murderdrome included?) from the iPhone (and iPod Touch) App Store for content Apple deems offensive [CNN Money]

Apple has just banned a book: forget eBooks; but we can buy Reservoir Dogs on iTunes; banning an app because of content? [Mike Cane] [Comic Reader praised as an eBook/eComic breakthrough]

The Murderdrome comic in question for all to check out at Infurious Comics [Infurious Comics blog]

"Murderdrome... is a comic designed for the iPhone/iPod touch- we've coded a comic reader and bundled the comic in with it." [creator comment on Whitechapel thread; YouTube video of how app works]

Digital comics arrive at iTunes App Store [Comic Book Resources] [Lying In The Gutters]
Comic Books on the iPhone? No Thanks; screen is too small [Wired]

It sounds like a collision of "Apple 'censorship' absurdity" with the equivalent of "creators of a new photo-viewing application dumbassly (or done on purpose to brilliantly get attention) bundle it with sample nudie pics when they shop app around to conservative companies".

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Update: More comics + technology: Scott McCloud comic introduces new Google Chrome browser

Posted 27 August 02008 - Permalink

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Doctor Strange and Dead Girl by Cliff Chiang No One has ever been Ripped Off as badly by the Comics Industry as Steve Ditko [Blog.Kobek.com]

Fascinating mail between DC and Jerry Siegel re: Superman from 01939 through 01947 now available- recommended reading [Uncivil Society] [PDF]
Comics is an industry built on exploitation; an industry "that so loves its Colonel Parkers and so distrusts its Elvis Presleys" [Comics Reporter]

Sweet Doctor Strange and Dead Girl sketch by Cliff Chiang [thanks to lucky owner Christian!]

Steve Ditko story "Family Mixup" from The Thing! #15 (July 01954, 5 pager) [Fortress of Fortitude]

Virgin Comics Shut Down [Publishers Weekly] [via The Beat]
It's always sad to see a comicbook publisher go under. It seems obvious now without the fog of eternal hope that Deepak-Chopra-"written" really-for-movies-not-comics comic books about Hindu mythology weren't going to fly very far in the hermetically-sealed-by-monopoly American Direct Market. But operations targeted at the South Asian consumer market to continue.

Posted 26 August 02008 - Permalink

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Clea by Colleen Coover This week's New Avengers #44 includes "the dark secret of the Illuminati" [preview at Comic Book Resources] [thanks readers!]

Strange and Stranger Salutes Spider-Man Artist Steve Ditko [Wired]

Point-by-point veteran response, agreeing and not, to Robert Kirkman's recent creator-owned manifesto [Steven Grant's Permanent Damage column at CBR]

The Top Ten Marvel Comics Heroes We Want To See In The Movies (And Five We Don't) [iFMagazine.com] [via the Defenders Message Board]
Doctor Strange is #1.

Warner Bros. to double-down on dark superhero movies after The Dark Knight [Wall Street Journal]
Watchmen soon; Superman to get darker reboot; Justice League stalled, actively developing movies for many solo heroes instead; Marvel movie method to be emulated. A terrible grim-n-gritty glut can officially now be predicted.

The Skrulls are everywhere [The Skrulls on Twitter]

Nothing is better code for "doctor" in comics than that forehead mirror thing [Polite Dissent]

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A big kudos and thanks to Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover for "Un-Enchanted Evening", their charming story in the recent King-Size Spider-Man Summer Special, which includes a Clea who's strong and competent (with new Coover-designed costume), and worthy of a potential Annual Neilalien Award for Best Appearance of a Dr.-Strange-Affiliated Character. Check it out!

Posted 25 August 02008 - Permalink

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Marvel Adventures Super Heroes #5 Doctor Strange cover From Spider-Man to Ayn Rand: Douglas Wolk reviews Strange and Stranger [New York Times]

November's Marvel Adventures Super Heroes #5 is a Doctor Strange story [First Look at Marvel.com] [thanks ComicSlayer!]

That time Doctor Strange protected the minor league baseball park in Durham, NC [Again With The Comics]
In Triple-A Baseball Heroes.

What retailer Brian Hibbs does with the comics that didn't sell; re: back issue bins [Tilting At Windmills at CBR]

People scan magazines and upload them to offshore Mygazines.com; digital piracy without grokking P2P [AP news story at Yahoo] [via Waxy]
If a comics equivalent, or just simply using Mygazines for comics, doesn't already exist, it will in about two seconds.

Flickr set of sound effects in comics [Retronomatopeya] [via LinkMachineGo]

Twinkies distract the Cosmic Cube (an omnipotent inanimate object, which if inanimately distractable, could create its own Twinkies) [Progressive Ruin]

Posted 18 August 02008 - Permalink

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Uncle Stan says There's Money In Comics! Doctor Extrano Biblioteca Marvel books: beautiful slightly-larger-than-manga-digest-sized crisp black-and-white spanish reprints [Howard Hallis collects and takes photo]
And Spain's collection of The Oath? Better than yours.

Neat essay exploring the use of solid-black panels in comics [Thought Balloonists]

Archie Comics Fights Mp3 Pirates [10 Zen Monkeys]

The Bride of Xemnu mashup takes some Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme images; funny footnotes [HeroMachine Community Blog]

Posted 16 August 02008 - Permalink

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A Ditko visit to the DC offices was related in some DC April 01998 comics [Four Realities]

Strange and Stranger positively reviewed [Johnny Bacardi Show]

Strange and Stranger blasted for mushiness in a very Ditkoan analysis [hosted at 20th Century Danny Boy]

Retailer negatively reviewing his nonreturnable stocked comics in newsletter to patrons seen as shooting self in foot [BeaucoupKevin]

Posted 15 August 02008 - Permalink

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Doctor Strange Pizzazz cover February 01978 Pizzazz cover has Doctor Strange on guitar backing Linda Ronstadt [Kleefeld on Comics]
And C3PO on drums. [Thanks Ted!]

Report from Blake Bell's Ditko panel at San Diego Comic-Con [Comic Book Resources]

[Former Marvel Comics editor Carl] Potts said that no one could match Ditko's prowess on showing emotion. "Nobody in comics had ever done anything like it," he said. "We tried to imitate it later. It was ground-breaking."

No one aspires to write Moby Dick 2, except in comics: Robert Kirkman goes creator-owned to save comics [Comic Book Resources; video editorial]

Good Not-So-Fast vs. growing provincial complaints that San Diego Comic-Con has gotten too big, too Hollywood, too crowded, too non-comics [Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat]

Posted 14 August 02008 - Permalink

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Blue Hat Man Marvel should license Dr. Strange out to Fantagraphics, give funky indie creators a crack [Flog!]

Even-handed skepticism for the too-quickly-solidified tale that Steve Ditko uses his own legendary art as a cutting board [Four Realities]

Love for Strange and Stranger, but questioning a meme of the book that a bunch of money would justify Ditko tolerating more comic-industry disrespectful treatment [Stephen Bissette]
"As one who likewise stepped away from the industry, Ditko's decisions and behavior seems utterly pragmatic and justified."

Alan David Doane, longtime disser of "comics cost too much" criticism, may have finally found his own limit re: $125 96-page Kramers Ergot #7 [Comic Book Galaxy]
Especially with four-buck gas.

Posted 13 August 02008 - Permalink

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Brendan McCarthy to write and draw new Dr. Strange/Spider-Man three-issue mini-series

Exciting news! [Brendan McCarthy] [career recap on Wikipedia]

(Via a hundred emails since it posted (thanks readers!), but Neilalien was on vacation, so The Beat got to post Doc news before Neilalien. Oh the shame! ;) Time to get back on the ball!)

Posted 12 August 02008 - Permalink

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Strange and Stranger documents Ditko's greatness, and the toll Randianism has exacted [Art Blog By Bob]

Mini-gallery of trippy Ditko Charlton Ghostly Haunts covers (with unfortunate Ditko-brilliance-diminishing drug-use reference-joke) [Psychskull]

The Dark Night and International Politics [Cogitamus]
The Dark Knight has some simplisticness-defying depth to it, and the politicos have definitely seen what they've wanted to see in it. This text is the best Neilalien's found so far, as (1) a mini-overview of the debate, (2) a refreshing critique of reading The Dark Knight politically in general and as right-wing validation in particular (re: Batman/Bush/America heroically, reputation-riskingly, and justifiably by any means necessary, opposing a nonrational Joker/Al Qaeda threat) and (3) offering a solid opposing progressive reading of the film re: Batman/Bush/America as a disastrous creator of Joker blowbacks in a broken international law-order system (Gotham).

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Neilalien was thrilled to finally meet Dash Shaw in person at last night's Rocketship event. A good time was had by all. Marvel, get off your ass and publish that indie book with Shaw's great Doctor Strange!

Missed it: Some John-Byrne-Forumer blasted into wacko orbit over Shaw's Doc pages and interview last year [related at All The Rage; primary links dead, and probably just as well]

Posted 2 August 02008 - Permalink

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Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet [The Onion]

Funny Wikipedia entry re: the third Doctor Who's catchphrase "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow" [Wikipedia]
Jon Pertwee is Neilalien's favorite Doctor actor.

Posted 1 August 02008 - Permalink

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